Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50293927 <comment><USER3> """On the matter of parts being lost, in early 2017 a review by the Federal Aviation Administration upheld Mr Barnett's concerns, establishing that the location of at least 53 "non-conforming" parts was unknown, and that they were considered lost. Boeing was ordered to take remedial action"""

That's not just bad; this is really, _really_ bad. In my eight years of the Navy, working on aircraft, parts and tool accountability was 100% the most serious part of our day. You went to and left the aircraft with everything accounted for. If _one_ part or tool was missing, everything would shut down for that aircraft until it was found.

The fact that tools and parts were/are missing tells me that either supply didn't do its job right, or someone left a loose nut in a compartment somewhere, just waiting to kill people.

People _die_ because of this shit.

<comment><USER4> I would say, as european, that all this storm of shit is good news for Airbus, but I hop on Boeing planes too, and I think competition is good news.

Boeing is maybe too big to fail, but the reputation hit they are taking may lead to companies not buying their planes, thus pushing for least competition, which is bad news for everyone.

Airbus being the kind of behemoth company it is, I am convinced that without Boeing's competition, over time, they would end up with the same practices, convinced that their aircraft sell themselves.

<comment><USER5> Airbus is no better. Investigation report about an incident in 2018 was just released: [https://avherald.com/h?article=4b57c3dd/0000&opt=0](https://avherald.com/h?article=4b57c3dd/0000&opt=0)

What happened there: wrong kind of oil was used in elevator and it went unnoticed because maintenance guides did not require any inspections of affected parts. Wrong oil caused delays in sensor triggering, which led to primary computers shutting down, believing that there was a problem with elevator.

Backup computers didn't detect gear compression correctly when the aicraft bounced on the runway (one computer believed it was on the ground, the other that it was airborne) and also shut down and locked the elevator in neutral (zero) position as a safety measure.

This happened during a touch-and-go landing on a training flight. The A320 touched down, bounced, elevator got locked, the aircraft climbed a bit, then fell down on the runway scraping and damaging engines (due to loss of control), then took off again (not enough runway left for stopping) and was now flying with no elevator and with engines about to shut down. It's a miracle that pilots managed to turn around and land safely.

In 1993, Lufthansa A320 crashed under similar conditions: landed in poor conditions, computers didn't think it was on the ground and didn't allow braking until it was too late [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_Flight_2904](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_Flight_2904)

<comment><USER6> > Airbus is no better.

Maybe, but the report you linked does not show that. The issue with Boeing is not that a plane crashed but that planes crashed despite earlier reports that people considered these planes unsafe. No such reports came out of Airbus about the A320 as far as I'm aware. Also the regulators did not delegate certification to Airbus.

<comment><USER5> Airbus has similar long-standing issues. On ground / airborne detection logic was broken in 1993 and is still broken in 2019, to a point that it can cause loss of flight controls.

Boeing, in contrast, uses simple radar altimeter. Whenever altitude reads 10 feet or less, the aircraft is considered to be "on ground" and things like thrust reversers become available.

I personally avoid praising or preferring Airbus when bashing Boeing. Who knows what else is under that rock too.

<comment><USER7> _Airbus has similar long-standing issues. On ground / airborne detection logic was broken in 1993 and is still broken in 2019, to a point that it can cause loss of flight controls._

So you're claiming that Airbus knowingly leaves a critical defect in their planes, which may cause the loss of flight controls and which they refreain from fixing for almost 30 years?

Either come up with a reliable source for this statement (which is extremely hard to believe) or allow me to call bullshit!

<comment><USER5> > So you're claiming that Airbus knowingly leaves a critical defect in their > planes, which may cause the loss of flight controls and which they refreain > from fixing for almost 30 years?

A320's computers monitor gear for uncompression of 1 second or longer. Computers are not in sync. If landing gear decompresses due to bouncing for long enough to be seen for 1 second by one computer, but short enough to get missed by the other, computers will produce different outputs and the system will shut down, freezing important flight control at a dangerous phase of flight and leaving pilots in a situation they have not been trained for.

Given the very obviously flawed and incredibly poor design that's easy to understand even for laymen, I would have very hard time believing that no-one at Airbus ever noticed, no-one ever spoke up. I think this would reflect even more poorly on Airbus.

Especially so considering that there have been multiple hull-loss accidents with fatalities (LH2904, TAM3054), where air/ground detection has been a contributing factor. Throughout the years, the aircraft has been unable to tell whether it's on the ground or in the air.

<comment><USER8> _Especially so considering that there have been multiple hull-loss accidents with fatalities (LH2904, TAM3054), where air /ground detection has been a contributing factor. Throughout the years, the aircraft has been unable to tell whether it's on the ground or in the air. _

With the Lufthansa flight the problem was not the aircraft design but rather that the pilot remained on only one main gear for too long. The Airbus design requires weight on both wheels (this had nothing to do with computers being out of sync) in order to prevent things like the Lauda Air (Boeing 767-300ER) crash where the thrust reversers deployed in flight causing the plane to drop out of the sky, killing everyone.

Same deal with the TAM flight. For whatever reason the pilots didn't properly position the thrust lever on one engine. That had nothing to do with computers being out of sync and had absolutely nothing to do with ground detection.

Meanwhile with the Boeing 737, a single (unreliable) radar altimeter (RA) is used as part of the ground detection and a single failed RA caused a Westjet 737 to start pulling back on the throttles.

[http://avherald.com/h?article=41e84cb5](http://avherald.com/h?article=41e84cb5)

As far a the Turkish 737 crash:

[http://avherald.com/h?article=41595ec3](http://avherald.com/h?article=41595ec3)

 _During the accident flight, while executing the approach by means of the instrument landing system with the right autopilot engaged, the left radio altimeter system showed an incorrect height of -8 feet on the left primary flight display. This incorrect value of -8 feet resulted in activation of the 'retard flare' mode of the autothrottle, whereby the thrust of both engines was reduced to a minimal value (approach idle) in preparation for the last phase of the landing._

...

 _The problems with radio altimeter systems in the Boeing 737-800 fleet had been affecting several airlines, including Turkish Airlines, for many years and were known to Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States of America._

...

