Ask HN: Do you sell to your friends? - <AUTHOR> My product is featured on BitsDuJour today, and early in the morning I got a purchase notification with dramatically familiar name and email. I refunded the order right away and contacted the person with anger and frustration. I always give away free licenses of my product to people I connect with personally, so it was very disappointing to know that someone I know so well tried to buy a license instead of just asking for it. She replied that asking for a free license of a 299USD product was unacceptable for her self-esteem and the full price was too high so she took advantage of the discount. Oh well...
Now I am left with mixed emotions. Is it OK after all to sell to your friends? Given that it is not a physical product and it does not cost me much to give it for free. Furthermore there may be others who even felt uncomfortable when I angrily rejected their money...
What is your experience with situations like this? <comment><USER2> Don't be angry, take this as a friendly support of your business. She think that it's a good product and she need it, so she wants to buy it. As a side effect, the money will help you to keep your business afloat. It's a win-win.

It depends a lot on the nationality/ethnicity of each person. Where are you from? Where is she from? If you are from country A and she is from country B and both live in country C you need an UN expert to answer the question.

It also depends on the profession. Some profession have an honor code. Some professions are more eager to give a free first consult. And it probably depends on other factor too.

Have you offered to give a free license? If she refuses the free license, should you offer it again? It depend s lot on the nationality/ethnicity.

Can you offer a free upgrade? I'm not sure if this is an aceptable solution for both parts!!!

tl;dr: Humans are complicated :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Anger was an initial reaction :) I got cooled down pretty soon.

We share the same ethnicity but live in different countries now. I think it has more to do with personal traits than ethnicity.

Anyway, I can't except her money. I guess it's a kind of my own personality glitch :)</comment></comment>


BMW remotely locks car thief in stolen vehicle until cops arrive - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/tech/bmw-remotely-locks-car-thief-stolen-vehicle-until-164227388.html <comment><USER3> I find it highly alarming that that car doors wouldn't have a manual override. What if the car is in an accident, causing both a fire and a malfunction in the electronics that locks the doors? Human beings should always have the last words over computers in an emergency!

<comment><USER4> The deadlock is not activated when the doors are locked from the inside. The telematics center apparently sent a command to activate the deadlock as if it were locked from the outside. He may have been able to open the doors if he knew how the system works.

<comment><USER5> I think the GP's point is that electronics should never be able to keep someone in the car, regardless of the circumstances in which that behavior is triggered. What happens if the control chip gets fried in a lightning storm and the output pin that controls the lock gets stuck high? No software will save you from that.

<comment><USER4> > What happens if the control chip gets fried in a lightning storm and the > output pin that controls the lock gets stuck high?

This is a ridiculous corner case and I can't tell whether you're serious. So: "output pins" from "control chips" are active low.

<comment><USER5> What a silly thing to be pedantic about. It doesn't change anything - <USER2> output could get stuck at either state. Moreover, it was meant as an easily understood _example_. Can you really not envision a software bug that would lock someone in the car? The point is, the mechanical design should allow the occupant to get out, regardless of any fault in the electronics or software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How long before an inconvenient journalist can be locked in their car?</comment>


Intel AMT flaw allows credential bypass - <AUTHOR> https://press.f-secure.com/2018/01/12/intel-amt-security-issue-lets-attackers-bypass-login-credentials-in-corporate-laptops/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131932)

        A Security Issue in Intel's Active Management Technology (f-secure.com)
        139 points by buovjaga 2 days ago | 33 comments

</comment><comment><USER3> This is confusing. Does the exploit really entirely hinge on administrators not changing the default password? How the hell is that an exploit? Is F-Secure just trying to ride the hate-Intel Meltdown bandwagon?

<comment><USER4> Becuase this is a very real practical exploit. Having such grossly insecire defaults is a security issue. Intel AMT should be disabled by default and enabled from the BIOS after the password is provided.

<comment><USER5> The issue here is there's no way to physically provide a password to user without also handing it to the adversary.

AMT could be protected, or AMT disabled and BIOS protected, by unique password printed onto laptop, neither of which will prevent adversary with physical access.

<comment><USER6> All computer should be sold with a small card listing all the unique default passwords and private keys. Maybe a bunch of QR codes may help the type in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > To exploit this, all an attacker needs to do is reboot or power up the > target machine and press CTRL-P during bootup. The attacker then may log > into Intel Management Engine BIOS Extension (MEBx) using the default > password, "admin," as this default is most likely unchanged on most > corporate laptops.

Classic

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh not this again the default password 'admin' is literarily from the MBEx user guide:

[https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/mo...](https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/motherboards/desktop/sb/intel_mebx_user_guide_for_7series.pdf)

This is at best a known weak configuration not a vulnerability.

The problem is that the PW isn't saved anywhere where Intel can touch it, some manufacturers pre-set the password some don't. However the instructions are login with default and change the god damn password it even ״forces" you to do that on provisioning.

<comment><USER9> Routers don't all come with the same WiFi password, why should this be any different? Most people probably won't even know about this feature, therefore will never "provision" it.

<comment><USER8> Quite a few of them do, in fact the likilihood of your router having a fixed default password increases with it being less of a consumer oriented product, most SOHO and above routers as well as other equipment does comes with a known default password.

This feature isn't turned on by default, someone had to go into the BIOS and enabled it. This feature is also not available on non enterprise consumer laptops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While this is a problem, all bets are off in terms of security when a bad actor has access to your hardware.

<comment><USER11> That's an outdated notion. You can't do very much with a stolen iOS device.

<comment><USER12> Same for Android since 7.0/8.0 (not sure which). Trying to factory reset the phone somehow wouldn't remove the Google account and would leave the screen lock enabled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does this affect Macs?

<comment><USER7> Doesn't sound like it, as far as I know there's no mgmt engine on Apple hardware

<comment><USER14> I thought Intel ME is embedded into the CPU die itself. Unless Apple actively disables it like some niche manufacturers, it is present and enabled.

<comment><USER15> ME and AMT aren't the same thing. AMT uses the ME, but the presence of ME does not imply the presence of AMT.

Apple doesn't sell any products with vPro as far as I know, and certainly doesn't offer any way of configuring it pre-boot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's mid boggling is that Intel will very likely get away scot free from all of this. If anything, it will provide a nice boost for newer Intel CPUs.

It's marvelous.</comment>


The abolition of grades and degrees - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dpaola2/the-abolition-of-grades-and-degrees-f77cdef7f158

<comment> xkcd-sucks Teaching a physical science at an okay university can be a bit depressing.

Students tend to view education in purely economic terms: They pay the university, and therefore they are entitled to "receive an education" in the form of high grades and a degree. This does not facilitate any sort of learning, and this problem will not be solved by getting rid of grades and degrees.

At some point, the wheat and chaff need to be separated. Whether this is done by employers, universities, etc. is somewhat immaterial-- But it's not likely to be accomplished by self-reflection on the part of the students, because (the vast majority of) students simply do not care.

Grades should be useful, and the reputation of a school should have some bearing on the competence of its graduates.

However, grade inflation has essentially rendered grades useless. Poor grades lead to poor faculty evaluations and endless unpleasantness. The dominant viewpoint seems to be: Give everyone high-ish grades, and let them become someone else's problem. Which is irresponsible and devalues the university's degrees, but such is life.

The computer programming model of evaluating peoples' competency via open- source contributions seems like a good idea. I wonder how this sort of thing would work for sciences or humanities. I also wonder how to make a system of evaluating competency immune to being gamed.

</comment><comment><USER2> Quote: "Much has been written about the devaluation of degrees and the evils of grading in higher education. As a society, we're clearly reeling from the consequences (44% of college graduates are underemployed)."

Oh, don't bother to try to produce evidence for a cause-effect relationship between grades and later underemployment. A few minutes' thinking about employment and statistical principles should have made you realize that roughly 50% of people are underemployed, for the same reason that 50% of people are below average.

We'll be abolishing grades and degrees the same day we abolish any difference in workplace compensation:

1\. Under the new program, a company's janitor and president will make the same amount of money.

2\. People will say, "Wait -- why should I try to hard? What's my incentive?"

3\. A brilliant theoretician will then say, "I have a great idea! Let's reward cleverness and productivity by giving clever, productive people more money!"</comment>


Intel Visa: Through the Rabbit Hole [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://i.blackhat.com/asia-19/Thu-March-28/bh-asia-Goryachy-Ermolov-Intel-Visa-Through-the-Rabbit-Hole.pdf <comment><USER3> The fuse thing about "deterministic random number generation" is spooky... does it mean it's possible to compromise RDRAND?

