"iCloud Backup" - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/09/26/icloud-backup <comment><USER2> Last friday a co-worker managed to snag one of the new iPhone 5s from an AT&T store and wanted to transfer everything from his old iPhone 3GS to it. He had not been syncing his 3GS to any computer, so I thought it would be a simple matter to set it up to sync with iTunes on his work computer, have it make a backup, then restore that backup onto the iPhone 5.

Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it should be. The sync appeared to go fine, but there were no apps or anything when restored to his iPhone 5. Going into the sync settings in iTunes offers an option to turn on app syncing, music syncing, etc, but alarmingly doing so would have completely removed the existing apps, music, etc on his 3GS.

Turns out that the only way to get iTunes to download the apps and other content from the 3GS was to right-click on the device in the sidebar and click "transfer purchases". I actually had to look up how to do this because that function is completely non-obvious.

Why is this the case? Why can't Apple be smarter and have iTunes download all information from the iPhone upon connection? My Palm m100 I had a decade ago managed this just fine - I could HotSync to a computer that I had never used before and it would dutifully sync contacts, calendar, etc, and make a full backup of the device. Also, shame on Apple for making it so easy to wipe the apps, music, etc off the phone during the process of trying to back them up. I hate to think that he might have lost everything, or been completely unsuccessful moving to his new iPhone just because of these stupid sync restrictions.

<comment><USER3> By default, iTunes pops up a message saying "you have purchased items on this device, would you like to transfer them?"

It sounds like your co-worker said no to this in the past, and checked the box to not pop up the message anymore.

<comment><USER4> I think that is kind of the point. It isn't really immediately clear what that will do. I think the message should read something to the effect of "You have purchased items on your device, which are not currently sync'ed to this computer. Would you like to transfer them now?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People with no technical experience using modern technology, sometimes I explain this to folks as the "Chutes and Ladders" problem.

You set the problem up like this, person comes to you and wants to buy lunch. You put down a "Chutes and Ladders" game (minimum age 3) and you say sure as soon as your piece wins. Now wait and watch them. If they do anything that isn't in the rules you play a loud buzzing sound and scold them.

The thing is that "Chutes and Ladders" is like the simplest game ever, but when you combine "I'm trying to do X" with "Your trying to force me to learn Y". A number of people's brain just freezes up. I don't know if that is like some deep psychological principle but the fact that doing "Y" is totally unrelated to trying to get "X" done its like your brain refuses to allocate any cycles at all to learning Y. What is worse people get emotional and angry because dammit they want X and before you blocked them they knew how to get it.

We forget that as children when things were 'new' we expected to not know how to do them. But when we are set in our ways that level of change is much less tolerable. In a lot of ways all sorts of technology is like that.

One strategy I've had some success with is to take people who aren't trying to do anything with the new technology yet and just explore it with them. That goal of exploring allows them to ingest new concepts, and then when they try to do something with the technology some of those 'learn the game' concepts will already be in their brain.

<comment><USER6> I don't really get your analogy. I've never played Chutes and Ladders, so I would probably be annoyed, but if the game is as simple as you infer, I suspect I would be able to accomplish the goal fairly quickly.

<comment><USER5> Yes you would be annoyed. Chutes and Ladders consists of activating a spinner, moving a piece along a path based on the number pointed to by the spinner, going 'up' if you land on a ladder or 'down' if you land on a chute, and you 'win' when your piece lands exactly on the last spot. You would probably get as few as 3 and as many as a half dozen 'buzzes' as you figured it out.

So you should try the test (or try it on an unsuspecting test candidate) my experience has been that no matter how 'simple' the game is, the fact that it seems completely orthogonal to the person, their ability to 'shift gears' and learn a new thing so that they can get on with the desired thing is blocked. It is especially true if you put a time limit on getting the desired thing done.

The challenge is that a number of things seem to have an assumption about your basic skills that may not be valid. An acquaintance went nuts when an app required that he cut and paste something on his phone. He had never had a reason to do cut and paste before so to complete the task he had to learn cut and paste. He was making zero progress on that goal. I did it for him, then later went back and showed him in a non time-constrained / outcome-desired setting how to do it. That worked fine of course, and now its part of his tool kit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is why I'm so infatuated with the concept of the Chromebook.

A lot of the "techie" stuff like backups and restoring that Marco describes here is solved with a Chromebook. And it uses familiar user interface paradigms that people recognise from their experience using Windows (especially now that they added the windows management system that looks a lot like Windows 7), whereas the iPad has completely new paradigms that people transitioning from a computer will find strange and foreign.

Many people I've introduced to iPads and Android devices have ended up not really using them because they're much more familiar with the point and click windows-based desktop system of Windows than "apps".

Not that the Chromebook fixes everything. But Google has done a great job identifying some important problems with the way our technology works today and is trying to get rid of those problems or make them irrelevant by providing you with a device where you really don't have to worry about hooking it up to your PC to "sync", update the system OS version, figure out the settings for something techie and confusing, or use iTunes (my God, iTunes) to do anything.

Can you imagine what a Chromebook-iPad hybrid device could be like, with the automatic updating of Chrome, syncing system of Chrome, familiarity of Chrome, but the polished user experience and app ecosystem of an iPad?

<comment><USER8> I love the concept of a Chromebook; however the Chromebook is based on an assumption: that we are always connected. 24/7/365, and unfortunately I haven't found that to be the case.

Once that is the case: that I can get an internet connection from dawn until dusk, no matter where in the country I travel, or heck even what country I travel to then I would absolutely get a Chromebook. But we aren't there yet.

<comment><USER9> Being online all the time is not something insurmountable. My mobile plan came with data included. I have 3G connectivity all the time, for really good prices too, both on my phone and on my iPad and I live in Romania, not the U.S. or some other country that's in the top countries when it comes to Internet connectivity.

And I'm seeing people living in the country-side, on farms, talking through Skype to their relatives that live abroad, using an USB stick that's connecting them through 3G, or using a broadband 50-100 Mbps connection exposed through Wifi. It's totally shocking, given that some of those places do not have access to cable TV (only through satellite) or to basic utilities such as marsh gas pipes, yet they have Internet access.

Of course, right now Internet access is a problem, even for us sometimes. The costs of my 3G connection is enormous when in roaming. Sometimes you lack the signal and 3G connectivity is not available everywhere, etc... but in 5 years from now I believe it will be a non-issue.

And Chromebook is designed for the long-run and I hope they won't cancel it in the wake of Android's success.

There are Chrome apps that are designed to also have functionality when offline, albeit limited. For instance there is a GMail app in the Chrome store that's designed to work in offline mode [1]. It's really basic and not something I would use, being more like a demo at this time.

I was also sad to hear that Google Reader is not working in offline mode anymore, so now for my iPad I'm searching for a replacement, and because what I've found in the store seems to suck, I may even code one myself - although I may just forward new items to my email address and do some filtering in my email client.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmpbfngldlkglhimk/related)

<comment><USER10> "3G connectivity is not available everywhere, etc... but in 5 years from now I believe it will be a non-issue."

I don't agree: 1) The bandwidth is a limited resource. 2) You can't install senders in every corner of everything to cover blind spots. If you haven't experienced both I believe you're using your 3G almost always without too much moving around and in the area without too much heavy users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently left a job that initially gave me a iPhone 3G ~3 years ago. When I upgraded to a 4S I just transferred the settings over.

When I left I decided to delete my email account because why would I need it anymore. So I remove the account from the iPhone and went to eat a bagel.

Imagine my surprise when I come back to my phone to call my sister except iPhone tells me I only know about 8 people.

