Don't buy the MacBook Pros even on sale, in my opinion - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/4277/dont-buy-the-new-macbook-pros-even-on-sale-in-my-opinion <comment><AUTHOR> Posting this from my six month old Macbook Pro 15" on which the spacebar has just started doing double spaces. Going to try and clean it with compressed air, but even if that works, it's unacceptable in my opinion that such a key piece of hardware on such an expensive machine should be so fragile.

The fact that at some point I'll have to take it back to Apple and probably be without it for several days due to the complexity of the repair makes this 10x worse - I am freelance so need this machine for work, so being without it (especially for such a seemingly trivial reason) is unacceptable and absolutely not what I expect when I buy Apple (previous Macbooks have worked for years without a single issue).

If they release a redesign, I'd swap it in a flash (I do actually quite like the keyboard to type on otherwise, but seems like the quest for thinness has gone too far this time!), but if this problem is as widespread as it seems who knows what it will do to resale values.

Would be great to get talk of this spreading as far and wide as possible, as judging by anecdata on Twitter and elsewhere, I am far from the only one with these kind of issues, and to me that implies a fairly major design flaw.

<comment><USER2> I'm experiencing this issue with my B key and it's annoying af. I use my MBP in clamshell mode with an external keyboard and I dread going mobile.

<comment><USER3> I had the issue with the doubling with the b key as well.

Mine was out of warranty, so I fixed it myself.

Failed: compressed air Failed: cleaning under the key.

Success (but not recommended) I removed the key, then pulled off the glued membrane. Cleaned all with 90% alcohol. Took a new membrane (but you might be able to use old) and used E6000 and a toothpick to glue it back. Replaced butterfly and key.

Not a good solution, but it worked.

It looked like the contacts were getting coated and not making good contact? Perhaps heat?

Best of luck.

<comment><USER2> I am not confident in my ability to do that but it's good to know there is a solution if I get desperate enough. My mechanical keyboard is saving my life right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's just incomprehensible (and an unfortunate indictment of Jony Ive's design leadership) that the 2016 MacBook Pro has continued to prove such a regression from the 2012 design.

Professionals demand good design: tools that meet our needs in efficient, reliable, and even elegant ways. Apple's line of professional laptops has traditionally delivered this by and large, but the problem with the 2016 platform is that _vanity_ finally overtook good design.

Good design weighs the trade-offs inherent in any design decision and decides based on the greatest benefit to the user. Vanity design decides based on the greatest benefit to the designer. And based on the dongles I've seen co- workers cart all over the office because Apple abandoned HDMI, based on the keyboard reliability issues that have affected the same co-workers, and based on the dearth of compelling Touch Bar applications that have sprung up in the past year and a half, I don't think there's any question that vanity has taken over.

Honestly, I think it's time for Ive to take more of an advisory role at Apple and let some of the many talented industrial designers in his org take Apple's hardware design back to fundamentals.

<comment><USER5> > (and an unfortunate indictment of Jony Ive's design leadership)

Ive has been leading design at Apple for 26 years. I think the failure lies elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> Counterargument: for a long time Ive had Jobs to push back on Design excesses. Now there's nobody that has the same kind of design sense at the top to push the product in practical directions.

It's like Lennon and McCartney, they wrote better songs when they were together than apart (I'd argue).

<comment><USER5> I actually don't think that's a counterargument at all. If someone like Ive is able to run unchecked and produce the failure that is the MBP keyboard, then that's a problem outside of Ive.

<comment><USER4> Based on the folklore, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine Jobs holding up an iPhone USB cable at a meeting and yelling "why the hell can't I plug this into my MacBook Pro?" I can't imagine Cook doing the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tangential rant ahead:

I've been pretty disappointed in the latest MacBooks as well (mostly just the keyboard and mediocre performance improvements over previous generations), so as a hedge I thought I should give Linux another try, hoping in the ~5 years since I last attempted it one of the more user-friendly distributions would have figured out how to make installation painless.

Nope. It's easy enough to get a basic installation of Ubuntu or elementary OS working, but you still have to muck around with things like wireless drivers, graphics drivers, multitouch support, etc to get everything working as well as macOS. After half a day of trying to tweak kernel parameters and other things I gave up. Sometimes I enjoy that sort of challenge, but not right now.

I understand it's difficult to support a wide variety of hardware without the support of a company like Apple/Microsoft/Google, and supporting proprietary drivers is controversial and not the community's top priority. It's just a bit disappointing desktop Linux still isn't ready for the mainstream, despite multiple commercial companies working on it.

<comment><USER8> I grew up messing with GNU/Linux, so I know what it means to tweak kernel parameters and not have working wifi. But in the past five years of using Ubuntu full-time I haven't had a single issue with out of the box stuff working on any of a number of Lenovo machines.

Hell, I even have 16.10 running on a Macbook Pro from 2013. Curiously, the baked on RAM chip has a bad patch on it somewhere and macOS chokes when doing a full re-install, yet Ubuntu seems more fault-tolerant about memory and runs mostly fine (there are display corruptions when first booting, but putting it to sleep and waking it up causes them to go away until the next reboot).

Meanwhile I would argue macOS has become much worse given the closed-nature of the software and the price premium to use it. It's hard to complain about having to tweak things when the OS is free/libre.

<comment><USER7> > But in the past five years of using Ubuntu full-time I haven't had a single > issue with out of the box stuff working on any of a number of Lenovo > machines.

Yeah, my only experience is with Apple hardware. Obviously Apple doesn't work with Ubuntu to certify their hardware like Lenovo does ([https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/](https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/)), nor would I expect them to, but MacBooks are one of the most popular laptops so I sort of expected it to just work.

> It's hard to complain about having to tweak things when the OS is > free/libre.

I agree, and I'm definitely willing to tweak things here and there, but it's a non-starter for most people. I guess they can still buy Ubuntu certified hardware or whatever, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ah, a MBP complaint thread. Here are mine (Maxed out 15):

1\. New keyboard is _painful_ to type on. I use it 99% of the time with external trackpad / keyboard / monitors but that other 1% pisses me off.

2\. Battery life is mediocre. I don't keep track but I'm always surprised how quickly it goes when I'm unplugged. How about stop trying to make them thinner?

3\. The touchbar is f*cking horrible. It's a bad solution to a nonexistent problem. My fingers touch it by mistake often, finding ESC is awful, and worst of all, it sleeps! Give me back my ESC and media keys.

4\. A computer with two GPUs SHOULD NOT CRASH when plugging in external monitors. It should also wake from sleep properly in clamshell mode. A lot of the time I actually have to unplug one monitor to get either to turn on.

5\. Support for external retina monitors is terrible. I spent the better part of a day getting two Dells to be readable / look good.

6\. Xcode. A medium sized project compiling now hits all 8 cores so hard music will actually stop playing (I use Roon with a pretty heavy CPU load).

Unless things turn around, this will definitely be my last MBP, maybe leaving the dev ecosystem altogether.

<comment><USER10> Ugh Xcode. What an awfully heavy piece of software. Makes Eclipse feel lightweight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Louis Rossmann has examined these issues in detail on his electronics repair YouTube channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KuVvb9DTaU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KuVvb9DTaU)

(I disagree with the level of his vitriol against Apple, but I appreciate his deep teardowns and clear explanations. He just doesn't seem to understand how valuable the Apple software is vs. Windows to those who need or appreciate osx.)

<comment><USER12> It's not Apple's great software. Most of Apple's software is shit (as opposed to 3rd parties who write OSX apps).

It's the fact that it's mostly-decent hardware running a mostly-compliant POSIX OS that looks enough like GNU to make it usable (and compatible with web servers).

If someone, ffs anyone, made a decent, reliable Linux laptop, Apple would lose the dev market in a month.

<comment><USER13> This is called a Thinkpad.

I'm running Debian on a Thinkpad at work, this work great... except for a few points.

It's always a bit harder to integrate with the rest of the internal infrastructure: * AD integration in your favorite email client to have auto- completion on emails is a bit tedious * Exchange calendars are also annoying * Mounting (and, first, finding) the windows shares can a bit tedious * Password renewal is not integrated that well

It works, but it takes a few hours to figure out and configure.

And sometimes you are just stuck with Windows/OS X because of a specific piece of software (for example in my case, the video conferencing tool we are using). I never used a truly Linux only environment in professional context, I always had a Windows VM also.

<comment><USER14> > This is called a Thinkpad.

Indeed! The keyboard is amazing. The latest thinkpad x1 carbon is pure bliss, and Linux works out of the box for everything without any problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just in case anybody thinks this thing is overblown:

\- On my 2016 MBP the left alt key only registers about 30% of the time now. It seriously hampers my workflow.

\- On my SO's MBP (slightly newer make but same keyboard type) the "H" key stopped working, now it's registering double (she's happy: "At least I can type, I just need to use the backspace key.")

\- At work two people have the same type of machine and both have had keyboard issues.

In short, I know four people who own this machine (including myhself) and _all four_ have had issues.

Needless to say, this is a serious let-down and makes me think my next machine will be the first non-Apple in 15 years. Sad, really.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Board Of Directors has structured Tim Cook's pay so his pay is dependent on shipping specific amounts of iPhones. This would be a good plan if the goal was to boost the stock price for the few years that iPhone seems innovative, compared to anything that Samsung can come up with. This strategy did work for several years, look at 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016. But the same strategy amounts to a plan for allowing the company to collapse in the long-term. Where are the new products? Where are the new ideas? Some people point to the vast cash reserve that Apple has and they view this as a source of strength: "Apple must be doing something right to have that much cash on hand!" But a large pile of cash can also be read as a weakness; in particular, it can be seen as a lack of ideas. For comparison, consider the last time Apple had super fat margins and a product that was light-years ahead of the competition: the 1980s. Apple did not pile up cash at that time, because it was still investing in the future. Profits were reinvested in new products. The leadership could see where the future was going, and they chased after it aggressively. The difference between then and now is obvious. Apple has a huge amount of cash, but they have no ideas about how to invest it. Tim Cook is a good operations guy, he has some talent for optimizing the supply lines between China and the West. But he has no ideas. And nowadays, given the growing number of problems, I think we have to wonder if he fully deserves his reputation for being a good operations guy.

