UEFI boot: how does that actually work, then? - <AUTHOR> https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/25/uefi-boot-how-does-that-actually-work-then/ <comment><USER3> From the article: "it's a really good idea to go and read the UEFI specification. You can do this. It's very easy. You don't have to pay anyone any money. [...] You can find it [right here on the official UEFI site]. You have to check a couple of boxes, but you are not signing your soul away to Satan, or anything."

Before people click on that link and start thinking the author of the article is a damn liar (the link takes one to a menacing "Access Denied" page which prompts users to login or register (which in turn involves filling out a form and possibly paying a large amount of money)), here is a link to free downloads of the specification documents (as PDF files):

[http://www.uefi.org/specifications](http://www.uefi.org/specifications)

And by the way, no need to check any boxes at all, just click any of the links and the download should start right away.

<comment><USER4> But also read the blurb on the page: "By downloading any of the UEFI Specifications, you acknowledge that no license, express or implied, is granted to you to distribute, additionally reproduce, implement or otherwise use for any purpose (other than to read only) the UEFI Specifications, and that all rights, title and interest in and to the UEFI Specifications, including all intellectual property rights of any type whatsoever, are owned by the UEFI Forum, or subject to rights granted to the UEFI Forum."

So if I download these files, I acknowledge that I may not use the spec to do anything useful with it. It might be better to derive UEFI knowledge from the Tianocore sources, since those come with no strings attached.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As as someone who just wants to install the OSes of their choice on their machines, the main takeaway I got was

> _there used to be a thing called BIOS that was dead simple to deal with and > did what you want. Now there is a replacement called UEFI that is insanely > complicated to deal with and (at least in practice) makes it hard to do what > you want._

Is that accurate?

<comment><USER6> Not really.

I'd amend your statement to be "There used to be a very limited thing called BIOS, a collection of historical hacks, which only did one thing decently, but not really well. To make matters worse, in all cases but this one, it completely fell apart. There was no consistent tooling, and when it worked, it was non-inspectable black magic even to the most sophisticated power-user. The limitations of BIOS booting caused different OSes to constantly step on each others feet."

UEFI is different, but actually has a _design_ , supports tooling, any OS can work with it seamlessly without fear of collision, and as result it handles all scenarios simple or complex equally well.

As a bonus it can also do a million things BIOS couldn't, like loading a Linux-kernel directly, from acoss the network, without any intermedia- bootloading proxy or iPXE shim.

Now you can actually put your bootloader setup in source-control. I'm not sure _why_ you would do that, but please go ahead and try that with BIOS.

So yeah. UEFI really isn't that complex. It's just different. It just seems more complex because now even regular guys like us can see all the moving parts, where in the past only OS-designers could peek in.

<comment><USER7> Really weird to see this downvoted. IMHO, UEFI is a godsend from the terrible BIOS days. Things like ipmitool could sometimes be used to control the BIOS on server hardware, but efibootmgr is much better, and available everywhere now.

<comment><USER5> (Not a downvoter, but) I'm just saying that as a user who doesn't know what things like ipmitool or efibootmgr are, all I know is that it was very easy to install OSes as I wanted, dual-boot, etc with BIOS and whenever I hear about UEFI it's scary/intimidating, for instance this article says:

> If you absolutely insist on having more than one OS per disk, understand > everything written on this page, understand that you are making your life > much more painful than it needs to be, lay in good stocks of painkillers and > gin, and don't go yelling at your OS vendor, whatever breaks.

I've dual-booted with multiple OSes per disk with BIOS several times and had no problems at all. So I can't help but get a bad impression of UEFI.

<comment><USER6> > I've dual-booted with multiple OSes per disk with BIOS several times and had > no problems at all. So I can't help but get a bad impression of UEFI.

I think this article was written back when you had to setup everything UEFI manually, at least in the Linux-world. I don't think all parts still applies.

These days most of these things should be taken care of automatically for you, by the OS vendor, just like they used to in the BIOS past.

Except now you wont have to mess around with installation-order, custom bootloaders or weird grub-entries. It's all handled natively by UEFI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One piece that was not mentioned is the necessity of your UEFI / EFI implementation including integrated chipset driver support for talking to various devices (mass storage, USB, etc) at boot. Additionally how that can interact with legacy Option ROMs.

It also didn't cover the replacement of the BIOS VGA baseline graphical communication standard with GOP (Graphics Output Protocol) - meaning that your graphics card itself specifically needs to be compatible with UEFI / EFI to even boot.

I'm sad he took a negative stance to Apple in the article. Their implementation (of EFI) is very interesting in the choices they made and it's worth noting the differences (they do not, for instance, provide a graphical configuration choice "boot menu" like most PCs - they only provide visual boot media selection).

Another interesting thing Apple did was, prior to all Windows editions natively booting to UEFI / EFI, they still wanted to provide dual boot support for OS X and Windows on their Intel Macs. But this meant that while OS X was EFI booting and required GPT drives - Windows was BIOS booting and required MBR drives. As such, Apple used a hybrid GPT/MBR format where the partition maps in both were in synchronization and GPT reserved the areas where MBR information was stored on the drive.

<comment><USER9> Apple makes some of the best and worse choices, often even simultaneously.

Good: No firmware setup UI. Leave the user out of it.

Good: Firmware built-in GUI boot manager that discovers _currently_ bootable OS's dynamically. Plug in an external, an icon appears with an animated reveal. Animation in the f'n firmware built-in boot manager.

Bad: That boot manager hard wires a label "Windows" for any legacy CSM-BIOS installed OS, even if it isn't Windows.

Mixed: Apple's firmware is mainly based on Intel 1.10, with some extensions such as UEFI GOP, and some Apple stuff. It's not a standard UEFI 2.x firmware at all, and it's not documented at all. 3rd party bootloader programs have to have physical access to Macs to poke them with a stick in order to figure out how they work due to Apple's closed nature. So if you care about running open source OS's on Apple hardware, this is probably more "bad" than "mixed".

Very bad: There's a long standing pernicious bug with Disk Utility, on Boot Camp'd drives (OS X + Windows) which permits the user to resize the OS X volume thereby creating a 5th partition: ESP, OS X, New Partition, Apple Boot, Windows. And Apple's tools remove the hybrid MBR, replace it with a protective MBR, and now Windows is unbootable. All without warning. This behavior violates their own proscription against manipulating drives with hybrid MBRs. Technote 2166: "If block 0 contains any other form of MBR, it should refuse to manipulate the disk." Their message boards have hundreds of such complaints. This isn't new, it's been a problem for years, it was bug reported years ago, and Apple basically blamed it on Windows rather than their own tool which actually causes the problem by wiping out the PMBR. [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/technotes/tn2166/_in...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/technotes/tn2166/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS10003927-CH1-SUBSECTION11)

So I'm not a fan of their hybrid MBR hack, even though earlier on it was probably unavoidable. Windows has supported UEFI booting since Vista, but Apple's kinda dragged their feet on supporting UEFI Windows boot until very recently, and I'm not even certain Boot Camp Assistant defaults to this behavior yet.

<comment><USER8> For Windows 8, yes, it defaults to UEFI now, thankfully.

<comment><USER9> This support must require relatively recent hardware with newer firmware because it's definitely not doing a UEFI install on a 2011 Macbook Pro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> EFI Shell is the new (built-in) MS-DOS. I'm waiting for someone to make doom.efi :-)

The the entire OS to BIOS API changed with UEFI. I've seen bugs where the BIOS int 15 ax=E820 memory map does not match the EFI memory map passed to Linux.

All of this to support > 2TB drives.

<comment><USER11> EFI isn't about 2+TB drives. That's just GPT, which could have been implemented in a traditional BIOS. EFI was created because Intel needed _something_ for the Itanium chips to run, and they didn't want to implement OpenFirmware.

EFI came to the PC because Apple wasn't interested in starting a 16-bit 8086 programming division, and the rest of the industry followed suit because it was easier than squeezing more things into the 16-bit BIOS. Now that we've got both EFI and GPT widely available, we can have machines that can do things like fetch and install their own firmware updates and we can have sane dual- booting.

<comment><USER12> However, in the meantime, we have to live with "complications" like a frequent lack of support on Linux for decent console drivers in UEFI boots. For example, technically the nVidia proprietary driver doesn't support framebuffer console on UEFI boots, and if you don't get the parameters just right, you can end up in the hilarious situation of typing your full disk encryption password blind to a blank screen visibly indistinguishable from a crashed bootloader.

<comment><USER13> I have been saying that BIOSes needs a proper support lifecycle and bug reporting channel for both security and non-security bugs for a while now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel like Coreboot would be a much saner alternative to UEFI.

</comment><comment><USER15> From this I get that "BIOS compatibility mode" is a required specification. Then I can ignore all the rest of the article.

I have recently been learning about OpenBSD. I really like how they have handled all the weirdness associated with PC architecture booting/partitioning. OpenBSD simply ignores it and does everything on top of it. Once you have a partition marked as OpenBSD you are done the architecture specific stuff. Then you go on to do things the OpenBSD way which is the same over all architectures. So when Intel comes up with UUEFI (or whatever) you can continue to ignore the whole mess.

<comment><USER4> Compatibility Support Modules ("BIOS compatibility mode") aren't required. The text states "many UEFI firmwares implement some kind of BIOS compatibility mode, sometimes referred to as a CSM.".

