Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm <comment><USER2> This is not one of Asimov's best works. While he is probably right about Orwell's feud with Stalinism, to judge 1984 by how well it predicts the future is beside the point, just as it would be a mistake to judge Asimov's own work by the accuracy of his imagining of future computer technology.

Asimov's dismissal of 'newspeak' as mostly just abbreviation completely overlooks the power of propaganda and fake news, or the Whorfian concept that underlies it. He complains that a human-operated surveillance state would not work, but this review was written before the opening of the Stasi files revealed how it does. Asimov's suggestion that Orwell should have posited automated surveillance does, of course, foreshadow what is becoming possible now, but he does not seem to do any better than Orwell in imagining such a future.

Orwell's renaming of Britain as 'Airstrip One' shows that, far from thinking of Oceania as the British Empire, he regards Britain as a satellite state of the USA, analogous to the cold war status of Eastern European states.

I had to chuckle at Asimov's complaints of sexism and racial bigotry in the novel, considering the prevalence of these things in his beloved 'golden age' science fiction, and for some time after.

<comment><USER3> > Asimov's dismissal of 'newspeak' as mostly just abbreviation completely > overlooks the power of propaganda and fake news, or the Whorfian concept > that underlies it.

But the strong Sapir-Whorf position of linguistic determinism in which the concept of newspeak is firmly grounded has generally been rejected and was never well supported; propaganda more generally is a different issue than newspeak specifically.

<comment><USER4> It's also entirely possible that even if Asimov had been introduced to the hypothesis at the time that he may have sided with Sapir and Whorf themselves who felt the Strong position was untenable for more than a thought experiment (ie, that it was a proper Null Hypothesis designed to be disproven, to prove more useful things such as some of the corollaries to the Weak version of the Hypothesis). Asimov would have probably loved that about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, given the implication that he and (John W.) Campbell built the Three Laws as a Null Hypothesis to disprove. [1] Makes you wonder if Campbell had taken a fancy to Sapir-Whorf as much as he did Psionics or Robotics what sorts of sci-fi might have mined that concept; an Asimov Sapir-Whorf novel might have been fascinating.

[1] I personally am on the side that the novels do manage to disprove the Three Laws several times, particularly in that the Zeroth Law is a huge consequent failure in the Laws (resulting directly in the failure of the Empire and a lot of the weirdness of the Foundation era), but it's a fascinating debate on both sides, and an interesting question of which side Asimov himself was on at various points in his career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you would like to read the book again: [http://1984.surge.sh](http://1984.surge.sh)

</comment><comment><USER6> In the comments: reviews of a review of a book.</comment>


Stripping Reddit From HackerNews with Yahoo's BOSS Mashup - <AUTHOR> http://lethain.com/entry/2008/jul/12/stripping-reddit-from-hackernews-with-boss-mashup/

<comment><USER2> union -> intersection

<comment><AUTHOR> Um. I wish I had an excuse. For some reason it just clicked and I never thought about it, although it is clearly and irrefutably wrong. Thanks for pointing that out, its been fixed (although the cached copy may take a bit to update).</comment></comment>


5 geniuses who renounced their work  - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/12/05/mf.geniuses.who.renounced.work/index.html?hpt=C2 <comment><USER2> Guidelines: "If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids.""

</comment><comment><USER3> You can add Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie to that list, both of whom became so exasperated and annoyed with the characters of their creation that they killed them off.

In particular: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/devon/hi/people_and_places/arts_...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/devon/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_9131000/9131482.stm) [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=13&...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=13&ved=0CCAQFjACOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fuktv.co.uk%2Falibi%2Fstepbystep%2Faid%2F592822&ei=qAT8TNSaEMiKhQfRluGICw&usg=AFQjCNF15PuA7pquOkotga5c1KsmcUI- wg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe this is why I rewrite backends from scratch in different languages searching for the one that just feels right.

This probably explains why I get a bunch of groans when I announce "I'm going to rewrite the back-end".

<comment><USER5> I just read 5 different people that had 5 different reasons for renouncing their work? Which do you mean?

Did your backend software turn into a tyrant?</comment></comment>


Your 404 is lame - <AUTHOR> http://your404islame.com

<comment><USER2> Only one of the example sites seemed to have custom 404s. Unless I'm doing it "wrong", which I'm more than willing to accept may be the case?

yayyyyy!- <http://yonenlabs.com/imaginarypage>

booo - <http://scarfilms.com/imaginarypage> (this is just a standard not found error!)

booo - <http://www.wryandginger.com/imaginarypage>

booo - <http://tether.com/imaginarypage>

BUT - I like the idea, I like your designs, and I think an obvious, flat and low fee is great!

</comment><comment><USER3> It is ok to put something funny on the 404 page and the pages for the other errors. But a proper and useful 404 error page will not only entertain lost visitors, but guide them back to existing pages of a website.

A sitemap and possibly a search input field are a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> Their own 404 page: <http://your404islame.com/non-existing-page></comment>


Let's Kill the Word Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://dataskeptic.com/epnotes/kill-the-word-cloud.php <comment><USER2> That and the "hairball graph"!</comment>


To Develop Expertise, Motivation is Necessary but Insufficient - <AUTHOR> http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/11/25/to-develop-expertise-motivation-is-necessary-but-insufficient/

<comment><USER2> This is great...

"One method comes from the physicist John Wheeler (the PhD advisor of Richard Feynman). Wheeler recommended that, after we solve any problem, we think of one sentence that we could tell our earlier self that would have 'cracked' the problem. This kind of thinking turns each problem and its solution into an opportunity for reflection and for developing transferable reasoning tools."

<comment><USER3> That always struck me as the natural way to compress knowledge for exams. I've got nowhere near the intellect to remember whole derivations and proofs, so I _have_ to boil them down just to have any hope of retaining them.

Doesn't always work, though. Turns out that memorizing the form of the Lorentz transformation will allow you to solve arbitrary length contraction / time dilation type problems, but nowhere near as quickly as the physics GRE demands. _C'est la vie_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "For chess, deliberate practice includes deep analysis of grandmaster games."

If this is true, could studying (reading) good code do the same for programming? One could, for example, begin to write an application and find code to a similar application where they would be able to check why things are implemented a the way they are as they go along. The tricky part here is deciding which code is worth studying.

<comment><USER5> This is why I haven't yet read all of Peter Norvig's coding essays -- you can depend on him to publish code that's really hard to improve on (by the metrics he's writing for, like clarity). I like to write my own first before reading someone else's, because yes, it really does help you suck the juice out of a learning opportunity. Feynman and Turing both seem to have emphasized this too.

Really polished code is hard to find. I've been playing around off and on with Ken Thompson's regular expression search paper most recently.

<comment><USER6> I feel that the end result of polished code isn't useful unless you can see the process they went through to get there. It seems difficult to retrace their footsteps.

<comment><USER5> I've found that extra info to be interesting and useful, it's true, when I can get it. For instance, Norvig's Lisp-in-Python essays came out with the code still in some flux and I could compare his improvements to mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone else was wondering what the other chess book is, it is Rook Endings By Grigory Levenfish and Vassily Smyslov.

<comment><USER8> Did he really read only those 2 books? I'm not a chess player, but still I find that incredible. Surely he didn't learn all his openings only by playing and reading one collection of games?

<comment><USER9> I'm not really surprised, I went through Josh Waitzkin's chessmaster tutorials, and one thing that stuck out was him talking about how his coach had him focus on the mid- an end-game, and hardly any on openings.

The idea I think is that by not knowing openings very well, you end up quickly getting out of the opening book, neutralizing your opponent's advantage and into where you're strongest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who would have thought...

</comment><comment><USER11> a similar thing occurs for job motivation, which research has shown is not necessairly linked to job performance</comment>


Ask HN: What it's like to move from home to pursue a dream opportunity? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Yesterday something funky happened to me. I received yet another job offer, but this time for a very well known UK company. A dream opportunity.
Basically they'd love it if I would move away from my home and family in Canada to join them there. They're inviting/paying me to meet the team for one day to see if I like it and if I like the project/team/etc.
Following that request, a bit dizzy with the "holy crap is this really happening?!" feeling, I talked about it with my family to see all their faces going pale with fear of losing me forever.
I'm used to traveling, I've spent several months away from Canada for various reasons such as working (not it-related at the time though). They know I always come back home, I love it here but I feel like I'd me missing something huge that could totally redefine my life even if I don't speak a word of that country's main language.
I'm currently 25 years old, I've been working for a startup for the last year and a half and have received a partnership request from my client which is great but sometimes I feel like the project is slowly drifting apart, my client has a job, kids, a wife and way more priorities than I personally do. It's a lot on his shoulders with the investors pushing in his back.
I have also a girlfriend of a few years, animals, a big and full apartment, etc.
---
So the reasons I'm asking this here are: - Anyone lived the same? What was your decision and how it ended up? - Did/Do you like the experience of working abroad? - Considering the wall of text I just wrote ^^ what do you think I should do? - How did your family/peers reacted? Are they mad or something?
Thanks to whoever takes the time to reply, this is very important for me.
Have a nice day. <comment><USER2> You're 25 man, use all the opportunities you get while you still get them. Go there, make sure if you want it or not and if you do just invite your family with you. If they don't want to come, their loss.

