The state of Mac gaming - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/07/the-state-of-mac-gaming/ <comment><USER3> I don't want to be dismissive, but this article talks about the graphics APIs and the hardware architecture (x86) yet fails to address the elephant in the room there: Cider ports. That is, macOS games which are actually Windows games running atop the the WINE-based proprietary middleware known as Cider.

Cider has both been a great boon to Mac gaming — it makes it cheap and quick to port Windows-only titles to the Mac without having to make them internally cross-platform — and also a great detriment: its Windows translation layer imposes a performance penalty and prevents true native feel, and crucially, many such games are using Cider's slow Direct3D-to-OpenGL translator, which is not only slower than real Direct3D (thus why such games will always run better under Windows in Boot Camp on the same hardware), and limits you to the Direct3D 9 featureset, but it is also translating to a graphics API Apple basically don't care about now (OpenGL).

The good news is that more and more games are using commodity engines, and those engines usually have proper native macOS support, and ideally Metal support. Nonetheless, Cider ports are very much a thing that must still be contended with.

For a recent high-profile case of Cider causing trouble, Square Enix went the cheap route when they ported their MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, to the Mac, and used Cider. The result was infamously bad and they had to pull it from the shelves. They did of course fix it up and re-release it, but even then, the resulting port is slower than and graphically inferior to simply running the game under Windows, because it's stuck with fake Direct3D 9. On Windows you get to choose between Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11.

<comment><USER4> For me, the big problem with mac gaming is that my $3k+ work laptop has a fairly shitty integrated gpu and even the dedicated gpu is pretty low end compared to what you can get in a non-mac laptop.

This means that, even though 1/3rd of my steam library has mac versions, half of these games don't actually run well.

(Disclaimer: since switching to mac, I typically game only on PS4 nowadays, which I guess probably doesn't have better hardware, but at least has well optimised games and lots of awesome exclusives)

<comment><USER5> I have the same issue, for just over $1/hour I run a g2 instance on AWS and game using [http://parsec.tv](http://parsec.tv) \-- 1440p at 60fps without breaking a sweat. It's revitalised my gaming hobby, and works wonderfully

<comment><USER6> Wow. How is that possible with non-local bandwidth and latency?

<comment><USER5> Some neat protocols. I've got a 25ms RTT from my home PC to my server in Sydney, which is basically less than a frame (ish), it's definitely enough for me to be competitive in-game.

Interesting fact: my in-game ping is usually 1 or 0, because its in the same data centre as the dedicated servers, heh. Removes another possible bit of latency, which is nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I work for a game publisher. We do not suggest developing for Mac. If you're building your game in Unity and can export it in Mac, then great (although now you have to factor in extra support). Otherwise, don't waste your time. Mac accounts for 3% in Steam [1], and Linux is even worse off.

Development time is better spent on internationalization than getting a working Mac build.

And I say this being a Mac user myself. Games actually run really well on my MacbookPro. But from a business standpoint, I wouldn't develop for Mac.

[1] [http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=combined)

<comment><USER8> Aren't the major game engines already cross-platform? I'm definitely an outsider to the industry, but it almost seems like a game developer would have to go out of their way to NOT support Mac and Linux these days.

Why would one take a cross platform game engine and make the rest of the game logic Windows-only?

<comment><USER9> Of my ~500 Steam games, IIRC something like 300 have macOS builds, and about 200 for Linux.

My experience is that most small studio or "indie" games will run on all three platforms, about half of really big games have Mac releases and some much smaller portion also support Linux, and of course anything that runs under Dosbox works on all three. ~90% of the Linux games are indie or dosbox. MacOS is a much more viable platform for a gamer, also aided by being generally much less fussy/buggy for all things multimedia-dependent like games, though hindered by generally mediocre graphics cards. _However_ you might be surprised what runs acceptably on a 2014-vintage Intel Iris graphics chip. I was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mac gaming isn't going to go much of anywhere... I mean, Apple is still trying to push Metal instead of updating OpenGL on macOS. Practically no one except the largest AAA developers and engine authors care about Metal. Everyone else doesn't have the time or money to learn _another_ graphics API and implement it in parallel. OpenGL performance on macOS is stagnant and Vulkan is nonexistent.

Apple's hubris is starting to catch up with them. They're trying to pull devs in with Metal but are instead pushing them away by making it harder or impossible to use APIs that devs actually want. To add insult to injury, the games market on Mac is small anyway, even relative to its market share. Windows has been absolutely dominant in this space for so long that I can't believe that Apple would try to get developers working on their platform by making it harder, not easier, to develop for.

<comment><USER11> The Steam Hardware Stats [1] also show the following abysmal market share:

        Windows  96.24%
        OSX       2.95%
        Linux     0.72%

If you aren't Windows in the PC gaming space, you really don't have a leg to stand on when trying to force developers to work your way.

[1] [http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/)

<comment><USER12> A bunch of us have both a mac and a windows pc for gaming, and would like to just use one computer for gaming. I wonder what the stats are for users that have both, and how much more / less they spend than windows PC only users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've never understood Apple's lack of prioritization for the gaming market. Weren't games critical (albeit not as much as VisiCalc perhaps) to the Apple ]['s success? Looking at the iOS App Store, games seem to be far and away the most active and best-selling category with almost more subcategories than all the other non-game categories combined.

That said, it's nice that we're experiencing a renaissance in indie game development, which seems to rely more on cross-platform frameworks like Unity. It's possible to have a full life of gaming if you're into puzzlers/strategy games like Factorio, Rimworld, and the Fireaxis library (Civ, XCOM).

<comment><USER14> I think it's a self-fulfilling prophesy at this point. The Mac was never really a good gaming platform (and I say this as a long-time Mac user and occasional gamer) and by now the reputation is entrenched. People who want to buy a computer for games won't buy a Mac pretty much no matter what, so Apple has no reason to court them, so they won't buy Macs, so....

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can play Civilization VI on my Mac. I'm good.

Personally I haven't bought a Steam game that hasn't had the Mac symbol on it for several years, and I used to be a heavy Windows user (still am at work and on my 'get work done' laptop). Generally requires me to get mostly indie games, but that's okay, I have consoles for the rest.

<comment><USER16> I played V, since it looked ugly, I went to Windows machine, huge difference in performance and everything, and it is same game. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I learned about Nvidias GeForce Now platform a few weeks back. It looked like a great solution for me for the amout of gaming I do now a days. Looks very cool check it out :)

\- Pay per hours played

\- 200fps with a 20-30ms delay

If you live in the U.S. you can try beta for free [https://www.nvidia.com/en- us/geforce/products/geforce-now/ma...](https://www.nvidia.com/en- us/geforce/products/geforce-now/mac-pc/)

Video of Apple Insider testing the beta [https://youtu.be/XbVFemjaeP0](https://youtu.be/XbVFemjaeP0)

<comment><USER18> It's as good as your bandwidth, which means it won't be great for most Americans.

<comment><USER19> So I have google fiber. And as you note this relies on your connection. But that's only half the issue. Since getting google fiber I've realized since my pipe is no longer the issue that the service I'm connecting to is the issue. All the latency and lag and bandwidth limits I have are coming from the servers themselves and their less than stellar capacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've often felt that true hard-core gaming machines were best thought of as a kind of high-end workstation, since, well, when you're a true "gamer", you're doing it in a nice dark room with booming sound, etc. Ergo, not mobile.

Given that the trashcan Mac Pro was a mess when it came to upgrading, it's clear that Apple just didn't prioritize high end workstation environments. We'll see what the next Mac Pro brings, it might be a nicer platform, but it'll be such a minuscule part of the market, I find it hard to believe many game studios will jump on it.

Otherwise, you're left with the typical Mac which often prioritizes good battery life, mobility, etc. So Macs are best left for casual gaming, but... well, phones are great at that too.

I do notice that cross platform mobile games on iPhones are significantly better performing then Android devices. So it's not that Apple doesn't prioritize gaming, just hard core "workstation style" gaming environments.

<comment><USER21> Most of the same games that run on high-end gaming machines also run on relatively low-powered consoles like the Xbox One and PS4. Heck, the Nintendo Switch uses mobile hardware and comes within spitting distance of Xbox One performance when docked.

Raw power isn't the issue. It's Apple's poor drivers and API support.

<comment><USER20> It's just interesting that the Mac drivers / APIs are just so bad when the iOS story seems to be so different.

Just today, I'm watching team mates suffer with Android freezes. This is far from the first time this has happened. There's just a ton of anecdotal evidence that indicates iOS is superior to Android for gaming.

And it's not like Mac's are having to deal with this "massive ecosystem". I mean, Windows runs on everything. And Macs, like the iPhone and iPad, really are pretty much closed ecosystems too.

So it seems there was some decision in the history of Mac OS development that has somehow screwed it over when it comes to providing drivers and APIs for game development, and, Apple can't rectify it effectively. I just wonder what that was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find Apple's lack of commitment to Vulkan incredibly short-sighted on their part and downright offensive to developers. At a higher level, both Metal and Vulkan address the same technical issues in previous APIs. The sheer waste of effort and squandered opportunities resulting from this type of fragmentation sometimes make me wonder if we need a regulatory agency to step in when big players show such obvious disregard for interoperability.

<comment><USER23> If you want Vulkan on macOS, it exists [0].

