OpenCore: Hackintosh Alternative to Clover - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> Hackintosh has a tendency to create amusing technical problems, so I thought I'd share some I've come across over the years.

\---

I had one computer that would only boot if a specific USB Bluetooth adapter was connected. If it wasn't inserted while the computer turned on, I'd get a kernel panic during the bootup process. However, I could unplug the adapter after boot and everything would be fine.

I didn't notice the problem until several months after I'd set up the Hackintosh, when I tried to replace my current Bluetooth adapter with a more powerful "class 1" dongle.

(I don't remember how I eventually fixed this.)

\---

I had another computer which wouldn't boot outside of safe mode. I couldn't remember the flag for turning on extra debug messages, but instead of looking it up like a smart person, I guessed and typed "debug=yes". This did not enable any extra messages, but it did cause the computer to boot correctly.

As far as I can tell, debug=yes is not a valid kernel flag. At least at the time, there was no information about it anywhere on the internet. But this computer would not boot without it. Removing the flag caused it to once again get stuck, and adding it back made everything work again.

\---

This one didn't happen to me personally. I was browsing some Hackintosh forum, and I came across a thread titled (paraphrasing):

> Help! Audio only works while I'm moving my mouse!

This might be my favorite technology problem ever.

<comment><USER3> At the time I was starting with Hackintosh it was unable to boot every now and then. I couldn't figure out what's going on because months could pass without any issues.

At the end it turned out that boot went right only if my microserver (NAS) was turned on. I guess I had an SMB mount that failed before GUI even started. Couple of weeks after I figured what was going on a new version of macOS was published and I switched - never had similar problem again.

Even now I'm not 100% sure that networking issue was exact cause but it certainly looked that way at the time.

<comment><USER4> I have had these same kind of problems with regular Macs.

My 2010 Mac Pro won't boot without a specific type of DVI cable and display. Certain standard USB peripherals (including some mice) don't work or cause other problems on my 2015 Macbook Pro while they work just fine on my Linux or Windows machines.

This is not just a problem with Hackintoshes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use OpenCore but have switched my Hackintosh system over to running in a VM (using GPU passthrough). It's easier for me to backup / make changes this way, and there is only a minor performance hit. This is a Geekbench run from my VM (Core i9 10940x with 4 cores passed through): [https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15395105](https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/15395105)

I have a Windows 10 VM running on a same system too. It may not be suitable if you require virtualization inside macOS itself though. Nested virtualization doesn't work too well with the Android emulator, in my experience.

<comment><USER6> If you're looking to create a macOS VM (w/ GPU Passthrough), I've made a detailed guide here: [https://github.com/yoonsikp/macOS-KVM-PCI- Passthrough](https://github.com/yoonsikp/macOS-KVM-PCI-Passthrough)

I believe my guide is better at avoiding GPU driver initialization problems than others. I'll need to update it to support OpenCore however.

<comment><USER7> Consider taking a look at this Opencore setup specifically configured for KVM and GPU passthrough.

[https://github.com/Leoyzen/KVM-Opencore](https://github.com/Leoyzen/KVM- Opencore)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just built a new hackintosh with opencore, and compared to clover, it was so much nicer. The documentation [0] is excellent; I'm able to grok what each option does rather than just guessing. It also feels so much less janky than clover did. Better filevault support, faster, leave SIP on, etc. It's also better in that one can avoid polluting /L/E /S/L/E, which will also allow users to keep running kexts even after Apple deprecates third-party ones.

[0]: [https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/blob/master/Docs/...](https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg/blob/master/Docs/Configuration.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Ditto. I built one last week. Everything was straightforward and the documentation great.

My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of cargo cult advise out there. Figuring out my Audio took longer than it should as finding the layout-id for my ALC892 was buried in threads where everyone kept parroting "use ID 1, 2, and 3 or just keep trying numbers until it works." My board needed layout-id 7 and it took a while to find out that I could use IORegistryExplorer to search for "HDAS" (my ACPI device name) and read the value from the table listed.

<comment><USER8> > My only criticism of the state of building a Hackintosh is the amount of > cargo cult advise out there.

Absolutely right. I think the issue behind this is that many people are repeating advice without understanding _why_ it matters because it worked for them. So, you end up with people cargo-culting SSDT overlays, boot arguments, and other miscellaneous settings. This is somewhat inevitable with something technical, but it's exacerbated by a couple things:

1\. many people in the Hackintosh community are very gatekeep-y. While others are very nice, I remember a few years ago being told to "go read the entire ACPI standard and the come back!" Reading about stuff is important, but it's pretty hard to figure out what the correct stuff is to read.

2\. A lack of a centralized documentation repository (this is being fixed by OpenCore and others) to explain when different pieces of advice apply or don't. This is especially important on laptops where there may be some obscure quirk of one's particular hardware revision that is much easier found if everyone puts documentation in the same place.

I mostly gave up on hackintosh a few years ago because of all this, but have found it so much better and nicer as of late. Big thanks to the acidanthera guys who seem to be driving a lot of this change.

<comment><USER10> These are true. But also, I think some of the weirdness is that a lot of people only do this once, struggle, and then move on. So the forums are full of people trying to find others with the same problem which none of them understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As another data point - Building a hackintosh is so much simpler now than it was 5 years ago.

The reddit forum at r/hackintosh is pretty helpful for getting started and has a nice repository of builds.

AMD Ryzen CPUs are fairly well supported now. My current system is a 3700x with radeon 5700xt gpu. I use OSX for my daily work, and Windows 10 for gaming. It's a great setup for $1000. My OSX geekbench specs beat out the latest standard 16" Macbook Pros.

For developers - One thing to note is that Docker is not supported with AMD hackintoshes. There are some workarounds but they seem fragile. Otherwise, everything else works great for me. I am mostly on cloud based apps/tools. Others also pointed out that Adobe, and vmware has issues. virtual box works.

<comment><USER12> also Adobe software requires patches, which is a little bit more of a dealbreaker.

<comment><USER13> To be honest quite a few apps don't seem to play nicely without the Intel- specific instructions present. REAPER won't run at all, Cubase crashes unless you remove the surround panner VST, Pro Tools would crash on launch last time I tried it (but this may have been fixed since)...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was a little bit confused what Clover was referring to— "Clover EFI is a boot loader developed to boot OS X (Hackintoshes), Windows and Linux in legacy or UEFI mode." ([https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Clover](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Clover))

</comment><comment><USER15> If anyone has an Intel NUC that they were thinking of turning into a hackintosh, there's a really great guide/set of documentation out there for a project called HaC Mini[1] which is based on OpenCore. This was my first exposure to OpenCore after being a long time Clover user and it was very good!

[1] [https://osy.gitbook.io/hac-mini-guide/](https://osy.gitbook.io/hac-mini- guide/)

<comment><USER16> The latest i9 NUCs look like a great Mac Mini replacement if they're Hackintoshable. Although they seem to be quite pricey.

<comment><USER17> The NUCs with CPUs comparable to the one that the Mac Minis offer are a lot cheaper (since they're a few generations old). Around $500 or so if you bring your own memory

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems to be a more generally useful link?

[https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop- Guide/](https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/)

It has links to other parts of the guide in the sidebar.

<comment><USER19> Introducing something as an unconventional first-in-class piece of software is not very descriptive IMHO.

I think this would be better described by the problem it solves, which I am guessing has to do with MacOS refusing to boot on non-Apple UEFI code, which I presume the Hackintosh community has not been able to obtain?

Saying it's better than Clover also doesn't help anyone who isn't already familiar with the problem.

<comment><USER20> Yep, the intro is super weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been using a Hack Pro for several months with OpenCore. It took a bit to learn my way through the docs as they were not terribly clear when I started but once I was up and running it was nice.

I was largely happy with it, as the machine was extremely fast and very, very quiet. I also had FileVault running too along with SIP. However, the main issues I had were stability - these machines are generally nowhere near as stable as a regular Mac as there are many small issues which over time can become big (restarting on wake from sleep, unreliable internet, disconnecting from iCloud, etc).

Depending on your use case, these may not be an issue. However, Opencore was vastly better than Clover and if you want to try this I'd start there first.

<comment><USER22> My OpenCore-based Hackintosh has been rock solid with the sole exceptions of Sidecar (iPad as an additional monitor) Apple Watch Unlock, which sometimes work and sometimes doesn't. I currently do not care enough to put much effort into it. Everything else works perfectly: iMessages, AirDrop, iCloud, etc.

This is not to discredit the parent comment, but rather to stress the importance of choosing your parts for maximum Hackintosh compatibility.

I built my PC to be a Hackintosh. I choose the build parts that were most compatible. Trying to Hackintosh arbitrary PC builds is above my tolerance threshold.

If you don't want to mess with your Hackintosh all the time, go this route. If you don't want to have to mess with your Hackintosh at all, buy a Mac.

<comment><USER23> What resource(s) would you recommend for identifying compatible parts?

<comment><USER24> [https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a- customac-h...](https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a-customac- hackintosh-the-ultimate-buyers-guide/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's too bad Apple is blocking Nvidia from releasing graphics card drivers for the more recent OSX versions.

<comment><USER26> I have been a hackintosh user for the last 3-4 years. I was shocked when I had problems with the GTX1060 I bought. I am using High Sierra because of this.

IIRC AMD hardware was the one without support for a long time. It is weird how it changed all of a sudden.

<comment><USER27> I gave up waiting and switched to an AMD card for the native macOS support. No regrets.

