Vatican magazine says hackers do God's work - <AUTHOR> http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42459193/ <comment><USER2> Here's the abstract for the article itself[1], translated by Google:

 _It is now common belief that hackers are saboteurs, if not real criminals. Talking about ethical hacker can then play even ironic. This article attempts to shed light on their history, their true identity and their "philosophy", clearly distinguishing them from the cracker, illegal operators. Investigating the patterns of life and intellectual pursuits hacker, based on creativity and sharing, it is discussed to be compatible with a Christian vision of life. Without unduly compare the hacker community and Christian community, it is concluded as Christians and hackers today, in a world devoted to the logic of profit, they still have much to be, as is clear from the experience of hackers who make their faith a pulse of their creative work._

[1] [http://www.laciviltacattolica.it/it/quaderni/articolo/2546/e...](http://www.laciviltacattolica.it/it/quaderni/articolo/2546/etica-%C2%ABhacker%C2%BB- e-visione-cristiana/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow that's a very interesting spin on the morality of hacking. Maybe the priest should resign and become the PR person for the hacking community? ;p

I can understand the point made by the priest, but I wonder if he'd say the same about anarchists? Since just about all governments these days are corrupt and unsympathetic towards the plight of their constituency, then you would think the priest would also congratulate those who are philosophically and actively opposed to these un-Godly governments? Except...

All is fine and "Godly" until hackers or anarchists engage in destructive behavior, which is not in line with the teachings of Jesus. This Robin Hood idea of stealing from the rich, or even destroying property because it's owned by "evil", is wrong because both are forms of violence, which Jesus was against for obvious reasons - both acts violate individuals. Whether or not these individuals deserved it or are "evil" is inconsequential: two wrongs don't make a right. So I'm kind of disappointed that this disclaimer wasn't brought up by the priest, if at least towards the end of his comment. There exist more positive ways to combat negative forms of competition or scarcity issues created by ownership of property; violation of individuals doesn't need to be the answer. Although seeing the sketchy and hypocritical history of Catholics, I shouldn't be too disappointed by the omission...

<comment><USER4> Neither of those two acts violate individuals. 'Property' is merely a convenient fiction.

<comment><USER5> How does the conclusion that theft and property damage do not violate individuals get even one thumb up?

<comment><USER4> I'm not really an anarchist, but I do think it's important to distinguish between living breathing human beings, as opposed to the social and cultural structures we impose upon each other. I am not my property. You cannot 'violate' me by stealing or destroying the things I 'own'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sometimes I wish it was the other way around (God doing this hacker's work) :)

<comment><USER7> I'd hope you could do better than the platypus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like to remind my Christians friends (and those who aren't friends) the ideals of Free Software - of setting people free and allowing them to help each other by means of giving them the software along with the resources required to improve upon it and share the results is very Christian. As much as the values of proprietary software, of enslaving your users and imprisoning them in a dependency relationship easy to abuse are completely against those same Christian values.

It's fun to watch their heads explode.

More recently, I have enjoyed quoting the "we fight for the users" line from Tron. Mostly because we really do.

</comment><comment><USER9> Shoddy reporting. This is like claiming that the White House is pro-hacker because of an interview that appeared on Massachusetts Public Radio

La Civiltà Cattolica is _not_ a Vatican magazine. It is a Jesuit magazine. And I highly doubt that the magazine itself endorses Fr. Antonio Spadaro's opinion.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find it hilarious that a Catholic order thinks there's anything Catholic (as opposed to catholic) about hacking. The open-source community is de- centralized and libertarian-to-anarchist, while the Catholic Church is built on blind faith in a central authority in deciding what is right for all (even when that "right" is protecting child rapists).

The only thing that could be funnier is if they quoted Eric S. Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which talked about that aspect of hacker culture, and who is an unapologetic atheist Wiccan.

...oh wait, they did.

<comment><USER11> The Catholic Church specifically teaches blind faith is wrong, so maybe you don't understand Catholicism as well as you think you do.

Edit - Catechism reference: <http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PX.HTM>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So chances are RMS really will become Saint iGNUcus!?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIF5xnkcncI>

</comment><comment><USER13> How long until Sony personnel are excommunicated from the Church?

</comment><comment><USER14> Now I know where to send the invoices.

</comment><comment><USER15> _In their passionate commitment to creating, and their openness to sharing ideas, hackers see their online exploits as "a form of participation in the 'work' of God in creation,"_

Given that logical reasoning is usually a strong trait common to hackers, it's a bit ironic to have the Vatican attempt to speak for hackers. Perhaps someone should email them this poll <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486594>.

<comment><USER16> I'm a Catholic hacker. Apparently I am a rare breed around here.

<comment><USER17> Not so rare.

<comment><USER18> Not rare at all.

<comment><USER11> Definitely not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you make them believe anything, you can make them do anything.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sysadmins are Gods

Hackers do Gods' work

Makes sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think I'd rather be the kind of hacker that breaks things, than the kind of hacker who gets praise from a man who employs thousands of child molesters and whose company has been responsible for more atrocities than hitler, stalin, and mao could have been capable of in their lucid wet dreams.

<comment><USER22> Okay, the church is not perfect, but Hitler Stalin and Mao did inconceivably more evil in a few years than anything out of the church in the past century or two. What atrocities are you referring to?</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Azure Container Service is now generally available - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/19/microsofts-azure-container-service-is-now-generally-available/ <comment><USER2> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11527668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11527668)</comment>


EdDSA, Ed25519, Ed25519-IETF, Ed25519ph, Ed25519ctx, HashEdDSA, PureEdDSA, WTF? - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptologie.net/article/497/eddsa-ed25519-ed25519-ietf-ed25519ph-ed25519ctx-hasheddsa-pureeddsa-wtf/ <comment><USER2> Prehashing doesn't just solve the storage issue. Imagine you want to sign a 1MB or even 1GB file with a typical hardware token. Without prehashing you'd have to send that entire 1MB or 1GB to the token, which has a throughput on the order of KB/s or maybe MB/s, and process all that data with a CPU clocked at MHz, not GHz. Breaking up the file into chunks doesn't help, and might even make things slower, not to mention the added complexity introduced to your file signature format.

The obvious solution is to _hash_ the data and sign the hash, just as is done for every other signature scheme. The downside is that now your signature scheme is only as strong as the hash. But if it turns out that SHA-512 isn't collision resistant, you have much bigger problems.

PureEdDSA has its elegance, and, sure, use it if you can. But supporting off- chip private keys (e.g. hardware tokens) is sometimes far more important to security. If you're creating an API, keep that in mind.

<comment><USER3> Please stop saying "you have much bigger problems", this cliché is dangerous and unproductive.

<comment><USER4> I don't see why that's dangerous. it's just a rephrasing of "this assumes x holds true" and if it doesn't none of this matters.

<comment><USER5> I don't know what's the parent's problem, but "this assumes x holds true" is actually much more clear and straight-forward, which really helps to stay on track with the discussion. At the very least it allows the opponent to ask if there's something available w/o this assumption, which "you have bigger problems" barely does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A slightly unfortunate trend in protocol design has been to prepend rather than append "info" fields to hash inputs. In other words, we tend to see

        H(info || msg)

instead of

        H(msg || info)

There are some good reasons to prefer append to prepend. One practical reason is that---related to what's discussed in the article---if we have to compute two values

        H(msg || info_1)
        H(msg || info_2)

we can do this with just one pass over msg (though admittedly in a non- blackbox way, namely, by saving an intermediate state of the hash computation). In contrast, for a well-designed hash function there should not be any way to save work when computing

        H(info_1 || msg)
        H(info_2 || msg)

and this lack of work savings is one of the reasons we tend to get prehash modes.

In addition, prepending to msg comes with a range of subtle security issues. As an example, for Merkle-Damgaard hashes like SHA-2 a proper prefix design needs to pad the prefix to a multiple of H's block length. This is to ensure that msg starts on a block boundary, which means that the hash digests as much of msg as possible in a single invocation of the compression function. Otherwise, if msg is short and it gets broken across a block boundary, this can make meet-in-the-middle--style attacks easier.

In contrast, appending the info string guarantees that msg starts at a block boundary, which is a small nicety. Moreover, one can easily guarantee in a black-box way (and independent of the value/encoding/&c of the info string) that msg _ends_ at a block boundary (just by padding msg). This can be useful as a defense against some kinds of power analysis in the case that msg is a secret [1].

To be sure: appending also requires care---and care is always required when a Merkle-Damgaard hash! (Sponges like SHA-3 are more resistant to misuse.) At the very least, whatever is appended to msg should be prefix-free, and you will likely want to stop length extension attacks and related issues (see [2] for further discussion of this).

But in general my take is that the set of footguns for append is a subset of the prepend ones, and I hope that more folks go towards appending in the future.

[1] [https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/985](https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/985)

[2] [https://cs.nyu.edu/~dodis/ps/merkle.pdf](https://cs.nyu.edu/~dodis/ps/merkle.pdf)

<comment><USER7> > Otherwise, if msg is short and it gets broken across a block boundary, this > can make meet-in-the-middle--style attacks easier.

Can you elaborate? Take SHA-512/256 with some awkward prefix size, let's say 127 bytes. Which attacks, presumably not side-channel based, become possible?

