FBI Recovers WhatsApp, Signal Data Stored on Michael Cohen's BlackBerry - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/06/fbi-recovered-hundreds-of-encrypted-messages-from-michael-cohens-phone/ <comment><USER2> Damn, you'd think that someone at that level would pay for better OPSEC support. But then, I guess that I'm not surprised. Blackberry does have a reputation, not at all deserved at this point. I'm pretty sure that the President's phone is just as poorly secured. Probably less, from what I've read.

<comment><USER3> This issue is huge in politics. The entire Clinton personal e-mail scandal was essentially her unwilling to give up her BlackBerry, something Obama was unwilling to give up too. These people learned how to use some technology decades ago, and will continue using it no matter what other issues it causes.

<comment><USER4> Check your timelines. Obama was elected in 2008, and BlackBerry was the dominant player in the market at that point.

Also, he DID swap out his phone for a secured one, and his staff instituted a number of security protocols to keep it secure.

<comment><USER3> A dominant player, yet Obama needed a special highly modified version to securely access the White House network. A huge amount of work to keep using what he was comfortable with.

<comment><USER5> Which makes complete sense. He is the most powerful individual in a country of 300+ million people. If he needs a certain thing to keep him operating at peak efficiency and focus, he gets that thing. Period. Unless it violates national security.

Being elected president is not the time to learn a new technology suite. Hopefully most presidents have better things to do with their time than that.

At that level your people have people who have people to deal with that kind of minutiae.

<comment><USER3> >Being elected president is not the time to learn a new technology suite. Hopefully most presidents have better things to do with their time than that.

At what level does this stop being a waste of time for the person?

I'm not suggesting Obama should have been forced to change, but every else in his administration was forced to change. There's some serious clashing between the need for secure devices and the reluctance to change from old technology.

<comment><USER6> I think it's fair to ask what the secure alternative platform was. I wouldn't be surprised if it was five years out of date and barely functional. I think the President ought to be able to say "this is crap, improve it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Manfort [not Cohen, as I originally wrote, but Manafort] had his message stored on iCloud. That turned out to be part of how the FBI was able to recover them so easily.

[https://gizmodo.com/paul-manafort-learns-that-encrypting- mes...](https://gizmodo.com/paul-manafort-learns-that-encrypting-messages- doesnt-ma-1826561511)

<comment><USER8> "...Cohen's messages were stored on iCloud..."

???

Your comment had me struggling to determine how one could store WhatsApp messages on iCloud. (From a Blackberry no less.)

But then I followed your link. I don't think that article was about Cohen. You may want to change your post.

On an equally important note, why is it that people out there assume that ANY form of electronic communication is impervious from government surveillance? The reality is that if a three letter agency is after you, it's probably unwise to be using WhatsApp and Signal in an incriminating fashion. (Or anything else for that matter.)

It's like locking your physical spaces. Yeah, you should go ahead and lock your house or office and turn on the alarm system while you're gone...

but you should also go ahead and assume that those three letter agencies planted surveillance devices in that house or office even in the face of your security measures.

<comment><USER9> >On an equally important note, why is it that people out there assume that ANY form of electronic communication is impervious from government surveillance? The reality is that if a three letter agency is after you, it's probably unwise to be using WhatsApp and Signal in an incriminating fashion. (Or anything else for that matter.)

Signal has a feature for self-destroying messages (on-read, or after x amount of time). Seems like that could've been used and it wouldn't have lead to this right here.

<comment><USER8> Point is that the messages still have to go over the public networks, so if three letter agencies have you under surveillance, you should assume they're gonna get everything you're saying. You should NOT just say, "well, I'm using encryption so I'm golden."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If there's one (family of) devices(s) that the FBI certainly knows how to 100% completely pwn the shit out of... it's the Blackberry.

<comment><USER11> Why?

<comment><USER12> BlackBerry CEO: We'll Try To Break Our Own Encryption If Feds Demand It (2017)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/10/25/black...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/10/25/blackberry- ceo-well-try-to-break-our-own-encryption-if-feds-demand-it/#61bfbd769772)

BlackBerry CEO blasts Apple for focusing on user privacy, data protection (2015)

[https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/219661-blackberry-ceo- bla...](https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/219661-blackberry-ceo-blasts-apple- for-focusing-on-user-privacy-data-protection)

<comment><USER13> Related: BlackBerry gives Indian government ability to intercept messages (2013)

[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/blackberry- india](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/blackberry-india)

Edit: Also

RIM to share some BlackBerry codes with Saudis: source (2010)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blackberry-saudi/rim- to-s...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blackberry-saudi/rim-to-share- some-blackberry-codes-with-saudis-source- idUSTRE6751Q220100810#tgPYKWxcfm9HeB3P.97)

BlackBerry approved in Russia (2007) [required access during criminal investigation]

[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/business/worldbusiness/27...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/business/worldbusiness/27iht- berry.4.8499664.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The letter to Judge Kimba Wood stated that "the Government was advised that > the FBI's original electronic extraction of data from telephones did not > capture content related to encrypted messaging applications, such as > WhatsApp and Signal... The FBI has now obtained this material."

I don't get this. How could you possibly decrypt encrypted messages without WhatsApp or Signal's assistance?

Isn't the whole point of encryption that no-one can decrypt it unless they have the necessary keys?

<comment><USER15> Encryption in transit doesn't imply encryption at rest.

For instance, WhatsApp on Android will happily back up to Google Drive, if you allow it, and it does so in cleartext.

<comment><USER16> Nothing on Google Drive is stored "in clear text".

<comment><USER17> If I put a file with certain content into Google Drive, then Google Drive, or a subpoena for my Google Drive data, will return exactly those contents.

Hence, it is reasonable to apply any distinction to the content as a user of Google Drive sees it, and not as it may be stored on the backend. Hence, if the data WhatsApp pushes to the Google Drive API is unencrypted (and we're talking about the data, not about the HTTPS-encapsulated form that passes over the network), it is reasonable to call it "in clear text", and it wouldn't be reasonable to call it encrypted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article doesn't specify whether or not the encryption was "broken", or whether Cohen is simply cooperating. My hunch tells me it's the latter.

<comment><USER19> Yea this is key. It's possible to have Signal on your device but not implement any device locking passcode or passcode for unlocking Signal... That would make it trivial to recover data if you have the device.

<comment><USER20> An alternative method of protecting oneself is to set an expiry timer, which makes messages in a conversation ephemeral. 1 week seems to be a fine balance between being able to look back at old messages, while also not having those you communicate with be allowed to store data on your device for too long.

<comment><USER21> Signal won't prune the messages until you open the app (or maybe the conversation) again. There've been a few releases where the changelog notes that the app didn't expire ephemeral messages properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Signal encryption relies on a password (last I used it, which was a long time ago). Typing long random passwords in a phone is nothing if not impractical.

It wouldn't shock me to find out they just brute forced the password.

<comment><USER23> Or found a sticky with the password on it when they raided his office.

<comment><USER24> Most likely scenario.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You can get WhatsApp and Signal on a BlackBerry?

<comment><USER26> Why wouldn't you be able to?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h BB used to run a custom QNX-based OS, not Android.

<comment><USER27> WhatApp ran on Nokia's S60 platform, which is for feature-phones. Making a QNX version was probably much less of challenge.

<comment><USER28> You mean S40. S60 was Symbian, the smartphone platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Trump is in trouble now.

EDIT: It is suspected that Michael Cohen, being a long time Trump friend and personal lawyer, is familiar with Trump's money laundering. If Michael Cohen believes he's at risk of being sent to jail for many years, he might collaborate with the FBI.

<comment><USER30> A _lot_ of trouble. A Ukrainian national said in an interview that he testified in front of a grand jury convened by the Mueller investigation last Friday. He said that the prosecutor's questions focused on Cohen so he is about to be squeezed from both sides and his family is now selling several multimillion dollar apartments (including his in-laws), supposedly to cover legal bills. His current legal team will cease all work for Cohen after today with sources saying that it is due to a failed attempt at negotiating down some already owed bills.

Federal grand juries convene on Fridays so we will know by Monday whether more indictments will be handed down.

<comment><USER31> I was under the impression that grand jury questioning was not to be disclosed? Am I wrong about this?

<comment><USER30> The jurors are not allowed to talk about the proceedings but unless the judge institutes a gag order or the contents of the testimony are otherwise protected (i.e., the case involves a child whose identity must be kept sealed, person testifying has security clearance and the topic is classified, etc.), witnesses can do whatever they please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> do people still use BlackBerry in Washington? Seems a little out of date to me...

</comment><comment><USER33> i cannt read i am dumb, but?

did they have his phone password or is this saying they hacked the chat softwares?

</comment><comment><USER34> It says that they have "731 pages of encrypted data" but nowhere does it say that they managed to decrypt the data, and read the plain text.

It states that they did not disclose what was in the "encrypted data" so... there's no indication or assurance that they've managed to access the plain text.