[0][https://moltengl.com](https://moltengl.com)

<comment><USER22> That's a commercial emulation layer -- this may be fine for some use cases but is definitely not a satisfactory state for the graphics ecosystem on Mac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My Mac gaming experience over the past decades has mostly been "fuck it, buy a console". Every time I try to play something on the Mac it's an uphill battle to get it to talk to any of my various controllers.

I lose mods, and I lose genres that really do work a lot better on keyboard and mouse - I've been having an on and off urge to find some kind of Settlers retread lately, for instance, and this really doesn't exist on consoles - <USER2> I gain a lot of time not spent swearing at incompatibilities.

</comment><comment><USER25> The one game I play regularly on my Mac is Hearthstone. It's great that Blizzard made a Mac version, and it runs well enough (it should, since it's also a mobile game), but after 3 years it still doesn't support retina monitors. The Windows version does, of course. It's built on Unity, so I don't know what the problem is.

<comment><USER26> Blizzard has always been pretty good about cross platform (Windows/Mac) support, all the way back to Starcraft 1 and Warcraft.

<comment><USER27> Blizzard is the only large gaming company that I can think of that never stopped releasing Mac games.

<comment><USER28> Well, until Overwatch...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> At this point, after having been a gamer (though I've never really been fanatical about it) ever since childhood in the 1980s... I just don't _care_ if my Mac plays big-budget AAA games at this point.

Like most software professionals, I work a lot of hours, and my time is limited.

So when it comes to leisure-time, I generally want my games to "just work."

I don't want to see a game on the Mac App Store and then spend a bunch of time Googling forums and stuff to see if the port's any good and if it will actually run decently on my Mac hardware, and then do some more experimentation with settings and everything to actually get it to run acceptably.

A little bit of console hacking can be fun; sometimes I enjoy tinkering with old consoles to get better video output or whatever. But that stuff is 100% optional.

Besides, these days, I'm more into indie-style 2D games than 60-hour immersive "epics" that cost $40mil to make but still have the same basic game mechanics as _Daikatana._ And a lot of those Unity-based 2D-ish games run pretty well on MacOS.

Plus, I don't know. I think I actually _like_ having my Mac be my "dedicated work machine." It's hard enough to get work done with the Internet beckoning; it'd probably be even harder if all my favorite games were just a click away too. Then again, maybe that's just the Stockholm syndrome talking.

<comment><USER30> I really enjoyed some of the games for Mac in the 80s. It seemed like the authors didn't much know what they were doing, but they were really creative. Almost like it was the work of clever amateurs instead of actual professionals.

I haven't played games on my computer in a long while. What are some of the good indie-style 2D games now?

<comment><USER29>
        Almost like it was the work of clever amateurs
        instead of actual professionals.

I liked that era too! Not Mac games in particular; just the era when everything wasn't so same-y. Everything felt almost like outsider art. Created by small teams on small budgets so they were free to experiment!

But, I think we've returned to that level of creativity. Computers are powerful enough that neat games can be coded in high-level languages, so we don't need assembly-language savants to make something that runs well. =)

        I haven't played games on my computer in a long while.
        What are some of the good indie-style 2D games now?

There's been a resurgence of Rogue-likes, many of which use a twin stick control scheme so you can move in one direction and shoot in another. I put a lot of hours into _Enter the Gungeon._

There's _Cave Story,_ ten years old at this point, but a loving and amazing (and cute) tribute to the Metroidvania genre. The original was created by a single person, and there have been some graphically updated versions.

Those are two I've personally put a lot of time into. There are tons more on Steam, PSN, Xbox Live, and Nintendo's eShop...

 _Stardew Valley_ and _Darkest Dungeon_ are two I have my eyes on to play next. Honestly when I need a new game I usually just google "best indie games of 2015" or "best indie games of 2016" hahaha.

The recommendation engines on Steam and the other online services are actually pretty good too. I would never buy a game just because Steam recommended it, but when they recommended something to me, it's usually worth Googling for reviews and videos of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I play a lot and used to do so on a mac book pro.

It used to be a good strategy, especially after upgrading my MBP 2011 with an SSD and more RAM.

Not so much with my last MBP, a mid 2015 model.

I have heard that the thermic paste used by Apple is of very low quality and degrades over time. It seems to be the case for me.. this laptop used to be able to run GTAV on windows, now it crawls even when I try a simple compilation.

I have mostly renounced to play on a mac (whether it is on windows or osx) and I mostly play on a switch now.

<comment><USER32> This is(was?) indeed an issue, and replacing the paste seems to make the machine feel like new again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It would be really nice if Apple decided to work with some player like Steam, who also has an interest in gaming on Unix-y systems. I would be really interested in the overlap between Steam's work on Ubuntu and Apple's OS X.

A large part of the problem sounds like Apple's commitment to Metal, but if it drops and and seeks to work with Steam, then they could stand to make a really great experience on their platforms, and perhaps in the living room, too.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's not about software. It's not about Cider or Bootcamp or which OS you're using. The problem is bigger than that; it's about suitability of form factor.

There's a key difference between gaming and other tasks - like graphic design and software development - that I think the article misses. Work demands portability, for being productive both in the office and while traveling away from it. But barring a few edge cases, gaming doesn't demand portability at all. There's no pressing reason you can't keep your gaming machine in one place, your home. That's the entire philosophy behind the console market. What these systems do demand is physically larger hardware and a slew of peripherals (displays, graphics cards, cooling, speakers, controllers).

Apple has been doing extremely well in the notebook market, but it has steadily lost ground in desktop. When the redesigned Mac Pro finally comes out, that might change. But until then, PCs will continue to dominate the desktop. And I do not see the desktop losing its spot as the best form factor for gaming.

</comment><comment><USER35> iMac owner chiming in; late 2013 model.

Gaming on OSX for me is hit and miss. Many of the games I have recently played have been advanced Wine wrappers and they work out pretty well. One company, Wargaming, has done pretty good with this model but they don't provide true support as the wrapper itself does introduce a lot of variable. Blizzard was a mainstay for my buying but even though I have not tried Overwatch the fact it was not made available for OSX does not bode well. If one of your longest supporters suddenly drops off, what does that say?

Was there some scare introduced with suggestions they may move off Intel? I never put any real faith into it and to be honest it might be the straw for me if it ever did happen.

Still a lot comes down to Apple really doesn't push their desktops and laptops as being used for games. They will put a "performance" claim on their website showing improvement over past models but not much beyond that. I rely on sites like barefeats to see if performance has ticked up enough to warrant a new purchase; as you can see for me my system is fine for what is there.

the saving grace has always been, just use bootcamp. It works, I don't need a new machine, and it can use the latest video drivers from the manufacturers site.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps Overwatch seemed too graphically demanding for most Macs to be worth porting?

<comment><USER36> Do not underestimate modern intel iGPUs! Even games like Fallout 4 can be made to run on these as long as you can accept lower graphical fidelity, resolution and 30 fps rather than a smooth 60+ framerate (the latter of which is common on gaming consoles, anyway).

Here's a video of Fallout 4 running on a Macbook Pro : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3A81BScMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW3A81BScMU) Running on Intel's GPU. Macs with dedicated GPUs with either NVIDIA or AMD hardware will perform much better.

Overwatch has no trouble running on more recent Macs, if you install Windows through bootcamp. Compared to many other AAA games, it's quite light. Hardware is not the issue here.

The biggest problem running games on Mac OS X is the terrible graphic stack. It's simply underperforming. Whether it's the drivers or something else, I can't say. However, from my personal experience having used Mac OS X, Linux and Windows on the same Mac, Windows tends to perform best, Linux a close second, and MacOS a very distant last.

This stays true even for games that were "natively" ported to MacOS, such as Diablo 3. They still run better on Windows. And as for people who play windows games through Wine.. those games run better on linux than on MacOS. And that tends to be a major problem with running games on lower end macs.. for example, Dark Souls can run fine on a Mac Mini if you play it through Wine under Linux, or natively on Windows. But Wine on MacOS will perform significantly worse. Not enough to make the game unplayable, but it's a much less enjoyable experience.

MacOS is just unfit for the purpose. I'm not a 'hardcore gamer' per se, and do not chase the treadmill of latest and greatest with the best possible graphics, but I still enjoy playing games from time to time and I ended up nuking MacOS from the mini I use as a media center connected to the TV. The next time I buy a tiny computer to put next to the tv, it will be an Intel NUC.

<comment><USER3> > Do not underestimate modern intel iGPUs!

I'm not! It doesn't run very well on my 2013 MacBook Air at lowest settings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is both a Hardware and Software problem. Apple's choice of GPU is always lacking behind in performance, and it was only 2017's update of Mac that got them the GPU they deserve for their price range.

OpenGL wasn't updated for years. Making any work to port Games to Mac much more difficult.

With Apple working on its own GPU, and Metal 2 they finally have the groundwork to moving Mac Gaming forward. Of course that is if Apple decide to so.

</comment><comment><USER38> Anyone have any experience with any cloud computing solutions (like [https://www.paperspace.com](https://www.paperspace.com)) with their MacBook? Was thinking about trying it since it's cheap to try out.

</comment><comment><USER39> If anyone likes RTS games, Dawn of War 2 and 3 are available on OSX(and Linux).

Unfortunately for multiplayer you are limited to playing against other OSX users - so windoze is the superior option again.

</comment><comment><USER40> The state of Mac gaming is it picks up the scraps from developers generally using multi-platform engines, limping along despite Apple.

