Wiki.js - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.js.org/ <comment><USER2> I need one function in a wiki platform that I haven't seen so far. When I write text, in its WYSIWYG editor, I need an ability to paste in an image (a screenshot that I just grabbed, let's say) and for it to automatically upload it and embed it into text. Does this support something like that?

<comment><USER3> This. Thousand times this.

I have been waiting for an online wiki with the usability of Apple Notes that I use locally on all my Apple devices. It works like a charm except that I cannot make it public.

This is why I often take notes rather than write blog posts on my website. If the wiki software was as easy drag and drop as Apple Notes, I'd just take notes and they turn into publicly available wikis!

I am yet to find that tool. I would happily pay for such a tool with one braking condition that it must be self-hostable. I will not write my content into something like Medium or Notion where I don't own my content.

<comment><USER4> This seems like it: ImgPaste plugin for DokuWiki

[https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:imgpaste](https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:imgpaste) [https://github.com/cosmocode/dokuwiki-plugin- imgpaste](https://github.com/cosmocode/dokuwiki-plugin-imgpaste)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is exciting. A compelling FOSS alternative to Atlassian Confluence was sorely needed.

Mediawiki has some UX and RBAC challenges that makes it difficult to scale to large organizations.

<comment><USER6> Since it's AGPL it will probably never end up in the same commercial use cases as Confluence does.

Google has some motivations written down from their lawyer department: [https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl- policy/](https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/)

It boils down to 'not worth the risk, do not use'.

<comment><USER7> OT, as the sole copyright owner of a web application I wrote, can I license it under the AGPL for the general public, and license it under different terms for clients who would prefer not to use AGPL software (and possibly pay for it) ? is dual licensing allowed by the AGPL ?

<comment><USER8> That's not how licensing works. If you write the software, you can release it under any license(s) you want. The license states the terms under which you'll let others use the software.

<comment><USER7> That's what I thought but wasn't sure. Thank you (and sibling comments) for your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm looking to launch an internal wiki and Wiki.js came out on top for my requirements:

\- easy to use for technical and non-technical staff alike: multiple editing options

\- third party authentication: really comprehensive offering

\- quality search: comprehensive internal and third party search offering

\- ease of maintenance: largely everything is built-in, so no module/dependency maintenance headaches

\- user management: solid user/group management system

With internal tools you need things to stick, and fast. As much as I am fond of mediawiki, the editing experience is a barrier to usage for many. And the extension ecosystem, while rich and diverse, is just more of a liability than a single installation. A quality search is also really important to adoption, so having options there is great.

I'd been using Docsify on a small scale with authentication through GitLab to edit, GitLab CD to build and Cloudflare Access to secure the front end. It works really well, but the lack of user management and the editing experience mean that it's time to move on.

It would be great to hear if this is a case of the grass always being greener on the other side.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not impressed. Wiki.js is supposedly "built with performance in mind", but its documentation wiki [1] is much slower than any DokuWiki site I could find [2]. It also requires JavaScript to be enabled in the web browser.

[1]: [https://docs.requarks.io/](https://docs.requarks.io/)

[2]: [https://www.dokuwiki.org/](https://www.dokuwiki.org/)

<comment><USER11> I find it really frustrating that every piece of software nowadays claims to be "blazing fast" or "built for performance", usually with no benchmarks to back it up. Makes it really hard to tell at a glance what the strengths of a project actually are. I honestly would be very grateful if a project up and said "we're not the fastest, but we trade performance for a simpler codebase and easier extensibility. If you need to do some-performance-intensive-task, try other-package instead".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> docs.requarks.io, which is said to be using Wiki.js, straight up doesn't load without Javascript, and even with Javascript enabled it's a multi-page application that just feels slower browsing page to page than your average 10-year-old mediawiki install (probably also heavier on the backend).

Who exactly is asking for slower software?

<comment><USER13> > Running on the blazing fast Node.js engine

Is Node.js that blazing-fast ?

<comment><USER14> Surprisingly yes. It has billions of dollars or optimizations and research in it over the years and can really fly. Of course you can write slow node code just like you can in any language, but a single well-written node instance can handle a lot of traffic.

<comment><USER15> Billions of dollars? I have no beef with Node, but that seems like a lot. Could you elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We needed a documentation solution at work. MY coworker had some experience with Wiki.js. What sold me on it was that you can use markdown and it can keep itself synced with a git repo.

This gives us plan text files that are tracked in a repo. It uses the user as the author, so now I can "code review" edit's to our wiki.

The content of the wiki is easily cloned by cloning the git repo. It is markdown in folders so if wiki.js dies at some point I could write a pandoc script to turn it into web pages again, you do loose all of the cool UI features.

</comment><comment> heresie-dabord I used a Wiki for a long time. But I try to minimise maintenance ("foist it upon others"). I also try to resist the enthusiasm for Rube Goldberg machines and for installing bad tooling (such as PHP).

Now that git has become ubiquitous, I prefer git with a self-hosted git-daemon instance. git , grep , awk , and sqlite make a strong set of tools for knowledge curation.

edit: minor grammar fix

<comment><USER17> Unnecessarily bashing PHP is soo 2005. Like javascript, it can be written poorly due to its loose roots. Also just like javascript, it is a very different language now.

That said, DocuWiki is pretty decent to get up and running quickly.

<comment> john-shaffer I use PHP in my day job. It is by far the worst language I've ever used. Nothing else even comes close. The language and ecosystem are so full of footguns that you are bound to shoot yourself eventually. The OpenSSL implementation will silently truncate the key [1][2] without even giving a warning. The cURL lib, in 2020, still hasn't implemented a get_curl_opt function. Sure you could wrap it if you're writing everything, but the reality is I have to work in this nightmare ecosystem that just uses raw curl. Every == comparison is still a potential security hole due to PHP's insane (and inconsistent) typecasting behaviors. Sometimes a number gets cast to a string, but a string gets cast to a number if you use it as an array key. WTF? Do I have to wait another 15 years for PHP to become a halfway decent language?

[1] [https://github.com/WP2Static/wp2static/pull/506](https://github.com/WP2Static/wp2static/pull/506)

[2] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55062897/decrypt- aes256-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55062897/decrypt-aes256-on- python-vs-php/55063033#55063033)

<comment> heresie-dabord > The language and ecosystem are so full of footguns

"footgun" is an excellent term. Here's an earlier use on HN, 2010:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904960)

<comment><USER18> I've wondered whether the term directly evolved from this sort of joke list that was popular to pass around on the early internet: [http://www.personal.psu.edu/sxt104/program1.html](http://www.personal.psu.edu/sxt104/program1.html)

<comment><USER19> I assume it evolved not long after guns existed, and likely grew in the military :)

<comment><USER18> "Shooting yourself in the foot," sure, but if you look up "footgun" it seems to only be programming slang. What I was suggesting with the above comment was that this sort of list might have popularized the metaphor of shooting yourself in the foot in programming, which was then was subjected to hacker- style word manipulation.

<comment><USER19> Ah fair, yep, that's probably right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder why it's AGPL and not dual-licensed or some different GPL. As it is right now it's dead in the water for any commercial usage unless you're manually installing the thing on a manually installed server somewhere (which you probably aren't).

With automation you'd build images based on their images but run via your own CI/CD with your own security scans and any additions you might need (like additional logging infrastructure). Doing that is not possible with AGPL.

<comment> gary-kim At least for me, the fact that it is purely licensed under the AGPL and that the copyright is owned by multiple people makes me far more comfortable with using it. It's a guarantee that the project will remain open source so I don't have to worry about suddenly being in a situation where I have to migrate away because the company or person decided that they don't want to have this be free and open source software anymore.

I guess, to a certain extent, that's because I'm an individual, not a company, and one that tends to open source pretty much everything they write. This is the same licensing that I use for pretty much all my projects (AGPL with no CLA).

<comment><USER20> > It's a guarantee that the project will remain open source

What are you talking about? They can change the license to a closed one from a certain version in the future.

<comment><USER21> For future versions, not past versions.

<comment><USER22> I don't think any of the mainstream open-source licenses allow you to retroactively revoke or change the license.

<comment><USER21> If they are the sole copyright owners (no external contribution) or have SLAs, they can for any future version of the software. It is not uncommon, it is just hard as most doesn't have SLA to do this.

<comment><USER23> > If they are the sole copyright owners (no external contribution)

That's not the scenario gary-kim laid out; you've failed to satisfy the constraints in the premise.

<comment><USER21> Read better, I'm not replying to him. I agree with him.

<comment><USER23> _Reply_ better.

I know who you're replying to. The premise that gary-kim laid out is still the relevant context. The hypothetical you're laying out, on the other hand, is not relevant, it's at odds with that premise (not in "agree[ment] with him"), and it's derailing the thread. (Which is the same reason your "future versions, not past versions" is downvoted, for that matter.)

