Tesla's solar factory is exporting most of its cells - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-solar-exclusive/exclusive-teslas-solar-factory-is-exporting-most-of-its-cells-document-idUSKCN1SL1H5 <comment><USER2> >...accompanied a request to produce the cells in a foreign trade zone within the Buffalo plant that would allow Panasonic to import certain parts tariff- free because the finished cells would be sold overseas, not domestically. That request was granted in April.

>The zones help companies avoid, delay or pay reduced tariffs on imported parts in cases where it helps U.S. manufacturers compete with overseas rivals.

>"It is fully anticipated that the majority of the cells to be produced" in the FTZ "will be exported," the company said in its application.

>Panasonic's Canal said foreign solar panel manufacturers want the Buffalo plant's cells because solar panels assembled abroad with American-made cells can be shipped to the United States tariff-free, according to U.S. trade rules implemented last fall.

>Panasonic's Buffalo operation is one of few U.S.-based solar cell producers because it is traditionally far cheaper to make the components in other countries, putting it in a unique position to serve the foreign demand.

This is kinda hilarious. Gotta love incentives.

<comment><USER3> Wait, so if i'm reading this right the process is:

* parts can be imported tariff free into the US to be used to manufacturer cells

* cells get exported back out to other countries (to enable the tariff free importing of the parts).

* cells are then assembled into a final product over seas

* the final product is imported tariff-free due to being manufactured in the US.

Is that correct? Because if so that's hilarious and horrifying at the same time!

<comment><USER4> Seems like this is the tariffs doing exactly what they're supposed to do -- incentivize US domestic production.

> _Panasonic's Canal said foreign solar panel manufacturers want the Buffalo > plant's cells because solar panels assembled abroad with American-made cells > can be shipped to the United States tariff-free, according to U.S. trade > rules implemented last fall._

> _Panasonic's Buffalo operation is one of few U.S.-based solar cell producers > because it is traditionally far cheaper to make the components in other > countries, putting it in a unique position to serve the foreign demand._

They would have to do the assembly into panels domestically as well if they didn't have the exemption due to the cells being US built.

<comment><USER5> They're incentivizing domestic production, but at two costs: 1) environmental, from shipping stuff around the world several times (parts into the US to SolarCity, cells out of the US to final assemblers, assembled panels back into the US for final sale and use), and 2) cost to domestic purchasers. Finally there's 3) reduced demand for solar panels due to higher costs, which means we don't produce as much power this way, and instead use other means (generally fossil fuel).

All in all, it's a terrible deal for us.

If we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot on something made abroad, I propose we do it for smartphones. Slap a giant tariff on any cellphone made outside the US, like 1000%. Let's see how Americans like being stuck with their aging smartphones or having to spend $10k for a new one. Oh yeah, make sure the tariff applies to the LCD/OLED screens too, since we can't make those here.

<comment><USER4> Just to put it in perspective, the 30% tariff on imported cells resulted in a net impact of about a 5% cost increase to the end consumer. [1]

The basic macroeconomic equations always tilt to the side of free trade. I majored in economics. The basic theories work in an ideal and simplified world, and don't account for all the variables. The "hollowing out" of American manufacturing was a result of globalization spurred by free trade. Any government intervention which isn't a subsidy is going to be less than ideal theoretically, but in a geopolitical reality can still be the right choice.

And to be sure, both the tax credit and net metering still provide a huge government subsidy for adding solar generation.

[1] - [https://news-media.energysage.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/05...](https://news-media.energysage.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/05/Price_Impact_Solar_Tariff-1024x555.png)

<comment><USER6> > The "hollowing out" of American manufacturing was a result of globalization > spurred by free trade.

Putting aside the question of whether domestic manufacturing is more desirable than domestic production in other industries, this claim is not borne out by the data. Real manufacturing output is at an all-time high, passing the 2007 peak last year: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS)

Perhaps you mean manufacturing _employment_?

<comment><USER7> There's an article that claims that domestic manufacturing numbers are very misleading, because of stuff like this:

"To make the output volume comparable from one year to the next, the statisticians aggregating the data adjust for price changes, as well as improvements in product quality. For example, let's say statisticians want to figure out how much the sales of Intel processors grew in 2017 versus 2016.

The problem is, the processor released in 2017 is superior to that sold in 2016 in many tangible ways. But how do you account for the fact that a 2017 processor provides users with more value? In general, statisticians assume the difference in value between the two models is just the difference in their prices. If, say, the 2017 processor costs twice as much as the 2016 one does, then selling one 2017 processor counts as selling two of the 2016 versions in the statisticians' books."

[https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about- manufacturing-...](https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about- manufacturing-thats-cost-americans-millions-of-jobs/)

<comment><USER6> This critique doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why _wouldn 't_ you count a processor that costs twice as much as twice the economic output?

It's vaguely reminiscent of the claim that inflation data is understated because computers at the same price have gotten _better_... except opposite. There's no adjustment for quality in the sense that a quality improvement without a change in price is estimated & counted. It's only if the processor's _actual_ price doubles — i.e. it brings in twice as much revenue!

Is that even something we observe in computers to a significant extent? Even if it is, is it a bad thing? If homes increase in size by 50%, simultaneously increase in price by 50%, and an equal quantity of them are sold, is home production not up 50%?

This feels like an argument that automation in manufacturing has only increased because the distribution of production has shifted towards the highly automated semiconductor industry, but it's couched in a bizarre claim that increases in monetary value of output for the computer industry just don't count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _California state data shows 21 Solar Roof systems were connected by the > state's three investor-owned utilities as of Feb. 28. Only a few others were > connected in the northeastern United States [...]_

Amazing that Solar Roof got so much news coverage for what, in the end, amounted to practically nil.

I am frequently extremely critical of Elon Musk, but I cannot help but admire his marketing and promotion skills. I believe they are even above Steve Job's. And I'm not being sarcastic, I mean this sincerely.

Every other car company needs a huge marketing budget; Tesla has consistently been getting front page press coverage for free, for more than a decade.

<comment><USER9> Both what Musk and Jobs do, are bad for consumers.

Both companies are extremely selective in what they say, and lie about their features, quality and accomplishments.

Not every company does this and gets away with it. But Tesla and Apple manage.

I wonder what demographic of people are okay with lies.

Edit, would someone explain why lying to consumers is a good thing?

<comment><USER4> Apple and Tesla are two of the most loved companies in the world by their customers. Tesla actually just won the "Most Loved Brand" rating from Auto Trader [1].

Neither company is perfect, or makes perfect products. Turns out in this world perfect isn't a requirement. Companies can "get away" with failing to deliver 100% of what they promised, when they promised it, if the end result is still delightful.

In short, both Apple and Tesla make _delightful_ products.

[1] - [https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-most-loved-brand-auto- trader...](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-most-loved-brand-auto- trader-2019-new-car-awards/)

<comment><USER10> >Tesla actually just won the "Most Loved Brand" rating from Auto Trader

I suspect this rating will probably do a 180 soon. Tesla cars (all of them) aren't that old. Just wait until a lot of owners are thoroughly in the used bracket and problems like [1] and [2] start rearing their head.

[1] - [https://carbuzz.com/news/tesla-owners-are-furious-and- nothin...](https://carbuzz.com/news/tesla-owners-are-furious-and-nothing-is- being-done)

[2] - [https://www.thedrive.com/news/27945/a-single-component- can-b...](https://www.thedrive.com/news/27945/a-single-component-can-brick- older-teslas-and-tesla-wont-fix-it)

<comment><USER4> One thing to keep in mind is that every Model S and X car is built to order. Whereas the Model 3 is mass produced up front. Parts availability for a mass produced car at a run rate of nearly 500k units/year (by the end of 2019) is going to be very different than parts availability for a made-to-order car selling 50k units / year.

Tesla has to scale their service capacity tremendously. But they know this, and talk about it a lot with investors. At the end of 2016 they had made a cumulative 170k cars, by 2017 it was 272k, 2018 it was 526k, and by the end of 2019 it will be nearly 1 million.

They have a technically sophisticated product which would ordinarily result in a tremendous number of service calls for things which aren't even technically repairs. I think the huge base of YouTube videos and forum posts helps saved them a _lot_ in this regard, as I will turn to Google searches for answers before calling Tech Support.

Tesla does have a very unique service model. They have entire states which legally bar them from operating service centers. They do mobile service in your driveway. They will text back and forth with you to help resolve an issue, and remote access your vehicle logs to diagnose a problem. The car will pre-order parts at your local service center if it detects certain anomalies.

I am sure that a minority of owners will experience Tesla "service hell". But I doubt very much that the Model 3 will turn out to be a lemon. So I think the rating will stand the test of time, particularly with OTA updates continuously making the car better in many measurable ways on a practically monthly basis.

<comment><USER11> So Tesla competes in the premium market segment and outsources support, partially, to Google search, YouTube and do it yourself-tutorials? Doesn't sound very premium to me. Cars the age of the average Tesla are supposed to run. And for that price tag customers can and do expect prompt service.

But I have to admit, marketing vise Tesla and Musk are even better than VW. Which _is_ an achievement.

<comment><USER4> Tesla incentivized the massive library of tutorials on YouTube, Tesla blogs, and such with their referral code program.

It's a huge asset, and strictly better than not having that fan base out there explaining and demo'ing every little new feature that Tesla releases. I'm not sure how you consider that a negative.

