UK Authorities Destroy Guardian's Hard Drives - <AUTHOR> https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/08/uk-authorities-destroy-guardians-hard-drives-force-journalists-report-nsa-stories-exile

<comment><USER3> The Guardian has been (together with the Scotsman by the way) a source of inspiration over the last decade or more.

To see them intimidated like this by thugs that could have walked right out of something by Bulgakov or even Kafka is a sobering prospect.

It translates into: the free press is now classed an enemy of the state and equates to terrorism.

I've lived in Poland before the iron curtain came down, in the years when Jaruzelski ruled the country and when Solidarnosc was just beginning to form, the free press was classed an enemy of the state there as well. Mere posession of an illegal book or paper could get you into a lot of trouble.

The state sanctioned media were extremely circumspect in their reporting of what was going on in Gdansk and Gdynia but word trickled out and slowly Polish people everywhere started to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Reagan, the Afghan war and Gorbachev all played a part in the fall of the Soviet Union. But Poland and especially Solidarity, Wałęsa and Popiełuszko deserve a good chunk of the credit too.

A not so visible part of all of this is that the free press in Poland (called the samizdat) spread not only books but also 10's of thousands of copies of the underground newspaper Solidarnosc, many of which were read by multiple people, passed from hand to hand to trusted friends. These were the only counterweight to state media (newspaper, radio, television) and the contrast between the two was stark.

I wonder if the Solidarity movement would have gotten off the ground as well as it did and whether Poland would have made the early move to freedom without such a free press (and in some cases it wasn't even a press but simply hand- copying or re-typing!).

It is the only historical change that I have had the privilege of observing at very close quarters, so my experience is limited. But a free press to me is a must have, it is as important as having a system of government, and to have a free press we must have journalists and newspapers that are free to operate.

Otherwise one of these days we'll have to resort to underground presses like in the days of communism in Poland, press freedom is _very_ important no matter who governs you, and government officials intimidating the press is a _very_ bad sign.

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_%28Polish_trade_unio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_%28Polish_trade_union%29)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Popie%C5%82uszko](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Popie%C5%82uszko)

<comment><USER4> Shouldn't we be doing more to discuss the nature of classified material that was exposed by the press, rather than just whether the "free press" is a good thing? Isn't there a continuum between reporting on e.g. _D-Day invasion plans two days before_ and _a judge who accepted cash to issue an injunction to stop vote counting in a contested election_? And wouldn't the press be guilty of treason for the former, but fourth-branch status for the latter?

<comment><USER5> So, discuss.

Why shouldn't we know about our own governments spying on us? Why shouldn't we be informed about how our government is governing?

The US Constitution, at least, was written in remembrance of the privations of an occupying army. The country was founded on the belief that the people are sovereign. If the people are to be sovereign, then they need to know what the government is doing. This is why we have freedom of the press, etc., and why this right is more important than any short-term goal.

The governments of the US and UK are acting like occupying armies. They disregard the rule of law, act arbitrarily, arrogantly, and without accountability. Fixing this is more important than any marginal security the NSA's secrecy provides. It's probably worth more than everything the NSA provides altogether.

<comment><USER4> It's been said here on HN, that if the anti-surveillance crowd were really serious, and constituted a good chunk of the voting public, then they would get organized like: Pro-Lifers, the Pro-Choice, Pro Gun, Civil Rights, etc. But it sounds like you are saying that your adversaries are agencies who by definition must act in secret, and there is no amount of political advocacy that can engage them on their level. It's only through some type of hacker- war, which you analogize to the revolution, that your concerns can be addressed?

<comment><USER5> I wasn't advocating a revolution, I think we can fix this inside the system we have. But I think that because we do have the means to allow us to fix it, like freedom of the press.

This episode bothers me in a different way than most violations of basic human rights. Because the violation is around privacy/secrecy, the violating entities have to attack the very means we have set up to correct violations. It's like a virus that attacks the immune system, something to be taken more seriously than the actual damage done, because it destroys the ecosystem's ability to correct other violations.

In any case, I was simply encouraging you to actually say something, rather than just say what sorts of things we should say, and then demonstrating what I meant.

<comment><USER4> I don't see any progress toward fixing this from within the system. Snowden and WikiLeaks are more analogous to an exiled resistance group than to people trying to work within the system. MLK stayed right here and got arrested and murdered.

Surveillance won't be a major political issue unless it tangibly affects a lot of people in a negative way. That's just not happening now. Most people don't care. But there are other things they do care about because they feel the effects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to take out a subscription to the Guardian.

At this point they are the only newspaper that seems to have the balls to tell the thugs from Whitehall to go and fuck themselves.

This stuff is absolutely insane, We didn't behave like this when the IRA was setting bombs off on a regular basis and shooting up the landscape.

It's always been obvious that the land grabs for power had little to do with actual terrorism.

Pick up that can.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure I would pick the Troubles as an example of good behaviour by the UK government. Not that long ago we had within the UK:

\- Large scale arrests and imprisonment without trial - "internment"

\- Massacres of innocent civilians by British Army soldiers - Bloody Sunday

\- Officially supported interrogation techniques that bordered on torture - the "Five techniques"

\- Innocent people forced into admitting that they committed terrorist acts, convicted and given long jail sentences - the Guildford Four

<comment><USER8> Not just bordering on torture, actually called torture by the ECHR in 1976 (although downgraded to "inhuman and degrading" on appeal in 1978.)

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

Not our finest hour, really.

<comment><USER9> If something is called torture and on appeal they decided that they were wrong then surely that is the definition of "bordering on torture"?

<comment><USER8> I'd say "inhuman and degrading" is more than "bordering on torture" but it's a fair point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the article: " _forcing a newspaper's editor into exile over a report it doesn't like sounds like a story from the 18th century reign of King George III, not of a supposed 21st century democracy._ "

Sadly, as an American, I have to point out that the main impetus seems to be coming from this side of the Atlantic this time and both places' governing bodies seem to be complicit and stepping on the gas.

Citizens overcame the tyranny last time. Let's hope we can do it again this time.

On another note: The government itself is showing either it has something to hide, in which case it's showing that it's lying to us, or they have nothing to hide, in which case here's your answer to "What's the problem if you have nothing to hide?"

<comment><USER11> The citizenry will not overcome the tyranny because most of the citizens are either (1) unaware of how the power effects them (2) do not understand it.

<comment><USER12> I think it's actually worse than that. Obviously I have only anecdotal evidence, but as far as I can tell, a large minority (maybe even a small majority) of people support what the NSA has been doing. They don't necessarily understand the technical details, but they completely understand the implications and consequences and they explicitly approve. When I go outside of my usual online and real life social circles the attitude about government surveillance is shockingly complicit.

I'm starting to believe the only way to change this isn't to get people outraged or make them understand the effects of pervasive surveillance on freedom. The solution is to instead make it clear just how ineffective it is at its stated purpose of keeping us all safe.

<comment><USER13> I disagree, if you make clear how ineffective these surveillance measures are, the natural response for the powers that be is that they need MORE power. "See, if we were able to arrest anyone who spoke about terrorism online or by phone, we could've prevented this attack." "If only we were allowed to jail anyone indefinitely we could've disrupted this sleeper cell."

If anything, this is how this whole power grab got started in the first place. "If we could spy on everyone we could've stopped 9/11."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now that they basically consider journalism to be terrorism, if I subscribe to The Guardian am I "funding terrorism"?

I've gone from angry, to completely and utterly 'defeated'. I think I agree with Groklaw where the only way to win, is not to play. Get off the net and go bush. Take up golf (I hate golf). No idea. It's like being back in school being beaten up by the bullies for being a geek, no words can make it stop, nothing I say or do will make a difference.

<comment><USER15> > Now that they basically consider journalism to be terrorism, if I subscribe > to The Guardian am I "funding terrorism"?

Jesus christ could we cut down on the hyperbole a LITTLE?

