Who Should Be CTO of the USA? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/20/who-should-be-cto-of-the-usa/ <comment><USER2> If Lessig doesn't want the job then Obama should give it to Rod Beckstrom and then have Bruce Schneier replace Beckstrom as head of the National Cyber Security Center. Giving someone the position just because they're famous for inventing a piece of technology is a terrible idea. Schneier would be a much better pick for NCSC because not only is his expertise in security, but he is really good at selling his ideas and motivating average users to get behind best practices. Beckstrom on the other hand is highly intelligent, competent, and intellectually curious, but he isn't really a security expert. He would however be an excellent candidate for national CTO.

<comment><USER3> Bruce Schneier would be a fantastic choice. He should be offered whatever high level position he thinks he could do the most good with, and be given the freedom to do things right. Can you imagine how much more sane things would be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All the other bureaucratic positions made out of thin air have worked out so well for the American people so far that I just can't wait to have my life more regulated in new and interesting ways. How exciting! I'm always so happy when we finally give power to a single individual to let us know the best way to spend other people's money. Life is so complicated with people arguing over better ways to do things with their products and services and all that rubbish. I'm genuinely looking forward to VictoryOS and the new VictoryBook laptop that the Ministry of Technology has in store for us. They will likely be leagues ahead of all the other horribly sub-par technologies we're forced to put up with today.

Personally, I think our new Chief Tyranny Officer should be someone who has the following qualities:

      - extensive experience forcing other people to do their bidding
      - no regard for civil liberties
      - a deeply flawed understanding of technology
      - passionate interest in maintaining and extending her power
      - desire to get filthy rich by propping up companies and providing subsidies to suffering industries

Well I guess we can just put about every name of Congress and the Senate in a hat. In fact let me just reflect that it is truly amazing to think that we live in a time when almost all our representatives share such patriotic qualities. 2009 is going to be great!

</comment><comment><USER5> Peter Norvig would be good.

<comment><USER6> That's a lot of horsepower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Vint Cerf seems far too academic. I doubt he'd be able to bulldoze the bureaucracy the way Gates could. Most of the other obvious choices would have the same problem. I think you'd have to be a bit ruthless to make any real progress. Eric Schmidt could probably do it, but not as well as Gates.

<comment><USER8> I agree with all of this, but I don't think Gates will accept the job. He's very committed to his foundation, which is a much bigger opportunity for large-scale benefit to billions of people than CTO of the USA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My money's on Marc Andreessen:

<http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/03/an-hour-and-a-h.html>

<comment><USER10> Not a bad call, but my guess is he's not available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you can spare her, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington.

She was a VP (if my memory's correct) and in charge of developer relations at Real when I remember talking to her about ten years ago. And she's been a US senator for a while now, which probably gives her a more direct understanding of "how a bill becomes a law" than most.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is USA the new Google killer?

<comment><USER13> Looks like it:

[http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chd...](http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chdet=1224554816546&chddm=50048&q=NASDAQ:GOOG&ntsp=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd vote for myself if I could, I'd love to do it! However, looking past the Nanoscopic chance of that happening, I would have to say Bill Gates. Gates, while aging, is a powerful and loud person when it comes to the use of technology in a modern society. He understands not only the needs but the potential for technology in our world. Unfortunately, Microsoft being the mammoth it is, you haven't seen him much able to maneuver it over the past few years.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sen. Ted Stevens

<comment><USER16> Definitely the best choice for Chief Tubes Officer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Vint Cerf/ Bill Gates

</comment><comment><USER18> No one.

</comment><comment><USER19> So they want some central planner to dictate technology in the "land of the free"... ha!

<comment><USER20> Yeah - think of it as ARPA on steroids. Remember ARPA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Stallman.

<comment><USER22> +1 I want him to be the President :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> vint cerf gets my vote

</comment><comment><USER23> Bruce Schneier

</comment><comment><USER20> Amory Lovins.

</comment><comment><USER24> Peter Thiel

<comment><USER25> Actually Peter Thiel would be a good choice, Who better to be the CTO of USA than a Libertarian.

<comment><USER26> And a Singularitarian!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Warren Buffet, of course

</comment><comment><USER27> Woz

</comment><comment><USER28> It should be someone who is largely retired, like a Cinnenatus kind of person, so, for example, not Steve Balmer. He is awesome as ceo of microsoft, and the world would be poorer for it, were he to go elsewhere, in my opinion. This job is not even that technical - just trying to increase access to broadband, and advising on "green tech" issues. More a job for a marketing type than a super- technical type.</comment>


LinkedInLabs: visualise your network - <AUTHOR> http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/

<comment><USER2> Fascinating... but so many lines! I'm sure there are some really cool unexpected connections in there, but it's just a mass of arcs and circles...</comment>


Javascript exploit actively used against TorBrowser - <AUTHOR> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-November/042639.html <comment><USER3> If TBB leads want to run Firefox with JavaScript "default on", then Tor Browser Bundle needs to be messaged as insecure. Either that or turn on NoScript and inform people what bad shit can happen when their browser is interpreting arbitrary code in a not-so-sandboxed manner. TBB is _not_ a solution against targeted deanonymization attacks.

This is neither the first nor is the last 0day in Firefox that will affect TBB.

IMO the best practical mitigation against these attacks is sandboxing with an amnesic system like Tails, as even as a VM it will leak a lot less information about the machine it is running on and requires burning both a Firefox 0day and a VM escape to get any real information outside of the real IP address of the user and some basic things out of /proc (although Tails may protect against the latter now). Also, as the whole VM goes away when it's closed, you're not getting persistence on that machine if you just pop the browser.

A 30 second glance at the source code makes it looks like this exploit pivots to attacker-controlled memory on the heap, and spawns a thread using kernel32.dll. As EMET has hardening against attacks like this, I am curious if this exploit works at all on EMET-enabled Windows systems.

<comment><USER4> > A 30 second glance at the source code makes it looks like this exploit > pivots to attacker-controlled memory on the heap, and spawns a thread using > kernel32.dll. As EMET has hardening against attacks like this, I am curious > if this exploit works at all on EMET-enabled Windows systems.

EMET can be bypassed so it's no guarantee that it would stop the exploit (but it would probably stop THIS exploit). I don't know if some modification would be able to bypass EMET or other mitigations.

A better solution would be to run javascript in a sandbox (as is done in Chrome/Chromium based browser) which has a much higher barrier to exit.

<comment><USER3> > A better solution would be to run javascript in a sandbox (as is done in > Chrome/Chromium based browser) which has a much higher barrier to exit.

Sure, but we can't get TBB rewritten overnight to work instantly with Chromium, and I'm sure there'd be a lot of push back on that.

<comment> TD-Linux An easier solution would be to enable e10s. It should be on by default in the next ESR, and I know TBB has been working to make their patches compatible with it.

<comment><USER5> Not just e10s, they also need to enable the sandboxing, i.e. it requires Firefox 50 at least.

It should actually be easier for Tor to enable stricter sandboxing than in the default Firefox, though, as presumably they have to care less about compatibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> slipstream- I reversed the shellcode, it's almost exactly the same used in 2013 (freedom hosting): [https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/803736507521474560](https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/803736507521474560)

<comment><USER3> This likely points to this being an FBI "network investigative technique".* I'm really curious where this attack was injected, as that also means that that .onion is also compromised.

My guess? Some darknet market.

* Sure, this could be some type of awkward false flag, but it seems unlikely to my gut.

<comment><USER6> It's on a CP site (giftbox). The exploit got loaded on the confirmation page after logging in.

<comment><USER3> Eh, with that being the case, I don't personally have too much sympathy.

+1 to FBI on this being pretty well targeted; you had to have had a successful login for them to be attempting this in the first place. It's about as precise as they can get; you're only going after users that are active members of the service. They are at least being reasonable in who they are targeting. I can't really think of how they can be more targeted in attempting to deanonymize people in the network.

I don't like this whole NIT garbage because I'm afraid this will lead to fishing expeditions, where you just root everyone on an .onion that happens to visit it, and then clean up with a multitude of search warrants later and hope you get something. I also don't believe it's the FBI's (or America's) job to play world police.

-1 to the FBI, at least: they were (once again) actively serving CP on a compromised server again, which seems like something you shouldn't be doing as an LEA fighting the distribution of the content. Illegal actions shouldn't be taken to fight crime. Distributing the thing you are fighting is the definition of the abyss having gazed into you.

<comment><USER7> > Illegal actions shouldn't be taken to fight crime.

I disagree with that and I am on favor of illegal actions against criminal actions.

I just think that this is not FBI's role. Illegal organizations should assume the illegal work. If FBI commits crimes to fight crimes, then to me they're as criminal as the folks they're hunting, and therefore I would treat them the same way I treat the "regular" criminal people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel like Tor Browser should just spin up a fresh VM with a minimal Linux distribution and fullscreen Tor browser, with the VM's only networking tunneled through Tor.

I think Hyper-V can do graphics as well and it looks like bhyve added some sort of graphics support earlier this year, but xhyve has none. Not sure if there are any other lightweight hypervisors that support graphics (or maybe just use a protocol like X11 or VNC?).

Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows have done a great job of hiding the fact that it's using virtualization from users (but doesn't need graphics, of course)

<comment><USER9> > fullscreen Tor browser

Tor recommends not going full-screen, since window size can be used as one of several identifiers.

