The "Window Resizer" extension for Chrome now contains malware (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/mlAD1ygc0v0/Cc7IrHdmE5AJ <comment><USER2> Reddit discussion from last month:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/1snyyl/ysk_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/1snyyl/ysk_the_chrome_extension_called_window_resizer/)

Also, alternative as discussed on SO:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20775775/alternative- to-c...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20775775/alternative-to-chrome- extension-window-resizer)

See it in action:

[http://chrisbalt.com/blog/2013/12/20/link-hijacking- through-...](http://chrisbalt.com/blog/2013/12/20/link-hijacking-through- chrome-extensions-and-other-security-risks.html)

Edit: Related:

[http://superuser.com/questions/694825/why-my-google- search-r...](http://superuser.com/questions/694825/why-my-google-search- results-are-all-directed-via-http-www-ecosia-org)

[http://windowresizer.userecho.com/topic/353032-did-you- pull-...](http://windowresizer.userecho.com/topic/353032-did-you-pull-your- extension-from-the-google-store/)

<comment><USER3> One thing I wish I had called out more clearly in my post ("See it in action") was the fact that the "feature" would re-enable itself after every update of the extension, which seemed to be quite frequently.

It's a shame; it really was a feature-packed, helpful extension.

<comment><USER4> No it doesn't re-enable after any update. It only re-enables if you uninstall the extension and install it back, because settings are lost and it switches to the default. Please check your facts before making such claims, ok? Anyone with minimal JavaScript skills can look at the source code and see exactly what's happening!

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Whether or not it was your intention or the design of your extension, that was the behavior I observed - hence my factual claim.

I've looked deeply into your extension and you did a very nice, impressive job. I don't believe anyone is discounting the quality of your work here. The pattern you exhibited by enabling the ecolinks feature by default (right or wrong) simply highlighted, for many, the risks inherent in granting browser extensions such great permissions to the browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is more interesting is the reaction from the developer himself. He seems to be completely unimpressed by the criticism. Noting that one permits Chrome extensions to do stuff, and they would have seen this permission the extension required when they updated or installed it.

Furthermore, he is quoted as joking about how he could have sold the extension to someone to get your passwords and whatnot (but ensures us that he hasn't done so).

<comment><USER6> That is interesting.

It could be criticism of the existing system. Or he could have other goals/intentions.

<comment><USER5> He asks specifically if he has broken some rules in Google Chrome's terms of service, where another user replies with quotations from the ToS. He barks at that saying his extension is allowed to do what he does, because his extension does reveal exactly what it does, if you read its permissions carefully.

Although, I cannot confirm whether that is true, but that's what he is saying.

I have no idea what he is up to; but aren't extensions supposed to be reviewed if they in the extension catalogue?

<comment><USER7> They seem to have an automated review process unless the extension is flagged for manual review. Source - [https://developers.google.com/chrome/web- store/faq#faq-gen-0...](https://developers.google.com/chrome/web- store/faq#faq-gen-08).

<comment><USER8> Yeah, seems like they should maybe institute some type of manual review for any type of "global" permissions. It would impede the well-behaving apps that legitimately need global permissions, but it might be worth it.

<comment><USER9> ... or incentive them not to request universe permissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since Chrome auto-updates extensions, users are likely not aware of this change.

I've been using the extension for several months until I noticed the transparent redirection. In fact, the only reason I noticed the redirect is when it failed. I clicked on a Google search result and got stuck on a blank page like this:

        http://ecolink3.ecosia.org/?key=3cdcd4dc082e3c7b860abe4608b6925d&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fstory%2Fpopcandy%2F2013%2F01%2F15%2Ffred-armisen-ira-glass-this-american-life%2F1836079%2F&cuid=2

<comment><USER10> > Since Chrome auto-updates extensions

How do you disable this?

<comment><USER11> Not sure if you can or not, but you can use this: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extensions- update-...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/extensions-update- notifie/nlldbplhbaopldicmcoogopmkonpebjm)

Which pops up a toast notification whenever an extension gets updated so you can investigate (Chrome doesn't force changelogs on updates either so you might have to dig deeper into the code).

If you don't mind having another extension which could be doing nefarious things.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, it's better than nothing at least.

[Rant: the whole concept of auto-update-by-default is stupid. /Rant]

<comment><USER12> If there was something like »Updates for your extensions are available, install them now?« would it really help or would most users just say »yes«? They'd have no way of verifying that the update is benign or not anyway.

<comment><USER10> It should be more like "Updates for your extensions are available; they will be installed when Chrome is restarted. [OK] [Cancel automatic updates]".

Or basically anything that gives you the option to avoid doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Whoa, wait. One guy in this thread is claiming that Window Resizer was sending all your keystrokes back to a central server based on what he saw in Wireshark. Can anyone else verify this? I've had this extension installed for...a year, at least. Do I need to now go change every single password on every site because chances are it's been keylogged? This is insane.

<comment><USER5> The developer also seems to claim that the keylogger exists as well. If you want to take his word for it as well.

<comment><USER13> I just can't even fathom. Like, every email I've typed. Every interaction with any site. Credit card numbers.

How is this not entirely illegal?

And it certainly shows an incredible flaw in Chrome extensions. This extension didn't do this when I installed it. A silent auto-update though basically turned it into the worst malware I've ever had installed on my computer. How can any Chrome extension ever be trusted?

Furthermore, I spend a lot of time in Chrome Dev Tools, and the Network tab and I are no stranger. I would easily have noticed if my keystrokes were being sent back to a server and it was shown in there. So not only can an extension be silently updated, but it's capable of using a network connection that doesn't appear in the Chrome Network tab, that only Wireshark can reveal? That seems almost as ridiculous as what the extension author did.

<comment><USER14> A chrome extension can make network connections that you won't (normally) see in Dev Tools using a background page. You'll see the connections if you inspect the background page directly but most users won't.

Unfortunately this is simply a byproduct of the web's (and browsers') botched security model; there is no way to allow extensions to modify pages without them being able to read the pages, and if they can read the pages they naturally can catch events, including keystrokes.

This is why you should think - hard - whenever allowing _any_ extension with that permission. It could autoupdate at any time to include malware.

There are a lot of bad extensions out there. I've encountered quite a few. It's a wide-open vector for exploitation and it happens all the time. Just last month I came across a game extension (super mario clone) that contained jQuery. Upon further inspection, it turned out it had been re-minified (making diffs difficult) and had a few lines deep inside that hijacked ads and replaced them with the author's ad network. Silent, effective, and this extension was on the 'top lists' for months. It might even still be there.

Be very aware of the permissions an extension asks for.

<comment><USER15> Pop fiddler on your machines and look for yourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The linked discussion is back from mid-December and the extension has been removed from the Chrome Web Store:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/window- resizer/kke...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/window- resizer/kkelicaakdanhinjdeammmilcgefonfh)

<comment><USER17> Smooth Gestures (lfkgmnnajiljnolcgolmmgnecgldgeld) has done the same thing for well over a year now. I (and many others) reported the addon to Google, but it still remains.

What does it take to get something like this removed?

<comment><USER18> In the extension text, they say: "This extension is ad supported, you can disable your support by going to the options and making a one-time donation. We depend on your support, but we understand if you would prefer to withhold it."

This, from what I can tell, plays within the bounds of Chrome's policy on extensions.

(I also spent some time looking at the extension source to verify that the only annoying thing they do is inject ads according to this whitelist: [http://goo.gl/3WAej6](http://goo.gl/3WAej6) Nothing else caught my eye. )

<comment><USER19> The extension did more than just add ads. A javascript listener for the click event was attach to each link on the result page.

If the user hovered with his mouse over a link, he couldn't tell the link would lead him to [http://www.ecosia.org/](http://www.ecosia.org/). But this is exactly what was happening, because the click listener was changing the URL _only_ after the user clicked.

So now the user was redirected to [http://www.ecosia.org/](http://www.ecosia.org/) along with a bunch of parameters, including the original query and the original URL, and from there [http://www.ecosia.org/](http://www.ecosia.org/) redirected the user to the original URL (after logging whatever it wanted to log), without the user having a way to notice what had just happened (unless looking in the dev console).

The fact that the URL was changed _only_ after the user clicked is quite a hint that deception was intended there.

<comment><USER4> Paul was talking about a different extension, but anyway...

The onclick event listener is the same thing Google does with the search results. Perform a search on Google and right-click a link, then you'll see the URL changes to the a Google proxy server that collects data about your click for analytics purposes. The reason is so the whole process is more transparent and the users can see the actual URL they end up with when clicking the link. The intention was not to hide anything, but to keep things as unobtrusive as possible. I'm sorry if it felt any other way!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google really REALLY needs to up their game. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7046240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7046240)

I don't feel safe using their services anymore.

<comment><USER21> Theory: Google decided to have relaxed rules to play catch up with Apple's App Store.

After hearing from other Android devs and what they were getting away with I decided to stick to Apple for a while.

<comment><USER22> This is a Chrome extension, not an App.

<comment><USER23> To be more specific, not an Android app. Chrome has web apps, but that's not the case here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Story sharing time!

I run a local user group that educates developers on Google's technologies that while proudly independent from Google, has a great working relationship with their developer relations teams.

Back in March of 2012 (that's almost two years ago) I first brought to the attention of the Chrome developer relations team an extension called Bookmark Sentry that essentially contained a trojan that hijacks links to serve up spam ads. You can read more about it here: [http://stopmalvertising.com/malvertisements/beware-of-the- go...](http://stopmalvertising.com/malvertisements/beware-of-the-google- chrome-extension-neat-bookmarks.html)

What I found troubling was the response back. I received an official response that it was within compliance of Chrome App Store policies. Specifically I was told:

"Ad injections are not in violation of the Chrome Web Store program policies. The policy requires that ads must be presented in the context of the extension or, when present within another page, ads must be outside the page's normal flow and clearly state which extension they are bundled with. We believe that ads are a legitimate way to monetize, but that they should be a known cost to the extension user."