<comment><USER35> Why on earth would those fools print it all out?

<comment><USER34> Hard copy for future reference, in case some sort of vulnerability becomes exploitable at a later date.

Also, to provide a vague, yet seemingly impressive metric, true to form for federal government employees, because it seems official to the non-technical layman.

If you were to declare a metric such as 900KB of encyphered base64, well, gee, that's like, almost nothing. But print it out, and non-expert jurors start thinking "Well, gee! 700 pages is longer than that Stephen King book that I just read!"

And anyway, they wouldn't have to print it out, to obtain a quotable metric. All they'd have to do is paste it into an evidence template, and prep it in a printable format, like a DOCX file or a PDF. Then, they can subpoena for the metadata, and at least maybe infer a relationship between entities, even if they are denied awareness of the nature of the conversations etween them.

Seriously, this is how government officials and lawyers tend to think.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I changed my mind about Safari - <AUTHOR> http://msiwek.com/blog/why-i-changed-my-mind-about-safari

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the site refuses to scroll in an Android browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's caused by an ugly workaround I used to enable Safari. I'll fix it as soon as I get home, thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment>


How ~75% of PirateBay traffic is seeded by 100 people driven by profit  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/interviews/2011/02/16/torrent-seeders-driven-profit/

<comment><USER2> That is one awful article. Arbitrarily cut in 4 pieces and never getting to the point. It is about a paper: [http://conferences.sigcomm.org/co- next/2010/CoNEXT_papers/11...](http://conferences.sigcomm.org/co- next/2010/CoNEXT_papers/11-Cuevas.pdf) [pdf] which from a first glance is not very good either.

Also the _traffic_ is not what this is about but users uploading things.

Did anyone read the paper? Worth a second look or is it rubbish? "We demonstrate that a small fraction of publishers is responsible for 67% of the published content and 75% of the downloads." suggest the ladder. Not to mention that they talk about Bittorrent but actually mean The Pirate Bay.

<comment><USER3> Articles like these make me wish HN had a TL;DR option. Something like:

How ~75% of PirateBay traffic is seeded by 100 people driven by profit

"Seeders put links in their content requesting that you visit their Adsense driven site" Click to read more...

Nice idea for my next hacking project maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summary: "some people give away free (others') movies, and then put some links to their private adsense-laden portals in a README file or somesuch. This accounts for a very large percentage of the downloads from the pirate bay."

Very interesting findings, but it doesn't really answer the question of how important these people are to the pirate ecosystem. Are they just taking releases from more-private "underground" seeders and putting them on the pirate bay (in which case they are, effectively, just spammers and their elimination wouldn't really hurt the pirates) or do they actually provide the content themselves?

<comment><USER5> Most of the content on tpb comes from the scene which does not condone p2p sharing. These people just have access to scene releases early and want to profit from it.

[http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-releasers-slice-the- top-o...](http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-releasers-slice-the-top-off- movie-piracy-pyramid-100727/)

[http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-releasers-are-the-new- kid...](http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-releasers-are-the-new-kids-on-the- piracy-block-100729/)

Sadly, the report does not list any of the usernames of those that they studied. However, if you just go to a category, pick a frequent submitter, and look at their uploads most of the time there tags from many different groups. Some even try to claim other's releases as their own.

<comment><USER6> Yep. "The scene" really hates p2p in all its forms. They have been having inter-group drama over it for years. Pretty hilarious all round.

See:

<http://www.scenenotice.org/details.php?id=1847>

<http://www.scenenotice.org/details.php?id=1920>

and many others on that site.

<comment><USER7> Don't these people have ANYTHING to do?

<comment><USER8> It seems to me that they are doing what they enjoy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People have been putting those little files in for _years,_ the only thing that's changed is that now the destination sites are bittorrent trackers with adverts and the txt files are poorly spelled and ugly, whereas back in the day they'd have awesome ASCII art advertising the various scene dumpsites the release had been FXP'd through.

<comment><USER9> They still have those ASCII art and scene dumpsites. Problem is that someone with access to scene material takes that, and then retags it with their shitty website and uploads it to bittorrent.

<comment><USER10> What a shame that their beautiful art which they invested time and energy into is being misappropriated by someone else so that they cannot profit from their creative endeavours.

<comment><USER11> The difference is that the scene shrugs and says "oh well, everyone knows who we are anyway" and doesn't try to bring the power of the state to bear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am shocked, shocked that piracy is not driven by music connoisseurs and film buffs eager to bring the artistic and cinematic masterworks of our times like Baby and Salt to poor wretches who can barely afford their $60 a month broadband and $500 computers to say nothing of their $0.99 music downloads.

<comment><USER13> In the US sure, but how many can afford it in the third world?

<comment><USER10> Get them reliable electricity, clean water, access to capital and stop propping up their corrupt governments... and give them all computers. And _then_ we can talk about whether their music downloads are priced fairly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _There are also cases where one username corresponds with a few IP addresses from the same ISP, which is known as the NAT [network address translation] effect._

Aren't they getting this backwards? NAT takes multiple computers (i.e., users) and concentrates them into a single outwardly-visible IP.

<comment><USER15> should be "...which is known as a dynamic IP address."

Actually, it is a bad sentence, 'which is known as' is referring to 'cases'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A couple of things struck me while reading this article:

1) Everything is a market. Any time people get together, for any purpose, trading occurs. That means the art of trading -- your time for a few ads, or whatever -- is happening. The _users_ of Pirate Bay may be sticking it to the man or whatnot, but it's just another marketplace -- albeit one with much cheaper entry and transaction costs. (So it's a winner for the participants)

2) The confusion, yet again, between correlation and causation. Yes, there may only be 100 people who start all the torrents, _but the 100 people are not the cause of the torrents_ , they're just the statistical artifact of having a marketplace in which certain behaviors are rewarded more than others. Take away those specific 100, and a new group would form. It's not like those 100 people are somehow directly causing the effect, they're just the people who fell into that role in that community at that time.

<comment><USER17> _Everything is a market. Any time people get together, for any purpose, trading occurs._

The truth of that assertion hinges on us _not_ remembering the billion other counter-examples.

It might comfort free-market capitalists like ourselves to paint humanity with that thick brush, but truth tells differently: people don't always gather with the intention to buy/sell, in fact, sometimes, commercial intent is detrimental to a healthy assembly and is frowned upon.

<comment><USER18> Just that trading occurs anywhere people get together doesn't mean everything is a market. I'd have liked to +10 you. It's so hip these days to see everything in the context of economics, as a market. In my opinion that's actually hurting our understanding of human behaviour, by trivializing every interaction.

<comment><USER19> It's a generalization, not a trivialization. Saying all human interactions are markets is like saying everything in computer programming is an object (or everything is a function, or everything is data, or whatever). It's a particular way of looking things that yields insights depending on where, how, and how well it is applied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> BitTorrent community is a hydra, and will grow two new heads if one is cut down.

If GrooveShark pays royalty fees, I indirectly pay for music, but movies in my country are nearly unavailable, and only the elite can afford to go to the cinema or buy disks.

</comment><comment><USER21> discussion on slashdot

[http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/16/1342236/How-Do- Seeder...](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/16/1342236/How-Do-Seeders- Profit-From-BitTorrent)

<comment><USER7> ... which is a dupe of this one:

[http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/26/1611226/100-P2P-Users- Upl...](http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/26/1611226/100-P2P-Users-Upload-75-of- Content)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Profit is a form of value. Big surprise that people are deriving value in different ways. Anyone that uses PirateBay without deriving some sort of value is either irrational or has blindly accepted the irrational premises of altruism.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like some good entrepreneurship going on there. These creative business models should be applauded. Some of them, if encouraged, may even lead to viable distribution business models for movies and music in the future.

<comment><USER24> I'm far from a fan of the big movie studios and their rigid distribution models, but I'm still unconvinced that annotating other people's content with spam portals is either (i) a particularly creative business model or (ii) a viable alternative revenue source for those creating and selling the content.

<comment><USER23> You have to make do with what you can. At the moment, any more legitimate form of content monetisation is effectively ruled out by the "rigid", as you call it, stance of the copyright holders. I'm sure the people setting up those sites would rather use more profitable business models.

In fact, if you read the article, you will see a screenshot of one enterprising bit-torrent site offering monthly subscriptions. So even with all the hurdles thrown into their way by the current owners of the time-unlimited copyrights on these works, they still manage to do more than just spam portals.

