Google reverses its 'digital death sentence' for Pixel phone resellers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/18/google-reverses-its-digital-death-sentence-for-pixel-phone-resellers/ <comment><USER3> I would understand it if they kicked the customers out of their webstores for physical products. Or if they forbade reselling via license, and had a contractual penalty (where permissible by law). But closing your email accounts? Google (the company that sells phones) and Google (the company that hosts all your digital life) are only incedentally the same entity. It's like your power company also sells toasters, and you resell a toaster on ebay, which they dont like, and then they cut your electricity in retalliation.

It's like if Alphabet bought a company running tollways, and they banned you from using their streets.

<comment><USER4> Also even if you have more than enough sufficient information to get a lost Gmail back. Send them your state issued drivers license and ID and birth certificate. It is still not enough to get my account back.

What do I honestly do in a situation like that? (After 2 years of failed recovery attempts, hunting down google employees on social media and their work or personal emails)

I got one single Google employee to respond to a help thread I posted on the Gmail help forums. He responded with a question that was already answered in the original post. And it took me 6 months to get there.

<comment><USER5> Sue them under wiretapping laws to release the information and redirect the emails to a domain you control. It is a federal crime to interfere with communications.

I'm considering suing Apple under the same laws for blocking messages sent from iPhones to my phone number (you can never truly deregister from iMessage. Apple still silently destroys group messages sent to you).

We need to get more serious about the idea that you can't legally withhold correspondence meant for someone else. These tech companies think they're immune from telecom laws but I am not sure the courts would agree.

<comment><USER6> There was a class action about the bullshit Apple pulls with iMessage but I don't remember how it resolved.

<comment><USER7> [https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister- imessage](https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage)

<comment><USER6> I know the steps, the class-action was because even after doing all that iMessage would still not properly deregister numbers, and then a memo was leaked revealing that Apple purposefully didn't solve the problem because it lead to people returning to iPhones after trying Android devices

<comment><USER8> I'd actually love to see the source on that, if you have it

<comment><USER6> [http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/11/apple-lawsuit- imessage-i...](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/11/apple-lawsuit-imessage- issue/)

here's the lawsuit, I can't find a definitive source on any memo so maybe that was just unfounded rumors

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes, great. But if you are not able to get news coverage about your problem, then you are out of luck?

Yeah, sorry, Google. I once trusted you, but now I am migrating away from everything Google (except search).

<comment><USER10> The fact that it has to be a covered by news really sucks.

I ran a website that got our AdSense account shut down for what Google claimed was invalid clicks. I never clicked on our ads and we made little money from AdSense (we had other ad networks). Since my personal Gmail account was used as a backup email my personal account's AdSense account was also banned. They won't reinstate either account or give any more details.

I don't use any Google Cloud services because I'm afraid that all of my accounts would get shut down for any reason and I would lose all of that data.

<comment><USER11> Search is the one you should really stop using when possible. I've found DuckDuckGo's general search to be only okay, but bang patterns are very helpful since I usually want to search stack overflow or another site directly anyhow.

Google search quality has dropped drastically. Any attempt to look up a technical issue results in StackOverflow inconsistently in the top 5, with maybe 20 different shitty mirror sites.

Google has lost their magic. I'm actively migrating away from their services at this point.

<comment><USER12> > Google search quality has dropped drastically. Any attempt to look up a > technical issue results in StackOverflow inconsistently in the top 5, with > maybe 20 different shitty mirror sites.

Are you logged in? Maybe their learnt wrong things about you? (For me swiftkey has that problem, had to switch away from it as the more it learnt, the worse the suggestions would become)

Search is the one thing I still need from google. Technical things result in 50% stackoverflow and 50% blog posts or forum posts of people discussing the same problem. For things with multiple meanings google usually gets the right one. I'd love to use DDG, but whenever I try it, I end up having to use bangs to get what I want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google needs to realize that their services (such as Gmail) are critical to a lot of people. I understand why they don't want to offer free support for a free product, they would get flooded with useless support requests. However, they need to offer a paid support option. Something like $25 per support request call. This would reduce the calls to only truly urgent and necessary issues.

It's possible to get something similar using Google Apps and a custom domain. But they need to start offering paid support for the free services (@gmail.com) as well.

<comment><USER14> _Google needs to realize that their services (such as Gmail) are critical to a lot of people_

Google will realize this when a) people pay for them and/or b) people start leaving the platform.

There are options for paid, supported email, like Fastmail and others. They probably have .01% of the userbase Google does.

<comment><USER15> Are you saying Google loses money on gmail? I can't see that being possible. It displays ads. It harvests incredible amounts of information, on "users" as a whole and individual users. It's a treasure trove of data on how people engage with each other, businesses, etc. It's a stepping stone into the large Google ecosystem where you can and do pay for things.

Gmail is just as valuable to Google as it is to any individual user. I'm not sure why people's gmail accounts would ever be banned. If people do something illegal, prosecute them. Even if they're found guilty, it's not like the court is going to delete their email address or take away where they live.

This feels like an episode of Black Mirror.

<comment><USER16> It wasn't illegal, per se: just against their terms of use.

Probably much harder to litigate than criminal activity, so I can vaguely understand the use of banhammers, even if they were clearly unwarranted in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The whole thing reeks of overly aggressive automation. And while Google has reverted these cases, i fear they have not changed their automation to match.

I am right now looking at two stories of people that has trouble with Google because of some security system or other has picked up "oddities" in the payment activity.

<comment><USER18> Which part of the automation failed? It appears to have identified with perfect accuracy an organized ring of phone scalpers. I think their account abuse team should be roundly congratulated.

<comment><USER6> Why should a scalper even be punished by having their email shut down? That's not a service connected to the phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just don't see the need to depend on Google for anything. They have a good search engine, even though it's ad-choked. (Search for "credit card".) But for everything else, there's an alternative. IMAP for mail, paid backup services, Github. I don't even have Google enabled on my Android phone; at initial power-up, when it asked for a Gmail sign up, I clicked "later" and then deleted the "first time" program.

Google went bad a few years ago. Google had to pay $500,000,000 to DoJ to avoid criminal prosecution in the "sportsdrugs.com" case.

"Federal agents created www.SportsDrugs.net, designed to look "as if a Mexican drug lord had built a website to sell HGH and steroids," Mr. Whitaker said in his account of the sting… At the agents' direction, Mr. Whitaker said he signaled his illegal intent to Google ad executives, including Google's top manager in Mexico. As a tape recorder ran, he walked Google executives through the illegal parts of the websites. He said he told ad executives that U.S. Customs had seized shipments, for example, and that one client wanted to be "the biggest steroid dealer in the United States.""

"Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting. "We simply know from the documents we reviewed and witnesses we interviewed that Larry Page knew what was going on," he said in an interview after the August settlement…".

Never forget this.

[1] [http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_journal_takes_us_inside_th....](http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_journal_takes_us_inside_th.php)

</comment><comment><USER20> Sadly, it appears Google has abandoned their former motto, "Don't be evil". This is completely sociopathic and amoral and a human had to have approved the action.

It's overwhelmingly likely that without the massive media backlash, Google would have carried out their "digital executions" on their otherwise defenseless customers. I don't say this lightly and it pains me to say it but they need to be regulated.

<comment><USER21> > This is completely sociopathic and amoral and a human had to have approved > the action.

How is it sociopathic and amoral to ban scalpers?

> Google would have carried out their "digital executions" on their otherwise > defenseless customers.

Defenseless doesn't mean innocent, and there's no evidence that these users were falsely accused or otherwise innocent of the violations they committed.

<comment><USER20> Innocent? No company that uses a double Irish tax structuring scheme to avoid paying billions has _any_ right to cast guilt on consumers who legally purchase phones and take advantage of minor arbitrage opportunities.

If you truly feel that wiping those people's personal communications records and blocking their email is a reasoned response then I sincerely hope you are never in a position of power.

<comment><USER21> > Innocent? No company that uses a double Irish tax structuring scheme to > avoid paying billions has any right to cast guilt on consumers who legally > purchase phones and take advantage of minor arbitrage opportunities.

That has no bearing on the issue at hand. Just because entity A is guilty of X doesn't magically make entity B innocent of Y.

<comment><USER20> If powerful entity A is guilty of X on a massive scale and then punishes weaker entity B for engaging in X on a small scale it makes A even more contemptible.

For your reference:

A = Google

X = Arbitrage

B = Users who bought and resold Pixels.

Y = X / 10^9

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good to hear. I think the whole event was a net good for everyone, based on how many HN commenters responded to the news by offloading as much of their data off google servers as possible.

Glad to see google doing good by undoing their own evil.

<comment><USER23> I've been thinking of switching to Fastmail; email is important and I'm not too happy leaving it with a company that owes me nothing.

<comment><USER24> You could also sign up for Google Suite on your personal domain.

I used to be on Fastmail and started running into serious deliverability issues. I'd send emails that'd never be received and people would send me emails that'd never show in my inbox.

I spent a month trying to get their support to figure out what was wrong, but the response was just "there's nothing wrong" the entire time.

Used to love Fastmail, but can't recommend it to anyone that depends on their email.

<comment><USER25> can you tell me the ticket number? I'd love to look into what happened there. Too late for you, but maybe we can make sure things are easier for the next person.

<comment><USER24> Ticket 796081. Also ran into lots of trouble with calendar. Other tickets I had trouble with that weren't resolved were 706457, 611829, 598481, 564293, and 541661.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you are scamming or cheating someone dont use your real email. If you do then you should be willing to loose access to that account.

<comment><USER27> To me, the key takeaway from this article isn't the fate of these relatively few specific people. They did something that was (probably) wrong and Google's response might have been disproportionate, but was arguably their right and close to reasonable.