At least it looks like linux has a "random.trust_cpu=0" option... [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/42164/rdrand- fr...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/42164/rdrand-from-dev- random)

<comment><USER4> Linux XORs its PRNG with the hardware RNG, so it being deterministic wouldn't break it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, is the encryption salt really that quote from William Wordsworth's poem ("I wondered lonely as a cloud...") or was that a joke? Can't extract sarcasm from presentation slides :(

</comment><comment><USER6> Despite the fact that it isn't much of a _vulnerability_ , per se, I'd be very interested to see if more processor vulnerabilities come out as a result of these better debugging tools.

<comment><USER7> "Imagine if instead of treating a conference as a passive chance to see a broad range of hacking demos, we all treated it as a chance to study up on the latest techniques. Something between workshop and lecture series..." - <USER2> Aitel

[https://twitter.com/daveaitel/status/1111979964780503045](https://twitter.com/daveaitel/status/1111979964780503045)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What software do you use for real time remote collaboration? - <AUTHOR>

This is an area that I have no knowledge about. The idea of being able to travel around for a year or two to many different locations while running a company appeals to me (and many of you, too, so it seems), but I would need a way to do remote presentations and collaboration with clients in real-time utilizing voice and/or video along with something to allow me to control powerpoint-esque presentations and a shared notepad / whiteboard. Who are the industry leaders in the field for this software? Is there anything open-source available? <comment><USER2> The only ones that will work with non-technical users are things that are simple, and I have tried them all.

1\. Adobe connectnow/connectpro. This is brilliant, and allows bi-directional screen sharing which clients love. It's really powerful when training someone to get them to do the training instead of just showing them.

Connectnow is free, and it's only requirement is flash. Couldn't recommend it more.

This can be a problem when the users don't have flash installed, but it is rare. I keep a link to the actual installer exe (some users struggle to download flash the normal way) to send to users that can't use it.

I ask them to go to connectnow.acrobat.com before the presentation and if they can see the begin button they will be fine to view.

Not only is connectnow the best, it's free, but connectpro can scale to thousands of participants if you need it.

2\. Others, such as copilot, vnc, glance, beam your screen, webex et al all have a huge number of issues in my experience. We do all our training, support and sales through connectnow exclusively now because it offers the least issues.

3\. We use skype if they have it for voice, but more often than not have to call. Voice is cheap regardless.

<comment><USER3> Thanks - I've been looking for something like this for a while for over the telephone product demonstrations. Had a quick go just now and can't fault it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to lead the development team for Yahoo! Answers, which was split between London, UK and Mission College, CA. Because of the massive time difference (8 hours, or an entire working day), collaboration was hard. We got by with a mix of the following:

\- Weekly conference calls via video chat. For those with less budget than Yahoo!, Skype would suffice;

\- Adobe Connect with screen sharing and shared chat for tech demos or presentations. It's the easiest to install and seems to work the best on iffy connections;

\- Shared collaboration areas (Wikis and mailing lists) to dump things when others are offline;

\- IM and IRC for "hi can you look at this?" type questions, or link sharing; and

\- Conference calls on the phone for targeted meetings (the productivity cost of a phone call is too high to have it frequently - people can work on their laptops in video conferences if they need to).

Between all these things we just about got by - I'd like to add the voices in the comments saying that face time is still very important. We'd typically fly to Santa Clara once or twice a year for either an entire sprint or for specific architectural/product meetings.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are several tools that you might try to use to work with your clients remotely. Here are a few that I use when I'm traveling abroad:

\- Skype

\- Etherpad

\- VNC (it's my policy to get clients to install VNC servers on their computers, so they can make an outgoing connection to my computer. This lets me view their exact desktop and review any problems that they might have)

\- SSH to my office/development/production environments (you can set up SSH to act as a SOCKS proxy into the remote environment, making it feel as if you were physically there with regards to connectivity and access)

\- SocksCap (allows you to transparently wrap any program that connects to remote stuff into the SOCKS protocol - used in conjunction with SSH)

I've found that I can generally service all my client requests and issues via the use of these tools. When something does fail bad, I have a PFY in my city who can get himself to the client very fast to resolve any issues which I cannot fix remotely.

</comment><comment><USER6>
      Answer 1: (Snarky)

I've used IRC & NCSA Collage on my Omnibook 300 since 1995. Daylight readable screen.. runs on AAs, no updates or worms to worry about since most of the code is in ROM. YEAH BABY!

      Answer 2: (Serious)

If you _need_ to see people, hear people, interact with them on a whiteboard, and show them a presentation, that probably implies you'll be doing mucho damage by not being there in person.

It's probably best to figure out ways to win by not collaborating in real- time.. like reviewing and continuing your employees work after they go home but before they start the day because you're in a different time-zone. Think about it - you'll probably have 8 hours to think about things and provide good well-thought out concise answers and ideas that'll get read by fresh minds. That's way better than the interplay you'll get in most real-time meetings. As to presentations, maybe it'd best to find someone that's really skilled in them and have them do the presentations instead while you enjoy traveling?

      Answer 3: (Answering the questions, pandering for upvotes)

<http://Etherpad.com> is a really nice collaborative notepad with no software to install.

<http://Skype.com> works great in tons of environments for voice and video.

<http://BeamYourScreen.com> allows you to show others what you've got on your computer, whether that's PowerPoint or a product demo. It even provides a no- download HTML viewer, and lets you interact if you want.

</comment><comment><USER7> For remote collaboration w/ voice and video, we use one or more of the following:

Yugma (with Skype): <http://www.yugma.com> ooVoo: <http://www.oovoo.com>

These allow for screensharing and audio.

Yugma has a call-in number, so to avoid fees, we use Skype. ooVoo does both screensharing and audio.

</comment><comment><USER8> Related question: what do people use for active remote collaboration, where you want to interact with someone else's screen?

I was on a team with people located in several places around the US, and my boss wanted us to try pair programming. We tried VNC for a day or two, and after having huge issues with it, we just scrapped pair programming altogether. Are there better solutions out there?

<comment><USER9> I use intelliadmin (intelliadmin.com) over our wan..very simple and easy to learn and use. There is an 'internet' version also, but it requires installation of software. The lan/wan version doesnt require pre-installation of software on the remote machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> iChat, or when that bugs out on audio once in a while, Skype. We use iChat for screen sharing and video chat fairly frequently, but we do get together often as well for more in-depth stuff.

We've had 3-4 hour iChats when there was lots of stuff to cover, and it's worked great. Just don't move your mouse while you talk or it'll get choppy... :)

</comment><comment><USER11> We're all in the same city, but we don't have an office space. So:

\- Confluence/Jira for wiki and ticket tracking

\- Spark jabber server for chat

\- I record demos with Screenflow to share with the other team members

We do meet face to face once a week. We don't have much use for video chat.

</comment><comment><USER12> Another option you may want to check out is expresswayvideo.com. This is flash-based video, audio and text chat software. The interface is made in Adobe Flex, which makes it different than some of the other options listed on this blog. Another nice thing about it is you can buy the license outright, so it is ideal if you are starting a video chat business yourself, or just want to install it on your website with no usage restrictions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone for all of the answers. I'll take a look at all of it!</comment>


Why do Recruiters want us, where's the catch? (Share your Experience) - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I'm regularly getting mails from people calling themselves Recruiter, Business Developer and in some cases Headhunter. I've not responded to many of them, except a few recent ones that I politely answered "no". But they keep mailing me.
Why do these people send us these requests and why do some want our resumes, or a description of what type of work we want to do? How should we react to it? Is there a catch, or do you recommend to take the opportunity?
A friend of mine once got cold called by someone who knew all of his past history and he never actually send his resume to that company who wanted to acquire him (he was employed at that time anyway). They refused to tell where they got his info from, but eventually it came out that a previous company he applied to, sold his resume to other companies. <comment><USER2> They're recruiters, paid by companies to find employees. They get a cut if you sign with a company through them. So they scrape, hard, for leads.

May as well be nice to them, maybe they'll give you an opportunity in the future :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, that sounds bad.. Your and @kjs3's (who appears to be hellbanned) comments agree on the point that these people should be avoided, right?