<comment><USER16> Why is this downvoted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > neither Apple nor its Geniuses would acknowledge that this was actually a > problem [...] Apple Geniuses installed, with its pristine keyboard and > maybe-different key switches. The answer is that after a couple of months, I > started to get temporarily dead keys for seemingly no reason. Again.

This is the exact same behaviour that drove me away from Apple 10 years ago: First deny existance of issue, second place blame on customer, third force customer into a generic replacement script of parts in accending order of price. Repeat until customer does not return out of frustration, accepts the broken product or is pushed out of warrantee.

I think this strategy worked for them on average when hardware design flaws were less frequent, it maintained their facade of absolute perfection at the cost of a few lucid customers... but it leaves a particularly sour taste for those whom it does affect, and I think they are fast approaching the threshold where it will backfire and destroy their image.

At this stage denying the existence of these types of problems is an insult to anyones intelligence, deep technical literacy is not required - Anyone who buys Apple products for more than beholding their aesthetic beauty can see the simple truth in this case: that it is broken.

</comment><comment><USER18> Concur. I liked the new keyboard when it worked. But after two week-long service appointments to deal with dead keys, I've given up on it. Those laptops are defective. I'm using a 2015 15" for now.

<comment><USER5> This is the hard part - it's supposedly a pro machine, yet they expect you to not work for a week while they repair the keyboard that fails by a single speck of dust.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This appears to have been aggressively flagged since it's suddenly dropped from the front page to the 6th page in a matter of minutes and has a better point to age ratio than most all above it...

Could anyone explain why? it looks highly suspicious to me. I understand that many are protective over Apple products but putting that asside, this an objective and valid warning to people looking to buy this otherwise popular computer.

<comment><USER5> Apple (among others) posts are automatically "downmodded". They require a much higher score to remain on the front page

<comment><USER17> Are you suggesting that Apple have automated bots attempt to censor hacker news? or is this more of an official thing where any posts regarding Apple are weighted down due to being considered too mainstream? or is it just a sensitive topic to many people?

I can easily imagine any but I don't know which is more likely.

<comment><USER5> No, it's a Hacker News 'feautre'. There are a number of topics/keywords that analysis found were being automatically weighted down for, I guess, generally being low quality and spammy, or rarely leading to useful discussions. I guess the intent is that the proper and good posts should "work harder" to push up through the weight.

I tried searching for some links to cooborate it, but I wasn't able to find anything quickly on my phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My plan is to wait until there's a new model out, and then take it in for AppleCare warranty repairs once a month until I hit their lemon limit and they give me a new machine.

The durability of this keyboard is a joke. I even bought one of those rubber keyboard condoms that makes the keyboard suck to type on and the H key still got dust under it somehow and started typing hh.

<comment><USER20> Apple doesn't seem to have an official lemon limit but they replaced the top- case 5 times on my 2016 and then gave me a 2017 with the same specs (slightly faster processor), and it's already crapped out already although this time they managed to replace the key and fix it.

<comment><USER5> You're right that there's no official "lemon limit", but hey do have a process for it - it's called 'CRU' (Customer Replacement Unit). It's unlikely that they'll offer it unprompted, but really after three repairs I find it difficult they would deny your request to have the laptop replaced.

It does require approval by a manager/"Lead Genius", but you can get there by being reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This isn't a "build quality" problem, it's a design quality problem. The quest for thinness has taken precedence over reliable functioning. If they added a millimeter or two they could put in a proper keyboard, but I fear they never will. We see a similar problem with the "trashcan" Mac Pro, where they backed themselves into a corner with a design that could not be upgraded. This is just bad engineering. Form follows function, not vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER22> As an owner of a small company who buys a few macs a year and uses one almost solely, I fully agree with this. I've had to replace my latest mbp computer two times now based on keyboard issues (the second time was power and keyboard issues). The keyboard is a disaster. If you have kids, forget about it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Was given one of these at work, the keyboard started failing within a week of taking it out of the box, some of my keys click much louder than others. My - key has been stuck twice while editing this comment, my ISO enter key has a dead zone and has failed to click once while typing this comment.

This machine isn't even 6 months old and it feels rickety and unreliable because of this design disaster of a keyboard, I wish I was over-reacting.

I will not be buying another Apple machine until this keyboard is reverted, I can't imagine dropping thousands of my own money and having such an unreliable janky input device.

</comment><comment><USER24> I can't recommend Apple anymore. With the recent trend of tech companies towards walled gardens, the things that made Apple's walled garden great are getting eroded by other companies. Their hardware really is subpar, they're spending all this money on design and virtually none on maintenance, because repair is a profit center for them rather than a cost center.

Apple software looks and feels great, and I used to believe their hardware was just as good, but it turns out that their manufacturing processes are really crappy. Remember the first unibody aluminum Mac? Wasn't a unibody. They glued two pieces of aluminum together instead.

Look, I get it, you have to deal with the manufacturers you have. But Apple's amassed a gigantic pile of cash, and they really should be using it to improve their hardware. But they haven't been. And now, there's never been a better time to switch platforms.

I was singing their praises 2 years ago. But the beauty was only skin-deep.

<comment><USER10> The first Unibody Mac was still a very nice machine, even if the display wasn't actually a unibody. The chassis felt like nothing before it, and it was so nicely machined with a super rigid keyboard. MagSafe with separate board. Extremely easy to access battery and HDD (with a really nicely designed little lever system). Unscrew the bottom cover and easy access to RAM. Rigidity of the chassis helped keep ports in good condition.

It's only real flaw IMO was the superglossy glass screen. Fragile and extremely annoying under fluorescent lights. Plenty of the machines lasted a long time despite the glue deteriorating from heat.

You're right about them spending no money on maintenance because repair is a profit centre for them. Rossman is right about Apple's durability issues, too - almost every generation of MacBook has had at least one significant design flaw (from the 8600GT to delaminating screen coatings).

They're only getting worse as they go over the top with proprietary connectors and interfaces, and iDevice levels of integration. I mean, Apple have reimplemented M.2 and NVMe in their stupid proprietary SSDs at least 4 times now. It's utterly ridiculous. If your custom blade SSD dies, which it inevitably will at some stage, your only options are Apple support or OWC (or gamble with second hand parts).

At least in the past they used to get the human stuff right (mostly). No Apple MacBook has ever shipped with a low quality LCD panel, for example. I've never heard significant coil whine from any Mac. I've never heard any Mac that has loud fans at idle (except under an error condition). I've never had a Mac that burnt me. I've never had a Mac with poor speakers. The trackpads have always been best-in-class. The keyboards have always been very good.

Until 2016.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This happened to my wife's macbook pro spacebar, $600 fix. It happens with mine every so often too, but fingers crossed it has 'fixed' itself each time.

<comment><USER26> $600! ouch.

Had a similar problem (faulty key) with my dell precision laptop. $30 new keyboard, few screws out, replace and back up and running.

The laptop is big, heavy and ugly. But I cannot have it out of action so every part being replaceable was a huge plus. In fact it is so big heavy and ugly that when I drop it on the floor, the floor dents :)

<comment><USER27> You can easy switch out any thinkpad keyboard, and they're not big or heavy. Ugly is in the eye of the beholder, that being said, it's a laptop, not a purse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The last great Macbook Pro was:

> MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

The new models are subpar in build quality imho and the touch bar is completely useless tech.

<comment><USER29> Yep, those are the holy grail machines at my shop. Everybody that has one is skipping their turn when they are due for an upgrade. Unfortunately I got hired too late and have a 2017 15-inch.

<comment><USER30> Why? They still sell that model: [https://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs-2015/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/)

<comment><USER29> Not our choice, IT only lets us choose the newer models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My spacebar locked up on me briefly a week after purchase - calling it dust would be BS. Doesn't bode well for the future.

<comment><USER23> Thing is, this is actually dust. It's just a single speck of dust is enough to mess up these mechanisms because they're so delicate.

This would be less of an issue if you could pop the keys off, but again the mechanism is so delicate popping a key off is enough to irreparably destroy the mechanism in most cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Even when brand-new, and working properly, these keyboards are a disaster. IT has been rolling upgrading people to them at work, and the number of external keyboards has skyrocketed.

So has the number of new lenovos.

</comment><comment><USER33> I can relate to what the article says, and yet find it hard to break away from the ecosystem given the tools I've come to use every day runs so well on the Mac. Muscle memory with shortcuts and all.

I've found a quick workaround to simply let the machine cool down. Eg. When running Docker previously and when the machine got heated, I found keyboard problems keep cropping up consistently. Letting it cool for about 20 minutes with a laptop cooler seemed to help.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm an iOS dev so have no other choice - but even if I did, I like pretty much every other aspect of the Mac (both this specific laptop, and the ecosystem) and am happy to give Apple my money, but expect a certain level of quality in return, which this generation of keyboards seems to lack.

<comment><USER33> Definitely agree with you. I feel underwhelmed with the 2017 MBPs (typing on one right now). And you're absolutely correct: if you're developing for certain app systems, you have no choice. I'm a Ruby developer and I remember years ago people switched to Mac simply so they could use Textmate. Some tools just work better on the system (for better or for worse).

