Ask HN: Is your company altering its vacation policy because of Covid? - <AUTHOR> My company has a "use it or lose it" vacation policy with a maximum number of days we can carry over from year to year.
The intent is to force people to take vacations somewhat regularly.
I've had 2 vacations this year cancelled due to travel restrictions and figured many others would be in the same boat.
I asked if that policy was going to be altered to allow us to 'store' more vacation and the answer was No.  The thinking is that folks can still drive, take staycations, etc...   A second factor would be that many of us would want to take a vacation soon after a vaccine or whatever was available, and the company just can't support that many people wanting vacation time simultaneously.
I can see a few different angles here and was wondering if other companies are altering their vacation accrual polices.  And I want to get input on how companies intend to handle (what I feel will be) a rash of vacation requests that are building up. <comment><USER2> Similar situation at my job - use it or lose it; no changes.</comment>


Time Management for Recovering Sysadmins - <AUTHOR> http://backdrift.org/time-management-for-recovering-sysadmins

<comment><USER2> _Don't be a BOFH_

This got a big grin on my face</comment>


Jet propulsion by microwave air plasma in the atmosphere - <AUTHOR> https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0005814 <comment><USER2> Watch the attached video - it's a really beautiful plume of plasma, and helps visualize what's going on in the diagrams.</comment>


An Alternate Universe (Microsoft Surface) - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/10/26/an-alternate-universe <comment><USER4> Odd, I played with the Surface yesterday and the device I used was much different than the one described here. I have an iPad (and love it in many ways), however found the Surface fairly refreshing in several ways. For one:

I find that I can't really hold the iPad with one hand, partially because the shape and weight distribution, partially because it feels so incredibly fragile. I found the Surface to be shaped comfortably, even for one hand, and thought it felt much more durable than the iPad (this article states it doesn't feel light like the iPhone 5, however even though it's comparable in weight to the iPad 3, my first thought was that it feels kind of like the lightness and increased sense of durability of the iPhone 5).

>> I couldn't type on the Touch Cover significantly faster than with the on- screen keyboard.

Seriously? I type on the iPad a lot and resort to "pecking" most of the time, and I have fairly average sized hands. I instantly was able to use the touch cover like a normal keyboard. I made a few mistakes, but could easily see myself typing nearly as fast as a normal keyboard with a little practice. I have no such feeling with the iPad.

>> Apple's products say, "You can't do that because we think it would suck." Microsoft's products say, "We'll let you try to do anything on anything if you really want to, even if it sucks."

Wow, what a sad sounding world for people who like Apple products.

I'm not going to buy a Surface yet, but I'm seriously tempted.

<comment><USER5> Haven't tried the Surface yet but something I haven't seen anyone mention is that when you are typing on the Touch Cover, your hands are not hiding the screen. That seems like a big plus to me.

Kickstarter idea: pitch a "Touch Cover" product for the iPad (could be done using the USB port I believe). PS: lawyer up!

<comment><USER6> No need for Kickstarter: Google is your friend! Try "ipad keyboard case" or "ipad keyboard cover".

<comment><USER7> but it's so thick(?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a shame to see Marco panning the Surface so thoroughly. It's apples and oranges. On the one hand, comparing brand new hardware (one day old) with 4th generation hardware and on the other hand comparing brand new software (again, one day old) with version 6 software.

Despite the criticisms of some of the execution here and there (e.g., the pointless animations), it's clear if you've done any reading that a tremendous amount of research and UX work went into this--but it's a v1 product and many of the apps are written by groups other than MS.

I got a chance to use the Surface today and the thing that I came away with was that this could be a person's only computer. As an example, you can browse the file system, run desktop apps, and copy files to external storage. I can't say that about an iPad. Everyone I know who owns an iPad (myself included) also has a second computer somewhere--often in the same bag.

The other thing I came away with was that Microsoft is open and Apple is closed. Why can't I plug a microSD card into any Apple product? Why can't I plug in a USB device? You can plug your camera into the Surface (it's a host) and download pictures to your local machine. MS has several capacities and price points, just like Apple, but they're not afraid to let you use external storage.

I believe in a future with open computing and, firmware lock downs notwithstanding, MS is far more open than Apple.

<comment><USER9> It is not apples and oranges. People making a utility-based purchasing decision can only compare the 1st generation Surface to the 4th generation iPad.

The amount of R&D has no relevance to a consumer. The relevant thing is how much value the device provides.

I agree that the expectation and advantage is to have your tablet serve as your one and only computer. But this will never be actually true since most people will actually have to carry around a phone (or phablet). The portability and availability of a phone will beat out that of a tablet. Try jogging with a tablet. What a tablet currently buys you is a larger screen and a keyboard that you can type on for awhile.

A truer statement may be that this tablet's aim is to take on additional functionality found in desktops and laptops and not found in other tablets. In Microsoft's mind, that functionality is Office and access the file system.

You can plug in microSD and USD into an iPad. You need the accessories. Agree that they don't let you use external storage.

If you want open computing, you shouldn't be picking Microsoft, nor Apple, nor Google. Are you saying that you want to depend on an entity whose sole purpose is to make money to supply you with open source code in the long run? How about Oracle with Java? Or Compuserve with gif? Corporations don't even trust other corporations with key technologies without making them open source or FRAND. If you truly want open source, you should be branching Android and replacing or removing Google services with open source alternatives.

<comment><USER10> Well, you disagree with Microsoft. As an exec said here (sorry to link to BGR) [http://bgr.com/2012/10/25/microsoft-executive-mundie- intervi...](http://bgr.com/2012/10/25/microsoft-executive-mundie-interview- cyber-crime-stalled-smartphones/) MS lead the way with tablets and touch based systems. If they were first, the surface isn't version 1.

<comment><USER9> That's quibbling. Irrespective of how you label the devices, a consumer making a decision compares the two devices at hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wait, so Apple invented the idea of a store with flat tables and sales staff with blue shirts? First of all, practically every high end women's shoe or bag store had that "Art Gallery" presentation style: hardwood floors, uncluttered and spacious, simply flat tables or shelves with few products. Although the sales people are usually dressed very sharp.

But Apple did not invent this style of presenting consumer electronics. Sometimes I feel like Marco, MG, and Gruber were born 5 years ago. Am I the only one who bought nice, industrial designed stuff from stores like Bang and Olufsen? The Beocom 2 came out in 2002 and some of the Bang and Olufsen stores had flat tables like that. And if you visited some of the boutique stores in Italy or Japan even 10 years ago you would find some with this layout.

And didn't BestBuy invent the blue-shirt guy? I'm kind of bored of the continued notion that Apple was the first consumer electronics company to obsess over industrial design, build quality, or retail presentation.

<comment><USER12> There's a difference between tastefully selecting reference points from a wide range of inspiration sources, and crudely imitating a direct comptetitor who has heretofore been wiping the floor with you. The former is what Apple did when creating the Apple Store, and what every other successful designer does when creating something original. The latter is what wannabes do when they begin to realise how uncool they are.

Successfully repurposing ideas into fresh contexts is good work. This is not what Microsoft has done. Not by a long shot.

As to the Bang and Olufson argument, well, B&O sell speakers and is a nice company, but Apple sells the future of humanity and is the largest company in the world. It's a question of vision and impact, not who came up with hardwood floors first.

Come to think of it, the whole who-thought-of-it-first is a real red herring when thinking about why Apple/Apple Stores are significant.

<comment><USER13> So what?

Apparently from the various posts relating to discussions about Apple some people take the idea of others emulating Apple as a criminal offense, a type of offense in which for them is valid to point the fingers in the face of such companies and repeated yelling: "loser loser."

About your two last paragraphs I dislike this wording but it shows every mark of the fanboy speak, when given the facts that someone made some elements that Apple uses today just say how Apple is significant compared to them, it's the reverse of the above pattern. This is increasingly making me sick.

<comment><USER14> If the only thing MS can do is play catch up with Apple and even copy their store designs than they're truly losers.

Writing this from a Windows PC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Marco Arment enters a Microsoft store beady-eyed, looking for things to nitpick, sneering at everything, seeing the negative side of everything. Whodathunkit.

The article by this fully-grown adult is summed up as he bitches about how "he isn't told how to exit other stores." What a clown.

<comment><USER16> Beady-eyed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> this is such a biased article with strawman arguments ("can you replace the sound card on the surface?") and silly comparisons(the author actually writes he could buy 2 ipad minis for 1 surface).

the criticisms about the store experience and salesmen notwithstanding, this is apple fanboism at its best.

It's far better to keep an open mind and experience new ways of interaction than to deride/scoff at alternative UI and UX.

I switch between Android, Windows, and Mac OSX; it's far more interesting to enjoy more platforms than forgo trying new experiences.

