Wikipedia Is Now a Brave Verified Publisher - <AUTHOR> https://brave.com/wikipedia-verified-publisher/ <comment><USER2> We signed up for Brave's setup at PortableApps.com after a few users asked about it. They hold your last 90 days in escrow, so you can find out how successful it is once you sign up. We were looking at around 10 cents a day for a bit under a million monthly users for that timeframe over the summer. And we can't even access it since Brave only works with one crypto provider and they aren't licensed in New York. The process was also pretty buggy and the magic link email login was clunky/kinda broken.

[https://portableapps.com/node/60580](https://portableapps.com/node/60580)

<comment><USER3> Uphold is working hard to acquire the bitlicense for New York. They shared on Twitter earlier this month that they hope to have this resolved soon.

It's worth noting that Creators also have a referral program whereby $5 in BAT can be earned for each user brought to the Brave platform. brave.com/refer

Thank you for your incredible patience and participation. We hope to see positive developments on the bitlicense front soon. Please do let us know if there is ever anything we can do for you in the interim.

<comment><USER4> Are there any plans to get rid of uphold on the publisher side and allow external wallets? It was a huge turn off to me when I signed up.

<comment><USER5> We need a regulated entity to do directed (tips, recurring), user-anonymous, off-chain transactions, and to comply with OFAC and other hard regulations. We can't do it ourselves. Wallet is the least of the issue, even if the publisher were willing to take BAT.

Our future phase (Apollo) blockchain work will move more txns on-chain but not solve all regulatory problems. No blockchain can do that unless you are using p2p directly, and then on the current big chains you don't have anonymity or low fees. This may change, we're working on it.

<comment><USER6> Please do not require people to submit their government ID in order to withdraw their tokens, after you inserted yourself in the donation flow of creators by offering to accept donations on their part from a priviledged UI.

We use platforms which do not ask for our ID, and we would prefer if you would not reduce the probability of Brave users donating to us because they think those BAT tokens will reach us.

Yes, unverified creators are marked as such, but a donation call in the browser UI is a powerful default, more so than the donation service preferred by the creator, which can only be shown as a web page.

<comment><USER7> > _Please do not require people to submit their goverment ID in order to > withdraw their tokens_

Not verifying ID almost certainly causes a violation of American, British and European anti-money laundering code.

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice._

<comment><USER6> So blockchain.com is breaking the law by not asking all their customers to upload their government ID and a selfie in order to withdraw the crypto they have received to a private wallet?

<comment><USER8> Blockchain.com's privacy policy states that, for anti-money laundering purposes, they'll collect:

> Passport and/or national driver's license or government-issued > identification card to verify your identity

(from [https://www.blockchain.com/legal/privacy](https://www.blockchain.com/legal/privacy)). That's consistent with every other exchange I've used.

<comment><USER6> Verification is only required to use their exchange, and not for withdrawing to a crypto wallet.

Brave would be able to offer BAT withdrawals for creators in a legally sound way.

[https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en- us/articles/36001835987...](https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en- us/articles/360018359871-What-Blockchain-products-require-identity- verification-)

<comment><USER9> AML laws aren't anywhere near as precise as most people expect. It basicly boils down to "if bad guys use your platform, and you can't trace them, you're gonna go to prison".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like what Brave is doing. I wish it was built on Firefox instead of Chromium. I just don't see myself leaving Firefox without major upheaval in the browser space.

<comment><USER11> (Brave employee here)

Curious: what are some of the shortfalls you see in Chromium?

Before I joined Brave, the desktop browser was originally using Gecko (from Firefox). Ultimately, there were some problems and the decision was made to move to Chromium. On iOS, Brave is forked from Firefox though

You can check out more detail on Reddit where folks asked why FF was not used (which has links to more detailed info): [https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9jpqde/brave_br...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/9jpqde/brave_browser_and_chromium/)

<comment><USER12> > _On iOS, Brave is forked from Firefox_

You mean the platform that specifically disallows competing browser engines, making Firefox just a shell over a Safari-enabled web view and that can't even access Safari's content blockers? The only Firefox that's not running a Firefox engine under the hood? That Firefox?

Given you're a developer for Brave, it's not possible for you to not know this, therefore your statement is misleading at best.

The pitfalls of Chromium are obvious... it gives Google the power to impose on the market whatever engine feature they want, they are the ones defining the web standards and there's nothing Brave can do about it because Brave does not have the capacity to maintain a full fork, or to fight for web standards, just like it doesn't have the capacity to build a browser without piggybacking on somebody else.

Don't get me wrong, nowadays even Microsoft admitted total defeat, but then Brave should recognize its total dependence on Google and its continued goodwill.

<comment><USER13> _> Brave should recognize its total dependence on Google and its continued goodwill_

What do you mean? Brave is based on Chromium, which is open source. Google can't stop people from using it.

(Disclosure: I work for Google)

<comment><USER14> Google is the dictator of what gets accepted into Chromium and what does not. That's how open source development works -- even if the code is available to everyone, its maintainers control its future.

<comment><USER13> Regardless of how Chromium is run [1] Brave is still in a position to make their browser work however they want. They can choose what Chromium features to enable, and take the code any direction they want.

[1] Your categorization doesn't match what I've seen. Microsoft has been driving substantial changes as Edge moves onto it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a publisher relying on ad revenue, and I hate Brave. It's not because it blocks my ads (I also contribute to an ad blocker list myself), but because Brave can swap my ads with its own. This is theft!

Brave is similar to Opera. It's not a mainstream browser, and they also want to make money. Dipping into publisher revenue and using some broken BAT crypto currency to reward publishers is not the way to do it. The currency itself is mostly useless and unstable, plus you will be making peanuts compared to even the lowest CPM country in AdSense.

What we need is an ad provider that provides a meaningful experience to advertisers and non-invasive ads to publishers. An entirely context-based, tracking-less, controlled (iframed and sandboxed).

A browser is a user-agent and it should stay that way. I like certain things Brave is doing (such as proxying Google Safe Browsing API requests), but for all this BAT nonsense, I would still stick with Mozilla.

<comment><USER16> I don't want to be uncivil and call you a liar, but can you explain why what you are saying about the ad replacement is true?

Brendan Eich has repeatedly said that they do not replace ads: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20831627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20831627)

For what it's worth, I find Brendan's position on homosexuality to be on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of faithfulness (I do not intend to put words in his mouth, but this comment feels like a strong acceptance that he has feelings or opinions about gay people that are hard to rationally, and intelligently defend) [0]

I want to make it clear I have no stake in protecting Brendan or Brave (I work for an analytics company!), but parroting bullshit you heard, or misrepresenting a company that affects your business is not taking the high ground even when the thing you are shitting on is led by a person whose position many people find despicable.

[0] Brendan Eich says, "As for homophobe, I reject your definition. Call me what you want there" // [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20792783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20792783)

<comment><USER5> What shows bad faith here is you taking my rejection of a loaded word as me being irrational. Mobs of activists including some green handles and longtime HN users would love to drive me out of a job. I am not here to explain an alternative point of view to you. Get to know people with whom you do not share all superficial or even deep beliefs. I am here for hacker news about Brave.

Thanks for calling out parroting bullshit based on personal dislike or animus. But FWIW, I don't see evidence of Ayesh doing that. Peace.

<comment><USER16> Yep, you are right and I do regret this back-handed defense to some extent, thanks for engaging despite my bad faith.

You've been doing a great job of defending Brave, I wish you didn't have to, especially to the HN crowd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had never read the Brave ad model before.

They want to display ads while respecting user privacy, which is nice from a user point of view, but do advertisers actually want that rather than being able to target 35-40 years old in Ohio that are using shaving products twice a week ?

<comment><USER3> Brave developer here. Great question! Brave Ads are entirely opt-in, and work via on-device machine-learning. The machine-learning bits study your browsing habits in a private, non-leaky manner.

Once a day, your device downloads an aggregate catalog of many ad options to be studied locally. If/when an ad is found that fits your interests (as inferred by your browsing habits), the ad is displayed as an OS notification and 70% of the ad revenue is deposited into your in-situ wallet.

So on the topic of targeting, Brave is able to deliver a better experience for Advertisers and Users, without the need to leak user information across the Web. The on-device ML bits learn about their user over time, delivering a better experience with maturity.

I hope that helps!

<comment><USER18> I would never opt-in to ads even if there was some upside. That's like asking if I'd like to see billboards on a beautiful drive through Colorado and in return you'll throw some change in my center console. I'll just take the beautiful drive and you can keep the cash.

> The machine-learning bits study your browsing habits in a private, non-leaky > manner.

I think everyone's been around the internet long enough to know that nothing is private forever and everything has leaks. Relevant: [https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1045091640480804864](https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/1045091640480804864)

<comment><USER3> Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance and financial support. Somebody has to pay for that. With Brave, Advertisers can pay for it (without getting hold of your data) by way of users. Alternatively, you may choose to "fund the roads" yourself by depositing your own tokens into Brave's wallet—that too is possible.

Brave aims to sustain the roads that grant you access to that scenery. For some users, they are able to pay a bit out of pocket (depositing their own tokens). For others, they can take advantage of a private advertising system that finds relevant ads, while paying the user 70%. This allows users to passively support the roads, if you will.

