Tesla Model 3 = 24% of Small and Midsize Luxury Car Sales in USA - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/07/tesla-model-3-24-of-small-midsize-luxury-car-sales-in-usa/ <comment><USER2> Note that all the Tesla sales numbers in the article are estimates by the author of the article. There are no sources cited in the article. Other articles on this site from this same author are very clearly biased in favor of Tesla and electric cards in general. I would take this article with a grain of salt to say the least.

FTA: "Tesla reports quarterly sales and does not break them out by country or region. Eventually, we get registration data from Europe, China ( _educated estimates_ at least), and Canada and can then make a more solid _estimate of US sales_ for the quarter, as well as monthly sales estimates. However, _it's a bit early for all of that since we don't have September numbers from most countries yet_. Even our data-loving friend and contributor Jose Pontes of EV Volumes didn't want to venture out too far on a limb and provide an early estimate that he might have to walk back. That said, looking at previous months' data, September figures from the Netherlands and Norway, and deeper historical data, I feel comfortable estimating Model 3 sales between 40,000 and 50,000 in the US in the third quarter. For this report, I've settled on 43,000."

<comment><USER3> For those truly wanting to do the due diligence, GoodCarBadCar does maintain a ton of sales data -- even down to by model, by month -- for the US and Canada

[http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/us-vehicle-sales-figures-by- mod...](http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/us-vehicle-sales-figures-by-model/#vwspc- section-5)

<comment><USER4> That is depressing... top three by a wide margin are pick up trucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They are wonderful cars and I have never heard anyone not loving the driving experience.

The only concern that I think is preventing growth (Other than production of course) - is the concern about long term reliability.

If you buy a camry or prius you know almost for a fact, that your going to drive 200k miles without a problem, and if there is one, its recognized as an engineering failure and the dealership fixes it for free - and fast.

But with Tesla, there are lots of rumors that the queue for getting stuff fixed it really long, and that after warranty expires, really expensive.

What I am really scared of is another "BMW" style reliability experience, which I would consider to be a catastrophic failure on the part of Tesla.

Edit - also accidents "caused" by "autopilot" software, and liability is still a big question.

<comment><USER6> What dealership is going to fix for free the problem you run into at 8years/150k miles?

<comment><USER7> The kind of problem caused by a manufacturing defect that leads to a recall. Parent's overall point is that you can effectively drive these cars 200k+ miles until the wheels fall off, and if you can't, it's due to a defect like that. Tesla is a younger company and it's not yet apparent how the vehicle's end-of-life will play out like it is for these sorts of vehicles.

<comment><USER8> Aren't there plenty of Teslas out there with 200k+ miles?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Anecdotally, but looking at older Model S on the local Craigslist equivalent, I see two listings right now that are ~6 years old with ~120k miles and say "recently replaced entire battery pack under warranty". If whatever fault that was happens to another Model S after the warranty expires, it's going to be a total writeoff. These cars are being sold now for below $30k (equivalent) with almost two years left of warranty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those who are thinking "the Model 3 isn't a luxury car", the model 3 is selling at about half the rate of the Camry or Civic.

[http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/honda/honda- civic/](http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/honda/honda-civic/)

Pretty impressive, IMO.

<comment><USER10> Your link shows that more Civics were sold by the third week of February than even the biased estimate in this post says Tesla is going to sell all year. For Camry the comparison is even worse.

<comment><USER9> My link gives monthly figures, not weekly figures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd never in my life have thought I'd have bought a car > $50,000 and here I am with a AWD LR Model 3 and loving it! My other car was a 2011 Ford Fiesta. If you don't want to purchase one, don't do a test drive. Once my wife and I did a test drive in a Model S, we were both sold on a Tesla.

<comment><USER12> To be honest, the Tesla interior leaves me cold. It feels corporate, like being in a nice chair driving a 17" laptop to work. Feels soulless to me.

I really hate touch screens and have opted personally for a similarly expensive car with lots of switches and dials that I don't have to look at to make sure I'm on the right one. (Mini Clubman, with basically every option, literally months before they added a touchscreen entertainment system)

<comment><USER11> Yeah that's an entirely fair critique (I mentioned the Audi and Mercedes interiors being way nicer in a followup in this thread).

I'm ok with a more spartan interior as driving is just so much more enjoyable. The regenerative breaking takes some real getting used to, but once you've gotten used to it and you do 1 pedal highway driving (assuming you're not using auto-pilot) it is just so much less work. Most of the real fanciness in the Tesla is around making driving more enjoyable. I got the Model 3 AWD LR (not the performance model) and know I can out accelerate virtually ever other non-Tesla on the road. If someone wants to be a jerk and cut me off it is pretty much impossible unless they're in a super car (or another Tesla). Not being a gear head or car fanatic it just gives me more options when driving. That is worth a simpler interior. I was also fine with the crappy interior of my 2011 Ford Fiesta however, so we have different tastes.

The Porsche Taycan is the first electric car that seems to start to compete with a Tesla. The soon to be released Volkswagen ID.3 also looks like a pretty solid Model 3 competitor. The future holds a lot of options in this space, so you don't have to drive a Tesla to enjoy the all torque all the time driving of an electric drivetrain.

<comment><USER13> > If someone wants to be a jerk and cut me off it is pretty much impossible

Why such an adversarial mentality? Why not just let people change lanes if there's enough room in front of you?

<comment><USER11> I lived in Los Angeles for 6.5 years, where people are utter nightmares on the highway. You have to be very aggressive in traffic. Not because I want to be, but because I would put on a blinker and someone would speed up just because I was trying to get over.

<comment><USER13> Oh, you mean they cut you off when you're trying to change over. That's terrible, we get that here (Vancouver) a lot, but I doubt the ability to rapidly accelerate would help much. There's usually a car in front and racing the jerk for the limited space behind it would create all kinds of dangerous situations.

<comment><USER14> To drive in LA is to drive in dangerous situations sadly, playing it safe will only put you at a higher risk of being rearended or cut off and someone slamming their brakes on you. It sucks, but I don't see any other way. Once enough selfish people are in the batch, it forces everyone else to be selfish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is really important to me, because it's showing up all of the other automakers dragging their feet on making electric cars - giving this excuse and that excuse why it doesn't make sense or it can't be done. It's forcing them to acknowledge that electric is the future, and they're going to have to go electric to stay relevant. I think it's safe to say at this point that Musk has done his job, regardless of the future of Tesla.