Apparently the iPhone tied all my contacts with the company account so when I deleted that, there went all my contacts with it.

No problem right, I'll just retrieve my backup from my computer from the last time I synced and I'll get my contacts back and then I'll figure out how to transfer over the contacts.

Except apparently when I got this phone with iCloud it turned off backups when I synced with my computer. Okay no problem, iCloud should have it right?

Except iCloud has been telling me that it doesn't have enough space to backup my stuff for weeks. I just assumed that meant my apps weren't getting backed up, which is fine. But apparently they don't update anything else, even if you've already backed it up (this is definitely not all Apple's fault, but iCloud is pretty confusing about its backup rules). Not sure why I couldn't retrieve my contacts from right before when I deleted them but they were no where to be found.

So finally I just bit the bullet and synced with an old backup and lost about 3-4 months worth of text messages. Yay.

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure that the iPhone asks you if you want to keep a local copy of your contacts & calendars when you remove an Exchange account, so you may have hit "No" on accident.

<comment><USER13> It didnt on my old iPhone 3G.

Gone were all my contacts and calendering data, including birthdays.

I had to export my stuff to CSV and massage it in local Outlook and do some reverse-and-double-wipe sync stuff through iTunes.

It was horrible and I refuse to buy another iDevice ever again.

<comment><USER14> Sounds like you were using an exchange server for your work, and you were storing all your information on that server. Could have been avoided by not storing personal data on your work servers and making sure you have the settings set to store them on the device itself or MobileMe/iCloud.

This kind of behaviour is probably something businesses like. Info on company servers stays on the servers.

This isn't an "iDevice" issue, it's a data ownership issue.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I too was on an Exchange server. I had no idea it was storing on only Exchange/that one account. Really hard to discern where it was saving contacts to, hence why I had about 8 or so contacts left over when I deleted the account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to assume the genius was off script. The shop I worked at had people sign a document before authorizing anything destructive. We usually imaged the disk anyway.

Definitely agree with the larger point though. PCs (phones, tablets, etc) are ridiculously hard to use and unreliable even if you kinda sorta know what you're doing.

<comment><USER16> I worked at the Apple 5th avenue retail store until April, and there is a document that has to be signed acknowledging that you could lose all your data. That said, it's usually framed as a "this probably won't happen, but just in case"

<comment><USER17> Back before Best Buy had the "Geeksquad", we had the exact same type of form. And we framed it the same way, actually had to almost underplay that bad things could happen.

<comment><USER18> It's Geek Squad, and why do you put it in quotes? That's the name of the company they acquired in 2004(?)

<comment><USER17> Since I quit I haven't really paid much attention to Best Buy to be honest so I didn't know the proper spelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "I figured that a "Genius" would quickly figure out whether it still had iOS 4, and if so, would just update it to iOS 5 or 6 and then set up iCloud backup."

Wait but "Updating to iOS 5 will delete all of the apps and media... To preserve your content, apply this update on the computer where you sync apps, music, videos, and photos." [1]

[1] [http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2011/...](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2011/10/ios- update-delete.jpg)

<comment><USER20> Yes, Marco's figuring was wrong (or at least incomplete).

However, doesn't his expectation sound reasonable (especially for the "it just works" company)? And isn't the mismatch between expectations and reality one of his points?

<comment><USER19> His expectation sounds reasonable but part of that is he's not an objective third party -- he's presumably writing to emphasize the reasonableness.

We really don't know what happened between when his 87 year old grandfather walked into the Apple store and when he walked out with a restored machine. I can think of a lot of ways this ends up "just not working". Maybe grandpa used the word "restore" at some point not aware of it's specific meaning, heads were nodded and miscommunication happened.

Wife and I were planning to get her mother a tablet to video chat with before she passed unexpectedly a year ago. Had we done so and had we been in a similar situation I doubt I would have sent her to the Apple store with only the words "icloud backup" scrawled on a piece of paper. I mean it's total speculation but I think I would have had an email explaining exactly what to do or told her to wait until we were there to handle it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Macro comments that his grandparents don't want/shouldn't have to spend time dicking around with apple IDs. No one should have to. It's awful. Email, music sharing, itunes match, App Store, iMessage, FaceTime, iCloud, notes, and likely others. Getting an iOS device or mac to have fully functioning services usually takes me weeks to achieve (oh, that email account isn't arriving for some reason) as random things that worked just seem to stop working when peculiarities of personal account functionality are encountered. Why on earth the initial setup can't have an initial chance to enter apple I'd one, then a list of services to turn on. And if for some reason a password reset has to happen it's just terrible trying to get all the devices in the house working again (don't lose Apple TV remote...) is hours of work, and is so bad the password changes are a killer. Please Apple, save us, I'm more than 50 years younger and I don't want this either.

<comment><USER3> Initial setup does ask for an Apple ID, then sets up most associated services (App Store, iMessage, FaceTime, iCloud, Notes, etc). They fixed that with iOS 6, and no 'random things that worked' broke when I upgraded. I don't use iCloud email so I can't speak to that.

<comment><USER21> That's my main gripe, if you have multiple email addresses that feed into one account, and like to email out from a variety of addresses its ugly. Really really ugly. Mainly because iCloud hates you sending a message that doesn't appear as an apple address. If IOS 6 is better than 5 in regard to initial Apple ID I couldnt really judge as most my settings carried over from my ios5 install, thankfully, but iTunes Match lost its setup, and home sharing too and the remote app is now broken for me on iPhone. However if setting up a new device has been improved/fixed. THANK YOU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of the most user friendly additions to software, ever, is the undo button. (if you want to feel how it is to use software without, try Linux in terminal for a while ;) ). And one of the best attempts to do this on a OS scale, is Time Machine. It should be as easy as bringing up a prompt and step or scroll backwards in time. You are really just stepping between data states. If you restore a state, it will merge with current state and step forward (which of course can be undone). You can decide to restore only one app, and thereby limit impact.

Update, restore, "are you sure you want to do this?", "pick the right destination", etc are user unfriendly concepts, and will make people nervous. Auto-update apps, but let people undo. Make restores undoable. Change "are you really sure?" to "don't worry, you can always undo".

Of course, you could argue, this will waste storage space. Well, with a good diff algorithm to rely on, not really that much. And even if so, you can always merge older states together (e.g. the detail of change is mostly relevant to very recent events - a few weeks back, I only care about major things like when I deleted all my contacts and didn't realize until now).

<comment><USER22> And to add a few points: \- When you don't have network access and the device is at the limit of storage space (so that a major state changing operation couldn't be undone), for the love of god, get the user to connect it first. Let it back up it's state to computer or network. Don't allow situations which cannot be rolled back.

\- A lot of apps and iOS features sync with the network. Will need a little work to make sure a restored local state doesn't interfere with the network state. It's solvable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The whole iDevice ecosystem is complicated. I've seen even tech savvy people suffer data loss or prolonged inconvenience. A lot of it is caused by bad design and buggy software, but a lot of it is also caused by Apple arrogantly throwing up intentional roadblocks.

<comment><USER24> I consider myself technical, but when recently faced with a task of backing up contacts from an iPad to iCloud - I got scared.

The iPad had an iCloud account set up. It was unrelated to the current device's owner, so I couldn't back the device up to that account. There is a 'Remove account' button, but what's going to happen when I remove the account? Is something going to disappear from the iPad? How am I going to know?

I figured I should back up to the Mac first, then switch to the new iCloud account and restore if anything happened. I didn't even do that, because the last backup of contacts from the iPad got lost (probably because there was another iPad sync'ed with the same Mac) and I wasn't sure what would happen when I sync'ed it this time.