Unlike billboards down the side of the highway (which, I agree, aren't pleasant to see), only the users who wish to see ads are shown ads. And they always determine how many are shown (which is not the case with billboards). Brave Ads are tuned over time, too. As a user engages the app, the ads will become more and more relevant (unlike billboards). All that said, the default experience is (and will remain) an ad-free experience.

To your Krebs citation, he is absolutely correct. Give your data to somebody, and it's likely they'll lose it, leak it, or sell it. That's why Brave avoids your data as best we can. Brave Ads takes place _on your machine_, where your data naturally lives. You don't entrust us or anybody else with it.

I hope this helps!

<comment><USER18> You are supremely lost. If you carry the analogy, you're saying the billboards destroying my view through Colorado are somehow paying for my roads. Well, actually taxes pay for my roads. And no, viewing ad's on Brave does not somehow make my internet better or faster. It just clutters the experience.

The only thing that will opt into this crap are the selenium bots I write to farm some Brave cash or whatever you're calling it, until I realize that the AWS fees are more than the Brave cash I'm getting and shut them off for good.

<comment><USER19> > If you carry the analogy, you're saying the billboards destroying my view > through Colorado are somehow paying for my roads. Well, actually taxes pay > for my roads.

You are entirely misinterpreting the Brave engineer's good faith argument. The argument wasn't that billboards somehow pay for roads. You introduced that analogy, and the reply showed where your anology falls apart. The argument was that _unlike roads_ , most websites aren't funded by taxes and won't be for the foreseeable future. The engineer also points out some ways Brave ads are different from billboards: they are opt-in, they are personalized, they give you useful tokens for your attention, etc.

It's impossible to ignore that every major browser is subsidized by either user tracking or OS sales. Even the privacy focused Firefox, which I use and love, is funded almost completely by Google ads.

And lastly, one great thing about Brave is it's completely (besides maybe Widevine, which isn't their fault) FOSS, so you are free to fork it and remove the Brave ads functionality. In fact it's probably not even hard to write a script to do it automatically. But no one has successfully funded large scale browser development while being FOSS and not relying on ads.

Also, I know people who would opt-in, though I wouldn't myself.

<comment><USER18> Let's break down what the the rep from Brave said... I don't think I misinterpreted anything.

> Your beautiful drive through Colorado requires quite a bit of maintenance > and financial support.

Roads cost money.

> Somebody has to pay for that.

Someone has to pay for the roads.

> With Brave, Advertisers can pay for it (without getting hold of your data) > by way of users. ... Brave aims to sustain the roads that grant you access > to that scenery.

Ad's (billboards) can pay for a great browser experience (the roads)...

So, therefore I said: Billboards don't pay for roads, taxes do. I get that the analogy isn't 1:1. However, stating that is an easy way to demonstrate that Brave doesn't have a market. Just like I don't need billboards to pay for my roads, I don't need ad's to pay for my browser experience. Firefox is open- source, and adblock exists. Come off it.

<comment><USER19> If you use Firefox, ads pay for your browser experience. It's just one extra level of indirection (Advertiser -> Google -> Firefox vs. Advertiser -> Brave).

With regards to original argument, my impressions was you didn't assume good faith and respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what the Brave developer said, as the Hacker News commenting guidelines suggest you do. Take that how you will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> BAT token is tradable on exchanges, and price floats and is unstable. Donation receivers need to worry about exchange rates risk - [https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention- token](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/basic-attention-token)

How about USD or USD stable currencies for this?

<comment><USER21> Does BAT fluctuate that much?

Lately I see one of two things : 1\. The market is up, BAT loses value because BTC sucks all the air out of the room with n00b investors. 2\. The market is down, BAT loses value because BTC valuation scares off investors.

Otherwise, Brave/BAT team can announce features & partnerships all day long and the price literally never budges.

<comment><USER20> Exactly it. An ICO was done and it is openly traded, there is going to be fluctuation whether up/down it is still an FX risk for receivers of BAT. Until we see more goods and services payable with BAT, it will a problem

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does brave still suck up money from people even when the site owner hasn't set up brave payments?

<comment><USER23> And not just that, they've moved/are moving to a model of displaying their own ads instead, which are invariably for some scammy crypto-of-the-day which even FB and Google ban from their ad platforms

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Brave has 2 ad-models (one still in the works). First, the User Model. In this model, user's must first opt-in to participate. If/when they do, advertisements are shown (at a user- controllable rate) as OS notifications. When a notification is shown, 70% of the revenue is deposited into the user's wallet.

The second model is the Publisher Model; this is in the works now. Under this model, Publishers will be able to opt-in the system as well, and have ads displayed on their pages. Under this model, publishers receive 70%, and the user receives 15%. But both models require consent before any ads are displayed.

<comment><USER23> We'll see how long that lasts once the VC money runs out.

Blocking ads and displaying your own certainly is an "ad replacement" model though, and websites that don't want to participate have no choice.

<comment><USER3> Ads are being blocked, already, on hundreds of millions of devices. Brave users are usually former users of ad-blocking extensions in Chrome and Firefox. As such, these users were beyond the advertising system, far out of reach of Advertisers or Publishers. Brave changes this.

Brave brings security and privacy minded folks back into the system by offering a better deal for all parties. Users get paid without giving up data, Advertisers get better value for their spend. And Publishers don't have to weigh their sites down with third-party scripts to monetize content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I understan Wikipedia does not have ads, but other websites do.

In the early 2000s, toolbars that replaced a website's ads with different ads were considered malware. Instead of the website that bears the cost of delivering content getting the money, the browser is now getting the money.

How is Brave Browser different in this regard than those malware toolbars?

<comment><USER25> The only difference is that consumers have agreed to let the browser do this.

<comment><USER24> How do we know that all the consumers realize the browser is doing this? How do we know all consumers with those toolbars didn't know?

I imagine those consumers also "agree" to website Terms of Service that don't allow this.

I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop people who use adblockers or Brave.

<comment><USER25> > I wonder if websites will fight back, closing accounts or doing more to stop > people who use adblockers or Brave.

My personal belief is that websites are free to track users as much as they want, but users are free to respond however they want. If it becomes an arms race, so be it, but I think in the end the result will be adtech finally having to fix itself which is a very good thing.

<comment><USER24> Same here; I block ads. I am denying revenue to the website. What I am not doing, is giving a middleman that money instead.

My conscience is okay with ad-blocking. It is not okay with helping someone steal.

<comment><USER25> I don't block ads but I just tend to avoid abusive websites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Since Brave is usually roasted around here, I just want to say thanks to the devs. I'm a Brave user and the experience is fantastic. Two things: I was a Chrome user for many years, so switching to Brave was not traumatic at all (same user experience, plugin's compatibility) and also ad blockers work as expected. I've never pay attention to the included ad solution. Im not interested on it. Im strictly speaking as an end user.

<comment><USER27> Did they fix the issue of pocketing the money on behalf of content creators who are not registered to Brave?

<comment><USER5> We never pocketed the money. In past years we gave out grants to users, who could send their tokens to unverified creators, and we would hold tokens in settlement awaiting those creators sooner or later signing up. We are still holding.

We switched over the end of last year to have your browser hold for 90 days, retrying each month to reconcile anonymously in case the creator verified. After that the tokens go back into the browser wallet, or if you have signed up with Uphold to put in or take out your tokens, into your BAT card at Uphold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can anyone explain why Brave uses BAT? As far as I can tell Brave would be much better if they used USD instead.

<comment><USER29> [https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#why-not- bitcoin](https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#why-not-bitcoin)

<comment><USER28> That explains why they can't use Bitcoin, but it doesn't explain why they can't use USD + a database.

<comment><USER5> USD does not work in all regions, believe it or not. Moreover it cannot be sent without an intermediary that is heavily licensed and regulated. Contrary to maximalists, we do aim in our Apollo phase for BAT moving on-blockchain with anonymity and low fees. Current blockchains and USD do neither

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This apparently just means that Brave users can now donate BATs (Brave Attention Tokes) to Wikipedia using an icon in their address bar. What the exchange rate is between BATs and USDs is left artfully unstated.

<comment><USER31> For what it's worth: [https://www.coinbase.com/price/basic-attention- token](https://www.coinbase.com/price/basic-attention-token)

<comment><USER32> Wait, that's actually kind of really good!? Out of 50,000 views, if 0.01% donated (500 BATs) that translates to $85! Maybe my expectations are low but that's more than enough to cover server costs for a month. It certainly doesn't pay rent but it's better than not making any money at all.

<comment><USER5> Wikipedia relies on donations, this adds another method of donating, automatically and regularly, plus tips on top. In the nonprofit space you don't turn down more and easier ways to donate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> \- do you plan to have a simple password instead of email link?

\- are there any brave banners i can use to promote brave?

\- will u provide a command line tool to verify websites?

\- why are referrals tied to channels instead of account?

\- will you expand to micropayments?

\- will brave always block ads everywhere or will you switch to blocking only on verified sites?

Some form if instant payment is sorely needed. I hope regulators can catch up with reality , or else maybe brave should move to another country

( it s also comical to witness the hostility of HN towards brave. Are we full of google shills here? )

<comment><USER34> (disclaimer engineer @ brave on creators team)

> do you plan to have a simple password instead of email link?

security gave the A-okay to give users an option to be able to stay signed in for 30 days. soon you will be able to check a box to stay signed in.

> are there any brave banners i can use to promote brave?

