Go vs. Rust: Writing a CLI Tool - <AUTHOR> https://cuchi.me/posts/go-vs-rust <comment><USER2> I'm puzzled by one of the conclusions: Go is better "if you target exceptionally/mostly Linux". But Rust is better "If the project targets many operating systems and I want a truly multiplatform codebase".

I have no idea what this is referring to. The first time the article mentions this (whatever this is) seems to be in the conclusions. Find the word "platform" in the article, and there is one match: in the conclusion.

I write Go on Mac or Win, deploy on Mac, Win, or Linux. One code base, one command-line option to tell the compiler which platform to target. A 2-second compile for local platform, test, it works, another 2-sec compile of same code with a different command-line option and I have a native executable for some other target platform.

I don't know what more Go would need for the "truly multiplatform codebase" that Rust purportedly allows, but I haven't used Rust. If I had to guess (again, the article doesn't seem to say), I'd guess that maybe if I were targeting something tiny, like a chip in a microwave oven or maybe WASM, Rust would be better, because you can customize the memory handling. I would certainly (learn and) use Rust over Go for such specialized cases, but then those are "specialized" cases, not general multiplatform cases. I wouldn't deploy the same code to a microwave oven and Windows.

So, I don't know. Any ideas?

<comment><USER3> He does link to an article [0] that mostly talks about multi-platform Go and uses Rust as a language that doesn't have these problems, to the same degree at least.

The gist of the article is that, while Go might very well compile easily on multiple platforms, it does so not by solving the complexities inherent with this problem but rather by merely hiding them from the user.

There are plenty of examples in the article so I won't elaborate on that part but his examples mostly revolve around $(platform)-specific features being poorly poly-filled on non-$(platform) platforms.

[0]: [https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-want-off-mr-golangs- wild-...](https://fasterthanli.me/articles/i-want-off-mr-golangs-wild-ride)

<comment><USER4> I skimmed over that article and most of the criticism is about OS API wrappers. The thing that enables Go's single command cross compilation is thanks to other components of the pipeline being implemented in Go, like the linker, or not needing Windows import libraries (there is a merged RFC for Rust called raw dylibs to solve this, but implementation has stagnated... go has this feature already).

In the long term, Rust may end up in a better place than Go regarding portability but of course as long as GCC can target more than clang and there is no Rust gcc backend while there is a Go backend, Rust can't be better than Go in all portability aspects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> I want a very simple language for my teammates to learn

I feel this is said in a demeaning way plus it is not true IMO plus if I had a penny for every time I read that I'd probably be much richer by now.

Go is _not_ a simple language to learn _correctly_. It is only simple if what you're trying to do is simple which goes for almost any production language that is not designed to drive you nuts. And it should be simple at that. A language is a tool. It should be easy to use in order to solve easy(ish) problems and feel progressively more difficult as the problem domain gets more complex. Having a language that gets in the way right from the beginning makes you focus on the language rather than at the problem at hand which makes for bad overall solutions.

Example: If you still feel that Go is simple to learn try to read some kubernetes code.

Having said that, I accept that Rust is way harder to get to grips with. My question is why should I though? I understand the appeal of Rust up to a point but I think much of it as a bad form of machismo - something quite common in the industry and also quite destructive. To me Rust is a better alternative maybe to C and C++ but that's about that. If you program systems and you absolutely do not want a garbage collector doing its thing then by all means go for it. For everyone else though I don't get why you should try to climb your project mountain in flip-flops. Not saying that it can't be done. Not saying that you won't get extra wow points for doing it. Just saying that you don't need to.

<comment><USER6> > If you still feel that Go is simple to learn try to read some kubernetes > code

The Go code in K8s is simple, the system of Kubernetes is complex

Rust isn't about machismo, it's about high performance computing. Try writing graphics or machine learning code in Go, it's not about being tough it's about having a tool that can actually do the job.

<comment><USER7> > The Go code in K8s is simple, the system of Kubernetes is complex

Can you link me to a doc which explains the runtime scheme type system of Kubernetes? Could never wrap my head around how that even works. And why they had to even do this in the first place?

<comment><USER6> This is the best I can find [https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/using- api/api-concepts/](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/using-api/api- concepts/) there used to be a better doc on this but I can't seem to find it again.

Runtime scheme and the k8s machinery can be pretty awkward. Scheme is just a way of registering the available datatypes by group/version/kind so the client can look at any given object and figure out if it knows how to decode it.

<comment><USER7> This doesn't explain it at all, specially the ecosystem surrounding schemes - informers, cache clients and various other code generators for typed as well dynamic API clients

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Rust has:

\- monadic constructs (Option & Result) \- the error propagation operator \- the From trait, to automatically convert errors on propagation

> The combination of the three features above makes up the best error handling > solution I saw in a language, being simple, sound, and maintainable at the > same time.

I absolutely agree with this. The error handling in Rust is fantastic to work with.

Once I learned about bullet three, error handling became less of a chore and more of non-issue while staying confident that any errors would be handled correctly.

<comment><USER9> The "anyhow" and "thiserror" crates remove a lot of boilerplate, too. I hope something like that gets merged into std.

<comment><USER10> Wanna know a quick way to reduce your compile time by several seconds? Skip proc macros that you can impl manually. The Error trait is one such case where the boilerplate impl is worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most importantly, like many articles and discussions regarding Rust, this article misses the point. It's not about high end language features. In 99% of the projects it's also not about computational performance (but latencies - memory, network, disc and scalability).

Success of our projects is ultimately shaped by the development process, the matureness and reliablity of the ecosystem (standard lib of Go) and ease of use of the tools, so you can focus on the problem to solve.

Besides of that: I haven't written much Rust, so I can only comment on the Go side:

I never heard of GVM (local env for Go) - probably because it's not needed. Just use Go modules. Really, no need to worry about GOPATH etc.

Regarding the conclusion:

Rust is ultimately faster and uses less resources, no dispute here. However, there're no benchmarks in the article. For the given CLI application, the result would very likely be: There's no performance difference.

However, Rust is not generally safer than Go. Rust is safer compared to other language with manual memory management (C/C++). Rust has a stronger typesystem, but that doesn't mean Rust programs can't panic too.

<comment> c-cube Rust is a bit safer.

\- it warns you if you ignore an error. \- it forces variables and fields to be initialized. \- it has sum types and generics instead of interface{}. \- it prevents some race conditions at compile time. \- it pushes programmers towards immutability.

<comment><USER12> It doesn't only WARN about ignoring an error, it refuses to compile. T and Result<T, E> are different types.

<comment><USER13> I've always wondered whether "unwrap"-ing is considered ignoring? I personally always equated it to ignoring if there's an error

<comment><USER14> I would say no, because it's not ignored. It makes it explode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apparently there is a new book (beta stage) dedicated on Go for CLI tools and applications [1].

Personally I think it'll be interesting to include D as well for more complete comparison due to it also fits the bill and it's no slouch either. A very fast TSV CLI tools written in D by eBay is covered in HN last year [2].

It'll also be very cool and useful if someone could write CLI tools in any of these compiled languages for supporting Arrow, Parquet and TileDB data formats [3].

[1] [https://pragprog.com/titles/rggo/](https://pragprog.com/titles/rggo/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20848581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20848581)

[3] [https://www.i-programmer.info/news/197-data- mining/13263-new...](https://www.i-programmer.info/news/197-data- mining/13263-new-database-for-data-scientists-.html)

<comment><USER16> > Apparently there is a new book (beta stage) dedicated on Go for CLI tools > and applications [1].

I own that book, and I have two considerations:

1\. I've found Golang simple enough not to need particular education on building simple tools; the book itself is well-written though, for people who like to be accompanied or motivated in learning a subject.

