Kodak resurrects Super 8 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kodak.com/ek/us/en/Consumer/Products/Super8/default.htm <comment><USER2> I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio (I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people can be, especially in industries that are mostly subjective but happen to bump up against a lot of technology. Audio, photography, video, and now film have all been through this.

The final product will be delivered digitally for 99.9% of consumers. Why fight it? Why spend so much money, time, and effort, to work with inferior media? I dunno. I worked on analog tape machines (I was even a hold out, for a while, having a 1" 16 track machine, as big as a mini fridge, in my house for several years after digital multitracks were the smart choice), but there really is no good argument for it today.

There was a brief window where the best digital equipment was inferior to the very best analog equipment, but it didn't last long. Maybe five years. We may still be in that window for film when comparing 70mm film to the best digital equipment...but, on the low end? Hell no. This janky little camera from Kodak will be a joke compared to digital equipment in the same price range. And, the film/processing costs will be outrageous comparatively speaking, limiting ones options when shooting to a significant degree.

In short: This is just hipster bullshit. Just like analog audio is hipster bullshit.

<comment><USER3> Is it really an issue of image quality? Because while the qualities are different, analog media has its own character. You have to do quite a bit of image manipulation in digital to get that "super 8" look, and it isn't always that convincing. Same with black/white photography vs. digital -- the way a digital chip reacts to light is very different than the way chemicals in film react, and some film stocks have a range and tone that is very hard to emulate with digital images. I don't think it is a question of which is "better" but rather that aesthetic that an individual wants. You have to learn lighting techniques in a new way when you switch from celluloid to digital, and a good DP's intimate understanding of how a particular film stock will respond in the shadows and highlights no longer applies when dealing with a very different medium.

<comment><USER4> At first it might seem like a fad, but "character" is essential when making art. You are trying to reach another human being, not simply deliver the best image possible, so her past experiences, memories, the fact that she grew up watching grainy movies at the local theater, will all interact and elicit a certain emotional or instinctual response. It's not that analog is better, is that your audience reacts uniquely to analog artifacts, even when delivered digitally.

This, and not superstition is the reason we still have tube amps, 24 fps polyester film ("celluloid"), vinyl records and the rest. That's not to say superstition is not rampant in the professional fields, We've all seen it: gold plated wires that deliver no measurable improvements, creators that refuse to touch the same application in an (much cheaper and faster) Windows PC as opposed to the "pro" Mac version, "magic" equipment brands that "all the pros use" and so on.

It's essentially a cargo-cult: we try to emulate successful creators and get fixated on the appearances. If we get success, often time by sheer luck, we attributed to brand X or Y and spread magic thinking to others.

<comment><USER5> Heh, I'd say tube amps are a bit more out there than everything else you listed (unless you mean tube headphone amps or something). It's INCREDIBLY difficult to accurately emulate tubes on normal computers in real-time due to their non-linear behavior. And there is at least some kind of science behind tubes "sounding better" since second-order harmonics are suppose to be more enjoyable for a listener, and are generated naturally by a single-ended tube amp design. I wouldn't say musicians using tube amps are trying to elicit memories of the past, rather that's just the best way they can make their instrument sound good

<comment><USER6> Sure, on a normal computer that may be the case. But, products like the Kemper Profiling Amp ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0SmSl1aS1w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0SmSl1aS1w)) are on the same price range as high-end amps and have been able able to model _any_ amp with an incredible precision for years already. Still, it's easier to find a wide selection of analog amps in recording studios than one of those. That said, I think it has a lot to do with the guitar player "fetish" of recording on a boutique valve head with a pair of 4x12 cabinets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting to see history repeating itself a bit: "When you purchase film you will be buying the film, processing and digital transfer". Kodak was pursued by the DoJ in the 1950s and ultimately ruled against in an antitrust suit for doing the exact same thing with Kodachrome, the market leader in color (still) photography at the time. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing)

<comment><USER8> Kodachrome was slide film. Very few labs would process it, though the colors were bright and some people really liked it. E6 was the process that most slide film used (even some of kodaks).

Slide film was always a challenge to expose just right, its dynamic range is pretty narrow compared to negative film. Its what you needed to use for movies though.

I can't see this new revival being more than a niche market. Sending film away and waiting a week might not cut it in todays market when phones shoot hd and can edit.

There are a bunch of these. The "imposible project" [1] bringing back polariod film being another. Polariod though has the advantage of being instant.

[1][https://www.the-impossible-project.com/](https://www.the-impossible- project.com/)

<comment><USER9> Polaroid instant film is awesome and is not like Super 8 at all (except they're both old). There is nothing digital that works as well as Polaroid (or Fuji) instant film. No, carrying around a digital printer doesn't work as well, yet. Integrate the digital printer into the camera so that you don't notice the printer at all, then it will moot the instant film. This Super 8 thing just seems crazy. It's conspicuously added inconvenience where instant film is just the opposite, an instant photo.

<comment><USER10> I'd say the Fuji instax SP1 works pretty damn well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amusingly, it's also a video camera, since the viewfinder is an LCD display. Not clear if the manual aperture and shutter time settings affect the viewfinder. You can feed video into the display (why?) but it's not clear if you can get video out of the camera. The film costs $50 to $75 per cartridge, for a running time of 3.5 minutes. Market: wannabe hipsters and old guys in the movie industry.

Kodak makes movie film only because the major studios, at the urging of some older directors, pay them to do so.[1] (Pro movie film sales were down 96%) The studios have to pay for a certain amount of film whether they take it or not. This leaves Kodak with a paid-for, underutilized film production plant and film development facilities. That's probably why Kodak is doing this.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-to-continue-making- movie-f...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-to-continue-making-movie- film-1423106264)

<comment><USER11> Amusing idea: conceal a flash chip in the film cartridge and record video to it from the camera used for the viewfinder. Put in a sound generator to make clicky film advance mechanism noises when taking pictures. The film in the cartridge is just a dummy and is not exposed. When the film cartridge is mailed in for processing, download the video, run it through Filmlook to give it grain and jitter, then upload to the cloud server. If the user orders the "return processed film" option, print the video to film stock at the processing plant.

<comment><USER12> No hipster will even notice. :) If done right, it will be even hard to prove there was cheating in the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You may have not noticed it, but the benefits of film have been going extinct this decade. Check out how many feature films are shot digitally versus on film. Unless you are Spielberg, you are shooting digitally.

Currently, there are small digital cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Camera (BMPCC) camera, under $1k, which have a capability to shoot images that are so similar to 16mm film that the average consumer couldn't tell.

The bottom-line today: if you want the 8mm vibe, you oversample your image when shooting (16mm or 35mm digital) and then degrade the image in post- production to 8mm.

<comment><USER14> Or unless you are Quentin Tarantino; see Inglorious Basterds (2009) to see what rich colors film can provide.

<comment><USER15> Or better yet, The Hateful Eight, in which he takes film to a new level, shooting on Ultra Panavision 70 (which perhaps counter-intuitively is 65 mm film).

Other people are going digital, but Quentin Tarantino seems to be busy taking film to the next level instead :)

<comment><USER16> The "70" in Ultra Panavision 70 mostly refers to the projection system. As projected in the the theater, it uses 70mm film. During the filming process a 65mm stock is used. The extra 5mm was for the optical soundtrack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The death of film has more to do with distribution than acquisition; the pervasive switch to digital projection completely killed the last bastion of demand for film stock. (A typical film might requires 100s to 1000s as much stock for delivery to theaters as it needed for initial capture.)

That said, you can't get the entire Super8 look with digital filters. There are optical properties (have to use the same lens and sensor size), and the way it handles highlights vs lowlights is different than digital sensors. (The 'rolloff' in the highlights, rather than clipping at saturation, is very desirable.)

And it's true that film isn't entirely dead in Hollywood. Quentin Tarantino shot his most recent film on 70mm stock. But that's nearly 100x the resolution of 8mm film, so they're not really comparable. OTOH, I recently saw Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom," which was shot on 16mm reversal (color, not negative) film stock for the look.

In each case, the choice of film stock definitely affected the look of the film. It also affected the act of shooting the film; even if you can mimic a filmic look digitally (through digital acquisition and post processing), shooting digitally is very different than shooting film. I happen to prefer digital, but courses for horses.

But yeah, for consumers, it's pretty much a hipster affectation. Good for Kodak, though! Also of note in the annals of hipster retro photography is 'The Impossible Project,' which revived Polaroid film:

[https://www.the-impossible-project.com/](https://www.the-impossible- project.com/)

Also, 'lomography.'

</comment><comment><USER18> With modern film stocks and scanners Super8 can look remarkably good. It'll be interesting to see how Kodak's scanning service compares to scans like these, both of which were shot with another new Super 8 camera, the Logmar Digicanical:

[https://vimeo.com/129700087](https://vimeo.com/129700087)

[https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287](https://vimeo.com/groups/super8/videos/87243287)

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish they would have resurrected 9.5 mm instead. 9.5 mm was an amazing format in that the emulsion went from edge to edge with no pulldown claw sprocket. Instead it used a single sprocket hole _between the frames._ It was still very cheap film but more than 50% larger emulsion than Super8.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9.5_mm_film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9.5_mm_film)

<comment><USER20> Unlike 9.5, they never stopped commercial manufacture and processing of Super8 so all of the commercial infrastructure is still there - its less of a revival, and more a introduction of a new Super8 camera.

<comment><USER19> Good point, but 9.5 is still kinda amazing format, if only.

<comment><USER21> What does it take to make film? The camera can't be that difficult. All those Nikon and Canon lenses for small sensors would be ideal.