<comment><USER18> The sound card comment was because the salesman was suggesting one advantage being a "PC Guy" was that he could upgrade his sound card. My response, btw, would have been identical to Marco's here.

<comment><USER19> Arguing quick examples and metaphors has never been useful to anyone except the arguer's ego. The salesdude actually tried to address Marco's underlying question (in what ways can you expand this thing?), even though it was clear Marco was there just for trolling. Surface love or hate nonwithstanding, this is an embarrassing post from start to finish.

<comment><USER20> It was important for the overall motif he repeated throughout the piece that the salespeople seemed to be forcing the issue too much and weren't personally invested. (How could they be? The store has been open for less than a month.)

<comment><USER10> On the subject of trolling, isn't the very store he went into some kind of meta-troll. Built to be encountered before the Apple store is reached, copying layout and staffing concepts, trying to divert people from buying iPads, coyly calling the competition (iPad) a tablet, rather than name it. I think that there is a reasonable augment to be made that Microsoft is trolling Apple. The smart cover keyboard though, that's a definite win however I look at it.

<comment><USER21> > coyly calling the competition (iPad) a tablet, rather than name it

Kind of like putting a picture of a Nexus 7 on the screen and calling it "a competitor's tablet"? This isn't trolling, it's the way advertising has worked throughout the history of people trying to get other people to buy stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > People who dislike Apple's approach or whose requirements are incompatible > with it will always exist in great numbers, and the Surface is for them.

I disagree. Historically, Microsoft software products have been more customizable and more flexible than what comes from Apple. PC hardware as well. But what we're seeing now, with Windows 8, is a departure from that. Microsoft isn't just copying Apple's store -- they're copying the fundamental mind-set behind Apple's software. Instead of a general purpose computing machine, they're both trying to sell closed consumer electronics products. In my opinion, Microsoft took their biggest advantage and tossed it. People who dislike Apple's approach or whose requirements are incompatible aren't going to find much of an alternative. Microsoft seems to think they can compete with Apple on Apple's terms.

<comment><USER23> And thus Android/Chrome may become the new "frankenstein customizable" option, which MS has historically been.

<comment><USER24> Maybe Android, but I can't see how Chrome could be that. It's a browser that runs web applications. Every other OS has a browser and runs web applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Quite a nice writeup.

It saddens me to see Microsoft disappointing, time after time. There must be great material for anthropologists to figure out how such an incredibly smart and talented group of people, with almost unlimited amount of money, can continue to be second-rate. In fact, comparing the cultures around Linux, MS and Apple is bound to reveal some greater truths about human/societal behavior which could be applied to improving the lot of countries and cultures which have stagnated.

<comment><USER26> How is the Surface disappointing? Explain please. Surface has by far the better hardware, and Windows 8 has a FAR better UI and UX than iOS. How is the Surface worse than the iPad? It's way ahead.

<comment><USER27> Most people seem to love the surface _hardware_ , it's Windows RT I've seen most complaints about. Most people also seem to love the touch cover, and had a better experience than Marco.

I read this entire piece as a critique of the MS store. The Surface just happened to be what he tried to see/mess with; an activity that was constantly interrupted by the sales staff.

I went into my local MS store a few weeks ago (pre-surface). While I didn't encounter pushy salesmen, the rest of the experience was similar. The layout and design was a clear copy of Apple. The uniforms and the way they carried their ID on a lanyard was a clear copy. There was an "XBox Experience" section in the back no one was using. The Windows phones were covered in fingerprints, making it hard to see how nice the screens really were.

They're trying, but it was clear to me they needed some time and experience to round some rough edges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28>
      The pitches were aggressive, fast-paced, and competitively
      defensive: they often mentioned "other tablets" and didn't
      let me forget which features were "not available on any
      other tablet".

This sounds like a description of the iPad mini keynote.

<comment><USER14> My thoughts exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How surprising, Marco panning Microsoft products.

That store experience does sound awful though. There's nothing more off putting than over eager sales staff interrupting your curiosity.

<comment><USER30> I have been to MSFT stores in San Diego and Seattle. They were like that before Surface. I felt dirty, and a little sad for everyone in the store.

<comment><USER31> Visiting their store feels like you've stepped into a Halloween horror movie.

The staff must be forced to take lithium at the start of each shift. At the Microsoft store in Chicago, it's not only empty and in the least 'cool' part of the city (distant suburbs), but the constant demos felt like I was a victim in a Saw movie. I had to enthusiastically play a Kinect game... or else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This post is 1/100th as useful as full write ups from Wired, Verge, ArsTechnica, or Anandtech. It's just not deep, insightful, or meaningful in comparison. I'd highly recommend reading those reviews if you're looking for anything insightful about the Surface.

</comment><comment><USER33> Seriously? blue uniforms, white name tags, flat display tables, guru bars... It's like they purposely tried to copy every distinguishable Apple retail formula except they're pushing PCs.

Does noone have any creativity left anymore?

<comment><USER34> It's not about creativity when you're running a store. It's about finding a method that works and tweaking it to fit your product.

The creativity is in the product and advertising.

<comment><USER33> So every other tech retail company that doesn't copy Apple is foolish? If that's the case we're headed towards a bland, uninspiring world.

<comment><USER34> The loyalty of Apple's consumers speaks volume. It's only natural for tech companies to follow their lead. It's about great customers service and that's not limited to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is it just me, or does the Article really does comes across as quite snarky in tone rather than an honest observation of what he saw ?

<comment><USER14> It's just you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why oh why did I read another pointless Apple fanboy article. It really isn't worth taking sides with these big companies and their sales tactics... Both play cheap awkward tricks. Both are trying to get your money and manipulate your habits.

The last line of the article says it all "I fled Windows 8 years ago with no intention of returning". Wow, thanks for that information. I really needed to know about your blind faith in Apple, and your feelings for Windows. I'm sure you attend Apple store openings and queue for the high-fives and woot-woots.

</comment><comment><USER37> > it wasn't clear whether there just wasn't a hidden context menu at that > moment or I just screwed up the swipe

This was the hardest thing for me when I was trying out Windows 8. Was never sure the menu didn't exist or my mouse wasn't in the corner properly.

</comment><comment><USER38> After reading maybe 1/4 of this I was left thinking if you can't say something positive, don't say anything at all.

<comment><USER31> Without criticism, nothing will improve.

<comment><USER15> Depends on the criticism. Constructive criticism, sure. Blinkered, petty, negative criticism from someone who made up his mind years ago? Not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> His impression pretty much matches mine, except I'm more enthused by the keyboard covers. I find OSKs intolerable; I agree with his assessment that Office is useless for creation - I will argue that having a full-fidelity viewer is very nice for attachment handling.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's obvious that the writer is an Apple person but the piece doesn't feel too biased.

This makes me a little sad, I was rooting for Microsoft this time.

<comment><USER41> Doesnt't feel biased? Was I reading the same post?

<comment><USER42> Ok, enough is enough. I have read too much of this.

The author made serious points (even the store uniforms(!) are copied, bad animation handling, office apps are slow, etc, etc).

Why are the anti-Apple fan boys just complaining that the article is biased -- instead of _showing_ that it is biased by answering the "biased" points?

<comment><USER41> The entire tone of his post from the outset seemed like he really had an axe to grind. It was like reading an article Fox News would publish about an Obama rally.

<comment><USER42> I asked for arguments against the _content_ of the article.

You lack that?

Edit: The criticism of the Surface is echoed here: [http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/10/microsoft-surface-rt- revie...](http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/10/microsoft-surface-rt-review-this- is-technological-heartbreak/) (I'm not going to bother to read more about non- retina pads/laptops. My eyes are too old and spoiled.)

<comment><USER41> Id have to quote the entire post to give you an example. I just found it to be overly smug and condescending, especially regarding Microsoft store employees (attempting to "trap" one of them with the soundcard question? Nerd arrogance at its finest.)

Granted there was a fair amount of valid criticism, but it was mainly the biased tone I was addressing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This guy is naturally arrogant. I totally understand how Microsoft is missing the point but come on, what is the point of this article?, is he trying to point out that people are missing these kind of things?.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't why would an adult would even bother to write something like this.

<comment><USER43> This is totally true, this guy has crossed the line of constructive criticism. But its kind of obvious, his main (maybe only) income comes from apple, so he has to compare everything to his life provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > It was like arguing with a Tea Partier.

I'm sorry, but why was this comparison necessary?

<comment><USER14> Because he can't say arguing with a christian. Are you one of them?

<comment><USER45> I am not, it just seemed like an immature comparison to make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I don't know why it is so hard to understand, that some people want to have the best experience.

The iPad does not everything, but at what it does, it tries to be the best.

The Surface is trying to be best at everything, but that creates so many trade-offs, it drags down the user experience.

