Australia Wants to Take Government Surveillance to the Next Level - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/opinion/australia-encryptian-surveillance-bill.html <comment><USER2> The headline is a little misleading. It's much more terrifying than that. It isn't _just_ Australia. It is the US, Australia, Canada, UK, and New Zealand all together (known as the "Five Eyes")[1]. Australia is just the country that put the memo together.

> _The "Five Eyes", often abbreviated as "FVEY", refer to an intelligence > alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and > the United States. _ [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement)

<comment><USER3> Gee, I hadn't heard of that. The Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam only learnt of it when the Attorney-General raided ASIO, Australia's version of the FBI, in 1973. Wikipedia says UKUSA is pronounced _yoo-koo-SAH_. Rather appropriate - _yakuza_ are "members of transnational organized crime syndicates"...

<comment><USER4> > Rather appropriate - yukuza are "members of transnational organized crime > syndicates"

That would be "yakuza." (YAH-koo-zah)

<comment><USER3> Of course, thank you! Corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article mentions that Australia has no bill of rights which, whilst technically true, doesn't mean we don't have equivalent protections. Some are enshrined in our constitution whilst others are parts of common law and other legislation.

The conclusion they draw from that is right however; a lot of laws can be introduced to our parliament that might not get off the ground elsewhere. It's why we've fervently fought against many other, similar laws that would impinge on our rights and freedoms in the past. I spent a good part of my youth fighting against the Clean Feed legislation (it was a great big Internet filter for Australia, a terrible idea) which was thankfully defeated before it got off the ground.

We'll have to do the same for this.

<comment><USER6> > The article mentions that Australia has no bill of rights which, whilst > technically true, doesn't mean we don't have equivalent protections. Some > are enshrined in our constitution

The protections provided by the Australian constitution (as interpreted by the High Court) are quite weak in comparison to those included in the US Bill of Rights, it isn't really a fair comparison.

> whilst others are parts of common law and other legislation.

Anything in common law or legislation isn't worth much, since a single ordinary Act of Parliament is all it takes to cancel them out.

<comment><USER7> True, but once you introduce a bill of rights all your commom law protections go out the window.. including stuff you didnt know you had

<comment><USER8> The US bill of rights doesnt define the rights. The bill of rights calls out special rights that the govt shall not touch.

The rights are granted to us by our creator aka natural law. The same law used to declare our independence from the crown and an inherent part of the fabric of the US.

Not sure if this is clearly stated yet.

<comment><USER9> The Constitution and Declaration of Independence are legal documents setting out the foundations of a government and a nationstate, not some divine text from a higher power. The founding fathers were not a group of infallible prophets.

<comment><USER10> That's not what geggam is saying. The underlying philosophy of the Bill of Rights as stated by the founders/framers is that the rights are "natural" rights which all are imbued at birth, and that the rights listed are not exhaustive but merely representative. In fact, the founders were wary of a Bill of Rights specifically because by enumerating some of them the list might be seen as complete.

But the notion is that governments do not "grant" these rights, and likewise government can never infringe upon god given rights.

<comment><USER11> _In fact, the founders were wary of a Bill of Rights specifically because by enumerating some of them the list might be seen as complete._

Right, which is why we have the 9th and 10th amendments. Unfortunately they are effectively ignored, along with the Enumerated Powers clause, meaning our government effectively has unlimited power. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The government has been quick to claim that this is not a back door, and the > bill prohibits requests to companies to create "systemic" weaknesses.

Claiming that you're not backdooring something doesn't stop it from being a backdoor.

</comment><comment><USER13> Digital Rights Watch has more information and a submission system to help people write their feedback to the government: [https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2018/08/19/defend- encrypti...](https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2018/08/19/defend-encryption/)

<comment><USER14> What the parent doesn't explicitly mention is that there is a government inquiry open _RIGHT NOW_. You have to get your submissions in by 10th of September (5 days time). Every Australian here needs to make a submission (please).

The parent's link, allows you to post a boilerplate submission with a single click. Far better to write and email your own submission, as form letters tend to get aggregated into one during evaluation. Your own submission only has to be a few lines, even if it just paraphrases a form submission. Uniqueness counts over bulk submissions.

The page for the inquiry is:

[https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistanc...](https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about/consultations/assistance- and-access-bill-2018)

The email address for submissions is:

firstname.lastname@example.com

Less time critically, you also need to write to or call your federal MP, but I'd suggest that a personal submission to the inquiry is the most "bang for buck".

<comment><USER15> After some calling around it seems this Bill has originated from Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton MP. His office number is 02 6277 7860.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel like the linked article on ABC has a much more detailed and balanced description of the bill [1].

The Government says that "systemic" weaknesses cannot be demanded. That said, the third part of the demands that can be made, the "technical capability notice", seems ripe for abuse.

At the very least, the acceptance of a bill like this will erode trust in app stores. I would expect to see some sort of checksum verification by users becoming commonplace as people become wary of potential targeted attacks.

[1] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-08-20/tech- surveilla...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-08-20/tech-surveillance- laws-labelled-aggressive-by-critics/10128166)

<comment> dane-pgp By "some sort of checksum verification by users", I guess you mean some sort of informal alternative / addition to this:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Binary_Transparency](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Binary_Transparency)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its interesting to think back when Saudi Arabia and the UAE tried to force Blackberry to fall in line there was global outrage including here about the 'backwardness' of these countries and values of democracy and freedom.

Now just a decade later this 'backward' behavior is now 'normalized'.

This is evidence things are moving too fast for us to fully comprehend or contemplate how far down the slippery slope we may be at the current time and how 'values' and definitions change in just a decade.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know why the Five Eyes countries issued a joint statement the other day (tellingly, via the Aussie government's web site). Modus Operandi for each Five Eyes country since forever is to ship their secrets to another partner so they could claim not to be spying on their own people. All they need is for AUS to have the backdoor and then all data could be channeled that way.

I appreciate that the author mentioned the gross incompetence of our intelligence operation which I presume doesn't get much mention outside the country.

PS: nice original Mac illustration for that article!

</comment><comment><USER19> 40 years ago my parents emigrated from an authoritarian South-East Asian country with a dubious human rights record to come to Australia where their kids could enjoy freedom and opportunity away from all that.

Today, I see this announcement in the news and I am wondering which country I can emigrate to with my own kids because I am disgusted with the increasing authoritarian bent of our government, as well as our plummeting human rights record...

</comment><comment><USER20> This method won't work for most 'after the event' scenarios, such as the San Bernadino case, because the subjects are often deceased, and so unlikely to be updating the software on their phones or computers, so it can only possibly apply "upon suspicion". ie. pre-crime...

This opens up questions as to how someone becomes 'suspicious' if their communication is already encrypted. And if they're already a person of interest, how many myriad other ways do they have of surveilling them or checking out their activities? Terrorist attacks require non-electronic items that have to be purchased, stored, and constructed in non-electronic places. There are existing ways to surveil people, under warrant. GPS trackers, phone records, bank statements, listening devices, watching devices, IMSI catchers, metadata (which Australia has legislated must be kept by ISP's for a couple of years).

This new legislation feels like a LOT of effort for a very small percentage return over and above those things I've already listed, especially considering:

\- How long would it take to develop and deploy a targetted version of a program?

\- What's the likelihood of the target updating their program during the useful window of time?

\- Is this timeframe going to be of use to law enforcement?

\- If the timeframe is justified, what's the time limit? Is 'suspect' going to have their comms intercepted for the foreseeable future? At what point is the well deemed to be dry?

\- At what point does warranted surveillance become government harassment?

What this looks like from the outside is more psychology than technology:

\- Hey Terrorists, we can do these things so, you know, re-think your life's direction

\- Chilling effects: encourage paranoia, discourage dissent, even discourage disagreement

<comment><USER21> >How long would it take to develop and deploy a targetted version of a program?

Not particularly relevant - they can require a targeted version of the program be developed before someone comes under suspicion.

>What's the likelihood of the target updating their program during the useful window of time?

Doesn't matter - they can require a force-push update system be built to silently update a specific customer's app version. The law is broadly enough worded that they can order whatever software is in their way to become broken upon receipt of a court order.

>Is this timeframe going to be of use to law enforcement?

Yes, because the law will allow them to force commercial companies to build automated, scaled systems.

>If the timeframe is justified, what's the time limit? Is 'suspect' going to have their comms intercepted for the foreseeable future? At what point is the well deemed to be dry?

We'll never know, because it's designed to be used in secret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It seems like they are just making it more explicit that companies must cooperate with the police. Isn't it already the case anyway if there is an appropriate court order?

At least they are not suggesting to compromise or limit encryption in any way.

What I fail to understand is how all this would help fighting crime. Criminals and terrorists can easily use end-to-end encryption for the communication. There is plenty of software for that and it's really easy to do nowadays.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately it gives them the legal capability to require your startup/IT company/multinational to _put development time in_ at their request to enable your software to give them the access they want.

For example-

get chats in real time

log IP addresses and pass them to gov

open containers stored on your infrastructure

get into the phone or device you have sold to a client previously

These are not interpretations of the legislation- these are the use cases they wrote it to solve.

As ex LEO I get it but the burden on organisations is going to bad for business, not to mention the insecure solutions that are going to get drummed up/coded on the fly to comply with these requests- security nightmare.

There is some reasonable paranoia that this might be a Trojan to enable access in the US. Can't pass legislation in the US? Easy, get your vassal state (AU) to pass it, then ask them to investigate your target and then force people to comply with your vassals state's request.

