One major difference - ZeroMQ and Erlang.  - <AUTHOR> http://jlouisramblings.blogspot.in/2011/10/one-major-difference-zeromq-and-erlang.html

<comment><USER3> Contrary to what the author says, ZeroMQ is actually a very good and powerful tool for building dynamic topologies - no idea why he decided that it biases your design towards a "static" network.

<comment><USER4> I don't know what exactly do you mean by "dynamic topology" here, but I'll try to explain what the author means, from my Erlang programmer point of view. In ZeroMQ you define a "network topology", however "dynamic" it might be. You define "formal" channels for communication. The computing entities use these channels to talk to each other. In Erlang it's just the opposite. The computing entities _are_ the communication channels. Imagine that you have entity A, communicating to entity C, via channel B. In Erlang you can have (and that's the usual way of programming) that channel B to be a process with computing capabilities of its own. So in fact in Erlang the "network topology" is not merely a means of communication between processes. In Erlang, usually the "network topology" is the program itself.

<comment><USER5> I don't know any Erlang, but, from what I understood (please correct me if I'm wrong), you can consider processes (let's say these are greenlets), connected directly to one another, so all you need to do to send a message is specify whom you want the message to go to. If you want to do, for example, fan-out, you have a process sit inbetween the other processes and distribute the messages.

In contrast, with ZeroMQ you have to have/set up channels, because these are sockets. At least, that's what's apparent to me that the author is saying. Is that correct?

<comment><USER6> That's correct. In addition, you use the processes themselves to encapsulate logic. So the communication channel AND the logical parts that works with them are essentially the same.

<comment><USER3> An erlang process has a global PID, a ZeroMQ socket has an address - <USER2> difference. If you want, you can run everything over named pipes, UDP, TCP, or via an in-memory transport with ZMQ and achieve the same semantics. Case in point: there are plenty actor libraries built on top of ZMQ.

You can run ZMQ devices which can act as routers, and you can easily create fan outs, fan ins, pipelines, and more.

For a mildly interesting example of building a "dynamic" typology, check this experiment: <https://github.com/igrigorik/zeroconf-router>

<comment><USER4> Well, of course, you are correct. The author said that in the article. As long as a language is Turing complete, you can use it to do everything that is possible with the other Turing complete languages. But he is not discussing what is possible. You say that a 0MQ socket has an address. That is one of the points the author is making. In 0MQ you send a message to a channel. In a sense, you might not care what entity is going to receive that message, what entity is going to do whatever computation is required and what entity is going to answer your request (or in what language is that entity written). This is _very_ different from the way we program in Erlang. In Erlang every computing entity is directly accessible (as network and in-memory channels are transparent to the Erlang programmer). Usually you talk to entities (and spawn entities to talk to other entities when you need asynchronous requests), not "through channels", and that makes a really big difference to the way we build our programs. Of course, you might argue that it's all the same, but to us, Erlang programmers, it's not. It's a whole new way of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ZeroMQ has been described by others as a socket-scripting language.

You can do Erlang/OTP-style processing over ZeroMQ, it simply doesn't _enforce_ it. In fact, if you wish to do so, you should use (or build) a library around ZeroMQ as an abstraction. The use of that library will resemble the use of Erlang/OTP and will build-in these developer assumptions.

<comment><USER4> As long as you have the "over ZeroMQ" part, it's not Erlang style :). The author tries to explain exactly that. In Erlang the "over X" part is omitted. In Erlang the "over" entity is a processing unit of its own. In abstract terms, in Erlang you don't talk "over" something. You talk "to" things. And even better - you spawn things (processes representing requests) to talk to other things, wait for a response, process that response and even make decisions of their own. And that's exactly the point that the author is making. He is not telling what is possible or what is not. He explains the mindset difference between Erlang programmers and such used to the concepts of "socket", "message queue" or whatever one calls them.

<comment><USER8> I think the assertion is that you can build the same type of abstraction over ZeroMQ that the Erlang runtime provides, at which point the "over ZeroMQ" part is just an implementation detail.

<comment><USER4> That is correct. But then, after you implement the system in question, you might not want to call that ZeroMQ any more. In the same way that we don't mention ssh when we talk about our Erlang clusters. And I think, you will lose quite a lot by cutting out all the goodies that ZeroMQ provides. You might not want to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tangential comment here; it's a bit sad now that blogspot redirects the * .blogspot.com URLs to use the country-code version based on the reader's presumed geolocation. Normally a "* .in" link would imply that the author of the article was from India or wants to be associated with India, but for blogspot links in HN it means that the submitter read the article from India or wants to associate the article with India. The difference causes some confusion in me.

</comment><comment><USER10> > It would be fun to see a language where process Id's - that is names of > processes - have a type of what that process receives.

I like this idea. It would allow you to catch and log incorrect messages at the sender. And it would reduce the amount of static configuration by facilitating service discovery. But the type specification would be difficult to design well.

<comment><USER11> They are adding typed channels to Haskell:

research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/parallel/remote.pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the contrary, I find ZeroMQ provides a great foundation for an Erlang-like distributed actor system:

<https://github.com/celluloid/dcell>

</comment><comment><USER13> Apples and oranges. ZeroMQ is a library. Erlang is a language+runtime.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you happy with your newsreader? - <AUTHOR> What app or website do you use to read the news? Are you happy with how it works or are there things you don't like about it? <comment><USER2> I use Feedly and I am totally happy with it. It has an app as well as the website is pretty clean.</comment>


UglifyJS just released a breaking release with no changelog - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/69o5w5/uglifyjs_releases_a_breaking_release_with_no/ <comment><USER2> It's a link to a link, but with an inflammatory title. The project just released a major version.</comment>


Laser-Based Audio Injection Attacks on Voice-Controllable Systems [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://lightcommands.com/20191104-Light-Commands.pdf <comment><USER2> Discussion yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21444928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21444928)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a cool attack, but I'm not sure where you got "$14" from. The laser pointers were $18 for a pack of 3, but you need a separate laser driver like the $300 one the authors used, and probably an audio amplifier as well.

There are some videos of the attack at [https://lightcommands.com/](https://lightcommands.com/)

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Title says "$14" and then show this as the setup: [https://i.imgur.com/SYUSIDs.png](https://i.imgur.com/SYUSIDs.png)

<comment><USER5> "Google Assistant can be hijacked by a $2 pack of screws!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the ones too lazy to RTFA:

VIII. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

In this paper we presented LightCommands , which is an attack that uses light to inject commands into voice-controllable systems from large distances. To mount the attack, an attacker transmits light modulated with an audio signal, which is converted back to the original audio signal within a microphone. We demonstrated LightCommands on many commercially available voice-controllable systems that use Siri, Portal, Google Assistant, and Alexa, obtaining successful command injections at a maximum distance of more than 100 meters while penetrating clear glass windows. Next, we highlight deficiencies in the security of voice-controllable systems, which leads to additional compromises of third-party hardware such as locks and cars. Better understanding of the physics behind the attack will benefit both new attacks and countermeasures. In particular, we can possibly use the same principle to mount other acoustic injection attacks (e.g., on motion sensors) using light. In addition, heating by laser can also be an effective way of injecting false signals to sensors.

</comment><comment> w-m I really liked their take on the countermeasures: "It is possible to reduce the amount of light reaching the microphone's diaphragm using a barrier that physically blocks straight light beams [...] However, we note that such physical barriers are only effective to a certain point, as an attacker can always increase the laser power in an attempt to compensate for the cover- induced attenuation. Finally, in case such compensation is not possible, the attacker can always use the laser to burn through barriers, creating his own light path."

Sure, you can try to defend by putting a lid on the microphone. But we already have a laser here, we'll just burn through that.

<comment><USER7> If someone is willing to blast your possessions to bits using a laser, I think the security of your smart devices is probably the least of your immediate concerns.

<comment><USER8> I don't see how that follows? A thief might be willing to break a conventional door lock if it gains them access to high-value, fenceable possessions.

In this hypothetical, the hostile actor isn't interested in the smart speaker itself, they're interested in what the smart speaker can do.

<comment><USER7> My point is that if someone is directing a powerful laser into your home, you are in imminent mortal danger, which is worse than whatever the smart speaker can do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is everyone more concerned over the ability of someone with too much time and laser modulation equipment telling their smart speaker to order 10 crates of hand sanitizer than the physics & possible new applications of influencing microphones via laser light?

<comment><USER10> They also point out they can use this to bypass security and open "smart- locks".. this is slightly more concerning than just buying hand sanitizer.. I wouldn't be caught dead with one of these smart-lock devices, but I have friends who aren't so cautious.

<comment><USER11> I have owned several smart locks and every single one has required a secret passcode to actually unlock via a smart assistant. Working backwards, the real threat if they didn't do that is just someone shouting through the window.

<comment><USER12> I forget if it was this article or not but someone mentioned that a few of the smart locks that _do_ have secret codes don't rate limit them, so, in theory, they could brute force a pin code or password.