 _Despite the fact that Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States of America had been aware for many years that the radio altimeter system was causing many problems and was affecting the operation of other systems, this situation was not designated as a safety risk. Reports of problems with the radio altimeter system that could not be resolved by Boeing justified an effort to analyse the radio altimeter system and other related systems. Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States of America could have recognised the fact that the problems caused by the radio altimeter system, especially the potential for activating the autothrottle retard flare mode, posed a safety risk._

That sounds a lot like the engineering that went into MCAS - using only one input for something safety critical.

<comment><USER5> In TAM and LH cases, pilots were locked out of using full braking capabilities of the aircraft because they found themselves in a situation that didn't satisfy the conditions defined as "landing" by aircraft designers. The had wheels on the ground, but program logic evaluated to onground = FALSE.

Westjet and Turkish incidents are irrelevant. Westjet malfunctioned, pilot took control and landed safely - that's what pilots are there for. Turkish airplane also malfunctioned and gave multiple warnings over several minutes, but pilots didn't pay attention to what the aircraft was doing until stall warning activated at 460 feet, by which time it was too late. Had they paid attention, they would've also recovered and landed safely.

In contrast, Airbuses systems didn't malfunction. They worked as designed and made the already difficult situation (landing in bad weather) deadly due to not responding like a pilot would expect. The design was deeply flawed, just like MCAS.

<comment><USER8> _The had wheels on the ground, but program logic evaluated to onground = FALSE._

Nope. The Lufthansa bird had one bogie on the ground and one off. With the TAM flight the pilots left one thrust lever at climb power and one at idle, pure pilot error.

 _The Westjet and Turkish incidents are irrelevant. Westjet malfunctioned, pilot took control and landed safely - that 's what pilots are there for. Turkish airplane also malfunctioned and gave multiple warnings over several minutes, but pilots didn't pay attention to what the aircraft was doing until stall warning activated at 460 feet, by which time it was too late. Had they paid attention, they would've also recovered and landed safely. _

Unfortunately the 737s were functioning as designed, the computers took invalid input and ran with it instead of cross checking it.

<comment><USER5> > Nope. The Lufthansa bird had one bogie on the ground and one off.

Which is to be expected from a crosswind landing (especially with a lot of lift from higher-than-usual speed), but it took 900 m of runway before enough weight was detected on both of them to activate thrust reversers and spoilers. And even after _all_ wheels were on the ground, it took another 300 m before wheel brakes became active. The accident investigation report recommended introduction of emergency override to cover the whole range of conditions in which airplanes fly.

> With the TAM flight the pilots left one thrust lever at climb power and one > at idle, pure pilot error.

The aircraft was firmly on the ground, with one thrust lever in reverse position. Spoilers and auto-brake did not activate because position of the other lever lever was prioritized over actual condition of the aircraft. Critical data was derived from a thrust lever, which has no safety features to prevent inadvertent wrong positioning. Furthermore, lever positioning suppressed aural reminders to bring thrust levers to idle (the famous "RETARD").

> Unfortunately the 737s were functioning as designed, the computers took > invalid input and ran with it instead of cross checking it.

Which is irrelevant on the 737, because its design philosophy expects pilots to monitor and (if necessary) override automation, which hundreds of attentive crews successfully did before the Turkish crash. A320, on the other hand, lacks emergency override, as the LH2904 investigators noted in their report. It cannot reliably tell whether the aircraft is on the ground or not, and stops pilots from taking the correct action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is at least one big airline that denies to accept airliners built in Charleston. Don't remember which. So quality problems are not invented by a single disgruntled employee. There have been news articles before [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing- dreamline...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner- production-problems.html) says that Qatar Airways "stopped" accepting planes fron Charleston. Not sure whether that means indefinitely or until the planes in question are reworked.

In normal markets competition would make sure that a company like Boeing gets enough pressure or eventually fails. Now they are too big to fail however they misbehave. And there is little doubt that they do badly. The merger with McDowell Douglas should never have been approved, even less the newest acqusitation of Embraer. Case AT&T showed what to do if competition does no longer work.

<comment><USER10> I would imagine that now that people hate Boeing management for risking their life it's much easier for other airplane startups to raise VC money and be succesful.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure I trust a startup to make life safety equipment either. Startups by definition have to do whatever they can to cut costs and get as minimal of a minimally viable product as they can, and often, that leads them to releasing shitty versions of the product and patching it later. That's fine when it's a mobile game, but when it's airplanes that carry hundreds of people across the ocean...

I'm not sure I have a solution here, other than saying something like "just fix Boeing" but whatever company is making commercial airplanes, I want them backed by governments and large corporations, not VC money.

<comment><USER10> The minimum viable product for a passenger plane startup is a newly FAA certified one, which is already a higher quality standard than how Boeing 737 MAX plane was certified.

Also I bet that the EU certification won't be easy in the next 10 years.

At the same time the number of whistleblowers increasing is great for keeping Boeing in check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Coming from another highly regulated industry: Medical Devices, I think it is not uncommon that Bosses ignore processes and for the sake of numbers (cash & career) would just override them. As long as they are protegee of any higher up on the ladder people generally don't care and as long no serious lawsuit would put people into jail I am wondering if this is ever going to change.

Anyone has made other experiences?

<comment><USER13> Yes.

Spent some years working on an a class 2b diagnostic device. Potential for harm not that high, but the lack of rigour in testing leaves me wondering to this day whether it worked at all as advertised.

If medical devices are ever open sourced, millions of critical bugs are going to fall out.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.opensourcediabetes.org/](http://www.opensourcediabetes.org/)

Already happening with Diabetics. I know a girl that has cracked her pump for closed loop performance and she says the results are mostly better, but take close monitoring and an active hand.

It's a tricky thing still. Yes, the devices are buggy (all things are), but half of medical devices are used by people with below average intelligence (by definition). It's still a balancing act and is likely to be for a long time.

<comment><USER15> That website is in a rough state.

I tried to contact them regarding the fact that their url for jquery tools no longer resolves and that their SSL certificate has expired. I filled out the contact form and hit submit and then was presented with an empty results screen (probably because the js is broken). Hopefully they fix it up, but might not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Previously covered by the NY Times [1], calling out rushed production and parts left inside aircraft, including that Qatar Airways stopped accepting aircraft from Charleston because of delays and required rework.

John Barnett, the whistleblower mentioned here, had complained to the FAA about sharp metal slivers and had his complaint upheld on inspection by the FAA.