<comment><USER22> Black and white film? It's very hard, but doable. Probably comparable difficulty to building your own computer out of logic ICs. You'll buy cellulose acetate stock, a bunch of chemicals, and build a coating machine yourself. You'll also need some chemical engineering skills. Your film might be comparable to that from the 1950s.

Alternatively, you can buy a film factory when it gets shut down, but these tend to produce film in large batches, and it might be difficult to repair the machines. People have done this before.

Color film? Basically impossible. Probably comparable difficulty to building your own ICs. Only a handful of companies were ever successful at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting. But it doesn't solve the worst problem I've ever had with analog film: The developer lost the rolls that had our honeymoon pictures on them. (As compensation, they were generous enough to offer us... blank replacement rolls. We were not impressed.)

That's the advantage digital has - you don't mail the pictures anywhere. Nobody can lose them for you. (Yeah, you can still lose them yourself...)

<comment><USER22> Tip from the pros: if the pictures are irreplaceable, then divide them in half. Send half to the developer. If it gets ruined, you've only ruined half.

This is how wedding photographers who shot on film avoided getting sued into oblivion by angry brides (and yes, there are many, many photographers who have been sued into oblivion by angry brides, contract or no contract).

<comment><USER24> Or alternately learn to do manual colour positive processing. It's really not hard, and with a big tank you can do half a dozen 120 reels at a time.

<comment><USER22> YMMV, the machines are very consistent, it takes some serious discipline to match that consistency at home, and you can get color casts accidentally. The C-41 chemicals are also a bit more unfriendly and more difficult to dispose of properly (not sure about positive). So these days I only do non-chromogenic film at home, but I might have made a different choice in the 1990s.

Speaking of which, Kodak doesn't even make E-6 film any more.

<comment><USER24> Indeed. I've a freezer stuffed with fuji e6 120 and 5x4, and chems for processing.

C41 is a pain in the ass and I only bothered a few times - but with a little practice you can develop positive film perfectly at home - all about being able to work blind, and having a series of tubs at the right temperatures. Admittedly my first few tries ended up with lomo quality from a rollei!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm strugging to figure out who exactly this thing would be _for_.

Amateurs for home movies? Nope, digital will always be cheaper, and faster/more convenient to work with to boot.

Aspiring filmmakers? Nope, if you want to shoot on film professionally you'll want at least 16mm to avoid the magnification/graininess Super 8 brings with it.

People nostalgic for the blurriness of old home movies? Do any of these actually exist?

<comment><USER26> The same people who buy impossible project instant film.

Sure you could shoot a perfectly in-focus colour corrected image and filter it, but there's something fun about not knowing the result instantly. It's the reverse of when digital cameras came out, then instant was exciting.

<comment><USER27> "but there's something fun about not knowing the result instantly."

Let me guess, you have never ever used a super 8 camera. I have, and FUN is the last word that will come to my mind about those machines.

Using a new cartridge and not being sure about light exposure in complex scenes, only knowing about it after having sent the cartridge away and returned. Idem with motion response, color and lots of little things that now we have feedback about in seconds, but at the time, took weeks.

I mean, after all the pain now you need to mount the projector, switch light off only to discover that your film is ruined, because you did not take the right decisions or just the developer lab did it wrong. Frustration, anger, disappointment, anything but fun.

This happened several times to my father. It was an expensive process to learn, only fun if you did not pay for it.

It was a pain in the ass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As someone who went to school in Rochester, NY (RIT), i love to see Kodak making a move that could possibly return them to a relevant position in the film industry. Rochester was once a proud city that has been beaten down by missing the innovation train. I hope this and other initiatives help to return it to some of its former luster.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there an actual double-blind study that proves that digital still cannot beat analog in certain realms? Because I'm having a hard time believing that this "analogue renaissance" isn't just pure marketing hokum.

<comment><USER30> If nothing else, it's a stylistic choice. Choosing how a film should look, the colours and tonality etc, is a creative process and has aesthetic and therefore subjective goals. You can't really say which one is 'better', only that they're different.

<comment><USER29> Everything you described is at least theoretically digitizable.

<comment><USER31> This is the best thing i've read on the whole film vs digital debate: [http://www.fototazo.com/2015/04/the-meaning-of-films- decline...](http://www.fototazo.com/2015/04/the-meaning-of-films-decline.html) # TLDR: most film advocates claim all the wrong reasons for shooting film, and i say this as someone who is primarily a film shooter.

The most compelling reason to shoot film is because it gives you access to a range of camera and lens technology that is impossible to replicate with digital without significant compromise in quality and/or shooting style.

Nolan shoots on IMAX cameras with modified Zeiss lenses that give an extremely shallow depth of field (witness some of the scenes in The Dark Knight Rises).

Tarantino shooting on Super Panavision 70 could not be replicated on digital without extreme cropping of a wide angle digital source, which would change the depth/perspective, or stitching (difficult if impossible in motion picture shooting). See also panoramic cameras: Fuji 6x17, Hasselblad X-Pan.

Large format and even medium format, because the available digital backs have not yet reached the size of a full 6x6 negative. The digital back manufacturers claim they are "full frame" but when used on actual full frame 6x6 cameras they are anything but (this is not a resolution/quality argument, it is a "oh, my 100mm lens is now actually cropped" argument).

<comment><USER29> Are you claiming that that range of camera and lens technology will never be duplicated in the digital realm?

<comment><USER31> Not at all, and i suspect as sensor technology improves and prices become more affordable digital formats larger than 35mm will rise in popularity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hearing the name "Kodak" just makes me sad these days.

From the wikipedia entry, _" From the $90 range in 1997, Kodak shares closed at 76 cents on January 3, 2012"_.

<comment><USER33> As sad as that is, it's a pretty long life for a company that was killed by mis-management: they invented the digital cameras but chose not to cannibalize their incumbent analog business. To combat demise, they chose to fire people and become an IP shell. Last try at survival was to sell off most/all IP and license its name. The rest is history.

<comment><USER34> We weren't in the company. It can be hard to tell. You could open a beauty therapy shop, and it's revenue increase every year, and suddenly after the introduction of cheap laser treatments and race-to-the-bottom competitors, in one year you could face a reduction of 70% of your revenue.[1]

[1] Anecdote.

<comment><USER35> Kodak certainly did a lot of things wrong--especially with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Part of their problem with digital was that they were arguably ahead of curve (and not quite on the right curve) with things like PhotoCD and providing equipment to photo shops to print customer photos.

However, the bottom line is that it would probably have been very difficult for even the most brilliant management to replace the film, photo paper, and chemicals consumables business. That revenue basically doesn't exist in the digital world unless maybe you count inkjet ink--though that's trending down too.

Fujifilm did end up doing OK by, among other things, applying their film making expertise to other industries like medical. But they had a tough run too. [1] The film business fell off a cliff that made CD sales look like a gradual decline.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how- fujifi...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifilm- survived)

<comment><USER36> I worked at Kodak as a summer intern in '85\. Was the era of the disk camera. Was also my first programming job. Lotus 1-2-3.

Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it still was at that time. The Elmgrove plant where I worked (one of a dozen facilities in the Rochester area) has over 14 thousand employees. Our start and end times were staggered in 7 minute increments to manage traffic flow.

That none of that would exist 20 years later was inconceivable at the time. The word "disruption" wasn't in business vocabulary. Nor was the phrase "made in China". Some senior technical managers saw the "digital" writing on the wall. But what could they do? What could anyone do? There was no way to turn that aircraft carrier on a dime.

There was no business model in digital cameras that would employ 100 thousand engineers, managers, factory workers, technicians, and staff.

<comment><USER35> What people don't get a lot of the time when they're opining about what a business should do or should have done because the market is collapsing/collapsed for a particular product category is that you have to run the numbers. Maybe the business executes brilliantly on creating a new $1B business (which is _hard_ ). But if that replaces a $10B business, things are still going to get ugly. I don't have the exact numbers at my fingertips but, as I recall, film revenue fell something like 90% in under 10 years.

(That said, Fujifilm provides an existence proof that Kodak could have, however painfully, probably navigated this with better management making better choices.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > There are some moments that digital just can't deliver

Isn't this the mindset that drove them into the ground in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER38> Came across a tweet about the Sony MiniDisc Recorder/Player going for hundreds and even thousands of dollars on Ebay. Nostalgia apparently sells.

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m5...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R4.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xsony+MZ.TRS0&_nkw=sony+mz- rh1&_sacat=0)

<comment><USER39> That's amazing. I have one that works absolutely flawlessly; I still need to transfer what I have on those disks before I try to sell it, but then...

Why would people pay that kind of money for this?? Do they need it to play their old disks? Wouldn't it be cheaper to have them transferred to another media by a lab?

<comment><USER40> My brother has a bunch of MiniDisc players and recorders. I do not understand why. He refuses to get an MP3 player or use his phone but will instead record audio in REALTIME from CDs etc. to MiniDisc. He says the battery life is really good. The psychoacoustic modelling on the audio is not, however!!

He even bought a multitrack minidisc desk. Apparently it was going cheap. I understand why - with 4 tracks of audio, it'll record 15 minutes. No good for long jams.

I do not understand the fascination with it at all. Even an old Tascam portastudio or the modern equivalents that record to SD card would be better.

<comment><USER41> _The psychoacoustic modelling on the audio is not, however!!_

There were quite some improvements between older and the latest models though, and the latter could also use uncompressed and/or lossless schemes.

 _the fascination with it at all._

One thing I really liked about it is the handling of discs. I don't know why, but I just liked the feeling of opening the player, ejecting a disc and inserting another one with a satisfactory 'click'.

<comment><USER40> A bit like using an old cassette walkman then!