I guess the idea is that they think nobody is going to sit there and shout pin codes until it unlocks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thought is that the radiation is causing the MEMS sensor to physically vibrate. Part of me wonders how much of this is similar to the way the Raspberry Pi would glitch out when hit with a camera flash.

[1] - [https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/xenon-death-flash-a-free- ph...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/xenon-death-flash-a-free-physics- lesson/)

[2] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDfRCi1UV0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDfRCi1UV0)

<comment><USER14> Not very similar.

The flash going off gives off strong EMF that induces currents in conductors at relatively low frequency.

The photo-acoustic effect is usually a thermal effect. Material gets rapidly hot from the laser and cools quickly when the laser is turned off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> According to their website the Google Home mini, the one with the cloth mesh top, is surprisingly one of the most resilient to this type of attack, being limited to about 20m in ideal conditions(1).

It's also one of the cheapest voice controlled home assistant devices, being given away by Spotify, Google and others on special promotions.

(1) [https://lightcommands.com/](https://lightcommands.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm a bit surprised that this works. It appears that this attack targets a single microphone. However, internal to most of these home assistant devices (e.g. Echo or HomePod) there is an array of microphones. A real sound from a spoken word would probably show up on more than one microphone (with an appropriate time and phase offset), although it seems to not be currently required. It seems like it would be complex or impossible for an attacker to target more than one microphone with this attack.

<comment><USER17> This is covered in the paper. They acknowledge this defense technique while also pointing out that a laser flashlight could be used to illuminate all microphones at once.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps the "all at once" attack could work against today's hardware. This is because the mics (in devices I know of) are co-planar and the user may be speaking to Alexa (or whoever) from directly above or below the device. In this configuration, it is valid for all mics to be receiving the same audio signal simultaneously.

But in some future rev, one could imagine that if the mics in the array are non-coplanar (e.g. at least 4 mics) and sufficiently far from each other, then there is no possible way for the audio signal to reach them at once (unless it is actually light being measured).

<comment><USER17> You could add timing difference to individual lasers as necessary. It's not really more complicated than duplicating the laser setups and feeding them the same signal with time delays. Not a huge step.

However, non-coplanar mics would work for the opposite reason: If they are on different sides of the device, you couldn't reach all of them from the same distant location. So unless all mics receive (more or less) similar sound signals, you could discard it as manipulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can someone explain the mechanism that causes light to translate to electrical signals in the microphone? Is the heat generated moving the diaphragm? Is the microphone photosensitive?

<comment><USER19> It's radiation pressure from the pulsed beam of light moving the tiny microphone.

MEMS microphones are tiny capacitors that are vibrated by sounds. In section IV.C of the paper, they test whether the effect is mechanical or photoelectric, and determine that it's acting via mechanical vibrations, since the effect is stopped by gluing the microphone down with a transparent bit of glue.

Think of it as a tiny solar sail-- they're hitting a very small piece of metal with a lot of photons, so even minor deflections are translated effectively.

"The diaphragm is a thin membrane that flexes in response to an acoustic wave. The diaphragm and a fixed back plate work as a parallel-plate capacitor, whose capacitance changes as a consequence of the diaphragm's mechanical deformations as it responds to alternating sound pressures. Finally, the ASIC die converts the capacitive change to a voltage signal on the output of the microphone."

"As can be seen, the modification decreases the amplitude of the signal detected by the microphone, and the signal after the glue application is less than 10% of the original signal. We thus attribute our light-based signal injection results to mechanical movements of the microphone's diaphragm, which are in turn translated to output voltage by the microphone's internal circuitry."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Man this is such a great hack. This reminds me of the old TEMPEST attacks against CRT monitors from the 90s.

Cool stuff!

</comment><comment><USER21> They made a simplified video explanation here: [http://youtu.be/ORji7Tz5GiI](http://youtu.be/ORji7Tz5GiI)

</comment><comment><USER22> While the attack is technically feasible, complexity and sophistication do not lend this to wide deployment. Someone with a lot of time, money and drive (think heist movie, or spy agency) to hack a person of interest _might_ find this attack viable, assuming they find a line of sight to the mic. But if one's dealing with determined hackers, there is likely a multitude of other lower hanging fruit to first pick off.

<comment><USER23> Hacks always start as "infeasible". But eventually the technique is refined and there's a kit for $20 that can let anyone do it by following simple instructions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't know if the authors mention it, but it seems like you could combine this with the vishing attack ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21306612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21306612)) by using silent light commands to get a malicious app installed.

Fun stuff...

</comment><comment><USER25> Title is editorialized, and in a way that adds incorrect information (the supposed $14 price tag). Mods, the title for this should be "Light Commands: Laser-Based Audio Injection Attacks on Voice-Controllable Systems".

</comment><comment><USER26> > ... We thus attribute our light-based signal injection results to mechanical > movements of the microphone's diaphragm, which are in turn translated to > output voltage by the microphone's internal circuitry.

Aside from the security aspect, this is a pretty cool example of applied physics.

The paper doesn't appear to report anything else on this effect, but AFAICT, it's new. The Wired story described two hypotheses, one of which involved the laster heating the air immediately above the microphone, simulating a sound wave as the light amplitude is modulated.

<comment><USER14> Naw, the photo acoustic effect is a 150 years old

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why did they need to focus the laser through a telephoto lens? I thought the whole point of lasers was that they were already focused into a beam that is moving in nearly exactly one direction?

<comment><USER28> Lasers are collimated [0], not focused. They might be focusing it to maximize light intensity at the required spot.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I forget where I read about a very early and simple attack on Amazon Alexas. Some people knew that their neighbors were going on a long vacation. So they just shouted into their house orders for the Alexa through the front door. They ordered tons of expensive shit on Amazon which was delivered to the front door and then ran off with the packages. The family didn't get the order confirmation emails from Amazon since they were on a remote trip with no Internet access.

</comment><comment><USER30> This attack method should be dubbed the "Mysteron Attack". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs13rCqfH9k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs13rCqfH9k) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Scarlet_and_the_Myster...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Scarlet_and_the_Mysterons)

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm curious if you can use the same effect with human/animal eardrums.

</comment><comment><USER32> I suppose the next generation of MEMS microphones can contain photodiodes to mitigate this attack.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is cool research, but I hope people aren't viewing this as a real-world worry. By the time someone is breaking into my house to set up hundreds of dollars worth of laser equipment, I probably have bigger problems.

<comment><USER34> If you'd actually read the paper, you can see that they were able to inject commands through double pane glass from 75 meters away.

<comment><USER33> I know, but I have a fence around my house. Once someone is setting up equipment around my house, why not just smash a window and steal my stuff directly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Blew my mind!

I always felt all these assistants we're super creepy any way and I get a lot of things hooked up in my smart home but want to control everything via my phone, which I trust.

</comment><comment><USER36> The authors seem to a little confused by the purpose of voice identification in these systems. They repeatedly call it "Voice Authentication", which is it not.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't understand why anyone wants these listening devices in their home

<comment><USER38> Do you really not understand or are you just not accepting the same answers everyone gives every time this question comes up?

They're terribly useful for listening to music, setting timers, alarms, reminders, checking weather, traffic, unit conversions, and just general web lookups.

I suspect what you meant was, "why do people trade their privacy for convenience?" Which of course is ALWAYS the trade-off one makes when it comes to security.

I personally have decided (for now) that the convenience of the devices outweighs the _likely_ harm they will have on me. Would I have one if I were running for political office? Absolutely not.

<comment><USER39> It's weird that I manage to do that entire list of things without saying a word aloud.

It's luxury tech. That's where the market is.

<comment><USER40> > It's weird that I manage to do that entire list of things without saying a > word aloud.

That's a incredibly broad statement... anything you do can be done in another way which someone could define as luxury. I can churn butter, but I like the luxury to buy it instead, I expect you are the same ;).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meet SiteSimon - turns Chrome into an intelligent assistant - <AUTHOR> http://sitesimonsays.com/post/22322950701/meet-the-new-sitesimon-the-best-assistant-on-the-web

<comment><USER2> _Until now, your browsing data has been constantly collected and used…for someone else's benefit._

So SiteSimon will never turn over my information to law enforcement or use it to target advertisements? That seems highly unlikely to me.

<comment><USER3> My impression is that all personal data is kept client side and all data sent to them is anonymous, though we all recall how well that tends to work in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> whoa this is pretty good - the idea is actually quite novel. Since most people consume content from select websites, they are bound to go to those sites more and essentially that is the internet to them. So why not help them try to find the most relevant content from that very site. I will give it a shot.</comment>


Succincter (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://people.csail.mit.edu/mip/papers/succinct/succinct.pdf <comment><USER2> Abstract: We can represent an array of n values from {0, 1, 2} using n log_2 3 bits (arithmetic coding), but then we cannot retrieve a single element efficiently. Instead, we can encode every block of t elements using t log_2 3 bits, and bound the retrieval time by t. This gives a linear trade-off between the redundancy of the representation and the query time.

In fact, this type of linear trade-off is ubiquitous in known succinct data structures, and in data compression. The folk wisdom is that if we want to waste one bit per block, the encoding is so constrained that it cannot help the query in any way. Thus, the only thing a query can do is to read the entire block and unpack it.