Car companies have always strived for a loyal following of ardent fans to talk ceaselessly about how much they love their vehicle. Tesla does it better than most.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SolarCity was initially a different Musk project, that ended in bankruptcy and then he made Tesla buy it to cover the losses. This sounds like they are effectively liquidating SolarCity and trying to make the factories profitable (at least for Panasonic).

<comment><USER13> Don't remember SolarCity declaring bankruptcy.

<comment><USER14> It probably would've if it didn't become part of Tesla, but yeah it didn't.

<comment><USER15> Do we have any indications of this? Or is this just more wild speculative hate towards Musk?

<comment><USER16> Many questioned the SolarCity deal from the beginning. It was all over the financial news. There is also a shareholder lawsuit over it.

[https://tslaq.org/solarcity-lawsuit/](https://tslaq.org/solarcity-lawsuit/)

[https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/20/why-investors- shou...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/20/why-investors-should-have- known-teslas-solarcity-a.aspx)

"What's becoming increasingly clear about Tesla's buyout of SolarCity is that it was a huge benefit to Musk and his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. The three had $100 million of solar bonds issued by SolarCity, bonds that were recently bought back by Tesla. The three will have bonds transfered to Tesla under the same terms, unlike outside investors, but would you rather have a struggling SolarCity owe you $100 million, or market darling Tesla, who has easy access to equity markets?

The debt is on top of the 22.2 million SolarCity shares that Musk turned into Tesla shares and the 2.3 million shares the Rives converted. Had SolarCity gone bankrupt, as some major residential solar rivals have done, rather than being bought by Tesla, they would have lost hundreds of millions combined.

A bailout of their SolarCity stake to save Musk and the Rives hundreds of millions is worth considering when you see SolarCity's operations being shut down and manufacturing being turned over to Panasonic. At this point, it doesn't look like the SolarCity acquisition was a good deal at all. Musk could prove that wrong eventually, but so far, there's little indication he has much interest in growing solar under Tesla's umbrella."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At the time that Tesla and SolarCity merged, the major synergy touted was selling cars, power-walls and solar panels together at the Tesla dealership. They eliminated most of SolarCity's other sales channels like door-to-door sales, and the Home Depot partnership, to focus on sales in the dealerships. Since then their sales have plummeted.

Now Tesla is closing most of its dealerships, eliminated the main sales channel SolarCity had remaining. It looks like their plan is to operate with online-only sales, skipping even an in-person estimate visit, and offloading that do the customers.

I originally thought that the merger was a really bad deal for Tesla. I didn't realize how bad a deal it would be for SolarCity as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> I actually thought the solar rooftop was really cool when it launched, and if I owned a home I would consider buying it. What happened? It sounds like Tesla intentionally sabotaged it.

<comment><USER19> It seems to have been just one of those hype cons that Musk is so good at. Musk pitched it in order to rescue the investment made by SpaceX into Solar City.

Every time some approach fails economically/financially, Musk comes up new technology that needs some financing and sells it. He is cashing in his reputation as technical genius again and again. He hopes that that nobody notices how his ideas to turn profit constantly change and are just out of reach.

Tesla was supposed to make 20,000 Model 3 cars by December 2017. If that plan would have worked, Tesla would have needed those cells.

Large scale ramp-up of Model 3 has slowed down to crawl, and has not reached even 6000 cars per month. With those volumes debt will drown Tesla and something must be done. Musk gained new investors with full-autonomy and taxi service idea. Completely insane proposition considering the state-of-the-art and the fact that the regulation is something that the company can't really influence.

<comment><USER11> SpaceX invested in SolarCity? Didn't know that... And I found the white knight buy out of SolarCity by Tesla already sketchy compliance wise considering the shareholder structure.

<comment><USER20> Space X had over a $100 million invested in Solar City.

<comment><USER21> There is a bit of nuance to this. SpaceX invested cash reserves in Solar City bonds. This wasn't an equity investment. While one can argue that people paying their electric bill monthly isn't as risk free of US treasuries (and that would be accurate), the risk was appropriately rated based on the returns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This isn't surprising, and it's not exactly the worst outcome, either.

We already knew Tesla's solar business was WAY down, even though they (well, Solar City) got incentives for the Buffalo plant. But, since Panasonic can export these cells, the plant is still fairly busy as promised, giving much of the employment benefit that the incentives were promising in spite of the Tesla solar slowdown.

That's not a suboptimal result, given the circumstances, IMHO.

{And on the other side, Tesla is also not forbidden from using other lithium or solar cells besides the Panasonic ones if it's more convenient for whatever reason (for instance, Tesla often uses non-Panasonic cells in storage applications), so neither party is locked in to a situation that would be detrimental just because the other party can't immediately deliver. That's also good.}

I don't understand those who think this is some scandal or funny. The incentives seem to be working (stimulating domestic manufacturing) as designed, even showing to be robust in the face of Tesla's solar downturn (temporary, we hope). What's the issue? Are we just all super jaded now?

</comment><comment><USER23> It's not surprising that solar panels aren't selling so well in the U.S. given how cheap your grid power is. Try paying $0.27/kWh and see how much sense it makes to install some rooftop solar.

<comment><USER24> Sure you save long term but 4 in 10 Americans can't come up with $400 let alone however much this roof will cost. It's a problem of a lack of cash on hand more than electricity costs, solar pays for itself in x amount of years no matter how much you pay per kWh, and in some cases you can sell excess back to the grid.

[https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2018-economic- we...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2018-economic-well-being- of-us-households-in-2017-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So Tesla paid $2.6B for SolarCity, but that didn't even include cell manufacturing so they aren't benefitting from this tariff-stimulated demand for foreign export, Panasonic is?</comment>


Kindness, Wickedness and Safety - <AUTHOR> http://brooker.co.za/blog/2019/08/12/kind-wicked <comment><USER2> I can't resist to make a parallel with good or poor implementation of 6 sigma, 5S or any other lean methodology. If the environment is kind, they will help the worker and indeed increase the productivity. If not, they will squeeze him, and in the end become counterproductive.

It seems that avoiding wicked environments is extending far beyond security. Wickedness or fairness may have compounding effects on many subjects. I haven't found a study about it with a quick search.

</comment><comment><USER3> I prefer the word robust. Where most if not all reachable failure states are not total disaster.

The other word is reasonable: failure states are possible to reason about immediately, correctly and fully.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how much troubleshooting and debugging strategies in early designs play into the long term niceness of systems. Software and hardware developers who love debugging wicked systems may likely lead to the development of wicked products and processes. If debugging is a first class deliverable of the project then maybe the end product will be less wicked?

I have seen so many complex systems that are wicked to debug as they had absolutely no formal debugging strategy. Many failed as a result of this.

Needless to say, I am a big debug first kinda guy.

</comment><comment> throwaway-1436 Reminded me of Bret Victor's dynamicland and this course on quantum computing: [https://quantum.country/qcvc](https://quantum.country/qcvc).

It's easy to forget that we can use all sorts of technology as mental crutches for making environments more kind and learnable.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that a guy in Seattle has a South African TLD for his blog.

<comment><USER6> He got his Phd from Cape Town Uni and probably grew up there.

My limited experience of SF left with the impression that fewer than 10% of people who work there grew up in CA let alone SF.

Seattle is probably similar.

<comment><USER5> > He got his Phd from Cape Town Uni and probably grew up there.

Yeah, I couldn't find anything on his site about that. Where did you find that info?

<comment><USER7> His LinkedIn.

By the way, with no judgment intended, the way your statements are worded is noticeably non-normative. Thought you might like to know.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I don't have a LinkedIn profile, so I wouldn't have been able to see that anyway.

What do you mean by non-normative? Can you give an example of a "normative" version of my statements?

<comment><USER7> No, if I do I will be downvoted and that will impact my ability to post here.

<comment> em-bee huh, how so? downvotes on a single comment won't impact you at all. i'd also like to know what you mean.

<comment><USER7> If you're sufficiently downvoted you'll get soft-banned. I'm sort of on the threshold already.

<comment> em-bee hmm, i think that should only happens with moderator intervention. if it happens they'll see that your response was requested, so as long as it doesn't contain any rants or attacks it should be fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Results of recent PostScript CharString security research - <AUTHOR> http://j00ru.vexillium.org/?p=2520 Presentation slides: http://j00ru.vexillium.org/dump/recon2015.pdf <comment><USER2> Does anybody know the precise (more precise than given in the slides) reason Windows had to put a font renderer in the kernel? That's absolutely insane.

EDIT: holy jeez, this isn't even the whole thing. MS has their own first-party ttf renderer in the kernel too, what the heck?

<comment><USER3> "In the kernel" is a bit of a misnomer in Windows. The graphics subsystem is not in the NT kernel (which is a pretty-minimal microkernel), though it is within the same Win32 process as the one containing NT kernel services.

In other words: "within the kernel" from a userland perspective; in a separate security domain from NT's own perspective.

<comment><USER2> Does it execute in ring 0? I don't really understand how Windows works.

<comment><USER4> Yes, as do the rest of win32k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great work. From looking at the PDF [1], it seems that this was done with something like IDA Pro rather than from sources. I imagine work like this would be a good candidate for the Microsoft Shared Source Initiative [2].

[1] [http://j00ru.vexillium.org/dump/recon2015.pdf](http://j00ru.vexillium.org/dump/recon2015.pdf)

[2] [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/sharedsource/](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sharedsource/)

<comment><USER4> Not even the PDB symbols are available for ATMFD, probably because it is third party code originally included into Win2000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The biggest attack vector I see here is embedded fonts; perhaps allowing browsers to download and use embedded fonts should be restricted to trusted sites too, since some font formats _do_ contain an embedded Turing-complete language. It gives a whole new meaning to the term "web-safe fonts"...

