Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/science/plants-consciousness-anesthesia.html <comment><USER2> > "Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices," said Frantisek > Baluska

I don't see how this follows from the finding that sedatives can prevent plants from responding to stimuli. It just means that there's a shared mechanism behind plants' responses and animals' responses, which wouldn't be overly surprising.

Of course, that doesn't mean that plants don't have a lot more going on than we usually realise, just because it happens at timescales so much longer than ours. There's all sorts of cool stuff happening in rainforests with cooperation/competition between plants.

<comment><USER3> Yet this is the same type of work people are using to argue that that crabs/fish can feel/experience pain. Proving or disproving consciousness is basically impossible.

E.g. I feel like a lot of people aren't conscious :) Prove me right or wrong?

<comment><USER4> The best explanation demystifying consciousness I've found comes from a claim it's a social phenomena that only arose around 3000 years ago:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_\(psychology\))

These days most people are conscious because you need it to function in society; there is a good deal of evidence in the book.

<comment><USER5> "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets." \- Richard Dawkins

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Remembering reading about the work done by Jagadish Chandra Bose:

"He researched the mechanism of the seasonal effect on plants, the effect of chemical inhibitors on plant stimuli and the effect of temperature. From the analysis of the variation of the cell membrane potential of plants under different circumstances, he hypothesised that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose)

<comment><USER7> Yeah its amazing that his research is completely forgotten perhaps too conveniently.

<comment><USER8> Not that amazing, given that it's never been successfully been replicated and quite likely to be bunk.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any references? Wikipedia suggests the opposite. I do not find anything wrong with new research but presenting it as groundbreaking is laughable.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose) [2] [https://doi.org/10.1038%2F360062a0](https://doi.org/10.1038%2F360062a0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Complex exchange of information and response to your environment is fascinating, and should be appreciated. But if we're calling that consciousness, we've watered down the term to the point that it's just a loose metaphor for virtually any kind of complex biological mechanisms.

This really shouldn't even be a debate. It's the special kind of wrong that ought to be embarrassing, like when people equate consciousness to quantum weirdness.

<comment><USER10> Provided there are single cell organisms with eyes[1], and transcription factors form DNA-based activation/inhibition networks conceptually indistinguishable from neuronal networks, debating whether plants have subjective experience ("a view from the inside" doesn't necessarily implies visual information) is totally on the table.

Whether those organisms experience anything we can relate to is another matter though.

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

<comment><USER9> Photoreceptivity isn't consciousness. "View from the inside" wasn't a mere reference to vision. And I would hope that the structural differences between DNA and brains are clear enough that they wouldn't have to be debated in a serious conversation.

<comment><USER10> Please stop with the "serious convesation" FUD.

Structural differences are no barrier to functional equivalence. Transcription factors are proteins that activate or inhibit the transcription rate of other genes, including those of other transcription factors.

They do form complex regulation networks that are isomorphic to neural circuitry.

Edit: re. ocelloid, I know you didn't literally mean vision.

The structure of the retinal body and adjacent organelles suggests that it is more than a focused, single pixel cam that would be used for simple phototropism, which implies that it is tied to a more complex processing apparatus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> K sooo to (kinda) answer the question: depends. What's your definition of consciousness?

Now as for the implication that anesthetics sedating plants has ANYTHING to do with this/whether or not they are conscious: no. No sorry, not buying it. Need more science.

This just suggests we may have similar inhibitory biochemical responses to certain organic compounds.

That's not surprising since were all made out of hydrocarbons & many anesthetics have relatively simple structures.

<comment><USER12> > What's your definition of consciousness?

How about - ability to adapt to environment and select good actions depending on situation, learning from reward/loss signals.

<comment><USER13> That seems more like a definition for intelligence or learning.

My favourite definition for consciousness is the following:

If it is something to be like a particular thing, then that thing is conscious.

If it is something to be like a bat, then a bat is conscious. If it isn't something to be like a bat - the "lights are off" so to speak - then it's not conscious.

Edit: clarity

<comment><USER14> You probably couldn't use this definition even if you had a magical device which transforms you into a bat and then back again.

After you are yourself again you'll need to interpret the acquired memories. You remember echolocview of the room (bats have memory, it's testable), hunger, disorientation and some other sensations. Does it mean that bat is conscious? What will you remember differently if bat wasn't conscious? You'll remember nothing? But memories are there and you should have access to them. The lack of self-awareness? But you don't know how you would remember the presence of self-awareness in a bat.

<comment><USER13> But the definition isn't _if it is like something for a human to be a bat_. Human experience doesn't really come into it.

It is like something to be a human. But the conscious experience of a bat (if it exists) may be completely alien to us in every way. That's not relevant to what it is to be like a bat. The only important thing is if it is like something to be a bat.

<comment><USER14> What's good in a definition you have no conceivable way of applying? How would you go about testing whether a bat is conscious according to this definition?

It is based on our illusion of understanding what it is like to be a human, but upon closer inspection it bears no real content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Study: Anaesthetics stop diverse plant organ movements, affect endocytic vesicle recycling and ROS homeostasis, and block action potentials in Venus flytraps

Citation: K Yokawa, T Kagenishi, A Pavlovič, S Gall, M Weiland, S Mancuso, F Baluška; Annals of Botany, mcx155.

Link: [https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcx155](https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcx155)

DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcx155

Abstract:

Background and Aims

Anaesthesia for medical purposes was introduced in the 19th century. However, the physiological mode of anaesthetic drug actions on the nervous system remains unclear. One of the remaining questions is how these different compounds, with no structural similarities and even chemically inert elements such as the noble gas xenon, act as anaesthetic agents inducing loss of consciousness. The main goal here was to determine if anaesthetics affect the same or similar processes in plants as in animals and humans.

Methods

A single-lens reflex camera was used to follow organ movements in plants before, during and after recovery from exposure to diverse anaesthetics. Confocal microscopy was used to analyse endocytic vesicle trafficking. Electrical signals were recorded using a surface AgCl electrode.

Key Results

Mimosa leaves, pea tendrils, Venus flytraps and sundew traps all lost both their autonomous and touch-induced movements after exposure to anaesthetics. In Venus flytrap, this was shown to be due to the loss of action potentials under diethyl ether anaesthesia. The same concentration of diethyl ether immobilized pea tendrils. Anaesthetics also impeded seed germination and chlorophyll accumulation in cress seedlings. Endocytic vesicle recycling and reactive oxygen species (ROS) balance, as observed in intact Arabidopsis root apex cells, were also affected by all anaesthetics tested.

Conclusions

Plants are sensitive to several anaesthetics that have no structural similarities. As in animals and humans, anaesthetics used at appropriate concentrations block action potentials and immobilize organs via effects on action potentials, endocytic vesicle recycling and ROS homeostasis. Plants emerge as ideal model objects to study general questions related to anaesthesia, as well as to serve as a suitable test system for human anaesthesia.

<comment><USER16> whether you are a robot or a person I appreciate your effort

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great, they've ruined vegetarianism.

<comment><USER18> We have known for years that plants give off a pulse ("scream") when assaulted, communicate chemically etc. I have said for years that the idea that eating plants is morally superior because they aren't sentient is basically speciesist, for lack of a better word.

<comment><USER19> Well, I would argue that eating animals is morally superior to cannibalism :)

So why can't eating plants be morally superior to eat animals.

<comment><USER18> I would argue that there are lots of valid reasons to eat lower on the food chain, many of which can be framed as having a moral impetus. But the idea that it is morally superior based on plants being stupid is repugnant to me. It opens the door on questions like "So, is it okay to eat mentally retarded people?"

Some moral arguments I can agree with:

A mostly plant based diet is less resource intensive. Since most wars are about scarcity of resources, eating less meat is voting against war in a tangible way. It is about promoting peace globally.

There are health benefits to eating less meat.

Meat is very water intensive. Water shortages are a big deal globally at the moment.

There are no doubt others. Just quick and dirty off the cuff thoughts.

<comment><USER20> Is war really about scarcity of resources or about conflict over resources, regardless of scarcity?

<comment><USER21> >Is war really about scarcity of resources or about conflict over resources, regardless of scarcity?

I think there is a huge difference between the world before the green revolution and after, and I personally think that this difference is a big part of why we haven't seen major power wars after the middle of the 20th century.

World war two was the last major power war, and it was also the last major power war fought when there were not enough calories for everyone to eat their fill. Coincidence?

