Linux snickers at Microsoft's victory declaration - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linux-snickers-at-microsofts-victory-declaration/9405

<comment><USER3> I've been interacting quite a bit with with Microsoft people in the last couple of years.

I was shocked to meet a bunch of people within Microsoft that have recently migrated there from Sun. Joel Franusic, the BizSpark evangelist for Silicon Valley has roots as a php/perl/linux Admin, and has been a Super Happy Dev House organizer since the early days.

They are working really hard to change Microsoft's attitude towards open source and *nix in general. They are trying to change the attitude from one of competition to that of cooperation. And, I believe that's why you see things like Microsoft joining the Apache foundation, Microsoft contributing a lot of patches to Linux, funding the port of Node.js to Windows, etc...

So, perhaps the change in wording is a hall mark of a change in attitude, rather than a declaration of victory. I could be wrong.

The crew at BizSpark Silicon Valley have been the biggest supporters of our Hackers & Founders tag line of the "Linux of Incubators." <http://angel.co/hackers_and_founders>

<full disclosure> Microsoft BizSpark sponsors a number of Hackers & Founders events in Silicon Valley[1]. I don't make any money from them, however. They cover the costs for some of the events that we hold to help startups and founders. </full disclosure>

ref:

[1] <http://hackersandfounders.tv>

<comment><USER4> That's all well and good.

But.

But: I've been hearing this for well over a decade. "Microsoft's attitude toward Linux is changing." Again and again and again and again.

And then some new instance of FUD emerges, or a legal attack on a Free Software / open source advocate or company, some trumped-up performance benchmark, chairs in low-earth orbit. Whatever. The behavior has _always_ failed to match the rhetoric.

I'm sure there are people at Microsoft who like Linux and respect it a bunch. With a few tens of thousands of employees, I also suspect there are those who dislike it, hate it, and/or misunderstand it badly.

As for the company as a whole, my read is that the overall attitude remains negative.

I'll believe there's a lovefest for Linux after 5-10 years of non-idiotic behavior from Microsoft.

As for caring: not so much anymore. Microsoft are increasingly irrelevant to the tech landscape. Not that they don't have a huge presence, but it's simiply not as significant to future development as it was ten or twenty years ago. Apple have a bigger market cap and are dominating emerging consumer markets (phones, tablets), Google are beating hard on Apple's heels and are pushing traditional enterprise tools (desktop apps, mail, calendar) into the cloud. Various cloud service providers are abstracting large server farms for many organizations. You can get your job done while only touching on Microsoft products very tangentially in more and more places.

It's no longer a world of "a PC on every desktop and Microsoft Windows on every PC". Not by a long shot.

<comment><USER5> It'll take a management change and some serious actions.

Let's make no mistake, the company has been compeltely and 100% opposed to Linux for a very long time now. What exactly would it take to constitue a change of heart? Seriously? I would think they could extend patent amnesty to all Linux distributions. They could embrace the Mono project. They could acutally release some software on Linux. How about media player codecs? When they come up with something like JPEG-XR or VC1, how about an MIT or BSD or GPL licensed reference implementation?

Short of porting a major application to Linux (Office?) I think a sizable contingent would never believe them. As others have mentioned, if you're building web apps, how do they even matter other than having a crappy browser that you have to code for?

<comment><USER6> Just one example, but the asp.net mvc source/reference implementation is available under a liberal license and plays nice with mono.

<comment><USER7> Mono isn't exactly killing it as the go to development platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read Microsoft's original change of wording completely differently - <USER2> wasn't that they had defeated Linux, it was that Windows had already lost (largely because their competitors changed the game.) Competitors no longer compete only with Internet Explorer, they now offer an alternative to the entire Windows OS. Linux on the desktop (GNOME/KDE) didn't win per-se, but the browser did win, and Windows isn't a necessary choice for a browser-first system.

<comment><USER9> >it was that Windows had already lost (largely because their competitors changed the game.) Competitors no longer compete only with Internet Explorer, they now offer an alternative to the entire Windows OS. Linux on the desktop (GNOME/KDE) didn't win per-se, but the browser did win, and Windows isn't a necessary choice for a browser-first system.

Is that reflected in sales figures?

They do acknowledge competition from Apple(OS X and iPad) and Google(Chromebook) and OS X has been offering a very big and popular alternative to 'the entire Windows OS' since inception.

How can you say Windows already lost while they are shipping on 85% of the PCs and laptops in the US and much higher worldwide?

<comment><USER8> It's reflected in (my reading of) Microsoft's statement.

Sales figures are retrospective; this section of their 10-K is forward looking.

Also, if you define the market to include smartphones and tablets, I'm pretty sure Microsoft doesn't have 85% market share. The open question is whether that broader definition represents the future of "the computer market" or whether it should remain a separate category.

Of course, you're welcome to your own interpretation - lots of people read it very differently than I did.

<comment><USER10> would you care to share data sources for your confidence?

I am not arguing they are wrong, I am just unable to google concrete data for PC and smarthphone + tablets usage in a recent time period.

<comment><USER8> A few sources... I wouldn't put too much faith in the details, but in terms of rough magnitude they're probably pretty accurate.

Gartner says PC sales in 2011 will be <400 million. I'm pretty sure that's mostly Windows: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870330090457617...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703300904576178381437662352.html)

iPad sales looking like 40 million (or more) for 2011: [http://blogs.computerworld.com/18550/apple_2011_ipad_sales_h...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/18550/apple_2011_ipad_sales_hit_40_million)

Smartphone sales were 100 million in Q2 alone; Windows share of that was 1.6% (!): [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219112/Gartner_Smart...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219112/Gartner_Smartphones_boom_overall_mobile_sales_drop)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Supercomputers, the fastest of the fast, run Linux almost exclusively."

And it's so disappointing. Consider the Blue Gene series. Great new architecture, custom networks, custom hardware. Initially, they put Linux on the I/O nodes and a custom kernel on the compute nodes, because you want a minimum of OS noise (see the FTQ benchmark for more info on this). But everyone clamored for Linux on compute nodes--so now we boot this enormous Linux kernel on each compute node. Plan 9 was ported (I did some of it), but nobody wanted it because it wasn't Linux.

I'm of the opinion that no group in the world is as set-in-their-ways and reactionary as the supercomputing application developers. If it can't run Linux and Fortran 77, they don't want it.

<comment><USER12> Plan 9 was a very interesting OS, but it always gave me the impression to be too desktop/workstation influenced. While you could have your heavy lifting carried out on big processing nodes on the net, it depended on having the same one-size-fits-all OS on all boxes. There was a time when we envisioned powerful computers running powerful software on every desktop. That time has more or less passed - most people now are very happy with the browser, the modern equivalent of the 3270.

