Trump gives Microsoft 45 days to clinch TikTok deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tiktok-trump-exclusive-idUSKBN24Y0UD <comment><USER2> It's so ironic that mainstream opinions in the US are nowadays so ideologically charged that TikTok is assumed, without proof, to be 100% controlled by the Chinese government and therefore this forced takeover is justified one way or another.

You see arguments all the time that start with "CCP is evil, X is Chinese, therefore...", which would basically justify any and every action against all Chinese entities.

Meanwhile, if you have even close to a clue about what's going on in China you'd know that ByteDance is bending over backwards trying to position itself as a multinational corporation with independence from the Chinese government, all in utter futility of course. That action actually drew the ire from the mouthpieces of the party.

Some rumors say that the reason TikTok announced the potential deal so fast is to make it so that the Chinese government won't intervene and turn it into another Huawei situation. Well, that kind of reasoning seems to be based on a purely fictional assumption that the US government is still operating on principal or in good faith.

<comment><USER3> There is no way to prove beyond doubt that ByteDance isn't having their data watched by the CCP, or that the CCP won't forcibly take their data in the future. That's just part of dealing with a company based in a country like China. You don't need proof that ByteDance is controlled by the CCP. You just need to see the way CCP deals with companies in its country, and the powers they have over companies within their borders.

Note: Yes, the US gov can do the same thing to US companies to some extent. But this about ByteDance and the CCP. And I think the assumption that you can't trust a Chinese based comapny (because of the CCP) is justified.

<comment><USER4> > You don't need proof that ByteDance is controlled by the CCP

Well, there is a counter proof. One of ByteDance's app (com.ss.android.essay.joke) was shutdown by CCP in 2018. Bytedance is a victim of governments bullies.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/china- toutiao-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/china-toutiao- bytedance-censor.html)

> Vulgar content on the Neihan Duanzi app had "caused strong dislike among > internet users," a brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and > Television said. The company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.

<comment><USER3> That... just shows that ByteDance will do what the CCP says. Which is exactly the problem being discussed here.

<comment><USER4> > ByteDance will do what the CCP says

If bytedance does what CCP says there won't be any app shutdown in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fact that something, anything, can be declared a national security risk without offering any proof for it whatsoever should worry everyone.

Pretty sure EU car manufacturers like Daimler or VW would like to buy up Tesla's European operations for cheap. Just need the government to simply declare them to be a national security threat and force them to sell or lose access to the largest market on the planet.

<comment><USER6> Wasn't it shown that TikTok (and LinkedIn to be fair) was accessing camera and/or clipboard when it didn't need to?

I have no dog in this fight, but isn't there at least a little evidence that TikTok may be collecting data on a large scale? I haven't been following it all that closely, but I thought that's what the original bans for military members was about.

Edit: So, yes, but that's ok because others were too.

<comment><USER7> > Wasn't it shown that TikTok (and LinkedIn to be fair) was accessing camera > and/or clipboard when it didn't need to?

There's a gigantic list of apps that were revealed to be accessing things like the clipboard in iOS 14. I just installed the beta, and I found that my credit union's app reads the clipboard every time I open it. My third-party reddit app does the same thing.

TikTok doing it isn't really even news. There are dozens to hundreds of apps doing it, and it's likely a bug.

<comment><USER8> Yea TikTok being mentioned was just clickbait/political because it was a Chinese app.

<comment><USER9> Given how this administration behaves, it's just occurred to me that it's also equally likely that TikTok is being singled out because it was used to coordinate the bogus Trump rally ticket reservations.

Any time a firm, app, or organization does something to offend or inconvenience the man, he launches an attack against it. There's certainly a pattern of this behaviour.

<comment><USER8> "Anti-US" interests could very well mean anti current administration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still don't understand what Microsoft is thinking. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and to some extent Apple have had to deal with content moderation headaches on their respective platforms. Especially when it comes to politics, it seems like un-winnable battle. Do nothing and you'll get blamed for helping spread hate and propaganda. Do something and you'll get blamed for violating free speech and censoring conservatives.

As far as I know, Microsoft has so far avoided being on that hot seat. So why, now, get involved in the shit show that is social media? I still don't understand why Trump has a beef with TikTok specifically, but if the rumors are true that this is payback for the prank they pulled on his first political rally, isn't this whole thing political in nature? What if TikTok users continue to mess with Trump? I can imagine Trump now set his crosshairs on Microsoft. I don't understand why you'd willingly put yourself in the middle of a controversy to buy a company that doesn't exactly align with your current businesses. What am I missing?

<comment><USER11> Your second paragraph is scary. It essentially says that a private organization should make business decisions that doesn't upset the king. We have entered faux democracy

<comment><USER12> Most observers are convinced this "king" is on his way out. I think the parent was arguing that he'll still be around just long enough to potentially cause problems for Microsoft.

<comment><USER13> They were sure he wouldn't have made it this far to begin with.

Any business decision riding hard on political hopes and dreams isn't really a safe investment this decade, no matter which side it's favoring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interfering with business M&A using just a threat of action then asking for a piece of the $$ for the treasury dept sounds like something a Soviet/command economy would do.

This is how you can tell when a right leaning group is significantly more authoritarian over liberty. Which is a divergence from many recent right leaning administrations in America (see: tea partiers) and the rest of the western world.

Not to mention its oddly similar to the thing they are accusing the Chinese of doing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Tiktok at this point should also sell their India business to Microsoft. It would make sense for Microsoft because their are millions of people in India who want TikTok back but don't want China associated with it. Also, I don't think Indian government would have any issue if it's Microsoft.

<comment><USER16> More money in the US Tik Tok audience to be perfectly frank. MS has to be reasonably certain they will get their investment out plus some profit. Not only that, but sometimes the MS's of the world won't even buy if the profit they will make is not large enough.

I would think some Indian firm might want Tik Tok? Not really sure why no deal has been made there?

<comment><USER17> I could see Jio making a play, especially with their recent injection(s) of capital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't get it.

Since when does one need permission of USA President to make the deal?

I mean sure he could block the app in states, but I figure microsoft could still use it outside ?

<comment><USER19> > _Since when does one need permission of USA President to make the deal?_

Since 1975 [1].

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investm...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investment_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER20> CFIUS doesn't apply here. It governs US companies selling ownership stakes to foreign entities (the FI is for "Foreign Investment"). For example when Lattice Semiconductor wanted to be acquired by a Chinese company and CFIUS blocked it.

This is the opposite situation: TikTok is a foreign company that's considering a US company as an investor/acquirer.

<comment><USER21> Actually it does, the CFIUS has jurisdiction over any foreign company doing commerce in the US. Which is why it has oversight over ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly, both Chinese companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is it just me, or has there barely been a peep from the CCP about TikTok? When it came to Huawei or ZTE, China's gov't regularly engaged foreign gov'ts, but it seems that they don't care much for TikTok. If that is the case, and not just a case of it not being reported as prominently, I would put my conspiracy hat on:

1\. TikTok is actually _not_ cooperating with the Chinese gov't (and maybe this is the CCP's way of showing them that it goes both ways).

2\. The CCP is allowing the US gov't to destroy its own credibility and moral high ground. These threads are usually solidly anti-China but there is a clear stream of discomfort now, with the realization that if national security can be used to override the law, and everything can be a national security threat, then how strong is the foundation of law?

EDIT: A few of the replies have suggested 3) TikTok is simply not that valuable. Which makes all the ruckus being raised by banning it, whether by the US or by India, even sillier?

<comment><USER4> 1\. TikTok is actually not cooperating with the Chinese gov't (and maybe this is the CCP's way of showing them that it goes both ways).

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/china- toutiao-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/technology/china-toutiao- bytedance-censor.html)

> The country's top media regulator on Tuesday ordered the company, Bytedance, > to shut down its app for sharing jokes and silly videos. Vulgar content on > the Neihan Duanzi app had "caused strong dislike among internet users," a > brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and Television said. The > company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.

<comment><USER23> This is called being law abiding.

I'm pretty sure that when OP talked about cooperating with Chinese govt. He was talking about what is hinted by trump, that they are doing massive clendestine surveillance on US citizens on behalf of CCP.

(Which incidentally, we now know that some US companies are doing exactly that for the US govt.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well that sure improves Microsoft's negotiating position.

They've actually been in discussions to purchase for months now. But the U.S. government comes along and says, actually, you better complete it soon, or the value of the U.S. business will be zero.

<comment><USER25> Does anyone not see how fucked up this is?

<comment><USER26> It's totally fucked up. By the same reasoning ("national security"), any country that hasn't already can and will now sooner or later ban US-dominated social networks, especially when networks as they exist benefitted from US antitrust turning a blind eye towards large scale purchases. The EU court of justice has just ruled against "safe harbour" arguing that personal data can be turned over to US authorities without due process. Pulling a "deal you can't decline" also won't exactly help mutual investments.

I believe the gravity of this hasn't been appreciated yet.

<comment><USER27> Somehow I get the impression that this will kill FiveEyes, which was abused by a recent administration, if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER28> FiveEyes is an awful lot more than social media observation. Don't need to care about social media if you've tapped email services.

<comment><USER27> True, but what I'm talking about is asking another country to spy on your citizens for you so you don't have to violate the law. Wink-wink style.

An open mind that considers other viewpoints is one that can outplay opponents. Literal thinkers can be led in circles.