What should be concerning to most people is that almost everybody depends on so many of Google's (and other companies) services in the cloud and you can have your entire life removed with absolutely zero recourse unless you get media attention. Google doesn't even offer human customer support if your account gets banned and you want to throw $50 or $100 in their face to speak get somebody's undivided attention for just 5 minutes to resolve the issue.

That's the real issue.

Yeah Google, we understand you cant provide free customer service for the entire internet and deal with every crazy person's complaints. But charge a reasonable fee and give desperate people a realistic way to talk to somebody over life-changing problems. Even Google's paid services are often very flawed in this regard.

<comment><USER28> Screwing up someone's life and then charging money for customer service sounds a lot like extortion.

<comment><USER27> I totally see your point: this could be prone to abuse. But it's still light years better than the alternative of not offering any support at all to desperate people.

There are people whose companies and lives get totally destroyed when Google randomly bans them from one of their services and then there is literally no way to get in touch with anybody at Google unless you somehow manage to get media attention.

We're all smart and realistic here: we understand that Google can't offer free tech support for the entire world and deal with every crazy person out there. That's why charging a nominal fee is suggested. Should it be $1, $5, $25 or more? I don't know. But there has to be some way to reach out to a reasonable and smart human being at Google for critical issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's good to see my paranoia about depending on a single cloud provider is not entirely misplaced. Losing access to my Google account because of some virtually unaccountable automated process would suck but at least I do frequently export my contacts, email, drive, etc and back that data up to other providers.

The driving force for my mistrust of depending on one cloud provider for everything was getting burned by a hosted email service that I used for everything. Since I didn't control the domain I had no recourse. Taking the lesson learned, I moved to a privately owned domain for my critical stuff and now I can instantly point to another provider (or my own server) of choice.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm trying to think of an alternative ecosystem that allows similar level of convenience to the Google ecosystem. Here's the best I could think of: (NOTE: this is for the AVERAGE user, so nothing complex like buying a custom domain)

\- Fastmail for email

\- Dropbox for data sync/storage

\- Switch to iOS devices

My reasoning is that companies focused in one area (such as email or storage) and offering paid accounts will be much more responsive to any issues since it's their core business. And for iOS, it's because there's the option to go to any Apple store and get immediate support for anything. For example, if I'm suddenly locked out of all my Google Play purchases, I'm SOL. With Apple purchases, I can at least go to an Apple store and there's a chance of getting it resolved. That in-person human contact option is very very important and something Google doesn't offer at all.

<comment><USER30> I have been using exactly this setup for over 3 years (6 years of Dropbox) and I'm very happy with it. It would be great to somehow sync Fastmail and iCloud contacts and calendars but I'm ok with Apple's platform lock currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm sure the potential for a first sale doctrine smackdown in the courts had nothing to do with this.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is so 1984 it's disturbing. I'm a hardcore Google fan with tons of photos of my children saved to their cloud. All of my business-critical, financial, and personal messages are stored up there. Losing access to all that is like losing your basic human rights. It's scary how dependent I am on this one company for being able to participate in the modern world....

</comment><comment><USER33> Why does Google care if I resell my Pixel phone? Seriously, does anyone know?

<comment><USER34> They don't care if you resell your pixel phone to a friend or put it on craigslist. They care if you and a thousand other people are being paid to purchase stock for an unauthorized reseller.

Google (and any other product company) wants their products to be sold through authorized channels only so they can manage distribution, keep pricing consistent, and ensure that the devices are legitimate and have not been tampered with before sale.

Customers receiving phones with malware pre-installed is a real problem for companies like oneplus and xaiomi who don't clamp down on unauthorized resellers.

<comment><USER35> That's a fair point, but the only reason this kind of thing happened is because they purchased their phone via Google from their Google Account, and the consequence, their account being disabled, is really out of proportion with the act of selling the phone to a reseller. I think it would be more fair for Google to limit the ability to purchase products in the future for people known to have done this, but significantly unfair/burdensome to disable their account as their account potentially has their entire life on it. It would be akin to the power company deciding something you did was "bad" and turning off your power, or your landlord kicking you out because of something "bad" they didn't like, regardless of your "bad" action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Great that they did so, but as others are pointing out, with this snafu Google has pointed out a major flaw with having all your eggs in one basket with a company that lacks Chinese Walls between their subsidiaries. As it is unlikely that there will be any regulatory changes, the prudent course of action is to spread your eggs around.

</comment><comment><USER37> It is terrible that you can't get any help from a human unless you make a big stink and are lucky enough to get press coverage about your issue. PLEASE, please let us pay you money so that we can talk to a human when the products that we depend on, and our businesses depend on, become inaccessible to us.

</comment><comment><USER38> If it was not publicised that much, the accounts would remain suspended.

Many who use AdSense get their accounts suspended and have almost no chance to figure out what happened and overrule the suspension. When their domain gets blacklisted due to a suspension, they can never use AdSense again.

</comment><comment><USER39> Can someone explain the scheme to me? I don't quite understand it. I buy a phone from Google, then ship it to NH, they sell it in NH and I make a profit? How? How could it possibly be enough to make it worth it?

</comment><comment><USER40> Years ago, when Google+ was first launched, you had to enter your birth date to create a Google+ profile. But my friends and I were under 13 at the time, and a few friends had their accounts disabled due to their age. There was a minor fuss about this online, including from people who had accidentally clicked the wrong birth date. (Though they did re-enable accounts if you sent them ID or made a $0.05 credit card purchase.)

As for me, though, I was terrified at the thought that my account could have been disabled, had I entered my actual birth date. Even back then, I had a fair amount of data stored on my Google account. The incident was enough to get me to start downloading data from Google Takeout once in a while.

It's been a while since my last backup, though. I hope this incident serves as a wake-up call to both me and everybody who "owns" a Google account. I also wish that Google would allow at least some disabled accounts to download their data from Takeout: that would make me feel just a little bit safer.

</comment><comment><USER41> Imagine Google/Apple/Microsoft or any such big business controlling your home appliances via their IoT enabled devices. They can literally kill you by disabling these devices (e.g. room heaters, refrigerators etc) in the time of need. Be warned, say no to "IoT by big corps". I hope, enough people get educated about the dangers posed by this.

</comment><comment><USER42> This should be a massive wake-up call for anyone using Gmail (i.e. 99% of those who come to HN), and at the very least we should diversify away from using purely Google products, i.e. consider Outlook for business/banking- related emails.

There's no point in trusting them after they did this once, even if they may have reversed it. The fact is they _did it once_.

</comment><comment><USER43> I guess I never really "trusted" Google as much as I trust most (rich and leading) nation states to handle my identity trustfully, providing a suitable mechanism (this is often quite expensive) for dealing with clerical or automatic mistakes in a mostly decent way, etc.

I've been a Gmail user since 2004 and have since (like everyone else, more or less) tied my online life around it. I don't care that much for backups (honestly, I don't store that much super memorable data in the google cloud - I have a separate, offline backup system for that stuff.)

What I do care for is the availability of my personal gmail as a fallback authentication mechanism for these hundreds of online services I've signed up for during the past years. I would recommend anyone who uses Chrome and its password manager to use the recipe at [https://github.com/megmage/chrome- export-passwords](https://github.com/megmage/chrome-export-passwords) to get a list of sites and corresponding passwords. I just printed mine out (all eleven pages). Don't bother storing it on a local drive - it's just another fat target to be stolen.

Up next is going through all those services to see which is critical or non- critical, and how I can get into them if I no longer have access to my primary gmail address. Facebook is probably a big one for most people. (Annoyingly - <USER2> tried to add my mobile phone number to FB recently, but at a first attempt I couldn't get it to just be a rescue number, rather than a rescue + spam messages via sms number.)

Some services allow multiple email addresses - for that I guess something like Microsoft's free outlook.com service could be suitable.

I'm also considering removing my credit card details from my Google Account. Seems like you're much more likely to be a target of their automated policing if there's actual money involved. (If they don't want stuff like this to happen, maybe they should invest a little more in that dirty annoying customer management area.)

</comment><comment><USER44> A lot of people in the comments recommend getting a personal domain, but doesn't that just move the single point of failure to the registrar? For example, quoting NameCheap's TOS: "In the event of termination [..], You agree [..] that Namecheap may take control of any domain name associated with the terminated Services." ([https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal- tos.aspx](https://www.namecheap.com/legal/universal/universal-tos.aspx))

A single company can still wipe your online identity. Is there any solution for that? Maybe getting a domain directly from ICANN somehow?

<comment><USER45> Just use joker.com or other registrars with sane terms of service. Namecheap (together with GoDaddy et al.) is really close to the bottom of the barrel, and should not be used as a representative example of what good registrar should look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can someone explain what happened to google. I mean, it was once a company so many of us looked up to and now little by little its becoming the "evil" in their own mantra "don't be evil".

<comment><USER47> Time and growth.

Pretty much every company in the world makes choices, little by little. Some set of people pretty much always disagree with those choices. If you make enough choices in a enough of a period of time, over a wide enough area, congratulations, you've now annoyed a lot of people :)

(IE even if Google was to do literally everything that hacker news people want, in the optimal order and way, it would just be some other forum where people are complaining.).

As companies become larger in scope, the number of choices they make, and the likelihood those choices will upset _distinct_ groups of people, grows.

Sadly, pretty much the only thing you can really change is how long the cycle really is.

IE even if you make PR-optimal (for lack of a better term, i mean the choices that upset the smallest set of people) choices, you'll probably just upset 3-5% of people instead of 10-15%. So you get 15 or 20 years instead of 5.

