Highly Maintainable, Efficient & Optimized CSS - <AUTHOR> http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.zomigi.com/downloads/Highly-Maintainable-Efficient-Optimized-CSS.pdf&pli=1

<comment><USER2> Some good stuff but lost me with the indenting. It is easy enough to just scan up and down to see related definitions. Indenting like that makes it harder and is illogical. They aren't embedded styles within styles and tidy-like tools you'd use to clean up formatting wouldn't respect that identation.</comment>


Corporate Entities - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/02/corporate-entity.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AVc+%28A+VC%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> A nice piece that will stimulate thinking on when and how to set up your entity.

With a tech startup, an equally important goal is to have an entity to which all IP is assigned as it is created, as opposed to being severally owned by a group of founders working loosely together without a company structure. Founders can (and often do) choose to kick the company setup down the road assuming they can later clean up IP issues, and this can work just fine as long as no issues or disagreements arise before the setup. If a founder departs from the team while owning IP separately, however, this can create due diligence problems for the startup when it goes for funding or is acquired. Thus, it is not normally good to leave the IP issues loose (at least if IP is important to the company), and this should prompt founders to set up their entity sooner rather than later as they begin to develop anything of value in their pre-incorporation stage.

Other good reasons to incorporate earlier rather than later in most cases are found in the top comment in this recent thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126785>), where various HN'ers took issue with the idea that incorporation should be deferred until the time of funding.

I personally think the corporate form tends to fit better for most early-stage startups than does the LLC form but that is an issue for another day. (I discuss some of the factors here, for anyone interested: <http://grellas.com/faq_business_startup_005.html> \- see point 2, "Normally go with a corporation instead of an LLC").</comment>


Huffshell: You probably type too much. - <AUTHOR> http://paulmckellar.com/huffshell/

<comment><USER3> While I'm not sold on this particular concept, it does highlight a feature of modern Unices which bears pointing out: the command-line environment isn't some dreadful primitive thing that should only be relied on as a last resort.

Rather, it's the evolutionary end-point of some 40+ years of continuous improvement in issuing and processing text-based information streams (both commands and outputs), in a very powerful, highly flexible, extremely adaptable manner.

The age of "Oh, Linux, that's like DOS" are far beyond us. But it bears pointing out that this is much like comparing a pogo stick to an F-22 / Boeing 777 / Mercedes E-class. Yeah, the both get you places. How, how much, at what speed, and in what style ... differ.

<comment><USER4> >But it bears pointing out that this is much like comparing a pogo stick to an F-22 / Boeing 777 / Mercedes E-class.

Well, more like comparing an early horse drawn carriage to the latter three. A pogo stick has always been a toy - never designed to get work done, however inefficiently. Primitive command lines were still attempts at letting you get work done, they just weren't as good as what we have now (or, in some cases and for some purposes, contemporary graphical alternatives).

<comment><USER3> It's also worth pointing out that many current CLIs are still grossly crippled. The DOS / CMD.exe environment in Windows. Oracle's sql client. Sun/Oracle's default tcsh. Cisco's IOS. All of which lack one or more of readline, tab completion, command history, pipelines, and other, really basic, modern shell features.

One of the first selling points for Linux when I first started exploring it a decade and a half ago was that while some of the internals were a tad crufty, the _userland_ (much of it, admittedly, GNU) _didn't_ suck, and _didn't_ suck in a much bigger way than stock commercial proprietary unices _did_ suck.

Pogo stick or oxcart, the point is that many such tools were, or are now, pretty much intentionally crippled.

<comment><USER5> DOS supported those you mention, and cmd.exe finally has them on by default in recent winders. It is still primitive though in everything else, e.g. scripting. Powershell with its weird syntax is a big improvment, but we split up after XP.

<comment><USER3> I haven't used Powershell at all. Would've been far better for MSFT to have adopted bash and provided windows-specific utilities where absolutely necessary.

DOS / cmd.exe, last I checked, didn't have true pipes, true shell expansion, or true readline capabilities (unless it's now GPLd, which I very much doubt). It does have some history and tab completion (though that last works weirdly IMO).

By shell expansion: expansion of wildcard globs by the shell, and not by specific utilities. Piping -- I forget the specifics, but it's always seemed hit or miss, mostly miss. Readline: see readline(3).

<comment><USER5> Yep, NIH.

DOS was primitive but the things you mentioned worked, even if they were a simulation. The end user was unaware, unless they needed real OS capabilites. In which case, why were they using DOS?

Cmd has a lot of improvements most people are not aware of because they were off by default. Still they refused to do further improvement necessary to make it very useful. There is a 3rd party shell called 4NT that is/was a compatible and very powerful replacement.

<comment><USER3> The thing about DOS's globbing is that it wasn't DOS that was doing the globbing, but executables. And they'd do it inconsistently. The executables were also _aware_ if they were passed, say, a '*', and might change their behavior as a consequence (I'm trying to remember whether or not this was actually been the case, can't say, it's been too many years).

Which doesn't happen in any Bourne-compliant shell, as it's the shell which expands the wildcard, not the app (an unexpanded or escaped wildcard character can of course be passed to an executable).

<comment><USER5> True. I remember someone here complaining about that just the other day, said it was a bad idea, but I can't remember why. I prefer the shell doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've actually been thinking about how I'd like this for all my typing, but it's difficult to imagine how to do it.

One trick I've learned, if you want to make sure you get the benefit of this sort of approach, is to ensure that the new alias is not just possible, but mandatory. If you map "git commit" to something, you should make it no longer possible to type "git commit" instead of your new alias, and doing so should pop up the correction. This can also be used to move keys around; turn your Caps Lock into _a_ Control key, you'll never use it, but if you unmap the left Control key at the same time, you'll find you've adjusted in about 5 uncomfortable minutes. It's fast enough to be worth experimenting with.

<comment><USER7> I've certainly found this the case when creating new key bindings for Emacs. Of course, this now means that other people have a little bit of trouble using my Emacs because some of the basic key bindings don't work any more and some of them do something new :).

I'm now using this strategy whenever I want to change something like a common command or key binding--essentially anything that is a habit I don't have to think about.

Another thing to note is that it really helps if you come up with the alias or new key combination yourself. I find it takes almost no effort to memorize a key binding I choose myself as opposed to remembering a new one that comes with the tool itself.

<comment><USER8> For vim I benefitted greatly from

      " disable arrow keys
      nnoremap <Up> <nop>
      nnoremap <Down> <nop>
      nnoremap <Left> <nop>
     nnoremap <Right> <nop>

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's the advice I'd give to people starting out in Emacs too. I didn't use it but somehow got the hang of navigating around with the keyboard anyhow. It's probably because I personally did not use the arrow keys before switching to Emacs--I usually used the mouse.

A bunch of people I know do use the arrow keys to move around, and it's quite a loss. You don't gain _that_ much just by being on the home row, of course, but there is _some_ gain. However, the real win comes when you start using higher-level movement commands and moving by word/line/paragraph/expression/whatever. People used to the arrow keys will not be able to take advantage of these nice commands nearly as easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm. I think my history is a very poor measure of the typing I do. It's the rare command I type that doesn't benefit substantially from tab completion and/or modification of earlier commands.

<comment><USER9> came here to write this. For example, if I look at my history, I have a bunch of `git diff` and `bundle exec rake test`, which actually correspond to `<C-r>-d-i` and `<C-r>b`, and a few `heroku ...`which amount to `he<Up>`.

The single command to actually count this occurrences required way more typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you have to do it once, fine. Some work needs to be done.

If you have to do it twice, think it over a bit.

If you have to do it a third time, automate it.

I am lazy enough that I have aliases setup to change to directories I frequently use. I know people who have gone far beyond anything I have done and looking over their shoulder when they are at the shell will show a highly custom environment with dozens of custom scripts that automate all sorts of multi-step commands.

I even know a few people who have used most of the alphabet to create single letter scripts. That is efficient!

<comment><USER11> Aliases to cd into directories? You need to check out autojump style tools! Will change your life.

e.g. <https://github.com/rupa/z>

I very, very rarely type cd by hand anymore, mostly just use z and popd

</comment></comment><comment> B-Con I fail to see why this is "too much". Pragmatically, for a competent typist, all of these duplicate commands add up to a grand total of what, like 2 minutes a month? You will easily spend a few months of savings performing the analysis and crafting the aliases.

Not that I'm against aliases - even minor time savers are indeed worth it - <USER2> just wouldn't call it "too much". I bet that a lot of people wouldn't care that much.

<comment><USER12> I agree. You need to look at that net time saved, not the gross.

In addition, if you're at a terminal on a new server, or someone else's station, all those aliases will be gone.

For me, that means any special aliases or scripts had better be awesome enough to convince someone else to use them... Or infrequent enough that I can't be bothered to remember the whole command. Or just so useful that it's worth overriding the above.

Shortening a 3-letter command into a 1-letter command is not going to fit into the above. Especially when I will have typed 'git' before I remember that I can just type 'g' instead, since I touch-type without looking. It just flows out.

</comment></comment><comment> X-Istence The biggest issue I've had when attempting to customise my shell is the same issue I've had while working with my custom vim setup and that is the issue of a different machine.

When I log into a new machine I still need to be able to find my way around, I still need to be able to edit files, I still need to be able to run various different commands. These can even be completely different shells or different versions of vi (nvi on FBSD for example, vim without python support on another system and so on).

Yes, my workstation has my vim customisations, but it only has the bare needed ones the rest are stock. Even on a vim without any of the scripts I have I would be proficient and I wouldn't miss a beat. Same thing for the shell, typing commands in full means I don't have to worry about muscle memory.

ll for example for ls -la is nice and all, but it isn't available on most of the machines I administer so I end up typing out ls -la anyway. That has become muscle memory for me now, and I am not worried about trying to change that.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does this include the times where the user presses the 'Up' arrow key to retype a previous command?

