How the NSA tracks people [video] - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/SHA2017-402-how_the_nsa_tracks_you <comment><USER2> Here's something that pops in my head every time Binney comes up, but I've never quite articulated it...

Let's just assume for the moment that outcome X is good while outcome Y is bad. (I know most people wouldn't agree with that as applied to the NSA's history of wide-net surveillance, but just stick with me...)

You design a system that technically delivers outcome X. It could technically deliver outcome Y, but you didn't implement it to deliver that outcome. However, there is nothing at all preventing outcome Y from being achieved with your system other than stated policy. Additionally, your system as designed brings the possibility of outcome Y much closer to fruition at a fraction of the cost of the quotes from contractors from the time.

It comes to be known that your system has been trivially revised to achieve outcome Y, and you become a dissident. Now you take on the responsibility of educating people about what can be achieved with your system, and systems like it.

I get that part. But here's the question: what was Binney's responsibility in designing the system in the first place? In interviews I've watched he seems to justify his contribution to the program by referring to the policy at the time-- to only use wide-net surveillance data gleaned from the internet on non-U.S. citizen targets overseas, and nobody ever imagined it would be turned around to spy on the domestic population.

But has anyone ever asked him if he regrets building a system in the first place that lowered the cost on a type of surveillance the risks of which are not well-understood? In that sense I don't see anything different in what he did than what the Stuxnet authors did. And I'm quite sure if a whistleblower from that team went public someone would ask why they thought it was responsible to build it in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Yes, there is a lesson there for all of us. For a quick (~4 hour) recent computer game on the same subject (very well executed, IMHO) check out _Orwell_ : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13549725)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is Bill Binney still walking around a free man? Surely he had security clearances and made an oath not to break them. Is it just that he's riding a fine line and not disclosing classified information?

<comment><USER5> I didn't watch the whole thing just jumped around but he has included slides that are marked 'SECRET//NOFORN' so if that material is accurately classified at that level (and its disclosure was not authorized), well he probably shouldn't be presenting to that.

Of course whether those slides would cause 'serious damage' to national security is a whole other matter or maybe it was 'authorized'.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps they were previously leaked through Snowden or others and he's only included them in his slides? Then he's not disclosing anything. He hasn't worked at NSA for a loooong time.

<comment><USER5> I'm no expert, and you are right he did leave sometime ago, perhaps there were changes with regards to protecting classified information after he left.

Classified information does not become unclassified just because it is publicly available if I remember correctly. Either way, I can't comment on whether including them in his slides is disclosing/divulging or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apologies if this may sound a little naive, but I can't help but wonder; Can anything be done about this situation within the next couple of years? Or is this process of mass data collection just going to continue and reach an irreversible stage where those agencies' power is out of control?

<comment><USER8> One thing that is being done is to reduce the amount of clear text available for collection: more and more data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

<comment><USER9> Gotta be careful with that - make too much encrypted and there will be pressure to change the law to make encryption illegal.

I think the existing state with e2e encryption easily accessible to those who care, but not enabled by default in many areas, is probably ideal.

I'd like to see more work on encryption of the metadata - for example, hiding who is sending messages to who, and when. The who, where and when of communications leaks nearly as much private data as the content itself.

Currently, tech for hiding who, where, and when isn't easy enough to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The codenames do not provide a material insight, also "what" is being done is very different to "how". An audience such as CCC would be more interested in the "how".

It is clear that major Internet companies are colluded with the government, including hardware manufacturers (Intel).

</comment><comment><USER11> What I don't understand is with such capabilities, why weren't Michelle carters texts flagged? Or the heather Mack texts/fb messages. Or the texts revolving around the death of Tim piazza at penn state? If the capability to save these people was there, why wasn't it exercised?

<comment><USER12> He states it in the video: they are incredibly overwhelmed with data coming in and are just using "old search methods" such as word search that he deems ineffective.

My understanding is that this bulk data gathering is not as much as preventing attacks but further securing of power for the strange amalgamation that we would call the federal government.