Everything works flawlessly out of the box and I no longer have to wait for Nvidia drivers before installing updates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I just used this to build a Hackintosh earlier this week. Took a while to go through the docs and figure out which files and config settings I needed, but install was smooth and I haven't had any problems.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if the VT-d disablement is required for the rootkit to work. Ideally you'd have VT-d in macOS for virtual machines, but then again you also don't have Thunderbolt so maybe it's simply not complete enough to enable 'everything'. (and if you really need everything you should probably just buy a Mac anyway)

<comment><USER30> I think the story is something like macos fails to parse the DMAR table properly, or something along those lines. If you drop the DMAR ACPI table you don't need to disable VT-d. If you disable Intel Virtualization support from the kernel via the dart=0 kernel flag, you don't need to disable VT-d.

<comment><USER2> > If you disable Intel Virtualization support from the kernel via the dart=0 > kernel flag

So _that_ is what dart=0 does!

I have Googled this, many times, as with several other weird kernel flags. Not even because I want to fix something, but because I'm curious about what's happening!

Every time, without fail, all I ever find are random forum threads of people saying "this flag fixed my computer", or maybe "You need to enable this flag because it makes your PC act more like a Mac" or some such. It's so frustrating!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has anybody tried getting this to work under Proxmox (specifically) or KVM?

I previously used to use this guide for Proxmox - which uses Clover:

[https://www.nicksherlock.com/2019/10/installing-macos- catali...](https://www.nicksherlock.com/2019/10/installing-macos- catalina-10-15-on-proxmox-6/)

However, it seems like OC might be easier.

Somebody there suggested this (apparently non-open-source) EFI making script:

[https://www.macos86.it/files/file/20-opencore-efi- maker/](https://www.macos86.it/files/file/20-opencore-efi-maker/)

but I can't even seem to get that working.

Another poster on this thread suggested

[https://github.com/Leoyzen/KVM-Opencore](https://github.com/Leoyzen/KVM- Opencore)

which seems like it could work - curious if other people have tried it and what their experiences are?

<comment><USER32> I run OSX under KVM with clover.

I've used this guide: [https://github.com/kholia/OSX- KVM](https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Every time I see OpenCore I feel like trying to make a Hackintosh again, but then I remember that my GPU is an Nvidia one and that it will never have drivers on any recent macOS releases.

My laptop is another contender, but that has an Intel wireless card so that will never be supported either. The network card issue can probably be worked around through some virtualisation, but the laptop CPU is too old to do IOMMU properly so doing a KVM Hackintosh is impossible as well.

<comment><USER28> No Nvidia drivers is very frustrating. I built a Hackintosh in mid 2017 with a GTX 1080 and it was a dream. Accidentally killed my build and didn't have time to figure out how to fix it, so I was using my hardware as an Ubuntu server for a lot of data processing and machine learning. Finally turned it back into a Hackintosh again this week and was so bummed to find out Mojave and Catalina don't have Nvidia drivers.

Granted, it's still way better than the mid-2012 MBA I was using, but I wish I could still use that GPU.

<comment><USER2> Personally, I would just throw High Sierra back on the machine. It's the best of the semi-recent macOS releases anyway.

It's going to go out of support when 10.16 is presumably released this fall, but... I don't know, live a little!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What is current state of Hackintosh this days? Is it stable?

<comment><USER2> I set up my first Hackintosh in 2011 while on Spring Break in High School.

It was the most difficult computing project I'd ever done up until that point --partly because it was legitimately more difficult back then, partly because I was using a pre-built Dell instead of a custom machine with parts targeting Hackintosh, and also probably because I was a stupid teenager who didn't know what he was doing.

But once I was done, it was absolutely stable. Everything worked[1]. I installed every point release update[2] through the normal software updater without problems. This was actually my first experience with OS X, and I completely fell in love with the platform.

Many people who haven't used Hackintosh seem to assume it's an unstable mess, and it certainly _can_ be a mess if you don't set it up correctly, or attempt to use not-quite-compatible hardware. But my experience has been that if and when you set it up properly, Hackintosh can be every bit as stable as a real Mac.

\---

[1] Except for sleep. Getting sleep working on Hackintosh is very doable but usually annoying, and it's not needed on desktops.

[2] Ie 10.6.5 ==> 10.6.8. Upgrading Snow Leopard ==> Lion almost certainly would have failed had I tried it, although such upgrades are sometimes possible nowadays with Clover, and I assume OpenCore.

<comment><USER35> >on desktops.

how about on laptops? not sleep itself but hackintoshing a laptop? i really want workspaces on whatever laptop i use but i don't want to pay through the nose for a macbook - i have a loner 2013 mbp right now and even those are still selling for like $800.

<comment><USER36> So this is a genuinely surprising attitude to me. You appreciate the software features and hardware stability of a platform, yet you do not want the creators to be paid for their work?

I mean, it must be obvious that doing these things well apparently costs tons of man-hours and someone needs to be compensated for it? How do you maintain that degree of cognitive dissonance?

<comment><USER35> lol at the accusatory and indignant tone.

1\. apple is a hardware company not a software company. to wit: they do not sell mac os and if they did i might buy it.

2\. i don't care a lick about any _other_ features or "stability" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22845629)). i simply said that i appreciated the workspaces feature. can i buy this feature ala carte? i would gladly. can i pay the devs that built it for their work? i would gladly.

3\. i maintain my cognitive dissonance the same way you do when paying a 2x markup for commodity hardware.

edit: man every day i can't help but feel more and more that people in tech (at least as this site reflects) are some of the most self-righteous.

<comment><USER37> I'm with doteka on this. I think techie entitlement is a bigger problem than self-righteousness. As Kyle Mitchell (kemitchell on HN) put it recently in his essay "No Thanks" [1]:

> From outside software looking in, "software freedom" walks and talks a lot > more like "coder entitlement" or "coder privilege". In short, a hacker on a > tear should never hear the word "no". Not when breaking into offices to > steal parts for a train set. Not when contending with a printer they didn't > develop or pay for. Not when building the next hot web or mobile app … > again. Not when building a war cloud or optimizing a baby-photo > reinforcement schedule for grandma.

Do we not realize how entitled and selfish we are?

And no, I've never done a hackintosh, either virtual or physical.

[1]: [https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/04/17/No- Thanks.html](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/04/17/No-Thanks.html)

<comment><USER35> >Do we not realize how entitled and selfish we are?

jesus christ what are you talking about. i should feel morally obligated to a corporation? or maybe tim cook himself? this isn't a moral quandary or question and never will be. you people have deeply internalized a relationship to money and corporations that is perverse. like any good business person would say: it's not personal it's business - if they want to prevent me from using their software in a way that violates the EULA or whatever then cool they can try to stop me (note: they have in the past and will continue into the future and so the world will turn).

re those poor poor apple engineers: apple's market cap is 1.24T (that's a capital T for trillion). oh no will someone please think of them and their margins! i'm (100-epsilon)% sure that not a single apple engineer will ever suffer any hardship from a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of their customer/user base building hackintoshes.

<comment><USER2> Apple definitely isn't hurting right now.

But my question with piracy is always, where do you dry the line? Is pirating Photoshop okay? What about Affinity Photo? What about Omnigroup, which makes fantastic software, but also has to charge a lot of money for it, and was forced to do a round of layoffs recently?

What if the app is made by a single developer, but you don't like his or her politics? Or what if it's a single developer charging too much? How do you determine what "too much" is, and are you really able to be a fair judge, given that you have a personal financial stake in the outcome?

As a Hackintosh user, I don't have all the answers. I tell myself Hackintosh is okay because I used a real Mac to download the installer, but that's still a moral judgement I'm not able to make impartially. I do try to avoid pirating all forms of digital media, though, even when it means there are products I simply cannot use due to lack of finances.

<comment><USER35> > But my question with piracy is always, where do you dry the line?

this has already been hashed out during the late 90s and early 00s in the context of media piracy: software and media are non-rivalrous goods. me pirating the good does not prevent anyone else from purchasing. it is not a loss to the developer or content creator because i was never going to purchase it in the first place.

> but that's still a moral judgement I'm not able to make impartially

there are zero moral issues implicated here. property is outside of morality.

<comment><USER2> > it is not a loss to the developer or content creator because i was never > going to purchase it in the first place.

How do you _know_ that you were "never going to purchase it in the first place"? There are lots of products where I initially looked at the price tag, thought "that's ridiculous", and walked away—but eventually came back and bought it, sometimes kicking and screaming.

Again, I don't think I can make a fair judgement about what I "would buy" when I have a financial stake in convincing myself one way. And I don't think anyone else can actually do it either.

<comment><USER35> > Again, I don't think I can make a fair judgement about what I "would buy" > when I have a financial stake

i'm at a loss for to how parse this let alone how to respond to it. who else but you "can make a fair judgement" about whether you'll buy something?

i don't have shifting perspectives on whether i'll buy something - i either decide to buy something or i decide not to buy it. if i decide to buy something _but i don 't have money for it_ i save money and buy it eventually.

to drive home the point: i pirate movies instead of going to theaters. if some movie that i was interested in seeing never gets released on some torrent site i do not buy that movie i simply do not watch it. on the other hand i do buy books even though i could pirate them easily.

<comment><USER2> > who else but you "can make a fair judgement" about whether you'll buy > something?

I can make a fair judgement when "not buying" means I don't get the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> sahin-boydas This will give so many opportunities to people who can pay their 10x monthly income to a buy 2-year-old mac :))

I think Apple had a stupid idea to become more luxurious and hire Angela Jean Ahrendts for 100M. God bless they realize, if they go for volume and price aggressive (as Steve Jobs said), more people can benefit.