Wobbling CDs into top-loading CD players was never as satisfying (and you were likely to scratch the underside of it as you slid it into the caddy).

Loading MP3s isn't satisfying at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I grew up in upstate NY and visited Kodak's campus in Rochester in their heyday. It was impressive as hell to a ten year-old. I'm sure the idea that the massive works and the business they represented could almost completely evaporate never occurred to the people working there. It's a little melancholy in some ways. I wish I could see this as more than a desperate attempt to rekindle that dead business, but I can't. How much do the benefits of using analog processes to capture the light really matter when the vast majority of people will access the content downstream through digital delivery platforms? Somewhere along the line the information is going to get sampled and aliased. Tarantino getting all nostalgic for analog content that will be shown to viewers via $100,000 digital projectors is one thing, but most photographs are viewed on phones, and in web browsers.

</comment><comment><USER43> I feel like we're out of ideas, so we revert to nostalgia. I just saw that Technics just re-reintrouduced the SL-1200 and now Kodak is reintroducing the Super 8. All so that we can feel the analog warmth. I think this is just the effect of software taking over the world. We cant have these tangible things anymore that have their own character, quirks, and defects(that when new infuriate users only to be remembered fondly 20 years later) We recently bought my 9 year old an instant camera. Each pack only has 10 pictures. She blew through that in about 30 minutes because she was so used to the "infinite" digital pictures she could take. To add insult to injury, she kept taking the film pack out and exposing the pictures, and couldn't figure out why they were blank.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is good for digital in ways I think people won't notice quite yet.

As an amateur photographer I tend to see film users a lot. I shoot digital but I'd like to shoot film too. The reality is that there are some artifacts that film gives you that you can't replace in digital _yet_. In art, if the effect or feeling that you want is given on a certain tool then that is the tool for the job. In photography, if this is film, then film is the right tool for the job. There's also the large factor of workflows. People get used to a workflow that influences their style and it's important to them to maintain that workflow. What is measurably better in technical terms is not important.

What I see happening is that market trends like this will push digital forces to perfectly re-creating classic films. The difficulty with re-creating film with filters or presets is it's notoriously hard to do and usually not perfect. Fujifilm is a perfect example of this with their film simulation modes on their X-Mount camera lineup. I suspect that the film trend is going to push photography giants into creating more accurate emulation of film baked into their workflows and devices rather than the current trend of generic hipster Instagram filters or playing in Lightroom for a few hours (and still not getting the effect you want).

Whether you're a professional or a 16y/o girl with a K1000 and mix-matched 80's leg warmers film still does have a place amongst people and this will in turn affect the development of digital processing.

</comment><comment><USER45> Cool, I'm switching to coding with punchcards.

<comment><USER40> Might be a startup idea to sell hole punches then eh?

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Interesting. Today I've come across quite a few stories on analogue tech. This + new Technic SL-1200 models + new vinyl pressing machines being produced due to vinyl demand continuing to grow + record players and instant film cameras being incredibly popular on Amazon this Christmas. I wonder if we'll see this occur to other analogue tech too?

<comment><USER46> There will always be a big market for items of nostalgia, whether it's taking photos, playing music, enjoying ancient video games, or banging out letters on a typewriter. All good fun as long as people don't spout pseudoscience about its inability to be emulated with modern equipment.

<comment><USER47> It isn't just nostalgia.

Digital music can't simulate having a physical album cover, an e-ink screen won't ever be similar to a printed page, no music encoding will physically prevent loudness-wars mastering the way a vinyl record will (the needle would just jump out of the track), no printer will ever be able to fool someone into thinking a document was written on a typewriter.

You can tell the difference if a piece of mail was signed by a human with a pen instead of a printer, and it means something.

The limitations of analog media are very often their strengths, especially in corner cases. The limitations of a medium are often a significant driver for the creative process and losing them or approximating them makes lots of things worse.

Normally people (morally) opposed to analog media spout just as much pseudoscience in defense of their position. (normally people arguing about such things on the Internet are idiots anyway)

<comment><USER48> What gives those things value IS the nostalgia though. A computer printed page has clear crisp letters with advanced fonts and typography compared to a typewriter with smudged, fixed-width fonts. E-ink books allow for notes, search, bookmarks and much more. The new is with few exceptions objectively better.

<comment><USER49> But it's not just about nostalgia. There's the fact that there is more human work and thought involved with doing something by hand. It is a social signal with some of the objectively "worse" ways that will stick around for awhile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I see USB and... SD card slot on the back? HDMI and... 3.5mm audio?

One of the most characteristic features of Super 8, at least to me, is the complete lack of audio (at least, on most Super 8 works). So if you went to a theater to see something on Super 8 there might be a live band playing the soundtrack.

I wonder if Kodak is doing something like putting audio on the SD card and then storing digital synchronization marks on the film somehow.

Edit: To be clear, I know you can already put audio on Super 8. It's just that most Super 8 films I've seen in the theater have had no audio or live audio. And yes, I looked at the specs. The specs don't mention anything at all, but the product rendering appears to show jacks for audio and data, and I'm wondering how that's incorporated.

<comment><USER50> You're just imagining what the product could be like instead of reading the actual product/specs page? That's an interesting approach, but should probably label your fantasies accordingly.

[http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/consumer/Product/Product_Specs...](http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/consumer/Product/Product_Specs/?contentId=4294993082&TaxId=4294969683)

"FILM GAUGE: SUPER 8 ( EXTENDED MAX-8 GATE )

FILM LOAD: KODAK CARTRIDGES WITH 50 FT (15 M)

SPEED: VARIABLE SPEEDS (9, 12, 18, 24, 25 FPS) ALL WITH CRYSTAL SYNC

LENS MOUNT: C-MOUNT

FOCAL LENGTH: FIXED / 6 MM, 1:1.2 – RICOH LENS (OPTIONAL ZOOM 6-48 MM LENS )

FOCUS / APERTURE: MANUAL FOCUS & IRIS"

etc.

<comment><USER22> I did read the specs, and they don't answer any of my questions. This comment fails to give me any new information and instead just makes me feel bad, so, congratulations, if that was your goal.

<comment><USER51> Description of crystal sync here: [http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/index_files/Page269.htm](http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/index_files/Page269.htm)

"a camera's running speed is locked to the digitally divided oscillations of a quartz crystal, with an accuracy of a few parts per million. The function of the pilot cable was to feed a representation of the camera's speed to the recorder. Since with crystal control that speed is precisely known, the cable can be replaced by a similarly accurate crystal generator mounted in the audio recorder. This eliminates any connection between camera and recorder, but permits them to stay in sync with each other. A pilot signal is recorded as above, but it comes from the built-in crystal instead of the camera. The resulting tape is resolved to mag film just the same as a pilot tape. You still need a clapper board for a start mark."

So, it doesn't actually record the sound, but it is capable of being sync'd to the recording of the sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> It'd be nice to see films shot in color again instead of blue and orange.

[http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of- orange...](http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange-and- blue/)

<comment><USER53> Go see Carol (shot on 16mm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> dumb question. as someone who shot plenty of super 8 about 35 years ago, what I don't see here is the projector? That was the part that sort of sucked (not to mention editing). You still need a projector to consume this media, right? Or is it just teleported through some hipster USB device now...

<comment><USER35> It's color negative film anyway. Probably gives better quality scans and is a bit cheaper.

[Edit: And actually I don't believe Kodak makes a reversal Super 8 film any longer, although others do.]

<comment><USER55> Yeah, Kodachrome processing stopped about 5 years ago, since the chemicals were too nasty. I think Kodak still sells B&W reversal though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is amazing news, the quality of the super 8 has a lot of character.

</comment><comment><USER57> Well, this will surely at least be a _collectible_ , some day.

</comment><comment><USER58> Here's a nice solution in search of a problem.

<comment><USER51> I speculate that there is latent demand for it between older people that miss it and younger people that are tired of pure digital and want something more organic and different.

Personally though, I would rather have something similar to analog that doesn't require the cost and time/complexity. I wonder how many folks will buy these to go with them: [http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/nolab-digital- super-8-cartri...](http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/nolab-digital- super-8-cartridge-make-film-cameras-go-digital)

<comment><USER35> >younger people that are tired of pure digital and want something more organic and different

Which I actually sort of appreciate (in my less cynical moments). Though, if it's just that they've never shot anything on film, I'm sure they have friends or co-workers with old still cameras gathering dust. Borrow one, shoot a roll of film, send it off to be processed, and the urge will probably have gone away by the time you get your prints back. You can get those prints scanned too if you like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> That's crazy amazingly awesome. Need to know how much it costs though, both camera and film/processing/cloud.

<comment><USER20> I'd expect the camera to cost 2-800 and the processing/film to be about 30 bucks a cartridge. Too bad they don't make a color reversal film anymore, so you can project it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> it makes a lot of sense for film makers who want to film in 4K without forking out for a Red camera, just paying per minute of film instead.

If you like in hollywood tho, it's probably cheaper to rent a 4k camera for your next blockbuster.

</comment><comment><USER61> These are all meaningless words without a sample video

</comment><comment><USER62> If Kodak is scanning all of the photos and putting them into the cloud themselves, does that mean they have rights to said images?

<comment><USER63> What amazes me is the lawyers haven't been able to come up with some legalese that allows companies to transfer your data around their internal systems for _your_ own use without stating "we can do whatever we want with your content".

<comment><USER64> AFAIK this is a solved problem in B2B. e.g.

AWS: "We do not access or use customer content for any purpose other than as legally required and for maintaining the AWS services and providing them to our customers and their end users. We never use customer content or derive information from it for marketing or advertising."