I certainly hope since then they've changed their policy on this issue and are actively policing and enforcing against spyware and malware.

Chrome App extensions can access extremely sensitive data such as webforms with credit card, contact details, passwords and more and in the wrong hands can do untold damage.

</comment><comment><USER25> I noticed this about a month back. I was browsing the web one Saturday morning and spotted an "Eco link" next to the search results. Most of them were big sites, like Amazon and eBay etc.

I immediately emailed one of our SEO guys with a snippet of the page and said, "we need to know how to do this in Google, it must be a new feature". I stupidly assumed it was a new feature Google had rolled out. When he replied that he can't see it I started googling the problem, most of the results pertained to Malware and I was shocked, I'm a very careful browser in general.

When I started digging around it was only then I started switching off my plugins 1 by 1 and the eco link went when I switched off the browser resizer, I was honestly shocked. I knew the developer wasn't supporting the plugin any more due to funding but I didn't think it would go in that direction, I expected it to just fade away.

No, I didn't read the updates on the product. I don't have time to read updates on products, especially plugins. After reading his comments on there, there is no remorse for his actions. He is nothing more than a simple malware spreader, he should apply for a job at SourceForge.

<comment> chrome-resizer Here is a version from before the takedown: [http://ge.tt/8PSuzxD1/v/0](http://ge.tt/8PSuzxD1/v/0)

(I zipped the '3rd-party' directory and removed references to those scripts in the manifest file. So it's there if you wanna inspect it, but ecolinks won't run. I don't have time to restructure the options page though :-)

<comment><USER25> I'm assuming you are the developer?

Now I see these pages I can see you were quite transparent about the eco links update. I still didn't see it though.

It's a shame it went in this direction as I used it all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I ran into this. I only found out because ecolink went down for a while. So when I clicked on google search results, it would error out while trying to redirect.

Valuable lesson learned. I never thought a chrome developer would be quite so stupid to pull something like this. Now I'll keep my eye on every extension.

And yes, you should never install Window Resizer, or anything else Ionut Botizan (the developer) releases again.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is completely egregious. Deleting now.

I love that the developer's defense is that he could have sold our passwords to someone but (supposedly) didn't. That really instills confidence in his morals, doesn't it?

<comment><USER28> It's almost akin to "I stabbed you in the leg, but see, I could've stabbed you in the heart!".

Would avoid this developer 100% from now on, Chrome or otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When developing my first Chrome Extension, it didn't take me long until i got the thought of "keylogging might be possible".

So i tried it, and sure - i was even able to replace password logins in the DOM with fake ones.

Firefox extensions does the same thing really, so now i only use a few "safe" extensions.

I'm surprised that this hasen't gotten more attention.

<comment><USER30> Now I have to wonder... What permissions do Firefox extensions have? How do I check or verify these things?

<comment><USER31> Firefox extensions have the same permissions as browser itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is it correct to class this as malware? I get that the portmanteau is "malicious software" and hijacking your Google search results isn't the friendliest thing to do but I think this is closer to "adware" than "malware".

Although the author seems like a bit of a di- ...fficult person, maybe we should coin the term "dickware" to cover this sort of software.

EDIT: I missed the keylogging bit, thanks to everybody that pointed it out. Adware + Spyware = Malware.

<comment><USER33> It's inserting fake search results and running a keystroke monitor. To me this isn't even a close call; of course it's malware. I would also say that any developer who would do this simply can't be trusted; if he will do this, he might do just about anything else. He doesn't seem to have any regard for others.

<comment><USER34> a hell of a lot of chrome extensions inject adverts and other tracking code into websites you visit, like Facebook and youtube. would you class those extensions as malware as well?

<comment><USER35> I would. Why wouldn't you?

<comment><USER34> I would, but that then means that the chrome web store is riddled with malware which isn't a nice thought and doesn't bode well for its future as something that is supposed to be more secure than traditional native platforms.

<comment><USER36> Something that was supposed to be secure is not. So you stop calling malware, malware?

Move on.

<comment><USER34> I was agreeing with him, perhaps I should have phrased it better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hover Zoom had a similar problem recently, but still exists on the Chrome store. Up until a certain version, their data collection did nothing much (perhaps save non-existing domain hits).

Then they partnered with someone and started sending certain form data (!!) to a third party -- claiming they wanted to collect anonymous demographic information. It didn't help that the script injection on all pages (which I discovered when debugging with the web tools) used some shady domains with no web presence.

They claim they did not send e.g. any password data -- but they perfectly could have. I tried reporting the extension on the store as did many others, but that had no effect. The developer seems to have reverted that bit of the code -- for now.

<comment><USER38> Looks like it's time to find a replacement for Hover Zoom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Someone should (and I just might) write an extension that updates a list of evil extensions and authors and warns the user when they have a bad extension or try to install a new extension on that list. Powered by a blocklist type of listing and community moderated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really what this boils down to, imho, is a need to educate users on the meaning of the permissions that are granted (with approval) to these extensions. Certainly the vast majority of users confirm the security permissions without comprehending the weight of access they've just provided the extension author.

With JavaScript, it's nearly impossible for Chrome to reasonably explain, with any level of granularity, what exactly an extension will do with its access - hence the "access your data on all websites" warning.

A proof of concept to demonstrate how you can take advantage of this access for nefarious reasons, even after getting approval into the Chrome Web Store, would be quite simple.

Long/short of it is: make sure you trust the author of any extension you install!

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow, I had noticed the clickjacking of my Google result links (to ecolink) but had no idea who/what was doing it. Very glad this mystery is finally solved! Thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER41> What a dickhead.

</comment><comment><USER42> Classic!

"There is no such thing as bad publicity" by Ionut Botizan

(Source: [http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/mlAD1ygc0v0/1MP...](http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/mlAD1ygc0v0/1MP8G-WsfFkJ))

</comment><comment><USER43> Same with Read later fast: It rewrites all your URLs:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-later- fast/de...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-later- fast/decdfngdidijkdjgbknlnepdljfaepji)

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm most concerned about the keylogging claims. Does anyone have a copy of the CRX so that we can determine if keystrokes were in fact being transmitted?

<comment><USER45> Seems as though he's aware of such a thing.

"No, that's bundled adware. If I wanted to give you malware, I would have added a keylogger which you wouldn't have ever discovered (ask around; it's technically possible). So stop whining already, uninstall the extension and move on with your life!" [http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/mlAD1ygc0v0/FL6...](http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/chrome/mlAD1ygc0v0/FL6w_Z0WoIQJ)

(Also, he's now posting on the linked thread. 7 minutes ago last reply.)

<comment><USER44> > I would have added a keylogger

seems to imply that he was not logging keystrokes, which conflicts directly with the first post in that thread:

> they are tracking all data and keystrokes. checked with wireshark.

It'd be nice to have a copy so that we can find out for ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Here's how you disable "EcoLinks" if you have this extension installed and enabled:

chrome-extension://kkelicaakdanhinjdeammmilcgefonfh/ecosia.html

Uncheck "Enable EcoLinks".

<comment><USER47> Yeah, and then it re-enables itself hours later, according to countless commenters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Ive been having those bad URLs for a couple weeks now and thought Google was really off their game since many times the pages came up dead. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER9> Note to the developer: Next time you make a malware, also use it to remove all bad references to your extension from HN and newspapers...

</comment><comment><USER49> I saw the ecosia redirects popping up in some instances but couldn't figure out where they were coming from.

The extension is now uninstalled.

</comment><comment><USER50> Shame, because it's a good resizer. I happened to uninstall it back in November, but my co-worker is still (was) using it.

</comment><comment><USER51> Monday started with a massive WTF ;)

</comment><comment><USER52> Do we know where he was _sending_ the keystrokes?

Was it logging all keystrokes in Chrome ever?

</comment><comment><USER53> The extension hasn't existed on the chrome app store for months. Why is this news on HN now? It wasnt malware either, it was ecolinks garbage for google search results that you could opt-out of.

<comment> james-skemp I'm glad it hit the home page. Had this on one of my machines as of December (booted it up a few minutes ago and it was no longer installed). Luckily my usage of the machine was limited, but ... now I've got to change passwords for the few sites I did visit.

Does anyone know if the Chrome Remote Desktop extension would have been impacted by the keylogging?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is adware, not malware!

The original post on productforums.google.com is complete _BS_ and the extension was NOT suspended because of that, but because it failed to make it clear, in the context of the ads, which extension enabled the EcoLinks. This is not the first, nor last, piece of software that uses ads in order to support its development.

Also, the extension never logged anything from the users. All the "keylogger" stuff is just rumors started by people who are either incapable of reading a sentence from start to end or are knowingly lying about it.

It didn't alter the search results either. Those were exactly what Google returned for your search, nothing more, nothing less.

There was no malicious intent whatsoever. The whole purpose was to support further development of the extension through some form of advertising which you could disable at any point. The disable option was not even hidden among the other options; it had a dedicated page with a link in the main menu that only consisted of a checkbox - it was that simple and obvious.

Another false rumor is that the setting would enable itself automatically. No, it didn't! The only way that it would re-enable itself was to remove the extension and then install it right back. On uninstall all settings are lost and it fallbacks to the defaults.

