Popularity of Sony's PlayStation VR Surprises Even the Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/business/sony-playstation-vr-sales.html <comment><USER2> Reading the comments I realized there are currently three main issues:

1\. VR costs a lot

2\. The technology needs to be better (higher resolution)

3\. There's not a lot of VR content available yet.

Two weeks ago, Gabe Newell and his SteamVR team talked openly about these issues in an interview. [1]

They say:

\- The price will go down and the tech will become better. He said VR will be a new reason for CPU/GPU manufacturers to up their game again. (2018/2019)

\- Valve is currently making three different full VR games (2017/2018)

\- There should be an open VR standard

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMpQWSqQFK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMpQWSqQFK0)

<comment><USER3> VR needs a GoldenEye moment. VR needs the kind of revolutionary blockbuster that Doom was, to make people sit up and take notice. Something that really pushes the possibilities of the technology, and pushes us into a new era of gaming, the way FarCry pushed the limits of video technology.

Instead, it's not quite getting dumped in the sand the way Atari dumped ET in 1982, but it's not far off - major supporters are giving half-hearted statements, and the biggest application I've heard about receiving VR investment is a desktop replacement - not exactly something from which I'd expect a compelling VR experience. So far, my most mind-blowing VR experience has merely been Google Earth.

Where are the Wii-game clones? Where are the DDR-clones and, like, retro arcades? Where are the games that have co-op in the same space? Why can't you invite your friends into your Google Earth, to look at the same scenes?

We're roughly a year out, with multiple platforms, and almost every game is still a tech demo. Where are the news reports of people breaking their TV with their Vive-mote? - Nobody has been so preoccupied with a VR game that that they flung the controller into the TV yet. I'm worried that investors were so preoccupied with whether or not they could make money off of this, that they didn't stop to think if they should make it fun. How many consoles have successfully gone their first year without a compelling release, and later recovered?

<comment><USER4> >VR needs a GoldenEye moment

It really doesn't. Anyone who has used VR knows how amazing it is. The main issue for games is getting the controls right.

The way I see it, sticking to a controller or keyboard/mouse and using the VR as a kind of stationary surround monitor is the best way to go for gaming.

Dual controllers and physically moving around in a room have too many issues and don't feel natural for games. It's great for tech demos, but I can't imagine playing through an 80-hour game like that. It's like the Nintendo Wii controllers that are only good for party games.

<comment><USER5> I think this sounds a lot like a "back in my day" kinda comment you'd hear from someone that's really averse to something different. Arizona Sunshine is one of the coolest games I've ever played and, even though it's not 80 hours long, is amazing for something running on 1st gen hardware. I can't wait to see what happens with VR in the future and would gladly play games with dual controllers and standing.

<comment><USER4> It's a comment and personal opinion from someone who works with the technology and has first hand experience. Make of that what you will.

I'd like a completely immersive experience, but current VR simply can't offer that.

To get there, full body tracking is required so that controllers are not needed anymore, and some kind of treadmill that allows you to walk in VR while physically staying in the same position, to avoid running into walls, having to re-adjust the connectors etc.

And even then, holding an object in VR when your hands are really empty or holding a controller feels weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I got the PSVR as a day one pre-order. I was so excited, I preordered months before its release (when they first announced it). I had it for 2.5 months and then I sold it. It was cool at first, but the technology just isn't quite there. The limiting depth of field, limited choice of decent games (Rush of Blood was great) and Wii style graphics for a few of the experiences (especially Playstation VR Worlds).

It's a fun platform, but it definitely has the gimick aspect to it. I've experienced Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR and PSVR. In all honesty, nothing has really wowed me just yet. I believe we'll need 4k VR for the technology to truly take it up a notch, it's getting there. My favourite is definitely the Vive, just peripherials and the resolution is great.

No doubt, the PSVR 2.0 is going to be amazing and I will buy that again.

<comment><USER7> I have a PSVR and I think it's simply amazing. Room scale and better visuals will be great, sure. But PSVR as it is today is already what I've been waiting 25 years for.

<comment><USER8> Same here :) I've extended experience with all major VR headsets and I actually prefer the PSVR because of Sony's top-notch vertical integration.

That said, I get the general criticism for the current state in VR ("low" resolution yadda yadda) and PSVR in particular (lack of full room control / limited motion tracking yadda yadda). _I really don 't mind_ as _presence_ works across the board _today_ and I actually love the "subtractive" design and simple controller based experiences of most PSVR titles.

In any case, even with the most high-end graphics card on a 4K+ display and the most ambitious titles, games still look _very_ far from photo realistic (ask any non gamer to watch you _play_ and evaluate).

It will take us still a very long time to get to that somewhat questionable goal, especially in VR where all those "shortcomings" get even more pronounced. We will probably need completely new paradigms in game development as well as whole new classes of technology in general.

So, it's still called "playing" right? Let's continue using our imagination while enjoying the most creative efforts of our time in ever more engaging ways.

REZ and BattleZone VR alone.. my 14 year old me still can't believe that this exists and is available for normal people for essentially a summer holiday amount of work :O

All that considered, VR clearly is not for everyone. Many people can't get used to it for lots of reasons. One should also _always_ get enough sleep and take breaks even when accustomed to VR – it _is_ taxing. Another reason why I prefer more "simple" arcade style experiences actually, 20 min bouts of highly enjoyable escapism after which I get back to real life yay ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a known strategy in politics to intentionally book rooms for speeches that are too small for the number of people who will show up. That way the next day the newspapers will talk about how people were standing in the aisles just to see the politician.

You have to wonder whether Sony is using the same strategy to generate more long term interest in a product that was "sold out" and "scarce".

<comment><USER10> A million sold is a lot for a $300 peripheral.

<comment><USER11> Sheer quantity shipped is not a guarantee that a platform will be viable.

The Kinect sold ten or twelve million in the first couple of months. (That may have been the number manufactured, but it still sold in the many-millions on launch).

That didn't help it succeed. There are a bunch of reasons why it didn't, and why it was eventually all but deprecated from the Xbox One. I believe that user interaction design driven by management-imposed ideology, rather than user testing, was a big factor.

<comment><USER12> As you say, Kinect was dumb for a whole host of reasons, PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other that means the potential market isn't just limited to PSVR only. I think that fact moves it firmly out of kinect territory.

I also agree and said at the time, adding $100+ to the price of the xbox one for a peripheral which most people wouldn't use was incredibly fucking dumb.