I think that's to be applauded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Infinite greed, torpedo their link backs

</comment><comment><USER26> Uhmmm...Do they really call that piece of crap "research"? Agrhrrrr

<comment><USER27> I can't agree more. The site is also incredibly irritating. Why split an otherwise average length article over 4 short pages and stuff each with pointless images? We really shouldn't be linking to such crappy sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Having been part of the "XviD scene" for many years in the not too distant past, I have to say that the whole angle on this being profit-driven is just... wrong. NFO-files have been around since the early days of BBS trading in the Amiga scene and the PC scene alike, and the presence of web addresses in these files today doesn't change the reality that _people just don't care for reading the NFOs_ when it comes to audio and video, and the vast majority don't even care when it comes to software unless they absolutely need to check the NFO for instructions on how to apply a crack, a registry key or similar. Furthermore, people don't give a damned about looking for web addresses in the NFOs to find out where to "get more"; they don't need to, they already know where to get their warez. To say that there is anything close to even moderate traffic going to the various groups' ad-laden addresses is a gross, gross exaggeration.

<comment><USER29> The trouble with a declaration like this is that it has no basis in fact, just your own personal experience.

I have never seen _anybody_ click on an ad on a webpage. By your reasoning that means that obviously no-one clicks them.

And yet google makes billions off it. Apparently 10% of internet users make up almost all the advert clicks.

I would agree that it's even more of a small % for nfo files and txt files in torrents because of the effort of getting to them. It could still easily translate to serious money when you're talking about 75% of the entire torrent ecosystem using only 100 peoples' torrents.

I have no facts, but the odd behaviour presented in this article makes me suspect you're actually way off mark as I find it hard to imagine that there is some small group of altruistic French seeders using one ISP who wish to bring the joy of movies and music to everyone for such a massive amount of effort.

The more likely explanation, just as presented in the article, is that there's good money to be made as long as you take the operation to scale.

<comment><USER30> _I have never seen anybody click on an ad on a webpage. By your reasoning that means that obviously no-one clicks them.

And yet google makes billions off it. Apparently 10% of internet users make up almost all the advert clicks._

I disagree that NFO files are anything like web ads. Web ads are in your face and surround content you are trying to access at all times. They are more like spam e-mails that show up in your Spam e-mail folder. You have to open that folder to see them, and then decide if you want to click through any links contained inside.

Plus, the demographic that is a much more specific demographic than users of the internet as a whole.</comment></comment></comment>


Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs. - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/petitions/lennart-poettering-stop-writing-useless-programs-systemd-journal

<comment><USER2> Blaming Lennart (not Leonard!) is a bit counterproductive. There's a general tendency in the desktop Linux community to rewrite components every few years, rather than improving what exists.

I guess this is mainly caused by the failure of Linux as a commercial desktop. Except for heroic efforts by Red Hat, SUSE, and previously Sun, it's mostly a hobbyist affair. As a hobby, people prefer to do the fun work, not the tedious and boring maintenance, bugfixing, and polishing.

The quality of Linux as a desktop operating system is in stark contrast with Linux as a server operating system. Thanks to the enormous amount of money invested in server-related components, Linux as a server is generally very polished and reliable.

On a personal note, the effort required to maintain a stable Linux desktop made me switch to OS X in 2007, after using Linux for 13 years.

<comment><USER3> The failure of Linux as a commercial desktop is also (not entirely, of course) his responsibility, considering the crap he pulled with all the desktop components he messed with (PulseAudio, HAL, DBUS etc etc), so clearly it's not a causal factor for his behaviour.

<comment><USER2> I think the 'failure' of the commercial Linux desktop can mostly be attributed to economics. Most importantly, consumers do not want to pay for a desktop operating system (even if it were proprietary). Microsoft effectively shut down the alternative market by making Windows-hardware coupling mandatory for large hardware vendors. This gives the perception (through scale and coupling) that Windows is nearly free. So, why would one spend money on an alternative operating system?

Then, there are social factors. A vocal minority of the Linux community is outright hostile towards proprietary software or even towards any form of capitalism. It is not a very attractive market to operate in - one misstep, and elaborate PR campaigns are set up.

<comment><USER4> "Microsoft effectively shut down the alternative market by making Windows- hardware coupling mandatory for large hardware vendors."

How did they do that, how?!

That is exactly why GNU/Linux on the desktop isnt used by more people.

<comment><USER3> monopolistic behaviour and a solid, conservative set of well-documented APIs.

<comment><USER4> Why would a hardware vendor care about APIs or monopolistic behaviour?

Why would a hardware vendor make a deal which said vendor can only use this software on the hardware they make but not other?

<comment><USER5> Unless I am misunderstanding you, your second question makes it appear that you didn't read the material cited in spot's response to your earlier post. If I'm wrong, could you perhaps rephrase your question?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think blaming someone for innovating is possibly the stupidest thing one could do.

dbus is awesome. Best bus we have.

systemd is really nice and useful, overall a better upstart. The reason it's not a patch for upstart or sysinit is that their designs preclude certain features that systemd provides.

I don't know about pulseaudio, and I'm not sold on Journal.

<comment><USER7> systemd doesn't appear to solve a problem, it seems to just add a layer of indirection and complication, as well as a single point of failure for ALL system startup services, rather than letting each service just handle it's own deal.

`init` _already exists_ to kick things off properly - now init just runs systemd which then kicks things off, for no appreciable gain.

<comment><USER8> Seriously, do you even know what you're talking about? init does not start systemd at all. systemd replaces init, in a way that I can even select whether I want to use the traditional init or systemd, on boot time, with a kernel option.

And have you seen proper systemd integration? I installed Fedora lately, and man, that boots fast. Fedora solves so many things in a sane way that Ubuntu has been struggling since years. usplash, xsplash, splashy? Fedora has FDO's plymouth. Guess what, it works. SYS V init, the stupid Arch init, ubuntus upstart? Fedora has FDO's systemd, and it's faster than any of those.

<comment><USER7> You're right, I misunderstood the integration.

It still seems like it's optimizing for the wrong thing for the vast majority of linux users. The # of linux servers, which don't care about boot time (or where software init is a very tiny part of boot time anyway) is way larger than the number of people using it as a desktop. Boot time isn't the thing that's keeping linux off the desktop.

Rewriting scripts and rolling them into a C daemon defeats the whole point of scripts in the first place - the administrator of the system can't make quick changes or easily troubleshoot things (or, optionally, selectively enable/disable small sections of initialization). It's also a large amount of new work for folks busy fixing actual broken or buggy parts of their software.

Lennart complains that the starting PID on his linux desktop is too high, because init scripts call 'grep', 'awk', etc. - and that developers should rewrite all of that into their own startup daemons. It seems like he's complaining about the 'UNIX way' of small, text-oriented tools each doing one job and piping the results between them for flexibility and power for the the system administrator. Moving all of that into a C-based daemon, hiding it entirely from the administrator (short of a unsupported-by-your-contract recompile and source mod) doesn't seem like a net win for me, especially for a few seconds saved two or three times a year.

Most scary is the way he wants to handle socket based services - it's already the source of one remote DOS against a machine running systemd: <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=739538>

<comment><USER9> This isn't about boot time, that is just a nice side effect for desktop users.

This is about servers, and better ways to manage the services on them. A service shouldn't need to daemonize itself, and monitor it's own process via shell scripts and PID files. Having infrastructure to _run_ services (as apposed to just _starting_ them), monitor them, and resolve dependencies between them is a huge step forward.

(I also don't agree with the handling of socket-based service in systemd, but it's an experiment, and maybe I'm wrong, so its worth a try).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "You seem to know a lot of stuff about me. I am not particular fond of people who turn their dislike of software I wrote into personal accusations and judging in a public forum." - Lennart Poettering Sep 21, 2008 <http://lwn.net/Articles/299615/>

For what it's worth, 4 years on I still struggle daily with audio and only audio on Linux. I'm not in a position to tell if it's ALSA or PulseAudio that makes nothing come out unless I plug/unplug, mute/unmute in the correct order everytime I come back from suspend/open a different app/want to use headphones. But I didn't have these problems before Fedora 8 when I was using ESD ;)

And just recently I've resorted to manually starting couchdb in a console instead of using the init scripts on fedora because after upgrading to 15 they do some bad things to file permissions. Is it the distributors fault or is it systemd? Correlation does not imply causation?

<comment><USER11> Why does nobody else create a better sound system?

<comment><USER12> ALSA already is the better sound system as long as you don't need all your applications to have one extra redundant volume control or playing audio on a remote computer over the internet. However de-pulsifying a linux install correctly isn't easy.

<comment><USER4> " or playing audio on a remote computer over the internet".

I thought thats the point of pulseaudio and really wanted to try it.

How can I say... it FAILS at even that! I got it working with ssh and mpd faster than... oh dont make remember.

<comment><USER12> > " or playing audio on a remote computer over the internet". > > I thought > thats the point of pulseaudio and really wanted to try it.

AFAIK (but I wasn't using linux at the time) the point of pulseaudio was that it was very easy for an application to lock your audio exclusively with ALSA or OSS (and still is unless ALSA is properly configured) and there were several competing "sound daemon" trying to solve this problem. Pulse audio was supposed to be the one true sound daemon, emulating everything else under the sun. Then it got sound mixing and networked audio bolted on because Poettering is the master of the kitchen sink.