<comment><USER28> I'm talking about the same thing. For example, it's illegal for the NSA or CIA to harvest emails between American citizens. But it's not illegal for the UK to do so, and it's already understood how they did it in the past to Google users by tapping inter-datacenter connections ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/nsa-i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa- infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents- say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html)), then feeding that data back to the NSA as a FiveEyes partner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm confused about something and hope someone here can clear it up. A threat of stopping the sale unless the US gets paid "a substantial amount of money" sounds like extortion to me. Is there any precedence for the US getting cuts of acquisitions?

<comment><USER30> Yeah, it's called "taxes".

 _When companies merge, they pay taxes on the value of the capital, stock or assets acquired during the process of a merger_

[https://smallbusiness.chron.com/taxable- merger-22406.html](https://smallbusiness.chron.com/taxable-merger-22406.html)

<comment><USER31> Foreign companies don't owe the U.S. taxes when U.S. companies buy them.

<comment><USER32> microsoft isn't foreign

<comment><USER31> Microsoft isn't getting bought.

<comment><USER32> exactly so Microsoft pays

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Am I the only one who doesn't like anything about this one bit? _Usually_ , the POTUS can't tell private companies what to do.

</comment><comment><USER34> Here is what Microsoft does (I don't speak for them, just what I would do):

\- secure the purchase \- let it run independently like LinkedIn \- move cloud components to Azure \- leverage Microsoft compliance with regulators and data retention / collection plans \- let tweens and teens do their thing

Profit.

</comment><comment><USER35> I hadn't heard of "Key money" so I looked it up. Turns out it means an illegal bribe: [https://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2015/11/what_is_key_mo...](https://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2015/11/what_is_key_money)

</comment><comment><USER36> How is TikTok's data policy any more acceptable if it's controlled by Microsoft? Is there a clause to change the source code and not make it tailored to the informational needs of the State?

</comment><comment><USER37> How exactly would an executive order ban an app?

Obviously it's easy to make Apple and Google remove it from their app stores but couldn't ByteDance just release a new app called TokTik or something similar? Could ByteDance just reincorporate as a different company if the ban was at the company level? Would the order ban apps with > X Number of users when owned by foreign investors?

Seems like this isn't something the president can actually do.

<comment><USER38> This blog, once you get past the clickbait title, goes over a lot of the mechanics: [https://www.lawfareblog.com/tiktok-and-law-primer-case- you-n...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/tiktok-and-law-primer-case-you-need- explain-things-your-teenager)

The short answer is that yes, it could be banned, but it would take a concerted effort by the White House.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> What a shitshow.

<comment><USER40> Well said

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Imagine if another country threatened to cancel an American company unless they merged with a local firm and paid a one-off bribe to the government.

<comment><USER42> Boy have I got news for you about foreign direct investment regulations....

<comment><USER43> Please do tell

<comment><USER42> India and China, along with basically every other country, have tons of regulations around how foreign companies can set up operations and invest in domestic markets.

You cannot do business without a local partners in many industries (read: a "joint" venture in which the local "partner" will acquire your IP and eventually compete with you down the road). Foreign ownership is restricted. It was big news when China mildly liberalized its laws earlier this year and only as a gesture in the ongoing trade disputes.

<comment><USER44> Maybe Washington will legislate to reciprocal effect. Not wield wierdly targeted executive order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Strangely this is framed as an ultimatum to Microsoft when in fact it is one to Bytedance/Tiktok, and it obviously helps Microsoft.

<comment><USER46> Yeah this is basically "sell to Microsoft or get banned". That obviously helps Microsoft's negotiating position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> People are thinking about this way too much in terms of personal data. I don't think this really is about that.

Editorial control over what a significant fraction of people see is significant power over those people. Even seemingly benign editorial actions could have serious effects.

Facebook and Twitter are clearly being pressured by all political sides to favor content they want favored and disfavor content they want disfavored. What does that look like when the CCP weighs in on what American TikTok users see? Maybe prioritizing posts about protests or just petty crime (even more so than the internet tends to do by itself)?

I think there are endless ways to get creative and subtle here that could cause problems.

<comment><USER27> Bingo. The conservative base on TikTok outnumbers the liberal base by nearly double.

<comment><USER28> That runs counter to the Trump administration looking into banning it.

<comment><USER27> Hello. Half of what Trump says is to push a chess piece around the table where he wants it to go.

You all think he's playing 2D checkers but he's really at Spock's chess level.

<comment><USER28> Please. His algorithm isn't too hard to fathom.

1) Say whatever he feels like

2) If there's bad news, say something controversial to try and jam the news cycle.

He's already had to back-peddle on claiming mail-in ballots increase voter fraud ([https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/08/04/trump- backtracks-mail-voting-florida-391373)), probably because someone clued him in that the biggest user demographic for mail-in voting is the elderly, most of whom vote Republican.

<comment><USER27> Your analysis of him is as shallow as you think he is.

<comment><USER28> No deeper analysis is needed because he isn't deeper. He's a man in over his head in a job he never wanted, desperately trying to save his reputation. He has no idea how to do his job (as indicated by the number of EOs overturned by the Court).

What he has is a cult of personality that sucks in the gullible. It was effective at selling sub-par steaks, but serves him less well as head of the US Executive for successfully running his office.

If you believe he's playing some kind of hyper-chess feel free to provide evidence.

<comment><USER27> Todd Scheller has an excellent analysis with citations showing your point to be wrong:

[https://www.quora.com/How-many-Obama-Executive-Orders- were-s...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-Obama-Executive-Orders-were-struck- down-by-the-courts-compared-to-Trump-Executive-Orders)

<comment><USER28> Ah yes, Quora, that bastion of well-researched, trusted facts. But in reality, Trump has EOs overturned significantly more than Presidents in recent history, with over 60 adverse rulings.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/the-r...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the- real-reason-president-trump-is-constantly-losing-in- court/2019/03/19/f5ffb056-33a8-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html)

More importantly, I don't know what a list of Obama EOs struck down by courts has to do with Trump's Presidency. It's entirely possible they were both bad at being President. Trump's failures are particularly interesting, to my mind, because of how often he torpedoes himself; he may have pulled off ending protections for immigrants from Haiti, Sudan, and Central American countries if he hadn't chosen to call them "shithole countries," opening up the spectre of his EO being racially motivated.

It's not 4D chess; he says what he wants and doesn't notice that a President is held accountable to his own words. it'd be funny watching his self- torpedoing buffoon act if he wasn't the President of the United States of America.

<comment><USER27> That source doesn't list any of his Executive Orders. This source does:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/here-s-full- lis...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/here-s-full-list-donald- trump-s-executive-orders-n720796)

Which one has been overturned?

Edit: Holy mackeral! For a bumbling idiot he sure does tackle a lot of issues.

<comment><USER28> [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive- or...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order- collecting-information-citizenship-status-connection-decennial-census/)

Blocked by the courts, and now moot as the census has happened.

He also needed two bites at the apple to get 13769 legal; the first two are overturned executive orders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What would the deal entail? Would MS get access to all the sourcecode, the IP behind it, etc? Would TikTok effectively be forked into two separate apps that evolve independently?

</comment><comment><USER49> Why Microsoft though, is there other company competing for the deal?

<comment><USER50> I kind of wonder about this. The US Government pours money on Microsoft. The number of Windows servers in government reels the mind, and of course every desktop is Windows, with Office. They previously acquired LinkedIn, which is where a huge number of US citizens, and particularly military folks, park their resumes and roledexes. The LinkedIn social graph essentially subtracts children and stay-at-home spouses, making it somewhat denser with the type of information a foreign government might be interested in. Similarly, GitHub is of huge US national, probably Western strategic interest.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if some folks at Microsoft were "encouraged" to pursue those deals to keep them out of other hands.

<comment><USER51> > The LinkedIn social graph essentially subtracts children and stay-at-home > spouses

What does subtract here mean?

<comment><USER36> The same thing it means everywhere else - it's a social network _minus_ kids and housewives.

<comment><USER52> (Also househusbands)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> MSFT stock rise about 5.62% (or $100b), likely due to the news to take over TikTok in US. If this is a fair trade, one would not expect MSFT stock to increase.

<comment><USER54> A bit of an over-simplification. A fair trade could cause the stock to rise if people think it will likely be unfair, or if people think that TikTok will be run better and more valuable in MS' hands, or that there's some synergy with other MS products/users to take advantage of, or because lots of investors might not move money from American stocks to Chinese but are happy to move money from being invested in other US tech companies into MSFT, or... etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I think its important to note that this started November 1, 2019 by CFIUS[1]. While Trump is known for erratic behavior, he is acting on the investigation by CFIUS.

[1] [https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/tiktok- clock-s...](https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/tiktok-clock- summary-cfiuss-investigation-bytedance)

<comment><USER55> Ok so I'm merely stating facts here. Why the downvote?

<comment><USER56> Two guesses, one for each side of the political spectrum:

1\. The word "erratic" suggests that there is error, rather than deliberate behavior to make the news and to throw enemies off guard.

2\. You pointed out that the actions were in fact started by CFIUS, which is a disappointment to anybody who wants to see the actions as being driven by vanity or malice or corruption or similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Forcing a foreign business to "sell or close" is an insult to the rule of law.

<comment><USER58> There hasn't been a rule of law in the US for four years. Congress and the judiciary have both been rubber stamping everything the President does.