<comment><USER13> Even if they cared, they wouldn't risk burning a source/method over a couple of teenagers potentially harming themselves or each other. This apparatus isn't about helping police, it's about state control, ostensibly of things like immigration and terrorism, but realistically as you say it's pure power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For the public source of this information, rewind to 2013:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us- intelligenc...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence- mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret- program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html)

[https://cryptome.org/2014/01/nsa-prism- dk.pdf](https://cryptome.org/2014/01/nsa-prism-dk.pdf)

You have to put together what we know about PRISM with recent testimony.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_v._NSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_v._NSA) is extremely important here. The NSA argues it can collect virtually every scrap of data flowing across US communications systems and that it does not violate your rights because as long as no one is looking at it your 4th amendment rights aren't violated. So to "look" at the data they get a secret FISA warrant. Jewel was defeated in court with the same tired argument of Clapper et. al -- "Your facts are inaccurate, but we won't tell you how because it is a state secret. Case dismissed. You let us worry about protecting your privacy within our walled garden."

NSA directors have a long history dating back to 2002 with Hayden of misleading congress and then saying "oops, sorry about that." It is a naked power game between congress and the executive branch and a bit of political chicken because the intelligence committees can only go so far before the president/white house can say the legislative branch is undermining your freedom and aren't tough on terror.... which will not go well for anyone at reelection time if it sticks.

The back and forth goes on. The picture painted, and I can't dig everything up is that, essentially, the NSA collects almost everything that happens on US soil. It has a legal fiction via executive orders (see Snowden emails) that let it do this. And then if searches of this data turn up anything interesting (since automated computer searches don't require a warrant under this legal fiction) they then apply for a secret FISA warrant and then humans can "look" at the collected data. And since no humans were collecting or looking at your data your 4A rights are fine and safe.

edit: I guess I meant to add this legal construction is why the "how" of their collection matters so much. Until we have accurate details of the "how" we can't even begin to argue against them in open court. And since the executive branch tries its very best to keep the "how" secret (for many not obvious reasons!) these things are important. I have seen people dismiss the importance of the technical details as just bits and bytes and what matters is the politics at play, but the "how" is very important as shown by the failure of Jewel to win in court due to specious "state secrets" arguments.

</comment><comment><USER15> Bill mentions that the current solutions are much more expansive, so it seems very likely that the NSA uses a private Google Cloud Video Intelligence[1] installation with TPUs in combination with their current iteration of TREASUREMAP.

This would enable the NSA to search based on scene descriptions of likely crimes and get government-ID tagging with GPS. This would serve as an effective filtering system and increase the productivity of intelligence operators.

1\. [https://cloud.google.com/video- intelligence/](https://cloud.google.com/video-intelligence/)

<comment><USER9> >very likely that the NSA uses a private Google Cloud Video Intelligence[1] installation with TPU

Nope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So a quick calculation. 1 zettabyte if stored on 4GB HDD, that's 250 million hard drives. That's without any redundancy.

Quarterly production of hard drives is around 100-140 million. That's quite a big slice of global production.

The buying operation of this scale should be visible somewhere on the price charts.

<comment><USER17> Read a rumor once that the tsunami in the Thailand that "knocked out" HDD factories several years was used as cover to buy up large amounts.

<comment><USER18> Did non-HDD factories in Thailand experience a similar price increase after the tsunamis? (I don't know the answer -- I'm just curious)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> His main point as I understood it seems to be that the problem is the direction of the organization demands that it continue to grow in that direction. More data means more power which demands more funding but also leads to less effectiveness at what they are actually supposed to be doing. It's really smart that he is confronting the problem by trying to create a legal framework that can steer the ship in a better direction. I really appreciate his work.

<comment><USER18> As they say, any bureaucracy will eventually be controlled by people trying to preserve the bureaucracy rather than those trying to achieve the actual goals of the bureaucracy.

Or:

> Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic > organization there will be two kinds of people":

> First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. > Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, > many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even > some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union > collective farming administration.

> Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples > are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of > education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters > staff, etc.

> The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep > control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions > within the organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> nice doc made about him : [https://m.youtube.com/watch?ebc=ANyPxKqbOng3dL_bQTCCpf3LIH_8...](https://m.youtube.com/watch?ebc=ANyPxKqbOng3dL_bQTCCpf3LIH_8Awvcc6i2XbuHXC3EkcD_tR4lf60oED6Zv9ficZqrLazyurCLHGuD1vAsZevTHy1eQVrnVQ&v=kbVfub-L5Rs)

</comment><comment><USER21> (That sense of mild threat you feel right now that is preventing you from either watching the video or commenting here is entirely natural and nothing to worry about. Go about your day as normal.)

<comment><USER22> I went to the comments instead of the link to take a look at whether there was a second source that didn't involve hitting a CCC page. Chilling effects indeed.

<comment><USER23> Sorry for the ignorance, but whats the problem with CCC pages?

<comment><USER22> Nothing inherent - the CCC is a great organization.

But it's already come out that searching for Tails or Tor can set off NSA flags, so I was pointing out that reading Chaos Computer Club accounts of NSA surveillance practices sounds like another likely way to be flagged.

<comment><USER24> > Chaos Computer Club accounts of NSA surveillance practices sounds like > another likely way to be flagged.

It sure is, meaning that a privacy conscious person is not a friend of a government and needs to be held in check. It's also quite disturbing that NSA is surveilling political parties around the World to excerpt pressure on them and to get geopolitical and economic influence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think some people need to have some backbone, and less fear.

I looked at it, I didn't feel any chilling effect. From an engineering point of view its interesting. Maybe I'm too dumb to process fear.</comment>


CardioID Technologies – Pervasive heart signals - <AUTHOR> http://www.cardio-id.com

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I'm writing software for a company that offers FDA approved pace- makers, defibrillators, and implantable heart monitors. These comments are my own.

No where on your site do you reference FDA approval and I see that you are not in the U.S., so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Bio-metric authentication using cardiac wave forms? I'm not sure that is a good way to go, but it sure sounds good. What happens when the user takes medications that changes the waveform (ie., they start new blood pressure medicine or cardiac meds, or intermittently take those meds)? What if the user has PVCs when trying to authenticate? What about diabetics with high glucose levels?

The only time I've seen a legitimate use for using ECG in a consumer/commercial application is detecting a pulse when a user is attempting validate a finger print. I worked with a guy who had to implement something for ATMs being shipped to Africa. They required the user to authenticate with a finger print scanner in order to withdraw money. It wasn't long before people were loosing their fingers.

As far as monitoring for cardiac anomalies, they don't happen all the time. Your device only appears to work when you hands are touching it. It often takes days or weeks for them to occur, requiring continuous monitoring for days, weeks, and sometimes months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Medical certification is something that we're not pursuing at the moment. For now, we intend to raise alerts to the user, in case we detect something suspicious, referring them to their medical doctor. We do not claim to detect cardiac pathologies that are rare, and need several ECG derivations to be correctly diagnosed.

What we do offer is the possibility of more frequent ECG monitoring, beyond the 10 second ECG exam that most people do only once or twice per year. For example, driving is a stressful environment, where a major cardiac event is more likely to occur. In a car with our technology, we would be able to detect when that event happens, thus preventing a crash by automatically stopping the car, and calling emergency services.

Regarding signal variability due to medication and other pathologies, that's something we have to account for, with robust feature extraction methods that are invariant to these changes, or adapt to them.

<comment><USER2> I'm not familiar with European regulations, or medical procedures, but in the U.S., a medical diagnosis can only be made by a qualified licensed medical professional. Even making statements about diagnosing disease states via software or smartphones is enough to invoke an FDA response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check out Nymi [[https://www.nymi.com/](https://www.nymi.com/)], also in this space.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are aware of Nymi, they have cited some of our ECG biometrics research papers, and we theirs. But Nymi makes the user constantly wear a band. As soon as you take off the band, their authentication stops working. Also, you have one more gadget to charge. In CardioID's case, the ECG sensors are embedded into everyday life objects, so the system is ready whenever the user wishes it. Beyond that, we also continuously track other heart parameters, like heart rate and cardiac arrhythmias.