After world war two (well, after the 'green revolution' that happened in the mid 20th century) there was enough food, and... you could argue that we haven't had a direct major power war since then.

I personally think that the fact that getting enough calories is generally not a problem anymore has a lot to do with the fact that we haven't seen any major power wars lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The thermostat in my house responds to stimuli, unless I sedate it by taking out the batteries. Is it conscious? No, of course not. In an era where charges of "fake news" are flying thick and fast, the NYT, of all venues, really should not publishing this sort of pseudo-scientific rubbish.

<comment><USER23> Do you have a working definition of consciousness?

<comment><USER22> I do, but I'm not going to play this game unless you seriously want to argue that a thermostat is conscious, in which case you have to go first.

<comment><USER23> Seems to me that consciousness is a matter of degree, with devices like thermostats at one pole, and self-reflective neocortex-style consciousness at the other.

Not that I have a strong desire to defend the consciousness of thermostats. I just wouldn't consider the article pseudo-scientific rubbish, and I definitely wouldn't just write off this type of inquiry or discussion as some kind of harmful fake news.

<comment><USER22> > consciousness is a matter of degree

That's true, but that doesn't mean that thermostats are conscious. Shortness is "a matter of degree" too. Nonetheless, Danny Devito is short (4'10"), and Michael Jordan (6'6") is not. We can argue about Tom Cruise (5'7") and Johnny Depp (5'10"), and with regards to consciousness, we can argue about dolphins and dogs and maybe even cockroaches. But not plants and not thermostats.

<comment><USER23> You're drawing arbitrary cutoffs in your height example. Which brings back the original question, what's your selection criteria for consciousness?

<comment><USER22> No, they are not arbitrary cutoffs. They are universally agreed upon conventions among speakers of English, and they give effective meaning to the words "short" and "tall". Quibbling over that is pure pedantry.

<comment><USER23> Convention = arbitary. It's conventional. For convenience. Relative. Not absolute. Same as your lines defining what is and isn't conscious.

<comment><USER22> [http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/569/2/Stoppard.pdf](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/569/2/Stoppard.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not in the same sense that we are. If you go by the Aristotelian and Platonic hierarchy of nature then we know that they are life forms by the fact that they are animated insofar as the metabolic process is concerned. They sedated the metabolic process. It's sort of like when you are hopped up on drugs in the hospital and not moving, you require much less caloric intake because you're expending less energy, similar to that I would suspect.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is the planet conscious but on a time scale that we are out-of-touch with? Plants are just an order of magnitude quicker to react but still much slower than needed to make us care. The truth is, we associate speed with intelligence, it's natural for us. We even have the word "slow" to mean stupid. It's possible we will eventually have a super intelligence able to craftily manipulate matter at the highest ability -- but will still be as slow as a turtle. If it builds shields and preventative measures to compensate for its' slowness, I think we'd consider it a superintelligent species -- slow or not.

<comment><USER26> I think we might just have to, out of philosophical desperation, define "murder" as a set containing A. the irreversible termination of any economically useful self-directing information processor and B. acts that desensitize our inborn resistance to doing A. The first covers not killing other healthy adults/sentient robots, and the second covers not abusing animals or euthanizing anybody. As far as my gut says that's all you really need out of an ethical system, right?

If I had to assign an evolutionary purpose to why we hate animal abuse so much, it would probably be that whenever the "don't torture squirrels" circuit fails homicide is not far behind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They mention that sedating bacteria can cause them to "pause" as well. Are bacteria considered conscious?

<comment><USER2> Putting a strong magnet next to my old mechanical watch causes it to "pause" too. Clearly I'm sedating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does everybody on HackerNews have a subscription to the New York Times or something?

<comment><USER29> Use incognito.

<comment><USER30> Or skip the article and just read the comments! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can anesthetize large parts of my body, losing all responsiveness, yet _remain conscious_.

Moreover, if I had no head (and presumably no consciousness), I would still respond to stimuli via the spinal cord, and could still be anesthetized.

That plants become unresponsive when anesthetized in no way imples that they have some consciousness that they are losing. Why does the article make this bizarre logical leap.

</comment><comment><USER32> Remove the hat from the dog and it seems to lose its sense of style. Is the dog a fashionista?

This is anthropomorphism while being unconscious of it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Alan Watts has talked about something very similar with regard to what is intelligence and how exactly do we measure and define it. Here is a short (1m20s) youtube clip of it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgZ73Lc5VS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgZ73Lc5VS8)

</comment><comment><USER34> Hmm, I am not sure how would I live with the thought that every single step in nature I do brutally kills/damages conscious beings. Fun! Theodicy would suddenly seem a small problem...

</comment><comment><USER35> That biological systems have a low power mode and that this can be chemically induced is not suprising. Suggesting that the presence of a low power mode in biological systems equates to evidence of consciousness is a big stretch.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm a hobbyist gardener. I've always suspected these guys have something else going on.

</comment><comment><USER37> Some wise hunters dont kill out of spite but necessity. They say a prayer celebrating the circle of life and thanking the caught animal. And dont take more than necessary.

</comment><comment><USER38> when you cut the legs of the frog and yell "jump", it does not.

could the ears of the frog be in the legs?

this article is inane.

</comment><comment><USER39> Vegetarianism is murder

<comment><USER40> My first thought. Though not appropriate for sharing in HN discussions, little toleration for humor.</comment></comment>


Remote Python Development in Visual Studio Code - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/python/remote-python-development-in-visual-studio-code/ <comment><USER2> Now, can Microsoft port the UI half of VSCode to iOS so I can just jack into a server from my iPad and keep working? If they've really separated the two parts as much as they claim, it should be possible.

<comment> 0-_-0 I had the same thought but with Android. The problem seems to be that VScode was built with Electron which doesn't run on Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah I've been doing this for years developing in KDE's kate, which, being a KDE application using the kio system, can operate on files transparently across a number of protocols.

The faff my colleagues used to make with their Sublime Text plugins trying to do the same...

<comment><USER4> Ah KIO. It's one if the (many) things I love about KDE.

<comment><USER5> The KDE Frameworks are chalk full of well designed and useful C++ libraries. Threadweaver is particularly nice.

<comment><USER3> This is becoming very offtopic, but it's got to be said that there are also some horrors lying around KDE land - let's not talk about akonadi...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Java 8 streams vs. C# LINQ - <AUTHOR> http://blog.informatech.cr/2013/03/24/java-streams-preview-vs-net-linq/

<comment><USER2> LINQ is one of the best programming inventions in the last 20 years. It saves hundreds to thousands of lines of code in general application development. It also makes code easier to read.</comment>


Microsoft Joins the Eclipse Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2016/03/08/microsoft-joins-the-eclipse-foundation/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. I was part of the original "Team Explorer Everywhere" team that built their Eclipse plug-in for TFS and had originally championed this as a good idea. But really, I'm not sure that I'm enthused about this news. Certainly this is good community building, but I've found the Eclipse Foundation to be so ineffective that I'm not sure what purpose this _actually_ serves except to send out a press release.

My team was initially acquired; we were originally a small company in a cornfield in Illinois called Teamprise, where we built the original TFS plug- in for Eclipse. At the time, we were Eclipse Foundation members and reasonably happy about it. Certainly it was nice to give back (in terms of membership fees) to a project that we were a part of and took advantage of. And the Foundation has a few really solid employees and it was nice to talk to them about tech stuff.

But our larger goal in joining the Eclipse Foundation was largely unmet, which was to actually _partner_. For example: we hoped to bring in a contractor who could occasionally tackle some bugs in Eclipse on AIX which ultimately affected our customers. We were a tiny company and going deep on some weird problem that only affected the Motif AIX build was not particularly rewarding. So we hoped to engage the Foundation to help us out here: we would pay this contractor if they could help us find them. But we were rebuffed in a manner that I found rather off-putting.

Despite this, after we became part of Microsoft I still pushed for us to join the Eclipse Foundation. I stopped pushing when Microsoft had a booth at Eclipse Con one year and a member of the Foundation (apropos nothing) went on a nice, long rant about Microsoft. I don't think it's particularly classy to make fun of your competitors, nor do I really appreciate inculcating an "us vs them" mentality. But to do that after we had paid a big hunk of money to sponsor that conference seemed particularly poor form, and if the Foundation is going to make fun of the people who are paying to sponsor their Conference, what does membership buy you? A steaming pile on your doorstep once a year?

