apecat

Yup, I concur.

You probably don't want to buy Genelec "just because musician X swears by them or Steve Jobs had a pair at his desk". See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20587970

The cheap Polks I have in my living room make a whole lot more sense for that use case than any smaller Genelecs I could've gotten at trice the price. One of the few residential use cases where Genelecs make sense is as actual 'computer speakers' where you get to enjoy the intensity of that near-field sweet spot.

Even the G Ones plus the F One sub are terrific for this, but at a price where you could get a pretty nice basic home theater.

The pair of Genelec 8330A we use at the cottage are just big enough to be enjoyable for our sessions of couchlock debauchery, where we also turn up the volume, and take breaks in order to do so. And the room is super good sounding, too.

My musician friends are usually horrified when I say we listen to Genelecs (or any near field monitors) for fun. This kind of speaker are precision tools, made to be used in specific settings, to painstakingly obsess over adjustments in audio mixes.

Near field monitors are unforgiving and harsh sounding if set up wrong. And they will absolutely not flatter your source material. You usually need a companion subwoofer if you get near field monitors of any size, because they're deliberately made to give a flat frequency response, not to sound beefy, or give a room-filling sound at lower volumes.

Well, I'm not really an expert, but room correction seems like an imperfect solution to an annoying problem in situations where you don't feel so crafty. I'd agree that obsessive room treatment is the way to go if you can plan a space for audio with the time, resources and dedication needed.

It obviously makes sense to turn room correction on and off and check the difference over the range of seating being used in any given situation. Do no harm, etc.

The run-ins I've had with room correction, with my own cheap hi-fi gear, as well as the and higher end stuff my cool friends have, indicate that room correction can be very handy.

Even the room correction built into the 2018-model EUR 400 Yamaha amp I have at home does more good than harm, with the little Genelec sub and Polk satellites. That is, in a regular residential setting, where everything doesn't happen on the terms of audio reproduction, to put it politely towards other concerned parties.

Similarly, this cottage thing revolves around my synesthetic friend's family owning and keeping up the place in a multi-generational social dance of compromise, which this very stylish friend finds annoying and moderately embarrassing.

There's not exactly the tasteful minimalist decor my friend would prefer, but a type of deliberately shabby, cartoonishly frugal kitsch you'd typically find in Finnish summer homes, where people just want to feel freed of suburban respectability norms. More to the point, my friend's mom wouldn't take kindly to acoustic treatment interfering with her live-laugh-love game.

I on the other hand have done the political hand wringing required to have my living room seating arranged for audio in the small apartment I share with my SO. And the sub is placed behind my couch where there happens to be a sharp, little corner that nicely traps bass resonance elsewhere than the couch, so DSP makes smaller adjustments.

Likewise, my Yamaha amp's room correction saved me that hour-or-so of annoyance of flipping DIP switches back and forth on the bottom of the Genelec sub to manually listen for the correct phase setting, or whatever it's called.

Yup, and that Genelec sub (superceded by the F One) we use cost like EUR 600 in 2012 or so.

The Genelec 8330A, which has programmable DSP, can be found at under EUR 800/piece these days from Thomann, a major German music online story that ships across Europe. I think my friend paid like a little over EUR 2k in total for his pair a couple of years ago. https://www.thomann.de/gb/genelec_8330_apm.htm

Here in Finland, everyone loves Genelec to the point of misplaced national pride. Non-audiophiles sometimes buy them as design pieces for living rooms. Of course, they're nice looking active speakers, and everyone hates receiver/amps and the crafty bullshit that goes into passive speaker wiring, so they solve a problem.

The smallest Genelecs are the G Ones, they cost like eur 700/pair. They're light, durable and pretty. They're still near field monitors, and have a lot of that mid range niceness I love in Genelecs and are super sweet if you listen to music at your desk, especially if you also get the F One sub. Steve Jobs would likely approve, as he did with his older Genelecs https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/2wj9ly/genelec_...

But obviously the G Ones aren't ideal in any but the smallest living rooms, or with ceiling mountes in restaurants, because they're not made for that. They end up sound sound anemic, as you'd expect.