Maybe technical users tend to overthink these things, but data loss does happen and the current Mac's ecosystem is indeed confusing in that regard.

<comment><USER25> Similarly, I consider myself technical but the whole iCloud syncing business on iOS and OS X Lion (may have improved in ML) is a mess and I managed to lose documents. Syncing has to be turned on and off in multiple places with non- intuitive descriptions of what may happen.

Turning syncing off warns that data will be lost (huh? I don't want you to delete anything, just stop syncing the two data sets).

Tis all a muddle.

And then backup. You have to choose _between_ backing up to this computer and backing up to iCloud? Why? I certainly don't trust iCloud with my only backup, but having it as a remote adjunct would be handy. Why can't I back up to both?

It's horrible.

<comment><USER26> There is one way to back up to both iCloud and your computer. First, set up automatic iCloud backup. Then, whenever you plug in your iOS device, right- click on its name in the iTunes sidebar and hit 'backup'. It will do a one- time backup to your computer.

It's not perfect, but it works really well for me. Daily automated backups to the cloud + backups on my computer whenever I update the OS or upgrade devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have a flipped perspective of this. In my experience, Apple tries to be too clever and does many unintuitive things behind the scenes so that "it just works".

I went through a horror scenario that scared me when I bought a new iPhone and my old pictures and videos for some reason did not sync over to the new device. I thought for a few brief moments that I lost 2 years worth of pictures and videos and that was enough to scar me permanently.

I now periodically back up all my pictures/videos from my iPhone and iPad to a folder in my Dropbox. Seeing all the files listed out in my folders gives me comfort, because I know there's no attempts at cleverness going haywire in the background, erasing and moving things around when I click "yes" or "no" to some popup question that I don't fully understand.

So I'm not sure what the right answer is. Sometimes I wish it wasn't as much magical as completely transparent about what's happening. Maybe there could be some nice UI that shows exactly what is stored, and people could somehow drag and drop data between devices?

<comment><USER28> You can use the Dropbox App to do that for you, it will sync your media with your Dropbox automatically.

I think in this sync issue DRM is at fault. Sync between old iPods and iTunes worked that way because music was DRM'ed and they didn't want you to give your friend your 40GB iPod and let him copy all your music. It has been carried away too long, there should be two way sync.

This is a special pain in the ass when you have more than one Mac.

<comment><USER27> Ah! Definitely not using Dropbox app to do the syncing for me automatically. Again, too much magic for something too important. I can't be guaranteed that the Dropbox app maybe somehow loses authentication and silently stops syncing, or maybe I edit a photo on iPhone and its filename is unchanged in the filysystem and it doesn't get synced over, or anything similarly weird and technical goes wrong.

Maybe I'm being paranoid but all I want is a perfect and completely transparent guarantee that I have a complete snapshot of my most important files. I'm willing to do the little manual work for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Its possible that oversight here was on Marco's part and not the Apple Store's. If his grandfather had told an Apple Genius that "he wanted to make sure he could transfer his stuff onto a new iPad in case this one ever broke", chances are that the Genius would have known what he was talking about. Instead, Marco doesn't trust his grandfather to explain that coherently and has him write down the cryptic words "ICLOUD BACKUP". To be fair, those words don't mean much by themselves and I could see why the Genius thought he was doing the right thing.

<comment><USER30> So, as per usual, when apple stuff doesn't work it is the user's fault. Right?

<comment><USER29> I hate how everyone immediately takes every comment as pro or anti apple on the web. Im not trying to defend Apple here. My comment was more about taking responsibilities for your own actions before immediately blaming someone else.

<comment><USER31> "he wanted to make sure he could transfer his stuff onto a new iPad in case this one ever broke" You realize that you're suggesting a hack, this is not at all what he wants to do, he wants to use his iPad with all the stuff on it. Maybe Marco should've suggested "ask them to make a backup before they do anything as they should be doing anyway"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The iPhone since its first version will only ever pair with one iTunes database on one computer. Although, yes, you can still backup your phone to any computer with iTunes, just on restore you won't be able to reinstall apps and music until you sync with the original computer. This is a political policy put in place and not any kind of limitation of iTunes Sync. I and several people have filed Radars on it over the years explaining why this was a bad policy but it always went into the black hole that is iTunes Radars saying "By Design".

The issue is moot now that you can back your phone up to iCloud completely avoiding the iTunes step. It's slow and could be costly if you have a lot to backup, but at least it moves things in the right direction overall.

<comment><USER33> I bet it had something to do with media licenses/contracts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Honestly I never trust Apple with iCloud. Still need to do backup with iTunes regularly. I wish iOS has better integration with Dropbox because I trust it. But again, if Apple takes over DB, then I would lose my trust. This guy isn't for web service except for music/app downloading.

</comment><comment><USER35> The lesson is as clear now as it ever was: users must not be responsible for managing user state.

<comment><USER36> Users want to be able to manage user state.

<comment><USER35> You and I do. Regular people don't.

<comment><USER36> Can you please elaborate on this? Perhaps we have a different definition of user state.

<comment><USER35> Sure. Let's start with an iPad.

iPads have physical state: shattered, powered, glitchiness, temperature, cover, location they're in, way in which they're being held, etc...

iPads have hardware state: processor, CPU, RAM, GPU, storage available, etc

iPads have software state: booted, OS version, OS mode, current app, volume, what the app is doing...

iPads have user-state state: songs, contacts, high scores, the way the apps are laid out, pictures, videos, other pictures, other videos, FACEBOOK, emails, signatures...

We know all of these things. An iPad is a small flat touchscreen PC with some prissy software and expensive accessories and most anyone in the tech involved world can distinguish between all of these layers and figure out what's wrong when something's wrong.

For the tech uninvolved, there's no real distinction between any these states. The iPad _is_. The iPad is, for lack of a better word, an appliance. It is a thing they bought to do _iPad_.

"Hey Marco, I had the iCloud put on my iPad. Now I can't even do anything with it."

It is no longer an iPad. The user-state-state is gone because of a misunderstanding and there's nothing that can be done to retrieve it. The user doesn't care how, why, whatever. iPad is not working.

What Apple is doing with iCloud is removing maintenance and reducing the chances of catastrophic loss of user-state-state. They are further ahead than basically anyone at this point, and had iCloud been running on the iPad in the story, it would have been near impossible for that iPad to become a non- working iPad. It backs up all of these things:

( Purchased music, movies, TV shows, apps, and books Photos and video in the Camera Roll Device settings App data Home screen and app organization Messages (iMessage, SMS, and MMS) Ringtones )

and quite a few more datatypes they don't advertise in a strong legal construct that allows Apple unbelievable flexibility and ability to make products that do things as expected. It is egregiously hard to delete an iCloud, even if you try.

State is a service. SIAS. State As A Service. Make whatever acronym you want.

<comment><USER36> So you're suggesting users shouldn't have control over "songs, contacts, high scores, the way the apps are laid out, pictures, videos, other pictures, other videos, FACEBOOK, emails, signatures" ?

<comment><USER35> No, I'm saying they shouldn't be responsible for where those things are or how to get them back when they aren't there anymore. Hence, "management" or "maintenance". I'm not quite sure what word I'm looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm pretty good with technology compared to the average person (or at least, those whose job description does not consist of spending their whole lives in front of a computer), and even I managed to wipe out a lot of my iOS data when simply _switching to a new computer_ (thankfully I had done an iCloud backup in anticipation of things going wrong and was able to restore. Still lost one app's data in the process, for some reason).

