Why I think Apple's Launching a Record Label - <AUTHOR> http://dbreunig.tumblr.com/post/183159459/tomorrows-apple-announcement-a-record-label-jay-z <comment><USER2> I don't agree with the general thrust of this post, but first, some nitpicking:

"Because in the end, all a label really does is market, distribute, and schedule tours."

No actually. For starters, touring is generally handled by the artists and their managers. Up till now, it's been uncommon to have labels involved -- although this is changing as we see majors scrabble for more money.

The author is also forgetting the actual production of the music. A label generally fronts the money for a producer, engineer and studio time. Not to mention the mastering required for distribution.

This isn't to say labels are the only avenue for funding recording, but it is one important thing that they do and that the imaginary Apple label won't.

"Digital music has reached an audience where this makes sense. 25% of all music sold in the US (physical and digital) is sold through iTunes."

That's impressive, but 25% still means there are a lot of other retailers shifting music. I can't imagine artists -- especially independent ones -- limiting themselves to just that chunk of the market. The only way around that is if Apple starts distributing music through other retailers. Not likely in my opinion.

"They've been hiring H&R types and artist relation managers."

A few AR and HR hires does not translate into the kind of marketing needed to support thousands of individual artists. If they did start a label, Apple may forego this, but a few hires is not evidence enough.

We should not underestimate the importance of _individualised_ marketing for artists. I have a hard time seeing Apple doing this.

"Why Jay-Z? Well, Jay-Z isn't really on a major label."

He does run a label though. I don't think he wants to cut himself out of the loop by helping Apple launch a label.

One of the major roles a label has is to editorialise. They hunt for and preen artists. They pay for recording, they tailor the marketing and distribute the music. How can Apple do this on a large scale? If they can't do it on a large scale, why would they bother?

Is it open to all artists or are they going to pick and choose? Pick and choose means limiting the scale of the operation. Making it open risks having Apple associated with music and ideas that conflict with their tightly controlled marketing. Retail is just retail, but being a label means "blessing" the content. I can't see Apple wanting to lose that control.

I really don't think the author understands how music gets produced and sold. I know it's popular to underplay the role of a label and simply conflate them with distribution, but in reality it's more complex. Some labels are arguably leeches and some work really hard to make their artists successful. Irregardless, they're not easily replaced by some monolithic Apple label.

<comment><USER3> > I really don't think the author understands how music gets produced and > sold.

Isn't this kind of the whole point, though? The old way of music getting produced and sold is outdated. The industry will go through its own revolution, just like all the others, even if the labels don't want it to.

> The author is also forgetting the actual production of the music. A label > generally fronts the money for a producer, engineer and studio time. Not to > mention the mastering required for distribution.

Why bother paying for all of this, when (as the author mentions) you can just do it yourself? Equipment is only getting cheaper and cheaper, and as far as mastering goes, well, "MP3 is enough" ([http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/radiohead_guitarist_mp3...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/radiohead_guitarist_mp3s_fine_there_goes_fidelity.php))

> We should not underestimate the importance of _individualised_ marketing for > artists. I have a hard time seeing Apple doing this.

Yep, we won't, because who better to market the band than the band itself? Why pay somebody, when you can make a myspace/facebook/twitter/whatever and plaster it everywhere? Now, branding is still pretty important, but still, quite a huge part of the traditional marketer's job has been replaced by the Internet.

> One of the major roles a label has is to editorialise. They hunt for and > preen artists. They pay for recording, they tailor the marketing and > distribute the music. How can Apple do this on a large scale? If they can't > do it on a large scale, why would they bother?

I don't mean to sound insulting, but it's early and I can't think of a better way to phrase this. My apologies.

Have you read The Long Tail? Why bother doing anything on the large scale? This attitude reeks of the Old Way of Thinking. If you don't believe in that, then fine, but really, all of that stuff is silly. That's what the old labels do, let them keep that, go after the vast majority of music instead.

Now, I don't know if Apple will actually do this or not, but it would make quite a bit of sense, and has the potential to make them quite a large bit of money. But I won't deny that I'm biased by my hatred of a backwards, self- centered, oligarchy of an industry. So, who knows?

Luckily, we only have to wait a few hours to find out, right?

<comment><USER2> "The old way of music getting produced and sold is outdated."

Recording processes haven't changed that much. If you have a band, recording still means sound-proofing, monitoring, mic selection and positioning; all the stuff an engineer does. If you're doing anything more complicated than a demo, this is not trivial. This costs money.

I agree when people criticise current retail and distribution -- physical distribution is expensive and wasteful, not to mention the fact that it inherently limits your audience. However to sell music -- enough to make a living -- just sticking it in a retail chain is not enough. You need to think about who the audience is, where they buy music, how you can promote your music to them etc. Again this is time and money.

"Why bother paying for all of this, when (as the author mentions) you can just do it yourself?"

Because mixing down and mastering is a skill in and of itself. There are plenty of musicians with these skills, but not as many as you think. The problem here is conflating writing and performance with recording and production. Related, but separate, requiring a different set of skills.

"Equipment is only getting cheaper and cheaper, and as far as mastering goes, well, "MP3 is enough""

Agreed, equipment is not the issue. It's now possible to get high-quality results with minimal gear -- assuming you have the skills. However, just because your target format is MP3, that doesn't mean you have to spend any less time or effort on the mastering. The final mixed stereo audio file needs to get the most out of the format. Issues to consider: downsampling, dithering and dynamic range.

"Yep, we won't, because who better to market the band than the band itself? Why pay somebody, when you can make a myspace/facebook/twitter/whatever and plaster it everywhere?"

Two reasons. Firstly, marketing is a lot of work. It takes time. Artists have a finite amount of time, so it's useful to be able to delegate it to marketing folk. Secondly, just jamming info on facebook etc, is not a replacement for an actual marketing push. Doing that in a coherent way takes knowlege and skill. Again, there are artists that can and do do this, but not everyone wants to devote the time to it.

"Now, branding is still pretty important, but still, quite a huge part of the traditional marketer's job has been replaced by the Internet."

That's wrong in my opinion. The internet has just become another medium for marketing. It's not a question of the internet replacing marketing, it's a question of who does the marketing on the internet, the artist or some professional they hire?

I'm not saying pro marketers are the only way to go, I'm just saying they're attractive part of getting involved with a label.

"I don't mean to sound insulting"

It's fine, I understand the internet makes it a bit hard to say critical things in a nice way :)

"Have you read The Long Tail? Why bother doing anything on the large scale?"

The problem here is thinking like this:

Labels = Major Labels = RIAA = Evil

In other words, you've been trapped into thinking all labels are large, slow- moving, customer-hostile entities, that labels on the whole are incapable of changing, while discounting the things they do for artists. I am not defending major labels -- I think they're largely fucked -- but it's naive to say that labels on the whole are incapable of participating in a changing market.

"Luckily, we only have to wait a few hours to find out, right?"

Yeah, and it turned out to be horse-pucky. I think we'll see some more inventive permutations of labels, but it's not gonna come from Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always enjoy the wholly baseless wild speculation that arrives during the week before an Apple event.

<comment><USER5> FTFA: "They've been hiring H&R types and artist relation managers. Alright, alright, I have no link to the post. But I remember seeing this position when job hunting about a year ago for client-side marketing roles."

I assume the author means "A&R" (Artists and Repertoire) here, but the whole article smacks of an Apple fanboy with no clue about the music industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could Apple be trying to buy out Apple Records?

I can't imagine the remaining Beatles letting them use the name Apple for a record label.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, as I understand it starting a record label is exactly the one thing which Apple Computer is forbidden from doing, thanks to an earlier deal with Apple Records.

I remember the story that this caused a little bit of concern in Apple's legal department when the first macs with built-in microphones were released. This, supposedly, is the reason why the update of the sound software released with those new macs included the new system beep sound "Sosumi".

I also remember in those days when I read the story how ridiculous the idea that Apple Computer would start a record label sounded. Just a sign of how much things have changed.

<comment><USER8> I love a good story: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi>

<comment><USER9> Fun Fact: In the 2004 proceeding in the RCJ, the case was handled by "The Honourable Mr Justice Mann"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apple already control the profits and destiny of all the existing record labels by being the gatekeeper of something like ~80% of digital sales (i.e. ~80% of ~99% of all sales, eventually) via iTunes. They have already managed, apparently without waking the slumbering record industry, to sneak in and take over control of distribution - the only profitable thing about being a record label in the first place. Not just one labels, or one markets distribution either, but all of it - all 'legal' digital music retail distribution, pretty much.

I'm not sure that the traditional phrase 'record label' really contains meaning, from here on out, anyway. If I can record some music using my digital studio (shhh, it's just a pc, but don't tell anyone), sign up to iTunes Music Store as an artist and just start selling it, I would. So, not only have Apple pinched the whole music distribution business out from under the majors, they've also provided the opportunity for people to sidestep most of the middlemen altogether. Notably, Apple will also sell you the software & hardware for your digital studio too, if you like.

So, the App store for Recording Artists, not Software Developers, with the artists getting a much bigger (like 20x bigger, or more) cut than they do now. Rating and reviews doing your marketing. Sounds like an idea who's time has finally come. The Monopoly is dead, long live the Monopoly.