Yet and still this is the same government that for some strange reason many on HN trust to "regulate tech".

<comment><USER19> > _Congress and the judiciary have both been rubber stamping everything the > President does_

This is patently false—the U.S. has been losing court cases left and right [1].

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/why- trump-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/why-trump-keeps- losing-at-the-supreme-court/613315/)

<comment><USER58> Yet and still.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-didnt-like- rul...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-didnt-like-rulings-on- daca-so-hes-defying- them/2020/07/31/36458e06-d1e1-11ea-9038-af089b63ac21_story.html)

<comment><USER59> This is an opinion piece.

<comment><USER58> Are you saying the facts that it presents aren't true?

<comment><USER59> It's behind a paywall so I don't know but what I do know is that I don't take any opinion piece as factual. Ever.

<comment><USER60> This is one of those shortcuts we use to cut out complexity, but in process, we create blind spots for ourselves.

It is not reasonable to expect things to either have opinions or not. An adult should have the sophistication to read something and understand what is opinion and what is fact. I get that many adults these days apparently lack that ability, but that doesn't excuse it.

<comment><USER59> I use it as a shortcut because I got tired of reading BS using the skills you describe. Now I don't read the opinion section at all. Once bitten twice shy.

<comment><USER60> Sure, but this is impossible to escape. Even if you're looking at a dry set of facts, there was editorial decisions made regarding what to put on that list and what to leave off. There is literally nothing you can read where you can escape the opinions of others.

<comment><USER59> No disagreement there

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Trump just openly demanded that the US government get a cut of the sale if it goes to Microsoft.

If I were TikTok I'd be shopping the company to europeans just to avoid any further headaches. They'd still get access to the US market but wouldn't have to deal with the headache of a sale to a US company.

<comment><USER61> Is that normal? I haven't heard of that happening before and it feels really weird.

<comment><USER62> No, and when pressed on the point, he deflected.

There's no authority -- presidential, or otherwise -- to "ban" TikTok, nor enforce a sale of a foreign entity to an American (The foreign investment act is about _selling_ American companies to foreign companies, not Americans _buying_ foreign countries.), nor is there any way for the federal government to get a cut of any sale.

It's just typical Trump talking out of his ass.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/03/trump- mic...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/03/trump-microsoft- tiktok-treasury/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This smells. US should ban them or not. This pressure to sell cheaply has a third world country feeling

</comment><comment><USER64> This seems to be a legitimate business move on the part of Microsoft. What is not legitimate is The-Donald/Twitler objecting simply because one of his rallies was oversubscribed by US Tik-Tok members. He is being a petulant toddler (ass-hat) and wants revenge.

</comment><comment><USER65> How badly will Microsoft fuck this up once the deal is closed? I can't imagine they're going to be able to successfully make this app secure.

</comment><comment><USER55> For those who are against US retaliation to China, how do you propose competing when China forces transfer of IP, blacklists companies and people when they make public statements they do not like, and bans apps[1] when apps do not fall inline with China's unethical policies? (I'm being generous here when I say China bans apps for political reasons when they can easily ban to be anti competitive.)

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

<comment><USER66> This is a missed opportunity to force China open up. Let Google, FB compete in Chinese market. Win-win all around. Forcing the sale is short sighted and only deepens the divide.

<comment><USER55> I'm not supporting the move here. I'm asking what you would do instead. How do you force China to open the market up?

<comment><USER4> Setup a web page monitor in both countries that fetch pages periodically and governments must guarantee network SLA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The US has permanently lost China's technologists and entrepreneurs at this point. I'm seeing people in the tech industry advocating for Facebook to get secondary sanctions from China - as in, companies which operate in China are not allowed to do business with Facebook. Presumably, this would mean Apple and Google (via Android)...

<comment><USER67> Facebook is banned in China...

> The US has permanently lost China's technologists and entrepreneurs at this > point.

What? We never had them. China's economy is closed and state-controlled.

<comment><USER4> > China's economy is closed

Well except Tesla and ExxonMobil just setup their WOFE in China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Sadly, the sentiment on HN showcases the inability of people to apply objective reasoning:

The primary indicator I saw is the diminishing sentiment towards the injustice suffered by TikTok.

At the very beginning, the sentiment that TikTok were mistreated was quite popular. Or even was the minstream [1,2].

Now, the sentiment has shifted that "why MSFT buy TikTok, why not TikTok sell to FB/Google". Like what's shown here.

To this date, except the broad claim that "TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, and Chinese government will force TikTok to share private information", there isn't a single evidence that is even remotely relevant to national security.

I am seeing a lot of US company executives are preparing to break from China very unpleasantly in the near future...

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24016938) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23832183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23832183) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23755863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23755863)</comment>


Facebook saves your old passwords - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/iPHFk

<comment><USER2> That's something common. [http://www.labnol.org/internet/facebook-account- passwords/21...](http://www.labnol.org/internet/facebook-account- passwords/21241/) You should research better.

<comment><AUTHOR> The link you provided provides no explanation for why Facebook would be storing a previously used password of mine (which is quite a few characters different than my current one).

<comment><USER3> They almost certainly don't store the password, just the hash. Why do you feel that's a problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's a problem, just thought it was interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google Apps does this too. It does not allow you to set your password to something that you've used before.</comment>


Google search should check URL parameters more carefully. (View on a phone) - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/02xl18d&q=Who+is+President? <comment><USER2> Works on my desktop too. Oh it's you Hans :-) So.. what's going on there?</comment>


Facebook Now Available Over IPv6 (Two Weeks Early) - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2012/05/facebook-now-available-over-ipv6-two-weeks-early/

<comment><USER2> That's interesting, but the site isn't being served over IPv6. The IPv6 page is just a redirect to the IPv4 page, so you still can't use it if you're IPv6-only. (And HTTPS connections to <https://[2a03:2880:10:1f02:face:b00c::25]> fail.)

<comment><USER3> The site is being served over ipv6, they are just redirecting you because your Host header doesn't match what they want.

This works just fine: curl -g -H "Host:www.facebook.com" -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_4) AppleWebKit/536.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/19.0.1084.46 Safari/536.5" "<http://[2a03:2880:10:1f02:face:b00c::25]>

<comment><USER2> Interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm getting strange transmission errors. Other v6 sites e.g. heise.de work fine. (I've fully disabled IPv4)

[https://img.skitch.com/20120522-nr5jf24birq4j7ggtqnmrruxn.jp...](https://img.skitch.com/20120522-nr5jf24birq4j7ggtqnmrruxn.jpg)</comment>


Is Android development tougher as compared to iOS development - <AUTHOR>

I am iOS developer, when ever I try to implement it, it implemented easily without much efforts. While Android people always struggle to make that design. Is it like Android development is tougher than iOS development. Also why every app first comes on iOS platform? <comment><USER2> These are different platforms:

* UI design is a lot easier on iOS if you use XCode's interactive designer. Doing it on Android with Eclipse's designer is painful, but I expect that Android Studio will make that easier.

* UI design without the interactive designer is easier on Android, because iOS is quite verbose for this

* About the code, I have found that iOS's APIs are badly designed, and change too often. The API's of Android are much more stable, but they can require too much code sometimes (example: setting onclick listeners for elements).

* About the tests, it is a lot easier to test for every iOS device, because there are so few (and iOS versions are rapidly deprecated). Android devices have a lot of different OS versions, screen resolutions, CPU, etc. That makes it tougher to test exhaustively.

Nevertheless, I have found that Android development is a lot easier than iOS development (at least for me), simply because XCode spends its time fighting me. For Android, I can just bypass Eclipse and work directly in vim with a Makefile, or I can develop in Scala and use SBT. It's much more fun that way :)

And to answer the last question: apps are primarily developed for iOS because:

* it is believed that iOS users are more likely to pay for an app

* journalists are often more on iOS than Android (and you want to please them)

* CEOs are often more on iOS than Android

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply, you clearly have cleared some of my doubts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Actually it depends on what you're trying to do - a good Android developer will spend the same amount of time implementing some of the features as a good iOS developer and some things are easier to do here and some there. The main issue I think is the learning curve, because on iOS you usually have to think about memory allocation (although it got better with ARC), but other than that I wouldn't say that either of the platforms is "tougher".

The main reason some apps come to iOS first is better app discovery and a larger user base. If you manage to score a high user base, the monetization is quite awarding so that's why developers choose iOS first. Definitely not because of iOS being easier than Android.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks mate for your feedback. I sometimes thought products comes first on iOS because its easy and less devices to tackle with as compared to iOS. So, experimenting with iOS is a good way to go. Although I know that for revenue/monetization purposes iOS is more fruitful than Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Android is a cross platform technology that is used by many companies to create all kinds of device software.

Building an app for the Samsung Galaxy S is about as hard as making an app for the iPhone. But an App that runs on both the Galaxy S Software and the HTC One Software is much easier to build that one that runs on the Apple iPhone and the Blackberry Q10

Because Android is a cross platform technology, designing an app for Android is more like doing on for the web.

<comment><AUTHOR> "App that runs on both the Galaxy S Software and the HTC One Software is much easier to build that one that runs on the Apple iPhone and the Blackberry Q10" what does it signifies??

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> yes, it is. I started with Android (because I don't need to pay for developer membership), but I hate it very much. Eclipse is very shitty IDE. So many bugs, so slow, so not user friendly.