SoftLayer: "As a Processor, SoftLayer will not access the Customer Content for any purpose beyond providing You with support as described above, and will not disclose it to any person or entity."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> This is going to fail HARD.

</comment><comment><USER66> c mount? i mean "c mount"!!!!! yes!

</comment><comment><USER67> Wow--surprised! Never thought I would see another film camera again. I didn't want to get into the film/digital debate, but I have no life--so here goes:

I can still tell the difference between film and digital. It could be I'm too used to film? It could be I'm partially color blind? Whatever the reason, I like the look of film.

Recent example. I watched Dumb and Dumber Too. Yes--it was bad on a lot of levels, but what really suprised me was the look of the movie. It just looked cheap. Say what you want about a Farelly brothers movie, they always looked great. I then looked into it, and one of the Farelly brothers was given the choice between film, or digital. The producers brought him to a digital lab, where the techs applied the film "look" program to make the digital look like film. Farley couldn't tell the difference. I sure could? They went with digital. If this is their last digital film--they will have settled to controversy--in my little world. I just have a feeling their next movie will be in film?

As to digital photography. When digital finally hit the practical point, I went digital. For myself, it was the Canon 20D, I bought the camera, and three very expensive lenses. Yes, it took great pictures. Great pictures to what? I wasen't a photographer before digital? I didn't know better. Actually, as a kid, I was a photographer. I used a Pentax K1000, and a Canon 350D. A few years ago I found a stash of negatives. I had them blown up, and asked a couple of family members to pick the best pictures. These were nature pictures. All picked my kid pictures. Maybe I was a better photographer as a kid? I don't know.

If I was going to "gear" up again, I think I would stay with film. Not because I think it's that much better, but because the used lenses, are so cheap right now. A used Canon F 2.8 300mm lens is under a grand used. The digital Canon 2.8 300mm lens is a minimum of $3500 used(usually beat up.).

To anyone who honestly wants to get into photography, but funds are tight, look into film. Hell, I wouldn't even bother with color. I would set up a bathroom darkroom, and set up shop.

I guess it's easy for me to throw around this advice. I'm not going back to chemicals in the sink. I have bought the digital equipment, and probally won't go back to film. Oh yea, whatever you do stick with prime lenses. That was my biggest mistake. Buy whatever camera bare. Buy the lenses(glass--if you want to sound like one of those guys--I never wanted to be in that club.) Buy your primes separately. Try to keep your digital camera not in [fully auto] all the time, but then again, I sometimes wonder why.

My ex-girlfriend is a professional photographer--takes studio pictures of old stuff. She loved to brag about it. "I'm a professional Photographer. Did you know, I take pictures for a living?" Yes--it was worse than going to the dentist, but maybe I was being too critical? She has never been in manual mode, TV, or even AV mode. She doesn't know about F stops, or exposure times. I think she got lucky though. I told her the pictures were Spectacular, but I really though they were too Photoshopped. As to her job--well it's a lot about who you know at big corporations.

Good luck--

<comment><USER68> "I used a Pentax K1000"

I got one of those as a gift, probably so I'd stop borrowing his Spotmatic (the K1000 was basically an 80s version of the 60s Spotmatic, with an annoyingly different lens mount).

I think a large aspect of picture quality when we were kids, is rich grandpa can give you triple digits worth of camera at Christmas, but I paid my own way on consumables and I had to push a broom at the food store for something like ten minutes per pix once all the costs of analog were accounted for. Large sheets of photo paper for enlargements were not cheap, either.

Something often overlooked is the analog era was extremely expensive.</comment></comment>


Technologies behind Google ranking - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/technologies-behind-google-ranking.html

<comment><USER2> It just goes to show, search is not a solved problem even now.

I think it's fantastic that they can share this kind of information.. it's really interesting technology.

I would have liked some more in depth technical details though.

<comment><USER3> You can request more in depth technical details at

<http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/>

;-)</comment></comment>


Pharo 7.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://pharo.org/news/pharo7.0-released <comment><USER2> Where does the Pharo runtime run? To which platforms can I bring its solutions? are these standalone binaries or can I create libraries or code which play well with other languages and systems?

Every time I look at a programming language, and at the HN it is every second day, I think about what kind of problems can it solve, and for what kind of platforms these compile/run their runtimes.. and surprisingly not many programming languages inform properly about the most basic feature, and prefer to go deeper into their.

<comment><USER3> I looked for any useful documentation for a few minutes and just gave up. I don't want to read a book. I don't want to watch a video. This is not my first programming language, thank you. I just want a "hello world" example to get an idea what I am actually dealing with. How do I run a "hello world" program from the command line? How can I deploy that to another machine that doesn't necessarily have a GUI?

<comment><USER4> > I just want a "hello world" example to get an idea what I am actually > dealing with. How do I run a "hello world" program from the command line?

The trouble is that what you are dealing with is a graphical interactive programming environment. Sure, you can run it from the command line like /bin/perl, but to understand what you are dealing with you have to open it up and try it on its own terms.

If you aren't interested in a novel immersive programming environment then you can safely ignore Pharo too.

<comment><USER5> >If you aren't interested in a novel immersive programming environment then you can safely ignore Pharo too.

I was curious and so downloaded and ran the default image, and I'm beyond captivated by it, but I have to agree that neither the link nor the homepage do a good job of enticing me to do so, or even hinting and what can I expect.

If I didn't feel like setting up and checking out random projects I stumble upon, I would have never even seen what Pharo is about, given the abundance of marginally different programming languages that pop up on HN.

So yeah, I also think Pharo's best "Hello, World" is just opening it and trying out stuff, but maybe it should try to sell itself, at least a little, for the uninitiated?

<comment><USER6> Agreed. The main website could benefit from somehow conveying the mind blowing power of using Pharo.

Maybe lots of little gifs?

<comment><USER7> One thing that struck me a bit odd was, that the website makes it look like I have to buy a book or join a (paid?) mooc to get started, because these are the very first sections under "documentation".

I was just looking for a basic examples to get some sense what Pharo is about and what the look and feel are. Without downloading and installing it, I wasn't aware that there is a pretty nice interactive tutorial built in.

Maybe convey better how Pharo is distinct from other languages/environments and how to get going?

Pharo is indeed very easy to get started, but the website makes it appear harder than it actually is.

<comment><USER6> I don't remember the MOOC costing money, but it was in French with English subtitles which is understandable with them being French researchers at INRIA, but it couldn't keep my attention up due to the gap.

The books are all free in PDF form and the lead developer also has another website somewhere where he hosts old Smalltalk textbooks which are largely still relevant.

They certainly could work on conveying this better, but it is open source and likely not a high priority.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, if I came off as too negative!

For me it was just the initial perception I got. E.g. I only realized that the books were free after you told me. And yes, this is due to me evidently being too lazy doing an additional click. I don't mind paying for books, but not as a first step.

I did download and tried Pharo because I was intrigued by it from another person, if I just were to land on the website from some random link, I likely wouldn't have.

I think there could be some small changes in wording and presentation that would get a long way for people without any prior knowledge of the language. For example if you compare it to Rust (just content, not design wise)

[https://www.rust-lang.org/learn](https://www.rust-lang.org/learn)

<comment><USER6> I see what you mean. I think Smalltalk and lisp have always suffered from poor marketing. There have been efforts to change this, but possibly too little too late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Detailed changelog: [https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo- changelogs/blob/maste...](https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo- changelogs/blob/master/Pharo70ChangeLogs.md)

Sounds incredible! Git integration and related code management changes are especially nice, 64-bit by default is great and support for binary packages is also important. New, extensible code browser (Calypso) also sounds impressive, but I'll have to see it in action first.

Pharo is an incredibly productive environment. Fully inspectable everything (on the language level, but also on GUI level - you can inspect all kinds of widgets interactively) and the Debugger where you can define your logic as needed make for incredible programming experience. Plus, it's Smalltalk, which is a beautiful language in its own right.

With this release, it looks like Pharo may finally become more than just a toy. Looking forward to it!

<comment><USER4> GToolkit is also an exciting new development that's happening in parallel with the mainline Pharo. This is a reimagined programming workflow for Smalltalk with new UIs for coding, debugging, documenting, example browsing, testing, etc.

Likely the best bits of this environment will be cherry-picked into future Pharo releases, but meanwhile it is available here at [https://gtoolkit.com/](https://gtoolkit.com/) and I for one am building an application on it.

<comment><USER9> Are there any screencasts or similar videos out there? Looks promising but it probably "clicks" more if you see it in action with a more complete example.

<comment><USER4> I'd recommend downloading and starting it. It opens into an interactive "notebook-like" tutorial. The system is very discoverable. Has a markdown-like syntax where you can embed Smalltalk objects and code examples and interact with them directly in the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like what I see, but they do a poor job of explaining the use cases, which is a common issue for most technical projects. Is this for:

\- learning?

\- developing personal projects?

\- developing business projects?

\- can be deployed to desktop platforms? mobile ? web?

\- Has GUI library support?

Without a clear break down of use cases, I am just lost in the cool technology without any way of determining if it fits my needs.

A good example of how to do this well is GameMaker Studio: [https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker](https://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker)

<comment><USER11> Hey!

In fact, Pharo pretty much can do everything you asked for. It is just amazing to learn a lot of CS concepts. Just so know, Pharo is a great tool to teach. I am a student and this is how I came across Pharo about a few years back.

And you can build both Business applications ([http://pharo.org/Companies](http://pharo.org/Companies)) or personal applications. Take a look at the catalogue here [http://catalog.pharo.org/](http://catalog.pharo.org/) and [http://smalltalkhub.com/list](http://smalltalkhub.com/list). You can do almost everything in Pharo. Imagination is the limit to what you can do in Pharo.

