Two-thirds of all Android antivirus apps are frauds - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/two-thirds-of-all-android-antivirus-apps-are-frauds/ <comment><USER2> Whenever i see anything about android anti-virus apps I've always been confused about what it is they actually look for. Every app on an android phone has fine grained permission management and for anything you give specific access to system functions(like drawing over other apps) to, you have to go to a specific extra permission enabling screen full of warnings to enable it.

I understand there's apps with malicious things buried in them, but how can an antivirus determine between something like that and something benign?

As far as i can tell, traditional viruses, the way the work on windows and dos systems, just wouldn't work on android.

I'm not sure if i'm just missing something, but this article kind of confirms my suspicions. It just seems like you'd have to be really fucking around, or just completely and utterly oblivious to some very obvious red flags, to install a straight up virus on android.

<comment><USER3> > As far as i can tell, traditional viruses, the way the work on windows and > dos systems, just wouldn't work on android.

You might be interested in reading Google's guidelines on what they consider to be a "potentially harmful application" (PHA) [0].

> [..] anything you give specific access to system functions(like drawing over > other apps) to, you have to go to a specific extra permission enabling > screen full of warnings to enable it.

Oh despite the on-device on-use/first-use consent, the android app ecosystem was a big mess before Google started auto-detecting rouge apps and booting them out of play store.

Even today, despite GooglePlayProtect, I occasionally find my friends complaining about apps hijacking their phones to show ads and sometimes be very hard to dismiss, and they do not absolutely know what to do (disable/uninstall no longer used apps, revoke permissions, disable notifications). They'd install anti-viruses in hope that it would help fix that.

> how can an antivirus determine between something like that and something > benign

Not sure what anti-viruses do, but some examples from Google's 2018 report on how they fished out PHAs using static/dynamic analysis of apks and machine learning [1]:

1\. Re-packaged game apps with data-hoarding/adware.

2\. Click-fraud apps (see above).

3\. Suspension of key device functionality (on a rooted device, esp).

> It just seems like you'd have to be really fucking around, [..] to install a > straight up virus on android.

You might be right: A good percentage of 2bn active android users might be doing just that.

\--

[0] [https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_S...](https://source.android.com/security/reports/Google_Android_Security_PHA_classifications.pdf)

[1] [https://security.googleblog.com/2019/01/pha-family- highlight...](https://security.googleblog.com/2019/01/pha-family-highlights- zen-and-its.html)

<comment><USER4> But do apps from the play store have the system permissions to carry out those operations on other apps?

I don't think they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every antivirus app is a fraud. I stopped using them about 10 years now, I only use firewall and haven't got any problems. There's also some great firewall apps for Android that have logging and stuff, pretty useful.

<comment><USER6> I have never owned an android phone and honestly did not know that there were antivirus apps for the phone. That makes me glad that I never owned one. Are viruses much of a concern for android phones?

<comment><USER7> This is really not Android-specific: [https://top8antivirus.com/ios-antivirus- comparison/](https://top8antivirus.com/ios-antivirus-comparison/)

But it's mostly a scam. Unless you really go for dodgy apps, it's all fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And 100% of iOS ones are. Why are they even allowed in the App Store?

<comment><USER9> This comment is breaking my brain.

If 100% of iOS antivirus apps are fraud, that implies they do nothing (probably because of permissions) and/or there are no viruses on iOS to even find, no? If that's the case, that'd further imply those antivirus apps aren't, themselves, malware. Then... what's the point? Why would they exist as apps (and why would people download them) if they do nothing and gain nothing for the author or the user?

<comment><USER10> They gain money for the author.

<comment><USER11> This ^

If it's free it's probably making money from ads, or making money from your information. Or you paid for it and it's doing the above anyways. AV style apps can ask for a lot of permissions without raising as much as an eyebrow because they need them to 'protect' users, which puts them in a nice spot to data mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It has been like that for at least five years, it's nice that there's finally an article about it.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article was like the security equivalent to an anti-vaxer blog post.

First, AV bake-offs are a racket that gets security companies to hand over their malware samples or pay to be "excluded," from the bake off. So anyone with advantageous data either gives that up, or pays to be left out of the test. There is nothing honest about their benchmarks or methods. Bake-off companies are scumbags, and this ZDNet reporter got taken.

Second: Hard problem with malware detection on mobile is that there is no privileged role to do analysis from. It's not like you can root the phone and do syscall interception. The best they can do is analysis of apps you can find, and to do automated software analysis at scale is some very interesting work.

However, If you are the target of a custom APT, there isn't a lot anyone can do.

There are a few startups who are doing automated dynamic analysis and working on symbolic execution problems to further this. That the industry has not solved it yet does not make them fraudulent.

Third, Android malware includes:

\- fake repackaged apps with adware or spyware. \- spyware installed by 3rd party \- malware that roots the device \- whatever all those dodgy 2FA and password manager apps are. \- apps with libraries with known vulnerabilities (think image processing, overflows, etc) \- apps that hoover up your data (txts, contacts, browsing, etc) and send it to authors.

The security model of mobile devices (iOS and Android) enforce hard limits on what is possible in terms of security value add by a non-OEM vendor. OEMs are worse than useless, and so app vendors have moved into the game. The threat model apps mitigate is patchy, but it suffices for most consumer and enterprise use cases. However, if you antagonize a government and get targeted custom malware, it would seem naive to think an app vendor is going to protect you.

While I have no remaining affection for any vendors in that space, to call them fraudulent is sensational, if not obnoxious.

<comment><USER14> No offense, but nothing you have theoreticized here can be proven to be true.

It seems to me that you've created your own conspiracy theory about the AV industry.

I don't see how this study can be disproven. "Security apps" detected themselves as malware. I'd say calling them "fraudulent" is quite accurate.

Just because you wrote along comment that doesn't make it right or accurate. You're way off base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> When 90%+ of all android apps are spyware, google, OEM and carrier apps being the worst offenders it becomes ironic for one spyware beneficiary to call another fraudulent.

</comment><comment><USER16> One of the problems that we have encountered is that even though an Android AV might be less than useful, durring the sales process enterprise customers are requiring a solution for each type of endpoint they have. So to play the game, you need to offer a solution, even if it is not a solution.

</comment><comment><USER17> Chris DiBona from Google already said this in 2011: [https://www.cnet.com/news/googler-android-antivirus- software...](https://www.cnet.com/news/googler-android-antivirus-software-is- scareware-from-charlatans/)

</comment><comment><USER18> People used to install these memory cleaners and anti virus apps and I used to tell them, they don't do anything. And they used to say, if they do then you're screwed. The logic is just wierd for me. Idk what to argue then.

</comment><comment><USER19> Antivirus frauds are like insecticides: I'll kill all the bugs ruining your crops, but I'll ruin your crops too.

</comment><comment><USER20> The only virus protection you'll ever need on smartphones is to know to install only programs from F-Droid: [https://f-droid.org](https://f-droid.org)

<comment><USER21> F-Droid has no viruses because nobody uses it so nobody bothers to upload any malware to it.

<comment><USER22> F-Droid is very similar in design to Linux/BSD/... package repositories as in only a few select people can push binaries to the repos (of course you can extend that list if you add other repos to your list). Considering the official F-Droid repo only ever accepts free software that can be built (manually or automatically) by the maintainers, the risk of spreading stuff that can be called "viruses" or "malware" is somewhat slim; either the original app code repo or a maintainer has to go wrong. However this is significantly less likely than on a store virtually anybody can upload to. Your comment just comes out as dismissive based on your perceived insignificance of the project, but that's just twisting reality: F-Droid has less malware, _by design_.</comment></comment></comment>


German courts say photos of public domain works are not in the public domain - cirrus-clouds https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170612/09194237572/multiple-german-courts-rule-photos-public-domain-works-are-not-public-domain.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> What excellent "journalism"!

They even explain the basics of German law, and why statute explicitly protects "Lichtbildwerke", but then they proceed to declaring the situation "crazy" and hoping that the fourth court involved now may spontaneously disregard the written statute and rule in favor of Wikimedia, because, well just because it's Sunday, I guess.</comment>


Losing the War - <AUTHOR> http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm <comment><USER2> Interesting seeing Rupert Brooke's "swimmers into cleanness leaping" associated with American attitudes to the Second World War. I associate this poem's bright naivety with European attitudes to the First World War, and associate the Second with painful reluctance both in the UK and in much of Germany.</comment>


Maine Lets Drivers Loose with CRZY Vanity Plates - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/maine-lets-drivers-loose-with-crzy-vanity-plates-11577454470 <comment><AUTHOR> [http://archive.is/xh2nP](http://archive.is/xh2nP)</comment>


Hybrid cloud deployments of Stackato using jclouds & Brooklyn  - <AUTHOR> http://www.activestate.com/blog/2012/06/video-hybrid-cloud-stackato-deployments-using-jclouds-brooklyn Cloudsoft CTO Alex Heneveld and ActiveState's Diane Mueller demonstrate how to run applications in hybrid clouds via Stackato (Platform as a Service) using two open source projects: brooklyn (a control plane for distributed applications) and jclouds (multi-cloud library that helps deploy Stackato in multiple clouds). The demonstration showcases a hybrid cloud that spans both the HP Cloud and Amazon`s AWS. <comment><AUTHOR> Cloudsoft CTO Alex Heneveld and ActiveState's Diane Mueller demonstrate how to run applications in hybrid clouds using Stackato -- ActiveState's Platform-as- a-Service for private clouds -- and two open source projects: brooklyn (a control plane for distributed applications) and jclouds (multi-cloud library that helps deploy Stackato in multiple clouds). The demonstration showcases using Open Source tools to do a hybrid cloud that spans both the HP Cloud and Amazon`s AWS.