In any case, I am not convinced in the least by this suffix pitch. Handwaving that "prefix-freeness" needs to be checked, when that's something that is constantly gotten wrong and results in real breaks is a bit naïve. On the other hand, I have real trouble thinking of a real break caused by prefixing. The Ed25519 paper you link to does not point to prefixing as the culprit either; that just happened to be where the key was, and the lack of randomness makes power analysis possible. Without randomness, suffixing would suffer a similar fate.

<comment><USER6> SHA-512/256 is already quite misuse-resistant, so it's entirely plausible that there's nothing to worry about in this specific case.

But if we limit ourselves to standard Merkle Damgaard hashes (i.e., _not_ ChopMD), then the specific concern is that putting a small amount (say, a few bytes) of msg at the end of one block lets us, in effect, look for collisions between two M-D hash functions where one has an attacker-chosen IV. Here, the key property is that the IV space is large enough to be useful but small enough to be feasibly searchable.

For SHA-2, this does not currently appear to be a problem, but the conservative move is to rule this out by construction. HMAC does this, for example (and as I'm certain you know, HMAC-SHA-1 remains plausibly secure in spite of all of the attacks on SHA-1).

Regarding prefix-freeness: I completely agree with you that this is easy to get wrong, and I didn't intend to hand-wave about this in the least. Note, however, that the requirement for prefix-freeness obtains for both prepend and append! So this isn't actually an argument against appending.

Regarding the power analysis: apologies, I should have been clearer on this point. One interpretation of the Ed25519 paper I linked is that the issue has to do with putting the secret in the same block as attacker-controlled bytes, because this gives the attacker a lot more power to extract information about the secret via power analysis. Even without randomness, this attack would be _much_ harder to pull off (perhaps even impossible) if the secret were padded to a full block length.

My point was just: don't put secrets and attacker-controlled data in the same block. And suffixing always lets us do this by applying a padding routine that is independent of the info string to msg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't confuse EdDSA with ECDSA, I was stumped for a moment until I realized my mistake ;=)

</comment><comment><USER9> To be sure, none of these are quantum-ready.

<comment><USER10> Yes but ED-448 is Spinal-Tap Grade</comment></comment>


Is it time to ditch passwords for apps? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.csc.com/2016/02/11/is-it-time-for-password-less-apps/ <comment><USER2> In apps we build on the Qbix Platform, we use oAuth 2 to generate session tokens in the native app. No password needed.

But how do we set up user accounts in the first place? Most of our users come from being invited by a friend. That invitation contains a unique link which, when clicked, allows the user to access their account. So they get an account and all their followers in one tap! And start using it immediately. Then when they download the native app, they sign in using oAuth 2. Everything is fast and secure and the only time they ever need to set up a password is when they want to set up an account on some shared public device. And even then, they could simply use their phone to verify the login, even if they get no cellphone signal.

Source: [http://qbix.com/platform/features/invitations](http://qbix.com/platform/features/invitations)

This is just some of the thousands of things we took care of so your apps don't have to. Another cool thing: all session ids are signed with an HMAC when generated, so your load balancer won't need to do any I/O when deciding to reject bogus requests. This reduces the impact of DDOS attacks on your app once it becomes well-known.</comment>


Ask HN: High Quality FOSS Apps? - <AUTHOR>

I've started a project on github, which is a curated list of high quality production grade free and open source software applications for web, mobile, desktop, and games.
Mainly because as a developer I often find myself looking for large non-trivial examples of software in the wild that I can learn from. Also, like most devs, I strive to build software that is exemplary both in its code and end-product so apps that can show me how this is done are a goldmine. They have things that library examples can't really show you, like setting up integration tests, code organization and modularity, etc.
Anyways, I know there are many HNers on here who build quality open source apps, so I wanted to ask if any of you have any suggestions? Since the list is currently based entirely off of my experience its very small and I'd love to get your input. <comment><USER2> You want to give this project life while learning something and not depending on user-driven content?

Leverage existing software-ranking sites that have stars/reviews, try to scrape them (or use an API if they offer it), quantify that data and put it into a nice webpage.

You will learn:

\- APIs/Scraping \- Data Analysis \- Some HTML/CSS/JS

It'll be better than starting a project like this, where you "wait for them to come".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> as an example my current list contains:

1\. Webapps (frontends only): circleci, the-guardian

2\. Webapps: ghost, gitlab, discourse, reddit, taiga

3\. Desktop: blender, atom

4\. Mobile: -nothing-

5\. Games: O A.D, Hedgewars

And here's the link to the details: [https://github.com/jwaterfaucett/awesome- foss-apps/blob/mast...](https://github.com/jwaterfaucett/awesome-foss- apps/blob/master/README.md)</comment>


If you're really upset about having topics you personally don't like on HN... - <AUTHOR>

Lately I have seen more than a few "why is this here?" type comments on topics that have already gone popular on HN. The bottom line is that happens because not everyone has the same interests, and this is a social site with many different people on it.
If the fact that you have to share this wonderful digital playground with the other kids really, really bothers you, then this is for you. It's a Greasemonkey script called "HN Toolkit":
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039
Part of the functionality is the ability to blacklist submissions, either by keyword in the title or in the domain (or entire domains, whichever way you want to look at it). It cycles through the list of stories and matches each against the blacklist, adding style = 'display: none;' to each match found.
Hope this helps. <comment><USER2> If you haven't read Clay Shirky's essays on the difficulty of maintaining an online community, do it now ( <http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html> and <http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_user.html> ). Actually, read all the source articles in Spolsky's Best Software Writing I ( <http://brevity.org/misc/bestswi.html> )

Every online community, from the very beginning, has faced its own crisis of identity as it scales. Perpetual September is as inevitable as the second law of thermodynamics.

I long considered HN to be a counterexample precisely because the group is not only self-selecting, but constitutionally disinclined to enjoy shallowness. A group of true geeks and entrepreneurs does not have to be coerced into expressing a love of Erlang internals and a hatred of celebrity gossip.

But, inevitably, any given community will attract people with different interests. A war of sorts inevitably occurs as both subcultures clash and try to gain power. The result is one we've seen in every single online community that has ever been created.

imho, the culture of HN is smart enough to either find a solution or at least a way to delay this process. There's a reason PG tells us not to complain about "redditization": such complaints are the very thing that dissolves a sense of community and shared values.

<comment><USER3> _constitutionally disinclined to enjoy shallowness_

The 154 people who upmodded this article didn't get the memo:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1162832>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find that it's pretty easy to determine what is on topic. I usually click through about 60% of the articles that make it to the front page, plus a few random new articles from time to time. 95% of the time, one makes the realization that this is a new school of thought or an interesting piece of commentary on a current topic. 5% of the time it is just people self promoting their restating of things that someone else already said (on hacker new no less) and other people self promoting their company. On that 5% I leave a "why is this here" comment. And every time I get a well written comment telling me why this product is interesting or why this persons opinion should be considered. If you can't stand people asking questions about things they don't understand, then maybe you sir have problems sharing this "digital playground".

But whatever the case may be, thanks for the link, although not sure why this post is here instead of just a link post ;)

also, here is the on-topic rules for people too lazy to click the link: "On- Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic."

<comment><AUTHOR> How did my suggesting a solution for people who apparently want it become "If you can't stand people asking questions about things they don't understand, then maybe you sir have problems sharing this "digital playground"."...?

There were people discussing the fact that they would like to see certain keywords actually banned from HN, and they were suggesting it on submissions that already had over 100 points and plenty of people participating in the comments. If you happen to be one of those people who thinks their opinion on what belongs > what the actual majority thinks then this can help. This was posted for them or those who feel the same way but didn't comment.

The reason this is a post instead of a link is that I wanted to explain why I was posting it, and what element of the script was relevant.

<comment><USER4> There was a little bit of facetiousness in there, sorry if it offended you.

I haven't seen many +100 vote posts with "why" posts, so I was more thinking about the posts that have no comments, or at least none than really contribute anything to the conversation. I do think "The reason this is a post instead of a link is that I wanted to explain why I was posting it, and what element of the script was relevant." is interesting though. I found your explanation was actually what made me want to comment. I'm not entirely sure your explanation added anything, and you probably would have gotten a better response with just a link and the title you selected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HN is still supposed to have a fairly narrow range of topics. With the userbase growing so quickly, a lot of people may not read the guidelines and the content could start spilling into subjects not really meant for HN. In that case, I think just educating people about what should and probably shouldn't be here isn't bad.

<comment><USER6> People should be able to do whatever they are able to do. If it's supposed to have a fairly narrow range of topics, use the voting system to achieve that.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that HN is not evolutionarily stable. We are susceptible to large numbers of new users upvoting each other's undesirable content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any way to easily hide the articles you've already clicked/read and show stories from the "New" archives? I don't like toggling between the two, so i therefore look at much less "new" submissions than i would otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER9> Holy hell this is awesome. Now I can weed out some of this crap.</comment>


The broken Internet (and how to fix it) - <AUTHOR> https://ungleich.ch/u/blog/the-broken-internet/ <comment><USER2> And I already feared it would be social commentary again...

My ISP does only supply IP6 and uses a service for bridging to IP4. It can be finicky in some places still. Sometimes there just aren't any free addresses available.

While the overall connectivity is pretty good, there are some edge cases where it can cause minor problems. If the IP4 bridges are completely down, the net can get quite barren still. It often stops right after Google. At least for European and American sites.