<comment><USER16> Most of the people I know who got Tesla instead of similarly priced Audi/Bmw/Mercedes did that for "auto pilot" and being electric for some of them was actually a downside.

<comment><USER17> It is hard to believe when the fact it is electric makes it cheaper to charge, more convenient, and provides quicker acceleration. Not to mention the environmental reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a Chevy Bolt and a Model 3 in my household. Of course I much prefer to drive the Model 3, but the Chevy bolt is also all electric , goes about 240 miles on a single charge and costs about $20k less than the Model 3. Why more people don't get a Chevy Bolt, is a mystery to me.

<comment><USER19> While I love my 2013 Volt, GM has not release ONE software update (that changes anything I can detect) since I bought it. The car I bought in 2013 is the car I have now. All my TM3 friends have a car that constantly improves constantly in both dramatic and trivial ways.

<comment><USER20> Is there something wrong with your Volt that needs updating?

I have no interest in owning a car that tracks everything I do and is the control of someone else.

<comment><USER21> You can opt out of data sharing.

I don't know if they had "something wrong" when initially purchased- they were great cars already, but in the last year or so Model 3s have had braking distance improved, a 4-camera dashcam added, a security sentry mode added, games added w controller support, a Netflix/YouTube/hulu theater, new music steaming (Spotify) on top of existing slacker, two types of self-summoning, new remote controls via the phone app, improved range, traffic visualizations, energy usage visualizations, new crash avoidance systems, faster supercharging, better cold weather improvements, a refreshed/refined ui, improved navigation, better driver personalization, fun Easter eggs, camping mode, better acceleration, new 3d climate control visualizations, much better lane keeping & "drive on nav" with auto lane changes, dog safety mode, track mode, and many more I'm forgetting.

Known to be coming in the next major versions- everything from user-selectable horn and pedestrian safety sounds ti improved "come to me" summoning and suggestions keep coming.

All these incremental improvements are delivered OTA.

Was there something wrong before? The longer braking distance might have required a trip to the dealership to fix on a traditional car, but otherwise, not really.

Is there any doubt these cars are improving significantly after purchase in both large and small ways?

<comment><USER21> (And as Pavon reminds me- regular security updates...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have to say if anyone are in doubt about getting one, for me personally the experience of driving the car trumps all other issues I've had with Tesla. I used to be a A to B car person, now I drive for fun all the time. I make up excuses just to drive.

Tesla is a startup company and can be a bit difficult to deal with but I will repeat what John Carmac said about his Tesla [1], "It's my happiness machine".

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua- ikbZVofc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua-ikbZVofc) [VIDEO]

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't see this mentioned anywhere. But the Tesla model 3 has the highest saftey rating of any car.

disclaimer I am pro tesla.

[https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/tesla/model-3-4-door- se...](https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/tesla/model-3-4-door-sedan/2019)

<comment><USER24> > _But the Tesla model 3 has the highest saftey rating of any car._

Confirmation bias.

The overall rating is also held by BMW 3 Series, Lexus ES 350, and Mercedes- Benz C-Class (which all rated better in child seat anchors ease of use)...and that's just in the midsize luxury cars category[1].

[1] [https://www.iihs.org/ratings/class-summary/midsize-luxury- ca...](https://www.iihs.org/ratings/class-summary/midsize-luxury-cars)

<comment><USER25> Not really...

You only mentioned IIHS but the Model 3 has been consistent globally on safety test results (Cherry picking?).. Along with NHSTA and IIS in the U.S.

While BMW's crash avoidance systems also failed miserably while the Model 3 aced it the test because of the superior auto emergency braking:

[https://twitter.com/tesla_truth/status/1160779803349282818](https://twitter.com/tesla_truth/status/1160779803349282818)

Tesla Model 3 awarded 5-star ANCAP safety rating in Australia

[https://thedriven.io/2019/07/30/tesla- model-3-awarded-5-star...](https://thedriven.io/2019/07/30/tesla- model-3-awarded-5-star-ancap-safety-rating-in-australia/)

Model 3 earns 5-Star Safety Rating from Euro NCAP | Tesla

[https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-3-earns-5-star-safety- ratin...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-3-earns-5-star-safety-rating-euro- ncap)

<comment><USER24> Now read one step above[1] my remark.

The parent made a false assertion (the claim of "highest saftey (sic) rating of any car") _while specifically citing IIHS ratings_. I corrected this assertion with fact by citing a higher-level IIHS reference. That's not cherry picking...that's proper constraint.

In contrast, you'll have to do a lot better than actual cherry-picked Twitter garbage, blog spam, and self-referencing Telsa press releases.

> _Along with NHSTA and IIS in the U.S._

Remind us who IIS is again??

I'll be happy to digest any independent NHTSA OVSC test reports on the subject that you point us towards...coincidentally, I've been shits-and-grins analyzing a bunch of FMVSS 106 and 218 test reports in preparation for next year's racing season, so I suspect they won't put me to sleep...to be sure, not that I really care for Tesla.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182264)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great job for Tesla! I was interested in an EV but ended up with a Volt myself - the expiring GM $7,500 plus huge discounts GM was having after announcing after shutting down Volt production let me get a $40k car for under $24k.

If I had to pay full MSRP I would have preferred a Tesla (or Bolt) and go full EV rather than PHEV! I do see more and more Telsas on the road, more than Priuses, Leafs, or any other EV/hybrid.

<comment><USER27> Good choice - Chevy Volt is one of the most under-rated cars ever!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm curious to know how people who bought Teslas thought about these pros and cons:

• lower maintenance costs than ICE vehicles

• higher insurance costs than ICE vehicles

• possibility of long delays for repairs (moreso than other EVs)

• possibility of company going out of business, and impact on software maintenance, software updates, and parts availability (also moreso than other EVs)

<comment><USER25> I always wanted a Tesla ever since the Model S came out in 2012. But have been skeptical since I have not owned an electric vehicle before. Did a ton of research and asked questions from actual owners and ignored the noise from media outlets.

June of last year, I finally got a used 70D Model S from Tesla since it comes with 4yrs/50K mile warranty for $47K to minimize the risk. Delivery experience was not the best but Tesla made it right.