[https://brave.com/assets-for-creators/](https://brave.com/assets-for- creators/)

> will u provide a command line tool to verify websites?

not in the foreseeable future. we have had some discussions allowing keybase as a trusted connection and mark any properties they have verified as verified in brave as well. we might have more news on that front in the future.

> why are referrals tied to channels instead of account?

very good question, this is a symptom of tech debt. we're hoping to move it over to the account very soon

> will you expand to micropayments?

we're discussing more ways to spend your BAT and that's all I'll say about that :)

> will brave always block ads everywhere or will you switch to blocking only > on verified sites?

brave will block 3rd party ads, in the future we will be introducing publisher ads which will allow websites to define sections of their site to for Brave to insert local privacy-preserving advertisements. the publishers get 70% of the revenue and users receive 30%.

<comment><USER35> Why do users receive 30% of revenue? They are the ones being advertised to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Lots of specific comments here about Brave, pro and con.

I would like to explain where I think it fits in the larger scheme of things. There is broad agreement that the web is deeply broken, with all sorts of bad consequences, because of how web sites get their money from advertisements and selling data.

Now the only way this is going to get fixed, as far as I can tell, is for someone to come up with an alternative financial model that publishers will actually adopt.

There are many projects working on coming up with this. Brave seems to be a lot further along than anyone else, and so I hope it succeeds. Either that or that someone else does.

<comment><USER37> If you are familiar with other projects in this space, would you mind sharing? I'd be interested in following their progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't want BATs and I don't want ads. I want to be able to donate to content creators through Apple Pay instantly.

<comment><USER39> I don't see why it would matter what form you're paying the creator in. I suppose in the absence of an apple pay direct link, you'd have to just use apple pay to pay for BAT. I think there's some sort of "re-fill $X/month" feature, but I can't seem to find it.

[https://brave.com/funding-your-brave-wallet/](https://brave.com/funding-your- brave-wallet/)

<comment><USER40> ...Why not skip the middleman and just fund websites with, you know, USD?

Obviously in the case of Wikipedia, we can donate (and please do so!) but I'd gladly throw $0.20 at a website to not get ads for a day or something.

<comment><USER39> Is there a different way to automatically pay based on how long I actually spend on a site?

<comment><USER3> That's the default behavior, known as Auto Contribute in Brave. If 10% of your time is spent on Wikipedia, they'll get 10% of your monthly budget.

You can contribute in this manner, or/also via tips (which are one-off contributions). You can also set a fixed percentage for the property, and set it as a recurring contribution each month.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, that's one reason I use brave. The parent was suggesting that they wanted to do something like this without Brave, but I don't know of a real competitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I switched from Chrome to Brave this week after getting overwhelmed with some of Google's recent design decisions on Chrome. The web inspector and yubikey support in Brave made the transition super easy. The adblocking works about the same as ublock did for me in Chrome so the browsing experience feels similar. Great work Brave team on giving Chrome users a privacy-friendly option to easily switch to.

<comment><USER42> If you are still using chromium you're still part of the problem

<comment><USER5> Same for oxygen breathed by bad and good alike. Or tools, where the details and how the tool is used make problems or solutions, depending.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Looking into this only briefly, it didn't take long to find a lot of very questionable decisions made by Brave:

1\. They're positioning themselves as both an advertiser and a privacy advocate[1], which strikes me as more of a strategy for bootstrapping revenue than a trustworthy moral position. The _entire point_ of crypto micropayments is to pay for content with crypto rather than attention/privacy. Why should I view Brave's ads rather than the other ads on the internet from advertisers who also claim their ads respect privacy? The fact that Brave has decided to get into bed with advertisers at all shows they're committed to profit, not to users: micropayments are just a way to diversify for Brave, which will quickly fall to the wayside if it fails to provide the revenue they want.

2\. The entire concept of a Brave Verified Publisher stinks. It positions Brave as a censor. If this system takes off, then suddenly Brave has control over who gets paid for content on the internet, and can censor content they don't like. And this isn't hypothetical, _they plan to do this_ : their TOS[2] explicitly contains a code of conduct which contains a long list of things they will terminate your account for: they _promise_ to use their power as censors to enforce of US copyright/patent law and also a wide variety of subjective social norms. This also shows their commitment to being an advertiser rather than an application that serves users: if you're serving users then you let them pay for the content they want to pay for, but if you're serving advertisers, then you can't let advertisers brands be seen as supporting questionable content.

3\. BAT based in Ethereum seems to be basically a way to ride the wave of cryptocurrency hype while still positioning themselves as a central authority/middleman. If they weren't trying to position themselves as a middleman, they would just make the micropayments in Ether directly, or better yet, in a cryptocurrency that doesn't have a history of forking the blockchain to fix an bug in a major users' contract[3]. If they weren't trying to ride cryptocurrency hype, they'd just allow micropayments via a much-simpler-and- more-reliable REST API or similar since they're already the central authority anyway.

I don't think we can trust Brave with our privacy or attention. I don't think we can trust Brave with the decision of who gets paid for content. I don't think we need Brave as a middleman to pay content publishers. I don't like the state of how content is paid for on the internet, but I don't think Brave is the solution.

It's disappointing to me that Wikipedia has decided to associate their name with Brave's. A big part of why I respect Wikipedia is their long-standing policy of keeping independent from advertisers, and it seems naive of them to have not realized that _Brave is an advertiser_. I can understand why Wikipedia has made this decision, but I still think it is a compromise of Wikipedia's values, and I hope they'll reverse their decision in the future.

[1] [https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/](https://brave.com/brave-ads- waitlist/)

[2] [https://brave.com/terms-of-use/](https://brave.com/terms-of-use/)

[3] [https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain- hard-f...](https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain-hard-fork- return-dao-investor-funds)

<comment><USER44> They're just using privacy as a marketing tool, as user behavior can be tracked externally by observing the transactions on the network. Brave makes things objectively worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Brave is such a clever concept. I'm just mad I didn't think of it. But then again, they've got some heavy technical firepower behind it.

I think they're genuinely doing all the right things:

* Opt-in advertising

* Client-side advertising

* Using a cryptocoin to avoid the microtransaction payment processor problem

They will probably do fine having had a very successful ICO but I can't imagine anyone actually donating meaningful amounts of money to any site. After all, you can just get it for free.

</comment><comment><USER46> Been using Brave for about 2 years now and here's the deal with BAT, Advertisers and Privacy.

As soon as you offer quid-pro-quo exhanges involving digital assets you open the door to the SEC/IRS. With even a modicum of success in market share Brave risks opening the door to the two most openly privacy smashing bureaucracies in financial history.

Brave can lament all they want but in the end digital assets will come to heel and SOX/Dodd Frank still stand.

</comment><comment><USER47> > The average mobile browser user pays as much as $23 a month in data charges > to download ads and trackers — that's $276 a year.

Is that true?

<comment><USER48> "as much as" just means one or more people have really expensive mobile internet and visit ad-heavy sites. It's not really saying much. My entire phone bill is ~half that.

<comment><USER47> They say "the average user".

<comment><USER48> True. It doesn't make sense. "Average" is in aggregate, but "as much as" is a single maximum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> 1\. Build a theme over Chromium

2\. Add your ads and tracking system over it

3\. Brand it as "X Browser"

This is not a browser, this is a skin over Chrome with a business model that's built over a crypto scam. Your army of online shills and your attempts to connect yourselves with reputable online entities such as Wikipedia won't change that fact.

<comment><USER50> I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say Brave is a scam, but it _does_ extort companies and websites by effectively saying, "We're shutting down your monetization sources (no longer showing your ads). If you want that money (or a different cut), sign up for our platform instead."

<comment><USER5> Our users have rights to block or unblock ads, and to try our alternative ways of supporting sites. No site has an overriding right to force ads on its users, not by law or by the design of the web standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Please stop promoting brave either you do it in good faith or paid or you are a shill. everything with "Acceptable ads program" is a cancer

<comment><USER5> We don't do "Acceptable ads program". Are you willing to look at what we do more closely, in order to understand it?

/be

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> How come more websites do not accept brave payments? If I had a website, what is the process required to begin accepting them?

Edit: typo

<comment><USER15> You have to be a verified publisher. There was a whole story about Tom Scott (English YouTuber) rightfully tweeting about it.

Brave changed themselves after to not collect donations for unverified publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Hey All - Brave BD rep here ... let me know if I can help in any way.

<comment><USER54> I hope other Wikimedia properties, like Wikidata and Commons, get added too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Wikipedia joins Brave "Protection Scheme" you mean.

<comment><USER56> It could only be considered a protection scheme if you were already relying on ads which Brave blocked. Wikipedia does not run ads.

<comment><USER24> > Wikipedia does not run ads.

Most other websites do. Replacing their ads and running different ads to make money with is unethical.

Toolbars in the early 2000s that did that were considered malware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> So finally Brave doesn't just take the money people thought they gave Wikipedia?

</comment><comment><USER44> Brave is a scam, with user funds being seized and converted into other currencies against their will. By issuing their own token instead of just using Bitcoin, they re-implement the same central banking system which the technology is designed to replace.

</comment><comment><USER58> Why doesn't brave adopt a stable coin like DAI for donations? Tokens are pretty volatile and it would suck for the publisher to lose money because they didn't cash out immediately. That won't be a problem though with DAI.

[https://www.coinbase.com/price/dai](https://www.coinbase.com/price/dai)

<comment><USER29> (Brave employee) The BAT is used for more than contributions. The token has a distinct use case as the unit of account for attention and services on the platform.