<comment><USER21> Right. _they_ were not meant to be Wiki.js, but ANY open source project. And was a meant to indicate the same subject as _any_ in this reply:

> I don't think _any_ of the mainstream open-source licenses allow you to > retroactively revoke or change the license.

My reply is in this context, not in the parent's parent which you mean as _relevant_ context. If I wanted to include the parent context the reply would be more specific. This was a __direct __reply to a specific message. This is a very normal way to reply on the internet, HN is not special.

<comment><USER23> Try rewriting history if you want, but the thread goes off-topic as soon as mekster suggests the project change the license, and your reply there only feeds into it. And it still doesn't explain how you can claim that your comment was meant to "agree" with gary-kim's.

> My reply is in this context, not in the parent's parent

The parent's parent at that point is... your comment, "For future versions, not past versions," which was off-topic.

> This is a very normal way to reply on the internet

Indeed, it's common for people to lose the plot in the comments section and then get defensive (and smug) while being wrong, e.g.:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23250829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23250829)

<comment><USER20> > mekster suggests the project change the license

When have I suggested the project change the license??? I only said it is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> w-ll I'd atleast expect a demo, and the homepage to be running on said wiki.

<comment><USER24> There's a link to a demo in their README: [https://docs.requarks.io/demo](https://docs.requarks.io/demo)

<comment><USER25> Their demo link there didn't work when I tried it, it's looking for the non- existent master branch. The docs site itself ([https://docs.requarks.io/](https://docs.requarks.io/)) is running on Wiki.js, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been using Wiki.js for several months now on a production project (self hosted). It has worked nearly flawlessly for me so far. No complaints. Setup was a piece of cake too.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just a minor nitpick. If there isn't an actual file called "wiki.js" that is self-contained, I would prefer it be called WikiJS instead of "Wiki.js" to avoid confusion. In general when I see ".js" I expect to see a single file I can import that does something useful to my code.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can I know what exactly this numbers are "15M+ Installations" On your home page.

I mean thats too large number. Is this of all open source software or I am misunderstanding something else?

<comment><USER29> I'm assuming that's for every single download, including testing. I know that when I use a service for the first time, I do a few installs while getting used to the software and its configuration. I'd assume they'd have no other way to verify installs (assuming there is no telemetry).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wikis are also useful for note-taking, I'm using Wiki.js to document a D&D campaign to have some canonical reference of what actually happened in past sessions.

<comment><USER31> Why did you pick Wiki.js for campaign management as opposed to something like Notion?

<comment><USER32> Big fan of Notion here for both documentation, task management, and general brain dumps. Only worry I have is one day they go away and I have to migrate off how much of a pain that would probably be. It feels locked in, maybe i am wrong

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I keep a v2 instance running on my Windows laptop solely for taking notes and keeping need-it-eventually information organized.

It's just enough added structure and functionality to make the whole body of notes more useful, without having to learn a formal system or adopt someone else's idea of what my note hierarchy should look like.

</comment><comment><USER34> Can we please not have SPA's eat wikis, too? Text-only content does not need... (checking...) 6.3 MB of JavaScript to display (checking...) 3.3 KB of text. Blank pages with JavaScript disabled or in non-mainstream browsers is a really terrible experience for content so plainly simple to display.

<comment><USER23> Wikis also don't need (or indeed, even permit) cumbersome Git and PR-based workflows just to get changes into the "wiki". Better for it to be a single- page app that actually implements a wiki, than to provide a service that doesn't actually support wikis but has no qualms about throwing the word around anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've used the 1.x release, and the Mongo requirement was always a bit of a pin. I think v2 fixes that, but I haven't yet upgraded. Anyone has feedback on v1 vs v2?

<comment><USER36> Looks like they stopped using MongoDB: [https://blog.requarks.io/the-switch- to-rdbms/](https://blog.requarks.io/the-switch-to-rdbms/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is it possible to output static-file-based wiki? (so some static HTML/CSS/js ?)

</comment><comment><USER38> I was looking into open source knowledge / wiki base solutions recently, and I found [https://www.getoutline.com/](https://www.getoutline.com/) to be the most usable.

<comment><USER39> 10 bucks a month though...

<comment><USER40> For the hosted version.

You can host your own for free: [https://github.com/outline/outline](https://github.com/outline/outline)

<comment><USER41> then you have to pay your host

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've been using 2.x since Jan and have really liked it. I'm using it in docker with postgres iirc for a small team for infrastructure documentation. Very markdown friendly and gets the job done while looking nice.

</comment><comment><USER43> In case anyone was wondering, the dependencies are:

        Node.js 10.12 or later

        MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL or SQLite3

Is it possible to install and run all of these as a non-root user?

<comment><USER44> Even better, you can run these in Docker as non-root. Security wise, while this wouldn't make your app itself more secure, it would insulate your host OS from getting infected. I just checked and they even have one-liner Docker commands that do just this:

        docker run -d -p 8080:3000 --name wiki --restart unless-stopped -e "DB_TYPE=postgres" -e "DB_HOST=db" -e "DB_PORT=5432" -e "DB_USER=wikijs" -e "DB_PASS=wikijsrocks" -e "DB_NAME=wiki" requarks/wiki:2

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Like the common theme all this wiki and outline are having 3 pane window any for Bootstrap it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I like the way the documentation is laid out, does that conform to a standard?

</comment><comment><USER47> Does anyone has a comparison to Bookstack?www.bookstackapp.com

</comment><comment><USER48> For personal wiki, nothing beats the simplicity of tiddlywiki.

</comment><comment><USER49> i love this platform, i will suggest this to all my friends and clients :)

</comment><comment><USER43> Why is there a Linux Tux logo next to macOS?

<comment><USER50> They are separate items in the horizontal list: [https://wiki.js.org/img/linux.3297c180.svg](https://wiki.js.org/img/linux.3297c180.svg) [https://wiki.js.org/img/macos.96f6d85a.svg](https://wiki.js.org/img/macos.96f6d85a.svg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Slightly related PSA:

Everyone should consider running a wiki locally just for yourself. It's like being able to organize your brain. I just got into it two days ago and basically spent the whole weekend dumping things into it in a way I can actually browse and revisit, like the short stories I'd written, spread out across Notes.app and random folders.

You don't need to run WAMP, MySQL, Apache, phpmyadmin or anything. Here are the steps for someone, like me, who hadn't checked in a while:

0\. `$ brew install php` (or equiv for your OS)

1\. Download the wiki folder and `cd` into it

2\. `$ php -S localhost:3000`

3\. Visit [http://localhost:3000/install.php](http://localhost:3000/install.php) in your browser

I tried DokuWiki at first (has flat file db which is cool). It's simpler, but I ended up going with MediaWiki which is more powerful, and aside from Wikipedia using it, I noticed most big wikis I use also use it ([https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page)). MediaWiki lets you choose Sqlite as an option, so I have one big wiki/ folder sitting in my Dropbox folder symlinked into my iCloud folder and local fs.

Really changing my life right now. The problem with most apps is that they just become append-only dumping grounds where your only organizational power is to, what, create yet another tag?

My advice is to just look for the text files scattered around your computer and note-taking apps and move them into wiki pages. As you make progress, you will notice natural categories/namespaces emerging.

I just wish I started 10 years ago.

<comment><USER52> I did start similar things over 10 years ago. Where I am at these days is just text files ( markdown ) nested into folder structures. I've found this the most sustainable for quite a few years and it's been super useful. Main thing is, do whatever, as long as you find it easy to sustain.

<comment><USER53> This is what finally replaced Google Keep for my shopping list and then eventually everything else. I use Markor and Syncthing on my phone, and a standard text editor on my various computers. It is super nice especially to be able to organize the directory using standard file management tools, search using grep and friends, etc. There is something to be said for simplicity.

<comment><USER54> +1 for Markor, also available on fdroid

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I started using Wiki.js over a year ago to maintain documentation related to system admin duties.

We run this in a docker container with SQLite database and backup the database daily to another server.

The private and public pages feature fits perfectly to our use case. We show system information, how-to guides and rules on the public pages and manage sysadmin documentation with restricted access.

</comment><comment><USER56> If it doesn't run on MediaWiki, I'm not into it.

<comment><USER57> DokuWiki used to be very much better for my use cases: easier to hack on/make plugins for and more built in functionality and less dependencies on top if that since it store the pages as flat files instead of using a DB.

<comment><USER56> Hmm. I'll go check it out.

The main thing I'm worried about with other wiki software (including Wiki.js) is that if it's compatible with gadgets, userscripts and all of the other neat tools already available.

It doesn't have to be MediaWiki, or even a distant relative of it. It just has to work with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Kontxt ([https://kontxt.io](https://kontxt.io)) could be a perfect inline communication and engagement layer to enhance wikis and docs with inline highlights, comments, polls, @mentions, page navigation, shareable deep links, and permission-based sharing.

<comment><USER59> Did... did kontxt.io write this?

Oh wait yeah.