<comment><USER13> > PSVR on the otherhand is broadly compatible with Oculus and Vive in the > sense that the games made for one can be adapted to the other

This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it's _not true_. There are different levels of immersion in VR, and you cannot take a game that is full immersion which includes 360 roomscale tracking with hands, to the most limited VR which is front facing tracking without hands. One is being able to walk around and touch things with your hand, the other is sitting in a chair and not being to touch things. Yes, you can use the most basic immersion on any VR system, but my understanding is most people don't want to bother with it because it's boring. One thing the Vive did correctly in my opinion is offering the highest immersion to every buyer - there were no optional wands, they were included (whereas you have to buy them separately for the Rift). 360 tracking is out of the box, whereas with the Rift you need to buy a 3rd sensor for that to work (and they're still having so many problems Facebook has even admitted it's not working properly). The PSVR does not support 360 tracking at all right now, it's intended as a sit down experience.

I see a lot of potential in VR, but I'd say it's 2 generations away from becoming "mainstream" in the sense that there is an active community for it and it's profitable, but it's always going to be a subset of the gaming market (talking solely about VR for gaming, the focus with Facebook is clearly to focus on mobile). Right now it's way too expensive, the resolution is bad, it requires high end video cards to just barely eke out 90 fps when you want 120 fps, and most importantly there is a serious lack of content.

Like another commenter said, VR right now is in the Palm Pilot stages. It's cool and there are early adopters, but it has a long way to go before we're in the iPhone era.

<comment><USER14> _This is actually one of the big problems in developing content for VR, because it 's not true._

What isn't true? There are absolutely games on the market that have been ported between PSVR, Occulus and Vive platforms.

<comment><USER13> If you make a game that's designed around 360 tracking and utilizing your hands, you can port it to the Rift but only a small fraction of the users would have the necessary hardware and setup for it to work, and you fundamentally could not port it to the PSVR. Right now there are so few VR _games_ that everybody is mostly making tech demos, and it's a bit of a crapshoot how well they work on each piece of hardware as a lot of stuff gets figured out. As more developers commit to the Vive (which polls show is the case) it seems likely that the full experience games won't be ported at all. I foresee a lot of forks within VR gaming, which is bad considering it's seeing much slower growth than many had hoped.

What I suspect will happen is the Vive will dominate for PC gaming (which I suspect will be a niche market), Oculus will dominate mobile (I think this will take 5-10 years and they will be heavily competing with Apple who is leapfrogging VR entirely for AR which I think will be a far bigger market and the true next computing platform), and the PSVR will slowly fade into oblivion the same way that nobody uses a Kinect anymore.

<comment><USER14> Would you be willing to clarify what your exact position on this is, so that I don't respond to the wrong statement and we end up talking past one another (because I _think_ we're in agreement to an extent):

Is it untrue that PSVR games can be ported to other VR platforms (this is what I was responding to initially and asked for clarification on) or that there are legitimate technical and market hurdles involved in porting from PSVR to other VR platforms?

My initial comment was that it _is_ true because that exact phenomenon is happening, there are multiple titles out that exist across all three major VR platforms and we're about to have more (Good lord almighty will Elite Dangerous hurry up and come out for PS4 already...); so my disagreement starts and about ends there because I thought that's what you were arguing?

Is that no longer the case as you're now talking about demos, and market split between Vive vs PC vs VR and the technical challenges needed to port games among platforms? If this is the case, I-in fact-agree with you.

Again, I just want to make sure I know exactly what I'm responding to.

 _As more developers commit to the Vive (which polls show is the case)_

Would you mind sharing those polls? This is something I'm very interested in as the whole VR space right now has really got me wanting to get back into game development-which was a hobby in high school making 2D platformers-so I'm curious what about the Vive is so attractive to other developers.

<comment><USER13> More developers are interested in working with the Vive from polls - [https://uploadvr.com/htc-vive-gdc-state-of-the- industry-2017...](https://uploadvr.com/htc-vive-gdc-state-of-the- industry-2017/) \- and admittedly it's anecdotal but everyone I know is exclusively interested in the Vive (ignoring my friends that work at Facebook, but they're not game developers).

Yes, games made for PSVR can be ported to the Rift and Vive. _However_ games designed for the Vive that take advantage of its capabilities _probably_ cannot be ported to the other systems. Basically, the Vive can do more stuff, and if you design you game around that it doesn't port well (or potentially at all) to the other headsets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apparently people have managed to get PSVR to work with Windows and OSX even going so far as to get a few Oculus games to run

[http://vrheads.com/do-you-really-need-ps4-playstation- vr](http://vrheads.com/do-you-really-need-ps4-playstation-vr)

I've been trying to get one since they shipped in October. I'm in Japan. They have a raffle every 2 weeks or so to decide who gets to buy them at list price.

</comment><comment><USER16> I bought PSVR last year and have purchased most of the games that have come out since. I've never used the other VR systems so don't know how PSVR compares, nor have I ever owned a HD TV (I play off a monitor) so the low-res doesn't deeply bother me. But the truth is is that while there are great experiences, there aren't many great _games_.

By great experiences, I mean, games that make you go "Wow" for the first 10 minutes, but after you've completed the game, there's not much reason to go back. The VR games aren't often designed with replayability or player freedom in mind. This coupled with the fact that putting on the headset is substantially more work than just picking up a controller means I've barely used the VR setup compared to just playing regular PS4 games.

Maybe things will change after the popular success of Resident Evil 7. But the problem with RE7 is that a pants-shitting experience is not the gaming for everyone. I don't blame developers in general for not putting the effort in making great, polished VR games -- the audience just isn't there in comparison to the 50 million PS4 systems in general. For PSVR to become truly successful, Sony had to throw money at developers to make games that will be loss leaders at first.

Right now, PSVR is mostly shovelware and ports from other VR platforms. One of only developers to build a AAA-game for PSVR, RIGS, was supported by and then shut down by Sony [0]. I don't have a lot of faith that VR won't go down the route of PSMove, PS Camera, Xbox's Kinect, and other such unsupported peripherals.

edit: A couple of other things to point out. I haven't used Rift or Vive but the general consensus is that PSVR tracking is inferior. That has to be another disincentive for developers to make distinctive, polished games. Right now, the most fun VR game is Fruit Ninja, but that allows for sloppy tracking and is a fairly simple game. The challenge of translating player gestures, and also not making the player super-sick, are the kind of challenges that require first-party support/investment by Sony...third-party indie developers can't do it on their own.

All that said, for games that can be played fully as either VR or non-VR -- this includes RE7, Rez, and Bound -- the VR experience is so much more superior that you can't imagine playing the non-VR versions.