I left Win XP, and Windows 7 did not make me come back, because there are so many things that lack decision making in leaving features out rather than putting everything in. Metro is a step in the right direction, but it needs more finish.

A computer should help you, and guide you to achieve a goal. A Win PC usually needs a lot of work to bend him in a way which enables you to do your task. And I have enough of that.

Why do I need experts in an Office program? Why not making the Office program so intuitive, that it is super easy to create a set of documents? Why not cutting unnecessary features out? A Metro version of Office, which does that, wouldn't that be great?

Furthermore, I don't want to tinker, I don't want to dig through five layers of settings.

I want to see the IT world going on. And Windows was not really helping in pushing the world forward in the last decade. Apple did. That's why some of the praise and "fanboism" is justified.

Let's see who leads the next decade, but have an open mind and acknowledge the fact that people like Marco, Gruber, or MG have an idea of what they are talking about.

They give credit where credit is due. But MS has to do a lot more to earn that credit. Maybe they have to cut some things out of the Metro side and go dual platform. It will help to make Metro something that pushes forward the whole industry.

When a lot of people are used to Win 8, maybe it's a good thing to go separate ways with Win 9. The "professionals" will use their desktop and the rest is used to Metro and maybe they will see how it excels the desktop version with ease of use.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've got VMWare Fusion on a Macbook Air so I have the luxury of being able to pick my OS and application for most tasks (usually OS X, sometimes Ubuntu and rarely Windows). I took Windows 8 for a test drive today and I will be happily replacing the native OS X Calendar and Mail with the Windows 8 alternatives.

<comment><USER48> Mail? Seriously?

I'm using Windows 8 on my (non touchscreen) laptop, for the overall improvements on the platform and I'm very happy about it so far. And it means I have day to day experience using it.

And so far, I think the Mail-app is one of the weakest apps to the point where I wondered if Microsoft is seriously releasing this as their RTM, finalized Mail-client for the masses.

If I may ask: What part about it do you find so faverouble? Is there some hidden gem I have missed?

<comment><USER47> Noted in a sibling comment, not being able to drag mail is a bummer. And on further exploration I definitely miss being able to search. But selecting it and moving it isn't too bad, and I can use mail.google.com when I need to -- overall I'm not concerned about a lack of features for this desktop client.

My guess would be that they applied the Aol user principle to the mail app and figured you'd use Outlook if you need a more featureful application.

<comment><USER49> You can search with the search charm

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Just look at the caption of third image. He is so much into trolling that he didn't mind pulling his son into it.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is pretty much the same insufferable stuff he goes into when he talks about Microsoft on his podcast. A general ignorance because he never uses the stuff (except long wnough to look for flaws) but that doesn't stop him from being an expert in his mind. I just hit the two minute skip button until I get to the Apple topics where I think he has informed opinions.

<comment><USER15> ..but he used Microsoft products, 8 years ago! Doesn't that make him an expert on all things Microsoft?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> well, he correctly noticed that the gestures and animations take a different approach than Apple's but that apparently just makes them "wrong" to him - Apple's is the only valid approach.

fwiw, here's a good presentation of the design rationale behind the use of animations in Windows 8: <http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/BUILD2011/APP-206T>

Gestures: [http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechDays/Techdays-2012-the-N...](http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechDays/Techdays-2012-the- Netherlands/2373)

<comment><USER52> Can't you summarize? I don't have 120 minutes. If you spend one minute making your point, and I spend one minute reading it, this conversation will be more efficient.

Sources are great when they support or expand on points you're making, but they're no replacement for dialogue. The comments become really spammy if it's all just links to videos and research papers.

<comment><USER49> Yeah, I realized most / everyone probably wouldn't have time to watch but hoped someone might be interested. I guess my basic point is that the animations and gestures are deliberately designed to feel more precise and clarify the discrete actions you're taking (which is to put a more positive spin on what he describes negatively as "feeling like a computer" - not that either spin is right or wrong). It's a purposeful contrast to Apple's bubblier approach, it's not that they tried to make their animations like Apple's but Didn't Get It.

<comment><USER52> Thanks, that's a good point. I haven't seen the Microsoft Surface in person, but this is throwing some doubt on Marco's testimony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Good lord... this is an article written by someone with an incredible bias. I mean he takes so many low-blows on the salespeople and belittles everyone and everything about the store. They are trained to sell things to an average consumer... not a tech-savvy blogger who knows his/her stuff. Most consumers don't even know what a sound card is or that a computer has ram. Marco needs to relax... not to mention that his mean-spirited article with identifiable employee faces could subject him to civil liability.

</comment><comment><USER54> Am I the only one who finds this blind following of a specific platform all rather childish?*

Platform zealotry is the domain of children, the feeble minded and host of shills who feed on the above two groups (and the platform holder's marketing budgets).

* Rhetorical question (I expect that most HNers agree).

</comment><comment><USER55> So apparently the stores are too much like Apple's, but the tablet is not similar enough.

The one to one feature comparison to the iPad is silly. The surface is not trying to be a carbon copy. Features like retina display come with trade offs in power, speed and cost that were obviously not worth the trade off. It seems that ever since Apple raised the issue pixels have gone from being something few ever thought about to being physically painful to consumer's eyeballs.

There were a few factual inaccuracies in Marco's post. The touch keyboard does allow you to rest your fingers on the surface. It's smart enought to recognize what is intended to be an actual keystroke. Rotating the screen does show a transition too; the screen shrinks, fades and expands.

</comment><comment><USER56> I could not agree more with the distinction the author draws between Apple's products and Microsoft. Sure, Apple's ecosystem is limited, but Microsoft's offering is very rough and will do many tasks poorly at the cost of doing just a few tasks well.

</comment><comment><USER57> This looks just like the Apple Store, but without the customers :)

</comment><comment><USER58> I feel bad for Microsoft. When you are first with a new product with great benefits, everyone forgives your missteps, because it's the only one - <USER2> best there is. But when you copy, you are competing with something that has been through iterations of feedback and corrections and bugfix and improvement. You are held to that higher standard, even though you're just starting out!

Also, in the past, Apple regulated the user-experience with the Mac (whereas the PC was open), which seems to have been too constraining. It might seem that history could repeat here, but there's a crucial difference: tablets are now a consumer device, like Sony used to make.

</comment><comment><USER59> This guy is biased. That's all.

<comment><USER12> So does this alleged "bias" invalidate his criticisms of Microsoft's retail efforts?

<comment><USER21> I don't know. That's the problem with bias. I haven't seen a surface in person or visited a Microsoft store, but from the entire tone of the article, I know I can't trust his account. He may be a veritable prophet with regards to Microsoft and the Surface, but if I can't trust him (and I don't), I'll have to figure that out on my own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The pictures clearly show that the entire mall is empty, not just the Microsoft store.

</comment><comment><USER61> Glad to see he went in there with an open mind.

</comment><comment><USER62> not a ms person here(not at ALL in fact).

but ok i get it, was reading, then started skimming, then got to the conclusion tl;dr.

apple store employees handing out stupid useless flyers in the middle of the street in gangs of 3 is better of course.

microsoft is giving out muffin fragments? i'm surprised they gave out anything at all.

</comment><comment><USER63> For Apple we have MG, Gruber and Marco. For Microsoft, is there any? And for Google?

</comment><comment><USER64> I am waiting to see the pricing on the Surface Pro. That is what I am interested in. I was very close to buying an ultrabook but am holding off to see how the SP is as a general computer as well as a tablet.

</comment><comment><USER65> Oh my.. this cringeworthy exchange reminds me of when Larry David tried selling cars :-) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neqO5y3Xaq8>

</comment><comment><USER66> Great article.

I get that some want the hardware upgradeability of MS PCs, but your can't do anything to Windows because its closed source. I buy Macs because I get the benefits of both a polished and (somewhat) open source operating system - <USER3> to mention its Unix. Also, in Apple hardware you actually know what you're getting - the majority of it is Intel. With other manufacturers unless you custom build your machine, its hard to know what you're actually getting inside beyond the specs on paper.

</comment><comment><USER67> It is especially sad to read such an article after the release of iOS 6. Before, it was a bit rude, biased and all, but now I feel it cannot be _justified_ anymore.

<comment><USER12> What are you trying to imply? That criticisms of Microsoft's retail efforts are no longer valid because Apple made a mistake with Maps?

<comment><USER67> Not exactly. I personally suffer from how the AppStore iOS application is made. Then the maps. The quality of many details is lost. After such obvious defects, it is hard to be in position to be extravagant and rude. The love is gone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> It's true that the Surface is coming in at a 10" form-factor when the iPad holds 70% of the market and the real battle is happening on the 7", slightly lower end market.

<comment><USER69> I had a bit of a tinfoil hat epiphany just yesterday about this... consider:

-Until now, Apple has been adamant about _not_ releasing a smaller iPad.