We break this limitation and show how to use recursion to improve redundancy. It turns out that if a block is encoded with two (!) bits of redundancy, we can decode a single element, and answer many other interesting queries, in time logarithmic in the block size.

Our technique allows us to revisit classic problems in succinct data structures, and give surprising new upper bounds. We also construct a locally- decodable version of arithmetic coding.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know of published experiments about porting traditional apps over to succinct data structures?

</comment><comment> the-alchemist Thanks, @espeed! I did a quick browse through the paper. I'm wondering why the focus seems to be on "trits" instead of bits.

<comment><AUTHOR> For more on trits, see Mihai's 2010 paper...

An Alternative to Arithmetic Coding with Local Decodability (2010) [pdf] [http://people.csail.mit.edu/mip/papers/trits/paper.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mip/papers/trits/paper.pdf)

Changing base without losing space (2010) [pdf] [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1806771](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1806771) (same paper as above, different title)

"The ternary numeral system (also called base 3) has three as its base...a ternary digit (trit) is analogous to a bit. One trit is equivalent to log2 3 (about 1.58496) bits of information" [1].

NB: Base 3 is the _integer_ base with the lowest average radix economy; however, base _e_ has the lowest average radix economy overall [2].

[1] Ternary numeral system [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_numeral_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_numeral_system)

[2] Radix economy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy)

[3] Three-valued logic [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- valued_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-valued_logic)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Lightweight time-management CLI tool - liviu- https://github.com/liviu-/ding <comment><AUTHOR> I recently started using Timetrap ( [https://github.com/samg/timetrap](https://github.com/samg/timetrap)) and find fantastic. Covers a lot of corner cases while still being incredibly simple to use.

<comment><USER2> But does it beep at you? That actually looks awesome though--thanks for sharing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excellent. Will investigate. Currently using espeak to call out pomodoros (among other things - weather, motivational quotes, reminders) at set times. But of course you tune out after a while. This might be a more flexible solution.

EDIT: CLI is the future :)

<comment><USER3> OK, based on the comment thread I'm now trying this:

        sleep 25m; espeak "Take a break!"; notify-send "Get a cup of coffee, stretch, ignore existential angst"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On Unix/Linux you have "at" [http://www.tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools- Summary/html/schedul...](http://www.tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools- Summary/html/scheduling.html). For the Mac, however "at" is disabled (for battery saving reasons? or for working with laptops that sleep?) but you can turn it on.

</comment><comment><USER5> Consider using \b instead of printing a new line every time. I've a huge scrollback configured and it can silently crash my terminal given a large enough wake time!

<comment> liviu- Great point -- there's a pull request addressing this issue just now: [https://github.com/liviu-/ding/pull/4](https://github.com/liviu-/ding/pull/4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This made me smile. I usually pop open the chrome timer or use my phone. I also just started trying out Strict Timer (chrome extension). As simple as these are, I think you've managed to reduce the motion necessary from the user to its absolute lowest level for a parameterized timer. Thanks for the tool.

</comment><comment><USER6> Emacs package Chronos: [https://libraries.io/emacs/chronos](https://libraries.io/emacs/chronos)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sweet! I saved the link. My intention is to take a look at the source code and then write my own ding-ding cli tool. It will be fun and I think it will give me a nice feeling when using it.

Thanks for the inspiration!

</comment><comment><USER8> > Around 100 LOC

Say what? To ring the bell after sleeping based on a parameter?

<comment><USER9> To be fair it does slightly more than that (relative times, absolute times, etc) but it is somewhat ironic considering that it advertises itself as an alternative to one liners like "sleep 4231; beep".

<comment><USER10> You can do sleep 15m; beep

<comment><USER11> One of the reasons to use this is to avoid beep, which may not even be enabled on your machine.

<comment><USER10> Use echo '\a' that's what this program uses anyway... It's literally sleep $1; echo '\a' or you can use at if you want exact time.

<comment><USER12> Yes, anything can be done in a different way.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Privacy Router Anonabox Gets $600K in Crowdfunding and Huge Backlash - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/anonabox-backlash/ <comment><USER2> Its inspiring to see so much financial commitment to an idea like this, but disheartening to see it go to the wrong place -- a Kickstarter, not the Tor Project.

Maybe we, as the FOSS community, need to start utilizing crowd sourcing more. Maybe we can use the marketing from Heartbleed etc. to launch a Kickstarter to audit OpenSSL, and use the NSA revelations to launch a Kickstarter to run more exit nodes (which are depereately needed -- about 1k nodes for 2M users). The project to audit Truecrypt seemed to reap the benefits of this quite effectively.

I'm not familiar with the TOS for Kickstarter so maybe this isn't possible, but clearly the general public clearly has more interest than we (I) thought. They just don't know how to channel their support effectively.

<comment><USER3> Is there a Kickstarter alternative solely for raising funding for OSS with little or no fees?

If not. Someone should build one.

<comment><USER4> Well, there's Gratipay (formerly Gittip), which is a great platform since it allows you to support an open-source project through regular payments. Unfortunately, the project has not yet received broad adoption, which I hope will change in the future, though.

Here's the link:

[http://www.gratipay.com](http://www.gratipay.com)

In fact, there is a page for the Tor community, so if you want to support them, go there and give them some money ;)

[https://gratipay.com/for/tor](https://gratipay.com/for/tor)

<comment><USER5> I know it's common here to let the past be past, but it should be said that depending on your world view, gittip is not a good option.

[http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The current state-of-the-art in Anonabox skepticism: [https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/2j9caq/anonabox_to...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/2j9caq/anonabox_tor_router_box_is_false_representation/)

<comment><USER7> I don't what the point of lying about the source of the boards was. That was just stupid. This user htilonom is just milking it for all it's worth though.

I've seen those devices retail for as much as $30. $50 isn't unreasonable. That price should ensure they can deliver.

After it's done with Germar, the reddit mob should take its pitchforks over to Starbucks. What a scam that place is. Slapping their logo on coffee from some third world country, claiming they made it. Outrageous!

<comment><USER8> Do you want to buy a tor router with default open wifi and admin password set to 'developer!'?

<comment><USER9> ...?

You understand that your router came with the username 'admin' and the password 'password' when you bought it right?

(don't get me wrong, there's some weird stuff going on with that kickstarter, but the password/username thing is such a strawman it hurts me to see people talking about it)

<comment><USER10> At least my router did not. It came with a sticker with a random password. My other routers all have ethernet ports and came with wifi disabled.

<comment><USER9> What router is it?

I've literally never encountered a router that didn't have a default password on it.

Some times service providers will set a random (or user) password before shipping the device, but they all reset to the default one when you factory reset it.

I thought it was just universal.

I'm actually quite interested to know which manufacturers ship a custom rom per device with a unique password.

<comment><USER11> Fritz Boxes have a unique password, it's printed on the sticker on the back. My consumer grade Telekom router does the same, same for the vodafone router my brother owns. It's de-facto standard for all consumer grade adsl/cable modems/routers that german telkos hand off to their customer.

<comment><USER9> Um. You might be confusing the password that is configured by the service provider and the password that set by the manufacturer.

The fritz box default password is 'password'.

[http://www.routeripaddress.com/routers/10609/avm-fritz- box-f...](http://www.routeripaddress.com/routers/10609/avm-fritz-box-fon- wlan-7390_default_settings.html)

<comment><USER12> Maybe confusing the WiFi password and the admin password? I just got a new modem/router today and the WiFi is WPA2 secured by default with a random passcode printed on a sticker on the base of the unit... but once connected, the login for configuring the unit itself is your standard default admin/password deal.

<comment><USER13> ADSL/Cable modems are usually set up to download firmware from the ISP, at least in cable modems throttling is usually done on the device as well, so it is sort of resets every time you turn it off and on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are ethical questions about the person ripping off multiple different products and not crediting them. He is taking a bunch of things and putting them in a nice shiny box with almost zero end user configuration required. Now, that's a moral question and I'll let you all decide if it's right or wrong.

Coming to the technical aspects of the box, the product is fine in the sense that it does exactly what it says technically - routing your connection via Tor. Using verified credentials over Tor is a bad idea for that specific identity. If you're the kind of person who's going to buy this, I can take a guess that a large percent of the population wouldn't really know how it works and will think "I'm anonymous and private now, thanks to this little box" and use the Internet exactly as they were using it before - bad idea. The concept is flawed simply because a layman will use email and facebook over Tor and then bam! you can identify him instantly.

TL;DR - Operation successful, patient is dead.

<comment><USER15>
        > He is taking a bunch of things and putting them in a
        > nice shiny box with almost zero end user configuration
        > required

This is a stronger value proposition than most social media startups.

<comment><USER16> Reminds me of debates in the movie en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_of_Genius_(film)

About what is to invent or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Forgetting the fact that it very well may be a crappy product, I am not sure I see the issue that has caused the pitchforks to come out on this one. The controversy seems to be over this statement:

 _" Little did we know, it would take over four years, and a lot more tacos and beer, to create a device with the security, speed, functionality and easy- of-use that is the anonabox."_

It certainly could have taken them four years, even if that only means they were tinkering with it for four years before they stumbled across a $20 board from China that finally made it feasible given their apparent lack of skills necessary to create a custom device. While I certainly won't be buying one of these, the description on the site seems fairly accurate. It's an OpenWRT- based router that they pre-configure to work with TOR. It seems like it probably does what it says.