[0] [http://metro.co.uk/2017/01/12/sony-shuts-down-rigs- developer...](http://metro.co.uk/2017/01/12/sony-shuts-down-rigs-developer- guerrilla-cambridge-6377707/)

<comment><USER17> I have to be honest: Vive (which is the most advanced consumer VR tech available right now) is about the same. My mate and I bought a VR setup (we didn't have a PC before this) around Christmas of last year.

It's mostly a lot of things that feel like demos. Nothing that I could see myself losing hours into, like skyrim[1].

The one game that feels really close is Arizona Sunshine. It is a zombie fighting game, and there is a minigame on it called "horde mode", where progressively more zombies come at you from all directions and you have to shoot them.

Essentially that game is a really good[2] combat simulator.

That said, I don't regret the purchase _at all_. VR is an incredible gift to share with people.

[1]Time enjoyed isn't time lost. Skyrim is a beautiful world to explore.

[2]Arizona Sunshine feels like you are actually developing a shooting skill while you are using it. Not exactly the skill that I would have set out to develop, but definitely interesting.

<comment><USER18> The demos can be so compelling sometimes that they make me believe in VR as a product. The content needs to catch up however. I think when Fallout 4 VR is released is when VR will begin to be worth the cost of entry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The reason I'm not buying the PSRV is that it's really hard to figure out if it'll even work for me vis-a-vis the tracking camera.

I have a projector setup, so the PSRV camera has some propriterary cable running to it that I'd need to buy a third-party extension cord for, and who knows if that'll work.

Even if I have that I can't find any information on Sony's site about where it's acceptable to mount the camera relative to where you're standing. Is it only OK if it's directly in front of you, how about at a 45° incline etc?

Then, if I get all of that right I don't have a lot of floor space in front of the projector (maybe 2x2 meters), they don't say how far you're expected to move around in the games you can buy.

<comment><USER14> _how about at a 45° incline etc?_

It works. I have mine on my mounted tv, which sits roughly at that angle from where my seat is. The PS Camera can tilt and swivel down so it doesn't need directly parallel vision.

Edit: The biggest knock I have (and this might be a problem with Occulus and Vive but I don't own either to know) is the issue of screen drift. Some games - like Eve Valkyrie - switch from a 2D/flat loading screen to fully rendered 3D environments.In those loading areas I may pull off the headset to check my phone or take a sip of water, put it back on and have to reorient the screen.

It's not a burdensome task to adjust, just press and hold options and it pops back into place. It's also not a terrible amount of drift that it impacts gameplay, but it is something I've noticed occurring with a frequency that's a little nagging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well, in order for VR to be successful you ACTUALLY need good VR games. It seems Resident Evil 7 got a fair amount of positive reviews. I believe the VR mode for that game is currently supported only on PS4.

<comment><USER14> Eve Valkyrie is also a full game worth talking about. Well, kind-of full. You don't get that "here's 30 minutes of an experience, now back to the start you go"; the multiplayer aspect of the game is amazing, but single player could have used a bit more attention.

Overall though, the immersion, the unique control scheme for space dogfighting, upgrading and improving your ships, it's doing a VERY good job holding me over until the PS4 port of Elite Dangerous comes out.

<comment><USER21> Eve Valkyrie is good but without supersampling it is hard to see ships at a great distance away due to the screen-door effect. Alas, I've got only a GTX 970 graphics card, so supersampling is out for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had trouble taking the article seriously when it repeatedly called the PSVR premium, coming off like a PR piece. It's strictly on the mainstream/low-end. Also, it didn't mention how much of the sales were in Japan other than to say 'especially', which doesn't often reflect reception elsewhere.

<comment><USER23> Premium when compared to those stupid bits of cardboard you put your phone in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally, I think the biggest problem with VR is that it's downright dangerous. I tried a professionally setup and monitored demo of HTC vive inside of a Microsoft store, and walked into the wall. They needed somebody with you to help make sure you didn't get tangled in the wires - during a 15 minute demo! And people still did, repeatedly. Until there aren't cords and something like the Omni treadmill comes around to handle movement without physically moving - I just think it's not practical or safe as a technology for games other then flight and driving simulators.

<comment><USER25> If you walked into a wall, they must not have had the chaperone settings setup properly, either miscalibrated or not appearing brightly enough.

I have a 2.5m x 2.5m space, with walls an inch or so past the edge of the space on two sides. There's only been a small handful of hits, and those were mostly at the beginning. My experience, both for myself and watching my friends try things out, is that the wire is annoying, but it's not dangerous. I think part of the problem here could be that it's best to play without shoes on - it's easier to tell when you are standing on the cord, which is when you can get the most tangled up. Obviously people are not taking their shoes off for store demos.

Wireless is definitely going to be a massive improvement, but I think saying it is dangerous is a bit of a stretch.

<comment><USER24> I could def see being shoeless helping things out. However, by definition most of these VR systems are wired into a computer on or near desk. I could easily see someone tangle and then trip over the wire and then hit their head on the desk.

<comment><USER24> In fact, just google "VR Injuries" and you'll see way more examples then say happened with the nintendo wii, pre strap, a change they made because they concluded without it the wii was too dangerous and lawsuit prone. The original wii has nothing on current state VR. If it became any where near as widespread as the wii did with it's current implementation, there would certainly be a few more entries to the Darwin awards...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it just me or is VR involves a lot unnecessary effort for the user?

ie: I don't want to walk around. I want to sit comfortably without straining my arm or walking into walls.

<comment><USER27> For non-games I agree. I'm working on a VR design tool and I've given myself the constraint that user are sitting in a swivel chair with elbows on armrests most of the time. I'm hoping that it'll give enough room to do interesting stuff without straying too far from keyboard-level laziness.

For games, I've been playing VR archery since I got the Vive almost a year ago and I still love it. It is tiring but so are traditional sports and people do those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have it , it's awesome BUT...it's pretty exhausting to use - like once a week. Resolution is low but then again there are these holy cow this is amazing get lost in what your seeing because of the depth of certain things and the awesome head tracking. Definitely needs more content I check every week for some new experience no matter how small.

</comment><comment><USER29> They compare sales to the iPhone's first three months which they call a huge feat, but at the time iPhone sales were actually considered somewhat lackluster until Apple switched to standard subsidy pricing. Only then did the iPhone become a phenomenon. A million units in four months is still impressive, but please get the historical references right.

<comment><USER8> The iPhone was a general "internet" device _and_ a "phone" and the PSVR is a "video game" — nytimes is comparing apples with oranges ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I remember the 3D VFX in the 1990s and thinking that in a few years it will be cheap and everywhere. Nope.

