There are no particles, there are only fields (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4616 <comment><USER2> This only clicked for me a few weeks ago, but it finally gave me an understanding of the Higgs field, and the Higgs-boson.

So the Higgs field is everywhere, like the electron field and the electromagnetic field (all elementary particles are thought to have their own field, as I understand it).

As excitations of one field (electrons etc) interact with the Higgs field, they experiance a kind of drag and this interaction gives them mass.

So how about this Higgs-Boson then? Well if you produce enough energy, like smashing two protons together at huge speeds, this energy is released and some of it ends up in the higgs field, producing an excitation of the field, which we detect as the Higgs Boson. It's unstable and quickly releases it's energy which dissipates into other fields, producing more excitations which we see as more particles.

Before I understood this, I was trying to work out how if the Higgs-Boson was responsible for mass, why it needed so much energy for it to appear. All makes sense when you think about it as a field.

<comment><USER3> The professor I wrote my diploma thesis at said to me: quantum fields and the corresponding operators are just mathematical crutches because that stuff can't be described otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And in another 100 years or so, this will finally make it to textbooks...

Quantum field theory is weird, but there are much more compelling analogies in classical world than particles. (Feynman was a fan of particles, but I presume he was aware of the problems with this representation).

When you speak of fields and wave packets, you eliminate the uncertainty principle, and double-slit experiment is no longer a paradox — no small feat to achieve.

<comment><USER5> The trouble with explaining the double slit experiment with spread out waves is the electrons hit the screen at points leaving you to explain how that works. Video of it happening [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToRdROokUhs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToRdROokUhs)

<comment><USER6> Because charge is quantized, and not splittable.

Once it interacts with something all of it gets "sucked in" to one spot, and the entire electron interacts. The exact place it does that is randomized with varying probability at different spots.

But once a place is "picked" all of the charge goes there.

It's the quantization that is fundamental, and it's the quantization that makes fields look like particles, not the other way around.

<comment><USER7> If I understand correctly, there's currently no explanation of how one electron gets picked out of all the gazillions of electrons available; am I correct? Would that just be considered a fundamental randomness in nature?

<comment><USER6> I don't understand your question, can you rephrase?

In the experiment here they fire one electron at a time, so you don't have to pick one electron. Rather the final location of that electron is what's random.

<comment><USER8> That's the question: how is the location picked?

You roll a fair die, 1-6. It lands on 4 _this time_. Why 4, and not 5? How was the 4 chosen? In classical mechanics, it's a horrendously complicated but fundamentally simple computation. In QM, no one knows.

<comment><USER9> Pilot wave theory :)

<comment><USER10> aka Bohmian mechanics, aka the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of QM. It definitely doesn't get enough serious attention IMO.

<comment><USER9> It's been getting more and more attention especially since many recent QM simulation experiments kinda show that pilot waves are a real phenomena.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sean M. Carrol always mentions this fact when he talks about QFT, which can be very entertaining like this one from 2013

"Particles, Fields and The Future of Physics"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEKSpZPByD0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEKSpZPByD0)

(Audio starts at 19 sec, Lecture starts at 2:00)

<comment><USER12> Just read this post from him recently, which, along with the referenced paper, was pretty enlightening: "Space Emerging from Quantum Mechanics" [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/07/18/space- em...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/07/18/space-emerging- from-quantum-mechanics/)

paper "Space from Hilbert Space: Recovering Geometry from Bulk Entanglement": [https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.08444](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.08444)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that the paper starts by attacking "quantum mysticism". Seems to me that the argument it's making renders quantum mysticism _easier_ to believe rather than harder. The concept of particles, after all, appeals to our Newtonian "billiard ball" intuitions; particles are the essence of locality, and our intuitions suggest that a particle universe should be deterministic.

On the other hand, if particles are epiphenomenal, and everything is really infinite fields which only have a certain probability of interacting in certain ways, it seems like, intuitively, there's a lot more room for consciousness to influence those fields in a nonlocal manner. No?

Just playing devil's advocate here :-)

<comment><USER14> Not at all. Fields are a precise mathematical model that could, in principle, be simulated on a computer to arbitrary precision. There's no room for mysticism or "consciousness" nonsense.

<comment><USER15> > Fields are a precise mathematical model

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here; unless you've solved a millennium problem!

<comment><USER16> Which one is it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article did get published in the American Journal of Physics, and there was some back and forth discussion also published in the Journal. Unfortunately, the published version and the ensuing discussion is effectively inaccessible ... they want 30 USD from me to read each published response.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/13.09.a.AJP.pdf](http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/13.09.a.AJP.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Generally I think the field idea is more plausible than the particle idea. But I think there are some things that the field can't explain yet (to my satisfaction at least). Why, whenever we measure the charge of an electron, do we measure the same value? Why not one half, or one third of that charge sometimes? After all, if an electron is just a disturbance in a field, why might we not capture just part of that field in our measuring apparatus?

This is of course trivially explained by the particle idea.

<comment><USER18> Why do gliders ([https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Animated...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Animated_glider_emblem.gif)) always have a 'weight' of 5 cells? Why not 4 or 6?

<comment><USER19> Space itself cannot be quantized into a grid because it totally fails under special relativity.

<comment><USER18> I seem to remember reading somewhere recently that you can in fact quantize space in a hexagonal grid in a way consistent with quantum mechanics, but I can't find a link now.

<comment><USER19> quantization consistent with QM is tautology; issue is this can't be made consistient with GR. see raattgift's comment in thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here another physicist challenges Hobson for not respecting realism, and he has a pretty good come back:

[http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/13.09.a.AJP.pdf](http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/13.09.a.AJP.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> That was eye-opening, and not just with regard to the titular subject. I'd never thought of energy stored in fields as a consequence of energy conservation.

</comment><comment><USER22> The abstract already lost me: "Thus the Schroedinger field is a space-filling physical field whose value at any spatial point is the probability amplitude for an interaction to occur at that point." But the wave function lives on the configuration space of the system: if you have $N$ particles, the wave function lives on $R^{3N}$. In what way is this a "space-filling physical field"? Admittedly I haven't had time to do more than skim the article; perhaps it's explained more carefully later on.

(Off-topic, but since this has come up a number of times on HN: this point is also where Bohmian pilot wave theory has never been wholly satisfying for me. If you accept the pilot wave picture, then the double slit loses a little bit of its mystery, but many-body theory still seems just as weird as before.)

<comment><USER23> If there are no particles, then how do you know what $N$ should be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the paper, at the top of page 10 of the PDF, at the end of section A:

"Some authors conclude, incorrectly, that the countability of quanta implies a particle interpretation of the quantized system. Discreteness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for particles. Quanta are countable, but they are spatially extended and certainly not particles. Eq. (3) implies that a single mode's spatial dependence is sinusoidal and fills all space, so that adding a monochromatic quantum to a field uniformly increases the entire field's energy (uniformly distributed throughout all space!) by hf. This is nothing like adding a particle. Quanta that are superpositions of different frequencies can be more spatially bunched and in this sense more localized, but they are always of infinite extent. So it's hard to see how photons could be particles."

As mentioned above, you can take linear combinations of these different single particle states at different energies and come up with various energy/location spreads. Doesn't one such combination have a spatial spread of zero? This would correspond to a single quanta at a single location in space.

My physics may be a bit rusty since I have been out for a while. Combining the different frequency components from the different field configurations is not _exactly_ the same as simple Fourier analysis, on the face of it. However, the individual contribution from a given field configuration (meaning a single frequency) is very small since there are so many different field configurations contributing (an infinite number). I believe the Fourier result does apply to the expectation value of the particles location here.

If I am thinking correctly this seems to be a very critical error in the paper. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

* * *

EDIT: I believe I said something incorrectly. Where I said "I believe the Fourier result does apply to the expectation value of the particle's location here." I meant to make a stronger statement, "I believe the Fourier result does apply to the effective value of the particles wave function in this location in this case." (The expectation value being zero would not bean the field does not extend to that location.)

<comment><USER25> (Not a physics person, but) As I read it, he is just arguing against the implication that Countability implies Particles. So he is saying that adding a quantum that is monochromatic has an effect across all space (which is clearly a non-particle like effect). Then he admits that you can get localization through superpositions of quanta.

Since he is arguing against a logical implication he only needs to show a counterexample exists.

The problematic part in choosing a single mode like this is that it can lead to a non-normalizable integral at some point (ie, it won't be a member of the Hilbert space).

QFT always made more since to me. Everything flows more naturally than in QM, where out of the blue, they introduce wave packets.

The paper does feel a bit shaky though especially as it is essentially taking a pedagogical point (start teaching from a QFT viewpoint) and making it into an argument about the foundations of physics. The non-relativistic QM view point is taught because it represents a smooth departure point from classical thinking without requiring the full mathematical complexity of field theory.

