Intel and ME, and why we should get rid of ME - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/intel-me-and-why-we-should-get-rid-of-me <comment><USER2> Intel remote management with support for using the wireless card is something that got me quite terrified when I first tried on my T420. Basically, no recent intel laptop can ever be secured, unless you physically remove the wireless and wired network card.

Intel has a jolly video demoing how to pwn a machine remotely (framed in the positive light of taking control and fixing a boot problem by the it service desk):

[http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/remote- support/remote...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/remote- support/remote-support-vpro-easy-operating-system-reimaging-video.html)

This is for 6th generation+ cpus, but the systems in older cpus are also quite powerful. And can't really be protected beyond using a password/passphrase. I'm not sure (and probably no-one knows) if there's also a golden key/backdoor.

(I wonder if the video is actually narrated by Zach Woods (Donald 'Jared' Dunn from Silicon Valley) - or if it just sounds a bit like that).

At any rate, if watching that jolly video doesn't fill you with fear, I'd say you're not sufficiently paranoid.

<comment><USER3> You can disable the remote management and the entire embedded network stack though.

<comment><USER4> That's not so easy to do. To get a sense of what's required...

[https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-business- clien...](https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-business-client- software-development/topic/563988)

Plus, even you disable it there's still room for exploits, previous versions of Intel AMT have had exploits. Check out the 'Known vulnerabilities and exploits' section of the Intel AMT Wikipedia page:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Tech...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology)

<comment><USER5> Enabling it isn't generally easier either, and it can be secured with certificates on both side. Every time this topic is brought up I'm surprised by the number of people who think remote access is bad and cannot possibly be secured, while not actually digging into what it would take to compromise such a machine.

Maybe it's the server admin in me, but OOB BIOS-level remote access and management for my systems is a godsend and my biggest issue with it is that they tend not to include those features in their "enthusiast" chipsets.

<comment><USER4> The features are included in all modern Intel CPUs AFAIK, if you found one where it wasn't included please let me know as its absence would be a feature for me.

As for the number of people who think remote access is bad, nobody seems to be denying it can be useful, but by baking it into hardware you're basically hoping that it doesn't get hacked. If it was an optional dongle nobody would care.

<comment><USER5> The remote access part is called AMT[1] and is part of the Intel vPro[2] feature set. It most certainly is not enabled in all modern Intel processors. Further, it requires a compatible processor, chipset, and BIOS for it to be enabled.

There is a common misunderstanding in these discussions that the ME features of the Intel processor (included in nearly all modern procs) allows for hardware level remote access, which isn't true.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Techno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, right. I suppose we're just supposed to take their word for that. There's an enormous difference between the concepts of trusted and trustworthy. You're extremely naive or clearly never read anything Snowden released if you think 'trust us' is enough.

<comment><USER5> Are you suggesting Intel has implemented hidden backdoors into all of their systems?

<comment><USER7> Not OP but it could be very much possible and that's what OP is trying to say. Just taking it on Intel's word that they haven't done it is not the correct way to go. For the truly privacy minded, it's better to err on the side of caution.

<comment><USER5> Err on the side of caution in this sense would mean fabricating your own proc. Are you going to do that?

<comment><USER8> How do you know the fab you send your design to doesn't implement a backdoor? You have to have trust at SOME level.

<comment><USER5> That is exactly my point. If you don't trust Intel, then who are you suggesting should build your processor? Unless you are going to design and fabricate your entire system top to bottom, and have no other persons involved who could surreptitiously insert evil code, then you're going to have to accept some degree of trust in a 3rd party.

<comment><USER6> It's not just Intel you're trusting, it's the OEMs, who also have an EXTREMELY poor record. Just take a look at the ENORMOUS number up BMC and auto-update vulnerabilities. They really just either couldn't care less, or are deliberately making machines vulnerable. Things are being pushed into IME, that aren't optional, often aren't wanted by users (or snuck in there so they wouldn't know), don't all have to be there, can't be verifiably disabled or overriden by end users. Even if it weren't backdoored (unlikely), it presents an ENORMOUS attack surface at the very worst possible privilege level. Open source designs that are at least inspectable by researchers would be a start. But more importantly - allowing users to CHOOSE whether they want to override software (it IS after all software and not hardware). Why shouldn't we be permitted to run Libreboot etc on modern hardware and know that when we turn a machine off, that it's off, without unplugging network, power cables, batteries, etc?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, no one here has mentioned Johanna Rutkovska's (Invisible Things Lab & QubesOS), "Intel x86 Considered Harmful"?

[http://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf](http://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf) [http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2015/10/27/x86_harmful.html](http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2015/10/27/x86_harmful.html)

Essential reading!!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcwngbUrZNg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcwngbUrZNg)

<comment><USER9> Joanna is a hero.

Also, I would give anything for a clean slate design that prioritized simplicity and transparency.

We've been layering complicated crap under and on top of older complicated crap for so long that even professional engineers no longer understand exactly what happens when you push the power button.

As long as that is true, we will never be secure.

<comment><USER6> Totally agree. She's brilliant. Deepest respect to her.

One of the extremely few people with genuine understanding of hardware security, who's working on the side of users & humanity.

The first time I read her work, I was floored that I hadn't known of her earlier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was another thread on ME. At some point ME will get hacked or the golden certificate stolen, at which point someone will have a lot of access.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813029)

<comment><USER11> > My first thought was that it seems increasingly clear that Stallman has been > right all along. The problem is that being philosophically right doesn't > always mean being practically right. In order to create the perfect > Stallman-esque machine, one would have to design everything from the logic > chips up from scratch, because in the end, no third party can be trusted. He > says this himself about the Loongson system he uses daily; he considers it a > compromise but one heavily weighted in his favor. In short, Stallman has > been right all along, but there's little we can do about it from a practical > standpoint.

Cherry-picked from that thread. I just have to point out this awful slippery- slope argument.

<comment><USER12> Just because we list slippery slope as a fallacy, does not mean it never happens like that.

Basically Intel owns the desktop and server market. They sneak stuff in that we may not want. What can we do at this point?

<comment><USER6> Vocally support Power8 and RISC-V projects and ensure Intel knows you're angry.

<comment><USER8> Like what happened with the NSA? Not to be rude, but you can be vocal all you want, but as long as the majority of the public doesn't care, there's not much you can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope these guys get lots of orders and prices fall (Raptor's Talos Secure Workstation): [https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php](https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php)

With Google having ported all their software to Power8, I'm looking forward to more economies of scale kicking on.

<comment><USER13> It looks great, except it has a ASpeed AST2400 BMC on the board which seems to do video and usb over IP etc (edit: eg it ties into networking, pci, usb, memory)...

Unless the firmware running on the BMC is going to be open source, I fail to see how it helps.

<comment><USER6> Does this cover your concerns?

      Open-toolchain FPGAs
      Blob-free operation
      - Fully libre (open-source) IBM OPAL primary firmware w/ PetitBoot interface
      - Fully libre (open-source) OpenBMC secondary (IPMI / OoBM) firmware
      NO signing keys preventing firmware modification

<comment><USER13> Gets most of the way there, though I'm confused as to the wording on the BSC. "Fully libre OpenBMC _secondary_ firmware". Still slightly worried as to the meaning of Secondary firmware; almost makes me think the BSC has non-libre _primary_ firmware on there too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FWIW, there is a petition for Intel to Release an ME-less CPU design: [https://puri.sm/posts/petition-for-intel-to-release-an-me- le...](https://puri.sm/posts/petition-for-intel-to-release-an-me-less-cpu- design/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't see how getting rid of the ME helps. If you don't trust Intel then you don't trust Intel. They can backdoor the main CPU as easily as they can backdoor the ME. The only true solution is an Open Source Hardware CPU, and some means of verifying that the hardware matches the HDL.

There are already Open Source CPU designs, but the verification is more difficult. Even if you use a big enough process node that you can decap it and inspect it optically (eg. using similar techniques as used with [http://visual6502.org/](http://visual6502.org/) ), there is still the possibility of dopant-level backdoors which are much harder to detect:

[http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf](http://sharps.org/wp- content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Trusting Intel on producing a CPU, and trusting Intel with ME are completely different levels of trust. If I could run my own software on the Intel ME, I wouldn't mind.

In some sense having Intel ME is worse than having Windows as your OS: at least you can apply security patches for Windows, and should you choose to do so you can replace it with your favourite OS. However Intel ME is entirely closed source and locked down: probably running out-of-date software with several unpatched vulnerabilities with no way for the user to inspect it, patch it, turn it off with a jumper or replace it.

<comment><USER17> AFAIK they can patch the Intel ME firmware and often do with BIOS updates. I am not sure about AMD PSP but that don't have access to the network so patching it is less important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I often wonder if the only secure computing and communication these days is an air-gapped computer.