I want hackintosh to work so well that indirectly, it will force Apple to develop way cheaper computers for the whole world.

<comment><USER38> Apple appears to be headed in the direction of making their own processors for their desktops and laptops, so this Hackintosh business isn't going to last much longer.

<comment><USER16> That's assuming that they completely abandon Intel, which would mean that the Mac Pro would not be offered with a 28-core Intel Xeon W, but rather with an ARM processor that has comparable performance (or not offered at all).

But even if Apple shifts to 100% ARM, Hackintosh community still has whatever number of years that Apple still has to support the computers that they are selling now / selling until ARM takes completely over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Two years ago i took my very old 2009 gaming pc bought fastest processor for the socket (LGA1156) on ebay for giggles (20usd) and put hackintosh on it.

Took a weekend to figure out but after that became pretty solid. So solid in fact that it became my main machine. I don't know what am i missing but i cut videos, make screencasts, work in blender... it all seems just fine.

I am doing this professionally not as hobby its my main workstation.

Now i was probably pretty lucky and for soundcard i need to use external one (i would anyway). But i am pretty sure if you buy right components you will get as stable mac as original and you will be done in two hours not days like me.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if OpenCore would enable me to (a) passthrough an i915 GPU but not an AMD GPU; (b) run Catalina on a Mac that doesn't support it?

I have an ancient macbookpro 8,2 with the defect that eventually leads to AMD GPU failure (it failed, was replaced under warranty extension, failed again same number of years later). I use GRUB iowr.mod and outb commands to disable the AMD GPU on boot so it's not even seen by Linux. But when I boot macOS, at some point during the session something enables discrete graphics and I get a kernel panic. I also get a kernel panic when doing any kind of software update (it's now stuck on 10.13.6).

<comment><USER40> I've had the same problem with 3 different 2011 MacBook Pros

There's an nvram variable you can change to disable the discrete gpu, details here: [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/166876/macbook- pro...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/166876/macbook-pro-how-to- disable-discrete-gpu-permanently-from-efi#285896)

I didn't go the Linux-live cd route so I have to reapply the fix when nvram is reset but other than that the machines work fine now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I just got a workstation grade Dell machine t7610 to be exact spent more than a week trying to hackentosh it but couldn't for some reason I always got some obscure error and none of the fixes worked. Found someone at GitHub with a similar machine but different graphics card and still couldn't make it work. But that got me thinking maybe there is a place for a tool where you feed it your hardware and it generates the most optimal configuration and image

</comment><comment><USER42> is it possible to dual boot mac os and Linux/windows or even triple boot?

I search last time no support for rtx gpu card in hackintosh. So I'm thinking to buy second gpu. What is best value gpu that support hackintosh?

My setup right now is amd r5 3600 with rtx 2060 super. I'm currently running dual boot windows 10 & Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER43> Can anyone let me know where do I start if i'd like to try this out?

Caveat: I am using the Pentium G4560 CPU. Is that a deal-breaker?

Thx!

</comment><comment><USER44> Interesting, I'll have to look at it. My T480 Clover hackintosh needs a rebuild because battery status broke and it hangs randomly every 15 minutes-3 days. It may have something to do with the Samsung 970 Pro 1TB. I have no idea about DSDT, so I'm going to have to dive in and debug that mess.

<comment><USER45> What guide did you follow for your setup?</comment></comment>


Aaron Swartz's Theory on How to Save the World - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/aaron-swartzs-theory-on-how-to-save-the-world-b3401bf79d99#.8tdx6ebw8 <comment><USER5> >Swartz claimed that the Joker is actually "homo economicus, a supremely rational actor ...

arXiv:1103.3257: The Joker effect: cooperation driven by destructive agents (2011)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.3257](https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.3257)

Keywords: public goods, cooperation, destructive agents, cycles

Abstract: _" Understanding the emergence of cooperation is a central issue in evolutionary game theory. The hardest setup for the attainment of cooperation in a population of individuals is the Public Goods game in which cooperative agents generate a common good at their own expenses, while defectors "free- ride" this good. Eventually this causes the exhaustion of the good, a situation which is bad for everybody. Previous results have shown that introducing reputation, allowing for volunteer participation, punishing defectors, rewarding cooperators or structuring agents, can enhance cooperation. Here we present a model which shows how the introduction of rare, malicious agents -that we term jokers- performing just destructive actions on the other agents induce bursts of cooperation. The appearance of jokers promotes a rock-paper-scissors dynamics, where jokers outbeat defectors and cooperators outperform jokers, which are subsequently invaded by defectors. Thus, paradoxically, the existence of destructive agents acting indiscriminately promotes cooperation."_

<comment> aaron-lebo Are there any historical examples of "a joker"? The sole example cited by the article is Nazi Germany which forced the US and the USSR to work together for a short time. That doesn't to me seem to be a real example of a "joker" however, that's just the enemy of my enemy being my friend kind of thing. Hitler wasn't just fucking things up for the sake of it, but had a very specific world he was trying to create. The Joker wanted chaos, or if he wanted anything else, doesn't tip his hand, being an unreliable source of information. How many different ways did he get those scars?

I'm just asking because scholarly articles about the actions of fictional psychopaths seem a bit much. Especially when we are talking about applying it to entire groups of people (nations) without some good examples. Note, this is also different than Swartz's or the author's suggestion - that this cooperation was intended. That's not implied by the movie, nor the joker of the article. This is the first paragraph:

 _In the recent Hollywood movie The Dark Knight (2008) the comic character known as the Joker jeopardizes a whole society spreading chaos and destruction with no aim of benefit at it._

That's not Nazi Germany (the sixth paragraph or so and example). Hitler may have had a fucked up sense of societal benefit, but that was his goal, not wanton destruction (at least until he went completely crazy).

<comment><USER6> I'd expect such characters to get written out of the histories fairly quickly. The point of a "joker" is that they're purely destructive and don't work in anyone's self-interest, not even their own; thus, they're eventually defeated and have nobody that cares about them enough to keep their memory alive.

But thinking about a few examples: Julian Assange is a modern-day joker, with Wikileaks indiscriminately publishing damaging info about many different institutions (several of which would otherwise be at odds with each other). Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who assassinated William Mckinley, who ironically spurred both cooperation _among_ anarchists and cooperation _against_ anarchists. Heck, the traditional description of Satan very much is the in line with the joker archetype, which makes me wonder if his depiction in religion is a composite of various joker-like characters that people have faced but not wanted to remember.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have never understood the raising up of Aaron Swartz to demi-god status by this community. It is tragic that he took his own life and I fully expect to be downvoted here for expressing this opinion as it is a thing you can't say here ([http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)).

<comment><USER8> He was young, showed great promise, was clearly ahead of his age, everybody who knew him found him to be a genuinely nice and caring person...

Is it really _that_ surprising that people are genuinely upset he took his own life after being harassed by the US government? This is a community that tends to dislike extreme prosecution, copyright laws and generally agrees with Aaron's ideology.

And on another note: Can HN not care about a guy without people saying we're "raising him to demi-god status"? With how often that accusation is thrown around, you'd think we have enough to sell our demi-god surplus to cults in need of more.

PS: The "I'll be downvoted for my contrarian idea but ..." stuff is for reddit, not here, tbh.

<comment><USER9> But he didn't really show great promise. He dropped out of high school. He dropped out of college. (At least according to the article... I didn't know him.) He didn't hold jobs. He broke laws, even if for arguably good reasons. He didn't get the legal help he needed. He didn't get the psych help he needed. And his life ended in tragedy.

He may have been a great guy. He may have been nice and caring. But he is not a great role model, no matter how much people wish he could have been.

<comment><USER10> Probably biased because I knew Aaron[1] but if you've read his fundamental belief on schools[2], which he held very early, it is not a big surprise that he didn't finish the process.

He didn't fit in that mold, as many didn't here. His mind didn't fit in the rule following process at all, which honestly IS what showed his great promise. He was capable of more and brave enough to try.

While I don't like post humous articles that use someone else to push your ideas, someone who can't speak for themselves anymore, this comment just made me sad.

[1] Same high school, a few years older. [2] [https://newrepublic.com/article/127317/school](https://newrepublic.com/article/127317/school)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> First: free information

Quotes from Aaron Swartz:

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

From:[https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...](https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt)

</comment><comment><USER12> Aaron Swartz seemed to not know how the world actually worked. It isn't a bunch of rational actors that love tech and information. Quite the opposite. One can't save the world without first diving deep into how it works. One then realizes there's stuff they can and can't change on top of lots of biases and trends in responses. Then, one builds on those elements of human nature to focus on the things they can change.

He didn't do that. Instead, he focused on what can't be changed by committing an illegal act with hope it would be meaningful to society or courts. The result was that he killed himself after that failed catastrophically. We might learn a great deal from Aaron Swarts but not how to change the world. He's the least qualified to tell us about that because it appears he never understood it to begin with.

Instead, we can just learn from and remember the good things he did that his mind was uniquely capable of doing. He has quite a resume of that. This approach is honest and gives him due credit.

<comment><USER13> Funny, under the excuse that they're "[d]iving deep into how it works", tons of people do absolutely nothing other than become wealthy and give their kids as many breaks as possible, while giving excuses to not acting in any way.

I hear it often called "being a realist". I consider it a pretty evil self- reassuring meme of our times. We're ready to believe we can go to Mars and live forever, but anyone fighting "Human Nature" (read: our current economical and political arrangement) is a fool.

"Don't be naive, we've figured human nature out. It wants malls and 60 hour work-weeks!"