And I have to tell you that being able to sit down at any 3270 in any company building and to have access to your stuff readily available was, in several ways, a better (if uglier) experience than what desktop workstation provided.

Plan 9 also committed the cardinal sin of being different for the sake of being different. You can build a better Unix without making "vi" a MIPS emulator.

We invent things that are ahead of their time. It's a shame so much of the technology is lost when that happens.

As for the Fortran 77 thing... Well... They have lots of code that has already been written and tested. Do you really want to port it to something else? Besides, legend says F77 compiles to very efficient code.

<comment><USER11> Possibly the biggest motivation for porting Plan 9 was that it provides a very light-weight yet featureful kernel. Linux is way too big, but the compute node kernels IBM and Cray have been coming up with may be too simple. Plan 9 provides a rich environment but doesn't demand much of the environment.

And yes, Fortran 77 can be quite efficient... but on the other hand, we're also seeing a lot of _new_ software being written in Python, which (at least according to our process traces) tries to open thousands of non-existent files on startup. So efficiency isn't _everything_ they care about... it's partly that they were used to Fortran, and now they're used to Python, and something scarily new like Plan 9 is, well, scary.

Oh, and good luck trying to convince people that MPI isn't necessarily the only solution for parallel programming. If the community at large has its way, we'll still be using Linux and MPI in 2040.

<comment><USER12> > and something scarily new like Plan 9 is, well, scary

Plan 9 would be more OK if it didn't try to be so not Unix.

That's too bad. It saddens me that, of the three more advanced widely used OS, two are variations of the 70's Unix theme while the third is the bastard child of VMS with lots of lipstick on it. :-( Plan 9 deserved better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a great Ubuntu fan I must say: It's strange why mobile plattforms are always a example for the success of Linux.

Android may be using a Linux kernel, but it has next to nothing to do with traditionel Linux distros, that are developed in colaboration.

<comment><USER14> This is more a myth than reality.

It's definitely not a compatible environment, but I'd argue with "next to nothing". Android shares the same kernel, is built with the same toolchain, has the same underlying POSIX environment (albeit a reimplemented one, not the GNU software itself), uses most of the same base library set (libjpeg, zlib, etc...), uses most of the same middleware components (bluez, wpa_supplicant, etc...).

The one big architectural difference is that they ripped out the X server and replaced it with their own minimal window system. But even then the rendering API (OpenGL ES) is an existing standard from the desktop world. And the only hugely different component is the API: they wrote an app framework in Java and run it on their own VM. But that's just the skin. Underneath it's all still linux.

To someone who does nothing but write apps using top-level frameworks, Android looks "next to nothing" like "Linux". To someone who actually knows linux, it's all the same stuff.

<comment><USER15> It's interesting that you say this. If POSIX was all that there is to it, then isn't Apple iOS/Mac OS the same as Android and (insert-your-favorite-distro- here) Linux? I think ultimately the differences between user-facing (and even developer-facing, API-level stuff) components are way more important than the fact that POSIX is so common. After all, we would't describe two computers as basically the same because they both have a CPU/RAM/Storage unless we were comparing them to say, a car.

<comment><USER14> All I'm saying is that by any complexity metric you want to pick (lines of code, whatever) Android and "Linux" are far, far more alike than different. The layer you are picking as "way more important" only seems more important to _you_ because it's the layer you live in.

The rest of the software is really important too (where would you be without the networking stack or video codecs, for example?) and to those people (and there are lot of us!) bringing up software on Android is more or less the same as doing it on desktop linux.

<comment><USER16> > All I'm saying is that by any complexity metric you want to pick (lines of > code, whatever) Android and "Linux" are far, far more alike than different.

Citation needed. The Android-specific stuff makes up a _lot_ of code.

<comment><USER14> A quick "du" over a fairly stale source tree shows the "external" tree as larger than the rest of the source trees added together. And that's not including the kernel, which is (by far) the largest single component.

Really: you need to get your head out of app space if you want to talk about platforms. There's an immense amount of code in a modern system that you never see. And Android (correctly) sucked it all in from linux instead of reimplementing it.

<comment><USER15> > Really: you need to get your head out of app space if you want to talk about > platforms.

Do you know that comex has written several jailbreaks for iOS? I think he's more qualified to talk about mobile platforms than either of us.

When we compare two systems, we should look at the code that is different. Everything about desktop Linux and Android is different except for the stuff that all computers need to do. Basic OS services are a solved problem, and that's why you don't see too many people writing OSes today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did I miss something? Microsoft is not a small competitor in this field: [http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/who-is- win...](http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/who-is-winning-the- u-s-smartphone-battle/)

Yes, Android is rocking it, and so is iOS.. but 10% of the mobile smartphone market is nothing to sneeze at. And those are old numbers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I guess "the year of the Linux desktop" may never come, but it also may be irrelevant :) Linux may still "win"

<comment><USER18> Mark Shuttleworth says Ubuntu is making inroads on desktops and is poised to take off:

<http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/738>

FWIIW, IMHO there never will be a "year of the linux desktop." Linux on the desktop is an infiltration, not a blitzkrieg. As such, it will only be recognizable in retrospect.

<comment><USER19> Even as a passionate Ubuntu follower, I don't see the possibility of Ubuntu going main-stream. The OS may match or even exceed the capabilities of Windows, but it is more important to have a diverse number of generally used apps. I feel Chrome OS has a very good chance of getting mainstream popularity. It does what it intends to do pretty well.

<comment><USER11> But... Chrome OS is little more than Chrome, running on a Linux base. You can run Chrome on Ubuntu, and still access all your files and such. There are even tools to let you mount your Gmail storage space locally so you can use it for a document store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Microsoft declared victory? Was there a press release, or some kind of public celebration? Somehow, I missed that. I work at Microsoft, and no one invited me to the party.

Both the original article and this followup are the worst kind of link bait.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ed Bott's article + this one are the digital equivalent of penis-length- measurement contests. Why is this cheap attempt at acting like Sherlock Holmes on the front-page of HN ?

I am an intern @ MSFT. I use win @ work. Windows+Ubuntu on my home box and load up FreeBSD in a VM (on my home machine) from time to time and used a Mac till very recently (it died not very close to a refresh of the MBP lineup to make it worth waiting and not too far from a refresh to buy the one on sale at the time).

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't see why these types of articles have to focus on the notion of a 'victory' for either side. Microsoft isn't winning, but it's making a lot of money in various areas, so it's not losing either.

Microsoft probably is concerned about declining market share, but to suggest it was always targeting 100% of the market is misleading (there are people that have always and will always run Linux, and there are other people -- particularly large enterprises -- that they are much more focused on).

