Apple Mail randomly becomes the frontmost application in macOS - <AUTHOR> https://annoying.technology/posts/cd82d56f98e75afc/ <comment><USER4> I've had this issue for the past 2–3 years. It seems to happen because of improper error handling. If you look closely at the app in the instant it opens, your affected account will have a "disconnected" symbol next to it in the sidebar. However, it goes away before an error can be shown.

My theory is: there is a momentary connection issue with these G Suite accounts, and Mail.app starts to show an error by focusing itself, but the error is resolved so quickly it doesn't actually get to show the "connection problems" modal.

I hope this can be fixed soon, it's been a daily annoyance for me for a long time now.

<comment><USER5> In my experience, if you always hide the Mail window (cmd-h) instead of closing it (cmd-w), it won't ever pop back up. Takes a while to retrain the muscle memory though!

I haven't tested this in Catalina, but it definitely works consistently in Mojave.

<comment><USER6> Mind you, a program with "hidden" windows open takes up more CPU/memory than a program without any windows open, because the view-controllers for those windows are still running, just bound to an invisible, non-updating view. (Though, admittedly, it's less of a CPU cost than _minimizing_ the window, since that requires the view to be kept active too, to facilitate updating the live thumbnail.)

The main place this comes up is in cases where the main window is doing something clever to gather the information to display itself. For example, Activity Monitor doesn't suddenly stop using half your CPU when you hide it.

Mail.app probably keeps a big scrollable list-control for the selected view in-memory for as long as you have the window open. So it might be a bad idea to do this if you're one of those people who never archive anything (i.e. practice "Inbox Infinity.")

<comment><USER7> > Though, admittedly, it's less of a CPU cost than minimizing the window, > since that requires the view to be kept active too, to facilitate updating > the live thumbnail.

I thought that was a static thumbnail?

> For example, Activity Monitor doesn't suddenly stop using half your CPU when > you hide it.

It does for me, which is why I keep it hidden when I'm not actively using it.

<comment><USER6> > I thought that was a static thumbnail?

Nah, it updates (...as far as I can recall.) Try opening a chat client, minimizing the chat window, and then sending a message from another device to yourself.

I believe it's just using the same call into the compositor that Mission Control uses to display your windows and spaces. Those are all live. (They might have a lower update rate, though.)

> It does for me, which is why I keep it hidden when I'm not actively using > it.

Interesting. This might be down to Activity Monitor being written to respond to a message letting it know that its view is entirely obscured, and the Activity Monitor main-window view-controller deciding in response that there's no point in it polling the system if all it's going to do when re-visible is discard all the stuff it learned in the mean time and re-poll again to get the newest data for the view.

I can't recall whether Activity Monitor has any historical/time-series views built in? If it does, then if you hide Activity Monitor with those active, it _should_ keep using CPU, to gather the data for that view, whether it's rendering it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My workaround for this issue is to put Mail app in its own dedicated Space/Desktop. Then it only comes to the front in its own Space, not in the Space I'm normally using.

<comment><USER9> I've switched back to a new MacBook, temporarily due to COVID as it was easy to purchase from Apple and it was an emergency.

I used OS X fulltime 2006-11. I'm surprised how buggy Catalina is, including Mail.app. I have had serious firmware issues too, such as needing to reset my SMC very frequently because my USB C stops charging the machine every other day. Apple is clearly, sadly, neglecting mac OS.

Surprisingly, I haven't disliked butterfly keys as much as I thought I would do. I can type extremely fast. I do prefer their scissor keys, though, which are really good and low latency [1].

[1] [https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/](https://danluu.com/keyboard- latency/)

<comment><USER10> if you really got a brand new one, the keyboard may not be as bad as the previous iterations (2016/2017)

<comment><USER9> Yes, it's new and it's fairly decent. I love mechanical keyboards (especially those with ALPS and TOPRE switches), but I realize low travel means I type much faster and it doesn't tire my fingers.

IMHO the scissor keys in the Magic Keyboard are really good because they strike a perfect compromise in terms of depth, comfort and speed. Also the board is really low latency. Not sure what tricks Apple has played with the firmware in those keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I experience this as well after upgrading to Catalina. I thought it was my fault at first, caused by some sort of key combo. It only happens for me when in full screen with another app.

I use Mail with a GSuite account as well.

<comment><USER12> I am still not on Catalina yet and it started for me ca. 6-9 months ago. Perhaps with some Mojave update. (unsure as no big changes occurred and it took some time to see being a systematic trouble)

I am more and more turning off system updates (not only Mac) as those bring more trouble than good. Being a very late adopter pays off. (update to Catalina is still not in the middle term plans)

<comment><USER13> To add a datapoint that might be underrepresented for reasons of self- selections: I've updated to Catalina and haven't had any issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty sure it is due too it not being able to connect to a mail server. every time it happens, i see the "couldn't connect" icon

<comment><USER15> Yes, that's it. It happened with my Gmail account too, it stopped when I removed it from Mail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, it is horrible. I am closing Apple Mail when I am not using it because of it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Something I still don't understand, similar to this - not sure if it's a bug or feature but I use Desktops heavily, especially while working at home without my extra monitors.

For some reason, the order of my Desktops on Mac seem to reshuffle, I can't work out what causes it or when it happens. I often have it ordered something like this:

Desktop 1 - Google Doc (Chrome)

Desktop 2 - Researching (Chrome)

Desktop 3 - <USER2>

Desktop 4 - <USER3>

I'll do the three finger gesture moving from Desktop 1 to 2 and randomly say Spotify will have moved there. It's so annoying.

<comment><USER18> The answer is found in System Preferences > Mission Control. Uncheck the "Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use" box :)

<comment><USER19> Astounding to me that automatic rearranging would have been considered desirable. Hard to imagine that it's just visual folks (like myself) who would lose flow state if the mental map of their Desktops was interrupted if they were suddenly rearranged.

<comment><USER20> > Astounding to me that automatic rearranging would have been considered > desirable

Funny, i really like this because it lets me switch to another app and then return with a single swipe. The ipad has this behaviour too though the swipe is in the opposite direction.

I use full screen very heavily and rarely use spaces as separate desktops, which _I_ find weird. You probably consider my use weird.

Not to say one approach is better than the other, just suggesting whoever set the default might have decided based on their own use. I suspect this issue was not subjected to any UX research, even at a place as big as apple.

<comment><USER19> You're likely correct: it feels like it wasn't subjected to any UX research. Knowing how Apple works, it was probably demoed in front of a few higher-ups, but nobody other than the person or team writing it used the feature long enough to notice that some people would be confused by it.

And you're correct, I never use full screen. I don't think it's weird to use it, it just doesn't suit my workflow (single large monitor, so I need a lot of stuff side-by-side).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't have any issues with Apple Mail but I do have issues with zoom, randomly switching from full screen sharing to the desktop and back again, it's incredibly annoying. It doesn't happen when I share my screen, only when others do. It seems to have gotten better recently but still happens in occasion. Anyone else seeing this? Maybe it's related?

<comment><USER22> It's a setting you can turn off

<comment><USER23> Yes. This is a very annoying default, but luckily you can disable it.

<comment><USER21> Alright people, stop teasing and tell me what to look for please! :o)

<comment><USER24> Settings > Share Screen > Maximize Zoom window when a participant shares screen ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You can fix this by removing the "Google" account and connecting to Gmail as a regular IMAP account.

Since I did that, I haven't had any issues with this.

<comment><USER26> Oh, I was wondering why I don't have that issue. I've set up Apple Mail long before they had specific support for "google" accounts so of course the gmail account is imap...

Btw 7 years of importing application configuration across OS installs without a hitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have the same issue, in fact I'm so used to it that I even do not notice it anymore, except when watching fullscreen video, then I'm like: "It's just the way how things are here...[quits Mail]".

As someone already mentioned - I'm also pretty sure it's related to some disconnect/reconnect thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Please make sure to log this at [http://bugreporter.apple.com](http://bugreporter.apple.com)

Your bug will at least then be triaged and acknowledged.

<comment><USER29> > Your bug will at least then be triaged and acknowledged.

Lol sure it will.

<comment><USER28> Bugreporter is just a front end for Radar.

And I can assure that when I was working at Apple bugs were triaged and acknowledged by a PM. Doesn't mean they get fixed though.