</comment><comment><USER31> That actually surprises me as well. I would have thought that VR was going to be like 3D-TV: hyped very much for a certain amount of time but then mostly forgotten again. And I'm still not sure VR won't go down the same route.

<comment><USER32> I thought that till I tried it. The experience is impressive, not at all like the gimmicky 3D TV.

<comment><USER31> My skepticism mostly comes from reflecting on how I'm currently experiencing video games most of the time: together with a friend, sitting on the couch in front of the TV in the living room. This is a social setting: when we play a game together, we don't just look at the screen, we talk to each, look at each other, get up and get a drink from the kitchen, etc. And most often, we spend a few hours doing exactly that.

I know that not everyone shares my feeling, but somehow I have troubles imagining doing the same with VR headsets on. I don't really want to be completely removed from this social setting, completely emerged in the VR environment -- I want both, plus the ability to switch between them quickly.

Don't get me wrong, I think VR is a super cool technology. My point is that I just don't think it plays well with the social setting of a bunch of buddies hanging out together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd like to see the usage numbers. Ownership is great for Sony, this generation, but on the next? I'm thinking of Kinect when I hear this. Kinect broke records on the 360 for sales. Once the Xbox One was launched, with the Kinect bundled (which was reasonable seeing as the Kinect v1 sales were amazing), people scoffed. I honestly don't think VR is going to be where it needs to be for a while. It's going to be great for therapeutic uses, but for general consumers, I am just not convinced that it's more than a gimmick item you show to your friends but never really use much. There will be exceptions, but I think usage numbers would back me up.

<comment><USER8> Have you tried PSVR yourself? If so, which games?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Humans finally get inexpensive VR and what's the first popular VR experience? A game where you kill other humans with guns. Oh we're going to be fine, just fine.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am too poor to access a rift or htc, the PSVR seems like it would soil my experience. Like those 720 HD ready TVs.

How do HN people feel about VR?

<comment><USER36> I love my vive but VR isn't quite ready for prime time yet. It's clunky and overpriced and there's a limited library.

It feels like we're in the "Palm pilot" stage of the technology. Eventually an "iPhone" will come out, but there are technical and UI hurdles to overcome before that can happen.

That being said, it's also an exciting time to get involved. VR owners get to experiment with different play styles and UIs and be part of a small dedicated community. Game devs hang out on /r/vive and accept feedback and ideas. And if you already know how to code, getting started in VR development is pretty easy.

<comment><USER37> Yep. If you've got an ounce of "early adopter" in you then it's a fantastic time to be involved. There's tons of great content if you're prepared for the odd rough edge and the lack of decent curation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would be happy if we [USA] never bought another drop of oil from the middle east until they learn a few lessons about human rights. And actually, exploitation of domestic resources has dramatically reduced our dependency on foreign oil.

/Firey opinion off, apologies

<comment><USER39> I believe you are in the wrong thread :)

<comment><USER38> Yes, I was replying to Saudi oil? How on earth</comment></comment></comment>


Serverless Framework with Terraform: A Firsthand Experience - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/serverless-framework-with-terraform-a-firsthand-experience-ce127db3ac5b <comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if you have any specific questions - happy to help where I can</comment>


Just released a major update for my site. What do you guys think? - <AUTHOR> http://regex101.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey

I have recently released a new update for regex101 where I pretty much recoded everything; the entire explaination and colorizer engine. They are still not perfect, and I'm not fully satisfied with the code, but its way way better than it was before. I will probably remake it when I get more time on my hands.

A list of all that has been fixed would take too long to write up, but I have added some of the things I have most commonly been asked:

\- Changeable delimiters

\- Alternating color matches

\- Bigger editor

\- Wider and more accurate explanations

\- Samples on how to use regex (automatically generated)

I am planning on adding more flavors in the future, so you can do live testing and validation of java, javascript, python and perl style regular expressions. I am also trying to create my own debugger (much like the one in regexbuddy). Once again, this will have to be when I get more time on my hands. Currently the only support is for PCRE which is achieved through PHP.

Until then I ask you guys to please tell me what you think of the current features, suggest new ones and please report any bugs you might encounter :).

If you want to help me out with the website, send me a message!

Thanks in advance!

</comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully not to distract too much from the valuable utility of this tool, but in case anyone else feels that the site design seemed uncomfortably similar to [http://rubular.com/](http://rubular.com/) (e.g. the three colors in the welcome box are identical), the site author mentions that regex101 is inspired by rubular in the about page [http://regex101.com/about/](http://regex101.com/about/):

 _I would also like to thank the creator of rubular for inspiring me to create my own service with extended features. I have from rubular recreated the regex quick-reference table (with some slight modification). The same goes for the welcome popup used on the index page. If there is any concern, feel free to send me an email and I will address the issue immediately._

<comment><USER4> You are right that they both share the same 3 hex values and border width for the greenish box:

      border: 10px solid #779A73;
      background-color: #CDF3C9;
      color: #283A26;

Though it seems the OP addressed it appropriately in the quote that you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure if Rubular[1] or your site came first but the design is very similar.

[1] [http://rubular.com/](http://rubular.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have written about this in the about & credits pagr. I have also spoken to the author of rubular.

<comment><USER6> FWIW I find your light design inspired by rubular to be visually superior. The community feature is great however I assumed from the name that it would just be a forum, perhaps a different label would help show its utility - <USER2> "favourite regex"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like the design :). Hmm, something like "Regex library" maybe? Unsure of how to word it properly.

<comment><USER6> Library sounds about right, maybe?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One interesting way to differentiate would be to allow drop downs for different regex engines. So one for perl, one for python, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will do something along those lines in the future, as I have written in my main comment in this thread :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like it.

How do you enter a tab character in the test string without losing focus of the text field?

When I start typing the regex, the cheatsheet gets pushed below the visible part of the page as the "explanation" section expands itself. It would be nice if the cheat sheet remained next to the regex field as I typed in the regex.

<comment><AUTHOR> You cant insert a tab character (yet). Ill fix that.

Hmm, you could perhaps minimize the fields you dont need while writing it? Use the [-] buttons

<comment><USER8> I could minimize some of the fields, but the larger point I should have made is that when I was typing the regex the first time, I was looking at the cheat sheet. The workflow I found myself fall into was:

1\. Enter the test string.

2\. Look at the cheat sheet and type into the regex field.

3\. Look at the matches and test field to see if it was correct.

4\. If incorrect, look at the explanation.