I think that would skew the results a bit if so.

<comment><USER14> I'll often use Up/^p/^r(i-reverse-search) to find a previous command and edit it's argument, which is where the tree nature of this tool would come in handy. If I 'type' the first n terms of a command enough times, it might be better to alias that part of the command rather than navigate my history and then edit the rest of the command repeatedly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find that using good aliases for common git command is quite useful. Here are my gitconfig to show some examples. <https://github.com/alexcp/gitconfig/blob/master/.gitconfig>

</comment><comment><USER16> Using git commit -m is a guaranteed way to write useless and ill-formatted commit messages.

<comment><USER17> Unless of course you only need to write one line. Not every use of git requires complex formatting in commit messages. Almost all of my git repos are used by me alone, and one line is enough. Obviously this isn't the main purpose of git, but I'm guessing I'm not the only developer using it this way.

<comment><USER18> Additionally, there's significant benefit to lots of tiny commits with a 1 sentence what changed and the squash the commits and write the larger, better formatted one based on your list of one-liners.

<comment><USER19> I am completely sold on a large series of tiny commits. I am not sold on squashing them together. Why do that?

<comment><USER18> I frequently have a commit history that looks something like:

        * Add call stub to Foo, add calls to the stub where needed
        * Beginnings of implementation, seems really friggin slow right now.
        * Ok, back to square one, need calls to X, Y and Z, can be chained together, wrap behind the call we actually need.
        * Final implementation

Which I then may leave comments in the code about the obvious approach that didn't work, or why it is the way it is. I then squash this into two commits, first one covering the implementation added to Foo with an appropriate descriptive commit message and a second commit after it that actually uses the new implementation.

Most of the incomplete commits aren't necessary, but we only develop on topic branches and I have a desktop I use at work and a laptop that travels to and from work with me (in case of deciding to work at a coffeeshop, or want to kick back, etc.). The ability to push not-yet-done work to my topic branch makes it available to either computer and the committing when halfway through because it's time to not be at the desk can easily be fixed with squashed commits.

<comment><USER19> Ah, so we're not talking about taking a whole branch and squashing it into a single 2000 line commit called "Implemented at FooBar" then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On a similar note, I like to periodically clean out my shell history by dropping commands less than a certain Levenshtein edit distance from earlier commands[1]. Looking at the removed lines would probably produce further ideas for optimizing commands; I'll have to try it next time.

[1] rudimentary script: <https://github.com/decklin/bin/blob/master/hprune> (haven't bothered to add real option parsing or make it efficient; for shell histories of thousands of lines you probably want to up the search depth to something in the hundreds)

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting analysis, once I got it to work. (I have my zsh configured to put history in ~/.zsh_cache/history, not one of the default files. I don't use oh- my-zsh, either.)

If I get to the point where I want to play with this, I'll probably fork it and propose some changes back. It also strongly suggests that I should blow away my history because there's some unusual values reported because of my work.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was inspired by this to share the rebuild alias I've finally come up with:

      sf = tcstop && mvp stretch-base,stretch-app && tcs
        tcstop = ~/tomcat6/bin/catalina.sh stop
        mvp = mvn package -projects
        tcs = cl && tcstart && sti
    		cl = cleard; cleari; cleare; cleart
    			cleard = find /cygdrive/c/var/log/tomcat6/*.debug -exec truncate -s 0 {} \;
    			cleari = find /cygdrive/c/var/log/tomcat6/*.info -exec truncate -s 0 {} \;
    			cleare = find /cygdrive/c/var/log/tomcat6/*.err -exec truncate -s 0 {} \;
    			cleart = find /home/sthomas/tomcat6/logs/catalina.out -exec truncate -s 0 {} \;
    		tcstart = ~/tomcat6/bin/catalina.sh start
    		sti = tail -f /cygdrive/c/var/log/tomcat6/*.info ~/tomcat6/logs/catalina.out

</comment><comment><USER23> Also see an old article of mine titled "Working with git? These aliases will save you hours!":

<http://www.catonmat.net/blog/git-aliases/>

</comment><comment><USER24> Is typing git commit over and over again really so terrible? It's pretty much muscle memory anyways.

Personally, I like to leave my setup as stock as possible, so I can still be productive regardless of whose computer I happen to be using.

<comment><USER25> Whenever there is an argument of a CLI being suboptimal you can be sure that the counter is going to be "but it's all in my muscle memory!". CLI itself isn't efficient, it just FEELS efficient. Its real strength is the scriptability, such that repeating tasks can be substituted. If you deny yourself that power, you'd probably be better off with a GUI and good use of hotkeys.

Now, I'm aware that there are different usage scenarios. A typical developer only ever works on a handful of systems at the same time period - which makes handling your personal set of scripts a viable option. Administrators are an entirely different beast.

<comment><USER26> I'd say that administrators who can't set up a system that allows them to have individual setups maybe should pick another job. Even if you're sharing a root account, you could still source your unique shortcuts and aliases. The only thing prevent you from doing that is privileges, of course (although even then there are partial workarounds).

But there is a point about optimizing typing. If you're just going to replace "git" with "g", you'll save two characters. You're probably not quite down to a third of the time, but there will be a measurable difference. But given that there's some overlap with other actions (e.g. you might already be pondering your commit message), the measured productivity increase will probably be pretty small.

In cases like that, it's probably better to look at the whole workflow, so you're not just saving time at the micro level. Save/unify several steps of the whole procedure (e.g. combine save-commit in your text editor).

And then consider that by reading this thread, you've spent x minutes that you'd have to work very hard to get back by saving keystrokes ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For improving your git-command-related efficiency, you could always use the excellent git-sh by Ryan Tomayko (CTO of GitHub): <https://github.com/rtomayko/git-sh>

<comment><USER28> Tower is pretty awesome too if you aren't wedded to the command line. I can do things in seconds that would take me awhile to figure out how to do on the command line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For a bare-bones approach, this shell command would also do the trick.

cut -d\ -f1 ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head

(Note: There should be two spaces after the -d\ .)

<comment><AUTHOR> (disclaimer: this is my link/blog/software)

If that doesn't work for you, this might:

history 1 | awk '{print $2}' | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"}{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail | sort -nr

What that doesn't give you is the command tree, for example "git commit" vs "git checkout". It just does "git".

[edit, added gem link] The gem is here <https://github.com/paulmars/huffshell>

<comment><USER30> Generating the word tree is short and simple, though. It's also useful as a standalone Unix utility. Here's my one-minute hack:

        import sys
        import collections

        tree = lambda: collections.defaultdict(lambda: [0, tree()])

        def printtree(node, indent=0):
            padding = indent * ' '
            for word, (count, child) in node.iteritems():
                print "%s%s %d" % (padding, word, count)
                printtree(child, indent + 2)

        wordtree = tree()
        for line in sys.stdin:
            node = wordtree
            for word in line.split():
                node[word][0] += 1
                node = node[word][1]
        printtree(wordtree)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I keep forgetting that bash has tab completion. I only found out when I got fish.</comment>


How A.I. Is Creating Building Blocks to Reshape Music and Art - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/arts/design/google-how-ai-creates-new-music-and-new-artists-project-magenta.html <comment><USER2> A.I. generated art is cool in theory, but I question what the purpose is. I supposed it's a good exercise in learning how to build advanced AI and machine learning, but do we really need auto-generated art (and music)?

Art (I'm including music in this) is at it's core, a reflection of the human experience. It is the product of sentient beings demonstrating consciousness. It is, in essence, humanity. If "art" is produce by a machine, is it still art? I see it as a product to be used commercially.

Look at the photograph - the internet has already completely changed how photos function in our society. They are no longer precious keepsakes and family heirlooms, but instead are disposable easily produced social currency- tokens.

Maybe I have an overly romanticized view on art/music, but it is the last thing I want automated in any shape or form. They are expressions of the human experience as old as humanity itself. Why take that away?</comment>


Surface Pricing Announced - $499 USD - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2012/Oct12/10-16announcementPR.aspx

<comment><USER2> More competition to Apple/Android is good for us. I'm surprised such a techy crowd isn't jumping on the opportunity to try out new tech.

I just pre-ordered mine and I'm stoked!

<comment><USER3> I for one really like the idea in terms of hardware, but my bad experiences with the RC of Windows 8 convinced me to not bother.

<comment><USER4> Same here. Besides, people are buying not tablets, they are buying ecosystems. Apple has the great one. Same with Amazon. Same with Google. What mobile ecosystem does Microsoft have? Very limited at this point. And virtually no apps for Windows RT.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. Browser, Office, and a keyboard make a pretty compelling argument for lots of people. All they really need is a Facebook app (which is integrated into the People Hub) and it's what most people will really want. Then they also have Messages (doesn't include GTalk, but different people use different things. A lot of the world prefers MSN Messenger over AIM for instance. And many people use FB Chat and Skype. It's not excusing MS for not having GTalk, but it does cover lots of use-cases and peole)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Battery: iPad 42.5-watt-hour clearly mentioning browsing time (its called confidence on your quality) Surface RT 31.5-watt-hour Pro 42-watt-hour

WiFi+Cellular: iPad Yep Surface WiFi only

Weight: iPad 1.44lbs to 1.46lbs Surface RT 1.5lbs and Pro 2.0lbs

Applications: iPad Rock solid platform unified Surface Choose between RT and Pro messed up ARM and x86

For me I think Microsoft has done same mistake again, introduce "complexity" and if you look closely they are actually selling you a "not a gorgeous quality stuff" for same price as iPad. I don't see Microsoft dominating the market! Just getting a market douche on stage that makes you hear sound of click with no quality in product pisses me off!