2\. they've labelled "beta 2" (!!) a book where 40% of the content hasn't been written; in the software world, this would be (rightfully) ridiculed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The first problem I found using Go, was when I was figuring out how the > module resolution worked along with the GOPATH, it became quite frustrating > to set up a project structure with a functional local development > environment.

Really?!

There is no magic. Create a directory anywhere and run go mod init. There is NO need for go virtual environments.

This is all well explained in the documentation. The first section of [https://golang.org/doc/code.html](https://golang.org/doc/code.html)

Really unfortunate the author missed this because the go tooling is really excellent and in 2020 you don't need to know anything about GOPATH.

<comment><USER18> Personally, as someone who doesn't write Go but occasionally tries to compile Go projects, GOPATH/GOROOT caused me problems all of the last 3 or 4 times that I tried to compile a Go project, and I struggled to find clear explanations of what they should be set to. I felt like I was being stupid, and I'm sure I should have read the documentation better, but nevertheless, there's my data point.

<comment><USER19> Indeed that was a problem for many people and a key motivating factor to deploy the new go modules approach (which is enabled by default for a while now). Most of the projects out there now contain a go.mod file.

That said there may still be projects out there that are unmaintained or the author didn't bother to convert to go.mod, so you might occasionally still encounter GOPATH.

<comment><USER20> That's aggravating the problem. No only the original way was painful, but now there are multiple ways and to the newcomer that just needs to contribute to a project - it's all one big mess.

<comment><USER21> Agreed! I pick up Go a few times a year (which doesn't help, admittedly) and even consulting the official documentation, it's hard for me to figure out what the current, correct way of doing things is.

<comment><USER19> If you want to learn this my suggestion:

Dedicate 30m to read [https://blog.golang.org/using-go- modules](https://blog.golang.org/using-go-modules) and try it out with a small demo project,e.g. write a small tool that emits a uuid; keep the toy project very small so you don't encounter other problems that might distract you from learning the basics of dependency management.

Search for dependencies using pkg.go.dev.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great comparison, but I'm sad that D lost out in the popularity wars. Talk about a versatile workhorse that is appropriate for 90% of (non-GUI) tasks.

D is a valid competitor of Rust, that just happens to smash Go in the process. All the ergonomics of a high level language like c#, decent (toggleable) garbage collector, the ability to write all your scripts in it... the list goes on.

It lacks options in the editor and tooling department (although VS Code support is great), but that comes with community size.

<comment><USER23> D also has LLVM and GCC back ends so you can target every architecture.

Other things it has over go:

Generics, inline assembly, kernel threads, and great interopt with C/C++.

<comment><USER24> How is the compilation speed - instant (close to Go), seconds (like C# or Java), something longer (like C++, Rust)? Sorry, I have not used D extensively.

<comment><USER25> > instant (close to Go), seconds (like C# or Java),

golang compilation is about the same speed, if not slower than Java or C#. Especially for larger projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love Rust, but a few drawbacks made me choose Golang over it:

\- Compilation Time \- IDE experience: I have yet to find a good IDE that works like Goland does for Golang, this anyways is due to the compile time :( \- Non-static binaries by default \- Too verbose (compared to Go) \- CLIs are not that easy to write compared to Golang, but this might be due to the fact that I have yet to find a similar library to alexflint's go-args for Rust \- Lifetimes: I'm too stupid to understand them properly, and I get frustrated when I think I understood them and then I spend half of my development time to fix an ownership issue

Again, I _love_ Rust language, but I very much hate its compiler, and thus my general development experience. If RLS and the Rust compiler were as fast as Go's one, I guess that the whole experience would be much better for me. Additionally there isn't really an IDE for Rust that works like Goland for Go :(

I have to admit that I'm much faster at writing Go CLIs (and I wrote a lot of CLIs in the past couple of months), but I might be biased for the reasons explained above that didn't let me enjoy that much programming in Rust.

For a private project of my own, composed of three libraries, I spent most of my time fighting with the borrowing system and the verbosity of the language itself (like `pub field` rather than Go's `Field`) or the whole `json:"fieldName"` annotations that Golang uses.

Last, but not least, I can cross compile Go projects from my Linux computer targeting Windows without any cross compiler toolchain, and the resulting binaries are static. This is a feature I love!

I would very much like to have somebody providing me with tips on how to improve my Rust experience

<comment><USER14> Have you tried IntelliJ-Rust? I am curious how it differs from Goland (I've never used it.) I personally use VS: Code with rust-analyzer, which is the successor of the RLS, and much better.

structopt will give you a go-arg-like experience. clap 3 is going to adopt it, in my understanding, so that reduces the number of packages.

<comment><USER26> IntelliJ Rust is good, but has still the same problem as any other IDE for Rust (that is, RLS performance). You have to wait 5-10 seconds to get a feedback from the compiler :(

The combination that works better is Clion + Rust plugin, but just because you can easily debug w/ gdb.

I still have to try Rust-Analyzer, first time hearing it - hooefully this will improve my developer experience: heck RLS is slow as hell even with vim :(

Thanks for the tips Steve!

<comment><USER14> Ah, IntelliJ-Rust doesn't use the RLS, as far as I know, so I wasn't sure how its performance compared.

rust-analyzer is way way faster.

Thank you for elaborating!

<comment><USER26> Thank you for your tips! I'll try again to dive into the Rust ecosystem, hopefully with a more happy outcome thanks to your tips :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> You may want to consider looking into go modules. It works much the same way that cargo does for rust and you won't need to worry about GOPATH for most cases.

</comment><comment><USER28> Author writes that this started as an interview project.

If someone showed you this article in a go or rust job interview, would you consider him for hiring? Why/why not?

<comment><USER29> The author proved he knows how to learn, how to search, how to analyze, how to compare two technical solutions.

The methodology is there.

I don't even care if he doesn't know the language we are using, I care about how he thinks because that is the skill used to solve problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love this font

<comment><USER31> Looks like Iosevka Sparkle.

[https://typeof.net/Iosevka/](https://typeof.net/Iosevka/)

<comment><USER30> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The conclusion missed the fact that Go is also multi-paradigm. It just misses the syntactic sugar, but that's not to say you can't use Go to program in multiple paradigms.

I don't entirely agree with the statement that Go seems to not work on Windows ("if build mostly for linux"). Go works fine on Windows, although I do agree some tooling just works better on *nix, but that goes for many langs :-)

It's good to see such a comparison form the perspective of a novice with the languages, but it'd also be interesting to get such a view from someone more experienced with both.

The source code is not bad though! Although the project structure could use some work :-)</comment>


Evernote articles on HN - <AUTHOR> People are, rightly or wrongly, freaking out over Evernote's announcement about its policy concerning employee access to users' notes.  Not all of them have comments, but there are several stories from several sources, and different HN readers might have different interests with regards this, and so you might like to have all the submissions in one place.<p>So here is a summary of submissions to HN about it ... <comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13166482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13166482)

        https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/235660588
        Notice of Privacy Policy Updates (January 2017)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13176036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13176036)

        https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/235660588
        Notice of Privacy Policy Updates (January 2017)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177215)

        http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/12/14/worst-privacy-policy-evernote/
        Evernote Privacy Policy Lets Employees Read Your Notes
        2 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177522](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177522)

        https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/235660588-Notice-of-Privacy-Policy-Updates-January-2017-
        Evernote updates privacy policy to allow employees to access notes

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177581)

        http://www.zdnet.com/article/new-privacy-policy-will-let-evernote-employees-read-your-notes/
        Evernote's new not-so-privacy policy will let employees read your notes
        2 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177971)

        http://lifehacker.com/evernote-employees-can-read-your-notes-and-theres-no-w-1790099958
        Evernote Employees Can Read Your Notes
        21 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13178628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13178628)

        https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/235660588-
        Evernote's new privacy policy let's employees read user notes
        2 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13178666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13178666)

        https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/evernotes-new-privacy-policy-allows-employees-to-read-your-notes/
        Evernote's new privacy policy allows employees to read your notes

