Sonos will stop updating its 'legacy' products in May - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/21/sonos-legacy-products-software-updates-ending/ <comment><USER2> I bought two play:5 v1s from the Sonos web site in late 2014, so 5.5 years ago. Today they announce the are EOL in May. This wouldn't be so bad except for this part of the announcement:

"Please note that because Sonos is a system, all products operate on the same software. If modern products remain connected to legacy products after May, they also will not receive software updates and new features."

So if I keep my 5 year old speakers the rest of my system will also not receive updates and may become non-functional.

This kind of anti-customer behavior is a great way to ensure your evangelists abandon your brand permanently.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I bought Sonos speakers for much of my house in 2012-2014 it was selling itself as an alternative to hifi equipment that lasts decades. In retrospect my expectation that Sonos would be longer lived than that was short sighted, I should have known better.

This is planned obsolescence at its finest and I guess I won't be buying Sonos/other smart speakers again.

There's no reason to replace perfectly good speakers every 5-10 years because the microcontroller inside isn't profitable enough to continue to support. Good sounding/looking powered speakers with a small compartment inside for a modular brain would be a pretty good trade off, basically like driving the same TV panel with a different set top box every few years.

</comment><comment><USER4> More outrage is necessary. I probably don't need their new features. Have a separate build for legacy without the cruft, or provide a means of replacing the logic board.

Luckily I only have two play:5 speakers and a bridge, but the play:1s are going to be next on their chopping block and my house is full of them, not to mention the sub and soundbar.

This, plus Sonos' lack of investment in their software clients, makes me plan on upgrading to something else.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is crazy - they say the devices were 'introduced in 2011' but they were actively selling them years beyond that. The trouble is I have thousands invested in a house-wide Sonos, and half of them are now declared as 'legacy' \-- that means that my whole system now doesn't get updates. And - the legacy products work perfectly

</comment><comment><USER6> How does this company continue to get worse and worse every time I read about them? People spent a fortune on their products, without ever imagining they would be worthless only a few short years later. Without updates, the 3rd party integrations could stop working at any point - google play, Spotify, etc. And then it would be a brick . This move sends their resale value immediately to almost zero in my opinion, or as soon as people realize the implications.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've purchased $1000 of Sonos speakers. A Play:5 and three Play:1's. (Two working - one was damaged by lighting and Sonos has no repair program.)

I'm done with Sonos. When the app stops supporting them I'll replace them with some decent bookshelf speakers and a wireless adapter.

</comment><comment><USER8> The sonos system is an extreme example of "engineered to fail". The only issue is lack of memory. All they needed to do was make the memory upgradable (or supply the system with a decent amount of memory to begin with). Sonos intentionally engineered this End of Life. Listen, we could all make our own DIY Sonos system, but to be honest, a.) We don't have time, and b.) they're software integrated with Spotify/Pandora/etc. (after they fixed major bugs from each release) was actually pretty decent. Instead, unlike my Dad's 1976 RCA reciever/turntable/speakers that still pumps out a sweet sound, my Sonos system will be relegated to the dump. If someone out there is selling an open source sonos replacement with decent control software, post the link here, I will buy it.

</comment><comment><USER9> ooof; this is absolute crap. If you have a single 'legacy' product on your network (like say, the 500usd Play 5 i bought 5 years ago); you're entire network loses updates and potentially functionality (if say, a cloud api makes a small change.

</comment><comment><USER10> The blog post by Sonos themselves: [https://blog.sonos.com/en/end-of-software- updates-for-legacy...](https://blog.sonos.com/en/end-of-software-updates-for- legacy-products/)

Some comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22109891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22109891)</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, rantbase.com - <AUTHOR>

Hello everyone!
This is my first post on HN, but I lurk frequently. I have launched the first beta of RantBase, a website where anyone can rant anonymously about anyone or anything. It is brand new (only 1 post), if you wouldn't mind taking a second to check it out, and maybe even get something off your chest so the site has content. Thank you so much!
http://rantbase.com <comment><USER2> Why would you do this? Is this the kind of "contribution" to the world you want to make? (Contribution is in quotes because this contributes nothing to the world; it subtracts.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Everybody can use some rant therapy from time to time. While anonymity brings tastelessness, it can also be therapeutic. Also for comedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you know fmylife ( [http://www.fmylife.com](http://www.fmylife.com))? It seems to be something similar to rantbase but with a more funny tone.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickable: [http://rantbase.com](http://rantbase.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> blocked at work Adult Material

<comment><AUTHOR> Certainly is not any adult material.. Possibly because theres so many "fucks" on the page.</comment></comment>


Moderna eyes 'early summer' start for phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/moderna-eyes-early-summer-start-for-phase-3-covid-19-vaccine-trial <comment><USER2> SARS v1 burned out by itself after a short time [1]. I think the companies previously racing to make a SARS v1 vaccine lost a lot of money.

Vitamin D3 is cheaper, and addresses one of the SARS v2 patients' actual problems. It would probably even protect against SARS v3.

Zinc is more useful for addressing zinc deficiency. I recently learned that ACE2, the entry point on cells for the super virus, is a zinc enzyme [2]. Read somewhere that children are mostly immune to SARS-CoV2 because their cells are covered with ACE2, and they don't miss the handful of ACE2 sites taken out by the super virus.

If the super virus disappears in the northern hemisphere during the summer, the media will have to explain why they sold us out to make a bunch of stories to cover.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23027183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23027183)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensin- converting_enzyme_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensin- converting_enzyme_2) \- "Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 is a zinc containing metalloenzyme located on the surface of endothelial and other cells."

<comment><USER3> The virus had continued spreading in the southern hemisphere despite the summer season. What makes you think it will disappear in the northern hemisphere?

<comment><USER2> I don't know much about southern hemisphere's current SARS-CoV2 cases, but people everywhere are Vitamin-D deficient. Some recent research found that the old vitamin D recommendations were a fraction of what people actually need for optimal health [0]. Cities are particularly good at creating deficient populations.

Human skin normally synthesizes vitamin D when exposed to ultraviolet light. People with darker skin need more sunlight to produce adequate vitamin D, which is presumably one of the main reasons why the super-virus' victims disproportionately have darker skin [1].

[0] _The Big Vitamin D Mistake_ \- [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541280/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541280/)

[1] _COVID-19 'ICU' risk – 20-fold greater in the Vitamin D Deficient. BAME, African Americans, the Older, Institutionalised and Obese, are at greatest risk. Sun and 'D'-supplementation – Game-changers? Research urgently required_ \- [https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1548/rr-6](https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1548/rr-6)</comment></comment></comment>


TechStars 2008 Applications Now Open - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/20/techstars-2008-applications-now-open/ <comment><USER2> Interesting to see their stats. 8 out of 10 from last summer are funded. Of course, the proof will be when and if any of them have an exit (and how good the founders make out in the exit).

Some offhand differences I see from YC are:

-3 weekly events with TS versus 1-3 with YC. \- TS is more of an incubator. They provide office space. I tend to think this isn't good-- creates less of a sense of ownership for the founders, IMO. \- Boulder, CO ... Not the best hub in the world. On the surface it doesn't seem to be impeding funding, but what about acquisition? \- TS companies have less competition... ~300 applications, 10 accepted. \- TS has a LOT more mentors, on the surface... No idea how engaged they are. \- And the biggie-- The YC/PG brand clobbers TechStars...

<comment><USER3> The working in designated office space requirement is a big negative to me. I see this as they either 1) dont really understand what kind of work environment hackers want/need 2) dont trust the groups that they are funding enough to allow them to work alone without supervision. They really should consider making the office space an option for those who want it.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps there are some entrepreneurs that _prefer_ a dedicated office environment as a way to focus and get things done. You may not like the office environment, but the same doesn't hold true for _all_ entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER3> Please name a successful startup that began its earliest stages in an office. Google, Excite, Yahoo, Dell, Msft, Apple? They all started in dorms/garages/apartments.

Not saying its not possible or some dont prefer it, but the majority of successful ones do not. That is just historical fact.

But its a moot point as it sounds like (according to rms) the group office space is indeed optional with Techstars..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Spoke with a friend who helped Brad Feld start Techstars. Although I still see YC as the best of all these a seed funds, he said TS has three differences:

1) Not PG rigid. He characterized PG as treating investors like the devil in the early stage. They think otherwise, bringing more mentors from the investment arena. 2) laid back location- Although silicon valley is a great place, they value creative environment over competitive atmosphere. Boulder is the place for that according to TS. 3) Hands-on mentors- YC brings them in and they talk, but TS brings them in and then you still have access later on. He asked, how many times have YC founders talked to Joe Kraus after he came and talked.

Both PG and Brad Feld (Techstars creator) have their own blogs and their college groupies (and then some), but I think it depends on the experience you want.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't want to accuse Feld of having knowingly said anything as false as (1) and (3) unless I was sure he actually did, but they are in fact way off.

We're very closely connected to follow-on investors. As anyone who's been funded by YC can tell you, I'm thinking from the beginning about how to pitch them to later stage investors. Often this starts in the interview. There is a stream of investors coming through here. We just don't advertise it, because we don't need to.

As for (3), he picked a really bad example. I hesitate to drag Joe Kraus into this by name, because the help he gives the startups is something he does voluntarily. But the fact is that he is extremely generous with his time. He is meeting with 2 YC startups this week. This is the rule with the speakers, not the exception.

This isn't the first time I've noticed TS trying to portray YC as just us, while TS is some magical stone soup of mentors. It's complete crap, as anyone who has been funded by YC can attest.

They should stick to (2). In the being-in-Boulder department they do actually have us beat.