And also there is a good list of use cases at [http://pharo.org/success](http://pharo.org/success).

HTH

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was going to say that it sounds a little like that Smalltalk IDE Squeak, and then it dawned upon me that this is actually a Smalltalk dialect too. :D

I'm going to throw this in here:

"Squeak or Pharo for the beginning Smalltalker?"

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8426981/squeak-or- pharo-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8426981/squeak-or-pharo-for- the-beginning-smalltalker)

And a third option that is much leaner and maybe less overwhelming especially if you are interested in actually learning Smalltalk itself to begin with:

[https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk- Dev](https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev)

<comment><USER13> Pharo forked from Squeak a long while ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I lol'd when the quote, "Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language and a powerful environment, focused on simplicity and immediate feedback.", is accompanied with a relatively chaotic artwork of the development environment.

Anyways, the dedication of the team is really remarkable. It looks like a really useful learning/teaching tool for OOP. I'll try and hopefully beat my prejudice.

<comment><USER15> For someone who's familiar with the "IDE" shown in the artwork, I was able to quickly parse the different components and it conveyed a vague sense of excitement :).

<comment><USER16> Indeed. It harks back to the "holy shit, look at all the stuff you can do with our tool!" marketing of the 80s and 90s.

Microsoft used to market advanced versions of their BASIC -- such as QuickBASIC for DOS -- by having it open several windows on the screen and draw or animate something different in each. A similar program shipped as a demo for Microsoft's AmigaBASIC.

<comment><USER15> In any case, I'm not one to judge a programming system by its artwork. I hope people don't get discouraged by it and not try it out, It's a phenomenal system for translating thoughts to programs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Everything's an object" is object oriented programming done right and I can see why Ruby and other languages used those ideas from Smalltalk. I couldn't understand the fascination with the integrated environments though. It was my biggest stumbling block. Is there a pathway to use Pharo with my traditional tools?

<comment><USER18> It's more than "everything is an object", though. It's "everything is a _live_ object", which is why you need the entire integrated environment with it.

<comment><USER19> Yes, that's the real point of Smalltalk.

I'm incredibly frustrated by environments like Ruby on Rails which pay lip service to the idea of "everything is an object" — but those objects are just a cesspool of hollow non-evolving throwaways that get built up and torn down on every request.

It's the difference between a castle made out of toy blocks and the Buckingham Palace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _IoT is now an important part of Pharo. Installing PharoThings > ([https://github.com/pharo-iot/PharoThings](https://github.com/pharo- > iot/PharoThings)) provides an impressive amount of tools to develop > applications in small devices._

On that GH repo[0] I see:

> _Raspberry driven by WiringPi library_

> _Arduino driven by Firmata, soon_

> _Beaglebone, soon_

Has anyone played with this?

[0] [https://github.com/pharo-iot/PharoThings](https://github.com/pharo- iot/PharoThings)

<comment> ben-coman I haven't yet. Plan to soon. Here is a demo... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezfjditHjq4&t=344s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezfjditHjq4&t=344s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Pharo website has zero mention of its relation to Smalltalk, although the Wiki article calls it a dialect.

So how close are the two in reality? Is the syntax from your standard Smalltalk-80 textbook largely portable/compatible to Pharo, or is Pharo merely "inspired" by Smalltalk?

<comment><USER21> Why isn't Smalltalk mentioned on the front page?

It seems that simply mentioning that Pharo is based on Smalltalk would immediately convey a lot of useful information to people who are new to Pharo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Final steps have been taken to make it useful from small devices up to enterprise usage. Still the best working environment ever encountered. Congrats to this gem!

</comment><comment><USER23> A significant milestone, worth exploring for getting a new perspective on working with objects.

Congratulations !

Sven

</comment><comment><USER24> Been a fan for years of this work - though distant. I'd love to get more time to really build something interesting in Pharo.

</comment><comment><USER25> Any good examples of open source tools made using Pharo?

<comment><USER26> Many of them a listed here: [https://pharo.org/success/](https://pharo.org/success/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Every time I try a Smalltalk (++) implementation, the custom UI framework is what kills it for me. Not only are they completely non-native in look and feel, but they also lag behind on features - e.g. Pharo is apparently non- high-DPI aware on Windows.

<comment><USER28> Plus the lack of vim mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Their website is down atm.

[https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo- changelogs/blob/maste...](https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo- changelogs/blob/master/Pharo70ChangeLogs.md)

<comment> ben-coman [https://pharo.org](https://pharo.org) was down. Its now back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The main issues that prevents me to have an interest in Pharo are the following two: \- There is no real multithreading support \- It's not easily embeddable

I believe that there are attempts to tackle these problems but what is the status?

<comment> ben-coman The traditional problem embedding is that the VM did a lot of window configuration before the image started. This has all been stripped out of the "minheadless" builds, which have defined a "virtual machine interface" used like... [https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk- vm/blob/Cog/p...](https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk- vm/blob/Cog/platforms/minheadless/common/sqVirtualMachineInterface.c)

and... [https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk- vm/blob/Cog/p...](https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk- vm/blob/Cog/platforms/minheadless/common/sqMain.c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> does it have decent hidpi support yet? I remember trying out pharo 6 briefly and being unable to get it usable on my laptop.

<comment><USER32> This has been a point of contention for lots of people, including myself. From what I remember, it was supposed to happen for Pharo 7 but now I see that it didn't.

Squeak and Pharo are great but the font rendering is terrible, I can't stress how bad it looks on hidpi screens. That makes it unusable for me since it gives me headaches. It's a shame too since they have spent a lot of time working on related frameworks (athens?, brick?, bloc?) that alas don't seem to go anywhere (or nobody is in the position to bring everything together). Last I checked they were trying to use a native library from Mozilla (Moz2D which is the backend of Firefox!?!?) to do all rendering, which is highly problematic and disappointing if it ends up being used. The clusterfuck of libraries that they have layered together should clearly point out that this is not the right approach.

On macOS, the graphics stack looks like: CoreGraphics <\- Skia <\- Moz2D <\- Sparta <\- Bloc <\- Brick

Alan Kay would have a seizure. Aliaksei Syrel: What happened to keeping things simple?

I really hope the graphics issues get resolved since I'm pretty sure they are costing them a lot of users. The regular Pharo devs by virtue of using Pharo every day are (probably) not in the position to realize how a new user coming from environments with great font rendering, UI speed/smoothness, reacts to Pharo. Initial impressions are everything.

<comment><USER33> I agree that the appearance of the system in this regard probably turns off lots of users. There are some in the Pharo community who are quite aware of this fact, but there are simply not enough contributors at the moment to deal with it on their own.

I am more hopeful about Bloc, however. The stack is not any more insane than that of a web browser.

<comment><USER34> The entire subsystems were rewritten from scratch, there are huge lengths of deprecated and/or poorly documented code, however, this hidpi bug remains unfixed for 5 years or more.

This is not about having too few contributors; this is about different priorities. This is why Pharo remains an obscure project on the margins of the industry, despite all its potential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> For anyone interested in learning Pharo/Smalltalk, there is a pretty decent MOOC: [https://mooc.pharo.org](https://mooc.pharo.org)

</comment><comment><USER36> TLDR: Pharo needs mountains of high-quality documentation equal to Python's docs or Java's docs if it seriously hopes to attract server-side or desktop mindshare among developers.

Long Version:

In 1980, Smalltalk had some of the best documentation of any language out there. In 2019, it basically has none. By 2019 standards, Pharo 7 ships without any documentation at all. That's a game-stopper.

Pharo 7 looks really polished. It sounds like the design team put in tons of hard work over the past year and half to produce this release. Moreover, since it's smalltalk, Pharo is also probably very powerful for both web and desktop development. BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS IF DEVELOPERS CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE IT!!!

(pardon the all caps, but I want to emphasize my point)

Here is my message for the development team: if you really want developers to start building stuff with Pharo, then you absolutely must (1) write detailed, soup-to-nuts, high quality docs for web design and (2) write another set of detailed, soup-to-nuts, high quality docs for desktop GUI programming.

The Pharo book doesn't cut it--not even close. It's not a very good book. The Pharo MOOC doesn't cut it--again, not even close. Who wants to learn that way? ProfStef is just a fancy hello world; it's really not a tutorial and it doesn't lead anywhere.

I realize that what I'm saying comes across as pretty strong medicine, but please understand, that's because I actually think Pharo looks amazing and would like to use it.

In my opinion, you should stop development on Pharo and document what you've built instead. Write docs for a year. Today's release announcement states that the Pharo 7 team closed 2142 issues. Brag in 2020 about the fact that you wrote 2142 pages of documentation and tutorials over the past year. Make your documentation coverage as thorough as your testing coverage.

Imagine what might happen if Smalltalk 2020 was as thoroughly documented as Smalltalk 80.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the feedback.

Have you seen [1] and specifically [2]?

[1] [https://pharo.org/documentation](https://pharo.org/documentation)

[2] [http://books.pharo.org/](http://books.pharo.org/)

Do you have a particular example of a site where the kind of documentation that you would like to find is published for other language (lets say Python)? This could help to understand better which are the expectations and why current books and MOOC are not enough.

<comment><USER37> From my experience as a recent Pharo user (started in October 2018 with the Pharo MOOC), the two main issues with existing documentation are

1) Much of it is outdated. 2) Much of it supposes significant prior knowledge of Pharo.

Once you start to become familiar with Pharo, neither is much of a problem. You see that the screenshot of Pharo 5 resembles what you see on Pharo 7 in spite of superficial differences. And you picked up enough of the jargon to be able to judge if some documentation is close to your level or not.

