Dear Apple, there's nothing 'really sad' about using a 5-year-old PC - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2016/03/21/apple-hypocritical-insensitive-pc-users-old-pc/ <comment><USER2> I interpreted that comment as a jab at the PC industry. The implication being that in the last 5+ years the PC industry has failed to offer 600 million users a compelling reason to upgrade. Isn't that the correct interpretation, considering the whole point of bringing that up is because they're positioning a new device intended to replace the PC? I seriously doubt it's intended to mean (to quote the article) "LOL poor people".

Granted, this interpretation would make for a boring thinkpiece and would not get me to #1 on HN.

<comment><USER3> > I seriously doubt it's intended to mean (to quote the article) "LOL poor > people".

He didn't mean to but this is the general reflection of the culture that permeates Apple as a company and the bubble in which they live.

I remember once one of my wealthy friends saying "I don't understand why people live in one bedroom apartments". I stared at her for a solid minute to determine if she was joking but no, she was dead serious. She genuinely did not understand. She was born and raised in a wealthy family and she just had lost track of the rest of the world.

Schiller and the Apple execs have similar blinders on and once in a while, the mask drops in a public speech because the speech writers and their proofreaders have similar blinders on and didn't realize the enormity of the implication.

<comment><USER4> This story is old as the world. "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" \- "Let them eat a cake", as great princess Marie Antoinette said upon learning that the peasants had no bread.

<comment><USER5> There is no support for that.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As someone sitting at a nearly 5 year old Macbook Pro, I took the comment as an off hand throwaway. I understand not liking the comment, but this isn't news. A company thinks everyone should be using the latest of their products. Oh no.

<comment><USER7> _A company thinks everyone should be using the latest of their products. Oh no._

An alternative way to read this is that Apple themselves don't believe their own products will be worth using after 5 years, and will therefore fail to support them properly in the long term. Anyone in the market for a computer to last longer than that (eg most home users, and many corporate users who don't lease) might have to look elsewhere.

This is not an offhand throwaway comment. This speaks to the absolute heart of Apple's strategy.

<comment><USER8> Apple makes no money on the OS. That is included with the hardware and upgrades are free. So aside from services such as App Store and iTunes, Apple has to sell hardware to make money. It's not in their interest to encourage people to hang on to older hardware as long as possible.

<comment><USER7> _It 's not in their interest to encourage people to hang on to older hardware as long as possible._

There's a difference between encouraging people to hang on to hardware for as long as possible and actively driving away your customers by laughing at them or suggesting that your own products will be obsolete before the customer is ready to update again.

To maximise their profit on hardware Apple should be encouraging users to stay within the Apple ecosystem, even if those customers only upgrade every 10 years. This is especially true in today's climate of very powerful computers that will _easily_ do most things a home user wants to do even after a decade. As someone who writes web software I am _acutely_ aware that there are users who are still using old PCs with old software.

For Apple to push their customers to abandon Apple products in favour of things that last longer is corporate suicide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I swear, if a modern tech company went up and said 'We think you should buy our product", someone would start yelling about how its insulting how a company is endorising capitalism and materialism.

We've gone from "Won't somebody think of the children" to "Won't somebody think of every single possible group that is possible to somehow offend in some way"

<comment><USER10> No.

What apple is saying today is something that it has always said - but its only recently that people in america are too poor to buy american products.

I grew up around windows and linux, and whenever I tell that in a job interview - people think I am not being serious since "real developers" use mac.

In my first software job - I was told to abandon my personal cheap linux and use the company's brand new expensive apple - even though I was more productive on my cheap linux.

Apple has always been like that, its just that most people who come from money do not hear it.

Edit:

Also you will notice this in poorer countries - a strong ecosystem for recycling exists everywhere outside of the US/UK. When I brought my first bike in the UK, I wanted to repair it and was told to just ditch it and get a new one !

It was extremely odd to me since I expected that bike to last at-least 20 years.

When my 3 year old laptop stopped working - I had it repaired rather than buy a newer one - even though repairing was almost as expensive as getting a new one. It just fell really wrong ditching a laptop rather than repairing it.

Maybe you are right - western societies do worship materialism.

<comment><USER11> > I grew up around windows and linux, and whenever I tell that in a job > interview - people think I am not being serious since "real developers" use > mac.

How true is this? I have noticed the proliferation of Macs in the developer community and I was wondering how much it would hurt me professionally by not owning one. Do devs really make snap judgements based on your platform of choice and could this impact me professionally in the long term?

<comment><USER12> _Real_ real developers use a precision flathead screwdriver and a bank of DIP switches.~

One of the great triumphs of computing was abstracting the algorithm away from the specifics of the hardware using compilers. We have the good fortune to be able to configure those compilers to generate several varieties of executable containers, such as ELF, a.out, COFF, EXE (MZ), EXE (PE/COFF), JAR, Mach-O, and others. As long as the OS has an installed virtual machine or ABI that can handle the executable, it will be able to run it.

If anyone got snooty with me about my _hardware_ , I think I'd consider myself lucky to not need to work with them.

Does it have a text editor? Does it have a compiler? Yes to both means that real developers can use it.

<comment><USER13> It's all fun and games until your boss's boss walks into the room and says _" Why aren't you using Eclipse? Real developers use Eclipse."_

If you have sufficient seniority, you can tell them to fuck off without worrying. But if you're new to the company, or worse, industry...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I built a desktop PC almost exactly five years ago.

\- Intel Core i5 2500K, 3.3 GHz, quad-core (200 USD)

\- 8B (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz C9 (100 USD)

\- 120GB 2.5" SSD Intel X25-M G2 (200 USD)

\- GeForce GTX 460 1GB (200 USD)

It's sad that a full five years later, CPU performance/USD has barely moved at all. RAM is half the cost now, SSDs a quarter the cost. Not sure about how GPUs have developed?

(Edit: The GTX 960 which today also costs 200 USD seems to be about twice as fast as the GTX 460.)

<comment><USER15> You represent the 5% of PC consumers.

The average person goes to Walmart/Bestbuy/BJ's/Staples and spends $475 on some shitbox laptop. The 25th percentile user (ie. millions of people) probably spent $275-325.

That average person who bought that average PC in 2011 has an aging HP/Dell/Asus laptop with a failing battery, $30 Celeron or AMD processor, 2GB memory, integrated graphics, a 500GB 5400rpm disk and integrated graphics.

<comment><USER16> I still have my 2008 plastic Macbook refurb that I still use to browse the web.

I had the pre-release Win 10/64 on it for a while, and it actually ran faster than OSX did on that machine (in my experience, Windows runs faster on Mac than OSX itself, but ymmv). And keep in mind that my Macbook pretty much got left behind by OSX after Lion.

<comment><USER17> I was reasonably happy on my bosses plastic Macbook until OSX stopped supporting them, and I need xCode for my job.

I now have his non retina Macbook pro to compile apps, and i fear the day that stops working too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is classic trolling, plain and simple.

The head of marketing thinks that using a competitor's product is "sad".

In response, this article calls Apple: "Insensitive". Offensive. "Hypocritical". "Insulting". And worst of all, promoting inequality by building high quality, expensive products and forgetting the needs of the poor.

It's an article designed to produce a response.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really this isn't terribly offensive. They're selling a product they think is superior, in their [marketing] minds the world would be a better place if you were pulled from the womb, slapped on the ass, and handed an iPad Pro, to be renewed every generation of gadget.

The Apple presentation stage is not the Basilica of St Peter. These are marketing pronouncements, not moral ones and analyzing them as such is such intense naval gazing that it's actually bad for your neck. If Apple hates the poor it's for no reason other than that they're outside their customer base.

</comment><comment><USER20> Perhaps I have some wires crossed from too much time as a sysadmin, but I take a 5 year old (+) PC (or any machine, really) as a mark of pride, not any bit of shame whatsoever. It speaks to a high degree of reliability which often speaks well of the operator (even if just "choosing robust hardware" is a component of this)

Some stories to add some color to this: Ran a very primitive file sharing server for my university on a dual P(2 or 3, don't quite remember) machine that was probably around a decade old by the time they finally ended up retiring it. My home fileserver is a ~10 TB 4U monster, running on (conveniently) 5 year old hardware and very boring FBSD. Outside of moving apartments, it has not had unplanned downtime once, I will continue using it as long as this is true and would be sad if I didn't get another good few years out of it.

I _WISH_ I could get the same lifetime out of desktop PCs but I tend to find assorted parts failing at an asymptotic rate around 3-5 years. The world in which we all use <5 year old hardware is a sad one, to be avoided, to my eyes. (To clarify, I don't mean this in any luddite sense, I don't believe tech should stop moving forward, but I long for more robust products with longer viable lifespans, such that one can make a choice to upgrade rather than waiting for the inevitable.)

<comment><USER21> That's not a PC (Personal Computer), it's a server.

You are thinking about hardware, Apple is talking about the whole computer.

<comment><USER20> You're right, but I was not trying to make a 1:1 comparison, but saying that properties servers seem to have in spades I'd really appreciate seeing in other markets, but that segment seems rarely catered to. (Let me gesture as well to my 2.5 year old phone whose irreplaceable battery is currently ballooning)

My statement addressed the "whole computer" as well, although the FS example was very much a special niche tool, I'd go so far as to say 90% of novel software features that have necessitated hardware refreshes in the last... decade? I could probably live without. This may be mildly hyperbole, but I hope the spirit of my statement comes across. I want to spend less time replacing/fixing my platforms and more time with them "just working".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not a fan of moralistic handwringing, particularly when it's brought about by uncharitable interpretations of what is clearly just marketing. This and the related articles are such poor quality that it makes me sad to see them get so much traction here. It's the sort of thing I'd expect at dailytech or slashdot.

