Apple Wants a Whopping $2.5 Billion From Samsung in Patent Suit - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/apple-want-2-5-billion-from-samsung-in-patent-fight/

<comment><USER2> Apple is starting to exceed Oracle in ridiculousness. Let's hope a competent judge takes this case.

<comment><USER3> Weird. I see Samsung and Google as being the ridiculous ones here.

Abusing FRAND principles, withholding/destroying evidence, deliberately trying to confuse the jury, misleading judges that overscroll bouncing and other design patents are equivalent to standards essential patents when they clearly aren't.

<comment><USER4> How do you see that?

Genuine question - given that the linked article quotes a _judge_ calling the whole dispute ridiculous, and the article calls it an _almost laughable amount_.

I think the whole set of patent disputes is stupid, and this damage claim meets all the criteria to be called ridiculous. I mean... _2.5 BILLION DOLLARS!!!!_

There just is no way that any design patent is worth that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the long run, this is actually less than Microsoft gets, of course. The MS patent deal is estimated at $15-25 per device. Last quarter, Samsung produced 50 million smartphones; at the lower rate at that run rate it would take under a year for the MS payment to exceed the speculative Apple one.

<comment><USER6> Goldman Sachs estimates Microsoft makes about 450M per year, or $3-6 per Android device sold.[1] There have been stories about them seeking royalties as high $15 per phone, but no evidence (that I know of) to support that they are getting anything close to that. It would be the highlight of their earnings if they were.

[1] [http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-29/tech/30216822...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-29/tech/30216822_1_htc- microsoft-android-device)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's almost 15% of total Samsung's mobile division revenue from last year. That's just plainly ridiculous amount of money.

<comment><USER8> Consider if it's Apple's loss or Samsung's gain being valued here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope they get it. I mean I don't really feel bad at all for Samsung

With stuff like; [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/with-these-ipad- smar...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/with-these-ipad-smart-cover- knock-offs-samsung-shows-why-apple-is-suing-it-updated/26308)

and

[http://www.macmixing.com/samsung-shamelessly-rips-off-the- ma...](http://www.macmixing.com/samsung-shamelessly-rips-off-the-mac-mini- amongst-many-other-stolen-designs/)

Amazing <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism> too, given the tablet covers where made by some top shots nephew.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kun-hee#Nepotism>

<comment><USER10> Does near religious following of a brand really cloud judgement so badly? Read the links you posted - the first was updated to the manufacturer not Samsung did it and the rest are slathered in cult following.</comment></comment>


Airbnb Was Like a Family, Until the Layoffs Started - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/technology/airbnb-coronavirus-layoffs-.html <comment><USER3> _" Then came the May 5 layoffs. To blunt the shock, Airbnb's severance packages included three months of salary and a year of health benefits, which was more generous than many other start-ups doing layoffs."_

That's not terrible.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the severance package is decent, but that's not what this is about.

Startups have been creating these cultures of "family" for years in order to have a closer relationship to their employees than ever before. This closeness, as many other dynamics of the current labor system in the US, benefit the companies far more than the employees.

The culture of "startup family" made it possible for companies like Theranos to lie to investors for so long while keeping their employees quiet.

The "startup family" culture made it possible for companies like Uber to devolve into a misogynistic, harassment-driven behemoth coming from the top.

The "startup family" culture convinced millions of employees to take lower salaries with the hope that their dead-last-liquidation-preference common shares would turn into a nest egg someday, while 99% of them never did. Most people never even ask or understand the terms of these agreements. That doesn't sound like family to me.

<comment><USER5> Startup family culture has some truth that you spend more time at your workplace than at home. But some SV companies take it way too far.

At the end of the day every company gets your skill and in return compensate with stocks and salary. That's all there is to it. If they don't value your skill, you're fired.

You don't disown your kids because you don't value their skill. Family is for life (mostly). Jobs aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work for a family owned company that does have a little of that "we are all family" sense of things and I think the distinguishing marks are:

1\. You are not fully trusted until the founder's son personally has some trust in you (this usually involves proving yourself professionally but also making an impression)

2\. If you are not fully trusted, the company loyalty is about the same as any other company

3\. If you are fully trusted, the company will go out of its way to avoid firing you even if you become ineffective, ie, they will shift you between positions, change you from full-time to part-time, sometimes even completely change your department.

4\. Sometimes this trust gets to the point of not really paying attention to what so-and-so is doing

5\. The downside is our company is heavily top-heavy, with a lot of people in vague senior positions with ill-defined zones of responsibility. People who are not able to stabilize somewhere into a new senior position usually move on but that can take a while

6\. Partly because of #5, the exact responsibilities of senior people can be vague and the chain of command for certain things can be confusing

7\. There is a lot of hiring within family and friends, not necessarily resulting in incompetence, but sometimes you wonder if there might be better people for some positions

8\. The company is slow moving and stays relatively small, procedures are highly informal

9\. Raises are probably below industry average, bonuses are probably above industry average

Altogether, for me personally, the trade-offs are worth it. That being said, I can understand why most companies do not structure themselves this way.

<comment> spaced-out >Altogether, for me personally, the trade-offs are worth it.

Really, because all the things you listed seem negative. What are the positives?

<comment><USER6> #3, the company going out of its way to avoid firing you if you get their trust. They don't ignore incompetence but they are willing to be flexible. The extra feeling of security is generally nice especially when company fortunes go up and down. They have also supported a shift in my job responsibilities toward more of a development focus, despite that being outside my original job description, and have overlooked some strange behavior on my part (not filing certain reports, avoiding certain customer interactions, etc), without needing a real explanation (the real explanation would require going into my mental heath history which is something I'd rather avoid).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why can't Airbnb do furloughs - take the amount they hope to save through a layoff, and have all employees not work for some x number of days each (staggered so as to not disrupt operations), so that the pain is shared, rather than borne by the laid-off few?

<comment><USER8> I was thinking that maybe it had do with regulation, or its effect on moral and productivity, etc.

But I would just wager its far easier to do lay-offs. The path of least resistance...

<comment><USER9> Ah yes, the path of least resistance. How very family-like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "We are family" is only meaningful if everyone has a meaningful share of equity, and that does not scale very well. An actual family shares resources. I personally know that I will inherit some property from my parents. My parents took care of me when I was young, I have helped them in recent years. That is family. Among commercial relationships, the only thing that comes close is a partnership where everyone has some significant amount of equity. And that doesn't scale. A partnership of ten people is often like an actual family, in the economic aspects, and maybe you could stretch that to a hundred people. But you could you stretch that to 1,000 people? Or 10,000 people? At some point it is just not possible.

Also, many workers enjoy working from home, but in terms of approaching the feeling of true alliance that is implied by "We are family" the only places (that I've been at) that have come close have been small startups where everyone had equity and everyone was working in one office.

Mind you, when I say equity, I mean actual equity, not stock options. And to get actual equity, typically a worker needs to bring something to the table, other than a willingness to commit future hours. Typically they need to invest their own money, and become a true partner, or invest something else of value (one of my partners had inherited an old farmhouse and donated that, which became our office).

<comment><USER11> BS, labor value should be equivalent to or more then capital value.

<comment><USER12> I agree. I think it's bullshit that for me to get equity, I have to put hundreds of thousands of dollars in... But my hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of time is apparently worthless?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://archive.is/NONc3](http://archive.is/NONc3)

</comment><comment><USER14> "New employees, who were screened for empathy in job interviews, were welcomed "home" and told: "You belong here."" \- What a distrubing quote, was it a cult?!?!

</comment><comment><USER15> Every startup I ever worked at was like a family until the money started to run out; then you very quickly realize this "we're a family" rhetoric works exactly one way and those 60 hour weeks you were pulling for free lunches and a significantly below-market salary were never going to be rewarded by anything.

<comment><USER16> That's because you can't buy culture. Bigger business has never been good at that and the youthfulness of the tech leadership world over the last 15-20 years is why this is a thing. We've attached the pretty-ness and warm feelings of realism to a hollow/fake implementation idea. Catered meals matter to those that haven't quite grown up yet. What really matters is your boss dropping by the hospital when your child is born, you showing up and standing quietly by his side when some one he loves passes away, colleagues poking fun and reminding you how old you are your birthdays, dropping their tasks on a dime to come rescue you when your broke down on the side of the road. That's life baby and they're by your side as we all trudge through it.

You don't build "the family" on the concept of it's value is purely what you're getting out of it. You base it on sacrifice and the understanding that the work part is only the mission, the team is the reason you're there and is probably what matters most.

We have forgotten that the things that matter most in life and the things that build that kind of culture everyone mocks as "not real", its all built on necessary sacrifice and substance that can not ever be quantified on profit & loss spreadsheet.

Maybe the issue is that people SAY they want a culture that cares, but really it's just not something you really want to work for. Do your job, collect a paycheck and go home. Maybe people should just be ok with the fact that in reality, that's all they want. Otherwise, move to a rural area, take a job that pays a little less on a team that has these family qualities. We do exist, I think it's just not something g you REALLY want or value.

<comment><USER17> > That's because you can't buy culture.

Well maybe you can - by giving everyone _significant_ equity - but no one is willing to write that cheque.