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually quite like the laptop otherwise - I walk to and from work with it every day so the reduced weight and size is great - although the touchbar is meh and the USB-C/dongle situation is still a pain!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have one of these provided by my employer - spacebar broke within a couple of months.

Also, I kid you not, the 'H' key was not functioning on one in the Regent Street Apple store I was using while waiting for an iPhone battery replacement.

Essentially, you have to avoid getting any detritus on the keyboard of any kind. I no longer eat any snacks or sandwiches at the computer, which is probably a good thing anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't Apple have a ton of in-house engineers that use their hardware every day and therefore must have these problems as well? Shouldn't they fix them if only to keep their engineers from the pain?

<comment><USER35> Presumably they attribute any failures in typing to the chronic headaches they have from walking into Apple's invisible walls too often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Fits with my experience.

Aside from hating the feel of the new keyboard in my 6 months ownership of the new Macbook Pro it went back for warranty keyboard repair twice.

I sold it and bought a second hand 2015

</comment><comment><USER37> Damn, my Macbook Air 2013 logic board just gave out, and was considering the upgrade to Macbook Pro 2017 as logic board is running at £450 replacement cost.

After reading other's thoughts here, I think I have to avoid Macbook Pro for now, I hope they change this in the next release.

Annoying as I need a machine with Xcode.

<comment><USER24> I was considering getting a Mac Mini for Xcode and developing remotely on it using my Linux desktop. I figure I can just edit the code on the desktop and push it to the Mac when I need to build. If I get a good workflow going I'll share it.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, I was thinking of similar, would be good to see how it works out for you. There's obviously the command line tools for building, but I would miss the integration of Xcode as an IDE for iOS storyboards etc.

Otherwise I've been looking at using remote servers from macincloud.com / xcodeclub.com, but haven't tried that yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I use a keyboard cover and it helps reduce this issue. When you do get a crumb under a key and it stops working, the solution is to keep hitting the key hard until you dislodge/break the crumb. Low tech, but it works.

<comment><USER20> This will eventually break the tiny legs in the keycaps rendering your key permanently inoperatable.

<comment><USER38> I've only done this about twice in the lifetime of the keyboard. I'm not doing it every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Been using a 2010 15" Macbook Pro since i found it in the dumpster in 2014 (yup...), it was my first ever time owning a macbook and using OSX (outside of some time on friends computers, etc) and i love that thing. I used linux before but wasn't so hot on the grueling labor of repairing simple stuff, and so i was stuck on windows coming from a windows-fanboy past - now i am a huge OSX fan for its combination of ease of use and POSIX compliance; but i refuse to buy any new macbook pro.

I want my magsafe charger, i want my displayport and ethernet port, i want my CD drive, i want to be able to replace the battery myself (done it twice), and to swap hard drives (done it four times) and RAM (once) easily, I want physical keys for escape and media buttons.

I have gone so far as to personally take out the motherboard and replace a single tanatalum capacitor with an aluminum-polymer capacitor (requiring me to scrape off some of the soldermask off so i could solder to the ground plane easier since the Al-Poly cap is much larger) because the tantalum one was causing GPU kernel panic crashes. (Big thanks to Louie Rossman for the tutorial video!)

I've brought this thing back from the brink of death many times and i will continue to do so until Apple cleans up their act and makes a true developers laptop again.

<comment><USER40> Funny I have an identical situation with my 17" 2006 MBP which has been repaired, and upgraded countless time. It has passed to many family members but it's back with me and I love it everytime I use it. Unfortunately, High Sierra doesn't support it so I don't know what it's future holds. My MBP 2016 is a disappointment; TB 3 is cool but I hate the touchbar and keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> MacBook Pro from late 2013 is just as difficult to repair, only cheaper because they don't have touch bar. I can't replace the keys at home (expensive parts, so many things can go wrong), so it's waiting for pickup to go to a company to stay there.

I'll probably sell it and replace with another Lenovo, which is one of my machines since 2011 and it's only two philips screws away to receive maintenance and upgrades.

<comment><USER23> > MacBook Pro from late 2013 is just as difficult to repair, only cheaper > because they don't have touch bar

Nope not true at all, the 2013 has a user serviceable keyboard, removing a keycap wont destroy the mechanism like it does on the USB-C MBP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This tells me theres a worse problem at Apple: Groupthink.

No one was bold enough to call BS on this poorly designed keyboard. Everyone just went along with it.

</comment><comment><USER43> And the worst part about it is that it's incredibly hard to replace the keyboard on the MBP. For most other laptops it's just a screw or two, a few plastic clips, and a ribbon cable to replace it. They're also super cheap for just about every manufacturer out there other than Apple and you can get a new keyboard delivery included for ~$15-$25. For the MBP you pretty much need to get the whole top case as one assembly because instead of just a few clips Apple rivets the keyboard to the case! And it's not just a couple of rivets either, try a couple dozen.

Absolutely insane how not only does Apple make the keyboard just about impossible to replace, but they also make a keyboard that's simultaneously much much more failure prone than any other keyboard that I know of. Here's a great video of a madman actually replacing the keyboard instead of just replacing the whole assembly.

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

</comment><comment><USER44> I hope that issues like this further open a two-way channel of communication apple has with "pro"-oriented users. For most of us, computers are tools, which must meet our connectivity and performance needs (encompassing raw compute power and hardware endurance requirements). To continue serving this market well and staying relevant to professionals and power users, Apple needs to take into account our needs and use cases when designing and releasing future products, which was quite evidently an afterthought for the 2016 MacBook models.

If apple tomorrow released an updated 2015 rMBP with a Coffee Lake or Ryzen2 CPU, an optional dGPU, 2 (or better yet 3) full-sized USB type A ports, and (only in my dreams) a full-sized number pad, I would more strongly consider a purchase than migrating back to the PC world for my main PC.

I am hopeful Apple recognizes their shortcomings, learns from them and produces more innovative and powerful hardware that meets the needs of the professional and power-user groups.

</comment><comment><USER45> I just switched back to Thinkpad X1 w/ Windows. With Linux Subsystem for Windows, it's been roughly working out. though I am currently maintaining two copies of things - one for Linux and one for Windows for lots of tooling. Not sure how to optimize here. Only been a few days. Re-learning keyboard shortcuts.

Only pain: not having iMessage on laptop.

</comment><comment><USER46> I am a Apple supporter and shareholder, but will admit that I loathe the butterfly keyboard on my MPB with Touchbar. The amount of typos I make (mostly missed key strokes) rivals my iPhone which is impressive. I have also experienced the "dead" key issue when dust or hair get's under a key.

</comment><comment><USER47> The technological anorexia plaguing Apple is progressing. Disorientation, lethargy, inability to complete simple tasks such as arithmetic, and fragility are all pathological symptoms. Apple employee injuries sustained by walking into walls, slowdowns caused by lack of energy reserves, irreversible damage inflicted by the lightest touch, degradation of capabilities once taken for granted, such as rapidly adding 1+1+1+1, coupled with staunch denials that any problem exists - these are not just warning signs. They are symptoms immediately recognizable to any trained practitioner denoting the sorry fact that, without intervention, Apple will not be getting better. No recovery may be reasonably expected.

</comment><comment><USER48> Last May I bought a 2015 Macbook Pro 13" on sale for $1100 from Best Buy. Humorously it had a higher user review score on their website than the 2016 model (4.6/5 vs 4.5/5) and was ~$1300 cheaper.

From everything I've heard, I lucked out on that one!

</comment><comment><USER49> All you need to know about Apple Engineering by Louis Rossmann [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8)

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm honestly thinking of switching to Thinkpad X1 Carbon now, but I HATE windows. And from what I've heard, Linux doesn't bode well with it. Anybody here Linux running on X1 Carbon?

<comment><USER51> I am, it's awesome with Fedora 28. There a couple of things to twiddle, mainly regarding sleep, but after that it's flawless. I can detail it a bit more if you like once I'm not on a phone.

<comment><USER50> Would love to hear it. I'm mainly concerned about the trackpad, wifi performance and power consumption.

<comment><USER51> Apologies for the delay:

Power consumption - pretty much the same as Windows. I did enable tlp and put `powertop --auto-tune` in the startup.

Trackpad is fine but it suffers from the same issue my XPS 13 (2016) has under Linux - occasionally tap-to-click stops working. A couple of clicks and it comes back but it is annoying.

Wifi performance is awesome, i'll max out my 300mbit internet on it, it's a league above the 'killer wifi' that Dell persist with.

The biggest issue and one that's apparently shared with the new XPS models is that Microsoft decreed their 'connected standby' sleep modes can't coincide with s3 (normal sleep). As Linux doesn't seem to support the new mode you have to patch the initrd line to insert a new ACPI table. It's a pain in the arse but you only need to run it once on each BIOS update. It's detailed here [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_\(Gen_6\)#S0i3_support)

Once that's done Fedora 28 is awesome on this, and the keyboard is leagues above the XPS or the latest Macbooks. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I recently had one of the new Macbook Pros for work and experienced exactly what the author describes. It happened regularly enough that is was a real issue. I finally got rid of it.

The can of air never resolved the issue either. I had to tap the side of the laptop and press down on the keys.

I honestly wouldn't recommend someone buy one either. They took forever to refresh the MBP and that fact that they released something after all that time with this issue is a joke. I won't be looking at Apple again for my hardware needs.