At some point, people become upset enough, go to the next thing, and the cycle repeats.

You can see this happen in pretty much any group of people, not just companies. Companies are just larger so the timescale is smaller.

All of this is also compounded by the fact that larger companies deal with positive and negative PR campaigns for and against them, which helps change opinion faster one way or the other.

People love to blame shareholders, governments, or whatever, but truthfully, that is just about them disagreeing with the decisions. Look at it from the other perspective - if you did the opposite thing, now those currently-happy people would just be the people who are annoyed. It doesn't change anything, just swaps the set of people. Maybe that set is smaller, but again, that just changes the timeframe.

It's pretty much impossible to be universally loved and large, for any serious length of time, unless you aren't doing anything (again, applies to more than just companies)

<comment><USER48> Oh give me a break. This isn't some inevitable outcome of physics. They purposefully chose growth at the expense of customer support because it enabled them to accomplish more things that they wanted to do. They looked at the nearly infinite margin of their developed product and figured, hey, even if they lose 5% of that due to shitty customer support, 5% approaching infinity is nothing. And they moved on.

Google chose this route because it was the easiest route to take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've got to say, Google is one of my favourite companies, but when things like this happen it makes me question if we should allow a single corporation to have this much control over our lives.

</comment><comment><USER50> I see a lot of comments suggesting FastMail and other email service providers with custom domains. Can someone explain how FastMail differs from Microsoft Office 365 Plans like Business Premium which allows custom domains and exchange because to me Microsoft seems to be the better option with Office suite and OneDrive storage. I'm skeptical thinking whether Microsoft could also ban a paid user's account like this without any prior warning or export option.

</comment><comment><USER51> "Google may be within its right to take an action — perhaps ban violators from buying more phones or ask them to export their data and move to another provider — but it shouldn't have the right to completely shut off someone's digital life instantly, with no warning."

While I don't disagree with the authors position here, if TC want to be seen as a source of quality journalism they really should ensure their "journalists" keep their personal opinions to themselves.

<comment><USER52> look at 1 for a more thorough analsis

crowd-sourced inventory acquisition program using the consumer Google site. It instructed people to buy phones from the Project Fi site and list the dealer's NH address as their "home address" so phones would be shipped directly to the dealer. The buyers were then paid enough to make a profit on the transaction (probably helped by the fact that NH has no sales tax), and the New Hampshire dealer would later resell the phone at a markup

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/11/google-bans-users- inv...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/11/google-bans-users-involved-in- pixel-phone-resale-scheme-later-relents/)

<comment><USER51> your point being?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is why you should not use Google free services for anything important. Google could turn them off tomorrow. You have no contractual guarantee against that.

Do mail through IMAP. All your devices can sync to a IMAP server. The IMAP server built into Android isn't bad at all. Use Thunderbird on desktops and laptops. Most ISPs offer free IMAP. Or you can get your own domain and use IMAP from a server on it. No ads, too.

<comment><USER53> Search is fairly important and competition just isn't as good.

<comment><USER19> IMAP has search. Tap the magnifying glass icon on the Android client.

<comment><USER53> I was unclear and was referring to web search sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Whether is it password or privacy or news bubble the general population is down with 'Fatigue' that hn-geeks advice. They just are overburdened. [https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2016/10/security- fatig...](https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2016/10/security-fatigue-can- cause-computer-users-feel-hopeless-and-act-recklessly)

</comment><comment><USER54> > The violation, in a nutshell, involved consumers who bought their phones > from Google's Project Fi mobile operator, then shipped them to a reseller in > New Hampshire, a state with no sales tax.

That looks a lot like Google's own tax minimization/avoidance policy, except they do it on a worldwide basis.

</comment><comment><USER55> For anyone who uses email a lot (most tech people do) it is a bad bad idea to let Gmail keep all those emails for you. I have Google Apps account with periodic archives setup to DRopbox. If google bans me I have to only change the mx addreses and move to something else.

<comment><USER56> Very true, but imagine the amount of services you wouldn't be able to get into (Facebook, Twitter, Github, etc)

<comment><USER57> He won't lose any service just by changing his MX record. (Or, at least, won't lose any after the DNS cache everywhere clears.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I don't like this; their general MO has always been google giveth, and google can take it away. Introducing inconsistency can only lead to more people trying to disagree post-facto with google, and eventual lawsuits

</comment><comment><USER59> All of your data from the smart phone service, however, is still going to be available for government surveillance purposes. This makes me unlikely to buy this product - from a reseller or not.

</comment><comment><USER60> You know what's ridiculous? Google's EMEA HQ is in Ireland, yet they're not selling them here. Instead, we have to pretend we're in the UK or order though a reseller.

</comment><comment><USER61> It's things like this I wish there was an open source, self hosted gmail clone that's approximately as good as the real thing.

</comment><comment><USER62> This really made me realize how much I need to find a way to backup stuff and move away from Google free products if I need to.

</comment><comment><USER63> Holy smokes, google was wiping Gmail accounts?

I'm glad they reversed their decision, but damn, it's time to move off Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER64> One of my projects for this weekend is to move off GMail for my main email address. It's too much of a risk.

</comment><comment><USER65> What kind of authorisation is needed for someone at Google to close a user's account?

<comment><USER66> You are making the mistake of assuming any human intervention is required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> They probably saw a spike in searches like "How to migrate from Gmail"

</comment><comment><USER68> Whith stunts like that, Google risks to be regulated heavily. If they continue to pull stuff like that again, I really wish them the regulators on the front porch by now.

</comment><comment><USER69> This is silly. I will never buy anything from Google.

</comment><comment><USER52> BTW, Google did not _ban_ them from life using gmail; the people who lost the accounts may OPEN new accounts?</comment>


Show HN: Random Password Generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ankitpati/rpg <comment><AUTHOR> A command-line password generator that sources entropy from /dev/urandom (configurable in the source to /dev/random), generates printable ASCII passwords without whitespace, and preserves entropy with a guarantee to waste no more than 63 bits of entropy in a single invocation on most modern machines.

</comment><comment><USER2> How does this compare to say pwgen?

<comment><AUTHOR> pwgen

1\. Focuses on memorable passwords, and restricts itself to fewer ASCII characters than rpg.

2\. Makes no attempt to preserve entropy; waste of entropy is potentially unbounded. This is a performance concern when reading from /dev/random, and a security concern when reading from /dev/urandom.

3\. Has large source code spread across multiple files. Good for reusability of components, not so good for auditability and security.

4\. Requires Perl and sed.

<comment><USER2> 1\. That's what the `-s|--secure` flag is for

3\. Is 1000 lines in 6 files really "large"?

4\. On Debian at least, it just requires Libc.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Sorry, didn't know about that. Just took a cursory glance through the source code.

3\. 126 lines in 1 file is still an order of magnitude smaller.

4\. The source has a Perl and a sed script, although they are not used in the password generation.

(2) is still a concern, especially on servers and embedded computers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trump Will Advance the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines by Exec. Order - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/893514/trump-will-advance-the-dakota-access-and-keystone-xl-pipelines-by-executive-order/ <comment><USER2> No one should be the least surprised.</comment>


X Prize to offer millions for Gulf oil cleanup solution - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jM1ZJVeQFjwXqgOBNxuQRm3yzl8w

<comment><USER2> The only problem with this is that the optimal solution is a quick and immediate clean up -- any technology or a solution developed now will arrive too late to prevent the likely massive death of ocean life and ensuing repercussions through the food chain.

Sadly, the only way I see this being useful is if someone has a magic solution they've been sitting on and just not using.

Though I'm cynical enough to think that maybe BP will say "oh look, money" and clean it up and collect the prize.

<comment><USER3> Well I'm not optimistic enough to think that this will be the last oil spoil to ever occur, so even though it may not help with this spill hopefully it would be useful in the future.

BP wouldn't be collecting the prize for money either considering the small fraction of the cost that the prize would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about recovery equipment and techniques engineered, fabricated, and tested _before_ a BOP fails at great depth? (Not _while 50,000 barrels a day_ are spewing into the ocean.)

I say make all petroleum companies pony up some serious cash and form an independent company to research and develop these techniques and maintain the equipment to be ready for such a future event.

</comment><comment><USER5> X Prize is holding a press conference tomorrow to announce the prize:

[http://www.xprize.org/media-center/press-release/x-prize- fou...](http://www.xprize.org/media-center/press-release/x-prize-foundation- to-announce-multi-million-dollar-incentive-competition)

There will be a live webcast at 1pm EDT:

<http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=71238>

</comment><comment><USER6> Simple, get Venter to create microbes that eat oil and dispersant and reproduce for exactly 16 generations.

(The "simple" is sarcastic for two reasons, one of which being the incredible danger of radically altering the ecosystem.)

<comment><USER7> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554351> ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-27/oil-from-bp- spill-i...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-27/oil-from-bp-spill-is- biodegrading-quickly-in-gulf-of-mexico-agency-says.html)):

" _Oil from BP Plc's record spill in the Gulf of Mexico is biodegrading quickly ... the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Oil has been dissipating since BP stopped the flow from its Macondo well off the coast of Louisiana on July 15, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco told reporters yesterday on a conference call. Crude that's dispersed into the sea is being gobbled up by bacteria, she said._"

Oil is to many people's surprise a natural substance and plenty of it naturally leaks into bodies of water like the Gulf so there's a lot of bacteria already evolved to feast on it.