In any case, that was when I stopped advocating for Microsoft to join the Eclipse Foundation and instead advocated for us to ignore them wholesale. I hope that my old team has better luck working with them than I did.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not sure what purpose this actually serves

Preparation. The world isn't ready yet for Microsoft joining the Linux Foundation.

<comment><USER2> I can't tell if you're joking or serious. Certainly, Microsoft hosts a lot of Linux VMs in Azure. A _lot_. The last I heard, Azure was hosting more Ubuntu than anything else.

I'm going to assume you're serious and agree with you; I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft _did_ end up joining the Linux Foundation. I'll guess within the next 2 years.

<comment><USER4> Na. The only reason why Microsoft is doing this is because they want to remain relevant in a world that has largely stopped relying on closed-source code in a server-side OS. I suspect Microsoft will open source Windows _long_ before it ever joins the Linux Foundation.

<comment><USER2> Those are unrelated concerns. Microsoft isn't a big homogenous unit. The business unit that would join the Linux Foundation would be Cloud & Enterprise (which does crazy things like open sourcing .NET and joining the Eclipse Foundation).

The business unit that would open source Windows is Windows Development Group, who are mostly stuck in neutral. They can barely perform _builds_ of Windows themselves, it's so huge and tangled and poorly organized. They can't change anything because they're crippled with decades of technical debt. Whether they want to or not (and I don't think that they really _do_ want to) to try to open source that monstrosity is quite far away.

That said, I'm sure some people within Netscape said the same thing about Mozilla. So I'd love to be proven wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like I'm not seeing the forest for the trees.

I swear Microsoft's business model was to bring people in to their ecosystem and then charge them for what is hopefully a superior development experience.

Is there a new business model? How do they lock people in and squeeze them for money? Is their cloud solution radically different from the competition that they can put all their eggs in that basket? What's the big picture plan? Or is the new CEO just going rambo and pandering to DIY geeks who want everything for free ? (myself included!)

I feel like there has to be some parallel universe blog where these press releases explain what they're doing to investors beyond "we're going to take your money, and we're going to make things with it. And then give it away for free! Please give us more money"

Like awesome dude... but what the hell is going on?

<comment><USER6> TL;DR: Azure.

What's going on in a new strategy.

Microsoft wants people building applications in Azure. They want people using ASP.NET technologies. Given that Azure competes with AWS and Google Compute; that ASP.NET and C# compete with Elixir/Phoenix, Clojure, Scala, Koitlin, etc, there is absolutely no way they can maintain any form of lockin. Even in the conservative companies, they compete with Java. The pitch to the investors is that by opening up their toolset, it gets more people on their cloud services and boosts recurring revenue. Which is what everyone else is doing.

<comment><USER5> So they've decide that the business model of the past two decades is doomed? Are investors onboard with that? Sounds like some serious downsizing is coming to come up in the next 5 years...

We might be looking back at this CEO with incredulity in 10 years when MSFT is struggling to keep the lights on ("they did what?! They just gave away all their products for free??")

<comment><USER7> The alternative is to wait while change passes them buy and then issue a Nokia "burning platform" memo.

(Nokia are now a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. If Microsoft collapsed, who would buy them? Apple?)

<comment><USER8> Microsoft bought Nokia's mobile phones but the rest of Nokia survives (marker cap $22 billion).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I must be missing something.

All of the comments here are all about "Microsoft is advancing OSS" and "Microsoft grew a heart" and "Mind blown", but all I see in the article is "We'll be providing some tools to help you use our paid cloud services".

What am I missing here?

<comment><USER10> Of course Microsoft is doing all this with the goal of making money at the end of the day.

But if you remember the Microsoft of 10 or 20 years ago, when they were bashing open source at every turn, spreading FUD and exploiting their monopoly on the desktop to crush competition, things have changed _a lot_. Not neccessarily because the "new" Microsoft is made of nicer people who just want to be friends with everyone, but because the world around them has changed.

The end result, though, is the same - Microsoft appears to be embracing open source and community-driven development processes.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for your reply.

Yes. I understand that that's the message here in the HN comments, but my question is _why_. In what way does this mean that MS is embracing open source? Many replies to that question (including yours) have been along the lines of "Remember when they were saboteurs? They just took an action that wasn't overt malice!"

Again, I assume I'm missing something, but it all sounds like "Hitler doesn't spend all of his time engaging in acts of genocide; Sometimes, he eats cereal." (BTW, no, I don't think of MS as inherently evil. I make my own living on closed-source software.) I'm not seeing the "complete reversal" people are talking about, nor even a partial reversal. Nor do I see the opposite. These things appear orthogonal.

Is this all because their new Azure-specific tooling is open source? Or is it simply because they're shaking hands (harder) with an organization that has OSS street credit? Or something else entirely?

<comment><USER10> Microsoft used to be very hostile towards open source in general and Linux in particular. These days, the publish some core parts of their software stack - the new Javascript engine, for example, the core CLR .Net runtime, including the JIT and GC - as open source and actively support running Linux instances in Azure.

That still does not mean, of course, that Microsoft is an "open source company" now, but I think it shows their attitude has changed significantly. Given their past, I think this is at least a very good sign. Of course, they still engage in plenty of lock-in, and their baroque licensing terms can drive a poor sysadmin insane. But there is some progress, and a lot of people are happy to see that.

Of course, the main reason for this is that the world has changed, and Microsoft can no longer exploit their monopoly on the desktop when a fair amount of people have - at least at home - ditched laptops or desktops completely in favor of smartphones and tablets (rarely running Windows). Developers like to build web services and web apps on Linux, and if Microsoft just refused to support any non-Windows systems on Azure, they would lose a fair amount of business. So they seem to look for ways to make money in a world where Windows and Microsoft's conventional software stack can coexist with other software and operating systems.

So if, for example, they open source the .Net framework, that means they can win over developers on other systems. Developers who then might want to use, say, Visual Studio, so they still can make money of those.

(Alas, with regards to Windows and Office, their cash cows, nothing has changed.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Microsoft is just a 'Solutions member', which is among the lowest form of membership for Corporate entities. They are only required to pay $20K a year. Not required to contribute any engineers to Eclipse Foundation. The 'membership' portion of this announcement is pure PR. If they were setting aside real cash, they would join as 'Strategic Member' where they would be required to contribute real cash and minimum amount of engineers to Eclipse.

<comment><USER12> While I'm sure they could easily join at a higher tier, I will still applaud their contribution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Say what you want about Microsoft, but they really take their words into action nowadays. Seems like there is at least one news item per week. They have been really active in the open source space recently.

Personally, I love this. Have recently been learning ASP.NET and started using Azure simply because I find it to be one of the easiest frameworks and platforms to iterate quickly on.

I love the new Microsoft, I hope this continues. It feels like they have had a lot of brilliant people previously held back by rules and constraints which are now removed.

<comment><USER14> They're doing this for themselves. If MS don't invest in open source, they'll be left behind.

It's a nice reminder how important OSS has become.

<comment><USER13> Can you mention one company sponsored open source investment that isn't based in self-interest?

I don't think that is relevant, but of course open source is important and probably will be in the future as well.

<comment><USER14> The point here is that people remember MS aren't doing this for philanthropic reasons.

To answer the question: Canonical. While they're aiming to become profitable, I don't think Mark Shuttleworth has any illusions about getting back all the money he invested.

<comment><USER15> I accidentally downvoted you when I meant to upvote. I really wish you could undo that (even if it precluded you from voting on that post again).

But the point is that everyone is self-interested in OSS.

Canonical has an ad on their page for Ubuntu Advantage, they run training and offer certifications, etc. They are not a philanthropic organization.

<comment><USER16> _But the point is that everyone is self-interested in OSS._

If we're going that far, everyone is self-interested in everything, even if it's just because doing something (like, say, giving to charity) makes them feel good or suffer less guilt.

<comment><USER15> I realize that was an overly broad statement but I thought the next line clarified it a bit. Canonical definitely has a direct monetary incentive in its OSS participation.

<comment><USER16> I agree, but compared to what he's put in, I'd be surprised if he has any ambitions of getting out anywhere near what has gone in. I think it's more of a lifestyle business (in the literal sense)... but I could be wrong! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I swear I just saw a pig flying across the sky.

What is going on in Microsoft? Have they finally seen the light? First today comes SQL Server on Linux and now this.

