How Roy Baumeister challenged the idea of self-esteem (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter-archive/the-man-who-destroyed-americas-ego-94d214257b5 <comment><USER2> I skimmed the first quarter of it and read through the rest; a decent read that touches on a lot of good points.

I found this particularly interesting:

The mistake of many modern feminists, he writes, is that they "look only at the top of society and draw conclusions about society as a whole. Yes, there are mostly men at the top. But if you look at the bottom, really at the bottom, you'll find mostly men there, too." His examples: The homeless; the imprisoned; the people who die at work, 92 percent of whom are male. The popular modern view is that it's women who are most poorly valued by culture. But, ever the contrarian, Baumeister says men are demonstrably "more expendable than women."

Also this:

Susan remembers hearing about a theory that the most successful people in life are those who are still searching for their parents' unconditional regard.

Sound like any famous (recently deceased) CEO?

<comment><USER3> The idea that men are on the top and the bottom and women somewhere in the middle is something I also experienced when learning about China. There are so many men who are completely unable to find a decent job and nor any wife at all, and on the other end of the spectrum men so rich that one of them has more money/power than a small country. The point that women completely ignore the men on the bottom and fight each other about the men on the top, who in turn have so much choice and so little punishment for bad behaviour that they don't regard women as breathing human beings, seems to add up to a picture that looks quite realistic.

It's probably a little too simplified, though. While the percentages vary between top and bottom men and women, you have both on each level. Beside the amount of people one would also need to look at the impact on each gender's life. And the result might still be that a woman on the bottom might have a much harder life than a man, and a woman at the top might not gain as many rewards as a man.

It's rather hard to get a complete picture, right?

<comment><USER4> Notably, the men at the bottom are considered failures for failing to acquire a wife. That's also one of those things that feminism takes issue with. Poor males are not saints; they just aren't in a position to actually change the overall status quo.

If wife acquisition stopped being an indicator of success in China, you'd have a lot fewer men being considered at the bottom.

<comment><USER5> Wife acquisition will continue to be a measure of success so long as China's sex ratio at birth is 1.1 men to every woman.

No wife means not only a lonely existence, but also no children to care for you in your old age. If that isn't failure, I don't know what is.

<comment><USER6> >No wife means not only a lonely existence, but also no children to care for you in your old age. If that isn't failure, I don't know what is.

This line of thinking just seems juvenile to me. Do you really believe the pinnacle of human achievement (and the only one that matters) is being in a long term relationship and having children?

<comment><USER7> > Do you really believe the pinnacle of human achievement (and the only one > that matters) is being in a long term relationship and having children?

Can anyone with any sense of Darwinian evolution _not_ believe that having children is the goal of life? Can anyone with any emotional sense at all _not_ believe that a lasting relationship with another is not the highest of pursuits?

<comment><USER4> Yes and yes.

I'm personally far more interested in passing down a cultural legacy than squirting my genes into an egg, and I'm more inclined towards raising the average happiness of the world than just a single relationship.

The funny thing about belief is that it doesn't necessarily extend from basic facts like having read the same book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FTA:

 _" In 1996 Baumeister, now teaching at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, co-authored a review of the literature that concluded that it was, in fact, 'threatened egotism' that lead to aggression. Evil, he suggested, was often accompanied by high self-esteem. 'Dangerous people, from playground bullies to warmongering dictators, consist mostly of those who have highly favorable views of themselves,' he wrote.

It was an astonishing theory..."_

I can imagine a group of people who might not be astonished; anyone who has been bullied, and then told they should feel sorry for the bullies because the bullies had "low self-esteem". At least, when it happened to me, my first thought was "Low? More like way too high."

<comment><USER9> It's frustrating to me that people perpetuate the fallacy that high self- esteem leads to schoolyard bullying. And it's mystifying that some critics of the self-esteem movement (such as the author of this article) are as strident in their criticism as they are.

The behavior that bullies exhibit isn't caused by high self-esteem, but by their need to overcompensate for low self-esteem through anti-social actions. They see themselves as inadequate, and they see others as threats. When people have this self-concept, their fight-or-flight response kicks in. Bullies gravitate toward their "fight" instinct, and social recluses toward their "flight" instinct. People with truly high self-esteem don't see others as threats, so they feel no need to treat them as anything other than equals.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett don't feel the need to talk about how rich they are, or put down people with less money. Similarly, people who are truly confident don't go around talking about how awesome they are or bullying others.

<comment><USER10> I guess it marks me out as an old person that I find Bill Gates to be a hilarious example of a non-bully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > As a man of science, he insists his views are influenced only by data...

> Rejecting the feminist notion of patriarchy as a conspiracy theory...

> "Oh, I don't know," he says. "I wouldn't say that. In America there's a > third movement, the libertarians, who are trying to reduce government > involvement and promote freedom. To me, they make a lot of sense."

> Political correctness upsets Roy Baumeister. He rages against what he sees > as a left-wing bias in social psychology that means that white prejudice > against the black community is studied frequently, while inter-minority > racism is comparatively ignored. Papers that show greed might be in any way > good are rejected. "If you have a finding that says the conservative > viewpoint did better, nobody wants to publish it," he says. Papers that show > greed might be in any way good are rejected.

It's funny how so many of the people who style themselves as "objective" and "ideology-free" all fall into the same ideological traps, straw-manning their opposition and believing what is most convenient for their own in-group.

How can anyone claim with a straight face that America is a nation were inter- racial violence is understood in terms of its historical roots _too much_ , and go on to state that the idea that "greed is good" is demonized?

<comment><USER12> > How can anyone claim with a straight face that America is a nation were > inter-racial violence is understood in terms of its historical roots too > much, and go on to state that the idea that "greed is good" is demonized?

He's not talking about "America", he's talking about "social psychology", or to be more precise, the predominant academic culture in that field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is obviously still enough ego in America to claim that C. Rogers was the first to argue that men are fundamentally good. Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau formulated that already in the 18th century in his "Second Discours" \- Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality))

<comment><USER14> Rousseau was not French but Swiss. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean- Jacques_Rousseau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau)

<comment><USER13> Right, my bad. I got taken away by his name, location of death and which country he influenced the most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From a novel I read recently: "Bob was American and called himself a former American, although such a thing would never happen. He had the fist-line friendliness typical of this culture, or lack thereof, and the particular and very irritating sense of specialness that had been infused in several generations of American children. You had to be special indeed if you were to play into the American Dream, the very only thing holding this mass of people together. Be somebody rather than do something. Not that this would not be in the back of the head of any parent anywhere else in the world, but anywhere else there was an unconscious sense of healthy resignation. Being was still a tad more important than becoming. Anywhere else, the condensate of thousands of dead generations, the wisdom of finitude had not been washed down to homeopathic levels by the tidal terror and guilt of having left and lost Mother. A borderline Nation, whose sense of abandonment, emptiness and void identity had brought about destruction, oral compensation and the art of fake relationships. But also a knack for pottering stuff."

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a nice overview of Baumeister's development as a scientist. I've read a couple of his books, and really recommend "Evil": [http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence- Cruelty/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence- Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424049901&sr=8-1&keywords=evil) It's interesting to learn a bit about where he came from.

[Edit: irrelevant argument removed]

</comment><comment><USER17> Good post. Appreciate your deliver greater to share this informative article that useful! For a nice and looking for manuals of this nature for the way too much time. [http://dissertationwritingpakistan.weebly.com/](http://dissertationwritingpakistan.weebly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> We can admit that unbridled self-esteem has created too many people whose actions may not jibe with their self-image.

What bothers me is that the pendulum will return to the old notion of self- esteem as a doggie biscuit for obeying one's masters. I'm sure the 1 percenters will like that.

</comment><comment><USER19> It was an excellent read, I did not know how huge the self-esteem thing was around the time when I was growing up. Sure explains a lot.

I didn't like the focus on conservative / liberal ideology, I think both of those are the same kinds of mixed category that self-esteem wound up being. It surprises me that the author didn't see that connection, though I should probably cut him some slack as it was written a whole year ago.

<comment><USER3> As far as I understood the author he made the same connection as you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm sorry, I can't click on titles like this anymore. I just can't do it. Is the article actually good?

<comment><USER21> Your instincts are right; it's worth a skip. The article is both poorly written and largely obtuse.

Its subject argues that promoting self-esteem leads to narcissism, and therefore is undesirable, while never fully grasping the obvious: that narcissism, despite appearances, is an artifact of low self-esteem.

<comment><USER22> It argues that _attempts to artificially inflate self-esteem_ result in narcissism.

<comment><USER21> That's a spurious distinction because it depends on defining _artificial_.