The source code is plain HTML & JavaScript and it has always been available for anyone to review. Anyone could download the .CRX file and unzip it (it's just a _special_ ZIP file) or take a look in the /%USER_FOLDER%/<PATH_TO_CHROME>/Extensions/kkelicaakdanhinjdeammmilcgefonfh folder (this varies based on your operating system) where the installed extension is. The source code has also been available at [http://ionut- botizan.net](http://ionut-botizan.net)

If you don't know JavaScript, you don't have to take my word for it; there is this prominent person in the web industry that, although he does not endorse this extension, has reviewed the code and confirmed there was no keylogger there: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7048156#up_7056031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7048156#up_7056031)

Another false accusation is that I bragged about how "I could sell your personal data and it wouldn't matter to me".

What I actually said is that "I could sell MY EXTENSION (as in transfer all rights and ownership to someone else) and it shouldn't matter to me (from a legal standpoint) what the buyer would do with it, be it collecting your private data or whatever". That claim was made just to point out that in fact I do care about the users' privacy and I chose not to sell the extension, even though I received plenty of offers. Some people asked "how could I even think of that"? Well, the extension is my property and receiving all those offers put me in the position where I had to think about it, whether I liked it or not.

In conclusion, yes, I admit the opt-out pattern is not the friendliest one and the whole thing could have been handled in some other way, but the reality is far from all these claims that I sneakily added malware to the extension, logged your keys and private data and sell all that to third parties or whatever.

The reality is I took your Google search results and converted them to sponsored links, plain and simple. All data that was transmitted when you clicked a search result was about the same that is sent whenever you click on any other ad or banner, which can not, in any circumstances, be used to identify you personally.

I am the developer and this is my answer; no excuses, just stating the facts. Learn what you want from it.

<comment><USER19> > All the "keylogger" stuff is just rumors started by people who are either > incapable of reading a sentence from start to end or are knowingly lying > about it

I went ahead and looked at the code after downloading the zipped extension you linked too, and I effectively cannot see anything re. key logger. Where was that first reported? I would like to ask the original reporter on what piece of code he based his conclusion that there was a key logger in there.

Edit: Never mind, I see this apparently comes from original poster on google groups, so I asked him exactly how he came to this conclusion.

<comment><USER4> Ok, that guy just explained what he meant by _keylogging_. Leaving aside the fact that he's wrong about how it all works (the results are provided by Google; nothing about the search was changed by the extension) and he never ever looked at the source code and what it is doing (probably because he's too dumb to understand any of it), what he means by _keylogging_ is adding the search terms to the URL query string when clicking on a link. (Ex: www.ecosia.org/url?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmicrosoftstore.com&v= _microsoft store_ <\- this italic text right here is the result of the _keylogger_ in his opinion)

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/mlAD1ygc...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/mlAD1ygc0v0/onn5FV6ektsJ)

So, this is what caused all this shit storm...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Haha that's so funny. The developer has involved in the discussion and he is seriously defending himself. What is wrong with him lol.</comment>


Git Tips and Tricks (Vault 7: CIA) - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_1179773.html <comment><USER2> Git: Such an inconsistent mess that even professional malware authors can't remember how to use it.</comment>


LoopBack – 2020 Goals and Focus - <AUTHOR> https://strongloop.com/strongblog/2020-goals/ <comment><USER2> I definitely don't like LoopBack in many ways :

\- custom relationship (hasMany - hasOne - belongsTo - etc.)

\- lack of documentation

\- readability

\- overriding and custom model methods

\- console output in bottom banner

\- too heavy compared to Java Spring framework (this is just one example)

\- realy hard to custom in general

\- and more...

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean LoopBack 3 or LoopBack 4?

<comment><USER2> LoopBack 3</comment></comment></comment>


New device makes wheelchairs obsolete. - <AUTHOR> http://www.wimp.com/newdevice/

<comment><USER2> Warning: obnoxiously loud video autoplays. OP, it's better to link to the parent site for a HN submission, in this case [http://www.matiarobotics.com/](http://www.matiarobotics.com/)

But content-wise, this is fantastic - great tech solution, _exactly_ what HN is about. This is the best pitch I have seen in in several years; Mrs. Browl was watching it over my shoulder and quipped that 'it's like a Segway that's useful.' Couldn't agree more.

Apparently due to go on sale at end of 2013 for about $15,000. Not so cheap compared to scooters, but factor in th reduced cardiovascular and psychological medical costs, and I bet insurance companies will be happy to get behind it. Again, fantastic. Great find, OP. Also, an obvious licensing opportunity for American investors.</comment>


Found a Project in GitHub. Seems Interesting - <AUTHOR> Hi, I found the following project in GitHub which seems interesting:
https://github.com/usernane/webfiori . According to the info in the repo, it is a web development framework built using PHP. Your opinion? <comment><USER2> I don't have much of an opinion on the project, however:

If it is your project and you want to show it off, please put "Show HN:" in the title.

If it is not yours, and you want to start a discussion on it, it might help to state what makes this project interesting to you, at this point it just seems like "Yet Another Web Framework"..</comment>


The End of Typing: The Next Billion Mobile Users Will Rely on Video and Voice - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-typing-the-internets-next-billion-users-will-use-video-and-voice-1502116070?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> Wonder if this could be used to help literacy.</comment>


Bitcoin XT 0.11A - <AUTHOR> http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010235.html

<comment><USER2> Best explanation of how this will work is on their site: "By mining with Bitcoin XT you will produce blocks with a new version number. This indicates to the rest of the network that you support larger blocks. When 75% of the blocks are new-version blocks, a decision has been reached to start building larger blocks that will be rejected by Bitcoin Core nodes. At that point a waiting period of two weeks begins to allow news of the new consensus to spread and allow anyone who hasn't upgraded yet to do so. During this time, existing Bitcoin Core nodes will be printing a message notifying the operators about the availability of an upgraded version.

If the hard fork occurs and you are still mining with Bitcoin Core, your node will reject the first new block that is larger than one megabyte in size. At that point there is a risk your newly mined coins will not be accepted at major exchanges or merchants." [https://bitcoinxt.software/](https://bitcoinxt.software/)

What I find intriguing about this in the bigger picture is it begins to answer one of questions from the beginning - how do political decisions regarding the blockchain get made when consensus has failed? And this shows a plausible mechanism for using a compatible fork to let users "vote with their feet".

I wonder if down the road this sort of thing could evolve/devolve into a sort of real block chain politics, e.g. let users incorporate one or more non-core patches into their nodes, and once a patch reaches some majority percentage it activates and forks the chain, perhaps even with a mechanism to allow other nodes to "accept a fork" (i.e. activate the patch in their node) if it wins but otherwise not proactively "vote" for it.

Interesting times.

<comment><USER3> >let users "vote with their feet"

Let's be precise: it's the _miners_ who are being asked to vote with their feet.

<comment><USER4> They won't stick with changes that the majority rejects, because their mining reward would otherwise become worthless

<comment><USER3> The Bitcoin XT software was designed to "poll" miners and ignore the other stakeholders. Mike Hearn explains why at

[http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin- dev/2015-...](http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin- dev/2015-August/010241.html)

Even though the other stakeholders will certainly be able to make their preferences known to the miners, any effect the other stakeholders will have on the success or failure of the fork will be _through_ the miners, which IMHO makes my statement "it's the miners who are being asked to vote with their feet" correct, at least for a sufficiently narrow definition of "vote".

Even when we consider the situation more broadly, none of the other stakeholders have (as far as I can tell) as much at stake as the miners. The miners for example might be hoping that if the 1-meg limit remains in place, transaction fees will become a significant fraction of mining rewards, which would increase the total income of mining (income being essentially the built- in rewards, which are not affected by the fork plus the transaction fees). Holders of large positions in Bitcoin on the other hand -- what is their reason for preferring one fork or the other? Ditto merchants who accept a lot of Bitcoin transactions.

ADDED. As far as I can tell, the designers Bitcoin XT sofware have done what they can to minimize the distruptiveness of the fork on the lives of the other stakeholders -- by, e.g., refraining from doing anything to affect anyone but the miners till 2 weeks after a full 75% of miners (or 75% of hashing power -- not sure which) are running the XT software.

ADDED. Yes, I realize that any additional income gained by the miners will be paid by Bitcoin senders (e.g., people using Bitcoin to pay for things), so in that sense Bitcoin senders have just as much at stake as the miners do, _but_ transaction fees will always be a very small fraction of the costs (considered collectively) of the senders of Bitcoin, so this is another instance of the very common situation where a large number of people are affected in some very small way by some policy decision whereas a smaller number of people are affected in a more significant and material way, and we know (from experience with democratic governments) that what usually happens in that situation is that the smaller group (whose interests are "concentrated") has a much larger influence on the decision than the larger group (whose interests are "diffuse").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought gavin and most of the established bitcoin devs were in favor of increasing the blocksize.. so why is this "lightning" system no one has heard about suddenly the new plan for bitcoin core? Whose clout is pushing this through? I was aware of argument about the 1MB limit but I thought the voices in favor of increasing it far outweighed those against.

<comment><AUTHOR> Two developers, nullc and pieter are against increasing the blocksize at a reasonable rate. Gavin, Jeff Garzik and Mike Hearn wish to increase it by early next year. Following some three months of debate, an agreement could not be reached, so Gavin and Mike are forking Bitcoin to the new Bitcoin XT. The vast majority of users, businesses and miners support Gavin and his bigger blocks, but blockstream, a relativley new for profit company which employs nullc aka Gregory Maxwell and Pieter as well as some other bitcoin devs and is developind lightning and sidechains which they offer as an alternative to increasing the blocksize has managed to stall this process, thus leading to a fork.

<comment><USER6> > Two developers, nullc and pieter are against increasing the blocksize at a > reasonable rate.