I just don't see pitchfork-worthy issues here.

<comment><USER18> A bit further down the product description:

      By our fourth round of prototypes we had created a model
      with 64mb memory and a 580mhz CPU. This not only runs the
      software well, it flies! At last happy with the board, we
      designed a simple, minimalist case in plain white to house
      it. The end result is our current model. We decided to name
      it the anonabox.

They did not create the board nor did they design the case.

<comment><USER19> And nowhere in what you quoted did they say that they created the board.

<comment><USER20> >we had created a model with 64mb memory and a 580mhz CPU.

I'm not sure about you but saying "we had created" is a pretty clear indication of where they thought they stood in the creation process here.

<comment><USER21> It just says they created the complete box, it says nothing about the components. For anybody that has any experience with assembling hardware, it is completely common case to use components from other manufacturers. Apple says "we created iPhone" but they use Samsung chips inside, should they say "Samsung created iPhone" instead? No, because they added their own work to the components, things that the components didn't do before. So the question is - did the source components do what Anonabox is doing? If not, they created something new and have valid claim to that. They don't have to make the silicon and extract the metal from ore to have right to claim that.

<comment><USER22> It definitely implies they designed the board. Apple certainly designed their own board.

If Apple was buying fully-functional iPhone hardware that only lacked a case then it would be ridiculous for them to claim they had created the iPhone.

For you to say 'complete box' is misleading, because the plastic shell doesn't actually do anything, the bare board is functionally already complete.

The board is not a mere component, it is 95% of the end result.

And especially the wording of creating a model, then evaluating the performance of the board, then designing a case... creation can _only_ apply to the uncased board in that paragraph. If they didn't make the board it's a pack of lies.

<comment><USER21> It says about technical specs of the product, and it says about how they looked for the hardware that would work for them, but it never says they soldered the board themselves. At least I don't see any of such language on the Kickstarter page, maybe they claimed this in AMA, I didn't read that. The product is what is sold, and if 95% was already there, I personally see no problem in that - a lot of great things were done as adding the final 5% to what already existed but was not as practical. I'm also not sure why anybody would care where the board comes from - as long as it works as a consumer product that didn't exist before, what's the problem?

<comment><USER22> I'm fine with anything that isn't deceptive.

<comment><USER21> Right, so I'm not sure yet if there was intent for deception. Sure, the product needs work - like default password, etc. - it should be fixed before it can be reasonably considered a security product, and that's all valid points, but that is not a fraud - it's just a product needing some work, not an uncommon thing on kickstarter. Now if they did claim they built it from scratch then it would be outright deception, and that changes the picture completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> According to a user in the Reddit IAMA thread with the Anonbox creator, the idea (and some of the wording) is plagiarized from a Hackaday semi-finalist:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_augus...](http://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_august_germar_a_developer_for_the_anonabox/cla3ydz)

> By the way, here is the original project, Hackaday Prize (not yet finished) > semi-finalist, and based on the Adafruit onionPi : > [http://hackaday.com/2014/09/06/secure-your-internets-with- > we...](http://hackaday.com/2014/09/06/secure-your-internets-with-web- > security-everywhere/)

> There are many obvious similarities and anonabox are even using almost the > same sentences I'm using for my HaD project, same arguments.

> The anonabox campaign started one day before the contest judging, and his > website has been registered on 18 of september, (after I released the > project details). This is a very aggressive move and everyone should be > carefull about this campaign.

<comment><USER24> A router preconfigured to use Tor and other services is not that original.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a common Kickstarter scam. Take a Chinese product off alibaba, maybe tweak the software, brand it, and sell it on kickstarter. It has happened time and time again for things like Android watches, Bluetooth low energy devices, almost anything currently being made.

</comment><comment><USER26> There's an interesting email thread on the tor-relay mailing list with people from the torproject itself commenting and sharing their thoughts on that project:

[https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor- relays/2014-Octob...](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor- relays/2014-October/005511.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> And funding is now suspended: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/augustgermar/anonabox-a...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/augustgermar/anonabox- a-tor-hardware-router)

<comment><USER28> Can someone enlighten me on this? Does this mean the creators will not receive the funding, or not that no further funding will be accepted?

<comment><USER29> I'm assuming both, at least until it's resolved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hey @kickstarter It's time to kill the @anonabox - @torproject needs to make a statement disowning this project too.

I've got a pile of money and an idea... let's make a mint by stealing peoples ideas.....

"Well, we have enough capital to do anything we want. We could have a new board made in the US with a new layout if we wanted. Its ultimately up to all of you, the backers"

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/augustgermar/anonabox-a...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/augustgermar/anonabox- a-tor-hardware-router/comments?cursor=8135947#comment-8135946)

It's more than time to boycott this thing.

<comment><USER31> According to filesharing rules and many people here on HN, you can't "steal" an idea. After all, it's not like a car. The idea is still there to be used by the original owner.

Oh, and I can't forget the other motto in business: "ideas are worthless...execution is everything"

<comment><USER32> You jest, but its the truth. Your idea is worthless until its in production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Let's count the ways this could have been done better. For starters, Let's not spend most of the time lying to people (apart from the straight up amaturish parts of their project), second, start the project by including the costs of security based milestones in the price of admission.

This results in higher costs because people are being altruistic... so let's make the cost $80 starters... $40 for Hardware (There are better mini routers out there for the price). $10 for Shipping. $10 for Software. $10 for Security Audit. $10 for TOR donation, because you're exploiting them for profit (higher pledges to TOR = TOR merch).

The more you sell, the better bulk hardware (increases in RAM/decreases in cost) order you can manage... but for 10,000~ units you'll need somebody with feet on the ground in China to deal with the local team. plus QA and taxes and lawyers and.. ARGGHHHHH

plus, should have an open and detailed platform with a threat model and design documentation before you even start.

Which OS/disto?, which packages/why these packages?, GCsecurity? firewall? administration UX? Update path? Stretch goals?! Feature set? Less is more in this kind of thing...

</comment><comment><USER33> I think a big part of the backlash was that the hardware is not open source. Sticking existing things together is fine but he can't guarantee the safety which is unfair to those wo purchase one an trusting it.

Btw you can achieve the same thing with open hardware: [http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm](http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm) \+ pfSense + tor

<comment><USER34> I think a lot of the anger is also related to the consistent and blatant lies given by August Germar. The AMA on reddit[1] was a disaster - August was repeatedly called out on various statements, and repeatedly made obviously debunked replies.

It was embarrassing to read, but it also leaves a bad taste in the mouth with regards to the integrity of the project.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_augu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_august_germar_a_developer_for_the_anonabox/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> does Anonabox have anything that sets it apart from Onion Pi ([https://learn.adafruit.com/onion- pi/overview](https://learn.adafruit.com/onion-pi/overview))?

<comment><USER36> As it doesn't have a source of hardware entropy, and the Raspberry Pi actually _does_ (bcm2708-rng/bcm2835-rng), I'd say it's clearly worse from one perspective.

From another perspective, the network on the Pi's connected via USB so it's not particularly great but it ought to be just fine for Tor. (Never actually tried an Onion Pi setup myself, but I have a few lying around, so I might do.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I cancelled my pledge on kickstarter for the Anonabox. Surely looks like the projectowner has been "a bit to clever"

</comment><comment><USER38> I would like him to spend $150k on a full time developer to verify the security on the box.

</comment><comment><USER39> [https://mobile.twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/52246310994522931...](https://mobile.twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/522463109945229313)

All they did was smear away the logo in photochop, though their OEM might have provided this image. Anybody can make their own Anonbox with a Cubieboard or similar Allwinner A1x/A20 box for under $60. Or use thegrugqs PORTAL on a chipped TP-Link router you can find plenty on amazon/ebay for $40 [https://github.com/grugq/portal/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/grugq/portal/blob/master/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER9> ha, I think the real take away from this is that there's a great opportunity for someone who knows what they're doing to create a very similar product without any of controversial baggage, and make a killing.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wouldn't give my money to someone who thought "The default password is developer! because developers are the only ones who would be looking at the code." [1]

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_augu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/anonabox/comments/2ja22g/hi_im_august_germar_a_developer_for_the_anonabox/cl9wphy?context=3#cl9w58p)

</comment><comment><USER41> This is an interesting phenomena to watch. A startup I was involved with years ago considered the use of the TOR network as an added service - mostly using the technology but with a managed set of nodes - to provide something like VPN services. This was very early in the reddit/social media days. I'm curious if it had seen the light of day what sort of press it would have received.

