deprave

I feel like every time I read about something ad-related it's usually in a negative context. This malware doesn't even care if it's not executed as root... it just needs the device to falsify ad clicks/impressions. And I guess nobody really cares, because the probably huge amount of bot action on ad exchanges just makes the pie larger for everyone.

(With all of Google's talent and machine learning and AI, it can't detect this junk? please...)

All the more reason to avoid hardware from this company.

A Google ad isn't a (top) result. It's an ad. With Google, ads are always at the top.

If you want to avoid ads, install uBlock Origin (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock). I'm shocked people who visit this site don't already do so.

They're inconsistent. Sometimes the file name comes before something and sometimes after something. It's a lot easier to remember commands if their structure is uniform, and Unix commands usually have the general structure of "program [options] [files]"

UI nitpicking:

These:

$ tmsu tag summer.mp3 music big-jazz mp3

$ tmsu tag --tags "music mp3" foo.mp3 bar.mp3

$ tmsu tag spring.mp3 year=2003

Are confusing. Very non-Unix. They should be:

$ tmsu tag music,mp3,year=2003 summer.mp3

There are three parts in this sequence:

1. Boot up - this is very machine-dependent ("MD") so you'll find it in each architecture's source code. Look for files named "locore.s" or "locore.S" in places like src/sys/i386/i386.

2. Kernel - the machine-independent ("MI") part, or where the fun begins... this is in src/sys/kern/init_main.c, look for the function main(). You'll see the different subsystems initialized, from the lowest level (auto configuration of hardware devices and console initialization) through fundamental subsystems (virtual memory, disk, network, processes, etc.), all the way to the scheduler. The scheduler will only have one process to work with (PID 1) which is init (src/sbin/init), so that's what gets executed.

3. Userland - /sbin/init is the first process that runs, and it takes care of running everything else, like daemons and eventually your login prompt. Your points of interest in init.c are runetcrc(), read_ttys(), and multi_user().

I don't know about "only applies to /r/technology" - we've been there before. Remember when ad blockers were mostly prevalent among techies and visitors to tech sites? Yeah, well, that changed. It may start with /r/technology, but I'm pretty sure it won't end there...

Key quote: "Marx of AV-TEST said that some newer companies secretly relied on data supplied by older companies while marketing themselves as a cut above the older technology. "They are using traditional methods, too," he said. Some of the newer companies said they do not share their evaluations for competitive reasons."

The above sentiment may ring a bell for those of you who follow the news. It's the exact same behavior we heard from Theranos: Startup makes headlines as breakthrough technology, but under the hood nothing works and they rely on decades-old technology for actual testing. When asked about their technology (even by their investors!) their reply is "we can't tell you more because competition."

These garbage companies, shrouded in secrecy and enjoying the hype, should be outed for what they are: snake oil.

This is an article by a Microsoft guy who says Microsoft is trying to provide better software by following Apple's footsteps in "owning the vertical" (kernel, compiler toolchain, file formats, ...) and ends by implying that Apple still does better because it owns the silicon, too.

After a few days of Microsoft failures, all I can say is: If this cheap stuff makes an impression on you, buy Apple.

I love your comment. :)

On one hand I agree with you that borrowing a term like "sweatshop" to describe Palantir is ridiculous. The abuse of language not just in this instance, but overall, is ridiculous to both extremes.

Having said that, I think the intention was to describe Palantir in relative terms compared to other companies in SV. With that in mind, then yes, Palantir is one of the worst places to work at among companies of the same type: well-funded startups with a rather convenient revenue stream.

It's part of the cowardice game.

How do you both take credit when you succeed and avoid blame when you fail?

You take an action that's easy to justify by external validity factors. If you succeed, you made the call, you take the credit. If you fail, you justify it using external validity factors ("they're one of SV's most valued companies! they only hire Stanford graduates!") to indicate there's no way anyone else could have done better.

My guess is the hype created through secrecy.

"If you do not claim this offer, you will need to purchase additional storage or remove some of your files. Otherwise, 90 days after you receive your first notice, your account will become read-only."

Examples for things that will break once your account is read-only:

* Any program that modifies files on open (Word, Excel, others)

* Any program or device that would sync to a cloud folder on OneDrive

* Any existing workflow that relied on OneDrive files for easy access and/or sharing

Have you ever mounted a filesystem read-only? You should try it and then come back and tell us that people have plenty of time. They might not lose their data immediately, but virtually anything that touches OneDrive will break once it becomes read-only.

If you read the announcement you get an idea of just how messed up this is.

Quoting: "We overcommitted with our free storage limits and we want to focus on delivering high-value productivity and collaboration experiences that benefit the majority of our users. If we continued with the current offerings, we wouldn’t be able to sustain our growth and deliver the reliable service that you count on."

Quoting further: "We will be actively communicating with our users as these changes start rolling out via email and in-product notifications. These notifications will start at least 90 days before the changes take effect to ensure that you have enough time to act or make changes."

In other words, Microsoft, a $400 billion company with $100 billion of cash in the bank, misled consumers when it said it could provide a service better than Dropbox, a measly startup. It can't sustain its growth, so you get 5gb cloud drive, or about a third the size of a GMail mailbox.