</comment><comment><USER2> Creating a Stackato fabric delivers a seamless hybrid cloud for the enterprise. Great job guys.</comment>


What apps do software engineers use to collaborate? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Email, chat, source control, whiteboards, screen share</comment>


Why Record iPhone Sales Might be Rotten for Apple - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2013/09/why-record-iphone-sales-might-be-rotten-for-apple-aapl/?google_editors_picks=true <comment> jack-r-abbit Ugh... I'm not even a fan of Steve Jobs, Apple or the way the two did business... but even _I_ am getting sick of the whole "this is not the Apple of Steve Jobs" on repeat. Of course this is not the Apple of Steve Jobs... because he is gone. The man got sick and stepped down and then died. Stop trying to keep Apple in some holding pattern while you wait for his return. He's not coming back. Somebody else runs the company now. Somebody who is not Steve Jobs. Get over it, please.

<comment><USER2> That's the double edge with marketing your CEO as some sort of industry god. The moment that person is no longer your CEO you will be left with unfair expectations.

reality = perception;</comment></comment>


Groupon Pulls Out of Skandinavia (Norway, Denmark and Sweden) - <AUTHOR> http://e24.no/naeringsliv/slutt-for-groupon-i-skandinavia/23562339 <comment><USER2> This just is an evidence that scam schemes like Groupon are not possible in Skandinavia. Good for them !</comment>


The Eldgjá eruption and its influence on the Christianisation of Iceland - <AUTHOR> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-018-2171-9 <comment><USER2> Without paywall: [http://sci-hub.tv/10.1007/s10584-018-2171-9](http://sci- hub.tv/10.1007/s10584-018-2171-9)</comment>


Ray Dalio's post-election financial outlook - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reflections-trump-presidency-one-week-after-election-ray-dalio <comment><USER2> Interesting to note that James Comey directly reported to Dalio at Bridgewater a few years back.</comment>


FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/fbis-suicide-letter-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-and-dangers-unchecked-surveillance

<comment><USER2> The NYT piece cited in this article was discussed when it came out: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8598652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8598652)

I thought both the NYT piece and the discussion were interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> > You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected > for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance).

What is the specific reason/prcatical significance of these 34 days?

<comment><USER4> The letter was sent about a month before King went to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, so it's probably a reference to that.</comment></comment>


So I hit "TAB" and Google mail sends the partially composed message? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm using Google's compose window, I'm in the middle of composing the message, press "TAB" to, you know, like, insert a TAB character, and it sends the message.
So what's that about?
People, when you design an interface, don't put invisible, undiscoverable, irrecoverable actions in it. <comment><USER2> It happened to me several times. To avoid that I always write the destination email address after having finished my message.

Also, the combination <TAB> \+ Space also sends messages here in Hacker Ne

<comment><USER3> When buttons are focused, enter and space both submit the button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I enable "Undo Send" to recover from accidental sends. I just hit tab here and it shifted me to "add comment" :D

</comment><comment><USER5> Pressing tab will move the focus to the send button, hitting return will then send the message. Presumably this is what you did. Possibly not ideal, but I'd disagree it is an invisible, undiscoverable (tab to move focus is standard), and irrecoverable (you must also hit return).

<comment><USER6> For programmers it might feel odd, if pressing tab makes the textarea loosing the focus, instead of putting a tab character in the text.

<comment><USER7> More counter-productive than odd. Since most of us are already used to using tab in browsers and forms.

But yeah, it sucks to write a real amount of text in a texbox that doesn't let you use tab. Of course you can always write in another editor and then put it in the textbox.

Even easier if you use something like this:<https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/its-all-text/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't reproduce your situation on Google Chrome.

I do these exact steps: 1\. Press Compose 2\. Enter recipient 3\. Press TAB 4\. Enter subject 5\. Press TAB 6\. Enter message 7\. Press TAB

At the end the focus is on Send, which is an expected behavior and it displays a tooltip that says "Send (Ctrl-Enter)". I'm able to send the message if I press SPACE or ENTER, but again, it's an expected behavior when you get the focus on a button (the tooltip can be misleading).

Do you have more information that could help finding the cause?

<comment><AUTHOR> After re-reading, I freely admit that parts of this make me sound really angry, and to some extent I am. I'm finding the Google Mail interface, and Google products in general, just get in the way, and stop me from working. I have to change to work the way they want, and many times that removes from me facilities that I depend on. So just to let you know that I'm having a bad day, and I apologise in advance for some ranting.

And so, to reply to your point.

I'm no longer on the machine I was using, and I was using Firefox on Ubuntu, not Chrome. I won't be able to test your sequence on the original configuration until Friday at the earliest.

Plus, in trying to log in on the appropriate account, I'm told I'm already logged in with a different one, and do I want to link the accounts?

No.

How can I proceed? It appears I can't. I either have to log out the other account, which would be a pain, or link the accounts, which I can't do because of separation of concerns.

There are times I really, _really_ hate Google. There's no link that says - no, just log me in, dammit.

So I reload the page and oh look! I'm logged in! That's obvious ...

So, now to proceed with what you say ... and yes, what you say has exactly the effect you describe, which is exactly the effect I expected.

Earlier today, however, on a different machine, with Firefox, I clicked Compose, clicked in the recipient box and type the address, clicked in the subject box and completed the subject, clicked in the text box and started composing. Part way through I was generating a plain-text style bullet list and hit return, then TAB.

The message was then sent, despite my expectation. That's as far as I can recall, but I did it a second time and it did the same thing. I'm pretty sure I didn't hit space or enter after hitting TAB, although I can't guarantee that now, several hours, much typing, and several tasks later.

So here's the point for other designers of user interfaces. When your use is in a text box, TAB might take them out without them realizing, and then hitting ENTER or SPACE might perform an action they really aren't expecting, and didn't want. perhaps you should design the interface so that the button they get to after the text box does not perform an irreversible action.

<comment><USER9> > So here's the point for other designers of user interfaces. When your use is > in a text box, TAB might take them out without them realizing, and then > hitting ENTER or SPACE might perform an action they really aren't expecting, > and didn't want. perhaps you should design the interface so that the button > they get to after the text box does not perform an irreversible action.

After typing my reply in the other thread, I read far enough down the page to get to this entry, and I have to say I agree 100% with what you've said here. The fact that pressing [TAB, space] sends the email irreversibly is dangerous, and can pretty easily happen by accident when typing quickly.

Having said that, the behavior of TAB moving between form elements is a long standing behavior. Many "power users" use it to great effect, but it's discoverability is very poor. The solution is a tough compromise though. In Gmail, many users rely on the [TAB, space] sequence to send email. I do the same thing on Hacker News. When I finish my comment, I use [TAB, space] to submit my comment. The people who write the software are loath to give that up.

My feeling is that within the rich text editing area of an email message, TAB ought to insert a tab character, but I'm not sure how difficult that is. The TAB keypress is handled by the browser, so if the Gmail devs were to go through the trouble of trapping TAB and inserting the tab character in to the text area, they'd be breaking the expected behavior of the web browser. In that way, this solution creates another problem. Which one is "right"?

It's a bit of a paradox. If nothing else, I hope this helps shed some light on why these design decisions aren't always as straight forward as they seem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It does not do that, I just double checked, even when the focus is on the "Send" button a dialog box pops with "Send (Ctrl-Enter)" and no sending happens. Maybe what you encountered was the work of a browser extension or a labs feature left enabled, or most likely you just tapped return at the wrong moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> It may not have done it for you, but it did it for me, and others in this thread have confirmed that it did it for them.

For reference, I don't have any browser extensions installed, and I haven't used any labs features, so neither of those suggestions is correct either.

And forgive me for being blunt, but your reply seems to be similar to what happens when a problem is reported to some "support" services where they say "Works for me!" The clear underlying text is "So you're an idiot, and don't matter."

So thank you for your suggestions, but they're wrong. And it did do it for me, and I double-checked.