"yeh I know you can't do that in Texas but you can in Western Australia and we, the US, has a treaty with Australia so you're just going to hand over that data. We'll deliver it to the Aussies for you"

I may be paranoid, but I'm not the only one seeing this angle on it.

Big conspiracies- count me out. Gov is lazy and disorganised. Little conspiracies between gov-buddies ? Absolutely.

<comment><USER24> ... sounds like asking a phone company to tap a phone, which is pretty well established?

<comment><USER25> > sounds like asking a phone company to tap a phone, which is pretty well > established?

That is exactly what they are asking for. In fact, the legalisation enabling them to gather the data and under what conditions (the authorisation required, like a court order) isn't being changed. This new piece of legislation just extends who they can force to collect it form them. It use to be the telco's, which was originally just phone taps but then extended to internet data. They are now extending that to software companies. (Also cloud providers like SpiderOak and "secure email" companies.)

In a few words this extension allows them to order a software company to (with suitable compensation of course):

1\. Develop / assist in developing an undetectable tap / bug for them, and

2\. Surreptitiously install it for them via an over the air update.

This extends their reach from phone calls to any device that auto-installed software updates / patches. Whether you consider the ability to install a "phone tap" into your phone, tv, car, router, wifi camera, pc, robot vacuum, modem, that can read all the data on there, enable the microphone and camera, monitor the GPS and other sensors, read keystrokes, fingerprints and other authentication data to be roughly as intrusive as someone monitoring your phone calls is I guess a mater of taste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I came across this video that shows the potential issues with this bill [https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE](https://youtu.be/eW-OMR-iWOE)

What is concerning is I am building a information management system that focuses on privacy and this sort of bill makes a mockery of the entire concept.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is anyone actively organising against this bill? I feel that ever since the Iraq war protests failed ever time some thing like this happens, people complain a little bit, but don't actually manage to change anything. I was wondering if there are any groups out there that are actively protesting this that I could join, or if not, if any one is interested in forming one? It seems to be an issue that will affect the majority of the readers of HN in a negative way, regardless of your usual political affiliation.

<comment> King-Aaron People seem to just express their anger at news facebook pages these days, but are far too apathetic to actually go outside and do something about it.

There also seems to be a growing "anti-complaining" feeling around people's interactions, where it at least appears that a large number of people find it amusing to actively attack those who are highlighting a problem.

<comment><USER28> Ask someone who was an environmentalist for a couple of decades if shooting the messenager is a new or growing phenomena. It definitely isn't, and is always at its peak issue makes people feel powerless, and they know that it would take personal sacrifice to make a difference. Few people like being told that rough seas are ahead, and the only way to make it through is with extensive teamwork, compromise, and putting aside petty personal issues.

Of course it's often enhanced by orgsnizations which benefit from the status quo. For a long time being in favor of EV's fell into the "tree hugger" category of ridicule and censure, and only when it became possible to adopt the tech without significant personal sacrifice did that change. The idea of organizing people and exercising mass political power is obviously hard, potentially risky, and involves more than making a 5 minute video or paragraph of posting. If people have already chosen not to do that, they tend to resent the people loudly reminding them that there is another way they simply chose to ignore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is mostly about "terrorism", right?

And for Australia, about immigration from flooding areas in Southeast Asia, right? Which arguably has follow-on roles in "terrorism". [I use scare quotes because the definition of "terrorism" is so politicized.]

</comment><comment><USER30> There are many things to admire about Australia and many reasons that I am grateful that I grew up in Australia.

But the ongoing ritual humiliation of Australian technologists over the past several decades is really tiresome.

<comment><USER20> It's also a confusing situation given the cyclical nature of headlines and government concern with Australia's brain drain (all the smart ones leave for better opportunities overseas), and the recent-ish pronouncements of Innovation! through having a specific Department and Minister for Innovation (which has now been decommissioned by the new Prime Minister).

... and the NBN debacle is another nail in Australia's "ability to compete on the world stage" coffin.

... and any lead Australia had in regards to renewable energy projects, investment, and research has been very effectively and efficiently squandered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I found the Assistance Bill to be relatively palatable although still disagreeable and I have emailed in to the forum saying I think it should not pass.

I was just surprised that it had so much awareness of the concerns around what it was doing.

The most worrying part for me was the enabling of remotely serving a warrant. In other words, if they had a warrant for your device they could hack your device instead of physically recovering it. This would mean their cybersecurity team will be broadening it's capabilities and weaponry in that area.

That is worrying. Much in the same way I don't want police cruising town in armoured vehicles with a small arsenal, I am not too hot on investigators being able to sick the hounds on an unsuspecting network. Collateral is a real issue in the digital world too. What if my org network goes down because a warrant was being served remotely on an employee and their exploits were not precision enough?

</comment><comment><USER32> The message is to entrepreneurs: don't build companies - build protocols.

</comment><comment><USER33> Do they think that is this law is introduced that criminals will be using Facebook and Australian hosted communications providers to communicate with one another?

</comment><comment><USER34> I cannot read that article in Firefox. Ironic

<comment><USER35> Works for me with Noscript, Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, and HTTPS Everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's interesting these are all common law Anglosphere countries which declared independence from Great Britain. The UK still has a lot of soft power.

<comment><USER37> Since WWII the UK is definitely the junior power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For those that would like more reading here is the explanatory bill: [https://bit.ly/2NR4tTh](https://bit.ly/2NR4tTh)

Three important things to note technical assistance requests, technical assistance notice and technical capability notice.

<comment><USER39> They keep insisting they're not asking for backdoors. Here's what the explanatory bill says:

 _The type of assistance that may be requested or required under the above powers include (amongst other things):_

* _Removing a form of electronic protection applied by the provider, if the provider has an existing capability to remove this protection._

* _Providing technical information like the design specifications of a device or the characteristics of a service._

* _Installing, maintaining, testing or using software or equipment given to a provider by an agency._

* _Formatting information obtained under a warrant._

* _Facilitating access to devices or services._

* _Helping agencies test or develop their own systems and capabilities._

* _Notifying agencies of major changes to their systems, productions or services that are relevant to the effective execution of a warrant or authorisation._

* _Modifying or substituting a target service._

* _Concealing the fact that agencies have undertaken a covert operation_

<comment><USER40> I wonder if the bureaucrat(s) or technocrat(s) who originally wrote or co- wrote this bill, has a technology background or is a white label lawyer from one of the big legal firms who often write legislation for the Australian Parliament on an expensive consulting basis? Or just an in-house lawyer from the A-G's office - whose expertise is purely legal rather than technological?

Many of these clauses are so vague ("Providing technical information like the design specifications...") that they show either a fundamental lack of practical technology knowledge, or, are deliberately vague so that the arms of the Orwellian Australian federal government octopus can create the intended backdoor without explicitly calling it a backdoor. Maybe both are true?

Was it William Shakespeare who once proffered: is a backdoor by another, obfuscated name, still a backdoor?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What training did you take that help you being a better founder/CEO? - video-host <comment><AUTHOR> Masters of Scale, reading lots of books, having good mentors, improving mindfulness and empathy</comment>


Ask HN: An alternative to Linode? - <AUTHOR>

I was going to move my work to Linode within the past week or so, but then the credit card fiasco happened.
I assume the worst is over, but I don't know if I should risk using Linode.
Are there any alternatives that seem to be on par with Linode? <comment><USER2> I switched over to DigitalOcean a while back and haven't had any issues. Relatively speedy support response, cheap, SSDs, I'm happy at least for my meagre VPS needs.

<comment><USER3> Yes, DigitalOcean is definitely a good alternative, take a look at www.digitalocean.com/customer-stories!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a really big fan of Ramnode right now. Very well priced with great performance. Alternatively you can look at serverbear.com for comparisons.</comment>


EAD: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Wellbeing with AI and AS [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://standards.ieee.org/develop/indconn/ec/ead_v1.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> From the PDF:

      Ethically Aligned Design - Version One
      Request For Input

      The document's purpose is to advance a public
      discussion of how these intelligent and autonomous
      technologies can be aligned to moral values and
      ethical principles that prioritize human wellbeing.</comment>


Rust on the Moon. How is that possible without oxygen and liquid water? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/09/rust-on-the-moon/ <comment><USER2> Original article: [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/the-moon-is-rusting-and- res...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/the-moon-is-rusting-and-researchers- want-to-know-why)</comment>


A 96-year-old artist who saved a village - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20181128-the-96-year-old-painter-who-saved-a-village <comment><USER2> So lucky a student found him painting to share his story. I wonder how many times something like this goes unnoticed and is destroyed.

what can we do to prevent their destruction in the future and depend less on luck?

<comment><USER3> More exploration off the beaten path and sharing with the outside world just like in this example

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. Look at how fast he moves-- I hope I can move like that when I get older.