<comment><USER12> Re become wealthy. I was thinking of Andrew Carnegie when trying for an example of young man who understood the world, got people, and changed it. For himself as you said. That's incidental, though, as s the methods are neutral to the end goal.

Re being realist. It means you need to understand the context you operate in before you can change it. All the successful people did. Most failures that werent just bad luck didnt. The very example you gave about work weeks was improved by realists in various businesses who wanted it and could execute it within a sustainable model.

<comment><USER13> We have very different views of progress I guess. When I think of people who changed the world, my mind doesn't automatically jump to Elon Musk or Andrew Carnegie.

I think of hard-won victories like Canada instituting Universal Health Care (starting in the less-known province of Saskatchewan), or people marching for Civil Rights and Labor Rights, all the while experts told them those things were unattainable and unrealistic. I think many people in those movements understood the system, just not in the way that the system approved of being understood.

Martin Luther King Jr. has a great line about this:

> _First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely > disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable > conclusion that the Negro 's great stumbling block in his stride toward > freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the > white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers > a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which > is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the > goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who > paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's > freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises > the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from > people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from > people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than > outright rejection._

I think the equivalent to that "white moderate" today is the person who thinks that anyone rocking the boat and making demands today, like Swartz, is "naive". They wisely and patiently wait for a benevolent billionaire to save the day instead. The fact that they, too, benefit from the status quo and find the current situation very tolerable is a mere coincidence.

I hope, since you freely imply that the absent Swartz was naive, that you have no problem with me calling you naive as well.

\--

edit: I too enjoy discussing things, but as soon as the conversation branches out it gets a bit messy.

I just want to say that it's a deliberate mistake to judge past movements from their white-washed idealized educational versions. It disconnects them from the messy reality of activism, and from their current-day representatives.

Replies below are saying basically "The Civil Rights leaders acted decisively and with wisdom, compared with this haphazard unorganized random act today". At the time, this is how this was portrayed by detractors:

[https://storage.synaptic.att.com/rest/objects/4a08bf2ea31f2e...](https://storage.synaptic.att.com/rest/objects/4a08bf2ea31f2e1704f5012314b18004f5ff1c88d017?uid=7be5f8cb9eb14188b0e40ae93aca2099%2FkingcenterATpalantirDOTnet&expires=1590984000&signature=epQQlbck7oWu9lum4AiRa9Yepk8%3D)

You are welcome to look through MLK Jr.'s correspondence too:

[http://www.thekingcenter.org/genre/correspondence](http://www.thekingcenter.org/genre/correspondence)

People calling his movement all over the place, erratic, etc. It's fascinating. Many, many people telling him and his ilk they were unrealistic and jumping the gun with ineffective direct action. A complete erasure of the dynamics MLK had with Malcolm X (good cop, bad cop). The FBI also conspired to try to get him to commit suicide, by blackmailing him ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_lette...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter)).

If the future Swartz was aiming for ever becomes reality, he will be remembered as a pioneer.

<comment><USER14> This is a very interesting thread and I personally think that you are both right. The big problem is that any of these things that need fixed are _really_ complicated. The most successful approaches have to have a multi- prong plan.

You do partially need to be a realist. You aren't going to be able to convince all people to ride a bicycle because it is good for the environment. You also need to be pragmatic. Take a targeted approach to go after the low hanging fruit, get the biggest bang for your buck. However, there are times when you will have to break free from the status quo and that won't be easy. Sometimes people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a new future, but this is _so_ hard. People like MLK understood that it was possible and put in the work (and was willing to pay the many costs) to force change.

Very few causes have the leader with a simple plan and the charisma to inspire others and the fortitude to see it through no matter the cost. Take a look at how quickly Occupy Wall Street faded into nothing. People will always fear change and getting them to become a more selfless actor is no trivial matter.

<comment><USER12> An important thing to consider is people cant act on abstractions. They need specifics that are easy to understand and act on. MLK's was to pass legislation banning discrimination. To this day, I still havent seen a plan of action when someone pushes Occupy.

In this case, they need pre-packaged solution ready to go to lawmakers second popular support shows up. Here's a subset of what r a alists might do in this topic:

1\. All taxpayer-funded research goes into public domain. All existing copyrights for such research goes into public domain.

2\. Since it matters to academics, the articles can be published in specific journals for visibility or prestige. However, they must provide online access to them for a flat, cheap rate applied monthly or annually. That's for unlimited articles.

3\. Private research can be copywritte to generate revenue for authors. Might put a limit on what they can charge or for how long.

All that codified into a law called Taxpayers Get Their Research Act. Has a website, premade letters, and so on. Low friction. One or more celebrities reference it in the media promoting it. Make sure personas for major demographics justifying it from their viewpoints. Swarms of people start emailing or writting letters that might lead to some or all of it passing. Optionally rich people throwing cash at lobbyists for the same bill.

 _That_ is how realists go for open access. Personally, I do my part by digging up linkz to key, paywalled papers from Wayback machine or other odd sources. Then send it to people that might use it.

<comment><USER13> > An important thing to consider is people cant act on abstractions

> "they need pre-packaged solution ready to go to lawmakers second popular > support shows up"

Again, I don't know how to describe this other than ahistorical. I would say people actually love acting on abstractions, like the pursuit of liberty or happiness, trusting they can figure out details as they go along. It's certainly the advice given to most startup founders ("hash things out a little so they make sense, figure the rest out as you go along, for you can't predict everything"). I just wrapped up Hamilton's biography not long ago, and the process was certainly nothing like people buying into a solid policy proposal.

Aaron Swartz doesn't need to be a one-man-revolution. He can do some radical inspiring acts, and then let Lawrence Lessig hash out some technical implementation details. This is how things actually work. You don't just inspire "popular" support, like the people are some thing to be manipulated for votes. The technocrats and administrators are just as vulnerable and in need of inspiration and new possibilities.

Dividing the world neatly into idealists and realists is like that quote "conservative at 20? heartless. liberal at 40? clueless." Sounds like an even assessment to both parts, but it's actually conservative propaganda saying that one is the tough true conclusion.

Same with a history of world progress that pretends that the only people ever worth following presented unchallenged, obvious avenues for change that everyone sensible agreed upon at once. Things that seem sensible now, like women voting, were not only met by vitriol by misogynists, but also with "lack of realism" by moderates.

<comment><USER14> I think he did need to be a one-man-revolution, at least somewhat.

From the article: "Because he moved from thing to thing fairly rapidly, that actually ended up imposing a cost, so that people were wary about starting a really big project with him because they worried he wouldn't stick around," said Ben Wikler. "That was a reasonable concern to have."

Human nature is fickle. If he didn't focus, then why would any followers. When everything is most important, nothing is. This is true in business, activism and most things in life. Things need time to bake, be refined, find what resonates, find easier paths, etc. This is why I still believe you need to be part realist, part pramatist and part rebel and likely at different ratios through the project's life.

<comment><USER12> "If he didn't focus, then why would any followers. When everything is most important, nothing is. This is true in business, activism and most things in life"

Same problem I had according to many. Still have to less of a degree. The trick to pulling it off successfully requires quite a bit of money that's recurring. It was Edison's: stay on all kinds of projects long enough to make significant advance in each with lab or production workers that would take it the rest of the way. The generalists need specialists committed to the long term that build on their ideas.

Now, we're talking about I.P. law specifically. That's not going to change without large amounts of money going into lobbying (same way it was created) or huge swaths of people focusing their energy on their representatives with intention to vote for the opponent if no action occurs. These options were available to him and people he knew. He didn't try them. Instead, he did some speeches and a one-off act that could never cause a large movement in the U.S. that would counter I.P. law. Most people simply wouldn't sympathize with combo of topic and his [criminal] actions enough for it to make those waves.

<comment><USER14> I agree with you. Plus his biggest challenge was/is how to make people care. Everyone has an iPhone and Netflix and a flat screen, so they think "how again is this situation so bad for me?", because to them it is pretty freaking awesome. How do you convince non tech people that Google is bad for them? That Facebook (that they spend 2 hours a day on) is really bad for them from a monopoly/privacy/etc. perspective? Most people could give a crap about security and privacy and competition as long as they get to do the things they want.

(I do think we need major IP reform but I think we need other things more....)

<comment><USER12> Good points. I've made an attempt at Facebook that you might find useful. Really tricky because one must assume a lay audience and appeal to those in high school. I welcome feedback on these especially in form of examples for my Gossip model that map to actual Facebook events.

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/ephemeral_app...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/ephemeral_apps.html#c5259463)

<comment><USER14> I think the following saying (from Andrew Lewis, not me) captures it very simply. "If you aren't paying for a service, it is because you are the product not the customer." We are the product FB (et. al.) sells, we are not its customer. There is always a price to be paid, sometimes it is not money.

<comment><USER12> I liked that and tried it on lots of laypersons for a few months. Almost none of them understood it without a lot kf explanation. It's no good if we're going for impact. Might do as a supplement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like electing Trump is one of those "out-corrupt the corrupters" strategies.

Not sure if I'm right.

EDIT: anyway I don't really agree with those theories, I would not base my political science out of comics, but I found the similarity odd.

</comment><comment><USER16> The argument about "the Joker being the hero" reminds me of a Borges short story, "Three versions of Judas."

In the story, Borges recounts a (fictional) theologian's slow realization that, in the New Testament story, it was Judas rather than Jesus who made the greatest sacrifice. Following this argument, this theologian eventually comes to the conclusion that Judas was the incarnation of God, not Jesus. Without Judas, he argues, the redemption of Man could not have occurred.