<comment><USER9> I think maybe you should take a step back and realize that the way you communicated your message initially isn't consistent with the defense you're making here. You didn't state your original issue as a bug, you called Google out as if this were some kind of feature:

"People, when you design an interface, don't put invisible, undiscoverable, irrecoverable actions in it."

This would only be a feature if it happened for everyone, and now you're using curt language with someone who is trying to help.

Troubleshooting is hard, and the communications involved are often polarizing. End users commonly feel defensive, and troubleshooters often fail to couch their language diplomatically.

The matter of reproducibility is the basic litmus test by which programmers classify issues as bugs versus environment issues. Bugs are problems in the software, and environment issues are problems in the user's specific configuration. Often times an issue is a combination of both. The willingness to engage in troubleshooting environment issues varies by developer, but if you're interested in receiving help, it's worth acknowledging that your problem falls somewhere on this continuum, which means you always bear some responsibility in remaining objective during the troubleshooting process. You seem convinced that this is some type of feature issue, rather than remaining open to other possibilities.

I think I might have an idea about what's happening in your case, but I'm reluctant to even posit the idea, because I fear you'll lash out as me as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I acknowledge that I was curt. I do, however, believe that I'm being consistent. It's news to me that it's perceived as not, so I'll take another look at it. Thank you.

And I didn't call it as a bug because it happened to me twice, it has happened to me on other platforms, and I assumed that a Google Mail interface would behave the way Google intended. I acknowledge that testing and debugging is hard, but I guess by default I had assumed Google would get it right. Your assertion is that they haven't got it right, and that this is a bug. Noted.

For reference, I work on software used in safety-critical situations, and so I know a little about getting user interfaces consistent, repeatable, and tested. I have the advantage that our system can control the hardware and environment, but I am aware of many of the issues. I'm just annoyed that hitting "TAB" caused me to send an incomplete message to an important customer, making me look stupid. I guess I'll have to treat Google's interfaces with the same paranoia as I use professionally when I write software. That's disappointing, but I guess unavoidable given their constraints.

And I'm sorry I've made you feel that you can't propose a suggestion as to what might have happened. That's really, really not intentional. But when I'm already having a bad morning, having someone say "No, that doesn't happen" when it clearly did is not a sure fire way of improving it.

So put it all down to the problems of writing software for uncontrollable environments causing different and sometimes undesirable behavior, coupled with the inability to read people accurately in a forum type of context, coupled in turn with a certain amount of stress over the whole thing.

And I apologize unreservedly for offence caused, and thank you for your comment.

 _Added in edit: I've upvoted you - I genuinely appreciate your comment._

<comment><USER9> All understandable points. I'll put out a couple of suggestions. Keep in mind that when troubleshooting, these are all guesses. They're not intended to imply that you don't have a problem. Also try to keep in mind that there may be some small detail you've overlooked that is causing the behavior you're observing. If you're dead set on insisting that the behavior happens the way you've described and there are no other possibilities, then you should stop reading here.

As troubleshooters, we often try to fill in the blanks with what we perceive as small pieces of missing information. This isn't an individual assault, but rather learned behavior. I'm damn good with a computer, but my #1 rule of troubleshooting is to assume that any "truth" about what I've observed can be invalidated through empiricism.

Enough hedging, let's see if we make any progress in troubleshooting the problem you experienced :) What we know so far:

* Pressing the TAB key results in an email being sent

* Other users report that pressing TAB doesn't send the email

We accept these as truths, but with two caveats: 1) they may be disproved or refined at any time (we aren't sentimentally attached to them, ego be damned), 2) there may be some additional information that is not yet obvious, so the list shouldn't be considered complete

What can we tease from this information?

1) Can you get the behavior to occur predictably? If you open a new compose window and press TAB, does the email send every time?

2) What is the normally expected behavior of TAB? In most web browsers, the TAB key is used to move focus from one form element to another. In Windows, the "focus" can move to buttons as well. In OS X, the focus navigation using TAB is constrained to text fields and lists by default, but can be configured to "All Controls" through the Keyboard preference pane.

3) What processes are available to _intentionally_ send an email? That I am aware of, you can: click the send key, use the keyboard shortcut ctrl+return or cmd+enter (Windows/OS X). Use TAB to move focus to the "Send" button and press the spacebar/return/enter.

4) What small pieces of information might be missing? We've already ruled out browser extensions, so that's a good start. Try to think of any other software that uses global keyboard shortcuts or performs automation.

My pet theory (guess) would be that you're pressing TAB expecting that the TAB character is inserted in to the text field, but this is actually causing focus to move to the "Send" button. From there, a press of the spacebar, return, or enter key is sending the email. This is very easy to do when typing. If you can't regularly reproduce the behavior by a simple press of the TAB key, I'd say this gives this theory a higher probability of correctness. If you _can_ reproduce the behavior by simply pressing TAB, then you can discard this theory.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on these items.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Build OpenAI's GPT-2: "The AI That's Too Dangerous to Release" - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/gpt2/ <comment><USER2> I only skimmed the article, but couldn't find a price estimate.</comment>


A Tale of Two Bootstraps: Lessons Learned in Maintainable CSS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pamelafox.org/2012/12/a-tale-of-two-bootstraps-lessons.html

<comment><USER2> My takeaway from this story is slightly different - we need better tools. Especially better refactoring tools.

IMO, using larger names is only a symptom of the main problem - the fact that we're still using plain old text search and replace. We're relying on it way too much. And its not a very precise, very fine tool.

Code organization solutions don't seem to fully solve this either.

1) Whoops, we need to change this style everywhere:

"Lets just use classes, then when we want to change the style of our buttons we can change it at a single place (the class)"

2) Whoops, we need to change the class name

"Lets just use templates containing the class name, then when we want to change the class name we simply change it in the template"

3) Whoops, we need to change the template... and so on.

I think there is a clear need for better code maintenance tools, for all languages. Especially the search (and replace) problem. Perhaps search tools that are based on the language parsers would help.

<comment><USER3> Intellij supports CSS refactoring to some extent:

[https://www.jetbrains.com/editors/html_xhtml_css_editor.jsp?...](https://www.jetbrains.com/editors/html_xhtml_css_editor.jsp?ide=idea#Refactoring)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it possible that bootstrap was really only designed to "bootstrap" the design of a web project? I think that eventually the project will mature into its own. I would not expect a mature project to ever "upgrade" to a new version of bootstrap as that doesn't really make sense to me.

<comment><USER5> I have wondered the same thing all along. And whenever I complain about the non-semantic nature of bootstrap use, people justify with that same, "but this is just to get started" argument. So that's what everyone says. But I don't think it's what anyone actually does.

<comment><USER4> I think if semantic markup is important, then don't use bootstrap. Once you use it, bootstrap will always be part of the project's DNA unless you do a true rewrite. But, to your point, that almost nevers happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > For a longer article that also recommends that technique for semantic more > than maintenance reasons, read Stop Embedding Bootstrap Classes in your > HTML.

I feel so dumb for never having thought of this myself. It really irked me that my HTML was no longer semantic, which is why I putted off using Bootstrap for a very long time. I don't have to feel guilty any more :P

</comment><comment><USER7> I feel like all the tools that allow you to do X or Y faster, actually make maintainability and debugging magnitudes slower.

Which is why I've started avoiding anything I feel it's going to be difficult to read and maintain in the future by me or another person. I now always assume it's going to be another person, even if it's not, but this has helped me write more clear and concise code.

Even if the initial effort is more time consuming, it makes up for it in the end. Bootstrap and CoffeeScript are two tools that I feel suffer from that effect greatly.

Maybe it's a fallacy, because I have nothing to back my claims, but it's only my personal opinion, feel free to use whatever makes you happy.

</comment><comment><USER8> coursera.org passes the first test of a successful Bootstrap site: i've visited dozens of times and didn't know it was Bootstrap!</comment>


How Facebook puts petabytes of old cat pix on ice in the name of sustainability - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2015/11/to-go-green-facebook-puts-petabytes-of-cat-pics-on-ice-and-likes-windfarming/ <comment><USER2> Minor point regarding "Facebook's infrastructure team once referred to this as the "negawatt"".

The term 'negawatt' comes from Amory Lovins. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negawatt_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negawatt_power) .</comment>


The Lost Oaks of California Ave - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/californiaavenueoaks.html <comment><USER3> I like Cal Ave partly because it's about as close as you can get in this area to my favorite neighborhood in Seattle (15th Ave).

A photo I took yesterday while they were taking the last one down:

<http://openbs.org/photo/wehavenotrees.jpg>

Quote from the notice they sent out:

"The City of Palo Alto Public Works Department ... shall be replacing most of the street trees on Cal Ave ... most of the existing trees are Holly Oaks and many of them are diseased and in poor condition. Their branches cover street lights and grow over building storefronts and roofs requiring frequent tree trimming. They bear and drop large acorn fruits that are tripping hazards for pedestrians.

