Anti makes wardriving child's play with a rooted Android phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/anti-makes-wardriving-childs-play-with-a-rooted-android-phone-20111017/

<comment><USER2> I'm faintly amused by this article. It's just an attempt to whip up some clicks with the ol' Hacker Kid On Your Network scenario. And this time, We Mean It, The Hacker Kid Can Do It With His Cell Phone.

It's not 100% clear to me, but it looks like you could do what this article is so scared of with existing Android apps, like Wigle Wardriving and Overlook Fing.</comment>


ReactOS 0.4.12 - <AUTHOR> https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-0412-released <comment><USER2> I ask here after every ReactOS release...does anyone here run ReactOS full time? Is it stable enough now to be used as a normal desktop OS? What does it give you over Wine?

I'm genuinely asking this; I'd like to get my grandmother off of Windows XP, and there was some piece of software (some weird productivity pack that she loves for some reason) that I couldn't get working with Wine.

<comment><USER3> I've used it to run some old Windows95 programs in a virtualised environment. I had easier ways of doing it but I decided to do it the hard way, and it isn't a disappointing experience. Just an empty one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can I use ReactOS as a CI runner in gitlab to build a Windows installer?

I'm currently using msys2 as the build environment-- does that run reliably on ReactOS? If not, is there another free build environment that runs reliably on ReactOS?

<comment><USER5> I don't know about ReactOS but you can use Docker with wine and WiX to build MSIs without a Windows server: [https://github.com/suchja/wix- toolset](https://github.com/suchja/wix-toolset)

<comment><USER6> Off topic, but thank you, I have an interview on friday and the have WiX in their nice to have list, thought it was about the websitebuilder(didn't do to much research yet), which would be odd since its a C# job and well i never had to build installers. Naming things is hard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this project very much. Every time there is a release, I test it on VirtualBox.

</comment><comment><USER8> What is ReactOS used for? I have been fascinated by it since I was a kid

<comment><USER9> ReactOS is a full OS so, unlike Wine, I believe you can load drivers that target Windows, which might be important if you have a piece of expensive hardware that only has official drivers for a legacy release?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If there's a matching SBC for react someday, I could see this taking off immensely.

<comment><USER11> ReactOS for ARM is already a thing so it's not out if the question

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me or the release was rather... underwhelming? I failed to see any major progress in the device compatibility department - usually releases had at least a few such highlights.

<comment><USER13> They mention Intel e1000 NIC driver, among others.

<comment><USER14> That's the main network card simulated by VmWare and VirtualBox, since pretty much the dawn of virtualization. I can't stop but think that ReactOS must be broken as hell if it didn't even have this working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Someone should combine it with the DOS POS software from the other day.

<comment><USER16> That would be more of freedos territory, I believe. [https://www.freedos.org/](https://www.freedos.org/)

<comment><USER17> I don't think it's in any way a coincidence, that the third screenshot on the freedos page is that exact POS software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is not to be confused with react the js framework.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg and the Rise of Philanthrocapitalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/mark-zuckerberg-and-the-rise-of-philanthrocapitalism <comment><USER2> Given that he gets tax credits, it feels more like he's rich enough to single- handedly decide how to spend a decent chunk of the government's money (not that they can spend it effectively, but normally thousands of people work to squander that money).

He's so much exponentially richer than everyone else that whatever thing he thinks is worthwhile is effectively free to fund (and lost money otherwise).

His net worth is ~50,000,000,000; in 2013 the median net worth of a college graduate across all age groups (Zuckerberg is normally in the lowest age group) is 365,000. Just a cool 136986 times the median. A little over 2^17 times more seems pretty reasonable. And I'd expect it to increase at a greater rate (percentage) than normal person's income. Honestly, I'm not sure he even knows HOW to spend that money, nor does he have time to determine an effective way of doing so. Capitalism has worked well, but it seems to have an odd way of dealing with certain things at an exponential scale.

Charitable giving does make all the inequalities and injustices defensible of course as the author has said.

At least Bill Gates knows how to effectively target and solve large problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably the most important political question: What does Zuckerberg believe is an important cause in comparison to everyone who has contributed to building his wealth?</comment>


Java 9 has six weeks to live - <AUTHOR> http://blog.joda.org/2018/02/java-9-has-six-weeks-to-live.html <comment><USER2> To anyone running a website: PLEASE don't hijack swipe gestures for navigation between articles. It interferes with the OS gestures and is infuriating.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you had success with pay what you want software? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone tried pay what you want software and have you had success or failure?  Any comments would be helpful. <comment><USER2> I tried it once. Worked perfectly. Really wanted to pay for it, but failed to do that.</comment>


Remembering the one thing Google Wave was good for: that Pulp Fiction thing. - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/as-google-wave-sunsets-remembering-its-only-good-use-case/254809/

<comment><USER2> Is the wave-in-a-box thing serviceable? With all the companies that jumped on the Wave bandwagon I thought there'd be Wave service providers popping up.</comment>


Show HN: Flow for Lua (EmmyLua PR) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/EmmyLua/IntelliJ-EmmyLua/pull/342 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of this PR.

If you're writing Lua and not already using EmmyLua, then I highly recommend you check it out. Basically the current release already has built-in support for basic type annotations, with limited support for static type checking.

The pull request linked basically significantly extends what kinds of types can be described, fixes some type checking bugs and adds some new static type- checking error reporting. It's still nowhere near as powerful as Flow, and not really intended to be. However, the premise is roughly the same.

P.S. To anyone looking at this pull request for inspiration, don't. This is a pretty terrible way to submit a pull request. It's _enormous_ and only _very_ roughly delineated into feature commits, with many future commits fixing bugs in earlier commits. It's basically a result of several months of on-again, off-again hacking at EmmyLua to meet my own needs. There's certainly been some squashing and interactive rebasing, but not enough.</comment>


No Cause for Alarm: Dynamic Sprinkler-Free System Stops Fires Before They Start - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/article/no-cause-alarm-dynamic-sprinkler-free-system-stops-fires-start/ <comment><USER2> Seems great, but how expensive is it?</comment>


No Joke: These Guys Really Do Work Out of a Cardboard Box  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/cliff-kuang/design-innovation/no-joke-these-guys-really-do-work-out-cardboard-box <comment><USER2> Shigeru Ban has done a lot with cardboard; his WikiPedia entry doesn't really do him justice, but the Phaidon book on his work is pretty good.

<http://www.arcspace.com/books/ban/ban_book.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Those are some of the nicest looking offices I've seen - there's a classic dark-wood paneling look with lots of glass and light. They have stairs up to a loft, desks, and tables made out of cardboard so it has to be pretty sturdy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm interested to how cardboard can support a person (there are what appears to be cardboard steps in there). Is there something special (like some pyramids) going on inside the step? That cardboard table looks impressive though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting contrasts:

Cardboard + iMacs + Herman Miller chairs + Bonzai trees</comment>


Primes and Primality Testing - <AUTHOR> http://www.clerro.com/guide/571/primes-and-primality-testing <comment><USER2> "There's no slick trick to check fast enough, whether or not a large number is prime. So much so that finding large prime numbers is one of the most challenging aspects of mathematics and computing.

This very fact, that large prime numbers are hard to find, is the basis of cryptography which is fundamental to cyber security."

That is simply flat out wrong.

What they probably are referring to is RSA. However the basis of RSA is not that it's hard to find a large prime number. (Actually if that would be hard then RSA would be impossible, as it needs large primes for key generation.) The basis is that it's hard to factorize a composite number.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right. I just made that change in the article. Thanks for pointing it out!

<comment><USER3> I thought modern RSA crypto intentionally stays away from real primes because it's less secure. They use two semi-prime co-primes of significant size and with a large enough difference between them.

<comment><USER4> I think you're confused.

A RSA private key uses large primes, two to be exact. Those two primes form your private key. Multiplying them together gives your public key. The idea is that undoing that operation: finding which two primes multiplied together form the public key, is an intractable problem.

Those two primes multiplied together is what's called a semiprime. The one part that you're correct on is that these two primes should be sufficiently distant, otherwise just trying a couple numbers near sqrt(pq) will give you either p or q.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a mistake in the description of the Rabin-Miller test.

The test itself is deterministic. If you try it for more than half of the numbers in the range, it gives you an exact answer.

In practice we run it as a probabilistic test because we don't want to test all of those numbers. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. didn't know that! Will add it to the section on Rabin-Miller. Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Primes have always fascinated me despite not being a mathematician. Counting numbers are regular yet the pattern of primes seems not to be (although there is a way of plotting them that makes pretty spiral like structures).

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here.. My fascination began when I learned about Glitch Primes, Cyclops numbers and the bloody Riemann Hypothesis!

<comment><USER7> Are you subscribed to Numberphile too? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah.. absolutely! :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has typos.

Says that 199^883467 is difficult to factorise. Well, all 883467 factors are shown already.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish i could type out that number without losing my sanity.