Recently a "radio moderator & business developer" asked me to join a conference with talented people for "free", but it appears that he's passively recruiting too, but by bringing people together in a room and letting them pay for being there.. that smelled a lot like scam.</comment></comment>


Discount Top Ten Toys for Kids: The Best and Most Innovative Toys of The Year - <AUTHOR> http://astore.amazon.com/discount.top.ten.toys.kids-20 <comment><AUTHOR> Buy with confidence. This store is Amazon's primary Top 10 Toys for Kids partner store.</comment>


Theranos adds qualified medical experts and scientists to advisory board - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/07/theranos-adds-a-bunch-of-qualified-medical-experts-and-scientists-to-the-board/ <comment><USER3> Who writes these articles? This is their Scientific board. "The board" almost always implies the company's corporate board which among other things can fire the CEO. Advisory boards just offer advice.

<comment><USER4> I am almost certain Theranos has always had an SAB (I don't know of a single company in this space that doesn't). Even my tiny startup 16 years ago had one. I've served on a couple myself and the role is very different.

I do wonder how involved the SAB has been given all the questions.

Edit: looking at the page I am now uncertain they had one, which would be very unusual for a life sciences company.

<comment><USER5> In regards to if they already had the SAB - pretty sure before this there was no scientific and medical advisory board, otherwise, why would they be adding so many members to it at once; meaning if that's the case, seems really, really fishy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At this point, I think the burden of proof is on Theranos to demonstrate that they weren't designed from the beginning to be a scam, initially aimed at the military but now just looking for any way to survive as a company.

<comment><USER7> I doubt they were designed from the beginning to be a scam. I do suspect they've been "looking for any way to survive as a company" since about 2006, and some of those ways include various scams.

Most folks, when faced with the reality that their original idea won't work and they don't have any idea how to make it work, fold up the company and go back to school or get a job. Some raise $800M, stack the board of directors with politicians and generals, and try to sell to the military.

<comment><USER8> > Some raise $800M, stack the board of directors with politicians and > generals, and try to sell to the military.

Apply HN here I come...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a shame for this to happen so late in the game. I don't know enough about medicine or medical engineering to know if Theranos' core goal is reasonably attainable...but having medical practitioners experienced in research and regulations would seem to have almost certainly prevented the shitshow that Theranos now has to dig itself out of...and their knowledge and experience of how much you can or can't fuck with regulators is probably something that Henry Kissinger, despite all of his authority and fame, does not have as much practical guidance on.

<comment><USER10> It's not even their actual board. This is more shenaniganry. It's all they know.

<comment><USER11> And how many medical and lab experts were on Theranos's scientific and medical advisory board before they added these eight?

The following press release only mentions two other members (one of whom is the CEO). It also uses the future tense to say "Theranos' Scientific and Medical Advisory Board _will_ meet quarterly."

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160407006056/en/Ther...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160407006056/en/Theranos- Announces-Leading-Medical-Laboratory-Experts-Join)

<comment><USER5> Pretty sure before this there was no scientific and medical advisory board, otherwise, why would they be adding so many members to it at once; meaning if that's the case, seems really, really fishy.

<comment><USER10> This company is already Andrea Rossi sketchy.

Is is appropriate to flag stories about Theranos? I doesn't seem appropriate to let them have an unfettered voice.

<comment><USER5> How is this giving Theranos a "unfettered voice" \- seems like the opposite given that there's no one from the company to my knowledge in this thread of comments; yes, I realize the post is a direct link to an article on them.

<comment><USER10> It's a link to an article that has a very misleading headline. It's the kind of 'accident' I've come to expect from Theranos and Theranos's PR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Probably should have done this, before, you know, (fraudulently?) claiming they had this amazing breakthrough.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, it's a step up from Henry Kissinger and Bill Frist, but it mainly still just proves they've got good connections. Doesn't say much about the tech.

<comment><USER14> This is just their medical and science advisory board, not their board of directors. Frist and Kissinger (ugh) are still on the BoD.

<comment><USER15> It's also not really a _science_ advisory board and more of a medical/clinical board. This would be great for making sure the tech is working in the hands of its clients, but that seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse maybe. Is not the tech itself something that needs advising? Maybe not - <USER2> the tech is so basic, not particularly novel, or so well completed that there is no further technology push to be made. Or maybe these people are actually really capable with respect to basic research in addition to their medical focus - hard to tell without more detailed biographies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Theranos had their shot... Walgreens pulled all their in-store advertising.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder what Theranos is worth now?

<comment><USER18> Wild guess: negative money</comment></comment>


Zoom's security woes were no secret to business partners like Dropbox - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/technology/zoom-security-dropbox-hackers.html <comment><USER2> I feel like this is a non-story.

> Dropbox privately paid top hackers to find bugs in software by the > videoconferencing company Zoom, then pressed it to fix them.

This is pretty standard. For a big company looking to purchase services from another company, commissioning a pen-test is common practice. It doesn't mean anything bad, it's about mitigating risk.

Further, everything about these contracts is about mitigating risk. Zoom had privacy/security issues for individual consumers, but large enterprises have a contract that lays out it detail exactly what is required and expected, and I fully believe that Zoom was meeting those requirements because that's part of the enterprise software game.

Does a large enterprise care if its traffic is being routed through China? Probably not (unless there's a national security concern), because they will have insurance against any issues arising from that as part of their contract – Zoom will be liable for data leaked. Same goes for Facebook login being in the Zoom app.

Yes, it's not great for the privacy of individuals, but that's not the target customer of Zoom, and even the target _user_ is a corporate identity, not a user's personal identity tied to their Facebook account for example.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I worked on Dropbox security. Not in appsec. I won't comment on the article, or the accuracy of the article, or anything that wasn't public before the article. I'm mostly just going to talk about what is broadly true for all or most companies.

I think it is worth noting that:

a) Pentesting 3rd party vendors is uncommon. This is something that the majority of companies rely on a SOC2 for.

b) Pentesting is not what the article is talking about, it's talking about bug bounties/ Vulnerability Reporting Programs. It is equally, if not more, uncommon for a company to bring a vendor into its VRP.

And yes, companies care greatly about traffic being routed through China.

<comment><USER2> > a) Pentesting 3rd party vendors is extremely uncommon. This is something you > rely on a SOC2 for.

In my experience this is fairly common? Although that was my experience working on the pen-testing side so I guess it was a little biased. The company I worked for did a lot of this sort of thing – pen-testing for meeting due diligence requirements.

<comment><USER3> There are two separate things here.

There's going to a company and saying "Are you SOC2? If not, we need you to be, and that requires a pentest - please go do that before we engage." There may also be, in this same vein, "We're strategic partners, we'll help you get that pentest". This is very common, I suspect the vast majority of pentests are compliance (and essentially sales) driven and would fall under this category.

That's different from "We have already engaged, you are already compliant with SOC2, you may do your own pentests, we will now separately pay for and manage a pentest of your company". This is not something I've seen too much of - perhaps that's just me not paying attention? But I'd be surprised if this were common at all.

Though I want to again restate that the article is focusing on VRP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "I don't think a lot of these things were predictable," said Alex Stamos, a > former chief security officer at Facebook

After the macOS installer bug last year I predicted exactly this. I may just be a random HN commentator but my opinion of Mr Stamos is diminished greatly if he actually believes this

</comment><comment><USER5> Somebody should create a lightweight VM to run Zoom and possibly other malware-like apps (WebEx) your employer forces you to use.

<comment><USER6> Luckily they offer web-based versions of the software, so I use my browser as that lightweight VM :)

<comment><USER7> I tried that the other day when I had to use Zoom for work. The sound was stuttering (in a consistent straight pattern). Luckily the group was small enough that I managed to convince them to switch to Jitsi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://archive.md/zo8jZ](https://archive.md/zo8jZ)

</comment><comment><USER9> What are the odds there'll be a project zero blog post on Zoom in 90 days?

<comment><USER10> Google doesn't have a competing project that I know of. From what I can tell they only study things google depends on or things google competes with.

<comment><USER11> Hangouts seems like the main competitor to zoom in casual contexts (school, families, etc)

<comment><USER12> They've dropped the "hangouts" and are just calling it "Meet" now (in some places, at least).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Zoom's defenders, including big-name Silicon Valley venture capitalists, say > the onslaught of criticism is unfair. They argue that Zoom, originally > designed for businesses, could not have anticipated a pandemic that would > send legions of consumers flocking to its service in the span of a few weeks > and using it for purposes — like elementary school classes and family > celebrations — for which it was never intended.

> "I don't think a lot of these things were predictable," said Alex Stamos, a > former chief security officer at Facebook who recently signed on as a > security adviser to Zoom. "It's like everyone decided to drive their cars on > water."