In the end, the number of people who are truly _inflated_ (which is the correct term I believe) are so few that this is an argument about over-eating discussed during a famine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love HN comments as a quick way to summarize the essence of good (and often long, full of fluff) read :)

<comment><USER24> I was annoyed this article is so long, but having read it all I can't say there's much fluff in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This should be read as a story about belief versus data. Forty years of _naked dogma_ resulted in massive social impact. It took a challenger to go through the data, and show that the ideas weren't true. And from the data, had been known to be not true for decades.

The social damage done by that dogma is likely severe.

The better approach is a scientific one. Measure. Question. Be sure that your beliefs are based on evidence, not theory.

<comment><USER26> Too bad that these things are very difficult, if not impossible, to do in the domain of psychology. How do you measure someone's self confidence? Their degree of narcissism? All you can do is ask them questions, and then argue over which set of questions are more accurate. There is no way to evaluate personality traits other than subjective observation.

Data is indeed the answer. Please, for the love of god, measure, question and quantify. But when it comes to social studies real data is very difficult to come by. Self reporting is the antithesis of empiricism. Baumeister does good work, given the field that he works in, and his ideas are powerful and useful. But at the end of the day, it's just a matter of social fashion. People prefer his ideas, or other ideas, or whatever suits them at the time. Anyone can come up with an experiment that shows that one psychological disposition is superior to another, or that kids should be taught this over that. These things change with the times. By comparison, F will always equal ma. There's no way to argue with real science. Everything else, is open to debate.

<comment><USER25> > Self reporting is the antithesis of empiricism.

Not entirely. The article talks about this. The _theory_ was that low self- esteem led to violence. The _facts_ are that self-reports of high self-esteem are correlated with increased violence.

You might disregard the "self report" aspect of the studies. But the main conclusion is that the original theory is wrong.

<comment><USER26> This was addressed in the article:

 _For Branden, the violent people Baumeister wrote about might have appeared confident, but underneath all that bluster they actually had low self- esteem."One does not need to be a trained psychologist to know that some people with low self-esteem strive to compensate for their deficit by boasting, arrogance, and conceited behavior," he wrote._

It's all a game of he said/she said. The bottom line is that the human mind is opaque. There's nothing easier than theorizing about something that can't be measured, or even directly observed.

<comment><USER25> When something is unmeasurable, it's more properly placed in the realm of "magic" or maybe "philosophy".

If people have _unmeasurable_ low self-esteem, than the original theory is _unfalsifiable_ , which means it's outside of the realm of science.

Or, we can talk about reality. We can treat people like black boxes, and correlate their claims with their actions. This is called "psychology".

The human mind is nowhere near opaque.

[http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain- movies/](http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/)

With some work, a computer can determine the video a person is watching in an MRI. It's not perfect, but it's amazingly close.

Saying "the human mind is opaque" is wishful thinking. It's magical thinking that somehow people (and thought) is different from everything else in the world.

It's not. We're meat puppets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Measurements that are qualitative are much more tricky to deal with than quantitative measurements.

When I read words like 'hollow self esteem' I feel like I am reading a poem, not scientific data. Hollow self esteem means 'self esteem that lacks social validation', but when we define self esteem clearly in terms of social validation with relations that show the distribution of 'when the social validation occurs in terms of time' and 'how much social validation is given' versus 'how much social manipulative ability is granted' then people in society start to become definable and moveable like machines. What is the point of existing as a human being when life can be plotted?

If I define my self esteem through a single data point in my past, can you really compare that to someone who defines their self esteem by each day as it unfolds? Can you really measure self esteem when everyone's self esteem is dependent on comparisons of self analysis versus social analysis?

Culture defines culture. Social groups define social groups dynamically as the group is processing and composing information. Data is almost the same as theory when it comes to psychology. I personally find it all ridiculous and believe that people need to have balance between the methods of science and understanding and seeking their own personal truths. People have the potential to be more than what language and mathematics can convey, but this makes many people uncomfortable, because it's not definable. What isn't definable always seems to get filtered through a lens of religious, dogmatic belief in the scientific community. If it can't be measured, it doesn't exist. But it does exist. The problem is that scientific, mathematical language does not measure the effect of itself.

<comment><USER28> You claim that you know that something that can't be measured does exist. If you haven't just made up that claim, that implies that you have somehow detected the existence of that thing. What you might not be aware of is that in the eyes of a scientist that makes you into a "measuring apparatus" for the thing that you claim cannot be measured. In order for a scientist to consider something unmeasurable, it cannot have any influence on the natural world, as that would be a measurable effect. Making you utter or type a claim about the existence of something is an influence on the natural world that can be measured, so if you making that claim is actually causally connected to the thing (as opposed to made up by you), that would make the thing measurable.

<comment><USER27> I don't think you understand that you can't control what information and processes are dynamically influenced and what components are static and unchanging. The methodology of science can be subject to the same level of analytical inspection and rigor that the scientific methodology itself upholds.

You hold science as a constant and shape the world around that lens. What happens when science starts to take itself apart, when it starts to redefine itself, analyze itself, study itself?

Keep down-voting me if you like. All I really know is that I have more questions than I have answers, and I don't think that is a bad thing.

<comment><USER29> Science on science, it's a thing. Also named Theory of Science, it studies Science from a philosophical view and brings up questions like "If we have measured something to be the same 10000 times, can we be sure it will be same the 10001st time?"

What happens when you do that? Well, for me what happens is the realization of the value of being pragmatic. Truth is, like Descartes said, we can't really know anything but our own existence, and depending on your definition of existence, even that can be questioned. But what is the value in that? Now when I know I know nothing, is it a good basis to live my life upon?

My answer to that is no, it's not a good basis to stand on. Instead I choose to approach it pragmatically, or as an engineer if you prefer, "I accept my perception of reality* as real" and "a useful fact is information that can somehow be used to predict the future"

But then, I tend to like answers more than questions, I guess it comes included with my engineering degree.

* Not meaning that everything I perceive in a given moment has to be real, rather that my understanding of the world is my best guess of how things are.

<comment><USER27> I don't understand why you replied to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to Live in San Francisco Bay Area? - <AUTHOR>

Hi ,
I am from India and in 12 days from now I am moving to San Francisco. I would like to know where can I find apartment in quiet area ?  I am married and my wife would travel with me. No kids.
I have been to US in the past and lived in NC. In Raleigh we were renting 1 BR/1 BA for $950.
This is first time we would live in Bay Area.
We don't plan on staying too long in SF just one or two years. We both don't like in US but my company is pushing me a lot to go for couple of years.
I am looking for place that is available up to $1200 rent max. I am aware of fact that rents are extremely high in Bay Area but this may be rent we can afford.
We don't want to live in downtown or in SF for that matter. We are okay to live on east bay and travel to SF. My job will be in downtown. I am okay to travel as much as 25 miles one way.
I am basically looking for place with no drugs , no violence.  Neither me or my wife drink.
My wife won't work and will stay home.
I have done some research so far.  Here are things I found - 1. Oakland is not so good area. There are some good neighborhoods but drugs and violence and loot is too large. 2. Some advised me to strictly avoid Tenderloin and Sacramento.
3. I don't know about Rockridge. Can anyone confirm if area is good / bad ? 4. Walnut creek is good but very very expensive. How about Concord ?  Is Concord good area ? 5. What about Alameda ?  Is it good ?  Even if I have to pay $100 extra I am fine if its good area.
All other towns that are nice and quiet even though little far ?
Please comment any neighborhoods to strictly avoid.
Thank you very much for reading and helping us ! <comment><USER3> Hello Iamanna,

You definitely have some parameters that will make this difficult, but as we Bay Area people can sometimes prove... some amazing things are achievable if we get creative or a little flexible. What I mean by that is: if you could do a share-rental, you'd find a lot more places would become in your price range. The downside of course is, you must live with more people than you'd like to. It can be a challenge, but if the house is large or you get your own wing, it could be pretty livable, at least for a set time period. The other thing you might do would be consult with a local real estate specialist who could do some quick leg-work for you here. (Sure, they will charge you, but maybe it won't be too much. :/ It's just meant as a possible idea for you.) Short of that, definitely look at Craigslist, but keep in mind, things could go (become rented) very, very fast. The $1200 limit is very tough to work with, because rents are shockingly high in the Bay Area. A small town you might find something in might be: Port Costa. Someone else mentioned Crockett (where I originally found your post referenced). If you look on a map, you'll see these two enclaves are close to each other. Crockett is known for being eccentric, artistic, having a huge sugar factory, and being located on the water (the Carquinez Straits). The houses are generally old, and some are sweet and interesting. You would feel like you were in a 'real' small town, but at the same time still not too terribly far from what you need, mileage-wise. Port Costa is just a little beyond Crockett, down a small road, off of Highway 4. It is also known for being an out-of-the-way artsy and eccentric place. I would say Port Costa is generally quite safe. You still will probably have trouble finding anything that is at your $1200 mark, but it will be only a few hundred over. (This might seem like too much still. I'm sorry!) I'm talking about HOMES — not apartments — so you may find cheaper for an apartment, specifically up there, but the towns are mostly comprised of homes (not apartments). I am sorry some people are laughing, but it's easy for us to forget how insane our pricing is here. We have endured it for so long! Please consider looking in to the share-rental idea. You can find things like that also on Craigslist! You also might try Martinez. It is the County Seat of Contra Costa County. No place will be completely free of crime or undesirable activity, but for your price range you'll do well to try these. I would be careful about apartments in Martinez, only because some buildings focus on 'low income' renters and (I'm not trying to disparage low-income people...)there can be 'a few bad apples' so to speak. I see someone else mentioned Concord. I would say the areas with a high concentration of apartments in {many parts of} Concord could have more undesirable incidences of activity you are trying to avoid. Best of luck to you, and let us all know what happens!