"The Holly Oaks will be replaced with Red Maples ... smaller seed fruits that are safer for pedestrians ... metal grates will be installed ... which will bring a uniform look to the business district. The existing tree wells in sidewalks are open wells which may be tripping hazards."

Funny thing is there are maples on 15th Ave so I've seen how they are through the year. When the maples start dropping sap on people's cars and all of the restaurants' outdoor furniture is too sticky to sit on I don't know what they'll do. I'll just laugh.

<comment><USER4> "…which will bring a uniform look to the business district…"

Sweet, with a little more effort they can turn all of California avenue into a strip mall. Uniformity is great in pencil leads and spark plugs, but the fractal beauty of nature is not just a sitcom on Fox. If you want uniformity, there's a few towns due south of LA where they shave the rough, non-uniform hill-sides into perfect 45° slopes to ultra-flat plateaus on which to build uniform tract homes.

This just doesn't seem like something Palo Altans would knowingly do. Well, we'll always have Los Altos: [http://www.losaltospost.com/PhotoGallery/photo/fullimages/Fu...](http://www.losaltospost.com/PhotoGallery/photo/fullimages/Full132109052125.jpg)

<comment><USER5> One of the things I love about the older bits of town here in Padova is that stuff is 'fractal' in the way you describe. You can look at some old buildings and see the interesting and somewhat random ways different portions grew together. Up close you can sometimes see an old fresco or a fancy door or something. You can walk around and see stuff you've seen before and not get bored by the sameness of it all. I think it's healthy for your brain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Where I grew up (San Luis Obispo county in CA), you'd need an act of congress to touch a mature oak tree–even on your own property. Our church actually had to build around one when they did a building project.

I bet if an entrepreneur or real estate developer wanted to cut down oak trees for a building project, they wouldn't get past the first step in the permit process ... but I guess when city wants them gone, they can run it through a "Development" association and play the disease card.

<comment><USER7> You can't cut down a mature tree on your own property in Palo Alto either. But apparently the city can.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure I'll be in the minority here, but doesn't that seem to stretch the meaning of 'your own property'? I mean, if you can't even cut the trees down, what exactly makes it 'yours'? (aside from the privilege of paying takes on it)

<comment><USER9> "Owning property," at least in the United States, is just a fancy term for describing renting property from the government. The price you pay for the property buys you the contract, property taxes are your rent, and anytime they feel like it they can evict you (eminent domain). And like all landlords, even those as generally hands-off as the government, at the end of the day, they make the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is sad though, that Cal. Ave, is considered on the most nicer areas of Sillicon Valley. There is nothing really special in it that you can't find in any dinky town in the us, minus the charm that small towns have. Compare to any nice areas to Cambridge, or W. D.C. or NYC, or Boulder. With the money flowing in the area, that that's what they can achieve? At least during the gilded age, the rich folks built memorial things, that are part of this country's cultural heritage. Todays' rich, just build bigger pools or planes, and that's it.

Tells you something about rich geeks being really introverted, and just want to keep on themselves.

<comment><USER11> When I first moved to the Bay Area, I was puzzled by how "blah" Silicon Valley is. The land of innovation is suburbia and strip malls? A cultural desert? My manager at Palm, who had grown up in Cupertino, said that Sunnyvale and Cupertino were "the two most boring towns in America".

Did they outside all beauty and culture to San Francisco? Or did they just not _care_?

<comment><USER4> Silicon Valley _does_ have some of the most beautiful, innovative office parks in the world. They're huge and isolated, however. Maybe the combination of strict zoning and ubiquitous automobiles aggregates retail into malls and strip malls, commercial into office parks, industrial into warehouse districts, etc.? Regardless, it's produced a grand, metropolitan brutalism of inhuman scale, navigable only by automobile, with the humane portions grandfathered-in between the cracks and targeted for extinction by city- planners, bureaucrats, and real estate developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It might be sacrilegious to ask, but what does this have to do with hacking (other than say, hacking down of oak trees).

The fact that it's ranked so highly just goes to show the amount of ass kissing going on here.

<comment><USER13> It's a herd phenomenon. Even if PG writes something utterly pointless, he gets upvoted to the stratosphere. It would be nice if this changed. Intelligent and successful people like PG don't need this kind of adulation.

<comment><USER14> I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think this comment shows a slight lack of... something... hmm...

This is a bit disorganized, but I'll try to lay out how the gears are turning in my head:

When you implicitly call out a community or someone very admired in that community (whose also running things for free for a lot of people's enjoyment), it's courageous but it burns some of your future ability-to-speak- out-and-others-will-listen-edness.

If you were to make similar comments frequently, eventually people would just shrug it off instead of burning the mental energy to apply difficult critical thinking.

Now, I was one of those disagreeable kids who used to argue with teachers when they got their math or chemistry wrong, and eventually I stopped doing that and started thinking:

"Do I want to burn some of my speak-out-and-people-will-listen-edness on this particular topic?" Because you only have so much, and you might want to use it on something important later.

Does the tree submission get submitted and voted if it's not Paul Graham or another very admired poster? Probably not. But it's a minor thing to take a banner up against, and it just oh-so-slightly decreases the resources you have by taking up that banner. And maybe it minorly gets on the nerves of a few people, and they don't like it, and so you get oh-so-very-slightly less attention/goodwill in the future.

Or maybe not. Just something to ponder.

<comment><USER15> _I was one of those disagreeable kids who used to argue with teachers when they got their math or chemistry wrong, and eventually I stopped doing that_

That's depressing. That's what education is supposed to be about (rather than blindly accepting incorrect facts).

<comment><USER16> Yes. lionhearted's example illustrates quite well the reason today's schools are generally incompatible with good education.

<comment><USER17> There are good ways and bad ways to go about it.

You have to think about your goal. Is your goal to get the teacher to correct their mistake and move forward? Or is it to boost your ego?

If it's the former, it's probably better to approach them later, in private, and point it out politely. They will correct the problem next session, or send out an email between sessions.

Either that, or be very polite, e.g., "Excuse me, Mr. Smith, but you wrote down <wrong stuff> there. Why isn't it <right stuff>?"

If you say, "Mr. Smith, you're wrong. It should be <right stuff>, not <wrong stuff>" you are strictly speaking correct, but you'll humiliate them. It feels good for your ego -- I'm smarter than the teacher! -- but probably won't advance the class.

This isn't about the "sorry state of education," it's about knowing what people feel when you blurt shit out in class.

<comment><USER16> Why is it the student's responsibility to protect the teacher's ego?

Here is the admittedly unusual way in which I look at it: In most cases, the school system (including the teachers) is implicitly claiming that students are better off in school with them than anywhere else. When a ludicrous claim like this is being made and enforced, I don't see why they should be cut so much slack.

<comment><USER18> It's not the student's responsibility to protect the teacher's ego, it's the student's responsibility to be reasonable. Standing up and yelling because the teacher forgot a semicolon in some example code, for instance, is a waste of everyone's time, not just the teacher's.

<comment><USER16> Your somewhat extreme example notwithstanding, are you saying it's unreasonable for a student to point it out when a teacher is giving incorrect information to the class?

<comment><USER18> I'm saying "It depends." My experience with that behavior indicates that it's usually counterproductive- either nitpicking like my previous example, or axe grinding that isn't really helping. Think an Ayn Rand follower interrupting a class on Marxism every few moments.

The problem, really, is that it's impossible to make a fully qualified statement and still be engaging. As a speaker, you have to skip over some detail somewhere, thus there is always going to be a place to jump in and act an ass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This will have adverse effects on the speed and traffic on that street, too. I've attended a couple of local community seminars on city planning, and studies cited there have found that tree-lined streets tend to cause drivers to drive slower and more cautiously. [1]

[1]: For example: [http://www.naturewithin.info/Roadside/Tree&Driver_ITE.pd...](http://www.naturewithin.info/Roadside/Tree&Driver_ITE.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> They may have suffered from Sudden Oak Death. My limited understanding is that because the disease spreads erratically they prefer to remove infected trees in order to prevent others from becoming infected, and to prevent damage being caused from the dead, weakened tree.

Edit: It appears there is no known cure, only preemptive measures.

<http://www.suddenoakdeath.org/>

<comment><USER7> At first I thought it might be some kind of serious disease. Why else would they do such a crazy thing? But all the other arguments the city listed, e.g.

"Their branches cover street lights and grow over building storefronts and roofs requiring frequent tree trimming. They bear and drop large acorn fruits that are tripping hazards for pedestrians."

make it clear this wasn't the case. If they were infected by some tree plague, it would have been enough to say just that.

