Meal frequency and timing in health and disease - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/ <comment><USER2> I've kind of personally adopted a IF regime automatically for the past couple of years. Incidentally I kind of think it started during a bout of depression where I didn't eat enough at all and lost a lot of weight and just looked horrible.

Since then I've gotten better at eating, but for the most part I still don't eat until the afternoon or even dinner, and for the most part don't eat anything afterwards(sometimes a late night snack).

This has had my friends react and tell me I'm crazy and express their disbelief at how it's possible to go to work or some such and not eat anything all day.

I literally have no problems wrt being tired and experience 0 reductions in cognitive ability. I haven't had to take a nap in the afternoon for several years and maintained the same-ish weight while retaining a good deal of muscle mass from my weight training days without having to do much for it.

For me, it just works out better. it's just really nice not having to be constantly focused on getting something to eat every few hours and since I'm not stuffing my face with calories all day I've been able to eat basically whatever I want without gaining any weight.

I've no plan to stop doing it this way since it's just become the natural way to do things for me. The only issue I experience is the occasional loud stomach rumbles for which my coworkers give me odd looks sometimes.

<comment><USER3> I have the same thing. Preople look at me like i'm crazy and tell me that I should be careful not to hurt myself. I make a half hearted effort yo poiny them in the direction of some studies like the above, but mostly people arent smart/knowledgable enough to understand.

<comment><USER4> It's amazing how doing something different is automatically viewed as bad for you. I'm guessing you don't look unhealthy? Are the people who say you're crazy healthy?

<comment><USER5> In general people seem to think they'd die if they went without food for a week.

(Of course such a period is much more precarious for some people, but a generally healthy person would barely notice except for being hungry at first)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My personal anecdote here. I recently started eating dinner only and shooting for a 16 hour fast daily with only coffee, tea or water during the day.

I haven't noticed a real drop in energy, however I have noticed significant brain fog, lightheadedness and irritability in the afternoon. I also have significant feelings of hunger all day, to the point where it's distracting.

I realized I needed to be adding some kind of salt to my intake during the day to prevent the lightheadedness. The only zero calorie solution is basically adding basic electrolyte to my water, which means I end up drinking a weak salt brine most of the day which is not very pleasant.

I'm not sure if this is sustainable because it takes up so much of my mental energy. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of good resource for doing this kind of diet, so I'm excited to see what comes out in the next few years. Perhaps it's just a transition period and it will work out.

<comment><USER7> You do a 16 hour fast, but only eat dinner? When are you eating your other food/meal? I do a similar length fast most weekdays, I just don't like eating soon after waking up so I only have water/black coffee until lunch. But I have a BIG lunch (1200-1600+ cal) and then something else around 7-8 or occasionally skip dinner. I think it's much easier to deal with not having eaten for awhile during the evening, you're usually doing something low-energy by then and if you start getting really hungry you can just go to sleep.

<comment><USER6> 16 hours is the minimum.

No other meal, but I may snack later in the evening depending on what was for dinner.

Anywhere from 12-2AM until 5-7PM is my fast period.

Yesterday for example, I didn't eat after 1 am but dinner was around 7PM so the fast was about 18 hours that day.

Today I didn't eat after 1230 last night but dinner was at 5, so 16 1/2 hours.

I'm the opposite actually, I geared my eating to be in the evening as I stay up late. I know I can distract myself with work or kids etc... during the day, but night is where I would naturally eat/graze anyway, so might as well just move my whole eating period to then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find fasting very easy on weekends, very difficult during the week, because the 9-5 routine implicitely stipulates when you should eat. Solving the situation where people need to spend 70% of their waking hours in a job would have huge flow-on effects allowing people to exercise regularly, cook at home more, and eat/live on their own body's schedule.

<comment><USER9> I just skip breafast. Lunch around midday, dinner as soon as I got (I not longer work full-time) home around 7pm. Fits inside the 8hr window and I honestly found skipping breakfast quite easy. I'd have a couple black coffees throughout the morning, and that's it.

<comment><USER10> Article recommends a 16 hour window and skipping lunch as well a few times a week.

<comment><USER11> I think they meant that a lunch at 12:00 and a dinner before 19:00 fit together in an 8h window, which gives you 16h fasting window.

<comment><USER10> "Examples of such prescriptions include fasting or caloric restriction (e.g., 500 calories) on alternate days or 2 d each week, or forgoing breakfast and lunch several days each week"

They do however state that there is no single prescription yet and that various timings should be studied further to find an optimum method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did a one meal a day plan. Lasted maybe 6 months. Reason I stopped was I started working nights and the combo of 4 hours of sleep and no food just made me a person you didn't want to be around. Had to drop something so I dropped the diet.

While I was on it, however, it was great. Really made me evaluate why I eat food and helped me stop eating to satisfy non hunger related needs.

Interview for a day job this week, if I get it I think I will switch back to this diet.

<comment><USER13> > _I did a one meal a day plan. Lasted maybe 6 months. Reason I stopped was I > started working nights and the combo of 4 hours of sleep and no food just > made me a person you didn 't want to be around._

So why didn't you just shift the meal time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> After one month of keto diet (less than 20g of carbs and less than 15g of sugar, 75-80% fat), I started IF very easily for 18-20h. I break mostly for social reasons as I'm never very hungry.

With the keto diet you loose the cravings, and you are not very hungry, I think it should be achieved before starting IF.

I'm also in a deficit and I keep lifting and rowing. Never felt better in my life, I am motivated to the journey for a 10% bodyfat body.

I recommend eatthismuch.com to help with meal planning.

Just give it a try, the first week is hard and after it's a new life. I feel always good with a very clear mind (I dropped alcohol as well)

<comment><USER15> Any recommendation for filling, low-carb foods?

I like fried eggs personally. Anything similar?

<comment><USER16> Avocado, cheese, salad, nuts

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> " Our agrarian ancestors adopted a three meals per day eating pattern, presumably because it provided both social and practical benefits for the daily work and school schedules."

Isn't it surprising that school is considered an important factor weighting on the evolution of early farmers?

<comment><USER18> Farming allowed for specialization. So school, or learning a trade, or how to make something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "10 hour window" or "16 hour window"?

\----

related ( 1 day ago )

"Eating in 10-hour window can override disease-causing genetic defects, nurture health" [https://www.salk.edu/news-release/eating-in-10-hour- window-c...](https://www.salk.edu/news-release/eating-in-10-hour-window-can- override-disease-causing-genetic-defects-nurture-health/)

HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889591](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889591)

<comment><USER20> 8 hour window, 16 hour fast.

<comment><USER21> Late dinner & breakfast!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Very useful data as to food consumption patterns. Nowadays we ruin our body with unnatural eating cycles.

Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good for health. From the evolutionary perspective--that invested in a human body 200K years--the way we eat today is broken. And our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Not to mention like adapting to changes in a food consumption we see in the last 50 years. A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. Viceversa--it was build to eat less. It needs to store energy and to use stored energy and only after that to store again. That's a natural cycle and functions that our body needs to execute. Nowadays we just store energy 24/7:

"Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage."

Here is also an interesting patterns of daily and weekly food consumption from this research including the common eating pattern of food consumption upon which the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and associated chronic diseases has emerged. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/fig03/)

<comment><USER22> > our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that > requires many thousands of years.

Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. The point is that evolution of large, complex polygenic adaptations may be slow but adaptive phenotypic change can occur very rapidly and it has likely accelerated in humans over the last 10k or so years.

> A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a > lot.

We can't go back and ask detailed dieting questions of hunter-gatherer humans 200k years ago, but I'd guess the basic mechanisms of eating were similar to us: they ate when they were hungry and when food was available. For some groups, it seems likely that could often be several times per day.

What we do know about pre-agricultural humans is that there is no such thing as a 'typical' diet, and what was eaten and when could vary significantly by geography. Humans have thrived in every region and ecosystem on earth, and our body is highly adaptable and not designed to subsist on a single, perfect diet or eating cycle.

Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. It could very well be that the 'what' and 'when' of our modern eating is less of an issue compared to the high caloric intake and sedentary lifestyle.

<comment><USER13> > _our body can 't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that > requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the > 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and > cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In > some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations._

200-300 is 6000 years (assuming 30 years per generation), so that's already consistent with the parent's "many thousands of years".

Besides that, we've changed our nutrition and its ingredients more in the last 50 years that we had in the last 20000 years. Adaptation takes much more than that (if it's not even harder to adapt to an ever changing list of factory- produced BS substances that weren't ever co-evolved along with humans, but on some food chemist's and big food corporation's whim).

> _Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when > they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food._

Not really. Hunter gatherers are said to have been able to gather food for several days in a few hours in a single day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I started eating one meal a day a few weeks ago. At first I had huge dinners but they've tapered off a bit and are now substantial but not crazy, and usually a small snack an hour or so later depending on how I feel. Combined with morning body weight training / running (which feels awesome when fasted) I'm really enjoying it. The few days when I've eaten during the day have left me feeling heavy and bloated and the hunger during the day has gone. It's very doable.

<comment><USER16> Almost any lifestyle or diet change can be held for a few weeks. Most studies that show participants losing weight after a diet change don't hold up over longer periods (subjects are back to their old weight after a year).