<comment><USER6> Not to mention they are trying to sit between netbooks, laptops and tablets and they ship a USB 2.0 in 2012! DUH Microsoft!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is the nail on the already-likely-dead coffin of MS Surface. What's the market they are going after???

"tablet market"? nope - already dominated by iPad

"enterprise"? nope - 1) not a market, 2) already dominated by iPad

"budget"? nope - priced on par with iPad

seriously, how are they going to push this thing? they don't have a channel like Apple nor Amazon, so they need to rely on all their other paths.

they should've called this "XPad", made it a mobile Xbox, and sold through that channel - just like they did with Kinect.

fail fail fail.

<comment><USER8> Imagine if all other car makers said "Oh, the car market is already taken by Ford. We should do something else".

<comment><USER9> Ha, said much more eloquently than I would. I think it is odd that people are automatically dismissing it simply because it is not an iPad. I guess that is how the hive mind works now-a-days. I like the Surface because it is a genuinely unique OS. And, in many ways it is better than Apple's offering. The gestures are better, it surfaces information better, and it works much better as a productivity device. When has _better_ become not good enough?

<comment><USER7> better is rarely enough. the biggest killer of "great" products? ones that are "good enough".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It appears they are using Vapor deposition of Magnesium to make the body. I hope it is just a texture on the outside. If anything could escalate the problem of a combusting battery, it would be a metal that ignites at 480°C and burns at up to 3000°C.

Edit: this reminds me of the NeXTCube. <http://simson.net/hacks/cubefire.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Pro version have USB 3 and mini display port. It is a nice combo of mobility and ease like iPad + power like a laptop. It is a full blown mobile machine. Ipad, android are just content consuming devices. You can't do much on them besides just absorbing content. I am glad MS understood the missing features from ipad and came with this beautiful product.

<comment><USER12> > You can't do much on them besides just absorbing content…

… and writing, drawing, painting, designing, composing and playing music, editing spreadsheets and databases, building presentations, taking photos, editing photos, emailing, chatting, editing movies, and so on.

Yep. Only for watching YouTube. You bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Won't compete with iPad on quality. Won't compete with Android on price.

Why should anyone buy this?

<comment><USER14> Defend your first argument.

<comment><USER15> I reckon he'd make a history based approach. Never seen a Gateway circa 2000 run Mac software. But eh, I'm not him, no so idea to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The "Touch Cover", which I'm assuming is the bit with the keyboard, will run you an extra $100-120. Given the attention to the Touch Cover in the promotional material MS has distributed, I'm surprised that it's even optional.

</comment><comment><USER17> No 3G at all? Zune all over again.

<comment><USER18> I don't mind this so much presuming it can do Bluetooth tethering with my phone [vs WiFi due to power usage issues]. If I'm the device's user, I'll likely have my phone with me, so having a redundant radio in the device doesn't add value. And, if I let someone else use the device while I'm not around, the likelihood is that there will be an available WiFi source.

I'd like it-just-works connectivity between my phone and any other devices I carry with me. Right now, I have to hit a couple buttons on both devices -- a pain for short-term usage scenarios.

<comment><USER17> I can get tethering to work, my mom: never. My parents both got iPads and a device that isn't just online all the time could never ever work for them. iPad really set the bar on that one.

<comment><USER18> Yeah. Tethering still is too mysterious. If it's not working, which device is at fault? For awhile (pre-ICS), my Droid RAZR had a bug where it required a reboot before the hotspot would work. Of course, it failed silently and claimed to be making itself available!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see that price point as being too high. I think 399 USD would be right in that sweet spot (especially considering this will be considered a poor Ipad substitute in the beginning).

<comment><USER8> What people in this thread are missing is that Microsoft isn't trying to capture the entire WinRT market with this device, they're not trying to outsell their partners, they're trying to set a benchmark. Something for their partners to compete against, and for those partners to compete against it (and the iPad) successfully.

The point of Surface is to keep Asus, HP, Samsung, etc from making a not- quite-iPad for $700 and blogs mocking the demise of the platform. Basically, if WinRT partners cannot outsell the Surface, they don't deserve to be selling Windows tablets. That is what Microsoft is implying with this release. Making it impossible to compete against would actively destroy that effort.

<comment><USER15> No, I fully understand the claim that Microsoft has designed this and set the price point to encourage an ecosystem to stay afloat. Yet, Microsoft has done fine in a number of hardware spheres without serious competition (e.g. XBox-- 1, maybe 1.5 competitors between Sony and Nintendo).

I remain skeptical that the better good is the underlying motivation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If it was a little less, I'd probably buy this. I'm a huge fan of Windows 8 (don't get me wrong: it's going to be horrendous for regular users, but as a techie, I think it's a really nice UI). $500 though is just too much for something that is so easily dismissed. I'd pay that much for an iPad or a Macbook because I know they will be well built and work well. Surface has to prove itself to me and as of yet, it hasn't shown me why I should spend that much on it.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are going to be x86 Windows 8 tablets coming out that run all your windows programs ever. A lot of people are going to be pissed and confused about 2 different versions of windows with entirely different sets of compatibility. Also x86 tables will probably cheaper, just like netbooks, just to pour some salt in your wounds you got buying an expensive device that runs no programs.

<comment><USER21> If they're going to be cheaper, they are also going to be ridiculously slow compared to the iPad (and possibly the ARM Win8), or they are going to have ridiculously short battery life, or they are going to be subsidized by Microsoft (or all of the above ....)

Have you seen a netbook that can deliver 9 hours of real usage on Windows _and_ run at a reasonable speed (for $500, or even more)? I haven't. And the laptops that can are larger and much more expensive.

<comment><USER9> From what I have seen both the x86 and ARM perform on par with the iPad and have 9+ hours of battery life. I think you are just making stuff up now.

<comment><USER21> I am making it up that I couldn't find a notebook with ipad comparable snappy response times and ipad comparable battery time? I'm not saying I'm all- knowing and that I survey every single piece of hardware that ever goes on sale everywhere, but I did spend considerable time looking for a Windows one (I needed it for a product I'm selling, and ended up with a $2200 HP notebook instead! and it has less than 6 hours of useful battery life!), and came up empty.

If you know of such a notebook, please let me know. As they say, put up or shut up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Should mention in your title that it's $499 for the USD model. $499 doesn't really tell much about it and making comparisons to iPads are difficult given the lowest iPad is $499 for 16 GB.

It should also be noted that Office is coming pre-installed. Which is awesome given the pricing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know if this can be used for development and graphics editing? Or if it will run Windows Desktop apps?

I could almost see something like this replacing my everyday work computer.

<comment><USER23> It will not run Windows Desktop Apps.

What you are looking for is Surface Pro which will be available in a few months. Or you could buy any one of the Windows 8 (not Windows RT) convertible tablets/hybrids that will be available from the likes of Lenovo, HP, Acer, Asus, Samsung, etc after Windows 8 launches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Surface I thought was going to be a bit cheaper, but I think Microsoft occasionally makes good software.

</comment><comment><USER25> So will this be able to run standard Window's programs or just tablet versions of software? If it could run Windows applications then this could be a great alternative to ultrabooks, with the added perk of the flexibility of a tablet.

<comment><USER26> The Surface is running Windows RT, so the tablet versions of software. The Surface Pro (which doesn't have pricing info yet) will be x86 and therefore run standard Windows programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Also, doesn't have a GPS, so only WiFi location services...

</comment><comment><USER27> Any idea of international pricing?

<comment><USER28> 499USD will most probably translate into 499GBP unfortunately

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What is the resolution?

<comment><USER30> From AnandTech ([http://www.anandtech.com/show/6377/inside-microsofts- surface...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6377/inside-microsofts-surface-rt- tablet)): 1366x768.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I applaud Microsoft for doing something new-- the new windows UI is very original. Further, they have managed to meet Apple in terms of pricing for a comparable iPad, something others have struggled with.

But the big take-away innovation here, and the center of their marketing campaign, is that it has a keyboard cover.

This seems to be about 5 years out of sync. 5 years ago, everyone expected the iPhone to fail because it didn't have a physical keyboard like the blackberry.

But after I got my first iPad, the original, I found that I could type at nearly the same speed (possibly faster due to autocorrect) on its on screen keyboard as I can at a regular keyboard... my finger just go to the place the key is, and while feeling a physical key would be nice, the end result on the iPad was about the same speed.

I think this will sell well into markets that are heavily invested in microsoft infrastructure... but I don't see how it is going to take marketshare from the iPad.

\----

Edit to clarify, since several have responded on this point:

I'm not saying that keyboards have no use. I recognize that many people buy an extra keyboard for their iPad, and prefer that for significant typing.

The point I'm making is what is the differentiating feature here? The UI is different, true, but then its the keyboard.

There are two keyboard covers- one is flat, with no keys which I suspect would be much like typing on the iPAd screen (though of course, not actually on the screen... so a little different) and the other has keys, so similar to buying an external keyboard for the iPAd, only it is slightly more integrated.

Is that really compelling? Compared to buying a wireless keyboard for the iPad, the price is about the same (or cheaper for the iPad).... and the advantage of the Surface is that the keyboard connects to the tablet with magnets?

I just don't see that as being significant enough to really take significant share away from Apple. That's all I was saying.

<comment><USER32> > But after I got my first iPad, the original, I found that I could type at > nearly the same speed

Speed is certainly one issue, but the ergonomics of typing for an extended period favor separate screen and keyboard components. I too use a table for typing and while I'm pretty quick at it, I can't find a comfortable position that lets me do this for more than half an hour at a time. For this reason alone, the inclusion of a keyboard has certainly made me take notice of Microsoft's offering.