<comment><USER7> Turing-completeness isn't a problem _per se_ (lots of people get this wrong) because no attacker is trying to _compute_ something: they want to run some shellcode, or redirect an HTTP request, or display something on screen, or something like that, _none_ of which a Turing machine can do.

The worst a Turing machine can do is run forever, which is easily prevented by limiting the number of steps it can ran.

<comment><USER8> this really misses the point/problem entirely, the problem with parsing a turing complete format is that verifying data encoded with it in the general case (as valid/non malicious/useful) is equivilent to the halting problem.

They are dangerous to parse not because they can potentially run forever, but because due to their expressiveness, it is very easy to arbitraily trigger bugs, aided by the massive nessisary complexity of most parsers.

Those two things together make avoiding logic errors invoked by malicious data, leading to exploitability essentially impossible to prevent.

Another factor is it is impossible to formally verify something that executes turing complete code.

<comment><USER7> Would a primitive recursive language be less dangerous? Well, it depends on the language.

> They are dangerous to parse not because they can potentially run forever, > but because due to their expressiveness, it is very easy to arbitraily > trigger bugs, aided by the massive nessisary complexity of most parsers. > > Those two things together make avoiding logic errors invoked by malicious > data, leading to exploitability essentially impossible to prevent.

Actually, the _parsers_ for these languages are not too complex -- the problem is that they're written in a language ill-suited to writing parsers. The interpreters _are_ complex, but all the exploitability is very easily avoided: by writing the interpreter in a memory-safe language.

This problem might be bug-prone, but a bug in a font interpreter should lead to whacky looking fonts, and never to remote code execution. The fact that it routinely does just shows we're using the wrong tools for the job.

<comment><USER8> there are more classes of exploits than simply memory management errors. For instance look at the laundry list of issues surrounding verification of x.509 certificates. Deciding a forged certificate is valid is catastrophic, and invokes no sort of memory related exploit at all.

<comment><USER7> X.509 certificates don't contain any Turing-complete languages, so the fact that X.509 interpreters have the same class of bugs as font interpreters, that supports my point that Turing-completeness itself is not the problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GoFundMe seized $1337, blocked my book campaign and account - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@romanpushkin/gofundme-seized-1337-blocked-my-book-campaign-and-account-bf25e2026c21 <comment><USER2> The screenshot of the CAPTCHA clearly shows that it was entered incorrectly. I would suggest that entering syruc when the word was clearly ms7wt was more likely the cause for rejection.

<comment><USER3> Presumably the captcha changes after submitting, but the field doesn't clear. The previous captcha was probably "syruc".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would a friend pay through GoFundMe, who takes a cut, rather than give to you directly?

<comment><AUTHOR> You've just ruined their business model. But this is how it works. Your friends support you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If that person donated by card they should dispute the transaction with their card issuer.

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks like fraud or money laundering or tax evasion.

Especially since you were raising a small amount, there was a single cross border transaction, and it was for $1337 for goodness sakes.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like, but it wasn't. I agree they can do whatever they want with their users. But at least, somebody from GoFundMe should reach out and explain. And if it happened to me, it can happen to you, and you should know about it.

P.S. there was no cross-border, it's US-to-US transaction.</comment></comment>


Show HN: JSFiddle-style object-relational BaaS - <AUTHOR> http://back.io

<comment><USER2> It is very difficult to read the documentation: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/fvd- data/notes/424868/1432256846-TP...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/fvd- data/notes/424868/1432256846-TPUgEN/screen.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I need a full-screen button to expand the docs pane.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a backend-as-a-service that I've been working on for a few months. It's for people to build simple apps with. Any feedback would be very helpful.

<comment><USER3> This service is a little bit slow when accessed for the first/second time. After been CDN-cached, everything is fine.

The full log can be found here, [http://pastebin.com/9SLsLZCS](http://pastebin.com/9SLsLZCS)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks for the report.

There is a code generation process that needs to occur, but I suppose this could be optimized.

<comment><USER3> Got another error: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/back.io/client.js.map](https://s3.amazonaws.com/back.io/client.js.map) 403 (Forbidden) then "Uncaught RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded" in the demo script.

<comment><AUTHOR> The 403 on the sourcemap is by design (I might change this), I'll have to look into the stack overflow though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > bun.name = "Sky";

> // Yep, it's saved. Seriously.

How?

<comment><AUTHOR> Async network requests wired up via Object.defineProperty()

It's covered in the docs: [https://back.io/#docs/io](https://back.io/#docs/io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> This is awesome idea. Do you have users?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but they're all isolated / custom-built at the moment ... other than the actual class editor which is built using the Back.io public API (it's a self- hosted system)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "backend cancer"

yeesh.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL -- I guess that remark could be interpreted a little crude :)</comment></comment>


Apple Defends Decision to Remove Parental Control Apps - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/apple-parental-control-apps/ <comment><USER2> I find the decision of the scorned developers to file with the European Union's competition office amusing considering the Union's incredibly strong stance on individual data privacy.

iPhones contain so much personal data on-device that Apple is absolutely responsible for protecting that data from illegitimate access. Using MDM which is clearly intended for enterprise management is an illegitimate use-case. Period.

The argument that their ability to use MDM APIs in the past and earn revenue due to a gap in Apple's vigilance dictates that they should be able to continue unimpeded is a logical fallacy.

Apple is under no obligation to offer unfettered API access to these companies just because they were filling a market need that Apple didn't want to pursue. You can tell if Apple wasn't under a market demand obligation to offer MDM to enterprises, they would cut that too.

One of the value props of the iPhone and the iOS ecosystem is that Apple exerts this level of control and editorializing on the platform. The result of which is easily seen when comparing the quantity of data mining apps on Android vs iOS.

I'm sure if I was one of these scorned developers, I would feel abused even victimized by Apple. Unfortunately that is a biased perspective. Apple is doing the right thing for consumers and end-users by blocking these apps.

The reporting on this was atrocious and seems to be a result of the recent competitive chatter about sandboxed computing platforms like iOS. Broader discussions around anti-competitive behavior on these platforms are needed, but this wasn't the poster-child.

<comment><USER3> Whatever Europe's crazy data privacy laws, it's ridiculous they'd apply to the case of a parent keeping track of their kids. The kid's right to wander into crazy elsagate videos and have covert online conversations with predators unsupervised is more important than the parent's right to protect their kid, and Apple is justified in ripping the monitoring capability out of parents' hands? Is that what you're saying?

Hopefully the parents either switch to Android if such a thing is still possible on Android or just get them flip phones with no data plan intended only for emergency calls. Where they can get a list of sent/received calls at the end of the month from the cellphone company at least, I assume.

<comment><USER4> > The kid's right to wander into crazy elsagate videos and have covert online > conversations with predators unsupervised is more important than the > parent's right to protect their kid, and Apple is justified in ripping the > monitoring capability out of parents' hands? Is that what you're saying?

No one is saying that. Just like privacy laws don't exist to protect encrypted hard drives full of pedophilia. The right to privacy does NOT enable or endorse deviancy or illicit behavior! At all! Privacy is a human right, not an _adult_ right.

Kids do deserve to have an assumption that when they are texting with their friends that their parents aren't watching them. Especially teenagers. What about the young boy in a conservative Christian family who is struggling with his sexual identity? What about the young girl who is trying to learn how to report her abusive family members? These are the reasons why children's privacy are important. Young people need their own secure places to express themselves and form an identity — that doesn't happen, thankfully, under parental supervision.

That said, of course it's a parent's job to protect their children. But spying on a personal device like a cell phone is oppressive and paranoid.

<comment><USER3> I went over abuse reporting/sexual identity in another comment, but to your point about right to privacy, I don't think there's a reasonable absolute right to privacy as a kid, at least not before maybe high school or late middle school. This doesn't mean no alone time with friends, but at least at elementary school age, internet should be monitored, and phone location tracking is certainly reasonable before high school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is...a very weird situation.

> "Over the last year, we became aware that several of these parental control > apps were using a highly invasive technology called Mobile Device > Management, or MDM.

> "MDM gives a third-party control and access over a device and its most > sensitive information, including user location, app use, email accounts, > camera permissions, and browsing history."

They make this sound like MDM is some scary third-party attack on their platform, neglecting to point out MDM is a system _they designed_. There's always been some schizophrenia from Apple around MDM (publicize new control features to admins in one release, add a big scary vague user-facing warning when that feature is actually used in the next release), but their general stance has consistently been that you, as a company, have a right to enforce whatever restrictions are available on devices used by your employees so long as _you own them_ , and so long as you accept whatever user-disclosure features they decide to implement. Likewise, you have a right to enforce a more limited suite of controls on your employee's personal devices, so long as it's all opt-in.

I would presume any parent intending to enforce restrictions on a child's device also purchased that device. So Apple's stance here is really that parents should have less control over their children's devices than employers have over those of their employees? Or are they really talking about some exploit of the MDM framework? Because the way it's phrased here clearly seems to be framing MDM in general as a nefarious tool.

<comment><USER6> > _So Apple 's stance here is really that parents should have less control > over their children's devices than employers have over those of their > employees?_

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong as I haven't used any of these apps, but I thought the point here is that it's not the parents running an MDM server. I mean, _I_ personally have long made use of MDM and profiles on iOS devices for myself and family, it's super useful (and necessary for some things like using S/MIME certs in native Mail). But I've done it via actual MDM, myself (you can also do a lot via simple distributed one shot profiles made with the free Apple Configurator software). There is no 3rd party involved.