For someone who downloads Pharo 7, starts it up, and wonders "what now", most of the existing documentation is confusing. The MOOC was a much better starting point back in October, but with the new system browser in Pharo 7, it's seriously outdated as well.

<comment><USER38> Racket is very exemplary with its documentation: [https://docs.racket- lang.org/](https://docs.racket-lang.org/)

GUI documentation will likely never show up: the current graphic framework is outdated, subject to deprecation and no subject to improvement since Athens low level layer was left as it is. It may or may not be replaced by Bloc or something else. I don't thing anyone is willing to write documentation when there is not clear direction regarding the GUI framework.

<comment><USER8> > when there is not clear direction regarding the GUI framework.

Isn't it crazy for this not to be solved yet?! That's a long time - don't remember exactly, but I started with Pharo 1.4 IIRC, and it was bad back there already, then juz got worse.

Is there a blog post detailing a) all the kinds of GUI frameworks that are out there and how advanced their development; and b) what approaches were tried and abandoned, when, and why? I know it's much to ask, but, at this point, I feel the lack of progress in this area should become a much higher priority, and a blog post like would help in recruiting people for the effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> How does this feel compared to programming in Emacs? (It's an honest question, from someone who'd love to try out Pharo)

<comment><USER8> It's more like " _programming Emacs_ " instead of "programming _in_ Emacs".

Try writing a mode for Emacs, something like Helm or NeoTree or Dired, _in_ Emacs and you'll get pretty much the same experience you'd get from Pharo, although with a lot less visual feedback. Emacs is concerned mainly with text and it's naturally reflected in its APIs, but the fact that you can live-edit any function or advice and see its results change immediately after pressing C-M-x is exactly what Smalltalk/Pharo does.

It's magical, in both versions. Smalltalk was designed for GUI first, so its APIs for manipulating graphical objects are much like Emacs APIs for text manipulation: vast, rather complete, also a bit arcane due to decades of history. There's one thing that Emacs lacks and that would be support for restarting code execution from any place (possibly edited in the meantime) on the call-stack after exception: Pharo's debugger lets you do that, which is a thing worth experiencing at least once as a programmer. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is it possible to integrate Pharo with KDE so the windows won't be trapped inside the Pharo window (I don't really like MDI) and would have system-set decorations (I love using "keep above", "keep below" and "shade" buttons I've added via the window manager configuration)?

</comment><comment><USER41> Is there any progress on porting to mobile system.[This]([https://medium.com/@richardeng/mobile- smalltalk-c6f0cc712909...](https://medium.com/@richardeng/mobile- smalltalk-c6f0cc712909\)mobile) SmallTalk seems to be the furthest endeavor.

</comment><comment><USER42> old article about calypso class browser [https://dionisiydk.blogspot.com/2016/12/calypso-new- system-b...](https://dionisiydk.blogspot.com/2016/12/calypso-new-system- browser-for-pharo.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> A few years back Pharo's predecessor/sibling Squeak was garnering some interest due to its "Seaside" web framework, which used continuations and so made some interactions easier to program.

But after the rise of JavaScript, this became a lot less important.

</comment><comment><USER44> Looks interesting. Getting a weird error when installing it via Homebrew, though: ""Pharo6.1-64" is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash."

Anyone experience anything similar?

<comment><USER33> I think this is some BS that has to do with OSX's "security" and that applications like this are required to be in the Applications folder. I could be wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Genuinely curious: Is there any industry usage going on for Pharo?

<comment><USER46> There is, if you consider it is a Smalltalk dialect.

[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/](http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/)

[https://gemtalksystems.com/](https://gemtalksystems.com/)

So you can learn Smalltalk with Pharo and then get into the big boys Smalltalk.

However expect the typical enterprise projects where Oracle DB licenses are footnotes on the overall budget.

<comment><USER47> These are commercial vendors, but there are industrial uses of Pharo itself, and as Pharo gets better a lot of companies are moving from their commercial dialects to Pharo. In particular from Cincom Smalltalk to Pharo.

<comment><USER46> Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I have Pharo installed on my laptop to try some stuff out with it, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe this is as good a time as any to start it up again.

</comment><comment><USER49> Big fan of Pharo!

</comment><comment><USER50> First time I have heard of this. What does it offer that other languages don't? What are the downsides?

<comment><USER51> Pharo is the most actively developed and used Smalltalk environment. There's plenty of evangelism and information on the Web about it in a similar way to Lisp. Pharo takes the "integrated" in IDE to a whole new level, which is one of its selling points. You can find plenty more information about how Smalltalk-style OOP is superior to Java-style OOP, so I won't rehash that here.

<comment><USER13> > Pharo is the most actively developed and used Smalltalk environment.

Is that true? VisualWorks isn't used more places? Where are you getting that information from?

<comment> d-mason One of the key words in that statement was "actively developed". Cincom, Instantiations, and GemTalk have some great people working on them, but Pharo7 had 75 different people contributing - including probably almost as many full- time people as the commercial developers (maybe more).

<comment><USER13> I love Pharo, so don't take this as me trying to take anything away. Cincom "actively develops" VW as well. I keep in touch with that side just for my own information. Pharo is doing a phenomenal job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> What is this thing - is it a programming language or an operating system or a desktop environment?

<comment><USER53> It's a Smalltalk. It's half language, half environment. The language itself is one of the inspirations for Ruby, and you will find in Pharo a purer expression of much of Ruby. The whole, 'everything is an object' applies, but so does 'everything is message passing,' and in a much more thorough way. The language's syntax is almost reminiscent of LISP in its simplicity (not its actual form, but there is so little of it that you start to feel like you're working directly with the objects, rather than programming them).

The other half is the environment. It's possible to run Pharo code, e.g., from the command line, but if you do all of your Pharo coding and debugging from a traditional editor+terminal combo, you're missing out on most of the reason to use the environment in the first place.

The environment is 'live' while you code. The objects are live, and the environment itself is an object you can interact with. When you add code, your code executes within that very same environment. There is no separate runtime. The runtime and the codetime are the same. Your code simply gets saved as part of a Pharo 'image' you are editing, and this image can be reloaded and resumed from where you left off.

The most common idiom is to program with a "TDD on steroids" approach. You create a skeleton of a few tests, and start it running. The debugger will stop and tell you the object you are sending Message X doesn't respond to that message. So while the debugger has paused the environment, you add the method with the help of the integrated GUI. Smalltalk (the original Smalltalk) pioneered the use of a 'class browser,' which does what it says on the tin. Pharo includes and extends this concept. Once you've added your method (or even, added the class entire), just hit resume and the (incredible) debugger will take you to the next bit that needs fixed. This is a more powerful edit- and-continue that actually works.

Having said that, while I enjoy playing around with the environment and using it to prototype some class hierarchies, I've had a tough time finding a professional use for it. The very qualities that make it mind-expanding to learn and play with, seem to limit its use "in production," so to speak. Who knows, maybe I'm unique, but I couldn't see myself in a hundred years being able to convince my employer to use it.

But it really is an eye-opening experience to learn. Just like learning LISP pushed my personal boundaries although I don't use LISP at work, similarly Pharo has pushed my boundaries in a way that I highly recommend experiencing.

<comment><USER52> Thank you very much for writing this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> By the way, how do I update pharolauncher to pick this up?

</comment><comment><USER55> [https://web.archive.org/web/20190122153012/https://pharo.org...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190122153012/https://pharo.org/news/pharo7.0-released)

<comment><USER56> Documentation if, like me, you want to find out more about the language

[http://web.archive.org/web/20190118083918/http://pharo.org/d...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190118083918/http://pharo.org/documentation/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> After reading this line:

> Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language and a powerful > environment, focused on simplicity and immediate feedback.

and seeing the initial screenshot on the announcement, I thought that this was a joke post. How you can call this "focused on simplicity" while showing that horrific hodge podge of a screen shot is beyond me.

<comment> ben-coman Thanks for your feedback. Maybe it would be better to show the three tools in separate screen shots rather than overlapping.

One aspect of simplicity is its minimal syntax... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pharo_syntax_postcard.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pharo_syntax_postcard.svg)

<comment><USER58> That's a pretty chaotic postcard. I think I get the point that it's trying to make, but at first glance it doesn't exactly convey the idea of simplicity.

<comment><USER59> Keep in mind that seems to be the _entire_ syntax. Doesn't look chaotic to me, and I'm not even a Pharo (or Smalltalk) user!

<comment> ben-coman correct. that is the _entire_ syntax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Why would I use this instead of C++ for example

<comment><USER53> It's a totally separate domain. Pharo/Smalltalk is essentially pure OOP in the way that Scheme is pure FP/LISP. So for me personally, I've used to increase the depth of my understanding of programming. It can also be good for prototyping class hierarchies and the like.

You can find examples of people using Pharo in production (and far more examples of people using other, more industrial-grade Smalltalk dialects), but I personally haven't been able to think of a way to use it on real projects. But that doesn't mean that it isn't worth studying.</comment></comment>


Troubleshooting Kubernetes: How container metadata changes your point of view - <AUTHOR> https://sysdig.com/blog/container-metadata/ <comment><USER2> Hi! Very nice post. I would like to know if it's necessary to have a sysdig- agent running in each kubernetes nodes or with only one agent running in kubernetes master I can have this visualisation of the cluster. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Kamilash! You need to have an agent installed on each physical node where kubernetes is running in the cluster. Let me know if you have any other questions!</comment></comment>


How to Not Attribute to Malice Things Adequately Explained by Stupidity - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-to-not-attribute-to-malice-things-adequately-explained-by-stupidity-5n393uh5 <comment><USER2> It can definitely be a challenge to be self-aware of cognitive biases, but my personal variation of Hanlon's razor would be closer to "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by extrinsic motivation". The article has a longer version attributed to Douglas W Hubbard: _Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system of interactions._.