<comment><USER30> Radar's asinine search functionality also obscures the seriousness of bugs by failing to reveal dupes.

It doesn't (or at least didn't) default to searching for all words used in the title; it only searches for the EXACT string you enter. It was a pain in the ass to even find bugs YOU wrote.

I couldn't believe how goddamned dumb this is, or the Radar team's response: Oh, you simply use Oracle syntax and wildcards in the title search! No explanation of how we were supposed to know this, or WHY.

<comment><USER7> > Oh, you simply use Oracle syntax and wildcards in the title search!

TIL

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This has been annoying me for months. It's particularly irritating when you're screen sharing. I just make sure Mail is quit when I'm not using it, which isn't ideal.

</comment><comment><USER32> How is it that there is still no known root cause for this issue? I suspect there is a way to check what the reason an app came to the foreground is, no?

<comment><USER15> The reason is that Mail thinks the mail server is unreachable, so it brings the window to front, but then magically it changes idea and the mail server is reachable again .

<comment><USER33> In general I find macOS handles alerting the user very poorly.

I don't know why but it infuriates me when icons bounce on the dock for attention. The animation is too insistent for whatever trivial thing the app wants to let me know.

Or an app will open some Important Dialog Box that I need to deal with, except it's hidden behind some other windows somewhere and the rest of the app refuses to respond to my clicks until I find the dialog box. It doesn't bother foregrounding the dialog box for me.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, that's not good. Sometimes you can find it through some combination of ensuring that app is frontmost by clicking its icon in the dock, choosing "hide others" from its menu, and triggering "show application windows" in Mission Control (often ctrl-down-arrow, or a three-finger down-swipe trackpad gesture).

<comment><USER33> Due to the explosion in videoconferencing I've spent some time recently helping family set things up via remote desktop (I highly recommend Chrome Remote Desktop by the way, pretty easy to set up). This kind of thing is absolutely inscrutable to non-tech savvy people. All they see is that the computer suddenly stops doing anything but playing an annoying "donk" sound whenever they click and they have no idea that any of those features exist.

Really, Windows with its `window == app == taskbar item` approach is far easier to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've had this issue for a long time now across a couple of versions of MacOS and three Macs. It appears to be related to Google Calendar. My current workaround is to hide a Mail window with CMD-h. I've given up trying to report it or find a fix.

<comment><USER5> Can confirm, same here. As long as you hide the window (cmd-h) instead of closing it (cmd-w), the problem doesn't ever come up. I've been using this work-around for over a year now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Another Mail issue I have: if one mail message is highlighted and then I click another and type command-R to reply, the email reply will be to the message that is no longer selected. Sometimes I'll get a notification of a new email, go to click and send a quick reply ("ok great"), and I'll have sent the email before I realize that it's going to the wrong recipient.

It seems crazy to me that the order of operations can be messed up like this. First I clicked, then I command-R'd. Why would Mail handle these commands out of order?

</comment><comment><USER37> I switched to Airmail for only this reason lol

<comment><USER38> Watch out.

Last time I tried it, it was vulnerable to a bunch of issues similar to XSS.

I suggest you test it with [https://www.emailprivacytester.com/](https://www.emailprivacytester.com/) and see if it still finds anything.

<comment><USER37> oh wow, thanks for the heads up!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I was a long time Gmail user, on the verge of leaving Gmail due to a long list of reasons. This bug was the final straw for me (I know it's not Gmail's fault). Got rid of Gmail completely. Haven't seen this bug since.

<comment><USER40> I'm not sure why but Google services seem to cause a lot of issues on the Mac. I don't use Google-based calendars anymore, but when I did, the accountsd process would often sit chewing absurd amounts of CPU for no discernible reason.

Same goes for this Mail issue, it only seems to happen with Gmail/G Suite accounts.

But yes, I am also looking to move away from Gmail; not because of this bug but because I don't like the idea of all my important online accounts being tied to a company that has essentially zero customer service or support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, I have the opposite problem: when I boot up my computer Mail shows now windows until I click on it, even though every other app restores its windows. Very strange.

</comment><comment><USER41> I get something like this all the time, except it pops up behind whatever I'm doing and doesn't steal focus. I also almost never do stuff in full screen mode, maybe that's the trigger for it stealing focus?

Definitely seems to be related to "I had an email connectivity error and I must let you know NOWNOWNOW." Knowing that it's associated with gmail accounts feels like one more reason for me to get off my ass and disentangle my email from gmail...

</comment><comment><USER42> If you have Microsoft Exchange accounts then you get a different bug. If you have no network connection or change network connections Apple Mail will thrash accountsd for long periods of time consuming as much of the CPU as it can. Neither Apple Mail nor accountsd appear to have any throttling of network connection attempts. Quitting Apple Mail until you have a network connection is the only option.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have this and it keeps happening while I'm playing Counter-Strike. Incredibly annoying for it to split screen and steal focus from the game.

</comment><comment><USER44> My Apple Mail bug is with changing passwords on Exchange accounts. I change the password, Apple Mail prompts for the new password, then uses the old one to connect.

I have to quit Apple Mail and use the accounts pane of preference panels and cancel when it prompts for the new password as it has the same bug. Then I can click details and change the password. That works.

Reported many years ago in Sierra.

</comment><comment><USER45> I get something like this with Music.app -- it seems to randomly open. I suspect it's some kind of keystroke (i.e. hitting the play button) but I haven't figured out exactly why it's happening or how to stop it.

I'm pretty sure this didn't used to happen until I upgraded to Catalina.

I really wish I had better luck with Linux...

<comment><USER46> If no media is currently playing or paused and you press the Play button by mistake, the Music app opens. It's extremely annoying.

<comment><USER47> You can get rid of this with

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist

([https://www.howtogeek.com/274345/stop-itunes-from- launching-...](https://www.howtogeek.com/274345/stop-itunes-from-launching- when-you-press-play-on-your-macs-keyboard/))

<comment><USER48> Unfortunately, when I tried it, it made the media keys stop working entirely, not _just_ stopping Music from opening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I run into an issue that started the past few upgrades: Mail will just stop downloading new Mail. No rhyme or reason, it just stops. I can have a second computer next to it and watch mail come in, but on that Mail, it won't do anything. I have to quit (sometimes force-quit) to get it to start again.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's bizarre to me that nowadays an application can become frontmost application at all. When I switched to OSX back in the days, it was an advertised feature that this can't happen the same way it does on Windows. If something wants attention, its icon bounced in the dock. Nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER51> Ugh! It's most annoying when you're in a full screen app and presenting. Suddenly, Mail.app decides to take half the screen and spurts all my inbox for everyone to see. You can't watch full time videos either due to this annoyance.

</comment><comment><USER52> Outlook 365 does this as well.

</comment><comment><USER53> Reading the people that put up with it why? What's wrong with thunderbird?

<comment><USER54> Mac Mail is a great app IMO. It's full featured and performant, I'm very happy with it. This is pretty much the only issue, and it's only with Gmail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It happens A LOT with non-GSuite Gmail accounts (personal GMail accounts) too!

<comment><USER56> There's no reason why it shouldn't affect all google mail accounts equally. If the cause is frontend disconnections, it will happen to any account tier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I've encountered other features such as long

\- long press on send (i.e. you're thinking about it) will send all your drafts

\- deleting an email might select the one above or below after, so you can't rapid fire delete a sequence

</comment><comment><USER20> This has been happening to me since 10.12 and I have no google account connected to my machine for anything (mail, calendar, nothing). It's infuriating, and assumed it was some perverse design decision.

</comment><comment><USER58> If anybody is interested, I've been writing a Gmail-focused email client for macOS called Mimestream. It combines native macOS UI with Gmail-specific features such as categorized inboxes, colored labels, and aliases (made possible by the use of the Gmail API instead of IMAP).

I just opened up a public beta, and you can request immediate access on the website at [https://mimestream.com](https://mimestream.com). It's free during the beta period - I only ask for feedback: email@example.com.

Unlike some other 3rd party email clients, it makes direct connections from your Mac to Gmail and stores data/credentials on your Mac. There's no intermediary servers.

</comment><comment><USER59> I keep it minimized to avoid the issue and to get notifications.