<comment><USER9> It's not so bad, only 2030961 digits. The first few are:

67741756636479844500840...

and the last few are:

...12967674786324684253399

<comment><USER10> That'd have roughly as many characters as a 338,000 word book... longer than The Brothers Karamazov (365,000) but shorter than Gone With The Wind (418,000).

Just over half the length of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, and probably just as entertaining. Heyooo!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It might be late and me being tired, but isPrime function will return false for 1 and any other prime? Shouldn't it be true when function is called isPrime?

<comment><AUTHOR> When a test is contrapositive, it's actually testing for composites. So technically, it should output True for composite but then, the name isPrime doesn't do justice. So I changed the outputs to strings 'Prime' and 'Composite'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The two definitions of primality given in the beginning of the article are not equivalent -- one rules out 1, the other one doesn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to look for the inequivalence you pointed at. The two definitions written are-

1.A prime number is a natural number that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself.

2\. A prime number is a number that has exactly two factors - 1 and itself.

Both statements clearly seem to be accounting for 1. Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER13> Definition 1 says that 1 is a prime (it has no positive divisors except 1 and itself (1)).

Definition 2 says that 1 is not a prime: it does not have exactly two factors, but just one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay.. so 1 should neither be prime nor composite. Because - a) 1 cannot be written as a product of two different factors : ruling out 1 to be composite b) 1 has only 1 positive divisor : ruling it out to be prime

That's indeed a special case which can be mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER12> I would simply not define "prime" or "composite" for 1, yes. If you check abstract algebra books (or wikipedia [1]), you'll usually find definitions along the lines of "a non-invertible, non-zero element is prime if and only if ...", and the nice thing about this definition is that it is a useful concept in more general structures than just natural numbers, namely (semi)rings.

[1]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_element](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_element))</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to switch careers - <AUTHOR>

I currently hold a MS degree in CS and have been working for the last 4.5 yrs as software developer. I would now like to try something different. would going back to school for a MBA or MS finance be a good idea?? <comment><USER2> What is it that you don't like being a software developer?It is kind of hard to completely do something else.

I have questioned my being a software developer also in the past. I seriously thought about going back to university to become a teacher. I decided against it. Mostly because of the financial losses this would have caused and because I just try to find outlets for my desire to teach in my current job as well as spare time.

It's usually a shame if you basically throw away 4.5 years of working experience to do something completely different. Unless you really hate what you are doing, I'd recommend trying to slightly steer you career into the direction you want to explore. Drastic changes often come with high losses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont have an aversion to programming...i 'm just unsatisfied with the job i have. And secondly dont want to program for the rest of my job. that is why would like to do something different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll be starting the transition to a new career over the next five years[1] and what really made me decide in my mind that it was something that will happen is by immersing myself in the subject for 2 years, as serious hobby outside of work. At the end of it, I still had huge enthusiasm and so now I'm ready to sink some money into it. Also, before you enroll into a program, do some research on the feasibility of transitioning from programming to X via some self-studying, a few courses and being in the right place at the right time.

[1] I've got a family so I can't just drop things and become a college student again.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a better question is what is it exactly you're trying to do. What are you passionate about. Stating you want an MBA or MS in Finance doesn't really say much. Can't provide good feedback like that.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking to work in finance, try switching directly into a finance job before putting down the money for a MBA or MSF. You'd be surprised how receptive the finance community is towards programmers.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do i switch to a finance job???

<comment><USER5> Look for a job in Sales and Trading. Bulge bracket banks love programmers and quant types for trading. It's hard to get an interview by just applying on a website, so you'll want to reach out into your network and see if you can get someone to pass your resume to HR.

A couple of websites that are helpful (though geared mostly towards undergrads): <http://wallstreetoasis.com> <http://mergersandinquisitions.com>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you would want to stay in your current role and test the waters with what you think your new job would be.

Unless you have enough money to just jump ship and go try whatever.</comment>


What Makes the Hardest Equations in Physics So Difficult? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/what-makes-the-hardest-equations-in-physics-so-difficult <comment><USER2> The article title sounds clickbait. It should better read: "Why are fluid equations in physics so difficult?" Quantum physicists or relativists would probably not agree that Navier-Stokes is hard.</comment>


Some Clarification and Musings - <AUTHOR> http://tylerdowner.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/some-clarification-and-musings/

<comment><USER2> The given headline is needlessly inflammatory. The very next post on that blog[1] says: "Firefox did not ship with 6,000 bugs."

[1]: [http://tylerdowner.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/even-more- clarif...](http://tylerdowner.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/even-more- clarifications/)

<comment><AUTHOR> If I said "the firefox _project_ has 6000 open bugs" would that have been better?

Now realize that's just semantics.

For the record I am a diehard firefox user, 6000 bugs or not.

<comment><USER3> Not really. The actual number of bugs (not enhancements) confirmed as legitimate (NEW, ASSIGNED, REOPENED) but not fixed across both the Firefox (interface) and core (backend) projects in Bugzilla is 31,992.[+]

This doesn't matter. At the end of the day it's about severity. If Firefox ships with 31,992 critical end-user visible bugs then it'll be rightly panned. It hasn't been, therefore the large majority of the issues aren't that severe, therefore they can be dealt with at a slower pace.

[+] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=1199753&...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=1199753&bug_severity=blocker&bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=major&bug_severity=normal&bug_severity=minor&bug_severity=trivial&query_format=advanced&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&product=Core&product=Firefox)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> By comparison, Chromium (Chrome) has 28,299 open bugs.

<comment><USER5> <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's great! That means we will get frequent releases, each with some bug fixes, instead of being stuck with an old, bug-ridden version, forever waiting for the perfect release.

[http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral- bazaar/...](http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral- bazaar/ar01s04.html)

<comment><USER7> Right, and not all of the "in-progress" features get shipped in each release. Each release only ships the parts that are ready. That way, users get the benefit of new, finished features without having to wait for thousands of bugs in unrelated parts of the code to be fixed first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've stuck with Firefox over Chrome because I don't want Google to win the browser. But with most of the signs and some news out of the Mozilla camp having not been good lately, each piece of news nibbles at my ear just a little bit more.

<comment> mike-cardwell I was considering moving from Firefox to Chrome, but with Firefox's recent performance improvements, I no longer see any reason to. The one benefit which Chrome had (performance), I no longer see. I like that Chrome exists, because it pushes Firefox to be better.

<comment><USER9> I've been using Chrome for Mac ever since it was in early, buggy developer builds. I was using Safari before that, but only because Firefox on OS X sucks.

For Windows, on the otherhand, I love Firefox so much. I do fine it's performance and UI so much better. Chrome sucks with lots of tabs open and the UI just bores me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In all large software projects I've worked, amount of open bugs always increased over time, only way to decrease them was to aggressively mark reports as ignored or wontfix.

<comment><USER11> Which is only natural. I don't expect fixes for Firefox 2 anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It took me some time, but I have come to terms with the rapid release process. I believe that it is actually a very good idea, as it makes the web much more competitive against, say, native iPad development – I may be a tad sectarian, but I tend to prefer the (mostly) open web to the (definitely) closed iPad model.

Now, the problem mentioned in the OA is quite real. Some of the processes of Mozilla have not scaled up yet. I suppose that they will.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you don't pay attention to them, they'll go away, won't they? ;-)

<comment><USER14> Sometimes, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just like chrome and android

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would have much less of a problem with rapid release if they'd stop changing major version numbers.

There is a three part version number for a reason, use it.

Firefox 5 should have been 4.5 and 6 should have been 4.6

If you want to release every other month to imply there are improvements, go for it - just don't imply there are major changes for "political" reasons.

<comment><USER16> I thought the goal was to motivate users and IT organizations to stay current. This frees up Mozilla developers from fixing bugs in N many different old versions of Firefox.

To me, the reasoning behind the change in version is pretty clear. Especially looking at the disaster that was IE6. As soon as there is any support for old versions some IT department somewhere will immediately decide it's time to freeze their version. Moving forward after making a freeze like this becomes very difficult (that has been my experience). This presents two options 1) It's their own problem and move on or 2) Continue to patch old versions. The issue with patching old versions is bad IT decisions end up costing Mozilla time. Meanwhile chrome just continues chugging along at full speed only supporting current.

The current linux distro versioning and support structure seems to map well to this problem. Ubuntu, for instance, has LTS versions that IT can stick with and are patched for X many years.

Windows users update their anti-virus software and definitions in near real- time. Operating Systems update near real-time... why not browsers. I now use chrome most of the time and I am (surprisingly) happy with their versioning. I was a naysayer when they first started too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't this self-defeating when there are eight major version number changes per year? Won't people start ignoring the need upgrade because there will be another new version in a few weeks?

In all seriousness - Firefox _version 25_ in two years, think about that and how no-one is going to take major version numbers for real anymore.

