Google isn't safe from Yahoo's fate - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/11/google-isnt-safe-from-yahoos-fate/ <comment><USER2> As many commenters have pointed out, this is indeed an horrible article. The author premise goes something like "Yahoo did search. Yahoo was so $$$. Yahoo failed. Google is doing search. Since Yahoo failed Google must fail. Hurp derp chirp"

Google owns a vast stake in mobile domain through Android. If mobile native ads is the way of future then I am sure Google will use it to their advantage and thrive at it. Plus Google has been diversifying it's revenue stream a lot lately. Also, a few people had internet and personal computers at home back then. People are more tech and internet savvy these days.

A bigger problem that a lot of people fail to acknowledge when it comes to demise of Yahoo is the brain drain. Top talent left Yahoo when Mayers joined.

<comment><USER3> The real issue with Yahoo! was that they focuses less on engineering and more on "we are a media company" thing. While in reality all FB, GOOG etc are media companies engineering culture is what is at the heart of their success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 77% of Google ad revenue comes from their own sites.

Only 10% of google revenue and almost none of the profits come from other business than ads. Google has tried but has not been successful in creating profits from elsewhere. Motorola Mobility was huge blunder.

Google is successful there is no moat that keeps it safe. It hast to keep running to to stay ahead.

<comment><USER5> > Motorola Mobility was huge blunder.

Is there public info from Google available stating the goal of the Motorola Mobility buy?

<comment><USER6> If I had to guess: patents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tend to disagree that Google is similar to Yahoo in 2000. If you look at Yahoo in retrospect, portal to the rest of the web is pretty banal. Google has a lot of core things going for it which are no longer the search-market: Android (and store), Google Maps, Youtube, Cloud Business, Office Suite, research into self-driving vehicles, that should make it more comparable to Microsoft than Yahoo.

<comment><USER8> Except for Android, which is facing legal challenges across the globe, advertising remains pretty much their sole profit channel. While Google may exist in many product areas, they need to find a new source of actual revenue.

<comment><USER9> Don't forget about Google Apps, Vault, and Google Cloud. Google Apps for Business with Vault costs my employer over 18 million dollars a year and my department has a five figure monthly Google Cloud budget.

<comment><USER8> They're definitely trying here, but from my understanding, Google Cloud Platform is a distant third to Amazon and Microsoft's clouds, and the revenue total barely is worth mention in Google's earnings calls.

<comment><USER10> > and the revenue total barely is worth mention in Google's earnings calls.

"Barely worth mentioning" because they don't even break out the $2 billion in quarterly revenue from non-advertising sources beyond "non-advertising sources" in financial reports, but in the most recent, the $400+ million increase in quarterly revenue in that category was primarily attributed to two sources -- increases in Play store revenue, and increases in "revenues from cloud and apps offerings for enterprise".

Its just hard for _anything else_ to seem significant against the background of $18 billion in quarterly advertising revenue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Some_ of the analysis in the article is rather on point; but to me it solidifies the belief that the 'Google of the Future' will be like the 'Microsoft of Today': possessing a large portfolio of diverse, user- and business-centric services, some premium, some free.

They'll collect data from their free services, they'll run an ad network, they'll run several social and/or communications networks, so they still have access to social graphs and interests. They may even produce or aggregate some content on content portals like Microsoft does with MSN. They'll make some of their money from display ads, but less than they do now. Meanwhile they'll have subscription-based products from which they'll derive the rest of their revenue.

It's tempting to look at where Google's current revenue comes from and accuse them of being a one-trick pony, but they've done what like Microsoft did in the 1990s and have ingrained themselves into the daily lives of people, through Gmail, Android, Chrome, Drive, Docs, and more niche ones like Hangouts, Allo/Duo, Google Photos. They're even guilty of some of the same mistakes as Microsoft: confusing product strategies and messaging, letting some services stagnate for years, sudden shutdown of others and releasing a hip new but slightly inferior alternative soon after.

The transformation of ad consumption and the relevance of search in the app- driven, app-curated world; these are all good points raised in the article. But I think Google's current set of non-money-making products is exactly what will save them from Yahoo's fate -- you may no longer search with Google, you may not even _like_ Google, but all your files and personal data is still going to be with them, their OS running on your phones and laptops, and network effects and platform lock-in (in the sense that it's not worth the effort to switch) will keep people with Google for years to come.

<comment><USER4> >'Google of the Future' will be like the 'Microsoft of Today'

Microsoft has diversified it's revenue but most of it's profits comes from Windows & Office licensing. Its' amazing how little Microsoft's' way of generating profits has changed while it has changed so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a poor article, Google in 2016 has a very large portfolio of services, something that Yahoo never had.

<comment><USER13> If you give me a few billion dollars, I will build you a nice portfolio of services, too. What Google lacks is a large portfolio of services that actually make money. From a money making point of view, Google has Adwords.

<comment><USER12> You could say the same for Facebook, if facebook.com is no longer relevant Facebook dies they don't have anything else. The fact that Google has Search, #1 mobile platform + many other services is a good sign of diversity.

<comment><USER14> Android is kind of become like windows mobile. It is on a ton of devices. Its super popular in Asia and other countries, but they have morphed android to their own needs and at times don't have google products on there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Yahoo went from a $125 billion valuation in 2000_

2000 was the height of the dot-com bubble, so comparing it to 2016's Google (with strong revenues and earnings) doesn't seem that apt.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's one reason why Google is safe. Explained in one graphic:

"In Pursuit of Simplicity" [https://blog.codinghorror.com/in-pursuit-of- simplicity/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/in-pursuit-of-simplicity/)

Another reason they are safe is because they are not a social network.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pretty hilarious that this post in itself seems to be sponsored by one of those dodgy native advertising companies.

</comment><comment><USER18> What would be so bad if they did go through a bad patch? I can't see it being like Yahoo's though.

</comment><comment><USER19> A better argument would be to simply publish a chart of company lifetimes. It's rare to live forever.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Google in 2016 = Yahoo in 2000? It's possible"

Is such a thing even possible?

Yes it is!

</comment><comment><USER21> Apples and Oranges. This is like the way bloggers used to compare facebook (the next AOL, like yahoo) with Google.

Google was founded based on a set of highly algorithmic methods for Search (part of today's AI), which is something that is extremely difficult to do correctly and even harder to duplicate (just ask Apple). Google never morphed into a 'content' site, like AOL. It was not founded based on easy-to-to duplicate code and content of others.

They've come a long a way in terms of real innovation and real technology in addition to revenue that is 10x greater than twitter, facebook, yahoo and others. Now add to this traffic reach, if you look at the top 10-20 sites on the net in terms of traffic, Google actually owns several of them including YouTube, Gmail etc. [http://www.alexa.com/topsites](http://www.alexa.com/topsites) Add to this an entire operating system that runs most of the worlds mobile devices. If you aggregate all their platforms and properties, it's orders of magnitude greater than any other.

There are deep technology companies and then there are not so deep technology companies that have limited lifespans.

Google probably has another 10 years before it begins to crumble within. Meanwhile and in a larger historical context, the new AOLs will come and go, repeating a cycle of duplicating one anothers content and so-called technology.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel that the article is not complete. Google is way more diversified (Google Apps, Cloud and so on). Furthermore, it also takes risks (with Google X).