[https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#representation](https://basicattentiontoken.org/faq/#representation)

<comment><USER58> Thanks. I wished people would explain that instead of downvoting.

<comment><USER29> Glad it was helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Wikipedia hates cryptocurrencies they constantly delete their articles even Bitcoin was denied an article at one point. I feel Wikipedia is violating their own conflict of interest policies with this.

<comment><USER60> Please back that up with some references.

It should be easy by linking to the respective edits.

<comment><USER59> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Bl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Blockchain_and_cryptocurrencies) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=cryptocu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=cryptocurrency&prefix=Wikipedia%3AArticles+for+deletion%2F&fulltext=Search+archives&fulltext=Search&ns0=1) Major cryptocurrencies deleted include Cardano, Chainlink, IOTA and Lisk. Also the Wikipedia admin David Gerard runs an anti cryptocurrency blog.

<comment><USER5> David is quite a character. I did not know he was a wp admin.

Brave has tons of verified publishers, see [https://batgrowth.com/](https://batgrowth.com/). Our verifying a site or channel does not thereby endorse all or any of its content. As noted elsewhere here, we aim to distribute if not decentralize verification so it is even more censorship resistant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> That's interesting and also essentially nullifies Brave's credibility as some kind of privacy browser. Either they are ignorantly unaware or they are complicit in supporting wikipedia, one of the many digital organizations that have in the last years gone full on dystopian censorship thought police, even if it is not apparent to the casual observer.

Case in point beyond just their close relationship and integration into censorious and authoritarian Google and Youtube, look for a link to the official government report on the definitely not muslim Bataclan attack in Paris, which details the gruesome slaughter, torture, disfigurement, dismemberment, and torment the attackers perpetrated upon their victims; which was all of course withheld from the public until it was forced into the light by the court case. You will not find a link to the report in spite of it being out for many months now, and you will be unsuccessful at adding a link to the report, let alone highlighting the brutal descriptions from the several hundred pages long report, somewhere in the wikipedia page.

It's full on censorship, and the most pernicious and nefarious and sick part of this digital censorship is that deletion, shadow banning, banning, or simply colluding across organizations to erase someone's digital personality and identity goes basically unnoticed by the general public that is none the wiser that someone was ushered off to the digital gulag or digital mass grave ... pooof ... that comment, information, person is gone, with not trace and no accountability or transparency.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Memorise? - <AUTHOR> Do you have some tips, books suggestion, blogs to increase/develop memorizing skill? I find hard in retaining information that I read, study or learn. Are there any techniques to actively improve our memory so that I can retain more information about what I studied? <comment><USER2> Anki[1] can work well with some things. For example, I used it after reading through a book on SSH and another book on Sudo to drill configuration options that it highlighted into my head. My retention has been fantastic, and I can easily configure both these days.

My process for doing that was to read through each book on Kindle, highlighting as I go. I then go to my Kindle notes[2] and convert them into an Anki deck for each book. Then it's a matter of going through the deck whenever you have idle time: waiting in lines, TV commercials, bio breaks, etc.

[1] [https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) [2] [https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook](https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook)

</comment><comment><USER3> Use Anki. Anki is a free and open-source spaced repetition flashcard program that uses SM2 algorithm.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki_\(software\))</comment>


How to Deal With the Fear of Quitting Your Job in Order to Start Your Own Business - <AUTHOR> http://briankim.net/blog/2008/04/how-to-deal-with-the-fear-of-quitting-your-job-in-order-to-start-your-own-business/

<comment><AUTHOR> There have been lot of startup advice from techies and hackers but this one is something different and offers some good advice:

1)Simple Life: strip all the clutter in your life so your business can benefit from your clear and undivided attention.

2)Marketing and sales is the lifeblood of any business and both factors are hugely responsible for the success or failure in the beginning stages of any business</comment>


Recent research into the rock art and function of Nawarla Gabarnmang, Australia - <AUTHOR> http://australianarchaeology.com/2013/04/recent-research-into-the-rock-art-and-function-of-nawarla-gabarnmang-jawoyn-country-northern-territory/

<comment><USER2> This is a very fascinating subject, but it appears that the link is down at the moment - has anyone any insight into these excavations and what they may have discovered? It is absolutely fascinating that this artwork has survived 40,000+ years of human occupation, and I think its probably one of the wonders of the world that we are able to discover such things, even now. It sure puts the Western world into perspective - Gabarnmang is 8x older than our existing sense of civilization. A truly wonderful discovery which I hope will bring context to the world today - especially in relation to our modern understanding of the ancient civilization of the indigenous Australians who, alas, have suffered greatly as a result of our Western, European, ignorance of the world around us. I sure hope we are able to preserve these cultural treasures long beyond the current century .. and I also hope we discover more from this wonderful site.

If anyone has anything else to contribute about the excavation and discoveries in Gabarnmang, I for one would love to hear about it. Ancient society as expressed by the discovery and interpretation of the remaining artistic artifacts is a topic that should be very well respected by us modernist, technology oriented peoples..</comment>


'Single domain' and 'multi domain' HTTPS certificates are the same thing - <AUTHOR> https://certsimple.com/blog/single-multi-domain-https-certificates-are-the-same-thing <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Short version: 'single' and 'multi domain' HTTPS certificates have been the same thing for about a decade. The only reason they're referred to as separate products are commercial:

\- old systems in a stagnant industry that haven't been updated

\- the chance to create arbitrary product distinctions

Pretty much everything in the article is referenced in RFC 2818 (HTTP Over TLS), the Baseline Requirements, and RFC 6125 (x509 for TLS) but if there's anything missing let me know.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think that many newer vendors of certificates are following this model. Let's Encrypt and AWS Certificate Manager both simply have certificates with names. One name, two names, 50 names, still just a "certificate".

(Disclosure, I work with AWS)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. It's a pity the older players who still issue most of the certificates seem to have completely disengaged technically.</comment></comment>


Animals that are currently monitored using facial recognition technology - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/developing/2018/10/what-creatures-may-we-place-in-the-panopticon.html <comment><USER2> Facial recognition for wildlife is something that I would like to see where a one-way function just gave birds and other animals names.

So imagine that you regularly take pictures of the view where you live and the phone-camera-app just identifies wildlife in the scene and gives names to creatures in the scene. If the algorithm is consistent then you could 'see' who had turned up to the bird table, for instance.

In this way the birds wouldn't just be random birds but over time you could get to know them and spot regular faces. Currently who knows if the squirrels you see are the same ones that you saw yesterday. The fox that you see, is it always the same one? If the facial recognition for foxes identified and 'hashed' to 'Fred' every day then, if another fox turns up, e.g. hashed to 'Betty', then you would know that 'Fred' was not alone.

Now if the sightings went to a database then you could work out where 'Fred' or 'Betty' roamed, how old they were and start to look out for them.

To us all animals within their species look the same but if you study them then you do get to spot and identify individuals. AI is bound to be better at doing this than us and could be used to effortlessly identify our fellow creatures on earth so we can appreciate them and start to care for them.

<comment><USER3> The iNaturalist app already lets you upload a photo and then suggests visually similar species. However it relies mainly on people for identifying observations. So right now they are building the dataset required to offer a real world Pokedex in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if Bloomberg and NY timed their articles to coincide with Snapchat adding facial tracking for cats, or if it's simply a happy coincidence.</comment>


The Stealthy Hardware Trojan that Can Affect Intel Ivy Bridge Processors - <AUTHOR> http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/34574/the-stealthy-hardware-trojan-that-can-affect-intel-ivy-bridge-processors/

<comment><AUTHOR> Paper here: [http://people.umass.edu/gbecker/BeckerChes13.pdf](http://people.umass.edu/gbecker/BeckerChes13.pdf)</comment>


Cryptome hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.cryptome.org/2012/01/cryptome-virus.htm

<comment><USER2> That's rough. It looks like they still have no idea how their server was compromised, although they appear to be running Frontpage extensions (if the posted scan is accurate), which can be a great way to get bit. I have no idea what the state of Apache's Frontpage extensions are.

If it was a Frontpage exploit though, then that should show up in the server logs. If the server logs don't show anything suspicious, then I'd be more concerned about how it happened and whether any other system files have been touched.

rkhunter (<http://rkhunter.sourceforge.net/>) used to be a nice way of getting started with a problem like this, but I haven't used it in a long time and it looks like the project might be dead now.

One of the nice things about using BackupPC on a server is that it can show you when files change for a particular directory, which might make server cleanup easier, depending on how careless the attacker was.</comment>


Why DHCP Lease Expiration Matters for Your Coffee Shop Router - <AUTHOR> http://nerderati.com/2016/07/06/why-dhcp-lease-expiration-matters-for-your-coffee-shop-router/ <comment><USER2> It still kills me to see everyone using 192.168.1.0/24\. IMHO, there is only one reason not to use 10.0.0.0/8 and it's because that can sometimes conflict with the address space commonly used for work VPNs. If that's an issue, an arbitrary /16 from the 172.16 - 172.32 range would be a good bet. I haven't really been using cheap consumer routers with their stock OS in a while (maybe 10 years), but is it still common for them to be stuck on 192.168.x.0/24 for the LAN side? I kinda assumed this was more of a problem from like 10 years ago, but I could be wrong I guess.