Kudos to him, giving back at age 96. He's an inspiration.</comment>


Earth and Civilization in Macroscope - <AUTHOR> http://blog.longnow.org/02018/05/29/overview-earth-and-civilization-in-macroscope/ <comment><AUTHOR> The images are breathtaking (scroll down!) video: [http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/may/22/overview-earth- and-...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/may/22/overview-earth-and- civilization-macroscope/)</comment>


Ask HN: Does Android need a system to revoke notifications on other devices? - <AUTHOR>

1) Many people use multiple Android devices. 2) Many people download several of the same apps on all their devices, which creates duplicate notifications. 3) Notifications are one of the essential interactions that users have with the operating system. 4) Actions done to notifications aren't reflected across devices or to the web.
If I dismiss a notification, should it not also be dismissed on my other Android devices, and also to the web interface of that app?
If I tap a notification, should it not also be revoked on the other devices and interfaces associated with that app?
Notifications have become so crucial to the Android experience to me. Automation through services like IFTTT/Pushover make life so much easier, and then there are all the email and social networking apps that ping with updates of all kinds. It's become very strange to me that I need to dismiss notifications on my second device which I have already read or acted on. <comment><USER2> I agree with this. Right now I have turned off notification sound in my tablet, so the phone is the only thing that makes noise. But if I receive an email I still have to dismiss the notification on one device even if I already dismissed it on another.</comment>


Apple recommends six specific payment platforms to use with ApplePay - <AUTHOR>

Apple tells developers, "You can find a list of payment providers who support Apple Pay with their SDKs
on developer.apple.com/apple-pay/. Using one of these SDKs is highly recommended."
These six are:
Authorize.Net, Chase Paymentech, CyberSource, First Data, Stripe and TSYS. As notable as inclusion are those who are absent.
Source: http://www.pymnts.com/news/2014/apple-pay-recommends-six-processors-and-paypals-not-one-of-them/
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8330629 <comment><USER2> I have to imagine this is because the Apple Pay system directly integrates with (admittedly outdated) tech such as 3D Secure, Visa and Mastercard forms of tokenization, and the incumbents other systems. These are traditionally very different from a new technology such as PayPal which, IMO, doesn't seem to be a standard gateway at all.</comment>


Top social media marketers to follow on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/SocialMediaMarketing/comments/2ftdpu/top_social_media_marketers_to_follow_on_twitter/

<comment><USER2> What is this? 3 points, front page, one greyed out comment that matches the reddit link -- which is the only comment?

</comment><comment><USER3> got a vote of 9 out of 10, how much did you get?</comment>


AT&T Locks Apple SIM on Activation - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6499?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US <comment><USER2> Doesn't this completely negate the point of "Apple SIM?" I thought the whole purpose was to allow people to switch carriers simply and quickly.

They even sold it as something which would allow you to switch into different inexpensive plans as and when you needed it. That was their damn sales pitch.

If you need to buy tons of $5 SIMs, and walk around with them to switch, then the entire thing has absolutely no benefit and you should just get a result SIM which might be free anyway.

<comment><USER3> Apple has a long roadmap to turn the carriers into dumb pipes. The original iPad deal was the first step. This is the second. Just because ATT locks the sim today doesn't mean Apple hasn't negotiated an end date to that. Just because Verizon has their own SKU today doesn't mean Apple won't slowly put the screws to them to bring them on board a universal model.

<comment><USER4> After 7 years in the telecommunications industry with the nations second largest telco, I can say for certain that they are dumb, and so are their pipes.

<comment> rational-future Telcos CEOs and big shareholders are extremely arrogant, but not dumb. IMHO in the US, the balance of power between telcos and phone manufacturers is still in favour of the telcos. To have any chance Apple will have to bring back most of their foreign profits (and that will cost a ton of taxes) and ally with other vendors (Google, Samsung, etc.). So not likely at all.

<comment><USER5> I would argue the senior staff may not be dumb, but much of their staff is another story. For example, I was working closely with Verizon staff while they were petitioning the FTC to allow them to raise 411 rates. Their argument for the required rate increase was that they were loosing customers to things like google 411 search, so they need to raise rates to keep their service profitable.

How's that for logic? "Hmm, we now have competition for our product that is better and cheaper, oh well we better just raise our rates." Meanwhile they were very slow to make improvements to their product as a means of countering competition.

<comment> rational-future The logic is that they have already lost the knowledgeable, price sensitive customers. Raising the rates would allow them to extract more value from the rest, e.g. old people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah... I think I'll stick to unlocked phones and swap out regular, 3GPP- mandated standard SIM cards. I'll know exactly what I get, which isn't regulated by some shady operator+manufacturer deals.

</comment><comment><USER7> "dedicates the Apple SIM", what a way to avoid writing "locks".

<comment><USER8> _Lock_ would be confusing because consumers associate that with being carrier locked. It is still an unlocked device, and the word choice helps make that clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> ... but you can buy a new SIM to switch carriers if you need to:

> If your Apple SIM becomes dedicated to a specific network and you want to > choose from other carrier programs, you can purchase a new Apple SIM from an > Apple Retail store.

Better than having to buy a new iPad.

<comment><USER10> iPads from the Apple Store are never carrier locked.

<comment><USER11> Yes. This just highlights the fact that you NEVER, ever want to buy an iOS device from a carrier's store. Always buy directly from Apple. Not just because of this SIM lock issue, but also because Apple's return policy and the way they handle problems very early in the life of a device is very different if you bought it somewhere else versus having bought it from Apple directly.

<comment><USER9> Wait, so explain it to me. When I bought my last iPad, I could have sworn I had to choose an AT&T model or a Verizon model. Or is this a new feature on the iPad Air 2?

EDIT: From the link:

> right from your iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 3

So this is new for iPad Air 2 then it appears.

<comment><USER12> Right. Older cellular iPads supported either GSM or CDMA, so you had to choose at purchase in the US whether it was for AT&T (GSM) or Verizon (CDMA). Newer cellular iPads include both GSM and CDMA.

<comment><USER13> The best part about this: iPad boxes never said which carrier it was locked to. You had to look it up via serial number. Non-Apple sales people didn't seem to understand this and happily sold me an AT&T iPad when I asked for a Verizon iPad.

<comment><USER14> They actually do, at least for the past couple of years. My past two iPad purchases have been clearly marked "AT&T" right on the label.

<comment><USER13> I bought my mom a Verizon iPad a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I was actually sold an AT&T iPad. There was no indication either way on the box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> US carriers are so silly. People can easily use unlocked phones in Europe and - this might shock them - the sky hasn't fallen! The usual duopolies are still the same duopolies as they were a decade ago.

You're buying a phone - you should be a allowed to put a different SIM in it and "cheat" on your network. It's not like you won't be paying them if you're in the contract anyway. If the contract ends - then you're free to leave them anyway. So why are they making such a big deal about SIM-locking?

<comment><USER6> > the sky hasn't fallen! The usual duopolies are still the same duopolies as > they were a decade ago

Prices have definitely dropped though. Mobile telephony in Europe is usually cheaper than in the US.

<comment><USER16> Except when you leave your home country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While there are certainly user benefits (like easier switching between providers) that's not the primary point of the Apple SIM.

Think about SKUs and inventory.

On launch day this month, Apple had 2 phones, with 3 different storage sizes, available in 3 different colors. Apple SIM is about not have to have another multiple on top of all those combination about which network the phone works on (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc).

Apple SIM lets them go from 42+ SKUS, to 12.

User choice is nice and Apple certainly cares about the user experience. But Tim Cook made his bones at Apple as master of supply and distribution chains. Apple SIM helps them, even if the carriers all balk on allowing users to switch providers via software.

<comment><USER6> Why is it so hard for Americans to learn what a SIM card is? "The SIM card is your phone number". My 85 year aunt knows what one is and how to swap it out. Why do they have to be preinstalled? So Apple can shave a mm off the thickness of the device?

<comment><USER18> Maybe because most people here never ever change their SIM card. You buy a phone and you're basically locked into your carrier until your contract expires, then you buy a new phone because it's the only way to justify the ridiculous monthly fees. If you venture overseas you often just put up with the stupid-high rates your carrier will charge you because it's too much of a pain or too complicated to call your carrier and get your phone unlocked.

I don't think saving mm's off the thickness is a factor at all because the SIM is still replaceable. I think Apple thought it was a better user experience to be able to choose their carrier this way. And of course now they don't have to stock iPads with carrier-specific SIMs.

Yes, they could sell SIM-less iPads, but that would make for a poor buying experience, at least for us SIM-shy 'merkins.

<comment><USER19> The other problem have been the cdma carriers have been and still are the predominant cell carriers in the USA. That means most never used phones with sims until recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Question: Why are they able to? Is the ability to lock some FCC regulation, or did Apple leave this ability in because AT&T demanded it?

</comment><comment><USER21> Why we as American consumers continue to tolerate behavior like this out of our carriers is beyond me...

</comment><comment><USER22> what's the cost of a new apple SIM?

<comment><USER23> $5. Not much but not insignificant. I'd rather AT&T just not lock it.

Edit: I thought I had read $5, but now I can't find that source, so who knows.

<comment><USER24> Another commenter in this thread is also saying $5. So it appears your memory is serving you :) ... unless of course you read it from this thread, ha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why? Why does apple allow them to do this?</comment>


Trump Moves to Ban Foreign Telecom Gear, Targeting Huawei and China - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/business/huawei-ban-trump.html <comment><USER7> The fear mongering against Huawei becomes really interesting when you look at all the "sorry, we forgot about that unintentional access possibility" incidents in Cisco gear that might either be back doors or lousy QA leading to security problems.

<comment><USER8> I don't really see the fear mongering or problem here.

This executive order would forbid the government from purchasing and installing Telecom/Networking equipment that would be considered to have a higher than acceptable risk.

Given that China isn't exactly the most friendly nation to the US, and given Huawei is by nature, an extension of the Chinese Government, it's not unreasonable to assume China might at some point in the future (or already is) use Huawei to conduct electronic espionage against other nations.