While Google does make a lot of it's earnings from Ads, Google Cloud is supposed to surpass it's Ads business in the next 4 years.

<comment><USER23> > While Google does make a lot of it's earnings from Ads, Google Cloud is > supposed to surpass it's Ads business in the next 4 years.

Where do you hear this goal? Google Q2 Ads revenue was $21.5B. AWS Q2 revenue was $2.6B. Google is currently small compared to AWS.

<comment><USER22> I should have added a source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks- google-cloud-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks-google-cloud- beat-search-2015-11)</comment></comment></comment>


Site-wide markup validation (as a service) - <AUTHOR> https://www.w3clove.com/

<comment><USER2> What this service does is, given a starting URL, scrapes the site in search for internal pages, validates them all using the W3C validator and gives back a report with all the common errors and warnings found, as well as detailed reports.

Here is an example report: [https://www.w3clove.com/sitemaps/check?url=http%3A%2F%2Fvali...](https://www.w3clove.com/sitemaps/check?url=http%3A%2F%2Fvalidationhell.com)</comment>


Rubinius 1.1 released - <AUTHOR> http://rubini.us/about/one_one

<comment><USER2> Has anyone done a shootout recently like this?: [http://programmingzen.com/2007/12/03/the-great-ruby- shootout...](http://programmingzen.com/2007/12/03/the-great-ruby-shootout/)

I'd heard that JRuby was fastest these days, so it would be great to see some numbers and side-by-side features comparisons.

<comment><USER3> Sure, the same guy has ;-) .. See [http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/19/the- great-ruby-shootout...](http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/19/the-great-ruby- shootout-july-2010/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anybody got a link for up-to-date benchmarks?

<comment><USER3> It doesn't use Rubinius 1.1 so can't be said to be entirely up to date, but this is only two months old: [http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/19/the-great- ruby-shootout...](http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/19/the-great-ruby- shootout-july-2010/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like the Ruby equivalent of Python's Unladen Swallow, but with more momentum. Unladen Swallow seems pretty neglected at the moment.

The Ruby community is definitely not lacking in passion, something I'd like to see more of in the Python community.

<comment><USER6> Technically it's quite similar to Unladen Swallow (in the JIT at least) except for the rewrite from scratch bit.

If you're interested in performance in Python the place to look is PyPy though: <http://pypy.org/>

Disclaimer: I contribute to both PyPy and Unladen Swallow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why can't the homepage explain, at least in one sentence, what the software is about?

<comment><USER8> It's a Ruby virtual machine built on LLVM.

<comment><USER2> Virtual machine can give the wrong connotation to a Java developer though. It isn't just running compiled classes like in Java. It has to do ongoing runtime compilation.

<comment><USER9> runtime compilation is what most common use jvms have been doing for a a few years though, so java programmers could get the right connotation :)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I never said that it couldn't, but I didn't explain what I was trying to say very well either.

Yes, there can be runtime compilation in Java like compilation of JSPs (for example). With Tomcat, Tomcat uses (or used to use- I'm getting old) classes in tools.jar, etc. which uses the JVM to compile and put in the work/... directory which it then loads via classloader, etc. etc. and interprets the bytecode it compiled it into into memory, etc. etc.

I was trying to explain to someone that might want to learn about what is going on with Ruby and Rubinus that unlike the Java JVM whose purpose most of the time at runtime is running precompiled bytecode, Rubinus, MRI, etc. are more often compiling at runtime than Java (at least until Java 7 with JRuby, etc. at which point I'll be completely lost, because I will need to understand how that works).

When I think of a VM in the Java sense from that background, I still think "MOSTLY (and thank you for clarifying) running compiled classes at runtime". I just didn't want the OP to be confused about that, and in process now I probably look like a total dumbass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool... though the site doesn't say _what_ rubinius is for us clueless folk (at least I could find it under the overview).

Did some googling though. Nice work! :)

<comment><USER11> Try the homepage</comment></comment>


How are your experiences with Rosetta Stone? Is it worth the price? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Assuming you mean this Rosetta Stone: <http://www.rosettastone.eu/> . I used it for a while a few years ago (they have an online version now, can't comment on that). I haven't used much other learning programs besides Memrise <http://www.memrise.com/> (which I use now to learn various writing systems). So for what it's worth:

I got through the first level of Russian and Japanese, and halfway through the second level of Russian. I'd say you get a decent feeling for the language, more than I got from other attempts to learn languages. However, it never tells you _why_ something is this or that way, you always have to figure that out for yourself. For a lot of things that doesn't matter, but I kept confusing the two counting words that are used in Japanese and it didn't give a clear reason as to why you should use this one with this and that one with that.

I think it'd work well on a tablet or so, since it uses only large buttons, but back then touch screens weren't so common yet so I had to use a mouse. I think I'd like it more if I had a tablet computer to use it on. There's all kinds of fancy features like a form of speech recognition to test if you actually pronounce it properly, but I haven't used that so I can't comment on that either.

As whether it's worth the price, _cough_ I can't comment on that. Also depends on how you have to spent ofc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd say its not worth it at all though I last tried it a couple years back and don't know what the current versions are like. But if they still use the same click on a picture method, I'd say no. But it also depends on what your goals are. For me I don't care about grammer or reading because I never need to use this, all I need is to speak/understand spoken language. Anyway, I wouldn't say I'm an linguist but I speak 4 languages fluently and have learned 3 foreign ones in my life and of all courses I've ever tried the pimsleur method (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimsleur_method>) is the one I think best simulates a real language environment if you're not fortunate enough to be able to surround yourself in the language. Also I've found listening to the radio in a foreign language is a big help because you're forced to concentrate to know whats going on unlike tv.

hope this helps, good luck :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry for diverging from the topic, but I recently started learning spanish and am finding <http://duolingo.com> an awesome resource. The points system keeps me hooked very easily although I do find that I have to go search somewhere else for actual explanations of certain concepts.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've used it for Spanish, Swedish and Korean. Gotta say, it's much more useful for a language where the grammar/writing system/etymology have something in common with your native language. The whole learning by intuition thing seemed to work for me with Swedish and Spanish (native English speaker) but not at all with Korean.

Rosetta Stone tends to work by slowly introducing new words, language constructs and such without explicitly telling you what they're trying to teach you. You kind of figure it out after a couple of units. But I found that while I could do that in the European languages, Korean was just too far removed from English to be able to comfortably make that leap of understanding.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've never used Rosetta Stone, but it looks like a steep price tag.

Why don't you try some of the free online services to learn a language? After participating for 4-6 weeks, you will understand your own commitment level and then make the jump to invest in Rosetta Stone.

When I was learning french, it helped me when I watched TV in my own language and read the subtitles in the language I was learning. I would then do the reverse. Watch the show in the language I was learning and read the native language subtitles.

Good luck,

Jenny

</comment><comment><USER7> Try Pimsleur. You might be able to borrow some CDs from your local library. Pimsleur's method is great, and helps me get the basics of a language very quickly.

I have tried the Rosetta Stone demos, and decided that it wasn't worth the price. They are basically fancy picture flash cards.

