Why Is Netflix Secretly Cropping Movies? - <AUTHOR> http://flavorwire.com/404511/why-is-netflix-secretly-cropping-movies <comment><USER2> Netflix almost certainly just licenses the pan-and-scan versions of movies for maximum compatibility.

I really don't know why this is blowing up all of a sudden. We've had pan and scan versions of films on TV and streaming for decades.

The only really troubling thing is that there's no "The film you're about to see may have bee modified from the original version" warning at the beginning of some, and it should definitely be clear that is the case.

<comment><USER3> Because now there is no technical reason to not have it as an _option_ instead of forced upon us.

<comment><USER4> No technical reason, but all of the praise and success of Apple's lack of options certainly makes the case for business reasons.

<comment><USER5> That's nonsense. Apple is not praised because of the lack of option!

it's praised by some despite the lack of option!

it's a price they paid to have somethings, because you can't have it all. it's not the feature per se.

<comment><USER6> I don't say you have to like Apple because of the lack of options, but for many, the lack of options is a feature.

The last thing I want is an iPhone - Android flame war, but something I don't like about Android, is that I constantly have to be searching for the ideal well... everything, since basically everything is changeable, I've gone through 4 music players, and have been disappointed several times, I did found a great one eventually, but in this case, I (and I said I god damn it) would rather have it Apple's way even if it's not perfect, it works if you do it their way.

<comment><USER7> In this case it sounds like it's the quality of Apple's default music player that you appreciate.

Imagine if their default music player was disappointing, and you couldn't change it... the lack of options would be a detriment, not a feature.

People don't like that Apple doesn't let you change things, they like that you don't need to because the default setting is good enough.

<comment><USER8> But you could go one step further, and ask "Why is their default considered so good by a broad audience?"

This could be attributed to how they identify (what they consider) the most important options, focus entirely on those, and implement them well.

The complexity of a system can go up exponentially with the number of features. If development resources were infinite, this wouldn't be a problem. But it is finite, and more complexity can lead to more bugs, more confusing interfaces, less maintainable code, and a host of other pitfalls.

In that case, if a lack of options is allowing Apple to a product that's better overall for most of its users, that's a definite feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whenever I watch a movie with some of my extended family, there's always someone who asks why the movie doesn't fill the entire screen. They want either the black bars removed and the area filled with images (like Photoshop Content-Aware Fill?), or the whole movie zoomed in (cropped) so that the sides are lost. I, along with some of the other serious movie-watchers in the family, have to convince these individuals every time that no, that's not how you watch a movie. (My favorite argument: "That area is reserved for subtitles.")

But I don't think most of the general public cares about the aspect ratio, only about utilizing the maximum square footage of their overpriced TV. Netflix is just catering to this demographic, just like DVD vendors who came up with 4:3 versions of 2.39:1 movies. The number of customers who complain about the wrong aspect ratio is probably much smaller than the number of customers who complain about the black bars.

<comment><USER10> _> Whenever I watch a movie with some of my extended family, there's always someone who asks why the movie doesn't fill the entire screen._

I'm seeing more and more things like this, which seem to fit into a category of "geometrical illiteracy." Making 4:3 video wider to "use the pixels" on a widescreen just looks wrong. It makes people look squatter than they actually are. Many diagrams and animations on Discovery channel shows that supposedly fall into the category of "science education" seem to be made by scientific illiterates. Apparently, the visual artists are looking up all of the terms in the script and description, but who have no real understanding of the underlying concepts. Wildly incorrect geometries are present in the majority of these.

A prime example. The a plane moving as in the animation shown would produce forces in the _exact opposite direction!_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggP32UJeTHQ#t=865s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggP32UJeTHQ#t=865s)

If this is what a large fraction of human beings are like, how are we supposed to maintain a democratic and technological society?

<comment><USER11> That clip is from a show called, "Penn & Teller Tell a Lie," wherein they present lies (and one truth) as fact.

Additionally, you probably misheard when Penn said, "centripetal force," and assumed he said, "centrifugal force."

Probably not the, "prime example," you thought it was.

<comment><USER10> _> That clip is from a show called, "Penn & Teller Tell a Lie," wherein they present lies (and one truth) as fact. Additionally, you probably misheard when Penn said, "centripetal force," and assumed he said, "centrifugal force." Probably not the, "prime example," you thought it was._

1) If the plane would spin sound its own axis like that, the iced tea would have hit the canopy. The diagram is just wrong.

2) They presented several truths and _one_ lie.

Are you trolling by "telling a lie?" You would have completely mislead anyone who only took a casual glance at the video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Call me crazy, but I doubt Netflix has permission to modify the films in this way. Something tells me the studios are providing them to Netflix pre-cropped.

<comment><USER13> Look at the Man on the Moon crop. It's clearly not just cropping off the sides. It's anchored to the right. I also doubt Netflix either has a smart algorithm that can figure out the focus of the scene, or hires a bunch of people to choose the right focal point for every movie. They probably ask for movies from their providers in 16:9 format and they show whatever they get. They could ask for both formats and give users the choice, but I'm guessing there might be extra licensing costs to get both, and the majority of their users aren't cinephiles, and they just want their movies to fill the screen.

<comment><USER14> _Look at the Man on the Moon crop. It 's clearly not just cropping off the sides. It's anchored to the right. _

That's what pan-and-scan is. Its done by the studio so they have some "artistic" control of how the cropping is done.

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

<comment><USER15> I thought etler was saying that the Man on the Moon crop wasn't pan-and-scan at all. It was just a complete lopping off of the entire left portion of the film that didn't fit the aspect ratio.

<comment><USER14> I'm not saying its well done but just "cropping" would crop to the middle "lopping off the left portion" is a film thats "panned" to the right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What a misleading title! It's really not Netflix's doing, and it's definitely not some kind of evil conspiracy.

The studio isn't going to pay for a new transfer just for Netflix, or maybe they have a better one but are only realizing it on Blu-Ray. Netflix just gets whatever version of the movie the studio happens to already have on hand, which is likely the HDTV version, which is sometimes pan-and-scan.

But that doesn't make a very sensational headline.

<comment><USER17> Every transfer for home video I've ever seen has been anamorphic widescreen since the earliest days of the DVD. There were a few releases among the very earliest DVDs that were pan-and-scan, because the studios were afraid people would freak out if they saw black bars on their TV. They didn't, so pan-and- scan vanished. And that was back when 4:3 SDTVs were the norm, now almost everyone has 16:9 sets, so widescreen transfers if anything would be more easily welcomed now.

Considering how much of their libraries they have now mastered for DVD, it would seem like it would take more work to go back and do a pan-and-scan transfer than it would to just reuse the one they made for widescreen DVD.

<comment><USER18> > Every transfer for home video I've ever seen has been anamorphic widescreen > since the earliest days of the DVD.

That's interesting because one of the things which disappointed me most with DVDs was how immensely hard it was to get DVDs with actual anamorphic widescreen.

Most movies was actually fullscreen or letterboxed, and for 2.35:1 films that meant effectively 200 lines for film content.

This was after DVDs had been on the market for 5+ years mind you.

TLDR: An anecdote does not make facts nor data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My guess is that this cropping is being done by video editing service companies at the request of the studios.

Netflix and a studio come to a distribution agreement. Netflix tells the studio the technical requirements for the digital files to send over. The studio realizes they don't have exactly the right format on hand, so they contract out to some firm to encode their content. The studio may not realize that there is an aspect difference, and the service company might automatically adjust the cropping to make it fill the screen to fulfill their contract and meet the technical specifications.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ah, this is close to my heart, and I have worked in video and streaming video for ten years, for many companies. Which is why I am so surprised the author does not realize that Netflix is not making this decision--video is supplied by third parties and sometimes this is out of control of Netflix or other streaming video vendors. Sometimes the pan and scan version is all that exists as a digital encode. Generally Hollywood studios are resistant to spending any extra money or labor to put our widescreen versions that customers can't generally discern from the pan and scan versions (and re-encoding costs are often absorbed by the streaming video service, in this case Netflix).

Netflix is generally making a smart business decision here--expanding selection and using a product that appears identical to 98% of viewers--and I say that as one of the 2% who can tell and do care.

In short, the author should know this, and have said it themselves, citing their video clerk experience--customers, if anything, think widescreen is the inferior product.

</comment><comment><USER21> I saw this interesting overview of the history of aspect ratios the other day. There's a lot more variety than you'd think.

[http://vimeo.com/68830569](http://vimeo.com/68830569)

<comment><USER22> wow, that was well made and informative. I had no idea that that's where the 16:9 aspect ratio came from (the mean ratio of the two most disparate ratios in film)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> HBO and the other "premium" cable channels also do this. Not every single time, but much of the time. Try watching any of the Lord of the Rings movies on HBO or Cinemax for example. They're all 16:9, even though they were 2.39:1 "scope" in the theater.[1]

Forcing everything to be 16:9 has become the new "pan and scan", and it's actually been around for a while.