<comment><USER21> Sounds more like the business owners didn't like the trees and wanted to get rid of them. All other reasons are probably just there to justify it in a way that doesn't make them look like the 'bad guys.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't recall the details any more, but I'm reminded that there's a historic cemetery in Boston, where several of America's founders are buried, where the tombstones have all been moved from their original locations. Someone during the Victorian period decided they'd look nicer if they were all arranged in nice straight rows. Nobody recorded their original positions, so the locations of the remains are now unknown.

So, cutting the trees isn't _necessarily_ a case of corruption. It's at least as likely that CAADA is run by people whose taste really is that poor.

<comment><USER21> The point is that such a drastic action (e.g. cutting down _ALL_ the trees on a frequented, busy downtown area) should be voted on by the citizens/tax- payers. In this case, a relatively small number of people instituted a _drastic_ change without consulting 99% of the people that it would affect. Not only that, but it is an _IRREVERSIBLE_ change. If they had decided to repave the sidewalks or repaint the lampposts, it would be a different story. Had it been a single tree or only a couple of trees (that weren't prominently display -- e.g. signifying the center of town or something) it might be excusable. But to tear down that many trees without any sort of public input on the matter other than 'the public tasked us with beautifying the city' is irresponsible at best and malicious at worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yeah this is really bad. First of all too many people have the silly idea that you can move trees around as if they are pieces of furniture or large heavy pieces of sculpture. "Oh lets get rid of these trees and put in different ones. Won't this be grand!" Moving trees is always tricky and not assured of success. When they get those new maple trees in california ave, I am sure that at least a couple of them will die and then they won't have equal height trees.

As far as the trees being diseased, all city trees are unhealthy in one way or another. That is because their leaves absorb all kinds of exhaust byproducts, most of their roots are below concrete where they cannot get water or nutrients, and a hundred other reasons. Cities are just not healthy places for trees.

But that does not mean that we should not have trees in cities. Trees make us feel better, clear up the air for us and make us happier in general. What if a tree is not healthy -- it is not actually suffering and cannot pass the disease to humans. As long as it looks good and it is green, it is serving its purpose. I guarantee you that the new maples they put in will become diseased pretty soon.

So, good idea to call attention to this Paul, but someone should have thought of it earlier.

<comment><USER21> Maybe someone should track these people down in a few years when the new trees are installed. Tell them that the new trees are diseased and need to be completely replaced a second time. Then ask them what their opinion is. If their opinion is, "There's nothing wrong with those trees." Then you know that the axed the oaks just because they preferred maples... no other reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I used to think most American cities were ugly because nobody cared enough to make them beautiful. Reading this almost makes me think it's _intentional_. Very sad indeed.

<comment><USER25> American cities are designed around the automobile. The rare American city that's designed to be beautiful (Portland, for instance) is impossible to drive in, while cities that can be driven in are almost necessarily inhuman sprawl.

You'd think that, as a trade-off, American cities would be usable for motorists. But traffic congestion is such a big problem that it's impossible to build a city to satisfy even that requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Relevant: [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dis...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html)

<comment><USER27> _Very_ relevant. He says very eloquently everything that's wrong with American city planning, with pictures. He doesn't mince words, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Your tax dollars at work.

It's no wonder that the State of California is bankrupt.

While the state of California is piling on _billions_ of dollars in debt to pay for unionized wellfare programs, raising tax rates across the board on its citizens, cutting essential city and state services, closing state parks, issuing "IOU's" to people in-lieu of tax refunds, and seeing its general obligation bonds downgraded below "junk" status, it apparently is still OK to spend taxpayer money cutting down perfectly healthy trees to make sure that all of the trees on a street are the same height.

This in a state that has more Honda Prius' per-capita than any other state in the union.

Isn't being "green" wonderful?

I'm sure there's an entire office of twinkie-munching government bureaucrats that could be fired to compensate the California tax-payer for this gross misappropriation of his hard-earned tax dollars.

</comment><comment><USER29> Private owners respect and conserve their resources.

Governments (which is to say, politicians with short lifespans in their job) use up resources in a rush to accomplish short term, idiotic goals.

You can look at the environmental records of capitalist countries versus centrally managed totalitarian states.

...or you can look at golf courses (which don't "cut down all the trees to keep things tidy") and compare them to the government of Palo Alto.

<comment><USER30>
       > Private owners respect and conserve their resources

Except when they don't. Blanket statements like that aren't very helpful.

       > politicians [...] use up resources in a rush
       > to accomplish short term, idiotic goals.

Except when they don't. Or when the goals are decided by the private owners who bought them lunch.

<comment><USER31> _Or when the goals are decided by the private owners who bought them lunch._

I think you missed the point. If the property in question were privately owned, then the goals concerning the property would be the owners' goals, not the politicians' goals. To the extent that the politicians' goals control property, the property isn't privately owned (except for the corner case of property the politicians privately own).

<comment><USER30> Allow me to reformulate my point for clarity:

1\. Politicians don't always mismanage publicly owned resources

2\. When they _do_ , it is often on behalf of a private interest, e.g. a real estate developer contributing to their next campaign

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This reminds of the time they chopped down all the trees along Fergusson College Road in Pune. It was one of the most beautiful streets in the city with trees on both sides forming a canopy almost covering the entire street.

The excuse then was creating more space for vehicles and improving traffic flow.

The trees are gone; the traffic jams haven't. Very sad.

</comment><comment><USER33> Something I don't understand: cities and counties in California are said to be broke, so how is it that the Palo Alto public works department is able to send out a work crew to cut down these oak trees? Is Palo Alto running a surplus that they need to spend before its fiscal year is over?

<comment><USER17> They've been doing road work up and down College Ave all year, too, so presumably they have money for something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A similar situation almost occurred in my home town of Galway, Ireland. The main square, Eyre square, has historically been shaded by trees - <USER2> says early ash was planted in 1631 - but the council wanted to remove 80 of 105 of them, "because the landscape levels were to be altered".

There was a lot of opposition, though, and eventually they backed down.

</comment><comment><USER35> Could the trees have been infected by Dutch Elm Disease? I've regrettably seen many old trees cut down from it, and you can't see much damage until it has progressed significantly. Granted, I've never seen it affect an entire street full of trees at once, so that seems suspicious...

</comment><comment><USER36> Are there any Maple trees that do not either drop sap or other liquids or large seed pods? We're all familiar with the mess the former makes of our cars and sidewalks. The latter, at least the ones from Sugar Maples, are a real pain in the ass, clogging storm drains and such.

</comment><comment><USER37> Acorns are a tripping hazard? I have never been especially graceful, I have lived under oaks for about half the last thirty years--including at least four that were astonishingly productive of acorns, and bless me if I've ever tripped on an acorn.

<comment><USER38> It happens - my aunt broke her tailbone after slipping on acorns. I don't blame the city one bit. Oak trees are beautiful trees for forests and parks, but they are very messy for public walkways. They drop small branches constantly as well as piles of acorns that attract squirrels and mice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I drove by today on El Camino and I thought it looked naked. Now I know why. Freaky. That said, I had a diseased oak lose a limb , if it had hit someone , or my car, it would have really done some damage.

</comment><comment><USER40> From Palo Alto Online - California Avenue trees get the axe:

<http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=13827>

</comment><comment><USER41> Hmm... tell me again why I would want to live in Silicon Valley?

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't mind talking about trees.

The bigger picture behind this concept is urban planning, which is a huge issue to be fixed in the U.S. (if you want sustainable development).

</comment><comment><USER43> This might be unconnected, but having just read PG's piece on publishing, and being in the local news business, it seems as though there may have been meetings about this decision? Published in the local newspaper perhaps?

At least, most developments and streetscaping projects around here don't go down with at least a (public) city council vote.

I'm not sure what my point is... maybe just that I'm curious what the local media coverage of this is/was?

</comment><comment><USER44> If governments have so much power that they can demolish well loved landmarks in the center of American entrepreneurship, imagine what they can do to a whole state or even country...wait a minute.

What needs to happen to save the state and country is the exact opposite of this travesty-entrepreneurs should replace the real deadwood, government on every level.

<http://lewrockwell.com>

</comment><comment><USER45> People should be pissed about this for a number of reasons. PG--I suggest putting their phone numbers up. Emails are too easy to ignore.

</comment><comment><USER46> Plenty of Oak trees still here in Cambridge PG as I'm sure you recall. Just beautiful this time of year. =)

I'd miss them if they were gone too.

</comment><comment><USER47> @earthlink.net for the Mayor? Ouch! He probably has a Flowbee and a Zack Morris bag phone to boot.

<comment><USER48> I emailed the guy and got a response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Where were the tree sitters at?

</comment><comment><USER50> Is the old Kirk's hamburger joint still there? Wonderful place.

(This is dating me--haven't been back there for 20 years.)