But overall I haven't seen disadvantages.</comment>


Where/How do you get your best entrepreneurship tips from? - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/ask-ih-where-how-do-you-get-your-best-entrepreneurship-tips-from-01dc325b83 <comment><USER2> Books and conversations

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate on conversations?

(I have seen a lot written about good books on this topic.)

<comment><USER2> Going to meetups, talking to those who been there done that, mentors. Being able to talk through things with someone is invaluable.

Also talking to those who don't know (about any given topic generally) forces you to think and talk/agrue for/justify/reassess differently.

Find a person who challenges you, as opposed to a yes person who agrees with everything.</comment></comment></comment>


Weev Talks About Life In Prison And His Plans To Open A Hedge Fund, TRO LLC - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/15/weev-talks-about-life-in-prison-and-his-plans-to-open-a-hedge-fund-tro-llc/

<comment><USER2> So now that he's out we can stop treating him like a hero?</comment>


Why is this site being surveilled? - <AUTHOR> http://ibloc.com/?2017-02-19T18:31:28.689Z <comment><USER2> What does "surveiled" mean in this context? And how can you tell?

<comment><AUTHOR> In this context I mean someone has worked, and spent money, to continuously monitor the article I mention in my post.

Because I've "blocked" them so many times they've had to set up accounts with several different web services and pay to set up a server just to keep monitoring that article.

It's only that article they are continuously observing.

I can tell by reading the web server logs. I provided an example of those in my post.

<comment><USER2> OK, I can now see your post (I was getting only part of the page before).

Probably someone is targeting the journalist and is interested in posts that link to them rather than in your post per se. Does your post come up prominently in any search results?</comment></comment></comment>


The Lorentz Force - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QWB8IfNoIs <comment><USER2> I wonder how related or not-related this is to static attraction (eg: bending a water stream by placing your finger near the stream from a running tap.)

Also, his 90 degree illustration immediately brought to mind the "3-D Loser" hand gesture we learned in school to remember the direction of positive / negative electrical flow. Googling that brought me to [http://montessorimuddle.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/01/Right...](http://montessorimuddle.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/01/Right_hand_rule_cross_product.png) and quite satisfactorily also connected it to the Lorentz Force with this version of the illustration: [http://montessorimuddle.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/01/Right...](http://montessorimuddle.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/01/Right_hand_rule_cross_product.png)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Look at the way the electricity apparently rotates the water in the second example... fascinating!</comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for information? - <AUTHOR>

delivered by video?
I am launching a beta version of a new video product today...
This is a Flash video player which allows anyone to charge for information conveyed by video, allowing viewers to watch for a set period of time free, then the video is paused and the viewer is required to pay for unlimited access if they wish to continue!
I would like to demonstrate the concept to you by given you an example of its usage and for this case I would like to introduce a method to help protect a companies online brand from being tarnished.
The Example:
Online brand reputation management is generally very expensive to accomplish and the technique I am revealing in this video could save a company thousands of pounds.
There is a fee of £49 GBP to watch the full video, but the first six minutes are free. It will then pause at 6 minutes and ask for a payment to be made, thereafter I will explain the procedure technically.
You can see the product in action here:
http://www.brandcurrency.co.uk/
It's the large video with the £49 price!
SOME BACKGROUND:
We are all pioneers in our own fields and each of us often have unique insights to problems and hold information which could have a high value to others, which can also be easily explained in a video.
There are many successful entrepreneurs selling informational ebooks, typically they use a company called Clickbank (http://www.clickbank.com/index.html) who manage the online payments of sales.
These ebook offers' normally make use of very long and somewhat spammy looking sales pages which for some strange reason seem to convert well...
A typical example of such a sales page would be as follows: http://www.get-better-grades.com/index-pass-exam.php
Clickbank claims to have paid out over 1 billion euros in earnings over the last 10 years so clearly there is money to be made from selling information!
One problem with those traditional ebook offers is that ebooks actually take a long time to write and develop.
Another problem is that in many cases video is better suited to explaining techniques visually, take the example of a plasterer demonstrating the art of plastering! Which would you prefer an ebook or a video demonstration?
In my new concept, information can be produced and packaged much quicker than traditional ebooks. Videos can be shoot and edited very quickly (in a few hours) in comparison to ebooks which can take several months to develop.
Also by using video it opens up entirely new avenues which can be explained easily and quickly, giving both the producers and consumers of the content added efficiency.
The concept is known and the Flash PAYer and can be found here: http://www.karsa.co.uk
At some point in the next 6 months (according to its adoption) I will probably incorporate a payment plan to this application and most likely have a tiered pricing plan with low monthly fees from £29GBP etc. however, its use is currently free and it will likely stay free for at least 6 months.
All payments go straight into the video producers own Paypal account so they make all the profits, no margins are siphoned off.
This concept is currently a 'minimum viable product' with just the most essential features incorporated, nevertheless it achieves the goals I set out for this product and I hope you find the concept interesting.
It could be used for any archive of online video information and all the variables can be adjusted.
I would love your feedback.... <comment><USER2> Paying for information is dependent on the value of the information to an individual or corporation, if you want people to pay for information then you can look at angles such as scarcity, quality, return on investment, entertainment value and so on.

There is such a thing as the 'information economy', so clearly information has value but what that value is highly depends on the information itself.

Next weeks lottery numbers are information, they're worth gold today but nothing two weeks from now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't you feel that with video, the reason it has been traditionally poor at converting or monetizing is because the systems used so far have generally been pay walls.

Pay walls eliminate customers because its like anything what you don't know you don't miss.

This new concept however, works much like real world interactions where the consumer can get hooked on the content before having to pay.

I think this is a fundamental shift from Pay walls...

<comment><USER2> The way most video sites seem to solve this is by adding advertising at the beginning of the clip.

It's a high nuisance way of creating money but it does seem to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have seen many large companies fail who relied solely on ads: Veoh, Stage6, even Google video failed to make money from ads!

The problem with ads is the cpm is always so low on such content and the bandwidth so high, it was this problem which led me to develop the general concept for my own <http://www.documentary-film.net> which was always on the brink of closure until I implemented this concept.

It worked so well that sales increased over 90% and I was able to afford a proper CDN (highwinds) to deliver the content.

After this I didn't think more about it until Andrew Warner @ Mixergy mentioned about charging for his content and I told him that introducing a pay wall (as he planed) would result in viewings going to zero, instead I told him to develop something like I had with doc-film-net.

Of course his response was, where's the plug in for that?

That's when I had the aha moment and built it for him and anyone else who is in the same boat. There's a ton of tech involved to achieve this feature and its way out of depth for the average content producer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can't say I'm too impressed with this as a business model.

I think that it's a small set of cases where video is the most effective way to transmit valuable information, and the alleged advantage over e-books ("e-books actually take a long time to write and develop") completely underestimates the work involved in creating a professional video.

But even then, supposing that I were willing to pay £49 for a (professionally produced, high value content) video, I'd sure as hell want to be able to download it and watch it repeatedly.

So, at the end of the day, what you are offering is DRM-protected video-- and there are plenty of much bigger folks (i.e., Hollywood) trying to crack that nut, with little success so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> offerings so far do not use the get hooked before you buy.

Also the variables are fully adjustable so people can allow 1 year of access etc..

The video I created as an example took me a few hours which includes the time needed to make the codecs. Of course though higher quality videos take longer but still they can be made relatively painlessly today.

Thanks for your feedback though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would you consider selling the audio transcript of the file?

We are working on a similar thing for podcasts. We plan to offer audio player and an option to buy the full transcript of the podcast. You are not however forced to buy the transcript; you can listen to it as usual. Transcript is just a convenience thing if you want to read it instead of listen to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would not since this is just really a demo for how the video product can be used..

good luck with your project though..</comment></comment>


One in Seven Registered .NET Domain Names Have an Unregistered .COM - <AUTHOR> http://www.leandomainsearch.com/blog/25-one-in-seven-registered--net-domain-names-have-an-unregistered--com <comment><USER2> This shocks me. Before reading this, I would have guess the number would have been close to 1 in 50 or even 1 in 100.</comment>


Entrepreneurship Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2011/11/entrepreneurship-sucks.php

<comment><USER2> This article reeks of inexperience and just a dash of sour grapes.

 _Supplier got the order wrong? Your problem; you fix it. Sales team can't get their act together (despite a wonderfully choreographed song and dance routine)? That's on your shoulders. People fighting? Smooth things over. Someone is only working at 103% efficiency, not pumping out enough likes and tweets and check-ins? All you to handle._

Yes, that's called being in charge. If you can't handle it all and have the means, _delegate_.

 _Brief edit:_ turns out this guy went to my school and is a friend-of-a- friend. Did some due diligence and friend says he's just trying to provoke a reaction (aka "troll"). He is, says my friend, "one of the hardest working people" he knows. Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER3> > _This article reeks of inexperience and just a dash of sour grapes._

My diagnosis is even worse. His basic mistake is "I'm like me; therefore, everybody is like me."

To choose one specific example: "Supplier got the order wrong? Your problem; you fix it." Ever worked in a union shop, John? You are _forbidden_ from fixing it, and you get to visit the supply foreman who will delegate to somebody (x2 or 3) before the order gets fixed, so go do something else for a few weeks. Stuff like that drove me up a friggen wall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [let's feed]

Some people might have this experience. I'm not one of them. I love being an entrepreneur for the reasons he indicates. And I don't see or have those negatives.