Unsurprisingly, the Church doesn't like this version of the story and Borges' fictional theologian dies in anonymity.

<comment><USER17> >Unsurprisingly, the Church doesn't like this version of the story and Borges' fictional theologian dies in anonymity.

A diversion: Judas is the representation of one of the great dividers in Christianity. To forgive Judas is to deny free will. One of the things that one could take away from the gospels is that choices were made a consequences occurred. If it hadn't been Judas it would have been Peter, and so on. Judas was not acting as an agent.

Catholics believe in free will and they believe in punishment (penance, purgatory, etc.). Luther, and many protestant sects, do not believe in free will as such. Either is there is no free will, or if there is, forgiveness more or less wipes it out.

The reason I mention this is that I can really see the influence of protestant thinking in Western society. The tendency to look at all actors as part of a larger "system" rather than individuals with agency that may or may not deserve punishment or reward based strictly on their merit. I find that interesting given this discussion. There's acknowledgment of dealing with individual choices, but as part of creating an optimal systemic outcome.

EDIT: This is also one of the reasons studying literature is an important effort. It gives us something of a window into a cultural world view. Here I'm reminded of the Iliad. Our tendency today is to admire Hector, but the Greeks would not have. He was part of a city and that city had sinned. There are no individuals. Fatalism is strong in Greek literature. It doesn't matter how good or bad a person you are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That has to be the single most weird take on the Joker character in ages...

BTW, homo economicus is the single most dangerous concept that has come out of the "science" of economics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Actually modern developments technically allow bot activism. If a legal bot can resolve your legal case, or (legalrobot for instance) can review your contract, why not to give bots power to represent your points and tirelessly petition?

</comment><comment> aaron-lebo I don't know anything about the guy other than having used Infogami (underrated) and followed early Reddit, but Swartz was always a brilliant but troubled guy. He was very intelligent but also just a kid, figuring things out in his own life while the tech world figured itself out. What happened to him was a tragedy, but Swartz engaged in illegal activity and found out his opponent was a lot more committed and effective than he anticipated. Unless he became Mandela in prison that wasn't an effective strategy.

 _In his essay, Swartz strongly supported the Joker's policy platform. Although the Joker presents himself to the world as a deranged and murderous clown, Swartz claimed that the Joker is actually "homo economicus," a supremely rational actor, the character who best understands both the problems facing Gotham City and the best solutions to those problems. Batman might have had better gear and Harvey Dent might have had the public's sympathy—but the Joker understood game theory, the best weapon of all._

 _Though the Joker's methods—such as burning large piles of money and blowing up hospitals—might have been controversial, the logic behind them was sound. "And the crazy thing is that it works!" Swartz enthused. Not only did the Joker end up ridding the city of organized crime, he convinced Gotham's residents to re-evaluate their world and their roles in it. "The movie concludes by emphasizing that Batman must become the villain," Swartz wrote, "but as usual it never stops to notice that the Joker is actually the hero."_

This is absurd (at least how it is portrayed by the author). In Nolan's movie the Joker is never portrayed as anything but a contradictory psycopath who engages in torture killings and according to his own words has no plans. He's a "dog chasing cars", even if that behavior was still rational. What solution did the Joker have again? The author closes with it, as though it's profound, but it's really just a screwed up view of justice that isn't even supported by the movie.

 _In his working paper, Swartz described his new plan for the future of activism. Rather than form a political action group focused on one single issue or tactic, Swartz proposed that organizers should assemble groups of people supremely competent in certain relevant disciplines — investigators, activists, lawyers, lobbyists, policy experts, political strategists, journalists, and publicists — who could combine their efforts and advocate effectively for any issue, big or small. Swartz envisioned a flexible, intelligent, multifaceted task force that would learn from its mistakes and refine its tactics accordingly: a team of specialists that, cumulatively, worked as generalists._

From a practical standpoint, this is interesting, though it sounds ripe for abuse and mob justice. How different is it from Wikileaks or even Anonymous? Isn't the problem with such a system is everyone always thinks they are the good guys?

Just please stop with the psychohistory and hagiography. Stop trying to say what Swartz was thinking (the author does this throughout). You don't know. If you want to compete with reality you have to be realistic. Stop using his persona to support vague notions of how the world works.

<comment><USER20> > _From a practical standpoint, this is interesting, though it sounds ripe for > abuse and mob justice. How different is it from Wikileaks or even Anonymous? > Isn 't the problem with such a system is everyone always thinks they are the > good guys?_

I'm wary of such universal teams which abstract away their own _raison d 'être_. This is what gave us the modern - how I like to call them - <USER2> paper companies, i.e. companies which couldn't give a rat's ass about _what_ they're making, as long as it is profitable (and that would gladly switch from building medical devices to making toilet paper if that had better ROI - <USER3> the name). I can't deny such focus on gaming the structure is effective - <USER4> like MBAs with abstract knowledge of how to run a money-making machine are effective at doing just that - to the detriment of all customers, who actually care about _the products_.

<comment><USER13> A PoliSci professor just released a political theory book called "Marx's Inferno" (the thesis is that Marx structured Capital like Dante's journey through hell in The Divine Comedy). It's very coherent with the thoughts you're voicing here. It's also a re-visit of Marx's theories in general.

One of my interpretations: if the invisible hand of the market describes the powerful ability of markets to turn self-interested actors into producing general welfare improvements by competing: cutting costs, producing innovation, etc.

Then, the invisible hand of the market must obviously have the same impact on good outliers. If you are trying to do something evil beyond what the market will bear, you're out of luck. If you're trying to do something good beyond what the market will bear, though, you're just as out of luck.

He goes very in depth into the fact that expressing our desires via revealed preferences in exchange/commerce removes a lot of our ability to voice what is exactly what we want.</comment></comment></comment>


Language support for functions that return multiple values - <AUTHOR> http://arcanesentiment.blogspot.com/2016/01/many-happy-returns.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ArcaneSentiment+(Arcane+Sentiment) <comment><USER2> I've always liked Beta's approach to assignment, calls, and returns (whilst disliking most of the rest of its syntax, sigh).

Assignments work left to right, approximately like this:

        (x, y) => (y, x)

which swaps x and y.

Calls that return multiple values look like

        x => sincos => (sinx, siny)

and we can string together all sorts of things like this

        x => sincos => sum => y

Procedures looked something like

        sincos(double x) {
          ...
        } returns (sinval, cosval)

All this syntax is pretty approximate, but perhaps you'll get the idea. To me, it seemed attractive in that a tuple of values flowed in at the top of a procedure, then left to right on each line, and top to bottom between lines, and finally a tuple of values is returned. Seemed like a natural sugaring of CPS style.

</comment><comment><USER3> The two-continuation style suggested there is familiar to me under the name "double barreled CPS", although usually in the context of compilation. Interesting to see it suggested for user code.

</comment><comment><USER4> Returning multiple values is not atomic.

<comment><USER5> Pray explain further?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Google Adwords Help? - <AUTHOR> Anyone know how to make Google Adwords spend more of my money faster? (without dramatically increasing max cpc). I keep waiting days for it to ramp up impressions and my daily budget is like 100x what it's spent so far. I did have it working well, but I maybe added some keywords and it dramatically slowed down in showing impressions on my ads. Also have it on search and display ads. Any Google Adwords experts? <comment><USER2> You may want to try "Accelerated" ad delivery. More info here - [https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2404248?hl=en](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2404248?hl=en)</comment>


The Sad History of the Microsoft Posix Subsystem (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/ <comment><USER2> Here is a more recent history of Interix and the history of it, from Stephen Walli who was part of it:

[https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/running-linux-apps-on- wind...](https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/running-linux-apps-on-windows-and- other-stupid-human-tricks-part-i-acbf5a474532)

[https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/running-linux-apps-on- wind...](https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/running-linux-apps-on-windows-and- other-stupid-human-tricks-part-ii-c244b2ee535)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Is Windows NT POSIX Compliant ?" is a good read: [https://books.google.be/books?id=t_HcO8cY91IC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.be/books?id=t_HcO8cY91IC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=windows+NT+3.5+posix+certified&source=bl&ots=Px9DXJRLat&sig=6aTVf7_8y2dgO7J80qV4OCKdO_A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjgjL-6mYzLAhUiQpoKHatGCxgQ6AEINDAE#v=onepage&q=windows%20NT%203.5%20posix%20certified&f=false)

<comment><USER4> Bloody hell - they really were utterly unethical back in the day! Seriously, somehow they were bypassing procurement rules - there had got to be either seriously incompetent decision makers, or some sort of graft that occurred at the time.

<comment><USER5> Look up the Orange Book certificatoon story after your blood's stopped boiling.

[https://gcn.com/Articles/1998/10/26/Former-Microsoft- contrac...](https://gcn.com/Articles/1998/10/26/Former-Microsoft-contractor- Ed-Curry-says-that-the-company-deliberately-misledgovernment-buyers.aspx?m=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the Interix guys gave a talk at my local Unix group in 1997 or so. He said they had a support contract with Microsoft. Once Windows NT came out, Microsoft stopped answering calls for about 6 months. Because NT was going to win, right?

After 6 months, their technical contacts were sheepishly apologetic...

On a personal note, I did my main FreeRADIUS development on XP with Interix for many years. It was... adequate as a Unix replacement. Not spectacular, but adequate.

When that system died, I replaced it with an OSX system. Which was enormously better.

<comment><USER7> I don't quite understand, what caused the 6 month period of silence and then apology?