</comment><comment><USER6> The first thing I tell designers and coders with iOS experience is to get over trying to make your layouts pixel-perfect. It's such a simple thing. But so many projects end up wasting a lot of resources, or even end up locking screen orientation when they first ship because they didn't take this seriously.

The other side of this coin is that a simple wireframe can get implemented on iOS quickly, while on Android, the coders may spend a lot of time on multiple layouts, multiple sets of graphical assets, different font sizes, different screen dimensions and densities, etc. It often helps if the designer participates in creating and testing layouts and assets for an Android version.

Secondly, a lot of coders who don't also have some server-side Java experience find Eclipse jarringly unfriendly. Spend some time getting used to Eclipse and understand how the "It's plugins all the way down" model makes Eclipse do some stupid things. Android Studio is much better, but it's still an "early access" release.

Thirdly, Android's runtime is a platform for apps and system middleware. Large parts of the Android system are written in Java using the same toolchain as apps. You can, for example, add an API to Android that other apps can use. You can communicate with lots of other apps. You can "borrow" parts of apps' UI and ask them to do particular tasks, like picking a file, for you, and you can let other apps do the same with your app. Android is more complex because it is more expressive.</comment>


Higher intelligence associated with "thinking like an economist" - <AUTHOR> http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/11/higher-intelligence-associated-with.html

<comment><USER2> People with higher intelligence are more likely to see the world analytically as some complex (optimization?) system. People with lower intelligence will just say "invisible hand" and "free market" and write articles about how people who "get it" share certain political views.

</comment><comment><USER3> Huh, I don't understand.There are so many economists with conflicting views. Do they imply free market economists are smarter than the others?

</comment><comment><USER4> The research is probably accurate but not surprising for an economist to discover this. Confirmation bias at work I suspect.

</comment><comment><USER5> strange, I find many economists dogmatic and heartless.</comment>


Deploy an Elastic High-Availability SQL Cluster with Crate and Weave - <AUTHOR> https://blog.giantswarm.io/deploy-elastic-high-availability-sql-cluster-crate-weave/ <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm the author of this post and wanted to open up the discussion to questions and feedback.</comment>


As Covid-19 Cases Surge Daily Deaths and the Case Fatality Rate Continue to Fall - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/07/06/as-covid-19-cases-surge-daily-deaths-and-the-case-fatality-rate-continue-to-fall/ <comment><USER2> Is this because of a lag due to better prepared health services?

<comment><USER3> Probably both.</comment></comment>


Google Pixelbook Is Google's New Chromebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.droid-life.com/2017/09/19/google-pixelbook-chromebook-price-release-date/ <comment><USER4> From my experience with a 2013 Pixel I got from I/O, these machines come with a huge caveat: you can't get them repaired. _At all_. I cracked the glass over the screen on mine and called Google about getting it fixed, expecting them to tell me that it'd cost $X00 for an out-of-warranty repair. But they wouldn't take it at all. They suggested contacting 3rd-party repair shops, but some research into that nixed the idea pretty quick.

So if something goes wrong with machine 1 day after your warranty runs out, you're probably SoL. Apparently replacing the battery isn't too difficult, but, other than that, you don't have a lot of options. That's okay for a $300 laptop. But I don't think it's acceptable for a $1,200 one.

<comment><USER5> +1. I'll never buy Google hardware again. 6 weeks ago, my Pixel C tablet bricked itself playing Minecraft: Pocket Edition (my guess is that the heat corrupted some of the flash memory). Google agreed to replace it under warranty, but they didn't manage to address the package correctly (they forgot to include some details, like the street, city, zipcode, and state (according to FedEx)).

What followed was 4 weeks of calls to Google support. Each time they promised they would reach out to the "shipping partner" and get it sorted. I was also receiving emails threatening to charge me the full cost of the replacement device because I hadn't sent in the broken tablet yet.

Eventually the package got delivered... back to the Google warehouse. Google wasn't aware of this until I called them up - their system assumed it had been delivered to my house. Another promise to fix the situation - and this time they managed to actually get a package to my house. Only it was a Pixel C Keyboard, not a tablet.

Another call, another promise. It's been over a week now and the latest package has not yet been shipped, it's stuck in the order confirmed state.

So, 6 weeks later, still no replacement. Luckily the tablet is mostly for entertainment, I personally plan to never rely on Google for anything important like making a living.

<comment><USER6> ah common, don't be so harsh on their hardware, it's not like Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P were not really good design...

<comment><USER7> True, I am using a 6P as I write, but wouldn't some (even most) of the credit for that belong to LG and Huawei respectively?

<comment><USER6> not sure about LG, but in 6P Huawei just produced it according google design and requirements, they never had problems 6P was plagued with, which can't be said about LG with their own phones bootlooping

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think I'll stick with my Toshiba Chromebook CB35.

\- It runs native Linux

\- Works awesome for every day web development

\- 1080p IPS display

\- $350 bucks total

If anyone wants to see how to set that up (it requires installing GalliumOS which is a native Linux OS for Chromebooks) and read a full review it's over at [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba- chromeboo...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromebook- cb35-into-a-linux-development-environment-with-galliumos).

<comment><USER9> _Very_ important observation: this article links to a M.2 2242 SSD with 64-512GB capacity and there seems to be ample stock on Amazon.com. This is important because the second SSD on the ThinkPad T470 and consequently the ThinkPad Anniversary 25 can only be a 2242 one and they are a major PITA to find. While some 2242 drives were broken for a few months it has been fixed a week ago [https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and- newer-T/...](https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and- newer-T/T470-unable-to-detect-M-2-SSD-2242-after-updates-inlcuding- BIOS/m-p/3801672#M118817) on the T470 so I fully expect the TA25 to come with the fix. Because what is missing from the Lenovo forum thread is that Transcend 512GB is the only one actually available at such a capacity and physical size.

And, I am guessing, everyone will be getting the only laptop with modern specs and a usable keyboard, right :) ?

<comment><USER8> Surprisingly enough, the keyboard on the Toshiba is really good. I think I even type faster on it than my desktop keyboard.

Trackpad is a different story (I guess it's average but I suck with trackpads in general because I rarely use it). I feel like it takes me 10 seconds to select text with a trackpad when I could do it in like 1 second with a mouse. Watching me use a trackpad is easily comparable to an ape trying to use hand tools.

<comment><USER9> Try convincing a Tesla owner to give it up for a Yugo before trying to convince a classic ThinkPad zealot -- someone with a six year old ThinkPad T420s, who kept it because of the superior keyboard -- to give it up for some random keyboard and no TrackPoint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been using the Samsung Chromebook Plus (ARM chip) laptop/tablet hybrid the past 4 months and it's one of the best devices I've ever owned. Very cheap and has high build quality (great screen and aluminium body). The 4 years prior I used the first ARM Samsung Series 3 Chromebook (much lower build quality, but it was great before it died).

I currently use tablet mode for 2-3 hour session for portrait reading (Wikipedia Android app, long-form articles) and from time-to-time light note- taking (Squid Android app) and PDFs. Haven't used crouton or done dev work on this Chromebook yet.

Here's a quick review of modern touch-screen Chromebooks used as tablets. While the hardware is exceptional, the software is terrible in tablet-mode. Here are the painful issues that I can currently remember:

1\. Easy to accidentally close the entire browser by brushing the X button (I was thinking the browser was crashing the first 4-5 times it happened, very frustrating as can't CTRL-SHIFT-T in tablet mode)

2\. Easy to accidentally close a single tab for the same reason. On an Android devices there's a little undo popup to reopen tabs, but that kind of obvious touchscreen user-interface polish isn't there on ChromeOS yet

3\. Two finger touchpad scroll doesn't work on Android apps for scrolling -- painful as heck when Wikipedia links open in the Android app in laptop mode

Side note: I wish there was a good app to non-destructively markup PDF files with the stylus. I think it was at WWDC this year, Apple showed great work in this area, but sad not to have found software that appears as good for Chromebooks/Android yet.

I know Google engineers will come across this post, so hopefully these pain points can be fixed eventually. Chromebook hardware is so good (and cheap), but there's a few painful areas still.

<comment><USER11> I don't usually plug on here but Kami ( web.kamihq.com ) lets you markup PDF documents on chromebooks, everything is kept as PDF annotations so they can be modified later.

Stylus drawing on the Chromebook Plus works, though there's still some improvements I want to make to that - I have one as well and it's a great device, definitely my favorite out of the dozens of chromebooks we have at the office!

(I'm a founder @ Kami)

<comment><USER12> I want to use Kami, but I am worried by the fact that it asks for permission to your entire Google Drive.

Why doesn't Kami use the "[https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file](https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file) permission" scope that gives only access to files created or opened with the app?

<comment><USER13> This. I wish Google Drive had a way to give apps permission to access only one folder. i.e I want Kami to be able to only access the "pdfs" folder in my drive.

Right now it seems apps can either access everything or they are restricted to their own private app folder which is hidden somewhere in drive.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the permissions system in Google Drive is quite limited - the only to get things to work reliably is to request permissions for everything which is obviously not ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who has attempted to use the original Chromebook Pixel as a development machine, I'm glad to see they've added more storage options. The original Pixel had 32GB of storage, and this one offers 512GB.

For those unfamiliar with ChromeOS, it allows you to run Linux application using Crouton/chroot, so it really has a lot of potential as a Linux dev machine. However, I ultimately ran out of storage space, and it wasn't worth the time to figure out an inelegant scheme for mounting external storage.