So they're saying because this product was designed for business rather than consumer, it wasn't necessary to build it securely? How the fuck does that make any sense?</comment>


Why the Apple iPad has no Java or Flash - <AUTHOR> http://labs.teppefall.com/2010/02/why_the_apple_ipad_has_no_java.html

<comment><USER2> I'm sure the technical and emotional arguments that Flash sucks had an important role to play in why Apple didn't include it, but I like to think it's almost simpler than that: Flash expects (and often requires) the traditional keyboard and mouse interfaces. The iPad has neither.

Sure, the big Flash sites like YouTube could easily get away with translating touches to clicks and it'd probably "just work" for them, but how do you handle the millions of sites that depend on rollovers to reveal menus or full keyboards to control game characters? You can't. There's just no elegant way to translate that to the iPad.

HTML/CSS was designed to degrade gracefully in the face of changing client capabilities. Apple can more freely create a new environment that can still acceptably display HTML/CSS content because of that core design decision. Sure, some sites will do things that break even on an iPad (or iPhone or Android - there's no right click, still no ever-present keyboard or mouse, unusual screen resolutions, etc.) - but for the vast _vast_ majority of HTML/CSS sites, the necessary information is still conveyed or available in some useful way almost by default.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty tired of hearing reasons about why Flash isn't included ... and while I'm happy for HTML5, it's pretty sad that Apple doesn't give this choice to its customers. To make matters worse, I don't think Apple allows modifications to Safari on the App Store.

The web was built on top of such technologies (Java, Flash, ActiveX) and while all of them where a PITA in the long run, back then it was the only way to work-around the browser's limitations ... competitive third-parties are driving innovation, not standards, and definitely not monopolies.

Imagine if Microsoft controlled what software gets installed on people's computers ... today we wouldn't have had neither Java, or Flash, or Firefox, or HTML5 for that matter, and AJAX would have been a second class citizen.

I don't want such a future. Of course, I trust the market enough to make the proper choice when the time comes. People aren't stupid, and unfortunately for control freaks, the genie is already out for openness.

But it saddens me to see such positive reactions from people that benefited so much from openness (like DHH). Even with all the viruses, spyware and spam flying around, it's still a better present that what could've been if the PC was locked.

<comment><USER4> _The web was built on top of such technologies (Java, Flash, ActiveX)_

Must be some different web you ar talking about…

<comment><USER3> Care to explain?

From what I remember, Java and then Flash were used extensively for games (ever since Netscape incorporated Java applets), and XmlHttpRequest originated in ActiveX, which was and is still is used extensively for corporate-intranet apps. The kindergarten my wife works for uses web-cams with an ActiveX app that's transmitting live images to parents (in 2010).

And streaming audio/video really happened with Flash, although it was possible with Java applets and ActiveX.

In my country we have saying ... it's like you haven't eaten garlic, and your mouth doesn't stink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Personally I wonder why these people are still employed in the technology sector..._

Really? This is the second line of the article, and you are questioning the professional competence of your readers?? What do you hope to accomplish here?

 _...but why not write down all the reasons before I get too arrogant and annoying._

Too late.

Okay, well... I read the article anyway, because I am actually interested in the subject. Unfortunately, the content was little more than a personal rant that would have been more accurately titled "Why Adobe Flash (and btw Acrobat) sucks".

<comment><USER6> Bingo. I stopped reading right there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fantastically good, it explains with convincing specifics why Flash is a bad idea on the iPhone OS ecosystem (and less so for Java, but that's much less of an issue).

Also points out how the insanity of Blueray DRM plus Apple's installed base of hardware makes Blueray a non-starter for them.

See also this _invaluable_ essay on Vista and DRM: <http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html>; it's what convinced me that Microsoft had turned against the users of its operating system.

<comment><USER8> Flash, perhaps. But considering the Nexus one runs on Java, as do many devices with even less powerful hardware, he's dead wrong on that point.

<comment><USER9> I wonder why no-one seems upset that Android, which is written in Java, doesn't let you use Java applets?

<comment><USER7> Well, it doesn't have a JVM per se, its VM is the register based Dalvik, which requires a translation phase to convert compiled Java/whatever bytecode to it.

<comment><USER9> I was aware of that, but if they can include a seperate Flash VM, then they can include a seperate Java VM just as easily, if not more so.

It also raises my other often unaswered question about Android. At what point are they going to just use a standard JavaVM? The two main theories are A) that it was a licensing dodge because (like Adobe Flash did till recently) Sun gave Java away on the desktop and charged for mobile and set-top boxes, or B) it was necessary to get performance on low power hardware.

I didn't believe the latter reason at the time, and it's only getting less true as phones get better processors and people talk about putting it on tablets and netbooks. The former reason is apparently toast since Oracle has announced the merging of Java ME and SE which I'm guessing includes licensing terms.

<comment><USER7> You're ignoring that Moore's law doesn't apply to batteries. It's not so much the crunch required (although non-Apple products have suffered here in comparison), it's the battery drain.

<comment><USER10> there's also the fact that phones have relatively limited memory. I suspect the Dalvik VM runtime memory footprint is much lower than that of the JVM.

<comment><USER7> I know that was a design goal, e.g. the bytecodes after translation from JVM to Dalvik are smaller. I also seem to remember hearing that not all of a JVM's library is supplied with Dalvik.

Also, hasn't Java ME stagnated? I.e. it's stuck in at Java 1.3 (which Oracle has promised to address).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _And moving Photoshop to Cocoa took so long that Apple lost all faith in Adobe's ability to deliver a good experience on Cocoa Touch._

This is bloody hilarious and looks like the author has no experience writing real applications. He seems to think a re-write of a complex app like PS is a trivial task.

BTW, before Apple can claim to lose faith in Adobe, it needs to port it's own Pro app, not consumer apps, like Final Cut Pro etc. to 64 Bit Cocoa. Apple itself hasn't migrated it's own Pro apps to 64 bit. Even Gruber seems to be relatively neutral on this: <http://daringfireball.net/2008/04/64000_question>

The one and only reason for no Flash and Java on iPad, and iPhone for that matter, is Apple likes closed system where they can control everything and don't want to give up their 30% cash cow. All other reasons are excuses IMHO.

<comment><USER12> Why should Apple _care_ about what it takes to re-write a complex app? If Apple can go without the pain, why shouldn't they?

Sometimes it sucks having a huge portfolio of hard to repurpose application code. Eventually the programming world will figure out how to write compact, easily refactorable code. But why should everyone wait till then.

This blog is harsh but logical.

 _The one and only reason for no Flash and Java on iPad, and iPhone for that matter, is Apple likes closed system where they can control everything and don't want to give up their 30% cash cow. All other reasons are excuses IMHO._

I don't think the author is saying much different in the end. It's just there are certain advantages to having locked-down platform - especially quality control.

I'm totally down with open source alternatives but we need to understand that there's no reason for Joe average to tolerate the standard bullshit that the programming world has gotten used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Flash cookies are pure deep evil and in use every single day."

LSOs in Flash are not strictly cookies. It so happens that many advertisers like to use them that way, but the usefulness for tracking across multiple websites can be easily curtailed by disabling 3rd party LSOs (so only swfs served from the website you're visiting can have access to LSOs). LSOs allow flash games to auto-save and let you pick up where you left off later. We use them to make the site faster for returning users _and_ diminish load on our servers by storing certain information a user is likely to request on return visits in the LSOs.

</comment><comment><USER14> In re to Java -- GOOD. I've never used a Java app I've particularly liked. Heck, is it even possible to code a decent GUI'd, non-sluggishly-responsive Java app?

<comment><USER4> I have no complains about SmartCVS/SmartSVN. They have SmartGit now, but I did not try that command line/GitX is fine for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Oh god. Here we go again. I think this dude should read a bit about Flash Player frame rates and how the Flash Player actually behaves inside the browser. [http://www.kaourantin.net/2006/05/frame-rates-in-flash- playe...](http://www.kaourantin.net/2006/05/frame-rates-in-flash-player.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> There is one reason, and one reason only, Apple won't let Flash or Java on the iPad or iPhone.

It's competition to the App Store and they don't want you circumventing that cash cow.

<comment><USER17> There is rarely, if ever, one and only one reason for anything Apple does. Their holistic approach to product design is integral to the success of their products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Free Flash games directly compete with the iTunes App Store. Apple could loose thousands of paying iPhone developers, with Apple hardware, if they added Flash support. And suddenly the exclusivity is lost since the Flash game runs everywhere else as well._

Would any flash games really compete with stuff in the app store? Games in the app store are made for the iPhone's touch interface, the flash experience would most likely suck in comparison. The only thing free flash games could compete with is free app store games.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have not heard of this Blu-Ray/Apple issue before, anyone care to elaborate?

</comment><comment><USER20> Amen !