</comment><comment><USER23> In times of climate change debate I think Apple is doing the wrong thing here, encouraging buy and throw away mentality increasing waste.

<comment><USER17> Ive had that exact same feeling since my iPad 1's life was effectively ended by software updates. It was the quickest device to become obsolete I've ever owned.

<comment><USER24> As someone who had to develop for that thing - it was underpowered from day 1. iPhone 3GS hardware with 5x the number of pixels to push and higher expectations on software capability? It was never going to work.

<comment><USER17> I somewhat agree with you about its specs, However when it came out of the box it was a smooth and snappy tablet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is ironic that Apple is mentioning this as I believe this is going to spell the end of their era of massive profits. Phones now are getting to the state where much like PCs, the older phone is good enough, and the new phone is not substantially better. There will always be people buying a phone for .2ghz more CPU or some slightly higher res screen, but the days of rapid evolution of mobile devices are over, and Apple is going to have problems selling someone a $6-800 phone every year or 2.

<comment><USER26> But with new OS versions, older phones quickly start to show their age. An iphone 4 or iphone 4s on the latest version of iOS it supports is really sluggish and slow (and no easy way to put iOS6/7 back on it)

<comment><USER27> this is by design, though, obviously.

providing "upgrades" to previous models incapable of truly supporting them is kind of an Apple trademark

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Did nothing interesting happen in the tech world today? This is such a non- story, it's really weird that this is on the front-page twice.

<comment><USER29> Pornhub launched a new VR channel for 180 and 360 degree content.

Tinder Adds "Swipe The Vote" so you can hook up with your candidate.

You decide whether either of these are more deserving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I interpreted it as "it's sad that those Window users having been using just Windows for 5 or more years and not Mac".

IMO He's catering to the audience of Apple enthusiasts (who are the ones that watch Apple events generally) and not making fun of poor people.

Its sort of analogous to when Jobs said: _" It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell"_ \-- about iTunes on Windows computers

Oh so Jobs thinks Windows users are Evil since they are in hell right?

<comment><USER12> Methinks Jobs had an overly high opinion of iTunes.

Giving iTunes to a Windows user is more like giving a massive, ugly, wooden horse to a Trojan, and it is so incredibly unwieldy that the lintel has to be removed from the city gate to even get it inside. Then a bunch of bearded maniacs come out of it and kill everybody.

I can't even tell you how many times I have been murdered in my sleep by iTunes. Okay, well, yes I can--zero. But that doesn't stop me from thinking it might happen one day.

<comment><USER30> Yes I agree. Even on my Mac I have seen it take more memory than Spotify and Spotify these days is basically running a Chrome instance.

I use VLC for most quicktime/itunes things these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If there's something sad about that fact, it's that the industry has delivered so little value in the past 5 years that not many people feel compelled to upgrade!

<comment><USER16> > If there's something sad about that fact, it's that the industry has > delivered so little value in the past 5 years that not many people feel > compelled to upgrade!

The glass half-full response?

The industry has delivered so much value in the past 5-8 years that not many people feel compelled to upgrade!

<comment><USER32> Exactly. I haven't upgraded my washing machine or refrigerator in the last 5 years either. The people Schiller was sneering at view PCs as appliances, and they don't watch Apple press conferences anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Actually, my main development tower is about nine years old.

And in that time, I've upgraded the processor, doubled the memory, upgraded the hard drive to an SSD, switched the video card twice, upped the number of connected monitors from one to three, and upgraded the OS from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 10.

It was pretty leading edge when I built it, and it's still pretty leading edge today. What's sad is the expectation that I should throw my computer away every 18 months.

<comment><USER34> Once you replace the motherboard it'll be a true modern day Ship of Theseus

<comment><USER35> Unless he's on AMD and the processor upgrade was very minor, he almost certainly did.

It's odd when people say "my computer is a decade old and I've only had to replace every single part multiple times over look at how green I'm being". It's the exact same thing as buying a new computer a couple times, just in smaller increments and with parts that are less likely to be recycled on their own.

<comment><USER33> Yep, AMD. And the only thing I got rid of were the video cards, which I sold on ebay.

I put the old drive in an external case and used it to archive old engineering projects. Kept the original monitor and added the other two.

I did have to trash my keyboard after I spilled coffee on it, though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Jesus christ, they are in the business of selling computers. This faux outrage over a salesman trying to sell his computers is gross - what's wrong with people?

Now watch as every blog tries to scramble to see who has the most outrage and who is the largest victim.

</comment><comment><USER37> Some people need to feel offended just as I need my morning coffee. I'm not even counting how old is my pc/laptop and that's the thing I like about PCs - there's hardly anything new that triggers my Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER38> "I want to be offended!"

signed, people who take offense at a off-hand remark like this.

Grow some thicker skin and stop wasting my screen real estate with irrelevant non-stories like this.

</comment><comment><USER39> I still use my 2009 MBP. I upgraded to an SSD drive and 8 gigs of ram. I don't game on it, but I can do almost all of my development on it. I'll admit it's slower then my 2013 MPB at work, but I see no reason to spend more money on a working computer.

My second computer is a Chromebook. My oldest daughter uses it for school work and we couldn't be happier. It's much better then our iPad (which we don't use anymore).

</comment><comment><USER40> Schiller is marketing his product. This is no different from the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials.

There are now _two_ articles on the HN front page about this utterly pedantic topic which boils down to marketing. Unbelievable.

</comment><comment><USER41> You know what makes me really happy? Any computer being used for fun/interesting/productive things, not just 'the latest ones'.

As a die-hard retrocomputing enthusiast with far more old computers in my basement than new, I'm biased. But I sure think that the time has come for the compute industry to start highlighting the need for lesser computing power, but yet still more productive computing.

8-bit computers are awesome. 16-bit machines superb! Get yourself set up with these systems and you can entertain yourself for hours and hours. 8-bit is a great way to learn software development - 2 hours of 8-bit coding a week will keep you sharper than sharp when the time comes to go back to the hipstertools-de-jour. (I kid, I kid.)

Point is this, folks: old computers never die - their users do.

</comment><comment><USER42> Until earlier this year I was still making heavy use of a Powerbook from 2004. I only stopped using it because the graphics hardware started to go funny.

I sold its battery, memory and power supply to someone still using a slightly older Powerbook.

</comment><comment><USER43> If anything its a fairly strong statement on the ruggedness of the PC platform. I have a 2500k i5 in my old desktop. With a new-ish videocard I play all the newest AAA games at high quality. Its incredible how the x86 world really hasn't had any huge performance bumps and how a Q1 2011 CPU is still competitive.

Also, there's the larger narrative of people buying tablets and putting off PC upgrades, so the PC ages. Don't worry Apple, you're still getting their money. Its just people aren't ready to replace a general purpose computer that they control and can run pretty much everything with a walled garden mobile device designed to get ad impressions and consume media.

If anything, this is Apple's frustration. They have all this success but people and businesses keep buying PCs. They'll never crack this market. They're too invested in the Jobsian "closed" ecosystem philosophy to be as agile as the PC platform. Mocking those who don't drink their kool-aid just makes them look like sore winners.

edit: I'm aware I can buy a newer chip, but from a single core vs single core perspective its not that much faster. Very little consumer software is properly multi-threaded so this is why my expensive work computer with the newest i7 doesnt feel any faster than my 5 year old desktop at home. Most things are pegged to one core and at the end of the day single core performance is what's going to matter.

<comment><USER44> > I have a 2500k i5 in my old desktop.

> Its incredible how the x86 world really hasn't had any huge performance > bumps and how a Q1 2011 CPU is still competitive.

Actually you can have _twice as fast_ desktop CPU today than your 2500k, and not for some number crunching you'll maybe never need (even though it's the most important thing for others) but for such common tasks like compiling the code:

[http://techreport.com/r.x/skylake/legacy1-qtbench.gif](http://techreport.com/r.x/skylake/legacy1-qtbench.gif)

Not bad at all for the times when the hardware speedups are getting harder.

But it's good that even the newest games don't expect only the latest CPU.

<comment><USER45> Where is the doubled single core performance? We have more cores now, but they are almost as fast as 3-4 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm a little sour on Apple. They say their products are rugged and "built to last", but an iPad is mostly glass which you need to encase in a giant rubber protective case if you don't want the screen shattered. Even then they are easy to break and very costly to fix, to the point now where it barely makes sense to fix it over replace it. Self-Repair is less expensive but so far I'm 50/50 on successes. I would say they are built to last, until the next one comes out.

<comment><USER47> The killer part is that it's only expensive to repair because Apple has opted not to streamline a repair pipeline. There is absolutely no way a digitizer glued to a piece of glass costs $500 otherwise they'd never make another iPad.

But if they price the part hideously expensively it makes buying a new one a no-brainer. Working in a school for a few years, I was amazed how easily and inexpensively I could replace screens and memory on 2008-era white macbooks when I had access to school channels for parts priced at cost (or close enough). I think we had access to those channels as a stipulation in a state contract to buy assloads of those machines for every kid in the state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> As someone who just picked up a reconditioned six-year-old, i7-equipped ThinkPad for a hell of a lot less money than what it would have cost brand- new, I have to laugh. It may not be the Latest and Greatest, but it's still speedy enough to handle anything I'm going to throw at it. The CPU performance curve has flattened out in the last few years, to the point that it's not worth spending lots of money for a modest performance gain.

I'll let someone else take the depreciation hit.