</comment><comment><USER9> It's strange that Linux was suddenly taken off the list in their stock filing but I think the article comes with some caveats.

Android in the mobile would be listed as 'Android' in their SEC filing, since it's not really a traditional Linux distro like RedHat/Ubuntu/Gentoo, SuSe etc etc. Also, even Meego/Maemo, WebOS, Bada are based on the Linux kernel, but there's no common ecosystem among these as there is in desktop/server Linux distros.

While they may have only a 15% share in the Web server market, it's a VERY lucrative 15%.

Just as people like to remind us that the iPhone captures half the profit in the mobile market with a smaller marketshare, Windows Server/SQL Server/Sharepoint/Exchange etc. are big money as reflected in the revenue numbers, 4.5 billion USD last quarter or 17 billion last year just for the Server and Tools division. It's really hard to calculate how much money is directly made off LAMP/RoR/Python.

Maybe they don't see Linux as an immediate short term threat anymore, but that is far from dismissing it completely, as the article projects.</comment>


Why Kenya's first Internet meme wasn't notable enough for Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://hblog.org/writing/the-missing-wikipedians/

<comment><USER2> _Why Kenya's first Internet meme wasn't notable enough for Wikipedia ... On March 24, the Wall Street Journal's Cassandra Vinograd commented on the story ... The article was deleted once again_

Actually in the end, it was notable enough for Wikipedia. The article was not deleted again following the initial speedy deletions for copyright violation and the like. It was nominated for a full deletion discussion, but every single person other than the nominator voted "keep" [1]. Furthermore, the nominator (the guy who initiated the full debate) isn't exactly a model Wikipedian; he had been registered for less than half a year, and left in a huff just two months later after administrators told him to be more patient with some guy who had added unsourced names to a soccer roster article [2][3].

 _But it is doubtful whether Internet access alone will make people in developing countries contribute to Wikipedia ... As those from developing countries come online and try to edit the encyclopedia, a number of conflicts have arisen due to tensions between so-called 'inclusionists' and 'deletionists' in the encyclopaedia ... the homophily of the current network is coming up against its need to expand and diversify_

Incidentally, one of the users who proposed the Makmende article for deletion (one of the other times, not the main debate above) is himself from a developing country [4]. And he's contributed to Wikipedia numerous articles about his home country (as well as others about Swedish, Taiwan, and Russian chemists) [5].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Makmende)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Woogee>

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_not...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive612#All- time_Long_Island_Rough_Riders_roster)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Makmende&actio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Makmende&action=historysubmit&diff=351789352&oldid=351785501)

[5] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Salih>

<comment><AUTHOR> I think your answer is an exemplar of the problems the Wikipedia community faces.

Insiders are satisfied that the process, honed over a decade, is working. At a micro level there is nothing to point to that is actually wrong; indeed you could argue the process is growing in sophistication and fairness.

Outsiders are often _very_ dissatisfied. From their perspective, new contributions are assailed with objections from people who appear to be proudly ignorant of the subject in question, and their work is subjected to bewildering bureaucratic procedures. And this is reflected in the macro statistics for contributors, which for the English Wikipedia are all flat or even going in reverse.[1]

I think Wiki-insiders have become a bit disconnected from the experience of outsiders, especially when it comes to social norms. To an insider, squabbles about notability and even requests for deletion are normal. Insiders are so used to this, they avoid being vulnerable to the criticisms of other Wikipedians, by reflex; for instance, in footnoting everything they say. ;) Imagine for a minute that you walked into a passionate notability discussion without such habits already ingrained. How do you think it would go?

The article strongly implies that there is a Global North/Global South problem here. So your point about how the core 'homophily' group aren't necessarily from Europe or America is interesting. Perhaps the real axis is Wikipedian/Non-wikipedian.

[1] [http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_users#Growth_in...](http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_users#Growth_in_contributors_to_Wikipedia)

<comment><USER3> This is hardly a problem unique to Wikipedia, and no especially workable solutions have been proposed that I've seen. If routine members are denied the ability to do things like bring up deletion discussions, just because some of them might get tendentiously caught up in the bureaucracy and thereby lose sight of broader goals, that just makes the process more onerous when it _is_ necessary, which is often.

I think the biggest problem is that the "outsiders" you are generalizing about, at least in your portrayal, are failing to realize that the "insiders" are just a bunch of individual people, and don't stand for any unified position, conspiratorial or otherwise.

Communicating information to new users, especially ones who make little effort to learn about community norms and practices, is extremely difficult, because there is no way to force them to look at any particular explanation. Even talk page messages lovingly crafted to be as helpful as possible are going to often meet with "What, I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out why my changes to an article were deemed a regression? No thanks."

<comment><USER4> _Communicating information to new users, especially ones who make little effort to learn about community norms and practices, is extremely difficult, because there is no way to force them to look at any particular explanation._

Karma systems deal with this by using game dynamics. Beginners are channeled into work which supposedly educates them and indoctrinates than into community values.

<comment><USER3> I think there's a big difference between a site whose visible product is discussion, such as Hacker News, and a site whose discussion is only in support of the visible product, like Wikipedia. Newcomers to a discussion community can easily see practices and norms at work, because the process and the results are the same thing, and are completely transparent by definition. Since much if not most of the process of writing Wikipedia is reorganizing and rewriting and cutting and polishing, without any one user having responsibility for an article, it's not obvious just quite what contributions are most helpful, or even helpful at all.

I think the feedback (reversions with edit summaries, discussion on talk pages, comments on users' pages) are okay, but it's an inherently different kind of feedback than you'd get from, say, HN or Facebook or Twitter or Stack Overflow. Just comes with the territory.

I think Wikipedia could do a lot better, especially if it had more programmers working on technical improvements. But I wouldn't guess the systems used by discussion-oriented communities could be usefully easily transferred.

<comment><USER4> _the systems used by discussion-oriented communities could be usefully easily transferred._

The specific mechanisms would have to be different, but the underlying economics would be the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Scotland has 3 patron saints: St Columba of Iona, St Margaret and St Andrew.

The Wikipedia page listed only St Andrew so I added the other two only to see them immediately deleted. So I added them again. Again they were deleted.

I asked why they were continually being deleted. Someone, who claimed to be in charge of the Scotland page, replied:

"if you ask any man in the street he will tell you that St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland"

<comment><USER6> That would appear to be an inconsistency in Wikipedia - on Columba's page he is listed as a patron saint of quite a few places/activities, including Scotland.

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

Wouldn't it be great if something like Semantic Web technology could actually detect these inconsistencies?

<comment><USER5> Looking at the current Scotland page it would appear that I finally won the argument :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It becomes dangerous when deletionists are made out of people who only know how to delete content.