Now this is not entirely good while it's happening since e.g. they consume oxygen to do it, but I gather that fish are smart enough to swim away from low oxygen concentrations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a great idea; this is exactly the type of incentive needed to promote cleanup of the spill.</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my weekend project: Fridgelist (using localStorage) - <AUTHOR> http://lvl-1.net/fridgelist/

<comment><USER2> Cool project i like it a lot...i always make 3 columns on a legal pad so this is perfect! Definitely would love to save the completed lists - for V2 it would be very cool to have them pulled up from a calendar format so you could see what you TODO list looked like at the end of each day

<comment><AUTHOR> great idea! Storing which task were completed on which days, etc. Maybe an option to display a month's summary of completed tasks, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> that's actually pretty cool. How about an option to also store it in the "cloud" somewhere so that one can retrieve the fridgelist from another location?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

Yes. that's definitely something I want to do. I was thinking about facebook/twitter login and then save your data in DB.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Uses html5, css3, @font-face, localStorage and more...</comment>


How to Write a Video Player in Less Than 1000 Lines (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://dranger.com/ffmpeg/ffmpeg.html <comment><USER2> "How to write a json parser in 2 lines of Python"

        import json
        json.loads('{"That": "was easy"}')

(To be fair, knowing ffmpeg exists doesn't mean I'd be able to easily write a video player with it without a lot of research. For that reason I find this tutorial is still quite interesting and valuable.)

<comment><USER3> For those who are curious how much of a video player can actually be implemented in 1k lines when _including_ a decoder and using existing libraries/OS for nothing more than showing a framebuffer --- I've tried writing toy decoders (no optimisations, pure C, decoding only) for H.261, MPEG-1, and H.262 (MPEG-2). Their line counts are, respectively, 740, 1083, 1461. The MPEG-2 decoder can also decode MPEG-1 since the latter is really an extension of the former. The simplest renderer, using Win32 GDI, is <100 lines. The line counts above are not "code-golfed", although I do tend to write very terse code (avoiding unnecessary abstraction etc.), but also includes things like comments and commented-out debugging code.

That seems to imply that, in 1kLoC of C, you should be able to write a complete video player for MPEG-1, and not much more beyond that. If you're even the slightest bit interested in video compression, I'd recommend giving it a try starting with '261 --- it's not as difficult as it sounds at first glance, and the results are very visible.

(When I have the time, I plan to continue this exercise with H.263, MPEG-4 ASP, and then H.264.)

<comment><USER4> That's awesome. But isn't H.264 like, 20 times more complicated than H.262? Or maybe not, I just think I remember looking at some big manual, not sure if it was actually H.264. But it seemed super complex. Maybe not as difficult for people who are really good at math.

<comment><USER3> H.264's complexity increase mainly comes from the large number of prediction modes and macroblock types, which are essentially attempts to encode more efficiently the differences between successive frames.

The maths has actually gotten _simpler_ ; the predecessors are all traditional DCT-based (JPEG-like) codecs while H.264 uses a simple integer approximation. Regardless, from a decoder implementation perspective, the theory behind it all is not that important; the spec tells you exactly what you need to do, and the increase in complexity is mainly reflected in needing to write more code to handle the larger number of cases.

H.261 is simple because it has a choice of only two resolutions, one framerate, two frame types (I and P), and 10 macroblock types.

H.262/MPEG-2 is already a significant increase in complexity since it supports a varying set of resolutions, framerates, interlacing, and chroma subsampling, has 3 frame types (I, P, B), 20 macroblock types (dependent on frame type), and more complex motion compensation.

H.263 has no interlacing but adds optional intra prediction, more advanced motion vector encoding, and a few other features.

H.264 has about 50 macroblock types, even more complex intra prediction, and motion compensation has a larger choice of which frames to predict from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shameless plug: here's an MPEG1 player in 400 lines and the decoder in 4000: [https://github.com/phoboslab/pl_mpeg](https://github.com/phoboslab/pl_mpeg)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a perfectly fine and useful tutorial by my standards.

For the naysayers out there, a better title would be "Writing a Video Player in Less Than 1000 Lines of C using FFmpeg and SDL"

<comment><USER4> If that were the title then I would not have complained about the title. Like I said, it is a cool article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > ffmpeg takes care of all the hard work of video processing by doing all the > decoding, encoding, muxing and demuxing for you.

Seems like a pretty good hint that you are not actually writing a video player in less than 1000 lines.

I mean it's a cool article, but the presentation is misleading and taking credit for something that it is not. And some people who aren't in programming actually see titles like that and think that this type of thing is literally 'easy to program'. Another example is when people say they quickly 'built their own browser'.

<comment><USER7> Acclaimed video software like VLC also uses FFmpeg/libavcodec to do the encoding/decoding etc, and I don't think anyone is claiming those developers are 'cheating'.

<comment><USER8> They're also not claiming they're writing everything themselves, and certainly not in X lines of code...

<comment><USER7> You seem to have a problem with the _X lines of code..._ part.

I guess I can see how it might be seen as boastful or showboating, but to me it signals "This might be a fun coding project for a single afternoon."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ffmpeg is awesome. However, there are some issues that all ffmpeg-based players share that I wish someone would tackle (either by fixing ffmpeg or making something new). Seeking performance and reliability (especially single frame seeking) is a big one. Robustness in the face of truncated or otherwise corrupted video files is another. Ffmpeg isn't terrible in these areas, and I realize that there are underlying issues that make these things very hard, but still I believe it is possible to do much better.

<comment><USER10> Yep. It's a lot of work creating a non-stuttering, fast-seeking player using ffmpeg/libav. For high resolution / high bitrate streams ffmpeg doesn't issue frames smoothely in itself (I-frames takes longer) so I had to create a whole caching structure and issue the frames from a different thread to get it to play smoothely in my application...

On the other hand there are so many edge cases around codecs and assumptions around what is and is not coming so I think that if a different API was created there would likely be a lot of cases where it would break? Something like the NDI API would be great, it is really quick to integrate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This should maybe be a little more specific with its title. Maybe include 'with FFMPEG'. Because I can easily write a video player in ten lines or so:

<html>

       <head>
          <title>Basic video player</title>
       </head>
       <body>
          <video width = "5122" height = "51" controls>
             <source src = "video.mp4" type = "video/mp4">
          </video>
       </body>

</html>

<comment><USER4> I think its actually mainly just the HN submission actually now that I look at the article again, I see that his first part of the title is "SDL and ffmpeg tutorial".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Title is a bit misleading. Should say "How to write a video player using ffmpeg in less than 1000 lines".

Otherwise it can be interpreted that in those 1k lines is included the heavy workload that ffmpeg arguably does it in more then 10k lines.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sadly, the code in this tutorial doesn't work anymore due to upstream changes in FFmpeg. There are quite a few attempts at keeping Dranger's tutorial up to date, but I found the repo below to be one of the better ones.

[https://github.com/rambodrahmani/ffmpeg-video- player](https://github.com/rambodrahmani/ffmpeg-video-player)

</comment><comment><USER14> A lot of folks don't know that ffmpeg isn't just a command line utility (which is pretty powerful in its own right) but also a set of _super_ powerful and reasonably well designed media libraries that can be used to do all kinds of stuff with media. I remember finding this tutorial years ago and it opened up a whole range of possibilities eventually leading to my startup Vidmaker[0] which, while not successful itself, got my cofounders and I acquihired into YouTube. Thank you, dranger, whoever you are.

[0] [https://www.vidmaker.com/](https://www.vidmaker.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Wildly off topic, but I ended up on his and Isaac Hoffer's 'Top 100 albums of 2004-05' [0], and wow I'd forgotten how many amazing albums came out in that short span! Wonderful commentary too.

Then I did the math and I guess now I'm an old guy that listens to... classic rock?

Back on topic: For anyone using ffmpeg/libav this tutorial might as well be the official documentation. Absolutely indispensable in my opinion.

[0] [http://www.dranger.com/top100/index.html](http://www.dranger.com/top100/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Discussed in 2016, with almost an identical top comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232616](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232616)

(current top comment here is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435669))

</comment><comment><USER17> The FFmpeg project is amazing but a constantly moving target. This was very popular around 2015 but is now broken because the API changed. If you want to try that code you must download an older version of FFmpeg.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love this guide! I used (an earlier version of) this to write a multimedia- based game in C++ before any of the free game engines had HD video playback support.

</comment><comment><USER19> What does the "ff" in ffmpeg, ffplay, ffserver, ffprobe, etc. stand for?

<comment><USER20> FreeFrame ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> (2015)</comment>


PyCon 2010 Talks - <AUTHOR> http://pycon.blip.tv/search?q=pycon+2010 Most of them are here <comment><USER2> Did I miss seeing it listed or is the Unladen Swallow talk not up yet?

<comment><USER3> The unladen swallow talk is up: <http://pycon.blip.tv/file/3261170/></comment></comment>


[video] Is this what Light Table is trying to be? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BjkJ1D55-4&feature=youtu.be&t=2m1s

<comment><USER2> If you have given this any thought instead of blindly trying to find any information to mock Light Table, you would recognize the shallowness of your own question. That is just one of many features of both of these tools, which by the way have very different purposes.</comment>


How to make Deep Learning models 100,000x more efficient - <AUTHOR> I've built an AI that generates AGI
https://sunpickai.carrd.co <comment><USER2> Flagged, but for others reading this: don't visit the URI, it attempts to use the camera and looks like spam.</comment>


I want to pay for TextMate 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2011/09/27/textmate-2-free-upgrade <comment><USER2> I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality.

I totally get paying when you don't have to in order to support fellow developers. I've got a nice collection of apps on my phone and desktop, all purchased, that I've acquired over the years to support my friends' development efforts. So if Marco wants to help out Macromates, that's fine. More power to him.

But I don't understand this mantra of, "We'll forgive you; just charge everyone." Let's ignore entirely whether that's a contract violation and just focus on whether it's fair.