<comment><USER5> Wow. Thanks PG, it's good to hear your response on this matter. I'll send this response off to my friend and tell him to stop telling ppl this and/or tell Brad Feld to as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > If you apply by March 3rd, you'll be invited to TechStars For A Day, which > gives you a chance to discuss your application with us personally.

If they give any feedback on applications then that will be very useful. This would be something that YC doesn't seem to have the time to do if you're not a finalist.</comment>


How to design a Linux kernel interface [video] - <AUTHOR> http://mirror.as35701.net/video.fosdem.org/2016/janson/how-to-design-a-linux-kernel-api.mp4 <comment><USER2> [http://mirror.as35701.net/video.fosdem.org/2016/](http://mirror.as35701.net/video.fosdem.org/2016/) All the fosdem videos

</comment><comment><USER3> Great insights about API design and implementation in general. The title makes it sound specific and technical while the subject matter concerns pretty much every developer, I recommend you watch it even if you're not interested in low-level programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, I found it because someone recommend it in this way: that this talk is right for every developer even for those who use are creating 'high level' software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> YouTube mirror: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOZZOLHQpd0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOZZOLHQpd0)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's amazing how you can deliver world most used software without unit testing.</comment>


The US told Ecuador to give Wikileaks 'an eviction notice' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/us-wikileaks-internet-2016-10 <comment><USER2> Limiting Asange's internet access could readily be within Ecuador's national interest independent of any other factor. It's hard to see real politic gains for Ecuador by the release of Clinton emails.

</comment><comment><USER3> Denial is proof. At least when discussing sensitive topics such as racism. So we can agree that there's at least a possiblity > 0% the US State Dept. might have twisted an Ecuadorian arm or two?</comment>


Electric scooters aren't quite as climate-friendly as we thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/2/20751610/scooters-electric-dockless-carbon-emissions-study-life-cycle-analysis <comment><USER2> Welcome to reality! Did we really need research for that? Doesn't common sense and a bit of thinking lead to pretty much the same results?</comment>


25-GPU cluster cracks every standard Windows password in less than 6 hours - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/25-gpu-cluster-cracks-every-standard-windows-password-in-6-hours/ <comment><USER2> Less good against non-NTLM passwords ... from my comment last time:

Taking SHA-1 (which YOU MUST NOT USE for password hashing blah), it only manages 63 billion a second. To try all the passwords for that in the alphanumeric space:

\- 10 chars: 35 weeks

\- 11 chars: 44 years

\- 12 chars: 2,800 years

\- 16 chars: 11 times the age of the sun

10 chars for bcrypt: 600,000 years...

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2865**16+%2F+63+billio...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2865**16+%2F+63+billion%29+seconds)

<comment><USER3> \- 8 chars: 84 minutes

\- 6 chars: 1.2 seconds

All of which demonstrates the importance of requiring longer passwords. Also, keep in mind that these are maximum times required to crack a password and not the average times.

<comment><USER4> The average time to crack will just be half of the maximum, so it's not a big difference (compared to order of magnitude errors, anyway). Still good to point out, though.

<comment><USER5> Sure? Wouldn't you optimise the attack to try words or wordlike c0mb1n4t1ons first?

<comment><USER6> That's a good idea if the password was human-generated. With computer- generated random passwords, like gH8r;2CpyyK!a, you might want to optimize differently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was discussed 3-4 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4875206>

Upshot - it's impressive, but NTLM already known as an vulnerable target.

</comment><comment><USER8> NTLM hashes are stored in Active Directory servers as one round of unsalted MD4. It's plain MD4. Not many people know this and I only point it out as it's important to understand that when talking about how many cracks per second they are getting.

</comment><comment><USER9> Impressive as the numbers are, it's worth remembering that this is an "offline crack", going against a stolen list of encrypted passwords. If they can steal your database of encrypted passwords, you've got a problem no matter how strong the passwords are.

How many guesses per second do you get in a typical online crack? E.g., a script kiddie trying to guess your cloud server's SSH password?

<comment><USER10> On my webserver, you get 3 chances and then a 24 hour ip ban. I think that comes out to 0.00003 passwords per second :)

The particularly persistent IPs get a special iptables rule.

<comment><USER11> I suppose it's a bit different from a user facing login, but does anyone know why these limits tend to be set so low? I've locked myself out of plenty of things, and so have plenty of people I know. It seems like setting the limit to 20 would be just as effective in blocking brute force attacks without being user unfriendly.

Is it that with user facing services the common user/passwords are so common it's reasonable to just try just the top x most common passwords?

<comment><USER12> Intuition, most of the time. Here are some quite common ones:

<http://www.splashdata.com/press/PR121023.htm>

There's no reason why you would have a three attempts limit, or five, or ten, and so on. If I get three per account, I'll just use the top three and try again different accounts. If I get three attempts per IP, I'll use many different IPs and do the same.

To remain user friendly, delays are the way to go. E.g. you could have three different delays that add to each other: Account-level, IP-level and global. Increase each with every failed attempt up to 30 seconds of wait time, and add them together. This will slow down brute force attempts to the point where they're useless, while still allowing legitimate users to login (just with a little inconvenience).

As a result, if I failed three attempts with one account, and three one next, etc., my IP-level limit will prohibit me from moving on to other accounts. If I try a lot of passwords on one account, the account-level and IP-level ones will slow me down. And if there's a distributed attack with many IPs, the global delay will reduce the damage the attack can do. All the while legitimate users can still use the service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember back when I was doing a network engineering course the guys could crack a windows password in minutes offline, simple matter of grabbing the database from the machine. I think once you have the machine offline unless you encrypt the data your pretty screwed regardless..

<comment><USER14> When was this? I know older windows versions stored passwords in plain text... I can't remember when they switched to hashed passwords but I think it was around XP or Vista

<comment><USER15> Windows never stored system passwords in plain text.

It did use the LM hash function to store passwords, which was rather weak, making rainbow table attacks easy.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LM_hash>

For backwards compatible this hash function was commonly in use up to Windows 7 (it was disabled by default in Vista though). There are decent workarounds since NT.

NTLMv1 is also rather easy to crack. NTLMv2 is better but took a long time to be in wide use. Kerberos is strong too and can be used

Long story short, Windows OS prior to Vista maintain weaker hash support for backwards compatibility by default (although you can work around it since NT 4, almost nobody did this). Windows Vista still has support for them if you want to turn it on, but by default it's off. From Windows 7 there is no support for weak system hashes. For Active Directories, MIT's Kerberos (used typically in Unix networked environments since the 80s) replaced NTLM from Windows 2000 on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Guess what? Back in 2009, I started using a method to remember long passwords with a huge # of letters, numbers, & special characters.

Gw?Bi2009Isuamtrlpwah#ol,n,&sc. (31 characters)

Create memorable sentences and create a password using the first letter of each word & all the numbers and punctuation. After entering it 10 or so times you'll get used to it pretty quickly.

<comment><USER17> or you can literally write the whole sentence, which is even more secure and you don't have to remember any special rules, just the sentence itself. Of course it's more typing:

        Guess what? Back in 2009 I saw a uniquely attired man traipsing round local places with a high number of legs, necks and shirt collars.

136 characters or 14 Gigayears to crack. Wow today I learnt that there's such a thing as a Gigayear.

<comment><USER18> I just went through the process of changing passwords to sentences. You'd be surprised at how many sites do not allow sentences.

<comment><USER19> I use a password manager, and I have a unique password per site. I generally try to use an MD5 hash resulting from a "ps waux | md5" at the time of registration. I've encountered sites that rejected this due to lack of upper characters (oracle.com, which then allowed me to use "Abc123"), having no special characters, being too long (often forcing me to down-size to 16 or 8 chars). The worst are sites that silently truncate long passwords (I'm guessing due to code errors), so your password is invalid the second you register and must immediately proceed with a password reset.

Big sites are generally good about allowing long/strong passwords. Many mom-n- pop sites are often hit-or-miss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure there is much significance to this article.

It points out "The technique doesn't apply to online attacks, because, among other reasons, most websites limit the number of guesses that can be made for a given account."

Same applies to Windows.

<comment><USER21> I think what they're referring to is having access to the physicial harddisk. In linux terms it would equate to having a copy of the /etc/passwd file.

For example the FBI seizes someones computer. This would allow them to brute force without said restriction.

So yes, from an online, or standard entry viewpoint this is a moot point. Also a properly encrypted hard drive using something like truecrypt is still pretty impenetrable regardless.

<comment><USER22> I've grabbed the SAM file from remote IIS servers in my younger years and cracked the passwords locally.

Buffer overflow the web service, bind a command shell to a port running as the system account (by having the system execute shellcode used in the buffer overflow), netcat to your open port, ftp the SAM (located in the repair directory) to somewhere you can retrieve it, download the file, delete all of the logs, crack the file.

Hard drive encryption would have done nothing to prevent this.

<comment><USER23> I doubt law enforcement would go that route if they seized your stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Edited title for length, because original title got truncated in a confusing fashion.

Original title: "25-GPU cluster cracks every standard Windows password in <6 hours"

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like that got fixed by sysop gods. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If this is done with commodity hardware, now, what were the NSA's capabilities even 5 years ago?

<comment><USER25> I'm sure they were able to crack the encryption method before Microsoft started using it.

<comment><USER26> Put your tin foil hats away. This doesn't "crack" NTLM, it brute forces at a very high rate. The NSA has more money to spend, but are similarly limited by the hardware available at any given point.

<comment><USER24> The NSA has access to their own chip fabrication facilities. I do not know if they own their own plant, or just have secure fab space at some other company's plant.