<comment><USER33> The included keyboard is definitely better than an on-screen one for human factors, but is it good enough to not be in the trough where an on-screen keyboard is more available (no keyboard-cover needed) and a full-size physical keyboard/mouse?

Personally, I think there is some traction in the Transformer style tablet - but the surface cover seems gimmicky. We'll have to see - if it works, I'll be thrilled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Who want this?

[http://www.microsoft.com/global/en- us/news/publishingimages/...](http://www.microsoft.com/global/en- us/news/publishingimages/ImageGallery/Images/Products/Surface/Surface-Magenta- Cover2_Page.jpg)

<comment><USER35> I think you'd be surprised at how a color that is SO DIFFERENT could make the device seem unique and individual. Everyone has either a black or a brushed metal laptop. Something this bright could sell well because of its novelty.

There was a lot of buzz around the cyan version of the new Nokia Windows Phone 8.

<comment><USER34> This seems like a quick hack version where a variable has been changed to pink.. My problem with this is not the pink by itself but mostly how it doesn't fit with the other elements. Try changing the background of HN to pink to have an idea of what I mean.

The Nokia cyan is different as it still fit with the overall design.</comment></comment></comment>


Doom released 20 years ago today - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game) <comment><USER2> I still play Doom and Doom 2, I even list it as an interest in my HN profile. It's the perfect FPS, to me. There's still a reasonably active community making custom WADs. It's amazing what some people have come up with for this 20 year old series [1]. There's a ladder of difficulty in custom WADs that I've been working my way up over the years before finally throwing in the towel because of Scythe 2 Map 23 [2].

On a side note, John Romero and Tom Hall did an hour long post mortem on the design and development of the original Doom a couple years ago [3]. I found it interesting.

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

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

[3][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKg85-TXY5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKg85-TXY5w)

<comment><USER3> I would like to play it on a mobile platform - anyone knows the best way?

<comment><USER4> You can get DOOM for iOS. Plays particularly well on an iPad.

<comment><USER3> I forgot to mention that I hate touch controls. Something more like PSP/Nintendo DS/gcw-zero/bluetooth controller is more likely...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I respect the mastery of the Doom creators, but for me personally, it marked the point where computer games went downhill. Shooting at blobs through the eyes of an anonymous virtual character just never worked for me.

I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D for about an hour, then getting bored with the repetitiveness and lack of identification with the protagonist, and never touching the game again.

When Doom came out, I tried it for 10 minutes, concluded it's W3D with better graphics and aliens instead of Nazis, and never touched it again.

Of course I don't mind that others enjoyed the game. Unfortunately these games became so popular that everything turned to first-person 3D and killed most of the genres I had enjoyed, and so I eventually stopped playing completely.

<comment><USER6> >Unfortunately these games became so popular that everything turned to first- person 3D and killed most of the genres I had enjoyed

Its not like they stopped making turn based games or RPG's or other genres. The Sierra-style hunt-and-peck adventure game died, but Sierra did that themselves by milking franchises and delivering a sub-standard product with, lets face it, boring and cliched gameplay. Not sure what other genre was killed at around that time. If anything, PC gaming flourished. Warcraft, X-wing/TIE fighter, Elder Scrolls, Sim City 2000, Command and Conquer, Mech Warrior, 7th Guest, Civ II, Diablo, etc came out around that time.

<comment><USER7> Lucas Arts consistently delivered (Full Throttle, The Curse of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango) and died too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> John Carmack is only 43. He was 23 when this was released. It still blows my mind how young he is. Notch is only 9 years younger than him. Some people just get good at a very young age. Carmack is still in his prime and his move to the Oculus, hopefully, will bring sci-fi like VR to the masses.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, have a look at this picture: [http://www.idwaregames.freehosting.bg/images/legends.jpg](http://www.idwaregames.freehosting.bg/images/legends.jpg)

They're all so young.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The chainsaw in DOOM is based on a real model: _McCulloch Eager Beaver_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_Motors_Corporation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_Motors_Corporation)

Since I've used a professional saw (such as a Stihl 260, a 650 and a Husqvarna 395 among others), the Eager Beaver just looks lame now.

Chainsaws should have a sticker on them that says how loud they are. The three mentioned above are around 115 decibels, three minutes of use without ear defenders will give you permanent hearing damage.

If you want to see a really mean saw...

[http://www.southsidesales.com/stihl-ms-880-magnum-chain- saw....](http://www.southsidesales.com/stihl-ms-880-magnum-chain-saw.htm)

<comment><USER10> Do they kill demons faster?

<comment><USER11> Only when the demons don't fight back: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvZQKoC3vc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvZQKoC3vc)

<comment><USER9> They won't fight back mate, they will be too scared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1/3 of the game released as shareware compared to today's pay for the game before it is done, sell it at release and keep selling you DLC.

At least with Steam the more obnoxious DRM has died a death for many games (Ubisoft I'm looking at you).

<comment><USER13> It was a pretty good system because I wasn't good enough at games to easily complete the first episode of DOOM so my parents never needed to buy it for me. Indeed, perhaps 80% of my gaming experiences as a kid were off of cover disks and shareware with very few games bought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> See also "Doom as a SysAdmin Tool" : [http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/)

Submitted here, but no discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881099)

<comment><USER10> _Certain processes are vital to the computer 's operation and should not be killed. For example, after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by csh, csh was shot by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and my session was abruptly terminated._

I wish there was something like that in windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wolfenstein 3D played a large part of driving my interest in computers and learning how they really work under the hood when I was young. Plus the release of MapEdit really made you feel powerful and a young kid getting involved in computers.

Doom is the point where I became interested in programming and it got me looking to how you actually made these games. id Software eventually open sourcing Wolf3D really helped spur that on. On top of that, Carmacks talk and his always interesting .plan file (a blog before blogs) made him seem very accessible and really opened up the world of game programming. I still enjoy going back and reading parts of the Wolf 3D or Doom code to see how they handled certain problems/limitations.

I'd agree with the other poster that 'Masters of Doom' is a great read and worth it to grab if you haven't read it already.

<comment><USER16> Ditto! Making Doom mods was the main reason that I taught myself programming. And I probably learned more about development (in a general sense) from making Doom maps, than I ever did in school...

<comment><USER17> Almost same exact story although I never got into Doom modding but did make my own games in high school because of doom. Actually reading "Masters of Doom" truly planted the seed for my entrepreneurial spirit, the first time I realized "I can get good at something and create something just for me. I can value just from sheer will"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> John Carmack to me is the closes thing to a real Rock Star programmer in the world. He's one of the best software engineers and I follow him on Twitter to see what he's up to. Almost always it's something crazy and new.

Here's a video of John choking someone out: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68Mm_kYRjc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68Mm_kYRjc)

He's a great role model to aspire to as a software engineer. :)

<comment><USER19> Ha, and I though I've seen everything about Carmack ... great footage, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just finished "Masters of Doom" a couple of days ago, and I've been on a sort of Doom/Quake/id/Carmack/Romero information frenzy ever since. It is beginning to consume almost too much of my time but very fulfilling since I was a huge Doom fan back when it came out (I created many levels and mods) and I also really liked the early Quake games.

So in the past weeks I read up on all the early id guys, and what became of them after they were fired or left, I did quite some (probably too much) reading on the mess that was Daikatana and how it came to be. I actually find this really interesting, to learn how a project backed with so many employees and so much money can fail so badly, there're probably lessons to learn here (I've even watched somebody play through Daikatana on Youtube).

While being on my search, I've found a lot of interesting or not so interesting things. So if you want to spend some time, here's an unordered list of trivia that I stumbled upon:

\- Somebody playing through Daikatana: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm3b0NJzhnQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm3b0NJzhnQ)

\- Romero Himself on Daikatana, including a GB port of the game that actually got good reviews (never made it to the US though) [http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm](http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm)

\- Awful public clash between John Romero and Mike Wilson (former Ion Storm Marketing guy): [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/01/gamecock_head_tears_into_jo...](http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/01/gamecock_head_tears_into_john_romero_its_getting_ugly-2/)

\- Ravenwood Fair is a Facebook game that Romero did a couple of years ago (so that's what he's been up to recently): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenwood_Fair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenwood_Fair)

\- If you read Masters of Doom, you'll remember that it all started at Softdisk, when Carmack and Hall created "Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement", a Super Mario Bros copy. Romero uploaded the original game including their level editor, you can find it here: [http://planetromero.com/games/dangerous-dave-in-copyright- in...](http://planetromero.com/games/dangerous-dave-in-copyright-infringement)

\- Unreleased Doom Midi Music Files: [http://planetromero.com/2007/06/doom- archaeology](http://planetromero.com/2007/06/doom-archaeology)

Sadly, the original Doom editor, DoomEd was never released. I read that it wasn't particularly good (compared to what is available nowadays) but since it was written in NeXTSTEP, I'd love to port it current OSX (or at least give it a go).

<comment><USER20> Just finished Masters of Doom on the plane Sunday. Fantastic read. I highly recommend it to all software folks, even if you're not a gamer. Tons of a highly relevant stories and accounts in there.

[http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed- Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed- Culture/dp/0812972155)

<comment><USER21> I agree. I devoured it in two afternoons and found it quite motivational in terms of a business book.

Here, there were a handful of programmers, experimenting with different pricing models (shareware vs. retail), dictating their terms to publishers, starting ethical and legal discussions (Columbine Highschool shooting related to violent computer games? Export laws of software, especially violent computer games to Germany), helping Microsoft to establish Windows as a gaming platform (by making Doom a Direct X game) and so on.

They not only made games, they established a genre and nobody had a clue what the future would look like.