<comment><USER18> Because no VC would touch that company with a 10 foot pole and with reason.

<comment><USER19> Sure, we all understand _why_ it has to be this way. Doesn't change the fact that I'm never going to feel emotional loyalty to a startup that I know is giving me as little equity as it can get away with (and what there is will probably be whittled away by dilution, sketchy clawback terms, etc.) Loyalty is a two-way street.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Much of the time, when companies say things, it's because they're not true, but they need you to believe they are. The things that are true don't need as much saying. The stated aspects of a company's culture are no exception. If they say their culture is one way, it's probably because it's distinctly not.

</comment><comment><USER21> If AirBnB is so certain in its "we are family" speeches: Why not give every current employee who has to be laid off because of the current situation an option to get back to AirBnB as soon as the economic situation of AirBnB improves again?

<comment><USER22> Explicitly, the mechanism for that would be a furlough.

Not so explicit, but most laid-off employees are "eligible for re-hire". That assumes, a) the company re-opens your same position, b) you still want to work for the company and haven't found a job in the interim, and c) that "economic situation" improves quickly to allow for the above, which it probably won't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What about legal adoption as part of onboarding?

</comment><comment><USER24> Your employer is not your family nor like your family. It isn't your parent, nor brother, nor cousin. It isn't your friend, in the sense that even if your boss may personally be your friend - the company has an interest that's contradictory to yours: Making more profit off of your work.

\---

As for AirBnB - I really dislike them. They eats away at the supply of apartments available to people for actual rent - you know, to live in - <USER2> favor to catering to rich(er) tourists. This naturally drives rents up. So, the employees were part of a somewhat nasty "family".

<comment><USER25> > It isn't your friend, in the sense that even if your boss may personally be > your friend - the company has an interest that's contradictory to yours:

This depends on who your employer is: if your boss _is_ your employer, and not just a higher ranked employee of the employer's, your employer can be exactly as much of a friend as your boss is.

<comment><USER24> Actually, it doesn't. If your boss is your employer, than he is not-your- friend on that deep level of conflicting interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How much did AirBnB have to pay for this PR piece?

>it built a reputation as the polar opposite of its sharing economy peers such as Uber, which prized ruthless competition, and WeWork, which collapsed under a partying culture and its founder's self-dealing.

>instead, Airbnb stood for earnest idealism.

As I recall, just like Uber, Airbnb created a platform that facilitated breaking laws and regulations in many jurisdictions...and ultimately caused damages to many owners whose property values went down as a result of their neighbors running illegal short term rentals.

<comment><USER27> >ultimately caused damages to many owners whose property values went down as a result of their neighbors running illegal short term rentals

Nobody is entitled to their property remaining a certain value. The same kind of argument is why NIMBYs try to stop the development of new housing, artificially propping up property prices and making it hard for new residents of a city to afford homes.

<comment><USER28> Artificially occupied apartments also make it hard for new residents to afford homes.

<comment><USER29> Airbnb absolutely increases home prices. Many cities did decide to allow it, but only after owners broke local zoning intent, visitors became used to Airbnb availability, and cities became used to increased taxes. As with many recent changes, this is all great for everyone except those without assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> No it wasn't. It was illegal hostels with subpar safety standards.

</comment><comment> the-dude "Part of the compensation is being part of this family,"

I grew up in the 80ies and communities were much stronger then. We had a community run iceskating course during winter, community run 'neighbourhood'-house with games, music etc. We supplemented our schools budget by collecting old paper every six weeks, people just showed up and did the work together ( teachers, parents & kids ).

Our municipality had a very nice pool-complex and library. All gone. Somehow this is all too expensive now.

<comment><USER31> We have that where I am. The taxes are actually quite high (~40% of my monthly mortgage is tax escrow) compared to wherever else I've lived.

<comment> the-dude The pool & library or the community?

<comment><USER31> All of the above, actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It sounds like you can be a family as long as your making money.

</comment><comment><USER33> I give you labour. You give me money.

GTFO with that family shit.

</comment><comment><USER34> > It's not a family. It's a workplace.

It's better when companies and managers are honest about the nature of the employment relationship.

</comment><comment><USER35> A friend who worked at one of these companies described it as: "it went from being all kool-aid to being all punch".

</comment><comment><USER36> Hate for Airbnb aside. I have to commend the CEO for directly addressing everyone in a meeting. Giving bad news like layoffs is extremely hard unless you are a sociopath.

My current CEO left it for all the directors to tell the rest of the team, a trend I've seen several times in my career. I wish there was a name for a CEO who only gives the good news and leaves the bad news for middle management.

<comment><USER37> I was one of those director people who had to give the bad news once. The big boss chickened out of firing everyone, except his brother. So I got left with the task of letting go of the guy with the pregnant wife, as well as the whole rest of the team. In addition, he didn't call to apologize to any of the investors (he'd blown up a hedge fund), he had our investor relations guy go that. Some of those investors literally said "ok I'm gonna lose my job when I tell my boss about this".

So yeah, we need a name for that kind of abdication.

<comment><USER38> See hospadar's comment, the word you are looking for is "coward".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It reminds me of one of my first jobs. "We're a family" yadda yadda yadda... They told me my contract wouldn't be renewed during a meeting which was initially planned to talk about a salary raise. Adding insult to injury they waited until they were legally obligated to tell me even though they knew much earlier that it was going to happen, what a great family.

A job is a job, that's it. You'll be treated like waste as soon as the money runs out.

> "Mr. Chesky aspired to a capitalism that had an "infinite time horizon" and > was good for society."

Ah ah ah, what a time to be alive

</comment><comment><USER40> Oh dear. I wish people would get the "family" idea out of their heads when it comes to working a job at a company. I'm at X company to offer my skills, help others grow, grow my own skills and making money so I support my actual family after 5pm. on the dot.

<comment><USER41> Exactly. The company is many things, but it's not a family. Find family elsewhere.

[https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-company-isnt-a- family/](https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-company-isnt-a-family/)

<comment><USER40> > The best companies aren't families. They're supporters of families. Allies > of families. There to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so when > workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they're the best husbands, > wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be.

Kudos</comment></comment></comment>


Crunchbase is hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchbase.com/person/larry-page

<comment><USER2> I doubt Crunchbase was hacked. Likely just his account.

[https://gist.github.com/674efaa1a8b941761f1a.git](https://gist.github.com/674efaa1a8b941761f1a.git)

Note that Gist has a screenshot of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the future, you really might want to link a screencap instead -- if a page is hacked it's quite possible some malicious code has been added too. This link could be trying some attacks against every visitor</comment>


Ok lets end this anthropic principle crap now - <AUTHOR> http://www.samonsoftware.com/?p=134

<comment><USER2> It sounds like what he's talking about is the weak anthropic principle, that if the universe were any other way we wouldn't be here and able to observe it, and so it must be that way.

The pebble analogy doesn't really hold true for that.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

It's not clear if the OP knows what "anthropomorphic" means. It's not the same as "anthropic".

<comment><AUTHOR> I meant anthropic, and have changed the post and link title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has been a personal bugbear of mine for a while. The anthropic principle is science's equivalent of the "God did it" card and is invoked anytime people test the limits of existing models.

Take for example this extract from the wiki article(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle>)

Roger Penrose explained the weak form as follows:

        "The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time.
        For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time.
        This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years.
        The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.).
        A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the earth's history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!).
        This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the sun.
        At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question-so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold!"
        The Emperor's New Mind, Chapter 10

Rather than create a model of how this coincidence occurs, it is simply ignored as "well it had to occur or we couldn't talk about it". For example, this coincidence may occur because we somehow derive our relational understandings and measurements from universal constants in the first place.

You can certainly derive something from the fact that we (life) exist but when you explain away observations with a simple "well we couldnt be here to talk about it otherwise" you are implying one of the following:

1\. There is a design to the universe

2\. The universe as it is is inevitable

3\. Every possible combination of variables has existed or does exist and we are simply the result of the law of large numbers.

Either way there is some burden of proof.

</comment><comment><USER5> The king went through a village and was amazed to see shooting targets painted everywhere - fences, walls, trees. Exactly in the middle of each target was an arrow.

"Wow, the greatest archer in the whole kingdom must live here" thought the King to himself. Soon he spotted a man carrying a bow and some arrows. Pointing to the targets and arrows the King asked the man "Have you shot all of them?". "Yes" replied the man. "How did you manage to do that?" "Simple" replied the man "It's not that hard if you shoot before painting the target."

</comment><comment><USER6> "He then thinks, Wow the chances of me picking up a pebble at random that has this weight and this diameter are tiny"

Meh. The difference between anthropic thinking and the pebble example is that, without the universe being the way it is, I wouldn't even be here to see it. This is a relevant difference.

ETA: Another relevant difference is this: the amazing thing is not that the universe has precisely the physical constants that it has. The amazing thing is that it has _any_ physical constants suitable for conscious observers.

<comment><USER7> Not if you rephrase the argument. Regarding the pebble, one might say that no matter which pebble he chose, its measurements would be unique and equally "unlikely." Similarly, no matter which universe we could ever observe ourselves in, it would have equally "unlikely" parameters enabling us to live in it.