John Petersel seems to have failed as entrepreneur (or maybe he never tried, which is even worse writing stuff like this...), but I think I make more money than him, have more free time, spend more time with my family, actually manage my company instead of 'doing everything myself' (as he seems to suggest). And I do what I love and have always done that. Life's too short not to.

Some people shouldn't be entrepreneurs, luckily not everyone wants to, but writing crap like this...

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi guys - author (Josh) here.

Thanks for reading and commenting. Even the negative stuff is appreciated. I thought I'd leave you a quick response.

First, I'm thrilled that you thought to do a brief background check, and found me. I can offer some explanation to some of the conclusions you've drawn based on the article and otherwise.

The most important note that I think gets lost in translation: In its original form (appearing in Harvard Business School's newspaper), the piece is a satire. Specifically, it's a response to a series of events that painted a particularly gushy and fuzzy picture of entrepreneurship. As many of you were quick to point out the holes in an article that was blatantly and exclusively negative, I had merely been acting likewise to the opposite prompt. Also, lamentably, much of the piece's humor had to be edited out for the broader internet audience (unless you suspect you'd appreciate quips about the eccentricities of HBS's staff & curriculum). In the given context, and even in the broader context, much of your criticism is certainly valid.

endtwist- I think "trolling" is a bit harsh, but yes, the goal is to provoke a discussion. Mission accomplished? I'm happy to hear that some mutual friend has vouched for me. And yes, given a broader scope and bigger word count, the art of delegating would certainly have been investigated at length.

jpdoctor- I understand your point. No, I've never worked in a union shop (sorry!). My argument was that, in some strange, perverse way, having such a burden lifted (as in your union shop illustration) is a nicety compared to the stresses of ultimate responsibility. But again, I can see why this might not be the case.

bdrocco- Yep. You're right.

MJR, brownie- Yep, you found me. Sorry about the typo- publishing the article on RWW was done through a third party. Though I can't claim to be a venerable authority with decades of experience, I hope my credentials (and brief explanation above) can add a little more worth to the piece.

tluyben2- I don't think I failed as an entrepreneur. And I most definitely tried. (I suppose the edited version of the article's second doesn't really make this clear, but I did continue to work full time after graduating from undergrad.) Without a doubt you make more money, have more free time, etc. etc. than I do - do bear in mind that I'm currently a student. That all said: much like you, I was in love with what I did, and look forward to re-entering the entrepreneurship field some day in the future. Thanks for commenting.

GFisher- Sorry for baiting you. But yeah, you're absolutely right.

rdl, chr15- technically I wasn't a 2+2, though most of the structure is accurate. As for "accomplishing nothing," I suppose it depends on your definition of accomplishment. And again, the article doesn't totally make it clear that I ran my company full-time, expanded operations cross-country, and exited via sale in the two years between now and my time in undergrad. Not your typical consulting background, but I think HBS likes to bring in a few strange people for diversity.

bodegajed- I'm with you 100%.

moocow01- I'm with you 115%.

Everyone else- thanks, too.

Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER6> The author needs to understand that being an entrepreneur is not about the result. Steve Jobs said in his bio "The reward is the Journey." It's the excitement of what's in store for the future.

<comment><USER7> Agreed - I think his fundamental 'flaw' may be be his MBA-ness meaning he is looking for the efficient, predictable, safe way to make money for the organization which in this case is himself. Its been said over and over but for the majority of people entrepreneurship is typically not the 'best' way to make money or going to make one materially wealthy beyond their wildest dreams - in most cases its probably going to be better for your spreadsheet if you just get a normal job. BUT a normal job 9 times out of 10 does not 'pay' anywhere close to the things one will get out of an entrepreneurial effort that is the right fit (meaning doing what your passionate about, living your life your way, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "I can't see why you wouldn't rather sit back in your ergonomically-designed desk chair, crack a beer you bought on the company's expense account, and cut your biweekly salary checks that could feed a family of five for three months."

I know that's bait, but I can't help falling...

Maybe that's true for the author (or someone Harvard-educated), but here in the third world, enterpreneurship sounds a lot better when you see that a "dream" job like mine pays U$ 15.000 after taxes (and yes, people think I'm mad because I want to quit).

I do have job security people in Spain or the US might only dream of (six months' severance plus a year's salary if I'm fired), but being secure in a dead end isn't my dream life.

</comment><comment><USER9> Who is the author? What are his credentials? What has he built? With a blank page for a bio, no other authored articles and a Google search that returns next to nothing, this article is worth just that - next to nothing.

<http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/author/john-petersel.php> <http://www.google.com/search?q=John+Petersel>

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like RWW made a typo with the author - his name is Josh, not John. Searching for "Josh Petersel" "Harvard Business School" will turn up a bio <http://averyjoshblog.wordpress.com/about-josh/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You suck as an entrepreneur ergo entrepreneurship sucks.

</comment><comment><USER11> How so you graduate from a mid-tier school with an undergraduate business degree in 2009, then get into Harvard Business School in a couple years later, without having anything noteworthy as a job in between?

<comment><USER12> Probably through Harvard's 2+2 program, which accepted its first class in 2009. The 2+2 program permits undergrads to apply to HBS. If accepted, you agree to work 2 years then go to HBS for 2 years.

I've had a couple of friends that were accepted in 2009, and they speculated the 2+2 program had as high as a 30% acceptance rate in its inaugural year since it wasn't well publicized.

That's my guess.

<comment><USER11> Wow, that sounds like a really bad innovation for HBS; the other way in used to require 2-3 years of high-end consulting work, or 4+ years of normal work.

They're bigger than most business schools already (900 students in the class?). Why are they doing this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, this article is saying that entrepreneurship is hard. Just because something is hard doesn't mean it sucks. Anything worth doing is hard. Living a life of ease is boring as hell.

</comment><comment><USER14> The author's attitude towards salaried work, let alone entrepreneurship, is awful. If that really is his attitude and I was his manager, he would be fired with in six months.

<comment><USER15> this is why your employees hate you and constantly talk bad about you to your own boss.

Did you hear about the quiet mutiny being arranged to have you pushed out when John is distracted by his vacation?

Didn't think so.

<comment><USER16> I'm a little bit confused by your comment. Do you know something about the grandparent I don't or were you speaking figuratively as if you or the GP were an employee alongside John/Josh?

Edit: Wait I think I get what you're saying. I had just assumed the GP had no boss so it didn't make any sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Waste of time. Author just wanted somebody to read his pseudo-polarizing superficial drivel.No substance to be found

</comment><comment><USER18> Honestly, if the author line had said "Tyler Winklevoss" I wouldn't have been surprised. This individual has confused "responsibility is hard" with "responsibility sucks," which is a very poor comparison to make if you want to do anything well.

</comment><comment><USER19> If entrepreneurship was easy, everyone would do it. That's all there is to it.

<comment><USER20> it really seems EVERYONE is doing it these days...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> hahaha i hope this guy is ready to be purified by a storm of angry frustrated entroporn enthusiasts</comment>


Accessibility Events - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/accessibility-events/ <comment><USER2> Axess Lab (a company specialized on accessibility) also blogged about this "feature" [1]. This reminds me of providing a "m.example.com" website just for mobile phones. Finally people noticed that making websites responsible by default is the right way to go. This should apply to accessibility as well.

[1] [https://axesslab.com/digital-apartheid/](https://axesslab.com/digital- apartheid/)</comment>


Design Vault – UI patterns and design inspiration from real products - <AUTHOR> https://designvault.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I just launched Design Vault - a UI pattern and design inspiration library for designers, developers & product managers to help:

\- Explore best practices and common UI patterns

\- Find inspiration from the worlds best apps and websites

\- Evaluate device-specific interactions

\- Research competitors

It's early days and my main focus right now is populating the site and adding content as often as I can, once it's well populated I'll be working to add new features and grow the community.

Feedback and app suggestions are more than welcome.</comment>


Stowaway – Multi-hop Proxy Tool for pentesters - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ph4ntonn/Stowaway/blob/master/README_EN.md <comment><AUTHOR> Stowaway is Multi-hop proxy tool for security researchers and pentesters

Users can easily proxy their network traffic to intranet nodes (multi- layer),break the restrction and manipulate all the nodes that under your control</comment>


What Tau Sounds Like - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3174T-3-59Q <comment><USER2> I think it would be interesting to see how this changes when you fix the distance between numbers on the chromatic scale (e.g. using only semitones or whole tones) to make it less arbitrary.</comment>


Show HN: weBounty – Accountable crowdfunded bounty platform - <AUTHOR> https://webounty.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Built for accomplishing objectives both big and small, the platform allows users to find, create, and support bounties around issues they care about, and to do so in an accountable way.

We've been in open beta for a few weeks, and will be launching on 6/19\. We are looking to make as many improvements as we can before then so your feedback is greatly appreciated.</comment>


Cheap bandwidth and server capacity, HN special offer - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/hn-leaseweb-special-offer <comment><USER2> Wow, that is a sweet deal. Thanks for posting jacques. I can't imagine a startup idea I may have that requires that much disk space, but it may set the mind turning to know the option is somewhat affordable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally I was swayed by the bandwidth, the fact that it is unmetered 1G for 1.45 / Mbit is really very low compared to other places. And this is a very serious hosting facility, unlike some of the other 'price breakers' out there.