Just like it wouldn't be unreasonable for China to forbid purchase and use of Cisco equipment within the Chinese government.

(We should also not forget or excuse Chinese IP theft which has enabled Huawei to produce competitive products in the first place...)

<comment><USER9> Maybe that's our fault for outsourcing all of our semiconductor production to China. We got cheap electronics out of the deal, but we've lost a lot of expertise in manufacturing as a result.

<comment><USER10> We don't outsource semiconductor production to China, China actually currently lacks leading edge semiconductor capabilities

<comment><USER11> I don't buy into _all_ of this anti-sinitic paranoia, but if suspicion of China-produced semiconductors were reasonable, why wouldn't suspicion of Taiwan-produced semiconductors also be reasonable?

<comment><USER12> Because Taiwan is a democracy on our side, and they're just as suspicious of the Chinese Communists as good old 'Mercia?

<comment><USER11> I can't imagine why Taiwan would be suspicious of any of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, or indeed of any polity that hasn't existed in over a millennium.

If you have a good reason to suspect that state-level attackers could be in your supply chain, that reason doesn't go away just because the semiconductors were actually manufactured in Taiwan. Do we imagine that China's spooks don't have access to Taiwan fabs? Do we imagine that USA's spooks don't? If this is an actual threat to you, you need a lot more assurance than a "Made in Taiwan" label.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A little off topic: I think multiple countries should join together to co- sponsor security evaluation labs to check Cisco, Huawei, and all telecom companies. These labs should get access to hardware design, software, etc. This can be done in a way that mostly protects individual company's intellectual property.

I suspect that the top telecom tech companies would go along with this idea, to get vetted, if it would help increase their business. Right now there are two European and one Chinese company who can ship 5G gear. I would like all 5G, and older gear also, to be vetted by international security labs.

<comment><USER14> Sort of like UN weapons inspects?

<comment><USER15> I like that. If we are using vocabulary like Cyber Warfare, Cyber Attacks, and even now seeing actual bombs blowing up buildings as a retaliation of a cyber attack, then why not. Who would be the Scott Ritter of the cyber world? Although, the only people that I'd trust to understand the equipment are the exact people I wouldn't trust with my equipment! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Foreign Telecom Gear" really only ever seems to mean Huawei and China in these proclamations.

The fact is the majority of Telecom gear is foreign-made with regards to the US. To wit:

Alcatel-Lucent - <USER2>

Nokia - <USER3>

Siemens - <USER4>

Samsung - <USER5>

Fujitsu and NEC - <USER6>

If the US were to truly enforce a domestic US-only vendor selection it would be limited to Cienna, Cisco, Qualcomm and Motorola. And to my knowledge none of those four companies are making 5G switching gear.

<comment><USER17> isn't all this stuff actually manufactured in China?

<comment><USER18> Depends on the component or product probably. Some is, some isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there major legitimacy to the state sponsored back doors in Huawei, or has the company just become some sort of pawn in the trade war?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm really looking forward to a time with the United States, Russia, and China all agree to get along and decide to screw all the poor people equally instead of just trying to screw poor people in their own country.

</comment><comment><USER21> This in addition to all the "security" advisories to other countries seems like a move to curb their economic growth more than anything.

<comment><USER22> For once in 2 years though the current US admin is right IMHO. China is not an ally, Russia is not an ally. Best case they're semi-neutral, worst case they're the next enemy.

China especially has been playing the ultra-long game by slowly getting more and more countries under their dependence, buying up assets left and right and where that didn't help resorting to industrial espionage.

The problem that the telco operators have is that there is (thanks to Chinese dumping, did I mention they are playing a long game) next to no viable competition in either the US or the expanded NATO space - Europe has Ericsson and Nokia which are expensive and the US has Cisco which is expensive and crops up with at least one real backdoor a month.

<comment><USER23> Are hardware vulnerabilities so difficult to find and insidious that no amount of auditing and investigation by the US govt will ever be sufficient?

<comment><USER24> Pretty much yes, combined with having to fully audit the software top to bottom every couple of weeks for every patch, piece of firmware, etc with pressure to get into production fixes for issues that affect customers service.

From my experience in the industry, most of the protections being offered are hand-wavy things, like a software patch from Huawei being scanned by a desktop virus scanner for viruses or remote access gateways that record the screens of external employees accessing equipment where the demo I got for the solution the security prime couldn't figure out how to actually view the screen recordings. Huawei employees weren't allowed to give us any USB devices either. (I didn't work with Huawei routinely, although I know many who do. I tended to work with Cisco, Nokia, and several smaller vendors).

The only model I could see sort of working is forcing them to hand over the sources to an industry group or government entity, that is then responsible for auditing, building, and signing the software. But there are so many moving components slipping something past that is still plausible, and many barriers towards that sort of model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This huge international campaign including pushing other countries..! It is not about security. It is more about money. Huge influence from powerful capitalists and investors because their market and long term interests are at risk.

</comment><comment><USER26> Can anyone stop him?

I don't want him to do this. I don't want these tariffs.

Does this mean the Republican Party is compliant in this nonsense?

<comment><USER27> I, on the other hand, am glad these tariffs are happening. They've been a long time coming.

<comment><USER28> I agree. We can't control China's behavior but the tariffs do a good job of controlling our own behavior since they punish us more then China. So if you are single sourcing everything in China you will be punished more then those who have more sources. Challenge is the next President will back right off and we will be where we were before.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure I support the wider set of tariffs (I really don't know a lot about the impact of that), but I totally support the banning of buying major telecom equipment from foreign countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This just goes to prove that even a racist clock is right twice a day [1] because it's clear that:

\- China has engaged in state-sponsored corporate and military espionage; and

\- Chinese companies are not separate from the state.

The only reasonable conclusion here is that Huawei gear on key networking infrastructure represents a security threat and really that's all there is to it. I find it odd that it's taken Trump, who otherwise is a disaster on pretty much every front, to actually say what is otherwise obvious.

[1]: [https://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-racist- clock-4...](https://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-racist-clock-4th- panel)

<comment><USER31> I don't believe this is the consequence of Trump being racist.

<comment><USER32> I don't believe trump is racist.

<comment><USER33> There is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest that he is[0,1], going back to lawsuits over housing discrimination in the 1970s, to his comments about wanting more immigrants from Norway rather than "shithole countries" in Africa, and of course equivocating on Charlottesville.

Granted, he hasn't burned a cross on the White House lawn, but it's difficult to look at his statements and the unprecedented (and well documented) support his campaign had from racists and not conclude he probably is racist beyond a reasonable doubt.

[0][https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump-r...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/trump- racism-comments/588067/)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump)

<comment><USER34> Charlottesville hoax has been debunked again and again, including by MSM outlets themselves. Read what he actually said: [https://blog.dilbert.com/2019/04/30/the-fine-people-hoax- fun...](https://blog.dilbert.com/2019/04/30/the-fine-people-hoax-funnel/)

<comment><USER33> Ok fair enough. That still leaves the rest of the mountain of evidence. Is every quote and statement ever made by and about Trump also a hoax? Even the ones from prior to his presidency?

<comment><USER34> Prior to his presidency here's how things were "racism" wise: [https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+with+sharpton&newwindo...](https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+with+sharpton&newwindow=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfqIfB757iAhXEMnwKHV0kDYUQ_AUIDigB&biw=2048&bih=1070). Dude even had a black girflriend for a couple of years: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/us/politics/trump- blacks-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/us/politics/trump-blacks- african-americans-girlfriend-charlottesville.html)

As to "mountains of evidence", up until you've read the article I linked, you thought there was "mountain of evidence" about Charlottesville, too. Heck, you probably still think that, this particular bit of fake news has been drilled into everyone's skulls relentlessly for over a year.

What makes you think that other "evidence" is not of the same quality?

<comment><USER33> One article from which that first picture was taken[0] suggests other than the narrative you want to present:

        Today, the two are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. In
        the interview last December, Trump said on Fox that Sharpton "is
        a guy who I don't believe really believes what he's saying."

        And Sharpton has used his MSNBC and radio shows to criticize Trump,
        arguing that his stances on Barack Obama's birth certificate
        and the Central Park Five were racist.

And here's another one[1] where Al Sharpton out and out calls Trump a racist.

So that leaves the fact that he one dated a black woman as your evidence to disprove everything else?

H.P. Lovecraft was a racist and virulent antisemite, and yet he still married a Jewish woman. Racists are not racist about everything, all the time, like cartoon characters, and where people like Trump are concerned, obviously class status also has an effect on the way race is viewed.

Not terribly convincing.

[0][https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/09/trumps-pal-al- sharpto...](https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/09/trumps-pal-al-sharpton/)

[1][https://www.huffpost.com/entry/al-sharpton-donald-trump- raci...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/al-sharpton-donald-trump- racist_n_5cc981aee4b0913d078b02fd)

>Heck, you probably still think that, this particular bit of fake news has been drilled into everyone's skulls relentlessly for over a year.

Now you're resorting to personal attacks, so this conversation is over.

<comment><USER34> Of course Sharpton will call him a "racist" _now_. Not doing so would subject him to intense repercussions as a democrat, his career would be over in an instant.