<comment><USER8> I mean fullscreen within the VM's desktop (no need for normal GNOME/KDE/whatever desktop), which itself may not be fullscreen on host OS. It would act like a native app. If you quit the browser it shuts down the VM.

<comment><USER10> Ah, You mean the VM only have one program which is Tor browser, and when Tor terminated the VM should terminated with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Confirmed in the next message in the thread: [https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor- talk/2016-Novembe...](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor- talk/2016-November/042640.html) (the vulnerability appears to exist in upstream Firefox as well). Seems to relate to SVG animation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Has nobody tried putting Gopher and Tor together? Would probably yield slightly better results given how minimalist Gopher is, mostly text based. It might not work as well if you try to have a "community" on Tor, but it would be interesting to know how Gopher works out in Tor if at all?

</comment><comment><USER13> As much as I love Mozilla and their philosophy, it has to be said that - <USER2> you have any sort of worries about security - using Firefox is a bad choice and borderline reckless.

It lacks even basic exploit mitigations that other browser have had for years now (most importantly a feature-complete sandbox).

Right now, Firefox is just a single process with zero separation of privileges. Any bug in the rendering code is a potential RCE. Writing exploits for Firefox vulnerabilities is well within a strong amateur's reach and this headline does not surprise me at all.

This is a (probably incomplete) list of all public exploits in the past three years:

\- 2013/08: XPCOM RCE ([https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/blob/master/m...](https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/blob/master/modules/exploits/multi/browser/firefox_svg_plugin.rb))

\- 2013/08: __exposedProps__ ([https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/blob/master/m...](https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/blob/master/modules/exploits/multi/browser/firefox_proto_crmfrequest.rb))

\- 2014/03: WebIDL RCE ([https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/blob/master/m...](https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/blob/master/modules/exploits/multi/browser/firefox_webidl_injection.rb))

\- 2015/03: PDF.js RCE ([https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/blob/master/m...](https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/blob/master/modules/exploits/multi/browser/firefox_pdfjs_privilege_escalation.rb))

\- 2015/08: The file stealing exploit: [https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/08/06/firefox- exploit...](https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2015/08/06/firefox-exploit- found-in-the-wild/)

\- [The FBI exploit (2016-ish)]

\- This one.

Publicly known as in, _with a fully functional Metasploit exploit_ , and most of them through JavaScript, so 100% reliable. ASLR isn't going to help with interpreter bugs. This is 90s level bad!

And those are just the publicly known ones. With a code base as large as Firefox, it'd be foolish to assume to assume that there aren't any private 0days. Just take a look at this list:

[https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-452/...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-452/product_id-3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html)

Even Microsoft Edge is better at this.

Project Electrolysis is a step in the right direction, but it will take a LONG time to mature. Last time I checked, it was just for process separation and did not provide any security guarantees. Chromium had a fair bit of sandbox escapes during the first years, and there's no reason to believe this is going to be different with Firefox. If have high hopes for their Rust re- implementation, but that's not going to be usable any sooner.

In the meantime, there's nothing like Chrome/Chromium security-wise. Not even close.

When was the last time there was a reliable, public Chrome exploit with a sandbox escape? The only one I can think of was the Hacking Team exploit, which used a Windows kernel 0day to escape the sandbox.

Chrome's security team is probably the strongest in the industry and they poured an absurd amount of effort into Chrome's security. And it being open source means that I can use without worrying about backdoors or data leakage.

<comment><USER14> Just to provide some balance: Chrome exploits are not as rare as you claim in this post. Pretty much any time Pwn2Own or similar contests are held, with non-trivial prize money, somebody brings a fully working Chrome exploit.

If you check [https://zerodium.com/program.html](https://zerodium.com/program.html) you can see that the current market prize for a Chrome exploit with sandbox escape is about 80k USD. Firefox is cheaper (30k USD), but only by a bit more than factor 2.

(I've been working on security vulnerabilities pretty continuously since 1998, so I somewhat know what I am talking about)

In general, for _any_ major browser: Given the size, complexity, and code churn, an attacker just needs enough motivation / time.

<comment><USER14> Also, it is safe to say that ChakraCore (the JS interpreter inside Edge) is much more broken / easier to find bugs in than Firefox, at least at the moment.

<comment><USER15> Why is that safe to say?

<comment><USER14> I looked at both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are there immediate actions for inoculation, _e.g._ disabling SVG, and/or detection, _i.e._ if this has been triggered?

<comment><USER17> noscript would probably work, seeing that it relies on javascript to function

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This only works in Windows, right?

<comment><USER11> This exploit is Windows-specific, though the vulnerability appears not to be.

<comment><USER18> Thanks. If you could say more about that, please do. Abstracting from 'The exact functionality is unknown but it's getting access to "VirtualAlloc" in "kernel32.dll" and goes from there.' to Linux etc is over my head.

<comment><USER11> The underlying vulnerability has to do with a memory corruption of some sort in Firefox's SVG rendering, which is a code base that is shared across platforms. So probably an analogous memory corruption exists on other platforms, because it's compiled from the same C++. While it's possible that it's not exploitable outside of Windows, there is no specific reason to assume it won't be.

But the exploit here with the ROP chain, calling Windows APIs, etc., is apparently Win32-specific and doesn't have binary code that could run successfully on other platforms.

The setup for the exploit is apparently primarily in the Javascript function craftDOM() which makes some SVG objects and modifies some of their properties, presumably in a way that triggers an underlying bug in Firefox's SVG support. There is also a Win32 object code payload in the string object thecode, which would not be able to run unmodified on another platform. Also, the ROP chain code is likely to be Windows-specific in several respects. Indeed, the statement

      throw"Bad NT Signature";

seems to be actively giving up the attack if it detects a non-Win32 environment.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, that helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This may be an unpopular opinion here but if the TorBrowser folks cared about security they should switch to a Chromium based browser. The sandbox provided by it would be robust and well tested as it's used in Chrome.

I don't see why the two objectives of having a secure browser and the privacy/anonymity provided by Tor have to be diametrically opposed. You can have both.

<comment><USER19> Because removing all of the Google-related features from Chromium would be a very large task indeed. Quite a few people have discussed it within Tor (and IIRC some people started working on it) but it might not be as good of an idea as you might initially think.

<comment><USER20> Like this?

[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled- chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

<comment><USER19> There is currently only one maintainer of that code, and there is this disclaimer in the readme:

> DISCLAIMER: Although it is the top priority to eliminate bugs and privacy- > invading code, there will be those that slip by due to the fast-paced growth > and evolution of the Chromium project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does this affect the regular (non-TBB) current version of Firefox?

<comment><USER5> The bug yes. The exploitability, unclear. Current release Firefox has some minimal content sandboxing protections enabled but TBB is based on older ESR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://github.com/mozilla/gecko- dev/commit/cba49f2392f772a0...](https://github.com/mozilla/gecko- dev/commit/cba49f2392f772a089b18fff8221368c5abf22bf)

</comment><comment><USER18> From Roger Dingledine on tor-talk

[https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor- browser-607-released](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor- browser-607-released)

[https://dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/6.0.7/](https://dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/6.0.7/)

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong This will make a very interesting postmortem. I'm curious how they escaped from js

</comment><comment><USER23> So going on a not-HSTS site through tor can now infect your computer (through the MITM of the exit node)?

Seems that using regular internet is actually safer now.

<comment><USER24> Exit nodes will also steal any unencrypted passwords and put malware in any binaries you download. It's been happening for years.

In China the "regular internet" intercepts http and inserts javascript malware to create a DDOS botnet.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but I'm not talking about downloading exes or logging onto gmail (and definitely not putting credentials on a site using HTTP) or anything.

I'm talking about going anywhere on Tor can infect you.

<comment><USER25> [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-report-bad- relays](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-report-bad-relays)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've quit using TOR. It seems to have been targeted by law enforcement and now this.

<comment><USER11> This was an upstream Firefox bug, so you should probably quit using Firefox if you're concerned about bugs like this.

(Using Tor does change _who_ can attempt to attack you with such bugs -- and maybe who is motivated to.)</comment></comment>


Linux Creator Linus Torvalds Declined to Join Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-linux-linus-tovalds-steve-jobs,15082.html <comment><USER2> To know whether it was the right decision or wrong decision would require knowledge of Torvalds decision making framework.

Clearly, the personal offer from Jobs himself makes it apparent that both sides knew that money was not the motivating factor for Linus otherwise a guy in a suit with a briefcase full of cash would have sufficed and a personal call would have been unnecessary.

I'm not sure what the veneration about working at Apple is all about, it's a company, you give them your time, they give you some money. Big deal. If one wants to work at a company that makes products used by billions of people I'd suggest a ball bearing factory.

The reality of working at a company with 10,000 engineers is that you'll probably spend your time writing the perfect unit test for the checkbox on the reminder app. If you really want to be the next Steve Wozniak you're going to have to start in your garage.

<comment><USER3> If you read the book called 'Just for fun' by torvalds, you will find some details of this conversation.

Jobs had to replace the notoriously old Mac OS design, with a new kernel. He had linux and BSD as the base kernels in mind. He offered the job to Torvalds to base the new OS on Linux. Linus, though did not want to build a closed source system, no matter what was offered. So he declined. Then Jobs had to base the new OS on BSD and hired a large group of FreeBSD developers.