It sounds like here that it was 3rd party apps/services that were making use of MDM functionality. "On behalf of parents" sure, but there's still a fundamentally different relationship and set of expectations for loading an app via the general App Store vs specifically enrolling a device/loading a profile from an employer someone has contractual agreements with, or someone running an MDM server themselves on their own behalf. There isn't really any way around the fact that MDM offers enormous power over devices, much of which happens without any user interaction or much (if any) exposure via the GUI. That's much of the point of it after all. That power certainly offers avenues for abuse that are different in scope.

I'm sure many of the 3rd parties are trustworthy and hopefully at least trying their best in terms of not themselves being hacked by malicious actors, but I think Apple also has a genuine legitimate concern here. A real goal for iOS is that someone can browse through the App Store and install absolutely anything they see and think looks interesting based purely on descriptions/reviews and face a known, fairly minimal and easy to reason about threat profile. Of course it hasn't always been perfect, but it's been a lot better at this then the general free for all. If some of those apps make use of MDM powers outside of normal MDM usage that breaks those expectations, that's not made up.

FWIW I personally think Apple should be required to allow other stores and permanent device owner created master signing cert loading capability, even if only via offering a more expensive "developer" model of phone with that capability not fused off. But the security and privacy tradeoffs there are worthy of consideration and efforts to find the best balances, and even in those cases I'd still be fine with Apple having their own curated App Store that remained as strict as they wished.

<comment><USER5> I see, this all makes sense to me. This is definitely not the message Apple is conveying in this statement however, if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ar-jan I wonder if they're also removing the apps used to control women's lives in Saudi Arabia.

<comment><USER7> While the apps are atrocious. The apps from what I csn tell are just front ends for websites and services being offered. They don't do anything on the phone itself that takes advantage of special permissions.

Of course they should remove them too.

<comment><USER8> I don't support the way women are treated in SA, but I don't really see why Apple should get to be the global moral police. Those applications are presumably perfectly legal where they are used.

<comment><USER9> > but I don't really see why Apple should get to be the global moral police.

Apple already takes a moral stance on certain things. This isn't a debate. If they don't want to allow something on their App store, they will shut it down, even if it's 100% legal. These are the slipper slopes people have talked about for years. This is not new.

Apple has shown that if it doesn't want to support something, they won't. This means it's perfectly reasonable to hold them to account for things that are supported by their platform. This is why some platforms simply don't do any policing, or very limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apple's long-standing policy of rolling out a new feature then criminalizing whatever subsequently competes with them doesn't need defending. There's maybe even too much defending - broken keyboards, bent iPads, anti-competitive practices, and not enough honesty or ethics in that company.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't a child's phone a managed device? Using MDM for parental control seems entirely appropriate.

<comment><USER12> The issue is who controls the MDM profile. In the case of these apps it's the app developers instead of the parents.

So by using it, you're giving some complete strangers access to snoop on everything in your child's phone. Even if you trust the developer not to abuse that, you're trusting them to keep their own systems secure _and_ to not hire an employee who might abuse it. We know how that worked out for the NSA where they had people using their surveillance programs to snoop on exes.

If you want to use MDM to manage your child's phone, the way to do that is with a service where you manage the MDM yourself like a company would do with their fleet of phones, not to hand the keys off to an untrusted third party.

<comment><USER11> > The issue is who controls the MDM profile. In the case of these apps it's > the app developers instead of the parents.

Ah. That makes perfect sense and I'm changing my mind on this one. Apple did the right thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this highlights the conflict between owner and a user. For Corporations with employees there is a clean distinctions. For kids it's a lot more difficult decision. Apple in its zeal to maintain the woke privacy friendly image (everywhere except China) made calculated decision that risk of these apps getting used in Intimate Partner Surveillance leading to negative PR is more than parents being unable to protect their kids from drugs and grooming. We will soon see how it plays out. My guess the the timer will turn red as it does when recording screen to alert user of MDM.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can't imagine growing up in a time like today where some parents think it's their right to know every single thing you do on your devices. It probably would have stunted my growth as a person in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER15> Link to Apple's Press Release : [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/04/the- facts-about-paren...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/04/the-facts-about- parental-control-apps/)

</comment><comment><USER16> If Apple really cared about developers, they should create a new set of features that allows developers to recreate the same functionality in their apps without having to use MDM tech, instead of banning them without listening to them...

<comment><USER17> From the article:

> "When we found out about these guideline violations, we communicated these > violations to the app developers, giving them 30 days to submit an updated > app to avoid availability interruption in the App Store," a spokesperson > explained. "Several developers released updates to bring their apps in line > with these policies. Those that didn't were removed from the App Store."

<comment><USER18> Realistically, 30 days may not be enough time for certain products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Everyone here is commenting about MDM being used in the enterprise, but what about schools?

I'm in education and the iOS schools we deal with use different MDM solutions, and certainly not Apple's MDM software.

</comment><comment><USER19> When Apple removes these apps, do they disappear from people who've already purchased them and, if so, do they get a refund?

<comment><USER20> They stay on the device. But if the person gets a new device and restores the phone I don't think the removed apps come back though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> FTA: "The controversy follows comments last week by chief executive Tim Cook, who said that Apple wanted to see customers spend less time on their devices."

Talk is cheap and sells well...

<comment><USER22> Apple doesn't make money from you spending all day on your phone. They would be fine if everybody would buy a phone, maybe a couple of apps, and set aside until there was a need.

You are mistaking them for Facebook or any of the other engagement-driven, ad- selling companies.

<comment><USER23> Apple most certainly makes money off of ads. It isn't a major profit center but according to the following article it is on track to rake in $2B by next year. Also they make a nice cut of sales via app purchases an in-app purchases. They. Definitely want you using your device as regularly as possible to capitalize on that revenue opportunity. Their stance on privacy and security is a marketing angle capitalizing on the fear currently out there as a result of people awakening to how much of the web is monetized (I.e. with ads).

[https://searchengineland.com/apple-search-ads-expected-to- ge...](https://searchengineland.com/apple-search-ads-expected-to- generate-2-billion-in-revenue-by-2020-306882)

<comment><USER22> Search ads, for instance in the App Store.

Again, nobody spends all day searching the App store. Apple's business model is not driven by your engagement. They make vastly more money when you make discreet choices, like buying a device, purchasing a subscription, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meg Whitman to Step Down as HPE CEO - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/meg-whitman-to-step-down-as-hewlett-packard-enterprise-ceo-1511300946 <comment><USER2> That 51 MILLION $ golden parachute must be really nice. Now she gets to go to a new place and do this all over again.

> Whitman would get nearly $91 million if HP gets acquired – more than double > her peers – and $51 million if she's forced out (not fired for cause) – > again, nearly double.

Source: [2015] [http://www.businessinsider.com/whitman-gets-51-million-if- hp...](http://www.businessinsider.com/whitman-gets-51-million-if-hp-axes- her-2015-3)

<comment><USER3> It's kind of amazing to me that there would be a bonus tied to being acquired. That would motivate the ceo to not act for the long term benefit of the company.

<comment><USER4> Shareholders are more than happy to carve up their company and feast off its remains if they come out ahead financially, and once you go public, they're all that really matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> eBay is a shadow of what it could have been, and so I really can't compliment her on her tenure there. She was on a rocket ship and took it to the moon instead of to mars. HP on the other hand was as tough as a gig as Yahoo. I don't know how you turn around a company like that. HP is a zombie company living off of its legacy.

<comment><USER6> I was at HP during the Carly years and I would say that between her and Hurd, anything that made HP anywhere close to special was destroyed by indiscriminate financial engineering. During Carleton's (Carly's real name) reign of terror, you would not be able to get office supplies at certain times of the month to make the quarterly numbers.

Our lab, which was one of the best places that I can look back on in my career, had been acquired by HP. Their messing about, sending us various failures as 'senior management' resulted in it draining all of its good people to companies such as Microsoft, Google, and etc. It was a terrible shame. Edit: I guess I was trying to say that HP legacy has been destroyed pretty good by all the mergers, cuts, 'retirements', etc.

<comment><USER7> _During Carleton 's (Carly's real name) reign of terror, you would not be able to get office supplies at certain times of the month to make the quarterly numbers_

This is a hallmark of the Telecom industry where Carly came from. Haven't spent many years there, I knew it was doom for an old tech executive to come to new tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hewlett-Packard (known for (school/desk) calculators, PC printers, chips and computer) bought Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) (known for server, mini computer) and Compaq (known for desktop and notebook computer).

All three companies were in good shape, especially Hewlett-Packard and Compaq (one of two biggest PC&notebook manufacturers).

Hewlett-Packard went all downhill in the 2000s onwards with changing CEOs doing greedy decisions and lackluster products and quality. It got worse in 2010s, and the company split to HP and HPE - now it's confusing for customers which company is responsible for what, e.g. HP "ePrint" iOS app (companion app for HP printer) is now owned by HPE and requires an enterprise login, whereas the consumer version got forked by HP and has to be discovered under a different name in AppStore. The network switches, notebook, printer, companion-software, keyboards, server storage, (most got renamed) and worse in every aspect. Yes Meg Whitman and the other CEOs (of both HPE and HP in 2010s) were bad.

<comment><USER9> The network switches and storage actually improved through acquisition which replaced their flagging HPE lines. Aruba & Nimble

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I remember correctly she said at her last HPE earnings call, "I am not going anywhere". She also stated she had much more work to do at HPE.