<comment><USER4> But if you have several locations where you'd like to log in you require multiple of these devices, right?

With wrist band you could sell to something like FitBit or just add step-, distance-, calorie tracking, watch, silent alarms and call/sms notifications into the mix.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you're right. That's why we're primarily targeting a B2B market. Imagine that a gym has machines with our technology embedded. The gym's users would be able to seamlessly track their workout across different machines, just by using them as they normally would, no need for extra weight.

Note that, for continuous ECG monitoring, you need skin contact with 2 electrodes, from different limbs. That's why with Nymi, authentication is performed only once when the user puts it on, with one finger touching the visible electrode (the other electrode is on the underside of the band). In this case, there is no continuous verification of identity, or other parameters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks really cool, but does the product actually exist? The page doesn't say.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have several business partners, for which we produced prototypes to be integrated into their systems. These prototypes include a signal acquisition hardware interface, a processing unit, and all accompanying software and APIs.

We do not currently have a product directly for sale to individual users.

<comment><USER5> Ok, in that case "Show HN" shouldn't be in the title ([https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)). But please do a Show HN when you're ready to show the actual product.

In the meantime, if you want to do it, I think a post that goes into technical detail about how it works and what people can do with it would likely be of interest to the HN community.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, thanks. I should've read the guidelines more carefully.

We were already planning on posting a more detailed overview.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why don't you have any cardiologists on your team?

<comment><AUTHOR> We do have research collaborations with cardiologists, but we consider them to be advisers, not officially part of the team. However, two team members are biomedical engineers, with expertise in the medical field.</comment></comment>


A look at home routers, and a surprising bug in Linux/MIPS - <AUTHOR> https://cyber-itl.org/2018/12/07/a-look-at-home-routers-and-linux-mips.html <comment><USER2> TL;DR of the paper "Build Safety of Software in 28 Popular Home Routers, by Parker Thompson and Sarah Zatko":

>These findings suggest an industry-wide failure to audit and test the security of the software running on these products.

>Indeed, our review shows that even the most basic practices are being largely ignored.

</comment><comment><USER3> All you need to know choosing home routers - could you install OpenWRT on it, or not.</comment>


Saturn's hexagon in motion - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/4up9cw/saturns_hexagon_in_motion/ <comment><USER2> Nice. The original source is [https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/saturn/hexagon-in- motion...](https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/saturn/hexagon-in-motion/) Do the reddit discussion have something especially interesting to add?</comment>


Show HN: Hyperrr – Hypercard for the modern age - <AUTHOR> https://hyperrr.co/ <comment><USER2> I feel carousel can be better with a line below conveying what product is about or what is being shown in images. It took me a while to know about product. Good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, at this time the main site at [https://hyperrr.co](https://hyperrr.co) is just download links essentially. The actual description and overview is at [http://community.hyperrr.co/t/quick-introduction-to- hyper/29](http://community.hyperrr.co/t/quick-introduction-to-hyper/29).

Eventually the two will get merged but it will take some time to figure out the right copy.

<comment><USER3> Is it just me, or is there no download for Android?

Is/will the stack be Free software?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool! What's the tech stack behind it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you asked :) [http://community.hyperrr.co/t/the-tech-behind- hyper/19/1](http://community.hyperrr.co/t/the-tech-behind-hyper/19/1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just made my first stack, and it was really easy! Could you add a map view to iOS native?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just reaching beta, looking for testers & feedback - and if you have questions, don't hesitate!