If they insist on this, I'd rather have a YEAR.MONTH version number. Firefox Version 2012.4

<comment><USER17> In the future, we will only concern ourselves with two versions: today's and yesterday's.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unix Delenda Est (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://housejeffries.com/page/3 <comment><USER2> After starting to become more interested in microkernels/exokernels/unikernels, I've started wondering if POSIX in all of its glory (and I've always been a huge POSIX fan) is perhaps holding us back from a different and better development model.

What I like about this post is that it's trying to point out some specific things that are perhaps the most constraining, though I'm not sure the solutions or conclusions are correct.

The question is the right one though.

<comment><USER3> Which question is that? I've so far only skimmed the article, but I haven't been able to find a central theme or discussion point.

<comment><USER2> I guess more specifically, the question is does the UNIX/POSIX principle/specification currently constrain our development methodology such that we are building software that could otherwise be simpler?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, UNIX sucks. We know this. The problem is, there isn't really anything better. Oh, plenty of things have TRIED, but it's the elisp curse: It's not the most elegant system, but it's easier to try and hack what you need on top of it than make a better one.

>Tagged Filesystems

While not in common use, these exist now. And you can run them on your unix machines. Look up BeFS.

>Typed Data

...I'd rather have 1000 ops on 1 crappy data structure than 10 ops one 100 good data structures. And that's what you usually end up with, regardless of what you're trying for.

>Immutable Data:

This is actually something I'd like to see. OH WAIT, I have, it's called git. Now we just need to integrate it into an FS. It's also called Nix, for packages specifically.

>Server First:

Plan9 did it, It's been emulated in userspace, It should have caught on.

>Decent Shell Lang:

Python and Ruby anybody?

We really should make those defaults.

>Reasonably Secure.

Yeah, we need to fix this. We need less C.

>Better Security Model

We'll implement it if somebody can design one that F _king works, and isn 't F_ing SELinux.

>Browsable Executables.

Yeah.

>Sandboxes

THE DOCKER REVOLUTION HAS ALREADY COME.

<comment><USER5> I think the winning solution could be Nix-like package management (like NixOS, GuixSD or to a lesser extent GoboLinux) PLUS lightweight containers.

You get the best of both worlds, good package management within containers, reproducibility, etc.

With Docker or apt you only get half baked solutions.

<comment><USER4> Meh. Containers are pretty heavy compared to nix/guix.

<comment><USER5> Lightweight ones? Guix already supports its own jails-like containers and they are a breeze. So are systemd ones offered by Nix.

<comment><USER4> I meant docker, where there's an entire new set of system libs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > A single global, mutable tree of untyped text is a bad persistence model.

In a strict sense, almost all software accessing standard hierarchical file systems is even just broken -- it breaks for certain concurrent operations, and there is no way to forbid them.

But still hierarchical filesystems are the best usable-by-default model I know. It's a humane approach from a cognitive standpoint: the real world of "things that exist only once, in one place" is inherently hierarchical.

For different needs, it's often easy enough to flatten data a bit and use tools like filename globs or regular expressions, to get a performant, good enough solution that is also maintainable.

For very specific needs, you can always use a relational, or whatever, DB.

<comment><USER2> I think the default indexing features in our modern OSes are already getting us into the DB filesystem mode. I use search more often these days than traversing the hierarchical tree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm midway through the article and I don't get the point at all. Is this person trying to explore the limits of the usefulness of uninformed opinion in the guise of meandering rants? Maybe the second half resolves the mystery.

</comment><comment><USER8> You know, this is all said very earnestly but the problem is that it tends to ignore the fact that many, many great things have been achieved with current technology.

The linked to "worse is better" article I have read before, years ago. The criticism of the failure mode of Unix is invalid. If you hit an error condition, then unless you have have kept your systems state for an indeterminate period of time, it's often not feasible to back out of the program to where the error occurred.

In terms of tagging, that's never taken off. Why? Because it turns out tagging things is harder than you might think, because you can call the same thing by different names, which is somewhat ironically a major problem with hierarchical file systems. You basically end up with needing to be able to locate all the tags that are synonyms of each other.

At the very least, a file system comes with a convention. I know where configuration files are on Unix - I go the the /etc directory. If I want to find my executables, I go to either /usr/bin or /bin. For my files, I'm under /home/chris.

If I was to tag stuff, I'd also need to stick to a convention, or chaos reigns. I know, I've tried this before. I basically ended up with a hierarchical tagging structure.

That's not too say tagging is awful, only that it's not a panacea to all perceived ills.

As for version control - git is honestly the best example of a versioning system that does everything you describe - content addressing, versions control, snapshots... And guess what? It's all in a DAG.

Oh, and one more thing: all that "untyped text" that is a "bad persistence model" firstly ignores the fact that it's not untyped, that every file system contains metadata, and that a file name is no different to a tag that is a label.

<comment><USER9> >In terms of tagging, that's never taken off. Why? ... >because you can call the same thing by different names

I guess for software packages some sort of hierarchy seems essential. At least for documents I always imagined that tags would be perfect. It seems that documents always fit in multiple hierarchies...

On the other hand, if you really want no hierarchy in software packages, some standard tags are necessary. Like 'ConfigFile', 'Active', ... Also one should keep in mind that data in software is also in most cases not hierarchical. Hierarchical databases are a weird animal that nobody uses. Maybe hierarchical filesystems have constraint our minds so much that we cannot easily imagine some other way.

Regarding the rest... I think as well that Unix has some problems, mostly due to old design. Having to use regexes to match file names is so error-prone, I think only for document file names that would be okay. I really like the innovative approach of Windows Power Shell eventhough the syntax is still too weird.

<comment><USER8> A file system is so because it adopted the metaphor of a filing system, which was hierarchical in nature itself. It's main advantage was that it enforced order, and once you knew the filing systems you could easily locate your important records.

The reason it is ubiquitous is that the human mind needs order, and a filesystem imposes this. It ain't perfect, but it works.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but you don't necessarily need a hierarchical order.

Of course the whole desktop computer is a metaphor of the desk and the first commercially successful graphical interfaces resemble a desk.

And GUIs are what most people use most of the time, even most devs tend to start their terminal from the desktop in a window, which appears a bit like paper, laying on the desk.

It's interesting that only few graphical operating environments break with this convention. It seems there hasn't been much conceptual innovation in the space of "desktop computing". Even the tablet seems to represent either a piece laying on the table or the table itself, depending on the size.

It should be more efficient to design systems based on the available digital infrastructure, instead of designing them based on partially obsolete office table infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want usable tags, then you first need a good ontology hierarchy.

Inventing good ontologies is a problem that's orders of magnitude harder than a problem of making a filesystem hierarchy searchable. Look at Wikipedia -- despite all this time and all this truly immense planet-size effort, they still haven't figured out a good categorization system!

</comment><comment><USER11> Some of the complaints seem reasonable. But how did he make the jump from the web-faxmachine to unix? did i miss something?

Web pages being saved as blobs and not providing raw data is not a problem technologists can fix unfortunately.

<comment><USER12> Sorry the intro moves so fast. The answer is here:

        But if web browsers are so bad, why do they keep spreading?
        [...] mainly because the alternative is defective.
        The startup, academic and open source communities all
        have their weight behind Unix, but Unix is a dead end.

Like many people I used to do everything in the browser (using windows, but treating it like a Chromebook). When I became I programmer I switched to Unix and tried to use the command line for everything I could. It was amazing!

I wanted other people to share this experience, but couldn't make any converts. It turned out that it was only working for me because I was willing to plow hours into fixing problems. For most non-programmers, command line Unix isn't a good enough user environment to be a competitor to the web. And we really need that competitor.

<comment><USER3> _It turned out that it was only working for me because I was willing to plow hours into fixing problems_

Fixing problems, or finding solutions for your problems? Every advanced system has a learning curve, and Unix is an advanced system without a well-defined domain. It's great that you invested the time to make it work for you, but that you feel that it is inappropriate for "most non-programmers" is not necessarily a failure of the system.

As a sibling post said, "there is not much interest in empowering non- technical users". I think that's close, but I would add that it's a problem of scale: non-technical users require domain-specific solutions. If there were one single solution to empower non-technical users, there would surely be commercial interest.

I'm sorry, but I can't help feeling that the article has a high dose of "lo! I've seen the light and my light will solve every problem on the planet". It ignores the many good things Unix has enabled, and is very light on the details how a better system would look (or how it would be secured -- befriend, really?).

<comment><USER12> Man, "befriend" is the one part of the article I can totally stand behind! Why the heck doesn't my computer have a "befriend" command? No wonder FB/LinkedIn/every webapp ever is beating us (meaning the FOSS OS community, i.e. Linux) on mindshare.

(You could implement this different ways, but I'm imagining that once you friend someone they can see a select subset of posts on your computer. For me that would be status posts, some photos, some WIP code, etc. This would be a huge deal. Think about how many webapps it would make unnecessary.)

EDIT: Less flowery sentences.