It makes a refreshing change. Long may it continue.

<comment><USER18> MS realized that Windows as a platform is not attractive to developers. So it is desperately to win those developers back. On the consumer land, Windows is quite happy being the de-facto platform OS, so it doesn't bother to release anything in other OS (DirectX, Office, just killed Skype in linux etc).

<comment><USER19> > so it doesn't bother to release anything in other OS (DirectX, Office, just > killed Skype in linux etc).

Office is available on other platforms, and they've been adding new platforms in the last couple of years.

Currently supports: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Mac, and PC. Not including their in-browser suite which runs on Chromebooks and your smart fridge.

They also haven't killed Skype for Linux. Skype for Linux was terrible before Microsoft purchased Skype. If anything Skype for Linux hasn't been improved while the Skype for Windows client has become progressively worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Visual Studio runs on Linux, now MS joins Eclipse...the changes at Microsoft is too fast and dramatic, considering a while ago they're so hostile to the open source and Linux world at large. This indeed explains the saying: "if you can't beat them, you join them".

I hope it's not too late for them, for me there is no way to get back to Windows environment for any kind of development.

I suddenly realized that, Linux has won already, from Smart phones to the cloud servers, all the way.

<comment><USER6> > for me there is no way to get back to Windows environment for any kind of > development.

Awesome! You don't need to:

[https://dotnet.github.io/getting-started/](https://dotnet.github.io/getting- started/) [https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt- downloads](https://code.visualstudio.com/#alt-downloads) [http://www.omnisharp.net/](http://www.omnisharp.net/)

*It's a stretch to say "Linux won on the smart phone".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Microsoft is finally realizing that Open Source is not an opposing ideology but an alternative kind of business contract (which happens to lend itself to services).

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm afraid that their "To Serve the Community" may actually be a cookbook...

</comment><comment><USER23> Argh. Was hoping to hear about C# integration not Azure hooks.

</comment><comment><USER24> It seems MS is thinking money is to be made from order of magnitudes more users paying order of magnitude less money on cloud tools / infrastructure. It is opposite of traditional MS where fewer users were paying lots of money for MS tools.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, this is certainly an interesting development, although not entirely unexpected, given that JetBrains is developing Project Rider. It would definitely be interesting to develop a Java application in Visual Studio.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hopefully MS stay as a "Solutions member" and not become a "strategic member" and screw-up Eclipse Foundation

</comment><comment><USER26> I was really thinking the announcement was going to be Visual Studio in eclipse............long shot I know.

</comment><comment><USER27> This seems like an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish type deal [1].

Can someone explain exactly what Microsoft would get out of this (and what they would theoretically give back in the process)?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish)

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a reason Microsoft doesn't make their VS Studio IDE work with Java? Yes, I'm aware of the 3rd party plugins available, but it would be nice to see official support for what is the world's most popular language according to the TIOBE index.

<comment><USER29> Old scars perhaps. VS initially had a java IDE, but then they got sued by Sun, which ultimately resulted in Microsoft developing C# as a Java killer

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B)

<comment><USER30> That was old Visual Studio, from the days of VS6 which shipped VB6, prior to the launch of Visual Studio.NET (2002).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Do you remember the times MS tried to kill Java by adding new features to Java? Every time they "contribute to open-source" I trust them less and less.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish#Examples)

<comment><USER32> Yes, we all remember Embrace, extend and extinguish. Even people who weren't around then. Because it gets brought up in every single Hacker News thread about Microsoft.

At this point I really don't think it's useful to cite a Microsoft strategy from the mid 1990s. It's clear at even a cursory glance that their approach has changed dramatically.

<comment><USER33> > At this point I really don't think it's useful to cite a Microsoft strategy > from the mid 1990s. It's clear at even a cursory glance that their approach > has changed dramatically.

I respectfully disagree. MS has spent a _long_ time building up a _lot_ of bad-will. Just because they've done a couple of nice things lately doesn't mean we should forget all that.

I hope they become awesome, and continue to be pro-FOSS, but it's going to take more than a couple of good steps to convince me.

<comment><USER34> Couple? F# and asp.net have been open over 5 years, yes under Steve Balmer. All this is not entirely recent but they have accelerated the pace and extended the scope. If you choose to ignore it, its your prerogative.

<comment><USER33> OK, so we have what percentage of their products open (admittedly, some of them are pretty significant)? compared to all the other negative they've done? I'm not ignoring anything, and I'm not really sure why you assumed that. In fact, if you blindly say they've turned to the good side, I'd accuse you of the same...

<comment><USER32> All the bad they've done presumably extending back to the 1990s? A company isn't a person - a significant amount of the workforce, senior management and even the CEO is different than it was back then.

<comment><USER33> But they chose to stick with that company and culture, presumably that "brand". I'm not saying they can't turn around, but they've still got a long way to go to prove to me this is anything different than EEE.

Also, they didn't just stop in the 90's. A lot of their questionable practices have continued on, and are still going on. I'm not basing my mistrust _only_ on the 90's. It's just one factor out of many, but one I still feel should be taken into account.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Defensive programming framework for .NET Framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aljazsim/defensive-programming-framework-for-net/ <comment><USER2> I think PostSharp can do something similar to this also.

[http://www.postsharp.net/blog/post/Validating-parameters- fie...](http://www.postsharp.net/blog/post/Validating-parameters-field-and- properties-in-PostSharp-3)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice! Not sure I like littering so many methods onto extensions instead of encapsulating in a Validate namespace, but I understand the convenience.

BTW small typo in the comments of your second set of example code: "thorws"

<comment><AUTHOR> I will correct it, thank you. Good catch!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one that dislikes ArgumentExceptions - especially if I'm consuming a library (without source.) IMO - exceptions should be for exceptional situations, not invalid input handling.

<comment><USER5> > Am I the only one that dislikes ArgumentExceptions - especially if I'm > consuming a library (without source.) IMO - exceptions should be for > exceptional situations, not invalid input handling.

Diving by 0 should yield exception for instance. Why not null? or odd when even numbers are expected? ...

I think the problem with all this is that you really want a type system that can do most of the validation job not at runtime, but at compile time.

Often OO languages force developers into some weird patterns (ex: value object) in order to mimic functional or algebraic types, at run time.

Contract programming with static predicates can help as well, I don't know if C# supports this.

<comment><USER6> C# does have a feature called Code Contracts [0][1]. I haven't used them, and in my experience they aren't super popular. They look like mostly convenience for specifying when to throw, rather than as an alternative to throwing. There is some static capability, but I'm not sure what the extent of it is.

[0]: [https://github.com/Microsoft/CodeContracts](https://github.com/Microsoft/CodeContracts)

[1]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/debug- trac...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/debug-trace- profile/code-contracts)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What makes this better than using regular asserts? Are asserts normally just associated with automated testing in .NET?

<comment><USER8> It essentially is asserts just more "fluent".

Not sure if I like it or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> why framework? you limit the usage.

<comment> V-2 It's a nice bucket of handy utility methods, but that doesn't constitute a framework as I understand the term</comment></comment>


Liz Parrish Wants to Live Forever - <AUTHOR> https://www.outsideonline.com/2325556/liz-parrish-live-forever <comment><USER2> This belongs to _fluff news_. I don't understand why people upvote these links/kind of content.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I've got bad news for her.</comment>


Happy World Tapir Day - <AUTHOR> https://www.beholder.uk/dwindle/ <comment><USER2> As an exmormon this holds a special meaning - it's sort of our mascot.

(Horses are an anachronism in the Book of Mormon. LDS scholars using cognizant dissonance stretched 'horse and chariot' to possibly mean 'tapir and chariot'...see: [http://www.mormonthink.com/book-of-mormon- problems.htm](http://www.mormonthink.com/book-of-mormon-problems.htm))

<comment><USER3> I have to admit, this is exactly where my mind went.

<comment><USER4> Mine went here: [https://landcruisingadventure.com/guyana- tapirs/](https://landcruisingadventure.com/guyana-tapirs/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a really great way to start the day. Extremely well done!

Once you go through the story, you should turn on "Tapir Notes" in settings and go through again (as noted in settings, probably best not to read them the first time through).