<comment><USER8> Microsoft burned their bridge with Interix because "NT was going to win, right?" Six months later, when Microsoft figured out that NT still needed a Posix compatibility layer, they had to (sheepishly) rebuild their bridge with Interix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is interesting. So basically, my understanding is that the Posix subsystem is just a user mode portion of Windows that translates API calls to calls into Executive services through ntdll.dll

Now this means that if you know the ntdll.dll interface then this remains stable. So if you want to develop your own environmental subsystem it should be possible. After all, the Posix subsystem was purchased by Microsoft!

What I'm _really_ interested in is what the ReactOS guys are doing. Have they implemented the same layering? If they have implemented ntdll.dll, then this could actually mean that they could technically get in ahead and do what Microsoft are doing right now.

For that matter, it starts to make me wonder whether someone could do what Microsoft have done but in reverse on Linux! In other words, implement a translation layer that translate ntdll.dll function calls to corresponding kernel syscalls, then work backwards implementing each of the user mode subsystems. Maybe WINE has done this already?

<comment><USER9> Up until Win7 the Win32 subsystem wasn't entirely in userland. In Vista they started the MinWin kernel initiative to extricate it but I don't know if that's full come to fruition in Windows 10.

If it has then you could theoretically write a WinNT interface for Linux and run the Win32 userland on it. But that's pretty much asking Microsoft to sue you into oblivion.

* According to Wikipedia, the MinWin project started after Server 2003 shipped.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't Microsoft have sued the ReactOS guys then?

<comment><USER9> No, ReactOS is an implementation of the Win32 API, not the WinNT kernel.

There's a layer of separation between WinNT and Win32 that's basically an API. In theory if you implemented this API, then you could run Microsoft's Win32 subsystem on your API without Microsoft's underlying WinNT kernel. That Win32 layer would be Microsoft code and they'd sue the heck out of you for running it.

The WinNT kernel was originally designed so that Subsystems would run on top of it and those Subsystems would provide the interfaces for applications. Originally WinNT had Win32, OS/2 and POSIX subsystems that ran on top of it. Over time the distinction between WinNT and Win32 erroded while the OS/2 subsystem was canned and the POSIX one neglected.

Starting after Server 2003 they began to redefine the boundary between WinNT and Win32. The primary reason was to allow for headless Servers that didn't have the overhead of the GUI (Win32) or other unnecessary functionality like the Printer systems.

<comment><USER4> That's entirely wrong. ReactOS implements the subsystems that allow drivers to run and a whole bunch more besides.

If you don't believe me, then I refer you to the following:

[https://github.com/mirror/reactos/tree/master/reactos/dll/nt...](https://github.com/mirror/reactos/tree/master/reactos/dll/ntdll)

The Wiki itself states that:

"The ReactOS project reimplements a state-of-the-art and open NT-like operating system based on the NT architecture. It comes with a WIN32 subsystem, NT driver compatibility and a handful of useful applications and tools."

[https://www.reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS](https://www.reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS)

You might also want to review:

[https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Ntoskrnl.exe](https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Ntoskrnl.exe)

And also:

[https://www.reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS_Core](https://www.reactos.org/wiki/ReactOS_Core)

And here is the header for the kernel functions used in ntdll.h:

[https://github.com/mirror/reactos/blob/master/reactos/includ...](https://github.com/mirror/reactos/blob/master/reactos/include/ndk/kefuncs.h)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems this article badly needs to be updated in light of Ubuntu on Windows. Here's a link from 2016 instead of 2010. [https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/03/30/ubuntu-on-windows- the...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/03/30/ubuntu-on-windows-the-ubuntu- userspace-for-windows-developers/)

<comment><USER11> It's a timely reminder for anyone getting excited about Ubuntu on Windows that Microsoft had a working system for doing that, only to slowly run it into the ground. I'd have a lot more respect for the new system if they'd revived Interix/SFU/SUA rather than releasing a different, incompatible replacement.

<comment><USER12> I think the point is to allow Linux binaries to be used without a recompile, which saves MS most of the cost of maintaining binaries for it.

<comment><USER13> Which is the key. Plenty of ISVs make Linux binaries, but nobody was interested in Interix binaries.

<comment><USER14> Indeed. I think you can see this in some of the history in this article: Interix was "POSIX compatible", but essentially its own OS, like compiling for Linux versus BSD. So someone had to maintain binary builds of GNU tools for Interix and thus you ended up with the large "Tools" distribution of user space binaries. Ultimately, "Tools" was its own Unix distribution that was subtly incompatible with any other Unix distribution. Even today on Linux you still see a lot of the headaches in the subtle binary incompatibilities across Linux distributions.

The amazing thing with Ubuntu on Windows is that user space is the same Ubuntu distribution of user space tools as on Linux. That lessens the maintenance burden of the User Space considerably as Canonical is already actively maintaining that distribution, and will continue to actively maintain that distribution, and that there are a considerable number of users of that distribution on Linux already and a considerable ecosystem of third parties building for that distribution. Those are definitely the missing pieces that Interix never had and makes this "Son of Interix" that is Ubuntu on Windows much more interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe the fact that Dave Cutler who was much more a VMS guy that did not liked Unix/Posix at all may have had an influence on the design of the kernel of windows NT is an explanation?

I must admit I used SFU and IO was all quirkish (buffered IO called in non buffered mode).

But knowing that async IO, threading was radically different from POSIX they may have decided at some point that it was not possible to offer a quirkless API for Posix by conflict of construction, and they dropped it.

I mean for a lot of programmer an IO is an IO, a process a process... but the kernel may thinks differently.

For the record, before I hear the Unix fan boys says that Posix is superior, PyParallel by continium exploits a parallel version of python on windows and have considerable gain from using exactly the heart of Dave Cutler's architecture: multi-threading, async IO... [https://speakerdeck.com/trent/parallelizing-the-python- inter...](https://speakerdeck.com/trent/parallelizing-the-python-interpreter- the-quest-for-true-multi-core-concurrency)

I do not say it is the panacea, I say it worths being looked at.

As you guess, thinking that the same cause produces the same effect and if the kernel still use Cutlers architecture around multi threading and asyncio then I expect the ubuntu runtime on windows to have quirks around... asyinc io and multithreading.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think this is a best described as a tale about using and writing proprietary software. At any time what you've written can be taken away and/or abandoned, and there's usually nothing you can do about it.

<comment><USER17> Using an abandoned free software project is rarely going to be much fun, either. In fact, using actively maintained free software projects is rarely much fun, since many of them tend to often abandon old features and introduce new incompatible ones, and you either have to keep using old versions of everything or update everything at once, breaking a ton of things. (Of course at times you're way better off with a free program than you'd be with a proprietary alternative, but the reverse can be true just as much in other cases.)

<comment><USER18> _using actively maintained free software projects is rarely much fun, since many of them tend to often abandon old features and introduce new incompatible ones_

GNOME has a lot to answer for. Most other projects try hard to avoid this and lean the other way, preserving ancient features at the cost of clarity.

<comment><USER17> I dunno, KDevelop 4, based on KDE's rather than Gnome's libraries, was nothing like KDevelop 3 and couldn't do some of the old things, and there was no way you could compile KDevelop 3 on an Ubuntu box bundled with KDevelop 4 and the new KDE libraries unless you were really good at this shit. Eclipse, based on the JVM, had a popular plugin that was broken, I think, in Juno or a bit earlier, and whose author refused to update it for the new Eclipse because too much of the things in Eclipse he depended on changed. Upgrading Emacs broke everyone's emacs-lisp hacks that they copied from each other. And so forth.

I think that in the land of Linux, the only things which remain backward compatible are the kernel (if you want to run statically linked userland binaries - not if you want to run driver binaries) and the GNU userspace utitilies like sh and grep (though sh is bash on some distros and dash on others, breaking the very popular assumption that sh is in fact bash, and env might reside in either /bin/env or /usr/bin/env, defeating its purpose of letting you deal with the fact that #!/bin/tcsh will break on systems keeping tcsh at /usr/bin. But a given distro will usually keep its shit where it last put it, which I guess is better than it could have been.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I should also mention this fiasco:

[http://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/2008/01/12/70624...](http://archives.miloush.net/michkap/archive/2008/01/12/7062458.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I used Cygwin to offer me a sane environment that ran most of my code and tools since at least Windows XP. Under it, Windows was a reasonably adequate workstation OS.

<comment><USER20> Between 2001 and the arrival of service pack 2, it was a horror due to virus and worms for sys admins and end users. The ignore the problem thing was a resident resource hungry program called "virus scanner" Com & co were great, ms used it,the rest abused it. And Xp feels fast too, it wasn't, 7 was faster, but it felt the other way.

<comment><USER21> >And Xp feels fast too, it wasn't, 7 was faster, but it felt the other way.

Desktop composition adds a frame or more of latency. If you disable it (sadly not possible in Windows 8 and later) UI interaction feels noticeable more responsive. But most people run Windows 7 with composition on, so for them it makes sense that "XP felt faster"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Around this time, the core development team was reformed in India rather > than Redmond and some of the key Softway developers moved on to other > projects like Monad (PowerShell) or left Microsoft.

This is indeed very sad. It seems like every project shipped overseas suffers the same fate. When will we ever learn that you can't "leverage the salary disparity" \- you don't outsource your engineers when your core competency is engineering.

<comment><USER23> This is not outsourcing. I'm an Indian and I know for a fact that Microsoft India employs the very best talent. Yes, there are cost benefits for having engineering done in India, but for companies such as Microsoft there shouldnt be a quality difference. However where you'd see quality difference is if you try to build an app for $50 with a company you found on a job website. Those employ regular run-of-the-mill, copy-paste-from-stackoverflow developers.