The data can be manipulated there and then copied to another computer using... uh... a writeable compact disk? USB drives are hard to trust given how much software is running on them, so... maybe CF cards too?

<comment><USER19> You want data diodes that physically enforce one-way-only data transfer.

Tin Foil Chat[1] has a circuit for an opto-isolator based data diode and a discussion of how to use them for secure chat. It's probably not hard to modify these plans for other uses, if the specific guarantees that TFC provides are compatible with your secure computing requirements.

[1] [https://cs.helsinki.fi/u/oottela/tfc.pdf](https://cs.helsinki.fi/u/oottela/tfc.pdf)

<comment><USER20> It's not hard to adapt. He regularly improved it based on our feedback at Schneier's blog. I speculated that a higher bandwidth would allow audio and video using same architecture. It's a great desigm regardless due yo strong confidentiality despite endpoint attacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Scary, I did not know this

I'm sure Intel has a real good reason for it being there but I would feel much more comfortable with it either not being there or being able to disable it in hardware.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure what that "good reason" could possibly be.

<comment><USER23> It's known to be used for DRM.¹ So… not a good reason, but at least it makes sense. Then there's Intel's very likely cozy relationship with the NSA.² ³ ⁴ ⁵

\--

¹ [https://libreboot.org/faq/#intelme](https://libreboot.org/faq/#intelme) See paragraph 6.

² [https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/SDcoemc9V3J](https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/SDcoemc9V3J)

³ [http://www.eteknix.com/expert-says-nsa-have-backdoors- built-...](http://www.eteknix.com/expert-says-nsa-have-backdoors-built-into- intel-and-amd-processors/)

⁴ [http://www.infowars.com/intel-ceo-refuses-to-answer- question...](http://www.infowars.com/intel-ceo-refuses-to-answer-questions-on- whether-nsa-can-access-processors/) (Note the NSA slide.)

⁵ [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ycs5l/hi_reddit_im_b...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ycs5l/hi_reddit_im_brian_krzanich_ceo_of_intel_ask_me/) (No hard evidence, but he dodged basically every question related to the NSA.)

<comment><USER24> > It's known to be used for DRM.

Better citation needed. AFAIK the ME has never been used for DRM. It's supposedly used to implement TPM 2.0 aka PTT, but AFAIK that has never been used for DRM either.

<comment><USER25> ME also controls the feature set available to the storage controller. I.E. whether or not it can support RAID 0, 1, 5 natively. Its features can be updated via BIOS firmware, which has to correspond to whats baked into the CPU. It can be bypassed using a special version of BIOS firmware in combination with a cpu with the right fuses blown. It almost takes an act of god to get all those things, even in their lab, when you're getting paid to test it.

<comment><USER24> Really? That surprises me.

AFAICT Intel's desktop RAID tech literally just remaps PCI vendor and device ids (which is a wee bit more complicated with NVMe / AHCI over SATA Express). The boot process was an option ROM and is presumably now baked into UEFI. The driver does the rest.

I can imagine that a couple bits in ME tell the UEFI blob and the driver which feature set to enable. Is there more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >Libreboot X200 laptop

Is this laptop the top of the line spec-wise that you can buy which is free from this trash?

<comment><USER27> Semi-hijacking your question to mention the other side of the pond too, which many people do not seem to know about and I run into this issue quite regularly.

While the laptop situation is indeed pretty bad (the X200 is probably as best as you can get here), for people looking for a modern workstation, AMD's current FX processor lineup is still free from this trash. Past the 2013 designs (Family 16h [1]) AMD includes their own equivalent of Intel's ME called PSP [2], so presumably the upcoming Zen is going to be heavily backdoored too.

Now, you can still buy an 8-core/4 GHz+ AMD Vishera [3] generation (which is the "current" FX), add a motherboard with ECC support (in a stark contrast to Intel, all AMD FX processors fully support ECC memory and for example ASUS sells a number of AMD motherboards with ECC support) and build yourself a workstation that will easily last for another decade, possibly longer (you can always buy a motherboard or two of your favourite model as a backup for the times when they finally disappear from the market). All FX processors are factory unlocked [4] and can be pushed much farther past their design specs with decent cooling, adding another bit to their possible usefulness over the long term.

Some more (random) reading on the subject of avoiding AMD PSP and Intel ME:

[http://hollaforums.com/thread/557954/technology/uncorrectabl...](http://hollaforums.com/thread/557954/technology/uncorrectable- freedom-and-security-issues-on-x86.html)

-

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_CPU_microarchitect...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_CPU_microarchitectures)

[2] - [https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd](https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd)

[3] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_FX_microprocessors...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_FX_microprocessors#Piledriver- based)

[4] - [http://www.techpowerup.com/153445/amd-unlocked-fx- processors...](http://www.techpowerup.com/153445/amd-unlocked-fx-processors- announced)

<comment><USER17> I should also point out however that AMD PSP don't have access to the network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can I just use AMD chips to avoid this?

<comment><USER29> AMD has it's own secret firmware. it was shown off a year or two ago at Chaos, and AMD only allowed the presentation to happen if they had a PR rep onstage.

<comment><USER30> Indeed. And even ARM has TrustZone. Our governments own us. Just accept it.

<comment><USER29> TrustZone doesn't really look like Management Engine at all. Are there some documents comparing the two?

(Heavily invested in Rockchip/MediaTek chipsets. Less scared of chinese backdoors than FIVE EYES backdoors.)

<comment><USER4> You're right to question this, as TrustZone isn't equivalent to Intel ME.

To explain further, here's a comment I made about this before...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11290069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11290069)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> BLK overclocking non-k sky lake chips disables ME. You loose out on some power saving/voltage throttling features as well as avx2 instructions, but if you're worried about security ME is disabled.

<comment><USER32> Can you provide a reference for this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> After the demise of PowerPC in the general computing space, what did you expect would come of Intel hegemony? BS like this. An invisible, all powerful, potentially hackable layer between the chip core and the OS sold as something to ease remote administration and enforce DRM.

</comment><comment><USER34> Problem of security product is their designers often do shitty code with design flaw with very high privileges.

But be assured every thing is fine since for security reasons you cannot see their code.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does ME still access the network if you don't connect anything to the Intel network card, but use a different network card instead?

</comment><comment><USER36> How does Intel ME access network? Does it use the IP address assigned to the OS or does it try to get perform DHCP?

<comment><USER17> It has to be configured to enable Intel AMT to do that, and that is if the firmware edition that has the code is installed (which I don't think is always the case). It is useful in enterprises that want remote management. It probably uses DHCP by default.

<comment><USER36> I did not find anything about ME in BIOS settings, probably the code is not present as you suggested. I have not seen any DHCP requests from the box.

<comment><USER37> My brand new Thinkpad T550 has an explicit ME config firmware I can enter. PRESS ENTER TO INTERRUPT BOOT -> F1 BIOS, F12 CUSTOM BOOT DEVICE, F9 INTEL ME SETUP

I can enter into it but its vital parts are password protected. Even though it is my computer, I cannot configure and control it. Scary. This is not the future I wanted.

<comment><USER38> The default password is "admin".

<comment><USER37> Nice one! Will try that.

<comment><USER39> Did it work?

<comment><USER37> It accepted the password, though all uppercase "ADMIN". It then immediately wanted to set a new password, which fails every time. Possibly an undocumented password strength policy, but could be anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I look forward to the variety of vendors who will offer RISC-V chips in the coming decade. I love Intel's approach to graphics and other drivers on Linux, they've been very helpful, and their products do often work well; however I don't think that I can bear the societal cost of something as misguided as the Management Engine. I'm perfectly happy to miss out on DRM'd consumer content on my workstation; I'm not happy to miss out on decent security principles.

</comment><comment><USER41> How is this enabled though? Sounds like ILO/DRAC/etc., if a bit more capable. But if it's not turned on, is it that big of a deal?

If we assume Intel is malicious, they hardly need a platform like ME to do harm. And isn't this kind of stuff only available on the more expensive systems? Because they include this to sell to enterprise help desks, right?

I dislike articles that seem set to spin something. At least explain the plausible or documented reasons, then show why it's bad.

<comment><USER42> Don't assume malice in this case, assume incompetence. And ME is on basically every intel processor made in the past 8 years

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Intel should supply a ME bricking firmware !

<comment><USER25> turning it off required a special cpu with the right fuses blown, along with a special firmware version. it's baked into the cpu logic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Anyone know if AMD suffers from a similar "feature"?

</comment><comment><USER45> It's remarkable how a company with so many resources can make something so poorly designed.

</comment><comment><USER46> Generally, do development boards have ME, too?

</comment><comment><USER47> Prediction: over time, there will remain no commercially significant high-end chips without this sort of a "security subsystem." Recommending ARM, PowerPC or other architectures over x86 as the FSF suggests will not get you very far because the problem (or as chip vendors call it, the solution) is not in the ISA, it's in the chip, and every chip vendor making the sort of chip that can power a general-purpose computer will end up being this way.