5\. Go back to (2)

So for me, the default layout didn't handle my step (2) very well. I'm not saying that's the workflow you should optimize the UX for, but it's what mine was.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I'll look into a smart solution for this. Thanks for pointing it out! I have a very large monitor, I rarely run into problems like these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is an inconsistency in naming: you call it "flags" at the top but "options" at the bottom. I think you should also say "Regular expression quick reference" rather than "Regex quick reference" for the same consistency since you use "regular expressions" everywhere else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Adjusted, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was just trying to find this site via google yesterday, and I could not. I'll be sure to bookmark it this time (surprised I haven't already, or maybe I have but couldn't find the bookmark either).

Thanks for making it!

Edit: I did bookmark it, it was just so long ago that it ended up being overshadowed.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice, this could be really useful for beginners. I tried the "random regexp" feature and it showed one that used \P<Given> and \P<Middle>, among other things. I have used named capture groups a bit I wasn't aware of these, and was wondering where they came from.

Which leads me to the problem I had with the site.

I was hoping for a way to easily (one click) get to the documentation for each of these. It seemed strange that a given name pattern could work for any human language, so I was trying to work out how this would be done. Eventually I found the tables at the bottom (with Advanced and Tricks tabs) but clicking on the links in there just adds the items to my current expression.. what I was hoping for was a direct link to some docs for the specific item (not a general link to the top level of some huge document).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, the explanation part does part of what you're asking. However, I don't know of any straight forward documentation that I can link to that will explain each and every one of these tokens. I have just read through pcre.txt many times and implemented stuff from there. If you know a source I can use I will look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Regular Expressions are perhaps my weakest point with regards to programming.

I realize that they are just little sub-dialects that I need to learn the rules of but I've never had a project which required me to take the time to write extensive regular expressions.

On the rare occasion that I do need to use a regular expression I find tools like this to be invaluable.

This tool looks particularly nice.

Community Forum section, online quiz, even IRC placed right within the page!

My favorite feature is definitely the ability to share a regular expression you've created via a link.

Nice work! (also I just followed [https://twitter.com/regex101](https://twitter.com/regex101))

<comment><USER12> I can honestly say in 12 years of coding full time for a living, I've never once used a complex regular expression. It could be my general aversion to complex regexes though, as I find they make code difficult to read, and are usually slower than alternative solutions.

Simple regexes on the other hand, I use all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would encourage anybody interested to try out the site's quiz. It starts out easily enough but eventually becomes extremely challenging.

I also really like the community submitted regexes. But, on that note, what's to prevent someone from submitting all of the quiz solutions to the 'community'? Are the submissions occasionally moderated?

I have appreciated this website for a while now. For those who don't know, Lindrian is also often active on #regex on freenode IRC, which is a great place to get feedback on regexes. (Or to just be told many times not to use regexes to parse HTML.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words! I moderate it myself fromtime to time. I hope nobody does something stupid like that; they gain nothing by it.

<comment><USER6> Re the quiz, in the first answer response it says "Excellent! I guess you have some regex knowledge, so let's get started!". Perhaps you should also add "Click a task below to continue." as it took me a few moments to work out how to continue. I expected that perhaps the "did i get it right" button my change to "continue" or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a great idea! I'll work something out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks good, I'm impressed it handles the rfc822 regex fairly well too :)

[http://regex101.com/r/fZ6cD5](http://regex101.com/r/fZ6cD5)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe yep, it works. It just creates >20000 DOM elements.. But other than that: it works :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice! Just a couple of minor nitpicks:

1\. The delay between updating the regex/test text and seeing the result is a little long. I find regex tools much more useful if I can see the results change as I'm typing.

2\. I did a simple regex with two capture groups and the second backreference came up red in the matches box. As soon as I see red, I assume there's an error. Might be worth removing those "danger colours" from the list.

Other than that, looking good!

</comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't fit horizontally on an iPad in portrait orientation.

<comment><USER17> Not sure why you're being downvoted, I think your comment is relevant when OP is asking for feedback.

You're not just nitpicking some blog template or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, the redesign looks like it would be much more useful (just from first impressions last time I tried it).

However, this is more of a debugger when you already have some idea how to write a regex to match a particular string. Are there any complete regex builders where you can select components (such as greedy or not, positive or not) when you can't remember the specific syntax?

</comment><comment><USER19> This is great! I love tools that help you understand tough concepts in a simple, no setup way. We'll definitely include this in our curricula at [http://www.thinkful.com/](http://www.thinkful.com/)

Would love to talk about other ways to work together as well – drop me a line: email@example.com

</comment><comment> martin-adams There are two things I need when it comes to regex:

1\. The ability to escape a string when searching using vi: [http://www.0x11.net/regex/escaper.py](http://www.0x11.net/regex/escaper.py)

2\. Lots of regex examples with a description of how they work.

<comment><USER6> The community page gives you examples with the automated explainer they maybe meet your 2. to some extent [or will when the feature has been used more].

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In the quiz, for competitive motivation it would be nice to see if you actually broke the current record on a quiz. Right now, there's no way to tell, whether you just caught up with the current record holder, or whether you've set a new one. ;) Otherwise, great update!

</comment><comment><USER21> If you're interested in an alternative solution, I personally always use [http://regexpal.com/](http://regexpal.com/)

It's a similar concept, except that the matching is highlighted in the same input field of your target value.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like it, especially this section [http://regex101.com/community/](http://regex101.com/community/) with commonly used regular expressions submitted by other users. Being able to vote a solution is also nice. Well done overall!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would like to see regex mapped in url so I have the option to send a regex to someone in this website. It doesn't have to be server side URL mapping. Just push the regex to location hash and let JavaScript parse it back.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use permalinks (press the button), which is the preferred way of sharing expressions. Otherwise the following works too: [http://www.regex101.com/?regex=...&options=...&text=...&sub=...](http://www.regex101.com/?regex=...&options=...&text=...&sub=...&delimiter=..).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would be nice to have at least a link to a detailed spec of the supported RE syntax, for a not good example, [http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html](http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> In the about page I mention what version of PCRE is running, and from there you can get to: [http://www.pcre.org/pcre.txt](http://www.pcre.org/pcre.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now you have 102 problems :). Good work, looks like something I would actually use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, hopefully my website will help you keep regex-related problems to a minimum :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Something that would be very useful, but that I haven't seen in any of these web-based regex tools, is to list the contents of capturing groups. If you added that, yours would be my goto regex tester.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if im understanding you correctly but the site does show the content of all capture groups: [http://regex101.com/r/nB1bR1](http://regex101.com/r/nB1bR1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is awesome. What I'd want most is in the quiz, I'd love to see how others are coming up with shorter regexes than mine. Satisfy my curiosity and competitive spirit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I don't want users to see shorter answers and then modifying their own to get the same length or even shorter (since they didnt do the real work). What about something like being able to see the shortest answer, but after that you are no longer allowed to modify your pattern? Feel free to pitch in if you have an idea of a neat way to do it.