</comment><comment><USER21> Because: 1\. This crap can't be compiled for ARM-based cpu. 2\. Even if it could (it won't), it won't run fast enough. 3\. Both technologies are outdated, even while still in use.

btw, each down-vote should decrement your karma =)

<comment><USER22> Does your (1) point refer just to Flash? It's certainly possible to get a JVM to run on an ARM-based CPU.

As regards (3), Java the language may be outdated (possibly a debatable point) but Java the virtual machine probably isn't. Both Scala and Clojure are written by seemingly bright people who chose to use the JVM rather than another alternative (Scala code can in theory be compiled to run on the .NET runtime but in practise I understand that's somewhat difficult to achieve). It's easy to write Scala apps for Android phones and I don't see any reason why they wouldn't run just fine on an iPad/iPhone.

<comment><USER21> 1\. Show me url where I can get JRE for ARM-linux-gnu.

2\. Show me #ifdef ARM_XXX in JRE source code.

Thank you!

btw, Clojure is a brilliant marketing move - an attempt to reuse existing JVM and the java class library to create something which looks like lisp. That's why there are so much hype - one buzzword and one magic world were put together. =)</comment></comment></comment>


The Radicalization of Luke Skywalker: A Jedi's Path to Jihad - <AUTHOR> http://decider.com/2015/12/11/the-radicalization-of-luke-skywalker-a-jedis-path-to-jihad/ <comment><USER3> I was wondering when this aspect of Star Wars would start getting batted around in the main stream. It's very interesting watching America square the never ending war on terror against our rich cultural history of glorifying rebels, particularly in light of our nation's birth. There's a reason that the Iraqi rebels were branded as "insurgents" during that war. I'd venture a guess that referring to them as rebels or any form of the word would be enough to get a Fox news employee fired. Orwell would have a field day with our modern linguistic contortions to allow ourselves to remain the scrappy beacon of individualism and personal liberty in our minds.

<comment><USER4> A big difference, in fact, the critical difference, between a 'rebellion/revolution' and 'terrorism', at least between a just rebellion and an un-just rebellion, is that a rebellion attacks (or intends to attack) military targets. Terrorists attack unarmed civilians.

<comment><USER5> > Terrorists attack unarmed civilians.

One of the most striking stories my grandmother always told about WWII (she was born in '34) was how, when she walked to school, very often US fighters shot at the children walking there. There was no way this was a mistake – they were still children, the road only led to the school, no one else was walking there at the time. And still, every few days fighters shot at them, and they had to jump in a drainage canal, or similar to hide.

Seeing your friends from school being shot by fighters in front of your eyes can hurt a child a lot.

Many old people here still hold a grudge towards the allies, despite all the amazing things they did after the war to rebuild.

But if attacking civilians is the measure, then the US is a terrorist state. And has been for decades.

        </comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

EDIT: I'm not saying the US is bad, or good, I'm trying to say there is no "good" side in a war. No one in a war is innocent.

There is a side that gasses jews, and a side that nukes civilians. There is a side that bombs hospitals, and a side that blows themselves up at a concert in Paris. There's a side that massacres disabled people, and a side that shoots children.

We can't compare, or even weigh up the sides against each other, and doing so would miss the point. But we can't say "only terrorists kill civilians".

<comment><USER4> If true, those soldiers were criminals and terrorists and they were acting against orders, at least the orders of the high command.

The US has accidentally killed plenty of civilians, of course. In the past (in World War II, for instance) they've also killed civilians deliberately. I'm not arguing that the US's hands are clean. But the US also recognizes (now, at least) that it is extremely counter-productive to kill civilians. That's why they _order soldiers not to_ and why it is officially against the law of the United States as well as international law, and a war crime, to target civilians. It is not part of the official US strategy to target civilians - <USER2> fact it is part of the official US strategy to _not target civilians_. On the other hand, it is part of the official, stated strategy of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organizations, to intentionally murder civilians in the most visible way possible.

*Edited to acknowledge current reality vs our past

<comment><USER6> We also accidentally dropped two nukes in Japan, and accidentally made Napalm and Agent Orange rain into the Vietnamese, with enormously high and vastly- civilian casualties in both cases. And these are just easy cases where direct responsibility can be tracked all way up to the commander-in-chief, so please no BS about no official strategy.

And then of course, the military chain of command is exceedingly good at diluting responsibility -- generals will demand results implying but not writing down how far commanders can go; soldiers and commanders will cross many lines which no colleagues will report( _) and no immediate superiors will punish; the press will be strictly managed to not see anything that "national security" doesn't need us to see so our own civilian population will be morally appeased that we're being righteous, everyone is happy.

(_) A few will do, and then they're jailed for life as traitors.

<comment><USER7> > We also accidentally dropped two nukes in Japan, and accidentally made > Napalm and Agent Orange rain into the Vietnamese, with enormously high and > vastly-civilian casualties in both cases.

Don't forget the extensive firebombings of numerous cities including Dresden or Tokyo (casualties estimates for the latter are in the same 100000~200000 range as the two nuclear strikes combined)

<comment><USER5> Which has still issues today – every few weeks whole districts in German cities are evacuated, because they found another WWII bomb with chemical timer that hasn't exploded yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's 10-12 hours of pulp-grade movie. You can project a lot onto it, because in the end, there isn't much there to either draw conclusions from, or contradict your interpretation.

This gets squared (or exponentiated) if you, like some people have done, decide that the films may themselves be unreliable narration. Which I think is not a useful decision, because you pretty quickly run smack up into the fact that these are just fiction anyhow in this case; the films were not written to stand up to that interpretation.

I think it's particularly difficult to draw _any_ sweeping conclusions because it's not clear to me that the movie universe is written carefully enough to justify them. For every Jedi epigram, you can find a Jedi violating it, or for some epigrams, it's hard to find anyone actually doing the thing. Jedi, for instance, repeatedly act in a way that can be described as "fearful"; is the Jedi proscription against fear simply referring to the brute emotion, or _anything_ that can be described as fearful? Honestly, the best answer is probably that it was not written to be able to answer that. Are the Jedi "hypocrites", or is the writing just too clumsy? Especially after the prequel trilogy, I can't help but think it's the latter. (And I do not mean that as a fashionably-snotty thing to say; I really don't think they were well-written. But they don't necessarily deserve the opprobrium heaped on them; they were not _especially_ bad by Hollywood standards. I'd call them pretty average on that front. Most Hollywood movies are philosophically and ethically really quite mushy.)

One must also bear in mind that from a "hard science fiction" point of view, the concrete and scientifically-proved existence of "The Force" may change things. In our real world, I think almost everything that Yoda says is gibbering nonsense, but in his world it may be entirely true that fear inexorably and directly leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. There's a mechanism for it to do so that doesn't exist in our universe, and we should _expect_ that if "The Force" is real that it means that there are things that are perfectly true in Star Wars that aren't true here, making it even harder to draw sweeping conclusions.

The conclusion I come to is that this is a fun movie series that, in the end, simply doesn't stand up to this level of analysis, as evidenced by the fact the analyses always seem to simply be the analysis' author writing about exactly what they already believe, dressed in Star Wars trappings.

<comment><USER9> This isn't really about the movies.

<comment><USER10> Then why talk about them? Framing it around Star Wars is pure clickbait. And it's dishonest.

<comment><USER9> It's a little bit clickbait, but it might also have some value if it gives someone a different perspective on terrorism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The Empire's accidental harming of Luke's Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen can be directly compared to the casualties of President Obama's drone campaign, whose body count terrorists capitalize upon for recruitment."

Uh-huh. And I suppose Alderaan was like Hiroshima, they were just forcing the rebels to surrender without risking stormtrooper lives with a ground invasion. Or something like that.

<comment><USER12> Actually, yes. That's exactly right.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act- four/wp/2015/10/29/t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act- four/wp/2015/10/29/the-destruction-of-alderaan-was-completely-justified/)

<comment><USER7> Not even that.

The Empire had a population of >100 quadrilion, Alderaan killed about 2 billion people. That's a difference of _8_ orders of magnitude (50 million), that's equivalent to killing ~140 earth humans. In relative scale, it doesn't come close to Hiroshima, it's closer to having bombed a large wedding.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure it's fair to argue that it would scale in such a way. Sure numerically it's an insignificant portion of the population but the Death Star still literally destroyed and entire planet and every living being on it.

Rather than comparing it to bombing a wedding, I think it's more accurate to compare it to destroying every trace of some micro-nation and then cleansing any plant and animal life native to that nation.