I would occasionally drive my wife's MB SUV and just couldn't get over how dated everything felt. Decided to trade that SUV in for a Model X and now we are an all Tesla household (never would have imagined this). I traded in the Model S for a Model 3 last July since it's more efficient/fun commuter car and I grin every time I get in it and often find excuses to drive it. The product is that good. It changed the whole driving experience for me.

Maintenance so far has just been tires and washer fluid. Lower insurance cost through USAA. Zero issues with repair even though the closest service center is 200+ miles way in Salt Lake City.

Service is handled by two Mobile Service techs in our area because of the interestingly fast adoption here in the Boise, Idaho area... I schedule via the app they call within 24hrs to confirm and they show up either at our driveway or work parking lot to fix issues.

If they need it longer, they also drop off a loaner. The pundits have been saying that Tesla will never make it or will go out of business since 2009. Yet here we are in 2019 and YoY growth and sales are still growing. Amazon, Apple or Google will quickly snatch up Tesla if it ever get's in peril.

My experience has been eloquently put by Chamath Palihapitiya on this video:

[https://youtu.be/lx6GJADrflk?t=255](https://youtu.be/lx6GJADrflk?t=255)

<comment><USER28> How is the Model 3 a more efficient/fun commuter car? Is it just used versus new, or is the Model 3 also better than a new Model S for you?

<comment><USER25> > How is the Model 3 a more efficient/fun commuter car? Is it just used versus > new, or is the Model 3 also better than a new Model S for you?

Excluding the obvious that Model 3 is smaller and weighs less less, the drive units on the Model S/X are conventional induction motors.

The dual-motor versions of the Model 3 have an induction motor in the front and a permanent magnet synchronous reluctance motor (PMSRM) in the back making it much more efficient:

[https://evannex.com/blogs/news/taking-tesla-s-model-3-to- get...](https://evannex.com/blogs/news/taking-tesla-s-model-3-to-get-a- glimpse-of-the-future-of-automobiles)

The new Model S/X "Raven" updates were able to leverage this new (PMSRM) drive unit tech which also improved their efficiency up to a record 370miles:

[https://www.tesla.com/blog/longest-range-electric-vehicle- no...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/longest-range-electric-vehicle-now-goes- even-farther)

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/24/18513899/tesla-model- s-x-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/24/18513899/tesla-model-s-x-range- upgrade-270-325-miles-supercharger-200kw)

The Model 3 is more fun to drive since it's more nimble. Though the ride quality and cabin noise on the S/X is better. The S feels like a boat, while Model X feels like a tank. The Model 3 has improved battery cooling and "track mode" which you can't do on the S/X since both will overheat (2012 design?).

Lastly, the Model 3 is also the only Tesla that can take advantage of the maximum rate of 250kW that was introduced on the V3 superchargers which can charge up to a rate of 1K mile an hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The sedan market is small and shrinking: there is a reason Ford has abandoned it. Tesla should be viewed in relation to the entire passenger vehicle market. According to [http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/us-vehicle-sales-figures-by- mod...](http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/us-vehicle-sales-figures-by-model/#vwspc- section-5)

... The Model 3 ranks 50th or so.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why do all the real manufacturers have very precise numbers yet Tesla has an estimated number?

<comment><USER9> Other manufacturers sell through dealers, Tesla doesn't.

<comment><USER9> In other words, for other manufacturers there are several places in the supply chain to get the numbers from. For Tesla, the only place to get numbers is from Tesla itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I still think it's only a matter of time before Apple takes another bite at Tesla. They want into the space, and are just too far back on the technology curve. They could engage someone to build the car for them, ala what they did for Foxconn, but they are not going to deliver better technology then what Tesla already has. There is a insane amount of overlap between Tesla owners and Apple's most lucrative customers, and Tesla's owner satisfaction is through the roof. It would be pricey, but I can see Apple making a huge bet there.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have trouble squaring this ostensibly fantastic news with the constant dire predictions about the stock.

Is it just the stock is considered by some people to be simply overpriced, or is Tesla the company in danger of going bankrupt? I'd like to get a Tesla, but I worry about the company going under and being left with a car that has no resale value or ability to be maintained.

<comment><USER33> Problem is Tesla is losing billions of dollars selling these cars currently with no real profitability in sight. Tesla also has $11bn+ of debt on its balance sheet. Elon keeps promising profitability but then misses it badly.

<comment><USER34> Tesla is a growth company. Being "profitable" is irrational and stupid. They should be farming every cent they make into production, borrowing every cent that will be loaned, and selling stock. Why turn a $1.00 into $1.10 this year when you can turn it into $15 in ten years? This is how startups and growth companies work. Profitability is a very narrowminded view of how to run a company.

The goal isn't to turn a profit next year. The goal is to become a bigger company than Apple, to wipe out entire car companies in the process, and to change how we power the cars we drive.

<comment><USER35> > _Why turn a $1.00 into $1.10 this year when you can turn it into $15 in ten > years?_

Because there's a very good chance you go bankrupt in year 3, turning your $1.00 into $0.00 instead of $15.

> _Being "profitable" is irrational and stupid. [...] Profitability is a very > narrowminded view of how to run a company._

What a weird, _weird_ thing to say. As if it were straight out of the Silicon Valley TV show.

<comment><USER36> Think of Tesla as maximizing the expected value of its entire profitability over its lifetime. Although you would like it to cease investing in new cars and maximize its profitability now, it has a good chance of making a _lot_ more money by continuing to invest in itself. The odds are good that there will be a generation of Tesla cars which primary job is to make money for shareholders, and they will make so much more than is possible now (we can look at the existing automakers for examples of this level of earnings) that the profits exceed the present value of possible profits.

It's different than the scenarios parodied in Silicon Valley, where companies with no business model, who _can't_ be profitable with their product, posture in order to be acquired to the extent that their founders believe the posturing.

<comment><USER35> > _Think of Tesla as maximizing the expected value of its entire profitability > over its lifetime._

I'm familiar with the discounted cash flow model of valuing a company. You're missing the point: If they keep losing money, they need more investments. At some point, they won't get any more investments, because potential investors won't believe that the company will be profitable in the future.