-Apple has a ridiculously efficient supply chain which can probably adapt very well, considering the next point...

-Tim Cook just went on record saying that Apple wasn't concerned about product cannibalization.

-The Surface tablet is just about to stick it's foot in the door, well after Apple has established itself at the top.

Aside from the obvious (consumer demand), does anyone else think this might just be one of the most comfortable bets they can make? Put out 7" tablets while they're hot, let people forget about the Surface, by the time Surface 2 goes 7" they can push out a much newer full iPad line...

<comment><USER70> I honestly think Tim doesn't really see Microsoft as a threat just yet. The iPad mini is a response to low-price disruption from Amazon and Google.

I think Amazon's "$50/year data plan" gives more heartburn to Apple strategists than anything Microsoft has put on the table or even hinted at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> "It feels too much like using a Windows PC" ...bingo!

That's the point, Windows 7 and 8 offer great desktop experiences and having "one system to rule them all" is the selling point ...though I'd rather have an x86 version of the tablet with the ability to use exactly the same software since the type cover is basically a usable keyboard ...hope Intel does some magic with ultra low power x86 chips soon

</comment><comment><USER72> The MS store employee who says you can't see any pixels is obviously lying, and I'm guessing that's what Microsoft told them to say.

</comment><comment><USER73> This is just pure trollbait. It's disappointing to see it on HN, as it doesn't provoke any useful discussion whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER74> If the alternate universe is one where "you can expand and alter even if it sucks" then can I boot BSD on surface?

</comment><comment><USER75> Of course, Apple clearly offers the best design, performance, user experience, documentation, reliability, and overall quality.

(pause)

Can I have my UIGlassButton now?

Even Genius-blue-only would be a start.

</comment><comment><USER76> Very entertaining. Thank you for posting!

</comment><comment><USER77> >The Surface is partially for Microsoft's world of denial: the world in which this store contains no elephants and Microsoft invented the silver store with the glass front and the glowing logo and blue shirts and white lanyards and these table layouts and the modern tablet and its magnetic power cable

Huh what? It looks like Marco's the one living in an alternate universe. I seriously doubt anyone would believe that. The whole "if you don't adore the iPad you're in denial" thing says more about the writer than the Microsoft store salesman. What bugs me the most about the Apple bloggers like Gruber, Siegler and Marco is their hate towards anything non-Apple, especially Android and Microsoft. It's one thing to like something, but to hate on something else because of that is very narrow minded.

<comment><USER78> To be honest, it's time to ban Macro's blog from HN. Every time one of his trollbait posts hits the frontpage of this site (and they somehow _always_ do), we have these exact same discussions about how him and Gruber and Siegler are incapable of looking at the technology industry without bias.

<comment><USER79> Wait, ban a site because it's consistently popular on HN? Clearly, many people here agree with him. (I don't, but that's OK)

<comment><USER80> Funny, because Paul Thurrott's <http://winsupersite.com> _is_ completely banned from being on HN, most probably from overzealous MS haters flagging articles to death.

<comment><USER79> I think that's ridiculous too. In fact, I'm as much a fanboy of Microsoft as Marco is of Apple - my comment wasn't about the content, it was about the ridiculousness of banning popular sites about HN-typical topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> You need some credibility before you write articles about huge corporations that have achieved something. Atleast you must be somewhere near the top of the hierarchy where your subject is, to understand fully about them, so you can even _consider_ writing about them. I fail to see how a guy with an app on an Appstore can think he is credible enough to write about a huge corporation that has taken risks he wouldn't even imagine taking himself and has had first hand experience and information about the market better than this guy. Microsoft is the one that makes the marketplace and Marco is just someone who submits his apps there. That's the difference in their positions in the hierarchy. What a shitty article.

<comment><USER12> He walked into a store and hated it. For any company that cares about success he is credible.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you challenge yourself? - <AUTHOR>

I am serial beginner in lots of fields, so from time to time I try to challenge myself, this time I am going to challenge myself by building marketplace in 10days.<p>So how do you challenge yourself? <comment><USER2> i keep trying new frameworks out and deciding what i like and not. sometimes i try to patch the missing features and when it becomes a clusterfuck i decide the framework is actually the problem.

also tried code golfing for the first time last week & it was a lot of fun... i learned a lot of really cool and not-very-useful stuff about C doing that.

<comment><AUTHOR> by the way do you practice code kata's?

<comment><USER2> no :/</comment></comment></comment>


CSS Digital Clock Animation - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/gscode/10-css-digital-clock-animation-1763 <comment><USER2> Please don't spam. This is the third time you post this in 4 days.</comment>


New digital payments rules in Singapore: a win or the death of choice? - <AUTHOR> https://sharedhere.com/thread/view/gFqtEffp7NZU3SDVtZHQLN <comment><AUTHOR> Well, digital payments deserve regulations given the prevalence for tech companies to gametize everything, including how easy it is to click the "PAY" button. And as a paternalistic state that Singapore is, this is expected. But at least we are not shy about regulating.

What is scarier is if a country pretends that money is "freedom" and "private". Because it sure as hell is not in Singapore by which the state government is pushing for cashless everything (and hence surveillance everything).</comment>


The Venture Capital Aptitude Test (VCAT) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/11/the_venture_cap.html

<comment><USER2> What is amazing is how much of those timeless insights is still relevant 6 years from its writing, or even 6 years from now into the future.

What is more amazing is even someone who possesses so much insights, has sufficient financial ammunition and more than enough connection and reputation couldn't make alltop.com a big success.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is from 2006, but a lot of it is valid today. Can we officially say now that the average duration of startup cycle is about six years?

</comment><comment><USER4> Any management consultant who thinks that "implementation is easy" is a really poor management consultant.</comment>


In-Memory-Only ELF Execution Without Tmpfs - <AUTHOR> https://magisterquis.github.io/2018/03/31/in-memory-only-elf-execution.html <comment><USER3> There are other ways to do this that don't involve tmpfs or write() - <USER2> [https://github.com/dimkr/papaw](https://github.com/dimkr/papaw) and [https://github.com/dimkr/Mirai-Source-Code](https://github.com/dimkr/Mirai- Source-Code)

<comment><USER4> But the readme says:

 _The payload executable is extracted to a temporary file. When running as root, this is done by mounting a tmpfs file system and lazily unmounting it before the extraction._

<comment><USER3> When not running as root, it doesn't use a tmpfs. Also, papaw replaces /proc/self/exe with an empty file. And it has some basic anti-debugging, like locking of the payload to RAM so it cannot be recovered by reading it from a swap partition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Given that Linux now has both file descriptors, and process memory-page ranges, pointing to anonymous allocated memory regions, are they interchangeable?

What I mean is:

\- to go from a memfd to anonymous memory, you can call mmap(2) on the fd

\- to go from anonymous memory to a memfd, you...?

<comment><USER6> Semantically this should do the job: anonymous memory -> vmsplice(gift) -> pipe -> splice(move) -> memfd. Then remap the pages from memfd to the original address ranges so you're allowed to use them again. But I don't know whether this is supported on memfds. And of course it's not atomic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And when would you want to do that ? Really curious as I fail to see a usecase where the same goal could not be achieve otherwise. But there must be some otherwise the API would not have been introduced i guess.

<comment><USER8> Organizing and executing code via a storage scheme other than a file system?

Security issues aside, I can imagine maintaining compiled code for stored procedures in database BLOBs.

Similarly, in an appropriate trust environment, I might want to ship work units to remote machines in the form of raw ELF. Copying the bits to disk just to execute them is unneeded overhead.

<comment><USER9> But a tmpfs (the usual way to do this) isn't persisted to a disk

<comment><USER10> It can be; swap and suspend-to-disk / hibernation can cause tmpfs to be written.

I wonder if there's a way to execute from mlock'd or madvised memory. I can imagine this be particularly useful, if you wanted to prevent your injected program (malware? valuable IP?) from being written to disk or appearing in a core dump.

<comment><USER9> True, but those caveats apply to OP's technique too. What I am saying is that there is no specific behavior of a tmpfs which causes things in it to be necessarily persisted to disk like the parent was suggesting. It works just like any other anonymous memory does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh yeah, I've once discovered this method myself. With execveat() one can even avoid going through procfs.

It doesn't work worth shbang-based scripts, though; that just returns ENOENT. Makes sense, I suppose.

<comment><USER12> Would you be willing to share how you did that (avoiding procfs too)?

<comment><USER11> Instead of

        snprintf(pathbuf, sizeof(pathbuf), "/proc/self/fd/%u", fd);
        execve(pathbuf, argv, envp);

you do

        execveat(fd, "", argv, envp, AT_EMPTY_PATH);

and that's it.

<comment><USER12> Thanks!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A bit off-topic, but their perl code is buggy. fork() returns _undef_ on error, not -1.

