Why Walking Meetings Work - <AUTHOR> https://forge.medium.com/walking-meetings-will-change-the-way-you-work-dce8b61f9e04 <comment><USER4> Netflix's CEO loves to do walking meetings, and a lot of the other execs follow his example. It's especially nice since the HQ is next to a lovely creek trail.

The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while walking, unless you can remember everything.

<comment><USER5> > The only downside is that someone has to take notes, which can be hard while > walking, unless you can remember everything.

For some reason, walking meetings tend to work like a memory palace for me.

Though I walk down a pretty specific set of landmarks and write notes afterwards, which is usually ordered by the walk trail landmarks & a follow-up would usually not need a set of notes either.

There was a time when the smokers used to be the ones to do this as a matter of habit - these days it is much healthier to do walk-talks.

<comment><USER6> I thought I'd heard the term "mind palace" before but couldn't remember from where (oh the irony). Google reminded me!

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets- sherlock...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/secrets-sherlocks- mind-palace-180949567/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started walking as part of a weight management strategy, when my team noticed I was doing these walks we started doing 1:1s on walks rather than in the office. They were _much_ better.

I find it easier to think things through while I walk so I added a recorder app to my phone so that I could verbally take notes while I was walking in order to not forget things that I had thought about or thoughts that came to me on the walk.

It has been a very productive change, not to mention it helps with managing me weight so definitely a win.

<comment><USER8> For some reason I was under the impression that recording meetings was illegal.

<comment><USER7> FWIW I don't record meetings, I record notes when I am walking by myself. That said California is a two party consent state so if I were to record a 1:1 I would insure that I had the other person's ok to do so (recorded :-))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Saw a comment long ago mentioning that our early nomadic ancestors must have spent much of their time wandering the landscape, probably for miles a day. What neglect do we bring to our brains when we don't do even a fraction of this?

<comment><USER10> I have learned that going for a walk is best way for me to think through a tricky problem. Something about the act of walking around almost immediately kicks my brain into a different mode that can do wonders for my thought process. It has to be a leisurely route though, meaning minimal dodging of cars or interacting with people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My experience is that certain types of meetings work really great this way whereas others do not. Collaborative 1:1 type meetings or "same side of the table" meetings where you need creative thinking to work through some complex issue really shine as walking meetings. Where there are concrete points you're trying to get across or in general more "information sharing" type meetings tend not to be so great in this format or at least they definitely need a followup email to ensure everyone understands the takeaways and actions expected.

I used to do many/most 1:1s as walks but I found that if you have a serious piece of feedback to deliver etc it's often not as good on a walk and if you always do a walk and then send an email saying "let's do it in the office today" it sends a signal which makes people immediately defensive.

Separately I'm a very rigorous note-taker (using a paper book) and one of the big benefits of walking meetings (from my pov) is that people are not sitting with a laptop and are actually intellectually present at the meeting. I just make sure to recap the actions/takeaways as the very last thing before we wrap. Then it's easy for people to remember them and take them back to the desk with them. You can also send a followup email to ensure you're in 100% sync.

</comment><comment><USER12> So, based on this and a recent news story (discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22503438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22503438)), the rule seems to be:

* Need to do some convergent thinking? Caffeine.

* Need to do some divergent thinking? Walk.

Each of these helps with one type of thinking but not the other.

<comment><USER13> Real geniuses walk and drink their coffee at the same time.

<comment><USER12> Being semi-serious for a moment, I'm genuinely unsure which strategy is best. On the one hand, why not unlock all of your brain's potential? On the other hand, would it make sense to consciously choose which type of thinking to enable? Basically open only the door that leads to the path you want to take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The effect of walking on improved conversation is so strong for me I have, for a long time, been wondering why it never caught on in the psychology community.

I wonder how much more effective talk therapy could be if delivered while walking, at the driving range, over table tennis, etc.

<comment><USER15> At least one psychologist practiced it:

"A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst's couch." —Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I pace when I'm thinking about work stuff. I find that being upright and mobile keeps me more alert and focused than slouching in my chair, in front of a distraction jukebox. Some people I work with like it (though, they joke that I should buy a school with a racetrack to walk around...)

I would _love_ for walking meetings to become the norm. Though, I'm aware that there's a lot of folks who are the exact opposite.

<comment><USER17> That's exactly me!

I can easily walk in circles a few hundred times when thinking, sometimes hours at a time if there's a particularly big thing to think about, and do it with other people around if I forget not to.

I would love a workplace with long distances to walk around and to have walking meetings.

In fact, what a great idea. I'll try to ask people for walking meetings in future. (With sensitivity to the fact some people find walking hard, even painful (back problems, knees, energy levels etc.), especially if it's for a long time.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised no one's mentioned one of the greatest advantages of walking and talking - spatial memory.

I used to go to a therapist who would hold walking sessions along a trail or path in a park. The best thing about it, besides forcing me to get out of bed and be in nature, was that I could remember exactly what we talked about and when, based on landmarks along the trail (e.g. "we were discussing X when we walked over this bridge). Similarly, I find that if I have a phone conversation while driving, I can remember it much better because parts of the conversation correlate to locations I passed as I was driving.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is one of the few downsides of remote work. It's not very effective to do walks over Zoom.

<comment><USER17> I find voice conversations over the phone pretty good while walking, using wireless headphones so my hands are free.

I do this a lot and pretty much forget I'm walking, can do it for hours if a call or series of calls needs it. As a result, it's probably my main exercise, and I much prefer this over a phone conference or chat while stuck in a chair.

Video doesn't fare so well when walking, I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was just thinking that walking meetings really work in today's environment because as you are walking you get the chance to get in contact with more people that were not originally supposed to be in the meeting and give them things, or get things from them.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great read, I like to record meetings on my phone(with permission) which allows me to listen and take in as much as possible before going back and reviewing what I missed on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a friend whose boss likes to 'go for a walk' or 'catch up whilst we head over to X'. Naturally she's wearing high heels and it's a fucking nightmare for her.

<comment><USER23> I'm afraid I feel my level of sympathy would be 100% correlated with how mandatory the heels are for your friend :-/

On aside, I'm also (genuinely, not snarkily) curious to understand the "Naturally" part in front of "wearing high heels". Don't get me wrong - <USER2> personally think they're a fabulously attractive if completely impractical article of clothing, but it feels like in many places in the world they are far from the norm/regular/Natural assumption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Absolute blessing if you have a tendency towards ADHD also.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's 2020 , time for management science to learn how to do science. No, it isn't science to take a study of individuals solving problems and extrapolating that "walking meetings work". It's bs.

<comment><USER26> Management science fundamentally cannot be science. There's nothing isolatable or replicable in humans in the workplace (or outside for that matter).

The best you can do is apply statistical approaches to arbitrary abstractions, and the main thing we learn when we do that is that return to the mean is the only thing we can really be sure of?

<comment><USER25> > There's nothing isolatable or replicable in humans in the workplace

That needs proof

<comment><USER27> While nothing might be too strong a statement, several studies have shown things like changing the light level in an office increases productivity - <USER3> doesn't matter what your started with or end up with. Given this how can you study the optimal light level in an office?

<comment><USER25> i think you already solved it, the optimal level is "fluctuating"

(btw thanks for the tip! i work at home and will use that)

<comment><USER28> What I assume is being referred to is the Hawthorne Effect: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

I admit that I was aware of the original interpretation but not the novelty/disruption effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Walking meetings are not accessible. If you have blind, deaf or wheelchair- bound colleagues, walking meetings are a wonderful way to exclude them from participating equally in the workplace. That's of course unless you don't already "solve" this issue by just not hiring such folks.

I really wish people would think about this. And not only in terms of their current workplace demography, but also their prospective future employees.

<comment><USER30> The solution is obvious: you solve the issue by not having walking meetings with people who can't effectively participate in them. Why is that so hard?

<comment><USER22> Because it's not actually obvious who can effectively participate in them. Are you checking your meeting participants for suitable footwear, asthma, underlying allergies, chronic health conditions they'd rather not disclose to colleagues...

<comment><USER30> Then, ask. Again, simple. Problem solved. Why do y'all want to make these things so hard? It's not that difficult to say "are you okay with a walking meeting?"

<comment><USER22> Okay, and is your direct report going to tell you no? Or are they going to worry that they're going to miss out on the opportunity to actually influence their boss because they don't participate in this week's fad?

<comment><USER30> Yes, they are. Otherwise, US law and social convention place the responsibility for not giving a straight answer on the employee. At a certain point, adults employed by a company need to take some responsibility for themselves. Once you've asked if they're okay participating in an activity, and they say yes, that threshold is reached.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Statement About Oracle's Move To Donate OpenOffice.org To The Apache Foundation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/06/01/statement-about-oracles-move-to-donate-openoffice-org-assets-to-the-apache-foundation/

<comment><USER2> My bet is that the Document Foundation will end up offering the Apache Software Foundation a major role in their organization in exchange for a merger of the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice codebases.</comment>


SIGGRAPH 2007 papers on the web - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.brown.edu/~tor/sig2007.html <comment><USER2> <http://groups.csail.mit.edu/graphics/CodedAperture/>

gotta love any siggraph paper that uses 3 40's as the example image.