<comment><USER13> The right thing to do would have been to fix ALSA so that applications wouldn't lock each other out, or whatever other problems ALSA may have.

<comment><USER12> They did, eventually, with dmix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, I don't understand why move this personal attack against Lennart. From my point of view he just wrote pieces of software he deemed necessary. I would rather put the blame on distributions other than Fedora¹ for trying to integrate his stuff early and poorly (thus starting a chain-reaction which caused even more distributions to rush with integration attempts). I think he's getting a lot of flak for choices made by others.

_________

1: Fedora is known to ship with lots of experimental software/wide-scale changes. Its users expect breakage/major innovations from time to time.

<comment><USER4> He could have improved esd or jack. But no.

<comment><USER14> Sure he could, but things like that happen all the time. Countless people start forks and new projects every day, while they could improve the existing ones (the world is full of examples).

I have this darwinian vision of the software world where it's extremely positive to experiment with new stuff. Only time will tell which things surpass the test of time.

Attacking someone publicly this way just because he doesn't contribute to your¹ favorite project is, in my opinion, a sick thing to do.

______

1: Not addressing you in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Haha, "Wolfgang Draxinger" signed 28 days ago. Check out this epic battle between Draxinger and Poettering: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0>

<comment><USER3> The way Poettering dismisses the "1970s unix mindset" is really sad. Here we have a big Linux contributor who apparently doesn't appreciate his heritage, which explains why he's constantly trying to reinvent it... and poorly, as the saying goes. I'm one of those who really didn't see the need for PulseAudio or any of the *Kit stuff, and even HAL was kind of a train wreck (all those years to make it stable and supported by desktop managers, to then throw it all away).

I'm sure he's just the most visible advocate of this approach, not the only one, but he's certainly responsible for a lot of the misery Linux desktop users like me were and are subjected to. After a decade of Linux on my desktop, I've switched back to Windows 7 in early 2011 and, to be honest, I'm quite happy I did.

<comment><USER15> > I've switched back to Windows 7 in early 2011 and, to be honest, I'm quite > happy I did.

Yes, because Windows 7 and OS X already have all this modern non-70s-stuff that Lennart is trying to bring to Linux.

<comment><USER3> No, it's because they're coherent experiences, developing single components over 10 or even 20 years. They don't chuck out entire subsystems on a whim, breaking compatibility with everything and then blaming anybody but themselves for the resulting mess.

Edit: it's quite astonishing how such a wide ecosystem of developers continues to misunderstand how you build successful developer ecosystems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why shouldn't Poettering be allowed to write whatever programs he wishes, useless or not? I think distributions are responsible for choosing the best selection of software, and nobody should be blamed for providing new alternatives to the table.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hear a lot of people complaining about these new programmes, like PulseAudio, but as far as I'm concerend, with PulseAudio I can now have proper working sound. No more of this "Oh I have pidgin open, which wants to do sound, so Firefox with flash can't watch youtube" problems that used to happen.

</comment><comment><USER18> What's the back story here?

<comment><USER19> Lennart is a Fedora dev known for writing replacements for linux subsystems. For example, he started PulseAudio and systemd, a replacement for init. Recently, he's suggested a replacement for syslog where the logs aren't written as plain text.

I would guess the last one was the impetus for this petition.

<comment><USER20> I don't understand what the big deal is. If his systems aren't useful distros won't adopt them and no harm is done. If they are useful and distros adopt them then he has advanced the state of the entire Linux community.

This petition seems childish.

<comment><USER21> He's a Red Hat employee so everything he does ends up in Fedora at some point.

<comment><USER8> Don't use Fedora?

<comment><USER22> What's a better use of my time -- converting my 1000+ machines to another distro (which may turn out to be worse) or convincing Fedora not to make a stupid decision?

<comment><USER8> If you don't like this change, you probably also don't like the other Fedora changes that came in the past and surely also in the future, so yeah I'm with sjs. In the long time you will save time if you switch to a distribution that aligns with your choices.

Plus, you can do a dry-run with a limited number of machines and you can select a distribution which seldom changes (Gentoo switched to baselayout2 after.. years, Slackware still has tarballs as packages). Unlikely that they will push radical changes soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Quoth Dziuba: "A long time ago, the original neckbeards decided that it was a good idea to chain together small programs that each performed a specific task, and that the universal interface between them should be text. If you develop on a Unix platform and you abide by this principle, the operating system will reward you with simplicity and prosperity."</comment>


Apple, Samsung Declare Peace - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-27/apple-samsung-settle-patent-infringement-dispute <comment><USER2> Aside from enriching lawyers, was there any benefit to this extended dispute? While this drained company's coffers ( and whatever they would have funded instead) was there direct harm from the dispute? I'm trying to find a reasonable perspective despite my unreasonably low (re: forming an opinion ) specific knowledge.

<comment><USER3> IIRC Apple won bans for Samsung devices on US market, which gave them time to catch up with innovations in the next iPhone generations. These innovations were not so easy to copy unlike the whole smartphone concept and "round corners design".

<comment><USER4> There were preliminary injunctions on Samsung's tablets that were later overturned. Apple lost all design claims on tablets everywhere, due to the obviousness and prior arts. In the UK where Apple's EU-wide community design claims were handled, Apple was ordered to stop and correct Apple's misleading PR campaign against Samsung. The company continued their crap about Samsung's non-existing infringement and Apple was subsequently sanctioned for defying the court order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is interesting to think about these trans-national corporations fighting wars and then signing peace treaties. Used to be only nation states did that.

<comment><USER6> Nah, private companies have got involved in that kind of thing since forever:

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company)

<comment><USER7> UFC : The Chiquita banana company who lobbied for the "1954 Guatemalan coup d'état" \- an operation to overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan government. Why? The elected president policies were a threat to UFC's exploitative labor practices. CIA involved, Guatemalan government overthrown, dictatorial rule, civil war for decades.

The CIA even launched another operation to find the Soviet influence in Guatemala to justify the coup. The operation was a failure.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état)

<comment><USER8> And the same kind of practices where done in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Bolivia, Perú, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, to name a few.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apple needs to focus on Qualcomm, and that is why it is time to end the case with Samsung once and for all.

On one hand Qualcomm CEO have said it is all about the cost of patents, and they will very likely settle out of court. Downplaying whatever damage there is, on the other hand they don't seem like they will settle.

Another interesting battle looming.

<comment><USER4> Apple has 90+ other pending patent litigations. I hardly doubt this closure is going to help them focus on Qualcomm.

Apple was forced to settle with pretty much every wireless patent holders and all in patent holders' favors (eg, Nokia, Ericsson to name a few) in the past -- I'm not sure if that's going to change this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Definitely padded the bank accounts of a bunch of law firms though.

<comment><USER11> Law firms aren't incentivized to conclude litigation, are they?

<comment><USER12> Of course they are. A firm-wide email celebrating the "successful" conclusion of a litigation and naming specific associates who did important work is primarily how associates gather the necessary recognition to make partner.

The last thing an associate wants to have happen at the partnership vote is for 2/3 of the senior partners to say "who?" when their name comes up. The last thing a partner wants to have happen is to get a reputation of "nobody ever makes partner working for him/her".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Apple said after its May victory that the case "has always been about more > than money" and "it is important that we continue to protect the hard work > and innovation of so many people at Apple."

So...is that what was accomplished here?

<comment><USER4> not so much of accomplishments, but two take-aways that come to my mind are:

1) you can't mess around with a politically well connected American company. Of course, I'm talking about the Obama administration's reversal of Samsung's ITC win that would have settled this lawsuit back in 2012.

2) thx to Apple, now we are very likely to see more absurd design patent lawsuits in coming months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have personally become weary of ridiculous patents over extremely trivial items that the average person considers obvious. These pissing contest stifle new and improved technologies built upon older ideas and makes it impossible for new startups to enter the field.

The entire idea of patents is sound, but the rules we play by need to be revised... hopefully our nations lawmakers will one day see how destructive the current rules are.

<comment><USER15> _Is_ the entire idea of software/design patents sound?

<comment><USER16> It generally seems at least as reasonable as any other form of IP protection. After all, the underlying principle is that the creators of an 'invention' deserve some kind of protection from others who would profit from their work without requiring the same level of investment – with idea that it's better for society in the long term to avoid a 'race to the bottom'. I'm not sure that's particularly different whether we're talking about creative work, physical inventions, manufacturing processes, computer software, or design languages.

It does seem that the rules governing them need to be revised. Many patented ideas are utterly trivial, or have no practical implementation, or are just unused. The terms are clearly too long as well. But the underlying idea doesn't seem terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have to wonder if Apple got Samsung to reduce the cost of their displays in the deal. Or the ability to license the tech to build them themselves. Just a complete shot in the dark but I could see Apple seeing that as a huge win.

</comment><comment><USER18> TLDR; Apple and Samsung seem to be tired of fighting this fight, so they settled. They have each spent hundreds of millions in legal fees on the ordeal and they avoid spending hundreds of millions more by settling the ordeal, which can go on a long time.