Now that was in response to Uber's courtship but this was so sudden you have to wonder what prompted it?

<comment><USER11> It's really not all that sudden. HPE appointed Neri as president back in June. From [https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/hpe-appoints- first-...](https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/hpe-appoints-first- president-antonio-neri-22-year-hp-veteran/2017/06/) :

The move positions Neri to become HPE's next CEO, CRN reports.

"This clearly lines up Neri to be the next in line to take the reins of HPE, there is no question about it," Bob Venero, CEO Future Tech told CRN. "This looks like it is Whitman staying true to her statement that the next CEO of HPE would be born and bred in the HPE family."

<comment><USER12> I've always been curious how those sorts of internal conversations go at that level at companies that size. Anyone have any insights to share?

<comment><USER13> Read Jack Welch's autobiography, very informative on the subject of internal car and successions

<comment><USER14> I've always been curious about this as well so thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Non-paywalled: [http://archive.is/jyavW](http://archive.is/jyavW)

<comment> m-p-3 I use this as a bookmarklet to bypass some paywalls

      javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

<comment><USER16> This is genius. Can you explain how it works?

<comment><USER17> Websites don't want to block their articles from being shared on Facebook, so they allow traffic referred by FB through. That link is Facebook's warning to users that a link they clicked on will take them offsite.

<comment><USER18> It is one of the precursors to loosing net-neutrality i.e. a tax on non FB users who pay with their privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is she planning to run for Governor again?

<comment><USER20> More likely Senate. Feinstein is up in 2018 and the tides are turning against her. It would be a tough slog but doable. Oh and she'd have to run as a Democrat. I don't think a Republican could get elected in California in 2018.

<comment><USER21> The smart move would be to say she's switching parties because of Trump, run as a conservative Democrat left of Trump but right of the progressive wing.

<comment><USER22> I feel like 2018 is going to boil down to only whether you have an (R) or (D) next to your name, if the election in Alabama is any indication.

When people will vote for a pedophile to avoid putting a checkmark next to a (D), that's when you can give up faith in the average citizen's regard for the details of an election.

<comment><USER23> He seems to be a horrible person who's done heinous things, but he's not accused of being a pedophile (except on Twitter). Words have actual meanings, and using ones like pedophile outside their proper meaning reduces their value and impact.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/roy-moore-is-not- a-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/roy-moore-is-not-a- pedophile/2017/11/19/1a9ae238-cb21-11e7-aa96-54417592cf72_story.html)

<comment><USER22> >Leigh Corfman told the Washington Post that she met Moore in 1979 when she was just 14 years old. The then-district attorney offered to watch Corfman while her mother attended a custody hearing, she said, and he asked for her phone number when he was alone with her. Corfman said that days later, Moore drove her to his house and kissed her.

[http://time.com/5029172/roy-moore-accusers/](http://time.com/5029172/roy- moore-accusers/)

Your (and the author of that op-ed) opinion and my opinion of the definition of "child" differ greatly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't know much about her and why she's leaving, but I do remember her from two years ago or something when she announced, with quite a fanfare, "The Machine". I was excited about that, and even bought HP shares as a result.

Not long after that, HP stepped down from most of their ambitions with this thing[1]

I don't know if that explains Whitman's departure, but I would not be surprised if that was taken into account.

1\. [https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/207897-hp-kills-the- mach...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/207897-hp-kills-the-machine- repurposes-design-around-conventional-technologies)

<comment><USER25> I dunnoh... even when The Machine was announced, it seemed like vaporware. If she was betting on that thing shipping, she's a bit crazy... and Ms. Whitman isn't crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The quality of HP products appears to have gone downhill. They had a perfect reputation but the last HP Envy laptop I bought about 1 year ago had lots of problems and it kept overheating to the point that I couldn't even touch the underside of it. The fan was quite loud too. After only 7 months, the hard drive failed completely.

It had so many obvious problems, it felt like nobody had actually tried using the machine in real life.

I don't think I'll buy HP again. I've lost faith in the brand.

My current laptop is a Dell and it's a huge improvement.

<comment><USER27> HP is pretty much three brands. Business HP, "Prosumer" HP and Consumer HP.

The first too are quite good, the last has never been great. (The Spectre x360 is great, the Envy x360... not so much)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> HP over the last 10 or 15 years has been a complete mess. When Meg came on board she was determined to turn HP into a consumer electronics company, the way Carly had envisioned, so it's ironic that when they split into HP Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services, she went with the later.

It's really a shame what has happened to that company and how all of the parts of HP that made up it's soul were sold off for not being profitable enough. What we have now is just another bunch of Me-Too companies that do shame to the Hewlett-Packard name(s).

<comment><USER29> I've been saying for years that HP is where good products go to die. They've been a mess, as you said, and it's not going to get any better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> And so she leaves the company gutted. Painful to see HP in tatters.

</comment><comment><USER7> In the end why was she pushed out? Was it a loss of credibility? Investors were probably happy about splitting the company. Did she lose internal credibility because she said she wasn't interesting in Uber (when she was)?

</comment><comment><USER31> It certainly has been interesting being a customer of HPE's software business (now MicroFocus) over the last few years.

</comment><comment><USER32> She was an MBB consultant turned manager turned startup CEO one-hit wonder. Although I do remember seeing the "supercar showroom" parking lot on the west side of Grelands Drive around the corner from where I lived everyday as one bookend of the dot-com era. To her credit she incubated the PayPal mafia and inflicted Teletubbies on America.

<comment><USER33> You say that like you are insulting her, but to most people in the world, "MBB(?) consultant turned manager turned startup CEO one-hit wonder." would be the best thing that happened to their life. Your description is someone who is very good at running businesses.

<comment><USER5> She may be smart and a great communicator, but eBay was a rocket ship and is a shadow of what it could have been and there was no turn around story at HP. MBB folks are often perceived as the smartest people in the room, but their ability to see around corners and to be an entrepreneur —- that I'm not sure she demonstrated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I would expect HPE to get bought by Oracle or IBM at some point in the next few years.

<comment><USER35> I don't know why oracle would want it. Since buying sun the share and recognition of sun hardware is even less than the lowest point since sun owned sun. I haven't seen a sun box in over a decade. Except eBay. I guess oracle has the cash to just buy it to lessen competition? IBM I thought was focused on power like they always are but never do anything with it. It's still damn near impossible to find a power 8 vendor.

So I guess I just don't see any reason for oracle or ibm to buy them.

<comment><USER36> > I guess oracle has the cash to just buy it to lessen competition?

> So I guess I just don't see any reason for oracle or ibm to buy them.

These two statements are at complete odds with one another. The only reason Oracle buys anyone is to kill competition against themselves - they are the penultimate 600 pound gorilla in the Enterprise Software space, with eyes on Microsoft's fast approaching taillights.

They bought Sun because it was the easiest way to get to MySQL. They wanted to buy MySQL because they thought that they could kill their single largest market competition in the FOSS database world simply by strangleholding it the same way they do with their other database products - fortunately it was protected by the GPL long before they got their hands on it. But the list goes on for as many companies as you can name that Oracle has acquired - Oracle is where tech goes to _die_ , and where tech laborers go to retire.

And in some ways, that's okay. It's healthy for the market to have trusted, long term minded players - enterprises love companies like Oracle because they know what to expect. Big price tags, but phone support and a deep ecosystem of people skilled to fix and deploy their junk. It's healthy for employees not to be looking over their shoulders and hoping Wall Street's next sneeze doesn't put them on the bread line. It only becomes unhealthy when Oracle uses its multibillion dollar cash reserves to stomp the life out of a market because it can no longer compete against it.

But, all of that said, the argument as to why Oracle might want to pick up HPE is a bit dull, I must admit. Unless they want to go for a complete vertical integration play and make it so you have to also buy their hardware to run their database engines, I can't imagine anything sticking. I also can't imagine that play working without regulators crying Unfair Competition, even with the current state of the DOJ and the constant hum of megamergers being rubberstamped. But HPE is not currently a competitive threat to... anyone? Oracle buying HPE would be a very long winded mercy killing, just like Sun.

(obligatory "my words, not my employers, yadda yadda")

<comment><USER37> No. Oracle bought Sun for control over Java, and its (ailing) Enterprise datacenter marketshare to cross sell into. Having done Sun I don't think there's anything to gain by acquiring HPE (but maybe there's a low enough price which is right.)

Re:MySQL was an inconvenience to Oracle in the Sun deal, not an acquisition target. PostgreSQL was/is a stronger OSS competitor to their DBMS tbh, due to its closer feature parity, especially PL/pgSQL - and no sign of them sponsoring (controlling) that project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why did it take too long?

</comment><comment><USER39> Is it sad that my first thought at seeing the headline was to assume she was one more person falling on their sword after sexual assault accusations?

What a world.

<comment><USER40> It really has been amazing to see the momentum building with people speaking out against aggressors. I wonder when critical mass will be reached in terms of when people feel that there's little negative consequence to sharing stories of harassment.

<comment><USER41> Sorry to be a cynic but the likely next phase will be a spate of false accusations and then a backlash. The so far largely credible victims have been receiving a great deal of well deserved attention, but attention is a profound motivator for some people; certainly enough that they'll make things up.

We're in the midst of the storm just now... In the last 48 hours we've seen Charlie Rose implode and Pelosi call for investigations of Conyers. In the last few hours John Lasseter ended up in the spotlight and got LOA-ed out of Disney. It's too early yet, but at some point an accuser will emerge with provably false claims against a popular and sympathetic figure and the worm will turn.