I did once took a job opportunity in a neighbor country where I didn't speak the language, but overall and all the experience rather changed my life in a good way not a bad way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes I forget how young I am! I'll go there to see what's going on and we'll see ;-)

Every time I spent more than a few weeks in another country, it always totally changed the way I acted about life. I totally see this happening again.

Thanks for the reply, greatly appreciated!</comment></comment>


This is the Google Chrome OS netbook keyboard -- Engadget - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/03/is-this-the-google-chrome-os-netbooks-keyboard/ <comment><USER2> The small part of me that was mildly curious about Chrome OS when it was announced has been completely absorbed into the remaining part that sees no use case for it.

I hope I'm wrong though.

<comment><USER3> If you really believe there's no use case for ChromeOS I think you're interacting with a very small subset of people.

I'll be the first to admit it probably isn't appropriate for power users. But most users aren't power users and those people are plagued with level upon level of complexity and bugs that inhibit their work.

I'm in charge of an IT department and the 5 most common complaints are all related to issues the Chrome OS should, in theory, fix. And that's just business users.

Think about home users who have to deal with virus scanners, malware, adware, errant programs running in the background, system updates and so on. Not to mention the simple cost advantage (Even academically priced Office still costs $100 in itself).

Finally Microsoft hasn't maintained Windows as well as it should have. So you have a shell that's been around since 1993 that is constantly getting new stuff tacked on to it. If you deal with it for long enough you start to see these flaws very clearly. Things like Wireless connections failing for no good reason (which are fixed with a simple right click and repair) or explorer grinding to a halt simply because the user tried to access a resource that wasn't there.

So there's plenty of use case here. Whether Google executes well enough is another story but there's definitely a need.

<comment><USER2> For me, it's not about being a power user; I'm actually quite happy to see the new era of "stripped down" os's become commonplace for people to use.

I just honestly don't see anything that Chrome OS does that Google couldn't already do with Android.

They've stated that they think of the distinction being whether there is a keyboard (Android is for devices without a keyboard/Chrome is for ones that have one), but to me that seems arbitrary.

Functionally, Android is all the functionality of Chrome OS with the added benefit of running native applications.

I don't particularly like Android, but I think it's totally well-suited to the market they're trying to go after.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When will people learn that the right place for the power button is not right above the second-most commonly hit key on the keyboard? :/

<comment><USER5> To me all power buttons should have a delay hold on them (ie you have to hold it for 2 or 3 seconds), then placement doesn't really matter. I can't even count how many times I have turned off my laptop via the docking station while plugging a usb cable into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope Chrome OS has an option to swap ctrl and search.

</comment><comment><USER7> cool, now when i'm typing into a text box and accidentally press caps lock, a slow and labored process will begin loading with multiple pop-ups and new tabs/windows rather than the slight annoyance of inadvertent capital letters.</comment>


Ask HN: Doing due diligence on potential investors? - <AUTHOR> I was at a networking/seminar event for film producers and investors (I'm in the former group) and met a variety of interesting people, several of whom were early-stage technology investors. As a general point, if you're an engineer and have or are contemplating a startup, attend such an event if you can - I found it a very empowering and educational experience - empowering to actually meet people out there who are actively looking to invest (there's a yawning social divide between the creative and financial communities in film) and educational in terms of hearing from investors about their needs and challenges.
Anyway, one person I met there - let's call him Mr X - was speaking a lot about new media, social networking and digital distribution, and mentioned investing in Y combinator. I pegged him for a member of this community, and sat down with him for a chat during  a break in the presentations. As soon as I mentioned YC he went off on a torrent of entrepeneurial excitement and investment possibilities - which I found a bit hard to keep up with, actually - but when I asked if he read HN it sailed right over his head. 'It's a discussion forum run by Paul Graham,' I added, which didn't seem to click with him either. So I assumed he was too busy and high-powered to deal with the hacking end of things.
But as time went on in the conversation, and in some other conversations I listened in on later, I began to wonder if he was for real - much talk of buzzwords and high multiples, and many interesting mentions, but after a while it sounded like a classic fast-talking hustle. I also noticed that the speakers who most impressed me with their insight, experience and businesslike demeanor all ended up backing themselves out of conversations with Mr X. After I got home I checked out Mr X's blog, which looked and read like he talked - lots of enthusiasm and connectivity to hot topics and projects, but little coherence.
I didn't dislike Mr X. He's a nice person who radiated enthusiasm, was full of ideas, and emphasized good karma and mutuality as a key part of successful business. He had insights and opinions on markets and companies that I know well, and which would find wide agreement here. But he also made me nervous, as if I were talking to someone on cocaine (which he wasn't, I hasten to add - he was just so fast and forceful in his conversation).  One instinct was telling me 'you should have a meeting with this guy', but another was telling me 'you should never, ever, bring someone like this to a meeting - you might get a deal, or you might get ejected...by force'.
I'll probably keep this relationship purely social, since it benefits neither party to get into any kind of a relationship if one side has misgivings. But I'm also considering the possibility that being pushed out of one's comfort zone can be scary, but is sometimes necessary.
Has anyone else had an experience like this, and how do you evaluate potential business partners or relationships? Are there any litmus tests you've found useful as part of your networking process? <comment><USER2> A lot of investors know YC but not HN, so you shouldn't read anything into that.

The best way to judge an investor (like people in many other fields) is simply to ask people who've worked with him.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the second time in approximately one week that I have seen someone describing getting a business proposition from someone who fits this description. The other was a potential investor describing a similar experience with someone looking for money. Perhaps it is the same person they are describing, perhaps not.

I have met someone like this before myself and can say he clicked with a particular individual for quite a while, and they made a pocket full of money together. Like dating, it seems there is someone for everyone but not everyone is right for everyone else. All people are different and have unique personalities.

As far as looking for an investor that meets your needs and evaluating a potential business partner, like dating, sometimes you have to get back into the saddle. Everyone is different. As far as a litmus test, I would say just go with your gut feeling, if it feels right you will probably know it right away. Everyone is different.</comment>


Full Wikipedia Hosted on a Raspberry Pi Zero W - <AUTHOR> http://wikipenguin.onthewifi.com <comment><USER2> I was hoping for some discussion of how this was done, it looks like there is some sort of software for hosting a specially encoded version of Wikipedia, and the overall goal is to provide access to a Wikipedia in areas without good internet access, but details are sparse and spread out. I'd like to know more!

<comment><USER3> According to links I found on the page, it looks like the software being used is provided by Kiwix [1], and the file format used to archive Wikipedia (and other sites Kiwix archives) is ZIM [2].

I agree, it's an interesting project. I would like to see more specifically about how many users they can serve at once from a Pi Zero. Unless they just stuck Cloudflare in front of it?

[1] [https://www.kiwix.org/en/](https://www.kiwix.org/en/)

[2] [https://openzim.org](https://openzim.org)

<comment><USER4> It's down at the moment with an error about capacity, so presumably not behind a CDN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How much space does the full instance take? It would be interesting to have a personal article recommender based on the stats form your own Wikipedia instance

<comment><USER6> There are different dumps. Text doesn't take much space. It's the images and videos. Usually about a 100GB. Check [https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages](https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to kill the Trojan horse PSW.Agent.ABTK - <AUTHOR>

This little gem has installed itself as a dll called msbixnl.dll (It's apparently random in each installation) and linked to every executable on my XP box.
If I remove it with AVG I get an avalanche of complaints.
My XP box is unusable. I need to kill this thing without nuking my system.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> fdisk it from linux, Its the only way to be sure. :)

Seriously though, the only way to fix stuff like that is to get outside the system. Boot with a livecd like knoppix and run a virus scanner on the infected partition.

There's usually no way for an infected system to "heal thyself" without an uninfected reference point to work from. If you have to boot into the compromised OS to try to fix it, the malware gets the first move.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. One of my friends got a nasty little piece of Malware on his computer last year, and that was the only thing I found that could get it off.

<http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php>

<comment><AUTHOR> love to, except I cannot bring up ff ie8 or chrome - they all kak.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've got an idea.

I'll kill msboxnl.dll - it's just living in the system32 dir - and REPLACE it with some harmless dll!

Anyone got any ideas on what harmless dll to use?</comment>


The First Sentence Is a Handshake (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/william-gibson-by-heart/382027/ <comment><USER2> The first sentence is a prompt for GPT-3 to write the rest of your book. :)

<comment><USER3> T-Rex: The first sentence is a prompt for GPT-3 to write the rest of your book. :)

T-rex: But then it's a PUSHING TITLE to PATCH.

T-Rex: And you cram more of your book into the space between them, like a book loop!

Dromiceiomimus: That's... well, I guess it's a little too much.

T-rex: The space between them is called "the foamy bottom".

T-rex [[with emphasis]]: It's basically the space between the page and the ol' spindle!

Utahraptor: So what's your climax?

T-rex: That yo know, I mean

T-rex: But you don't say "that yo know where to look for inspiration". You just say, "That yo know a place where I can start."

Utahraptor: It's the place where you can start a sustained conversation about what idea would be an excuse to tear this friggin' book off into the corner of the room!

T-rex: You can? Let yo start!

{{title text: I could have a place where I can START the conversation and tell yo I think the guy should pull the trigger!}}

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "First sentences are doors to worlds."