Zoom back several years to the era Marco's talking about. TextMate 1.0 ships. It's a nice editor--really nice, actually--but it has a lot of rough edges to it. But, Allen promises, buy now anyway; upgrades through version 2.0 are completely free. So a lot of people, including me, slapped down money to buy version 1.0 on this promise. (And in my case, also to support an upstart dev who was daring to take down the 800-pound gorilla of Mac text editors, Bare Bones' BBEdit.)

But that promise never materialized. TextMate got a lot of improvements initially, but there's now a relatively large collection of third-party plugins you need just to achieve parity with the now-native versions of Vim and Emacs that can be had for free.

And in exchange for not shipping anything for literally _years_ , you want to _reward_ him by _paying him more_?

What am I missing here?

<comment><USER3>
      > I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality.

Like, say, tipping at a nice restaurant.

You may not like the food, but it seems others did, and they want to demonstrate that to the chef.

<comment><USER2> As I said: I can understand _Marco_ wanting to pay. I didn't like my meal, Marco did, and he should feel free to give a great tip.

I'm focused on the people who are saying that Macromates should charge users for the upgrade they said would be free. This would be equivalent to someone saying that, because _they_ enjoyed _their_ meal at the restaurant, the restaurant should charge a mandatory 25% tip to all current patrons of the restaurant. That's a very different situation.

<comment><USER3> I think you're right that _everyone_ shouldn't be charged because Marco and others think the product is worth it. Some bought it on the promise of a free upgrade.

An upgrade to version 2 wasn't part of the "value" I attributed to TM when I bought it years ago, so were it not free, I'd seriously consider buying anyway (even though I do little coding nowadays, and am impressed with SublimeText2).

So, count me as mixed on the whole thing. I wouldn't balk at a nominal upgrade fee, and don't begrudge those who want to pay more, but sympathize with those who bought on the promise of an upgrade years ago.

<comment><USER4> I never would have bought TM1 w/o the promise of TM2.

Even with that, I kind of regret buying it. For how I used it, it was a decent text editor that allowed me to experience the spinning beach ball of death at least 10 times a day.

<comment><USER5> I thought the free upgrades forever deal for Minecraft was great. I only rarely get to game and if I had to upgrade every six months to play with everyone else it'd be prohibitive.

It's a big obligation that the maker of Textmate and Notch of Minecraft took on but founders do sillier things (look at the deals VCs cut) for funding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Contrast the TextMate situation to that of Sublime Text. Jon Skinner has done an amazing job of shipping something compelling early, updating it often, developing out in the open and giving his customers a good reason to buy the product even though _it's still in beta_.

Allan Odgaard has made promises as to the quality and ship date of his product, and that's about it (to be fair, there have been 1.x updates). At this point the promise of a free upgrade combined with the boatloads of cash TM1 made are almost certainly what put future product development on perpetual hold. Far from just avoiding that promise, he should have avoided talking about future versions _at all_.

For me the choice is pretty clear. I finally deleted TM from ~/Applications a few weeks ago and haven't really looked back. Sublime Text 2 isn't perfect, but it is already very close to being everything I need for my day to day development and general editing tasks. Even though it isn't stable, I use it nearly every day, and it just keeps getting better.

<comment><USER7> TextMate 2 seems to be limping over the finish line while Sublime Text 2 is already getting in to its stride for the next race.

I think Sublime deserves to take the crown, but a little more polish specific to the Mac version (behaviours, icon) wouldn't hurt.

<comment><USER8> I think Mac version gets a ton of attention :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Given the value that we get out of TextMate, it's already grossly underpriced. Please let us give you more money"

The value for you isn't probably the same for all the customers.

Some people make millions from the work of the Apache Foundation for example but others use their web server to run little websites. Some would probably pay tons of money for it, others won't.

I am not saying that a upgrade fee for TextMate 2 will not be fair, but that is solely at the author's discretion.

<comment><USER10> "The value for you isn't probably the same for all the customers" Definitely right on. If this person is so set on paying for this product the creators of TM should just have a donate option. Then he can pay all he wants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> TextMate 2 is the _perfect_ , yet heartbreaking example of Brook's Second- system effect. It's painful seeing an otherwise successful developer get so completely sucked into it.

<comment><USER12> Except we haven't even seen TM2 yet. It could be a more svelte, nematodeine, feature-less slice of software. Just because it's taken half an eon for even the beta announcement to come to fruition doesn't mean it's a bloat-ware type scenario. At least I hope it isn't.

<comment><USER4> Sadly it isn't even a beta announcement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe he should use the "pay what you want" pricing concept for upgrades. Anyone who wants his free upgrade can't complain. But he'll end up getting paid some, too.

<comment><USER14> This seems like a good idea to me. Just have part of the upgrade process be a text box that says something like: "Please enter how much you would like to pay for the upgrade. As promised, this upgrade is free if you want it to be, but if you think Textmate is worth it, please consider paying an appropriate amount."

That way people who can't afford it or otherwise feel entitled to the free upgrade can get it free, and all the moderately wealthy developers who use Textmate every day and can afford it can be guilted into supporting development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The assumption here is that TM2 is better than TM1. Lets see if that holds.

<comment><USER16> +1.

<comment><USER17> Please add your +1 by hitting the up arrow next to the comment.

<comment><USER4> Now that we don't see comment scores, that isn't effective for publicly voicing agreement.

<comment><USER18> Votes do influence the ranking. And is "publicly voicing agreement" really more important than a usable comment page?

<comment><USER4> Put the two together and its a decent argument for bring back displaying up votes on comments.

Influence isn't the same as that is for an entire conversation thread. What if an initial comment gets very few up votes but a response to it gets tons? they aren't ranked independently of one another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Simple solution: Optional payment. Keep the promise of a free upgrade, but add the option to pay anyways if someone really likes it (if the current TextMate is any indication, many will).

I wish all software was sold like this: You get the full version for free, no restrictions, no nagging (perhaps a reminder once a month). If you really like it, you get the option to (easily, avoiding PayPal) pay for it. Heck, you might even let people choose the price.

Of course this would work only for software that makes people think: "Hey, someone really spent a lot of effort into making just the right tool for the job". Microsoft Office might not benefit from this method of "voting with your money" - but then that would probably be a good thing too.

</comment><comment><USER20> A simple solution to this problem - for existing users, allow them to choose their own price for the upgrade. Some people feel like they deserve a free version (maybe they just bought Textmate recently), while others have been using it for years and feel like Allen deserves to be paid for version 2.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just bought it because I expected the free upgrade, and was patiently waiting. I don't plan on paying for it again.

<comment><USER22> Not be a jerk, but if you didn't plan on using Textmate in the mean time, why didn't you wait for 2.0 to come out before buying it?

<comment><USER21> Don't get me wrong...I'm using it, and I like it. I just don't feel I should have to buy the same product twice.

<comment><USER23> It's not the same product. It just has the same name.

I'm not saying your deal with Odgaard shouldn't bind.

I'm just saying, if Odgaard from the beginning had said "Textmate 2 will cost $60 and there will be no paid upgrades", that too would be a perfectly fair pricing strategy.

What Marco is hung up on is how underpriced Textmate is relative to the value it provides (unfortunately, it's a text editor for programmers; the price points it competes with create dynamics similar to those of trying to sell ice to Inuits).

I preemptively agree with you that Marco's observation about Textmate's pricing shouldn't bind on you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> While we wait for TM2, you can supercharge/augment TextMate 1's full-project search capabilities with ackmate. It's an indispensible tool for me:

<https://github.com/protocool/ackmate>

<comment><USER25> I installed this yesterday, and it's fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I absolutely agree. TextMate is still my favorite editor. I switched to it from vim in 2007 and have occasionally looked back and around at other editors, but always return to TM.

Everyone on my team also uses TextMate all day, every day. We'd be happy to pay for TextMate 2.

<comment><USER27> As someone who's actually making an analogous opposite switch (learning vim rather than using Sublime), I'd love to hear your reasons for preferring Textmate over vim (I haven't used Textmate myself).

<comment><USER26> For me, it's the ease of use, the HTML bundle's shortcuts for quickly slicing through markup, the automatic recognition of languages embedded within languages (JavaScript bundle and syntax highlighting automatically activated when the cursor is in JS code inside HTML). The easy macro recording doesn't hurt either.

AckMate solved the only real issue I had with TextMate, so I'm a pretty happy coder with it now.

<comment><USER28> yeah, textmate's nested language support is one of the top two features i really wish vim could steal from other editors (the other is lisp scripting from emacs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Giving TM2 as a free upgrade probably does make a lot of sense to the developers. Textmate is hugely popular, and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets more than enough to finance what he wants to do off of its sales. And by making it free he makes sure that no one has a reason to use TM1 anymore, keeping his userbase unified and easier to handle.

It's also worth mentioning that licences from one discount bundle (MacHeist) will require an upgrade fee, a smart distinction to make.

Buttt, this is a case where he is severely undervaluing his software, which isn't helping in a market where software is already too cheap. The developers are doing less harm to themselves then they are the Mac software community.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have tried using a lot of other text editors over the past year or so—trying to find a viable replacement for TextMate. Each time someone in HN mentions Sublime or MacVim or new hotness text editor X, I give it a shot, use it for a couple of days to see if it sticks. I even tried going back to BBEdit—the editor I used for years and years before TextMate. To me, nothing compares. I'm not sure exactly what it is about it, but it just feels right to me. I even use only maybe 2% of what it's capable of. Still, there's something 'correct' about it.