[1] Some of the time a movie has been filmed in a format which contained extra space on the negative, such as "Super 35", and in some cases the 16:9 might actually be showing _more_ of the image rather than less, but it's very hit- and-miss and requires a custom transfer and master of the movie (which HBO has been known to do in at least some cases).

</comment><comment><USER24> Isn't it just the content providers sending altered movies?

<comment><USER25> It most likely the content providers sending Netflix these alterned movies is as it is way too much work for Netflix to do this cropping themselves. I think it is customary for every film to have a "pan and scan" version created by the studios/content providers:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-and-scan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan- and-scan)

Now, Netflix may be at fault for purposely not requesting letterboxed formats, and opting for the cropped 16:9 versions.

<comment><USER26> To nitpick, Netflix wouldn't want to request letterboxed formats. They should want the native format, because I'm confident that every video player they support will do the letterboxing for them.

<comment><USER27> They definitely do not do a good job of checking what formats they're getting. If you watch Star Trek or The Twilight Zone on a 16x9 TV, you'll actually see bars on left and right because it's encoded for 16x9 even though the source is 4x3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ugh. Now I need to look up each Netflix movie to see if they have messed with it before playing?

Shouldn't be difficult to give us an option, Netflix is already encoding in many different formats.

<comment><USER29> Reminds me of the good old DVD days where I had to always check for two things: region restrictions and "anamorphic" format.

I somehow still have to deal with region restrictions today, because technology.

<comment><USER30>
      I somehow still have to deal with region restrictions today, because technology.

Actually, it's because licensing.

<comment><USER31> It's awful. I'd get Netflix in a heartbeat if I could do so easily, but I need to get a VPN and fart about to make it work. And in the evening, the last thing I want to do is fix stuff, after a day of all sorts of format/file/network battles (radiology department job). Fix the licensing stuff and I'll pay.

<comment><USER30> No argument here. It's changing, but keep in mind that many of these licensing deals were multi-year, and that therefore the technical decisions necessary to support these deals have been baked into standards since day one. Thankfully, Blu-Ray is the last physical format we'll have to grapple with.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, a reasonable attitude like yours is what I need. I skipped blu-ray and went straight to digital. Discs in the bin etc. I think I jumped too soon. Meta data accuracy, library software, media servers etc have all changes vastly in the time I've been purely digital and every change is awful. My last change over was so awful that I said never again. I'll see if that holds, but having a third part sort it for me seems ideal.

<comment><USER32> I wish I could go fully digital but sadly the only way to get high quality "DRM-free" (in the sense that at least it's easy to strip the DRM) video today is by getting BDs. It saddens me that the actually good digital options are pretty much all illegal.

Admittedly I do currently have a Netflix account as well, mainly for some casual watching. I wouldn't be paying for it if it wasn't for MediaHint, though, which allows me to watch everything available on US Netflix.

Though speaking of DRM, incidentally just 10 minutes ago I was trying to show an example of some horrible subtitling on Netflix to a friend of mine and ran into a DRM error with Silverlight (it was claiming my time and date were inaccurate)... took a while to figure out how to solve it. Ah, DRM, always so friendly to legal consumers.

<comment><USER31> Exactly. We got into the Sopranos and I got out a few series from the local video store on DVD. This was a few years ago. Never again. The DVD player was the wrong region, so I put it into the Mac. It played fine. I tried to output the video on the Apple TV. Some kind of (according to apple forums) DRM prevents this. I was in the brink of encoding the DVDs to a different format, when it occurred to me to torrent them. I set off the torrent and the encode at the same time, and a short time later stopped the encoding, and the torrent had got enough to get us started. And I didn't have to watch the anti piracy warning. How can legal be so hard and free be so easy?

<comment><USER33> I agree that it's bafflingly hard to legally use legally bought media.

> How can legal be so hard

Because rights holders have weird beliefs and think that DRM is great, and they won't sell the rights without DRM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> " and Milos Forman made a decision when he chose to show both Jim Carrey and Jerry Lawler."

I'm amazed that Netflix edits the frame to a degree that may actually change the meaning of a scene or a dialog. I know that cropping even a few mm off the edges is bad, but 'cropping' one entire guy from a scene involving two people is outrageous.

<comment><USER24> Now, I'm not a fancy big city video-editor but I think it has more to do with the characters placement in the original shot than the editing.

Begin Speculation

You can probably be pretty specific with your cropping placement but whoever did the editing, likely didn't understand the meaning of both in the shot (I would've missed it initially) and had a directive of, make this look good and full screen, so they chopped it that way.

End Speculation

<comment><USER2> Yes, in pan and scan when there's a wide shot with two characters, it is generally preferred to show one person in full at a time and cut between them if you can.

Directors generally don't film with this in mind, so it can be rough on certain styles and completely ruins some shots. Has for decades, nothing you can really do if people won't watch letterboxed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I contacted Netflix support about this, and they claimed that this isn't the case generally, but it might happen with some devices. Has anyone been able to reproduce this?

<comment><USER5> i would if they had any movie worth watching.

why people subscribe to a service that is 95% tv shows, and then complain about the few movie image quality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've actually noticed this (because, technically speaking, widescreen films should still have black bars on them even with "normal" widescreen televisions). I always assumed it was Netflix just accommodating the average user who would get pissed that they bought a widescreen TV and the picture is still showing up with bars on it.

Also consider that the average user usually watches television with their TV that auto-crops and/or zooms and stretches pictures, not to mention interpolates 120Hz viewing for a delicious soap opera effect.

I have to say, though, that cinemaphiles complaining about Netflix quality is a bit like the audiophiles that buy $10k sound systems to listen to their MP3 collection.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's crazy; almost all forms of broadcasting are made without any consideration of proper display. 4:3 TV shows from the 80s and 90s are cropped to 16:9 (which kills the resolution to abysmal levels); films on VOD services and TV are cut down from cinemascope to 16:9; black and white sources are colorized and made weird and ridiculous. why on earth would I ever want to pay for any of these services? Well, I don't. I don't watch TV anymore; I buy a couple of DVDs here and there, and that's about it.

<comment><USER37> If only we could make resizeable screens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> OT: site is unreadable on my Android device with Chrome (latest).

It disables zoom but is too wide for the screen and doesn't reflow the text (I should just turn off allowing sites to disable zoom...).

<comment><USER39> I have disable zoom turned off but it didn't help it only turns off ability to restrict zoom in not out. Apparently its for the hard if sight... Rotating the screen was OK though here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well if you believe in conspiracy theories, Netflix subtly alters the film so that if it shows up on Bittorrent they know where it came from :-)

But I suspect that Netflix isn't doing the altering, rather their source material comes that way. Either because the distribution channel gets it that way or because the content providers want it that way. Like the author I suspect that if it wasn't being done by the media companies there would be a big stink about it.

<comment><USER41> These are the opposite of subtle, more like "Netflix ruins the film"

<comment><USER42> I think you read half of the parent comment before replying, and missed the point of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I just noticed this a couple weeks ago with "Serenity" \- I mostly watch TV on Netflix, rather than movies - but they absolutely should be giving us the whole picture. TV's have anti-letterboxing modes, and the people who don't know any better than "the picture isn't taking up my whole TV" should use them. And of course there's no reason whatsoever for them to provide anything but the original version on the website.

</comment><comment><USER44> Personally I've never understood the 2.39:1 aspect ratio. My TV, computer monitors, laptop and phone are all 16:9. TV shows I watch are 16:9 as well. Other than 4:3, it seems like the universal ratio. So why are movies shot at 2.39:1, a ratio that causes black bars on any device you watch it on?

<comment><USER45> Because 16:9 wouldn't exist except for the existing theater ratio of 2.39:1. 16:9 is a compromise between existing movies and academy ratio[1]. 21:9 would have been a better ratio, but we got the compromise just like the resolution is 1920 x 1080 instead of something that jived better with computers.

If you shoot a movie in 16:9 it will look cropped when viewed in a theater.

1) there is a YouTube video that explains it. I think it made HN a while ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This also reminds me of how they take TV originals, like Seinfeld, for example and originally shot for 4:3. They enhance them for 16:9. I would like to see a comparison of that too.

However, I will admit I think the Seinfeld enhancements do look pretty good from what they used to.

</comment><comment><USER47> Next you'll tell me that their movies are compressed and not at the same quality as blurays!

</comment><comment><USER48> Why is it a change without some giant announcement is suddenly some sort of secret conspiracy?