Ties in nicely with this which I was reading just the other day: <http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/08/23/On-Music>

<comment><USER11> > They have already managed, apparently without waking the slumbering record > industry, to sneak in and take over control of distribution

Can't the record labels just jack up prices for iTunes?

<comment><USER10> There's a certain amount of internal competition within the iTunes market that prevents this working across the board. Also, the 99c thing is pretty sacred - if it went up to $2.50 across the board, there would be a huge backlash, which Apple (being teflon coated) would just redirect to the RIAA/record labels - who everyone already 'knows' are evil anyway; ergo (even more) huge PR disaster for the majors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple already allows you, if you are an artist, to submit yourself for consideration to be featured in the iTunes Music Store.

Many, not label signed, indie bands alreay do this. They go through a similar process as the app store aproval, and yes, many are refused.

Not mentioning this process in his post, the author shows how he doesn't know what he is writing about really well.

<comment><USER13> That's the problem. Some indie artits may do this, but not nearly enough, due to Apple's approval process. Most actually are refused as you mentioned, and this is why itunes is not a viable option for unsigned musicians, as many sites are not. The industry is catered to major label musicians, and FCC regulation stricken. It does not meet the needs of the unsigned musician. Checkout Pandora's plight.

[http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-tech- observer/2008/...](http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/the-tech- observer/2008/08/18/first-bytes-pandora-u2-fcc-techcrunch-vs-demo/)

[http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2009/07/important_u...](http://blog.pandora.com/pandora/archives/2009/07/important_updat_1.html)

[http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/07/14/pandora-teams-up- with-r...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/07/14/pandora-teams-up-with-record- labels-wants-regular-radio-to-pay-music-fees-too/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, I think Apple is going to start a car company, because they already have deals with some car companies to do iPod integration, and all car companies really do is design cars, build them, and put stereo systems in them.

I'm sorry, but this seems like the dumbest idea ever. Apple is a technology product company, not a marketing and touring services company. This would be completely outside their area of expertise, and I don't even really see the justification that it would worth the financial risk. iTunes is making money as the distribution arm for the entire industry...what do they gain by trying to pick up the less profitable parts of the value chain?

In addition, while the author of the post mentions that labels "book tours", he doesn't really delve into how much of a big deal this is. Nor does he cover how labels help setup and finance production.

This is ridiculous.

<comment><USER15> Apple wouldn't be a traditional record label. They would re-invent the business. They'd probably handle distribution in a way somewhat similar to App Store while outsourcing tours and production of physical CD's--or, perhaps, setting up an ecosystem for artists to hire promotion firms and touring firms like LiveNation while Apple does the distribution side.

<comment><USER14> What? That makes no sense...Apple is already effectively outsourcing everything except for the distribution. Furthermore, they're not bound by the bizarre economics of trying to make up for 20 loser albums with 1 spectacular winner; Apple makes roughly the same amount on each song they sell. And with the way the music industry is going, it hardly seems clear that it would be a good idea to move more in the direction of a label, even a non-traditional one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't it much more likely that they buy a digital distribution service like <http://fuga.me> ?

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, the keynote just ended and no announcements even remotely like this. What a shock!

</comment><comment><USER17> It'd be dumb not to.

<comment><USER14> Why? In order for that to be the case, all the other functions that labels provide need to be:

      1. More profitable than what iTunes already does
      2. Something that Apple has the expertise to be able to do
      3. Worth the risk of labels ditching iTunes

#3 is fairly important...I wouldn't put it above the labels to get together and pull out of iTunes en masse.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author again: #3 is the reason they didn't do this ages ago. Now that they comprise a quarter of all music being sold, there's simply no way for the labels to walk. Even if they all agreed to, one could stay and reap the profits. If they managed to split all at once they risk being caught as a cartel (but they never could pull it off).

Apple essentially owns the most valuable market they exist in. They can't walk.

Read the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> iTunes for digital mass distribution, social music apps for viral marketing: the time is nigh for self distribution through Apple to happen!

</comment><comment><USER18> Sure Jay Z has his own record label, but he still doesnt tie into the Rock n Roll theme</comment>


Show HN: Develop an MVP at 1/10 the cost - <AUTHOR> https://airdev.co/prototype-development <comment><USER2> Looks good! Though note it's best to avoid submitting the same site 2x in a very short amount of time.

<comment><USER3> It'd also be good to actually show something.. not be terribly light on details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> have an idea I've been meaning to build out... will check you guys out!</comment>


No – a utility program for linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arjun024/no

<comment><USER2> The example given, provided one is running the GNU tools, can be equivalently done by:

cp --no-clobber * ../tstfolder</comment>


Ask HN: What are the data needed for quantitative trading? - <AUTHOR> What kinds and quality are of the data? How to get and organize those data? <comment><USER2> Probably start with some api. Check out Quantopian [https://www.quantopian.com/help](https://www.quantopian.com/help) or IEX [https://iextrading.com/trading/market- data/](https://iextrading.com/trading/market-data/).

This subreddit has a lot of information [https://www.reddit.com/r/algotrading](https://www.reddit.com/r/algotrading)

</comment><comment><USER3> Type: Prices/Volume, Company Fundamental Data (EPS Growth, P/E Ratio, ROI), News (Earnings, New CEO, Divestiture, Weather), "Alternative Data" (Satellite Images, Transactions)

Vendors: Bloomberg, Thomson (Refinitiv), Factset, Compustat, CapitalIQ, Quandl

Quality: varies, you get what you pay for, cost anywhere from $100's to $100,000's/yr

[https://www.quantopian.com/](https://www.quantopian.com/)

^ probably good place to start</comment>


Ellen Pao Appealing Order to Pay Kleiner Perkins Trial Costs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-11/ellen-pao-appealing-order-to-pay-kleiner-perkins-trial-costs

<comment><USER2> "Pao argued she should pay nothing because it would send the wrong message to employees trying to fight bias at the workplace."

Considering the jury found she wasn't in fact fighting bias, wouldn't paying costs send exactly the right message to people who cry wolf about bias?

<comment><USER3> That seems like a very uncharitable characterization. I haven't followed the lawsuit closely, but is it not possible she sincerely felt she was discriminated against when she filed the case? Surely you don't think everyone who loses a lawsuit was automatically "crying wolf" in the complaint, right?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps uncharitable, but her argument seems like grasping at straws. She's well educated, and had good representation, there's little likelihood she didn't know the risks going in.

<comment><USER5> Read about her husband's background, and you may perceive a pattern.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The making of HBO's 1983 "Starship" Intro - <AUTHOR> http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/old_skool_special_effects_-_the_making_of_hbos_1983_starship_intro_15919.asp

<comment><USER2> I would have never guessed that the HBO logo was a metal model and the colored light streaks were fiber optics. I was sure that was early CG.

The real question is, what are we doing now that in 25+ years will be looked back upon as incredibly tedious and unwieldy (but we see as state of the art)?

<comment><USER3> The ridiculous amount of time & money that goes into a big budget computer game might be an example.

<comment><USER4> especially things like motion capture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I eat up stuff like this, and it brings back memories from my childhood. I remember that intro! Thanks for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome.</comment></comment>


Extreme heat wipes out almost one third of Australia's spectacled flying foxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-19/heat-wipes-out-one-third-of-flying-fox-species/10632940 <comment><AUTHOR> Events like this are occurring again and again, at increasing frequencies, all over our world. Australia, one of the world's great enthusiasts for human population increase and fake "economic growth", is still in denial about its past and present.

Human history has imposed on us a task we are failing to meet.</comment>


Ask HN: So what Holiday Projects will you be working on this year? - <AUTHOR>

Thinking of using D3 and Square's Cube project to visualize my holiday gifting graph in real-time ;) <comment><USER2> I've been putting off writing a Mac App to publish on the app store. I finally have a concept I can get excited about and I have already started. It's been a learning experience but I'm taking notes that I can hopefully transform into a series of blog posts.

As for D3, I'm intrigued and really want to play with it, but I don't currently have a problem to which apply it :(

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm wrapping up a D3 project as well. Grabbed some data from the US Govt (Foreign Aid over time) and have been playing with visualizations.

D3 is pretty cool :)

<comment><USER3> And just finished!

<http://www.euphonious-intuition.com/USForeignAidVis/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm completing a demo of my web-app to show off to incubators and seed investors. Mainly because a lot of applications for their Spring intakes open around February. Also because I've been in contact with a Toronto based incubator who is excited to see my app.

I'm glad to say it's been a good end of the year and that 2012 will be extremely busy for me (In a good way, I hope).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll be doing some consulting work to pay bills! While the test pack is running, I'm playing around with some document databases to see if I can finally grok the differences in the current crop. :)

I played a bit with d3 for some datalogging work I did for my (now broken, of course) race car. It took me a while to wrap my head around it, but I really enjoyed it once I got it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was going to work on eating some cookies.

</comment><comment><USER7> It doesn't have a name yet, but it's a way to make your finances completely public, as helpful push to help you get out of debt.

</comment><comment><USER8> A show of hands type of poll web-application. I'll keep it small enough to be finished in the next 2 days.</comment>


Evolving Lacing Patterns for Bicycle Wheels - <AUTHOR> http://master.matsemann.com/ <comment><USER2> Wow, cool to see my thesis here! I posted a picture of it [1] to r/bicycling yesterday titled _I managed to make my thesis in computer science be about bicycles!_ , and it got some traction. I answered some questions in the discussion, if anyone is interested.