<comment><USER49> considering cpu speed has been "good enough since around core 2 duos (late 2006?) the only major improvements since then have been battery life and ssd cost.

anyone with a computer from the last 10 years that can support an ssd and 8+gb ram, is probably fine. travel being the exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The only thing not lasting more than 5 years in my 20+ years owning computers are Macs, other iDevices and PCs are much, much stabler. Macbook Pro 2008 (died in 3 years), iMac 27 2010 (died in 4.8 years), Macbook Air 2013 (dying) and Mac Mini 2012 (dying) are the reason why I always end up coming back to my 2010 gaming PC and 2010 HTPC, the ones to break the 5+ year mark without a major hardware failure.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't understand how the author went from the guy saying it's "really sad" to "Apple is insulting people". I mean even his first argument on why people don't upgrade IS actually sad since they can't afford to do that. I know it is because I'm one of those people who can't afford to upgrade my machine.

/rant typed on a 5 year old Asus N53SV.

</comment><comment><USER52> [http://www.apple.com/environment/](http://www.apple.com/environment/)

</comment><comment><USER53> I said this in the other thread..

I just bought a "new to me" laptop.

Refurb Thinkpad T420s from 2011.

I added 16G RAM, two Intel SSDs, an Ultrabay battery, and an 802.12ac wifi card.

Grand total: less than $325.

This will be my primary portable for at least 2-3 years, and it's already four years old.

Just because I can afford Apple doesn't mean I can justify the 2x price premium, or that "old" hardware isn't capable.

<comment><USER54> May I ask from where you bought it and how did you upgrade it. Looks like a very interested configuration.

<comment><USER53> I tend to get my refurb Thinkpads from arrowdirect.com. You can use the code ARROW for 20% off.

I ordered this one as 4G/128SSD but already had the RAM on hand to upgrade it to 16G.

Part sources:

(if you want to upgrade from the 128G) Intel Pro 1500 180G: $55 [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pro-1500-180-GB-2-5-SSD- Intern...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pro-1500-180-GB-2-5-SSD-Internal- Solid-State-Drive-SSDSC2BF180A4H-/191728007943)

(optional) Intel 310 80G mSATA SSD: $30 [http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-310-Series-80GB-mSATA-SSD- SSDM...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-310-Series-80GB-mSATA-SSD- SSDMAEMC080G2-/231812886235)

Ultrabay battery: $28 [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad- Battery-43-3-Cell-Ba...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkpad- Battery-43-3-Cell-Bay-Lenovo-Genuine-FRU-0A36310-NIB-/141898955475)

Intel 7260 802.11ac MiniPCIe wifi card: $28 [http://www.amazon.com/Intel-7260-HMWG-R-Wireless-AC- Bluetoot...](http://www.amazon.com/Intel-7260-HMWG-R-Wireless-AC-Bluetooth- Mounting/dp/B00MY9S692)

An external USB3 enclosure for the Ultrabay DVDRW drive will run around $30 on Amazon.

To install the Intel 7260 card, you will need to install a modified "whitelist removed" BIOS, as Lenovo restricts what MiniPCIe cards can go in their systems by default. The system comes with an 802.11n card (mine was an Intel Centrino 6205).

My only complaint about ArrowDirect is that if they have a system model that could have different screen resolutions, you have no way of specifying / requesting certain specs; you get what they pull and send.

Every system I've ordered from them (close to ten now) has arrived in near- mint condition; this t420s would be amazingly perfect if not for a scuff of the rubberized paint/coating on the top lid (which doesn't matter to me one bit).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Echoing the comments from others, My "main" pc is about 7 years old running the x58 platform (socket 1366) - it easily outperforms my work-supplied development laptop.

For the uninitiated, the ebay workstations mentioned are typically these ancient x58's. Most support hex core xeons, 24gb ram (or 48gb unofficially, more on server boards and some workstations), and a pile of PCI-express lanes. As such, you can easily add in PCI-express m.2 SSDs, USB 3/3.1, and GPU's to your heart's content. The takeaway is that old pc tech can be had at a fraction the cost of new hardware with comparable performance.

I understand the marketing nonsense from Apple, the "PC does what" consortium, and hardware vendors on the whole - but there is nothing sad about owning an old pc. The reality is that the best performance for the price lies in "obsolete" platforms.

</comment><comment><USER56> Is there anything sad about using a 5 year old mac? I'm hoping that eventually my mac book pro will last 5-10 years. With multi-core systems, SSDs, and 16 gigs of ram in MBP's do we really need to be upgrading so much? Also, clock speed advances have stalled.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think I have a rusty, almost 5 year old PC lying around. It has an Intel i7-2600K overclocked to 4.6 GHz, 24 GB RAM, 240G SSD and a Radeon 6950 GPU that can run most games well in fHD.

Most of the machines Apple sells are actually slower than this PC.

<comment><USER58> That's a great exception to the rule. The overwhelming majority of computers Apple is talking about, are probably shitty $400 PCs that were underpowered from day one, which are just barely chugging along.

Because that is actually what most people buy.

<comment><USER59> Thing is, OS bloat has finally ground to a halt. Win8.1 wasn't really any slower than 7, and Win10 is actually faster in my experience. So really, you don't need a stronger machine today than you did five years ago. Any perceived slowdown is just the result of malware, fragmentation, and DLL buildup - refresh the OS and maybe install an SSD and they're fine.

I'm using a laptop from 2010 with an i7-720QM and an SSD, and it's perfectly snappy. I frequently let it do light encoding tasks while I'm using my desktop.

<comment><USER58> Partly. Yes, the operating systems feel faster, but they are all relying more on GPUs for their rendering. And one way cheap Windows PCs keep their costs down is by using cheap integrated GPUs that are quite underpowered.

I use Windows 10 on in VMWare every day at 4k resolution on my retina macbook pro. It feels a bit sluggish, but I know I'm pushing the limits of VM graphics on a laptop with that resolution. But I can only imagine that a computer that's 6-7 years old would start to struggle graphically in Windows 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I agree that this was tone-deaf of them, I just find it fascinating that we picked this one instance of tech industry rich guy tone-deafness. Seems to be getting a lot of play for some reason. But it's everywhere if you look.

</comment><comment><USER61> Thinking of all of the computers I've had since 2007, all of them are usable and still in use at least once a week.

2006 era Mac Mini Core Duo 1.66Ghz. Run Windows 7 gave it to my mom. She still uses it.

2009 era Sony Viao - Core Duo 1.66Ghz, 2Gb RAM. Windows 7. My son uses it for Office and MineCraft

2009 Dell Pentium Dusl Core 2Ghz, 4Gb of RAM. It's still my only laptop. The display is 1600x900 and is still better than many cheap laptops. The battery is crap though.

2011 Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz laptop. My wife's computer. It's still feels fast.

My workhouse is a 3Ghz I3 with 6Gb of RAM. Bought in 2012.

</comment><comment><USER62> I agree with this piece. I have long been upset at Apple's forced obsolesce policy, and creating the notion that devices are disposable. I still have a Macbook from 2009, and another from 2012, that I am doing everything in my power to upgrade and avoid the forced slow down. Likewise with my iPad and phone. I resist the persistent upgrade requests to the OS. Not because I am blase about security issues, or not wanting bugs to be fixed, but because those fixes and upgrades come with a cost: premature, forced obsolescence.

</comment><comment><USER63> You know what's _really_ sad ?

I am using a 2009 octo mac pro, which is now _7 years old_ and since that date, apple has not released a single product that is compelling enough to upgrade that system.

</comment><comment><USER64> I believe that an iPad (or comparable Android Tablet) is better for most computer users than any low/mid-tier 5-year old PC.

With PC's you can upgrade them, and make tweaks to squeeze out every bit of performance, but by and large for most people, when taking into account that mobile content consumption is on the rise, a tablet is a better upgrade than a new PC. Tasks like email, text, video, music, photography, facebook, are pretty much now done via mobile phone. For these people, PCs are anachronistic.

</comment><comment><USER65> I have a HP Pavilion Elite m9458fr bought in july 2009 for 416€ (on eBay hp_marketplace_fr). I only need a silent reliable computer with a reasonably fast CPU for web development on Linux. I have no need for beefy GPU, I just need to connect 2 displays (23" and 19"). I would like to replace it in order to have USB3 connectors and SATA III HD. I do not find anything on the market for reasonable price. Should I buy a ultra-HD laptop with a magnifying lens ?

</comment><comment><USER66> It seems a somewhat strained interpretation to view this as Apple is anti-poor people. But it does point out that Apple is losing touch with what people do with personal computing power.

Phone are much better then five years ago, computers not so much. I'd much rather spend my dollars where the major improvement in computing technology is, then spending to upgrade a desktop to view thing almost the same as before.

</comment><comment><USER67> The main problem I see is Intel and Microsoft have given up on power users and it is all Apple envy and phone envy, no wonder people don't buy new PCs.

Back in the 0s I had a policy of never rehabilitating an old PC because a new PC was better in every way.

The other day a friend brought a Macbook from 2007 to me with a busted HDD and I put an ssd I had laying around in and we got Win10 running on it with no drama and no Apple malware (iTunes, boot camp, etc.) It feel faster than a skylake machine with one of those useless hybrid hard drives and after puffing some hcfc gas through the fan it is great.

Any and or pre core 2 machine would go to the trash, I would not even donate it to the poor, but frankly broadwell and skylake are just an excuse to reduce the io slots to put manufacturers of gfx cards.

They say customers get better battery life but software screws that up if they really tried it and the most you can get is spend a lot of money on a thin and light machine that the doorman can slide under the hotel or get a 2 in 1 machine just because you need a trackpad on a touchpad machine and have a fight over if and where you stow it with the stewardess just to have another reason to get arrested at your destination.