> _[...] it has a good chance of making a lot more money by continuing to > invest in itself._

Only if they don't go bankrupt in the near future, which is a very real possibility. Then all this talk about growth and "investing in itself" will be useless – they will make zero money.

<comment><USER34> Which happens to a lot of companies. Big deal. You invest in a growth company, you are expected to recognize the risk involved in that investment.

At the moment, Tesla seems to have no real trouble raising the kind of capital they need in order to maintain the level of growth they're experiencing. But it's going to take a lot more growth before they're on par with GM or Toyota or the like. And since that's the obvious goal, it's foolish to be "profitable".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think there is a dilemma at Tesla whether to go with a mid range ($20-25k car) with limited miles(limited performance,etc etc, you get it...)vs going for the mid luxury to full on luxury ranged cars.

Also 2020-21 would be the years where mass market car companies like Honda / Toyota might release their cars and my guess it would start with ~$25k range

<comment><USER38> In an interview, Elon said:

> let's say ultimately getting like a twenty five thousand dollar car [...] if > we work really hard we maybe could do that in three years [with time and > scale]

[https://youtu.be/MevKTPN4ozw?t=280](https://youtu.be/MevKTPN4ozw?t=280)

<comment><USER39> Is a base Tesla really too expensive, I mean the new Jeep Gladiator can top out at 55,000?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Cadillac sold about 154,000 cars last year, but they're not listed.

The Tesla Model 3 is heavier than the Cadillac CT5 and CTS. All are 5 seats. The Cadillac CTS has a 1.5" longer wheelbase than the Tesla Model 3. The definition of "small and midsize" seems to have been carefully chosen here.

</comment><comment><USER41> In my recent trip down the i5 corridor the M3 was the most common vehicle after the Camry.

<comment><USER42> I'm surprised you're seeing that many performance trim level BMWs.

<comment><USER43> M3 in this context means Tesla Model 3

<comment><USER19> TM3 is the correct abbreviation.

<comment><USER41> Thanks I'll use that in the future!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What's with the huge dropoff between Q4 2018 and Q1 2019?

<comment><USER45> Q4 was the last month for $7500 incentive in the US, so they opened up to new markets. Thousands of cars were on ships headed to other countries which aren't counted as 'delivered' until over a month later.

Q1 is also consistently the weakest quarter for the overall car market.

<comment><USER46> It's remarkable that Tesla is making delivery records even though they've lost over $5000 of incentive per car in the US. For a lot of vehicles, that's the entire profit margin. And they're doing that on top of historically low gas prices and without a mid-level SUV or truck.

Tesla is proving more robust than the common narrative.

<comment><USER45> The worst part for Tesla is that the US federal tax rebate can still be used by the competition that is starting to arrive. Tesla fought such an uphill battle to make electric vehicles mainstream, but now can be undercut by $7500 by the incumbents entering late in the game.

This is a double-edged sword, since competition is good. Competitors also are unable to make the same profit margin as Tesla for now.

<comment><USER46> Right, they're fighting that competition right now (eTron has been available for months in the US and its sales are declining) but are still crushing it. In fact, it's disappointing that few have really risen to Tesla's challenge. Taycan does (I'm impressed by the higher voltage of the battery), but at much greater cost and still doesn't quite meet the highest Tesla trim performance.

The EV credit system is unfair for domestic EV makers who have taken EVs seriously (GM and Tesla) and advantages foreign EV makers like VW group companies (who count as separate companies according to the tax credit but can use the same platform for their EVs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The only reason I'm not interested in the Tesla is the overall unavailability of replacement parts.

<comment><USER48> Is this a major concern? How often are people in accidents on average? I supposed one day this could happen to me. Or hopefully I wouldn't get unlucky and have a normal experience in this case. Regardless, I just haven't needed much body work over the last 15 years at all.

I assume this issue is improving too.

<comment><USER47> I had two minor accidents in 12 months, so yes, it's a major concern. If I were in a Tesla, it would still be drivable today, but something about having a car that is too expensive or hard to fix is not something I like or need.

The discovery I have made is that timing commutes away from rush hour does more to prevent accidents than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Lots of reassuring news about Tesla recently. Odd. And reassuring. Which is odd.

</comment><comment><USER50> Duh. Even if the numbers in the article were accurate, nobody besides Tesla buyers are purchasing cars. Everybody else is buying Crossovers and SUVs. Ford and Chevrolet don't even have mid size cars anymore.

<comment><USER17> Sometimes I wonder if the reason for that isn't because there wasn't an option like what Tesla provides now.

Anyways, Tesla is also heading that direction with the Model Y (2020) and the truck they are expected to announce in November.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> It's a luxury car? I haven't ever considered the 3 as a luxury car. The 5, sure, but not the 3.

<comment><USER52> The price puts it well within in the luxury car range.

<comment><USER51> Shouldn't it be the other way around? It's expensive but super shitty compared to actual luxury cars. When Hyundai trumps your build quality you have serious issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Tesla could (and for some, arguably does) make the best vehicles in the world but if they can't figure out how to make them for a profit eventually and inevitably Tesla will go broke. Also something I didn't know until reading the article below is that Telsa doesn't even have IP on their batteries, they're Panasonic batteries!

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2019/05/29/who- wo...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2019/05/29/who-would-buy- tesla-and-why/#69ecc79f3451)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2019/01/22/wasnt- tes...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2019/01/22/wasnt-tesla- supposed-to-make-more-money-as-the-model-3-ramped/#7e928494c737)

<comment><USER9> Tesla's gross margin is 15% GAAP. They have an overall loss is because of R&D and capital expenditures etc. They could pull an Amazon and start posting profits at any time. That would be stupid, but they could.</comment></comment>


How "Old" Technology Still Runs the World - tefo-mohapi http://www.iafrikan.com/2016/05/15/how-old-technology-still-runs-the-world/ <comment><AUTHOR> There is no substance to this blog post. It is just someone claiming certain industries still use mainframes...ok. Not sure why people are upvoting it.

<comment><USER2> Over time I've developed a speed-reading technique where I skim quickly past the common introductory/padding words of no substance. I just found myself at the end of the article feeling like the whole thing was just an introduction with no substance or conclusion. Then I came here and saw your comment, so I know I'm not alone.

<comment><USER3> I badly wish for every article to have a tl;dr version at the very top.