<comment><USER3> What is the reasoning for not using the 192.168.0.x address space? I'm a networking newbie who doesn't understand. I've actually changed a few routers to use the 192.168.0.x instead of the 10.x.x.x space that was the default. Why should I not have done that?

<comment><USER4> No reason. All work equally well

<comment><USER3> Thanks. That's what I figured, but wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TLDR - very long technical explanation of DHCP with recommendation to reduce the lease time.

<comment><USER6> Correct!</comment></comment>


Startup boot camp Y Combinator illustrates dearth of women in tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/twitter/ci_15517047?source=rss

<comment><USER3> Statistically founding a tech startup is at the intersection of two things which are primarily male-dominated at the moment: founding companies and IT. It's really only when they're multiplied together that it becomes so starkly biased towards males.

My long standing theory on the tech front has been that the hook in the 80s and early 90s for kids getting into technology was computer games, which were largely marketed to boys.

My little sister, however, was born in 1988, and by the time she was using a computer the primary hook was the internet, which (as I recall) young girls spend _more_ time on than young boys.

Like I had, she learned to program at a young age, knew HTML when she was 11, Java when she was 14, and so on. However, also like me, she had a lot of aptitude for music.

I was _fiercely_ discouraged from music. My parents saw it as a waste of time. Becoming a software engineer was respectable. Heck, I started college in 1997 when it seemed like about the best thing in the universe that a kid could go into.

Now, my sister was encouraged in music. My mom moved 90 miles away so that she could go to a magnet high school for performing arts, my parents bought her a $3000 flute and drove her around the country to top conservatories for auditions when the time came. But even up to her senior year in high school she was considering a double major in physics and music, but the interest in physics was largely downplayed by my parents.

Now, what happened there? Two kids, both good at mathematical stuff and music, same parents, _wildly_ different parenting approaches. I don't think my parents in the meantime considered music any more _useful_ – it was simply acceptable that she do something _useless_ , while I had to do something useful. I think you see where this is going.

In college I noticed this again – the computer science department was about 95% male, while the math department was only 50% male. The difference obviously wasn't in analytical abilities – I think anybody that could get through a math degree could get through a CS degree. No, the difference was that almost all of the girls were minoring in education and intending to become math teachers.

I don't think that _everything_ in the gap is nurture; there's probably some truth to chest-beating nature of starting a company, but the scales certainly are tipped heavily in the direction of boys by our upbringing.

<comment><USER4> _the scales certainly are tipped heavily in the direction of boys by our upbringing._

Perhaps, but...

 _I was fiercely discouraged from music._

Your own upbringing sounds pretty atypical.

<comment><USER3> To be clear, it wasn't that my parents discouraged music from the get-go; they discouraged me from taking music seriously. In high school I taught myself to play four instruments, went into a studio and recorded a single for an indy compilation CD with my band and spent most of my free money and time on music stuff.

The contrast was that while I was buying new instruments with money I made from mowing lawns and working at a burger joint, my parents _still_ complained about me wasting the money on them. When my sister began taking music seriously they bought her nice instruments and never pushed her to get a job so that she could focus on music.

Ironically, by the end of college, while studying computer science, I was paying my bills with music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Speaking as a young woman in the industry whose startup has successfully turned into a solid small business and had to deal with condescending remarks from my male colleagues and clients (though very, very rarely on purpose), I would say it is due to both societal issues and the way computing is currently done.

Another issue is that young girls just don't generally like to spend a lot of time alone, and technology is overall an isolating pursuit, at least while you hone your skills. It's pretty easy for me to sit down with my young nephews and hang out on the computer together, but my nieces get bored of staring at the screen and prefer to make things, so I get their attention more when we play with sensors and robots.

I expect at some point technology will break out of the two dimensional confines, and young girls will pick up computing as much as they can excel at knitting and sewing, which I use primarily as an example of complex pursuits requiring attention to detail and logic but with a physical result.

Give it time. Bring your girls up to love technology as much as your boys and they'll be participating equally but in different ways. Accept, and enjoy, that girls and boys approach technology with different goals.

<comment><USER6> What is it about the way computing is currently done that inhibits women outside of social norms?

I wonder If programming syntax as it is designed might have some influence. There is some evidence that men and women use language differently, is it possible that common computing syntax designed mostly by men to actualize their thought process is biased towards the gender?

<comment><USER7> Then maths would be biaised too towards boys. But studies have shown that gender doesn't affect competence in maths.

<comment><USER4> Other studies have shown that it has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My wife works in an industry dominated by women and gay males. AFAICT, nobody in this industry thinks this is for any reason other than women and gay males being interested at the work and few straight males being interested. People get that, as a whole, gender and sexuality shape your interests. There's no scare articles about something being wrong with the industry, or large companies trying to hire straight male quotas, but where they exist, people like them and appreciate them for what is frequently a different and refreshing focus.

And as a straight male, I'm OK with this.

<comment><USER9> When I was a kid I loved dressing up and makeup, etc. My parents (thankfully) did not discourage this type of play, but did they encourage me to make a career out of this interest? No. Was there anything in society that pushed me, a straight male, towards this career? Not really. Instead, while I was playing with Barbie I was also telling everyone I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, mainly because I liked paper airplanes.

Kids seek approval from adults, adults approved of my interest in engineering, not my interest in fashion. Is it a surprise that I majored in CS?

<comment><USER8> You do make a good point. Part of the reason I was attracted to my wife is an appreciation of the traditionally creative industries, something that's always held my interest - I use to buy a lot of fashion magazines as a kid, and I got started programming by doing architecture inside video games. I think that boys interested in the arts are often pushed towards 'manly' pursuits like architecture rather than traditionally soft skills like fashion design - <USER2> parents were this way, it yours seems yours were too. Now I'm 30, and I regret not engaging the creative part of my brain more readily.

Perhaps we should be saying that girls who want to make stuff on computers should be encouraged to pursue that, just like boys who want to make clothes. No quotas, no 50% expectation, just encouragement for the kids who need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something that bothers me whenever something like this comes up is that children are assumed to be one dimensional beings. I know for sure that at some level, be it proprioception or some difference in processing information, male and female brains are different. However, the catch is that those differences may not actually be that profound.

Children as young as 3 can pick up gender cues from the environment and base their behavior on that. I know that I did. I just knew that I couldn't play with dolls. I knew I couldn't talk about babies and things like that. I knew I was expected to pick fights with other kids. I knew what my parents expected from me, and in order to seek their approval I did precisely that.

There are so many subtle societal cues which govern behavior. You tend to only notice them when you are carefully paying attention constantly. They are undertones in conversations. It is how people look at you. It is what they first talk about. It is in their facial expressions, and somehow unconsciously we internalize them all.

What is even more interesting is what happens when a child is gender variant. Societies response to such a child happens to be quite telling, and unfortunately for a child, at least, such things matter. It mattered to me and it matters for any child. At that age approval is everything.

So is it surprising that more women don't go into tech?

In the coming years when this generation grows up in an environment of different expectations and viewpoints. I think that there will be more women in tech, and they will wonder why women earlier didn't choose it as a career.

The point is that kids must be respected and loved not confined as beings who have to grow into pre-defined roles. Only then can such things change.

</comment><comment><USER11> Taking a cue from Philip Greenspun, maybe the real question is: why are there so many men? In my experience, at least half the people in "tech" are miserable. HN.YC focuses on the winners, not the losers. For every young startup hotshot, there are 1000 middling software engineers working on connecting the invoice database to the PO database and wishing they never got into the field in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER12> There aren't very many women going into tech because there aren't very many women in tech. Male or female, when a kid is picking a college or major, they tend to listen to their friends (and maybe even family). If none of their female friends are considering Computer Science, it's an uphill battle to sell a girl on that. I don't think most teens care as much about this as parents, but if they can't see positive role models already in that field, it's even harder to consider that field.

I don't think it's getting much better soon. My daughter's on a First LEGO League team (4 boys, 2 girls) and we see lots of teams without a single girl on them. Our local Girl Scout council got a grant to fund several First LEGO League teams. We've tried to work with them to mentor any new teams but no success. (Now, maybe an all-Girl Scout team is unrealistic, but it has been done.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Random thought comes to mind: Does anyone think that Dan Brown novels might help get more women into Math/CS? They have a tendency to have female techies. I know at least one woman who was inspired by one of the novels to learn a bit about crypto.

<comment><USER14> Most of the sci-fi I've read have great female role models. Dan Brown is an awful writer so would be better to push better writers - get their films made! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why are so many people equating math with programming with science? There might be some bleed between the subjects, but Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, none of these strike me as requiring particularly high level math skills.

</comment><comment><USER16> Only 14 out of 450 are women? That's just 3 percent. Yikes.

<comment><USER17> Paul invited me to apply for YC but I declined because I didn't want to move for 3 months. (I'm a girl.) I don't know if that is still in effect, but it is ridiculous, and more men than women will go to ridiculous lengths.

Compare that percentage to a course I just finished teaching, 12 weeks on bootstrapping - how to make your first profitable product, on the side.

I had triple the percentage of female students - 4 women out of 50 participants. They were all 30 or older. I am reaching women that no seed fund will reach, and they are going to be successful.

I expect that percentage to grow.

<comment><USER18> > I don't know if that is still in effect, but it is ridiculous, and more men > than women will go to ridiculous lengths.

It isn't ridiculous, it's the whole basis of the program. I did the program last winter, convinced that I could do it just as well from home. I'm now convinced of the opposite: doing a successful startup (excepting side-project type startups, which are valid but different) requires being in the valley.