</comment><comment><USER41> I installed Bootcamp on my 2017 MBP and it works very well. I am able to play several Windows games using Steam Box.

</comment><comment><USER42> Weird seeing an article on Ars Technica ragging on Apple.

but then i see it is from an outside contributor...</comment>


Show HN: HackerNew for Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lgoghlndihpmbbgmbpjohilcphbfhddd I've been working on and off on a Chrome Extension for Hacker News, the extension focusses on improved usability rather than design. I can almost guarantee that after a day you won't want to go back to regular Hacker News. Give it a try, features include:<p>- Improved readability - Quick inline replies from comments page - Quick profiles with social network info when hovering over usernames - Filtering of stories based on terms and phrases / domain or user - Endless scrolling - Collapsible comment threads - Social sharing for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Buffer<p>Forks, improvements and comments welcome:
https://github.com/tommoor/HackerNew <comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on and off on this for a little while, the extension focusses on improved usability rather than design. I can almost guarantee that after a day you won't want to go back to regular Hacker News. Give it a try, features include:

\- Improved readability

\- Quick inline replies from comments page

\- Quick profiles with social network info when hovering over usernames

\- Filtering of stories based on terms and phrases / domain or user (try filtering out negativity!)

\- Endless scrolling

\- Collapsible comment threads

\- Social sharing for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Buffer

Forks, improvements and comments always welcome: <https://github.com/tommoor/HackerNew>

<comment><USER3> "I can almost guarantee that after a day you won't want to go back..."

Unfortunately I probably won't make it to a day or two. What you really strive for as a designer is more like "I can guarantee that after 30 seconds you won't be going back". I can tell you that I'm already uninstalling it. Don't change the styling-- or at least leave the information density that we've got w/ HN now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would use it if you didn't change the css, and didn't make share the rightmost link. Also, that "block this guy" popup is really pervasive when you're just roaming around with the mouse. Other than that, really nice work!

<comment><USER5> Same suggestion. I like the overall improvements but please don't force the styling. Make it as an option that users can check to disable default styling of HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely considering making this an option in the next version

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please forgive my ignorance, but what's the point of having proprietary web apps for Chrome that could already be achieved with existing HTML5 toolkits?

This just seems to be an effort to "app-ify" the web, that is, create a shitty appstore google owns for websites. I hate this concept and don't understand why people support fragmenting webpages like this. HackerNew may be fantastic, but release it as a website that all browsers can display.

<comment><USER7> Your point is valid; I'd guess the developer's point in "having proprietary web apps for Chrome" is that there is no cost to run the extension in other people's browsers.

It is a lot more work to do this cross-browser, even with some of the newer toolkits designed to help in this scenario: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4913123/cross-browser- ext...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4913123/cross-browser-extensions- api)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat. I started working on a bookmarklet to improve HN last year called Hacker News Enhancement Suite:

<https://github.com/driverdan/Hacker-News-Enhancement-Suite>

I never got the code far enough to announce / release. The long term goal was to also make plugins.

<comment><USER9> And I actually posted my extension also called 'Hacker News Enhancement Suite' yesterday but no one saw/cared.

<https://github.com/etcet/HNES> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3933090>

I cannot say how angry/sad/confused this makes me :(

<comment><USER10> Following the thread: I posted my extension called "HNHance" two days ago but no one saw/cared. It doesn't change the style, just adds hover parent links - something i find immensely useful in long comment threads.

<http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/132359.user.js> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3923150>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few points:

1) There's a subtle difference between the white background of the extension and the border of the browser. We're talking just enough to notice but not enough to quickly see the contrast. I'd say make it completely the same or exaggerate the contrast a bit more.

2) Any way to address the tiny buttons for up vote/down vote? They are so small that I am always afraid that I'll hit the wrong one. Perhaps side by side or more spacing between them.

3) Just for discussion sake, do you think when sharing it should be mentioned that it's come from HN?

4) In-line comments are awesome! How about using a sidebar on the HN homepage for something like preview or better yet, to display comments for the current article with similar styling to preview in Google search results?

5) Endless scroll on the "Comments" page seems to be broken.

I don't know if I can ever go back to the standard HN....Great job!

</comment><comment><USER12> It's great, except that I can now only see 12 links on the home page... And infinite scrolling is good, but how do you now search ? All the bottom links go further down when you scroll the page.

</comment><comment><USER13> Damn... I've been working on a userscript to do, well, pretty much what this does; I'd completed thread folding, and was just getting stuck into AJAXy "more" links and reply forms.

Oh well, time for a new hobby project.

[edit: Incidentally, do you find the tables-within-tables-within-tables structure of HN, with some arbitrary variations between pages, as infuriating as I do? Or am I doing something wrong?]

<comment><AUTHOR> That's all part of the fun ;-)

<comment><USER13> I've been awfully tempted to have my userscript just completely rip the page layout apart & re-assemble it properly as styled divs, actually. I might still do that.

<comment><USER9> As someone who just wrote their own extension for HN, I think that's the right way to go about things. Tables are such a pain in the ass and I there were multiple times where I had to talk myself into 'staying the course' and just getting it done rather than starting from scratch with a more sane approach.

I think if you could create a nice minimalist table-parser base it would be useful for any future browser extensions.

<comment><USER13> Actually, that's really a rather good idea. I'll be sure to Show HN when it's done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The features are nice but can you make it look more like the Georgify extension. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfeh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfehgblppafkijjhmi) I like how the content is centered with Georgify.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can really appreciate this extension and the fact you've open sourced it. Thank you for that.

I think a successful modification to the HN feed would leave the same vertical spacing, but somehow make links more easily browsable. Zebra striping perhaps? Eliminating the number on the left or make it smaller?

I like the Share option. That's super helpful.

I'm not really liking the large links or their color.

The hidden filter that only shows on hover should be hinted at, at least, by making it slightly visible.

I think you've abandoned the HN brand. I believe a successful modification to the feed layout would be subtle enough that it wouldn't be immediately noticeable but, rather, generally easier to read.

</comment><comment><USER16> One of the things I like most about Hacker News is that it's one of the few sites left without social media sharing buttons, or as I like to call them, junk. Anything that will add those buttons to sites that don't have them is the antithesis of what I need.

<comment><USER17> Fully agree. Worst of all are the truculent widget bars that refuse to scroll with the rest of the page. Thankfully the Antisocial subscription for Adblock takes care of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand that the social buttons are not useful for all, this is why they are hidden behind a click and dynamically loaded. You can completely ignore that link and enjoy the rest of the new features :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Endless scrolling is uncool if you want to click any of the links at the bottom of the page, Lists, RSS, Bookmarket. Maybe these links can be relocated to the top of the page? I sometimes go to Lists | bestcomments to find the creme de la creme.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow! The infinite scrolling feature just made me a lot less productive at work. I used to just look at the homepage...

Feature suggestion: could you add a different link to the discussion page? Something more prominent and easier to click?

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks nice, but I perfer Georgify [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfeh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ofjfdfaleomlfanfehgblppafkijjhmi)

<comment><AUTHOR> The styling is really only the tip of this extension :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The only missing feature that prevents it to become the ultimate HN extension is to show an icon in the address bar that links the a web page to the HN thread (if available).

Keep up the great work!

<comment><USER22> I want this too! This comes close: <http://chetan51.github.com/panels/hacker/>

<comment><USER21> Also:

[Hacker News'd!] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/njdndkhkelkeepcnmo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/njdndkhkelkeepcnmookckfhleebcokl)

[Hacker News Sidebar] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhedbplnihmkekhgma...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhedbplnihmkekhgmaoikgfbkjjaocnl)

But are not perfect and it would be nice to have a single package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I tried to contribute to this thread but my IP seems to have been blocked after submitting my comment. I included a list of 6 Chrome extensions and their URL that in my opinion improve the usability and features of HN. I'm afraid to submit it again since I don't want the current Squid proxy's IP being blocked also and then I won't be able to read HN until I find a different IP I can route through. Anyone know how long IP blocks last?

</comment><comment><USER24> Never had a time to give my respect to HN by building my own bootstrap and adding more features (I believe more options viewing HN, the better) but every time something like this comes around HN I follow the thread.

This is what I learnt so far:

\- do not change fonts, colors styles.

\- do not try to add cool up to date, buttons, etc - most users just got used to the way it is right now \- do not add anything between rank position and title. no additional icons, etc. folks here got used to scanning HN certain way and more white space makes it harder to read

How would my HN bootstrap look like?

\- wouldnt touch the outlook and add minimum additionals: after # of comment I would add ajax-driven "follow" for the post and "follow for replies" - <USER2> threads were there are hundreds of responses its hard to catch up with whats new (who wrote new reply); I know you can lookup your profile to see comments related to yours, but I find it kind of hard it this way and you have to leave to post screen.

\- add highlighters to responses. karma is good and many times interesting folks have high karma (duh!) - I would add highlighters (opt in/out) for high karma users when they type response so when I scroll long thread and am limited with reading time, I could at least see posts coming from high karma users

\- social features: would add IRC, follow hacker (notify me when he posts new stuff, or write a comments), but would never add all the fb/twitter crap. imho hn being less popular is better. this community is awesome as it is

\- would do it never ending scrolling like you did, BUT also make it as refreshless as possible - would load stuff through ajax, also monitor the hottest subjects and preload theirs comments in hidden div so when you click "comments" it would show up instantly and just added missing comments that took place from the moment of last reload (all reloads would be silent ajax- driven) - this would give you feeling that loading data is extremely damn fast.