Careful, what is "reasonable" is what is at issue here. There are legitimate arguments being made on both sides.

<comment><AUTHOR> One side - your side specifically maaku and that of your employer blockstream - loses complete legitimacy when they start censoring posts and spoofing Satoshi's email address.

<comment><USER6> Neither Blockstream nor any of the core developers have affiliation with r/bitcoin, bitcointalk, or bitcoin.org. By design, mind you, for the purpose of ensuring decentralization. I may have the book badge on the subreddit, but I'm as helpless about censorship as you are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yet you and some of your other blockstream colleagues are cheering on the censorship in r/bitcoin.

<comment><USER6> I am not and I don't know anyone at Blockstream who is. Care to back that up with a link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's been some time since Bitcoin has given me reason to break out popcorn, the next few days should be quite fun to watch. :)

I have no particular opinion on which way this should swing, however it's clear that XT represents far more than just a block size change (and the XT web site even makes this explicit): it is another attempt at gaining increased control of the project, which is also mentioned by the linked Medium article as one of reasons Lightning isn't great for Bitcoin either.

While Mike and Gavin have long been members of the project, in good standing, and with no obvious reasons to doubt them, it's still worth giving a few moments thought to how the project may be impacted in the coming years should this "change in administration" succeed.

<comment><USER6> Mike was never really involved in Bitcoin Core, and Gavin stepped down 2 years ago.

<comment><USER8> Make coined the name "Bitcoin Core".

Gavin is still a core developer. He stepped down from his Leadership position to become "just" a regular core developer.

(I know that Maaku knows this. Just clarifying for the crowd.)

<comment><USER6> Care to point to what Gavin has worked on in that time frame?

There are very few changes that Gavin has contributed back to Bitcoin Core since he handed most of the day-to-day repo management over the Wladimir.

I honestly don't know what you are referring to, unless it is the small patches here and there of similar size and importance to things we receive on a daily basis from dozens of people. Gavin pretty much disappeared from core development when he stepped down 2 years ago.

<comment><USER8> Sorry Maaku, but I think you are taking this thread off-topic. The number of contributions Gavin has made since stepping down from Leadership is not relevant to the point "Mike and Gavin have long been members of the project, in good standing, and with no obvious reasons to doubt them."

More specifically, the number of his recent commits (or other contributions) does not speak to (1) the length of time he has been a member of Bitcoin, (2) whether he has been in "good standing", or (3) whether there are obvious reasons to doubt him.

It appears, rather, that you have some ill feelings towards Gavin, and are letting these feelings leak into your thoughts by belittling Gavin's contributions to Bitcoin.

A better way to address this point, while still expressing your feelings, would be to say "Gavin is not in good standing with me. I think he's an asshole for going around our consensus process. Fuck him. I disagree that he is in good standing, and I doubt his leadership."

<comment><USER6> Gavin does not lead bitcoin. This is a simple fact. I am simply doing fact corrections.

<comment><USER8> Maaku, your thoughts are getting sloppy. Nobody here claimed that Gavin leads bitcoin. Go back and read the post you were replying to, and try to find the words that you were "correcting." They don't exist.

It was _you_ who first mentioned him leading Bitcoin when you said "Gavin stepped down 2 years ago." Now you are just arguing with yourself. You came into this conversation, imagined people talking about him leading Bitcoin, and then tried to do some "corrections" to the claims that you hallucinated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> r/bitcoin is being censored right now (quite ironic), so thought maybe you hackers can have a discussion about the upcoming bitcoin fork in regards to the blocksize. Some suggest that bitcoin blocks should remain at 1mb, which currently covers around 200k transactions, a limit that is close to being reached. The vast majority seem to want an increase on this capacity for pretty much obvious reasons. However, some relatively newcomer bitcoin developers argue that increasing it will affect decentralisation, and everyone should use a hubs and spoke system instead. Others argue that as the number of users increases, the number of the blockchain applications increase, the number of nodes and miners increases, thus decentralisation increases. In regards to lightning it is still vapourwear, it requires hot wallets - something which has caused many problems - the hubs are likely to be centralised - and fundamentally users should have a choice. So yeah looks like bitcoin will fork.

<comment><USER9> >r/bitcoin is being censored right now (quite ironic)

As in, actual censorship about all blocksize discussion, or just about XT?

<comment><USER10> The #1 story was removed by the moderators. It was an article by Mike Hearn about why he's moving forward with the Bitcoin XT hard fork. [1]

The justification for the removal is that Bitcoin XT is an altcoin, and altcoin discussion is not allowed. [2]

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h424p/why_is_bitc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h424p/why_is_bitcoin_forking)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h424p/why_is_bitc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h424p/why_is_bitcoin_forking/cu4498v)

<comment><USER11> It's like saying Congress is not allowed to discuss or propose amendments to the constitution.

Bitcoin is designed to be fought over and amended, it's built into it. Software is never complete and XT is not an altcoin.

<comment><USER12> and /r/bitcoin is designed to be completely stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The XT developers could probably defend against the "decentralization" argument by implementing IBLT to speed block propagation and ultimate blockchain compression to reduce disk usage before increasing the block size. But that would probably take years and they don't have years, so never mind.

<comment><USER6> IBLT is basically already implemented and deployed as part of TheBlueMatt's relay network. Improvements to scaling isn't going to come from IBLT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do not understand bitcoin and the blockchain. Isn't your bitcoin tied up in the mathematics the blockchain? Will those who trade away their money on one blockchain be able to retain it on the other blockchain? Will they synchronize the ledger in some way?

<comment><USER15> If the chain forks, then in theory you have the same money on both chains, and could spend it differently in each.

In practice, this fork only happens if >75% of miners switch to the new software, and I suspect the whole community would quickly abandon the other fork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain what is means for bitcoin to be forked?

<comment><USER8> Bitcoin, like all monies, is a social protocol. We agree that a coin has value if it follows certain rules.

Some people want to change the rules. But some other people don't want them changed. So now we have two sets of people, the Changers (XT) and the Don't-Changers (Core) who will be following different sets of rules.

So their softwares won't play together in places their rules disagree. This will create a "fork" in the ledger histories. If your coins existed before the fork, everyone will see them. But if you transact them in a way that's incompatible with one set of rules, the transaction will only exist on one side of the fork.

So the public will then have to choose which side of the fork to live on. They will probably want to live on the dominant side. Then the losing side will give up and switch!

Bitcoin-XT actually has a few built-in mechanisms to make this transition graceful. It will only deploy the incompatible rules once it has a 75% majority vote, and is thus confident of success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> With the Bitcoin price on a steady downward spiral into oblivion, I'd have to say that the XT fork was a really stupid idea. Thanks for scaring all of the investors, you bunch of retards. Smooth move, X-Lax!!!

</comment><comment><USER18> Seems like the blockchain is forking too...? What happens to everyone's bitcoins in the meantime? Wouldn't this practically destroy the system?

</comment><comment><USER19> Some of the messages on the mailing list started to feel a little personal

</comment><comment><USER20> So...I now have double the coins, but separated onto two chains?

<comment><USER21> You have the same number of coins, and will continue to until the point that a block is mined on the XT chain that would not be accepted by Core clients. The absolute earliest that could possibly happen is January 25 (Jan 11 activation date + 2 week grace period). But that 2wk grace period only actually activates after 75% of the hashing power globally moves to XT. So at the time XT actually forks, users will have had plenty of notice.

Coins you hold now are not at risk. You are only at risk if you spend a coin on the Core network sometime after XT takes over 75% of the hashing power and before Core releases an update to bring it in line with XT, and only then if the block your tx ends up in happens to be over 1MB.

<comment><USER22> I may be wrong here but assuming you're broadcasting to both networks, your transaction is valid in both XT and Core so they'd both try to add it to a block.

The only bitcoin that become unusable in one chain are those that come from a post-fork coinbase transaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066746), but it's hard to know whether that one is factual. Since the two threads are closely related, this seems like the one to go with. (This is not based on any opinion about the story itself.)</comment>


Chinese Military to Join 'Unprecedented'Russian Joint Exercise for First Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/08/22/asia-pacific/chinese-military-join-unprecedented-russian-joint-exercises-first-time/#.W39k9KROnYU <comment><USER2> I guess my only thought is "why wouldn't they?" In an RTS FFA custom game, the two less strong contenders are always going to at least try to give the appearance of a united front against the score leader.

</comment><comment><USER3> Aren't they doing this before? They have recently knot their ties with each other right? This is not even a big news. It will be if USA joins them but on the other hand, they're both doing this to intimidate the states. It's an ongoing cold"ego"war among those superpowers.</comment>


Ask HN: Unit test makes my mind blow up - <AUTHOR>

Please take a look at the method below. It's a database driven method that tells you if a user id has been mapped to an account id. Nothing special, very straight to the point and it works.
So my main question, is it really worth writing a unit test for a method like this? Or, is a unit test pretty much useless for a method like? Should time be spent on integration/end to end test? Someone please explain and expand on this.
Thank you
fyi: I know you can throw in a mock $user_map array in there to test for various user id and account id combinations. Is this really the way to go and write?
class User{ 	var $db;
function __construct(){ 		$this->db = new Some_DB(); 	}
/ 	* returns true if user user owns account 	*/ 	function is_user_account($user_id, $acct_id){ 		$db = $this->db;

		$sql = "SELECT um_active FROM UserMaps WHERE acct_id = ? AND user_id = ?"; 		$res = $db->DbGetOne($sql, array($acct_id,$user_id));

		return $res; 	}
 }
function test_is_user_account(){
        $user = new User(); 		$user->db = new MockDB();

		$has_access = $user->is_user_account(1,1); 		assertTrue($has_access);
 }
class MockDB{
function DbGetOne($sql, $params){ 		return 1; 	} } <comment><USER2> Right.