<comment><USER8> I was going to write exactly the same thing. +1

With Pimsleur you will get vocab, simple grammar and canned phrases. With that you can build other simple phrases, at least that was my story.</comment></comment>


9front (Plan9 fork) man pages in print form - <AUTHOR> http://stanleylieber.com/2019/05/23/0/ <comment><USER2> 9front is one of the most fascinating pieces of software that I know of. The devs are in this strange retrofutristic, idealist bubble where they are making their ideal OS, and don't care about the outside world (for it is tainted by unclean programming paradigms). Fun to watch, nonetheless.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This probably makes 9front the only OS still in development to have manuals in book format. Who else misses those old microsoft documentation that used to ship with their software in the 90's and before? I was never a fan of their company, but that aspect of their software in particular was awesome.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you Stanley. Been wanting this for a long time.</comment>


Show HN: On the fly color scheme selection for rxvt-unicode - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/trobador/urxvt-theme <comment><AUTHOR> urxvt is my favorite terminal emulator, but one thing I've always missed is the lack of some profile/theme selector functionality, so I created this Perl extension that implements this using dynamic colors and good old X resources :)

<comment><USER2> Perl is not needed.

URxvt.keysym.M-C-minus: command:\033]4;0;#333333\007\033]4;1;#cd3333\007\033]4;2;#33cd33\007\033]4;3;#cdcd33\007\033]4;4;#3333cd\007\033]4;5;#cd33cd\007\033]4;6;#33cdcd\007\033]4;7;#cdcdcd\007\033]4;8;#656565\007\033]4;9;#ff6565\007\033]4;10;#65ff65\007\033]4;11;#ffff65\007\033]4;12;#6565ff\007\033]4;13;#ff65ff\007\033]4;14;#65ffff\007\033]4;15;#ffffff\007\033]11;#101010\007\033]12;white

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, actually I first thought about writing a script to translates normal X resources color schemes into urxvt keybinding commands with escape sequences like yours, but then while I was reading the documentation I discovered that urxvt has support for pop-up menus, so I created this Perl extension instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In case you need something more generic: [https://github.com/dylanaraps/pywal](https://github.com/dylanaraps/pywal)

</comment><comment><USER4> Does it support direct RGB colors (true color)?

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest I'm not sure, does vanilla urxvt supports direct colors?

<comment><USER4> Not completely, but there are patches and forks for this.</comment></comment></comment>


Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material   - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528786.100-why-wood-pulp-is-worlds-new-wonder-material.html <comment><USER3> This brief article about current uses of wood pulp reminded me of something I read in a book back in the 1970s about a proposal to build an aircraft carrier during World War II (when there was a shortage of steel) out of a mixture of wood pulp and water ice. That material was called "pykrete," after the name of its inventor, Geoffrey Pyke. The shortage of steel was alleviated, and plenty of aircraft carriers constructed of conventional steel, before this idea was implemented. In actual use, such a ship would have had to have been continuously refrigerated, perhaps a greater drain on scarce materials than building a ship out of steel.

Sure enough, there is a Wikipedia article about the material,

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

which reports that the Discovery Channel popular science program Mythbusters made ship models to test out the idea.

Wikipedia

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

and the Royal Naval Museum

<http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/info_sheets_Habbakkuk.htm>

have websites about the frozen aircraft carrier project that relate more details, citing sources other than the book I read decades ago.

AFTER EDIT: I think the book I read about this plan was Of Spies and Strategems by Stanley Lovell,

[http://www.amazon.com/Spies-Stratagems-Stanley- Lovell/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Spies-Stratagems-Stanley- Lovell/dp/B000I5KCJ6/)

although a Google Books search doesn't show the keyword I'm looking for in that book.

<comment><USER4> I can't find footage, but Mythbusters had a pretty impressive episode where they tested various formulations of pykrete. Jamie's newspaper-based one seemed to be the strongest. A smallish piece of it held a pile of lead, plus Adam's entire weight, while he smacked it with a hammer repeatedly. They built a little boat out of it which disintegrated pretty quickly. The idea that you could build an aircraft carrier was deemed "plausible but ludicrous". <http://mythbustersresults.com/alaska-special-2>

<comment><USER5> I would consider "plausible" and "ludicrous" to be mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER6> There are many things that are possible, but never the optimum solution to any real engineering problem. Mythbusters has a long track record with that sort of thing, probably most notably their functional lead balloon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >it is made from a tightly packed array of needle-like crystals which have a strength-to-weight ratio that is eight times better than stainless steel.

That's a pretty useless thing to say. What kind of strength? Tensile? Shear? Yield?

Maybe this figure is buried somewhere in the paper they linked to, but not in any easy to find place.

<comment><USER8> Looks like they're probably talking about Tensile strength. (<http://www.celluforce.com/en/product_properties.php>)

<comment><USER9> Does that put us in space elevator territory?

<comment><USER8> According to this(<http://www.spaceelevatorblog.com/?p=1125>), no not yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr: US Forestry Service: We have too many trees ! How can we sell more of them in a declining building market?

The US Forestry service (certainly by Bill Bryson) is regarded as in thrall with loggers (builds roads for access to heavy equipment, sells trees at a loss acting as a subsidy provider etc.)

So the idea that the great new industry, that involves chopping down trees, should be owned by US forestry service, does not inspire confidence.

       The $1.7 million factory, which is owned by the US
       Forest Service,

Who remembers the Friends episode where Courtney-Cox was asked to come up with some tasty way to make cakes with fish-chocolate?

<comment><USER11> _The US Forestry service (certainly by Bill Bryson) is regarded as in thrall with loggers (builds roads for access to heavy equipment, sells trees at a loss acting as a subsidy provider etc.)_

You seem surprised by this? The clue is the name: _Forestry_ service - <USER2> exists to provide service to the forestry industry.

BUT this isn't necessarily a bad thing! A properly managed forestry industry is a good thing: it provides a cheap, 100% renewable resource, acts as a carbon sink, and acts as a substitute for non-replenishable resources (eg, unmanaged rainforest logging).

At the same time, there is a tension between the renewable aspects of forestry management and the idea of opening new areas for exploitation. That's where the issues are, not around building forestry roads etc.

<comment><USER12> It's actually called the US Forest Service.

<comment><USER10> There is needless pedantry on HN and there is needful pedantry on HN

thank you, have a karma point :-) you deserve two for that

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's nothing that suggests this material has to be derived from _wood_ pulp, or from trees. There are plenty of other organisms that produce the type of cellulose they're working with. As mentioned elsewhere, it could be more efficient plants such as bamboo, or even sugarcane grasses, or hemp, for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER14> NSF says $600 billion industry by 2020? Wow, I'd really like to see the details of how that projection was made.

<comment><USER15> This would be a good place to start: <http://xkcd.com/605/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just read PG's submarine essay for the first time a couple weeks ago [1], and have been on the lookout for a good example since then.

Bingo.

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> How long until people are buying $5000 bikes made of this stuff?

<comment><USER8> I get that you're having a dig at the biking crowd, but the major cost of a $5000 bike is the components, not the carbon fiber frame. If the sheer strength is better than Carbon fiber, and still has the same strength to weight ratio, then it probably won't be too long.. especially if the cost is lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sad that hemp is overlooked, it's truly a wonder material. So much so that it sounds fake.

<http://www.informationdistillery.com/hemp.htm>

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

<comment><USER19> It isn't overlooked, follow the link to the technical report.