<comment><USER16> I know you think you're being very clever, with your disingenuous "A LITTLE", but ironically it really is only a little hyperbole in the grandparent comment. For fuck's sake, partners of journalists in the UK are being intimidated by the government. If I was the journalist I'd be very hesitant to travel at all. This is in bloody england, remember, the progenitor of everything we think about when we think "the west".

Open your eyes. Look how far things have come. This is not about LOLPOINTS™ on the internet, this is actually getting pretty damn real, and people are worried.

<comment><USER15> If you think that equating journalism with terrorism is only slight hyperbole then you have no place in reasonable discussion.

It is excessive hyperbole that helps nobody and serves only to polarise discussions. In reality the statements so far indicate that they stopped Miranda in order to determine if he was carrying information likely to be of use to terrorists. This seems to be an illegitimate use of the powers, which we'll find out soon.

That is a reasonable take on the matters, not 'JOURNALISM NOW IS TERRORISM!!!!!'

<comment><USER17> David was detained using a law explicitly written for use against terrorists, to detain them in airports for up to nine hours without counsel. Also to not answer questions would land him in prison.

So... it's not hyperbolic at all to say that journalism is equated with terrorism, because the state us using laws designed for use against terrorists against journalists.

Wake up.

<comment><USER15> > David was detained using a law explicitly written for use against terrorists

Incorrect, it is applicable to all travellers entering the United Kingdom

> to detain them in airports for up to nine hours without counsel

Incorrect, he refused counsel.

> Also to not answer questions would land him in prison.

There's no real evidence of this, there is a 'must not interfere' clause but it has never been tested.

> So... it's not hyperbolic at all to say that journalism is equated with > terrorism, because the state us using laws designed for use against > terrorists against journalists.

> Wake up.

Could you use more of a cliché? It's hyperbole, you have just proven as much by your complete ignorance on the subject.

<comment><USER18> > Incorrect, he refused counsel.

If you aren't permitted counsel of your choice (and he wasn't) but only counsel selected by the _police_ (which he was offered), then you are effectively denied counsel.

<comment><USER15> What total nonsense. You may as well claim duty solicitors are in the palm of the Police.

<comment><USER18> > You may as well claim duty solicitors are in the palm of the Police.

While there is still a potential agency problem, duty solicitors (or, in American parlance, public defenders) aren't an alternative to counsel of choice, they exist to provide the choice to have _some_ counsel to people who otherwise would have none, without denying them the choice of securing any of their own to the extent they can.

Providing the option of a duty solicitor is not, then, at all the same as denying someone access to willing counsel of their choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This title is completely misleading and paints the government here in a false light. It is clear to me from the original article that the GCHQ staff were ensuring that hard drives ALREADY slated for destruction by the Guardian were complying with their required destruction process for classified information. They were not destroying hard drives owned by a private corporation without their consent or seizing hard drives. I know it is tempting to read only one side of a story and jump on reactionary headlines, but let's try to continue giving benefit of the doubt to both parties like rational humans.

<comment><USER20> I don't think it is. It seems pretty clear you misunderstood. As posted in another comment, this Tweet shows that The Guardian destroyed the hard drives at the government's behest: [https://twitter.com/dansabbagh/status/369794535464767488](https://twitter.com/dansabbagh/status/369794535464767488)

<comment><USER21> This is all very unclear to me. There's quite a bit indignation here which may be clouding people's rational assessment of the situation.

The Guardian has clear motive to play up any interaction like this with the government. That doesn't mean they would, but I'm not going to suspend critical assessment of the situation just because it plays to be beliefs.

The ratio of verified information to editorializing rants is very low here, at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> All this Gaurdian praise neglects the fact that they have had all of their exclusives handed to them over the past few years, from WikiLeaks to Snowden... and for no good reason other than that's who it was given to last time.

If papers such as the independent, etc. had been given this information, im sure there professionalism would have been the same or higher. Outside of handed-on-a-platter reporting, the Guardian has massively cocked up in the past (leading to the arrest of sources, etc.).

<comment><USER23> All the other UK papers (and the BBC) have barely even REPORTED on any of these issues, exclusives or not.

To look at those papers you wouldn't suspect something of this magnitude is even going on.

<comment><USER24> They were 'requested' not to report it by the government: [http://order- order.com/2013/06/08/d-notice-june-7-2013/](http://order- order.com/2013/06/08/d-notice-june-7-2013/)

<comment><USER25> As that rightly states, D-Notices are requests to not publish. They have no legal standing, though they are frequently obeyed. (One relatively reason example was the D-Notice concerning Prince Harry's military deployments — for the sake of his safety and of those serving alongside him.)

What's really disconcerting is that the other outlets have decided this isn't sufficiently "in the public interest" as to disobey the notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This seems like the digital equivalent of adding skulls to your officer's caps -- how have these guys not realised that they're the baddies yet? ( [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU) )

edit: less-copyright-blocked link: [http://www.snotr.com/video/3167/Are_we_the_baddies](http://www.snotr.com/video/3167/Are_we_the_baddies)

<comment><USER27> So the Queen's Royal Lancers[1] and the USMC Recon Battalions[2] are baddies as well? How about the dozens of other units that used it?

I'm not saying this action by the British government isn't troubling, but there is no single symbol of being "the baddies".

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Royal_Lancers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Royal_Lancers) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Reco...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Reconnaissance_Battalions)

<comment><USER28> The use of skull and death motif goes back the Napoleonic wars with Brunswick Hussars. Hitler and the Nazis where very good at nicking their imagery - <USER2> suspect Hindus are still at bit pissed off over the swastika

<comment><USER27> Actually, it goes all the way back to the War of Austrian Succession and Prussian Husaren-Regiment Nr. 5.

As a long-time student of history I get very annoyed when Nazi symbology is presented as something they invented, particularly when used to demonstrate that we should have known they were evil to begin with. They ripped all their shit off from someone else, and some of it is only viewed as evil today _because_ of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> To why they didn't go to court:

@dansabbagh "Reason Gdn destroyed the computers was to avoid a lengthy legal UK battle that wld have prevented more reporting of Snowden files."

[https://twitter.com/dansabbagh/status/369794535464767488](https://twitter.com/dansabbagh/status/369794535464767488)

<comment><USER30> How would it have prevented more reporting of Snowden files? Rudsbridger said the US division will continue publishing.

In another comment in the Guardian Rudsbridger mentioned only the potential liability, not the impact to reporting.

<comment><USER31> Perhaps if the issue was brought to the courts the Guardian may have become subject to a court order (let's say, a gag order), which even if violated in the US could have lead the Guardian to be in contempt. I think in this case a small retreat was more effective than a direct confrontation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What is this trying to accomplish? Did they really think the Guardian has the only copy of that data? They couldn't really believe that, could they, after the Guardian pretty much explicitly told them it wasn't true. So they're just government thugs playing whack-a-mole? Confiscate some usb sticks here, smash some Guardian storage devices there...

If they can't ask the Guardian to overwrite the drives a few times and expect the Guardian to comply with that, what good does physically destroying the drives do? The Guardian could download the encrypted data from some (backup) cloud storage location and have it back in an hour.

<comment><USER33> > What is this trying to accomplish? Did they really think the Guardian has > the only copy of that data?

Of course not. The idea was to frighten people who haven't been obedient and to create a lot of costs to reduce the profitability of running stories on unwelcome subjects.

<comment><USER34> "One U.S. security official told Reuters that one of the main purposes of the British government's detention and questioning of Miranda" [note: using a clear abuse of a terrorism law] "was to send a message to recipients of Snowden's materials, including the Guardian, that the British government was serious about trying to shut down the leaks."

[http://ca.news.yahoo.com/britain-forced-guardian-destroy- cop...](http://ca.news.yahoo.com/britain-forced-guardian-destroy-copy-snowden- material-222933670.html)

Whenever anyone asks this kind of question, please give them citations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can someone remind me, since when did "journalist" become synonymous with "terrorist" again?

<comment><USER3> Probably around the time that journalists decided they would write what they think rather than what they are told to write.

Journalist is a risky profession, even when you're not going into some warzone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can't imagine how this went down in person. Group of police turn up and tell you that they're going to destroy all your working media. How would you even go about authenticating such a ridiculous claim?