<comment><USER22> Offshoring then. Talent probably isn't even the problem. It could have more to do with putting 8000 miles between the devs working on some project and the people who care about that project. If you try to get an app built for $50 you're gonna have a bad time regardless of where you do it - that's not an argument.

<comment><USER24> > the devs working on some project and the people who care about that project.

Those two aren't mutually exclusive. Toyota employees in the US probably still care about the cars they're working on. I can verify that the Finnish employees at Microsoft do great work (e: and care about it), despite being 4700 miles away from Redmond.

<comment><USER22> I'm not trying to imply that offshore workers don't care about their work. If you take an existing project and send it far away from everyone who was involved with that project, that project will probably suffer, especially with software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's sort of a truism that the more expensive software is to buy, the more expensive it is to own... (i.e. worse quality, less development on the part of the vendor, etc.)

<comment><USER26> I think the starting point of that could be more precisely identified as "the fewer buyers for a given piece of software..." the more expensive it is to own.

If you're the only customer running OS/2-on-NT-using-Token-Ring-over-Carrier- Pidgeon, you're not going to have a good time when you find a bug or missing feature.

<comment><USER27> A variant on the network effect effect.

<comment><USER28> (Absence thereof.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well that was indeed sad, including the Walli writeup linked by Justin.

Question: Does, and if so how does the Window Station[1] fit into the NT Subsystem framework?

1\. [https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askperf/2007/07/24/sessi...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askperf/2007/07/24/sessions- desktops-and-windows-stations/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I still have a Softway Systems CD laying around somewhere. Wasn't quite the same as Linux but was fun to play around with.

</comment><comment><USER31> details matter

[https://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=156953+0+archi...](https://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=156953+0+archive/1998/freebsd- chat/19980823.freebsd-chat)

<comment><USER32> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here's my tl;dr:

1\. Interix/SUA subsystem was not developed by Microsoft. It was acquired from a company called Softway. It was used internally to transition Hotmail from FreeBSD to Windows. It is believed some important MS customers also made use of Interix and possibly came to rely on it.

2\. How to explain MS seeming ambivlance toward a POSIX layer on top of Windows? Idea: Windows API is so complex (convoluted?) as to exclude competition. See Joel On Software reference. He marvels at Windows' backwards compatibility - being able to run yesterday's software on today's computers. Yet he also admits MS strategically developed software that would not run on today's hardware, but only on tomorrow's. (Not intending to single out MS as I know other large companies in the software business did this too.)

Complexity as a defensive strategy. Who would have guessed?

Many years ago, I gave up on Windows in favor of what I perceived as a more simple, volunteer-run UNIX-like OS that was better suited to networking.

As it happens, unlike Windows, _all versions_ of this OS run reliably on most _older hardware_. Although it was not why I switched at the time, I have come to expect that by virtue of the UNIX-like OS, my applications will now run on older _as well as_ current hardware. I rely on this compatibility.

Unlike Windows I can run the latest version of the OS on the older hardware.

Windows backwards compatibility is no doubt worthy of praise, however the above mentioned compatibility with older hardware is more important to me than having older software run reliably on a proprietary OS that constantly requires newer hardware.

The 2004 reference Reiter cites on the "API War" suggests people buy computers based on what applications they will be able to run.

Unlike the reference, I cannot pretend to know why others buy certain computers. Personally, I buy computers based on what OS they will be able to run. Traditionally, in the days of PC's and before so-called smartphones, if you were a Windows user this was almost a non-issue. It was pre-installed everywhere.

At least with respect to so-called smartphones it appears this has begun to change. Maybe others are choosing to buy computers based on the OS the computer can run? I don't know for sure.

As for the "developers, developers, developers" and availability of applications idea, since switching to UNIX-like OS, being able to run any applications I may need has been a given. In fact, I have come to rely on applications that will only run on UNIX-like OS!

And now it seems MS is going to make running UNIX applications on Windows easier. Why?

As with Interix, will the reasoning behind this successor POSIX layer remain a mystery?

<comment><USER34> >MS strategically developed software that would not run on today's hardware, but only on tomorrow's

what do you mean by that?

<comment><USER33> If you follow the "API war" hyperlink, it's under the heading "It's Not 1990".

When consumers are upgrading their hardware regularly as they were in the 1990's, then developers can disregard the notion of users "upgrading" their software.

Instead they can just write applications targeting new hardware. It does not have to run on older hardware.

The user will be compelled to upgrade the hardware and, in the case of Windows, by default they get the new software. The example cited was Excel versus Lotus123.

MS also benefitted from hardware sales through agreements with the OEM's.</comment></comment></comment>


Logging Like a Pro - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/logging-like-a-pro-8cc6ad09e415 <comment><AUTHOR> Logs are like evidence in crime scenes, and developers are like CSIs. Logs play a crucial role in developers' investigation of a bug or an outage. This article aims to not only provide a list of useful application logging practices but also explain the theories, such as the what, the when and the who in logging</comment>


Show HN: Real time digital assets monitor - <AUTHOR> http://gdxm.io <comment><USER2> Could you please add "Nano" there?</comment>


Show HN: LiveCoder - <AUTHOR> LiveCoder is a fun tool I built almost a year ago to simulate live coding Frontend technologies for my presentations. You actually don't have to live-code, but just prepare beforehand the program, snippets of HTML, CSS and Javascript and you feed the tool with it, so you can just focus on explaining what's being coded. Simple :-)
I never really shared this tool, but I used it in a few presentations quite succesfully, so I think it could be an interesting tool to use. You have full control of the speed. You can pause and resume... An entire app can be live-coded with this. It's quite fun to watch ;-)
There is a Demo in the repo, a bit slow at the beginning but wait until the end, gets better. Hope you enjoy it and please, feedback would be very much appreciated.
Repo: https://github.com/jscriptcoder/live-coder
Fran <comment><USER2> I love the demo. Can you pause and resume dynamically, or do you always have to embed the pause and resume points into the pre-prepared script?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can pause by clicking on the document, and resume by clicking again. But I might also add some keypress for that, like "p" to pause and resume (play), in case document click does already something else in the app.

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An occasional misspelling and slightly variable speed would make it more authentic :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like fun. I could add a configuration item such as: { humaLike: true } to introduce a more human behaviour.

Thanks for the feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would make the demo link more prominent because it is really cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll do so

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> impressive. You would deserve more stars on github... World is an unfair place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :-)</comment></comment>


GitHub install upload filters to comply with new EU copyright directive - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ffii.org/github-install-upload-filters-to-comply-with-new-eu-copyright-directive/ <comment><USER2> I hate April 1st</comment>


Extraction Library – Query-Based Tree Extraction for JavaScript Object Graphs - <AUTHOR> http://rse.github.io/extraction/ <comment><USER2> I saw this over at /r/javascript on Reddit. Pretty neat little library.</comment>


Google and ProPublica team up to build a national hate crime database - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/18/google-documenting-hate-news-index-propublica/ <comment> chroem- I'm about as far left as they come, like campaigning for Sanders left, but I have some serious concerns about this.

There has been a serious effort to label everyone that disagrees with Israel's growing apartheid policies toward the Palestinian people as antisemitic hate criminals. I worry that this sort of corporate vigilanteism is going to make it effectively illegal to disagree with the narratives sponsored by the wealthiest members of our society.

<comment><USER3> Lefty here too (So left I wrote Bernie in, hoping Trump would win just to stick it to the DNC) - and not sad I did, because the Rep. party is literally in a suicide spiral off Trump tower...

I'm totally totally appalled..by Saturday's events..and part of me rejoices at Cloudflare/Google/Godaddy fighting Nazi's... but a part of me - <USER2> techy/privacy part is screaming MY GOD WHAT Are we Letting them do in the name of 'Anti-Hate' \-- giving everyone a label, or making them fit in a box is a scary precipice to go over.

I hope and pray we can find better ways to combat the hate, I think the leaders at google are well meaning in this, but this screams to me that something bigger and deadlier could be unleashed as a result. We need to be REALLY careful how we start self-policing the internet.

<comment><USER4> One thing a co-worker brought up recently is how terrifyingly "mob" like the online sphere has become. From twitter to facebook to etc. Media is now reactionary to what people want, and they can tell what people want by "trending topics", which are essentially the wills of a mob.

I could expand but I think this gets the gist of my fears out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google engaged in blacklisting people for something as vague as "hate crime" (when not crimes) is as Orwellian as it gets. Then again, as long as Antifa, BLM, KKK, Neo-Nazi, etc. persons convicted of real crimes are fairly and equally represented, perhaps we'll see real movement to shut this nonsense down.

</comment><comment><USER6> I detest the surge in (at least visible) racism as of late, but as a liberal this terrifies me. The idea that an organization (particularly one that is driven by corporate interests and has serious problems with diversity) is able and willing to impose its will like this against others is concerning.

This is one of those hard things, because I don't fear what it currently is, or what the intentions are, but I do fear what it can become. Definitions of things change over time, and what is considered a "hate crime" can and will change. This could easily become a tool for the enforcement of political correctness (and I don't mean that the way the alt-right likes to define it. I mean the traditional definition, that being politically correct means you agree with those in power).

And what of somebody falsely accused or convicted? We know the police can be crooked and that courts can make mistakes. Are we to ruin someone's life and/or reputation because of that? Must they beg and sacrifice at the altar of Google to clear their name?