[1]: [https://redd.it/3p8hua](https://redd.it/3p8hua)

<comment><USER3> Can I ask a question, please don't take it the wrong way, as I find optimisation a very interesting topic, and in fact it was also the subject of my thesis. However: How is this a computer science thesis, and not a mechanical engineering thesis? I'm just curious how you managed to pass a wheel-design topic through a CompSci program. Did you have a co-supervisor in engineering? Or does your school have a combined CS/engineering program?

<comment><USER4> It's really a thesis about EMO-algorithms and how to use them to optimize real-life problems. The wheels just happen to be the chosen _application_ of the optimization, if you get what I mean?

<comment><USER3> Ah ok, I was wondering if that was the case. Wasn't really clear from the way you presented it. Can you summarize your results regarding the algorithms? What worked best, what didn't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Building bicycle wheels is incredibly satisfying, I built a set a friend used to win the local state cyclocross championship one year. There's a lot of technique in tightening the spokes, when I see the 'bad ride' simulation of the wheel in the video, it occurs to me you get the same types of visible behavoir if the spokes aren't tightened correctly. I wonder how spoke tension is modelled here?

<comment><USER6> My guess is that it's not.

From earlier discussion on this article, the wheel was modeled as an infinitely stiff rim, rather than the more mechanically accurate beam on an elastic foundation. For a first level linear elastic approximation, the spoke tension doesn't matter. The spoke tension is really going to only be an issue once you get into the non-linear effects associated with rim stability, which is strongly dependent on the rim stiffness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat idea. Did the author read Jobst Brandt's book, "The Art of the Bicycle Wheel"?

Symmetry obviously makes the ride smoother. The real issue is dish and the incredible strain difference between. The drive side and the non-drive side: did the author simulate modern rear wheels?

</comment><comment><USER8> This is interesting for sure in identifying novel spoke patterns that _might_ result in a stronger/lighter wheel. Since the simulator identifies lots of possibilities it would be useful to have some kind of figure of merit to help with down-selection. It also seems like things like being out-of-dish or out of true are things that could be used to eliminate possibilities without user intervention.

Lastly I wonder if you constrain this enough whether it would spit out "standard" spoke patterns that are used commonly. I'd like to think that spoke patterns that we use now are close to optimal due to a kind of evolution based on lots of trial and error. But maybe that's not the case.

<comment><USER9> Not exactly what you're asking about. But I talked to a guy who worked on a project using genetic algorithms to optimize motorcycle wheel designs. He said one of the best designs that came out looked pretty much like a traditionally spoked wheel, just a bit more organic in shape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I assume it wouldn't function well, but I've always wondered about a wheel were some of the spokes do not go to the hub, but are instead connected directly to another spot on the rim.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was in a research group with Dave Hadka, who wrote MOEAFramework. I'll have to tell him about this! Nice work!

<comment><USER4> I really liked the framework. Powerful out of the box, and not that hard to modify/add what I needed. Hadka was also very helpful on answering mails with questions about the framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any comment on how much the new boost 148 standard for mountain bikes helps with stiffness and/or strength?

</comment><comment> bro-stick Neat. Can't wait for the follow-up paper which ranks lacing patterns by simulated load profile.

</comment><comment><USER13> Did any of these get built?

<comment><USER14> Basically until a simulated of a wheel is actually built, I'd dismiss all this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd disagree strongly. I think the point of the paper was the evolutionary algorithms. Whether or not the wheels could adequately replace a modern bicycle wheel is kind of a side note. The work was entirely about creating a program that would produce better and better results over time, while balancing multiple objectives to meet. As you can see in the videos, (and he even admits in the paper) most of the wheels would not work very well if they were produced.

That said, I think if you're going to be completely dismissive of a thesis that I'm sure represents thousands of hours of work, I might put a sentence or two explaining why you think the algorithm isn't the important part of this.

<comment><USER6> I agree. It's really cool that he managed to find the standard 3-cross based on a pretty rough model and an optimization step.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scary Javasript that knows if you've been bad or good [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XDpJUhDTos <comment><AUTHOR> This was a very interesting talk about privacy on the web. Showing some "hacks" and explaining how many of these work. Very good talk in my opinion.

<comment><USER2> Just finished it. It was good. Many methods that I had heard of before and a few that I hadn't.

Lots of slides to go through, but thankfully time limits means he blasts through them.</comment></comment>


OpenSSH 7.4 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.openssh.com/txt/release-7.4 <comment><USER2> I was saddened to read the release notes that state:

 _" OpenSSH is a 100% complete SSH protocol 2.0 implementation..._"

This bug[0] calling out the fact that OpenSSH doesn't implement section 6.9 of RFC 4254 (which allows you to send signals to remote processes) has been open since 2008, complete with community submitted patches that implement that part of the protocol.

My recent pet Golang project[1] is a parallel remote command executor that uses OpenSSH, and I would really love the ability to better manage remote processes I execute via SSH.

[0]: [https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424](https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424)

[1]: [https://github.com/spudlyo/metassh](https://github.com/spudlyo/metassh)

<comment><USER3> I mostly jumped to the bottom of the bug discussion thread there, but there doesn't seem to be much opposition to adding this, just comments deferring this to other releases. Are they just requesting that patch submitters do some extra work to get it in there?

<comment><USER2> I think they've been wanting to get this patch into OpenSSH for years, but for whatever reasons it just never happened. I assumed it was a community patch, but it was actually written by Darren Tucker, who is an OpenSSH dev.

There was some conversation about if it was appropriate to pass on certain signals, but that's about it. After Darren cleaned up some client UI issues that bugged him, he even suggested that we might see the patch in 5.4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's good to see support for obsolete features and weak crypto being removed.

Does anyone know why there is no support for Curve448 being added? There is a draft RFC at [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-curdle-ssh- curves-00](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-curdle-ssh-curves-00) describing this, together with SHA-512.

Previous versions of OpenSSH have already supported the privately defined "email@example.com" key exchange protocol.

</comment><comment><USER5> Openssh is one of the pieces of software that I would argue needs to be kept up to the latest and greatest regardless of the original version shipped by the distro.

I would similarly push for latest version of OpenSSL but that's harder to get right.

<comment><USER6> Right now distros who backport, such as Debian, need to very carefully read changelogs and decide what and what not to backport. Quite a daunting task.

<comment><USER5> I get that. My argument is for a small subset of software tools, to be considered to be sufficiently critical that updates are prioritized because compromise of said tools would have outsized consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hm. That's more mechanism-as-policy than I like, _e.g._ :

 _Refusing all RSA keys smaller than 1024 bits_

 _The next release of OpenSSH will remove support for running sshd(8) with privilege separation disabled_

That's not really the sort of decision application programmers should be making for sysadmins.

<comment><USER8> > That's not really the sort of decision application programmers should be > making for sysadmins.

As a programmer you have the right (or maybe even obligation?) to write secure software and I would argue software that's hard or impossible to use insecurely. It should live up to the standards of the time of release, not the time of the release of the first version (in case of OpenSSH that would be more than seventeen years ago).

As a sysadmin you can always decide to stick with an old version if that is what the environment you operate in demands.

I think this proactive mentality of OpenSSH is an important part of their success and why it has such a good track record from a security point of view.

<comment><USER9> I disagree with bandrami in this case, but I don't think this is quite right either because you focused on an instance-specific goal rather then universal principle:

> _As a programmer you have the right (or maybe even obligation?) to write > secure software and I would argue software that 's hard or impossible to use > insecurely._

There is plenty of software where secure usage is not a concern and that's fine. Rather, it would be better to say that as programmers we have the job to ensure that our software is as fit for primary expected purpose as possible, and in particularly lacks any surprising gotchas. Sometimes within a given program's core purpose there are decisions that can only be properly made as part of deployment/usage and those are appropriately left to the sysadmin/user, but if something is directly contrary to core purpose then it's always worth questioning whether it needs to change.

In the case of OpenSSH in particular the core purpose is in fact secure links. We've all long had an insecure very fast virtual terminal system if we wanted it and it's called Telnet. There is no reason that any available built-in mode of OpenSSH crypto should ever be insecure. Asking to have obsolete methods generally considered to no longer be reliable to be "left up to the sysadmin" would be like asking it to have rot13 as a sysadmin option: completely contrary to the purpose and expected function of the program. Not just in security but in software in general any extra switches carry both developmental load (more code to go wrong), deployment load (more possibilities to make mistakes) and cognitive load, so they should always be considered to have inherent negative value and then asked to justify themselves, not considered to stick around forever by default.

<comment><USER7> Deprecating ciphers I'm fine with. Telling me a minimum required key size isn't, because they have no idea what the window of security I'm looking for is. If I need to keep a text secure for 2.5 seconds, a short key is fine, and for that matter a longer key gets logistically problematic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why isn't openssh.com served over https ?

You'd think it would be, given where it comes from, who those people are and what it is. (tone: I'm just surprised)

<comment><USER11> https works as well: [https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-7.4](https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-7.4)

Maybe submitter here on HN just put http. Would be better if it did the redirect automatically though.

<comment><USER10> Yes it would certainly be better :) Thank you, I didn't think to manually check as I assumed it would have redirected me.