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing- dreamline...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner- production-problems.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> When the 2nd Boeing crashed and the whole Boeing saga started, I came across this (boldly named and maybe a bit exaggerated in the form) website:

[https://www.thelastboeinginspector.com/the-last- inspectors-c...](https://www.thelastboeinginspector.com/the-last-inspectors- contact-me-and-about-me-page.html)

(the navigation is on top of the page, you need JS enabled to see it)

It seems there's a lot of people inside Boeing who can say "interesting" things. The guy who created the above website was terminated _in 2006_.

</comment><comment><USER18> We need to optimize so that public health and the environment comes first. Right now economic growth and quarterly earnings are prioritized top.

The current economic system demands that corporations should always grow. The solution is to change to an economic system which minimizes global warming, promotes public safety. In such a system this plane would not have been designed how it was.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow - more serious story than I first imagined.

> Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 > years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he > was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, > South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the > 787 Dreamliner.

In terms of credibility lent by a career, you can't do much better in terms of being positioned to blow this particular whistle.

> According to Mr Barnett, 57, the rush to get new aircraft off the production > line meant that the assembly process was rushed and safety was compromised. > The company denies this and insists that "safety, quality and integrity are > at the core of Boeing's values".

Surely Boeing must realize how tone-deaf this sounds given the current skepticism being (rightly) cast its way.

> Mr Barnett says his attempts to have the matter looked at further were > stonewalled by Boeing managers. In 2017, he complained to the US regulator, > the FAA, that no action had been taken to address the problem. The FAA, > however, said it could not substantiate that claim, because Boeing had > indicated it was working on the issue at the time.

I tend to lean libertarian on a lot of "regulatory" matters, but no matter your normal view of things, I hope we can all agree that this is an embarrassingly obvious fox guarding this particular hen-house.

> John Barnett says tests suggest up to a quarter of the oxygen systems could > be faulty and might not work when needed. He also claimed faulty parts were > deliberately fitted to planes on the production line at one Boeing factory.

Even if the bag does not inflate, breathe normally as oxygen is flowing. Or not.

<comment><USER20> >> [...] The FAA, however, said it could not substantiate that claim, because Boeing had indicated it was working on the issue at the time.

> [...] I hope we can all agree that this is an embarrassingly obvious fox > guarding this particular hen-house.

I can imagine situations where I would not agree, to be honest. If a manager says, "There is a bug in this system here" and I say, "I'm investigating that problem and will get back to you", it would be a bit strange for the manager to call a halt to my investigation so that they could start a new one. Usually the manager would wait until my investigation is finished. If they were _still_ not satisfied, then that's the time to intervene.

In the same way, I would not expect the FAA to intervene on an issue if the manufacturer was already investigating it. They would wait until that investigation was finished. Sure, put a deadline on it, but it's pretty reasonable to say that you don't know where the issue stands because it's currently under review.

<comment><USER3> In the meantime, people die, or have the potential to die.

There's nothing preventing the FAA from proceeding with its own investigation, except for Boeing saying, "Nah, don't do that, we got our own thing going on here... btw, how's your bank account? Get that 250k yet?"

<comment><USER21> people always "have the potential to die" no matter what.

i'd wait for the FAA before jumping to any conclusions, as unfashionable as this is in today's "speak first, think never" culture.

<comment><USER3> Then in this case, people have a higher potential to die while Boeing twiddles its thumbs and bars the FAA from running its own, separate investigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> These people need to stop finding faults with the airplanes I fly on regularly! /s

Its getting to the point that I'm actually nervous about flying Boeing now. I took 6-8 flights on the 737-Max each year 2016-2019 and now I've taken 4 flights on the 787-Dreamliner since March.

I know that it is still statistically improbable that one of these flights to have an issue, but it still raises my blood pressure since I fly predominantly on Boeing aircraft.

</comment><comment><USER23> >On December 13, 2018, the 787th Boeing 787 was delivered to AerCap, the largest 787 lessor. By then the 787 had flown 300 million passengers on 1.5 million flights and opened 210 new nonstop routes.

There have been 894 deliveries through September 2019. So far only one incident involving the uncontained failure of a Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engine. There have been no complete losses.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner#Accident...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner#Accidents_and_notable_incidents)

<comment><USER24> >Rolls Royce Trent

Great 'final assembly' time-lapse video of the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2R6NTgvEV4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2R6NTgvEV4)

<comment><USER23> Interesting. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The upside to this complaint is that it should be "fairly easy" to test. Though you probably need someone to obtain some systems from a plane currently in operation.

But if the fault rate is 1/4 of the systems, you probably don't need many samples.

</comment><comment><USER26> How can I tell when I'm booking a flight if that plane will be boeing? I would like to avoid them (for the time being at least).

<comment><USER27> Most airlines typically try to purchase their fleet all from the same manufacturer if they can.

There's a lot of additional cost that goes into maintenance, pilot training, pilot availability, etc. that has to be accounted for if you're mixing aircraft from different manufacturers.

You can just look up the aircraft owned by an airline and it will give you a pretty good idea what to expect.

You can also go on flight tracker sites and just look at what aircraft are running the route currently, which would also be a good indicator.

<comment><USER28> > Most airlines typically try to purchase their fleet all from the same > manufacturer if they can.

Most of the big ones have a mix of Boeing and Airbus (plus smaller Canadair/Embraer etc. ones for their regionals). Some of the budget airlines are notable for having a single aircrat or single manufacturer fleet - <USER2> Air, Southwest, Jet Blue.

<comment><USER29> I believe Southwest's entire fleet is 737 in various versions.

<comment><USER28> Yes, they're one of the budget airlines I mentioned. There are some signs they're regretting that now.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/south...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/southwest-a-stalwart-boeing-737-max-customer-eyes-other-jets/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In the past, I've known people who refused to fly on McDonnell Douglas planes as their record was so bad. I wonder if the same has started, or will start happening, with Boeing.

<comment><USER31> Would you fly with a 787 now?

<comment><USER30> Yes, I would as I consider depressurisation an extreme event. I believe the pilots have a separate oxygen supply, so a double failure is even more unlikely.

<comment><USER32> But depending on the altitude you're at getting that mask on is wishful thinking. Don't bet on your pilots being conscious after a plane depresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The market would benefit massively from another entrant to the space, eliminating this Boeing + Airbus duopoly.