If anyone is going to siggraph this year, let me know, I'm still trying to decide if it's worth my time. I'm always a little disappointed.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.den.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yuki/plushie/index-e.html>

<comment><USER2> Takeo's been doing this sketch based stuff for a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I know. But this is pretty cool anyway. See the results in the last minute of the video.</comment></comment></comment>


Mendeley: Free reference manager and academic social network - <AUTHOR> https://www.mendeley.com/ <comment><USER2> I have tried Mendeley, but despite its odd (Swig-based) interface, I prefer JabRef ([http://jabref.sourceforge.net/](http://jabref.sourceforge.net/)). It is open-source, and it keeps its database of references in plain BibTeX format: therefore, it is super-easy to edit it by hand, when necessary. It does not offer facilities for searching/discovering new papers, but IMO it is perfect to manage a database of citations.

</comment><comment><USER3> I abandoned Mendeley back when I realised I could not use it whilst keeping my reference collection synced via Dropbox.

That led me to try Zotero, and I have not looked back. Though I wish the Zotero devs would just hurry up and give us an editable bibtex citation key field!

</comment><comment><USER4> On OS X, I like Papers ([http://www.papersapp.com/](http://www.papersapp.com/)) since it allows me to download the papers directly from the application.

</comment><comment><USER5> pops up every so often, don't forget Qippa ([http://www.qiqqa.com/](http://www.qiqqa.com/))

*i'm not affiliated with qippa, it's just what i prefer over mendeley</comment>


Ask HN: What's the ideal platform for online discussion? - <AUTHOR>

There's a lot of online communities made for sharing links: MetaFilter, Reddit, HN, Slashdot, and many others. There aren't so many that exist solely for discussing topics -- discussing an issue, rather than commenting on a link about the issue. (Link-based sites often don't have the same depth of back-and-forth discussion, but rather many comments on the article's contents with unrelated points.)
I think this is partly because most discussion forum software is cumbersome and poorly designed, and partly because nobody has built the right community.
If you could build a discussion system from scratch, how would you do it? What would the software look like? The rules? The community?
My current thoughts involve a threaded system that's either invitation-only or has a high bar for membership, although I find current threaded discussion systems unsatisfactory. <comment><USER2> from the beginning of the bbs, to forums, nested forums, to twitter.. they have all been trying to manage conversations better. I though Google Wave had it right when you could press a Play like button of history and could see how the conversation played out as to when each new conversation piece was added, but this would only work in smaller groups.</comment>


How to hack a turned-off computer, or running unsigned code in Intel ME - <AUTHOR> https://www.blackhat.com/eu-17/briefings/schedule/#how-to-hack-a-turned-off-computer-or-running-unsigned-code-in-intel-management-engine-8668 <comment><USER3> In case you haven't already used the following, please note that the NSA had an undocumented "backdoor" included which "disables" the ME. (Man, oh man, I wish I was making this stuff up.)

[http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel- me.html](http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html)

I put quotes around "disables" because the ME is not fully disabled. The blog's analysis does show how it is in a "safe" state, i.e. forced to ignore the outside world very early in its code path. Also, not likely to brick your computer, assuming unscrewing your case and using a SPI flash programmer hasn't already bricked your computer.

Edit: "backdoor" in quotes too.

<comment><USER4> If there is a "safe" state, there's also an "unsafe" state and it was obviously introduced knowing it might be unsafe, otherwise there'd be no "safe" state.

Long story short, it's not a backdoor but a key to a backdoor which implies there is a backdoor.

<comment><USER5> ME _is_ the backdoor - it's unsafe by default meaning it can be used to inspect/control your machine remotely. That, AFAIK, is it's primary and stated function!

<comment><USER6> False. ME by itself does not do any remote communication whatsoever. Zero external attack surface. Different story for vPro, but you can disable it.

It's a great place, however, to gain persistence after an initial compromise as the talk shows.

<comment><USER3> Do you have proof that the ME does not do any remote communication and has zero attack surface? Be sure to include "internal" attack surfaces that may be accessible from malware in ring 0.

<comment><USER6> I was talking about the external attack surface, and there's absolutely no indication that ME has any such attack surface as far as software vulnerabilities go. They could have built a deliberate backdoor into the network code, but that's highly unlikely.

It obviously has a lot of _internal_ attack surface, which is bad enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would be glad if this made Intel reconsider their stance on enforcing untrustable CPU features onto users.

CPUs aren't cheap! Just give your customers full control over the product!

<comment><USER8> It's almost as if there's some mysterious third factor at play, above and beyond giving your customers what they want, and above making a profit.

What could it be? This mysterious additional factor.. What could make the US company with the biggest CPU market share in the world possibly want to put an omnipresent overlord control chip onboard every processor it ships? It's almost like there's some kind of outside force at play, but that's a crazy idea. There's No Simple Answer here, for sure.

What indeed, such a mystery! It's a mystery, I tells ya!

<comment><USER9> You're not Intel's customer. Dell, Lenovo, Amazon et al. are. And they want management systems, because the large companies who buy from those guys also want management systems. This isn't some super conspiracy, (even if it's something the three letter organizations try to take advantage of it) this is pure business. Pwning a computer across the internet that your dumbass sales manager left on a train is a feature.

<comment><USER8> In a world where the clipper chip, snowden leaks, NSAKey, room 641a, NSA/RSA deal, and national security letters didn't exist, I'd be in the realms of crazy conspiracy theorist and you'd sound like the rational voice of evidence- based reason.

But that's not the world we live in. What I list above are not conspiracy theories, they are proven, factual happenings. There is a clear evidential basis to infer the NSA's intent and capabilities in this area.

There are obviously security/privacy snafus that companies make all the time that have nothing to do with nation-state influence and spying. Superfish, for example, was more-likely-than-not a really bad judgement call on the tradeoff between analytics and customer privacy.

>this is pure business.

If that were true then the ability to disable ME, which clearly exists, would be made available to parties other than the NSA.

<comment><USER10> Nah, it's still conspiracy theories. At best conspiracy conjecture.

Unlike "... proven, factual happenings", your idea isn't backed by any evidence - at least not any that appear in your post.

<comment><USER8> What kind of evidence would you imagine one would find, if that were happening?

<comment><USER10> Your point doesn't push the burden of proof unto those that disagree (see Russel's teapot[0]), nor make it OK to skip evidence altogether.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot)

<comment><USER11> Things change once we've found the rest of a tea set in various orbits. There may not be strong direct evidence but it's no longer a silly conjecture, it's the kind of thing that we find.

So those other examples mean you do have the burden of justifying your 'conspiracy' label.

<comment><USER10> Not really; it isn't actually proven until you have proof.

As FooHentai originally said, "There is a clear evidential basis to infer the NSA's intent and capabilities in this area" \- but it tells us nothing about this particular case, which remains speculation. One could say the odds have changed, but we still don't know anything about the real state of things.

The "'conspiracy'-label" is applicable regardless, whether we're talking about fact or fiction.

<comment><USER12> If you find that someone broke into your house and stole your Xbox, and there's a guy down the street who you already know has a long criminal record of home burglaries, is it unreasonable to suspect that guy to be a likely culprit?

Likewise, if there's a backdoor in every new PC's CPU, and there's a three- letter agency presiding over that CPU vendor's jurisdiction that has a long track record of backdooring things, is it unreasonable to suspect that maybe - just maybe - that TLA is responsible?

Now of course the ex-con or the TLA can be totally innocent here, but if I were a detective, they'd be the first ones from whom I'd be asking for alibis.

<comment><USER10> I don't think your analogy holds up;

The hypotheticals aren't comparable, nor is the prior available information - and even though the Intel AMT/ME situation is egregious, explaining it simply as "a backdoor" is an oversimplification.

I'd agree that probabilities with regard to what is reasonable to _assume_ (the operative word here) shift as a consequence of circumstantial information, but you can't really draw any conclusions based on that - <USER2> the burden of proof, i.e. the presumption of innocence in your analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let me dial the paranoia up a little by calling your attention to this historic text:

[http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomps...](http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf)

A quote from the conclusions:

"In demonstrating the possibility of this kind of attack, I picked on the C compiler/ I could have picked on any program-handling program such as an assembler, a loader, or even hardware microcode. As the level of program gets lower, these bugs will be harder and harder to detect. A well-installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect."

<comment><USER14> Once we get to the point where machine learning can develop and deploy exploits/low-level bugs like these will become very interesting, and likely weapons of nation states.

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure that was the entire point of the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge. XD

<comment><USER16> [http://archive.darpa.mil/cybergrandchallenge/](http://archive.darpa.mil/cybergrandchallenge/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hate to be a Debbie Downer / conspiracy borderline, but nothing will change if all of this is true. Some apologies, "it's an oversight, we'll do better", "we take security seriously"... and nada. Maybe some provisional solutions which seem good, but in the back - things will remain status quo.

<comment><USER18> For a very brief moment in time, there was some hope that AMD would release their equivalent as open source. That hope was dashed and they will be doing no such thing.

For the time being, ARM is making headway in creating usable chips for more serious computing. Well, I guess I should say designing, as opposed to making.

I do have current gen hardware and some older hardware, should it reach the point where I need to be concerned. Though, at least theoretically, a good hardware firewall should prevent this from being exploited but most consumers aren't going to invest the effort and money to do so.