</comment><comment><USER8> Who deletes the deletionists?

<comment><USER9> Nobody; they too have a right to be included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is going to be a growing problem that Wikipedia will have to address. Wikipedia is increasingly becoming a primary source.

If you witness an important event that has been reported inaccurately would your first reaction be to write a newspaper article, write a blog, or edit the Wikipedia page?

<comment><USER10> _Wikipedia is increasingly becoming a primary source._

That's not what Wikipedia claims to be, for any ordinary definition of "primary source."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RS>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT>

<comment><USER5> I realise this, I am suggesting they will eventually have to change.

At some point, the weight of millions of edits to itself will have to outweigh a link to another single source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Molly Lewis wrote a song about wikipedia after being kicked off it for not being notable enough (it's geeky and hilarious): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFxWhzJWJ4U>

Note: she now has a legit wikipedia entry: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Lewis></comment>


Boeing Flies on 99% Ada - <AUTHOR> http://archive.adaic.com/projects/atwork/boeing.html <comment><USER2> FYI I used to date a girl with a Masters in CS who got a job with Boeing. She worked on the OpenGL overlay for the B1 Lancer. She wrote about 3 pages of justification for every 5-6 lines of code she wrote. After 2 years she bounced as the job satisfaction in that type of environment, simply wasn't there. Also OpenGL from ADA is... interesting.

She worked at the Boeing San Diego office, which is quite beautiful.

<comment><USER3> If she has experience writing 3 pages of justification for every 5-6 lines of code, perhaps she should join the functional-programming community...

<comment><USER4> We don't tend to write that much justification (at least in industry).

<comment><USER5> I think he meant it as a joke.

As in: "for every line of code a functional programmers writes" he'll write 5 blog posts and 10 HN comments on why functional programming is better, how currying, functional composition, monads, etc, work etc...

<comment><USER4> If only we could write the blogs in Haskell as well, for the awesome reduction in LoC.

<comment><USER6> Well, you can write them in literate Haskell...

<comment><USER7> Just use tons of monads!

<comment><USER4> Monads are too mainstream. Applicative Functors is what it's at these days.

<comment><USER6> But Monads _are_ Applicative Functors. Go for arrows instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an awesome article - there are a ton of interesting excerpts all in one place, that I haven't seen before, such as this one:

 _One compelling reason behind the extensive pre-testing was Boeing 's desire to meet the Federal Aviation Agency's (FAA's) Extended Twin Operations (ETOPS) standards ahead of schedule. The original ETOPS rule was drafted in 1953 to protect against the chance of dual, unrelated engine failures. Unless a newly designed and produced aircraft has at least three engines, it usually had to wait, sometimes as long as four years, before the FAA and the Joint Airworthiness Authorities (JAA) will allow it to fly more than one hour from an airport; after a time, the new aircraft is deemed a "veteran" and is allowed to fly three hours away. A shortened trial period would drastically increase Boeing's sales."_

It hadn't occurred to me that a 777 is always three hours away from an Airport. I'll have to look more closely on the map.

<comment><USER9> This is a nice mapping web app that lets you see allowed and forbidden areas for different ETOPS levels: [http://gc.kls2.com](http://gc.kls2.com)

At 3 hours, it's mostly the Southern Ocean that's off-limits.

<comment><USER10> [http://gc.kls2.com/faq.html#etops-240](http://gc.kls2.com/faq.html#etops-240)

I had no idea Boeing was subsidizing Midway Island in order to provide an ETOPS alternate airport.

Also, 5.5 hour ETOPS? That's crazy long!

[http://gc.kls2.com/faq.html#etops-330](http://gc.kls2.com/faq.html#etops-330)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have developed many years in Ada. It is a marvelous language. Many mistakes are found during compilation. Very often, when it compiles, it works. Since Ada95, the multitasking features are really awesome. The overhead of the verbosity is real for short programs, but becomes less relevant for big projects.

Ada is not in the hype anymore. It is getting more and more difficult (and expensive) to have developers with a good knowledge in Ada.

In my current society, some projects are still in Ada, but the quality of the code is becoming lower and lower, with a lot of type cast. It seems people are thinking in C (C++) and are painfully writing their ideas in Ada.

<comment><USER12> It is an absolute shame that Ada did not take its place as a dominant player early on. But people have difficulties reasoning about cost in computing. The verification cost for the toolchains pretty much kept places I worked at out of it. It is too bad that those costs were not treated as public goods and paid for out of tax money. I expect it would have been a good investment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google Cache Link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aarchi...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aarchive.adaic.com%2Fprojects%2Fatwork%2Fboeing.html&oq=cache%3Aarchive.adaic.com%2Fprojects%2Fatwork%2Fboeing.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> The actual language has little to do with the current widespread use of Ada in critical aviation software. The main reason lies in the certification process and reuse of certified tools. I wrote a little about it here: [http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/2/10/making- aviat...](http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/2/10/making-aviation- sofware)

<comment><USER15> C is usually supported as well as or better than Ada so it does have to do with the language.

<comment><USER16> With certified tools?

<comment><USER17> FAA certifies software and databases (and the data in those databases) of companies like Boeing.

<comment><USER16> Yes, was parent claiming that C has a lot of "certified" tools as much as Ada does? The phrasing was ambiguous.

<comment><USER18> Dynamic memory management is inadvisable in avionics code, making languages that rely on garbage collection (perhaps pointlessly) challenging to use. But in general, there are no restrictions on what _language_ is used. The particular version of the compiler you are using has to be certified, but just long as you can use the language and the compiler to meet DO-178B/C standards, you can use whatever you want. You can use whatever tools you want, if they get certified. You can write your own tools and certify them. Anything goes, just so long as it meets standards.

(Working on some flight management software, I found a bug in our version of GCC. It's free software, right? So I could just fix it? Or even upgrade to a newer version? That would have meant re-certifying the compiler, so it was easier to work around the bug.)

In practice, I do see a lot avionics code written in Ada. I see a lot written in C. I see a lot written in C++. I haven't seen much else. I would guess a roughly even split between Ada and C or C++, with either C or C++ being increasingly favored for new clean sheet projects.

<comment><USER15> Surprisingly you don't even need to use DO-178, you just need to convince the FAA that it is safe. I have never heard of anyone not using DO-178 though.

Have you seen level A software written using C++?

<comment><USER18> _I have never heard of anyone not using DO-178 though._

Me neither. I can imagine that would be harder than just using DO-178, as the auditors are used to dealing with it.

 _Have you seen level A software written using C++?_

Not personally. I have heard of a level A flight controls project that was planning to use C++, and was in the process of getting their C++ compiler (GCC C++, I believe) certified. I don't know how it turned out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A good thread about programming languages in avionics.