<comment><USER22> Slight nitpick, but Doom was a DOS game and it's DirectX port (Doom95) was written by Microsoft, not ID Software.

In fact the developer a MS who wrote of Doom95 is another famous name in the world of gaming; Gabe Newell (who has obviously since left Microsoft).

The reason I nitpick is because ID Software have always been pro-OpenGL rather than favouring Dx3D. What's more, most of their earlier games (I've not played anything since QIII) have been ported to other platforms by ID Software themselves and often not even developed on Windows PCs to begin with. So I think Gabe really deserves the credit (or criticism hehe) for kick starting the Windows/DirectX culture we see now.

Which is ironic as Gabe is now -in my opinion at least- the biggest threat Microsoft faces for the future of Windows games. But that's another topic entirely :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's a wonderful post on Metafilter about this very subject: [http://www.metafilter.com/134597/Twenty-Years-of-Ultra- Viole...](http://www.metafilter.com/134597/Twenty-Years-of-Ultra-Violence)

</comment><comment><USER24> I still remember playing Doom on my 486 DX2. It was a big step up from Wolfenstein 3D and really paved the way for the FPS gaming genre.

</comment><comment><USER25> Funny how very very creepy this game was and yet there was no problem with that. More than gore and 'biological' lets say, it had ingredients more haunting than Indiana Jones Temple of Doom (NPI) : corpses hanging, skulls, metal chains, spikes ... It didn't require effects to scare you, no hidden monster suddenly revealed through thromboscopic lights as in Doom 3. You just sink in this filthy space.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is very fitting since I started reading "Masters of DOOM" book just a couple days ago. Haven't been able to put it down. Great read about the two Johns and the story of id Software.

[http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed- Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed- Culture/dp/0812972155)

</comment><comment><USER27> An anecdote: One of my professors, Dan Gordon, authored a paper [1991 Gordon and Chen] which was used in Doom's engine implementation of BSP [1]. He was quite happy to learn about it from me, some 15 years later :)

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

</comment><comment><USER28> I was a Mac kid, so my world was Marathon, but I think a lot of the lessons are the same. I remember building my own custom worlds, really screwing up the physics, and then deleting en masse.

Whenever I play shooters now, I still think, "Man, I should just get a copy of Doom and play that instead." Too much noise in some of these games –– I just want to blow stuff up.

<comment><USER29> I preferred Marathon a lot over Doom. Some reviewers have called it "the thinking man's" shoot-em-up and I think this holds some truth. Of couse Marathon was released almost a year after Doom's release, so Bungie had plenty of time to improve the genre in many areas. Not just in looking up and down, the game also featured:

\- weapons with multiple modes and reload mechanics

\- advanced lightning effects

\- "5D" space (one of the multiplayer levels used this)

\- physics (e.g. grenade hopping and missile ballistics)

\- neutral and allied npc's

\- more varied elevator / switches system (e.g. in the "Colony Ship For Sale Cheap" level)

\- motion tracker in UI

\- nifty level mechanics, like the levels without air (e.g. "G4 Sunbathing")

I still wonder if Jason Jones could have become an equal to Carmack if he kept his focus on coding games ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would argue that Wolfenstein 3D is more responsible for ushering in the first person shooter genre than Doom.

Wolfenstein was original in it's technology, Doom was based on that tech. Both were extremely popular in their time. The main difference is that iD sold their Doom 3d tech (which produced games like hexen and heretic) and did not with their Wolfenstein tech.

<comment><USER31> Actually Wolfenstein's tech was sold to Wisdom Tree to make Super Noah's Ark 3D (or "Super 3D Noah's Ark").

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_3D_Noah's_Ark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_3D_Noah's_Ark)

I have the SNES version on a cartridge and it resells for as high as $300 CAD.

<comment><USER32> "The game plays similarly to Wolfenstein 3D, but the graphics were changed to reflect a non-violent theme. Instead of killing Nazi soldiers in a castle, the player takes the part of Noah, wandering the Ark, using a slingshot to shoot sleep-inducing food at angry attacking animals, mostly goats, in order to render them unconscious."

Awesome

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how many people's GPA plummeted due to the fact that this was released straight into finals season at a lot of universities.

</comment><comment><USER34> Lots of mentions of W3D in the comments here. Wonder how many folks played the original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple ][.

<comment><USER35> Me, and that game was awesome. Also Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I can still hear the German commands shouting at me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wasted countless hours playing Castle Wolfenstein 3D... It's hard to believe that over 20 years has elapsed since then.

Carmack is one name I can vividly remember, but the one that stuck with me the most is Todd Replogle, of Duke Nukem fame.

It was before _Wolf 3D_ and Duke Nukem was one of my first PC time-sinks.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. (again)

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe it was a revolution in video games. But to me, it coincided with my forced transition from Amiga to PC. From then, I almost completely stopped playing video games (and programming as a hobby).

On a side note, I recommend the book "masters of doom" that that tells the story behind the game.

</comment><comment><USER38> I was working at E.A., on the 3DO console no less, when one day in early January of '94 one of the guys brought in a copy of Doom. That was the end of any productivity at E.A. for at least a week while that game erupted like a brush fire through E.A. advanced technology group.

<comment><USER8> I always wanted to have a 3DO back then. Sadly I didn't have the money and they were initially kinda hard to come by in Germany. I loved the concept and idea. Too bad it never amounted to much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Some more nostalgia and retrospective over on Verge [http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/10/5195508/doom-20th- anniver...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/10/5195508/doom-20th-anniversary- retrospective)

</comment><comment><USER40> Last week I decided to listen to all the keynotes from Carmack (2002-2013).. So much respect for this man and what he has done for the gaming community.

</comment><comment><USER41> Wolfenstein definitely started it but Doom was so much better. Modem to modem connections was great. OT: Comcast is having some real issues today.

</comment><comment><USER42> I remember the first time I played Doom it was one of the best games I ever played, what beautiful memories, nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wow I am currently listening to the master of Doom is an amazingly good audiobook

</comment><comment><USER44> this could be interesting...

[http://speeddemosarchive.com/Doom.html](http://speeddemosarchive.com/Doom.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> This makes me feel very old.

</comment><comment><USER46> Damn, I feel old now..</comment>


Nintendo NX is a portable console with detachable controllers - <AUTHOR> http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-07-26-nx-is-a-portable-console-with-detachable-controllers <comment><USER2> Great, it's a Playstation Vita--. At least it will come with a Fire Emblem game.

<comment><AUTHOR> I 'd like to believe all those unfortunate calls on their part, the huge benefits of switching to x86-64 and standard h/w components(for the most part) for PS4/XB1 developers(and their makers), and their predicament they are in now, have informed their guided their decisions this time around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I never understand Nintendo's naming. NES, SNES, SP, DS, 3DS, NX?</comment>


Police hunt for person taking daily walk dressed as 'terrifying' plague doctor - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-plague-doctor-hellesdon-norfolk-police-a9489781.html <comment><AUTHOR> Clear consensus in the comments.</comment>


John Nash Has Died - <AUTHOR> http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2015/05/famed_a_beautiful_mind_mathematician_wife_killed_in_taxi_crash_police_say.html <comment><USER2> It is always strange when people who have had an outsized impact upon others die. Prof. Nash wasn't just someone who was killed in a traffic accident. He was someone who touched the lives of many, many people in surprising ways. His work itself has a large sphere of influence that will exist without him, but I'm talking about a more personal kind of influence. He was an example of living to who you could be regardless of what was broken inside of you or what was "missing."

When I was a teenager, I had the good fortune of attending a lecture by Prof. Nash. Although I did not have the maturity to truly grasp what he was trying to explain - the event did influence my later life. I started reading up about him and his struggles with his schizophrenia, the work he wanted to do, the fears he had of never achieving it, and how despite everything he ended up manifesting his work anyway. This influenced my own struggle with teenage depression and made me realise that there was probably more I could contribute beyond the seemingly staunch limits of my own mind. That altered my life trajectory in a "tiny" but measurable way, so that I - a complete stranger - feel moved by the loss.

I'm sure he stands for so much more to so many people and that's a testament to the power of a life well lived.

<comment><USER3> "He was an example of living to who you could be regardless of what was broken inside of you or what was "missing.""

This is a wonderful legacy and i just love the way you where able to describe it on one sentence, thanks.

<comment><USER4> I think that sort of excellence is born from resignation to "brokenness". Many many people waste their potential trying to fix the things they think they're missing.

<comment><USER5> Sounds interesting, can you expand on that?

<comment><USER4> Society is continually expanding it's notion of minimum acceptability. Standardized testing is a great example. The problem with this approach is that extreme excellence is fundamentally divergent. Revolutionarily smart people don't think the same way but faster. They think differently [1]. Also, excellence in one domain precludes it in others. For instance, you can't be a world class distance-runner and body-builder at the same time. The same holds for mental activities. Effective heuristics in one domain become cognitive biases in another. By expecting and accepting lower performance in general you create room for your comparative advantages to further develop. This can be summarized by the maxim: focus on your strengths. In this case I suspect insurmountable weakness enabled Nash to do exactly that.

1: or "different" if you're too focused to bother with grammar ;)

<comment><USER6> "No entity can be optimally efficient at more than one thing." \- [http://www.thebookoflife.org/why-work-life-balance-is-an- ill...](http://www.thebookoflife.org/why-work-life-balance-is-an-illusion/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Such a tragic loss.

Like many people, I never wore a seatbelt while riding in a taxi. I'm not really sure why, it just seemed somehow to be the social norm and I went along with it. Then one day, my co-worker and his girlfriend were both severely injured while in an accident crossing the east river in manhattan.