<comment><USER46> It still pops up when it's minimised. I blame this bug for my inboxes going to crap over the past year, because the only fix for me is keeping Mail closed and opening it only when I really need to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I stopped using Mac Mail quite recently, because of a bug that meant not all my IMAP folders were displayed.

Remember Mozilla Thunderbird? It's great. Also has an RSS reader built in.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is happening to me on Catalina with Safari. Having on dual monitor another app and Safari, clicking in another app and Safari takes focus back.

</comment><comment><USER62> I have the problem that Mail.app gets the frontmost CPU-bound application. It for no obvious reasons too.

All in all, a bit buggy application it seems.

</comment><comment><USER63> Added to this, have anybody been able to get Mail app to connect via authenticated proxy?..

I can only use Outlook to work at work which is frustrating

</comment><comment><USER64> Apple mail also loads remote images when you forward an email, indepdent of the "load remote images" setting.

(haven't tried latest OS)

</comment><comment><USER65> For years I've seen a concostent bug where I can't go to the Mail window until I force quit and reopen mail a bunch. Frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER66> I have a similar issue with Safari. I have not opened it for months, but every so often it is the frontmost app after waking.

</comment><comment><USER67> Funnily enough most of the times Mail came up was due to me accidentally pressing cmd + i in a browser.

<comment><USER7> I hate that! I've been looking for ways to turn it off or rebind it to another keyboard shortcut but it never sticks…

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Just learnt to minimise(Ctrl+M) the window instead of closing it with x or Ctrl+W

</comment><comment><USER69> hits me too and it's really annoying... I even got used to quit Mail.app but yeah... it's bad. My feeling though is that google is more and more saying goodbye to standards... just a feeling

</comment><comment><USER70> Hard to believe it still hasn't been fixed.

</comment><comment><USER71> Same. I've had this issue for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER72> I've had it since I got catalina

</comment><comment><USER73> I thought I was going insane

</comment><comment><USER74> Apple Mail is riddled with bugs it's unusable. Do yourself a favor and switch. Anything else is better than it, Thunderbird is a pretty good alternative imo.

It feels like apple doesn't put any care into regression bugs in their applications. It's the same on the iPhone, Mail is so bad that I uninstalled it in favor of outlook (the irony...) —Mail was sucking so much battery that my phone wouldn't last 8h. With outlook it lasts all day (12+h)

<comment><USER75> > Apple Mail is riddled with bugs it's unusable.

Weird, I've been using it for a decade and I have zero issues. Maybe 'unusable' is a pretty subjective assessment?

<comment><USER76> The best thing about Apple Mail is their integration with contacts and everything "i" Phone, Pad, etc.

It is the whole ecosystem lock down deal again. Nothing has progressed in tech in this aspect, each company is still for themselves instead of consumers.

<comment><USER75> What lock down are you talking about? Any email client can integrate with your calendar and contacts - those are public APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Where I work we don't allow Apple Mail to run on corporate computers.

IT rolled out mandatory endpoint protection once, and they started getting reports of malware living in the Mail storage folder. Apparently when employees synced their corporate Gmail to Apple Mail, Apple Mail was pulling down the malicious/suspicious attachments from the Google spam folder. So I figure that's a good reason why physical mail clients need to die. There's no real need for them anymore.

<comment><USER78> Malware doesn't harm your computer just by sitting around on the disk.

<comment><USER79> Until someone finds a buffer overflow in Apple Mail MIME handling or some such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is not a bug, it is a feature. Someone out there had to write the code that pushes the mail app to the front. It does not happen spontaneously, someone made it happen. And made it an exclusive behavior without user control. It must have been a conscious feature. A mindless and stupid one, but still a feature. No bug to fix here.

(after suffering and spending toooo much time of experimenting I decided to get rid of the Google account approach of the Mac but use it as an IMAP account, turning off 'safe' access in my Google account)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Someone out there had to write the code that pushes the mail app to the > front.

Sometimes the code you write doesn't do what you had in mind. Or worse: gets triggered by side effects of something unrelated.

I don't think it's intentional in this case but even if it would be intentional after seeing this many bug reports everywhere you'd have to reconsider and make connection errors less intrusive.

<comment><USER12> You do not push the whole app to the front by mistake, especially at some glitch of connection as it is happening here! It is not a typo or whatever kind of mistake just happens on its own but had to be a conscious action!! I write code, I make mistake, but this is beyond that! It is also neglected for years now while being very widespread, no way of being unnoticed and left there if it wasn't a conscious choice to do so!</comment></comment></comment>


Debian 10.2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20191116 <comment><USER2> Does anyone know of a distribution other than debian with a social contract[1]? To me this is the reason why I never really considered another distribution.

[1] [https://www.debian.org/social_contract](https://www.debian.org/social_contract)

<comment><USER3> I'm glad this exists. However what I'd look for in a social contract is something about the level of technical support the users should expect.

When the issue of free software support comes up, too often I see the usual "OUR COMMUNITY IS NOT YOUR FREE TECHNICAL SUPPORT WE OWE YOU NOTHING"... o..okay, fair enough. I can't waltz into your community and demand your time for free... But you _do_ want me to use your system, right? You _do_ think that Free Software is a viable alternative to proprietary software, where the creators literally _owe me_ support for their software because I paid them for it?

That's why it would be nice if they laid out exactly what it is that they are committing themselves to. Not just writing code and putting the thing together, but a certain (of course not unlimited) amount of assistance, so I know I won't be totally left hanging. Maybe some OSes are too much of a hobby or experiment and they don't want to offer that level of support. Totally fine. We should expect that sort of thing in the social contract, so users know what they're getting themselves into, and so that we can all step back and evaluate whether Free Software is a viable alternative to propriety yet.

<comment><USER4> No, I like it this way. I feel like I'm not a client of the community but a participant. It's my favourite part about open-source.

<comment><USER5> It's my favorite part about Free Software.

<comment><USER4> That is what I meant, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please note: Starting with Debian 7, the minor number is not part of the Debian release number, and numbers with a minor component like 9.4 or 9.7 now indicate a _point_ release. Basically, only security updates and major bug fixes, with new updated installation media images. This, 10.2, is _not_ a new major release of Debian.

<comment><USER7>
      cat /etc/debian_version

<comment><USER6>
      cat /etc/os-release

<comment><USER8> tac /etc/issue

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of Debian's draw backs is that simply finding the download page on its website is an arduous process.

<comment><USER10> These days I use [https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham- Needs/](https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/)

Because despite the rapid dismissal from these other yahoos, finding an image with WiFi firmware from the front page is a nightmare maze of wrong links and secret knowledge.

<comment><USER11> Wifi firmwares are non-free and are _not_ included in the official iso for a reason.

Search for "debian non-free iso" and you probably will find what you are looking for.

> ...nightmare maze of wrong links and secret knowledge.

Please, don't exaggerate.

<comment><USER10> > _Wifi firmwares are non-free and are not included in the official iso for a > reason._

And the result is that 99.99% of people can't get 99.99% freedom because of 0.01% of people doubling down on the 0.01% of freedom. I love Debian, but I consider that gatekeeping a great crime against regular people who could be empowered and informed from minimal freedom to _nearly_ total freedom instead of kept out by arcanity and hardlining.

That's why I like the link I posted. Because it says "this will actually work on your computer" AND also informs you about user freedom and the harm of proprietary device drivers.

> _Please, don 't exaggerate._

Let's perform an exercise, shall we? Starting from www.debian.org, reading from top left to bottom right as the English language is read, how many words must you pass over, how many links must you pass over, which links do you have to click, and how do you know to click those links and not the other ones in order to find an iso that installs on a market standard laptop over WiFi? The decision tree is much deeper than you acknowledge.

<comment><USER11> > Starting from www.debian.org, reading from top left to bottom right as the > English language is read...

I guess you should start with the first link, the one that says "About Debian". There you can know what Debian is about and align your expectations.

If you think it works for you, then go back to www.debian.org and do a ctrl+f and type "download", there is a big button in the top right corner. It is probably what you need (amd64, netinstall).

<comment><USER10> All I hear you saying is that you think regular people with regular lives and regular products and regular concerns don't deserve to get _almost_ total freedom from Debian because of that missing last little bit, and, too bad so sad, they should just go somewhere else. I disagree with that stance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's actually the point in those point releases?