\- Ursula K Le Guin

</comment><comment><USER5> Instantly reminded me of a similar older quote from Jhumpa Lahiri in the NYTimes: "The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace."</comment>


The weakest link by far is Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/08/07/how-apple-and-amazon-security-flaws-led-to-my-epic-hacking <comment><USER3> How is Apple the weakest link in this? According to Honan's account, Amazon was as equally, if not more weak in its verification processes:

[http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat- hona...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan- hacking/all/)

> _First you call Amazon and tell them you are the account holder, and want to > add a credit card number to the account. All you need is the name on the > account, an associated e-mail address, and the billing address. Amazon then > allows you to input a new credit card. (Wired used a bogus credit card > number from a website that generates fake card numbers that conform with the > industry's published self-check algorithm.) Then you hang up._

> _Next you call back, and tell Amazon that you've lost access to your > account. Upon providing a name, billing address, and the new credit card > number you gave the company on the prior call, Amazon will allow you to add > a new e-mail address to the account. From here, you go to the Amazon > website, and send a password reset to the new e-mail account. This allows > you to see all the credit cards on file for the account — not the complete > numbers, just the last four digits. But, as we know, Apple only needs those > last four digits. We asked Amazon to comment on its security policy, but > didn't have anything to share by press time._

At least to get into the Apple account, you need the credit card on file. For Amazon, you can _send a fabricated credit card number_ and get complete access (because you can add a new email account, to which you send a password reset to).

Apple just seems like the worser player because Mat Honan put so much power into the hands of iCloud. If Honan was in charge of administering enterprise services using Amazon's EC2 services, and hackers used his account to wipe out everything (or compromise corporate security), everyone would be calling out Amazon.

 __Edit: I haven't seen this fact mentioned much, but Honan's billing address was compromised through a WHOIS lookup on his domain. This is a huge reason to use registry protection services. It's true someone could look you up using things like Pipl and Spokeo, but that's only if you have something in public records, such as a mortgage (or, in some cases, leases).

Honan is in an especially tough situation because of the uniqueness of his real name.

<comment><USER4> The level of security you apply to a service ought to be proportionate to the potential loss. Apple have failed here completely, providing a woeful level of security for a service where the potential cost (loss of all user data) for the end-user is very high.

Amazon on the other hand doesn't (potentially) have the power to wipe your machines and cause havoc. If someone compromises your Amazon account, then worst case they can order goods in your name to be sent to you & Amazon will be out the cost of shipping and re-selling those goods, plus the cost of any chargebacks if they mess you about refunding your credit card. In other words, the risk here lies with Amazon, not the end-user, so they are rightly free to set the level of security applied to Amazon accounts to whatever they feel meets their goals.

It's not Amazon's fault that the 4 digits that the credit card companies decided that it was ok to leave on your receipts are precisely the four digits that Apple accepts as evidence that you own the card in question. The fault lies with Apple for accepting data that you leave behind every time you make a purchase with your credit card (it's printed on every credit card receipt you leave behind at the local pizza joint IIRC) as being suitable evidence to permit an anonymous caller access to an Apple account.

Now, if Amazon applies the same level of security to accounts with personal data or other costs to the end-user (cloud drive, Amazon S3 or EC2 accounts and so on) then you'd be right to lay into them. Does anyone know if that's the case?

<comment><USER5> Well, if you have AWS linked to your amazon account I would imagine this could be disastrous...

<comment><USER6> AWS supports two factor auth among other ways to secure your account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's getting pretty annoying that Marco is _consistently_ able to recap yesterday's top tech news item, _add no insight,_ and hit the top of HN.

Or am I missing something? Is there value added in this process? Or do these concerns end up reaching a much wider audience?

<comment><USER8> We like rehashing old news to feel better about ourselves.

Put another, less inflammatory way, Hacker News tends very highly towards the ephemeral. I would argue certainly more highly than reddit and possibly even more highly than something like 4chan.

This creates a detrimental effect because the discussion around these news stories is more long-lived than HN (the discussion vector) would let us believe.

This creates something I'd call the Hacker News Timeshift - blogspam based on yesterday's news _purely_ on the off chance that the generated blog post will act as a vector for spurring the truncated discussion, thus generating plenty of ancillary or almost coincidental traffic to the blogspam.

Anyone who visits the new stories page once a day will see this effect in action for roughly 50% of the stories that were on the news page yesterday.

<comment><USER9> Nice observation. I buy it, but question how often authors have that specific intent in mind vs. unaffiliated submitters and voters creating the narratives with what they can find. Who knows? There's a chance Madonna^WMarco himself might not be targeting the HN masses with his latest post.

Regardless, it's finally dawning on me that the never-ending stream of Apple punditry is a fucking bore, including the "high quality" sources in the echo- chamber such as DF and 5by5.

<comment><USER8> Hacker News, in general, is a fucking bore. The nice thing about being random access is that you can be highly selective in both the stories that you read and the discussions you participate in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple's performance here is inexcusable for a software company. It displays either a complete disregard or a complete lack of understanding of basic security.

<comment><USER10> I think that might be too harsh. For people like us, customer service policies aren't normally included in "basic security". Obviously they should be. But my guess is that this kind of vulnerability exists all over the world in all sorts of industries.

In the US, at least, regulated banks have some security requirements that might prevent this (though I'm not sure). But outside of that my guess is that it's routine for a customer service agent to be able to make any modification to an account they want, without an extra authentication factor or supervision.

So yes: blame Apple. But be wary, they can't possibly be the only ones.

<comment><USER11> Yes, definitely blame Apple, no doubt about it. I'm still a little shocked that the last 4 cc digits constitutes 'security'. An easy alternative - <USER2> I think they already have - is the whole two security questions thing. I would feel much better - as a customer - if they used those.

This type of thing is going to happen more and more and the fact that remote wipe of all the devices happened totally negates any advantages of using cloud services. I mean, what's the point of having everything backed up remotely if

a) the backup is not current b) the same remote servers can wipe your devices at any time

In addition, it's possible the remote backups could be removed as well (although not sure about that for iCloud) and in that case, you might as well not back anything up and have a hard drive die (at least that could be recovered I suppose).

Apple needs to jump out in front of this asap and announce a policy change in regards to security in order to put people at ease. I'm glad this is making waves and I think there needs to be more noise about it in order to get them to change.

<comment><USER12> Well, If he had a backup (either remote or local) it wouldn't have mattered. It would mean a few hours spent with Time Machine, but he wouldn't lose his data. And a remote backup should not be "removable".

Also, don't ever expect Apple to do anything ASAP. Even if the whole world shouts at them, they won't say anything. They take their time to (hopefully) think this through.

<comment><USER13> >> Well, If he had a backup (either remote or local) it wouldn't have mattered.

For this specific thing, no. But this was a fairly blatant act by the hacker. What if they silently read your iCloud mail, or used the Find my iPhone functionality to stalk you.

<comment><USER12> They couldn't _silently_ do anything. They won't give you passwords, they give you the ability to reset it. If the hacker were to reset it, the reporter would notice (as he wouldn't be able to use his account anymore). And I think Find my iPhone would cease working if the password saved by the app does not match what's stored in the cloud (i.e. hacker's bogus password).

In case of cookie sniffing, Google shines. They show you the IP addresses of people who have used your account recently. If you (or them) spot an stalker, you can reset the password. I don't know how effective that could be with 3G, but at least

\---

That said, It's no secret that Apple's password system is absolute garbage. I had to reset it 5 times last month because someone was trying to get to my iCloud account (probably brute-force). Apple would de-activate my account and would require me to re-enter security questions and choose a "new" password that I haven't used in the past year. And every time I had to spend an hour typing the new password in my various devices. AND I WOULDN'T RECEIVE MAILS IN THE MEANTIME. Just ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This whole saga proves it's too hard for companies to implement effective security policies on their own.

What's needed right away is a "badge of security approval" from an independent third party, which verifies not just the technological side, but the customer- service side too. Including things like:

\- password policies (e.g. not limiting to 16 characters)

\- hashing and salting passwords

\- standards for security questions (these are usually so horribly written)

\- standards for identity verification if you've forgotten password AND sercurity question answers (most sites will not be big enough to bother with this, so you just lose your account, but Facebook/Apple/Google/etc. need to have a common model, so inconsistencies between companies can't be exploited)

\- policies for sending out password-reset emails, adding/changing e-mail addresses, with appropriate user notification

\- waiting periods between changing emails and passwords, so you can't just go and change everything about an account all at once

\- special unique privileges to initiate operations that can delete large amounts of data (like a special second password, or extra security questions, for deleting your account, remote wipe, etc.)

These are just vague ideas off the top of my head, not an actual proposal. But we really need a set of "best practices", and a way of identifying that companies are actually following those best practices.

A secure "lock" icon in the browser bar is no longer enough.

<comment><USER15> I think "Security questions" need to be completely destroyed and the earth salted. Then we have a long talk about them before bringing them back in a very careful, limited format.

Bank Of America is horrible in this. First off, if someone else tries to log in using your username 3 times, it locks you out of your account. You need access to your email to get back in.

But it demands you re-create three security questions after that. I chose a simple username so other people stumble across it a lot. So I have to go through this process frequently, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

How securely are they storing this PII? Probably not at all. I try to give the exact same questions and answers every time to limit what BoA knows about me, but someone compromising by BoA account might be able to learn that information and use it to cascade attacks into other services. (They display by secret questions and their answers to me in plaintext.)