<comment><USER58> Hello emiliovesprini! You are correct. That's actually why the username "kontxt" was specifically selected. Decided to share here because people exploring the wiki and documentation space might find it useful. Best regards fellow code creator.</comment></comment></comment>


Bing Ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=ADB303ECB3C92C0C

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the first two here are pretty clever, even though I'm not sure most people will get it the first time they watch them.

The third one just confused me. Apparently, Google's confusing search results caused the economic crisis?</comment>


Sony was running unpatched Apache with no firewall for months before breach - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/2011/05/security-expert-sony-knew-its-software-was-obsolete-months-before-psn-breach.html

<comment><USER2> If I see one more article on this incident that abuses the word "firewall" I'm going to hurt someone. Surely Apache is either accessible via port 80, or it isn't. What would a firewall do to mitigate vulnerabilities in a webserver?

<comment><USER3> Look at modsecurity.org. That's what people call (rightly or wrongly) a web application firewall. You can put a bunch of rules in and if it seens certainly bad incoming requests or certain outgoing requests (all of which are configurable) it'll take whatever action you've got configured.

For example, if you try and submit javascript tags to my websites, they'll just drop the connection. SQL injection attempts (at least, very obvious ones) are also logged and dropped.

There are commerical hardware devices that'll do the same sort of thing modsecurity does - I guess it's being suggested Sony didn't use any, which IMHO is very stupid.

If you look at the definition of firewall, modsecurity seems to fit it: "A firewall is a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access while permitting authorized communications." I don't think the term is being abused, just used in a way that people aren't familiar with. Most people seem to think a firewall is only a network (IP or Ethernet) level device.

<comment><USER4> What if I want to actually submit JavaScript tags to your website such as in a plaintext comment in a blog, to help illustrate my comment? This is not how you handle input. You sanitize output, not filter/drop input. And by sanitize, I mean encode safely for the medium, not just completely block anything unsafe before encoding.

<comment><USER5> mod_security is a hack that you put in front of hacks to make them collapse in a more amusing manner. The idea is to stop the dumbest of dumb attacks.

People after 20 million credit card numbers can probably find two bugs to exploit, rendering the "protection" useless.

People trying to protect 20 million credit card numbers need to learn how to sanitize inputs and be able to render correct pages even if someone submits <script>'drop database. If they don't know how, it's time to hire programmers to write your applications instead of the monkeys you currently have.

<comment><USER3> I'd much rather put up some barriers that'll make it harder for the hackers. I'm not saying modsecurity (or anything else) is a perfect prevention, but combined with other things I can't see how you can argue it's _not_ useful. Are you so confident in your sanitized inputs that you run your webserver as root?

I have it deployed on sites where people are using Drupal and Wordpress with addon modules. I have at least 2 documented cases where it's stopped an exploit that would otherwise have gotten through (though I'm fairly sure the setup of the webserver would have stopped anything bad from happening)

Your last sentence seems to be suggesting I was supporting a "just chuck modsecurity in front of it and don't worry about security" attitude, which I wasn't at all. All my original reply was trying to say is that an Application Level Firewall is still a firewall.

<comment><USER5> I agree; I always design my software with as many failsafes as possible. For example, I design my applications to crash safely. But, I also try to make sure they never crash.

Similarly, web application developers need to make sure that their app is 100% safe without hacks like mod_security. But after you do that, sure, turn on mod_security. People and processes can fail, and it's good to have as many failsafes as possible.

I object to things like mod_security because, in general, people write piece of shit apps and then think they are safe because the mod has the word "security" in it. That doesn't make you safe, that makes you ignorant.

<comment><USER6> Please keep in mind that mod_security does a lot more than sanitize input. I use it to limit and control invalid http authentications, which is not natively supported in Apache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not part of this article: Sony ran unpatched Apache on a system actually containing sensitive data, Sony was actually hacked via unpatched Apache.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I saw this rumor a while back and I wasn't convinced it was related. It's like saying Area 51 had a gap in the fence. That said, it's obviously indicative of bad security practice and will likely count against them either way.

<comment><USER2> Los Alamos _did_ have a hole in the fence! Because everyone working there was a US citizen the censorship was voluntary and had limits, so Feynman was able to write a letter out describing where the hole was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've worked in IT in Japan for a little over 5 years now.

Getting people to /allow/ you to patch servers is like pulling teeth. Seriously.

If the OS itself is so far out of date that you can hardly find patches for it anymore, the issue is even worse.

The mere specter of something possibly breaking is usually reason enough in many people's minds to not prioritize security updates, or in some case, flat out disallow them.

Sadly.

Edit: keep in mind that this is anecdotal, I'm sure there are companies that patch their servers properly.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a feeling the upcoming lawsuits against sony aren't going to go well.

</comment><comment><USER11> An unpatched apache is hardly an apache at all.

<comment><USER12> hey that's catchy

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is bullshit.

If they're running RHEL (which is likely), the version number doesn't mean anything, since RedHat back ports all security patches.

</comment><comment><USER14> There is no mention of missing firewall in the report.

[http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Heari...](http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Hearings/CTCP/050411/Spafford.pdf)

Quote:

      In the Sony case, the majority of the victims are likely young   people whose sense of risk, privacy and
      consequence are not yet fully developed, and thus they may also not understand the full
      ramifications of what has happened.  Presumably, both companies are large enough that they
      could have afforded to spend an appropriate amount on security and privacy protections of
      their data; I have no information about what protections they had in place, although some
      news reports indicate that Sony was running software that was badly out of date, and had
      been warned about that risk.

</comment><comment><USER15> What version was it running? Can anyone point to an explanation of the exploit?

<comment><USER3> Here is the alledged IRC chat of hackers discussing it. No idea how real it is. <http://pastebin.com/m0ZxsjAb>

<comment><USER16> I thought it was shown that those people are discussing hacking the actual device (PS3), and not hacking PSN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anybody know what those hackers did to breach the servers?

</comment><comment><USER18> I would wonder if whomever their sys ad was, deliberately left their perimeter weak.

Also, did they _never_ do a security audit??

<comment><USER10> I've been dealing with Sony platforms as a game developer for over a decade, and their primary method of interacting with others is one of arrogance. From sample code that doesn't work and still has japanese comments, to incorrect documentation, to requiring developers to build all their own systems, sony often doesn't seem to give a shit about the outside world.

Given what I know about sony as a game developer, I would not be even remotely surprised to learn that they've never done a security audit.

<comment><USER19> I know some guys who are ex-SCEA dev support. According to them, the attitude of Sony's American and European teams was one of frustration that the Japanese headquarters are hardware guys with no interest in software. They have always been severely underfunded compared to the Xbox dev support team and they've had to make do by pushing off a lot of the work to the third parties.

<comment><USER10> Yeah that meshes with what I know as well. However I'm pretty sure when I started on the PS2 pre-launch, SCEA dev support didn't even exist. Sony Japan probably didn't feel it necessary.

Which is probably why all our docs were in Japanese for the first three months.

<comment><USER20> It's remarkable in this context how one of Sony's primary strengths for the Playstation franchise has always (certainly PS1/PS2) been having the broadest third-party support of any console out there.

<comment><USER10> Well, this started with the PS1 because it was actually quite easy to develop for. It had good tools, the tools were cheap, and you could build your game in C.

Contrast this to the N64 at the time, which had a $1000000 buy in for a developer license, or the Saturn which was, by all accounts, a nightmare to develop for that made the PS2 look like child's play.

After that, the support comes down to the economics of numbers. Most devs I know would have gladly made games on Dreamcast forever, but (piracy/marketing/apathy) killed it, and the PS2 was all that was left.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No phoenix firewall? pft</comment>


SpaceX Must Pay $4M for Thousands of Underpaid Employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/31478-spacex-settles-underpaid-workers-lawsuit-for-4-million <comment><USER2> Why is a settlement even allowed? If I tried walking out of Walmart with nothing more than an unpaid TV under the arm I'm looking at criminal charges. If someone drove away with a truck with 10000 TVs for Walmart (midrange, USD 400 each) and got caught they will look at a lengthy stay in prison.

But SpaceX gets to settle. They need a dedicated prison-goer, like the Yakuza have. This kind of misbehaviour is what criminal charges (as opposed to civil charges) are designed for.

<comment><USER3> Probably because employees had the right to quit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is probably true for Tesla as well. Many people I know in Tesla are overworked (not sure if they are underpaid though).

</comment><comment><USER5> Fire every one who got a settlement

<comment><USER6> Yea, that's a fantastic way to show maturity and that the company doesn't retaliate against employees... Sounds like something you'd expect from a place like Uber.

Treating employees poorly by not allowing simple breaks and then retaliating against them isn't made up by having a cool goal. If SpaceX in fact does that, I hope the rest of their employees leave.