</comment><comment><USER49> There's an outside chance that Netflix only has a _license_ for the pan-and- scan versions, and the studios want more $$$ for the widescreen versions.

</comment><comment><USER50> When I look for the majority of the movies in the article and linked site, they come up as unavailable (US netflix). Kind of makes it all moot.

</comment><comment><USER51> Does anyone know if Amazon streaming does the same?

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm not sure if it's intentional irony or not, but the site is too wide on my iPhone and doesn't allow me to pinch/zoom.

If the author intended that to inspire frustration with mobile readers... then well played, sir/madam, well played!

<comment><USER53> Is fine in landscape on iPhone 5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I contacted Netflix about this on twitter. They say it ain't so. [https://twitter.com/lo_fye/statuses/357851185140596736](https://twitter.com/lo_fye/statuses/357851185140596736)

</comment><comment><USER55> Ironically, you can't resize the article to read the full lines on mobile safari.

</comment><comment><USER46> That first paragraph had me rolling. I worked for Transworld from 99-2002ish and had to explain the exact same thing to people. Got the same result. Glad I can laugh at it now. At the time it pissed me off more than anything.

</comment><comment><USER56> What are the chances that this person had the DVD flipped to play the 4:3 version of the film? (Studios sometimes release pan & scan and the widescreen on the same disc, but on opposite sides).

<comment><USER57> Does Netflix source their content from DVDs? I would have thought the studio would send over some sort of lossless master file of the video which is then scaled on Netflix's side.

<comment><USER56> Uhh, I was actually thinking about the DVD-by-mail service. But yeah, an employee at Netflix could have flipped it when encoding it. But your explanation with the studio sending a master is the most likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> this is usually the case when watching a movie on the HD feed of HBO/Showtime/what have you as well. They're probably getting the same source as netflix.

It seems that some directors have the clout to demand that their movies are distributed in the original aspect ratio. Or perhaps they're willing to trade some cash for control of that aspect of distribution.

</comment><comment><USER59> The iPad app used to let you watch the movies in both portrait and landscape modes. I found portrait mode worked better for me when watching a movie in bed.

As of a month or two ago, they took away the ability to watch in portrait. Why. It just made the app worse.

</comment><comment><USER5> summary: the article does not answer why.

</comment><comment><USER60> The NSA wants the cropped out bit.</comment>


Kangaroo Twelve Implementation in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mimoo/GoKangarooTwelve <comment><USER3> K12 is _not_ a "faster SHA-3". K12 is K12, M14 is M14.

K12 is related to SHA-3, but if you're throwing standards out the door (and I think you should), you can use any of the hash core algorithms, whether or not they're related to Keccak.

The best all-purpose cryptographic hash is probably truncated SHA-2 512, and the hipster modern hash is probably still Blake2.

<comment><USER4> > The best all-purpose cryptographic hash is probably truncated SHA-2 512

Could you elaborate on that please? Why would you consider it as the "best all-purpose cryptographic hash"?

<comment><USER5> On 64-bit processors SHA-512 truncated to 256 bits is faster than SHA-256, and has the advantage of being safe against length-extension attacks (which are a major gotcha of SHA-512 and the rest of SHA2).

Out of SHA3, K12, SHA2 and Blake, SHA-512 is one of the fastest (some variants of Blake2 are faster), and it's the one with the longest track record, while the Blake-family and SHA3 are fairly new. It's also widely supported nearly everywhere. All that makes truncated SHA-512 a sane default.

<comment><USER4> > Out of SHA3, K12, SHA2 and Blake, SHA-512 is one of the fastest (some > variants of Blake2 are faster)

[https://twitter.com/KeccakTeam/status/834789451708628995](https://twitter.com/KeccakTeam/status/834789451708628995)

> It's also widely supported nearly everywhere

This is true for the non-truncated variants, but I am not aware of any protocol that uses the truncated ones.

I will agree with the "longest track record" however, this is an important part.

<comment><USER6> If you are free to choose a hash function, you are free to truncate SHA-512. Truncated SHA-512 is secure, there is no need to wait to see it used in a standardized protocol to increase confidence in its security.

Creating a truncate(SHA-512, 256) out of regular SHA-512 is trivial, so it true that it is widely supported nearly everywhere.

<comment><USER4> This is wrong, SHA-512/256 is not the same as calculating the output of SHA-512 and then taking the first 256 bits of it, there are some differences between them such as different IVs that would make the outputs also different.

<comment><USER3> This only matters if there's an existing protocol that uses truncated SHA-2 you need to interoperate with (and your premise is there is not).

There is no functional advantage to having a different IV for SHA-2 5-2/256.

<comment><USER7> Yup, this looks like it's a cross-domain protection.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but if you care about domain separation, you can't rely on the IV anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (from linked resources)

> Keccak won the SHA-3 competition, and became the FIPS 202 standard on August > 5, 2015. All the other contenders lost.

I don't think many professionals would agree with this view of cryptographic competitions.

> Being too late to take part in the fight to become SHA-3, it just stood on > its own awkwardly.

Again with the wording... SHA-3 is not an epic battle for blood and honour. Acting as if a NIST competition is a public fight is rather disconcerting.

> It is only in 2013 that SHA-2 joined Intel's set of instructions, along with > SHA-1...

Technically true, but only now -- four years later -- desktop processors were released supporting the SHA extensions, and none of these are from Intel so far.

</comment><comment><USER9> KangarooTwelve on PicoLisp: [https://bitbucket.org/mihailp/tankfeeder/src/5a91a025d78eacf...](https://bitbucket.org/mihailp/tankfeeder/src/5a91a025d78eacf68655b6dbec5c2dd346624146/crypto/kangaroo12.l?at=default&fileviewer=file- view-default)

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't this SHA-3 less safe, too? Why not just go with BLAKE2?

<comment><USER4> BLAKE2 is less safe than BLAKE as well.

>Isn't this SHA-3 less safe, too?

Yes, both K12 and M14 are less safe than SHA3. Instead of 12 + 2ℓ rounds (where ℓ is 25 * 2^ℓ = r + c [where r + c = 1600 in both sha-3 and K12]) it uses just 12 rounds (14 for M14). It also uses half the c (c = 512 in sha3-256, c = 256 in K12, where c is the sponge capacity). It provides the same amount of bits of security against collision attacks for both quantum and classical systems, however the preimage security is the ~85 bits for quantum systems (128 in sha3-256) and 128 bits in classical systems (256 in sha3-256) due to the changes in c.

<comment><USER3> The word "safe" isn't doing us any favors here. What we're really talking about is the "security margin" of the different hashes. Every hash we're talking about on this thread has a margin far beyond any plausible or foreseeable attacks. None are unsafe.

<comment><USER11> This is a serious issue, and I think it's a problem of cryptography education.

On the one hand, we (rightly, in my opinion) teach people who haven't studied cryptography that they shouldn't try to implement it on their own. This is good, because cryptography is mostly applied math (hard) and careful software implementation (also hard), and mixing these two hard things without shooting yourself in the foot is _very_ hard.

On the other hand, developers who follow this advice don't have a clear way to find the answer to questions like, "Which of these great algorithms do I want?" It's easy to find sound recommendations for which algorithms are well- studied and essentially safe; it's less easy to find guides that compare and contrast algorithms along nuanced axes like computational cost, interoperability, security margin or adaptability.

This leads developers to come to their own conclusions based on imperfect understanding of the metrics they can quantify:

"I need to encrypt something - Serpent has a much higher security margin than AES (Rijndael), I should probably go with that."

"I need to hash something - Keccak won the SHA-3 contest, so I should use that instead of BLAKE."

"I need to authenticate something - if I choose two strong algorithms it will be better than one, so I'll use AES-CTR and HMAC-SHA, instead of an AEAD."

"More bits means higher security, so I'll use AES256 and SHA-512."

I'm noticing this more and more in online discussion, where people seem to be talking past each other about things like the "safety" of algorithms without discriminating between other metrics like speed. In my opinion, it would be better for people to consider "safety" as a mostly binary property if they haven't done enough due diligence to know why one algorithm has a higher or lower security margin than another one, because the other metrics are so much more important.

There probably needs to be better cryptography education as well, something that is a bit higher than "do this, don't do this" and which provides some elaboration about the _whys_ inherent to different security margins.

<comment><USER12> > It's easy to find sound recommendations for which algorithms are well- > studied and essentially safe; it's less easy to find guides that compare and > contrast algorithms along nuanced axes like computational cost, > interoperability, security margin or adaptability.