I'm not really sure what this means for the future of personal computing. Like you say, nothing is going to change. They will continue to roll things like this out onto unexpecting users.

I don't have a problem with this being included, but I do have a problem with it not being something you can disable. In fact, I'd prefer it to be off by default. I suppose it'd be okay to have it configured by the OEM, as some large orders may wish it in by default.

Either way, it is insecure by design and they show no signs of changing that. It's rather disappointing. I have read, but not yet verified, that AMD's version can be turned off in the BIOS. That also assumes that off means actually off.

<comment><USER19> It seems like SVM turns on and off with the extensions KVM (AMD-V) uses in my gigabyte motherboard for a Ryzen 7. All the TPM related functions (including PSP/AMD SP) are another separate option called "AMD CPU fTPM", and are disabled by default.

Business models based around certain kinds of binning (security instructions that are openly documented) and tying functions together (in case of a 3rd party chipset ever using the same chip) need to stop. 3rd party chipsets or desktop class arm/risc-v to break the x86 oligopoly at this point around security need to be developed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow this sounds huge. I remember people speculating about this since it came to light... But people always talked about it like it was a vague hypothetical that only scary 3-letter agencies would figure out. I'm curious to see what kind of access they need in order to actually make use of this. If they somehow don't need physical access this is going to be nuts.

<comment><USER21> Yeah I'm really curious about that too, and I wish the guys would at least give that much detail but I guess they'd prefer to hype up the reveal at their event instead. I want to believe it requires physical access... For now I find comfort only in knowing that it's a skylake+ vulnerability, and just continue to hope it doesn't work down to other models as they learn more about the internal workings of the ME.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is the kind of thing that will cause Apple to switch to internally designed arm chips for their Mac line with great alacrity.

One could argue that it's surprising they haven't already.

<comment><USER23> Give me a break. The same three letter agency that convinced Intel to do this will convince Apple to do the same. I'm guessing you're basing your faith in Apple based on their refusal to cooperate in the San Bernadino case[1] and the so-called "cop button" in iOS 11[2]. (And some generic "we value privacy" rhetoric that I won't bother linking.)

That stuff is great but doesn't mean much. Just because they're blocking border agents from trivially imaging phones at the border doesn't mean that they won't cooperate at a higher level with some undocumented baseband features.

Just as Defense in Depth is a concept in security, we've already seen a corollary "Offense in Depth" from the intelligence community. Is the best attack in the random number generator[3] or undocumented silicon[4] or intercepting your boxes on the way to your data center[5] or tapping your fiber[6] or stealing your certs[7] or paying your employees to go rogue[8]? Why choose when you can just do them all.

Apple hardware is vertically integrated and utterly undocumented. The AMT chip has been present on motherboards since 2006[9]. The Snowden Introspection Engine found that the Wifi Chipset remains powered up even when Wifi is turned off.[10] I find it hard to believe that the same government who went to all these lengths to compromise our infrastructure would really let Apple get away with refusing. How did that turn out for Joseph Nacchio?[11]

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us- wa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-wants-apple- to-help-unlock-iphone-used-by-san-bernardino- shooter/2016/02/16/69b903ee-d4d9-11e5-9823-02b905009f99_story.html?utm_term=.28bb85453e0a)

[2] [https://www.cultofmac.com/498052/ios-11-lets-quickly- disable...](https://www.cultofmac.com/498052/ios-11-lets-quickly-disable- touch-id-prevent-forced-unlocks/)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generator_attack...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generator_attack#Possible_Backdoor_in_Elliptical_Curve_DRBG)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_backdoor#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_backdoor#Examples)

[5] [https://www.extremetech.com/computing/173721-the-nsa- regular...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/173721-the-nsa-regularly- intercepts-laptop-shipments-to-implant-malware-report-says)

[6] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/new-docs-show- ns...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/new-docs-show-nsa-taps- google-yahoo-data-center-links/)

[7] [https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/12/09/serious- security...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/12/09/serious-security- google-finds-fake-but-trusted-ssl-certificates-for-its-domains-made-in- france/)

[8] [http://www.ocweekly.com/news/fbi-used-best-buys-geek- squad-t...](http://www.ocweekly.com/news/fbi-used-best-buys-geek-squad-to- increase-secret-public-surveillance-7950030)

[9] [https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel)

[10] [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2996800-AgainstTheLa...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2996800-AgainstTheLaw.html#document/p2)

[11] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio)

<comment><USER18> You're asserting that a 'three letter agency' convinced Intel to do this, and asserting it as factual. I'm not convinced that it is, and think market focus is more probable than nefarious agencies. Though, to be sure, those types of agencies would probably be willing to take advantage of this.

No, it seems more probable that they did this because their largest customers want centralized management at a low level. They want to be able to track and control assets, and to prevent asset loss. They, being the largest customers, control the features that Intel offers. It then makes no sense, financially, to make two versions of the CPU.

Unfortunately, the market for people who care is vanishingly small. Most people don't much care about privacy or security, other than to pay it lip service - if even that much. Prevalent is the idea that they've nothing to hide and, thus, nothing to fear.

So, without evidence that this was inspired by a three letter agency, I'm going to assume it is a financial decision. That seems much more reasonable and probable.

Do you have any evidence to prove three letter agency coercion? I'd expect it to be quite the news event, if you did.

<comment><USER24> If what you say is true, why has vPro not seen wider adoption?

It has been around long enough.

Anybody work for an MSP or enterprise that actually uses this in the field?

<comment><USER18> I can't say, really. My contention was largely around the idea that it was asserted as fact that it was at the behest of a three letter agency and the remainder of the comment presented based on that. It has not been established that it was at the behest of a three letter agency and presenting arguments based on that is like building a house on the sand.

It hasn't anything to do with quality specifics, nor of alternatives. Without factual evidence to support the three letter agency theory, the rest of the argument is invalid.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a horrible idea. I've just seen no reasons to assert that it was done because of a three letter agency being the directors. As near as I can tell, and I've followed this fairly closely, no such evidence exists. At best, it's speculation. At worst, it's conspiracy theory. Either way, presenting it as fact and then basing an argument on that is illogical.

We can do better than that. There are lots of valid complaints that don't need speculation, disinformation, or hyperbole. IME is a horrible idea, at least it is so long as you can't disable it as the end user. This very thread is a fine example of one of the reasons that it is horrible. It's a security nightmare and should be user controlled.

No three letter agency needed to point this out. Wild, unsubstantiated, accusations may make people take the complaints less seriously. That seems less than helpful.

<comment><USER25> Do you then have substantive evidence that market forces/centralized management caused this?

<comment><USER21> Occam's razor. I'm a very conspiratorial person and I've seen nothing to suggest any nefarious activity or collusion so I'm not getting carried away on this.

[https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/executive- perspectives/a...](https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/executive- perspectives/agile-secure-intels-approach-designing-world-class-security/)

This is a statement by the Intel CTO from 2016 on the ME discussions, and briefly reassured us that Intel is conscious of the security of the ME, and that they have teams dedicated to it and can push firmware updates out to cover vulnerabilities.

[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- tec...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- technology/intel-amt-vulnerability-announcement.html)

Intel made an official announcement in May that they have discovered an escalation of privilege vulnerability and are addressing it accordingly as you would expect. It also notes that consumer hardware and firmware is not affected by the vulnerability, demonstrating that Intel actually does release two different chips, and prioritizes privacy and security more over features on the consumer models.

[https://newsroom.intel.com/news/important-security- informati...](https://newsroom.intel.com/news/important-security-information- intel-manageability-firmware/)

Intel releases a software tool for checking if your system is one of the vulnerable units or not, they have a fix already for the firmware and confirm it is not due to physical design flaws, and are working with manufacturers to push the updates ASAP.

Overall, I don't feel like Intel is at all intentionally sabatoging it's customers, and genuinely considers the ME a valued feature by consumers, even though it bothers me that one is included on every product, they do differ and consumer models have fewer privileges than business models, which seems to be more of a firmware design than a hardware design, so I tend to believe that they simply don't design extra chips without the ME and instead lock it down more on a software level. Vulnerabilities also appear to be firmware based, and the extremely vague announcement by black hat doesn't suggest otherwise either. Intel very obviously takes the security of their devices very seriously and makes themselves available to users who need help identifying whether or not they're vulnerable and what to do about it.

<comment><USER26> In post-Snowden era, I'm not sure that Occam's razor applies that way anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What I don't understand is why AMD doesn't jump into this niche market: just include a switch on their version of the ME (forgot name) that turns it off. Corporate clients still get their ME if they need it and AMD catches the security-focussed market. This would also mean lucrative orders from non-US governments.

<comment><USER28> Because a lot of three letter agencies demand these hardware backdoors exist, and AMD has no will to fight them on it.

They announced intent when they released Ryzen to "look into" disabling their ME (they call it the PSP), and then six months later made a backroom comment that it is never going to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Joke's on them, my computer's never turned-off.

But seriously, I take it we won't know the attack vector until December, however if remotely exploitable they would surely have used the word "remote"? Is any mundane malware with admin rights able to update Intel ME?

<comment><USER30> If it is remote, I have a feeling we won't be seeing the presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Wouldn't it be kind of great if millions of people were secretly running minix, it would finally go mainstream!"