<comment><USER7> > I'm not sure it's fair to argue that it would scale in such a way. Sure > numerically it's an insignificant portion of the population but the Death > Star still literally destroyed and entire planet and every living being on > it.

Between core worlds, protectorates, governorships and colonies, the empire is estimated to cover close to 70 million inhabited worlds, and billions of uninhabitable planets.

> Rather than comparing it to bombing a wedding, I think it's more accurate to > compare it to destroying every trace of some micro-nation

More like a small town taken over by entrenched terrorists.

> then cleansing any plant and animal life native to that nation.

A firebombing would do that, and that's an unfortunate side-effect more than the purpose of the act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All of this "Empire as the good guy" stuff started out as amusing, but I'm starting to agree with it. One of my favorite takes:

"How to Talk About Star Wars at Thanksgiving With Your Ignorant, Rebellion- Backing Uncle"

[http://freebeacon.com/blog/pilgrims-were-the-original- rebels...](http://freebeacon.com/blog/pilgrims-were-the-original-rebels-that- is-to-say-racist-religious-freaks/)

<comment><USER15> Don't stop with Star Wars. Just about every morality play can be analyzed this way. It's a trope that goes all the way back to antiquity. It's one of the first things I think about when I watch such a movie. Is this political order really something that needs to be destroyed? My answer winds up almost always being 'no'.

My favorite is this treatment of _The Dark Knight_ :

[https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/3insgr/joker_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/3insgr/joker_is_the_hero_in_the_dark_knight)

I enjoyed the otherwise-awful movie _The Seventh Son_ because of the playfulness they take with world-building. The heroes and their quests all wind up being a part of the broader political structures of the world rather than those structures being the stakes. I like it when the very plot doesn't take itself seriously.

<comment><USER14> Saw someone bat around the idea of Ursula being the good side in The Little Mermaid. Strong independent female fighting against the two patriarchal monarchies, etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unlike the real world, the force actually exists and has practical applications within the Star Wars universe. Who wouldn't want to master that power? Same cannot be said for some "other thing" in the real world which people believe in...

<comment><USER17> Hello. I am the Director of NEPTA. Will you please reach out to Maverickheroes/Mindblowideas. The MRF APP needs to be completed. Thank you Kindly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pro-Imperial writers so often ignore the bombing of Alderaan.

<comment><USER14> Completely justified.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act- four/wp/2015/10/29/t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act- four/wp/2015/10/29/the-destruction-of-alderaan-was-completely-justified/)

<comment><USER18> Completely not

[http://sean-mcbeth.tumblr.com/post/134608041510/neoconservat...](http://sean- mcbeth.tumblr.com/post/134608041510/neoconservative-post-hoc-rationalization- of)

<comment><USER14> I think that author took this all just a little bit too seriously. It's all obviously fairly tongue-in-cheek. I mean, his title is "Neoconservative Post- Hoc Rationalization of Genocide". He must be a blast at parties.

<comment><USER18> Actually, I am a blast at parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Luke wouldn't blow himself up in the middle of a market. Neither do to Yazidis.. you know it. Bad article, [x] check

</comment><comment><USER20> I guess that between Luke Skywalker's lifelike radicalization, and Palpatine's seizing dictatorship through an emergency-powers clause, _Star Wars_ is the story of how al-Qaida fought the Nazis...

("You're all a bunch of damn Yankees," as the hillbilly said of the Yale versus Harvard football game, "and I hope you both lose.")

</comment><comment><USER21> From this cherrypicking article to various other online forums critical of them, it's pretty hilarious how recently, every single crevice of the Star Wars movies is thrown into the town square naked, and then being loudly decried for it being an inconsistency/plot hole/any other logical deficiency. All the while forgetting that in the 70s, a business man with an acumen for world-building conceived these space operas. Space operas whose largest overarching theme is a simple struggle of good vs. evil. I'm partially convinced Disney is to blame for this, most likely stoking the fire behind- the-scenes.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's a lot of quaint cherry-picking of evidence going on in these arguments which is really cheesing me off, but I want to highlight the importance of what I think is the fundamental issue, what is _always_ the fundamental issue: what we're fighting for.

I think some of these parallels are correct: we can compare Luke Skywalker to a terrorist and the Galactic Empire to (presumably) the US. Why does this comparison work? Because the US IS a fucking evil empire, and there IS genuine outrage and injustice to be fought. The drone campaign is not mere "justification" for terrorists to use to fight their battles, it is an actual injustice, as was the invasion of Iraq, its starvation before that, the ongoing bombing of Yemen, the support of autocrats who oppress ordinary people for decades, etc., etc.

This is not mere "recruiting material", this is stuff worth fighting over. The reason people revere Osama bin Laden as a hero is because he is fighting the dark power that has oppressed them - literally, with bombs and guns - for a generation.

No doubt people will find this comparison uncomfortable, while the inverse tee-heeing over the Empire is amusing.

Let's remember what's being fought for: a democracy versus an autocracy based on raw power. The Empire, after all, rules through fear, mediated by an army of storm troopers, and replaced a democratic government that responded to its constituents with the rule of one man.

This is closely modeled on the actual events in Rome, where a thousand(ish) years of Republic, with genuine democratic struggle for the rights of ordinary people an ongoing feature for most of its history (Brutus deposing the kings, the Gracchi becoming the first tribunes) devolved into an Empire ruled by pure thuggery, men like Caesar and Crassus who used their enormous wealth and influence to amass enough personal power to simply take control of the state.

There WAS a rebel who fought against the advent of this Empire to preserve a Republic, who died hunted down and killed by the army of the first emperor - Brutus. We might also call him a terrorist for his attempted assassination of Caesar. But in the balance we must judge these men - all men - who exercise brutality on _what they are fighting for_. What is the order they are seeking to preserve or rebuild? What are its principles? This is the distinction that matters.

<comment><USER23> _Let 's remember what's being fought for: a democracy versus an autocracy based on raw power...replaced a democratic government that responded to its constituents with the rule of one man._

Except that is an unbelievably naive way of looking at the world. Popular power is always limited, even in a "democracy", thanks to the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Most people are too busy living their own lives to understand how the levers of power actually operate, or to understand the complicated ways in which they are getting screwed. And even when they do participate in politics, people are usually whipped into a frenzy based on envy, fear, and bigotry. Correspondingly, autocracy does not automatically mean "bad". Many powerful leaders actually did bring order to their realms, and allow people to live decent lives, free from internal strife. See Augustus, or the four good emperors of Rome. And often removing a strong ruler simply brings the realm into chaos. See the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the aftermath in Iraq and Libya. Or look at what happened after Brutus killed Caesar -- there were twenty more years of civil war until once again someone could win definitively.

I wrote much more in depth on this topic here: [http://devinhelton.com/2015/08/dictatorship-and- democracy](http://devinhelton.com/2015/08/dictatorship-and-democracy)

<comment><USER22> I'm not arguing for "democracy", I'm arguing for democracy - the extension of popular power, which, I agree, must be preserved through constant action against ossification and entrenchment of power (viz. the current American "democracy"). I'm also not arguing for the replacement of autocracy with nothing. Caesar was the product of years of devolution of the Roman Republic, the corruption and decay of its democratic institutions in the face of military power, wealth, and slavery. His removal could not produce democracy merely by its absence.

What I find most interesting in this Star Wars argument is this lack of faith in democratic power and the seeming resignation to autocracy that seems to be generally present. These are all things that are happening now, to our own democracy. I find this lack of faith disturbing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As with most articles, this one says more about the writer than it really does the subject. The stories are ambiguous enough that you can literally find any message you want to out of them. Scrappy little startup vs Oracle. The plight of the middle east vs the UN (or just the USA). A SF story told from another time.

So, what do you take from it? What does that tell you about yourself?

</comment><comment><USER25> It was that George Lucas tried to protest against Vietnam war.

[http://nypost.com/2014/09/21/how-star-wars-was-secretly- geor...](http://nypost.com/2014/09/21/how-star-wars-was-secretly-george-lucas- protest-of-vietnam/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Great, I clicked on this from an airport lounge and it was blocked. Hope I am allowed on the plane!

</comment><comment><USER27> This article and others like it ignore the context of the films. Palpatine disbanded the imperial senate. The rebels were fighting to restore the galactic republic that had stood for 1000 years.

<comment><USER28> The point you're making is that it's good because it's tradition?

<comment><USER27> The point I'm making is the empire was a totalitarian regime that had to be eliminated. Look at it in terms of today's world. Imagine if a president disbanded the congress and held power by threat of force.