<comment><USER24> I think the general assumption is that QFT is true, it is just whether you can call the physics it creates as being particles. At least that is how I interpret it. QFT is QM, but it just has a lot more degrees of freedom (infinite) than what you are talking here about when you say QM. You can write a Schroedinger's equation for a field. Rather than the wave function being a function of X, the wave function is a function of F(X) where F(x) is a field configuration over space.

I would say some of his argument comes down to semantics because by his definition in order for something to be a particle it can't have spatial extent. I think a lot of people don't include this in the definition of a particle. They do associate the number of "Quanta" with the number of particles, at least in a field theory.

What I was saying above is that I believe you can create an object by the "Quanta" definition in QFT that has no spatial extent. His argument is based on the fact that this is not possible.

Adding these Quanta together to form a zero extent object is similar to saying in Fourier analysis you can take a number of different frequencies (like the quanta at different wave lengths) and create a delta function (which has no spatial extent). The thing is, even though we are dealing with adding a bunch of frequencies together, it is not exactly the same as a Fourier series because we are adding them together in a different way.

You make a good point about people first teaching the simple Schroedinger's equation of particles because it is a lot easier. I think what is so hard about quantum mechanics is relating it to the real world, and not the axioms themselves. The simple form is much easier to relate to the real world.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I just meant QM as meaning the semi-classical version. Making QM work with SR requires moving to QFT/"second quantization".

You can presumably create particle-like quanta with a creation operator that creates particles in position space vs momentum space. The particle then won't have a definite momentum in that case, so there's still an extent problem at least in configuration space. If there is an ultraviolet energy cut-off then you end up with problems as well.

I think we perceive living in a position space more than we feel we live in a momentum space. We would prefer things to have a definite position more than we care about them having a definite momentum. The fact that they are conjugate observables is the troubling part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Particles is just result of [self-centric] human perception bias and the resulting naive concept of matter or a substance as perceptual conditioning, evolved in a certain physical environment (everything what we are, including our mind and consciousness is shaped by the environment, and our perception of reality, in turn, is shaped by our mind, conditioned by perception).

We think that there are solids and atoms - grains of matter - basic building blocks. This model corresponds to what our sense organs give us. It is hard to convince oneself that there is no matter at all, only energy and our perception grossly zoomed out of what is really going on.

Matter is an appearance to perception. A wrong model due to limitation of the sensory system. There is no matter when there is no observer, only states of energy, or fields, which is a better concept, but still mere concept. We could say that atoms are "stable" fields, but it is much better to do not apply "human" predicates to the nature.

Particles is a good-enough model, which allowed us to sequence a genome or build a CPU, but it is only a crude model nevertheless.

</comment><comment><USER27> Total aside and this may be too late into a crowded thread for anyone to notice this. But have physicists ever rigorously examined the idea that quantum "duality" is explained by computational complexity?

I know it's more metaphysics/interpretation, but that's what we're talking about here. I also know that universe-as-simulation is a very popular notion among laypeople (particularly programmers) who look at physics. I'm just wondering if any physicists have rigorously studied the idea, and if there are falsifiable propositions we could make about this.

In game programming, one often cannot compute every detail of every component of a simulation. So, what you often do is focus more precise computation on areas around a player, or what the player is actually observing. The rest are often modeled stochastically or via computationally efficient functions. This has always mapped well in my (very surface-level, entirely layman) understanding of QM and QFT.

Note that there are, in my mind at least, two different notions here. One is actually the concept of a simulation with observer-dependencies directing the fidelity of the simulation. The other doesn't imply a "simulation" nor is it directly dependent on any "observer": perhaps computational complexity is related to the fundamental physics of the universe and nature prefers to use imprecise probability estimates wherever possible and it is only when precise interactions need to be resolved that more precise or definite calculations are performed.

I know these are sloppy notions as presented here and I'm not taking the time to phrase these questions very well, or very precisely. Busy atm, sadly. Just wondering if any well-reputed physicists have studied this possibility rigorously, or if it has been rejected for an obvious reason, etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> I always enjoy a discussion about semantics, but only when both parties are very clear about the fact that it's semantics they're talking about, and not fundamental nature of existence. I'm very wary of people trying to use physics to further an ontology, as physics almost by definition allows for multiple, completely equivalent descriptions of reality. That's not to say I think physics teaches us nothing about how the universe really works, but I don't think you can conclude from his interpretation of the mathematics of QFT that particles (whatever they are) don't exist, just as much as the Fermat principle[0] doesn't imply that light has a sentient mind which seeks out the shortest path. There exists a consistent, fully equivalent interpretation of (non-relativistic or relativistic) quantum mechanics that includes particles at the core of its ontology, Bohmian mechanics[1]. I'm personally not an adherent of it, but it shows that by nature, it's very hard to use physics to show what something fundamentally is.

Besides, the article doesn't define clearly what it means by particle, which is a priori just an English word, nor does it justify it well. I don't share the authors' problem with the excitations of a field being spread out all over the universe (by virtue of them being momentum-eigenstates). It's discrete, has a mass, has a momentum, and energy and interacts as a whole. The article calls these properties necessary but not sufficient, but doesn't explain why this doesn't suffice.

Particles are at least a useful abstraction. They emerge naturally at the classical level, interactions between fields are even at extremely high energy levels still very localised, electrons "scatter" a lot like they're bouncing off other particles, they leave neat tracks in bubble chambers, excitations of fields are discrete even at the lowest level, ... Feynman diagrams[2] are extremely handy, even if they don't "actually" happen, but are just a term in the series expansion of an interaction Hamiltonian between two fields.

What's the use of contorting oneself to the limit to fit every observation in a single mold, a field. Sure, classical particles are nothing like what we see at the quantum level, but classical fields are absolutely nothing like the fields in quantum field theory either. Why pick one term over the other?

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_principle) 1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory) 2: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fb/Feynman- diagr...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fb/Feynman-diagram-ee- scattering.png)

<comment><USER29> I think it's been proven fairly comprehensively that particles don't really exist in QFT in any useful sense. See e.g.

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.7469.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.7469.pdf)

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/massive-neutrino- expe...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/massive-neutrino-experiment- undermines-our-sense-reality)

Particles may be a useful abstraction, but they're also a very misleading one.

It looks a lot as if what really happens is best described by a Two State Vector/Transactional interpretation.

Which is _very_ weird, because those are both time symmetric. And that's not a feature you'll find in any particle-oriented theory.

<comment><USER30> Newbie question: if there are no particles, then why are there quantized packets of energy such as photons?

<comment><USER31> I'm am not a physicist, but interested in QM. Photons behavior cannot be completely explained by treating them solely as particles. The simples counter example (one you can perform yourself with a laser pointer), is the double- slit experiment. If photons behaved classically (like billiard balls) they'd never interfere with themselves.

If you'd like a good intro to QM, youtube is full of great material. Here are some of my favorites:

NOVA - The Fabric of the Cosmos: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbIcg0XsbFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbIcg0XsbFQ)

The Secrets of Quantum Physics: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgDlzGZAPcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgDlzGZAPcY)

Particle Fever: [https://vimeo.com/125987472](https://vimeo.com/125987472)

<comment><USER32> Particles can interfere with themselves in the double-slit experiment if they are being guided by a wave. This explains wave behavior and particulate events as in Bohm's theory.

Sadly, there are issues with photons as particles as their wave equations do not seem to allow for an easy particle interpretation unlike, say, electrons. Of course, the flexibility of QM allows for electrons to have a particle existence and photons to not: [http://arxiv.org/abs/quant- ph/0404134](http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0404134) (I am a coauthor of that paper)

And some videos to answer questions about BM: [http://www.bohmian- mechanics.net/videos_faq.html](http://www.bohmian- mechanics.net/videos_faq.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> as water waves are 'epiphenomena'/emergent from the underlying form, are the 'waves' that are used to describe light also epiphenomena (i.e. emergent) or are light waves the EM field exactly ? If the latter, I don't see how to interpret the photoelectric effect.

<comment><USER33> All phenomena are emergent. That word means nothing.

The photoelectric effect is not complicated any way you slice it. An atom absorbs some quantum of energy from the field. This doesn't require any understanding of what model you use to describe the energy in the field. The interaction is quantized either way.

<comment><USER19> not quite. 'emergent' in theoretical physics typically means 'arising from a composition of the more fundamental physical state'. 'All phenomena are emergent' with this definition of the word would mean you could always represent something with something else that is more basic, _ad infinitum_ \- I don't think that is the accepted view among physicists.

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure the term "emergent" is a term in theoretical physics. I've certainly never seen it.