<comment><USER6> "no matter which universe we could ever observe ourselves in"

But you can't just assume that our existence is necessary. We might not have existed at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any universe in which a thinking being exists will be suited to the existence of that thinking being.

No one can claim "isn't it suprising that the universe suits me" because anyone who can say it, can say it :)

<comment><USER8> Any universe in which I win powerball 10 times in a row will be suited to me winning powerball 10 times in a row.

I can't claim "isn't it suprising that I won powerball 10 times in a row" because anyone who can say it, can say it :)

<comment><USER9> Do you know how unlikely you are to win 10 times in a row? The odds of you winning 10 times in a row are exactly the same as the odds demonstrated by the results of the last 10 times powerball was run.

Do you find the results of last 10 powerball runs surprising?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What this says to me is that the argument is fruitless, whether you are an IDer, or a "new athiest". So let's stop using it.

<comment><USER4> Except that the argument is used as part of science not just religious discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I modified the title to Anthropic on the post and here.

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought this was going to be a post about people who over-use "Information wants to be free/anthropomporphized." That would have been worth reading, perhaps.

Clearly NHN

</comment><comment><USER12> i'd say you nailed it here</comment>


You Have No Idea How Wrong You Are - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA

<comment><AUTHOR> "There are a lot more ways to be wrong than there are ways to be right. Yet somehow, many of us think that we are probably right most of the time. Prior generations were wrong about almost everything they believed, but this does not stop our unfailing confidence that we, being so much more enlightened, have things for the most part figured out."</comment>


A map of California crop production - <AUTHOR> http://exclav.es/2019/05/21/a-map-of-california-crop-production/ <comment><AUTHOR> Map link: [http://subject.space/projects-static/california- crops](http://subject.space/projects-static/california-crops)

Try zooming ALL the way in on some color -- it shows field-level data.

From DWR "Crop Mapping 2014" open dataset: [https://data.cnra.ca.gov/dataset/crop- mapping-2014](https://data.cnra.ca.gov/dataset/crop-mapping-2014)</comment>


Ask YC: SEO/Google results - <AUTHOR>

If you search for IBM on google, their site has a list of the main categories that shows in the results.  Is there a way to encourage goog to include these for your site, or is it an optimization on their end for certain sites and you can't force it at all? <comment><USER2> Google calls it site links. See: [http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...](http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47334)

</comment><comment><USER3> I had all of the pages in the root directory and it wasn't until I broke them out into there own directories did I get some links under the google.com search for officezilla.com. It makes a big difference, without those links your site listing is "just another listing" but with the additional links your site looks more important.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK great, we have our sections broke out that way.

I suppose it is just a matter of traffic and pagerank?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the site I work on, Google just does this without any sort of sitemap or anything from our end.

</comment><comment><USER5> Google says that when it believes a user has performed a search that they believe is "navigational" they will serve site links for your site.</comment>


London Stock Exchange in historic Linux go-live - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/open-source/3260727/london-stock-exchange-in-historic-linux-go-live/

<comment><USER2> This is a big win for Linux. The London stock exchange was one of Microsoft's big clients that it touted in marketing materials. The with the high profile problems (outage / slow), it quickly became a headache for Microsoft. If I remember correctly, Accenture blamed them and they blamed Accenture.

If their Linux system does well, with no major problems, it will be a nice high-profile case study for Linux.

<comment><USER3> It is sad that the underlying system gets blamed in these cases. While it is easiest to simplify and the blame gets passed around, there's no reason why you can't build a fault-tolerant system on-top of Windows. In fact, there's nothing particular about Linux that makes it immune from failure or bottlenecks (hardware, infrastructure, etc) that a high availability, high throughput system would need to overcome, nullifying any increases in stability or performance innate to the OS.

While I would professionally recommend Linux over Windows, it wouldn't be for reasons of "stability" or "performance" but that it was simpler and more straight-forward to sanely manage large farms of interdependent Linux boxes and that Linux provides a better development platform for these types of distributed applications.

I agree though, it would be a nice anecdotal win for Linux.

<comment><USER4> From what I read, Accenture built the system using SQL Server 2000... but this was a system that had been upgraded in 2007. Why didn't they use SQL Server 2005? I tried looking around also but couldn't find anymore technical details on what exactly caused the system to fail.

I should mention that despite being a .Net guy by trade I too would recommend a Linux system for something like this, especially for performance reasons where microseconds matter. Still I can't help but feel a little frustrated that no one ever said what exactly occurred beyond "one or two unforseen events happened that brought down the London exchange for several hours". In fact, one article even attributed the outage to human error! Aside from poor UI design or confusing procedures, sometimes it's a matter of PEBKAC.

(or maybe I just didn't get lucky in my searches)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article says, "...Millennium Exchange was processing messages at a round trip latency of only 126 microseconds..."

Is this right, or did the author mean milliseconds?

<comment><USER6> microseconds.

internal messaging latency is measured in microseconds

order acknowledgement/cancel/fulfillment is measured in microseconds to low milliseconds.

<comment><USER7> Let me be the first to say that this is pretty damn fast.

For reference, try to ping a remote host in your LAN. You'll see about the same roundtrip time (~150 microseconds) and that's without a payload to speak of and without any processing going on.

<comment><USER8> Round-trip latencies for small MPI messages are typically a couple microseconds over InfiniBand, under 10 microseconds for 10G Ethernet without TCP, and a bit more when going through TCP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> my code to interface with this for a major financial exchange went live today too. So far its been working perfectly!

<comment><USER10> Same here.

Thanks LSE for providing us with one of the simplest protocols to code against!

For those wondering what kind of protocol I'm talking about: <http://goo.gl/ld9aj> (MIT203 and MIT303).

<comment><USER11> Unshortened URL:

[http://www.londonstockexchange.com/products-and- services/mil...](http://www.londonstockexchange.com/products-and- services/millennium-exchange/technicalinformation/technicalinformation.htm)</comment></comment></comment>


Native or Cross Platform mobile app? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/inloopx/native-or-cross-platform-mobile-app-f113aa7ab581 <comment><USER2> Unfortunately or not the decision relies always on the type of project you're about to build as the article mentioned, specially depending of the end user. Modern technologies are not obsolete, for now!</comment>


Why Objective-J, Cappuccino and SproutCore are completely changing the web app industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.carsonified.com/web-apps/why-objective-j-cappuccino-and-sproutcore-are-completely-changing-the-web-app-industry

<comment><USER2> Because Apple's dev tools have always had such a huge impact on the software development industry, and web-based variants of those tools will obviously completely change the industry?

Apple is not that important. Seriously. They make very pretty products. But they aren't shaping the developer landscape, outside of a few segments of the industry. I went to YAPC::NA a week ago...350-ish people, 10-15% Mac users. I went to a Sun-sponsored, Open Source focused event a few months back...~1200 people, 15% Mac users, tops. Even at Startup School (where folks like to talk a lot about "wow, look at all the Macs!"), 800-1000 people, 30-40% Mac users.

It's really easy to look around at all of your friends and say, "Wow, everybody is using this, and thinks it's awesome! It's really going to take over the world!" But, your friends are not a representative sample of the development world.

So, Objective-J is a cool idea, and if it helps 280North (who are smart, nice, cool guys doing great work) get their product out the door faster, I'm excited about it. But, I've also looked at Objective-C and Apple's development environment, and came away far less than impressed. While it may be superior to working in C++ (or plain ol' C), it's probably not even better than Java for getting things done (and that's not all that good), unless your problem set happens to overlap very closely to what it was designed for.

There are already several revolutionary JavaScript libraries and toolkits out there (jQuery, YUI, ExtJS, Dojo, Mochi, etc.), and they're all making an impact...but let's keep the hyperbole under control.

<comment><USER3> _Apple is not that important. Seriously._

Even with a mere 10% market share, Apple is so incredibly important. Since 2000, they have continually set the standard in industrial design across the electronics industry (and even beyond it). Beyond that, they've also completely changed the music industry. They went from zero music presence to 80% market share in music players, and the number one music store (not just online music store). The iPhone is already redefining the cell phone industry.

Sure, they may be small, and maybe they'll never get bigger, but you can't for a second claim they aren't important.

<comment><USER4> True, but as SwellJoe said, they are not _that_ important, particularly in the space in which this topic resides. Their contributions regarding UI and design have definitely been impressive, but we're talking about dev tools here. The mass adoption of iPods and MacBooks hasn't yet resulted in an equivalent increase in Objective-C, and I would think that it would do so even less with web technologies.

<comment><USER5> How many Objective-C books were on the shelf at barnes and noble before apple used it? Now there is always one or two and I expect that to grow with iphone uptake.

<comment><USER2> Two whole books? Why, that's as much as .1 times the number of Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, or even Lisp books on the shelf at your average bookstore! Get ready world, here comes the Apple development juggernaut!

My comment was merely to point out the silliness of hyperbole. I'm not picking on Apple, or its fanboys. You like Apple products, and development tools that emulate Apple products, and that's wonderful for you. But, it doesn't alter the fact that Apple has historically had little to no impact on the web development world (web _design_ , they've had a huge impact on...actual code, not so much).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I consistently see posts like this touting 'new web-app frameworks' and such, and always find a few important concepts about web apps mysteriously unmentioned:

1) Video.