<comment><USER4> See also:

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_%28communication%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_%28communication%29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anybody still has the equipment in the picture, please contact the Computer Museum in Mountain View.

The picture is a set of IBM System/360 mainframe components from the 1960s, displayed for a advertising photo. It's not even a working system. Nobody is using anything that old; you can't get the parts to maintain it.

Google Image Search is getting very smart. Although that specific image isn't known to Google, it identifies the picture as "ibm system 360".

(Top center is an IBM 2321 data cell drive, 400 MB of storage on strips of magnetic tape with a complicated mechanism to get to any of them in about 1 second. Sold 1964-1975.)

(Found the picture.[1] It's from the original IBM System/360 product announcement in 1964. The one that introduced the word "byte")

[1] [http://millennialmainframer.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/3...](http://millennialmainframer.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/360-systems-arranged.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> Plenty of businesses still use AS400s. PDP-11s control nuclear reactors, and the US government keeps its nuclear launch codes on 8" floppy disks.

</comment><comment><USER7> This makes me think of the 100-year-old technology and architecture running the New York subway system.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-why-the-new-york- city...](http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-why-the-new-york-city-subway- is-always-delayed-2015-7)

</comment><comment><USER8> other's here have criticized this article pretty effectively.

my own peeve with it is that it further relegates client-server computing to the dustbin of history by thinking of centralized data resources as servers, and users' computers as clients, rather than, say, the user's X desktop (or smartphone screen!) is the server accessed by a centralized computer center information client, which is much more expansive and instructive view of what client-server was supposed to be, a way for computers to talk to each other and distribute resources as it made sense.

The modern implementations seem to be more victim-advertiser than client- server.

</comment><comment><USER9> Written language? The wheel? Irrigation?</comment>


XFS: the filesystem of the future? - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/476263/ <comment><USER2> It's somewhat amusing that the filesystem of the future was developed by SGI in 1994 ;)

I've had little to complain about when I've used XFS. It seems like a very good file system, and has handled the large datasets I've thrown at it without any problems.

<comment><USER3> As mentioned on the article's comments, when I used XFS about 8 years ago, I found exceptionally prone to data corruption.

It remains the only filesystem that I couldn't at least partially recover.

For a good mix of speed, reliability and huge data capacity on Linux, I stick to ReiserFS, at least until btrfs becomes more stable.

<comment><USER2> 8 years ago would make you an _extremely_ early adopter of the Linux port. XFS has seen significant development since then. I don't think experiences based on eight year old software hold much water.

XFS has adopted some nasty stigma of being a filesystem that eats your data. But it seems that for every user that complains about data loss, another does not.

<comment><USER4> > _But it seems that for every user that complains about data loss, another > does not._

So, a coin toss then? You're not helping!

<comment><USER2> No, we need a careful investigation of the filesystem.

Listening to my "works fine" comment is as useless as any other "didn't work for me" comment.

What _might_ be helpful is a comment saying "I encountered the following issues with the following configuration, reported the bug, and the maintainers said ..." What would be even better would be for actual experts to audit the code, look through the bug reports, and give their opinions.

But "works for me"/"broke for me" comments are, unfortunately, as useless as most filesystem benchmarks. Indeed, any time filesystem discussions come up, a stunning majority of the opinions are unhelpful. Unfortunately, I jumped right in with one as well :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A file system for generic purpose has only one primary feature: "Don't lose data. Ever." If I pop the SATA cable off my drive while writing, the filesystem should later remount in 100% uncorrupted condition with whatever data it had time to write to the disk. I don't want to run fsck or use debugfs to recover from a hairy state. Backups or RAID-1 take care of physical failures of the disk.

Beyond avoiding data loss, anything else is _ultimately_ secondary. Speed is nice but near-average filesystem performance is all right for a HDD. SSD gives you more speed. Totally abysmal speed _might be a reason_ to switch filesystems—though, I'd still take the abysmal speed if it saved me my data and the faster filesystem wouldn't.

Due to this conservative approach, switching filesystems _is really hard_. I've been using ReiserFS since 2000 or so because it hasn't failed me once. I've had HDDs going slowly broken and lost some individual files until I cloned the old disk to a new one. But I've never had to fsck, defrag, recover, or _anything_ my ReiserFS partitions. Never. It's getting harder and harder to switch. A conservative alternative would be ext3 but ext3 has lost me data on another computer.

I have some interest in btrfs but I probably won't switch until I have to. XFS would be very interesting but not just worth the risk because ReiserFS is good enough.

<comment><USER6> It must seem very strange to you that most filesystems don't do data journaling and that they have options which increase the risk of data integrity problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > For I/O-heavy workloads with a lot of metadata changes - unpacking a tarball > was given as an example - Dave said that ext4 could be 20-50 times faster > than XFS.

A while ago, I read somewhere that XFS is good for a small number of large files, whereas ReiserFS is good for a large number of small files. I don't know whether that's true anymore if it ever was; but perhaps extracting a tarball with thousands of small files in it is not the best way to bring out XFS's strength?

By the way, when are we expecting the "experimental" label to be taken off of btrfs?

<comment><USER8> > By the way, when are we expecting the "experimental" label to be taken off > of btrfs?

I believe distributions are waiting on an fsck for btrfs.

<comment><USER9> Hahaha. That's pretty much /thread, innit?

<comment><USER10> What are you trying to say?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is XFS available in stock RHEL 6.2 ? or does it require an additional purchase of the Scalable File System Add-On

[http://www.redhat.com/products/enterprise-linux-add- ons/file...](http://www.redhat.com/products/enterprise-linux-add-ons/file- systems/)

Redhat doesn't list prices of its add-ons and its generally onerus if one has to call sales to find the price of a filesystem

Reminds me of Veritas VxFS

<comment><USER12> I think it's in the base RHEL 6, try 'yum list xfsprogs', if it's there you have XFS.

[http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6...](http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Storage_Administration_Guide/xfsmain.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've had good experiences with XFS on my home file server. The only things to keep in mind are that once you cannot shrink the filesystem once it's created, and that fsck doesn't run when booted (you can write an init script to run xfs_repair if you like).

Also, my fragmentation often gets quite high - over 90% - but it doesn't seem to really affect performance.

