Neutralize ME Firmware on SandyBridge and IvyBridge Platforms - <AUTHOR> http://hardenedlinux.org/firmware/2016/11/17/neutralize_ME_firmware_on_sandybridge_and_ivybridge.html <comment><USER2> This appears to be a legitimate ME neutralization.

The ME is purportedly placed in "recovery" mode:

      According to Nicola Corna, the current ME state should have been changed from "normal" to "recovery".

Since the MEI interface is disabled (not visible from a PCI bus scan), there is no way to activate the ME at runtime, even after a full system compromise. It would still be possible to rewrite the BIOS flash chip with a new ME image, but the system would need to be restarted before the ME would read the changes.

I don't speak for the FSF, but it sounds like this is as close to an FSF RYF certification as any Intel CPU is going to get. FSF approval of a device requires that all user-modifiable software be Free Software. Previously, no recent Intel CPUs could be FSF certified as "RYF" because the ME chip would shut the system down after 30 minutes. (Side note: no recent Intel CPUs can be considered "stable" without microcode updates which also violate the FSF's RYF guidelines.)

[1] [http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your- fr...](http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom)

<comment><USER3> ME isn't the last obstacle though, is it? Looking at the purism/librem pages, there are still various other subsystems like FSP/EC/SMC.

[https://puri.sm/posts/bios-freedom-status- nov2014/](https://puri.sm/posts/bios-freedom-status-nov2014/)

<comment><USER2> The FSP is a package (the P in FSP). It includes in it the ME blob. The other parts of it are things like DRAM init. It would take work to develop a fully libre implementation for any Intel chipset, but the biggest hurdle was (and is) the ME blob in the FSP.

The EC, SMC, and other blobs are much more the domain of the board designer, and are much easier to make a libre implementation for.

<comment><USER4> >It includes in it the ME blob

No, it does not. FSP only includes x86 code to be executed on the main CPU. It may include stuff which talks to the ME but no ME firmware itself. You can use any UEFI extractor like UEFITool to check that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I succeeded at doing this to an old Asus Z68 motherboard. Steps:

      flashrom -p internal -r bios.rom
      ifdtool -x bios.rom
      python3 me_cleaner.py flashregion_2_intel_me.bin
      python2 dump_me.py flashregion_2_intel_me.bin -x
      python2 me_sigcheck.py FTPR_part.bin
      ifdtool -i ME:flashregion_2_intel_me.bin bios.rom
      exit # Skip this line if you're okay with bricking your motherboard.
      flashrom -p internal -w bios.rom.new

`lspci | grep -i mei` and `lsmod | grep mei` are now empty.

intelmetool:

      ME: FW Partition Table      : OK
      ME: Bringup Loader Failure  : NO
      ME: Firmware Init Complete  : NO
      ME: Manufacturing Mode      : NO
      ME: Boot Options Present    : NO
      ME: Update In Progress      : NO
      ME: Current Working State   : Initializing
      ME: Current Operation State : Bring up
      ME: Current Operation Mode  : Normal
      ME: Error Code              : Debug Failure
      ME: Progress Phase          : BUP Phase
      ME: Power Management Event  : Pseudo-global reset
      ME: Progress Phase State    : 0x3b
      ...
      ME has a broken implementation on your board with this BIOS
      ME: failed to become ready

It took a hard reset to re-enable integrated ethernet.

Awesome!

<comment><USER6> Please report it here [https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/3](https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/3)

Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> rootkit is defined by google search as "a set of software tools that enable an unauthorized user to gain control of a computer system without being detected."

* A set of software tools: Check

* Unauthorized user: Check Caveat: user is not authorized by you, but by someone else (Intel)

* Gain control of a computer system without being detected. Can access your machine while it appears to be "powered off" but plugged in. Has full access to RAM. Can draw undetected on top of screen. Can read screen. Check.

So. Does this qualify the Management Engine as a rootkit? It meets the definition. Just because the rootkit is installed by the manufacturer doesn't make it less of one.

<comment><USER8> AFAIK the remote network access ("AMT") has to be specifically enabled.

<comment><USER9> Some of the paranoia around ME is the possibility of undocumented commands or magic byte sequences in software or via network interface that give an attacker invisible control of the ME without the user enabling AMT. The NIC is probably still powered and active for WoL.

It's also conceivable that a state-level adversary could have hidden arbitrary DMA instructions in a NIC firmware, that only activate with a signed request embedded in a random packet. Some of the largest firmware blobs on Linux systems are for NICs.

Most people aren't facing state-level targeted attacks, but without open firmware, it's nearly impossible to know for sure if one is vulnerable. And, with botnets and worms, it only takes one non-state-level attacker discovering the backdoor for everyone to be affected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The ridiculous shit that needs to be done just to rid of some blob.

RISC-V can't take the market over fast enough.

<comment> TD-Linux How much are you willing to pay for it?

There's the Talos Secure Workstation, which has no such ME firmware (but costs ~$4.5k) [1].

A RISC-V desktop is pretty far out. There is an Arduino style microcontroller being made in silicon, though [2].

[1] [https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing- systems/talos-s...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing- systems/talos-secure-workstation) [2] [https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v](https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v)

<comment><USER11> Not really. They're talking Raspberry PI type devices based on RISC-V on the market by late 2017.

Source: MeetBSDCon 2016, update on RISC-V by the team who designed it.

<comment><USER12> [https://youtu.be/QTYiH1Y5UV0?t=39m20s](https://youtu.be/QTYiH1Y5UV0?t=39m20s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Has Intel ever commented about this issue of removing ME?

Surely, at least 1 Intel staffer reads HN and they must have discussed this internally.

Unless they just brush this off as negligible (a couple thousand paranoid/"extremist" users) ?

<comment><USER14> Their discussion may have consisted of "too bad these extremists don't realize that the ME is harmless if you don't have an Intel NIC".

<comment><USER15> There is a device visible on the PCI bus. How hard is it to imagine that userland programs could somehow pass requests to that device, and have the ME do bad things to the CPU or the RAM?

How hard is it to imagine some special string in RAM could trigger the ME in a similar way? (so many CPU instructions - I would be surprised if there wasn't one to talk to the ME)

Exploits and vulnerability are mitigated by proper analysis and ecological diversity.

Here we have an attack channel present of every single Intel based computer, regardless of the CPU.

Call me an extremist if you want, but this is far from harmless.

<comment><USER16> If userland processes are passing unauthorized commands to PCI devices, you have bigger problems.

<comment><USER17> They're called proprietary video drivers, and yes, they pass unknown commands, without user authorization (think DRM) to PCI(e) devices (video cards) all the time.

<comment><USER18> If you're running highly privileged binary blob drivers, is ME really the attack vector you should be worried about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Beautiful work. Standing offer to buy dinner for any of the contributors if they come through Dallas.

</comment><comment><USER20> As a potential backdoor with access to a computer with compromising the OS, how much is ME neutralized by just not using the integrated NIC and instead using a PCI-E or USB NIC?

<comment><USER2> The ME firmware includes a Java VM so that other companies can run their secret apps inside the ME's environment (e.g. DRM crypto plugins). That is just one example of all the features included in the ME firmware, and none of it is published or well documented, much less audited at the source level by an independent third party.

The ME is very alarming, and seems to only become more alarming the closer you look at what it is designed to do.

<comment><USER21> And any code running there can read and write your RAM as it pleases because "ME is secure and obviously nothing bad can ever happen there so there's no reason to protect other things _from_ the ME".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like the BBB is more versatile than the x220. Not to mention it has no ME.

+1 for the use of ifdtool.

</comment><comment><USER23> What happened to VIA and their x86 CPUs and mini-itx platform people used to build media PCs on? Wouldn't that be a viable option if you really want to avoid ME?

<comment><USER24> VIA is still around. They announced a new core with AVX2 support, Isaiah II, around late 2014 but it appears their x86_64 license will run out before it actually gets produced. The situation is really unclear. In 2010 they got a 6-year license extension thanks to the FTC, so it's possible VIA can't actually produce x86 CPUs anymore.

VIA is 100% a viable option—they support SSE 4.1, run Windows 10, and their integrated GPUs even run DirectX11 natively¹—except that _they compete with Atom, not desktop or even regular laptop CPUs_. However, the current (40nm Isaiah) "high-end" VIA microarchitecture is a out-of-order, 3-fetch 7-dispatch wide² superscalar, fully pipelined core. So it should outperform a modern Atom by a decent margin, with only slightly higher power consumption.

Apparently VIA is still fairly popular in China (and by virtue of being a Taiwanese company, possibly Japan as well).

1\. See e.g. [http://www.viatech.com/en/boards/mini- itx/epia-m920/](http://www.viatech.com/en/boards/mini-itx/epia-m920/)

2\. [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/01/via-cpu- isaiah/2/](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/01/via-cpu-isaiah/2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any research on how to disable AMD PSP.