Video on the web is king. Streaming video. Live video. Video comments. Video video video. None of these javascript-based solutions have an inherent solution for incorporating video into your web app, and therefore will always need to be augmented with a video technology for web-apps that require video.

2) Cross-browser compatibility

We're getting closer with javascript compatibility, but not there yet. Yes, many of these frameworks claim to hide the issue, but what about developers that want to develop components for the framework? A virtual machine that is consistent across all browsers (well, supported browsers) makes development much cleaner.

3) Flash IS Open-source.

Flash may not be truly 'open-source', but rarely is there a mention that Adobe has released the specifications for the specifications for both the .swf file format and the actionscript virtual machine, and are accepting feedback on both.

4) Rapid Development Environments

I admit to knowing little about how people are developing these apps in these languages, but doubt that the IDE's contain the feature-rich capabilities required for complex RIAs - things like code hinting across libraries, a walk- through debugger, visual drag & drop component interface, etc etc.

\---

I am in no way suggesting that these new technologies are not exciting or an improvement - I just think the hype around them ([http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/14/cocoa-for- windows-f...](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/14/cocoa-for-windows- flash-killer-sproutcore/)) is somewhat unsubstantiated. They still have a long way to go. But it's great to see some new competition creeping in on the big guys - good for the consumer!

<comment><USER7> I think you misunderstood the article. Video is not king - it's important, but it has it's place. HN wouldn't be better if all comments were videos.

In general, you seem to have missed the point of this article - it isn't comparing RIA's and JS, it's comparing 'old' JS frameworks and new ones, and the new ones are making big progress to being desktop apps.

 _I admit to knowing little about how people are developing these apps..._

I don't mean this personally, but then why are you talking about this? Can we all agree to talk about things that we know about? I think that heuristic will benefit this community most.

<comment><USER6> I do know little about the development process, but that wasn't the point of my comment. I think it's perfectly acceptable to discuss things that justify general points without having in-depth knowledge about the specifics. Nor was my point that video is necessary for every web app. These are points that, when taken as a whole, explain why I think the new frameworks are not a revolution in web app development.

Web apps are dominated by Flash, and to a lesser extent, Silverlight, for a reason. The hype around these new frameworks just isn't justified. If the title was more to the effect of 'new frameworks are a good step forward in the javascript-based web-app approach' then I'd happily concede. The title says _completely changing the web app industry_!! The point of the article seems, to me, to be about how these new frameworks allow for simple web-app (aka RIA, more or less) development with more support from big players. My point is that this isn't as much of a game-changer as some people seem to think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Objective-J and SproutCore change all that. They allow you to create true desktop-like apps right inside the browser. "

Why would I not prefer a true desktop app right on my desktop?

Using Java and JNLP I can get an app the can be auto-updated (as a Web app would be) but takes advantage of an arguably more robust and speedier language (Java, perhaps by way of JRuby or Scala or Jython) with true desktop features.

It seems that the "Build Apps in a Browser with JavaScript" pitch is mainly a win for Web developers who only know JavaScript. It isn't clear what the benefits are to the end user.

<comment><USER9> > what the benefits are to the end user.

A UI that doesn't suck eggs comes to mind.

I use strong language to get a point across; Java UIs today feel to me like Motif UIs did in 2000.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that even though Java GUIs tend to suck, web app guis suck more. I'm probably going to get a fair bit of hate from this, but seriously, web apps are a pain.

        - they have the browser's baggage. Address bar, back/forward buttons, etc
        - They don't use native widgets... except for some places (form widgets)
        - They're slow
        - They can't integrate with other desktop apps (drag and drop, saving to local disk, heck, even loading from local disk sucks)

While web-app style development is going to get better, I somehow hope we could get to the "write your UI in a GUI description language, develop your logic separately, talking to a network server" stage without being stuck with compatibility baggage resulting from needing to be compatible with the browser.

To be clear on what I mean -- Yes, currently developing and deploying desktop apps isn't fun. Who wants to write reams upon reams of code to pack widgets into containers, or whatever layout-method-du-jour your toolkit is using, when you can simply type some XML to describe your UI? Who wants to use a slow installer after a slow download to get an app installed? Web apps win here.

However, web apps -- by design -- are unable to integrate properly into a desktop. They're trapped in a browser, cut off from interaction with the rest of your UI, and if they weren't, it would be an insanely bad design decision.

On the flip side, with things like Glade, designing a desktop GUI is starting to hurt far far less. I think that pushing desktop app development frameworks towards being far more network aware, easily deployable, and faster to develop will lead to far, far better results than trying to make web apps not suck, while dragging the web browser legacy junk onto desktoplike web apps.

[edit - expand on ideas]

<comment><USER9> So! I agree with you about your limitations, and agree that they suck. Where we disagree is on the valuation of those limitations.

The benefits of web apps in consistency of interface elements, interoperability (hyperlinks!), customizability (greasemonkey!), toolset (FF, IE, Opera, Safari, Lynx, Emacs, mostly use whichever floats your boat), and portability (use the same app at work as you use at home) far outweigh the drawbacks.

Which is not to say that we should not attack those drawbacks, we should, but we should do it in a way that we maintain the benefits we've gotten from web applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well, the first thing is that until Objective-J and Cappuccino are released they won't change the industry in any way, and then we will see.

One thing I don't understand is why _web_ apps have to look like _desktop_ apps? Browser/net and desktop are completely different environments, each with their own characteristics. And trying to do a desktop-like web app brings two problems:

1\. It fails in the uncanny valley: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley>.

2\. They use a lot more JS than it's needed, and while this is not a problem on computers it is in mobile devices. Do you really want a web app suck all the battery of your iPhone, even when it's not necessary?

<comment><USER3> I don't really think web apps _have_ to look like desktop apps. But I think any such discussion also required a bit of consideration of what counts as a web application, and what is just a web site.

Objective-J and Cappuccino (and SproutCore) are really designed to build applications. Long running applications that exist in the context of the browser. By my definition, this is far from the realm of web pages, so why should they _have_ to look like a web page?

Google's Presentation app is an apt tool for comparison. It was designed to look very much like the rest of Google's web pages. In my opinion, its not a very good design. Admittedly I'm biased, but the UI in 280 Slides is just light years ahead of Google Docs.

As far as using "more JS than needed", what makes it unnecessary? If it were really the case that you could build UIs like 280 Slides without using a pretty advanced JS framework, than why haven't people been doing it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recommend listening to Ajaxian's podcast with SproutCore's creator

[http://ajaxian.com/archives/audible-ajax- episode-27-sproutco...](http://ajaxian.com/archives/audible-ajax- episode-27-sproutcore-with-charles-jolley)

it's good (though technical) listen.

</comment><comment><USER13> When do leaky abstractions become Niagra Falls?

<comment><USER14> Indeed, I completely abandonned the idea of abstracting HTML/CSS/Javascript away completely by building a higher-level language on top. The problem with trying to do that is that you have an unsolvable Ease-of-Use VS Completeness problem. If you want your code to be easier to write you'll have to shun some features (ex: html attributes) and that will come to bite you in the ass later. But if you support everything HTML does then you end up with... HTML!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anybody played with SproutCore yet? First thoughts? Impressions?

<comment><USER16> tried SproutCore... doesn't work on Opera so it's no use for my needs.

<comment><USER17> Took a peek at SproutCore and is it just me but it's slow as molasses. Using FF2 on Ubuntu...another thing I want to raise is it's over reliance on Ruby to install the damn thing. Why can't it be like jQuery and other js libs that you just drop into your web directory and call em from the page. How is this different from jQueryUI?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone knows how is this different from Google Web Toolkit?

<comment><USER19> It's quite different. In GWT, you write your front end in the Java programming language and GWT compiles your source into highly optimized JavaScript. GWT's goal is to abstract away JS/DHTML development.

It appears that obj-j's goal is to make JavaScript more like Objective-C and cappuccino's goal is to make it is easier to develop web UIs that look and work like OSX.</comment></comment>


Researchers have achieved wireless speeds of 1 Tb per second - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-have-achieved-wireless-speeds-of-1-tb-per-second <comment><USER2> TL/DR: Simulating a low noise environment is lot easier than finding one in the real world. And that's not news.

Researchers simulated a 1Tb/s transfer rate within a 100Mhz channel. Shannon's limit[1] explains how: set the noise term arbitrarily small, and your transfer rate can be arbitrarily large.

Bandwidth is popularly misunderstood to be some fixed range of spectrum, as if signals outside the range are attenuated to zero. But you can't attenuate a signal to zero. "Bandwidth" is measured[2] as the range over which attenuation is less than (say) 3db.

If not for noise, you could utilize a limited-bandwidth channel as if it had infinite bandwidth merely by amplifying frequencies outside the range in the exact proportion they are attenuated.

But every real system has noise. Overcoming this noise is the challenge of high speed transfers. There's no indication these "researchers" have accomplished anything whatsoever.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisy- channel_coding_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisy- channel_coding_theorem)

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

<comment><USER3> >>by amplifying frequencies outside the range in the exact proportion they are attenuated.