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180313)

        http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/12/14/worst-privacy-policy-evernote/#18186ff01977
        Evernote Privacy Policy Update

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183490)

        http://lifehacker.com/how-to-jump-ship-from-evernote-and-take-your-data-with-1782841075
        How to Jump Ship from Evernote and Take Your Data with You
        31 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183543)

        https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/235660588
        Evernote's New Privacy Policy Lets Staff Read Notes to Improve Service
        23 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183932)

        http://fortune.com/2016/12/14/evernote-customer-notes-privacy-machine-learning/
        Evernote Users Upset Over Company's Decision to Read Customer Notes

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183937)

        https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/14/evernotes-new-privacy-rules-let-employees-read-notes/
        Evernote's new privacy rules may let its employees read your notes

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13184946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13184946)

        https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/featured/evernote-privacy-policy/
        Evernote staff can already read your notes. Why complain now?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13186182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13186182)

        http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/12/14/worst-privacy-policy-evernote/
        Evernote's New Privacy Policy Allows Its Employees to Access Your 'Ideas'

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13186612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13186612)

        https://spideroak.com/articles/internet-rightly-freaks-out-when-evernotes-admits-employees-can-read-your-notes
        Internet (Rightly) Freaks Out When Evernote Admits Employees Can Read Your Notes

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13187031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13187031)

        https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2016/12/15/note-chris-oneill-evernotes-privacy-policy/
        A Note from Chris O'Neill about Evernote's Privacy Policy

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13187280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13187280)

        http://www.pcworld.com/article/3150479/security/bye-privacy-evernote-will-let-its-employees-read-your-notes.html
        Evernote will let its employees read your notes</comment>


Sprint and T-Mobile could announce a merger by the end of the month - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/06/sprint-t-mobile-announce-merger-end-month/ <comment><USER2> wonder how would that impact google fi? if it would mean adding a new carrier like verizon or att, I am in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would it impact it? They are already using Sprint and T-Mobile, aren't they? I guess they will just use SprinT-Mobile now.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is the dot/period character used as file extension separator? - <AUTHOR>

Why dot and not any other character? What's the historical reason behind it? <comment><USER2> I don't know why. VMS also used it to indicate the revision number of a file, as I recall--demo.c.1, demo.c.2 ...--but it has been a while.

Years ago I worked with Data General minis. The 16-bit ones ran the operating system RDOS (real-time disk operating system), the 32-bit ones AOS/VS (advanced operating system with virtual storage. All used the '.' to mark of stem from extension, but all also had a file type associated in the directory. This meant, among other things, the the assembler would balk at processing something called urgent.asm if the directory showed that it was a generic file. That was baffling the first time you encountered it.

<comment><USER3> VMS also used the semicolon to do version information if you're interfacing with DCL or DECWindows (or NFS I think too). The dot was also used as the directory separator. In VMS land your path would look something like (in the case of my login.com): DSA0:[USERS.MVEETY]LOGIN.COM;5

<comment><USER4> My company still uses VMS today. This:

DSA0:[USERS.MVEETY]LOGIN.COM;5

Looks all too familiar to me :-/ I even still have to write some DCL from time to time!

I swear we are going to be the last one's off this system.

<comment><USER5> VMS isn't dead yet.

HP just licensed VMS to vmssoftware.com:

[http://www.vmssoftware.com/news/announcement/faq.pdf](http://www.vmssoftware.com/news/announcement/faq.pdf)

Roadmap: [http://www.vmssoftware.com/news/announcement/RM/VMS_Software...](http://www.vmssoftware.com/news/announcement/RM/VMS_Software_Roadmap.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unix has no concept of file extension. The dot is just like any other constituent character. To distinguish between file types, Unix uses the file(1) command and its database of manually curated magic strings and heuristics.

</comment><comment><USER7> because the underscore is evil

</comment><comment><USER8> > Why is the dot/period character used as file extension separator?

Why not? Maybe it was realized that other candidate non-alphabetic symbols were already reserved for other things, like '/' as a path delimiter on Unices, '\' same purpose on Windows, '#' as a comment delimiter, '%' as the modulo operator, '|' as the command pipe symbol, '^' to signify either power or exclusive-or depending on context ... we're quickly running out of candidate symbols on an ASCII keyboard.

<comment><USER9> Windows/MS-DOS had file extensions (which it inherited from CP/M) before it had directories and directory separators.

Did CP/M and Unix independently come up with file extensions with a dot separator, or did they acquire it from the same source? I'm dimly aware of other operating systems that use(d) a different character (AS/400?), but it's outside my ken.

<comment><USER10> I believe Microsoft's file extensions and the 8.3 naming scheme are descended from Digital's 6.3 naming in VMS, RT-11, etc. DEC even used a number of the same extensions: EXE, COM, OBJ. Not sure where they came from prior to that. I don't think IBM used file extensions like that in System/360, System/32, or anything prior to PC-DOS. From what I can tell, Burroughs and Univac didn't use them either.</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin: The Economic Frontier of a Digital Age - <AUTHOR> http://theamericanstatesmen.com/2013/12/bitcoin-the-economic-frontier-of-a-digital-age/

<comment><USER2> Bitcoin is also a huge bet against P=NP</comment>


French fries are overrated - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/culture/2020/04/a-parisian-who-hates-french-fries.html <comment><USER2> I was slightly disappointed when I discovered this wasn't a presidential campaign to bring back "Freedom Fries." Only as disappointed as one gets when they order In-N-Out and forget to order the fries extra crispy.</comment>


Show HN: Sell life insurance from your FinTech website - <AUTHOR> http://inslock.com <comment><AUTHOR> Comparable to Stripe for life insurance. Insert a line of JavaScript into your website's HTML to display life insurance quotes. Users can choose a carrier and apply using the first direct to consumer multi-carrier eApp for life insurance. User friendly wizard gathers data, allows user to schedule their exam, fills the insurance company's forms and displays filled application for user to eSign with DocuSign. Available in all states from the following carriers: American General, Banner Life, John Hancock, Protective Life, Prudential, US Life, William Penn. Website's company will be the writing agent and must be insurance licensed.</comment>


Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-internet-protests/thousands-of-russians-protest-against-internet-restrictions-idUSKBN1QR0HI <comment><USER2> Russian here. I live in Moscow. I've just came back from the rally. Interned at an IT company in Switzerland and US. My Digital Ocean VPS IP address was blocked in Russia due to this crazy thing going on with the Internet here. Even though it was a private service that is not exposed to the global network. AMA.

<comment><USER3> So what exactly are they doing? Just cutting off random IPs? The actual IP was blocked or is it only DNS based? How about tor traffic?

<comment><USER2> Right now, we have a legislation (this one existed since 2012) that requires to ban certain IP addresses. All ISP's are being monitored by the authority called Roscomnadzor and allowing access to a banned IP will lead to fines. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work because people here learned how to use VPN's, proxies and Tor. Moreover, with cloud providers you can easily switch IP addresses. Telegram messenger was banned here but it still works. I guess that they frequently change IP addresses and use multiple cloud providers. When Roscomnadzor tried to ban the messenger, they added significant number of IP subnetworks (I think that the largest blocked subnet was 220.127.116.11/11 used by AWS). This lead to all sorts of different problems because it turned out that some banks and large companies were paralysed for months as their websites were blocked.

After a year of of trying to block the messenger, they just decided to pass this law. All ISPs that handle inter-counties exchange must install a government backdoor that could shut down all outgoing and incoming connections outside from Russia.