"many" not "all", and the article sticks to that.

Since CSMs are incompatible with Secure Boot (since they can run whatever, without extending the trust chain), I expect them to be on the way out. Same as with the "Secure Boot optional" requirement on x86, by the way, since I guess that the real reason Microsoft added that to their Windows Logo requirements is that their large customers wanted to be sure that they can image Windows 7 onto new machines for a while longer.

Once this kind of legacy is gone for good, Microsoft may tighten the screws there. And since all big Linux vendors support Secure Boot now, that part of the PC landscape won't make many noises either.

<comment><USER15> Last I remember the Linux distros were just using a shim to get around the secure boot stuff. In other words, something that just boots from the partition that Linux just happens to be in with no verification of what that is. If things are to be tightened then the keys for the shim would have to be revoked. Then everyone is sad. Otherwise the OpenBSD approach still works as normal with the shim.

<comment><USER16> That's not how the shim works.

The shim loader is an MIT-licensed piece of code that's signed by a Secure Boot CA, typically MS for off-the-shelf x86 hardware. The shim has another public key hard-coded into it, and verifies that the next bootloader (usually GRUB 2) is signed with that key. It works around a couple of issues:

\- The turnaround time for getting something signed by MS is slow. Linux distros want to be able to push out a new version of GRUB on their own. So by having the CA sign a shim loader, new versions of the boot loader can be signed with the distro's key alone, which they can automate as much as they want.

\- There's some ambiguity over the GPLv3's TiVoization clause, so to avoid any interpretation that MS would have to hand over its own private key, MS won't sign any GPLv3 software directly (like GRUB). The distros think this is a non- issue, and they're happy to sign their own GRUB binaries without imagining they'd have to give up their private keys.

It doesn't change the security model of Secure Boot at all. You're still verifying that someone whose key is in hardware has a trust path to your bootloader. It's just that the trust path is one more step away.

If you want to include your distro's key in the UEFI variable that lists your Secure Boot CA roots, you can do that, and skip the shim. (You probably can't remove MS's key because UEFI drivers are signed with it, but that's a different issue.)

Some distros (notably Ubuntu) have their _bootloader_ willing to boot unsigned kernels, on the grounds that Secure Boot protects UEFI "boot services" (things that run while UEFI still controls the machine, including access to certain UEFI variables like Secure Boot config), but does not protect ring 0. Other distros (Fedora, SuSE, etc.) think that that's nonsense, and Secure Boot obviously protects ring 0. So their bootloader only boots signed kernels, and those kernels, in turn, only load signed kernel modules.

MS has complained about Ubuntu's interpretation, but has so far not shown any signs of forcing Ubuntu to change their practices. (I suspect with no real information that MS is worried that, if they're holding the only CA for PC hardware and they revoke the most popular Linux distro, they're going to be reminded of what antitrust lawsuits feel like.) You can see MS's signing policy here, including a link to the (non-MS) shim:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_certification/archi...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_certification/archive/2013/12/03/microsoft- uefi-ca-signing-policy-updates.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Most of the unhappiness about Secure Boot is not really about Secure Boot the mechanism – whether the people expressing that unhappiness think it is or not – but about specific implementations of Secure Boot in the real world.

Unfortunately, people in the real world use implementations of secure boot, not its specification.

>If you want to get cheap volume licenses of Windows from Microsoft to pre- install on your computers and have a nice "reassuring" 'Microsoft Approved!' sticker or whatever on the case, you have to comply with these requirements. That's all the force they have.

Post-US vs. Microsoft, MS does not want to be seen to be explicitly violating anti-trust law, which is why in public and on the record, they will say and do nothing wrong. This has actually done a lot of good, because it does shackle their ability to engage in anti-competitive behavior.

It just doesn't shackle it completely, and it means that in order to do it they have to be a bit more creative.

They still wield a large amount of power over the PC market, and manufacturers know this. They still have several ways of opaquely favoring or disfavoring some manufacturers over others. Manufacturers, on the whole, dont't mind being opaquely favored and don't want to be opaquely disfavored and know that crying foul about Microsoft abusing its market power in secret won't do them any favors either.

It's a cut throat market and nobody is going to feel sorry for you as a manufacturer if you died out because you didn't get an Microsoft promotional tie in.

Thus sometimes, all it takes for anti-trust violations to continue and to go unpunished is a nudge and a wink or an off the record conversation between MS and manufacturers, and a decision made by either party that falls in a _gray area_ of legal defensibility.

Here's where it gets evil, and here's the bit you are glossing over:

Secure boot PROVIDES that gray area while maintaining a veneer of respectability.

>If you have an x86 system that claims to be Windows certified but does not allow you to disable Secure Boot, it is in direct violation of the certification requirements, and you should certainly complain very loudly to someone. If a lot of these systems exist then we clearly have a problem and it might be time for that giant lawsuit, but so far I'm not aware of this being the case. All the x86-based, Windows-certified systems I've seen have had the 'disable Secure Boot' option in their firmwares.

Certainly you seem to be able to turn it off in most implementations I've seen, but I haven't seen any that let me add trusted keys myself. Another gray area methinks.

Nor is turning it off particularly easy. I know where it is and what it does, but I know the history behind it.

MOST people draw a blank stare when they look at it and CERTAINLY don't get to the menu and look at it and think "oh, for sure this is the thing that stops me from installing linux".

Oh, and incidentally I've never eer seen a coherent error message caused by secure boot's "protection". Not "you appear to be installing an untrusted OS". Just blank screens and opaque error messages.

Let's say hypothetically that instead of being buried three menus deep, it was a physical switch, with a clear explanation about what it actually does.

Let's say hypothetically that adding a key for secure boot were done using a clean and simple UI that my mother could follow. Flip the switch, plug in a USB key to boot from, menu asks if you want to trust this OS. You say yes and flip the switch back on.

Let's say hypothetically that trying to install an "untrusted" OS gave you a clear error message.

If these were the case (and these things certainly adhere to the spec), I wouldn't have a problem with it either. Let's be realistic, though. It's not that. It was not ever intended to be that. It was not supposed to be used to secure your system, and while Microsoft did just enough to avoid a lawsuit over it, their intentions are crystal clear.

Hardware manufacturers also know what's up, and won't be making it an easy to use feature any time soon.

MS is playing the same game they did pre-DOJ, they're just trying to keep plausible deniability at the same time as greasing all of the right palms. MS pretends not to violate antitrust law. Microsoft contributes to all the right election campaigns. DOJ pretends not to notice that Microsoft's secure boot _initiative_ (if not the spec) is anti-competitive.

>As far as x86 devices go, though, right now, Microsoft's certification requirements actually explicitly protect your right to determine what can boot on your system. This is good.

Microsoft is not explicitly breaking the law here. This is indeed good. Let's award them a fucking medal. By the way, I didn't deal drugs today. This is also good.

As for UEFI itself - it reminds me of XML - designed by committee, and yes, strictly speaking it _does_ do the job, but it's ridiculously overcomplicated and the market is littered with terrible implementations because of that complexity. Worst of all it was never truly necessary because a simpler specification (where's the UEFI equivalent of JSON?!) would have sufficed for all use cases.

Another thing reminds me of XML too. There was a good market in being an expert in XML for a while. It was almost a club, in fact. The arcaneness plus the reliance the world had on it made for some excellent opportunities. Opportunities that, say, JSON never provided.

There appears to be a good market to being the go to guy for UEFI too.

Just sayin'

<comment><USER18> > Certainly you seem to be able to turn it off in most implementations I've > seen, but I haven't seen any that let me add trusted keys myself. Another > gray area methinks.

Which systems have you seen that have Secure Boot enabled by default and don't provide any mechanism for key management? Many vendors won't provide a UI for adding additional keys but _will_ let you remove all existing ones and then enrol your choice - that's pretty much how the spec envisages this working.

> Let's say hypothetically that instead of being buried three menus deep, it > was a physical switch, with a clear explanation about what it actually does.

And let's say that, hypothetically, hardware vendors refused to add a physical switch that would cost a few cents extra per board and have an effect on their bottom line. What then? And how do I prevent someone with brief physical access from flicking that switch and replacing my bootloader?

> Let's say hypothetically that trying to install an "untrusted" OS gave you a > clear error message.

Microsoft don't have enough leverage over the firmware vendors to be able to mandate choice of language, so what you'd end up with is a variety of vendors with their own idea of what a clear error message is.

> DOJ pretends not to notice that Microsoft's secure boot initiative (if not > the spec) is anti-competitive.

The number of lawyers I've found who, after having had all aspects of this explained to them, thought that Microsoft's behaviour here was anti- competitive is zero. There was a much stronger argument before Microsoft mandated that vendors provide a mechanism for performing key management and agreed to sign third party bootloaders. Now? Not so much.

> There appears to be a good market to being the go to guy for UEFI too.

I'm doing pretty well out of it. But I did pretty well out of BIOS before that, and if the market decides that Coreboot with a non-Tiano payload is the way forward then I suspect I'll be fine there as well.

<comment><USER17> >Which systems have you seen that have Secure Boot enabled by default and don't provide any mechanism for key management?

All I've come across so far. Dells, Toshibas, a Lenovo, etc. I literally haven't seen a UI for key management at all. Ever.