The engineers probably thought something like this when deciding to use minix.

Now it might achieve the opposite result by associating it with a worst-case scenario of computing freedom and security.

</comment><comment><USER12> "One of the reasons is the transition of this subsystem to a new hardware (x86) and software (modified MINIX as an operating system)"

Whoa! So wait, every recent desktop and laptop is actually running a tiny MINIX in it? Or am I reading that wrong?

If I'm reading it right, then it means that we've totally leapfrogged Linux to usher in the Year of the MINIX Desktop™.

<comment><USER32> It would be interesting to login into that minix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I actually really hope that this is exploitable remotely and causes a massive global problem.

Maybe then we'll see companies that take security seriously, thinking twice before they include things like ME in their products.

<comment><USER34> I'm afraid this won't be enough.

If it doesn't hurt the shareholders' and creditors' bottom line, corporate behavior is unlikely to change.

You need an event like the government banning Intel ME from their agencies, or the shareholders' bank accounts getting hacked due to this bug. I'm not suggesting that anybody do that - that's illegal - I'm just cynical about wealthy people in those positions.

<comment><USER35> Right -- there are so many problems with boil down to a broken chain of liability.

I mean, just look at the Equifax blow-up, and how companies have rebranded "someone stole from us because of our shitty authentication" into "someone stole your identity, good luck with that."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can someone repost the content into a comment? I cannot solve cloudflare's captcha.

<comment><USER37> Here you go:

Intel Management Engine is a proprietary technology that consists of a microcontroller integrated into the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) microchip with a set of built-in peripherals. The PCH carries almost all communication between the processor and external devices; therefore Intel ME has access to almost all data on the computer, and the ability to execute third-party code allows compromising the platform completely. Researchers have been long interested in such "God mode" capabilities, but recently we have seen a surge of interest in Intel ME. One of the reasons is the transition of this subsystem to a new hardware (x86) and software (modified MINIX as an operating system) architecture. The x86 platform allows researchers to bring to bear all the power of binary code analysis tools.

Unfortunately, this changing did not go without errors. In a subsystem change that will be detailed in the talk of Intel ME version 11+, a vulnerability was found. It allows an attacker of the machine to run unsigned code in PCH on any motherboard via Skylake+. The main system can remain functional, so the user may not even suspect that his or her computer now has malware resistant to reinstalling of the OS and updating BIOS. Running your own code on ME gives unlimited possibilities for researchers, because it allows exploring the system in dynamics.

In our presentation, we will tell how we detected and exploited the vulnerability, and bypassed built-in protection mechanisms.

<comment><USER38> This is how the robots win, by social engineering ;P

<comment><USER37> I use a VPN whenever I'm not at work, so I know how frustrating it is to be told I didn't pick all the images with a street sign or whatever ridiculous hoop I have to jump through. Especially when I'm only casually interested in the article.

Plus, I'm totally fine to help robots out. If they can convincingly post online comments or converse with me, who am I to discriminate?

<comment><USER39> I really like the captchas. I regularly answer them incorrectly but "correctly" to F up Google's training. Just doing my small part really.

<comment><USER40> If enough people don't flag low speed limit signs as signs we'll have faster self driving cars

<comment><USER41> If enough people don't flag large bodies of water... we will have a lot less cars!

It really is an environmental thing to do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well, it finally happened. This is potentially the ultimate hack. I can see it now: billion dollar class action lawsuits. Intel, you were too cocky, and now you're gonna eat humble pie.

You'd best offer us the firmware to completely and finally _eliminate_ this giant, ossified, ticking timebomb software stack you've dumped into the world's computers. And I want it ALL out, even the trusted path garbage!

As if you don't have enough troubles already, Intel. Let's take this one off your plate. How's about doing the right thing and earn back a little respect from the consumers.

<comment><USER43> Shaming Intel? I'm sure they'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

<comment><USER42> aargh_aargh! You're right, of course.

There's bound to be tons more rot elsewhere, though. And, if they don't eat humble pie now, perhaps they will next time when the exploit can't be mitigated in firmware or via microcode updates. Then lawsuits are filed and consumer protection laws get passed and we see some actual positive change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > modified MINIX as an operating system

Say what?! Anyone know more about this? MINIX is neat in some ways, but I never thought of it as a production ready OS.

<comment><USER45> Intel ME has the MINIX license copyright message in it: [https://twitter.com/qrs/status/857342798420422657](https://twitter.com/qrs/status/857342798420422657)

Positive Technologies, the people doing the presentation in the OP, have this blog entry about earlier findings surrounding Intel ME (some of the language from this entry is used in OP): [http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling- intel-me.html](http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html)

<comment><USER46> I know I watched a presentation on YouTube from a hacking convention from the same folks who figured out how to disable the IME, but after 15 minutes of searching YouTube I can not find it at all. If you come across it, it's a good watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Finally, some hard evidence that BadBIOS was possible.

(BadBIOS was lax on details, but people were remarkably resistant to the idea that it was even possible in theory.)

<comment><USER48> Nobody was resistant to the idea of it being possible, they were resistant to the actual claim being made, which was based on the reasons that the victim cited for believing that they were infected. This lends no further credibility to that claim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Maybe this could be used disable Intel ME when other methods do not work?

</comment><comment><USER50> OT: Sweet Jesus! 1 319 gbp for early registration? It's not exactly accessible to students and amateur Hackers, is it? :-(

<comment><USER51> Nope. Blackhat is for corporate lackeys attending on the company dime. It's disappointing how many major exploits get announced there rather than more traditional hacker confs.

</comment></comment><comment> et-al Are the specifics of this published anywhere else, or does the public have to wait until Dec 4, 2017?

</comment><comment><USER52> Archived copy, which can be read without JS enabled:

[https://archive.is/DFvwm](https://archive.is/DFvwm)

</comment><comment><USER53> Everything is terrible and everything is going to crash and burn. :-/

<comment><USER54> No argument here

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> They don't mention how easy or difficult this exploit is to carry out... so I'm betting that it's extremely difficult and will affect practically no one.

That's not to say that Intel ME isn't an awful idea, just that we shouldn't necessarily panic yet.

<comment><USER56> I would rather be easily exploitable so people realize how bad this is. The alternative is only governments/powerful corporations exploiting it forever without repercussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Finally. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time - now hopefully we can see some change.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is very bad. A strong attack based on this could run through entire data centers.

</comment><comment><USER59> Is Intel ME functional on Macs?

<comment><USER60> It is functional regardless of OS.

> _Intel AMT uses a hardware-based out-of-band (OOB) communication channel[1] > that operates regardless of the presence of a working operating system. The > communication channel is independent of the PC 's power state, the presence > of a management agent, and the state of many hardware components such as > hard disk drives and memory._

> _Almost all AMT features are available even if the PC is in a powered-off > state but with its power cord attached, if the operating system has crashed, > if the software agent is missing, or if hardware (such as a hard drive or > memory) has failed._

— [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Techno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology)

<comment><USER59> OK, but we know Macs don't have AMT, so... ME doesn't apply to Macs?

<comment><USER61> It applies to Macs. I think AMT is just one particular application/feature of ME. ME is a piece of hardware on Intel chipsets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Really time to take a look at Thalos II ([https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/](https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/))

</comment><comment> iam-TJ It's been getting under my skin how many of these kind of articles repeat the inaccurate (lie)

"Hack a turned-off computer" theme

For the sake of accuracy stop persisting this myth.

Take away the wall power/remove the battery and the thing is dead, nothing is active (obviously doesn't apply to systems with internal battery if they're holding charge).

What these articles actually mean is, if the system has power but is in the 'Standby' state (+5V standby), the Intel PCH/ME is active.

</comment><comment><USER63> What is the severity of this? Can the ME be patched or will we see half of all current computers owned by a botnet? (or mining ether) Can the ME bypass a firewall by interfacing directly with the NIC?

<comment><USER63> I guess home users who are not behind a restricted firewall are most likely to be vulnerable to this attack vector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Here is nice presentation about hacking intel ME in older processors

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0nh- TdpVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR0nh-TdpVg)

</comment><comment><USER65> > _In a subsystem change that will be detailed in the talk of Intel ME version > 11+, a vulnerability was found._

Okay, so this effects 11.x, but I wanted to clarify that there seem to always have been circumventions floating around out there.

I stumbled on [https://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/5i6qa3/can_the_nsaf...](https://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/5i6qa3/can_the_nsafbi_use_intel_me_to_defeat_tor_on_95/dbkxlw2/?context=10000) (mirror: [http://archive.is/T8yVz](http://archive.is/T8yVz)) some months ago. It reads a little like a skiddie (a well-connected one) strutting a bit, and I think some of this person's views on ME as a viable attack vector are slightly careless and un-thought-through, but whoever this person is, they seem to be very confident about some of the things they said, particularly the following quotes (to be completely clear, I've removed first-person references):

> _[This person] know[s] that at least up to firmware version 8 is traded > underground, and version 11 (the latest) is available without difficulty to > people who know how to find it. [This person has] access to version 8 's > signing keys [themselves] ..._

> _It 's certainly not common but it is absolutely something that FVEY and > related contractors (Raytheon, Leidos, half the people you'll see at ISS, > etc) will be able to get their hands on, if they haven't already._

> _[This person has] an enterprise ThinkPad that proudly boasts having WiMax > support, requiring extensive configuration. It was expensive. If you don 't > have a BMC card (and you do not), then it is not possible to remotely > control your system. Even if you did have a BMC, simply having the signing > keys and toolchain for the ME would not be sufficient to get in. An attacker > would need either a 0day, or your credentials._

..... _Well_ then. Oops.