<comment><USER51> There's no longer a Kirk's on California. The Palo Alto location moved over to Town & Country village a couple miles away. Kirk's has a few other locations in nearby towns too, though, so I suspect it was more because the California Ave. location was getting old and run down than financial troubles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> absolutely terrible.</comment>


Has GeForce Now Quietly Killed Google Stadia? - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2020-has-geforce-now-quietly-killed-google-stadia <comment><USER2> Thought Fuck it, I'll fire it up.

The website account page keeps saying "Your order is still in progress. Try refreshing after a few minutes" (Even as I type this) but once I got the order confirmation email I just downloaded the local client and installed it.

First It needs C+P support. It's a pain in the arse to type randomly generated passwords into the remote game client but at least it seems to remember my login details so that might only be a pain in the arse once.

The local client doesn't seem to have the ability to scan my local machine for games nor query stream or battle.net for my games. I had to manually search for a game I was interested in playing.

Picked Overwatch cause I play that a fair bit after searching for a few other titles and came up blank. I normally get around 20ms lag playing locally but on their servers I was getting 50ms. Game client (GeForce Now Client) says I have a 8ms ping to their servers.

It might of just been my personal "feeling" about it but there was some input lag. In OW if you press melee your character will punch right away even if it takes 20ms for that response to hit the server, but ovb I had to wait for that action to leave my machine, get rendered and get sent back to me before I saw it here.

Played a round on the arcade and I felt off my normal game, but if I only played using the service I would prob get used to it.

Its a nice idea and if you only play single player games or not so competitive multiplayer games like OW I can see a use for it esp if you don't want a gaming rig but atm its not for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Standard "No" response to article title asking a question applies just fine here.

<comment><USER4> >Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no - Ian Betteridge

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't really think cloud gaming has a market in my lifetime anyway (the economics seem desperately broken and there are multiple usability issues that are not plausibly overcome), but certainly Stadia looks an extremely bad proposition in comparison.

<comment><USER6> Edge computing (<5ms from your location) may be able to make this a reality for people close to populated areas.

<comment><USER7> I feel like PC cafes solve the problem far more efficiently, and more elegantly (with additional side-benefits, like being able to upsell on food, and perhaps even creating social interaction) than cloud-gaming will for a very long time.

It's not clear to me why it never picked up in the US.

<comment><USER8> >I feel like PC cafes solve the problem far more efficiently

For your definition of efficient, maybe. As a strawman, for the father who wants to get in a few minutes of gaming now that the kids are asleep and can't or won't spend the money on a high-end gaming rig capable of playing modern day AAA games, Stadia is the answer. He can start a game in less time that it takes to drive to the nearest pc cafe. Assuming his wife will let him leave to do so. There's no comparison in terms of convenience or efficiency.

The target market isn't really twitch gamers sitting on super-high-end machines playing all hours of the night and naturally they're derisive of Stadia because it isn't meant for them. Stadia is meant for casual / semi- casual gamers who don't want to invest in up to date hardware but still want to play modern games.

If you want to understand why PC Cafes didn't take off I'd argue the reasons are similar to why Netflix, et al have killed the movie theatre industry in the US. At-home convenience is preferred to a communal experience particularly when costs come in to play.

<comment><USER9> For that dad, the consoles are a much better solution. No dependency on internet, much lower response time, much larger game catalog.

<comment><USER8> Loading update 1 of 23...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The biggest draw of GeForce Now over Stadia for me is that I can still play my existing Steam library and don't have to buy new copies of the same games. That, for me, is a dealbreaker.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have both Stadia and GFN.

Stadia is straight up unplayable on my wired internet connection.

GFN works fine. I've gone through Prey 2, The Witcher 3, We Happy Few, The Witness and a couple of other titles on NVidia's service.

It's pretty good to be honest, however, some caveats: 1\. Note how all those titles are single player. I don't think competitive multiplayer games will properly catch on platforms like GFN/Stadia, mostly because of the input latency hindering you in a competitive game. I've tried DotA2 and the input delay is noticeable . That being said, I see people talking about Modern Warfare and other shooters on r/geforcenow, so at least _some people_ are playing these games, but, based on my experience, I have a strong prior that most people won't enjoy competitive games.

2\. GFN really needs a better games search engine. My use case (which I imagine isn't that uncommon) is that I buy games on Steam specifically to play on GFN. However, there's no good flow to decide which game to play next.

So far, I've been using the full games list they used to display at [https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce-now/games/](https://www.nvidia.com/en- gb/geforce-now/games/) but now that's been replaced by a search bar! So the only possible flow now is to look a game up on steam, then manually check if it's supported by GFN. Now, most games are not supported by GFN, so I have to create a shortlist of games, then manually check each one and see if GFN supports it, then make a purchasing decision.

GFN needs a first class search engine, where I can search supported games by genre, year of release and maybe rating.

3\. The UI/UX is super janky and confusing in terms of how steam starts up inside of GFN and how you have to install the game. It doesn't bother me that much, but it does feel consumer unfriendly. I was hoping they'd improve the UX before launch, but I guess not.

4\. Had a weird bug this one time in The Witcher 3. There are 2 expansion packs you can buy for the game ('Blood and Wine' and 'Heart of Stone'). I do not own them. However, a while ago, I logged onto GFN, started up TW3 and saw a message congratulating me on having installed the expansion packs. I shrugged and resumed my most recent load and, fair enough, new abilities had been added in the game. I logged off after 2 hours of gameplay. The next time I logged on, the expansions were gone and my recent saved games were unplayale because they needed the expansion to load. Must have been some weird glitch where the expansions were still installed from a different player. Weird.

</comment><comment><USER12> Stadia smelled bad on the first day.

</comment><comment><USER13> Stadia is dead on arrival due to its hard limit on Linux. I mean they want game developers all to use Vulkan on Stadia, a much better and superior graphics API, but still people got used to the inferior OpenGL/DirectX immediate mode thinking, Stadia need to give time the masses to adapt the better way of utilizing the GPU.

But I love to see how far Geforce Now could do. Maybe we could trigger a sandbox escalation and use that juicy GPU as a render station/encoding station, its just so cheap man.

<comment> m-p-3 I don't think it's dead, because a major hurdle for gaming on Linux is the hardware heterogeneity, and the fact that there isn't the same volume of potential customers on the end-user side.

However, Stadia brings a Linux platform with well-defined specs, which greatly reduce the amount of configuration to test, like a game console.

Many game developers are already used to a Linux/Unix/BSD-like environment if they develop for the PlayStation and the Switch, so I think they still stand a good chance.

On the topic of Nvidia, I'm glad they're jumping with some competition.</comment></comment>


Facebook's Debut Marred by Trading Glitches - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/facebooks-debut-marred-by-trading-glitches/

<comment><USER2> I was at a trading desk today, there really were issues at Nasdaq. I've never seen such fury and never heard such obscenities. Traders didn't know what their positions were and those who did know of their positions, couldn't be sure of the price they received.

<comment><USER3> So, any guesses what these weird after-hours spikes @$42 are? <http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AFB>

See the peaks at 4:24, 4:52, 5:10PM pacific? Nearly a million shares changing hands after hours >10% above the official closing price for the day? That is some strange stuff on IPO day.

<comment><USER2> Good question. Looks interesting, unfortunately I have no idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Despite witnessing countless "enterprise" systems built out of bubble gum and popsicle sticks, I still have a hard time believing that Nasdaq really couldn't handle this technically... I'm not sure what to make of this.

<comment><USER5> 82 million trades for FB in the first 30 seconds.

I have no idea if that's a lot or not, but it's pretty impressive to build a system capable of doing that.

<comment><USER6> As a point of comparison, NASDAQ handled trades for 750 million shares in 1.1 seconds for last year's Russell Reconstitution[1], one of the busiest equity trading days of the year.

[1] -- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Indexes#Annual_reconsti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Indexes#Annual_reconstitution)

<comment><USER7> Trading systems are trivially shardable by symbol or letter range; not so much help for a single symbol as in the case of an IPO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't have insight into it but this sounds to me like the underwriters making excuses for a "poor performing" IPO.

I have no idea which way FB will head on Monday but am pretty sceptical that this is at all relevant to their 1st day performance. I wouldn't base optimism specifically on the viewpoint

<comment><USER9> I had a limit buy order at $45 which I placed at 11am (when it opened) which was never filled (and should have been, as the price never went above $43 or so). There were definite trading glitches, and if they were skewed on the buy side, that could definitely have affected the price.

EDIT: Actually, the order did go through (annoyingly, at $42). The delay was just in the reporting. So never mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I've heard (from a friend at MS) is that the initial delay was due to the underwriters convincing larger funds not to just dump all their shares at the open ...

<comment><USER11> Can you provide more detail about your source?

<comment><USER10> Friend works for MS. (updated parent)

<comment><USER12> Maybe I'm being _really_ thick here, but what does MS have to do with this?

<comment><USER10> Sorry about that, but 'MS' = Morgan Stanley.