<comment><USER16> There is no reason for banks to have any security questions at all, or even passwords. They can mail security tokens to all their customers and rely on the postal office validating the identity of the customer. And if the security token breaks or is lost they can just mail a new one.

This is what all or virtually all Swedish banks do.

Only websites where the users need instant access or you have a low profit per user cannot afford security tokens. Banks are obviously not included here.

<comment><USER17> No, they can't rely on the post office. The workers there aren't paid that well, after all, and some of them would probably be quite happy to take money on the side to make a few security tokens disappear into the hands of a fraudster.

<comment><USER18> They already send credit and debit cards in the mail. Is this substantively different? Do we have widespread problems of postal workers stealing credit or debit cards? What's in place to prevent that, and why couldn't the banks use similar measures with an OTP device?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know where else to bring this up, and had no idea how to discuss it when it happened. So i'll do it here, in this excellent thread of Security discussion.

Dropbox doesn't send an email notification, or anything of the sort, when adding a computer to your Dropbox account.

I discovered this, when one day I realized some of my files in Dropbox were deleted. Specifically my 1Password file.

I logged in to check things out, and discovered that there was a weird computer added to my account. I promptly changed my password to dropbox, did a recover of my 1password file, changed the master password of that, then went through and changed passwords of my most important information stored in 1password.

The fault lied with me, in that my dropbox account was still using my temp 'testing this service out' password I'd used when i first signed up. Stupid me. My 1password master password was already very strong so I wasn't highly concerned.

What ticked me off, was that there was absolutely no notification or verification process when adding a computer to your Dropbox account! I wrote Dropbox, and their only response, after MANY days, was 'make sure your password is strong'.

<comment><USER20> On the security page you can turn on email notifications for system additions: <https://www.dropbox.com/account#security>

On your account page you can enable RSS feeds. The home page then has a link to the feed, which I have in Google Reader. It includes all file changes, as well as machine additions and removals.

<comment><USER19> The email notifications for System additions most certainly didn't exist when I wrote Dropbox about it. I did however, know about RSS but didn't choose to use that as a notification system (and wasn't aware it notified about machine additions or other system stuff).

Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Leaving aside Apple's choices regarding the degree of security employed to protect their customers, this would be a non-story but for the fact that Apple decided to treat Honan's Macbook as if it were an iPhone.

Email accounts get hijacked, phones loose data, and impersonation happens on Twitter. A blog post about one of these or all in combination may make the front page of HN, but unless the writing is compelling (and in this story none of it is), it will not persist there.

This story is a story because the Macbook was wiped remotely. That's what's scary. Losing data on a phone or iPad will never potentially entail the loss of years of work. They are second and third devices, and intended primarily for consumption not creation.

It's our computers which hold our work (and as this story shows, moving it to "the cloud" may not offer significantly greater protection). An architect doesn't store her design on her iPhone, nor a developer her code, nor an entrepreneur his company's books. Our computers tend to hold important parts of our lives. They are the tools we use to create and retain our work.

Apple forgetting that for the sake of a consistent sales sheet across product lines is really the heart of this story's traction.

Remote wiping at the flick of a switch is a bug, not a feature in the consumer world.

</comment><comment><USER22> four digits are worthless. somebody was able to get the last four digits of my social security number (how many times have we given that info to customer service reps thinking it's "safe?") and used the digits to open a credit account on BillMeLater (yes, they did not require the full social security number to open an account). they then started buying stuff (nike shoes -- why doesn't that surprise me?).

the _only_ reason i discovered this is because they didn't have my real email address and BillMeLater called me to tell me they needed me to update my email address. so, we also know that they don't even require email address authentication. now all of my credit reports are locked. i recommend everyone do the same.

sorry to hijack the discussion, but wanted to provide another "4 digits suck" example.

<comment><USER23> Why doesn't it surprise you?

<comment><USER24> People go to stupid lengths to get them. They are a luxury good that is just cheap enough that a lot of people can realistically desire them, but just expensive enough that people will do stupid things to get them, instead of just paying for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > It's appalling that they will give control of your iCloud account to anyone > who knows your name and address, which are very easy for anyone to find, and > the last four digits of your credit card, which are usually considered safe > to display on websites and receipts.

Not trying to defend anyone. But has this been reproduced enough to confidently say they'll give control to "anyone"? Or was it just an employee mistake not following the policies in place? It would be a mistake on their part either way, but I'm just trying to understand what the mistake was.

<comment><USER26> If you read the Wired article by the fellow who was hacked ([http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat- hona...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan- hacking/all/) ), yes, Apple does this as a matter of policy, and even after Apple assured the author that this was not policy, Wired went and tested the method on two separate occasions and was able to gain access to other folks iCloud accounts.

Quote:

 _On Monday, Wired tried to verify the hackers' access technique by performing it on a different account. We were successful. This means, ultimately, all you need in addition to someone's e-mail address are those two easily acquired pieces of information: a billing address and the last four digits of a credit card on file. Here's the story of how the hackers got them._

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Even if Apple fix the account recovery process, the fact that any flaw in iCloud security could easily lead to all attached devices getting remotely wiped is extremely scary. All of your work gone in moments!

Don't get me wrong, remote wipes are useful. But they should be protected by some kind of a "Remote Wipe Authorization Passphrase" that the user must set up. Otherwise we are all simply at the mercy of the next access control vulnerability in iCloud.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. The onus is entirely on the user to backup his/her data.

Don't use remote wipe unless you have a backup solution. I mean seriously, the very concept of remote wiping, whether intended or not, should make you buy an external hard drive and activate Time Machine. Because a remote wipe could happen in a database-server glitch on Apple's part, which would presumably bypass a passphrase mechanism. So why leave your data to chance?

But the other reason to not have a passphrase...what is the purpose of having a remote wipe? Because you are paranoid that ot only someone will steal your laptop, but that they'll steal the data. Depending on your work situation, time could be the main factor here. What happens if you forget your passphrase...because really, how often are you going to be using that passphrase? Then you've given your robber minutes/hours to access your data.

Just to be clear, the verification process is still incredibly flawed on Apple's part, and the remote-wipe problem should not have happened in the first place. But enabling any kind of remote-wipe-power without thinking through the backup process is Honan's fault, as he admits in his article.

<comment><USER28> I don't agree. You should have backups regardless and the odds of your laptop drive just gives up or it falls to the floor or gets stolen should, in any universe, be way more probable (regardless of usage) than a "database-server glitch" on Apple's part.

Yes, you should backup but for way more important reasons than enabling remote wiping.

<comment><USER3> No argument there...but I'm just saying, remote wipe does what it does. Is there any consumer out there who enables it without realizing that it indeed allows the destruction of your device's data from "the cloud"? I assume that the average consumer is sufficiently paranoid about these kinds of technologies going awry...a database-server glitch is improbable, but don't you think the average consumer assumes otherwise?

<comment><USER17> Apparently remote wipe is enabled by a little innocent-sounding checkbox labelled "Enable Find My Mac", so consumers have almost certainly enabled it without realising that it allows their data to be wiped by a poorly-secured cloud system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Quick question for HN'ers... does anyone actually feel safe using cloud services for personal data storage?

In the interest of full disclosure... I can barely muster trust enough for gmail. Actually, I don't trust gmail, which is why I don't use it for anything important or personal. I certainly would not put my child's photos onto a cloud service and expect them to be safe. And from what I understand, these people put, not only their data on iCloud, but their ACTUAL DEVICES are administrable from iCloud. That seems insane to me. It seems that this is the inevitable result of any such system.

I guess I am just a bit surprised at the surprise being expressed here. USB drives are not THAT horrible are they? They seem, to me, far more reliable backup methods.

<comment><USER30> You need to have your stuff backed up to the cloud (in case your house burns down) _and_ to a USB drive (in case your account is compromised). Neither is adequate by itself.

<comment><USER31> I hear the "if your house burns down" line often and I can't tell if it's meant literally in this context. I'd think that at least for most regular folks, if their house and everything in it was turned to ashes, the last thing they'd cry over would be their, say, iTunes collection or mostly useless email archives hoarded over the last ten years.

<comment><USER18> It's more likely they'd be upset over losing photos of their child growing up, for instance. Or if they've digitized, say, financial records.

I mean, yeah, obviously the primary concern would be "oh my god my house burnt down." But if you can minimize the repercussions by putting digital stuff which is important to you offsite, maybe that's something to be _relieved_ about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's also interesting that for Amex cards, that part of the card number is very structured. The middle two of the last four are almost always 00 or 01 since it is just incremented for reissued cards.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nothing is 100% guaranteed secure. Let's start there.

As far as password recovery, I would like to see something more "physical", if you will. For example, Apple charges a small random amount to the CC on file and you have to come back and give them the amount.

A fingerprint scanner on every iPhone could be interesting.

I think the reality is that nearly all but the most safety conscious/paranoid hackers reuse easy-to-remember passwords across a multiplicity of sites. Some might have two or three passwords to fence-off, say, financially related logins from non-financial stuff. Still, the vast majority of Internet users are probably in the first group with a simple password across every single login they have. That's the problem. And, with such tools as Facebook logins you also have a situation where discovering on login gets you in to all manner of sites.