[https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Which-is-Major- Programming-l...](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Which-is-Major-Programming- language-141158.S.93712052)

Having had a lot of my undergrad CS classes in Ada (in Toulouse France, the home of Airbus) I get nostalgic every time I see a post mentioning Ada on HN.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's not surprising, given that safety-critical software is very often programmed in Ada or SPARK.

<comment><USER20> If it is so safe and reliable, why isn't used more for normal projects?

<comment><USER21> I was involved in writing the short term collision alert system for the New En Route Centre down in Swanwick, UK. Basically proving something won't kill is extremely important in this environment. The language is almost irrelevant. Proving every single piece of logic has been exercised (an OR statement had to have true true, false true, true false and false false tests...now add multiple ORs to that). Mission critical software is another world.

Probably rather alien to the HN crowd ;)

<comment><USER22> The Paris subwway network is partially automated. The software is written in OCaml, and mathematically proven correct using Coq.

<comment><USER23> Which parts aren't automated?

<comment><USER24> Plenty of line still have drivers.

The only fully automated lines are 1 and 14.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ada is by far the strongest typed language I've used in my 2 decades of programming. In the defense / aviation industry, it's very common to have multiple sub-contractors working on different pieces of the platform. Due to this trait, interfaces between these sub-systems / components are heavily scrutinized. Using a language such as Ada to ensure that large amounts of bitwise data structures are clearly defined and match eases the burden (at least a little).

</comment><comment><USER26> There's a relevant Programmers.SE post on this ...

[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153266/what-o...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/153266/what- operating-systems-are-used-in-airplanes-and-what-programming-languages-are)

According to comments there, some modern aircraft run an RTOS (real time operating system) on top of the bare hardware, which then lets you run Ada or C code. Those mentioned include VxWorks[1] for the Boeing 787 and Integrity[2] used by the Airbus A380.

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

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_(operating_system)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_\(operating_system\))

<comment><USER25> Most bootloaders (of components) if nothing else will be wrapped in vxworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I recently applied for a job at a company that makes civilian drones (rescue, police). They required knowledge of the Oberon language, I'm pretty sure they use HelyOS [1] for real-time control of their coaxial helicopters.

It's quite interesting how these Pascal derivatives seem to find their niche in high-reliability or real-time applications, although I don't quite understand why. That may have been part of the reason why I didn't get the job.

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

<comment><USER28> No pointers.

Range limited types, e.g.

         Type Day = (0..7);

         Days = (monday,tuesday,wednesday,thursday,friday,
                 saturday,sunday);

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> ...and now I will always want to fly on an Airbus instead.

Reminds me of the joke:

> At a recent real-time Java conference, the participants were given an > awkward question to answer:

> "If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of > programmers had been responsible for the flight control software, how many > of you would disembark immediately?"

> Among the forest of raised hands only one man sat motionless. When asked > what he would do, he replied that he would be quite content to stay aboard. > With his team's software, he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as > far as the runway, let alone take off.

<comment> enjoy-your-stay >...and now I will always want to fly on an Airbus instead.

Reminds me of a joke I was once told by a QA consultant:

His colleague was on his way to deliver a revision of software which had been extensively tested and many serious bugs discovered and fixed. The software was so important that it was to be delivered in person by the consultant on a laptop to the customer.

On the walkway to the plane, he happened to glance up and see the aeroplane he was about to board was an Airbus. In fact the very revision that had the same software he'd just been testing and had found to be full of bugs.

Oh no.

Suddenly getting very cold feet and desperately thinking of a way not to get on the plane he takes a drastic step and deliberately drops and destroys the laptop with the software he was going to deliver.

Happy now he returns to the office and declares 'well, that's a shame - but I think I'll take the train next time'

\- was told to me as a true story, and you never know...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> _> According to Brian Pflug, engineering avionics software manager at Boeing's Commercial Airplane Group, most companies disliked the idea of a standard language at all, and then seriously objected to Ada as too immature._

By what measure did they consider Ada "too immature" I wonder? It's one of the oldest languages, an open international standard, and has been through several major updates over three decades. On the surface there are few if any languages that claim more maturity than that.

<comment><USER31> There's no compiler (and standard library implementation) that has faced public scrutiny like other popular languages have. Aditionally, there are no IDEs for Ada comparable to the IDEs of other comercial languages (e.g. C++, C# or Java). Which is understandable given how little interest there is in Ada, amongst the "general public" of developers, which is understandable given how there's no proper free implementation of for Ada.

There's essentially just the AdaCore implementation that costs $$$, the GPL'd AdaCore implementation that requires you to publish your source code (because of the libraries) and then there's some unsupported GCC implementation.

I like Ada, and I would like to see it gain more market share. If it had, things like Rust and Go may have been superfluous. But the way things are, I just don't see it happening. Unless you're some big enterprise Ada is essentially a non-option, due to licensing, and if you're a big enterprise it's essentially a non-option since there's very few devs around for it. And so it remains an obscure language used in very niche applications (albeit with great success there?).

<comment><USER32> Really strange about the tooling, if I were BAE or Boeing I'd be standing up a project to create an IDE on top of Eclipse - ~2 man year effort for vast productivity gains!

 __dons asbestos pants in expectation of anti eclipse comments!

<comment><USER33> [http://www.atego.com/products/atego- objectada/](http://www.atego.com/products/atego-objectada/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What new languages are being developed that could be even safer than Ada for safety critical systems? Are Agda, Haskell, or Rust as safe or strongly typed as Ada?

<comment><USER18> Weirdly, avionics development seems to be moving away from Ada toward C! I personally think something like OCaml would be a better choice...

I think the problem is, there is so much momentum built up around Ada and C usage in the avionics world that there just isn't the infrastructure and culture built up around better languages, so it's hard to make the switch. Even if you have to write a brand new codebase for some small avionics project, how do you justify the expense of doing it all in OCaml when there is already certified compilers and support for Ada?

It ought to happen, though.

<comment><USER35> Yes, cause one definitely wants "Stop the World" GC in a real-time system.

<comment><USER18> Right, that was unclear. Languages that rely on garbage collection can't realistically be used in flight. "Something like OCaml" but with manual memory management might be better than Ada. But with recursive functions also frowned upon in avionics, a lot of the fun of OCaml might be drained...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What is the other 1%? (I was only able to glance through pieces of the article for now)

<comment><USER37> The hardware access routines, real time operating system, and bottom level I/O can't be written in ADA. CPUs accept only machine code, so those programs have to be written at least partly in machine code.