<comment><USER28> I think you're confused; "the empire was a totalitarian regime that had to be eliminated" is the thesis you're trying to prove. So, what is your argument? Your original comment contained to points for this argument: (1) Republic is old, (2) the Senate was dissolved. (1) relies on the assumption that "old = good" and (2) assumes that elimination of Senate — about which we don't know pretty much anything at the moment — is bad. Does it really look convincing to you?

Oh, and Galactic Republic is/was too different from US political system for your comparison to be relevant in any way.

<comment><USER27> Any representative government being overthrown by a militaristic dictator is justification for war.

Please argue this. I don't see how I could disagree with this, but here's your chance to convince me.

<comment><USER28> > overthrown

Have you seen Episodes 1-3? Palpatine has real support of the public.

(Look, dude, of course he's evil as hell, I don't deny that. It's just that arguments that you choose to prove that are not working.)

<comment><USER27> > Palpatine has real support of the public.

They showed many planets at the end of RotJ [1] where massive celebrations occurred, including Coruscant. I think these celebrations speak to the rebellion's support.

>It's just that arguments that you choose to prove that are not working.

There's nothing to prove. The belief that a people have the right to topple their dictators is subjective. I can only prove something if we share the same axioms.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiM5zEEI_Jo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiM5zEEI_Jo)

<comment><USER28> > their dictators

How do you define who's a dictator and who's not?

If Winston Churchill have acquired more executional powers during WWII to get through mind-boggling beurocracy, would you call him dictator, for example?

You're trying to prove a statement that is true, but your proof is abysmal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The pro-Empire articles referenced in the piece above require the reader to turn on their irony detectors. First-rate trolling.

</comment><comment><USER30> Its also creepy to watch either of the two Dune movies. Herbert borrowed a lot form Islam Jihad.

</comment><comment><USER31> The problem with this is that "the Force" really does have supernatural powers (in the context of the movie at least), whereas religions only claim them but can't prove it.</comment>


A practical case on why we need the humanities - <AUTHOR> https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case-on-why-we-need-the-humanities/ <comment><USER2> This article has some good points but is a bit meandering. The best point is right there at the beginning: the humanities study things which are not (entirely) subject to scientific rigor, but which are still worth studying. This sort of begs the question, why is anything worth studying?

I think Francis Bacon made the best point about this: knowledge—real knowledge—is about the ability to reliably recreate some effect. With something like the material characteristics of a metal, we can use the rigor of experiment to figure out how to create metals with desired characteristics. We subject the metal to varying levels of heat, pressure, etc. and see what happens.

With governments this is basically impossible. You can't run controlled experiments against governments that are similar in all aspects but one. __But it is still useful to study governments __if we want to design good ones. You can make a good argument that much of America 's success is the result of the Founding Fathers studying the many forms of government that preceded them.

I would argue all other humanities are essentially the same. Literature and philosophy are collections of "experiments" conducted and suppositions made by our predecessors about how to live good lives. English composition is about how humans can effectively communicate in that language. Etc, etc. Are the various stories, rules of thumb, and bits of wisdom in these disciplines scientifically rigorous? Of course not. They can't be. But they can still improve our odds of reproducing some desirable effect, and that makes them knowledge worth having.

<comment><USER3> >" the humanities study things which are not (entirely) subject to scientific rigor, but which are still worth studying."

An issue with these things is that institutions and government make major decisions based on the output from these fields. It's not that we discount them completely but we should also consider opposing data from alternate studies, but what you get is agenda driven decision making (on all sides, this isn't the province of one ideology).

<comment><USER4> > An issue with these things is that institutions and government make major > decisions ... what you get is agenda driven decision making

What do you think politics is? Everyone in politics has an agenda.

> It's not that we discount them completely but we should also consider > opposing data from alternate studies

Politicians already do this. Whenever there's a decision being made, it's being processed through a host of ideological positions.

<comment><USER3> I'm fine with these if they have some data that's withstood scrutiny —but I've seen governments make decisions based on studies published by second tier educational institutions because it dovetails with their ideology.

<comment><USER4> I still would like to know what your conception of politics is.

> I've seen governments make decisions based on studies published by second > tier educational institutions because it dovetails with their ideology.

Do you have an example of this for a humanities specific field? I could see maybe philosophy, but I really don't think most humanities fields have the political power a lot of people attribute to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What gets me the wrong way about these arguments, and it is even itself addressed somewhat in the article is the reduction of 'the humanities' to formal or academic study.

The ideal of the humanities and of the holistic, cosmopolitan citizen with a broad education in every field of human activity is not new. Humboldt (and others) formulated it long ago.

In that sense I think the humanities aren't just needed in education. They're needed in churches, in political debates, in homes and families. Humanities as a practice rather than as a four-year degree.

If you really want to democratice and popularize the humanities don't treat them as a grooming mechanism for leaders or an intellectual exercise as is common in the anglosphere, but as a part of everyday life.

<comment><USER6> That's one of the reasons why there are required humanities courses: to try to ensure that graduates are "well rounded".

As for their emphasis in higher education, where else are you forced to face different and conflicting ideas? Certainly not in political debates.

<comment><USER7> Are students in higher education currently facing different and conflicting ideas? That goes to humanities students, specially. It seems like when it comes to worldviews universities are almost monocultural, or maybe it's just a regional thing here?

<comment><USER8> Students in American and European universities are definitely not facing different and conflicting ideas. More often than not, expressing different and conflicting ideas will make you a social pariah, or even get you fired if you're the instructor trying to truly make your students well rounded. In fact it is often those very same students that file petitions and participate in protests to get professors fired when they face an idea that they don't agree with.

There is only one set of ideas that truly experiences freedom of thought and inquiry in the humanities in Western universities, and that's the progressive far left worldview. This cultural bias skews the humanities far more than it does STEM. You can see it institutionalized in the *-studies majors (e.g. ethnic studies), which have relatively little academic rigor. And because the humanities are so often skewed, I disagree with the notion that it makes students well rounded.

Without room for conflicting views, critical inquiry, and freedom of thought, the humanities seem to have devolved into a propaganda machine that teaches just this worldview. It is a ubiquitous enough problem that entire news outlets have been created to track the disturbing saga of college monoculture in America: [https://www.thecollegefix.com/](https://www.thecollegefix.com/)

<comment><USER9> Man, he was asking a rhetorical question. You're (most likely) preaching to the choir.

<comment><USER6> I don't know about preaching to the choir (I don't buy it, anyway), but

" _There is only one set of ideas that truly experiences freedom of thought and inquiry in the humanities in Western universities, and that's the progressive far left worldview._ "

has been the complaint since before I was born (which was a long time ago) and "what are they teaching kids these days" has probably been the complaint since universities were first founded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> apart from the benefit of the humanities in an undergraduate education, there are big positive externalities from the scholarly work as well.

for instance, even if most people never read any of the written work of historians, the existence of that community and its scholarly standards helps prevent a lot of bizarre, erroneous historical narratives from gaining traction, and society is much better off for it.

<comment><USER11> Historians wanted to push the narrative that primitive people were less violent, that seeing the pots dug up during different eras was due to cultural transmission not people being wiped out and replaced, "Pots, not people"

Genetics has revealed that no, it was people not pots:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6)

You'd have had a more accurate picture of prehistory watching Conan the Barbarian than sitting in anthropology lectures.

<comment><USER12> Your description of history and anthropology is about at the level of accuracy that one would expect of someone who conflates the two.

<comment><USER11> I point out that far from preventing it, academia has caused "bizarre, erroneous historical narratives ... gaining traction"

Then you point out that I'm conflating history and anthropology... how academic!

When looking at what happened to people in the past, does reality cleave neatly down history/anthropology lines? Or is that an artifact of bureaucracy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _The great rush of STEM funding that has slowly marginalized the humanities within our education system_

STEM funding doesn't marginalize the humanities; there's no reason STEM funding needs to reduce the value of a humanities degree or needs to decrease the number of people majoring in the humanities.

 _The core of teaching in the humanities is the expression of the grand breadth of human experience_

There is a lot of motte and baileying ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte- and-bailey_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy)) among humanities defenders: the humanities are hugely important, but the way they're practiced by many in contemporary universities is not so good. Harold Bloom called the current practice "The School of Resentment," but it goes under other monikers as well.

 _The other thing we ask students to do, beyond merely encountering these things is to use them to practice argumentation, to reason soundly, to write well, to argue persuasively about them_

This is good! But many humanities professors now think they have the answer, and their job is to become activists, spreading the answer they've found to everyone else.