But Trump is the dude literally _nobody_ had any problems with until he ran against HRC, including the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, etc. He received the Rosa Parks award fer chrissakes: [https://www.snopes.com/fact- check/trump-received-ellis-islan...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump- received-ellis-island-award-in-1986/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What is this gonna mean for my OnePlus

<comment><USER36> Nothing, unless your cellphone is part of the infrastructure of a telecom company.</comment></comment>


The future of education is plain text - <AUTHOR> https://simplystatistics.org/2017/06/13/the-future-of-education-is-plain-text/ <comment><USER2> Plaintext certainly seems more attractive the more docs I write. Over the years, with both work and personal projects, I've used every format from:

\- Notepad

\- Microsoft Word

\- PDF

\- Twiki

\- Various proprietary WSYWIG that compiles to HTML

\- JIRA

\- Raw HTML

\- Markdown (several flavors)

With nearly every kind of migration, there are numerous pain points. The "raw" formats are a nightmare to edit and update, and the compiled ones require several hours of changing syntax, image locations, etc.

I've been getting so tired of having to re-do stuff on different platforms that more of my docs are starting as Plaintext and then written in pseudocode markup for areas that I know will change on every platform (e.g. generating a table of contents, image tags, etc).

Having just coded an entire website from scratch that was basically just documentation, Markdown comes remarkably close to doing what I want, _except_ when the common format fails to meet my needs, which forces me to then have to switch to a specific flavor of Markdown in order to get something as basic as tables.

The docs of mine that seem most resilient to platform shifts (other than plaintext) are the ones that are written in or compiled to longstanding formats like LaTeX or HTML.

So perhaps my takeaway is, write in something readable that compiles to something widely available. That will provide the least headache.

<comment><USER3> If you're interested in adding LaTeX to that list, you might like to try Overleaf [1] -- it's an online collaborative LaTeX editor we built to try to lower the learning curve (I'm one of the founders).

It includes a rich text mode for easier collaboration with non-LaTeX users [2], and you can also write in Markdown if you like :) [3].

Feedback always appreciated if you do give it a try, thanks.

[1] [https://www.overleaf.com](https://www.overleaf.com)

[2] [https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81](https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81)

[3] [https://www.overleaf.com/blog/501](https://www.overleaf.com/blog/501)

<comment><USER4> Thank you so much for Overleaf, as a new user, its great!

I really like how easy it is to experiment with the LaTeX formatting (something I wasnt super familiar with) and immediately see the output.

I had someone send me their resume template on overleaf and it was super easy to get a similar product with my personal touch.

The only feedback I would have is it was a little awkward to do folders within folders (this was a few months ago) and I had to ken the "hey put a path separator in the name" before I got it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback - great to hear you've been finding it useful and yes, improving the file tree is definitely on our list.

Good luck with your future projects!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Plaintext OrgMode notebooks exhibit every benefit listed in Minimaxir's [0] post, and have the additional advantage of powerful editor integration beyond R code.

Here is an example of using the IPython kernel to evaluate inline Python code within an OrgMode document.[1][2]

More information on how to create multi-language notebooks with OrgMode Babel here[3]

[0] [http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/](http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/)

[1] [http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/29/ob- ipython...](http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/29/ob-ipython-and- inline-figures-in-org-mode/)

[2] [https://github.com/gregsexton/ob- ipython](https://github.com/gregsexton/ob-ipython)

[3] [http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/](http://orgmode.org/worg/org- contrib/babel/)

<comment><USER6> Org format is great, but the designs of many of its more advanced features rely heavily on the Emacs editor's ability to collapse metadata. Once you've built a file that uses drawers, tags, some spreadsheets, and several levels of nesting, the resulting file can be too cluttered with metadata to be easily understandable in other plaintext editors.

<comment><USER7> Not using those other editors is an added benefit.

<comment><USER8> Not unless you work alone. When you work with other people, it's important to use a common format for the benefit of the group. Trying to force other people to use emacs won't win you any friends.

<comment><USER9> Org exports to anything including utf8 plain text with a nice style reminiscent of IEEE RFCs.

<comment><USER10> Without using Emacs Org-mode however, you're stuck with something that only you can properly enjoy and edit, so everyone who doesn't like Emacs is SOL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Plain text: so that no one can own the presentation method.

Plain text: so that no one can own the distribution method.

Plain text: so that no one can own the creation method.

Plain text: so normal people can recover data even when partially corrupted.

Plain text: so you aren't forced to see jarring ads.

Plain text: so that there are no tracking pixels.

Plain text: because connecting information with hyperlinks doesn't require all of HTML or even computers.

Plain text: because it's good enough for metadata.

My future and knowledge is in YAML-fronted markdown and YAML metadata for binaries. Let's take back our data. Look out for Optik.io.

<comment><USER12> Started with a Stallman-esque rant I could get down with and then ended in a very un-Stallman-esque and opaque ad. :(

<comment><USER11> Ok fair, this is the first time I've gotten public interest! Awesome. Please hold shortly, website incoming...

(Just for reference, I do want to build a business on open data, but not by owning your data. I would like to help people manage their data.)

 _EDIT:_ Website is live! Try [https://www.optik.io](https://www.optik.io) until DNS catches up, if optik.io is not responding for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nope, because plain-text is incompatible with centuries of mathematical notation.

<comment><USER14> This.

My wife is a math teacher, and the piss-poor experience of writing mathematical notation outside of MS Word keeps them stuck on Word. As much as she and I love LaTeX's math notation, she can't get her departmentmates onboard with that kind of syntax.

They need to maintain notes, guides, tests, quizzes, etc. and basically running a team OneDrive is really the only option because all the alternatives utterly fail a group of non-technical mathies.

<comment><USER15> Fun fact!

Microsoft Office has two internal math formats, one of them is Ecma Math[0], the other the other is the "Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics"[1], it is a Unicode standard and uses only Unicode standard characters. It has the unfortunate property of being hard to type on its own (the integral character isn't on most people's keyboards), but it is pretty easy to read as just plain text. If you copy an equation out of Word you'll get something like this: ∫(x^2/2)

[0] [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml-a...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml- and-ecma-math-omml/)

[1] [http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf](http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf)

Disclaimer: I work @Microsoft improving on some math features, and we are the main implementors of the spec. Which makes me sad, since it is an open spec and it is really powerful!

<comment><USER16> Funny that it's not ∫(x²/2), though!

OK, I went and looked at the standard and it seems like they're thought about this: they allow input as either ∫(x²/2) or ∫(x^2/2) but they apparently output as ∫(x^2/2) because it's more general and editable, like if you wanted to change the exponent to something that didn't have a predefined Unicode superscript.

<comment><USER17> I like that, except I prefer "un-necessary" parenthesis to be explicit about the ordering of operations.

Thus assume only + - and * / are unambiguous, everything else be explicit about ordering.

EG: ∫((x^2)/2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As others have mentioned, once you dig into the innards and nuances of plain text representations and formats, things can get hairy. Still, I think the author is correct in that plain text formats are certainly a better base for sharing curricula, and for knowledge production in general, than something proprietary like word docs, pdfs, etc.

I think markup languages like markdown which are both fairly easy to convert into other formats and deliciously human readable are the way to go.

<comment><USER19> PDFs are still ok though. There are many implementations of PDF parsers, many Open Source. It may not be as "universal" as plain-text, but it is definitely universal. At this point, I believe that all major operating systems ship with the ability to open PDFs for display.

<comment><USER20> PDFs presume that the writer has "control" rather than the reader. Actually I probably shouldn't put quotes around "control" \-- formatting is rigidly constrained, on purpose.

In addition PDF adapts, by design, a model of paper to the web. It's a "horseless carriage" file format.

Font size, page width, cut/paste and presentation in general should be the reader's choice, not the writer's. The Web manages this, sort of.

The OP is right on in this regard. Even the TeXs of this world, while better than the binary formats, have upgrade complexity.

<comment><USER21> >should be the reader's choice, not the writer's

Sometimes. There are a lot more design options available if the creator of the content maintains control over layout, fonts, etc. Sometimes this doesn't matter--if it's a block of text for example. Fairly simple layouts also render pretty well on the web.

Different content works better or worse with different approaches. One isn't intrinsically superior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What important problem in this domain does the author think plain text uniquely solves? I'd say that the arguments aren't specific to education, and that they're also pretty weak.

Remember that one of the major breakthroughs of the World Wide Web was that HTML meant documents were no longer plaintext.

<comment><USER23> You could replace "plain text" in the article with "non-binary", and it would probably make more scence. Markdown is also not plain text in the most strict sense. Or HTML is plain text in a vague sense. In the end, what really matters is how easy it is to build parsers and tools for a format. Being non-binary is a huge plus. I think that was the point of the article, and I agree with that.

<comment><USER24> I don't think anyone would claim that HTML was easy to parse, would they? It took _decades_ for the HTML5 consensus to emerge.

I like text-based formats, but I'm not convinced that _" Being non-binary is a huge plus"_ for parsing. With binary formats you can assume that documents are generated by a tool, which is at least _trying_ to be compliant with a spec, so barfing on noncompliance is more acceptable. With text you have to be prepared to cope with any kind of rat dance imaginable.

<comment><USER25> Parsing semistructured text as markup is a problem solved _over 30 years ago_ [1].