I might be hugely mistaken, but isn't the current situation that almost all of the "essentially safe" hash functions are good enough for almost all uses? I understand that the amount of choice can lead to analysis paralysis, but sensible solution generally is just pick one (possibly the one that has a reasonable implementation most readily available) and move on. Sure, the almost randomly picked algorithm might not ideal on all possible metrics, but perfect is the enemy of good.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this is precisely my point. "Safe" is a binary property in cryptography. But developers don't have much to go on, so even if they follow best practices they often interpret differentiating metrics as variances in "safety", when in actuality those things are only relevant for computational cost, implementation difficulty, adaptability and interoperability.

In general if you provide people with a list of possibilities and say, "Yeah, any of these is fine", they're not going to literally choose one at random. They're going to search a bit and read about differences between the algorithms, and unless they spend a lot of time reading about the respective properties of each algorithm they might eventually say something like, "Argon2 is safer than bcrypt."

"Safer" is a misnomer. There are meaningful reasons to choose one algorithm over another, but these generally boil down to performance impact, implementation time and how easy it is to shoot yourself in the foot with implementation.

This matters because people seek understanding, and if you don't provide a satisfiable amount they might draw erroneous conclusions that have a meaningful _non-security_ impact. For example, you most likely don't need to be using AES256. People like to, because 256 > 128\. But seriously - <USER2> probably don't need to. The impulse to just use the bigger number leads to decision making based on signaling more than real security, and has a meaningful reduction in things like usability and performance.

To rephrase my point here - "safe" is safe enough, and there should probably be better education on the peripheral implementation metrics for cryptographic algorithms, because you're far more likely to run up your AWS bill or inadvertently screw up your security by e.g. choosing a complex cryptographic algorithm with a huge security margin versus a simple one with a "good enough" security margin. If we're not able to provide more education about what to _actually_ look for when discriminating between algorithms, then we need to find a way to decouple certain metrics from the perception of "safety", like key size.

For a real world example of this, look at the advertising with things like "bank-grade" or "military-grade" security which are heavily associated with phrases like "128-bit" or "256-bit." Sometimes a developer will see that AES128 is used and think to themselves, "I'll use 256 and be even safer!", all the while the public is slowly taught to associate safety with ever larger bit sizes. Then when a legitimately superior ECC algorithm comes out that uses 224 bit keys, people cling to RSA because they can use a 2048 bit key size and 2048 > 224.

<comment><USER12> When I said good enough, I meant good enough on all aspects, including non- safety related. I mean it is somewhat difficult to imagine that someones project would fail because they picked the "wrong" hash function or encryption algorithm from the "essentially safe" ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A mention of the always-on culture of these times seemed appropriate. Easy access to information doesn't seem beneficial if said information is geared to attract clicks or foment fear. Or both.</comment>


Alec Baldwin blasts government for cutting corners, trading freedom for security - <AUTHOR> http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/06/07/alec-baldwin-nsa-security/?hpt=hp_t2

<comment><USER2> Its funny in that Alec Baldwin has advocated against constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, yet still does this.</comment>


Computer Files Stored Accurately on DNA - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9821895/Computer-files-stored-accurately-on-DNA-in-new-breakthrough.html

<comment><USER2> Links to articles that talk of storing data on DNA, bacteria and diamonds [http://miningbigdata.blogspot.com/2012/08/storing-data-on- dn...](http://miningbigdata.blogspot.com/2012/08/storing-data-on-dna.html?m=1)</comment>


Show HN: A Chrome extension for goal-based browsing - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
I just made this Chrome extension I would like to hear your feedback on:
http://alexisrondeau.com/reup/
The extension will ask you to define a goal while working within Chrome. Once you've set yourself that goal it will be visible on any webpage you visit after that.
Some background: I've been noticing how much time I tend to waste online, especially Facebook, HackerNews, and tried many different ways to control the habit.
There are extensions and methods out there that should help with this kind of behavior, for example StayFocusd or LeechBlock, but I have found myself not being able to stay on track even with them. After a while I wind up just using a different browser. Please note, this is not a shortcoming of the extensions, but of my own self-control.
So, instead of blocking sites, I thought it good to stay reminded of what I set out to do in the first place (For example: "Finish todays project and deploy", "Get inspired", "Research meditation techniques"). Usually, when I know what I want, the internet is an amazing tool. If I forget about it, things just get messy and wasteful...
If you are interested, give it a spin. Any feedback or questions are highly appreciated.
In best case I would like to know how it does -- or doesn't -- affect your productivity positively over the course of several days and if there is a breakingpoint of annoyance over time. <comment><USER2> When I open a new tab, I still see the form "My Goal today is..." which is kind of irritating. Shouldn't it just show my goals. If I have to set my goal I shall click on the reup extension icon to fill it.

Nice idea btw, planning to try this for a week.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, there is this extension here that supports more goals: [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ocnjckohbfdjdlhf...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ocnjckohbfdjdlhfgmnocamdfdkfclmk) \-- It works a bit differently but could be interesting as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea. But ouch! I'm on a Cr-48 trying to spend the first month under the free Verizon 3g 100MB plan, why does this take 3.8 MB?

Also, I was editing this comment and punched right through whatever that popup is when it finishes downloading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Just checked, I still had the .git folders that got packaged, too. The .crx file is now updated at only around 400K.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great idea. It would be nice to be able to hide it from some webapps (identified by domains or tabs), like your favorite webmail app.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand that, and a configuration page could take care of that. Do you think that when you're in your webmail, you would not want to see your goal? For me that's one of the places I would want to be reminded, but, again, I understand.</comment></comment>


Show HN: samefeather: LinkedIn for your interests - <AUTHOR>

We are looking to get feedback for http://www.samefeather.com. We have tried this with friends and family but want to get some critical feedback (note to self: do this sooner next time).
SameFeather is a location based network of people with similar interests. Our emphasis is offline. We provide a way for people to find others in their vicinity that share their interests and meet them offline. We are trying to stay away from calling it a social network because that seems to scare away a lot of people. The differentiating factor from whats already out there is we focus on individuals and allow them to create personal groups around their interests.
We are thinking about a possible mobile app in the future based on some more real user testing/feedback.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'm not going to give feedback about your business model or the idea or your mobile app or strategy or anything like that. Let me share the first thing I noticed.

I went to your website, and I saw something I had to register for. I almost immediately closed the tab, and wasn't even going to respond. But then I thought I would give this feedback. There's nothing on the site that tells you what it is. The info boxes try to do that, but they don't really convey a message about what the website actually is. My suggestion is this: Decide what one thing your website does, and communicate that very bluntly on the frontpage. Beyond that, direct people to learn more before asking them to sign up. Your "login" is taking up very valuable space, despite the fact that you don't have users. Put it in a less valuable place, and try harder to sell your product. And "Birds of a feather flock together"? What the hell does that even mean?</comment>


Web browsers – World's most popular computer programs are becoming less boring - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21701495-worlds-most-popular-computer-programs-are-becoming-less-boring-window-dressing?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/window_dressing <comment><USER2> Developing niche browser is the only way to attract, may not large but enough number of users. And nowadays anti-tracking thing is in demand. Sometimes such browsers work far better than bigger ones.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mention about Servo missing.</comment>


A Strange Loop (about Curtis Yarvin Being Kicked Out of Strange Loop) - <AUTHOR> https://improprietaryinfluence.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/a-strange-loop/ <comment><USER2> Huh, strange that the article to get traction on HN should be written by a neoreactionary. I'm not one, but the author isn't wrong: the people who got Yarvin kicked are hard-Left. Which is significant to me personally, because of the following:

I'm a Zionist. That is to say, I'm a Jewish nationalist, who immigrated to Israel about four years ago from personal conviction. As many will be aware, there is a strong current of Left thought that calls Zionism a racist ideology. This led to U.N. resolution 3379 ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_3379)) - later revoked as a condition of Israel agreeing to a crucial stage of the peace process.

But I would be very surprised if at least _some_ of those who demanded that Yarvin be kicked for racism, did not also think that I was a racist on account of my Zionist beliefs; the phrase "progressive except Palestine" exists for a reason.

Now yes, Miller has every right to choose who comes to his conference, and the attendees have every right to ask that he kick people out for any reason they deem sufficient. But it seems to me that if there is a social norm of letting people veto speakers on grounds unconnected to the subject of their talks, then we're in a very parlous state - even if those grounds are things like racism.

Miller can't be blamed for uninviting Yarvin, there's too much money hanging on it. But this should not be something that passes without concerned comment.

<comment><USER3> _Miller can 't be blamed for uninviting Yarvin, there's too much money hanging on it._

Agree with everything in your comment except this. I think he must take responsibility / blame for his decision. And the money's not all on one side. I've wanted to attend Strange Loop for a couple of years but certainly won't, now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A good reminder of the 2013 PyCon fiasco encrusted within some of the most _polite_ extremely extreme reactionary conservatism that I have read in recent times. Harks back to the good old days of William F. Buckley and the old days of the National Review.