In fact, I often think to myself, "Self, if TextMate 2 never came to be and you 'had' to use your current dusty version for the rest of your life, you'd be a.o.k. fine and dandy. Maybe by the time you stopped using a computer (and therefore TextMate 1.x), you'd have learned to type a little faster and maybe learned to use another 2% of the available features. Maybe, if TextMate 2 came out, you'd still prefer what you're using now." I totally agree with myself, then move along—happily coding away for yet another day in TextMate current.

So, when TextMate 2 comes out, I'll download it and give it a shot—just like all the others. If it sticks, and helps me enjoy my work a little bit more, then, just like everything else that does, I'll purchase it so I can keep using it.

The makers of TextMate will decide to do whatever they think is best for them regarding the price & past promises of free software, but I'm with the Marco.org fella in seeing (and paying money in exchange for) value in well crafted tools.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am pretty much a die hard BBEdit user for the past 15 years, but I purchased a copy TextMate years ago. I think it would create a lot of bad will if 2.0 was a forced paid upgraded.

I think TM2 should be free for TM1 buyers via macromates.com, but cost full price via the Apple App Store.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been trying to find some rationality in all this. I think it's crystal clear. The REASON Marco has been using version 1.x since 2006 is because there IS no version 2.0.

It's NOT any of our faults that the upgrade wasn't there 6 months later. That was the developer's fault _. If it had come out 6 months to a year later, the revenue generated by 1.x would have most likely covered his "salary". But that money was obviously spent somewhere else... at his discretion. Now we have people saying, "it's ok, we'll pay again." Sure, I used the software since 2005, but only because for most of that time, there was NOTHING better. In no way is that my fault.

_ I mean absolutely no disrespect to Textmate, its developer or anyone else. As a developer, I understand that rightfully, family, obligations, and more lucrative projects can get in the way of one's pet projects.

</comment><comment><USER32> I switched back to Emacs from TextMate. Never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER33> Speak for yourself. The only reason TM2 is a free upgrade, or even coming out at all is that Sublime Text 2 is eating up the cash cow that was TM1 and soon TM user base will go away unless he does something about it.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is somewhat OT but I've used EditPlus under Windows for almost eight years and have paid $35 twice -- v2 and v3. Same with FileZilla.

When it's worth it, it's worth it. a lot of people feel the same way about TextMate.

<comment><USER35> Hmmm, that's odd because I bought EditPlus 2.3x for 30$, the price was increased in 3.x. Also v3 was free for all paid customers of 2.x. When did you buy 2.x?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm sure the author of the posting could simply donate to the dev via paypal. It's similar to those "rich" people who are demanding to pay higher taxes. That's a nonsense argument because they can donate to the US Treasury just as a dev could donate to the TextMate guy. I am tired of people suggesting to other people how to spend everyone else's money. If you want to pay more -- do it yourself.

For the rest of us, I'll pay what I'm required and donate if I feel so inclined. I'd personally rather donate to the Tiny Wings guy simply because paying $60 for a text editor is fairly steep, if you aren't getting the version 2 update for free. And Tiny Wings has better music. Logic Studio is only $299, compared to a text editor's $60 and Xcode is free. The amount of coding that went into Logic is light years beyond TextMate, but Apple knows that if they charged $1000 for it (a fair price based on feature set, they'd lose more revenue than charging $299.) I'm not a business school guy, but I do know a thing or two about demand elasticity. Try charging $4.99 for an app in the App Store and charge $1.99 -- you'll make more money at $1.99, unless it's some highly niche product; TextMate is far from highly niche. It's ubiquitous.

I have paid for TextMate and have no problems doing so, but I'll be damned if some jackass suggests that we should pay more. That's a business decision to be made by the TextMate dev, not some user who likely has very little experience in selling software to the public. No offense to anyone, but based on the posting, it appears that the author has little understanding of demand curves, not to mention contractual agreements.

</comment><comment><USER37> He should start a donation fund to pay for the development of TextMate2. I'd happily throw a few hundred $$$ into that. I own TextMate 1, so I get the update for free.

Problem for him is, he'd open himself up to litigation if he tried to charge for TextMate 2. However I'm also of the opinion that the lack of release is due to the lack of cash. If he could see money rolling in via "donations" maybe he'd be more capable of paying his bills and continuing to develop his great editor.

</comment><comment><USER38> I can see both sides of the coin. I understand that a lot of people may have bought TextMate because they were told the update to 2.0 would be free (otherwise they may have waited). However, with as big as TextMate is and how a guy with little or no team was able to create it, he can't possibly afford to offer it to free for the thousands of people who bought the original one.

I think it would be perfectly fair to offer a discounted price to those who bought TextMate 1.0 (as opposed to free). That's a pretty fair thing to do IMHO. Many others said it, but if you are shelling out all the big bucks to buy a Mac, spending a few more bucks on an outstanding piece of software. It is a good way to show your support to the developer and make him continue sending out updates.

Just imagine the scenario where he does offer it for free, makes virtually no profit, and then ends up quitting support for TextMate 2 (as in making bug fixes, features, etc) because he can't afford to just live off of doing that. We all lose in that scenario.

I'm a student with lots of debt, but I will buy TextMate 2 full price because it's a good investment. Even if he does offer it for free, it would be a great gesture to buy it anyway or at least open up a donation thing for him.

Can't wait for its release!

</comment><comment><USER39> I'll solve both issues: TextMate Gold. It's a special version for TextMate 1 licensees that decide to pay the extra upgraded prices (or unlicensed users who pay an extra 39 EUR). No extra features, it just adds a gold titlebar (preferences controllable, of course), and puts your name in gold lettering in the about box. People like Marco can feel better about themselves, and no one who bought TextMate 1.x feels screwed over.

</comment><comment><USER3> Several commenters here, and on other threads and across the web have complained about no progress since forever ago. And while the core product may not have changed, bundles and plugins have continued to be created/updated, so it's not like things have been completely stagnant all this time.

Sure, there's angst at a lack of communication, but that doesn't mean the TM community has stagnated the entire time.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think Alan could make money writing a book about the development of TextMate 2.0. I'm curious what happened and what lessons were learned.

</comment><comment><USER41> The problem is that, from an accounting perspective, money that should've been funding TM2 is considered TM1 revenue. So it looks like he is giving away TM2 for free, even though many, including myself, only bought TM1 for TM2. I think Sublime Text is smart for charging for the ST2 beta in order to avoid this problem.

Macromates should've charged new customers for the TM2 beta while he had a chance years ago. I bought TM1 recently. There was no good reason I should've been paying for TM1 in late 2010. I should've been buying and helping to fund TM2 directly, even if it was an alpha release. I don't know what held up TM2 development, but Sublime Text 2 has shown that people are willing to pay for a broken unfinished product if it has potential. Now he has a whole bunch customers, myself included, to unnecessarily grandfather in.

</comment><comment><USER42> I had no idea Textmate 2 would be a free upgrade for Textmate 1 users. I would gladly pay for Textmate 2 as well.

</comment><comment><USER43> "You promised the free update in a different era, probably expecting different circumstances. Things have changed."

True, but not how he means it. Now people expect lifetime free upgrades from smaller software packages. There's no Instapaper 2.0, for instance, and probably never will be.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seriously people just use Sublime Text if you can't figure out Vim (I use both). Author is super responsive, cranks out really awesome features every week, totally someone who is worth throwing money at.

And both of them are cross-platform ie. Linux, Mac, Win, you rule them all.

</comment><comment><USER44> What are all the features that everyone wants? Why all the hype?

I gave up on TM2 a long time ago, but that doesn't mean I switched to another editor; I still use TM1 everyday. However, when I purchased TM1, I was promised TM2 for free, and therefore I'll have it for free.

<comment><USER45> There are quite a few things that textmate does not have but should have to be a full featured text editor. off the top of my head the main ones are: split screen, better printing control, better plugin system, ability for a real lexer/parser/tokenizer to be plugged into the plugin system(I guess you could get around this by writing your scripts in ruby and shelling out but that seems slow.) Regex for syntax highlighting your files breaks very easily. I might be way off base and all these are easily fixed with some plugin but I haven't found the solution to them yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> If TextMate 2 is great software new customers will buy the software. If TextMate does not come out with a new version, other editors like Sublime Text 2 will deprecate TextMate. If MacroMates wants to sell more licenses of TextMate they will need to be competitive with the other more modern editing software. MacroMates should hold to the existing contract that subsequent versions are free to upgrade to for TextMate 1. If they want to change that with TextMate 2 licences, that is fine. If you want to entice MacroMates to develop TextMate 2 with money write them a check and tell them what the money is for or buy a new license when the new version comes out.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wanting to pay more is certainly a valid and generous thing to want to do.

However, it is a bit grating that Marco presumes to speak for all customers of this product by using the word "we". I don't presume to speak for Marco, he should speak for himself only.

</comment><comment><USER48> While I totally appreciate the generosity of Macro, I totally condemn Macro's speaking for the entire buyer community as in "We will not hold you to it" & "Please let us give you more money".

For Allan, money sure is good but reputation is still better.

</comment><comment><USER49> Vim is still free.

<comment><USER50> and is still awesome! I tried textmate for a few weeks and went back to macvim

<comment><USER49> I look forward to the day I can teach my kids to use Vim :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> What I like about the Free software is that if the main author dies or stops working on the project, I can pick up where he left off instead of write blog posts saying we should all give him more money.

</comment><comment><USER52> Back when I pirated TextMate 1 (probably in 2006 or so) I told myself that I'd pay for it when 2.0 came out. I still plan to, though I'll admit that it's been longer than I thought it would be.