</comment><comment><USER4> Tenderloin is a district inside of San Francisco. Urban and probably higher crime than what you want. Rockridge is essentially Oakland.

Concord is safe but hot. Good BART commute to the city, tho (one train). Same with Walnut Creek, but more expensive than Concord. Another city like Concord would be Pleasant Hill. Many parts of Alameda are nice, but you might be pushing your budget, and some parts are like Oakland (to be fair, the Oakland hills are beautiful, but likely outside your price range).

I'd look at Fremont, which is in the South East Bay Area, is cooler than Concord, and at the end of another BART line that goes directly to The City. Fremont also has strong Asian and South Asian communities. There are a wide variety of ethnic markets for those otherwise-hard-to-find foods, utensils, and spices and a wonderful selection of restaurants that have great food but aren't too fancy for weeknight dining.

Public transportation in the Bay Area is concentrated in the larger cities and along the BART line, tho. If you are more than a few blocks away from BART in the East Bay, you can expect to need a car, and are likely to need a car to go grocery shopping as well, due to the sprawl of suburban living that also makes it lower crime and quieter than The City. Many suburbs are large enough that it might be easy for a wife to become practically housebound without access to a car. Every place she might want to go might easily be too far to reasonably walk.

If you look at a map, Sacramento is way too far, though I have seen some people try to car commute from there.

Oh, and don't expect to drive into the city! Parking is a nightmare and very expensive. It's really easy to get towed or have your car damaged (or stolen) there as well. Best to expect to ride BART to a downtown SF job coming from the East Bay, and to use a car to get to BART, because the more suburban parts of the East Bay have unreliable bus service that tends to be ~ once an hour and not on time enough to use for work commute.

</comment><comment><USER5> I want to laugh too but I know you're probably stressed out by trying to find a new place to live.

You can't live in SF for that little. Just, no. It most likely won't be a good size or it'll be in a terrible neighborhood. Sacramento is absurd to commute from, same with the Tracy/Manteca/Stockton area (unless you're commuting to San Jose, in which case you can take the ACE train). Oakland is getting much better, but in exchange for gentrification, rents are rising quickly. So that's probably out for you.

I highly recommend you look into San Leandro, Castro Valley, Dublin/Pleasanton, Hayward, and Fremont. You've got a reasonable idea with Concord too. I might throw in like Daly City maybe, or the San Mateo/Millbrae/... area. A lot of areas in those neighborhoods will be more affordable, fairly quiet, not too bad in terms of drugs/violence, they're located right on a Caltrain, BART, or AC Transit Transbay bus line so you don't have to drive too much, and did I mention they're affordable? Just be careful when you look around for a place to rent - there are definitely some shitty areas in all those places too.

My parents live in San Leandro and have a nice 2br townhouse in a gated area+amenities for around $1500 while they're looking for a house to buy. It's pretty doable. The good places are all waitlisted though, so you have to get right on it if possible.

If you're from India, I even think you'll enjoy East Bay more than SF. I'm East Asian and I think ethnic food is way better east/south than in SF, where I live, where it's all full of fancy and Californian/Italian/French cuisine with a dash of sushi and Thai.

Be warned though, you will probably want to get a car if you live out east so budget for it. It's hard to travel without one - but don't travel into SF with it if you can since parking blows and bridge tolls add up. AC Transit is great and so is BART for long distance, not so much for nearby shopping/restaurants/personal needs.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a very vague question with lots of facts not useful for a Bay Area person for giving you some inputs.

1.SF Bay Area is a very spread area. Just a quick Google will give a fair idea. (For example from San Pablo to San Jose span around 50 miles).

2\. It will depend on where you will work. I believe initially you will prefer to a location close to your work place. If you have driven before in US and are willing to buy a car to make a long commute then it is possible to stay at a distant place with cheap rent from your work. But prepare to spend at least 1 hour each way on the road. Else you are going stay near a BART(Bay Area Rapid Transit) or Bus route.

3\. In every part of Bay area there are some bad pockets/neighborhoods and good areas. You have to spend a bit more if you want to stay in a decent neighborhood. There is a good reason why those areas are pricey. But if you spend enough time looking around you may be able to find some good place at a reasonable price near to your work.

4\. Before renting any place go to to Yelp, or apartment reviews sites and read other people's feedback. It is not always reliable. But if you are seeing an apartment or housing having several negative reviews in a row then you know there is something wrong with the place.

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER7> What you're asking for is most likely unrealistic...

Even tiny studios in bad neighborhoods tend to go for more than $1200 in majority of the bay area much less what you are asking for. The only way I can see you landing a place that meets your requirements is sharing a place with other renters or getting insanely lucky

</comment><comment><USER8> Vallejo has affordable housing and it's a nice city. This works well if the job is downtown. I used to take the ferry to downtown SF from Vallejo. Ferry runs about $300/mo. Ferry is comfortable and you can sit down and get work done with wifi.

You can find rentals in your budget: [http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=vallejo](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=vallejo)

</comment><comment><USER9> Making gross generalizations about entire neighborhoods and cities is generally a bad idea. The bay area is extremely diverse, and neighborhoods themselves can _feel_ quite different from block to block.

My suggestion is that you simply visit these neighborhoods (both during the day and at night) and see how you feel. It might be tempting to line up an apartment sight-unseen, but its really impossible to gauge a neighborhood's energy remotely.

The only cardinal rule is: stay reasonably close to the BART line if you expect to commute into SF from your home.

<comment><USER10> _" The only cardinal rule is: stay reasonably close to the BART line if you expect to commute into SF from your home."_

If your destination is reasonably close to Embarcadero, being on the NL line might also be doable. Still better to commute within SF or from SF or outside SF than _into_ SF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A $1200 rent for a one BR (or even a studio) in the Bay Area is impossible...or nearly so. Look at craigslist.com/apa and decide how far outside the city you are willing to live.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco- neighborhoods-w...](http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco- neighborhoods-where-one-bedrooms-are-expensive-2014-8)

<comment><USER10> My wife and I are paying $1200 for a one BR in Oakland, pretty close to BART. I've no idea whether it's possible to find similar now - we're certainly grateful that our landlady hasn't raised the rent in the 3 years we've been here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rockridge is a "good neighborhood" in Oakland. There are others as well. I would highly recommend living in Oakland; I would weakly recommend _against_ living in Oakland to work in SF - it's certainly possible but that's a crowded commute.

</comment><comment><USER12> Alameda is nice and quiet and the commute is good to SF. Rockridge is a good choice too. Oakland is workable if you can stay near lake Merritt or downtown. Your budget is pretty low but look around. Concord is a trek but could work. Same with Dublin/Pleasanton. Sacromento is way too far.

<comment><USER10> _" Alameda is nice and quiet and the commute is good to SF."_

By what means? Just getting out of Alameda by public transit seemed hard on Google Maps when last I looked, and there's no way I would call driving into the city a "good commute". Is there an option I've missed?

Dublin/Pleasanton is going to feel safer than Concord; whether it will _be_ safer depends on just what you're doing.

Sacramento is ridiculous if you're going to be in the office every day. I know people who've done it telecommuting 2 days a week, but I still think that's crazy. If you can telecommute 4 (or more) days a week, I can more reasonably see it being the best option with the right set of other constraints.

<comment><USER13> Maybe the commute from Alameda by ferry? I don't know too much about it, but I have a friend who took the ferry often from Alameda to SF.

<comment><USER10> Oh, right! A bit spaced out (30-40 minute gaps, irregular, it seems) - <USER2> trip is only 20 minutes in the mornings. Not a bad option at all! Anyone know how crowded it is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "No drugs" is unrealistic. Chances are, a lot of people around you will do drugs, but they're completely normal people with good careers and lives. You have to understand that to an extent.

</comment><comment><USER15> Be aware of scams. If you find apartments listed at a price similar to this, it's likely a scam. Never pay deposit upfront without actually visiting the unit.