</comment><comment><USER6> Glad this got traction - had Dave Whiteland as lecturer last year. He's really into Tapirs!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is great, love this style. The story uses the medium to the fullest, with unobtrusive navigation. Bookmarked, thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Obligatory link to True Facts about the tapir: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJm6nDnR2SE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJm6nDnR2SE)</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone into analog neural networks? - <AUTHOR> There are some awesome plastic analog neural networks with cascaded control loops out there. Anyone into analog computing? Simulators of analog computers? Pct? <comment><USER2> I remember years ago, someone had an evolutionary algorithm that was designing circuits for FPGAs. The circuits exploited the analog nature of these digital chips to come up with solutions.</comment>


Today I found old source code for a Reddit alternative I built when I was 17 - <AUTHOR> http://zeefeed.co

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I see where my design inspiration came from. :)</comment>


Linux is a lemon on the new retina Mac Book Pro - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=apple_mbpr_linux&num=1

<comment><USER2> This article from a fedora developer seemed a bit more hacker newsish to me:

Playing with Thunderbolt under Linux on Apple hardware

<http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/15948.html>

<comment><USER3> Can anyone explain why ACPI would want to know what OS is running? Shouldn't it just report what it can do and let the OS decide what to do with it?

<comment><USER4> You would think so, but unfortunately ACPI is horrendously overengineered by committee and basically does have code running in it which can contain these sort of checks. I once had to recompile some part of it (possibly the DSDT - differentiated system description table - whatever that is) on an old Dell laptop of mine which literally had

if (operating_system == "Microsoft Windows NT" || operating_system == "Microsoft Windows 95" || operating_system == "Microsoft Windows") { // make stuff work }

baked into it. Linux worked fine once those checks were removed, of course.

Needless to say, my opinion of the whole mess has been pretty tainted by that. I try to assume that it is incompetence rather than actual malice on the part of Microsoft and/or the manufacturers, but it does do an awfully good impression of the latter.

<comment><USER5> This is why Linux now claims to be Windows.

<comment><USER6> The striking parallel with user agents makes a good case for a generalized design rule of "don't assume anything about the ability of the other side to handle your side's specifications. Let them make the decision."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wouldn't buy a macbook for linux regardless of display. Mainstream linux window managers expect two mouse buttons. If you want an ultrabook, there's a great new Thinkpad just released made out of carbon fibre. Lenovo hardware tends to work well with linux/unix. [http://gizmodo.com/5935723/lenovo- thinkpad-x1-carbon-review-...](http://gizmodo.com/5935723/lenovo- thinkpad-x1-carbon-review-what-the-future-of-laptops-should-be)

<comment><USER8> I actually dual-boot Arch on my mid-2011 Macbook Pro, and two mouse buttons has been the least of my problems -- you can configure Synaptics to recognize a click on the touchpad with two fingers as a right-click, just like OS X. (You can even set it up to recognize a three-finger click as a middle click, which OS X doesn't do.)

The only real issue I have with Linux is that something keeps eating my bootloader, so I have to keep a GRUB boot CD around to boot into it.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure it's getting eaten? I have had issues with efi bootloader, where it'll forget to boot from the right OS but the bootloader is still there and accessible from the boot menu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm currently tri booting arch linux, os x and windows on a retina macbook pro.

I almost only use linux, support is much better than suggested here. Yes, if you expect the latest build of Ubuntu to just work you're going to be disappointed.

The trackpad works excellently, equivalent to os x (with mtrack), as does wifi. Graphics are fine with the nvidia binary, which offers better performance than nouveau anyways. On that note, there is progress with getting nouveau to work. Just a few days ago a bug was fixed in the i915 driver, and intel graphics work now. It is true though that Optimus support is bad on linux, and probably will be for a while. That said I'm at 86% battery, and I have about 3.5 hours left.

Its pretty easy in linux to change the font settings for applications, having the 2880 resolution with a sane font size is really great.

Also switching between the os's is really really fast, around 30 seconds. Probably in a month or two the majority of hardware will work without development packages or other modifications on an arch install. Until then, installation is tricky, I wouldn't suggest it unless you already know linux pretty well.

<comment><USER11> Optimus doesn't work, but there's a kernel module called VGA_Switcheroo that you can use to switch between active graphics cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Which begs the question: when are PC makers going to take their fingers off their a$$ and start producing decent hardware? (with a non Linux-restricting implementation of secure boot, KTHXBYE)

<comment><USER13> _"Which begs the question"_

That doesn't mean what you think it means.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question>

<comment><USER12> Ah, I stand corrected. So that "raises the question", right?

<comment><USER14> Yes, that is a good substitute

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For that much money I got a machine from Lenovo with a nice screen (not that nice) but also 32GB of RAM.

<comment><USER16> I hope you didn't buy the RAM from Lenovo. They mark up 8GB sticks by $300 each.

<comment><USER15> i got the RAM from crucial

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The various Linux desktop environments are also less than ideal in handling > high-density displays. Compared to OS X 10.7/10.8, the Unity, GNOME Shell, > and KDE desktops all looked like shit at 2880 x 1800 on the Retina MacBook > Pro. The text was difficult to read and even when toying around with > different scaling factors, the text ended up looking awkward in relation to > icons and other visuals.

I wonder how could a better resolution make the text more difficult to read. Too bad he didn't publish any screenshots.

<comment><USER16> High density means smaller text, which is hard to focus on.

<comment><USER17> You can use larger text. GNOME has had this for some time, a common setting for all programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why you need to run linux in a mac book?

<comment><USER19> I have to work on an latest-gen iMac at work because that's what they bought us. I tried for over a month to get used to it, but it's just too much crap that accumulates. I waste too much time on things I shouldn't even be thinking about.

Such as alt-tabbing doesn't cycle through the windows an application has, just the application. If I have three Sublime Text 2 windows open, I have to hunt it down like a predator.

So I just installed VMWare, and setup my Linux Mint 13 machine and work there exclusively now.

<comment><USER20> Did you know about alt-` -- it tabs between windows.

<comment><USER21> Exactly. Once you know that it's actually preferable to Alt-Tab doing everything. If you are like me with sometimes dozens of open windows it's nice to have one more layer of abstraction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux-ready, made-in-Germany "Volla Phone" succeeds on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://tuxphones.com/made-in-germany-linux-ready-volla-phone-kickstarter/ <comment><USER2> It's totally misleading of the article to suggest this phone is a success in any way. Building a phone (even on top of a rebranded device) is incredibly hard and expensive and unfortunately they didn't raise anywhere near enough money to even try.

The Volla Phone met an arbitrary goal of raising 20k, but they were clearly using the common KickStarter tactic of setting a really low initial goal that they hoped to blow past to build press and enthusiasm. But then unfortunately they... didn't. And they only tried this second approach after running a previous campaign to raise 350,000 euros and getting no where close.

Selling ~50 phones and not even managing to sell out the "early bird" option is the opposite of a successful KickStarter launch. They didn't even raise enough money to pay a single developer, let alone deliver an entire custom OS. And it's clear from the demo video that they don't have much software built yet. There's just no way they could deliver on their promises with the tiny amount of money raised.

I'd be surprised if this is even enough money to cover the time to purchase, box and ship out the 50 re-branded phones to the backers without installing any custom OS. I hope they decide to either just return the money or immediately ship out unmodified phones instead of trying to build their custom software. They just didn't get enough money to do that and it would most likely lead to pain and disappointment on all sides to even try.

<comment><USER3> > It's totally misleading of the article to suggest this phone is a success in > any way.

It sounded to more like the Kickstarter succeeded, which usually means they just hit their goal. If you read the article, it doesn't claim anywhere that the phone itself is a success.

That said, I agree with pretty much everything else you said.

<comment><USER4> Say "success on ..." still sounds dishonest and clickbaity. It should be "exceeded milestone" or just "reached their goal".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sceptical.

From my knowledge of the phone industry, and one of out past client's venture into it, the minimal viable budget for a cellphone project is $1M these days on the low side.

\- MOQs of all truly essential assemblies are huge: high-end PCBs, custom made camera modules, custom cut LCD/OLED cells, antenna-body integrated assemblies

\- RnD is long and torturous, even without Android atrocity: RF-tuning for high perf wireless, tiny high density PCBs development, lots of prototyping for bodywork and LCD assemblies

\- SCM challenges are monumental even for factories in South China: constant shortages and high lead times of speciality passives, time spent waiting for parts, while burning money, logistics to and from module integrators...