>'All phenomena are emergent' with this definition of the word would mean you could always represent something with something else that is more basic, ad infinitum

No, what it means is that at some point, you've broken your model down into something that is not ' _phenomena_ ' in any meaningful sense. Which is something physicists do all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The day I understood this, it was a awe moment. The realization that if we zoom in very very deep, we will not see marble-like particles, rather we will see nothing. Its only through the interaction of the excitation in these fields do our pseudo-particles form.

</comment><comment><USER35> There are followup comments to this paper:

* [http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/13.09.a.AJP.pdf](http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/13.09.a.AJP.pdf)

* [http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/13.09.b.AJP.pdf](http://physics.uark.edu/hobson/pubs/13.09.b.AJP.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER36> There is only the mathematics. "Shut up and calculate", as one physicist put it.

Here's Feynman talking about it.[1] "We interpret the intensity of the wave as the probability of finding a photon".

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7OEzyEfzgg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7OEzyEfzgg)

<comment><USER37> I feel this approach is flawed. In theory it'd have been possible to come up with Relativity by recognizing the Lagrangian transforms that match experimental outcomes and say "That's just how it is". Einstein provided an insight as to _why_ that's far more enlightening.

To me, QM is still in the former state, detailed equations looking for a soul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Nothing new. This guy published a book about it in 2006: [http://transfinitemind.com/tapestryindex.php](http://transfinitemind.com/tapestryindex.php)

</comment><comment><USER39> "Physicists are still unable to reach consensus on the principles or meaning of science's most fundamental and accurate theory, namely quantum physics. An embarrassment of enigmas abounds concerning wave-particle duality, measurement, nonlocality, superpositions, uncertainty, and the meaning of quantum states. After over a century of quantum history, this is scandalous."

What is also scandalous that in this age of systems that do this work for you automagically (e.g. Tex) typesetting and microtypography in scientific publications seem to deteriorate. This one is a fine example of this trend. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER40> Can someone ELI5 or possibly 15 on this for me?

</comment><comment><USER41> the map is not the territory.

the model is not Absolute, but it gives us a really, really good idea.

</comment><comment><USER42> Platonism and Kantianism are still alive and strong in Western thought.

<comment><USER43> What's wrong with Kantianism?

<comment><USER42> Its just a modernized version of Platonism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I never understood why interpretations of QM which violate non-locality like pilot wave theory are frowned upon. Fields are non-local by definition.

</comment><comment><USER45> is this essentially a reminder that the materialistic view of the universe / reality is outdated, or am I reading too much into it?

</comment><comment><USER46> It's either this, or something like objective collapse really does happen, physically, which seems less likely.

</comment><comment><USER47> Anyone who's studied beginning grad level physics should know that. I don't get why it's trending on HN

<comment><USER48> Yeah I'm being taught QFT in my undergrad. Any theoretical physicist would be expected to know this concept well. I guess people here aren't theoretical physicists though! However I do think the quality of physics commentary here is generally quite poor. I see a lot of crackpot theories or just ignorance in general. Especially with anything involving quantum mechanics, that seems to drive people crazy. I don't think that many people realise that in physics we don't talk about the philosophical implications at all, we're just trying to find good models, that's it...

<comment><USER24> I agree that many people who are not experts often misunderstand quantum mechanics. It is a very difficult field to learn. It takes a long time. I disagree about physicists not talking about philosophy. At least some people do in theoretical physics. That is probably why this paper is published in the area of "History and Philosophy of Physics".

<comment><USER48> I mean in general. Of course there are physicists at some universities that write about philosophy, but not a single one in my theory department.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Efficient Is Energy Efficiency? (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-efficient-is-energy-efficiency-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ <comment><AUTHOR> A relevant listen to in light of the potential of new carbon tax regulations.

The gist is that energy efficiency laws do a really good job at driving future technologies to be more efficient. The example they use is that all technology made after the Warren-Alquist Act passed would be 80% more efficient, AWESOME! But the problem lies in technology made prior the the new regulation. My TV made prior to the act is exempt from the rules, so as long as I don't upgrade my TV I'm still having a major impact on energy consumption without paying for it. An Energy Tax would say, "Hey! I see your old TV, now pay-up for that extra energy consumption".

The same applies to carbon tax. New cars are really efficient in emissions, but most cars on the road AREN'T new, they are old and producing a ton of bad emissions and the owners aren't responsible. A Carbon Tax says, "Hey, you driving that antique car every day! Pay up for your contribution to environmental damage!" Utilities companies can grandfather in old power plants that are incredibly bad for the environment as long as we have efficiency laws, tax laws wouldn't let those old plants slip through the cracks.</comment>


The Haskell Platform 2010.1: the standard development environment for Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://haskell.org/platform/

<comment><USER2> This is exactly the sort of thing languages that wish to become popular need. User-friendly applies to programming environments too; batteries included should be the result - they can always be removed later.

I'm sure someone will call that approach "bloat by default", but I think that's a red herring. Good programmers will remove bloat where it matters, and bad programmers will add bloat where it's harmful.

<comment><USER3> I absolutely agree, but the haskell guys have not quite gotten it complete. I envision mathematicians a-plenty installing ubuntu because it's "programmy" and then giving up installing the haskell platform because they don't know what compiling is or why they need all those "X-dev" packages.

I for one know a few math guys that absolutely love haskell when I show it to them (more so when I talk about category theory and types :-), but would just get distracted if I asked them to run console commands in order to install it, which is a terrible shame because they totally get it on my system once everything's installed and set up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wait for it ... <http://packages.debian.org/sid/haskell-platform>

The single .deb install. Ubuntu will pick it up shortly.

<comment><USER3> I retract my previous statement. Haskell people are wonderful creatures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I realize that microbenchmarks like those posted at <http://shootout.alioth.debian.org> don't really tell us much about a language's performance in or suitability for larger applications, but I must admit I'm surprised that the Haskell programs there aren't significantly shorter than the Java versions. After all, Java is roundly criticized for its verbosity and these kinds of problems seem to be particularly good candidates for short, expressive functional solutions.

Are the Haskell versions written in a non-idiomatic style for performance reasons?

<comment><USER5> Yes. Those programs serve as a warning against what you might have to contort your short, sweet, clear programs into in order to get good performance without dropping down to C.

<comment><USER6> That is assuming you are comparing the speed against C. I rewrote one into short, sweet style and found it was much faster than python and ruby. The only frustration was being unable to get the code shorter than the ruby version.

Note that the benchmarks are still for 6.10.4, they might get a bit faster when run with 6.12.

I am curious, are you speaking from some particular experience of problems with the speed?

<comment><USER7> > found it was much faster than python and ruby.

But it seems that Haskell, because of static type checking and compilation should compete against C, C++ and Java in terms of speed. Because if it is competing against Python, I'll just always use Python when I need to get things done.

<comment><USER8> It does compete with Java, as both are garbage collected. C, C++ and Fortran are in their own category because they don't have to deal with the indirection of boxed heap objects.

The mythical "sufficiently smart complier" can remove these indirections, but no current compiler can do it perfectly, as doing so requires generative the copious amounts of object code that C++ is so roundly criticized for (templates). GHC is pretty good at removing these indirections. I understand C# compilers are as well. I've not used Java much but isn't there some issue where you can't store primitive integers in a collection because they don't inherit from the base Object type and/or the JVM doesn't support unboxed objects?* This is the same kind of annoyance you have to deal with in Haskell to get fast-as-possible performance (i.e. using types which are not polymorphism-friendly thus decreasing code reuse and increasing verbosity) so in that way I think they are equal with regards to the performance/brevity trade-off.

* I'm sure this has probably been fixed in some recent version of Java but it's still illustrative of why garbage collection imposes a real performance impact that C and C++ just don't have to deal with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Torrents for the platform:

OS X: [http://natulte.net/~dave/haskell- platform-2010.1.0.0-i386.dm...](http://natulte.net/~dave/haskell- platform-2010.1.0.0-i386.dmg.torrent)

Win32 : [http://natulte.net/~dave/HaskellPlatform-2009.2.0.2-setup.ex...](http://natulte.net/~dave/HaskellPlatform-2009.2.0.2-setup.exe.torrent) (this is the old Haskell Platform still, not updated yet)

Linux : [http://natulte.net/~dave/haskell- platform-2010.1.0.0.tar.gz....](http://natulte.net/~dave/haskell- platform-2010.1.0.0.tar.gz.torrent)

We're going to try to get those torrents up on the platform page itself as well, but dons is in a plane for the next several hours.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be great if they had a .torrent or some faster servers, downloads from haskell.org always go at a snail's pace for me.