</comment><comment><USER10> One thing to keep in mind is that people _frequently_ underestimate the impact that a bad commute has on their day-to-day happiness.

</comment><comment><USER16> Are you sure on the "no drugs" thing? Because you are on drugs if you think such an apartment exists.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @All - Thanks everyone. I really don't know if $1200 did sound as a joke , although it might be if you are already in SF, but I would consider it as high rent. I added $$250 to what we were paying in NC. I could be terribly wrong. I could go up until $1500 but I can't grasp idea of paying $2k or $2.5k for 1 bd/ba. I don't care / mind what everyone is doing in their home but I just don't want to get robbed at gun point.

Many of you have provided very nice information which will help me narrow down the area.

Just one last question on living on Oakland after researching further. Is Oakland really runs that scary ? I am asking because even though I might rent in some good neighborhood I might have to pass through Oakland. Do people literally get robbed or shot in broad daylight or by 8pm / 9pm ?

Thanks very much again for helping me out and excellent info.

</comment><comment><USER17> HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HA

<comment><USER10> In the future, please add some line breaks...

<comment><USER18> If this happens and you let us know (firstname.lastname@example.com), we'll fix it.

(We'll deal with a permanent fix after we roll out the new markup we've been working on.)

<comment><USER10> Awesome, thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Mesosphere Datacenter Operating System Enters GA - <AUTHOR> https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/06/09/the-mesosphere-datacenter-operating-system-is-now-generally-available/ <comment><USER2> I like the idea they present in the post: "We want to let users build and deploy applications whose components span entire datacenters, but with the simplicity of programming for a single machine." Unfortunately in my experience that isn't a reality. DCOS / Marathon do not provide the necessary components to really make this feasible. Sure your operations team can tie in Mesos-DNS / Bamboo / Consul / whatever else, but that completely negates the statement, while also requiring a specialized team. Even when tying in these third party tools, it is likely you will have to make significant code updates to utilize features such as service-discovery / SRV records.

It seems like Mesosphere's real innovation is a wrapper around Mesos with a pretty UI sitting on top. Many operations teams will still require standing up their own environment to install necessary packages for compliance, etc. At that point what makes the DCOS install easier than Mesos? By creating this wrapper around Mesos, it seems like the issue they present: "needing a team of distributed systems experts", is simply changed to needing a team of DCOS / Marathon experts. Having a team of DCOS experts will not replace your operations team.

In my opinion most of the selling points mentioned in the article are really Mesos benefits, rather than anything DCOS itself provides. The image in the article with features of the Enterprise Edition only really provides 3 benefits over Mesos itself:

* Platinum 24x7x365 support (which is hopefully better than what I've experienced thus far with Marathon) * Emergency Patches * Professional Training

I am not sure why teams would pay for an annual per-node Enterprise Edition of DCOS when they are just as capable of deploying Mesos themselves. Either way they are ending up with a hobbled-together system needing serious support from an operations team.</comment>


Patents DO Foster Innovation – Study Proves - <AUTHOR> http://www.greyb.com/4-statistics-prove-patenting-system-good/ <comment><USER2> I don't buy it. Another study showed a net loss:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140416/04183626928/paten...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140416/04183626928/patent- litigation-cost-us-business-about-trillion-dollars-quarter-century- outweighing-benefits.shtml)

It's humorous that they trot out the definition of innovation: "make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas or products" A patent explicitly forbids you to make changes on something already established. Want to make an innovation on a processor that already exists? Sorry, patent! You'll have to wait nearly 2 decades to make your innovation.

Plus it just doesn't pass the smell test. They're basically claiming that if companies spent billions of more dollars on innovation instead of patent litigation we would have _less_ innovation!?

The j-core open processor and RISC-V instruction set are only possible because of patents that expired. Imagine what web development would be like if someone had patented using xmlhttprequest to update the DOM and info in the DOM. Would innovation have increased or lagged?

Patents quite literally create monopolies. If monopolies are so good, why does anti-trust exist? I think it's quite obvious that patents stifle innovation. Oh yes, they may provide a legal method for people to rent-seek, and make lots of money through extraction, but they definitely slow the rate of innovation.</comment>


Todorant – a smart todo app that tricks your brain into completing tasks - <AUTHOR> https://sideprojects.net/posts/ugZ55GHCBimcC5jAD/todorant-smart-todo-app-that-tricks-brain-into-completing <comment><USER2> Mods, the actual link is [https://todorant.com/](https://todorant.com/)

This points at sideprojects.net, that points at medium.com that points at vc.ru (though in Russian) and apparently it's about guy's post on how he read 20 books and made 7 projects (mostly Telegram bots) in one year. Then, one link there goes to his blog, where you _can_ finally find a link to this "smart todo app".

<comment><USER3> oof, thank you for your effort to find the actual link

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _> Todorant is a plain vanilla todo list with one single catch. Every action and feature was carefully weighted and tested using cognitive psychology. I have used the decades of studies and packed them into a single simple silver- bullet productivity tool. Todorant tricks your mind into doing more good actions and less bad actions. It builds positive habits and gets rid of bad behaviour._

Can anyone share the specific "cognitive psychology tricks" encoded into this product that costs $60/year?

<comment><USER5> In this Medium article[1], Nikita Kolmogorov describes the rules he embedded in Todorant. The rules are ...

\- As soon as you think of a task (e.g. you get an email) you should add it to your task list — and then archive this email away from the inbox.

\- If you are going to spend less that 2 minutes completing the task — do it right away.

\- Tasks should be simple, clear, short, specific, actionable.

\- Spend a couple of days organizing everything and every thought you own.

\- Every task should either have an exact date or a specific month (but not the current month) to complete; you should not have any tasks without specific month or date to complete them.

\- Do day planning every morning. Do week planning every Monday morning. Do month planning every first day of the month morning.

\- Don't feel ashamed and add completed tasks to the todo list marked completed.

\- Complete unpleasant tasks (frogs) in the morning.

\- Focus on only one task at a time.

[1] [https://medium.com/@nikitakolmogorov/how-i- launched-7-produc...](https://medium.com/@nikitakolmogorov/how-i- launched-7-products-in-1-year-efe542b1f8b6)

<comment><USER6> Like every set of rules, they work if you follow them. Like, you know the secret of a successful diet is not eating all that junk you gulp down every day. The secret of quitting cigarettes is not smoking them. But you still do. So what? where is the magic powder that makes this happen in todorant? Do they send a couple of mafia hitmen to make sure you're not having a quick smoke in the parking lot, like in that old Stephen King novel?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        SIGN IN
        (you are already registered)

I most certainly am not.

</comment><comment> dawg- No thanks. I actually don't want to sign up for my brain to be tricked into doing anything. Please leave my brain alone</comment>


New discovery proves 'selfish gene' exists - <AUTHOR> http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/06/20/new.discovery.proves.selfish.gene.exists

<comment><USER2> This seems like a gross misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins's argument. The neo-darminist claim is that all genes are inherently selfish. In order for a gene to survive, that gene must have a phenotypic effect that maximizes the survival of the gene. Because natural selection occurs at the level of the gene, altruistic genes disappear from the gene pool. So I don't know what the scientist quoted in the article could possibly mean when he says he has discovered _the_ selfish gene. (I hope it is not necessary to point out on this forum that selfish genes have nothing to do with the selfishness or altruism of an individual organism. Selfish genes can produce altruistic people if that's the phenotypic effect that helps them survive.)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's not much news content here, just a claim. Where's the link to the paper? Where's the summary of the paper? How does one identify it as the selfish gene? I'm not discounting Dawkins here, more that the article has no substance whatsoever.</comment>


Is Your Game Crap? This Fan Will Fix It for You - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/11/deadly-premonition-pc-durante/ <comment><USER2> There is a long tradition of mods, fixes and enhancements in PC gaming. The PC version often ends up being much better than the console version. The privacy and DRM issues with current consoles are bad, but this article demonstrates _my_ favorite reason to just buy a decent video card for your existing PC, rather than buy a console.

<comment><USER3> My favorite reason is that games from 10 years ago still run, and as a last resort I can fire up a VM, on a modern computer. My N64 cartridges, meanwhile, stopped working in new machines as soon as the Gamecube came out. And if the console ever dies, they get harder and harder to find.

<comment><USER4> Wat? One of the things I like about consoles is that they are plug 'n play. No fiddling with trying to get emulation settings just right.

<comment><USER5> Yes, consoles are plug and play, but they're not backwards compatible. There are several PS2 games I love, that will never be remade for PS3 or PS4.

Meanwhile, I can still play "Crusader: No Remorse" or "The Longest Journey" on my PC.

<comment><USER3> Or even Zork.