This is for a good start. One day I will get there as I want to learn Python or Ruby :)

<comment><USER25> agree on not changing fonts, colors, styles, buttons ...

<comment><USER24> Yeah. I think lots of people find HN design perfect the way it is and its hard to move on. Its like another Craiglist, I guess.

Btw: my post gets lots of upvotes -- perhaps someone could design some of the features I mentioned...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not bad! I was previously using a combination of the Georgify and Collapsible comment extensions. Your extension is better in some ways and worse in others.

Suggestions: Collapse link shouldn't be on the far right, and collapsed comments should only show 1-2 lines regardless of actual length. Link color brightness could be taken down a few notches. Reply link shouldn't be underlined.

<comment><USER27> Ohhh. Thanks for the pointer to Collapsible comment. Trez useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ooo, this is quite nice. I like all of the inline features you added (though inline comments aren't currently working for me --- scratch that, they were just really slow).

Nicely done! I predict, as with all HN re-themes, that someone will soon comment about how article density is less than on standard HN, so I took the liberty of adding it to your GitHub issues :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, thankyou very much. Hopefully the endless scrolling takes away some of the pain of more readable titles ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One thing I would add is either reducing title size on the front page, or adding an adjustable title size on the front page (and remember that title size). I wouldn't mess with the font size otherwise, it just throws everything off.

Otherwise, this is terrific! Only bad part is endless scrolling may keep me on HN even longer.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is my HN for Chrome <http://imgur.com/dPcjC>

Given my default sans font is set to Droid Sans, all I needed to do was simply zoom-in (Ctrl ++) twice and chrome keep it this way between log-ins and recently between machines as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> The extension is mainly about additional functionality and ease of use over styling, let me know if you give it a try!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can you add privacy details? It looks like this is using a 3rd party service for social profile data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey,

The extension queries Google's social graph API to gather information about users profiles - you can find details here: <https://developers.google.com/social-graph/>

<comment><USER31> That link goes to:

         'The Google Social Graph API is no longer available'

Anyway, i'm not keen on that. Infinite scroll and CSS should be options, too.

Personally, all i really want is collapsible comments, inline replies, and hiding stories

Anyone know of a script/extension that does just that??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I uninstalled it almost immediately after installing. Cool idea but you shouldn't change the entire look and feel of the site. See Reddit Enhancement Suite as a good example of how to write and present a site addon.

Great idea, it's just too intrusive.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't get access to the footer because of the endless scrolling. Basically there's no way for me to access the Search box long enough to type something in. Is it possible to move the footer items to the top or somewhere else?

</comment><comment><USER33> Please remove this CSS changes, they look terrible.

The features are nice thought.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice but it doesn't work if you visit <http://hackerne.ws/>

Only <http://news.ycombinator.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't even know that URL existed - i'll add support in the next update :-)

<comment><USER34> I added support for you and submitted it to github :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Merged and pushed to Chrome webstore ;-)

Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Like the UI layout, but as others are saying it's not easier on the eyes: try to make the background more dark, not monokai-dark but not this retina-burning white either...

</comment><comment><USER36> Finally, a way to easily share HN posts! Had to adjust the styling using Stylebot, title fonts are way too big... Can you add an Instapaper button? Would be really helpful

</comment><comment><USER37> Just installed it - loving the added spacing, increased font sizes/etc; it makes far better use of the full screen.

I doubt I'll ever be uninstalling this :)

<comment><USER12> > it makes far better use of the full screen. Not for us poor laptop owners! > It's actually the exact opposite :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is a great new tool! Thank you very much, HN _was_ one of the ugliest sites I visit daily :)

I guess it's true though, Content IS King.

</comment><comment><USER39> Fantastic work! I'm liking the different feel of the site. Infinite scrolling is a big plus too. Curious to see what else you can do with this.

</comment><comment><USER40> It would be nice if the collapse thread link collapsed the parent of the thread, as well, the way reddit's collapse buttons work.

</comment><comment><USER41> Looks nice. I'd quite like to see a poll with the various alternative HN themes to see what most people are using.

</comment><comment><USER42> The HackerNew extension makes searching from the search bar at the bottom of the page extremely difficult.

</comment><comment><USER43> Endless scrolling is very cool, until you try to click one of the links on the bottom or use the search.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did consider moving search to the top - what do you think? What stopped me was wanting to augment rather than completely change the current HN experience.

<comment><USER43> I understand your goal of not completely changing the HN design. However, as the extension works right now, it is literally impossible for me to click the links on the bottom. I can see them for a microsecond if I scroll to the bottom but they instantly get pushed down by a wave of new stories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The pure white in the background hurts my eye. Isn't it a good practice to make it a little grayish?

</comment><comment><USER45> So I installed it, but it's not showing up in "Apps" in a new Chrome tab. What am I doing wrong?

</comment><comment><USER46> It looks good but I rarely visit hackers news' front web-page. I end up getting RSS.

</comment><comment><USER47> Option to open all links in a new tab would be greatly appreciated

</comment><comment><USER48> I only wish to have it default to follow links into a new tab.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, I think the best practice across the web right now is to let the user choose when they want a new tab. Just hit CTRL while you click to create a new tab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Blue text on a white background is a cardinal sin in design.

</comment><comment><USER50> Congrats Tom! Been looking forward to using this.

<comment><AUTHOR> why thankyou good sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Missing expand/collapse comment threads.

</comment><comment><USER52> I really like it, nice job.

</comment><comment><USER53> Awesome!!!!</comment>


Which Endangered Species Would You Save? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/19/illusions/which-endangered-species-would-you-save

<comment><USER2> None at all. Once we can create pink polkadot tigers that fetch your slippers, who cares about the albino Siberian tiger? What significance does it have? Its whatever random species inhabited this globe when we came to sentience. Millions came before, and we're not missing them.</comment>


Oracle's New Supercomputer Has 1,060 Raspberry Pis - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/oracle-raspberry-pi-supercomputer,40412.html <comment><USER2> '...asked Oracle why it chose to create a cluster of Raspberry Pis instead of using a virtualized ARM server...one company rep said simply that "...a big cluster is cool."'</comment>


Fact-checkers: Talking crap in Holland v America - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/08/fact-checkers <comment><USER2> As a dutchman, I have to comment on this:

>> _In the Dutch electoral system, this can't happen. Two months before the elections, every political party is expected to submit a detailed budget plan to a non-partisan agency called the Central Plan Bureau (CPB), which plays a role similar to the Congressional Budget Office in America. The CPB produces an analysis of the economic consequences of those budget plans. The effects are assessed in detail for 2013-2017, and there's also a prognosis for 2040 to discourage parties from larding up their budgets with short-term candy that leads to negative long-term consequences._

So, what happens instead, is that all parties write up their budget plan in a way that they expect will yield the most favorable CPB calculations for their intended audience. Contrary to most voters, they realize full well that most of their plans will never be realized, because the Dutch political systems is built around political coalitions, where multiple parties (typically 2, 3 or 4) have to make compromises. Almost inevitably, this means the sharp edges are taken off, and typically it's exactly the sharp edges that influence the CPB calculations the most.

>> _The CPB's report came out Monday, and most parties had their strong and weak points. Of the two parties most likely to win the elections, the Liberals did well on deficit-cutting and long-term job creation but hiked income inequality and hurt household purchasing power; the Socialists did well on purchasing power and jobs in the short run but had low employment growth in the long run._

In the mean time, we had our elections, and the resulting coalition comprises the liberal party (VVD) and the socalist party (PvdA). Together, they negotiated their plans for the coming 4 years. And guess what: the net effect of these plans is almost the exact opposite of what the 2 parties have been advertising during election time.

The liberal party agreed to health care reforms that will actually decrease income inequality, and will have a huge impact on upper middle class incomes, up to 10% net income loss. They also agreed to cut tax benefits for home owners, which again mostly hurts upper middle class incomes. In exchange, the socialists agreed on labor market reforms that will cut unemployment benefits, and on housing market reforms that will increase the cost of living for people who rent, usually people with lower incomes.

The last few weeks there has been a raging debate here, because voters on both sides feel cheated. People who voted the liberal party feel particularly cheated, because the current plans hurt them disproportionally, while at the same time they will destroy jobs, reduce consumer spending, and hence are very bad for economic growth. The only rationale for these measurements is redistribution of wealth, which the socialists traded for reducing social security. All iof this goes against everything the liberal party stands for, never ever have the liberals even hinted that they would agree with such measures.

So tl;dr: Even though the unbiased analysis of the plans the different parties have reduces fact-free policies, it's far from a guarantee that after the elections, the winning parties will simply make a 180 degree turn and screw you over anyway.

<comment><USER3> Small addition: PvdA (one of the two parties in the new government) is the labor party. The 'socialist party' spoken of in the article is the SP, which still did well in the polls when the article was written, fell out of favor.

<comment><USER2> You're right, though projecting to US politics, I think you can safely say PvdA is socialist (they call themselves social democrats by the way). SP would be outright communist by US measures ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One major point not addressed in the article is that the Dutch media aren't afraid to call out politicians on their lies. When a politician is caught in a gross lie the media turn up the heat until the politician publicly apologizes (or at the least ceases to spread misinformation). Politicians are forced to answer tough questions whenever they appear on TV and in addition they get cross-examined during debates. So the blatant dishonesty displayed in the US election won't work here.