An outcome may be interpreted as stupidity, but I've seen otherwise smart individuals make poor decisions because of extrinsic motivation like meeting the expectations of their manager in order to succeed at (or maintain) their job, aiming for personal incentives, or avoiding consequences. If the extrinsic motivation is not (or cannot be) shared, actions or goals may appear to be irrational (or stupid).</comment>


Lessons for Brands From the Burger King Twitter Hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225862

<comment><USER2> I can't believe I missed seeing this on twitter. But I'm not sure I agree with the article's conclusions. The author writes, "As bad as it seemed, the fallout won't be severe—just a week or so of mass embarrassment and a lifelong cautionary tale for PR pros, marketers, and social media gurus everywhere." I think the fall-out could be substantially longer term.

<comment><USER3> Yes, because people care about Burger King's twitter account in a way that is meaningful to their bottom line. I think it'll probably help them, if anything. In a roundabout, unintentional way, Burger King got the attention of a wide audience that largely ignores them. I'm going to go eat a Whopper.

<comment><USER2> fair point. Except I don't believe you about the whopper

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Change your passwords regularly." Does it really makes sense? Even if I use keepass to randomly generate a giant password to each different account I have? I don't understand why I'll be more secure if I change my passwords regularly.</comment>


The $100 muon detector - <AUTHOR> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-100-muon-detector <comment><USER2> Imagine outfitting a datacenter with these, and using them to understand the rate of bit flips in your processors. Maybe we'll find some parts of the Earth have fewer cosmic rays hitting there, and are thus are more naturally suited to being datacenters.

<comment><USER3> The basements of large buildings made from concrete spring to mind, then geographical areas that are at or below sea level.

Random thought: anti-coincidence detector? A detector above the RAM chips and one below with data processing set so that if the detector above gets a count and the one below does not or sees a count with significantly lower energy, you _know_ some energy has been absorbed somewhere near the RAM.

<comment><USER4> > _The basements of large buildings made from concrete spring to mind_

What is concrete made out of? Rocks? What do rocks contain? Radioactive elements.

So that's not actually the best way to protect against radiation.

<comment><USER5> The energy involved in radioactive decay is far less than that of cosmic rays. If the goal is to protect ICs from bit flips then indeed putting them under concrete or natural rock will reduce them.

<comment><USER6> You don't have a background in nuclear spectroscopy, and I claim my £5.

The irony of this: what is typically used for nuclear spectroscopy? Semiconductor detectors? If you get one out -- albeit probably a geranium^Wgermanium detector rather than silicon, if you do gamma rays -- potassium-40 products stand out in a typical environment. (I've mostly done that over sandstone -- why the lab was there; it may be different somewhere like Edinburgh.) Concentrated in a calibration source rather than a concrete block, it would be controlled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01196](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01196)

<comment><USER8> The paper contains the following link to the supplementary material which contains BOM, PCB drawings and some code:

[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/102942](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/102942)

Edit: spelling and a little more info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given muons can catalyse the nuclear fusion of deuterium and tritium I wonder if you could extend this to your own very low power fusion reactor? Not quite sure where you get the deuterium and tritium.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon- catalyzed_fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion)

<comment><USER10> Tritium from firearms optics or iron sight paint and you'd need to make the deuterium. Both quite expensive and still very doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting, I was just looking at the SiPM (its $132 qty 1 ([http://sensl.com/estore/microfc-60035-smt/)](http://sensl.com/estore/microfc-60035-smt/\))), nice to see it in use.

</comment><comment><USER12> Any practical use?

<comment><USER13> It's a great educational project for a physics class, from what I can tell. The article ([http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01196](http://arxiv.org/abs/1606.01196)) is nicely detailed and accessible to undergraduates. Good introduction to instrument design and construction, especially if (as the author suggests) the students are asked to write their own analysis software for it.

As far as applications go, the article offers a few ideas:

 _1\. Measure the relative depths of subway stations across the city, using the measured muon rates.

2\. Test relativistic time dilation on the cosmic ray flux by measuring the flux at various elevations, such as in an airplane or on a mountain, compared to sea level.

3\. Investigate correlations between the atmospheric temperature/pressure/humidity and the count rate.

4\. Investigate seasonal variations in muon rates.

5\. Using multiple detectors, measure the angular muon rate by looking at the coincidence rate.

6\. Lower the gain of the circuit to look at high-energy stopping muon events. Investigate whether or not one can see the Michel electron from the muon decay._

Tempted to build one, but I don't immediately understand how it discriminates between muons and other forms of ionizing radiation that an ordinary Geiger counter will pick up.

<comment><USER14> Scintillators are able to resolve particle energy, and can be used to measure a spectrum. Muons have very high energy, which can be used to identify them.

For extra certainty, you can use two stacked scintillators and only count a signal if it occurs in both of them within nanoseconds. This also allows determining the rough direction the particle came from since a particle that comes in at a low angle will not hit both detectors. Changing the distance between the scintillators will change the solid angle the instrument can 'see'. (as given by 5 in your list)

This guide for a student experiment has more background than the paper you linked:

[http://home.fnal.gov/~group/WORK/muonDetection.pdf](http://home.fnal.gov/~group/WORK/muonDetection.pdf)

<comment><USER15> > Scintillators are able to resolve particle energy

No, scintillators only detect a particle going through.

<comment><USER16> My (NaI based) gamma spectrometer disagrees.

<comment><USER17> I suspect that this is a question of energy. At high energies, it's difficult/impossible to stop a particle, so you place a row of scintillators out, bend the charged particle path using a magnetic field and measure its displacement (and thus velocity and thus energy).

At lower energies, you can stop the particle in, e.g. an NaI detector which is known as calorimetry. Typically, of course, cosmic rays are quite high energy and given the low rate of muon interaction calorimetry is difficult/impossible. A HEP physicist may use both techniques, e.g. by using heavy-metal plates to cause an EM cascade and measure the resultant shower in a crystalline detector. But typically when one talks of scintillator devices (and almost certainly in the case of cosmic rays) one talks of tracking and measuring deflection in magnetic fields if wanting to measure the energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Put it into a usb stick, or a keychain, and we could all be collecting data. The internet of things

</comment><comment><USER19> The next sensor for phones?</comment>


SC-IM – An ncurses spreadsheet program for the terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im <comment><USER2> A few other terminal based spreadsheets:

Visidata [https://www.visidata.org/](https://www.visidata.org/)

Oleo [https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/](https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/)

Teapot [https://www.syntax-k.de/projekte/teapot/](https://www.syntax-k.de/projekte/teapot/)

<comment><USER3> The original Lotus 1-2-3 was 'terminal' based too ....

<comment><USER2> Sure, and Visicalc before that, probably others.

<comment><USER4> I believe that VisiCalc was the first to ship a functional spreadsheet. I remember watching RichHarris's "Rich Harris - Rethinking reactivity" video introducing Svelte 3, and he discussed an earlier academic spreadsheet concept.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AdNJ3fydeao](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AdNJ3fydeao)

I used the following "terminal" spreadsheets

VisiCalc on a Radio Shack Model III

Microsoft MultiPlan on MS-DOS

Lotus 1-2-3 on MS-DOS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I first discovered sc by accident: sc was the "fast" abbreviation for "score" on the MUDs I was working on at the time. made for an interesting shock and great find once I realized what it was.

I still use sc sometimes, especially when I want super-easy computations in a very small window without a ton of extra "chrome" getting in my way. it makes layout math very easy and fast.

it made me smile seeing it, and seeing the grey link show up here on HN.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been using sc for many years. As others have noted, it's lightweight and fast. Some of it's unusual features are:

1\. Each cell can contain both a label and a value, so you don't need an extra column to label numeric values.

2\. Cell editing is done using vi keybindings.

3\. Files are stored in a very readable, pure text format.

The biggest drawback of sc is there is no undo. If you delete something by mistake, you can't bring it back. This is the biggest reason to choose SC-IM, IMHO.

Unfortunately, the menu commands in SC-IM are not the same as the ones in sc, which is a real problem on a keyboard-based spreadsheet and you have developed sc muscle memory :(. SC-IM's help menu is also hard to read in narrow terminal window, because it uses fixed-width line endings that cause every line to improperly wrap. The fact that sc is included by default in most, if not all, Linux distributions makes it so convenient to install and use I likely won't ever change.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool. I use original sc almost every day. Is this from the same code base?

</comment><comment><USER8> Genuinely curious, what reasons are there to use this instead of a GUI spreadsheet application?

<comment><USER9> I'm not a fan of LibreCalc, and I don't know of many other GUI spreadsheet programs for Linux. A terminal-based program is also attractive because it can easily be scripted.

I once had to use sc-im because when I tried to open a ~very~ large file it crashed all the GUI programs I tried.

<comment><USER10> Gnumeric and Calligra Sheets are 2 other GUI spreadsheets for Linux. Calligra is the name for what used to be the KOffice suite from the KDE project.

I can't speak to the usefulness of either especially since I have no idea what your use case is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Coming from a DOS background, this gave me nostalgia for Lotus-123.

</comment><comment><USER12> This pairs well with WordGrinder, a word processor (not text editor) for the terminal.

[http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/](http://cowlark.com/wordgrinder/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Visidata isn't exactly a spreadsheet, but deserves a mention.