MAYBE that's because it's too well hidden or maybe those machines I've looked at simply didn't have it.

>And let's say that, hypothetically, hardware vendors refused to add a physical switch that would cost a few cents extra per board

I'd say that non-hypothetically speaking, they were trying to stay on Microsoft's good side and coming up with a lame fucking excuse to do so.

That is, unless they came up with an equally good UI that didn't require a button, which is possible.

Someone on this thread mentioned that chromebooks have a button. When pretty much the lowest-cost point in the market can do it....

>Microsoft don't have enough leverage over the firmware vendors

Yes they do. If they have enough to mandate that it's written they have enough to mandate that it's written coherently. They just have every incentive to ensure that it isn't, and with a nod and a wink they can get their way.

>The number of lawyers I've found who, after having had all aspects of this explained to them, thought that Microsoft's behaviour here was anti- competitive is zero.

I wonder how many of those lawyers have ever tried to install linux with secure boot turned on.

Maybe they all thought that if the spec was kosher that's all that matters.

>I'm doing pretty well out of it.

That certainly explains the apologetics.

<comment><USER18> > MAYBE that's because it's too well hidden or maybe those machines I've > looked at simply didn't have it.

Maybe you don't know what you're doing.

> I'd say that non-hypothetically speaking, they were trying to stay on > Microsoft's good side and coming up with a lame fucking excuse to do so.

I'd say that you don't know what you're talking about.

> Someone on this thread mentioned that chromebooks have a button. When pretty > much the lowest-cost point in the market can do it....

Except Google _are_ able to precisely define what a Chromebook looks like - <USER2> you don't manufacture to Google's specifications, you don't get to ship ChromeOS. Which, if Google were to dominate the market, would probably be the point where you'd decry them as behaving in anticompetitive ways.

Microsoft have to perform an interesting balancing act. Vendors will adhere to the Windows hardware certification requirements because it saves them money per-unit. Microsoft can demand new firmware features because that's a one-off cost per new platform. Hardware features cost per unit, and if they push that too far it's cheaper for manufacturers to tell Microsoft to fuck off and market their hardware without the Windows sticker. That's simply not an option in the ChromeOS market. You can't compare them.

> Yes they do.

So cool you don't know what you're talking about.

> I wonder how many of those lawyers have ever tried to install linux with > secure boot turned on.

Linux distributions having fucking dreadful installers really isn't what determines whether something is an antitrust violation or not. Linux distributions not being able to get their shit together sufficiently to get things signed isn't either. Canonical, Red Hat and Suse (and a _whole_ _host_ of smaller distributions and specialised products) have managed to deal with this.

> That certainly explains the apologetics.

I've also done pretty well out of OpenStack, but I'd be the first to admit that it's dreadful.

<comment><USER17> >Maybe you don't know what you're doing.

I triple checked on two computers to be sure. Nada. Maybe go fuck yourself.

>I'd say that you don't know what you're talking about.

And I'd say you should stick to low level coding and not comment on the economics of competition and the contents of the US vs. Microsoft dockets... unless you are an antitrust lawyer, an economist AND a kernel hacker?

Thought not.

>Except Google are able to precisely define what a Chromebook looks like

So a single switch is monstrously expensive unless Google mandates it, in which case it's not a problem.

>So cool you don't know what you're talking about.

Jesus Christ you are so fucking lame.

>Linux distributions having fucking dreadful installers really isn't what determines whether something is an antitrust violation or not.

It's the FIRMWARE's job to tell you that it's "saving you from yourself", not the installers.

>Linux distributions not being able to get their shit together sufficiently to get things signed isn't either. Canonical, Red Hat and Suse (and a whole host of smaller distributions and specialised products) have managed to deal with this.

Funny. I tried installing (the latest release of) Ubuntu the other day and got nothing but a cryptic error message because secure boot was turned off.

<comment><USER18> > I triple checked on two computers to be sure. Nada. Maybe go fuck yourself.

For the Thinkpad I have here:

1) Enter firmware 2) Go to security 3) Select "Reset to Setup Mode" 4) Enrol keys using UEFI SetVariable() interface

What models are you talking about? Shipping with no mechanism to do this is in violation of the Windows hardware certification requirements, and vendors falsely claiming compliance are both falsely advertising and breaching their contracts with Microsoft, so it's a pretty big deal for them to do so.

> And I'd say you should stick to low level coding and not comment on the > economics of competition and the contents of the US vs. Microsoft dockets... > unless you are an antitrust lawyer, an economist AND a kernel hacker?

You _are_ an antitrust lawyer and an economist?

> So a single switch is monstrously expensive unless Google mandates it, in > which case it's not a problem.

In the Windows world, if Microsoft's demands become too extreme you can ignore Microsoft, undercut your competitors and ship Windows anyway. In the ChromeOS world, you can't.

> Funny. I tried installing (the latest release of) Ubuntu the other day and > got nothing but a cryptic error message because secure boot was turned off.

If Secure Boot is turned off then your inability to boot Ubuntu has nothing to do with Secure Boot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting overview. I just dislike how it sets the tone with the 'everything on the internet is crap except for what my Red Hat buddies and I say' intro which is then followed up with several minor inaccuracies in the text.

<comment><USER17> >I just dislike how it sets the tone with the 'everything on the internet is crap except for what my Red Hat buddies and I say'

The UEFI world seems to be very clubby. I suspect its arcaneness and the lucrative nature of working in it contributes to this.

I've seen this patronizing straw man "you don't know the spec like I do" from a few other UEFI blog posts, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> After fighting an eMMC-based "Windows Chromebook" for the last couple weeks, I think I can answer how its specific implementation of UEFI works with one word: "poorly".

<comment><USER20> What were you trying to do with it?

<comment><USER19> I was trying to install Ubuntu so that it boots off the eMMC. No luck there, but Fedora can boot from a tiny USB stick that barely protrudes from the chassis.</comment></comment></comment>


Triple Parity and Beyond – Linux RAID Storage - <AUTHOR> http://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg45073.html <comment> ryan-c Did you mean to link [http://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg44948.html](http://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg44948.html)?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not really. Your link is the beginning of the thread, but what I wanted to link to was Duncan's clarification of what it was all about.</comment></comment>


Huawei's Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/huaweis-yearslong-rise-is-littered-with-accusations-of-theft-and-dubious-ethics-11558756858 <comment><AUTHOR> I am amazed on how weak the accusations are. A ringtone? Some guy who thinks he can patent the idea of a camera attached to a smartphone?

A hitpiece like this could have been written about just about any big tech company. And it is leaving out the story of how Huawei committed its true crime: That within some fields (5G notably) it is today a lot more advanced and cheaper than its competitors.

<comment><USER2> They note that Huawei's patent contained Quintel's name in the documents. How are those accusations weak? Seems like impressively strong evidence.

Between T-mobile's tappy (resulted in indictment), Quintel's antennas, CNEX Labs, Tekelec Inc, motorola, cisco source, and Akhan Semiconductor's Diamond Glass[1](unmentioned in this piece) seems like there is quite a bit of evidence that Huawei has a company wide directive to steal IP.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei- st...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-sting-offers- rare-glimpse-of-u-s-targeting-chinese-giant)

<comment><USER3> I talked to a senior Huawei exec and he said that tappy is not a good example of IP theft. The tester literally attempted to walk out with the machine. You can't get any more sloppy then that.

Instead he said that the worker was really pressured by his bosses into delivering results.

That's not to say that there are broader problems with IP theft at Huawei though.

<comment><USER4> Trying to confirm your point: because the company was careless in letting an employee walk out, this was a lesser theft?

I haven't heard a case where a burglar gets a reduced sentence because the house was left unlocked.

The fact that this comes from a Huawei senior exec speaks a lot about their company culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My friends in telcom from years ago would regularly tell us about H techs who would come install equipment. And while doing so would disassemble every rack and switch in the room and photograph everything.

Thats an unprovable allegation, but I know these folks to be reliable sources of information. Having read about the internal incentives for techs providing IP intel and outright rewarding of theft, I'm convinced.

<comment><USER6> Why wouldn't Huawei just buy a switch? Why would the customer tolerate someone spending 10x longer on an install and taking apart all their other crap? For that matter why were they able to take apart the other switches at all? Wouldn't that have taken the system down? Were they storing inactive equipment in their live rack? None of this makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, the only way I can see that happening is if there's a bunch of unused equipment in the room that you can take apart without unplugging - but since when do you let a bunch of foreign techs hang out in one of your server rooms by themselves? Not likely.

<comment><USER5> According to these guys, they'd come in to do an installation at 2-3AM (standard time for maintaining a cell network), but security was lax and they would be left to do their own thing mostly unsupervised. These were smaller shops that were later bought out by the big handful recognize today. They were dumb. Maybe they let it happen, but it takes two to tango.

According to the particular story that I might be foggy on, the engineer responsible for the station and surrounding stations came in to check in on the installation unannounced, and the people on site were not really aware or concerned that they were in back working. The engineer found out what was going on, and everyone shrugged, saying that what harm could they do, etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anecdote. May be untrue. Don't trust everything you read online, etc.