[http://www.tappi.org/Hide/Events/2012-Nanotechnology- Confere...](http://www.tappi.org/Hide/Events/2012-Nanotechnology- Conference/Papers/12NANO05.aspx)

<comment><USER18> It can't still be illegal here in the United States if it wasn't overlooked; ask the average person if non-psychoactive marijuana was used to make cars at one point and most will look at you with confusion, if they even answer.

The history and incredible, incredible use of hemp is extremely overlooked in general. Good luck finding it mentioned more than in passing in a high school text book, or finding a politician aware of the fact that it's almost incomprehensibly better for paper, clothing, and could create - oh my god - _so_ many jobs, the thing a lot of politicians seem to be talking about and promising; but directly preventing (this is both parties, by the way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great, another reason to chop trees down.

<comment><USER21> A wood farming industry could be great for the environment, if done right. As long as you don't burn it, wood is a carbon sink, and as long as you keep replanting trees as you cut them down, you aren't really deforesting.

Basically, assuming this is produced sustainably, for every tonne of this magic wood pulp we produce we suck about 2/3rds of a tonne of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Win-win!

<comment><USER22> > and as long as you keep replanting trees as you cut them down, you aren't > really deforesting.

That may be so, but there are plenty of ways of cutting them down that still leaves the environment devastated. Poorly managed logging utterly ruins the eco-system of the forests.

You're right it _can_ be good for the environment by creating additional economic incentives to manage forests, but only as long as they're managed _well_ , and that's not at all a given.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this material dangerous? What if you breathe it in?</comment>


TunSafe: WireGuard with TCP Support - <AUTHOR> https://tunsafe.com/ <comment><USER2> What do people think of this?</comment>


Idk how I feel about Rust's longest-running justification being wound down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/graydon_pub/status/1293410766628851712 <comment><AUTHOR> Sadly it looks like Mozilla does not intend to continue the Servo project.

Graydon Hoare wrote on Twitter today: _" I don't know how I feel about Rust's longest-running justification for its existence being wound down (at least by moz -- I hope Servo & team finds a new home).

Good that it doesn't need it anymore? Worried that maybe it still does? Wistful for missed chances? Nostalgic? Angry?"_

Also Manish wrote: _" As far as I understand it, @ServoDev is no longer being funded by Mozilla."_</comment>


Reddit turns 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.redditblog.com/2015/06/happy-10th-birthday-to-us-celebrating.html <comment><USER2> I started out as a fan of digg until digg-v4. This is when I found reddit. I like reddit alot, but the moderators tend to get in the way more and more these days.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing to see a internet business so focussed thrive for this long. Keep up the great work!</comment>


Cup Size Isn't Everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3035228/innovation-by-design-2014/cup-size-isnt-everything?utm_source=facebook

<comment><USER2> True & Co.'s model is so vastly superior to other intimates companies, in terms of actually working to make sure garments FIT customers. The way they're using data to inform the products they create and offer is really interesting, especially because bra fit is such an individual and impactful thing.</comment>


'Master/Slave' Terminology Was Removed from Python Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard-vice-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/8x7akv/masterslave-terminology-was-removed-from-python-programming-language?amp_js_v=0.1#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fmotherboard.vice.com%2Fen_us%2Farticle%2F8x7akv%2Fmasterslave-terminology-was-removed-from-python-programming-language <comment><USER2> I'm happy with this. The trauma from events that happened decades before my birth still haunt me.

Still, we have a long way to go. Linux and Mac are full of triggering words and concepts which need to be made acceptable.

If only Unix didn't have a kill command. Then I'd finally not be triggered each time I had to end a process. The killing of child processes is still quite traumatic.

The man command. Sexist. Mansplaining at its worst.

As for the finger command. I'm not sure what to say.

<comment><USER3> > man abort

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Finally, freed from the oppressive words we take out of context and force change onto everyone else because we're offended. Thankfully we can all write code again.

<comment><USER5> Now we're all just _agents_ of change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalenc...](https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalence)

</comment><comment><USER7> Actual, non-AMP URL:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8x7akv/masterslav...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8x7akv/masterslave- terminology-was-removed-from-python-programming-language)</comment>


Show HN: Built an extension to put an end to paywalls and popups - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pophurdle/aahomkibgllnelmhgifialfohphlfjip <comment><USER2> > This alpha version is free until we release beta!

This implies that you will, at some point, be charging a fee to remove revenue from other sites. Does this not border on unethical business practice?

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify the paid option will let publishers verify ownership of their sites and then get what they may have lost by ppl using the extension with adblock.

<comment><USER3> Seriously? Do you even understand how ridiculous that sounds?

<comment><USER4> "We destroyed your business model. For a small fee, we will be happy to un- destroy it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work! I would appreciate this more if it were available in the form of a uBlock list, rather than a standalone (and apparently pre-monetization) browser extension.

And to everyone who's complaining about 'stealing revenue': buzz off. It's a _user_ agent, not a _vendor_ agent. Screw these popups and nagware and screw your website which uses them.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I take a pretty simple policy to ads.

If you run your own ad platform from first-party code and you audit the process for ad inclusion as well as the code running the network to ensure only static ads from vetted partners, we're good and I won't block. Otherwise, block.

Blame Forbes. [https://www.networkworld.com/article/3021113/forbes- malware-...](https://www.networkworld.com/article/3021113/forbes-malware-ad- blocker-advertisements.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instead of paying Pop Hurdle $4.99/month to remove other sites attempts to pay their bills, you could pay Scroll $4.99/month ($2.49 for the first six months) to remove all ads from Scroll's partner sites who then receive a cut of that $2.49 (minus Scroll's cut). This cut is reportedly more per-user than publishers typically get from ads per-user.

[https://scroll.com/](https://scroll.com/)

Disclosure: Mozilla is partnering with Scroll to create a Scroll Firefox extension ("Firefox Better Web"): [https://firstlook.firefox.com/betterweb/](https://firstlook.firefox.com/betterweb/)

</comment><comment><USER8> > This does NOT close out of "hard" blockers that require payment to view > content because that is illegal.

This implies that "soft" blockers like this aren't illegal, which is a topic of debate and to my knowledge hasn't been legally tested.

I dislike paywalls as much as anyone else, but I wouldn't assume that paywall bypasses are kosher. It's not analogous with ad blocking.

<comment><USER9> > which is a topic of debate

No it's not. Nobody is debating this. Even if people were, it's literally impossible to enforce so it doesn't matter (unless your moral conscience is influenced by the law)

<comment><USER8> Sure, it's neither feasible nor practical to sue _individual users_ for using paywall bypassing tools, but a service with a distinct company presence that could potentially monetize said paywall bypassing would be a probable target for a C&D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This extension offers a subset of the functionality of open source extensions like stylus and ublock, and the store page is terrible. How exactly did this get on the front page of HN?

</comment><comment><USER11> > We only use statistical data which is provided via Google Analytics. We may > collect non-personal identification information about Users whenever they > interact with our service.

Could you explain a bit more about that without having to send you an email?

Data collected (ip, browser..) and for how long for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Users" is how many people have it installed and how many sites it has blocked so far, not the people specifically using the extension. Im not touching anyone's ip data nor do I want to. Probably going to dump it monthly if possible because its only for tracking basic KPIs. Ill switch if there's a privacy-based alternative.