So they could have easily fabbed something like this, or a tuned architecture specifically designed for the purpose.

<comment><USER27> It's very probable that they have and if so, it's almost certain that it would involve specialized hardware implementations (ASIC, FPGA, whatever) rather than commodity graphics hardware which is burdened with expensive and useless stuff like onboard memory and would be power inefficient

considering that the entire purpose of NSA in the first place is to provide SIGINT and encrypt or decrypt signals, it's almost a given that they're trying to the best of their ability to crack stuff.

<comment><USER28> Not sure

Money buys more commodity hardware faster than the time/money used to develop a chip

It's not hard to make tens, or maybe even hundreds of GPUs beat a specialized chip except for very specific things

And even for something specialized it's probably easier to use an FPGA

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So , why don't modern versions of Windows just use Bcrypt or similar for passwords?

</comment><comment><USER30> Nice. But can it run Crysis?

<comment><USER31> Yes. Physically, it's running *nix though so you'd have to get windows to not freak out with all that power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Every standard Windows password less than 8 chars only?

<comment><USER33> I know for practical purposes this doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but you have to understand that 8 chars of mixed case, numbers, and symbols is still a gigantic key space. That this can be done so quickly on commodity hardware is pretty impressive.

<comment><USER34> Individual char variance is less significant compared to additional chars.

Look at the xkcd password entropy comic

<comment><USER35> From what I remember of the comic, the point was not the length of the password. The entropy was calculated based on 4 possible words.

Assuming ~2000 common English words, the number of possible passwords in that format is 2000^4 ~= 2^44. If the calculation is based on a completely random string of letters it is far stronger at 26^30 ~= 2^141 but it's safe to assume people aren't going to memorize a 30 character random password.

It's worth noting that the fairly common 8 character upper/lower case, numbers, and symbols they cracked in 6 hours is more secure than "correcthorsebatterystaple" at 72^8 ~= 2^49.

<comment><USER34> Why would that be true?

Wouldn't you have to know in advance that the longer password was only lower case letters?

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure which part you're asking about. I'm assuming it's that "correcthorsebatterystaple" is only lower case.

I was mainly commenting on the format suggested by the comic - 4 all-lower case words. You could throw in capitilzation, but most people are going to follow some pattern such as capitilizing all the words or the first and last, etc. These schemes only add a couple extra bits. Fully random capitilization would greatly increase the strength but make it nearly impossible to remember.

There are a lot of assumptions in these calculations, chief among them already knowing the format of the password. It's somewhat reasonable to ignore though, because not knowing the format of the password is going to add extra complexity more or less evenly across all formats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How bout SSL?</comment>


Show HN: 5 Kb Spreadsheet for the Web with copy paste - <AUTHOR> https://renanlecaro.github.io/importabular/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, I felt like JS libs for spreadsheet UIs were always overkill for my usage of letting users import their data into my app. I spent more time disabling the default features than required, and the bundle would still get bloated by tons of features i didn't need. So I made this tiny lib, that's supposed to give you the look and feel of excel, some copy pasting ability, without trying to mimic the power of excel.

</comment><comment><USER2> I get it. Most of these products are bloated, but an HTML table with an input is hardly enough to be user friendly.

And sooner or later you will need to use virtual scrolling, unless 100 rows is all you need.

Have you seen DataGridXL? [https://datagridxl.com](https://datagridxl.com). It's not 5kb but it's not bloated like other products.

Note: I am the author

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't see it when i was looking around, but i basically ignored all libs priced at 50€ or more.

\- You are not gzipping the lib on your marketing website so it only shows up as a 200kb chunk (40kb after gzipping locally), better than most implementations but still too heaving IMO.

\- Your keyboard handling is top notch, but i can't focus the grid on the page using tabbing, so it's not accessible to keyboard only users (so is mine though).

\- You price would have driven me out. My idea is to use this lib in an indie app that's around 100€ MRR, and on multiple small projects that aren't even monetized. I understand making a great lib like that takes time and effort (because i tried and mine is still not ideal) but i also understand many devs don't want to put 800€ in a js file. Most won't even pay for a sublime license that costs less than 100€ a year. So IMO the only ones that will pay for a lib like this are enterprise.

\- your copy paste implementation doesn't play nice with libre office (when i paste from office to your table, the empty rows are ignored, when i paste from your app to office i get an import popup)

<comment><USER2> Hi! Didn't know about the Libre Office copy/paste issue. Will give it a look. You can use the lib for free btw, as long as you don't mind displaying the branding link.

Nice project btw :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Дoбрoe врeмя сутoк, друг!

This looks great. Thank you for sharing. I have already cloned it for my project.

Great work! Мoлoдeц!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha thanks, I hope it will be of some use. You can see it in action in a live "google sheet" like editor here [https://simpletext.link/F864RMYnzcwDND96W](https://simpletext.link/F864RMYnzcwDND96W)

Greetings from владивосток</comment></comment>


FCC approves cellular service in Puerto Rico through Project Loon balloons - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/matthewberryfcc/status/916446259598299140 <comment><USER2> You can see the balloons on flight trackers. There's one by the Virgin Islands right now [https://www.flightradar24.com/HBAL194](https://www.flightradar24.com/HBAL194)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's very cool. I hope if it becomes semi-pernanent that they're able to keep the balloons from hitting the Arecibo Radio Observatory with radio frequency interference.

<comment><USER4> The observatory is in a high altitude and remote part of the island. I'd be surprised if they get any coverage out there since it would make more sense to keep them over the more populated regions.

<comment><USER5> 100,000 people live within a few miles of it, in the municipality with the same name. It's not all that far from the coast:

[https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23957081#map=12/18.4031/-6...](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23957081#map=12/18.4031/-66.7136)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great to see bureaucracy not getting in the way of something like this. Is there a link somewhere about Google's tech and motivation?

<comment><USER5> There's a brochure:

[https://x.company/loon/](https://x.company/loon/)

They want to increase the availability of internet in remote areas.

<comment><USER7> if only it was original Google idea, and not something stolen by X division like [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15422157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15422157)

[https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop- alpha...](https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop-alphabets- project-loon-balloons/)

<comment><USER8> Many people had this idea decades before Google. In the 60" the NASA tested the idea of "Satellite balloons" [0].

Following this experimentation, engineers in France planned to create (in the sixties) a national network of telecom (atmospheric, not satellite) balloons, but it turned out it was easier to build telecom towers.

Myself I wrote a Web site in the late 90" explaining the technology (at that time) and economics of such networks. I think it was one of the earliest proposals where active platforms (Echo balloons were passive) and modern telecom (at that time) technology, where brought together. I cannot find it on the interweb anymore.

Later in the 2000" but before Loons there were several research projects on such high altitude platforms. [1]

I filled an unsuccessful proposal for such a project inside my company in 2008.

[0] [https://www.space.com/8973-1st-communication-satellite- giant...](https://www.space.com/8973-1st-communication-satellite-giant-space- balloon-50-years.html)

[1] [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060717103934.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060717103934.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Between this and Tesla, it seems like Puerto Rico might be a great opportunity to try out experimental technology.

<comment><USER5> Tesla isn't really deploying experimental technology.

Short of some evidence that they have installed an enormous amount of storage and panels, I'm going to be cynical and assume that they are mostly deploying marketing.

<comment><USER10> I may be incorrect, but it's not even that. I think someone on twitter asked Musk if they could help provide power to PR. And Musk basically said yes they could, like they've done in other areas. I don't think it went any further than that.

<comment><USER5> There are some news stories about Tesla employees working on the island.

[http://fortune.com/2017/09/28/tesla-battery-puerto-rico- powe...](http://fortune.com/2017/09/28/tesla-battery-puerto-rico-power/)

But the goal is 20 billion kw-h (I guess per year):

[https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=RQ](https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=RQ)

So all credit to Tesla for helping with a few tens of thousands of those kilowatt hours, but there is need to keep a firm eye on the reality of the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this real? Better URL?

<comment><USER12> [https://www.wired.com/story/google-closer-to-using- balloons-...](https://www.wired.com/story/google-closer-to-using-balloons-for- telecom-in-puerto-rico)

Which started out as this tweetstorm from the writer: [https://twitter.com/meharris/status/916436843771478016](https://twitter.com/meharris/status/916436843771478016)</comment></comment>


How long will a 64 bit Transaction-ID last in PostgreSQL? - <AUTHOR> https://andreas.scherbaum.la/blog/archives/970-How-long-will-a-64-bit-Transaction-ID-last-in-PostgreSQL.html <comment><USER3> There's no chance we go for 64bit transaction ids on the tuples themselves - the space increase would be far too big. The overhead of tuple headers is already a problem, and xmin/xmax are a significant portion of that.

There were patches however that kept an 'epoch' (the upper 32bit of a 64bit transaction id) on a page level. Plus some rewrite logic when transactions that are too far away from each other to be represented as an index from a base epoch are about to be present on one page. That'd allow to effectively have 64bit xids.

The in-development zheap storage engine basically does something roughly akin to that, removing the need to perform freezing when a table becomes older than ~2^31 - safety-window transactions.

The transaction id that the system internally has effectively already keeps track of of xids in a 64bit manner, albeit in a somewhat over-complicated manner by keeping track of an epoch separately (there's a patch likely to land in the next version to just go for 64bit there). That's why you can see e.g. txid_current() return 64bit transaction ids.

<comment><USER4> Why write the transaction ids in the tuples at all?

In most production cases, transactions in flight are going to affect a small amount of rows overall, so you can just keep the data in memory, and store it to disk in a separate table if it gets large.