<comment><USER5> Yes. an Uber thing, not likely for SpaceX. I suspect this was a scheme by lawyers and not by any abuse by Spacex</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Introducting Qbox.io - Hosted ElasticSearch with Free Dev Tier - <AUTHOR> http://qbox.io

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to show this can work, we put together a demo called "Million Person Search". This is, as you may have guessed, a table search with a million records to demonstrate how fast ElasticSearch is when it is powered by SSD's. There is a link to Github to document it. <http://qbox.io/demos>

</comment><comment><USER2> Per se the product looks interesting, but having all these new accounts praise it, looks a bit odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> We tweeted the link, herrherr... we have friends and backers, too.

If the product looks interesting, you should try the dev tier... there is no credit card required.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, looks like astroturfing comments from my end.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for teaching me a new term, I've not heard of astroturfing before.

Not sure how this will be applicable to any of my projects right now, but I've got to admit the demo's work impressively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These guys make ElasticSearch painless to deploy in your existing environment. Definitely nice when trying to focus on other infrastructure improvements.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure a Free Dev Tier of 10megs is gonna do much. Plus the astroturfing mentionned earlier is a big put off.

</comment><comment><USER7> How do you guys handle ES authentication? It isn't really clear from the curl snippets posted on the homepage.

</comment><comment><USER8> Personally connected with this team. They are talented and motivated to serve the search community!

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks great but when I click 'Get started now' on the homepage, registration isn't over SSL.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just the name and email link isn't over SSL... Once you confirm your account, then you will definitely be in https when you create an index.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This team knows what they're doing, very excited to see them evolve!</comment>


Dear US Kickstarter starter - <AUTHOR>

I don't want to send the wrong signal here. I absolutely LOVE Kickstarter. I've personally backed 30 projects and counting. I'd LOVE the thing even more if I could submit projects of my own as a Canadian, which I can't do for now, but that's not the subject of the present post. What worries me are shipping fees. The fact that so few project creators realizes that there are 2 levels of USPS international service with 2 very different cost levels involved: shipping to Canada and International. Please consider offering a lower than regular international shipping fee for Canadians on your next Kickstarter campaign. Or do as others and include Canada as your free shipping zone. You will be more successful for this, by at least 10%, maybe more (Canada's population is about one tenth of the US). Thanks! <comment><USER2> Not a bad idea. Best way to encourage projects to add better shipping support might be to purely ask questions to their project page! I know I'd add better shipping if I knew I had a backer waiting on me</comment>


Trump Wants 'Goddamned Steam,' Not Digital Catapults on Aircraft Carriers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/trump-wants-goddamned-steam-not-digital-catapults-on-aircraft-carriers/526386/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> If Trump is confused and infuriated by digital catapults, no one should tell him about the nuclear submarines, lest he order them all to run on kerosene.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a moment there, I thought he wanted Steam, the PC gaming service.

<comment><USER4> The joke is that he wants steamships, fueled by coal.</comment></comment>


One Man's Junk Is Another Man's Museum – Museum of Everyday Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/design/museum-of-every-day-life-vermont.html <comment><USER2> Cool initiative, great artifacts and curation. Why the gendered title? NYT needs to get with it - _especially_ when the artist, the "chief operating philosopher", happens to be female.</comment>


Why Supermarket Bacon Hides Its Fat - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-bacon-package-product-design/ <comment><USER2> In the UK, we mostly eat back bacon rather than the streaky bacon which predominates in the US, and it is usually packaged like this:

[https://www.ocado.com/productImages/637/63740011_0_640x640.j...](https://www.ocado.com/productImages/637/63740011_0_640x640.jpg)

There's no artful hiding, but the label covers the fatty tail.

Sometimes, fancy bacon is shingle-packed, but the top isn't covered:

[https://www.ocado.com/productImages/145/14531011_0_640x640.j...](https://www.ocado.com/productImages/145/14531011_0_640x640.jpg)

Even if it's streaky:

[https://www.ocado.com/productImages/265/26532011_0_640x640.j...](https://www.ocado.com/productImages/265/26532011_0_640x640.jpg)

I'd be interested to know if this is because of UK (or EU!) food packaging regulations, or if it's just local custom.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly enough, in New Zealand, shoulder bacon predominates, which is even leaner.

I think that shoulder bacon makes superior bacon butties, whilst streaky bacon is better in dishes with other things (such as macaroni cheese), where the fat adds a lot of flavour to the surrounding dish.

<comment><USER4> I recently spent a yeah in New Zealand and while I really like it there, I could never find bacon like at home in the US. Even the streaky bacon wouldn't crisp up like US bacon. I'm not sure what the difference is. Perhaps the NZ streaky bacon isn't cured in the same way? I'd love to know if anyone has the answer.

<comment><USER3> I think possibly NZ bacon is cured wetter than American bacon?

I guess it's an upbringing thing, but I really dislike crispy bacon, it just seems dry and overcooked to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two things I find fascinating here:

1\. People obviously know bacon is fatty, and buy it exactly for it, but still somehow hiding that fact seems beneficial. Moreover, it looks like at the base of this fact lies the anti-fat stance which now has been proven to have rather weak factual basis. I.e. we have a marketing trick counter-acting the effect of the bad propaganda.

2\. The government-mandated rear window is an example of a regulation that solves non-existing problem (if people didn't want fat they wouldn't buy bacon) by ineffective means (people that are so naive as to not know bacon is fatty surely wouldn't also know to look for that back window - how often you actually turn over the packages you buy in the supermarket?). Yet a lot of educated well-paid people are working tirelessly at implementing and supervising such regulation and they persist for years. Because otherwise what would happen? We would never know bacon has fat!

<comment><USER6> Not every pork belly is the same, and the fattier ones are sold as a cheaper brand. If you've ever bought the really cheap bacon, it shrivels up to nothing as it cooks. So the window does let you know what you're getting and let you make a price/value decision about how much fat you're willing to pay for.

I suspect that brand affinity may have something to do with people not using that window regularly. Once you find a bacon you like it's going to be relatively consistent. But without the window you can't really compare two brands.

<comment><USER5> You can do what consumers of other things do - buy a sample of each, taste which one you like the best and keep buying that one. It's not like we're talking about taking mortgage here, it's a pack of bacon, costing how much, five bucks?

<comment><USER7> If you are looking at premium brands, significantly more perhaps; lots of people are frugal enough that even if they are going to try more than one, they'd like to narrow the selection down before doing so -- and even decide whether or not its worth buying _any_ at their regular store, or whether they need to try elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> If you're looking for a premium brand, a small window is not going to help you much. I don't know how good your sight is, but mine doesn't allow me to bake it and taste it through the plastic ;) and if you're into premium brands, the sight won't be your defining factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish they'd package it the other way around. I buy bacon the for the fat, period.

<comment><USER9> You know there's fatback or slab bacon which is pretty much all fat or much more fatty than the more common side/streaky bacon, right?

<comment><USER10> Isn't it usually ridiculously salty? Even more so than regular bacon?

<comment><USER11> Yes. IMO the saltiness is a dealbreaker. Some regular bacons are borderline too salty for me though.

<comment><USER12> Salt pork is usually used to add flavor to other dishes like beans or greens.

<comment><USER11> Ah, see, I once made the mistake of purchasing "economy bacon" to save a buck only to find out what you just said.

there was a salty breakfast had that morning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article doesn't address why they do it. There's a quote from an ad a few decades ago, but the article doesn't answer the question. Interesting read nonetheless.

<comment><USER14> It might be less about health and more about the fact that low-quality bacon is almost all fat.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, this is really what you'd determine comparing brands. The mega brands like hormel, oscar mayer, etc will almost always have massively imbalanced fat proportions, and a lot of the time the smaller, or more expensive brands will be a lot closer to even. Fat's delicious in bacon, but it needs the muscley bits to hold it's own and not taste like chewing on lard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When plastic contamination in food was a big deal a few years ago I switched to the stacked pack bacon or buying it straight from the butcher. I always liked mine a little crunchy anyway, but I didn't know the meaty bacon could taste just as good or better than the stuff I was raised on. Now I can't go back.

I've had what England calls bacon and it just looks and tastes like a good boneless pork chop sliced like lunch meat. If I want that I'll have the poor chop and a dash of spices (have you tried lemon pepper or chili powder on a pork chop?)

<comment><USER17> I started buying my bacon from the butcher counter in the supermarket, and I'm now spoiled and can't go back to the packaged bacon. I like my bacon thick- sliced, and while I don't hate fat, I don't want to cook up a pound of bacon and drain off a whole coffee can full of grease - which I have done with packaged bacon. The funny thing is, that nice, good quality bacon that's up there with the filet mignons and shish kabobs at the counter, is the same price per pound as the Oscar Meyer thin-sliced garbage.

<comment><USER18> Have you tried baking your bacon yet? Line a shallow baking pan with foil and lay out strips, put it in a cold oven and turn it to 400 degrees. For thick- cut bacon, it will be done in 22-25 minutes. The ends may get a bit crispier, but it does such a wonderful job rendering the fat throughout the slice. SO tasty. None of the chewy partly-cooked fat. At all.