They currently host 10's of thousands of servers, including some pretty major sites.

<comment><USER2> Where are they located? Are there benefits to the location, such as fair treatment of IP disputes? It would be nice to have a server hosted in a place where the ISP only unplugs you after a court decision, not before.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're in Europe, specifically on an industrial area close to the city of Haarlem.

Leaseweb has historically hosted a whole bunch of 'controversial' sites, they've stood by their customers as far as they can but of course they do have to abide by the law.

See here for instance:

[http://torrentfreak.com/leaseweb-forced-to-shut-down-more- bi...](http://torrentfreak.com/leaseweb-forced-to-shut-down-more-bittorrent- sites-071116/)

Here is their DC from above, it's got to be an old picture because there were a lot more gensets when I was there last time.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=haarlem,+netherlands&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.315864,60.732422&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Haarlem,+North+Holland,+The+Netherlands&ll=52.391931,4.664624&spn=0.001709,0.003707&t=h&z=18)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've just purchased my first server from Leaseweb as well (spoke with Robin too) and the deal is pretty nice considering the quality of bandwidth is supposed to quite good with Leaseweb.

The majority of my servers are with OVH though, they're not known for quality support but their prices are pretty low and do have a good control panel. However I guess it's best to find a server that suits your needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've looked at OVH, but I read so many horror stories about them on hosting review sites that I never dared to sign up with them, good to see they have satisfied customers as well.

They're huge from what I've seen about them, but as you say, support is a bit of an issue there, as well as strong opinions about oversold bandwidth.

<comment><USER3> I just read what I wrote, I sound like an advert! I actually have quite a love/hate relationship with them.

They generally work through things blundering on one thing to the next and I'm not sure how they made it this far. At times they cause more trouble than they're worth but when it's all good, it's brilliant.

They're bandwidth can also be pretty hit or miss outside of Europe (and random spots within Europe and even France too). They disregard it with little interest but that's a bit insane considering the Internet is an international phenomenon. Oh, and not to mention peers can get 5kb/s to one server but then their full connection (700kb/s+) speed to another server in the same datacentre (again, met with little interest).

That said, I have been told (explicitly in an incident ticket by staff) that the monitoring on the 10Gbps servers do not yet work with their routers. As a result they have no way to track the bandwidth usage and impose their 40TB usage on them.

10Gbps for 300/month!

<comment><AUTHOR> > 10Gbps for 300/month!

That's hilarious, if they actually can deliver.

I might go and try that for a bit :)

My current total commit is 6 Gbps, and I'm paying substantially more than that.

<comment><USER4> No, that's not hilarious. It's a typo or a scam.

1 Gbit/s ( _one_ G _bit_ /s) flat will set you back at least around 5000 EUR/month. 1 Gbps (that would be _eight_ Gbit/s) for 300? Yeah. Right.

<comment><AUTHOR> read the ops comment a bit more carefully, it is because of a technical limitation at the hosting facility that they can't enforce their data cap.

<comment><USER4> You are right, I should have paid better attention (the provider is, apparently, not themselves advertising this "feature").

Regardless I still don't see the point of highlighting a loophole that is obviously going away in the short term.

Au contraire the existence of this flaw should a be strong indicator _against_ using said ISP. Do you really want to trust your stuff to them if they can't even get their own billing straight?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While searching for a new hosting provider a few months ago, I had a few (on- site) conversations with Leaseweb in The Netherlands too. I can confirm they seem to be nice people (although we decided to go with another company).

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a typo in the name leaseweb atleast once in the page.

<comment><USER7> And so, of course, there is also a typo in your comment. Is there some law about this?

<comment><USER8> Muphry's law: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, I only spotted that on the third reading of your comment.

I guess I shouldn't be proofreading anything :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578261780648285770.html <comment><USER3> Mr. Gates writes, _"I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal — in a feedback loop ... This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right."_

He's talking from experience. Between the late 1990's and early 2000's, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wasted around $1.7 billion on a broad-ranging, intensive, national effort to study small schools... based on a flawed measurement of Bayesian probabilities!

The foundation looked only at the probability that a school would be small given high school performance, and seemingly forgot to look at the probability that a school would be high-performing given a small school size. The two are not the same. $1.7 billion, poof!

The following analysis, by a professor of statistics, explains in more detail how the foundation got it wrong: <http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8863.pdf>

<comment><USER4> Guy spent $1.7 Billion testing a hypothesis. Admitted he was wrong.

Probably would have been better to fail faster, etc. But it was his money. Kudos to him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I must say the comments here are extremely cynical and somewhat disturbing. Speaking as a citizen from India, (still third world despite our progress), I can say that the Gates foundation has done a turn of good in our corner of the world. You might dislike Microsoft the corporation, but Gates as a philanthropist deserves praise.

<comment><USER6> I am pleased to hear that Gates's money is doing good somewhere in the world. In the US, I think, the Gates foundation has a much higher profile in education reform, which is very controversial because it drags in all of the baggage of accountability, slipping standards, unions, privatization, big government, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He is not wrong, but there is also a certain danger in this approach that goes unremarked upon. It is often difficult to measure the outcome you actually desire, and a lot easier to measure some proxy for it. But attaching incentives to optimising some metric - making an intermediate goal the goal in itself - tends to make it an extremely unreliable proxy for the original worthy cause.

We know that Gates is aware of this, because he is credited with having once said: "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." We can only hope that he is keeping this in mind; he certainly makes no reference to the problem in this piece.

The Gates Foundation has in the past spent billions driving ruthlessly and with careful measurement toward what turned out to be entirely counterproductive goals. Simply measuring more stuff will not be sufficient to prevent it from doing so again.

Some recommended reading material on the subject:

Ritter & Webber, "Dilemma's in a General Theory of Planning" (1973) introduced the concept of "wicked problems" - [http://www.uctc.net/mwebber/Rittel+Webber+Dilemmas+General_T...](http://www.uctc.net/mwebber/Rittel+Webber+Dilemmas+General_Theory_of_Planning.pdf)

Dietrich Dörner, _The Logic of Failure_ (1996) covers this ground very well, including with case studies of people trying to save a fictional third-world country in a computer simulation of an aid program... with uniformly disastrous results.

<comment><USER8> What are the counterproductive goals the Gates Foundation has driven towards?

<comment><USER7> I was referring in particular to the "small schools" initiative: [http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/18/gates-foundation-schools- op...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/18/gates-foundation-schools-oped- cx_dr_1119ravitch.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell talk on why future generation will remember Bill Gates and not Steve Jobs and also why he will be remembered as a humanitarian and not as a computer genius.

</comment><comment><USER10> Feedback and data related to your actual goals is key to achieving anything, and of course education and health should be targeted, but a bigger underlying problem is the structural inequality causing a constant lack of resources for many countries and communities.

The fact that Mr. Gates ignores this leads me to believe that he thinks that the grossly unequal distribution of resources is the result of some process that has a sound basis. Our current 'economic' models, since they do not take into account equality, health, education, or any other important scientific data, are fundamentally unsound, and that is why we have the problems of gross inequality and inadequate distribution of resources.

We should frame this as less exploitation and more fairness rather than more charity.

<comment><USER11> I agree with what you say. What bothers me about the Gates Foundation is their education agenda. Their priorities reflect a naive reductionist worldview akin to Rudyard Kiplings' Just So Stories.

MEASUREMENT

I'm confounded by the emphasis on Taylorism (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management>) and privatization, and by extension the emphasis on teacher performance.

Make a list of all things wrong with public education in the USA (inequity, parental involvement, malnutrition, etc). Teacher performance isn't even in the top ten.

A friend works on some sort of in school room surveillance system at the Gates Foundation. It records the teacher. Which is then reviewed and the teacher graded. By what criteria, I can't imagine. Then the teacher's performance is graded and coaching in administered. For improvement. I asked if any teachers were advising the project. No. I asked who reviews the tapes. Non teachers.

Yea, that'll help.

Even more standardized testing is another aspect of Taylorism. As every QA/Test person knows, you cannot test your way to quality.

The only measure of teacher performance is student achievement. But with so many factors beyond the control any teacher or group of teachers, it's patently unfair to judge teachers. And yet ask any faculty, group of students, or parents, and they'll tell you who the great teachers are.

PRIVATIZATION

The outsourcing of education is just a way to divert money meant for the classroom towards cronies. Standardized testing, textbooks, misc contracts are some examples.

The rationalization for corporate charter schools is that somehow the free market will make schools more competitive. Alas, free market means monopoly, not more parental choice.

Further, how is a private entity more accountable than government? I can attend board meetings, vote on levies, submit public records requests. But corporations can easily hide their activities, that's what makes them private entities.

THE FIX

I believe what's needed is more transparency, more accountability, more democracy.

Every single profession struggles with their bad apples. What's needed is a way to hold individuals accountable and some means of either correcting the problem or firing them. This applies to cops, doctors, accountants, teachers, everyone.

It's always an open secret who the bad teachers are. But just try to fire one.