We definitely have a long way to go, although I think a lot of the stuff we put up with is also due to accommodating external forces like backwards compatibility, pressure from the music and movie industries, etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think as time goes on, the digital divide won't be focused on inter- generational (gramps can't use the internet) issues as it is now. Instead, the focus will shift to first VS third world, and rich VS poor.

Generational issues will decay over time as the population becomes made up of a greater proportion of 'digital natives', but the gap between rich and poor will still exist. We should take the lessons we learn here and try to apply them there when the time comes.

</comment><comment><USER38> While Marco has written specifically about iCloud and the iPad, what he describes is not limited to just everything Apple. My father recently turned 70 and he has a PC at home which is used for listening to music, browsing and a lot of CAD. He started using computers much before I did, but he did not grow up with them and still finds it hard to deal with GUIs. It has always baffled me as to how someone who was excellent at using the CLI can struggle so much with what is meant to be easier. I am talking about ease, not efficiency.

And it is not that he's not a sharp cookie anymore. He runs the household, still consults on his civil engineering projects, tinkers frequently with various things electronic/electrical, but GUIs stump him and his predicament has only gotten worse with the newer iterations of operating systems. For my generation, who grew up with the modern computing paradigms, this is unfathomable, but it is a real problem too, one with no real solution.

I have found my eventual solution in doing Teamviewer sessions for most problems. It is heartbreaking to make aged parents feel incompetent because they can't seem to grasp easily the same concepts we can grasp without even half a thought.

</comment><comment><USER39> While I agree completely to Marco's post, I also want to point out, what I believe is, the underlying root of evil: "The iPad is easy" (or the X is easy).

Expecting that something is easy and always works is not that helpful, and to some extend removes responsability from the consumer (which is great for the consumer in the short run).

It doesn't help that we (techies and others) use catchy phrases such as "It's easy" to convince people to give it a try. Because, for some, it _will_ be difficult.

When you tell older generations about something "new" (email, smartphone, tablet, whichever) and they're hesitant or slightly sceptical, it's easy to hear yourself giving the argument: "But it's easy, you just have to...".

Don't say "but it's easy" in cases where you should've said "but it's easy for me".

Should the iPad experience be better? Sure, and I'd love to see them continue to strive towards it. My point is the other end of the equation: the consumers.

</comment><comment><USER40> I recently had a problem with corrupt file system ( _that's what I initially thought, but right now I think the disk is dying_ ). Anyway, what I did was re-partition my 750 HDD and installed Mountain Lion in another volume. Then, I copied "~/Music/iTunes" AND "~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync" folders from the (supposedly) corrupt ML to the new ML, and the next time I attached my iDevices to the Mac, they synced back without a problem and I didn't lose a single item. Of course, I also had iCloud sync set up before hand (and now I learned that I can use both the iCloud and manual backup to my computer, which is extremely convenient).

It was a little off-topic, but I just thought sharing that little story with others might be beneficial. I searched a lot before doing that but couldn't reliably verify I can move my Synced data between multiple installations, so maybe others in the same situation find it useful.

</comment><comment><USER41> Thx, I hope this get pushed up to front page. And prove my comparative theory, Apple will know they happen to be good only because their competitors are bad.

I think we need some rethinking into the whole mess of sync. It is not easier, even for some technically minded individuals.

And may be someday Apple could charge $50 or more per iDevices and have iCloud Backup as standard. No more messing around with iTunes Sync. And my friends wont cry when her iPhone has been stolen and lost all the pucs she took over the years.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've just upgraded from an iPhone 4S to an iPhone 5 using iCloud backup. I assumed it could do everything that an iTunes based backup could do, but I was wrong. It didn't backup any of my audiobooks - so I have to buy those again, and it wiped all my Google Authenticator codes.

</comment><comment><USER43> Oh iTunes, you are hilarious.</comment>


Should NoSQL startups be afraid of DynamoDB? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/cloud/should-nosql-startups-be-afraid-of-dynamodb/ <comment><USER2> I think that the market is also huge for small developers who don't want to pay for admin and infrastructure, want to be able to go on vacation and be fairly certain their data store will be available, etc. The question is how this large pie will be divided up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't seen the ability to run DynamoDB locally such as during development. That's an issue for me.

<comment><USER2> A few days ago on a HN thread, Werner Vogels responded to my comment about this saying that it is on their features list.

I agree with you: one thing that AppEngine did very well: smooth local and deployed work flow.

<comment><USER2> BTW, I wrote up my little experiment using DynamoDB with a Ruby client a few das ago: [http://blog.markwatson.com/2012/01/yes-dynamodb-managed- data...](http://blog.markwatson.com/2012/01/yes-dynamodb-managed-data-service- is.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Distributed Filesystems other than HDFS? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in doing some analysis over a large set of data where the performance would benefit from distribution across multiple CPUs and machines, namely to use a large bucket of RAM.
We are a Python shop, and less interested in Python on top of layers like Spark - projects like Dask are more interesting. HDFS is of course an option, but as we don't need any other Hadoop components, there is overhead that takes up some of that needed RAM.
My first lab was built on MapR-FS, as it is NFS mountable, does not require namenodes, and looks like a regular filesystem to any non-Hadoop API. However, balancing available cache for the filesystem and for apps is a bit of a challenge - there is still a lot of JVM threads involved.
Are there any similar distributed filesystems that are "lightweight", transparent to apps, easy to manage, and POSIX? Or is this yet to be invented? <comment><USER2> Try BeeGFS - [https://www.beegfs.com](https://www.beegfs.com) \- should be up and running in 20 minutes and does everything you ask.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://ceph.com/](http://ceph.com/)</comment>


Josh Bloch on the Future of Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/04/bloch_java_future

<comment><USER3> Java the language is ripe for replacement. Java was a miracle. It was a safe, decently-designed language (thanks to Gosling et al.) that PHBs weren't scared of (thanks to Sun's marketing.) A decent language with modern libraries and no segfaults that your boss will actually let you use is no longer the novelty it once was. Now when people think "Java" they don't think "what a relief, no more C." They compare it to Ruby and C#, which is a little bit tougher standard.

</comment><comment><USER4> As a heavy Java user it's really frustrating to see how little effort Sun (Oracle) has been putting into maintaining the JDK tools. It seems like only critical security bugs get fixed and everything else just languishes. I submitted a new javac bug 10 days ago and, although it was confirmed fairly quickly, it still hasn't even shown up on the public web site. Or look at Bug ID: 5093723 <[http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=5093723&#.... It's been open for five years with no fix. I would be willing to pay for a fix but there doesn't even seem to be a way to do that.

</comment><comment><USER5> A BSD Java worked on by IBM, Oracle, Google, Apache etc together would be interesting, but it's the politics that'll make or break it.

<comment><USER6> That's basically what Apache Harmony is today.

<comment><USER5> Really? What's Oracle's involvement?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "I just want to remind people that many recent Java success stories are > getting lost in all the gloom and doom. Among them are Google Collections, > Guice, the JVM languages you referred to earlier, and Android"

Bloch should also highlight java.util.concurrent, which was his and Doug Lea's own work, including upcoming Fork/Join framework (JSR166y): <http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/jsr166/dist/jsr166ydocs/>

People often overlook this strength. There are quite beautifully designed APIs (built on fairly few primitives e.g., monitors and condition variables) around the difficult problem of shared state concurrency (yet the Fork/Join APIs are also used by the Actor implementation in Scala 2.8 and I believe other Actor implementations).