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks amazing! Im an iOS developer myself would love to help/test in anyway. HMU

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, best is to download the apps from [https://hyperrr.co](https://hyperrr.co), check out the docs at [http://community.hyperrr.co/](http://community.hyperrr.co/), then create some stacks and share any feedback in the forum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks really, really good

<comment><USER7> One tiny criticism: It should be HyperCard, not Hypercard ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, thanks much, it should be fixed now.</comment></comment></comment>


Novelrank is gone - <AUTHOR> https://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,266705.0.html <comment><USER2> From their site:

On August 21st, Amazon decided that after 9 years, without warning, NovelRank violated their Terms of Use. On August 31st they followed up all appeals by closing the final domain: Amazon.com, effectively killing NovelRank.

Please export any data you want to keep as soon as possible.

If any publisher or other entity is interested in purchasing the valuable NovelRank domain please email me a reasonable offer: email@example.com.

I was NovelRank's biggest fan. I made it for authors like me; who barely sold any books, but it still felt good to know that someone found your writing valuable. It grew to be valuable to so many others. I'm sorry this has happened and I have to now focus on my new wife (married for the 1st time Aug 3rd) and what my future can be now that my income is gone.

Regretfully, Mario Lurig Founder, Developer, Advocate: NovelRank.com

<comment><USER3> I read that too. One mystery: How did he make income off it?

<comment><USER4> A combination of donations, affiliate links, and enterprise subscriptions.

>How much does NovelRank cost?[0]

>It's completely free! The site is supported by author donations, Amazon bounties, and affiliate income when book purchases occur from Amazon click- throughs on NovelRank.

>NovelRank also introduced NovelRank Enterprise Edition and the BuyBox Research Tool, which offers a private sales rank and price tracker for any product on any Amazon domain.[1]

[0] [https://www.novelrank.com/faq](https://www.novelrank.com/faq)

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/novelrank](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/novelrank)

<comment><USER5> Could the offering the subscription service be the cause of what Amazon claimed as a violation of their ToS? It doesn't really lead traffic straight to Amazon website, rather it feels like a resale/repackaging of Amazon's data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Building a business around another platform can be extremely profitable, but has great risk attached to it as well. We have seen this time and time again. Be it changes to Twitter's API or changes to Instagram's API, it happens time and time again. The only way to stay safe from this is to build your business around an open source system, like Wordpress. However, I do think that there should be at least some protection against moves like these - depending on context of course.

<comment><USER7> If a company sees you bottling their moat, of course they're going to come after you. I think this particular thing could have been symbiotic, and maybe valuable enough to be a reasonable acquisition target by Amazon, but it's hard to thread that needle as a 3rd party tool, especially when many of them are adversarial because of lack of official API support, or the general difficulty of running a business based entirely off another business's data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From reading the comments, it seems a novel sales tracking system, Novel Rank [0], which depended entirely on Amazon sales rank data, has had their access denied, essentially shuttering the business.

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

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone else missing context? The link opens to what seems like a Kindle related forum on mobile.

EDIT: Links to the forum post when I use "Request desktop site".

<comment><USER10> Yeah, feels like I don't know enough about how Novelrank worked to begin with to understand why it's somehow completely dependent on Amazon and cannot operate otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "NovelRank is the best free resource for authors to track the sales rank of their print and ebooks on Amazon with charting, sales estimates, RSS feeds and more."

I'm kinda surprised Amazon doesn't offer that as a dashboard to authors/publishers.

<comment><USER12> Maybe they plan to, and killing the competition is the first step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They lost their source of revenue. But they can get the data easily by scraping or paying for a 3rd party API like the keepa API.

Plenty of other sales estimation tools, viral launch's market intelligence, jungle scout, etc

</comment><comment><USER14> Some of the stuff mentioned in the linked thread certainly smacks of monopolistic behavior. Given how much Trump hates Bezos, there might be a very real opportunity to get a govt. investigation of Amazon's anticompetetive tactics.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's about time that data owned by big corporations be put in the public domain.

<comment><USER16> Non-creative data can't be copyrighted. However, Amazon can have whatever terms they like for their affiliate, bounty, and data APIs.