SGML has the SHORTREF feature which allows custom Wiki syntaxes such as markdown, but also casual math. It works by applying a context-dependent (parent element dependent) mapping of tokens (such as the `_` token for markdown emphasis) to replacement text (eg. the `<b>` start-element tag). Within the `<b>` context, the `_` token is mapped to the `</b>` end-element tag, in turn, ending the emphasis. In combination with tag omission/inference (such as in HTML) and other markup minimization and processing features, SGML is a quite powerful plain text document authoring format.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Generalized_Markup_Language)

<comment><USER24> We may be talking about different things. Parsing valid, standard-conforming HTML/Markdown/whatever is a solved problem. Getting multiple parsers to deal with arbitrary tag soup, authoring errors, variously-supported extensions etc in a consistent way is a lot uglier. The problems may be commercial/political/educational/organizational rather than technical, but that doesn't mean they aren't real.

<comment><USER25> I'd say that's exactly what SGML is about - a meta language to describe those things consistently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What many developers either don't understand or refuse to accept is that when it comes to distribution you don't control formatting. It doesn't matter if that white space is explicit like white space characters or inferred from rules like CSS.

There is a naive assumption that all platforms and operating systems will treat your text (everything is either text or binary before it is parsed into something else) equally. This is false. When when this fallacy becomes self- evident many developers will refuse to modify their assumptions in the belief that consuming software will figure it out properly. Sometimes that is true and sometimes will absolutely break your code/prose/data. Clearly that assumption carries a heavy risk, but this is just data at rest.

When it comes to data moving over a wire the risk substantially increases, because all software that processes that text may make custom modifications along the way. You don't see it so much when the protocol is primitive like HTTP, pub/sub, or RSS (but it still does happen frequently). There are many distribution protocols are that less primitive and absolutely will mutilate the formatting of your documents, such as email (which is why there are email attachments).

<comment><USER27> > There are many distribution protocols are that less primitive and absolutely > will mutilate the formatting of your documents, such as email (which is why > there are email attachments).

That's not entirely true. For email, the only characters that have special meaning are carriage return, line feed, period, and the null ASCII character.

Other than that, you can transfer data via SMTP without any issues.

<comment><USER26> That might be true in theory but it certainly isn't true in practice. I know because I have done this work before. Documents passed through email tend to get mutilated by each application that touches it, such as: email servers, user agent applications, and sometimes network proxies and other application tools on the line. Microsoft applications were huge offenders, particularly MS Exchange which added all kinds of crap to the document.

The worst was webmail, which is an email client embedded in a web page. The documents would have to be mutilated so that contents didn't leak outside of a bounded area on the page and visually kill any advertisements or other controls on the page.

If you embed HTML in email and then embed other grammars inside the HTML these applications will brutalize your document at every step. If you are fortunate and extremely defensive your document arrive at a first destination mostly undamaged, but after that any retransmission will thoroughly crush its soul.

<comment><USER27> > That might be true in theory but it certainly isn't true in practice. I know > because I have done this work before.

My testing was limited to three commercial SMTP servers that I had credentials for. One of them was the SMTP server that I could access using my Hotmail account credentials. Other than changing the Message-Id header that I had manually set in the test message I was sending, I wasn't able to to see any other changes in the message that I had sent (a string of ASCII characters (0-255) excluding the ones I noted in my previous reply).

On the other hand, I have no idea what MAPI does with text.

After re-reading your original post, it appears that you're taking applications and the transfer protocol as a single unit rather than separating them out. If you use protocols like HTTP, IMAP, SMTP, or NNTP over telnet, you'll find that they don't typically mangle text (bytes) that you send outside of certain control characters like I mentioned above.

But you're definitely correct about the problems that applications pose in terms of preserving the text that they process.

<comment><USER26> Try putting HTML with some exotic CSS (inline of course because this is email). Ensure that CSS contains some position absolutes and other properties that allows presentation outside the accepted bounds.

Also put some JavaScript in there and see what it does.

I guarantee Hotmail will destroy the original document and do so in such a way that the document evolves from machine that touches the document. The document, from the perspective of SMTP 821/281/5321 (and so forth) is still just plain text.

<comment><USER27> > I guarantee Hotmail will destroy the original document [containing HTML/CSS > and/or JavaScript] and do so in such a way that the document evolves from > machine that touches the document.

I'm not disagreeing with you here and you're most likely correct. Exchange has historically not complied with SMTP RFCs. I'll try it out and see how it changes just to satisfy my curiosity.

I suspect that you were to send email like you specified through Postfix, Sendmail, or Exim, it wouldn't be altered before being sent to the next MTA or delivered to the user's mailbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> And the future of operating systems is the command line.

We deserve better than this reductionist thinking. Constraints can breed innovation; but they can also just constrain.

<comment><USER29> it is, but computer isn't smart enough for the future to happen yet

<comment><USER30> It's the Unix/text fetishizing developers who aren't the smart enough ones I think...

<comment><USER29> yet it is the unix/text fetish that forms the foundation for toasters, smartphones/watches, clouds, and supercomputers you'd think that a superior alternative would be overtaking this clearly inferior symbolic text system makes you think, don't it? not like people haven't been trying, but why is it so persistent? do you blame the fetish? why can't some other technically superior system win? WHY?

<comment><USER28> Systems are funny. People do what works. Don't think about it too hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It seems worth mentioning that plaintext is discussed here as the storage / source format.

That doesn't mean it _has to be_ the distribution / consumption format.

One of the great things about something like Markdown is that it can be rendered to HTML trivially, to display video, equations, etc.

Same thing for ebooks, PDFs, whatever (thanks Pandoc!). It's also easy to translate between formats (e.g. .md, .org, .rst, etc.).

If a new format comes along that everyone wants, there's an extremely good chance that plain text can be rendered to it.

The reverse is not true.

<comment><USER32> A thought occurs to me about source versus consumption formats. It would seem to me that source code should be the distribution format. That way, the recipient can choose their own preferred consumption format.

When I first heard about HTML, described in some magazine article, it was touted as a way to give people a chance to have their own unique readers. For instance, a blind person might want to have their own HTML reader, that uses the hierarchy of header tags to help them navigate the document.

Today, my impression is that HTML and its successors are treated more like a general purpose programming language intended to drive visual-specific browsers. This is why we have to create target specific web pages (e.g., mobile and desktop), rather than let each target's browser render generic pages.

<comment><USER9> That's nice and all but in a classroom you want to be able to say "open page n". Anything else causes terrible confusion.

<comment><USER32> That's a good point. I suppose there has to be at least a preferred distribution format that everybody has access to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While plain text is compatible with virtually 100% of every OS ever, when I try to open a txt file on my windows machine it asks what application to open it in, since there are no default apps (Windows 7 and earlier.) This might make it _appear_ that plain text files are a "special" format because it doesn't open up when you double click on it.

I have sent plain text files to some of my colleagues in the past (so that there is a 100% chance that they could read the file), and they were unable to open them because of this issue with choosing the default application, and asked me what app they needed to download to view the files.

<comment><USER34> I'm pretty sure .txt opens in notepad..?

<comment><USER33> It does, but sometimes the line breaks don't show up so it's all on one line with what appears to be tabs. WordPad works fine though.

<comment><USER34> Save your .txt files with CRLF(Windows) line endings, not LF (Linux) or CR (Mac). Your txt files should now work on all (relevant) OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> May I share a related vignette?

I have a kid in middle school, and he has a tablet. These things are often pushed as "educational". Pop quiz: you walk by, and you need to determine, within a couple of seconds, if what he's doing is actually educational. Here's what you see:

lots of graphics, whizzing around the screen

-or-

black alphanumeric characters against a white background

Now, you don't actually _know_ , but generally speaking, the second is a better indicator than the first.

I realized this applies to my own work as well. There are parts of my job that I consider extremely useful to the world, and parts that I really gotta wonder about.

If I'm looking at green or white alphanumeric characters against a black background (easier on the eyes), I'm probably at a UNIX prompt, writing code that is doing something very analytical, or writing SQL. If I'm looking at graphics whizzing by, I'm either trying to figure out how to get a drop down to repopulate with the right thing pre-selected in the latest javascript framework, or, worse, I'm so irritated with javascript frameworks that I've decided to browse the web.

Again, it's not a guarantee, but I'm starting to consider a very general guideline: if you are looking at symbols and alphanumeric characters, the odds that you are building something of lasting value is much higher than if you are looking at things with elaborate UI elements.

It's not 100%. My kid could be watching Citizen Kane and developing an interesting critical point of view. He could be reading 101 fart jokes. It's not a perfect match. There are worthy and unworthy things on both sides.

But as a general rule, for culture and career - if you're looking at plain text, that's a good sign.

<comment><USER36> Or the student could be a visual learner.

<comment><USER37> But there's a reason scientific books aren't very rich in illustrations.

<comment><USER35> I'm coming in a little late here, but I really did mean it was just an indicator. Visualizations are still important. In fact, a moving graphic might mean that the kid on the kindle is, in fact, using a visual aid to conceptualize how back propagation works with neural networks.

I also don't want to come off as knocking video games. I had an Atari in the 80s. Super fun. I would have played that thing 8 hours a day if my parents had let me. They put a cap on it, along with a rule that I also spend some time with this odd object involving black letters printed on a series of white pages if I wanted to play the video game.

The Atari is long gone (though you could say it's as present as ever, in a greatly enhanced form). But those black letters on white pages are still pretty excellent, and are identical to how they were 30+ years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I totally agree and I strongly prefer text. So much that I made this: [https://www.libre.university/](https://www.libre.university/) for me and my classmates to learn some topics. Note: the English one is mostly empty except for [1], the main one is the Spanish page.