<comment><USER11> No kidding. I'm at 5.1 kb/s. This is exactly the [legal] sort of thing that torrents were designed for. Once my download is complete (~8 hours from now), I'll make a torrent of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We need bigger tubes for all this Haskell!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The Windows installer currently provides the 2009.2.0.2 Haskell Platform"

Problem with the website or is Windows release lagging behind?

<comment><USER13> It is lagging a bit behind. Patience...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really wish they would include gtk2hs by default, it's such a pain to get working on windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on that. Axel Simon is cabalizing gtk2hs. Once that happens, it could go in to the HP.

And then we'd get cool tools like ThreadScope as well: <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/threadscope/> (which needs gtk2hs)

Hot topic and stay tuned.

<comment><USER14> Great! Thanks for that, thread scope looks interesting...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Was the GHC 6.12.1 for Snow Leopard compiled with --enable-shared?

It seems it wasn't. I just tried to install a cabal package passing the --enable-shared switch, and got the error

         Failed to load interface for `Prelude':

         Perhaps you haven't installed the "dyn" libraries for package `base'?

which I believe means this GHC cannot build shared objects.

Am I right about this? I hope not; the ability build shared objects is one of the key features of 6.12.

</comment><comment><USER16> Supports Snow Leopard 64bit. Been looking forward to this.

<comment><USER17> _If I understand_ \-- note that this is the new macports version, which is ghc 6.10. Simultaneously, there is a new mac installer for the Haskell Platform with ghc 6.12 -- it works with Snow Leopard, and is 32 bit.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/bgchh/the_haskell_p...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/bgchh/the_haskell_platform_ghc_612_snow_leopard_64_bit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does this install on Mac OS? Does it dump everything to /usr/local, or is it clean and self-contained inside its .app bundle?

<comment><USER19> I believe that everything is installed under /Library/Frameworks/GHC.framework and then symlinked. (At least, that's what I'm seeing on my system from the last version of the installer.)

See here for some details (may be out of date, in terms of SnowLeopard): <http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mac_OS_X>

As that link mentions, the platform also comes with an uninstaller at /Library/Frameworks/GHC.framework/Tools/Uninstaller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ah, I see it has the new version of GHC now: 6.12.1</comment>


Show HN: Turn Mailchimp data into awesome insights - <AUTHOR> http://launch.granahq.com/early-access <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, would love to have your feedback, shares or sign ups. All is welcome :)</comment>


HDMI Capture and Analysis FPGA Project (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://warmcat.com/hardware%20design/hdmi/fpga/2015/10/20/hdmi-capture-and-analysis-fpga-project.html <comment><USER2> This may be a long shot, but is there someone here who knows about HDMI video freezing? I'd like to design a freeze button, like in some projectors, as a separate hardware accessory. Plug in HDMI input and output, then press a button to change between pass-through and freezing the last frame.

<comment><USER3> This is doable with the right hardware. You'd need HDMI decoder and encoders and enough internal or external memory to buffer the resolution you are working with. (1080p = 1920 x 1080 x 3 = 5.9MB) You can probably avoid having to double buffer if it waits for vsync to switch modes.

<comment><USER4> One potentially helpful piece of out of the box hardware is bunnie's NeTV, which has an fpga in an HDMI path. By default it does overlays on an HDMI signal but with some FPGA rejiggering I suspect doing freeze frames ought to work. At least on non-drm'd HDMI signals.

[https://kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=NeTV_Main_Page](https://kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=NeTV_Main_Page)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't you need an Intel-signed pubkey to intercept anything using HDCP? How do you get around that? Or has HDCP been cracked?

<comment><AUTHOR> Search for HDCP in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18216910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18216910)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> @walterbell submitted this, so intuition tells me I should be paying attention, but all I read is someone struggling with single-link digital video implementation on a FPGA and a sponsored advertisement for a tool that doesn't quite make sense in context.

I think I may have had one too many drinks tonight. Did I miss something?

<comment><AUTHOR> HDMI capture on an FPGA board that _does not have an HDMI input_. Over the six-part series of blog posts, the author explores the 2015 limits of FPGA hardware performance and IP segmentation for HDMI processing around $150 price point, e.g. [http://zedboard.org](http://zedboard.org). Other video projects with less connector hacking:

$250 Spartan-6 HDMI Light: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18216910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18216910)

$350 Numato Opsis Spartan-6 HDMI2USB (2015): [https://blog.mithis.net/archives/category/timvideos- us/hdmi2...](https://blog.mithis.net/archives/category/timvideos-us/hdmi2usb) & [https://github.com/timvideos/HDMI2USB-numato-opsis-sample- co...](https://github.com/timvideos/HDMI2USB-numato-opsis-sample-code)

$500 Artix-7 Digilent Nexys, [https://store.digilentinc.com/nexys-video- artix-7-fpga-train...](https://store.digilentinc.com/nexys-video-artix-7-fpga- trainer-board-for-multimedia-applications/)

$900 Zynq MPSoC (Arm Cortex A53 + Xilinx FPGA) with H.264 video encoder, [https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and- kits/zcu104.html](https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/zcu104.html)</comment></comment>


All About Monads - <AUTHOR> http://www.haskell.org/all_about_monads/html/index.html <comment><USER2> I was hoping this was an article about Leibnitz. For some reason, his Monadology is one of the only things I remember from my Modern philosophy class. Ironically, I spent the entire semester down with Mono.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion, the best of the many, many monad tutorials I've seen. I'm lucky enough to work with the author.</comment>


What we learned about running our startup in 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://info.rjmetrics.com/blog/bid/51180/2011-What-We-Learned

<comment><USER2> How do you justify locating in center city philadelphia with all the taxes and the dysfunction of the city government when you can be 12 minutes away in conshohocken to avoid them?

<comment><USER3> I live in center city Philadelphia, and I would like to know the same thing.</comment></comment>


Pls review my webapp - <AUTHOR> http://obj.localghost.webfactional.com

<comment><USER2> Not for me. Not much of a person that likes to look at random pictures online.

Critique:

* Why are all the images full screen? This is something that makes sense for mobile, but not for desktops.

* Big problem: you force the scroll to be slow which makes it impossible for me to quickly skip images I immediately flag as uninteresting. Just let the native scroller do its thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> just made the scroll faster. Thanks</comment></comment>


How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the '1 Percent' - <AUTHOR> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/26-3

<comment><USER2> Duplicate submission. See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3517830> .</comment>


VISA & Mastercard Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/K8k0uEEp

<comment><USER2> Looks very suspicious. For one, why are the visa and mastercard data interleaved? Why isn't there more rows released. Why the hell are there email addresses? Why not leave the last 4 digits of the credit card numbers? and many many more questions like that!

I doubt the validity of this.

Edit: On his twitter account he mentions that its data through a bank and not the credit card companies themselves.

<comment><USER3> There's no way the data source is either Visa or Mastercard. Each row, which there are less than 2000 of, is non-standard (lower case, varying abbreviations of Street/Lane/etc., partial and full zip codes, varying phone number formats).

Likely a dump of a poorly secured online retailer.

Nothing to see here, move along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://kevtownsend.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/reckz0r-hacks- ma...](http://kevtownsend.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/reckz0r-hacks-mastercard- and-visa-anonymous-says-no/)

Interesting to consider. But I do not know much regarding this topic, I am just leaving that link because it is directly related :P

edit.: Anyways, I downloaded that file and it was really just plain texts, nothing to worry about. But seemed suspicious anyway. Why are there email addresses?

<comment><USER5> Another directly related link: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamer>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel bad for @Reck0r on Twitter, who Reckz0r or Reckz, or Jeremy linked to in the bottom of this paste. He or she obviously meant @Reckz0r <https://twitter.com/#!/Reckz0r>

</comment><comment><USER7> A little bit out of the topic but drew my attention: Looks like hackers love to quote from Albert Einstein and write their names instead of Einstein's.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. This data shows up on a Palestinian "hacker" forum [1] on a post dated June 5th.

[1] - <http://gaza-hacker.net/cc/showthread-t_38196.html>

<comment><USER9> Reckz0r's tweets say "I just tweeted Reid Hoffman's VISA credit card information, then I had the thought that i'd get suspended..so...nevermind, folks."

From the link above:

"Reed Hofmann..."

Close but no cigar :^P

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The cc#s/exp/CVC/CVC2 might have been encrypted which is why they aren't included. I doubt this is even from a bank.

<comment><USER11> per PCI & PA-DSS standards CVC and CVC2 cannot be stored.

<comment><USER12> There are plenty of companies who don't know that, or haven't been audited yet. When they are audited, they can be out of compliance for months before anything final is done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think someone is mistaking the whole "Hacker News" title, here.