How do you protect Mom, Dad and Uncle Fester from this? You are not going to turn them into computer scientists or security experts. No, they are not going to create and remember fifteen different thirty-two character passwords with a mixture of alphanumerics and symbols. That's just not going to happen.

Not sure what the solution might be at this point. The Internet, due to the nature of its organic evolution does not have an underlying security construct that is, for lack of a better word, bulletproof.

</comment><comment><USER34> I can't think of a time when I didn't see the last four digits of my credit card on a receipt. This is a totally boneheaded move on Apple's part

<comment><USER35> Sadly, I can :)

Just a few years ago I looked at my receipt from a local Dairy Queen and it had all _but_ the last four digits printed on it. I complained to the guy behind the counter, who didn't see the problem.

I assume most new POS systems nowadays don't even have the option to print anything but the last four, but there are still some out there in the wild which do. Which is why I still shred all my receipts.

<comment><USER36> It really shouldn't be a problem. In my teenage years I could memorize a 16-digit number from seeing it once; I can't be the only one. If credit card security depends on keeping the big number printed on the front secret then it's doomed to failure.

<comment><USER37> Did anyone ever show you his credit card "okay but just once"? I doubt so. The big number is indeed supposed to remain as secret as possible to avoid trouble.

<comment><USER24> Ever use a credit card? You are almost always handing them over to other people; often times they even leave the room with it for several minutes.

<comment><USER38> In the UK at least you should never have to hand it over. You insert them into the chip and pin device yourself. A lot of places will do this for you but only in plain sight.

<comment><USER24> Well, in the US it is common to hand your card to servers after your meal who will then carry it off to the register (wherever that may be, usually not visible) and bring it back to you with a receipt.

The UK may have a better protocol, but that doesn't change the fact that for a significant population, the number on the card is really anything but private. Certainly Apple should know this, being based in the US...

This is usually ok since credit card companies have the whole fraud thing figured out for the most part. It only becomes "not ok" when companies like Apple make them into something that absolutely _needs_ to be secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> RE: "At the bare minimum, for this level of recovery that bypasses security questions, they should require confirmation of the entire credit-card number and verification code."

That's still a fail because if your wallet probably contains credit cards, which have your name and credit card number, obviously. And driver's licenses in the US, as far as I know, include an address. So it's all there. You're screwed.

What is necessary is 2-factor authentication, which is what a lot of us have been saying for a long time (I wrote this blog post in 2009, after another Twitter-related hacking: "Why The Twitter Breach Is Bullish for Two-Factor Authentication": [http://chrisco.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/why-the-twitter- brea...](http://chrisco.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/why-the-twitter-breach-is- bullish-for-two-factor-authentication/)). If not 2-factor, at least don't make recover possible with things so easily obtained, such as information from items typically contained in a person's wallet.

<comment><USER40> My thought is that they should additionally charge a fee for this, using a card that passed name, zip code, and CVC checks. Now you have a higher bar to fake your way over, and in addition whatever laws were broken by the perpetrator, he would have credit card fraud as well, and that's something that prosecutors, courts and juries can understand a lot more easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why is this at the top of HN? Just because its from marco? There is nothing new in the article. Can a moderator please change the title to the actual tile of the post "Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to Mat Honan's Hacking"? The current title is just linkbait for people that thought it was a general discussion about apple's weaknesses from marco.

</comment><comment><USER42> Does "remote wipe" also wipe attached drives, or just the system disk? It would really suck to also lose your Time Machine backups that way. I alternate my TM backups between several disks, leaving one of them off-site in case of catastrophe, but I'd still lose a good chunk of data if remote wipe targets attached volumes.

</comment><comment><USER43> Instead of a remote wipe, what they should do is a remote encryption. Generate a pair of public/private keys, use the public one to encrypt the data, and destroy the private one after a month or so. Encrypted data is indistinguishable from random data, but at the same time, the user can get it back.

<comment><USER28> _When you perform a remote hard drive wipe on Find my Mac, the system asks you to create a four-digit PIN so that the process can be reversed. But here's the thing: If someone else performs that wipe — someone who gained access to your iCloud account through malicious means — there's no way for you to enter that PIN._

From: [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat- hona...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan- hacking/all/)

But ultimately, if the attacker has the ability to remote wipe/encrypt your device he/she is probably in control of any keys required to undo it.

<comment><USER43> The way I would do it, if I were apple, I would keep the keys myself and require the customer to go to the store, personally, with their wiped/encrypted device, and present some proper form of id, for the sales rep to undo the wipe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have one question as I'm not aware of any - has anybody had there blackberry hacked and remotely wiped.

What proportion of share price is effected by security, as that is all a company realy care about.

Now maybe the whole credit card system that we have is at fault - one number to rule them all to pay for things. Maybe is we had a system were we could give each transaction a unique number you could was unique to each vendor you used. Then if that number is leaked it woud be clear were it leaked from and only effect the people who leaked it. Until then there are disposable credit cards.

If Apple only accepted Apple credit cards and if Amazon only accepted Amazon credit cards, then this would not of happened. Can see what the outcome of this will be and people will still complain.

</comment><comment><USER45> AFAIK almost every bank in India has now been ordered by the government to use 2 factor authentication. What's more, a specific bank I use has also included an interesting approach against phishing attacks.

You are basically assigned an access phrase and access image. They ask you to look at these two things and know what they are. Then, when you visit the site you enter ONLY your username. Once you click submit you're shown your access phrase and access image. If this were a phishing site, there is a high chance that your access phrase and image wouldn't match so you'd know to GTFO.

This is followed with a 2 factor authentication. Pretty solid IMHO :)

<comment><USER46> Bank of America has been doing this for over 3 years. It's called SiteKey.

But iirc certain banks in India have a alphabet board behind the card with letter-number pairs, right? Something like A-14 B-65 and so on. Then they just ask you to enter random 3 boxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The title of this article is completely misleading. It really is astonishing how the author is primarily targeting Apple to be at fault here. While protecting customer information is a top priority for reputable companies such as Apple, you cannot equate one non-diligent AppleCare employee to the entire organization. Clearly, the AppleCare employee that was easily socially- engineered did not follow standard operating procedures. For the record, the "hackers" who destroyed Honan's digital life should be prosecuted. Its sad that Honan is letting these young punks get away with their malicious and unethical acts.

<comment><USER48> "Astonishing how the author is primarily targeting Apple"? Do you even know who Marco _is_? He's constantly accused of being an Apple fanboy. If anything he's biased _for_ Apple.

The idea that "one non-diligent AppleCare employee" did this is reality- averse. Wired managed to duplicate what happened to Mat after-the-fact using other people's details. Even if you were correct, "one non-diligent AppleCare employee" should not be _able_ to do what this employee did (apparently in accordance with policy, FWIW). A company that cared about security would not allow it.

So you can put down that water you're carrying (boy, does it look heavy!) any time you'd like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Obviously. And yet, you have to admire the sneakiness of the hacker to even think of something so simple. If nothing else, this whole fiasco called attention to a terrible system that's probably already been changed by Apple.

<comment><USER50> It's not "creative" to think of this. Sarah Palin's email was "hacked" by someone who looked up her security questions in Google.

<comment><USER3> And Paris Hilton's phone was hacked because her security question was the name of her dog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> What if Apple provided some sort of 2-factor auth that you had verify with the phone rep? Like they'll send you an email or sms and you verify the code back to the rep?

</comment><comment><USER52> I think this will result in Apple selling less apps: People will set a way better password on their Apple account, and since you need the same password to buy $1 apps (every time!) as you do for remote wipe, people will buy less apps. They should probably have several levels: one simple PIN code for less intrusive stuff, and a lot of checks for the remote wipe (or expensive purchases).

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't know how this whole affair reflect on Apple as a company, but this seems like Apple's best opportunity to let users know whether it should be taken seriously as a cloud service and specifically e-mail provider.

</comment><comment><USER54> The EU has data protection law which means companies that store personal data are legally obliged to protect it. I wonder if Apple are in breech of the law here? Will someone affected make a complaint?

</comment><comment><USER55> The last four digits are the ones on almost any receipt from a payment done with credit card which is not censored. And all the other info is in the phonebook or other places on the net.

</comment><comment><USER56> Oh wonderful. Replace one set of weaknesses with something much, much worse - allowing any customer service rep access to your entire credit card (including CCV)!

I do like his second idea though.

</comment><comment><USER44> Weakest link is having a chain of events that prevent you from doing a backup. Two phrases that spring to mind "back don't fudge up" and "trust nobody".

Remember time beats all security.

</comment><comment><USER57> Name, Address and last 4 digits of your credit card... Seems like one would be screwed if you lost your wallet with you DL in it.</comment>


Vladimir Komarov went on a space suicide mission to save his best friend, Yuri - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/DMOberhaus/status/1116939111368097792 <comment><USER2> related discussions:

2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2342677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2342677)

2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072718](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11072718)

mirror: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1116939111368097792.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1116939111368097792.html)

<comment><USER3> Top post on the 2016 version of this repost, links to an NPR article that debunks the whole thing: [https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a...](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/03/135919389/a-cosmonauts- fiery-death-retold)

<comment><USER4> "Debunked" is a pretty strong word. The disputed elements of the story are mostly based on the account of one person (Venyamin Russayev, the KGB minder assigned to Yuri Gagarin) and they are contradicted by official transcripts and the memoirs of the people involved.