</comment><comment><USER16> What if I like using the integrated NIC?

<comment><USER7> The NIC permits remote access to the Intel rootkit, you probably don't want to use the NIC.

<comment><USER26> Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER8> It is supposed to be used for corporate environments using Intel AMT for remote management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the most important lesson is that the arms race against laptop theft is ridiculous.</comment>


PG&E files for bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pge-bankruptcy-filing-20190129-story.html <comment><USER2> I partly remember seeing this company outsource all the work to my former company. Digging a little deeper you can see that the company in its final years laid off all the workers and outsourced most of its operations.

It looks like a pattern now. If you see a company outsourcing everything and laying off its own workers it means that the company is not going to survive for long. Whenever the management feels that workers are a problem and not the way it operates its business that company will soon die in the next few years.

<comment><USER3> You think PG&Es problem was outsourcing and not Californian law making them liable for wildfire damages even in the absence of negligence?

That's....a novel take.

<comment><USER4> Interested to hear your full angle on this, not trying to flame bait here but genuinely curious.

<comment><USER5> My impression based on limited information is that many of the areas were so overloaded with dry dead vegetation that who sparked the otherwise inevitable fire should be irrelevant. The state forcing liability like it is amounts to nothing but a back-door tax propping up areas which should be uninhabited because of the risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is it acceptable to privatize profit, but socialize risk again?

A company shouldn't have carte Blanche to pass the cos of it's incompetence and neglect on to the customer. If anything, they should have their rates frozen until such time as they have made whole all those who have been harmed.

It _is_ okay for companies to die. It should happen.

<comment><USER7> Probably because the risk is such that no industry would go into that business if costs weren't socialized to a degree.

> If anything, they should have their rates frozen until such time as they > have made whole all those who have been harmed.

So the fire apparently started because PG&E didn't have the resources to properly maintain rural lines. And the response is to further deprive them of funds?

This is what I'm talking about here. If PG&E is supposed to shoulder the burden of forest fires caused by downed lines, then electricity is going to get a lot more expensive. I'm not sure where this idea that utilities are supposed to take more responsibility for risk while simultaneously dropping or freezing rates. That's not how money works. More risk means higer costs.

<comment><USER8> Which is why utility companies get tax breaks, direct tax funding, and legal monopolies.

What you're saying is the current system of _zero_ risk, high gain, is acceptable.

In this case pg&e deliberately chose not to perform maintenance on their lines, despite turning a profit (meaning they could afford to do more) and despite receiving tax payer money specifically for the purpose of that maintenance.

Instead the issued dividends to private people and orgs, and to executive bonuses.

Those people have now have that money, a lot of which already came from taxpayersz the same tax payers that have now been left with the bill for damage caused by pg&e not doing what it had agreed to do.

That is a pretty canonical example of heads I win, tails you lose.

In fact as long as companies are allowed to behave like this (eg with no criminal liability in management), there is no downside to this kind of theft.

<comment><USER9> Utilities do not generally get tax breaks, or direct funding. What they do is endure regulated rates and low profit margins in return for a low risk business (e.g. getting a legal monopoly). Forcing them to bear massive, unlimited risk, while having their rates regulated to ensure modest profits totally breaks the model.

At the end of the day, we depend on private capital to build our electric grid. It's not public money building power lines and transmission stations. There is a business case for investing in a utility, where you might eke out 5-10% profits, but are guaranteed that your business won't be obsolete tomorrow or be in the hook for huge liabilities. That can be an alternative to investing in say something like Facebook where you've got 25% profit margins but a business that could be obsolete in face of the next new thing. Low profits _and_ massive risk of your shares becoming worthless makes it very unattractive to investing in that infrastructure.

<comment><USER8> The "private capital" you're talking about is largely on top of the massive funds from government sources. In most countries it was _entirely_ built out by central governments.

Re: taxes - please look at your line items and notices the various "fees" you're charged.

I think the problem here is that you believe that utilities should be generating massive profits. Given they're backed by the state - PG&E literally got laws made to retroactively reduce their liability - then _any_ profit that they make or distribute is tax payer money.

Let's put this super simply:

Let's say the company makes $X a profit, and distributes $Y to shareholder and executive remuneration (annually).

After N years they have made N _$X, given out N_ $Y to owners, etc, their bank balance is Z=N _($X-$Y) (obviously exact amounts change year to year, but we 're being simple here). If Z is less than 0 then they've been running at a loss for N years, and we'd have no problem saying they should go bankrupt - they would have long since lost the ability to get loans, etc.

Now, let's say this is a public utility, then their annual profit is made up of:

1\. Revenue in the form of below market resources costs (e.g. they don't pay market rates for land) 2\. Revenue from state granted fees 3\. Other tax related subsidies

So lets put these altogether and say $X = (actual profit) + $T (T=tax payer).

So after N years, they've received N_$T funds. So if their bank balance is below $T, and $Y is greater than zero, they have been running at a loss, and they've been paying out the owners with tax payer money. Eg. they are taking tax money that is intended to support the utility and divesting it.

This is what PG&E did.

They took fees, and they took tax payer money. Then they "reduced" their expenses by reducing maintenance. That gave them a "profit" they divested to private interests. Now, when the costs of their failure to maintain infrastructure came due they couldn't afford it. Which means they're now taking even more tax payer money. Even if the company is taken apart, that money doesn't cover the costs they have inflicted.

<comment><USER10> I believe may be confusing investor-owned utilities like PG&E with government- owned public utilities. PG&E does not receive taxpayer money. They are a private company such that their entire revenue stream is dictated by a government commission [1]. The commision-fixed pricing benefits the consumer because we pay less than what electricity is "actually worth". The drawback is that PG&E cannot afford to mitigate risks such as forest fires. Presumably, if the "true price" of electricity included the costs required to prevent forest fires, it would be significantly higher.

[1][https://www.energy.ca.gov/pou_reporting/background/differenc...](https://www.energy.ca.gov/pou_reporting/background/difference_pou_iou.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps the only people less worthy of receiving a bonus of any kind than the Moody's and S&P analysts who as recently as three weeks ago rated now bankrupt PG&E as investment grade is the management of PG&E, which one year after the most destructive fire in California history sparked, literally, another "most destructive fire in history" with no hedges or fallbacks in place. And yet as part of its first day bankruptcy motion, the California utility that filed for bankruptcy early on Tuesday is seeking to pay employees about $130 million in performance bonuses for last year, an amount which is due to be paid in March 2019.

According to compensation and benefits court filing, the company - which is facing $51.7 billion in total debts - said that the bonuses "are critical to ensuring that employees stay motivated." About 14,000 employees are eligible for short-term incentive plan cash awards for 2018, for achieving performance targets and individual goals. The payouts range from about $5,000 to $90,000 per person, not including senior officers and directors.

PG&E also said it wants to maintain a rewards program that gives gift cards to workers who go "above and beyond" their regular duties, at a total cost of about $15.2 million a year; the company is also seeking to pay out $650,000 in outstanding awards.

In separate filings, PG&E said it will keep paying $327 million annually for pension benefits. The decision to keep paying into its pension plan means about 54,000 current and former employees are unlikely to be drawn into the bankruptcy case, company says in court papers.

The utility also pays $109.2 million annually in 401(k) matching funds for 22,000 current employees and $28.3 million annually toward retiree health care, and has asked the court to keep such payments.

Also of note, the company's $5.5 DIP loan (which was arranged by J.P.Morgan, Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, MUFG Union Bank and Wells Fargo) doesn't set any deadlines for PG&E to sell assets or adopt a detailed reorganization plan, which gives the utility far more freedom than most companies operating in Chapter 11. In fact, one can almost claim that the only limitation imposed upon PG&E is for litigants to seek relief for the tens of billions in legal fees that they will be entitled to as a result of the deadly California fires.

<comment><USER12> Santa Rosa, CA here.

You have no idea how hard those PG&E workers busted their ass up here in Nor Cal during and after the Tubbs fire - a lot of them lost their own homes, and they were still out doing their jobs before the firefighters were even allowed to start doing their jobs 24 hrs in.

On the gas side, they went to every house in the city - thousands of houses - and turned off gas, and then did the same thing to turn it back on. An army of workers went neighborhood to neighborhood just to make sure we didn't explode.

Factor in that there were no hotel vacancies, and the PG&E workers were willing to live in their trucks with 4 other dudes for 2 weeks straight, and yeah - I think they should be compensated.

<comment><USER13> thanks for jumping in with this I think its a pretty rare case that an employer facing tens of billions in claims keeps paying into the comp plan and im pretty happy with PG&E right now. I think that likely its a good sign that they want to keep the employees motivated.

one other thing OP talks about is that the payouts are up to 90k for senior members. that's a far cry from the millions that we see bank execs getting. I dont think we should treat this with such hostility.