This is true in the sense you know a function everywhere if you can expand it for example using the Taylor series with inifnite terms. This is not true for discrete data which is limited by the niquist rate and the DTFT of the data will clearly repeat, meaning you literally can't get at higher frequencies to amplify.

See the following figure, notice how higher frequencies are lower frequencies repeated: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Rec...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/ReconstructFilter.png/400px- ReconstructFilter.png)

>>But every real system has noise.

Indeed, but in many channels there are physical limitations on the propagation which is slightly different then noise....

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what you mean - any real world test wouldn't be a discrete signal.

And yes, real physical channels are imperfect in other ways, for example not perfectly linear, etc. Could you dig into that a little? You think these effects are more significant than noise? Love to hear about it.

<comment><USER3> >>any real world test wouldn't be a discrete signal.

Perhaps band-limited, because they have a clear start and stop. If they were infinite you wouldn't be able to encode data as you could measure them at t=+/\- infinity and retrieve all the signal information. Perhaps HN isn't the best place to have this discussion :-)

>>You think these effects are more significant than noise?

Group velocity dispersion in optical channels, people called it `noise` was at one point treated as noise before the appropriate transforms were worked out, I believe Infinera did this. In the case of remote sensing, ewald's limiting sphere represents a limit on the scattering meaning that you can't simply deconvolve and get better resolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For reference, current DDR4 RAM to CPU is ~0.5 Tb/s [0].

[0] [http://ark.intel.com/products/81059/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E5-...](http://ark.intel.com/products/81059/Intel-Xeon- Processor-E5-2697-v3-35M-Cache-2_60-GHz) (see "Max Memory Bandwidth")

<comment><USER5> Usually you don't have to share your memory bandwidth with others nearby.

<comment><USER6> Doing so within a rack might be quite handy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This does not mean much until we learn how much spectrum they used. We need more efficient use of spectrum not raw download speeds.

<comment><USER8> This claims 100MHz bandwidth: [http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/02/university- of-s...](http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/02/university-of-surrey- claims-1tbps-speed-over-future-5g-mobile-tech.html)

<comment><USER9> Is that good or bad?

<comment><USER10> 100 MHz is a lot. It's wider than the entire 2.4 GHz band and each cellular carrier has less than 100 MHz of spectrum. [http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/how-much- lte-s...](http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/how-much-lte-spectrum- do-verizon-att-sprint-and-t-mobile-have-and-where)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 2.56 Tb/s in 2012: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/telecom/wireless/twisted-...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/telecom/wireless/twisted-light-leads-to-256-tbs-link)

<comment><USER7> Yeah but this is optical, not radio. Optical transmission may technically be wireless (such as for laser communications) but this is usually too unreliable for ordinary communications. Thus, optical is most often wired, as in fiber optic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't there be a noise problem when all signals are broadcasted as in radio transmission!? Unless you point it like with a laser or microwave.

I would be hesitant putting a 1TB/s uplink next to my head. :P

<comment><USER13> Yet you walk around outside in 428-750 terahertz radiation at 120 watts per square meter without ill effect (mostly).

<comment><USER14> 120 W? I thought sunlight was more like 1 kW (but perhaps not much of it in 428-750 terahertz?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What could we do with this kind of bandwidth? I can't even imagine.

<comment><USER16> Well first off you can serve thousands of phones with attenuated signals with reasonable speed.

Also I guess you can run at SSD speeds over local wireless.

Things like wireless monitors/TV are already doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This test is largely bunk. Its over 100 feet, in direct line of sight, using a client device that is a test device built exclusively for this (as in, it is not a phone nor a laptop nor anything small and underpowered like that).

They say "5G speeds" but neglect to tell you this is not done using LTE or Wimax (the only two protocols that ITU-R recognizes for 4G; 5G will use descendents of these as they are designed for many generation forwards and backwards compatibility in mind).

<comment><USER18> Well, duh. This is obviously not a production device. Nothing about the title leads us to believe that this is a production device.

You generally have to achieve breakthroughs in lab settings before you can achieve them in real-world settings. 1Tbps is well beyond _anything_ we have in production today.

<comment><USER17> Well, it also fails to claim what it can do over distance. Like, LTE-Advanced with high order antennas (supports up to like 32x32 MIMO, but lets for this example say 8x8) could do 100mbit/sec within a 25 mile sphere around the tower using a fixed install (ie, home internet router), according to some stuff I've read.

This is technology we have now that could be used to deploy the last mile solution that'd work in many communities, yet we're not deploying it, but we're working on new tech to replace tech we're not even using (possibly just "yet", possibly forever).</comment></comment></comment>


Norimaki Synthesizer: Taste Display Using Ion Electrophoresis in Five Gels - <AUTHOR> https://research.miyashita.com/papers/I42 <comment><USER2> This works on "tastes" at the lowest level definition of "taste", in other words tongue sensations. But what we think of as "taste" is actually a combination of this and of smell or aroma.

Smell is much more complex and relies on detection of the shape of the particles by the olfactory receptors (see: [http://cst.ufl.edu/taste-vs- flavor-whats-the-difference.html](http://cst.ufl.edu/taste-vs-flavor-whats- the-difference.html)).

It could be possible to simulate different aromas with a fairly small number of scent molecules, and there has been some work in that direction (see: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227512326_Aroma_sim...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227512326_Aroma_simulation_on_the_basis_of_the_odourant_composition_of_roasted_coffee_headspace)), but no successful commercial product has ever been launched (that I'm aware of) based on this technologly.

So while interesting, this 'taste synthesizer' and anything like it is not going to enable anyone to taste anything that really tastes like a food.

<comment><USER3> Isn't John Carmack working on smell for VR?

That said I wonder what would come first these external stimuli emulator or a neural link, by passing the external sensor seems to be the most straightforward way even if it's much more complex on paper.

<comment><USER4> It's my guess that early brain-machine interface is going to require a fair amount of training and conditioning to interpret information across the interface. I think attempting to locate, isolate, and stimulate specific nerves that carry these sensation is going to be way more difficult than just exciting the receptors at the ends of those nerves. I'd anticipate "displays" emulating external stimuli preceding brain-machine interfaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The device looks like a big roll of norimaki, but there's another angle on the use of sushi for this project. Sushi is unique among savory foods in that it is usually eaten at room temperature. The lower serving temperature means that sushi emits fewer volatile esters, hence less smells, at least before chewing starts. The lower initial odors of sushi are one of the reasons that the look of sushi is so important: the colors and symmetry trigger the salivary glands in lieu of savory smells.

To create a device that simulates flavors but not smells, it makes sense to start with foods where flavor is more important relative to smell versus other foods.

<comment><USER6> > Sushi is unique among savory foods in that it is usually eaten at room > temperature.

What? There are heaps of savoury foods served at room temperature. Antipasto, salads, cold cured meats, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's also a device consisting of an electrode array for the tongue to attempt to provide an additional sense:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5523951/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5523951/)

"Tactile Vision Substitution (TVS) was the initial motivation for designing the TDU. With TVS, a user-controlled video camera captures a real-time image from the ambient environment and provides a spatially-corresponding tactile stimulation to the user's skin."

</comment><comment><USER8> Japan has a long history of appreciating quirky (often useless) inventions, I think there's a certain aesthetic quality to these gadgets that resists easy definition.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER9> It's funny how it's called a 'Display' like it's for the eyes.

It should be called a 'setup' or taste smorgasbord.

<comment><USER10> I think we've encountered a vocabulary black-hole.

And after reading the actual article, Norimaki doesn't quite roll of the tongue but I see where the author was headed.

<comment><USER11> I mean there are braille displays which are intended to be read with your fingers.

Hopefully the norimaki taste display, will soon be followed by the kimchi odorphone.

<comment><USER9> The naming braille display makes more sense than most. They do replace a text output terminal and even work very much like a raster display with small height dimension. The users of the devices also probably also map sensing of it to parts of their visual cortex.

With sight being the most developed sense, we often default to language that refers to it. And many people are visual learners. We have expressions like "I see what you mean" being used to communicate technical matters and "I feel you" or "I hear what you're saying" to convey more emotional things. "I get what you mean" or just "I get you" can be used for either.

Even when studying Human-Machine-Interfaces and ergonomics in school, we were always talking about displays and controls. It's no wonder we have touchscreens for everything now. I wonder if we're going to get a generation who don't know what it's like to drive by feel and sound and smells of burning oil and rubber or other things with non-visual feedback loops. Perhaps another good reason to learn to play an instrument.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A paid online service that will make up convincing lies for you. - <AUTHOR> http://www.usaweekend.com/07_issues/070923/070923online-alibi-network-excuses.html

<comment><USER2> Why have morals when you can make money instead?

</comment><comment><USER3> I want to see this "service" get sued for being party to fraud.

</comment><comment><USER4> pitiful</comment>


Show HN: Free database of geographic place names and geospatial data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/delight-im/FreeGeoDB?hn=2015-09-25 <comment><USER3> "RESOURCES.md" ( [https://github.com/delight- im/FreeGeoDB/blob/master/RESOURCE...](https://github.com/delight- im/FreeGeoDB/blob/master/RESOURCES.md) ) includes OpenStreetMap, which is licenced under the Open Database Licence (ODbL). You cannot relicence it under the Apache licence. I've raised an issue ( [https://github.com/delight- im/FreeGeoDB/issues/1](https://github.com/delight-im/FreeGeoDB/issues/1) )

<comment> maze-le What if you make extracts, reprojections or create a new dataset from a ODbL- Licensed resources (or even more Licenses, depending on the number of datasets you use to create a new one), can you relicense it then?