</comment><comment><USER53> I haven't had any issues with the 2016 tb version. But then that's only 1 data point! Actually it's the best Mac I've owned by far. The keyboard has been a big improvement as has the trackpad, screen, speakers, build quality and switch to USB c, reduced weight and size, etc. I upgraded from the redesigned 2012 which had a lot of glitches. New designs always take a while to work out all of the glitches. But generally I don't see a lot of threads on bad keyboards. So I suspect this is fairly isolated.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm not a huge fan of the keyboard on my late 2016 MBP 15" myself (I would prefer the previous version, the buttons don't have the nice "clicky" sound anymore) but it has been rock solid ever since I got the laptop (November 2016) and has been in constant use since then (8+ hours every day).

</comment><comment><USER55> I have my MacBook Pro on a stand then use a bluetooth keyboard and external monitor. Rarely do I use the actual keyboard.

If Apple created something similar to a Mac mini with a laptop battery I would buy it immediately. I know it wouldn't work for everyone, but it would suit my needs.

<comment><USER19> What do you need the battery for? No power at your desk, or just something a basic UPS could handle?

<comment><USER55> You're absolutely right, a simple UPS would be sufficient for my needs. I'm beginning to wonder if that is all I'm missing from my setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Form exceeded function. This isn't much different from stories of Apple power adapters with strain relief that always broke because the designers/marketers prohibited the engineers from making a proper strain relief.

</comment><comment><USER30> Just an FYI, Apple still sells the older 2015 model: [https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/](https://www.apple.com/macbook- pro/specs-2015/)

<comment><USER44> I hope they keep doing so until a newer model with a descent keyboard comes out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I moved on to an HP Spectre and Windows 10 from my 2009 MBP...I'm mostly happy with it, but VERY SAD that the MBP era seems to have ended rather than getting better and better. It's a damn shame.

</comment><comment><USER58> I use a 2012 MBP that's still going strong. The newer models with irreplaceable (at least by us mere mortals) hard drives, batteries and memory, and permanently pushed me away from buying a Mac again.

</comment><comment><USER59> Any suggestions for good non-Windows laptops in the $1000 price range? I'm seriously considering just buying a refurbished MacBook Pro from 2013 at this point.

<comment><USER60> I think the dell XPS 13/15 or precision 5510 line is the successor to the MacBook Pro. I recently picked up an XPS 13 and installed Linux. I really prefer it to the MacBook Pro 2016 I have at work. The only thing missing is iMessage, which unfortunately is why I haven't gone full Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> So far I haven't had any problems with mine, purchased 4 months ago... _knocks on wood_

</comment><comment><USER62> Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnot sure what you're talking about. It's best keyboard ever.

/sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER63> What is up with Apple lately. The Homepod is a total train wreck. No mic mute button. No input jack so can not use as a speaker. No stereo. Siri still terrible.

</comment><comment><USER64> I had an employee provided macbook air which had constant issues with driving an external display. (I think it was firmware problems). When the keyboard broke after 10 months, I was pretty happy to have a solid reason for a replacement.

New macbooks are junk.

</comment><comment><USER65> > _This old MacBook Pro is still fine_

Then why did you buy a new one?!? Excess consumerism drives the tech ahead, sure, but I can only have so much sympathy for your buyer's remorse.

The problem must be environmental or physiological (he presses the keys harder than average, or something) because keyboard malfunction isn't some recall- level dysfunction as he wants to make it out to be.

That said, the new keyboard is indeed a travesty.

</comment><comment><USER66> Keyboard working here without issue. Noticed a couple issues earlier on, but discovered was from a couple crumbs. If there were a major issue affecting nearly everyone there would have been a recall or constantly news cycle about it. So I don't think the answer is for others to not buy a MBP because 'you' and some others are experiencing issues. Instead, I'd recommend you and others affected bring it into get fixed.

That being said, I'm sure the keyboards will continue to improve with each generation, albeit with compromises such as to get thinner they change the key styling and eventually will be touch only with haptic feedback (which I'm not excited for) but will be inevitable.

<comment><USER67> I think you need to reconsider the things you're saying. "A couple crumbs" rendering a key useless is a problem, not something to hand-wave. And yes, the issue is widespread enough that I've read several blog articles, stories, and comments on several websites about how terrible the keyboard is. This isn't some cheap $20 keyboard part that is expected to fail; this is Apple hardware, frequently claimed to be the best in the business.

Why "you" in scare quotes? Do you think people are lying about their problems with the keyboard? People don't want to bring in their workhorse machines (MacBook _Pro_ ) for repair because of a couple of crumbs. They don't want to be faced with repairs into the hundreds of dollars. They expect the newer MacBook Pros to be as reliable as the old ones, and this isn't happening.

Why are you so sure the keyboards will "continue to improve" with each generation? They _haven 't_. The current trend is that they're getting _worse_. Have you tried typing on a hard, flat surface for a lengthy period of time? It _hurts_. Fingers were not designed to bang against unyielding surfaces for hours on end.</comment></comment>


Building Accurate Visual Diffs - <AUTHOR> https://blog.spotbot.qa/building-accurate-visual-diffs-6b41b09973a6 <comment><USER2> This is seriously awesome!! I was just chatting with a co-worker today on PhantomCSS and how I felt visual diffing could possibly be replaced with diffing the actual dom tree. Does anyone know of an open source project working on this? If not, I'd love to start one (although I'm sure it would be incredibly difficult)

</comment><comment><USER3> Too bad they didn't open source this implementation, but they did link a bunch of papers that inspired it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will probably open source it in the future. It's a bit hacked together right now, and it depends on code running in different places so it's not easy to deploy.

Those problems are surmountable though, so it's something we'll look at in the coming months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand the pricing plan - limiting on pages tested seems like a bad way to get customers. I would plan on testing quite a few pages per site and testing those after each commit.</comment>


Artmarq: Bloomberg for art business in making - <AUTHOR> https://www.artmarq.com <comment><AUTHOR> Artmarq to bring data-driven decision making to the $57 Billion a year art industry. It is made to track, analyse and broadcast every single deal in Art Business. Artmarq App can help users navigate the complex art market otherwise dubbed as 'Exclusive', 'Opaque' and 'Intimidating' at a competitive price and on Mobile.</comment>


Cache me if you can: distributed caching on ACM - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3136953 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a detailed overview of Edgemesh as a follow-up to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15132811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15132811)</comment>


Using Images for Content - <AUTHOR> http://www.yodspica.co.uk/2012/01/pictures-worth-1000-links-how-to-find.html#.TyViuupEmq4.hackernews <comment><USER2> Blogspam --- actual link is [http://www.blueglass.com/blog/a-pictures- worth-1000-link-how...](http://www.blueglass.com/blog/a-pictures- worth-1000-link-how-to-find-and-cite-images-for-content/)</comment>


Noca - Payments Simplified - <AUTHOR> http://www.noca.com/rates <comment><USER2> god damnit no. the issue is NOT rates, the issue is NOT security, the issue is NOT how "nice" the company is, the issue IS international support.

Paypal are "winning" and will forever "win" because they support _EVERYONE_. Finding a person who can't use Paypal (who is over the age of 18 and isn't a previously terminated customer) is very hard because it supports (almost) _EVERYONE_ yet these "new" "paypal killers" don't and they won't gain any traction because of this.

and even then there are still bigger issues, but the biggest issue is international support.

<comment><USER3> @citricsquid

International support will come over time. However Noca is more like a better alternative to Authorize.net. Paypal in shopping cart takes the Consumer away from Merchant site and requires the Consumer to have an account i.e. sign-up. Even with Paypal's high userbase only 1 out of 3 or 4 users in the US have an active Paypal account. Not a good idea to potentially loose majority of Payors/Buyers simply 'cause they don't have Paypal accounts

<comment><USER4> PayPal does not require an account. Simply click the "Pay as guest" link and it presents a standard billing form.

Further, when you're a small site, I'd think it's preferable to redirect your customers to Paypal's site when they enter their billing information as it gives them confidence that it's secure. As a user myself, I would think twice before typing my CC info into a small obscure website, as I have no idea what kind of security measures they have in place (https is only one piece of the puzzle).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > For Secure Check(tm), the merchant needs to have a business checking account > in a bank in the United States. And consumers can only pay with a checking > or savings bank account with a bank in the United States. Currently for > VISA/Mastercard Consumers can pay with Visa/Mastercard issued by a bank in > United States. We are however opening up to accepting International > cards/Checks soon.

So basically, no, this isn't a real competitor to PayPal at all.

<comment><USER3> When Paypal launched is did not do "foreign" accounts. We're still in early stage.

But more importantly Noca is more of an alternative to Authorize.net than Paypal (the "Paypal competitor headline came from Techcrunch - not from Noca )

<comment><USER6> > Paypal (the "Paypal competitor headline came from Techcrunch - not from Noca > )

So then why is Paypal part of the side-by-side comparison in the linked page?

<comment><USER3> Comparison is with 4 different providers and comparing just the rates, not the user experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know PJ, who runs Noca. He's been working on it for several years (it used to be called Paybl). Unfortunately it suffers from the same problems as every other payment system in California that is regulated by the Money Transmission Act, which is to say it's basically illegal as of July 1. Then again, maybe he's changed the business model in some way I'm not aware of.

See...

[http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/In-Fifty-Days- Payments-...](http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/In-Fifty-Days-Payments- Innovation-Will-Stop-In-Silicon-Valley)

[http://www.thinkcomputer.com/corporate/whitepapers/heldhosta...](http://www.thinkcomputer.com/corporate/whitepapers/heldhostage.pdf)

This isn't the first time I've seen a "finally, a real PayPal competitor!" post on Hacker News. I don't think people get it. There isn't going to be one any time soon. PayPal raised a hundred million dollars. It has licenses in 45-ish states and Washington, D.C. that cost about ten million dollars alone. It supports multiple currencies. The dot com boom (and the comparative lack of regulation at the time) is just about the only thing that allowed PayPal to exist. Venture capitalists (and banks) know better now, and they're not enthusiastic about investing in red tape just so Jamie Dimon and friends can make more of it.