</comment><comment><USER8> I find it interesting that IBM's JVM wasn't even mentioned in the article, yet there's an ad for IBM at the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER9> I found it curious that they omitted J9 too. That said, I haven't kept up with what IBM has being doing with it lately and I've always been under the impression it is a closed project that isn't likely to influence the overall direction of Java.

I wish Microsoft would make the CLR open source and OS agnostic. That would make things really interesting.

<comment><USER10> Sadly, it's extremely hard to see that happening. Write once, run anywhere was a basic attempt at undermining the importance of Microsoft; oddly, it seems to have undermined differences in server OSes. CLR will always be a framework that makes Windows important for basic business reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting , though i would be more interested in an in-depth article from the thought-leaders of the community about "Future of the JVM".

</comment><comment><USER12> "InfoQ: This is probably provable (one way or another), but do you suspect that the JVM's use has decreased over all, or that Java proper has decreased while Ruby/Scala /Jython /Groovy have taken up the slack?

Actually none of these languages make Tiobe's top 20. That doesn't mean they aren't important or valuable; they are. But they aren't mainstream, yet. That said, I'm absolutely thrilled by the amount of language research and design going on these days. There are plenty of good ideas out there, and it's marvelous that people are exploring them."

Josh is a bright guy and Java isn't the terrible language everyone may think it to be (though it isn't my preferred language). Ruby is in the Tiobe top 20 though... good to see that he at least recognizes the good that's coming out of other languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am eagerly waiting for JDK 7 with invokedynamic support. I will be good to see the improvements it will bring to dynamic languages like Jython and JRuby.

I wonder if Oracle is going to be conservative or go all out and consider features like tail calls.

<comment><USER7> I would very much like a very simple, basic, tail recursion to be available in Java. Not tail call elimination in the same way as is specified by Scheme. It doesn't even require the a JVM change, it can be done by the compiler: Scala does this. You could use an annotation (@Tailrecursive) to verify that it happens (or error out).

C does this with "-O2" (factorial is a bad example, unfortunately as there are algorithms that are much more naturally defined in terms of tail recursion):

      long factorial_helper(int n, int acc)
      {
          if (n==1)
              return acc;

          return factorial_helper(n - 1, n * acc);
      }

becomes:

      factorial_helper:
      .LFB16:
          jmp .L8
          .p2align 4,,7
      .L6:
          imull   %edi, %esi
          subl    $1, %edi
      .L8:
          cmpl    $1, %edi
          jne .L6
          movslq  %esi,%rax
          ret

Looks very similar to what my own assembly would look like. Now with -O4 the assembly becomes completely unrecognizable (which is why higher level languages may be faster than lower level ones).

Continuations would be another improvement possible at language rather than VM level, with same effect (allowing efficient _and_ elegant implementation of some algorithms).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's refreshing to hear a point of view that isn't all doom and gloom about Oracle's Sun acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting comments from the guy who sets Java best practices for Google. I do most of my work now in Ruby but the Java platform is still very relevant to me because I can mix my libraries and other people's Java libraries with JRuby/Scala/Clojure applications. I still use Java for AppEngine development (BTW, but not JDO because of the hit of longer loading request times).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Considering the focus and shift towards dynamic languages I would love to see more adoption for the parrot VM. There is a lot of innovation there.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure how much of that "focus and shift towards dynamic languages" is real, though, and how much is just an illusion created by lots of animated discussion between us geeks in blogs and on forums like this one.

Of course it's hard to judge the progress of a vast and fast-moving industry like ours, but what data there is always suggests that tried-and-tested static languages like C, Java, C++ and newer derivatives like C# and Objective-C still represent the lion's share of development. A few dynamic languages like Perl, Python and JavaScript have established themselves as mainstream and command significant user bases as well.

However, while we _hear_ a lot about things like Clojure and Groovy because they are new and potentially interesting, I see little evidence that many people are actually using them yet. How much real innovation is coming out of these younger languages and platforms is an open question, and it will probably be a few more years before we know what their real contribution will be.

<comment><USER11> "I see little evidence that many people are actually using them yet." - <USER2> experience has been different , even in large Enterprise Java Shops you now have a smattering of different languages on the JVM , albeit all hidden away.

This is primarily because the new languages all come as jar files so taking a cursory glance the tendency is to say - oh that's another Java library , look a little deeper and you find Groovy,Beanshell,JRuby, AspectJ,Scala, Clojure et all, the main scaffolding is still in Java but the interesting parts are being written in other languages.

<comment><USER16> "in large Enterprise Java Shops you now have a smattering of different languages on the JVM , albeit all hidden away."

That's my take as well. I currently work in a J-A-V-A shop, but Python scripts are working their way in and there's the knowledge that in 5 years, we may need to look at creating our next generation of web applications in another framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unless they drop the yahoo toolbar or some other distro gets easy to install, I don't think the JVM has much of a (long term) future at all.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think Java should share the future with the Flash - they were already seen their best days.</comment>


You Can Reach Into This Monitor And Touch The Interface - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671989/you-can-reach-into-this-monitor-and-touch-the-interface <comment><USER2> While the tech is very cool, I still see this needing a lot of innovation before we can use it in everyday situations. Maybe grabbing windows and moving them around is simpler and easier than dragging with a mouse or with touch, but holding your hands up is tiring compared to resting them on the table while you use your mouse.

We need to figure out how to emulate real world objects (reach out and "grab" the window) as much as possible without causing any additional effort in terms of holding your arms/hands up.</comment>


Can this startup steal Node from Joyent? VCs bet $8M on it - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-node-from-joyent-vcs-bet-8m-on-it/

<comment><USER2> >September 18, 2013 8:47 AM

Lets all move along, this submission is just an attempt to stoke the fire to roast Ben Noordhuis on.

</comment><comment><USER3> They aren't betting on them stealing the community,the email line "the company behind Node.js, founded by the Node.js core contributors" is just how they are playing up the company. How they go from that to the only way the VCs get their $8M back is by stealing the project is beyond me.

Nothing to see here just a linkbait article

</comment><comment><USER4> Are all the articles on Vulture Beat like this? "Someone said..", "Someone else said...", "This one time at band-camp..."</comment>


Feynman Lectures on the Strong Interactions - <AUTHOR> https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=11782 <comment><USER2> I've been on a personal quest to understand quantum electrodynamics and perhaps quantum chromodynamics. It is quite daunting as my formal math education pretty much stopped at linear algebra. I'm currently going through one of MIT's 8.04 (Quantum Physics 1) through OpenCourseWare and it's been pretty accessible so far. The jump from classical quantum mechanics to quantum field theory, however, seems pretty large and out of reach of anyone who doesn't want to spend a LOT of time studying pure math.

In other words, I look forward to being able to enjoy these in about 3 years ;)

<comment><USER3> Susskind's Stanford videos are a treasure trove. While not shunning the math, the lectures are extremely accessible.

<comment><USER2> I'm currently watching his General Relativity videos along with the MIT stuff. There's a really good explanation of vector co(ntra)variance and tensor algebra at the beginning of that course which I needed. And contrary to the sibling, I really enjoy his presentation style which assumes that I am not a graduate student in math who lives and breathes abstract algebra.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On arxiv, in a technical paper, one doesn't often find a personal apology to a long-dead boss for how long it took to complete one's assigned duties. I found that very touching.

</comment><comment><USER5> Any recommendations on QCD textbooks for Physics grad students? I left that field a while back but I had always hoped to understand it, beyond just hand- wavy explanations.

</comment><comment><USER6> As an aside, if you have not read it, you should chew through "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!"[1].