Unfortunately, the author is more interested in the manifestation/justification of his own values (arch politeness; nihilistic stoicism; the existence of a strictly bipolar culture war between noble, truthful conservatives and misguided communists who are living a lie) than the topic at hand, so we don't get to hear as much of his thinking on the matter as we might like to.

He points out that there are tactical and strategic dimensions to this sort of incident, and that there there are individuals and groups who actively pursue this kind of power; he correctly, I think, identifies this as a general problem that needs to be dealt with more determinedly and in a more professional manner than "now look, we don't want no trouble, here..."

However, he gets bogged down in a threat analysis that really only needed to go as far as the word "careers." There are indeed individuals for whom this sort of disputation is a career, or at least vocation, regardless of how cynical or innocent their intentions may be. One needs to fear professional revolutionaries; an inquiry into the nature of the revolution misses the point.

I vaguely recall the name Mencius Moldbug as being that of an absolute loon; he may well believe a great many things that are directly or by consequence very ugly. The author is likewise someone I would (having read a few of his essays) personally describe as deluded. However, I think that someone needs to make the argument that this sort of influence-leveraging is ethically wrong. It is disappointing that the author explicitly shrugs off the notion... the truth, or ethics, or whatever is just and good in his mind: these are matters internal to conservatism, it would seem.

I am not sure that it _is_ , in fact ethically wrong. I don't know. But I think it needs explicit, public justification on the part of at least a few of those "large number of current and former speakers" who allegedly put such widespread pressure on the conference organizers. Such a thing requires justification in every case, as does all public censure, for the same reasons that (for instance) a system of laws ought require justification for a penalty: otherwise, the ability to coordinate and provoke censure becomes a means to power and an end in itself.

</comment><comment><USER5> The tone of this post is strange to me. The author says things like, "To them, it is an absolute requirement that anyone who utters opinions they consider unacceptable must be excluded from their society." and "They "would not feel comfortable" being forced to treat him as a respectable human being. As a matter of tactics, this is perfectly reasonable. ...the people we are talking about are communists." and "...the ideas that almost everyone in communion with Harvard University believes are communist ideas" and on and on in this vein.

The author clearly has a curiously well defined political ax to grind but to conflate the issue of this speaker being banned with what looks like a 1950's style anti-communist fetish is bizarre. There are so many assumptions and leaps of extremist faith in the post that I'm surprised something like this would get so highly ranked on Hacker News.

As someone who has attended the conference in the past and who is diametrically opposed with the political views of the extreme right (being a moderate, normal, person), I don't have a problem with someone like Yarvin speaking about tech at the conference. What's more, we can discuss his banning without the issue turning into a ridiculous red baiting diatribe framed in terms more suited to the crazy wing of the extreme American Right.

p.s. look at the comments on that post! It's just ridiculous that such insane extremism (of any sort) should elbow its way into such a topic.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a surprisingly low-quality essay for the front page of Hacker News. Accusing everyone of communism? Claiming that Adria Richards's job was to go to conferences and "fuck them up?"

And that comparison is extremely suspect regardless of the hyperbolic ad hominems. That issue was around what is and isn't a violation of a conference's explicit or implicit code of conduct, and what is or isn't an appropriate response with respect to the persons involved and those that report them.

Whereas, this issue is around a person who has not violated a code of conduct. Massive difference. A far better comparison might be to the fate of Brendan Eich, who did not publicly espouse views about same-sex marriage on or off the job.

There's an excellent essay to be written about the dividing line between someone's personal views and their professional conduct, but this isn't it

<comment><USER7> Regarding Adria Richards, if you follow the "fuck them up" link[0], you'll see that he's not wrong.

————

0\. [https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/](https://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is sad to hear, especially with how crazy this same crowd goes over things like NSA surveillance and Internet censorship. Such hypocrisy.

Yeah I know it's a private conference, but it says something that people can't tolerate views they disagree with.

<comment><USER3> Free expression is a cultural value. The value is way more important than the Constitution and laws that embody it.

Funny way for this to finally make the front page. I'm not sure I buy that this is the work of Marxists or the connection to Donglegate. But very curious to hear how HN sees the situation.

Unfortunately, one side effect of this kind of "no platforming" is that it legitimately leads to concern about whether people feel free to openly assert their opinions.

EDIT: Well, I guess I won't be able to hear about it, since this post has been flag-killed. Really strange that HN seems determined not to discuss this. As I said in an earlier post that got buried, this should be in our wheelhouse. urbit has been actively and approvingly discussed here previously, with Yarvin's participation. Should those posts have been flag-killed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do we really need this kind of culture war nonsense? I don't agree with anyone being barred from speaking at technical conferences for their political views, but then bringing Steve Klabnik's politics into it doesn't feel like a classy move either (and I say that as someone who does not share his politics). It seems that posts like this are designed to get people more riled up and create another round of polarising outrage, rather than encourage the people who mobilised to bar Yarvin from the event to consider the possibility that they might have been wrong to do so.

<comment><USER10> "Do we really need this kind of culture war nonsense?"

Perhaps you should ask Strangeloop that. They're the ones who threw the first punch when they decided to boot people based on their political views.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quite sober-minded and unpolemically written, in contrast to the many non- passivistic articles produced in response to this case of politics eating the world. The clear acknowledgement of the independence of tactics from ideology is refreshing - the weapons of rhetoric and other forms of social technology are as innocent of harm as more corporeal arms.

</comment><comment><USER12> Talk submissions should be blind to maximize inclusiveness and minimize quackery.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wondered when this nonsense would show up here, and indeed am utterly unsurprised to see an article spinning conspiracy out of the disinvitation of a virulent racist and fascist popping up at #1.

For a less sensationalized counterpoint, try this: [https://al3x.net/2015/06/04/wouldn't-censorship-be- exciting....](https://al3x.net/2015/06/04/wouldn't-censorship-be- exciting.html)

<comment><USER14> > Strewn throughout the Urbit author's writings are statements in support of > racism and slavery.

Can you link to or quote any such statements?

As an east-german i'm looking upon this with bewilderment and bemusement as "left politics" are decried.</comment></comment>


Quick fix for vertical alignment in CSS - <AUTHOR> http://andrewoons.com/quick-fix-for-vertical-alignment-in-css/ <comment><USER2> I think I'd get more out of your post Andrew if you would include an example of what the 'vertical alignment' problem you were experiencing was. At this point, I'm not sure where I would use your solution. Maybe an image of the offending design, and the proper result?</comment>


Microsoft Announces Age of Empires IV - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/gaming/2017/08/22/microsoft-announces-age-of-empires-iv/ <comment><USER2> I'm one of the biggest AoE2 fans out there-- it's my favorite game of all time and I've played _thousands_ of games of it. I also loved the original AoE and the related Age of Mythology.

In spite of that, I feel this is nothing to be excited about.

Age of Empires 1 & 2 were special because they were designed by a special team at a company called Ensemble Studios, which was bought by Microsoft and sadly shut down in 2009. None of that team remain with Microsoft.

AoE4 is being developed by Relic, a company with no track record to speak of.* It has _nothing_ in common with the game many of us know and love other than the title. It is _extremely_ unlikely to have the depth, nuance, replayability, and well-thought out design that made the original franchise a hit.

In place of those things, it's likely to have shockingly poor multiplayer integration through the Windows store as Microsoft inevitably rejects Steam integration, and god knows what other modern problems like microtransactions.

Frankly I feel there's very little to be hyped about here.

And god do I ever hope I'm wrong.

*They made some decent games 15 years ago. How many of those designers and developers are still with the company now? How many will be working on AoE4? And were their best games good enough that they're still so beloved that they merit re-releases, new expansions, and definitive editions 20 years later? I don't think so...

<comment><USER3> Not sure how you can say Relic has no track record... Homeworld, Dawn of War, and Company of Heroes were all very successful games.

<comment> aaron-lebo Not to mention Homeworld is one of the greatest games of all time...

<comment><USER2> As I said in another comment, does that matter? Homeworld is from 1999. How many people who worked at Relic in 1999 are going to be working on AoE4? My guess is zero.

<comment> aaron-lebo Was just saying Homeworld is really great, and that manual.

I agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Relic just recently screwed up DoW3, CoH2 has become micro-transaction hell even in multi-player against bots, so I wouldn't expect much.

I've always played these RTSes with friends against bots, and Relic have basically been at war with our play-style for a decade. First they said the RTS was dead, then dispatched with base-building and then added in terrain heights that are impossible to discern from a top-down view. Now they have made the DoW series into some sort of bad DotA/RTS hybrid, removing cover and morale, that's got terrible reviews.

Prepare for your fond memories of AoE to be trampled over.