It looks like this only tests whether MocDB.DbGetOne() returns true, which it always does, and which is not testing the program, but the test.

You have to test the tests, to be sure they'll correctly test the program. Of course, then you also need to test the tests that tests the tests, and so on...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Code doesn't show properly on HN. Here's the [http://pastebin.com/y1fhT33G](http://pastebin.com/y1fhT33G)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this question may be better suited for [http://stackoverflow.com](http://stackoverflow.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> code with mock usermapp [http://pastebin.com/w1HHtwKT](http://pastebin.com/w1HHtwKT)</comment>


Congress Acts, No more Caller ID Spoofing - <AUTHOR> http://latestgeeknews.blogspot.com/2010/04/congress-acts-no-more-caller-id.html

<comment><USER2> I use Google Voice and all unknown numbers do not ring my phone and go straight to voice-mail.

</comment><comment><USER3> First the do-not-call-registry and then this. 'Bout time they did some good. Now fix the @#$%$% angel funding issue with Dodd's bill.

<comment><USER4> The "$2.3m" thing is a fabrication — Dodd's bill leaves it up to the SEC to adjust the old figure for inflation as they see fit. The original $1m figure was set by the SEC, not legislation.

This whole 'issue' is like _DEATH PANELS_ for startups, and this community is taking the bait enthusiastically.

<comment><USER5> Until you reply to this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1276179> I'm afraid I'm going to have to believe what everyone else is saying.

As well as note that the regulatory changes---registration, 120 days, throw it to the states---could easily be much worse than these changes. Which would indeed make the SEC and their equivalents in the states Death Panels for startups. They would decide which get a chance to live and which die stillborn.

<comment><USER4> Just did so. I had slightly misread the statute (or it's been updated) when this first blew up a few weeks ago, but it doesn't cast any doubt on my comment you're replying to here: the 2.3m figure is bullshit, the SEC is left to update the numbers themselves.

While I don't find the new registration requirements onerous, you're absolutely right that the approval process for those registrations are insane. The 120 day federal approval window is bad enough, but the automatic devolution to the states is going to be a fucking disaster when some state legislature notices its newfound powers.

Unfortunately, everyone's laser-focused on the idea that the pool of small angels could possibly shrink, making it very easy for others to write them off as self-serving whiners (especially when they're inflating their claims). It reads as "shit my old boss won't be able to fund my startup".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This could easily be worse than ACTA. This is basically the first step to making anonymous communication illegal.

<comment><USER7> Not sure what you mean... incorrect CLI is completely different from withheld CLI - from the bill:

 _(2) PROTECTION FOR BLOCKING CALLER ID INFORMATION. — Nothing in this subsection may be construed to prevent or restrict any person from blocking the capability of any caller ID service to transmit caller ID information._

Also - there is no such thing as anonymous calling on the PSTN network. Your providers know exactly who called from where - even if the destination doesn't get full set of information. Unless the providers are completely incompetent, there's going to be a way to recreate the whole path based on logs from every interconnected node. (not sure about US laws, but in most countries if police requested that and the provider couldn't produce it, they would be fined)

You can buy voip services from a company in country X too, then send some legit-looking paper saying you're paying bills for the number 001555555555 and in many cases they will be glad to allow you to use it. Then you can continue your scamming. This bill doesn't stop any illegal uses of id spoofing really.</comment></comment>


Instant Agile Practitioner Just Add Coffee: Blank Lined Journal - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/Instant-Agile-Practitioner-Just-Coffee/dp/1798743256 <comment><AUTHOR> Yes this is a complete piss take, potentially a joke gift.</comment>


Ask HN: Our Startup is falling. Should I fall? - <AUTHOR>

I'm CTO of a cool Startup. We got investments, a cool product that everybody said "Whoohoo" when we showed what we can do with it. But we never sold it...(its free but we never did marketing)
We don't have money anymore and didn't pay our employees the last month. The CEO fails to convince investors or buyers.
What do you advice? <comment><USER2> I think that decision is a very personal one, and only you can make it. With that being said, here are a few points that should (perhaps) inform your decision:

1\. How much institutional support (and energy) is there to get the paid version shipped? Is everyone else burnt out and jumping ship, or could you realistically stay the course and get that product out the door?

2\. Even if you shipped the paid version, would the revenue be enough to cover the burn rate? It looks like you guys raised 3 million over the course of the past year, and burned through it (correct me if I have that wrong, just getting the data from your Angellist page). At that burn rate, your premium version (at your stated price of $5 per user per month) would need to onboard roughly 50,000 paid users to be at the break-even point (though probably more than that since your costs would go up). Is onboarding than many users feasible?

If you can ship the premium version and onboard a ton of users all before the rest of the team throws up their hands...maybe you should go for it; give it one last college try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your analysis and advice. Reaching the required number of paying customers is not possible at the moment, that's why the CEO is looking for other investments. The marketing we did was too small to reach that number and we are probably bad marketers anyway. We were expecting for a buzz that would make us famous and then become superstars. And that's why we tried to make a better slack with our chat.

But I don't see that point coming. And I think it is the reason we are falling

<comment><USER3> I don't see a clear market segmentation. Is it for 10 users or 10,000?

Five bucks per person-month doesn't make sense in either market. It's $5 too much for people building their business on Drive and Evernote. It's too little for 10,000 screen organizations...they know you will go broke. And then there's an asterisk on the free plan and another deal for students, so I'm left wondering if it's worth figuring out the value proposition before I think about learning how to use it.

If it was an enterprise product, it might make sense but that's not live fast. die young, and leave a good looking corpse business strategy compatible. Students probably don't need mobile task updates for group projects. In the middle, though, there are good user stories and price points. $400 per month for up to 20 users...that sounds like a way to qualify businesses and reduce the number of sales.

And if you can't make the bottom line $5000 per year better for 2000 companies, then it's time to throw in the towel.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We never took the time to evaluate more our pricing and its impact. We were focused on getting users so we can make them pay later

<comment><USER3> Your company is building a business solution, not Pintrest. People are going to live 8 and ten hour workdays in it. Sure there needs to be an "easy button" to help people get onboard. Maybe that is training. Qualifying customers by their willingness to invest in learning to use your product makes sense. Project management is hard enough that investments in tool acquisition pay off.

The wrong customers are worse than no customers because they look like success but arent.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right and we didn't see it. We probably had wrong customers. Identifying the good ones is however a hard process, specially for the service we provide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No paying customers, no cash reserves, no investors/buyers lined up: you're done!

Your mission now, (based on your skills & expertise)-- identify someone who you can help and will pay you for your services. You can make this "pivot" either individually or as a group. Put your heads together as the sales & biz dev team. Get out there, start asking people what projects they might need help on. Do it now!

<comment><AUTHOR> We already started to talk how to sell the team, but it is a slow process we can't afford. It is however our best option at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I advise not to take advice from random people on the internet who know nothing about your company or your situation

<comment><AUTHOR> Taking advice doesn't mean to follow them but open up your range of choices I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> WOw, your customer list is impressive(looking at your homepage).. Apple, Starbucks, etc... If you can sell to those companies, why do you have trouble selling to other businesses? is it more of an entreprise product rather than consumer, and you're not charging enuff?

</comment><comment><USER7> i would check out the talks by patio11 he has some good insights to monitization, optionally: fire ceo, build another product, quit, dont work for a place that doesnt have a business plan/monitization strategy, sell it to another company on flippa

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanls, I'm going to listen to those talks. Firing the CEO is too late :/ and I'm sure he had a good business plan otherwise the investors wouldn't have given us money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is the start up, or at least what does it do?

<comment><AUTHOR> The startup is LiveMinutes, it is an real time collaborative platfom. We started as a video conference service then we thought it would be cool to store documents on it, to edit them, then to have a chat, then to have Evernote, Google drive integrations... but never considered finding real clients. We have a high traffic/users but not enough...</comment></comment>


Introducing Operator: H&Co.'s first monospace typeface - <AUTHOR> http://www.typography.com/blog/introducing-operator <comment><USER2> Wish it were possible to give it a try. They specifically point out usage in a text editor, but not too many developers are going to spend $199 without trying it in their editor first.

<comment><USER3> Also, for that cost I'd love to see it include Fira Code-like ligatures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Beautiful font. Wish the pricing model weren't so stratospherically off just to use it in a text editor. "From" $199.

</comment><comment><USER5> To me it looks like a candidate for Comic Sans of monospace fonts. Absolutely awful.

<comment><USER6> Those lower case a's. ZOMG QUIRKY!

Yep. And make me X it out. :(

<comment><USER7> It's not even the a's. The random cursive letters would drive me mad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Underwhelmed for coding. May be useful for other monospace font needs and/or special use cases (like the Atom editor example on the site).</comment>


Show HN: The excel file I use to manage side projects - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PeZrVrZqAOTZIQgrqAN1q-HbjI5YmoZwyiKX9QRx-JE/edit?usp=sharing

<comment><USER2> This is very cool. I keep all my ideas/ projects I'm working on in WunderList but nothing quite as organised as this. Very useful to see how you have stored your projects - props for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @itschaffey it would be great to see how you guys would change it to make it fit to your own needs and make it work even better!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What do you guys use to manage side projects? Is this somewhat useful??

<comment><USER3> I normally host all my side projects on github and scroll through my profile every so often when I am not sure what to work on.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you decide which of those projects is worth working on and which not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this just a decision matrix for how to spend your time?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes. sort of. Basically I was in trouble because I was getting into to many side projects and couldn't focus on just one thing that had the potential to become a product someday.