It may be ridiculous in the sense that it is a hardship, and if you think men will go through this hardship more than women, then I think we know why the numbers are so skewed.

<comment><USER19> When I lived in the bay area, it seemed more like a vacation than a hardship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The most informative thread on the Internet on this subject is probably this one:

<http://www.plos.org/cms/node/75>

That's an extremely informative, citation dense conversation which took place in the aftermath of the Summers/Barres imbroglio a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER21> Either on the whole females are fundamentally less capable of excelling in mathematical subjects or it's a societal thing. I believe it's the latter. I think the article hit it on the head: "girls are often told that's OK and try something else, but boys are encouraged to work harder."

Math is fun because it's challenging and part of my motivation comes from my peers', parents', and teachers' expectations that I excel.

I think the problem rises from a combination of:

        "Math is hard... let's go shopping!"

and more insidiously

        "Physics is hard... let's go to English class!"

I've seen a few really smart girls get frustrated with physics or chemistry, give up, write it off, and then focus their effort on english or history or some other humanities class.

<comment><USER22> My favorite professor was a mathematician who did her doctorate at Zürich in the 1940s. Needless to say, for most of her career she was the only woman in the department. With the advent of feminism she would get called up frequently by activists or journalists asking her to comment on all the obstacles she faced as a woman (a request she steadfastly rejected), and also on how to get girls into math. Her routine answer to the latter was that if anyone had tried to "get her into math" she would have promptly dropped math and taken up embroidery. But my favorite story was when the controversy hit about the talking Barbie who said "Math is hard." She was phoned up and asked what she had to say about this. Her response: "Barbie is right."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> YC is somewhat infamous for having a bias. Their reputation is that if you're not a college-aged Caucasian male, you need not apply.

Of course, there is a dearth of women in tech, but I think it has to be exacerbated by this kind of subconscious preference.</comment>


Show HN: An SVG based snake game - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appnician.snackysnakes

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to say that you steer the snake by tilting the phone. That's kind of important for the whole experience. There used to be a virtual joystick but I temporarily removed it as I think accelerometer steering is superior choice in this particular game.

</comment><comment><USER2> Quite fun to play! Couldn't figure out what the two buttons next to the sound on/off button do though.. Any ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are music, sound effects and vibration. You see, for total immersion the device actually vibrates when you crash providing that extra level of realism:P

Awesome that you like it!</comment></comment>


Crypt.Chat for EU users on EU servers - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=chat.crypt.cloud

<comment><USER2> > Crypt uses AES-128 encryption to secure the connection between you and our > servers, once at our servers all the data is encrypted at AES-256. All of > our servers are located in the EU, currenly France with uploads such as > images and documents being stored with Amazon Web Services in Ireland to > increase the performance of our App.

So everything is available in plain-text on their servers, and in case of uploads on servers within reach of US agencies? That's not great compared to other offerings, and makes the entire "EU only!" advertising pointless.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yay! First fork of actor.im in less than week after release'</comment>


Windows or Chromebook? A Best Buy salesman told me it isn't even close - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-or-chromebook-a-best-buy-salesman-told-me-it-isnt-even-close/ <comment><USER2> Why is a Best Buy employee's opinion relevant? They hire teenagers off the street who don't know anything but are willing to talk all day like they do.

I used to work there, albeit years ago, but the amount of misinformation spewed by "product specialists" rivaled politics.

<comment><USER3> At some level, they understand what people who go into best buy look for and buy. But those who work there usually have big personal preferences, so it may wash out. They are rarely the super casual user. At the very least they're not on commission (though they DO have sales targets, and sometimes those can be for specific brands). Best buy built their business on taking the commission model and not paying anyone commission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not really related to the topic at hand, but it's just occured to me that this is what passes for journalism now.

<comment><USER5> It's a humor column. Lighten up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've wondered about this a while ago: Is it possible to do real work on an android or chromebook device.

I'm on trains, busses, ... a lot, in general without internet. And I just take a laptop. Dont care about mac win or linux. I do some bookkeeping in a spreadsheet, or some programming, I write some text.

I hate to do anything productive on this (cheap) smartphone. No keyboard or mouse, basic software is missing,... It's great for consuming content, for a quick search or checking a map. But as soon as I want to do something, it all falls apart experience-wise. So I waste time in a game or HN when im on a bus, instead of doing something I like or have to.

So how do you people do it?

<comment><USER7> Termux on Android plus Apple Bluetooth keyboard plus Chromecast to anything with HDMI port is the most compact / portable enviroment I have. And quite powerful with latest VIM, node, nvm, Go, awscli, gcloud and whatever you like.

For everyday work I use ChromeOS on MacPro 13 and 10 year old Thinkpad x230. With Debian sid in chroot. All apps work in GUI (so in Chrome as apps) like Instagram, Tinder, Spotify, Youtube Music, even MS Word. There is also VirtualBox included.

I haven't used Windows laptop in 10 years or so. What am I missing?

<comment><USER8> You're running ChromeOS on a 13 year old Mac Pro? What am I missing?

<comment><USER7> On 13 inch Macbook Pro Retina 2015..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The power of marketing campaigns. It's a bit disturbing to see Google push so hard for this - and still majority of ordinary of customers just want a cheap Windows laptop. The Best Buy guy gave pretty reasonable advice. Also confirming my suspicion that actually hardly anyone wants that expensive Pixelbook. But as long as one can install Linux it should be fine - but I'd rather pick a slick Surface Laptop.

<comment><USER10> Pixelbooks can run most Debian packages, so I've heard, and container work seems to be in the code base. I'm planning to try one out to see if it makes sense for the non devs at my company. Not allowing windows machines because security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am usually anti-google and I would never use a chrome book. But man! I had to edit a pdf a while ago and it was such a horrible experience on windows. A free app on adroid did it easy-peasy.

I would still prefer windows over a chromebook but I don't think people who prefer a chromebook are clueless either.

<comment><USER12> What kind of editing were you doing? I've found PDF-XChange[1] to be pretty good on Windows, it has all the annotation functions.

Disclaimer: Not in any way affiliated with PDF-XChange, just a long-time user.

[1] [https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange- editor](https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor)</comment></comment>


How to get good customer support - <AUTHOR> https://blog.fortrabbit.com/how-to-get-good-support <comment><USER2> > This is the most time-efficient way to handle being stuck, and it's the most > respectful of other people's time, too.

No it is not.

1\. People have other things to do. "being stuck" just threw a wrench in the gears of someone who may have many other things to do. They did not plan on being stuck and have therefore not alloted time for it. Therefore it is the most time-efficient to hand the problem of to someone whose time has been alloted in that way (i.e. your support team) and who can probably solve the problem faster because he looks for these kinds of problems all the time.

2\. It's the most respectful of your time, sure. But as a customer I could not care less about that. It's definitively not the most respectful of my time asking for that, and it is definitively not the most respectful of my customers time.</comment>


Ask HN: Are explainer / landing page videos a good investment? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I think it depends on your product. If you have a complicated product that would be easily visualized, then an explainer could be a good investment.

If it is a marketing thing like dollar shave club, it could also be a good investment.

But if people can get the gist of your product without an explainer video, it might not be a good investment.</comment>


FreeBSD 11.0 Now Available - <AUTHOR> https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2016-October/001760.html <comment><USER2> For anyone else curious about this strange and seemingly out-of-place command in the upgrade instructions:

# : > /usr/bin/bspatch

See [https://www.freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD- SA-16:29...](https://www.freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD- SA-16:29.bspatch.asc)

> Because this vulnerability exists in bspatch, a component used by freebsd- > update, a special procedure must be followed to safely update. First, > truncate bspatch to a zero byte file.

> FreeBSD-update will fall back to replacing bspatch, rather than applying a > binary patch. Proceed with FreeBSD-update as usual.

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be a good moment to be "that guy" and kindly remind you to donate: [https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the highlights don't mention the release's best bits. The full release notes are way larger and it really depends on what you do, what you might consider the most interesting part.

Also I am happy to see a bunch of "Sponsored by..." Netflix, Yandex, NGINX Inc, Netgate, Citrix, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Dell, Multiplay, ScaleEngine, etc. in there.

[https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/relnotes.html](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/relnotes.html)

<comment><USER5> As a full time developer, you are correct that the relnotes don't capture all the great stuff. It is difficult to keep track of all that is going on. The only way I know how is to continuously read the commit logs. But distilling that down into a useful document for end users is quite hard, especially retroactively.

I will say that the release has non-trivial improvements in TCP performance (Mike Karels, Matt Macy, Netflix crew).

VNET jails also should be safe to tear down, and SysV SHM can be jailed/virtualized which should be interesting to many users.

<comment><USER6> >I will say that the release has non-trivial improvements in TCP performance

For your average home / small business user? Or do you need to be at Netflix scale to see the benefits? (that's not a bad thing).

<comment><USER5> It matters most for people doing 10-100gbps throughput, CPU usage will be lower and more stable in all cases though.

There has been a lot of improvement to many network card drivers in 11, and I am helping to push/fund the final integration of Matt Macy's "iflib" for the common intel em/igb/ixgbe drivers.

There are a lot of goodput improvements coming soon, which will affect all TCP users. I had Matt Macy upgrade TCP CUBIC to match 2016 RFC and most Linux behaviors (HyStart). Hiren Panchasara has been working full time for almost 2 years to address many other goodput and correctness issues in the TCP stack. Some of these are in 11, but the majority will hit in 11.1.