<comment><USER23> I've been paying attention to my diet and exercise routine for a few years now and am quite happy with where I am, so I'm really not sure how relevant your comment is. I have no intention of losing weight. I'm more interested in how enjoyable this routine is, how it helps me keep an eye on my macros and how they impact training, and how much I enjoy food too.

So far I'm quite happy with it. I'm more interested in creating varied and interesting dinners, I'm still performing well with the workouts and I feel I have more time during the day as I'm not preparing and eating food so often.

Just my 2c.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find fasting for a week easier than for 12-16 hours.. eating makes me hungrier; whereas fasting for a few days, the extreme hunger goes away after 3-4 days.

Ironically, a friend of mine whom runs a restaurant and works long hours eats like the suggested diet unintentionally: one normal-sized meal a day in the evening because of working nonstop since 5 am.

The downside of fasting is that it stimulates the SNS and increases stress and cortisol... which may well cancel out any "good" effects.

<comment><USER25> who, not whom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Having a hard time reading and understanding these type of academic study papers.

Sincere request: Can someone who understands do a TL;DR please?

( Usually when I make this request I get downvoted, but happy to take the risk for this one as I am really curious)

<comment><USER27> It's not exactly a study, more of a review of other papers. The authors state that the timing of the food we eat isn't really that great for us. The provide some evidence based meal timings, and discuss ways that they could implement these changes and the pressures against those implementations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does the 16hr window between eating include sleeping time as well?

<comment><USER26> Almost always, yes. If you are referring to intermittent fasting, then the 8 hour eating window starts at your 1st meal of the day. So if you wake up and eat breakfast, then 8 hours from that is when you stop, and then sleep. If, on the other hand, you have your 1st meal as dinner in the evening, then also, you have slept for 8 hours and spent another 8 hours - morning through afternoon fasting.

So either way, 8 hours of sleep covers half the fasting. Which is why it's somewhat intimidating cos there's a chance you wake up feeling hungry and can't fall asleep...

I do intermittent fasting on week days, but like someone else has mentioned it's kind of difficult to keep up with considering the 9 to 5 work schedule dictates our eating routines (for most people). I did notice an improvement in my digestion and in sleep quality. On days that I do work out, I sometimes wake up and have trouble falling asleep as I feel hungry... that's always annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can't eat in the morning, I'm not hungry. When I get home from work, I can't eat, same reason.

When I'm hungry, I eat.

</comment><comment><USER30> tldr; A fast window of just 16h seems to be enough to gain benefits seen in IF, so perhaps we need to rethink the modern lifestyle

<comment><USER10> That's exactly what the article talks about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> probabilistic structure for fasting… @nntaleb [http://bit.ly/2ivHC5d](http://bit.ly/2ivHC5d)</comment>


Tips for Job Searching over the Holidays - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashiraprossack1/2019/11/26/tips-job-searching-holidays/ <comment><USER2> It's tough. Last year, after one of my contracts ended, I was looking for work. It took about a week before Thanksgiving to almost Christmas day to find work for the following January.

Lots of hiring managers were on vacation and just the amount of jobs available was a fraction of their normal levels.</comment>


Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Dorsey, Marianne Williamson and the Wellness Aristocracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a28480608/spiritual-snobs-gwyneth-paltrow-marianne-williamson-jack-dorsey/ <comment><USER2> It's quite interesting that Jack Dorsey simultaneously urges people to disconnect and find themselves, and also operates a platform designed to keep people plugged in and lost. It reminds me of Huxley's systems of control.

<comment><USER3> You could probably make the same criticism of us and HN.

<comment><USER4> True but we're not trying to profit off people's loneliness.

<comment><USER5> Only their desire for VC money, even if that is an obvious side effect, so it's cool. ;)

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say that's where the problems with HN are. Most intellectual curiosity here is outside the pull of VC. From my perspective the issue has more to do with addiction to content and lack of real-world connection.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How GoDaddy Acquired and Dismantled a Successful Startup - steve-benjamins http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/blog/what-happened-to-virb-after-godaddy-acquired-it

<comment><AUTHOR> Not that this isn't abhorrent behavior, and not that GoDaddy isn't a terrible company anyway, but this isn't exactly uncommon. It happens every day, with the prototypical example of this sort of thing is General Motors:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

</comment><comment><USER2> Sure, GoDaddy is evil, but how is this different than any startup that Google/Facebook/Twitter etc. acquires and kills?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not directly related but one of the happiest days of my life was the day I transferred my last domain away from GoDaddy.

<comment><USER4> Who did you transfer out to? When SOPA was the rage, I looked into transferring my domains out from Godaddy, but was unable to find a better domain registrar.

<comment><USER5> Really? Nearly everyone I've dealt with has been better. Name.com is my go to right now.

<comment><USER6> Name.com's nameservers had a huge outage that lasted about an hour a few months back now.

That's not the bad part.

The nameservers didn't just go down, they were misconfigured and were serving the incorrect records for all of our ~140 domains. They were resolving to some totally unrelated address we'd never seen before. And not with a 0 TTL.

Before emailing to ask about an issue they already knew about, I looked for their service status dashboard... They don't have one. I checked their Twitter and other social media... No mention of the issue.

To date they haven't released _any_ information on what happened that I'm aware of. When I contacted them directly and asked them what had happened and asked if there was to be a post-mortem released, their response was simply that it was a "configuration error" and they couldn't give me any details about what had happened or what they're doing to mitigate it, but I had their word that it would never happen again.

As a registrar they've been decent (lots of issues trying to get some registrant info updated on our .CA domains...).

I would absolutely recommend someone more transparent for nameserver hosting however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did you|anyone expect anything else from GoDaddy?

I do occasional WEB consulting and I warn clients that I have to charge extra if they are hosting any of their resources at Godaddy.

Every time i need to interact with their resources to do anything productive - it is a minefield of upsells at every step and wasted time trying to find simple things.

<comment><USER8> I had the opportunity to interact with some of the new execs at GoDaddy and the culture was definitely shifting. But Virb's numbers just couldn't compare to GoDaddy's own site builder. Virb was a drop in the bucket compared to the user base they already had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Surely this should be _why_ GoDaddy acquired and killed....

The mechanics are simple, and obvious. GoDaddy buys an upstart with money, kills it be starving it of resources.

Whats more interesting is why it would do such a thing. To acquire a company and kill it takes a lot of time and effort. It must have been either a great threat, or have assets worth spending money on.

This isn't an uncommon practice. However its less common in the world of startups, mainly because no one runs at a profit, they can't afford to spend valuable run time capital killing a competitor.

Autodesk and Avid are the masters of the buy and kill.

<comment> steve-benjamins Did you read the article?

GoDaddy never set out to acquire Virb. It just happened to. This is more of a story about the messiness of acquisitions than any kind of dark, malicious intentions by GoDaddy.

<comment><USER9> Yes,

but sorry, no one spunks out millions of dollars to get a happy accident. There are months of wranglings, negotiations, covenants drawn up, targets created.

Granted Virb might have been collateral, but thats the point of my question. Why, was it lack of interest, did it cost to much to develop?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After my favourite invoicing solution roninapp.com got bought out by GoDaddy, I was forced to use their inferior Bookkeeping product!!! Never again!!!

<comment><USER8> What is infuriating is that Virb still lives under the MediaTemple umbrella. I'm sure MediaTemple loves having a good as dead product in their product lineup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had no idea Media Temple was now owned by GoDaddy. Makes me glad I never used them.

Random sidenote: wasn't Virb originally a side project from PureVolume?

<comment><USER8> Yup! I used to work for PureVolume, then Virb, and then Media Temple via acquisitions. Crazy world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, any idea of how much Virb was sold for to Media Temple?

<comment> steve-benjamins I don't think that's publicly known. This was an article written around the time of the acquisition but it doesn't state any prices: [http://www.businessinsider.com/virbcom-the-myspace-killer- th...](http://www.businessinsider.com/virbcom-the-myspace-killer-that-wasnt- has-a-new-plan-2010-7)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's Paul Graham been up to? - <AUTHOR> It's been a while since I've seen any posts or new PG essays--just wondering if we can expect anything soon? :) <comment><USER2> He's quite active on Twitter:

[http://twitter.com/paulg](http://twitter.com/paulg)

Other than that he's probably just enjoying spending quality time with his young family after a relentlessly busy few years.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://twitter.com/paulg](https://twitter.com/paulg)

</comment><comment><USER4> He's enjoying time with his kids (source: Twitter). My fav tweet - "If there is anything in the world better than being spontaneously hugged by a 2 year old, I haven't found it in 49 years."

<comment><USER5> Woah, he has a 2 year old? Amazing, that while I was pretty actively following his (and jl's) comments 2 years back, I saw absolutely no mention of a baby (or even so much as a hint of it). I guess he's just crazy good at keep his professional and personal life separate.

<comment><USER6> He has a four-year-old (as well?): [http://old.ycombinator.com/ycca.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/ycca.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> During YCHacks he and Jessica came by the YC office with little kids. I was too busy finishing up our app to pay attention, but the two times I looked up, he was carrying a little one around the office on his shoulders.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's actually been 137 days since he made his last comment on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg)

However, he is very active on Twitter

</comment><comment><USER9> By the way, I noticed that a lot of popular geeks who we (or me personally) look up have started young families. Probably just confirmation bias. But it's nice to see.