A friend was a 7 year Ericsson employee (ending in 2012). In his opinion, Ericsson's networking equipment was universally acknowledged as having slow deployment times. Nokia's stuff was much faster to deploy. When Huawei hired the ex-Nokia engineers at 2.5x their previous salary, they asked them how Nokia did particular tasks. The engineer would say 'The best way of doing this is...' and get cut off: 'we want to know exactly how Nokia does this, not anything different'. All the Nokia customers moved to Huawei's kit. After a couple of years of extraction Huawei would fire the ex-Nokia engineer saying 'we have everything we need from you'.

Again, might be bullshit.

<comment><USER9> I remember reading an article about how a Chinese company would hire European bakers to demonstrate how they bake breads ad nauseum until they could reproduce and automate each steps perfectly.

The thinking was "they [chinese] have no imagination so they stick to known processes and don't deviate".

Don't really know what to make of that.

<comment><USER10> Which is why this trope about China ruling the world is crap. Generally speaking they are good at copying, reverse engineering, and cheap labor. The country's MO is to steal designs and process and implement better. When the west finally figures out how to stop letting China steal/copy - then the West will continue innovating, and China won't have anything to make.

<comment><USER11> Except the same empty arguments were made against Japan, and were levelled against the nations producing the imported cotton cloth that people were starting to buy in preference to long established Lancashire cotton mills.

"Don't buy Japanese electronics or motorcycles, they only make poor cheap copies" would be commonly heard in the seventies and early eighties. They easily - and quickly - moved past that phase, as will China. They mostly already have.

In each case the complaining nations have been happy to supply tooling and equipment to enable this.

<comment><USER12> I absolutely don't know _anyone_ who was saying that about Japanese electronics in the 1970s in my part of US flyover country. Sony was considered to be one of the very best in the world, and my family was greatly disappointed in the 1980s when Sony moved a lot of manufacturing to Mexico and they had to fix many cold solder joints on TV sets. If you wanted a good reel to reel tape deck, Teac was your first choice.

One thing left out of this formulation is that it was realized at some point, certainly by the 1970s for electronics, that the Japanese added "and improve", which no one says about the Chinese. Who are said to have a pattern more than a century old of steadily decreasing quality until the customer complains. Different culture, vastly different societal trust levels, Japan high, China low, different results.

<comment><USER11> Maybe US experience was different - I certainly remember that impression through the seventies, and the reputation mainly being with the Euro makes - Dual, Grundig, Quad, Tannoy etc.

Sony TV had reputation for poor colour. I think they modified their NTSC designs to PAL, or shared something with the US standard. Enough to be noticed by customers anyway. That reputation stuck around a while, but was fading when Walkman arrived (early 80s?), and by the end of the decade they had a solid reputation among the best TVs. Couldn't tell you when they adopted PAL "properly". By the end of the 80s, Japanese makes had cornered the mass market, and were chipping away at the higher end, and many of the Euro brands fading, or disappearing.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like it. None of the brand names you mention were known in my part of the US at the time, and I don't even recognize any of them today except for Gundig.

For TVs, Japan very conveniently for the US shares the same NSTC standard, their only issue is that half of Honshuu, the big island, is on 50 cycle power, the other on 60 cycles (both at 110-120V for consumers like the US with our 60 cycle power). So with their two biggest markets being satisfied with the same gear, I can well imagine the fragmented European market suffering.

Note also SECAM for France, countries it influenced, and apparently Eastern Europe per Wikipedia either initially so its subjects under Soviet domination couldn't receive PAL signals from across the Iron Curtain, or because it's insensitive to amplitude and phase variations from long cable or microwave links.

What about radios? While Sony pioneered the small and inexpensive lo-fi radio with their own transistors, this was very big in the 1950s through the 1960s, but by the time I was paying attention in the 1970s no Japanese company had a commanding lead in radios in the US, they were pretty much a low end commodity by then, except for shortwave sets, which weren't big in the US by then.

The first Walkman was released in Japan in 1979, the brand and general format was _very_ big in the US by the early 1980s: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkman)

Sony and Phillips also closely collaborated on the Compact Disc, its capacity was supposedly dictated by one Sony guy's insistence that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as conducted by Herbert von Karajan would fit on one (you have to split a movement between sides for a single vinyl LP release, that was _very_ annoying).

They also scored a big early hit two years later in late 1984 with a very small CD player, the head of the project estimated how small was possible with current technology, made a block of wood that size, and challenged his engineers to make one no bigger. Ah, the "Discman", it was per Wikipedia and my memory very important in the early adoption of CDs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discman)

<comment><USER11> Interesting, I didn't know Japan was also on NTSC. That explains the way PAL turned out. I found a reference on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitron)

"The decoder inside the UK-sold Sony color Trinitron sets ... had an NTSC decoder adapted for PAL. ... Any phase errors could then be compensated for by using a tint control knob on the front of the set, normally unneeded on a PAL set". Presumably also applied in other PAL countries too, or they entered those markets a little later.

TV's to choose in 1979 were probably British Ferguson, Dutch Philips, and German Grundig. In 1989, replace Ferguson (I think they were taken over sometime in the 80s) with Sony. Philips were the most likely to innovate and bring out new ideas, like Laserdisc (with MCA) or V2000 video recorders, that was best quality of the three, and first format to leave the market.

I also only started being aware in the 70s. Portable Radios seems a very similar picture to the US - Sony was here, but no one really had the market. So plenty from Philips, Braun - with that iconic design that gave the iPod design, Brother at the more expensive end, along with lots of cheaper makes from both Europe and Japan. ITT was about the only non-professional US make I can remember with much presence here. There's bound to be one I missed. Short wave was Grundig and Philips for the hobbyists, with a few from Brother.

Brother are still going, and doing quite well in DAB radios, especially with models that are digital versions of 50s and 60s successes. Tannoy is the common generic term for a PA system here, they moved into home audio and speakers. They're long bought out into a group making hifi and speakers, along with Quad and Wharfedale. German Dual are still around, and were one of _the_ mid range but quality audio and turntable makers of late 70s and early 80s. Now I think just expensive turntables after a buyout or failure or two.

Walkman was, of course, huge. I think that and the ghetto blaster fashion pushed all the Japanese brands right to the front of the market in the early 80s. Even though the boombox was also a Philips idea they were never the most desired brand. Philips kept their reputation for TV though, with some of the best late-CRT models.

So Japan and Sony race ahead, Sony's former mixed reputation being thoroughly forgotten, and in the process completely transformed the market. Few of the older brands could keep up. All the Japanese makes became a success - Pioneer, Sanyo, Sharp, Aiwa, Marantz, Panasonic/Technics, Hitachi etc, even though one or two weren't very good yet! Then Sony upped the stakes with the remarkable pro Walkman models - that few could respond well to.

Japan ended up taking the reputations for just about everything except high- end hifi and notably speakers - where they struggled, but even there they made some inroads. Several Japanese brands started designing and making speakers in Europe or using Wharfedale or Tannoy. I think Panasonic/Technics and Denon may still.

I'm sure I forgot a few bits of the timeline. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wikipedia article [1] says that US has been also involved in industrial espionage:

> In 1999, Enercon, a German company and leading manufacturer of wind energy > equipment, developed a breakthrough generator for wind turbines. After > applying for a US patent, it had learned that Kenetech, an American rival, > had submitted an almost identical patent application shortly before. By the > statement of a former NSA employee, it was later discovered that the NSA had > secretly intercepted and monitored Enercon's data communications and > conference calls and passed information regarding the new generator to > Kenetech

Also, other article [2] mentions that West had earlier stolen a secret of porcelain manufacturing from China.

Are those the examples of proper, not dubious "ethics" that we should learn from? Did Europeans returned the stolen secret?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_espionage)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#Origins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#Origins)

</comment><comment><USER14> As an aside, Huawei poured a lot of funds in R&D, and those scientists and mathematicians they hired from Russia/France etc,. helped significantly to their breakthroughs.

</comment><comment><USER15> Accusations? They sold networking equipment with accompanying Cisco manuals. Ha.

Big picture, is the world better off with Huawei's rise? It depends on your perspective.

If you care about the global environment, Huawei's costs are so low because they do not have to satisfy environmental standards as they do in the west... That is the basis of most cost differentials outside of labor supply/demand.

</comment><comment><USER16> We are reading a lot about Huawei lately and it almost all seems to boil down to how "evil" their business practices are. Is this WSJ in the Overton window spinning a manufactured consent?

<comment><USER17> Did you read the comments for the article? This has the width of the Overton Window laid bare for you. The consent has already been manufactured! Nobody dare cross the line and say how cool they are with Huawei products.

We have short memories, not so recently the Koreans were the ones doing all the IP theft, but nowadays Samsung is legit. Or you can go further back to when everything except and IBM PC (or Apple) was a clone.

Going further back, in the world of automotive, when a special product comes out, e.g. the MINI in the UK, the first thing Ford does is to buy one and take it to pieces, cost the whole package and work out how it is done.

There are places I have worked where there have been cupboards full of rival products, tested to destruction. It is called research.

What is quite interesting with the narrative is that Huawei have got there in the execution of 5G and they are allegedly ahead. Imagine if Huawei got to setup a colony on Mars first, we could complain that they stole Elon Musk's ideas and throw toys out of prams, to ignore accomplishments and execution.