Oh wow, got dozens of subscribers to that latest hifi cottage playlist. That's a lot by my standards. Thanks for the interest, people. I hope you all find something fun in there: I really enjoy doing this.

With this development in mind, I'm going to keep this playlist current over time with our new adventures in hi-fi. I'll move the previous content to separate playlists for archiving.

Bummer that Spotify hid playlist subscribers a while back so I can't see who all of you people are!

This is a really promising concept, I'll definitely shoot you a message later, when I'm done at the business factory

I'm glad you asked, and ideas are welcome! I'm not an audio pro and I suck at physics.

I'm at work but I fired up Skitch and made this ridiculous little drawing, which should explain the situation somewhat. http://www.nybergh.net/stuff/linked/2019/08/hifi-cottage.png

Basically, we're using the corner of the L-shaped kitchen+living room space to our advantage by moving the couch a bit and pointing the speakers there. The sub sounds super clean anywhere near the convex corner with the fireplace.

I find that the biggest challenge is the stereo sweet spot, which always is going to be annoyingly garbage and narrow with two-channel stereo. The subtle room reflections help a bit, and we rotate seating to make it a bit more fair.

I read renowned Harman researcher Floyd E. Toole's 'Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms' and he seems to agree that there's not a whole lot that can be done about two-channel stereo. In fact, Toole rants in favor of three front channels quite a lot, and well as mocking audiophiles who think their rooms are going to be likely to not need basic tone controls on reproduction gear. https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Psychoacoustics-Lo...

But back to business, with this nice house we don't really need to do much. The log walls absorb a lot, while leaving a nice little lively touch that makes it not feel like a padded room (one of my friends had a padded room before for music, and I've decided I definitely prefer a room that feels a little bit alive).

My friend has this DSpeaker Anti-Mode 2.0 for room correction http://www.dspeaker.com/en/products/20-dual-core.shtml

The same friend has two Genelec 8330A active speakers that could do room correction on their own https://www.genelec.com/studio-monitors/sam-studio-monitors/...

Then we have a previous model of the Genelec F One form factor subwoofer, I can't remember the model number, which is alphabet soup, even though it's connected to my system at home. https://www.genelec.com/home-speakers/f-series-active-subwoo...

The Genelecs are both compact, durable and easy to transport, and we have telecope model stands for them. They have a super nice mid range for guitar and the human voice, and they're also quite nice to look at.

When we set up the space, we basically let the DSpeaker box do its frequency swipes for ten minutes or so. We'd be fine without it even, but it just clears up the bass so nicely.

Oh, I noticed I've gotten new followers on Spotify in just a new minutes. I love shared Spotify playlists so, so much.

I also entertain friends with my 'Mistape', a six-track, made-to-crossfade playlist sans genre BS, which I update Fridays https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6LpZZfvO70x1YkNkRGToMV

If you can, please steal and/or adapt this idea in any shape or form. Music is such a nice and safe drug.

Here's the playlist from our latest adventure https://open.spotify.com/playlist/76BJ3kWrBGo0b9p9M2uMob

My Last.fm is here https://www.last.fm/user/apecat

I think a lot of people are more open to this kind of thing than they think. Purists can complain all day long about Bluetooth audio (I say ABX blind test AAC/AptX transcoding or GTFO), but I'm blown away by the potential brought along with the popularity of premium wireless closed-back cans with active noise cancellation.

These are oftentimes bought for reducing or avoiding stress, but they have great potential to counteract the awful trend of people not even having typical 90s micro stereo system at home, but using exclusively laptop or TV speakers, or mono BT speakers.

So, I'm not grumpy: I like a lot of trends in contemporary personal music listening, mainly streaming for decent quality sources (I equally devour albums, curated playlist and algorithmic recommendations). I've had Spotify Premium since March 15 2009, and it has done so much for my appreciation of music.

Oh, trust me, it's an absolute delight. It's tingly, ASMR-like and you hear stuff in a completely different way.