I am trying to build something that would help me with that and support me with my personal goals.</comment></comment>


Start Coding, People go Crazy - <AUTHOR> http://www.proudn00b.com/post/837225718/criticism-support-inspiration-day-2

<comment><USER2> I like the article but the link highlights have to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> Take a lesson from @dhh and get some sleep

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do...just getting everything set up...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Learning Python is one of my personal goals this year, so while we're on the subject of Python, has anyone done a review of Zed Shaw's _Learn Python the Hard Way_ (<http://learnpythonthehardway.org>)?

One of the biggest mistakes I used to make was reading programming books start to finish, and _then_ coding. I would read in a comfy chair and code at a desk. Laziness would kick in, and I'd sit and read, instead of popping over to the desk and coding what I just learned.

The second mistake I used to make is wasting time (and $$) on crappy books without researching reviews first. I like the philosophy behind Zed's tutorial - learn by doing - but I was wondering what Python programmers thought of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Learn Python the Hard Way was excellent. Best free PDF I've found on Python

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Who has the blog with the best design? Interested to see what peoples thoughts are on the Links & fonts...

</comment><comment><USER5> Why did you pick Django as a framework?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know a few friends who use it, and since I am a bit dependent upon the help I can find...made sense to me. What would you recommend?

<comment><USER6> I think this is a good call on your part. There are a lot of people who know Django, and Python in general. In this phase it's good for you to use something that your immediate peers use.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome thanks reynolds</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Holiday by MooresCloud. Programmable fairy lights — with a full REST API - <AUTHOR> http://holiday.moorescloud.com/

<comment><USER2> Heh - check out the text on the circuit board mask just under the 8 pin header on the edge that's at the top in the image on the dev blog page: [http://dev.moorescloud.com/2013/05/28/holiday-hardware- at-a-...](http://dev.moorescloud.com/2013/05/28/holiday-hardware-at-a-glance/)

Nice! (you'll probably need to click through to the large version of the image to read it)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://dev.moorescloud.com/2013/05/28/holiday-hardware- at-a-...](http://dev.moorescloud.com/2013/05/28/holiday-hardware-at-a-glance/)</comment>


Tableflip dot club - <AUTHOR> http://tableflip.club/

<comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9369883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9369883).</comment>


Ask HN: Which is the best Windows 7 laptop - <AUTHOR>

Prefer a
17" screen min 8GB RAM
min 500GB HDD (Can't afford SSD yet)<p>No gaming requirements, but lots of CAD softwares (CATIA, ProE, UG). <comment><USER2> A 15" Mac Book Pro</comment>


The PowerPC Compiler Writer's Guide (1996) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cr.yp.to/2005-590/powerpc-cwg.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> (submitter)

Henry Warren, the author of Hacker's Delight[0], is one of the authors of this book.

Chapters 3, 5, and Appendix D have some neat examples of bit twiddling code in Power assembly language.

The content overlaps with that of Hacker's Delight and Bit Twiddling Hacks[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker%27s_Delight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker%27s_Delight)

[1] [https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html](https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Great document for those with an interest in PowerPC assembly and still generally applicable to modern Power ISA. Some of these code sections appear in the TenFourFox JIT to this day.

<comment><USER3> I just fixed an inline assembly bug in LLVM for PPC Linux kernel support: [https://reviews.llvm.org/D81767](https://reviews.llvm.org/D81767)

I tried to see if this doc had anything about calling conventions for 64b parameters on 32b ILP32, but alas...(at least a cursory skim of `A.1 Procedure Interfaces` came up empty).

Another fun fact I learned about PPC assembly for that bug is that without `-mregnames`, it can be hard to distinguish between registers and constants in compiler generated PPC assembly. Official docs from IBM ([https://developer.ibm.com/technologies/linux/articles/l-ppc/](https://developer.ibm.com/technologies/linux/articles/l-ppc/)) say "Get used to it. :)" LOL

<comment><USER2> What was your question on the parameters? Is this SysV or PowerOpen ABI?

<comment><USER3> I've heard of OpenPower, but PowerOpen? I guess SysV since we're referring to Linux (though I'm not sure that the kernel strictly adheres to SysV).

<comment><USER2> For 32-bit PowerPC, PowerOpen is the ABI used in PPC Mac OS and OS X (largely, with a couple minor differences) and AIX. The System V ABI is pretty much everything else, but it's really a misnomer since the *BSDs on 32-bit PowerPC use SysV too.

PowerOpen is still a thing for 64-bit, see [https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/ELF/ppc64/PPC- elf64abi-...](https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/ELF/ppc64/PPC- elf64abi-1.9.html)

As memory serves me, on 32-bit you would pass a 64-bit value in adjacent 32-bit registers in big-endian fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FYI: [https://www.eejournal.com/article/ibm-gives-away-powerpc- goe...](https://www.eejournal.com/article/ibm-gives-away-powerpc-goes-open- source/)

You could, in theory, run code generated by your own compiler on a PPC chip you designed and built with your own hands and brain.

Random thought: would it be feasible to implement PPC on an FPGA, as has been done with RISC V?

Anyone know offhand what's the most powerful PPC system you can readily buy? I'm guessing it's one of the PPC Mac machines.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if there's something either higher up that you'd qualify as "can readily buy", but a [Raptor blackbird]([https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B01/intro.html](https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B01/intro.html)) would handily outclass the legacy PPC macs, and a [Talos 4U server]([https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2SV2/purchase.html](https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2SV2/purchase.html)) (with two CPUs up to 22 cores each) would pretty much crush it.

Admittedly the latter is a $15k machine, which is perhaps may be pushing what you had in mind for "can readily buy", but it's for sale...

<comment><USER2> This 16-core (2x8) Talos II is around $8ish-K, which is still a lot, but I feel I got my money's worth out of it. 64 threads is good times (each core is SMT-4). I run a "stripper" spec for the Blackbird, which was an experiment to see how low it could go; it came to around $2100, but I would advise going a little higher spec than I did (single-4, no GPU).

The T2 is a great machine, though. There's just no comparison to the Quad G5 sitting next to it. It's quieter, it uses less power and it doesn't feel like I'm lacking for CPU. I got a lot of wear out of the G5 and I'll never get rid of it, but if you don't need 32-bit and/or to run OS X on the metal, the best Power workstation is a Raptor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aaaah, the Power ISA... If you want to "rotate left immediate speculatively if condition matches additionally push sign bit on the stack and zero extend the next register unless it has an odd value", this is the most likely architecture to do that for you ;-) At least its the one I most often need to take a look at the manual what slxwimzus (or something like that) _exactly_ does when looking at disassembly. Of course luckily most compilers don't do the freaky stuff, so I'm probably quite lucky :)

<comment><USER7> Copying something quoted on HN ~4yrs ago:

"IBM has a well-known disdain for vowels, and basically refuses to use them for mnemonics (they were called on this, and did "eieio" as an instruction just to try to make up for it)."

\- Linus Torvalds, 2009

<comment><USER6> I could swear it also has a `mkitso` mnemonic.

<comment><USER7> Don't think so.

There is "stfsux" though.

I like rlwinm which takes _five_ arguments. It can do so many things there are like 12 alternative mnemonics for simplicity.

[https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_aix_72/as...](https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_aix_72/assembler/idalangref_32bit_rtate_shift.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a great book that is good to see preserved and available in PDF form. A lot of this is applicable to other architectures, and gives a good view into how compiler engineers think..</comment>


Ask HN: What do you want to know about business/tech in China? - <AUTHOR>

The media presents a wide range of views on business and tech in China. Maybe fair, maybe not.<p>As someone who works in the industry over here, what would you like to know, or what questions would you like answered about the state of tech, software development and business in general in China? <comment><USER2> What would be the best way to assess the quality of cheap computers from China? I am thinking of buying a number of android tablets. For instance, [http://www.globalsources.com/NEWS/7-inch-Android- tablets-122...](http://www.globalsources.com/NEWS/7-inch-Android- tablets-122112.html)</comment>


Developing a WordPress Theme from Scratch - <AUTHOR> https://www.taniarascia.com/developing-a-wordpress-theme-from-scratch/ <comment><AUTHOR> I would take his opportunity to invite folks to share their experiences of developing their own themes from scratch. How did they begin? Were they novice when they began? How did they improve?</comment>


Ask HN: What would it take for you to switch your search engine? - <AUTHOR> Search engines have very little user lock-in.  For the most part, users just have to visit a different website or change their default search settings to switch.
But it is incredible difficult to get people to switch to a different search engine (just ask Bing).
The HN community is different than the average web browsing population, but what would it take for you to switch your search engine?
(To be fully transparent, I am building an alternative web search tool, so I have additional interest in the answers to this question in addition to it being a good conversation). <comment><USER2> I have tried several times (bing, ddg) to switch away from Google, but I have been disappointed by the results.

I don't really know if other search engines would improve over time as I "trained" them on the subjects that I search for (as I have unwittingly done with google).

As a recent example, Google knows full well that when I search for "hugo" that what I am after is results related to a template engine, not about a film, line of clothing, politician, or poet.

I am currently unwilling to suffer through the bad results phase in the hopes that I can train the search engine up. Even then, once I have trained the search engine on my profile, what will I have gained other than teaching some other aggregator about the things I like?

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Even then, once I have trained the search engine on my profile, what will I have gained other than teaching some other aggregator about the things I like?"_

I guess that's the real answer. People are more likely to switch if they have a problem with the search engine they currently use vs. something "better" coming along.