I mean, even IBM sells 360 chips that clock over 5 that use water cooling. It is not that hard.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm using a MacBook Pro from late 2011.

Most of the actual machine specs (i.e. processor and max RAM) have barely changed in 5 years. I put 16 Gb in my laptop 5 years ago and it's still the most you can squeeze into a 13" MacBook Pro.

It's sad (and somewhat telling) that Apple has not packed more power into this form factor over the past 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER69> Holy crap the "politically correct" army has entered the tech world. We're not safe anywhere...

</comment><comment><USER70> I'm using a ~5 year old PC I built myself and it still outperforms the hardware in any available mac product (desktop, tablet or laptop) that isn't a Mac Pro (starting price $2999,00).

I don't have a compelling reason to upgrade until the launch of VR headsets.

<comment><USER64> I am also using a phone that outperforms the hardware of any available PC that wasn't built in this century.

Putting aside the hyperbole, I'm willing to bet the USB 3.0 and TB2 ports on my MBP out perform the ports on your 5-year old PC.

<comment><USER70> I actually have 2 USB 3.0 ports. USB 3.0 was first available on ASUS motherboards in late 2009 [1]. Thunderbolt wasn't available at that point but it was unveiled with the Thunderbolt Display, which was July 20th 2011, so coming up fast on 5 years old tech at this point. I personally have no use for 20Gbps transfers so TB2 has zero draw for me to upgrade.

Talking about hyperbole, you're comparing brand new hardware vs something that was released in 1999 (so 16 years of moore's law) against the point that the hardware apple uses in it's cutting edge desktops/laptops is pretty comparable to the stuff commercially available 5 years ago, which is a valid point.

If Apple wants to shame the market for not upgrading in the last 5 years, maybe they should offer a valid reason to upgrade outside of a marketing campaign appealing to 'want' and additional software features which a recent change actually made free anyway.

The idea that I could replace my PC with an iPad pro is just plain wrong.

[1] [http://www.pcworld.com/article/174672/Asus_Debut_First_USB_3...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/174672/Asus_Debut_First_USB_30_Motherboard.html)

<comment><USER64> My hyperbole was making fun of your silly statement that your 5 year old computer out performs all the hardware that Apple makes[1]

My phone is more powerful than any PC[2]

I am the richest man in Seattle[3]

> The idea that I could replace my PC with an iPad pro is just plain wrong.

I'll take your word on that. But that isn't true for all PC users. I have a pretty beefy machine, not the latest and greatest, but a hex-core, 12gb, 960gtx and dual 30" monitors, which I use wholly for gaming. Youtubing, videoing, etc, have all moved to my ipad+appletv, and with my PS4, I finally feel like I have a console that provides a real crisp gaming experience. So I'm ready to no longer maintain my $2k PC, and switch to something like a SteamMachine.

[1] if you exclude the MacPro.

[2] made before the year 2000

[3] if you exclude the people that have more money than I do.

<comment><USER70> Silly statement that's factually correct and entirely relevant to a discussion about the lack of reason to upgrade hardware to something Apple currently makes?

When your comparison is to bring up a 16 year hardware difference or to incorrectly comment at the lack of transfer standards available to me and also suggesting that I even needed said transfer speed or peripherals, I don't understand what impact you're trying to have on the discussion.

I excluded the mac pro because it costs ~$1k more than I spent on my computer 5 years ago. I could spend the same ~$2k and build a similar or the ~$3k and a far more powerful computer, but I realize that isn't available to everyone and so omitted it as it wasn't a fair comparison and not relevant to the conversation on an Apple exec suggesting that people don't upgrade their computers frequently enough and should instead buy the latest iPad Pro every 2-3 years.

I really don't get what point you're trying to make, other than being overly pedantic and argumentative. There isn't much reason to upgrade hardware, especially not within the Apple ecosystem and these comments from an Apple exec are very far from the mark. If you don't agree with that statement then I'm happy to discuss, but your current line of reasoning is flawed and unproductive.

<comment><USER64> > I don't understand what impact you're trying to have on the discussion.

> I really don't get what point you're trying to make

The point I'm making with you is the strong confirmation bias (See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)) to your belief that there is no compelling reason to upgrade from an older PC to a tablet.

You are selectively fitting evidence (ignoring MacPros) to ensure your anecdotal argument is factually correct, then using that statement as the basis for invalidating the assertion that PC users with old hardware would benefit from "upgrading" to an iPad.

There is no reason for you who presumably has a very powerful, albeit "old", PC to upgrade to a tablet. That does not mean every other person with an old computer will also not benefit from replacing their machine with a tablet. The latter part being the basis for the statement from Apple.

My opinion: for folks who don't require KVM, could upgrade to a tablet. Anecdotally, my Mom no longer uses her laptop, and does her emailing, youtubing, and photo stuff wholly on a 1st gen ipad. However, her use case is clearly not yours (or mine).

<comment><USER70> I ignored mac pros? I specifically called them out as not a valid comparison given the price point.

First it's hyperbole, which you incorrectly applied now it's confirmation bias by 'ignoring' something which was not pertinent but I called out anyway. Make up your mind.

If you want to argue on the internet, there are plenty of other places to do that, I wish you luck in your sport. However, if you're just going to stick around and argue equivocation needlessly, that's not something I want to be a part of.

<comment><USER64> > However, if you're just going to stick around and argue equivocation > needlessly, that's not something I want to be a part of.

He says, after multiple replies.

<comment><USER70> Thank you for confirming your motives by ignoring the substance of my comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Maybe user of old computers are not poor but:

* Do not suffer from avarice?

* They do not need the newest shiny toy for their ego and to win recognition?

* They don't touch a good running working system?

* They want to save CO2 emissions and noble earths?

* They have a frugal live?

* The know what Eco-sufficiency means?

* They know that consumerism does not make happy?

</comment><comment><USER72> semi-Related:iCar release date rumours, features and images: Apple CEO Tim Cook comments on Apple Car rumours

[http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/will-apple-make-icar- pr...](http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/will-apple-make-icar-project- titan-rumour-roundup-bmw-tesla-tim-cook-3425394/)

Reading related news is interesting. Imagine Apple applies its tactics on their cars: You probably need a new apple designed plugin other than the universal one, special tools to change flat tires and/or update the exterior slightly to market therefore driving a 5-year-old car is sad.

</comment><comment><USER73> There is however something sad about buying products to not look poor.

</comment><comment><USER74> I am using 7 year old pc with single upgrade(motherboard),I have no reason to buy new!!!! I have no reason to buy any expensive apple laptop or ipad.

</comment><comment><USER75> 600 million PC users discovered that running a lightweight unix distribution/DE and not allowing javascript made the life expectancy of their computers triple.

Or so I dream.

</comment><comment><USER76> If your child's school only had 5 year old computers, you'd probably think, "Huh, it'd be better if this school had newer computers."

</comment><comment><USER77> The e-waste stream and the throwaway consumer culture is what's really sad.

</comment><comment><USER78> I miss my "Turbo" switch that used to be on older PC's. Just press "Turbo" and your PC is good for another couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER79> I can be "not wrong" and sad at the same time. A newer PC would likely be much faster, resulting in less stress and less wasted time.

</comment><comment><USER80> I, too, am shocked that a computer company would communicate that their new computing devices are better than the old ones people already own.

Shocked.

</comment><comment><USER81> \-- sent from my almost perfect 9yo laptop

</comment><comment><USER82> Hahahahahhahahahahah... my main machine is a Macbook Pro, Mid-2009. Going on 7 years old. Hahahahahahah.

</comment><comment><USER83> My 5 year old PC has a dual socket Xeon I think that beats any iPad rubbish.

<comment><USER21> How much battery life dos your PC have?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Last Macbook Pro generation is from 2012... this is really sad, it really is.

<comment><USER16> I may not be a fan of Apple any more, but I don't understand how this is sad.

The innards have been upgraded regularly since 2012, and the CPUs and GPUs in the latest 15" models are pretty competitive to everything else on the market not counting machines for gamers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I use a 4 year old MBP. Does that make me middle class then?

</comment><comment><USER86> Yikes...My primary PC is 5 years old. Works great.

</comment><comment><USER87> Still running a desktop with a Q9650 and 8GB RAM.

Runs fine.

</comment><comment><USER88> My main home machine is an 8-year-old Mac Pro running Snow Leopard. Apple today sells nothing that could _replace_ it, let alone improve on it.

</comment><comment><USER64> Apple v PC flame war still lives on.

</comment><comment><USER89> What Phil said worked.

</comment><comment><USER90> Yes there are things that are sad about it. A 5-year-old PC is probably not running a recent version of Windows, and has a higher likelihood of being compromised. And if a person wants a new computer but can't afford it, that is sad too.

That said, it was an obviously stupid stat for Schiller to cite. But now we're going to be subjected to a long series of Apple-bashing articles that overreach in the opposite direction. By the end of today we'll see multiple "actually, I'm proud to be running 5-year-old PC" posts.

Why? Because when mining for pageviews, there are few veins as rich as bashing Apple.

Edit to add: If we want to talk about the tech industry and poor people, let's do so. How many new companies are variations of "let us bring things to your door for you for an extra fee" or "let's give you personalized service so you don't have to go shopping/ride a bus/interact with a human"?

<comment><USER91> A 5 year old PC is likely running Windows 7, which still receives upgrades, is supported, and is quite secure. Of course, all Windows 7 PCs received a free upgrade path to Windows 10. So there's no reason they couldn't be running the most recent Windows, without spending a dime.