<comment><USER15> > Amazon can have whatever terms they like for their affiliate, bounty, and > data APIs.

Not if the law said they couldn't.</comment></comment></comment>


Oops, I Accidentally Wasted My Entire 20s (And I Feel Fine) - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/oops-i-accidentally-wasted-my-entire-20s-and-i-feel-fine/

<comment><USER2> Why is this is acceptable in your 20s? Why not sleep/drink/waste your way through your 30s or 40s?

"Know yourself" sounds too much like "Don't just do something, stand there!" I'd rather learn by doing than spend months in limbo figuring out who I truly am. Then you really have stories to tell that become part of who you are.</comment>


Olive, a new non-linear video editor - <AUTHOR> http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/introducing-olive-new-non-linear-video-editor <comment><USER2> > Olive is geared towards users who rely on shortcuts: all editing tools and > common operations have them, and you can configure your own shortcuts (UI > for that could do with more work though).

I wish all programs that rely heavily in shortcuts also had a search bar for users still not proficient with the program. The way Code Editors have been doing in the last years. Searching with a few keywords is much better than having to look through tons of menus for new users.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _I wish all programs that rely heavily in shortcuts also had a search bar > for users still not proficient with the program._

Maybe, this _feature request_ [0] would be implemented very soon ;-)

 _UPD: Added few mockups into description of feature request!_ [0]

P.S.: Issue with saving customized shortcuts in _Olive_ just fixed![1]

[0] [https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/issues/259](https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/259)

[1] [https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/issues/250](https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/250)

<comment><USER3> That's useful, but not what the guy above had in mind :)

You are looking for Blender's or GIMP's search and run command thing. E.g. [https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/controls...](https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/interface/controls/templates/operator_search.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, could you write another one feature request to _Olive_ issues tracker?

 _UPD: I just add such feature request_ [0], think it would be solved very soon, as such pop-up should be very similar to current "Keyboard" tab of "Preferences" dialog ;)

[0] [https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/issues/265](https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues/265)

<comment><USER3> You already did that :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Finally, Issue 265 fixed & _" Action Search" pop-up menu_ added into _Olive_![0]

@krispbyte, GET latest nightly build[1] while it hot! ;-)

[0] [https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/commit/952c67972b9e19f...](https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/commit/952c67972b9e19f5f47236a03dd5a1dae61230a8)

[1] [https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou...](https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OpenShot [1] is another free (also GPLv3 as Olive) video editor for Windows/Linux/Max using the portable AppImage format [2] (AppImage lets you download a single binary and launch the software directly, no install process or super user privileges needed).

It uses ffmpeg behind the scenes.

It seems to have suffered from stability issues in the past (the wikipedia article mentions lots of negative reviews) but seem pretty stable now, so you might want to give it a ... shot.

It has been very useful for its quick install process, intuitive interface and reliability: haven't had a single crash in a very long time, with more than 200 videos on our channel [3] (albeit none required anything fancy editing- wise).

OpenShot's goal might not appear to be as grandiose as Olive's so I would love if there was a comparison of both out there.

Looks like we're off trying Olive to compare. Thanks and good luck to the Olive team.

\---

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

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

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgsdHWWQBMHP1plylPrrgpA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgsdHWWQBMHP1plylPrrgpA)

<comment><USER5> I've tried OpenShot, Kdenlive, and Shotcut (not to be confused with OpenShot), and I have to say Shotcut is my favorite.

<comment><USER6> Could you please review Shotcut a bit further?

I haven't tried it but have had success with OpenShot. I don't remember why I picked it over Shotcut, but it did what I needed and never crashed; just was slightly lacking in features, like reorganizing the timeline - I think I couldn't multi-select components.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The program doesn't crash all the time. In fact, I've only seen 4 or 5 > crashes for overall ca. 8 hours of use.

That's pretty terrible and matches my experience with other open source video editors. Cinelerra was especially bad. Why is it so hard to write a video editor that doesn't crash?

