What Transistors Will Look Like at 5nm - <AUTHOR> http://semiengineering.com/going-to-gate-all-around-fets/ <comment><USER3> >At 5nm, it will cost $500 million or more to design a "reasonably complex SoC," In comparison, it will cost $271 million to design a 7nm SoC, which is about 9 times the cost for a 28nm planar device, according to Gartner.

So basically with every node improvement, the "design" cost increase at around 50% - 100%. This heavily flavours Apple's model. You will have to sell a lot more SoCs to balance out that $500M design cost for leading node. Apart from the design cost, does anyone know if the Wafer cost increase as well? And at what rate does it increase per node?

Thinking this in Intel's scale, PC Industry is shrinking in unit, the CPU die size is also getting smaller to keep up with Intel's profit margin. at what point does the cost increase sway the balance to other Foundry's flavour, when Intel 's unit sales takes longer to recoup the cost then TSMC.

<comment><USER4> I agree (re: favoring Apple's model). Whether server or mobile, there'll be fewer SKUs, and those that exist need to be blockbuster hits.

It may well be that economics is the limiting factor stopping Intel's long run, not the physically limiting properties.

<comment><USER5> Same as with "peak oil" then. Its not that we run out of physically extractable oil, but that the cost of doing so will curtail our current usage of the substance.

Its pretty much the inverse of the Jevon paradox (or maybe that everything has a bell curve, and we are so focused on the left half we forget its mirror on the right).

<comment><USER6> Actually, people are looking forward to a long period where a certain node, "20" something nm (not Intel's 20 something), becomes so standard that economies of scale result in it being the one most entities use for their designs, especially non-mobile or otherwise seriously power constrained.

I gather we're already sort of there, with wafer costs in the $5,000 or so range, the trick is of course to limit the NRE to something you can afford. The lowRISC project is going this route, I learned much of this starting from their future production plans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong The lattice constant for silicon is about half a nanometer, right? So that means that this new "gate" is only about 10 silicon atoms across?

That's a very impressive feat. It's hard to imagine CMOS continues scaling down beyond that point.

<comment><USER7> It makes me wonder why we really need such a huge lattice (the silicon bulk) really. Can't we somehow deposit small pieces of lattice in places where a transistor is needed?

<comment><USER8> There are alternatives but they are difficult (expensive) to work with and not yet required so we keep using silicon for the 5nm node

<comment><USER9> until peak silicon

 _EDIT_ the analogy with peak oil is not literal, but that just as uneconomical sources of oil (and of energy) became more economical when the price went up, the parent's "alternatives" will become more economical when present silicon technology gets more expensive (due to the lattice size for example, as discussed). Just as with oil, it doesn't necessarily mean we'll give up silicon. Though we might.

<comment><USER10> 28% of Earth's mass is silicon, so I'm not too worried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I do not understand the proclaimed 3X increase of design cost per finfet node, particularly in the context of digital ICs. Most cell designs are highly repetitive, so the increased design complexity should only add a one-time offset to the total chip cost. Hence, the total design cost should be comparable to previous nodes, i.e. well below 2X. I understand that purely analog designs are a different beast, but it doesn't make any sense to use advanced nodes for these in the first place (ft/fmax drops as a result of higher-than-linearly scaled CGS).

<comment><USER12> The "design" cost quoted mostly means mask cost. It gets very expensive to produce for smaller nodes.

<comment><USER13> > _The "design" cost quoted mostly means mask cost._

No, mask costs are only a very small part in development and production of complex ASICs. Some sources:

1) First graph in [http://electroiq.com/insights-from-leading- edge/2014/02/gate...](http://electroiq.com/insights-from-leading- edge/2014/02/gatech-interposer-conf-amkor-globalfoundries/)

2) First graph in [http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1322021](http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1322021)

<comment><USER12> That's the recurring cost of the mask set, because they don't last forever. The setup cost of the mask however is very high.

As for logic design effort, verilog is verilog. Floor-planning and P&R is a bit more complex at lower nodes but that's mostly software. Also TSMC offers you standard cells to pop into your design.

Therefore most of that "design" cost is in the foundry making the fist set of masks for you, not the incremental mask cost. They're recouping their investment in the process, thus the price is extremely high for newer nodes.

<comment><USER13> Do you have a source or some links? I would like to know more about this.

<comment><USER12> It is mostly based on my experience working as an ASIC designer and having taped out several chips.

However, you can consider it logically -- the engineering effort to design the logic, and perform place and route doesn't change much from node to node. You're doing the same work, with the same software; albeit with new libraries provided by your fab.

The cost clearly correlates with smaller nodes because they charge you a ton to do the "setup" for you, i.e. make the first set of masks. Older nodes are now much cheaper than they were because more shops are using them, thus spreading the amortization costs.

AFAIK, a lot of cortex-M ARM chips (such as STM32F) are made on 90nm nodes. There, the variation you offer your customer is important so they want lower mask costs to make as many variants as possible. The core itself is so small than going to 28nm wouldn't offer much savings because a bulk of the cost is in packaging, testing, and at 28nm would be the amortized mask cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"My current assumption is that 5nm will happen, but it won't hit high-volume manufacturing until after 2020," said Bob Johnson, an analyst at Gartner. "If I were to guess, I'd say 2021 to 2022. " ... In R&D, chipmakers are also looking at 3nm and beyond, although it's unclear if these nodes will ever happen._

What this all seems to be pointing to is that, in all likelihood, the "party" will be over within the next 3 to 6 years. It seems to me like there is an insufficient level of panic happening in the world over this issue (the imminent end of Moore's Law after 30+ years of non-stop exponential growth). Moore's Law was a massive, earth-shattering, 30+ year continuous exponential curve, that we all have been riding. I think the collapse of this curve could have serious implications for more than just chip designers and manufacturers. In my view, some groups that seem over-exposed and under-concerned are the software and startup industries.

For the past 30+ years, the market has seen better/smaller/bigger/faster silicon computing devices arriving with unrelenting regularity. Now that will suddenly stop with one final, ultimate silicon product generation. After which, it sounds like we don't get faster or cheaper CPUs, or bigger CPU caches, or more CPU cores, or more RAM, or better or cheaper GPUs, or bigger or cheaper SSDs, or better/cheaper LED lights or OLED screens, or better/smaller/faster/cheaper smart phones/tablets/digital cameras/sensors/broadband networking, etc? So the whole show just stops, like a high-speed train hitting a wall. And, by all credible accounts, this cataclysmic event is scheduled to occur within the next 3-6 years (barring some unforeseen, miraculous scientific revolution)!?

Once that happens, all computer technology seems destined to a fate similar to many other commoditized, industrial age technologies. A famous example is the design and performance of commercial aircraft, which has not fundamentally changed in nearly a century. Another example is steel manufacturing - <USER2> about the cost or other performance dimensions of steel have changed since the industrial revolution. Steel is now a base commodity, and no one is waiting to upgrade all of their steel structures to some next generation steel alloy that will justify the massive expense of a complete "hardware upgrade." Other examples include electro-chemical batteries, internal combustion engines, rockets, etc.

If this truly is an end-game within the next 4-6 years, then there will be a few niche, interesting areas to eke out performance gains within (let's say) the next 20 to 30 years (e.g. through specialized hardware designs and new software optimizations), but these gains seem to be very different from the economic miracle of the endless PC/server/smartphone/software upgrade cycle that everyone has become so accustomed to. No such "eke out optimizations" will be able to compensate for the massive, negative economic impact of Moore's Law ending, considering that our global economy seem to be fundamentally dependent on technology consumption cycles stemming from Moore's Law.

This situation reminds me of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, where US sub-prime residential real estate prices had started falling in 2006 but everyone kept on ignoring the problem and hoping that it would just go away. It also reminds me of global warming, where the consequences are dire, and there is no solution in sight, but everyone is hoping that some new fundamental scientific discovery will revolutionize the energy industry. It _could_ happen ... we could possibly discover a fundamentally new energy technology that replaces conventional fossil fuels, electro-chemical batteries, etc. And we _could_ possibly discover a fundamentally new science that replaces "Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor (CMOS)" silicon technology. On the other hand, perhaps the laws of physics do not admit such a possibility? Or worse, even if it is physically possible, what if our global socio-economic system should collapse long before we are able to fund the necessary discovery? For example, is it possible that Moore's Law stalling within the next 5-10 years could trigger a financial crisis so massive that it economically ends Moore's Law for good, before the research can be funded to solve the problem?

<comment><USER13> Your proposal for immediate panic is an unnecessary overreaction.

> _it sounds like we don 't get faster or cheaper CPUs_

The progress in desktop CPUs has been a near-plateau for several years now.