One of my friends just goes to town with his synesthesia and usually keeps his eyes shut for a big part of the evening.

One of the most mind-blowing experiences I've had there with a well-known piece of music that many can relate to: the bass on the 2018 mix of The Beatles' 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps'. In a room with almost no resonance it's just so nice and warm.

Similarly, with the clean bass, you fall for these hidden gems, even among contemporary top 40 pop, like Dua Lipa's hit 'New Rules' from a couple of years back. Also, a fair chunk of pop sounds quite airy and nice compared to ten years ago.

My point is though that it's very self-selecting crowd we've attracted. Not even everyone who loves music enjoy sitting still and quiet for an evening, save for our quick remarks and giggles of pleasant surprise, for example when we describe how good some cheesy 80s pop tune actually sounds. There are no guilty pleasures if the production is good :D

Now with the Tool discography coming to streaming tomorrow(!!!) I suspect our next session is going to be quite the orgy.

Of course the Japanese had this concept figured out.

I do this thing with a small group of friends, where we drive like 3-4 grands worth of speakers and room correction DSP (Genelec and DSpeaker) to a summer cottage every 6-8 weeks or so. The place, a big log cabin, happens to have wonderful acoustics.

And we just sit back, mostly STFU and listen to a selection of music for an entire evening, DJ:ed by me (I accept requests), and we eat good food. There's no background music, when we cook, eat or clean, because we want to rest our ears for the main sessions.

The next day, we drive back, I check everything we listened to from Last.fm, and I create a Spotify playlist of the event, which we all save.

Most people look at me like I’m insane when I describe this activity.

Yes, that is the problem, and someone is hopefully working on it.

But if you start looking at those '12 users', you should notice that that the need is extreme.

This includes drug people and at-risk populations like sex workers: I'm not happy until drugs and sex work are decriminalized globally, so I want to protect sellers and buyers, a partial reason why I participate as a Tor relay admin. Then there are journalists and politicians. Apps like Signal, Wickr, Wire and Threema aren't as much the ecosystem we want as the silos we deserve.

That said, you'd be surprised how easy a sell Signal is in some cases.

I've gotten a bunch of friends over to Signal, from the likewise end-to-end encrypted Whatsapp. And after a family crisis, where a friend of the family died, I explained how the metadata of a mostly dormant Whatsapp group lighting up suddenly could be interpreted.

Facebook knows we're a family of aging parents and grown-up, mostly independent 25+ kids, so there might be a crisis or emotions whenever there are big bursts of activity. A crisis might make people more susceptible to predatory ads.

This was enough to convince my folks. So, family chats are now on Signal. The app is good enough. Granted, my parents and siblings are active in professions related to either legal or social services, so they understand the need for privacy and my overall desire to curb stomp the online tracking industry.

Moxie Marlinspike, of Open Whisper Systems, had some pretty pessimistic things to say about how stagnant federated protocols become, and why they avoided that approach with Signal. https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

End result: Signal is a real, usable tool, the recommendation of which is fully actionable security and privacy advice you can share with anyone who is capable of using WhatsApp.

Here's some HN discussion on the post, and a piece with counter arguments. The latter, I feel, misses the entire point of how urgent the need for usable privacy and security tools is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11668912 https://gultsch.de/objection.html

Yup. I never touched Apple's portable stuff during the iPod/iTunes era.

I found these products and force-fed management software absolutely horrid. I didn't even want iTunes on the family computers, or a dependency on Windows. I maintained a couple of old desktops for my siblings, for very basic Linux desktop appropriate tasks, as in browsing and OpenOffice (I didn't believe in Linux on the desktop and I still don't, for my own use).

So, an mp3 player that didn't let me transfer and/or play my meticulously organized mp3 and/or FLAC collection was just plain cancer in my opinion.

As a teenage "family sysadmin" I made sure everyone got USB mass storage compatible mp3 players and used media library software like Winamp 5 or Amarok (the original branch that's currently known as clementine) for media management.