</comment><comment><USER10> He's designing an even better Lisp dialect in which lambda is spelled f (down a full 50% from fn!) and let bindings do not require any parentheses at all:

        (let a 1 b 2 c 3 (+ a b c)) -> 6.

Note how there can only be one form, otherwise it is ambiguous. But when you have two or more forms in a construct ("implicit progn"), all but the last are evaluated purely for their side effects (pun intended): it is imperative programming, which this new form of let nicely banishes.

<comment><USER11> > Note how there can only be one form, otherwise it is ambiguous

Actually, that's not true. You can disambiguate multiple forms by noting that variables are atoms while forms are lists.

<comment><USER10> Here is a problem: symbol macros. Symbol macro foo could expand to a form like (bar xyzzy) let cannot know whether foo is intended as a form (via expansion of to (bar xyzzy)) or whether it's intended as a new lexical variable shadowing the symbol macro foo. It doesn't matter whether let is a special form or macro: something at some point has to walk the code of let and make this decision, whether that is the expander for a let macro, or the code walker that traverses special forms in search of macros.

<comment><USER11> If you want foo to be interpreted as a form just wrap it in a progn.

(Personally, I think it's very bad practice to use a symbol macro that expands to anything other than a place, and it's _certainly_ bad practice to define a symbol macro that expands to a form with side-effects. So this would never happen in my code. YMMV of course.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not that it doesn't matter, it's that I just don't care.</comment>


Theorists with a Swamp, not a Theory - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10460 <comment><USER2> Anyone have insight into how theoretical quantum field theory is developing outside of string theory? Not just high energy physics but also condensed matter physics. I'd imagine understanding quantum field theory more deeply leads to more efficient modelling and computation, but that sort of incremental advancement doesn't get much public exposure.

<comment><USER3> The breadth of your question makes it difficult for any one person to give a representative answer. I'll give a few examples, biased by my limited background.

1\. Amplitudology: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-discover- geometry-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-discover-geometry- underlying-particle-physics-20130917)

2\. Conformal bootstrap: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/using-the-bootstrap- physicist...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/using-the-bootstrap-physicists- uncover-geometry-of-theory-space-20170223)

3\. Tensor networks: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.2164](https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.2164)

<comment><USER4> I'd say all three of these are topics related to string theory and worked on by string theorists. I don't think of them as part of string theory exactly, but it's roughly the same set of people doing the research. What does that mean? The two possibilities that occur to me are a) that the age when one could make a career purely as a string theory specialist is ending, and b) that knowing string theory is a competitive advantage for anyone doing formal theory.

<comment><USER3> I would say that all three of those topics are being worked on by researchers who have also worked on string theory (among many other people), but string theory is not directly relevant to most of the work in those topics. Especially tensor networks, which is largely driven by condensed matter physics and thus far has limited relation to string theory. Eg: most of the research at the interface between tensor networks / high-energy physics is restricted to a particular tensor network known as MERA, and its association with holographic spacetime [1].

If I might make a sociological observation, people who work on "string theory" have had to do the hard work of understanding quantum field theory in its many contortions, and the "good researchers" among them often have a thorough understanding of a good chunk of ideas in fundamental physics and related math. This also puts them in a position to capitalize on any related research avenues which they consider promising, even if those topics have little to do with string theory as such. So, IMHO (b) definitely carries weight, and I do not have a complete enough picture to comment on (a).

[1] PS: I have worked on this topic. Also, FWIW, I wouldn't claim to have a string theory background, but I did learn a little string theory in grad school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I enjoy Peter Woit's writing and especially loved his book "Not Even Wrong." I also enjoy shitting on string theory from the comfort of my armchair. Maybe this is "productive," in the sense that getting people to stop investing in string theory will get them to work on investing in something else, but again from my armchair, I just don't see what _positive_ work is happening. It feels like there are not enough holes in the standard model that need plugging and no big theory trying to supplant it or handle gravity gaining ground.

<comment><USER6> His book contains _several_ factual inaccuracies that he either has failed to correct or refuses too (as of last year). It makes me think a lot less of him and his position on string theory. It makes me wonder what else has he misrepresented in his criticisms.

Keep in mind science is not free of "agendas"; people in competing areas love to bash the competition because they're competing for funding, aka their livelyhood.

<comment><USER5> Can you point me to something about these inaccuracies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bored medieval philosophers speculated on how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Bored modern philosophers peculate on string theory. Neither put forth experimentally testable hypotheses, so one is about as scientific as the other.

<comment><USER8> Well, if angels are physical in the slightest, modern philosophers have computed an upper bound of how many of them could dance on the head of a pin, before they collapse into a black hole</comment></comment>


Introducing ScreenShield – iOS Screenshot-Prevention for Confide, and Beyond - <AUTHOR> https://blog.getconfide.com/introducing-screenshield-ios-screenshot-prevention-for-confide-and-beyond-692bbae2c31d <comment><USER2> On another note, I think I should also mention that using Confide instead of say Snapchat implies you have a weaker trust in whoever you are sharing your secrets with. If you cannot even tell your recipient not to take a screenshot and expect them to keep the promise, how can you trust them not to leak whatever you are telling them through old-fashioned memorization-and- paraphrase?

</comment><comment><USER2> Here's an explanation from Daring Fireball about how this is done: apparently through the DRM that's built into the system! [https://daringfireball.net/2018/01/screenshield](https://daringfireball.net/2018/01/screenshield)

I wouldn't usually trust DF for technical content so I'd love it if we can have a technical writeup.</comment>


How To Build A Startup: The Lean LaunchPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupplays.com/plays/how-to-build-a-startup-the-lean-launchpad

<comment><USER4> The site has a very complicated signup process. I tried signing up through Twitter (even though they ask for many privileges), but then they still wanted me to create an account with an email and password. After that, I thought I would be in,but there was another logon form, so I gave up.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I created a login on accel.io, then came back to the site - <USER2> tweeted the course, still nothing.

How does one join the course?

<comment><USER6> We need a step by step guide to sign in first. Login with Accel.io -> Sign Up -> Click on Twitter Button -> Authorize the app -> THEN YOU MUST GO HERE [http://handbook.accel.io/plays/how-to-build-a-startup-the- le...](http://handbook.accel.io/plays/how-to-build-a-startup-the-lean- launchpad) coz if return to <http://www.startupplays.com/> it logs out. Click on Preview button (eye icon) -> Click on Add To Cart -> Its done. ??? Frustrating

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am fine with the 'pay with tweet' growth strategy, but seriously, you have to sign-up as well? You are creating nothing but frustration and I do not see how that is helping you. I think it should be one or the other - <USER3> not both.

</comment><comment><USER8> Steve Blank is one of the best, and one of those people who make me feel ashamed I don't write. Have enjoyed his writings for many years since being exposed to him on HN.

Steve aside, I clicked through the StartupPlays.com site and really amazed at the uptick in the commercialization of starting up. Beginning to feel like Home Shopping Network for the office. From Founders-only credit cards to clif- notes for billion dollar businesses, success is surely imminent.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd rather pay with a dollar instead of a tweet.

</comment><comment><USER10> The business model canvas graphic on the right looked very familiar so I would recommend this book for further reading: [http://www.amazon.com/Business- Model-Generation-Visionaries-...](http://www.amazon.com/Business-Model- Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417)

</comment><comment><USER11> Can't join the program since twitter is unavailable here in China + VPNs don't load the site properly.

I'm going to have to download all the useful stuff the internet has to offer and bring it back in a huge 1TB disk. Internet is a joke here.

</comment><comment><USER12> Annoying signup process is annoying...

Can anybody post it as a pdf or something?

<comment><USER13> It's not a document. It's almost like a checklist for startups, with 'tips' and other stuff.

I'm sure it could be transformed into a short book, but they seem to want some interactivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Always loved Steve Blanks stuff but he can be a little tough to digest, love that this guide's less university course and is simple, to the point and easy to follow for simpletons like myself :)

</comment><comment><USER15> I took the liberty of reformatting this into a PDF: <https://www.box.com/s/r05a7tluz8alpmlmh16c>

</comment><comment><USER16> I've gone through one of Steve Blank's free programs. It was definitely worth while, so paying with a tweet and having to sign up is more than worth it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've previously purchased the Startup Owner's Manual. This is actually a great complimentary resource

</comment><comment><USER18> Grabbed this as soon as I saw it go up - going to go through it with my co- founder asap!

</comment><comment><USER19> I love Steve Blank's blog but it's so long. Great to have a step-by-step approach

</comment><comment><USER20> Steve Blank is epic. This is a great free guide for building the business</comment>


Twitter is always hiring - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jobs/positions <comment><USER2> Keep forgetting - is that conference groper guy still working there? That's always been one issue which has kept me away from the idea of working for Twitter.</comment>


Facebook's ad platform now guesses at your race based on your behavior - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/facebooks-ad-platform-now-guesses-at-your-race-based-on-your-behavior/ <comment><USER2> Absolutely nothing new; the marketing-analytics industry has been conducting this sort of profiling in stealth, and have been able to assign probable race, education, and SES tags to individual STB IDs and accounts, for over a decade.</comment>


Corporate Innovation: Pushing and Pulling Startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@peignoir/push-and-pull-a-new-way-to-build-your-corporate-innovation-strategy-9921cede65b3#.zg3f1jrdv <comment><USER2> A really good read- we don't spend enough time talking about the strategy for startups as it relates to larger companies. We talk about disrupt, disrupt, disrupt, but it doesn't always have to be that way. When aligned properly a larger company can pull a startup upwards.</comment>


Thoreau Was Actually Funny - <AUTHOR> http://lithub.com/thoreau-was-actually-funny-as-hell/ <comment><USER2> I discovered Thoreau in 9th grade and responded much as the author describes. I loved the clarity, the independence, the disdain for the crowd, the longing for nature, and the commitment to a moral, self-examined life. I think his message only continues to grow in importance.