<comment><USER3> I didn't mean to imply that was a bad idea. I meant that you provided no details on how it could be implemented or secured. That's more than just an implementation detail to me.

For example, your code as shown implies that you can reach your friend's computer through an Internet name (through dns even?). That already assumes that these non-technical friends can register their own Internet names, and care enough to do so. But that assumption is well outside the bounds of "unix sucks".

<comment><USER12> That's a totally fair point. Hey, I never said it was a good article!

Perhaps a charitable reading of it would be that instead of reading "unix sucks" (sadly I use almost these exact words in the article) instead read "the mismatch between the tools provided by unix and the needs of a normal user, combined with decisions made with good intentions at the time and kept for backwards compatibility, make the unix user environment a bad user environment for normal people today".

But of course I didn't write that, so I'm in no position to complain too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem with hierarchical filesystems is people who can't organize in a hierarchical manner, regardless of presence or absence of excuse or responsibility, make a mess of size X. And likewise the problem with tagged data is likewise the people who can't organize tags is arguably an equal or larger group and they end up with a huge steaming mess, although its of size 1000 times X especially WRT human effort required to clean up and curate.

The classic analogy is you unleash genealogists on a village cemetery and have them produce a family tree and the output is actually useful information. Unleash the same team and ask them to digitally tag tombstones, and you just get a pile of useless, error filled data, packed with duplicates and weird capitalization issues. This is a classic "information vs data" misunderstanding.

Another problem with hierarchical vs tagged is we have somewhat obtuse yet usable set of tools to handle truly immense spammy hierarchical filesystems, but strategies for handling and scaling tagged filesystems usually are hand waved away with "it'll never happen" or "we'll sprinkle magic AI dust on it, then it'll evaporate away". A classic "make the simple easier, while making the more difficult impossible". No thanks.

Much as there's nothing really new under the sun in IT, a generation or two ago this was "sure sendmail configuration is complicated, but all it needs is a GUI because in the small subset of problem domains that are a match for GUIs and people with a problem simple enough to be handled in a GUI, it works well, therefore its perfect for everyone to do everything in"

Also data typing is just a subset of tagging. Or rephrased a type is a very poorly implemented limited single tag.

Ditto the above with a "decent shell language" again we're dealing with people who can't handle paper calendars without a book telling them how (GTD, 42 folders, etc). They're just going to mess things up quicker with automation, while people who can handle the cognitive challenge will likewise jump into org mode or crontab without any serious effort on their part... You "could" write a noob gui for a nuclear reactor, or a UI for even newborn babies to use matches, but you probably shouldn't.

As a meta observation this is a classic "future is already here just unevenly distributed" problem, I use databases and git all the time. However see the comment about the GUI for sendmail... Much like some people are unqualified to be handed an acetylene cutting torch or a beryllium-Pu neutron source, some people should not be handed relational DBs or KV stores or version control, and if they had the background to understand and safely use those tools, the existing tools aren't really all that hard to use for folks of adequate cognitive level.

<comment><USER14> To your last part - I have a problem with the current software trend that's present both in web and mobile. Everything is being dumbed down, so that it can be used from the get-go.

It is _stupid_. The only way you can make someone an expert of a new tool in 15 seconds is by making the tool so simple that it's completely useless. There's a reason you get a few dozen hours of training before you are allowed to drive a car around. Or fly a plane. If you want to have a simplified car UI, then one exists too - it's called _a taxi_.

The reason of course is the competitive market pressure. The primary interest of a company is to _sell_ the product, not for the product to be useful. And so most of current design effort is about making software easier to sell, not about making it actually useful.

It's absurd to expect people to figure out by themselves how to use their file systems, databases or - yes - even their paper calendars. All of those are tools that require some learning to use effectively. We need to make people read manuals again, and stop expecting everything to be usable out of the box by an untrained monkey.

<comment><USER15> _> We need to make people read manuals again_

If you've ever read a technical manual, you're probably in the 1% of the population. People don't even read two-lines popups, and you expect them to read complicated manuals?

What you really need is adaptive interfaces that grow in complexity as requirements expand, reliably detecting the newbie / power user / hacker progression. That's what works best. Hackers ridicule UIs that bury stuff under "Advanced" modes, but they're actually the best approach.

Doing three (or four, or five) times the work, though, is no fun for developers, so we go from "you're a dumb user, be happy with limited options" to "you're a clever user, surely you can read a 1000-pages bible before launching a command", because building multiple interfaces for the same routines is boring.

<comment><USER6> Although it depends on what you mean by "technical" manual, 1% seems way to low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Sandboxes make a much better security primitive than sudo, file permissions, etc. which are useless for protecting a single user's data.

Is not only sudo, but sudo AND polkit. Are you sure you know what are you talking about?

And about your sensitive data, AppArmor is more than capable. For the other sensitive data, create a folder out of /home and "chattr +i" your content recursively, giving proper permissions first.

And you rely in Plan9 for your speech, which is more UNIXy than UNIX and everything IS a filesystem in a more hardcore way (something you look as obsolete), altough factotum and namespaces are a complete different beast.

<comment><USER17> Many unix systems are used by just one person (Desktops, Smartphones, Tablets). Most unix systems that are used by more people are servers and don't use the unix user system to discern between users.

The fewest unix systems out there have several users connecting to it with each user having a different unix user account. But exactly this is what the unix user system was designed - nothing else. Everything else like root or users for services is just a dirty hack, because unix wasn't designed to offer real isolation of applications.

AppArmor doesn't work because users creating profiles about what syscalls are allowed is out of touch with reality.

The only unix systems partially offering the isolation actually needed today are Android and iOS. You could still improve them massively though.

<comment><USER2> Just because you don't have more than one "person" user on a system doesn't mean you don't have multiple users. The UNIX security model is based on user separation, and has been used in many server environments to define boundaries between different privileges on the system.

Security wouldn't be possible without this. You can also think of cgroups/lxc/docker as a direct extension of this.

<comment><USER18> How much simpler would OSes and security be if we threw away multiple users (and groups)?

I think we don't really need them. We only need 3 operating "modes" in 90% of the cases: normal, administrator, guest. And after that various per- application permissions a la Android or iOS.

We don't need multi-users systems.

<comment><USER2> I think multi-user in this context is more about authorization of operations. It's correct that we don't need users/groups for this today, there are equally good things in cgroups and pam, but it's a simpler abstraction in many cases.

I think your mostly correct, but in most cases I would prefer individual authorization rules, like apparmor. There's always cases when you don't want to escalate the entire app to root level, but need something more than what's a normal mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Inspiration for the title: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est)

</comment><comment><USER16> >We are not NASA. RHEL had 30 million lines of code, 71% of them C, in 2001! How many hundred vulnerabilities lurk there, unseen by human eyes?

As if with "modern" languages you would be safer. Poor new delusional kids.

<comment><USER20> > As if with "modern" languages you would be safer. Poor new delusional kids.

That's a rather amazing quip. How would I, in my mid-thirties, accidentally write a buffer overflow in Haskell or Rust?

<comment><USER21> Wait, what, these things have no bugs, you say? All software has bugs, unintended side effects, untested code paths, and other cruft at the lower layers, especially when interfacing with the OS. Look how many vulnerabilities have been found in the JPG libraries alone, and that's just a bitmap; how hard could it be, right?

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/498234/vulnerability- in-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/498234/vulnerability-in-the- functional-programming-paradigm)

<comment><USER22> Interesting choice of a link, since all the answers essentially say that it may be easier to make it consume lots of memory, leading to a possible DoS. That's not pleasant, but hardly a major problem compared to remote code execution.

All software has bugs, it's true, and language runtimes included. But that doesn't mean some languages can't be safe _r_.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lawrence Lessig: The Solipsist and the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/the-solipsist-and-the-int_b_206021.html <comment><USER2> This extended flailing of Mark Helprin seems thorough, but it seems a lot longer than necessary for most of us.

Synopsis: Mark Helprin does not do his research and throws around a lot of unjustified and erroneous invective.</comment>


Ask HN: What to flag and how to detect sponsored stories? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN, given the text of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10573590 , what would be good criteria to determine if a story is a sponsored one?<p>I do a fair bit of looking at the new page but it is getting harder to figure out which articles are written with payment by the subject of the article. For instance, I flagged the story about the audio plug-in ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10636826 ) but it was not immediately obvious (and there is no proof). Given that comment we can expect a wave of such sponsored content to arrive and it might be good to establish a bunch of criteria based on articles suspected to be sponsored content. <comment><USER2> I just skimmed the audio plugin story and I find it perfectly fine.

Let's not swing the pendulum too far in the direction of suspecting every story to be sponsored.

It will only lead to more accusations of being a shill in the comments, and I'm very happy we users (and the moderators) seem to have successfully pushed back against that.

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole point of this ask HN is that it's not clear (at least, not clear to me). At least two users independently flagged that article, there may be quite a bit more. Without objective criteria of what sponsored content looks like good content will end up flagged and sponsored content will end up dominating the discussion.