<comment><USER12> If "collect data about users" is supposed to mean "how many users", then maybe amend it to say "collect data (only) about the number of users"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >> As we test the alpha version of pophurdle, we are offering it free of charge! May not even be paid in the end also and continue to be free.

The wording here is weirdly casual and wishy-washy. I'd never pay for this add-on, but if someone is considering helping you alpha test it they might want a little firmer future commitment.

Combined with your answers in this thread I think you should slow down and consider some of the questions and concerns comments have brought up. Your responses are inconsistent and somewhat concerning.

</comment><comment><USER14> Charging for a plugin like this is kinda stupid. If people don't want to pay for the content why do they want to pay for your plugin? Then you end up in an arms race with content providers who will block your methods leaving you with pissed off paying users.

</comment><comment><USER15> It seems like yet another step in escalating adwars. I am very much in the anti adtech corner, but I can't help but wonder where it is going to lead us.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why do websites have pay walls? Maybe because they want to earn money. You are now gonna take it from them. A dirty shady business I call it.

<comment><USER17> What's dirty is clogging up search results with paywalled articles. If they don't show it to users unless the users have payed, they shouldn't show it to search engine crawlers either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are the best resources to learn how to structure a Chrome Extension? I find the API very difficult to grok.

<comment><USER19> > how to structure a Chrome Extension

In the true spirit of JavaScript, you just structure it however you damn well please. Well, not completely, usually you have a background page, a popup page with associated scripts, an options page, optional content scripts, etc. You can learn from examples but in general they're just structured in whatever way the author feels like.

> I find the API very difficult to grok.

That's surprising because most APIs are really simple as long as you're comfortable with callbacks. Sometimes there's a bit of trial and error (messaging might be one pain point when you write your first extension), and sometimes details might slightly differ from the docs as certain features are tightened up (usually in the name of security), but I've never encountered anything that defies a bit of debugging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Isn't there an uBlock Origin thing for this? uBlock Origin Extra.

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal of this is to supercharge any adblocker and not specifically uBlock. At the moment pophurdle has a few main site types it can work with and will eventually work for most! Its currently in alpha.

<comment><USER21> Ideally I want as few extensions modifying a page as possible, for speed purposes. Having a different engine parsing, matching strings, and editing each site must be slower than having one that does everything well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to present an alternative for anyone looking for this kind of thing, I've been using this free Chrome extension for the last couple months and it works like a charm [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls- chrome](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome)</comment>


Show HN: A website to upload photos of cats and vote on the best - <AUTHOR> http://cats.io

<comment><USER2> I feel like this would benefit from infinite scrolling. Having to stop and paginate gives me too much time to evaluate just what I'm doing with my time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Love the idea. Definitely will be adding this.

<comment><USER3> Much better already!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Add keyboard nav to upvote, downvote, and cycle through pics. The internet needs a streamlined cat experience.

</comment><comment> why-el It might not be possible, but I would love to see this website scaling so fast it would become _the_ place for cat pictures, hence forcing all social media back to doing some public good.

</comment><comment><USER5> You should really submit this to Reddit (if you haven't already),. This is exactly the thing that the Reddit community would die for.

<comment><USER6> Crosspost to:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/cats>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/aww>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/lolcats>

etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This a great start, I think there's definitely something here.

I think the biggest issue right now is just making the experience of browsing more dynamic. Endless scroll would help make it easier to see more cats faster, but I'm not sure that's enough.

One thing to think about would be making the cats able to be tagged, so we could browse categories.

Somehow, an extra level of engagement needs to come in. As hideous as that kittenwar.com site is, I end up wanting to stay there longer and I end up seeing more kittens because the game aspect keeps me interested.

</comment><comment><USER7> It would be nice to have next / previous / random buttons on the detail pages.

I tried to add a couple pictures, and they haven't shown up on the "newest cats" page (and yes, I'm sure I'm not just looking at a cached version). If that's by design, it would probably be a good idea to display a message to that effect after a picture is added (I just got the blank "add a cat" form after submitting my pictures).

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you add a title? Otherwise the image validation could have failed.

<comment><USER7> Yes, they both had titles (something like "My cat is not a Twilight vampire" and "Holly and Thunder on a sunny afternoon". One other thing that might be relevant is that they were both PNGs.

<comment><AUTHOR> All right. I'll check into that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice idea. I would totally love to have an option to import pics from some other websites, such as Flickr, Reddit, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to be adding Tumblr import soon and I'll take a look at Flickr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My suggestion: allow users to flag inappropriate photos. Only a matter time before someone uploads a dead cat pic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. It's on my todo list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks pretty rough on my iPad. I'm sure the normal layout would be fine if you could just mirror that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just made some tweaks. Should be better now, but I'll work on improving that more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a few pics of my cat Baily for ya ;)

(Not sure why some of them went in upside down)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It's not checking EXIF data for orientation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://kittenwar.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> What javascript plugin do you use for Pinterest layou?

<comment><USER13> It seems to be using Masonry (<http://masonry.desandro.com/>)

<comment><USER4> Pinterest is a viral demo page for jQuery Masonry. (<https://twitter.com/#!/gem_ray/status/167010997008211969>)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:A community for app lovers - <AUTHOR>

I finally dropped my Blackberry and took Android. I was cautious while I moved on and use a $140, unlocked phone from a company (Karbonn) nobody knows. But Gingerbread works fast and it is responsive for my 1000+ contacts.
I just want to ask if there is a community (like HN) dedicated to Apps. With half a million apps it is a daunting task to select a right app. I wanted a return key for SMS and searched, installed, removed a number of keyboard apps before settling with Swiftkey.
With OS adding tweaking functionality ( I rooted the phone in just a week) every new version, taming the mo'bull' is a fun and need a community for active discussion. I know there are forums like XDA-developers, but forums are not as great community as HN. <comment><USER2> Your best bet might be finding a good subreddit.</comment>


Ask HN: have you built a custom outdoors WiFi router? - <AUTHOR> We have so many days of sunshine here in LA. And I'm fortunate that my building has a beautiful outside patio that would be amazing to work from.
Problem is: my home WiFi router is barely in range here (using it atm to write this) and not good enough for typical web activity.
I'd like to see whether I can weather-seal a Wi-Fi repeater that will stay outside. We don't have extreme weather here, so rain and general protection from the elements is what I'm looking for.
Has anyone here made such a DIY project? I'm thinking of using a second Google Wifi spot (assuming from their claims that it's really easy to set up a mesh network). <comment><USER2> You could consider attaching external antennas to a router which is indoors.

This kind of product is good too and reasonably affordable:

[https://store.ubnt.com/products/unifi-ac-mesh- ap](https://store.ubnt.com/products/unifi-ac-mesh-ap)

Ubnt hardware is head and shoulders better than almost all consumer-oriented stuff. (High end WiFi hardware is better still, but much more expensive.)