The way iTunes was intrusive is of course why it worked for ordinary folks, who didn't have a "sysadmin" like me. But iTunes was such as piece of flaming garbage it couldn't even remove dead/missing files from its media library database automatically.

It's amazing how bad iTunes remains, and I've never used it for music. I mostly like Apple's approach to things these days, now that my time is worth money. The only thing iTunes does well in my opinion is that it takes disk image backups of iOS devices, an essential part of why I now use iPhones, but that's another story.

However, the iPods/iTunes had their good points, none of which I didn't understand at the time. The iPod, if memory serves, never ever rebuilt its media database on its own. That was the job of the iTunes software, for the sake of optimization and keeping the iPod system lean, pleasant and fast (please correct me if I'm wrong).

This philosophy remains visible with Apple's Airport Wi-Fi base stations to this day. Apple base stations do require a proprietary Windows or Mac utility, which was a non-starter for 19-year-old me. But the Airport utility still basically uploads conf files to the base stations, which run pretty nice and slimmed down NetBSD based firmware.

In retrospect, it was smart of Apple not to do stupid bullshit like vulnerable and memory bloating web interfaces on base stations. Those Airport base stations are solid, and by the way, a decade-old models are still supported with updates. The listening daemons available on Airports, Airplay, Apple's lossless (!) music streaming, since 2004 (!), and printer sharing, never had to compete for RAM.

Anyways, at the time, in the early-mid 00s, the only benefit I saw in being in the iPod ecosystem was early adoption and universal support of AAC as the go-to lossy codec. Fiddling with those VBR presets for the Lame encoder was and remains the only way to get decent sounding mp3s, without maxing out the codec at 320 kbps. A maxed out bitrate would have been just wasteful on a my tight budget in 2004. I had no money to spend on storage, so I wanted my music collection near-transparent mp3 VBR files with average bitrates around 200 kbps. My equipment was just worse, so I could live with those bitrates. Good headphones used to cost money and portables had pretty modest headphone output quality.

Btw, features like seeking and correct time displays for VBR mp3 was far from perfectly supported at the time. Amazingly, this still remains the case, which, by the way, is one of the reasons why podcasts are almost universally CBR mp3, even when produced or prepared for distribution by people who know what they're doing.

Flash storage was expensive at the time. So, I used CD-RWs with mp3 compatible portable CD players, mostly from Sony. It was risk management on my part - I didn't want a fancy HDD based mp3 player because I couldn't afford to replace it if I ever dropped the damned thing.

And 512 megs of non-replaceable flash storage was just too tight for a vacation, which is what cheap small mp3 players provided. Eventually, mp3 players were good enough though. My last flash based mp3 player before my first smartphone was a Sandisk Sansa Fuze, it supported removable microSDHC, I think, and even the Vorbis and FLAC codecs.

I got into Mac with the late 2008, first pre-pro unibody Macbook, because I worked a service desk gig at the time at the time, and consequently didn't want to even see Windows in my spare time. I also wanted Unix on the desktop, which is a problem Apple still solves, although at a premium.

To be honest, I don't I think I ever would've switched to iPhone due to the missing USB mass storage mode if Spotify hadn't completely taken over my day-to-day music listening. But what pushed me from Androids early was the lack of even security updates on newish flagship phones back in 2011. I considered iOS 5 with music through Spotify good enough, and I've never looked back since.

I'm a total non-engineer/developer, but I'm increasingly interested in what guys like you think about software QA as it relates to security.

Today's Apple does a lot of security posturing in hardware/platform architecture, like full disk encryption, the iOS device secure enclave thingie, the secure enclave's subsequent inclusion on touchbar Macbook Pros to control the webcam, iOS defaulting to non-networked sandboxing for third party keyboards, etc.

Do you think macOS/iOS development perhaps should slow down from a yearly release cycle to delay releases with continuous big reworking starting with XNU?

With a very rudimentary outsider perspective on QA, it just seems insane to keep pushing big OS changes yearly.

Yeah but to phrase it pointedly, to what degree does Apple consider Macs to be basically development kits for iOS apps? It's very clear that iPhones make the big cash.