<comment><USER4> This is known as a "Derivative Database" and so ODbL still applies. It's a classic share-alike/copyleft licence, with the wrinkle that it has to use copyright, database rights, and contract law because database protection varies across legislations. See [http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/](http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/) .

<comment><USER3> > It's a classic share-alike/copyleft licence

A big difference from a CC-SA licence is that it is possible to make a produced work from OSM data and all you have to do is attribute OSM, there is no share-alike requirement. In this way, the OSM ODbL is _less_ restrictive than a standard share-alike licence.

The main example of that is making a map image. You can make a map image from 100% OSM data, and that image doesn't have to be share-alike.

If you create a _database_ as is the case of FreeGeoDB (and perhaps if you use OSM to geocode another database), then share-alike applies.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand. If I produce a map image with all the details I'm interested in, and publish it, then use opencv to extract the data from that image into a database, would I be free to license the resulting database as a I wish?

<comment><USER3> I don't know. Ask a lawyer or judge. You can read the licence [http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/](http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/) and look at the definitions of "Produced work" (a map) or "Derivative Database".

In practice, no-one's really done that or likely to do it. Either you'd do something silly like make the map a SVG with all data encoded as textual attributes and your "Computer Vision Algorithm" is basically grep (in which case it would probably be seen as a Derivative Database), or do real CV on a real image, which is very hard to do and will result in bad results. It's sufficiently hard that no-one's worried about it.

If you really don't like the OSM licence, you are free to go to another map data provider, pay them what they charge and agree to whatever they want, and get something else. If you want OSM, agree to OSM's terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First three norwegian cities I looked up was given the wrong name. (Plesund (should be Ålesund), Bodi (Bodø) and Tdnsberg (Tønsberg)). So, I think it is safe to say that there are encoding issues in the data set.

<comment><USER7> There's definitely something wrong.

Looking at the SQL file, "Zürich" is listed as "Zdrich", Munich is only shown as "Munich" without the German name "München" anywhere, and Cologne is listed as "Cologne" with the wrong "Koln" as alternative name.

Doesn't look like a reliable data source.

<comment><USER8> French names have the same problem, with "La Réunion" being shown as "La Rcunion" and "Rhône-Alpes" as "RhAne-Alpes".

It's strange, I can't really understand how these accents can get mangled as these particular single letters.

<comment><USER9> Almost looks like OCR errors, especially Rhône -> RhAne.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that the reason are OCR errors. It's too consistent for that.

I think I also have seen such character set corruptions before, but I can't remember how exactly you can get these particular corruptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So this is bascially Natural Earth repacked as JSON, CSV and SQL?

It's a nice start. I like it. Would it be possible to add the programm /instructions you used for converting the data from their original shape?

I would love to see an additional SQL version for PostGIS and the likes so that I can use their a large number of spatial functions to work with this data.

<comment> maze-le It seems to be the Natural Earth Dataset -- I think the 1:50m-resolution, but with a slightly reduced set of properties (columns). I haven't tried it, but from the looks of it, the sql-files should work with PostGIS as they are.

<comment><USER10> For what I've seen the data type of the columns is always varchar and not geometry.

Not a big issues merely it's more convenient otherwise ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> We should definitely fix this in the future! Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apache seems a strange license for data. Why not CC-0 like for instance wikidata?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

We know that Apache, MIT, etc. are usually for code and the Creative Commons licenses are for content (e.g. writing, images).

We thought that the data sets (CSV, JSON, SQL) are rather in the intersection of code and content, so the Apache license would be okay.

Is there anything specifically wrong with the Apache license for this type of project? We couldn't find any tangible downsides but we'd love to hear about any pros and cons.

<comment><USER12> data sets are simply that - data - <USER2>

your code would be the scripts you write to process it, and your content would be your data in my opinion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> congratz, nice job! really interesting and helpful. I'll try to use it. nowadays I am using sollo atlas (which is used by the [http://www.findmyninja.io](http://www.findmyninja.io)):

[http://atlas.sollo.io/atlas/api](http://atlas.sollo.io/atlas/api)

it's possible to easily navigate through resources (places data) and, a helpful feature is its capacity to have synonyms.

</comment><comment><USER14> This would have been useful if the railroads and roads actually had names attached to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't get those from our sources but we'll love to add them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The data like these are available for free (and updated by community!) for years. See [http://www.geonames.org/](http://www.geonames.org/)

Numerous website use the Geonames dataset foe there work. (I also partisipated in this madness: [http://www.wemakemaps.com/](http://www.wemakemaps.com/))

<comment><USER16> I've not see [http://www.wemakemaps.com/](http://www.wemakemaps.com/) before, looks like a cool site, but whats with consistently referring to OpenStreetMap as OpenMap? and how about adding proper attribution on the OSM maps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are free airport lists that are much more complete. Also, two columns (lon, lat) for points would be better, as it's much easier to transform "lon, lat" into "POINT(lon lat)" than otherwise.

And, yeah, although I don't really care for licenses usually, here it makes me feel uneasy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

What makes you feel uneasy about the license? We'll love to fix this!

Regarding the airport lists, we're definitely open to merging in more complete and accurate data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks interesting, how would you compare it to GeoNames?

<comment><AUTHOR> Admittedly, it's similar! But we wanted to include more data, _other_ data, and just offer an alternative in general.

Three things we definitely wanted were (1) complete boundaries, (2) easiest programmatic access and (3) efficient collaboration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cool! Do you have any plans to track historical changes of geospacial areas? What reference frame are you using for labeling areas? (places America considers countries vs what China considers, for example)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Tracking historical changes is a great idea, but this requires _perfect_ data from day one, doesn't it? Otherwise, how will you differentiate between historic changes and mere factual/technical corrections? Thus, right now, there are no plans to track this. But we're open to ideas and contributions on how to do this.

Regarding the reference frame, that's definitely an issue. Right now, it follows the souce's guidelines (see "SOURCE.md"), which means "boundaries of sovereign states according to defacto status. We show who actually controls the situation on the ground. For instance, we show China and Taiwan as two separate states. But we show Palestine as part of Israel."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How will this be kept up-to-date?

<comment><USER21> Yeah, a quick perusal (VERY quick) revealed no provenance, maintenance, or currency information. There's a lot more to data than a snapshot of some tables.</comment></comment>


Security tips for Amazon S3 users - <AUTHOR> http://securitybits.net/security-tips-amazon-s3-users Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a popular and great service to store and share large amounts of data. It's reliable, scalable, cheap and secure. Unfortunately, Amazon lacks decent documentation and guides on how to use its service properly and how users should implement S3 security to protect their content. SecurityBits compiled a list of essential security tips for S3 users. <comment><USER2> > If you host sensitive or private data on your S3 account, you wouldn't want > anyone to find it with a simple Google search query. To prevent search > engines from indexing your bucket, place a file named robots.txt in the > bucket.

Wow - this is a security blog? If you host sensitive data, don't make it publicly readable _at all_. Documenting its existence in a world-readable robots.txt is a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER3> Not exactly true. I use S3 account to host my files only. I don't use it for hosting or whatsoever. If I use robots.txt, I prevent it from appearing in Google and since you don't know my bucket name or my S3 account name, you can't read my robots.txt file.

<comment><USER4> If you need a robots.txt, you're doing it wrong.

Set the ACLs on your buckets and files so that they're not readable or listable by anyone but you. There's no reason to depend on obscurity to protect your data when you can easily secure it using ACLs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wasn't aware of those options at all when I first read about S3. Definitely worth reading for any S3 user.</comment>


Ask HN: Should you hide members-only features for non-members? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a site and am deciding on some semi-important design issues.
The app revolves around one main page, which new visitors will see when they arrive to the site and which registered users will see once they've logged in. The main difference is that when someone is logged in, they'll have additional options (links) on that page.
Few usability/business questions:
1. Should I hide these links for people who are not logged in or do I include them, but direct them to the login/registration page? On one hand, it's slightly annoying for a new customer to be unexpectedly led to a registration page but on the other hand, it'll likely lead to more registrations since they'll get to see the features they'd have with an account. Another viable option would be to make the members only links a different color.
2. Probably a small detail, but: 'Sign in' or 'Log in'?
3. What do you think about letting customers log in on the main page (with a email/password input box) vs link them to a separate log in page? Most sites let people log in on the main page, but I'm leaning away from it to keep the main page simple and uncluttered. Thoughts?
4. Does anyone else use Firebug to edit the dimensions of this text box while typing a post? :)
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> 1\. My view would be that I wouldn't mind being directed to a sign-in/up page upon clicking, as long as it was clear why I'd need to be signed in to do so. If I'm on yahoo.com, and I click on mail, it makes sense to ask me to sign in. But I certainly want to know that once I'm signed in, I'll be able to have mail.