<comment><USER16> My in laws do that. I can't argue with their results but it's still damned irregular to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In Ukraine people like to eat salted raw pork fat called 'salo', and of course no one tries to hide its appearance. It looks like this: [http://img- fotki.yandex.ru/get/4420/12481978.15/0_5e518_b2c0...](http://img- fotki.yandex.ru/get/4420/12481978.15/0_5e518_b2c0abba_orig)

</comment><comment><USER20> Fat is good for you. Cut the carbs if you need to lose weight. Meaningless source of food.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just added weight reading that article. I need to cut down eating bacon but it is so good.

<comment> semi-extrinsic [https://xkcd.com/418/](https://xkcd.com/418/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And I'm done with the Internet for today. I will go out into the world, and try to interact with people. Some days I need a kick in the butt.

<comment><USER23> Bacon packages may seem of no consequence, but let me say kindly, just like Labor unions, there was a very real reason for these regulations to exist. Such things saved all of our rear ends until maybe today. A child of the late 60s, I remember some of the very lousy business practices that brought this stuff about; but I now realize that most businesses that would try something like that today would be tried in the public court in nothing flat. Then again maybe not; it didn't stop the outrage of the EpiPen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are we all going to ignore the fact that the author doesn't know what "prosaic" means?</comment>


Cold war bomb warmed by chickens - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3588465.stm <comment><USER2> Reminds me of this other cold war project, the pidgeon-guided missile: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon)

</comment><comment><USER3> The fact that there's such a thing as a nuclear landmine is more surprising to me than anything else in the story.

Edit: Article says it would have been manually, remotely detonated, so that's at least a little less crazy.

<comment><USER4> Israel is believed to have nuclear land mines placed in the Golan Heights, due to the strategic importance of that area. If Israel ever attacked and militarily forced to withdraw from that area, it's likely to become a radioactive exclusion zone.

<comment><USER5> Give how small that whole area is, it sounds cracy to consider it an option as this would likely radiate much more than just the heights ... with wind it would nicely spread out to the whole area. :(

<comment><USER4> When they believe that they face an existential threat, military planners often consider options which would otherwise be considered crazy. Look at mutually assured destruction, for example...

(Whether Israel actually _does_ face an existential threat is irrelevant here; the fact that they _believed_ they faced such a threat from their Arab neighbours explains their actions, regardless of whether that belief was correct.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it significant that the publish date is April Fool's Day, 2004?

<comment><USER7> > Tom O'Leary, head of education and interpretation at the National Archives, > told the paper: "It does seem like an April Fool but it most certainly is > not. The Civil Service does not do jokes."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my sleep deprived stupor, I read that title as "Cold War, Bombed by Chickens" and got very very interested.</comment>


4K TV (84") by Sony - <AUTHOR> http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&identifier=S_4KTV

<comment><AUTHOR> Super stoked about 4K. Does anyone have realistic insight as to how long it will take to reach consumer market? How about 4K computer monitors?</comment>


Apple updates its iMac line - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/03/imac-gets-a-2x-performance-boost/ <comment><USER8> Bought my iMac 7 years ago with 8GB as the default memory option and a 1TB fusion drive.

And here we are, nearly a decade later. Still 8 GB in the newest models. Still 1 TB fusion drives. GPUs haven't even seemed to take a jump over last year's models.

<comment><USER9> Plenty of folks use an iMac as the primary family machine - email, homework, some Netflix, kids' basic games. 8 GB is entirely sufficient for that. Hell, four probably is.

If you're doing Photoshop plus a half dozen VMs, you buy it with more RAM.

<comment><USER10> Chrome + Slack alone took up ~3 GB of RAM on my 4 GB machine and forced me to upgrade.

<comment><USER11> I use Slack in the browser instead. No more Electron crap.

<comment><USER12> I turned slack into a chrome "shortcut" (which seems to be a PWA minus the service worker), which lets it run in chrome instead of a separate electron instance, but also have a separate app window.

Ive also found having slack be ~another chrome tab, instead of a copy of chrome via electron, to be really nice

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's just frustrating, I switched the household over to Apple devices when OSX came out, and now there really aren't any systems from Apple that look interesting to me.

I've been programming since before the (Unix) dawn of time, and Apple devices have been good development machines for me since OSX was released 18 years ago. I'm comfortable on Linux, but the Apple iOS devices and computers are all over my home and integrate well with my development machines. Furthermore, the family does well with MacOS, and they don't need IT help with their email, iPhone, music, homework, printing, etc. like they used to under Windows.

I'd love to see Apple make a system that supported _upgradeable_ memory, SSDs, High capacity hard drives, graphics, and separate larger monitors, but that doesn't look like that will ever happen. By locking down the hardware to just certain configurations, the very successful stores can handle problems (hardware, software, and user related) at locations all over the world.

Even if Apple can't make the machines more upgradeable because of customer support issues, the new machines don't seem to be well designed for me. They have become too thin and too sleek and overpriced because of features I don't want (over sharp display, touchbar) and issues caused by the pursuit of sleekness and style (crap keyboards, thermal limits).

Lenovo (Thinkpads) offers thin, light, somewhat upgradeable, good looking laptops that are light to carry and easier to grip with great keyboards. I wish Apple could start with something like one of those and equip it with an Apple touchpad and MacOS.

I've been waiting and waiting for Apple to improve its line up (I'm writing this on a Mac Pro from 2013 with a nice 34 inch ultra-wide monitor). It looks like I'll never replace it. I know there are alternatives, my home/office are littered with computers, Thinkpads running Linux, Microsoft laptops, Dell Servers running FreeBSD, and homemade PCs running Windows (for gaming); but I'm going to miss using MacOS as my daily-driver.

<comment><USER14> Since you're using a desktop, what's wrong with the 2018 Mac Mini? Upgradable RAM, storage and GPU can be added externally. Dual 4k support out of the box or a single 5k should be enough for your single monitor?

<comment><USER15> Because the cost of all that external junk adds up and you create what is essentially a dongle town on your desktop. It defeats the whole purpose of a Mini.

I know because I tried to do this with a 2018 Mac Mini. Aside from the very lackluster GPU performance, it's a pretty speedy machine.

I had a fairly generous budget for a new computer. 32GB of RAM was about $200 from Crucial. The external SSD storage options were pretty crappy. Any sort of TB3 option was a few hundred dollars to start. I ended up settling with a USB3 2TB HDD. I then had to copy my Photo and iTunes libraries over to it and re- point the apps to the right spots.

For the external GPU, you're looking at about $500 at a minimum. And then you have to find a place for that to sit, and it's essentially the size of a small ITX PC case.

I ended up returning the Mini and just breaking down and building a vanilla hackintosh. A 8700K/32GB/1TB SSD/RX 580 ITX box with quality parts that's all in one small case (Fractal Design Define Nano S) in the same desk footprint as just the external GPU enclosure, and it's not a thermally-constrained dongletown.

Would I recommend it to anyone? No. But after an initially scary couple of hours, I have for all intents and purposes a normally-functioning macOS box that is noticeably quicker than the Mini for the cost of just the base Mini -- sans all the other junk I had to buy. The macOS install is vanilla, with SIP enabled, and no janky kexts in the OS install - NOTHING custom in the OS install. The bare minimum shoved in the EFI partition.

Everything works (sleep, audio, iMessage, etc). It was marginally more trouble than getting Windows 10 installed. Less trouble than getting Ubuntu installed.

God, it's glorious.

<comment><USER16> This sounds interesting - do you have a description of the hardware you used to hand?

<comment><USER15> [https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jake541/saved/#view=ZnVr6h](https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jake541/saved/#view=ZnVr6h)

As of today, the prices are higher than what I paid. If you're going to buy, monitor /r/buildapcsales on Reddit and buy your parts when they go on sale. I bought my stuff over a period of a couple weeks and saved substantial money.

Samsung SSD prices fluctuate by 10s of dollars. Other SSD manufacturers such as Intel and WD offer steep discounts at times. The RX 580 GPUs go on significant sales pretty often.

At some point, I need to finish my guide and publish to Github. I largely followed corpnewt's Vanilla Guide for Mojave [1], and followed the Coffee Lake train. It's important to follow each step closely.

Again, I do not recommend a hackintosh, but for me it worked out really well.

1\. [https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla- desktop-...](https://hackintosh.gitbook.io/-r-hackintosh-vanilla-desktop- guide/)

<comment><USER17> Just want to say thanks for sharing all this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The iMac is a great machine. I have a late 2014 iMac 5K 27" and it's still going strong with 32 gigs of RAM and 512G SSD. It had the max CPU for the time (4.0 ghz i7.) Apple Care expired end of 2017, so unless the thing dies or OS upgrades become unsupported, I don't have a reason to upgrade it.

<comment><USER19> Same here. My 3TB fusion drive died at some point but it lives on with just the 128GB ssd that came with that. Also, I connected an external 2 TB Samsung SSD to it which ended up being a nice performance upgrade as fusion drives are slow. Apple should just kill the fusion drive option; bad idea. You are better off with a proper ssd and external storage.