"Better" in search relevance is super subjective as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Explicit queries need to be explicit. I'm pretty sure I've had queries where no combination of quotes/plus signs/etc. will convince Google to not "helpfully" expand to near matches or break out phrases, clobbering anything I was looking for in noise.

I wonder if it would make sense to have a few "intent disambiguation" radio buttons to pre-prioritize results. Something like this:

"Purchasing Intent" => comparison shopping sites, retailers "Informational Intent" => Product info pages, review sites "Support Intent" => Forums, blog posts, and Stack Overflow sort of sites

</comment><comment><USER4> NOTE: #0 is PRIVACY! I'm tired of using a search engine to find e.g. This +That When some results WILL contain both parameters BUT many of others listed contain only This OR That!

Here's my favourites, some of these actually use Google: [https://www.qwant.com/](https://www.qwant.com/) [https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/) [https://www.ecosia.org/](https://www.ecosia.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Privacy certainly seems like it is the main reason people would switch. Also second time someone mentioned not requiring all search terms to be present. Quotes around each term definitely helps, but Google doesn't always respect that. Google also has a "verbatim" search option as well.

Correct on the search engines, below are the search indexes used by each:

Qwant = Bing

Startpage = Google

Ecosia = Bing

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google gets worse all the time but its still better than everything else.

Once upon a time if you wrapped something in quotes, Google would search for exactly what you asked for. That hasn't been the case for several years.

I use Google for security research. It tries so hard to protect users that its ruining its search results for anything technical.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, + used to work and then it was switched to quotes to serve that purpose, but now that isn't total respected either.

I used to think a true research search engine that actually respected boolean operators would be a good thing, but it seemed that the market was so small it wouldn't be worth the effort.

Bing actually respects quotes pretty well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I want results to be direct links, not something else that redirects.

I want to be able to use URL query strings to specify stuff.

I don't want intrusive CSS/JavaScripts. I have my own settings for fonts, window width, colours, etc, and don't need yours.

I want to be able to tell it to randomize result orders.

I don't want the search to index text which is only available when JavaScript is enabled, try to guess text from pictures, try to follow form submissions at all, etc.

I want to be able to enter advanced search queries, including based on parts of the URL, based on keywords, both exact and approximate matching, and to be able to exclude based on the keywords, based on protocols, on what features the web page may include, MIME types, etc.

I don't want it to try to guess what I mean and correct it; it should instead search for what I type in.

I should hope for good results, when they are available. Options to customize this may help, and maybe also the ability to specify submissions with keywords for feedback so that users can indicate if it is good or not, with the ability to control how well this functions (perhaps with cookies).

If it uses cookies, document what each one does, in order that the user may edit the cookies using their cookies manager to the settings they want. But, allow it to work with cookies read-only or disabled, too.

The search engine should work as well in Lynx as it does in Firefox and other browsers.

It should not be HTTPS-only (although HTTPS is good to have, it shouldn't be mandatory).

It should abide by robots.txt and not index that which is disallowed by the robots.txt.

The user agent string and other request headers it uses should be documented.

I do want it to index plain text files too, and not only HTML.

Another good thing to have would be the ability to set cookies to cause it to permanently exclude certain things by default, if the user wants it (see above about documenting cookies).

I want to be able to get the results in plain text format (and possibly also JSON, CSV/TSV, etc) if the Accept header specifies such a thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" I want to be able to tell it to randomize result orders."_

That would be a pretty fun feature, I've never seen anyone mention that before.

<comment><USER6> The reason for this is to avoid problems when the top result is always same one and others will then not be looked at much, so that if random mode is selected then you can have a better chance to look and see if it is good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Besides the obvious privacy, I do NOT want custom search results.

I want the same search result as someone on the other side of the Atlantic, with a completely different browser history.

</comment><comment><USER8> Before I answer what would I get in your search engine, that I won't get in Google (assuming I don't care if Google tracks everything i do). All I look in a search engine is am I getting the results for the things I am looking for. I don't see any difference in results between Bing and Google. But I still use Google. I felt some how I like the results on Google (the way they present). Not sure why I don't like the way Bing presents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Privacy is a big motivation, but to your point, not for most people.

The core benefit is it attempts to pull in the best results from different vertical search source based on search query intent.

Real world example, I play the guitar and search online for guitar tabs (music notation) all the time. I like a website called Songsterr for that, and historically I would search Google for "Songsterr" and then search that website.

Based on my site's model, when someone searches for "{song name/band} tab", it knows to hit the Songsterr API and also display those results directly on the SERP. Same goes for other niche topics, like hiking trails or podcasts.

Right now there are about 30 of these curated data sources for different topics integrated, but I have a list of hundreds of them to add.

The idea is that long term, there will be niche data sources that provide more relevant results for targeted topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Less obviously commercial results. I can't seem to search for anything on Google without getting the 'buy X' interpretation of the term, even if it is not something typically associated with buying something.</comment>


How the iPhone Got Tail Fins – Part 1 of 2 - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2011/10/18/how-the-iphone-got-tail-fins-%e2%80%93-part-1-of-2/

<comment><AUTHOR> After two years of suspense, Steve picks up the Durant vs. Sloan story. Write more, Steve! Please! <http://steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan- part-1/></comment>


Ubuntu Is A Poor Standard Bearer For Linux - <AUTHOR> http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/04/ubuntu-is-a-poor-standard-bear.html

<comment><USER3> I have actually become stupider after reading this article. Her cheap laser printer stopped being recognized after a full distribution upgrade, which makes Ubuntu's developers out of touch, its policies unfitting for mom and pop who want things to "just work" (thanks, never heard that one before!) and the contributers to open source software meanies for breaking people's stuff.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I could go on, but how about some choice quotes? Keep in mind this is a fluff article that's only 7 paragraphs long, and sticks to the idiotic grade school "introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, concluding paragraph" nonsense formula, so it's more like 4 paragraphs long.

 _No wonder CrunchBang Linux is moving to a Debian as a base instead of Ubuntu. Linux Mint may be moving in the same direction._

Man, at this rate, Ubuntu might as well move to using Debian as a base, too.

 _It seems I haven't printed from the netbook, only the desktop running SalixOS, since I upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) to 9.10 (Karmic Koala). .... We can't have hardware magically stop working after a routine upgrade."_

Yeah, they should put in a giant locked button and several warning signs that say you are about to replace almost every software component on your computer, with repeated warnings, explanations of what it means, and instructions. Well, I guess that's something you'd only do on a non-routine upgrade. Wait, oh.

 _The one conclusion I have reached is that Ubuntu is a very poor standard bearer for Linux. It isn't what I want Linux judged by. Other distributions have problematic releases but other major distributions do not have significant problems in nearly every release. Ubuntu does. So how do we, in the Linux press make people outside of the Linux community aware that Linux does not equate to Ubuntu? That is the real challenge we now face if we want Linux to be more widely accepted._

I had to stop to vomit between each sentence in the paragraph. It may be the most contrived thing I've ever read, and I've read Sonic the Hedgehog fan- fiction.

The best part about her article (3rd grade essay?) is the solution to her problem, which she did not include: unplug the printer and plug it back in.

<comment><USER4> What's your point? Are you a school teacher or something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The specifics of the post may be written in a troll-like style, but the key points are quite valid - I've had very similar experiences with Ubuntu. Running an "apt-get dist-upgrade" update last October entirely hosed support for my (pretty damn common) network card - transferring at anything above about 5Mb/s would lock the network driver. I had to manually discover this, and hand-correct the hosing until they finally shipped a kernel > 2.6.30.

The machine is an entirely standard, off the shelf, Atom based PC. Taking the "Could I give this to a non-IT expert" test, it failed entirely. I'm not saying that this couldn't happen on a non-Linux system, but a) I've never had it happen to Mac or Windows b) Trawling support forums and kernel bug lists to discover the cause isn't good enough for end users and c) Waiting 4 months for a non-hacky fix sucks. As it stands, I could never seriously recommend Ubuntu to a non-tech savvy friend.

I suppose this is just anecdata, but I'm certainly not alone (another friend can tell you a similar story about sound cards, for example).

<comment><USER6> Users who aren't tech savvy don't install their own operating systems. Unless you're going to set everything up for them, you shouldn't be recommending Ubuntu to people who aren't tech savvy in the first place.

<comment><USER5> Well, even if I _did_ set it all up for them, the point is that it will happily break itself without doing anything other than the recommended updates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started to switch from Windows (which I got stuck on when SCO Unix on a 386 was worse than Win 3.1) _right_ at the time Ubuntu "lost it" with Hardy Heron (8.04) two years ago to the month. From the notes I took at the time:

From the moment they released the first version of the kernel, it had broken error reporting (would just crash without reporting) _and_ had bad lockup problems. This was reported early and ignored through the alpha, beta and release cycles. The obviously unreportable and undiagnosable lockup problem was "patched" by users (for the most part) by switching to the RT kernel.

Various serious problems were reported and closed out without being fixed and reopening them was not allowed, e.g. breaking Broadcom 43xx wireless cards.

The analysis at the time that made the most sense to me was that taking a Debian unstable snapshot every 6 months and then furiously trying to make it stable enough was impractical. My interpretation of the above development management problems was that shipping on schedule took absolute priority, and the whole process reached a tipping point with this release.

Me, I eventually went to Fedora, then to Debian stable lenny because I needed Xen _and_ stability ... and by then the hardware I had bought for this was old enough that Debian lenny supported everything ^_^.

(I can supply plenty of URLs or my entire set of notes if desired.)

<comment><USER8> I feel like a lot of people take the Ubuntu->Debian path. Its not unlike how people start playing with HTML, and end up coding in PHP a year later-you hit the limit of what it can do for you, what it can handle, and then you go for the full model

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Summary: "Other distributions have problematic releases but other major distributions do not have significant problems in nearly every release. Ubuntu does."