It's like they've never heard of off-site backups.

<comment><USER37> In all seriousness, though, reading about the smashed MacBook Pro has me reviewing our Chubb business operations and equipment insurance.

It excludes acts of terrorism and terrorism related activity. If jackboots show up demanding to physically demolish servers in any of our dozen datacenters around the world, claiming Section 7 or Patriot Act, will our insurance replace them? A government's categorization of data as terror related could quickly put a cloud provider out hundreds of thousands or millions (mass video storage is expensive) in unrecoverable costs.

We're covered for business continuity if the DMCA or SOPA troops show up and make off with servers like with Mega. But looks like we're not covered if the insurance company can prove a government called the destruction terror related. Ugh.

<comment><USER36> If the iTunes agreement contains a clause about not using it to make nuclear weapons (it does), you can be sure as anything most insurance policies are void if you lose things to government action. I had a flick through mine some time ago, the only ones I can remember are falling spacecraft and floods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> All this tells me is that our government are doing worse things we don't even know about yet, and they're doing everything they can to keep it quiet.

</comment><comment><USER39> Thugs. That's the first thing in my mind. The UK government employs thugs to intimidate people and destroy property.

This kind of subject makes it really hard not to Godwin the thread right away., because you know what other government used thugs to intimidate and destroy.

<comment><USER40> The American government?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It might be worth checking out the killed journalist meter by Reporters without Borders.

[https://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-barometer-journalists- kille...](https://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-barometer-journalists- killed.html?annee=2013)

They may not even provide the most throughout look on these things, but they seem to cover most incidents regarding persecution of journalists.

</comment><comment><USER42> Am I the only one that finds this part more Orwellian than any of the actual leaks? To me there's a fundamental difference (though I hate both) between collecting data, and attacking people who politically disagree with you and attempting to destroy data you don't like.

Book burnings general don't end well for the party in power.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's unfortunate Guardian didn't force the government go to court over this. It would increase publicity.

<comment><USER29> Maybe they already did? Seems like the current government have introduced secret courts recently... [http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/jun/14/what- are-secret-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/jun/14/what-are-secret- courts)

Also the Guardian hasn't stopped printing these stories in the UK or online. They've been staffing up in New York (including Nick Davies who brought down much of Rupert Murdoch's print empire last year and crucially prevented newscorp from buying the rest of bskyb).

It's interesting to me that the US has a better low-level legal framework for a free press, but it's not plain sailing at all (i.e.: the nytimes and washington post "asked dad" before looking at wikileaks files; judith miller and now james risen have no shield laws).

<comment><USER43> Maybe they did. But the man who was contacted by UK officials about destroying the data, Alan Rusbridger, didn't say they went to court. He said (in reply to a comment) he doesn't see the need for it:

      AlanC said:
      If you meekly give into their demands without insisting   that they
      take you to court then you've as good as admitted that they can do
      whatever they like as far as the UK press is concerned. ...

      Alan Rusbridger replied:
      Play out the scenario for me in which fighting this case in court would
      have enabled us to do a better job of reporting the Snowden documents.
      I'm not sure I quite see it...

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-m...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david- miranda-schedule7-danger-reporters)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> To subscribe to the Guardian : [http://subscribe.theguardian.com/](http://subscribe.theguardian.com/)

To send Alan Rusbridger an email of support: email@example.com

I'm drafting an email here [http://blog.mikadosoftware.com/2013/08/20/supporting-a- free-...](http://blog.mikadosoftware.com/2013/08/20/supporting-a-free-press- by-paying-for-it/) but send something - a few people standing up are worth supporting.

<comment><USER30> Please don't do that. As I described in another comment Rusbridger didn't do anything courageous, quite the opposite.

<comment><USER44> I'm struggling with this - he is the editor, he supports his reporters when they are harrassed, he throws an idiotic government move into sharp relief, he is still pumping out page one stories when the rest of the press think "Prince says baby son is rascal" is news.

We are not living in 80's Poland, or 30's Russia, or modern Iran / Syria. So on the spectrum of courage-shown-by-news-editors he is never going to choose between his family and his editorial page, but he is doing better than all the rest of his peers - and we sorely need it.

<comment><USER30> Maybe he does more than some of his peers but the qualities you describe hardly meet the bare minimum of what the public should expect from an editor. And, while exceedingly few, there are reporters who are head and shoulders above Rudsbridger and who report in service to the public at great harm to themselves and their family, Greenwald being an example at hand.

But no one asked Rudsbridger to sacrifice his family nor was he at risk to. As an editor he should have demanded a court order before destroying source material. He should not now pretend he is a courageous government-defying reporter when he has minimized risk to himself.

<comment><USER44> > qualities you describe hardly meet the bare minimum of what the public > should expect from an editor.

Or from head of MI5, head of Civil Service, Attourney Generals, Prime Minister.

There is a lot unknown here, but I think you are assuming he allowed the destruction so that it could not be proven they had it in the first place (making him safer).

There are other explanations - including a desire not to let UK courts have jurisdication over his sources. He is moving the entire reporting to NY - thats a pretty clear indication of his thinking. Choose your jury wisely.

<comment><USER30> > I think you are assuming he allowed the destruction so that it could not be > proven they had it in the first place (making him safer).

No, what made him safer was obeying the government and also, I presume, removing himself from direct involvement in reporting the story.

That's why the portrayal of courage and rebellion is laughable.

<comment><USER44> He has removed himself and _any reporter not based in New York_. He knows the strength of the first amendment in US courts, National Security letters or not.

No UK reporter will do any work on surveillance any more, simply because the UK has too much power over the press when it really wants to. Going to court in the US gives him a near certain win, going to court in the UK a near certain loss.

To paraphrase Napoleon: I would rather have a clever editor than a brave one, and a lucky editor than a clever one. He got lucky with the UK destroying the disks in a heavy handed manner.

<comment><USER30> Fine, describe him as clever or lucky but not courageous or standing up to power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I am starting to seriously despair at the state of the UK.

<comment><USER46> Me too. But don't be fooled into thinking anything different would have happened elsewhere, this definitely would have happened in the US, and I doubt he would even have been allowed a lawyer and most likely held indefinitely. And we have already seen Europe close off their airspace to the Bolivian presidential plane due to suspicions Snowden was on board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know that wikileaks' "torrent the encrypted archive, have the decryption key on a dead man's switch" approach didn't _exactly_ work as intended, but it's starting to seem like a relatively good option again IMO :S

<comment><USER3> It's worked just fine so far, Assange's hide-out still hasn't been stormed and he's safer where he is than Snowden.

<comment><USER43> How do you know Assange's hide-out is safer than Snowden's?

It's also interesting that Snowden likely has more freedom. At least he can move around Russia, while Assange is stuck inside a room. (security vs freedom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> 'God Bless' the Guardian..

</comment><comment><USER48> Don't be fooled, events like this one _will_ have their repercussions.

<comment><USER49> I truly hope so, but who for and what are they likely to be? When many people in the UK read what the tabloid media writes, without questioning it or taking biases into account, if the events are even reported at all. An uninformed electorate is a dangerous thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> David Cameron is going to have answer about this at the next election. He should be trembling in his boots.

<comment><USER51> Well, maybe, but the Guardian's circulation is only about 200,000, and I doubt more than 1% of its readers would have voted for Cameron anyway. (Or was that heavy irony?).</comment></comment>


Against UI Chrome (not the browser) - <AUTHOR> http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2011/02/against-chrome-a-manifesto.html

<comment><USER2> The enemy here is an abuse of skeuomorphic[1] design principles. The Reason and iBook examples are the most blatant abuses of this technique.

Buttons are a good example of skeuomorphic done right. In real life, if something's supposed to be turned, I expect it to be a knob. If something's going to be pulled, I expect there to be a handle. Since you're expected to click or tap buttons, it they should obviously look like buttons.