<comment><USER4> Well, no. Samsung won the SCOTUS decision last year that cancelled out Apple's hometown jury's absurd design patent award. The case was sent back to the district court for damage-only re-trial where Apple's hometown jury awarded even more money to Apple.

Apple clearly had no desire to settle, but Samsung clearly saw that there was no way that they could get a fair trial like they did in non-US courts around the globe. Samsung probably ended up paying slightly less the amount the last jury awarded, plus some humiliating terms and conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because the technology and hardware being debated was obsolete.</comment>


Tesla's new 100kWH battery makes Ludicrous Mode even more ludicrous - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/23/12611466/tesla-battery-upgrade-p100d-model-s-x-ludicrous <comment><USER2> > Tesla's Model S is now the third-fastest car in the world, going from 0 to > 60 MPH in just 2.5 seconds. That's only just slower than the Ferrari > LaFerrari and the Porsche 918 Spyder

The Porsche also does

> 0-200 km/h (120 mph) in 7.2 seconds, 300 kilometres per hour (190 mph) in > 19.9 seconds and a tested top speed of 218 miles per hour (351 km/h).

Plus it can corner.

Third fastest in the world seems a bit of a stretch. 0-60 acceleration, sure.

<comment><USER3> Also, while this may be due to the new battery, it's not simply its kiloWatt- _hours_ capacity which does that. It must be that the battery can also deliver more kiloWatts. A battery storing way fewer kWh could yet support even greater acceleration, just by dumping current faster (and perhaps also by weighing less).

A super-capacitor bank which is completely drained after 10 seconds could support the 2.5s long operation needed to demonstrate 0-60 acceleration.

(But, of course, better acceleration _and_ range: _well done!_ )</comment></comment>


Problems in Plane and Solid Geometry [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://students.imsa.edu/~tliu/Math/planegeo.pdf

<comment><USER2> LaTeX got a good workout compiling that tome!</comment>


How Developers Are Shaping the Future of Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_the_future_of_music_is_in_the_hands_of_develop.php#.TzvEWJMM6uA.hackernews <comment><USER2> EMI Partnership Developer FAQ

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

What's the elevator pitch?

EMI is making some of its artists' content available via an API. Developers can work with the content in a sandbox environment and propose ideas for applications. If a proposal is taken forward, EMI will handle the tasks of clearing the necessary rights and marketing the application. Revenues will be shared between the developer, EMI, artists, The Echo Nest, music publishers and any other rights holders.

I read this as EMI want me to take the risk of developing an application, and then, if they think it's going to make money, they'll take it on and make money out of it. Sounds like they're trying to apply the same model to developers as they do to musicians.</comment>


Why You Should Upgrade Your Router, Even If You Have Older Gadgets - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtogeek.com/243039/why-you-should-upgrade-your-router-even-if-you-have-older-gadgets/ <comment><USER2> This is what the article boils down to: Old routers can be a source of "degraded internet connection quality". If you buy a new router, you'll get "better Wi-Fi range, stronger signal, and better handling of demands modern users put on their network".

I'm using one of those WRT54G routers, running DD-WRT. It's 12 years old, but still works like a charm. It's able to deliver around 22 Mbps, which is enough for my ever so modern demands.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would have been a more useful article if there were concrete recommendations. As it is, it's just "newer routers are better, you should buy one."

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a PFsense router at home. It's powerful enough for my 50Mbit connection and had a slew of enterprise features. Most of my family I've put on Linksys WRT54GL routers since they support so many open source firewall operating systems.

Anyone buying a "Gaming Router" or other nonsense prosumer model from a big name is getting ripped off.

If you need proprietary the Peplink SOHO is surprisingly good.</comment>


OAuth 2.0 / OpenID vulnerability affects Facebook, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, ... - <AUTHOR> http://www.tetraph.com/blog/2014/05/covert-redirect-vulnerability-related-oauth-2-0-openid-covert-redirect-vulnerability-related-oauth-2-0-openid-%E4%B8%8E-oauth-2-0-openid-%E6%9C%89%E5%85%B3%E7%9A%84-covert-redirect/

<comment><AUTHOR> For counterpoint, TNS argues this is really nothing new, just a "sky is falling" report trying to stir up panic: [http://thenewstack.io/it-director- yoda-unlearn-what-you-have...](http://thenewstack.io/it-director-yoda-unlearn- what-you-have-learned-about-facebook-and-oauth/)</comment>


What software engineers are making around the world - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/09/what-software-engineers-are-making-around-the-world-right-now/ <comment><USER2> Let's not get too fixated on dollars. Think about all that you're paid in... if you live in Sydney, you get paid in access to beaches. If you live in Austin, you get paid with good BBQ and tacos. If you live in SF, you get a lot more networking opportunities than anywhere else on the planet. Dollars are just one part of the equation.</comment>


Useful Rails Resources - <AUTHOR> http://johnfgibb.com/useful-rails-resources

<comment><USER2> One of the most important resources for me has been <http://rails.rubyonrails.org/>. Note the difference from <http://api.rubyonrails.org/>. The former seems to be the 2.x documentation whereas the latter is the 3.x documentation.

Not everyone is quite ready to switch to 3.x and having the 2.x documentation around is a lifesaver.

It's sad that <http://rails.rubyonrails.org/> doesn't seem to rank very high for "rails 2" prefixed queries on Google.

<comment><USER3> You should use <http://apidock.com/rails> it has documentation for all rails versions

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice resource. I actually wanted to do something like this for web design resources way back in the day, but never got around to it. I thought about it a lot, and the secret sauce for me was the ability to tag version applicability of resources, and to deprecate resources in favor of new ones. This is particularly useful in the Rails world where whole swaths of blog articles are obsoleted on a regular basis (think Rails 3 articles from January 2010). Maybe the reason I never got around to it was because I was too ambitious?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking of making this a little more general purpose (instead of being rails specific), as this could be a useful resource for other technologies as well. Maybe each technology could get a top level url? Like whatever.com/rails and whatever.com/django?

At that point, however, would a wiki be a better format?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> P.S. I use this every day, so it's likely to stay up to date!

</comment><comment><USER5> pretty good. You should include railscasts possibly add a section for good rails blogs.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea - I'll add a separate section when I get a chance. It'll let me separate links to specific articles vs links to a general purpose resource.

But for now... Gotta keep working on hooking up Facebook OAuth2 to my current project ;)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Thoughts on quantum computing? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any prevalent criticisms/enthusiasms for the current trajectory of the commercial availability of quantum computing? Naturally, there has been a large amount of research effort and funding devoted to advancing quantum computing, Lockheed-Martin being one of it's major advocators.<p>Is this an up and coming area that developers should start focusing their efforts on? How does this compete/complement with the current "trend" of massive parallelization? <comment><USER2> Parallelisation and QC are mostly orthogonal in that you don't need QC to do parallelisation properly and most of QC can be done with the current state of classical parallelisation. I would also not suggest working on QC as a software developer just yet, given that QC theory is far more advanced than QC hardware already.

Nevertheless, what certainly is worth working on and an area that unfortunately does not get as much attention as I would prefer is 'QC-safe' classical encryption, i.e. encryption schemes implementable on classical computers that cannot be easily cracked by QC. Otherwise we're just waiting for someone to build a QC and set up a website 'Upload a public key here and get the private key via email'.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am curious if anyone could comment on what QC could mean in terms of AI/NLP.</comment>


Windows non-LAN, wormable RCE 0-day discovered - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/taviso/status/860681252034142208 <comment><USER2> I'm curious what "don't need to be on the same LAN" means. If it would be exploitable over internet wouldn't you just write that oder even leave the part about LAN out?

<comment><USER3> Because other remote vulnerabilities weren't exploitable outside the LAN. So while they are "remote" it's a different class of "remote" so to speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So little information. We will have to wait until this is patched to know more about it, won't we.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand the LAN bit, does this mean 'over the internet'?

<comment><USER6> Yes. Non-LAN meaning the attacker doesn't have to be inside your home/work local network.

<comment><USER7> It could mean two things.

Either it could mean it is not a requir mentioned to be able to send broadcast packets to the machine. Windows uses broadcast packets for lots of things, like discovering UPnP devices, media centers, other machines file/printer shares, etc.

Or it could mean no need to have the ability to send the machine IP packets directly, so one can attack even if the machine is behind NAT.

There are far fewer ways to attack a machine behind NAT with no user interaction, but things like sending back false NTP or DNS responses, spoofing windowsupdate servers, or some of the peer to peer services built into windows sound like possible ways.

<comment><USER8>
        s/NAT/firewall/g

NAT does _not_ provide security on its own, it's the firewall that drops packets. Most of the time you see both together on the same device; it's very rare to see a NAT-only device, which usually _will_ route packets to hosts on the LAN.

<comment><USER9> Nat certainly does provide basic security. If you aren't routable, they can't setup a connection to you.