[1] [https://en.libre.university/subject/4kitSFzUe/Web%20Programm...](https://en.libre.university/subject/4kitSFzUe/Web%20Programming)

</comment><comment><USER9> Plain text would've been THE usual way to go for most things (1), but it's so hidden in major OSs, even in Linux distros. Many use Word or Wordpad mostly as a plain text editor becausr they don't know the difference between plain text and a word document. Also, there is thpage metaphor in those programswhich people like, because we think of text in pages. This is not that hard to emulate in plain text but not that straightforward too. People often share documents so pages and paragraphs must be equal for all (paragraph numbering might be a solution). We have the tooling fir generating convenient formats for consumption likr PS and PDF, but default tooling for plain text and the visibility thereof is what's needed.

(1) When youcompose text you want to compose first style later. Wysiwyg mixes the two and you end up with crappy spelling and half arsed formatting most thetime.

</comment><comment><USER39> A long text explaination of how a piston engine works or a short explanation and an animated GIF.

Which is better?

I would say the second one is more effective.

<comment><USER40> Depending on who's doing the advocating, plain text doesn't inhibit images or any other media, as any site with media written in markdown or reStructuredText shows. Lots of GitHub READMEs are written in Markdown and include images, for example.

There are a number of image formats that are commonly supported, as well as video and audio. Once you've decided to go beyond face to face speech in the same language, you have to make compromises. Just try to minimize those, and try to stay within conflicts that have compromises, like line endings.

I think starting from "authorship in plaintext," along with sharing plaintext files, would move things pretty far forward. (I guess there's some irony in there.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Odd to see a _statistics-focused site_ to emphasize plain text as opposed to formats that promote usability/reproducibility like Notebooks such as Jupyter (or R Notebooks, as discussed last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14522795))

The post correctly notes that R Markdown files _are_ plain text, but the benefits of such (version control) are not discussed by the OP.

<comment><USER31> What are the possible benefits of doing something that could be done using plaintext, using a JSON blob?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> One advantage of plain text formats that I haven't seen mentioned is that they're easily and meaningfully diff-able.

You can run two versions of a markdown file or a LaTeX source file through a diff, and see what's been changed. Try that with a PDF or Word file or what have you.

As I like to keep my files in version control, I use plain text formats as much as possible.

<comment><USER43> People look at you like your a damn wizard when you diff two texts to find the differences. I'm sure there are diff tools for Word as well, but almost no one use them, because they aren't aware that such a tool could exist.

The average person run around with a smart phone in their pocket, a marvel of engineering and yet they still don't know how to use their computer to do trivial tasks.

<comment><USER44> If anything, the "track changes" feature in Word is actually nicer than diffing by hand (and this is coming from someone who positively hates Word!).

<comment><USER42> Does it track changes in one document (when enabled), or can you give it two documents and let it highlight changes?

(A fairly common occurrence when many people's distributed version control system consists of emailing around "thesis_v0.9.doc", "thesis_v1.0.doc", "thesis_final.doc", "thesis_final_v2.doc", etc. See also: [http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1531](http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1531) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Text is also accessible to people with sensory disabilities (blind, deaf, deaf-blind...). Hypertext is also fine, of course; I won't insist on "plain" text. But this is in contrast with graphics, audio, and video.

</comment><comment><USER46> The future of education might be plain text, but not for the reasons mentioned in the article. Also, I think something can be the future of XYZ if it solves the problems XYZ face currently.

The current content for education is good, but is definitely bandwidth-heavy and is tough to maintain. But dropping to plain text will force us let go a few things that otherwise make learning more effective.

I think HTML (or a WYSIWYG style editors - that seem like plain text, but can be powerful with images, videos, animations when required) also does the same thing like plain text,

\- it is always compatible (I give it to you that it takes effort to run hifi stuff on browsers, but still better than plain text).

\- is easy to mix and match

\- is easy to maintain (thanks to many editors)

\- is light weight (not compared with plain text of course)

\- is forward compatible (not possible when all browsers decided to not support HTML in its current state).

I appreciate the thought behind bringing this up. I think writing something in plain English, which can then be turned into some super cool learning material that runs everywhere would be awesome. It helps both in solving the issues mentioned in the article at the same time keeps learning effective.

<comment><USER31> Disagree. HTML is a fine _output_ format, but one that can always be generated _from_ plain text. HTML is a poor storage format for the editable 'raw' content itself.

Images, videos, and animations can all be done in markdown -- they're just references to files.

Even something as small as the the MathJax CDN getting retired means that I have old HTML notes which are now 'dead'. If I don't have the markdown/rmarkdown source for them, realistically, they're just not coming back.

<comment><USER47> > If I don't have the markdown/rmarkdown source for them, realistically, > they're just not coming back.

That's why I try to use HTML as the universal storage. It's not friendly to edit by hand, but with a basic, limited editor it's wonderful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What about the existing "standard", PowerPoint slides and PDFs? Although most of my notes could be plain-text, any graphs or figures need pictures. ASCII art doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER49> Are you stating that there are people that like pdfs?

<comment><USER50> _Given a sufficient device_ it's actually a fairly decent format. The problem is that that device has to relatively closely correspond to printed paper sizes, within a factor of about 75% - 125%.

What PDF offers is a consistent, space-persistent, formatted output. For reading longer works, it actually _does_ matter to me _where_ a passage appears on a page, or within a work. Spatial memory is important that way.

I read a lot of material, in a lot of different formats: paged text (manpages, console-mode browsers), formatted HTML, ePubs, DJVU, image-scanned books.

If I'm reading on a largish (9-10") tablet, PDF in one-page-up format is actually really good. Fills the screen, is almost always suitably readable. Scans of old books (thank you, Internet Archive and Google) in particular are a delight -- there's something about reading a century-plus-old library copy with markings and (hopefully not _too_ much) marginalia, as well as the original typesetting and images.

The main problem I have with fluid formats ultimately _is_ their fluidity. I realise that that's perverse, and that there are times when it's a real benefit, but again, I can't seem to get away from that spatial memory thing.

If I'm _extracting_ content from works, I prefer source (LaTeX, Markdown, DocBook, etc.). Though that's another story.

The ability to spin out formats on demand would be an ideal. I'm looking into ways of doing that.

<comment><USER51> dr. ed said:

> If I'm extracting content from works, I prefer source (LaTeX, Markdown, > DocBook, etc.). Though that's another story.

except it's not actually another story. it's just a different part of the same story. and a format (like .pdf) which only handles one part of the story well (such as reading) but falls apart on another part (like text reuse) is not -- ultimately -- a good solution.

but that doesn't mean .pdf is worthless. yes, it's worthless as an archival format, and as a distribution format. (and those two are the ones which people commonly pitch as _strengths_ of .pdf, unfortunately, which is misguided.)

but .pdf is fine as a one-off output-format, spun out in an on-demand fashion by an end-user who wants .pdf for their own personal reasons (which require no justification to us). this is what you mention at the end of your comment, and i, too, am working on that...

<comment><USER50> As you note: if PDF is what you _want_ , then the option _to request it, or whatever other format is your preferred option_ , would be excellent user- centric behaviour.

The idea of requesting, say, <item>.<extension>, where extension is [html,pdf,epub,djvu,txt,json,tex,md,csv,dir,...] would be interesting.

This presumes that there's a way to represent the content as, say, a directory listing, CSV, or JSON archive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I must say that I agree - to a certain extent. They (lecture notes) actually already are (at least in HE Physics education) as everything is written in LaTeX. They are just not distributed that way. I've been working on hacking together a demo of some stuff that turns those original LaTeX documents into a little (static) website. We've had pretty positive reviews from students so far - it's searchable (which is key), considerably more screen-reader friendly, and is broken up into manageable chunks rather than being some monolithic 100+ page .pdf! ([https://community.dur.ac.uk/joshua.borrow/npp_notes/](https://community.dur.ac.uk/joshua.borrow/npp_notes/))

<comment><USER53> This site looks and feels amazing! Great work. Please share your conversion demo once it's available!

<comment><USER52> Thanks! Most of the stuff is already open source on GitHub - even if it is a bit... crappy at the moment. I'm attempting a re-write with a vue.js frontent and a python LaTeX -> JSON compiler.

Here are the associated repos:

[https://github.com/JBorrow/latex-pandoc- preprocessor](https://github.com/JBorrow/latex-pandoc-preprocessor) (pandoc does not handle cross-references from LaTeX -> markdown correctly at the moment. Can be installed with pip install ltmd)

[https://github.com/JBorrow/lectures-in-the- middle](https://github.com/JBorrow/lectures-in-the-middle) (the website & dodgy compilation script). The docs for this are pretty rubbish at the moment but the configuration file (litm.cfg) is pretty verbose.

If you are interested in setting it up and need more info, it's probably best to chat via email. It should work just fine already, and as I said students love it, but I'm not completely happy with middleman and the huge number of dependencies.

Also: if you're interested in contributing to the new frontend then let me know, I'm looking for contributors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Which reminds me of my "biggest" crux these days: what should I replace Evernote with? Looking for a text-based solution, possibly open source, possibly encrypted, and possibly with sync.

<comment><USER55> Textfiles + <Insert File Sync Too> \+ OS Search facility.

Or something like DevonThink.

<comment><USER56> text files + syncthing + grep

[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good- grep...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep-tools- for-windows)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I find anything but plain text irritating when writing (I dislike attempts to merge the creative process of writing with the only peripherally related creative processes of orthography, layout and printing). The WYSIAYG editor "revolution" and the associated explosion of opague untranslatable binary file formats did us all a huge disservice. My students learn fairly quickly that my warning that assignments submitted as MS-Word files will be deleted without comment was not a bluff.