<comment><USER3> You need to access that data from different connections, so it needs to be correctly locked etc. Looking purely at the tuple you need to know where to look for the tuple visibility information. Accessing data stored in some datastructure off to the side will also have drastically worse cache locality then just storing it alongside with the data. E.g. for a sequential scan these checks need to be done for every tuple, so they really need to be cheap.

<comment><USER5> Except in most usecases, the tuple is old enough that it was committed long ago and visible to everyone.

It's only a tiny fraction of tuples which are recently committed and visibility rules come into play. That can be a special-cased slow-path

<comment><USER3> In a system like postgres' current heap you cannot know whether it was committed long ago, without actually looking in that side table (or modifying the page the one time you do, to set a hint bit). You pretty fundamentally need something like the transactionid to do so.

Also, in OLTP workload you often have a set of pretty hotly modified data, where you then actually very commonly access recently modified tuples and thus need to do visibility checks.

There's obviously systems with different visibility architectures (either by reducing the types of concurrency allowed, using page level information about recency of modification + something undo based), but given this post is about postgres, I fail to see what you're arguing about here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems to be (with coincidental timing) the cause of Mandrill's current outage [1]:

> Mandrill uses a sharded Postgres setup as one of our main datastores. On > Sunday, February 3, at 10:30pm EST, 1 of our 5 physical Postgres instances > saw a significant spike in writes. The spike in writes triggered a > Transaction ID Wraparound issue. When this occurs, database activity is > completely halted. The database sets itself in read-only mode until offline > maintenance (known as vacuuming) can occur.

> The database is large—running the vacuum process takes a significant amount > of time and resources, and there's no clear way to track progress.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084525)

<comment><USER7> It is probably too late, for later reference, when this talk is up, check it out, it has some answers.

[https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/breaking_postgresql_o...](https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/breaking_postgresql_on_scale/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author talks a bit about the architecture of PostgreSQL transactions, touching on lazy transaction ID consumption and vacuuming. Notably, writes require IDs but reads do not. So this is focused on write-optimized workloads.

If you want to get the basic tl;dr which answers the headline: these IDs will last so long it's almost not worth quantifying. This is an obvious calculation even if you assume ostentatatious performance requirements three orders of magnitude greater than the author's:

        2^64 / (86,000 * 1,000,000,000) = 213,503.9

The author uses 1,000,000 writes/second; I prefer 1,000,000,000 since it's more ridiculous. There are 86,000 seconds in a day. It will take you the better part of a millenium to exhaust those IDs, assuming you consume an average of one billion every single second.

The author didn't talk about collisions, but those are worth mentioning because you could even confidently assign these randomly instead of incrementally. Since a collision will occur (in expectation) after 2^63 transactions, you shouldn't even have to worry about a single one occuring (on average) for almost 300 years.

Of course, using 64-bit IDs comes with nontrivial space increase - <USER2> single tuple will increase by a factor of 2.

EDIT: Original collision estimate is wrong, see corrections. I took (2^n)/2 = 2^(n-1) as the birthday bound instead of 2^(n/2).

<comment><USER9> Actually you'd expect a collision with 50% probability after only a much smaller fraction of the 2^64 space. This would be the birthday paradox, and unfortunately I can't find a calculator or software at the moment that can handle 2^64 power factorial to calculate it properly.

<comment><USER10> Square rooting will get you in the proper ballpark. I imagine that's why UUIDs are 128-bit values.

<comment><USER11> Correct on both counts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I highly recommend using flexible-freeze if you run Postgres in production - does not take very much effort to set up and almost certainly will help you avoid issues with txnid wraparound:

[https://github.com/pgexperts/flexible- freeze](https://github.com/pgexperts/flexible-freeze)

It just runs `VACUUM FREEZE` when you schedule it (usually daily), starting with the tables closest to hitting a wraparound.

</comment><comment><USER13> Just imagine running `VACUUM` on that table that wrote 1M rows/seconds for 300 years and now you need to vaccuum quick because the transaction ids will wrap around next year...

<comment><USER14> Unless I'm missing something, you'd still have some 299700 years for your VACUUM to complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What if we interpret Moore's law to say that transaction speed will double every 2 years?

<comment><USER16> 15 years for 1B/tx/s, 35 years for 1M/tx/s.

Or more generally:

        t_years = doubling_time*(txid_bits - log( initial_tx_rate_per_year * doubling_time / log(2)) / log(2))

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I don't understand is how this only affects postgress. How do db2/mssql/oracle handle mvcc? Is it superior or is it a case of trade offs? Supposing the answer is publicly available.

</comment><comment><USER18> I guess people had similar arguments when designing IPv4.</comment>


A $200 privacy device has been killed, and no one knows why - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/a-200-privacy-device-has-been-killed-and-no-one-knows-why <comment><USER2> I'd bet that this wasn't shut down for "national security" reasons but probably because the device wasn't what it was hyped to be. This has happened before, see Haystack[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystack_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haystack_\(software\))

ProxyHam seems like a neat combination of existing technologies, but it was just a Raspberry Pi + WiFi + 900Mhz interface. Probably was fun to make, but not necessarily something that deserves a lot of hype by Wired etc. Maybe the developer decided it wasn't worth all the trouble.

<comment><USER3> I lived through the aftermath of 2009 Iranian presidential elections. This brings back many memories, none of which are good. I simply cannot fathom how someone could play with the emotions (and potentially lives) of a nation, all for personal gain, for fame and greed ...

<comment><USER4> What do you mean?

<comment><USER5> This set of stories from WNYC's On the Media captures the arc quite well.

You scarcely need to read (or listen to) the stories, though I recommend you do.

IN IRAN, NEW SOFTWARE TAKES ON INTERNET CENSORSHIP Transcript Friday, May 14, 2010 [http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132777-in-iran-new- software-...](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132777-in-iran-new-software- takes-on-Internet-censorship/transcript/)

IS HAYSTACK TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? Transcript Friday, September 10, 2010 [http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132909-is-](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132909-is-)

AFTER HAYSTACK: SPEECH AND PRIVACY ONLINE Friday, September 17, 2010 [http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132917-after-haystack- speech...](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132917-after-haystack-speech-and- privacy-online/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand the sortof not-saying-it-but-maybe-saying-it implications that the big bad government had to "shut this down".

It was a 900mhz wifi router with some wishy washy "security" speak slathered on top of it to gain attention.

If you want a 900mhz wifi router, here: [https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/nanobridgem/](https://www.ubnt.com/airmax/nanobridgem/)

Go nuts. In fact, look at all of the other really cool stuff that ubiquity sells!

My guess would be that this talk was either pulled because the author got in a little over their head, or the organizers of the event realized that this was just going to be a talk about a DIY wifi access point.

BTW, proxyham guy: COOL PROJECT! Wifi access points are _really fucking cool_ , and building your own is really fucking cool too. Everybody should build one.

<comment><USER7> Ubiquiti stuff is great. Only low cost stuff I found that penetrates the Faraday cage that is Central American housing. (They're concerned about earthquakes, so they fill every wall with rebar and concrete. I need two long- range APs to cover my not-big house.)

Downside is the admin system needs Java and runs as a service you browse to (and pretty sure there's a mongo dependency in there). Suppose it makes more sense in a dedicated office environment.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, exactly. Just installed a Ubiquiti setup in Guatemala between a tree on a mountain top (4G USB modem with high-gain antenna, solar panel, RouterBoard) to my parents house 2km down in the valley (where there isn't cell phone coverage).

Works great! Had to use a high power flashlight at night to get the angle perfect, but it sure beats satellite internet once we got it dialed.

<comment><USER9> You should photograph and blog something about this. It sounds super cool. Bravo

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this device is way, way overhyped. If you are at the point where you need a device like this to get away from some government agency (or terrorists, or whomever) you expose yourself to so much risk just planting a 802.11 to 900 MHz bridge it's not even funny, and then if you have someone who is remotely competent is tracking you, I would imagine they'd having something like some SDRs or a couple of spectrum analyzers and notice unusual traffic on one of the few unregulated frequency bands, and would have no trouble at all triangulating you (believe me, the FCC is excellent at this). Would your normal law enforcement officer/agent from $THREE_LETTER_AGENCY always do this? Probably not, but if they're not going that far, you're probably safer just connecting in a normal fashion and doing things like MAC spoofing, or for added distance, just using a good 802.11 transciever with a excellent dish or yagi antenna. The 900 MHz bridge planted at the WiFi AP just screams "I'm doing something probably really bad", and the name of the game here is "keep a low profile."

<comment><USER11> > I think this device is way, way overhyped.

Based on what?

> believe me, the FCC is excellent at this

Any HAM radio operator or junior electrical engineer is excellent at this. Triangulation isn't magic. [http://www.homingin.com/beginr.html#toc](http://www.homingin.com/beginr.html#toc)

<comment><USER10> > Based on what?

Based on the fact this got any media coverage whatsoever. Idea is cool, from the technical perspective of bridging from one frequency range to another (and there's obviously money to be made in it, as the equipment he used is manufactured by Ubiquiti for something similar to this purpose), but really is a very poor way to try and keep a low profile or make yourself less traceable/make an easier escape.

> Any HAM radio operator or junior electrical engineer is excellent at this. > Triangulation isn't magic. > [http://www.homingin.com/beginr.html#toc](http://www.homingin.com/beginr.html#toc)

Right, I think it drives home just how relatively straightforward it is, not to say the FCC has a monopoly on the technique by any standards. I had mentioned the FCC, as this tends to be their domain, and I've been on the wrong side of their triangulation once in my youth. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ErrataSec hit it in one IMO:

[http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/07/proxyham-conspiracy-is- non...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/07/proxyham-conspiracy-is- nonsense.html)

<comment><USER13> "An even funner talk, which I've long wanted to do, is to do the same thing with cell phones. Take a cellphone, pull it apart, disconnect the antenna, then connect it to a highly directional antenna pointed at a distant cell tower -- several cells away. You'd then be physically nowhere near where the cell tower thinks you are."