<comment><USER4> It does redirect for me, thanks to HTTPS everywhere ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey guys, crypto-noob here.

Who needs this? I have a ssh server on my ubuntu, do I need to update OpenSSH? Also, I have openssl installed (for some reason), is that the same thing?

<comment><USER13> The ssh server on your Ubuntu machine is probably OpenSSH. If you're keeping your machine up to date with Ubuntu's security updates then you can let them take care of it.

OpenSSL is separate software, but it provides a cryptography library that OpenSSH (usually) uses. You will need it installed.

<comment><USER12> It's unfortunate timing that just today I got the message that I could no long get updates for Ubuntu 15, and pressing me to update to Ubuntu 16

<comment> angry-hacker Research about Ubuntu (or any distribution) long term releases (LTS) to avoid that situation in the future :)

<comment><USER12> TY

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice</comment>


Amazon cutting hundreds of Seattle jobs in its consumer business: source - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-layoffs/amazon-cutting-hundreds-of-seattle-jobs-in-its-consumer-business-source-idUSKBN1FW1ZA <comment><USER2> More comments here — [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360339)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Missed that one.

<comment><USER4> Why is this post shadow banned? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366248)

<comment><USER3> Would you please stop replying with completely other issues? The HN guidelines explicitly preclude comments like this, with good reason. We're happy to occasionally make an exception but not when it's a repeated pattern.

It would also be good if you'd drop the meta. 6 of your last 9 posts have been just about HN; that's bad. Meta posting is the fastest growing weed in the garden.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER4> You can downvote me all you want but it doesn't justify your actions nor does it make your actions any more transparent. Why did you shadow ban my submission? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16366248)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> : source</comment>


Finding out if person X has property Y without knowing anything about X directly. - <AUTHOR>

Let's say you are thinking about hiring X for your startup but have doubts about his/her programming ability.
You could then use this service to get back advice on X's programming ability.
The idea here is to assume that most people using this service to ask about X's programming ability have doubts about X in that regard.
And so, if many people did ask, then X would receive a poor rating.  If not many people asked, the service would not be able to offer any advice.
Essentially, this service would check whether many other people have the same initial impression about this person that you do. <comment><USER2> To implement such a system would require a huge network of trust. Otherwise it would collapse as malicious individuals manipulated the system. Such a network needs a wide reach in order to make it reasonably certain that any given individual will be listed in its database. Possible? Yes. Making it useful? Well, thats up to you. Building the initial database could be quite difficult.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just interview them. Your system might think someone has doubtful programming ability when really it just shows they applied to a lot of places that used your system. Also, it can never work for someone who is only applying one place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Suppose after the interview you have these doubts but don't have better candidates.

<comment><USER3> Find more candidates. Picking a coworker is too important of a decision to take a chance like that.</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla Firefox gets a "HTTPS Only Mode" for more secure browsing - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-firefox-gets-a-https-only-mode-for-more-secure-browsing/ <comment><USER2> Nice. I sometimes browse in https-only mode using HTTPS Everywhere addon by EFF (Handy when connected to shady free wifi hotspots). Although I have to whitelist the captive portal as they seem to be exclusively in HTTP</comment>


Bruce McCandless, First Astronaut to Fly Untethered in Space, Has Died - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2017/12/22/517135809/bruce-mccandless-first-astronaut-to-fly-untethered-in-space-has-died <comment><USER2> The famous photo: [https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2...](https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2100.html)

<comment><USER3> I cannot imagine the mental resolve and training it takes to handle something going wrong in a situation like this.

<comment><USER4> "I was grossly over-trained. I was just anxious to get out there and fly. I felt very comfortable ... It got so cold my teeth were chattering and I was shivering, but that was a very minor thing," he told the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/23/astronaut- br...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/23/astronaut-bruce- mccandless-the-first-person-to-fly-freely-in-space-dies)

Astronauts are definitely a different breed.

<comment><USER5> As a young kid, I thought astronauts where just specially trained pilots like any other who happened to go into space. When I actually did some research on it I found out how wrong I was. Many of them helped engineer the equipment they used (as McCandless did). I've never had the chance to meet an astronaut but they also seem like good people in general.

<comment><USER6> I'm not a regular listener of Joe Rogan, but his interview with Chris Hadfield is fascinating: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS0laJvgVxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS0laJvgVxo)

Interesting to hear about his experiences as an astronaut. I was not aware of the effects to the body after being in space for long periods of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "When We Left Earth" is a fabulous TV mini-series and Bruce McCandless is interviewed a few times.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Left_Earth:_The_NASA_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Left_Earth:_The_NASA_Missions)

</comment><comment><USER8> I asked Bruce how accurately the simulator matched the reality. He replied that it was amazingly close, with the exception that the real thing "Chattered loudly" when it was working. That caught him by surprise, and the simulator was subsequently changed to include the noise.

An intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working, humble, charming man.</comment>


FailCon teaches entrepreneurs to flop to the top - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/26/BUFJ1G1P5B.DTL <comment><USER2> Any other hackers go to Failcon?</comment>


Move Your Startup to St. Louis, Get $50,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-12/move-your-startup-to-st-dot-louis-get-50-000

<comment><USER2> Not only does the organization provide free money, taking no equity in winning companies, but the whole entrepreneurial eco-system is thriving. The interplay between the two mechanisms, the funding arm and the wide array of low-cost support available, provides the building blocks for starting and growing your business.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, St. Louis is a very affordable place to run your business. Center of the country, good talent available and a growing startup community

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My start-up simMachines obtained the grant during 2012. Feel free to ask questions about our experience.</comment>


A mutant coronavirus has emerged, even more contagious than the original - <AUTHOR> https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/sns-mutant-more-contagious-coronavirus-has-emerged-20200505-lr5pctceo5bltbh2mjkiajbxwq-story.html#nt=oft-Double%20Chain~Flex%20Feature~top-news-chain-1~mutant-tue-1115a~~1~yes-art~curated~curatedpage <comment><USER2> What they didn't tell is that the latest variants are much more harmless. several dangerous sequences got deleted, so that's why the virus is now more contagious. it doesn't kill its hosts, it acts more like the common flu to spread better.

And "new mutant" sounds worrying, but is not. it mutates every two weeks. mostly for the worse, much more deletions than insertions. kind of a self- deactivation switch. [https://jvi.asm.org/content/early/2020/04/30/JVI.00711-20](https://jvi.asm.org/content/early/2020/04/30/JVI.00711-20)</comment>


Google's approach to privacy - <AUTHOR> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/12/googles-approach-to-privacy.html

<comment><USER2> >But we haven't always done a good job of talking about Google's philosophical approach to privacy overall

Likely because Google hasn't had a cohesive philosophy on the subject yet other than "don't be evil".</comment>


Aaron Swartz wanted to save the world. Why couldn't he save himself? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/02/aaron_swartz_he_wanted_to_save_the_world_why_couldn_t_he_save_himself.single.html

<comment><USER2> Despite the weekly articles and coverage since Aaron's death, this is by far the best of the pieces, especially in terms of detail. I think even Aaron's haters will think it's the best, as it dispels a lot of the exaggerations that have cropped up around Aaron's material accomplishments.

But even in this more realistic, nuanced light, the tragedy of his suicide seems even more profound. There's no easy answers or conclusions, though this piece does the best job I've seen so far of explaining the political tensions and context leading up to Aaron's prosecution and death. Definitely a worthwhile read, even after reading thousands of other words on the subject.

The OP downplays Aaron's role at Reddit considerably, to the point where it sounds like he did nothing at all except dream about social activism before taking the money and running. But even if he wasn't the full time engineer, wasn't his contribution in converting Reddit to web.py considered noteworthy toward the success/maintain ability of the site (at least at its early stage)? <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit>

Edit: this was discussed in the Reddit thread five years ago though not really conclusively answered

[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cof...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1octb/reddit_cofounder_aaron_swartz_discusses_how_he/c1odpo)

<comment><USER3> reddit hasn't seen fit to include his avatar in the 'reddit alumni' <http://www.reddit.com/about/team/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reading this I kept shaking my head and thinking "what a sad little boy/man." Everything about his life makes me cringe: the awkward adolescent photos, his gravitation towards adult "friends," his dependence on a largely analytical basis for relationships and connections, the endless dissatisfaction and detachment, the fruitless big dreams, the inability to focus and work on one objective, the recklessness, the grueling self-analysis and self-exposition, the anger and the impotence...

I think, from reading this, that Aaron was a person with something missing inside of him. To compensate, he tried to change everything around him - everything but himself. People like that have poor odds in life. When the world resists their efforts and they are forced to acknowledge the limits of their agency, their big dreams of quick change come crashing down. They can find themselves with little to retreat to in the aftermath.

<comment><USER5> It sounds like you're disappointed in him for not succumbing to aspects of the modern world which could fairly be described as diseases. I understand this is a widespread and basically normal opinion, but I don't understand how people can hold it without being aware of how subjective and ridiculous it is.

It would be like going back to the time of Galileo and Giordano Bruno and commenting how sad it was that they couldn't just make nice with the powers that be and toe the line like everyone around them, and how much more fulfilled and happy they would have been if that were the case.

The world needed changing then, and it needs it now. To ignore this is to totally miss the point of this entire episode.