And yet I don't think the author has really proved his point. Having a sense of humor doesn't make Thoreau any less painfully earnest. Martin Luther liked bawdy jokes too, and that in no way lessened his seriousness. If anything, joking about peeing on the bushes seems to confirm Thoreau's boorishness. I still feel a kind of adolescent immaturity in him: a lack of self-doubt, and a preponderance of self-importance.

It is not easy to find a good balance of gravity and levity. Those concepts are too clumsy, I think, because you need both---in the right measures, at the right times, and towards the right things. And I think in general the world could use more gravity towards the things Thoreau loved. And on the other hand the world could also use more self-doubt, more understanding toward your neighbor's weakness, more charity, but that is hard to find in Thoreau.

This article is just the introduction to a book, so perhaps later the author better proves his point, although it sounds like a hard thing to do, because the argument looks like a non sequitor. Did Jesus' jokes suggest he didn't mean it?

. . .

By the way, I do like the author's approach in looking for humor where we have been taught not to expect it. That is a great way to ready Moby Dick, I think: things like sharing a bed with a savage, but also the long digressions about rigging or scrimshaw or whatever. It helps to feel some indulgence toward the author, and trust that he is leading us on a detour to show us something "cool", but also something personal, like a private joke.

A good friend once suggested that the Book of Jonah is an early specimen of Jewish humor, and I think he was on to something. What if its genre is _joke_? (It could still be no less divine Scripture for that.) That last bit sure sounds to me like a punchline: "And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left; and also much cattle?"

</comment><comment><USER3> Thoreau is obviously a tad extreme, particularly in _Walden_ , but his messages are timeless. These quotes profoundly impacted my life:

> I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly > impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to > use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver > fetters.

and

> "I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances > confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life > which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common > hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, > universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around > and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his > favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher > order of beings. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be > lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Among other influences, these quotes helped me to break free of my "golden fetters." I quit my high-paying and "prestigious" career, which was sucking my soul, and escaped the big city in favor of a simpler lifestyle. Haven't looked back once.

</comment><comment><USER4> I found Thoreau through 'Where I lived, what I lived for'. I was bitterly disappointed: his attitude was that of a puerile individualist, and the only thing he had in any abundance was arrogance. He was a lesser person than I'd been told. So I sincerely hope he has some work that was of a higher quality. Suggestions? 'Walden' seems to be a recommendation based on high quality social commentary, so maybe I'll start there.

<comment><USER5> I think if you read the essay you might get the idea that he wasn't being entirely serious and re-read it again in that light.

<comment><USER6> I fear we have run into Poe's law here... that sufficiently advanced humor/sarcasm is indistinguishable from arrogance. If his contemporaries truly reviewed him as a humorist,

 _"done in an admirable manner, in a strain of exquisite humor, with a strong undercurrent of delicate satire against the follies of the times. Then there were the interspersed observations, speculations, and suggestions upon dress, fashions, food, dwellings, furniture, &c., &c., sufficiently queer to keep the audience in almost constant mirth…The performance has created 'quite a sensation' amongst lyceum goers."_

then it does truly seem that I've learned (and been taught) the very antithesis of his meaning. The joke was on us!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I didn't interpret Walden as an exceedingly subtle "joke," but as a lamentation of the nature of cultural, intellectual, technological, governmental, etc. progress. The space between lamentation and comedy is small enough for misinterpretation (in either direction). More specifically, I read Walden as a commentary on the accelerating erosion of individualism and self- reliance as we progress along those (cultural, technological, etc.) axes.

I might be projecting a bit, biased by personal struggles with (what I think are) the same issues today.

</comment><comment><USER8> I live in MA and swim in Walden pond on occasion in the Summer; it makes this discussion somewhat less abstract. The primary source (contemporary newspaper article) does make my think less of him. [http://historyofmassachusetts.org/henry-david-thoreau- woods-...](http://historyofmassachusetts.org/henry-david-thoreau-woods- burner/)

<comment><USER9> I wish that school did more to convey the fact that even the most prominent authors are flawed people like everyone else, and that some of them can be outright assholes - no matter the quality of their writing. Instead, literature classes often put authors on pedestals.

There's undeniably some great insights in Thoreau's work, but many parts - such as the one you linked to - show that he was kind of a douche.

The first time I realized that someone whose work I deeply admired was a total asshole, many years ago, was eye opening for me. The art can be sublime, and the artist can be the lowest of scum. It makes talented people with a lovely personality that even more admirable.

(Also reminds me of one of my favorite quotes for people working in prestigious, competitive environments: "we're all talented here - differentiate yourself by being kind")

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Similar to [https://newrepublic.com/article/123162/everybody-hates- henry...](https://newrepublic.com/article/123162/everybody-hates-henry-david- thoreau) . (Can't comment on their accuracy as I haven't read Thoreau.)

<comment><USER11> Seems pretty similar to what I've picked up from Thoreau's work.

What irks me is that most people delve to much into if Thoreau did this or that, if what he wrote resonates with you, take it as it is.

You don't need to agree with a person fully to find nuggets of wisdom in their work that can last you a lifetime.</comment></comment>


Feeling safer online with Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://blog.astithas.com/2017/01/feeling-safer-online-with-firefox.html <comment><USER2> Awesome changes.

One suggestion: In the Control Center™, I would recommend using the past-tense for the current state. E.g.,

        Receive Notifications           Allowed X
        Access Your Location            Allowed X
        Maintain Offline Storage        Allowed X

As it exists in the screenshots, the present tense is used, and the X button seems to be associated with the word "Allow." Further clarification could be achieved by making the X button actually say "Disallow" and giving it a border separate from the word "Allowed." E.g.,

        Receive Notifications      Allowed   [Disallow]

<comment><USER3> > Further clarification could be achieved by making the X button actually say > "Disallow" and giving it a border separate from the word "Allowed."

I agree. An X usually means "close" or "hide this thing," whereas here they're using it to change a setting. It really looks like there should be a toggle switch there.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly right that X means "close" or "hide this thing" and this is what it does in this case as well: it removes the non-default setting and hides the list item.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am sure there are people who would love a browser that can control their car or pacemaker and report their bank balance on the welcome page.

But I personally would feel far more secure if there was a firefox-lite where no sensitive stuff (access camera, share screen) were included to start with. And I don't mean turned off by default, I want it removed at compile time.

<comment><USER6> As mido22 said, the alternative right now is a closed plugin (Flash) or installing software on your computer completely outside of the sandbox. Putting these features in the browser in a controllable way is a step forward. If you don't need them, Firefox is open source and I'm not just saying that to be glib. You can easily grab the source [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions) and compile it with --disable-webrtc [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Configuring_Build_Options)

<comment><USER6> Replying to myself: ok so I just tried this and it's not that easy. The bootstrap script installed a bunch of dependencies but didn't install rust for some reason. Also Ubuntu 14.04 doesn't have the right version of gcc available so you have to get that basically too. The hg clone operation took forever and timed out a few times. Then my computer ran out of RAM during the build and I had to close some programs and start it up again. Pretty much a giant pain, and I don't even want to try Windows where the first step is "install Visual Studio"!

<comment><USER7> FWIW, on a fresh ubuntu 16.04 install, this is what needs to be run:

        sudo apt update && sudo apt install python build-essential -y
        wget -O bootstrap.py https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/raw-file/default/python/mozboot/bin/bootstrap.py && python bootstrap.py
        cd mozilla-unified/
        ./mach build

<comment><USER6> That takes care of rust too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The status "Use the Camera - Allow - X" can be confusing. Is the site currently allowed to use the camera, or not? The word Allow could either mean "currently allowed" or "click to allow." The X could mean either "currently blocked" or "click to block."

<comment><USER9> The X has a tooltip that says "Clear this permission and ask again" so it's quite clear to me.

<comment><USER10> Right, but it would be much more clear, without needing to read the tooltip, if it just said "Allowed - X", which IMHO is pretty clear that it is currently allowed and can be revoked with the 'X'.

<comment><USER11> Agree - this was the first thought I had and came here to comment on it.

When using the UI it's a bit more clear: you can't click "Allow". But just looking at the screenshot, I had the impression this was a request dialog somehow. I thought Allow was clickable to give permission, and the X was to dismiss being told the site wanted to know about the permission request.

The little X doesn't seem like a common UI element to indicate "block", but it's probably ugly to say "Allowed - [Block]".

Another idea might be to write "Currently allowed" or "This site has access to" under the word "Permissions".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The incorrect system time detection is a small feature, but actually pretty neat. I've run into that before, when testing time-sensitive features in my software and forgetting to change it back, then wondering why on Earth nothing secure works anymore.