<comment><USER14> Why should the senior execs get _anything_ other than a pink slip and/or a very long look at the bad side of a prison cell door?

<comment><USER13> frankly, because they were promised it. if we create scenarios where employers can skip out on paying due compensation to employees who have already performed the work then our corporate system would be even more rigged then it is.

In the case of corporate governance, we hold board members accountable. not employees who do as they are paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "State Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa) said the situation is "extremely disappointing and underscores the need for change at PG&E in both its leadership and corporate culture.""

Hypocrite. Senator Dodd just happens to be the _author_ of the big PG&E bailout bill of just a few months ago (which became law).

<comment><USER16> If a ship is sinking it's perfectly logical to first save the ship and then criticize the crew afterwards. Calling someone a hypocrite because they critique the captain but didn't let the ship sink seems kind of odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe California will have something better than third-world electrical infrastructure (quasi inexistent interruptions, secure, underground cables, etc.)</comment>


Ask HN - Turn open source project into a profitable side project? - <AUTHOR>

I have this open source project[1] I have been working on for a couple of years. It is relatively popular[2].<p>Do anyone recommend me to try to turn this into a profitable project instead of just a hobby code project? If yes, what would be a good approach?<p>[1]: https://github.com/pkhamre/wp-varnish [2]: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-varnish/ <comment><USER2> First thoughts ...

1) Paid support/install/configuration assistance for users (ie they get priority support but the normal support still continues albeit at perhaps lower priority)

2) Paid consultancy (perhaps there's a certain feature users would like, where you're paid to develop but it gets added to the open-source version

3) Premium version (I'd suggest not removing any features already in the open- source version, but adding new features to the premium version first)

No idea what your uptake would be on any of those ideas but that's the most common ways of monetising something like that I can think of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answer

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would look at the metasploit guys as a good example of how to move forward.

Keep an open source "community" edition with all its current features, then start on an enterprise edition. Still updating the community versions core but keeping some features just for the enterpriser customers.

</comment><comment><USER4> put up a donate button You might need to add more features. or other projects.</comment>


Unlimited Storage with Office 365 Subscription - <AUTHOR> https://blog.onedrive.com/office-365-onedrive-unlimited-storage/?linkId=10218942 <comment><USER2> Shameless plug for my product, ExpanDrive

[http://www.expandrive.com/expandrive](http://www.expandrive.com/expandrive)

Mount OneDrive (and OneDrive business, soon) as a network drive in Mac/Windows (soon Linux!). Smart local cache. Access the data on demand without syncing the repo in first. Also supports gdrive, s3, sftp, Dropbox, box and more. Makes an unlimited account make a lot more sense if you only have a 128GB SSD. Use selective sync with the primary client to only sync a portion of your account. Then use ExpanDrive to offload the rest and access it as needed.

<comment><USER3> Google Drive broke on the last update. It is very slow.

<comment><USER4> I just updated my Google Drive to the "new" web interface and I've noticed it is absurdly slow in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have they fixed the other problems with this service?

We did a pilot of Office 365 with an eye on using the OneDrive stuff (in addition to migrating to the cloud Exchange service) and found:

\- There's no mac client for the business one drive. Only windows. \- Documents are silently modified by adding a "signature" to them. In some cases this wouldn't matter, but in others it definitely would. \- There was a 20,000 item limit. (files or directories) There's ways to get around this by creating additional collections, but that's hard and has its own limitations and issues. \- Individual files had a 2GB size limit. \- Those combined to mean that the "1TB" space limit was meaningless.

Note: "One Drive" and "One Drive for Business" are totally different. The stuff connected to "Office 365" is the business stuff and it's really some friendlier front-ends on some kind of Cloud SharePoint thing...

<comment><USER6> >Note: "One Drive" and "One Drive for Business" are totally different. The stuff connected to "Office 365" is the business stuff and it's really some friendlier front-ends on some kind of Cloud SharePoint thing...

From the link: "We've started rolling this out today to Office 365 Home, Personal, and University customers." I'm using Office 365 University and it definitely is the normal "One Drive" (just offers more space for it). The branding here seems a bit confused.

<comment><USER7> OneDrive for Business is part of Office 365 which is run on Sharepoint online cloud service by Microsoft.

In this OneDrive has two different services, you can use both as a Office 365 user. What you are using is the personal service for OneDrive which is on the onedrive website, the other is the sharepoint online for teams which is used for collaborating files in different projects, teams etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And an unlimited amount in PRISM.

"Beginning March 7 2013, PRISM now collects Microsoft (One)Drive data..."

[http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/video/olmk/holt/greenwald/NoPl...](http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/video/olmk/holt/greenwald/NoPlaceToHide- Documents-Uncompressed.pdf) (27)

</comment><comment><USER9> They should remove/increase the file size and count limit first. Technically, that's also probably the bigger challenge.

<comment><USER10> As much as it's a pain in the ass, you can always a multipart RAR to get around this.

Again, I know, pain in the ass, but it's a work around.

<comment><USER5> Then you'll run into the 20,000 item limit faster...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm currently paying $10/month for GDrive, mostly because of the auto-awesome photo suite that automatically incorporates my full-size GDrive photos and lets me share easily on G+. While I love that perk, it just doesn't compare to backing up my entire family's data for $20/year each... and that's before including the free Office suite for each of us!

If anyone at Google is reading this, you can win me back by incorporating photo deduplication. I have well over a terabyte of duplicate photos that I don't dare delete, but could easily be deduplicated down to maybe 100-200GB. I'm sure deduplication already happens server-side, but the consumer is still stuck with endless copies in disorganized folders.

Sadly, this is almost certainly checkmate for Dropbox. I imagine they'll be acquired by Amazon, which has yet to offer a decent consumer-facing cloud brand and needs the economies of scale to compete with Microsoft and Google. Even then, I'm not sure how anyone can compete with the price of OneDrive alone... much less when coupled with the best-of-class Office suite.

</comment><comment><USER12> OneDrive is currently a pale imitation of Google Apps. It's close but there are lots of rough edges and subtle usability bugs.

Also, this promotion doesn't work with business accounts.

</comment><comment><USER13> In case anyone on the OneDrive team is reading this, the link on "here" in the words "go here to put yourself at the front of the line" links to a URL [+] that seems to have a placeholder tracking id.

[+] [https://preview.onedrive.com/?wt.mc_id=oo_blog_onedrive_inse...](https://preview.onedrive.com/?wt.mc_id=oo_blog_onedrive_insertblogtitlehere)

</comment><comment><USER14> The 20000 item sync limitation is still there though.

<comment><USER15> Does that 20000 item limit apply with all types of accounts? I've seen comments about how onedrive business doesn't have a mac client for example?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They were already offering 1TB of storage for free, realistically they are probably rebranding 1TB to Unlimited because I highly doubt most of their users were getting near a TB of storage. (It was also 1 TB per user, so 5TB free for a Home account)

<comment><USER17> Had this exact same thought. Upload rates being what they are, I doubt many people are uploading that much. This plan could come back to bite them down the line if Google Fiber (or other similarly fast services) ever gets a wide rollout, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Finally, somebody being smart enough to give unlimited storage. One of the primary reasons gmail took off was unlimited storage, at a time when people were very space conscious and had to keep deleting emails.

<comment><USER19> Gmail didn't have unlimited storage at launch; it gave 1GB of storage, which back then felt like unlimited (relative to Yahoo's 50MB limit, anyways).

OneDrive had a 1TB limit before this announcement, which isn't as dramatic of a comparison.

<comment><USER20> But when it was released the marketing message was that the storage on Gmail was "infinity +1" since you get 1GB to start and the storage would grow slowly forever, thus infinity.</comment></comment></comment>


4K Time Lapse of a Container Ship at Sea [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h16zyxiwDLY <comment><USER2> very cool, what's the exact duration?</comment>


Re-engineering News with Technology - <AUTHOR> https://ramblingspace.com/posts/re-engineering-news-technology-possible/ <comment><USER2> News orgs need to find a niche and specialize.

Right now they are just getting overwhelmed, trying to parse the ever increasing tsunami wave of info that hits them each day.</comment>


Mapnificient: Areas you can reach with public transport in a given time. - <AUTHOR> http://www.mapnificent.net/

<comment><USER2> Neat app. I had no idea transit agencies were publishing that kind of data. Lots more applications are just waiting.

Cool as it is, Mapnificient really needs to incorporate expected waiting time into its isoline calculation. Public transit is all about convenience.</comment>


Download This; Google Voice App w/ Widgets - <AUTHOR> http://www.droid-sync.com/2010/08/28/download-this-google-voice-app-w-widgets/ <comment><USER2> thank you, but i will pass.