<comment><USER10> They can, it's called firewall punching...

Skype does that routinely: ever wondered how it can setup a point to point connection without port forwarding?

So to agree with PP, NAT is not a firewall...

<comment><USER11> I believe that's called ICE. and still needs both clients aware that theyre about to connect, and making outbound connections to each other with the goal of opening up sourceports.

This does not negate the fact that NAT(PAT) provides protection against directly connecting to a device.

<comment><USER10> If you know a bug in the DNS resolving stack of the client, you can make it send a query to your DNS server and exploit it to establish a connection. So no, it doesn't have to know it's about to connect.

A query is easily triggered by sending an email with a an external picture embedded or something like that.

Nothing NAT/PAT can protect you against.

<comment><USER11> thats also something a firewall cant protect you against.

<comment><USER9> The difference is that NAT doesn't track the counter party, so after you reached out to the DNS, any other service can use the opened port to connect to your PC.

With a stateful firewall, it tracks that the port was opened only used for the DNS server. If a connection to that port from a different IP address than the DNS server is made, the firewall will block it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A wild stab in the dark: remote code execution using a standard codec/library, easily triggered in the context of an ad.

</comment><comment><USER13> does this mean that it can be triggered by a web browser ?

</comment><comment><USER14> Clickbait title? Zero info? Windows is evil! To the front of hacker news we go!

<comment><USER15> Are you suggesting that Tavis Ormandy is making this up?

This is upvoted because of the reputations of the people reporting it and because it sounds very serious. It's nothing to do with any kind of anti- Windows agenda.

<comment><USER16> There's absolutely zero info.

So even if he isn't making it up, there's still nothing to discuss on this, and he's ratcheted the hype up to 11.

<comment><USER3> > there's still nothing to discuss on this,

Oh I think there is a lot to discuss. How Windows has handled vulnerabilities in the past. Can talk about how disclosure works. Maybe mention recent Intel vulnerabilities as well. Connect to CIA and NSA leaks them hoarding 0-days and so on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How not to talk to the press - <AUTHOR> http://twiddla.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-not-to-talk-to-press.html

<comment><USER2> I will add, and have repeated it to the offending indivual many times over the years. _When speaking to reporters, do not use the phrase "coding in their underwear" when describing your amazing employee retention rate._ It will show up in the article and then the whole "shared corporate underwear" question comes up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yep, I learned this when running for office last year. I tried using "No, you can't have a pony" for a slogan, only to spend far too much time explaining what it meant.</comment>


Mate Desktop 1.24 - <AUTHOR> https://mate-desktop.org/blog/2020-02-10-mate-1-24-released/ <comment><USER2> I use mate desktop with i3 for the windows management. This means everything just works. Volume keys, brightness, usb storage auto-mounting, complex audio configuration, printers configuration, lock screen, battery management, mouse settings, external displays settings, screenshots and so on and so forth. I get the best of both world. Without Mate, I would have to hack everything together and spend days configuring everything by hand.

If you want to replicate this setup: Start with Ubuntu Mate. Install i3 via apt. Select i3 on the login screen. In your i3 configuration add the following:

       exec --no-startup-id exec mate-settings-daemon
       exec --no-startup-id exec mate-screensaver
       exec --no-startup-id exec mate-power-manager
       exec --no-startup-id exec nm-applet

Welcome to the year of Desktop on Linux.

<comment><USER3> I've tried tiling WMs a few times, maybe 4 years ago last and liked them (inclduing i3) but at least at the time there were too many problems.

If everything works now, Id be willing to try i3 when I install ubuntu 20.04.

Is it now easy to set up a launcher/start bar with a nice battery/volume/wifi etc. indicator? That work both when I click on them and via keys and with the icons visibly changing based on the current state?

Do all Windows open normally? Do they all fullscreen normally? Which don't?

Do you get any crashes?

Are there any WM-specific settings/fixes you have to tweak more often than once every 6 months?

<comment><USER4> Homestly, nothing changed. It's just (imo) hard to figure out yourself if nobody tells you that it's possible.

The other way around is also possible btw (starting gnome/mate/xfce and starting i3 right at login. I personally preferred the parents way as well though (using xfce though)

You won't be using Wayland with i3 however, and weren't they going to prefer that with Ubuntu 20 and onwards?

<comment><USER2> I find the i3 documentation excellent.

On Ubuntu Mate, when you install i3, the login manager let you select it. There is nothing special to do.

i3 doesn't work on wayland. I have heard sway is a great alternative. I will have to try it one day!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gnome 2 was a very shiny and polished desktop environment. Its death (in favor of Gnome 3) meant a lot of people who contributed to it (e.g., me) got fragmented into Mate, Cinnamon, Xfce and others. I wonder what would have happened if Gnome was still a usable thing and this massive migration out of it was not necessary. Would we have fought over some other problem and forked regardless? Would we all have worked together to make it even more awersome?

It also saddens me that Red Hat insists on dumping its money in Gnome 3. I would love if they were putting their resources in improving something I actually use :).

<comment><USER6> It didn't die; somehow it changed direction hard enough to lose significant developer capacity.

I liken it to the total failure of the Flickr rewrite. Flickr could have been Facebook!

So... How did that happen? Who was responsible for setting Gnome dev back by half a decade?

<comment><USER7> I still hold that they should've renamed GNOME 3 something other than GNOME and let each develop as their own things. I feel like that method would've hemorrhaged fewer developers. Clearly there was some sort of closed meeting at Redhat with the few people that inherited leadership of GNOME deciding on the complete overhaul; it wasn't a democratic process.

GNOME 3 is performing well enough now that I have moved over to it. At its introduction, though, it forced compositing, and drivers were not ready. That coupled with the massive UI changes gave users good reasons to complain.

<comment><USER6> It cannot run on most ARM SBCs; I can't run it with any reasonable consistent responsiveness on any but my newest PC. Gnome 3 is _still_ a pig; and utterly useless to most of the world which still operates on half decade or decade old PCs.

It's a prime example of privileged western developers overlooking the needs of their users.

<comment><USER8> I live in a Western country and Gnome3 is still a pig on low end 4GB RAM based machines. Budgie is much faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mate is easily the best Linux DE available; I love that they're focusing on fixing bugs and incremental improvements to keep pace with hardware improvements, rather than chasing unneeded software features.

</comment><comment><USER9> Really grateful that Mate exists. To this day, gnome3 has not reached parity with gnome2 on flexibility of configuration. I don't even make a lot of customizations to my desktop, but having the option when I need it is really key.

<comment><USER10> GNOME doesn't reach parity on configurability because... it's by design.

There is an extensive post on the subject: [https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al- rotti...](https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in- threes). It's tragicomic to read ("And I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry.")

I'd say that the GNOME devs have Jobs' ego and intention, but none of his talent(s). But at least they have branding™! /s

<comment><USER11> It doesn't happen very often any more, but when people always used to ask why I didn't like GNOME 3 I'd just point them to the devs' own words on the mailing list: [https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell- list/2011-June/m...](https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell- list/2011-June/msg00110.html)

<comment><USER10> From that thread:

> Can we declare that GNOME Shell doesn't have themes, and prevent people from > posting screenshots of GNOME Shell with a modified theme or with a modified > top panel?

o_O

<comment><USER12> Maybe if Gnome's default theme didn't make window title bars half the size of the screen, people wouldn't be so eager to theme. Seriously, I have a huge, hi res monitor and the default theme makes it feel like some child or elderly specific thing. Nobody uses Gnome on a tablet, give it up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Super grateful for this project, I use it every day on all my computers.

Maybe it's the age talking, but to me it feels like Gnome2/MATE is the peak of the desktop paradigm. Also Windows XP/7, in terms of UI/X.

People took the desktop for what it was and tried to make the most of it.

Nowadays most DEs, including Windows feel like they are made for a phone or a tablet.

<comment><USER14> I'm honestly really happy with GnomeShell once I install the extensions "dash to dock" and "workspace matrix".

<comment><USER5> Until you apt-get update and they break :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I switched to XFCE away from Gnome 3 after becoming frustrated with Nautilus's lack of type-ahead-find. I am perfectly happy with XFCE now. I'd be interested to hear from users with experience of both XFCE and MATE how they compare, as they seem to have similar design goals.

<comment><USER16> As a fellow xfce user, it's hard to get convinced by other alternatives because why they may have more polished on some things, the things they do worse will be really worse. You only need to fight one or two time with your wifi or Taskbar after an update to realize you just don't want to waste your time doing that.

With that said, for the part that work well Mate definitely feels like a cleaner nicer xfce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does Mate compare to XFCE? Not as "which is better" but as "what are the main differences"?

<comment><USER18> XFCE is designed from the get go to be very light weight. On my laptop I average ~300 MB Ram usage idling with XFCE.