Likewise the compiler has to generate CPU instructions,the opcodes and operands of which are embedded in the code generator as binary data. That is code that isn't in ADA either.

<comment><USER38> Ada get compiled to machine code, so of course it can run directly on the CPU.

There's also no reason it can't be used to write a compiler and there's probably several Ada compilers written in Ada. I'm not sure what you mean about binary data having to be embedded in the code generator; you can easily generate arbitrary binary data from almost any language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Anyone else thinking that Public Write and Execute would be bad for an Airplane?!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you document your knowhow, past projects and lessons? - <AUTHOR> Previously, I did use gmail drafts, but now I use private installation of doku-wiki for documentation of my design, schemes, know-how, created source code (git module), lesson learned.<p>Wondering what use HN community, if there is better way or tools for that. <comment><USER2> OneNote. The hierarchical breakdown of Notebook, Section, and Pages is quite useful. I use one page as a linear, chronological "Plan for today" journal, with links to subject matter on other Pages that naturally get organized into Sections (ML learning, Coursera - Scala, Health, Attitude / Thinking, etc;).

Evernote's Search is much better than OneNote's (Windows' Search), searching seamlessly even inside attachments, but I absolutely hate the look of Evernote pages; just a personal thing. Could be something as simple as Tahoma vs. Calibri, but I think it's more than that...OneNote really looks good to my subjective eye. Plus I like the keyboard shortcuts.

For PDFs, get really good at whatever Reader you use w.r.t. annotation tools. I love PDF-Xchange Viewer for annotation (a Windows product).

<comment><USER3> This topic comes up occasionally and we see lots of answers involving plain text and wikis. It seems like there is still room for some perfect solution to the OP's problem with just the right feature set. Something with the stellar web and mobile ease-of-use and performance of Trello but document-based and at the same time free-form.

OneNote is probably the closest thing that exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Using markdown, in a SublimeText project, with MarkdownExtended, Markdown Preview, project search (using ripgrep), imagePaste (to paste from clipboard to a file in a ./.images directory along with the image markdown syntax), and a folder hierarchy that organises notes into general topics and filenames with project/contents descriptors.

I also write all my lectures this way and output to slides using backslide (remark.js).

I have two text files always open, `_inbox.md` (all unorganized incoming notes) and `_work.md` (tasks list and dates).

I've tried a bunch of different things and this is the only thing I seem to stick to. I sync it to multiple machines with BoxSync and keep it all in a git repo (for when I care about tracking changes, usually my commits are weekly, with useless commit messages).

</comment><comment><USER5> For my own work:

A Leuchtterm1917 dotted notebook + mechanical pencil + ink/gel hybrid pen.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ENUIKC/ref=s9_acsd_hps...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ENUIKC/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_c_x_5_w)

For work I do under employment I tend to use org-mode and publish to whatever format suits them best. Often one of PDF, HTML, or Markdown.

I have been experimenting with using an org-mode based publishing system that syncs with my ReMarkable... it is taking over _some_ of my note-taking. But I'm a chronic journal-keeper and have over a decade of notes and experience with my system.

<comment><USER6> How do you organize your paper notes?

I take a lot of "scratch" notes on paper, but often end up copying them into the computer at the end of the workweek. Usually they are quite a mess, and preserving them as-is makes for a challenge when using them in the future.

The other nice thing about notes on the computer is that they are easy to move around, tag, edit, etc. I can also integrate a tool like Zotero into my workflow, using pandoc-citeproc to keep a true bibliography and reference list.

I'm not saying you need all of those things, obviously. But I find them really helpful, and I would like to know how your system obviates the need for things like that. Do you write URLs by hand?

<comment><USER5> > _How do you organize your paper notes?_

Meticulously.

For each subject I keep notes on (projects, mathematics, reading, etc) I use a series of journals and different styles.

For my projects I use a system somewhat similar to bullet journal[0]. The Leuchtterm journals are a great fit (and I'm glad I discovered them) because the pages are numbered and come with an index. I use the pocket at the back for reference cards.

I like taking notes using my personal notation and being able to think in a quiet room without a glowing screen, notifications, or the temptation to check HN is valuable. It helps me get in the flow and solve the real problems. When I get back to my work at the computer it's usually pretty rote.

For mathematics I use a dotted-pad with a system I developed for myself. I use smaller, lined books for my reading and diary.

And they all stay in my office in my home indexed by shelf. And it looks quite handsome I think. I don't know whether it will be a boon or a burden to those I leave behind when I'm gone some day but I enjoy having a hard reference copy of my development and ideas.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Markdown to Evernote, but I'm also keen on embedding little screencasts in my notes. It's sometimes a great memory jog to have an old terminal session reanimated and popping up in response to your keyword search results.

It's also been useful for a 'show rather than tell' approach to technical Confluence documentation.

I've previously used LICEcap and Screenflow, but SnagIt also has some nice video capture options, with an option to convert to animated GIF. Also becoming a bit of a fan of Camtasia, but the output is regular video.

</comment><comment><USER8> Used to use Quiver ([http://happenapps.com/](http://happenapps.com/)) but now switched to Bear Notes ([http://www.bear-writer.com/](http://www.bear- writer.com/)).

Both support Markdown and Syntax Highlighting. Quiver is lot more full featured programmer's notebook but I like Bear because its light and I prefer tag system.

<comment><USER9> Another happy Bear user here. Markdown, syncing, and tags all work really well.

The downside is that it's Apple-only at the moment. It's not a problem for me right now since I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem, but I'm keeping my eyes open for alternatives that are as polished as Bear, but are cross-platform.

Worst-case scenario, Bear can dump out to markdown files on disk (images too) if I ever need to migrate to something else.

</comment></comment><comment> michael-ax I used google-drafts, wikis, all sorts of combos involving folders & files & hardcopies before discovering org-mode 4..5 years ago.

Since then I've been able to forge 20 years of references, scans, pdfs, application-code!, shell scripts, photos, glyphs, graphs, fonts into an exo- brain (a nice word from the cool kids) that not only includes journals, time & billing, ledgers, feeds, project and resource planning, play-books & checklists for my own debriefing

into something version controlled that boots from a chroot and can transfer to android devices. i can now find, use and profit from clusters of notes, generate html and latex, read, write and code, interface with and even capture just about anything that life has thrown at me since i started re-tooling myself.

I've got a reminder/drill mechanism which picks high-level topics things for me to review and i just go with that to remember and refine old stuff as i go. Its a seething mess of useful.

In essence .. i tag, sort, sift, condense and categorize like everyone else. In under a gig of ram, and, as it happens, at the speed of thought via a consistent user-interface.

And yeah, of course i use a browser. I can capture/convert html to plain text & drag images into files knowing that everything will always be hyperlinked by not-too-obnoxious uuids.