<comment><USER6> or even Legend of Zelda! or Bomeberman!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am routinely amazed at the improvements the modding community makes even for games that are designed to be unfriendly to mods.

Take Mass Effect 3 for example. The game ships with Origin, which is EA's wannabe Steam online-store/community/DRM. The me3 executable is validated when origin starts up in an attempt to ensure that there's no way to play a modified version of the executable. Modders found a way around this that basically involves playing musical chairs with executable files, and proceeded to mod the heck out of the game from there. The game is not terribly friendly to mods so there's nothing like what you'll see for a game where a toolset has been released, but basic things like texture upgrades (and changes), unlocking and repurposing game assets, modifying weapons, unlocking the in-game console, etc.. (I'm a particular fan of enabling the flycam so you can fly around levels and see how they're built, dynamically loaded, and how they achieve optical effects).

Other games are more mod-friendly. Bethesda's games are one of the standard bearers, and stepping back into one of their games after a year or two can be a completely different experience with the right mods! There are mods that completely rework combat mechanics, add entirely new spell systems, total interface overhauls, you name it! If there's something you don't like about a Bethesda game, odds are you can completely replace it! This raises the replay value of their games tremendously, and all they have to do is release a devkit and be a little bit friendly!

Every once in a while, a botched and buggy game with tremendous potential will be buffed and polished by an obsessed modding community, revealing a classic that the developers were never given time to realize. Games like Troika's Vampire: Bloodlines or Obsidian Entertainment's KOTOR2 are still evolving online. I've been holding off replaying KOTOR2 for years because I know it just keeps getting closer to the game it was meant to be every year.

I'm rambling, but I really respect and love the PC modding community. It truly is something special, and I wish more game companies (EA, I'm looking at you!) would give it the respect (and cooperation) it deserves!

<comment><USER8> > Every once in a while, a botched and buggy game with tremendous potential > will be buffed and polished by an obsessed modding community, revealing a > classic that the developers were never given time to realize. Games like > Troika's Vampire: Bloodlines or Obsidian Entertainment's KOTOR2 are still > evolving online. I've been holding off replaying KOTOR2 for years because I > know it just keeps getting closer to the game it was meant to be every year.

A game that is worth mentioning here is Falcon 4. More than 10 years after its initial release people have (and are still ?) modding it. More info at [https://sites.google.com/site/falcon4history/](https://sites.google.com/site/falcon4history/)

<comment><USER9> I was addicted to falcon 4 only a few years ago. Its a wonderful sim that even ran great on my laptop. Learning all the radar modes really increases the feeling of realism.

Also there's a strange online community. The everyone is middle aged and some real pilots too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am glad it's about a computer scientist (hacker) that performed an action that wasn't subjective and not some 'game designer ux product idea ui designer visual artist ux' snake oil who wants their game idea implemented.

Fixing broken game ideas is easy.

<comment><USER11> Because obviously someone's title declares what he is capable of or likes doing. Because someone with a title that isn't 'hacker' instantly discredits his ability to hack. Obviously. Because people who didn't study CS can't be hackers, obviously. Because someone who does UI or UX can't hack backend things, obviously.

<comment><USER12> Yes, and because we all know that no computer scientist has ever done anything unethical, obviously.

<comment><USER13> I understand where you are coming from, or at least I think I do. You feel that has comments relegate UX designers to some time type of "second seat" in the software development food chain. And, perhaps as a designer yourself, that to be rather insulting.

But I'm going to put this out there and say your are misinterpreting his comment.

There is a whole lot of "rockstar" talk when it comes to software now; "amazing" engineers or designers that will change your world(TM). It would seem that revolutionaries and visionaries are a dime a dozen now. However, more often then _I_(and I'd argue the parent as well) would like, the whole thing turns out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. That type of behaviour bring the whole community down. Its not that UX designers or agile engineers or whatever are bad, they are clearly some of the most valuable and hardest working members of the technical community. Its just that when I see a piece on the next great mind in software, I get this knee-jerk reaction to think "hypppppppe."

Which is what I thought when I clicked the link. But this article plays counterpoint to that world. Here you got a guy, unkept, on his way to being a computer scientist, probably never meet a VC in his life, who is also a hacker. And instead of talk, he is putting forward some rather boring, technically difficult to implement, but useful, stuff. What's more, he is not trying to be like, "I'm better than this company," instead he's got a real grasp on the scale, penetration, and limitations of his work. Its just refreshing.

Perhaps the parent could have worded things better, but I'm not sure he intended to be insulting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > some people made up long reasons for why such a lock could be in place, I > was irked. Someone was wrong on the internet, and it fell to me to set them > straight.

The lock was in place because one reason: Their developers did not know how to do this in a short amount of time. Their estimate may have been 2-3 months (because they would need to learn how to do it properly), and management decided against the effort.

This shows how valuable a well-rounded team of developers can be "as an asset". If you only have one or two developers for very specific languages or platforms, their skillset is going to be very limited, and you're going to miss out on big opportunities.

<comment><USER15> > Their developers did not know how to do this in a short amount of time. > Their estimate may have been 2-3 months (because they would need to learn > how to do it properly)

Eh, what? They're not idiots, they know how to change resolution. They just figured it wasn't possible to do a proper job in the time/budget for something low on the priority list, so they didn't do it. Game devs like to get paid for their work, too.

<comment><USER16> It's not just changing the resolution, it's also fixing all everything that breaks in a game that was developed targeting a single resolution.

<comment><USER15> Indeed. Which is why it takes some effort.

<comment><USER17> So basically you're agreeing with fragsworth.

<comment><USER15> Not that it's worth going on about ad infinitum, but no, I don't agree with "Their developers did not know how to do this [...]" and "they would need to learn how to do it properly".

In fact I assume the opposite - their developers knew EXACTLY how to do this in a short amount of time (i.e. massive overtime), and they would NOT need to learn how to do it properly, AT ALL, because they know what they're doing.

<comment><USER14> If they knew exactly what they were doing then it seems very unlikely that they would decide against doing it, because Peter Thoman's method only took about 2 weeks of his own time. The method the developers were considering may have been an internal one that required some kind of refactoring, and they were either unaware of any other way to do it, or they were aware but didn't know how long it would take because they've never done it before.

Not every game developer has an extensive understanding of how to manipulate DirectX, considering that you can put together a pretty decent game by just using a game engine and ignoring the underlying graphics altogether. I can see them failing to hire someone who has experience with the lower-level stuff on PC, when the game wasn't for PC to begin with...

<comment><USER18> But Peter's method, as he himself said, isn't good enough for software that would be released by a company for people to use:

> _Thoman says the difference between his fixes and official patches are > primarily an issue of quality assurance. "When I write and program > something, I make sure I didn't make any obvious errors, and then I just > release it," Thoman told WIRED. "If it works for 90 percent of people, I > already consider that a success."_

> _From there, Thoman starts working for that other 10 percent, but he says > that there's probably one percent of people that he will never be able to > help. If he were in charge of a commercial product rather than a fan-made > patch, he'd have a responsibility to make sure whatever he released worked > for everyone and didn't break anything._

<comment><USER19> What's wrong with having having a checkbox to "Enable experimental renderer" and let people tweak the settings there? Certainly that's better than restricting your entire customer base because some of them don't have the right setup.

<comment><USER18> From a product management perspective: it adds complexity, and it adds other things for people to complain about your product.

People might complain that your car's top speed is 60mph, and that the acceleration is crap, and that is bad for your car and company's reputation.

It would be much worse if there was a switch a driver could flip that would double the speed and acceleration, but would soimetimes eject the windshield, exhaust pipe, and door handles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> He is one of my lecturers at university and god damn awesome at what he does. _cheers_

</comment><comment><USER21> I remember his fix from the Dark Souls PC release. The creators, From Software, basically announced "we have no experience in PC, this will be a direct port, and the quality is an unknown". They were quite up-front about it.

This bloke had a prediction about what was needed to fix the issue, and said he did a few hours prep work. Dark Souls was released, he confirmed that his prediction was correct, and it was only half an hour (from memory) between DS being released and Durante posting the first version of his fix. He continued to roll updates for a few weeks afterwards.

One bizarre thing was that all the art in the game was already hi-res. Nothing suffered for turning on the hi-res ability. It seems odd to me that art for console-locked resolutions would be made in hi-res and then displayed in low- res, rather than being designed for the target resolution in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like what this guy is doing :)

I've personally stopped buying any game that is a port just because of past experiences lol. Also it's probably us PC gamers who have certain standards that are more demanding than consoles. An example is the feel of an FPS (half life and the like set that bar)... or just as in the article, the graphics settings.