I think that Apple's decision to continue buttonizing touch UI was probably wise in the beginning, but seeing Windows Phone 7's all flat everything approach feels really fresh. Why don't they chrome up their touchable objects? Because its a _touch screen_ and the only thing you can POSSIBLY do is _touch_ them. The context is I took out my device to do something with it, I expect to be touching things.

So while buttons may still need to be buttons on the desktop, I'm happy to see chrome fade away in touch UIs.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph>

<comment><USER3> Reason is _fantastic_. It's actually a fantastically intuitive interface for its target market, and what's more, it's psychologically effective.

The skeumorphism in Reason is _so_ over-the-top – there's a physics engine in there! - that it gets you in the right mindset: it's playful, it doesn't take itself seriously, and that's exactly what you need to get making music. It's exactly the opposite of WriteRoom because it's serving a very different mindset.

<comment><USER4> I use Reason every day, and while I assure that its design was somewhat appealing at first, the sheer _insanity_ of having to deal with virtual instruments and sequencers as if they were the "real thing" grows tiring _extremely_ quickly.

Even during my education, wherein I dealt with more than a few individuals in Reason's "target market" (see: aging film composers who have spent their fair share of time plugging real cables into real sequencers) found it appalling and difficult to use.

The only reason I still use the program at all is because it has a few excellent patches built into it. The fact that I have to wade through the swamp of illogic that is its user interface remains one of most frustrating parts of my job as a media composer.

<comment><USER5> Also, one of the ironies in reason is that you quickly arrive at the point where you want to wire the relevant knobs and dials to _one_ central virtual control surface, because scrolling up and down over 3 screens full of devices gets old rather fast.

But there is no such thing that I know of (in Reason4), so without a physical MIDI control surface you're effectively lost.

Disclaimer: I'm only a casual Reason user, perhaps I'm missing something. I also hear Reason5 has some improvements but haven't upgraded yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While I agree to some extent I think that the physical appearance on touch devices is necessary. I think that a button needs to look like a button, because I can't just explore with my mouse and wait for a rollover effect to understand what's clickable. Also trial and error to find a link could be a pretty frustrating process.

<comment><USER7> There needs to be some way to show what is tappable but I don't think that making all that look like buttons is necessary. If you look around iOS (especially on the iPhone or iPod touch) you will see that very few tappable elements actually do look like buttons, they don't have to. Only potentially risky actions are brightly colored and look like buttons, for example "Send" or "Delete". I would argue that it wouldn't matter much if you were to ditch the gradients and shadows and just go with bright colors and rounded corners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Speaking of chrome, I wish you wouldn't resize my entire browser window when I open your image link in a new tab.

On a separate note, I hate the Windows phone examples he gave. My phone is a communication device - I expect that no matter what I'm doing in the OS, the clock, battery indicator, and my connection status ought to be visible.

<comment><USER9> Wow, that _is_ spectacularly obnoxious. Apparently I forgot to disable that in firefox after I updated to windows 7...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Now, this kind of severe chromatosis is particularly widespread in music- making applications, perhaps hoping to assuage the gear-nostalgia of composers who once had actual knobs and buttons to play with but now are reduced to pretending to operate pretend knobs and buttons on a screen. That's the only reason I can think of for this, a kind of glorious reductio ad absurdum of rampant chromiology, in Reason:_

Actually, I know the designers of Reason. That product was extremely successful _because_ it presented users with an interface that they already found familiar (dangling patch cables plugged into input/output panels on audio gear) whereas most competitors were presenting and interface they did not find familiar (signal routing as electronic schematics).

There are far more powerful programs than _Reason_ for making music. But apart from Ableton Live (more modern, but until recently with much less control over signal routing), they are considerably harder to use and have a much steeper learning curve. I have 20 or 30 software packages like this (I used to work in this industry) and while many of them allow open-ended schematics instead of imposing this 'chrome' metaphor on the user, the downside of this is that reading other people's schematics or learning to organize one's own is difficult. A _Reason_ schematic is easy to read quickly because you know where everything is, a lot of the choices have been made for you and you can focus on what's distinctive about it instead of spending the first few minutes trying to parse the graph.

At music biz trade shows, the probability that a vendor will speak of _Reason_ dismissively as a 'toy' is inversely related to the quality of the UI on their soft/hardware. In an extreme case the 'software UI' turned out to be an IDE in which you could write Motorola 56k assembler. A year after the firm went bust the lead designer still claimed to be perplexed about why the music-making public had failed to embrace the product.

<comment><USER11> "The probability that a vendor will speak of <insert popular, easy-to-use software here> dismissively as a 'toy' is inversely related to the quality of the UI on their soft/hardware."

I think that could be said of just about every industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dwarf Fortress. By far the most complex game I've ever played, and yet the interface was simple.

The dozen-items menu you see on screen is just a block of text telling you the hotkeys. Nothing to click, push or drag, no focus to worry about, you just pressed keys away.

And once you memorize enough of them, you can just hide the big block of text and go completely UI-free.

No wasted space, no button hunting or "I didn't know you could right-click". Just you, the game, and the keyboard to translate your thoughts.

I wish it was possible to implement this in every software.

<comment><USER13> DF is a bad example, because of the learning curve. There are things that the UI could've done (especially if it left ncurses) that could make the game more approachable for new players.

<comment><USER12> I always thought the hardest part of the learning curve was understanding the game itself, not the interface. What each workshop does, why that dwarf have been in bed for two months, what pissed the elves.

Not saying it's perfect either, but what do you think the UI could have done better?

<comment><USER13> The game operates like a cross between VIM and NetHack. You have to jump between modes of operation (selection,placement,navigation,element action)

If the world was iso metic 2d, with context mouse sensative information, and when clicking on something available

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I agree, chromeless is nice. But I love Reason. I really enjoy being able to immediately introspect into the signal path, something which can be much more vague in other music apps. Ordering, layering, and combining effects are common practices in sound engineering/recording/performing to achieve different sounds. Being able to explicitly define the path in the chrome is actually quite handy.

Chrome _can_ be a good thing. Really.

<comment><USER15> There are better ways to show signal path than a bunch of droopy patch cables.

<comment><USER16> How would you propose to do it then?

<comment><USER15> Standard 2-D representations ala Kyma, Reaktor, Bidule, and the various audio tables (Reactable et al).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having used Reason, Logic and a huge amount of audio software, I can only half heartedly agree with this post. Ultrabeat and some of Logics other instruments(sculpture) are indeed examples of how not to do a UI.

Reason, for me is probably the most intuitive application I have used since I initially was plugging hardware cables to make music. However, it certainly isn't the most efficient way to patch something, but with the huge amount of routing flexibility in that software, I don't see a better option, the context menu for cable patching isn't really an effective method either since its list can exceed the height of my screen in some cases. I find though that most audio applications(reason included) do offer very flexible and easy linkage to hardware controllers which makes life easier. Most audio processing is about hands on control of many parameters simultaneously, and I think some of the best solutions(jazz mutant had some purpose built touch control surfaces) were much too expensive for the average user. I really hope that someone can make a tablet based app equivalent for iOS/android that could mimic these types of things. <shameless plug> (any software vendors want a dev(me) who would LOVE to work on this sorta project?!?! :)</shameless plug>

One other point that wasnt addressed properly in this article is that much of the "hardware look" UI chrome is due to these things being "emulations" of real gear. I think the market has decided that if you want to model a piece of gear, you had better draw up a photo-realistic picture of it and add some 3dfx to the knobs and sliders. For better or worse, a lot of users just dont buy into the sound emulation thing unless it looks like real device.

I have seen a lot of developers out there that have made some very functional very pretty UIs that also look like gear. U-he, FXPansion come to mind. Interestingly, Logic contains some very clean and easy to use UIs(the included efx) along with the dogs like Sculpture and Ultrabeat. Hopefully Logic10 will have a UI refresh to improve things...

<comment><USER18> A little off topic, but if you're looking for iPad touch control of things like MIDI devices, hardware is already out there to do that. Projects like touchOSC are providing the graphical instances, as well as others like S1MIDITrigger. This is getting bigger and bigger, and I imagine that's the reason Jazz Mutant packed it in - the writing was on the wall that the iPad is storming this market.