So it's a strong cultural thing. There are no mainstream politicians here who hold scientifically untenable positions about evolution, global warming, vaccinations/autism, abortion, and so on. They'd get ridiculed, and rightly so.

This does not mean that rationality prevails in the Netherlands, unfortunately. Austerity measures are seen as the obviously responsible thing to do, even though economists don't agree. As a result we're looking at an economic recovery significantly worse than the one in the US. The GDP growth is projected at a meager 1.5% per year until 2017.

<comment><USER5> Not meaning to open a "classic flamewar topic", but when you say,

 _scientifically untenable positions about evolution, global warming, vaccinations/autism, abortion_

What is the scientifically untenable position about abortion? As far as I know there is no scientific controversy concerning abortion in general, but rather it is wholly a moral question.

<comment><USER6> > What is the scientifically untenable position about abortion?

The argument that can be summed up as 'life starts at conception'.

<comment><USER7> Speaking as a biologist, sperm and eggs are alive even before they fuse. There's no scientifically meaningful way to specify when 'life starts'. So the question of when a developing foetus should be given the rights of a person is primarily philosophical.

<comment><USER6> I tried to avoid nitpicking by specifying that it's just a summary of the argument, but I failed. I should have used the term 'personhood' instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me, this is the absolutely key phrase in the entire article.

" Some question the usefulness of the economic models the CPB uses, which (like all economic models) have never successfully predicted what the economy will do several years down the road."

The problem with any sort of fact checking agency in regards to economics, while useful, is far from a magic crystal ball. Economics is a pretty vague sort of thing that straddles the line between between the humanities and hard science. As a former economics student, I can tell you I've met very brilliant people who have adamantly disagree with one another, yet both have excellent insights. It's tough to definitely say that x plan is better than y plan, because there are so many what if scenarios and assumptions to rely on. That being said, I find it's generally better to trust whoever has articulated their plan better. Simply the act of extrapolating out their assumptions means that while they may be wrong, we can look and see if they've taken into account the metrics that matter.

<comment><USER9> At the _very_ least, the CPB requires that the budget actually adds up mathematically, something that cannot be said of the things that politicians proclaim ("everyone will get tax breaks!! we will close the budget by removing inefficiencies!"). Even though the _prediction_ is not perfect, a group of experts can still detect outright wrong and misleading policies. In the US if a politician says "the middle class will get tax breaks!" you don't know if that actually means anything since another take hike might totally negate a small tax break. Even though the CPB cannot predict the future accurately, it can verify such statements by adding up all the proposed tax hikes and breaks and premiums, and use its statistical model of which policies apply to the middle class population to come up with a number like "on average a middle class person will have €56.30 more per month".

For example, check out this graph, which breaks up the effects of the new government by income level: [http://static3.volkskrant.nl/static/photo/2012/14/8/6/201211...](http://static3.volkskrant.nl/static/photo/2012/14/8/6/20121108064823/media_xl_1417281.jpg)

The idea that you would do better by listening to the words of politicians on TV, than a group of experts working on this full time who actually calculate the effects of all the proposed policies sounds preposterous to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As an American, this:

> there are currently ten parties represented in parliament, four to six of > which are major contenders.

makes me insane with jealousy. What is it that enables this number of parties to remain viable? My first guess would be that the voting system is not first- past-the-post, but I can't find that info after a cursory Wikipedia search.

<comment><USER11> You're correct. Their voting system uses proportional representation, in which each party receives a number of seats proportional to the percentage of votes they received.

Edit: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_Netherlands#Pol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_Netherlands#Political_parties)

<comment><USER12> In addition, the Netherlands does not have an election threshold. A party that gets 1/150 of the votes gets one of the 150 seats in parliament.

That is different from, for example, Germany, where seats are proportionally distributed among parties that got at least 5% of the votes.

So, the theoretical maximum number of parties in parliament is 150 in the Nethelands, but 20 in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Paul Ryan was and is the head of the House Budget committee, which under his leadership proposed a detailed budget that was passed in the US House of Representatives but failed in the Senate for both of the last two years. Romney said he supported the Ryan budget. Remarkably, no Democratic Senator has proposed or voted in favor of any budget whatsoever for the last 3.5 years.

So this "fact-check" seems to invert the truth--the Democrats have given no details about their plans, while the Republicans have been very specific about theirs, whether or not you agree with them.

<comment><USER14> A federal budget does not include how you're going to raise the money to pay for it. The thing that Romney was vague about was which tax loopholes he was going to close to pay for his budget. No Democratic senator proposed a budget in the last 3.5 years because their President did that for them, as is customary (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_process>).Also, only the House has "the power of the purse", i.e. the right to propose spending bills. And of course Democratic senators voted on budgets during the last 3.5 years. All spending bills have to pass the Senate. Here is the Senate roll call for one of the FY 2012 appropriations bills, which passed the Senate on Nov 1, 2011: [http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c...](http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=1&vote=00194) . Note that most Democrats voted "yea", and most Republicans voted "nay". Also, the article in question was not a "fact-check". It was article about fact-checking.

<comment><USER13> What I was referring to was the fact that no Democratic Senator has voted for or proposed a Budget Resolution for the past 3.5 years, which as your Wikipedia article reference says, is the normal procedure for establishing a budget after the House passes its Budget Resolution. The House and Senate budget resolutions are then normally reconciled through a negotiation process that has not happened because the Senate hasn't passed any such Budget Resolution.

So since September 2010, to keep the government functioning, Congress has passed a series of seven continuing resolutions. In their frustration at the unwillingness of the Democratic Senators to propose a budget resolution, the Republicans even brought President Obama's proposal up for a vote this last year, but it went down 0-99 in a rare show of bipartisanship. Admittedly a stunt, but the point is that Democrats are refusing to negotiate by ordinary procedures.

The Budget Process is clearly broken, and it's a serious problem for the economy and country. The non-partisan "No Labels" organization has echoed Independent former Senator Joe Lieberman in calling for a serious reform of the budget process.

Also, the blog article in question prominently attacked Rep. Ryan, and said the Romney-Ryan campaign did not have a budget plan. At least part of it was a typical partisan hit piece implying "facts" existed where they didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think there should be a "Meta-Pundit" site, which would be somewhat like a Wikipedia for pundits, but tailored towards specific kinds of relevant information. There would be a means of entering information on predictions in the public record and marking these right and wrong. The same could be done for facts. The social media aspects of this could be augmented with web crawlers that look for the same data.

<comment><USER16> You can have _both_ people saying what sounds like opposite things in a debate, and they are _both_ technically correct.

Fact-checkers are not infallible, either. It's usually someone who doesn't know the issue at all looking it up on Wikipedia or interviewing an "expert" with his own biases to get an answer.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/11/05/the-ten-worst- fa...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/11/05/the-ten-worst-fact-checks- of-the-2012-election/) is from a conservative viewpoint, so read it with a grain of salt, but it's should be enough to make you skeptical of the whole process.

<comment><USER15> _You can have both people saying what sounds like opposite things in a debate, and they are both technically correct._

Yes, but there are enough things that are incontrovertibly right and wrong, like a lot of pundit predictions of this last election. Even if this were not the case with anything whatsoever, there is clear value in being able to look up a pundit and see all of the predictions and statements in one place.

 _Fact-checkers are not infallible, either. It's usually someone who doesn't know the issue at all looking it up on Wikipedia or interviewing an "expert" with his own biases to get an answer._

So there would be 3 or 5 grades for predictions and factual/nonsense statements made by pundits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, why does the Dutch media care about the US presidential election to this extent? It would barely effect them, and the population (I'm guessing) is already firmly convinced of the evils of the Republican party, so...what's the point?

<comment><USER12> Some/many (I wouldn't know) economists think the fiscal cliff, if handled incorrectly, will put the world into a recession.

So, the election may affect Dutch economy. Doubly so because the economy of the Netherlands is highly dependent on foreign trade. [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/nl.html):

      - GDP    : $840 billion

      - Imports: $492 billion (5.9% from the USA)

      - Exports: $550 billion

(some economists joke that it isn't necessary to have a Dutch minister of economics, as there is no way local policy can compensate for the effect of foreign economies on that of the Netherlands)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Aug 31st 2012

</comment><comment><USER19> "the actual budget of the Dutch government will look nothing like any of the proposals submitted by the parties"

Understatement of the century.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really don't get this twisted logic:

 _It's impossible for a neutral arbiter to preserve its public legitimacy when ruling on subjects of partisan dispute in an election if there are only two disputing parties. Neither side will accept the referee's judgments._

So it works in sports, but doesn't work in politics for some reason?

<comment><USER10> I think the point is that if there were only two teams _in the league_ it also wouldn't work in sports.</comment></comment>


The SEC Will Leave Good ICOs Alone - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-15/the-sec-will-leave-good-icos-alone <comment><USER3> I think couple of things need to be repeated from earlier threads. This discussion happened during a Yahoo conference. So, its more like a person's opinion. Unless we get a press release from SEC it is a difficult statement to make whether SEC is all good with ICOs.

Secondly, the question of Ethereum being a security is a tricky one. It is a security by definition given in the same speech. So, it started out as a security but then it is not a security any more? That is confusing. A good read on this:

[https://prestonbyrne.com/2018/06/14/ether-is-not-a- security/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2018/06/14/ether-is-not-a-security/)

<comment><USER4> Here's the official statement from the SEC.