Of course, they could also be running something like Ubuntu (Linux counter puts the number at 73 million, W3Counter at 2.58% of all devices, or just under half OSX's numbers in that counting method), in which case they'd also likely be running a recent OS, one which is arguably more secure than either Windows or OSX.

I don't think it's 'offensive' what Schiller says. But it does speak to Apple's mentality, where planned obsolescence and profit trumps all, and the faithful buy into it...</comment></comment>


This Web App Best Viewed by Someone Else – Eric Meyer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38al1w-h4k

<comment><USER2> Eric Meyer mainly complaints about javascript not being an option but a first requirement (single page apps). As is high speed (lots of js frameworks, video, images, custom fonts).

Good to be reminded of the basics: the web was meant to share information with everybody and every device. Now you are effectively offline without the latest browser and high-speed internet. As in great parts of this world.</comment>


Laid Off? It's Good for You and Good for the Tech Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/17-08/st_essay

<comment><USER2> The disconnection between the writer and reality is really striking.

If you're laid off it is never 'good for you', and it certainly isn't good for the industry.

Plenty of talent that was thrown out at some point in this crisis due to no fault of theirs is not going to try their hand again at a job that left them with 0 security when times were hard, that talent will be lost forever.

And if you have a mortgage, kids to put through school or college and the usual family expenses then being laid off is a crisis, not 'good for you' in any way because making a facebook or a twitter application is not going to put bread on your table in time for your house not to be repossessed.

It's ok to suggest that for some individuals there are opportunities in being laid off but for the most part any forced leave from a job that you may have liked and performed well in and that kept you alive is a tragedy.

It could easily ruin someones life for years to come.

<comment><USER3> I have to say that usually it is marginal talent that has hard time finding a job.

Crisis like this is when the chaff is separated from the wheat. They filter out people that shouldn't be in he bussiness.

I remember my car mechanic was a DBA back in 2000. He read a SQL book, and a 3 months class, and bam, he was DBA for some company, which eventually went under. He admited me he didn't know what he was doing, but at the time you will get hired right away if you new something.

He owns a car repair garage now, and is pulling up to 500k of profit a year. Who knows, maybe he would have been a great DBA with enough experience, but in this case he clearly profited more by doing what he was good at.

Kinda like CS 121, which was the hardest class in college, and a lot of people failed. They usually switched majors, to bussiness, or information systems, or something else they could do.

I thought it was good, as those people were evidently there b/c they had heard all those stories about startups and being rich, while had no passion or abilities for programming whatsover.

<comment><USER4> The skills required to quickly find a new job aren't even related to the skills required to execute on a software team.

<comment><USER5> Succinct and correct.

Besides, even good software teams are now losing people simply because the money is not there, either in financing or for the customers (thereby reducing the customer base). They do not hire -- on the contrary, some have to lay good people off. This is not good. It's the opposite of good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _And there are still plenty of opportunities out there for Valley types: Facebook widgets, iPhone apps, Twitter tools, and cloud services are exploding._

That's where they lost me. Laid off? No money? Kids starving? Make a new Twitter app!

<comment><USER3> Hey, that's what I am doing right now.

My previous company shut down. I got 4 job offers withing 2 weeks, and right now I am transfering my H-1B papers.

Since that takes few weeks, I am working on something fun. A sms backup system, that automatically backs up all your sms, and makes them search-able from a small portal.

Using Python for the backend, and java/objective-c on the client side. I choose python b/c I would like to learn it better, as in all my jobs it has been all java.

So, I probably won't make any money out of it, but I will come with some solid server side Python experience that I can put it on my resume.

Meanwhile I still have to tell recruiters "sorry I already accepted an offer". Got a call from google, and fb.

Bottom line, if you are good, there is really no recession for you. And getting laid off is not that bad. (this is my first time). My previous company was going no-where, and my skills would have been better used somewhere else, where I can produce real economic value.

<comment><USER7> For what it's worth, that sounds nice, and disruptive, but possibly short- lived. Someone recently asked me how I enjoyed using Google Voice, and while I didn't immediately have an answer, after thinking about it, I decided that I liked it mostly because it allowed me to keep my SMS messages in the cloud.

Many people use SMS to get actual work done, as I do, and it surprises me that nobody seems to care to back them up (or at least, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of allowing that) -- but Google Voice gets rid of the problem altogether, in that they're only transiently on my phone, and always stored in the Googleplex (deletions are 'archived', similar to Gmail).

<comment><USER6> Just because Google's doing it with Google Voice doesn't mean someone else's solution will automatically be "short lived".

Most of the world has still never heard of Google Voice (let alone "the cloud"). If he makes an SMS backup product, and sells it as that, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who would be interested, regardless of what Google is doing.

<comment><USER7> I didn't mean to imply that google was going to put him out of business, so much as I meant that I think carriers will likely follow Google's lead eventually -- They already have your SMS messages, call logs and voice mail data -- exposing them to the web effectively competes with a large portion of Google's Voice offering, and doesn't require significant overhaul of anything for carriers to implement. Of course, I could be wrong, but my point wasn't that he was sure to fail because he was competing with google as much as I feel things are trending that way already.

Besides, it's not like competing with Google is unwinnable either, it's just very, very hard to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Paul Boutin (firstname.lastname@example.com) was a_ Wired _senior editor until we fired him in 2001_

<comment><USER9> the ladder, the ladder is on FIRE!

I wonder what will come after it? <http://paulgraham.com/ladder.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I laugh. I'm not exactly laid off, but I quit a pretty decent dev job in January to do some traveling. Since then I built a gmaps mashup for a library, a wordpress twitter widget, a custom wordpress widget, and $80 worth of elance work. I'm in the process of learning python/django in the hopes of releasing a pretty fun twitter app with no revenue potential. I can say of all of the technologies I used to build these things, I had zero previous experience, and still don't have enough to list it on my resume in good conscience. So where does that leave me? My travels are coming to an end and I'm scared to death I'll never find a job.</comment>


Can God Get DDoS'ed? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@entrifis/can-god-get-ddosed-e8b88d3c62ed <comment><USER2> I thought god was on blockchain and had immutable god's plan encompassing all past and future events? Then prayers are meaningless, since the divine plan can't be changed, and probably discarded on ingress.</comment>


Std.variant is everything cool about D - <AUTHOR> https://dlang.org/blog/2018/03/29/std-variant-is-everything-cool-about-d/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of the article, so feel free to ask me anything, or give me your thoughts on the article.</comment>


Working with Search or NLP? Here are some cool datasets to mine - <AUTHOR> http://myeverwrite.com/working-with-search-or-nlp-here-are-some-cool-datasets-to-mine/

<comment><AUTHOR> Another cool related list can be found here: [http://www.datawrangling.com/some-datasets-available-on- the-...](http://www.datawrangling.com/some-datasets-available-on-the-web)

</comment><comment><USER2> The AOL Dataset doesn't exist any longer. Most of the other datasets are from Yahoo, where you only get access with an university verification.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can download it here: <http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool! a nice collection of datasets if you need training data for your NLP or Information Retrieval algorithm. Kudos!</comment>


New Property of Light Discovered - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-06-property.html <comment><USER2> I did a project during my undergraduate degree in physics which involved interfering three planar waves at 60 degrees from one another to create a hexagonal intensity pattern. The interesting thing was that at each of the 6 corners of the hexagon was a singularity (optical vortex) where the phase was undefined. At these points, the phase space was shaped like a spiral staircase (screw dislocation) and particles suspended there could actually be rotated. It was like an "optical wrench" if you will.

On a small scale, planar waves can be modeled like flat sheets of paper traveling through space without any angular momentum (no twisting motion). Yet when these sheets hit an object from multiple angles with the right timing, they can actually cause the object to twist.

<comment><USER3> Very interesting. To clarify, 60deg phase offset or azimuth (e.g. converging at a single point)? Now I really want to plug this into an EM simulator

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I misspoke about the angle of separation (it's actually 120 degrees) and did a poor job of describing the orientation. If you imagine a vector perpendicular to the sheet indicating the direction of travel, then these three vectors would intersect at a single point and lie along the surface of a cone. The angle between the axis of the cone and each vector, the azimuth, was 30 degrees.

[https://i.ibb.co/VDgS8yr/3beam.png](https://i.ibb.co/VDgS8yr/3beam.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To make it clear:

Photons have two different forms of angular momentum. Spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM). Radiated photon carries not only spin but also orbital angular momentum.

That OAM must exist has been known some time but it was observed relatively recently (27 years ago). Orbital angular momentum of light and the transformation of Laguerre-Gaussian laser modes [https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.45.81...](https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.45.8185)

>Abstract

> Laser light with a Laguerre-Gaussian amplitude distribution is found to have > a well-defined orbital angular momentum. An astigmatic optical system may be > used to transform a high-order Laguerre-Gaussian mode into a high-order > Hermite-Gaussian mode reversibly. An experiment is proposed to measure the > mechanical torque induced by the transfer of orbital angular momentum > associated with such a transformation.

> Received 6 January 1992

>DOI:[https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.45.8185](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.45.8185)

<comment><USER5> was OAM used in any way in applications even though it hasn't been observed properly ?

<comment><USER6> Yes, people have used OAM to demonstrate various quantum information tasks. See this as an example [https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.06...](https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.063831)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When we discovered that neutrinos oscillate, we knew that they had mass because we were able to observe a change from within our frame of reference, implying a finite time dilation. I thought that light was unable to change its physical properties in time (as observed from our frame of reference) due to infinite relativistic time dilation. How is it possible that we can observe torque, a change in angular momentum, for a particle moving at the speed of light?