Clearly the Overton Window is defined on this, and woe betide anyone that ignores it. So how does one avoid flamewar? Humour always helps. IS there any original IP in this WSJ article? Is it actually novel? Have they stolen content from other articles? Have they nicked content from the Washington Post? Their Huawei trolling is far from investigative journalism.

<comment><USER18> I just have a meta question. Was there a recent article or something that brought the term 'Overton window' into common use? I did a little digging and it seems like it's been a term for a few decades, but I don't recall ever seeing it before this year. Now I see it used all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> The TV Show "Billions".

<comment><USER18> That's definitely it, timing is dead on. Thanks!

<comment><USER19> It was commonly used on Slashdot before (where I learned the concept).

<comment><USER18> Interesting. Used to love slashdot, have an account at the bottom end of the five digit range, but i cant do it any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just huawei? Isn't that the case for china's rise overall? Wasn't the basis of US-China relations the past 50 years a simple transfer of technology/capital for cheap labor/lax environmental regulations? We looked the other way while china took our technology and money. And they looked away as we exploited cheap labor and lax environmental law. It was a wage, technology, capital and environmental law arbitrage. It terribly skewed the wealth/income inequality in both countries, it destroyed large segments of the US ( rust belt ), it has been an environmental disaster and it's significantly altered the global power balance. But at least the elites got ridiculously wealthy.

For 50 years, the wsj and the ny times defended this. Bloomberg defended this since their inception in the early 80s. It's odd to see the entire establishment media shift from supporting it to now suddenly attacking it. Also, you would think independent media would offer differing opinions rather than speaking with the same voice. But it's always complete support or complete rejection as if someone flips a switch on and off.

"Theft and dubious ethics" has been the basis of the US-China relationship from the very beginning and it went both ways. This is something everyone and their mother knew from the very beginning. Why did it take 50 years for the wsj and the rest of the media to figure it out.

If the wsj is concerned with "theft and dubious ethics", are they planning on an expose' of the US-Saudi relation and US-Israeli relation? Maybe in another 50 years?

<comment><USER21> Yeah, it strongly reminds me the media of USSR. They switched narratives in a perfect unison with politics like that. Sometimes they even did it ahead of politics preparing ground for changes in politics.

I wonder what the mechanics of it might be in a democratic society. It was easy to do in USSR: top-down structure allowed state to rule media by orders. But democracy is more nuanced than that I believe. At least I've never witnessed ahead-of-time switch in narratives of democratic media.

<comment><USER20> It's in all states. It just becomes more noticable in times of stress ( economic, military, societal ).

Go read about the mccarthy era, the red scare before that or the yellow peril before that. Or go read about how how china and the chinese were viewed pre-1970 to how the media changed perceptions during the 1970s with deng's visit, etc as they prepared to open trade relations. Read about how chinatowns historically were stereotyped as the worst kind of ghetto with drugs, crime, etc by the media for much of history. During the 1970s, the media turned chinatown from a ghetto to a hip ethnic enclave.

The same thing with the natives, blacks, mexicans, japanese, germans, russians, chinese, italians, catholics, irish, jews, etc in the US. There were periods where they were demonized and then some switched got flipped and the media softened or completely reversed their stance. Why and at whose request, who knows.

Go look at sino-soviet relations. They are "best buds" and their respective media praised each other. Things go sour and the media pushes anti-sino and anti-russo rhetoric. Same thing with sino-american relations. The interests of the ruling class determine what perceptions the media creates.

Remember when Bush looked into putin's eye and saw a good man? The media was praising putin for stabilizing russia and improving living conditions? It was only 15 years ago, but in media terms, it feels like a lifetime ago. How things quickly change.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is the Trump 2020 campaign.

Essentially Trump has figured out he can win the 2020 election by going to war with China.

So it is anti-China all over; from smearing of political opponents to policy to information campaigning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's the big deal here? Couldn't other countries just steal technology back? e.g. couldn't a 5-eyes country consortium just rip off Huawei's 5G technology and run with it in their own markets?

<comment><USER23> Stealing stuff is OK because other people could also steal stuff?

I don't think that's a valid point.

<comment><USER22> ok. but it might be a path to profitability. i mean, what is all this rhetorical heat and drama really about? it's about making money. it's not truly about ethics. US business is not exactly a lofty ethical model to hold up for global admiration. if accusing a big company of theft and security breaches can get them locked out of your market, that's one less competitor.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: If you could do it over how would you learn Rails from scratch - <AUTHOR> In my learnings, every few months I like getting new perspectives on learning and attacking rails. Would love to hear more stories of you guys/girls on how you would tackle it from the start knowing what you know now. <comment><USER2> Same way I learned it the first time.

1\. Rails for Zombies to learn basics without setting up a local env.

2\. Sam Ruby book, assuming it's up to date.

3\. Make an app from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would spend more time in Ruby first.

Then I would build APIs basic unit tests, and lots of request specs.</comment>


FX chief: Even peak TV can be a 'sideshow' to internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2018/FX-Networks-CEO-John-Landgraf-says-television-keeps-churning-out-record-numbers-of-original-series-but-is-being-overshadowed-by-the-internet-s-dubious-distractions/id-0f79dba660824aceb10b967318695f29 <comment><USER2> Yeah, and there are reasons for that. Focus groups kill creativity with group- think, and TV reeks of it. Standards and practices and other varieties of self censorship mean TV shall fight forever with one hand tied behind its back.

The internet is frequently better than TV, because merit is free to boil to the surface without being stifled. It's not that the internet is free of bland tripe. But merely that it's costly to force bland tripe to the front, and when the state-sponsored tripe gets upstaged by something better, it's harder to bury the higher quality content.

The problem with the internet is the firehose of The Long Tail ultimately does bury absolutlely everything (good and bad), so once again, over time everything is obscured by default, leading to micro-generation gaps (maybe spanning as little as two years) and reasonably large subcultures that never see the light of day.

On some level though, the movie industry has proven that profits don't matter, since we see that for the last decade, profitable movies are mostly unwatchable garbage.

So, even if TV manages to be profitable, it can surely deserve the same sideshow status as movies. The only thing the internet paradoxically lacks right now (despite massive unicorn companies with nigh unlimited resources) is the unrestrained budget movies enjoy. And this is because the most captivating things on the internet are authentic in real time, and cannot be "budgeted" in a traditional sense.

<comment><USER3> > Yeah, and there are reasons for that. Focus groups kill creativity with > group-think, and TV reeks of it. Standards and practices and other varieties > of self censorship mean TV shall fight forever with one hand tied behind its > back.

I would actually argue that FX has produced a lot of notable content which has been novel and high quality. Examples would include The Shield, Fargo, Louie, The Americans, Sons of Anarchy, and Atlanta. HBO and AMC have also made outstanding content.

Where you tend to see groupthink yielding safe, predictable crap is the major networks like CBS, FOX, and NBC.

<comment><USER2> Not all of TV sucks, and FX isn't terrible. But given the commercials, TV feels like willful brainwashing in practice.

Consider the idea of paying for cable, and _still_ watching commercials. It's sort of like paying for the internet connection and _still_ paying for the content. No thanks.

<comment><USER4> Most Internet content providers have advertising, sometimes invasive based on my browsing history — YouTube, I am looking at you — to offset costs or rack up profits. Therefore, your beef with broadcast networks based on advertising is on shaky ground. There are many reasons to dislike broadcast TV vs. Internet content, but advertising cannot be one of them because both mediums have it.

<comment><USER5> I don't see Adverts online anywhere, I have no control of that with TV?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The U.S. Military Is Creating the Future of Employee Monitoring - <AUTHOR> https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/03/us-military-creating-future-employee-monitoring/155824/ <comment><USER2> Yet they banned fitbit usage among deployed troops because it was giving away their locations.

"Do as I say, not as I do!"</comment>


Diversity in physics: are you part of the problem? – Ann Nelson (4/29/58-8/4/19) - <AUTHOR> https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.3536 <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing.

I will miss Ann, she was a great person.</comment>


Lex in depth: Examining the slave trade – 'Britain has a debt to repay' - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/945c6136-0b92-41bf-bd80-a80d944bb0b8 <comment><USER2> Few people have a debt to repay other than their bank perhaps. Reparations are either done immediately after a conflict or they should be ignored. Everyone is free to grant leniency to groups affected by historic injustices, but it cannot become policy. If it does, you will get lines of conflict that reinforces the fault lines, obviously. I say obviously, but apparently it isn't.

Imaging that being part in political discourse. Some pretty naive proposition for reparations would ensure a never ending conflict. Black and white people fighting over resources. Sure, that would be a good idea... It isn't far off if some people have the impression the financial industry wants to start a race war.

Shitty article is also behind a paywal. I think financial times would have some debt to repay here...

edit: Of course the public funding these propositions might generate are of interest here too. Wouldn't want to get those to needy people...