Of course in practice, as long as say Linux runs on the machine, the existence of the ME or the like is almost inconsequential for the user, because you run the same software, and there's never a shortage of security vulnerabilities right there in the OS and the userspace software. In terms of the impact on the number of vulnerabilities, eliminating C and C++ would go way further than eliminating black box "security" hardware, just because the huge amount of C and C++ code, much of it written hastily and committed the moment it "runs on my machine", presents a much larger attack surface than the black box hardware + software system. But of course the FSF will never recommend ditching C and C++.

<comment><USER48> Well done for turning an unrelated issue into a C++ rant!

<comment><USER47> Do you think the keylogger running on your and my machine came in by exploiting the ME or a C buffer overflow somewhere in the OS or userspace code that sister claims you "control"?

<comment><USER49> "Luckily," we don't have to choose between being afraid of firmware and afraid of C and C++. The shitty Management Engine and other firmware code will be written in C or C++ by terrible coders. The UEFI source code is over 7000 files and 100 MB of code, according to Matthew Garret: [https://www.linux.com/learn/uefi-secure-boot-big-hassle- ques...](https://www.linux.com/learn/uefi-secure-boot-big-hassle-questionable- benefit) . And it can continue running once the OS has booted now (a great "feature" that was missing from the BIOS, right?)

<comment><USER17> Intel ME is a blob written by Intel however and all OEMs uses the same one. I'd bet on UEFI code being worse than the Intel ME firmware.

<comment><USER49> Isn't this kind of like arguing over which brand of hot dog has more pink slime and factory floor sweepings? They all do.

Anyway, ME is likely to be a much higher value target for hackers. A compromise there would compromise millions of PCs, whereas a UEFI hack would be specific to one vendor.

<comment><USER17> Obviously, but UEFI tends to cause more of the practical problems and attacks, including non-security ones and DoS attacks (some of which is easy to do under Windows).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's Zuckerberg sues to force land sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/01/18/business/facebooks-zuckerberg-sues-to-force-land-sales <comment><USER2> It is clear that almost no one commenting here has actually read past the first few paragraphs of the article (if that). It is very well written and explain that this is an extremely complex issue.

Property rights are the foundation of civil society. Due to variety of factors, Hawaii has destroyed property rights on some parcels due to degenerate laws and legal customs.

Just consider one point raised by the article: one small parcel has over 300 informal owners who are descended from a Portuguese immigrant who bought the land over 110 years ago and that "individual ownership fractions range from about 1/7 (about 14 percent) to 17/333,396 (less than a one-hundredth of 1 percent)."; when everyone owns something, no one owns it. This is an enormously complicated legal problem and there are no simple answers for how to resolve it.

<comment><USER3> I am surprised by the number of people who claim this is rich bashing.

Indigenous people around the world have lived for centuries with widely different concepts of property ownership. In many cultures, once you reach a working age you build your house where land is available and do your bit (say farming, or crafts) towards a functioning society. There is no land ownership record, but rather it's based on trust. Once these lands become part of countries without adequete protection for indegenous cultures, they become susceptible to exploitation. Interpreting their culture through our legal system is one way to do this.

The indigenous people of Hawaii (and elsewhere in the world) are the true owners of that land. Even if you get legal rights from each one of the current owners, it still deprives the unborn children of their rights.

It's unfair at best. At best.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you that the social structures we've set up have largely forced the hands of the indigenous people who want to keep their lands in their families in perpetuity to sell. How can we actually make sure these lands stay within families forever possible though? To do something like disallowing the sale of these lands outside of their communities doesn't seem particularly ethical either. In this case, that could mean that some of the landowners who might be hard pressed for money might have a pressing need to sell, so how could we forbid that? Just like preserving our diverse cultures, I totally understand the value proposition, but how can you ethically force cultural preservation? Not a perfect analog, but I'm curious how you think a more equitable system might work here.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that the exact problems that Indian reservations were set up to solve? A kind of community-administered perpetual land grant, basically.

It seems that – some problems within the tribal administrations non- withstanding – the external legal relationships are solved pretty well within that framework.

<comment><USER6> What you're describing is forced (w/ threat of violence) migration and I don't think it's easily justified. Care to take a shot?

<comment><USER5> I was talking about today's reservations as a legal vehicle to allow perpetual group ownership & administration of land, so as to preserve it for a culture. I may have forgotten the part where, once the structure is set up, owners would voluntarily add their property if their shared this objective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a historical precedent for those above the peasants, but still below the king, to constantly rationalize and serve as king apologists? I notice an interesting trend with a large chunk of the discussion being centered towards why [rich person's] [behavior] is not [as bad] as you think.

Maybe it's because the king enables those above the peasants to retain that position? It's really interesting, actually. Kind of a (10th-to) last place aversion-like response. [1]

[1] [http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234](http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234)

An interesting quote. Notice how the behavior I describe is actually the opposite of this. It's kind of Stockholm syndrome like, actually (people on the top end, but not anywhere near the top, wanting to maintain the status of those at the top, in hopes of getting their themselves).

> Last-place aversion – and the accompanying lack of support for > redistribution – is particularly pronounced when people near the bottom of > the distribution have their attention focused on keeping the people below > them down, rather than on redistributing wealth from those at the top. [2]

[2] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/occupy-wall- stree...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/occupy-wall-street- psychology/)

<comment><USER8> I think it's more of a knee jerk reaction to the "wealthy people are evil" narrative that is quite common in the media. Some people just read the headline and immediately assume it's another instance of this, whether they are right or wrong.

Personally, this kind of article doesn't "gratify my intellectual curiosity" and I don't think it belongs on HN.

<comment><USER9> Of course, wealthy people are not evil.

But maybe it just happens that in order to become wealthy, people more often than not have to repeatedly choose wealth over generosity, exploit other people, take advantage of resources that less privileged ones pay for without explicit consent.

Also, it often happens that people who are already wealthy and possess more than what they and their children would need for comfortable royalty-level lives, continue accumulating wealth, focusing their disproportionally large power in more exploitation, more privilege, more wealth.

I'm not sure where the line between not quite evil and ok, clearly evil lies but sometimes I wonder if accumulating a lot of wealth while creating more and more suffering for many other humans is a healthy behavior.

<comment><USER10> The idea that rich people got rich because they screwed other people over is quite common but also a made up generalization. It's an excuse that people who worry about their own socioeconomic status make to feel better about themselves. "I'm poor but at least I'm not evil like those rich people.". Instead of searching for reasons why rich people are evil, why not just be happy with your own life? You don't need to be rich. Stop worrying about status and get on with whatever you enjoy.

<comment><USER9> Capitalism exists on exploitation and maximizing profit by squeezing as much as possible from people serving it. In this environment it is only logical that the ones standing on top are standing at the top of pyramids of both wealth and suffering of all who were exploited in the process.

Of course there are companies that choose to limit their profit in exchange for better conditions for the ones exploited.

As for your statements implying that I am somehow conflating good/evil with the excuse of the poor(/lazy) or that I am somehow dissatisfied with my own status, I don't hold either of these views.

I am dissatisfied with privileged people like me blaming less privileged for their lack of privilege as if that was a function of choice. Being poor is caused by being born that way more often than by anything else.

I am well aware that the conservative view conflates wealth with virtue. Yet somehow, with 62 people owning roughly as much as half the world's population, I have my doubts. That'd be a lot of virtue!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Zuckerberg purchased the land from all serious parties, and now his lawyers are doing their due diligence to track down anyone who might own even a "1/3,276" share, and are hardly treating anyone unfairly.

Put down your pitchforks, no one is being driven off their land.

<comment><USER12> The issue is around compelling people to sell land they don't want to, that has a tradition of belonging to that family.

<comment><USER13> No, the issue is identifying the owners, at Zuckerberg's own personal expense, most of whom seem to be completely unaware that they are partial owners.

The practical effect is some people get a windfall check in the mail that they weren't expecting at all.

<comment><USER5> It's a two-step process. First, they learn about their part ownership of some land, which is probably a nice thing, although one shouldn't mistake it with a gift or winning the lottery or some such. After that, their land is exchanged for money, possibly against their will. That seems very much like any eminent domain case, except for the whole for-the-good-of-the-public aspect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Three Zuckerberg companies — Pilaa International LLC, Northshore Kalo LLC and High Flyer LLC — filed eight quiet title lawsuits Dec. 30 in state Circuit Court on Kauai."

Hmm.. so the man who wants all of us to "open up" on his conglomerate of social networks - sometimes even if we don't want to [1] (it is not for him, you see, it is for this grand vision of connecting the world together) is troubled by a reduction of his privacy.