Smartphones are becoming like jet engines: while parts count in general go down per unit of functionality, and they become simpler for non-IC parts of the design, very few can make them competitively as the supply chain gets longer, and 3rd parties are now taking bigger and bigger cuts with each year.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't it be simpler to license an existing Android design from Samsung/Huawei/... and change as little as possible to make it run?

<comment><USER7> Googles Android license forbids this.

<comment><USER6> Are you saying that manufacturers that produce hardware that runs android are banned from also selling hardware (being an OEM manufacturer) that does _not_ run android (that doesn't fly with e.g. Samsung making TVs with their OS and Sony making cameras that runs non-android I guess)?

Somehow it doesn't seem possible to prevent HTC from building one smartphone and sell it either themselves or via another brand as an android phone, while at the same time selling the same design (screen peripherals etc) with some minor chages, maybe a slightly different SoC, to someone who wants to sell a phone with a different OS? How exactly would the license forbid it?

Obviously google owns the license and can probably unilaterally revoke it for anything they see as unpleasant (such as building OEM phones that run linux, instead of just TVs that do?) - but is this really expressed explicitly in their agreement? How?

<comment><USER8> > Are you saying that manufacturers that produce hardware that runs android > are banned from also selling hardware (being an OEM manufacturer) that does > not run android

It is the other way around companies that produce Google Android phones (with play store) are banned from producing anything Android not based on Googles stack. Amazon had to find out the hard way that basing your OS on Android makes it hard to find a manufacturer.

Of course this is not globally true. Various countries already informed Google just what they thought of that kind of licensing abuse. That led to Google carving out new licensing regions for every lawsuit and outright boycotting Turkey when they mandated the same treatment as the EU.

<comment><USER6> So no problem for a manufacturer to build a oem phone running a non-Android Linux then? It has no relation to Android if it runs a non-Android OS?

Or is there a

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm struggling to reconcile "Linux-ready" in the title and this blurb in the article body:

      MediaTek Helio P24 SoC is not one of the
      most easily hackable, and its Taiwanese
      manufacturer is not exactly famous for
      releasing kernel sources.

<comment><USER10> Please don't use code blocks to quote text, it's very hard to read on mobile and narrow viewports.

<comment><USER11> > MediaTek Helio P24 SoC is not one of the most easily hackable, and its > Taiwanese manufacturer is not exactly famous for releasing kernel sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let's cripple our project right from the beginning by including an ugly notch at the top, a "design feature" that tanked Essential, caused recent sales slip of new Nokia phones and forced even low-cost Chinese manufacturers to switch into drilling a circular hole in the display for placing camera in order to avoid its negative sales effects.

<comment><USER13> /opinion

<comment><USER5> Actually a very sensible opinion. If anybody put a bare minimum effort to survey the market, they would've found that some no notch models are being sold solely because of that. If you make 2 similar models, one with notch, and one without the first will sink in sales, things are as simple as that.

Look at sales stats for Mi Max 3. Despite good sales Mi kills it, and then get surprised how their other models didn't get any sales kick, and then resuming Mi Max production.

Same with other brands having a "Waterloo moment" with models lacking 3.5mm jack. Samsung saw trashy sales on low and mid-level models without jacks, made models with jacks, then removed them again, and is now about to introduce new A and J series phones with jacks again. Some times they don't learn...

I think the same thing was with removable batteries and tf cards.

What was good for Apple, was a real poison for brands with a polar opposite identity to Apple.

I attribute HTC's demise highhandedly to them denying removable storage, and jacking storage prices, while few power user brands were hammering that point.

I can remember such cases where blindly chasing trendsetters kills many times, going back to 200X, and Nokia.

So many brands went under chasing Nokia because they were perceived as "cheaper, worse Nokia's" just as today some brands became "worse Iphones"

<comment><USER13> Still think it is opinion, why not see it as 2 extra flaps of display at the top? Why _not_ cover those areas with display if you can? I certainly agree on the removable battery though.

I also hated that they removed the head phone jack. But I recently bought 16$ qcy bt headphones, never looked back. Personally I don't care much about notches and headphone jacks at all. The camera would now be my nr. 1 buying argument.

<comment><USER10> Because it leads to a very short status bar which annoys me a lot. And if I disable the notch to get a full status bar underneath it from settings, then the "flaps" get turned off system-wide for all apps so they're of no use.

Now I've switched back to my old notch-less phone and am much happier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > MediaTek Helio P24 SoC

Thanks, nope. Firmware is closed source and you'll never get updates in 99% cases.

</comment><comment><USER15> I hope some day, somebody will recognize that phones have become our everyday computers, and will create such a device.

A phone that is just that on it's own, but couple it with a dock and it becomes a desktop computer. It will of course require apps to have both phone and desktop UI variants, but given that most serious apps already have both phone and desktop versions i don't really see that as a major problem.

My current phone has just about as much RAM, CPU and GPU as my desktop machine has, so performance should be somewhat "desktop like".

I'm aware this is partially what Ubuntu tried to do with the Ubuntu Phone, but last i checked that project wasn't doing too well.

<comment><USER16> Samsung Dex has been doing this for years now.

<comment><USER17> I was surprised how useful Dex has become, and yet no one seems to speak about it.

Currently the only thing holding me back is that my particular phone (S9+) has fairly limited resolution support. IIRC the Note models are supposed to do much better as they have a discrete GPU for Dex output.

But basically all my day-to-day development tasks can be done on Dex and a SSH/terminal app.

<comment><USER18> I second your sentiment but the Android keyboard (external Bluetooth) is not very Linux friendly. I googled and experimented and there is no way to have an Esc key. I have to work in vi with control ], like on some broken terminal from the 80s. If anybody has a solution I'll pay with an upvote :-)

<comment><USER17> You can connect any regular keyboard through BT or USB. The escape key just works as expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of the best things about this phone is currently hidden in Update #6: Backers can get the phone with a preinstalled Ubuntu Touch OS! [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/volla/volla-phone- desig...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/volla/volla-phone-designed- with-simplicity-and-security-in-mind/posts/2769732)

</comment><comment><USER20> How many Kickstarters have we had for these phones? I will personally bet $1000 this doesn't ship.

</comment><comment><USER7> How does this compare to pinephone?

[https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/](https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/)

I might be wrong but it feels as if that's were the mindshare is right now (maybe because they have already shipped development phones)

</comment><comment><USER21> How can 20k euros buy a phone? I doesn't make any sense, unless it already exists and this is "only" a branding effort. The kickstarter mentions Gigaset, do they have a ready Ubuntu Phone already?

<comment><USER22> It looks to be like rebranded Gigaset GS290... They put their logo on the case and install some other OS for you and sell it for 50€ more than the original one...

<comment><USER7> I would happily pay those €50 if it works as advertised.

Time is money and anything that keeps me away from random dudes random ROM on XDA is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Surely 20k isn't enough to manufacture a phone. Even the tools themselves would cost more than that, let alone purchasing components. Unless they're CNCing the housing for every device

<comment><USER16> It's just a white label Gigaset GS290 from what I've read. No tooling costs etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just want a hand-sized general-purpose tablet with a 5g modem I can plug in when I need a phone. I like the 'security by isolation' aspect of physically unplugging my cellular connectivity. Otherwise I piggyback on Google Voice for texts/calls. Also bring back physical slide-out keyboards like the Motorola Sidekick.

:-)

</comment><comment><USER25> Kinda feel they would be better off providing an OS reflash service for a 50 euro fee of a range of phones they could expand over time. Given this is just a rebrand of an existing phone as many have pointed out.

</comment><comment><USER26> Where's helio P24? [https://www.mediatek.com/products/smartphones/helio-p](https://www.mediatek.com/products/smartphones/helio-p)

</comment><comment><USER27> It's exciting to see this. I believe such a design will have many applications in niche industries and niche use cases for sure.

</comment><comment><USER28> 20k isn't enough for communication cost for heaven sake. Plus what niche is it targeting? Geeks? Good luck milking the milkers.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why support this Kickstarter campaign instead of just buying a Gigaset GS290? For the custom OS?

</comment><comment><USER30> totally unrelated, any of you feel that kickstarter's logo is stale and due for an update?

</comment><comment><USER31> Another one to bite the dust.

</comment><comment><USER32> No dual SIM :(

<comment><USER32> Sorry, if it's a rebranded Gigaset GS290 then it did have dual SIM

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> My first reaction was "No f-ing way!". Then I decided to dig deeper.