<comment><USER4> Disappointed? Huh? What are you talking about?

Aaron was unhappy his entire life. He behaved recklessly, attracted criminal prosecution, and capped it all of by killing himself. Do you find that noble? I don't. I think he failed: failed to see the world realistically, failed to direct his thoughts and energies in a constructive manner, and failed to achieve much of anything. He puffed himself up and charged into something that didn't budge, and then he lost control. That's not noble to me at all. Just sad.

As for: > _aspects of the modern world which could fairly be described as diseases._

Can you elaborate? (And do you mean that these aspects behave similarly to pathological infections in organisms or to epidemiological dynamics among populations?)

And > _Galileo_

Bad comparison. Galileo was explicitly ordered by the Catholic Church not to "hold or defend" the Copernican system. I.e. the dominant social power of that time and place decided they didn't like the concept, and they suppressed efforts to discuss and spread it. When Galileo edged around the constraint, they clamped down even harder. It was a clear cut case of a social power deciding to restrict free speech to prevent an idea from even being _thought about._

In contrast, there is no dominant social power in modern times. No one is in even a remotely comparable position in 2013 to suppress ideas. You and I are free to discuss copyright liberation or whatever we want. Aaron was free to write blogs, tracts, hand out pamphlets, send letters to politicians, make websites, etc etc etc. No one suppressed him in any of those activities. It is only when he crossed the line into illegal behaviour that he was prosecuted - according to open, democratically-developed laws and prosecutorial guidelines - all subject to normal processes of democratic oversight.

> _The world needed changing then, and it needs it now._

Dangerous language in my opinion. Nothing "needs" anything. Deciding that the world "needs" changing means you set up a very rigid condition for success. And this is what I think happened with Aaron: inevitably people who think the world needs changing run into roadblocks, which their rigidity does not prepare them for. Then, failing to make the changes they believe are necessary, they fail to meet their rigid victory condition - and because of its rigidity, they fail, in their own opinion, absolutely. Which is devastating, and in Aaron's case, seems to have pushed him past his limits.

A healthier perspective is that the world might be better with some tweaks - but it will probably never be perfect, and you should accept that you might not be able to do everything you want - and so on and so on. Aaron could have done with a bit of that perspective I reckon. How about you?

As far as I'm concerned, all of Aaron's convictions and all of the bickering about the technicalities of the case are red herrings here. The fact that so many people haven't stopped to think harder about all this, and have instead jumped on the instant rage bandwagon is one of, if not THE real issue, I think. It speaks to a real trend of snap-judgement reactionary groupthink, which seems to be prevalent in contemporary internet culture. The angry people yelling about democracy and shouting dissidents down are the real danger to open society.

<comment><USER6> > No one is in even a remotely comparable position in 2013 to suppress ideas.

Of course not. That would be weird, as those events lie hundred of years in the past. It is a total different world today. Thinking that those events map one-to-one is far beyond ridiculous. You need to refer to the principle.

The hard truth is, that much of the publicly funded research is kept away from 99,9 % of the people, just so a few can make profits.

Fine, it might make it easier for you to say to yourself, that

> democratically-developed laws

back up your opinion.

But the actual truth is that many laws are written by lobbyists.

Also the laws are and always have been up to interpretation. The prerogative of interpretation is under a constant challenge.

If you think that the current system will be seen as just in 100 years from now you are probably wrong. If we want to accelerate human development we must make sure, that everyone has access to current research, just as we make sure that everyone has access to the modern software due to open source.

Sadly, for every Aaron there are thousands of people with your mindset that chose the way of least resistance. And when I hear those people pitying the ones who are trying to make the world a better place, it makes me angry and sad.

<comment><USER4> 1) You've got the wrong end of the stick mate - it was etherael who tried to make the Galileo comparison - I was pointing out to him how ridiculous that comparison was - and you have mistaken my critique for his original comparison. Aim your criticisms at him.

2) _The hard truth is, that much of the publicly funded research is kept away from 99,9 % of the people, just so a few can make profits._

How about you back up _that_ opinion? Because it sounds like reductive hyperbole.

3) _the actual truth is that many laws are written by lobbyists._

I would never deny the influence of special interests, and you misconstrue me if you think I do - or if you think I am arguing that current political systems are perfect. I am sick of this false dichotomy that you can only have two opinions on modern democracy - either you are a raving critic who thinks it is all corrupt and shit, or you are a placid simpleton who thinks everything is fine. I take a middle road - I try and see the good and the bad in balance. The harsh black and white perspectives common among e-activists are severely in need of some balance.

4) _the laws are and always have been up to interpretation_

Yes, of course. Did I argue that this is not the case, or should not be the case? The question is the mechanism through which laws should be reappraised. Aaron Swartz thought reckless, desperate and illegal behaviour was an appropriate mechanism. People like you seem to think that angry crowds of people on the internet demanding the change they want is an appropriate mechanism. I think that careful, focused consideration of all pertinent issues by qualified experts is the most appropriate mechanism. Shocking, I know, but no, I don't think people on the internet tend to come to particularly balanced opinions on political issues. My greatest sin seems to be that this isn't sexy or modern enough - it is after all a mechanism which modern democracies employ all the time. Apparently that makes me one of the "thousands of people... that chose the way of least resistance" (because it sure is a walk in the park venturing and defending my position against the anti-government consensus on Hackernews...)

5) _If you think that the current system will be seen as just in 100 years from now you are probably wrong._

Again, this false dichotomy - can I not simultaneously believe that there is a lot of good to be found in the democratic systems we have developed so far, and believe at the same time that there is room for improvement? I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive.

The problem I think is that people today are not particularly educated about how the history of the development of modern political and economic systems, and they have no understanding of how much they have improved on previous formats, and how many benefits we derive from these advances. They are blind to the benefits of what has been achieved, and can only see problems. So they have no perspective.

6) _we must make sure, that everyone has access to current research_

We must, I would argue, also make sure that we protect the systems of incentives that allows creative work to be done. This to me is the singular arrogance of e-activists - the belief that anyone profiting from creative work are fatcats, that no allowances should be made for creators in making information free, that anyone affected by the actions of e-activists is just a dinosaur, that the world must adapt to them. It's unhealthy. I think if we really want to accelerate human development we must be careful not to succumb without critical scrutiny to the allure of impressive-sounding causes such as open-everything. How often do e-activists question their actions? How often do they say "what if the things I believe in are wrong and damaging?" Not often, from what I can see.

6) _when I hear those people pitying the ones who are trying to make the world a better place, it makes me angry and sad._

Oh, get off your damn high horse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm kinda gettig tired of all these Aaron Swartz posts. There I said it.

<comment><USER8> Therein lies the power of the oppressors: the public attention span to any one subject is severely limited. I admit to also getting tired, but I wish it weren't so, because it doesn't seem we've accomplished much. The petition has stalled and no reforms have been made.

<comment><USER4> Welcome to 2013 and the sound and fury of insta-activism. Welcome also to 2012 (KONY) and 2011 (Occupy). Am I missing anything?

<comment><USER3> "Am I missing anything?"

Stop SOPA?

<comment><USER4> Ah yes. Sometimes the mob does have teeth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra If you ever played computer games you will know: Having one healer you can heal everyone but that healer; Having two healers you can heal just everyone.

</comment><comment><USER9> I know many of you are getting tired of articles about him. But I still find this article really interesting!

</comment><comment><USER10> Here's an only tangentially related question I've wondered about several times now, reading various articles about this case: his girlfriend's last name is "Stinebrickner-Kauffman", and consistently so. I know of Spanish customs where children get the last names of both parents, but these names don't sound Latino. Is it customary for (sorry if I'm making a wrong assumption there) Israeli/Jewish people to take both last names as well, or had she been married before? (again not to be stalkerish, I don't really care if she had been married - I'm just wondering if there are other cases than in Spain where it's customary to take the name of both parents).

<comment><USER11> Here's an article on surname patterns in the United States, previously submitted for HN discussion:

[http://www.npr.org/2012/07/19/156923573/when-hyphen-boy- meet...](http://www.npr.org/2012/07/19/156923573/when-hyphen-boy-meets-hyphen- girl-names-pile-up)

<comment><USER10> Oh that's interesting, missed that the first time around, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The comment thread, by the way, is fantastic. Entertaining seeing what a relatively non-tech crowd (with a few nuts sprinkled in for good measure) has to say about all this.

<comment><USER4> E.g. - from user Catfitz: "You've put your finger on something I've felt a long time about life and death of Swartz and his case -- there's an authoritarian arrogance there about hacking and stealing 4 million articles to decide for other people, the JSTOR system and the universities and scholars who participate in it, how they should live -- and be forcibly "liberated" as he "expropriates from the expropriators" like a common Bolshevik. This is dressed up in so much talk of "free" and "open" that people forget that it bears all the signs of technocommunism -- everyone is to be forced to work for free and share everything in a collective farm. How will costs be met?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could the guy responsible for making the contents of his hd available online do it so. Use the dd command by the way, don't just copy files.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like all the stories about him. It is like seeing him from a different angle every time. Pieces by pieces, I start to see the whole picture. I feel I understand more of him each time. But at the same time, I feel there are more and more things I still don't know about him.

</comment><comment> j-kidd Great article. The most interesting part for me is that the JSTOR servers couldn't sustain continuous download from a wireless connection. If only they have more competent developers...