I maxed out the specs at the time, which in retrospect was a good choice since it has lasted me for five years. The screen is awesome and with a quad core i7 and 32GB there's not a lot it can't do comfortably even today.

Games are the exception as this is not a gaming machine. Yet, I regularly use x-plane on it as well and I get decent performance given that it is running on a laptop grade GPU that is five years old. It's actually more sensitive to CPU performance and the 4Ghz core i7 is still pretty nice. CPUs have gotten faster but not a lot in the last five years. Certainly they have not doubled in performance twice. Rip Moore's law, I guess.

I don't run x-plane at native resolution because I gain a few FPS by using a slightly lower resolution but it is actually usable at native resolution if you can live with lower graphic settings. If you are into this, I maxed out most graphics settings like maximum objects, texture resolution, etc. but have reduced reflections to the minimum (kills performance with not a lot of visual impact) and reduced anti-aliasing settings and shadows as well. Tuning x-plane is a bit of dark art but generally it can look great on even modest hardware. I also use a lot (several hundreds of GB) of high resolution Ortho4XP scenery and and other custom scenery. Typically seeing between 20/30 FPS. So, looking pretty good and it uses the 32 GB. The AMD m295x with 4GB has been pretty good.

It's a bit disappointing that five years later the state of the art Imac is essentially the same with a slightly newer CPU and GPU. Sure it will be faster but a 2x performance boost will only be true for software that maxes out all 8 cores. Still, nothing wrong with the vega and i9 combo. I'd take that provided there are no thermal issues. I had the same kind of disappointment when I replaced my 2012 MBP with a new one a bit over a year ago. My java build ended up roughly 30% faster only (maxing out all cores). I suspect my comparatively ancient iMac might be faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Still selling brand new machines with 5400 rpm HDs. In 2019.

It undermines the brand. Any Mac a customer buys should have good enough performance. 5400 spinning disk hasn't been fast enough for a decade.

<comment><USER21> It's a fusion drive so most "normal people" likely won't notice unless they have a huge photo library.

My guess is they want 1TB so they can upsell you to 3 or 4TB, which would be prohibitively expensive with SSDs right now.

Edit: I was wrong, the lowest tier iMacs actually have a 1TB regular drive. That's crazy considering the lowest tier Mac is almost always the most popular.

<comment><USER22> I made the mistake of buying an iMac last year with a fusion drive. I assumed that since it was an Apple product it would have relatively good performance. It is unbelievably slow and negates the high performance characteristics of the rest of the system.

I have tremendous buyer's remorse and rarely use the machine. Whenever I do use it, the feeling I get is "how could Apple do this to its brand?". The machine cost over $3K and is slower than a $400 Intel NUC for all practical purposes.

The lack of upgradability adds insult to injury. Apple would be better off putting in solid state storage that is a few generations old, as it would still be orders of magnitude faster than the mechanical drive.

<comment><USER23> So you couldn't just by an SSD external drive and boot off of that?

<comment><USER24> So now you have to carry an external HDD around with you and plug it in every time you want it to boot up?

<comment><USER25> We're talking about iMacs. In case it's not clear, that's a desktop system not a portable one.

<comment><USER24> Ah. I got mixed up. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Huh... The title of their press release seems to me somewhat clickbait-y... Why not 'iMac got a hardware refresh; now with 2x performance'? When I read this, I thought, 'oh wow, Apple really outdid itself with their SW optimisations'.

Overall, I'm kinda disappointed that the 21' and 27' macs get different CPU gens. Why? Why not just have the latest gen in both of them? Is it price, or is it more about artificial performance impediment?

<comment><USER27> have you never seen an apple press release? Every product is 2x as fast as the old one, based on a cherry picked benchmark

<comment><USER28> In this case it's not just marketing speech: the new top end CPU is i9-9900k, it's ALMOST 2x faster than the previous top end CPU (i7-7700k) for multi-core benchmark.

[https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/2548](https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/2548)

[https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/1779](https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/1779)

<comment><USER29> Of course it's almost 2x faster; it has 2x the cores. Meanwhile the single- core score is almost the same for both. I've never seen anyone try to put together a good breakdown on how various common workflows stack up, but I would bet that most benefit very little from the extra 4 cores.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I hope this is indicative of Apple starting to get it, no one wants to buy a machine that is 3-4 years behind the curve. I could live with having a fast hardware refresh cycle and a slower design one.

<comment><USER31> Agreed. Updates 2 days in a row is a bit of a new thing for Apple. It is a good change if they are setting a precedence for doing more frequent spec bumps outside of events. We will not know for sure until 6-9-12 months from now.

<comment><USER32> They have an event soon and seem to be getting other announcements out of the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> re: RAM, I bought a 2015 iMac with a 1TB drive on Craiglist last month, thinking it might be the perfect machine to edit and store/serve family photos (mac --> Google Photos and mac --> BackBlaze).

It never in a million years would have occurred to me that 1) 8GB on a 2015 machine would be utterly, pathetically underpowered for even browsing the web, or 2) that an iMac would be sold in 2015 that would not let you upgrade the RAM.

I quickly re-sold it to another person who I bet also hadn't imagined these things.

<comment><USER34> I bought one of those from best buy and quickly hit the wall with the 5400 rpm drive. I bought the iMac repair kit from ifixit and put a 1tb ssd in its place. It screams now. I have literally never had a drive swap make such a HUGE performance improvement.

<comment><USER35> Can confirm. 2012 Imac with 1TB rust disk was truly feeling its age. Swapped to small SSD I had laying around just to see what would happen and just SuperDuper-ed the old OS. Could not believe the difference. You just have to see it happen to get it. Best upgrade ever.

<comment><USER36> Agreed. I had a 2009 iMac with 640GB (7200 rpm) disk and 4 GB ram. I swapped to a smaller (250 GB) SSD and upgraded to 8 GB ram and it's like a new machine for me--a great upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've always had a fondness for the iMac which I've been using as my main Desktop since the last PowerPC version, IMO they've always been a mark of the best all-in-one of the day, lots of people like to focus on the internals but it ignores the noise and clutter free desktop and top build quality I've enjoyed for over a decade.

I've upgraded 4 times since and am currently enjoying the iMac 5k, this floating screen is beautiful on the inside and out, the 5k is gorgeous and its form factor is near perfect, still just a single power cord disappearing out from behind it and wireless for everything else.

I've got the high-end version with Max CPU and SSD so I'll skip this version but will in all likelihood get the next unless someone ships a better all-in- one, which never happens.

</comment><comment> sahin-boydas Did you guys see this?

"iMac Pro now available with 256 GB RAM option … for an extra $5200"

sort of pricey.

[https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/19/256-gb-ram-imac- pro/](https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/19/256-gb-ram-imac-pro/)

<comment><USER38> Looks like it costs $3,381 off-the-shelf: [https://www.avadirect.com/256GB-4-x-64GB-Quad-Rank- DDR4-2666...](https://www.avadirect.com/256GB-4-x-64GB-Quad-Rank-DDR4-2666MHz- CL19-ECC-Load-Reduced-Memory/Product/11428748)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It seems to me this product is on life support and Apple is simply doing performance bumps to avoid big capex expenses on designing/tooling for something new? It ships with a 5,400 RPM disk, an outdated display technology, omits T2 chipset, doesn't include Face ID, nor any of their other innovations over the last year. It's actually egregious to stuff old hardware in a workable form factor and hock it, while ignoring that they're not backporting _any_ of their other innovations back to these devices.

And that's not to mention: buying a $3500 screen glued to a computer is massively risky.

<comment><USER40> Well the Mac Mini got a recent refresh with decent processors, the new Mac Pro is reputedly just around the corner and there is a rumour they are going to release a new display soon. My guess is you are right, it's on life support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I find it curious that Apple is starting to communicate major product updates decoupled from an event. Just good old press releases.

Maybe they already have too many announcements to fit into the narrative of the handful of events per year.

<comment><USER42> This is not the first time that they have significant updates days before a major announcement.

I suspect that Apply keeps a lot of options for things to talk about until the last days. They wait for every key aspect of the announcement to be confirmed (which can be days earlier). That allows them to focus on the expected change if they are ready, or, if there is a last-minute issue, they can talk about spec upgrades to fill the hour, or rather to __ramp up __the announcement (e.g. "With all that memory, HD videos are going to look _gorgeous_. And you know where you can find HD videos? Boom! New VOD service!"). It's consistent with descriptions of how Steve Jobs would scrape large segments of his keynotes at the last minute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I just wish there was a way to run OSX on a high-performance server, or a cloud virtual machine, for continuous-integration purposes. The iMac Pro doesn't cut it, and is a pain to host anywhere. I'd like to test-build applications for OSX alongside CI builds for Linux and Windows, and there's no sensible, legal, scalable solution for that.