This is just a Gigaset GS290 with different software:

[https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/gigaset- gs290/](https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/gigaset-gs290/)

Current street pricing for this phone appears to be around €269.

Volla is getting from €298 to €359 for them (Let's ignore the t-shirts, books, etc.).

If we assume they are buying the phones for, say, 25% off, their COGS is around €200 per unit. In other words, they are getting paid between €100 and €159 to develop software and support their version of the phone. In the case of the KS campaign, that amounts to about €5000 and €7950.

There are other possible business arrangements that are often negotiated in these kinds of deals. For example, Gigaset manages fulfillment under the Volla brand and they split the profits. That would imply zero upfront costs to Volla. That's the kind of deal I would want to make if I were in their shoes. Don't deal with hardware if you don't have to. Hardware is hard and very expensive.

I am going to guess or assume (and we know how dangerous assumptions can be) that the bulk of the software has already been developed and might even be in release-able condition. I make this assumption because they've been at this crowd-sourcing thing for a while.

In other words, they have sunk costs. And it might very well be that they don't really have to invest much more to actually deliver these modified COTS phones. In that context the €5K to €8K they just raised (after paying for the hardware) might be fine. It's a signal rather than a bankroll needed to produce phones. They are NOT manufacturing hardware from scratch. At worst they might have custom printed packaging, which costs nothing.

I then looked into Gigaset. It's a solid company. Used to be Siemens Home. Now 70% owned by Goldin Group out of Hong Kong (which puts into question just how much is really "Made in Germany"). Still, this is a real company with real products. Therefore, there is no reason to doubt the hardware at all.

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

One way I came out of this is to consider the idea that, if the Volla software does not work out for whatever reason users might be able to reprogram their phones with the standard Gigaset software and life goes on. If this is the case, and you like Gigaphone, this deal has basically zero risk. You are paying a relatively small premium to try a proposal that may or may not work. Which is fine. Good project.</comment>


The US just bombed Yemen, and no one's talking about it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/15/us-bombed-yemen-middle-east-conflict <comment><USER2> Let me summarize so far the US involvement in the middle east: US gets involved in Iran, then in Iraq - thing gets worse. US gets involved in Afghanistan - al quaeda is born. US make very limited involvement in Iraq - things get better. US gets involved in Afganistan again - things go to hell US invades Iraq - thing go to deeper hell US interfere minimally with Egypt's revolution by backing the winner both times - the country is somewhat stable. US interferes more heavily after dragging their feet in Libya and the place is in low level civil war. US interferes in Syria and we have hell on earth there.

See a pattern - you can rely on US to make the worst choice in the majority of cases.

The only sensible strategy in the Middle East is to support the strongman as long as he keeps the place together and switch to the new one, when the old no longer is. Realpoltik 101 - just listen to Kissinger.

<comment><AUTHOR> Beyond your US criticism, I think the main lesson is how you can wash the media while people think they are not missing every breakthrough story.

<comment><USER2> Look. The best natural position for us is to wait for natural winner to emerge and help him consolidate and work to have him as semi client. Instead US often chooses puppet that is 100% obedient but lacks the strength to rule a country - Karzai and the Iraq guy and the shah are prime examples.

The question was what candidates think - Trump don't have the brain to coherently describe that position - although his stronman admiration shows he instinctively gets it. And Clinton lacks the balls - because the whole left will jump against her.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I read several articles about this in the news before I learned that "no one is talking about it" \- go figure.

<comment><USER4> Apparently you didn't read this one though, considering

> Yet we've heard absolutely nothing about this from our presidential > candidates.

= it's not about it being unreported in the news.

<comment><USER3> I did read that part of the article, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this the same location that recently fired anti-ship missile to US warship?

There was some speculation on reddit whether it was "someone trying to draw US into the conflict" or "US poking the bees nest, seeking excuse to get involved". Now that US got involved, we can speculate if the admirals are idiots, or is the plan working..

<comment><USER6> The US had been helping the Saudis wage war in Yemen well before the anti-ship missile was fired at the US destroyer, which presumably is in response to a wedding being bombed.

Matt Lee of the Associated Press asked State Department spokesman John Kirby what the difference between US involvement in Yemen and Russian involvement in Syria is, to which there was no answer.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria- co...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-conflict- yemen-civil-war-aleppo-russia-assad-bombings-obama-saudi-arabia-arms- sales-a7357171.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was a top post on [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/578ags/us_launch...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/578ags/us_launches_strikes_in_yemen_after_missiles_aimed/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The US has been at war in Yemen for years.

<comment><USER9> We've always been at war with Eurasia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We do lots of terrible shit nobody wants to talk about. Sadly.</comment>


Tendrils of Crime: Visualizing the Diffusion of Stolen Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.01769 <comment><USER2> Too bad it's impossible to do the same with cold hard cash.</comment>


Show HN: AutoCloud – 3D Automated Cloud Diagrams and Documentation - <AUTHOR> https://www.autocloud.dev/ <comment><AUTHOR> Bring clarity to your cloud infrastructure with the most comprehensive visualization tool available for Google Cloud (AWS and Azure coming soon)</comment>


Why Selling WhatsApp To Facebook Would Be The Biggest Mistake (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/12/03/why-selling-whatsapp-to-facebook-would-be-the-biggest-mistake-of-jan-koums-and-brian-actons-lives/1 <comment><USER2> "1\. Had they stayed independent, these founders would have overseen businesses that would have been vastly more powerful than they were then and perhaps more than they are now under new management."

Had YouTube stayed independent, it would have been crushed under the foot of the media industry's juggernaut lawsuit machine and political ties. Not to mention it was bleeding to death, with no viable business model at the time (it would take the king of advertising years to figure out how to begin to monetize YouTube properly).

"3\. Selling WhatsApp to Zuckerberg in 2012 would be like Zuckerberg selling Facebook to Yahoo in 2006."

Not hardly. WhatsApp got roughly 19 times what Yahoo was willing to pay for Facebook. Not comparable scenarios. Even in 2012 it's likely they would have received net value far exceeding the 2006 Yahoo offer, accounting for the increased stock valuation.

"4\. You will never have a better business idea than WhatsApp for the rest of your lives."

That's probably true for Koum and Acton, and they just received roughly $8.55 billion and $3.8 billion for their best business idea. On what scale is one going to argue they didn't just pull off a financial coup?

"5\. How long would you last reporting to a 28 year old like Zuckerberg?"

$8.5 billion in pocket, this question no longer matters. Go do whatever you want a year or two from now, including buying the NY Yankees if you feel so inclined.

"8\. WhatsApp has a much brighter future as an independent company than Instagram did."

Approximately 19 times brighter apparently. And?

"9\. You can be the "next Facebook" – but only if you stay independent."

Know when to walk away, know when to run. The WhapsApp crew pulled off the perfect deal.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author seems to write a lot of negative/link bait articles on Facebook. Some examples:

1) Why Silicon Valley Tech Wunderkinds Will Only Ever Have 1 Good Business Idea During Their Entire Lives

2) Here's My Fix for Facebook: Make Facebook a Subsidiary of Instagram With Zuck Reporting to Systrom

3) Why Facebook Doesn't Have Mobile In Its Founding DNA - and Why That Spells Disaster

4)Why Peter Thiel Should Be Ashamed - And Resign From Facebook's Board Immediately

</comment><comment><USER4> Turned out to be true - they 19x'd what they would have gotten had they sold in 2012. I think everyone is missing the fact that this was 1.5 years ago - this article is proven CORRECT by today's acquisition, not wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> The author has some seriously flawed reasons. "How long would you last reporting to a 28 year old like Zuckerberg?" What's at stake isn't your pride, it's the life of your company, what you've spent X number of years building, the employees that believe in you, your users that you want to serve. Who cares how old Zuck is?

</comment><comment><USER6> NINETEEN BILLION DOLLARS can do quite a bit of world changing.

<comment><USER7> Everything about this screams that the author was imagining a much lower price point. I especially liked the part where he mentions that they won't have another idea like this for the rest of their lives. Guess what? They don't need anything for the rest of their lives, as they are billionaires. Haha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would happily make $16 billion mistakes.

<comment><USER9> Go halves?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Facebook didn't become Facebook by being the next Google or the next MySpace. It became the first social network that really appealed to people in a broad way and didn't overdo it with ads."