Ever since then, I've gotten in the habit of using my seatbelt while in a taxi, car, bus, or whatever. Sometimes I get weird looks from it. Sometimes I find that the seatbelt is buried in the seat because seemingly nobody has used it for months. I do the same thing here in Tokyo and I believe its still rare for passengers to care but at least the cars are cleaner and the belts are better maintained.

It's a bit odd that we (New Yorkers in this case) allow the TLC to push back on those regulations and win.

<comment><USER8> I _always_ buckle up, even in bus. I've gotten looks from taxi drives in south Europe for this, they treat it as an insult. I feel it's better to insult than be dead. Afaik since you get fined quite severely in Norway where I live (and most of Europe) if you don't wear a seat belt, the rate of use is much higher than the US.

He will be missed. Hopefully it can put focus on such a simple thing to save lives.

<comment><USER7> Here's a fun fact: the yellow school busses most North Americans get trucked to school in usually don't have seatbelts. The reason is that they follow a different school of thought regarding safety.

The basic idea is that instead of giving everyone seatbelts that unruly kids won't adjust properly and will use to whack each other's teeth out, you make really high padded seats so that in the case of an accident the passengers go flying into the seat in front of them, but its a relatively short distance and a soft, sturdy landing. The theory is called 'compartmentalization' if you're looking for a google search term. Here's one:

[https://canadasafetycouncil.org/child-safety/there-need- seat...](https://canadasafetycouncil.org/child-safety/there-need-seat-belts- school-buses)

<comment><USER9> We have a local school bus that took a head-on collision at speed (bus traveling 45mph, oncoming pickup at 60mph) and treated the occupants very well. The bus was full of high schoolers, the pickup was driven by another high schooler. The bus driver took a break near the ankle and none of the students sustained anything more than bumps and bruises.

Now, a lot comes into play here - the bus outweighs the pickup by several times, so it has the momentum to absorb the oncoming momentum and keep moving. But it's certainly not like hitting a flying bug. All that energy from the truck headed the opposite direction has to go somewhere, and it slows the bus dramatically in an instant. And these are high schoolers - no matter how many times the driver reminds them to sit down, sit correctly, they just won't. And even after all that, with no one besides the driver in a seatbelt, the students were all OK. (To satisfy curiosity: the driver of the pickup took serious injuries of which none were life-threatening; he spent two days in the hospital. He'd gotten impatient driving behind a tractor/trailer and decided to pass immediately after a curve without checking the lane first. This was a two-lane state "highway" and he was indeed in a zone that allowed passing.)

Then there's the Really Bad Accidents where the bus ends up on its side or upside down. Seatbelts are designed the hold under stress-- the button becomes near-impossible to operate and release. Smaller children will require the assistance of an adult. And there's ONE on the bus. With 50 kids. They make a safe belt cutter that a driver can carry, but now the driver has to visit every seat with multiple belts, cutting kids free, supporting them so they don't fall. This is not a scenario I'd care to have enter reality.

<comment><USER10> I can't speak to every seat belt buckle - but I went off a 20' foot cliff in a 70's sedan of some kind. (Grandmother was driving, she fell asleep). The seat belt left a _perfect_ imprint of a bruise, down to the _stitching_ on my chest and waste, but I (and my grandmother) had absolutely zero difficulty popping the seatbelt. The fall when we popped them wasn't that far, as 3/4 of the car had crushed.

Both of us walked away without a single injury other than the bruises from the seat belt. I've worn them religiously ever since that day.

<comment><USER11> _> The seat belt left a perfect imprint of a bruise, down to the stitching on my chest and waste_

One of the serious accidents I was in (my grandmother turned a corner very slowly and the other driver was going 130km/h, with a pregnant lady in the passengers seat) did the exact same thing to me. I also got a black eye; apparently right as the accident happened I entered the brace position so quickly I hit my eye socket on my own knee!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The culture around seatbelts in the US confounds me.

As an Australian I've spent my entire life wearing seatbelts. It's second nature. I don't even think about it. Taxis or otherwise. In fact I think it's required in all cases.

But in the US people seem to view the choice to turn a mild car accident into a severe or even fatal one as some kind of moral stance or personal freedom. Or rather any effort to require their use as Big Government or the Nanny State.

Some states still don't require rear passengers to wear seatbelts. [1]

Personally I wear a seatbelt in cabs and don't think twice about it. I'd feel uncomfortable without one.

Anyway, sad news.

[1] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_legislation_in_the_...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_legislation_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER13> The culture in the U.S. Is very much pro-seatbelt. Grizzly TV and billboard ads run all the time (in fact I just saw one last night). The slogan here is "click it or ticket" and police will ticket you for not wearing your belt.

For some bizzare reason though, it is somehow acceptable to not wear a belt when you are in a taxi, as if you are magically protected by the "professional" driver. I'm not 100% sure but it may have something to do with being in the back seat as well, as if that made it somehow safer.

I personally always fasten the seatbelt and have never had the slightest odd look from the taxi driver.

<comment><USER14> > as if that made it somehow safer.

But it does.

<comment><USER13> The article seems to prove otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seeing Prof. Nash enjoying his walks on campus is one of my fondest memories from grad school. This is very sad.

I was curious to learn more about his work a while ago and had looked up his PhD thesis. Here's a link: [http://www.princeton.edu/mudd/news/faq/topics/Non- Cooperativ...](http://www.princeton.edu/mudd/news/faq/topics/Non- Cooperative_Games_Nash.pdf).

What struck me was that it only had 2 references to prior work! That's how you know you're doing innovative research.

<comment><USER16> I'd say that lack of references is more often a sign of ignorance than innovation. I see that every day; transformative work like John Nash's thesis only come along once in a while.

<comment><USER17> The way we publish research is broken. So much prior art goes unpublished because it is never accepted by a journal. Negative results, meh results, and flawed research all have value. Proper citation is often difficult but can be as important as the work itself, other wise the knowledge graph is fractured.

<comment><USER18> You're not in academia, are you? There're hundreds of obscure journals and conferences with very low standards. As long as you choose venues that are within your league, you can publish anything that remotely resembles research, and it will show up on Google Scholar. A new academic paper is published every 15 seconds, and most of them are "negative results, meh results, and flawed research".

<comment><USER19> Very, very few of them are negative results. People just don't write those papers.

<comment><USER18> Most of them are negative results, though usually not overtly presented as such. In my experience, it's extremely rare for a researcher to throw away months of hard work because the result is null. They almost always find a way to augment it or spin it, write up the paper with the phrase "more research is needed" in the conclusion, and submit to a mediocre venue.

<comment><USER19> Can you give an example, because I have seen very few papers with negative or 'null' results. I'm not even sure what 'null' results means.

<comment><USER18> Null means "without value, effect, consequence, or significance; being or amounting to nothing".

Google "reproducibility crisis", "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by Ionnadis, "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Gelman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Remembering John Nash

It was an afternoon of Monday, May 9 2011 (the so-called 'Victory Day' in post-Soviet Union countries - that's how I remember). For the previous 2 weeks, I was busy working on my final project for the Information Retrieval course - Natural Language Processing project which aimed to teach Japanese grammar with example sentences. The Spring semester was about to end, and I was struggling with my New Jersey pollen allergies while having a lunch with a friend at the Frist Campus Center.

We were sitting at the table right next to the tray return conveyors, so when I spotted a familiar figure returning his tray, I decided to approach him. That was indeed Prof. Nash. The topic for the conversation was not hard to find, as just a couple of days before on the Kazakh news sites, I saw that he was one of 6 Nobel Laureates who attended the annual Astana Economic Forum in my hometown. Apparently, he just got back from the forum past Friday. We talked about his meeting with the Prime Minister, the fact that the meeting with the President was cancelled on the last minute. He said it was his first time in Kazakhstan and his second time in the former Soviet Union country (he's been to Saint Petersburg a couple of times) and one thing that surprised him was the fact that all the signs in the Central Asian country were in Cyrillic (not Chinese). We chatted for about 5-10 minutes. I guess, that's how you blow an opportunity to talk mathematics with the legendary mathematician.

Next year in May 2012 he attended the Astana Economic Forum once again. It just so happened that he flew back on the same Lufthansa Astana -> Frankfurt flight with my family who were traveling to the US for my graduation. My mom told me how over the course of the flight a few times on his way back from the restroom he stopped by my younger brother Nurym and in complete silence watched him time his 4x4x4 Rubik's cube solves.

One year later in May 2013 while browsing the shelves of The Labyrinth Bookstore in downtown Princeton I stumbled upon the book "The Essential John Nash" which with plain and informal style attempts to explain the Nash's diverse contributions to game theory as well as pure mathematics. It was so good that I finished one chapter right at the store and took the book home.

The world lost a beautiful mind. Rest in peace, Prof. Nash. The Phantom of Fine Hall.

</comment><comment><USER21> I never understand why people don't wear seat belts, even in cabs. I think the thought is that it's the city, you probably won't be going fast. But humans are really bad at judging just how fast they are travelling.

Imagine I asked you to absolutely sprint full speed into a tree while blindfolded. So no time to brace yourself or slow down. You'd probably refuse, thinking this will either hurt very badly or even permanently injure you in certain circumstances. And that is at 12-15mph for most of us. In a car you are going at least twice as fast at all times, and have all sorts of fun objects to break your motion, like steering wheels and dashboards.

<comment><USER22> Cycling is great for giving an appreciation for what 20-30mph really feels like, without the car disconnect. Same as your sprinting example: go get a bike, find the steepest hill you know of, pedal as fast as you can down the hill (this is going to be 30-40 mph), then ask yourself if you'd like to hit a brick wall in that moment. Most people who are otherwise comfortable riding without seatbelts would be peeing pants and grabbing brakes long before 40mph.