> _bigger CPU caches_

Diminishing returns have been hit several years ago.

> _more CPU cores_

Dito for most use cases.

> _more RAM_

Dito for most use cases.

> _better or cheaper GPUs_

GPUs have become so fast and cheap that integrated GPUs are good enough for most use cases.

> _better /cheaper LED lights or OLED screens_

I don't think they are related to the semiconductor nodes of digital logic?

> _So the whole show just stops, like a high-speed train hitting a wall._

No, the train has already started slowing down several kilometers away, and most people on it have realized it. There will be no wall-hitting.

> _Steel is now a base commodity_

Steel may be a commodity, but the steel-using industry (in this analogy, the software industry) is alive and well.

> _no one is waiting to upgrade all of their steel structures to some next > generation steel alloy that will justify the massive expense of a complete > "hardware upgrade."_

This is actually a good thing. Besides, the sentiment "no need to optimize, just wait a year and computers will be fast enough" died over ten years ago and was stupid to begin with.

> _our global economy seem to be fundamentally dependent on technology > consumption cycles stemming from Moore 's Law_

It's really, really not. At least not outside of the SV-startup-scene cognitive bubble.

<comment><USER14> If I can summarize what you are saying, we have been experiencing early symptoms of end of Moore's Law for the past 5 to 10 years, and nothing drastic has happened yet, so there's nothing to worry about?

Consider the possibility that such a narrative is simply describing a "slow- motion train wreck" as opposed to the absence of a "train wreck?"

There is no doubt that the slow-down has been occurring for several years. One turning point was the collapse of Dennard Scaling around 2005, which led to stalling CPU clock speeds and the "multi-core crisis." I know that CPU clock speed has plateaued over a decade ago. I have not tracked costs, cache sizes, and other factors as closely, but comments here seem to be confirming that many factors have been stalled for the past 5 to 10 years (somewhere between the failure of Dennard Scaling and 28nm nodes). There have been other slow- motion slowdowns happening as well, including the collapse of PC sales growth and now the emerging collapse of smartphone sales growth. The fact that this has been happening for "a while" does not make me feel any more at ease.

To be frank, I am less confident in your comments regarding the dependence (or lack thereof) of global economic growth on technology consumption. I beg to differ that it is just a "SV-startup-scene cognitive bubble" ... I'm pretty sure technology is systemically important to global economic growth.

<comment><USER15> The thing is, we're not actually all in the same industry. Companies that sell phones might not be so happy if sales level off or decline, but others will do fine. On the software side, there are plenty of ways to innovate without the hardware getting better.

If people stop upgrading phones, all the companies writing software to run on phones can still do their thing. Uber and AirBnB aren't really going to care; their apps already work. New businesses can come along based on mobile phone apps that put today's hardware to good use, even if the specs don't get any better.

Or looking at entertainment, the game industry doesn't actually depend on better hardware. If the VR thing turns out to be a fad, game designers will still manage to come up with innovative new video games for existing platforms, and people will keep playing them. (Minecraft doesn't require the latest hardware.)

Also, the design of phones can improve even if the raw hardware specs for CPU or memory aren't any better. You can see hardware innovations in other areas (like new sensors). Most recently, the fingerprint sensor is a good improvement.

There are all sorts of opportunities for innovation and refinement that have nothing to do with Moore's law.

<comment><USER16> When phones were wired you didn't 'upgrade' your phone for years if not decades.

All the end of Moore's law indicates is the end of the free lunch: free performance increase for software without any work on that software.

So instead of 'doom and gloom' I predict a _very_ healthy re-surgence in reduction of bloat and efficiency, something that as far as I'm concerned can't happen fast enough.

FWIW my cell phone is 6 years old and as long as it works I'll happily use it. If a phone is a status symbol or a fashion accessory then there are plenty of ways to get people to upgrade even if the underlying tech doesn't change so I'm quite sure that manufacturers will find a way to re-package the same tech in ways that allows them to sell into the elective replacement market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This may be slightly unrelated but I'm curious; have _curved_ silicon dies ever been considered? Say like hollow rings or spheres? Would there be any benefits regarding heat or speed etc.?</comment>


To Sit, to Stand, to Write: The Author's Position - <AUTHOR> http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/32/pendle.php

<comment><USER2> To lighten the mood that the Nietzsche quotes in this article may evoke:

[http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/switched- standin...](http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/switched-standing- desk-now)</comment>


India's Philanthropist-Surgeon Delivers Cardiac Care Henry Ford-Style - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/01/05/375142025/india-s-philanthropist-delivers-cardiac-surgery-henry-ford-style

<comment><AUTHOR> These guys are using the same "pay what you can" model that Dr. V is using to treat eyes at Aravind. Amazing that two separate hospital systems in India are able to offer free or cheap surgeries to poor people, while very few hospital systems in the US can say the same:

<< "We do about 30 to 35 major heart surgeries a day. And we have never refused a single patient because they have no money."

The fees from the rich offset the costs for the poor. Patients with money pay several thousand dollars for open heart surgery. But patients with little money — and little hope of raising any — pay very little. They are 60 percent of the cases. >></comment>


Show HN: UTClock – Super Simple UTC Clock for Mac OS X Menu Bar - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/KNNCreative/UTClock <comment><USER2> Nice one.

Another option is `date -u`, which can be put in the MacOS menu bar with bitbar, [https://getbitbar.com/](https://getbitbar.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We devs look at UTC time all the time. I don't see a simple way for Mac OS to display UTC time so I created a simple UTC clock to see it. Hope you guys will find it useful.

\- Kien</comment>


Maximum Wage - <AUTHOR> https://howwegettonext.com/maximum-wage-3e21048fc107#.pqvhvfu3c <comment><USER2> > the gap between the highest and median employee — inside an American > corporation has increased from 30:1 to more than 300:1. This is the very > definition of a zero-sum game

That's not the very definition of a zero sum game. For that to be true you would need to prove that 1) had the ratio of ceo to employee earnings not increased, all of the money that didn't go to the ceo would have gone to the employees. And 2) that increased ceo compensation was not caused in any part by company valuations rising and CEOs' corresponding equity compensation increasing in value.

Both of those are, on average, much more false than true. 1) The vast majority of savings from decreased ceo pay would be retained in the business or distributed to shareholders. 2) CEOs making more than employees because they have more equity only happens when the "pie" actually gets bigger (which is the very definition of "non-zero sum"). The employees wouldn't have gained everything the CEO lost - it's not even close to being zero sum by definition

As far as tech companies having more employees with more equity, my guess is that it has more to do with them being younger and early employees still having equity

Snapchat and tinder are absolutely thousands of times more valuable than being a principal in a troubled district! What kind of tortured social justice metric do you use to argue otherwise? Genuinely curious to hear that argument

Just because _you_ don't find certain projects useful doesn't all of a sudden mean that everyone working on them needs to drop what they're doing and become a city planner

And it's especially ironic coming from a professional writer! Should he drop what he's doing to try to be Morgan freeman in "Stand by Me" because some fraction of people don't think his writing is valuable?

There were a couple other very unconvincing, phaux-moralist points but I need to get back to working on my "9 Reasons Why Paul Graham is Even More Evil Than We Thought" article

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR: We stand on the shoulders of giants. The author seems to think this is an amazingly original idea and fails to notice that Newton said it hundreds of years ago; he could save a lot of rambling explanation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Even though I mostly disagree with the author, I enjoy reading the detailed alternative perspective. It helps me gain a deeper understanding of how different individuals think about income inequality.</comment>


Why the launch of ShareBetaKeys.com Is a Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.genesx.com/2012/07/why-the-launch-of-sharebetakeys-com-is-a-success/

<comment><USER2> Unity Developer here, just want to say thank you, and I can't wait to play with the API :)</comment>


How I rolled my own explainer video for my Saas in a weekend - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dsabar/how-i-rolled-my-own-explainer-video-for-my-saas-in-a-weekend-for-less-than-100-a1a5b35f44ec#.k2wpapufi <comment><USER2> A couple of notes / thoughts:

1) The animations seem slow. I found it distracting as I watched them meander into / out of frame or focus. Can they be sped up some? Especially anything dealing with text...it was painfully slow to watch.

2) Your wife has a gorgeous voice and does a great job! There are a few instances where I detected awkward pausing (perhaps cutting audio to sync / match with the animation?), but for the price it couldn't have been beaten!

3) Be mindful of English. The statement "Not just for big corporates" sounds odd.

4) Include more screenshots of your application. When talking about being able to use it on any device you should overlay images of your application from those devices onto the outlined images of the various devices. Give us a look at how your app appears on mobile / tablet / desktop.