I've actually been a bit sad lately, because I think the industry has changed so much in the last 10 years. The '95 to '05 run of PC games was awesome [1]... small to mid-sized companies churning out great stuff (especially in some of my favorite genres, like strategy). Then around 2004, I got engulfed in HL2 (+ mods) and WoW, and emerged a few years later to find quite a different PC games market. To me, it was basically now only Blizzard/Valve, with everyone else gone... or making the 'cool' games for console (I guess console gfx finally caught up). Good to see indie/kickstarter stuff lately though!

I miss the days when I would go into a random games store and find gems in the PC games aisle (and I'm not even that old). Last time I tried that it was basically all ports of console games and then the 25 WoW expansions lol.

[1] Some of my favorites from that time: Age of Empires/Mythology, NOLF, Blizz games, Unreal Tournament, Command & Conquer, Red Alert, Valve games, Battlefield, Dungeon Siege, Far Cry, Call of Duty 1, The Sims, Baldur's Gate, Quake... can't remember any more haha.

</comment><comment><USER23> There are mods that fix some broken things, like all those mods that add widescreen support to older games, and it was skyUI that fixed the broken HUD of the shitty skyrim console-port.

Anyhow it is frustrating to see what the PC as a gaming platform has become, you have unoptimized, un-customizable, just awful console ports. Where the industry constantly rambles about the pirates, but at the same time are unwilling to invest in more quality assurance, that you need because of the wide variety of hardware configurations, instead they _just complain_ about the variety of pc hardware configurations (even carmack did it!), do nothing, ship broken buggy console ports that, on top of that, also include their borderline-rootkit DRM crap. Gee I wonder why people pirate their games?

Not that I particulary miss anything the big companies produce, stuff like <60fps/health-regenerating/gamepad-autoaim-controls/ etc.

So yes there mods that add higher resolutions to crappy console ports, whoop- dee-fucking-doo!

</comment><comment><USER24> "My primary motivation," Thoman said, "is because I don't like playing games at low resolution."

I thought that quote was great. The modding community always amazes me for their frequent dedication without any kind of financial reward or recognition.

</comment><comment><USER25> He might not feel like doing this full time, but surely there is a market for this. i.e. A team that doesn't nothing but PC ports. I'd imagine similar issues would crop up every time so specialization might be possible.

<comment><USER26> Companies hiring other companies to do ports is commonplace in the industry. Such companies aren't usually _limited_ to doing only PC ports (sometimes it will be a company that also releases its own original games as well).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very cool. Tough, as often times it's a question of cost-benefit analysis and it's definitely possible the developer didn't feel it was a high priority enough issue (against other bugs, against shipping by a certain date, against other projects), so it's awesome that someone from the community could choose to fix the issue in their stead. Obviously not ideal, but very cool nevertheless.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't play games much and when I do it's on a really shitty 14" standard def TV, so is 720p really that bad? I usually watch videos at that and it looks just fine.

<comment><USER29> Compared to 14" standard resolution no, it will not look any worse. You would definitely notice on a larger, higher resolution screen the minute you had something to compare it to though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I thought this would be about a fan (mechanical air-blowing device)... like, so effective that you could wildly overclock your machine or something. Disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER31> I bet even he would be unable to get GTAIV to run smoothly on a computer built today

<comment><USER32> Not only does GTA IV run perfectly smoothly, but there are community patches to make it look jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Very similar story there to this one, actually.

<comment><USER23> bs. in case anyone wondered, GTA4 is the prime example of a shitty console port.

<comment><USER33> Definitely when it first came out, but didn't it get patched? I remember a friend of mine getting it when it first came out and it ran terribly. He tried it a year or so later and it was improved.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LucyPhone Waits On Hold for Customer Service for You - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5536977/lucyphone-waits-on-hold-for-customer-service-for-you <comment><USER2> My questions are:

1) Does it work (technically)?

2) What is the business model? I suspect it has something to do with collecting my phone number and tracking which companies I call, which I don't like.</comment>


WebUSB is dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.hbyconsultancy.com/blog/webusb-is-dead.html <comment><USER2> I find the push to turn web browsers into VMs for running sandboxed JavaScript/WebAssembly applications fascinating. WebUSB, WebGPU, WebTransport, etc etc. I think it's really cool, and enables cool things, but I have 1 problem with it.

I wish we separated the browser application from the VM application. ie, let us make simple, secure content with HTML and minimal CSS. For things like Wikipedia and even a lot of YouTube that's all you need. People can use an extremely simple (and private/secure!) program to access this kind of content. A text version of my personal site is browsable with cURL or even netcat[0].

Make the VM a separate program that people use for fancy web apps.

[0]: [https://anderspitman.net/19/#netcatable](https://anderspitman.net/19/#netcatable)

<comment><USER3> > let us make simple, secure content with HTML and minimal CSS.

Browsers aren't stopping you or Wikipedia or Youtube from sticking to HTML and minimal CSS.

Your problem isn't with browsers, it's with Web developers who don't share your priorities.

<comment><USER2> Yep, but there is a bit of a chicken/egg problem. If someone created a wicked- fast, private, secure browser that worked with a subset of HTML/CSS, people could start designing their sites in a way that's compatible with both that and modern browsers. It would actually be less work for the developer because you need to become familiar with a smaller number of tags and properties. Over time hopefully bigger sites would make themselves compatible, and eventually you get a killer app like Wikipedia on board and the rest is history. </pipedream>

<comment><USER3> Sorry but this vision is totally unrealistic.

You're right there's a chicken/egg problem: no-one's going to use that fantasy browser, because it can't browse the Web. We know this because faster experimental browsers exist, and essentially no-one uses them. Even browsers with tens or hundreds of millions of users struggle to get Web developer attention, even when they're almost completely compatible with the dominant browser and don't require fundamentally rearchitecting, and arguably crippling, one's Web site.

Also, from a technical point of view, ripping out JS and DOM APIs does not magically mean you get a "wicked-fast, private, secure browser". It would be a lot more secure, but building a fast HTML/CSS rendering engine that still has to handle window resizing, zooming, incremental loading, editing and other interaction is still incredibly hard, in fact not hugely easier than supporting JS. (Source: I'm a former Mozilla distinguished engineer who worked on this stuff.) By far the easiest path to such a browser would be to take an existing engine and rip out stuff, and I don't think you're going to end up with something much faster. Disabling JS in a regular browser is going to give you most of the wins.

<comment><USER2> Everything is unrealistic until it becomes real. I naturally tend towards cynicism sometimes, but I try to practice dreaming a little. I find I'm happier when I try to imagine the world as it could be and what I can do to push it that direction.

True, general web layout is a hard problem. But there are a lot of knobs to turn. What if we removed CSS layout altogether, and only allowed linear pages, a la reader mode? That's a big tradeoff, but maybe it would work. If that's too much, maybe only allowing flexbox would be enough. As for editing, at that point you're making a web app.

<comment><USER3> > As for editing, at that point you're making a web app.

Are you getting rid of Web forms now? Also, remember that at the very beginning Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb browser supported HTML editing, so it's definitely part of _some_ vision of the "good old days".

Yes, if you cut down or eliminate CSS, or just redesign it, you could build a faster renderer.

But these questions point to one of major defects of the "cut-down Web" vision: lots of people have a limited set of Web features that they like, but they tend not to agree on what that set is. You like flexbox. Some people really like grid. Some people really need ruby, or floats, or columns, or editing, or vertical breaking (pagination). Pretty soon you've got something nearly as complicated as real CSS.

<comment><USER4> > But these questions point to one of major defects of the "cut-down Web" > vision: lots of people have a limited set of Web features that they like, > but they tend not to agree on what that set is.

Democracy to the rescue:

1\. Start a FLOSS mailing list thread to get as much input as possible on the best starting point for this reduced set of functionality. Gopher, resurrecting Xanadu, revisiting Hypercard, and so on. Let the conversation flow.

2\. Invite the people who chose Firefox Reader View to private gitlab instance and get to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just got an Ergodox-EZ (ergonomic split keyboard which takes some adapting to), and their helpful training tool [0] leverages WebUSB (which I didn't even know about before I started using it). It's useful because it can talk to the keyboard to find out what's the current layout and layer, and show you the relevant info and keys being pressed.

From my point of view as a user: on one hand it kind of sucks because I use Firefox as my main browser, and launching Chrome/Chromium every time is a bit out of my usual path.

On the other hand, I appreciate not having to install something on my computer just for this. It's nice for small apps that you won't be interacting with that often or for too long.

[0] [https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/train](https://configure.ergodox- ez.com/train)

<comment><USER6> And it's nice that the web app only has a narrow set of permissions.

You could imagine the same for an unzipping app. It theory, an unzipping app doesn't need anything else than specific file system permissions, i.e. read for a specific set of bytes and write access to a specific filepath.

[https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/unarchiver](https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/unarchiver)

I work on the Capabilities team on Chrome and I think it's pretty cool the web can do more, and provide safe experiences for users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems bad form to declare something is dead when you didn't work on it directly, and other people clearly are working on it as evidenced by the latest version of the spec being less than two months old.