In a place like LA I'd be worried about interference. One reason you might be getting bad range is that there is a lot of competition; inside your house you are shielded from outside interference just as the wall shields you.</comment>


60 Minutes special on Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jqSK8Qv4ZY

<comment><USER2> Hmm. The first segment is 16 minutes, the second segment is 13 minutes. Are there really 31 minutes of commercials in "60 Minutes", or did they only put parts of the show online? Usually, there's 40 minutes of content to 20 minutes of commercials...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Catch part two here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXcfDN6L9d8></comment>


"Google will never adopt Go for the backend" at 32m50s - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Language-based-Security-as-Extreme-Modularity

<comment><USER2> To be clear, the guy who said that isn't a Googler. (His reason why is GC, if you want a spoiler.)</comment>


Intel's "cripple AMD" function (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.agner.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6 <comment><USER2> > _Never rely on benchmark tests unless the benchmarking code is known to be > open source and compiled without using any Intel tools._

A serious question - how many common benchmark packages are compiled by ICC or uses Intel MKL? I hope the number is limited, otherwise all the benchmarks published by mainstream PC reviewers are potentially biased. If there's a serious ICC-in-benchmark problem, then only Phoronix's Linux benchmarks are trustworthy - the majority of benchmarks on Phoronix uses free and open source compilers and testsuits, with known versions, build parameters and optimization levels. Thanks Michael Larabel for his service for the community.

<comment><USER3> This concern really only applies to synthetic benchmarks (stuff like SPEC CPU). If you're testing a commercially available application or game as delivered to consumers, this issue does not invalidate the benchmark, it just makes the software vendor a bit of an Intel stooge.

<comment><USER4> The go-to Intel-crushing benchmark these days is Cinebench R20, which runs on Intel's Embree raytracer.

<comment><USER2> So Cinebench R20 is a suspect?! That's not good...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Money quote: "... on an AMD computer then you may set the environment variable MKL_DEBUG_CPU_TYPE=5."

When run on an AMD, any program built with Intel's compiler should have the environment variable set. I don't think there is any downside to leaving it on all the time, unless you are measuring how badly Intel has tried to cripple your AMD performance.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that that flag is gone, as of couple of months ago. Intel "fixed" it.

<comment><USER7> Why not patch out the CPUID check as a post compilation step?

<comment><USER8> That's definitely possible (it probably checks that the manufacturer ID is _GenuineIntel_ ), but nobody wants to distribute patched MKL versions, because it most likely violates the MKL license.

It may even be easier to replace the function altogether with _LD_PRELOAD_.

<comment><USER8> Indeed works. A simple trace reveals that the function is called _mkl_serv_intel_cpu_true()_.

Make a file with the following content:

        int mkl_serv_intel_cpu_true() {
          return 1;
        }

Compile

        gcc -shared -o libfake.so fake.c

Run

        LD_PRELOAD=libfake.so yourprogram

And it uses the optimized AVX codepaths.

Disclaimer: may not be legal in your country. I take no responsibility.

<comment><USER9> Wow. I wasn't quite expecting something as simple as "if CPU is not intel, make everything worse."

<comment><USER10> I'm sure their justification is that (1) they have no obligation to help AMD, and (2) how could you guarantee AMD implements CPUID the same as Intel (as in: what if AMD implements a feature bit differently?)

Of course, the second one makes no sense as x86 programs run just as fine on AMD as Intel with the same feature set (albeit at different speeds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work on CFD software. We're well aware of this in my work, but the reality is that all our big corporate clients use Intel hardware. We already tell people to set those environment variables in our documentation.

> Avoid the Intel compiler. There are other compilers with similar or better > performance.

This is not really true IMO, but even as an aside, the Intel compiler has the enormous advantage of being available cross platform. So we can use it on Linux and Windows, and provides MPI cross platform. We upgrade fairly regularly and that provides us with less work.

My own tests found that PGI compiler performance was worse than Intel for C++, and that now appears to have been discontinued on Windows anyway with NVidia's new HPC compiler suite replacing it. GNU can run everywhere, but performance is around 2.5x worse on Linux for our application use case because it doesn't perform many of the optimisations that Intel does. We use MSVC on Windows just because everyone can have a license, and performance is much worse.

The other thing is that MKL is pretty stable and gets updated. If I use an open source BLAS/LAPACK implementation - sure, it works, and it may even give better performance! But it's not guaranteed to get updates beyond a couple of years, and plenty of implementations are also only partial. We pay Intel a lot of money for the lack of hassle, basically.

<comment><USER12> So which are the optimizations the Intel compiler does which GCC can't is asked? I could guess at the reason for a factor of two, but what does the detailed profiling say with equivalent compiler flags? I can also say that GCC is a factor of two better on SKX on a Fortran benchmark, and came out about the same over the collection that's from when profile-directed. The usual reason for the Intel compiler appearing to win much is incorrect-by-default maths optimization allowing more vectorization.

I don't know about MKL stability, but reliability definitely isn't something I associate with the Intel Fortran compiler (or MPI) in research computing support.

<comment><USER11> I found that the common subexpression elimination performance was significantly better than that in GCC for one thing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The mythology surrounding the Intel tools and libraries really ought to die. It's bizarre seeing people deciding they must use MKL rather than the linear algebra libraries on which AMD has been working hard to optimize for their hardware (and possibly other hardware incidentally). Similarly for compiler code generation.

Free BLASs are pretty much on a par with MKL, at least for large dimension level 3 in BLIS's case, even on Haswell. For small matrices MKL only became fast after libxsmm showed the way. (I don't know about libxsmm on current AMD hardware, but it's free software you can work on if necessary, like AMD have done with BLIS.) OpenBLAS and BLIS are infinitely better performing than MKL in general because they can run on all CPU architectures (and BLIS's plain C gets about 75% of the hand-written DGEMM kernel's performance).

The differences between the implementations are comparable with the noise in typical HPC jobs, even if performance was entirely dominated by, say, DGEMM (and getting close to peak floating point intensity is atypical). On the other hand, you can see a factor of several difference in MPI performance in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER13> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21732902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21732902)

</comment><comment><USER14> Even if the compilers are biased, isn't it reflective of what users would experience because most software is made with biased compilers?

<comment><USER15> Not really. No one outside of specialized applications like HPC will use Intel's compiler for their software. The general public seeing SPEC benchmark figures between gcc AMD and icc Intel may be surprised when they that Intel CPU doesn't perform as well as expected vs AMD when running generic code.

<comment><USER16> 5-10 years ago the Intel C compiler produced significantly faster code than gcc (and clang was even worse back then), so there was a bigger reason to use it back then.

<comment><USER17> That was the story 10 years ago as well, yet I have never managed to find an open source program where the Intel compiler has produced faster code than gcc back then, too.

gcc has always produced faster code for at least 15 years. In fact, it is the Intel compiler which has caught up in the most recent version.

<comment><USER11> For what sort of application? I ran benchmarks of my own scientific code for doing particle-particle calculations and with -march=native I could get 2.5x better performance with Intel vs GCC.

One thing I found that you do have to be careful with though is ensuring that Intel uses IEEE floating point precision, because by default it's less accurate than GCC. This causes issues in Eigen sometimes, we ran into an issue recently after upgrading compiler where suddenly the results changed and it was because someone had forgotten to set 'fp-model' to 'strict'

<comment><USER18> If Intel is using floating point math shortcuts you can replicate it with -Ofast when using gcc.

It goes without saying that you should use -O3 (or -O2 for some rare cases) otherwise. I am mentioning it just in case because 2.5x slower sounds so exotic to me that the first intuition is that you're omitting important optimization flags when using GCC. GCC was faster than Intel on everything I tried in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there major software that uses I tell compiler?