<comment><USER5> FYI - I'm having a lot of trouble getting any information at all from this comment, because so much of it is tied up in abbreviations that I don't understand.

<comment><USER6> DoW3: Dawn of War 3

CoH2: Company of Heroes 2

bots: Robots / Automated game play

RTS: Real Time Strategy

DotA: Good explanation provided at: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dota_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dota_2)

... and just in case anyone is confused by your abbreviation:

FYI: For Your Information

:P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suppose there won't be any Linux version?...

<comment><USER8> Why would there be? There's not a sufficient market for it. Hoping for the day when everyone magically supports Linux hasn't worked for 20 years. Maybe it's time for a different plan?

<comment><USER9> maybe they'll build it in electron

<comment><USER7> That seems like the standard approach to linux ports these days :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> AoEII definitive edition aka seriously we're going to stop making you pay for the same game over and over again.

<comment><USER11> Gladly do it

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a long time fan of the AoE who thought that the series was dead, this news is rejuvenating. I've found the chess-like gameplay of turn based strategy games to be frustrating, and there are hardly any new games being made in the RTS genre anymore.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a life-long fan of this series I have extremely high hopes and expectations for this game. I really hope they deliver.

I remember some of my first "hacking" was running chat bots in the MSN gaming zone lobby for AoEII.

<comment><USER14> > _running chat bots in the MSN gaming zone lobby for AoEII_

But why?

<comment><USER13> I was young and thought it was cool. I was probably 10 or 11 at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If i remember correctly, age of empires III wasn't very great at all. Have my hopes up for this though!

O CANADA O CANADA O CANADA O CANADA

</comment><comment><USER11> Im so excited about this new version, now if they could also do the same for xwing and crimson skies.

</comment><comment><USER16> As long as they don't turn it into a MOBA.

<comment><USER17> What do you mean by turning it into a MOBA? I would really appreciate a launcher/matchmaking interface similar to League of Legends - granted the game itself remains a RTS just like AoE2.

<comment><USER3> MOBA is a bad genre label used to distinguish games like Dota and League of Legends from RTSs like Starcraft. It's a concept that is completely orthogonal from providing a matchmaking service with your game.

<comment><USER17> I know (I used to play LoL after all, so I'm familiar with the genre), but I've seen people misusing the term very often. I wasn't sure because I'm not entirely sure how would they turn a game like AoE into a MOBA - it wouldn't be an update of the original game, it would be a whole new concept published under the same name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can't wait for this! Waited a long time.</comment>


Cisco to lay off about 14,000 employees - <AUTHOR> http://reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSKCN10S05D <comment><USER2> Let's just say the average salary is 70k which is very conservative. That is 14k * 70k annually lost from the local community, a grand total of 980M or let's just say 1 billion annually.

Looking for another job when there are massive cuts like this also degrades the salary they accept on their next job because of the competition.

I wish companies, if possible, throttled layoffs a bit more instead of large chunks like this, but that is unlikely as the board/CEOs are looking for a stock uptick when they do and don't want to drag it out to affect the market value (translation: their own pay / stock value/price).

We rarely look at the amount of money lost in communities when things like this happen but it would be nice if reporters put out the lost community dollars/salaries along with the layoff number. The Great Wage Stagnation continues in our consumer driven economy.

<comment><USER3> It's kind of strange that massive layoffs like these result in a stock uptick. At least for me it's a sign that the company is probably unhealthy and that its value is going to go down in the future.

<comment> Altay- It mostly just confirms my belief that fully half of all white-collar workers in the developed world are adding zero value. They hustle for their first few years, then coast as old products sell themselves to old customers they already established relationships with in their younger years...

I can't fault them for not giving their all every day... I know for a fact I would instantly put in the minimal amount of work required after achieving tenure / seniority / whatever at a large organization.

<comment><USER4> "It mostly just confirms my belief that fully half of all white-collar workers in the developed world are adding zero value. They hustle for their first few years, then coast as old products sell themselves to old customers they already established relationships with in their younger years..."

This is not necessarily true.

It's more like - as you add people to the pile, you get diminishing marginal returns on value-added for each person yo add.

Trust me - older products that are hardened, and sold through established channels - those are where the juicy profits come from! Nobody wants to mess with that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > ...as the company transition from its hardware roots into a software-centric > organization.

With all these companies exiting the hardware space, who is going to be doing the hardware?

Will hardware remain a niche department within these software based companies? Are off-the-shelf systems-on-a-chip now powerful enough that there is now no need for hardware, beyond a generic universal SoC based device? Is it going to be an unserviced niche for new players to move into?

To use the specific example of Cisco: what hardware are Cisco planning to have their software running on in (for example) 5 years time?

<comment><USER6> The software will run on inexpensive dumb hardware from whitelabel manufacturers such as Quanta computers. The secret sauce in hardware that gave Cisco big margins is increasingly replaced by software that is good enough (e.g. You can use SDN controller and a cheap switch hardware to replace very expensive Cisco stuff). The trend in Enterprises and telcos is to use cloud (AWS, GCE, Azure,...) and open source (aka Facebook Open Compute) so the hardware spending has slowed down. (in tier 1 carrier I deal with, all new deployments must be on Openstack that uses whitelabel hardware purchased in bulk). EMC, Oracle, Cisco, HP are facing the impacts of such decisions.

<comment><USER7> > all new deployments must be on Openstack

you have my sympathies

<comment><USER8> What's so bad about OpenStack?

<comment><USER7> The Vision: a community-managed set of integrated tools that let you create a featureful cloud on hardware you control.

The Reality: a bunch of python scripts everyone forks.. committee politics...frustration

OpenStack is a great example of going "community" before the problem is well understood or there is a solution people trust.

It's basically a tire fire at this point and most of the community participants are market losers.

<comment><USER9> Substitute Python for bash and I get the same sense from Kubernetes.. I'm not sure it's fair to say "before the problem is well understood... But maybe. Whatever Google had going on internally Kubernetes is very much figuring it out along the way at almost every level. If you are wanting to use on AWS then you have kops, kube-up, hyperkube, protokube; a dizzying, un-approachable and interconnected ecosystem of launch scripts/programs. Very strange interop decisions with AWS, but hard to fault because it's darn near one person trying to manage all AWS integrations.

<comment><USER10> "Substitute Python for bash and I get the same sense from Kubernetes"

Huh? Kubernetes is written in Golang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I live down the street from Cisco HQ. I share an apartment building with many of their engineers. Perhaps it is anecdotal, and my evidence comes purely from speaking with them (I have never seen their work), but they come across as absolutely terrible as software engineers. They seem like the kind of company destroying people that are the death knell of every software giant. They have no care for the product, good programming, or their company. Their main goal is to just have a job and fly under the radar.

<comment><USER12> I have looked at Android code. It is awful. Now, I don't form opinions about Google engineers based just on that code.

I meant to say, generalizations don't always work well. They may have bad engineers. But they have great engineers too. Kent Dybvig and his team who wrote Chez Scheme works for Cisco. There are many others. Jonathan Rosenberg who wrote many Internet RFCs on fundamental protocols that run the Internet voice/video works for Cisco.

Let's not generalize. It hurts people!

<comment><USER13> > I have looked at Android code.

You just have to look at the API. From little details (wifiInfo.getSSID() returning either the quoted SSID, an unquoted string of hex characters the SSID consists of, the special string "<unknown ssid>" or "0x") to the overall architecture (needlessly convoluted lifecycle, 2D rendering architecture from 2000s, the whole intra-app Intent bullshit that causes people to find alternative ways of communicating between Activities within the same app ...)

<comment><USER14> Out of interest, what's wrong with Intents??

As alternatives, do people just end up dumping to an sqlite database and polling it in each Activity? Haha that'd be madness

<comment><USER15> For inter-app communication Intents are a pretty reasonable solution to a complex problem. But inside an app, I would just love to have constructor parameters for my activities. I make do with Intents, but I don't have type safety, I have to deal with partially constucted objects until I've read my Intent Parameters and any time I have to pass something that's not in the default types that a bundle can contain I have to build a Parcelable wrapper for it, or find some other convoluted solution. Overall I just feel like I'm working at the wrong level of abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sweet jesus that's a lot of people! I'm having trouble wrapping my head around that many people being fired.

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised that they have 14,000 working at Cisco. I know it's a big company, but still.

<comment><USER18> Total workforce is around ~73000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't think any past or present employees are surprised by this. Cisco has always been a volatile place to work (at least since the dot com bubble) where these layoff rumors start every 4-6 months; and more often than not they do occur.

This kind of uncertainty is unsettling to any employee (good and bad performers). It's prudent for existing employees to look for employment elsewhere since this uncertainty has been going on for over a decade now. If that means gaining additional skills, networking (no pun intended) etc. so be it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wonder what this shift to SDN will mean for F5? It seems like you still need fast edge devices to get to the SDN of the cloud.