I don't know whether WebUSB is healthy or not -- but the OP clearly doesn't either.

</comment><comment><USER8> Google themselves just made it possible to flash Android devices from within the browser, by using WebUSB: [https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2020/01/flashing-a...](https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2020/01/flashing-android-open-source-project- builds.html?linkId=81318357)

I interpret the definition of "dead" here to be:

      No other implementation than the one in Chrome

Rather than:

      No implementation or spec work at all

<comment><USER9> I sure consider anything only working in one browser to be dead.

Now that might change as we soon will only have one browser.

<comment><USER10> I think you've confused " _so far has failed to take off_ " with " _dead_ ".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This topic fascinates me because I've successfully built an app and business around an Electron app (no Linux, yet) that connects to USB devices on Mac and Windows. The app uses native node modules for USB (not chrome).

I've been successful using these npm modules: "@nodert- win10-rs3/windows.devices.custom" and "enumerated" on Windows and "usb" on Mac. Interestingly, "usb" relies on libusb which isn't really an option for the common Windows user.

A naive developer will read about WebUSB and think, "oh, Electron is Chrome, so this must be a good solution!" but remember that Electron apps consist of one node process (main) and multiple chrome processes (renderers, aka, BrowserWindow objects).

In my experience, it is poor design to exclusively connect to USB hardware using a BrowserWindow. Instead, it's much better to use the main node process to handle all exclusive USB access, and then push state to renderers using IPC.

So, once you go down this road you realize that WebUSB on Electron isn't viable. The idea seems good, but was dead on arrival for me. Your mileage may vary.

Ten years ago I would never have identified as a hardware-focused software developer. Now it's become part of my professional identity. My speciality is Electron/USB. You can check out my USB-heavy Windows/Mac app at [https://www.label.live](https://www.label.live). I'm available for consulting if you have a need for custom desktop software that talks to hardware. I've solved dozens of incredibly difficult problems over the last few years. Super fun.

<comment><USER12> > Instead, it's much better to use the main node process to handle all > exclusive USB access, and then push state to renderers using IPC.

You should absolutely _not_ do this - don't do anything in the main process at all; blocking it even a little bit makes your entire app janky and hang'y. If you want to connect to USB hardware in an isolated context, create a hidden renderer process (aka a BrowserWindow that you don't call `show` on), though tbh I would just use your existing BrowserWindow, I'm not sure why you immediately dismiss it as "poor design".

<comment><USER11> You're assuming the USB read and writes block, but they are in fact async and work quite well for this purpose. My app is document-based so the user may have multiple label designs open. Because of this, USB is handled from a central location. That could be another renderer, but then you have to shuttle data from renderer to renderer (via main) which in and of itself becomes laborious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title is completely misleading. It should read "I couldn't use WebUSB".

And WebUSB is by no mean dead. Geez, it just got supported by Microsoft in the last version of Edge!

<comment><USER14> Yeah, surprised Dang left it as is...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like Web Bluetooth is more supported. Surprised Firefox doesn't support it.

[https://caniuse.com/#search=Web%20Bluetooth](https://caniuse.com/#search=Web%20Bluetooth)

I know you can connect game controllers to your computer, but maybe that uses the Gamepad API instead. Haven't dug too much into that but was playing with a Babylon Demo and thought the camera controls with a Xbox One Controller was a bit nicer than using my mouse.

[https://caniuse.com/#search=Gamepad%20API](https://caniuse.com/#search=Gamepad%20API)

<comment><USER16> I think Web-Something is going to be critical for the next few years of IoT development. WebBluetooth looks like an obvious candidate, and if it works, the niche for WebUSB gets smaller.

I've played with WebBluetooth some and hope it gets more love!

<comment><USER15> Only bad thing is apparently Bluetooth spec has a connection limit. Sounds like it's 7? So sounds like some people might be pushing close to that...

Say they have their Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, Airpods(probably counts as 2 connections) and then sometimes the case status shows up too. So 5 connections. Looks like the limit is 7, so some are pushing it.

[0] [https://superuser.com/questions/931188/how-many-devices- can-...](https://superuser.com/questions/931188/how-many-devices-can-be- hooked-up-to-one-pc-bluetooth-adapter-at-a-time)

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't count WebUSB dead yet. People lament the death of WebSQL but [https://caniuse.com/#feat=sql-storage](https://caniuse.com/#feat=sql-storage) points to 77.59% availability despite having been "killed" years ago

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> WebUSB is very much NOT dead. We use it every day in the latest version of Chrome w/ our WebUSB Printer and Scales in Chrome Version 79.0.3945.130 (Official Build) (64-bit) and Edge.

The website's comment system is what is dead. Getting a 403 when posting a comment: [https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared- Image-2020-02-04-20-1...](https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared- Image-2020-02-04-20-18-46-hMKf4)

</comment><comment><USER18> The title here is pretty misleading. WebUSB certainly isn't dead, but it's true that Google are the only ones pushing it forward.

</comment><comment><USER19> I write a lot of engineering and test software that interacts with hardware. Generally it communicates over serial or UDP. I package the software as an executable that gets installed on lab PCs.

There is a lot of configuration management. An operator has to use the correct build of software, and needs to configure the software with the appropriate settings. After some testing he needs to save off the data to the appropriate places for analysis and archival.

It seems to me that this type of application would be appropriate to implement as a web application. This would help me manage deployments better and would automate the CM/data flows.

I have been casually monitoring the Web Serial, Web USB, and Web Socket APIs, since they would enable me to implement the low-level communications I need. The opposition to these standards bums me out, but I keep hoping that the security concerns can be resolved and that attitudes will change.

</comment><comment><USER20> WebUSB is pretty much alive on the Chrome VM.

The last week's released Android Flash Tool, makes use of it.

[https://flash.android.com/](https://flash.android.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> About ten years ago, I wrote an IE/win7 plugin that broke the security model of IE to allow the browser to communicate with a USB device (in this case, a remote control).

It was a nasty, nasty hack, and things like this shouldn't be allowed. Management insisted that our product have a web-interface because they had information that our competitor was going from desktop apps to web apps. Ironically, our competitor was never able to get its web interface working.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Great discussions and apologies as I am checking this very very late. The purpose of my post was not to create buzz as some of you mentioned. I have been in the web industry since 2001 contributing in open source community, and author of an online PHP magazine since 2005. creating buzz was somehow part of my business, but not this time.

WebUSB was really a very cool approach to connect Web to USB devices in spite of all the security issues that you may or you may not face. I had the chance to work on it and see its limitations two years ago. I found out very small of successful implementations and solutions (Google use it to flash Android from the web, finally (: ).

To make this thread more interactive, I am adding a proof of concept of a code generator to generate WebUSB code :-) [https://github.com/hatemben/usbmon](https://github.com/hatemben/usbmon)

Feel free to fork/test and play with. It's true that there are tons of security issues related to WebUSB, and there are always solutions to security issues. For me WebUSB is dead two years ago, I just remembered to announce it last week.

-Hatem

</comment><comment><USER22> You'd flash the (now-defunct) Chip SBC using Chrome - I always wondered how that worked, it must have been WebUSB! It worked brilliantly. Pity the tech hasn't found much take-up. I can imagine use-cases for it are scarce.

[http://linuxgizmos.com/hackable-arm-linux-sbc-starts- at-9/](http://linuxgizmos.com/hackable-arm-linux-sbc-starts-at-9/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Currently using it in a commercial project to control microscope lights form a web-app. Works on Linux and MacOS. Not on windows because Windows cannot see the device as a Webcam and a generic USB endpoint at the same time (my old StackOverflow question [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44942495/getusermedia- an...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44942495/getusermedia-and-webusb- over-the-same-device-windows)). In the beginning the project was born to run on vanilla Google Chrome but now is distribuited with NWJS. I would really love to see a definitive good WebUsb crossbrowser API spec.

</comment><comment><USER24> WebUSB sounds like a truly gaping security hole. Imagine exploiting USB drivers over the web (yes, even though USB doesn't require DMA support, the drivers operate on a very low level -- [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/118854/attacks-...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/118854/attacks- via-physical-access-to-usb-dma)).

WebGPU is more useful but direct access to hardware that could have coherent memory access/DMA is just irresponsible.

Chrome needs it for chromebooks. Not sure why it's needed for less constrained machines.

<comment><USER25> There are 2 worlds on the web, what a page can access simply by going to it and what a page can access when you grant it permissions after it asks. The latter is where WebUSB falls, I call it the realm of the web app, and is no more risky (arguably less due to design) than the current "do you want to download and run nativeusbapp.exe" permission.