<comment><USER17> Will look into touchOsc- thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is why I loved the Full Flat Absolute Black[1] and its brethren themes for Firefox back a few years ago, exclusively.

Sadly, the developer has not updated them in a long time (2008!), so one must go through the hackish method of updating the maxVersion by downloading, opening, and editing the addon oneself. Even with this, there are a few platforms it doesn't work on fully.

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/full-flat- abs...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/full-flat-absolute- black/)

</comment><comment><USER20> The field of music production does seem to be a bit of a magnet for this skeuomorphic UI business. Having people coming from physical equipment is part of it, but there is an aesthetic factor as well, which relates to the kind of people musicians tend to be.

However, there is a new generation of UIs appearing in music production software, and the German company _Native-Instruments_ seems to be playing a big part in it. To contrast with the example of Ultrabeat from the article, consider NI's drum sampler 'Battery'[1] which arranges the same controls (plus some more) in a much more visually approachable manner, using strong, clean lines, and tabs to navigate between less-used controls.

Similarly consider their synth 'Massive'[2], which also employs clean lines and visual simplicity, and employs a system of colour-coding and numbering to achieve what Reason does with it's cable spaghetti approach.

Also, I find the Windows 7 Phone UI to be really bland. It is about as far as you can go in the opposite direction from a UI which has some sense of real- world objects and forms, and I think somewhere in the middle would be more desirable.

[1] [http://alex.leonard.ie/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/native- ins...](http://alex.leonard.ie/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/native-instruments- battery3.jpg)

[2] <http://static.kvraudio.com/i/b/massive.jpg>

<comment><USER21> I found it interesting that REAKTOR 5.5[1] and Sonar X1[2] are both upgrades that both tout an improved UI. Maybe a turning point has been reached? (After using Ableton, I can't imaging using the crazy "gear" UIs.)

[1] [http://www.native- instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/rea...](http://www.native- instruments.com/#/en/products/producer/reaktor-5/) [2] <http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/X1-overview.aspx>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If interfaces like reason's and ultrabeat's were the best UI possible for music software, then the interface for Final Cut Pro would be a rack of virtual VCRs and assorted machines, maybe even a bench for cutting and taping virtual pieces of film together.

When all you're doing is copying the physical device experience, it's the laziest UI design you can possibly make, completely ignoring the medium you're working with. Sure it works, just as well as the physical machines with a hundred buttons and knobs do, but it doesn't make use of all the possibilities a computer can offer. The best and the worst of the physical experience has been ported.

To me this is the same as emulating a rotary dial as a mobile phone's only means of dialing a number. It only sounds ridiculous because we all know the more efficient alternative. I think a lot of music software has yet to find the UI breakthrough it needs. Whenever that happens and a new standard of music software UI makes better use of the computer as medium, people will look back at UIs like reason's and find it very misguided.

That doesn't mean the answer to all UI issues is to go minimalistic like the article suggests, but I think real-life device mimicking is generally a sign of lack of UI/usability hard work. It's always the easier solution to copy the existing rather than think hard on a better solution nobody's done before.

<comment><USER10> Up until the last year or two, you had to use a mouse to interact with music software. Touchscreens existed, but were prohibitively expensive - the iPad is beginning to change that. Indeed, it's only within the last 5 years that processing multichannel audio hasn't hit the CPU so hard that the UI starts to get choppy (preventing complex animations of what's going on in the signal).

You will see some interesting multitouch applications within the next few years, but the real breakthrough will require some sort of 3d holographic display. Truly interactive musical creation requires the same sort of open- ended conceptual space as sculpture does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Chrome should be all about making an application interface more intuitive to users. A completely reductionist UI would be just having hotkeys, like vim, but that makes it a lot harder for a new user to get started. I think the key is to strike the right balance so that as users gain experience, the Chrome doesn't hold them back.

<comment><USER7> What about users who like to use the mouse? I'm not sure whether keyboard centric UIs are inherently superior to mouse-centric UIs.

<comment><USER24> Unless we're discussing actual metrics, it seems like it's a matter of preference.

Keyboard UIs (vim, pentadactyl, etc) should allow the user to do what they want in as few keystrokes as possible. They allow the user to do things _fast_. For people who want to take the time and effort to master an interface, they're superior to mouse centric UIs. For people who want to be able to sit down and use something right away without having to read a manual, they're horrible. The discovery of such UIs consists of "RTFM".

Mouse centric UIs should be easier for people who haven't used the program before. The functions should be fairly obviously labeled and easy to click on. For those unfamiliar with the program, at least its basic functionality should be immediately obvious. However, without some form of keyboard shortcut, they tend to be slower and more frustrating for more experienced or technical users who want to simply get stuff done.

All of this is just IMHO of course. I tend to prefer UIs that are essentially not there. My Firefox consists of a pentadactyl command line/status bar, and the TreeStyleTab sidebar. The browser UI is completely out of my way, and I know how to do what I want with just the keyboard, mostly. However, when people sit down and try to use my Firefox, they have no idea how the hell to even begin. (Whether this is a bug or a feature is up to you. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can I just say as a musician who fully endorses modular synthesis (and is the process of building his own physical modular synth) that Reason's design is fantastic. That's the back side of the instruments, you don't really interact with that much - only connecting various things which you don't really tweak. On the other side, yes, the gear matches physical interfaces and each instrument has a different interface. To me, that's the beauty of it! It really keeps your creative juice flowing and you end up doing things _wrong_ and making mistakes, which unlocks all sorts of cool sounds.

Also, I don't really see the issue with Ultrabeat, for precisely the same reason. I don't tend to use that, but that's just because a drum machine isn't my workflow.

I think the author would have got his point across better if he wasn't using creative software as his example.

</comment><comment><USER26> His first argument is a functional one: surely computers can give us a better way to manipulate audio than dragging around virtual patch cables. I totally agree with that.

However, then he tries to pivot the argument towards modernistic design sensibilities. Modern can be beautiful, but it can also be cold. And, like tactile interfaces, it's not immune from the eventual fatigue of seeing it everywhere.

In the end, the classic rule of form following function still applies. Make it work, then make it beautiful. As long as they don't impede function, I welcome the different looks and my occasional dose of nostalgia.

<comment><USER27> I think the classic rule of form following function doesn't have to do with doing one then the other. Rather, I believe it refers to the beauty of something which is built to be highly functional (e.g. higher mathematics, the piano, poetry(?)). In this case, aesthetics are functional.

<comment><USER26> I really like that integrated viewpoint. I'd always thought it to mean that "form follows function" in order of priority (rather than chronologically in development). But I really like the idea that beauty is the byproduct of functionality. That's a new spin for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think the examples here are poorly chosen - wouldn't it be more interesting to compare the relatively chromey iOS interface to Windows Phone 7 (rather than an archaic Logic plugin released in 2004)? If we're bringing up old audio software, why not bring up Ableton Live, which has been on the forefront of chromeless GUI design for nearly a decade?

Also, Android's Honeycomb interface shows us that "chromeless" doesn't necessarily equal "flat".

</comment><comment><USER29> There is a reason why forum software looks dated compared with commenting system in blogs. Old style forum designs do too much work with the chrome. Heavy, styled, boxes. It makes a design weighty and draws attention from the content.

Ben Hunt called for "Design the content, not the box it comes in". More of that over here <http://savethepixel.org/save_the_pixel_ch1.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER30> Software designers use visual metaphors to make software easier to use. One of the reasons Apple has been so successful is their UI elements remind us of things in the real world. Like the now popular on-off switch from iOS. That could have easily been accomplished with a drop down or a checkbox, or radio buttons... but the useful video metaphor lets the brain think less to use it.

So, I have to disagree with the author. Im not against using relevant visual metaphors. Im against stupid ones (like the messy cables).

</comment><comment><USER31> Is this a "modest proposal" or an actual argument against usability?

<comment><USER32> It's religion. Laugh.

<comment><USER31> Actually, it was an honest question. I've always assumed that metaphors were a good thing in UI, and was surprised to see an argument against them.