</comment><comment><USER14> So we're to believe that he can hack VISA & Mastercard but cannot consistently format a text file and uses double \r\n line delimiters?

Alarm bells are ringing, Willie.</comment>


Samsung sees 300% growth in smartphone market share - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/07/2011-will-hit-420-million-smartphone-sales-samsung-hits-433-percent-growthsamsung-sees-300-growth-in-smartphone-market-share.ars

<comment><USER2> Samsung will soon be the new phone/smartphone king, to replace Nokia. Apple might take the smartphone king place for a quarter or two, but they can't compete with Samsung in sheer numbers, because Samsung is also making $150 smartphones, which appeal to a lot of people because of the price point. The new Galaxy S2 seems to to give the iPhone a run for its money, too.

<comment><USER3> It's a short-term gain. As a Galaxy S1 owner, I've been burnt by the "nice hardware, no ongoing software support" issue and I probably will not invest any of my hard-earned money in Samsung products in the future. As a tech- influencer of friends and family, when asked for advice about the Samsung phones, I always recommend against them.

I've noted other users express similar concerns, which leads me to believe they've sacrificed long-term consumer loyalty to short-term growth.

<comment><USER4> Google recognizes this problem and is attempting to get vendors onboard with an 18 month commitment for updates([http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/10/google- promises-android-d...](http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/10/google-promises- android-devices-updates-18-months/)) .

On the other hand, the hardware vendors prefer you buy a new handset every year. How many vendors will agree to long term updates is anybody's guess. I'm no fan of Apple but this is where their controlled line of hardware definitely helps updates/support.

<comment><USER5> You'd be hard pushed to find a smartphone contract (for the likes of the iPhone and SII, anyway) on the high street that isn't 18 or even 24 months, in the UK at least. If Samsung think they can have a 12 month turn-around on their high-end models, they're lying to themselves, and if their business model depends on a 12-month turnaround, they're in trouble.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Agile Is the New Waterfall - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/agile-is-the-new-waterfall-f7baef5d026d#.16getfee7 <comment><USER2> I am confused by the entire premise of this piece. That agile is some sort of developer-empowering methodology of the people is entirely a new concept to me, and I have run multiple agile and waterfall projects.

Agile is a bottom-up strategy for project management, whereas waterfall is top-down. That's really about it. I'm glad you had a revelation that they are both project management methodologies and that the stakeholders remain the same, but I'm sorry to say I think everyone else already knew that...

<comment><AUTHOR> Everywhere I've seen Agile it was almost always top-down disguised as bottom- up.

There's also the follow-up post addressing what the waterfall comparison is all about: [https://medium.com/swlh/agile-is-the-new-waterfall-a- followu...](https://medium.com/swlh/agile-is-the-new-waterfall-a- followup-f1c0bcd2162e#.k3bu0znaw)</comment></comment>


Email Still A Preferred Method Of Communication Despite The Emergence Of Web 2.0  - <AUTHOR> http://internetrack.blogspot.com/2008/05/email-still-preferred-method-of.html "Consumers prefer email as a primary method of communications in their personal and business capacities; they will continue to prefer email in the future despite the rise of online threats and the emergence of other communication channels and web 2.0 applications." <comment><USER2> Are you saying that a technology that has been working for the past 20+ years, that is simple to use, simple to implement, and does what it says on the tin is the Internet's killer app?

Why, I never....

</sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER3> maybe for my parents it is, but I thought IM / texting was #1 for gen x and y

</comment><comment><USER4> Stop the presses.

<comment><USER5> I had to look at the url to check if it was the onion.</comment></comment>


What's 700M Times Faster Than a Missile and Infinitely More Deadly? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/10/04/whats-700-million-times-faster-than-missile-deadly.aspx <comment><USER2> Arithmetic is hard, it seems. That laser isn't even 700 million times faster than a pedestrian, and they should know that, writing: _" 186,000 miles per second? That's 669,600,000 miles per hour. "_

<comment><USER3> Compared to "infinitely more deadly", that miscalculation is a drop in the bucket.</comment></comment>


ITunes is almost as big a biz as OEM Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9246260/iTunes_is_almost_as_big_a_biz_as_OEM_Windows

<comment><USER2> Entirely bogus comparison, as these are very different types of revenue flow. Apple pays a huge percentage of that money back out, whereas Microsoft actually keeps its Windows sales.

It'd be like pretending Google keeps all the revenue from AdSense, or Dell keeps all the money from copies of Windows sold with new PCs.</comment>


Quora's mobile web blocker - <AUTHOR> This is awful. Why should I have to install an app to continue reading just because of my user agent header? Screenshot: https://ibb.co/cTwVnU <comment><USER2> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Quora. (Because the app has extra permissions beyond what's granted to a webpage? Because the site wants you to log in, and that's also easier to do through a native app?) That said, it also has restrictions on unauthenticated reading on normal web - they seem to push hard for "everybody needs to be logged into our walled garden".</comment>


Go 2 Error Values draft implementation - <AUTHOR> https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/exp/errors <comment><AUTHOR> This is on the Go 1.13 roadmap, tho hasn't been announced as such.

They dropped the dependency on Go 2 Generics described in the initial proposal.

[https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draf...](https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/go2draft- error-values-overview.md)</comment>


HTML5 based drag and drop game creator - <AUTHOR> http://www.scirra.com/ <comment><USER4> You guys NEED to get a video demoing how easy it is to make a game. Your real market isn't existing game developers. It's people who love games, and would be interested in making games, but don't quite have the chops to do it yet. Most of those people will already assume they can't make games, and not even go through the download process to see whether or not your claims are true. You have to convince them it really is that easy to make a game. So show them.

Make a video where you make a cool but simple game, like an asteroid shooter, or pong. Keep the video short, and well scripted in advance. Keep the video to 10 mins or less, have all your graphics already in place, and show non- developers really how easy this will be for them.

<comment><USER5> I do the website (my brother writes the editor), this is a great idea. Neither of us know much about making videos it will be another steep learning curve but I'll try and get them made and maybe even do some A/B testing with them. Your reasons make perfect sense - thanks for your comment!

<comment><USER6> Tom, this reminds me a lot of the game creators that Clickteam created years ago - Klick&Play, The Games Factory and Click and Create. Do you take any inspiration from these? I spent _hundreds_ of hours as a kid making games. I consider it one of formative aspects of my life. Keep up the project. I think it could be really successful.

<comment><USER7> I _loved_ the games factory and click and create! I made so many games... and it really was so easy. That software might have determined my life's direction.

I had always wished at the time that I could somehow send these games to others. Now with the internet and web based software, it might be a dream come true for my younger self :)

<comment><USER8> Hey, I actually work for Clickteam today.

The successor to TGF/CNC (Multimedia Fusion) has add-ons for exporting to Flash, iOS and soon Android. It can still import old GAM/CCA files, too, if you're looking for a nostalgia fix!

I think Clickteam have been forgotten about to a degree, mainly due to the website/marketing not being much different than it was in the 90s, but things are beginning to change in that regard.

<comment><USER7> I'm amazed you're still around! I actually used Multimedia Fusion too. Legal purchase and everything. At the time I couldn't find any kind of export like that. I also didn't have an internet connection, so maybe it just wasn't up to date.

Great products, by the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome to see the Construct guys moving so quickly to embrace HTML5.

The experience in their demo games is awful at present, but most of the problems seemed to be stuff rooted in the low quality of current browser implementations (bad audio functionality cross-browser, etc).

Two more concrete nits, though: The camera in the ghost shooter demo borders on unplayable, and both demos suffer from long, frequent garbage collection pauses. Even years from now, I doubt that GC pauses will be gone, so if your goal is to ship good games using HTML5, you need to take steps to control the rate at which you create garbage.

<comment><USER10> Hey, I'm the runtime dev. Interested in your comment about GC pauses. Off the top of my head, the runtime either makes short-lived temporary objects or long-lived ones, which AFAIK is what collectors are best at. Any tips on how we can improve it?

<comment><USER9> Short-lived temporary objects are going to perform awful in Firefox until the addition of a generational GC, and will still perform somewhat badly until it goes multi-process (sometime in the distant future). In particular, since right now JS all runs on the UI thread, a user with lots of tabs open is going to have really long, painful pauses while playing a Construct game in the browser.

I'm also uncertain whether IE has a generational collector or the ability to collect individual pages separately. My current testing suggests that it might have a generational collector in 10, but it likely does not in 9 - short-lived temporaries cause awful pauses just like FF.

Even in Chrome (generational + process isolation), too many short-lived temporaries will cause you to spend a ton of CPU time in their collector running gen1 collections. This stuff adds up, even more than it does in say .NET or Java.