Well this business unit might be a toxic asset now.

But I'm sure it'll go right back to printing money once it's no longer directly associated with a vendor of TLS interception middle boxes popular among despots. And the browser relations fiasco will blow over eventually.

Might cost them a bunch of rebates and refunds to keep clients, but I see why this could be a viable customer acquisition move for DigiCert.

I had this realization some time ago: almost everything I do on my desktop runs in Chromium wrappers: Chrome (duh), Spotify, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal

There's a really good breakdown of the Swedish Security Service's (Säpo) report on this case in Swedish, written by a knowledgeable journalist. It's fairly ok in English through Google translate. http://www.breakit.se/artikel/8326/jag-laste-sapos-gransknin...

Symantec is now a company that operates both as a CA and, having acquired Blue Coat, also as a vendor of TLS intercepting middle boxes that they sell to despots.

With this history of mis-issued certs in mind, Symantec's CA business should be kicked to the ground, left bleeding and never be trusted again.

My basic understanding of this matter is this: never co-operate with the intelligence community.

Shit on these people and burn their identities whenever you can because they're not your friends. You might even be able to limit the future career opportunities of a younger intelligence officer who's approached you by not only telling your friends, but informing the entire internet.

These people may be a necessary extension of diplomacy, but history shows that it's likely toxic for any individual to be ensnared as an asset in any kind work for this sector of the government, foreign or domestic.

There are enough 'useful idiots' who will fall for this, you don't need to be one of them. Unless you're an actual employee of an intelligence agency or a contractor, these people will fuck you over in a heartbeat.

Anyone unfamiliar with this line of business could do worse than to read any old basic textbook on intelligence and counter-intelligence work (such as 'Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad', linked below. There's a good audiobook version on Audible).

Training in this business is based on cultivating anti-social behavior in susceptible individuals. Just as you don't want any garden variety sociopaths in your life, you don't want to deal with people who've been trained to fuck with you.

http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/thwarting-enemie...

@jgrahamc

I'm curious to know a bit about what the human, biz and tech process is like when Cloudflare opens a new DC and traffic from local ISPs slowly is beginning to be routed towards it. Very much like what I'm currently observing here close to HEL (I'm stalking my /cdn-cgi/trace every morning).

Myself and most somewhat technical people I know don't seem to be all that familiar with how peering, BGP and all that works. My mental image is that companies set up play dates and pull some cable between big switches at some IX and then magic happens.

So, I guess this is as much a question as a suggestion for an interesting blog topic, or something.

cheers!

Apple's AirPods will probably suck, audio wise, but there's a chance they're sturdy as hell. I know because I've used Apple's otherwise useless EarPods to listen to spoken word content and to fall asleep with for years.

The only thing that break on the EarPods are the cables, and if you're not like making knots intentionally, you can wake up in the morning tangled in them for more than a year before they start to break.

So, yeah, I like the eur 500 worth of other headphones I own at the moment too. Sure, it's weird I'll need to use some goddamned dingus to attach them to my next phone.

But fuck me if we're still stuck with current wired tech for audiophile gear in 2030. It's not like I want to use shitty headphones out and about. I do because I don't want to fuck up the cables, etc. And wireless headphones still suck, universally.

We live in the future now for goodness' sakes and Bluetooth audio is only marginally less useless than it was ten years ago.

So yeah, if you've got any sense of pride over where wearable tech should be taking us, please, roll over and beg that this infusion of Apple's proprietary shitty cans into the marketplace will raise adoption of voice control and increase development of less shitty hardware to make music and user interface appear in our fucking ears with no wires.

I don't own any Apple stock so I don't really give shit, except I prefer to buy tech somehow designed to fit together. If Apple crashes and burns because they're trying to make wearable computers in your ears a thing, so be it.

I submitted this article from Finland's national public service broadcaster. A side note:

Finland remains all in on prohibition. Ideas such as harm reduction and decriminalization are relatively slowly approaching a status where they can be discussed in serious political contexts.