<comment><USER26> It moves the target for user education yet again though. You know how we get the "allow notifications" popup everywhere now? Recently someone spotted a page which tries "to verify you're human, click allow on the notification".

If we spam users with requests like that and lose control of simple things, there's no chance for us to ask a meaningful question about webusb. I've seen this on my mom's mobile phone. It's full of news notifications that annoy her - because she defaulted to clicking "allow", because she's a typical user.

<comment><USER25> The WebUSB popup asks you to select the USB device per session not allow/disallow all devices for all sessions.

<comment><USER27> So I know of a very popular keyboard controller than can be made to run unsigned code by sending it the right HID data.

Said code persists after reboot.

Please point out if this attack is not viable:

Ask for permission to use your keyboard. No matter how scary the warning, non- technical users will allow a website to use the keyboard because "of course it needs a keyboard"

Upload a malicious payload to keyboard. Remember, now it can present itself as any USB device. Or maybe stay simple with a keylogger, maybe with heuristics to get juicy data (what are the first 20 characters typed at boot and after "www" is typed)

Game over?

<comment><USER25> Nope, the first 3 (plainly written) sections of the standard will tell you why if you're curious [https://wicg.github.io/webusb/#introduction](https://wicg.github.io/webusb/#introduction)

The upcoming WebHID API considers and mitigates this attack as well [https://wicg.github.io/webhid/#introduction](https://wicg.github.io/webhid/#introduction)

<comment><USER27> Excuse me, what? Please explain your reasoning.

(And yes I read the section 3 of the standard before writing the comment above, see my other comment in this thread)

WebHID even says it more plainly:

> In general, these types of attacks are device-specific and cannot be > mitigated at the API level.

Both documents you linked literally go:

"We know these attacks exist, we don't care as long as we show a prompt, device manufacturers fix your shit it's not our problem"

-

I can't reply for some reason but:

I didn't see any mention of HID devices not being listed, not was it immediately apparent that a HID device would already be held in the kernel context

I also still don't see blocking input from trusted devices, I see the same language I called out:

"Device manufacturers should watch out"

-

"I think it works like this, why doesn't it" is a great way to learn things, except when the reply is a low effort: "here's that thing you read, did you actually read it?"

<comment><USER25> Going with the good faith assumption you read it trying to find why instead of why not in the WebUSB standard you can find this paragraph under 3.1 Abusing Access to a Device:

"Lastly, since USB devices are unable to distinguish requests from multiple sources, operating systems only allow a USB interface to have a single owning user-space or kernel-space driver. The UA acts as a user-space driver, therefore allowing only a single execution context to claim a USB interface at a time. The claimInterface() function will fail if multiple execution contexts attempt to claim an interface."

I.e. the keyboard couldn't be claimed even if you managed to get it to list as it's claimed via the OS HID driver so can't be claimed via the userspace driver. HID devices are also hid from the listing (no pun intendend) which is what resulted in the WebHID standard in the first place.

For WebHID understand it's an early draft and that the method described in section 3.1 of blocking access to HID devices that can generate trusted input is actually the go forward implementation plan not merely a suggestion.

.

I don't mind discussing WebUSB further but not if the conversation is just going to be in a "I thought it might work this way, show me the line that says it isn't" way. There are many blog posts that cover it better than I could anyways (such as [https://blog.scottlogic.com/2019/04/03/upcoming-webhid- api.h...](https://blog.scottlogic.com/2019/04/03/upcoming-webhid-api.html))

<comment><USER28> That may be obvious if your used to USB, but it's actually quite a leap otherwise. An explanation in your original post would have gone a long way.

<comment><USER25> Just to clarify I'm no expert in USB in any way, shape, or form and do not wish to claim to be. I have never worked with USB (beyond quite literally sticking a device in the port or reading about which USB storage drive to get) prior to reading the original article this post linked to and don't want to give the false impression I'm an expert in the field because I've read a few documents/demos followed by a couple of blog posts after.

<comment><USER27> My original reply:

I didn't see any mention of HID devices not being listed, not was it immediately apparent that a HID device would already be held in the kernel context

I also still don't see blocking input from trusted devices, I see the same language I called out:

"Device manufacturers should watch out"

-

"I think it works like this, why doesn't it" is a great way to learn things, except when the reply is a low effort: "here's that thing you read, did you actually read it?"

Also I'm pretty sure the parent's point is jumping from "the kernel and userspace are not allowed to both access a device" to "keyboards cannot be accessed" is non-obvious

I still don't see where the filter on HID devices is mentioned, or the exception for trusted devices

<comment><USER25> Note on reply disappearing: I think sometimes HN hides the reply unless you go to the permalink (i.e. what the "2 minutes ago" link points to). Or at least that's how I work around it when I don't see the reply button. Not really sure why it does that, never looked into it.

It's not so much about the HID class itself as "why" (it's more an effect you find out later once you know what the HID class is) as it is "if an OS driver doesn't already hold the USB keyboard how could you type on it". The opening paragraph of the standard tips this off straight away:

"...Standard device classes include keyboard, mice, audio, video and storage devices. Operating systems support such devices using the "class driver" provided by the OS vendor..."

That combined with the closing paragraph of 3.1 under security considerations I quoted before led to the answer for the particular question without the explicit mention of "HID" in the document:

"Lastly, since USB devices are unable to distinguish requests from multiple sources, operating systems only allow a USB interface to have a single owning user-space or kernel-space driver. The UA acts as a user-space driver, therefore allowing only a single execution context to claim a USB interface at a time. The claimInterface() function will fail if multiple execution contexts attempt to claim an interface."

I later ran across "HID" reading a blog post while testing some code which is how I fumbled to finding WebHID. For the WebHID portion the hint I originally mentioned came from this paragraph in 3.1:

"In some cases, a device may expose functionality that should not be accessible at all from a web page. Specific devices may be blocked by recognizing the device by its vendor and product ID and hiding such devices during enumeration. The HID report descriptor allows a device to describe its own capabilities, and this information can be used to block classes of devices even when the vendor and product ID cannot be known in advance. This can be accomplished by inspecting the usage values assigned to collections within the report descriptor; for instance, access to keyboard-like devices can be denied by denying access to devices that include a top-level collection with the Keyboard usage ID."

I guess "mitigates" wasn't fair as the feature still hasn't even had an experimental implementation added behind a flag in Chrome yet let alone have a demonstrable implementation of the proposed protection. I'd say "considered" was fair though and not at all hidden/hard to find.

I also wanted to point out that the wording around "manufacturers should do" in both is presented an argument for defense in depth (IIRC they even called out defense in depth explicit in one of the calls to action) not their argument for "since manufacturers should do this we shouldn't do anything". Again about reading to find "why" vs "why not" which usually requires reading in context instead of searching for a key phrase.

.

Don't get me wrong, questions are a fine method of learning! It's just your initial question was "Please point out if this attack is not viable" not an ask of "I saw this in the standard, can you explain why this attack is not viable?" so I told you it's not viable and then mentioned it's in the first 3 sections in case you were curious. The response I got back was that you had already read section 3 and got a different takeaway. Well of course you did, I didn't say why was in section 3 I said it was in the first 3 sections, which are quicker reads than the comment chain the question came from! Going on good faith I pulled the exact quote out, explained it further, and then mentioned "I thought it might work this way, show me the line that says it isn't" isn't how I want to talk about the standard to then get told my original comment which answered exactly what you asked was low effort! Looking back I can see the confusion with section 3/first 3 sections and that originally you very likely meant "could you explain why" not a literal "is it or not" so my apologies for misinterpreting where you were trying to drive the conversation but I ask you consider the above as well before judging my reply/cautiousness to be just low effort/dismissive.

Anyways I hope the content above the "." gets us on the same page. I'd have shared some modified WICG/webusb GitHub repo linked demos I worked on earlier to validate my understanding before I said "nope" but they don't work on JSFiddle/CodePen because WebUSB requires a feature-policy header to be set to be used in a page + "allow" to an iframe (which seems like other great protections but absolute pains for testing!) so you'll just have to take my word on the real world test :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ah, that's inconvenient.

A probably-viable (but also inconvenient) alternative is to code your own bridge: a server that talks the relevant USB protocol in the host OS and exposes an HTTP endpoint that a browser can connect to. More complicated than having the browser just be the bridge, and it introduces the significant risk of mis-implementing the security model and leaving your hardware open for remote-zombification though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Meanwhile, I just used WebUSB to flash an updated version of the firmware to my NumWorks calculator.

</comment><comment><USER30> Super clickbait title. It's not being removed from Chrome...

</comment><comment><USER31> Why does the site need a loading bar to display a text only post?

It sucks that webusb is cjome only, but there are definitely at least a few projects using it.

<comment><USER32> It works on Edge.

<comment><USER33> Edge is either a dead end or Chrome now.</comment></comment></comment>