A second friend was a principle for a few years. Of the bad apples, one of his teachers was assaulting his students. For years. My friend wasted three years trying to fire this person. Opposed by the district, the union, the other teachers, etc. Couldn't get it done. Violent teacher was a few years away from retirement, hey buddy, don't rock the boat.

Another friend works in the local school district. He recently related that people within the district admin were quite pleased they only "had to fire" 5 teachers out of 2,000+ in the last year. That's astonishing. I know there's more than 5 bad apples in the district. The documentary The Rubber Room shows what happens to bad teachers in NYC that can't be fired. (Spoiler: They all sit in a room every work day, doing nothing.) I have it on good authority that happens in every district. Probably in every profession.

One example from my experience: I wasn't allowed to fire 4 developers on my team. Pushed onto my team by my VP, who was building an empire. Completely toxic individuals (eg one Lebanese and one Isreali who would go at each other). No other manager would deal with them. Complete drain on my team's morale and productivity. I had numbers, facts, personal reviews in my arsenal. I couldn't fire them. I can't imagine how much harder it is in a public context.

But in truth, I don't know a specific fix is for culling bad apples. I believe this governance issue is the central management challenge in our society.

Meanwhile, I advocate for gathering more data (transparency) so that we can at least know what's going on.

(Thanks for reading this far.)

<comment><USER12> I don't necessarily disagree with much you wrote, but this piece about corporate charter schools,

 _Alas, free market means monopoly, not more parental choice._

seems like it came out of nowhere. Since charter schools entered my area, my kids have gone from two choices, the local high school and a gifted program for engineering students at a local college, to many choices, includes a performing arts school, a science and engineering school for the "non-gifted" and many others.

As a parent, I have concerns about how charter schools impact the local school budgets, but monopoly is the exact _opposite_ of the word I'd use.

So I'm curious about what logic brought you to that statement. Your comment was well thought out, so I don't think you are just pulling statements out of nowhere.

<comment><USER11> Thanks.

Yea, that was quite the leap. I see privatization equated with competitiveness all the time. (As those the bidding process isn't an insider rigged game, but that's whole 'nother issue.)

I'm pleased that charter school led to greater diversity and choice in your district. Like they say, YMMV.

In the reports I've read, charter schools have been selectively admitting students, cherry picking, excluding the low potential, aptitude students. Reinforcing inequity.

Whereas public schools have to take all students. Different rules, same scoring system. Very unfair.

In my district, we've had short-lived "magnet" programs and schools. They're hugely popular with students and parents. Teachers seem like them too. District administrators hate them. Non standard. Must be closed down. Taylorism redux.

Two of our low income high schools have hugely popular magnet programs. My friends that teach at those schools say that it creates a class (caste) system, like two schools in one. The smart, rich, mostly white students in the gifted programs. The rest in the remedial programs. The two groups rarely commingle. (I used to volunteer in the classroom, I've seen this firsthand.)

I find that so weird. So much wasted potential.

Whatever the current situation, there's huge money being poured into our local pro-charter school campaigns. So whereas our district foolish tried to culled diversity, maybe we'll eventually get it with new charter schools. That'd be ironic.

Thanks for replying.

<comment><USER12> The application process is one of those interesting ones. I completely agree that having a different ruleset but same grading process is completely wrong, but I think that says more about having involvement from too high of a governmental level.

Personally, I think our best option would be to do away with the notion of age-based grades. Make progression based on competency (at least for the core curricula), so if you are highly competent in math, you may be with students several years older than you but if your writing stinks, you may be with younger kids. Instead of trying to force kids into a mold that very few fit comfortably in, let them grow in their own ways.

I would love to have my kids attend a school like that. My daughter, who is a gifted writer and artist but struggles non-stop with math (and there are physiological reasons for that) would be able to be comfortable in school and, as a result, better able to focus on her strengths instead of trying to shore up weaknesses that only matter for testing programs.

If the charter system allows more experimentation, then that alone justifies its existence; but the transition of more than 100 years of "prepare them for the factory" type of education to "prepare them for knowledge work" will not painful, especially since we still need some of the "prepare them for the factory" and many more "prepare them for a trade".

<comment><USER11>
      Personally, I think our best option would be to do away with the notion of age-based grades.

Agreed.

I've been chewing on two ideas.

Assess student achievement with actual achievements. Just like achievement badges in the Boy Scouts. My son is an Eagle Scout. After meeting the minimum requirements, and completing his project, he was able to assemble whatever achievements tickled his fancy. Promotes self direction and working at one's own rate.

Have students teach each other, work more collaboratively, grade each other. Versus lectures, rote memorization, and testing. I've experienced this first hand (as the student). Peer pressure and expectations work wonders. Hardest, most rewarding 'A' grade I ever earned. (I was otherwise a terrible student.)

Alas, to date, there's very little research on these two reforms. Some places have tried the achievement system, results inconclusive. I haven't looked to see if the peer support system has been tried else where.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A couple of years ago my wife's 2 years old nephew was diagnosed with retinoblastoma (eye's cancer). I contacted the world's best hospitals and was told that the treatment will cost hundreds of thousands dollars.

So I tried to get some financial help from related funds and organizations and contacted all of them I could find on the internet.

Guess what happened: 90% of them just ignored me, and the rest told me that they are not helping sick kids, but only doing research work. One came up to cover up to $3.500(!) if I provide a bunch of documents I was sure I wouldn't be able to gather in a short term.

On web pages of such funds you normally can easily find a button to make a donation. But try to contact them if you need help - you will be surprised how difficult it is.

So we (relatives and friends) collected as much money as we could, the kid was receiving treatment in one of the local hospitals, in the end both of his eyes got removed. Maybe the same would have happened in those best hospitals too, but if there was even the slightest chance to keep his sight it certainly would worth any money.

Bottom line is - I don't believe in cancer funds any longer, and will never donate any dime. In fact I'm not even sure that they spend all money for "Research", they might be just another way to avoid taxes.

May be Bill Gates fund is different, I hope so...

<comment><USER14> In the past, the foundation has explicitly stated that they are not looking to fund clinics and specific work. While that kind of charity provides immediate help to people, it does not provide any long-term solutions.

Bill Gates does not have unlimited money. The $40BN or so they manage is not enough to really make an impact if they focus on immediate solutions like helping individual cases. They need to use the money to research better ways and change how governments handle things so that the overall system will be better.

While it's sad about what happened to your nephew, it's much more sad if such diseases remain expensive and difficult to treat and more people suffer in the future. Unfortunately, it is _not_ worth unlimited amount of money to save one child's sight.

Do the math. If the Gates foundation spent $100,000 to help one person out, they'd be able to only help about 400,000 people. That, in the scope of things, is not a whole lot of impact. Their current plan will have far more impact.

<comment><USER13> I see your point, but considering that there are almost no advances in cancer treatment over last decades (despite all that research), may be it would make some sense to spend some of that money to help sick people? Especially 2 year old kid with such rare type of cancer? In fact trying to help him could be a great research in itself, but looks like it's not something they are interested in.

<comment><USER14> Even if there were no advancements, which is certainly not the case, no, it would still probably not be a good use of the money. If all forms of cancer are simply unsolvable (not the case), then research would be better spent on researching other diseases, working to change healthcare so the costs are not extremely expensive, and so on.

And why spend $100K+ to save one child? Why not that money, to, say, feed many starving children? Or build housing?

If "trying to help him" would be a form of "great research", then chances are someone would be interested in it. You might need to realise that he is simply unlucky. But not necessarily any more unlucky than a child that gets polio, or has their skin burned off, or is left brain damaged from a car accident.

It's complicated and sad, but denouncing long-term investment because of immediate sad situations will only create more sad situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hmm, would love to see Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet in a competition to see who can solve more of the worlds problems.

<comment><USER16> In a way there are, or at least BillG and Elon Musk. Buffett is giving his money to the Gates Foundation. Musk and Gates each identified what they saw as our greatest issues where they could have impact, and went from there. Whether we agree with their priorities or not, it's inspiring to watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How to rid the world of all known diseases (the Python method)

"Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvelous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again."

<http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/toridof.htm>

<comment><USER18> Also on youtube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM> :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bill Gates treating the world like a computer optimization problem. First profile the world (program) and construct suitable benchmarks. Figure out some reasonable goals and test if your various health care and education programs affect the benchmark results.

<comment><USER20> As Gates points out in the article, these techniques existed before computers. So I agree given Gates's background, he is probably applying what he learned from computers to wider problems. But in the grand scheme of things, computer science adopted these techniques from other disciplines.

<comment><USER21> I know Gates was a really good (strike that, he was really, really good) hacker and software engineer.

But I think he was an even better bussinessman. I am pretty sure he's applying more from the latter background than from the computer field.

<comment><USER22> Gates was a good business man. I've not heard many call him a good hacker before. I'd like to hear more...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dear Bill Gates. Here's yardstick to measure residual value of your efforts: _If you'd stop doing whatever you're doing, will the world continue benefit from your past efforts for ages to come?_

Compare "buying food for the hungry" and "teaching the man to fish" - <USER2> effort carry more residual value?

You developed DOS, and then Windows. Even when you stopped - the world continued rolling with your software and building more and more great stuff on top of it. Even Ballmer with all his powers couldn't derail your past efforts.

Dear Bill Gates, please stop taking consequences for causes, stop fighting with shadows. See where you can turn on the light so it will shine when you'll be long gone. Money + creativity goes the long way. It's time to add creativity. You can do that! You can do that!