That would be interesting.

<comment><USER14> If it became known to be deployed, what's the bet some Erlang hacker upgrades the cell tower firmware to detect probable directional antennae?

How would that potentially work? Well, I'm no radio engineer but I know it's possible. Normally you receive signals of varying strength as users move throughout your cell. I'm fairly certain that sub-cell positioning metrics are already developed on the change between these various known signal states and directions. One would simply pick outliers (eg. with constant signal strength, or constant direction).

<comment><USER15> Why Erlang?

<comment><USER16> I assume he was referring to how a series of popular telephone switches from Ericsson had their software written in Erlang.

The towers themselves would just be a mishmash of DSPery and C/C++, however. Probably, anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps it was just vaporware to begin with, and the creator knew this sort of action would create more of a stir than releasing the "schematics" or delaying it constantly. Not that I really trust government, but it seems FAR more likely that it was just vaporware.

</comment><comment><USER18> >ProxyHam, according to Errata Security CEO Rob Graham, was little more than the combination of a Raspberry Pi computer and a ... 900 MHz bridge from a company called Ubiquiti Networks...

I work at Cambium Networks ([http://www.cambiumnetworks.com/](http://www.cambiumnetworks.com/)), one of Ubiquiti Network's biggest competitors on this exact type of radio.

They provide you with a network bridge between two radios. The same effect could be reproduced with 2.5 mi of ethernet cables, except it's wireless. This is definitely nothing new. You still need a connection to the Internet at the other endpoint. How this secures you, I'm not sure. Also these radio's are line-of-sight and the antenna is directional. You could effectively follow the direction the radio is pointing at and find the 2nd radio installation.

From my perspective, this is a useless tool. It _physically_ secures your computer. Plus ProxyHam is extraneous, these radio's work with minimal configuration. ProxyHam sounds more like a wireless broadband radio installer than a privacy device.

</comment><comment><USER19> WIRED raises one possibility:

> Online anonymity tools certainly aren't illegal. Tools like VPNs have > allowed users to obscure their IP addresses for years. The anonymity > software Tor is even funded by the U.S. government. But it's possible that > secretly planting a ProxyHam on someone else's network might be interpreted > as unauthorized access under America's draconian and vague Computer Fraud > and Abuse Act.

[http://www.wired.com/2015/07/online-anonymity-project- proxyh...](http://www.wired.com/2015/07/online-anonymity-project-proxyham- mysteriously-vanishes/)

<comment><USER20> Don't know about the CFAA as a whole, but it's perfectly sensible for placing a repeater on someone else's network without permission to be illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I first read about this idea I wasn't crazy about it, because it would be so easy to determine the source and destination of the 900 MHz signal. One of the comments in this article raises the same point: HFDF, huff-duff, high- frequency direction finding. This is WWII era stuff.

Instead of RF, I think a point to point IR laser link would make much more sense. It has a very significant limitation in that it would require line of sight (with maybe 1 judiciously placed reflector). But the advantages would be that 1) nobody would be expecting it and 2) it wouldn't be continuously announcing itself to the world.

<comment><USER22> ...with the distinct disadvantage that the laser is pointing directly at you...

Why not just jump on someone's wifi connection while spoofing your MAC? Directional antenna client-side for distance. Problem solved.

<comment><USER23> Using a standard ~2.4HGz parabolic dish with a Ubiquiti Bullet M radio, I've hit strong APs at ~5Km.

<comment><USER22> Stab in the dark here (given your use of metric): do you also happen to use a common flaw in APs that use the tail section of an SHA1 hash in their SSID?

<comment><USER23> If you're speculating about my identity, no.

If you're twitting me about style, I just like "Km" more than "km" :) I mean, "KB" and "Kbps" are pretty standard, no?

<comment><USER24> KB=kilobyte, Kb=kilobit.

<comment><USER23> Yes, and ...?

Some say "kB" and "kb", rather than "KB" and "Kb".

But maybe k=1000 vs K=1024?

<comment><USER25> Yeah, 1 Km does not mean 1000 meters, it doesn't mean 1024 meters really either, it's just written as 1 km. For some reason, the metric system is only capitalized for mega, giga, and tera... only mega conflicts (with milli), nothing else is t or g. K, M, T, G seems more consistent than k, M, T, G.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "900MHz radio frequency so the owner could connect from up to 2.5 miles away from the source of the Internet connection. As a result, even if someone tracked down the location of an IP address, the user wouldn't automatically be discovered."

triangulation seems to be a weakness if you can separate it out with other stuff transmitting in that range which I think is quite easy to do with the right hardware.

<comment><USER27> For some reason people just can't let go of 900Mhz as some kind of NLOS data transmission panacea. The truth is radio is HARD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sort of related: are there any actual hams in SF (probably SoMa, Dogpatch, Potrero, or maybe Mission, given my location and aspect) interested in trying to setup a (unencrypted) Broadband-Hamnet (BBHN, formerly HSMM) mesh network?

I've got a couple 2.4Ghz nodes but I'd been willing to try other frequencies. Ubiquiti gear is pretty cheap and nice.

[http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/](http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/)

<comment><USER29> I'd be interested; will have a roof at 2nd/townsend at some point late this year. More interested in satcom, though.

<comment><USER28> What satellites are you interested in?

I've got a handheld VHF/UHF yagi which is kind of fun (ISS, SO-50), but a rotor and a roof to put it on would be a lot nicer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This happens every summer with Defcon, non-issue all around, and yet every summer people act like the sky is falling when a talk is pulled.

</comment><comment><USER31> Without evidence to the contrary, let's stick with the most probable explanation: The device didn't work.

</comment><comment><USER32> The missing link here in my mind is what is on the other end of the 900Mhz link? Someone has to have an internet connection on the other end of it. It is not clear who would want to provide that and pay for it or how many users you could get on that link at the same time across the ISM band which is inherently noisy because cordless phones, baby monitors and all kinds of other unlicensed devices use it, 2.5 miles seems pretty optimistic. The best anonomizer I have found is simply finding an open WiFi hotspot and connect to it remotely. I live in a fairly urban area and if you use a directional high gain parabolic antenna you can connect to any number of open hot spots from afar and it is almost impossible to figure out where you are unless someone has a triangulation equipment set up ahead of time.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm sure the creator knows why, but for some reason, he isn't talking...

> For the record, I asked Caudill about getting a NSL, Caudill would only > answer, "No comment."

Because I reckon that's exactly what happened. Paranoid US government steps in as usual.

<comment><USER34> That's exactly how I would respond if I had failed to build a security device that lived up to its hype.

<comment><USER35> That is reasonable. I just feel like rather than have this sort of streisand- esque effect, if that really was the case, why not just say it. If you see sites like outincrediblejourney[0] this industry relishes failure nearly as much as success. Sure it would be a ding on the ego but in the Def Con community being interdicted by the NSA on a project you were working on is probably worse than not having fort knox level security on some prototype device you were going to present.

[0][http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER34> He'll be a martyr in the DefCon community if they think the NSA stopped him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There is a ton of FUD, but seriously? It is quite odd, Caudill responded to questions indicating that it had nothing to do with intellectual property or the FCC. Also the tweet said "immediately canceling talk" without explanation. One would think he would have said something about deadlines slipping or another conflict when canceling the talk. An NSL is probably not the case, but I also find it difficult to believe he just couldn't get it done in time given the utter lack of explanation and the media now moving in.

</comment><comment><USER36> I would like to see some Ubiquiti gear that boots from removable media so I can use my own software to control it, similar to Soekris or PC Engines.

It is the Ubiquiti "OS" that keeps me away.

<comment><USER37> At least some of the Ubiquiti gear can run OpenWRT.

<comment><USER36> Would you believe I want to run something else other than Linux?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It sure sounds like someone got a nastygram with a gag order.

Which if your America is Norman Rockwells and has first amendment protections, etc. seems like it would be _prima facie_ unconstitutional.

But there is that thing in our current system where being a test-case just drains your finances as well putting you at risk of criminal prosecution; even if the order is blatantly wrongful.

If someone is issuing such orders we can only hope that they are currently about to be doxed by whistleblowers.

</comment><comment><USER39> While we're discussing what is likely, just keep in mind that you can't use a 2011 understanding of what is an "implausible" action by government. No matter how implausible it seems, we've _all_ been wrong about what they wouldn't plausibly do before, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think it's pretty clear that they sold out.

<comment><USER41> I don't think that's clear at all. I think that's your jaded viewpoint and a shot in the dark.

<comment><USER22> is it fair to say that _all_ of the speculation in this thread is merely shots in the dark?

<comment><USER41> I will grant you that, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Lol the best part? You'll never find the guy ;p (Because he has the device)</comment>


We Drive the Aptera, and It's a Real Car - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/04/we-drive-the-ap.html

<comment><USER3> I've been following Aptera for awhile and they are one of the very few companies looking at the electric car as a clean-slate design. I can appreciate the benefits of taking our current idea of "a car" and swapping out the traditional powerplant for an electric one, but we won't see the true potential of electric drive until we abandon our preconceived notions of what a car is and design one from the ground up using parameters established by this drivetrain.

Aerodynamics and style aside, the construction techniques used in the Aptera have been proven in both aircraft and automobiles (at the racetrack) and, while new to production automobiles, have a proven history and a lot of engineering behind them. These vehicles have the potential to not only meet the performance and safety requirements of existing automobiles but exceed them.