It's a fun read, and really gives you an insight into both Feynman's life, and they way that he approached solving problems and teaching others. I have gotten massive leverage from "if you can't explain it to a five-year-old, you don't really understand it" as a learning and coaching tool (a.k.a. "The Feynman Technique")

[1] [https://amzn.to/3fu9zCE](https://amzn.to/3fu9zCE)

<comment><USER7> And then: What do you care about what other people think?

In the first chapter he goes on to tell about beauty/taste[1]. One of his friends told him that you scientist won't be able to appreciate art as much as us artists. Then Feynman explains how he can imagine the cellular level function, why is the flower colorful, and how it interprets to insects having some sense of colour for why should beauty only be on centimeter level?

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html)

Wikipedia: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_People_Think%3F)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can open-sourcing a side-project hurt my job applications? - <AUTHOR>

Over the last months I have been working on a side-project, now I am looking for work. Since I am an experienced software engineer with barely a Github presence I wonder if it might hurt to publish  workable but rather pragmatic code as my sole open-source project.<p>Some more background: A non-trivial amount of hours went into the project, it clocks in at about 10k of (already refactored) LOC and it actually works. There are other open-source solutions but they all suck in their own ways. My project is not particularly elegant or reusable outside the narrow scope I chose (e.g. it only works with one database backend, is somewhat modular but not does not provide a multitude of abstractions,...). TL;DR. It was never meant to be a panacea and has the same issues like most 1st productive versions of startup code. <comment><USER2> I guess if your side project betrays a distinct lack of knowledge of basic programming then it could hurt you.

My suggestion would be to use your project as a springboard during any potential interviews to detail the areas in which you have grown as a programmer since the project's creation.</comment>


Windows? No, I'm a .NET developer - david-vujic http://davidvujic.blogspot.com/2016/02/windows-no-i-am-a-net-developer.html <comment><AUTHOR> I did the transition the other direction.

When I was teaching myself to code, I was on the linux side writing ruby in vim. My first full time job was writing C# in Visual Studio. I really dig both environments, though in philosophy I think linux, vim, and the cli suit me better. I don't know. It might just be how I feel about them, and nostalgia, but it just feels nice.

I'm also wondering how VSCode would stack up against atom on linux, when writing in net languages. I use atom as my general purpose editor right now, mostly with Haskell and Python, and I really dig it. Lots of support for it, and I've started looking around it to try hacking on the editor. Never tried atom with any .net, though.

<comment> david-vujic Thank you for sharing! My impressions are (along with reading user comments about it) is that VSCode currently is just as good (or even a bit better) as Atom is for asp.net core 1 development.</comment></comment>


Show HN : My (current) Weekend Project - I am, I do - <AUTHOR> http://iamido.info/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

This weekend I'm at a hackday and the theme is 'dreams', My dream is to get people working on what they love and find inspiration, I find my inspiration in the people around me and the people doing what I want to do, so we asked 30 friends 6 questions each and put the results online, we've had an amazing response with some really thoughtful answers and now we've opened it up to everyone, we've got about 3 hours left before we have to present the hack and I'd love to reach 100 responses (we currently have 50).

It uses twitter bootstrap as a default and I know that HN is getting a bit sick of it but it makes knocking up something quickly so easy and for hackdays I really thing it's perfect.

We've got about 4 features to implement as well so I'll be checking back whilst we code :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently working on

* favouring an answer from someone to create a scrapbook of inspiration (we joking call inspr-paper ;) )

* showing on the sidebar people who are similar to you but your not following

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Cool, nice work. I think the "I do blah" can be awkward but I like the focus.

For fun, my friend and I made a similar site called <http://threeabout.me> (profile example: <http://threeabout.me/max>). It's centered around describing yourself with the three most important things you want people to know about you.

I think we both desire some kind of online profile that has limits, kind of like describing yourself in a tweet.

<comment><USER3> Hey,

It's not aimed so much about having an online profile for yourself with constraints, but to inspire others and be inspired yourself. Three about me looks neat though, interesting to see how creative people can be when constrained in describing themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice idea.Greatly executed.Clean design. But I have very small doubt. When people say this is 3 hour project and weekend project, do they mean buying the domain and hosting solution and deploying along with coding the website.All of those tasks fall into that 3 hrs or that weekend? I understand that this is done in hack day competition and my question may not apply to this case, but what is it in general

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Sravfeyn,

Yep, we came up with the idea on Saturday morning, bought the domain name last night and spent from midday yesterday to this second coding it :)

I'm not sure about others but our weekend projects are generally weekend projects..

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the clarification :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really cool idea. It's a lot of fun just randomly browsing around and reading peoples' stories.

Tiny annoyance: the line-height: 36px (application.css:23) makes wrapped section headings look strange. One simple fix is to replace that with margin- top: 18px; margin-bottom: 18px;.

<comment><USER3> Glad you like it!

Integrated your CSS change, many thanks :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beautiful. Simple, does what it does, clean layout. Really nice.

Would be cool to be able to search by what people do as well as names, unless it's there and I'm just missing it. I'd like to see what other people doing (say, software development) have to say.

<comment><USER3> Hi Alex,

We've not added the ability to search by "do" yet, but if you view someone's profile and click on their "do" activity it'll list all other users with that "do" entered. I'll stick the searching on the todo list. :-)

Thanks for the kind words and glad you like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to be able to browse random people easier. A big "Show me another!" button would be cool. Then I could just sit there and while away the hours reading random thoughts from random people.

<comment><USER3> Interesting suggestion! Definitely something I'd love personally as well, it's firmly on the todo list. Thanks! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love it. Here's my profile: <http://iamido.info/users/23963-natan-yellin>

<comment><USER3> I'm [the other] co-author of it. Thank you very much, and glad you love it! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> cool, I like it.

I had a similar idea rumbling around my head for a few months now (basically "I live here and I do X"), but the twist you've added of making it stories about people is nice.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some feedback:

* Add geographic location and show people near you

* Change "you have no friends" to "you have no friends yet. why not invite some?"

<comment><USER3> Hi Natan,

Good ideas thanks. Geographic location would definitely be interesting, I'll put it on the todo list. And I've tweaked the wording of the friends panel if it's empty. Knew we'd overlook something!

Thanks again.

<comment><USER8> One more suggestion: change the Twitter and Facebook posts to "I am ___, I do ___" and a link. It is mysterious and doesn't look spammy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Definitely an interesting next step into this geek list-like area. Keep it up and stay with it.</comment>


Hackers Are Targeting Nuclear Facilities, Homeland Security Dept. And F.B.I. Say - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/technology/nuclear-plant-hack-report.html <comment><USER2> I'm worried. I've been following the Maersk outage. The world's biggest shipping line still hasn't fully recovered. Their less automated ports were down for several days. LA and NJ finally came back up about two days ago, but operations are still partially manual and they're running longer hours trying to cope.

Their most automated port, Maasvlakte II in Rotterdam, is still processing imports only; no exports. Some containers there are stuck in the stacks; they have a list of which containers can be reached. They're requiring paper customs forms and a paper commercial release, instead of their usual paperless system. Earlier, they were so down that the automated cranes could not unload ships. This is what Maasvlakte II looks like in normal operation. There are no people on the quay at all. All those cranes and AGVs are automated.[1]

Maersk's financial side is still down. They're not sending out invoices, which means zero revenue. They just announced a price cut, to keep shippers. Some of their phone and email systems are still down. The booking side is now up, so they can take new shipping orders.

This is the first time we've seen real-world outages of this magnitude. It may not be the last.