It's just the way of things.

<comment><USER20> It's already happening. George Takai's accuser seems to not be believed. Also Al Franken's accuser backed off when the photos of them hanging out being friendly came out along with a ton of witnesses who said they saw the two being friendly the whole time.

<comment><USER42> > Al Franken's accuser backed off when the photos of them hanging out being > friendly came out along with a ton of witnesses who said they saw the two > being friendly the whole time.

AFAIK there's a well-known phenomenon of victims later being friendly with their attackers. In general, it doesn't disprove the allegation (I don't know the details about Franken).

Based on my poor knowledge of it (and in the absence so far of anyone who knows more), it comes from the desperate need for safety by traumatized people (i.e., those in the fight / flight / freeze state), any way they can get it. That includes by later trying to placate their attackers and checking if the attacker is friendly (or safe). Remember, often attackers are someone the victims previously knew and trusted and then that trust was horribly violated, leaving the victim feeling utterly defenseless (i.e., dependent on the attacker's good will).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I never understood why she ever was.

<comment><USER44> She was hired as a hatchet man. A role she served well.

<comment><USER45> Huh. That's an interesting term. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> How do you turn around a hardware company, you dont. But it wont die either ... software rises and falls like a deritive stock, but hardwate is like the gold tgat is always good to have a stake in

My suggestion would be to become the mysql of hardware, be compatible with everyone, what if an hp could go from pc to mac? We have never had that direction. Impossible you say? That why theres profit , the market doesnt have it yet. (Mac to pc is there)

Cheaper hardware , but same env. Make it worth apples wild. Hp seems to have good salesmen and bizz connects. Big contracts are not just about tech.</comment>


Show HN: Bitcoin Christmas Tree - <AUTHOR> Using a RaspberryPi, some Candle IR LEDs, a small Christmas Tree and blockchain.info API I built the Bitcoin Christmas Tree as a weekend project :)
http://www.bitcoinchristmastree.com/ <comment><USER2> Too wasteful. Bitcoin is way too expensive. You should have done it in Stellar or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> if I had a little btc I would send.. really nice project</comment>


Let's Build a Web Server. Part 2 - <AUTHOR> https://ruslanspivak.com/lsbaws-part2/ <comment><AUTHOR> The code for the article has been updated to run under Python 3.7+</comment>


US election system reveals frightening vulnerabilities at almost every level - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2018/10/25/18001684/2018-midterms-hacked-russia-election-security-voting <comment><USER3> Paper ballots are the superior method of voting. It makes it nigh impossible to cheat at a large scale and there's a paper trail verified by multiple adversarial parties. It's also way more reliable due to the sheer simplicity of the system. For a system as important as our elections we should take every precaution possible.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't even trust mail-in ballots. I'm perfectly content to fill out my ballot ahead of time and hand-deliver it on election day.

I think it should also be a requirement to show a state or federal ID before you can cast your vote. I'm always floored when people try to defend voting without requiring any kind of identity verification. In Puerto Rico you're required to register ahead of time for a voter ID and you must present it in order to vote. If Puerto Rico, which is drastically poorer than all 50 states, can pull this off without it being considered a problem then I find it really hard to take seriously the claims of people saying it sets too high of a bar.

<comment><USER4> > I think it should also be a requirement to show a state or federal ID before > you can cast your vote. I'm always floored when people try to defend voting > without requiring any kind of identity verification. In Puerto Rico you're > required to register ahead of time for a voter ID and you must present it in > order to vote. If Puerto Rico, which is drastically poorer than all 50 > states, can pull this off without it being considered a problem then I find > it really hard to take seriously the claims of people saying it sets too > high of a bar.

The problem is that the state and federal ID system is so fucked up that it disenfranchises voters. Until that system is fixed, you can't use it for voting.

This issue then becomes a partisan one because voter fraud is so rare that it doesn't seem to need any additions, so strong pushes for voter ID laws (which almost never address the issue of the ID systems) are targeting those who are less likely to have ID, which tends to be concentrated with voting for one party. If anyone actually cared about voter ID laws for non-partisan reasons, it would go hand in hand with a national ID system.

<comment><USER5> The same proponents of stronger voter ID laws are also the same people who are incomprehensibly paranoid about the notion of a national ID system.

<comment><USER6> Is that really so weird? All elections are essentially state elections. Even the presidency is really a state level election due to the way the electoral college works. There is no nationwide election so why would there need to be a nationwide ID system for voting?

I'm in favor of requiring a photo id to vote but am well aware of the problems some have in obtaining such an id. That's the problem that needs to be corrected. It does need to be corrected first and we shouldn't just shrug our shoulders and go back to things the way they've been. Everyone should have easy access to a state endorsed identification card. It's an essential function of government and interaction with citizens. As such it should be funded by general taxation rather than a user fee.

A state issued identification card is used for so much more than just authorization for driving a vehicle. Why is it in the hands of the DMV/DDS in most if not every state? Even the non-driver identification cards issued to those who don't drive are usually still issued by DMV/DDS. It's an odd system that wouldn't be designed as it is now if we were designing from scratch but we're use to it because that's how it evolved over time.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. I hold a similar dual position and it is very easy to rationalise. Government controls the police and military, and so has the capability to threaten me in a way that pretty much nothing else does. I want the process of controlling the government to be transparent, difficult and controlled - <USER2> voters should be identified on voting. I want the government's power to be controlled - hence I don't want them to have a database where they can quickly and easily match bits of my data up.

There tension between those two positions is of little practical importance. I'm not worried that they can link my name and address, I'm worried about a sudden outbreak of majority-vs-miniority where someone I really don't like gets in to power and links, I dunno, tax records-name-address, racial-history- name-address , travel-history-bank-account-photo or somesuch. I don't think it is practically feasible to target someone off the information in a voter role.

The real issue to me is that there isn't much organisation against governments laying the groundwork, and in practice opposing an ID card doesn't mean anything. In Australia we basically have all the infrastructure for a national ID card except the formalisation of a little piece of plastic.

<comment><USER8> couldn't someone in power just buy that link information from someone like Equifax?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My county of over 600k people has a Bureau of Elections staff of five, and none of them are really technical people, they just do basic work on the machines and train the temp staff hired for elections. They rely on a contractor to handle just about every aspect of the technology, including the pollbook system, and that company is a larger operation but still the kind of operation where I've heard the elections staff getting on the phone with them to have them restart a service that had gone sluggish. Some amount of support is provided by the secretary of state, but the SoS elections office is also very small, and even the state's department of IT doesn't have a meaningful security department.

I honestly think that the election system in the United States is simply too decentralized. Counties, even larger ones like mine, struggle to afford to hire a staff or retain contractors that have any kind of serious security expertise - or even expertise in reliable services. The federal elections commission was created to address some of these problems by providing centralized resources to states and counties, but it hasn't gone nearly far enough in my opinion. I have a had time imagining a way to make a serious improvement here without moving just about the entire platform for voting systems under the federal government.

<comment><USER10> The decentralization of the United States is, in my opinion, a feature, not a bug.

The upside inherent in fifty parallel and bespoke experiments in government is worth the extra complexity and cost. Ideas are tried out, and can bubble outward and upward if they work. Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country.

Furthermore, having state and local control over elections has a direct impact on legitimacy. I don't have to believe that someone in Washington DC is doing things right. Instead, I can interact directly with our state's secretary of state and our local county elections office.

Decentralization with heterogeneous procedures makes election compromise a much greater logistical challenge for any nefarious actor. It is probably a lot easier to spend money on lobbying.

Edit: Finally -- if you want your local/state elections infrastructure to have more resources, your voice and your vote are your tools.

<comment><USER11> > _Bad ideas directly impact only ~2% of the country._

If only populations were so evenly distributed. 1/2 of Americans live east of the Mississippi, on 1/3 of the Continental US, and about 1/2 of the rest live on the West Coast. The mideastern states have very few residents.

<comment><USER12> What are the mideastern states?

If you mean the Midwest then I regret to inform you that Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan are all in the top 10 most populous states.

<comment><USER11> Yes, those 3 Mideastern states are east of the Mississippi.

They're in the middle of the continent, and east of my state, so they are mideast to me. Not to be confused with Arabia, east Mediterranean, and Persian gulf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> At this point I'm really wondering what it will take before we accept the utter insanity that is electronic voting.

Even if there isn't a major breach to the point where hostile actors (foreign or domestic) "steal" an election, the confidence in e-voting will inevitably be cast into doubt by the losing side at some point. Guaranteed.

How do you audit or recount an anonymous electronic vote? How do you know if a vote cast is recorded as such? How do you know votes aren't wiped at some point?

There are two basic options that work perfectly well:

\- Fill in a paper ballot with pen or pencil marking in spaces for the candidates you vote for. Have a machine verify your ballot.

\- Vote on a touch screen. Once done print out your ballot and put it in a box.

In either case you use some kind of paper that isn't impossible to counterfeit (that's basically an impossibility) but it should be hard enough such that it's nontrivial.

That's it. That's all you need to do.

Sure local actors can "lose" ballots, ball stuf and so forth but this all has to be done on a pretty local level. You get rid of any potential vectors like a Russian or Chinese state agency changing the result from the other side of the planet because someone forgot to update OpenSSL on one Linux server or someone clicked on a phishing link on an innocuous looking email.