The headline provided is hardly a fair description of the content of the article. Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, just states the technical facts of how a https->http proxy works in the context of present day surveillance.

One might argue that Cloudflare’s UI should be a bit more forthcoming and warn customers against blindly turning on what they call "Flexible SSL", which is the issue here. I’m of the opinion that this behavior creates a false sense of security for end users.

A few days ago, I made this humble argument as a reply to John Graham-Cumming, @jgrahamc, an industry rockstar who works at Cloudflare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12094057

Flexible SSL is Cloudflare’s term for enabling SSL from the proxy servers to the client, when no encryption is present in the connection back to the origin server. This can protect against things like ISP level snooping, or code insertion and curious local network admins. But it undermines the perceived benefits of https, without the end user knowing.

I personally choose to never activate Cloudflare's SSL without origin SSL, for the reason I stated above: regular people trust that "green lock" in their browser.

But then, there are those who argue that any SSL use through something like Cloudflare muddies the water, as a service like this, acts as a Man in the Middle out of necessity. Furthermore, CDN providers like Cloudflare are by their very nature entrusted with a lot of data which they could mine for nefarious purposes, or leak to local authorities. Another black box to trust, sadly.

This matters for a lot more people than one might assume. One of the central points of CDNs is of course that they try to find the closest/fastest Point of Precence/data center. And now, unfortunatelty, my residential ISP here in Helsinki, Finland (TeliaSonera) routes me to Cloudflare’s new Moscow PoP/data center most of the time.

Previously, my Cloudflare traffic got routed to their Stockholm PoP, as is still the case with other local ISPs I use at work, on mobile etc. For TeliaSonera, Moscow just happens to be the best route at the moment.

This, in turn, causes me to feel slightly more creeped out about potential Russian mass surveillance targeting than I did previously about the Swedes, Germans and other Western actors. Just my personal preference. Also, one would have to ask how Cloudflare will handle Russia’s new, totally batshit anti-crypto legislation ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/26/russia-passes-... )

In this case, I’m in luck, because CEO Matthew Prince recently said that Helsinki, Finland will get its own PoP "very soon" (https://blog.cloudflare.com/brussels/ ).

But all of this if of course something to keep in mind for internet users, that their traffic might take unexpected routes, through areas with totally batshit laws. You can check which Cloudflare PoP you are served by currently through the url below. "Colo" marks the data center, named after the closest airport. https://www.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/trace

With all this said, I’m still loyal user and customer of Cloudflare’s. Despite the inherent problems, and the ongoing issues Tor user face.

I would go as far as to say that Cloudflare is something of a dream machine for someone like me who supports a bunch of websites, varying from small to quite heavy on traffic, while still having other work to attend to.

Combining Cloudflare and basic disk based caching found in CMSs, you really can do things like viral web content very cost efficiently. And you get a little help against automated CMS vulnerabilities without paying for their full DDoS protection.

@jgrahamc: Do you think it would be feasible to add clearer notification about potentially creating a false sense of security to the Cloudflare ui, when no origin SSL is present? What Cloudflare calls "Flexible SSL" has real implications and I think one of the necessary evils of infosec work is pushing people towards more informed decision making.

As a frequent Cloudflare freeloader and occasional paying customer (lots of different hats), I really appreciate how the service made it possible to use SSL for free, before it was cool.

With Let's Encrypt being implemented at a lot of hosting providers and hosting automation systems over time, I think the following may become a diminishing problem.

But in cases where, let's say, a "not top tier" hosting solution makes it impossible to use any sort of SSL/TLS back to the origin server (within the customer's budget), my personal choice has been to not defaulting/redirecting sites to Cloudflare's SSL.

And I mean, it's not like crappy hosting without Let's Encrypt automation or the ability to add Cloudflare's origin CA, is going away. One of Cloudflare's selling points at the low end, is how the service stretches the capabilities and resources of less than optimal hosting and apps. I mean, the idea of running Wordpress without Cloudflare or a similar service in front, really gives me the heebie jeebies.

Not going half-way with SSL is sort of an ethical choice for me, exactly for the reason of not wanting to give a false sense of security, even at the cost of Google juice.