But, this occurred in the USSR, so I don't think we really know what happened with any high level of certainty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More on this informative site by a Russian space geek now living in the US:

[http://russianspaceweb.com/soyuz1.html](http://russianspaceweb.com/soyuz1.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Damnit I hate crying to stuff I see on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is the most tragically inspiring story of the modern era.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Pence remark was completely unnecessary and infuriating. I thought this was some educative chain of tweets and it ended in "orang man bad". Very anticlimactic.

<comment><USER9> It's the _entire_ point of the piece. And it's not really all that much of a political statement. The message is pretty clear: don't send people to die in space for stupid-ass political reasons.

<comment><USER10> As a counterpoint, sending people to space for stupid-ass political reasons resulted in one of humanity's greatest technological achievements that allowed us to put the plaque up there in the first place.

<comment><USER11> Note the subtle difference between "sending people to space" and "sending people to die in space". (As explained in the thread, Soyuz-1 was hurried to launch for political reasons despite being unspaceworthy)

<comment><USER12> That doesn't counter GP's point, it reinforces it. The successful moon missions were all launched for political reasons, too.

<comment><USER13> He is pointing out that there is a difference between sending people to space for political reasons and sending people to space for political reasons in known to be unsafe aircraft knowing that the possibility of death is significantly above average. One is risking someone's life for achievement and glory. The other is killing someone because your fragile ego can't take the hit of not being ready on time for some stupid political deadline.

<comment><USER12> Yea, the point is why is there a random political shot at Pence? It makes no sense. It's shoehorning a totally petty and not relevant potshot. Every space mission has been "political", and of course everyone agrees you shouldn't do a bad job at it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


When printf debugging is a luxury (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://lackingrhoticity.blogspot.com/2010/12/when-printf-debugging-is-luxury.html <comment><USER2> Printing a string is luxury! When I was working on a Linux port to the Treo 650 ages ago, I had a single bit of output: an LED that I could turn on or off at certain parts of the boot sequence. That was good enough to get me to the point where the LCD could be initialized and I could do proper screen logging.

I've done this for a handful of other projects as well. My first step is always locating a processor GPIO that controls something obvious (camera flash, status LED, etc) that I can use to figure out where I am in the boot process.

<comment><USER3> One bit/pin can be more than enough if you can code some state behind it. On one embedded MCU job, I ended up with just one port pin free. I tied it to a piezo-oscillator and played short Morse strings through it; that was my printf. (It helps that I'm a ham, so I could head-copy those messages.)

Once I turned it over to production use, the techs found the difference in overall sound between "OK" and an error message useful enough that they kept it jumper-enabled. They did put tape over the oscillator's opening to cut down the amplitude, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Luxury. We used to _dream_ of printf debugging when we're doing embedded microcontroller systems! (at least the ones I work on).

There the debugging is toggling a port pin and examining with an oscilloscope. I typically toggle it different numbers of times at different places in the code to see where I've got to.

<comment><USER5> I grew fond of printing a char, after I spent some time snooping a uart. The o-scope in capture mode (I realize this wasn't always an option) grabs the char. Handy because I find char waveforms very easy to recognize at just a glance, and you don't have to measure periodicity or count toggles.

Even if you don't have a uart, you can write a little proc to bit-bang a pin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was once porting my OS to a new platform, and hadn't got the screen to work yet. What I did get to work was the screen's backlight, so I would have it blink to show debugging info. It was a huge pain in the ass.

</comment><comment><USER7> I once had a university project where we were implementing low-level threading for a custom OS, and had some task manipulating the signal handlers. Needless to say, we ran in to a few issues with the code we wrote. At that time, I was pretty much a print-line debugger (still mostly am).

I failed that assignment, but in the process learned how to use gdb. I still do wish I had seen this post back* then though, just for the marks.

*Disc: I'm not knowledgeable enough to know 100% this would have helped

</comment><comment><USER8> Apparently simply panning around that blog (while zoomed in on mobile) is a luxury, because it seems to send you to different blog entries when you do it.

<comment><USER9> The greatest "feature" of Blogspot. It is the most obnoxious thing on mobile devices.

<comment><USER10> Not as obnoxious as - on iOS - having my browser's focus stolen by an appstore link which switches me from browser to App Store.

This is _particularly bad_ when visiting Pinterest. So bad that I stopped visiting Pinterest at all because I hate the behaviour. It is so obviously broken that I'm surprised they still do it.

<comment><USER9> A game that is popular at my school has these modal ads with a close button that is smaller than you can accurately tap. Every third time it opens I end up in the App Store. It drives me nuts. A confirmation would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My first commercial 8-bit games (Sinclair Spectrum and Amstrad CPC) were developed entirely with border color as the only debugging tool. Figuring out a particular stack corruption bug was a miracle, and there was at least another bug that went unfixed (just changed the level map and it stopped happening). Those were the days _ahem_.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't forget binary size. Often I find calling printf() links in a bunch of gunk- I'm not quite sure why- exploding binary size 10-20kB.

This is, of course, mostly a problem on microcontrollers rather than PC's.

<comment><USER12> It is a whole parser plus number parsing too. Few implementations compile at runtime if the pattern is known.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If printf doesn't work, then just instantiate a Logger! </LetThemEatCake>

There are some things I miss about doing hardcore embedded programming. This is not one of them.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you want to buy our website - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
We've been developing our site - getinspired365.com for the last 15 months. We've spent a long time on it but we've reached a point where myself, and my partner, can't spend any more time on it. We would like some return on the work we've put in so we've decided to see if we can sell it. Here is a quick presentation (6 slides) on what the site is about, and why someone may want to buy it.
http://app.emaze.com/414240/gi365#slidenum=1
thanks <comment><AUTHOR> clicky [http://app.emaze.com/414240/gi365#slidenum=1](http://app.emaze.com/414240/gi365#slidenum=1)</comment>


Show HN: emotions.com MVP - anonymous network for sharing & support - <AUTHOR> http://emotions.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for viewing. There are still a lot of kinks in our V1. Emotions.com's goal is to be the safe place on the internet to get support and connect with people anonymously. You can see HN partly inspired us. We'd love your feedback on how to make this product better. :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Although you seem to have some content, none of it seems to be newer than 18 days old. That gap seems odd.

Also, I would make new content the default, rather than top content

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool and kudos on the idea. We built something about a year ago that's very similar (<http://confideapp.com>). It's a place where people have talked about suicide, sex, relationships, pain and joy. I'd be happy to chat about what we learned in hopes you could grow something bigger that will positively impact more people than we're able to. Happy holidays!

</comment><comment><USER4> How on earth did you get your hands on this domain name :) ?

Regardless, looks though I'd suggest you take a look at coolgeek's feedback.</comment>


The Nest generation of our store - <AUTHOR> https://nest.com/blog/2016/06/22/the-nest-generation-of-our-store/ <comment><USER2> After years of not launching new products that they have been working on such as an out door camera, security system and more, it seems under the reign of the ceo, they are going to come at it from a different direction of focusing on their core products and be more of a gateway to other products like Wink.

Seems more and more less likely they will ever support Homekit, so most likely all apple customers were slowly continue to move from the beautiful nest products. Really too bad that Nest is continuing to try to be a hub for all products rather than being just a product, even when Apple is clearly going to take over that space, as well as Google. Pretty bad that even Google didn't think their Nest should be the center of the home and instead building their own.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of the D language? - <AUTHOR>

I'm toying with the idea of giving a chance to a statically typed language after 6-7 years of working happily for fun and profit with dynamic languages (mostly Python with a bit of Javascript lately). I recently (re)discovered the D language after reading an interview of Andrei Alexandrescu, a long time C++ guru that has moved to D. Despite that the language has many and powerful features (http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/comparison.html), it doesn't seem to get much airtime compared to other hip languages du jour (Clojure, Scala, Go, Erlang, ...). One barrier for adoption is that it doesn't piggyback on the JVM or .NET for getting free access to the gazillion libraries already out there for these platforms. Do you think this is the main reason it is less well-known and considered for new projects or there are more serious issues ? Do you have first-hand experience with it and if yes, do you think it is it worth spending time to learn compared to other statically typed languages ? <comment><USER2> I love D because it has what i like about C and C++: it makes it easy to reason about the performance and memory requirements of code accurately. I can mentally translate snippets of code into assembly much like the compiler would. And that's what I like about programming, that you tell the hardware how to solve a particular problem and implement a certain algorithm. D retains that property while letting you use more higher-level abstractions than C++ 0x, and nicer syntax in things like templates.

When I first went from C++ to D I was very sceptical about it using garbage collection, but accepted it since you're not forced to use it. (I thought R-value references had to be the ultimate solution.) But now I'm quite sold on it. I think it manages memory in a more elegant way than R-value references and reference-counting do, and you can get closures and efficient strings and arrays for free.

</comment><comment><USER3> I came across it as a result of the Go language announcement! Basically I wasn't happy with Go for what I had in mind, so it got me looking to see if there were any other alternatives to C++ (my home for 14 years). Found D and think the language features are great, especially the template handling and built in string and slice handling for rapid development of efficient applications. Can't wait to work with the language (D2) more. I also recommend the book (The D Programming Language) which was published earlier this year.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm currently reading "The D Programming Language" and having a lot of fun playing with some of its powerful features. Coming from Java, it feels like I've been let out of the sandbox.