<comment><USER8> I'll guess that they crash a lot because they need to allocate a lot of memory and the size of the files they deal with often exceeds the machine's free RAM. Blender seems to have the whole "stability" thing down at this point, though, probably because its primary use is as a 3D modeling and rendering application and so the video editor can take advantage of its good memory allocation system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please, read with magnifying glass:

> _The program does_ _NOT_ _crash all the time._

Also, I can run and normally use _Olive_ on my 10-year-old notebook[0], where _Blender VSE_ / _OpenShot_ / _Shotcut_ / _Kdenlive_ could NOT work properly!

[0] [https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1080489940138512385](https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1080489940138512385)

<comment><USER9> 4-5 crashes over 8 hours is _way_ too many crashes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Test latest nightly build of _Olive_![0]

Four days ago it crashed for me on some tasks, BUT after yesterday update I try reproduce same steps — and _Olive_ not crashed anymore!

It's development activity is really high; just check their commits[1] and bug- tracker[2] history.

[0] [https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou...](https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous)

[1] [https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/commits/master](https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/commits/master)

[2] [https://github.com/olive-editor/olive/issues](https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/issues)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _@probonopd_ wrote:[0]

> _Olive is a professional open-source video editor in the making. And they > are publishing continuous builds in #AppImage format for #Linux which makes > it trivially easy to follow @oliveteam[1] development. Pro tip: Use > AppImageUpdate for binary delta updates_ [2]

[0] [https://twitter.com/probonopd/status/1079154249253179392](https://twitter.com/probonopd/status/1079154249253179392)

[1] [https://twitter.com/oliveteam](https://twitter.com/oliveteam)

[2] [https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/releases/tag/continuou...](https://github.com/olive- editor/olive/releases/tag/continuous)

<comment><USER4> @app4soft, humbly asking for an "executive summary" tweet (maybe pinned on @OliveTeam?) introducing the project to people who have never heard of it to make it easy to retweet with some essential "selling" points (cross platform, open source, free, financially backed on Patreon, very active, ...)

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course! I will tweet few "executive summary" during this week via @app4soft and will ask @OliveTeam pin some of them ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still use Blender for everything, including non-linear Video editing.

And apparently the Video Sequence Editor is being worked on again, after a couple of years of neglect.

<comment> em-bee is there a good tutorial on how to get started with video editing in blender?

i managed to use blender to edit some render sequences others made that i added to my video using pitivi, which is frankly the only video editor that i could get to work reliably (compared to kdenlive, openshot and cinelerra).

i'd love to use blender for everything to cut down on learning multiple tools and deal with transition issues but i couldn't figure out how to edit the whole video in it.

<comment><USER3> Something like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcj4onvP06w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcj4onvP06w) (suggests using an add-on for Blender) or the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RViX4Tn_tGs&list=PLH3QvbpQe8...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RViX4Tn_tGs&list=PLH3QvbpQe8WQY9ms1t9oKbpWyNu1Q_8PW) series maybe?

<comment> em-bee thanks, i'll check those out...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see any practical reason not to use Davinci Resolve, which is free (as in beer) and miles ahead of the open source editors. I used to be quite fond of Kdenlive but having used Resolve for a couple of months there's no way I'm going back.

<comment><USER12> +1. I haven't seen a single free video editor that is actually professional grade like Davinci Resolve is. Openshot and Olive/Kdenlive may be great at replacing iMovie and Windows Movie Maker, but there's a level of featurefulness that is a requirement for serious productions that none of those FOSS solutions seem to have.

I can't wait for the day in which I can be fully satisfied with an open-source video editor, but until then I'll keep using the solutions that actually do the things I need them to.

<comment><USER3> > Olive/Kdenlive may be great at replacing iMovie and Windows Movie Maker

Olive / Kdenlive and iMovie / Windows Movie Maker are vastly different types of video editors.