Also, some websites now are blocked by their DNS record, not by their IP. This lead to other problems. Imagine there was a website X that was blocked in Russia. The X company decides to change the domain and abandon X. Now, someone else buys the banned domain and adds any IP addresses to the DNS (like, government authorities websites). Whoala! These websites are banned in Russia as well. This happened multiple times and lead to Google, YouTube and other websites being inaccessible here.

The legislation proposes a separate national DNS system that differs from the ICANN one. Similarly to how North Korea does this in their country. This way no-one could buy an abandoned blocked website and add a bunch of valuable and valid IPs there.

They claim that this will increase the stability of the Russian Internet. People in our government believe that the Internet was designed in the US to control the world. They also believe that they could shut down the Internet in any country at this point of time. They say that this has already happened in Syria once and we need to prepare for this.

They don't actually explain that the thing that happened to Syria was possible only because they had a single ISP. And their centralised system was hacked.

I believe that if we decide to install a backdoor to all of our ISPs, then someone else from the outside could pull the switch.

<comment><USER4> > People in our government believe that the Internet was designed in the US to > control the world.

Maybe it wasn't designed with this objective in mind, but it is definitely used this way. And the fact that Google and Facebook are de-facto monopolies doesn't help.

And I'm not from the government. I'm just another little guy that sees tons of that propaganda every day.

For example, I watch mostly videos from conferences on YouTube. Why YT displays rusophobic videos in the recommendations list instead of more videos related to the conference? Even after I clicked hide button on them multiple times?

And all those rusophobic comments under every video about Russia? Who writes them? Sometimes I see exactly the same comment from different nicknames. I even made a screenshots of such instances, only to find out that nobody cares.

<comment><USER4> Another example: on one of facebook groups I regularly see posts from a person regularly bashing Russia. Under every post he leaves derogatory comments. Sometimes he posts derogatory posts although the facebook group is not about Russia at all.

Just recently he had shared a meme picture from some of the "opposition" groups (Alexei Navalny or his friends) stating that Russia has the highest suicides rate in the world (of course, because we're poor and doomed and Putin eats our children for breakfast).

I didn't believe it and went to several official sources (including international) to verify. Of course, we're very far from the first place in the list of suicide rates. I've commented this on the post and received zero reaction. Moreover, the post was liked and shared further by several members of the group.

This is all you need to know about our "opposition".

And there're many persons like this disseminating fake news in facebook groups and other communities. I have no evidence, but I strongly believe that they're on a payroll from some non-Russian agency or NGO.

<comment><USER5> > they're on a payroll from some non-Russian agency or NGO.

At this point, I would be incredibly surprised if any country in the world wasn't engaged in some sort of online trolling/fake news dissemination on either the global (e.g. Russia vs US vs China) or local (internal politics) scale. It's the best way to spread propaganda while making it seem as real as possible.

<comment><USER6> And once you propagandize the population successfully enough, they'll carry on without you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The unfortunate part about this is that there's a lot of really talented network engineers who are from Russia (or Ukraine, or Belarus, or other former soviet states). The high quality of math education is part of it, totally subjective personal theory of course...

A lot of the most talented Russian network engineers don't want to work for an autocratic regime. I've met at least a half dozen that now work for international ISPs you would see on a top-30 list for CAIDA ASRank, none of which are Russian ISPs. They're living outside Russia, enjoying actual free speech and human rights, and making a better salary.

</comment><comment><USER8> Russian here. Few points:

\- Root DNS and most of the cloud providers are in US jurisdiction. US declared Russia as top 3 enemy and applies random 'sanctions'; \- Russian (and EU) laws require companies to store citizen's personal information locally; \- many lazy developers and service providers relied on AWS/GCP thus breaking the law.

Telegram blocking attempt has shown that even some government resources are hosted outside Russia. In case of severe confrontation escalation US/NATO will cut DNS or will engage in cyberwarfare operations against Russia. So Russian government wants to make sure that Russian infrastructure will continue to function properly.

This is not PRIZM or Great Firewall of China type of system or regulation. There are no plans to cut off internet. There's a group of people that spread FUD and hype around this initiative.

<comment><USER9> No plans to cut off from the internet? This was in the news a few days ago:

"Russia plans to test a kill switch that disconnects the country from the internet" [https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/russia-internet-turn- off-d...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/russia-internet-turn-off-digital- economy-national-program/)

<comment><USER10> To be fair that article says pretty much what the OP says. They want to ensure the country keeps functioning if it is cut off from the internet.

On one level I sort of understand. My own country would stuffed for a short while if DNS in particular went down. It's not just the internet - the phone system, a lot of TV and god knows what else would be in real trouble.

But on the another level, fixing it would just require DNAT'ing a bunch of IP's. If it happened (and it seems like a big if) it would be mostly over after 24 hours of mad scrambling. If you were paranoid enough to want to have everything in place you could try doing the DNAT on small sections, see what broke and what it didn't effect because packets will still flying out, and fix it without inflicting a worse case cyber war outcome on the entire country.

From a western perspective, the cost / benefit of what they are proposing seems way out of kilter. Maybe it is politicly reasonable thing to do in Russia, but in the west a whole sections of society (business, sporting associations, professions) would be willing to put in a few dollars to ensure whosever idea it was would never hold the reigns of power again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Intresting fallout from our bigger client. They have been slowly migrating to aws over the last year but because russia started bloking whole blocks of aws IPs, they now stopped migration and are going to keep their own infrastructure up. I havent heard yet but I am sure they are considering moving away from cloud providers, we'll see what they decide, because Russia is huge market.

<comment><USER12> Huge market for what goods/services? What is your client selling / providing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> And things like this make the educated and ambitious young move abroad.

Good for the economies of Western Europe but not so good for Russia.

<comment><USER14> And bigger salary and bigger projects have nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER9> No, Russians do love their country very much. Just their government doesn't love them back.

<comment><USER14> Aww, that's so romantic :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _It seeks to route Russian web traffic and data through points controlled by > the state and proposes building a national Domain Name System to allow the > internet to continue functioning even if the country is cut off from foreign > infrastructure._

The first part just seems like a forced MITM situation whilst the second makes _some_ sense - in a cyber warfare scenario; however, that runs under the assumption that the DNS servers and/or entries didn't get poisoned before they're "cut-off" from foreign infrastructure. Doesn't really seem all that worthwhile, unless you create recovery points to ensure that you have records to recover with; otherwise, what's the point...?

(Of course, I could be entirely misunderstanding the premise of the law because it's not referenced in the article _and_ I can't speak/read Russian for feck-all...)

<comment><USER16> I think the answer to the question _what 's the point_ is to notice that there's a bit of a rhetorical trick going on. Notice how they say (in passive voice) _proposes building a national Domain Name System to allow the internet to continue functioning even if the country is cut off from foreign infrastructure_. So you're trying to analyze this as if a foreign country tries to cut Russia off from the internet. The Russian government has an interest of its own in cutting itself off from the internet to control its own citizens' speech on the internet, it's just that it's a little bit cynical to imagine it and it wouldn't be balanced to mention it explicitly in a news article.

<comment><USER17> The U.S. did cut Russia off during midterms last year didn't we? It's not a what if.

<comment><USER7> Citation? I am unaware of even a single Russian ISP that has been cut off from a traffic exchange point in Western Europe.

This would make news in the internet infrastructure community if it occurred.

<comment><USER18> This is what he is referring to:

[https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/431614-us-cyber- ope...](https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/431614-us-cyber-operation- blocked-internet-for-russian-troll-farm-on-election)

Saying the US, "cut Russia off" is a massive overstatement, but something did happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just took a 30 second look at the English language websites of TASS, RT and Sputnik.