And you can use '$FH->autoflush(1)' instead of the eye-watering 'select((select($FH), $|=1)[0])'

<comment><USER14> I was going to say that you need to use the IO::Handle module to be able to use the autoflush method, but apparently this no longer necessary with modern Perl.

From [https://metacpan.org/pod/perl5120delta#Other-potentially- inc...](https://metacpan.org/pod/perl5120delta#Other-potentially-incompatible- changes) :

> _Filehandles are now always blessed into IO::File._

> _The previous behaviour was to bless Filehandles into FileHandle (an empty > proxy class) if it was loaded into memory and otherwise to bless them into > IO::Handle._

<comment><USER14> On a second thought, this is probably the right changelog entry:

[https://metacpan.org/pod/perl5140delta#Filehandle-method- cal...](https://metacpan.org/pod/perl5140delta#Filehandle-method-calls-load- IO::File-on-demand)

 _When a method call on a filehandle would die because the method cannot be resolved and IO::File has not been loaded, Perl now loads IO::File via require and attempts method resolution again_</comment></comment></comment>


ASK HN: What Sites do you read for tech news? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I am a long time lurker and just signed up for an account today. I was wondering what sites you guys read for tech news/hackernews type sites? Thank you! <comment><USER2> Generally speaking I just keep an eye on my twitter feed because I'm usually pretty busy.

On a day off, in addition to HN I'll occasionally check the following:

[http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=22](http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=22)

[http://slashdot.org](http://slashdot.org)

[http://boards.4chan.org/g/catalog](http://boards.4chan.org/g/catalog)

[https://news.layervault.com](https://news.layervault.com)

[https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)

[http://techcrunch.com](http://techcrunch.com)

[http://www.technologyreview.com](http://www.technologyreview.com)

but most of those are crap.

</comment><comment><USER3> TechCrunch does some reporting on startups, so I look there.

I also have an account on [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs), but I don't really use it.

</comment><comment><USER4> A great site of general IT news that I read every morning is [http://techmeme.com](http://techmeme.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I will check those two sites out. I do not really enjoy the writing on techcrunch but I appreciate you sending it my way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pandodaily , stumbleupon (yes it does have interesting reads sometimes)</comment>


Mail-order chicks are arriving dead, costing Maine farmers thousands of dollars - <AUTHOR> https://www.pressherald.com/2020/08/19/dead-chick-deliveries-costing-maine-farmers-thousands-of-dollars/ <comment><USER2> I am from SE Asia and postal system is non-existent to most people in my native country. Last time I sent anyone a letter was to my grandfather 30 years ago.

I came to the US 5 years back, and I still marvel at how crucial USPS is to the growth of tech and economy here. You see, back in my country an entrepreneur would have to tackle the last-mile delivery problem using their own fleet. Only in last 2-3 years ride-sharing service has become commonplace in major metropolis and as a result facebook-based housewife-run boutique shop businesses have boomed. But here in the US, you could always stick an address on a parcel and forget about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> From the article:

Usually they arrive every three weeks like clockwork," she said Wednesday. "And out of 100 birds you may have one or two that die in shipping.

The wrongness of what's happening here is not just that the Post Office is experiencing unusual delays. Even the normal state of affairs shows a grotesque indifference to life.

<comment><USER4> You do know that for every chicken you eat a male chick was pulverized to death, right? (in the US, some countries prefer suffocation).

<comment><USER3> Yes, I am very well aware of this. Which is why I don't eat chickens, other animals, or consume any other livestock product.

But every once in a while I forget the fractal nature of the horrors we inflict on any animal that is unlucky enough to get caught up in our agricultural industry.

<comment><USER5> "Caught up" is a good way to put it. Imagine what this does to bird nests: [https://cdn.agriland.ie/uploads/2015/03/Harvesting_winter_wh...](https://cdn.agriland.ie/uploads/2015/03/Harvesting_winter_wheat_2_OGP-e1503043417724-730x375.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd been expecting articles like this to pop up soon. USPS has long been known for its efficiency in moving poultry around the country. All our birds arrived by mail as day-old chicks and like the article indicated, it isn't uncommon to move hundreds at a time with very limited loss. That said - it's only possible to make this work because the USPS has had a functioning, effective system for decades, where birds are born Monday and typically to their destination somewhere in the country no later than wednesday. The boxes have a chemical warmer and the birds have just enough food in their tummies to make it across the country. When I started hearing about these delays, I knew this would be a problem as their little lives are on a time-sensitive system that works because everyone from the hatchery to the receiving farmer understands the criticality.

</comment><comment><USER7> USPS regulations for day-old poultry: [https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm)

<comment><USER8> Why is it even allowed to mail animals at all? I would have expected a specialised service for that.

<comment><USER9> People used to mail children through the postal service: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history- chil...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-children- sent-through-mail-180959372/)

<comment><USER10> Lol, I hope the mortality rate were lower than the 2% for birds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious how they protect the chicks in the mail during shipping when the temperature has been in the low-mid 90s the past few weeks in PA. Even in Maine it hit 90.

<comment><USER12> Like the article says it's worked perfectly for a very long time. Having it be too warm is probably much safer than a little cold (our chicks would gather directly under the heat lamp and I wondered why it never bothered them). The problem here is probably dehydration from having shipments intentionally delayed.

<comment><USER6> I agree - dehydration / starvation is the primary issue here, followed by the risks of simply more moving and shaking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Birds today, your medication tomorrow. The USPS provides a public good well beyond its cost.

</comment><comment><USER14> Other things of commercial significance that you can mail: bees.[1]

[https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm)

</comment><comment><USER15> The long tail of business that's transacted on the assumption that the USPS is a reliable, cost-effective business is absolutely massive.

I honestly can't believe it's being dismantled in this manner for purely short-term partisan goals by an ostensibly "pro-business" political party.

<comment><USER16> > I honestly can't believe it's being dismantled

I think your news is about a day old. USPS backed off any changes until later:

[https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/18/usps- postmas...](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/18/usps-postmaster- general-louis-dejoy-election)

[https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/08/18/politics/post-office- dejo...](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/08/18/politics/post-office- dejoy/index.html)

<comment><USER17> They've already removed hundreds of sorting machines, thousands of blue boxes, removed almost all overtime and a host of other things. Sure they "stopped" but those things aren't coming back. Damage done.

<comment><USER18> Eh I've heard no where near those numbers, do you have a source for that?

<comment><USER15> The original reduction plan as detailed in a presentation from May called for nearly 1,000 sorting machines to be dismantled. It's hard to say how much of that plan has been completed (we'll likely find out more next Monday during the Congressional hearings) but it's absolutely that order of magnitude.

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7035434-USPS- Equipme...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7035434-USPS-Equipment- Reduction-Plan.html#document/p1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At some point, probably when it's too late, people will realize that Trump appointing people who intentionally destroy the agencies they oversee was an intentional plan to destabilize the government.

<comment><USER20> This is not surprising nor recent. American politicians have been trying to dismantle the government for decades; almost immediately after the New Deal era.

See also: regulatory capture, gerrymandering, campaign financing, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who thought it was a good idea to 'mail' live animals? Seems like a rather harsh thing to do... especially when it's done using a process that doesn't care about what it is mailing. (regardless of who is influencing that process)

<comment><USER21> This is a normal, regulated, and common use of the USPS.

<comment><USER8> Seems rather absurd to put a live animal in a box and put it in a process that is designed for moving non-living man-made objects around. The only time I've heard about animals shipping via a postal service was illegal imports of birds (tied up and put in tubes).

<comment><USER22> That's an inaccurate statement. The shipment of live animals via USPS is a specific service documented in detail at [https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm)

These include bees, day–old poultry, adult birds, and small, harmless, cold–blooded animals.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook was down - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/ <comment><USER3> Obviously anyone can "take credit" for things like this, but if this[1] is true, then jesus.

Edit: Since it's topical, I enjoy listening to Chuck Rossi in interviews or presentations. Releng 2014 - Keynote 1: Chuck Rossi, Release Engineering, Facebook Inc. | Talks at Google [2]

[1] [https://twitter.com/lizardmafia/status/559963134006292481](https://twitter.com/lizardmafia/status/559963134006292481) [2] [http://youtu.be/Nffzkkdq7GM?t=4m39s](http://youtu.be/Nffzkkdq7GM?t=4m39s)

<comment><USER4> I gotta say I'm finding it hard to accept their word that they're responsible for Facebook. I haven't paid much attention but I'm under the impression that they primarily just deal in DDoS's and other crude attacks, and I have a hard time imagining that they could cause a large enough DDoS to affect the massive juggernaut that is Facebook. Especially since Facebook just came back up and is now perfectly responsive and showing no signs of being under strain.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it doesn't seem like a DoS since facebook was reachable and serving error pages, and instagram was reachable and serving blank pages. It _does_ seem like an intrusion or other security incident though because I'd be surprised to learn that instagram shares lots of critical infrastructure with facebook. It seems more likely that someone hit the panic button for both sites.