Don't understand me wrong, I'm running Debian on all my servers, but on the desktop I'm in love wit the rolling release model.

Is it just to overcome the initial upgrade inertia?

<comment><USER13> There are places in the world where internet is not accessible, maybe for you it's a commodity but for some people is easy to burn a CD and send it to those who needs it.

<comment><USER12> Oh, yeah, this makes totally sense, I did not think about that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm happy they decided to backport the fix for cyrus ! Some mails could become hidden on update from cyrus 2.5 to 3

I didn't want to use backports for a mail server and after the maintainers decided to not patch the SSL bug in the previous release ([https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=863520](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=863520)) I was afraid they would do the same.

</comment><comment><USER15> What does that mean?

Will my daily "apt update && apt upgrade" get me this?

<comment><USER16> Yup. Sometimes you might actually need "apt full-upgrade" to get everything right, but not today.

<comment><USER17> Don't you mean "apt dist-upgrade"? Or are they the same thing</comment></comment></comment>


Jobote.com – Referral hiring that works - <AUTHOR> http://www.jobote.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Jobote is a referral hiring tool which helps companies leverage social networks to hire trusted talent.

Check out our web or app!</comment>


Ask HN: What software do you use for business 1:1 chat (NOT group/channel chat)? - <AUTHOR> Maybe I'm dating myself here but there was a time within corporations where chat software was primarily used for 1:1 instant messages. Such things like XMPP, Skype, etc fit this bill really well.
Then over the last few years, a slew of new chat based apps popped up in the enterprise that were primarily focused on group/channel chat (e.g. Slack, Zulip, etc.) as opposed to the 1:1 messaging model.
What would be good chat software today that focuses on 1:1 messages (not groups/channels)?
[XMPP worked great for this but that doesn't seem en vogue any more. And I find the focus that many of these "modern" chat app have on group/channel distracting] <comment><USER2> > What would be good chat software today that focuses on 1:1 messages (not > groups/channels)?

The premise of the question is that direct messages are somehow different and require a separate application. I don't think that's true. Slack and Teams do an absolutely fine job at 1:1 messages.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd prefer a chat app which made it _harder_ to create a group/channel.

I've been apart of organizations that use Slack and the proliferation of channels is insane because they are so easy to create.

<comment><USER3> Discord works well in practice for creating groups and channels. By default, regular users cannot create channels. Like Slack, it has very fast search, with no message limit. File and image upload work wonderfully and the audio/video works every time.

For small-scale groups, Group DMs are fine, though, I would warn to try to use Group DMs only for when more than two participants should get an urgent ping on a message. (Users can "mute" group DMs so they don't get notified by them.)

<comment><USER4> The problem with group DMs in slack is that they are almost always better off as a channel - you can't really add new people to a group DM. So you're forced to decide if you should make a channel or not right at the beginning.

Group DMs can also have usability problems, and they tend to clog up the UI of slack. I currently have 5 or 6 group DMs going that all have at least one of the same people in all of them, so now when I use the quick switcher I see all of those. Some of them even have 2 of the same people in them - it makes it really easy to select the wrong group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand. 1:1 means two people. What's wrong with using "group chat" with a group of two people?

I don't think even XMPP focused on 1:1 and even Slack uses XMPP (or at least used XMPP in the earlier versions, as it started out as an internal communications solution built as IRC + storing messages in database + search + ...)

Also, [https://meet.jit.si](https://meet.jit.si) , [https://jitsi.org](https://jitsi.org) They also use XMPP.

</comment><comment><USER6> We use Teams. It's ok for 1:1 stuff. It all depends on the actions and preferences of the user base. I try to use single recipient chats whenever possible, but others like to create group descriptions.

</comment><comment><USER7> WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram.

Preferably only Telegram, but I don't have a choice.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use MS Teams for 1 on 1 as well as group chat and audio calls.

</comment><comment><USER9> Element/Riot (a Matrix client)

or Jitsi.

<comment><USER10> +1 for jitsi</comment></comment>


Show HN: GOLO, a simple personal project management app - <AUTHOR>

GOLO: http://getgolo.com
To be honest, its a personal itch project.
Reasoning behind the project is that I needed something extremely simple to do project management for very small teams (3-6).
Golo has only 2 entities in a project: task-name & priority (0-1000). Use priority number to group tasks together and order them too.
There is no concept of logins. An access link is emailed to you every time you request it including sign ups. The app has persistent sessions. Its not super secure by any standards and hence DO NOT put sensitive data in there. Its only for management purposes.
I know its not even Show-HN quality yet but I would love to get as much feedback as possible while I am building it rather than later. So thank you guys in advance for checking it out. <comment><USER2> Nice work, clean looking. There is something to be said for a simple but useful app.

I were going to ask for one more field, I'd like to see a field for the task owner (could just be simple text) at which point I think it would definitely work for simple project management.

Of course a status field, notes and comments would make it a more complete system, but I think certain types of projects can get away without those things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot Jake.

Actually thats the idea behind it. So, I am planning to support all these functionalities which you mentioned. In fact these features will be off by default. You can enable it on need basis per project. But this is still in development.

Do not forget to use it on your next simple project and give me feedback. Just reply to the registration email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like it - not sure why "priority' is not used more - it is such a useful construct. Instead of re-purposing it though, maybe add "tags' and still keep it super lean

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. I thought of tags but still went with priority because an open ended priority serves two purposes: high level ordering as well as low level ordering.

What I mean is that you can separate out very different tasks by giving them far apart priorities and order and group sub-tasks/related-tasks by giving them priorities closer by. Let me know what you think.

Or if you have a way in mind about tags, would love to hear your thoughts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a simple tool, but I see that it can be useful. However, why not use other tools already built? Why not Trello?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Trello is closest to what I needed. I do not have a strong reason to not use Trello. I come from a background of using excel sheets for this task and needed something in flatter structure. Trello seems more visual than I need it to be.

I will understand if you didn't find my logic very convincing :).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://getgolo.com](http://getgolo.com)</comment>


Please don't use Puppet - <AUTHOR> https://ilya-sher.org/2017/06/09/please-dont-use-puppet/ <comment><USER2> The post fails to explain _why_ , barring some generic ideas that can be applied just as easily to PostgreSQL or dedicated router.</comment>


Will.i.am: Coding is the 'most creative space' (interview) - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/29/will-i-am-coding-is-the-most-creative-space-interview/ <comment><USER2> Will.i.am ? Creativity ? I'm sure he has no idea what creativity is after this: [http://www.dancingastronaut.com/2013/04/will-i-am-rips- off-a...](http://www.dancingastronaut.com/2013/04/will-i-am-rips-off-arty-and- mat-zos-rebound/)

</comment><comment><USER3> thats good...</comment>


Ask HN: Is Java still worth learning/relevant? - <AUTHOR> I know it's still around for the last 20 years, so that's saying something.<p>Do you enjoy programming with Java? Or is it too slow and verbose? <comment><USER2> If you learn Java you will be able to get a job doing it. So in that sense it is relevant. I personally feel it is a dead end though. And this is coming from someone who loved Java when he first played with it 15 years ago (previous experience was C++ / VB6 / BBC Basic though!)

If you want to enjoy your job, or your hobby, choose a better language.

I'd suggest Clojure or Haskell. But where I live at least it is a fight to get to do paid work in those languages, but a fight that is worth it.

Hard to explain why Haskell is better than Java in a little comment. I say learn some Haskell and Java and discover for yourself what you prefer.

<comment><USER3> I have been looking around for jobs here in Spain, a lot of the better paid senior level stuff is for either MS stack, or Java (they all seem pretty corporate style). There are Python jobs around, but more mid level.

<comment><USER2> Same problem here. It takes some ingenuity to get paid well and use the stack you love. I am working on it. One way is to convince your current company to try something new on a small project to get its feet wet.

Any MS shop could consider F# and Java shop could consider Scala/Clojure as in each case it compiles down to compatible ones and zeros.

Or it could be a case of get a .NET/Java job at an open-minded enough company.