Apparently we didn't learn our lessons from unreliable voting methods in 2000 (pregnant chad, anyone?) so I'm not super-hopeful.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was floored when I read the responses to malfunctioning equipment in Texas. "Voters are moving too quickly through the pages." That is a BUG! not user error in the slightest.

<comment><USER15> Right? "Voters need to wait until all the choices have populated before making a selection." Absolute BS. Software design 101.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm from India and every ejection since 1950s has been called rigged by the Opposition. The party which is in power now, has written a book on EVM tampering and the party which was in power for most of the time have rubbished EvM tampering.

Now that roles have reversed, so have their claims.

Coming to the point, isn't US using paperballots? All the papers in my nation say US holds elections via paperballots and not EVMs.

And why the heck do EVMs exist? Who verifies if they are fine or not? We know very well abouhow elections are rigged in third world dictatorships.

There needs to be a standard.

<comment><USER17> I don't think I've seen a paper ballot since I voted absentee in 2004.

Why do electronic machines exist? The charitable interpretation is that they were chosen in the aftermath of the disastrous 2000 election because they remove ambiguity and error. The less charitable interpretation is that they're used because they're easier to screw with.

Who verifies them? Mostly the companies who make them.

<comment><USER18> > I don't think I've seen a paper ballot since I voted absentee in 2004.

I've voted in person consistently, and never seen anything else. Different jurisdictions in the US make different choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Where is our National Security Agency in all of this? Isn't their express goal the monitoring of foreign signals and the protection of US signals?

<comment><USER20> And didn't they promise the Cybersecurity Act of 2016 would help them - oh so much - in stopping these attacks and that it "was not another surveillance bill in disguise" ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Democrats have been complaining about this for decades, but what did they do when they got majorities in 2008? Absolutely nothing.

Like a lot of other things, I feel like Democrats like to keep these issues around as a rallying cause, instead of fixing them.

Edit: I'll just address some of the comments here. This is not "partisan sniping", and I write this as a former Obama volunteer and a lifelong Democrat.

Second: the federal government _can_ do something. Here's an idea: give a $100M grant to 5 major universities to develop an open-source (hardware and software) alternative to the current system, and make a FIPS standard out of it. Then, certify vendors who implement that standard. The states can then buy systems from those vendors.

<comment><USER22> Guys, we've had three terrorist attacks this week, and a lot of us are just kind of tired of the partisan sniping.

Can we just kind of give it a rest for a little while? It really is a bad time right now.

<comment><USER17> If you don't want to read partisan sniping, don't come into the comments about election systems. It's not like this is a story about the attacks where people hijacked the conversation. Don't seek out a topic and then complain that people are discussing it, that's just silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's a winner-take-all electoral system. I'm not getting my interests represented anyway. So not exactly sure why I should be upset about the accuracy with which I being denied that.

Sure it's not good. But it is just an enhancement of a greater wrong. I find most people don't want to deal with that issue at all and would prefer to believe the current system, as it is supposed to work, is the best way to do things.

It's a good system for those who are currently able to exploit it for their own gain. But that's always true everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER24> Isn't election systems the best candidate for open sourcing? So that anyone with technical knowledge can independently verify the security and correctness.

I wish every piece of civilian software funded by gov is open sourced. And why shouldn't they be?

<comment><USER25> Yes. But verifying the source code doesn't guarantee anything, as you don't know what is actually running on the machine.

<comment><USER26> Unless you specify open testing protocols that also test for cheating (like VW emissions).

It shouldn't be this hard to vote and to trust a certified outcome. Regulators require businesses to run with specified parameters, why do elections get off the hook?

<comment><USER27> It's not hard, if you use paper ballots and well-established protocols for securing elections.

On the other hand, if you use electronic machines without paper backup, it's basically impossible.

<comment><USER25> Then why do electronic machines in the first place?

<comment><USER28> Because they're cheaper. I lived in counties that formerly used mechanical voting machines. They were replaced by electronic ones when the cost of maintaining them became higher than the replacement cost. If security was considered at all, I speculate that it was not the highest priority.

<comment><USER25> I agree but only if paper voting is abolished, otherwise you'll have both systems in place. Or is the paper only used when there are concerns about the results?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think it's probably still a little too far outside most peoples' comfort zone, but I think the future of voting will be 100% electronic with the capability of being instantly recallable. The voting system will allow me to see exactly how my vote was tallied after the fact.

From what I have read this is not desirable for the fact that people will more easily be able to sell their vote because they can prove to their "buyer" how they voted. I think from a big-picture perspective this isn't a big deal. The reason is it would be extremely easy to create sting operations on both ends of this transaction: (a) create a sting to find and prosecute people willing to sell their vote, and (b) create a sting to find and prosecute people attempting to buy votes.

I'd prefer to move to a voting system where I can account for my vote after I've voted and put in place enforcement via these types of sting operations to prevent the inevitability of people attempting to buy / sell votes more frequently.

<comment><USER30> No the primary problem isn't selling votes. The primary problem is _fabricating_ votes or people trying to destabilize an election by claiming they voted for someone else. If even 100 people come out and said their votes were changed what do we do? Re-run the election?

Just use paper ballots. This isn't that hard.

<comment><USER29> The way I look at it fabrication would be impossible if done right.

1) precinct has record of every eligible voter 2) voter can (via encrypted means) retrieve their vote so it's still "private", but the voter can view it after they've voted.

So as long as (a) the precinct confirms only eligible voter records are counted and (b) each voter can confirm their vote counted how they intended then I can't see how fabrication comes into play.

Granted this assumes the systems in place to onboard new voters is solid, but even if it's not breaches should in theory expose the weaknesses and make it possible for us to iterate toward an even more perfect system. By not exposing the core data it's kind of like "security through obscurity".

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This goes back to the whole, "hacking the election" 2016 fiasco. Why are we talking about these potential flaws more than the glaring flaw that adversaries already exploited, that of a relatively dumb populous easily manipulated via social media? There's already a 0 day we don't know how to patch, our adversaries don't need to invest in complex cyber attacks when they can achieve the same end via free broadcasting platforms.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd guess that it has had frightening vulnerabilities since it started.

Ideals are hard to live up to ... for many.

</comment><comment><USER33> Every election is rigged according to the loser, or the non-incumbent

<comment><USER34> Trump started a voting security investigation, saying the voting system was rigged. He also won.

<comment><USER35> He started that narrative because he wanted to be a Fox News pundit after losing the election, selling the idea of a rigged election to bask in the attention and fuel his Hillary bashing. Winning ruined that plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If the system is already so rigged and/or fragile, why don't we explore the blockchain world more? If people could get private/public keys into their hands, they could vote using these and no one can change it. They could vote at home or at poling places.

<comment><USER37> I work in the public sector of Scandinavia, where we've digitised voter registration to make queues more efficient but kept the actual voting part on paper.

Overall there isn't a reason to have voting machines, and if you do, they should really just print a piece of paper with your vote so that you can make sure it's what you picked.

You'll sometimes hear finance and efficiency as a reason, but unless American licensing for government software/hardware is significantly different from every where else, it'll always be cheaper to manually count the votes than to buy voting software/hardware.

I mean, we digitised part of the process like I said, but we did it to make citizens wait less not because it was cheaper. It's actually really expensive compared to doing manual voter registration, but we pay the money because no one likes queues.

Blockchain isn't really a suitable option. It could be, but in the real world it would never be truly decentralised because no government is ever going to trust that, and if it isn't, it's just as easy to change and manipulate as any other database structure. And you still wouldn't know if the voting machine actually did what you told it to do.

You can never vote from home in a democracy, because people might force you to vote a way you didn't want to. I don't really think groups would show up at your house to force you to do anything, but we frequently get husbands ask if they can vote for their wives, and if they could do that from home, no one would be there to stop them.

I know we live in a time where we want to digitise everything, but the paper vote is probably the safest and most efficient way to run voting in a democracy.

<comment><USER38> > You can never vote from home in a democracy, because people might force you > to vote a way you didn't want to. I don't really think groups would show up > at your house to force you to do anything, but we frequently get husbands > ask if they can vote for their wives, and if they could do that from home, > no one would be there to stop them.

The states that implement vote-by-mail in US (which, coincidentally, uses paper ballots), ensure that the person casting the vote is the person to whom the ballot was mailed by requiring a signature. To implement secret voting, the ballot is enclosed in two envelopes, and only the outer envelope has any personally identifiable information, including said signature. The signature is checked against the one in the voter registration database, and if there's a mismatch, the election department will contact the voter to ensure that the ballot was, in fact, theirs. Once the check is done, the outer envelope is discarded, and the still-sealed ballots are transferred to the people who will actually count them.

This doesn't preclude forcing someone to vote in a certain way, or paying them to vote in a certain way. But that is just as feasible with voting booths with modern tech - you simply demand that the victim records filling the ballot with their smartphone or a similar device. Some countries are banning camera phones from voting booths for this reason, but enforcement is usually impractical.

<comment><USER37> If you want to mail order in my country you have to go to a voting place and go through the regular process. Exactly to prevent forced voting.

We set these up at libraries and other muniplacity buildings that already offer citizen things (English is my third language sorry).

We also have voting busses that go to low voting neighbourshoods and we obviously setup voting in nursing homes, hospitals and such.

But the process is always you, alone in the booth, with a piece of paper. Unless you have a physical handicap, then two officials will help you vote.