(Where's the Flexport guy who posts on here? He has to deal with all these problems. Flexport is a freight forwarder, which means that when something goes wrong with freight they are forwarding, it's their problem to fix it.)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo)

<comment><USER3> How is this not bigger news? I assumed the lack of coverage meant that everything was back to normal.

Had this been several of the big shipping companies at once the world would be reeling by now, especially economically.

<comment><USER4> "I assumed the lack of coverage meant that everything was back to normal."

Incidentally, that seems like a pretty fundamental issue with news in general.

<comment><USER3> You're right. A big thing in the news around here lately has been one punch kills. I have no idea is it was always a thing and not reported as such or if we've somehow become softer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Since May, hackers have been penetrating the computer networks of companies that operate nuclear power stations and other energy facilities, as well as manufacturing plants in the United States and other countries._

 _Wolf Creek officials said that while they could not comment on cyberattacks or security issues, no "operations systems" had been affected and that their corporate network and the internet were separate from the network that runs the plant._

Good, I'm glad they are not insane, but I also hope they have pretty stringent rules to keep personnel from plugging in unverified devices. Stuxnet should be a lesson to all.

<comment><USER6> They're not insane; they're just lying. 15 years ago it was believable that control networks were airgapped from the Internet. But today, the likelihood that some low-level tech has plugged a wifi router into the control network for his own convenience approaches 100%.

<comment><USER7> If you did that in my previous company, you would get a visit from IT and a good tongue-lashing from your manager within 15 minutes of doing that. As a 20-something, it seemed like an overreaction. As a 30-something, it seems perfectly reasonable.

<comment><USER8> At a CNI site like a nuke plant you will get the interview without tea and biscuits lose your job and security clearance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This might be the most top-heavy title I've ever read, given the economy of words. "Hackers Are Targeting Nuclear Facilities, Say Homeland Security Dept. and F.B.I." would be much more balanced - or am I just off my rocker?

<comment><USER10> Indubitably any facility of sufficient complexity or strategic value will draw more or less continuous unwanted attention from foreign state actors. 'Targeted by hackers' could include port scans and phishing attempts. What with the recent, perhaps only perceived, upsurge in activity it is hard to know whether this is complete bunk, nsa-script-kiddie open season or something even more sinister. It is sad that the agencies in question no longer enjoy the level of trust by the public they once had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whenever I see (nytimes.com) after a URL I know that there's some big long bill that's been sitting in a drawer somewhere that's going to suddenly get pulled out of that drawer and will be voted on next week and this is just setting the stage for it.

<comment><USER12> You're implying that most articles on nytimes are written to preemtively lay support for future bills? That seems like a pretty strong statement that'd need at list a hint of evidence with it.

Has this been a pattern? Do you have examples? Are there stories that the nytimes covers that other papers don't cover that suddenly become bills? What inspired this?

Your post comes across as a lot of innuendo without providing any support... at all.

<comment><USER13> Go to bed, ny times reporter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Rubén Santamarta is going to talk about vulnerabilities that affect widely deployed radiation monitoring devices in nuclear facilities.

"The purpose of this talk is to provide a comprehensive description of the technical details and approach used to discover multiple vulnerabilities that affect widely deployed radiation monitoring devices, involving software and firmware reverse engineering, RF analysis, and hardware hacking."

That will be July 26 at Black Hat USA 2017.

Go Nuclear: Breaking Radiation Monitoring Devices [https://www.blackhat.com/us-17/briefings/schedule/index.html...](https://www.blackhat.com/us-17/briefings/schedule/index.html#go- nuclear-breaking-radiation-monitoring-devices-6829)

<comment><USER15> If this was the 50s or 60s the government would never allow a talk like this to happen. Anything to do with nuclear was kept as a black art. Fortunately that paranoia has lifted so we can have safer systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm skeptical that there's a real threat to nuclear facilities. I've visited reactors before and seen first hand that the control rooms are all still based on analog components. The reason for the analog components is precisely because they are reliable and unhackable. When it comes to physical security, I can't think of a harder place to break into than a nuclear power station. You're not going to sneak in that's for sure. This reeks of manufactured consent. Are you afraid of hackers yet?

<comment><USER17> > You're not going to sneak in that's for sure.

Wasn't one of the IS terrorists of Paris employed in Belgium at a nuclear powerplant?

<comment><USER16> I literally do not know anything about this. Didn't even know Belgium had a nuclear power plant. Source please?

I can't speak for Europe, but I know in America even if you worked at the place you're not pulling off an attack. You're not going to sneak a gun past the check point. If you do somehow sneak in a gun or a knife, you're not going to live very long before the guards kill you. You're not going to get into someplace where your keycard/job status doesn't let you. Overall the most likely outcome is you trigger an unscheduled reactor shutdown and throw your life away. I can't imagine anyone making a 6 figure reactor job salary throwing their life away. Money > religion.

<comment><USER17> Apparently he left the powerplant and went to Syria to do jihad there, but still: [http://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/1154/belgian- jihadist-f...](http://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/1154/belgian-jihadist- former-worker-at-doel-nuclear-plant-dies-in-syria)

<comment><USER18> He had a clearance through a contractor to inspect welds: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/brussels- attacks...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/brussels-attacks- stoke-fears-about-security-of-belgian-nuclear- facilities/2016/03/25/7e370148-f295-11e5-a61f-e9c95c06edca_story.html?utm_term=.c412eca26c11)

I don't know the specifics of this particular plant's security procedures, but it's unlikely he was in a position to do any significant damage to the plant, and his clearance process was likely much less involved than would be for someone who is in a position to do real damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Government warfare is really the worst thing that has ever happened to the internet. I wish they would leave this old-fashioned territorial thinking to rot in the material world.

<comment><USER20> I hate to be that guy, but you know that the internet as we know and love it today started out as ARPAnet, right? The internet was domesticated, not weaponized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As long as the systems controlling infrastructure (of any kind) are network accessible, they are internet accessible. Hence, they will be attacked.

Convenience always works to the attackers gain, and convenience is the name of the game for engineers and managers and support staff. Unless the system is physically isolated and protected and there is no kind of networking available, it is effectively crackable. Even if physically isolated, staff can still be bought.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd imagine every piece of infrastructure is targeted that can be.

What's going to be done about it is the real question.

<comment><USER10> True but a wind farm taken over by hackers is still just a wind farm not a thermonuclear weapon.

<comment><USER23> A nuclear plant taken over by hackers isn't a thermonuclear weapon either.

<comment><USER24> The implication is that, once it's taken over, the hackers could intentionally trigger a Chernobyl-scale spill.

Not quite as bad as a nuclear weapon detonated in a big city, but still very bad.

<comment><USER23> It's unlikely that hackers could manage even a Chernobyl-scale problem on a modern nuclear plant. Chernobyl had several horrendous flaws. For one, it had a positive feedback: as the fuel got hotter, the reaction sped up. With modern plants the opposite occurs.

Also Chernobyl had no containment dome.

Even the old GenII designs in the U.S. have much better inherent safety than Chernobyl had. There's no way to hack away physical barriers. Even TMI, our worst accident ever with a full meltdown, did not breach the containment barriers.

And of course with any commercial plant, there's absolutely zero chance of an actual nuclear detonation, much less a thermonuclear one as mentioned in the comment above. The fuel just isn't enriched enough to work as a bomb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Aren't hackers always targetting Homeland Security and nuclear facilities? Hasn't this been the plot of 24 for over a decade now?

<comment><USER26> Yes, but it becomes a much higher media priority when the entire intelligence community begins to agitate for WW3 with Russia.