<comment><USER13> Any reason why you would not try time-sensitive stuff in a VM?

<comment><USER12> Easier to change the system clock than set up a VM :P Especially for macOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I run FireFox on Linux for personal on-line banking. It's the only browser that I am able to run with Tomoyo Linux in enforcing mode (level 3). I'm sure, if given enough time, I could build a Tomoyo policy for Chrome, but it's far more verbose than FireFox and the last few times I tried, I gave up.

<comment><USER15> If you don't mind answering: How usable is Tomoyo for you overall? How much extra time does it consume? Are there things that just don't run? Are there many bugs in applications that do run? (Also, which distro are you using?) Thanks!

<comment><USER14> Debian 8. I find Tomoyo to be the most usable of the LSMs. You can be up and running in a few days with rather complex policies. I could not get Chrome to work with it. It just reads and writes all over the place in ways that are hard to manage. No bugs yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I only the one who finds "new" (well, it was there for about an year, I believe) "Site Identity and Permissions Panel" panel to be literally useless for the "site identity" part?

It has no information on CA, whenever it's first time you saw this exact certificate or not, whenever a "weak" or "strong" ciphers are used (and if PFS is enabled), etc - things one'd really want to see if they care about their connection encryption and authentication. It's all still available, but hidden after long sequence of button clicks. Heck, it would be useful to have client certificate and HTTP auth status there as well - it would actually make those nice things closer to being usable.

I really fail to understand why it can't be displayed in a sanely concise manner - and why things that were there before were removed. Surely there's a plenty of screen space and it's not like it would scare Joe Sixpack off to Chrome, or confuse anyone. Or analytics show it otherwise?

<comment><USER4> There have been a number of user studies done by Mozilla and other browser vendors that clearly show end users only have a basic grasp of the security properties of the web. So yes, more details in main UI elements leads to confusion. It's just 2 clicks for those of us who know what a certificate is (Ctrl/Cmd-I is even faster).

<comment><USER16> > It's just 2 clicks

Three, actually. One on the i+lock icon pair, one on the right-pointing arrow, then one on "more info". If I'd need more details (like issue and expiry dates, which is pretty common thing to be interested in), then it's 1 more button "view certificate". And if I'd happen to be interested in certificate public key properties (algorithm and key size) it's a really long story, 6 clicks away from the address bar.

It certainly makes sense to not show something right away, on the first click. But the current UI hides quite essential information (to those who can understand it) way too deep. I'm really not persuaded it would hurt usability and confuse users if such information would be 2 clicks away, rather than 4-6.

(And, really, it mustn't hurt to show at least "have I visited this page prior to today? yep, 234 times" on the very first click. And probably won't confuse anyone much to also see something like "TLS1.2, modern ciphers" or "TLS1.0, legacy ciphers".)

> Ctrl/Cmd-I

Toggles bookmarks sidebar for me. I'm unaware of any shortcut to open page info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As long as more and more features get added the more the attack surface increases on firefox and all other browsers.

Feeling safe, and being safe are two different things.

Same goes for self signed (or expired) certificates and 'not secure' connections, they are not per definition 'not secure'.

<comment><USER5> Could not agree more (see my other comment). Firefox should slim down to reduce the attack surface.

<comment><USER18> Reduced attack surface or standards compliance; pick one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice post, it's hard to realize progress made in secondary UI elements such as security panels.

</comment><comment><USER20> Making it easy to see permissions for the current site is great, but why is there no way to see _all_ the sites that have special permissions? Firefox used to have about:permissions but that was removed last year.

<comment><USER4> about:permissions was an incomplete experimental UI, but a fully functional replacement is high on our priority list. We are waiting on a new design from the UX team at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a step in right direction, but would certainly feel safer if in addition to cookies/storage/geolocation permissions, Firefox allowed to whitelist JavaScript on certain domains out of box, with no need to resort to NoScript. Using NoScript results in two different whitelist mechanisms with completely different UI which breaks the browsing experience.

Ironically, as far as "privacy-oriented browsers" go, Chrome has domain whitelisting of Cookies/JS/Plugins easily accessible from address bar and it works as expected.

</comment><comment><USER22> > In the new design, permission prompts stay up even when you interact with > the page.

I think this is going to be a nice improvement. It was way to easy to "loose" the permissions dialog in the older flow.

</comment><comment><USER23> I love firefox.. My big problem as a late though seems to be that sites stop loading intermittently, need to be refreshed or I need to wait (and I don't have this problem on Chrome).

Also, I got kind of annoyed when one of their leaders came begging for donations by email, but are getting paid FAR beyond normal wage.

</comment><comment><USER24> Extensions still run in Private Tabs, unlike with Chrome, so they are free to phone home about your private browsing as much as they'd like. This is the real privacy hole that still needs to be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER25> The only thing that would make me feel safer would be the sandbox.

<comment><USER26> Mbox exists for this or FireJail, Sandboxie (Windows)or OSX sandbox-exec [https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/mbox/](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/mbox/)

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Sandbox)

<comment><USER27> Sandboxie is nonfree and after a trial period only allows sandboxing one app at once. Firejail just had a local privilege escalation exploit, but I'm still using it (although more cautiously than before). Mbox appears unmaintained, and sandbox-exec isn't even for a platform I use.

I'm quite glad that Firefox implements sandboxing of its own.

<comment><USER26> Look at the sandbox used for SubgraphOS (Debian/Jessie only) [https://github.com/subgraph/oz](https://github.com/subgraph/oz)

<comment><USER28> The goal of browser sandboxing is to protect different sites _from each other_. It does me no good if some malicious ad uses some plugin bug or JavaScript heap spray or something, and my sandbox successfully prevents the exploit from escaping the browser, but the same browser also has my bank open in another tab.

Given that 95% of what I do on my personal computer is in the browser, sandboxing the rest of my computer from the browser is sort of a [https://xkcd.com/1200/](https://xkcd.com/1200/) situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm excited to see FF undertake security this way. It's the right thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER30> Firefox is not even looked at pwn2own competition because it's too easy to hack and not using good OS or sandbox protection [https://it.slashdot.org/story/16/02/12/034206/pwn2own-2016-w...](https://it.slashdot.org/story/16/02/12/034206/pwn2own-2016-wont- attack-firefox-because-its-too-easy)

<comment><USER31> How do you know with such certainty that it is because it is too easy to hack and not because Chrome is the current "big fish" among browsers and Google gives monetary rewards to white hats, both of which could reasonably fuel disproportionate interest in breaking Chrome?

<comment><USER32> Reasons aside, the fact remains that when a group of white-hat hackers says they "won't bother" with a given target, it doesn't speak well to that target's security. There are no-doubt tons of exploits in Firefox still waiting to be found, as there are in Chrome, Opera, Edge, etc. Given that the Tor Browser is built on top of Firefox, it's a huge loss for everyone that Firefox is not being included in the attacks; the vulnerabilities that the white-hats find would be reported and promptly plugged, rather than left open for nefarious three-letter agencies to exploit.

<comment><USER33> > Reasons aside

No. Reasons not aside. Reasons are very important.

<comment><USER32> If we don't know what the reason was, and they won't elaborate on it, what importance does it have? Pwn2Own 2016 already happened. Firefox wasn't included, for whatever reason. The damage is already done at this point, as its exclusion created the _impression_ that it was "not worth attacking".

If the guys had said, "We didn't bother with Firefox because they weren't willing to pay us as much as Google or Microsoft", okay. But they didn't. What they said was:

 _' We wanted to focus on the browsers that have made serious security improvements in the last year,' Brian Gorenc, manager of Vulnerability Research at HPE said."_

And now Firefox looks weak by comparison.

<comment><USER34> > If the guys had said

Why would they have said that, even if it were true? What's the upside for them?

I agree the net result is the same whether they were honest or not, of course, which is again why there was no upside for them to say that if it were true.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An open letter to our community from our CEO - <AUTHOR> https://classpass.com/blog/2016/11/02/open-letter-to-community/ <comment><USER2> They had to have known that an unlimited plan wasn't sustainable, because of the studio costs.

It sounds like they used the unlimited plan as a way to hook in new users and the cancellation was planned.</comment>


Tell HN: SPIL Games have a $50,000 contest for HTML5 games - <AUTHOR> http://www.html5contest.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've had the opportunity to work with SPIL several times with my Flash games. They've just started a push to get HTML5 games so if you're messing around with it you might like to talk to them.

You can also talk to Martine Spaans who handles licensing for their Flash game here:

[http://www.flashgamelicense.com/view_thread.php?thread_id=20...](http://www.flashgamelicense.com/view_thread.php?thread_id=20487)

or here:

[https://en.mochimedia.com/community/forum/topic/html5-the- ot...](https://en.mochimedia.com/community/forum/topic/html5-the-other-way- into-mobile-content)

They're an awesome company to work with, and the biggest company in the world with online gaming by a _very_ big lead.

</comment><comment><USER2> Be sure to read the rules (affecting entrants and winners):

<http://www.html5contest.com/rules>

[Not a criticism, just full disclosure.]

<comment><USER3> I suppose the key rule is this: "Once submitted, a prize winning Submission becomes the exclusive property of Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned."