<comment><USER15> This is actually a good reason to go with a 3rd-party manufacturer. Almost all non-Google Chromebooks include microSD card slots, so you can get another 128GB of persistently-mounted executable flash for large builds and similar.

Google does not want you to use microSD cards. Google wants you to use Google Drive.

<comment><USER16> My Chromebook Pixel LS has an SD card slot. It wouldn't be a surprise if this one also has one.

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately, it's on an internal USB 2 bus, which makes SD access extreme slow. All the external USB ports are at least 3.0, so I use a slim 64GB flash drive.

<comment><USER15> Huh, that's king of a weird decision, but I guess it is probably going to be near the USB connectors on the board, anyways. I guess that probably means it's falling back to a normal SPI interface instead of the faster quad-SPI MMC interface? Maybe they don't want to spend one of their chip's QSPI peripherals on storage expansion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool dev machine but for 1200 dollars I want to be able to run Microsoft office when people send me documents without asking them to reformat and also edit and modify images with standard software when necessary.

In a collaborative world it is not worth the pain to pay 1200 and not be able to work with people who do not code.

Chrome books are acceptable at the 200 dollar price point (I have one that dual boots archlinux) but they are not replaceable as a main work station unless you never interact with people who use popular software.

<comment><USER19> Can't new Chromebooks run Android applications?

Microsoft has Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Android so it seems like the only think you might be missing out on is Access.

I can't speak to the quality of the Android applications, but the iOS versions are surprisingly well done.

<comment><USER18> You're right that there are android apps for some of the software I mentioned, but my experience always feels like they are some compromise of the real thing (formatting issues, some problems with commenting involving multiple people...) and image editing software doesn't compare with adobe. My point is this type of compromise is acceptable at a lower price range but not when you're paying 1200 or more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hope this will be as cutting edge as 2015 Pixel LS (I own one, running vanilla Ubuntu): 16 GB RAM, awesome screen (2560x1700) especially good for coders because of 3:2 ratio, first laptop with USB Type-C charging, first laptop with 2 USB Type-C sockets and last but not least - design and build quality that I would argue is even better than that of Apple laptops.

<comment><USER20> Wow, the 2015 Pixel LS still go for >1000$ on ebay!

Nice to hear that it's possible to run Linux - I have a budget Acer C720p Chromebook and it's a real nuisance to set it up with Linux. Bodhi Linux is great, but once the internal battery runs out, the device is bricked and has to be reflashed with ChromeOS.

<comment><USER21> Did you install a new bios? If you're only ever going to run Linux, it's probably better not to run the stock bios in legacy mode. Standard bios booting roms are here [https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom- download...](https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom-download/) or if you want to futz with UEFI, [https://mrchromebox.tech](https://mrchromebox.tech)

<comment><USER20> This is great news, I didn't know there were BIOS updates available for the C720P! I'm not going to use UEFI if it's avoidable.

<comment><USER22> > I'm not going to use UEFI if it's avoidable.

... why? normalizing hardware quirks, better HW support from Linux, direct Linux kernel boot support, a sane, documented way for OSes to interact with the boot manager... there are a lot of good reasons to use UEFI and I've yet to hear a compelling reason not to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Serious question for HNers: Does anyone actually buy these for ChromeOS? Every time I hear these discussed it seems to center around what you can do with them that involves a new OS, either Windows or Linux. So is it really the product in demand or just the demand for hardware not bound down with a bundled OS License?

<comment><USER24> Yes. My wife and I have three kids. We have at least four Chromebooks sitting around the house for anyone to pick up and use. We used to have a couple OS X machines, but other than occasional video editing that we now do in the Instagram app, they were never used for anything a Chromebook couldn't do. My kids' schools all use Chromebooks, too, so it's easy for them to resume work when they get home.

I am an engineering manager at Google. I carry around an Asus C302CA for meetings, and I'll occasionally use it to SSH into a corp machine. I do have a Linux workstation at work for coding.

I also use the nearest Chromebook to SSH into a personal VPS where I keep stuff I want online other than the usual cloud content. And I have a couple Raspberry Pis at home for misc hacking.

The main value of ChromeOS to me is that the machines never break, and other than making sure my family enables U2F on all their accounts, there aren't any best practices, fine-tuning, or maintenance for the fleet of machines that I maintain as a dad.

Favorite models including years past: Acer C720 (fast and cheap but screen wasn't great); Toshiba Chromebook 2 (IPS, full HD, love the keyboard); Google Pixel 2 (remains the perfect laptop of any kind, but it was hard to find in quantity); Asus C302CA (currently the best; great screen + touch, OK battery, hinged design is very nice for impromptu shared viewing sessions and presentations).

<comment><USER25> > I am an engineering manager at Google.

Well then, not biased at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Terrible design; $99 pen with no place to stow it.

Apple style price jacking for storage; $1199-128GB, $1399-256GB, $1749-512.

I don't see this hardware line going anywhere either. I won't be surprised if the pen requires charging like Crapple. Samsung has better offering with Plus/Pro at less than half the price.

Why did Google let the guy who rekt Moto run Pixel and Nexus into the ground? This is terrible.

<comment><USER27> In the absence of specs, we're all guessing here.

That said, I would (err) guess that the more expensive versions also have more RAM and bigger CPU's.

We'll see when the actual models are trotted out ...

<comment><USER26> The specs are widely available. This is chromebook Eve. It is very overpriced.

<comment><USER27> Unless I missed something, we have different price points for 3 different models, but apart from storage capacity, no mention of other spec diffs between these models.

So we don't know if these models also have increasing ram, or more powerful cpu's, in addition to the extra on-board storage.

Until we get the full specs of all the models.

Which is why ascribing the price increases solely to the increased storage size is, well, silly.

If you have these "widely available" specs showing what exactly is different across the 3 models, then spill the beans. Otherwise ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >Chromebook Pixel units in that it folds into a tablet

Folds? That is far inferior that the iPad Pro and Surface (two most serious competitor, particularly Surface). Surface has the opportunity to dominate the market.

God, if this was detachable, I would ditch surface for this in heartbeat. Running linux command line app. Running Chrome apps natively. Running android apps (in foreseeable future). It is like dream, if it was _detachable_.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think they mean "Google Pixelbook is Google's new Chromebook Pixel". If Google has discontinued the cheap Chromebooks it would be really bad for all the school systems that rely on them as cheap laptops for students.

<comment><USER30> Google seems to be moving away from cheaper hardware, and moving it's products towards the "high end reference implementation" realm. The same thing happened with Android and the change from Nexus towards Pixel.

That doesn't have to be bad news for schools. Schools generally acquire their chromebooks from vendors like Dell and HP and Acer. These vendors will no doubt continue to build cheap systems with Chrome OS for the education market if there is demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is there any real technical reason to have soldered RAM and storage ? A well built $1200 linux laptop would still be OK if it weren't artificially gimped. M.2 ssds are already quite thin. So the form factor argument doesn't hold. The storage markup on these devices is huge considering that a 1 TB nvme pcie m.2 ssd goes for under $350 (even less during sales).

<comment><USER32> Cost, durability, probably easier to fit into an even thinner form factor.

I don't like it either, but I'm pretty sure they're not just doing it to be a jerk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using an Asus Chromebook. I don't have the specs, but it's ~ a year old and was at the higher end of sub $500 pack at the time.

I've pretty much given up on using it. I liked to use it for ssh over to my real computer (over wifi) to get work done; but this was always noticeably laggy. Trying to use basic tools on it (zoom, slack) is painfully slow - <USER2> if you run two bandwidth-hungry things at once, forget it. I have to jump through hoops to get a decent shell for ssh that Just Works - which sorta means it doesn't Just Work after all. Running anything heavier than the shell is slow.

I don't know the specs on the one, but I think I'm done with ARM on anything but phones. At least when them, I don't have any expectation of good performance from applications/sites to begin with.

<comment><USER16> My Chromebook Pixel LS included a Core i7 that was more than enough for regular Chrome OS usage, plus running Arch Linux via Crouton.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Would it run an actual Linux OS?

<comment><USER35> Crouton[0] is one option for that, but I would recommend GalliumOS[1] to anyone interested in a Chromebook. My current laptop is an Acer C720, purchased for $110 and running GalliumOS. It's not shiny or new, but it gets the job done, and it's practically cheap enough to be disposable. There are admittedly times when I wish I could justify the cost of a Pixel or an XPS 13, but I can't really get past the idea of being able to buy a half-dozen other machines for the same price.

[0] [https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton](https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton) [1] [http://galliumos.org/](http://galliumos.org/)

<comment><USER36> > but I would recommend GalliumOS[1] to anyone interested in a Chromebook

Just make sure the spacebar is never pressed at boot. That's all it takes to screw up your nice dual boot setup.

<comment><USER27> If you:

* resize the (unused) root-c partition (use the chrx script to do it for you, if you like)

* mount it somewhere under /mnt/stateful_partition

* use that for your chroots, etc

Then you can safely use chromeos in dev mode, and not worry about the "deadly spacebar at bootup" problem.

Pressing the spacebar takes you out of dev mode, which will involve rewriting the contents of the rootfs partition currently in use. It will NOT repartition the entire drive, so your separate partition will be safe. Just revert back to dev mode, and you'll see its still there.