I don't take binary blobs from ATI, apple, google, and certainly not from some random file sharing site.</comment>


The Impossible I-1 Analog Camera now available - <AUTHOR> https://us.impossible-project.com/products/impossible-i1-instant-analog-camera <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11475284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11475284)

The absence of optical specifications seems counter to the marketing blurbage regarding manual mode and full control of aperture and shutter. The ring flash is a nice touch, though.</comment>


Would you opensource an application like StackOverflow? Answer: Question closed. - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1285019/can-an-application-like-stackoverflow-be-built-in-less-than-4-weeks-closed

<comment><USER2> So, history doesn't repeat itself ?

Yes, you can build lots of stuff quickly. But that doesn't mean it is production ready. The devil is always in the details.

The beginning of any project is fast, you always thing 'wow, this is going just great, at this rate I'll be done next week'. And then it starts to slide little by little you slow down, no matter how polished your dev environment, that's just a matter of degree.

So, after a month has passed and you start wondering what happened to make you slow down you start to realize that this project is probably going to be just like all the others. Once you've implemented your days list of fixes and features you find yourself with a longer list for the next day.

And that's before you let the unwashed masses in the front door, that's when the fun really starts.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure that an opensource version of StackOverflow would be as useful as StackExchange. Let's ignore the re-implementation issue, and assume that an open-source clone appears by magic tomorrow morning. You still have the support problem.

Anyone doing this as more than a hobby needs a supported solution. The reason to pay $xxx a month is so that you can outsource worrying about the site's maintenance and upkeep. The cost (in man-hours) of building such a clone would be dwarfed by the hours spent bug-fixing and performance-tuning and dealing with hardware/software issues. If the site is ancillary to your business (if it's your customer support site, for instance), then there's a lot of sense in letting someone else handle the support, especially if web software isn't your core-competency. At $1300 for a dedicated, hosted server, you're essentially betting that it'll require more than 12 programmer-hours/week ($15.6k/year hosted vs. $50k/year for the programmer) to maintain the open-source version and run the hardware. And you're betting that someone at Fog Creek dedicated to maintaining Stack Exchange is going to be better at it than whomever you lasso into maintaining it part-time.

</comment><comment><USER4> The question is closed because any questions about StackOverflow belong on the Meta Stackoverflow site.

You can put away your tin foil hat now.</comment>


Where Microsoft beats Apple (Fonts) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fawny.org/2010/04/12/appletype/

<comment><USER2> On every Windows system I've used recently (XP and 7, I haven't touched Vista) I cannot seem to get fonts of all sizes looking decent.

If I turn "Standard" font smoothing on, Windows will antialias (normally) larger fonts so they look wonderful, but won't touch smaller fonts (I think the cutoff is around 12 or 13pt (probably configurable)). The smaller fonts look terrible as a result.

When I turn ClearType on Windows will use subpixel antialiasing on _all_ fonts. The smaller fonts look great, but the subpixel antialiasing does almost nothing noticeable for larger ones. Messing with the ClearType tuner doesn't help. The larger fonts look awful and jagged as a result.

If I turn off font smoothing everything looks jagged and ugly, of course.

Am I doing something wrong? Is it possible to make _all_ size fonts (excluding tiny sizes like 6pt and below) look decent at the same time in any version of Windows?

<comment><USER3> To answer your last sentence, no and no.

Fonts are designed for 300dpi and up and are made of mathematical vectors instead of pixels, to make them look good on 72 and 96 dpi (Apple & MS) hacks like hinting and antialiasing are used by the rasterizers (software that converts mathematical vectors to pixels) in their products. They are hacks and not real solutions as there aren't any, they have the tradeof you mention. However I advice you to go for the hinting and antialiasing for small fonts on screen and leave the large ones alone as long you don't display it on some megascreen, they both will come out perfect on your printer (unless you made bad settings or use cheap fonts). Subpixel antialiasing is mostly antialiasing with the help of color while normal antialiasing is a grayscale one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just a note, subtitles on DVDs are actually video layers, not text. (Closed Captioning is text)

<comment><USER5> I wondered what he meant here too. He knows the difference and in fact rails angrily against UK-English speakers because we use "subtitles" to describe both subtitles and captions.

<comment><USER4> That's just a tad ironic.</comment></comment></comment>


Drunk Cycling - <AUTHOR> http://cheeptalk.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/drunk-cycling/

<comment><USER2> The original numbers are BS for the simple fact that people don't walk the same distances that they drive. So dividing up statistics between walkers and drivers on a per-mile basis will skew the results.

The people that 'walk while drunk' are most likely the people with a short distance between the bar/party and their destination. If their destination is far away, then they are probably drunk driving instead of drunk walking. How many people would walk to a party that was 5 miles away instead of driving? It's a very self-selecting answer and seems intellectually dishonest to me.

update: To me it feels like the entire reason for coming up with such a statistic is to generate controversy by saying, "drunk walking is more dangerous than drunk driving."

It makes more sense to view such statistics on a 'per trip' basis (i.e. x% of drunk walking trips end in death and y% of drunk driving trips end in death). This also doesn't take into account the number of dead people per accident too, but that might be skewed by practices like teens piling into a car with a drunk person behind the wheel.

<comment><USER3> _It makes more sense to view such statistics on a 'per trip' basis (i.e. x% of drunk walking trips end in death and y% of drunk driving trips end in death)._

You'd really need to take the level of drunkenness into account, too. If you give me three beers I'll be too drunk to drive, but not "drunk" in the usual sense of the word. You'd have to give me another ten before I start being dangerous at a walking pace.

The biggest problem, though, is the random assumption that the same proportion of miles are walked drunk as are driven drunk. I personally have walked quite a few miles while drunk, but have driven no miles while drunk, and I hope I'm not the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the article misses the point. Drunk drivers kill other people. Drunk walkers kill only themselves.

<comment><USER5> _"Drunk drivers kill other people. Drunk walkers kill only themselves."_

Levitt said exactly that less than two minutes into the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Indeed, that's some poor use of statistics by the freakonomics guys.

Another example: during the Battle of Britain, 1547 British aircraft were shot down. Of these, the pilot was (I'm guessing) not drunk in 1547 cases. By the same logic, and assuming that one out of every 140 miles was flown drunk, this proves that dogfighting while drunk is infinitely less dangerous than dogfighting while sober.

</comment><comment><USER6> Steven Levitt wrote an article 2 days ago addressing readers that are critiquing this exact argument: [http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/what- bother...](http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/what-bothers- people-about-superfreakonomics/)

<comment><USER3> Actually that article seems to be addressing a completely different (and indeed wrongheaded) argument that states that it's fatalities-per-hour that matter, not fatalities-per-mile. It doesn't address the real issues here, which are that:

a) The assumption that the proportion of miles walked drunk is the same as the proportion of miles driven drunk is completely unjustified,

b) They don't distinguish between different levels of "drunk"

Whether these arguments are ignored through ignorance or deliberate disingenuousness, though, I'm not sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The statistic of deaths / mile is irrelevant. Of course more drunk walkers die per mile walked than drunk drivers die per mile driven, because it takes them > 10 times as long to get anywhere. I think it's more likely that accident rates are based more on time traveled than on distance traveled.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone explain this comment to me:

        Any self-respecting cyclist would never "roll or ride
        off a curb into traffic," because they would never
        ride on the fucking sidewalk. That's the surest
        way to die, no matter what your mental state.

<comment><USER9> Most knowledgeable cyclists ride on the road all the time. Riding on sidewalks is dangerous, mainly because cars frequently pull out of driveways and stop at the edge of the road, not the edge of the sidewalk. A cyclist on the sidewalk is usually moving faster than the pedestrians that cars are used to, so they don't think to stop at the sidewalk and watch for cyclists.

<comment><USER8> Makes sense, but what if it's the kind of street that doesn't have driveways? I always wonder why the bicyclists ride on the road, apparently taking serious risks, when the sidewalk is right there and almost entirely empty, as is usually the case in suburbia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would just like to point out that drunk cycling is very good fun.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree. However, I do find it very dangerous. I frequently try to do stupid things that sound like fun, then fall, when I'm cycling drunk.</comment></comment>


Skype for Web [beta] - <AUTHOR> https://web.skype.com/ <comment><USER2> doesn't work on tablets with multiple cameras - doesn't let you switch the camera, and defaults to the rear-facing camera on the Surface 3, for example. just amazing that they wouldn't provide this functionality, considering all of the multi-camera devices out there. Even for a beta, this is pretty sad. I ended up having to use a mirror so my family could see me while doing a video chat.

[https://community.skype.com/t5/Skype-for-Web-Beta/How-to- swi...](https://community.skype.com/t5/Skype-for-Web-Beta/How-to-switch- camera/m-p/4014786)

<comment><USER3> I may be wrong, but atleast in android, isn't the camera chosen at the OS or Browser level?</comment></comment>


Native support for taxes and shipping - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/native-support-for-taxes-and-shipping <comment><USER2> I wish Stripe would improve its offerings in other countries to match up to everyone else.