So Facebook was totally different from Myspace, except it was exactly the same but with less ads. Gotcha.</comment>


Amazon CloudWatch Logs in Kinesis - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2015/06/amazon-cloudwatch-logs-subscriptions/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a brilliant feature! With some Kinesis ingest processes it would be trivial to send all your "fresh" logs to logstash for example :D</comment>


T-Mobile's Hip CEO Not So Hip with His Status Quo Opposition to Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20141111/05323229102/t-mobiles-ultra-hip-ceo-not-so-ultra-hip-when-it-comes-to-his-clumsy-status-quo-opposition-to-net-neutrality.shtml

<comment><USER2> Finally, some realistic coverage of t-mobile, after the lipstick-pig routine that had so many fooled.

T-mobile is the same company they always were; desperate and petty.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even without the article, the photo of John Legere at Global Crossing is absolutely priceless. It really says everything that needs to be said about his schtick.</comment></comment>


Ghosts of Unix Past: a historical search for design patterns - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/411845/ <comment><AUTHOR> Part 2 of the article is here: <http://lwn.net/Articles/412131/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Part 4 <http://lwn.net/Articles/416814/> (but not freely available till Dec 2, unless a subscriber chooses to share it)

</comment><comment><USER2> Part 3 <http://lwn.net/Articles/414618/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Tiny nitpick: CP/M had a fixed, two-level hierarchy with 16 different areas of the disk, accessible via the "user" command.</comment>


XYDO Feels Like It's Taking The Pageviews Out of Publishers' Mouths - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/xydo_feels_like_its_stealing_the_pageviews_out_of.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4dc1f632fb4964f0%2C0 <comment><USER2> The first comment over on RWW makes a great point:

"I think XYDO feels different simply because, unlike most RSS readers, it's not made to disappear into the reading experience. Instead, it adds highly visible layers of functionality and interface on top of the reading experience (that's its draw, after all). When a typical RSS reader opens a full feed, you don't really notice, since the reader's just a vehicle for consumption. But because XYDO doesn't fade in the same way, it feels a lot more like linkjacking."</comment>


Submit a Privacy Act Request with the NSA to see what info they have on you - <AUTHOR> http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/foia/submit_privacy_act_request/index.shtml <comment><USER2> One practical reason to object to the government holding private information on everybody is that such information might be vulnerable to theft.

This is an example of a channel for information theft. What happens when someone submits a request for your information with your (forged) signature? That would be fraud, of course, but that doesn't mean it won't ever happen. Will they get all your texts and gmail?

Maybe they check requests very thoroughly and this isn't an exploitable security hole. But it changes the equation of storing data on 3rd party services: instead of just trusting the cloud provider and his software, you also have to trust the government to never make a mistake.

<comment><USER3> And what happens if they do make a mistake? Could you imagine the effects to society if this Complete Database were leaked -- if _everyone 's_ internet record were made public? It's mind-boggling.

<comment><USER4> How does a yottabyte get leaked?

<comment><USER5> One byte at a time.

<comment><USER6> that's a yotta bytes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> BoingBoing points to Muckrock ([http://boingboing.net/2013/06/11/howto-foia- the-nsa.html](http://boingboing.net/2013/06/11/howto-foia-the-nsa.html))

But it seems like Muckrock has done this sort of thing before, and the take- away I am getting is: \----make sure to request fee estimates before completion of request ----

$1,200 bucks for records of parking complaints @ NSA HQ! - get outta here. [https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of- america-10/nsa...](https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of- america-10/nsa-parking-complaints-254/)

<comment><USER8> FOIA and Privacy Act requests are completely different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> AKA, "Start a dossier on me if you haven't already. If you already have one, please select me for further scrutiny." 1st amendment is so toast.

<comment><USER10> My first thought.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. I was like okay lets pull my records, it'll be interesting. Then I thought okay maybe they pull them, it gets sent through some automatic scanning process, eg "Why does this person want their information pulled? Lets put it through our automated scan-for-suspicious-behavior machine. Oh what's this? The subject was in the neighborhood at the time of an unsolved case, lets bring them in for questioning and generally disrupt their life in a horrible manner"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think I'm going to do this, just for shits and giggles. But I wish the site said more about what they consider a valid digital signature. I wonder if the US government has a general policy on this? TBH, I've never really bothered with digital signatures on email much, so I'm pretty clueless on the topic. _shrug_

<comment><USER13> I wonder whether requesting the info puts you on any sort of list.

<comment><USER12> I hope so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like it's applicable for non-US citizens as well.

However, for most people this would probably be nothing more than a great way to put yourself on the proverbial "list".

<comment><USER15> Who cares? Do you want to live in a country where this matters?

<comment><USER16> It doesn't really seem to matter where you live, if the government of the USA decides that it doesn't like you.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, you can be sitting there eating dinner with your family when a remote controlled drone operated from half way across the world fires a missile at you killing you and your family instantly without any forewarning.

Now that's fucked up.

<comment><USER18> Or, in the UK, our police will happily accompany US officers to your door step and let them render you.

I'm sure the "K" in UK is a place holder for an "S". And that "S" is for "special relationship".

Oh, any actual American people aware of the UK / US "special relationship"? It a hilarious self delusion on our part.

<comment><USER19> On the American side there is a very special awareness of England. (We are generally ignorant enough to not understand the difference between the UK and England.)

That relationship is that you're the goto example of tyranny worth rebelling against. Among politically active Republicans that I know, you're also a good source of statistics showing that implementing gun control increases the crime rate. (Never mind the fact that you changed how you collect statistics to include more crimes in your statistics, the NRA loves the fact that you implemented gun control and crime rates went up.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They require a "digital signature" for email requests, but say nothing about the format, nor any requirements for the signing key. You'd think that the NSA, of all organizations, would not put such technological naivete on public display.

<comment><USER21> You can use the Sha-2 hash of the last 1000 URLs in your browser history. The NSA will then hash the same on its side. If the two match, they know it's you.

<comment><USER22> lol, it reads like some serious advice until you think about it.

<comment><USER23> lol, it sounds as a joke until you realize it could work

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "By electronic e-mail" _groan_

</comment><comment><USER25> Why would anyone believe the info they offer up? Meaning how can you prove what you don't know (ie, if they actually have more info than they let up) and why would any of this stuff about 'we want transparency now' lead to the NSA actually showing their cards? It's silly to expect an agency based on secrecy to not be secretive.

So what does one do in the face of all this? I simply don't know, aside from starting from scratch.

<comment><USER26> It would be fun to flood them with requests though. They apparently have a lot of free time available spying on every woman and child.

<comment><USER27> Yes, "fun," because it's absolutely hilarious to flood your government with busy work as a valid protest. Stop being a petty child and realize that the only effect that this would have is either a stoppage of serving requests or an uptick in hiring for the department.

<comment><USER26> Got any better ideas? I don't see any positive progress in the privacy department so pretty much whatever we're doing isn't working.

Might as well sit back and make it as difficult as possible for them to do their job.

Hell maybe the extra workers could stimulate the economy and help pay back the debt to China :)

<comment><USER27> Sure, donate to the EFF. Write to your senator. Try to keep it in the medias' eye.

And I know you were "kidding" about the "debt to China" part, but the economy doesn't work that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The NSA is exempt from disclosing investigative files on individuals, even if they have information on you. Here is a typical rejection letter if you want to see:

[https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of- america-10/aar...](https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of- america-10/aaron-swartz-nsa-2485/#684502-glomar-response)

<comment><USER29> It's just anecdotal evidence, but I can personally confirm this. I submitted a FOIA request to see what various departments had on me. Perhaps I should be thankful that I'm not interesting enough for them to have compiled any information on me, because all of them came back with a generic letter stating that they didn't have anything for me.

The exception in this case was with the NSA, in which case they stated that they weren't going to divulge anything, much like the letter in the URL above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like how they ask you to send your SSN via e-mail. I mean, electronic e-mail.

</comment><comment><USER31> How do we know that they would not be collecting even more info on us by making such a request?

<comment><USER32> This will just become another record in the database of course. But is it worth it to have a record of your signature to (possibly?) obtain (some of) the data they collected on you? That's what you have to decide.

<comment><USER33> If you've ever sent the signature to anyone by email then they've arguably got a copy already.

<comment><USER34> If you've ever paid taxes, gotten a state ID/drivers license, signed up for selective service (as a male), or any number of other routine, upstanding citizen activities, the government already has your signature.</comment></comment></comment></comment>