Or ... put everything on a mini usb stick :)

<comment><USER36> Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't see how this can possibly be an improvement on the first Chromebook Pixel from a design aesthetic point of view but I am hoping to be proven wrong.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've just recently gotten OpenVPN and SSH working on my Chromebook and it is fairly decent, though with some limitations that make me wonder who is really paying $1,100 and up for a Chromebook...

I got one of those crazy HP 13 chromebooks, a Pixel-level device that at the time a few months ago was really the only available option more recent than the Pixel. I ended up finding it on Woot for $520, instead of nearly a grand.

It has the high res display, charges over USB-C so I can use the same charger for my laptop, chromebook, phone, and Fiance's laptop. The device is nice.

The OpenVPN was not TOO bad to set up, but you seem to only be able to have one VPN active at a time. So I can connect to either the office OR the data center OR my personal network, where my laptop can connect to all of them.

The SSH works great, but doesn't have an SSH agent so copying from one remote machine to another doesn't really work. It looks like there is some agent option but I haven't gotten that working. One nice feature of the SSH program is that it can map the remote system as a local Chromebook drive, so I can drag and drop downloaded files when I need to.

For programming I'm looking at Cloud9, which I've played with in the past but never seriously. Probably will just end up SSHing to a box and running vim, I do very little development.

For running Ansible sysadmin tasks, I'm either going to have to go into my desktop and set up an SSH agent to handle the connections to all the other hosts, or use Rundeck once I've committed and pushed the Ansible changes.

So, 90% of what I _NEED_ a laptop for at home (something broke at work, working on personal servers/network), the Chromebook will do, though not quite as nicely as a laptop. Also, I'm using Enpass for passwords, and on the Chromebook I'm using the Android app, which kind of sucks compared to the Linux app version.

The comparison is that around the same time I got a Lenovo T470s running Linux. Also has high res display, also is tiny. It has something weird going on with the mouse buttons where after a suspend they sometimes "stick".

The Chromebook is less expensive, though not really disposable. The $250 chromebook I tried really kind of sucked.

<comment><USER39> I have the same one. It's been great w/ crouton (although crouton chromium is noticeably slower than chrome from the "native" os). It's a great, slim beast for $500, I paid the higher price to get it earlier as my primary "home" laptop, and I love it. It's bridging me quite nicely until apple either zigs or zags on their laptop line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If the SSD specs are accurate, this could be fantastic. The biggest problem with the last Chromebook was the storage capacity for Linux from what I can gather.

</comment><comment><USER41> Not as fond of the build quality on this new Pixel.

The original Chromebook Pixel and Pixel LS is probably my favorite design of any laptop--the aluminum body was gorgeous, and the rectangular "slab" look that did not taper off was distinctly unique and _not_ Macbook-derivative.

The new one looks like it has a glass back (?) similar to the Pixel phone.

<comment><USER42> I mean, it was definitely a _tad_ macbook derivative.

<comment><USER37> Not at all, the original Pixel Chromebook is a design classic, the updated one is notionally better but it is more like a mid-life update that you get with a car, despite the extra features the design is not so pure. Think of it as like the VW camper van going from split-screen to normal windscreen, better but not if you are into design classics.

The keyboard is designed without legacy cruft, it is still QWERTY but very much redesigned and not to emulate an Apple - there are none of those weird keys with weird symbols on them in the place of where things like the CTRL key should be. There are also no silly Windows keys.

The screen is 3:2 with a touch screen. Apple do not do that. Sure they do 'retina' and that gets the resolution up to Pixel levels of awesomeness.

The speakers are below the keyboard rather than some tinny things hidden under lots of holes drilled in aluminium. I don't believe you can get better sound on a laptop or tablet than what the original Pixel does.

The colour-bar on the lid is not fruit shaped. It does things too, like an Easter Egg rather than 'obligatory branding'.

The tactile look and feel aspects are definitely an improvement on what Apple offers. The keyboard is much nicer for actual typing. I think the same goes for the trackpad but I use an external mouse in Apple world whereas with the Pixel there is no need to plug stuff like external pointing devices in. This is subjective to a certain extent, some people prefer cheap wine.

Then the final form factor. There is no roundy-roundy-ness. It is not overly branded with fruit-style images. It is square, not round. Even the colour sets the Pixel apart from Apple products.

The Pixel is a start from a blank piece of paper design, it is not a copy of a rival product, it is an example of what can be done and that is not the same idea as 'derivative'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> To people tempted by the Pixelbook, why not by a Macbook for that price? instead of getting a machine which OS basically amounts to a browser forcing you into google cloud services? You're basically paying a premium to get data- mined... And MacOS runs Chrome so I don't see the big deal here.

<comment><USER31> You're paying a premium for good linux and coreboot support. A macbook isn't that unique, and quite a sink of money since it can't run any other OS too well. It certainly can't run linux, and windows isn't too good either. A good linux laptop that ships with coreboot is rare. You can also run windows on these things generally.

<comment><USER44> What do you mean a Macbook can't run Linux? macOS _is_ a Unix.

As for Windows it works great in either a VM or dual boot. I know people that have bought a Mac because they can (legally) run more software than any other computer.

<comment><USER27> Well, by the same token ChromeOS is a linux distro.

And in dev mode, you get access to a bash shell, full root access, and a spare vt (so you can run xorg, etc). So you can install anything you like.

Rendering your original complaint moot.

<comment><USER44> What token are you talking about? If I build an user land application on top of ChromeOS, can I directly call functions exposed by the Linux kernel in the standard way? If so, then ChromeOS may indeed be a Linux distro.

macOS is a Unix because it's certified as such by The Open Group. It's built on top of the XNU kernel and is POSIX compliant.

> Rendering your original complaint moot

I had a complaint?

<comment><USER27> > If I build an user land application on top of ChromeOS, can I directly call > functions exposed by the Linux kernel in the standard way? If so, then > ChromeOS may indeed be a Linux distro.

Of course you can. There's no "may" about it. You seem rather unsure of what ChromeOS actually is.

Its just a linux distro. In fact, its much closer to more mainstream linux distro's than more exotic linux variants like android.

It has the linux kernel (duh!), but also glibc, gnu coreutils, bash - <USER3> whole shebang. In fact, the only thing (purposely) left out in standard mode is a terminal allowing you to run bash.

In dev-mode, that is given, so you then have terminal access to run bash, and automatic root access.

Nearly all linux pkgs will compile, install and run, "as is". In fact, there's even chromeos-specific package managers which cater to chromeos just as apt caters to debian, rpm to redhat, etc.

And google themselves give you a bash script which restores portage and installs various precompiled ebuilds.

Yes, ChromeOS is effectively a Gentoo Linux build.

Last I checked, gentoo allows you to "directly call functions exposed by the Linux kernel in the standard way" (but I've only been running gentoo since 2002, so what do I know?)

> certified as such by The Open Group

That may have been relevant in the 80's, but for over a generation, linux and/or the gnu suite has been the de-facto standard for what "unix" really is. Which is why most of the official "I've paid the open group their fee so that they can stamp me as official" unix distro's/os's have, in fact, a linux binary emulation layer.

Gnu-linux is basically the lingua-franca of the unix world. The only reason they never got this certification which some think is so important is ... because noone wanted to bother paying the subscription fee back in the 90's.

Thats it.

>> Rendering your original complaint moot > I had a complaint?

Hmm, looking back at this sub-thread, I guess thats more applicable directly to 'camus2'.

You were wading in on that side of the fence, which is why I hung my reply off of your comment. It pretty much applies to both of you.

Basically, he was saying "why bother with a chromebook, mac is 'proper' unix, and so can run lots of unixy stuff, in addition to chrome. Chromebooks can't".

Well, ChromeOS is also a proper unix, and can run lots (and lots, and lots) of unixy stuff, in addition to chrome - with the caveat that you have to put it into dev mode first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Stupid question maybe, but can you edit documents offline?

</comment><comment><USER46> No TensorFlow transistors? Seems like a squandered opportunity to further #MLAllTheThings and to build the first real consumer alternative to #Nvidiopoly.

</comment><comment><USER47> Who pays $1,199 for a Chromebook?

<comment><USER48> Those that value what the Chromebook offers over what a regular laptop with Linux does.

For many also $1099 is spare change -- at least when considering what computer they can buy.

<comment><USER49> Hopefully $1099 will be spare change for me soon! However, why can't someone get a cheaper laptop similar specs, perhaps worse design, just install linux on it?

<comment><USER50> In my experience, 'just install Linux on it' is only enjoyable till the first piece of hardware that fails to work as you expected it to (usually Bluetooth or the touchpad). Crouton on Chrome OS quite literally 'just works' and is at least as easy to install as Linux on a PC.

Also, why would I want worse specs? I'd rather get the best hardware I can, and if it looks good, even better.

<comment><USER51> Definately mixed milage here I agree..

That said on the low end I bought an Acer CloudBook (Win-10 competitor to chromebook) about 2y back and literally everything works, including suspend, wifi, and all the rest.

When a linux install goes right, it's pretty great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> >Pixelbook

Google will have tough luck registering this trademark in China

<comment><USER53> Could you elaborate on why this name would be hard to trademark in China?

<comment><USER52> There was a somewhat well known Chinese brand around 2007-2009 that was making rather decent laptops.

The core of the company's collective went to found the BYD's consumer electronics unit and were the ones who made BYD's Vaio P clones. Their makes were rather stylish for a Chinese CE company

<comment><USER51> Hmm yes. China is well known for it's fierce regulatory regieme with respect to intellectual property.