<comment><USER14> XFS filesystems can be defragmented. The tool is called xfs_fsr

<http://linux.die.net/man/8/xfs_fsr>.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I have a cron job that does that.

<comment><USER14> And yet you are getting 90% defragmentation? I wonder why that is happening to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I want to throw in another XFS data-eating anecdote. When I used it, I found it had a tendency to zero out files which were open for writing during a system crash.

I've been using JFS now for 6 years or so and have never had files go missing on me. JFS routinely takes second place to XFS in various benchmarks but still far outperforms ext3 and the like.

<comment><USER16> _When I used it, I found it had a tendency to zero out files which were open for writing during a system crash._

This was pretty much a FAQ and very much by design. See for example:

<http://madduck.net/blog/2006.08.11:xfs-zeroes/>

<comment><USER15> Interesting. I don't buy the security argument though. If, after a crash, the file size is larger than the actual extents, _why not just truncate the file size to match the extents_?

<comment><USER16> Because there's no guarantees the extents actually point to the file data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does XFS stack up with ZFS when it comes to speed, reliability and protecting my data?

</comment><comment><USER18> At our company, we have been shipping XFS as the filesystem for our products for over 8 years. We've shipped many petabytes of storage in that time, all of which is being heavily hammered every day in feature film & TV post- production.

We've found XFS to be a very robust filesystem, and any problems have generally been traceable to modifications we've made to tools like xfs_fsr.

In general it's been considerably more frequent for people to end up in a panic after making a mistake replacing a disk in a 3ware array and deleting a RAID unit! Luckily our resident RAID ninja has been able to get the majority of people out of that hole. :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> All open source developers want users. Users means more bug reports and often more developers to contribute to the prokect. In addition, the greater relevance also means it's more likely they will be able to get companies to be able to pay for them to do what they do, conferences to invite them to talk about their projects, etc. (It's for this reason that when the IMHO over- aggressive enforcement of busybox license forcing people who get sued to release code on code unrelated to busybox has caused FUD amongst Linux embedded companies, the emergency of a replacement toybox project which avoids these issues has caused so much dismay amongst the busybox development community.)

Given that Dave Chinner is one of the primary developers of XFS, it's not surprising that he wants to promote XFS. And to be fair, XFS has not gotten as much attention as it has perhaps deserved based on technical considerations alone (as has other perfectly capable filesystems at the their time, such as JFS) and that's no doubt frustrated him. In addition, the work he has done to improve XFS removes one of the significant performance bottlenecks often seen by desktop users and developers, and he should be saluted for that.

That being said, it's also true that in many cases the file system is not the bottleneck, and so other issues that aren't tightly focused on performance (i.e., the quality of the userspace tools such as e2fsck and debugfs for ext4, and their equivalent or lack thereof in other file systems), familiarity by sysadmins, data recovery services, etc., ease of upgrading of existing large, production file systems, and so on.

In addition, it's dangerous to draw conclusions from a single microbenchmark such as fs_mark alone. It's not common that you have workloads which create thousands and thousands of small (< 64k) files in parallel across lots of CPU cores at the same time, on the same file system. So using this this benchmark alone to say that file system X is more scalable than file system Y is just not going to tell the whole story. Personally, I like to use microbenchmarks as a tool for improving a file system, and not as an argument to try to get people to switch from one file system to another. Unless someone's use case is exactly mirrored by the microbenchmark, I personally find this approach to be a little dishonest.

I will say that at the moment, many of the developers who have been working on ext4 are employed by companies who are using ext4 as part of a cloud data storage stack. This is why there has been changes such as no journal mode (which is great when you have consistency guarantees being provided by a cluster file system above you, since they have provide the file even if an entire server's power supply has exploded), and good performance when under severe memory pressure (funny how most benchmarks are done when the only thing running on the server is the benchmark, so there is no competition for the CPU and for system memory --- XFS in particular have proven to be a memory hog, and others have noted severe performance degredations and in some cases stability problems, under memory pressure; not a problem on a stand-alone file server, but not so great if you are also trying to run VM's or other applications using the file system on the same machine). Arguably some of these improvements don't mean as much for desktop users, although I believe some of the performance enhancements we've made have also trickled down to help the desktop.

XFS, in contrast, has been focusing a lot of attention on the desktop use case, and they've traditionally owned the big stream writes, HPC workloads using huge servers, huge memory, and huge RAID arrays. It's good that XFS has made these improvements, and I salute them for it. But to state that these two workloads are the only ones which are important, and therefore they are the file system of the future, may be overstating matters --- with all due respect to Dave and his many years of experience working on XFS.

<comment><USER20> Reading the post, a lot of what he says is that XFS scales better than ext4 due to better algorithmic implementations of various "things".

Why not just get active with ex4 (more likely 5) development and work to introduce his performance improvements into the main line file system already in use?

<comment><USER19> His performance improvements are very specific to XFS; arguably they were fixing a problem/fundamental design issue in the original journaling code in XFS. Ext4's journaling code is very, very different from XFS. So a design improvement that applies to XFS is not necessarily applicable to ext4. That being said, there have been times when we've looked at what XFS has done with some feature (such as delayed allocation writeback for example) and written code which has been inspired by XFS's algorithms. I'm an engineer, I'll take good ideas from wherever I can. (Unless I suspect there may be legal reasons why I had better stay away from certain techniques :-/)

Also, the scalability issues that Dave has been talking about aren't ones that matter for any of the workloads that the ext4 developers or their employers care about. We don't have 32 CPU cores all writing small files and requiring small block allocations to a single file system at the same time. So yes, there are scalability problems which he has identified with that specific benchmark that Dave was experimenting with (fs_mark) where ext4 has its own performance problems that could be fixed with the appropriate developer attention. It's on my list to look at and hopefully address, but I have higher priority things that do benefit the workloads that my company is interested in.

For example, I am currently working on making Async I/O truly Async even when we need to read metadata blocks, which is a bug that all file systems suffer from under Linux; AIO is not truly "A". This is something that has been known for over a decade, but up until now, no one who was funding fs development, for ext4 or XFS, has had a workload where this has mattered enough. When I do fix this, it will be an area where ext4 will have an advantage over XFS. Will I then trumpet this as the reason why they should switch from XFS to ext4? Of course not. Not everyone has a need for true Async I/O. On the other hand, if ext4 has such a feature, it may appeal to some application writers, probably of various different storage servers or perhaps web servers, and if they start using it, then there may be more workloads where true AIO is relevant. And that in turn might inspire XFS developers to add a similar feature. This is why I've always believed competition is a good thing, and why I've never argued that fs developers should abandon one file system and go work on another file system. (As Dave has done on the linux-ext4 list, but never mind that.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'll have to give XFS a look again. We use subversion at my work and an "svn up" took 4-8x longer on XFS than on reiser3.6; it was insanely faster for just about everything else though.