5) Parts of the template don't seem to mesh with what the voiceover is talking about. Prime example: talking about linking to payroll systems (starting around 1m35s). The image is a lightbulb. Doesn't make sense. Perhaps that's just the limitation of the template.

6) Overall time is quite lengthy. We live in bite sized chunks of time and sitting through a 3m video is difficult. See if you can chop it down to just the basics. Give us a taste of your app and then direct us to your site to dig in for more details.

Great job though considering the budget!

<comment><USER3> 1\. The overall pace of the video - animations and narration - seems pretty slow. People today are used to very fast video editing.

2\. You don't start to say what the product actually does until 31 seconds in ("filing cabinet in the cloud"), with further details coming about 45 seconds in, and then the rest of the video to explain yet further features.

3\. There are a lot of features, which is very cool - but naturally that does make your one-sentence punch line hard to craft. Example: "HR Partner serves as your digital filing cabinet to effortlessly organize all your employee information, lets your employees keep up-to-date on office memos, and integrates payroll information." That's not that great a sentence, but some soundbite upfront would tell us that more features are coming over the course of the video.

4\. Ditto on numbers 5 and 6 above. The "h with an h" caught my ear as well, as I'm US rather than Australian.

Thanks for posting this, and how you did it - we've thought about making a cost-effective video as well so this is really helpful. I'm surprised at how good this looks and sounds (unfair advantage with in-house talent!).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Useful tips again here, especially about shortening the message and saying what the product does as early as possible. Much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent work and general information. Templates are eating the world. I saw a post on HN the other day about no design jobs--the author got it wrong in his reasoning. Design jobs are shrinking because of templates. It's not economical for me to pay 5 or 6 figures for an original design, when I can have a good enough one to for 60 bucks.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool looking site + amazing work if you did the entire HR system yourself. As someone who has worked for an "underdog ERP provider" I love every new player in the market. Good luck with sales/customer acquisition and the entire funnel. That's pretty tough if you are alone. From my experience I think a good strategy is hammering the employee self care and privacy hard. I'd also try to attack one niche at a time if possible (even though that's harder for Saas). I'd also play the "we're Australian" angle harder since that's where you can go door to door and get the non website signups. If it wasn't for your wife's accent I wouldn't have known (it's hidden somewhere at the bottom). I understand if you don't want to do that but growing regionally first is a very solid strategy for any type of business software from my experience. The common advice is to hire good salespeople quickly, if you feel you're up to the task I'd say do it yourself. Running a lean/small enterprise software company is pretty doable. Customers will want to hear "your story". Be prepared to offer that, mention that your wife does the audio of the video if you're comfortable with that. That's the stuff that always sold really well. Do not underestimate how many people will try you because they "hate the big companies". If you talk to enough people that work in the broad ERP domain you'll hear all sorts of stuff that isn't really true. Sell features, IT only cares if the stuff improves efficiency etc...I'd say you can safely ignore all of that. Beautiful and UI are (still) vastly underrated, your product is ahead of the curve on the former and I'm assuming also on the latter.

Note on the webdesign: The top text disappears behind the laptop picture (latest FF, OSX, 15" MBP). Announcing (new line) a beautiful, easy to (image, newline) web based human r (image, newline) managemen ste (half an m). The pictures at the bottom also float slightly over text iirc

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for the marketing info, especially the tips on what to make stand out. To be really honest, I am finding the marketing of this WAY tougher than the actual development! I struggle with 'telling the story', so your hints are especially valuable - I really appreciate it. Thanks also for mentioning the design flaws on the site, I will check those out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Correct me if I'm wrong...but shouldn't you also include the time you spent in your "final cost"? For example, if my time is worth $100 per hour and I spend 10 hours, sure, my debit card shows that I spent $100...but add in my time and now it's around $1100. I could have used that time to work on other things, to generate even more value for my startup, and effectively break even when the company I hired to create an explainer video delivers.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. If I added in my normal consulting rate, the cost would have been the same as the original quotes I got. But for me, I valued the learning experience of doing something I had never done before. To be honest, it was a good change from the core development work on the app, or the social media marketing I had been doing.

I am pretty much a one man show here, so am used to doing everything myself now. In a sense, I still think that the added skills I am learning adds value to my startup. Once I started earning serious income and hire others, then I will have to strive to become better at delegating work that is not my core speciality, but until then, I just have fun learning. :)

<comment><USER7> I admire your philosophy on this. It's impressive work for 48 hours starting from scratch. I'm also glad you recognise that 2,000 for a video like this is a reasonable rate. A lot of times people don't realize just how much goes into that sort of work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not put the video 'above the fold' on your site. I think that would be valuable.

But seriously, you created a full-fledged HRMS site (that also looks nice)? These are sprawling beasts. For the past few years working in HR, I've never met one that both works seamlessly on the input side, and does not need CSV exports of things to make reports look nice. Great job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much. Yeah, I spent about 3 months last year building that. Wrote every line of code myself (around 20,000+ lines of Ruby and 80+ database tables.). Still a lot more to add to it, but I thought to get it out there.

<comment><USER8> You do realise that Fortune-500 companies have far, far worse HRMS systems in existence? I don't know every F500, but would guess all of them do, including big name consultancies that say they are the bees-knees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As others have noted: it seems slow.

A good "trick" to dealing with this is to self-impose a hard run time of 1 minute. Having that will force you to make choices about what to include, what not to and really pick up the pace.

</comment><comment><USER10> There is also www.adobe.com/voice Its an iphone app that allows you to create videos. I used fiverr for the audio (since I am not a native speaker) and adobe voice for the video. The end result was pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER11> I paid a guy 20 bucks on fiverr for a 30 second video with an Australian accent and cookie cutter cartoon animation. Rolling your own explainer only makes sense if you can outdo someone on fiverr or you want original content which I think doesn't really matter for explainer videos because the video watcher only cares what the product is, people don't buy products on the video alone but I could be wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good feedback. Were you happy with the results? How much time did it take you to go back and forth to explain the concepts and ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One thing that struck me is that After Effects seems quite reasonable at $20, of course the UK price is more though only about $25 - must be extra to pay for the transatlantic crossing for the data /s.

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://hrpartners.com](http://hrpartners.com) does not resolve without www. Check that issue.

</comment><comment><USER14> is it just me or the pronunciation for HR Partner is off at [https://vimeo.com/157981359#t=0m24s](https://vimeo.com/157981359#t=0m24s)

(the H is mispronounced)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well picked up. I think that is really a colloquial thing. My wife is Australian, and she does tend to switch between "aitch" and "haitch" for the pronunciation.

Good tip to remember in future to keep it consistent. I am thinking also that US viewers might be discomfited by her pronunciation of "data". Once again, the Aussie way is "darr-ta" rather than "day-ta".

<comment><USER14> gotcha! I'm not a native speaker, so I had to double-check how to pronounce the H :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice Aussie accent

</comment><comment><USER16> So you bought a pre-made template used by thousands of others and edited the text...

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Rather than pay a four figure sum like thousands of other others.

I figured that there would be people in the same boat, with limited finances, who may like some pointers to ways they can achieve the same.

<comment><USER17> Watched the video. It's pretty slick for $100. I went back to see how much you paid for voiceover, but your wife did it -- that's cheating! Like saying I made an explainer video in a day for free and oh, "my brother is a producer". I guess you could always do that part yourself to cut down on cost. How much would a voiceover actor have been? Did you need to work with Adobe after effects or was it just a library type dependency? If so, what did you think of it, how difficult was it to learn and work with?

<comment><USER18> You could use something like voicebunny for the voice over if you didn't have access to talent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good tip. Coincidentally, a couple of years ago someone suggested my wife audition for Voice Bunny to be added to their talent pool for contract jobs. She never did though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reads like an advert for Envato. Is it sponsored content?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all. Envato was just a source for two of the components I used. No affiliations or anything with them. I probably should have named ALL the other local software that I used to do the audio etc., but it would have become really long winded. I just wanted to point people to a spot they might find useful, like I did.

<comment><USER12> Might be worth having a list somewhere of every piece of software used so people can replicate your effort if they wish.</comment></comment></comment>


Yes, websites are starting to look more similar - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/yes-websites-really-are-starting-to-look-more-similar-136484 <comment><USER2> Not only the websites, but art within them as well is starting to become more and more similar.