Another company is working on the recently announced BBR congestion control from Google and a TCP stack with RACK/PRR [https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/201606/Transport](https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/201606/Transport). The end result of all this will be a more tightly integrated and coherent TCP implementation, which should make FreeBSD have the best network stack again in 2017 after falling behind for a while.

<comment><USER7> We did a lot of work on IPsec as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A couple things HN users might be excited about:

* Docker via ZFS and jails (...running Linux x84-64 binaries): [https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker](https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker)

\--- (See also, [https://github.com/3ofcoins/jetpack](https://github.com/3ofcoins/jetpack) )

* Add support for trackpads found in Apple MacBook products: [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=26126...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=261260)

* CloudABI executable support: [https://nuxi.nl/cloudabi/freebsd/](https://nuxi.nl/cloudabi/freebsd/)

This is an awesome release.

<comment><USER9> Is anyone using FreeBSD on their development machine? Are there any gotchas compared to Linux?

<comment><USER10> I use CURRENT on a Thinkpad X230. It works ok.

Main gotchas:

        * No SSL CA certificates out of the box.  FreeBSD security team has taken the
          curious posture of claiming that shipping no CAs is better than just
          shipping e.g. Mozilla's CA bundle.[0]

        * rc.d is like Linux init from 5 years ago.  Dynamic network configuration is
          not handled well.

        * Intel GPU driver support for anything above Haswell is still waiting to be
          merged.  But work is ongoing.[1]

        * No Xorg or session management out of the box.  You get dropped to a terminal
          console.  Good luck starting a session.

        * Some packages conflict with each other needlessly.  For  example, you cannot
          install gitk and git-svn at the same time.

        * Finally, the installer has some limited choices.  You can't enable full disk
          encryption for UFS with the installer (last time I checked, anyway).

Other than all that, it works well.

[0]: [https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=189811](https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=189811)

[1]: [https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base- graphics/wiki](https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/wiki)

<comment><USER11> Hmph. I remember when "session management" was echo startx >> .loginrc

I sure miss being able to understand and control my machine...

<comment><USER6> I reached the point of not understanding my machine when mounting a disk on Linux required udisks2/dbus and parts of Gnome.

FreeBSD can be pretty spartan, but I do feel like I'm more in control.

<comment><USER12> Is this a thing? I'm running Slackware and mounting a disk is still done with good ol' `mount`, same as it ever was.

<comment><USER13> I've been in the linux world for less than a decade, and I miss 'mount' being useful. It's full of spam now - so I've started using 'lsblk' instead...

        $ mount | wc -l
        32
        $ lsblk
        NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
        sda      8:0    0 698.7G  0 disk
        ├─sda1   8:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
        ├─sda2   8:2    0 690.3G  0 part /
        └─sda3   8:3    0   7.9G  0 part [SWAP]       # this was a mistake...
        sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

<comment><USER14> > # this was a mistake...

That's not an unfixable mistake: sda3 is at the end of the partition table, so if it's deleted, sda2 can be safely resized offline. For example,

      parted /dev/sda rm 3
      parted /dev/sda "resizepart 2 -0"
      resize2fs /dev/sda2 # for ext2/3/4

And then you can create a swap file or volume on sda2, so long as it isn't on btrfs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Often gets lost in the release notes - deploying on Google cloud is super easy:

        % gcloud compute instances create INSTANCE --image freebsd-11-0-release-p1-amd64 --image-project=freebsd-org-cloud-dev
        % gcloud compute ssh INSTANCE

<comment><USER16> Wow, nice. Do you know how straightforward it is to get it with ZFS?

<comment><USER17> Even the last release supports full ZFS+encryption with the default installer.

<comment><USER18> This is still geli+zfs, and not native zfs encryption that was recently presented in OpenZFS Developer Summit [0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frnLiXclAMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frnLiXclAMo)

<comment><USER19> Correct, it is full disk encryption instead of dataset encryption.

But on the other hand, if you install 11.0 from installer and chose Auto(ZFS) with EncryptedZFS and MBR(GPT) then you will get a GeliBoot installation. There is no boot pool anymore, instead the early boot stages decrypt the root zpool to load the rest of the boatloader, which then decrypts the pool to load the kernel. With bootloader-selectable boot environments.

<comment><USER19> ...and I meant BIOS(GPT). Hmpf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _EC2(TM) users are urged to read the Errata Notes for FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE regarding an issue discovered very late in the release cycle that may cause the system to hang during the boot process when upgrading from previous FreeBSD versions. New EC2(TM) installations are not affected, but existing installations running earlier releases are advised to wait until the issue is resolved in an Errata Notice before upgrading._

This is discussed on BSD Now 162 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ- mgwxhNvo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ-mgwxhNvo)

</comment><comment><USER21> FreeBSD is not 'just another OS out there' but an important piece of technology powering lots of things we often use: from Sony's PlayStation and WhatsApp, through Netflix and Yahoo, to Juniper and PFSense networking gear and EMC storage and FreeNAS appliance - and many, many more!

So, have you donated yet? We need FreeBSD and FreeBSD needs your support!

[https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/)

<comment><USER22> What really makes me sad is that the BSD license allows corporate leeches like Sony to create incredibly successful and valuable products like the PS4 without ever having to give back to the project that produced the software they rely on. It's obvious that Sony picked FreeBSD over Linux because they don't have to publish their additions to FreeBSD, and can continue to integrate new and improved code from upstream with no obligations whatsoever.

Yes, some corporate users contribute financially back to the project, and we're thankful. But why should we have to be thankful? The GPL already provides a tried and proven legal framework for requiring downstream users to publish their improvements for others to use. Free software is an ecosystem where everyone helps and everyone benefits. When the BSD license allows parasites like Sony to benefit to the tune of billions of dollars without giving a line of code (or a penny) back, that breaks the ecosystem.

I'm calling Sony out particularly because they are not included in the list of corporate sponsors in the article. The Sony games division made $3.2 billion in revenue in quarter 1 2016, this is unacceptable.

<comment><USER23> > It's obvious that Sony picked FreeBSD over Linux because they don't have to > publish their additions to FreeBSD, and can continue to integrate new and > improved code from upstream with no obligations whatsoever.

It's obvious that FreeBSD contributors picked FreeBSD over Linux because they wanted to publish their software for people to use with no obligations whatsoever.

If Sony is heavily modifying the FreeBSD code, eventually they'll start contributing back, because maintaining a substantial fork is more effort than upstreaming code. Either that, or they'll end up with a largely frozen code base like Apple's copy of the FreeBSD userland, which is probably OK on a console.

<comment><USER10> > Either that, or they'll end up with a largely frozen code base like Apple's > copy of the FreeBSD userland, which is probably OK on a console.

I think this is what they've settled on and are quite happy with.

For PS5 they'll likely do another from-scratch adaptation of whatever the then-current FreeBSD is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be awesome if there were a cookbook for getting this on to the Dragonboard 410c (its my only AArch 64 board ATM). The wiki page points to the 96boards site which has everything you need to put Ubuntu on but not FreeBSD AFAICT. I just may not be reading it closely enough though.

[1] [https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/DragonBoard410c](https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/DragonBoard410c)

<comment><USER25> booting on the Dragonboard is unlikely to happen any time soon, I started working on it, but don't have the time to get it into a usable state (and lack hardware to test).

Source: I started & mostly work on the the FreeBSD arm64 port.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Wireless support for 802.11n has been added.

Wait, What?

<comment><USER27> My guess is this part:

      The iwn(4) driver was added, providing support for the
      Intel® Centrino™ Wireless-N 105 and 135 chipsets. [r266770]

from: [https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/relnotes.html#drivers...](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/relnotes.html#drivers- network)

<comment><USER28> That driver was on OpenBSD for a long time. I put FreeBSD on a machine a year or so ago and really missed that driver. Maybe now I can get rid of the USB dongle I've been using instead.

<comment><USER10> iwn(4) has been present for a long time. I suspect you mean iwm(4)?

<comment><USER28> You're right. Also happy to report that machine is working way better now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I still have hope some or all HardendedBSD features might get ported or reimplemented in FreeBSD 12. Too much low hanging fruit, and now that linux has been steadily closing the gap to grsec, the competition in mainstream kernel branches is on.

<comment><USER5> HardenedBSD is one of the bigger jokes in the BSD community. If you really care about the things it claims to do, I highly recommend using OpenBSD because it actually has competent and sustainable development.

<comment><USER29> Are you saying that the measures listed here [http://hardenedbsd.org/content/easy-feature- comparison](http://hardenedbsd.org/content/easy-feature-comparison) do not work properly?

<comment><USER10> I'm not GP, but yes. They do not work properly and likely introduce additional vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER30> Do you have any evidence for this? I've heard rumors here on HN and else where that HardenedBSD's code quality is lacking and that they didn't incorporate all the fixes and suggestions from the FreeBSD community during the various code reviews. But none of that is definitive, do you have any proof or evidence for this statement, "They do not work properly and likely introduce additional vulnerabilities."

<comment><USER10> Here's an example of poor code quality:

[https://github.com/HardenedBSD/secadm/commit/3dd7584b70804cf...](https://github.com/HardenedBSD/secadm/commit/3dd7584b70804cf0bd3eb6f45d15b07851466ef2#diff-e4ccce5da8f7b4683a2f989b674e9d8aR80)

If this check did anything, it appears susceptible to time-of-check, time-of- use attack.