After all, that's the goal of the sponsored content, to drown out any 'regular' content because the two are in competition for the same amount of attention that we can expend, but because sponsored content has money behind it and 'regular' content likely does not there will be a significant risk that the sponsored content will win that match.

<comment><USER2> I don't see any possible way to distinguish sponsored content from other content, short of an admission by the involved parties.

Therefore I don't see a positive outcome from the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, some things that might work - or not:

\- sponsored content would likely only talk about one product, not about a product against a competitive background

\- it would likely _only_ talk about that product in a positive sense

\- it would likely be part of a larger campaign

Maybe there are more criteria and hopefully simpler ones (certain keywords, calls to action, incessant repetition of product or company name or other giveaways).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As we know from pg's submarine essay, variants of this problem have existed for a long time. I don't see a big difference between PR-written articles and sponsored articles. The former are arguably more insidious because they leave a fig leaf of independence (c.f. Dan Ariely's argument that conflict-of- interest guidelines actually increase corruption because people feel that as long as they satisfy those, anything else goes).

The only information we're guaranteed to have is the text of the articles, so we might as well all get better at reading. Fortunately, for most topics, HN's community contains people who know something about it, are unlikely to be part of any marketing campaign, and can provide valuable critique. That's exactly what happened in the audio equipment thread.

Edit: I just noticed an interesting case: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10641543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10641543). That's a profile of HN favorite Bret Victor, apparently sponsored by BMW in some disclosed but not explained way. At first glance it seems to be a good article for HN.

I suppose a best-case (if unlikely) scenario of sponsored stories is that authors would be funded to write high-quality content and wouldn't have to worry about making it baity or dumbing it down. That would be closer to patronage than advertising.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't look at the story, look at the website.

If the publication is an honest one (The Guardian, New York Times, ZDNet, whatever) then the story is not sponsored, and if it is, it will say so. And with an honest publication, the sponsorship only buys you the space, it does _not_ buy you the journalist's opinion or a favorable review.

Note: it doesn't matter if you agree with the journalist's opinion or not. Different people have different needs, experiences, and views, even on the same paper. Even if you think a review is deluded, that doesn't mean the journalist is a shill. (And maybe you're the one who is deluded....)

If the publication or website isn't honest, then it really doesn't matter whether the story is sponsored or not. Caveat emptor. You can decide for yourself whether or not the story is useful for _you_.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about this then:

[http://www.condenast.com/press/press- releases/2015/01/26/new...](http://www.condenast.com/press/press- releases/2015/01/26/new-branded-content-studio-23-stories-conde-nast-debuts)

<comment><USER4> Branded content, isn't it? Which means it's still advertising rather than editorial....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it a good article? Is it interesting? Paid or not is irrelevant.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. But I'd very much like to know when I'm looking at content that is pushing something versus something that is genuine. The same could be said for reviews: if the review is good and interesting whether it is paid or not is not relevant. But for me it does matter whether the reviewer was paid by the maker of the product, it tends to skew the review towards favorable or even very favorable when in fact the product may be mediocre or simply bad.

<comment><USER5> Don't US rules mean sponsored content has to be marked as such? FTC has some stuff here: [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/ftc...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking)

If it's a UK source the rules are much tighter: any sponsored content has to be clearly identified as such before the user "clicks" it. So, a YouTuber who has a sponsored post must include the fact that it's sponsored in the title of the video, and should probably have "sponsored" in the thumbnail, and in the first few frames of the content.

Having, for example, a three second clip at the end of the video saying it was a sponsored post is not enough.

<comment><USER6> Just because there are rules don't expect anyone to actually follow them.

<comment><USER5> Well, I'm used to UK regulation where these things actually are enforced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is funny South Park episode on this: [http://uk.businessinsider.com/south-park-sponsored- content-a...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/south-park-sponsored-content-ad- blocking-episode-2015-11?r=US&IR=T)

In perfectly sponsored content there should be no ads you can click on. :-)</comment>


Bing It Is: Microsoft Rolls Out Its New Search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/bing_it_is_microsoft_rolls_out_its_new_search_engi.php <comment><USER2> B.I.N.G.: But It's Not Google. That choice of name is either very clever or very not clever and I'm not sure which.

<comment><USER3> I bet it was unintentional. But I think you just created a very sticky fakeponym.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. Actually I just saw that on Slashdot. I think you just created a sticky neologism too: <http://www.google.com/search?q=fakeponym> I like it.

<comment><USER4> I'm afraid the concept already has an accepted name:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks more like a 1990's era "portal page" than google's trimmed search engine. I'm not sure if that is a good thing, since google already killed that dragon.

<comment><USER6> I think they may be onto something. The "Portal" doesn't work because it pushes a lot of information or options at the user that they didn't ask for.

Search was better because it responds to the user. If you have something that's purposely structured like a portal, but which reacts to what the user asks for, then you have advantages of both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be curious to hear exactly what functionality is supposedly provided by the distracting background images and headers. I want to like bing (seriously, powerset FTW), but this is the same kind of pointless design-by-committee stuff that typifies this company's products.

<comment><USER8> I thought the random background image was a cool idea. Gives you something to look forward to, assuming they change it every day, and you have it set as your homepage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am skeptical. Yet this grabbed my attention:

 _Bing [...] wants to focus on providing an especially good user experience in four verticals: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business._

Those are precisely the areas where I find Google to be so overrun with SEO'd junk that it's often close to useless. If MS can deliver something better in these areas I'd use it. I doubt they will, though. They'd have to go from being awful to being great.</comment>


Ex-SolarCity employees: We were fired after reporting millions in fake sales - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/3-ex-solarcity-employees-claim-company-oversaw-bogus-sales-to-inflate-valuation <comment><USER2> My partner worked for various solar companies (But not Solar City) as a canvasser hoping to get some sales experience. As a result we got to see first hand how corrupt and underhanded their sales departments could be.

Canvassers were exploited mercilessly and commissions never appeared as new requirements were added to the payouts. Paychecks bounced periodically. Canvassers would be told to go door to door in areas where solicitation was illegal even though the company knew it was illegal and risked getting their employees arrested. Managers would hire friends and use fake leads to make them look good.

I kind of hoped that Solar City would be an exception but I'm not surprised. It seems like the entire solar industry is focused more on extracting government subsidies than on creating long term revenue streams. I don't think management is very confident of the long term prospects of residential solar. Especially considering pushback from utility companies.

<comment><USER3> > It seems like the entire solar industry is focused more on extracting > government subsidies than on creating long term revenue streams.

Some might argue this is the exact nature of government subsidies.

People are always going to make choices in their economic self-interest. Either solar needs to be the most cost effective solution for their energy needs, or the government needs to artificially inflate the cost of other energy (or reduce any subsidies to other energy to make solar more competitive).

Every time a hurricane knocks out a town's electric grid and federal funds are used to repair it, that's a subsidy. When government authority to exercise eminent domain acquires easements or land to erect power distribution, that's a subsidy. Not to mention utilities being absolved from responsibility for the pollution they create.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you've sufficiently proven the argument which the rest of your statements hinge on: "People are always going to make choices in their economic self-interest". It's an attractive (if somewhat cynical) point, but it's no more reasonable than any other generalisation. Not very.

<comment><USER5> Its patently obvious. No sane individual will systematically go against their economy self interest.

<comment><USER6> You may wish to look into behavioral economics [1], a system of psychology + decision making that looks deeply at how individuals often do go against their economic (and other) self-interests.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A trend that's been growing for quite a (long!) while now is exemplified by this article: " _Tesla did not respond to Ars' request for comment on Sunday._ "

Who in their right minds realistically expects _any_ organisation to respond to some random journalistic enquiry _on a Sunday_?

The other major variant of this shyster tactic is along the lines of, "Company X failed to respond _immediately_ when asked for comment." No company is able to respond _immediately_ , particularly not on an issue that's likely contentious. Any response would need to be run by their PR and legal people at the very least.

It's a cheap and nasty way to make companies look/feel uncaring about the issue being reported, but imho it does nothing but reflect poorly on the reporter and publication using these smelly tactics, and leaves me wondering what other agendas they may have running.

<comment><USER8> > Who in their right minds realistically expects any organisation to respond > to some random journalistic enquiry on a Sunday?

Jeez. Considering the story was posted today, what this probably means is that they requested commentary _on_ Sunday, waited for the entirety of Monday, and didn't hear back until today, when they decided to post it.

<comment><USER9> In my experience, legit journalistic sources are also open to delaying a story to include commentary if the commentary source asks for some reasonable additional time to respond.

<comment><USER10> Psht, delaying a story is so 2010.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "This tactic allegedly resulted, this person said, in tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom revenue."

SolarCity had revenues of ~$480M in 2016 [0]. "Tens of hundreds of millions" would mean billions of dollars of phantom revenue. Even if that fake revenue would be distributed over a couple of years, it would have been a significant proportion of SolarCity's revenue. Just seems unrealistic that the SEC or any other agency didn't realize that.