<comment><USER58> >only peripherally related creative process of orthography, layout and printing

I think you should rethink this a little, constraining or adapting your medium will provide you with different results that can be better or worse, depending on your goal of writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Having written tons of curriculum in Markdown, I thought it was amazing! The remixing possibilities are endless and it makes all of it so much more programmable.

</comment><comment><USER60> Great let me just illustrate this mathematical equation with a diagram.

Oh.

<comment><USER56> Let me introduce you to LaTeX: [https://www.latex- project.org/about/](https://www.latex-project.org/about/)

<comment><USER60> If you consider that 'plain text' then I have some docx to show you...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The future of <X> is the solution that best meets the job.

For exchange and processing data (data != information), UTF-8 text with contextual formatting like Markdown, CSV, etc is nice as it is generally tool agnostic.

But for conveying information (information != data), plaintext sucks. That's why Markdown is a copout -- the formatting still matters... and humans don't perceive markup coding as well as the rendered result. Humans do better with visual queues when interpreting written data. Formatting, typesets, bullets, tables, graphs, etc all help use process and contextualize data.

If being able to reference information or data over time, where time > 10 years, you need to think about what you're doing. (Archivists do this professionally.) PDF is the quick path to address this for format-sensitive applications, as big & important institutions like the US Courts use PDF for their documents -- it isn't going anywhere. Big datasets are more complex to deal with... you have to decide whether the raw data should be preserved vs. the processed/analyzed data, etc.

<comment><USER61> Since Unicode already contains directions, smileys, combining marks, why not simply add VGA color plane and few [un]-bold/italic/big/sub/sup markers and forget about these shitty .docs, .htmls, etc? We already have a complex format, why not encapsulate at least simple formatting characters into it? These can be zero-width for rendering on systems that do not support colors.

For those who want to point me at html, html cannot be rendered without a browser and created without a messing with tags, but unicode 𝐜𝐚𝐧.

<comment><USER55> As a human, what do I gain from this?

Word is probably one of the most successful software products ever devised. There's a reason -- it solves a problem.

<comment><USER61> We could colorize and format texts via right-click menu in the text box (and even have plugins there like quick syntax highlighting of selection), instead of having to use closed un-interoperable solutions.

Word is succesful, but you can't highlight syntax in Word, apply styles in MD, do WYSIWYG in HTML (cause fonts).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I recently wrote a book using Libreoffice and Microsoft Word, because the publisher demanded it.

The process took about a year. My own estimate is that we lost about 2-3 months to tool-related problems, without any benefit whatsoever. I have never in my 20 year career understood the point of word-processing tools, and never will.

And those tools make money. That is wrong.

<comment><USER63> Would you have had tool problems if you had just went with Word?

<comment><USER64> To be devil's advocate, that's like the recipient stating something like: "sorry, we only accept manuscripts in blue ink, and not black ink (not for functional reasons, just historical reasons/habits".

<comment><USER50> Brown M&Ms.

[http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp](http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> There's no such thing as "plain text".

Is this UTF-8, latin-1, 7 bits ASCII…?

<comment><USER66> It's UTF-8.

<comment><USER67> Is it carriage return then linefeed? or just linefeed? or maybe just carriage return? or maybe linefeed then carriage return? or maybe a different character or sequence of characters to denote a newline?

I sent someone an important text (7-bit ASCII) file once. Much later, I found that they had tried to read it using NotePad. They had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to format it into something they could read. Had they opened it in WordPad, Word, a web browser, or practically anything else it would not have been a problem, but by default text files are opened with NotePad.

Please don't get me started on tabs vs spaces.

<comment><USER68> The end-of-line character issue is trivial to solve with a very simple editor (e.g. many editors can figure it out and render appropriately). I _think_ the real issue is that NotePad is a rather basic (not dumb, just simple) tool which unfortunately is an OS default. Imagine a world where something like Notepad++ is the default bare-minimum text editor for a typical end-user OS!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> > My answer to this question was that we need lecture notes stored in plain > text files (like rmarkdown files) and data stored in csv files with direct > links.

When I think of lecture notes I think of two uses:

1\. An informal reference/mnemonic for the lecturer. This use suggests a format that suits the particular lecturer (which may not necessarily be text, or even a digital format).

2\. Potential answers to exam questions for situations where there are too few instructors (i.e., lecturer plus TAs) chasing too many students over too short a time for students to practice critical thinking.

Are there other uses? If not, I can imagine standardizing notes across schools could be a detriment by streamlining "plugging-and-chugging".

</comment><comment><USER70> The only downside I can think of here is that plain-text-only documents tend to defer images/figures and other non-plain-text media to external files (if they even support such media in the first place). This means that these additional files (and their formats) need to be considered as well.

After all, not all of us are able to learn by just reading a bunch of text. Some of us need graphical (possibly video) or even interactive material as well. Such material is at high risk of being lost (see also: the abundance of interactive science demonstrations online that are implemented as Java or Flash applets).

<comment><USER27> > The only downside I can think of here is that plain-text-only documents tend > to defer images/figures and other non-plain-text media to external files (if > they even support such media in the first place). This means that these > additional files (and their formats) need to be considered as well.

Before MIME was a thing,I was possible to embed images in emails by including a block of uuencoded text in the middle of the email message (which was otherwise in plain text).

I suppose that could be one option assuming the client program can render them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> No, the future is interactive multimedia that you can rewind as many times as you like.

</comment><comment><USER72> Here we are, 33 years after PostScript was created and now the answer to "education" is plain text... Shouldn't we, as tech sector, feel ashamed for even thinking this might be a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER73> Why stop with markdown? You can draw diagrams[0] with plaintext too

[0]- [https://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown/](https://ivanceras.github.io/spongedown/)

</comment><comment><USER74> even the article uses more :P

Let's agree on markdown/rich text + non-interactive media (images, sound, video)

</comment><comment><USER75> Plain text in what encoding, with what character set? We start adding implementation details and suddenly it's not as straightforward.

<comment><USER76> UTF-8, Unicode.

<comment><USER69> And how do you represent line breaks?

<comment><USER77> CRLF unless your audience mostly use Mac or Linux.

<comment><USER78> It seems to me the only thing on Windows that cares about CRLF is Notepad.

Everything else works fine with just LF. A lot of new Windows software even seems to ship with LF format configuration files. Especially games, probably because it is so common to have a Windows game with Linux backend servers, so the developers are working with both.

So anyway, I'd go with just LF unless your software is Windows only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> > Plain text is always compatible

This person has obviously never been tasked with reading text files from old mainframes.

<comment><USER27> EBCDIC? I think that some terminal programs were able to translate between that and ASCII (like Kermit).

<comment><USER79> Yeah, that.

I was using Windows at the time. I finally discovered UltraEdit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Plain text should be the only option for medical records. PDFs and drop-in Word documents should be frowned on.

</comment><comment><USER81> I completely agree. After spending hours trying to programatically read something as 'common' as a PDF [not all .pdf files are created equal, I learned] - I'm totally on the side of the "Give me the content and I'll deal with the formatting" mentality.

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't care what you use, as long as Org-Mode can export to it and Pandoc can consume it.

</comment><comment><USER82> There is an excellent argument and guide to this here

[https://kieranhealy.org/publications/plain-person- text/](https://kieranhealy.org/publications/plain-person-text/)

</comment><comment><USER83> For the first time ever, the comments on the article actually captured every thought I had - even the problem with contrast! I'm more impressed by the readers of that article than the article itself.

</comment><comment><USER84> I think json would be much better than csv. At least allowed. It's still text and possible to open in almost any editor but much better for hierarchical data and more complex data.

</comment><comment><USER85> Markdown is the new Cursive

</comment><comment><USER86> I would appreciate any additional pointers to resources available in plain text demonstrating its effectiveness - the future predicted here should be readily evidenced by the past!

</comment><comment><USER87> I would hope that the future of education is not plain text and lectures! Computers can generate powerful methods of interaction. Why limit them to being worse than physical paper?

</comment><comment><USER88> We believe the future of online conversation is plain text, too.

www.hellolyra.com

<comment><USER88> For example, the first-line paragraph indent - which evolved over centuries to guide the eye, ergonomically and aesthetically - is missing from the modern Web.

Lyra brings it back.

<comment><USER27> > For example, the first-line paragraph indent - which evolved over centuries > to guide the eye, ergonomically and aesthetically - is missing from the > modern Web

I wonder whether the indent really has any advantage over the blank line separation between paragraphs of text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> There are some hiccups like newlines that don't transfer too well between unix/dos in plain-text.

</comment><comment><USER90> I'm as great a fan of plain text as anyone else, but you gain a lot when you keep it in a sqlite db.

</comment><comment><USER91> I have not really found a viable plain text version to Excel that normal users can use. I have done some Excel like tasks with R, Python (pandas, and various other python sci libraries) and even SQL (postgres) but it seems its either a programming language (R, python) or a data format (csv).

I have been meaning to look into what alternatives are out there.

<comment><USER31> R/Python scripts are 100% plain text. iPython notebooks are not.

<comment><USER91> I didn't say they were not. The issue is they usually do not hold the data and _present_ the data (ie WYSIWYG). The python and R only are the formulaic part. I have not seen a format where you can toggle the data or formula and see results as well as Excel does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> The author doesn't mean "plain text". They mean some variant of Markdown.</comment>