The best writing is often found where you can't tell if the author was being sarcastic, and to me, this read like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> people still calls me crazy when i say the only thing GTK miss is an X skin, with plain B&W flat buttons.

</comment><comment><USER15> Cannot be upvoted enough.</comment>


Why Peat-Free Gardening Is Essential for the Environment - <AUTHOR> https://seednsow.co.uk/blogs/news/why-peat-free-gardening-is-essential-for-the-environment <comment><USER2> "Peat bogs are one of the most important carbon stores, often referred to as carbon sinks. When peat is removed, this quickly releases a large volume of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming."

It does? How does harvesting peat release CO2 into the athmosphere? Didn't get that ... Not that I am advocating the use of peat nor its depletion in its natural environment by industrial harvesting, I don't. I don't like peat. But I really think that a lot of the rethoric and reasoning is dumbed down in these parts of the internet. Isn't peat used to ultimately grow plants, perhaps the most important carbon sink? Do we know 100% that this is a CO2-positive venture?

While not strictly related this reminds me of the strange case of "BioChar" ie burning wood (!) to inoculate in the ground, because of its magical properties. Ugh ... The scientific data on BioChar is practically non- existent, yet its advocates are almost fanatical and furthermore 100% positive that the measures they take are going to be CO2-negative.

<comment><USER3> > How does harvesting peat release CO2 into the athmosphere?

Peat forms in bogs and the plant matter within is decomposing under specific anearobic conditions. When harvested the microorganisms contained within go from anaerobic to aerobic conditions. Under aerobic conditions the continued decomposition of the plant matter releases CO2.

Addressing the comment below, just exposing something to the air doesnt make it evaporate into CO2, but add bacteria and fungi and it will be metabolised by them, releasing CO2

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but the problem is, thats what bacteria and fungi do, and they do it for all plant matter. Then, afterwards, CO2 goes back into the plants, which they deposit in the soil as carbon, either through their roots, or through dying off.

Life on Earth produces CO2, and eats CO2. Without this cycle, it'd the Oxygen Holocaust again. CO2 levels vary over vast time periods naturally, and peat, and its analogs through time, don't really play a big role here.

What anti-peat people do is make you forget one important thing: we can renew peat as fast as we harvest, which means it continually sinks carbon into the bog as the industry goes through harvest cycles. What _doesn 't_ happen is an instant CO2 release... most of the CO2 remains locked up in the peat for years or maybe even decades, while the peat bogs themselves renew it faster than it decomposes further in our gardens and containers.

What you really want to bitch about is coal and oil. The peat industry is nothing compared to the amount of CO2 production by those fucks.

<comment><USER2> Not criticising what you said. But isn't that very close to saying that composting is releasing CO2? Thing is I don't really get why peat is so extremely unproportionally badly angled compared to other mechanisms similar to that what you have just said. To me, there seems to be a hidden bias somewhere.

<comment><USER3> Composting does release CO2 if done aerobically, which is ideal. It releases methane if it is allowed to go anearobic. And methane is a more potent GHG. If composting at home you are bringing the carbon cycle close to home.

The difference between composting and harvesting peat is that one is a way of using the decomposed remains of your own plants, vegetables, wood and other waste, to enrich your soil.

The other is harvesting a natural carbon sink which is at risk of being destroyed.

As the poster before mentioned, there are sutainable peat sources. But there are also peatbogs being drained and burned [0].

Changing landuse is one of the drivers of climate change, and its not just forests that need to be managed, wetlands and swamps do too.

As a species we are pumping a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere maybe we should think about leaving some carbon in the ground for once.

[0] [https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/as-fires-strangle- national...](https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/as-fires-strangle-national- parks-indonesia-struggles-to-restore-peatlands/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cyberpunk 2077 world premiere: 50 minutes of William Gibson-level insanity - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/06/cyberpunk-2077-world-premiere-50-minutes-of-william-gibson-level-insanity/ <comment><USER2> "The trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 strikes me as GTA skinned-over with a generic 80s retro-future, but hey, that's just me." \--William Gibson[1]

It's mentioned (and little more) in the article at the end, but it still seems odd to invoke Gibson's name and not talk about this more.

1\. [https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1005958197654351872](https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/1005958197654351872)

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this really a criticisms though? I would buy that in a heartbeat, heh

<comment><USER3> Deus Ex was there in 2000, no big, open spaces and vehicles like modern open world games but political intrigue over and beyond Neuromancer and the hacking and body modification were integral parts of gameplay, System Shock 2 had those hacking/body mod gameplay features as well in 1999 but in space, so there are some great ones out there if you don't mind older games and if they run on a system you have.

<comment><USER4> Deux Ex runs on modern PCs without issue using the GoG or Steam version. I play it without visual mods, and it still holds up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Witcher 3 and its expansions are probably my favorite game of all times, and I've been gaming voraciously since the late 80s. The story, the connection to the characters, the feeling of immersion into the world, and the character of Geralt himself are not something I've seen in many other titles. Somewhat reminiscent of Final Fantasy 7 in terms of its impact on me as a participant to the experience.

The pressure on that studio to deliver something amazing couldn't be any higher.

<comment><USER6> Its NPCs having real backstories that didn't feel like fetch quests provided a very nice level of depth, and made you care about what happened to them. I got the bad ending, and my jaw was legitimately agape for a few minutes as I processed what just happened, after playing through for as many hours as I did.

<comment><USER7> If it makes you feel any better, the more canon ending would likely be that brutal and painful given how the books were supposed to end the story of Geralt and Yennefer. Even the full trilogy ending seems to mock the player for being desperate for a completely "happy" ending - even that one can't possibly be the happiest thing for Geralt if you ask me because we have lost so many good friends / colleagues probably to get there. The fact that the writers don't even dwell on these losses too much actually makes the losses more brutal - you aren't told how you should feel telegraphed in any way. Part of what makes the series so engaging is very similar to what made the Sopranos on TV so good - it is actually following the ups and downs and successes and failures of an active, dynamic life. I believe this was described by Kurt Vonnegut as such anyway.

It's unfortunate a lot of people that hate on games won't be able to sink their teeth into the really fantastic writing that went into that game and its expansions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It doesn't have enoigh rain to really feel cyberpunk.

... on a side note, I just realized we're now as far away from cyberpunk in time as cyberpunk was from the golden age of sci-fi. That also feels wrong somehow.

<comment><USER9> Reasonable, but it _is_ in LA, and the rain in Bladerunner was always unrealistic (baring unpredictable effects of climate change).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> CDPR the old Blizzard looking forward to this.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hoped for a better graphics :( The initial trailers were more life-like.

<comment><USER12> Yeah. I preferred the original aesthetic too, feels far too cartoonish now.

<comment><USER13> The original trailer was completely CG done by an animation studio. This trailer is rendered in engine.

<comment><USER11> One of the selling points at early stages of development was that what they shown in trailer should look exactly as game play. That's why it is now such a disappointment.

<comment><USER13> The old trailer was done in 2013, real proper development started in 2017. What are you actually disappointed about, that it's not dark and gritty all the time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm so sad they chose a first-person view. I can't play in first-person view more than 20min without feeling nauseous. I'll have to skip the game just because of my condition… :/

<comment><USER15> I used to play FPS shooters relentlessly and competitively. Somewhere around Quake 2/Quake 3/Halo I started to get severe motion sickness playing games and had to stop. For years I thought I would never be able to really enjoy FPS shooters again. I stuck mostly to RPGs as they weren't as intense.

These days, if I know I'll have a couple rare hours to myself where I can play video games I'll pop a Dramamine. I've also found that ginseng pills, sea bands, colder air, lots of water, lots of rest, good food, fresh air, and playing frequently enough to build up a tolerance but not so often that I'm over doing it help. This may be just be the placebo affect, but it seems to work.

I still get motion sickness occasionally, and I stop playing when I do, but it's far less severe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another first-person shooter. :-(

They spend all that money and time creating worlds, it'd be nice to have another Skyrim or two some day. Set in a cyberpunk world. There aren't enough RPGs made anymore.