It's like comparing a full-featured DAW against Audacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've used a few open source video editors and the only one that was stable enough was Kdenlive. Since then I switched to the DaVinci Resolve and am super happy with it, even bought the paid version USB dongle. Funny that Resolve is also not stable on computers that aren't beefy, had to upgrade the PC for it to handle 4k smoothly. It's refreshing that you can de-noise audio, fine-tune video stabilization, color correct and add nice effects and transitions all in one app. I've got a ton of crispy artisan 4k home video now :-)

<comment><USER14> I would love to try Resolve but got stuck on installation. They've never packaged it for any distro I can find, and their self-made installer seems to only work on RedHat. Am I missing something? How did you get it installed?

<comment><USER13> Sadly can't help since I'm using Windows at home, didn't have any installation issues. Only gotcha so far is that one has to download a separate binary for the paid version of the app, there's no "activation" in the free version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It always pains me when people write about software without mentioning what platform it runs on. Even after clicking on the project page link in the article, you have to go to the downloads to find this information. As it turns out it's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so this is a little less objectionable than other instances of this problem where I read about something only to find it's only available on a single platform.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. Updated the beginning of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It was buried at the end of the article, but this is the creator's Patreon:

[https://www.patreon.com/olivevideoeditor](https://www.patreon.com/olivevideoeditor)

I'd love to see Patreon grow as a viable way to fund open source projects.

</comment><comment><USER17> I admit I still use the abandoned Premiere 2 from Adobe. It's a free download and it works, perfect for home projects (even if it's technically piracy)

</comment><comment><USER18> > Proxies. Olive doesn't do that yet.

In the age of UHD resolutions and up this should probably be on the list of immediate priorities. I could not work without the proxy feature of Premiere.

<comment><USER19> Likewise. I immediately cringed at the idea of usability for 4K or even 1080p video without proxies.

<comment><USER3> On smaller projects (think 5 minutes of final video), Olive works pretty sensibly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've previously used Pitivi, found it too unstable for continued use. I think next time I need to do some video editing, I'll probably try out Blender.</comment>


On Twitter usernames with lots of numbers - <AUTHOR> https://tinysubversions.com/notes/twitter-usernames/ <comment><USER2> An alternate interpretation of Darius/tinysubversion's argument is that most signups since December 2017 have been bots.</comment>


Don't Just Auto Invest! Proving Systematic Bias at LendingClub - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/dont-just-auto-invest-proving-systematic-bias-at-lendingclub-c9a9122ec8c1 <comment><USER2> Hey thanks for posting this! I'm the author of the article. I really hope if enough people become aware of this it will pressure LendingClub to change their practices.</comment>


Notching floppy disks to double their capacity - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Double-sided_disk&oldid=713168494 <comment><USER2> When you notch a disc like this and turn it over all the dust accumulated in the dust collector enloads onto the disc on the first side as the disc rotates the other way.

<comment><USER3> That's why they came with a dust sleeve - to keep the dust off the disc.</comment></comment>


What's new in Deveo 3.17? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.deveo.com/whats-new-in-deveo-3-17/ <comment><USER2>
        "Deveo is a code hosting and collaboration platform that supports Git, Subversion and Mercurial"</comment>


Show HN: A self-driving leaderboard - <AUTHOR> https://deepdrive.voyage.auto/leaderboard/ <comment><AUTHOR> The backend for this project actually has a wider scope - [https://github.com/botleague/botleague](https://github.com/botleague/botleague), with our self-driving sim being the first use-case for it. Everything is open source and open data - sans some temporary keys used to communicate evaluation data between problem providers and our score keeper server ([https://github.com/botleague/botleague- liaison](https://github.com/botleague/botleague-liaison)). The hope is that others will post problems as well - of which combinations can be solved by more and more general and sophisticated bots. Curious as to what you all think of this self-driving leaderboard and the broader AI league idea. Very early stage here, but excited to get it out for y'all to try.</comment>


So is the universe made of tiny springs, or isn't it? - <AUTHOR> http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/so-is-the-universe-made-of-tiny-springs-or-isnt-it/

<comment><USER2> Short answer: Nobody really knows.</comment>