Even more priceless stuff:

"Defendants have 20 days to respond to the legal complaint after being served with a copy. If they don't respond, they get no say in the proceeding. If they choose to participate, it could be expensive if they want to be represented by an attorney."

Hmm.. I wonder if the timing of the court filing might have to do with some other major event happening around the 20th of January which might drown out this "not-fake" news. Like, say, the inauguration of the President of the USA?

It is very interesting that by the time this news shows up on HN - the 20 days are already up. Is it possible that FB could have suppressed this news in the name of stopping fake news from spreading? I can't prove that the suppression happened, but can you prove with certainty that it didn't?

The best part in all this is how tuned out FB employees are about these kinds of things. I bet they don't even see the connection between what they claim is good for everyone (a private entity purporting to connect the world as its grand mission and violating all manners of decency in the process) and what they claim is good for their boss (an individual who knows exactly what it is like to be on the _receiving_ end of privacy invasions). "Do as I say, but not as I do". But it is important to show how tuned out they are, because otherwise you can bet they will come back a little while later claiming that they had no idea these things are going on.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588449)

</comment><comment><USER15> If Zuckerberg is trying to dislodge residents from their homes, that's reprehensible. On the other hand, if he's merely trying to gain clear and unencumbered title to land that he's already bought and paid for, that's ... just common sense? Unfortunately the article doesn't really make it clear which scenario is operating here.

The writer invokes the word "kamaaina," which a lot of folks here are interpreting as "Native Hawaiian." It literally means "child of the land," but is used locally to mean "Hawaii resident." If you've lived in Hawaii long enough to get a Hawaii driver's license, congrats, you're kamaaina, as distinct from "malahini" (newcomer) or "kanaka maoli" (which does mean Native Hawaiian).

<comment><USER16> What the article doesn't mention is that we only got to this situation in the first place after centuries of nastiness and dirty tricks that deprived the native Hawaiians of their land in a similar fashion to the way the native Americans on the mainland were deprived of theirs. What is "legal" today is only "legal" because some rich white guys decided to make it so using methods that would horrify most of us today. But the reason that these methods are no longer used is not because the rich and powerful have developed a more refined sense of morality, it's because the populace has been subdued to the point where they are no longer necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You could argue some of the land parcels in question are owned by growing numbers of family members with each new generation, and that therefore it's likely some (even most) owners wouldn't utilize the land. However, it's also interesting to digest this situation alongside Oxfam's report [1] on 62 people accumulating more wealth than half the world's population combined. Zuckerberg owns 700 acres of Kauai[2]. Why isn't that enough?

[1] [http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press- releases/2016/01/...](http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press- releases/2016/01/62-people-own-same-as-half-world-says-oxfam-inequality- report-davos-world-economic-forum)

[2] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11160588/Mark- Zuckerberg-buys-part-of-Hawaii-for-100-million.html)

<comment><USER17> > Why isn't that enough?

According to the article, the owners of the parcels have the right to traverse the land he already bought. From the sound of the article, this is making a mountain out of a molehill.

He wants his privacy and, thanks to bizarre land ownership practices in Hawaii, these parcels are fractionally owned by hundreds of individuals making it impossible to make a traditional offer. This legal process, far from being abusive, is the standard process when dealing with these sorts of parcels since it clarifies who actually owns the properties. It sounds like once the list of owners is established by the court, he'll make a traditional offer rather than forcing an auction.

<comment><USER18> It's only Bizarre to you, it's not Bizarre to the people who own the property I'm sure. What's Bizarre is being forced to sell land that you've owned for generations.

<comment><USER19> Some of these pieces of land have hundreds of owners. In this case one of the owners has an interest of less than a one-hundredth of a percent. Most of the owners do not even know what they own. The legal fees to establish who has a fractional interest in the property would outweigh the value of the property normally for each individual owner, but with Zuckerberg footing to bill to find out the family tree all of the owners will benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It reminds me of old maps of Swedish villages. In the 1700s there was a big push to accurately record who owned what in each village. The fields were divided into strips of ownership divided between children and by the 1700s this meant that each map has fields made up of long strips just a few feet wide. There were various schemes called 'skifte' to rationalize things, e.g. Solskifte (literally "sun shift") where the big farms were numbered clockwise (the direction the sun goes in) and the fields likewise and assigned. Of course they also took account of how good the fields were etc. My own house was built by a farmer selected to move from a village quite a long way away and given land to move to 1850. We have a list of timber etc he was entitled to take from his farm, which reads like a shopping list of the materials used to make the very grand new house.

</comment><comment><USER21> This article makes me respect Bill Gates more. You never hear of him being involved in cringy stuff like this.

Yes, it may be legal, but it definitely doesn't look good.

Also, is it just me or is Zuck becoming rather paranoid about his privacy and security?

(1) He apparently has SIXTEEN bodyguards at his house: [http://pagesix.com/2016/02/14/mark-zuckerberg- has-16-bodygua...](http://pagesix.com/2016/02/14/mark-zuckerberg- has-16-bodyguards-at-his-home/)

(2) He bought all the houses surrounding his in Palo Alto to protect his privacy: [http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/15/palo-alto-mark- zuckerb...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/15/palo-alto-mark-zuckerberg- compound-raises-red-flags-for-city-board/)

(3) He tapes his laptop camera and microphone: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark- zuck...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark-zuckerberg- tape-webcam-microphone-facebook)

(4) He goes jogging with FIVE bodyguards: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3464044/Isn-t- work-T...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3464044/Isn-t-work-T-shirt- Mark-Zuckerberg-heads-jog-wearing-trusty-uniform-carrying-phone.html)

(5) THIS current article.

Obviously a famous rich guy will need more security than the average person, but other billionaires don't seem to take it this far.

<comment><USER22> don't forget that one.

[http://fortune.com/2011/05/26/mark-zuckerbergs-new- challenge...](http://fortune.com/2011/05/26/mark-zuckerbergs-new-challenge- eating-only-what-he-kills-and-yes-we-do-mean-literally/)

""The only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself," says the Facebook founder and CEO."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm struggling to make sense of this....Zuckerberg purchased 700 acres of land, but other families are still using that land (or have the right to)? How can you purchase land that others legally own?

<comment><USER24> I'm confused too, but reading this:

>Close to a dozen small parcels within Zuckerberg's Kauai estate are owned by kamaaina families who have rights to traverse the billionaire's otherwise private domain.

...that suggests to me there are essentially landlocked parcels owned by the natives, perhaps? And if they are land locked, well, the people have to cut through his property to access their land, I suppose.

<comment><USER25> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> At least Larry Ellison had the good taste to work with the local population of the Hawaiian Island he bought to provide jobs for them and such.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here is my IANAL understanding. If multiple people own a property all it takes is one person who wants to sell and they can force a partition sale.

So my guess is Zuckerberg is using the quiet title suit to get the names of all the players. He then just needs to get enough of the fractional owners of each property on board and he can then pay the legal fees to help them with their partition actions and then purchase the properties and clear his title.

<comment><USER28> Sounds about right, or perhaps get lucky and settle with some who are desperate for money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If Zuck truly is planning to run for office as some speculation has supposed, this does _not_ look good for that.

This reeks terribly, I was unaware this was even legal, but this is almost literally depriving someone of their property because you have the money.

<comment><USER29> The news story also reaks of a cliche smear-job though. I have a hard time Zuckerberg sits on moneybags in his house cursing the filthy peasants. Seems like it's more just a weird land practice (many people own the land he thought he bought) and he wants some privacy.

<comment><USER30> > (many people own the land he thought he bought) and he wants some privacy.

Then tough luck for him. He should have figured that out before he blew 100 million dollars on it. This "weird land practice" is likely meant to protect native Hawaiian people from being forced out of their homeland which, if this article is accurate, is what Zuckerberg intends to do.

EDIT: I did go looking and a few others are reporting on this. A lawyer representing Zuckerberg claims that Zuckerberg "has no intention of contesting any co-owner who can prove their interest in any of the land parcels." We'll see, I guess.

[http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo- sui...](http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-suing- hundreds-over-kauai-land)

<comment><USER31> _This "weird land practice" is likely meant to protect native Hawaiian people from being forced out of their homeland_

That seems like wild speculation on your part. Any evidence to back up your claim?

<comment><USER30> From the article I posted:

" _Under the Kuleana Act of 1850, those lands are also passed down to people who now only own fractions of an interest in the property._ "

And from Wikpedia:

" _Another notable part of the Great Mahele was the Kuleana Act of 1850._ "

" _The Great Māhele was one of the most important episodes of Hawaiian history, second only to the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. While intended to provide secure title to Hawaiians, it would eventually end up separating many of them from their land._ "

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_M%C4%81hele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_M%C4%81hele)

So that was the intention, but if you read further into the Wikipedia article it explains how many poorer Hawaiians did not understand the new laws and therefore lost their land to rich Hawaiians and the nobility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Coming from Australia and learning about the indigenous history there, it was quite a shock to learn how the land was stolen, men killed, women raped and the children brainwashed. An entire generation lost.