</comment><comment><USER5> I may be biased because D has been my favorite language for more than five years now, but, well, it's good enough to have been my favorite language for more than five years now.

</comment><comment><USER6> It depends on what you'll be doing. Go might be a better language for server stuff, but D has quite a large game creation community behind it.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's damn hard to stop using. Pretty addictive.</comment>


"Parallel Reality" Pixels - <AUTHOR> https://www.misappliedsciences.com/Home/Technology <comment><USER2> Very interesting and useful applications.

The ideal use would be in the office - I can browse HN while my manager will see the latest infrastructure project details when walking by.</comment>


Ask HN: As a dev lead where do you go for advice feedback? - <AUTHOR> Dev/team lead/managers where do you go for advice on how to effectively lead? Any forums or sites you visit frequently? <comment><USER2> I joined [http://www.platohq.com](http://www.platohq.com) a few months ago. It's been awesome for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Podcasts:

Developer Tea

Developer on Fire

Soft Skills Engineering

Newsletter:

softwareleadweekly.com

Relevant SO posts, and I always fallback on the basic skills taught to me as an NCO in the Marine Corps

<comment><USER4> How's that working out for you? I don't imagine most devs respond well to being called devil dogs for example! I jest but being a former nco myself (army) I don't see how it really applies. Maybe commincating clearly and making intent and desired outcome clear, maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership- slack/](http://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/)</comment>


Violations of Editorial Standards Found in WIRED Writer's Blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/violations-of-editorial-standards-found-in-wired-writers-blog

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a case where a bad editor is amplifying a writer's misdeeds to cover up his own. Jonah is in no way defendable, but it's comical how Hansen says his writer violates "editorial standards" and then in the second paragraph admits that no editor or fact checker ever reviewed his work before it was published.

The role of an editor is to uphold editorial standards. Where was Hansen when these 18 problematic posts - and potentially hundreds - just magically found their way around Wired.com's incredible editorial standards? Historically, editors have resigned when their writers are caught fabricating because their supervision was too poor to protect the public from bad information. What will Hansen do to prevent this from happening again?

Oh, "spot check random Wired.com articles." Nothing to see here, everyone. Let's just keep reading.</comment>


Valve starts promoting Steam for Linux to Windows users - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/games/valve-starts-promoting-steam-for-linux-to-windows-users-20130121/ <comment><USER2> "start urging Windows users to make the switch" "Proof of that comes from the screenshot you see above."

Really? This is at least slightly exaggerated. First thing I see is a big green button with a download link to the Windows installer. Then a invite to join a Beta program. That's not exactly _urging_ anything. More like letting people now it's available.

<comment><USER3> Linux gamers are extremely sensitive to any news that isn't negative.

<comment><USER4> There's a reason. There's very little news about Linux gaming, and even less that's positive.

Let's just say that my standard response to "Hey, there's this awesome game out, have you tried it" is "I use Linux".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a strong desire to leave windows. Windows 8 seems to enrage me more every day. Unfortunately, the majority of my experience is with C# :(

<comment><USER6> Chiming in on the _"get on Mono"_ train: it's true, you should get aboard ASAP.

I don't quite agree on the _'learn'_ part though, because it may sound frightening when for most purposes it is a direct C#+.Net port, so there's basically nothing to learn on the language/library front. It mostly revolves around the tooling (MonoDevelop is different from VS, mcs is different from the MS C# compiler, xbuild is different from msbuild, but source code is the same, assemblies are the same, sln/csproj files are the same). You will mostly lack WPF if you ever used it, and learn to use Path.Combine instead of hardcoded string concats and backslashes in paths (i.e write portable code), but you will benefit from having many Mono-only or Mono-bundled tools (csharp REPL[1}, ) and libs[0].

Miguel de Icaza regularly (re)tweets and promotes various community activities and achievements, so I recommend to follow him to get a feeling of what happens.

If you're daring enough, you can get on board and use emacs, which seems to be what the non-IDE Mono developer community revolves around, so emacs modes should be quite good (apparently, F# support is coming up nicely[2])

[0]: <http://docs.go-mono.com>

[1]: <http://www.mono-project.com/CsharpRepl>

[2]: <https://twitter.com/simontcousins/status/293329223597297664>

<comment><USER7> This.

Mono is awesome. I haven't used linux in years, but I managed to install linuxmint and setup Mono + Nginx + ServiceStack over the weekend. It's a bit difficult at first, but when it works it's nice. You can even build in visual studio and copy the files over to your linux box.

<comment><USER8> Off topic.

What's with the comments that start with "This."? What is "This." suppose to mean as an introduction?

<comment><USER9> Sort of short-hand for "I agree with this". I think (? please correct me if wrong, someone) it started on Reddit.

<comment><USER10> I've heard it in real life far before that. Its a way of re-emphasizing something that was just said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How many Linux games they have so far: ~62

How many games I have in my steam library: 100+

How many games in my steam library that has already been ported to Linux (as of yesterday): 6

I will make the switch when they have at least 1/3 of my steam library ported over to Linux.

<comment><USER12> 62 games is an impressive number.

Sadly, there still are a few dealbreaker apps that prevent me to switching to Linux.

There's also the massive back catalogue Windows has, my girlfriend loves playing random PopCap games and other casual-friendly stuff that are not yet click-and-play in Linux - was going to say "not available" but Google has an installation guide for Wine, but not yet available to mainstream users.

<comment><USER13> 62 games isn't impressive at all. Most of the games I bought (indie, mostly) have Linux versions that work fine in Ubuntu, but they aren't on Steam!

I expect they'll probably arrive soon, since all the Humble Bundles have been Linux-friendly for ages, but they don't have the games available now. They're probably trying to get the client more stable, I guess.

<comment><USER12> I really don't follow the Linux news, I'm comparing to 2007 which was the last time I had a Linux desktop (SuSE with KDE), where the only available games were Frozen Bubbles and some half-baked sim game clones.

Seeing mainstream support (Steam and others), and 62 titles shows Linux has gone a long way, and of course the rise of web gaming is a huge boon.

<comment><USER14> In 2007 you also had all the old Quake1-3 mods, as well as UT99 and UT2003. Also Doom 3.

Probably still the best games on Linux imho...

<comment><USER12> You're right, I forgot.

I don't like First Person Shooters (even the original Wolfenstein gave me motion sickness, and I don't have great motor skills), that's why I forgot about those.

I've always liked turn-based strategy games, or real time strategy games (at medium or slow speeds, I get destroyed on online matches), puzzle games, point-and-click graphic adventure games, etc... and I distinctly remember searching for those and not finding much back then.

I definitely need to give Linux another try, but I don't manage to convince myself to set aside the time (it might be a good investment, though :) )

<comment><USER15> The Humble Store has a number of Linux games: <http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Humble_Store>

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a favourite of mine, not sure how easy it is to get a copy of these days though.

DEFCON, Darwinia: <http://introversion.co.uk/>

Wesnoth is a great turn-based strategy game and has an unusual amount of polish for a FOSS game.

SpringRTS is a really fun RTS, if you can look past the many bugs in the launcher/lobby: <http://springrts.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think this is urging users to switch to Linux, but at least the huge penguin is the most obvious thing on the page: it's the biggest, it's visually distinctive, and it's smack in the middle of the page. So they are definitely trying to raise awareness of Steam for Linux to the larger audience.

I just rebuilt my desktop yesterday, and downloaded Steam for it. The above is what you get when you click the "Install Steam" button on their homepage, and it definitely caught my eye.

</comment><comment><USER17> Would the (many, many) games I've already purchased on Steam work on Linux? Will Steam for Linux ship with WINE or something similar? If not, I don't see the real value for someone like me.

<comment><USER18> The games will work if there is a Linux port on Steam and you've already bought for Windows/Mac. You don't have to buy twice. However there seems to be a few games with working Linux ports that aren't available in Steam under Linux yet, bastion being one example.

I believe most of the Steam Linux games available are native ports and don't use Wine. Maybe there are some that do use Wine, but I don't imagine that they will make them available through Steam unless they are confident that they will actually work.

So the real question here is, "what is the real value of this assuming you already have a dedicated Windows PC or a dual boot for gaming?"

For myself it is nice to have a few good quality indie games available to play if I fancy a short break from coding on my Linux box without having to power cycle my PC. For serious gaming sessions Windows is still king for now.

The real question is about future games. There seems to be increasing interest in cross platform toolkits for game development, this is probably most because people want to target iOS and Android rather than Linux however.

However if it gets to the point where Linux just becomes another output format for a cross platform game engine (like unity3d) then perhaps you can expect future game titles to become available on Linux simply because the friction to launch on the platform is so low.

<comment><USER19> >You don't have to buy twice.

How do you know ports will be free? It removes most of the incentive that developers would have to make a good port: money (unless Valve pays for the ports, which would be _very_ expensive).

<comment><USER18> The ports are currently free on the beta, assuming you have bought the original. Seems unlikely that they will change that as "buy once, run anywhere" seems to be a big selling point of Steam.

I guess in terms of incentives to do ports, if Valve plans to launch a Linux based Steam box they can tempt developers with more prominent placing of games with Linux ports, a larger audience (assuming Steambox has good sales) or even flat out make it a requirement to get onto Steam.