<comment><USER27> Well, the way I look at it, I don't see a problem with building on other people's attempts. I'm dying to know how anyone's managed to implement (e.g.) 11-byte email validation, and if I can find an even shorter solution, so much the better to help everyone else learn some regex tricks too!

On the other hand, if you're planning on adding something like a public leaderboard of names, then I guess that would change the nature of the game. Glory, instead of learning or personal challenge. And cheating becomes a problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right.

I managed to mess up some entries of the database, thats why you see some ungodly stuff like 11b email validation. I'll patch it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think your #quickref_links click events need an 'event.preventDefault()' to keep the browser from jumping up to the top of the page when you switch between tabs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think the problem is the click event sending you to the top of the page, its the fact that the textarea is out of sight and its being modified. The browser will then focus it for you, which scrolls you up. Only way I can think of to solve this would be to make sure the textarea is always visible (even if not for the user), which is more work than its worth I'm afraid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Excellent job. Wonderful tool. Do you have plans to monetize? (ebook ALA Learn Regex the Hard Way, a mac desktop tool, editor plugins, etc...)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Not as of right now, everything I do I release for free given I can still pay for the server bill. I have plans on expanding the website quite a bit though... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Pretty good :) But it feels a little sluggish. I'm used to my regex tools displaying feedback with seemingly no delay.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean the fact that it doesnt show matches instantly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Bug report: I entered hi+ and it parses it like (hi)+ instead of like h(i+) (I mean with noncapturing parentheses).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Has since been fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It would be __great __to know a little bit about the internals of the "explanation engine".

<comment><AUTHOR> The colorizer does most of the grunt work, it tokenizes the regex and colors it properly. The explainer then basically just loops over those tokens and explain them. It's a bit hacked together as it works right now though; but it seems to do the trick. The explainer does some additional error-checking which the colorizer doesn't have enough resources to do as well. Anything in particular you want to know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Definitely the best regex test (and/or learn) website I have visited so far, period.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Pretty nice, though would be better to use CodeMirror or Ace instead of textareas.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been looking into this, but I know too little about them to make my current scripts work along side one of them. If you can help me out that would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER34> It's quite easy actually, so i can help, is your code on github?

<comment><AUTHOR> No its not but feel free to send me an email on email@example.com so we can talk privately :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I liked the 'Your Regular Expression Explained' section.

</comment><comment><USER36> No info for /u. And why it's not default?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean its not explained correctly or its not in the quickref? Its not enabled by default because it changes the behavior of many things, for example what \d and \w match. The user has to decide for himself what flags to use.

<comment><USER36> It's not in quickref. Of course it changes, and it should be default. There are languages other than English.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure I agree it should be default; it's not expected behavior. Either way, there are too many flags to add them all to the quickref, I figured I would just show the most common.

<comment><USER36> Right now, even _café_ is not matched by _\w{4}_. If this is what you call _expected_ …

<comment><USER20> Yes, this is explicitly a tool that uses PCRE via PHP. So I'd expect the behaviour to exactly reflect that of the `preg` suite in PHP... which does not use `u` by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sucks on mobile. Needs a responsive design.

<comment><USER30> Maybe. Or maybe the broad constituency is not on a mobile device. Perhaps this is a tool for someone who is coding. Presumably, someone who is not on a mobile device.</comment></comment>


Hyundai Motor Introduces Electric Double-Decker Bus - <AUTHOR> https://www.hyundaimotorgroup.com/MediaCenter/News/Press-Releases/Hyundai-Motor-Introduces-Electric-Double-Decker-Bus.hub <comment><USER2> BYD double-decker electric buses have been in use in Futian district of Shenzhen for a couple years now.

<comment><USER3> And the rest of the world won't touch them because they break down pretty much every week.

Reliability is very important for a bus, and BYD hasn't got that yet.

<comment><USER4> This has not been the experience in London which will soon have over 200 fully electric buses, most of which have BYD drivetrains. By all accounts, they have proven _at least_ as reliable as their diesel counterparts.

<comment><USER5> _> they have proven at least as reliable as their diesel counterparts_

Things may have improved recently, but that certain was not the experience in Hong Kong:

 _" Five Hong Kong electric buses pulled from service in under two weeks due to glitches"_[1]

 _" Hong Kong electric buses pulled from the road for third time in nine months"_[2]

 _" Trial run of five Hong Kong electric buses delayed indefinitely due to bus stop bell problems"_[3]

 _" KMB electric bus runs into trouble on first day of trial"_[4]

[1] [https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/economy/article/2038314/...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/economy/article/2038314/hong-kong-electric-buses-pulled-road-third-time- nine-months)

[2] [https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/economy/article/2038314/...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/economy/article/2038314/hong-kong-electric-buses-pulled-road-third-time- nine-months)

[3] [https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education- community/arti...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education- community/article/2018569/trial-run-five-hong-kong-electric-buses-delayed)

[4] [http://www.ejinsight.com/20170801-kmb-electric-bus-runs- into...](http://www.ejinsight.com/20170801-kmb-electric-bus-runs-into-trouble- on-first-day-of-trial/)

<comment><USER6> Most of those stories are from 2016. Technology improves over time.

In 2011 there was a high-speed train crash in China and every questioned HSR in China.

Today China had 19,000 miles of track and carries 2 billion passengers a year.

It's not hard to believe that initial electric buses had a few problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Most of those stories are from 2016._

Here are a couple from 2018 and 2019:

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric- buses-201...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric- buses-20180520-story.html)

[https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/01/electric- bus-...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/01/electric-bus-battery- recharge-new-flyer-byd-proterra-beb/577954/)

> _Technology improves over time._

This is bus technology, not rocket surgery. The BYD buses in Albuquerque had door malfunctions, cracked and missing welds, brake issues, exposed high voltage cables, etc.:

[https://www.cabq.gov/mayor/news/mayor-tim-keller-byd-will- be...](https://www.cabq.gov/mayor/news/mayor-tim-keller-byd-will-be-held- accountable-in-court)

This doesn't have anything to do with the technology. It's just bad bus manufacturing.

<comment><USER4> _"The BYD buses in Albuquerque had door malfunctions, cracked and missing welds, brake issues, exposed high voltage cables, etc"_

Much of London's electric bus fleet uses the BYD battery & drivetrain in combination with an ADL (Alexander Dennis) bus body. These units seem to be reliable and well-regraded.