Or what do they mean by "Tens of hundreds of millions?". Did they mean to write "Tens OR hundreds of millions?". Even then the same logic applies.

[0] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/505770/revenue-of- solarc...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/505770/revenue-of-solarcity- corp-breakdown/)

<comment><USER12> That construction is so weird that I'm going to assume it was a typo and that they meant "tens or hundreds"

<comment><USER11> Ok. So it could be either $40M or $400M - that's a huge range. Let's assume something in the middle, like $200m. Does it seem credible to you guys that nobody except the three plaintiffs noticed that SolarCity faked half of their 2016 revenue?

<comment><USER13> Well first off, I don't see a time range here. This could easily be stretched over multiple years.

Secondly, if someone says "tens or hundreds of millions", I assume that they're giving a rough estimate based on incomplete information. If I'm evaluating the credibility of such an estimate, then I'll consider the most conservative end of the range, which in this case is $20M. If we suppose that that was spread over three years, then we're talking about 1-2% of total revenue. That doesn't sound so implausible, right?

Finally, SolarCity's 2016 revenue was $730M, not $400M.

<comment><USER11> That does sound plausible and also not newsworthy :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _This tactic allegedly resulted, this person said, in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom revenue. He added that more than a dozen people reported the practice to the relevant human resources representatives, and CEO Elon Musk himself, who never replied._

So employees were pumping up projected sales figures for (at least) personal benefit in the form of bonuses. What happens when these figures don't materialize?

<comment><USER15> Nothing. Its a pretty common problem in sales. Lots of sales people are constantly moving jobs and pushing their numbers up.

<comment><USER16> Who are these poor souls paying out bonuses and commissions on unrealized revenue?

<comment><USER17> Commission typically isn't paid out until the company is paid in my experience. Bonuses are different, but some companies I work for actually tracked how many orders were actually fully paid for vs. how many were entered into the system. A concerning number of salespeople would basically sign people up if anything the customer said could be construed as being interested, and their numbers would look great until you looked at the number of sales that fell through.

I never has the most sales in a single month when I worked sales, but I regularly had the highest realized revenue because every single person I signed up actually wanted what they were purchasing.

<comment><USER18> This was all over the cell phone industry when I worked networks side. This was pre-iPhone era, just to give an idea how long ago.

I traveled around metro areas measuring signal quality, simple upgrades or maintenance, often stopping at nearby retail outlets rather than laptop in the truck.

I'd get to know the store staff and they'd talk freely around me about "fake" signups to juice numbers.

The trick was sign em up at end of month, cancel them before a bill got sent. That way the store appeared to hit their monthly target.

They'd often do fleet style signups; construction company would come in legit looking for 10 lines, the store would sign up 20 phones for construction company. Then return half before the 14-day no questions asked period.

This was going on all the time, across multiple stores, as far as I could tell. The details would change, from construction to startup or new business needing phone in a hurry.

<comment><USER19> Heh, the same game gets played in retail commissions.

Didn't hit numbers for the month? Buy a bunch of your own product, wait a few days until the next cycle starts, then return it all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think Solar City didn't have a great reputation when they were independent, and I think those problems linger.

In Tesla's defense, they have trimmed back sales considerably and it seems like they are moving to a retail model in the future. I think that has the potential to be a lot more sustainable and less ripe for abuse.

At least, I hope so.

<comment><USER21> Keep in mind that the only reason for why non-utility deployment of solar makes economic sense was due to extremely generous subsidies, and net meter billing.

Which are not going to stick around forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> We just had solar installed (yesterday, actually!)

I worked with 3 companies; a local large-ish San Jose company, a much smaller local company, and SunRun (national).

Ultimately most of the quotes and sizing came back near identical; the very local company had a really nice guy come out and pitch pretty convincingly and ultimately tell me "even if you don't go with us, don't use SunRun, please.." and showed me some negative Yelp reviews and stuff.

Well, I was leaning towards that guy because I liked the idea of using a local company, but after a fair bit of digging I started finding some suspicious stuff.. I had contacted one company, but he presented a business card from another contracting company, and so on. Ultimately there were 3 company names, it was hard to find reviews, the address looked more like a freight forwarding company.. and when you start digging into contractor licenses the guy's associated with companies in SoCal that had been apparently sued out of existence.

I think the problem is, there's such a gold rush in solar, that everyone is just jumping in. The margins must be good, and demand is high. I don't actually think the guy was an outright scammer, I just think there are a lot of third rate contractors trying to set themselves up as solar experts and just over-promising and under-delivering.

Thankfully, this helped me end up with the larger, reputable local company that seems to have the size and professionalism that comes with it, while still helping me feel like I'm able to support a local company, with real local _employees_ , everything under one roof. But you have to look.

</comment><comment><USER23> So, I have no idea what the truth is, but didn't Solar City get bought out by Tesla? In that case, it would seem like it would have been better to clear the books with an audit of past sales, so as to make the price Tesla would have to pay for Solar City, something easier for Tesla to pay. But, I am not a finance person.

<comment><USER24> The Tesla purchase of Solar City cannot be thought of like a normal purchase- because of Musk's role. Solar City had all sorts of problems before the purchase - it lost >20% of its workforce in 2016 and cut the salaries of it's founders to $1. There was also some really questionable self-dealing like SpaceX buying SolarCity bonds.

It makes perfect sense for Musk as a person to use Tesla to support Solarcity - one of his enterprises supporting another. But that's not how public companies work, you can't force Tesla shareholders to overpay SolarCity shareholders for a buyout simply because Musk personally wants to see SolarCity succeed.But when you view it in that context is makes perfect sense to see why Musk didn't try very hard to drive a hard bargain purchasing SC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Although this is just hearsay, this is something the company will need to react to. High commission sales orgs frequently create bad incentives. It's hard to work around this, because the most aggressive tend to thrive in this kind of world, until they cross the line. But if you give up commissions, you will lose the highest producing salespeople to your competitors.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sounds like they should try to reduce the cost of the shingles and power wall, might be easier to sell :P

</comment><comment><USER27> Kinda hope these accusations are mostly true in a way, since Ars doesn't seem to show any compunction about naming names filed in a lawsuit. Would suck for the named persons if it turns out to be entirely false. I miss when journalists at least pretended to have standards.

<comment><USER11> It does seem like the involved persons' names are public, no?

<comment><USER28> Yes but few bother to read lawsuits. Most read news coverage of lawsuits.

<comment><USER14> So, while it's public information, they shouldn't report the names because most people won't read it? I'm not sure I follow.

<comment><USER29> The binary categories of "public" and "nonpublic" are just approximations for exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ok, I can write out the script for this knowing only the headline.

\- Elon defenders will jump in and claim it's all lies

\- Elon haters will chime in with "j'accuse!"

I honestly don't know the truth about this (few would) but let me point some things:

1\. I would find it strange if sales people were paid bonuses (let alone commissions) on non-real sales.

2\. Even if bonuses were paid when no money was paid by the customer, this would eventually get reconciled and at some point pretty quickly that salesperson would get flagged.

3\. Knowing that "tens or [sic] hundreds of millions of dollars" was in nonexistent sales would make an officer of the company guilty of any number of securities infractions. Not that this isn't possible of course but the severity of this has to be weighed against the benefits to make it more or less likely that it occurred given the potential outcomes.

4\. Was SolarCity a public (note: "public" != "publicly listed") company? If so, there are financial reporting issues too. As well as any obligations to shareholders or financiers.

5\. SolarCity was no stranger to lawsuits or government investigations [1].

6\. The buyout by Tesla is, on paper, suspect. One way to describe it is: one of Elon's companies (Tesla) bought (arguably "bailed out") a second of Elon's companies (SolarCity) that owed a lot of money it would arguably default on to a third of Elon's companies (SpaceX). Not much happened here remotely resembling at arm's length.

7\. People who get fired, rightly or wrong, have their own motivations for speaking out and rarely is it ever to say "yeah, I screwed up" but that's the case at least some of the time. Not that I'm saying it is here (again, no knowledge of the specifics) but just bear that in mind.

8\. Ex-employees might be suing (or considering suing) their ex-employer for any number of reasons which may or may not be valid. I suspect if they had good counsel they'd say nothing. If they had bad or no counsel they'd speak about this publicly. So which is it? Who knows.

Anyway, just take a deep breath and fight your natural (and irrational) instincts to either pile on or defend Elon because none of us really know what happened (yet?). [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Litigation_and_inves...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Litigation_and_investigations)

<comment><USER31> This behaviour is happening in sales departments in companies all over the world. The only reason it's of any interest here is because SolarCity has Musk's name associated with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> [deleted]

<comment><USER11> Pic or it didn't happen.

<comment><USER11> Ah come on, a little but of humor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone know who owns arstechnica? I have noticed a pattern of negative reporting directed towards anything associated with Elon Musk.