<comment><USER6> All special relativity says is that if an object is moving at the speed of light, its motion will appear to be the same in every reference frame. That is all. It says nothing on what can happen to photons when they are interacted with other photons or or with other media. Photons have several internal properties and all of these can be manipulated, either in the lab or naturally. The polarization of photons can be changed by Faraday rotation for example. In cosmology, you might be aware of Hubble's law, which involves the changing of the frequency of light.

I haven't read this paper or intend to, but here is a key quote

> We demonstrate that the self-torque arises as a necessary consequence of > angular momentum conservation during the extremely non-linear, non- > perturbative optical process of high-order harmonic generation (HHG). In > HHG, the interaction of an intense field with an atom or molecule leads to > the ionization of an electronic wavepacket, which acquires energy from the > laser field before being driven back to its parent ion, and emitting a high- > frequency photon upon recollision.

What they are saying essentially is that by interacting the light with matter they are able to generate the said torque.

<comment><USER8> I think the question comes from the following understanding:

\- change requires the passage of time.

\- particles moving at the speed of light relative to us have infinite time dilation and so no time passes from our point of view.

\- the article is talking about particles moving at the speed of light which under go change.

I have the same (mis?)understanding and am curious how this can work as well.

<comment><USER6> Your second point is where all the trouble is arising. Special relativity is talking about one thing and one thing only - how an object moves from one point to another in space, and how fast this process appears. The position (and speed and acceleration) are external properties of an object, they depend on who is doing the describing of these properties. Special relativity is concerned mainly with these things.

Objects also have other internal (non-space/position) related properties. For example, light has polarization. These properties can and do change with the passage of time. For example, you can change the polarization of light with a strong magnet. Relativity can and does place some restrictions on how this evolution happens, in so far as something is moving in space, but that is a more involved story.

<comment><USER9> > Objects also have other internal (non-space/position) related properties. > For example, light has polarization.

So the angular momentum of light would be put under the same category as polarization, which is a property that a single photon can have?

Or is it a property like wavelength, momentum, frequency, intensity, etc -- a property of light that can be observed only when the light is a system of lots of photons, instead of just an individual photon?

Also, sorry if my categories are wrong. If so, I hope it doesn't take away from my main question of whether it is a property of a single photon or a property of a system of photons

<comment><USER6> Every category you have named, wavelength/frequency, intensity (function of frequency), linear momentum (function of frequency), polarization are properties that individual photons have. It is possible to construct photon detectors that are able to resolve these properties for a single photon thrown at them.

Orbital angular momentum is also a property of single photons, related to the shape of their wave function. You can read about it and see some example shapes on the wikipedia page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_angular_momentum_of_li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_angular_momentum_of_light)

I can't think of a property of light that is only in the bulk and not at the single photon level (somebody correct me if I am wrong). But I haven't read this paper in any detail to find if the "torque" is a bulk property or a single photon property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do I understand this right? Light has angular momentum (long known). That angular momentum can change (new), which requires torque. But it's a beam of light putting torque on itself. Or, it's photons in a beam of light putting torque on other photons in a beam of light.

Worse, it seems to be (if I understood the article correctly) that different parts (front and back) of the beam of light are torquing each other. How can they do that while still moving at the speed of light?

<comment><USER11> The forward speed is the speed of light, but the angular speed is ... the angular speed. It's two different properties and measurements.

Disclosure: I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER12> Is there a limit to angular speed, just as there is a limit to forward speed?

<comment><USER13> That is such a good question!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whoa. Anyone have any ideas for use cases? The article mentions manipulating tiny materials - like what? How would that work?

<comment><USER3> Applied to microwaves in particular, modulating wave properties is how we transfer data. New ways to pack more bits per Hz are always useful.

<comment><USER15> Problem is OAM does not work for long distances.

<comment><USER3> Can you elaborate? I've seen OAM at the conferences but not super familiar

<comment><USER15> As the beam diverges, you need larger and larger receive antennas to discriminate between the modes, more aperture than you need to compensate for path loss. That seems to be why OAM research is now mmWave (better collimating) and more applicable to short range backhaul.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find this theory fascinating to consider: all physical objects/abstractions at each order of magnitude (atoms to laniakeas) in spacetime (shared reality) are holons governed by a natural and pragmatic system (platonic ideals) with some degree of freedom collapsing along quantum-information received by differential co-observations. Those objects with the most appearent freedoms and power to act, we traditionally call alive, yet it seems all objects at all orders of magnitude have some amount of autonomy, especially our own bodies. Light, electrons, and energy all exist within what appears to be the information and language layer between holons co-observing relational quantum- information (like spacetime) where time is the rate of subjective information observation, and the limited speed of information/light results in what we see in response time witnessed as observation-intention/reaction-action/physical change.

Question for any postmodernist: (I don't know if there are any in the physics circles because it seems that postmodernism ideology which dominates the humanities has serverly diverged from physics in some fundamental theories, and I am trying to understand this gap in theory.) It seems postmodernism's claims on subjective reality throwns out the theory of platonic ideals and renders it impossible to see the math and geometric uniformity of the universe; and cannot conceive of the law "information is indestructable" if all reality is subjective. Please help me understand what I fail to see.

To continue, if objective reality only exists within the spacetime dimensions and additionally a subjective reality exists as a set of dimentions within the information/language/feeling dimensions but collapses as observers understand each other via communication, this could find explain some of the gaps between social philosophy (humanities) and natural philosophy (science).

Note: I will likely come back to this post tomorrow to rewrite it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if this will affect how we understand things about light, like the two-slit experiment.

</comment><comment><USER18> I had a wild thought, not 6 months ago, that angular momentum in light could account for all the missing dark stuff in the universe. I didn't know science didn't know light had angular momentum.

<comment><USER19> Science did know it. It just didn't realize that the angular momentum could change with time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it is this one?: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.10942](https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.10942)

<comment><USER21> The Science version has much more readable/viewable formatting and has a bit more references, though.

<comment><USER20> Thanks, I didn't realize you could read a paper on Science without paying.

<comment><USER22> You can't, officially. scihub is the napster of scientific publications, and it regularly gets shut down and moves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Made me think, I wonder if the photon pressure from a vortex beam of light will spin a target, as well as push it away?

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this torque in the same sense of the word as "ability to move objects"?

Is StarTrek happening?

<comment><USER19> No, it seems that I'm this case, the angular momentum of the light beam itself changes over time, a process that is typically referred to as (or driven by?) torque in classical mechanics, and so they used that term here as well. They call it "self-torque" (I believe) because it's the light changing it's own angular momentum. But I've not been involved with physics academia in several years, so take it with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This sounds like refraction. Two beams traveling through the cloud. If you use a double prisim, you could achieve the same type of results.

<comment><USER3> Refraction is a linear effect. This is nonlinear because two waves enter the gas at f1 and leave at f2 (the photon momentarily energizes an electron in the gas, which collapses and releases a photon at another frequency)

<comment><USER25> You cannot guarantee the angles at which they enter the gas.

They also stated to using different wavelengths out of sync. Which would cause the angle of refraction to be different.

Different angles of refraction lead to different changes of speed as they enter one medium to another.

Also I'm not sure what you mean "the photon momentarily energizes". The photon has a constant amount of energy. A beautiful balance of kinetic vs potential energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Could this encode additional classical bits (optical transceivers) and/or qubits (single-photon quantum key-distribution protocol)?

</comment><comment><USER25> What does this mean for the double slit experiment?

</comment><comment><USER27> Can waves wave angular momentum? This is really neat.

<comment><USER21> Transversal waves can: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_momentum_of_light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_momentum_of_light)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> TLDR they changed a doughnut into a croissant.

<comment><USER29> Did they use a cronut as the intermediate stage?

<comment><USER30> Ok I'm upvoting both of you, I don't care what HN says.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I could listen to Laura Rego Cabezas talk about physics all day long.

</comment><comment><USER32> Might be some stupid questions, but maybe someone can enlighten me:

Could this explain the Schrödingers cat experiment, i.e. the light moving through both of the two slits? If light has a self torque, a single beam of light could travel through both slits (almost) simultaneously depending on the torque. Also, can someone clarify whether every beam of light has self-torque? Or do you need to create a beam of light in a special way to achieve this property? If every beam of light has that property, wouldn't that mean that light doesn't travel in wave form, but rather in a wave-cylindrical form?

<comment><USER10> That's the two-slit interference experiment. Schrodinger's Cat is completely different.

And no, this has nothing to do with the double slit experiment.

And no, not every beam of light has self-torque. You need to create it in a special way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> They rediscovered circular polarization?

ED: No, apparently polarization is called spin angular momentum in this context. OAM can take a range of twist-rates while spin is either right- or lef-handed.

And to the mute person who thinks downvoting questions is helpful: please just go away.</comment>


Things You Should Know About Tor - <AUTHOR> https://eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/7-things-you-should-know-about-tor <comment><USER3> I had been meaning to run a Tor relay for a while. The EFF Tor Challenge [0] motivated me to get it done. It was incredibly easy. If you have a VPS with unused bandwidth, please consider taking a few minutes to set up a Tor relay.

[0] [https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/](https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/)

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind though when setting this up to take a close look at your exit policy settings, to ensure you only route the traffic you want and where you want it.

I span up a relay at home to play around with, but just skimmed over the exit policy settings and ended up running an exit node. Not big deal really, as it was only advertised for about 14 hours before I noticed and disabled it. It was only after a few weeks when my girlfriend was complaining she kept getting messages from websites refusing to show her content on the basis that she was connecting over the Tor network (which she wasn't) that I realised my home IP was blacklisted, and it took a while for me to get a new lease and IP.