<comment><USER17> > it'd be nice to have another Skyrim or two some day

Starfield is likely roughly a year out. So that's pretty exciting.

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry but what is this based on? Bethesda showed a logo and a pre-rendered video of a planet. I have a feeling we're far more than roughly a year out from Starfield releasing.

<comment><USER17> Pete Hines said it needed "some time and attention after this year", "it's playable", and (in so many words) "it's next after fallout 76". [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XA6YHeaOO-Y](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XA6YHeaOO-Y) So that sounds like 1, maybe 2 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Was looking forward to this till I heard it was first person perspective.

Just can't play first person games on console with a controller. Lost all interest in it now.

<comment><USER20> I'd at least give it some time, watch a few streams of it before turning your back on it, cd projekt red might release something beautiful, it's not even complete yet and you could potentially have the options for 3rd person perspective.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/16c2wk/cyberpunk_20...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/16c2wk/cyberpunk_2077_trailer/)

hidden image in the trailer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unless these myriad of dialog options lead somewhere meaningful, it's not much different from Mass Effect or the even older Knights of the Old Republic and other precursors.

<comment><USER22> I'd take reskinned KOTOR in a heartbeat. If the quality of writing is consistent with Witcher 3 that would be even more awesome.</comment></comment>


Apple Pay Runs Afoul of MCX, a Group with a Rival Product - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/technology/apple-pay-runs-afoul-of-a-rival.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> What's really going to be interesting is to see what CurrentC's plans are for getting onto the iPhone. Apple has a history of not allowing certain products, if they conflict with Apple's plans for monetization.

So, CurrentC might work on Android, but ... it's Android, not the iPhone, which is the one that generates the buzz in the US.

Plus, there's the whole _not-actually-having-a-product_ thing when Apple has a product _in use_ ,

I suspect that CurrentC will wind up being a negotiating tool, more than an actual product.

Which is kind of funny, because Apple doesn't actually have to negotiate here.

<comment><USER3> CurrentC is the holding the shotgun to their feet yelling at Apple, "Don't make me do it!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really interesting battle, because MCX's CurrenC looks like an _utterly horrible piece of shit_ that was almost certainly doomed to fail even if Apple had never come up with anything in this space.

[http://www.imore.com/depth-look-currentc-and-personal- data-t...](http://www.imore.com/depth-look-currentc-and-personal-data-they- want-collect)

<comment><USER5> What it is is annoying and disheartening. When Google Wallet came out I wasn't able to use it for anything but loyalty cards since carrier versions of phones that normally supported it were gimped in order to stall Wallet's adoption while the carriers tried to develop their own system.

About a year ago I got a Nexus 5 and have been using Wallet's tap-to-pay ever since. It's pretty convenient to pull out my phone, flash the loyalty card, and wave it over the POS terminal. I get a little receipt scrolling up the screen and a copy is emailed to me.

Now Apple has joined the party and with the two biggest smartphone OSes supporting tap-to-pay (and with implementations that both work on standard POS terminals with NFC) it looked like there would finally be some push to get support from retailers that hadn't updated their terminals yet. Seemed like a win-win. Both iOS and Android fans would have a convenient and more secure way to pay for things without any of the lock-in or incompatibility that normally comes along when Apple and Google are competing in the same space.

...but no. These guys are taking a page from the carrier playbook and deliberately disabling something that has been working for years just as it's gaining popularity outside the early-adopter/techie space. It's the sort of thing that bums me out and I wish it didn't affect so many retailers so I could participate in my own ineffective (but satisfying) boycott. As it stands, I guess I'll just go back to the plastic because there's no way I'm installing this CurrenC nonsense.

It would have been nicer if they competed by building their own NFC implementation that also worked on common hardware (a-la Wallet and Pay) so users could choose to use it if they wanted. Maybe they could offer coupons or some other reason people might decide to opt in. At least that would be competing in a way that didn't hurt overall adoption. Instead they went the route of scumbags like cell carriers.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk confirms that he just bought back X.com, the domain he owned in 1999 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/10/elon-musk-x-dot-com <comment><USER2> Elon Musk is the greatest PR savant of our generation. I mean, he's an absolutely outstanding entrepreneur, genius engineer and fascinating technologist. But, wow. His personal brand carries so much weight, I'm definitely interested in learning about the PR people and / or firms behind his success.

Buying a single-letter domain is impressive, to say the least.

But a whole TechCrunch article, headlining with your face and name, because you tweeted about a domain name purchase for sentimental value is really next level. How did he manage to build such an impressive cognitive footprint in a world that's constantly fighting for your attention and ad revenue?

(... but then again, in the world of domain name purchases, I'm sure we'd all share a laugh if Sean Parker and / or Justin Timberlake bought "thefacebook.com" from Facebook.)

<comment><USER3> thefacebook.com is/was the web mail portal: [https://mail.thefacebook.com/](https://mail.thefacebook.com/)

<comment><USER4> Are they really running Exchange 2010?

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't be surprising. As it turns out, lots of businesses run on Microsoft technologies.

<comment><USER6> I think the poster was questioning why they weren't running a more recent version of Exchange such as 2013/2016

<comment><USER5> My company uses 2010 as well. It's regularly patched and supported for another two or three years. Why fix what's not broken?

(Yes, I know Clinton used 2010. Her admin was a dumbass though).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oooo time for my x.com story!!

I worked at PayPal 2003-2007. At some point my team had a meeting with the CEO of some vendor, and at the end, the guy pulled me aside and asked, "Do you know what happened to x.com? I used to work at PayPal, and when PayPal was acquired by eBay, part of the contract said that we could keep our x.com email addresses forever and that they would guarantee delivery would keep working as long as eBay still owned the domain. But it stopped working a little while ago".

So it turned out that eBay was contractually obligated to keep running x.com and the email addresses, but no one in ops knew that, thought it was unused, and shut it off.

I'm not sure if they ever got it working again, but I would guess that Elon didn't pay much for it, since eBay wasn't using it and technically was obligated to keep running it for Elon.

He may have just said, "Hey, I'll run it myself if you don't want it anymore."

</comment><comment><USER8> I recall when I was at PayPal, which owned x.com at the time, there were a few people who had x.com email addresses internally. It was considered a prestigious novelty.

I also recall pitching to various folks to use the domain as a URL shortener, but people rolled their eyes. Always felt like a missed opportunity to me, although I admit it was a kind of gimmicky idea.

<comment><USER9> Hah that's cool. X.com could've been a bigger version of tinyurl and bitly when both were at their peak. In the bigger picture, still small stuff though like you sort of alluded to.

<comment><USER10> bit.ly for a while let you use j.mp which was even shorter than x.com. For some reason (simplifying their brand maybe?) they eventually got rid of that and now going to j.mp just gives you bit.ly URLs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just checked, and of all the single-letter domains, only u.com and z.com are being used.

<comment><USER12> Hrmm, I tried a whois for a few (a, g, t, e) and they're just not registered: "organisation: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority".

Is IANA sitting on them?

edit: Oh, from the wiki [1]: "In 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved all single-letter and single-digit second-level domain names in the top-level domains com, net, and org, and grandfathered those that had already been assigned."

"...with the intention to avoid a single company commercially controlling a letter of the Alphabet."

Oops.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second- level_dom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-letter_second-level_domain)

<comment><USER13> > _"...with the intention to avoid a single company commercially controlling a > letter of the Alphabet."_

Authorities taking steps against undue corporate control of the internet. It's almost quaint today.

<comment><USER14> It was still Postel's IANA. I'm sure current ICANN would be a very different organization if he was still at the helm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unused single-letter gTLD domains are still being offered, it would appear; although there is both an unspecified financial bar and some kind of .ORG values-alignment test: [http://www.project94.org/](http://www.project94.org/)

The values test is presumably not too onerous, if Facebook could pass it to acquire i.org (apparently unused).

<comment><USER16> huh .. weird. Although that link is just for org. Does ICANN still offer com/net single letter TLDs?