If there's any entity that's proven they can tackle capital intensive aerospace markets as a new player, it's SpaceX. I know they're waiting for battery energy density to improve so that they can launch supersonic electric jets, but regular jets that use jet fuel wouldn't be a horrible stopgap.

<comment><USER34> We already have several other players that have experience building aircraft: Bombardier and Mitsubishi come to mind, and China has a manufacturer that's keen on challenging the duopoly with their jet too.

Don't forget, building a jet isn't _that_ big a deal. Boeing doesn't even make the 737MAX fuselage! It's built by a company called Spirit in Kansas. Boeing doesn't make the engines either, of course (no aircraft manufacturer builds engines, which are surely the most complex and technically challenging part of the plane). Boeing does the engineering, the wings I suppose, and the final assembly.

It seems like it shouldn't be _that_ hard for a smaller competitor to get a capital infusion and scale up to building larger jets.

<comment><USER35> Bombardier has already tried: they ended up partnering with Airbus to market the C-series (now A220).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> >the sharp metal pieces — produced when fasteners were fitted into nuts

does it sound like too powerful (i.e. fast which translates to assembly speed) tools are applied to too cheap (like in manufactured to loose tolerances from cheap metal) fasteners and nuts?

</comment><comment><USER37> If Boeing keep this up, I am wondering who's out there writing the book called "Boeing: The giant stall"?

PS: Credit me for the title if ever! :)

</comment><comment><USER38> Just curious - what are the repercussions for an untruthful whistleblower? Say someone is disgruntled, fired or laid off and wants to cause the company some level of public harm?

<comment><USER19> Certainly they can be held civilly liable if defamation can be proved. If actual spite and malice can be shown, or if the suspect intends to profit from the action, it's possible that there may be criminal laws that apply, depending on the state.

<comment><USER39> Are there any studies or reports of typical repercussions faced by whistle blowers for false reports?

I'd guess both false and true reports suffer approximately the same repercussions...

<comment><USER40> False whistleblowers can suffer less repurcussions if you include "made up out of whole cloth" because it is impossible to ruin a career that they never had. They tend to be easier to discredit at least in a "the Pizza restuarant doesn't even have a basement it is built in swampland and would flood way too easily" way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I Am Jack's Complete Lack of Surprise</comment>


The Industrial Revolution of Shame - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/opinion/sunday/internet-shaming.html <comment><USER2> This is getting pretty bad. The thing that really bugs me is when people are shamed for things they did 20 or 30 years ago. 20 years ago I was prank calling people and saying some pretty awful stuff to them. Would I do it now? No, of course not. I've changed. Should I be shamed for something that long ago? I don't personally think it's productive.

I guess there's a balance, though. If I had questionable character _now_ perhaps it would be relevant to include past information. And also, what's the cutoff? Five years? Ten? At what point do we say "that's recent enough to be a reflection on you?" I don't know.

I do know we seem to be reaching back ever-further to find ways to smear people we don't like. It's a constant drive to feel outraged about something. As if there isn't enough bad stuff going on already...

<comment><USER3> I sometimes think about part of Fredric Jameson's remarks on one of the distinctions between modernity and postmodernity being an atemporality, that under postmodernity there is only the ever-present now. And I wonder if things like this are part of that, that we technically still recognize time, in the sense that we know we get off at five o'clock, but at the same time inherently _don 't_ recognize that in a sort of broader context, so people are forever what they were, are, always was, will be. So under such strictures, such makes a certain sense, in descriptive terms, that there is no what someone _was_ but only what they _are_.

<comment><USER4> True post-modernism should also dissolve a staunch moral evaluation framework thus dampening outrage. What we have is some mix of modernism (rejection of classical thought) and fundamentalism (harsh judgement with black and white morality).

<comment> maze-le The way I see it, post-modernism has enabled the outrage machine in the first place, by dissolving the borders between fact and fiction and dismissing context in any form. When everything is interpretable in any possible framework truth, reason and nuance become just another straw in the haystack and not something individuals should strife for.

You suggest we don't have true post-modernism, because it is not critical enough of the own operating moral framework. I counter that with: post- modernism is essentially only 'tried and tested' anti-modernism, but it doesn't come along as religious outrage like in the old times, but dressed in the form of moral outrage machines, that can be triggered by any form of non- conformist behaviour in any possible framework -- the frameworks have become interchangable, the operational mechanisms work like they always have.

<comment><USER5> If I understand correctly, one of the things that postmodernism says is that all speech is about power, not truth - that all claims of truth are really assertions of power.

It's not just that the border of fact and fiction has been dissolved. The question is not even considered relevant, because the statement isn't considered to be about truth in the first place.

"Everything can be interpreted in any possible framework" only in the sense that they will interpret your statement in the framework that makes it look the worst. Why will they do so? Because _their_ interpretation of your statement is not about finding truth, but about _their_ assertion of power. That is, these people are operating consistent with their philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The word "censure" doesn't appear once in The Fine Article, which, I think, undermines its point a little. He writes with nuance about witnessing without judgement, but then assumes all this behavior is categorically "shaming". There is a legitimate social value to censure, and some of this stuff is absolutely censure, not shaming.

To clarify my terms, "censure" talks about behaviors: "That is not an okay thing to do," versus shame's, "You are 'bad' for having done the thing."

Shame is just toxic. Telling people they're defective in an effort to make them improve is stupidly counterproductive.

It gets tricky when we have some kind of identity invested in the thing we're doing. It becomes hard to experience censure and not feel shamed.

<comment><USER7> Your distinctions between shame and censure are arbitrary and meaningless. e.g.:

Censure: "You shouldn't have done that."

Shaming: "You shouldn't have done that. Shame on you."

The point is the same. If an action is deservedly shameful, then so be it.

Shame that brings positive change is not a bad thing; it is a natural social consequence. The problem is lack of forgiveness even after repentance. How can one's debt to society be paid when convicted by the court of public opinion, prosecuted by the NYT? The exile is indefinite.

One of the problems in our society now is shamelessness, i.e. the lack of social consequences for some actions encourages people to take them. Compounding that is the media, which now acts as self-appointed arbiters of who should be ashamed, when, and why, depending on a person's current favor with the politically powerful. Displease the wrong people, and words uttered a dozen years ago without complaint are suddenly cause for outrage, according to them. Meanwhile, others who said much worse things yesterday are lauded. It's all a big farce.