</comment><comment><USER53> Blah, blah, blah. I seem to remember all versions free up to but not including version 2. Anyways, aside from it being a little bit better then Notepad++ mostly in UI. It's OK. I personally roll with: Textmate for local dev @ home & vim, Dreamweaver & Notepad++ @ work and Eclipse & gEdit @ school. Personally if I could find an IDE that isn't as heavy as Eclipse that can roll HTML, java, php, css, coldfusion, ruby, bash, javascript and C I'd happily convert from 6 different editors to 1. ... #justSayin

</comment><comment><USER54> Just for interest's sake can anyone point to this 'promise' of a free upgrade to version 2? I bought TM1 and it played no part on my buying decision because I was not not aware of any such guarantee.

If this promise was made then IMHO his best option is to adopt the Firefox/Chrome numbering scheme: stabilise and release whatever he has now as TM2.

He should also change the licensing to free updates for 12 months from date of purchase and continue working on TM3.

<comment><USER55> See for example the "license policy" page [1], where it says, "We do hope to release a free 2.0 upgrade (which will require Leopard) but we provide no guarantees about this, we do not promise what features it may or may not include, we do not have any expected date of release etc."

[1] <http://macromates.com/license_policy>

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> While you were talking, a new update for ST2 has arrived :)

</comment><comment><USER57> I agree. I would gladly pay full price for TextMate 2, even although I paid for it the first time around. Of all the software I've bought over the years, TextMate is the one product that I use every day.

I'd started looking at Sublime Text 2 as a possible replacement, as it's got some really nice features. The TM2 announcement fills me with hope that I may not have to do that... so I'll hang in there a bit longer.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't really own a Mac nor do I use TextMate but over the years, I have heard about its greatness. I am just dying to ask this but why not put an optional paid upgrade? That way, if someone feels like paying for it, you'd know :)

Sublime Text 2 (which is my TextMate :) on Windows) uses something like this - keep using it and pay when you feel like model and I absolutely love it!

</comment><comment><USER59> I find it depressing that some people in the comments here wouldn't want to pay for a _key tool of their trade_ - assuming they work with texts professionally as programmers, bloggers, designers etc. Even 10% increase in productivity will pay for Textmate license in 10 days, assuming you get at least a minimum wage.

<comment><USER60> I don't think it's depressing. I can use emacs (others would give different examples) for free and I can use it in my daily work quite efficiently. So given that reality, I have a hard time paying for an editor, even if it is a key tool of my trade.

<comment><USER59> What I was trying to say is that every tool should be evaluated using 'productivity gain vs cost' framework. It may well be that for some people productivity gains of TextMate vs emacs/vim/other editor are small and therefore paying _any_ price for TextMate is unreasonable, since the alternatives are free.

But in a case where TextMate _does_ yield to substantial productivity gain, "$60 is too much" is a wrong mental model.

<comment><USER61> Couldn't agree more. The fact that so few developers are willing to pay for good tools is why we end up with tools like Eclipse.

<comment><USER62> Do you really claim that existing commercial IDEs are so much better than Eclipse?

<comment><USER4> I use eclipse every day and would never defend it against almost any disparagement.

<comment><USER62> I don't particularly love Eclipse, but I just don't agree that the commercial alternatives are so much better. Which IDE would you recommend yourself?

<comment><USER4> For java development? I don't have a recommendation really. I've tried Intelli-j and I think it is def. better but at least for my workflow at the paying job, eclipse's notion of project works out much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I find it interesting how he feels that software purchased through discount bundles are not proper.

</comment><comment><USER64> He could just do what everyone else is doing: move to the Mac App Store and charge everyone again.

</comment><comment><USER65> When I bought, I remember reading the free upgrades part, but I had thought it was only up "TO" version 2.0 not including 2.0. Somehow I just assume that major upgrades are fair game for upgrade fees.

So...if 2.0 is truly a major upgrade I'm more than willing to pay the $60.

Count me in!

</comment><comment><USER66> If as a current TextMate user I'll have to pay for TextMate 2 I'll just switch to MacVim.

<comment><USER67> If you don't mind me asking, why on earth would you do that?

1\. Your existing copy of TextMate will continue to work just fine 2\. Have you used MacVim recently? Assuming TM2 has a totally painless upgrade path from TM1, you will be spending _weeks_ getting used to vim. Surely, it is cheaper to invest in TM2.

<comment><USER68> _"you will be spending weeks getting used to vim."_

How in the world would that even be possible? Give it a weekend _at most_.

<comment><USER67> Two days just to get used to it. On and off experimentation for the right set of plugins, eventually getting a good vimrc. A very long time before you get proficient.

A hyperbole, no doubt, but vim is way harder to use than TM.

<comment><USER68> I think you mean _"harder to learn"_.

<comment><USER67> Nope! Harder to _use_. It's basically impossible to discover new functionality in vim without reading technical documentation for it, whereas in Textmate I assume (having never used it) that feature is accessible using a mouse.

TM is more _usable_ than vim.

<comment><USER68> 1) "discover new functionality" is a "learn", not a "use".

2) Vim can have menus too if you want them, and a mouse to go with them...

3) I learn new things about vim all the time without reading the documentation. A _massive_ community makes that quite easy.

<comment><USER67> >1) "discover new functionality" is a "learn", not a "use".

I'm talking about application usability. When I say something is hard to "use" I roughly mean "how easy it is to pick up" and "how easy it is to use everyday".

It's a sign of poor application design when you have to learn it instead of merely using it.

After six years of regular vim use I still find myself constantly forgetting key shortcuts and which feature accomplishes what.

A text editor is not conceptually difficult application. It's unlike a cockpit. Case in point, Textmate.

Whatever, it's not worth splitting hairs. _I_ think that not being able to use an app until you thoroughly look at its documentation is a fairly clear cute example of an _unusable_ app.

>2) Vim can have menus too if you want them, and a mouse to go with them...

I know. I use MacVim almost every day of my life. The menus don't even cover everything you can do with a buffer or a split.

>3) I learn new things about vim all the time without reading the documentation. A massive community makes that quite easy.

Reading blogs I think falls under 'documentation'. I don't want to Read Things just to use 10% of a text editor's features.

<comment><USER68> 1) _"It's a sign of poor application design when you have to learn it instead of merely using it."_

No, what this actually is a sign of is disingenuous arguing. I have _conceded_ that vim is harder to learn. What I do not concede is that it is _otherwise_ hard to use. You understand what I am saying, but being purposely difficult.

2) If vim's menus were to cover everything vim can do, _then_ we would have ourselves a usability issue. That menu system would be absurdly deep (which is really just an argument in favor of vim if you think about it critically).

3) Blogs are not " _technical_ documentation", which is what you said. Not to mention that any developer in the world should be able to use compat mode without reading anything. The rest of vim's feature set is large enough that it will require _some_ type of research to uncover, _no matter the presentation_. Textmate can avoid this by having a dramatically smaller feature set.

<comment><USER67> 1) It's just been my experience, when designing and discussing user interfaces, to include "how discoverable" an application is as a factor to how "usable" they are.

A LOT OF FEATURES that experts can use does not necessarily make something usable.

If this falls outside of the purview of what you consider to be satisfactory, that's fine by me.

2) Not really. You'd have a few context menus, and maybe an inspector window might be necessary. Obviously you're not going to represent all of the keyshortcuts but there is no good reason why I can't right click on a split and reorganize it relative to my other buffers. Or select text and hide it using whatever feature "zf" is called. Etc, etc.

Maybe I have an extremely dim of the full, non plugin augmented, vim featureset but… I think it would be possible.

3) Now you're the one splitting hairs. A blog post covering a specific vim key combo… is documentation of a technical sort. C'mon now. Few people are reading that to relax after work.

>The rest of vim's feature set is large enough that it will require some type of research to uncover

I disagree with this. I mean, if you want to compete at vimgolf, of course you need to know the internals inside and out. But there ought to be no reason why I need to memorize five commands off the bat just to split a window. Or set a macro. Or blah blah blah blah.

<comment><USER68> _"Few people are reading that to relax after work."_

The popularity of vim screencasts might suggest otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Understandable perspective from a successful independent app developer.

</comment><comment><USER69> I will be paying for the upgrade. It's a full digit release that's been a kagillion years in the making. I've gotten my $'s worth out of all the 1.X's to date.

</comment><comment><USER70> Being ashamed of buy discounted software is kind of stupid.

<comment><USER59> People may have different motives then you do. It is not stupidity - just one developer appreciating the work of another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Sounds good, long as we are making developer requests.

Hey Marco, I want to pay for a really good kindle sync of instapaper, stop being so iOS focused.

</comment><comment><USER72> There seems to be a lot of bickering along the lines of "business is business, and he should keep his promise of business"... Which doesn't quite make sense to me. If I were him, I'd charge all yall $80, but up it to $90 if you sent me an email about free upgrades. Buy it, or don't buy it. You love the product. you ponied up for a mac. I suspect somehow I'd sell enough to not be able to give a rats ass what you think. That's business my friends.

<comment><USER73> That is an... interesting approach.

I, for one, who would gladly pay for TM2 separately had I not _already purchased a license for it_ , would not appreciate that kind of attitude and make sure never to do business with Macromates again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Just present an optional payment screen, maybe a _pay as much as you want_ scheme, to those who are upgrading.

2\. Get rich

</comment><comment><USER75> Tell Alan to put a donation badge on the site. Problem SOLVED !!!

</comment><comment><USER76> TextMate 2.0 will be free. Maybe TextMate 2.0.1 will cost $79. Maybe if enough people support TextMate 2.0 by paying for it, the rest of the freeloaders will get 2.0.1 for free, as well.

</comment><comment><USER77> What would people like to see in TM2? I'll start:

\- window splits \- better inline search (i.e., from hitting /), so that the find/replace window isn't covering up the editor window

</comment><comment><USER78> <snarky>Those jerks at Microsoft who have the nerve to charge for things at every major release...</snarky>

<comment><USER79> Well, XP to XP SP 2 was practically a major release, and that was free as they promised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> its should be a paid upgrade... its taken too much time to be a freebee ..