<comment><USER42> Looking at the amount of pledges they collected, that start-up likely had not, because on Reddit people _like_ Tor. Issue here seems to be about general dishonesty - consequences of which I really think more companies could use to think about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Sorry, how is this different from, say, Barracuda Networks packaging commodity hardware with open source software in nice boxes and selling them for a mint? Where is the outrage coming from on this if he's making this stuff easier to buy and deploy, even if the hardware wasn't developed in-house?

<comment><USER10> The issue is lying about it, and making other false claims. Such as claiming its "open hardware" when they are relying on closed off the shelf devices.

It also doesn't help that it appears that their default setup is hideously insecure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> During a bout of insomnia I came across the project and funded it. Seemed like an easy way to get something I would use.

I just pulled my funding. This is way to sketchy. If the Tor project can put something together I'd be happy to put my money into that instead.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's ironic that the outrage came from Reddit because that site was built on lying to people (in the beginning)

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-reddit-got-huge-tons- of...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake- accounts--2)

Now that they have solved the chicken-and-the-egg problem, they're legit.

Point being, lot's of startups over-promise (and exaggerate) in the beginning. It takes time fix bugs and find things. If you waited for a perfect product and were 110% honest you would likely not get any traction.

That's not to say that this guy shouldn't be penalized for lying about where he sourced his products though!

<comment><USER46> I certainly agree that startups over-promise in the beginning, but they need to be very explicit and very clear as far as human safety is concerned. I work (up until the end of the day today) for a medical startup. We speak highly of our own product, but we make it unambiguously, blatantly clear that our product is NOT an emergency feedback system. If we lie and say we're a system like that, people could get killed. In this case, the publishers lied critically about the source of the parts and the system that was running on top. While perhaps not as immediately and spectacularly fatal as a medical device malfunction, if journalists or revolutionaries are using the product and there's a backdoor, there will be lives lost. They were NOT clear that the hardware they were using was actually a Chinese manufactured product from a Chinese design company. When it comes to surveillance, the Chinese government doesn't have a great reputation. There's plenty of reason to believe the device may have a hardware backdoor, as has happened before. Second, the software installed on the device is itself highly insecure. The original Reddit post pointed out that the device had a web-exposed remote administration panel open with the default username and password.

The only thing worse than no security is the illusion of security. This product, as sold, provided just that -- a minimal but ultimately illusory security.

<comment><USER45> I think you make a good point. It's a security product that can harm people's lives. So in that way, it's different then lots of other startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is a great idea and I think the future home router should provide a switch button to switch between normal mode and TOR mode.</comment>


Under No Circumstances Write A Long Business Plan (my actual angel funded deck) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thefailingpoint.com/2009/08/gettingstarted/write-a-long-business-plan/

<comment><USER2> This must be an effective presentation because I actually understood it after 3 minutes. Then again, isn't that the point? Great job.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, 3 years on, I am embarrassed to read it. So many things I know now that I would have liked to have put in the deck. Thanks for the kind words...I really want to share as much as I can from that learning experience.

<comment><USER3> I think it'd be really helpful for the readers for you to write about what you would change and why.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you asking about what we would change in the deck or the company? There's certainly a bit of what you seek in the write up in terms of what we did wrong with this deck. In the future, I plan to put up the deck we took to the VCs when we went seeking the Series A round. We received two term sheets from what anyone would call Tier 1 firms. Hopefully seeing that deck, and being able to contrast it against this one, will be useful for entrepreneurs and founders looking to raise capital. If you have more specific questions, please don't hesitate to send them to me on email or twitter.

<comment><USER3> _In the future, I plan to put up the deck we took to the VCs when we went seeking the Series A round. We received two term sheets from what anyone would call Tier 1 firms._

That would be awesome. Thanks Brandon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know this is off topic, but IMSafer is a great application. Please add the ability to "Mark All As Read" or make your AJAX-ey site run faster. I have 1000's of alerts to go through and have given up on taking the time to clear them all out!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words. I wish I could help. The company that bought IMSafer about 20 months ago had done some updates, but they mostly bought the backend stuff for products they were selling into other markets. Have you sent an email to support?

<comment><USER4> Yep. I think I actually mentioned it in an e-mail to you when you owned it. It's ok though, I'm about to uninstall the app as everyone in the house has grown up enough to deal with their own issues :).</comment></comment></comment>


Sweden's Bank-ID, the country's most important app (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://futurereport.schibsted.com/one-id-to-rule-them-all/ <comment><AUTHOR> As the poster of the article, I take myself the freedom to hijack "my" own comments for pointing those among you interested in Sweden's tech sector, to my free weekly newsletter swedishtechweekly.com. Apologies for that :)</comment>


Procrastibation - <AUTHOR> http://findthepulse.com/blog/2008/10/21/procrastibation/

<comment><USER2> This is a pointless article. What he's saying is 'learn some self control'. I believe that if procrastinators found it easy to learn self control, they would not be procrastinating.

It's like telling an alcoholic - only drink on weekends.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the point of the article is obvious but I don't think the article is pointless. Too many procrastinators fool themselves into thinking they're being productive when in fact they are not reaching their full potential (PG's "type B" procrastinator). Recommending structured procrastination in the way that John Perry does is like telling a nicotine addict to switch from cigarettes to cigars. Also, the article doesn't say that it's easy to learn self control. In fact, it says just the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've found the best way to stop my self from procrastinating is to just fullscreen my Konsole window and hide the menus, that way i just have a big black screen, and a tab bar at the bottom(which i can also hide). That only works when my work can be done in a terminal, but most of it can.

</comment><comment><USER4> I believe pg wrote an essay touching on the idea of structured procrastination: <http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html>

<comment><USER5> As did Robert Benchley:

[http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/etext/how-to-get-things-done- des...](http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/etext/how-to-get-things-done-despite- procrastination.txt)

"Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment."

<comment><USER6> As did Aaron Swartz: <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity></comment></comment></comment>


Many "listen" TCP sockets slow down Linux – The revenge of the listening sockets - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/revenge-listening-sockets/ <comment><USER2> Good write up. The tap scripts are nicely written too.

It isn't quite correct to say many listening TCP sockets slows down Linux, but many listening bound to the same port number module 32 - regardless of bound IP address.

I've learned there are a lot of these little gotchas still floating around the kernel that get hit from time to time. Great expos on how to track them down.

But I love the kernel comment "This is really all you need." Once again that infamous saying bites people in the rear.</comment>


Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080 Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/geforce-rtx-3080-founder-review,1.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting, review I have been waiting for ;)

3090 Specs are next gen no doubt: 8nm process gpu. 24 GB GDDR6X RAM. 19 Gbps mem bandwidth. 8K 60 Hz HDR. 10K shader cores. 285 TFLOPS</comment>


In India, Summer Heat May Soon Be Literally Unbearable - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/climate/india-heat-wave-summer.html <comment><AUTHOR> > Air conditioners can contribute to heat waves by blowing hot air out into > the city. Never heard of this before, quite interesting.</comment>


What Programming Languages Should You Know? - <AUTHOR> http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=704316&seqNum=1 <comment><USER2> The list provided by the article (C, Smalltalk, Lisp, Erlang, Haskell, Prolog) is not a bad one, if your goal is to understand different paradigms of programming.

Of course, if your goal is to hack out a quick web app, the list might look slightly different....</comment>


Let me develop your web app – for free - cryptic-waters Hi,
I want to offer my development services to HN community.
I will be developing in PHP(Laravel), I can also do front-end development.
I cannot design. You provide that.
Your project has to be clearly defined - not too many feature creep please.
Example project : ( http://nanosupply.co ) -> NGINX, Laravel, MySQL, Bootstrap3, Elasticsearch
Please comment with your project details, expected timeframe and contact information. <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I am thinking on three ideas.I am not able to proceed as my CSS skills are very bad so my output webpage looks ugly.

1) Stackoverflow is reactive. You have to wait for someone else to post a question before you can answer. As a developer, whenever I solve a difficult problem, I want to be able to tweet or write a blog about it so others can find it. However, unlike twitter, it will not be limited to 140 characters. This is mainly useful for proprietary softwares where senior developers/managers often need to train new comers. Essentially, this is yammer for developers.

2) When buying a home, commute time is a big factor but very few tools let you compare commute times over an extended period of time. For example, if I have 3-4 areas in my mind, I would like an app which sends traffic updates for these areas everyday at 8:00am and at 5:00pm. After a few ideas, I will have an idea of which place would be a better commute

3) A job search engine which is sorts jobs based on "Commute distance" from your home address rather than from city centre. This also takes public transport and spouse's commute also into consideration.

If you are interested, drop me a line at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER2> Check this:

[http://www.demotivation.us/media/demotivators/demotivation.u...](http://www.demotivation.us/media/demotivators/demotivation.us_IF- SOMETHING-IS-FREE-It-means-you-are-the-product.-_135566602815.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi there,

That's exactly the stack that we use (somewhat unsurprisingly) so of course this is of interest - but my main question when someone offers something for free is Why?

So, why are you offering it for free?

<comment> cryptic-waters I am looking for interesting projects that I can be part of.

Most ideas have limited funding behind them and eventually die out because they can't afford to get the product out.

I hope to help develop the initial iteration of the application. If its successful, maybe I join in full-time.