One of my arguments to introduce F# (when I am ready to) is that F# is now (a probably better version of) what C# is going to be in 5-10 years time, so lets get ahead of the curve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is probably an unsatisfying answer, but large tech companies (such as Google) generally want to conduct interviews in Java or C++. Python seems to be an outside option. So for that reason alone, you might want to learn java.

On the bright side, if that's what you're using Java for, you might not mind it so much. Academic-leaning data structures and algorithms problems don't require the heavy frameworks that got Java a bad reputation[1], nor do they deal with programming cultures that prefer method names that read like the first 5 chapter titles of the GOF design patterns book. If you need to write code to find a cycle in a linked list, or find the sub matrix with the largest sum, or find a sub tree in a BST, I don't think you'll find Java particularly onerous.

[1] I've heard things have improved considerably, and that Java frameworks are now much lighter than they were in the early days of spring, struts, and hibernate.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes I enjoy programming in Java. On the server-side its performance is very good. As far as the enterprise goes, it will be in use for years to come.

It is a bit verbose but I'm ok with it. I know its fashionable to hate on it but I find it a comfortable language to work in. So, yes it's still very relevant in business and is worth learning.

<comment><USER6> Let the haters keep hating on Java; this continues to leave well paying jobs on the table for me, I love working with Java and Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My opinion: If you're interested in learning a JVM language such as Scala or Clojure or Groovy, it makes sense to to know at least a little bit of Java because you can't really take the "Java" out of "JVM" with a library and error messages will often be provided relative to the underlying Java implementation - i.e. Clojure and Scala often throw Java errors.

As for Java being "too slow", for what?

</comment><comment><USER8> Short answer. No. Long answer. Java is very similar to C# and so time would be better spent learning C# as the language is more evolved and so you will get to learn more by default in learning C#. Also I believe your next best bet would be Python as the language concepts are similar.

<comment><USER9> How are the language concepts of Python similar to Java or C#?

<comment><USER8> Do you really want to know or are you just asking because you don't believe me?

<comment><USER10> Do you really want to know or are you just asking because you don't believe him?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes there are still companies that use it and if you want to learn Android programming you have to know Java because Android has a Java virtual machine in it.

Microsoft made their own Java and got sued by Sun, so they made Visual C# and the Dotnet languages to compete with Java.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been learning Ruby on Rails, Python, Javascript, and now am considering focusing on learning Java.

As you would guess, there is quite a bit of difference.

Appreciate the feedback.

<comment><USER11> I've been told that they BlueJ IDE is great for beginners.

[http://www.bluej.org/](http://www.bluej.org/)

When I started learning Java in 1995 I used Windows Notepad because there was nothing else I could find. There was no Hacker News to get good advice from, and paper based Java book to read from instead of free ebooks on the Internet and Github repositories for example code. Sometimes I had to pay money to get a floppy disk postal mailed to me with example code on it.

<comment><USER6> I first picked up java in 95 too; I can't for the life of me recall the name of the tool I used.. mocha or something like that for Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is certainly not outdated. I do not enjoy it as much as I enjoy other languages, and I do think it's too verbose, but it's incredibly relevant. Most enterprise software is written in Java, and that's not going to change any time soon. And big companies need lots of programmers.

Some of the advantages of Java are that even mediocre programmers can be productive in it, and it scales very well to even ridiculously large, complex projects. Of course those can also be considered disadvantages from certain viewpoints, but from the viewpoint of large companies (and therefore job opportunities), they are definitely big advantages.

Personally, I'm convinced that Java is the Cobol of the future.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes - if you're interested in Android development, it's definitely the best language to use to get started.

Java can be a little clunky, but once you learn Java you can pretty easily learn the basics of C#, for instance.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am not a fan of the language myself, but Java is definitely still worth learning. It might not be the flavour of the week like Javascript or Go, but a lot of companies still use it (popular in the enterprise) and if you want to build an Android application, you'll need to develop using Java. Once you learn Java, you will find learning other languages like C# or C++ will be a lot easier, it's a great exercise in patience and a gateway to other languages.

</comment><comment><USER15> I disagree with comments saying it is outdated. It is not. Choose your audience, choose your stack.

Is COBOL/DB2 outdated? Probably, but not sufficiently so to mean companies have moved their infrastructure away from it. There are good jobs to be found in mainframe land, many, and in great demand with great reward.

Java is probably not COBOL in audience, but it is engrained in a lot of enterprises, or as another commenter mentioned, even Android. It is here to stay.

</comment><comment><USER16> In the midwest, java programmers are the top paid programmers and the most in demand.

</comment><comment><USER17> As other users said, It depends on what would be the purpose of learning it. I'm currently consuming data from different API's and currently using Python. So the next step is learning Java and some Apache technologies: Kafka, Hadoop, Storm which are built in it.

I also will need to code a native mobile app and Java is the language of choice for Android.

</comment><comment><USER18> Interesting responses. Java and C#.Net are by far the biggest languages used in developing enterprise business software at the back end. Also big tech companies such as Google use Java extensively.

A company will assume if you graduated in CompSci in the last decade or so that you have used Java fairly extensively.

Java is fast to run, and pretty fast to develop in due to static typing and when using an IDE although there might be some additional boilerplate code. I enjoy using it and there are plenty of Java options if you want a more RAD style of development like Rails e.g. Spring Data/Batch, Play, Grails etc.

</comment><comment> why-el Not as much Java as the JVM, because even if people are abandoning Java the language, the JVM will survive I think since not-insignificant languages such as Clojure and Scala are using it.

Learning Java to a comfortable degree will most likely expose you to the JVM and its inner workings, which is really a good piece of engineering.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good if you want to use JavaSCRIPT. But most people prefer to use Dalvik becauz it runs on ARM which is much cheaper than ms windows devices. But JVM Cobol is probably more backward compatible</comment>


Sequoia Capital plans $8B global fund, eyes China investors - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sequoia-fundraising/sequoia-capital-plans-8-billion-global-fund-eyes-china-investors-sources-idUSKBN1FK0G3 <comment><USER2> Now that companies go public so much later, this sort of really large, really late stage fund is basically occupying the space some mutual funds did 20 years ago. Which is quite a big change for Sequoia.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you agree with the hypothesis that every company will be a tech company then, then the largest market opportunity for VC for tech-first version of almost any major incumbent. This is especially true in traditional industries that have lacked major innovation. Tesla was one example but we're seeing AgTech as well: Indogo threatening to become a new seed company, Farmers Business Network threatening Cargill. If there is talent, boat loads of money and a strong technical edge there is an opportunity to displace most incubamts. Unfortunately we're not investing enough in the upstage pipeline to make this happen more quickly.

<comment><USER4> > the hypothesis that every company will be a tech company

It's hard to argue that there is a single company in the S&P 500 which does not use technology as part of doing its core business. The idea that a company is a tech company may not be so useful.

What is your definition of a tech company? Almost every company uses technology in one way or another, but if the breakdown of the S&P is an indication of our true beliefs, then one might say we tend not to categorize them as being in the "tech" sector.

I suppose Netflix is an example of a media company that is also a tech company, but I think over time we will restrict the idea of a tech company to harder tech, like semiconductor fabrication and operating system development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >"There is so much money now (in the tech sector). You need to have a bigger war chest," said a Hong Kong-based investment banker familiar with Sequoia's strategy.

But what if it's a bubble?

<comment><USER6> Can we please forget about this word called bubble? Do you like recession? There are certain set of people who are constantly posting about it from last 3-4 years. It has not happened and it ain't going to happen so let's move on.

<comment><USER7> > _It has not happened and it ain 't going to happen so let's move on_

Bubble versus Not Bubble is a measure on expected returns. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Projecting a half-decade sample of opinions across infinity is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are writing 100-150mm checks, 8 billion seems natural. Maybe it funds 50-75 investments. And if you plan to keep mega- companies private you need even more.</comment>


AWS Nitro Enclaves - louis-paul https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/nitro/nitro-enclaves/ <comment><AUTHOR> How does it compare to SGX?

<comment><USER2> I don't work at AWS but anything Nitro-qualified likely refers to their integrated hypervisor system that relies on a software hypervisor that works in tandem with various FPGA-based hardware controllers to provide boot chain and device attestation, and device binding (e.g. ephemeral storage keys never leave the block device FPGA controller). In this case Nitro "enclaves" presumably encompass a public API to bring up EC2 instances that are attested using the same internal PKI that Nitro-based EC2 systems use for their control plane.