</comment><comment><USER81> It's strange how so many people are waiting for a number.

As far as I can tell, there have been almost no feature promises, so the TM developer would be perfectly within his rights to add the 1 or 2 promised features, bump the version to 2, and fulfil his contractual obligations.

<comment><USER82> Maybe Allan should skip version 2 completely and just release the new one as TextMate 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Oh la la, look at this guy, he has money!

</comment><comment><USER84> Me too.

<comment><USER84> How can the support for Textmate, expressing my will to pay - be worth a downvote.

I understand the urge to keep this place noise free, but people committing in public to pay for a new version - and I've also bought Textmate a long time ago - is probably of more information value for many people here - with their own projects - then many other upvoted comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> WE WANT TEXTMATE FOR WINDOWS ABSOLUTELY

</comment><comment><USER68> Paying for a _text editor_. Boggles the mind.

<comment><USER86> I've never used it; is it really /just/ a text editor?

Edit: to clarify, my use of "just" wasn't meant to be dismissive or diminutive in any way...

<comment><USER87> Given the relationship that coders often have with their editors, this is like saying to some parents "It's just a boy"… If you spend a lot of time in one program _voluntarily_ , it's hard not to develop some feelings for it, beyond pure utilitarian reason.

TextMate is certainly one of those programs. It embraced the programmability of a Unix-based environment, coupled with a very simple design and actually introduced some new concepts (or at least made existing ones more prominent and/or easier to use). It also came at the right time, filling a niche for developers that wasn't satisfied by the pure-Unix breed (vim, emacs), nor by the entrenched MacOS editors (well, BBEdit mainly). Being introduced in a quite hip Ruby on Rails screencast didn't hurt, either.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not even a hardcore TM fanboy, as I switch a lot between editors, while secretly regretting that I can't just stick to emacs…

But I certainly understand the appeal, and if a bit of money (that most developers who buy Macs certainly can afford) helps keeping the momentum of a resurrected application, I'm all for it. Whether I'm buying it, is another matter. Right now, it doesn't fill an interesting niche for me, and I'd much rather spend the time customizing my .emacs file. Never mind that where I'm really missing good editing functionality isn't HTML or Ruby, it's Objective-C (or Java, when that was still job-relevant), where an IDE really helps. Well, let's see what AppCode[1] can bring to that particular table…

[1]: <http://www.jetbrains.com/objc/>

<comment><USER88> > I switch a lot between editors, while secretly regretting that I can't just > stick to emacs…

Why can't you just stick to emacs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Marco, learn a new editor, don't be lazy and a rockstar.

<comment><USER90> Why? He's clearly so happy with TextMate that he's willing to fork over more money for version 2 voluntarily. That doesn't sound like someone who's in need of a new editor.</comment></comment>


California is becoming a nightmare. Here's why the state is getting unlivable - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/california-unlivable-nightmare-housing-climate-change-2019-11 <comment><USER2> Nothing says a place is unlivable like record-high rents and real estate values.

<comment><USER3> Don't forget untenable fuel costs, taxes on electric cars, un-walkable cities, and horrible public transportation!

Bonus Edit: Skyrocketing water bills, high electricity costs, and power outages

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This belongs here as it is related:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/11/27/trumps-r...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/11/27/trumps- right-about-californias-fires-it-wasnt-climate-change-two-new-california-laws- prove-it/#50cd3b6d22e3)</comment>


A Poison Most Deadly - <AUTHOR> http://notchesblog.com/2016/05/10/a-poison-more-deadly-defining-obscenity-in-the-west/ <comment><USER2> Isn't this site called Hacker News?</comment>


A Shift in the ATM Malware Landscape from Physical to Network-based Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/shift-in-atm-malware-landscape-to-network-based-attacks <comment><USER2> From the article: _A majority of ATMs installed worldwide still run either Windows XP or Windows XP Embedded._

You'd think ATMs would run LynxOS or QNX or some real embedded OS, preferably booted from ROM. But no.

<comment><USER3> Yes it is surprising. Wondering what's really the cause of it? Is the ATM Front end code or ability to train and maintain windows XP.

<comment><USER4> Does Red Hat have an embedded version? If not I suspect the reason is "Enterprise (TM)"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice to see attacks that require the vigilance of banks and financial networks. I'm tired of seeing advisories on how consumers can detect and avoid card skimmers. Your network infrastructure is not our responsibility, and neither is your physical infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER6> Url changed from [https://gizmodo.com/hackers-found-a-new-way-to-rip-off- atms-...](https://gizmodo.com/hackers-found-a-new-way-to-rip-off- atms-1818859798), which points to this.</comment>


Metadata: An Invisible CAPTCHA - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/security/2008/11/25/captcha-pramana-bots-tech-identity08-cx_ag_1125captcha.html <comment><USER2> Though it's an interesting concept, I think they would need to recreate their algorithms too quickly to stop spammers, plus recaptcha has a dual purpose/benefit of helping computers when they fail with OCR. I don't hate captcha as long as it is done well.</comment>


"Flattening the Curve" is a deadly delusion - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@joschabach/flattening-the-curve-is-a-deadly-delusion-eea324fe9727 <comment><USER2> > _They suggest that currently, the medical system can deal with a large > fraction (like maybe 2 /3, 1/2 or 1/3) of the cases, but if we implement > some mitigation measures, we can get the infections per day down to a level > we can deal with._

I never took it this way. I always thought the point was "slowing down the disease saves some lives, even if the same number of people eventually get infected." That's it. Nothing more.

> _They mean to tell you that we can get away without severe lockdowns as we > are currently observing them in China and Italy. Instead, we let the > infection burn through the entire population, until we have herd immunity > (at 40% to 70%), and just space out the infections over a longer timespan._

The diagram says nothing about lockdowns. The diagram doesn't promise us we will fully flatten the curve, but demonstrates the life savings benefits of flattening as much as we can.

In my opinion, we should also prepare for temporary lockdowns.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, this is a really bad analysis, because, for one, the author assumes in his model that the total number of infections won't change as the result of greater social distancing. But distancing will have an effect on the number of infections, and this effect is in fact quite substantial. For example, the results of this model suggest a ~80% reduction in total infection burden with a 50% reduction in the rate of transmission, and nearly 95% with a 75% reduction: [https://twitter.com/IDMOD_ORG/status/1237881591784865793](https://twitter.com/IDMOD_ORG/status/1237881591784865793)

<comment><USER4> And even IF the number of infections didn't change and we spread the infections over 2x time rather than 1x, it will literally save lives. Once you have that outcome available with a relatively small effort... why wouldn't you do it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fairly dumb...

1\. Flattening the curve obviously improves the situation (even if it doesn't solve it),

2\. Containment would have to last as long as the curve might last: just not practical,

3\. Look to Taiwan: so far they _are_ successfully dealing with the emergency the best out of any country.

That said, as much delay as we can get at beginning of the curve is excellent: we want as much time as we can get for our scientists and health systems to discover mitigations, to build up relevant industrial capacity, and to build out health systems support. A lot of lives can be saved with a few lucky discoveries.

<comment><USER2> > _Flattening the curve obviously improves the situation (even if it doesn't > solve it)_

Yes. The criticism feels like Nirvana fallacy to me. Let's aspire to flatten the curve, it will make everything less bad, even if we don't fully succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's right about the curve memes being wrong, but I don't like the conclusion.

I've seen estimations of 5 years to flatten the curve for a few countries.

And I've yet to see hospitals capacity drop over winter, they are seasonal.

Add to this there is only so long the operations they are delaying can be delayed.

And I've yet to see the hospitals capacity drop as the staff gets destroyed.

The curves are giving a false sense of security and downplaying the large effects of dragging this out, flattening or containing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Flattening the curve is what everyone is trying to do and it obviously helps.

The issue is that for example the UK have said that they want to flatten the curve to protect the health services while also wanting to build herd immunity rapidly, perhaps by the end of the year.

These are mutually exclusive.

Either drastic measures are taken to flatten the curve a lot, or the health services will collapse and many people in serious condition won't receive any treatment at all.</comment>


What's All This Widlar Stuff, Anyhow? (1991) - <AUTHOR> http://m.electronicdesign.com/analog/what-s-all-widlar-stuff-anyhow

<comment><USER2> Pease and Widlar were two legendary engineers who ruled during the birth of the analog integrated circuit.

I heard an interesting story about Pease from someone who worked at National and knew him by sight. During the last great recession, around 2009?, my friend (another engineer) was using the services of California's state unemployment agency, when she saw the great Bob Pease walk into the EDD office to apply for unemployment. He had been laid off from National Semiconductor. The shock of this news spread throughout and a little later, National rehired Pease. But this event signaled to me that the sanctity of analog IC engineers had been pierced and no one was spared from the crushing recession. To me, it was the passing of an era, hardware engineering was losing it's prestige and dominance. Today, software has replaced hardware as the most vibrant and lucrative field in engineering. I can see that the brightest students are entering computer science, instead of going into electrical engineering.

I sometimes wonder who are today's engineers with as much influence as Widlar and Pease. Or if any engneers could be as dominant as those two in today's world where there are so many different technologies and directions in software.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there any context? Widlar is one of my heroes, right up there with Euler, Archimedes, Newton, etc. But I don't quite see why this is news today?

</comment><comment><USER4> Pease was a hacker god; while Widlar was awesome there are so many other wonderful "what's all this xxx stuff anyhow" essays that would have been more fun.

It was exciting to get a message from pease!</comment>