It definitely is not great for sudden power-failure, but really if you're not using a laptop, buy a UPS, it's not that expensive.</comment>


Will my iPhone become old next week? - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2010/12/30/willMyIphoneBecomeOldNextW.html <comment><USER2> A different way to phrase this might be: to some bleeding edge tech people, their iPhone will become old every week. Looking only at Android, if it continues to grow like it did in 2010, it is not unreasonable to think about 50 or so major Android-enabled phone releases in a year. Each one with perhaps a micro improvement on an iPhone feature. Jobs can only update the iPhone every 12 months, more or less.</comment>


Video Game Streaming Is Here: The End of the Console? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/09/02/onlive-beta/ <comment><USER2> Misleading title. Videogame streaming is _not_ here (at least not in the form of the OnLive service), and a great number of people still have some pretty fundamental questions about the technology. There was a tech demo at a videogame tradeshow, but as people here surely know, a controlled tech demo is a whole different beast from a real live service.

The other funny thing about this write-up is the idea that OnLive is challenging the videogame industry. Rest assured, most big companies in this space would _love_ to have this technology be a reality: it offers greater control than consoles, and makes piracy next to impossible. If OnLive can make this work for a wide market (and not just hotels and the like), we'll see lots of offers to buy them and lots of copy-cat technology.

<comment><USER3> And OnLive is a great example of marketing gone wild--the technical information their marketing has put out cannot physically all be true at the same time. Some information I've heard, for example:

1\. Their system is powered by a JPEG encoder.

2\. Their encoder handles one frame per millisecond (1000fps).

3\. They plan to do something on the order of 2.5 megabit 720p video.

4\. They intend to have extremely low end-to-end latency.

It should be obvious why not all these can be true at the same time. Furthermore, you'll notice other conflicts even if you start ignoring some of the claims: even if 1) is false, 4) basically makes 3) impossible (ultra-low latency has a catastrophic effect on interframe compression).

So at this point I'd pretty much put OnLive in the "extremely dubious" category due to the fact that their marketing can't seen to decide what their technology actually does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely not.

There are still MAJOR questions about these high-end "games on demand" services that have so far gone completely unanswered, aside from PR type non- answers.

Latency - how will they perform when round-trips take 30-100ms+?

Bandwidth - Even assuming a mediocre resolution of 800x600 at 30fps, games are going to guzzle bandwidth.

Hardware - While a decent spec server can happily serve up dynamic webpages to thousands of users, that's just not possible for games. Modern games require a modern spec machine per user - and don't forget the heat/power issues either!

And wow - we haven't even talked about all those publishers who are going to demand top dollar for their latest titles!

So we'll see. I do look forward to seeing the what the service is like, but my feeling is that unless they can sign deals with ISPs to colocate then they're doomed. That said, such a service could be very attractive to cable operators as an additional extra to offer their customers.

<comment><USER5> According to CrunchGear OnLive is a "cloud gaming service": [http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/24/can-onlives-cloud- gamin...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/24/can-onlives-cloud-gaming- service-threaten-traditional-consoles/)

One user per core would probably work fine, if you leave one core for the operating system. Of course you will need a lot of memory and probably a video card per user as well.

Edit: Just checked out the Wikipedia entry and it looks like they're doing something like that and with virtualization. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive#Architecture>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> AnandTech had a great article recently about latency in games and where it comes from. A good PC could have as little as ~30 ms latency, while a poorly optimized PC is closer to 100 ms. Assuming their system is heroically latency- optimized, this means that OnLive is not necessarily that much worse than local gaming.

<http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3601></comment>


Sergeant White – Medal of Honour - <AUTHOR> http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/white/battle/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I was struck by how compelling the multimedia experience was, especially for a government and military website.</comment>


WebKit browsers finally support custom headers from XMLHttpRequests via CORS - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76419

<comment><USER2> I spent a while today troubleshooting why the 'Location' header wasn't getting returned in an XHR Request handler (using POST to create an Object and getting the location from the 'Location' header in a PhoneGap app), turns out released WebKit browsers don't honor the Access-Control-Expose-Header directive. Just verified this behavior is fixed in the WebKit nightlies (using Safari running latest update to WebKit). Sweet job webkit guys!</comment>


Erik Wachtmeister starting a new social network - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerfriedman/2012/05/29/erik-wachtmeister-of-a-small-world-sends-out-private-invites-for-new-social-network/

<comment><USER2> Too bad we can't vote a story down... :)</comment>


Ask HN: Submitted Too Much Articles or Got Caught by Heuristics - <AUTHOR>

I submitted an article about poker and bitcoin. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2479617
I am not sure if I submitted too many articles from my domain or it is dead because HN thinks poker link are spam.
Edit: For those who want the links of the article: http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/bitcoin-poker <comment><USER2> I believe HN autokills stories with "poker" in the title, but you can get around it by submitting with an innocuous title and renaming the story after it's been accepted.

I used to try to submit the more interesting articles from codingthewheel.com and a few other places that tended to be more mathematically interesting, but eventually gave up trying to fight with the submit form.</comment>


Safe: Free Easy File System Encryption - <AUTHOR> http://www.getsafe.org/

<comment><USER2> First thought on the Website: Don't do that. Don't force me to go through lengthy animations, just show me your actual content and let me use it like I use the rest of the web.

Second: The 'Learn more' presentation actually says nothing, nevermind that the start page is equally uninformative. Not a single word about techniques used or what makes this service supposedly 'safe' or why I should trust it with my data.

I am highly suspicious of anything claiming to be "safe" or "secure", expecially when it is this dodgy around details. I'd not advise anyone to actually use this for anything sensitive.