I applaud the effort of every manufacturer (honestly) attempting to bring an electric car to market but I hold a special respect for those willing to take the risk of re-imagining the American automobile.

My only regret is their focus on "fair-weather" states, if they ever come to Wisconsin, I'll be the first in line.

<comment><USER4> I applaud their innovation, but it looks like a cut-up Cessna in a pair of roller skates. I can only imagine how much interior room you lose on account of that, and even though it's as "big as a Honda Civic", it looks to only seat two.

Plus, it's another battery-powered beast... slow to charge, quick to accelerate, but heavy as hell compared to either gasoline or a fuel-cell vehicle. Not to mention the huge amount of pollution required to make LiOn batteries in the first place.

So, it's interior dimensions are a bit better than a Smart Two-Two, it has a bigger environmental impact (including manufacturing) than pretty much any of the small city cars you find in Europe, is twice as expensive, and will be a fashion statement in California to show how 'environmentally conscious' people are.

So, I don't like it. Watch it sell like a KFC next to a Weight Watchers. :)

<comment><USER5> Yeah I didn't follow that statement in the article either, about as "big as a CRV on the inside ... it seats two". Last time I checked, the CRV is a small SUV, with 5 seats and plenty of cargo space.

Not sure I follow your "heavy as hell compared to either gasoline ..." statement. The car weighs 1700 pounds. That is more than 1/2 the weight of most modern vehicles. I'm with you though, the current state batteries for electric vehicles leaves a lot to be desired.

<comment><USER6> I'm guessing it's a typo, and they meant a CRX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 100 miles in great. But gasoline is one hell of an energy dense and convenient fuel. It will go several hundred miles and "recharges" in minutes.

Hydrogen could be as energy dense but transporting it is a pain.

That's why I've been wondering about a sealed tank with water, which would use electrolysis to split it into hydrogen and oxygen.

The gas stations could keep huge capacitors which continually recharge slowly from the gird. When a car pulls up the capacitor would dump enough juice in it to split the water in minutes. Then while you drive you "burn" the hydrogen and turn it back into water.

But the whole system is sealed and there's no need to worry about the infrastructure necessary to ship hydrogen all over the continent.

<comment><USER8> The gas station could also directly split the water which is easy to transport. The only advantage to on bard electrolysis is home charging. Anyway, the real problem is storing enough H2 to drive a useful distance.

<comment><USER7> Good point the stations could certainly split the water. I was under the impression that fuel cells to have range comparable to gasoline. Here's a wired blog about Toyota's fuel cell claims: <http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/516-mile-range.html>

<comment><USER8> You can burn hydrogen in a normal car engine the issue is the fuel tank. Pound per Pound Hydrogen has a higher energy density than gas, but high pressure tanks are costly and take up a lot of space.

Fuel cells have a higher efficiency which let's you store less fuel, but they are even more costly. You can even make a hybrid, fuel cell, hydrogen car like the FCHV-adv, but few people are going to want to pay the full cost of such a beast. Ok, they could do a small production run like the Bugatti Veyron <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron> at a loss.

PS: Toyota, is getting people to road test their prototype, but don't think this is any where near being cost effective in mass production.

<comment><USER7> I wonder what's an easier engineering task, affordable fuel cells, or affordable high pressure hydrogen tanks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The 2e doesn't place form over function, form is function."

Replace 2e with anything that you admire and you will most likely find that statement to be true. I think that is incredibly important and the answer to the false dichotomy that is "form or function?". When you do it right you end up with both.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have to admit that it's pretty. I used to think it was a dumb idea, but it looks cool and seems quite usable. I'd buy one if I had that kind of "play money."

It's by no means practical and I'm sure the first few 1,000s will be purchased like the comment said "as a fashion statement." But realistically, except for the crappy range, it's as "useful" as my 350Z: which is to say, not very - <USER2> buy these things for fun, not practicality!

<comment><USER11> The range is a price thing. Tesla has shown you _can_ squeeze serious range out of an EV - and design a commodity car for quick battery swaps. But all of that costs money. Aptera is undercutting Tesla's second car with their first, they can't afford to gold plate it, so they have to make the best of old tech.

Economies of scale acting on EV battery packs should make their jobs easier after 2010.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've ridden in a pre-production one. They're pretty big inside. The hinges and whatnot were a bit creaky.

<comment><USER13> Were they still planning on having on-seatbelt airbags that deploy in the event of a crash? Or have they adopted more traditional airbag configuration?

<comment><USER12> Dunno. It just had regular seatbelts, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can one drive it on a freeway? The article doesn't really say that, although the comparison to Honda Civic suggests that the answer is yes.

<comment><USER15> The article also mentions a top speed of 90 mph, so I would assume so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now THIS is a useful electric car. To hell with the Peapod crap from Chrysler.</comment>


BSNL seems to have blocked port number 22 nationwide in India - <AUTHOR> The default port for SSH is port number 22 and BSNL a state-owned telecommunications company in India seems to have blocked this port number nationwide. It seems they have done this in wake of a malware attack on their ADSL modems in India. Developers using BSNL are having a hard time. <comment><USER2> As per BSNL Network team, due to recent malware attacks, some of the ports are blocked by BSNL for security reasons .

As per the instructions from NOC , for port opening the following details are required from affected customers .

1)Customer Name 2)Company 3)IP details (ILL /BB/FTTH ) 4)Ports to be accessed and opened 5)Purpose of the access 6)whether access would be within the country or outside the country .

Kindly share the same .

Thats the answer i got from BSNL</comment>


Big brother wants to place black boxes in your car - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/29/AR2010042904700.html

<comment><USER2> The government has essentially dictated what goes in ECU's for a decade and a half. Why is this news?

</comment><comment><USER3> I fail to see how a black box is Big Brother-ish. The recent Australian proposal to charge per kilometre, now that sounds a bit Big Brother-ish.

Poor headline, I think.

</comment><comment><USER4> I suppose the big-brotherish aspect is the assumption they will eventually be configured to track all the important parameters of usage.

On the other hand these could also be gateway devices that evolve into a necessary component for smart roads.

</comment><comment><USER5> Kind of silly editorializing in the headline, no?

</comment><comment><USER6> Aren't these pretty standard in new cars already?</comment>


Looking for a co-founder  - <AUTHOR>

Hi working on a new stuff so if anyone interesting (DEVELOPER OR A UNIVERSAL PROGRAMMER CAN DO BOTH WEB AND MOBILE APPS  LIVE IN THE US VERY IMPORTANT SO
please let me know AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
THANKS<p>SEND TO email@example.com <comment><USER2> I strongly, _strongly_ advise you to delete this and search HN for other cases where people asked for co-founders. See what worked and what didn't, see what got good reactions, and what didn't.

Yours is a great example of exactly how not to do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought the "please let me know" in lowercase while almost everything else is allcaps was a nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER4> Idea?

</comment><comment><USER5> lol what is this</comment>


Motivation: Freedom - <AUTHOR> http://www.olark.com/spw/2011/07/motivation-freedom/

<comment><USER2> > we might find ourselves merely working a job for a paycheck. At best we > would be working on someone else's dream, at worst we'd forget that we had > dreams of our own.

Yeah, standard cupcake. But what I always found puzzling about entrepreneurs/SMB owners who write things like this is, how do you then go out and convince other people to work for you? Are you bullshitting candidates while actually looking down on them as tools that are stupid enough to "work for your dream" or have "forgotten they had dreams of their own"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is this puzzling? I doubt any entrepreneur thinks _everyone_ should do their own business. If that was the case the world would be made of companies of one person and nothing would ever get accomplished.

The mindset of an entrepreneur is very peculiar and is not representative of the average person (if such person existed). Most people don't _want_ the stress and pains that come with having your own business; they are happy with a regular job. Therefore, you're not cheating someone who desires the stability and guidance of a job by getting them to work for you. Just because the OP can't stand the thought of working for someone else doesn't mean he thinks everyone must feel that way.

So I don't see where the confusion comes from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wrote this, but I wasn't ready for prime time hacker news. I think it needs another revision ;-) -- definitely interested in feedback on the first pass.

<comment><USER4> When I try to load the page on my iPhone 4, I can only see a couple words at the end of the sentence (zooming out doesn't fix this).

Will be happy to provide feedback when I can get to my laptop

<comment><USER5> That's my bad - I'm the designer at Olark who forgot to make our WP theme look good on mobile. Fix coming tonight.

Sorry about that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't get to the page. Can someone repost the content here?

<comment><USER7> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?rlz=1C1CHMR_enU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?rlz=1C1CHMR_enUS341US341&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.olark.com%2Fspw%2F2011%2F07%2Fmotivation- freedom%2F)

Google is your friend.</comment></comment>


Apple's software chief details how iOS apps will run on Macs - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/wwdc-2018-federighi-ios-apps-on-macos/ <comment><USER2> Of course. But Apple doesn't want to announce this until the Apple A-series powered Mac mini and MacBook Air are hardware is ready to announce as well. And hardware announcements happen in August. :-)</comment>


Ask HN: In what scenarios use of node.js can be useful? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for possible use cases of node.js.<p>How is it being used right now? Are you using node.js in any of your project? What new can be done using node.js? <comment><USER2> I'm building a streaming HTML5 Twitter client called Denby: <http://www.hellodenby.com/>

(Although the hosted version is currently in closed alpha, you can check out progress on GitHub.)

If you want something more Tweetie than TweetDeck, check out Streamie: <http://streamie.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Use node for anything that has a HTML(5) front end. The big win is that you no cognitive disconnect between the client-side and server-side code. The productivity increase is significant.