<comment><AUTHOR> Syndicated, non pay-wall version:

[https://investmentmoneycnn.com/wp/lex-in-depth-examining- the...](https://investmentmoneycnn.com/wp/lex-in-depth-examining-the-slave- trade-britain-has-a-debt-to-repay/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Syndicated here:

[https://investmentmoneycnn.com/wp/lex-in-depth-examining- the...](https://investmentmoneycnn.com/wp/lex-in-depth-examining-the-slave- trade-britain-has-a-debt-to-repay/)</comment>


Ask HN: Can you help me build a 0 profit venture? - <AUTHOR> TlDr: I want to use a crowdfunding platform + an online campaign to get cheap and effective air filters into low/no income homes in polluted areas in an effort to engender a wider awareness of cleaner air. I want to neither make nor lose money doing it.
1) A few years ago, a gentleman working abroad in China posted his air purifying workaround here on HN (original article: https://scienceblog.com/73679/grad-student-rigs-cheap-alternative-rival-1000-air-purifiers-smog-choked-china/ ). It motivated me to "build" my own version. After many experiments with brackets, hardware, and duct tape i cobbled together a design that cost about $60. Then my Dad came along and cut the price down to $30 by just putting the filter on the back, letting the suction do the work of attaching the filter (the original design i ripped off used a barrel fan + HEPA filter; mine is a box fan + furnace filter).
The thing is amazing. Placed next to kitty litter box it eliminates the smell almost completely. It pulls hair and particulate matter out of the air effectively, helping keep work and leaving spaces fresh. The original Ideageneer tested his to compare it to the very expensive consumer models available and his was on par with their's at a fraction of the cost. I have not tested mine, but using his methods it would be simple to do so. While there is the cost of electricity for running them, as well as the occasional fan replacement and the more often filter replacement, the cost comparison with an expensive Phillips Unit is astounding. <comment><USER2> Seems like a good idea. You could start a crowdfunding campaign now, right?

You could reach out to hardware accelerators like Bolt, Dragon Innovation, to see if they would gift you some advice.

I think you should avoid mentioning asthma as caused by smoking and pets unless you have non-anecdotal scientific consensus for it. I don't know what causes asthma myself, though [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis) seems popular and is in direct contradiction to your claim.

And, uh, wasn't there _less_ asthma around a few decades ago when smoking was everywhere than there is today? Like, it seems like asthma rates have risen dramatically literally while smoking rates were decreasing dramatically. If I had to pick one side of the argument to argue, I expect I'd choose to argue that exposure to smoking actually reduces asthma, if it has any effect on it at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is my fault for being unclear. I mean to say that smoking, pet dander, and particulate matter in general exacerbates breathing conditions like asthma. There are also knock on health effects for the rest of the body from bad air. Nonetheless, your point is a valid one and i thank you for making it. I in no way meant to state or imply that these things cause asthma.

Thank you for the advice. i will look into those orgs. In terms of starting a round of crowdfunding, i am not yet confident enough in the plan of attack and the logistics, hence my posting here. Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 2) In my travels for work i have come into contact with many low/no income communities. Regardless of country, color, or creed i have found that the children of these folks are numerous and often suffer from easily treatable maladies. Due to various factors (i am going to side step politics here) these kids grow up living with these maladies instead of them being treated. One of the most common i have personally encountered is Asthma. Often, but not always, parents/guardians smoke inside. They also live near factories, highways, and landfills. They almost always have at least one pet. These contributing factors lead to bad air. Factor in regional pollution and we are talking about big, bad particulates in poor, little lungs. These filter fans will not solve poverty or cure long term illnesses, but they would be a positive step towards opening minds to creating healthier environments at low cost.

I am not independently wealthy. I do pretty well for a current student thanks to patrons and family. If i had the money, i would do it myself, but i do not. In crafting this campaign, i looked at the objectives, then the methodology, then the desired outcome. This is no Silicon Valley disruption level event. The requisite pieces are fairly easy to obtain as well as easy to maintenance and replace. I do not want to create a product that makes money on the back of a health initiative (don't think i didn't consider it, but this kind of idea is inherently unprofitable given the constituent parts). What the campaign is about is, to put it rather coarsely, leading horses to water.

<comment><AUTHOR> 3) So, from my perspective, i need to buy fans and filters then distribute them to worthy candidates. The cost of a box fan is a range of $15-30 depending on season and manufacturer. The cost of a filter is a range of $7-15 based on density of fibers. Shipping cost (to the recipient) is ever changing but easily calculated. Assuming an optimistic $10 shipping cost, we roughly land at: 10 + 10 + 20 = 40+shipping. That is pretty expensive.

Excepting shipping, i believe these costs could be brought down by buying in bulk (or getting donations). This is not a frontal assault on bad air with the intention of winning the war. The idea here is to propagate the fact that, for a relatively low cost, parents of any bracket of the socio-economic stack can provide cleaner air for their kids without buying an over engineered consumer product. So what is need is a highly visible, popularly shared event that spreads the message far and wide. This requires 100% transparent accounting of costs and distribution, a simple 1 page document explaining the methodology and supporting data (to be printed and mailed initially but to be shared online in the future), and an online campaign to tie it all together. Most of the pieces are in place. What i need is the bulk materials (fans and filters), the hardware and software required to generate accurate, demonstrable, and repeatable testing, and the support of a well connected and well intentioned community.

<comment><AUTHOR> 4) So here i am, asking for help. This is not the first community i have reached out to (Imgur is a tough crowd to get support from) so i have little expectation of progress, but i think about it too much and i will keep trying to find support every year or so until something happens. Thank you for reading and please feel free to make any type of comment, question, suggestion, addition, or reproof. To reiterate, should this take off, i want to make sure that at the end of the day it is a net zero venture in terms of money (i am a historian and filmmaker, not an entrepreneur).

May you have clean air and a cleaner conscience.

<comment><USER3> Have you spoken with any charities about this? Frankly it sounds like your problem of identifying how to distribute it and who to is much harder than the manufacturing problem, and they will of course have ideas on the funding side too.

One problem I can envisage is that the electricity costs of running a box fan are potentially high, reducing the likelihood of a lot of the people that would benefit from having a $30 device donated to them from actually using it. The other question would be how your device compares in effectiveness (amount of air filtered and types of particles removed) with other inexpensive air filters. Does it actually pick up the PM2.5 particles people have most reason to be concerned about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 97-109-107 I read all your comments here so far. My problem is that (at least for us here at HN) there is no clear call to action. Maybe you could re-iterate what skills/things you need help with. I would gladly offer my support in these domains: [http://generativestuff.com/sparring/](http://generativestuff.com/sparring/)

</comment><comment><USER4> You can buy box fans in bulk on alibaba for ~12$, from what I could see. An air filter is ~6$. That should additionally reduce your cost.

</comment><comment><USER5> Share the plan online. Have a good write up on how to build it. Make youtube videos. Make it free for all.</comment>


MS IE Bubbles performance test shows results based on User-Agent - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEzi0sEmsTQ&feature=player_embedded I tested on my machine, and I get 15 FPS in Chrome, when I change the user agent to IE9, I get 22 FPS. <comment><AUTHOR> I get 15 FPS in Chrome on my machine, when I change the User-Agent to IE9, I get 22 FPS.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you walk away from this? - <AUTHOR> I have been asked to consult a company in how they should speed up their development process.
Today the application which in the end of it all is a web application, consists of a lot of old ASP classic code, a COM+ bridge for being able to function within a mix of a lot of different .NET libraries written in .NET 3.5 (CLR 2). COM+ acts as a bridge between the two technologies.
The teams cannot compile code inside the development tools, it can't debug unless they do it with some obscure hacks and workarounds and it seems that no one is really in control of what is going on in the core code base and no one really want to touch the original code base to clean it up and refactor/re-write it.
My concerns are really rooted in different aspects of the project.
The project has been like this for multiple years, i mean, the ASP code base is around 10-13 years old. There is nothing wrong with old technology I think but building on top of it for over 10 years was probably not a great idea.
Then someone has tried to build a gap between ASP and ASP.NET and I assume this is because of business-needs and also no one really wanting to get their hands dirty with a refactoring.
Why would a business do this ? Keep patching and re-patching old code instead of cleaning up and making things smoother and safer.
Not to talk about the effeciency of developers and teams.
I am frustrated, only 3 weeks in, and I am obviously not the only on whom has tried to figure this out, but everyone has just given up and said "this is just how it is.".
Given those facts, would you engage or walk away ?
I just don't like to walk away, but this is basically a big mess which in turn runs a multi million dollars business. <comment><USER2> I would engage but not assume it will last very long. In fact I would do a three pronged approach early on. 1) I would identify a particularly nasty corner of the code base that could be sectioned off and improved in such a way that everything that touches it will be easier to deal with. This prong is your short-term easy win "we did something to make life better."

2)Develop a reasonably detailed plan for complete update and refactor within .NET environment. This preserves the legacy, skills and domain knowledge of the current staff.

3)Develop a broader plan for a green-field rewrite in a modern environment with great developer tools, training and support.

My guess is that they will not take either of the more radical approaches but you will have delivered consulting on what they can do to speed up their development process. They might not like the implications of the answers and at that point you can probably just walk away.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Consult" can mean a couple different things. Are you working as a contractor just focused on improving the dev workflow? If so, there's not much I can offer you other than to keep beating the drum and trying to get some attention on the issue.

But if you were brought in as a proper "consultant", then you might be in the perfect spot to address this. Companies like this bring in outside experts for one of two reasons: either so they'll say exactly what the person hiring them wants them to say, or so they'll be free of any political ties inside the company and free to say what needs to be said. You'll already know if you're the former.