The kernel was just 'one' of the many parts that Jobs needed, albeit a complex one. He was more focusing on creating something 'greater than the sum of its parts'.

<comment><USER4> That's not how I read it. Jobs never had the BSD or Linux kernels in mind, he just wanted Linus to somehow "get all the open source people to like Apple" and stop maintaining a separate ecosystem.

<comment><USER4> To whoever downvoted: I actually have read "Just For Fun" in its entirety, and that comment was in fact my honest assessment of what I read in that text. If you want me to come back in a couple of hours with a citation, fine.

Jobs tried to recruit Linus _after_ NeXTSTEP was already an established OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not working for Apple is possibly the best decision Linus could have made. One can argue that Linux would have kept moving forward without him, but it's really a shame when great talent leaves the open-source community. The man might be opinionated, and some might not like him, but where would we be without his continued contribution?

<comment><USER6> _Not working for Apple is possibly the best decision Linus could have made_...

... for us

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _I take a guess and predict that many of us mortals would have taken a chance._

This is the worst lead sentence from any article I have seen on HN.

</comment><comment><USER8> sneaky how he rips off the wired article by saying "apparently...this and that..". We are seeing too much of this kind of journalism lately. You see a catchy article somewhere then rewrite it by saying "so and so reported this. Apparently they found out that...

<comment><USER9> Apparently this article rips off the Wired article and that's the unfortunate trend in reporting these days.

<comment><USER10> There's clear value-add here: for some reason, I couldn't find a discussion surrounding the Wired article.

The real reason why the trend is pervasive is because oftentimes one article from one source doesn't reach all corners of the internet. Middlemen cascade the messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Considering Job's obsession to build closed systems that goes far beyond just "closed source" this should have been a trivial decision for Linus. As described in the book, Job even insisted to use non-standard screws so owners and hackers couldn't open the box using standard tools.

</comment><comment><USER12> the other reason, cited in the wired article that it seems this was based from here <http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/mr-linux/>, is that Linus also didn't like the Mach kernel.

The relevant paragraphs are here:

"Torvalds has never met Bill Gates, but around 2000, when he was still working at Transmeta, he met Steve Jobs. Jobs invited him to Apple's Cupertino campus and tried to hire him. "Unix for the biggest user base: that was the pitch," says Torvalds. The condition: He'd have to drop Linux development. "He wanted me to work at Apple doing non-Linux things," he said. That was a non-starter for Torvalds. Besides, he hated Mac OS's Mach kernel.

"I said no," Torvalds remembers."

</comment><comment><USER13> For the interested reader - Linus' book "Just for fun" has a pretty detailed account of his meeting with Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Who is surprised by this "revelation"? The only less surprising thing would be Theo or RMS saying no...

<comment><USER14> I had to wikipedia Theo (founder of OpenBSD and OpenSSH): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt>

<comment><USER15> ROFL I remember this.

BSD guys make fun of Linux on message boards and Web sites, the gist being that BSD guys are a lot like Linux guys, except they have kissed girls.

Theo de Raadt is a pioneer of the open source software movement and a huge proponent of free software. But he is no fan of the open source Linux operating system.

"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"

[http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix- cz_dl_0616th...](http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix- cz_dl_0616theo.html)

<comment><USER16> From that article:

 _Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment further._

Ha!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The remarkable thing about this story to me isn't that Linus turned this down - that seems like an obvious move, frankly, considering Linus' goals and aspirations and the kind of work he's sought out in the past.

The remarkable thing is - why would Steve Jobs offer Linus Torvalds a job? I mean, Steve Jobs was highly intelligent, and he clearly knew that Linus is a top-notch computing mind. But I feel like Steve has a much more focused idea of what he wants from Apple than that. He never ran Apple like it was Google; it never seemed to be his goal to gather an amalgamation of really intelligent people and encourage them to pursue their interests in the hopes of seeing what came out. Apple is a much more focused company than that, isn't it? I mean, Apple seems to have very high standards for who they hire - but those standards include more than just intelligence. It's a company that works toward fixed conceptual goals.

It just doesn't seem like Linus could ever have fit in with Apple culture, and I have a hard time believing that Steve didn't realize that. Maybe it wasn't as well-known yet how irascible Linus can be; or maybe Steve's notion of the culture of Apple hadn't really become as focused and solidified yet, since he'd only returned to Apple three years before.

Either way, as a die-hard Linux guy (albeit one with an iPhone and an iPad) I have to say that I cannot for the life of me imagine Linus Torvalds hacking away at a super-secret iOS subsystem or realigning the internals of the Lion OS or anything like that. I think we know now that Steve Jobs already knew by 2000 that those things were to come - so I wonder how he felt about Linus being part of that.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone remember Jordan Hubbard, co-founder of the FreeBSD project? He joined Apple around that time. I am not really sure how he compares to Linus but working for Apple does not go well with wanting to be a public person.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that Guy Kawasaki person, never heard of him. Who's Jean Louis Gassée? Jonathan Ive? All just faceless employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Remember the photos from apple's icloud datacenters last year? All linux, and linux powered appliances. Like the gigantic TerraData Extreme Appliances.

</comment><comment><USER19> I read this "news" on slashdot 10 years ago. Also remember reading about Torvalds interviewig for, but declining to work at Sun, which also in hindsight was a very good decision.

</comment><comment><USER20> That was a dumb decision on Linus' part. Apple is the future; Linux is the past.

<comment><USER21> Way too broad a statement. Linux is clearly a future for a large segment of users, same as OSX.

Actually, let me take that back - with the new 'post PC' world coming where only techies will have laptops, Linux has a greater future. OSX will fade because all hipsters will just have iOS devices

<comment><USER22> You may be underestimating the number of techies liking OS X.

<comment><USER23> I think the problem is a lot of techies like OS X now, but not the way it's headed.

Lion is enough to make me switch away, and I've been on OS X for a very long time. What's keeping OS X popular now is not its own merits, but that the alternatives are even worse.

<comment><USER24> I have to agree because I like Snow Leopard better than Lion and have not made the switch yet because of that. However I don't think this is a sign that OS X is endemic. I still have hope that Lion is just an ill planned stop on the OS X progression.

<comment><USER25> endemic - I do not think it means what you think it means.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's first website is still on Angelfire - <AUTHOR> http://www.angelfire.com/ny/mez51/ <comment><USER3> feels good to see that everyone in world learns like a child and incrementally develop into a genius whom world admire. Thanks to xbuzz for this post.

</comment><comment><USER4> The first attempt at a social graph?

<http://www.angelfire.com/ny/mez51/web.html>

<comment><USER5> I can't get it to display for more than a frame in the "web" configuration, everything is scrunched up in the corner. Anyone have better luck? I'm trying to get a screenshot but it's quite difficult.

*edit: got it! anyone sound familiar? <http://i.imgur.com/6hKsLoJ.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me a lot of my angelfire page in that era, though a little more AOL-centric. The linked people applet is definitely interesting given how things panned out for him. Mine had a lot of physics and science-y stuff, so I begin to wonder how many other people have Angelfire/Geocities sites that predict their future lives.

</comment><comment><USER7> The best - <USER2>

<http://www.angelfire.com/ny/mez51/thebest.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the most interesting thing here is that this has a clear precursor to Facebook in it("The Web") but it was never brought up during the lawsuit w/ the Winklevoss twins.

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.angelfire.com/ny/mez...](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.angelfire.com/ny/mez51/)

Seems legit.

</comment><comment><USER10> BTW the counter seems to reset every time it hits 3,000 or thereabouts. I've refreshed a few times and seen it make the rounds.

</comment><comment><USER11> Has Anyone Checked the Code to make sure its not a Great Way to Serve some Wicked 1990s Java Virus...

<comment><USER12> ehhh

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <META NAME="Author" CONTENT="Mark Zuckerberg">

Created when he was 15 and living with his parents in New York.

</comment><comment><USER13> I miss site counters... Said no one ever... Felt a bit nostalgic after I saw the ALL CAP HTML tags

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm more impressed that angelfire still exists. Also AOL Progz? This is taking me back.

</comment><comment><USER15> The counter shows only 210 people have been to it so far. Reallly cool find!

<comment><USER16> over 3,000 views now, and growing - which is surprising since there are no pictures of cats on the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In 1999 everybody used <HTML TAGS IN CAPITAL>, so its fake.

<comment><USER18> Check out the <BODY> tag it's capitalized. The <html> tag and other tags are put there by angelfire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is comedy gold.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Hi, my name is...Slim Shady. No, really, my name is Slim Shady."

lol'd

</comment><comment><USER21> I hope "the Vader Fader" makes it in to Facebook.

<comment><USER22> I can't figure out what that utility was supposed to do. What does it mean to "fade" message text? Blend it with the background color or something?

<comment><USER23> exactly.. it would fade your text with a color gradient for the aol chat rooms. I wrote some with visual basic when I was in high school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a really interesting find.