<comment><USER12> Ah, of course. In my line of work 999 times out of a 1000, MS is Microsoft ;-)

The other 0.1% would be multiple sclerosis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something was definitely broke, as I was watching stocktwits to see what people were saying about Facebook. I saw at least 3 or 4 people saying that their orders were not being confirmed and still listed as pending. One was using scottrade I believe.

However, I was able to purchase stock just fine via tdameritrade.

</comment><comment><USER14> So does anyone think that on Monday if Nasdaq stays more stable, Facebook's stock will do better?

<comment><USER15> I think that's exactly why Facebook announced the Karma acquisition after markets closed Today. Since there won't be any underwriter protection to keep the price at above $38 on Monday, I believe Facebook timely released the acquisition news to open Monday in favorable terms.

<comment><USER16> Given the skepticism about the Instagram acquisition, the Karma acquisition could be interpreted either positively or negatively by different investors, couldn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Today was a Friday.

Markets usually sell off on the last day of the week before heading into the weekend; i.e. traders don't (usually) like holding positions for two days more than they have to.

I think it's important to factor this into any discussion of Facebook's trading debut.

I personally would be waiting to see who things fair next week/monday.

[addendum] I'm quite surprised the IPO was set for a Friday because of this.

<comment><USER18> I almost think this was intentional. I think that Zuck has extremely savvy advisors. And I think he is rather shrewd himself.

I would not be surprised it this thing triples next week.

<comment><USER19> What good does that do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I, for better or worse, decided to invest some of my dollars in Facebook. Like many others, I received radio silence about my trade. At EOD, I got a call from my brokerage, Fidelity, apologizing about the trading issues and offered to cancel my trades. They were going to absorb the costs to make me happy... And I didn't even complain. I was on the fence about canceling my order but that was besides the point, for me Fidelity just secured a lifelong customer and now, apparently a Fidelity evangelist!

</comment><comment><USER21> _puts on tinfoil hat_

Trading "glitch", or engineered opportunity? Any smart person can make a small fortune off of a delta. As I always say, if there is a way to make money, somebody, somewhere, is going to figure out how to do it.</comment>


Bangalore is actually called Bengaluru - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore#Etymology <comment><USER2> It's the "real name" in the same way as the "real name" of Moscow is Moskva. I.e. these are the names in the local languages, and names in foreign languages tend to derive from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is also true, however in this case the Indian government did officially rename Bangalore to Bengaluru in 2014 in order to drop the anglicised version of Bangalore. Yet many people still refer to it as Bangalore.

For example, Google Maps redirects Bangalore to Bengaluru, whereas it does not for Moscow.

Bengaluru: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/bangalore](https://www.google.com/maps/place/bangalore)

Moscow: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/moscow](https://www.google.com/maps/place/moscow)

<comment><USER2> That does not make it the 'real name' and it's not for a government to decree how foreign languages in foreign countries should pronounce the names of local cities.

In this case it is really just a political move to push back against colonial times by changing the English names of Indian cities (not only Bangalore) to strict local orthography. The fact that English is used as a common language in India may play a role in that push because they probably see a need to define names in English (which is ironic).

It also depends on the language. China also did that for Beijing, Guangzhou, etc. It worked in English but e.g. in French nobody cared and the 'French' names are still used, the same largely goes for the name of Indian cities.

<comment><AUTHOR> If a government formally announces a name change for one of its cities and provides an English spelling for the new name then that should probably be respected, like it has been done in the example on Google Maps.

It is definitely political. In this case they're resetting the original name that was anglicised when they were colonised. Would it not be courteous to respect that?

<comment><USER2> Adapting pronunciation of foreign words is what all languages do. It's not related to colonisation at all.

Respect starts by not forcing pronunciation on foreign languages and not calling how they pronounce words "not real" (which is what you wrote in the title of your post and what I took offence with).

Edit: Bangalore is called Bengaluru in Kannada. That's about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> > calling how they pronounce words "not real" (which is what you wrote in the > title of your post and what I took offence with).

The title does not say Bangalore is not a 'real name'. That is your intepretation, presumably to justify your argument.

> Respect starts by not forcing pronunciation on foreign languages

Not forcing anything, it was posted as informational. The tone in the link or my comments is not forceful. Your own tone, however? Again, framed justification.

> Edit: Bangalore is called Bengaluru in Kannada. That's about it.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bangalore&t=h_&ia=web&iaxm=maps](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bangalore&t=h_&ia=web&iaxm=maps)

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/bangalore](https://www.google.com/maps/place/bangalore)

[https://binged.it/2PYvubq](https://binged.it/2PYvubq)

[https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=bangalore#map=12/...](https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=bangalore#map=12/12.9889/77.6221)

Not just Kannada, all of the above mapping services "actually" recognise Bangalore as Bengaluru. But, if you don't want to do that or take offence to a perspective that differs from yours, that is your prerogative.

<comment><USER2> > _The title does not say Bangalore is not a 'real name'. That is your > intepretation, presumably to justify your argument._

The title of this thread at the time I posted my comments was " _The real name of Bangalore is Bengaluru_ ".

You obviously know that this you are the poster.

HN is about honest discussion... You see to have starting this with an agenda in mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did change the title, twice, within the first few minutes to make it read more easily. Not in response to your comment, that I had not seen yet, which now appears to be more focused on nitpicking the title than what was actually posted.

Since you know so well what HN is about, you'll know that you should read the content of what is posted and not just drive-by comment based on the title. Then it should have been clear that the post had nothing to do with denying Bangalore as a "real name".

The only agenda was to inform people about something I came across that I thought was interesting. That what a lot of people still refer to as Bangalore has had it's name changed by the Indian government to Bengaluru and that people should probably start using that name.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wild red wolf population could soon be wiped out - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article209721684.html <comment><USER2> Time to retreat and wait for the war against nature subside. Sometimes is the wiser move. There is not point in painfully breeding and releasing endangered animals just to be killed ASAP by the local people.</comment>


Go and Docker = - <AUTHOR> https://jpetazzo.github.io/2016/09/09/go-docker/ <comment><USER2> OK, then I will use a complicated, slow and unstable machinery that depends on lots of kernel features, to run a simple, self-contained and fast compiler?

And think, Go was created with intent for faster builds. My bigger go project builds faster than `docker run` starts up...

The author forget to say that this way docker will setup a network namespaces, bridge, mount a unionfs (overlayfs, aufs, etc), lots of other things, make a chroot and then finally execute the go tool...

And Go doesn't even need to be installed on the OS, it can be placed anywhere, you only need to set the GOROOT env var. (For bash-users, the gvm script automate the build/download of every go version you want in your $HOME)

The only point of the article is when you're not a Go programmer and want to test some Go project...</comment>


Video Interview: The Xobni team give an inside look at the newly launched startup - <AUTHOR> http://us.intruders.tv/The-Xobni-team-give-an-inside-look-at-the-newly-launched-startup_a184.html

<comment><USER2> Someone left the sweater that Matt's wearing at our office. He likes it. If it's yours, you should probably stop by before he becomes too attached.

<comment><USER3> Dude, you are blowing up my spot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me or is Xobni the perfect example of all that is ridiculous about what is or isn't this bubble we have nowadays? I mean seriously... a social networking Outlook plugin?

<comment><USER5> Is it just _me_ , or does a genuinely useful product directed toward an under- served market with lots of money to spend provide no evidence of a bubble whatsoever? Xobni saves me time and makes my work life easier almost every day. No matter what the market's doing, there's always room in the market for products like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "There would be _hell_ to pay in the blogosphere!!"

lulz! Like Bill Gates cares what anyone who knows who Michael Arrington is thinks.</comment>


Becoming a fantastic Software Engineer in Test and Automation - <AUTHOR> Hello Hacker News,
I've moved to the testing work recently enough from Dev/Support and have had a troublesome time attempting to find resources which will make me a better tester and a better software engineer in test.  The one thing I found on hacker news other than hundreds of job postings was this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264223#up_3264286 - which is both very old and doesn't seem to contain great advice.
So HN, how do I become an awesome software engineer in test, clearly there are a lot of them out there based on job postings, so where are they?  What skills do they have?  Where do they go to learn new skills to become better?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, you've left out some of the details necessary to answer your question. The big two big questions are:

(1) What are you testing? (e.g. hardware?, software?, firmware?, ... \--and more detail is better)

(2) What are you trying to automate? (e.g. an oscilloscope?, a Logic Probe?, network throughput? computational load? memory usage? algorithm efficiency? a software bug test suite to find regressions? ...).

Other useful questions are:

(1) Does your company do experimental/research work?

(2) Is your company using "Agile", or "TDD" (Test Driven Development), or some other organizational methodology?

(3) What are your constraints? (e.g. do you need sub-millisecond timing resolution?, are you limited to particular interfaces/buses like Serial, GPIB/HPIB, SCPI, PCIe, USB, Ethernet, ...?, do you need to use emulators?)