You need to be the expert they hired you to be. See if you can arrange half- hour interviews from developers on up to the top of the company about the product, how it's developed, how it's sold, etc. Ask how development resources are scheduled. Quantify the time lost to working with the development environment.

Don't ask for permission to do these things. Tell them you'd "like to" or you "need to".

Most importantly, propose solutions. Describe them as "bold" and "visionary" for the upper management. Talk about cost savings in developer time and tools. Talk about the extra time/cost of on-boarding new employees. Show Google trend data and stats from job postings to show their pool of potential employees has moved on to more modern development stacks, and the quality and quantity of new hires is at risk.

Remember, you were brought in to say all those painful things people may actually be thinking but don't feel they can say.

And if you can't get anywhere with anybody, that's your report right there. Go right to the head of the company and say "I can't continue with the work you hired me to do because your employees are not engaged enough or committed enough to change. I was brought in to fix technical problems, but this is cultural".

BE the expert. Be the one who can say all the bad things everybody is thinking and walk out the door with a check at the end.

Edit: also, pay close attention to seren's answer. There are no mustache- twirling villains here, just people trying to do their job day-to-day and not get fired.

<comment><USER4> To take this one step further: You don't have to decide whether to walk away. You just say what they need (not want) to hear. Then you let them decide for you whether you walk away (by how they receive what you say).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd engage if you're up for a long-term commitment. The good news is: the problems you're experiencing are pretty standard; the bad news is: it's going to be a slightly painful road ahead to crawl out of that hole.

You're not going to be able to fix _everything_ at once, there's going to be some amount of triage necessary, so you've got to prioritize your concerns. Figure out which changes give you the most bang for your buck. If you can prove your value by making a few small strategic changes, leadership might trust you to do bigger overhauls later on.

If it was me, my main concern would be that the engineers don't want to get their hands dirty. That's a really bad sign. Perhaps the biggest change you could implement short-term would be to flip that culture on it's head. Set some team goals around testing-coverage %, and documentation-coverage %. Encourage small teams to pick a small part of the codebase, refactor it, write tests for it, and write documentation for it. Reward them heavily for every little increase in coverage. Make sure they feel pride of ownership. Make sure they know they're not responsible for 13 years of code...just their tiny corner of it. The main goal is to stop the developers from tying their perceived self-worth/value to _NEW_ features; that can lead to a "slap more lipstick on this pig" mentality. You want them to feel like investing time/energy in the current codebase is worth it.

Little by little your metrics will improve. Eventually the codebase will be stable enough (and the team will be productive enough) that you'll be able to say "okay, I want 3-5 developers to split off from the herd and start a ground-up rewrite". And that's where the real fun starts.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Why would a business do this ?

If you are in charge of SW team, without too much SW knowledge, and you have to deliver something in the next 3 to 6 months to you customer, you would likely ask your architect/developers to do "same as previous product" but with a single modification for the new feature. This is the risk-free solution for the short term. Add to that that managers could change every 2 years, there are no incentive to take a big risk in rewriting or upgrading the technology. But this is also the boiling frog syndrome, in the long term you end up with a mess, and if you are in a competitive environment you are getting too slow and your company will be eaten alive. If you are relatively competitor free in your niche market, this could somewhat work...

If you hope to achieve something, you need to have a least one supporter in the upper management. It is still very possible that they are unaware how bad the situation is (or they are but they don't care for the long term). So you're first short term goal, should be to communicate clearly what is wrong, and above all what it costs the company every quarter in term of time lost, bugs, etc. And you should propose an alternate solution with some roadmap (even long term one). "In X years, we will have moved to Z and it will allow us to gain Y"

If you don't have at least one big ally, you'll never manage to have some time or resource to improve the situation. (It will probably be easier to convince some of your colleague).

So if you can't rally any ally in the next 3 months, or at least find potential allies that are aware of the situation, walk away.

PS : Even if this looks ugly, there might have been sound reasons that led to that mess. Every small decision in the past were maybe good for the time being. So don't judge too harshly your predecessors. Especially if you need to convince someone in upper management, that the decision he had taken 5 years ago, was absolutely horrible. (And since you are new, that could a very possible misstep)

Edit : if you have been hired to speed up the dev process, at least someone has started to think that maybe something was wrong, so there is some hope !

</comment><comment><USER7> Can you see a light at the end of the tunnel? Does the business side of the business understand how much technical debt has arisen? Is there a third party solution that does 90% of what you need? Does the business need to keep upgrading the app or can it end of life it? Are there subsystems you can upgrade relatively easily that will have business benefit?

"Where there is muck, there is brass."

I would get all your concerns on the table with the person who writes checks and present some alternatives and let them choose.

(I went through this a few years ago with a 11 year old java + gwt webapp and had some success.)

</comment><comment><USER8> I would absolutely engage... __IF __the senior management is committed to changing the status quo and is ready to invest money and time into the effort and is ready to make changes (including org changes) to make this effort happen. I have been in countless situations like these and the only times I have seen success is when the executive team is committed.

Also, don't expect anything drastic to change in 3 or even 6 months. 10-13 years old is a lot of time and the technical debt would probably be huge. If I have to guess, you are probably looking at a multi-year multi-project effort.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1) Are they paying enough? Money is not the only motivation, but usually a underplayed employment comes with other environment problems.

2) Some ideas that may be useful: "Getting Things Done When You're Only a Grunt" [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000332.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000332.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems like an awesome and career defining movement to overcome a worse case scenario challenge.</comment>


NSA: Still bound by laws of computational complexity - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1517

<comment><USER2> "In cryptography, then, it's not just for idle academic reasons that you'd like a publicly-available trail of research papers and source code, open to criticism and improvement by anyone, that takes you all the way from the presumed hardness of an underlying mathematical problem to the security of your system under whichever class of attacks is relevant to you."

Being open to criticism and improvement does not necessarily improve anything unless the people doing the review have the same level of knowledge as the people trying to leave exploitable flaws.

<comment><USER3> While what you say isn't false per se, there still is no better avenue of approach.

This is like the fifth time today that I'm seeing this sort of inward-looking anti-intellectual sentiment. Was there some dimwitted reddit thread that led to the consensus that since crypto is hard to understand, it's only for elites and shouldn't be trusted? Or that we should throw away the ideas that open development and the scientific method are our best tools for creating foundations for progress?

Or maybe these newly created accounts are just NSA psyops attempting to dissuade people away from the idea that the NSA can even be thwarted?

Sorry kids, these Snowden revelations are apparently hitting you quite hard as you'd resigned yourselves to trusting one of corporations, the government, or the populist mob and are shocked that the first two are colluding to undermine the third. But for those who've been analyzing security all along, this news is just confirmation of existing speculation and another opportunity to shout from the rooftops to convince people that security matters.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Examples of exceptional Git repo wikis? - <AUTHOR> I'm guilty of rarely checking a project's wiki since it is most often not all that helpful.
The golang wiki recently surprised me: https://github.com/golang/go/wiki
What are some exceptional examples you've noticed? <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/showcases/projects-with-great- wikis](https://github.com/showcases/projects-with-great-wikis)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, thank you.</comment></comment>


Ranking Visualizations of Correlation Using Weber's Law [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~remco/publications/2014/InfoVis2014-JND.pdf <comment><USER2> Didn't expect to see my paper on the front pages of HN today :)

Lane (first author) here -- happy to take questions on behalf of the co- authors.

xangg already pointed out the nice followup from Matthew Kay and Jeff Heer ([https://idl.cs.washington.edu/files/2015-BeyondWebersLaw- Inf...](https://idl.cs.washington.edu/files/2015-BeyondWebersLaw- InfoVis.pdf)). I'll also direct folks to Ron Rensink's original paper and his several followup papers targeting the underlying mechanisms of correlation perception ([https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=s_5xXxQXpU0C...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=s_5xXxQXpU0C&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate))

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm reading the book Good Charts ([https://hbr.org/product/good-charts-the- hbr-guide-to-making-...](https://hbr.org/product/good-charts-the-hbr-guide-to- making-smarter-more-persuasive-data-visualizations/15005-PBK-ENG)) and it talked about (and linked) your paper. I found it quite interesting, so I submitted it here in case others did as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One thing they did right with this study and paper was to make the data public, which allowed a better analysis to be published the following year. See [https://idl.cs.washington.edu/files/2015-BeyondWebersLaw- Inf...](https://idl.cs.washington.edu/files/2015-BeyondWebersLaw-InfoVis.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, your link is a superior study. The OP is really not very good in the problems it considers. Bottom line of either study seems to be:

"We can give a clear recommendation for designers in the vast majority of circumstances: use scatterplots to visualize bivariate correlation"</comment></comment>


Tokenizing Assets on the Blokchain - <AUTHOR> https://themerkle.com/commerceblock-turns-real-estate-buying-and-selling-into-a-global-tokenized-market/ <comment><USER2> This is game changer for a lot of industries, it's essentially taking the infra and utility of public blockchains and applying it to solve business problems of today, tokenizing assets over public blockchains will result in more efficient and transparent transactions, which is big issue in today's financial system.</comment>


Blue Apron to Sell Meal Kits in Stores to Buttress Sagging Deliveries - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/blue-apron-to-sell-meal-kits-in-stores-to-buttress-sagging-deliveries-1521118800 <comment><USER2> Ever since I got my FIRST Blue Apron box (two years ago maybe?), I felt they should've sold boxes in stores. I simply don't understand how they had such a blind spot for something so obvious.