On mobile platforms in particular, even a generational collector with isolated processes (like Chrome) is not going to perform great because your CPU is so much slower and memory bandwidth is not as plentiful as on PC, and your processor might not be out-of-order. Likewise, the state of the art for mobile browser technology is far behind the desktop - Android's stock browser is a pale shadow of Chrome, and mobile Safari is not as solid as desktop Safari. MS is only just now rolling out something roughly on par with IE9 for Windows Phone users - WP7 shipped with a browser that was far behind the curve. Firefox Mobile's JS runtime is not any more sophisticated than Firefox Desktop's (though, oddly enough, Firefox Mobile runs each tab in its own process, so you get some benefit there).

You should try to at least minimize the number of short lived temporary objects, especially if the total set of live objects is large. If you have a ton of long-lived objects and a complex graph, the GC is going to take time to do a full pass over the JS heap and that's going to make your pauses long enough to be noticeable. It'll be even worse if some of your long-lived objects have gotten paged out due to not being used recently - <USER2> might have to bring those pages in from disk and will cause a horrible stall.

In some cases, a pool/freelist for your short-lived objects might be enough to eliminate pauses and remove the burden on the GC. In other cases, manual lifetime management will be too difficult/error prone and you should instead work to minimize the burden on the GC from your temporaries (by reducing their count or complexity in terms of the work the GC has to do to mark them).

P.S. If you or anyone else at Scirra wants to talk more about this stuff, feel free to contact me.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the tips, I've sent you an email since I think there's more to cover!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's an interesting project, but it needs some polish: unfortunately it doesn't work well on all modern browsers, for example the image in Chrome for demo game Ghost Shooter was broken (it worked well in Firefox and Opera)

Also it looks like the sound disapears after some time in all browsers (was tested in Space Blaster Game)

<comment><USER12> also fps on chrome was really bad. Didn't try ff but on ie its was better.

<comment><USER5> Musket, have you tried enabling Chrome hardware acceleration in the settings? [http://technicallyeasy.net/2011/03/how-to-enable-graphics- ha...](http://technicallyeasy.net/2011/03/how-to-enable-graphics-hardware- acceleration-google-chrome/) By default this is disabled, eventually browsers will ship with this enabled by default. It should allow a much better FPS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Games made with Construct 2 From the Demo page:

Space Blaster Game <http://www.scirra.com/demos/space-blaster/index.html>

Ghost Shooter <http://www.scirra.com/demos/ghost-shooter/index.html>

Works awesome in Chrome 13.0.x

Impressive!

<comment><USER5> Thanks :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the Squeak Etoys and MIT Scratch movement have been going mainstream, judging from the appearance of blocks-style drag-and-drop programming environments in these very democratizing game-making tools.

Meanwhile I've been building a GPLed Squeak/Scratch inspired game making app, as an extension to Common Lisp. The language extension is called Blocky, and the site is <http://blocky.io>

What do people think of the visual language aspect of some of these tools (such as Stencyl and Werkkzeug?) Is anyone interested in exploring the Common Lisp side of this scene?

There's also Scheme work going on with Scheme Bricks and Fluxus which I blogged about a while back. <http://blocky.io/blog/2011/07/07/go-check-out- schemebricks/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Both demos worked beautifully for me in Firefox. Very impressed guys - <USER3> done!

Agree with DevX101 about the need for a video showing the programming process - I also looked for one.

<comment><USER5> Thank you! We appreciate your feedback. We do want to get some videos up as well as more demos soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a question. Does early adopter license cover future major/minor releases?

<comment><USER5> Hi Leej, the early adopter is considered full payment for Construct 2. There are many more releases to come! We like to release often with small increments rather than big monthly ones. See <http://www.scirra.com/construct2/releases> for our release history.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the response. Sorry but I'm confused. So future major/minor releases are free to upgrade for license owners?

<comment><USER5> Hi Leej,

Think of it this way, we have Construct 2 and we are selling licenses for it. Because Construct 2 is in Beta we are rewarding people who buy it now as early adopters by giving them a significant discount. Once you buy a license you have a fully licensed copy of Construct 2.

Any new builds of Construct 2 are compatible with your license. You would only need to pay when we release Construct 3 which is far, far off in the future :) We release new builds all the time.

Hope that makes sense!

Tom</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Confronting New Madrid - <AUTHOR> http://www.idlewords.com/2015/07/confronting_new_madrid.htm <comment><USER2> During my stay in Bucharest I got to experience a very slight quake, that wasn't centered anywhere near my location (the epicenter was 100's of km south of where I was).

At first I thought I was becoming unwell, I couldn't focus on my computer screen and I felt like falling. Then after a bit I realized it wasn't me but the world (what really helped is that I noticed the lamps were swinging relative to the building).

It only lasted for 30 seconds or so but I've never in my life felt more disconcerted and panicky (whereas normally in a 'bad' situation I'm scarily cool and composed because that's the way to get out of bad situations this hit me in a much more primitive part of the brain).

All I could think of once I realized it was an earthquake was 'get out' which given the general state of construction in Romania isn't a bad idea at all but would have been a spectacularly dumb thing to do once the quake has started because the staircases are amongst the most dangerous places.

Really odd feeling and I sincerely hope to never experience it again.

[http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/201...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2014/20140524.php)

[https://twitter.com/jmattheij/status/470134804894470145](https://twitter.com/jmattheij/status/470134804894470145)

I'm going back there in a couple of days and the feeling never quite left me and I'm conscious of it when I'm indoors there.

It's pretty irrational given the chances of a really bad quake while I'm there but Bucharest has had its share of really bad ones:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Vrancea_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Vrancea_earthquake)

<comment><USER3> This is somewhat amusing to hear for someone who lived in an area with recurring earth quakes :)

It reminds me a bit of having visitors from Israel in Berlin - in Israel when it rains beyond a trickle everyone goes inside to wait it out. This works because it doesn't rain very often and when it does it doesn't usually last very long.

Of course the same behavior in Berlin would mean you can't leave your home for half the year, and my visitors were astound to see stuff like mothers walking their baby strollers in the rain & general "normal life" activities taking place during medium-intensity rain.

<comment><USER2> It was quite amusing to the others present too ;). I had the reverse happen in IJmuiden, the Netherlands when some of the people from the Canadian office were visiting and someone set off some fire-crackers. The Canadians hit the deck as one and shouted 'drive-by, get down, drive-by!'...

<comment><USER4> I think they were fucking with you.

<comment><USER2> Judging by the bruises they really weren't.

<comment><USER4> People who live in places that actually have drive-by shootings (note: probably does not include Canada) do not shout "hit the deck! drive-by!" when they hear loud popping.

Gunshots don't really sound like fireworks. If you've ever been near angry gunfire (even from a safe distance), you probably don't forget the difference.

My money remains on "they're fucking with you" but with the bruises added to my priors, my backup is "you were hanging out with really dumb people".

<comment><USER5> I've lived in those places and agree. If anything, we'd have "wtf" looks on our face trying to figure out what the sound was and which idiot was doing it. If we hear gunshots, we make ourselves invisible while carefully assessing source, distance, and whether we're the target. It's usually over before we even do, we roll our eyes, and go back out our business. Sometimes, you'll see such people mock suburban type's chaotic reactions to situations that normally don't happen in their sleepy towns. Mostly, we just don't care if gunfire is happening so long as the bullets aren't coming at us.

Now, moving from an area with lots of drive-by's to an area with redneck neighbors spontaneously shooting in their backyards was an adjustment. Lol...

<comment><USER6> Do you perceive more danger from the drive-by's or from the rednecks?

<comment><USER5> Far as shooting, there was little danger from either so long as you don't antagonize them. The drive-by's were more dangerous in terms of stray bullets given rednecks were in rural areas and tended to shoot in directions without many homes. In terms of face-to-face, rednecks are worse as I've never had a drive-by targeted at me but plenty of rednecks made up a reason in their head to start some stuff. And they're usually tough and have back-up with more than 9's. Fortunately, they'll shout or fight 10x more often than they'd shoot so I've never had to use a weapon on them other than these knuckles.

Best to avoid the worst of both rednecks and people in the hood. That said, plenty of rednecks and people in the hood are alright day-to-day. Some are pretty awesome. I had plenty of fun with and learned plenty from both types of people. Hood rats taught how to hustle better. Rednecks taught me how to shoot more interesting guns. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Remember, it's pronounced "njuːˈmædrɨd". I don't think TFA will win any prizes from the Illinois Office of Tourism. It's fine to decry riverfront casino architecture or the unpleasant monotony of driving through Illinois (although I suspect he's never transited Kansas or Texas), but how can you talk about old buildings in Cahokia and not mention the Mounds?