All the async event goodness (which is great for streaming of course) is just icing on the cake.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's useful for streaming large data sets, such as audio or video files.

Here are some examples:

[http://debuggable.com/posts/streaming-file-uploads-with- node...](http://debuggable.com/posts/streaming-file-uploads-with-node- js:4ac094b2-b6c8-4a7f-bd07-28accbdd56cb)

[http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2009/12/7/real-time-online- acti...](http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2009/12/7/real-time-online-activity- monitor-example-with-node-js-and-websocket)

[http://blog.andregoncalves.com/post/1620276144/inaugural- twi...](http://blog.andregoncalves.com/post/1620276144/inaugural-twitter- streaming-with-node-js-and-html5)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm using node.js for a personal project: <http://boxsocial.fm>

The site reads and writes to last.fm in the background and pushes updates to client's browsers while doing so.

I'm sure it would have been possible to write it using some other technology but node.js just made it so easy. Also, writing the entirety of the app in just one language was an additional bonus.

I'm excited about building something bigger with it soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this alternative client for last.fm? I wonder how useful developing alternative clients can be apart from learning purposes. I have seen a lot of twitter clients coming up. Do users really care about using these?

<comment><USER5> To some extent. It copies a user's scrobbles/now playing info to one or more other users' profiles. So if a bunch of you are in the same room listening to music you can all scrobble at the same time.

That said, it was mainly written to get to grips with node. As well as to scratch a personal itch, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The biggest advantage I see from my experience with node.js is that you can code in just one language from the client side to server side. Of course, server side JavaScript is _not_ exactly the same as in client side - but for most part, that does not get in the way and the language basics remain the same.

It also helps that it scales well for the traditional web apps, and currently there is a huge momentum behind it, and an active community working on it.

</comment><comment><USER7> The great thing about node.js is the flexibility it provides. It isn't what Rails is to Ruby or Django is to Python, really it is a way for Javascript to interact with the OS outside of the browser, e.g. on servers. This versatility leads to a ton of options, which many don't even focus on the web. With that in mind, know that using node.js is more than building a web app, it has given us slick tools to do things that in other languages or options would be painful or annoying.

Here is a good list of things that should be done: <http://blog.nodejitsu.com/ten-node-apps-that-need-to-exist>

I personally have made simple tools with it, like a desktop image uploader, or a cli gist (github) maker. I enjoy how easy it is to connect many different technologies together with very little effort.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are some really interesting ideas.

"A browser based real-time multiuser sketchpad" - It made me think if it is possible to develop a collaborative, online, vector graphics design tool. Not a heavy application like Illustrator but something like light version of InkScape that can help in quick and easy graphic design for web such as logos, buttons etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use node.js to power my domain name generator:

<http://impossibility.org/>

It runs queries against a pool of lookup servers and aggregates/returns the results in real time. I'm also using it as a fast, low footprint HTTP server.

</comment><comment><USER9> Loggly uses it for handling large amounts of web POSTs and translating them into syslog like TCP packers which are sent to our indexers.

Basically it can be treated like a big ol' expensive load balancer, except its not expensive.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm using node for all my new web development.

It has an awesome community, and by that I mean: awesome package manager, awesome packages/libraries, actively maintained and developed.

<comment><USER11> How do you handle things like form/model validation?

<comment><USER12> <https://github.com/dandean/express-form> and <https://github.com/caolan/forms> are two good options. Out-of-the-box validation for model-based forms is a little bit trickier — there are many persistence options and each has their own way of doing things, which isn't always model-based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just asked a few folks on how they were using node.js, check it out here:

[http://bostinnovation.com/2011/01/15/who-is-using-node-js- an...](http://bostinnovation.com/2011/01/15/who-is-using-node-js-and-why- yammer-bocoup-proxlet-and-yahoo/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I used node.js to make a drum machine that multiple people can play with at once: <http://jambox.us> (requires Safari/Chrome)

<comment><USER15> didn't work for me :( - two macbooks running chrome/safari

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A little chat, a little soundcloud, a little ge.tt, sophisticated privacy management... and you get <http://secretsocial.com> ... a node project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. I liked the video. Is beta available?

<comment><USER16> Thanks Anuj! Very soon. Sign up / Tweet and you'll be invited.</comment></comment></comment>


Special alloy sleeves (for RFID cards) urged to block hackers  - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/AR2009071101929_pf.html

<comment><USER2> My friend's start-up sells RFID-shielding wallets, passport cases and apparel. difrwear.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Wonder if they can't they be disabled by a strong EM field? That's basically how the RFID tags on merchandise are disabled at the retail checkout counter.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use aluminized Mylar potato chip or ramen bags for this. I've verified that they work with a FasTrak transponder, but I haven't done measurements to see how much the bag really attenuates the signal.

</comment><comment><USER5> Are these documents invalid of the RFID chip is destroyed?

<comment><USER6> I think I read somewhere that intentionally destroying the chip is a no-no, but if you 'accidentally' hit it with a blunt object and it stops working the document is still valid. Don't quote me though.

<comment><USER7> I recall reading something similar with regard to the new, chipped U.S. passports. If the chip fails, the document is still valid. (Though I expect you might well be in for some hassle. And don't take my word WRT the document's validity; I'm just remembering some random thing I read.)

I would imagine, though, that intentionally disabling it represents some form of criminally liable tampering or vandalism. Hopefully not forgery; I seem to recall that forgery carries some big penalties. I wouldn't see disabling some of the information as forgery, but I don't know how a prosecutor might argue the situation.</comment></comment></comment>


Oslo bombing Facebook scams infecting 1 user per second - <AUTHOR> http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=11328

<comment><USER2> I know this happens every time there is a tragedy, yet I still cannot fathom what kind of evil mind uses events like this to further a cybercrime agenda...</comment>


Ask HN: Coolest way to implement infinite scroll for mobile devices? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to implement infinite scrolling of my website's catalog page for mobile device but due to appended items the DOM becomes heavy and the browser crashes. So what would be the proper solution ?<p>Here's description of problem
http://rad-js.com/infinite-scroll/ <comment><USER2> You may want to take a look at this post from Airbnb. They tackled this problem, and have open-sourced their solution:

[http://airbnb.github.io/infinity/](http://airbnb.github.io/infinity/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Here's another approach:

[http://ionicframework.com/blog/collection- repeat/](http://ionicframework.com/blog/collection-repeat/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great solution but for that I'll have to use a separate framework which I can't !! Also , as it is written in angularjs you can easily keep track of object binding , watches and all other stuff.... but with jquery it becomes pain.... I need a solution which can be 'plugged' in that's it !! I don't want to use another framework kinda thing.</comment></comment>


Introducing the Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/introducing-gmail-app-for-iphone-ipad.html

<comment><USER2> Aside of the fact that the app displayed an error message at first launch ("Notification error" - "no valid 'aps-environment' entitlement string found for application" - how did this pass review?), it a) doesn't support multiple accounts, b) is very laggy to use when you compare this to, say, the android version and c) feels like another one of these "let's embed the website above a little native toolbar"-apps

Because Safari gets to JIT-compile JavaScript and UIWebView embedded into apps can't, this actually feels slower than the website (~0.5 seconds between clicking on a message and seeing it load? really?)

I really think I'll move back to using their Exchange-Sync for push together with the standard web shortcut for mail management as this is faster and supports multiple accounts.

(edit) On a related note: Doing these "let's add a native toolbar to my website and publish this in the AppStore"-apps feels nearly as stupid as when everybody felt the need to add flash intros to their website. There's next to no additional value (especially with the currently broken push) provided by such a half-assed pseudo-native app.

This does nothing but hurt both native development (by leaving a bad impression on what's possible with native apps) and the open web (by making people believe that a website is not good enough)

<comment><USER3> Have you used the Google Voice app for the iPhone? It's literally the worst app I've ever seen in my life. Crashed constantly, won't refresh from the server, will close your text box randomly while typing a message (clearing your message), will fail to make calls frequently, and since I upgraded to iOS5 now has signed me out and crashes immediately when trying to sign back in so it's been rendered completely unusable.

I can only assume that there's some desire within Google to make sure the iPhone versions of their products are complete dogshit to try and encourage Android adoption.

<comment><USER4> > I can only assume that there's some desire within Google to make sure the > iPhone versions of their products are complete dogshit to try and encourage > Android adoption.

Do people think companies really behave this way? "Hey guys, how can we make our products crappier? Surely if people think our iPhone apps stink, they'll be motivated to go out and buy a whole phone from us!"

There are a whole host of mundane reasons why products turn out worse than they could be, and they almost never include conspiracy or malice.

<comment><USER5> I bet it's the same reason Apple products suck on Windows... the devs themselves just don't use the platform.

<comment><USER6> Well, I'm not convinced it's fair to say that Apple software is worse on Windows. I don't know anyone who's tried Safari on Windows (so maybe it is worse than on a Mac, but I wouldn't know) and while iTunes is certainly absolutely terrible on Windows, from what my Mac owning friends tell me it is just as bad on Macs.

<comment><USER7> > from what my Mac owning friends tell me it is just as bad on Macs.

Who told you that? I just launched iTunes on my Lion machine, it started up in 5 seconds and started syncing with my phone wirelessly while I scrolled through 18,000 tracks without stuttering & a track played.

iTunes for OS X is arguably a little bloated and lacking direction, but it's still hands down the best library based music player/jukebox for OS X. Nothing else even comes close.

To be fair, you come right out and say you have little experience on the topic either way, so why cast an opinion? As someone who uses Apple's software on Macs and PCs extensively, there is not even a debate to be had about where Apple puts its effort.