Unsurprisingly, there is no mention whatsoever of these protests.

<comment><USER2> These websites are controlled (directly or indirectly) by the Russian government. They usually don't mention opposition meetings. I think that they don't want anyone to know even about their existence.

<comment><USER19> Can you reference any significant 'opposition' meeting (such as this) that was not covered by RT for less than justifiable reason? E.g. - in this event the organizers prohibited RT from covering the event, which is a pretty decent reason for the lack of coverage!

<comment><USER20> What you say may be correct, but is it your position that these news sites are not Russian government propaganda machines, that they give good, objective coverage of what is right and wrong with the country and its government?

And what is your own view of the Russian government?

<comment><USER19> First as a little update it turns out they did try to provide English language coverage of the protests, so much as possible [0].

As for your question, I think that's clearly a false dichotomy. I do think the issue of propaganda is important, especially in today's times. So let's consider an incident. Some weeks ago you probably read about Maduro's government, in Venezuela, setting one of the US aid trucks on fire. This was covered extensively. CNN stated that "a CNN team saw incendiary devices from police on the Venezuelan side of the border ignite the trucks" [1] while describing the images of the trucks as sickening and repeating numerous calls for stronger action as a result of such things. If that page should change in the near future, the internet archive [2] is your friend. This was repeated by most other media sources as well.

The problem is that it was a lie. The aid truck was undoubtedly set on fire by anti-government forces. This is now being covered by the NYTimes [3] citing "unpublished video" and dutifully pondering 'how we got here'. The Intercept has also done a phenomenal piece on this event, here - showing how it was played out as propaganda and the entities that pushed it hardest. [4] Of course I haven't mentioned RT once yet, so what gives? This [5] gives. That's an article from RT. What you might notice is that they have an embedded video, literally the "unpublished video" from the NYTimes demonstrating that it was an anti-government protester setting the truck on fire. And it was published weeks ago, as soon as the information came to light while most western media continued to simply beat the war drums.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

This is also not an isolated incident. I point this out not to claim that RT is amazing. If the roles were reversed and it was a very serious event such as Russia trying to foment a coup in another nation, I certainly would not expect RT to run timely articles indicating that actions being used as propaganda were, in fact, not the fault of the targeted government. You're not going to find any single source that provides "good, objective coverage" when it comes to issues that align with, or run against, their interests. So I find it important to expose yourself to a wide array of media and particularly to sources that are more like to challenge your viewpoints than affirm them. Nietzche might not approve, but in the end we're surrounded by nothing but abysses.

[0] - [https://www.rt.com/russia/453483-internet-freedom-rally- mosc...](https://www.rt.com/russia/453483-internet-freedom-rally-moscow/)

[1] - [https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/24/americas/venezuela- pompeo...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/24/americas/venezuela-pompeo- maduro-colombia/index.html)

[2] - [https://web.archive.org/web/20190301142504/https://edition.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190301142504/https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/24/americas/venezuela- pompeo-maduro-colombia/index.html)

[3] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela- aid-fire-video.html)

[4] - [https://theintercept.com/2019/03/10/nyts-expose-on-the- lies-...](https://theintercept.com/2019/03/10/nyts-expose-on-the-lies-about- burning-humanitarian-trucks-in-venezuela-shows-how-us-govt-and-media-spread- fake-news/)

[5] - [https://www.rt.com/news/452326-venezuela-us-aid-truck- protes...](https://www.rt.com/news/452326-venezuela-us-aid-truck-protesters/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Ruler needs to give his subjects bread and circuses. The circus part is increasingly happening in the Internet.

If I was Putin, I would make sure that you can stream or torrent movies and have good access to game servers, cat videos and mindless entertainment like my life depends on it.

<comment><USER22> You overestimate tech literacy of the majority of Russian population. Very small percentage is engaged with playing videogames or knows how to use torrents.

People are given lots of distractions though - so many controversial, absolutely absurd laws have been introduced in the past few years everybody talks about (about fighting homosexual propaganda, forbidding adoption for foreigners, blasphemy laws and so on). Internet restrictions are like a drop in the sea of craziness and not even the most relevant one for the majority, or controversial, or loud.

<comment><USER21> The real power in Russia is within two cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg. It's the urban and relatively highly educated population in these two cities that decides the fate of Russia, not the majority.

<comment><USER22> I might be pessimistic because I am in close contact with that demographic (lots of my friends are young, educated, comparatively well-off guys from Moscow working in tech) and, pardon my French, they decide shit. Oligarchs decide the fate of Russia.

<comment><USER23> Yet the oligarch's power plays and Russia's tough posturing seems popular among the population. Or at least tolerable to the average person.

How do you account for that?

<comment><USER20> For one thing, Putin controls the media so they have been propagandized. That's why he is so afraid of the internet.

Beyond that, due to Russia's sad history, the population has pretty low standards and expectations for its leaders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That's really just a symptom, while the disease is the dictatorship which can do whatever it wants disregarding the people.

<comment><USER25> Please don't take HN threads further into political or nationalistic flamewar.

<comment><USER24> What's flameable here? It's all factual and not the matter of dispute. And the point is that fixing symptoms won't help until the root of the problem is fixed. And I'm not saying protesters are wrong or anything. It's just that the problem is a lot deeper.

<comment><USER25> It was far from "all factual", and clearly in dispute since someone immediately disputed it.

If you post strong political claims using pejorative language like "disease", "dictatorship", and "disregarding the people" (which in fact is almost all of what you said), you're going to take threads like this further into flamewar whether you mean to or not. That's bad for thoughtful discussion and therefore off topic here.

Most of us are living in contexts where our strongly held political/national views feel obvious and unobjectionable. But the minute you open up to a much broader context, such as a highly international forum like HN, it becomes painfully clear that this is not the case.

<comment><USER24> Who disputed it? The only ones who "dispute" the autocratic nature of power in Russia are government backed trolls. That's not considered dispute by any means.

And trying to be neutral or "soft" about these kind of things ends up in whitewashing it. It sounds strong, because the problem is serious.

<comment><USER25> The commenter who replied to you disputed it. Jumping to "government backed trolls" is exactly the mentality I was just trying to describe. That's just a form of assuming your conclusion, you have no evidence for saying it, and in fact it explicitly breaks the site guidelines to insinuate it. (Please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.))

The range of legit opinion is much wider than most people think. That has become very obvious to us, looking at the data left by millions of readers, voters, and commenters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The beauty of the network and hyperconnection. It's like you can try and maintain a hierarchical structure with all the energy and resources you have. But the more the nodes within your hierarchy are connected to external networks the less chance you ever have of maintaining the integrity of the hierarchy.

There is a threshold of contentedness above which it doesn't matter one bit what the hierarchy does to maintain integrity. China will stay separate for longer because they disconnected much earlier, but their anxiety over the trade deal just shows how hard it is. Britain too is going to pay a price. Putin is waking up too late. The Network will assimilate all. The thresholds have been crossed long ago.

<comment><USER27> You highly underestimate power of totalitarian state

<comment><USER28> There aren't any models from history of what happens to totalitarian states when their population is connected to a much larger external network.

This is the first generation of totalitarian leaders that has to figure out how to handle the "connectedness". They will do the obvious thing and try to disconnect. There is nothing to suggest it will result in anything but a loss to the state and to them.

<comment><USER27> In case of Russia those in power don't care about that loss they need enough people to do resource extraction and to serve in military and that's about it. Their families live in London and Miami and don't have to contend with whatever crap this will result in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _> The protests in Moscow, the southern city of Voronezh and Khabarovsk in the far east had all been officially authorized._

How subversive.

<comment><USER30> I don't know where you live, but is it not the same (i.e. you need official approbation to plan a protest) in most countries?