<comment><USER3> @Aaron (and others who want to change the current payments landscape):

Noca is more of competitor to Authorize.net than it is to Paypal.

"Paypal competitor" headline was written by Techcrunch - not by Noca. As anyone who has been "Techcrunch'ed" knows they don't get to say what they want but instead what Techcrunch wants to about them (No complaints here - I was aware of this when I talked to Techcrunch)

Unfortunately I have little control on how to steer information about my company once the "buzz" has been created.

I will regardless continue to do what I believe in i.e. Build a payment system that doesn't suck! I have been doing it for a while and the opportunity simply keeps getting bigger.

Noca did start with Check payments, however we've pivoted to doing Credit Cards (the reason/explanation is long, maybe I'll post it sometime )

About the Money Transfer licenses - it's not required for Credit Card transactions. Also for "Check" transactions there are limitations and exclusions. If we need to operate without restrictions we will need Money Transfer License, but can operate within restrictions

<comment><USER8> Just a tip - bloggers will fill in parts of the narrative that you haven't fed them. Readers love comparisons - 'heroku for x' , etc. and if you don't give them one, they will create one for you

tech savvy ppl may roll their eyes at the comparison headlines and call them out for being lazy - but since readers spend seconds scanning headlines you need something that can be grokked by non-tech users quickly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a useful payment offering. However, I'd still offer Google Checkout, Paypal, and Amazon to customers in most contexts, since they're more willing to do a transaction at all -- even if you pay a higher rate, it's better to have the transaction happen. Maybe offer this in addition, but I always feel better when I see multiple payment options.

Stripe ([http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/28/stealth-payment-startup- str...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/28/stealth-payment-startup-stripe- paypal/)) is a great option, when they launch.

Square is 2.75% and no fees for card present; 3.5% and $0.15 for card not present.

ACH (checks) can be $0.25-0.50 flat-rate.

<comment><USER10> Offering multiple payment options is just fine. Specifically with the "equal preference rule" being rescinded a Merchant can now offer incentives for a specific payment system.

Google Checkout, Paypal and Amazon payments all require the Consumer to sign- up or already have an account with these services. While a number of Users already have an account with Paypal, Google checkout the majority don't. e.g. in case of Paypal (estimates vary ) but only 1 out of 4 online users in the US has a Paypal account. Would you as a Merchant be willing to loose upto 75% of your users ?

As far Stripe: Not live yet but hopefully will be good

Square: is irrelavant since its for Card Present space primarily. Noca is for the CNP Card Not Present space

ACH for $0.25-$0.50 has been around for decades. Its hasn't taken off because nobody has their routing number and account number handy. Take a look at Noca's check offering, it obviated the need to repeatedly input Routing number and Account number. Basically making ACH easier for the Consumer and hence way different than traditional ACH.

<comment><USER11> Got a link about the "equal preference rule" being rescinded? Sounds interesting and I hadn't heard of it. Googling "equal preference rule credit cards" didn't help me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At a 3.49% credit card rate, I'm not sure how much of a real competitor it is. No fixed fee helps for smaller sized transactions though.

<comment><USER3> Notice the rate for Checks its 1.49% Less than half of Paypal's rate. Paypal is able to route approximately 50% of the users to pay using bank accounts which costs almost zero yet they charge the Merchant the same. With Noca the Merchant saves directly when the Consumer pays using Checks so the average rate is much lower than 3.49% (Plus No Other Charges Apply )

(PS: As I posted/mentioned in this thread, Noca is more of an alternative to Authorize.net than Paypal)

<comment><USER13> Is it common that people are paying for online things with checks? (honest question, nothing I do is worth charging anyone for, so I don't know).

<comment><USER14> I can tell you (from looking at real world stats) that only 1% of people use eCheck when paying through PayPal.

So it's kind of irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The first paragraph of the "About" page is garbled - doesn't inspire confidence, which is paramount for services like this.

</comment><comment><USER16> What about WePay!? 3.5% flat fee. Supports international payments. Dead simple API. No merchant account required! Plus, it's only 50¢ for e-checks vs Noca's 1.49%. <https://www.wepay.com>

<comment><USER17> Looks good, but WePay lacks a number of features found in PayPal, such as recurring payments (aka subscriptions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks much improved since the last time I looked at it. Last time, it looked awesome except that customers had to provide bank account information to pay with it, which will instantly drive away a huge number of customers. Now it looks like they accept credit cards, too, which makes it a viable contender.

In particular, they now have everything they need for the "lightweight payment system market". They still can't address the surprisingly large "I want to pay but I don't have any kind of credit card at all" market, though.

<comment><USER3> @JoshTriplett

About the "I want to pay but I don't have any kind of credit card at all" - that's where Noca's "Check" system comes in. It allows payments using bank account without having to type in the cumbersome Routing # and Account #

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A flat 3.49% (not even including the 20% discount at volume) for credit cards is substantially better than PayPal and Amazon for micro-transactions.

Is there some kind of hidden fee or limitation I'm missing?

<comment><USER3> There is no other fee. (NOCA = No Other Fees Apply). There is a minimum transaction size, currently at $2.00 i.e. Noca will not accept transactions less than $2.00

<comment><USER19> It was indeed too good to be true. I think you guys should mention that on the site.

It's not really fair to compare yourself to Amazon's micro transaction fees but not actually accept micro-payments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm waiting for someone to disrupt the "Card Present" side of the industry. I work for a large Point of Sale software provider and the choices and for Payment Gateways are awful. We need things like Noca and Braintree for transactions in the real-world. Our NextGen product is going to be HTML5 web- based client, but we can't find good Payment Gateway partners with a Restful API. If your out there and and working on this, please let me know. Our customers process billions in transactions.

<comment><USER21> Watch "square"; they're interesting.

<comment><USER20> They're an interesting company, but not for these reasons. If someone built a payment gateway in the same fashion of Noca and Braintree, but for "Card Present" transactions, it could make it easy for many independent developers to build their own "Square". That's what's missing in the "Card Present" space.

btw....Square uses Authorize.net

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pretty spammy submission. The previous title was "Real competitor to PayPal is here - Noca.com" and it links to a "Fees" page that provides little support (for starters, PayPal is generally less expensive).

The new title "Noca - Payments Simplified" is not much better considering the link is still to the fees page and Noca does not seem simple at all (ex: the signup page is painful).

Finally, the service doesn't appear to be new.

<comment><USER3> @pbreit

Compare it with Authorize.net not Paypal (as I have said in my earlier posts, the "Paypal competitor headline was written by Techcrunch - not Noca )

It will take you a month or so on an average to setup an account with Authorize.net (if you are a small entity ). The signup form that we have at Noca will give you virtually instant sign-up

Plus did I tell you our API doesn't suck. (It's not perfect yet, we are working out some kinks but basically accepting payments should be simple and easy for any entity launching on the web - something that incumbents don't do )

<comment><USER22> Authorize.Net is a gateway which seems quite different from Noca. Noca looks more like ProPay, 2Checkout and Stripe.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. Noca's look and feel is indeed different

<comment><USER22> There's a pretty big difference between a gateway and pseudo-merchant account provider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This looks like a good service, but I still really haven't found anything that is even close to as easy and simple as Stripe.

<comment><USER24> I am in Australia so have to watch from afar, but I am really keen to see exactly how Stripe operates.

As far as I can work out (I obviously don't have a login) part of what will make them brilliant is they enable you to accept payments in minutes, I.e don't require you to hold a merchant account / create one for you.

Is this correct? Keen to know more as PayPal are really the only other service that do this and their increasingly difficult fraud protection barriers must be a result of the complexity of managing such a service.

<comment><USER23> Sorry about the late reply, but yeah, that's entirely correct. It's pretty sweet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Competition is always welcomed in this market. Don't know how much users are going to use checks instead of a card, and the example only seems good in prices comparing agains authorize and paypal for small transactions, not big ones.

</comment><comment><USER26> I keep on hearing Foo: Payments Simplified, and yet payments are still complex. Is it perhaps that a lot of what people consider accidental complexity in payments is necessary complexity?

</comment><comment><USER27> @pjg: Do you accept customers having a TPPA (Third Party Payment Aggregation) business model? What are the requirements in order to be accepted as customer?

<comment><USER3> @gst

We _may_. I hate to use the phrase "it depends" but unless we know more I cannot give you a conclusive answer. If the TPPA is doing "low risk" transactions e.g. utility billing with a service charge lets say, it should be ok. Higher risk items will be tougher. Send an email to "firstname.lastname@example.com"

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> About -> press leads to a 404.

The video player popup moves with mouse on Firefox 6.

Is there a direct link to the demo video? I couldn't get it to play on the site.

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone used this?

</comment><comment><USER30> impt question: international customers?

<comment><USER31> i add another: international merchants?

<comment><USER32> In the FAQ is says 'Is this legal is all 50 states' so I'm guessing its USA only.

They need to add this answer to the FAQ

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> THIS NOT SUPPORT MECHRANTS OUTSIDE UNITED STATES ;-( like amazon and authorize.net

PayPal Win;-)

</comment><comment><USER34> What about Amazon Payments? Is that a good Paypal alternative?

<comment><USER35> 2.9% + $0.30 for transactions above $10

So it's exactly the same costs.