<comment><USER23> Dear Bill Gates. Stop buying stuff for people. Be that vaccines or portable toilets or donations to some vague "research" causes.

Invest in helping people to discover the powers within. Do not invest in making people think they need to depend on some external rich power to pull themselves out of their misery. That is misservice. This is lie. That warm, fuzzy feeling you get after spending billion on buying stuff for poor people comes with deeper unease - deep inside you know that you did not really make a lasting difference. Difference yes. Lasting - only until that billion ran out and your vaccines are used, food is eaten and very soon they will want more. This is not a difference.

Invest in helping people to learn the skills, invest in helping people to find inspiration within, invest in helping people to express their own creativity and power.

Invest in helping people to discover how each of them can help other million people without spending billion dollars.

<comment><USER24> He's trying to _eradicate_ polio. That would be incredible lasting good.

Research does serious lasting good as well. Research funding built the Internet, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So far as I'm aware, the Gates Foundation does nothing in regard to the world's biggest problem, which is aging. Aging kills the most people, causes the greatest amount of suffering, causes the greatest loss of wealth and capital, falls most heavily on the poor without access to palliative medical technologies, etc, etc.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an- outra...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an- outrage-1.php)

You'll see a number of mainstream foundations in the Methuselah Foundation lists, and those also support the SENS Research Foundation, working on the basis for ways to reverse the cellular and molecular damage that causes aging. The Gates foundation isn't there:

<http://mfoundation.org/?pn=donors>

But that's not entirely surprising: from the beginning, the Gates Foundation has been a very traditional Big Philanthropy operation. Wealth does not grant vision. Where there is innovation or stepping away from the norms it is of the incremental type, with none of what Peter Thiel calls "radical philanthropy". Is this is a criticism of Gates? Sure. But it's equally a criticism of everyone else. The Gates Foundation is doing what most people think Big Philanthropy should do. The blind spot for aging is near universal.

<comment><USER26> I'd put aging a lot farther down the list of big problems. I'd much rather him dedicate resources to stopping malaria in Africa, granting children and average people a shot at living, than to give money to extend grandma and grandpa's lives by a few more years.

<comment><USER27> What about extending the prime years of scientists, engineers, etc? More years of experience and wisdom to capitalize on and to reinvest their skills and knowledge into human progress. I for one would prefer that many of the brightest candles in humanity's past were still lit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not everyone is as confident in Bill Gates's magical abilities as he is.

[http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/10/how-bill-gates- wasted-50-...](http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/10/how-bill-gates- wasted-50-million/) [http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny0...](http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny09.html)

<comment><USER20> That 2nd link is an obvious straw man. If you read what Gates is actually saying [1] it's far more reasonable. There is a huge dynamic range in teacher abilities. He is saying take the very best, and give them a slightly higher load. Just as you can take the very best programmers and have them write more code. But then people freak out and say Gates wants big classes across the board, it's silly.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2011/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2011/02/27/AR2011022702876.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm very glad he's doing what he's doing.

It is also fair that when someone proposes a certain set of objectives, and then declares a plan to accomplish those, that you can criticize the plan to accomplish those objectives as being less than optimal. IMO, since this is his own money, he has every right to pick the objectives he thinks most important.

I think a marginal $1b spent to end the drug war would do more for his stated goal of fixing underperforming urban schools than a marginal $1b spent on teacher measurement. The irony is he wouldn't even need to spend $1b to make a huge impact on ending the drug war -- just showing through data that the drug war is responsible for many of the problems in schools and urban culture ($10mm to study this?) and then having the courage to promote that result (free or priceless) would accomplish it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Who has more power to do good in the world? A rich business person or a "powerful" politician in a democracy? I'm going to go with the business person. They're free to do anything they can afford, unlike politicians who are at the mercy of government processes and political opponents.

</comment><comment><USER30> We will fix nothing if we don't change the OS on that we are running...

OS = what we see(input) and what we do with that knowledge(output)

We can Install this software and this firewall and this make things easy tool but at the end we still are on the same OS.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sometimes it seems that some think that the world biggest problem is that there are too few people on earth. No, it is not. We are killing our ecosystem already now. These other human problems like child mortality, poverty etc are of course emotionally and personally big ones, but resolving them would make world more crowded and not better place at all. My suggestion: if you put X amount of money to increase human population, then you must put also at least same amount to resolve all the next problems what we people generate: over- harvesting, co2 and other greenhouse gases, pollution etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting read.

What is not measured, can not be controlled.

</comment><comment><USER33> The best I can say is that BG sure made the right decision stepping down from Microsoft to do something useful.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't get the negativity in this thread. Bill Gates is trying to solve hard problems and people here are complaining. Sure, they may not be the problems that _you_ think are most important, and I'm sure the foundation is making missteps along the way and wasting some money. But his message in this article is a good one I think:

> _The process I have described—setting clear goals, choosing an approach, > measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine > our approach_

This sounds like a pretty pragmatic plan to me. I know that I don't necessarily agree with the direction he's going (I would personally pick other problems to tackle), so I just hope someday I'm in a position to do something along the same vein and learn from the lessons he's willing to share.

<comment><USER35> >I don't get the negativity in this thread. Bill Gates is trying to solve hard problems and people here are complaining.

I respect Bill Gates and think his cause is noble but they are partly childish because of the idealism and the hopes to cure disease. ilaksh's post on this thread is part of the reason why though I wanted to reply to your post instead of doing so to his. It will be far more controversial though.

David Attenborough recently said that human beings are a plague on Earth.

I'll present you with three stories:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906520/planet-earth- narra...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3906520/planet-earth-narrator- david-attenborough-calls-humans-a-plague-on-the)

Peter Beard, in an interview with Alec Baldwin on 'Here's the Thing', said that AIDS was a good thing in Africa because of overpopulation and it caused quite a stir.

I listened to an All Things Considered story where, not only was there a slaughter of elephants for their ivory tusks, but they would wait until more elephants would come back to mourn the slain and the poachers would kill them too. When asked, off the record, the poacher said he had to feed his family. The natural question I asked is "Why are you having kids you can't afford?" The question wasn't asked during the piece and it's something that isn't asked worldwide.

There are numerous examples of mankind ruining the environment. As the most intelligent life on this planet, we are to be the custodians and not expand like a virus.

Even if you took the approach of mankind over everything else we are now destroying the soil which we rely on and food shortages continue as the price for food continues to rise.

The answers don't come easy in this world. The best ones are the most difficult to make. I suspect Western countries will have to do the same in the coming years to limit population growth.

<comment><USER14> Why exactly does Earth itself have any intrinsic value greater than humans? We evolved to expand; we're machines to replicate DNA. I'm not sure how you can state that we now must be custodians and not expand more.

I know you "can't get an ought from an is", and I can come up with several utility functions that have the effect of limiting humankind's impact, but I'm not sure there's any fundamental reason they're valid. You may want to save the environment so you can continue to live, but poaching elephants doesn't harm human survivability.

<comment><USER35> >Why exactly does Earth itself have any intrinsic value greater than humans?

If you'd like to be arrogant about it then that's fine. However, we revolve around and are dependent on animals, insects and plants to provide us life.

>We evolved to expand; we're machines to replicate DNA.

You can expand as much as you want. Nature will fight back like it has with adaptive viruses and the Ice Age.

>You may want to save the environment so you can continue to live, but poaching elephants doesn't harm human survivability.

My comment dealt with saving humanity from humans. If you think it's fine to kill elephants while they hold a funeral then you've lost your humanity. Some already have. A bunch of 6 year-olds just got killed and NRA subscriptions went up during that span before any legislation.

<comment><USER14> >You can expand as much as you want. Nature will fight back like it has with adaptive viruses and the Ice Age.

Ice Age? Can you point me to the theory that shows how Earth or "Nature" is somehow an entity that performs massive climate shifts in response to too- successful lifeforms?

There is no necessary balance in nature. It's a constant struggle and what you see just might be a somewhat stable state. If an actor in that system (like humans) finds a game-theoretic superior strategy, there's no fundamental reason why they won't "win" and destroy the rest of the ecosystem and go extinct. Plenty of other species go extinct all the time. That's nature.

Anyways, I'm not saying it's fine to kill elephants at all. Indeed, I find it disgusting, and it'd be fantastic if societies could figure out ways to ensure that poaching isn't a beneficial action. But I am pointing out there's no mandatory acceptance of any axioms that would generate an obligation to "take care of the Earth", whatever that means. And there's definitely no particular reason why a human killing elephants to feed his family is somehow invalid, whereas if lions do the same thing, it's OK.

<comment><USER35> >Ice Age? Can you point me to the theory that shows how Earth or "Nature" is somehow an entity that performs massive climate shifts in response to too- successful lifeforms?

I can point to scientific theses about how it will occur in the future. Are you willing to bet against 95% of the scientific community?

>why a human killing elephants to feed his family is somehow invalid, whereas if lions do the same thing, it's OK.

Are lions wiping out a species?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Bill Gates eradicating disease is pretty awesome. His weird school ranking system in the US is pretty bizarre and utilitarian.

"Students would be better served by measures of which colleges were best preparing their graduates for the job market." is total corporatist bullshit. How about more free courses online like what MIT and Stanford are doing.