From a side-channel perspective it's likely better than SGX as I presume EC2 already uses more resilient core affinity (e.g. no hyperthreaded core sharing across instances) and other mitigations, many of which aren't even possible with SGX.

OTOH, their PKI system and other implementation details are likely much more complicated than Intel's SGX system (which also utilizes an online, centralized authority), with many more avenues of attack. There are just many more moving parts with EC2. But it's difficult to say as it's all proprietary.

TL;DR: From a general data confidentiality perspective, EC2 is likely better. From a nation state-level attacker looking to subvert attestation, I'd lean Intel.

<comment><USER3> > From a side-channel perspective it's likely better than SGX as I presume EC2 > already uses more resilient core affinity (e.g. no hyperthreaded core > sharing across instances) and other mitigations, many of which aren't even > possible with SGX.

A primary point of SGX is confidentiality: the host OS can't map and read enclave pages because the contents are encrypted and the hardware will generate an exception on any attempt. In other words, your data is confidential from even the infrastructure operator.

None of this confidentiality applies here, so it's mostly irrelevant whether the side channels are better mitigated. The host OS can dump data whenever it wants. The better protections against side channels is pure speculation, ... and it's nonsense to say that Nitro is uniquely capable of core isolation. This would work equally as well for limiting side channels for SGX — disabling hyperthreading is literally Intel's recommendation AFAIK.

Of course, those side channels would still be exploitable by the host. But in this case, Amazon wouldn't even need the side channels, since the door is wide open. This system appears to be providing only integrity measurements, a locked down data plane, and standard hypervisor isolation.

I've got nothing against this product (and I have mixed feelings about SGX) but the conclusion that EC2 is better for "general data confidentiality" is a weird assertion. Maybe you could make an argument that it makes integrity better, easier, etc. but not confidentiality.

<comment><USER2> > A primary point of SGX is confidentiality: the host OS can't map and read > enclave pages because the contents are encrypted and the hardware will > generate an exception on any attempt. In other words, your data is > confidential from even the infrastructure operator.

You're still trusting Intel to truthfully verify attestation. Intel could lie about this. Ultimately you're trusting the vendor implementing the environment and providing the attestations to behave as they claim, independent of the technical characteristics of the environment.

But in terms of the technical characteristics, it seems far easier to mitigate side channels in an environment like EC2 than SGX. And that's what I based my opinion on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Device Harvests Energy in Darkness - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/science/solar-energy-power-electricity.html <comment><USER3> Hi there - I'm the lead author of this paper. Not a big fan of this particular write-up.. it's not a solar panel at all! But happy to answer questions.

The NYT actually had a detailed write-up that I thought was quite accurate: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/science/solar-energy- powe...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/science/solar-energy-power- electricity.html)

<comment><USER4> Semi-off topic but you should knowledge-able in the area, but would there be any potential in leveraging the permanent temperature differences which occur 10meters below the ocean? Light does not penetrate below 10meters and old water is denser. Thus the ocean, away from land, has a permanent and substantial potential energy difference between these two layers. Is it viable to harvest this difference?

<comment><USER5> Yes. It's called an OTEC (Ocean thermal energy converter) and it's a very old idea. They are quite workable. In the simplest form, you have a 2 vacuum chambers at the surface, and a pipe to the bottom of the ocean. You vacuum out your pressure vessel down to around 3psi and let some warm surface water in one end, while pumping cold bottom water into a radiator in the other. At 3psi, the surface water flashes to steam in vessel A, drives a turbine into vessel B, and then condenses back into liquid water on the radiator. This brings the system pressure back down to where you started.

In practice, you'd probably use the surface water to warm a working fluid that is a gas at surface temperature and pressure, and then the system can stay at atmospheric pressure.

The benefit of this system is that it also creates an artificial upwelling of nutrients from the bottom of the ocean, which can be used to grow all sorts of stuff. Was a big hippy fad idea back in the 70's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat invention, frustrating article title.

paper link: [https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30412-X](https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351\(19\)30412-X) [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2019.08.009](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2019.08.009)

"We have highlighted the remarkable possibility and potential of generating small amounts of power by radiative cooling at night using low-cost, off-the- shelf, commodity components (less than $30 USD for our initial proof of concept demonstration). In off-grid locations throughout the world, this approach of generating light from darkness highlights an entirely new way of maintaining lighting, entirely passively, at night. The power generated could also be used to power small sensors in remote locations, with their lifetimes not being limited by batteries but the lifetime of the thermoelectric module, which can be an order of magnitude longer"

The invention seems more fitting for certain remote sensor applications rather than say, lighting for an off-grid home that's already served by the various solar-battery-lighting companies that've been around for over a decade.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love this concept.

Sure, it'll never be a significant source of energy [if we plastered literally the entire earth's surface with them at maximum theoretical efficiency, we'd provide 1% of our electricity consumption].

But the sheer concept of "you know what, lets generate energy from THE VOID OF SPACE, the ABSENCE OF HEAT" is deeply entertaining.

<comment><USER8> I had this weird, uncanny moment when I first realized that atmosphere being transparent at some infrared bands means a device exploiting this is literally cooled as if it was exposed to interplanetary space. It looks into the abyss.

<comment><USER9> You can have a fun and cool similar effect if you get a $10 infrared thermometer (I would say one with a laser for helping to point it). Useful for cooking and food safety.

But then...go outside a night and point it first at the ground, then at any clouds, and then right up into darkness. You'll see a big drop in temperature, which is the absence of heat energy in the atmosphere itself...all the way out into space.

I believe that the sensor has some type of angle to what it can detect, so you're getting the average reading across a large cone of air/space at that point. Also, the radiated heat along the depth of the cone would be "stacked", so that you are viewing a 'cumulative' reading from the entire depths of that cone, like an integral going into space.

<comment><USER10> So what happens if you point it to the sun during daytime?

<comment><USER11> Youtube says you get about 350F. The sun's angle is probably too small for a proper reading. (And you get something like -15F for daytime sky.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From what I can tell this is a peltier ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling)) block.

The new(ish) bit is the fact that with a heatsink it can radiate heat from the earth into the atmosphere.

however its 25mw per m2, to put that in comparison, this photdiode here: [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9541](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9541) looks like it can produce 11mw in full sun.

<comment><USER13> The newish bit is that it's bypassing the atmosphere and radiating directly into space. They actually try to keep the atmosphere off of it with insulation, since the atmosphere warms it up to ambient temperature. The night sky is cold enough to freeze water (and has been used for thousands of years to make ice even in countries where the nighttime temperature is above freezing).

There is a Peltier device at the core of it. That's old news. The new news is increasing the temperature differential that drives the device. None of that is new physics. It's just a first stab at trying to make one practical.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This reminds me of using a solar oven in reverse.

Take a heavily insulated box with a window on one side and put a parabolic reflector in it. Point the reflector at the clear night sky, and you can create ice at the focus.

All objects are in a balance between incoming and outgoing heat, so when all the heat going out it sent into a sink - such as the clear night sky - <USER2> object will drop in temperature.

The effect isn't huge, but it's real. The system described in the submitted article here has nothing like the energy generating potential required to become a sensible source of renewable energy, but it's a nice effect, and a nice system.

<comment><USER14> Can someone who knows how this works explain what's going on in terms of the 2nd law of Thermodynamics?

<comment><AUTHOR> Consider a small body at the focal point of a parabolic reflector, and that reflector pointed at empty sky at night.

You effectively have the body radiatively thermally connected to space, and space is cold. So heat radiated from the object goes out to space, and nothing comes back, and thus the object gets colder.

If doesn't work if there are clouds, because clouds are quite warm.

<comment><USER15> > ...because clouds are quite warm.

And are, therefore, radiating heat back into the small body via parabolic reflector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's with the scroll behavior on the site? makes me not want to even be there.

<comment><USER17> I quit reading it because of the scroll behavior.

<comment><USER18> I couldn't read the first sentence because I wanted to zoom in a little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very interested in this, as someone thinking about how to set up an off grid cabin here in Alaska. Last winter we hit a 112°F difference between inside our cabin at 72° and outside at -40°. This seems like a way to harness some of the heat drain while compensating for the accompanying darkness of the winter months that would drive less photovoltaic generation. I don't know much about solar alternatives so would love to know more from anyone who could suggest things...