<comment><USER18> <https://www.xkcd.com/918/> seems to apply perfectly to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yay !! for micro payments.

3.49 is too much for large transactions.

<comment><USER37> >minimum transaction size is $2.00

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> PayPal does a number of things (stored value system, aggregation, virtual terminal, etc). I'm not sure how Noca is a competitor at all. Also, this page has a number of inaccuracies. For example, chargebacks don't exist for checks, Authorize.net as a standalone doesn't enable payments at all (it is a gateway, you also need a merchant account, which you could get cheaper than at Noca), etc. It does NOT take months to sign up with Authorize.net, you can get setup in an hour.

Noca is relevant if it is somehow 3.49% for all transactions though... It would make it a cheap option for transactions <$10 or so.

<comment><USER3> @pitdesi

I do need to compliment you on deciphering Noca's service - it is more an Alternative to Authorize.net than Paypal (Thank you for pointing it out ). You are correct, Authorize.net is not a gateway but an aggregator (most people confuse them for a gateway) and yes Noca will will provide a similar service much better

About Chargebacks: They _do_ exist for Checks. They're just not called "Chargebacks" instead they are called ACH returns, specifically return code R10 (google "ACH return code R10" )

Its just that ACH i.e. Check payments are not pervasive online hence knowledge about Chargebacks or the ability of the individual Payor i.e. Consumer to initiate a chargeback is generally not known. Unlike Credit Cards, Checks do not have an "800" number printed on the back that the Consumer can call to dispute a payment. However the rules set by the Federal government i.e. the Fed are similar/identical (google "Reg E" or FED regulation 12 CFR 205 specifically 205.6 if you really want to read the rule ). So the issue is more of Consumer interface/UX/UI and Consumer education - something that can and needs to be solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can I make deposits to a client account using this? Instead of debiting from the accounts of my users I want to deposit in them (presumably using their account and routing numbers.

<comment><USER3> Not yet. But our Marketplace solution should be able to provide you with you are looking for. Send an email to "email@example.com"

<comment><USER39> Thanks! I will.</comment></comment></comment>


Rectangle after Rectangle (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/65/powell.php <comment><USER2> Loved this essay. I would highly recommend this lecture for anyone who wants to go further: [https://vimeo.com/81483477](https://vimeo.com/81483477)</comment>


Git Reset Demystified  - <AUTHOR> http://progit.org/2011/07/11/reset.html

<comment><USER2> Everytime I see an article like this, of this length, all to explain a single git command, I get the feeling that git (and all other decent SCM tools at that) are way too complex. It's well written and well illustrated, but I feel like I shouldn't have to read that much just to learn a basic feature of a tool that's supposed to exist to help me. Is this just me?

Of course, the feeling is strengthened by the fact that I still don't completely grok git, but shouldn't a tool that's there to help me be easier to grok? I understood dropbox in 1 minute. I learnt TDD in 3 hours. Why should (distributed) version control be so much more difficult?

I don't know how, just wondering if I'm the only guy who feels like this.

<comment><USER3> Git is not wrong by itself, there's just an impedance mismatch between it's model and a usable interface model. For most purposes, the index should completely hidden.

<comment><USER4> I would respectfully allow that anyone who can't comprehend what the index is for with the aid of two paragraphs and a diagram should be looking for an alternate career. The index is important. It's one of the great things about Git; without it, you wouldn't be able to create commits from a subset of the difference between your working directory and HEAD. It also has a confusing name, but here we are.

<comment><USER2> > It's one of the great things about Git; without it, you wouldn't be able to > create commits from a subset of the difference between your working > directory and HEAD.

I never understood that. I can do this just fine even with TortoiseSVN. Just click "commit" and select the files you want to include in this commit. I don't see how I need to keep yet another data structure / piece of "state" in the back of my head for that. I definitely don't see why I have to look for an alternate career because of that.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> The benefit that the index gets you in such a situation is that sometimes you are working on two unrelated changes at the same time, but they both touch the same file. Git (using the -p flag to the add command) lets you interactively select portions of a file to add to the index.

The interface is pretty simple: it just shows you each small piece of diff to the files you are adding, and you say whether you want to include that bit of diff in the index or leave it in the working directory. Alternately, it can drop you into a view of the diff in the editor, and you can add or modify diff lines as you please.

<comment><USER6> Honestly though, if you're doing that you should be using two different branches. Which is another thing git is wonderful for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Scott, thank you so much for all your work on Git tutorials, blog posts, screencasts and books... I'm sure you know this already but you're a great teacher!

<comment><USER8> I second that. Pure excellence at <http://progit.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's ironic that this is on the front page at the same time as Linus's proposal to change to commit object format, in which he claims that the lack of generation numbers is Git's "only real design flaw" [1]. Okay, maybe he's only talking about the plumbing, but if it needs long guides like this to understand one command, I think maybe that would constitute a design flaw.

I like Git, I really do. This article helped me like it more. There has to be a way to get the benefit of that object model without all the grief at the interface.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2765844>

</comment><comment><USER10> Good overview, for beginners as well as regular users.

In particular _git checkout <file>_ which is (a) not obvious (before stumbling upon it, I was trying to find it in git-reset documentation), and (b) looks pretty innocent (as the _git checkout branch_ is quite safe to do if you've got staged changes.)

</comment><comment><USER11> git is an extremely powerful tool - but it's interface is far from being smooth - maybe it will come with time. For example the usual pattern of a copy command is:

copy source destination

The pattern of git push command

push destination source:destination

<comment><USER12> 1\. There is no built-in copy command in git.

2\. What is confusing about "git push <remoterepository> <localbranch>:<remotebranch>"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Git is like that "one data structure with a hundred functions operating on it, instead of ten functions operating on ten data structures".

<comment><USER14> And that "one data structure" is a directed acyclic graph of objects, where an object is one of four kinds:

\- blob (like a file)

\- tree (referencing trees and/or blobs, like a directory)

\- commit (referencing one tree and other commits)

\- tag (referencing a commit)</comment></comment>


PureDarwin - Community project to make Darwin more usable - <AUTHOR> http://www.puredarwin.org/

<comment><USER2> No blog updates since Dec 2012, no forum posts since April...

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/puredarwin](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/puredarwin)

<comment><USER3> Obviously nobody is interessted. Not because the system is bad, because Apple user want to use Apple and not an Open Source alternative.

It make more sense to create a good emulator, so you can use OpenSource System (like Debian, BSD,...) and native Mac OS Software.

<comment><USER4> I would be thrilled to have a solid Darwin that runs on commodity hardware so the servers could run the same code as the clients. The last I looked at actually running Darwin it looked like there was no effort from Apple to maintain a runnable Darwin. The lowest risk option was writing the code twice, a waste of resources we could have done without.

<comment><USER5> Which servers and which software? I'm curious. Most of the stuff in that realm is platform independent, anyway.

<comment><USER4> I want to run my own daemons on the server. But I want them to be written in Objective-C and use the Foundation libraries. This is all part of Apple's Darwin released code, it just doesn't run on anything.

I want to have access to the instant scalability of the various VPS and dedicated box providers, but with Apple ecosystem code.

Apple abandoned the datacenter hardware market long ago, unfortunately, they took the datacenter deployment options with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand the motivation for this project. OpenDarwin (yes, not PureDarwin) was motivated by putting Darwin on Intel, and when Apple moved to Intel processors, it pretty much killed OpenDarwin's steam. I get that people have their pet projects and do things "because they can," but attempting to drum up support for your project from the community requires that you explain to people why they should care.

<comment><USER7> Some people are interested in learning how things work. In that case the main page's description is enough to get them going.

I don't think that every project needs to be treated like a commercial product. This kind of project usually doesn't have a direct value to consumers but prepares the ground for other projects. It can help better understand the OS and help jailbreak IOS. Or provide drivers to install OSX on a PC or a VM and then allow cross-OS browser testing. Or maybe help a wine-like project for OSX apps. Who knows but without that project all these might not happen because the barrier to entry might be too high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> And this is better than Debian, Ubuntu, Mint etc. because -- what?

<comment><USER9> It's usefulness is source level compatibility with Mac OS. It's a tool for understanding Mac OS, testing Mac components in a detached fashion, redistributing Mac software without proprietary baggage or running a pseudo Mac environment on commodity server hardware.

Even as a standalone OS, a comparison with other BSDs is far more appropriate.

<comment><USER10> That proprietary baggage is what makes Mac OS X worthwhile as an OS.

Without Objective-C and all the frameworks that make up the OS, it is no better than using a *BSD.

<comment><USER11> > Without Objective-C

GNUstep.

> it is no better than using a *BSD.

Actually it's quite likely to be worse. Is there any good reason Apple is using that Mach stuff other than momentum and having developers who know it well? IMO any given BSD project has a more coherent design than XNU.

<comment><USER10> GNUStep is almost dead project, it was being developed already before Apple bought NeXT, and it is still not there.

The way the web site gets updated, looks like a software project connected to a machine, without proper support for the latest Objective-C versions, who would bet on it for production code?

Every time I see them at FOSDEM I look forward to see better updates, but it always looks the same.

<comment><USER11> I used to use and develop with GNUstep (just small personal projects) for a good chunk of the 2000s decade, until I lost interest. A lot of the important stuff is there. AFAIK they have parity with 10.4 or so.

It's true that there isn't a lot of momentum behind the project. I suspect that's just a lack of people. I wonder if they'd be receptive if some folks just jumped in and implemented more of the missing stuff. I am guessing yes.

The spirit of my comment is: you can't say objc doesn't exist outside of Apple. It's there in some form. It might even more "there" if people start using and developing it. We as individuals have the power to do that. Dismissing it very early strikes me as defeatist.