Democracy dies in darkness, all right--the darkness of the evil of the contemporary press.

<comment><USER8> > The point is the same. If an action is deservedly shameful, then so be it.

The point is different because censure (as we're using it here) judges the _action_ but shaming judges the _person_.

Censure: "That thing that you did was bad."

Shaming: "You are a bad person for doing that thing."

<comment><USER7> No, you are arbitrarily deciding that "shaming judges the person," and that shaming means, "You are a bad person." That's what _you_ think it means. You do not get to decide what "shaming" means to everyone, and it's not right for you to tell others what "shaming" means to them.

Besides that, even if one thinks that shaming _does_ "judge the person," that's not necessarily bad, either, because rightful shame can lead to changed behaviors, which is good for the person and for society as a whole. However, this only works as long as _forgiveness_ is available to those who change.

The problem our society currently has is that forgiveness is often denied, even after repentance. The judgments of the court of public opinion are essentially permanent, which is not healthy. And it's doubly bad when relatively old words and actions can be cited as a reason for judgment and outrage today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Outrage culture exists, in part, because it is very profitable. News outlets have an incentive (for clicks/ad revenue/social engagement) to find something to be outraged about 24/7...even if it is completely absurd. The problem is this really is eroding the trust in media. Even if something is so absurd that most people disagree with it, the hate clicks/engagement from that is well worth publishing it.

The only real way to solve this, imo is to start punishing these publications by simply no longer engaging with them or supporting them. Even good publications (I'm thinking Wired, which generally is good, but lately has published some absurd things.) Until then, or until the ad business model changes...this will continue.

We should be looking at alternative business strategies for media, so they aren't dependent on the absurd. That extends to cable news as well. Fox, CNN, MSNBC have all turned into clown shows...and what anyone that has been on these programs or done media training will tell you...the producers often book people simply for being absurd. Merit it no longer what matters, it's all about engagement to drive ad revenues.

</comment><comment><USER10> We're on the cusp of, or sliding down into, a long and intense reckoning for our public figures and elected officials vis a vis Harm.

Think of all the things that were done to women, minorities, etc throughout history, and how difficult it's been for them to have a voice before the internet. Imagine if the black community in the 1950s-60s had smartphones and Twitter. Would the newspapers of the time be decrying the "shame" mobs as truth was inevitably spoken to power?

Yes, categorizing someone as 'bad' or 'defective' in an effort to induce change is counterproductive, as another commenter said. So too, actions from 10-20+ years may not be relevant.

But when historically oppressed people get a national platform, if you aren't one of the oppressed, you may not like what they have to say.

<comment><USER11> now you're equating WILDLY different things, a minority being oppressed is different from say - donglegate. remember that? two dudes fired for making a joke about dongles and penises because some "woke" woman overheard and tweeted about it? now imagine one of those guys changed and became a true feminist champion. the internet mob of today wouldn't let him do anything related to feminism because of his past

<comment><USER12> Afaik, all involved people were fired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Outrage culture is not about social function imo, it's that words and thoughts provoking the feeling of outrage transmit more easily, that people willingly click into stories about outrage regardless of their relevance. If ideas are like DNA in that they propagate across human minds and there is a type of Darwinian survival of the fittest, outrage inducing memes are simply more fit.

</comment><comment><USER14> Man, it really feels like at this point the reactionary response to "outrage" is orders of magnitude larger than the initial outrage ever was. I never, ever even hear of any of these supposed outrages until I hear folks going on and on and on about how opposed to the "outrage" they are

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing you haven't been using the Internet for the past few years then? This stuff is rife, and often well planned and organised with the apparent collaboration of the MSM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Witch hunts are nothing new; people have been doing this for as long as there have been people. I'd even go so far as to say the mass media have been doing this for at least 150 years now.

What's new is its weaponization as a tool for political control in the West.

<comment><USER17> What's new is the explosion of scale the internet has enabled.

<comment><USER18> Not really, I think the literal Inquisition still has us beat.

<comment><USER16> You should read an older history of this series of events; past views of the inquisition were vastly different than the present view. For a long time, it was seen as a humane thing due to their use of an actual legal process rather than people and local strong men burning heretics (who were probably mostly "heretics") at random. In other words, the inquisition was a Church reform designed to mitigate "private sector" witch hunters who were causing political upheaval. The use of standards of evidence by people like Bernard Gui (who wrote a manual on the subject) was a big innovation, as silly as it might seem today.

My historical point of comparison is the events leading up to the various religious wars. The protestant reformation unleashed historical and cultural forces in the same way the present slow motion destruction of the last 100 years of political consensus.

<comment><USER18> No, it's not silly, just a testament to how screwed up the time period in question was. Just to add to what you're saying, did you know that the inquisition was only allowed a single torture session? Of course they got around that by "pausing" the session and resuming endlessly. Still the _ideas_ in the Inquisition, putting aside its aims and practices, were interestint for the time. So "big innovation" isn't silly, although I admit it's an interesting perspective not usually taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think it's too simple to just blame the media for this phenomenon. What is needed is not less media, but more nuance in the discourse; an ability to weigh the importance and relevance of some prior digression against the present person. It is possible, although perhaps uncommon, for people to change, even in major ways. But as one commenter noted, many people today seem to believe in a constancy of time and personality; that the core self is always the same and never changes, and therefore some action taken 20 years ago should carry the same weight as if it were done today. That belief is what is really underlying the current culture of outrage.

</comment><comment><USER20> Shame has always been a part of human nature, doing shameful acts -- like eating up all the reserve food that the tribe worked so hard to store is appropriately responded to with shame from peers.

Social pressure has it's place in society, as with all things the internet takes everything about the human social experience and turns the dial to 11. I think we are only just coming to grips with what actually should be shamed on the internet. As with all things, we will reach an equilibrium. You don't kick someone out of the tribe for a simple mistake that has a slim chance of happening again if the proper amount of social pressure is applied.