<comment><AUTHOR> Martine elaborated on that after some Flash developers raised the issue (since that's not how we normally work either):

[https://www.mochimedia.com/community/forum/topic/html5-the-o...](https://www.mochimedia.com/community/forum/topic/html5-the- other-way-into-mobile-content#22)

There is some flexibility on that issue.

<comment><USER3> I see - they should write it like that in the rules, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I agree on that ... I wouldn't personally sign my IP over to anyone (at least without a tidy bonus and/or performance bonus).

That said their HTML5 platform's going to be a bit of a moving target for a while, it does make sense to have it the exception rather than the rule.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Who Wants To Buy Honduras? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-honduras.html?_r=2&smid=tw-share&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> > _He eventually realized something that seems obvious to any nonacademic, > that poor countries are saddled with laws and, crucially, customs that > prevent new ideas from taking shape. [...] The United Arab Emirates, Hong > Kong and Singapore were able to build well-designed cities that housed and > employed millions, in part by persuading foreigners to invest heavily._

It's really obnoxious that the author allows this facile analysis to pass without any attempt to provide context. Hong Kong and Singapore were Western colonial corporate/financial/trade centers for a giant continent which was otherwise mostly blocked off, and so were bottlenecks through which massive amounts of capital flowed (and goods: HK, Singapore, and Shanghai are the busiest ports in Asia). The UAE is a tiny country with one of the largest oil reserves in the world.

The claim that the main problem poor countries have is "customs that prevent new ideas", as compared to – at least in the case of Honduras – 500 years of quite shocking exploitation and violence (diving into Honduran history books is not for the faint of heart), and for most the last 100 years political control by US-backed strongmen and American fruit companies and frequently the US military, as the original "banana republic", is offensive. [He did mention that Dole/Chiquita "have controlled its agricultural exports", but left it at that.] Cf. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Honduras#Honduras_in...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Honduras#Honduras_in_the_twentieth_century)

Disclaimer: I grew up in southern Mexico, and a couple years ago took a course on Mesoamerican colonial history from the former Honduran Minister of Culture, who fled to the US after the 2009 coup.

<comment><USER3> This is standard 20th century history. It's also the standard Communist line (Galeano, Zinn, etc). Its only correspondence with reality is the statement that everything wrong with Latin America is the US's fault. While this is true, everything else is a lie.

The truth about Latin America is that it's suffering from 200 years of revolutionary ideology exported from El Norte. All its functional institutions date to Spanish rule (which is why "colonial" is applied indiscriminately to anything that isn't ugly in Mexico). Things started to suck in the 19th century when revolutionary Enlightenment ideology, all of Anglo-American origin, destroyed first colonial, then clerical and aristocratic rule, in the process producing approximately a zillion very very nasty civil wars.

And of course comparing 19th-century revolutionary ideology to its 20th- century successor is like comparing strychnine to cyanide. Where did all these ideologies come from? Dude, do you really have to ask? Ergo "pobre Mexico, tan lejos de Dios, tan cerca a los Estados Unidos."

For instance, it's grimly hilarious that today, with Mexico the world capital of decapitation, anyone could conceivably praise the Mexican Revolution. If Woodrow Wilson and Americans like him hadn't been so intent on "teaching Mexico to elect good men," the Porfiriato could easily have lasted another century:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz>

Instead, thanks to John Reed and his ilk:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Reed_(journalist)>

You wind up with this dude:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teodoro_Garc%C3%ADa_Simental>

whom I'm pretty sure neither the Porfiriato nor New Spain would have wasted much time in hanging. Etc, etc, etc.

 _took a course on Mesoamerican colonial history from the former Honduran Minister of Culture, who fled to the US after the 2009 coup._

And no doubt wishes the State Department would repeat its usual trick of deposing all Latin American governments which aren't headed by Harvard professors, or completely Americanized natives acceptable to such. Strangely, this position is commonly referred to as "anti-Americanism" - possibly for the same reason tall men are called "Tiny."

Needless to say, the _golpistas_ in Honduras are a hell of a lot more Honduran than anyone who has ever taught a course at Harvard (or wherever). If you prefer them to the Harvard professors, you're an imperialist. Hell of a world we live in, ain't it?

Disclaimer: my father was a US vice-consul in the Dominican Republic. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

<comment><USER4> At the turn of the 20th century, Argentinans enjoyed living standards fully 90% of contemporary Western Europeans[1]. Today, that is just 37%. In fact, 6 of the world's 30 richest countries were in Latin America in 1900. Today, Latin America's richest country ranks #55 in GDP per capita.

[1] [http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/thebearslairview?art_id...](http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/thebearslairview?art_id=10653)

What is plaguing Latin America is NOT the legacy of colonialism, but the legacy of revolutionary left-wing leaders and the bad economic ideas of the left.

<comment><USER5> Argentina's default in 2003 was caused by the right and the IMF policies, Nestor Kishner a left-wing leader saved Argentina from that crisis.

<comment><USER6> That's a good one... maybe you don't remember what the "left-wing leader" did in the '70s, or '90s, or what happened up until 2003. Or maybe you are reading 6,7,8's account of history, very well written in Newspeak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We see this same thing in huge development shops. The rules, structure, and culture has become such that it's impossible to get real progress done. In such cases, if we can get firm commitment from management to leave high performing cells alone come what may, we can create small packets of high- performance that can then set an example.

I think this is a great idea.

However, from personal experience I can tell you that the rest of the system will actively seek to kill these pockets -- mostly through well-meaning efforts and concerns. It'll be a tough row to hoe for Honduras.

I'd also note that in environments like this it's typical for everybody to have a story about how they (and they alone) could fix it if only one thing was changed. If their pet cause was addressed. These stories can sound very attractive, and no doubt contain a great deal of truth, but you must remember that it's stories like this that perpetuate a system that gets more and more complex and unwieldy as patches are applied and then as patches are applied to the patches. Nope, starting over is their only shot. I wish them well.

</comment><comment><USER8> I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.

\-- Leo Tolstoy

Any solution to the suffering in Honduras will have to involve stopping the injustice there - which means Dole and Chiquita will have to give up the notion of "basically-free labor".

You don't need to help the poor - just get off their backs.

<comment><USER9> > ... which means Dole and Chiquita will have to give up the notion of > "basically-free labor".

If we can build a self-driving car good enough to carry the rich and famous, a self-picking banana cart is a no brainer. Then nobody will be on the poors' backs.

They had better have a service economy ready when it happens.

<comment><USER10> It's not like bananas are even one of those crops which requires cheap labour in order to be economical.

The Australian banana industry gets by somehow, paying sky-high Australian wages, and you can still buy Australian bananas for no more than you'd pay for an Ecuadorian banana. (At least, in those years when the Australian banana crop hasn't been wiped out by a cyclone.)

<comment><USER11> Australia has its own cheap labour: working holidays and people (students) who want visa extensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a little odd seeing the old stories about why poor nations fail to be popping up again on a forum of predominantly libertarian-minded hackers.

Lots of places have wealth; but some squander it and some don't. Lots of places have been touched by the smelly hand of imperialism, but some prospered and some are ongoing failures. Lots of places have driven out Western "strongmen" as one poster called them, and lots haven't, and they have succeeded and failed economically in various ways.

The Honduras experiment is an experiment in the latest theories of developmental economics, that arose as a reaction to the failure of the old stories. The idea is that some kinds of institutions are conducive to growth, and others aren't. Importing institutions from successful countries can be anti-growth but it doesn't have to be, nor does the absence of foreign investment somehow magically empower the citizens of a country.

The rejection of this charter city because it 'smells of colonialism' seems a dishonest reason to reject things--motivated by clinging to old, feel-good ideas; refusing to try things that might or might not work because one would rather see the poor definitely starve than give up one's sense of moral righteousness on a risky endeavour.

<comment><USER13> This forum is not one of predominantly libertarian hackers. I have been here a long time and have not found any predominant political leaning of this forum other than on specific issues related to technology law, intellectual property and privacy. So that statement is presumptive and wrong.

Regarding the rest of your post, it will take me all day to point out all the various misconceptions and racisms there.

But I should say that in my old country we had a 50 year experiment called communism forced upon us by a more powerful foreign country and it was no fun at all. That experiment also came highly recommended from the best minds in academia.

That's why the whole idea of powerful countries doing experiments on weaker ones seems incredibly wrong and offensive to me.

And no this is not "importing institutions from succesful countries." There is not a single successful country that has anything similar to this -- i.e., an autonomous region that is ruled by some economics professor and is not subject to the country's laws or democratic institutions. In fact if any politician even suggests this for America, their career is doomed.

How about we don't experiment on poorer nations. How about we let them decide for themselves. This way if they do something wrong it will be their own fault. And if they want to pass laws that favor foreign investment they can pass those laws using their lawfully elected parliament and they can take their own responsibility for them.

The current president of Honduras is the result of a military coup and very dodgy elections held by that same military after many arrests and disappearances.

If this deal goes through it will not be considered by ordinary people in Honduras as something they chose. It will be considered as something dictated from the U.S. I am not sure how much that is true, but it is obvious that this is what the Hondurans will believe. The coup is already being blamed on the US.