You can even test it yourself. Take any Mac, put Windows 7 on it. Launch a clean copy of iTunes in OS X, then reboot and do the same in Windows 7. The OS X version will start up instantly, the Windows one will stall for at least 10-15 seconds. This is just one obvious example, there are plenty more out there.

<comment><USER6> You're right that I shouldn't have offered a second-hand (my friends') opinion about iTunes and specially not without spelling it out. What happened was that I complained about iTunes on Windows (which I use to put stuff on my iPod Touch), specifically that (1) it sometimes incorrectly marked podcasts as played or as not played, (2) it sometimes hung trying to connect to the iTunes store (for Windows users: if this happens run ipconfig /flushdns in a cmd window and restart iTunes), (3) somethings where hard to find in the UI (I can't remeber my concrete example now, but I did mention it when I complained with my friends), (4) rearranging app icons on the iPod's homescreen is quite buggy: you often windup with empty spots or duplicated icons in iTunes, which then crashes if you try to sync. (I did not complain about startup time, since it doesn't really bother me; and I should also say recent versions of iTunes on Windows don't have some of these problems) My friends said that all of my complaints save for (2) also happened on Macs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The app is so bad it sounds like they're saying: "If you really want a great native Gmail experience, switch to Android."

Like Gruber said on The Talk Show recently (and I'll probably be downvoted given how unpopular he is here): Apple gets people to upgrade their phones by making them love their current one; Android makers get people to upgrade their phones by making them hate their current one.

Seems like the strategy continues to holds true here...

<comment><USER9> That love thing is typically gushing and odd.

I like my iPhone 3G, but it's annoyance at no longer receiving security updates, and lack of iCloud support, that would make me spend money to upgrade. Not love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like they removed it from the App Store:

"Update: 11/2/11: Earlier today we launched a new Gmail app for iOS. Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app. We've removed the app while we correct the problem, and we're working to bring you a new version soon. Everyone who's already installed the app can continue to use it."

</comment><comment><USER11> Shows exactly how far apart the distance between native apps and web apps really is.

People were impressed with the GMail web app when it launched; this is basically a skin around that same app and they're recoiling from it in horror.

<comment><USER12> What are you saying? web apps are better or native apps?

<comment><USER13> That people accept (bad) things from web applications they will never accept from a native application, I'm guessing.

This would imply native applications generally being better than web applications, since the acceptability threshold is higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Incredibly, this app is slower than using their mobile website. Nicely done!

</comment><comment><USER15> I'll echo other comments here that this looks like it needs a bit more work.

* Notification error on startup: ridiculous

* Laggy scrolling (how?)

* No support for Send As, which is actually what is really missing from the iPhone Mail app.

It's almost there. It needs a bit more love.

<comment><USER16> The laggy scrolling is likely because they're not using native scrolling, but rather using the same JS based scrolling they use in the web app to overcome issues with iOS 4's support for fixed CSS positioning. However, since the toolbar is native in the app, they should just use native scrolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> All those that ridicule Google's product quality on iOS have never tried to use iTunes on Windows!

And given that lots of Googlers have iPhones, it's hard to ascribe malice when just incompetence will suffice.

<comment><USER18> All those that ridicule iTunes on Windows have never tried to use a Google product on iOS!

:)

<comment><USER19> But hey: the current mobile version of Reader looks and runs much nicer on a Mac than the desktop vertsion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, if Google is supposed to only be hiring A people, who is making all these crummy iOS apps?

<comment><USER21> Google hires the type of people who want to solve hard engineering problems, not the type of people who want to really polish an app.

<comment><USER22> Thing is, this app isn't just unpolished. They threw up this excuse for a native app to avoid engineering a real one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Multiple accounts is definitely a deal breaker for me. I'm surprised they didn't implement that out of the gate.

</comment><comment><USER24> When I want to remind myself of what it's like to use a non-iOS device, I'll open up this Gmail app.

<comment><USER25> But the gmail app on Android is excellent, and nothing like this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Google, hire some Mac/iPhone developers to do the job.

This is what happens if you hire 'generalist' and reject Mac developers by asking some scaling and data center questions.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've always been very satisfied with the iPhone mail app personally.

</comment><comment><USER28> _sigh_ they (poorly) lifted functionality, all the way down to cache clearing in the app settings, from <http://usemailroom.com>.

Between that and the Facebook navigation, this app is more stolen than it is crappy.

</comment><comment><USER29> I guess I fail to see the point of using this app. For me the mail.app and active sync have been working great. I get push, I can attach files, etc.

Other than better searching, and different management I don't know why this would be better.

</comment><comment><USER30> Searching for mail or finding 'labelled' archived content on the default mail client was a real pain and this app answers those questions but as previously mentioned..

No multiple accounts? I have several Gmail accounts that I need to manage on the fly, and it is indeed quite 'laggy' when you have images or heavy content in the email body (which it doesn't scale down!)

All in all, it's a step in the right direction and about time this app came to market - let's just hope they resolve the issues and tweak the overall user experience.

</comment><comment><USER31> That blog post breaks scrolling behavior on iPad and iPhone. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER32> It doesn't look like it supports multiple accounts unlike the web app

</comment><comment><USER33> Here's the link to the app in the appstore: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gmail/id422689480?mt=8>

</comment><comment><USER34> Doesn't seem to support multiple accounts - back to Mail.

</comment><comment><USER35> Super disappointing that it's just a native wrapper around a web interface. They had a chance to kill it with this app and they didn't reach very far.

<comment><USER36> All the more puzzling is that they waited so long to do it. There has always been dissatisfaction with Mail.app but it's taken them 3+ years since the launch of the iPhone SDK to come up with a half-assed wrapper around a website that performs more poorly than running it in WebKit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't see it in the app store, unfortunately.

Edit: for me, the only way to get it is to download in iTunes and then sync

<comment><USER38> I couldn't find it in the app store either, but I followed the link in the article on my phone and it opened the install screen for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I was hoping to see the native Gmail app that can support multiple accounts, but it is currently not. Oh well. I'll stick with Mail for now.

It look like the native Gmail itself is a browser and navigate to Gmail Mobile website. Thus is the reason why the native app only can hold one account at a time.

</comment><comment><USER40> Apparently not available in Germany.

The AppStore search function only finds third party apps and the AppStore link from the blog post opens the AppStore and shows the unhelpful error message "Your request could not be completed".

<comment><USER41> Also not available for me, in the U.S., browsing the app store from my iPod Touch.

<comment><USER41> And apparently this is because the app was pulled because of a bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Interesting how they decided to copy the sliding panels from Facebook for iPhone. I wonder if it will become a standard on iOS.

<comment><USER43> I've overheard lots of discussion from iOS developers lately on this becoming a new trend. As certain apps increase in complexity the old Facebook home screen style becomes much less scalable, and this new method seems to be the answer.

My guess is we'll see at least another half dozen popular apps take on this style as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> For us users that don't own an iOS device, what is this sliding panel effect you're discussing?

<comment><USER44> When you click an icon for the menu, the entire page you're on currently slides to the right to expose a panel of menu options.

See here: [http://a1.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/119/Purple/eb/62/0a/mzl.uvhm...](http://a1.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/119/Purple/eb/62/0a/mzl.uvhmahke.320x480-75.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Can anyone explain if/how this app downloads mail in the background? I thought that wasn't possible using the current iOS API?

</comment><comment><USER46> Can't swap to another account. At all.

Edit: There is a switch in settings to do it...

Doesn't work with GAFYD accounts...

</comment><comment><USER47> Ya know, a web page announcing your iPhone app should really be viewable on an iPhone. This one refuses to scroll at all.

</comment><comment><USER48> Not terrible but not at all great, either.

</comment><comment><USER49> Floppy disk icon for "Save"? I guess GMail alreadh has users who never had that thing in their hands…

</comment><comment><USER50> It feels like the mobile web client.

<comment><USER51> It is the mobile web client, only slower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Ha. Seems like it was pulled from the app store (Probably because of the push bug). Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER53> annnd...it's been yanked already, according to thenextweb: [http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/11/02/google-pulls- gmail-a...](http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/11/02/google-pulls-gmail-app- for-ios-citing-notification-issues)

</comment><comment><USER54> They have officially pulled it and are working on a fix. Check the update on the blog post.

</comment><comment><USER55> I just got a message saying the item I tried to buy is no longer available.

</comment><comment><USER56> Yesterday, when I asked people not to get too excited about the iPhone GMAIL app and I was downvoted into oblivion.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180049>

The I maintain that the Android version is really unstable (take a look at the app store review page).

Google is just too big to move at the pace required for so many products it has.

</comment><comment><USER57> I tried downloading it just now- says the app is "no longer available."

<comment><USER58> they pulled ti due to the notification bug:

<https://twitter.com/#!/jdalrymple/status/131795707295309824>

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Any good alternatives so?

</comment><comment><USER60> iTunes error: "Not available in US store"

</comment><comment><USER61> About time.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm baffled that Google, of all companies, can't make a decent mobile web app. The first Gmail versions from years ago on the iPhone were beautiful and they degrade with every new version.</comment>


Boeing's 787 Dreamliner to Make First Flight Next Week - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704193004574588823091016440.html

<comment><USER2> I could not read more than the first two paragraphs of the original article due to the paywall.

Here is a Bloomberg article that can actually be read:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a0Kv...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a0KvpnlvveYY)

<comment><USER3> If you search for the article title on Google and then click in from there, you can read the referenced article.

However, if you (I) do the same search at Yahoo or Bing and then click through, you only get the two paragraph teaser. Irony upon irony.</comment></comment>