</comment><comment><USER21> the media produces a lot of manufactured outrage as well.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Hosting with tiny dedicated machines instead of VPS? - <AUTHOR>

The SheevaPlug post yesterday reminded me of what I really want from a hosting provider, and since we've been thru the age of the blade, and VPS is all the rage right now, I wonder if some innovative host has come up with it:
A tiny dedicated machine.  EG: A blade or a rack system with a bunch of independent very small machines.  Say and ARM CPU, and 512-1GB of RAM and an onboard, dedicated SSD of 10-40G.  Since this is an all silicon solution it should be smaller than anything using hard drives.
I'm picturing something like the gumstix.  (Maybe someones done this with gumstixes in fact.)  You could probably fit hundreds of them in a 4U Rack enclosure.  Power supply would be separate, off the shelf, and stick a network switch in there as well and provide a separate NAS for bulk hard drive storage.
This would be pretty ideal for a lot of hosting situations.  Fast local storage (the downside of the shivaplug is the USB hard drive interface) and dedicated resources at low power and low capital costs.
I know VPS is more efficient in theory because most people are idle most of the time.  But there are thousands of VPS providers and this would be an interesting differentiation.
Anyone doing anything like this? <comment><USER2> I think there is a market for this. Here is something similar: <http://www.macminicolo.net/>

I know someone who used them and was satistfied, he was able to take the macmini he had his server on and just mail it to them.

Some credit card processing requirements specify that certain servers not be on shared hardware, I have overheard discussions about this with regards to hosting some kinds of transactions on Amazon. Perhaps that could be a target market.

</comment><comment><USER3> you'd have to be priced really aggressively since those machines are super low power. add an SSD as an additional differentiator - i can't think of a VPS service doing that, and it would really boost performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have a sense for the compute power difference between a 1GHZ ARM and 1/64th of a Quad Core Xeon or whatever a VPS represents.

But I also am continually surprised that SSDs are still independent devices. I'd expect at least Apple to have integrated one on the mother board by now.

This idea is predicated also, in part, on the assumption that there's some software that will allow part of the SSD to work as a cache for the networked hard drive.

<comment><USER2> Linux and other modern operating systems automatically cache network drives or can be configured to do so. Probably the best way to address that would be to increase the amount of RAM in each device, so more (or the entire disk) could be cached.</comment></comment></comment>


Everything you need to know about recursion - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Methinks, you forgot to add the link to the content. Correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> Think again, my friend. ;-)

<comment><USER2> oops! silly me.

sorry, lesson learned.

> Never comment on HN when it's already 2 AM, you must be sleepy.

By the way, let's be more pedantic. It lakes the termination condition for recursion.</comment></comment></comment>


NASA going toward a commodity-based 100Gbps firewall with FreeBSD - <AUTHOR> https://www.nas.nasa.gov/SC16/demos/demo9.html <comment><USER2> Well I heard NASA will no longer be able to do weather research under the new admin, nothing like hiding ones head in the sand and we all know only earth has weather :)

</comment><comment><USER3> How to get past the overview to the actual work?</comment>


Frag: A Quake3 engine in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.haskell.org/Frag

<comment><USER2> "Darcs is the standard revision control system of the Haskell community."

Hmm, was that the case in 2005?

<comment><USER3> Yes, Darcs predates Git by a few years and was used by GHC, XMonad, Happstack, and several other well-known Haskell projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love frag. Have you seen Nikki and The Robots? [https://github.com/nikki- and-the-robots/nikki](https://github.com/nikki-and-the-robots/nikki)

<comment><USER5> Screenshots etc?

<comment><USER6> [http://www.indiedb.com/games/nikki-and-the- robots/images](http://www.indiedb.com/games/nikki-and-the-robots/images)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Frag is a decade old. Does it still run?

<comment><USER8> I'm guessing it still runs on GHC 6.8, maybe GHC 7.6.3? It uses HOpenGL-2.0 and the current version is OpenGL-184.108.40.206 (with a name change apparently).

I'll try to compile it.

<comment><USER8> Whoa... I'm surprised this is building (using ghc 7.8.3). I just did:

        darcs get http://code.haskell.org/frag
        cabal sandbox init
        cabal install

It's still building right now. I'm expecting some failures soon, but then again I wasn't expecting to get this far.

update: Their cabal file doesn't have any bounds... easiest method would probably be to add bounds and use an older ghc. It depends on Data.HashTable from base 4.2. However I'm wondering if this is the only thing and if I can just use the hashtables package on hackage.

<comment><USER9> > Their cabal file doesn't have any bounds...

A surefire recipe for bitrot. If you want to maximize the ability of people to build your code in the future, upper bounds are essential for all your dependencies.

<comment><USER10> As I sadly recently discovered when I went back and revived a node.ja project from 2 years ago.

This is an advantage of PHP's Composer over node.js's npm, as it can write your require lines for you, so you resist the temptation to put "*".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How slow is it, since it's using Haskell?</comment>


Limelight Networks, Inc. v. Akamai Technologies, Inc. - <AUTHOR> http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/limelight-networks-inc-v-akamai-technologies-inc/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the original petition:

Akamai holds a patent claiming a method involving redirecting requests for Internet content and selecting optimal servers. The Federal Circuit acknowledged that neither Limelight nor customers using Limelight's service directly infringe Akamai's patent under 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) because no one performs all the steps of the patented method. App. 6a, 30a. The Federal Circuit nevertheless held that Limelight could be liable, under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b), for inducing infringement if (1) it knew of Akamai's patent; (2) it performed all but one of the steps of the method; (3) it induced its customers to perform the final step of the claimed method; and (4) the customers performed that step. App. 30a. The question presented is:

Whether the Federal Circuit erred in holding that a defendant may be held liable for inducing patent infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) even though no one has committed direct infringement under § 271(a).</comment>


Best Comments (with no points) - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments <comment><USER2> Forgive me for saying this, but I NEED to know what the hive-mind likes. I need the points. Without the points I might as well be reading some random blog comment that could have been created by a spam bot. I probably wouldn't know the difference.

<comment><USER3> If something is severely downmodded, it will still appear light-gray, so you are still able to recognize those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aggg. While I'm pro no-score, this might be one case in which score is nice to know.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like it, but I think if it is not a top-level comment it should include whatever it is responding to for context. Maybe some sort of subtle (or not subtle) indicator of what is the best comment vs what the context is.

<comment><USER6> _I think if it is not a top-level comment it should include whatever it is responding to for context._

I hear you, but what I have done whenever I browse the top-scoring comments view of HN shared here is simply follow the "parent" link that appears on each comment when I want to know what prompted the comment. Sometimes I can tell well enough what the context is just from quoted text in the comment (when participants who comment remember to quote text from comments to which they are replying) or from the title of the submission thread.