2\. Google, Yahoo, and Amazon use "sign in." Facebook and Myspace use "log in." I'd say it depends upon the use, but personally I'd go with sign in.

3\. Since the functionality is somewhat limited before signing in, have sign- in functionality on the front page. That way the user gets to what they want with one less page. However, along with my previous comments of keeping the links there, they should lead to a separate sign-in page.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, we faced the same for our site.. imho:

1\. Show the features, so people have some anticipation of what they get if they register / upgrade. Suggest you mark them differently graphically so people get an idea that this is "pro" or "vip" only.

2\. Haha..we agonized over this for a full 5 mins! We settled for "Sign up" and "Log in", not "Sign in"

3\. We let them login directly on home page - for your returning visitors its a massive saving every time. Your users will thank you

4\. no idea :)

</comment><comment><USER4> It depends on the kind of service your webapp is offering.

If it's possible to use your app to create/enter data and then save it later, let your users do it. If the user is logged in, save it if not ask them to sign in and save it or signup. This would give your first-time visitors a demo of your app too.

 _Sign in_ or _Log in_. I too hadn't thought about this before. Had used _'login'_ previously till today. But I think I'll choose to use _'Sign in'_ from today. But IMO when using _'Sign in'_ it's better to use _'Register'_ instead of _'Signup'_. Both words sound totally different and don't cause confusion. Whereas 'login' would go hand in hand with 'Signup' or I guess it's upto you.</comment>


Slack Podcast - <AUTHOR> https://slack.com/varietypack

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like it won't be a behind the scenes look at Slack, but more general commentary on culture and work, ala This American Life. Interested to see how this develops.</comment>


China's Ghost Cities and Malls - <AUTHOR> http://newslamp.com/post/337579/china-s-ghost-cities-and-malls

<comment><USER2> Perhaps this is an early sign of a credit collapse:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/is- china...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/is-chinas- historic-credit-bubble-about-to-pop/283174/)</comment>


Ask HN: Web developer on windows, what is your setup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at a web developer job at a place that is an all-windows shop, aside from a few testing boxes. I've been on a OS X for the last 9 years, so I really don't know the state of development tools in the Windows world. What are the good editors / IDEs / Tools (aside from Firebug) of course. Are you a web developer in a windows world? How do you cope?<p>They're also mostly PHP & rails whereas I've been doing php / xlst / django for the past few years. <comment><USER2> Depends what you want really. For me, I use Notepad++ for everything. It's an awesome lightweight text editor with a teeny amount of sugar coating (syntax highlighting and code completion for PHP functions). They key point for it is that it's very fast and I like that.

Never really found a fast enough IDE and so can't advise you there. I can point you in the direction of Zend who do a PHP IDE that some people swear by.

Beyond that, there are good tools for anything you want really. SSH: PuTTY. SFTP: FileZilla.

And this new job: what are your would-be colleagues using? That would be a good start because they would help you out if need be.

<comment><USER3> Adding to the Notepad++ advice, it really is a good editor. But ofcourse if you're not already into emacs and stuff.

Other than that some "misc." tools i use

* Console2(<http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/>) - i have a lot of command windows open. The tabbed version is awesome, especially since i can run different shells in each of them. Eg. cygwin prompt in one, cmd.exe in another.

* Kitty instead of putty. It has automatic password filling etc.

* Batch scripts - i write batch scripts for everything. I start a lot of applications, enabling me to switch context to another project at once with one click, Eg.<http://dpaste.com/216517/> Works best with virtuaenv if you're a python guy.

* virtuawin - for virtual windows.

* Ultramon - for multiple monitors

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll second PuTTY & Filezilla. I have used WinSCP in the past but I remember being a little flaky.

As for IDE, Zend Studio looks pretty rad. I actually use an old copy of Dreamweaver 8 for the very sensible reason that I like the syntax highlighting colours (and I could never really quite bother to alter them in any other IDE). It just looks really nice and I feel happier coding in it! Before that I used Ediplus 2/3 which is nice lightweight editor, kinda similar to Notepad++.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use Notepad++ for all coding tasks. And FTP Surfer; a super lightweight FTP client that lets me work on the server using Notepad++. For SFTP, I use WinSCP

I've been using Firefox and firebug for a long time until just earlier this year when ff has become so bulky and sluggish my ram couldn't take it. So i switched to using chrome and its inline inspector

Oh yeah, another tool that I often use is WinMerge

</comment><comment><USER6> * Zend Studio

* Subversion

* JIRA Bugtacker (It's cheap and I like this a lot)

* LAMP Stack on an inhouse dedicated 64 bit Dell development server

</comment><comment><USER7> smartFTP worked wonders for me back when I was on Windows.

SSH was great. So was FileZilla and Putty.</comment>


Inequality, Bargaining Power, and Startups - <AUTHOR> https://devinhelton.com/inequality <comment><USER2> Fundamentally why Zuckerburg, Gates, Walton, etc. got rich so fast was not tthey got control of a revenue stream but instead he was able to give themselves stock in a company in an early phase which then went public.

This particular institution goes back a lot longer than the Reagan administration but it is something that can't be taken for granted.</comment>


Ask HN: Who wants to learn to program with me? - <AUTHOR>

I've been programming on and off for a few years now. Unfortunately, there are people out there who have been developing software less than 6 months and could probably code circles around me.
I'm looking for a programmer that has some prior programming experience or no experience at all. We'll keep each other motivated by sharing what we learn or accomplish each day. This model seems to be successful at getting people committed to their projects, so why not apply it to programming too?
If you're up for the challenge, drop a line here or hit me up on Twitter at @ManiacalScience.
EDIT: I'm going to leave this for a while and see how many responses I get. If I get more than one or two I'll have to talk to everyone and see who most closely matches my own goals and interests. If it is the case that a decent number of people are looking for someone to learn with, it wouldn't be a bad idea for others to try pairing up. <comment><USER2> I have been teaching myself programming for a couple months now, and since I want to be more of a generalist I am learning some csish stuff that really takes getting used to. I could definitely use some motivation right now (im out in the sticks). email is rayjhendricks at gmail dot com</comment>


Out of context game development changelogs - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TheStrangeLog <comment><USER2> We have to get the maintainer to run a "guess the game" on each of those tweets. You reply to a tweet with your guess, then 24 hours later you get the answer.</comment>


Show HN: Track your responses over time - <AUTHOR> I think tracking how you feel over time can radically improve decision making. So I made a quick little webapp that helps you do that!
1. Submit a question with a schedule
2. Emails notify you when it's time to respond
3. See how you feel over time
https://simple-decisions.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. I already track/log my decision making process for everything important, so i'm right in your target audience, but I think your approach has the following problems:

\- Decisions and opinions brew over time, but in bursts; you spend some 'active' time thinking, or get intuitive realization in 'background', or something 'external' happens. When one of those occurs it's important to write down the new ideas or changed opinions immediately when it is in memory with all details and emotions. Your timed email reminders seems completely wrong way (for me).

\- The decisions worth tracking are the important ones, and to trust any cloud based application with critical financial or personal decisions is major barrier. You would need to offer some pretty amazing benefits over tracking in encrypted plain docs, but i'm not sure what those amazing benefits could be: plain docs work fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> i totally agree with a lot of this. i don't think people should make decisions by taking the average of their decision over time or anything like that -- this is more about having good inputs to your decisions. maybe i need better copy :)

re: "decisions and opinions brew over time...": i think it can be very hard to "zoom out" of how you feel in a moment and have perspective, and consequently people make impulsive and emotional decisions. being able to see that 90% of the time you're unhappy with your current job can put a good week in perspective. seeing that 90% of the time you're happy with your relationship can put a fight in perspective. it is easy to get distracted by right now, and hopefully this can help. heck maybe you notice that the biggest factor in your overall happiness is the season -- that could help you avoid some crazy decisions, or maybe inspire a move!

re: "the decisions worth tracking are...": yea i think that is right. i think the point is somewhat softened by the above, but i agree broadly. honestly for me i have "coded" some of my questions so someone reading over my shoulder won't know what i'm actually responding to. the important thing is that you take your temperature over time at random intervals so that you don't just respond when you're feeling extremely one way or the other. for me emails help me achieve this, even if the text of the question is just a prompt for myself

thanks for the comments!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just signed up. I've been wanting to log this kind of data, but it was never a strong enough desire to do it consistently over the long-term. Considering how many times I check email every day, this just might do the trick.

Side note: Inbox-based apps seem like a great way to hack forgetfulness, at least for habitual email checkers. Unfortunately, everyone has figured this out and abuses it. I click "unsubscribe" at least once a day.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> in case you're interested in the code. this is a webapp build on scalatra with a react/redux frontend and postgres.

[https://github.com/smatt989/decisions](https://github.com/smatt989/decisions)</comment>


Multitasking makes you dumb - <AUTHOR> http://sirupsen.com/multitasking-makes-you-dumb/ <comment><USER2> To say the least, the post is a worst possible example of "science":

1) Bad generalization: "Multitaskers actually become bad at multitasking, by multitasking". Reading the referenced article, we can find out that it talks not about generic multitasking but only "media consumption multitasking".