> _Having the signing key allows nothing more than writing malicious firmware > over SPI and allowing it to persist. It 's just a little more powerful than > the UEFI kits cr4sh can write, and just as easily detectable by reading your > flash chip._

That's still bad! (And I have no idea who cr4sh is.)

> _But it 's not like you're analyzing your microcode (of which there are > likely signing keys being traded as well), which can also be installed on a > large number of systems, considering the BIOS functions to load the latest > microcode it has into the CPU._

The above bit is unrelated, but I couldn't leave it out, because that's worth filing away too (...ouch).

\--

Sources/past comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15187540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15187540)

<comment><USER66> Please use archive.org instead of archive.is as a mirror next time. Archive.is blocks VPNS and tor while making it impossible to see the target url and use it directly or via another archive. Moreover since it uses cloudflare every connection to it is being MITMed by them.

<comment><USER67> I just visited archive.is with the Tor Browser Bundle and had not problem accessing it.

<comment><USER66> With JS disabled as well?

This is quite weird, I was never able to access it with TBB nor with any proxy without the cloudflare captcha page popping in.

<comment><USER67> Just restarted TBB and turned off JavaScript (High Security) and went there: [https://imgur.com/a/CXCw4](https://imgur.com/a/CXCw4)

<comment><USER65> I'm curious - does archive.is flag the WAF more than the average (if there is such a thing as an "average" for a planet-wide WAF, heh)?

(Also - if I can ask/clarify a couple things I've been curious about for a while: based on released info, I get the idea that the Lua part of the WAF is mostly regexes and "precompiled"/predetermined-ahead-of-time-based-on-past- incidents "possible issue" flagging, and a bunch of Go code (which I theorize runs slightly behind realtime, but not too far) follows up on those flags and makes the actual executive decisions about blocking/tracking/dropping/etc the Lua-generated event. I've also learned (from solving an ISP glitch with the guy who coincidentally manages the WAF!) that your copy of Lua is a bit special (although I don't know specifically how). I just wanted to let you know that there are people out there very interested to learn more about the "boring" (non-proprietary) parts of the CF stack. "Go/no-go within 999 nanoseconds" is amazing, I'd love to learn more about it. It's a cool platform.)

<comment><USER65> Experimentally mentioning the word cloudflare just in case my previous message (the comment this comment is a reply to) simply wasn't noticed. Now I can have high confidence the comment above this one was at least seen, even if a reply can't work (which is fine).

<comment><USER67> Yes, if you mention Cloudflare in a comment on Hacker News I see it very quickly: [https://github.com/jgrahamc/hncomments](https://github.com/jgrahamc/hncomments)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> someone pls tell me that this vulnerability at least requires the computer to be physically attached to a network.

</comment><comment><USER69> uh oh

</comment><comment><USER66> I wish that they would just publish that "hack" into the public, that way people would hopefully understand the dangers of "black boxes" and maybe even push intel and AMD to remove ME and PSP from their products.

I wish that open hardware (CPUS specifically) were more popular and closer to the market. RISC-V is still quite a long way off for everyday use (though I did see a risc-v based arduino thing, which is nice)

<comment><USER70> I think if the hack were published we can expect some things from intel with reasonable degree of certainty:

1\. They would have to respond publicly (to the general public not just dev community).

2\. Somewhat less satisfyingly I expect their first action wont be to issue some kind of widespread automatic disarm of ME, but instead just patch it.

They are unlikely to receive the message as "this is insecure by design" and more likely to interpret it as "there was a small bug in out very marketable management engine, we will patch it and all will be fine in the world". Unfortunately the general public wont appreciate the difference and perceive intel to have had a "hicup" which is exactly what intel would want of course, because it's the same general public which make the biggest dent in buying up all those intel-inside stickers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Considering this, remember to push AMD to allow the disabling the PSP (their version of ME) or share the source of it. Recently they said that they won't do it [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803373).

</comment><comment><USER71> This sounds like an announcement of an announcement, which generally is frowned upon on HN -- though this might merit alerting people.

<comment><USER72> Don't care. This is so big, I'm happy to be alerted a little early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Holy shit</comment>


Facebook Still Doesn't Understand What Privacy Means - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/12/05/facebook-still-doesnt-understand-what-privacy-means/ <comment><USER2> I don't think it's an issue of "don't understand why privacy matters." The problem is deeper, more systemic. They've build an enormous system monetized on the premise that privacy can't be considered a serious barrier to their decision making process.

</comment><comment><USER3> >[Selling "access to hardware" preloaded with data] is a particularly intriguing framing as it would allow Facebook to rationally and legally argue that the product of value being "sold" is indeed "hardware" rather than "data." To its two billion users, however, such distinctions are meaningless.

This doesn't pass common sense muster to me. There's no way this would fly in a court, right?

Could you imagine: "your honor, I never sold illegal handguns, I only ever sold _holsters_ that just happened to have handguns in them. Plenty of other people sell holsters, and nobody ever prosecutes _them_ for arms dealing!"</comment>


Oracle's rising open source problem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.2ndquadrant.com/oracles-rising-open-source-problem/ <comment><USER2> Flagging this blatant "blog spam" that basically just links to an article [0] on TechRepublic.

[0]: [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/oracles-rising-open- sour...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/oracles-rising-open-source- problem/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Microsoft porting MSSQL to Linux doensn't help Oracle much either.

</comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr - Oracle is loosing a part (a very few numbers given) of the market to OSS'ed SQL and NoSQL databases</comment>


Rebranding Samsung - <AUTHOR> http://www.azizfirat.com/blog/2014/7/11/rebranding-samsung

<comment><USER2> This is just an "inspired" rip-off of Andrew Kim's Microsoft designs (with a little Jony Ives ROYGBIV gradient thrown in). It's like the author downloaded Kim's blog post and s/Microsoft/Samsung/ effectively.

But as natch alludes to in their comment, this may be right up Samsung's alley.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, let's see. You're a creative, and you're going to donate your work to a company that in my opinion is notorious for ripping off the work of creatives who work for other companies. Brilliant?</comment>


Cognitive bias cheat sheet - <AUTHOR> https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18#.9yeyi4qem <comment><USER2> I find the treatment of psychology on HN to be perplexing. On one hand, there have been attacks on psychology as a field [1] due to legitimate concerns related to replication. On the other hand, blog posts such as this come up every few days that take the same results for granted and frame them in everyday terms.

I wonder, are there different groups of HN readers with different attitudes towards psychology? Or does the treatment also depend on the presentation, e.g. in the form of a scientific publication vs. a brain hacking tips or cheatsheet.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12643978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12643978)

<comment><USER3> I actually get the impression that most of the articles that are "liked" by HN are somewhat grass roots. Take this one. It is a "hacker" that is spending time to try to improve biases held.

It is somewhat ironic, to me, that I am basically accusing us of having an anti-intellectual bend. However, it is not unique to psychology. There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science.

<comment><USER4> _There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science._

As someone who went to college for CompSci, I see good reason for a slant against computer _science_. The problem is that it's the wrong topic for somebody who does software development!

What we do is not _science_ , it's engineering. Much of the time spent teaching us the science aspect is wasted, at least compared to the opportunity to use the time on engineering topics like modeling and design, documentation, etc.

<comment><USER5> > The problem is that it's the wrong topic for somebody who does software > development!

For somebody building the next CRUD app, perhaps. In my line of work (EDA software), I routinely apply concepts from my computation science education on the job and in my code. Algorithms, data structures, discrete mathematics, graph theory, set theory, type theory, universal algebra, tractability theory, automata theory — these are all topics where knowledge has come in handy in my professional experience at various jobs.

Of course, concepts from other fields — biology, linguistics, and physics, for example — have also come in handy on occasion. I _almost_ feel like there's no such thing as a "wrong topic for somebody who does software development", though some topics are certainly more relevant/useful than others.

<comment><USER6> Well, then you're most likely part of minority. And even in that minority I'm willing to bet that a lot of the time is spent in things that have little to do with Computer Science.

Be honest and think of all the time you've spent fiddling with build systems, various random tools (compilers, scripts, databases, version control, etc.).

<comment><USER5> Far too often, to be sure. Two things I have yet to encounter in my (admittedly short, so far) professional career are a sane build system and version control that isn't a PITA...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is cool, although the real trick is knowing when and how to employ methods that will mitigate the problems caused by cognitive bias to accurately identify and resolve conflicts and facilitate clear decision-making. This is the purpose of courts, the purpose of peer review, the purpose of debate.

Generally, it is not necessary to understand every single type of cognitive bias in a nuanced way to mitigate the problems. Indeed, sometimes cognitive biases overlap to the extent that trying to mitigate one, you'll wind up affected by another. What's important is that your behavior and social rules be oriented towards uncovering truth through dialectic methods.

Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist, recently posted a terrific video on the the issue viewpoint diversity on college campuses-- specifically, the lack of it. Problems of confirmation bias are exaggerated, especially in social sciences, when there's a lack of viewpoint diversity on campus. When everyone likes the conclusions put forth by a paper, no one is motivated to find the flaws. Thus the flaws are not found, the flawed papers get cited by other papers, and you wind up with a knowledge base that is increasingly divorced from reality. Whether you know the name for that bias or not is less relevant than actually addressing the structural problems.

<comment><USER8> Can you share a link to the video?

<comment><USER9> He's spoken about it in a number of forums, take your pick: [http://righteousmind.com/viewpoint- diversity/](http://righteousmind.com/viewpoint-diversity/) (near the bottom).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The world is very confusing, and we end up only seeing a tiny sliver of it, but we need to make some sense of it in order to survive. Once the reduced stream of information comes in, we connect the dots, fill in the gaps with stuff we already think we know, and update our mental models of the world."

So wonderfully said. I wonder what biases AI will develop in its models

<comment><USER11> Likely a lot of the same biases... Look at the categorization, these are things any general system of intelligence is going to have to do at some level. Only a system with infinite computational power can afford to be without bias.

<comment><USER12> I even think that this biases could be a base of a good AI. Just code this biases in and your almost good to go!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm impressed that he managed to figure this out whilst taking care of a baby.

When my son was born, I spent most of the wee hours testing which Star Wars theme I hummed worked best for getting him back to sleep.

(By the way, The Imperial March worked best, especially slowed down and rocking him on every 4th beat)

<comment><USER14> My kid loves the Imperial March too for some reason. I thought I was a bad parent. Strange we came to the same conclusion. There must be something to this. /s (n=2)

<comment><USER15> No, you're not a bad parent, your son is just going to grow up to be a Sith Lord.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In politics, I find gambling is the best way to resolve disputes among friends stemming from cognitive bias. Put a bit of money on various results and someone will be right and someone will be wrong.

<comment><USER17> I've heard it said that wagering on real life events (presidential election outcome, climate change, etc) is "a tax on bullshit."

<comment><USER18> Not sure if this is the original source, but at least the first where I saw this calim:

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/11/a-b...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/11/a-bet- is-a-tax-on-bullshit.html)

And another view:

[http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.fi/2013/05/bets-do-not- necess...](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.fi/2013/05/bets-do-not-necessarily- reveal-beliefs.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Quite funny when hearing yourself think "Yeah this is confirming my own thoughts" and then you stop and think about what you just read.

<comment><USER20> Confirmation biasception?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How can any list of cognitive biases be complete without the end-of-history illusion [1]. Given the number of young people I see with tattoos it would have to be the most common illusion.

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of- history_illusion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm fascinated by the graph Manoogian created. Does anyone know what specific tools were used to create it, or which could be used to create similar ontologies?

[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*71TzKnr7bzXU_l_pU...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*71TzKnr7bzXU_l_pU6DCNA.jpeg)

I'm working with a largish ontology of my own I'd like to present to 2-3 and possibly more levels of depth. GraphViz isn't cutting it.

(I'd asked Manoogian himself, he vaguely pointed at some R graphics tools, which was as far as I've gotten.)

</comment><comment><USER23> To summarize biases further, in one word: Incompetence.

Lab results confirming cognitive biases come from testing small groups of students (up to 200). Among other things, it means: (1) respondents with similar background, so we can't generalize (2) respondents don't care about outcomes, (3) tests are synthetic. Plus publication bias and other standard issues.

These results are themselves a sort of confirmation bias.

Mistakes in real life happen when we don't know what we're doing. If a person can learn, he'll discover systematic mistakes. But that comes with domain experience, not cognitive science.

<comment><USER24> It's not that simple. Some cognitive biases, especially related to shortcuts in decision making, are more prevalent in smarter people.

Here's a good jumping off point: [http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal- cortex/why-smart-peopl...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why- smart-people-are-stupid)

I highly recommend reading more of Daniel Kahneman's work if you find the above interesting.

<comment><USER25> Great find! Doctors are famous for lousy financial decisions, which I think proves the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Granted this might be useful but I believe the ability to recognize these biases and fallacies can only be improved by experience. You can read or memorize what each bias is but you might not be that quick to recognize it in a discussion, it takes practice not just a cheat sheet[0].

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

<comment><USER27> First line of article: I've spent many years referencing _Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases_ [0] whenever I have a hunch that a certain type of thinking is an official bias but I can't recall the name or details.

I don't think there's anything the article author mentioned that argues against improvement through experience, critical thinking, and sensitivity to the limitations of the human mind.

[0] actually links to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is excellent. It could be improved by adding a very short summary of each bias. This would help the reader to drill-down to a specific bias of interest.

<comment><USER29> If a one-sentence tooltip for each bias were added to the codex graphic fielded on a webpage, and each bias was linked to its own page, that would make the graphic more sensible and accessible.

And if each quartile of the codex had a color coded mouse target, you could popup a menu of just that cluster of biases sorted into whatever spectrum makes the most sense.

<comment><USER30> Though, if the article is to be believed, 'a one-sentence tooltip for each bias' would itself be highly incomplete and therefore subject to all sorts of biases in its interpretation and application ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The article starts off by complaining about the wikipedia article, but as I was reading his post I kept thinking "But this is exactly what was in the Wikipedia infographic!" .... aaand then I realize the infographic is a side- effect of his blog post!

A little ah-hah moment for me. :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Thanks for putting this together! As someone interested in cognitive biases, I wonder: how many of these effects have survived the recent replication crisis intact?

</comment><comment><USER33> I learned a long time ago already not to trust my memory. For example I'm trying to find a piece of text in a book, or a specific story in a newspaper my memory might give me a clue, which would be something like "it's on _that_ page next to that "red thing" or "there's a story on the opposite page about xyz". I never trust this anymore it's a wild goose chase.

A good thing to think about how biased your brain is, is to think of that time when you were witnessing that wonderful sunset and you decided to take a photo. Later you look at the photo and it doesn't look at all like you remember. Why? Because it's your brain playing tricks on you. You have a built in image filter in your brain that adjusts the image and your memory of it whereas the camera sees it "objectively."

Once you become aware of all the cognitive biases you just get tired of listening to people talk (about anything really), when it's full of logical holes and anecdotes. In fact it becomes painful especially when listening to some electoral candidate / politician talk about stuff that might actually matter. _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER34> >We notice flaws in others more easily than flaws in ourselves. Yes, before you see this entire article as a list of quirks that compromise how other people think, realize that you are also subject to these biases.

I found this section was written very pourly. /s ;]

</comment><comment><USER35> This exact title/link has been posted a number of times (>5) in the past 1-2 months [1].

I'd be interested to know which cognitive bias is at work when the instance of the post today gets 480+ points -- but no instances of this post (same title, same url) in the past 1 month garnered more than 26 pts.

I am both new to HN, and legitimately curious. Perhaps the content of the site was improved dramatically?

edit: clarity.

[0] [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=cognitive%20bias%20cheat%20she...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=cognitive%20bias%20cheat%20sheet&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER36> Great article, but what on earth is the point of the huge wheel chart? Its pretty, but I'm not sure what conclusions it helps me draw, other than sorting sources of bias by group/subgroup in a difficult to read manner.

<comment><USER37> The point is to put it on the wall of your office so that when people come in they will understand that you are an expert on human biases and be on notice not to try anything funny.

<comment><USER38> > they will understand that you are an expert on human biases

unless they correctly identify your hanging of the image (and implied expertise therefrom) as a fallacious appeal to internet-blog-authority!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I got tired reading this, but had gotten too far not to finish.

<comment><USER40> If you had really been tired, you wouldn't have kept reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> One has to make a distinction between dialectic situations, where you are trying to get at the truth, vs. rhetorical situations, where the attempt is to convince others (often not the person you are speaking with) of the truth.

For example, trotting out cognitive biases in a rhetorical situation is often very effective, particularly when your opponent is operating in a dialectic mindset.

Know thyself, but also know thy situation.

</comment><comment><USER42> Useful resource to review. There is always time to think about how we think. I know from experience that always underestimate by 30% the time it takes to do things - being it gardening or coding. I measure it to find out. Cognitive bias is something that we all need to be aware of. Just give yourself a 30sec "CB Check" before any decision and see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is the third article on the front page that is running on medium.com infrastructure with that annoying banner in the footer.

Is that the new standard?

<comment><USER22> Which banner are you talking about? The persistent footer w/ SocMed link litter in it? Which I find annoying, frankly.

<comment><USER43> Yes, that one. It links to Medium so I think of it as a banner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> 4.3 "We reduce events and lists to their key elements." I liked how this one relates to cheat sheet itself.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is there a dataset somewhere with sentences/paragraphs labeled with cognitive biases? The idea of a machine learning program auto labeling college essays with faulty deductive logic is enticing. Then run the system backward to generate logically sound arguments like the yahoo Nsfw detector post recently.

</comment><comment><USER46> I highly recommend "Charlie Munger On the Psychology of Human Misjudgement."