<comment><USER14> I'm Honduran. Zelaya was going against the constitution when he decided to be re-elected on a third consecutive term, without the vote of the people. As stated somewhere else, he was bringing over rigged votes from Venezuela.

The current president is not the result of a military coup. After Zelaya was overthrown (without violence), the military set up an interim government with a temporary president. He was president until democratic elections took place. We all voted and chose our current president (at least the majority).

I really pity how the rest of the world views this as a coup and say that our current government is not a valid one. Thanks CNN.

<comment><USER15> Too bad Zelaya didn't have the brilliant idea of packing the Supreme Court wit sympathizers like Ortega did down south, so that when he announced he was going to seek an illegal term the sympathizers in the court would give him legitimacy. Now, inexplicably Nicaragua has yet another Ortega term. Guess Chavez's oil money works better in Nicaragua than it does in Honduras.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the problem is that the government is dominated by a few wealthy families and heavily-invested foreign corporations control the exports, how could it possibly be solved by creating an area that is dominated by a board of a few wealthy people and tries to attract heavy investment from foreign corporations?

This doesn't "reek of" colonialism. This _is_ colonialism.

<comment><USER17> The idea here seems to be to transition from a system focused on extracting wealth to a system focused on creating wealth.

This is definitely something that will have to happen in poor nations exploited by internal and/or external sources, there's no question about it.

Whether or not this particular plan can actually succeed at making the transition is certainly up for debate, but the goals it sets seem to pretty clearly be good ones.

<comment><USER16> Well the goals are good, but if you buy into the whole "noble savage" thing, the goals of a lot of the first-round colonialists weren't so bad either. I think the distinction between extracting vs creating wealth is a narrow one, when the mechanism for creating wealth is essentially mining the local native population for its labour rather than its natural resources---and extracting the created wealth.

I mean, if you think colonialism has a net-positive effect on the natives, you would not be alone, and there are certainly some positive effects (which may or may not outweigh the many negative effects). But denying that the OP proposal is a form of colonialism seems disingenuous at best. If you're going to promote it as a good thing, you might as well embrace it.

<comment><USER11> I think the idea is that you can't _mine_ someone for _skilled_ labour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Paul Romer's ...

selected publications: [http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/selected_publications.sht...](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~promer/selected_publications.shtml)

TED talk: <http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html>

Not my field but worth a peek I guess.

<comment><USER19> I'll add to this with a link discussing Romer's blatant ripoff of colonialism, and what the state of the evidence is about whether colonialism produces good results: [http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from- cr...](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-cromer-to- romer-and-back-again.html)

<comment><USER20> I think you've got the wrong link there. You seem to have meant to add something of substance, but the link is to a post that appears to do little more than say "niggaz" a lot and throw mud in pretty much all directions.

<comment><USER19> Both "substance" and "a lot" are entirely a matter of personal taste in this instance, I guess. I don't consider a word "x" appearing 0.04482294935006723442402510085% of the time in a post to be "a lot", but I recognize the existence of people who believe more than 0 of anything is a lot.

For the substance, well, there's a lot of words there, but of course I've read posts with 40 words and posts with 11,000 words that both conveyed the same small amount of substance. I do think the link has a non-zero not- insignificant amount to add (or why bother sharing as a child of another link- sharing comment) especially if you include the links from that link; I think it has at least as much substance as the actual submission here. (And look, the author himself has even posted here, splendid. If you think his light- weight comments here have substance, make sure you give him an upvote.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Okay! This NYtimes article is not a good introduction to the concept.

Here's the main website: <http://www.chartercities.org/> (with an FAQ! <http://www.chartercities.org/faq/11/faq> )

Here are the related TED talks:

<http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/paul_romer.html> from July 2009

[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/paul_romer_the_world_s_firs...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/paul_romer_the_world_s_first_charter_city.html) from 2011

To the people screaming "colonialism!", please read/watch these things first.

</comment><comment><USER22> Discussion of a much more negative take on Romer's "charter city" idea from two years ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850900>

</comment><comment><USER23> Why would you choose a country to be the custodian of a city state instead of choosing a city or several cities to act as custodians?

I hardly think that nations are fit to manage a special economic zone.

Hong Kong, Singapore, NYC, San Francisco, etc. are better equipped to manage a special economic zone than England or Switzerland are.

<comment><USER24> Countries have military forces that can ensure the settlement of international disputes.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, but from what I gathered from the article, the discussion going isn't about the custodianship of the entire country (although it's titled to give that idea), but the custodianship of a special economic zone governed according to Romer-istic policies and principles. Nicaragua could still serve as the protectorate of this SEZ.

<comment><USER24> Yes, Nicaragua would be the protectorate, but the terms of the contract for the economic zone ultimately can only be enforced by someone with a large enough military to impose justice of the last resort -- or at least have the opportunity to do so. Cities can't do that. Legal clout comes from military cloud. Cities have no military clout. Therefore, they have no legal clout, except as provided for by some country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This may be relevant: <http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/t4.asp>

See criticism of the above link here:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn#Criticism>

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know any more specific proposals for how the city will be laid out or what laws will be adopted?

<comment><USER21> Yes, you can find more here: <http://www.chartercities.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I didn't see the original article in the Atlantic anywhere here which is where I heard about this first. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the- poli...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-politically- incorrect-guide-to-ending-poverty/8134/?single_page=true)

It's considerably more indepth and worth reading for a fuller view. I came away from it originally thinking it was worth a shot

</comment><comment><USER28> > The United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Singapore were able to build well- > designed cities that housed and employed millions, in part by persuading > foreigners to invest heavily.

In part, yes. But rich "countries" generally exist as low-population centers keeping many people out with strong borders. The UAE keeps out the more numerous Yemenis next door, Hong Kong (all 7 million of them) the mainland Chinese, and Singapore (all 5m) the Malaysians and Indonesians. The richest countries, like Norway, Canada and Australia, are low populations with large natural resources.

</comment><comment><USER29> I for one cannot believe that we (Sweden), passed on this opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER30> I for one am glad to see Honduras on the news for something positive. In it's current state Honduras will continue to spiral down as everyone becomes poorer and the government becomes even less dependable. I think that actually getting giving free enterprise more freedom is the way to go to actually start generating wealth and stop poverty. Hopefully the idea will get somewhere and will continue to be supported by the governments to come.

</comment><comment><USER31> The real way out of poverty is self sufficiency. This TED fellow is doing that in Africa, creating self-sufficient villages: <http://workingvillages.org>

</comment><comment><USER32> me! me!</comment>


Ask HN: How you decided which text editor to use and sink time into? - <AUTHOR> First let me say, DO NOT START FLAME WAR! That is not why I am here, asking for your help. If you want to read more in-depth about my dilemma see my medium post:
https://medium.com/@PhilippMiletic/editor-s-c3ba97f31ca1
So what is really driving me crazy is that I am stuck between emacs and vim. I have both of them installed and whenever I stick with one for a week, I feel like I miss the other one. For Example I use emacs for a week, great, enjoy using it, but I kinda miss vim. So eight day I open Vim and feel like wow, I see all the things I like it, and try, stick with it for a week and thing repeats it self, and after few days I swing back to emacs. And it is irritating because I cannot learn both things at the same time.
I was using vim for 3 years, liked it (except viml and configuring) a lot, and I like to throw myself out of the comfort zone so I tried Emacs because I read a lot about it. And I used it for 4 months, and now I switch between these two every one in a while. Long term Emacs seem like much better investment, it is amazing platform actually, where plugins feel like whole environments, while Vim is so much better for editing text and my flow was pretty good with iTerm2+zsh+neovim, but plugins are just like that plugins, nothing special about them (where in Emacs land you have magit, ENSIME, CIDER, CEDET). And I dipped my toes into Lisp, so Emacs is built for that. But when I want to go write some C, and get things done I go back to neovim and do it. So I am aware of good and bad sides of both editors, neither is better, philosophies behind them are different.
What are the things that made you decide and pull the trigger of one of those?
I am really picky about my tools, and people say I am config freak, but I just like to tweak things. I enjoy spending my free time by tweaking things that make no to little difference when you look at them by themselves, but after I look at bigger picture I can see I am learning and having fun. <comment><USER2> You might find the xkcd fora thread on the subject good reading; despite the "religious wars" forum title, there are a number of well-reasoned arguments for both sides: [http://fora.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=14943](http://fora.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=14943)

</comment><comment><USER2> If you are a sysadmin (which you clearly are not), there isn't much of a choice—vi is available on every server you will ever log in to, even in single user mode and even on embedded devices, whereas emacs generally is not.

For developers, the decision is more preference-based than spurred by necessity.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can't choose between them, what do you think about the vi-emulation modes for emacs, like evil-mode?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was limited to 2k chars in my initial post, but I knew this question will come. I do not like that. And let me explain why, at least for now!