In particular I have the style with disfigured colorful human figures displayed in various weird poses. I am not sure what is the name of this drawing style and how it got popular, for some reason it repulses me, but here is one example I remember:

[https://todoist.com/](https://todoist.com/)

<comment><USER3> > am not sure what is the name of this drawing style

Corporate Memphis. [https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate- memphis](https://www.are.na/claire-l-evans/corporate-memphis)

<comment><USER4> Also @humansofflat on twitter. Although the tweets are now protected, so I don't know what the current status of the account is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like seeing articles like this. I would just point out what I think is a not-so-discussed aspect: The transition from layout-consideration to mobile- consideration, a real issue that was capable of turning every project into a mess of puzzling layout questions from the start. This has been and remains a huge energy-level blow to a design effort, if you are a layout-design-first thinker, or just feel like approaching a given project in that way.

The article seems to be rooted in this kind of design-first preference, and I don't see that as a huge problem, but it needs to be pointed out because a lot of us here on HN can swing both ways, so to speak--cover your economically- necessary base and go with the flow (see frameworks, below), or focus on beautiful creative design.

While this shift to accommodation of mobile device was troubling from a workload perspective early on, it soon became clear that if many / most of your audience were going to consume your content on a mobile, then there was a huge energy-expenditure incentive to focus on layouts that stack up, component-by-component. This became a strong hidden incentive for web designers to say, "I see your fancy designs but things like this need to be mobile-friendly or even mobile-first these days. Also, simplicity is going to be huge for a lot of different reasons." A big reason: If you color outside of the lines, you now have a huge number of ways and places in which you need to test and troubleshoot your layout.

So the economics of site design quickly shifted: Get a vertically-stacked, mobile-friendly site with a relatively boring layout and save money, OR go all sorts of creative with the layout and pay more by creating more of a fractal of work for yourself. Maybe you'd pay just a little more, but still: More-- maybe more time, or more money, or both.

Eventually as this pattern locked into place, the broader "website creation economy" rediscovered a certain level of energy efficiency as frameworks and libraries were developed around the mobile-consideration standard.

And as it turns out, these frameworks and libraries now underwrite a specific, stacking-friendly, tech-first approach to design. If you don't want to work that way, you need to go looking in the manual or cross your fingers and spend some time with Google. Or you have to hire someone who does. Or you have to look at DIY platforms with other trade-offs, like fragile designs that stack up a huge load of technical debt over time, gradually introduce subtle design bugs, and then go unsupported.

IMO these various effects are a big contributor to what the authors discuss.</comment>


Death spiral for cars. By 2030, you probably won't own one - <AUTHOR> https://reneweconomy.com.au/death-spiral-for-cars-by-2030-you-probably-wont-own-one-93626/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's an interesting prediction, but it's hard to see this becoming a universal situation. Most likely, the aging population will be able to get around more easily, probably a lot of young people will rely on "TaaS" vehicles to get around, and the majority in the middle will continue to own.

It's hard to imagine giving up my minivan which I use to haul stuff all the time -- gear for wedding gigs, furniture, etc. Not going to replace that any time soon.

But when visiting another city... TaaS would be sweet.</comment>


Notes From the Field: I have seen the future of healthcare - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbillion.net/blog/notes-from-the-field-i-have-seen-the-future-of-healthcare

<comment><USER2> "And trained lay health workers, paid perhaps a fifth of a doctor's salary, handle 80% of the calls, so only 20% get passed on to doctors."

This is what need to be done in an organized way even without a call center. A lot of patients don't need a person with knowledge of every tissue/bone, salts and systems knowledge. Just the diagnostic knowledge for common ailments.

In most of countries today a patient goes to a doctor (with 4-5 year education) and then to a specialist with a complicated issue. We need to add another "doctor" category which 1-2 years education to filter the patients.

The problem is that this idea will be vigorously opposed by the doctors associations/cartels who are going to lose because of reduced number of patients.

<comment><USER3> We already have this facility in the US. They're called nurse practitioners. Walgreens runs clinics staffed with them. They can run a strep culture, prescribe antibiotics, and presumably handle 80% of the rest of your medical problems.

Nurse practitioners may be the future of US medicine. That'd be a good thing. A 400 seat medical call center, on the other hand, seems dystopian. I'm hard pressed to name a _single_ business in which consumers have been well served by call centers.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Nurse practitioners are a great addition to the medical field. They can handle most common problems and are well-trained enough to know when to refer you to someone higher up the chain. All the nurses in our school system are NPs now. This pretty much guarantees good, basic healthcare to all of the kids in the school district. They can all get their annual physical from the school NP and if a kid comes in to see the nurse and has, for instance, strep throat, the nurse do the strep test and write out a prescription for antibiotics and the parents, who may not have insurance, don't have to pay to take their kid to the doctor (granted, they still have to pay for the medication, but this is still a huge cost-saving service for a lot of uninsured families).

<comment><USER5> That sounds fantastic. I had a slight ear-infection the other day and couldn't be bothered going to the doctors for a antibiotics prescription. Even if it is free/cheap (Australia). Being able to skip the doctor part would be great.

Also - We've used the "Nurse on Call" call-centre a couple of times. It's been a good experience. Reassurance if it's not a big deal, and a referral to a doctor (or an auto dial to an ambulance) if it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is too good an idea to allow to be legal, along with a few other things which would take cracks at the guilds.

(e.g. We have people with masters degrees who are, at this very moment, using scissors on construction paper to prepare for class. This is the tip of an iceberg of waste which would be alleviated... if we were willing to reduce non-trivial proportions of those very politically influential workers to the wages appropriate for someone who cuts construction paper with scissors.)

<comment><USER3> You think medical care provided by effectively anonymous caregivers over the phone is a good idea?

<comment><USER6> We do it in the status quo in a few very limited fashions: for example, many hospitals have a line for new parents to call in where they will get a nurse who will listen to them, calm them down, and tell them that $SYMPTOM is within normal operating parameters for their new infant and that they should not panic unless $CONDITION happens. My sister in law is a maternity nurse, and she works on one of these. She's a wonderful woman who would be equally wonderful talking you through it if you were in Calcutta when calling her. I assume there is some wonderful woman in Calcutta who can do the same. That would free my very expensive sister in law to do stuff which more uniquely requires her considerable expertise.

90% of medical care is low-skilled well-understood grunt work. Much of it is readily identifiable as such. There are huge structural disincentives from building our medical care processes to take advantage of this.

<comment><USER3> So, like I said upthread, we're already in the process of divesting day-to-day care from actual MD's. Go to a Walgreens clinic next time you have a sore throat. Even if you have strep, you'll get taken care of without ever setting foot in a doctor's office.

It's easy to see that taking the load off overqualified, overly expensive doctors is a good idea, which is why this idea is actually being implemented.

What I'm more interested in is whether we think it's a good idea to have those providers working in call centers. Because, from what I can tell, the economics of call centers are almost exactly opposed to customer care.

<comment><USER7> I think a call center is a good idea -- you can call in with your symptoms and they can tell you that it's minor just take some Tylenol and enter the symptoms into the system. They can also tell you that based on your symptoms to call them back if the the condition continues, if you start to experience a fever, etc.

I've called the doctor before (talked to a nurse), and told her my symptoms and asked if I should come in -- they said that if the condition persisted then I should come in, but there were a lot of people with the same flu in the area and rest/fluids would take care of it.

I think the more we can standardize medicine the better, it is a mess of a science. With machine learning and the rapid pace of new sensor development hopefully we'll be able to get more automated care -- that can be reviewed by a doctor/nurse to make sure it's ok.

The economics of call centers are no different than having nurses on staff -- how many people can you treat an hour.

<comment><USER3> A doctor's office --- or even a regional medical center --- has different scaling pressures than a call center. Call centers are centralized. They're more strongly incentivized to:

* Ramp up new hires as cheaply as possible

* Keep staff maximally interchangeable and minimally accountable

* Keep their resources as close to oversubscribed as possible

A doctor's office has these same pressures, but on a much smaller scale. It is a big deal for your doctor to hire a new full-time nurse. Patients will interact with staff face-to-face and at length. As busy as the office gets during busy hours, there are prolonged lulls.

Call centers also win several extra problems that a doctor's office doesn't have:

* Terrible continuity across multiple calls

* The need to talk lay people through basic medical testing (ever tried to do tech support for someone who doesn't know how to use a mouse?)

* The personnel management problems of having multiple tiers of support staff.

I don't have any arguments about standardizing medicine. If you reread anything I've written today, I'm in favor of the nurse practitioner model, and I see the problem with relying on full-service medical doctors. I just think call centers are terrible for consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think he misses the point, a lot; and that this is rather unnecessary to begin with, at least in the USA.

First question to ask in the USA is:

"Why are there quotas on medical doctor training?"

If you create scarcity, what do you expect will happen?

ISTR back in the 1990s the Clinton administration crowing about how they were helping NY State reduce the number of medical school admittances.