But wait, there's more! You thought you could rely on their cloud offering to backup your data? well, you'll have 90 days to clear that space. Because you can't really get any peace of mind from Microsoft.

I don't understand people who can avoid Microsoft products and services yet still opt to pay to this awful company.

Probably due to the same reasons Apple Watch and Google Glass failed with (most) consumers. It's nice as a gimmick and probably in very specific settings, but not as a general-purpose device for daily use.

Fully agree. It's unfortunate that these "trends" are actually trailing and imitating recent successes. It only goes to show that VCs (YC included) don't shape the future of technology, but rather try to squeeze money from their own investors by pitching ideas that relate to things they hope the latter are familiar with thanks to news coverage.

I agree. Here's what Steve Jobs had to say about this, in the context of mobile search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC8LR9cryG0

If we assume that different search queries are better served by different engines then I wonder if it's not possible for someone to develop a "thin" search engine that would do semantic analysis of the query and then redirect it to one or more sites, or show results side by side...

I don't hate capitalism and there's nothing wrong with generating revenue. In fact, the rise of ad blocking is a perfect example of market efficiency. What's important here isn't the software that blocks ads, but the expression of preference by hundreds of millions of people around the world who say "we do not want to see ads on the web and we know they can be stopped."

Believing "acceptable ads" can thrive alongside such knowledge is naively asking to be reminded of the tragedy of the commons and the fact that such widespread coordination usually happened in either dictatorial or communist societies.

Revenue will be generated, only that it will eventually have to come from consumers directly to publishers and content creators.

Fair point.

There's some background here which might be relevant. Another extension, AdBlock, used to have a policy against "acceptable ads." The author sought donations to keep development going, but later sold the business (and the users!) to an entity that immediately started allowing such ads through.

Maybe the author of uBlock Origin wants to make it clear that this can't happen here.

Both the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Ghostery accused ABP of extortion due to their business practices.

A program that labels itself as an "ad blocker" yet allows, by default, ads from companies who pay money, is part of the dark side.

The "acceptable ads" initiative is how the company behind ABP makes money. It is their primary revenue driver and is the primary differentiator from other products on the market.

Yet, they choose to name their product in a misleading way, suggesting they do something which, by default, their product does not do.

If ABP was a drug, what would the FDA say? :)

We all know that outside tech circles most people don't even know what "acceptable ads" are, assume ABP does what it says on the label, and don't bother changing defaults. That's why ABP's business is so shady.

Because of the default setting that shows ads in a program called "ad block."

Minor correction: uBlock Origin has the highest number of contributors (49). ABP has 13 and the fork-gone-bad has 40.

Use uBlock Origin, see my other post. The author of uBlock Origin makes it clear that no donations are sought for the development of the extension. That is not the case with the other version.

ABP already is part of the dark side with their "acceptable ads." It boggles the mind why a program whose sole purpose is to block ads would not do so out of the box.

Anyone who hasn't yet switched to uBlock Origin should do so ASAP. It's super fast, has a much smaller memory footprint, has a strict policy against "acceptable ads" (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md), licensed under the GPLv3, and hosted in a very active repository on GitHub (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock).

I see, that wasn't clear to me, thank you!

This looks really great and I love the direction. Hopefully they're working on making it more consumer-friendly. ;)

Questions:

1. They say that "While most solutions (Dropbox, GlusterFS, OwnCloud etc.) store your files unprotected in the cloud or on a specific server, we took a diametrically opposed direction by relying heavily on encryption. Whenever a file is stored in Infinit, it is cut into chunks, every chunk is encrypted with a unique key (AES-256) and stored, providing both encryption at rest and in transit."

Isn't that actually a lot like Dropbox? (https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/27)

2. How stable is FUSE for OS X? Last time I used it (couple of years) was for SSHFS and it was unstable and crashed the machine every now and then.

I expect infrastructure hardware like routers to be used and supported for a minimum of five years. Google changes its policies and dumps products on a whim. It cannot be trusted with such hardware. Phones, sure. Chromecast, fine. Anything that has longer life expectancies, never.

A positive bias towards anything coming from Google. Just look at the number of Google employees on this thread...

The "let's see what sticks" approach might work well for software, especially the Google kind: ad-supported "free" cloud-based software services. Complaints trigger the knee-jerk reaction of "you never paid." It doesn't work for hardware, and I don't know why Google would risk its reputation for what must barely move the needle on their income statements.

Apple's approach of providing SDKs that work with their existing devices, thereby testing the waters and seeing what products get built, what consumers like, etc. before entering it themselves seems like a much more sensible move.

Your question rests on the assumption that it's "my" router, since it's a piece of physical hardware that I bought, and that it will continue to function after they shut down the cloud-based features that they used to lure customers in and justify the price tag.

Past experience - most recently with Revolv - suggests that your assumption is wrong and Google has no problem bricking the device instead of letting it function without cloud support.

In other words: When Google shuts down a product, it's 100% shut down. Hence, I cannot understand why anyone would buy non-throwaway hardware from them.