<comment><USER4> Some sort of security incidence does seem more plausible than a DDoS, although I can't think of what would affect Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Hipchat, and AIM simultaneously. I'm also having a hard time imagining what sort of security incident would result in Facebook deliberately shutting down their web presence, even for a few minutes. And all of the other potential attacks, such as DNS or CDN, seems like it a) wouldn't affect everyone simultaneously, and b) wouldn't even work because sites like Facebook don't have a single point of failure, there's always backups and backups for the backups.

<comment><USER6> Instagram runs within the Facebook data centers. They had some challenging scaling issues within Amazon Web Services and moved their code base to Facebook's infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Official update: "Facebook and Instagram experienced a major outage tonight from 22:10 until 23:10 PST. Our engineers identified the cause of the outage and recovered the site quickly. You should now see decreasing error rates while our systems stabilize. We don't expect any other break in service. I'll post another update within 30 mins. Thank you for your patience." [https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/39399836411226...](https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/393998364112264/)

<comment><USER8> "The issue was resolved at 23:10 PST and the site stabilized shortly afterwards. Our internal and external monitoring shows that API requests are being served with normal latency and error rates, in all geographic regions. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you and the users of your apps."

No hints there, guess we'll just have to wait for a full post-mortem to come out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> BBC[1] are reporting it was a "configuration problem", no hack

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30996928](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30996928)

<comment><USER10> "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a configuration problem."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Update from Facebook:

"Current State: Fix Pushed

Facebook and Instagram experienced a major outage tonight from 22:10 until 23:10 PST. Our engineers identified the cause of the outage and recovered the site quickly. You should now see decreasing error rates while our systems stabilize. We don't expect any other break in service. I'll post another update within 30 mins. Thank you for your patience."

[https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/39399836411226...](https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/393998364112264/)

Might not be a hack! Might just be weather in Boston:

"Akamai (provider for FB, Instagram and so on) claims to be down due to power outage. #LizardSquad claims to have hacked them. Get popcorn."

[https://twitter.com/petterkarlsson/status/559975340526014464](https://twitter.com/petterkarlsson/status/559975340526014464)

</comment><comment><USER12> I restarted my modem and router _two times_ before I realized that the network was fine and that it was just Facebook that was down. Props to their ops team for uptime that is so reliable.

<comment><USER13> I haven't seen Facebook go down in years. I wonder if this is going to be a _big deal_.

<comment><USER14> I'm wondering how much revenue gets lost every minute that Facebook is down. It has to be in the tens of thousands.

Edit: someone wrote this below in the comments, which came to $400 per second of downtime. Ouch.

<comment> semi-extrinsic For comparison, the cost of downtime for a single oil rig is on the order of $100 per second. Petrobras, as an example, operates 70 rigs and has a market cap of $125 billion. Facebook has a market cap of $216 billion.

(source for cost: Cormorant Alpha shutdown in 2013)

Edit: misplaced parenthesis => my first number was way off, $70 000 vs $100. Redid analysis, made mental note not to do math before coffee intake.

<comment><USER15> [http://www.offshoreenergytoday.com/cormorant-alpha- shutdown-...](http://www.offshoreenergytoday.com/cormorant-alpha-shutdown- costs-10-mln-per-day-uk/) estimates that the Cormorant Alpha shutdown cost $10,000,000/day, or about $100/second. That figure comes from multiplying the oil production (90,000 barrels/day) by the oil price ($110/barrel). Where did you get the $70,000/second figure from?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Gah, misplaced a parenthesis. You are correct. I shouldn't do math before I've had coffee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting to see how Facebook downtime has a huge effect on Internet traffic – there's a Guardian report where they share their referral data while Facebook was down for 31 minutes (the longest outage in 4 years):

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/19/facebook-u...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/19/facebook- unavailable-longest-outage-four-years)

</comment><comment><USER17> Quick, Google+ Engineers: take it down too! You don't want to fall behind.

<comment><USER18> Gmail is 502'ing for me.

<comment><USER19> Gmail seems to be in working order

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com)

It's not just you! [http://facebook.com](http://facebook.com) looks down from here.

<comment><USER21> There's a shorter link

[http://isup.me/facebook.com](http://isup.me/facebook.com)

<comment><USER22> It's about quality, not quantity.

[http://wheresitup.com/results/54c732d88c3dcf8416232c91](http://wheresitup.com/results/54c732d88c3dcf8416232c91)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> All the 'is it down' websites are slowly going down with people searching for it.

</comment><comment><USER24> "This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems. We moved quickly to fix the problem, and both services are back to 100% for everyone." \- Facebook spokesperson [1]

[1] [https://twitter.com/blakeyblogs/status/559995252485140480](https://twitter.com/blakeyblogs/status/559995252485140480)

</comment><comment><USER25> Akamai, the CDN used by Facebook went down before Facebook for me this morning: [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/akamaihd.net](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/akamaihd.net)

<comment><USER26> Looking through the customer list, most other sites seem to be working fine:

[http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/customer_list.html](http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/customer_list.html)

I wonder what makes FB and Instagram different?

<comment><USER27> Akamai has several different networks, one for streaming media, one for regular http, and one for https. They also have an S3-like storage system and a DNS service. Some customers are configured with several of these offerings at once, so it's hard to know which, if any, experienced problems and led to the outages.

Honestly, I doubt it was an Akamai issue. If Akamai experienced network problems, dozens or hundreds of sites would be affected. If an Akamai config issue (ie human error) were to blame, then it would probably only affect one site, not several. Neither FB nor Akamai is dumb enough to push multiple site changes at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How much revenue are they losing every second?

<comment><USER29> $7.87 billion in 2013 / 365 days / 24 hours / 60 minutes / 60 seconds is about $250 a second.

Edit: using more up to date data:

$3,300,000,000 in the 3rd quarter of 2014 / (365/4) / 24 / 60 / 60 = $418.58

<comment><USER28> $1.5M an hour!!!

But considering this is not the peak time in North America, it's should be little less.

<comment><USER30> But here in India and the rest of Asia, people wake up to Facebook. You can't ignore that.

<comment><USER31> In Asia Facebook isn't that big, they also have other social services

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is the API down as well? I imagine thousands of websites and apps rely on Facebook being up.

<comment><USER33> Yes, can't use log-in with Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've always thought how strange it is when people notice and make such a big deal about facebook being down or accessible. It's almost as if fb has become a public utility or something.

As others have remarked, one way one can interpret this is it is a testament to their ops' exceptional ability as engineers that such downtime is so noticeable.

<comment><USER35> >It's almost as if fb has become a public utility or something.

Well thats what Zuckerberg answered a user to the question "Why Facebook wasn't cool anymore". He didn't want it to be cool , but more like a digital utility like water or electricity

<comment><USER36> The trouble with that analogy is that water and electricity (just about) are absolutely essential to our day-to-day lives; a specific social media site isn't. Facebook needs to appeal to the trend to keep in business. Hugely popular social networking sites have failed in the past, precisely when they've fallen out if fashion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> [http://youtu.be/qpNNa_Mokok?t=10s](http://youtu.be/qpNNa_Mokok?t=10s)

</comment><comment><USER38> Even the fbcdn / akamai part seems to be down (an error occured while processing your request) ... funny

</comment><comment><USER39> Hmm, interestingly enough Faceboook today "has complied with a Turkish court order demanding the blocking of a page it said offended the Prophet Muhammad." [0]

[0] [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30982556](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30982556)

</comment><comment><USER40> This doesnt look right:

whois facebook.com @126.96.36.199

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to [http://www.internic.net](http://www.internic.net) for detailed information.

FACEBOOK.COM.DISABLE.YOUR.TIMELINE.NOW.WITH.THE.ORIGINAL.TIMELINE-REMOVE.NET FACEBOOK.COM.GET.ONE.MILLION.DOLLARS.AT.WWW.UNIMUNDI.COM FACEBOOK.COM.LOVED.BY.WWW.SHQIPHOST.COM FACEBOOK.COM.MORE.INFO.AT.WWW.BEYONDWHOIS.COM FACEBOOK.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM FACEBOOK.COM

To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record.

>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 06:56:04 GMT <<<

<comment><USER41> Appears to return hosts with name starting with search term, which doesn't make a lot of sense but has likely always been the case. Also @ flag is a dig thing, not whois.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That's why I can't comprehend companies using SaaS solutions like Slack or HipChat for something as crucial as internal communication, that requires a connection to an external server to work. What's even more scary is the data leakage risk - with DDoS you know when something bad happens, because the service simply doesn't work, but with data leakage how can you tell? Every single conversation stored on a 3rd party server. It's ridiculous. Yes, they're well protected, but it's also much more inviting for hackers - <USER2> you breach it, you gain a massive amount of sensitive data about thousands of companies... Well, it seems nice UI and 3rd app integrations are more important than security and reliability these days I guess.