For some reason I had to hold my nose delving into emacs after ignoring it for 20 years. It seemed so weird. Now that I've gotten used to working with software that enables general purpose computing, I'm experiencing Ataraxia.

Anyhow, to the OP, check your net-present-value figures. Are you expecting to be a knowledge worker for a while? Have you ever chosen a slightly harder path to make things easier?

If so, just take this note as a hint for what's possible when you're seriously looking to answer your own question :)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm testing out tiddlywiki ([https://tiddlywiki.com/](https://tiddlywiki.com/)) as of right now. I really like it so far. Used to use org-mode, then plain old google docs. Right now for me it's between onenote and tiddlywiki.

<comment><USER11> That project must be really old, because I remember being excited about it at the same time I was excited about Emacs.

<comment><USER10> The main developer has rewritten the whole thing in version 5 in NodeJS and HTML5, it's pretty slick now. I have it running in a docker container on GCE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use vim <[http://www.vim.org/>](http://www.vim.org/>) and zim <[http://zim- wiki.org>](http://zim-wiki.org>) to maintain my collection of notes which are primarily text. Both tools work well on Linux and Windows.

Zim is great if you need some type of markup (ex:- hyper links, bullet points etc.,). Vim is great for plain text.

If the notes are private but need to be shared across multiple machines, I create a private gitlab project.

If the notes are public, I either create a github project or put them on a public wiki where only I can edit. For the public wiki, I am using an account on shoutwiki <[http://www.shoutwiki.com>](http://www.shoutwiki.com>) .

</comment><comment><USER13> I've spend a long time trying different methods of doing this.

I briefly investigated tiddlywiki, used OneNote heavily for a while.

Currently I'm migrating to using JupyterLab notebooks on an ec2 instance with IP whitelisting.

It works pretty well, I have a kind of dream to connect it to a Datomic server instead of using filesystem notebooks and have relational notes.

<comment><USER14> does your note contain runnable sourcecode? why Jupyter?

What's the benefit of datomic vs. filesystem?

<comment><USER13> Yeah some runnable code, not much at the moment but hopefully more as time goes on.

Most of my notes are to do with data or programming, and a lot are just script fragments on how to do something, I want to run them.

In theory I could hack jupyter and datomic to enable me to define relatinoships and query for notes instead of having either a text search or a single hierarchy navigation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am interested in personal experiences/anecdata documenting what happens to these collections when the collector dies. So much effort invested!

I plan to make sure organizational time pays off in the short term, and need to work up a 'site map' for my various digital collections (in the off chance anyone cares after I'm gone). Sharing as much as possible starts to make sense in the long term, so classifying what "must be private" must be done as part of the process. (A tiny bit of this aspect is reflected in how useful my own StackOverflow contributions have been across jobs!)

In this light, tools encouraging sharing useful specific technical info semi- privately within a small group of very close professional friendships start to make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER16> i've seen free blogs used such as blogspot or wordpress, i might go that route.

Also GitHub gists have been of great help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Using a Wordpress theme for it with all post formats supported (link, quote, aside, etc)

[https://mothemes.baby](https://mothemes.baby)

If you want to try (in test mode now) send me an email to the address from my profile

</comment><comment><USER3> That is an interesting use of gmail drafts. I'm sure you stretched the usability to the limit and found pros and cons going to a wiki.

I use orgmode, starting with a buffer with a few headings, URLs, and paragraphs on a topic. The buffer may be killed the same day or turn into 100k words spread over a few files a few years later, still easily searchable with org-agenda or grep and automatically exported to HTML for viewing on mobile. I don't bother with images or mobile editing due to complications--those are the main drawbacks.

</comment><comment><USER18> While building my company, we just drop all our experiences, lessons learned and failures down in our blog. It helps us document the process, be able to look back at it, as well as hopefully provide a valuable blueprint for other people building a business.

We've been doing it from day 1 and realise how valuable is and will be, going forward. [https://weardulo.com/blogs/origins](https://weardulo.com/blogs/origins)

</comment><comment><USER19> I write things down and then transfer what is useful to digital with org-mode.

Depending on the "officialness," I write things down on either a legal pad or in a lab notebook dedicated to a project. Then the most important bits of this gets put into an org-mode "notebook."

I prefer writing things down first, I find that it sharpens my thinking around whatever I'm recording.

Though there are some other interesting ideas in here that I may try and steal.

</comment><comment><USER20> Relevant from 73 days ago: "Ask HN: How does your team handle knowledge documentation?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15637194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15637194)

My answer is the same. The tools don't matter much at all when it comes to documenting knowledge. Whatever gets used is best. Searchable is a plus.

</comment><comment><USER21> I use GitBook and GitHub.

I have a repository with many markdown files ([https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge)) and I render it all with GitBook here ([https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz)).

</comment><comment><USER22> Diaries in Workflowy, per project. Top-level "folders" for years, second level for months, third level for days.

</comment><comment><USER6> At the moment it's a collection of Markdown files in a Git repo. I'm thinking about moving to a wiki solution but I haven't settled on one yet.

Has anyone used multiple wikis and can comment on the pros and cons? There are so many out there. The only one I know I don't like is Tiddlywiki.

<comment><USER23> Gollum is a wiki UI for what you're already using (markdown in git)

[https://github.com/gollum/gollum](https://github.com/gollum/gollum)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> nvALT is growing on me as of late. Very quick and easy way to build a library of markdown notes.

</comment><comment><USER25> Boostnote ([https://boostnote.io](https://boostnote.io)). Writing markdown in vim mode, annually rotated, version controlled with SparkleShare.

</comment><comment><USER26> What's your opinion about online Markdown editors backuped by Github Pages? Something like [http://prose.io/](http://prose.io/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Using Python Sphinx. Compiles markdown to html. Searchable, TOC, index. [http://www.sphinx-doc.org/](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/).

</comment><comment><USER28> emacs org mode self hosted mediawiki

</comment><comment><USER29> A Dropbox folder full of markdown files with some custom syntax for quick jotting down ideas and knowledge, worked great for the past couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER30> I use CherryTree. I use it as simple editor application (not code editing though) and also use its' hierarchical structuring of the notes.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use IntelliJ/WebStorm. I open a Google Drive folder which contains a markdown file for each day.

</comment><comment><USER32> Github Gist, Bear Note taking app(hashtags, hierarchical ordering, etc) and sometimes jrnl cli tool

</comment><comment><USER14> GitHub gist, google drive(why Gmail drafts?), mediawiki

</comment><comment><USER33> Markdown. Synced to github and Gitlab.

</comment><comment><USER34> a .plan file for my todo list, and some Markdown files synced on github.