<comment><AUTHOR> Again, show me some links. Here are the bus inspection reports from Albuquerque. They're not great:

[https://www.cabq.gov/mayor/build-your-dreams-mechanic- inspec...](https://www.cabq.gov/mayor/build-your-dreams-mechanic-inspection- reports)

<comment><USER6> China has almost 400,000 electric busses.

[https://electrek.co/2019/03/20/chinese-electric-buses- oil/](https://electrek.co/2019/03/20/chinese-electric-buses-oil/)

How are those working?

<comment><AUTHOR> You tell me. Just saying there are 400,000 doesn't speak to their quality or reliability.

<comment><USER3> If you have 400,000, you might care less about reliability.

If there is always another spare, a few breakdowns each day don't matter as much as they do in a smaller fleet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> new gbus please!

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this efficiency is only 70% more than model 3.

<comment><USER8> Why my comment is so downvoted? 370kw is an impressive value, my model 3 usually use ~220-270 to drive, but bus i so much bigger.

<comment><USER9> You're conflating units, I think. The long range Model 3 has a 75 kWHr battery pack, and goes about 300 miles. That equates to about 250 wh/mi. This bus has a 374 kWHr battery pack, and goes 300 kilometers. That's 180 miles, so about 2100 whr/mi. The "energy" tab of the Model 3 is displaying watt-hours.

<comment><USER8> I see, i misread article, was thinking that 374 is whr/mi</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Google Needs Twitter To Stay Relevant - <AUTHOR> http://richdemuro.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-google-needs-twitter-to-stay.html

<comment><USER2> First off: Google bought Jaiku, Twitter's competitor. If anything, they'll be focusing on making Jaiku competitive.

Second off: Google indexes some sites every minute. That's pretty close to instantaneous: with the exception of real news obsessives, it's at the very least adequate.

Third off: the fact that people write articles like this _about_ Google shows that Google is still relevant. And until somebody creates search that isn't better but _revolutionarily_ better than Google, it will remain that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a nice thought, Rich, but this won't happen. Twitter has already turned down acquisition offers.</comment>


Ask HN: What podcasts are you listening to? - <AUTHOR> I am into Ruby, Apple, Web, Defcon, Elixir, MongoDB, OSes, React, Design, etc. But, I am also curious to whatever is interesting/funny that you guys might be listening.<p>Side question, what podcast softwares are you using on a iPhone and on a Mac? <comment><USER2> [http://www.dancarlin.com/](http://www.dancarlin.com/) [https://fallofromepodcast.wordpress.com/](https://fallofromepodcast.wordpress.com/) [http://typehammer.com](http://typehammer.com)

<comment><USER3> +2 for Dan Carlin. One for 'Common Sense' and another for 'Hardcore History'.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, Hardcore History is great, with "Wrath of the Khans" being by far my favorite HH series.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Freakonomics - [http://freakonomics.com](http://freakonomics.com)

RadioLab - [http://www.radiolab.org](http://www.radiolab.org)

For my Iphone, I use an app called Overcast - pretty decent.

</comment><comment><USER6> I always look forward to Troy Hunt's weekly update podcasts: [https://www.youtube.com/user/troyhuntdotcom](https://www.youtube.com/user/troyhuntdotcom)

</comment><comment><USER7> No Dumb Questions - [https://www.nodumbquestions.fm](https://www.nodumbquestions.fm)

It's new, but I'm interested in seeing how it develops.

</comment><comment><USER8> ctrl+walt+delete with Nilay Patel & Walt Mosberg

re/code media with Peter Kafka

</comment><comment><USER9> the tim ferris show - incredible insights by interesting people

</comment><comment><USER10> Elixir Fountain

Dot Net Rocks

Startups for the Rest of Us

Bootstrapped Web</comment>


How to easily transfer your files to iPad with Python one liner  - <AUTHOR> http://fuzz-box.blogspot.sg/2013/03/how-to-easily-transfer-files-to-ipad.html

<comment><USER2> Nice little hack.

I assume he means port 8000 in the part that reads:

 _From your iPad, open safari and go to_

 _<http://192.168.1.2:8080>

to access and download the files to your iPad._

Otherwise, you are browsing on a different port and it probably won't work.

(edit: Also, you need to know your computer's IP address ... mine happened to be the default one, but YMMV)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is nice, and I can _see_ the files, but I have no download option. There's a "Copy" in safari but where the heck can I save these to?

EDIT: okay, figured it out. This app can do it: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mymedia-download- manager/id3...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mymedia-download- manager/id348609711?mt=8)

You don't even need Cydia!

</comment><comment><USER4> My `bin/server`. It prints all ip addresses binded to the machine, and tries port numbers starting from 8000 until one is available for use:

      #!/usr/bin/env python2.7

      import commands
      import subprocess

      port=8000
      while commands.getstatusoutput('lsof -i -P|grep ":' + str(port) + '"')[1]:
          port = port + 1
      print commands.getstatusoutput('ip addr | grep inet')[1], "\n"
      subprocess.call(['env', 'python2.7', '-m', 'SimpleHTTPServer', str(port)])

</comment><comment><USER5> I was inspired to write a small bash script to let you know which ip exactly to go to. It is hackish due to my limited knowledge of sed but it works on my Mac at least

      #!/bin/bash
      ip=`ifconfig -r en0 inet | sed -E '/en0/d;s/inet[ \t]([0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+).+/\1/'`
      ip=`echo $ip | tr -d '[:space:]'`
      echo "Go to $ip:8000 in a browser on your local network. When you are done, use ctrl-c to exit"
      python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000

</comment><comment><USER6> But where on the iPad is it stored?

And can I reverse it - taking photos off iPad into my server

Really backing up these devices is a closed book to me

<comment><USER7> image capture on mac should be able to do it. requires to be plugged in via usb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The code in the post is for Python 2.x but if you're running Python 3.x, use this to set up a server:

        python -m http.server 8000

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing, great hack!

</comment><comment><USER10> Why not this? :-)

       "python -c 'import os; os.system("mv ... ~/Dropbox/from_comp_x/")'

Edit: My point is -- what makes this worth up votes?!

</comment><comment><USER11> Use our Tonido server instead (<http://www.tonido.com/ios/>). Less adventurous though :-)</comment>


Google Introduces Portable Native Client - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/17/google-introduces-portable-native-client-makes-it-easier-for-developers-to-add-c-and-c-code-to-their-web-apps/ <comment><USER2> It's like ActiveX... of the future!