"based on my understanding of the present state of Ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions."

[https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/speech- hinman-061418](https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/speech-hinman-061418)

<comment><USER3> Please read in full before quoting an article. The very first footnote is:

> The Securities and Exchange Commission disclaims responsibility for any > private publication or statement of any SEC employee or Commissioner. This > speech expresses the author's views and does not necessarily reflect those > of the Commission, the Commissioners or other members of the staff.

<comment><USER5> But isn't this person the person in charge within the SEC for setting the policy? It seems unlikely his opinion will be different from the official stance.

<comment><USER6> Even if one person is in charge, policy is not set in isolation. Their opinion will weigh on the decision but it will not be the decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the headline might be glossing over some important details. There is a subset of ICO's that consulted lawyers and structured their deals in such a way that they don't run afoul of SEC regulations. If you ever see people talking about a "utility token" that is a why they are calling it that. It doesn't give the owner any stake in the company or right to a share of the company's profits. It's more a kin to a virtual currency in a video game the likes of which preceded crypto currencies.

What people really want or where I think the promise of Ethereum in particular really lies is to tokenize traditional assets in the form of ERC-20 tokens in the case of stocks or ERC-721 tokens in the case of unique property. The SEC will need to be involved in the former to make it legal. Both Coinbase and TZero possibly others are working on that now.

<comment><USER8> > _if you ever see people talking about a "utility token" that is a why they > are calling it that_

The SEC has consistently seen utility tokens as securities. The workaround, so far unproven in court, is the SAFT (simple agreement for future tokens).

<comment><USER9> > The SEC has consistently seen utility tokens as securities. The workaround, > so far unproven in court, is the SAFT (simple agreement for future tokens).

The issue with all of this is that people are trying to fit a new technology into a series of boxes when it doesn't fit into any of them.

The problem cryptocurrencies aim to solve looks like this. I have a hardcopy of a book that I've finished reading and I'm prepared to sell it so I can use the money to buy a copy of another book. I am not keen on the efficiency of the barter system, so what I need is currency that allows me to sell the book I have and then buy the book I want.

But currency isn't a security. The rules for securities are much more strict, because you have to worry about people defrauding investors and engaging in stock price manipulations etc. In the normal everyday currency transaction where I exchange my book for a $20 bill and then go somewhere else and exchange my $20 bill for a book, there is never any paperwork for me to fill out. I don't have to give anyone my name or anything else to allow them to compile a database of which books I read or which social clubs I patronize or what kind of contraceptives I use.

The rules for digital credit transactions are also strict, because they were designed for _credit_ transactions, where you have to worry about someone buying something on credit and then not paying, or taking out credit in someone else's name.

What's really needed is a digital version of _cash_. But there is no law designed for digital cash, so people keep trying to squeeze things that aim to serve that purpose into one box or another when the rules were clearly designed for something else.

What we need is for the law to more explicitly allow the internet to work like the real world.

<comment><USER10> Right, but the article is talking about ICOs, not cryptocoins in general.

<comment><USER9> But once there is an ICO then whatever it is it continues to be, right?

It obviously impacts the initial value of a coin if it can't practically be used as currency because future trades have to be treated as a regulated securities instrument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is how the internet and the tech industry in general have worked. Legislators and regulators are reluctant to clamp down on an emerging industry before it's clear how it's going to work. At one point the legality of Napster was legitimately up for debate. As time went on, however, those regulations have come. I think this is actually the right approach. Be conservative in regulating a new industry and wait until it's mature and understood, while allowing it to grow and work out as many kinks in the free market before the government steps in.

<comment><USER12> "This is how the internet and the tech industry in general have worked."

Well I don't think that IBM, Sun, Nvidia, Oracle, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sandisk, Cisco, Ebay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, Snapchat, Wechat, Instagram, Pinterest, fall into that category.

AirBnB, Uber, some weed companies ... DraftKings, Kik, Telegram ... I suppose fall into that.

But 'hotel permits' and 'cab permits' are in another league altogether from 'selling drugs / gambling' or 'unregulated securities', so I think ABnB and Uber really are in a middle category.

Selling 'classically licentious stuff' like porn, drugs, gambling - and also selling financial scams - these things are as old as time ... and there's good reason we regulate it, even if we don't always agree on the thin red line (i.e. should weed or prostitution be illegal?).

That doesn't leave to many real companies skirting regular law and waiting for regulation to catch up.

ICO's I think are a special case.

The one's the SEC has said are 'cool' are basically the token-only one's and I think they are all de-facto scams, to the extent I highly doubt any of those tokens will be viable.

The SEC is missing one thing - and that is the speculative nature of the coins and that they are not bought up front as 'currencies to do stuff'. No - <USER2> are bought with the hope of massive increase in valuation of the currency, thereby making them more like securities than currencies. Or rather, they are 'financial options on some future currency'. In which case, I think they need to be regulated, at least lightly, or at least in some basic way, i.e. requiring minimum amounts of transparency, at very least the executives have to register with the CEO and can go to jail if they just run off with the money willy nilly, which it seems they can do today ...

<comment><USER11> > Well I don't think that IBM, Sun, Nvidia, Oracle, Apple, Google, Microsoft, > Sandisk, Cisco, Ebay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, Snapchat, Wechat, > Instagram, Pinterest, fall into that category.

I don't think you're right about that. Congress waited to pass laws about software patentability. They waited to hold Craigslist accountable for potentially illegal ads on their site. They took a conservative approach in applying things like libel laws to the likes of spam filters, to Wikipedia and social networking. Instagram and Pinterest definitely skirt the law when it comes to copyright violations and they could have easily ruled early on that if you publish something on your website, you're responsible for the legality of that content. YouTube (not that you mentioned it) grew out of illegally hosting copyrighted material before they learned to play nice with the big corporations by implementing contentID and the like. The government could well have regulated these websites like they did with television: banning the use of profane language or sexual content. You severely underestimate the wild west that a lot of these companies were operating under. Hardware, fine, but I don't know of what regulations a person might want to place on them to begin with.

<comment><USER12> Except that none of those situations you suggest indicate 'laws catching up to the internet' \- except in the case of Craiglist prostitution ads which is within the special case group I noted.

None of those companies were broadly breaking any rules to the point of fundamental ambiguity wherein 'we all waited to see what was going to happen'. I see your point about Pinterest but it wasn't really an existential issue, really.

And none of said companies faced existential issues or angst awaiting legal clarity on anything really.

<comment><USER13> > None of those companies were broadly breaking any rules to the point of > fundamental ambiguity wherein 'we all waited to see what was going to > happen'. I see your point about Pinterest but it wasn't really an > existential issue, really.

Huh? It's absolutely an existential issue. Pinterest's entire business is built on unauthorised use of content from other websites.

<comment><USER14> > Pinterest's entire business is built on unauthorised use of content from > other websites.

That's 100% true of Google too, and actually Facebook as well to a large extent. And certainly Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So basically, if you want to raise money by selling gift cards for a product that doesn't exist to speculators who will trade them, make sure you describe it in terms of some inscrutable crypto protocol network thing that doesn't map neatly to stock or gift cards.

<comment><USER14> I don't disagree with your characterization of many ICOs.

But... is there anything wrong with that? It's a junk investment, but aren't junk investments just as valid as strong investments? If my gift card for an unreleased product trades for pennies on the dollar... isn't that still a valid investment?

<comment><USER15> Anything can be an investment. There are laws about gift cards and equity. Cryptocurrency systems are so technically complex and overloaded with ideals, uses, and philosophies that they can be simultaneously nothing like and everything like these things, IMO. It's not about what's right and wrong, it's just amusing to me that if you want to exploit this particular opinion, as a loophole, the way you'd do it is to make your cryptocurrency sufficiently abstruse.

Edit: To be really clear, I'm talking about the opinion that basically says, if your coin functions as equity then it's equity; if it functions as a gift card, it's a gift card; but if it functions as a protocol, it's a protocol, even if it has speculators bidding it up and benefits going to coin-holders — basically a lot of the properties of equities and gift cards that cause them to be regulated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If anyone at bloomberg reads this comment, please stop the bar at the top from periodically coming down. It makes the article impossible to read for those that use the top of their smart phone as a place holder.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why are there so many ex-convicts in this ICO/crypto space? Like literally, a huge chunk of these so called ICO investors and founders have very shady pasts. Why isn't anybody calling people out on this? Why do we have criminals being entrusted with people's livelihood?

<comment><USER18> > _Why are there so many ex-convicts in this ICO /crypto space?_ > _Why do we > have criminals being entrusted with people 's livelihood?_

The second sentence answers the first: we do not want to trust criminals with people's livelihoods, so we leave lots of brainpower lying around outside of "normal society" because we don't want to let an embezzler write accounting software. Is it any wonder, then, that we would see an abnormal number of criminals end up working in a field where there was money but nobody to keep them out? You and I can choose between academia, industry and weird self-owned schemes, but there is a certain group of smart people that have only one option...

<comment><USER19> That's an incredibly interesting way of looking at it. At first blush I was thinking more of a "Wild West attracts Wild West criminals", but it definitely is more nuanced than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems to be a trend in the US with crypto and marijuana as examples. If you move faster than the government, the letter of the law no longer seems to apply once you have established a substantial market.