<comment><USER43> If you are, say, a startup with sensitive information being discussed in an IRC server that you run, do you really think your data would be more secure then? Keep in mind that you can't afford a security expert (or your own time) to admin your system if you're a small business.

As for reliability, I've been using Slack for months without a single outage. If it went down for a day, the impact would be minimal -- I'd just use email and communicate less for that one day. Or I'd switch to another provider. Big deal.

<comment><USER42> How about P2P connections, so nothing leave your company's internal network, because why should it? It's the most secure and reliable solution, but even running an IRC server on a local machine is so easy that you don't need an admin.

<comment><USER43> Easy, yes. But very secure? No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> yes. the fact that it feels so weird is testimony to their server eng team

<comment><USER45> It really is. Facebook is far from bug-free, but I'm a near-constant user and this is the first time in a _long_ time that I can recall it going down completely. I'll be really surprised if it lasts more than an hour, at most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Facebook did go down before, but _not_ like this time. I tried to ping many IPs of Facebook, all even failed to reach. Can be a sign of DDoS.

Anyway, if that is true, people have to take it really seriously this time.

</comment><comment><USER11> I mean, like, WOW. If they have done this we all must give them props for ambition.

Forget Sony. Nobody outside of hollywood bigwigs were impacted by that. But Facebook? The US government is going to go nuts. I hope lizardsquad are driving drone-proof cars.

Facebook is now back online for me on my home connection (BC Canada) and every Tor node I try. Either the attack is over or FB has fought back.

</comment><comment><USER47> WhatsApp wasn't affected. It still runs on its own infrastructure it seems. And this might be common knowledge, but not to me.

</comment><comment><USER48> I can get back on; able to see posts from hours ago, noting within 5 hours- ish. Anyone with an ops background able to give a JS eng who has no ops experience like myself a glimpse into what bringing services back online like that looks like? No experience with ddos mitigation techniques

</comment><comment><USER49> Facebook status[1] on this seems dry. Hoping to see a tech blog post soon on this issue.

[1] [https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/39399836411226...](https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/393998364112264/)

</comment><comment><USER50> Nanog is asleep, but Ausnog might shed some light on it: [http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2015-January/029463...](http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2015-January/029463.html)

</comment><comment><USER51> Looks more like a "SW update gown wrong" scenario. People reported problems a few days before already, empty timelines and such. They roll out incremently. Those kind of problems quickly affect the backends.

</comment><comment><USER52> They are saying it was human error by facebook and hence the outage.. but how come other apps like hipchat and tinder were also down? can't be co-incidence.

</comment><comment><USER53> FYI [https://twitter.com/hashtag/facebookdown?src=tren](https://twitter.com/hashtag/facebookdown?src=tren)

</comment><comment><USER54> The only subdomain working is: [http://newsroom.fb.com](http://newsroom.fb.com) and hosted by wordpress.com

</comment><comment><USER55> Yep. Down for me in Queensland, Australia as well (Facebook and Instagram). It is situations like this that give people a much needed break from social media (myself included). You don't realise just how much of a stranglehold (some more than others) that it has over you until you can't actually use it. Downtime for a site as big as Facebook is rare, but it happens, especially when your infrastructure isn't solely controlled by you (content distribution networks come to mind).

</comment><comment><USER56> Just tweeted

"@LizardMafia: More to come soon. Side note: We're still organizing the @MAS email dump, stay tuned for that."

</comment><comment><USER57> Oh no, I just got used to React.js/Flux

</comment><comment><USER58> According to Twitter, Facebook falling in the dead of night does in fact make (about a few million) sounds.

<comment><USER59> There is no dead of the night on a platform with users all over the world. Maybe when it's midday over the pacific, but not even then.

<comment><USER58> Let's suspend disbelief in the name of a stretch joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Perhaps it's a good time to re-think our dependence on facebook for 'cheat' SSO.

<comment><USER61> ... because they haven't reached five nines? Because your own privately hosted authentication system _will_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Yes, it's also down in SE Asia

</comment><comment><USER63> Bet it has something to do with this damn snowstorm. I want this season to be over with!

<comment><USER64> But [http://aws.amazon.com/](http://aws.amazon.com/) and [http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/](http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/) seem to be up so some devops work needs to be done here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Still shows Facebook is pretty popular given the widespread news its outage has caused!

</comment><comment><USER66> I wonder how many people are calling their isp call centers right now ;)

</comment><comment><USER67> One of our vendors crashed which hung out site. Damn counterparty risk!

</comment><comment> umair-a yep, even ping fails. even though historically it use to work. [https://bitneer/facebook.com/ping/](https://bitneer/facebook.com/ping/)

<comment><USER68> where's .com? ;-)

<comment> umair-a sorry about that :) [https://bitneer.com/facebook.com/ping/](https://bitneer.com/facebook.com/ping/) working now of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Instagram too, apparently. Are they sharing crucial infrastructure?

<comment><USER70> [http://instagram- engineering.tumblr.com/post/89992572022/mig...](http://instagram- engineering.tumblr.com/post/89992572022/migrating-aws-fb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It doesn't help to link to the website when it is already down.

<comment><USER71> Traffic sent from HN is but a drop in a bucket the size of a dump truck for facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Even instagram seems down

<comment><USER72> Makes sense. They share the same data centers. See: [http://instagram- engineering.tumblr.com/post/89992572022/mig...](http://instagram- engineering.tumblr.com/post/89992572022/migrating-aws-fb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Funny how an outage of something as pointless as facebook generates this humongous comment count. But then, some source material for [http://www.lamebook.com](http://www.lamebook.com) may have been lost...

<comment><USER74> I don't get how anyone could think that Facebook, a platform that has literally defined a paradigm shift in the way people communicate across the planet, could be genuinely considered pointless.

It's okay not to like Facebook, and there are many good reasons to be sceptical about them as a company, but to call them pointless is so utterly myopic that it beggars belief.

<comment><USER73> I was calling fb pointless from my own point of view. Obviously, lots of people disagree, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten that big. And I'm sure that every single user has their (valid) opinion on what "the point" of fb is for them. But as far as I'm concerned, I'll still call it pointless — no offence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> That'll teach you to not rely on FB to sign in to Spotify.

</comment><comment><USER76> Back up now. Total downtime around 55 minutes that I could see.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's down for me as well (11:50 AM IST) in Mumbai, India.

</comment><comment><USER77> I feel strangely _free_.

Perhaps this is a sign that I should go back to blocking myself from Facebook with StayFocusd.

Kind of sad that I needed this kick in the backside, but I'll take this as an opportunity to reclaim empty calories and wasted time.

<comment><USER78> Might as well take a first step to ignoring facebook. I've spent more than my fair share of time on the site in the past few years. While it's been productive overall in terms of professional and personal networking, I could have achieved as much with 10% of the time if I focused solely on the productive aspects. Two weeks ago I decided I could do without endless pointless conversations with vague colleagues, being updated on largely irrelevant minute details and thoughts of people I don't actually know, and and endless stream of low quality news links. I deactivated my account for a week and then reactivated it but only visit once a day at most. My quality of life certainly has not decreased!

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Back up now. Will be good to read the postmortem on this one.

</comment><comment><USER80> Lizard squad associated account just tweeted this [https://twitter.com/LizardMafia/status/559963134006292481](https://twitter.com/LizardMafia/status/559963134006292481)

</comment><comment><USER81> True fact is that in each country it was randomly shut down

</comment><comment><USER82> As of 11:12 PM PST Facebook and Instagram are back online.

</comment><comment><USER83> Meanwhile world's productivity goes up substantially.

<comment><USER84> Not with everyone constantly refreshing

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> [https://www.dropbox.com/s/zueam1oq3sdzv36/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/zueam1oq3sdzv36/Screenshot%202015-01-27%2011.54.49.png?dl=0)

<comment><USER26> Charge your battery!

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> "Facebook was down"

So what?

</comment><comment><USER87> Looks like a classic Stack Snowverflow error to me.

</comment><comment><USER70> Expensify is having issues too:

[http://status.expensify.com/](http://status.expensify.com/)

I feel like this is more the norm rather than an exception for them at this point, though.

</comment><comment><USER88> I can't wait to know the reason behind this.

<comment><USER57> Looks like cdn or part of their network routers failed, because mobile apps for instagram and facebook work fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Back up for me, showing an error page now though.

</comment><comment><USER90> wonder if this has to do with the storm near IAD?