Perhaps they can just rebrand them as Mac and sell them at one of the fake apple stores instead if this becomes a problem..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> looks neat

</comment><comment><USER55> Pixel yourself

When you're getting old

...

Pixelbook

Pixels of your mama

Taken by your papa a long time ago

...

A pixel of you

in your birthday suit.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7encWb7lNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7encWb7lNQ)</comment>


Show HN: Monodraw, an ASCII Art Editor for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://monodraw.com <comment><USER3> > Monodraw does not use activation or any other form of DRM. We have complete > trust in our customers.

Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad to see other people appreciate it :)

It was a very simple decision for me - putting any kind of activation etc would just annoy the real customers. Whoever wants to pirate the app will do so regardless of any other protection mechanisms.

(Monodraw developer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any chance of a Linux/Windows port in the future? I saw this the last time it hit HN, and have hoped for something like this for other OSes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Monodraw is written in Obj-C against the AppKit framework and we always strive to create the best native experience.

This means the app is not portable as it is right now. But with the recent announcement from Microsoft about their support for Obj-C, this might be something that could happen in the future (MS does not yet support AppKit).

(Monodraw developer)

<comment><USER5> Might the GNUstep AppKit work for you?

<comment><USER6> Serious question: Does it work for anyone ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using Monodraw for several months and really enjoy it. An indispensable feature I don't see mentioned on the landing page is the ability to embed an image in the canvas so that you can "trace" over it. It makes converting an image to ASCII by hand much easier.

</comment><comment><USER8> Been using the beta for a couple of months and I love the export options w/ various code comment flavors. It makes it much easier to drop in some no-so- subtle hints. For example:

[https://github.com/bigbang/HelloAndroid/blob/master/app/src/...](https://github.com/bigbang/HelloAndroid/blob/master/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml#L5)

</comment><comment><USER9> This seems really nice (and will work well with my wiki-ing everything lately). However, as another poster pointed out, A$65 is somewhat steep for something that won't see daily use. How does this compare with asciiflow ([http://asciiflow.com/](http://asciiflow.com/)) featurewise?

<comment><USER10> The site you linked has a lot less features and a more cumbersome UI.

<comment><USER9> Thank you! I hadn't yet had time to actually go and compare them. I'll have a look at monodraw as soon as I have some cash available (my car is sucking me dry...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Recent discussions: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9138039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9138039), [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8445087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8445087)

</comment><comment><USER12> > I can move myself to the Applications folder if you'd like.

That is a friendly feature that I haven't seen before. Do other programs do this?

<comment><USER13> I've seen quite a lot of apps with this feature, they are probably using this: [https://github.com/potionfactory/LetsMove](https://github.com/potionfactory/LetsMove)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, I love this. I can't believe I never wished for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Been beta-testing this, and it's really really great! Excellent for small diagrams in code comments.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks awesome! I guess my only concern is $65 AUD seems a bit high? Also, is there a specific reason why it needs 10.9+?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, Monodraw developer here.

Regarding pricing: I wish we could price it much lower but the reality is that this tool is extremely niche. We've also put a _huge_ amount of work into it and I hope it shows in the amount of polish (although there are many more things we would like to improve and add but we had to call v1 at some point). If we ever stand a chance to continue making the best software we can, we have to price it in such a way that will allow us to do that. Note that we might still fail and not achieve a sustainable level but if we priced it at, say, $30 or $20 then we would definitely not be able to continue making the apps we want.

Regarding 10.9+ requirement: we do depend on the improvements in AppKit in 10.9 regarding layer-backed views and hence the requirement.

Hope that clarifies both issues.

<comment><USER17> I understand the reasoning, but I was going to purchase it, then saw the price, £39.99. I'd probably have bought it at £20, but for an app I'm not going to use very often £40 is too much for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am really excited about this. I'm curious if I can write a novel in this thing (or copypasta into something else), while mixing in visual cues (shapes, drawings), so I can scan a huge text file (hundreds of thousands of words) very quickly and always know exactly where I am.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, Monodraw developer here.

I think it should be entirely possible. Different parts of your novel can just be different shapes and you can arrange them on the infinite canvas as you wish.

In addition, Monodraw now supports embedding of pictures on the canvas, so you should be able to have additional visual cues.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any specific use cases in mind - <USER2> happy to hear more from our users.

Thanks!

<comment><USER18> Another quick thought. Again, this program is already polished and excellent-- I think "export" should be as simple as hitting ctrl/command-C with something selected and then pasting into a text file. This would be for quick little drawings without breaking flow in another file. Right now it seems like you have to export, choose a file name and location, open the new file, etc., etc.

And another quick thought. I haven't looked closely at your save format, but it'd be great if one could also have periodic autosave to *.txt or even autosave after every change. Layers, etc., would be lost, but I'd feel safer than leaving data in your "proprietary" format (which actually might be quite accessible) if I investigated it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Another quick thought. Again, this program is already polished and excellent > --I think "export" should be as simple as hitting ctrl/command-C with > something selected and then pasting into a text file. [snip

That's exactly how it works! Select any number of shapes, hit Cmd-C and it will copy them to the clipboard. You can even set a preference to include a comment tag when copying to the clipboard.

> And another quick thought. I haven't looked closely at your save format, but > it'd be great if one could also have periodic autosave to *.txt or even > autosave after every change.

As a standard OS X document app, it autosaves are regular intervals that are determined by the OS (in particular, every time you leave the app, as well).

<comment><USER18> >> That's exactly how it works!

Ah, have to be in select mode. Not intuitive--I really did play around and give up, and I'm not stupid. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can see this being used for command line UIs, and maybe it would be nice for source control for some reason. Other than that, I struggle to see its usefulness, and I'm a little surprised at all of the positive feedback.

The website looks beautiful! I bet it has been fun to develop.

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome work! I have been working on a roguelike and a tool like this will be great for mocking up dungeons and testing out different ascii characters for representing things :)

Before I was using vim for this but this seems much nicer. I like the ability to set a 9 grid up on rects.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really would love having such a thing for Linux.

<comment><USER22> Ditaa ([http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/](http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/)) does drawings in a similar style, and is open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Damn! I missed the Beta discount :( I've found this app useful for TCP/IP diagrams and will be purchasing it shortly.

<comment><USER24> The product is awesome! Just out of curiosity, what kind of TCP/IP diagrams do you draw with it?

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing it's the ones found in RFCs, like this:

[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt)

<comment><USER24> Awesome! Great examples on how to represent stuff in plain text. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been wishing for something like this to help me draw diffable diagrams in source code comments

</comment><comment><USER27> This is really awesome. So much quality. Upvoting.

</comment><comment><USER28> Beautiful landing page!

</comment><comment><USER29> congrats on launching this!

</comment><comment><USER30> Dude this thing is super cool! I can see myself using this a lot! Thanks!!</comment>


Ask HN: Interviewing Brian Cox in an hour. Any questions from here? - <AUTHOR> As the title suggest, interviewing Brian Cox as part of his new shows that are coming to the UK.<p>Anything that you've always wanted to ask Brian Cox, or indeed anyone of his ilk? <comment><USER2> Is string theory science?

Some scientists argue that "if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally". Where does prof. Cox stand on this issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> Added to the list!!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I also thought some good questions would be in the realm of human exploration. i.e. with the ever increasing capabilities of machines to do a vast bulk of the exploration - where do humans fit in now, and in 50years?

<comment><USER3> In this vein ^, what are his thoughts on Von Neumann probes?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are latency and jitter still critically relevant in online gaming today? - <AUTHOR> How relevant are problems caused by latency and jitter still in online gaming? (bearing in mind the increasing penetration of broadband and fixing the latency & jitter effects in-app/game, e.g. by implementing FEC-like controls)<p>I'm working on building a network intelligence tool and one of its quick byproducts is having the ability to do a quick (network) performance benchmark of pretty much any online gaming server (with the usual suspects like Fortnite and PUBG included) - would this help anyone if I release it as open source? <comment><USER2> Loss means more really. A good engine can compensate and predict very well with variable latency and jitter. You probably know that the quality of the connection matters more than the speed. You could have a 5/5 connection but have great quality and have a great ping. My town has two ISPs, spectrum and a local fiber optic provider. Spectrum has horrible bufferbloat on their connection and wildly variable ping. The local fiber has a literally flawless connection to everything and is cheaper and faster. Pretty much every game I get a 15ms ping or less.</comment>


Black and brown tech workers share their experiences of racism on the job - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-06-24/diversity-in-tech-tech-workers-tell-their-story <comment><USER2> It's strange how this "black and white" article seems to gloss over the fact that Asians (Indians/Chinese/ etc) who are also "non-white" and are the dominant labor force in tech.

Wonder how their experiences gibe with this article?</comment>


Super-Efficient Free-Piston Engines Could Replace Traditional Gas and Diesel Engines - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/free-piston-engines-efficient-plug-in-hybrid-cars-electric.php

<comment><USER2> Here is the original article:

<http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21442>

Caption: _Piston power: In an unconventional engine design, a rod with a piston at either end shuttles between two combustion chambers. Magnets at the center of the rod move past metal coils (orange) to create an electrical current._

I usually call these crankless engines.

      .