I like that both are gaining acceptance, but to the early entrepreurs willing to sell a clear security without filing or the growers willing to sell a controlled substance underground, go the spoiles when the states and federal government bend to the will of the market.

Unfortunately, it creates an unfair playing field for those willing to take a criminal risk and puts those that try to do things legally from day 1 at a disadvantage.

<comment><USER21> How is that an unfair playing field? People being rewarded for productive risk taking is one of the fairest things I can think of.

<comment><USER20> Well, I called the SEC and they said they can't think of a way how these ICOs are not violating the Howey Test. Basically that in time, they be prosecuted.

So, those of us that decide that the potential for financial or criminal consequences is not with it miss out when it turns out all but the most egregious scams will get a pass.

<comment><USER21> Sure, I understand where the risk is coming from. I don't understand where the unfairness is coming from.

<comment><USER22> Because what you classify as "taking a risk" most of us classify as "potentially breaking the law."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I did a panel on ICOs last Thursday. Me as crypto skeptic, two crypto guys as well.

Video here: [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/06/14/topline- comm...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/06/14/topline-comms-how-to- launch-a-successful-ico-with-me-on-the-panel/) (no transcript, sorry)

We all concurred: assume your ICO is a security, _talk to your regulators_.

And, ah, don't do fraud - "fake it till you make it" needs to not become "make material misstatements when making an offering". Doing your best to do things properly will definitely make regulators much more helpful.

Remember that financial regulators actually want you to do well in business, and make a great big pile of money! The SEC's mission statement is: "protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation." They'll be delighted to help with that third part as long as you're not messing with the first two parts.

Note also that the regulators are all going "what on earth", and they all talk to each other. FINMA in Switzerland has some surprisingly clear guidance on ICO tokens. Basically: it's a security unless it's pure utility, and if your "utility" token is exchange-tradeable it probably becomes a security. We expected this would be a good rule to work to.

Let me stress again: _talk to your regulators first_. One of the guys on the panel (Davide Vicini from Maveric SA) spends way too much of his time helping ICOs who launched and _then_ tried to square things with the regulators.

</comment><comment> fake-name Let me know as soon as they find this elusive "good ICO".

I hear they're generally found in the same habitat as unicorns.

<comment><USER24> Plenty of unicorns out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I had a bad experience with a coin, and I'm hoping the SEC gets involved with investigating it.

They claim it was not an ICO, but I never got the coins I expected. They were doing quite well, and are in the top 20 on coinmarketcap. I feel cheated, and have received a lot of flak since becoming more vocal about the issue... there were even some half-joking death threats and websites created to discredit me.

They claim there was a deadline I missed. I maintain there was insufficient notice of the deadline, and that they just wanted to keep the coins themselves. Also, I'm not sure it's legal for them to keep something like that once it's paid for...

It's a big question, worth a lot of money, and I'm glad the SEC is finally getting involved in this area.

</comment><comment><USER12> "But if there is a company, and it raises money by issuing a token to the public, it has the same securities-law obligations it would if it raised money by issuing stock or bonds."

And there's the rub. Sometimes, it's hard to tell.

</comment><comment><USER26> Check out the rest of the writing by this author. Matt Levine is great. He has an impressive background which gives him great (and usually cynical) opinions about various financial topics.

</comment><comment><USER27> Hopefully the SEC actually finds a good one to leave alone. but I am guessing that will be a challenge for them. The entire landscape of ico could be decimated and nothing of value would be lost.

<comment><USER28> You could probably do the next gen stock market as ICOs

<comment><USER27> But why? It has zero benefits.

<comment><USER28> Lower transaction costs, more control, easier to trade for small cap companies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do you think I should consider an ICO for a company which has been unable to close its seed round (except under ridiculously bad terms)?

I have an extremely strong association between the words ICO and "scam", but I also recently found out that seed rounds are basically non-existent [1]

If the SEC tacitly allows for "good-faith" ICO's, I would consider it. I don't want to shutter the work of my cofounders and contributors just because the seed-stage startup ecosystem is this broken.

However, I have gone down extremely long rabbit holes and I am very wary.

I would like to raise approximately 300k for a play that is built for an acquisition for a major player (within a small number of years). We got one term sheet for effectively 51% of the company for $17k or so. (That was from a real VC.) There were no other serious offers.

Another (more promising?) alternative would be to bootstrap doing something unrelated. For example we have some expertise on our team in machine learning and perhaps could use it in an unrelated market where the size of the opportunity is pretty small (and it's pretty competitive).

Is ICO worth exploring at this stage? (Bearing in mind that we are built for acquisition.)

We are a "real" startup and don't have anything to do with cryptocurrencies or tokens. I also personally think the SEC does fantastic work that makes the whole startup ecosystem, and indeed investment at all, possible.

There is a reason the United States investment climate is one of the best in the world, if not _the_ best, and I think the SEC and general legal framework is one of these. So I am strongly biased against unregulated ICO's and would be very happy to submit to any oversight that would increase transparency and investor protections.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17284796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17284796)

<comment><USER8> > _I also recently found out that seed rounds are basically non-existent_

$8.5 billion were invested across close to 14,000 seed and angel-stage rounds in 2017 [1]. On both deal frequency and gross volume, seed and angel financing grew from 2016.

[1] [https://news.crunchbase.com/news/q4-2017-global-report-vc- se...](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/q4-2017-global-report-vc-sets-annual- records-back-strong-late-stage-results/)

<comment><USER29> > close to 14,000 seed and angel-stage rounds in 2017

worldwide. :) That's "basically non-existent".

Maybe you can flip it around like this: the number of people worth at least $30 million worldwide is 226,450.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high-net- worth_individua...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high-net- worth_individual)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Laughable! What's a "Good" ICO?

FTA: "Loosely speaking, then, ICOs that seek to fund the construction of decentralized open protocols should still work under the SEC's rules."

Also "ICOs that are just fundraising schemes for companies will be treated like securities.."

I'm looking at this distinction with both eyebrows raised. I'm highly skeptical that an ICO will be treated differently under different use cases. This would only lead to confusion. Further down, in the article, the author brings up a third category - Ripple. What's to prevent a fourth and a fifth category? The law when it comes down is going to be uniformly applicable to ALL ICOs not just "Good" and "Bad" ones.

</comment><comment><USER17> Good luck because you won't find an ico that is not a security aimed at swindling teachers, baristas and other innocent people.

The % of 'Good ICO' is very very small, if non existant. It turns out nobody wants to do an ICO unless they get money. Fuck you. If you've been involved in an ICO or blockchain charlatanism, you are well deserving of scrutiny.

In a few years after the crypto craze is over, everybody will be busy sending out DMCA notices to Google to hide their involvement in the 99% of ICO that will never deliver, get 'hacked', or just take off with the money.

Fuck ICOs

</comment><comment><USER31> What's a 'good ICO'? I did 2 and didn't get shit for it.

<comment><USER31> Here's an 'offical one' that worked (airdropped):

[https://etherscan.io/token/0x6a95771d66731e1f59681b9f71f45dc...](https://etherscan.io/token/0x6a95771d66731e1f59681b9f71f45dc2d248790c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> We are now somewhen in the 90s, somewhere in the US. Welcome.

People are getting scammed when buying things online. The elderly are sending money to Nigerian princes. There are rapists and murderers on chatrooms preying for victims. Kids addicted to online games drop out of school. There is deviant pornography turning young men and girls into perverts or enticing them to post nudity online.

I strongly believe we must protect the public, and we must put severe regulations on the internet. Noone should be able to just set up a website or online business. It is far too dangerous. Aspiring e-entrepreneurs must be required to file a goverment-reviewed application, and be represented by an attorney throughout the whole process, as well as undergo background checks and pay various fees to state and federal agencies.

If all goes well, within 1-2 years (depending on backlog) they can have permission to put up a website. Every year they must renew their website license, and according to what kind of content they wish to host they will need different licenses (eg different if you want to serve video, different if you want to have chat) /s

Makes sense right? The internet seemed like a weird crazy unregulated space back then. Except that.... that would have killed all of the amazing innovation that happened in the past 25 years in the US.

My point is. We must protect the public, of course. But it is never as simple as pulling out the torches and pitchforks screaming "BAN BITCOIN. BAN THE DARKWEB. STOP ICOs". We cannot risk stifling innovation. Because if we do - innovation will still happen just... somewhere else in the world. And no government wants that.

-

EDIT: FYI - in case you think I am exaggerating, the scenario I described above is similar to today's internet situation in mainland China. You need an ICP license (granted by the government and renewed yearly) in order to be able to have a publicly accessible domain name. If you want to serve back visual content (images/video) and user-to-user communication (chat or public text posts) you need to undergo extra delays and checks to prove that you are trustworthy and can censor content. Certain websites from outside of China (eg google, fb) are just banned.

<comment><USER8> > _it is never as simple as pulling out the torches and pitchforks screaming > "BAN BITCOIN. BAN THE DARKWEB. STOP ICOs"_

Straw man [1]. Nobody serious suggests banning any of these.

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

<comment><USER32> please check the comments at this very page. Some people claim that everyone involved is a charlatan, one specifically says "F... ICOs" and someone else that all ICOs could disappear and no value would be lost.

EDIT: I agree with you that they are not serious opinions worthy of consideration, so your point might stand.