</comment><comment><USER20> It's seems to be a variation on a simple thermocouple [0]. Underlying the technology is geocooling and geoheating which have been around for quite some time and are fairly mature technologies [1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple)

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

</comment><comment><USER21> It is not like a heat pump at all, it is a thermoelectric material. This has been around for ages. Basically, the thermal gradient across a thermoelectric material causes the flow of charged particles. See some of the links below.

They basically built an efficient heat sink (a material good at cooling itself and anything that it is attached to) that radiates heat from one side of their thermoelectric crystal while keeping the other side at room (or other) temperature. This temperature gradient creates the current that they say can run an LED.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JH- GgLe1xs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JH-GgLe1xs)

</comment><comment><USER22> Yeah, but it's a gimmick. There's no way to make it useful because even at perfect efficiency, it's not possible to generate a useful amount of power given the required surface area.

<comment><USER23> Useful for what? The paper mentions off-grid sensors, which seems like a useful application. Looks like the numbers are 0.5W/m² which means a square meter of these could power e.g. an ESP8266.

It's obviously not going to power your home with those numbers, but it's a little unimaginative to say that it has no useful application.

<comment><USER24> 0.5W/m² is amusing, as my rule of thumb for solar power is 10W/m² (24/7/365, all degradation considered).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Could you bury something like this in the ground all the time since the earth is ~50° at 11'[1]. You could have those plates touching the earth which would conduct heat away from the plate. 50° is pretty cool and would be running 24/7.

Would surrounding earth be able to sustain cooling a disk like this or would the area just warm up right away and you'd lose any gains?

[1] [http://www.duanesworld.net/duanesworld.net.sensors.htm](http://www.duanesworld.net/duanesworld.net.sensors.htm)

</comment><comment><USER26> That's really neat! If you only need a little power, you might even be able to harness the 100 W of heat our bodies continually give off. You could press the warm end against you to bring it up to human body temperature rather than just ambient, which should increase the thermodynamic efficiency by quite a bit. I'm imagining, perhaps, a handheld flashlight that powers itself using the heat from your hand alone.

<comment><USER27> A small flashlight can (and has been) done, see e.g. [https://hackaday.io/project/158857-body-heat-powered- flashli...](https://hackaday.io/project/158857-body-heat-powered-flashlight)

</comment></comment><comment> d--b I don't understand, isn't this harvesting the same energy as a heat pump? (Warm earth, cold air)

<comment><USER28> At it's core, yes, but I think it's less "cold air" and more thermally equilibrating with the radiative temperature of the night sky which is more like 3 degrees Kelvin. So in essence you are lowering the temperature of the cold sink until the ambient temperature is comparatively hot to extract work out of your heat pump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> how it work? and how much if it going to be sale? this is will be good with solar energy in future, when we can creating energy from day to night

</comment><comment><USER30> Reminded me of the phenomenon about starting a fire from moonlight and the conservation of étendue. [https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/](https://what- if.xkcd.com/145/)

<comment><USER31> You could start a fire with moonlight + phosphorus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> We should call it... dark energy</comment>


Entrepreneurs in America: Who creates jobs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21577106-immigrants-do-who-creates-jobs?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/who_creates_jobs_

<comment><USER2> This comes in time with the whole debacle of the H-1B lottery being triggered this year due to too many people applying within 5 days of the quota period, overflowing the 85k yearly quota by almost twice.

I've written about this before, and I like to impress upon you yet again that the majority of H-1Bs are taken by outsourcing / consulting companies that you might not have heard of, like WiPro, InfoSys, Satyam, Tata, Deloitte, Patni, which contribute the least to innovation, in my humble opinion.

Second in line is Microsoft, Google, et al. and the smallest group by far are startups and small businesses, which innovate the most and create the most jobs for the US.

Why not make work visas easier to get for small companies but limit visas per company? That'll make sure companies pick correctly and only people they need. Or maybe make it much more expensive. There is currently an additional (around 2k/appl iirc) cost for having too many H-1Bs, but it's not enough. The visa system heavily favours larger companies, because it was created and lobbied by them.

More details: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5515519>

....

Besides, if you're worried about foreigners driving salaries down, you should quit targeting the H-1B which has a legitimate prevailing wage requirement (and we can argue for days whether the DOL does a good job of deciding what prevailing is, and I'll say it does, but that's a different issue).

The L-1 visa for employees of multinationals has almost as many people entering the country per year, but has NO prevailing wage requirements. Yup, I can bring in a person from another country and pay them federal minimum wage to be an engineer.

...

My opinion on calls to end the H-1B used to be pretty negative but maybe we do need a startup visa. My problem with the startup visa is that it's pushed by VCs and favours that model heavily. Want to bootstrap? Want to raise angel investment for a year or two? Good luck.

In any case, the US has a labour force of 150 million. We're talking about 85k a year.

Could we agree that letting small / medium businesses hire a reasonable number of H-1Bs easily would not demolish the the US economy or significantly? Let the cap be for the large ones.

<comment><USER3> They will drive salaries down by simple supply/demand (but that's not a reason to not to do it -- just like increasing the number of engineering graduates is a good idea regardless of wage effects).

Totally agreed on the cap for large companies and not small ones. There is a lot of precedent for small companies having different rules, and this is one where being small is a huge disadvantage.

In my case, it's because I might hire one H-1B in a year and can't take the risk that I will lose them to a lottery. A company hiring 100 can risk losing a % of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing that a lot of people don't realize is how hard it is to start a company being on H-1b visa. It's almost impossible. I actually agree that "Immigrants overwhelmingly enter the labor market and drive down wages". I had to work for 4 years, taking less-than-market salary before I got lucky and got my Green Card. Next day I started a company and now I create jobs.

We need visas for entrepreneurs, we don't need more H-1b's

<comment><USER5> Before visas for entrepreneurs, how about we dal with the issues the locals have? Like health insurance and laws that favor tax breaks for bootstrappers and incubators. Nothing against foreigners, but more people dont fix anything if laws are not aligned for the benefit and interests of those involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The government should auction the H1B visas to the highest bidder. This would encourage high value immigration. They could set a price floor of $100k to discourage low wage employers. They should also set a minimum salary for H1B holders of $100k.

There is already a visa for investors creating jobs so that is covered.

<comment><USER7> That's actually a brilliant way to handle immigration.

Compute how many slots are available, based on national concerns (mostly, how many people can you easily integrate and naturalize per year). Then, auction off the slots to the highest bidder, and have a short-track naturalization process for the winners.

<comment><USER8> When you auction off the available slots you can be reasonably sure that the auction will benefit the winners (if self-sponsored) or the sponsors (if this is an H1B-style visa). But it may not be in the best interest of the nation as a whole. I note that most every other high-immigration country (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain) has a point system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you only want job creators to come to the country - how about just creating a visa to only allow that. On this visa, you can come to the US to consult, open a barber shop, found a startup, etc but you cannot work for anyone else.

<comment><USER10> A consulting visa would set up perverse incentives between employers and "consultants"; I don't see what the public policy difference is between someone working W-2 and someone working 1099, except that in the 1099 case the employer has an excuse not to pay FICA or offer health insurance.

A problem with startup visas is that nobody knows what a viable startup is, and countries have a strong incentive not to offer long-term residency to people who can't support themselves. So what we have to go on instead are proposals like "we'll allow you in if you're sponsored by a qualified venture capitalist", which creates it own set of perverse incentives.

<comment><USER3> All things being equal, public policy usually prefers employer-employee relationships over 1099. Tax collection is more sure, worker's comp and unemployment get paid (and the individual is covered), etc.

Probably the best way to deal with "startup visa" is to instead have a small- business visa. Small-business already has an understood (to the government) meaning, and there's already a lot of examples of slightly different rules for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Job creation is the wrong metric. One could employ a million people digging ditches and then filling them up again, and ultimately nothing will have been accomplished save for some wealth redistribution.

Wealth creation is the key metric. While harder to measure, it's what actually moves society forward.

<comment><USER12> > One could employ a million people digging ditches and then filling them up > again, and ultimately nothing will have been accomplished save for some > wealth redistribution.