</comment><comment><USER25> Moses Snugglebunny - RIP</comment>


Antarctic ice rift spreads – 20km remaining - <AUTHOR> http://www.swansea.ac.uk/media-centre/latest-research/antarcticiceriftspreadsnewbranchrevealedinlatestdatafromiceshelf.php <comment><AUTHOR> It's actually within 13 km of breaking, as of May 31: [http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/another-step- closer/](http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/another-step-closer/)</comment>


Show HN: Picnic 4.0 launched. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://www.picnicss.com/

<comment><USER2> it's like a stripped down bootstrap? what am i missing here?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there's no javascript and then it uses a lot more of native elements so you also don't need to write so much javascript. Also it is under 5kb and it sets up some styles automatically so you don't need to write so many presentation classes in your html (:</comment></comment>


MPs want UK jail time for hacker  - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7707778.stm

<comment><USER2> That's the first I'd heard of any UK politicians trying to help Gary McKinnon. The whole situation is an absolute farce.. What Gary really needs is support on the US side, if anyone reading this would like to get involved please message me and I will help give you information from his family with how you can help. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's easier to prosecute a "hacker" and portray them as an evil terrorist, than to admit your 'security' absolutely sucks.

</comment><comment><USER4> surely you mean "cracker".</comment>


How Boundary does application deployments. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.boundary.com/2011/11/01/the-apps-cookbook-and-application-deployments.html

<comment><USER2> Very cool, Joe! The JVM and hot-upgrade Erlang stuff looks especially nice.

Any reason this can't just turn into a pull request for Opscode's application cookbook though?

<comment><AUTHOR> IIRC the Boundary app cookbook is a pretty big divergence from the Opscode application cookbook due to their reliance on roles, environments and etc. Additionally our cookbook has a far more narrow (I think in a good way) focus. Both have their place, just probably not in the same cookbook.</comment></comment>


How Facebook Saved Us from Suburbia - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27860/ <comment><USER3> This article fails to support it's own thesis. I'm highly skeptical that facebook has _anything_ to do with this.

I would attribute it more to a standard cycle than anything else. Where I live, it used to be cheaper to get a house in the burbs...now it's cheaper to live downtown (factoring in transportation, food, etc). I also reject the assertion that suburbia is something from which we need to be saved - <USER2> certainly can be, but so can urban environments.</comment>


Time Sort (Noguchi) Filing System - <AUTHOR> http://www.askunclemark.com/2007/01/time-sort-noguchi-filing-system.html

<comment><USER2> The optimality of move-to-front (under what precise meaning of "optimality" I couldn't tell you) for organizing a list is a fairly well-known result in computer science. Knuth mentions it in TAOCP, vol 3. It's a wonder it took this long for someone to apply this result to real life.

</comment><comment><USER3> For documents in a single directory, you can get a similar effect using the 's' key in emacs-dired mode or 'ls -lt' from the shell.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you translate your web application? - <AUTHOR>

In my startup we want to translate our app to Spanish and Portuguese. We are not large enough to hire our own translators and we don't have enough manpower to crowdsource them.
Also we deploy daily and would like our tranlsations to be updated daily. Not in real time maybe, but within couple of hours after deployment is good enough.
I wonder whether such service already exists. What do people here use for web app translations? <comment><USER2> Freelance translators might work. But, please, don't be cheap. I am brazilian, and an odd, "google translator" type of language is worst than keeping it in english(or even using portuguese from Portugal). For those of us who understand english, if the the portuguese is not perfect (I mean, really perfect,well worded, clear, with common words), we prefer it in english. For the brazilians that do not understand english (and there are a lot), an english language app might even be tried, but mostly ignored. But an ugly portuguese language app will make you think is a scam and run away.

I don't believe any kind of "lean translation" actually works. Codecademy, for example, have translated some parts of their site, mostly buttons and navigation. But with the relevant parts in english, it makes no diference at all.

And a tip, if you have a video, english subtitles helps a lot! I mean, a lot!

</comment><comment><USER3> SDL[1] maybe a bit overkill for what you need but we had good success with them for projects that required international translation.

[1] <http://www.sdl.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> I used <https://webtranslateit.com> at my previous startup before which was great.

</comment><comment><USER4> I heard <https://phraseapp.com> is pretty cool. I know the founders. Good luck :)

</comment><comment><USER5> You should check out <http://www.dakwak.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> Submit it to duolingo.com</comment>


Ethical vulnerability disclosure - <AUTHOR> In a mobile application (sort of ebay) with 10 000+ download on Google Play I found some vulnerabilities that allowed me to find sensitive information about the buyers and their purchase. I was also able to find a vulnerability that allowed me to find seller information, every sale that they made and manipulate their items. I have contacted them by email and telling them that they have vulnerabilities and what was possible if someone exploited them. They have not replied yet. If they reply to my email is it ok if i ask for money to disclose the other information? If they do not reply should I make this info public? P.S. I do not want to make such info public. <comment><USER2> For starters, the ethics of vulnerability disclosure are such a broad subject, you're going to get 10 very different answers.

A generally common approach is:

* try to contact them via phone/email

* if no response, contact a CERT and see if they care

* wait a while (90 days? 3 months? up to you)

* if no response; disclose publicly

Asking for money? big nope. If you genuinely want to have this problem fixed, get it fixed. If you want to make money from finding bugs, enter bug bounty programs.

Please don't try to manipulate them into giving you money, it only serves to deeply hurt the reputation of people working in the often very difficult field of vulnerability research and disclosure.

Edit: bullet points not working.

Edit2: be careful with the way you report these vulns. If you've tampered with variables in an API for example, that could constitute 'hacking' and they may come at you will full force and lawyers. In that case you may want to use a proxy (a human proxy).

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly I don't care if they fix it or not.

I am not even going to make anything public.</comment></comment>


The research is in: Caffeine boosts your mental and physical performance in - <AUTHOR> http://alifeofproductivity.com/research-says-caffeine-boosts-your-mental-and-physical-performance/ <comment><USER2> This article doesn't address the long term effects of Caffeine. Personally, I find that Caffeine makes it harder to slow down and relax. Caffeine makes it harder to sleep.

The last time I quit coffee for a long period time was around the end of college. It was really rough at first, but I started sleeping really well every night. I slept for 12 hours the first day, but I started to feel incredibly rested. I was able to just relax and read books. I felt more introspective and began to realize things inside of me that I had been distracted from. I felt more like me. I didn't have the highs that coffee brought, but I didn't have the lows brought by over-consumption, anxiety and sleep deprivation, headaches from withdrawal when I didn't have enough.

Of course, something got me back on it, I'm still drinking coffee, and it's even harder to quit now.

Here's a list of the long term effects:

[http://www.livestrong.com/article/97493-caffeine-longterm- ef...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/97493-caffeine-longterm-effects/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Caffeine seems to help power through dull, repetitive tasks but also stifles creativity:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20888549/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/20888549/)

Sad that we live in a world where it seemingly needs to be so ubiquitous.

<comment><USER4> Got a source on the "stifling creativity" thing? I don't see anything about it in the abstract, and I don't particularly want to pay $36 to read the paper.

<comment><USER3> The New Yorker summarized the study here:

[http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-caffeine-can- cram...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-caffeine-can-cramp- creativity)

<comment><USER4> Interesting, thanks. That makes sense in retrospect and fits well with other research I'd heard of.

(tl;dr a wandering mind is good for creativity. Caffeine stimulates focus and inhibits mind wandering)

It's not quite a slam dunk though - the mind wandering is supposed to happen _before_ the creative act. So I see no reason why going for a walk, then sitting down to write with a cup of coffee, should have any negative effects whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would like to believe this, but this feels like one of those conclusions that flip 180 degrees every few years, depending on who you ask. I have very little trust in nutritional science for these kinds of things.

</comment><comment><USER6> Caffeine is an ubiquitous substance - so I wonder if these performance tests were done on people who had never used caffeine before, or at least use caffeine only rarely.

I'd assume the study would have told these people not to consume caffeine until they arrived at the study. If these people were regular caffeine users the positive effects could just be that the caffeine they were given alleviated the withdrawl symptoms of going without caffeine all day until the study.</comment>


Introduction to Mix Networks and Anonymous Communication Networks - <AUTHOR> https://leastauthority.com/blog/mixnet-intro/ <comment><USER2> > The saying goes, "Anonymity loves company" which means that an anonymous > communication system cannot provide high anonymity assurances if there are > very few people using it.

I see this often repeated but never elucidated. It is particularly problematic in light of the stated non-goal:

> Hiding the fact that someone is utilizing an anonymity network is not an > intrinsic goal of anonymity networks.

So here's a straightforward counter-example I mentioned before:

Create a PIR where messages-- let's say "tweet-sized" for this example-- are sent once daily, and the only allowed participants are Debian developers. If a participant has no message to send, they send a "tweet-sized" message composed of randomly chosen bits.

The clients try to decode all messages with their private key. The message or messages that are successfully decoded were the messages that were intended for that client.

Let's even put a single point of failure like a centralized server where all messages are sent and retrieved.

Now you've got:

* sender anonymity

* receiver anonymity

* sender and receiver anonymity with respect to third party observers

* maximum practical resistance to Sybil attacks

* resistance to timing correlation attacks

* resistance to compulsion attacks

Anyway, for this example the saying "anonymity loves company" is false.

<comment><USER3> Have you looked into BitMessage?