<comment><USER44> Searching for "macos hosting", here are the first seven links I found:

XCLOUD - macOS Cloud Hosting - [https://xcloud.me](https://xcloud.me) XCLOUD is an enterprise-class IaaS for macOS. It is perfect for developers and companies that need to run one or hundreds of dedicated macOS VMs in the Cloud. In fact, each XCLOUD instance is a dedicated virtual machine running macOS version of your choice .

MacStadium | Apple Mac Infrastructure & Private Clouds - [https://www.macstadium.com](https://www.macstadium.com) MacStadium is the only provider of enterprise-class Apple Mac infrastructure. Whether you need to deploy a private cloud for large-scale CI/CD or just need a single Mac mini to test your iOS app, MacStadium has a solution for all of your Mac development needs.

MacHighway | Mac Web Hosting | Website Builder & VPS Hosting - [https://www.machighway.com](https://www.machighway.com) MacHighway's renewable energy initiative means that not only do we reduce our environmental impact, but you do, too - simply by choosing us as your hosting provider. We purchase enough wind energy credits from Renewable Choice Energy to cover what our servers, network center, and offices use.

macOS Server Hosting - Colocation America - [https://www.colocationamerica.com/dedicated-servers/mac- os-x...](https://www.colocationamerica.com/dedicated-servers/mac-os-x.htm) Colocation America has a dedicated server for all the Mac heads out there that are looking to run the latest Mac Operating System (OS) server hosting with their favorite operating system. Reap the benefits of Apple's latest macOS with its airtight security features and its world renowned user-friendly interface.

CloudXMac - Mac VPS macOS VPS Cloud - [https://cloudxmac.com](https://cloudxmac.com) High-quality macOS VPS with incredible support from multiple locations around the world.You can connect to the macOS VPS from any devices to use iMessage, develop iOS and Xcode applications, run any MAC software and more!

HostMyApple: Mac VPS cloud Hosting of macOS - [https://www.hostmyapple.com/macvps.html](https://www.hostmyapple.com/macvps.html) With up to 8GB of RAM and the option to expand storage HostMyApple offers powerful and affordable Mac VPS hosting. With no hardware to purchase, running your own macOS server is an easy choice for anyone looking to host their own website, share files, run mail services or develop iOS applications, all with the power of macOS Mojave.

macOS in the cloud. - Mac mini Hosting & Colocation - [https://www.macminivault.com/try/](https://www.macminivault.com/try/) macOS in the cloud. We specialize in hosting Macs in data centers. Our two data centers (Milwaukee and Phoenix) host thousands of Macs. We have high density cabinets for both the Mac mini and Mac Pro.

<comment><USER43> I'm aware of such services; however, I said "high-performance server". Where do I get a 72-thread server I can build OSX software on? Nowhere.

More importantly, who has a scalable cloud where I can spin up as many such servers of varying sizes as I need?

<comment><USER45> You haven't investigated these services. MacStadium will help you do this if for some reason their virtual Mac cloud product doesn't work for you.

<comment><USER43> I did investigate all of those services before I replied. I see that MacStadium will manage Mac Pro systems, but those don't have nearly the processing power I'd want. As I said, where can I get a 36-core 72-thread Mac? Nowhere, at least not legally.

<comment><USER45> Why doesn't their private cloud service give you that? It doesn't seem reasonable to insist you get all your computing power from one physical machine if another solution is available.

<comment><USER43> Because I can't do make -j72 (or the Ninja equivalent) across multiple machines.

There are multiple reasons to want a single large machine rather than distributed systems. I can get that for a Linux or Windows machine, quite easily, from hundreds of vendors.

<comment><USER45> You're right. I thought they could abstract away the network parallelization but they can't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I _really_ wish I could buy a headless Mac with similar performance (including a real video card) and price. The mini doesn't quite meet my needs and the pro at $3k+ is way too expensive. These specs look good (although I would greatly prefer SSD) but I really don't want an extra monitor on my desk.

<comment><USER47> The mini + eGPU seems like it would be a candidate then?

<comment><USER46> I suppose so. I don't know much about eGPUs. I see the cheapest one available on the Apple store is $700 which includes a Radeon Pro 580 (appears to be the same card offered on the top of line iMac from today?). With SSDs on the Mini being as expensive as they are ($800 to upgrade to 1TB), I'd probably want an external HD as well, so minimum 3 boxes on my desk and more chords to deal with.

It would meet my needs and I might reluctantly get one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hey Apple! While you're on this upgrade sprint, I wish out of the blue, an iPhone SE 2 is also announced.

<comment><USER38> The more time passes, the more it looks like they released an SE by mistake, still be best phone ever made IMHO but doesn't fit the strategy of upselling as much as possible.

<comment><USER49> Reading your comment on my iPhone SE. It really is the best ultra-portable smartphone ever released :)

I'm a bit puzzled as to why they don't just keep selling it, maybe with an upgraded SOC but no other new components. I don't think it would cannibalize sales of their mainline phones, and it would give lower income people a path to buy into their ecosystem. They're taking that approach with the iPad line. Maybe it didn't sell as well as I thought it did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Maybe the best feature:

> 8GB (two 4GB) of 2666MHz DDR4 memory; four SO-DIMM slots, _user accessible_

<comment><USER51> I haven't needed to touch my memory in forever; why is this still apparently weighed so heavily? Or is that one of those things where you try to go around the Apple tax of more memory by installing your own?

<comment><USER52> Because when RAM was dirt cheap, you would pay triple the price if ordered from Apple. It's ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Still have an old first-gen i5 powered 27" iMac. I pulled it out of the closet a year ago and replaced the dead OEM hard drive with an SSD and set it up in a corner of the living room as a GP/web machine. The optical drive is dead and a couple of the USB ports don't work, but it's still useful (nice screen, still). It's the last mac in the house, though, and I'll never buy another one.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm still running a 2012 iMac with fusion drive and it still feels slicker to me than a high spec Windows machine.

<comment><USER55> What would you consider a "high spec" Windows machine?

<comment><USER54> Dell XPS laptop from 2018.

<comment><USER56> That's not a high spec Windows machine, that's just a high spec Windows laptop.

<comment><USER54> High spec is subjective.. it's high spec compared to a 2012 iMac

<comment><USER56> Well, it depends. Which particular 2018 XPS are you referring to?

Some Passmark CPU comparisons:

2012 iMac with the i7 3770 - <USER2>

XPS 13 i7-8550U - <USER3>

XPS 15 i7-8750H -12477 (Note that XPS 15s tend to be thermally throttled also)

Desktop i7 9700K - <USER4>

Desktop i9 9900X - <USER5>

Desktop Ryzen 2920X - <USER6>

A high spec laptop doesn't compare with a high spec desktop CPU, especially if it's a U class CPU like the ones used by the XPS 13 (which seems to be way more popular than the XPS 15).

If you have an i7 2012 iMac, it still holds its own to any top end ultrabook (U) class CPU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The Vega 48 GPU seems disappointing for a machine that expensive.

<comment><USER58> Agree, I would want at least a Vega 64 for that amount of money (Or even a Radeon VII!). But then Apple has to think about cooling inside the small chassis, so they might not have a choice. (They managed to fix a Vega 64X in the iMac Pro, but the Pro lineup has different thermal management than the normal one)

<comment><USER57> It seems crazy to me that Apple compromised the cooling solution of their desktop machine to save 5mm of thickness. Does anyone outside of Apple's marketing department care about the thickness of their desktop machine as long as it is below an inch or two?

<comment><USER59> We're not the target audience. For programmers, developers etc, Apple has the Mac Pro.

<comment><USER60> The Mac Pro has not been updated since Dec 2013.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> It seems that the price point of i9+32GB+1TB SSD+Vega 48 is about the same price ($5000) as the baseline iMac Pro. Imac Pro comes with Xeon processor and Vega 56 though. Is the iMac Pro better at this price point?

<comment><USER62> For that price tag, I can build a full server with more pimped specs and that can do much more. 5000$ are too much

<comment><USER61> There aren't really options if you want the form factor, silent operation and MacOS.

Also, I won't be upgrading my main work computer in at least 5 years. I'm now on 2011 iMac which is still a great computer, but unfortunately can't be updated to the latest MacOS any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> An interview with the iMac product manager. Mostly a fluff piece but Jason Snell did ask about the continued use of non SSD hard drives. (Link will bring up a web page if you don't have Overcast.)

[https://overcast.fm/+Fcm8vPRGM](https://overcast.fm/+Fcm8vPRGM)

</comment><comment><USER63> Proof that Apple has anorexia: 5mm thin on the outer edge of the all-in-one computer and monitor. Thinner than a lot of monitor-only's everywhere else. What is the purpose? Who would not trade a thicker stationary monitor for better upgrade-ability and/or a cheaper price? Look behind your monitor - <USER7> are, it's just a bunch of empty space behind it on your desk. I would love to be a little bird on the wall in the Apple strategy meetings where they decided that iMacs need to be that thin. I still have an old iMac G3 kicking around from 1999. It's over a foot deep, just takes up the empty space behind the screen on the desk - no big deal.