<comment><USER34> Because he's done a lot of negative things lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wow I'm surprised to see Ars hey in on the Tesla bashing... Interesting

</comment><comment><USER36> Seems like nothing more than mud-slinging from disgruntled, fired employees.

If SolarCity would have had "...tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in phantom revenue that would put them at over a billion in revenue, which I'll leave to you to look up how inaccurate that statement is.

<comment><USER37> The line is "tens _or_ hundreds of millions of dollars."

It didn't occur to you that that might be a misprint? Nobody says "tens of hundreds."

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why are we blaming the employees when these kind of things come from high pressure management.

Everyone is aware the Elon works his employees to death at Tesla, SpaceX, and apparently SolarCity.

I feel like these tech companies are great for consumers and shareholders, but employees are worked like dogs to keep the profit flowing.

<comment><USER39> That's a shite excuse. "Just following orders" etc.

<comment><USER40> If your neighbor was one of the salespeople, then sure go ahead and slag her for it. If you're a prosecutor with jurisdiction and you think there's a case, jump on it. Since most of us don't personally know any of the people involved, there's not much point in selecting these nobodies for our two minutes of hate. The character we're going to have to deal with again is the dude at the top, so naturally he's the one whose behavior we'd like to affect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Solar City commits fraud to make Elon's stock look good. Nice.

Side note: just watched Back 2 the Future again and saw what 2015 is supposed to look like. I didn't see anything about putting explosive batteries and flammable material next to every house.</comment>


Microsoft broke the internet? - <AUTHOR>

Downloading files from internet explorer 8 in vista and Windows 7 RTM won't work from most sites.<p>It seems windows 7 RC1 and XP are unaffected. <comment><USER2> [citation needed]</comment>


The sad state of RSS on the Mac - <AUTHOR> https://blog.notmyhostna.me/sad-state-of-rss-on-the-mac/ <comment><USER2> I use [https://newsblur.com](https://newsblur.com) — it's a web interface and service with apps available for iOS and Android.

The code is open source and actively developed, which gives me peace of mind when I pay my yearly subscription.

On my Mac I tried liking Reeder 3, but TBH NewsBlur's web interface is better. Reeder can use NewsBlur's API and the syncing between mobile and desktop is nice to have.

NewsBlur's author has been very responsive to issues and has been actively improving the service.

I also tried self-hosting various web solutions but it's too much of a hassle, a constant security risk and paying for a VPS ends up being more expensive.

<comment><USER3> For me, it's that I use a variety of systems and operating systems depending upon the circumstances. Unless it's relatively specialized tools (development environment, heavy-duty photo editing), I'd _much_ rather have a web interface I can get to from anywhere rather than having a native app I can only use on one system. The native app has to be a _lot_ better at some task.

<comment><USER4> If you run a cron job that turns your feed items into emails[1], you can use your regular IMAP client on any platform. I prefer it over both web clients and native feed readers.

[1] There are a bunch of tools that can do this, but I'm going to give a totally unbiased recommendation for [https://github.com/zsau/feedmail/](https://github.com/zsau/feedmail/)

<comment><USER3> I don't use a regular IMAP client :-) I read all my email through web interfaces too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Brent Simmons working on new open-source[1] rss reader for macOS — Evergreen[2]. Brent is original author of NetNewsWire. He recently posted screenshot[3] of current Evergreen state.

        [1]: https://github.com/brentsimmons/Evergreen
        [2]: https://ranchero.com/evergreen/
        [3]: https://twitter.com/brentsimmons/status/1020079742869884928

<comment><USER6> I hate to say it because people seem to have some weird affinity for Pasco in the Mac community, but Black Pixel is where good apps go to die. They bought up Kaleidoscope and have effectively stopped all development on it (a paid diff viewer that still has no syntax highlighting).

<comment><USER7> Why does that app even exist? All its features are natively implemented in git.

And an RSS reader? I'm starting to get the feeling that Mac apps are stuck in 2005.

Say all you want about Microsoft or Electron, but VS Code is the only developer app on my computer that doesn't feel out of place or have a strange and outdated UI. I don't care that it's consuming the resources of my cheap desktop computer slightly faster than another app might, it gets the job done and it's intuitive and works well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kaleidoscope has a bunch of great features, like diffing images and easily resolving merge conflicts with a few clicks. It also integrates into other git GUI tools like Tower for Mac. Of course if you live in the Terminal it's probably not very tempting to use. It's a matter of personal preference.

I still use it from time to time even though I know that it's probably at the end of it's life.

<comment><USER8> I use kaleidoscope with the git cli. I like using git from the command line, except for dealing with merge conflicts, so I have kaleidoscope pick up merges through its mergetool hook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use Reeder for Mac (and iOS) with Feedly and while I understand the author's reluctance to buy, I haven't had any real problems with the apps in all my years of usage. Although I must say I recently contacted the author with a tiny feature request and didn't hear back from them either.

RSS is just a niche product, bring it up with your average user and they probably won't know what you're talking about. I'm just glad these apps are still around. Maybe we'll once get a resurgence like Podcasts.

<comment><USER10> I too am very happy with Reeder. It actually is kept up to date. Came out with iPhone X support promptly, for example.

I think we're just conditioned to expect super frequent updates for everything every few weeks. Reeder is old school that way.

Having said that I only use it on iOS. On the Mac I use Feedly in a browser.

<comment><USER11> Reeder is excellent, and I've been happy with it, but the author is not usually quick to update it. iPhone X support was a notable exception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > inbox got a bit out of hand by having too many unread items piled up. I > slowly stopped looking at them before abandoning the idea completely

And this is precisely why it's insane and counterproductive to have unread counts on an RSS feed.

Don't obsess over reading every last article. It's a feed. Read what looks interesting. Let other things go. Don't track what you've read or what you've missed. There's nothing down that path but frustration and stress.

And yet, almost no RSS developers see the wisdom in this, and they prefer to embrace the dumb idea with open arms.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that also wouldn't solve the issue, what needs to be handled better is the difference between high volume feeds and low volume feeds.

I absolutely want to see every post of my friend's blog that has a post every few months. What I don't care about is to get every single MacRumors post with the latest gossip because that would make up about 15 items / day. I've seen some of the hosted solutions going into that direction but there doesn't seem to be a self-hosted or app doing that yet.

<comment><USER12> > I absolutely want to see every post of my friend's blog

I handle this by subdividing my feeds into useful categories- a feature which every RSS client supports.

My friend's blogs are placed in a category alongside other low-volume feeds. I never miss a post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm using Reeder 3 and it's actually quite good. The author updates it when it's necessary but yeah, no new features are in the pipeline apparently.

<comment><USER5> Reeder is the best right now, but author disappears for a long stretch of time without updates, then large release, few bug-fix releases and then again quiet time. Despite the fact he promised more frequent updates recently — he's been silent for a long time to think Reeder is dead. It's been crashing a lot lately, so not sure what to expect.

<comment><USER14> I think this is to be expected, since the app is not subscription-based.

We should all switch to subscriptions for apps that we use seriously, to avoid this exact problem.

<comment><USER15> It's an RSS reader. I don't expect anything but bug fixes, because I'm not sure there are any new features I'd care about. Reeder does it's job and does it well.

My only complaint would be I'd prefer to use the native share sheet, not have to go through the Reeder one to get to the native one. But that's not a huge problem. And I think Reeder may predate useful share sheets in iOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use Reeder syncing with Feedbin. I couldn't be happier. Yes, Reeder rarely gets an update but it works well and I believe it gets updated whenever is necessary — which is enough for me.

Feedbin, however, is just fantastic. Easily the best service I've been using for years, along with Pinboard.

<comment><USER17> I'm using the same combination. Daily and with zero issues.

Of course I'd wish Reeder was more actively developed, but thinking about it there simply isn't anything missing. And if OP is dissatisfied with the available RSS clients there's always Feedbin's web interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what exactly the author misses in Reeder. I've been using it for years, and did not even notice that it wasn't being updated.

I have feeds. They have posts. I read (some). The end.

There's nothing I'm missing, nothing that's broken. Complaining just about missing updates probably explains why the author never got to read anything: he was too busy fiddling with the reading experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't miss anything from Reeder, I use it on iOS already and it's all great. I also don't really have a problem with spending the money for Reeder. I'm just worried that in a few months when Mojave comes out all kinds of things are going to break and I have to look for a new solution.

<comment><USER18> I'm running Reeder on the Mojave beta and ... nothing changed.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great. Will it get updated to the new dark mode, will it get fixed if the new beta version breaks it? I was just trying to get a sign of life from the developer / developers. As someone else already said it has a history of activity and being abandoned for long stretches of time.

<comment><USER19> >I was just trying to get a sign of life from the developer / developers

This seems a little weird, no? Reeder's a one time purchase, not a subscription service or anything, so it seems kinda strange to be so worried about "a sign of life" for it. Lots of software used every day live in "maintenance only" or even "not maintained mode".