<comment><USER2> Yes. Except that in Russia this works a little bit different. You need a permission (not approbation) from the authorities for any political gatherings. Otherwise, everyone gathering risks spending 15 days in jail (or $500 fines, median monthly salary after tax $300) for gathering illegally. Usually they forbid them, so that was an exception.

<comment><USER8> That's not how it works. You don't need permission to rally. You notify local government about the date and preferred place and number of people. If the place is available - you rally there if not you're given an alternative place.

<comment><USER31> First, you don't always get an alternative place, lately local authorities started just denying the permission. Second, even if they propose an alternative, it's somewhere on the outskirts and/or at extremely inconvenient time. You can find a big bunch of examples of both at [1] (in Russian).

[1]: [https://ovdinfo.org/news/2018/04/25/otkazy-v-soglasovanii- ak...](https://ovdinfo.org/news/2018/04/25/otkazy-v-soglasovanii-akciy-nam-ne- car)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The proper US response to the 2016 meddling would have been a NATSEC law that said no US based social media company could allow for 5 years any Russian IP address to connect to their services, or they would suffer massive fines. Facebook and Twitter for their role in the attack would be fined $5 Billion Dollars each and forced to provide policies within 1 year to prevent this from happening again, or face the threat of becoming regulated by the US government. All user accounts that belonged to Russian citizens as well as the Russian oligarchs and politicians were to be frozen for 5 years. US and EU Banks would be required to sanction Russians Oligarchs and Putin's interests.

Basically you would have instantly made Russian life a living digital hellscape for 5 years, at which point things could be lifted provided there were signed binding treaties and assurances that the type of attack in 2016 would never happen again. If attacks resumed the next round would last 10 years and be twice as severe.

If we're going to destroy net neutrality and impart government fascism, or have bizzaro government rulings that get throw out in court, this is how we should have done it, and this is the cause we should have done it for.

<comment><USER33> Is this possible technically? The story is about trying to block Telegram and finding out that is impossible because of VPNs, IP changes(tech details) why do you think you can prevent Russian trolls to post on social media with a law? You block eh innocent people that are not technically sophisticated at best</comment></comment>


Show HN: Purrrl – file sharing for developers. - <AUTHOR> http://purrrl.link

<comment><USER2> Small note, I noticed the CSS on your "Sign Up" button is calling the Lato font incorrectly. Instead of font-family: Lato-Bold;, it should be font- family: 'Lato', sans-serif; font-weight: 700;. Can't wait to test this out however!</comment>


Mobirise Responsive Layout Maker v1.7.1 - <AUTHOR> http://mobirise.com

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The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/the-evil-reign-of-the-red-delicious/379892/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> The article seems oriented toward raw consumption, I like to experiment with food canning and I've made many single variety batches of applesauce to experiment with. Pure grannies are a little acidic to me. My kids like red delicious applesauce, for something thats basically sweet with a texture its not bad. Ida Red results in an extremely pale nearly white applesauce which is interesting looking but the taste is boring. I'd have to find my notes I've experimented with most every variety at one time or another. Its a fun relaxing hobby.

Something I like about home canning my own applesauce is bug-leg-free applesauce is commercially unavailable in stores, its safe to eat buggy applesauce but pretty gross once you have a source of bug-leg-free applesauce. Also if you follow the USDA/BallBook you can't vary lemon content for food safety reasons but you can vary cinnamon and its an eternal experiment to try different ratios. Also there are USDA approved low/no sugar applesauce recipes but in the store you can only buy corn syrup or artificial sweetener applesauce.

Anyway to make a long story short, store applesauce is gross, few hobbies are as delicious as home canning applesauce, and I've had "OK" results with red delicious in applesauce form. Its not pure red evil or whatever as the article claims.

Next story, lets debate Concord grapes, vs Flame seedless, in raw and home canned jelly form.

<comment><USER4> I've made apple sauce a few times for near-immediate consumption (over the course of maybe a week). There is a big, notable difference in taste and quality from the store-bought. Might be time to try canning it for longer term consumption.

However, stores near here do carry a no sugar added bottle of applesauce. That's all we ever buy, and I can't imagine why they would even consider adding sugar/corn syrup. I like making it at home because I can play with the tartness a little more by adding in some grannies, and I like to leave in the skin for the added nutrients.

<comment><USER5> Studies show that sugar and salt increase consumption. So they add these things to increase sales. People aren't making a decision that's in their best interest, this is a biological hack that favors one party disproportionately compared to the other.

<comment><USER6> Sugar and salt make things taste better. Things that taste better also tend to sell better. If you took all salt and sugar out of food, you'd certainly eat and sell less, because it wouldn't taste good.

You can call it biohacking if you want, but it is no more so than when your mom made you dinner.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.popsci.com/high-salt-diets-might-make-you- hungrie...](http://www.popsci.com/high-salt-diets-might-make-you-hungrier)

>The more salt you eat, the thirstier you get. Right? Wrong, according to two studies released today in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. The research found that as salt consumption increased, people actually drank less water. And the high-salt diets seemed to make study subjects hungrier, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I HATED Red Delicious as a kid!

Honey Crisp Apples are the best tasting apples I have ever eaten but they cost almost triple the price. Pink Ladies are also phenomenal. My 6 and 10 year old like them better then candy.

<comment><USER9> Fuji are also good, but yeah, honeycrisp are definitely the tastiest apple I have ever eaten... I was brought up on galas and golden delicious and I had no idea that apples could taste as good as a honeycrisp does

<comment><USER10> Local news to the rescue! (=

* Why Honeycrisp apples are so expensive - YouTube || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4eQX2vZ_Zg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4eQX2vZ_Zg)

* The Story Behind Honeycrisps, America's First Brand-Name Apple || [http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a20018/honeycrisp-pri...](http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a20018/honeycrisp-price-explained/)

And look, hope for better apples on the horizon!

* Washington Apple Growers Sink Their Teeth Into The New Cosmic Crisp : The Salt : NPR || [http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/03/525421226/was...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/03/525421226/washington-apple-growers-sink-their-teeth-into-the-new-cosmic-crisp)

<comment><USER11> TL;DR on first link:

\- They're not hardy (trees need support, apples are thin skinned, and they ripen at different times)

\- A university holds a patent on the tree (only $1 per tree, tho)

<comment><USER12> The patent and the royalty on Honeycrisp expired in 2008.

<comment><USER13> The University of Michigan blundered by marketing the apple under the varietal name; varietals are considered inherently generic under trademark rules and so ineligible for protection.

A Pink Lady apple is actually a Cripps Pink, grown and picked in accordance with certain quality standards. Anyone can sell a Cripps Pink, but only licensees of Brandt's Fruit Trees Inc can sell a Pink Lady.

<comment><USER14> Alum here. Minnesota != Michigan. Boo.

Anecdotally, UMN has one of the best agriculture research programs in the world, and it's entirely based around figuring out how to grow really anything when first frost is early September (Minnesota).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not an apple snob but if you have a chance (and live in the right temperature zone) visit a local orchard and pick some random varieties to try.

Here is Western Massachusetts you can get Cortland, Macoun, Empire, Mutsu, Spy, Spencer, Ida Reds, Paula Reds, Jersey Mac, Gravenstein, Redfree, Gingergold, Suncrisp, Rom Beauty, Jonagold and (probably) hundreds of other varieties. Some might be better for baking or cider but hey, maybe you'll like them to eat in-hand.

Life is too short to eat crappy apples.

<comment><USER16> I feel like apples are an appropriate thing to be a little bit snobby about. There just really is a lot of difference between cultivars, and some of them are legitimately gross.