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems like writing about Aaron Swartz still generates traffic.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Aaron Swartz wanted to save the world, so why couldn't he save himself?"

...Really? There are implicit assumptions in that title, and the way in which it was presented, which I find somewhat disrespectful.

Why do we need to question that he couldn't "save himself"? Why do we need to assume he had that responsibility at all?

And why does attempting to save the world beg the question of inability to save oneself?

The answer: it's just a title to get you to read it, hoping to have enough pathos that you don't think too critically about it.

Why do we force ourselves to take on the burden of overanalyzing the man? It's obviously a sad passing, but people are dwelling on it in what I believe to be the wrong way. Stop questioning and just appreciate for its own sake. It wasn't preventable. At least not for the reporters and readers of these articles. And I'm sure his loved ones are not appreciating news articles that implicitly try to find something _wrong_ \- it delays peace.

<comment><USER15> The full title is: "The idealist: Aaron Swartz wanted to save the world, so why couldn't he save himself"

The article itself, is good journalism in the in-depth detailed vein. After finishing it, I found the question in the title to be relevant.

There was no over-analysis of the man.

edit: missing quotation marks.

<comment><USER14> I agree with you, I have no difficulty with the article itself. The article was well-written.

And while this is admittedly subjective, I find the title itself to invite the sort of things I mentioned above, borderline to link-bait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe he did, only our reservation of what he did prevents us to recognize that.</comment>


Polymer 2.6 is out - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Polymer/polymer/releases <comment><USER2> More interesting is the newest 3.x release, stable should follow soon.</comment>


Remote Mac Exploitation via Custom URL Schemes - <AUTHOR> https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x38.html <comment><USER2> To sum it up:

* MacOS automatically registers an application as the default handler for any custom URL schemes it declares, as soon as the app is downloaded (this happens automatically when the app hits the hard drive)

* Such custom URL schemes linked to malicious app may be opened via javascript automatically on a webpage, leading to the app execution by the system

* The system asks for permission to launch the app the first time. The name of the app as displayed in the permission box is app-controlled, so it can spoof its identity or use a cute name with emojis to make it less suspicious (as per the article)

<comment><USER3> > The system asks for permission to launch the app the first time.

Small point, but one I think is important, is you'll be asked not once, but twice for confirmation. The first confirmation is for the custom url scheme, the second confirmation is for file quarantine for the newly downloaded app.

While I think the default of "opening safe files" is utterly bat shit stupid, Apple has done a fair amount here to block this "attack" vector otherwise. It's asinine to me this "attack" would work on a security minded user as the article indicates the presenter said, but I guess the adage that "everyone makes mistakes sometimes" explains it.

<comment> s-y-n-syn-a-c-k from the article, "In its default configuration, Gatekeeper allows signed applications. The malware used by the WINDSHIFT APT group was signed (as is most Mac malware these days). So Gatekeeper doesn't even come into play!"

So as long as the app is signed, there are no secondary prompts from gatekeeper

<comment><USER3> Sorry to burst your bubble, but all executable downloads get quarantine dialog. If the binary wasn't signed, then it wouldn't be a dialog with a "proceed" equivalent option, it would be a full stop (unless you turned off the requirement).

<comment> s-y-n-syn-a-c-k There is no bubble to burst.

What you said is untrue in High Sierra and maybe other versions. Go out and download a signed executable. If I download and execute a signed package from the Internet, I receive no warning. If that package installs a URL scheme helper, I always receive "would you like to run xxxxxx" from Safari.

The article even says gatekeeper does not come into play with signed apps. So you are refuting the article's accuracy?

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT202491)

<comment><USER3> Quarantine != Gatekeeper. They are two different things, stop conflating them. _Even with a signed app, you'll get the quarantine dialog_. See this Apple Support page for confirmation and to see an example:

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201940](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT201940)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a serious issue in Mac OS X but I don't see how it ties in with the 'use Google Chrome if you want to be secure' spiel. Don't open untrusted archives if you want to be secure would be better, if impractical, advice.

<comment><USER5> It might be that Google Chrome does not automatically unpack zip archives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great research, it's important that macOS security gets some attention as people are lulled too much into a false sense of security nowadays. Also check out the tools on his site. They're great. Always running BlockBlock, this helps a lot.

</comment><comment><USER7> somewhat related i got a wierd bug on my web page that some links open a new tab and navigates to a seemingly random page from the browser history. but there doesnt seem to be anywhere to report the bug and it has existed for over a year.

<comment><USER8> I doubt that's related, but allow me to suggest creating a new browser profile like this for Firefox [1] or this for Chrome[2]. If that doesn't fix the problem, a quick search for 'report bug Firefox Chrome' will allow you file a bug report. Or were using Safari? My solution for that would be to switch to Firefox...

1: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager- create-...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and- remove-firefox-profiles)

2: [https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?co=GENIE.Pl...](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en)

<comment><USER7> its Safari. and i do tell people to use firefox instead, but not everyone is ok with that solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > And if you're a Mac user concerned about security, use Google Chrome

and surrender your privacy to Google, have no functioning private browsing etc. makes me to rethink about objective-see tools.

</comment><comment><USER10> > If the Mac user is using Safari, the achieve will be automatically unzipped, > as Apple thinks it's wise to automatically open "safe" files. This fact is > paramount

This hasn't been true for a long time, the automatically open 'safe' files option has been turned off by default for years now.

Though the option should be removed all together really.

<comment><USER2> Not true from my experience. Just checked in Safari on an up-to-date system (High-Sierra, patches applied) and the option is On by default in Safari preferences (I never changed this setting).

<comment><USER11> I can verify as well. I'm in the process of setting up a new Mac and had to turn this off yesterday.</comment></comment></comment>


Anecdote Driven Development, or Why I Don't Do TDD - <AUTHOR> http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/38616

<comment><USER2> BTW, for the uninitiated, AMC is streaming all 17 episodes of The Prisoner at <http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video>

</comment><comment><USER3> In many environments, executing refactorings of your code also refactors your tests. (VisualWorks using the Refactoring Browser.) This squashes one of the author's objections.</comment>


YouTube wants to delete you if they deem you to not be "commercially viable" - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210#ae7e8c059d <comment><AUTHOR> In their proposed update to the terms, YouTube wants to be able to delete your channel, account, access should you/your content be deemed by YouTube to not be "commercially viable" enough.

I guess using an #adblocker could be sufficient? Or not enough views? Both?

"Terminations by YouTube for Service Changes

YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account's access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable."

<comment><USER2> I doubt that not enough views would be the issue they would close an account over. Sure there's some cost to store the video but the majority of the cost that YouTube bears is in views.

I suspect this is will be used against accounts that have high view/subscribers but their content is such it can't/won't be monetized by YouTube.</comment></comment>


You don't know this exists. A Kickstarter alternative and a conflict of interest - <AUTHOR>

Alright, I am biased. This is the definition of conflict of interest.  I work on Growth at Tilt.  Maybe I am just bad at my job, I am just surprised that so many devs / hackers are choosing Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Fundify etc. when it comes to crowdfunding.
Open Tilt is freaking amazing... Soylent, Lytro, Navdy, Whistle, Dick's Sports, Chubbies...
It's Open Source... I mean... really!  Yes, really.  If you are a hacker, and you are, isn't this exactly what you want. Full control, full transparency. I know I do. (https://github.com/crowdtilt/crowdtiltopen/)
Lowest fees in the business. You are only paying the credit card processing fees, (~2.5%).  Kickstarter and the like can take like 5-10%.
Can you host it on your own server?  Yup.
Can you customize it out the wazoo?  Yup.
Is it written in an esoteric language? Nope. Ruby.
Oh and the team behind it is freaking amazing too.  Some of the smartest and nicest people I have ever worked with.
There must be a catch right?  The reviews must suck right?  Nope. They are stellar. - http://goo.gl/r3yItp
This is not a stunt, not a growth tactic.  This is a great gift to the hacker community.
I know that Indiegogo and Kickstarter have the network effect.  I get that, they are huge and you are hoping that your campaign will get picked up and featured, but that's like winning the lottery.  Why not take matter into your own hands.  I know your products are good enough.  Also Tilt's team looks at all of the Open Tilt campaigns too and if they are incredibly awesome, no doubt Tilt will try to help you make it successful.
Anyway, more of a rant and should probably be a blog post.  I just had one of those moments where I am reading the website of a company that I work for and I am like... damn this is good. <comment><USER2> For a "Growth Scientist at Tilt," you're not very good at subletly in your blatant marketing spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure. Not hiding anything. I just wish more people used it. I feel like they don't know about it. Maybe I am just bad at my job lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure if I understand the use-case. If you're a hacker/dev/whatever, why would you need to start a campaign in the first place?

That is: If you've got the skills to build a product, why do you need to raise some money to get that product going?

I certainly appreciate the open-source nature of Tilt, but I wonder _who_ they are catering to. Who is this middle-ground developer that knows enough to take advantage of your github, but knows so little that they need to raise money to pay for another dev?

</comment><comment><USER4> Kickstarter and Indiegogo provide so many advantages to indie entrepreneurs. Network effects, a large number of people with credit cards on file, free marketing and indexing. Also, when you see a Kickstarter link you know you are being asked to crowdfund something.