I really hope we don't see [http://a/](http://a/) in the future. I'm not all that happy about the brand name TLDs that got approved .. feels like a return to AOL keywords.

<comment><USER17> The Danish hostmaster as [http://dk](http://dk) configured with an A record.

I noticed Google uses just "go/XXXX" internally as an URL (no dots!).

So their internal DNS server must respond to just "go", or maybe there's a default search domain configured for everyone.

<comment><USER18> I have seen internal toplevel domains before, it's much less impressive. Imagine a company making "[https://mail/"](https://mail/") load their webmail, etc...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have a X dot com t-shirt which was given at a Paypal event couple of years ago

</comment><comment><USER20> It would be a good domain for a holding company or even just a summary of the companies he does.

</comment><comment><USER21> X.com was owned by PayPal/eBay for a while and originally hosted a site about X.commerce... their failed enterprise application bus (at least I think that's what it was).

They threw one heck of a party and then promptly disappeared.

<comment><USER22> Ah, yes, back in the frothy days when your Series A money was spent exclusively on the launch party.

<comment><USER23> x.com was indeed a weird business communication platform. They designed an entire API around SOAP-style verbs that had no RESTfullness whatsoever and were defined in a bunch of public read only repos. for some reason it didn't catch on.

some random evidence of its legacy: [https://github.com/johnj/php5-xcom](https://github.com/johnj/php5-xcom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For $5 million?

Doesn't seem to be too expensive for someone with $15 Bn net worth. Nice of Paypal to let go of it though, I guess.

<comment><USER25> The writer is just hypothesizing.

<comment><USER16> Yea I noticed that when I read it. I hate it when they do that. It's sorta click-baity, but that's not the right word as you're already reading the article. I guess misleading for .. dramatic effect? Stupid effect?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I feel like I'm missing something, maybe - how is this news?

<comment><USER27> It's a bit interesting, no? Hacker News isn't literally news, it's what people of our type find interesting.

<comment><USER28> Ok..What is interesting about this?

<comment><USER29> Elon Musk; the thread up top about him has some discussion about him being an interesting human being; there is literally a book about him.

The domain name x.com: It's interesting that something happened X.com as most of the other 26 single character domain names are reserved and won't be sold.

The history of it; Paypal, the previous owner of X.com and started by Elon Musk is a well known internet commerce success story; many readers not only have Paypal accounts, but also complex opinions of their service, and may even have worked there at one point.

Tantalizingly, as Elon Musk "enthusiastically" now owns X.com and has done other cool stuff in his life, it's interesting to fantasize about what might sort of content, if anything, Elon Musk will put up at X.com.

Finally, this is an article on TechCruch, and we're suckers for anything they post.

None of that might be as interesting as, say, "taking control of all .io domains with a targeted registration", but that has about 10x the points (1068 to this post's 104), but each upvote adds 1 point and is then plugged into the mysterious frontpage algorithm.

Elon Musk buying X.com isn't going to keep me up at night going wild with possibility, but it's really a human interest story and we're not robots. He owned this back in 1999; where where you then, where are you, and where do you think will you be, 18 years from now?

<comment><USER28> A person can be interesting. I agree. But I don't agree that any mundane actions that this interesting person do is also automatically interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I make a clean VIM reference site? - <AUTHOR>

Problem:
Vim tips and files are scattered all over the web. Usually in sites that are brutally difficult to use.
Yet there are TONS of people using VIM.
Solution:
A contrastingly clean central source of all things VIM that's user-maintained through GitHub.
Questions: 1. Would this interest you? 2. What would be the top-level nav links? (A little virtual card sorting here) 3. What would you expect on it? <comment><USER2> I believe your problem statement is accurate but incomplete. There is a central vim coordinating authority (vim.org) that is (poorly) integrated with a (rather clunky) knowledge base (vim.wikia.com).

I think you should consider discussing this on the vim mailing list (maybe you have, maybe others have).

It's a glaring deficiency of the vim ecosystem, I agree. Every single time I use vim.org and the vim wiki, I hear David Cross in my head saying "THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY". The fact that David Cross is in my head then concerns me for several minutes and I forget about Vim.

I'd love a way to update a wiki via a dvcs. Then it becomes a help file as well. Here's a project I would be more interested in:

 _Design a next gen Vim help file / wiki system that would allow for local help file access to extend naturally into user contributed wiki content. Integrate scripts into the above. Allow all of it to live in any of several popular DVCS's. Ensure that the scripts that live in it can be independently sourced using Pathogen, etc._

</comment><comment><USER3> A printable cheatsheet (black-n-white) would be good. Graphical cheatsheets are for fancy.

I found this one [http://www.digilife.be/quickreferences/QRC/VIM%20Quick%20Ref...](http://www.digilife.be/quickreferences/QRC/VIM%20Quick%20Reference%20Card.pdf) but it doesn't have anything about tabs, buffers and splits. A full quick reference in the same style as the one above would be good to stick next to a computer.

Right now I'm keeping <http://vim.runpaint.org/toc/> open in a browser tab and referring when needed. It's simple to refer and read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good one, and thanks for the pointer!</comment></comment>


Smartphone Evolution: US vs. Rest of the World - <AUTHOR> http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2009/06/a-tale-of-two-smartphones-us-vs-rest-of-world-compared.html

<comment><USER2> Europe is _not_ the "rest of the world".

In Taiwan, which has the highest cell phone penetration in the world (106 phones per 100 people), the market is vastly different from described in the article. LG is doing extremely well, leading the touch panels, Samsung, a number of Japanese companies, HTC (a local company) and recently Apple are the other major players.

AFIK, the story in Hong Kong is relatively similar and Korea has been even harder for Nokia.</comment>


The Verbalizer – An open source board to use with Google's Voice Search - <AUTHOR> http://breakfastny.com/verbalizer

<comment><USER2> This event was impressively organized, even though the software was very alpha and untested and hard to make work. I posted some photos here:

[http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/micro-controllers- sod...](http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/micro-controllers-soder-pizza- and-beer)

I should also add, the headline here on Hacker News is misleading. Yes, the demo connects the Verbalizer to Google Search, but you can do a hell of a lot else with it. That's the whole point. You could argue that it's basically a glorified microphone, but one that's got a bunch of points of control added to it. The 2 women sitting across from us connected a heat sensor to to the Verbalizer, so they started getting heat data from it and feeding it into their laptop. They didn't have time to do anything cool with that input, but clearly, this is an area that is wide open for experimentation.

By the way, all of the equipment was given to us for free. Even the sodering iron was given to us for free. I guess Google was throwing around some marketing dollars. This is the most impressive free event I've been to in months.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a perfect example of why we need the Chromium developers to come to consensus on an acceptable UI for programmatic triggering of the HTML5 speech API.

In this implementation, they have to actually take over the computers mouse and have it press the microphone Icon to capture input.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't want to sound like a guy from the 1990s, but it's nice to see so many women interested in hacking. Looks like a great event, kudos to the organisers.

<comment><USER2> That struck me as well. The organizers were 5 guys and 1 woman, so if you look at the photos it looks like the room is majority male. However, of the attendees, there were 9 men and 9 women. I was curious about that. We were all, in a sense, handpicked to be at this event -- after we signed up they sent us an email every day saying "Are you sure you still want to be in, please reply by 10 PM or you are kicked out." (I'm paraphrasing, they were slightly more diplomatic.) We failed to reply on Sunday night so we got kicked out. Then on Monday they told us there was an opening (someone else failed to reply and got kicked out). So we got back in. But the point is, everyone who was there was, in a sense, picked. So I'm curious if the organizers deliberately engineered the 50/50 gender split.

The whole thing was videotaped, and we had to sign a release form for the video as soon as we walked in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get it. How do the google search results get back to the board? Is the board parsing the search results?

Also, surely this violates Googe's TOS.

<comment><USER6> The article said nothing about search results going back to the board.

<comment><USER5> oh, so what's the point? It's basically a bluetooth microphone?

<comment><USER6> Yup. With a widget on the PC side to take the waves and shove them into Google.</comment></comment></comment></comment>