<comment><USER4> I don't think BitMessage scales well at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great summary of anonymous routing networks. If you're interested in anonymous distributed computation, you might want to have a look at Feralcore (I am not the author)

[http://www.feralcore.com/fcfiles/download/feralcoredoc.pdf](http://www.feralcore.com/fcfiles/download/feralcoredoc.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Is it possible to make a bittorrent-like protocol that is anonymous? I mean, hiding what is being downloaded, hiding the source of the download and replicating/caching data so more rarely downloaded files are still available.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Doesn't i2p do that?

EDIT: Sorry, meant freenet.

<comment><USER7> Using Freenet is extremely hazardous. One should not use it, except through Tor. Adversaries can readily discover IPs of Freenet nodes. Once you've been arrested, you will find "plausible deniability" a useless abstraction. At best, you may negotiate a minimal sentence.</comment></comment></comment>


Jim Simons profile (Renaissance Technologies) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ayjImYcoCiH8

<comment><USER2> The grass on the other side of the fence is surely greener. Indeed, I find myself perusing nuclearphynance ( the "chat room" that a member speculated about Rentec analyzing audio frequencies) often. Somewhat like hacker news, it is full of intellectuals. However, unlike hacker news, everyone there is unabashedly pursuing money.</comment>


Predatory or Below Cost Pricing - <AUTHOR> https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/predatory-or-below-cost <comment><AUTHOR> Isn't this what Uber is currently doing?</comment>


Hardware fix for Dell "AC power adapter could not be determined" - <AUTHOR> https://blog.project-insanity.org/2020/05/25/hardware-fix-for-dell-ac-power-adapter-could-not-be-determined/ <comment><USER2> Dell Laptop PSUs has this for at least 15 years. Internally it use a DS2501 to store the manufacturer, wattage, output voltage, output current, Dell SN and check sum. It is more like EDID for power supplies, it is definitely not DRM. It helps the laptop to understand how much wattage it can get from the PSU to avoid over heating, and use the output voltage to determine whether it is safe to use it to charge the battery.

The content is something like `DELL 01 AC 065 195 033 {23bytes} 01`, where 01 matches the revision number on the label of the PSU, 065 means it is a 65 watts adapter, 195 means the output voltage is 19.5V, 033 means the output current is maxed at 3.3A. The {23bytes} contains the country where it is produced, the Dell part number and date codes which I don't have enough data to understand how that is coded.

There was a github project which provided tools to copy and reprogram the chip, HP follows a similar protocol for its high end laptops, it is possible for a Dell laptop to use a HP PSU, if the BIOS is not implemented correctly.

<comment><USER3> Which I guess is among the things usb-c power delivery covers as well.

Usn-c for charging, despite its warts, are quite the game-changer. Especially in these absurd times where batteries are non-replacable being able yo juice- up from a power bank is fantastic. (yes you could do that before but it was very niche and/or expensive and with less utility).

<comment><USER4> Side note: integrated batteries are still replaceable if you're handy. (Though not quickly swappable like you're suggesting for more energy capacity over a single day!)

On the MacBook Pro I'm typing on right now, I replaced my the battery myself a few months ago. It took about an hour including a thorough cleaning of the laptop internals and I documented it here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAYFDDxUxHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAYFDDxUxHA) . That's still 59.9 minutes longer than it would have taken if had a modular battery, but about the same price in dollars. And a fun little weekend project.

<comment><USER5> Where did you get your replacement battery from? I was looking into replacing my battery, and my options for sourcing the part appear to be Amazon or iFixIt. The former's reviews are show a number of people complaining that the part they received was of poor quality and barely held a charge (although this might be a vocal minority? Hard to tell). The latter is almost the price of just getting Apple to do it in the country I reside. What route did you take?

<comment><USER6> [https://eshop.macsales.com/](https://eshop.macsales.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Now solder that component into an adapter that goes between your jack and your third party power supply, and I'd buy it.

I don't even want to use illegit power supplies. Rather, I have a growing pile of genuine Dell ones (and jacks) that developed intermittent connections on that pin and no longer detect as authorized.

<comment><USER8> At risk of kicking in an open door: have you tried using contact spray? I own a can of contact cleaner 390 by Kontakt Chemie (I'm sure other brands work similarly effectively) and that stuff is basically magic for intermittent contacts. So far I've used it to repair a buttload of wonky plugs, corroded battery contacts, as well as all the switches and volume knobs on my 40 year old amplifier. the volume knob still amazes me most. it went from an awful crackly mess to perfectly smooth and it still is perfect 5 years later.

Anyways long story short: give contact spray a try. Worst case the contacts are deformed too badly and it wont work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have good recommendations for general office laptops? My company bought about 10 Dell laptops and about half of them have a problem in which they randomly shut off due to some thermal issue. Dell has given us a hard time with the problem and have replaced some of the laptops with new laptops that have had the same problem.

<comment><USER10> Which Dell laptops did you buy?

Dell manufactures the whole spectrum of laptop quality, from cheap Walmart garbage to high-end mobile workstations. If you buy their consumer-grade stuff, yeah, it's often junk. But their business- and professional-oriented laptops are usually decent quality. Latitude and Precision, for example. I have both of those and they've been workhorses for me.

Mid-range Thinkpads would also be a fairly safe bet.

<comment><USER11> I've a precision 5530. On paper it's a lovely machine. In practice, lots of graphics issues, docking station issues where screens flicker, etc. It's such a shame for something so costly. It's a work laptop, I'd have returned it long ago if I'd purchased it myself.

<comment><USER12> I have a 5520, so, the generation before.

Specced the heavens, max memory, ECC, Xeon.

I also had issues with the dock, but it was exclusively the dock, the TB16 is a flaming hunk of garbage that has no business being on my desk.

The issues mostly stem from the fact that the USB controller (which powers nearly everything in the dock) is shockingly terrible.

But, regardless, there are more issues because the 5520 (and probably 5530) have only 2PCIe lanes to the thunderbolt port. I was surprised to learn that "thunderbolt3" != "thunderbolt3" in all cases.

I have a 5k laptop that is a buggy pile of trash because someone tried to save a dollar on a USB controller.

Honestly if I could lug this thing at Michael Dells' head I would do so I'm so frustrated.

But anyway, the laptop by itself is fantastic, it does get toasty under full load but I tend to disable the GPU so it's bearable. I considered getting the new WD19 thunderbolt dock before I realised about the thunderbolt PCIe lanes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> usb-c on the XPS just says it's less then ideal wattage (if that's the case) and still charges.

<comment><USER14> But then you get the nightmare that is cpu throttling, don't you? Had the same experience with a precision.

<comment><USER13> How would I test that?

I only use it for travel and watching movies. There as a short "brain freeze" when plugging it in, but it continues to work normally.

The hardest part was finding a USB charger that:

\- has decent wattage

\- is not expensive

\- also charges non-c USB

\- does not explode (and bring down the whole trains outlets...)

\- throttles/splits current (instead of running hot, shutting down and leaving your equipment uncharged for the night...)

I settled on this one: [https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07PR8LDGL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_...](https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07PR8LDGL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Only downside: no qualcom quickcharge 3.0 for the non-c USBs

<comment><USER14> >How would I test that?

On windows you can use CPU-Z, on linux look up for some command line solution.

<comment><USER13> I'm on windows :)

Didn't do heavy load testing, but see the same ~2800mhz on AC/battery/usb-c (it's an i5-6300HQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was bit by this issue once. I was still using the original charger. The issue wasn't anything wrong with the pin, but the power port had been slightly pushed inward. Had to crack it open and solder it to the frame.

I don't buy dell laptops for this exact hardware flaw.

<comment><USER16> Newer Dell laptops charge via USB-C PD, and work with any compliant charger you'd like. Actually that's not quite true - I believe they require 20V support, and like most things USB C, just because its "USB C PD" compliant, doesn't mean it supports 20V (most OEM phone chargers dont, for example).

<comment><USER17> What's funny is MacBooks don't require 20V. I've never tried with an iPhone charger, but I've definitely charged MacBooks overnight with a common 12W iPad charger (using one of those USB-A-to-C cables).

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I think MacBooks work fine via even via 5V chargers (albeit slowly). Would be nice if Dell followed their lead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Proprietary technology slows us down and increases waste.

<comment><USER19> But it also increases customer lock in which increases profits. Apple loves to do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It starts out being Dell then switches to HP? Something funky about that article.

<comment><USER21> Don't know what the issue was, but HP and Dell supplies are the same, they'd be interchangeable if not for the smart charge features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dell PSUs are the worst. My wife's XPS 13 PSU went bad after just 4 years of use. I bought a Chinese replacement for a fraction of the cost. No drm issues yet

<comment><USER22> 4 years isn't a bad lifetime for a laptop PSU. I know I kill the cables on mine way before the 4 year mark.

<comment><USER23> One of the underrated facts of USB-PD; replaceable cables. No need to replace the brick if the insulation frays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wait... won't it still think every adapter is 90W, even if you plug in a 65W adapter?

<comment><USER25> There is a disclaimer that mentions this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My dell died recently and I wasn't sure why, since all the components that I could check were working. It seemed like the thing just had no power. I sent it for recycling after stripping some parts, but now I wonder if this was the issue I had. I didn't get a Dell for my replacement, so I'm happier now with a lighter, nicer computer anyways.

</comment><comment><USER27> Do we really need DRM for AC power adaptors?