Open Tilt would be more beneficial for companies with marketing teams or an already known brand.</comment>


Things JSConf got right that every conference needs to learn from - <AUTHOR> http://blog.joesgoals.com/2009/04/29/thisjsconf-win/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like it was awesome! An SO track is an innovation I've not heard of before but hope to see spread to other conferences.</comment>


New Research on Roundup in Your Gut - <AUTHOR> https://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/food/glyphosate-research <comment><USER2> > Choose organic. Roundup and other chemical pesticides and fertilizers are > banned for use in organic agriculture.

I've never considered the investment in organic produce to be worthwhile. But this is pretty compelling, maybe I'll change my mind.</comment>


Building a Website with Limited Experience - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/building-a-website-with-limited-experience-d595bd4e3128#.oifm3wcyj <comment><USER2> To me, that white-print-on-pale-yellow-background theme is unreadable.</comment>


I included emoji in my password and now I can't log in on Yosemite (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/202143/i-included-emoji-in-my-password-and-now-i-cant-log-in-to-my-account-on-yosemite <comment> lone-commenter "You're using passwords wrong."</comment>


Bank dress code:  "makeup will enhance your personality" - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/12/15/132078288/bank-dress-code-makeup-will-enhance-your-personality

<comment><USER2> Although UBS titled this document a dresscode it seems to be more like a dress handbook from the snippets that have been translated.

Overall I think it's an intriguing idea. I've known quite a few people (myself included) that have harmed peoples' perceptions of them simply by not appearing professional. I had used to think it would be a big burden on my time, but it's amazing what taking 5 - 10 minutes a day will do to improve your image.

<comment><USER3> I have a friend who apparently never learned to make the 'th' sound, and just replaces it with the 'd' sound or at the end of words with the 'tch' sound. He runs his own business and does moderately well for himself, but I tend to find that speech habit very distracting and can only assume many of the people he does business with are the same. I've considered bringing it up to him as something he could improve on, but I haven't figured out a way to tell him that wouldn't sound horribly condescending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps they should consider a form of A/B testing. It's certainly true that people are strongly biased by looks, and like it or not, outside of the hacker world, where everything is (allegedly) based on ability, appearances really do matter.

People say it shouldn't be so, but it is. Recognising that and using it is a form of societal hacking.

</comment><comment><USER5> There should be a hacker-developer version of this, to be published in hex by Google.

Ideabolt: How about a startup that gives fashion tips for hackers? How to give off that "I'm intelligent and don't give a damn" feeling with gusto, what t-shirts to buy? What shoes does Sergei wear? Where does Steve gets his black turtlenecks, etc.

<comment><USER6> I am a long time lurker, but only just created a login here. I didn't think that this would be my first comment, but this sort of thing - advice for geeks - has been on my mind for awhile. I'm a geeky woman and have given my (mostly male, but female as well) geek friends advice over the years, on relationships and dating, dealing with being "the geek" in situations where that's not how you want to be seen, networking, and yes, how one looks. I'm a geek but my family was very business oriented, and I had to learn how to network and such at company events and gatherings at a fairly young age. I count myself lucky in this, while I have never really loved networking I do know how to do it and it is important. Looking at some of my friends I can see how I might have turned out had this not been the case. I have thought about creating a website like this, an advice site for geeks, but was unsure of my authority. My friends know my authority in this such as it is - I give good advice and they know my background. But random people on the internet? I'm just another person. Thoughts? Is authority important?

<comment><USER5> Authority is important in advice sites, esp. in fashion, I think. However, there are three aspects of this particular demographic that I think would make the job easier: (1) they are by their nature more or less anti-authority and anti-establishment, (2) AFAIK, there are _no_ sites that do this sort of thing, and most importantly (3) we are _much_ more connected (except, perhaps, for teenage girls) so word of mouth is very powerful.

The only thing that sort of comes close in fashion are sites such as Threadless, betabrand, etc., mostly geeky t-shirts. But no site for how to do the whole look.

What you are proposing, I think, is to take the idea even further, give advice on relationships, dealings with pointy haired bosses and so on. I think that would be _great_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given that this is a document for the swiss division of ubs, I'm not really too surprised.

If hiring is any indication, I know that in France (not 100% sure specifically about Switzerland) it's pretty much required to submit a photo of yourself with any job application/CV. I think this is a good reflection of the kind of thought process that goes on in some workplaces.

If they think they can judge your worthiness for a given position by your appearance in a photo, I can only imagine the importance they put on daily dress at the office.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone have a non-Scribd copy (if permissible)?

P.S. When did "Don't" enter the French language (p 42)?</comment>


Apple Campus 2 construction video – August 2014 – shot with GoPro - at-fates-hands http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfZvimPkKio

<comment><AUTHOR> That's some awesome fun with drones! That was a very smooth take all around, although the image stabilization was a bit too much, particularly at the beginning. Do you know what kind of projects will be going on once the building's finished? I'd love to see it in the future!</comment>


UberEats May Very Well Eat Grubhub - <AUTHOR> https://seekingalpha.com/article/4231251-ubereats-may-well-eat-grubhub <comment><USER2> Saying home meal kit providers are a threat to grubhub is like saying frozen pizza is going to run pizza joints out of business IMO. Different target audiences in the vast majority of user cases.</comment>


What Does Immersing Yourself in a Book Do to Your Brain? - <AUTHOR> https://lithub.com/what-does-immersing-yourself-in-a-book-do-to-your-brain/ <comment><USER2> > A student came to him, a beautiful 13-year-old girl, who said she wanted to > be part of his theater group performing William Shakespeare's plays. It > would have been an ordinary request, save for the reality that the young > girl had advanced cystic fibrosis and had been told she had only a brief > time to live.

and then...

> She went on to become one Shakespearean heroine after another, each role > performed with more emotional depth and strength than the one before. Years > have now passed since she played Juliet. Against all expectations and > medical prognoses, she has entered college, where she is pursuing a dual > degree in medicine and theater, in which she will continue to "pass over" > into one role after another.

> That young woman's exceptional example is not so much about whether the mind > and heart can overcome the limitations of the body...

I don't understand this. Is the writer implying that 'advanced cystic fibrosis' is a limitation of the body and not a real disease, and so she was able to 'beat it' by immersing herself in reading and drama?

The 2 statements - "she had only a brief time to live" and "Years have now passed since she played Juliet. Against all expectations and medical prognoses" completely contradict each other. Did she 'beat the disease' (which seems improbable) or was she misdiagnosed in the first place?

<comment><USER3> annecdata:

I grew up with two CF children who are nearly as close as sisters to me.

They are both alive, and "healthy", at least five years past what we had expected to be the years of their demise, and they show no signs of passing soon - and this is not just limited to them; their CF classes (which do still dwindle in size) are much larger than had been expected.

There are many different kinds of CF, but across the board the treatment has improved massively. It's a testament to the advancing field, the strategy of the NHS, and the persistence of the parents and children, that the lifespans predicted (on solid evidence) for these children keep being invalidated and extended.

<comment><USER4> > that the lifespans predicted (on solid evidence) for these children keep > being invalidated and extended.

My understanding is that they are also cautious in generating such estimates, excluding any non-concrete factors (improvements in healthcare etc) that might be used to modify a purely frequentist estimation given historical data.

In general it's probably better to tell a cohort that they've an expected lifetime pessimistically than optimistically?

<comment><USER5> It's shitty bedside manner though, and provably harmful.

This reminds me of the story a few weeks ago of the hemophiliac kid who got HIV and then spent his whole childhood believing he would never grow up, never find love, never have a life.

How many people would just give in and roll over on that sort of news? It's self fulfilling prophecy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the topic of reading, read "The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads" by Daniel T. Willingham [1]. It is very nicely written and each chapter focus on one aspect of reading (recognition of letters, extracting meaning ... ) and for each the author present evidence and also links to other work .

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32285196-the-reading- min...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32285196-the-reading-mind)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been thinking that in order to write well, the author has to empathize with their audience. The effect is that the reader is able to empathize with the author.

Math, programming, and writing are verbal skills, but _good_ communication requires empathy, an emotional skill. I realized this was true after I realized I needed to consciously work on empathy because it is so crucial.

<comment><USER8> I had never thought about programming (or, for what comes next, application development) as a verbal skill.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense, especially as it pertains to UI/UX. About empathy -- you need to relate to your users, understand, be aware and sensitive of their needs and their thought process as they use your application.

Thanks for the interesting view. Not sure I read it too literally, but it gave me something to think about.

<comment><USER9> I can't prove it, but I really don't think that programming helps one to become more empathic. In my case, after a long programming session, I need about an hour to snap out of my analytical state of mind, and get my social/verbal skills back to their original level.

<comment><USER10> I've had the same - I have that quite a lot but have also have the reverse where immediately after a non-technical presentation being presented with a trivial technical problem that mind would _not_ engage with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the story of the Shakespearian actor. She put her soul into that, based on the idea she might not survive to adulthood.

I wonder how much this risk taking behavior learned from necessity helped her overachieve in adulthood, where she will now be an actor... and a doctor.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been getting into old scifi audiobooks. They're quite fascinating.

Not quite as immersive as a dead tree book, but at least I can still enjoy and be absorbed in it while walking/running.