I am in maui currently. It's a beautiful place. While the world is a much better place I'm kind of against a billionaire owning so much of land here and filing lawsuits left and right against the natives.

It's their land. Does one guy really need 700 acres to feel secluded? People have lived there for generations.

The great thing about hawaii is a lot of places are publicly accessible. I would hate some billionaire asshole to ruin it for everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER18> Surely his lawyers informed him of the situation when he bought it.

In Hawaii (or the US in general) can people own beaches below the high tide mark? Surely it's impossible to have 100% seclusion anyway as people can land by boat when the tide is low and enjoy at their leisure?

<comment><USER33> I actually saw his property when my GF and I were in Kauai a few months ago and visited the beach in front of his lot for fun.

So his property is adjacent to a land reserve so it is much more secluded than just the land he owns. He is building a massive wall in front of the house that is obstructing some of the views of people on the other side of the street which they are not happy about (you can google to see it) and many of the houses are now for sale. As for the beach front, by law all beaches in Kauai are open to the public. However... his property is on a hill and it appears that many people plant these extremely thick bushes that create a thick thorned wall of shrub (many dozens of feet wide) that prevents access (in addition to requiring you to walk up a steep slope). Just getting down to the beach from the public access point took 15-20 min.

That said, I don't think the beach can be accessed by boat efficiently (very rocky once you get past the sand) and swimming in it is very dangerous. For those of you who have not visited, there are very aggressive undertows in Kauai that can easily kill a kid or novice swimmer.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the info. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How do we even judge moves like this?

On the one hand this is one in a continued series of "I don't care how it looks" real estate moves by Zuck.

EG like his plan last year to build fake houses on 4 zone residential lots around his Palo Alto residence and turn the block into his private compound [http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/15/palo-alto-mark- zuckerb...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/15/palo-alto-mark-zuckerberg- compound-raises-red-flags-for-city-board/)

And I get it, can you imagine being internationally famous for being a YOUNG billionaire?

Life would be very strange.

I can see it seeming "fair" that you could use some of that wealth to claw back what you can't have anywhere - privacy - when on the other hand you're trying to be "macro good" as one of the world's largest philanthropists? (1 / 2)

So what do we do put a green checkmark in the "Good guy" column and a red checkmark in the "asshole" column?

Sort of like any of us except his checkmarks are super sized?

(1) [http://mashable.com/2014/01/02/zuckerberg-charitable- donatio...](http://mashable.com/2014/01/02/zuckerberg-charitable- donation-2013/#anZC_WB.XaqI)

(2) [http://www.pcworld.com/article/3010838/software- social/zucke...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3010838/software- social/zuckerberg-to-give-away-99-of-his-fortune-or-about-45-billion-to-new- charity.html)

<comment><USER35> Look, donating a small percentage of ill-gotten gains, however impressive the number sounds, does not change anything. At all. How expensive has Facebook's ecosystem of control been to humanity? Surely more than a morsel of that very institution's stock?

And donations are always so ambiguous. For one, I wish someone would attempt to quantify how much less a donated dollar helps than a dollar made at the expense of the population hurts (ounce of prevention vs. pound of cure). For example, what percentage of that donation is going straight to that organization's advertising budget? Moreover, what is Zuckerberg getting in return? Political clout? Further control over the city?

And if this is how he justifies kicking people off their land (which, yes, clearly he is), it simply doesn't add up on the existential scales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I admit this is confusing to me, but the premise of this makes no sense to me. It seems that the sale should still require some vote on the part of the identified shareholders on whether or not to sell.

Isn't this basically saying that a ridiculously wealthy individual like Zuckerberg could force a family to sell their inherited lands to him at whatever price he wants to pay, as long as no one offers a higher price? Without meaning to be glib, how is this even constitutional? What does it matter how many owners there are? Don't they collectively have a say? If the family voted "no," it seems that vote should be respected.

<comment><USER37> All states can have different laws so it is hard to comment as a non-Hawaiian. That said, my wife helped settle the estate of her great uncle who held title to property with his deceased ex-wife. One option was a quiet title hearing where you try to contact everyone who might have an interest in the property, and then inform them of a court hearing. In Washington state if they show up and can prove they should have part owner ship, then the court creates a title which includes them as owner. If nobody shows up the court can update the title to make the person who is currently possessing the land the exclusive owner.

My understanding of what the article said, was that if these Hawaiians showed up and had proof of their ancestral ownership (probably ancestry records of some sort), then they would be added to the title and at _that_ time Zuckerberg could negotiate with them for the sale of their ownership interest to him. Could be a big payday for some Hawaiians as you have a lot of leverage.

But if they don't know about the trial and/or don't show up, then they forfeit their interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> $3 billion for Oculus, which is 'just' a headset, and $100 million for 700 acres of land, it seems strangely backwards! But forcing people from their lands sounds pure evil.

</comment><comment><USER39> Pretty sad and pathetic.

</comment><comment><USER40> > Now the Facebook CEO is trying to enhance the seclusion of his property > [...]

Enhance the seclusion, LOL. So, 700 acres on an island in the middle of the pacific ocean is not secluded enough. Of course, he'll win "because money", but what a sad story.

<comment><USER10> That's what money is for. So you can buy things you want. To do that you also have to give away your money to the person who used to own those things, so they win too. The reason he got so much money is because he gave a lot of other people things that they wanted and they gave him their money. There's nothing wrong with that - unless you think trade is wrong and we should all be self-sufficient hunter gatherers, or that people who work hard to serve others should not be rewarded for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Seems like Ellison, Trump and Zuckerberg are not so dissimilar after all.

<comment><USER42> You're forgetting Vinod Khosla who is trying to circumvent the California constitution, because he doesn't like public property rights.

[http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/vinod-khosla-beach- trial/](http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/vinod-khosla-beach-trial/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Kind of reminds me of the Crocker "Spite" fence, on Nob Hill in SF.

One of the big four millionaires in San Francisco build a spite fence around the undertaker who wouldn't sell the property to him for his mansion. The undertaker in turn build a giant coffin on the roof, visible over the spite fence.

Here's the fence, before the coffin: [http://i.imgur.com/n1o7S3T.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/n1o7S3T.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER44> Unlike Gates, Young Zuck couldn't change his spots.

<comment><USER45> It might come with age; perhaps Young Zuck needs to mature into an Older Zuck

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Hawaii has defeated many powerful forces. Recall the Superferry disaster / ouster.

Whether or not Zuckerburg is right or wrong, locals have significant power to disrupt the actions of rich and powerful outsiders.

Too much of the comments here are analyzing the legal issues and the not the political / social forces involved in a haole vs local conflict.

</comment><comment><USER47> _the Facebook CEO is trying to enhance the seclusion of his property by filing several lawsuits aimed at forcing these families to sell their land at a public court auction to the highest bidder._

With a friend, you could really push up the price and make a ton of money.

</comment><comment><USER48> This story is extra sensationalized here. I am sure Zuck will let go a $100 Million investment to avoid negative publicity. We cam all wait and see how this pans out. If anyone is a culprit here is the middle party aka realtors, as usual.

</comment><comment><USER49> Zuck's answer: [https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103427714244971](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103427714244971)

</comment><comment><USER50> A lot of these people aren't even living, and some of the cases even have the support of descendents/relatives. It seems most of the owners don't even know they own the land, and this is less "suing to force sale" and more "this is how land sales are done in Hawaii due to legacy property ownership."

Having read the entire article, it doesn't seem a single Hawaiian involved has a problem with their land being "taken away". Maybe they just didn't quote those people, however it seems like this is all pretty legitimate.

</comment><comment><USER51> Dude is worth $53B. There's nothing they can do.

</comment><comment><USER52> My first year law professor taught us that property law is a bundle of rights. Here's an example that shows that he was right.

</comment><comment><USER53> >>Now the Facebook CEO is trying to enhance the seclusion of his property by filing several lawsuits aimed at forcing these families to sell their land at a public court auction to the highest bidder.

Wait, I thought only the government could force the sale of a piece of land, via Eminent Domain? How can a judge rule that a private party must sell their property to another private party?

<comment><USER54> _> How can a judge rule that a private party must sell their property to another private party?_

If the law says you can do it, and nothing in the state or federal constitution prevents it, then why not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Where is his appropriate extensively liked facebook post on that subject?

<comment><USER42> I'm sure his staff is crafting a soft focus photo spread on the issue as we type.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this- team...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team-runs- mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-page)

<comment><USER55> This explains a lot. Zuck, essentially, is: [http://blogs- images.forbes.com/kathleenchaykowski/files/2016...](http://blogs- images.forbes.com/kathleenchaykowski/files/2016/02/oculus-1200x799.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Compared to what oil barons and railroad tycoons did a century and a half ago, this is hardly anything.