There are two big problems with getting students and grad students to major in the humanities: the cost of college is one, and the way the humanities have largely morphed into a particular form of political activism is the other. The humanities as learning "to practice argumentation, to reason soundly, to write well, to argue persuasively about them" is and would be great. The experience on the ground is quite different.

I majored in English and went to grad school in it: [https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know- befo...](https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-you- start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and- opportunity-costs/). Here is one version, albeit not the only one, of the intellectual problems that occur widely: [https://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/02/what-happened-with- decons...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/02/what-happened-with- deconstruction)

I forgot to add: I used to try and keep a list of examples of the kind of thing one sees in the humanities, but Real Peer Review does it better: [https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview](https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview).

</comment><comment><USER14> > The other thing we ask students to do, beyond merely encountering these > things is to use them to practice argumentation, to reason soundly, to write > well, to argue persuasively about them.

If the purpose of teaching the humanities is to teach kids sound reasoning, good writing, and effective persuasion, then why is so little of that evident today when more kids than ever go to college?

<comment><USER15> > " _If the purpose of teaching the humanities is to teach kids sound > reasoning, good writing, and effective persuasion, then why is so little of > that evident today when more kids than ever go to college?_ "

The answer is simple: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." Even here on HN, we have a large number of people saying that going to college is merely to get a credential and that they didn't learn (or, more accurately, didn't bother to learn) anything of importance there.

<comment><USER16> Then maybe we shouldn't be spending billions of dollars leading a bunches of horses that aren't thirsty to water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The trivium and quadrivium are the foundation that, to me, ties the importance of the humanities into the non-humanties areas of study. It has a compounding effect on not just breadth, but also depth of knowledge, and in particular, offers greater potential for novel insights over "1 mile deep, but one inch wide" knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER18> I watched an a documentary about early humans a couple weeks ago, and felt really grateful that we have people passionate enough to dedicate their lives to learning about our ancestors. On one hand, it would be really heartbreaking if the number of people deeply focused on the humanities starts to dwindle, and our culture gets more and more monotonous. On the other hand, maybe this shift could cause us to automate more of the boring parts of this research or discover new research tools that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

It'd be a lot easier to justify a humanities education if it resulted in a high-paying job. Just image a Udacity for the humanities where the end of the program resulted in a career coach helping you get a $300k job as a historian. To me, that is truly utopian.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Does anyone look at the present moment and conclude that we have an over- > abundance of humble, empathetic, well-trained and effectively communicating > leaders?

Yet do we have a dearth of leaders with experience in the humanities? Just doing a quick look at the current politcal leadership, and Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi both have a degree in political science. Trump has a degree in economics, but Obama and George W. Bush both majored in the humanities. [Edit: I thought I'd take a look at the past three vice-presidents as well - Pence, Biden, and Cheney all majored in the humanities.]

Saying that these qualities are important is fine, but one has to consider whether or not the current way that academia teaches the humanities is a good way to instill them in people. If something doesn't achieve its goal, then it doesn't matter how lofty said goal is.

I'm constantly impressed by how articles like these claim that studying the humanities will give people a better way to question things and think critically about the world around them, but then fail to do so themselves.

<comment><USER20> >> claim that studying the humanities will give people a better way to question things and think critically

Approximately 100% of these articles are written by humanities majors though, so I'm not sure what else you're expecting to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article suggests that many of the current fields of humanities are markers of wealth and status symbols, and that we need to move away from this. That may be true but a bigger problem to me is that the modern humanities have fragmented into many narrowly focused sub fields, which seem to be based on presuppositions about how the world works. These fields seem less like a legitimate area of study and more like pseudoscientific political tools, often working to legitimize perspectives that aren't grounded in reality, and radicalizing students and our culture as a result. The grievance studies have drastically undermined the legitimacy of the humanities as a whole even though "core humanities" may not deserve the same critique. Unfortunately even though much has been written on this issue ([https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance- studi...](https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and- the-corruption-of-scholarship/)), I don't see it affecting the momentum of these dubious programs at modern universities.

<comment><USER21> There appears to be little to no self-reflection. There are no objective markers of quality compared to science or engineering. I suppose that's a duh. But experience and strong intuition should guide you and one's own consciousness and rationality should hold you to a standard of intellectual honesty. That's a lot of "shoulds" though. In the end, intellectual honest is always going to require voluntary participation.

If you weave a sophisticated enough tale with enough novelty to draw attention, you can convince people of anything. If enough people buy into it, you can create a framework from it, no matter how far off course it is from basic intuition about human behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very old debate. Famous 1959 essay by Brit CP Snow about the two cultures of STEM and humanities leading to misunderstandings between the two. UK colleges pretty much tracked you into one of the two cultures with little exposure to the other.

</comment><comment><USER21> What about the opportunity cost of studying the humanities as opposed to science or engineering? This a question for the individual. As a boy I fell in love with Orwell which led me to strongly appreciate literature.

Now a little older I realize what is actually meant by "knowledge is power." Knowledge is a lever. When you're young there's absolutely nothing you can do of any consequence because you live inside someone else's bounds. In a modern economy it's not enough to produce a bushel of corn a day to feed one person. To operate in the economy as anything more than a consumer requires levers in the form of skills, experience, education, and knowledge. Otherwise, you live off the fat of our capitalistic system as some unimportant facilitator, or entirely as a consumer.

Knowledge in the sciences and engineering effectively makes the individual more than what he's worth in just labor. You can effectively leverage our modern day infrastructure of virtually infinite water, electricity, materials, connectivity, and information to do more than what a person in the past could only accomplish with their hands and feet.

What is worthwhile in the humanities preferable to understanding the power of technology and being able to create objective value in society?

</comment><comment><USER23> The academic humanities departments have made their bed over the last fifty years.

Now they may lie in it.

<comment><USER24> Sorry, I'm not sure what you're referring to?

<comment><USER25> I'm guessing over-admission, watered down standards and acquiescence to bad ideas, but I can't speak for the original poster.

<comment><USER23> Yes to all of that. A culture of fear and loathing. Charging obscene levels of tuition for it while piling the real work onto adjuncts. Close-mindedness that would make John Calvin blush. The list is extremely long.

There is no chance I would let a university humanities department anywhere near my children at this point.

<comment><USER4> > A culture of fear and loathing.

Examples?

> Charging obscene levels of tuition for it while piling the real work onto > adjuncts.

This is endemic to the US university system, in general.

> Close-mindedness that would make John Calvin blush.

Again, it's all fun and games to riff and instantly disregard a vast number of fields of study, but you're not doing yourself any favors by just throwing out a laundry list. You have an immense distrust towards these departments: air your grievances, I'm sure a lot of us are interested.

> There is no chance I would let a university humanities department anywhere > near my children at this point.

Universities tend to admit adults. Also, if your children go into university, are you going to refuse to pay for their general courses? They're going to have to touch a literature or history course eventually. Are you going to forbid them from taking 3 credit hours of Spanish?

<comment><USER26> Here is an example... [https://reason.com/2020/06/10/ucla-business-school- lecturer-...](https://reason.com/2020/06/10/ucla-business-school-lecturer- placed-on-leave-for-e-mail-to-student-rejecting-request-for-exam-leniency-for- black-students/)

<comment><USER6> " _On June 3, Klein was placed on involuntary administrative leave until June 24. The notice states that the leave is necessary to give UCLA the opportunity to consider "allegations regarding behavior made in the course and scope of your position … inconsistent with [UCLA's Faculty Code of Conduct]."_"

What exactly is the university to do while it pondering the issue?

<comment> barry-cotter They're not supposed to ponder the issue. They're supposed to tell the students that if they don't like departmental policy the door is that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Some people have always hated the humanities, nothing to new there.

But what _seems_ new is the humanities coming into politics in what _seems_ like a big way.

It's gone from what you should think, to what you have to think.

That's why I think it should be smashed.

<comment><USER28> It should be smashed, because what you think its obviously correct yes?</comment></comment>


Amazing: Tupper's self-referential formula  - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuppers_self-referential_formula

<comment><USER2> Broken link - try this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper%27s_self- referential_for...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupper%27s_self- referential_formula)

<comment><AUTHOR> the submitted link works for me!

anyone else has the same issue described on the comment above?</comment></comment>


Use Keybase PGP keys to sign Git commits - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bsflw/harbour <comment><USER2> Hi all! Creator here. I saw lots of blog posts online about signing Git commits using Keybase, but they all require you to export your keys into gpg.

Since Keybase's command line tool allows you to sign and verify messages out- of-the-box, I built harbour to proxy messages between Git and Keybase. Now you can sign commits without exporting your keys!</comment>