[https://www.visidata.org/](https://www.visidata.org/)

</comment><comment><USER14> SC original authors are James Gosling and Mark Weiser (!)

</comment><comment><USER15> Remember Lotus 123? Quattro Pro?

There was a time where terminal spreadsheets was the regular way to work with spreadsheets.

</comment><comment><USER16> No really about the software itself but it's fantastic it uses regular 'ol make (and it looks like it provides a BSD makefile too!).

I'm seeing more and more of what I feel are bloated and unnecessary build systems, ninja, cmake, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> I used sc back in the day for many light tasks. I had no idea that James Gosling was an author. (Or didn't know who James Gosling was, at the time.) It's great to see that it's being maintained in some form!

</comment><comment><USER18> I used Visicalc in the early 80s (maybe first around 1982). Reminds me of a colorful version of that.

Did some awesome things with Visicalc and Wordperfect back in the 80s.

</comment><comment><USER19> I absolutely adore sc(1) and enjoy whiling away time by crapping lovingly hand-crafted data in it.

</comment><comment><USER20> ncurses gives it arrow key navigation, this is cool. Every single distribution needs this to run WITH disk partitioning software. EVERY.

As it is, I have to slipstream DOS box, and run as-easy-as... royal pain. Best reason to run linux ever. ( besides the nifty tee shirts )

</comment><comment><USER21> Fun fact, the author of sc James Gosling went on to design the java programming language.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nurses. Sadly. The other thread using python to do a II has more platform because python And its Screen have more platform.</comment>


"Your password should be committed to memory rather than using a password mgr" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TD_Canada/status/578636864053256192

<comment><USER2> This is an unfortunate problem with a lot of online banking systems. The bank I use doesn't even let me use special characters in my passwords, or passwords longer than 16 characters. It's a shame that the one online system that should be the most secure has a password policy worse than a browser game...

<comment><USER3> Yup, banks are one of the largest problems.

On of my banks forces a 4-digit, number only password, that needs to be rotated every 90 days, with no consecutive numbers, can't repeat all passwords, no numbers repeated, and a few other conditions.

Heck, even random generated numbers will fail to get accepted sometimes (1671 has two ones. 1894 has two consecutive numbers. etc).

It starts to get really hard to pick new ones as time goes by and you've already used up lots of memorable patterns.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you'll run out of combinations in your lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Password manager?

Hargreaves Lansdown, a UK broker big enough to hold people's pensions, asks you for eg the first, third and eighth letter of your password.

So not only no password manager but they are almost certainly storing my password in plain text.

They supplement this "security" by asking for a username in the format <name><2 digit number> and your date of birth...

<comment><USER6> That may be against FSA regulations.

When I worked in banking that type of policy would have been torn apart by any competent auditor, an internal audit at that.

If you're their customer or just concerned, write an email to the FSA, as certainly using a birth date as a username is phishy to the extreme.

<comment><USER7> Sadly it's not but it's also doesn't mean that they store you PW in plain text. Verified by Visa or 3Dsecure uses a similar scheme, they has the passwords however they chop them single chars and use a salt which is derived from your PAN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I vaguely remember hearing this line of reasoning behind Banks and their password complexity restrictions:

"Users are more likely to forget complex passwords than simple ones. So in order to save resources on providing support to users of lost passwords, we force them to make their passwords relatively simple, and we can afford to do that because we have other more advanced mechanisms in place to secure accounts (secret questions, IP restrictions, log-in pattern heuristics, etc)"

Not that I agree with it. I still see no reason why they couldn't leave the choice of password complexity to the user. A complex password in addition to their "advanced" security mechanisms is always going to be more secure than a simple password in combination with these same mechanisms.

I suppose the real reason is probably something to do with not wanting to upgrade their "battle-tested" legacy systems that simply don't support complex passwords. Which I can sympathize with due to the risks involved in performing such upgrades.

Still, I imagine sooner or later their hands will be forced by a high profile data breach of some kind at a big-name bank that exploits the limited protection these simple passwords can provide.

</comment><comment><USER9> Previously, TD online passwords were only a maximum of eight characters and you were not allowed special characters. Also, I heard that letters were case insensitive.

This is their current password requirements: Password tips:

* Your password must include at least one letter, one number, and be 8-32 characters long. To make it stronger, include upper and lower case letters and special characters.

* Your password should be unique. Memorize it and do not disclose it to anyone else

* Avoid using names, dates or numbers tied to your identity (such as birthday, family name, pets, street)

* Use a password that differs from your other banking, email and social media accounts. Change it periodically, ideally every 90 days

</comment><comment><USER10> Write your username/password combos on paper, in a code that is contained in your will if you don't trust those who could access it. Your next of kin will thank you.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here are my 2 cents...

The problem that some people are missing is that on most mobile platforms there are not restrictions to the clipboard, and virtually any application which is installed on the device can use it.

If the mobile platform would've supported clipboard isolation, or the application could plug into a password manager directly to retrieve the credentials that would be a completely different story. An "acceptable" alternative would be to implement an indirect clipboard in which a trusted keyboard application can replay the string for a short duration but that's not going to happen either.

The funny thing about password managers is that people claim they use them because they can't remember a complex password, while that's might be true but it also means that the password they use for the PWM is not complex enough to be used for say online banking in their minds which makes the fact that they use a PWM a bit ironic.

Whats worse is that probably most people who use a PWM on a mobile device choose to have a PIN lock on it after supplying the initial PW which reduces the PW complexity even further.

If you want to use a PWM on a mobile device i strongly suggest get some BT/NFC token based solution, while it's not the most secure one it's several orders of magnitude more secure than using a PWM on the common mobile platforms today.

Also as far as PW complexity goes while it's true that having a password like Password123 isn't a good idea, having something that looks like this isn't $qE`ADYCI=5% much better. There is an old XKCD comic about it and it's some what true that most randomly generated passwords are hard to remember but technically easier for a computer to brute force than a strong pass phrase.

If we are talking about hash braking then for example the following password melonyogurtstrawberry will take 2402661779222536 years 160 days 4 hours 58 minutes and 56 seconds to break (5.388571461264625e+29 password combinations), while the password $qE`ADYCI=5% will take only 167777774 years 185 days 20 hours 22 minutes and 17 seconds 3.7628372639504774e+22 password combinations). Both calculations are for an unslated SHA1 at 7000 Kh/s, and while taking into account the charset of both passwords so lcasealpha only for the 1st one, a mixedcase alpha numeric + all symbols for the 2nd one.

So while it might not seem like 3-4 random words form a more complicated password they do. Now before you go into dictionary attacks and say common words are easy to generate for a computer generating a string like melonyogurtstrawberry takes just as much time as generating something like $qE`ADYCI=5%, and while it's true that you might take just the most common words in the English language and do all possible combinations you are still left with 99955939123250 combinations if you take the 7000 most common words and use a 4 word pass phrase. And considering that most people have a vocabulary much greater than that with access to common "pop culture" words which are not part of the official English language the number of potential combinations is much much greater than that (which is good enough to begin with).

So yeah while it might not be popular to say using PWM's is not the most secure solution, the truth is that its not, at least not as how I've seen most people implement and use them.

I do use a PWM mostly because melonyogurtstrawberry still wont pass asinine password complexity calculators which look at the charset rather than the bitsize of the password. However i don't copy paste my passwords and i use a key file stored on a Token (Aladdin/Safenet eToken) to store the decryption key for the PWM DB.

On mobile phones i rather use long pass phrases which are easy enough to remember, i do add numbers and common substitutions to them tho which are not any harder to remember for me than 4 random words after couple of uses but are really not needed since even lower case alpha provides all the password complexity you can dream off if you reach 20+ chars.

<comment><USER11> Take a look at Keepass2Android, I like it a lot.

 _> An "acceptable" alternative would be to implement an indirect clipboard in which a trusted keyboard application can replay the string for a short duration but that's not going to happen either._

Actually Keepass2Android does just that - it provides an (optional) dedicated keyboard layout that you can install and activate.

 _> Whats worse is that probably most people who use a PWM on a mobile device choose to have a PIN lock on it after supplying the initial PW which reduces the PW complexity even further._

Some password managers have the option for using a part of your password after the database is unlocked - you get a limited number of tries (configurable) and the database locks if you don't guess the short code.

<comment><USER7> Apple doesn't allow replacement keyboards AFAIK considering that what was the post about.

I use Keepass with an eToken on my PC, found too many things about the Android version if it that i don't like :)

As for the PIN part, most people will setup a 4 or 5 digit pin, you would be surprised how many PIN locks can be broken with using the 10 most common PIN's avoiding most lockouts. If you have the device it self then avoiding the PIN lockout is a trivial thing to begin with. IF you talk about the Keepass2Android then it has many issues including not encrypting the the DEK in memory while being active, caching way too much shit on disk, and overall having quite questionable other implementations so there's a good chance you won't have to brute force anything.

<comment><USER12> Apple allows replacement keyboards as of iOS8

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Granted, the UI should allow paste and the password policy should allow complex passwords.

But, since when are password managers best practice? I wouldn't want to put all my eggs in one basket...

It took me more than fifteen but less than twenty years to develop the ability to commit dozens of complex passwords to memory _and_ change them frequently enough. I highly recommend that you develop this ability, too. Practice, practice.

<comment><USER2> You just can't expect the average user to go to such lengths. Password managers may not be perfect, but they are still an improvement over existing methods. This is incredibly useful when you're testing out a lot of online applications or apps that you may not ever use again - there's no way to have unique passwords for all of them without a password manager.

<comment><USER14> To be honest I don't really see the need to have different passwords for web services that I don't really care about.</comment></comment></comment>