<comment><USER10> > you can't say objc doesn't exist outside of Apple

Sure, it exists in a form as if we were in 2005, away from all Objective-C 2.x goodies, more recent frameworks and tooling.

<comment><USER11> ... which is not nothing. These developments come from somewhere, I don't understand why one would bash GNUstep because it's not a unicorn.

<comment><USER10> I am not bashing it, just stating the hard reality that the project is stagnated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would it be feasible to have Debian + Darwin? I am wondering about driver availability.. Does Darwin support all hardware FreeBSD does? Is it stripped down to Mac-like hardware?

And in general what would i get from using Darwin as opposed to Linux or *BSD apart from the ability to run a limited amount of Mac-only commandline tools?

Also, looks like a dead project..

Also, given that Apple moves away from open source more and more [1], i really wouldn't go down that road... you'll end up surrounded by proprietary software, extensions, drivers more likely then not.

[1] [https://plus.google.com/103674611711666213369/posts/7j1c2bZ7...](https://plus.google.com/103674611711666213369/posts/7j1c2bZ7jJb)

<comment><USER13> > Does Darwin support all hardware FreeBSD does? Is it stripped down to Mac- > like hardware?

I think you have the common misconception that Darwin uses the FreeBSD kernel. It does have components from FreeBSD, and one of the principal engineers was the founder of FreeBSD. However, the kernel is actually Mach+XNU (Mach is a micro-kernel, XNU is a Unix-kernel-like wrapper around it).

<comment><USER14> This is just being pedantic, but XNU is the name of the whole kernel, which describes the combination of Mach and the BSD interfaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The reason interest is going to be so low is that, generally speaking, it is pretty easy to just have software that runs on both Linux and OSX, cross compile for both, an use the Linux kernel instead of trying to use a binary compatible kernel... which lacks anything resembling a proper environment.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me a lot or ReactOS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS)

</comment><comment><USER17> AFAIK, this project is dead for years

<comment><AUTHOR> This project has been "dead" for about 6 months or so. Personally I don't thing that should matter much– it's an interesting project, and the more exposure it gets the better chance it has at being rejuvenated.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Blogs... how many? - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting a new company now and have always wondered what I should do as far as blogging goes. We are going under the name UpOut.com and I'm not sure if I should also start blogging at another domain I purchased, martinizer.com (my name is Martin). What is appropriate to put on our company blog vs. what should I write on my own (or should I have my own?).<p>On a side note, great idea: toothbrushes with expiration dates to let people know when to buy a new one (aka every 3-5 months) which will also increase toothbrush sales! <comment><USER2> Content that validates your concept, approach, ability to execute etc. goes on the corp blog, interesting things you find along the way go on your personal blog.</comment>


Universal Prediction - <AUTHOR> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/14486/ <comment><USER4> The argument of this very long and technical paper seems to boil down to this:

Solomonoff induction is (in the limit) as good as any computable prediction method, which sounds pretty "universal". But it is not itself a computable prediction method (it's just semi-computable). And if you are satisfied with semi-computability in a predictor, then you should demand instead that a "universal" predictor always be as good as any _semi-_ computable predictor, and it can't meet that more demanding requirement. And so on in infinite regress.

I find this kind of underwhelming. Solomonoff induction represents, in practice, an unattainable ideal that prediction systems can aspire to approximate. This argument shows that if you somehow could reach the ideal, there is an infinite regress of super-ideals beyond it. So what?

<comment><USER5> I think you did a better job than all other commenters here (who seem to be mostly free-associating on the title and abstract), but your comment still doesn't quite capture the contribution of the paper or the reasonable takeaways from it.

The key is section 4.3.3, which draws a distinction between measures and predictors. The Solomonoff lower-semicomputable semimeasure is universal for all lower-semicomputable semimeasures, not just for some narrower class. But if we forget the idea of lower-semicomputable semimeasures and treat Solomonoff as a member of a wider class - limit-computable predictors - <USER2> turns out to be not universal for that class. In fact, moving from measures to predictors is so lossy that no predictor can be universal for its own class, by a simple diagonal argument. To me that means Solomonoff's approach with measures is more nuanced and informative than the approach with predictors.

<comment><USER4> In my admittedly very cursory skim of the paper, I gave it the benefit of the doubt on this point, because this seemed convincing:

"for the purpose of prediction, we are, of course, not so much interested in the probabilities issued by the measure functions, as in the conditional probabilities that give the corresponding predictors' outputs."

Do you disagree?

(Also, my original summary is wrong at least in that I should have said limit computable where I said semi computable!)

<comment><USER5> I guess the question is whether we want universality over all limit-computable predictors, or only those derived from lower-semicomputable semimeasures. Since the latter class contains its own universal element and also every computable predictor, maybe it's okay? But yeah, I can see how you can have a different takeaway. Sorry for being a bit harsh in the previous comment.

<comment><USER4> No need to apologize, I thought your comment was perfectly civil. It can be hard to read tone on the internet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm honestly surprised there's not more research / funding on universal prediction. It seems like a top down approach for true AI (start from theory and work backwards to something feasible/practical) as opposed to the current engineering mindset (start with something that works, i.e., neural networks, and try to do more with them).

The ideas related to universal prediction were initially developed in the 1960s by Chaitin, Solomonoff, and Kolmogorov, but little has been done with the concept since, partly due to the fact that computers weren't very powerful back then and partly due to the fact that a lot of their theorems ran up against barriers of uncomputability.

Marcus Hutter and Shane Legg come to mind as people who have done some work in this area, but I'm not sure if Shane has continued investigating this approach separately from his work with neural networks at DeepMind.

<comment><USER7> I think there are 2 main problems with working on universal prediction:

1\. getting all the information to the program in a usable, computational format.

2\. Defining the requirements (old problem but a good one). How would you actually design an algorithm to predict something completely unknown. ML works well here, as it is fairly narrow and 'easily' definable

It certainly is the most interesting problem though, and I'd love to see more research attempted.

<comment><USER8> How would you make an algorithm to predict something unknown?

This is essentially the field of sequential decision making, which encompasses everything from reinforcement learning to multi-armed bandits. [1]

As an example, let's pretend we have the task of predicting labels of a size 2 alphabet {0, 1}. These labels are come to us via a stream; so in contrast to classical ML, we are not given access to the full "dataset" beforehand to train our predictor. But instead, each round, a label is given to us; and in between each round, we can only predict the next label with the set of labels previously revealed.

Note that we have no model of how the labels are generated — this is what we mean by "predict something unknown". In general, we can assume two cases: it's either adversarial or predictable (shaky definitions, I know).

In an adversarial case, we assume the labels are generated such that we incur a heavy loss. Say, if we predict 0, the adversary outputs 1; vice versa. It turns out with deterministic strategies and a certain adversarial model, we can always incur loss linear to the amount of rounds; this goes a bit into game theory. To counter this, we can employ a random strategy where we flip a fair coin to decide what to predict. This is somewhat analogous to you, in the classic tie breaking game, of choosing {rock, paper, scissors} with 1/3 probability.

But what if the labels weren't generated adversarially? Remember, we don't have a model of how the labels were generated. Say, the sequence was 000000... predicting with a fair coin would be a bad strategy then; and instead it'd be better to simply predict 0. A better strategy here would be something like follow-the-leader, where you predict the most frequent label seen so far.

But recall, we don't know how the labels are generated — it could very well alternate between periods of predictability and unpredictability.

What we need is a mixed strategy which does well in both cases. One algorithm that turns out to do this is called multiplication weights, which assigns "weights" to each label and increases or decreases them proportionally each round depending on what the label is.

There's a whole lot of other ground that can be covered but I'd recommend reading a book instead of reading it here. One resource is "Prediction, Learning, and Games"—but feel free to find another book since this one assumes a background in probability.

[1] Actually the first section of the linked pdf above.

<comment><USER6> > How would you make an algorithm to predict something unknown?

Wouldn't AIXI address this? I believe the algorithm is known; the hard part is how to approximate it in a practical (i.e., remotely feasible) way...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the abstract:

In this dissertation I investigate the theoretical possibility of a universal method of prediction. A prediction method is universal if it is always able to learn what there is to learn from data: if it is always able to extrapolate given data about past observations to maximally successful predictions about future observations. The context of this investigation is the broader philosophical question into the possibility of a formal specification of inductive or scientific reasoning, a question that also touches on modern-day speculation about a fully automatized data-driven science.

I investigate, in particular, a specific mathematical definition of a universal prediction method, that goes back to the early days of artificial intelligence and that has a direct line to modern developments in machine learning. This definition essentially aims to combine all possible prediction algorithms. An alternative interpretation is that this definition formalizes the idea that learning from data is equivalent to compressing data. In this guise, the definition is often presented as an implementation and even as a justification of Occam's razor, the principle that we should look for simple explanations.

The conclusions of my investigation are negative. I show that the proposed definition cannot be interpreted as a universal prediction method, as turns out to be exposed by a mathematical argument that it was actually intended to overcome. Moreover, I show that the suggested justification of Occam's razor does not work, and I argue that the relevant notion of simplicity as compressibility is problematic itself.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing to see a paper referring to Solomonoff on HN. It does seem that if ever there was a time for his work it is now.

I find his writing obscure, and in person I could almost never understand anything he said. He really never fit in with the world of symbolic AI (called GOFAI these days).

</comment><comment><USER11> It's possible to have universal prediction for some definition of universal and prediction.

The problem is that any universe one starts predicting could look an indefinitely nested set of conditional distributions.