PDF transcription here [http://www.rbcpa.com/mungerspeech_june_95.pdf](http://www.rbcpa.com/mungerspeech_june_95.pdf)

Explains a lot (he says, during Presidential Election season in the US)

</comment><comment><USER47> This reminds me of master persuader Scott Adams mentioned about "cognitive dissonance"[1] on some of his recent tweets.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)

<comment><USER48> His book is really interesting and an easy read. I guess it pays off to write things as simple as possible.

[https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still- eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still- ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4)

The one thing to take away from this election is that persuasion trumps everything else. It's scary and crazy!

<comment><USER37> Another thing to take away from this election is that Scott Adams turns out to be somewhat of a moron when discussing the topic of presidential politics.

I followed his arguments in the primaries and found them somewhat compelling, the idea that Trump was in better shape than people thought. But he's lately gone of the rails totally and completely.

And more to the point of this post, he completely misuses the phrase cognitive dissonance, having apparently defined it to mean something like "a way to tell people who disagree with me they don't know what they're talking about" rather than an actual psychological characteristic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> there are so many cognitive bias we see them on the street, in popular music, homeless people, university professors, alcoholics, politicians... everyone exhibits more than a few of these.

So many in fact, I just look at the list overwhelmed and curl in bed and suck my thumb

</comment><comment><USER50> Related to biases are fallacies in argument as illustrated (in a less serious but instructive manner) here: [http://existentialcomics.com/comic/9](http://existentialcomics.com/comic/9)

</comment><comment><USER51> And of course the biggest cognitive bias: that knowing about cognitive biases will make you less of a monkey in a baseball cap. Just remember that at all times you are probably wrong, and you'll do okay.

</comment><comment><USER52> For those interested in the topic, there's a really good book (also available as audiobook) that covers this in some depth, "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

</comment><comment><USER53> Nicely done.

I like to refer to it as "short-cut thinking" rather than cognitive bias, because people that might not know the term immediately understand what I'm getting at.

</comment><comment><USER54> 20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions

[http://i.imgur.com/czyJsjO.png](http://i.imgur.com/czyJsjO.png)

<comment><USER55> I like that "anchoring bias" only has one example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Off topic: I'm developing a resistance for scrolling up. It became common to significantly reduce the size of the view-port every time you go up.

</comment><comment><USER57> Hurray Buster! Cool to see this article doing so well!

</comment><comment><USER58> Can one get that graph in a non renderd format. Is it only available as that blury jpg?

Looked for myself, but i cant find anything.

</comment><comment><USER59> My suspicion is that cognitive biases have a lot of what it means to be human. In particular I think the "language instinct" is a derangement of the ability to reason about uncertainty in a consistent way that makes language learning possible.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is 'cheat sheet'; short and handy reference for making a quick decision. Full reference is probably a few tons of books.

I feel that someone who just uses instinct, will make faster and better decision, even with all the biases and cognitive illusions.

<comment><USER61> All these cognitives biases actually tell you that your instincts are not working properly, they are biased. Sure it will be faster (your biases, your prejudices will guide your decision), but not necessarily better.

If you see a spider, your instinct is to kill it, it's not necessarily the better solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Looks like the wheel chart has already been added to the Wikipedia page... talk about circularity...

</comment><comment><USER63> Want a poster of this in every meeting room, maybe sans brain picture in favor of Rodin's Thinker sculpture.

</comment><comment><USER64> Insulate yourself from Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), Sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others)

</comment><comment><USER65> it talks about suken cost falacy but links to the entry on actual sunken cost, which at most has an argument about fixed vs recurring sunken costs.

</comment><comment><USER66> I think its a slur of excuses we tell ourselves. We just don't care all that much.

It's all about filling your brain with the latest instant fad. People get bored if they don't get their fix of fake news or cat pictures. How would they even spend a few hours doing real research and actually trying to think?

Way too hard. The internet only exacerbates these issues. This blog is even a prime example. It's telling you what to think so you don't have to, and it matches the popular bias so its easy to just praise it and move on to the next insta-fad.

<comment><USER67> It does appear to be classic conditioning, despite the downvotes. I am concerned for the future of concentration & independent thought as I observe people of all ages around me who cannot stop fiddling with their gadgets... especially unnerving when they are operating 2000+lbs of plastic & steel and drifting into my lane.</comment></comment>


Couch hacking - A proof of Ikea's excellence - <AUTHOR> http://www.lengrand.fr/2012/05/design-innovation-and-hacking-in-a-couch/

<comment><USER2> Even though Ikea furniture is essentially disposable, it looks relatively attractive, can easily last for a few years (I have 2 desks going on 11 years with only minor laminate peeling), but one thing that makes buying their stuff a joy is the instructions.

I know that Ikea's instruction style has been intensely influential in the home furniture business when I go buy a set of curtain rods at a different store, or an "assembly required" vacuum cleaner at a garage supply store and they all feature copies of what look like Ikea instructions. Simple line-art, no words (saving having to print assembly instructions in 11 languages) etc.

And then when I set out to actually follow the instructions is the brilliance of Ikea's instruction design made clear. Curtain rod instructions? I have almost no idea what they are trying to convey to me, random screws and indecipherable brackets make putting them up a chore. Vacuum wasn't much better, I'm still not sure I have the right hose in the right place.

But put together an 1100 piece Ikea drawer unit? It's as much fun, and as simple, as building a Lego Millennium Falcon -- and they've managed to describe the process unambiguously, and in only as many steps as necessary (around 30). Each little connector is absolutely clear, the shape and sides of similar looking pieces are obvious, multiple steps (when absolutely clear), are combined into one.

The instruction manuals are virtually parts of a piece of audience participation performance art.

<comment><USER3> You can also tell that they've pretested them. They'll include the "X" over common errors, like choosing the wrong length screw, instead of just putting the picture of the right thing.

Cookbooks get dinged for this all the time... recipes are often not pre-tested before placement in many cookbooks, such that some now feature on the cover "Every recipe tested in our kitchens". It becomes apparent when cookbooks list common errors (yes, even expert chefs make common errors) or ways to fix bad outcomes or ingredient substitutions which actually still taste good.

It all looks so simple, til you get the curtain rod instructions (agreed!) or a non-tested cookbook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This couch doesn't have drop shadows and an unnecessary 'loading' animation, metaphorically speaking. This article is a great description of the product of what _good_ designers do. It's cheap to manufacture. Easily deployed and assembled. Well suited to its primary purpose. Incorporates multiple additional uses without compromising the primary use. Flexible enough to be reconfigured easily for different locations. Best of all, it doesn't have any unnecessary 'design' frills.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't have summarized better. That is exactly what I tried to show in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their designs may be innovative but the material quality is often so low you should consider it as disposable. Especially all the 'fake wood' stuff. The inside is made of the lightest stuff and it breaks at the first occasion. Ok, its cheap, but it feels cheap as well. Most of their office chairs are crap and do no last. As for the couch in question, it is probably ok for that purpose. There are however a bunch of items for which i wont consider ikea as an option anymore.

<comment><USER6> > Their designs may be innovative but the material quality is often so low you > should consider it as disposable.

It really depends on what you get, the fake wood tables definitely don't last (though they're no worse than most "fake wood" alternatives using woodchips, you won't get those to last either).

And I recently got a bunch of expedit units[0], it's fakewood but it feels extremely sturdy, especially the "sides" (heavy as fuck too). I don't know how well they survive moving, but the part was cheap and doesn't feel cheap.

Really, they've got pretty much all the range, you can find cheap stuff that won't last and more expensive stuff which will. And their integration and parts are really clever (for expedit parts for instance, there are something like a dozen "basket"-type things which fit perfectly in the slots but can also be used as independent baskets with no issue, from the $5 "drona" which is just some tissue over cardboard — sufficient for laundry — to the $15+ pjas or knipsa woven baskets with metal structure which feel extremely solid)

> Most of their office chairs are crap and do no last.

Then again I can say that for all office chairs I've seen under $150. Love having screws digging in my ass after 2 weeks due to the shitty foam seat.

[0] <http://www.ikea.com/us/search/?query=expedit>

<comment><USER7> > I don't know how well they survive moving

Well, let me tell you my experience! When we moved I took apart our 5x5 Expedit shelving unit. When I had to put it back together, the heavy top shelf turned out to be bent upwards in the middle. It was only a few centimeters. I decided to unbend it with my foot, and through the resulting hole I found out that the Expedit are actually cardboard inside :)

Still, it's perfectly fine (there's books on top of the hole anyway), and straight again.

<comment><USER8> I picked the wrong colour on my 5x5 expedit for one of the 30 kilo boxes, and spent this Saturday carting it 2 u-bahn's and a bus back and forth on my shoulder to change it. I hurt. But it looks very nice beside the desk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My entire place is like an Ikea showroom. My only complaints are that the surfaces are not hard wearing,even on expensive items. I've taken to covering work surfaces with another layer of laminate or in the case of my desk, I had a custom cutting mat cut for it which is glued on with impact adhesive.

<comment><USER10> I've already had to replace the desktop of an otherwise fine Ikea desk. Wear- and-tear over some two years had removed the paint on a palm-sized oval area where my mouse hand sat. Some unfortunate punches in less glorious moments cracked through (it's not solid wood, but basically a thin walled box with a cardboard hex structure inside).

The good part is that the desktop costs a lot less than the whole desk, it's always in stock and it takes 5 minutes with a screwdriver to change.