To what extent this is true is unknown as the author only gives anecdotes.

<comment><USER10> There were some well known major regressions with Intel drivers in Ubuntu (which are more popular amongst Linux users as they have OSS drivers) that didn't affect other distributions. The scope of those affected - <USER2> everyone with an Intel card - meant it seemed that there was no systematic testing of known-good hardware prior to declaring a release stable.

<comment><USER11> I wonder what the hardware testing lab at Microsoft looks like? It seems like Ubuntu really needs to beef their testing up. In reality Ubuntu and MS have the same problem, an infinite number of possible system configurations to release against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know it can be frustrating to have a software not work as expected but, I don't think Ubuntu is doing too bad in this respect (I have been using Kubuntu @ work and Fedora at home for the past 2-3 years). The author IMO is a bit too harsh on Ubuntu. On a somewhat related note, I think people should also read this while passing judgement on another OSS (esp bug fixes): <http://ryanbigg.com/2010/04/want-it-give/> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1255905>

<comment><USER13> seconded - please file bugs atleast. Or help in debugging. A lot of bugs, by a lot of people, are about their particular hardware not working.

Please atleast install debugging symbols/packages and submit better bug reports. Ubuntu developers dont have access to _all_ varieties of hardware.

Yes, delays do happen - but help the developers in helping you.

Better stacktraces, log files, even debugging-enabled-but-slow-Ubuntu helps in fixing issues.

<comment><USER14> I think the biggest problem here is the barriers that exist to reporting bugs. Often you have to start the program in a terminal for stderr output or look for logfiles, isolate relevant error messages and figure out what hardware or software components are relevant, then track down the developer's bugtracker, register to their platform, maybe wait a day for the registration to be processed, and then open a ticket consistent with their conventions, and hope your problem is something they actually care about.

That's a lot of work for users who only see something no longer working after an upgrade. It's tolerable for people who expect to be doing QA in exchange for getting to use cutting edge releases, but if your users aren't programmers, which is the case with ubuntu, they'll just cuss and delete.

<comment><USER11> Thank goodness I have more than one computer so I can report bugs on my working one while trying to keep the Linux box running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The things that really broke Desktop linux' back was that there was never a cross-distro way of installing things (rpm vs apt, package managers changing all the time). If Fedora, Ubuntu and openSuse had worked together when the world was watching Vista fail, linux could have grabbed a significant market share. It's sad to say this, but I think it's too late now. Linux might succeed on severs, smartphones and cloud os devices, but it has lost the war for the desktop to Windows and Mac Os X.

<comment><USER16> I am a developer who had been working on such a cross-distro installation system. www.autopackage.org. You wouldn't believe the issues we had encountered. There were technical challenges but they pale in comparison to the resistance we got from distro makers and veteran users. The resistance arguments boil down to (from what I can remember):

\- Cross-distro installation is only useful for closed source software.

\- apt/yum/$DISTRO_SPECIFIC_PACKAGING_TOOL is the ultimate packaging tool, everything else is evil and can break the system.

\- Different distros should be regarded as entirely different operating systems and hence shouldn't need to be compatible.

Until the community accepts the notion of a cross-distro installation system, things look very bleak indeed.

<comment><USER13> the autopackage site has no (easily) locatable links that compare it with new installation systems like 0-install, Nix.

Can you comment on what advantages does autopackage have over other package managers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all package managers are essentially cross distro - I can run rpm/yum on my Ubuntu machine.

And a google search turns up .... umm.. this - [http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/autopackage_designed_by_...](http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/autopackage_designed_by_monkeys/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Desktop Linux is worlds better than it was when I last used it seriously ten years ago, but it still has plenty of issues. I'd be reluctant to recommend it to anyone non-technical.

Case in point: I recently bought an EeePC 1005PE and installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it. This is probably the most popular netbook sold today, but networking and power management were completely borked under a fresh install. Figuring out what was wrong and fixing it was a distinctly non-trivial process that took hours and a couple of reinstalls. Even then, battery life under Ubuntu is drastically worse than the same hardware running Windows 7.

</comment><comment><USER18> Provocative at best.

"We FOSS supporters get all on our high horses about proprietary software while we keep offering up "Linux for humans" that, in reality, is an oft broken mess, at least in the case of Ubuntu. I am back to believing Andrew Wyatt was right when he called the distro "garbage salad." This is a perfect example of what he was describing. No wonder CrunchBang Linux is moving to a Debian as a base instead of Ubuntu. Linux Mint may be moving in the same direction."

A specific complaint I could find from the author is about a printer driver. While I haven't used another distro for quite some years now besides Ubuntu and RHEL, third-party drivers often fail to work on every platform - Mac and Windows included.

While the user does represent a common user, and usability and reliability could be improved in Ubuntu - I find the article a bit too "garbage-salad" (to quote the author).

<comment><USER10> Really? Mac and Windows have pretty good third party driver support the last time I checked. I've never had to upgrade my entire OS to get a new piece of hardware working either

RHEL backports a lot of driver updates to its stable releases. Ubuntu LTS doesn't seem to do this.

<comment><USER19> Mac OS X has good driver support only because Apple implements their own drivers for every device, and bundles them with the OS. Leopard had ~5gb of printer drivers alone in the default install! In 10.6 they moved to a system that installs drivers for stuff on-demand, automatically downloaded from Apple.

<comment><USER20> "because Apple implements their own drivers"?

AFAIK, Mac OS X and Linux share a lot here. Both use (Apple-owned, and GPL/LGPL) CUPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have to agree with the author about the lack of backports and the time it takes for some bugs to be fixed. Examples:

\- Backports: No Thunderbird 3.0 on Karmic 64-Bit ("we'll get it in the next release"). Good luck with the daily builds.

\- Bugfixes: Yesterday, I got locked out of my account after enabling auto- login with an encrypted home-directory. I consider this a showstopper for end users. The bug was fixed after twelve months, and only for Lucid.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just because a single printer does not work out of the box does not a garbage OS make.

I wonder if the author tested every single other Linux OS with the same printer!

Instead of complaining regarding a free product I prefer if they submitted a bug report to ensure a better experience for everyone else and avoid this situation from happening again.

<comment><USER23> The bug report was already submitted, and it is classified as "high priority". The author wasn't complaining about the printer not working; he was complaining that the bug wasn't fixed (and that it shouldn't have been let to the system in the first place (the printer worked on previous version)).

<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/491133>

<comment><USER22> From what I can see with the bug report is that it is still active (Triage), awaiting someone to deal with it.

That does not mean it will not get fixed in the future, I'm fairly certain with the high exposure of this article will get it done more rapidly.

Once fixed can the author come up with something else that supports their argument?

<comment><USER23> I would assume that the printer was meant just as an example of the problem (which is that new releases may break things that used to work).

That said, I've been using Ubuntu as my main OS for about 2 years and I've never had any real problems (that I didn't cause myself...) with it, so I don't quite agree with the author.

<comment><USER24> Moved to ubuntu as my main workstation since past 6 months. No problems as yet. And its fun to tinker around the system. Finally librated !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Support for proprietary hardware is a Linux problem, not a Ubuntu problem. In my experience Ubuntu is better than most distros at making things "just work". No Linux distro is ever going to be as turnkey on any random gadget you just bought at Best Buy as Windows/OSX until the manufacturers start writing and open-sourcing their own drivers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ubuntu reluctantly decided to support proprietary drivers in 2006 <http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7895189911.html>

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't care that much if printer x doesn't work on netbook x, because I don't own a netbook. Just saying, maybe the bug is not that high priority after all.

If she really wants to support oss, perhaps she could pay a developer to fix the bug?

Also, a new printer probably costs less than the dev time to fix the bug, and less than her time for writing the rant is worth.

Edit: i've also had an old scanner stop working. Os x doesn't support it anymore either. Inconvenient, but it is old, after al. No biggie.

</comment><comment><USER27> From her bio: _She is currently heavily involved in the Linux Yarok project as a developer._

So that might explain the biased flamebait.

</comment><comment><USER28> Linux is a _superior_ OS. Windows is a _popular_ OS.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article may be provocative or even flamebait but the author still has a point.

I'm constantly bombarded with things working in a previous release no longer working in a new release. This involves everything from video-drivers, GDM, wifi, powermanagement etc etc ad infinitum.

And yes. Constantly breaking things which used to work is not what I call progress. See fewt's take on this for a more technical breakdown on how Ubuntu's internal workings can be (1).

It's become so extremely annoying that for me, that right now the only thing I'm using Ubuntu for are shell-VMs with a fairly predictable "hardware" config and for my netbook for lack of better choice.

(1) <http://www.fewt.com/2009/10/i-give-up.html>

<comment><USER30> It's frustrating that progress sometimes seems to move in both directions with Ubuntu, but I wouldn't imagine that Ubuntu is the only distribution where this occurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This article is one that makes me wish I could downvote. "My crappy printer doesn't work with my free operation system. Therefore that operating system should be scrapped, it's community is a failure!$@!!@$"

Or maybe printers are all cheap pieces of garbage, somehow worth less than the toner inside of them, so full into the idea of planned obsolescence you just buy a new one when it's time to replace the ink..</comment>


Tech firms aren't biggest users of H-1B visas - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/tech-firms-arent-biggest-filers-of-visa-applications-2226392488.html <comment><AUTHOR> There is a great graphic on this page that shows that the 5 biggest tech firms together would only be the third biggest user of H1-B visas.

</comment><comment><USER2> They aren't counting outsourcing firms as "tech firms"?</comment>