MATE is the spiritual successor to Gnome 2, which isn't as light weight (but they haven't tried to add things to make it bloated, and gnome 2 was never too resource intensive). It is taking ~700 MB idling on that same laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really really wish Ubuntu had decided to ship MATE as their default desktop at the time of the GNOME 2 to 3 transition, instead of trying to create their own DE, abandon it 4 years later, and then reverting on GNOME3 ...

<comment><USER20> There was some speculation that GNOME3 redesign was done because of Microsoft patent threats [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This gave me flashbacks to Gnome 2 and how much I loved it.

<comment><USER22> After Gnome 3 and the abomination of wasted screen real estate that was Unity released I switched to using XFCE on Linux environments and haven't really found anything better since. It's so snappy even on crappy hardware and is customizable enough.

<comment><USER23> I actually liked unity. Putting the task bar on the side was a great idea at an age when screen started getting flatter and flatter.

The HUD(?) was a great concept allowing easy Dutch within an apps menus.

<comment><USER24> > Putting the task bar on the side was a great idea at an age when screen > started getting flatter and flatter.

That's hardly innovation though since most DEs over the past 2+ decades that I can think of would let you move the taskbar (if they had one) anyway.

<comment><USER25> Indeed even Windows 95 let you do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's funny to think about, I first used Gnome 2 in 2006 and I remember having to install XFCE on my laptop. My laptop only had 256 MB of RAM, so GNOME at the time was too resource intensive. My Desktop had 2 GB of ram (so it couldn't really run Vista when that came out), but it could run Gnome + Compiz extremely well.

I don't have that laptop anymore, but I now have a Thinkpad X200, which has 8 GB of RAM. So now Gnome 2 is "lightweight" since it can consume under 1 GB idling, and it is sitting at 1.7 GB with normal usage. I'm glad to see that some software hasn't been bloated up simply because the processing power exists.

<comment><USER8> Ditto. I uses Gnome2 under an Athlon an 256MB of RAM too, but Fedora's Gnome 2 was unusable, Debian was far faster.

Nowadays is either Fluxbox+rox+udiskie on Slackware/+hotplug-diskmount under OpenBSD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They're dropping python2 support for caja (nautilus) plugins so watch out if you have any python based caja (nautilus) scripts. Not that that's unreasonable. Just beware.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is Wayland support a big deal? Or do most desktop environment support both Wayland and X11 in some way? I'm not familiar with how it works.

<comment><USER12> Wayland is "the future", but I don't bother with it. It has too many warts and lack of support. Screen sharing support is a hack that kinda works, except for Electron apps. X 'just works'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like XFCE and MATE but I decided to use Gnome 3 only because with XFCE and MATE I had some problems connecting a TV with HDMI to the computer. With some tweaking it works, but with Gnome 3 it works out of the box, as it does in Windows.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, I was just thinking of switching away from Mate on my laptop yesterday because of the external monitor experience. It was struggle to get it working, and once it does it is nowhere near seamless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm still rocking MATE+Compiz on Arch and it's a pleasure to work with (as much as it was back in 2008). Really appreciate the work of all the devs who keep maintaining both of these to date.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have been using gnome 3 on zorin and popos for a few months without issue. What am I missing that everyone here seems to think it's disfunctional?

</comment><comment><USER32> Used MATE a couple of times. I'd say it is the most beautiful and a generally well done lightweight DE. Takes me back to early Ubuntu days

</comment><comment><USER8> Gorilla and Motif themes :D.

Now we need these old icons adapted to the new XDG standards and I'm done.

</comment><comment><USER33> buster-backports when? :)</comment>


I interviewed 120 independent podcasters.  what I learned - <AUTHOR> https://www.listennotes.com/a/120-interviews-with-independent-podcast-producers-a-snapshot-of-indie-podcasting-in-2018/3/ <comment><USER2> Why are people not interviewing @adamcurry when they do stories about podcasting? He co-invented the technology, had "the first" podcast, has a massively popular podcast currently, and founded a company attempting to monetize the medium and can tell you, in detail, why it's not possible to monetize the network.</comment>


Covid Explained - <AUTHOR> https://explaincovid.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> COVID-19 is confusing. There's a lot of conflicting information out there— can you get the virus from food? Is there such a thing as immunity? What kind of tests are really out there? Who is most at risk? And all the conflicting information can make it hard to make decisions, from whether to go to the grocery store to when to send your kids back to day care.</comment>


Ask HN: Immigrating to canada/aus/uk - <AUTHOR>

I want to know which country has the best immigration policy(less restrictive) for a skilled software web developer, I have a degree/can code in many languages well. I code mostly in Ruby(professionally) and had pull requests accepted in rails/rails and another open source project, but I live in a third world country with no direct immigration benefits to live in another country.
Also, does any of you have any experience in actually preparing physically, emotionally and professionally, to move to a better country and got any tips?
I'm currently preparing to the TOEIC exam, what else should I look to have under my belt in order to get a good job abroad?
Thanks. <comment><USER3> I am not sure there are many people who would be across the details of migration for all those three countries, and even then you might just get opinions, whereas you need facts. For Australia, my home country, start here: <http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/general-skilled-migration/> and also look here: <http://www.immi.gov.au/skilled/sol/> ... as you will be wanting to get in as a skilled migrant.

I can also recommend reading this forum: <http://www.australiaforum.com/> ... which is a kind of 'peer-to-peer' support forum for people wanting to / trying to / migrating to Australia. There will be lots of information there regarding people in your situation.

Before you prepare for moving, I would prepare for weeks / months / maybe years of applying to migrate, waiting, or improving your conditions so you look like a better 'risk' to your country of choice.

I have only migrated to a 'worse' country (if you can call it that - <USER2> -> Eastern Europe), and only on a temporary basis (have dual citizenship), so can't provide much other info or advice other than wish you good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> Australia and Canada both offer a points based immigration system, which allows you to move to the country even without a job offer lined up.

For example Canada requires 67 points. You get 22 points for a university degree, 16 points for speaking perfect English (another 8 points if you're fluent in French), 21 points for four years of work experience, and 10 points for being between 21 and 49 years old. That's 69 points and enough to qualify for a visa, even without an employer.

Australia has a similar scheme. I'd say concentrate on your language skills, so your preparation for the TOEIC is the right path. I would try to find out which tests are accepted by the immigration authorities in these two countries and go for that.

The UK used to have a points based system, but that ended in 2010.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Did you consider applying directly to companies in your expertise in one of these country? If they like your profile and are interested they should then be able to help you obtain a VISA and immigrate in the country? Coming from France it is easy to say this, but for Canada for example I was advised to search for a company first and rely on them to obtain the papers afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER6> From watching too many Fareed Zakaria shows,i got the impression that Canada,Australia and Singapore had the best immigration policies for skilled workers.I could be wrong,though

</comment><comment><USER7> UK immigration policy is the most lenient I think, depends which country you come from - where are you from?

<comment><USER8> Not any more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate a little more about it?

Thanks.

<comment><USER8> The Tier-1 visa which made it easy for developers to enter the UK and work for pretty much anyone they wanted (including themselves) as long as they were earning market rates has been abolished and replaced with a scheme more similar to the US where you have to get an employer to sponsor you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Airbnb for Traveling - <AUTHOR> http://tounat.com

<comment><AUTHOR> more native way to discover a culture: <http://tounat.com> be a native of your city and let tourists be traveller</comment>


Recce, A Rich, Interactive Map That's Also A Gaming Platform - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/13/recce-a-rich-interactive-map-thats-also-a-gaming-platform-launches-with-4m-from-nea/

<comment><USER2> This is sweet!

<comment><USER3> And why would you say that, Chris?

<comment><USER2> Sam,

I think it is pretty different compared to other mapping apps, and I am an eeGeo shill! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Regexes: Now you have 2^N problems. - <AUTHOR> http://devblog.getinvisiblehand.com/regexes_now_you_have_n_problems

<comment><USER2> While the point of this article is about using gdb to debug a running Ruby process, surely a useful tip, the exponential regex engine is a fairly major player too.

"Complexity Attacks" against web services aren't unknown, where you can bring a server to its knees with a well-chosen string. Search engines in blogs, wikis, and the like are a good target, since they are running user's regular expressions. But you should make sure your own regexes don't backtrack much either.

Or, use a linear matching engine, like re2. For more information about the complexity of matching a regex, Russ Cox's page is a classic: [http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html](http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html)</comment>


Universal Basic Income Is the Best Tool to Fight Poverty - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/universal-basic-income-is_b_10251176.html <comment><USER2> wow. This is posted several times a day, for the past week or so.

</comment><comment><USER3> where does the money come from?

<comment><USER4> Same place as welfare. It's not an increase in spending necessarily, just a change in the rules.</comment></comment>


Incident Report: DNS Outage due to DDoS Attack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dnsimple.com/incident-report-dns-outage-due-to-ddos-attack/

<comment><USER2> Another reminder: If you're running DNS servers, make sure you are not providing recursion: <http://openresolverproject.org/>

<comment><USER3> Had dnsimple failed to do so? Did it help?