<comment><USER21> Downvoted and can't undo on mobile.

I will say that I wish F5 were less of a substitute for reliable applications where I work. If we had gold, horizontally scalable apps we wouldn't need to Bork with routing so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. I live in the south bay right next to the Cisco campus, and the amount of new employees they are hiring is staggering. I wonder how many of the 14,000 are being rehired as a contractor or something?

<comment><USER23> Oh my god you are probably right, at least according to their jobs website [0]. There are plenty of jobs posted, I looked at a few job categories and there are pages over pages of openings in their database. Not 14,000 though, it seems like maybe 3,000 at most. Still _a lot_ for a company with such a headline.

[0] [https://jobs.cisco.com/](https://jobs.cisco.com/)

<comment><USER24> Some companies tend to post jobs they don't have, to be able to show that they are productive and investing in resources. The reality is they just want to show competition/shareholders that they are hiring a lot of people and investing in new markets. Most of those jobs will be re-posted again and again as they are never filled. Some other nasty companies put jobs online as a trap to interview competition exec/directors and know more about their strategy, then they never hire them. Welcome to the world of greed.

<comment><USER25> I concur. I have seen at places where I work that even with complete hiring freeze there are open positions posted on job portal. And as you said at higher level it must be to glean information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> According to the CRN article [1], "The networking leader has a history of announcing layoffs at the end of its fiscal year each summer."

Yes this is a huge number, but seems like usual practice for Cisco.

[1] [http://www.crn.com/news/networking/300081750/sources- massive...](http://www.crn.com/news/networking/300081750/sources-massive- layoffs-coming-at-cisco.htm)

</comment><comment><USER27> Will be interested to see if this is followed by Cisco applying for 14,000 H1B visas.

<comment><USER28> Cisco has offices all over the world, I doubt hey are particularly interested in H1B visas.

<comment><USER29> I understood the largest H1B users were companies such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro, companies whose core business developed as offshore/outsourcing locations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I work here and this is a surprise to me, company seems to be doing well there has been considerable hiring in my organization in the past few months so I am not sure why 20% of the employees are being laid off.

<comment><USER31> It's often easier to fire under performing employees en masse for legal reasons. Fire one and they can claim discrimination etc. Be part of a layoff and there's not much argument.

If it's just 20℅ it could just be cleaning out the ranks while continuing hiring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The reported number from Cisco is 5500 (7%) per [http://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-announces-plans-to- cut-5-5...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-announces-plans-to- cut-5-500-workers-1471465487).

The 7% number is more of a norm for Cisco at the end of each fiscal year. I wonder why the big gap between the Reuters source and Cisco's own reports.

<comment><USER18> Reuters (and everyone else) aped it from CRN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm curious about which business units this affects most. I expect it to affect hardware development as the company increases its focus on security.

<comment><USER34> Why would hardware development not be important to security?

<comment><USER33> Long story short: I think that, in the next year, we will see a marked shift toward subscription pricing. Amazon pushing subscriptions. Dollar shave club for X. Same for Cisco - getting recurring revenue through security/SDN/SaaS subscriptions rather than one-time hardware sales seems to be a safer long- term bet.

<comment><USER35> It's already happening. Several examples come to mind, but for now I'll use one that is relevant to Cisco: Palo Alto Networks offers several subscription based services for its security/networking hardware.

<comment><USER21> IPS and URL filtering have always been a subscription model though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Cisco is a very hierarchical company. Every time there is a shake up, most people affected are not generally bad performers but those who fall under spineless Directors/VPs. Also, Cisco generally starts hiring right away.. So, in effect nothing changes drastically. You still have long hierarchies and the drab environment. The same set of names at the top level get reassigned or regrouped and nothing major changes. I feel that it's a company going down, though it will be a very slow process (perhaps a decade more) before it becomes insignificant in the tech field. (mainly because of the money they have in the banks/overseas). It's very difficult to expect the company to transform itself unless it lets other people grow and not feed suck-ups.

</comment><comment><USER37> I interviewed with them a half-year year ago and I didn't get the position because of a "hiring freeze" in the department.

This is the third major "dodge" of my career and I feel somewhat lucky to miss out on opportunities before they cause potential harm.

</comment><comment><USER38> If anything this shift to software based networking is a reflection the Intel's CPUs have reached the 'fast enough' mark.

Here are some of the relevant articles for those who may not be in the datacentre loop:

NFV [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_function_virtualizatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_function_virtualization)

SDN [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software- defined_networking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_networking)

Regardless there is still place for time-critical network segments where you'll find the likes of QNX.

<comment><USER39> Yup. For most use cases, SDN is now good enough that you don't need premium/bespoke hardware solutions, commodity hardware works just as well.

And for the segment of the market where SDN isn't yet good enough (HFT, for instance), there are a lot of players in the field.

See this article that was on HN recently about one of Cisco's competitors, that seems to be making more performant switches than Cisco.

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602135/high-frequency- tra...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602135/high-frequency-trading-is- nearing-the-ultimate-speed-limit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's scary seeing all of these lay-offs happening. I'd hate to be looking for a software engineering job right now.

<comment><USER41> If you listen to tech CEOs, there's this huge "shortage of software engineers". Surely any former Cisco employee with software experience will be snapped up within days by all these tech companies desperately searching for tech talent.... Any day now....

<comment><USER42> _If you listen to tech CEOs, there 's this huge "shortage of software engineers"._

There is no shortage of software engineers. What there is, in the eyes of those CEOs, is a shortage of H1-B visas -- i.e., cheap labor from abroad with low mobility. Of course, the alternative is to invest in training citizens and permanent residents, who will then go and get higher-paying jobs elsewhere. So the myth of the software engineer shortage lives on...

<comment><USER43> Low mobility? Immigrants on H1-B can change employers.

<comment><USER44> I can assure you most H1-B employees would be scared to mess with a good thing. Unless they are well experienced with H1-B or their job offer is quality w/ promises of an immigration lawyer taking care of it.

<comment><USER40> Yes, several of my friends are "stuck" working for big companies that people on HN wouldn't want to work for until they get their green cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> alex- Looks like the number is 5500 - 7% [http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/08/17/cisco-report- lay...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/08/17/cisco-report- layoff-14000-employees/)

</comment><comment><USER45> I think hardware will take a hit for sure. Cisco will consolidate development around software defined networking hardware and then charge a yearly subscription fee to use its network OS.

</comment><comment><USER46> Meanwhile in "HN: Who is Hiring (August 2016)"[1]

> Cisco Meraki | San Francisco & London | Full-Time ONSITE

> ...

I have the feeling that company is sending mixed signals.

Well, on the bright side that can explain why they don't reply =)

\---

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12222620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12222620)

</comment><comment><USER47> This link seems relevant [https://klmlinks.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/fucked-by- the-clou...](https://klmlinks.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/fucked-by-the-cloud/)

</comment><comment><USER48> Reading some of these comments has reminded me just how much I no longer have to really think about in full-stack engineering, because it's been so successfully abstracted away. It's like reading an abridged version of the history of technology growth.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is Cisco admitting defeat to commodity manufacturers. I wonder if there is a massive skilled worker crunch on the other side of the world from which the commodity manufacturers operate (despite the huge population).

<comment><USER10> Is it? Because I guarantee if you go look at the Akamis, and Level 3's, really any large scale CDN or Telecom network you will find that is majority Cisco and Juniper. Aside from a handful or very large companies like FB and Google that have the expertise to build their own, you won't find a lot of commodity hardware running the datacenter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The actual number being reported now is 5500, significantly less that 14K.

</comment><comment><USER50> I kept hearing that code quality at Cisco is poor, so perhaps this is an opportunity to clean house and pivot?

Not all layoffs are bad, and the good engineers most likely jumped ship already.

</comment><comment><USER51> The root cause is: this is capitalism. "Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the labourer.

Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 15 (1867)"

</comment><comment><USER52> I was just yesterday called to schedule an interview... >.>

<comment><USER53> Ah, hiring before the formal firing. Efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Huh. My CareerBuilder feed has a lot of Cisco reqs today.

</comment><comment><USER55> don't they typically do these thing before the end of a quarter? Now is the beginning of a quarter - so why should they do the layoffs now ?

</comment><comment><USER56> I thought they were ramping up for IoT.

</comment><comment><USER57> software is eating the world in one regard.

but industries like Cisco and Intel are very cyclical.

</comment><comment><USER58> "China is now low-cost, high-quality" \--Jack Ma

</comment><comment><USER59> Cisco is losing the ground to Huawei, ZTE

</comment><comment><USER60> Winter is coming.

<comment><USER61> And its going to get lot worse without company subsidized health insurance.