</comment><comment><USER35> Simplenote / github</comment>


Show HN: Diff web assets across geographic regions - <AUTHOR> https://www.ubiqwerty.site/ <comment><AUTHOR> A quick side-project I developed to test CDN issues. Looking for ideas on how it can be made more useful.</comment>


Wal-Mart's Answer to Apple Pay, CurrentC - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/walmarts-answer-to-apple-pay-currentc-2014-10 <comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping that Apple Pay would open the doors to NFC payments, but I didn't realize it would create such a mess!</comment>


Ask YC: Wattvision vs. Black & Decker EM100B - <AUTHOR>

I learned yesterday of B&D's product: http://bit.ly/frag
Any chance the Wattvision team would comment on how their offering (beyond the obligatory social networking component) is different?
I assume the question came up during Demo day. <comment><USER2> Hi Sanj. Thanks for your message. Since Wattvision hasn't launched yet, I don't want to get in to too much detail, but in short, wattvision is faster, better, and cheaper. You'll hear more when we launch soon.

Thanks for your interest. Do hit up the team at info@wattvision if you want the details ;) -s

<comment><USER3> Hmm, I don't know. That black & decker device looks like it just uses photo detection or what not to read the reading from your electricity meter.

Other devices currently out use a clamp instead, this doesn't measure voltage and is therefore inaccurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you like interesting power meters, check out the Wattson - <http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/07/wattson_monitor.php>

</comment><comment><USER5> Disclaimer: I don't have any direct input to this question.

However, someone else might, with the help of --

<http://bit.ly/jgAHI> [CollectiveSys]

Jerry</comment>


Bing/yahoo/duckduckgo are gaining on Google? - <AUTHOR> my blog's organic traffic has 80% google, 12% bing, 5% yahoo, 3% duckduck <comment> ajc-sorin I know most people on this aren't a fan of the subreddit /r/The_Donald, but there is a tremendous push on that sub for people to use alternatives to major tech giants.

Google, Facebook, and Amazon (due to the connection with Washington Post) are vilified, and multiple posts reach the top each week outlining alternatives - Duckduckgo is a major one, firefox/brave are suggested browsers, and in general people on that sub talk about completely disconnecting from facebook, or minimizing use to messenger only.

I can see a pretty sizeable opportunity for platforms to come out that are truly tolerant of all speech/perspectives. I'm not criticizing, nor expressing favor towards, any of the services I've mentioned, but it seems like someone could make a solid earning in a lifestyle company aimed at servicing individuals who want privacy and uninhibited freedom of speech.

For reference, T_D is in the top 125 of subreddits by subscriber base and activity. If you exclude default subreddits, they're probably in the top 50 subs. Considering they probably have even more penetration through the amount of lurkers (like me), I wouldn't be surprised if they drove a sizeable chunk of users away from Big-Tech.

Edit (for personal reasons): I'm not on T_D because I support Trump. I go there to get a perspective of people who I don't completely understand, in order to better understand their needs/fears. Also, their memes are dank.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure why everyone is for tolerating the intolerant. To me, that just leads to a society where little cancerous spots can thrive and even grow.

Then when a catastrophe or a period of unrest hits these little spots of cancer get the opportunity to grow into the general populace by spreading their fear, uncertainty and blame first mentalities.

I get the slippery slope of censorship but when a group/ideology processes itself to be only intolerant and hateful then should we really encourage or even tolerant its existence?

As an aside, obviously when it comes to bigger groups (religious groups) then it's harder to generalize that every participant espouses every belief.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not sure why everyone is for tolerating the intolerant.

If you accept intolerance towards intolerance then why bother caring about tolerance in the first place. Everyone's just intolerant. The "good" aren't the people who shout the loudest, they're the people who extend goodwill towards their enemies.

> Then when a catastrophe or a period of unrest hits these little spots of > cancer get the opportunity to grow into the general populace by spreading > their fear, uncertainty and blame first mentalities.

Same thing with fear. If people should fear fear what's the point of caring about fear in the first place? Everyone's already afraid.

> I get the slippery slope of censorship but when a group/ideology processes > itself to be only intolerant and hateful then should we really encourage or > even tolerant its existence?

As for censorship and speech, there is worldwide consensus that humans should be permitted to speak freely without fear [0]. In, at least the US, I believe (and sincerely hope) this human right continues to be recognized in the long term.

> As an aside, obviously when it comes to bigger groups (religious groups) > then it's harder to generalize that every participant espouses every belief.

Debates are probably better focused on individual arguments than on groups anyway.

[0] "...the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people..." \- [https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human- rights/](https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

EDIT: a word

<comment><USER4> >> I'm not sure why everyone is for tolerating the intolerant.

> If you accept intolerance towards intolerance then why bother caring about > tolerance in the first place.

I see a lot of my engineer friends struggling with this. Being logical & binary, they think as tolerant people, they need to tolerate intolerance. A lot of their arguments are for defending intolerant people like if bakery doesn't want to serve gay customers, then so be it. Some even go as far as to say that if laundromat doesn't want Black customers, then so be it.

I always point out tolerance is more than a simple word or definition; it is a philosophy and political idea. You tolerate your annoying in-laws; you stand up against discrimination because you believe in a tolerant society.

The real world is not binary nor logical. You have to fight evil in whatever way you can. Intolerance is evil. Turning blind-eye to it or hiding behind logic is essentially accepting intolerance.

<comment><USER5> The intolerant aren't enemies to be destroyed; they are the land to be conquered; it's the ideas that must be destroyed.

The beginning of every hateful ideology begins by seeing itself as the oppressed and removing its tolerance for perceived oppressors, from nazism, to communism, and others I shall not name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> About 2 months ago I switched to DuckDuckGo and have been happy with the results I get back

<comment><USER7> The problem I have with ddg is that their non english and local searches are lacking. Those are the only reasons why I stick with google.

Anywats, I used to use ddg for english non location dependant queries for a while

<comment><USER8> Interesting because that was one of benefits of DDG for me. 80% of my time I do not want local searches because I'm looking for the best IT results and local often has subpar quality. Google thinks I value local better than English and prioritizes local over quality English.

Of course when I do want local Google is the best :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a fact I was able to pull competitive docs from website with the help of Duck that Goog won't provide.

Name kinda sucks - i always typing duckgogo and ending up at spammy site. WTF is duckduckgo?

Can't we do a brandy shortcut or so?

<comment><USER10> They could rebrand to merely Duck, but duck.com is already registered... to Google [0].

[0]: [https://www.whois.com/whois/duck.com](https://www.whois.com/whois/duck.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't Yahoo still powered by Bing? Or did they move back to their own engine?</comment>