</comment><comment><USER91> Seems facebook is back. a total of 55 min or so.

</comment><comment><USER92> It's down from here - Bay Area, California.

</comment><comment><USER93> No one has anything else to do tonight, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER94> Instagram as well

<comment><USER95> Looks like they share some infrastructure with facebook. Whatsap web and app works though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Facebook back online in SF as of 7:09 GMT

</comment><comment><USER96> Facebook seems to be back online for me.

</comment><comment><USER97> It's down in Eastern Europe too.

</comment><comment><USER98> This post might as well be a poll...

</comment><comment><USER52> with malaisian airlines getting hacked its making me think what if the ISIS got it to facebook?

<comment><USER99> Very unlikely. The attack on Malaysia Airlines was a hijacking of the DNS, not an actual hack on the website. Plus with the reosurces fb dedicates to security, they have a much better chance of finding 0days than some terrorists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> Looks like they're back online

</comment><comment><USER101> Something to do with the blizzard?

</comment><comment><USER102> Yep down for me too from Serbia.

</comment><comment><USER103> Over the last fifteen years, when ever I have experienced intermittent Web access, I try www.cisco.com.

It has never been down. Ever.

</comment><comment><USER104> The post mortem is going to be very interesting. It's Facebook, not like a Freenode server or something.

</comment><comment><USER105> And with it millions of widgets and like buttons suddenly vanish from their webpages. Good riddance I say!

</comment><comment><USER106> Instagram is down as well!

</comment><comment><USER107> Here in Brazil is Down,Facebook, Tinder, Instagram, AIM and HipChat suffer decline worldwide! D:

<comment><USER107> [http://check-host.net/check-http?host=facebook.com](http://check- host.net/check-http?host=facebook.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Seems like they are back up now. 100% HA is a myth, for even those who can afford it.

</comment><comment> ankit-mehta It's Up and Running. All the websites are accessible now.

</comment><comment><USER108> South African here - Down for me too.

</comment><comment><USER107> here in Brazil, Facebook, Tinder, Instagram, AIM and HipChat suffer decline worldwide! D:

</comment><comment><USER109> Welp...that escalated quickly.

</comment><comment><USER110> down here (in Turkey) and surprisingly, it isn't the government this time!

</comment><comment><USER111> Annd it's back up again

</comment><comment><USER112> Down here (Central America)

</comment><comment><USER113> Up again here from Norway.

</comment><comment><USER114> It's working for me

</comment><comment><USER115> Down from Bangladesh !

</comment><comment><USER116> Back up for me again

</comment><comment><USER117> Confirmed, from Iran

</comment><comment><USER118> instagram and facebook down as of this posting

</comment><comment><USER119> Its down in India

</comment><comment><USER120> Yes (from India)

</comment><comment><USER121> It's back!

</comment><comment><USER122> Yes

</comment><comment><USER123> down in Norway

</comment><comment><USER124> back up

</comment><comment><USER125> yep

</comment><comment><USER126> Let's all have a moment of contemplation & relaxation on behalf of those poor souls on-call...

<comment><USER127> They are brave men and women for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> down in Singapore

</comment><comment><USER129> yes, @korea

</comment><comment><USER130> yup

</comment><comment><USER131> OH MY GOD

</comment><comment><USER129> yes @korea

</comment><comment><USER28> yes

</comment><comment><USER132> Down for me too.

</comment><comment><USER133> yes

</comment><comment><USER134> yes

</comment><comment><USER135> yeah

</comment><comment><USER136> yes

</comment><comment><USER94> Yup

</comment><comment><USER137> yes (Central Europe)

</comment><comment><USER138> Lizard squard???

</comment><comment><USER139> one of the comments in thenextweb article is going nuts on the upvote/like

</comment><comment><USER140> Affirmative

</comment><comment><USER141> yes - Sydney, 5:59pm

</comment><comment><USER135> Yeah

</comment><comment><USER142> Instagram is also down

</comment><comment><USER143> Seems Facebook isn't very webscale!

</comment><comment><USER144> what's facebook?

</comment><comment><USER62> Yep, it's down here in SE Asia too

</comment><comment><USER138> DOWN for me too.

</comment><comment><USER145> Ok they're back for me in Alberta! What a wild ride. I pooped everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER146> Somewhere in the world Jesse Eisenberg is throwing an epic fit

</comment><comment><USER119> ISIS hacked into facebook network ?

<comment><USER147> are you joking or do you actually have any basis for this suspicion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER148> Yup. Down.

[http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/facebook.com)

</comment><comment><USER145> I blame global warming. Them servers were too hot I betcha.

</comment><comment><USER149> Yea, it could be Lizard Squad. [https://twitter.com/LizardMafia](https://twitter.com/LizardMafia). Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad

<comment><USER150> Or it could be a power issue brought on by this little bigger than average blizzard that will hit the Boston area the hardest where, incidentally, Akamai is located.

But sure, couple of script kiddies might be responsible as well. It's usually one or the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER151> Was completely dead in Australia. Down on both my local ISP and VPN to the National Research network. It was not a DNS issue as the IP Address is the same as it was during the outage.

"Host unreachable", maybe they took out the load-balancer?

\- traceroute to star.c10r.facebook.com (2a03:2880:f00c:6:face:b00c:0:2)

1 _redacted_ 2 ge-1-0-0.bb1.a.syd.aarnet.net.au (2001:388:1:5001::1) 107.649 ms 91.569 ms 91.814 ms 3 ae9.pe2.brwy.nsw.aarnet.net.au (2001:388:1:88::1) 91.981 ms 92.822 ms 103.957 ms 4 ae5.pe1.brwy.nsw.aarnet.net.au (2001:388:1:87::1) 92.447 ms 93.29 ms 101.182 ms 5 et-1-1-0.pe1.rsby.nsw.aarnet.net.au (2001:388:1:66::1) 94.606 ms 109.654 ms 91.987 ms 6 et-0-3-0.nsw-msct-bdr1.aarnet.net.au (2001:388:1:a3::2) 96.119 ms 92.032 ms 92.57 ms 7 6453.syd.equinix.com (2001:de8:6::6453:1) 99.204 ms 111.52 ms 190.499 ms 8 if-xe-0-3-1.3.thar1.1MH-Sydney.ipv6.as6453.net (2405:2000:ffd0::a) 90.392 ms 90.862 ms 92.174 ms 9 if-3-0-0.2.core1.PV4-Piti.ipv6.as6453.net (2405:2000:ffd0::1a) 232.07 ms 210.376 ms 163.293 ms 10 if-xe-3-1-1.10.tcore1.TV2-Tokyo.ipv6.as6453.net (2405:2000:ffb::22) 191.668 ms 200.129 ms 226.642 ms 11 if- ae2.2.tcore2.TV2-Tokyo.ipv6.as6453.net (2001:5a0:2200:300::2) 192.905 ms 191.953 ms 201.681 ms 12 if-ae6.2.tcore1.SVW-Singapore.ipv6.as6453.net (2405:2000:ffa0:100::49) 288.696 ms 279.671 ms 269.912 ms 13 if- ae11.2.thar1.SVQ-Singapore.ipv6.as6453.net (2405:2000:300:100::d) 264.938 ms 264.522 ms 266.912 ms 14 2405:2000:300:100::16 (2405:2000:300:100::16) 354.279 ms 349.7 ms 389.75 ms 15 ae2.bb02.sin1.tfbnw.net (2620:0:1cff:dead:beef::84c) 349.649 ms 348.205 ms 347.904 ms 16 ae0.bb01.hkg1.tfbnw.net (2620:0:1cff:dead:beef::1bdc) 349.552 ms 356.726 ms 348.74 ms 17 be6.bb01.pdx1.tfbnw.net (2620:0:1cff:dead:beef::5dd) 366.212 ms 368.99 ms 368.89 ms 18 be9.bb01.prn2.tfbnw.net (2620:0:1cff:dead:beef::f5) 365.81 ms 366.327 ms 366.598 ms 19 ae10.dr02.prn1.tfbnw.net (2620:0:1cff:dead:beef::1c27) 377.387 ms 365.613 ms 365.392 ms 23 * * * 24 ae10.dr02.prn1.tfbnw.net (2620:0:1cff:dead:beef::1c27) 387.156 ms !H 383.877 ms !H 374.672 ms !H

</comment><comment><USER152> If they guy is posting pics of himself on Twitter asking others to "dox him", it could mean that he's pretty emotionally stable not to fall for the common pitfalls when it comes to online hacking.

In that sense, it's very possible that he has access to some major database dumps that the public is unaware of, and given that he is also claiming the glory behind the Malaysia Airlines hack; it's clear that he does more than DDoS, no matter what the more educated hackers are saying.

A long way to go for a secure internet, that's for sure.</comment>