For instance the worst of it is the 7 day wait for transfers, this is despite the 'instant' direct debit to accounts if there's a refund.

There's also the 'push to debit card' functionality that isn't available everywhere either.</comment>


Popular versions of 2048 with previews - <AUTHOR> http://2048.nerdspace.co/

<comment><USER2> Oh my, maybe we can get of all the 2048 links with this site... Fwiw, the site performs very badly on my fairly recent small notebook, all those previews are just too much.

<comment><USER3> fixed.</comment></comment>


ESA's VEGA rocket just exploded - <AUTHOR> https://www.jottit.com/n6mw3/

<comment><USER2> At 14:00 GMT the BBC web site and the ESA web site are still announcing a flawless test flight.

Edit: Nothing on the ESA twitter feed: <https://mobile.twitter.com/esa>

Edit: Even though it claims the explosion was at about 13:30, ESA was still tweeting about success at 14:00. Seems pretty clear this is a hoax, or blogspam, or similar.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've also seen this referenced on Twitter. What's going on? The real-time video on ESA site seems hanged up...

<comment><USER2> Please provide a link - I've found nothing.

<https://mobile.twitter.com/searches?q=vega+explode> returns no results.

Edit: Thanks for your link but it just points back to this same page, it's not supporting evidence.

Edit: The alleged "More information" from the same Twitter account is simply a link to what is clearly a computer generated image of a launch. Not credible.

This appears to be a traffic generating scam/hoax.

<comment><USER3> This is the link I saw:

[https://twitter.com/#!/carlosdelcasti2/status/16906170159189...](https://twitter.com/#!/carlosdelcasti2/status/169061701591896064) (it's in spanish).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this true? I cannot confirm this, as the link there does not clarify much.

<comment><USER5> As far as I can find, there is nothing to support this. I think this is just an attempt to bring traffic to his/her website.

<comment><USER3> I don't think so, as Jottit is an instant web page creator and it doesn't seem to be any ad there. Why bother? Just trolling? I'm amused.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S government says pharma's complacency on price won't be tolerated - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-09/trump-inspired-tweets-signal-more-drug-price-pressures <comment><USER2> Aside from opiates, can we just get the generics for all drugs on the shelves of grocery stores? i.e. end the concept of prescriptions and instead have "recommendations" from doctors.

<comment><USER2> I should add that the United States of America is the only place most drugs are still prescriptions. In the EU and most other countries, what I am asking for already exists for the most part. I am learning how to make the prescriptions that I currently use.</comment></comment>


How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/mf_milner/all/1 <comment><USER2> "It is his outsiderness that seems most irritating and even alarming" - that's the main issue that people seem to be having with Yuri. If he was American, he would be yet another success story, flashier than the others, but still competent enough to have made it big.

As much as I admire the Silicon Valley investors who live in a normal house and drive a normal car, it's Milner's choice to go all out and get some expensive stuff if he wants - I suspect growing up in Russia, they didn't have access to any kind of luxury items when the Union collapsed, so the desire to get all the big houses, yachts and expensive cars is understandable.

By the way, I like it how he bought Mail.ru when it was cheap - it was certainly a smart investment (it's now the biggest mail service in Runet, not only Russia itself), at a time when most of them thought the fancy American invention, the Internet, went belly up.

<comment><USER3> If his 'outsiderness' is so irritating and alarming that's just nicely dressed up xenophobia.

And from what I've seen of it SiliconValley is not much prone to that. So why is it different with Milner?

<comment><USER4> The Valley doesn't care about a person's ethnicity, as long as they generated their wealth through legitimate means. Milner, on the other hand, is nothing more than a frontman for Alisher Usmanov, who basically accrued everything through wholescale theft of state resources. Basically, Milner is a crook, and if there was any justice in the world he and Usmanov would be in jail for what they have done. But there isn't, and there are people in the Valley who are willing to overlook ethics if you have enough money. The fact that Milner is now working with YC is a sad testament to that fact.

<comment><USER5> VCs are not so high minded that they're offended by who his LPs are, believe me. The reason VCs don't like Yuri is that he is disturbing the cosy world they formerly inhabited by offering more founder friendly terms.

So morally the situation is not as simple as your comment implies.

<comment><USER6> Actually, it would seem to be just as simple as he implies. VCs in the valley care only about money and don't give a hoot about morality. You haven't debated the fact that Milner is linked to the looting of state resources; you've simply said that anyone else would also take his money if they could.

Makes all you VCs and Angels in the Valley seem like dogs fighting over a doggie biscuit -- or in this case, the looted flesh and bones of the Russian people.

<comment><USER5> Let me be more precise. When I said the situation was not as simple as his comment implied, I meant that even if Yuri's money was tainted in some way, it was being used as a counterweight to another bad thing.

<comment><USER4> "The reason VCs don't like Yuri is that he is disturbing the cosy world they formerly inhabited by offering more founder friendly terms."

I greatly respect and admire you pg, and god knows you're far more intelligent than I am, but surely you can't be so naive as to think that Milner is doing what he is doing out of some altruism for founders?

He is spending outlandish amounts on startups for the same reason Abramovich spends hundreds of millions on yachts, why the Sultan of Brunei spends millions on cars, and why the Saudi princes spend millions on trips to the Riviera. Because he never worked hard for the money, and so he doesn't care about throwing it around.

When a man works hard, he is loathe to spend it carelessly, because he knows the sacrifice in time and effort it took to acquire the money. In the words of the great Milton Friedman: "Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own". This applies not only to government officials but to the criminal element as well, from hoodlums to ponzi schemers and everything in between.

People like Milner and others associated with Russian oligarchs spend lavishly because the money they have came with no sacrifice on their part. The sacrifice came from all those miners working in subzero temperatures in the Kazakh steppe for kopeks a day, their bodies broken down prematurely, with the share of wealth that was promised to them stolen away. And instead of those who betrayed them being brought to justice, they instead depart to the West where they are greeted with applause by those who mistake cunningness with intelligence.

<comment><USER7> Pg is implying that Yuri's LPs are no more questionable than the LPs of the top VC firms in the Valley. They've all taken dubious money.

<comment><USER8> From reading this post, I am surprised that this story is not on top of the Hacker News....anyway, i agree 100% with what the above comment says....PG and Hacker News sold out and sold their Souls to Yuri and all the corrupt Souls that Digital Sky Technologies (DST) is associated with. Good Going Paul.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If there's one mistake this story makes, it's in trying to come up with complicated theories about why Yuri does well. He's simply smart. That's what DST has in common with Andreessen Horowitz, though they have little else in common.

<comment><USER9> Come now, Paul. Yes, Yuri is smart. But he also has huge sacks of money to throw around, most of which comes from oligarch Alisher Usmanov. Wolff confirms here for the first time (I believe) that "Milner has created a separate fund to invest in international—and especially American—Internet companies, with Usmanov taking the biggest stake."

And we've yet to see any sort of track record for the piles of money Milner throws around, at least the big new money he is spending in America. In what sense is he "successful?"

It's kind of sad, to me at least, the extent to which a sort of amorality has really taken hold in Silicon Valley. It's nice that he's helped your investments out, Paul, but where does Yuri's money come from? Have you looked into him and Usmanov? I mean, the sad thing about Yuri Milner to me isn't that he's an ostentatious outsider, it's that he fits in so darn well in Silicon Valley. I wish this was the sort of place that looked completely alien to someone from Moscow or Wall Street. Every year, it seems that's less and less the case, at least in terms of culture.

<comment><USER5> _In what sense is he "successful?"_

Financially, in the same sense Mark Zuckerberg is.

<comment><USER10> I though Zuckerberg's success is in the creation, not in the bank balance? Really, 'financial success' and life's success (for achieving something worthwhile for the history of this planet) must be two absolutely different achievements..

<comment><USER5> That's why I qualified my answer by with "financially."

That is the type of success mapgrep is asking about: his returns as an investor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The wealth in hands of all these xUSSR oligarchs (Usmanov etc) was once a social wealth of all Soviet people. It is nice to see this wealth is now being converted 'back to social'. Our Facebook accounts are supposedly worth $100+ already, so it seems like a very clever plot to pay these money back to where they belong. Let's hope Mark will provide payouts for those choosing to close their accounts.

<comment><USER11> > so it seems like a very clever plot to pay these money back to where they > belong

Um... you seriously believe this?

<comment><USER10> of course it was sarcastic, how could a sane person believe in that? you scare me with such question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> pg is extremely naive if he thinks the this guy's money is not tainted. Actually, it does not take a genius to figure this out. IT IT IMPOSSIBLE to make that kind of money in Russia by playing according to the rules.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not anybody thought that what Milner does is he paves the road to even more money coming from legit and not-so-legit investments from Russian oligarchs. Once Milner gets settled in the SV and proves his operations are successful, then Russian money will start flowing in in amounts that's hard to comprehend.