<comment><USER3> Even if we made it as easy as possible to get a medical degree, we wouldn't solve the scarcity problem. It's extremely expensive, in time and dollars, to become a doctor; it takes 10-12 years.

<comment><USER9> So we would solve the scarcity problem 10-12 years in the future.

Currently, for every person accepted by medical school, there are approximately 2 people _with almost identical grades/scores_ who are rejected. This suggests we could roughly triple the supply of doctors if we put effort into training more.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't suggesting that relaxing restrictions wouldn't help because it would take 10 years to see the effects. I was suggesting that there are other significant obstacles to recruiting people into the medical profession besides accreditation.

Consider also that if you tripled the number of doctors, supply/demand says doctors will make less money, making the prospect of suffering through 10-12 years of training (and N years of low-wage work) less attractive.

Again, medical care _should_ be less lucrative for providers, and I agree that we _should_ make it easier to become doctors. I just think that the long-term scalable solution for this problem has to involve more than just doctors. It only takes 4-6 years to become a nurse practitioner.

<comment><USER10> Remove the requirement of a bachelor's degree for acceptance into medical school. Integrate anything they see as necessary into the medical program itself. That's 4 years of their life they can have back.

I had a friend that went to a prestigious European medical school for a 6-year program right out of high school. Is he any less qualified as a doctor than someone that spent twice as long to get to the same point?

Or compromise and make the students prove themselves for 2 years before being accepted into the med program. 8 years, they're done and "well rounded".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the elephant int he room on the healthcare debate is that studies overwhelmingly show that greater access to health care does not result in increased general health. this is because more than half of current "best practices" in the western medical community are actively harmful, are of completely unknown effect, or are known to do nothing.

<comment><USER2> This is interesting. Could you elaborate a bit?

<comment><USER11> <http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/meds-to-cut.html>

robin hanson consistently blogs on this topic.

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/medicine>

<comment><USER3> A Hanson suggestion from that post: bring in practitioners from places with a low-cost standard of care so they can impose those practices on American medicine.

I'm a broken record, but: that's another benefit of nurse practitioners. They aren't equipped to prescribe exotic, unproven, or advanced medications; instead, they're equipped to provide an 80%-solution standard of care and to recognize when to escalate past that. If NP's were the normal first tier of care for most patients, we'd get better resource allocation simply by eliminating an opportunity for carelessly wasteful decisions from overworked doctors.

<comment><USER11> this is the wal-mart/CVS solution which Hanson is a big fan of as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It may be the future of healthcare in a lot of the world, but not in the U.S.. Our health care interests are too entrenched. This would be too disruptive.

Probably this is already illegal in the U.S., or cost prohibitive if you tried to staff the phones with workers who would be legal. I wonder if one could legally hack the system by using a call center located _outside_ the U.S. . . .

Of course, the public could be turned against something like that pretty easily. Just publicize the hell out of the first person who dies due to a mistake that came from the call center. Congress would pass a law the next week.

Another commenter suggested that our medical system needs a "reboot". Oh my yes. But I don't see how we're going to get one.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think something like this is inevitable in our country, no matter how much primary care doctors dread it. We simply will not have enough of them to care for everybody in even the very limited way they do now. We are all used to the hour long waits and 10 minute sessions with our swamped primary care doctors. That will only get worse when tens of millions of previously uninsured people enter the system. The amount of doctors produced by our medical schools has remained nearly constant for more than a decade, and new openings add only about 100 doctors per year (about 1 school per year). We need to either pay primary care doctors more money to draw doctors in from the specialties, add a lot more medical schools, or somehow use technology to make health care much more efficient. Since the first two have been available options for years without being implemented, I think we will fall back on the last one.

<comment><USER14> That's odd. I know long waits (not quite ten hours, maybe one, two or three) from specialized doctors here in Germany, not ever primary care doctors. I have to wait maybe thirty minutes for my primary doctor, probably not at all if I call him up in the morning and go there later the day or the next day.

I know that the reverse must also be true for some rural areas in East Germany, an unattractive area with low pay and hard work where the doctors are slowly dying out and nobody wants to replace them, but that really seems limited to rural East Germany.

Why is that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The UK equivalent is NHS Direct.

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

I've had several positive interactions even though, unlike most of rural India, I'm 5 minutes from a major hospital.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Clinical decision support systems" have been a test bed for AI since the 1980s at least. For whatever reason they never catched on.

<comment><USER17> There are isolated cases where clinical decision support can work well. The best example of this are the ones that analyze prescriptions for dangerous combinations or mistaken quantities (too much for age, weight, etc...).

The reason they haven't caught on in the general case is because medicine is full of unique edge cases, and like much of AI, teaching a machine about all of them becomes exceptionally difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are many reasons health care is so expensive right now. Among them the expense of equipment and equipment operators, the expense of education, the expectation of huge salaries (often $200k+, always $100k+), the complexities of private and socialized insurance programs and the complications in collecting payment from insurers and then patients, and so on.

Modern medicine is really, really messed up. I think the whole thing needs a reboot, and everyone involved needs a reality check.

As far as the article is concerned, I definitely don't think "phoning it in" is the answer, and I don't think that solution addresses any of the issues listed above. We need to reset everyone's expectations.

Law and decree may help temporarily, but they'll just find ways around it, and the government can't pay them off forever. We need a real solution to this and no one's coming up with any.

<comment><USER7> I think this provides the best way to move forward in the way we address healthcare: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020425140457434...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html)

It starts by addressing systemic issues:

1\. Remove tax advantages from corporate plans

2\. Allow people to see what their treatments cost -- pay for results instead of doctor anguish (the current way medicare works -- a truly horrible system).

3\. Allow people to buy insurance from anywhere in the country.

4\. Change the expectations of health insurance -- it covers disastrous problems. For everyday maintenance it's up to you, and you better make sure you do it because your catastrophic health insurance will raise your rates significantly if you don't take care of yourself.

5\. If you have something happen that would be considered "a preexisting condition" for other providers your provider sets up a fund for you that covers that. For instance if you have cancer -- the health insurance you have at the time of diagnosis will cover the costs.

None of these need government mandates, they just need the government to get out of the way.

If you look at Lasik eye surgery costs the technology has gotten better and the price has declined -- that's what happens when people shop around, which is the majority of all healthcare dollars.</comment></comment>


Apple Partnering with Valve to Develop AR Headset - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2019/11/04/apple-has-partnered-with-valve-ar-headset <comment><USER2> If this is true it points to Apple not actually having a strong game plan for AR outside the phone. One of Apple's big strengths is that it does all its hardware design and development itself (or at least only with behind the scenes partners) and it does a good job of it. Partnering with Valve, a gaming company, on this is actually a bit of a red flag.</comment>


NetBotz Cameras have a build in NSA backdoor - <AUTHOR> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/BND-verheimlichte-angeblich-NSA-Hintertuer-in-Ueberwachungskameras-3333992.html <comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't find any english version until now. This news will be making waves the next few days in Europe.

A short summary: NetBotz cameras have an integrated backdoor for US intelligence services. NetBotz are used quite often in serverrooms. The are also sold by APC. NetBotz did an agressive marketing by German institutions a few years ago, they sold their stuff below cost of manufacture to get those mandates. At the same time they rejected requests from public companies. They also tried to get bought by a German company. When this didn't worked the sold themselves to French Company (www.schneider-electric.com). The German intelligence service BND was aware of this since 2005 but didn't gave this information to any other institution.</comment>


Cerebro App – Open-source productivity booster with a brain - <AUTHOR> https://cerebroapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Some of the comments in this thread are the exact opposite thing I would expect from this community and it is shameful. It's unfortunate that the top comment is one of these which could steer some people away from reading further.

As many others in this thread have pointed out, Cerebro is a pretty cool app that borrows from some core OS functionality and improves on it. Is its design 100% perfect? Maybe not. However, instead of commenting the application isn't exactly the way YOU would have done it and complaining try offering some constructive criticism.

If the app is memory hogging, not following best coding practices, or you have a cool idea of how something could be done instead share that feedback and offer better ways to do things. Not only does this benefit the developers working on this app but it helps others who may be working on becoming better developers themselves.

I myself am a naive developer. However I enjoy developing in my free time to keep myself thinking and I enjoy learning new things. I frequently visit this community to see what others are working on and looking at all the cool applications that people develop is a great way to pass time. If I had worked on something really hard, posted it, and then received some of these comments I would be extremely discouraged.

That said, if a Cerebro developer is reading, this looks like a really cool improvement on Spotlight (I use OSX). Keep up the good work and don't let the negative comments in here discourage you or your team!