<comment><USER4> Also a great Uncle Tupelo song (they repeatedly pronounce it for you!):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7CGkuLEs5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7CGkuLEs5U)

Briefly the name of my new company, too.

<comment><USER7> I was going to post that song, but you beat me to it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _" Growing up in Illinois filled me with such a longing to escape that it's hard to imagine someone wanting to live here. [...] The passengers have the haunted, vacant look of people who have just taken an Illinois road trip. [...]"_

Hmm. I heard from another native about the snow pile in the mall parking lot being the tallest hill for many miles around, but he did not seem too fazed by that.

 _" If you enjoyed this post, send me to Antarctica!"_

That seems a bit harsh.

(OK, OK, the funding includes a return trip.)

P.S. Was puzzled by _' our front passenger points at a row of low hills and says, with a big smile on her face, "Karsty!". The car shakes with laughter.'_; a search found me this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst) , which I suppose will have to do.

</comment><comment><USER5> Entertaining and terrifying article. Now I get to loose a bit more sleep on this. (sighs) Going to pass that favor along by forwarding the link to other inhabitants of this power keg (read: death trap) that is the Mid-South.

More seriously, the situation isn't unknown over here. Many of us are told what happened as campfire stories and such. Running the "Mighty Mississippi" backwards plus creating Realfoot Lake [1] left us in shock and awe. Especially after fishing at Realfoot. Then we tried to calm down by asking when the next one is coming and what they did to prevent us from being buried in rubble. The answers... didn't calm us down one bit... The New Madrid fault's potential is so devastating that people either leave the area or just put it out of their mind until some asshole writes another article lol.

The worst thing is we have bad storms, tornados, and potential for a major earthquake. The protections against the first two tend to make the other one worse. And vice versa. Tapei 101 has an interesting solution but Mighty Madrid would probably throw that sucker right out of the ground (or sink it). Not being in the area is literally the only safe strategy. I just hope the Big One doesn't hit during one of the many tornado invasions...

[1] [http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3713836](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3713836)

<comment><USER7> In the mid-1980s, I was at Grinnell College in Iowa. One summer, there was a tornado warning - one on the ground, a couple miles away from campus. A bunch of students visiting from California for some academic thing ran out to the soccer field to watch. The native midwesterners like me told them to get inside NOW (we didn't mention that the part of campus they were on was completely destroyed by a tornado in the 1920s). One sneered, "Hah! You've never lived through an earthquake!" I told him that I won't go into the basement of a brick building during an earthquake if he won't stand in an open field during a tornado. Then I went to the basement, because I'm not stupid. Dunno if they did or not.

<comment><USER5> Lmao that's hilarious. "Hey, it's one of those things that put objects through brick walls and fling trailers through the air. Let's get close to it!" I nominate them for At-Risk Survivor status on Darwin Award page.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, seriously. Native midwesterners (I grew up in central Illinois, in a nasty tornado alley) take tornadoes seriously. They were new on campus, or they'd know that the dorms they walked out of to go see the tornado were built because the previous dorms had been destroyed by a tornado.

<comment><USER5> I have so many tornado stories from Tennessee and Mississippi it isn't funny. My mom says I was jerked off the ground (in her hand) by one when I was a kid but I must've blocked it out. One time we were in the trailer in the bathroom... wishful survival thinking I know... when she got sucked into the vent she was laying on due to air pressure, vacuum, or something. My dad had to pull her off it. Another time at school some people wanted to get to their family [against our recommendations] but two people couldn't pull the door open against the tornado's winds forcing it shut. Another time was a storm rather than tornado with 90mph windows that had me practically crawling to the house, garbage cans rolling down streets, and cars barely keeping on their path. Most recent was when we lost our shed to either a tornado or intense storm. I was temporarily living somewhere else & can't recall details except to say there's no trace of it in the backyard lol. House is fine, though, except for constant roof work.

So, I was thinking on these underground houses as a potential solution to that and then there's this article on New Madrid fault... (sighs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a great writer, and the article seems well researched. I note that he's got a Kickstarter to go to Antarctica, just chipped in for that.

<comment><USER10> While I understand his humorous writing style, this:

"always attributed this to Midwesterners being a more seismically sensitive people, perhaps due to their vast bulk, but the difference is a matter of objective fact."

Made me stop reading. There is a difference between mocking a place for comedy, and mocking a people for comedy. One is observational, one is just mean.

<comment><USER4> As a stereotypically bulky midwesterner, I appreciated the attention to detail.

He was definitely making a point of being mean to Illinois, with all the flair of someone who's never spent more than a day or so in Indiana. But (a) he grew up here, so he's entitled and (b) it's not like people are any nicer to the horrid overstuffed tech prospecting camp he lives in now.

<comment><USER7> As a central Illinois native, I know not to spend more than a day or so in Indiana if I can possibly avoid it. I'm right there with the writer on the need to escape as soon as you can, although I never made it farther than Minnesota.

(Incidentally, I love Minneapolis with my whole heart - it's all the good of the midwest with very little of the bad)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but he grew up in the Ferris Bueller suburbs of Chicago, not corn country. So while I sympathize with your urgent need to escape, in his case I think it's a symptom of (perhaps mild) dysfunction.

<comment><USER11> What sort of dysfunction?

<comment><USER4> The "being a big old jerk face" dysfunction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author's from the area, so he probably was around when Iben Browning[1] made predictions of a 6.5-7.5 magnitude earthquake in December 1990. The predictions made international news, and then punchlines.

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

</comment><comment><USER13> My mother works for the Red Cross in mid MO. Within the last year, I believe, they had a massive multi-state training scenario for a large quake on that fault. It's definitely as close to worst case scenario as MO natural disasters go.</comment>


My first tiny "weekend project": readable text hosting. Useful? - <AUTHOR> http://tidypub.org <comment><USER3> I love this! Tons of places to dump text on the web but I've never seen one that gives you a _clean_ page. Suggestions:

\- Set a cookie and let the poster edit/delete the page after it's published. They will make typos, mess up the formatting, post while drunk, etc.

\- Markdown formatting. You need at least bold and italics. You could even have a small toolbar. I don't think the editor needs to be _super_ minimal, just the viewer.

\- Make sure the branding and links at the bottom are visually distinct from anything the user could enter. Maybe give it a grey background or invert it or something. Fixed positioning is also an option, but might be too annoying.

\- Remove the Feedback tab from the viewer.. really spoils the aesthetic.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if I would agree with Markdown, depending on your audience. I'm of the opinion that trying to teach the concept of markup to ordinary people is always going to alienate some non-technical users.

I'd just suggest adding buttons for bold, italic & link. That way you can still keep it simple. I'm all for having a ruthless approach to unnecessary features.

<comment><USER5> I used to be on that side, but with Reddit's success and their use of Markdown I've decided that it is OK for even the non-technical audience. (Though there still should be the little "formatting help" button like they have nearby)

<comment><USER4> Reddit provides enough value for its users for them to invest the effort to learn some Markdown. This is due to Reddit's content and community being the main sources of value for the user, not it's text-formatting features. I couldn't say the same for this app. If they can't pick it up in two seconds, I think most won't bother.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks really awesome. I dig the clean interface/presentation.

The app is done well enough where nothing is overtly bad or glaring. That being said, I do have a few light thoughts & suggestions.

\- I agree a source textbox for citations would be nice, but it's not too pressing considering you can include it at the end. In a similar vein, an author box would be nice too.

\- Any reason why the URLs are 5 letters long? Not to undervalue the popularity of the service, but you could easily start out with 3 letter abbreviations, which would give you ~150k URLs.

\- For that matter, what is your character set? Are you using just letters, or alphanumeric characters? Again, I'd prefer the former since you aren't going to get a significant boost from the extra choices. You might also want to take out 'O', 'o', and 'l' so its unambiguous when written out.

\- Finally, although I'd be weary of allowing crazy markup systems, it might be good to implement a lightweight format such as Markdown. Nothing too fancy, but it's nice to be able to add _emphasis_ without having to SHOUT.

For fun, my comment on tidypub: <http://tidypub.org/moAbu>

<comment><USER7> > Any reason why the URLs are 5 letters long?

What has Twitter done to this world? I for one would like to see the title you type appear in the url.

<comment><USER6> Actually, it's more of an issue with writing down the URL and passing it on.

Less characters means its harder to screw up. Question marks and random letters make non-techie people anxious. If its short, it at least helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My point was to be able to publish readable "blog posts" on sites like HN and reddit without an actual blog. I'd love to hear feedback on whether it might be useful, and if not, what might make it so.

<comment><USER8> You can also do this by emailing anything (e.g. text, pictures, YouTube link, gist URL, etc) from any email address to firstname.lastname@example.com. Of course, future emails to the same address are tied to the same blog, so if anonymity is your goal (including no association to a previous anonymous post), that option wouldn't work.