<comment><USER7> In fairness, Cisco has offered excellent severance in the past...but then again, they've never done layoffs on this scale

<comment><USER62> > they've never done layoffs on this scale

in 2k1, if memory serves right, they laid off approx. 10k folks. i would guess, in percentage terms (given at least 10% less employees), it might be similar though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Anything to keep the all-important stock price up. Capitalism is wonderful, isn't it?

<comment><USER64> Yeah, let's keep 14,000 people who we don't need because communism turned out great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> 70,000 employees is way too big. Not know much about how Cisco runs its business, half of it must be sales, business and enterprise solution consultants.

<comment><USER66> According to this 2009 document[1], they're 30% engineering, 27% sales, 43% business support functions.

[1] [http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac227/csr2009/pdfs/CS...](http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac227/csr2009/pdfs/CSR_09_Employees_Demographics.pdf)</comment></comment>


SF to Paris in 2 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://boltron.com/sf-to-paris-in-two-minutes/ <comment><USER2> That was pretty incredible, I've never seen the northern lights from a plane.

Also, thank you for choosing music that was _not_ some airy/indie ambient song.

<comment><USER3> It's funny you say that about the music... (in fact, I seriously can't tell at this point if that was sarcasm) -- because the music was produced apparently by Air France, and 'airy/indie ambient' is precisely the genre one could describe Air France's music being.

(I personally love 'airy/indie ambient' music myself. :) Especially Air France's, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ADxybVy5Ls> and so on)

edit: Oops, yes, apparently I confused things here (as explained below). Sorry.

<comment><USER4> Aren't you confusing things here?

The music on the YouTube video is described as:

       a modified template of "Gain" used with permission from DETUNE ltd. denkitribe http://soundcloud.com/denkitribe/gain - I created this arrangement on the Korg iMS20 iPad App, and it's my first custom score.

"Air France" is the flight company here, not the swedish band. I thought at first you were talking about the usually ambient music that plays in Air France's TV ads, but apparently there are two "Air France" the Earth can bear. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The photos during take-off and landing are all computer models and totally rendered because I would never use an electronic device during times when the FAA prohibits them."

Lulz.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks fantastic but hearing the shutter release every few minutes would've irritated the hell out of me if I was sitting anywhere near him on that flight.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why does this video need to be captured by a lucky passenger who found amicable crew to let it be recorded? Why don't we have videos like this published by airlines?

<comment><USER4> True. I didn't even realized we could see the northern lights on such a common flight route (and I realize now that it was pretty obvious).

<comment><USER8> This seems to be what most of us are thinking :), call off that Alaska trip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Site is down, YT mirror: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j36Erxd5rc>

<comment><USER5> And Vimeo: <http://vimeo.com/21822029>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Generally you can't have the window open when people are sleeping at night time in the plane. Anyone's guess how he manage to do that?

<comment> k-mcgrady I usually keep the window open at night and have never had anyone say anything. I thought the only rule around that was they had to be shut during take-off/landing if the cabin lights were on.

<comment><USER11> They actually have to be open during take-off/landing, in case of a crash the rescue crew has to be able to look inside the plane from the outside.

<comment><USER12> And the lights are dimmed on a nighttime takeoff/landing so that, in the event of needing to evacuate, your eyes don't need to adjust as much as when going from very bright to very dim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just wondering: The flight attendants didn't give you any troubles on your setup?

<comment><USER14> Naw, it wasn't an american airline :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very cool.

Here is the flight path, for those interested: [http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SFO-CDG&DU=mi](http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SFO- CDG&DU=mi)

<comment><USER16> Actually, the flight path can vary depending on weather conditions between a lower-latitude route[1] and a more direct great-circle one[2].

1\. [http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR83/history/20130401/22...](http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR83/history/20130401/2240Z/KSFO/LFPG)

2\. [http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR83/history/20130331/22...](http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AFR83/history/20130331/2240Z/KSFO/LFPG)

<comment><USER17> I'm curious: how is it possible that the lower-latitude route is almost one thousand miles longer than the great-circle one, and still, one plane took just 11 minutes more to get to Paris than the other at almost exactly the same speed? Or maybe I'm miscalculating and the extra 2 knots of average speed make that much difference in 7000+ miles trip.

What other factors not shown by FlightAware should be taken into account in this case?

<comment><USER18> The Jet Stream, which at times blows nearly west to east across the continental U.S., and can provide a powerful tail wind to jet aircraft. This is why the parent post references "depending on weather conditions."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yup, that looks like Paris alright, overcast and grey!

Except for today.

</comment><comment><USER20> That glimpse of the tripod and camera is surprising.

</comment><comment><USER21> How and what was the hardware setup?

<comment><USER22> It was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II + battery grip [1], Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L II lens [2], a TC-80N3 shutter release timer [3], on a Slik travel tripod [4].

As for how it was shot: _"I shoot these on Av (Aperture Priority) with an ISO ranging from 200 during the day to 6400 at night. That way the 5d2 will automatically go up to 30 seconds at night to as quick as 1/8000th when dawn comes. [On timing:] 2 seconds during the day, and up to 30 second exposures and intervals at night. [On battery life:] I have the grip with two batteries and I disable photo review so the LCD screen never lights up. That way I can shoot about 3k - 4k photos off two batteries fully charged."_

[1] [http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/590457-REG/Canon_3353B...](http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/590457-REG/Canon_3353B001_BG_E6_Battery_Grip.html)

[2] <http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/16-35mm-ii.htm>

[3] [http://shop.usa.canon.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_...](http://shop.usa.canon.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_10051_10051_171331_-3)

[4] [http://www.adorama.com/alc/0011522/news/Compact-Travel- Tripo...](http://www.adorama.com/alc/0011522/news/Compact-Travel-Tripods-from- Slik)</comment></comment>


Show HN: We Skinned our Company Site for Halloween - <AUTHOR> http://skookum.com

<comment><AUTHOR> There's some rough edges since we weren't given enough time to fully flesh out the entirety of site skinning, but we pulled off changing the entire color scheme, logo, and some icons and in a timely fashion. It's nice being a part of a company that gets our humor and gives us the freedom to pull stunts like this... Happy Halloween!</comment>


A Hint of What Google's Social Network Might Look Like - <AUTHOR> http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=5442 <comment><USER2> I understand that Google is big on defensive patents, but this one seems over the top. Here is the abstract of the patent application Google has filed -- it has lots of big words, but doesn't seem to describe anything that is in any way non-obvious. Ditto for the claims...

"Hubs for social interaction via electronic devices are described.

In one aspect, a data processing device includes a display screen displaying a social interaction hub, the social interaction hub including a collection of records. Each record includes a counterparty identifier identifying a counterparty of a past social interaction event, a mode indicium identifying a mode by which the past social interaction event with the counterparty occurred, and a collection of mode indicia each identifying a mode by which a future, outgoing social interaction event with the counterparty can occur.

The counterparty identifier, the mode indicium, and the collection of mode indicia are associated with one another in the records of the social interaction hub."

The full text of the patent application is here: [http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20110099486.PGNR.&OS=dn/20110099486&RS=DN/20110099486)

<comment><USER3> Right, exactly. So they're basically trying to patent something that any app with a UITableView and some social feeds does?

<comment><USER2> That's what it seems like. Unless I'm missing something, it seems like there has got to be a ton of prior art that would invalidate this, forget the fact that it is obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this old? Isn't that Buzz?

I'm being sarcastic, but there is nothing new to see here!</comment>


Justice Dept. To Abolish Movie Distribution Rules Dating to 1949 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/business/media/movie-distribution-rules.html <comment><USER2> Their reasoning is literally "This rule bans X, but X is unlikely to happen now, so lets abolish the rule and hope for the best."

Does this kind of law-changing ever favor consumers?</comment>


Steve Jobs unveils the first Apple Macintosh in 1984 - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8721722/Steve-Jobs-unveils-the-first-Apple-Macintosh-in-1984.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The look of pride on Jobs' face when he first unveiled the Macintosh will be forever burned into my mind as a testament to the satisfaction that comes from the act of creation. RIP to a visionary and auteur.</comment>


Danes make welfare a hot election issue as cracks show in Nordic model - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-denmark-election-welfare-insight/danes-make-welfare-a-hot-election-issue-as-cracks-show-in-nordic-model-idUSKCN1SZ0IC <comment><USER2> > You can say you want a thousand new nurses in the hospitals, but they are > nowhere to be found

What is immigration

<comment><AUTHOR> Forget that (for known, right or wrong, reasons)....unless I'm reading it wrong, 3 million are OUT of work, and 2.8 Million work. No doubt 4 years olds and pensioners can't work, but I'm sure quite a few are milking the system.</comment></comment>