<comment><USER13> What do you like so far? I used to listen to X Minus One and shows like that. I really enjoyed them and would love to listen to more scifi.

<comment><USER12> Right now I'm listing to a Niven/pournell 1977 book

but I've just finished about 4 Robert A. Heinlein books in a row... all around the 1950's with stories based on the future being late 70's to the year 2000.

Pretty funny listening really. though they're not meant to be.

<comment><USER13> Lucifer's Hammer, by chance? Man I still think about that book really often. Crazy plot twists.

Heinlein sounds good, I'll have to read more. Thank you.

<comment><USER12> yup! that's the one.

yeah RAH is an interesting one... some of his stuff is just plain _wrong_. One time his character cloned himself into little girls, then another he went back in time to have sex with his mother (when she was a hotty)...

but yeah. dude writes some really odd stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great article. I am not so sure about the concern that a new generation isn't connecting with books as prior generations have.

<comment><USER15> I tend to agree. Books and writing have never been less expensive or more accessible. There are literally thousands of very inexpensive self published books available on Kindle and other platforms with quality ranging from excellent to absolute trash.

Considering the other options now available, it is amazing to see so many kids around with their heads buried in books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find books incredibly more immersive than, say, a film, probably because books are so full of perspective.

This story about the actor is wonderful

<comment><USER17> You're also reading a book, which is far more active than just passively watching stuff on a screen. A typical two year old has no trouble watching tv, but can't read a book. Reading is a more cognitively taxing and attention- demanding activity, even when you've mastered it. Then beyond the raw reading, you have the activity of your imagination working to conjure images of what you're reading, which is yet another layer of attention.

Reading is the best.

<comment><USER18> Why would "cognitively taxing" and "attention demanding" be criteria for an intellectually superior experience?

Many concepts are simply better described by a visual demonstration. There's less communicative barriers that way. Just observe the cause and effect. You could be illiterate and still understand a visual demonstration.

My three year understands engineering concepts from goofy YouTube videos. He doesn't read.

Is all of this proclamation about books being the superior format just akin to old-timers screaming "back in my day we listened to great music, not like this crap nowadays!"?

<comment><USER19> Many concepts cannot be described visually. You can't visualize how freshly cut grass smells, so there isn't much of a way to utilize that mental process as a manner of connecting you to something in your past to base a feeling off of. And you can't twist and break those feelings either - where you can easily, in words, take something like fresh cut grass and make it a painful experience by associating it with something like past trauma. Say, a description where an accident with a lawnmower led to a character losing an arm. Now that character is traumatized by the smell and in some manner so are you. There is less depth to the internalization a visual presentation of those events creates, as the book is more likely to force you into imagining those events and empathizing with the character. You may even end up traumatized yourself as the reader of such a powerfully connected piece.

<comment><USER18> >You can't visualize how freshly cut grass smells

Why can't I? Even to someone illiterate, this is an experience we've all had? And visually, seeing the blades of up close on a freshly cut lawn, with dew dripping down, might conjure up memories of summers past and the associated smells.

You're taking for granted that words are abstractions and aren't learned for most until they're 5 or 6. Meanwhile, visual recognition is something more innate and starts to appear in babies in as little as 2 or 3 months (smiling, recognizing parents, etc).

25% of the world's population is illiterate. By accessibility alone, video wins.

<comment><USER20> > 25% of the world's population is illiterate. By accessibility alone, video > wins.

I don't think it's as clear cut as that. Literature doesn't have to be written; oral literature exists, and has been around for centuries, and was still fairly common even in living memory of people in the West. You can have literature without writing, basically... and that's always preceded video, and, I'd say, is probably the first form that humans encountered literature (and likely occurred when we first learned to speak, before Homo Sapiens Sapiens was even a thing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Humans have been creating virtual realities since telling stories around campfires hundreds of millennia ago. I can become entraced in an oral story as well as print novel or movie. Many cultures have had long oral books of myths or religion. The Greek Illiad and Hindu Bhagavad Gita Are examples.

<comment><USER20> This is something I would recommend to everyone. Try and find a master storyteller, and sit and listen to them tell a story. It's quite a different experience, but immensely rewarding in my opinion. It can show how literature doesn't necessarily have to be written, and is something that has existed, in oral form, likely since the first people capable of speech. It's actually a shame, in my opinion, that it's dying out. It coexisted with writing for quite a while, up to living memory of people in the West, I'd say.

<comment><USER22> Or read the Old Testament, or any of the Eastern scriptures. All those stories, with the possible exception of the Maccabees, were originally passed down orally, even after they got written down.

The New Testament loses a lot, in my opinion, by being written almost purely for literary composition.</comment></comment></comment>


How to fix the MacOS root and blank password security flaw - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2017/11/29/macos-security-flaw-allows-you-to-login-as-root-without-a-password/ <comment><USER2> Don't read this article, simply head to the Mac App Store and update. Done.</comment>


Mozilla Launches Firefox OS Simulator 3.0 - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/02/mozilla-launches-firefox-os-3-0-simulator-with-push-to-device-rotation-simulation-geolocation-api-and-more/

<comment><USER2> Just to clarify the simulator is now version 3.0, not the OS itself.

Here is a link from Mozilla explaining whats new in the new version of the simulator:

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/05/firefox-os- simulator-3-0-r...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/05/firefox-os- simulator-3-0-released/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, it looks like a really slick OS. I think it'll be neat seeing web-apps as first class citizens - it never made sense to me why we have to use Objective-C or Java just to make some UI or whatever.

<comment><USER4> Somewhere, a former Palm webOS engineer is reading your comment and crying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now if only their developer phones were easier to get a hold of.

I was totally ready to impulse buy a Keon last week, but I missed the initial rush on them.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're interested in seeing the code for it, it's made with love and open sourced up on github. Please try it out and leave us some constructive criticism in our issue tracker: <https://github.com/mozilla/r2d2b2g/issues?state=open>

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any way to get your hands a dev phone without being a mobile app developer rockstar (I assume they give them away to these guys/girls)? Alternatively is there a method to get your hands on the OS and load it on an android phone to play around with?

The simulator is great and all but I love seeing the finished product on an actual phone.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.geeksphone.com/> Went on sale about a week ago. I think they're sold out though

<comment><USER9> They put a few more up every day.

Each day they go through the cycle:

      - shop is down, has a white page saying that the shop will
        be up again "in the following hours"
      - the shop goes live
      - the shop sells out
      - the shop is up, but says "Out of stock" on product pages

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> is Firefox OS based on Android?

<comment><USER11> Did you even look up your question on a search engine before asking it?

The dedicated Wikipedia page has all the information you are looking for: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS> (spoiler: no it is not)

<comment><USER12> Correction: yes, it is; it uses Android kernels.</comment></comment></comment>


EevBLAB #13 – Batteriser dislikes me - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU08zwBH-wo

<comment><USER2> discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064276)

<comment><USER3> Just to be clear, that is discussion of the Batteriser itself and the EEVBlog debunking of it.

This new submission is not about the Batteriser, but rather about the reaction of Batteriser fans to the debunking.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. There was a flurry of dupe or near-dupe "Batteriser" submissions, and it seems I misread this one.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When is a [dupe] not a dupe? - <AUTHOR> For what it's worth, it seems to me that posts are being marked [dupes] unhelpfully. For example, recent posts linking to articles about Beto O'Rourke's hacker past are being marked as [dupe] even though they may offer unique analysis or perspective. The interesting thing is not the report of what has happened, but the interpretation or analysis. Varieties of valuable interpretation/analysis are sometimes missed when posts that are only superficially related by subject matter are marked [dupes]. Not a huge deal obviously, but HN might be helped by a slightly more judicious use of the [dupe] marker. <comment><USER2> The [dupe] tag is mostly put on by moderators. The intention is to indicate that a story has already received front-page attention on HN within the last year or so ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)). Articles are considered the same story if they don't contain significant new information compared to the previous discussion. This is a matter of interpretation, and no doubt we make the wrong call sometimes. If you notice a case of that, your best bet is to email us at firstname.lastname@example.com. We always look, and often change.

p.s. I couldn't resist editing your title from "When is a dupe not a [dupe]?" because it seems to me that that asks the opposite question :)

</comment><comment><USER3> For this reason I sometimes wish that multiple links could be merged into the same thread.</comment>


Live on Product Hunt – Discover Friends and Games (psychology and ML) - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/gametree <comment><AUTHOR> Moved from San Francisco to Ukraine to build this (good boostrapping hack). Now launching after 2.5 years. Hope you enjoy and happy to answer any questions.</comment>


NSA Chief Keith Alexander to Step Down - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE99F12W20131016?irpc=932

<comment><USER2> While this might seem promising in the surface, I don't see a change if leadership as an immediate indication that the agency is going to be overhauled.

I'd like to read Alexander's departure as a practical acknowledgement that the agency's work is likely to have to be conducted in the open from now on, and that new leadership is necessary to make that happen. However, it is just as likely that the man is leaving out of embarrassment over the fact that his lax security allowed Snowden's leaks to occur in the first place. Let's not forget, the leaks were a major blow to the operational integrity of the NSA. This is further backed up by timing of the departure: if he had left immediately after the leaks, at the height of the media coverage, it would have been seen as a result of embarrassment of the program.

Or, maybe he just left because he's been at the job for a while.</comment>