See also [https://reviews.freebsd.org/D473](https://reviews.freebsd.org/D473) , where Shawn pretty cleary does not incorporate feedback from the FreeBSD community.

<comment><USER29> Fair enough. The more important part of my question: isn't there a focused effort to complete FreeBSD's security feature checklist?

<comment><USER10> No one is paying for completion of checkbox security features in FreeBSD. So the community is really only interested in effective mitigations and not checkbox features.

We would love to merge in Konstantin's ASLR work. Reviewers have pointed out performance issues and memory fragmentation issues, especially on 32-bit platforms, but it's still better than nothing. I think we should just merge it as is, maybe default to off on 32-bit platforms, and improve from there. With the intent to have it polished for 12.0-RELEASE.

One such mitigation receiving community attention is Capsicum. The Capsicum security sandbox is a viable way to constrain applications. Unlike OpenBSD's pledge, rights are limited on a file descriptor basis. It has been ported to Linux and DragonFlyBSD (although merged to neither). There has been a lot of work in FreeBSD lately to restrict base programs, especially setuid programs, using Capsicum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > A kernel panic triggered when destroying a vnet(9) jail(8) configured with > gif(4) has been fixed. [r271917]

> A kernel panic triggered when destroying a vnet(9) jail(8) configured with > gre(4) has been fixed. [r271918]

I see they fixed the kernel panics when destroying vnet jails but is vnet enabled by default? Or do I have to compile a custom kernel like with FreeBSD 10.x

<comment><USER31> I started using SmartOS partly because it has really nice VNIC support and you don't have to recompile the 10.x FreeBSD kernels. :-) It'd be good to know if 11.0 changed that.

<comment><USER32> Does linux have similar facilities yet?

<comment><USER33> Yes, a "network namespace" is the Linux equivalent. [http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/ip- netns.8.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/ip-netns.8.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> TRIM support in GELI (disk encryption), awesome!

</comment><comment><USER35> Congrats to RE@ for the release.

Looking forward to that sweet, sweet IPSEC by default.

<comment><USER7> You're welcome. :-)

<comment><USER35> ...we're missing IPSEC_NAT_T.

Brought to you from a custom compiled FreeBSD 11-p1 host :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone know if FreeBSD supports PHP-FPM 7+? I'm so ready to drop Ubuntu if so

<comment><USER10> It is enabled by default in the php55, php56, and php70 ports. (See the "FPM" OPTION in all three.)

Does that answer your question? (Sorry, I'm not familiar with PHP.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Regarding the Vagrant image: I'm trying to use it on OSX (El Capitan) with the latest VirtualBox.

When I do vagrant up, I see the following error:

No base MAC address was specified. This is required for the NAT networking to work properly (and hence port forwarding, SSH, etc.). Specifying this MAC address is typically up to the box and box maintainer. Please contact the relevant person to solve this issue.

If I do vagrant up again, it seems to be working, but then I see a lot of:

default: Warning: Remote connection disconnect. Retrying...

and it eventually times out.

Any ideas on how to solve this issue?

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER38> Going to grab the 11.0 release image and try installing it on my ThinkPad. Pre-release versions had issues with my Intel chipset that lead to boot loops.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've got a 10.3 system that's running a "custom" kernel with VNET enabled for my iocage jails. What am I in for when I upgrade? How do I keep my ZFS pool safe through the upgrade?

<comment><USER19> Why would your zpool be in any danger from the upgrade?

If you upgrade via freebsd-update and have renamed your custom kernel (and not named it GENERIC), then freebsd-update will tell you when to build and install a new version of your kernel.

If you kept GENERIC as the name of your custom kernel, which is a really really bad idea, then freebsd-update will probably still replace it with a vanilla kernel, haven't checked that in a while. In that case either rebuild your 10.3 kernel again with a fixed name, or upgrade to 11 from source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How much do you think it will take until Juniper JunOS and netApp will upgrade their kernels to 11.0-p1?

<comment><USER5> Acknowledging this is somewhat inflammatory, both of those companies are absent and incompetent when it comes to open source interaction when compared to others like EMC Isilon and Netflix.

NetApp does tend to be one of the higher financial contributors to the FreeBSD Foundation but this amounts to the salary of one full time engineer. I think the bhyve code drop was a fluke, but a very fortunate one, and the two developers left NetApp quickly after that happened. Outside of that, especially during the formative '90s and '00 where it could have been politically influential, continuing today there is almost no code reintegration. It's hard to find business justification because NetApp is a prime contributor to Linux, including the NFS server which could be argued has allowed companies like PureStorage to eat their lunch.

Juniper has some storied history of many many-year projects to resync their branch. They have their own TCP stack. Many of the influential FreeBSD devs I know there have fled recently. I heard something about switching to Linux. Sounds like a rudderless company, following a nice anti-pattern example set by Yahoo. It is sad because JunOS and the HW was and is for now quite nice.

I work at a small but highly traditional/bureaucratic company and was able to build a 4 person full time upstream BSD team in 2 years. I cannot fathom why NetApp and Juniper would not have a 10-40 people upstream team.

<comment><USER40> Sigh, you know, the Juniper story is so sad. I even owned stock in it at one time. It started out great, had such potential, and just imploded. Yeah I have heard the rumor of them moving to Linux too. Good luck with that tire fire! They do that and they are dead to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> No mention of ASLR. Helping to prevent memory corruption bugs apparently isn't on their radar?

<comment><USER10> It's on their radar, but did not make it into 11.0. It's still under code review here:

[https://reviews.freebsd.org/D5603](https://reviews.freebsd.org/D5603)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The image is from 29th september, is this the updated version?

</comment><comment><USER43> Seems like they are releasing faster? Nice!

</comment><comment><USER44> "Wireless support for 802.11n has been added"

C'mon FreeBSD! We're in the 802.11ac era! As much as I love BSD, they're always a couple of years behind the status quo

<comment><USER45> Hi! FreeBSD wifi person here!

* ath(4)'s 11n support is much, much better now. All the AR93xx/AR95xx PCIe devices are supported and STA/AP 11n should work great. * iwn(4)'s 11n is much, much better. It still has some warts, and I'd love some help in chasing them down. * urtwn(4) in -HEAD does 11n now. * rsu(4) in -HEAD does 11n now. * iwm(4) (intel 7260, etc) is getting better every day in freebsd and dragonflybsd. Thanks to another developer for that !I think we're almost ready for starting the 11n bits? once the 11n bits are done and working, we can start on the 11ac bits. * Another developer is working on urtwn/rtwn unification and support for 11ac USB devices from realtek. * I'm working on an ath10k port from Linux to FreeBSD - I have association working now and I'm about to start on normal data TX. Once that's done, I'll get crypto and 11n station mode operation working.

now, where's 11ac? It's mostly waiting for some stable like 11ac devices to appear in the tree with 11n support. 11ac is partially revolution and partially evolution - if 11n doesn't work, 11ac definitely won't work. So, between iwm 11n work, the rtwn/urtwn 11n/11ac USB work going on and my ath10k work, I think we're heading in the right direction.

I'm hoping that once I get ath10k up in monitor, STA and AP mode, with crypto, QoS and 11n working, the 11ac bits will be trivial - at which point I can start on the 11ac stack pieces. I know what those stack pieces are and I've started writing them down - [https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/80211ac](https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/80211ac) .

All of this is non-commercial btw - no-one is sponsoring any work on BSD wireless at the present moment. If you'd like to help or contribute, please consider talking and donating to the FreeBSD foundation, or consider funding someone to help in these efforts.

Thanks!

firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER46> Thanks Adrian. I am not a device drivers person. But, quick query - do you reuse the current Linux drivers work [0].

Looking at the current client device deployment, Intel owns around 80% of the Wi-Fi modem market. Is anybody from Intel working on BSD wireless drivers as well.

[0] [https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers](https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers)

<comment><USER5> There is reuse, for example iwm(4) is based on the Linux driver and pulls from it. But the process is manual, not like the Linux-KPI graphics and OFED stuff.

It would be great if Intel stepped up to the plate and helped.

<comment><USER46> I was thinking about a common driver interface similar to POSIX standard would solve the problem of multiple OS device support on a single hardware platform.

There was an effort for Uniform Driver Interface (UDI)[0], looks like it is dormant.

[0] [http://wiki.osdev.org/Uniform_Driver_Interface](http://wiki.osdev.org/Uniform_Driver_Interface)

<comment><USER5> People will probably wrinkle their forehead :) but NDIS is that and a lot of operating systems support it [https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndis&sektion=4&man...](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndis&sektion=4&manpath=freebsd- release-ports)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Have they fixed the remnants of the update security hole? I haven't been keeping up, so they might have done that already, but I thought I'd ask.

<comment><USER4> Yes. They fixed the theoretical stuff and the things where you'd have required to be root anyway.

<comment><USER10> In 11.0-RELEASE-p1, or just 11-STABLE? Do you have a link to the commits landing in the RELEASE branch?

<comment><USER48> In 11.0-RELEASE-p1.

I merged them here: [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=30637...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=306379)

<comment><USER10> Great. Thanks, Ed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> [https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=28719...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=287197)

POLA violated.

Next FreeBSD will adopt ethX for wired networks and sdX for disks, and systemd for init.</comment>