<comment><USER33> Saying "Fuck ICOs" or "ICOs have no value" is not the same as saying the government should ban them. And even if you do think the government should ban them, that's very different from wanting to ban Bitcoin or the dark web; although there are certainly people out there with various reasons they think both of those should be banned, the chief argument against _ICOs_ (that most of them are scams) doesn't really translate to either.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: As a Developer, what API would you like to use, but does not exist? - <AUTHOR> I would like to create an API for developers, but not sure what API is needed at this time.
Can you share any requests that you have for an API that would be helpful to you? It could make your life easier or be more convenient than existing solutions (such as a gem or library).
It could be something difficult such as Face Recognition. Or something simple such as converting from feet to meters or getting current time in UTC.
Alternately, it could be an API that is useful to you, but is too expensive or does not offer a free tier.
And yes, this API will offer a free tier. (And, it will be completely free for a while.) <comment><USER2> A parsing API handling common forms like "strings", parens, {blocks}, key:value ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Can you explain? What would you send, a string? What would the response be? Can you please provide an example?

<comment><USER2> > What would you send, a string?

Yes (or an URL).

> What would the response be?

JSON or CSV with options to allow filtering on certain types of tokens (only numbers or strings for example).

The output could be a tree (with children for a block) or flat.

I'm on freenode (see my profile) if you want to talk about that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm still not clear on what this would do. Can you provide a few examples?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A real time stock market API.

<comment><USER4> Bloomberg [https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/product/market- data/](https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/product/market-data/)

<comment><USER5> Or for those who don't have a ton of money to spend on it [https://intrinio.com/data/realtime-stock- prices](https://intrinio.com/data/realtime-stock-prices)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A remote git API, showing me the output of (chained) git commands on arbitrary remote repositories and so allowing me to analyze them (much like GitHub already does for their repositories).

</comment><comment><USER7> API to check if today/certain date is a public holiday

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this for the US, or any arbitrary country? Does it take the country as a param?

<comment><USER8> if you have to ask - you won't get far.

They told you what they want - now go build something in your vision. Once you have users they will tell you what they want.

<comment><USER9> Seems far more sensible to me to gather more information from the original idea giver before going off to build something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I thought that is the job of a developer or even a "hacker", as the case may be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Java API for CRISPR.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you referring to "Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats"?

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

Is there software that runs locally on your machine?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Re-encode my videos? Scrape web pages? I supply an url and get back plain text from the page.

<comment><USER12> > supply an url and get back plain text from the page

I would like to have someone (a Java or Kotlin developer) take over [https://github.com/MachinePublishers/ScreenSlicer](https://github.com/MachinePublishers/ScreenSlicer) and rework it. It's a project that intends to do exactly this. You enter a url, it finds a search box, enters the user's search query, uses single-layer neural nets and text munging to extract the search results, and then separates each result into a few fields (url, date, title, summary).

But it was written as a complete app and so is of limited use to most people. If it were remade to be a library it would have much more utility.

Beware there are lots of ugly regexes and terrible hacks. This is html afterall, the Cthulhu way.

Recently re-licensed from AGPL to Apache 2.0.

Also my time is busy on other things. I would be able to answer some questions occasionally but largely I can't provide much help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> C# API for Tensorflow!

</comment><comment><USER14> an api to control gdb, bash. a real time stock price api.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean GNU Debugger? Is the debugger running on your machine? How would the API work?

How would an API control Bash? Is the Bash shell running on your machine?

Regarding a real time stock price API, I thought of this as well. I will look into it. If I can find a good source of data this seems like a great feature.

<comment><USER14> because I'm creating a terminal emulator for bash. and I realized that there is no way to communicate with bash other than sending and receiving text.

if bash supports an api to send and execute command and query for states. that will make many things easier.

for example, query for the current location "pwd". many terminal emulator just send this command and parse the returned string and hide it from the user.

if bash supports an api for you to directly query for this information, the terminal enumerator can be implemented cleanly.

for gdb, I want to understand a code by generating flame graph like execution history.

for that I want to step over each line of the program and dump a call stack. gdb has python support within it, but it doesn't seem to provide an api to control it from the outside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [deleted]

</comment><comment><USER16> Food classification API that has only two responses: Hotdog or Not Hotdog.

<comment><AUTHOR> What about "Is it a vegetable?" Pizza is a vegetable.</comment></comment>


Graphical password vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com.ua/translate?hl=uk&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fhabrahabr.ru%2Fpost%2F174773%2F <comment><USER2> Judging by the photo at the end the reason the author's locking code was defeated so quickly is that although the input mechanism used doesn't work quite like a traditional keyboard it is a common keyboard pattern. Keyboard patterns in passwords are an actual research subject [1], and a pretty interesting one at that. There's at least one practical JavaScript-based password quality meter that can find spatial patterns in QWERTY passwords [2] like "bgtyujmnh", which the author's code is similar to. The meter is actually quite interesting to play with.

On a related note, it's nice to see Pascal still used for fun but the fact that it's a version from almost 20 years ago doesn't help the language's image. If are curious about Pascal and think you might want to write some code in it today I'd suggest you try Free Pascal [3], a modern, FOSS, object- oriented 32/64-bit Pascal compiler based largely on Borland's own dialect that even has a good recreation of Borland/Turbo Pascal's Turbo Vision IDE [4] if you want one.

[1] See [http://www.usafa.edu/df/dfe/dfer/centers/accr/docs/schweitze...](http://www.usafa.edu/df/dfe/dfer/centers/accr/docs/schweitzer2009a.pdf), <http://www.ijicic.org/ijicic-10-09032.pdf>, etc.

[2] <https://www.cygnius.net/snippets/passtest.html>

[3] <http://www.freepascal.org/>

[4] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/FPIDE_1....](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/FPIDE_1.0.10_de.png)

<comment><USER3> I don't think that was the takeaway. I think the vulnerability was that she could see the pattern in the hand-grease on the phone. It wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't used a common pattern, because the path of the finger would still be obvious. The fix is to wipe off your screen after you lock it.

<comment><USER2> I guess you're right. I was thinking along the lines of "a less common pattern is less likely to be noticed and tried correctly the first time around and by then the traces left of it are ruined" but now that I've looked at the photo again I see this is probably wrong. On a phone like that any grease pattern should be pretty obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My sister uses the schizophrenic pattern shown in the middle that uses all the dots. Because sliding your fingers between two dots just pixels apart was an error prone nightmare, she decided to just hop her fingers from dot to dot, based on the fact that if you touch one dot and then you touch another, when you lift the first finger the path between both will be automatically drawn. That way, the trace in her screen is just fingers over dots, making it impossible to tell which one is the first and which one comes next.

</comment><comment><USER5> I suggested to my local supermarket that they change their alarm code: there were four digits that were white, the others were covered in grime. Knowing the only possible digits makes it a cinch to work out the code just from watching movement from afar.

Two years later, those same keys are still clean. The others are even dirtier.

<comment><USER6> Not so. If it's a 4 digit combination, it's already n!, so 24 combinations, which is enough for a good system to lock up and automatically call the police. If it's more, then it's gonna grow as n!/k!l!m!... where, k, l, m... are the numbers of repeated digits, but still it's more than enough to know that someone's trying to brute force the system.

<comment><USER7> The point is that the attacker watches from a distance, and using the rough hand movements he/she has seen can reduce that 24 combinations significantly.

<comment><USER8> Hence why I prefer the smaller keypads on ATM machines, so I can minimize my finger movements. Having one keycode for the supermarket is also a good way for disgruntled former employees to act malfeasantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> the broken english translation really adds to the punchline.

<comment><USER10> Hmmm, could someone build a text "scrambler" that would intentionally create broken English? I have also noticed that "broken English" is more effective by some measures than ordinary English.

Note also that the broken English here is not the author, but it's Google Translate. The text has been machine translated from Russian. Also interesting that Google Translate is much more effective translating the mathematical portions than the other portions of the text. Another case of what people find hard computers find easy, and vice versa.

<comment><USER11> The fact that broken English is effective for recall, at least in some circumstances, totally fascinates me.

I'd love to capitalise on the idea somehow, just because its so counter intuitive I think. Although i fully appreciate it's not effective enough to replace spaced repetition or other formal techniques.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's not really new, though, is it? The bigger "vulnerability" is shoulder- surfing, which is pretty damn effective against this.

<comment><USER13> It isn't new, and people have been joking about finger smears since this kind of unlock mechanism came out (I remember making this discovery myself and promptly switching my phone back to using a number pad). But it is worse than shoulder-surfing; you can just steal a phone, say, from someone's purse or off a table when no one is looking, and then unlock it. You don't have to stock the person, see them unlock the phone, and _then_ steal it.

<comment><USER13> *stalk

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I sometimes take a friend's phone from them and hand it back to them unlocked. Just for the look on their faces. Until they figure out that I just watched them unlock it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Love the Pascal script

</comment><comment><USER16> This even has a name. It's called a "smudge attack"

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

</comment><comment><USER17> The graphical password isn't really meant for security though, and I always considered it a means to prevent pocket-dialing.

<comment> __--__ It's considered a security setting for preventing other people from opening your phone. If you just want to prevent pocket dialing, there's a mode you can set where you swipe anywhere on the screen to "unlock".

<comment><USER17> I don't believe the intent of the graphic password was ever for security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > [...] probability of 0.01%. One hundred percent

One hundredth percent*

Google translate should work on its spelling!</comment>