</comment><comment><USER57> he paid for 700 acres already - and it's not enough?

</comment><comment><USER58> > Quiet title actions are the standard and prescribed process to identify all > potential co-owners, determine ownership, and ensure that, if there are > other co-owners, each receives appropriate value for their ownership share.

Basically doing the state's work for them, getting rid of that state's antiquated cop-out law.

</comment><comment><USER59> Land rights shall need be part of Universal Basic Income. The capital class will buy away all the land from the labor class faster as automation and capitalism keeps kicking ass.

<s>Whats the use of owning 700 acres of beachfront property if you can't exclude all the humans that used to live there. It's not like you could have avoided displacement by purchase of a smaller plot to enjoy. It's not like he could have chosen a less populated island to start with.

Privacy advocate Mark Zuckerberg deserves more privacy at the cost of mere mortals. Sue that underclass till they break Mark! /s</comment>


Dream launches online VR collaboration and productivity tool - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/04/dream-launches-online-vr-collaboration-and-productivity-tool/ <comment><AUTHOR> We're super excited to get this out after nearly 3 years of work by our team - we've put together some further thoughts here: [https://medium.com/@idanbeck/announcing- dream-754c0f374da0](https://medium.com/@idanbeck/announcing- dream-754c0f374da0)

Dream is now available in early access on the Oculus store, so we'd really appreciate any feedback and thoughts people have. We truly believe that immersive technologies like virtual reality can make remote work and collaboration better than existing 2D form factors - especially as the new standalone VR headsets like Quest come to fruition in the coming year.

Dream has been built entirely from scratch, so we got to rethink a lot of the stack. We prioritized certain things, like networking and UI, and we're really proud of the outcome. Doing so also meant it took us a lot longer to bring a product to release, since there was a lot more to do - but it allowed us to integrate WebRTC at the native level as well as chromium (by way of CEF) so we can do things like bring up our keyboard when a user hits a text field.

Hope people like it, and want to say thanks to everyone that made it possible!

<comment><USER5> I'm a big believer in the potential of VR for remote collaboration and as a fully remote VR development team we already make some use of it. Congrats on shipping but from what I've seen so far its not clear to me what this offers over Bigscreen or Oculus Dash desktop sharing? There's a bunch of functionality I'd like to see in this space that nobody has really nailed yet that I've seen but while this looks like an interesting project the articles I've seen so far don't do great job of explaining what new functionality it brings to the space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would be super interested in what kind of functionality you're specifically looking for, or is it more that existing functionality doesn't hit the mark? Our goal with this release is to get some great feedback so we can make Dream better, and more useful for users so please let us know what you'd like to see!

To respond to some of your other questions - one thing that we've noticed isn't super clear is that Dream is not doing any form of desktop sharing. We integrated chromium at the native layer (by way of a forked version of CEF) and the content views are all web browsers. This allows for a level of integration with the rest of our stack in a way that is difficult or impossible to achieve if you're doing desktop sharing (we actually built desktop sharing, but disabled it in the build for now until we can solve some inherent usability problems).

We're big fans of Bigscreen, but I think they're heavily shifting their focus on entertainment and watching movies in VR together. Also, we were working on Dream for 1.5+ years when Dash was announced and were excited to see some similar ideas there! We're trying to find ways to make VR as a viable solution for remote working and collaboration, and this has led many hard decisions we've had to make - especially as we've decided to build the entire stack. This obviously meant it took us a lot longer to get something out there, but as a result Dream is a lot more intuitive and seamless than you might expect.

For example, our keyboard was heavily inspired by an early Google VR experiment we saw, but after building out a version of it we quickly understood why it wasn't getting people to a viable text-entry solution. We built our own collision system and "interaction "engine" to allow views and apps in Dream to respond at the event level of "touch start, touch end" similar to what you'd expect in building an iOS app - and underlying this the interaction engine would be updating the collision / position of everything in real time. As a result, we've seen people hit 30-40 WPM on our keyboard due to the tactile cues we've included (audio/haptics) as well as a kind of activation region, which allows you to really time and feel out the key press. Definitely hard to describe this or show this in videos since it's all happening at 90 FPS - but hey, it's a free download so give it a shot!

Dream never asks you to revert to your monitor or take off your headset, this was a strict rule. This means that everything from logging in, to inviting someone new to your team had to be possible in VR. To accomplish this, we create a kind of chromium integration with Dream so that we could run web views that manipulated our engine directly. To us, asking the end user to remove their HMD for any reason is equivalent to asking them to restart their computer - it's really not acceptable.

Our goal is to demonstrate how immersive technologies like virtual reality can enable remote collaboration and communication use cases. Especially in terms of how VR, by comparison to existing 2D formats of video/voice, provides an improved layer of presence through nonverbal communication cues.

<comment><USER5> Ah, ok, yeah that wasn't clear to me from the articles I saw, it sounded like desktop sharing. I went to the BigScreen talk at Oculus Connect and yeah it's pretty clear that their focus at the moment is on people watching video content together in VR but we have used it with some success for code reviews (desktop sharing is key there, I can jump between Visual Studio and the Unity Editor).

Your keyboard sounds interesting and I'll have to check it out but to be honest it's not a big selling point for me as a touch typist: I don't have any trouble using my keyboard in VR. We do have some non touch typists on the team though and it's not always convenient to put your Touch controllers down to type so I can see it being useful.

My ideal VR collaboration app would support at least solid desktop sharing support, well implemented VR whiteboards (including annotation on the shared desktop) and 3D sketching like Quill / Tilt Brush. We use whiteboards and 3D sketching in Rec Room but they're quite primitive. The sketching doesn't have to match a dedicated sketching app but should be better than Rec Room.

It would also be useful to be able to easily import 3D assets for review, Dash support for GLTF is looking like a good implementation of that. Custom environments would also be useful for us so we could do collaborative design of environments for our own VR app.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was actually at that session as well! It was a bit surprising for me to hear that they're taking such a strong stance with regards to shared movie watching, but generally it's always felt that Bigscreen has been tuned for gamers / entertainment type use cases.

Totally hear you with regards to being comfortable touch typing while in VR, but I think that this is a pretty big barrier for a lot of users that are not as comfortable in VR. In our early experiences demoing Dream to people, we noticed just how overwhelming going into VR is for a lot of people that have had either no exposure, or very little to it. We used to have computer keyboard pass-thru, and this could be something that we add back as we continue to iterate and make the experience better.

In terms of desktop sharing - we used to have this capability, and it's still in the build but disabled. We pulled it back due to some inherent usability issues that we're working on as well as performance limits on low-end machines.

Annotation (whiteboarding on shared content or a white screen) is next up on our road map, we just didn't have sufficient time to get it into the initial release - so excited to hear that's something you would be looking for. Similarly, 3D model import / review is something that we're about to tackle as well. One of the big things we're excited about exploring is actually using chromium to do this vs. forcing every client to download what could be a big file, or push performance limitations on a varied set of machines. Instead, we'd find a way to utilize WebRTC to stream the content in a way that provides a 3D review experience for all clients with no performance limit.

On environments, we agree as well - right now we have one environment, and have 2 others in the pipeline. In the future, it'd be great to allow for 360 stereo videos to be used as the environment or allow teams to customize their environments if they've got the in house capabilities to do so!

Thanks for the feedback, and hope you get a chance to try Dream out a bit and give us some hands on experience if you get a minute a well!

<comment><USER6> I've always thought that conferences / education / seminars was the big sell here. Productivity didn't seem like a starter, simply because work is such a cultural thing with all of its own stresses and getting people to adopt these new techniques is like pulling teeth. Students and conference goers who want to save on the extremely big bucks that travel and classrooms and conference halls can cost will see this as a huge win.

Also, the isolated / focused environment of VR could be a big plus for learning as it blocks out so many distractions. I'd love to see a study done around that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm also extremely excited about education applications for VR, especially those that benefit from real time communication. For example, learning a foreign language from a tutor that lives in the origin country of that language - and being able to interact with them naturally, including the various nonverbal cues that are crucial when learning a new language in the same location as someone that has it mastered.

At a slightly higher level, I think VR can unlock a lot of "centralization of expertise" type use cases. Basically, there's some resource that is distributed normally but is required to be centralized due to the way that expertise is consumed. For example, things like call centers, or tutoring - <USER2> those people could instead operate from wherever they might be located while providing their expertise to customers wherever they may be located, this could be super useful for both providers of said expertise as well as the consumers of it.

Definitely excited to see what kind of things applications like Dream can enable!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Watching the video I was struck by my own experience of creating a virtual art gallery (of real world photography and 3D renders) in Second Life.