I think it would be one thing to be a snob to the extent of "I'll only eat this one cultivar from New Guinea which costs $30 apiece and must be ripened individually under a swan's left wing", but it's another to say "I only care for a few types of apple, and also screw the Red Delicious".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I lived not too far from where Red Delicious was originally bred, and I can say from personal experience the original Red Delicious is not the Red Delicious that is typically sold in the grocery store.

Of course, I've never had the original one, but the heritage Red Delicious apples from multiple small orchards within a certain radius of where it was developed all taste totally unlike the ones in large groceries elsewhere in the US.

The ones from Iowa you would probably recognize as Red Delicious if you were told that, and if you were not told their identity you probably wouldn't. They're much smaller, rounder, more variegated in color, and have a much more complex flavor. Many people would probably guess McIntosh, but probably would say they have no idea.

My experiences have left me with the strong impression that some kind of subsequent genetic drift/inadvertent selection occurred, or that there's such a dominant set of horticulture protocols with the apple that the original characteristics of the apple have been washed out.

<comment><USER18> I don't think circumstances around your anecdote leave room for it to be factual. "Red delicious" isn't simply a breed of apple — they're all trademarked _clones_. The offspring of an apple tree won't produce anything like the fruit of the original apple. In fact, the overwhelming majority will be inedible and only suitable for cider. Genetic drift isn't really plausible because there's no mechanism by which these trees would drift genetically.

New apple strains are, as far as I know, not really bred for. They're found in the wild.

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty confident that an apple that isn't a strict clone of red delicious can't be marketed as a red delicious. It's also possible that growing conditions now have changed enough to alter the fruit, but I'm not positive that it would be a large enough difference to notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We had a bunch of apple trees when I was a kid, including a red delicious tree that was probably planted in the 1920s. Its apples were my favorite, especially when they became crisp and sweet after a light frost. Perhaps store bought red delicious suck but I think this hate is just misplaced elitism from people who've never had one off the tree.

<comment><USER20> How is it elitism to say that the 99% of the variety that people actually eat suck?

I would think the elitism is insisting that the only way to truly judge them is straight off the tree (after a spell of opportunistic weather).

<comment><USER19> I guess that's exactly why I thought it was a bit snobby ... internet folks trashing the preferences of 99 percent of the population.

Having a tree is pretty hard where I live now but pretty normal back in the Midwest.

<comment><USER21> That makes it even more important to point it out. Most people would otherwise have no clue there's anything to miss out on. As some people above said, making their own apple sauce made "store bought inedible". The flip side of that is, to make cheaply and badly mass produced things sell, people can't know good things. Once stuff is gone and purged from the archives, it's gone. The feelings of anyone who happens to be around currently, including ourselves, are not even a matter compared to the dangers of that.

We can't remain at the point where our problems with coping with emotions restrict our intellectual movements. This isn't asking anyone to run 50000 miles, or go a week without sleep or a year without food, it's just saying "this thing you think is good is actually kind of shit, and if you knew this actually good thing that would be immediately obvious to you, please don't die now". And while most people (including me) can't have a tree, everybody but the very poorest could save up some money to buy just one "real" apple to at least confirm this. Or maybe buy two, and give one to a poor person, just so they know how bad the apples they sometimes eat are. And then the question is "what does this mean, how can this be improved", etc., and not "how do I live with this blow to my ego". Please, don't take this as me being upset at your comment at all, it triggered me, you could say. I read Fahrenheit 451 recently and since then every HN discussion has aspects that remind me of it.

If people didn't personally identify so much with what they know and do etc., there wouldn't even be any hurt feelings to overcome, but I'm not even going there. Let's assume it's real offensive to be corrected or put down a peg: yes, and, so, what? That should motivate us to head off others at the pass, and to smoothly inspect their lessons and take them on board without blinking should they have merit, to become good at it, instead of attempting to ban it.

> internet folks trashing the preferences of 99 percent of the population

vs. article:

> His words contain the paradox of the Red Delicious: alluring yet > undesirable, the most produced and arguably the least popular apple in the > United States. It lurks in desolation. Bumped around the bottom of lunch > bags as schoolchildren rummage for chips or shrink-wrapped Rice Krispies > treats.

Maybe it's a bit rich coming from me after going on such tangents, but still, it takes some mental gymnastics to turn complaints about "ramming [these apples] down the throats of American consumers" into "being a snob for thinking lowly of people for liking these apples so much". No, everybody would be able to tell the huge difference, but as you said, most people don't get the chance. That's the problem, not the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I happen to like Red Delicious since they produce a satisfying crunch without being tart (like green apples) or mushy (like gala). I'm surprised this article is using a personal preference to criticize an entire variety and industry.

<comment><USER23> You need to try a Cortland. If only we could get them here on the West Coast...

<comment><USER24> YES. I grew up eating Cortlands in the midwest. Have never found one in the LA area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was put off apples throughout childhood because of the taste of the Red Delcious, my mother only bought those, and I only returned to apples after working at a software company that supplied free apples (of various different types). Until then I had not known how tasty apples could be, now I eat a couple everyday.

</comment><comment><USER26> Generally, you can rank apples based on fiber, sugar, and antioxidants. [http://www.leonoredvorkin.com/henu/benapples.php](http://www.leonoredvorkin.com/henu/benapples.php)

Granny smith have more fiber: [https://olumialife.com/knowledge/are-granny- smith-apples-the...](https://olumialife.com/knowledge/are-granny-smith-apples- the-healthiest-apples-708) Red delicious (particularly the dark red) have more antioxidants, although Granny smith is also high: [http://www.healthextremist.com/comparing-apples-apples- antio...](http://www.healthextremist.com/comparing-apples-apples-antioxidant- levels/). Most of the antioxidants are in the skin, hence peeling / juicing tends to reduce them. But of course the antioxidants are also the bitter taste. Golden Delicious and a lot of others are high in sugar and not much else, closer to candy in terms of food group: [https://furthermore.equinox.com/articles/2013/10/apples](https://furthermore.equinox.com/articles/2013/10/apples)

Overall I just buy the cheap apples; the differences aren't significant except to a connoisseur (easily adjusted for with supplements), and I prefer to spend my money on startups.

<comment><USER20> Why would you rank them on anything other than taste and texture?

<comment><USER26> Because taste and texture are obsolete; they don't really affect the outcomes of eating. Taste can be disguised with spices or condiments, and cooking and food processors will produce an edible texture out of almost anything. Nutritional variables are unaffected by these modifications, hence measure more of the underlying reality.

<comment><USER20> Cooking has a huge impact on nutrition.

The health impacts of antioxidants are also not well established.

I guess there is a pretty good argument for not eating lots of a sweet variety (but 1 a day is meh).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The most interesting part of this article is the last bit about China. It reminded me of an earlier article I saw on HN concerning the Asian market for wild ginkgo harvested in Appalachia.

It's becoming clear Chinese and American consumer behavior concerning food are vastly different from one another, and globalization has not eliminated all of those differences. Food is still one of America's biggest exports, so there may be a lot of undiscovered opportunities here for smart entrepreneurs in the food manufacturing industry to take advantage of these differences.

Politicians can create and trade restrictions and tax breaks, but they can't wave a magic wand and move consumer markets around more to their liking. The presence or absence of a market is what decides the viability of a business. Either the market's there or it's not.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are braeburn apples available in the US?

I agree that red delicious are terrible eating apples but most of the newer varieties seem to be a bit on the sweet side for my liking. Braeburn has the perfect balance of tart and sweet while being consistently crisp.

<comment><USER20> Yes, the apples of the damned are available here.