<comment><USER3> I actually find comments like yours far more obnoxious than level-headed criticism. This communities purpose is not to be a marketing team for whoever wants to post here. Criticism is much more edifying than blind support.

<comment><USER4> The problem I see in this community is that much of the time, many aren't providing criticism. If it were only criticism, I'd even agree. The truth is that the so called "criticism" is really armchair quarterbacking most of the time.

<comment><USER5> I wish you and some other Hn'ers would stop hating on armchairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are quite a few of these Quicksilver-clones these days:

* Ulauncher [http://ulauncher.io/](http://ulauncher.io/)

* Albert [https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert#albert-](https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert#albert-)

* Synapse [https://launchpad.net/synapse-project](https://launchpad.net/synapse-project)

* Kupfer [https://kupferlauncher.github.io/](https://kupferlauncher.github.io/)

* Zazu [http://zazuapp.org/](http://zazuapp.org/)

* M-x counsel-linux-app [http://oremacs.com/2016/03/16/counsel-linux-app/](http://oremacs.com/2016/03/16/counsel-linux-app/)

I've tried a couple, but I always end up back to Alt+F2 in XFCE, since most of these launchers always start so slowly in comparison, and I never use any other features (more than once) than starting Firefox/Emacs/Terminal …

<comment><USER7> Rofi is fast, customisable and nice.

<comment><USER8> I like rofi + i3w on Antergos, after using tiled windows and all the hotkey goodness it'd be hard to switch back to a more window-ed experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related: For fast _filesystem search_ on Windows (NTFS) I cannot recommend enough _Everything_ [0]. Instant search through all drives. This app really shines. Under 1 Mb install size, blazing fast interface (can be bound to global hotkey), command line interface, optional HTTP interface, small memory footprint (depends on the size of indices). Really, if you haven't seen it, check it out.

It basically connects to the NTFS database, fo that's why it is instant. Still don't understand why OS does not do this.

[0] [http://voidtools.com/](http://voidtools.com/)

<comment><USER10> There's also Wox [0], which provides a nicer UI/UX over top of Everything. Also has some interesting plugins.

[0] [http://www.getwox.com/](http://www.getwox.com/)

<comment><USER11> I've tried Wox and other launchers that include Everything several times and I always go back to having a launcher for, well, launching and using Everything for searching. For me the compact design of a launcher is not well suited to show a couple of file search results. But of course that also depends on what files you usually search for, how many results there will be and what you do with them. If, for example, you often search for documents it's fine. But I usually search for source code files and what not and there it's different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great, another electron app. This one takes almost 300mb of RAM, just sitting there, being idle and doing nothing: [http://imgur.com/a/vITos](http://imgur.com/a/vITos)

<comment><USER13> The question is, is it fast? It annoys me if I hit the shortcut keys and the window takes a long time to pop up, I use Find and Run Robot(1) on Windows and it shows up instantly. It even has plugins, but you have to _gasp_ write them in C/C++!

1) [https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/](https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/)

<comment><USER12> After I saw the memory consumption, I honestly didn't played with it a lot. It seems fast, but not as fast as Alfred (I use macOS).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder why people dont use pyqt? my startup's first product was a Square-pos like tool built in pyqt and cross compiled to exe, dmg and linux executable.

We made it run on Windows XP machine with 256 mb ram total. Oh and we embedded cherrypy into it.

For lots of products with performance as a criterion, pyqt toolchain is so much better than electron. And programming in qt isnt bad at all.

<comment><USER15> Deploying PyQT (statically, most end users don't have it installed) is a major PITA.

<comment><USER14> that's actually not true. we statically compiled the binary to include all qt dependencies and it ran out of the box - remember we were installing on low end POS machines and pyqt worked beautifully.

Qt does not need to be dynamically linked. In fact the commercial versions of qt have even better toolchains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> MacOS, and Linux, and Windows? Let me guess: it's some web-electron-app- native-things, right?

Yes it is.

Not gonna replace (native) Alfred for me, no.

<comment><USER17> Equally, it's free. Alfred wants me to pay for it again to upgrade to the newest version, but I'm feeling like I kind of don't want to sink more money into it ..

<comment><USER18> Alfred as a launcher it's free and way more efficient than spotlight. But just as the comment above, paid version is really nice and worth that price. Even deserve more. There is a website packal.org for workflows. It's amazing. Really miss fuzzy search on Gnome-shell or windows search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wrote about a cross-platform alternative using Terminal, specially if you work with multiple OSs [https://hackernoon.com/cross-platform-productivity- tool-with...](https://hackernoon.com/cross-platform-productivity-tool-with- terminal-7dd0487ead93)

</comment><comment><USER20> i see some criticism of electron in the comments because of it's high memory footprint. If i would have to create an offline app i would also choose electron, because of it's simplicity and my familiarity with the technology. Is there something being done or planned to reduce the footprint? Or something on the roadmap? I would guess a browser is just not optimised for a use-case comparable to Cerebro (running as a daemon).

<comment><USER21> > I would guess a browser is just not optimised for a use-case comparable to > Cerebro (running as a daemon).

That's pretty much it. There's no useful way to make electron slimmer in any way, since it comes with the full chrome browser in the backpack and there's nothing you can do, because chrome's being the base of the huge pyramid with your teeny tiny bits of html and js on top.

It's useful for proto-typing or one-off apps, but for long-running things you're better of making it a chrome app directly (i.e. reusing Chrome's memory foot-print), or making it into a proper native app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish siri would let me type queries.

Having "information at your fingertips" really kills productivity for me. I need long stretches away from twitch reactions to "what's the capital of Uganda?" type of intrusive thoughts. I'd honestly pay for a "2 click" browser extension where you only get to make two clicks on any link per hour for a given domain on a blacklist of time sinks during certain hours.

<comment><USER23> Forgive me if you aren't looking for advice, but I recommend a distraction notebook:

Keep a small notebook beside you and promise yourself you are going to focus on the topic at hand for a period of time. When a thought, question or search topic pops into your brain, write it in the notebook. When you have some free time you can pick up the notebook at look up all those things. Of course, I often find that coming back to them they aren't all that important at all, and feeling of desperately needing to know has gone.

<comment><USER22> Thank you, I actually do something like this. If I get stuck writing I'll write out all the scatter brained thoughts into a catch all file.

Otherwise, I try to create separate physical spaces for various tasks and try to practice mindfulness in general. It will always be an ongoing process though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I love the idea of extending it with Javascript. Every service my company uses has an API that'd be (presumably) trivial to wire-in to this, making for a nice alternative to the traditional informational portal.

</comment><comment><USER25> So its an embedded webbrowser with built in bookmarks.

Am i missing something here?

<comment><USER26> Seems more like it's Quicksilver built on a browser stack

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I used Launchy for years but then when setting up my last day to day laptop switched to Wox ([http://www.getwox.com/](http://www.getwox.com/)) after trying Hain. It was too limited at that point.

On Linux, I use Super (Windows) key to use the inbuilt launcher which meets all my requirements. If Windows had anywhere near this level of usefulness in its start menu I wouldn't need the third party Wox.

<comment><USER28> Wox looks like a front-end to Everything ([https://www.voidtools.com/](https://www.voidtools.com/)), but with really nice UI and also plugins, etc. It looks nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> [http://imgur.com/a/Oyjqt](http://imgur.com/a/Oyjqt) Can't even launch the application

</comment><comment><USER30> Flashlight is my fav [http://flashlight.nateparrott.com/](http://flashlight.nateparrott.com/)

</comment><comment><USER31> So basically... an imitation of Spotlight? I prefer that they copy Alfred's UI. Simple and does all I need. Need Alfred on my Windows machine!

<comment><USER32> Check Hain [1] on Windows. It works very nicely.

[1] [https://github.com/appetizermonster/hain](https://github.com/appetizermonster/hain)

<comment><USER31> Thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately, it's also an Electron app, which is something I would like to avoid. If footprint is also a concern to you check out [http://keypirinha.com](http://keypirinha.com)! It's really great, with the only concern being not very elegant aesthetically...

<comment><USER33> Just installed Keypirinha. It's great! Thanks for the hint.

Edit: [https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha](https://github.com/Keypirinha/Keypirinha)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Every thread I have seen here on HN that presents another bloated Electron app seems to be filled with criticism, and I must admit that this restores my faith in humanity. If the consensus was that Electron apps is a good thing and we need more of them, it would be very depressing.

I do think the criticism is productive, because it's usually not targeted against the developer or the app idea, but that it's built on the Electron framework. Maybe many developers using Electron do not have much experience and it seems like a good idea in their heads. In this case criticism is helpful because the developer will learn that Electron is bad and should be avoided.