It felt really amazing when I was alerted by a sensor in the gallery that someone was visiting it and I could teleport back to the gallery to meet them. Their location in the virtual space (which pictures they were stood in front of) said something about the pictures that they liked. I could read something about their personas from the avatar they were using (especially in conjunction with other scanning tools). My own little gallery was just one of many and other organisations and groups created much more impressive interactive environments (admittedly a lot of them seemed to be for various forms of role-play, some very unsavoury).

The promo video shows the participants in effect in a completely conventional conference room - one screen and chairs around a table. The wider space doesn't seem to contribute functionally at all - it's a pretty backdrop but doesn't display more info that contributes to the meeting. So I'm curious - could this sort of capability be used to create more dynamic interactions - <USER3> are we limited by the tech (tethered interaction by seated people) to more constrained situations? (please don't get me wrong - I'm supportive of the concept - but I'm encountering pushback from colleagues and customers who don't see the potential)

<comment><USER8> I will say that we at Dream, hold a pretty contrarian point of view on this. So let me start by saying, it is an opinion, but one we hold pretty strongly. I can talk a little bit about locomotion, but this sort of philosophy applies to many of the design decisions we made, for better or worse.

Dream doesn't allow for locomotion by design. Dream is meant to be a place where people meet to be productive. The environments are intentionally pretty but not distracting. The focus is on interaction with the other participants and the shared content. We feel that removing locomotion and reducing dimensionality is how we will make the interactions with Dream simpler, especially for new users. Mechanisms like teleportation are super fun and certainly add to immersion and are the right choice for all sorts of VR experiences. However, Dream has been built from the perspective that users are here to collaborate and then go back to real life. In that context, something like teleportation is fun and novel the first time you use it, but the 10th time, we feel like most users would just prefer a menu. The overall idea being, reduce dimensionality to increase precision and simplicity.

I'm happy to hear a critique of this philosophy. Ultimately we have to create software people love to use, and we certainly understand that we might be proven wrong about this.

<comment><USER7> I think that's a great response, nicely articulating that you are prioritising utility over gimmicks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I work in finance and talked to somebody who implemented a Bloomberg terminal wall in VR. This would be a great application for VR since you never can have enough Bloomberg terminals open and usually never have enough screen space.

However he told me that VR can not be used for anything productive right now because of many problems. One thing is, only very few people can wear a VR headpiece for 8 to 10 hours straight without getting serious headaches and dizziness. The resolution has to at least be one order of magnitude higher for meaningful sized fonts being properly readable. The head pieces have to be one order of magnitude lighter. If you want to do more than a 2D wall displayed like a canvas in 3D you have to solve the problem that your eyes automatically try to focus differently on different depths which is also one major source of headache.

All in all I was convinced by him that the VR technology is at least 2 generations behind what you would need for serious work. Until then all kinds of software, SDKs and Hardware will change dramatically. Hence investing in VR productivity software development right now is a complete waste of time and money.

<comment><USER10> > Hence investing in VR productivity software development right now is a > complete waste of time and money.

Do you think advances in technology just happen by themselves? We need people to invest time and money RIGHT NOW to get to better software, hardware, and mainstream adoption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm sorry, what's the value added here? In the demo video (in vimeo) the team is going over some work tasks in Trello. Considering the bad HMD resolution and general clumsiness of doing things such as typing, I'm really unsure as to what is the value added of doing a meeting in Dream VR session as opposed to just regulard desktop/webex type of thing with possibly desktop sharing and voice/video conf. I work extensively with VR and I have a hard time seeing the catch here. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the question!

It sounds like you have easy access to VR HMDs, so if you get a chance to plug into an Oculus rift any time soon I recommend you try it out - and would definitely love your hands on feedback.

We've done a fair bit of jiggering to make sure a majority of web based content is both legible and usable - and our UI has been built to try to be as intuitive as possible, and eliminate a lot of the bumbles that we too associate with many VR experiences.

It's a free download, and you don't have to create an account if you don't like - once you download, you'll be presented with an account sign up / log in form where the keyboard can be used and messed with a bit. We also use chromium for all of our login / account creation flow in VR - so you can get a taste of what that feels like as well. If you want to try something like Trello out, just create a throwaway account and never verify the email - <USER4> you can pull up a website like Trello or NYT, where you can assess the usability and legibility.

I think that if you're coming from a place of comparing this to existing 2D based collab tools like Skype / Zoom etc you'll have a hard time seeing the benefit, but if instead you try to look at how those tools are insufficient compared to a real-life meeting you might see where we fit. Our goal is not to replace 2D based methods, but to allow for a level of presence previously only possible with in-person interactions. This shines in particular in situations where you're meeting with three or more people along with content at the core of the meeting.

Hope you get a chance to try it, and would love to hear what you think and how we can make it better!

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the reply. Incidentally I've also worked on a bunch of problems you guys must have had related to the UX in VR. For example I've also implemented a bunch of virtual keyboards ;-)

Are you using straight CEF or have you improved the compositor to composit directly into a texture? IIRC CEF only provides the composited web page in a bitmap and then you're going to have to do repeated texture uploads which is going to be a drag.

Does this support VIVE too or only Oculus?

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome to hear that! Would love to check out your work if you have a link / video or anything like that!

We actually forked CEF - and had to make a few changes to allow for integration in the way that we needed. We do use OSR mode, and update a texture in that way - although we need this buffer anyways, since we're sending video frames across the peer to peer mesh - so even if we did go straight GPU, we would still have to download the buffer from the texture.

It's a drag, but there are a number of techniques to improve the performance. Resolution is one great approach - since the resolution of the HMD makes having a high resolution on the browser kind of useless, so reducing the resolution also reduces the pressure on the GPU. Also, we can limit frame rate based on the kind of content being used - and also, we can leverage dirty rects to optimize for content that isn't changing. Since we're running multiple browser tabs, the latter technique isn't as useful for a particular page, but makes it more performant when a user is doing multiple things, like watching a video on the shared screen and scrolling through wikipedia or a news site like NYT.

Up until we consolidated the build for Oculus release, we supported OpenVR and still do in our code - just not the Oculus build. We've gotten a lot of interest in the Vive build in this initial release, so might look to reintroduce that. Before pushing to Oculus, Dream would just launch off the desktop and detect which HMD you had plugged in and then launch the appropriate platform. Shouldn't be a ton of work to bring it to Steam!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How possible is it for users to have haptic gloves for typing instead of using controllers? I remain positive on VR productivity tools in future but think we have to get flexible and creative on hardware. Personally, I would love to have collaborative meetings with my colleagues worldwide, even just to demo my modelling ideas on a whiteboard which I think would be tremendously helpful (I believe FB keynote last year also voiced the same sentiment). I fully agree with the hardware limitations at the moment but certainly don't think investment and work now is a waste of time. To push this area forward, we also need to find compelling experiences that are unique to VR, like remote presentation rehearsal, collaborative white board brainstorming sessions for 3D design etc. Wearing a VR headset to work 8 to 10 hours straight is not the answer I look forward to, at least not for now. What VR is strong about to me todate are: minimising limitations resulted from physical distances and fading memories of past experience, as well as its ability to create limitless imaginary worlds, boosting multi-dimensional communication.

<comment><AUTHOR> Early on we actually built out support for leap motion in dream, and this was super cool because of the networking stack we built - we were able to send all 20 points per hand in real time at 90 FPS at low latencies. This was really an amazing experience, but there were a lot of issues we simply couldn't overcome - like wrist occlusion where your hands would suddenly fly off into the distance, or when your hands didn't do what you intended due to incorrect data from the sensors. As a product minded company, we had to make the hard decision to hold on this - at the end of the day, users don't care whose fault a bad experience is, they just uninstall your app and never come back.

Really excited for new HW and capabilities to become available commercially. We built out our keyboard to be effective without anything but what's currently available (6DOF HMD with 6DOF controllers), and we'll continue to expand support for commercially available capabilities. Maybe it's an unorthodox perspective, but we really only want to ship and represent capabilities that any user can attain easily - and not tease things that are soon to (but may not ever) come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Name collision is unfortunate, thought this was related to Google Daydream at first, since it uses Google Chrome to access VR.

How is this different than BigScreen? It allows people to view computer screens (video games, browsers, movies) in VR with other people.

Edit: saw that you answered the bigscreen question earlier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, the name collision is unfortunate - we actually incorporated before Daydream was announced. If there are real issues / conflicts with the name, we're the smaller guys here (our team is just 4 people), so we'll obviously make the corrections that we need to make over time!