(I think of them as consistently and impressively mealy)

<comment><USER23> Yes Braeburns are mealy. Cortlands are what you are looking for -- very crisp, with just the right mix of tart and sweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> torrent-of-ions Red Delicious are very sweet without much actual flavour. Granny Smiths are very tart and I can't understand why people actually like them (I have a theory it's because they consider them medicine rather than something to actually enjoy). I do like to use Granny Smith's for cooking, though. They are very flavourful and don't break down, but I add extra sugar, of course.

Cox's Orange Pippin is surely the ideal eating apple. A wonderful, complex flavour without being too sweet or too tart and it has an almost non-existent core. The seeds seem to just rattle around in there.

<comment><USER29> I like granny smiths for the same reason I like sour candy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like these ones - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Transparent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Transparent) Unfortunately they are hard to come by even locally in ex-USSR because they are extremely fragile and no market want to handle their transportation or storage.

If you'll ever visit ex-USSR in late summer or early autumn ask for "byeliy naliv" apples (meaning something like "white shine"). They are green to white in color (more white as they are more ripe) and not very hard when ripe.

</comment><comment><USER31> So, since it's spring - what's the good apples that are ripe first? Because basically I only buy Galas rather than figure out the complicated list of apples that are good for each season.

</comment><comment><USER32> I never thought my taste for red delicious apples were something I'd have to feel about the way people did about eating McDonald's(I mean obv they're different, but..)

</comment><comment><USER33> Red Delicious apples actually taste really good if you can find a ripe one. It's picking them before they are ripe that gives them the bad taste.

Same thing with mangoes you find in the store.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting read, I have always preferred green apples to red apples. I even distinctly remember a day in kindergarten where we did a taste test - <USER2> everyone in the class picked the green apples. I had never really understood why red apples were so popular, I hadn't realized there was a dominant type of red apple or what it's backstory was. I'll have to try a Honey Crisp or Gala next time I'm at the supermarket.

<comment><USER35> Fujis are also delicious, and very widely available.

<comment><USER20> My experience in recent times has been that Gala are a lot more reliable than Fuji.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For my money the best (somewhat) widely available apple for eating out of hand is the Ambrosia. Sweet, crisp, attractive in shape and appearance.

As production has increased I have noticed an uptick in mealy Ambrosias, but they can usually be identified by a slight softness.

[https://www.orangepippin.com/apples/ambrosia](https://www.orangepippin.com/apples/ambrosia)

</comment><comment><USER37> My son and I have settled on Gala and Fuji as our go-tos are the farmers market. I actually arrived at the same conclusion as this article about "Red Delicious" \- it certainly is red and that's the most that can be said of it.

<comment><USER38> Red Delicious are absolutely the best apples for throwing at your enemies. They are also the best fruit to be stacked on a cart and driven through during the car chase scene of an action movie. They are also quite useful for making your business look like it has made a token effort towards providing fruits and vegetables for customers.

They are certainly poorly suited for actual _eating_.

Fujis have a good taste/price ratio, making them my default value option. Honeycrisps are great, but currently rather expensive. Hopefully that price can come down as more Red Delicious orchards are demolished and replaced.

The most bizarre part of the article is where it says people buy Red Delicious and just throw them away. While that would be insane for private residences, the Red Delicious is somewhat of a symbolic icon for "fruit". If you manage a convenience store, truck stop, or hotel breakfast nook, you can buy one Red Delicious and keep it around for a few months, secure in the knowledge that no one will be foolish enough to eat it. And the whole time it is not being eaten, you can advertise that you offer "fresh fruit".

Just look at your fruit at home. All that stuff gets eaten and replaced. If you go out on the road, the standard fruit basket becomes Red Delicious apples, small, hard oranges, and bananas--literally the three cheapest fruits you can buy in any grocery store. And the apples might as well be wooden apples, painted red, because when the bananas and oranges go, they remain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Growing up in Australia, all I ever ate were Jonathans.. couldn't stand the mushiness of "delicious" varieties.

</comment><comment><USER40> Jonagold Large are the kings of the apple section

<comment><USER41> I buy a bushel of Jonagolds and two or three others each year (varieties depend on crop), and they're great for cooking or eating. I make around three gallons of apple butter and a gallon or two of spiced cider total, and I still have enough for at least two five pound pies and some for eating. Nice, firm apples that don't break down too readily when cooked and with a pleasant tartness.

I buy honeycrisps by the peck for eating, and I've tried cooking with mutsus, detroit reds, and september wonders, and few others, but jonathans and jonagolds have proven themselves staple worthy in my kitchen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Red Delicious apples are also $1/lb at the grocery store, while other varieties are $1.67/lb to $3/lb.

</comment><comment><USER5> Empire are awesome. My 2nd tier are Cortland, and Macoun. All three have McIntosh in common.

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe in Europe Red Delicious is different, but I like it so much, hehe :)

</comment><comment><USER44> previous submission [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8300619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8300619)

</comment><comment><USER45> the Red Delicious in Latin America are fantastic

</comment><comment><USER46> they didn't list my goto: Empire apples!

</comment><comment><USER47> Red Delicious apples are horrible. Pink Ladies if you can find them, Honeycrisp if you can't.

<comment><USER48> I don't really get the love for Honeycrisps. I mean, they're better than Red Deliciouses, sure. But they're still too... blandly sweet, I guess, for my tastes. I like Pink Ladies, and I like Granny Smiths. That sharper, more acidic taste, I suppose.

<comment><USER49> Funny. The Honey Crisps I have had I would never have thought of as "blandly sweet". They were tangy and delicious.

Reading these comments, though, does make me want to try Pink Ladies.

<comment><USER50> Yes, I'm hungry for an apple now, maybe a few if there were several to pick from!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Huh. I guess there are people who moralize about apple varieties.

<comment><USER52> Lamenting that a clearly inferior product dominates a market is not "moralizing".

<comment><USER53> Yeah but to use a word like "lament" or "inferior" you're kind of already moralizing.

<comment><USER35> We can exercise our critical faculties without moralizing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: xiringuito & xaval – vicious SSH VPN tools - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ivanilves/xiringuito/releases/tag/v0.2.0 <comment><AUTHOR> The project has changed radically after it got a "xaval" connection manager. Before it was accepted more like a parody on sshuttle ;)

Now you can use it not only because you hate python, but also if you like simple and straightforward CLI tools that save your time.

Any feedback is welcome - we start to work on OS-specific releases and rewrite with a better language than bash, but any suggestions apart are also welcome.

Thanks for your time!!!</comment>


Ask HN: Who is going to Web Summit 2018? - <AUTHOR> I'm going to Web Summit this year as a participant in ALPHA startup programme with https://startinfinity.com
Just wondering who is going to Web Summit this year in Portugal from HN community?
Let's meet there! <comment><USER2> hey! we are also heading to websummit! would be great to meet up, i think both our companies could create great synergy together!

www.asyncy.com</comment>


Clojure In Small Pieces [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://daly.axiom-developer.org/clojure.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> This is the link to the Clojure Google Groups discussion - [http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/460417fe45f314c3)

</comment><comment><USER2> "Thanks. I think that this is really useful in some contexts, especially where you're trying to bring new developers up to speed on a language. One problem I've found with open source is that once the original developer team leaves the project just dies. Another problem is that new developers will add "new" features that are already in the language elsewhere.

Working with the actual source surrounded by an explanation of "why" the code exists and the ideas behind the code seems to me to solve both problems.

The other problem is that clever code is hard to maintain even for the original authors. I got my own "dirt simple" code back after 15 years and, while I understood what the code did, I had no idea why it was there. Sometimes whole subsystems die because they are no longer used but nobody is able to remove the dead code because they don't understand it. "

Thoughts on this?

</comment><comment><USER3> Did anyone actually look at the PDF?

Chapters 2 - 4 seemed interesting, but has no content.

The rest seems to be a java code dump in a 1000 page PDF.</comment>