Taking a photo of your ballot is illegal, but as you say, it's impossibil to enforce. You do have options though, we use pencils in the booth and you can always ask for a replacement ballot until your vote is cast. So you could technically take a photo and still vote another way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open Letter to Sarah Lacey Re: Klout Experts - <AUTHOR> http://getfireplug.com/blog2013/05/08/open-letter-sarah-lacey-re-klout-experts/

<comment><USER2> But I want my endorsements for "Poetry Readings" and "Spoken Word Speed Training" to count just as much as my "Leadership" endorsements....

<comment><USER3> If you get enough RT's you can be answer as many Poetry Readings as you want... fair point.</comment></comment>


China's crackdown on dissent goes global - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/04/asia/china-dissident-crackdown-goes-global/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> I read this entire article, nodding my head throughout: why would a large country, with many other problems, invest time, effort, potential embarrassment, and legal implications, just to hunt down a few critics. Then the Snowden rendition plane story made its way to the top of HN, and I forgot which country we're talking about. Pot meet kettle.</comment>


Building The Linux Kernel In 60 Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAyNjU <comment><USER2> tl;dr version - Intel's latest chip is pretty fast.

Having 'grown up' around computers I have found that this sort of 'damn!' moment is not uncommon. At some point in a person's experience there is something they do with computers a lot and its 'hard' for the computer to do (aka slow) and then suddenly one day its 'easy.' It calls attention to the growth that is the industry. My particular moment was a 1 GB disk drive, at USC that was how much space was hooked up to all three DEC-10 machines (330MB per) and it took up a room.

That being said, the new Sandy bridge is a beast of a machine. One can wonder if it is near the peak of what you might use as a desktop in the post-PC era. Sort of like the muscle cars in the 70's which were replaced in the 80's and 90's with cars that went for different targets (mileage, handling, etc).

<comment><USER3> "use as a desktop in the post-PC era". Isn't a desktop computer pretty much a definition of a PC?

I doubt that this is the peak. With muscle cars, there was no need for more muscle. With desktop computers you can easily see use cases for more "muscle" and that need will keep the growth going on.

<comment><USER2> It would be interesting for you to say more about 'easily see use cases for more "muscle"'. I was under the impression that one of the challenges that PC vendors were facing is that laptops and PCs are 'good enough' for more and more of the computer marketplace and so they were unable to depend on 'upgrade' revenue as the components got more capable.

I don't doubt that there are folks that can use infinite amounts of computer power, but if they become so specialized perhaps it will shift the market around again.

<comment><USER3> One common scenario are the browsers. Imagine websites with real 3D model e.g. nike.com with a modeled shoe. Browsers are becoming an application platform and to deliver rich client style UI, it takes juice.

Video editing is becoming more and more common place with cheap digital video cameras and the ones on camera phones.

I agree that the upgrade cycle may become longer, but to me it seems like there is a market for more CPU power on the desktops. I think there is some normal fluctuation where you improve one or more corners of the industry at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know this is not what the article talks about, but ... Bellard did this in 15 seconds, in 2004 with a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4. In the 7 years since, I except a 4-fold increase in speed, so on modern hardware it will probably be 4 seconds, maybe 1 or 2 on the beast described in this article.

<comment><USER5> > Bellard did this in 15 seconds, in 2004 with a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4

But isn't Linux kernel a lot bigger nowadays?

<comment><USER6> He did it with his own C compiler (tcc).

<comment><USER7> See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_C_Compiler#Compiled_progra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_C_Compiler#Compiled_program_performance)

There are tradeoffs for compiling very fast: Slower program execution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ah, compiling C is so pleasantly fast.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wondering how fast it could build Android 4.0. (<http://source.android.com/source/building.html>) Bit of a pun intended. I have recently realized that a 4-core smarthpone, one of those coming in mid-2012, on a 1.5 GHz (e.g. the rumored HTC Edge) theoretically packs similar power to that of my dual-core Macbook Pro 2.8 GHz (4x1.5=6 vs. 2.8x2=5.6). One probably cannot compare OMAP with x86 too much, but still, the CPU developments in mobile space excite me more than the desktop ones, which frankly, disappoint me a bit. Somehow, sometime in 2000s I expected to have massively parallel CPU sometime around now, not a mere 6-core.

<comment><USER10> A desktop CPU probably has about an order of magnitude more power per cycle than a mobile chip.

They have bigger caches (less time spent waiting for memory), more logic units, deeper pipelines, and can handle far more 'in-flight' instructions.

That said, the smart phones of today probably do have more power than desktop computers of about 10 years ago.

edit: now that I think about it, a order of magnitude is probably generous, but I would still guess that it's at least a factor > 2.

<comment><USER9> I don't have time to get better data, i.e. I couldn't find any MFLOPS data for a mobile CPU (not GPU), so just quickly unscientifically:

Texas Instruments OMAP4460 (in Galaxy Nexus at 1,2 GHz): 2047.7 BogoMIPS

1.7 GHz Xeon from 2006 (the small EC2 instance, single-core): 5203.55 BogoMIPS

Would be interesting to see some real benchmarks though..

<comment><USER11> You dont want flops figures - no floating point is used to compile.

Bogomips lives up to its name.

I suspect that compiling has fairly poor locality and is quite cache dependent, so you might be better off just benchmarking on a mobile cpu.

<comment><USER12> Not a great test either but better then the above:

      Geekbench 2 on iPhone 4S: 617
      Geekbench 2 32bit on iMac i7 @ 2.80GHz: 8557

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Honest question, because I'm actually curious about this. Are these extreme edition chips used almost exclusively by enthusiasts, or are they actually used in certain software engineering branches?

<comment><USER14> Most enthusiasts don't buy top of the line. It's way cheaper to buy the "second best" and overclock your way to the Extreme Edition's performance (which is really easy with the new chips).

The second best in this case is i7-3930K, same 6 cores and architecture (just 100MHz difference) but with less cache (12MB vs 15MB) at half the price.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the response. That makes sense, obviously you can pay a lot less and get more by overclocking the CPU. Then my question is, who actually buys these chips, and for what purpose?

<comment><USER8> Well, isn't this basic differential pricing? If there are customers who are willing to "pay as much as needed" for "the fastest chip they have", why wouldn't Intel offer it? It shouldn't be too expensive to "brand" yet another model, and there are enough enthusiasts to shell the required cash on this thing. $1K isn't that much, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> the ads on phoronix are getting pretty over-the-top</comment>


TV that saves energy when you're not watching ... - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8323077.stm

<comment><USER2> hey what is this wesite for?

<comment><USER2> its for te news a little bit!</comment></comment>


4 Qualities of a Good Cafe to Work In - <AUTHOR> http://fanpopblog.com/?p=34 <comment><AUTHOR> From the post...

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

The key to a good working cafe are:

1\. Character and charm - You don't want to be sitting at a cookie-cutter cold Starbucks or a place that doesn't have a local feel to it. The best places are those that have cool furniture, colorful walls and decor, and fun staff.

2\. Good music - If you're going to be sitting at a place for hours and hours, the last thing you want to have to endure is crappy music or music that's too loud and distracting.

3\. Mixed crowd - It's nice to have a diversity of people wherever you work because when you start daydreaming (not that I ever do), you can people watch. San Francisco is such a diverse city that it's always fun to see all the eclectic types that make this city so wonderful to live in.

4\. Tasty food and drinks - A cafe isn't a cafe unless they have quality munchies and can make a mean latte.</comment>


The Cybersecurity Effects of Fourth-Parties on Websites - <AUTHOR> https://www.reflectiz.com/the-cybersecurity-effects-of-fourth-parties-on-websites/ <comment><USER2> I think this article is a useful overview of the risks associated with relying on 3rd party software loaded into a website, which in turn rely on their own 3rd party vendors to make their software work.

The one thing that the article lacks is links - to referenced organisations, to primary data sources - which support the assertions made by the article. I'd like to investigate this aspect of site security further, but the only links offered (at the bottom of the page) are to the company's own sales/marketing teams (I assume). I think this is a pity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for your helpful feedback! You are obviously right. We have added a screenshot taken from a scan we performed to demonstrate the role of 4th- party on apps, their parents and so on. Kindly note that we don't share websites' identification details taken from scans we run on articles we publish. Please, do not hesitate to contact us for additional questions: firstname.lastname@example.com Many thanks!</comment></comment>


Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, top U.S. official says - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/russians-penetrated-u-s-voter-systems-says-top-u-s-n845721?cid=eml_nbn_20180207 <comment><USER2> Do i understand this right that there still is no evidence and not even a small technical explaination how or why this even could be a issue? The title states no results have been altered, so what is it even about?

Honestly this still sounds like propaganda the way it is portrait. No actual information and a lot of finger pointing.</comment>


Why are we 'milking' crabs for a coronavirus vaccine? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53333096 <comment><USER2> This isn't specifically for coronavirus, from wikipedia

> Amebocytes from the blood of L. polyphemus are used to make Limulus > amebocyte lysate (LAL), which is used for the detection of bacterial > endotoxins in medical applications.

There's a nice video here on it (3:22) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgQZWSlLBnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgQZWSlLBnA)</comment>


Wifi bypass? - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone help me to bypass my hotel's wifi login page? I used a VPN earlier and somehow they seemed to have blocked it and they take ridiculous money for using wifi. I've tried various other VPNs but to no avail.Please help me! <comment><USER2> > Can anyone help me to bypass my hotel's wifi login page?

Are you serious? You've just asked people to collude in the commission of a felony crime, in a public forum. How stupid do you think people are?

Circumventing a login page is a violation of federal law, nut just state law, and it's a felony, not a misdemeanor.

Anyone who helps you has to be brain-damaged.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)</comment>