(4) Does your company have an existing test regimen?

(5) Is your middle name Tim?

OK, that last one more than just a joke; it's actually a trick question and it serves a point. The best test design and automation engineers I've known all have a real knack for doing the unexpected --You can often find bugs by doing unexpected things.

Whether it's called "Test" or "Quality Assurance" or "Total Quality Management" or whatever, the field is absolutely huge, and it can be extremely fun and challenging.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Software, more specifically web applications.

2) Automated browser/ui tests, hopefully I'll get to move more toward the api/service/functional level as well. First stop will be to essentially build a regression suite.

Other

1) Nope.

2) Using agile

3) Not constrained other than by management and other workload. Essentially I can make testing here what I want and I want to make it good. I'm fighting some pretty old ideas on a regular basis.

4) Basically no, they've hired me and another guy to 'develop' it but I had zero testing experience and the other guy has a few years, though has never led.

5) No, it's Patrick!

I feel I have a knack for doing some unexpected things when I have freedom to think and I'm not hugely rushed. Unfortunately I don't get much support from management. For example, I found an unexpected bug which I and several devs thought was a 'show-stopper', the product owner thought this was, 'testers running through unrealistic scenarios.'

<comment><USER2> The kinds of "test" and "verification" automation I've done in the past are vastly different from the kinds you'll be doing. Though I've never personally faced the really extreme needs (read: "requirements") of diving physical test equipment with a Real-Time OS to get sub-millisecond resolution, or need to resort doing the testing (read: "verification") through simulation for even faster resolutions, the general concepts of "Quality Assurance" will still apply to your situation.

 _1.) Always show up with solutions, not problems._

With good reason, Rule #1 is the first thing to always remember. You never want to be the person who impedes development or release. You always want to be the person who improves development and release. By the nature of you job, you _will_ be the person who often needs to deliver the unwanted bad news, but if you gain a reputation for delivering the bad news with some good news, like ways around a problem, then people will seldom dread talking to you. Take responsibility for improving the product, offer fixes, and _still_ offer fixes when it's not your job to fix the bugs.

Never utter the words "show stopper." Even if you are right, it may not be your decision, and you can easily make enemies of the people you need to work with every day. Instead educate others on the potential harm to customers, potential loss of customers, and if that doesn't work, the potential harm to the viability of the company as an on-going venture. When you need to do this, and you will need to do it, be prepared with multiple paths for working around or fixing the issue along with a cost estimate for fixing the issue. In other words, lead others into uttering the fateful words "show stopper." Surprisingly, you job is to make the risks and consequences known, as well as provide alternatives to mitigate the risks and avoid the consequences.

Pointing out mistakes is always a touchy situation. Many people react poorly to being told that something they did is wrong, so try to memorize the secret formula, "We can improve X by doing Y to avoid Z." The "we" is important and you can even toss a "probably" in there somewhere for added effect.

If you can reliably remember the secret formula even when your scalp is sore from pulling out all of your hair, then please tell me how. ;)

 _2.) You will always have constraints, so know and memorize them._

When an executive spends $200K on a piece of test equipment, and the other engineers want data at some super fast resolution beyond the capacity of the equipment, you are the person responsible for knowing the constraints of the test equipment. This has actually happened to me, and it's a whole lot of no- fun. You get stuck between a rock (the other engineers) and a bad place (the exec who doesn't want to look bad for buying the wrong/cheap equipment). Sure, it may seem anecdotal, but you'll be surprised how often you are asked to do the impossible.

When you know the constraints of your test system, then you can show up saying, "We can do X with what we have currently, or you can push upstream for more investment in test infrastructure. We try doing X to see if it will suffice for your needs?"

In your situation with web apps, particularly mobile-ready web apps, testing will require a big investment in test infrastructure. If your web app is using any of the newer direct-to-hardware (WebGL, AudioAPI, ...) features, just using emulation (system/browser images with VMware or similar) may not suffice to give proper test coverage. Emulated hardware is never perfect, so you'll often need access to real hardware. Of course, you can often do tons with just emulation, but knowing where emulation will fail in strange and unexpected ways means knowing the constraints of emulation.

Knowing your constraints is knowing what you can actually test. When others have unrealistic expectations, knowing your constraints puts you in charge of the negotiations... --And it's _always_ a negotiation. If need be, keep a constraints cheat-sheet around with the details. You'll be surprised how often it comes in handy.

 _3.) Within your now known constraints, define the specific capacities you want to verify, and the means to verify them._

Once you know the desired capacities and the means to test them, the automation of verification becomes a whole lot easier. Your existing bug tracking database should be a good place to start for building up your regression tests, but preventing the reappearance of old bugs is only a small part of the problem. The majority of the problem is finding the never ending stream of new bugs.

Since browsers and operating systems are constantly changing, you never have a solid foundation. This means your test environment requires extremely strong versioning to manage the vast multitude of browser, OS, hardware and version combinations. It's important to realize how automatic updates are your sworn enemy. They will hose your test environment since if you don't know what you're running, then you don't know what you're testing. Of course you'll test the latest and greatest versions of everything, but each new update will be a new environment version that needs to be preserved.

Environment versioning is a real pain. The number of environments you'll need to manage and test will grow exponentially, so with the always limiting resource of time, you'll not only need to automate as much as possible, but you'll also need to do triage. Testing every possible combination is intractable.

Many sites will try to avoid the pain of environment versioning by only supporting the most current version combinations, but in doing so, they only avoid the expense of supporting "legacy" combinations. There will still be plenty of combinations of "newest" so their test infrastructure will undoubtedly fail to give proper coverage on some of them.

Virtual machines, emulation, simulation, system images (snapshots), and similar along with your favorite version control system (git, cvs, svn) will really help to manage the env versioning issues. It can be a ton of work to get things all set up the way you want them, but the benefit of being able to give good and repeatable coverage makes it worthwhile.

Personally, I'd go with open source as much as possible since it will use a normal programming language. It will mean recreating the wheel in some situations, but for me, it seems better than the alternatives. The generally known open source web app testing frameworks are Selenium [1], Watir [2], and RobotFramework [3]. If you hate real text editors and prefer to suffer from using an IDE, some IDE's have plug-ins like CubicTest [4] for Eclipse which can drive Selenium/Watir.

[1] [http://www.seleniumhq.org/](http://www.seleniumhq.org/)

[2] [http://watir.com/](http://watir.com/)

[3] [http://robotframework.org/](http://robotframework.org/)

[4] [http://www.cubictest.org/](http://www.cubictest.org/)

Vendor lock-in from proprietary test suites and proprietary languages can be immensely aggravating and expensive. You might have the budget for expensive proprietary test suites, or you might not, but if you ever need to do something out-of-scope or need to change vendors, then you'll be proverbially stuffed. Sadly, I don't know the proprietary tools at all, and worse, I'm against them without adequate information. Yes, I suffer from the usual "I can do it" bias and personality fault, namely valuing my time less than valuing my money. Your situation may be different.

There are a quite a few different "Software Test" and/or "Quality Assurance" groups and conferences around. As you might expect, they often favor proprietary test solutions since it's usually the vendors of said solutions footing the bill for the conferences. Even with the deck stacked in favor of the proprietary solutions, the groups/conferences can be a good place to learn. EuroStar is one common conference but there are many others if you look around. When looking up EuroStar, I found a writeup from last year that you might want to look over:

[http://www.eurostarconferences.com/blog/2013/7/25/comparison...](http://www.eurostarconferences.com/blog/2013/7/25/comparison- of-cross-browser-ui-testing-tools)

If you've ever seen the musical called "The Wiz" or even the movie of the same name, try to memorize the lyrics of the song, "No Bad News". If you can learn to sing a reasonable A Cappella rendition of it, even better. It will definitely come in handy, and more often than you'll want to admit. ;)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQT- QFy5Nig](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQT-QFy5Nig)

Good Luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, thank you for your incredibly detailed reply. I'll ensure I refer back to it again and again. Often I have the problem I'm in the midst of right now, I focus on specifics rather than the bigger picture and the general things you need to keep in mind while working.

Thank you very much for going to the time and effort of that reply, I really appreciate it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google & Facebook might completely disappear in the next 5 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/04/30/heres-why-google-and-facebook-might-completely-disappear-in-the-next-5-years/print/

<comment><USER2> Probably to be replaced by something worse still. I'm already feeling nostalgic about Microsoft who only wanted my money without choice.</comment>


High Performance SBC Alternative to the Raspi3: Running Linux on Khadas VIM2 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tomac/from-tv-box-to-high-performance-single-board-computer-running-linux-on-the-khadas-vim2-max-5c00f6e95aa4 <comment><USER2> It runs an Amlogic CPU, Amlogic made a move for mainlinux support and GPU support last year. These guys have been really doing the major push on that front and the mainline support is linux kernel tree.</comment>