Let me know if my response to the Bigscreen question above is sufficient, or if you have other specific questions about anything. Would be happy to dig deeper into anything. Super excited to share the hard work of our team - we've basically been quietly coding for years now, so this is the first time we really get to talk about what we've been up to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isnt resolution the big killer for all of these applications? Even in the video Trello looked really blurry, i can only imagine what it would look with the Rift instead of an Vive Pro for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Resolution is a big deal for sure, but because we're using chromium instead of desktop sharing we are able to set the resolution to ensure fair visibility for most content sources. Generally, we see people trying out Dream and bringing up CNN or NYT and having little issue with reading articles. Sure, if the resolution of the HMD was better we could do a lot more - but we set the parameters to optimize for content viewing, and also added FXAA to help without hurting low-spec machines in terms of performance.

Dream is currently only available for Oculus Rift - and the video was actually shot with an in-engine camera that we developed, and captured on a mirror pipeline at 4K - so I think the blurriness in the video may be an artifact of streaming potentially? Here's a link to the vimeo, which might let you watch it at the set 1080p resolution we scaled it down to: [https://vimeo.com/291432708/4c32095226](https://vimeo.com/291432708/4c32095226)

We're excited to get Dream onto other HMDs, especially the mobile standalone ones coming soon - really great that the Quest is going up to 1600x1440 as it will make use cases like ours work even better!</comment></comment>


Stuxnet Worm Still Out of Control at Iran's Nuclear Sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/09/despite-iranian-claims-stuxnet-worm-causing-nuclear-havoc/

<comment><USER2> This article is claiming they've been trying to get rid of a worm for months? Why wouldn't they just format the computers and return to a previously backed up state?

Secondly, if the government needed information on how to solve the problem and didn't want to be detected, wouldn't they just send one or two of their top people to research it and then tell everyone else? How does large traffic from a certain country imply that the government is trying to find out how to defeat the worm?

Very strange article. Almost surreal.

<comment><USER3> I believe <i>somebody</i> just blew up one or two of their "top people". The article seems to indicate the scientist who was killed was in charge of the Stuxnet recovery.

Also, I'd bet fixing the whole plant's industrial control systems isn't as simple as restoring from a backup. I imagine there can be a lot of complexities such as the backup systems being infected, having to write custom tools to detect and prevent future infections, etc.

Also, I'm curious, what are people's thoughts on the worm's authors? Is it generally accepted to be Israeli-made, or are there some doubts about that? I remembered reading something about a reference to Israeli in the code from some anti-virus folks, not sure if that is actually true though. And I don't personally think that the CIA / U.S. military is innovative or clever enough to pull this off, but obviously that's just my opinion. Are there any other candidates?

<comment><USER4> Likely a joint project, offered in return for one of the Israeli settlement freezes of the last few years. The motorcycle bombings were clearly Mossad, but the technical expertise, specifically the specs needed on the Siemens products, would probably have come from the US.

<comment><USER5> This whole affair feels like a cyberpunk action thriller. It's a bit spooky that it's real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a like of guessing, lies and FUD.

There's some activity from that general area, so the nuclear site must be still infected? What kind of logic is that?

<comment><USER7> Indeed, all conjecture, zero substance. Once more: don't expect serious journalism from Fox News. Nevertheless, I can quite easily believe Teheran lacks the technical knowhow to defend themselves. And given the large number of involved parties (we were talking Siemens hardware), a clean room approach won't work either.

<comment><USER8> +1 for highlighting lack of journalistic integrity at Fox News.

-1 for making a statement, that could quite happily be broadcast by Fox News ;)

<comment><USER8> i.e. speculative conjecture, and a generalisation based on cultural assumptions: _I can quite easily believe Teheran lacks the technical knowhow to defend themselves_.

(plus Teheran is a city and a region, not a nation state - it would have made more sense to talk about Iran)

EDIT; I surrender, I saw the Fox logo, it's now very clear -> 'fair and balanced' ;)

<comment><USER9> Using the name of a capital city as shorthand for a central government is very common and accepted

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I didn't realise. Previously, I'd only heard this kind of reference made in 1950s war films.

Perhaps I'm wrong, I but I think it's foolish to dismiss a country's capabilities without firm evidence. Much of the news media picks up on vague themes, and often makes assumptions based on its own country's perceived superiority. In my opinion, there's no good reason to duplicate their error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, and included motorcyclists with bombs. Move over James Bond. This is 2010.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems awfully speculative.

</comment><comment><USER12> I hate to say it… but you do realize this is an article by Fox news right? FOX.</comment>


Goodbye Python Virtual Environments - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@grassfedcode/goodbye-virtual-environments-b9f8115bc2b6 <comment><USER2> I'm curious how will this work with nested packages, i.e. a package inside a __pypackages__ dir can easily have its own __pypackages__ and so on.

Could that be a solution for avoiding version clashes when specifying dependencies? Right now, installing all the requirements on a legacy system I have inherited gives me the following notification:

        package-xyz has requirement six==1.10.0, but you'll have six 1.12.0 which is incompatible.

With __pypackages__ it might be possible to install six 1.10.0 into package_xyz/pypackages, and six 1.12.0 globally...

</comment><comment><USER3> It's unfortunate that the solution for an inadequate toolchain is a brand new workflow instead of improving the existing tools/workflows.

Python packaging is still a mess in 2019, and Python 2.7 is still alive and dominating. Pypi download statistics show that Python2 is still the top cobra with 60% of the download share. Thus, these new workflows unfortunately splinter the python community even further unless they are able to target the entire community.

Does this PEP improve support for doing things like creating rpm or deb packages from virtualenvs? Virtualenvs aren't relocatable, which is one of the sticking points that make them hard to work with a packager's perspective, and it doesn't seem like this proposal improves that situation at all.

I don't see this as "Goodbye Virtualenvs" but rather, "here's a new workflow to add onto the heap pile," where the end result is even more complicated because now we have yet another workflow to know about.

If `__pypackages__` goes in the same directory as the script, and those typically live in bin/, what happens when you have multiple tools in bin/ that have different needs?

Would does a packager want? A dead simple way to create a suite of native OS packages from a requirements.txt-like specification that install into a custom filesystem prefix along with a custom package naming prefix. I can then take this package and install it on any machine and don't need to have internet access in order to install my dependencies.

I don't want to run virtualenv as an end-user consumer of the software -- I want to install from a package repository, just like everything else. I don't want things to litter stuff all over random directories without any way to inspect what happened. Things like "pip install --user" are terrible from my perspective.

Apt solved this issue decades ago. Reinventing that stuff is a recipe for half-baked solutions.

What I don't want is a brand new system and new mechanisms that do not address the fundamental challenges. What are those challenges? C-extensions that need custom compilation options and all that stuff. The fact that setup.py's C-extension mechanism is basically a build system suggests that maybe Python should get out of that game and instead double-down on an existing solution (e.g. cmake) and worry about creating building blocks that are easy to package using native deployment tools (debian packages, rpms, etc) rather than trying to invent a new system that solves the low-hanging fruit and ignores the fundamental issues that got us here in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Just fyi, using pypi download statistics is something that no one reputable does. They're dominated by mirrors and automated tools, not by actual downloads. [http://py3readiness.org/](http://py3readiness.org/) is what you should look at, which shows that 359 of the 360 most popular packages support Python 3, or have a drop in replacement that does. The one remaining, apache- beam, is actively working on finalizing Python 3 support, (and in practice, already does support Python 3).

Most people in python-land don't want to package their stuff as rpm or dep packages because linux isn't the only environment they run on. When .debs can be installed on OSX and windows, that might make sense, but until then, cross- platform distribution is probably going to be seen as the superior way for most devs.

>goes in the same directory as the script, and those typically live in bin/

For most python scripts, the thing in `bin/` is a stub that invokes a library in site-packages or sometimes in a specific venv, depending on the install method. So I'd expect that no, the script would keep doing what it does, and __pypackages__ would exist inside of the python package eventually invoked.

>What are those challenges? C-extensions that need custom compilation options and all that stuff.

These are fundamental challenges for only a very small subset of people (even fewer now that the CFFI is a thing).

You're asking python to be nicer for your specific usecase which appears to be python with C++ extension development on linux at the disadvantage of everyone who isn't on linux and who doesn't write extension modules. (and even within that area, I'd argue that cython or CLIF atop Bazel or Pants is still superior to handwritten extension modules atop cmake, so you're asking python to double-down on a not-the-best solution).

You're correct that they shouldn't splinter the community, but all of your suggestions would do just that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Learning curve", "Terminal isolation" and "Cognitive overhead"; well, none of these are strong reasons, to be honest.

<comment><USER6> Also the learning curve is not steep at all. Just 4 commands.(including activate, deactivate)</comment></comment>


Australian coal plant reopened for blockchain mining - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/australian-coal-power-plant-reopened-blockchain-bitcoin-applications/ <comment><USER2> > There's no doubt blockchain is the next big thing in the tech world

</comment><comment><USER3> And this is why we need a price on carbon.</comment>