Why is this desirable for oligarchs? Simple: businesses in Russia are profoundly insecure - remember Khodorkovsky? So, Milner will find a great amount of willing investors among the second-tier oligarchs once he's ready to start doing money heavy lifting.

And when you pave the road that will go "pay-to-pass" you can spend few unnecessarily billions.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like money laundering.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if it is possible for a YC startup to take Andreessen-Horowitz $50000 investment and pass on Milner's investment.

<comment><USER3> Sure it is. But nobody did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The story angle is wrong. Why would someone like him care if he bought into anything, when he can buy everything. It reads like an insecure fable which I doubt.

</comment><comment><USER17> The man is making people's dreams come true and taking chances on young and hungry entrepreneurs, legally. Some of you make it sound as if he's a murderer. Leave him alone and let him and all the companies he's funding be great.</comment>


The 100 Ether Rooftop - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/9elements/the-100-ether-rooftop-9625af6d604a <comment><USER2> that's definitely a good invest. Congrats!</comment>


Combat sidestroke - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_sidestroke <comment><USER2> How is this news? I guess it _is_ one of those things most people don't really hear about that the military made pretty efficient.

It's a useful technique because it's almost as fast as freestyle, but you tire less and don't splash as much. It's also easier to adapt to dragging someone or something, which is why it's taught to USAF Pararescue jumpers. Finally, you are a little less likely to seriously hurt yourself when you run into something.</comment>


Thinking time - <AUTHOR> http://gorban.org/post/14162629940/thinking-time

<comment><USER2> It's also a very good idea to find the right balance with _allowing your brain to think_ , so not setting a fixed time for it, but recognizing when your brain is caught in a situation where it _needs to finish a good bunch of thoughts_. When you push yourself to get work done, you often end up putting that off for too long and your brain just hits back with a state of general confusion.

If that's the case - you finding yourself with a busy brain that seems incapable of finishing any thought - _Stop working_ and allow it some time off to tie up those loose ends.

I have found that my brain has three modes of working when it comes to creative thinking - The first is in-the-moment thinking, where and work and thinking are one - Synchronous Thinking. The second is finishing up thoughts while I'm doing something else (literally, getting the results to a thought- process out of the blue) - Asynchronous Thinking. The final one is the one described here - Exclusive Thinking.

Learning which of those to employ at a given moment (based on your workflow and mental constitution) is an artform and hard to master, but just being aware of it is already a big step.

(And not to forget - there is also a fourth one - Exclusive Non-Thinking, but that's a whole different area of philosophy and more related to general mental balance than it is to getting work done.)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps its my background in Mathematics, but I have a bit of a problem with the idea of 'putting thinking time on my schedule'.

I find that the thoughts come along when they want to and think themselves anyway. They laugh at my (paper) diary. I suspect that this is related to me being on the 'maker' schedule rather than the 'manager' schedule.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>

<comment><USER2> I really enjoy actual paper notes as well - particularly when you end up in creative thinking mode, having a completely non-technical capture medium does the trick for me. I've tried a lot of the electronic stuff, but plain A6 cards that I can later organize work wonders and I have yet to find something better (it's not really like I'm looking for something, though - I have found my sweet spot).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From my experience, this is immensely helpful in dealing with the problem of procrastination, which has come up a lot here on HN. I found it to be most useful in two scenarios:

1) You have a complex problem that will require a complex solution, and you're procrastinating in figuring out how to deal with the problem.

2) You're coming towards a milestone in a project, and it's time to plan out the next steps and goals.

For both of those scenarios, just taking a walk with a pen and a notepad can be the most efficient use of your time. Sometimes a bit of fresh air and slow, methodical thinking goes a long way.

</comment><comment><USER5> This reminds me greatly of the GTD "review" process, which is frankly the part of GTD that I'm worst at doing.

Basically it's scheduling a time to review and evaluate everything on your to- do list. This seems to be a forward looking "what else can I do?" variation on that.</comment>


Make hacker news open source and let some magic happen - <AUTHOR>

hacker news has access to so many hackers. should they not open the code so large number of devs can contribute and become creative? <comment><USER2> It is open source: [https://github.com/wting/hackernews](https://github.com/wting/hackernews) albeit that source is somewhat outdated.

Source code (news.arc): [https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc](https://github.com/wting/hackernews/blob/master/news.arc)

From the Arc 3 tarball: [http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tar](http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tar)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a Chrome extension for that. :P</comment>


Neuroscientists' Open Letter To DIY Brain Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2016/07/11/caution-brain-hacking <comment><USER2> Neuroscientist here: Just listened to a talk from a reseacher who studied tDCS and tACS in human subjects, and found that IQ scores were actually going down relative to control groups. It's absolutely not clear what the appropriate protocols are, and behavioral outcomes could be incredibly sensitive to factors such as 1) electrode placement, 2) stimulation frequency, 3) amplitude, 4) direct or alternating current, etc.

On top of that, benefits may come at the cost of other unobserved effects (i.e. faster learning and plasticity, accompanied by faster forgetting, to oversimplify).

<comment><USER3> >> Neuroscientist here: Just listened to a talk from a reseacher who studied tDCS and tACS in human subjects, and found that IQ scores were actually going down relative to control groups.

So really, someone experimenting on their own could be considered more ethical than researchers doing it to other people ;-) This is really an area where having all the data is critical and that publication bias we keep reading about at HN can actually be harmful to people relying on published results. One could say "they shouldn't be doing that", but don't researchers want their results to be used for something, or is it just about publication?

<comment><USER4> No I think that medical research can now be preformed by anyone. I think that there are going to be great advances that come from this amateur research in the next 5 years and I think it is the next evolution of hacking. People in general are capable of the kind of science required to achieve reproducible results. Most of this "research" is driven by a personal motivation (personal or some one close) where traditional medicine is unable to help. Research is driven by what can be sold afterwards and not the reward of knowledge gained from the results. And even then if knowledge was captured it often be inaccessible to those whom could turn that into a practical application of that science. So really this comes off as questioning the Doctors' absolute authority as masters in their field, and someone with out credentials coming up with just as meaningful results being tossed aside as amateurs not having a full understanding of what they are doing. I would say that in my personal experience that medicine is largely more art than science you rarely find Doctors that are interested in solving the unusual.

<comment><USER5> "No I think that medical research can now be preformed by anyone."

They should have at least some knowledge of how research works. Whats the point in experimenting if you aren't adding a control group for example?

<comment><USER3> Some people just want to make themselves better. They don't care about a control group. They only care to see if they can produce a positive effect on the one subject that matters to them. Most of them would probably go to a doctor for this if it were readily accessible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> RadioLab's 9-Volt Nirvana episode discussed how DARPA uses tCDS to enhance sharp-shooting ability.

At the end of the episode, the reporter conveyed a sense of loss when the tCDS system was no longer available to her. She sounded like a drug addict that pines for that feeling of their _first high_ and then risks spending their life in vain trying to recover that feeling.

If your life literally depends on a skill and supervised tCDS can improve it, then the reward may outweigh the unknown risks. But for other tasks/skills, it is difficult to justify.

Edit: typos, clarity

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt- nirvana](http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana)

<comment><USER7> A quote from the reporter's blog [0]: "When the nice neuroscientists put the electrodes on me, the thing that made the earth drop out from under my feet was that for the first time in my life, everything in my head finally shut the fuck up."

I'll be honest, that is a pretty compelling testimonial for many folks.

[0]: [http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2012/02/09/better-living- th...](http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2012/02/09/better-living-through- electrochemistry/)

<comment><USER8> From that blog post:

 _And then, finally, the main question: what role does doubt and fear play in our lives if its eradication actually causes so many improvements? Do we make more ethical decisions when we listen to our inner voices of self-doubt or when we're freed from them? If we all wore these caps, would the world be a better place?_

That's a really interesting thought. Not so much "would the world be better", as there is a presumption present in that question that more rational decision making is necessarily better, but if tDCS works similar to how it did with her with other people, we might have a way to study rational decision making in groups in interesting ways.

<comment><USER9> It's a leap to say that suppressing doubt and fear makes people more rational. It could just as well make people more impulsive.

<comment><USER10> It's also a leap to say the world would be a better place. One person's version of rationality can be quite different to another's. Imagine of someone feels that the only rational thing for them to do is to do something "normally rational" people would find irrational- like kill your neighbour's dog because it's bark is keeping you up at night, but social pressures, anxiety and fear actually keep them in check from the perspective of the whole population.

Are psychopaths not a good indicator of what might happen if your self limiting emotions/thoughts were turned off?

<comment><USER8> Well, rationality doesn't exist in a vacuum. Those societal pressures are taken into account in a rational choice.