<comment><USER64> As a counterpoint: Aesthetics matter to a non-trivial percentage of computer users. I love the iMac's design and it was a pretty big selling point to me and differentiated the model from the other available desktops. I use an arm- style mount and couldnt be happier with the overall lack of wires and thin aesthetics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> My 2017 MacBook pro is definitely my last Apple laptop because it's just too expensive and unreliable (for reasons well discussed on HN). I have definitely considered getting a Mac Mini, but the new iMacs are definitely interesting. One thing I'd be concerned about is cooling. I know the iMac Pros are not ideal from a cooling perspective - I can't imagine an 8 core processor @ 5GHz plus a Radeon Pro GPU runs cool. I'll wait for the user-upgradable Mac Pro before I make a decision.

<comment> pickle-wizard I've been saying for 10 years, that I am going to switch from a Mac to a ThinkPad running Linux. Yet I keep buying Macs. My latest was a MacBook Air. It really wasn't that much more than the ThinkPad I was looking at.

<comment><USER66> Their steps backward in MacBook functionality (keyboard, ports, touchbar which is at best a wash) and the price hikes over the last ~4yrs have me thinking about going back to Linux. But I need a laptop, and don't want to feel like I _have_ to have a mouse to use it and not be miserable. And good battery life, and power management so reliable I never have to think about it (close the lid, pick it up, walk off). They're _so far_ ahead of everyone else it's hard to justify switching even when they keep screwing up and raising prices for _years_. It's more a testament to how bad every other hardware+software combo is, at this point, than how good they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The CPU increases are welcome, but I was hoping for the rumored 6K displays.

No space grey, no T2 chip, no Touchbar.

Somehow they still sell the 1080 21" model for $1099.

<comment><USER67> No touch bar is a win IMHO. I'm not against it per se, but a soft `esc` was a mistake.

<comment><USER68> vim lifer here, I'm dreading the day my 2015 rMBP dies.

<comment><USER69> You should probably stop using the tiny escape key long before that happens. Either swap out caps for esc (my pref), start using ^[ or do one of these tricks: [https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key](https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key)

<comment><USER70> I don't know if you've tried this, but consider using caps lock for ctrl (the other tiny harder to reach key) and jk for esc. The home row reachability of jk is actually really nice and having ctrl remapped seals the deal for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> If only they offered with a Nvidia GPU

</comment><comment><USER72> If you're in the market for this model, do yourself a favour and don't buy the base configuration with the unusably slow 5400 rpm HDD. I bought the previous model with that hard drive and the startup performance is appalling

</comment><comment><USER73> The "upgrade" to 512GB SSD is not so bad, but to upgrade to 32GB RAM it's $600? Yikes...

Looks like Apple is starting to put a premium on OSX rather than going quality-first for its hardware.

<comment><USER23> RAM upgrades from Apple have been ridiculously overpriced for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Why can't you upgrade to the new CPU on the 21.5" models?

<comment><USER27> Probably the same reason you can't on the MacBook Air

<comment><USER75> So... No real reason?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> If you're intending to Bootcamp your iMac, remember that Windows will only use the slow AF spinning rust portion of the fusion drive. The SSD is worth it in this case.

</comment><comment><USER77> Disappointed we have another year of the same iMac design, especially with serious Mac Pro rumors swirling.

Guess I'll wait for the laptops this year to see HOW Apple gets my money lol.

<comment><USER78> I don't get the craving for a new design, the form-factor is pretty great as it is. Surely they'll eventually update it as well, but I'm a lot more interested in the internals/display/IO than the chassis.

<comment><USER79> humm I'd love to see thinner bezels and also face ID on the iMac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> The price for upgrading remains as ridiculous as ever (especially if you're not in the US).

RAM:

8 GB -> 16 GB is 2200 SEK (239 USD)

8 GB -> 32 GB is 6600 SEK (717 USD)

You can get 32GB as low as 1689 SEK (183 USD) on Newegg.

<comment><USER80> isn't the RAM soldered in on iMacs?

<comment><USER81> I don't think so at least as of mid-2017, I just searched and found videos on how to do the upgrade. Basically turn the thing over, open a latch, and swap out the ram.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious how the thermals will be with the i7 and i9 chips.

The 2017 5K iMac had cooling problems with the infamous i7 7700K.

</comment><comment><USER82> it's easy to add an external SSD to an iMac, install the OS on it and configure it to boot off of it. I have gotten great performance out of an old iMac by doing this.

</comment><comment><USER83> And if you buy two of these, you get a 4X performance boost!

</comment><comment><USER84> I'm going Razer for higher-end upgradeable laptops & custom builds for anything which isn't going to be portable.

</comment><comment><USER85> 5400RPM HDD in 2019

</comment><comment><USER86> "Apply,".... is now making Macs wonder what "Apple," thinks of this?

</comment><comment><USER87> When will they produce an Ultra-wide (21:9) screen iMac?

<comment><USER88> Once they figured out how to make it sound like a new revolutionary thing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Cool HW, however fusion drive in 2019? Apple wake up!

</comment><comment><USER52> "iMac gets a 2x performance boost"

[Citation needed]

<comment><USER90> The link you just copy/pasted is literally the citation

<comment><USER52> It's 2x faster because Apple says so. OK.

<comment><USER90> The general rule on HN is to use the same headline as the article you're linking to and not to editorialize in your title. So when you're linking to an Apple press release then of course it's Apple saying it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> One word: hackintosh.

<comment><USER11> I started fiddling with hackintoshes in 2010 and since then I've built maybe a dozen ones for me or my friends.

I now own a 5K iMac. My time is worth more than the difference in price between a hackintosh and a real mac.

Of course if you are in it for hardware freedom instead of cost then a hackintosh is your only option, but it's very difficult to get a perfect build and updating the OS is always a Russian roulette game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> @dang typo: This has been up for 5 hours with the title "Apply" instead of "Apple"?

<comment><USER93> Typing fail—sorry!

The submitted title was "iMac gets a 2x performance boost" but I changed that about 15 minutes before you posted, because we try to avoid press-release language on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> > _...ideal for pros with graphics-intensive workloads..._

Did a bot write this? No one uses "pros" in writing like this to refer to professionals.

<comment><USER94> Really, this release was either written by a bot or a non-native English speaker.

> _From consumers to pros alike, users will notice their iMac is faster for > everyday tasks all the way up to the most demanding pro workloads._

This is not a natural sentence.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Curtain for Parents – Curtain for Parents – Your Children's Safeguard - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/curtain-for-parents-your-childrens/id1116925192?ls=1&mt=8 <comment><USER2> isn't this just a flawed product? children's safeguard - if it is safari only. This is not really sufficient, or -safe-.

Anyone can easily circumvent this by installing a different browser, visit a friend or breaking the rules in the product themselves.

as a parent don't believe you are safe, or that you have done your part only by installing this software---or any similar software like this.

if you want to protect your kids, educate them.</comment>


Engineering Security (2014) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/book.pdf <comment><USER2> Note that Guttman was also one of the people who gave formal, methods people a reality check:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170214231046/http://www.cypher...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170214231046/http://www.cypherpunks.to/~peter/04_verif_techniques.pdf)

His work taught me to watch out for such problems. Plus, keep a mix of formal and empirical methods on any given project so they cross-check each other.

</comment><comment><USER3> Extremely interesting to read how data availability is very often (in the military, no less) more useful than both confidentiality (because any eavesdroppers are unlikely to be able to act on the information quickly enough) and authenticity. I wonder if the latter is because of some combination of the difficulty of crafting a believable message which will have the intended effect and the hardware requirements, because the sky isn't full of nuclear missiles.

</comment><comment><USER4> The part on the placebo SSL certificate is interesting ([https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/book.pdf#page37](https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/book.pdf#page37)). Do users really ignore the big red warnings that web browsers give for invalid certificates? I imagine that it has to do with the fact that someone would rather be able to do what they want to do instead of heeding a warning they don't understand.

<comment><USER5> This phenomenon even has a name. Dancing pigs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_pigs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_pigs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note the Author is Dr Peter Gutmann, maintainer of Cryptlib. Highly recommend you go to one of his talks if you ever get the chance,

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow this guy is snarky (probably with good reason though).

<comment><USER7> On further reading it seems like just the intro section is (imo) unnecessarily hostile. This is a pretty engrossing read - although I'm skimming through and just reading all of the amusing anecdotes.

Specific example: Phrases like "Fashion Statement Technology" seemed kind of unhelpful, better keeping the explanation of why they are bad without the snarky labels.

<comment><USER8> For a variety of reasons, snark is omnipresent in security culture. This writing style is immediately familiar to me as a result.

<comment><USER7> Just dropping my two cents in as the author was asking for feedback. No idea if they're reading this thread though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>