_Free-piston engines aren't new: they were invented in the 1920s. But the increased recent focus on hybrid cars has led a growing number of research groups and automakers to start research programs to develop the technology. Unlike in conventional engines, there is no mechanical connection between the piston and a crankshaft (hence the name free-piston). Since the design allows for improved combustion and less friction, the engines could be far more efficient in generating electricity than either conventional generators or newer fuel-cell technology._</comment>


GemStats.org - Help the Ruby community collect stats on library usage - <AUTHOR> http://gemstats.org

<comment><USER2> At New Relic, we've published a report like this about once a quarter for the last few years for the thousands of Rails apps that monitor with us.

We included information on Ruby version, Rails version as well as popular gems and plugins.

You can see previous stats here: <http://railslab.newrelic.com/>

I'm working on publishing the next report, which should be out this week.

<comment><USER2> I just posted the latest State of the Stack for Ruby.

[http://blog.newrelic.com/2011/09/28/state-of-the-stack-a- rub...](http://blog.newrelic.com/2011/09/28/state-of-the-stack-a-ruby-on- rails-benchmarking-report-sept-2011/)

It has: \- A breakdown of ruby versions \- A chart showing the changes to ruby versions deployed since Rails 3 came out \- A breakdown of rails versions \- A breakdown of ruby dispatchers \- The top 50 gems and top 50 plugins

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They're asking the questions:

      * Company type
      * Team size
      * Hosting environment
      * Other languages your company has been using ruby
      * Years your team has been using ruby

and asking for a manual upload of the gem.

I don't see how this will indicate the quality or popularity of a Gem.

A more sound approach may be to spider RubyGems.org, look at the "source code" link, check out the repo, and start doing stuff like look at test coverage, amount of documentation, etc. If the gem source code is on github, you could probably get some idea of the quality based on some metric around the number of followers they have, etc.

\--

Edit: I didn't realize they wanted just the Gemfile.

As for the down votes: I'm not sure how this is "FUD". I question the methodology, to which the author responds below. We're all smarter for seeing that.

<comment><USER4> First off, they are asking for your _Gemfile_ , not your .gem. There is a big difference here. There is no source code in a Gemfile. Secondly, they clearly state why this is an indication of popularity-- they are getting real world usage statistics, not download counts. They ask for company info because if a company the size of 80 people uses a gem, it's going to effectively be more popular than a company of size 1. 79 more people are using it.

Please stop spreading the FUD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be nice if you published the results of your data, too? Unless that is forthcoming.

I'm not into giving away my data if I don't get some feedback.

<comment><USER6> Yes, as mentioned on the site, the whole idea behind this is to publish the results. Otherwise there's no value! Can't blame you one bit :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would it be possible to create a gem so one could just include stats gathering in their gemfile?

eg.

      gem "gemstats"

<comment><AUTHOR> This is only our first pass. We have discussed the next version which should be passive. Either plug in some analytics directly to Gemfiles or have a post- commit hook to submit the Gemfile when it changes.

It would be great if we could look at Gemstats.org and instantly see stats without having to go through the upload process.</comment></comment>


Tourists to US may get asked to hand in passwords or be denied entry - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/09/uk-tourists-to-us-may-get-asked-to-hand-in-passwords-or-be-denied-entry <comment><USER2> I believe this can also be a problem for US citizen's coming over. If you don't unlock your phone they might take it and/or delay your entry with questioning.

This border/airport security is just like the old fashioned Soviet/German stereotypical scenes. The problem is that propaganda about 'Muslim terrorists' is so effective people think that's what its about. All of that is a lie. This is about restricting freedoms in order to close down a country.

The answer is don't come to the US if you value privacy (i.e. are human).

The United States is becoming a repressive regime. Many people who have the means to do so are emigrating while it is still feasible.

<comment><AUTHOR> US citizens ARE being asked for passwords.

1)[http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd- bikkann...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkannavar- detained-cbp-phone-search-trump-travel-ban)

2)[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/traveling-while- brown-u-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/traveling-while-brown-u-s- border-agents-can-search-your-n732746)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know that I couldn't hand over passwords without consulting legal departments in multiple companies. Just from the NDAs that I've read.

I'm sure there are a lot of people here (freelancers, engineers, programmers, and similar that customize solutions for external companies) that fall into the same category.

<comment><USER4> Ah but they wouldn't be 'tourists'.

<comment><USER5> Yes they would. Some people co-mingle work and personal data on the same computer. Granting a third party access to the non-personal data might violate some NDAs. The obvious solution is to remove, or further encrypt, this private data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honest question: why? What reason could they possibly have to do this?

> Keeping America safe and enforcing our nation's laws in an increasingly > digital world depends on our ability to lawfully examine all _materials_ > entering the US

Key word: materials. Data does not fall into that category.

All I see is "extreme vetting". What, specifically, does that mean? How is any data a threat to national security?

</comment><comment><USER7> _" face detailed ideological questioning"_

That sounds scarily close to full-blown Stalinism having come to the US.

<comment><USER8> We've had homegrown McCarthyism for a long time, no need to import.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm my passwords are in a keepassx database in Nextcloud. I don't have an app on my phone to read the database (nor do I have the keyfile). It seems I have quite some prepping to do if I don't plan to take my laptop to the US.

<comment><USER10> Enjoy being detained until they give up because they don't understand you cannot comply with what they are asking. Or don't visit :(

<comment><USER11> Under this policy they would be denied entry, so the detention would only be until their flight out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's going to be great for tourism. Not.

</comment><comment><USER13> This isn't just about phones or other devices. But my worry, as an American, is reciprocity.

</comment><comment><USER14> May I suggest "Tourists might be asked"?

Or even better, "US might ask tourists to hand in..."????

Get asked? Sure, the meaning is conveyed fine, but "get" is this mysterious slang construction from my generation that is fine for everyday conversation, in my opinion, but not from a reputable news outlet LOL

<comment><USER15> Whatever your opinion on whether it's appropriately formal for a news article, the 'get-passive' [1] is definitely not 'this mysterious slang construction from my generation', unless you're a contemporary of Mark Twain.

Here, 'get asked' conveys the additional meaning of an emphasis on the subject and a negative connotation of the action's effect on it, which 'be asked' would not convey.

[1] [http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british- grammar/p...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british- grammar/passive/get-passive)

<comment><USER14> Cool link, thank you. Ultimately people are allowed to express themselves in whatever way they wish, but this particular construction feels a bit obtuse, unnecessary, and as your link noted, informal.

I was speaking with a linguist from my alma mater who said that "get" is a uniquely "millenial, valley girl" construction that has been popularized in our generation through schools and tv shows for teenagers.

I don't see any of us praising "like", "kind of", vocal fry, upvoice, and etc?</comment></comment></comment>


Leaked PDF with secret plan to install child porn blocking filter for Europe - <AUTHOR> http://ak-zensur.de/download/europarat--access-blocking-re01.en10.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty shocking.

We're talking about an EU wide filtering and logging capability that will require deep packet inspection at the provider level.

 _Of course_ nobody can be against it because we're fighting child pornography and terrorism here.

Never mind the detail that once such a filter is in place it can be used for other purposes.

<comment><USER2> While in Europe recently I met many Chinese tourists who all said that their internet filtering was originally put in place to protect children.

<comment><AUTHOR> What bugs me about all this is that when the iron curtain was still in place everybody and their brother here was taking pot-shots at the perceived weakness in the people on 'the other side' for not standing up while their rights were trodden on, and how evil those governments were.

And here we are, our rights are trodden on in ways that the former sovblock regimes could probably only dream of (inspect _every_ letter ? trace every data request citizen makes ? trace the whereabouts of every citizen 24x7 ?) and it just happens.

It's almost as if having a bad example right next door helped us to find our moral compass.

<comment><USER2> The disturbing thing is we do have a bad example right next door - people will point and criticise China and Iran and in the next breath point out how we know better and would never let the power be misused.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I think that the fact that to most Europeans and Americans 'Russia' (the collective view of the former sovblock started at the east German border and ended halfway between Japan and the former USSR) was the enemy, and China is not yet.

There is some noise now with respect to the google China situation, but on the whole people think of China as relatively benign, and as an ally and trading partner rather than as an enemy. The cold war was definitely different in that respect, and everything 'the Russians' did (and by extension the other sovblock regimes) was perceived as bad.

I remember that in the mid 80's, when I visited Poland that on my return people were literally shocked that there were CCTV systems operated by the government on the streets.

The KGB keeping files on all foreigners and so on. We've come full circle and we're doing all that and more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just in case no one reads down.... I think the title is due to a confusion on the use of the word filtering on page 5. This doesn't propose internet filtering but instead refers to a indecent website blocklist maintained by a group called CIRCAMP. For the most part this never affects you and the group themselves call this an interim measure; it's _not_ filtering your connection - just blocking access to certain manually checked domains.

More here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1218006>

</comment><comment><USER4> Boing Boing featured MOGiS, a german organisation of abuse victims opposing the blocking scheme: "Child-abuse survivors oppose EU censorwall" [http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/25/child-abuse- survivor.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/25/child-abuse- survivor.html)

Also there is some more detail in following article: [http://www.pcworld.com/article/192295/ec_to_propose_mandator...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/192295/ec_to_propose_mandatory_web_blocking_for_child_abuse_sites.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Leaked PDF without secret plan to decrypt SSL connections"

Oops.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, small oversight on their part. They might institutionalize the man in the middle concept though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aggh it makes me so mad, these people are either fools or take me for one.</comment>