A crude analogy: If I was driving on an divided highway in the wrong lane without knowing, I would be very grateful if the first car I met in the opposite lane would use the horn and blink the lights to get my attention so I could immediately stop and turn around.

</comment><comment><USER35> Great to see some open sourced based efforts in this area. Imho FOSS is a promising approach for this kind of helper apps. Although I've tried a few of the closed source alternatives I'm not yet definitely sold to one. A community driven approach could provide a better result in the long run. The best of luck for the future...

</comment><comment><USER36> Not as polished, but I wrote something similar that leverages Google or DuckDuckGo on top of Hammerspoon. If you're in to little tweaks like this to boost your productivity on a Mac, definitely check out Hammerspoon. Hammerspoon is quite light, and runs on Lua.

Here's my version, Anycomplete: [http://github.com/nathancahill/Anycomplete/](http://github.com/nathancahill/Anycomplete/)

And the Show HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13065670)

</comment><comment><USER37> Doesn't Cortana do this? Also unit dash can also search the web and local files.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is finding things such a pain point for many people? I work with a few tools/programs, and a few locations where my documents and data live. I know where those are and go to them so often it takes no effort. The few times I do need to go elsewhere, the tools that come with the OS work fine.

So, sure, great, more power to you if you want to write a tool like this. I'm just not feeling the pain that would make me have any interest in giving it a try.

<comment><USER16> I don't use my mouse for navigation if I can help it. With Alfred (similar tool to this) I can navigation to any folder on my system, any contact, search on duckduckgo, translate words/sentences/currency, navigate my clipboard, restart/shutdown/lock my computer, open any app with just a keyboard shortcut and a few letters that specify what I'm going for.

It's like a very precise search engine for your personal machine.

It's amazing how great it works, and not having that available when I'm using a computer ruins things for me.

If that is not enough, Alfred also has lots of other awesome features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Search everything in few clicks" \- poorly phrased or actually promotes navigating by clicking instead of using keyboard?

<comment><USER40> some keyboards make clicky sounds ;)

<comment><USER41> For the ones that don't, there's [https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring](https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> i tried this app, i actually love it. the fact is in electron is not that big of a deal, but i would awensome if i could share the electron instance between multiple electron app, but i guess is something hard.

Good job dev

</comment><comment><USER43> On Windows...

Are anyone using keypirinha?

Is cerebro better?

<comment><USER40> ive been trying keypirinha since a few weeks ago. its not bad. its nice improvement over launchy and is being developed unlike launchy which hasnt been touched in years. having to change the settings from a text file in keypirinha is bit of a pain though.

anyway, from what i can tell, cerebro is able to show you a lot more things and also has plugins. keypirinha just shows basic things like files and apps i think

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I tend to use Gnome Do[1] as my launcher. I haven't observed any noticeable battery drain (on Arch) despite the fact that it runs in background.

There's a neat comparison of different launchers available on Wikipedia[2].

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Do](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Do) 2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_desktop_applicat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_desktop_application_launchers#Linux)

As someone mentioned previously the Alt + F2 (or F3) works well enough in XFCE most of time.

I'll give Cerebro a try...

</comment><comment><USER45> Yeah there are other similar apps.

But this one is written in Javascript, so that is something going for it. More accessible, millions of packages to drop in easily.

Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER46> > > [https://github.com/KELiON/cerebro/blob/master/app/AppUpdater...](https://github.com/KELiON/cerebro/blob/master/app/AppUpdater.js) > :

> export default class AppUpdater { ......

why is this a class ? just so it can auto-exececute without being called ?

i would prefer an 'export default function init(){ // init code'

<comment><USER47> Not even. `export default new class ...` would be 'equivalent' to an IIFE; using CommonJS module caching to produce singleton behaviour. This should just export a function. That's it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> OMG, another electron app that is meant to run as a daemon.

It's terrible. I already have hard times with Slack taking more memory than i would expect from a chat.

Yeah, I know that it's super hard to make native GUI these days, but please if you try to attract developer community with plugins and you have a relatively simple app, don't choose electron for that.

Examples of good ol' native desktop apps : twitter for OSX.

<comment><USER49> Wow, some of the comments in this thread are pretty harsh considering the developer has worked hard on providing what looks to me like a pretty cool free app. Nobody is forcing you to install it.

<comment><USER12> So, people shouldn't be able to comment their point of view because the developer worked hard?

<comment><USER50> I think people should be slightly less critical of design decisions enforced by a limited amount of time to work on a side-project that's free.

Comments such as "why didn't you make everything from scratch" probably aren't going to contribute much to the conversation.

<comment><USER51> Well, maybe we should choose our projects based on time we have for them, instead of using a hammer to drive in a screw?

<comment><USER52> Or maybe the app works great and nobody cares what technology you wish had been used.

<comment><USER51> We have already established this is not the case.

<comment><USER52> No, we haven't. A bunch of people have used the app (including me) and said nice things about it. Then some other people have spouted vitriol about the fact that it's made with electron. Frankly all we've established is that a lot of people are bitter about electron and don't have the basic manners required to take part in a constructive technology community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Mac and Swift/Obj-C fanboys will always rail against anything that fails their purity tests. Electron certainly has some issues they need to work out, but Electron criticism doesn't need to dominate this comments section to the rate that it is.

<comment><USER21> Fwiw, i work on windows and also reject anything electron that isn't designed to be started, do a thing, and closed quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> "Cerebro" in Spanish means "brain".

<comment><USER55> Not even close, it is the «brain» as invented by Pr Xavier in X-men.

Spanish must have stolen it in an alternate universe when the X-men went back in time fighting the spanish inquisition disguised as lumberjacks and it's ok.

<comment><USER56> Hm.

I don't expect it that it was the Spanish Inquisition.

Cerebrō was Latin for brain before it was Spanish, so probably it's some kind of Future Past thing with the Colosseum. Which explains why it's so beat up, but not how Magneto lifted it when the Romans didn't have steel-reinforced concrete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> What's it like compared to Spotlight on OSX?

<comment><USER58> It's Spotlight++, even better with an NP-hard template system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Default Spotlight in macOS?

</comment><comment><USER60> i just use alt+space in kde plasma 5.

</comment><comment><USER61> Years of work can still amount to absolute crap. You're not shielded from criticism because your software is free.

<comment><USER62> There's difference between arrogant criticism and constructive feedback. Most of those who rudely criticize are those who rarely create anything. Instead they are mostly into commentaries.

<comment><USER61> Aaaaah, the good old "you shouldn't critize if you haven't created anything argument". Easily applied to "you can't criticize music if you haven't recorded an album" and "Why are you criticizing this movie you haven't even filmed a blockbuster".

Commentaries have a valid point, with or without creation.

<comment><USER62> I disagree. I can dislike a song. If I am able to talk to the singer/musician, I won't say 'You Suck', that would be rude.

<comment><USER63> I think that you are focusing on "rudeness" too much.

This is the internet.

And this is a (mainly) hacker community -who are not known for their politeness-, and good engineering matters for hackers. (as it should) I think that this is the perfect medium for rudeness.

The whole reason people post their projects here is to get criticism of any kind. If one is disheartened because of a rude comment, one needs to grow up.

One needs to learn how to deal with comments; learn to decide on which ones to take seriously and which ones to not..

The good thing about the internet is that most of us are anonymous here. So you can not judge my comments based on my identity (or my history, e.g. what i have done). Nor you can punch me in the face for being rude or something. The thing you get in exchange is honesty (hopefully).

This is healthy. Let's embrace it, and keep politeness and politics for face- to-face meetings.

<comment><USER64> > And this is a (mainly) hacker community -who are not known for their > politeness-

And you hold this up as an ideal rather than something we can improve upon? Tone matters.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. > Avoid gratuitous negativity.

If you want to act differently than in real life, this is not the site.

<comment><USER63> Good point.

I might be wrong.

I was trying to say that everybody needs to learn how to deal with rude people/comments.

This does not justify the bad tone nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> No love for Listary?

</comment><comment><USER66> "Cerebro.app" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer. I'm really curious why developers release software without signing it. The Mac developer account and code signing certificate seem like a small cost if you're releasing software you actually expect people to use. Personally, I see that warning and assume the developers aren't serious and/or don't care about their users and delete the software.

<comment><USER67> Personally, I support developers not signing apps out of principle.