EDIT: Just noticed the tiny light-grey 'About' link at the bottom, which gives a little more info. Still, I absolutely dislike the site design.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback! i don't disagree with you.

i designed the splash page to be very sparse because i wanted to minimize distractions and make it simple to just get started using the app. i figure most people don't like reading as much as they like looking at pictures.

for those who like to read (and have a discerning eye) the "about" link has all the gory details you're looking for.

it was a trade-off and there definitely could be a better result but this is what developed in the end. the splash page may change as more feedback rolls in.

<comment><USER3> Just to put my +1 here, I think the project looks great and the product itself seems good but that website is not good and is actually quite annoying.

1) No animations. Just get rid of them all.

2) Put a link on the 'Learn More' page that takes you back to the homepage. The 'Learn More' page only contains a link to the download page, no way to click back to homepage.

3) 6 click throughs to read 6 sentences on the About page is annoying. I don't need a single sentence stretched out across an HD screen (feels like I have to take a few steps back to read the massive text without panning my entire head left and right). Have all 6 of those on one long page instead.

4) I didn't even notice the tiny links on the front page at the far bottom left (probably because of how gigantic everything else is). Make those links more prominent and maybe also have those links as part of the footer of every page. The [http://www.getsafe.org/about](http://www.getsafe.org/about) is especially useful and contains most of what I wanted to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Safe is a wrapper around EncFS, which (a) potentially leaks a lot of metadata and (b) is a weird combination of CBC and CFB. I'd feel better about Truecrypt.

<comment><USER5> I would probably think twice before using anything based on EncFS. See this audit for a lot of detail: [https://defuse.ca/audits/encfs.htm](https://defuse.ca/audits/encfs.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> we're actually in the process of updating encfs to use XTS. also, that particular audit was done quickly and some of the analyses weren't done considering the threat-model that encfs is designed for (so it makes encfs look worse than it really is).

<comment><USER4> encfs encrypts a-file-at-a-time, right? That's not an XTS use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> It can be. We want to move away from IV-based encryption primitives to tweak- based primitives for each individual file. This is just so more people understand how it works, especially since now XTS is a recommended standard. Right now we use a custom solution, which made sense in 2004 but now that XTS exists we can switch over.

<comment><USER4> Wait, XTS is a standard recommended for block-level disk encryption. It's not a recommendation for file encryption. The two problems are similar, but not identical; for instance, block encryption has strict requirements on ciphertext size, and requires the capability to modify ciphertexts instead of just re-encrypting. Are you sure XTS is a good idea for file encryption? Wouldn't a simple AEAD mode do the job just as well, and also provide for file integrity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although it servers an entirely different purpose, there are a couple of things I would ask: 1) How would one share encrypted files? 2) What happen when user forgot password? 3) What cryptographic algorithm is this using?

Actual issues when I gave it a try: 1) Unmounting the safe is possible but there's no easy way to remount the Safe 2) All the filenames are obfuscated (good and bad). Abilities to search for files, view thumbnails etc., usual filesystem functionalities are affected.

I think it's quite early but it is an intriguing project. Like others, I would love to learn more about the folks behind it as well as the product details.

I wrote a little bit about data security, especially cloud data security a while back: [http://vuongnguyen.com/personal-business-cloud- security.html](http://vuongnguyen.com/personal-business-cloud-security.html) if anyone is interested in my humble opinion.

-V.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not totally up to speed on encryption techniques, but it looks like this makes it somewhat obvious that you have encrypted files on your machine by mapping a new encrypted file 1 for 1 to the files that you're storing.

In this case, wouldn't you lose plausible deniability? If I remember there's a feature in TrueCrypt which allows you to have two passwords, a _fake_ password that you could use if questioned that decrypts a portion of the volume, and the _real_ password that decrypts the entire thing. I maybe conflating two separate things, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct. If you want plausible deniability, you should definitely use TrueCrypt. Safe was not meant for this.

Safe is mainly for making it difficult for casual snoopers to view your data. For instance, if your computer or external hard drive gets stolen.

Safe and TrueCrypt form an ecosystem of encryption tools. Safe is a bit more user-friendly but it's for casual use. For special circumstances TrueCrypt is a better tool. Compare butter knife to swiss army knife.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This website doesn't tell me ANYTHING about what Safe actually does. The SVG tour says it "prevents" other people from seeing my data, but given the low competence most products have with regard to security, without details, I am never going to trust it.

Edit: I found this after installing the app: [http://www.getsafe.org/about](http://www.getsafe.org/about) it has a bit more detail.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a much easier way to build the same functionality: use encrypted sparse disk images. See the `hdiutil` command line tool.

I used this many years ago to build a Mac app with the exact same functionality, and probably much safer encryption: [http://excesapp.com/](http://excesapp.com/)

<comment><USER10> How does your app derive a key from the user's password?

<comment><USER9> It doesn't; I leave it to Apple's code to handle the encryption aspect. That said, I'd imagine that it uses PBKDF2 to derive a key from the password. The content itself is encrypted with AES-256. Here's what `man hdiutil` has to say about it:

        -encryption [AES-128|AES-256]
            As of 10.7, the default algorithm is the AES cipher running in CBC mode
            on 512-byte blocks with a 128-bit key.

\--

Not sure why I'm being downvoted for sharing this. Go figure, HN can be mean sometimes.

<comment><USER10> That's a good way of doing it. I would have prefered scrypt but PBKDF2 is good enough. (Something changed with HN recently, I get the downvotes too.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this closed-source? What crypto algorithm and library are used? Who are the developers?

The website at getsafe.org has very, very little info for a crypto app. I understand the need to keep the pitch simple for casual users. But the website needs a link to much more detailed info for those of us who know some things about security.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's free software, more info can be found here: [http://www.getsafe.org/about](http://www.getsafe.org/about)

<comment><USER11> The home page really ought to link there. (As of this writing, it did not.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's an interesting workaround for not having FUSE on Windows - create a WebDAV server and mount it. It looks like it shells out to net.exe which makes me wonder if there's a Win32 API for doing that.

Other options for FUSE-ish things on Windows are CBFS and Dokan.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not use an encrypted sparse bundle?

<comment><AUTHOR> Safe might be a better fit if you need to access your data from Windows as well as Mac OS X. Also Safe is open source so you know what it's actually doing.

If you don't care about cross-platform or open-source then encrypted sparse bundles are great!</comment></comment>