Nice clean look & feel though. It looks almost exactly the same as what my Readability bookmarklet turn out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Weeeelll... I was somewhat inspired by readability, so a resemblance is not coincidental.

I have seen posterous, but I was going for something even simpler. The email to post idea is pretty cool though. Thanks a lot for the feedback.

<comment><USER9> Being able to send an email and get the URL back without having a full blog set up like posterous would be awesome. It really could become an anonymous blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love it.

Don't listen to those asking for markdown, WYSIWYG editing and the like - <USER2> it simple. /Maybe/ do some detection to identify links and linkify them, but that's it. The instant usability and beautiful /enforced/ styling are its strong points, adding more customisability just dilutes this, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice!

How about a script for a *NIX command line?

      $ tidypub -t 'Any Title' < foo.txt
      http://www.tidypub.org/wHzf3
      $

<comment><USER12>
        $ ./tidypub -t "How about this?" < tidypub
        http://tidypub.org/doHLm

This is a python script I just wrote. Unfortunately, the white space gets lost. Try <https://gist.github.com/721676>

<comment><USER13> Does anyone else appreciate the irony of a Python app losing whitespace?

<comment><USER12> I definitely do, but just for record, it's the browser not rendering the white space. It is there if you look in the page source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Aaron Swartz did it first with <http://jottit.com/>

<comment> mike-cardwell Jottit works without JavaScript and also has a HTTPS version:

<https://jottit.com/>

There is also a HTTPS-Everywhere ruleset for it in the current development branch.

For those reasons alone, I would always choose jottit over tidypub...

<comment><USER15> Why is working without js an advantage? Do you often browse on browsers that do not possess a js interpreter?

<comment> mike-cardwell Because I choose to disable it by default for security and privacy reasons.

There is _no_ good reason that this site should require javascript. _Nothing_ it does is improved by the javascript requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like it. One minor suggestion: Put your < link > tags in the head because right now, I'm seeing ugly flashes of unstyled content (<http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/fouc.asp/>).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. The website is actually in need of much cleanup, even though it is small. I was trying to roll it out asap, in fears that otherwise it would never see the light of day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is useful to share bits of a larger text. A "source" text box to input the URL of the source would be great. Thanks!

<comment><USER18> //A "source" text box to input the URL of the source//

If the source already has a URL, then why is it needed to create a another (short) URL for that source again! a URL shortener (bit.ly, goo.gl) could be used in that scenario. :)

<comment><USER19> You could just send part of the text or you could just want a text with a cleaner look.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To add to my earlier comment:

Jottit <https://jottit.com> has the same minimalist interface, but has a lot more features to offer.

      * "WYSIWYG" editing with Markdown syntax.
      * Custom subdomains
      * Access control
      * https
      * Custom theming etc.,

<comment><USER20> I don't think they're after the same thing, despite the similarities. TidyPub is pretty, readable, and, to use a term from the site, 'classy'. It's about ONE entry. One page.

Jottit is about making a website -- multiple pages, themes, etc. It's more like a quick wiki. It's certainly not as readable or pretty, but is quite utilitarian -- not a bad thing, just different.

So, despite the two both beginning the process with a simple textarea and a button, they're not the same, and neither should strive to be the other.

<comment><USER14> Nothing stops the user from using only the frontpage of jottit that provides the exact same functionality with no additional complexity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's useful as a user interface experiment. Most blogs require signing up before posting. This lets people post first, maybe get some traffic, then you can gradually suggest new features based on how each user uses it.

I doubt you'll get enough users though.

</comment><comment><USER22> Could you tell us something about how it was built?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that is not an exciting story. I used Django. And, oh yeah, its on shared hosting... for now...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice looking service. I'm not sure it's something I'd use but I could see it being used. One thing to look out for is spammers.

I find that the most of spam that I get on paste site I run is deplorable link spam for illegal content. I'm not talking about warez or torrent links either. I ended up having to write a filtering to look for keywords and url to content analysis and then submit content that triggers the filter to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER24> See Infogami. It's not available anymore, but maybe some use ideas there. [http://web.archive.org/web/20061107190837/http://infogami.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20061107190837/http://infogami.com/)

<comment><USER25> It also seems very similar to the (crowded) pastebin space, which according to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastebin> have been around since at least 2002.

To be honest, I think it would be hard to get a profitable business out of your idea (the cost to acquire customers would probably exceed the lifetime present value). However, I suspect that profit isn't necessarily your intention here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Looks very nice. Maybe add a button to toggle between light and dark interface?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea! When making it I was really torn between a dark and light scheme. You solved the dilemma. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> i built exactly this last year, over a weekend ... it's at <http://reduce.li>

Though i dont maintain it anymore, there's basic visitor tracking by adding a + to the generated url, just like bit.ly.

Very soon, online pharmacy bots started spamming me!

In retrospect, looking at all the positive feedback here, I feel that where I went wrong was adding bloat like picture uploading/url shortening etc...

</comment><comment><USER28> Not sure if this was said, but add a little text editor like in gmail so one could add links, etc. The main point of what your trying to do is so people can add this text to twitter, facebook, etc. Like a mini published text based website. Great Job!

</comment><comment><USER29> I like this a lot. I can already think back to a number of times when I or a friend could have used this. I can't imagine it being simpler to use, and I like the nice, clean presentation of the text.

</comment><comment><USER30> Another similar project is <http://wrttn.in/> (it's a royal pain to spell). Is it true that tidypub really has no admin link to edit the original post from?

</comment><comment><USER31> This is one feature of <http://stk8.co>

<http://stk8.co/Wpbbbc>

But stk8.co supports links as well, like:

<http://stk8.co/gkbbbc>

:)

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting, merits further development I think. The idea has merit but not quite just in this current form, you need to find some other missing element to marry it too perhaps.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Nice. If you were to use the placeholder attribute for the title box, and change the publish button to a "submit" type input, then it would work without requiring JavaScript...

</comment><comment><USER33> Good idea but logo not readable. <https://skitch.com/jm3net/rnqge/logo-not- readable>

</comment><comment><USER34> Why not expand on the concept that people could use a place to store an annotation of any sort. That way, if I want to leave people text, photos, a presentation, an embedded video, etc, I can do that without the need to create a blog or let that person see a full history of other things I've written. Another idea would be to generate a QR code for the page.

That being said, I can't think of very many times I've needed something like this. If I had more to say on a topic than I wanted to leave in a comment, I'd blog about it. If I knew the person, I'd email them.

<comment><USER35> +1 for QR code gen

<comment><USER36> +2 I think that would make a nice, easy, useful way to tie a digital comment to the physical world, QR graffiti tied to a manifesto anyone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Text should be fully justified, rather than just left justified.

Ligatures would be nice too, but I guess that is dependent on things outside the apps control.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interesting. What I like the most about it is that it ends up looking very similar to my Readability setup. :-)

</comment><comment><USER39> How about adding a print button/link on the same page as the text ?

<comment><USER40> Why? Can't you use browser's print button?

<comment><USER41> When I print preview in firefox, the margins seem to big. All the text is squished into a narrow column.

<comment><USER42> I think it just needs a @media(print) stylesheet then? (Or whatever the actual name is.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is great. MathJax support would kick ass too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I was looking for something like that. Thanks for the pointer! This is a feature which I, personally, would like to see soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Your competition:

<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability>

<comment><USER45> Not really. Readability is for content that's already online. His 'competition' is sites like pastebin.

<comment><USER44> That depends on what you think the product is. Tidypub is pastebin+readability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> What about pastebin ?

</comment><comment><USER47> very neat.. nice work!

</comment><comment><USER48> great idea

</comment><comment><USER49> To get rid of the cutoff gray background after pressing the feedback tab in Chrome, you can add "html {height: 100%}" to your CSS. This adds a vertical scrollbar though, but again just in Chrome. I had to deal with this on my Get Satisfaction widget too.

Nice service by the way. I love the low barrier to posting. Like pastie.org, but for publishing.

</comment><comment><USER50> neat idea, nice spike at it. i could see this filling a certain use case for some folks.</comment>


Startup studios on the rise - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@aszig/startup-studios-on-the-rise-34ec5ad8310d

<comment><USER2> So, if you're in a studio (either as EIR or a techie or anything), you get assigned to different startups? Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of entrepreneurship, like pursuing whatever idea you have?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are working on your first startup, and are in love with the idea so much, that you would not be able to do anything else, then you might be right.

On the other hand, if your priority is to build a (working, sustainable) company, or become a leader / ceo, then a studio environment could provide you with a better basis for your goals - stability, etc etc</comment></comment>