<comment><USER23> These are both pretty terrible arguments, due to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_%28physics%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_%28physics%29) Cars have crumple zones for a reason. This is not to say seat belts aren't good, as they along with air bags contribute to impulse, but there's a huge difference between shooting an egg (or person) at a brick wall at 50 mph while naked, vs. encasing it in sufficient amounts of bubble wrap first. I'll gladly sprint into a tree, or ram a bike into a wall, at such speeds provide I or the tree/wall are sufficiently padded. ([https://youtu.be/DEP8juRSBRo](https://youtu.be/DEP8juRSBRo))

<comment><USER21> Neither are terrible arguments. They are not exactly equivalent, obviously. A car does have crumple zones, meant to slow deceleration of the vehicle itself. It is assumed that passengers and objects are somehow attached to the car, such as by a belt device of some sort I imagine. The crumpling effect doesn't help you when you propel into the person in front of you, or as in many cases, through the windshield itself and into something that's not so crumply.

You absolutely would not drive into a wall sans seatbelt at 30mph, even with a newer car. You'd be a fool to do so, as you will get injured and MAY not survive said injuries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just under 64 years ago, Nash's Ph.D dissertation 'Non-Cooperative Games' was published in the Annals of Mathematics.

The most legible copy I've found on the web is here: [http://www.cs.upc.edu/~ia/nash51.pdf](http://www.cs.upc.edu/~ia/nash51.pdf)

Requesciat in pace.

<comment><USER25> I didn't feel sad, but reading that paper I feel something which knows no name. It is between respect, appreciation for beauty, and the need to do some maths. It isn't griefful, but it is truthful, and surely M.Nash would have liked it truthful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> John Nash's 1950 thesis: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/ze91a751btm2lkr/PhD_Thesis_John_Na...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ze91a751btm2lkr/PhD_Thesis_John_Nash.pdf?dl=0)

I've stumbled on it a while ago, now is a fitting time to share it. Thanks John Nash for teaching me how to cut a cake, and many other things in life.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow, this is shocking. My buddy and I rode past the accident. The cops kept signaling to us to keep driving.

They posted this yesterday shortly after the crash, but at that point they did not have the bodies identified: [http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2015/05/2_dead_in_nj_t...](http://www.nj.com/middlesex/index.ssf/2015/05/2_dead_in_nj_turnpike_crash_police_say.html#incart_river)

</comment><comment><USER28> A person who I knew nothing about became one of the inspiring figures in my life after I watched the movie, "A beautiful mind". I am neither a mathematician, nor an economist. So, I didn't get to dig his work deep. But, I often use his struggle with schizophrenia and his recovery as an example of unlimited potential of human mind.

<comment><USER29> Nice movie, but remember to read the diff with the real life: [spoiler alert] [http://monkeymigraine.blogspot.com.ar/2007/12/beautiful- lie-...](http://monkeymigraine.blogspot.com.ar/2007/12/beautiful-lie-truth- behind-beautiful.html)

<comment><USER30> I just watched the movie last night for the 2nd time, thinking that I was in for a completely fictionalized story, because I had uncritically accepted sensational blog titles like the one you linked to.

Turns out, the movie is a rather good depiction of the struggles that Nash went through. He published a groundbreaking paper as a grad student, married Alicia, suffered from schizophrenia, and learned how to manage it, eventually going back to Princeton as a damaged but wiser man, and worthy of a Nobel prize in economics. All of these major points were covered in the movie.

Nash himself found the movie to be close to reality, except that it may have suggested that he went back on newer antipsychotics--see the interview he gave to a Nobel reporter 10 years ago[1]. In fact, the movie was much more fair to his point of view than he admitted in the interview.

Some details of his life were left out, but his reputation as the "Ghost of Fine Hall" was preserved. I see the film as a fair presentation of his life, especially compared to the Hollywood standard for "true stories"\--see _The Hurricane_ , _American Gangster_ , _JFK_ , etc.

[1] [http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=429](http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=429)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Self driving cars can't come soon enough. I'd be fine with 100x the current punishments for drunk driving if someone has the option of a self driving car and actually chooses not to use it.

</comment><comment><USER32> The metro buses I ride in to St. Louis do not have seat belts, do not have soft seats, and are not high but they drive on the freeway at 65+ MPH. It's even legit just to stand which I've done when the bus is crowded. None of this has ever felt safe to me but I assumed someone had determined that it was. For instance, I had not known how effective school busses' high, padded seats were at protecting its passengers until reading this thread and had assumed similarly that they didn't seem safe but must be.

<comment><USER33> Apparently (1998 figures) in the US about 41,000 people die in road accidents of which about four are motorcoach passengers. So in general anything to get people onto busses rather than cars would be a plus.

[http://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/Bus_Crashworthiness.as...](http://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/Bus_Crashworthiness.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> At Princeton, John Nash sat at my lunch table in the campus center a few times. The first time it happened, I didn't know for sure it was John Nash, but there was something about him that just told me that it was. It happened many more times and I always felt a sense of awe to be in his presence. Another example of the fine line between brilliance and insanity and how they are interrelated. Not the way you would have expected John Nash to go. Rest in Peace and thank you for your contributions to the world.

</comment><comment><USER35> Absolutely tragic.

Just a note, New Jersey, like most states in the U.S. requires the use of seat belts for drivers and passengers, even in a taxi and police will cite you and passengers for not wearing them. Drivers will get double cited if passengers are not wearing them.

</comment><comment><USER36> This feels really odd. I just saw John Nash a few days ago in the Fine Hall elevator. Hell, I used to see him all the time in Fine Hall. I will surely remember and miss him as I walk through campus next year and remember all the "sightings." What a loss.

</comment><comment><USER37> Terry Tao says they were returning from the Abel prize ceremony: [https://plus.google.com/+TerenceTao27/posts/F6dLkQietJg](https://plus.google.com/+TerenceTao27/posts/F6dLkQietJg)

</comment><comment><USER38> It was through the movie A Beautiful Mind that I came to know about the man that is John Nash. an inspiring talented guy who is will be sadly missed. I have been guilty of not wearing a seatbelt in a taxi a few times before, as many others seem to point out there is this socially accepted practice of not buckling up in a taxi and I have no idea why.

If there is one thing we should take away from this highly tragic loss it is: seatbelts save lives.

</comment><comment><USER39> His wife Alicia was also killed in the accident.

</comment><comment><USER40> Very sad. The non-wearing of seatbelts in taxis is something I'm acutely aware of at the moment as I'm in Bogota, Colombia, where taxis very rarely have seatbelts in the back seats and driving conditions are erratic.

In my experience, i.e. just the people I've met (mostly in their mid-20s), locals here don't care. In the rare cases seatbelts are available, they don't wear them, and they even laugh off my suggestions to do so. The taxi drivers generally do wear them in their front seat, but I've also noticed them going without.

It's very strange and infuriating to me that not wearing a seatbelt in taxis seems to just be the culture here. I'm from the UK so wearing a seatbelt has always been a natural instinct. It's such a simple, low-cost action that can have such a high payoff in the event of a crash. It just seems obviously a better strategy to wear one than to not, but maybe that's based on my points system where fitting in with the traditional, 'done thing' weights much lower than trying to optimise my personal safety.

I've noticed this in other Latin American countries too, in particular Brazil. In Brazil if I remember correctly the taxis did actually have seatbelts fairly often, but locals (again, just people I met in their 20s) don't wear them. Indeed, when I suggested a friend buckle up in a taxi doing 80 km/h on a city road, I was told something like "that's not the Brazilian way". I was absolutely dumbfounded!

Back in Bogota, one interesting side point is that Uber cars generally do have seatbelts, and are in much better condition than the typical street minicabs. As a result, when I can order an Uber, I do. I think it's a very interesting thing that's happening there - the Uber cars aren't just disrupting on price, but on standards too. The latter is far easier than the former here, I'm sure, and despite the non-seatbelt-wearing culture you'd imagine it has to appeal to enough people to give them a competitive edge, which may go some way to pushing up standards all round.

</comment><comment><USER41> In Canada, wearing a seat belt is the law, plain and simple. [http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/safety/safe-driving- practic...](http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/safety/safe-driving- practices.shtml) [http://www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/osmv/road- safety/seatbelts.htm](http://www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/osmv/road- safety/seatbelts.htm) and so on I won't list all the provinces but you get the picture. You _will_ be stopped and ticketed if you ride in a cab w/o a seatbelt.

</comment><comment><USER42> Very nice short video Nash did for the Abel prize [http://www.abelprisen.no/artikkel/vis.html?tid=63683](http://www.abelprisen.no/artikkel/vis.html?tid=63683)

</comment><comment><USER43> Thats just sad :(

</comment><comment><USER44> _sigh_ I suppose it's a sign of the times that there are already Uber-vs-Taxi rants in the source article's comments (while there are some valid points there, it's rather tasteless.)

<comment><USER45> Sadly, a lot of people subscribe to the mantra "never let a crisis go to waste". I miss the quite contemplation of the dead and then a thoughtful analysis of if we have a problem and what we can do to solve it. I guess that's long gone or only alive in niche areas.

rest in peace troubled brilliance

<comment><USER46> As much as I hate to argue against thoughtful analysis, sometimes never letting a good crisis go to waste can radically improve chances that others don't die - and at that point I can live with not giving sufficient respect to the death.

<comment><USER45> I guess I've only seen half-baked solutions come out of crisis thinking. Also, there seems to be a tendency for some parties to put their little "pet project" into effect after a crisis. Since I just traveled, I would suggest the TSA as one of the prime examples of the way the road leads.