I'm technically proficient enough to understand that client -> Cloudflare https connections can stop a lot of ISP/last mile/LAN level tracking and code injection, though. And obvioulsy, Cloudflare is a MiTM. So it's a real choice with tradeoffs.

But I work at a grass-roots level where I usually am the only person tangible IT skills. When it comes down to it, I feel quite strongly that we should avoid messing with people's already vague understanding of what that "green lock" means.

Yeah, well, I agree that people should stop using DRM, but it's not like it seems to be happening. And from a business point of view, it can be really hard to make that case.

Anyway, the world looks really bleak for open platforms right now.

The main example is Android. If you have like one toe dipped into a role related to infosec at the moment, you can't serioulsy recommend that people you work with or care for even touch mainstream Android phones. Because the patching situation is such a dumpster fire.

Even Google's Nexus crap that is getting patched, seems to be set on a 2 year lifecycle, with 2014 phones getting end of lifed a few months from now. Pretty weak sauce if Google's intention is to set any kind of example for vendor security support on Android.

My sister runs my first iPhone, a 2012 iPhone 5, fully patched. It's going to be supported for another year or two, probably.

https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705#nexus_device...

###

I don't particularly want it to be this way, but I have to almost force people I care about to buy iPhones. It feels bad, especially in cases when they'd have better use for their money.

So with Apple, specifically, they're really good at the closed platform game and I don't see them getting out of that, especially if they're getting more into things like payment services or automotive. Their crypto stance really implies that they want institutional-level trust from their customers. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/follow-t...

###

Game consoles are unlikely to quit DRM too: the only thing that'd make them stop with DRM per se is probably to make all games just streamed from the, uh, cloud. Doable... maybe soonish but that'd rule out a lot of people and use cases where the connectivity just isn't there.

That's kind of why I suggested my half-baked idea to pressure, force and shame closed platform vendors into proper legacy support as part of the "social contract". Or whatever. Not that certain "social contracts", like the ones Western countries have with banks are working out all that great at the moment.

###

But as I said, this idea of mine is half baked. Someone like Apple is only part of the puzzle, since apps and games increasingly rely on server backends to work properly. It's not like Apple could save the gaming world's cultural heritage in 2030 just by offering a binary blob that runs all iPhone apps from 2010.

Wow. I certainly hope someone with a lot of power over company culture at, say, Apple is watching this. And that they get inspired to think about cultural preservation.

I really think it should be a standard act of corporate responsibility and platform stewardship to make it so that work like that of Professor Abrasive's, is not the only spare key we have to current culture a few decades down the road. We as a global culture just might be really, really lost and bereft of history if that was to be the case.

I frankly think that Apple under Tim Cook is in a historically unique position of making cultural preservation of games and software feasible and something built into the whole social and legal contract of proprietary, locked down platforms. It's not like Sony is going to lead the way with the PlayStation?

I mean, to really make preservation legit, there needs to be some sort of useful official emulation and data extraction capability down the road. For all we know now, there might be terrible legislation that prohibits reverse engineering in a lot of jurisdictions.

There's of course a lot problems to solve, with all the crypto and stuff, and licensing, but someone should be on this. Especially since software distribution is becoming all ephemeral and download based! Not to mention the cloud fragmentation of personal data.

Here's a thing on food science from The New York Times from three years ago I keep referring to. Long but really good read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary...

In the context of new developments of food replacements from the internet (Soylent etc), you can't help but see a tragic waste in how food science has spent all this time on addicting snacks, cynically geared towards heavy consumers.

When I think about this emotionally and feel like oversimplifying, I can't help but to lump this in as a part of the James Howard Kunstleresque argument of how Western Civilization wasted much of the potential of the "good growth period" of global capitalism on completely unsustainable living conditions (suburbia etc).

Yep. To overclarify: my post was a joke about the (surface level) environmental benefits of an unde(r)veloped economy within North-Korea's current form of bizarro pseudo-stalinism.

"Stalinism - Lovely weather for ducks"