As of this moment, I do not consider myself vim expert, but I know my way around it. Enough that I felt really comfortable using it. So you could say I am average Vim user. Know few commands, chording, moving around without keys etc etc. And after that I struggled with Emacs keybindings, since I finally understood philosophy under Vim. I installed Evil in Emacs and wow, I didn't expect it to be _that_ good! And it is an option, but not for now. Not for few years, until I become just as (or even more) comfortable in Emacs than I am now in Vim. Because for few weeks I used Vim I found my self using commands from Vim mixed with commands from Emacs, to do particularly the same thing. And it would be like using some third editor. I think I cannot forget Vi keybinding that easily, it feels like it's riding the bike. So I was thinking lately, and most likely scenario is that I will stick with Emacs. It will hurt now, but it will get better over time! My guts tell me I won't regret it and that it will pay off much more than Vim. So I will basically follow the guts. And after time spent with vanila emacs I think I could jump into Evil If I steel feel the need for vim bindings and modal editing. I just think I got used to it a lot.

<comment><USER4> I used emacs at a very basic level for many years, and then I switched to vim and I was very happy. The way of vi fit me so much better than all the chords with emacs. I used vim for about 10 years. Lately I've transitioned back to emacs, because VimL/VimScript or whatever you call it is a nightmare, and I began looking into org mode in emacs and I wanted it very much.

So I installed emacs with evil, got into a place where vi key bindings didn't work and I was stuck. So I turned off evil and stuck with normal emacs for a while. Until I knew I wouldn't be stuck if I got thrown out of vi key bindings. Then I turned evil mode back on.

No need to wait a year or more. Just Get a basic familiarity with plain emacs and then switch to evil. You get the best of both worlds.</comment></comment></comment>


Purism Librem 5 Pre Order - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ <comment><USER2> I will buy it and I am sure I'm gonna love it. I will feel good having it in my pocket and knowing nobody gets my data if it's not me giving it to them. I will develop software for it and I hope others will too. I really hope THIS is the future of personal mobile devices, and I want to help make that happen.

<comment><USER3> I don't want to spoil your enthusiasm, but how do you know that?

"and knowing nobody gets my data if it's not me giving it to them"

As far as I know, the hardware is not open source, nor is the firmware.

So it is a nice step in the right direction, but we are not there yet.

<comment><USER2> > So it is a nice step in the right direction, but we are not there yet.

Even if it's not perfect, it's like a million times better than everything else around.

Perfection will come. Maybe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to be skeptical of non-mainstream products like this. Late last year I bought a Linux laptop from System76 that was by far the most expensive laptop I have ever bought (mostly because it has a 1070 GPU for machine learning) but so far it has been a great experience.

I love my iPhone/Apple Watch combination with perfect interop with my MacBook but I can see myself buying something like a Librem 5 in the future. The biggest drawback would be giving up my Apple Watch: it has been a game changer for me to be able to leave my cellphone at home, sort of disconnected but people can still get ahold of me while I don't spend time staring at my phone instead of enjoying the world around me.

I would like more information about hooking a Librem 5 up to a monitor and Bluetooth keyboard. Even with a lower power phone, for me it is a compelling idea to have just one device.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love that it exists, but I don't think I'll buy one. The processor having half the power of my 2016 mid-range phone is concerning me a little, especially for the price.

I hope they keep developing because I really do want a linux phone, but with enough power to emulate Android somehow (just can't go around it for some things).

Again though, congratulations for making it this far. The Librem 5 will probably be the standard hacker-phone for a few years.

<comment><USER6> I suppose it depends what you do with your phone?

Even with a slower processor I have no problems believing it may be better for certain workloads because you won't have a load of background tasks running, that don't need to etc. Will probably be worse for games though.

So the same situation that desktop Linux was in, in the naughties?

Thinking about your Android emulator. That should be fairly easy? Android is already basically a VM running on Linux. I'm sure Google will be working hard to prevent this use case though.

<comment><USER7> Jolla Phone already had a Android emulation for Sailfish OS

<comment><USER5> Alien Dalvik is a great idea and theoretically works well, but it's proprietary software and its developers don't seem to have any interest in anyone actually using it.

There doesn't seem to be any free software effort in prong porting ART to a real linux system (which shouldn't be hard at all), which could've happened for years and I'm not sure (though shyly hopeful) the Librem 5 will change anything about that (so the only realistic option would be full emulation, which would require a good bit of power).

Edit: Just realized that you could theoretically run Android apps via Chrome. But shit, that'll be slow.

<comment><USER8> You should check out Anbox. It's basically a containerization platform for Linux that hosts an Android userspace and shares your host kernel a la docker. All you need to do is load the ashmem and binder kernel modules or build them statically into your kernel.

So far I know that there's an Ubuntu touch port of Anbox that works. It's a pretty good all-around solution considering the low container overhead and support for OpenGL ES 2.0

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are we expected to order the phone without knowing its features/specs...? I can't find them.

<comment><USER10> I found them: [https://puri.sm/faq/#faq- Whatarethephonespecs](https://puri.sm/faq/#faq-Whatarethephonespecs)

Edit: argh, I think their lazy-loading breaks the anchor link browsing position. I will just paste the contents here:

Development is still ongoing, so most of the specs are not finalized yet. What is certain at this moment is:

CPU: NXP® i.MX 8M Quad or NXP® i.MX 8M Quad Mini

GPU: Vivante GC7000Lite

RAM: 3 GB minimum (subject to change)

Screen: 720×1440 high-DPI 5.7″ (glossy)

WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n

Bluetooth: Yes

GPS: Yes

NFC: No (subject to change)

FM Radio: No

Card slot: microSD

Loudspeaker: Yes

3.5mm jack: Yes

SIM cards: One

Camera: Front and back

Replaceable Battery: Yes (with tools)

Smart Card Reader: Yes (OpenPGP-compatible)

Everything else is To Be Determined. This applies to: dimensions, weight, supported modem frequencies, internal storage capacity, maximum SD card capacity, camera specs, other screen specs, battery life, SAR values, etc.

<comment><USER11> Anyone know what the purpose of a "Smart Card Reader" is on a phone like this? I hadn't heard of OpenPGP smart cards before, are they similar to the PGP subset of functionality on Yubikeys?

<comment><USER12> > are they similar to the PGP subset of functionality on Yubikeys?

Yes. I understand it as providing something akin to the "secure enclave" on the iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This phone is something I'd see myself using in the future. This way you could really have a Linux desktop/laptop machine for work and a Linux phone where it's a lot easier to bridge the gap between the devices. Imagine the ability to use most of the features of your phone from a Linux PC like MacOS has some features of: quick Bluetooth tethering, USB tethering, answering to messages, calling someone, and more! But it's missing some key features imo like responding to phone notifications from your desktop, using IR blaster, using the Bluetooth on your phone if your PC doesn't have it, sleep mode that's synced, and so so so much more that I cannot even think of.

But for now, I cannot afford a phone like this. Not only because of its price for what you get. But also because I want my phone to "just work".

</comment><comment><USER14> I believe we've found our next phone! Replaceable battery, headphone jack, Linux support. Hello, indeeed.

</comment><comment><USER15> That's actually a pretty expensive phone: $600. I think it's a fair proposition given what they are offering and attempting, but in this post they provide none of the phone specs. I suppose it's not their target, but should probably still list it.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Upon initial shipment of the Librem 5 in 2019, it will offer the essentials: phone functionality, email, messaging, voice, camera, browsing. The featureset will expand after shipment and over time to more free software applications. Your user experience will improve as we incrementally add commonly requested applications and features (such as calendaring, notes, calculator, PDF viewer, etc.) while keeping performance in mind."

A phone without a PDF viewer or calendar app? :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder why they very carefully avoid giving a hard minimum for how long the software will actually be supported. "For years to come" could be a third of your device's physical lifetime like everyone else does.

<comment><USER18> Maybe it's because the phone's just running Linux. I believe [1] they have upstreamed a lot of their work into the kernel and Gnome so really as long as those projects keep going it should be fine.

1\. [https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-2018-11-hardware- report/](https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-2018-11-hardware-report/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love this idea but without Signal and Whatsapp I basically will have a phone but no one to actually communicate with on it. Matrix is great but it's UI/UX needs work and barely anyone is using it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Real question: does anyone see anywhere on the site where they say what LTE/3G/GSM bands it supports? Or TD-LTE vs FD-LTE?

I like to know before I pre-order if it will work in my region.

<comment><USER20> The device uses one of SIMCom SIM7100E or SIM7100A WWAN module.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anybody know if this phone will be able to work on Sprint's network in the United States? It's always a pain to get BYOD to work with a lot of the carriers.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is the baseband firmware open source?

It would be exciting to have an open source phone based on the risc-v processor. Until the hardware is open source, it will never be truly secure.

<comment><USER23> iirc its not (simply because there is no oss baseband) but they went through great lengths to isolate the basebands chips from the rest of the phone. Greatly neutralising the threat the it can pose. In normal phone designs the baseband has unfeathered access to everything.

<comment><USER24> ... you mean, like flagship commercial phones already do? Because, no, it's no the case that iPhones basebands have unfettered access to everything: the iPhone baseband is a USB peripheral.

<comment><USER12> And the iPhone is one of the few phones that do this.

The main selling point of the Librem5 however is that it is not a restricted platform like iOS is, baseband separation is just a nice bonus, (plus hw kill switches).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does this come with the same gnome 3 that I would install on a desktop?

Can I make apps that look consistent with the rest of the phone's OS just by using GTK?

<comment><USER5> No and kind of.

It ships with a custom Wayland compositor built with GNOME technology, but theoretically you could install GNOME. They have a custom widget library, but that builds on GTK.</comment></comment>