Because Easydns [http://blog.easydns.org/2013/06/04/post-mortem-of-the- june-3...](http://blog.easydns.org/2013/06/04/post-mortem-of-the-june-3-4th- ddos/) said "While most of these typically use open resolvers, it is also now common to use authoritative nameservers in reflection attacks".

Can we end the "War on 'Open' Internet (Resolvers)" now?

Because I don't think an organized crackdown on "open" authoritative nameservers is in the best interests of our freedom.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, this was not due to open resolvers in this case. We do not run public resolvers - we only provide authoritative DNS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there something "going on" with DNS DDOS right now, or have I just happened to notice several in the last few days? cloudns.net, EasyDNS, and now dnsimple.com - all in the last week...

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's anything out of the ordinary. Attacks happen quite regularly, most are mitigated quickly and quietly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I want to apologize for my earlier downvoted comment by saying that, I only said what anyone in a software organization would say. eg your boss.

If you dont know how to run DNS, then your the wrong guy to be running it.

Dont come out in public and whine about hackers. Its your job and yours alone to know how DNS works and what to do.

Its not even mildly interesting anymore than TCP/IP is interesting. So do your job.

Thats what my boss would tell me and thats what your boss should tell you.

Its not mean what Im saying. Its the truth.

<comment><USER5> There's nothing whiny about it. They're explaining to their customers what happened which is a part of their job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dont care about DNS, its your problem, fix it and stop whining about hackers.

<comment><USER7> What do you use a massive /etc/hosts file?

<comment><USER8> I just use IPs and netcat. Accessing sites via SSL is a good mental workout.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Save any instagram post as image - <AUTHOR> https://instacyborg.com/ <comment><USER2> What's wrong with just taking a screen shot? lol</comment>


Silicon Valley History - <AUTHOR> http://patrickcollison.com/svhistory <comment><USER3> I highly recommend "The Secret History of Silicon Valley" \- a talk given at the Computer History Museum. It starts with talk about radar and electronic warfare in WWII. "Every WWII movie you have ever seen that included airplanes on bombing missions is wrong". That soon becomes the genesis of universities in the war effort (research), east vs west coast, and Stanford with Fred Terman who is widely credited as being the father of Silicon Valley (along with William Shockley). He encouraged students to set up companies, sometimes investing in them too.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo) Hour long video

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

</comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't take place in Silicon Valley but I thought "Soul of a New Machine" [1] was a great read!

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New- Machine/dp/0316491977](http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New- Machine/dp/0316491977)

<comment><USER5> Yes, I read that book some years ago and thought it was a great read too - <USER2> the sense of entertaining, like a novel, even though it is mainly about the computer industry and the race to create that computer, a next generation Data General minicomputer. It's also to a good extent about skunkworks style product development. I love that quote about pinball in the book; won't spoil it for readers by saying what it is, but it is likely to appeal to many people on HN.

<comment><USER5> Just saw this, from the Wikipedia article about the book, and thought it worth posting:

[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/soul.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/soul.html)

It's a short article in Wired about Tom West, the leader of the team that built the machine, many years later, when he was retired in a coastal town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What was the name of that slightly fictionalized story that somebody wrote about the rise and fall of the iPhone fart app?

Aha there it is: [http://www.flailfast.com/](http://www.flailfast.com/)

Along with Jacob's laughter. "I thought it was hilarious. I mean, we both ate like pigs at the time, and I wasn't surprised that Ben had to let one go, but man...what a doozy." Ben and Jacob left the breakout room early; they feared a hazmat team was required to make the room usable again. But they couldn't stop listening to the video as they walked back to Jacob's apartment. Jacob remembered his epiphany; he didn't think much of it then. "I didn't like having to pull out my Flip cam to listen to it over and over again, when I had my iPhone right there. It deserved to be more convenient." As soon as they returned to Jacob's apartment, he built a (aptly described) "quick and dirty" iPhone app that could serve his purposes. All the app displayed was a big red button and the word "FART!" underneath it. Satisfied that it functioned as expected, Ben spent some time prettying up the button, and installed it on his own phone. The novelty refused to disappear as they pressed the button over and over again; the staying power of Ben's indigestion was unprecedented.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the doorstopper _Fire In The Valley_ a lot and have read it several times. It hits basically every part of SV history, following personal narratives of major players in each time period. This style makes it very interesting to read.

Disclaimer: I have no idea where it stands with regards to factual accuracy.

[http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Personal-Computer- Edition/...](http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Personal-Computer- Edition/dp/0071358927)

<comment><USER8> I just read the latest edition, what really struck me is how many of the giants of the industry were really just in the right place at the right time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great talk about Silicon Valley history: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ)

I watched this talk a long time ago, but I just noticed the name is Steve Blank, the "customer development" guy, and I have one of his books. That's pretty cool.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Blank)

</comment><comment><USER10> A few more references:

(Commodore) _The Home Computer Wars_ , Michael Tomczyk [http://michaeltomczyk.com/Tech-Pioneer.php](http://michaeltomczyk.com/Tech- Pioneer.php)

(Apple) _The Apple Revolution_ , Luke Dormehl, [http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-apple-revolution-book- revie...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-apple-revolution-book-review/)

 _A Bibliography of the Personal Computer_ , Roy Allan, [https://archive.org/details/ABibliographyOfThePersonalComput...](https://archive.org/details/ABibliographyOfThePersonalComputer)

 _A History of the Personal Computer_ , Roy Allan, [https://archive.org/details/A_History_of_the_Personal_Comput...](https://archive.org/details/A_History_of_the_Personal_Computer)

<comment><USER11> If you want Commodore, there's _On the Edge_ by Brian Bagnall [http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-Spectacular-Rise- Commodore/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-Spectacular-Rise- Commodore/dp/0973864907) and its half-a-second-edition _Commodore: A Company on the Edge_ .

<comment><USER12> Deathbed Vigil by Dave Haynie might also be interesting, the last days of Commodore: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5QKnGTEiJo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5QKnGTEiJo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also not on the list and doesn't take place in SV but I loved it and the culture is very SV like - [http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir- Lockheed/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir- Lockheed/dp/0316743003)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a great PBS documentary on the history of the transistor which is also a great look into both the creation of Silicon Valley and Intel

[http://video.pbs.org/video/2332168287/](http://video.pbs.org/video/2332168287/)

</comment><comment><USER11> There's a new book on Intel out, /The Intel Trinity/ [http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062226761/the-intel- trinity](http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062226761/the-intel-trinity) by Michael S. Malone.

<comment><USER14> have you read it. I think highly of Michael Malone's great coverage of silicon valley.

<comment><USER11> So far I've just dipped into it at the bookshops. Maybe a _little_ bit inspirational and personality-centric, but overall Malone seems to be fairly well-informed (I am not a topic expert) and not concerned to sugar-coat the bad. For a book billed as a joint biography, it's disappointing that the author doesn't seem to have had any direct access to the subjects. But if you're interested in a popular history of Intel or the first decades of the semiconductor industry then I think this should do nicely. (However see this lukewarm review on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZKDIXCGFBZ02/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ZKDIXCGFBZ02/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00G2A7WL2) .)

<comment><USER14> Thanks. Yeah, I just saw the computer history interview with him for the book. I gotta check this out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a great list and seems to nicely complement a list of similar intent I posted a while back: [https://davepeck.org/2014/01/02/hacker-history- bookshelf](https://davepeck.org/2014/01/02/hacker-history-bookshelf)

I love that Robert Noyce makes an appearance in Patrick's list; I feel that he did much to set the tone for entrepreneurship in the Valley.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's another good book, published by Silicon Valley Historical Association

[http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/#!silicon-valley- hist...](http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/#!silicon-valley-history- book/c166b)

</comment><comment><USER17> I really like The Innovators by Walter Isaacson, it is a great book about the whole computer history and many ideas that made it possible.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a great list, thanks Patrick.

The problem with these lists is that I never find time to go through them properly.

<comment><USER19> Not everyone has to be a credible, billionaire startup founder.</comment></comment>


Seeking Review/Feedback for my MVP - Thrill Engine - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I am excited to share with you my venture  - Thrill Engine. It's a service for finding and booking Action sports travel destinations.
I started working on this out of few things:

    Pure passion - been riding a snowboard for a while, recently got into kiteboarding and surfing is next on the radar (life is short, gotta live it up :))!;
    After using similar services, while planning trips, seen areas of improvement;
    Had a long time goal to start my own thing.

 I'm a hustler, who decided to learn and do all the coding by myself ( after struggling to find CTO ) Needless to say that it took me a lot of time and pain to build my MVP :)
Please check it out and let me know your feedback -- http://www.thrillengine.com/ Thank you for your time. You are Awesome!
Emils <comment><USER2> Interesting venture. From a graphic design standpoint, I'm not crazy about the header - too busy - but I like the concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Design will be improved later on.</comment></comment>