<comment><USER20> Most high performance software on super computers uses the Intel C and Fortran compilers, and much engineering and scientific software on workstations uses the Intel Maths Kernel Library (MKL) for high performance linear algebra.

Now that AMD EPYC processors are powering a lot of next generation super- computer clusters, we're going to have to figure out some workarounds!

<comment><USER21> I think this: [https://developer.amd.com/amd-aocl/amd-math-library- libm/](https://developer.amd.com/amd-aocl/amd-math-library-libm/) is supposed to be the alternative to MKL for those applications.

<comment><USER20> Thank you! I wasn't aware of this. But this is only a replacement for libm (i.e. basic trig, exp function), not the matrix-orientated BLAS, LAPACK and SCALAPACK routines that scientific codes spend >90% of their time.

<comment><USER21> I'm not personally familiar with those, but seems like BLAS, SCALAPACK, & others are also available:

[https://developer.amd.com/amd-aocl/](https://developer.amd.com/amd-aocl/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow. How is this not a lawsuit happening already?

<comment><USER23> Toward the end of the article, the several lawsuits and FTC actions are discussed. The end result of them is a disclaimer on the Intel compiler that it's not optimized for non-Intel processors and that Intel can't artificially hurt AMD performance (but it apparently has no obligation to support unique AMD optimizations either).

<comment><USER3> > (but it apparently has no obligation to support unique AMD optimizations > either)

It's a bit worse than that. Intel has no obligation to support optimizations that _aren 't_ unique to AMD; they're allowed to disable SIMD extensions that AMD processors declare support for, while at the same time using all of those SIMD extensions on Intel CPUs. They just have to include the disclaimer that their compiler and libraries may be doing this.

<comment><USER10> Why is it _just_ the compiler maker's job to report it may (read: will) underperform on AMD and not also the program developer too? If I paid for software that performed worse on AMD because it deliberately hobbled itself (and was not informed), I'd want a refund.

It's straight up anti-competitive, but consumers aren't smart enough to understand that it's a problem; A consumer just sees biased benchmarks that show Intel outperforming AMD, and then choose Intel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> All companies are evil if you let them...

<comment><USER25> Business is war, they say.

<comment><USER26> Except when discussing free trade.</comment></comment></comment>


Emacsrookie.com - Hints about the emacs text editor - <AUTHOR> http://www.emacsrookie.com Today I launched emacsrookie.com. All about emacs and the hidden treasures. Enjoy <comment><USER2> cool site, I look forward to your emacs tips.

I have been doing a "Learn Emacs" series on my blog for a while now. <http://rawsyntax.com/tagged/emacs> and I have a lot more post ideas in the works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi rawsyntax

thanks, must say your site looks nice too and I definitely like the idea of articles with videos to show off. Great job.

sam</comment></comment>


Aptoide wins court battle against Google in landmark case - <AUTHOR> https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-google-antitrust-aptoide/aptoide-wins-court-battle-against-google-in-landmark-case-idUKKCN1MW2CL <comment><USER2> If anyone else thought this article is pretty scant on context, here's the backstory behind the lawsuit, Google was using Play Protect to nag users to uninstall the Aptoide app store: [https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2018-07-12-aptoi...](https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2018-07-12-aptoide- says-google-stops-users-installing-a-different-app-store-on-android-devices/)

<comment><USER3> Good. Maybe Microsoft should be taking note since it was doing the same thing earlier: ([https://www.howtogeek.com/243581/windows-10-may-delete- your-...](https://www.howtogeek.com/243581/windows-10-may-delete-your- programs-without-asking/))

<comment><USER4> But what about Apple? iOS is designed such that a third party app store is impossible. Why should Google have to allow a third party app store and Apple be able to "walk free" in their walled garden.

<comment><USER5> Aside from the other (excellent) comments already made, Apple neither has the same market share as Android nor does it have a (near) monopoly in search or advertising.

<comment><USER6> This excuse is always mentioned whenever such comparison appears. But it doesn't convince me.

Having a smaller market share doesn't mean you can get away with breaking the law.

<comment><USER5> It isn't a get out of jail for free card. Laws still apply for any company however for a (convicted) monopolist different laws apply than for a random (successful) company. Microsoft and Google _are_ convicted monopolists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the top download list for last week: [https://en.aptoide.com/apps/local/more?period=7d](https://en.aptoide.com/apps/local/more?period=7d)

Note all the high profile apps like Google Photos, Nest, WhatsApp, Instagram? None of these have been uploaded by Google, FB, etc. These could easily have been modified to include additional malicious code to steal your personal data.

None of this is mentioned of course in the press. But it seems like this company mainly survives on copyright infringement and serving malicious apps.

<comment><USER8> Bear in mind [https://www.apkmirror.com/](https://www.apkmirror.com/) is a totally legit site run by Android Police, which also gives you all the APKs you need to sideload official apps from Google, Facebook, etc. See [https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google- inc/](https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/) to get an idea how much they have and how convenient it is.

Most people accept that "free" apps should be able to be installed any way that people like. The difference is that Google doesn't consider their apps to be "free", they're a licensed component of Google Apps, which manufacturers license for their phones.

<comment><USER7> > Most people accept that "free" apps should be able to be installed any way > that people like.

That doesn't make it legal or safe. Re-distributing copyrighted material is questionable even in Portugal.

But more importantly there's no guarantee the app binary was not modified and repackaged to include malicious code.

<comment><USER9> It is very easy to verify these apps have not been modified if you also have access to a known good copy of the same app. Install known good copy -> install suspect APK as upgrade -> signature check performed on upgrade verifies that it was signed with the same key as the old version, so if the upgrade succeeds there has been no modification.

<comment><USER10> How do you get access to a known good copy of the app?

<comment><USER11> Especially since the normal use of an APK intermediary is that one does not have access to a known good source such as Google Play

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Aptoide said the Android antivirus program, Google Play Protect, was nudging > users through a notification to uninstall the app store from their devices, > warning them the program could download harmful apps. For those that choose > to keep Aptoide despite the warning, the app store no longer functions and > can't install apps, the company said.

I'd be pissed as well

<comment><USER13> The part of the context that's missing is the fact that Aptoide is one of the main channels for distribution of cracked and pirated Android apps.

<comment><USER14> It's also the primary source of common free apps that only publish on the app store for people that run android phones without google accounts.

It still boggles my mind that organizations like keybase and protonmail refuse to shove an APK on an S3 bucket somewhere, it makes me feel like they don't really understand their audiences that well...

Anyway, for closed source free apps, aptoide has my back.

<comment><USER15> F-Droid [1] might be another good option for Keybase and Protonmail. F-Droid offers APK download from their website but also an app which reminds you of updates or installs them automatically if you had an extra permission extension and enabled the feature.

[1]: [https://f-droid.org](https://f-droid.org)

<comment><USER16> f-droid is a fork of aptoide. Just interesting information that isn't that common knowledge.

<comment><USER17> F-Droid the client started out as a fork of the aptoide app, yes. This was quite a while ago and I doubt there's any resemblance in code or appearance at this point in time.

F-Droid the ecosystem is far more than that though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I read the article & comments correctly, the problem is that Aptoide is/was sometimes/often used to distribute cracked apps from Google's AppStore and/or removing in-app purchase requirements for additional features.