I'm not telling people to not run exit nodes, but people shouldn't just go and spin up a Tor relay with default settings, because it will by default run as an exit node, and depending on the hosting provider, this may or may not be an issue.

<comment><USER5> My distro's tor setup (arch in this case) should default to not being an exit node, relevant default lines in the torrc:

      ExitPolicy accept *:6660-6667,reject *:* # allow irc ports but no more
      ExitPolicy accept *:119 # accept nntp as well as default exit policy
      ExitPolicy reject *:* # no exits allowed

Installing via `pacman -S tor` and enabling via `systemctl enable tor.service` doesn't start an exit node / relay but a simple client.

Are you using linux, windows or osx?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a very strong suspicion that Tor is completely compromised, and that's actually how they caught Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road). All the stuff about his previous posting, etc, is tenuous and circumstantial-- it seems totally feasible that it is parallel construction.

The "Tor Sucks" document is from 2012. It talks about the GCHQ running Tor nodes. What could have happened in the years since?

[https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html](https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html)

What many people don't realize is that Tor has only ~5000 exit nodes and ~3000 relays. If you control 50% of the nodes, Tor is essentially compromised. Half is ~4000 servers.

Seems like a lot for an individual person, right? Just a rough estimate, at $40/month for a cheap linode VPS, 4000 nodes would cost $160k/month.

But that's _nothing_ for a nation-state. $160k/month isn't even a rounding error. And that's all it costs to _completely_ compromise Tor.

These nation states don't want anyone to know they compromised Tor, so they won't waste it on little fish. They'll save it for real terrorists and major criminal actors like Ulbricht. But if they compromised Tor, they're certainly recording _all_ that activity somewhere. It's sitting in archived storage ready to be mined if necessary.

<comment><USER7> My suspicion is essentially the opposite: Tor is secure, but the two high profile arrests (Freedom Hosting and Silk Road) where given priority to make the general public a.) feel that the entire function of Tor is illegal and often repulsive activity b.) that Tor is not safe.

The latter part of that theory, that law enforcement agencies intentionally stepped up the resources for both the FH and SR cases in order to intentionally create disgust and distrust of Tor, is of course merely conjecture. Basically I find it an amazing coincidence that the two most notorious parts of the Tor hidden service world where busted very quickly after a huge amount of positive public attention was brought to Tor right after the Snowden leaks. Additionally if you actually look at the details of the FH exploit the FBI unleashed it is fairly useless, but very terrifying when you read just the headline. Legally there seems no useful reason to use such an easy to discover exploit that would have delivered no particularly interesting information. However from the stand point of creating public fear it worked marvelously. If you talk to even technical people that don't understand security and Tor well they often assume that the feds "hacked Tor". Which, in my opinion, is exactly what state actors want people to think.

As for the former part of the claim, that Tor is secure, look at the Snowden leaks about the methods that the NSA was thinking about for attacking Tor. Egotistical Giraffe, the attack used on FH, as mentioned was not a particularly useful exploit, and attacks user behavior not the network. Other similar leaks also suggest that neither the NSA nor any other state agency, has the ability to completely compromise Tor.

Finally,if you are a state agency and you have completely compromised Tor, you would actually want the general public to think it _is_ safe. It is an amazing advantage to have your adversary think they are on a secure line when they absolutely are not. On the other hand if you haven't (and probably can't) compromised Tor you want the majority of people to think you have so that they disregard one of their best tools for defense.

Now of course there is plenty of evidence that federal agencies can perform targeted timing attacks against specific individuals. Tor does not and really cannot guard against this, and this has always been the case and fairly well known. If a state agency is targeting you specifically, I don't think there is anything you can do. However, given the information that is available to us, I do think it's reasonable to assume that Tor is secure from general, large scale, untargeted surveillance.

<comment><USER6> You don't address my specific point; namely that it is not only possible but relatively inexpensive for any nation-state to compromise users' anonymity on Tor en masse not by cracking its cryptography but by running >50% of the nodes themselves.

<comment><USER8> a bit of a pedantic note: If you want to control 50% of the servers by adding servers, you actually have to double the total server count... ie, 8k servers now, if you want to control 50% you have to add 8k of your own servers for 16k total servers ...

<comment><USER6> Indeed, but my proposition is that they already did that, some time ago. It's just such a small amount of money that it seems unlikely that they _didn't_ do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Things I've used Tor for:

\- Accessing BBC Liveplayer as if I'm in England (using lots of normally discouraged add-ons and defined exit-nodes)

\- Bypassing paywalls (possibly still criminal?)

\- Bypassing censorship (which is what it really is) on organizational wifi networks (in Canadian hospitals). The funniest block was to ginger.io, a big data smartphone data analysis play (but blocked by an over-aggressive filter for obvious reasons).

Does anyone else have some unexpected/interesting use cases?

<comment><USER10> I use Tor hidden services to punch through NATs (mostly for SSH); it's also useful in that only you can access the service (since only you know its address), so a hidden service + random port is a cheap "port knocking" implementation.

I've also used Tor to debug firewalls. It's a good way of saying "put me in a random spot on the Internet."

Outside of that, I use Tor for whatever I can: downloading RSS feeds, instant messaging, downloading email, mostly. There's no reason not to have Tor on these things because they're all either batched or tolerant of bad latency, and it destroys a little bit of my personal information that would otherwise leak.

<comment><USER11> The onion addresses of hidden services are not themselves secret. The onion address is in fact well known, published in the directory. It's only your server's IP that a hidden service is hiding.

So please, don't treat knowledge of the onion address itself as a secret! You still have to authenticate to your service in some way.

<comment><USER12> Are you saying there is a complete directory of onion addresses?

<comment><USER13> There isn't a definitive/exhaustive directory, but see this post: [http://donncha.is/2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden- services/](http://donncha.is/2013/05/trawling-tor-hidden-services/)

tl;dr it's possible, and you don't have to rely on crawling the web searching for .onion addresses. You can instead become a HS directory authority, and pick your place in the DHT. Eventually you'd be able to get every address that goes into the DHT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm probably going to take some flack for this, but I don't trust Tor. When you access Tor, you're masking your origin IP to the remote address by trusting one of a couple hundred volunteer exit nodes who raised their hands and said "Trust me! You can route all of your internet traffic through me and I promise I won't monitor or inject anything..."

I think most Tor users don't have an adequate understanding of the threat model. It doesn't help that the Tor Project has at times upsold the anonymity provided to a ludicrous extent[1] (to be fair, they do address the risk in their FAQ[2]). Is it more likely that that Comcast will MITM me, or some random exit node? I might expect Comcast to maybe inject an ad into an HTTP connection or do some DNS redirect to shoot me an advertisement, but I don't worry about them stealing my credit card or injecting a buffer overflow or something. In fact, they have a profit incentive to not do so. I don't have that guarantee with a random exit node. It might be a generous privacy advocate, or it might be someone who has more nefarious profit incentive in mind[3]. If you're only connecting through Tor just to avoid the NSA, then you have to assume that both a) the NSA is targeting you to begin with, and b) that exit node you're going through isn't controlled by the NSA (or GCHQ/FSB/PLA/etc).

sslstrip[4] undermines the prospect of protecting yourself by connecting solely over SSL through Tor. Even then, in my experience more than half of the sites I visit don't support SSL to begin with. The HTTPS Everywhere plugin that EFF provides and is included in the Tor Browser Bundle is implemented backwards - it connects over SSL only when the site matches a whitelist[5] (I use KB SSL Enforcer on Chrome myself).

Sorry if this came off as a rant - I just see too many articles like this that prop up Tor as a silver bullet without discussing the risks and establishing an adequate threat model that allows the user to make an informed decision regarding the risks/benefits of using Tor.

[1] [http://betaboston.com/news/2014/05/07/as-domestic-abuse- goes...](http://betaboston.com/news/2014/05/07/as-domestic-abuse-goes-digital- shelters-turn-to-counter-surveillance-with-tor/)

[2] [https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#AttacksOnOnionRo...](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#AttacksOnOnionRouting)

[3] [http://threatpost.com/small-number-of-malicious-tor-exit- rel...](http://threatpost.com/small-number-of-malicious-tor-exit-relays- snooping-on-traffic)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibF36Yyeehw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibF36Yyeehw)

[5] [https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/faq](https://www.eff.org/https- everywhere/faq)

<comment><USER15> Lets address your concern by talking about security and probability for each of those issues.

Credit card thieves in Comcast vs in TOR. Given the number of employees who has remote access to customers routers (ie support), sysadmins that has remote server access, and personale who has physical access to switching equipment, whats the risk that _one_ of those people has a criminal record? This will always be non-zero, and one can never actually test it.

In TOR, this risk _can_ be tested[1]. Exit note can be probed by sending unique credit card numbers or other profitable personal information, and then observed by seeing what the node owner does. If they act on the information, the node then get blocked. You can not do this with Comcast since your identity is known to the personal of Comcast.

The NSA threat, as talked about, is reduced by using TOR. Doing statistical analysis is in theory possible but in practice very hard. Out of all the Snowden leaks, not a single one present this as a ongoing work happening. Non- tor traffic analysis is however presented as business-as-usual and should be assumed to happen at every point in the network.

Last, the HTTPS Everywhere you mention is a direct answer to the SSLstrip for the most commonly used websites. Claiming it is implemented backwards because it uses a blacklist is a bit unfair, since blacklist and whitelist each has their own tradeoff in security. HTTPS Everywhere has no false positive and protect against the common threat, but will be vulnerable against uncommon ones. If they had gone with a HTTPS-only approach, it would have caused a extreme amount of false-positives, and users would have turned it off. This trade-off (security vs false positives) is commonly the distinction between user products and server products.