So your system could be going along learning and predicting when suddenly things changed and it would have to start all over. It would have some mechanism for pivoting at that point but of course that would less than perfect. So there are inherent limits if you talk arbitrary universe.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Here's a possible way out. Suppose the universe is always changing according to some state-transition function that gets you to time t to time t+1. We have a machine existing in this universe which is trying to predict the state at t+1. You point out this is impossible because the transition function might suddenly change for some particular t+1. But if the change is massive enough, it will also destroy the internal workings of the prediction machine. Conditional on the universe retaining enough regularity for the prediction machine to survive, maybe it would be possible to make "universal" predictions.

<comment><USER13> This seems a bit circular.

The universe (U) itself would be the prediction machine.

To be fair, there would be no definition of "circular" without the universe.

The reality we - or habitants from other universes or other domensions - <USER3> measure seems to be some kind of "Fractal collapsing" at the dimension/universe that the "measurer" is located.

\---

Kind of related:

Dostoiévsk, in his book notes from underground proposes an interesting problem.

I paraphrase it below:

What would you do if you receive from god himself a manuscript of the actions (down to the minimum possible dt) that will maximize your "satisfaction function" considering all your life?

\---

Rick and Morty also explored this using another analogy:

Psychologists are like horses in a caroussel trying to understand it's mechanism. They'll do their best, but in the end won't help much and feel terrified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't being able to reliably and precisely predict anything is just about building a sufficiently precise model of the system? So, if we could build a sufficiently precise model of the world we live in wouldn't it also "automate science"? In fact, some people say our universe and we ourselves actually are such a model already.

And although it may be impossible to model the whole universe with model scientists in it, I'm rather certain it is going to possible at some point to build an artificial brain that is going to be a model of an extremely smart human additionally enhanced with direct interface to huge databases and computational powers this way being able to figure out almost anything swiftly making an extremely resourceful automatic scientist.

</comment><comment><USER15> I recently made a video on the possibility of using the insights from deep networks to automate science. [https://youtu.be/Y-WgVcWQYs4](https://youtu.be/Y-WgVcWQYs4)

I find the possibility of automatically deriving science from raw data intriguing. Is anyone working in the area?

</comment><comment><USER16> I only read some of the first two parts of this dissertation.

I wonder whether there are any good classes of learnable patterns. In, say, the continued fractions, or the decimal deals, there is a fine but essential line between patterns of coefficients with repetands, and those which do not repeat.

</comment><comment><USER17> >> I show that the suggested justification of Occam's razor does not work, and I argue that the relevant notion of simplicity as compressibility is problematic itself

This is just sad.

</comment><comment><USER18> Judging by the abstract, this looks like a non-trivial piece of philosophy.</comment>


[ANN] Zeus IDE 3.97x Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeusedit.com/ze397x.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Zeus is a language neutral IDE with support for the several programming languages:

[http://www.zeusedit.com/language.html](http://www.zeusedit.com/language.html)

NOTE: Zeus is shareware, runs natively on Windows and runs on Linux and Mac OSX using Wine.

 _Jussi Jumppanen_

 _Author: Zeus IDE_</comment>


NOBUS (Nobody but Us) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOBUS <comment><USER2> I've wondered occasionally if Rijndael was chosen over the other AES finalists so that the NSA would have a NOBUS backdoor in the form of the whole s-box timing side channel thing. Is there any good info/commentary on that possibility?

<comment><USER3> Its impossible to prove absent a snowden-class leak. The premise is they have secret knowledge. Maths is inductive reasoning, they might have a non- inductive insight into a thing which exposes a magic key to them, but they have to do a risk analysis the bad guys (tm) can do the same AHA moment and secure the same advantage.

In this space, I feel about the only public evidence would be when the NSA feel the protocol cannot be trusted for government use, where the primary risk is other-state actors.

I also feel the blurring of the role for the agencies here does nobody any favours. NOBUS confers a specific advantage which massively undermines your own position in the longer term for tactical advantage now. I would probably be told by wiser heads tactics trumps strategy, but when you face 20-50 year relationships and you burned your partners 15 years ago, that tactical win can be a bit of a problem.

The UK did this with Enigma: kept their insight secret and handed the captured units to the commonwealth governments. They did not help their own cause in the 1960s independence wars, trust was close to zero. I have no evidence the ability to decrypt their signals helped or hindered btw. Its conjecture on my part.

<comment><USER4> Could they simply use a different sbox? Or can specific implementations be written to avoid the vuln?

You have to also keep in mind,aes is class-b crypto, the only publicly known class-a ciphers are decades older than aes.

<comment><USER5> The sbox is a part of the definition of AES. If you change it it is no longer AES, and the new algorithm (that may well have vulnerabilities) is no longer compatible with the cryptographic protocols that specifies that they use AES as a cipher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can you write deceptive messages in order to try to determine what kind of messages the government can decrypt?

<comment><USER7> Taking great care to avoid revealing your capabilities has been integral to spycraft for a _long_ time.

<comment><USER4> That's why parallel reconsruction is a thing.

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

<comment><USER8> This is a term everyone should know. It's not just to protect technology. It's used to launder what would otherwise be unconstitutional spying.

This is effectively what we're learning the government does through its FVEY[1] "partnerships". Can't spy on a US citizen? Have our neighbor do it and pass it back to us!

1\. [https://theintercept.com/2018/03/01/nsa-global- surveillance-...](https://theintercept.com/2018/03/01/nsa-global-surveillance- sigint-seniors/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > If there's a vulnerability here that weakens encryption but you still need > four acres of Cray computers in the basement in order to work it you kind of > think "NOBUS" and that's a vulnerability we are not ethically or legally > compelled to try to patch – it's one that ethically and legally we could try > to exploit in order to keep Americans safe from others.

Not sure about the law, but I'd say that assuming that nobody else has that kind of computing power is quite arrogant, and it's certainly not "ethical" to keep it undisclosed…

<comment><USER10> I don't know about arrogant; when you're a state actor, you have available things like a detailed infrared map of the entire Earth, order flow from every chip fab, power figures for all extant power plants with attempted "balancing of the books" against all above-board known uses of that power, etc.

Because of this, it might be unclear exactly _what_ a rival power is doing with all that heat and power and all those chips, but it's very easy to know that they're doing _something_. And, therefore, very easy to know when you're "ahead", in terms of nowhere else on Earth showing the right MASINT signature to represent the same compute capacity you have.

Mind you, this is commutative; the Russians, Chinese, and other powers with satellite networks can take the same infrared imagery, and do the same maths, to calculate exactly how much more compute the NSA has than they do; and their OPSEC doctrine is necessarily designed around this knowledge.

<comment><USER11> > I don't know about arrogant

Does Google or Amazon have enough compute power to compete with the NSA? My guess would be yes. They certainly have a good cover story if they were interested in using it for exploits. :-)

<comment><USER12> That is a good question. My first intuition was yes. But Google has about 2.5M servers at say $2000 per. That's $5B which is chump change for the NSA.

<comment><USER13> I'd be very surprised if that were even close to the average cost of a cloud datacenter server. Wouldn't they be optimized for physical density and power efficiency (which is to say, maxed out CPU/RAM)?

<comment><USER14> Interested to know more about this. I don't think much public information is out there, but a quick Google revealed Snap signed a five year $2B contract with G back in 2017, and that's just one major customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was thinking about NOBUS in relation to the NSA's finding of a critical security vulnerability in Windows 10 / 2016 [1]. Ie. "how it at least does not apply right now."

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22048633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22048633)

</comment><comment><USER16> Sounds a bit pretentious. Pride comes before the fall.

<comment><USER17> I was reading thinking NOBUS does sound a lot like HUBRIS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sort like the short bus, but shorter.

</comment><comment><USER19> If it is war there is ...

And if you inform everyone that they have vulnerabilities not only that is security leakage it is a kind of security commerical activities without pay.

But nobody it is not. You have Russia and totalitarian china.

... the world is not pure and black And white. The wiki writing is too bias. And too political correct based on the wrong assumption.</comment>


Apple exploring deal with voice recognition company Nuance - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/apple-exploring-deal-with-voice-recognition-company-nuance/

<comment><USER2> Things to note: * Apple already uses Nuance code in their phones.

* Current iPhone speech is native, doesn't require network

* Nuance also offers iOS apps that do speech recognition over the network (I use this all the time to send "long" SMS/emails, and it works decently).

* Google's offerings are network-based, and exceed current iOS capabilities (anyone have a chance to compare the usability between the two?)

So if this deal comes to pass, will it be an extension of the current (native) voice, or network based, or a hybrid?</comment>


Vis editor – 80% of vim's features implemented in roughly 1% of the code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/martanne/vis <comment><USER2> With multiple cursors!

<comment><AUTHOR> And they're implemented so cleanly and elegantly, too.</comment></comment>


How-to: set up dual-band WiFi (and juice your downloads) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/how-to-set-up-dual-band-wifi-and-juice-your-downloads/#continued <comment><USER2> Except that even with my 2.4 802.11n, the DSL is far, far slower. Maybe this makes sense if you have a for-real wired internet, but even 802.11b can max out most residential internet...

<comment><USER3> It's now possible, even easy, to get 100Mbps Internet most places in the world (even the US), so a 54Mbps connection won't be adequate for much longer.

FWIW, I used wired between my main computers, and only use wireless when people bring their laptops over or something. Gigabit is faster than even 802.11n. (Although, incidentally, my Thinkpad doesn't support jumbo frames, and hence it's about as fast as 100Mbps ethernet in practice. intel--.)

<comment><USER4> I have Verizon FIOS w/ 20mbps upload. It rocks.</comment></comment></comment>