I knew before clicking that there would be a baseless nod to *Bear attribution in this article, and it certainly didn't disappoint.

<comment><USER27> What makes you think they are "agitating" for WW3 and not simply responding to actual aggression by Russia?

<comment><USER28> Because the US has clearly stated it wants Assad out of Syria, and Russia has clearly stated it wants Assad to remain. And nobody gets away with telling the US how it's going to be when it comes to oil supply.

<comment><USER29> Is the implication that oil supply has much to do with Syria? I understand Russian natgas companies have some pipelines that traverse the country into Turkey and their eventual customers and Europe, but I'm failing to see what that has to do with oil and the US. The US gets most of its oil from Canada.

<comment><USER28> Looks like the US gets most of its oil from home. 62.1%

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/20...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/04/11/where- america-gets-its-oil-the-top-10-suppliers-of-u-s-oil-imports/amp/)

<comment><USER30> Yes, it would be more apt to just admit the feds consider that their playground and don't want someone else playing there. (probably the US fed people doing it want 'democracy' and the Russia people doing it want 'stability' but the exact ideology is unimportant since neither is really acting in accordance with that ideology so much as just stirring the pot)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sorry, why are "Nuclear Facilities" on the internet in the first place? Or the FBI for that matter...

If they mean they are targeting some public facing BS server for some website they keep, OK, who cares...

But anything functional and touching controls should be very well out of bounds...

</comment><comment><USER32> I translate that into contractors aren't required to warranty their embedded components. Rewrite the contracts.

</comment><comment><USER33> The US administration is under the impression that they can wage a conventional war against an adversary like North Korea, yet this is the same nation-state actor that is claimed to have hacked into Sony.

If North Korea is attacked militarily expect hell to be unleashed online. What we've seen is just experiments, not actual attacks. A full-out war could be vastly more damaging.

<comment><USER25> Please. "Hell online" is going to be trivial compared to the thousands who will die in the first hours of the conventional artillery shelling of Seoul. Let's not pretend that some leaked emails are in any way going to be as bad as that.

And frankly, hacking into Sony is not that hard to do.

<comment><USER33> I honestly don't know what's worse. Shelling Seoul, which will be bad don't get me wrong, or killing the power grid and water systems of entire countries. The latter could utterly cripple logistical systems and lead to a total melt- down of society if there was enough panic brewing. If there's shelling you can evacuate the city, you can head out of range of the guns. There's nowhere to hide from electronic warfare if your entire society depends on power, fuel and computers.

This isn't about leaked emails or advance copies of movies, it's about attacking and permanently damaging large portions of infrastructure. If you can fiddle with a power plant you can destroy generators, transformers, and other extremely expensive equipment that could months to source, fabricate, transport and replace under ideal conditions. They don't have a warehouse full of spare turbines just sitting around.

Stuxnet showed what can happen if you pin-point target a particular system. If you broaden the scope of your targets, if you don't care about collateral damage, the stakes are very, very high.

Hacking into Sony wasn't hard and I have a sneaking suspicion that most infrastructure control systems are as bad or worse.

The black-out in eastern North America in 2003 shows how suddenly things can change if the grid goes down. That only lasted a day and yet the economic destruction was significant. Imagine if not only were the power plants offline, but they were crippled in such a way they couldn't come back without serious repairs. _That_ is a possibility here. Months without power, without water.

<comment><USER34> Shelling Seoul is worse.

Just ask yourself which would be worse for you, say, a week or even a month without power or a rain of explosives randomly demolishing buildings in your city.

We can get stuff working one way or the other without networked computers but there is no reasoning with shells.

<comment><USER35> Shelling affects one city, whereas destroying the power grid can affect a whole country.

<comment><USER25> Shelling a major metropolitan area will kill _thousands_ of people within _hours_. The power grid going down doesn't typically kill very many people unless it is down for a long time.

<comment><USER36> It won't be MY city they are shelling, they cannot reach my city with their guns. Even if they could we are low down on the list of targets. However they can reach my city in a broad bring down all water systems attack. I suspect there are only a couple vendors of water control systems so if there is a hold in one vendor's water control system they will attack everyone at once. Tiny towns with < 500 people will be hit, and I don't know if my town is one or not. (actually tiny towns are probably easier to target, large cities probably have a mix of systems so they are more likely to get by with a general everyone conserve water message, whiel the small towns are down completely.

<comment><USER33> Many municipalities have sold off large chunks of their infrastructure to private companies that are always more concermed with profit than expenses like "security".

It stands to reason that the smaller towns will be hit the hardest since they're the least prepared for electronic warfare. Their IT department is going to be the same guy that tests the water and removes dead animals from the reservoir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe I won't have to wait for sea level rise to wipe my hometown off the face of the earth, some jerk in Russia will pop the nuclear plant that's up-wind and it'll be uninhabitable.

</comment><comment><USER38> Of course they are. They hate your freedom.

So long and thanks for the propaganda, NYT.

<comment><USER39> There must be subtext here that I don't understand.

<comment><USER40> The NYT was one of the chief cheerleaders for the Iraq War, both through Judith Miller being an outright mouthpiece for Bush administration propaganda, and more generally through being a friendly media outlet of "balanced" thinkpieces that set the stage for popular support for a non-declaration-of- war (the AUMF) that allowed Bush to invade Iraq based on some nebulous threat of a WMD attack in the U.S. that was never real.

<comment><USER41> They also had an editorial policy of not referring to any action committed by US forces as "torture" until 2014.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Most US nuclear plants were built in the 1970s. How much "computer networking" do they really have?

<comment><USER43> Every nuclear power plant in the US has an NRC mandated Safety Parameter Display System. These were retrofitted after the TMI-2 meltdown. The SPDS is supposed to provide a concise view of critical parameters to avoid the sort of confusion that led to the TMI-2 incident.

In 2003 Davis-Besse had its SPDS disabled by SQL Slammer, a worm that congested the network on the site. So in answer to your question, yes these 1970s plants do indeed have devices interconnected in the contemporary manner, and compromises of these networks have already produced reportable events.

The core components of our power reactors are not at the mercy of software; operators have authority over reactor protection systems that are deliberately independent of complex digital controls. Nevertheless, a clever attacker could probably engineer enough confusion or interfere with ancillary systems badly enough to produce a notable incident such as a SCRAM. That would certainly make headlines and lead to a prolonged investigation.

Is it possible that greater damage could be done? Anything is possible. If so I'd imagine it might involve cooling pools, their circulation and alarms... who knows. Given enough time, knowledge and planning it might be possible to cause a serious problem.

<comment><USER44> If a power plant scrams, how long is the subsequent startup? Do they have any sort of fast recovery procedure?

<comment><USER43> "how long is the subsequent startup?"

It depends. Fission is complex. Factors include reactor design, fuel age, xenon accumulation, which parts of the RPS tripped, whatever axles the resident NRC inspector(s) wrap themselves around... those are few I can think of as a layman.

"Do they have any sort of fast recovery procedure?"

While operators do strive to minimize outage there is no general "fast recovery" procedure. There is a startup procedure and that's what you follow. If everything is optimal then 12-ish hours to begin the restart, several hours thereafter to become critical, then a relatively slow process of pulling rods until full power is achieved. "Hot xenon" startups are something you study and practice in a simulator.

The military has other prerogatives and naval reactors see rapid and frequent transients. Naval reactors are built (at great expense) to do this. They're also smaller than civilian power reactors; a 165 MWe naval reactor being thought "large" whereas a 600 MWe civilian power reactor is on the small side.</comment></comment></comment></comment>