</comment><comment><USER37> Didn't read the article; is getting rid of Balmer somewhere in there?

</comment><comment><USER38> Hey Bill Gates! Fix what Aron Swartz was fighting for.

<comment><USER39> Which was?

<comment><USER40> Well for one, he was wanting to make sure that corporations weren't able to convince government for any self-interested group to control the internet and in general, the freedom of knowledge and fighting corruption. In regards to the JSTOR stuff, he was against their locking up of open source, public domain scientific information behind a paywall. He wanted information to be available and people to communicate freely. Which helps societies knowledge grow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Money elf found a new way to spend money (that just applies "The Lean Startup.")

Good on Money elf!

"Huzzah!"

<comment><USER41> "Keep your comments to yourself!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The biggest problem is resource depletion and overpopulation. Overpopulation will be "fixed" through starvation and death. Resource depletion will leave the current young and future generations with far less extravagant lives. Adding to the overpopulation through vaccination programmes und su weiter is a misstep.

<comment><USER43> Decreasing child mortality rates and increasing healthcare availability is statistically shown to decreased birth rate (among other improvements), resulting in fixing the issue of overpopulation (over time).

<comment><USER42> Whether it stops at 8 or 9 billion doesn't really make an impact until 2150 at best. IF we had the resources to keep everything puffing till then. We don't. :)

<comment><USER44> We sure do. The human race will be just fine resource wise.

And that's just accounting for the existing base of resources and knowledge we have today. What we'll have in just another 50 years will be astounding, and further ensure that we won't have a resource problem. :)

<comment><USER42> You're not even able to moderate yourself to "could" be astounding, it WILL be astounding, categorically? Is there anything pointing toward such being able to reach fruition? Not really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Windows is one BIG problem of the world. How is he going to "solve" it?</comment>


Switching from MacOS: Developer Environment - <AUTHOR> http://blog.elementary.io/post/152671475281/switching-from-macos-developer-environment <comment><USER2> >>>I am a professional web developer ... working with an amazing graphic designer/illustrator who designs everything you see on System76.com.

But doesn't design it using ElementaryOS, seeing as it has no graphic design software —or design it using any Linux, for that matter, seeing as no Linux distro has any professional grade design software...

>>The column view is a nice option for those of you used to that in macOS...

Except it doesn't have the preview pane from the column view in OSX Finder. So is nowhere near as useful.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud what you're trying to do with elementary OS and appreciate that you probably see the general disappointment over the latest MBP as a great opportunity to get elementary on the radar of disillusioned Apple users. But to try and pass elementary off as a viable alternative is just daft.

* A crippled Finder-lite

* Some pretty notifications

* A dock

* A mediocre email programme and browser

* A terminal

* A text editor with syntax highlighting

* An image viewer

* A PDF reader

* An app store which is completely empty, apart from what comes with the default install.

Did I miss anything?

<comment><USER3> I'm no graphic designer, so sorry if it's not applicable, but Inkscape and Krita is insufficient? The beauty of linux is that you don't really need a distro to have any specific software, because there are always multiple options available, even if it's sometimes not quite as polished as the Mac or Windows eqiuvalent. It can often surprise you though.

<comment><USER4> Krita is getting there but it's no Photoshop at the moment.

<comment><USER3> Good to know.

<comment><USER2> At least no-one suggested that godawful Gimp as a Photoshop alternative

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a professional full-stack developer. I get such a kick out of all these Linux distros trying to think: Hey, you can totally just go to us as a developer. Here is why I can't just go: I expect the environment to work for me. I need this environment to get out of my way. I need to solve problems before I have them. All the little things that stop me from doing what I want, develop software.

Here is what I irks me:

No, xTerm and Terminator don't cut it. I need color control, including themes, gamma, and events. I need font control, UTF8 and powerline pro. I need full UI control, including no bars, no scrolls, full screen. I need full key control, including mapping, meta, disabling and arrow-keys with meta support. I need copy/paste working.. for real.. with system-wide integrated buffers and vim.

I need full discoverability, network, printers, etc. Mac can find a printer on the network, install its own driver and just work. Same with scanners.

I don't need packages for apps. One of the best things about Mac is install and uninstall an app is dragging to or deleting out of the Applications folder. That an app is just a special folder that I can peer into if I need to. Apt-get is fine for system tools, but not applications.

One of the most underrated features is file containers, DMGs. Double-click and they mount. Application installation becomes trivial and.. cannot fail with some "lock file is open" crap. They're also wonderful for keeping a set of related files together.

The UI is one of the most consistent out there. Apps aren't perfect, but I have general expectation what will be in menus. I also know the menu will always be at the top of the GUI. Speaking of: full-screen support is amazing, and with exposé it's a snap just jump between window with hot-keys.

Office-type tools are generally overly complex and not-integrated. I may be able to use X for email and Y for calendar, but I have to configure the same things in each. There is no centralized concept for accounts, messages, and notifications. Seriously, go into the System Preferences and really consider all the settings that can be controlled and are system wide. I can configure every important system configuration with it, including setting all forms of sharing.

PDF should be integrated by default. I should be able to view them, annotate them, drag-and-drop rearrange/build them. I should be able print them from the print menu.

Preview is one of the most underrated, under-appreciated, under-noticed apps. It has a crap load of power, but it's so simple people generally don't realize what they're doing. It can scale, crop, and rotate. It can adjust size, color, and resolution. It can scroll through a directory and give a slideshow. It can annotate, mask, and create contact sheets. It can work with pictures, animated files, movies and documents. It can be scripted through AppleScript to do all of these things. And, is integrated with most apps through the system application hand-off.

And, NO. I am not going to sit down and configure these things. I have plenty of fun setting up my own configuration for my development environment. I don't want to set up Samba. I don't want to apt-get applications. And most importantly, I don't want to have to sudo apt-get upgrade. The system should tell me: "it's time to upgrade, when is it convenient for me to do it, as I have already downloaded the package and it's ready to go."

Fundamentally, what macOS gets right more than anyone else is "things work." Sure, there are things that get broke, but most of the time I can plug this or that thing in, and it just appears: drives, card readers, floppies, networks, printers, displays, accounts, applications, games, and on and on..

It's not about what distros can do, it's about what I don't have to do.

<comment><USER6> I completely agree. I switched to Apple around a decade ago because I got tired of the yearly reinstall-windows ritual and installing printer drivers and having to send my laptop for repairs.

There's a lot I don't like about Apple, but the 'just works' thing, at least for my use case, is absolutely true.

After the MBP announcement I started looking into alternatives, but all of them fell short.One example:

if I buy new MacBook, I'm up in running in no time because of Time Machine. I've already Time Machine'd at least one laptop ago and things are still doing fine. Or if my current MacBook Air fails, I can easily set up an old-ish Mac Mini with my entire system. Almost no downtime.

That right that, much as I hate to admit it, is enough reason to suck it up, eventually, and buy a really expensive MacBook Pro in a year or so.

And then there are Mac-only apps and iOS-only apps like OmniFocus that I use constantly, a nice touchpad (main reason I'm not getting an XPS), a sleep/hibernate mode that somehow _still_ works better than the altnerative, and the fact that I can walk into any Apple store and have my problems taken care of because of Apple Care.

Now I fully understand that for many people the somewhat ridiculously high price of the new MBP (in Europe, at least) does not weigh up against all these things. But for me they're worth overpaying. Begrudgingly, but still.

They are losing some goodwill though. I'm keeping my ears to the ground and I'll jump ship if I think it's worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No split panes in the terminal application?

<comment><USER8> Not in the default terminal app. But that functionality is "sudo apt install terminator" away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What I don't like about these "eye-candy" distros is packaging--do they have the required human resources to ensure packages are always up to date, especially when security problems arise?

>You can also install any downloaded .deb file designed for the version of elementary OS (or underlying version of Ubuntu or Debian)

Installing external .deb packages is usually the worst idea: the application will break when the ABI of one of the linked libraries changes, for example.</comment>


Google's Fuchsia OS will support Linux apps - <AUTHOR> http://linuxgizmos.com/googles-fuchsia-os-will-support-linux-apps/ <comment><USER2> There's a lot of space to make a better OS than Linux, but I only partially trust Google to make it better than an Android platform where hardware vendors can finally legally choose not to publish source code for their drivers and other hardware support.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's face it - Google has cash to burn. They can entertain the development of 3 OS-es!!</comment>


Malcolm Gladwell on Late Bloomers - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell

<comment><AUTHOR> A reassuring quote for ever-battling founders:

"The Cézannes of the world bloom late not as a result of some defect in character, or distraction, or lack of ambition, but because the kind of creativity that proceeds through trial and error necessarily takes a long time to come to fruition."</comment>


WSJ: Apple wants 50% revenue from $10/month News subscription service - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/12/apple-news-subscription-service/ <comment><USER2> That is a staggering percentage and given the current state of the app I don't see how it is warranted. Then throw in your bundled in there with everyone else who signed up so the pay back is what exactly? Seriously, if you a large news organization with a built up reputation and good customer base what is the pay off here?

and here I thought Apple might take a hint after companies started to balk at the 30% clip in the app store

</comment><comment><USER3> For a typical newspaper 2/3 of costs is printing and distibution. So if they can live with that in print why not in electronic distribution channel?

And remember that Apple is starved for 'services' revenues.</comment>