I can understand Google/App-developers not liking that, but why would they use this approach? Is there no way to stop/challenge this though the court system?

<comment><USER19> If it was sometimes/often used to distribute cracked apps, then it was also almost certainly used to distribute apps with other added "features" (malware), in which case, the connection with play protect isn't that crazy.

<comment><USER18> I agree, and I think that's a good reason to deploy a warning about this app(store) and educating the user about the risks. But blocking the installs entirely is a bit much, IMO.

<comment><USER20> Google's antivirus is optional, so if a user was cognizant of the dangers of using Aptoide but still wanted to risk it couldn't they turn Play Protect off?

Google and Microsoft are often criticized for malware that targets Android and Windows, respectively, but restrictions such as this render Play Protect and Windows Defender increasingly toothless in the battle against malware vectors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My paid app has gotten between 5k-25k downloads on their store, obviously without me getting a cent. What are my options to hurt them as much as possible?

<comment><USER22> You have 2 options:

\- Be a partner and publish your paid app there. It then will be paid.

\- Submit a DMCA notice: "9.3 DMCA Notices. If Aptoide receives a Notice according to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Aptoide will immediately remove the Product in question. Such notices shall be directed to Aptoide's DMCA Agent at email@example.com." They will then unlist it.

<comment><USER23> Both options suck. There are dozens of sites like these to keep up with. Distribution is one thing, but customer support is a nightmare, particularly since you don't know if you're supporting a legitimate download or not.

DMCA is a nuisance. You have to be big enough to dedicate resources to filing and tracking takedowns, as well as be able to take legal action anywhere in the world for sites that don't respond. It's very easy to clone a pirate site. It's much harder to play whack-a-mole to take one down.

<comment><USER24> Sorry to be dismissive, but this is basically what the internet is for content creators. There's a reason the *AAs of the world resort to sending automated, often stupid, blanket takedowns -- computers make copying easy.

At work, we've used MarkMonitor to try to solve similar things, which is sometimes useful and sometimes results in our secondary apps getting taken off Google Play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "If you have reason on your side don't fear to challenge Google."

I like this. People forget that just because you agreed to a contract, it doesn't mean you have to put up with everything in it as a court might disagree with the facts and circumstances.

<comment><USER26> Having reason on your side has not been an historically reliable way to win legal battles.

<comment><USER25> Getting the court venue, judge, and that jurisdiction's political process favorable is an art too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If only the courts showed half as much willingness to regulate Apple as Google. Remember when steam was banned from Apple's app store, and Apple retroactively modified it's ToS to justify the ban?

</comment><comment><USER28> How is apple able to not getting any EU slack for allowing little to no competition on their devices. I know their market share is a little less, but it is still pretty big in Europe.

<comment><USER29> Android has something like 85% market share in Europe, it's not even remotely close.

<comment><USER28> 15% is still a large market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there any source for this that doesn't rely on a Aptoide press release?

Every other source seems to go back to this Reuters article and the Aptoide PR.

</comment><comment><USER31> What's the deal here? Aptoide was malware? Or was it serving malware-infected apps? Or none of the above?

<comment><USER32> It was a super easy place to get pirated apps that had usually been ripped from the play store and modified to open up all in-app purchases for free.

<comment><USER33> +???

Who knows what other modifications were made.

<comment><USER34> Who knows what the original play store apps did to begin with. Most of the top apps are basically malware. Maybe someone added a bitcoin miner to the existing spyware that came from the original app but it just comes back to the same thing that you can't trust proprietary software to be safe.

<comment><USER35> But at least if the original play store apps have spyware issues, you can generally find a developer/company behind them to blame. If Google updates the Gmail app to include a bitcoin miner, people are going to find out and be pissed at Google.

If someone takes the Gmail app, injects a bitcoin miner and uploads it to a third-party store, who gets the blame?

<comment><USER34> Google puts a personal data miner in gmail and no one gives a shit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably the most interesting thing here is that after Google has just reworked it's licensing to suggest Google Apps are "worth something" as opposed to just being "free", now Google is prohibited from banning a top method of sideloading them.

The emperor has been revealed to be wearing no clothes. I wonder if Google will now start implementing DRM into Google Apps to prevent them from running on unlicensed phones.

The other place this gets interesting is that most Google Apps are just clients for online Google services, services offered free, which have (truly) free apps on iOS that aren't tied to a license fee. How long will Google be able to extract license money from Google Apps from Android manufacturers that Apple gets for free? How long will users tolerate being told this is licensed software that is just the best way to access gmail.com or youtube.com on their phones?

<comment><USER36> Wut? They only started charging EU manufacturers for the apps because the EU courts required them to. They want as many phones as possible using the apps if they can, to get more users into the online services.

<comment><USER8> EU courts didn't require them to start charging manufacturers. Google chose to start charging for them, since they were upset the EU told them they could no longer make access to them conditional upon preloading Google Search and Google Chrome, which are where Google makes all it's money on ad revenue.

Google could absolutely allow users to install the YouTube app or the Gmail app with no strings attached, but they don't want to do that. They want them tied to Google Search/Chrome, like in the rest of the world, or for a fee, like in the EU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> After seeing the headline, I really was hoping it was a lawsuit over Maps, just for the pun.

<comment><USER38> On account of it being a landmark case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> While Aptoide is probably not the ultimate answer, Google does not have a leg to stand on here given the amount of censorship they have been practicing on the app store by banning apps such as Gab.ai. Irregardless of whether you agree with the content on Gab, they are not perpetuating viruses, harming the system etc..

The fact that Google can majorly affect your business by denying you access to the app store is a real problem. Apple is guilty of this too and these are problems with the entire mobile space.

</comment><comment><USER40> the virus creator sues the antivirus company and wins.

<comment><USER22> Do you have any source on this?

I've worked in Aptoide, they aren't a virus company. They even spent a lot of resources fighting virus but that's always a cat and mouse game and given the amount of resources they have vs amount of users that can publish an apk (everyone) it gets hard.

If you think they are manipulating the published apps, you are free to fork the Aptoide client on github.com/Aptoide and create your own version.

<comment><USER36> That's precisely why Google wants the average Android user with uncertain tech knowledge to use the app store. It uses Google's immense machine learning and ops resources to fight malware and malicious apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> great victory!</comment>


Isaac Asimov's Robot and Foundation Story Chronology - <AUTHOR> http://www.templetongate.com/asimovchrono.htm <comment><USER2> I remember getting "Prelude to Foundation" as a gift when I was in middle or high school. The intro to the book contained this list and it was a great way for me (pre-internet) to get a concise listing of the stories in order. Ended up going through the whole list eventually even though I'd read some of them already.

</comment><comment><USER3> It happened that I read the initial robots, empire and foundation cycles first, and then the "glue" novels that Asimov later wrote for the sake of general consistency. And those added novels contain wonderful twists - it was such a pleasure to read them!

</comment><comment><USER4> Also, "The end of eternity", it's partially related. In one of the books (I don't remember on what exactly, could be "Foundation and Earth" ? ), he makes a references to what happens on these book.

<comment><USER5> Was gonna post just that. The "end of eternity" arc is referenced in Foundation's Edge.

Relevant link (spoilers):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Eternity#Role_in_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Eternity#Role_in_the_.22Foundation.22_Series)</comment></comment>