KB SSL Enforcer do not protect against sslstrip and MITM[2] for new installations. If the Tor Browser Bundle included KB SSL Enforcer, it would worsen the security of the Bundle compared to HTTPS Everywhere, and would be counter to the design. Rather than leaving no records of the sites you go to, KB SSL Enforcer have to record and permanent store it.

[1] [http://www.slideshare.net/FreeLeaks/exposing-malicious- tor-e...](http://www.slideshare.net/FreeLeaks/exposing-malicious-tor-exit- relays)

[2] [https://code.google.com/p/kbsslenforcer/wiki/FAQ](https://code.google.com/p/kbsslenforcer/wiki/FAQ)

<comment><USER14> You can test Comcast in the same way that you can test a Tor exit node - <USER2> technique is exactly the same. The threat of a rogue network admin is similar to that of a rogue waitress stealing credit card info - significant criminal liability if caught. To top that, people in a position to carry out such an attack are generally easily identifiable by their employers if there is a criminal investigation. The same can't be said for the administrator of a Tor node in a foreign country.

The NSA threat relies on the assumption that they are targeting you specifically; the risk with a rogue exit node is that you are exposing yourself to an adversary that doesn't care who their victim - i.e. most criminals. My issue with Tor advocacy is that it's attempting to mitigate the risk of a perceived adversary by exposing users to a much more realistic threat. My spouse and I have both had our credit cards stolen before, but I've never had any reason to believe that I've been targeted by the NSA.

There is a definite tradeoff with regards to the whitelist/blacklist model, but ultimately both solutions are really just patching over inherent flaws in SSL trust model. I wasn't clear in earlier post - my issue is not necessarily with the HTTPS Everywhere model, but rather the perception that it gives the user pervasive end-to-end encryption and solves the issue of rogue exit nodes.

<comment><USER15> If you test comcast in the same fashion, the rouge employee can see that you are sending several thousands unique credit-card number to some website and are thus behaving in a very strange and obvious manner. They can see plainly if the request comes the investigating branch of the police.

With a tor exit-node, the operator can't identify who is sending them the traffic. They can't distinguish a investigating police from a victim.

You can disagree and think that rouge Comcast employees are easier identified than Tor operator. This is a trust question, and everyone is free to pick who they trust and who they don't. The argument given in favor of Comcast just don't sway me, and it would likely require a research paper with test data in order to actually prove what has higher risk associated with it.

The NSA do not target people specifically. That was proven by the revelations from Snowden, and has been quite obvious for quite a long time. NSA doesn't care who their victim is when they are collecting the information. It is cheaper and more effective to target everyone, and then data mine the result after everything is in their hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "It is also important to remember that if you log into services like Google and Facebook over Tor, you will be sacrificing your anonymity to those services."

It is important to note that both Google and FB can track you on 3rd party websites through things like "Like" button. Consider disabling 3rd party cookies completely or using plugins like Ghostery.

<comment><USER17> I've been browsing the internet for 15 years with 3rd-party cookies disabled.

I never had ANY problems with any website - no idea if there would have been more functionality with 3rd-party cookies enabled. But then again, how can functionality depend on THIRD parties?

Also activated the setting for my girlfriend years ago, no complaints so far.

This feature should really be the default for any browser and any user. Too bad Android Chrome doesn't have such a setting. Too bad for Google I'll use something else instead.

<comment><USER18> Safari has always shipped blocking third party cookies by default; just about everything works with it. I remember there used to be some nasty trickery to make iFrame resident Facebook games work, but that was about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I actually tried to get Tor relay working.

It ate all my monthly bandwidth limit within an _hour_. By simple analysis I found out it's mostly BitTorrent traffic, but I didn't dig very deep so I might be wrong.

I would love to run a Tor relay, but I just do not have unlimited bandwidth to do that.

<comment><USER20> It would seem there is more demand than supply when it comes to Tor relays. If there were a safe, anonymous way to pay for using Tor relays (Torcoin?), then there would be a lot more incentives to have people run relays. That means the speed will be bumped up and at one point there will be an equilibrium between supply and demand. The system might also provide preferential treatment to users who are willing to pay more.

Discuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In addition to not being a criminal you might be a government agent working in a hostile country.

<comment><USER22> also, you might _not_ be a government agent working in a hostile country (in addition to not being a criminal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It is possible to de-anonymise any Tor user if they have JS enabled and you have passive listeners at their ISP. See [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kVKMeKx...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kVKMeKxd2UEJ:www.regimedeath.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

The described attack on Tor may not be well known, but at the very least I told the FBI how to do it myself, so they certainly know about it.

<comment><USER8> IIRC Tails helps you by encouraging you to turn off the JS to avoid the exploit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "4\. No One in the US Has Been Prosecuted For Running a Tor Relay"

That's a bit of a misleading statement. I'll agree that there haven't been any people prosecuted because they ran a TOR relay directly but there has been at least one case where they prosecuted or at least harassed a guy on child pornography charges because he was running a TOR exit node and saw the activity coming from his IP. Perhaps that wasn't in the US but still.

<comment><USER25> Note it says 'in the US' because they have been prosecuted successfully in Austria.

[https://rdns.im/court-official-statement-part-1](https://rdns.im/court- official-statement-part-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I agree Tor isn't as slow as many think. It's just slightly slower. My biggest problem with Tor, though, is having to enable Javascript even for common tasks, like logging in to Reddit, which hopefully they aren't doing on purpose, considering Reddit is known for a site where you can use pseudonyms as much as you want.

<comment><USER27> Have you tried [https://ssl.reddit.com/login](https://ssl.reddit.com/login)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One usually sees a list like this presented as debunking myths. The myths are given bold headings that state the opposite of what the author wants to say. This format is so much clearer because they state the position they are taking instead of the opposite of their position.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tails is _not_ fool-proof when it comes to determining the IP address of a Tor user. A live CD would not have helped any FreedomHosting victim.

The only way to do secure TOR is to use a distinct machine (NOT a VM!) as a gateway.

<comment><USER30> >A live CD would not have helped any FreedomHosting victim.

Yes it would have. That attack relied on both a Windows-specific vulnerability, and accessing the internet without Tor. Neither would have happened to a user of Tails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Last I checked google was able to discern my real ip even while behind tor... I used tor for scraping google but now that no longer works

</comment><comment><USER32> Would there be consequences in using Tor on HN?

<comment><USER33> established accounts are allowed to use tor on HN. If you make an account over tor, its posts will be killed for two weeks, then it will be a normal account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How did the feds locate freedom hosting?

How did the feds take down silk road?

The "tor stinks" slide was over a year old when these events occurred. A lot can change in a year.

<comment><USER35> Didn't the feds take down Silk Road because the owner paid a cop posing as a hitman to kill someone?

Also, there is a problem where hidden services can be enumerated by scanning IPs. With IPv4, it is practical for a well connected entity to scan the entire internet and search for hidden services, making it possible to match to IPs. This is only an issue for people running hidden services, not Tor users.

<comment><USER36> Hidden services can't be located in that manner unless the owner has badly misconfigured the service so it's reachable by IP address. A typical configuration would have the service listening on 127.0.0.1 or a private (RFC 1918) network address only, and have Tor connect to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Tor is _currently_ funded by the US government.

Any list of things you should know about tor should include that.

<comment><USER38> I guess we should also should include that with every Linux kernel release too. The US government has funded a lot of publicly available security technology that you may not even be aware of, even through the NSA (SELinux).

It is a _good thing_ the US government supports these things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> >They have been able to compromise certain Tor users in specific situations. Historically this has been done by finding an exploit for the Tor Browser Bundle or by exploiting a user that has misconfigured Tor.

I'm not touching TOR until I figure out how they managed to capture Ross Ulbricht.

I highly doubt that he had his TOR misconfigured.

<comment><USER40> He exposed his email address containing his name as a contact email for silkroad business, so he pretty much gave himself in. With that kind of "attention to details", I wouldn't be surprised if he even had misconfigured TOR.

<comment><USER6> Not exactly. He exposed his email address as a contact for bitcoin related development, then used the same username some time later as one of the first people to _discuss_ silk road. It's a tenuous connection at best, but this seemingly minor opsec lapse gave the investigators a hint to follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This isn't accurate. It doesn't mention that the u.s government can in very high likelihood de-anonimize users , sometimes even without cooperation from foreign governments , and sometimes even ISP's can do that.

<comment><USER35> A passive observer that is as big as NSA/GCHQ etc. can correlate traffic to de-anonomise some traffic, some very small amount of the time. It is extremely unlikely that a single ISP would _ever_ have enough information to do that though.

<comment><USER10> Even the NSA has to deal with the base rate fallacy. You can't just magically "correlate" traffic.

<comment><USER42> It is hard, perhaps, but a good attack for the NSA would be to run many of the exit nodes.

The intelligence gathered this way would be very valuable, as the traffic on the TOR network is has a much higher intelligence value. This is because it is used by those trying to hide something, something which the NSA may like to know.

<comment><USER43> Have you considered contributing to organizations that make sure no single entity controls too many exits:

[https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor- relays/2013-Septe...](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor- relays/2013-September/002824.html)

[https://www.torservers.net/](https://www.torservers.net/)

<comment><USER44> If I wanted to support the NSA, I'm sure I'd do volunteer work for those organizations -- and if I ran an intelligence agency, I'm sure I'd recruit assets off university campuses across the globe. Just saying.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>