<comment><USER4> "Say you'll work for free and make yourself invaluable." -Clint Eastwood

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a relly good idea sir, keep this going on and you will learn alot :). Good luck to you i wish.

</comment><comment> cryptic-waters [http://nanosupply.co](http://nanosupply.co) \- link

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm doing the same but for C++ development

</comment><comment><USER7> hi if you want to contribute to something, take a look at my latest project and give feedback! Http://melonpix.com

</comment><comment><USER8> Great idea! I emailed you yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER9> No.

<comment> cryptic-waters OK</comment></comment>


The Sin of Sloth – an external module system for C - <AUTHOR> https://billwadge.wordpress.com/2020/06/23/the-sin-of-sloth-an-external-module-system-for-c/ <comment><USER2> This reads quite complicated, a simple example would really help to get the picture.

Just as side-note: There is already a kind of C module system, at least when you can live with GPL licensed code: The GNU Portability Library (Gnulib). It's a source code collection designed for portability and in combination with GNU Autotools a very powerful toolbox.

<comment><USER3> How is gnulib at all a module system? It's just a library from what I can tell.

<comment><USER2> Gnulib is distributed in source code format and comprises several bundled functions aka "modules" including dependencies.

You either download individual files online or clone the whole repository for local usage. There is the gnulib-tool utility which you use to copy the required source modules into your project. They come along with Autoconf macros and build scripts.

After properly setting up your configure.ac and Makefile.am, all imported modules will be build, the resulting object is a static libary libgnu.a, ready for linking.

On the source code side, the only thing you will do is #include "<module>.h" and use the available functions.

Autoconf & Automake take care of the rest for building.

For me, this feels very much like a module system (designed for maximum portability), but of course there might be other definitions of a module system.

[https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/MODULES.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/MODULES.html)

<comment><USER3> Colour me surprised. Yeah, that looks like a module system to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So, where can I download this module system?

<comment><USER4> Maybe that is the reason it didnt catch on? (actually I am having the same question as you)

<comment><USER5> I'll arrange something

<comment><USER6> Were you committing the sin of sloth when writing that post? But seriously, announcing something like that and not following "show me the code" is rather unusual these days.

<comment><USER7> What do you mean announcing? My read of this site is that it's a blog post about an interesting project from the past.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Asia's car battery sector leaves Europe in the slow lane - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/d6703610-cafe-11e8-9fe5-24ad351828ab <comment><AUTHOR> ""If we don't take back innovation, it will be like the solar industry all over again," said Anil Srivastava, chief executive of Swiss producer Leclanché, referring to the fact that the top three global solar companies by production are Chinese. Thanks to generous subsidies and bank loans, Chinese companies ended up producing two-thirds of the world's solar panels between 2010 and 2015, an expansion that pushed many European competitors into bankruptcy."</comment>


Conway's Law Is Real - <AUTHOR> https://goodroot.ca/post/2018/10/13/practicality-metaphysics-conways-law/ <comment><USER2> _Communication is sometimes called a "soft problem". It is emotionally rooted, which is used as the rationale to dismiss its importance. It isn't code, it isn't tangible, and it isn't logical. ...._ _Communication is not an engineering problem. And it isn't a soft problem. It is one of the hardest problems there is._

I'm guessing the author has met people who think "soft = easy", and dismiss it like that.

"Soft vs Hard" isn't equivalent to "easy vs difficult", it's closer to "intuitive vs systematic". (I suspect soft skills are under-valued and under- appreciated because it's harder to fairly measure and evaluate non-systematic traits).

So of course communication is a "soft problem".

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting but whoever put that animated GIF in as the primary image when the story is shared should be shot. How mortifying to text this link to someone and subject them to endlessly repeating animation when they open your message thread.</comment>


I was sued for libel under an unjust law - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/i-was-sued-for-libel-under-an-unjust-law-1.10979 <comment><USER2> Having the burden of proof on the defendant is a _terrible_ idea. The imbalance in the UK libel system has given rise to libel tourism [1]. This is something the UK has been seeking to reform [2].

If you're a public figure or an organisation then we have to accept that some people are going to say some crazy things otherwise it would be too easy to use the courts to silence legitimate criticism.

As for Elsevier's package pricing strategy, it's interesting how similar this is to how cable companies price offerings.

In the case of cable companies (IMHO) we need structural separation between those that own the physical network and those that provide services on it. Around the world telecommunications policy is slowly heading in this direction in relation to the "last mile".

In the case of academic journals it seems academics are victims of themselves basically. Prestigious journals carry weight because academics give them weight. Promotions and continued employment sometimes revolve around getting published. At that point the academics are captive to those that provide those journals.

Previously distribution was a key problem. Now obviously it isn't. Some disciplines have taken a far more open approach to publication and peer review. This problem will probably be solved as more disciplines get organized and go their own way.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism>

[2]: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- order/8379196...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- order/8379196/New-rules-to-discourage-libel-tourism-in-Britain.html)

<comment><USER3> English libel law is ridiculous, and yet it still hasn't gotten reformed. Remember the McLibel case? (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel_Case>)

I don't exactly sympathize with the panicky rhetoric of the pamphlet that was about, but nothing in it comes anywhere close to the kind of thing libel law legitimately protects against, and it looks like stuff that would be perfectly legal to say in more reasonable jurisdictions like Holland or the US.

But yes, even more outrageous than English libel law (there's no such thing as "UK libel law," since Scots law is different) is this Libel tourism business.

I wonder what it would take to get this reformed. Any British people on here who have a better view of the local political climate? I somehow suspect that a push from local constituent carries more weight in British politics in today's climate than ECHR judgments like the one in the McLibel case. Is there anyone strongly pushing _for_ these strict laws, or is it just a case of inertia combined with nobody pushing very hard against it?

<comment><USER4> > _there's no such thing as "UK libel law," since Scots law is different_ //

If we're being pedantic shouldn't it be England-and-Wales libel law?

<comment><USER5> s/pedantic/welsh/

What the hell, my karma was getting a bit high anyway.

<comment><USER4> It's actual until recently been a bit redundant as Wales was only really created as a recognisable entity as it was annexed to England (thus becoming part of England as any other county or region, Yorkshire for example).

I've not really researched if Wales exists as a country now only that someone told me the laws establishing the Senedd and giving it powers had changed the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice. This reminds me of one of El Naschie's most awesome papers, published in 'his' Elsevier journal "Chaos, Solitons and Fractals": <http://www.el- naschie.net/bilder/file/Photo-Gallery.pdf>

<comment><USER7> Linked PDF is an 'article' in "Chaos, Solitons and Fractals" titled "Photo Gallery", which is exactly what the title suggests: a gallery of photos of El Naschie with colleagues, photos of El Naschie on vacation, and one screenshot of a web page.

Truly a pioneering piece of research, this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The linked article from Nature here

[http://www.nature.com/news/libel-win-reveals-need-for- reform...](http://www.nature.com/news/libel-win-reveals-need-for- reform-1.10981)

and the accompanying Nature editorial

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7406/full/487139a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7406/full/487139a.html)

give a lot more background on the details of this particular case, and on which defenses to libel claims are available under British law. Proposals for legal reform in Britain are also discussed at those links.

</comment><comment><USER9> > many of which pondered the _texture of time and space_. Physicists > questioned the quality of the papers and the lack of proper peer review.

Being curious about his theories, I've located this...

<http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mohamed_El_Naschie>

Which brought me to this...

"E-infinity theory"

"By introducing a space-time which is not only four-dimensional but also infinite-dimensional, and by using hyperbolic random fractals, I was able to precisely model this stormy ocean in which relativity and quantum mechanics can live side by side."

</comment><comment><USER10> Great news, but I wished the article went into more detail about the original lawsuit and the strategy used to win the case.

To me, the big story in all of this is Elsevier's "package sales strategy". They are a much bigger foe, so accusing them of wrong doings directly would be a much bigger fight. Their dominance in the industry will hopefully soon evaporate.

<comment><USER11> Tim Gowers and 12,325 others (including myself) have stood up to accuse them quite directly of wrongdoing, with precisely the aim you suggest.

<http://www.thecostofknowledge.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hence the joke "I'm going to sue you in England."

In America the burden is on the person being defamed to prove his case, including that the stated facts are unjust.

We have a lot of crazies here saying crazy things. It's wonderful.

<comment> excuse-me >burden is on the person being defamed to prove his case, including that the stated facts are unjust

So if I say you are a child molester - you have to prove that you aren't !

How exactly were you intending to do that?

<comment><USER13> You don't "have to" do anything. Ignoring criticism is always an option; you can rely on the audience to be able to tell truth from falsehood in many cases. People lie, and say mean stuff. Must there be a remedy for that built into the legal system? The US choice (and this stems directly from the first amendment) is broadly no. You can sue for damages from libel, but you need to be able to prove to the court that the offender actually knew what they were saying was wrong. Otherwise, they were just stating their opinion, however misguided it might have been. Opinions are protected speech.

<comment> excuse-me The legal system should probably get involved when there is an imbalance of power.