> Are psychopaths not a good indicator of what might happen if your self > limiting emotions/thoughts were turned off?

Possibly? If your goal is the ultimate advancement of the self, then sociopathic tendencies might yield the best results. We've evolved to have strong emotions regarding our offspring and those of our tribe, because that's proven a beneficial strategy for the _species_ , but that is, in some respect, to the detriment of the individual. Most of us are fine with this decision, because of our feelings regarding our and our future offspring, but if you have no care for family, friends or the species as a whole, then gaming the system for your own advancement is probably the rational choice.

There are interesting implications to your sentence though. The blogger explained the loss of (generally perceived as) negative emotions, but what if they were not put in a situation to notice, or were unable to because of the condition itself, a loss in what we generally perceive as positive emotions, such as empathy and sympathy? This of course assumes that there was some emotional state change, and it wasn't a placebo effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The first 40 minutes of this week's "Invisibilia" touches on the effects transcranial magnetic stimulation had on a woman who lived with undiagnosed aspergers for most of her life.

> ALIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE: Until she was 54 years old, Kim (ph) was totally > unaware that there were things in the world that she could not see.

> KIM: Everything that was intended in this went completely over my head, and > now I saw it - completely missed the meaning of the whole thing until after > the TMS. And then I saw the whole thing clearly.

[http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/485138695/invisibilia-an- exper...](http://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/485138695/invisibilia-an-experiment- helps-one-woman-see-the-world-in-a-new-way)

(The TMS study "Kim" participated in took place at the same hospital that the co-author of this letter works, Beth Israel Deaconess.)

<comment><USER12> The linked transcript is fairly short and DEFINITELY worth a read.

Very interesting stuff.

<comment><USER13> There is a much longer and even more fascinating article here on HN about a similar case. You should search for it, if I was in front of a computer I'd find it for you. In it the man seems to have a lasting effect and is "cured" from Aspergers ends up splitting with his wife of I remember correctly.

<comment><USER14> [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/an-experimental- aut...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/an-experimental-autism- treatment-cost-me-my-marriage)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the thing that a lot of hackers don't understand is unintended consequences. It's fine when you're hacking a computer game, and the worst case scenario is that the game malfunctions. Things like overclocking a PC, or re-tuning a car, have more tangible consequences, but those consequences ultimately mean that the hacker will damage an easily replaceable commodity.

A person's brain is not replaceable.

<comment><USER16> That's one of the reasons I've stayed away from 'beta blocker' medications even though they're designed to tone down stage fright to a bare minimum. There are, from what I've read, potential side effects that can be rather severe. As in, some real unwelcome motor/cognition changes. That's enough cautionary literature to keep me away. Strangely enough though, I'm not anti- supplement (vitamins, PH stacks, etc) in the least.

<comment><USER17> Can you point to any papers? I'm curious. A friend (actually not me) was just asking about them. He gets anxiety, and wanted to have them on hand in case of a severe attack. But he's wary of medications generally and is on the fence about taking them.

<comment><USER18> Beta blockers aren't great for sudden panic attacks. I took them for years, and while they're great for toning down the anxiety baseline, they don't even remotely approach benzos when it comes to mitigating severe panic. Sadly the only medications you can reasonably get out there that will address an incipient or in progress panic attack are benzos.

There are other supplements/medications that are helpful (phenibut is my goto since I no longer wanted to take benzos), but none of them are fast acting or powerful enough to stop something that's already happening.

<comment><USER17> Ah, interesting. I checked with my friend, and it turns out they had gotten mixed up. They were prescribed benzos, not beta blockers.

What made you stop taking them? My friend has been making good progress without them, but still gets some rough days. And what supplements/medicines do you use, apart from phenibut?

(To be clear, they've already spoken with a doctor, psychologist, consulted drugs.com listing of side effect, etc.)

<comment><USER18> I stopped taking them for two reasons.

1\. I have an absurdly high tolerance to them (and almost all GABAergics, for that matter.) I always have, and also have an absurd alcohol tolerance. So, while clonazepam worked for me, I was taking roughly the maximum dosage designated for severe seizure disorders (I was taking 18mg/day, which if anyone is familiar with clonazepam, they'll know how absurd that is.)

2\. I was starting to feel dumb. I'm not 100% sure if that was the clonazepam or the quetiapine or the topamax, but one or all of them was making me forget my friends' and family's names. So, I dropped them like they were hot.

I'll give a small rundown of my stack below. I certainly won't say my stack is bulletproof, and for people with addictive personalities it could certainly be actively harmful. I won't discuss dosages either, because frankly my phenibut dosage is irresponsible, but once again that goes directly towards my GABAergic tolerance.

\-----

Tianeptine - for depression. It's a fast acting novel TCA that works via unknown mechanisms. In higher dosages it exhibits opioid activity, and if someone suffers from addictive tendencies it should absolutely be avoided.

Phenibut - for anxiety. It's converted directly into GABA in the brain. It's relatively fast acting. Some people, but definitely not all, can suffer from horrible withdrawals if they take it for a long time and then stop taking it. I've never had problems with it if I've run out though, and I take it daily.

Adrafinil - for fatigue and sleepiness. I suffer from an autoimmune disorder and am chronically fatigued. Adrafinil is a pro-drug for modafinil, and gets rid of your tiredness without being otherwise stimulating.

Caffeine - tiredness. I get mine powdered, but it doesn't really matter.

Vitamin D - this one helped with my depression enormously. I decided to give it a try one day after my dad was diagnosed with SAD, and did a loading dose. Within 3 days the dark circles had disappeared from under my eyes and my depression lifted significantly.

Those are everything I take on a day to day basis. I also have conditional nootropics for days when I'm in the mood for them/need to be extra productive. Noopept, aniracetam, oxiracetam, N-Acetyl Selank Amidate for days I'm feeling extra anxious, N-Acetyl Semax Amidate for a mental boost, and a few others I rarely use.

<comment><USER19> How much Vitamin D are you taking? I have been supplementing with it, but it did not put much of a dent in my winter depression. And what is considered to be a loading dose?

<comment><USER18> 10,000 IU per day. A loading dose is in the range of 100,000IU to 1,000,000IU, depending on age and body weight. Hypervitaminosis D only occurs when you take a loading dose level for months or years; it's not possible to acutely overdose on vitamin D.

<comment><USER20> That's a lot. Vitamin D tests are easy to get, so I just took a few over a few months to find a dose that would keep me at ~50ng/ml. Previous to that, I had taken 5000+ IU/day for some time and the test showed my levels were very high.

It looks like this site has a nice chart: [https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/further-topics/i-tested- my-v...](https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/further-topics/i-tested-my-vitamin-d- level-what-do-my-results-mean/)

<comment><USER18> I did end up taking a Vitamin D test after I had started supplementing, and on that dosage I'm still a little below normal levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> ""Some people were administering it to their kids," he says. "

WTF , fair enough if you want to risk it on yourself but not your children with still developing brains.

<comment><USER15> The whole thing just reminds me about the radium water craze years ago:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor) [https://67.media.tumblr.com/1899ba50f59df9c88dace35c13c2c1a7...](https://67.media.tumblr.com/1899ba50f59df9c88dace35c13c2c1a7/tumblr_nvvm8tVOyn1rwjpnyo1_500.jpg)

<comment><USER22> I watched a documentary on Netflix a while back that talked about the Radium health craze and carelessness. I think it was about the rise of investigative chemistry with regard to poisonings, etc.

The radium portion was horrifying to think about.

<comment><USER23> As long as the mindset of "we're done hearing from experts!" is allowed to resurface again and again, we'll have this problem. See: Anti-vaccers, the insanity with radium, maybe even Bob Marley's toe cancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Forgive my votum separatum, but:

> The biggest risk is that we just don't know what all the risks are. I think > that's the biggest risk.

I would call it "an opportunity". And as far as it is being done voluntarily, and there is a non-zero entry barrier, I am indebted to all those who (maybe) risk their health and lives for possible progress of science, medicine and technology.

Compare it to extreme sports, where there is risk, but often with little or no long-term benefit for the rest of society.

If we restrict ourselves only to "safe", "regulated" and "within the sacred walls of academia" experiments, we will miss (or seriously delay) a lot of things. Especially:

> I don't know that any hospital review board would actually let us do that > experiment, so we might never know what that does to brain activity.

<comment><USER25> Yes, but unless these experiments are done by pairs or groups, you are getting what is passed off as scientific results from someone who is experimenting on their own brain with a sample size of one and no control group. How do you trust the results from an experiment conducted on the experimenter's brain? What if the experimenter loses the capacity to properly conduct the experiment in the process? How would you know the difference between that and he or she being incompetent in the first place, aside from the fact that they're attempting this in the first place?