We used Blue Apron on and off for 2 months and just got tired of it. We loved the food but sometimes we just wanted to have our native cuisine. But some nights, you want to try something new impulsively, which is where having them available in grocery stores would've been great.

Blue Apron also had seemingly slimy tactics (even if they weren't, they felt that way). Like for example, you had to cancel a week in advance for a delivery, but you could opt in for a delivery 2-3 days before the new week started. Also you couldn't just say "stop until I say start," but rather you had to login every 2 weeks to keep clicking "Skip delivery." All these things leave a bad taste in your mouth (pun fully, and proudly intended)

<comment><USER3> Do you still have to e-mail them for a link to cancel your subscription completely? That's the dark pattern I couldn't stand from them. Unforgivable.

<comment><USER4> I think you can click through to it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use Blue Apron sporadically; it can be a good thing on a busier week because it removes both menu planning and shopping while still letting you make home- cooked meals (take-out more than once a week or so gets really old).

It can also be a great break when your go-to recipes feel too repetitive.

But often one of the three recipes ends up being a dud, and if you forget to skip a week and get a bunch of stuff you don't feel like cooking it's an expensive and _annoying_ obligation to prepare meals you didn't really want or make an ersatz recipe out of the ingredients they sent.

There is absolutely zero chance I would go to a store to buy a Blue Apron box. Without the convenience of home delivery, it really loses its appeal.

<comment><USER6> I agree. The biggest annoyance with Blue Apron is planning your deliveries. There might be a week you were planning to skip, for cost reasons or "too busy to even cook" reasons, but you forget until its too late. Or, you might forget to go in and select the recipes you want, so you get a couple good ones and one that you never would have ordered, wasting at least $20.

But I think it depends on the cost of these in-store kits. It does remove the huge convenience advantage, but I still like the idea of meal prep kits. The problem with in-store is that this space is so easy to compete in, and now you're asking to go up against every other company that can find space on a store shelf, which is easier than maintaining a delivery network.

Blue Apron's food isn't especially high quality and the recipes aren't especially amazing. They're great, but not great enough that I wouldn't switch to a competitor if the price or quality was better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not a bad idea in spirit, but the store's mark-up might be too much to make it worthwhile. I like the idea of Blue Apron in spirit, but the sheer amount of waste it produces in the delivery boxes turned me off.

One thing it does well is providing only as much of said ingredient as you need. I recently tried to get into Chinese cooking, and before I made my first two or three dishes I had to run out and buy Hoisin sauce, chili garlic sauce, oyster sauce, Chinese rice wine, and minced ginger. That's quite a bit of an initial investment before I even decide whether I like the food or not. So if I can pay a little extra upfront just to get whatever amount of those sauces I need while I'm still in the trial phase, that would be nice.

As someone else said, local grocery stores could probably do very well just by providing their own meal kits. Wegmans does this on occasion, although their stuff is usually assembled to the point where you simply bake it.

<comment><USER8> but ... the cost of all those ingredients will still be significantly less than what you pay any meal delivery service, is it not? for a $1, you can get a bottle of Hoisin sauce.

<comment><USER9> All of those ingredients, with the exception of the garlic, will stay good for years as well.

I find it infinitely more resourceful to have a well-stocked kitchen with ingredients that last a good while than to go out and buy a single serving of anything. I would never consider buying a specific spice or sauce "an investment" in a single type of dish given both the small cost and the viability of those items in other types of cooking. Hoisin is great when making hamburgers or chilis, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We just cancelled our Hello Fresh (which we loved) but if we can buy similar kits at the store we'll probably do so.

Hello Fresh boxes are great but their subscription and forced delivery model just doesn't work with our schedule. We sporadically shift between cooking and eating out. They're not having a "send me a box now" option forced our hand in cancelling.

<comment><USER11> > "send me a box now"

So instant food delivery but you still have to cook it? That would be a very narrow market.

<comment><USER10> I had meant "Send me a box this week".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've ordered pre-made meals before. Having ingredients delivered doesn't make sense to me though. Enough energy to cook but not enough energy to go to the store? I'm sure there are a million excuses, but just buy some produce at the store people.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, for New York (where Blue Apron is based out of) it actually makes some sense. Grocery shopping in New York can be (heavily depending on where you go) a taxing experience. Especially in Manhattan.

Space is expensive, so stores often have pretty narrow aisles in order to cram in as much as they can. You're almost always blocking people the second you stop moving for any reason.

Trader Joe's is so popular that it's not uncommon for there to be a line _just to get into the store_. The checkout line moves quickly, but because it's so large you'll still probably spend 20-30 minutes waiting in line to check out.

Anyway just shining a bit of light on why people might hate grocery shopping. I still think grocery delivery services make way more sense than something like Blue Apron, though.

<comment><USER14> just in general grocery shopping drives me crazy. find your item on a shelf. put it in the cart. take it out of the cart. put it on the belt. put it back in the cart. take it out of the cart. put it in your car. take it out of the car. put it on a shelf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stuff like this is a death spiral. It's clearly a case of audience and revenues being bought by VC money, and is unsustainable without cash infusions. Yet early investors were able to sucker mutual funds and retail investors to buy their shitty stock. Another case of VCs winning and the general public losing. At some point we have to hold the mutual funds responsible for perpetuating this BS because they are the enablers for VCs to profit no matter how terrible the stock is.

I wonder what this means about ride sharing. I actually believe it's a game changer and it's sustainable to profitability but stories like this make me wonder.

<comment><USER16> Wow, you sound bitter. It's true that huge amounts of money are wasted and perhaps investors being gypped but the question is whether crappy business models would be shaken out as quickly with conventional investment/banking strategies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They can do whatever they want, it won't matter in a few years when Amazon flattens them.

</comment><comment><USER18> The second Amazon starts offering these in Whole Foods I'm all over it. And I bet a bunch of other people will to.

We do meal kits (Local Crate) and they're great, but always need a little augmenting (extra veg. mostly). So I'm already at the store a few times a week. The meal kits just simplify the process enormously. Marry the two and you've got a killer product.

<comment><USER19> It seems like something Whole Foods is missing out on. There's a local Whole Foods-like store I've swung by in town that carries their own kits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A store can easily undercut Blue Apron by providing homegrown meal kits, as soon as they see that they sell. Some grocery stores already do this ([https://www.thefreshmarket.com/specials/little-big- meal](https://www.thefreshmarket.com/specials/little-big-meal)).

<comment><USER21> Another: [https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2017/...](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2017/07/20/hy- vee-wants-tax-breaks-new-64-million-facility-ankeny/496951001/)

Some individual stores have been doing it independently of corporate since at least 2016: [https://www.facebook.com/events/968415496617260/](https://www.facebook.com/events/968415496617260/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm wondering if this (these meal in a box services) is just one of those wrongheaded approaches. There's some saying about "Cheap, good or fast: pick two." And it seems like services like this are shooting for all three or something.

Yes, if you could do all three, sure, people would like to get that. But I don't see how there is profit in it. It seems like the target market is people who don't have time and energy to cook and don't have money to spare either. It's like they are secretly trying to solve the problem of the harried, overworked, underpaid 99 percent. And that's not really a business model. It's more like something that needs to be addressed by charities or government policy.

</comment><comment><USER23> Excellent. I can't read it because of the pay wall, but the key value it brought, being one to always live blocks from a coop, was the sack of seasoning and the like in the right amount. Previous attempts at learning to cook had always lead to 80%+ waste in bottles of perishable sauces, seasonings, et. al. BA/Plated overall are a Godsend, this headline sounds like a good step given the holiday pileups/reschedules and sometimes missed/misplaced deliveries.

</comment><comment><USER24> I tried Blue Apron but didn't stick with it because the recipes were actually pretty time consuming for the amount of food you prepared, and also because of the unreliable timing of the deliveries. If you live in the city, you need to be home for the deliveries to be made, and waiting for a FedEx truck to show up whenever is annoying. FreshDirect was much better since you can schedule a two-hour window for delivery.

<comment><USER25> Blue Apron is sooo time consuming. Everything arrives just rolling around in the box. You need to sort it, then find a place to put it in your own cabinets and refrigerator. Their time estimates for cooking are often off by half, and the recipes are hard to follow. I really don't like Blue Apron.

Some of the others I like have the food for each meal all come in a single bag, so I don't have to keep track of it in my fridge. My wife usually handles these and she switches them up frequently, so I can't remember all of them, but my favorite is Terra's Kitchen, because it has the least waste, and short, accurate prep times. All the items are numbered to match the meal they're for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had Blue Apron and at first loved it, but ultimately, their calories where far too high and didn't have any offerings for people on a diet or other health conscious concerns such as low sodium and such. Their food was tasty but by missing out over health conscious options, they missed a growing niche, and once Amazon or someone comes in with more options they will be done.

</comment><comment><USER27> Publix already sells meal kits near me, including slowcooking kits and baking bags you just open one end of and toss in the oven. Seems like any grocery store with actually fresh meat and produce could easily compete with this, right?

</comment><comment><USER28> Its a service I might be interested in signing up for - but I refuse to make an account, so they can email me and nag me, to find out how much it might cost.</comment>