[edit: oh come on downvoters, tomjen3 is stating an opinion held by many and it kills any hope of discussion when someone gets downvoted into oblivion]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I was once in a taxi in which the driver would snort cocaine when we stopped at a traffic light. Needless to say I got out and walked.

Another time I was in a taxi and the driver fell asleep on the highway. We were in stop and go traffic and after a long "stop" the traffic started moving but we did not. I noticed the driver sort of slumped over in his seat. I yelled "hello?" and he startled awake. Couldn't just get out and walk, we were on a highway in the middle of winter in Montreal.

<comment><USER48> ...and your point is....?

<comment><USER47> Taxis can be very dangerous

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Bob Simon of 60 Minutes also died this way in February. Wear your seatbelts in cabs and Ubers, people!

</comment><comment><USER50> [http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/376qv4/john_nash_taugh...](http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/376qv4/john_nash_taught_me_the_connection_between/)

</comment><comment><USER51> I initially came to hear about Nash through the movie, and Crowe did such a wonderful job!

I never heard of game theory before, and it piqued my interest, and it is quite amazing how much watching a movie did to increase my knowledge!

</comment><comment><USER52> His boardgamegeek page:

[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/1630/john- nash](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/1630/john-nash)

</comment><comment><USER53> Can anybody sum up what his main achievements are?

</comment><comment><USER54> Obligatory xkcd: [http://xkcd.org/182/](http://xkcd.org/182/)

<comment><USER30> OK this is probably the best evidence for the inaccuracy of _A Beautiful Mind_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Such sad news, it almost feels like it doesn't do the man justice to go like that. Even worse it was with his wife.

</comment><comment><USER56> May he rest in pice now. :(

</comment><comment><USER57> Black bar.

</comment><comment><USER58> RIP Professor! :( sad

</comment><comment><USER59> god bless noble soul... sigh i am numb :/

</comment><comment><USER60> Rest in peace

</comment><comment><USER61> This was no accident.

</comment><comment><USER62> Oh no. RIP John and Alicia Nash. Where's the black ribbon?

</comment><comment><USER63> I've never worn a seatbelt in a taxi, but I've always worn them in an Uber.

</comment><comment><USER64> He was a beautiful human being, I wish he had been wearing a seatbelt.

Maybe when we have self-driving cars men and women like John and Alicia won't have to be killed in "accidents" caused by people who don't understand how to drive without murdering others.

<comment><USER65> Just because you "understand how to drive" doesn't mean you are protected from being killed while driving.</comment></comment>


Why "Work smarter and not harder" is crap advice for entrepreneurs  - <AUTHOR> http://anthillonline.com/why-%E2%80%9Cwork-smarter-and-not-harder%E2%80%9D-is-crap-advice-for-entrepreneurs/

<comment> loup-vaillant Mabe he should read this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=971708>

Direct PDF link: <http://lostgarden.com/Rules%20of%20Productivity.pdf>

One thing this presentation says: while working more than 40 hours a week eventually lowers your productivity, your _self perceived_ productivity is still higher.

Now, every individual is different, and I understand that he may have a productivity peak at more than 40 hours a week. But 95?[1] 4 hours nights? That is superman.

[1]: He took the example of 19 hours a day.

</comment><comment><USER2> How much of the constant state of emergency is unavoidable and how much is a consequence of running to the limit of capacity such that you can't anticipate non-scheduled black swan events like, um, Christmas?

</comment><comment><USER3> The author of this post spends the first seven paragraphs telling us how busy he is. Then he uses a metaphor that compares being busy to having a large penis.

I am not making this up.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't get any better; later he complains that some of the members of his retail workforce clock off as soon as their shift ends.

<comment><USER5> It's even worse than that... he _acts_ like he's not complaining, saying something like, "I'm glad they've found their work/life balance," but then goes on to say it's a _shame_ that they don't want to put in an extra hour of work per day, because then they could carve out a more interesting and exciting career for themselves. As if what his employees do outside of work is a poor substitute for career development.

I think it's great that he's happy working his ass off making his business succeed. But not everyone defines their self-worth based on their job. Personally, I'm more concerned about making and maintaining connections with the people I care about. Yes, I'm working like crazy at a startup right now, but it's not my _life_. It's my job. It's a rewarding job helping to build a product I believe in and am passionate about, but there's so much more to the world than the office I spend most of my time in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That article has some really shady analysis in it. An example:

 _Despite there being diminishing returns on my time beyond a certain point, there are still positive returns. To elaborate, if my first 10 working hours per day are worth $10 per hour to the investors, the 11th hour may be worth $9, the 12th hour $8 and so on. Still my 19th working hour would still be worth $1 to the investors. As long as I am not destructive and my work produces value, and I can function the next day back at the $10 an hour mark, there are real benefits to my company for me putting in my time._

He provides no proof for his claim that performance drops off in such a linear fashion and he can consistently work nineteen hour days while being just as productive the next day.

<comment> loup-vaillant His _perceived_ performance drops off in such a linear fashion. As long as we don't have a way of measuring our _real_ performance, we are stuck with that perception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't believe that his strategy is the best one, but if he does, more power to him.

Burning your life only gets you so far. It must be terrible to see other people that seem lazy to overwork you.

In my experience, the best workers I'd known were lazy bastards, from that reaper that worked only in the morning because grass was fresh(dew) and did more in one hour that all we in the entire day to the CNC machine programmer nobody knew how he made simple programs in very short time and leave that surpassed our own in the company.

His "having it big is good" argument is flawed too, I have a friend with an enormous one that had real problems with girls.</comment>


Valentina typeface - <AUTHOR> http://www.behance.net/gallery/Valentina-typeface-free-font/3527197 <comment><USER2> It contains a gj ligature. Let's check English usage: <http://www.morewords.com/contains/gj/></comment>


The Museum of Soviet Space Travel - <AUTHOR> https://designyoutrust.com/2019/04/out-of-this-world-photographer-egor-rogalev-visits-the-museum-of-soviet-space-travel/ <comment><USER2> I've always been impressed with their successful rescue mission of Salyut 7[0]. And of Salyut program in general [1]. There is also a pretty good Russian dramatized movie about Salyut 7 rescue[2].

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_7](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_7) [1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_programme](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_programme) [2] [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/salyut_7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/salyut_7)

<comment><USER3> Many people in Russian think it was unique and never heard about a very similar Skylab rescue mission, although in that case, Skylab overheated while Salyut froze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FWIW the Kansas Cosmosphere supposedly has the most extensive Soviet space collection outside of Russia. So if you are driving across on I-70, it's definitely worth a diversion.

The rumor is the stuff was on tour in the USA in the 90's with some scientists, during which the Soviet Union fell apart, and they sold all of it.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if there was only one tour or multiples, but I do remember going to see the display in Little Rock. This was 1995 or 1996.

The display was interesting. There was the hardware mixed with some very fanciful paintings of cosmonauts by a Russian artist. The paintings were in a flat style, almost like Orthodox icons, and featured several scenes of cosmonauts with halos descending from heaven like angels into villages where the peasants were awestruck.

If this description reminds anyone of the artist, please let me know. These paintings have haunted my memories for the past 20+ years but I cannot find the artist. Even asked in groups and subreddits specializing in imaginary astronaut / cosmonaut art but no one's ever seen it nor knows the artist.

<comment><USER6> Maybe this?

[https://soviet-art.ru/yuri-gagarin-in-soviet-palekh- lacquer-...](https://soviet-art.ru/yuri-gagarin-in-soviet-palekh-lacquer- miniatures/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for linking, but that's not the one I'm trying to remember. It is, however, very beautiful. I have a book of those prints.

<comment><USER6> Would you tell me details of that book please -- it sounds interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a lot of appreciation for the Soviet space program (this might be my favorite space story ever [0]) but it never ceases to amaze me how absolutely _hideous_ Soviet architecture was. The concrete buildings are absolutely soulless.

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known- sov...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet- mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station/)

<comment><USER8> Brutalist architecture has a charm all of its own :-)

<comment><USER9> Yes in a few cases it does. The DC subway is my favorite example.

<comment><USER7> Weird. I've always hated how the Metro stations look. They've always felt like a bad science fiction scene to me.

<comment><USER10> One of the things that might not be obvious is besides being examples of 1970s concrete brutalism, the waffled arched ceilings in the Metro are meant to evoke the similar waffled ceiling of DC's historic Union Station (which in turn are a reference to ancient Roman architecture). So you can pretend you are living in a world where Rome didn't fall while waiting for a train (not sure if that's better than bad SF).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is that last thing [1]? Surely that's where Fallout got its inspiration for the eyebot?

[1] [https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/upload...](https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/04/21-13.jpg?iv=61)

Edit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1)

<comment><USER12> It's actually Luna, not Sputnik: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Briljant angles, compositions, and colors in these photographs.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it accurate to say this is the Russian equivalent of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum? If not, what would be? I'll put it on my bucket list.

<comment><USER15> I think the Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow near VDNKh would fit that better. I'm very biased as I've been dozens of times due to it being free to students and conveniently located to where I lived in Moscow, but it's massive and directly under a huge monument to the space program, plus the park around it is full of dedications and smaller monuments to various figures in the program.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Museum_of_Cosmonautic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Museum_of_Cosmonautics) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmonauts_Alley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmonauts_Alley)

<comment><USER16> This. I was surprised article doesn't mention it but its just an amazing place to visit. The so-called "Monument to the Conquerors of Space" is unlike anything you may ever encounter elsewhere and that itself is worth a visit. You cannot possibly stand under that monument and not admire the massive courage, perseverance and ambition of these trail blazers. This monument is so huge that its hard to even capture in single frame and if you manage to do somehow, photos don't convey its full magnificence.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Conquerors_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Conquerors_of_Space)</comment></comment></comment>