<comment><USER26> Check out Erowid[1] and see how people dealt with those 'scary chemicals'. People were being their own chemist & pharmacy at much higher doses, for much longer periods than any doctor had ever prescribed. There are certainly uncertainties, but enough people saying similar things actually do start to hone in on very real affects (that aren't/can't actually be known from an 'ethical' experiment).

[1] [https://www.erowid.org/](https://www.erowid.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So the TLDR is its basically like exercise where you can quite easily hurt yourself if you have no idea what you're doing, and you probably do not especially if you're a broscience devotee, and most people make pretty dumb decisions about appropriate levels of repetition, effort, and pain.

Another way of putting it is people with poor judgment can now at some effort and money, destroy their brains, not just their knees and shoulders. Eh.

Another good analogy is alcohol consumption, although unlike alcohol it appears both brain stimulation and exercise can have a net positive effect.

<comment><USER28> With exercise there are at least people who do know what they're doing you can ask. In this case there isn't anybody who really knows what they're doing, at least not to the point that they can get any benefits out of it.

<comment><USER29> I think the real "only" way to improve your brain is to improve the sophistication of the "software" that makes up the wiring of your brain. I'm pretty sure from a logical standpoint that electricity alone doesn't do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> TDCS seems like using a sledgehammer to tune a piano.

<comment><USER16> Nicely put. I'd venture that a lot of the "plug in and go" crowd might be better served with some vigorous exercise rather than electrical stimulation. At least one of the two has viable, peer reviewed studies and results to consider.

But hey, Darwin Awards ain't going to write themselves.

<comment><USER31> In addition to vigorous exercise, add in all the promising results from studies on mindfulness meditation as well. But clearly the cyberpunk aesthetic, and techno-solutionism is what is motivating here, it's not the evidence.

<comment><USER32> I'd never have thought there would be anyone who'd _want_ to live in a Peter Watts novel, but here we are.

<comment><USER30> Governments seem to think 1984 is an instruction manual so this is not uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A good idea would be to create a website were self experimenters can log their results, describe their setups, take tests and answer questionnaires. Similar to what erowid did for drugs back in the days - the self reported "trip reports".

Of course - warn people that it's dangerous, etc etc, but people are still going to do it so why not use that as 'volunteer' experimental data.

<comment><USER34> That's a start. But given that the report is subjective, and its a report on brain-altering drugs, as a data set its of questionable usefulness. E.g. all those that were changed to be hyper-focused will not be able to change their attention to reporting - so many will be missing from the reports. Others may become depressive and incapable of reporting as well.

Its like "everybody who didn't survive the experiment, raise your hands!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Huh. I thought it's something about DIY EEG devices or something like that and is quite surprised with what some people do with their heads...

</comment><comment><USER36> Peter: Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head, remember that?

Egon: That would have worked if you didn't stop me.

</comment><comment><USER37> Hope someone writes a similar letter about nootropics. There's little evidence about their long term effects.

<comment><USER38> I think centrophenoxine and racetams are fairly well tolerated. I've cycled them on and off for a few years with only positive outcomes. They've been studied for decades. It's probably worse to take something like tylenol pm every night, which is FDA approved, OTC etc. [http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic- dr...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-drugs-like- benadryl-linked-increased-dementia-risk-201501287667)

<comment><USER37> But where's the link to centrophenoxine and racetams? Your link only talks about anticholinergic drugs. I have seen such results about benzodiazepine [http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/benzodiazepine-use-may- ra...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/benzodiazepine-use-may-raise-risk- alzheimers-disease-201409107397)

When you are chemically toying with your brain, it is good to know if there are any adverse long terms effects. Risk vs. reward. Surely some non chemical ways of modifying the your brain can also have adverse effects: like eroding concentration due to constant multitasking.

<comment><USER38> Here is an account of long term centrophenoxine use. Not sure there is lots of study demonstrating 35 years of use is safe in large qty of the population so this should be treated as an anecdotal report only. It does cite other study he has done.

[http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/64596-my- personal-35-ye...](http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/64596-my- personal-35-year-report-on-the-value-of-centrophenoxine-in-antiaging-by- professor-imre-zs-nagy/)

There are links to outcomes of studies on oxiracetam here which is my go to racetam:

[https://examine.com/supplements/oxiracetam/](https://examine.com/supplements/oxiracetam/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The actual open letter:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.24689/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.24689/full)

</comment><comment><USER40> My brothers and I saw a child psychiatrist in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She had stuck needles in our head and tried to treat us via electric shock for depression.

We were all high functioning with above average intelligence.

Ever since I had problems remebering names and faces of most people I met and other memory problems.

She said we were too smart to have autism but high functioning autism wasn't discovered until later in the 1990s so we might have been misdiagnosed.

It makes it hard for me to find work and be accepted.

</comment><comment><USER41> Apparently there's already commercial device for this. I came across a paper about it.

"Unfocus" on foc.us: commercial tDCS headset impairs working memory - [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-015-4391-9](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00221-015-4391-9)

</comment><comment><USER42> Given that the human brain is full of electrical impulses it makes sense that external impulses can change our brains. The article mentions some people seeing the opposite results from the same protocol. It seems likely we will need more precise methods of stimulation to see better results given how complex our brains are.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm the one they featured in this article.. [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592_supp/full/53...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592_supp/full/531S6a.html)

<comment><USER44> Has it worked for you before?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Frustration comes from how slow and opaque research in this area is. I think their warning is very appropriate and timely. Having said that, I think a lot of benefit can be had from transparent research.

</comment><comment><USER46> > a zapping session may produce an effect exactly the opposite of what's > intended

Sounds a lot like anti-depressant medication.

</comment><comment><USER47> Does wearing monitor headphones possess not obvious risks to your brain functions?

<comment><USER32> That depends on how badly miswired they are, I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I had no idea people actually tried stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER49> Real brain hacking is about subliminal conditioning. Leave it to WIRED and similar publications to muddy the water and dumb down the populace.

<comment><USER29> I think you are the one that is right about this "brainhacking" stuff.</comment></comment>


Anonymous Member Banned By Court From Using His Real Name Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/10255815907/guy-accused-being-part-anonymous-banned-court-using-his-real-name-online.shtml

<comment><USER2> The other thing that tickled me was (this is from the Forbes article):

 _"A 17-year-old student who cannot be named for legal reasons"_

Yeah, I appreciate why that is and why it makes sense, but it doesn't make it any less ironic that somebody from 'Anonymous' can't be named in the coverage of this case.

<comment><USER3> Well, he wouldn't be anonymous then, would he?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a sort of failed attempt to apply the "released but cannot associate with [previous associates]" bail condition to the internet. The first attempt was: can use the internet, but can't post on social networks; and then that was narrowed to, can post on social networks, but can't post with your 'normal' identity to your existing networks.

</comment><comment><USER5> At last, the court has discovered the deadly weakness of hackers to _being forced to use their legal names!_

Wait, what?

The decision makes a very, very sad statement about the court's understanding of the issues at hand.

</comment><comment><USER6> Better link (and actual source...): [http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/09/07/court- lets...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/09/07/court-lets- anonymous-suspects-keep-using-twitter/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Oh no! That means he can't use Google +!

<comment><USER8> That's ok though. This is exactly the type of riffraff that Google wants to keep out of its gated community.

<comment><USER9> That and anyone who has a stalker, or is not out of the closet, or is a political activist in a non-democracy, etc. Google doesn't like _those_ people.

<comment><USER10> There is no such thing as a "real name" anyway. The whole idea is quite silly. Is Lady Gaga allowed on Google+?

<comment><USER11> What about Pilot Inspektor? That poor child is going to have fun getting on G+ when he's old enough.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Jason_Lee_%28...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Jason_Lee_%28actor%29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does this mean he's barred from making purchases online with credit cards taken out in his name?

<comment><USER13> Unless his credit card only has his first name on it, no. Did you read the article?

<comment><USER14> Bad news for Cher if she ever joins Anonymous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What self respecting hacker would use his real name online?

-M0rpheus

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm not going to read the article so I can continue to believe this is little Bobby Tables: <http://xkcd.com/327/></comment>


Increasing the barrier to entry by simplifying the process - <AUTHOR> http://insidethe.agency/blog/increasing-the-barrier-to-entry-by-simplifying-the-process <comment><USER2> read the article. sounds like incorrectly using the introjs script to me. This weren't simplifying the process. They had two competing info highlights. You were injecting distraction away from your main instruction guidance.

Instead the proper thing, if you wanted the point-and-click guided tour, would be to _use_ the info highlights to guide them around. Or, to skip the guided tour and use the instruction boxes. Not both.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree our issue was how we were using IntroJS. Our intention when implementing IntroJS was to simplify the process but ultimately this didn't work out as we anticipated.

Still that's the point of user testing, to find out what works, what doesn't, learn from it and iterate.</comment></comment>