<comment><USER5> Maybe then a setting you can toggle to display the parent?</comment></comment></comment>


Self-Defeating Sentences - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/self-defeating-sentences/

<comment><USER2> There are so many t-shirts waiting to be made from this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I loved ready the examples in this article. They put a smile on my face.</comment>


Tmux Support Arrives for Bash on Ubuntu on Windows - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/06/08/tmux-support-arrives-for-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows/ <comment><USER2> The actual name is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL): [https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/490](https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/490)

</comment><comment><USER3> Will you add support for Ubuntu on Windows to 32-bit machines?

I have only a rinky-dink Asus laptop as a Windows machine; it's one of those 64-bjt Atoms saddled with a 32-bit OS and WSL is nowhere to be found.

<comment><USER4> What is preventing you from using a 64-bit OS?

<comment><USER5> I'd second this -- it's worth the hassle of re-installing the OS to get the security benefits of 64-bit, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So byobu should work now?</comment>


Running DOS Apps on Windows - <AUTHOR> https://gekk.info/articles/dosapps.html <comment><USER2> > specifically, it had no "process management"; no concept of "processes" at > all, in fact.

I don't know if that statement is quite true. In MS-DOS, each PSP segment is arguably a process. Processes can spawn sub-processes, albeit the parent process is mostly suspended while the child process runs. (Not entirely suspended, because a child process can call back to a parent process – most commonly by invoking software interrupts for which the parent process has installed handlers.) While only one process can be executing in the foreground at a time, multiple processes can coexist in memory. TSRs rely on this ability to have multiple processes in memory at once.

By contrast, some other operating systems, for example CP/M-80 1.x and 2.x, only supported loading one program into memory at a time, and had no support for spawning subprocesses. (Later versions of CP/M did develop some support for spawning subprocesses, although arguably it was less polished and cohesive than that provided by MS-DOS.)

Microsoft BASICs for DOS (BASICA, GW-BASIC, QBASIC, etc) provide a SHELL statement which runs a subprocess and then continues executing the BASIC program when it has finished. Microsoft BASIC for CP/M (MBASIC) has no SHELL statement, because the earlier versions of CP/M it was developed for lacked that facility.

You can actually implement the equivalent of "ps" for MS-DOS by walking the MCB chain and checking which MCBs look like valid PSPs. (One can look for signs that an MCB contains a valid PSP – for example, that it starts with the bytes 0xCD 0x20.)

<comment><USER3> I implemented time shared multitasking in a DOS TSR... Had a modem tender sending and receiving files in the background. Thanks for reminding me about the existence of Program Segment Prefixes and Memory Control Blocks. _twitch_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I seem to recall that common practice for playing games in the 3.1 and 95 eras was to exit windows and just run DOS.

A few games, but hardly all, worked in the virtualized full screen mode. It was rare that any decent game would run windowed.

By the time 98 rolled around it was less common to want to play a game that wasn't already targeting Win32/DirectX.

<comment><USER5> I also remember having to exit into DOS on my parent's PC running Windows 95 whenever I wanted to run MS-DOS games. I remember a PIF setting that allowed booting into DOS, directly running the program, and immediately rebooting into Windows upon closure, which bypassed the need to use DOS commands to execute the program. I was just a kid at the time, and I remember my dad buying cheap DOS games at the 98 Cent Store, which became the Dollar Tree sometime around 2000. One game I remember was a shooting game named Kiloblaster that I enjoyed a lot, and I also remember some educational titles, one teaching history and geography (I forget the name, unfortunately), and another teaching fractions. I also remember a MS-DOS version of PacMan.

If I remember correctly, Windows 95 was able to detect whether a DOS program would run well while Windows is running, or if it required booting directly into DOS. QBASIC was well-behaved and thus did not require a reboot.

This article brought back some pleasant childhood memories.

<comment><USER6> > at the 98 Cent Store, which became the Dollar Tree sometime around 2000

That's inflation for ya.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a much longer (and more detailed) description of the history of the transition from DOS to Windows: [https://www.filfre.net/2018/06/doing-windows- part-1-ms-dos-a...](https://www.filfre.net/2018/06/doing-windows-part-1-ms- dos-and-its-discontents/)

(That's part 1 out of 9)

It has a slightly different focus: it doesn't mention PIF files, but spends time on the business relationship between IBM and MS. It also discusses OS/2.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Microsoft leaned in hard to videogame support, but never did improve DOS emulation to a point where you could practically play much of anything in a window. In fact, I seem to recall NT did a little better at this at times. You 'd think they could have managed it under 9x, and that they would have considered it worthwhile, but perhaps it's a harder trick than I think._

That's actually something handled by the video driver, or more precisely, the VXD responsible for virtualising the GPU; and although MS did write a few of their own, that is typically supplied by the GPU vendor.

The whole DOS-based Windows product line, from Windows/386 onwards, are better thought of as thin bare-metal hypervisors, like Xen, rather than a traditional OS. The main difference is that instead of contemporary virtualisation that denies guests access to the host hardware by default and requires specific "passthrough" configuration otherwise, Windows allows guests to access the hardware by default, and traps and virtualises only the bare minimum necessary for itself.

I recently experimented with writing a minimal VESA video driver ("framebuffer") for Windows 9x, and it was a very interesting experience; there's a usermode component (running in 16-bit protected mode, basically a DLL) which is called by GDI for the various drawing calls, and you can either implement acceleration if you can, or pass it on to the DIBENG ("DIB engine") to have it do all the drawing in software. This component is actually surprisingly easy to write, since all you need to do is set the video mode and pass DIBENG the framebuffer to draw into; I was able to get Windows to boot with the driver and graphical Win16/32 apps using it with around a weekend of work.

Trying my driver on various physical and emulated hardware revealed that with some GPUs, although Windows applications worked perfectly, opening just a DOS prompt window would corrupt the screen, yet full-screen DOS worked fine. I discovered that although Windows' built-in VXDs virtualised a standard VGA, if the video BIOS or DOS apps accessed the hardware beyond the standard VGA registers, it would not be trapped by the VXD and thus the state would "bleed out of the VM". A lot of super-VGA hardware is "hidden" inside the same interface as a regular VGA, which explains how my user-mode-only driver didn't encounter this issue; but others have more registers and I/O ports which Windows didn't know about.