<comment><USER28> Yes because batteries and power adapters can kill you and/or cause a fire.

There was an engineer who showed how shoddy many phone chargers are and how dangerous they could be.

<comment><USER29> So what does that have to do with DRM? That's what products liability suits are for. You sue the maker of the shoddy battery/charger. DRM can't protect you from that -- what happens when you buy the whole device from the shoddy vendor?

edit: Yes, of course some of the vendors will be gone or judgment proof. So don't buy from disreputable vendors. Which brings us back to the original problem -- if the user _is_ willing to buy from them, they could just as easily be buying an entire laptop or a toaster for their kitchen. So solve it the way you solve those instead of stamping out competition, because you need to solve those anyway.

Or put it another way: If _OEMs_ really wanted to solve this, they would stop overcharging so much for chargers and battery replacements so that people wouldn't have to play the Chinese equipment lottery to avoid paying a 1000% markup.

<comment><USER30> Attempting to sue the overseas manufacturer of your no-name third party AC adapter is pretty much the definition of futility.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay extra for an AI Agent that had a fiduciary duty to you - <AUTHOR> In a world were AI agents(like Siri and Alexa) present only one offer how do you know your getting the best offer? <comment><USER2> I have just about zero interest in having an AI agent right now, but that would alleviate one of my myriad reservations.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> what about companies like uber? would you be more likely to use an app that tried to suggest the best alternative for you?</comment>


Ask HN: What do companies really look for when hiring? - <AUTHOR>

Ok, a whole lot of companies form start-ups to big giant conglomerates say they are always looking for the best and brightest in the field.
In reality, except for a very small percentage of those, most of these companies aren't.  If they were, there would be a lot more smarter people in those companies.
Which comes to my question, what exactly is their hiring criteria?  What are they looking for?
From my point of view, it seems like hiring is mostly politics and less about your ability to do stuff.
What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> I don't agree - in business, you always want to have the best your money can buy, because this means their output in terms of your business success will be better than of those less good.

Companies are not filled with smart people because there's not many smart people in general, and those who are truly smart figure out a way to escape the 9-5 lifestyle one way or another.

Also, companies are not made equal, some can throw more cash at employees than others, and smart people value cash. That's why companies with most money have the brightest minds (Google, Facebook, banking sector).

<comment><AUTHOR> So basically what your saying by this statement "those who are truly smart figure out a way to escape the 9-5 lifestyle one way or another." is, most companies don't have smart people?

If the smart people escape the 9-5 lifestyle that quite a lot of companies, their current employees, and their current management mandates - doesn't that mean they can't hire the people they want?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any company wants the best programmer that is a good fit in their environment that they can afford. Budgets and environments tend to dumb down who actually accepts the position. I've turned down positions based on the quality of the management or the working environments before. I assume it happens every day.</comment>


Notifying administrators about unhashed password storage - <AUTHOR> https://cloudblog.withgoogle.com/products/g-suite/notifying-administrators-about-unhashed-password-storage/ <comment><USER2> At least we know that Google doesn't get it right either.</comment>


PGStrom – Postgres extension to offload to GPU for massive parallel execution - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PGStrom

<comment><USER2> Quite exciting, although the tradeoff with respect to the number of rows against the speed-up could be relevant. I.e., in the micro-benchmark being shown, how does the choice of table size affect the outcome of the benchmark?</comment>


Brendan Eich on Ecma TC39, JavaScript.next, and Google Dash - <AUTHOR> http://brendaneich.com/2011/08/my-txjs-talk-twitter-remix/ <comment><USER2> I feel for Brendan Eich, he is a bit of an unsung hero when you consider what he enabled with JavaScript and it is always stressful to learn someone is trying to kill your baby.

Having said that, I really do hope it is killed. Well, not _killed_ , but demoted to "one supported language of many". And the sooner this is started, the better, because it is a long, long process. I don't think JavaScript is _bad_ , but I do strongly feel that the underlying engine for client side web programming should be a full-blown VM that supports many possible source languages (ala modern .net with the CLR, DLR and all), and I'll support that model regardless of who pushes it, so long as they do a good job on the technical side and don't try to use it as a lock-in mechanism. Google seems to be the most posed to do this (I can't imagine Microsoft giving up that much control of .net) and their idea to support JavaScript as an interim target is the only practical way this will ever be solved, so I hope Dart is successful -- assuming it is actually going for this and not just trying to switch one core language out with another, which remains to be seen when they announce more information.

BTW, yes, I know you can already compile many other languages to JavaScript (as Dart itself will do in the first stage), but.. why? Why not just put a proper VM down there that is truly designed to efficiently run byte-code from many different source languages, and have JavaScript be one of those languages?

<comment><USER3> A standard VM/Runtime specification for all the browser would be awesome. We got plenty of them; CLR, DLR, JVM, Parrot, etc. Can you imagine? I can see those mime types already: application/csharp, application/perl, application/ruby, application/IL.

<comment><USER4> To be pedantic, it wouldn't be "application/csharp". By the time it's compiled to MSIL bytecode it doesn't matter if it was C#, VB, F# or whatever. "application/MSIL" is what I'd say.

I can imagine it, and I guess my browsers already have three VM/Runtimes in them (JavaScript, Flash, Silverlight) but it feels so inelegantly top-heavy to have lots more.

<comment><USER3> Right, call me silly but I'm honoring the "Right-click->View Source" spirit here, I don't know about you but I feel more confortable knowing that my browser is downloading source code and compiling or interpreting than downloading some kind of binary to execute, even if you call it "intermediate code", "byte code" "almost-there-machine-code" or whatever, it's still binary stuff. I get your point though.

<comment><USER4> I agree, source is better.

But. Flash isn't served as source, is it? And JS is often minified/obfuscated. Sure you can run that through a tool to get back the source (sans comments and long variable names) but you can do just that with MSIL bytecode too.

<comment><USER3> Yep, Agree. Then we will see how additional tabs emerge in Firebug and Chrome Developer Tools, I can see them already: "IL View", ".NET Refactor", "JSIL View" hehe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From what is known, it seems as if Google plans to move all their Javascript app building efforts to Dart. Given that GWT/Closure are already pretty successful in large organizations and internally, that seems like a big bet on Dart's future.

Whether the Dart VM gets adopted by other browsers seems relatively inconsequential provided they have a decent cross-compilation story.

Assume Dart is objectively better except for lacking browser support. Even Brendan Eich seems to admit that Dart will be "better". Then developing using Dart will give you an adult tooling story (through Chrome/Dash VM/Brightly), a server-side front-end language (capable of Google-scale applications), optimized compilation to Javascript (presumably better than GWT), and major corporate backing (in contrast to coffeescript).

This seems to be like the makings for a major win provided that Google commits to adopting it internally.

<comment><USER6> "Even Brendan Eich admitted...". As if I would not expect, nay _demand_ , that Gilad and Lars would do better -- much better -- than JS!

For the record, I'm not worried about JS being replaced by a better language. I am working to do that within Ecma TC39, by evolving JS aggressively.

The leaked Google doc's assertion that this is impossible and that a "clean break" is required to make significant improvements is nonsense, a thin rationale for going it alone rather than cooperating fully.

The big issue I have with Dart, which you seem to consider inconsequential, is whether Google forks the web developer community, not just its own paid developers, with Dart, and thereby fragments web content.

A Dart to JS compiler will never be "decent" compared to having the Dart VM in the browser. Yet I guarantee you that Apple and Microsoft (and Opera and Mozilla, but the first two are enough) will _never_ embed the Dart VM.

So "Works best in Chrome" and even "Works only in Chrome" are new norms promulgated intentionally by Google. We see more of this fragmentation every day. As a user of Chrome and Firefox (and Safari), I find it painful to experience, never mind the political bad taste.

Ok, counter-arguments. What's wrong with playing hardball to advance the web, you say? As my blog tries to explain, the standards process requires good social relations and philosophical balance among the participating competitors.

Google's approach with Dart is thus pretty much all wrong and doomed to leave Dart in excellent yet non-standardized and non-interoperable implementation status. Dart is GBScript to NaCl/Pepper's ActiveG.

Could Google, unlike Microsoft ten or so years ago, prevail? Only by becoming the new monopoly power on the web. We know how that story ends.

<comment><USER7> > We see more of this fragmentation every day

I'd be curious to see this backed up. Certainly with a long enough timeline we are not at a maximum of "works only in x", and -- ignoring those beleaguered Opera users still subjected to crappy UA sniffing -- I can't think of the last time I came across a site that blocked me for whatever my choice of browser (I'm a Chrome and Firefox user as well).

If, on the other hand, you're talking about fancy new CSS3 or WebGL (or whatever) demos leaving out some browser due to neglecting to add a particular prefixed property (or whatever), I don't really see that as a problem. Prototype then standardize, right? Yes, not feature detecting and prefixing properly is poor web development practice and yes, they are cutting out part of their audience, but using an experimental feature inherently means that it may break at some point, and almost certainly isn't supported in all browsers.

When 3d CSS transforms land in Firefox soon, there are going to be a whole lot of demos out there that won't work. I would say that's an education and library problem, not a fragmentation one.

<comment><USER6> I was explicit about the problem, which is _not_ new features that come to some browsers first, advertised in a browser-agnostic way. That is ok, provided the features are on a standards track. What I cited is fragmentation due to capital-C Chrome as a requirement.