The thin-box design is smart, it makes it very light, and the cardboard hex structure deadens resonance, so it doesn't sound like a "cheap" box, even if it is one. A lot like how car doors have sound deadening to give them a solid, satisfying thump, instead of a cheap, high frequency ring when you close them.

<comment><USER9> I never knew you could get individual parts.

I found that the desk I have has some resonance with a Sony all in desktop pc I had. Was solved by putting a couple of glue gun glue blobs on the bottom of the unit.

Was slightly annoying.

<comment> excuse-me Another IKEA solution. Buy a piece of the kitchen counter top rather than a desktop - 3x as heavy and waterproof (check the damagedbin to get one for $10). Then add the legs from the do it yourself table range and add an extra one in the middle at the back.

Then you can have a 3m long desk for $50 that will hold an array of large CRTs

<comment><USER9> Great idea! Must try that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Manstad is awesome, got one 10 years ago and it is still in use every day.

Another IKEA-item I'm really impressed by is the simple NJUTA shampoo containers: <http://www.ikea.com/dk/da/catalog/products/70192699/> \- what impresses me is how they have shaped the container such that it can be stored in different ways depending on your bathroom: standing on the lid, hanging from a hook or squeezed in between the wall and the water pipe.

Now I'm buying shampoo based on the shape of the container.

</comment><comment><USER12> IKEA sits at that price point where it's expensive enough to not seem cheap, and cheap enough to be affordable.

Plus half the furniture into something else hacks seem to be from IKEA, so maybe they just design it with the idea in mind that it'll end up as part of a rackmount setup or something.

<comment><USER13> IKEA makes simple pieces designed for reuse across their whole inventory, so it is natural that their components extend to third party aftermarket designs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ikea are absolutely brilliant. Some may have issues with their style or perceived quality however for price and flexibility they dominate.

Other companies are trying to mimic the flat pack business model. However the overall shopping environment, forcible furniture, warranties make them standout.

The sofa is just one example of adaptable furniture. One limitation though is their bed and mattress products. They have different dimensions (unique to ikea) and therefore you need an ikea mattress for a perfect fit.

<comment><USER15> _One limitation though is their bed and mattress products. They have different dimensions (unique to ikea)_

Are you in a country that uses imperial measures? I have an IKEA Mattress, in a non-IKEA Habitat bedframe, that uses the same non-standard (in the UK) sizes. I assumed it was just a metric standard from continental Europe.

<comment><USER8> Nah, I'm in Germany and the duvets and beds are very awkwardly proportioned. It means you have to choose IKEA sheets to get them to fit just right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have never purchased Ikea furniture. I've only had the pleasure of putting it together for other people. So far that experience has included wardrobes, desks and beds. Without fail the stuff is absolute crap.

From pressboard panels, where the slightest overtweak of connectors causes permanent damage, to undersized drawers that fall off of slides, to the inevitable missing parts, the stuff is garbage. It looks nice in the showroom maze and it's inexpensive but you definitely get what you pay for. Maybe even less than that.

And yes its disposable. It cannot take the abuse of moving from one apartment to another.

<comment><USER17> Our bedroom is largely from Ikea, except for one bookshelf and one dresser. We have run into precisely zero of these issues. The only significant damage incurred was when we slammed a car trunk onto the bottom of a table, puncturing it underneath. So far, the desk and shelves have survived moves without any problem.

Ikea has a pretty big range of furniture, and some of it is made out of actual wood; maybe that makes the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A lot of IKEA stuff is at a really nice price point, but I tend to avoid buying anything from them that involves wood. The particle-board composites they use are so heavy that their furniture becomes impractical to actually move around (and for someone who moves frequently, this is a major drawback). For bookcases and dressers, I usually try to find something made out of pine (or some light hardwood). You can get them from unfinished furniture outlets for a very decent price, and they look quite attractive, even if you don't finish them.

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember looking at Ikea when buying a sofa-bed earlier this year. I dismissed it as too expensive. This MANSTAD looks great so I decide to have a look.

$699. Not too bad. Much cheaper than I remember Ikea. Now to look for the Australian Price. Can't be too much more than that. $1299. And that's why I bought a 2nd hand leather couch off gumtree for $200.

<comment><USER20> I have had the similar experience. Living in Melbourne, IKEA was considered as almost exclusive, being Swedish and with a pricing slight higher than Freedom or Plush. Now that I am living in Germany, IKEA is considered almost poverty pack furniture!

Personally, I really like their design - clean, functional and to the point.

<comment><AUTHOR> And I must say that I was surprised at the US price tags when writing the article. I always assumed IKEA's prices were kinda standardized.

Experience showed that they absolutely don't. The Manstad is 100$ cheaper in France than it is in the US.

<comment> excuse-me It's changed a little. When I first lived in the US in the 90s, IKEA was almost exclusively a grad student level store. Now it seems to be upmarket here.

Remember as well that the French price presumably includes 20% vat while the US price will be +sales tax.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was actually including the tax :)

<comment><USER19> So the $AUD price is €1021 including the 10% GST. The Ikea/fr website lists €499

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > It was by far the item I loved most in my flat (even before my computer).

I left a marriage and a fully furnished house behind me, but my old couch is one of the things I regret the most, it was just perfect :) That, and the dish-washer, someone should write a poem or build a statue for the person who invented/perfected this wonderful piece of machinery.

<comment><USER22> The best thing about dish-washers is that they use _less_ energy and water than most humans cleaning the same amount of dishes. At least if you get a modern one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> They definitely are an innovation company.

<comment><USER24> One of Ikea's greatest innovations (and also the one they keep quiet about) is that it's actually a _non-profit organisation_. In 2009 Ikea Group made a €2.5 billion profit, _none of which_ was taxed.

Depending on your viewpoint, it's either insanely brilliant or morally bankrupt: the vast majority of Ikea's revenue goes to the INGKA Foundation, a charity which ostensible supports 'innovation in the field of architecture', but only gives 0.2% of its total equity to charitable causes each year.

It makes the fairly standard tax avoidance measures carried out by tech companies like Apple or Vodafone look amateur by comparison!

<comment><USER25> It's slightly disingenuous to say "none of which was taxed" when each store and regional organization does pay taxes in the country they're located. The part that's not taxed are the royalty fees paid from each store (franchise system) to the parent corporation (which of course is still a massive amount).

<comment><USER26> There's also income tax paid by Ikea employees, which I guess is why the Swedish government has let Ikea get away with the rest of it.

<comment> excuse-me Ikea isn't a swedish company it's dutch.

ps this is exactly the same sort of scam (double Irish rather than dutch sandwich) used by Google/HP/MSFT/Dell and every other company operating in Europe

<comment><USER24> No, it's not 'exactly the same sort of scam' - unless you're trying to tell me that Google, HP, and Microsoft all divert the bulk of their profits through non-profit charities to avoid tax. They divert their profits through _holding companies_ , but these are _for profit_. Ikea don't do that.

Setting up holding companies in EU to pay minimal tax is standard practice: creating a 'charitable organisation' absolutely isn't. Ikea is a very unique, and in some ways innovative, example of creative accounting.

<comment><USER13> Occams razor tells me that if IKEA's system saved any more money than Google's etc, Google etc would switch systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had that couch and notice a glaring omission: it's VERY uncomfortable. Hard as concrete slabs. That's it's primary function and it fails. Also when trying to move it around my apartment the particle wood/cardboard sides started tearing within it. Are they innovative? Yes. Excellent? No.

<comment><USER28> Exactly. We have the same couch as well (in a small guest room)and it's fantastic in theory (lots of internal storage space, incredibly easy to convert between bed & couch) but in practice it makes for an uncomfortable bed as well as an uncomfortable couch. As you said, the Ikea particle board is also quite fragile.

We ended up purchasing a down mattress pad (for ~15% of the price of the couch) for when it is used as a bed and it makes it bearable as a bed, but now we have to store the mattress pad in the couch itself.

After living with the couch for a year I would happily pay twice as much for a similar design that is executed better. Unfortunately no such thing exists as far as I can tell!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The best part about Ikea is the experience when you return something. No fuss, and it's no biggie if you lost the receipt or come after the return period has ended. Awesome customer treatment.

</comment><comment><USER30> I may have had bad luck, but the last time I shopped there, the customer experience was horrible. I had a new tenant coming in, so perhaps I was buying more than a usual purchase, but an app that let me know where to pick up all the parts for items (for some I would have to go to different parts of the warehouse) and let me check them off as I got them (perhaps using the phone as a scanner) would have been very useful...

</comment><comment><USER31> I still prefer MUJI. It's too bad they don't really have many locations in North America outside of New York City.

</comment><comment><USER32> It is fun to shop around in IKEA and we do frequent visits there but often the quality is too low.

On the other hand, IKEA operates under the ownership of non-profit establishment using sleazy tricks to avoid taxes.

</comment><comment><USER33> IKEA ftw, came for the furniture, stayed for the meatballs.

</comment><comment><USER34> I have that couch. It's so good my friend also got it.

</comment><comment><USER35> That's the couch we got when I moved out here to work at Greplin. Brilliant design.

</comment><comment><USER36> When they learn how to cut bed slats to the width required for the bed, so that they don't fall through when you sit on them, I will be a lot more impressed.</comment>