I have yet to find the time to write the VXD component, but I think it's definitely possible to get graphical, even high-resolution, DOS graphics to work well in a window.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorry for being off-topic. There was a time when we called programs _programs_ and I really miss it. I believe it was Apple, who caused this change with thier iPad.

That's quite the major change of language. They've managed to push computers so deep into the mainstream, it changed not just a word, but public perception about computers.

<comment><USER2> The term "application" was in common use in the 1980s and 1990s, and shortening it to "app" was not uncommon either.

You might recall the term "killer app". Here's an article from 1989 using it:

[https://books.google.com/books?id=CbsaONN5y1IC&pg=PP75](https://books.google.com/books?id=CbsaONN5y1IC&pg=PP75)

<comment><USER10> Common among engineers but not the general public.

<comment><USER2> The term was common in computer magazines in the 1980s and 1990s.

A lot of people who read those were not IT professionals, they were popular with enthusiasts.

Many of them were sold in mainstream outlets targeting the general public.

<comment><USER10> As we have seen, they didn't hit their target often enough for it to make much difference back then.

Most offices didn't have an enthusiast yet, and certainly not IT professionals.

I even took a look at a personal computer publication or two at the time, and I am neither.

Publications needed to cast a wider net, but it took a while to reel ordinary users in.

_App_ was literally understood by enthusiasts for years without ever becoming part of the everyday spoken vocabulary even among themselves. It still had no meaning to users at the time, but they already knew what a program was, as well as a computer programmer. However, most users purchasing their first Apple or PC had never yet heard of a software engineer.

Kind of helps to explain why it took until the 21st century for the nomenclature to become mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love the collection of tiny, standalone EXEs from Windows NT 3.51 that still run great under Windows 10 (described at the bottom of [https://gekk.info](https://gekk.info) ; download directory: [https://gekk.info/nt351/](https://gekk.info/nt351/) ).

<comment><USER12> I've commented this a few times in the past unsuccessfully so here I try again:

Ages ago I stumbled upon a website that described a way to run Windows 1.0 EXEs on Windows 10 (32bit obviously). Iirc it involved patching the PE header with a hex editor to say it's for Windows 2.0 or maybe 3.0 and then using an old version of Borland resource editor to recompile the embedded resources, since the that format changed some time between 1.0 and 3.0 and that old editor happens to support both variants.

The page had screenshots of some old programs like reversi, calc etc running on 10. Some looked a little glitchy but it basically worked.

Unfortunately the site either went down or my googlefu is weakening.

<comment><USER13> There are only few nerds geeky enough to attempt such feats for pleasure.

[http://www.os2museum.com/wp/](http://www.os2museum.com/wp/) Michal Necasek

[https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/](https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/) neozeed

and [https://soylentnews.org](https://soylentnews.org) NCommander come to mind

Maybe this is what you were thinking of [https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/05/10/1753203](https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/05/10/1753203)

Edit: and indeed NCommander guest post on neozeed blog [https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2020/05/22/examining- wind...](https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2020/05/22/examining- windows-1-0-hello-c/) has first comment mentioning [http://toastytech.com/guis/misc.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/misc.html) , Nathan Lineback is your nerd. His whole website is a treasure.

<comment><USER12> That last link is it! Thanks a ton, I'm gonna set up a win 10 VM tomorrow :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would have mentioned at least DESQview because it's rather nice and then OS/2 for obvious reasons.

About the memory model, for instance Wikipedia does a decent job (see [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_memory_management](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_memory_management)). I think it's definitely necessary to understand the gist of what you're writing about and not simply give up because as you can't find it easily now with the whole Internet at your fingertips, then surely few did back then or it's not really important. That strikes me as a strange way to approach these topics tbh.

I don't understand the point about Windows 95 and VGA. The minimum requirements for Windows 95 included VGA, but no one inflicted such pain on themselves. By the time Windows 95 appeared, pretty much everybody got something like an S3 Trio and went with SVGA/XGA. I mean, try to use Word 95/97 with a 640x480 14" screen, it's cramped and you get less PPI than an early 90s $999 Macintosh Classic.

<comment><USER15> You can actually run the Windows 95 UI on 320x240, I've seen it happen when the VGA driver messes up

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I haven't touched a Windows machine in the past 15 years and is shocked to read in this article that running DOS apps is no longer a feature of Windows. From my childhood they were as intertwined as the peanut butter and jelly on a de-crusted wonder bread.

<comment><USER17> You misunderstood the article. It is not a feature of 64 bit Windows, but it still works on 32 bit x86 version. Exactly how it was 15 years ago when Windows XP x64 debuted.

<comment><USER16> Oh that makes much more sense, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That was actually way more in depth and interesting than I thought it was going to be.</comment>


Show HN: Bifocal News – Democracy-Driven News without Hidden Bias - <AUTHOR> https://bifocalnews.com <comment><USER2> Because an explicitly-designed filter bubble is what the world needs right now...

<comment><AUTHOR> Please see [https://bifocalnews.com/about](https://bifocalnews.com/about) for the reasoning behind the goal of this site before making unproductive criticism

<comment><USER2> That looks very reasonable. But the HN headline seems _very_ misleading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback, my apologies for the mis-direction. I changed the headline to Democratic News without Hidden Bias

<comment><USER2> OK, but if I understand correctly what you are trying to do, the word "Democratic" is misleading, because you're not trying to present just one side of the Democrat/Republican divide. You're trying to expose both sides to each other.

BTW, I think this is a really important thing to do, and I wish you every success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah I see what you mean, I changed Democratic to Democracy-Driven. You are absolutely right that most people would assume the political party. Thank you for the support!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Text Recognition Simplified. Capture any text from your Mac's screen - <AUTHOR> https://textsniper.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

The idea to build TextSniper was born from my personal, trivial use-case. I was watching a YouTube video tutorial and on the video was a link I needed to paste into Terminal application. The link was quite long and the only option was to retype it. Then I thought, would not be great, if I just could draw a selection around this link on the video and turn it to typed text and then easily paste anywhere I need. No mistyping and the job is done in seconds.</comment>


Matrix.org Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/matrixdotorg/status/1116311617355026432 <comment><AUTHOR> matrix.org and riot.im are down for "emergency security maintenance", "to address issues with [http://Matrix.org](http://Matrix.org) 's production infrastructure. This is not a Synapse issue."</comment>