Google is doing deals and marketing web apps and add-ons as "Chrome". This is showing up all over the place, most recently in my experience on the Starbucks free wireless service agreement page.

Major content publishers Mozilla has talked to are surprised that we can host their Chrome-targeted web apps and HTML5-based extensions. They think such things are exclusive to Chrome. If they use Dart and need native performance, then that'll be true. There is a slippery slope, especially when more and more of the differentiation is not on a standards track (Dart, NaCl, WebSQL).

Nevertheless most of the current differentiation is bogus and any modern browser will do. There's certainly some "WebKit required" fragmentation. We saw this with Amazon's kindle web app, which is specifically built to WebSQL and not IndexedDB. But I do not believe any big player is pushing "WebKit required" as an agenda or marketing program. In contrast, Google is clearly pushing "Chrome" as a requirement or works-best-in brand.

The Chrome experiments, most recently

<http://www.allisnotlo.st/index_en.html>

are obvious, maybe too obvious. Defenders can always play up the "experiment" hedge. That helps but only so much, especially when many of these experiments could work in other browsers with trivial changes.

I'm told that people have run chrome.angrybirds.com in Firefox. So it should be html5.angrybirds.com but -- no surprise from a marketing angle -- the domain name starts with C not H.

<comment><USER8> Brendan,

First, I'm a huge fan. :)

... and I was with you until the WebSQL vs IndexedDB thing.

IndexedDB is a horrible, horrible thing. It should be put out of its misery and replaced with WebSQL in Firefox.

Mozilla is singlehandedly holding back offline web apps with the insistance on a slow and hard to program -- yet buzzword friendly -- technology that no one actually wants to use. There's no reason what so ever to stick with a dumbed down K/V store when you're not trying to replicate data across data centers.

So, IMHO, you've bought this bit of "WebKit required" onto yourselves. WebSQL is the only production ready offline web app technology available today.

Take it from someone who offline enabled one of the biggest web apps on the web: I'd rather leave out offline entirely than code IndexedDB.

Considering that Apple will never support it, it's pretty much dead. And I feel that Mozilla is really on the losing end of this particular battle.

TL:DR; Please support WebSQL in Firefox. :)

<comment><USER9> How should we deal with the mandatory dependency on a particular major/minor/patchlevel version of SQLite? That seems bad to standardize on.

I personally think there's definitely room for a SQL database API built into the browser, but Mozilla did have a point. It should be something a little bit better specified than that.

Also, it's not singlehanded -- IE refused to support Web SQL as well IIRC, and they aren't going away anytime soon.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, that's worth reiterating: IE wasn't buying. Alas they didn't get IndexedDB done for IE9. And, just because WebSQL wouldn't fly does not make IndexedDB the one and only winner. We need to revisit this whole messy area.

<comment><USER10> did anyone on the standard bodies (from MSFT?) suggest LINQ framework as a WebSQL "replacement" ?

it makes a lot of sense IMHO. it abstracts away dependency on exact SQLite version, but preserves a familiar _SQL-like_ mental model. it is stable, mature, well understood and widely deployed/used (god i sound like a shill.. ;)

and has the added benefit that it can be implemented in two different _flavours_ : as a standard JavaScript (ES3) library on top of WebSQL (or SQLite in Gecko), or as a first-class language extension with syntax sugar similar/related to array comprehensions (from JS1.7/Harmony/ES6)..

check out the two code samples, and a list of language extension (all feeling right at home in JS): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query#Langu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query#Language_extensions)

if it wasn't proposed, can someone from WHATWG (like you Brendan ;) politely ask Microsoft to "contribute" any related intellectual property to W3C? how likely do you think would it be for AAPL/GOOG to accept it? (and if not, it could simply be implemented as a thin layer above WebSQL ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll pipe up with one thing nobody seems to be emphasizing. A lot depends on _how good_ Dart turns out to be. Suppose it turns out so good that we get all four of the following:

      1. No worse a user experience in any browser;
      2. A much better user experience in Chrome;
      3. A much better developer experience;
      4. A much better server-side platform than V8.

If we get all that, standards or not, I will be jumping for joy. If Dart is that good, it will become standard, either de jure or de facto as alternatives fall by the wayside.

Of the four, #1 (a good enough Dart->JS) seems problematic. #2 may be bad for other browser vendors, but if it's good for users and programmers, why should I care? I see no virtue in a lowest common denominator. #3 and #4 are hardly objectionable. Only those who like them need bother.

I don't know how likely this win-win-win-win is, but here's why I'm indulging in the hope. These guys have been gods of fast dynamic VMs since Strongtalk. If Dart is their chance to build what they always wanted, but this time with 20 years of experience to draw on and the institutional support of a Google behind them... well, we have the chance of something insanely great. Greatness sets its own standard.

Comparisons to VBScript and Flash only kick in if what they come out with is lacklustre.

<comment><USER12> #2 is bad for users unless Chrome is shipping on all hardware and operating systems users use. In fact, that's the same reason any sort of web-related monopoly is bad.

Where's Chrome for PPC processors? Chrome for ARM (being worked on, but no there yet)? Chrome for whatever architecture or OS users might want tomorrow?

The right comparison here in your success scenario may not be VBScript but ActiveX, except without the security issues ActiveX had. If ActiveX were required for use of gmail today, how would you feel about it? How would you have felt about it in 2002?

<comment><USER11> If ActiveX had been insanely great, not only would I feel fine about it, it would be ubiquitous by now.

<comment><USER6> Isn't "insanely great" a Steve Jobs phrase?

I like Apple's hardware (modulo the fans running all the time on my latest dual-core i7 MBP), and some of its software (but WTF happened to Mail.app on Lion?).

Still, "insanely great" didn't make Apple-only web tech ubiquitous. That took hard, open-standards spec-work in the CSS WG. And that, to the extent it happened with help from Apple, is the _opposite_ of the Dart plan in the leaked memo.

Stop worshipping i.g. It's never that great. Native apps on iOS use Objective-C, for crying out loud. Everyone's sh*t stinks.

I.g. is no excuse for monopoly behavior. The greatness goes away, leaving only insanity.

<comment> m-k-s Well said Brendan!

Like I said in a tweet this morning, I know those Googlers know way more about JS than I do, but if they think as per the leaked mail) that devs are choosing iOS over browsers because of JS, they have their heads in the sand.

Those choices are happening due to iOS as a _platform_ not because devs are somehow so much more happier learning/using objective-C! The best thing that Google could do is to KEEP working hard on improving the browser _platform_ like you guys are doing with B2G and they started to do with ChromeOS.

For example, I'd love to hear from the ChromeOS team exactly what in JS is blocking them delivering all the kinds of APIs that B2G is promising to deliver.

And on the server-side, some one should tell the hordes flocking to Nodejs that they are all wrong! As you pointed out, serverside everyone can choose to use whatever they want and given that choice, just look at everyone jumping on the Nodejs bandwagon. I'd love to see all those thousands of module that dev around the world have written in Go recently! (npmjs.org)

maks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is probably true that, even with a cross-compilation strategy, if Dart doesn't get adopted by competing browser vendors it will be a force towards fragmentation, which tends to be bad for the web.

An interesting question to consider, IMO, is whether a "clean break" for client programming languages is a bad idea outright, irrespective of context and motivation. If it is, it follows that the principal means for information dissemination and collaboration our species has devised will forever be programmed in the same language. It is a bleak thought, because, even if the language was faultless at its time, progress happens and the web needs to improve.

Of course Javascript can evolve (I personally very much like the proposals, and look forward to working with ES.next), but any language designer knows once some decisions are made there is no way to go back and revisit them.

If we allow for the possibility of a "clean break", then we can ask ourselves how could it be done. IMHO, committees don't fare all that well in language design. I think it would have to come from a single knowledgeable designer or a group of closely aligned knowledgeable designers. I also think it would be impossible to evaluate such a language without a real implementation. A real implementation would have to be in a real browser. So, a Browser vendor that employs experienced language designers seems like a good candidate to try a clean break, and I'd be glad if it succeeds.

<comment><USER6> Thumbnail of possible future (first is happening): ES6: modules and shallow continuations; ES7: guards, contracts, event loop concurrency; ES8: macros, parallel arrays (SIMD).

JS evolution disrupts the clean-break rationale.

Languages can change both surface and semantics. The open question I see is: can JS become the VM (its source the "bytecode") to host many languages and several approaches (none memory unsafe; no shared-memory threads).

We have lots of evidence for JS becoming the VM already, along with nay-sayers who want a clean break.

I'm going with evidence over clean-break assertions until we hit a wall that is either inherent in the language or emergent in the standards body and the market. Again, this is why I am concerned about Google playing fair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dart will not be 2x (or more) faster than JS. Dart will not be so much more expressive and elegant than JS is.

Google would have to replace the whole stack (from HTTP to DOM to Dart to IDEs) to make it really compelling, but I'm pretty sure they will give it a shot.

Fortunately there is a competition:

Nobody will dedicate himself to Chrome Web Store and Google Web technologies and miss out on future Facebook WebApp Store (or whatever Project Spartan turns out to be) or future Apple AppStore (I believe in Apple's intelligence and visionary and that they will realize potential of Open Web and Clouds in time).