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not demanding an SLA or monthly updates. It's the same as with pulling a dependency into your projects, you are checking if the author is still around, the issues are being worked on and if other people are using it too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't get this obsession with the "last update date". Are there major bugs open? Did the underlying platform change and the app got left behind? Are there any major features missing?

Software applications are never "complete", but at some point we can stop fiddling all the time.

<comment><USER21> If I had a popular piece of software out there, once I reached the point of feature completeness (yes, I believe it is possible if you're a reasonable person), and stability I would do meaningless updates once every 3 months just to keep people that you're referring to happy and using my product. People aren't smart enough to just "be happy" and content, so you have to trick them into product satisfaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been using News Explorer for a while now and it's been pretty good. Dev is active, app is stable, syncing works, it's not Electron.

<comment><USER23> Not commenting on the app itself, but isn't kind of a sad thing when discussing an app and stating "not Electron" is probably a major selling point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I personally use News Explorer, both on macOS and iOS. It syncs via iCloud; I don't need or want some third party subscription service.

I only use it for Youtube subscriptions though, so that I don't need a Google account to follow channels I like.

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks pretty great, thanks! I'll look into it even if it doesn't have Fever integration. iCloud sync sounds neat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I use the inoreader web app, which works quite well. I don't think RSS is the type of thing that really needs its own native app anyway.

</comment><comment><USER26> Emacs and elfeed combined with swiper were the revelation for me personally. I am finally satisfied with offline RSS Mac experience.

<comment><USER27> Came here to plug this.

I'm working with the author to make a feed summary page like some other readers have, if you prefer to see things collapsed that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's web based not a desktop app but after Google Reader went down I somehow ended up with Newsblur and it's actually pretty good. The iOS and Android app is also nice.

</comment><comment><USER29> I just recently started using Cappucino[1] from the makers of Airmail[2], gotta say it feels like the spiritual successor to Reeder

      [1] https://rink.hockeyapp.net/apps/902c8f3a570242808ebb00495f5fa04d
      [2] http://airmailapp.com

</comment><comment><USER30> As someone who next to a Mac also uses Windows I just gave up on native RSS apps. Somehow RSS (or Twitter) apps never got traction on Windows.

There are some nice self-hosted RSS aggregators but in the end I just 'solved' this problem by subscribing to Inoreader. Its web app is convenient, resource- friendly and has more features than I will ever need. Their Android app also looks very polished. It is reliable to fetch article contents for header only feeds and because most RSS feeds are just pointers to web content I am just fine with not having a native app on my Mac/PC.

<comment><USER31> I use RSS in Outlook and Thunderbird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tangentially, I'm looking for a good RSS reader for iOS (preferably free and well designed, but paid ones are ok too).

I used to use Pulse, but it was bought by LinkedIn and completely messed up after that. Then I switched to using Apple News to follow some sites. But News is not a proper RSS reader as such, and Apple has done little to improve it since it was released with iOS 9 — still supported and available only in a few countries, cannot add RSS feeds, cannot find certain sites through a search, and very weird bugs if one switches the region setting. It's basically abandonware, as far as feature richness and expansion are concerned. Three years on, I still don't understand why the app cannot be available worldwide and work as a feed reader too.

I've tried Flipboard, but I don't like the fancy magazine-like layout and navigation (which I find unintuitive).

<comment><USER33> I like Newsify. iCloud sync, no nonsense, free with minor paid upgrade I didn't need but paid to support the developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just a vote for the oft-ignored RSS Owl. Don't know about the maintenance status, I see the web page is only copyright to 2015. But it works well.

[http://www.rssowl.org/](http://www.rssowl.org/)

<comment><USER35> Yeah, it's getting pretty old and there are a lot of unfixed exploitable vulnerabilities. Plus I was starting to have trouble using it with sites that had bleeding edge https/ssl configs.

I ended up switching to the slightly more modern Liferea a couple months ago. [https://lzone.de/liferea/](https://lzone.de/liferea/) I don't like the interface quite as much but it's workable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> For me it's the Newsblur web interface on desktop, and the wonderful Unread on iOS. I paid for it years ago and it's still getting updated monthly with new features and bug fixes, even though it has changed hands twice in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've been using ReadKit with very few issues for 4-5 years now. Maybe it's just that specific integration but it works fine with Feedly.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a bit off topic, but with so many people recommending what they use in this thread I thought it would be a good place to ask.

Can anyone recommend a good online newsreader that has a solid docker deployment? NewsBlur looked promising, but their app requires four setup steps to be executed in the terminal. I'd like something that gets pretty close to Twelve-Factor deployment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'd also recommend Miniflux. It's great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've started using NetNewsWire on the Mac in...2005? Earlier? They can pry RSS from my dead cold hands.

I wish ReadKit didn't seem abandoned. Great keyboard shortcuts, Pocket integration, and no attempts to algorithmically sort items. I wonder if this is another app that got hurt by the lack of upgrade pricing in the Mac App Store. I'd pay again if I could.

<comment><USER40> NetNewsWire is getting a successor, Evergreen [0].

[0] [https://twitter.com/brentsimmons/status/1020079742869884928](https://twitter.com/brentsimmons/status/1020079742869884928)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Never really liked RSS on the mac, used Google Reader, then switched to Feedly but wanted a little bit more, so i built [https://aktu.io](https://aktu.io), a RSS reader + news aggregator, kind of a mix between Google Reader and Google News.

Would love some feedback!

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm RSS reader for more than 8 years. I just moved to online services long time a go. Despite the sad fact that they disappeared after a while(Google Reader, Digg Reader) they are great and hassle free. Currently I'm using Feedly and that is how I'm here now.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm looking for a new RSS service, the problem is, that the one I liked best raised its price over the limit I'm comfortable with at this moment. So I'm out of luck. I have given up search for a good RSS application.

<comment><USER44> Try Winds, it's free

<comment><USER43> Winds is one of those Electron-based applications, and the idea of having for each application an entire web browser installed and running sounds more then weird to me. I'd prefer a progressive web application or native local application or a simple web site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think this might be a moot problem once Mojave allows you to use iOS apps on the Mac. The RSS reader situation on iOS is much more dynamic and would probably translate fairly well to the keyboard and mouse.

</comment><comment><USER46> I still use NetNewsWire 3.1.7. It's still the best RSS reader I've ever used. It has become more crashy as the OS updates come though, presumably as Apple keeps breaking its APIs.

<comment><USER47> I'm very happy with NetNewsWire 3.3.2 on Mac OS El Capitan 10.11.6.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I emailed the developer of Reeder about exporting my Readability's bookmarks, but never got a reply. I feel better now that I'm not the only one not getting a reply. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER49> I use Shrook. It is native, lightweight, fast, and free.

</comment><comment><USER44> Check out Winds: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/winds-podcasts- rss/id1381446...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/winds-podcasts- rss/id1381446741?mt=12)

And [https://getstream.io/winds/](https://getstream.io/winds/)

It's open source and looks awesome: [https://github.com/getstream/winds](https://github.com/getstream/winds)

<comment><USER50> > _It 's open source and looks awesome_

"Looks awesome"? As the CEO/Founder of the company that makes it, have you not tried it?

<comment><USER11> I think they're complimenting the appearance of the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I have used Thunderbird on Elfeed on Mac, both are quite good. Just not standalone applications.

</comment><comment><USER52> I also add rssguard and quiterss to the list, but I don't know about Fever.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about them but they'd probably both not qualify as a nice to look at native Mac app personally.

<comment><USER52> I see.

What about running TT-RSS locally and fetching from it with FeedTheMonkey? Probably the same limitations, but I put it out there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> been using newsfire rss ([http://www.newsfirerss.com/](http://www.newsfirerss.com/)) for a long long time.

still works perfectly for me...

</comment><comment><USER54> I use Reeder, syncing with Inoreader. Works great for me.

</comment><comment><USER55> Reeder in combination with Inoreader is my choice.

<comment><USER21> Why both?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Thunderbird to the rescue...

</comment><comment><USER57> Reeder is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER58> Have you tried Vienna? I've happily used it for the last several years now. It's open-source.

[https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna-rss](https://github.com/ViennaRSS/vienna- rss)

<comment><USER59> Is it just me, or they just don't have any screenshots anywhere? I'd like to see the interface before downloading and running it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, this also baffles my mind. It's probably the first thing I look for before even thinking of downloading something. Google images only has screenshots of very old versions it seems.

Lack of screenshots usually indicates to me that the interface is probably not worth showing.

<comment><USER60> There you go [https://imgur.com/a/5OYIDBM](https://imgur.com/a/5OYIDBM)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, that actually looks better than expected.

<comment><USER60> I've only had it a week or so and it seems pretty good, you can arrange things in folders and it has smart folders to, which create dynamic lists using criteria - haven't looked at them yet - they're not something I need. It hasn't crashed yet and seems to just work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>