Gatekeeper on Mac OS, while ostensibly a "security" restriction, is nothing more than a blatant money-grab by Apple.</comment></comment>


Working to Strike a Better Balance - <AUTHOR> https://blog.doordash.com/working-to-strike-a-better-balance-e1f66c76fca1 <comment><USER2> I still fail to see the justification for the old formula. A simple principle on pricing is that no one should be surprised about where there money is going. The old pricing model wasn't obvious or direct, the new one (only implemented after backlash) does.</comment>


Growing Web Template Studio - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2019/08/21/growing-web-template-studio/ <comment><USER2> This is something that is actually interesting to me. It does simplify the whole get a web service up part of development. The one thing that isn't touted enough on the page is how much this was brought about by interns. I hope those interns get some respect for something this functional and usable (I checked the MS Garage page and the team isn't even pictured, sigh).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an impressive engineering effort and really just a cool project, but most importantly to Microsoft, it's an excellent sales funnel for Azure.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do the
s look bigger than the

<comment><USER5> The snozzberries taste like snozzberries.</comment></comment>


Pixelworm – A tool to help match your code with your design - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelworm.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hello everyone, We are very excited to be announcing the launch of Pixelworm! Pixelworm is a developer tool that compares the interface you have just coded with the sketch file you were given for reference and lists out every difference between the two, there and then. You won't be hearing from your designer colleagues again, nor will you be forced to reopen a screen you completed days, maybe weeks ago because of minor discrepancies that were caught in the design QA phase. Pixelworm has you covered in misplaced components, off color elements, font size and style differences, and more. And it does so in an easy to use interface crafted similar to other project management and issue tracker applications. With Pixelworm helping you make sure your interface is coded and assembled exactly the way it was handed over to you, you will not only save time but will move onto the next step in your project with peace of mind. Take a look at at: [www.pixelworm.io]([http://www.pixelworm.io](http://www.pixelworm.io)) Our producthunt launch: [www.producthunt.com/posts/pixelworm]([https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pixelworm](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pixelworm))</comment>


If you want to be trusted more: claim less - <AUTHOR> http://www.badscience.net/2010/01/if-you-want-to-be-trusted-more-claim-less/

<comment><USER3> Recently I was at a meeting with our company's marketing director and the channel director of partnerships for a multinational corporation.

We were meeting due to a specific skill set we're developing and the corporation's strategic decision not to pursue the same skill - they still have clients they need to service who require the skill set, so we'd potentially be their go-to people in these instances.

We were specifically, but gently, asked on whether or not we would also do other tangentially related things for them, to which we answered "no - <USER2> focus is this one thing."

That was the right answer.</comment>


The Skeleton Lake of Roopkund, India - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-skeleton-lake-of-roopkund-india <comment><USER2> I was there at the site in 2010. It was an amazing trek (<http://roopkund.com/>).

Right now, the forest officials are struggling to preserve the remains because tourist often like to take the skeletons back with them as souvenirs. Since the lake is far off and frozen for eight months in a year, it is difficult to guard the area. Most skeletons and bones have been stolen over the years with only a few skulls and bones remaining around the frozen lake.

<comment><USER3> _Right now, the forest officials are struggling to preserve the remains because tourist often like to take the skeletons back with them as souvenirs._

I that's happening, it is surprising that tourists can pass through customs with human remains, undetected.

<comment><USER4> It's not like all the tourists in India are from abroad. The majority are Indians from other states. We travel too, you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't make sense to me, why did the bodies only have wounds on the head and shoulders ?

It seems intuitive that you protect your head with your hands and arms, as sudden as the hailstorm may have been, and once they collapsed to the ground their whole bodies should have been hit (although I guess their clothes could have protected them a bit) ?

<comment><USER6> My guess is that those are the only wounds that are visible on the bone. On most of the rest of the body the bones are protected by soft tissue.

<comment><USER5> Maybe but I don't think there's that much soft tissue protecting the hands. Maybe they were stoned, then digged up for some reason?

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

That would explain why there wasn't any survivor able to come back later to bury her comrades (if you curl you up I'm not sure how a hailstorm could be lethal to everyone in a big group)

<comment><USER6> I think that it is probably hard to find enough hand bones to piece together to determine if they have been hit by something big and blunt after this many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even though this mystery is as good as solved, this mystery death remains still a mystery

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

<comment><USER8> There exists a Skeptoid episode about this:

<http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4108>

an excerpt:

 _"Here is my proposed explanation of what happened. It's wrong, of course, because it's done from my armchair 50 years after the fact and with no firsthand knowledge of the region, but it's completely reasonable and does adequately satisfy the facts as we know them. Nine skiers set up camp in an area with potential avalanche danger, but no more or less danger than would have been found if they set up anywhere else they could have reached before nightfall. Sometime during the night, a loud noise, either from a nearby avalanche, a jet aircraft, or military ordnance, convinced at least five members of the group that an avalanche was bearing down on them. They burst out of the tent wearing whatever they happened to be sleeping in and ran. At some point one of them fell and struck his head on a rock. They became lost in the dark and poor visibility, or simply found themselves stranded with their injured friend, and finally built a fire. They quickly got hypothermia and probably shouted themselves hoarse for their friends. Two of them lost consciousness and the others made a desperation decision: To take what little clothes their two unconscious buddies had and risk it all to try and make it back to camp. One made it 300 meters, the second made it 480, and the third a full 630 meters before all five were dead from hypothermia. Back at camp, the four who didn't panic and run away in the night got dressed, collected provisions, and began to search for their friends. They searched for hours, circling high and low, until at some point either through a slip or just bad luck, they were caught in a real avalanche. During the resulting turmoil one received a fatal skull fracture, one received twelve broken ribs, and one bit her tongue off, all perfectly plausible injuries during such a traumatic death. Their bodies remained buried until the spring thaw, as is so common with avalanche victims. At the open-casket funeral for the first five victims, relatives saw the combination of five days of winter sunburn in those days before sunscreen, and the mortician's effort to cover up frostbite and a full month of exposure to the elements, and described it as a strange orange color; though others described it simply as a deep tan, which is consistent with reasonable expectations. And who knows what hair would have looked like after all that exposure and who knows what kind of treatment done by the mortician, so I can't assign too much significance to what amounts to a few anecdotal reports from some funeral attendees, and not even all funeral attendees. Plus I'm quite certain that if UFOs had turned all of their hair really gray, don't you think the cold war Russian authorities would have had it colored back to normal for an open casket funeral? Their bodies had been exposed outdoors for weeks. Of course they looked terrible."_

<comment><USER9> Not bad, I can buy that. However, bodies exposed outdoors, in the cold, do not age that much, especially if they are covered with clothes and so on. Not sure where the tan would originate from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can one really die from hail? I have seen pretty big ones now and then, but usually one would cover their heads with their hands at least, to make it safely through it.

<comment><USER10> 9"/23cm hail would do you in pretty quick I would think. Even using my entire forearms I can only manage to partially cover my whole head. You'd be better off dropping down into the fetal position but if all the injuries were to the top of the head then it sounds like they didn't do that (maybe it started too quickly).

<comment><USER11> I think the comments to the article draw the correct conclusion - the author mixed up circumference with diameter, and the hail would have been 'only' 3 inches. Still pretty deadly, but not quite as terrifying as being bombarded with rock-hard soccer balls.

<comment><USER9> Wow, mixing up circumference and diameter is pretty bad journalistic mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great, now I have one more irrational fear.

<comment><USER13> I'd say a fear of the color blue or clowns is irrational. A fear of earthquakes, snakes, and huge hailstorms is rational (if extremely unlikely to occur).

Not to, you know, encourage your imminent agoraphobia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Going there next week for the trek :D

But why is this trending on HN?

<comment><USER15> HN tends to be popular in India at this hour.</comment></comment>


Will the Singularity turn us into gods or end the human race? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/22/3535518/singularity-rapture-of-the-nerds-gods-end-human-race

<comment><USER2> Welcome to the future, boys and girls.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. Seems to me like artificial intelligence hasn't lived up to the hype. We've had great progress in increasing processor speeds, but not as much luck at the Turing test.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there's actually a term for the failure of the hype:

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

I think AI is currently in the phase of failing to live up to short term expectation while its long term implications are underestimated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _BOTH_ would seem to be an optimal outcome for us and the other lifeforms on this planet.</comment>


SeatGeek and data-driven PR - <AUTHOR> http://seatgeek.com/ticketpulse

<comment><USER2> Tip: pick out the top 4-5 points from your report and share them in the blog post as a teaser.

Otherwise having to read a multi-page scribd document just to get a clue requires way more time and attention than most people who can give you coverage have.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome. Can't wait to see it on ESPN ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why are they using a PR agency?

<comment><USER5> Probably because they think a PR agency helps them do a better job on PR. Lots of companies use PR agencies and sometimes they are a valuable service.</comment></comment>