2) Incorrect conclusions: "Students who browse Facebook and instant messaging while doing homework on average achieve lower grades in school". Really? Don't you think that students who browse FB instead of doing homework are probably bound to do worse in class not because of multitasking but because they are just not interested in learning?

3) Just complete BS. "For instance, when driving and talking in cell phone, our brain assigns a higher priority to responding to our the phone conversation than focusing on the road." Really? The referenced article doesn't even have the word "brain" in it. I would be very curious to find out the source. And BTW, you should probably never fly in an airplane if you believe this BS since pilots constantly listen and talk on the radio while flying planes and navigating in the same time.

Yes, multitasking is not a "native" human skill. You have to learn how to do it and some are better in doing it than others. Also, it is absolutely correct that context switch has a price. However, you can learn how to do it effectively. As the result, while you productivity in each individual task will be impacted, the overall results will be better. And of course, one of the skills is to learn the priorities of different tasks to make sure that cell phone conversation is secondary to driving the car.

<comment><USER3> The empirical evidence presented by OP's blog post is far heavier than your objections to it. You have some valid points, but so does he. All other things equal, he has cited scientific studies and you haven't.

I am biased, because my reading has predisposed me to agree with OP that multitasking is the antithesis of productivity, but that's just my .02.

<comment><USER2> If you read my comment, then you might see that my objections are about citing "scientific studies" incorrectly.

<comment><USER3> Well, not really. Lets take objection #2 as an example. You wrote:

""" 2) Incorrect conclusions: "Students who browse Facebook and instant messaging while doing homework on average achieve lower grades in school". """

Which is a reasonable objection on the grounds that correlation does not imply causation. But keep that in mind: does not imply. The fact that something does not imply, does not mean it is necessarily false, or that the study was useless! In fact, the study gives us a lot more information than we had otherwise. So, it's better to draw an inference that's based on results, than none at all.

You go on to say:

""" Really? Don't you think that students who browse FB instead of doing homework are probably bound to do worse in class not because of multitasking but because they are just not interested in learning? """

Which is a hypothesis completely untested! Perhaps you should do a study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The key concept here is 'context switching' and how fast you can do it. Multitasking is considered bad because people switch contexts and lose bits of information in the process. Some people can retain their context longer, or have a workflow in which they can easily rebuild their context based on hints (notes, to-do lists, mental mind-map).

In my case, whenever I'm working on some complicated bit of code and someone interrupts me to ask a question, or to go to their desk, I have no problem doing it because I am already immersed in the task and don't need to offload it anywhere. If I realize that the talk is going to take longer than I though, or if it is about something completely different from what I'm working on, then I might scribble myself a quick note to get my mind back in the state that I need to be in.

Or another example: assisting two different people with two different programming problems via chat, while myself working on a third one, but all in the same codebase. There's not a lot of context switching required because we're all sharing the same code and are all in the same mindset. My productivity in terms of my own code does decrease using this method, but it's still more productive than taking the time to go and sit with each individual person to go through their problems one by one.

tl;dr: multitasking is impractical in some situations, but there are situations where you can benefit from it. I think it's a useful skill to be able to create those kind of situations for yourself (and your team).

</comment><comment><USER5> I totally agree with this article. I've been playing a lot of video games in the past, always with the T.V. on, all while doing my homeworks and reading my school notes. I failed a few classes during that period of my life, and I finished pre-university a year later than expected. It turns out that it didn't pay off at all.

At the moment, I'm in University while working full-time, and my grades are where they should have been years ago. I'm getting As most of the time, and I believe it has a lot to do with how I handle my tasks. Since I'm only doing two classes at a time, I try to focus on one a week, on the other the next. I try to never work on two different subjects on the same day and I even force myself to avoid reading some article and trying new things because it would take my focus away from what I really have to do.

Dedicating our attention on one subject at a time always turns out better.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotes like yours don't prove anything. That's why we have science.

Without a control group and test group we don't know if your conclusions are statistically valid. Maybe most people get better grades when they watch TV and play video games.

<comment><USER5> I probably mis-worded my thoughts. I did not meant "it's true for x therefore it's true for the whole set". It's definetly not something we can generalize. At least, we can say that he's not completely wrong.

Nevertheless, I still believe that if such study was conducted, it would tend in that direction. The actual difference between a multi-tasker and a uni- tasker might not be very large, there might even not be any difference in some cases. Considering how the memory supposedly works, I find it hard to believe that one would retain the equivalent amount of information while multi-tasking than while uni-tasking.

This is a study from 2007 that goes in the same direction. It focuses on the impacts of social networking sites on high-schooler grades. [pdf]<http://www.iiisci.org/journal/CV$/sci/pdfs/E214BL.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Multitasking is for people who don't have to do work that requires deep concentration.

Concentration and multitasking are mutually exclusive. If you can't tell this from your own experience, then I implore you to actually check the literature out there.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think part of the drawbacks of multi-tasking is attitude. The multi-taskers I've known have taken their approach as a sign of their intelligence, as if doing _just one thing_ at a time is below their capabilities. They act as if they've tapped some special, hidden potential of the human brain that common people don't understand. Yet despite their super-human powers, they're often one or two tasks away from completing everything they're supposed to finish.

Their work is best described as achieving "limit as work approaches done." They continue to work on something, they get closer to completing it, but you could give them an infinite amount of time and they'd never finish.

I'll take devs who can focus on one task and complete it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ok, here goes my highly controversial sweeping generalization: _men suck at multitasking, women are actually much better at it_. My source? Just years of active observation. I'd be very interested to see any actual research on the subject.

<comment><USER9> Well, riding my motorcycle on the California freeways has shown me that women seem much more skilled than men at simultaneously driving, texting, adjusting the radio, and running over motorcyclists ("I just didn't see him there!")

<comment><USER10> "and running over motorcyclists ("I just didn't see him there!")"

I'd call you sexist, but my sample size of one smashed femur by a female left turner who didn't see me fails to disprove your theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aside from whether this article is right and accurate, can anyone share research-backed tips on how to get back from multitasking habit to singletasking? During career development ,for example from developer to manager, people take on more and more various duties and have to start multitasking. Is there a way to curb such performance deteriorating trend?

<comment><USER12> It's simple, ignore surrounding tasks and duties.

<comment><USER11> I'm afraid it's not that simple, unless you want to change your job ,'downgrade' to programmer and accept pay decrease. You could be lucky, but still changing back to lower rank often means less power over product's final shape, which you don't really want to give up. Anyone there with a more practical advice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem test domain was inverted. Multitaskers see the water fall because they are not focused on singing Kum ba yah. The ones in the test set were told to ignore blue; they were really thinking why would they tell me to ignore blue. Blue has color, it has purpose, it must be relevant and when it is they would be the only ones to see the pattern thus making them true folk legends.

</comment><comment><USER14> Generalization is what makes you dumb.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's a relationship between these two themes of "multitasking iz 4 n00bz" and "dropping friends who are not makers/builders/hackers/achievers/doers" but who ruminate and cannot fix their problems.</comment>


Kill Everyone On Board - <AUTHOR> http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfromthewing/2011/06/01/was-the-government-really-prepared-to-kill-everyone-onboard-the-united-flight-that-returned-to-dc-after-a-seat-reclining-incident/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boardingarea%2Fviewfromthewing+%28View+from+the+Wing%29 <comment><USER3> The F-16s aren't there to kill everyone on board. They're there so that if they do need to kill everyone on board, they're in the right position.

When information channels are so weak, it's imperative to get into the best decisionmaking vantage point available.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kill everyone is certainly not the only option nor the most likely reason for scrambling. Any commander will value eyes on the ground as high quality intelligence, and in this situation a calm professional pilot obsrving the cockpit will be useful, even if the airforce don't have gizmos for listening in, videoing etc

so, no, reaching for a gun might mean you just want to look down the sight to see more.

<comment><USER5> I agree. They could have forced it to land as well, simply by getting rid of an engine or two.

<comment><USER6> Korean airliner over Soviet Union in 1978:

>He fired a pair of R-60 missiles, one of which caused heavy damage to part of the left wing of the Boeing 707 and punctured the fuselage, causing rapid decompression, and killing two of the 97 passengers. After being hit, the airliner descended into cloud and was lost by the Su-15s. At 23:05, 40 minutes after the missile strike, it was finally forced to land by another Su-15TM on the frozen Korpijärvi Lake

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_902>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Now, there is only one thing that the F-16s could have done in this situation. Either they do nothing, or they shoot down the plane.

Utter BS. Before it comes to killing, the escort fighters usually show to the plane being escorted where to go. They do it using radio, visually (pilot's hands, overall fighter maneuvering and rolling), and if it comes to it - <USER2> tracer rounds. After the escorted plane refuse to follow the commands ... and continue flying toward DC ... in the post 9/11 world the kill would seem like a publicly acceptable outcome.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes I'm amazed that people don't understand why we have a military and what it does for us.

<comment><USER6> to drive technological progress? After all, the exponential development of brain and technology was triggered by the ape discovering the tactical advantages of stick and stone in fight/hunt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I figured it was a scare tactic. "See those jets outside the window? Yea you're in that much trouble". Kind of like when you're picking on someone and their big bother shows up.</comment>