Yes if an anon user on HN says another anon user on HN is a vi user instead of an emacs user - so what?

But if the NYT runs a front cover accusing me of some terrible crime, do I have to prove that I lost financialy because of it eg. I didn't get a new job, in order to get more than a retraction at the bottom of page 9?

<comment><USER13> If the Times truly and reasonably believed you were guilty, then you weren't libeled under US law. If they lied, then you have a case (and you don't have to "lose" anything financially per se, damages are more general than that).

I guess that doesn't seem to bad a compromise to me.

<comment><USER14> As I stated above, and assuming he is a private citizen, he probably could win that libel case.

<comment><USER13> That's a good point, I'd forgotten about the private citizen distinction. Though again, the fact that the posited story was on the front page of the newspaper would sort of be an existence proof that the target was a public figure. Citizens whose lives are newsworthy are public, sort of by definition.

<comment><USER14> I was assuming he was positing it as an absurd example: he is clearly not a public figure, and was wrongly accused of something on the front page. Also, the distinction between public figure and private citizen is clearly not whether or not they are newsworthy; such a distinction, as you point out, would always come up "public figure" by definition.

I was going to explain the rational used, but Wikipedia to the rescue: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_figure>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

In 1817, William Hone, a satirist, defended himself against multiple charges under Britain's then-antiquated libel laws. He won, despite all odds. Read Ben Wilson's recent "The Laughter of Triumph: William Hone and the Fight for the Free Press" for more.

What boggles my mind, what truly causes me little conniptions, is that even after supposed reform of the various UK libel laws, they are still used today to silence one's opponents. IANAL, etc., but these laws do seem, uh, heavy handed and unfair, arming the slighted with fully automatic sledgehammer launchers to use against any foe, real or perceived.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another case that HN'ers may be familiar with is that of Simon Singh. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Singh> Its a joy to read his books and he hangs out on HN at times too.

Why UK libel laws must change:

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-04/16/qa-with- simon...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-04/16/qa-with-simon-singh- why-uk-libel-law-must-change)

Simon Singh Puts Up a Fight in the War on Science:

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/mf_qa_singh/>

</comment><comment><USER17> For another case of sanity reigning supreme after an English libel law suit, there's Simon Singh's victory against the British Chiropractic Association, after an article he wrote in the Guardian:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/15/simon-singh- li...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/15/simon-singh-libel-case- dropped) [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/10/libel- la...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/10/libel-law)

See also: <http://www.libelreform.org>

<comment> excuse-me That wasn't a victory - they withdrew their suit after he had spent 250,000 defending himself.

And since it never went to trial, there is nothing to stop them suing him again tomorrow, or picking on a less well defended or less public figure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm a big fan of the English libel law; to my mind, if you write something about someone, you should bear responsibility for ensuring that what you write is true, and have the proof to back it up.

Placing the responsibility on the person you're writing about seems just plain unfair to me.

The only problem with the English libel laws is it takes so long to resolve a case. I don't understand why it takes so much time and expense, and would prefer this aspect to be fixed first - if at all possible.

<comment><USER19> If everyone had to prove that what they said was absolutely true before saying anything then nothing would get said as it is almost impossible to prove a positive.

<comment><USER20> Really? I thought it was almost impossible to prove a _negative_.

"You eat babies in your spare time!"

"No, no I don't."

The 1st can produce a picture of the person eating a baby, how does the 2nd prove that he doesn't eat babies?

If the person who had the claim made against them had to definitively prove that beyond a doubt he doesn't eat babies - he'd have to have had someone recording him for every minute of his waking life, including those moments prior to the claim.

The only way to prove a negative is to run a (perhaps nearly) infinite number of tests and never get that result.

<comment><USER19> _Really? I thought it was almost impossible to prove a negative._

Go read Karl Popper on falsifiability.

<comment><USER20> ... and most of the examples shows proving a positive as well, and also clearly exerts why the statement I said in my post is not falsifiable. Your original statement, was, btw, "it is almost impossible to prove a positive." So, how is it nearly impossible to prove "this swan is white," but highly possible to prove "no swan has ever been black?"

I can prove there is a mouse that is blue and black on my desk, but I cannot prove that there has never been a red and black mouse on my desk, I can only assert such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The hilarious thing is that English libel law has been shitty and everyone has known it for literally hundreds of years.

<comment><USER22> You say that, yet justice and sanity prevailed.

<comment><USER23> Is it really just and sane when the defendant is out thousands of pounds even after winning?

<comment><USER22> Were are you pulling that fact from as the that is not the case under UK libel law.

The winner gets there costs covered by the loser - realy rather simple and fair.

<comment><USER23> According to the article, this guy is only expecting about 70% of his costs to be covered in the end. He said he was expecting to be out around 10,000 pounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are American's protected by the SPEECH Act now?</comment>


Why the Apple II ProDOS 2.4 Release Is the OS News of the Year - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5054 <comment><USER2> I have so much admiration for the people who keep old platforms alive. I tinker with a Commodore 64 (a real one) now and then, and I'm just blown away by the community that still exists around it. People still write new software, build new hardware (I have a MSSIAH synth/MIDI interface cartridge and it's a blast to play with), make new demos and intros, discover new graphics modes and sound techniques, etc. The landscape is pretty well mapped out, but people still manage to find new ways to look at it every now and then.

I've always wanted an Apple IIgs, because it had a built-in FM synth that was really powerful for the time (I have a fascination with electronic music and equipment from that era, which is why I have the C64 and MSSIAH, as well as a Gameboy with LSDJ). Maybe now is a good time to start looking around for one.

This is a fantastic story...I want to play with it, just because.

<comment><USER3> "I tinker with a Commodore 64 (a real one) now and then, and I'm just blown away by the community that still exists around it."

I am curious - is there an analog in the c64 world to this new ProDOS 2.4 release ?

That is to say, have enthusiasts reworked and re-released the built-in c64 firmware or otherwise reworked the OS ?

<comment><USER2> ProDOS is not firmware, as I understand it. It is disk-loaded.

Many of the Flash-based disk drives for C64 have a DOS shell that includes the CMD disk and file management functions (CMD made hard disks for C64 back in the day), and a bunch of other DOS enhancements built in. So, yeah, kinda; I think it's as close as one could get to being the same. C64 never had a disk- loaded DOS, as the DOS was built into the disk drives themselves (often enhanced by cartridges or a pluggable firmware called JiffyDOS from CMD), so there is not a direct parallel to ProDOS. But, certainly the enhancements from a bunch of places have become widely available to anyone still using the platform with any modern upgrades.

So, yes, you can work with directories and large collections of files, today, that could not be worked with on original hardware (and realistically there wasn't enough room on disks to need good file handling and directory support in the DOS back then). There's also a shell that makes common operations a lot nicer.

Edit: I think it might be worth explaining for folks who weren't around the first time that DOS stands for "disk operating system", and it was exactly that...it made disk drives work, and provided commands for working with files on disks. The OS itself, on both C64 and Apple, was mostly in the firmware, and was mostly just the BASIC programming language and some boot routines to setup the hardware for software to use. There was no protected mode, and no real notion of APIs, as provided by Operating Systems today. Many C64 programs would map over the built-in ROM, and remove what built-in functionality the OS did provide (like BASIC) in order to get more usable RAM. GEOS was perhaps the closest analog to a modern operating system for those old 8 bit systems; in that it had an API and did provide an abstraction of the hardware, to a small degree. Apple loaded more from disk than the C64 did, in the general case; making it more flexible, but also slower to start up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. This brings back memories of my first job at Apple working on the IIe emulation board for the Mac LC.

<comment><USER5> Would love to hear more also! Did you have any involvement with 'Gus', the IIgs emulator written (but never publicly released) by Apple?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds similar to the China Dos Union MS-DOS "7.1" which used the DOS from Windows 98 and included FAT32 support, long file names and a CD-based installer.

[https://winworldpc.com/product/ms-dos/7x](https://winworldpc.com/product/ms- dos/7x)

<comment><USER7> I remember coming across that many years ago, as far as I remember it was a rather interesting group of Chinese DOS-using hobbyists. They also came up with a "Windows 3.2" that fit on a floppy and was also based on the 7.1, creating possibly the only 3.x version of Windows with long filename support. The latter was released under the name "PMWIN3.ZIP" and apparently can only be found in the Internet archives now: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070128175800/http://www.cn- dos....](http://web.archive.org/web/20070128175800/http://www.cn- dos.net/msdos71/pmwin3.zip)

(The rest of cn-dos.net is also worth checking out if you read Chinese or find Google Translate to be sufficient; this is an example of one of the forgotten- yet-very-interesting parts of the Internet.)

<comment><USER8> Interesting, do the open-file dialogues and winfile support LFNs in this ? (@ work and can't look right now).

<comment><USER7> Yes:

[http://reboot.pro/uploads/monthly_04_2008/post-5-1208637282....](http://reboot.pro/uploads/monthly_04_2008/post-5-1208637282.jpg)

I'm not sure how they did it though, maybe when I have the time I'll look into it since this is a very unusual software.