Android also is in trouble so unless Google will win the mobile market big time it will get more fragmented and thus forcing _everybody_ to jump into Open Web and not Google Web.

And then there's Mozilla - let's hope they can pull off some good piece technology with their B2G and Firefox Mobile!

At least that's what I want to believe...

<comment><USER5> > Dart will not be 2x (or more) faster than JS.

Why are you so sure of this? The people involved appear to be big believers that dynamic languages can be extremely performant provided they are designed with the VM in mind. LuaJit proves this out. A simple 1000x1000 matrix multiply in LuaJit is already 20x (not 2x!) faster than V8 and on par with C.

[http://attractivechaos.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/amazed-by- lu...](http://attractivechaos.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/amazed-by-luajit/)

<http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-06/msg00071.html>

I think far too much emphasis is being placed on whether Dart replaces JS in the browser. Google would gain a huge amount by having a performant server- side language that can be tooled and compiled to JS for the client.

<comment><USER15> > A simple 1000x1000 matrix multiply in LuaJit is already 20x (not 2x!) faster > than V8 and on par with C.

You are using outdated measurements. Up to date results:

<http://attractivechaos.github.com/plb/plb-lang.png>

<http://attractivechaos.github.com/plb/>

The difference between V8 and LuaJIT is nowhere near 2x on matmul and comes from differences in language features (no debugger interruption support for generated code in LuaJIT2) and lack of certain optimizations (e.g. array bounds check elimination) in V8 [matmul_v2.lua used for measurements relies on ffi arrays which do not include bounds checks at all]. Code generated by both compilers is roughly equivalent (invariants hosted out of the loop, temporary double values are on xmm registers, etc). A bit more details: [http://blog.mrale.ph/post/5436474765/dangers-of-cross- langua...](http://blog.mrale.ph/post/5436474765/dangers-of-cross-language- benchmark-games)

<comment><USER5> Interesting, thanks. Do you have a guess on what the Dart means by "Dash is designed with performance characteristics in mind, so that it is possible to create VMs that do not have the performance problems that all EcmaScript VMs must have." Where will a redesign likely see gains?

<comment><USER6> JS has notorious optimization hazards such as holes in arrays (Array.prototype[1] = "ha ha"; a = [0,,2]; ... a[i] for i=1 must find the prototype element), prototype delegation in general, delete and default- mutability, plus the eval of old and 'with' (respectively reformed in modern impls and specs, and banned in strict mode).

These all add some cost in either runtime guards, static analysis burdens, or a mix.

A new language could leave out most of these, but it would still want inheritance. Then the question would be: how useful is mutability along the inheritance chain, i.e. shadowing -- even if you remove 'delete'.

Beyond this, a new language _or_ a JS extension (this is what the Dash memo rules out as un-possible, without evidence) could allow pinning down the shape of objects, even to include machine types such as int32, etc. That would allow for big speedups on certain benchmarks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "his is why I think cooperating in standards bodies is critical for web interop and non-fragmentation. It necessarily implies less competitive content languages at any given instant, but with consequent widest reach."

I think it's interesting he's admitting to standards bodies leading to inferior languages but that the benefits include wide reach. I disagree. See HttpRequest. I say let the browsers innovate at will and let the standards bodies come in and standardize what people are actually using after the fact.

Shoot first, ask standards bodies later.

<comment><USER6> "... he's admitting ..."? Hello, I'm here, and you're not deposing me, so drop the lawyer talk.

Also, try to pay attention to the historical correlation of market forces: XHR came in when Microsoft was a monopoly:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_supp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_support)

Even then, it was new and optional, and we cloned it into Mozilla (Opera cloned it too). It was pretty simple compared to anything like Dart or NaCl's Pepper APIs.

Ok, look where we are today: no monopoly power, but Google arguably acting like one. That won't lead to reverse-engineering without a much less balanced market.

First, the reverse-engineering costs of Dart are much higher than of XHR.

Second, the more balanced competition won't make any browser follow instead of lead. We could indeed end up with two problems (three, counting JS), as just happened with WebSQL and IndexedDB. Dart, and Microsoft's new language Phart, say. :-P

Glib "shoot first, ask standards bodies later" is a recipe for fragmentation and non-interoperation. Even if standards are written (years later, for XHR; never for VBScript and ActiveX and a great many examples you conveniently ignore), they don't offset the up front costs.

And here's the kicker: if you get your wish, there won't be one interoperable superior language ruling the roost until that later standardization step, if it even happens. If there's no monopoly or duopoly power structure, you'll just have the "inferior" language (JS) and spotty support for the "superior" one.

It seems to me that a lot of you "bring on our new overlords" boosters are unaware of how HTML5 came about. It was not through one vendor shipping proprietary code and standards bodies mopping up later. Study some recent history.

<comment><USER16> "First, the reverse-engineering costs of Dart are much higher than of XHR."

Does this matter if it's open source? Not being combative, I'm actually asking.

"It seems to me that a lot of you 'bring on our new overlords' boosters"

Well shit. I definitely don't want to be one of those!

<comment><USER6> Open source is usable only by some vendors. My Opera pals say they can use it (I'd heard differently from others at Opera in the past). Microsoft, I'm told, cannot -- they cannot even read open source. This is public knowledge, it came out, e.g., as part of the IronPython project.

So Microsoft objected to WebSQL, since it depended on SQLite as source-code- is-specification. Writing a spec for SQLite or Dart is very hard. SQLite is >100KLOC in one .c file! Dart is at a guess bigger. Hence, reverse-engineering is required.

Reading code at this scale doesn't tell you enough. Testing, with good coverage, is required. Then you have to separate the over-specification due to abstraction leaks and bugs, from the intentional specification. That's hard work too, and while source code comments may provide clues, the source itself does not say what's what.

"Well shit. I definitely don't want to be one of those!"

Sorry, I was not addressing you specifically, rather the (many, more than I expected) people here and elsewhere who are asking for the new and good monopoly to rewrite the web by itself with more awesome languages.

The IE monopoly with ActiveX and all that was so long ago, the new generation did not live through it.

<comment><USER16> "The IE monopoly with ActiveX"

I certainly remember and that's what your comment made me think of. It's not QUITE the same thing as it is supposed to compile to js but yeah, I get the comparison and would prefer to have no single-corporation overlords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm afraid it's already too late to make suggestions, but I would be really excited if Dart supported facilities to make unit testing an integral part of the language, taking into consideration the interaction with the DOM. This is something that would really help IMHO.

<comment><USER12> > I'm afraid it's already too late to make suggestions,

Which was precisely the point of developing things this way. They don't want anyone's suggestions; they want to force the thing that benefits _them_ the most on everyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Classes :(

</comment><comment><USER19> I hate to say it, because Brendan Eich is no blogspammer, but I feel like he name-dropped Google Dart (Dash) as well-intentioned linkbait. It's mentioned in one sentence and offers no new details or interesting discussion.

I agree with georgemcbay that he has reason to be disturbed by Dart's appearance and the backing of Google/Chrome, but with no actual details, he's just taking a quick shot at it while he can here.

<comment><USER6> I took no shot at Dart because we all know nearly nothing about it.

My whole talk was about how competing browser vendors work together to standardize and evolve JS. In that light, bailing to a proprietary move like Dart is entirely relevant and not linkbait.

This is a non-technical, or really meta-technical point. Lots of JS and web standards work is about techniques for solving technical problems, hence meta.

Any well-funded company with smart people on staff can "do better" for a given point-function or language in the set of languages. On the web, such better- is-better approaches won't get traction without being adopted by multiple competing browsers.

The best way to get adoption is standardization. Forcing reverse-engineering, open-washing as if that helps competing vendors more than a little (assuming their hackers can even read the delayed-open source as a reference), fragmenting web content are all "less good" in my view.

A browser with market power can try these tactics. They may backfire, or make a messy "now you have two problems" world.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SuperMoney - <AUTHOR> http://www.supermoney.com/reviews/credit-reporting/credit-karma

<comment><AUTHOR> With SuperMoney, I am trying to build the Yelp of the personal finance niche.

Looking for some good feedback on UX and general thoughts on the value proposition, site, branding, or anything else useful.</comment>


How to Brew Coffee Without a Coffee Maker - <AUTHOR> https://tonx.org/without-a-coffee-maker

<comment><USER2> Serious options: Aeropress or Hario V60 drip filter (or similar -- Chemex, &c.), and a good hand-grinder. I use Hario's skeleton/skerton.

Does anyone know of any services similar to Tonx that will ship to England?

<comment><USER3> We're working pretty hard on England. It doesn't look like delivery times will suffer much... but price will be significantly different. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely some rigged voting going on here. It's at least not the worst thing I've seen someone try to ram to the front page.

<comment><USER3> Well I certainly voted for it - is that rigging or is there something else?

<comment><USER5> For something with just 10 points before I upvoted it, I'm not seeing anything weird.</comment></comment></comment>


When delivery drones meet the enemy, it might be us - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/biggest-obstacle-for-delivery-drones-isnt-the-technology-its-you-and-me/2016/01/06/e4cae052-aa81-11e5-9b92-dea7cd4b1a4d_story.html <comment><USER2> Article title: Biggest obstacle for delivery drones isn't the technology: It's you and me</comment>