There are also current Linux users like myself who are just more tempted to buy a game if it has a Linux port.

<comment><USER20> >or even make it a requirement to get onto Steam

Let's hope not.

<comment><USER21> > >or even make it a requirement to get onto Steam > Let's hope not.

why not? i think if steam flex its muscle (of which it still doesn't have enough), it might jerk studios to put in the effort!

<comment><USER20> Valve doesn't have any business muscling developers into this or that platform. It's wrong if Microsoft does it, and it's wrong if Valve does it. Let the better platform win, in an open and competitive way. (I'm confident Linux would win out in such a contest, btw.)

<comment><USER18> IIRC they currently mandate Windows compatibility to launch any game on Steam. You can't publish a Mac only game for example.

If Valve are serious about launching their own platform , they're likely to apply as much muscle as they can in order to get games on there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For some reason I don't want to install Steam on my Ubuntu partition. I use it to get work done. If I feel like playing a game I just boot into my Windows 7 partition.

Having a "work boot" has done wonders for my productivity.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd understand the headline if it was a pop-up for those using the Steam Client on Windows. As it is, it looks like they're just using their website to advertise. Not really targeting Windows users specifically.

</comment><comment><USER24> I would love to switch to Ubuntu at home, games is one of the reasons I don't; Unity being the other.

This may be isolated to my experience, but the PCs that I've installed Ubuntu on suffer huge performance drops when using Unity. Most of these PCs were running XP, one them is running Win 7. I even had one machine running like a dream on Ubuntu 11.04 then upgraded to 11.10, now it's nearly unusable.

I've drank the Ubuntu kool-aid in the past, but now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

*edit for clarification, I'm referring to Ubuntu's new default UI: Unity.

<comment><USER2> It's not isolated.. Recently I quickly needed some linux distro in a VM to test some things out and since I just found a premade VirtualBox image of the latest Ubuntu I tried that. Could hardly believe how slow it felt. I know a VM is not the real thing, but given that anything else I run in it flies it's at least an indication something is wrong.

<comment><USER25> I have found recently out that VmWare Player works better with Ubuntu 12.10 than VirtualBox. Difference is "you can work with it" and "I will suffer because I need it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I found the crucial ssd video on that site far more fascinating: [http://www.geek.com/articles/games/how-its-made-crucial- ssds...](http://www.geek.com/articles/games/how-its-made-crucial-ssds-come- from-very-clean-rooms-20130121/)

</comment><comment><USER27> My biggest issue with Steam on Linux is the load times. They seem ridiculous for no discernible reason. Based on my watch opening simply loading a game must read through 20 Gigabytes of files. Oh, wait. The game is only 14 G on disk. Maybe it's 14 gigs of ridiculously compressed data?

Connecting to servers in TF2 takes an eternity, too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does this mean that Ubuntu supports GPU Hardware acceleration drivers?

I am not an expert on the matter, but it seems that most Linux distributions used to lack this, unless you had a specific Card that had drivers for it under yer distro ..

Please feel free to correct me. This is one of the issues which prevents me from 'jumping' completely onto Ubuntu.

Thanks

<comment><USER29> The official proprietary drivers for nvidia and amd gpus tend to work pretty well, and Ubuntu will prompt you to install them. The open source ones are generally not suitable for games yet.

Most Intel gpus just have open source drivers.

<comment><USER30> Mobile nvidia cards with nvidia's Optimus technology require two steps to work:

1\. Install Bumblebee (requires a PPA) and possibly x-swat PPA as well. [1]

2\. Launch video programs through optirun. For example:

      java -Xmx1024m -jar minecraft.jar              # non-Bumblebee users
      optirun java -Xmx1024m -jar minecraft.jar      # Bumblebee users

If you run the first command but have an Optimus card, the program will still run, but it will use the weak Intel GPU instead of the powerful nvidia GPU -- which is plenty powerful enough for "normal" desktop usage like web browsing, email, word processing, or video players, but a recent 3D game will likely turn into a slideshow.

Hopefully the Steam client will make it easy for people to use Bumblebee by giving a GUI to install the PPA and automatically invoking 3D games with optirun.

[1] <http://bumblebee-project.org/install.html#Ubuntu>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find it more significant that the Steam homepage now has a fairly prominent Linux tab: <http://store.steampowered.com/>

</comment><comment><USER32> Blatant sensationalism; its on their About page and appears to users of all OS's, not just Windows. Just had a look on a Mac and Linux and the page is static.

</comment><comment><USER33> Steam ported on linux is one thing. Games, specially AAA titles ported on linux is a completely different argument.

</comment><comment><USER34> Мake all of my steam backlog work on linux and I switch. And not a moment before that.

<comment><USER13> If you're already using Linux as your day-to-day OS, there's no reason for you not to install Steam already, as there's no "switch" for you to make.

If you are using Windows and aren't looking to switch otherwise, there's no reason to do it, since all games work fine there. This is for people who've wanted to switch (or have already switched) to Linux and miss Steam, or dual- boot (like me).

So, basically, you're not the target market, and nobody cares what you do!

<comment><USER35> >If you are using Windows and aren't looking to switch otherwise, there's no reason to do it.

Depends on what you mean by 'not looking to switch'. Permanent, set in stone decision? Then sure, no point in proving that 1 == 1. But decisions drift and change (which is nice), and so does software (which in some cases is excellent). So I wouldn't be that categorical.

I'd agree that for some folks Steam not running on Linux may be the only reason to stay with Windows (though I don't think they miss Steam, as you put that; I think what they miss are their games - owned ones and not yet released - and venomsnake says just that, actually), but I'm pretty sure there's quite a large number of people who consider many different general-purpose sides of switching platforms (gaming, music, video, paper/docs work, some development), and for them Linux version of Steam as a provider of games may be an important signal.

<comment><USER13> Of course it is an important signal, but they don't say "I'll switch when _all_ my games work, to the very last (even the ones I have no intention of ever playing again), and not a moment earlier". That's just an unreasonable position, which I'm sure not even venomsnake really believes.

Now that I typed that, it's obvious that we're feeding the troll.

<comment><USER34> It was not attempted trolling. The problem comes from the fact that even if there cannot be "some" games working under linux. And i will try to argument myself. My steam and gog library is about 200 games. For the majority of them - i will never touch them again. But there are maybe 20 games that I play regularly. The problem comes from the fact that they are scattered trough time and technology.

Giving up on the most of the games will be easy, not so much on vampire the masquerade, deus ex, painkiller, icewind dale, jedi outcast,skyrim, psychonauts or heroes 3. These are games I tend to play a lot.

But you don't have much chance with compatibility - if you make any of these games work, there is strong chance you will be able to make most of the games of this generation also playable. And then comes the thing that everyone has some games that are dearly loved but they are different for each person.

So yeah - all is not what I meant. So if Gabe wants the linux users to play from now on - that is amazing. If they want to get people to switch the comparability is important. And for old games too - because for some they are beloved classics that have stood the test of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The games I'm interested in will probably never be ported. Valve needs to get in on the Wine project, specifically with an eye toward improving the gaming experience, and then integrate that into Steam/Linux.

</comment><comment><USER37> While I'd love to get rid of Windows as my gaming OS, I can't see this happening while game developers still use (and enjoy) Direct X and D3D over Open GL.

</comment><comment><USER38> What's the story with Steam for Linux system requirements? It seems unlikely that they'll end up supporting Ubuntu alone.

</comment><comment><USER39> Port Dota 2 and I'm deleting Windows from my dual-boot system.

<comment><USER40> There are reports from WINE users that Dota 2 actually runs better than on windows, under WINE.

Cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why has not a single person pointed out that the number of Linux games is very obviously artificially low? All of the Source engine based games are effectively ported via the TF2 port.

And no mention of the momentum that will be caused by the Steam box?</comment>


Ask HN: Small startup networking setup - <AUTHOR> Please forgive any potential naivety/conceptual misunderstandings, networking is not my forte but I am needing to put my sys admin hat on to design a network for my startup.
Haven't found a lot of useful information in various available guides as my requirements are not typical.
The primary purpose for the time being is to allow easy access to our deep learning workstation from anywhere without worrying about port-forwarding or issues caused the ISP router's ip changing, and to avoid worrying about crazy NAT workarounds required for applications such as mosh. The VPN is not assumed to be secure by the devices on it, although the extra security provided is a plus.
I believe I understand how to set up openVPN directly into the workstation, but it seems desirable for the VPN to tunnel out of a dedicated router to allow for easy future expansion.
Pictorially, I desire a set up like this:
[internet] - [ISP modem/router] - [VPN router] - [workstation]
where any devices connected to the VPN router can talk to each other and are accessible over VPN.
Is my understanding correct that I can accomplish this by getting a DD-WRT supporting router and hosting openVPN on it?
Thanks in advance for your help, Andrew <comment><USER2> You can skip all 'your headache' with Zerotier p2p vpn.

[https://www.zerotier.com/](https://www.zerotier.com/)

\- open source

\- proven and mature

\- nothing to configure on router / firewall

\- easy instaltion (5mins? for download)

P.S. The OpenVPN require setup of server (on DD-WRT or tunnel to some machine), routing, certs, etc.etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this recommendation - exactly what I was looking for and working perfectly so far.</comment></comment>