This is kind of obviously wrong. Just substitute "entertainment" for the ditch digging and it should become apparent why. Those people might have made their money in a silly way, but much of it will be spent, and that is important.

<comment><USER13> Wealth is goods and services people want. People want entertainment. People do not want ditches dug, then filled in again. Entertainers are generating wealth; a soft, fuzzy sort of wealth centered on meeting needs very high up the Maslow hierarchy, but wealth nonetheless, a luxury good. The ditch diggers and fillers are not.

<comment><USER12> I think the key thing (arguing the nuance re: wealth is hugely boring and unimportant) is that codex was arguing about "what actually moves society forward." His hypothetical ditch-diggers, unless they BURN the money they earn, will end up moving things forward when they spend their money.

(unless we're talking about a hypothetical society consisting entirely of hypothetical ditch diggers. again, boring)

<comment><USER13> No, that's looking at the wrong place. Yes, the ditch diggers may make money and that may go on to generate wealth, but at the point where we're _paying_ the ditch diggers, we're burning wealth. We could either have gotten something for that money, or nothing, and we chose nothing. There's opportunity cost there. Quite significant, in fact.

A lot of people make this mistake, including the government and even it seems to me many economists, always looking to the _next_ transaction and failing to think about _this_ one. But _this_ one is the one that counts right now. The mere fact that the dollar wasn't "destroyed" doesn't mean that it did anything _good_ , and it certainly could have.

<comment><USER12> There's a discussion to be had about the "velocity of money" but this isn't really the place for it. The point is that if an economy is hydrolocked and nobody is spending, "throwing away" money can benefit everyone if it unlocks things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always find "who creates jobs" comments silly. Consumer demand is what creates jobs.

<comment><USER14> maybe...maybe not, depending on who you ask and how you look at it.

example: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Regardless of truth of the article, it looks like immigration reform is going to continue to be delayed. The whole "$100,000 in welfare then blow people up" message is going to take a lot of positive to overcome. It is possible to lobby past the event, but there doesn't seem to be a group willing to do that.

<comment><USER16> The Economist article cited two groups that are lobbying to fix this- Innovate for America and FWD.us.

<comment><USER15> They don't seem to have the muscle to overcome the crisis. Neither has done the advertising to locals to push through a bill. They are not putting the money into the local markets to really count as a push.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a current H1B holder. I would quit my current job and start a company if my visa status allowed me.

I've been working for over 4 years. As things stand, I have to wait for another ~5 years before I get my green card and start adding jobs to the economy. And that's assuming the US government does not delay it by making me jump through various hoops like they did with my H1B application.

<comment><USER9> Apparently there were some recent changed to the H1B which actually allow people on this visa to start their own companies. you should look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sorry, all people living in the US are immigrants.

<comment><USER19> Then all people living on Earth are immigrants from East Africa.

<comment><USER20> I think you need to look up the definition of "immigrant." You clearly do not understand what it means.

<comment><USER19> > I think you need to look up the definition of "immigrant." You clearly do > not understand what it means.

Read the comment I replied to, whiz.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What percentage of immigrants start innovative businesses? I think it's negligible. Immigrants overwhelmingly enter the labor market and drive down wages.

[http://cis.org/immigration-and-the-american-worker-review- ac...](http://cis.org/immigration-and-the-american-worker-review-academic- literature)

<comment><USER22> The percentage of immigrants who start businesses is higher than the percentage of americans who start businesses.

Here is a data point: 40 Percent of Fortune 500 Companies Founded by Immigrants or Their Children: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2011/06/19/40-per...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2011/06/19/40-percent- of-fortune-500-companies-founded-by-immigrants-or-their-children/) And because immigrants represent a minority of the people in america (12.6% as of 2007 [1]; and when adding their children this is likely still less than 40%), we can deduct they create more businesses per capita than americans.

[1] [http://books.google.com/books?id=aaimTNHDzZYC&pg=PA32...](http://books.google.com/books?id=aaimTNHDzZYC&pg=PA32&dq&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER21> Business creation is not a particularly useful metric. Note that I qualified with "innovative." That there are more restaurants and more people have their lawn professionally landscaped rather than cutting it themselves doesn't really create an argument for immigration.

The Fortune 500 stat smells pretty slippery and cherry picked. I mean, one co- founder had one parent born overseas and the company is counted as immigrant founded? This is meaningful? The vast majority of major companies were probably also founded by people who grew up in major urban centers. Immigrants are disproportionately likely to live in major cities. What happens when you control for that? I cast aspersions.

The link I provided is actually fairly rigorous in describing the effect of immigration as it is currently practiced in the USA: It drives down the wages of low earners and increases profits to the economic elite. It's probably a wash for the bulk of the middle class when measured in purely financial terms, but that ignores various psychic and ecological impacts. Did you know that current immigration rates projected out result in a USA population of over 600 million by the end of the century? Is it not obviously insane and ecologically criminal to allow that level of over population?

<comment><USER22> _"Business creation is not a particularly useful metric"_

Business creation is wealth creation. It is job creation. It is everything to the american economy.

 _"I mean, one co-founder had one parent born overseas and the company is counted as immigrant founded"_

No it is not counted as immigrant-founded. The point of this statistic is to show that immigration has a positive effect on business creation. In other words, had the parent never immigrated, the child would not have founded a business (created wealth) in the USA.

I think the same is true in reverse: americans who emigrate are probably creating more businesses in countries they emigrate to, than citizens of these countries. Immigrants are risk-takers who want to take control of their working lives.

<comment><USER21> > Business creation is wealth creation. It is job creation. It is everything > to the american economy.

Most new businesses are small businesses. The jobs associated with small business are significantly worse than those associated with larger business. You are oversimplifying this.

<comment><USER22> Are you saying the average immigrant founder creates small businesses of inferior quality than the average business?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook refuses to delete fake Pelosi video spread by Trump supporters - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/24/facebook-leaves-fake-nancy-pelosi-video-on-site <comment><USER2> I really don't think it's up to these companies to decide what and what not to keep on their platforms. I can understand that they're a private company and therefore they can make their own decisions about what they want, but I think something that people don't realize is the sheer amount of power these social media websites have over society and culture. Especially when you see how many social media companies Facebook actually owns (facebook, instagram, and whatsapp afaik)

These companies could, in an instant, remove someone from public view. Alex Jones for an example. It's absolutely HORRIBLE that he made the comments that he did about the Sandy Hook shootings, but just because the dude is an absolute nut job doesn't mean he should have the right to talk about what he wants to the public to be taken away. It seems pretty contradictory that companies like Facebook preach that their entire platform is to connect people and communicate with each other, but if you don't communicate like they want you do, they'll hide behind their terms of service and ban you for whatever reason.

I know the userbase of facebook has been declining, but they still have a massive number of people who get their news from their algorithms. They could just start pushing more "pro-russia" propaganda news to their users and conveniently blame it on "the algorithm" (a blatant excuse to absolve responsibility) or "we're a private company, we can push whatever we want to our users".

With a company as large and as widespread as Facebook, which also quite obviously has ulterior motives, they can't be trusted with regulating who says what on their massive platform.

Maybe if we broke Facebook up into pieces instead of having this monolithic mega-corporation whose sole goal is to harvest all your data whether you're a user or not, we wouldn't be talking about this in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> From a Gizmodo article:

"... the video will appear alongside a related article from a third-party fact-checking website (which, ostensibly, will point out that the video is indeed altered—though no such context appears directly on the video page itself.)"

[https://gizmodo.com/facebook-scrambles-for-a-middle- ground-o...](https://gizmodo.com/facebook-scrambles-for-a-middle-ground-on- misleading-vi-1835011397)

</comment><comment><USER4> From what I've read, the claim that it is "altered" is due to it being a compilation video. Which I think is disingenuous to say it is fake."

But any Trump news is very hard to parse regardless.

<comment><USER5> Its in the article: Its been digitally altered to give the impression she is slurring her words</comment></comment>


Thnks Fr Th Mmrs: The Rise Of Microblogging, The Death Of Posterity - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/22/thnks-fr-th-mmrs/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if he realizes posterity means our descendants. That is probably a bolder claim than he means to make.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I didn't know the proper definition until now, either. I doubt Paul realizes it.</comment></comment>