<comment><USER7> Check the actual project, it has nothing to do with what you're talking. It is just an index of news articles talking about hate crime.

> This page lists media reports, collected by Google News, about hate crimes > and bias incidents.

<comment><USER6> I did read the article. Perhaps you missed this part:

> "In this case, it helps reporters by digging out locations, names and other > useful data from the 3,000-plus news reports

<comment><USER7> And? Again, it only lists media articles about hate crimes and bias.

<comment><USER8> It's fine to disagree, but I just don't understand what you aren't understanding about his concerns.

He doesn't like the idea of this list being made. Is that not enough?

<comment><USER9> I think it's that "the idea that an organization is able and willing to impose its will like this against others" is a total misrepresentation of what the project is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not even pretending anymore, Google?

> ProPublica was the brainchild of billionaires and major Democratic donors > Herbert and Marion Sandler, the former chief executives of the Golden West > Financial Corporation, who have committed $10 million a year to the project

<comment><USER11> I encourage you to look at the full list of partners, this isn't "google and one liberal rag" it's "google and a ton of major journalism outlets and universities", and it's worth evaluating through that lens.

I am cautiously optimistic that they might be able to accomplish something good here and create a more data-driven analysis of something that's a hot- button, highly emotionally charged topic right now.

<comment><USER12> "google and a ton of major journalism outlets and universities"

Can you point to the known conservative group in that mix?

<comment><USER12> The group reported at [1] is _The ProPublica-led coalition includes The Google News Lab, Univision News, the New York Times, WNYC, BuzzFeed News, First Draft, Meedan, New America Media, The Root, Latino USA, The Advocate, 100 Days in Appalachia and Ushahidi. The coalition is also working with civil-rights groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, and schools such as the University of Miami School of Communications._

1) [https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/08/19/propublica- working-...](https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/08/19/propublica-working- google-document-hate-threatens-conservative-bloggers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Like police shootings and acts of force, hate crimes are growing in number and visibility but are inconsistently reported. An independent database seems like a great idea. I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that this is going to be some Google-run thoughtcrime outfit. It's news organizations and universities sharing data, Google is on algo support.

Full list of partners here:

[https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/hatecrimes](https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/hatecrimes)

</comment><comment><USER7> For those who didn't read the article, the project doesn't try to define hate crimes, just surface media reports about hate crimes:

> This page lists media reports, collected by Google News, about hate crimes > and bias incidents.

<comment><USER13> >The Hate News Index will keep an eye out for false positives

finding false positives means eventually you have to decide what you consider a hate crime

<comment><USER7> You missed the example of the false positive:

> (casual uses of the word "hate" for example)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> oval-atom 1984: Government's Attempt to Control The Mind and Bodies of Its Citizens

The novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is an American classic which explores the human mind when it comes to power, corruption, control, and the ultimate utopian society. Orwell indirectly proposes that power given to the government will ultimately become corrupt and they will attempt to force all to conform to their one set standard. He also sets forth the idea that the corrupted government will attempt to destroy any and all mental and physical opposition to their beliefs, thus eliminating any opportunity for achieving an utopian society.

I guess Mr Orwell got it wrong, it won't be the government. Google has already shown it's belief in "Diversity", but only how they define it, as experienced by the engineer they just booted.

Google, FaceBook, Apple, Twitter, and Microsoft will be controlling all the information. Don't be surprised if you see only what they want you to see.

People worry about the NSA invading your private life, the NSA drools about the data these Techno Giants already have. And of course they put on this glorified act of denial when the government requests information.

Yet people worry about who will police what these government entities are doing, so who is going to police these Techno Giants? Remember, these companies are in for the money and all that that comes with it.

Zuckerberg wants everyone to have a Basic Income, who is going to pay for that? But it is one way to buy votes. It sounds like just another welfare program.

Welfare is destroying this country, as it is today. It destroys incentive and when that happens, the mind becomes worthless.

I tend to go along with Thomas Sowell. [https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/thomas- sowe...](https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/thomas-sowell- explains-how-the-welfare-state-hurts-the-poor/)

[https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/instead- of-...](https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/instead-of-ending- poverty-big-government-subsidizes-dependency/)

The ideology of the Techno Giants, "Your Life Belongs to US"

<comment><USER14> George Orwell was British not American...

<comment> oval-atom But government is government, hope you got the rest of them.

<comment><USER15> I think prewett is disagreeing with this

> The novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is an American classic

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess they will start choking off more web activity from their political enemies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't worry, I'm sure James Damore won't show up on this list.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's with this dystopian news I'm reading more everyday? "This page lists media reports, collected by Google News, about hate crimes and bias incidents." No doubt containing personal names and being combined with Google's algorithms. What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great, southern poverty law center already does this well though

<comment><USER19> I think reasonable people can disagree on how well the SPLC does this considering their including of Maajid Nawaz among their list of anti-Muslim extremists.

Edit: To clarify, I understand that you were referencing their hate crimes database and that I brought up their list of people they label as extremists, and while the two things aren't the same, my point was to highlight that not everyone sees the SPLC as infallible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is excellent news!

<comment><USER5> Sure, if you like living in a nanny-police state. A lot more than the 1st amendment is under threat for the grossly staged violence perpetrated upon American society in recent days.

Ref.: [http://stevepieczenik.com/charlottesville-staged- confrontati...](http://stevepieczenik.com/charlottesville-staged- confrontation)

<comment><USER21> Oh, look. Someone believes the latest act of right-wing violence was really a false-flag operation by leftists coordinating with the CIA, and that Pizzagate was actually a thing.

What crazy kooky outside-the-box reporting that is, which means it must be true I guess.

<comment><USER5> Pizzagate is a distraction manufactured by the the mainstream media. Hardly surprising someone with your false and dismissive opinion would bring it up. How is this obvious? Because the media focused on one pizza joint when there are extensive documented cases of pedophilia and child sex trafficking taking place. Heard of Haiti and the Clinton Foundation? Get informed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> #3 14 points/26m Google and ProPublica team up to build a national hate crime database

#6 105 points/1h YouTube admits 'wrong call' over deletion of Syrian war crime videos

Yeah, perfectly explainable. Like every other time.

<comment><USER22> If you are talking about post position on the Front Page, then it's stated somewhere (the FAQ?) that HN mods and admins can 'insert' a story anywhere on the front page if they feel it needs more attention than it's getting.

Personally, I'm not a fan of that (feels a bit /. under DICE for my liking) - but I'm just a freeloader here, like the rest of us.

<comment><USER10> In the Google Memo debacle they kept saying they did not intervene in favor of Google. That it was just the flagging of users what drove the stories out of the home page. A story with 1600 points could only be reached via Algolia or comments section.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Antifa, BLM, KKK, Neo-Nazi

2 of these things are not like the others. 2 of these things just don't belong.

edit: yay downvotes from people who can't mention nazis without whataboutism.

<comment><USER24> In the videos I saw, Antifa and BLM were stalking (and eventually hitting) people in Charlottesville with bats.

In Berkeley, they beat several people unconscious, and that was just over a speaker who they didn't like.

That's crossing some serious lines, whether you find it justifiable or not.

<comment><USER25> > In the videos I saw

These don't seem to be very easy to find. Can you link some examples? (Honestly asking).

<comment><USER24> It's hard finding a video without slanted commentary, but this should give you an impression of what I mean.

[https://streamable.com/svxcr](https://streamable.com/svxcr)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm terrified at seeing the positive "great idea!" and "good job google" comments here. This type of database, or collection of persons can (and most likely will) be wielded in an unfair and unjust manner. This isn't Google's job to handle at all.

HN readers, sure Google is on your side today but that might not be the case tomorrow. Any sane person can see why this is an awful idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sounds like positive news because it's totally crazy to see somebody—specially if not even German—waving a Nazi flag like it's something to be proud of.

However, I wonder if this promotes hate towards the haters (probably a dumb thought)..? Who gets to decide who the bad guys are and what a hate crime is..?

<comment><USER10> Of course. I'd even agree up to a point the extremist intolerants should not be allowed (be it nazis, fascists, maoist, communists, or religious extremists). But it looks very wrong to put this in the hands of a mega- corporation with political interests. They are a virtual monopoly on search and videos.

I wonder what would the EFF would say about this.

We've been on this road before. Under the pretense of terrorism threats individual rights were eroded on a massive scale. And Google was part of it, either actively or with willful ignorance (e.g. not encrypting internal links so NSA could easily tap).

Who are they to decide what is a hate crime? In Canada it's a hate crime to refuse to use on of a dozen gender pronouns for "non-binary" people.

<comment><USER23> > In Canada it's a hate crime to refuse to use on of a dozen gender pronouns > for "non-binary" people

No it's not. Listen to a lawyer or actual expert instead of a psych professor with a chip on his shoulder.

<comment><USER10> Canadian Department of Justice website. [http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj- sjc/pl/identity-identite/fa...](http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj- sjc/pl/identity-identite/faq.html)

> With very few exceptions, grounds of discrimination are not defined in > legislation but are left to courts, tribunals, and commissions to interpret > and explain, based on their detailed experience with particular cases.

Yeah, vague wording would surely work out if it's a hate crime or not. This is ridiculous. Laws should be clear. The majority of Canadian judges are quite left-liberals.

<comment><USER23> > The majority of Canadian judges are quite left-liberals.

Good.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What does the filler text "lorem ipsum" mean? - <AUTHOR> http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2290/what-does-the-filler-text-lorem-ipsum-mean

<comment><USER2> Straightdope was a little deficient this time. Wiki has a better article.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum)</comment>