<comment><USER9> probably copied the NT3.5 file manager and hacked it to work with win32s? that's probably easier than modifying the win3.11 binaries to hold file name buffers than what's needed for the 8.3 scheme.

(or maybe they binaries are actually pretty similar, so all it needed was a slight API change for file name lookup)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Old apple stuff isn't my thing but I applaud any efforts to preserve our history. Jason makes a number of good points about the sorry state of modern OSes in his article, and it's worth a read for that alone.

<comment><USER7> Along the same lines there's an "unofficial service pack" for Windows 98SE which fixes a lot of little issues and actually allows running some substantially newer applications on the 18-year-old OS. I wouldn't be surprised if 2K/XP get the same treatment, and in fact I know it's already happening. It's sometimes amazing what the community can come up with.

<comment><USER11> I wish one could force vendors to open source operating systems they no longer support.

<comment><USER12> Oh yes! Then we could get the source to Mac OS 9 and bring it into the modern era! Spatial metaphor forever!

<comment><USER13> Imagine a fork of various Apple OS's that took skeuomorphic interfaces to their logical conclusion!

We need a name for this: an open set of parallel computing universes. Maybe OpenCandide: The Best of All Possible Worlds. (Ironic misinterpretation of the phrase intentional.)

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure if you were implying otherwise or not, but: spatial metaphor file managers are not skeuomorphic. Skeuomorphism strictly encompasses non- functional interface elements, such as faux-leather stitching on Apple's old address book application. The spatial metaphor Finder in OS 9 was 100% functional.

The way it remembered all of the details (size, layout, position, display mode) of each window and the way each window had an unbreakable 1 to 1 connection to a folder made it a joy to use. It allowed the user to identify what window belonged to a folder at a glance and to be able to set up a whole workspace arrangement and have it be remembered automatically by the Finder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's an interesting retweet from ProDOS's author last month.

       @JBrooksBSI
       [59]Aug 17
       Was MS-DOS copied from CP/M?
       [60]embedded.com/electronics-bl...

       60. https://t.co/mOR5mLBHwC

[http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/say- what-/4442498/...](http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/say- what-/4442498/Was-DOS-copied-from-CPM-)

<comment><USER15> "My conclusion is that DOS source code was not copied from CP/M source code."

"The commands were not copied; they were simple, descriptive terms that were common to other operating system such as VMS and Apple DOS."

 _" The DOS system calls were definitely copied from the CP/M system calls. Given the quantity of identical numbers representing identical functions, it is clear that Tim Paterson referenced the CP/M manual when writing DOS."_

The last bit is alluded to in page D-7 of the DOS 1.0 user manual[1], which says "There is an additional mechanism for _pre-existing programs_ that were written with different calling conventions. The function number is placed in the CL register...and an intrasegment call is made to location 5 in the current code segment." That's because in CP/M, "...access to the FDOS functions is accomplished by passing a function number and information address through the primary point at location BOOT+0005H" [2].

[1] [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibmpcdos61_7006095](https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibmpcdos61_7006095)

[2] [http://www.gaby.de/cpm/manuals/archive/cpm22htm/ch5.htm#Sect...](http://www.gaby.de/cpm/manuals/archive/cpm22htm/ch5.htm#Section_5.2)

So, yes, the DOS function calls were designed with CP/M backwards compatibility in mind, and it says so right in the manual. Kind of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another heroic effort was the posthumous release of Star Fox II. A community took the Japanese alpha of Star Fox II, patched all the bugs, made it fully playable, and translated it into English. I finished it and I can tell you it was better than Star Fox 64.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love this kind of stuff! Related is the reverse engineered GEOS (C64) available at github: [https://github.com/mist64/geos](https://github.com/mist64/geos)

The maintainers are gearing up to support more platforms, CPUs, repair and extend!

</comment><comment><USER18> Hmm, Still looks like it has the 32M (IIRC) partition limit. There are GSOS drivers to work around this, but not for generic 8-bit prodos (AFAIK).

Frankly, the II line was always slow moving (the IIE was sold commercially longer than any other computer without any significant upgrades). Which is why was such a great learning computer, there were only a couple models, very well documented, and hacked on to uncover every tiny little trick/edge case. Now days, I look at 6502 assembly and wonder how I managed to get anything done with such a restrictive stack/etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thank you John Brooks!! You are the best!!

Warning: this is going to get mushy...

While my first computer was the TRS-80 COCO I, I spent more time coding on my second computer, the Apple IIe, coming home each afternoon after school to just program and play games constantly. I owe my current occupation to that, and my family and friends that benefit from my salary I all owe to those two computers.

I love the Apple II line along with the TRS-80 COCO line and my heart is full that there are those that continue to develop for them.

</comment><comment><USER20> So how does one fix bugs in ProDOS 2.0.3? I assume John Brooks does not have the ProDOS source code. Is he patching the old binaries?

<comment><USER21> I'm going to go out on a limb and say that ProDOS was originally written directly in assembly and not compiled from a higher-level language.

Disassembling is pretty trivial compared to de-compiling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting read, but no mention at all of what this thing is, or will be, used for. Anyone?

<comment><USER23> My memory of 30 years ago is a bit rusty, but I don't recall an easy way to format an Apple II disk without putting either Apple DOS or Apple ProDOS on the disk. This version is smaller, more widely compatible, and adds several third-party add-on features to ProDOS.

So, it's useful any time you'd format a disk in your Apple II emulator. Now you get more utilities, and you disk works on a wider variety of hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> FTA, on why this is important:

 _Next is that this is an operating system upgrade free of commercial and marketing constraints and drives. Compared with, say, an iOS upgrade that trumpets the addition of a search function or blares out a proud announcement that they broke maps because Google kissed another boy at recess. Or Windows 10, the 1968 Democratic Convention Riot of Operating Systems, which was designed from the ground up to be compatible with a variety of mobile /tablet products that are on the way out, and which were shoved down the throats of current users with a cajoling, insulting methodology with misleading opt-out routes and freakier and freakier fake-countdowns._

So true. :/

<comment><USER25> > blares out a proud announcement that they broke maps because Google kissed > another boy at recess

Sure, if by "broke", you mean "built a privacy-respecting competitor based on a well-trusted open map technology called OpenStreetMap", and if by "kissed another boy", you mean "withheld turn-by-turn navigation because Apple wouldn't let Google whore out end-users private information as part of the process"..,

<comment><USER26> Most of my friends still think Apple Maps is a complete failure of a product because of their badly received launch. I'm always able to get them admit that Apple Maps' satellite data is far superior when I show them the side by side (try the satellite + map tilt in a major city or try the 3d tours).

<comment><USER25> Mob opinion is generally not the best gauge of reality.

Look at all the shit people are posting about Apple removing an ancient analog audio port, vs how many people are posting about Samsung the phone that self combusts.

<comment><USER27> Note 7 blow rate: 0.01% IPhone 7 jackless rate: 100% If my calculations are correct, then about 10000x more people should write about Apple's jack crucifixion.

Also, technology is not "ancient" just because it's 50 years old. Electric motor is over 180 years old, and that's not ancient. It's not ancient if it's used everywhere. If it's used everywhere, it's called modern.

<comment><USER25> > IPhone 7 backless rate: 100%

iPhone 7 included adapter rate: 100%.

If a phone blowing up is not something to be concerned with (ignoring all the Airlines and government departments telling people to turn them off while flying), then a removed audio port shouldn't even factor into your consciousness when you consider that they give you the adapter for free.

> Also, technology is not "ancient" just because it's 50 years old.

In the world of consumer electronics, 50 years _is_ ancient.

At the end of the day the way the 3.5mm jack is used in 2016 is the ultimate hack-on-a-hack-on-a-hack. The plugs are all the same size, but they could have anywhere from 2 to 5 contact points, depending on device type/manufacturer.

It worked for a while, but at some point you have to move on, and someone has to be the first to move. As I said in another comment, Apple has always been ahead of the pack when it comes to adopting new technology and dropping legacy technology.

> Electric motor is over 180 years old, and that's not ancient. It's not > ancient if it's used everywhere. If it's used everywhere, it's called modern

No, if its used everywhere its called "popular" or "ubiquitous".

An electric motor can be modern, if it's a new/recent design. That doesn't make all electric motors modern.

<comment><USER28> > iPhone 7 included adapter rate: 100%.

iPhone 1-7 requires proprietary connector rate: 100%.

> It worked for a while, but at some point you have to move > on, and someone > has to be the first to move. As I said in > another comment, Apple has > always been ahead of the pack > when it comes to adopting new technology and > dropping > legacy technology.

That'd be a great argument if what Apple was providing was objectively BETTER than the status quo. However, I'd wager that most people wouldn't call needing an adapter to utilize off the shelf headphones they already own or having to buy very expensive ones that will only work on SOME Apple products (not every Mac comes with a proprietary Lightning port) an improvement.

It's a pity too because I was seriously considering making the switch over to an iPhone next year, but then Apple goes and reminds how poorly they play with others.

EDIT: Oh and I almost forgot, want to charge your phone and use wired headphones at the same time? Better buy another adapter (not included).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>