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a niche technology. I doubt that many C/C++ developers want to write front end code for the web.

<comment><USER4> I want to. I am developing a survey progrmaming compiler. I am currently isolating the runtime (written in c++) and trying to compile to JavaScript using Emscripten. But PNaCl could be a another web delivery option

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just an interesting tidbit I'd like to point out: native client was not mentioned in the Chrome portion of the I/O keynote at all, while asm.js was:

"And in the last month alone, we've gotten over 2.4x speed boost running this asm.js code in V8, and there's tons more optimization to come."

Not only that, but it turns out that the mentioned improvements had nothing to do with asm.js at all: <https://twitter.com/mraleph/status/334719725617696768>

<comment><USER6> We were going to show a couple of cool Native Client demos during the keynote but we had to cut them at the last minute due to time constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have really high hopes for PNaCl, but I'm skeptical that it will "get there". Getting other browser vendors to adopt it seems to be an uphill battle so far, and figuring out the tradeoffs between security and power will probably be a sticky point as well.

<comment><USER8> But it can solve a lot of problems for iOS development if you don't want to go trough the store.

<comment><USER9> Yeah when Safari supports it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really wish that someone other than Google would take this up (whatever Google would need to do for that). C has of course been a great choice for performance-sensitive programs for years and it is quite a mature language with mature tools. It doesn't make sense for everyone to be forced to use JavaScript as the only option, forever, just because of convention.

<comment><USER11> Once it's actually possible to use PNaCL apps in webpages, I think it will see dramatically faster adoption. It's mostly a question at this point of whether they manage to ship it before someone else beats them to the punch (looks like Chrome 30 is projected for August). By then Mozilla could easily have picked up a lot of momentum with asm.js.

<comment><USER12> Problem is we'll only ever see PNaCl support in Chrome. The nature of NaCl and PNaCl is that they rely on single implementations by Google which are designed around Chrome's internals, and so they are unlikely to ever be adopted by other browser vendors, aside from perhaps Opera, since it will be Chromium- based.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds kinda like Google's own implementation of WebCL? I guess Google is really trying to push the concept of utilizing the Chrome browser as an OS development environment instead of just a browser... seems cool.

<comment><USER14> WebCL runs on the GPU while PNaCl runs on the CPU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How much of a subset of LLVM is it? Can other LLVM frontends target it easily (e.g. Rust or <http://terralang.org/>)?

<comment><USER16> Rust could target it, but not as easily as you might think. LLVM IR is not portable (for example, here's some of the code necessary to get the calling conventions right in the LLVM IR for x86-64 [1]). The runtime and scheduler would have to be ported to the Pepper API if you wanted stuff like GC, I/O, and threads (which most Rust programs will want).

[1]: [https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/master/src/librustc/mid...](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/master/src/librustc/middle/trans/cabi_x86_64.rs)

<comment><USER17> Possible still seems preferable to impossible, which is the situation with Rust on asm.js (correct me if I'm wrong…)

<comment><USER16> asm.js Rust is no harder than PNaCl Rust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me, the most interesting thing about PNaCl is that it'll be the first real test of LLVM as a portable assembly bitcode, rather than just a compiler IR. There are arguments for why LLVM may not be such a good idea, but given the momentum it's been making, I can only see good things happening for LLVM if more people use it.

<comment><USER19> Right. I had always thought that LLVM bitcode was unsuitable as a portable representation because it inevitably encoded architecture-specific details.

Consider code like this:

        int lsize(void) { return sizeof(void *); }

how would this be compiled portably, so that it returns 4 or 8 as appropriate? What would the LLVM bitcode look like?

<comment><USER20> This is true for LLVM bitcode in general, but PNaCl specifies an abstract machine that defines pointers as 4 bytes long. It also specifies Little Endian &c.

See [http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/bitcode- abi#TOC-D...](http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/bitcode-abi#TOC-Data- Types)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _PNaCl, which Google says we should pronounce as "pinnacle"_

Or as I will call it, "P-salt".

As in, take it with a grain of salt that Google will support this technology 18-24 months from now after it fails to gain much traction.

<comment><USER10> If you think this kind of technology compares to Google Reader, you are just confused. WebGL would be a better comparison.

<comment><USER22> Only WebGL is a standard, whereas PNaCL is a Google only endeavor. If it doesn't catch up, they might abandon it just as they did anything else of theirs.

Whereas they cannot abandon WebGL if they want to have a standards compliant browser.

<comment><USER23> Actually google doesn't seem to have much problems with abandoning standards lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't see the need for NaCL when there is asm.js and emscripten. For fast lightweight native sandboxing, now we have docker. NaCL seemed like a great idea, but now it has been overtaken by other initiatives.

<comment><USER25> Asm.js doesn't have (as far as I know):

1\. Good primitive data types (e.g. full width machine integers)

2\. SIMD

3\. Tail calls

4\. Threads

5\. Structs

6\. Gotos

7\. Memory management

Once you add these you lose the supposed advantages of asm.js in practice. You lose the light weight. You lose realistic backwards compatibility because programs using these features will run so slow on normal JS VMs that they're unusable, or in the case of tail calls the program will stackoverflow on a normal JS VM.

<comment><USER16> > You lose the light weight.

No, an asm.js that supported all of these would still just be JavaScript, which is far more lightweight than PNaCl. Besides, these features dovetail with things we want for JavaScript _anyway_ : SIMD, tail calls, full width machine integers are things all JavaScript programs need. By implementing them once and for all we help both regular JavaScript and asm.js.

> You lose realistic backwards compatibility because programs using these > features will run so slow on normal JS VMs that they're unusable

No, we are compiling programs that use these already, and they are not too slow as to be unusable. For example, Unreal Engine 3.

<comment><USER26> > No, an asm.js that supported all of these would still just be JavaScript, > which is far more lightweight than PNaCl.

What makes asm.js "far more lightweight" than PNaCl? What more "lightweight" means here anyway?

> No, we are compiling programs that use these already, and they are not too > slow as to be unusable. For example, Unreal Engine 3.

Do you mean the Epic Citadel demo which runs fine on smartphones. So you made it run more or less smoothly on beefy x86 desktops, how much of an achievement is that? Is it that "OMG I run my game from the 80s inside the browser with HTML5 CANVAS!!!" thing again?

<comment><USER16> > What makes asm.js "far more lightweight" than PNaCl? What more "lightweight" > means here anyway?

It's much simpler than LLVM and reuses the components of the JavaScript engine that already must exist in browsers.

<comment><USER26> > It's much simpler than LLVM and reuses the components of the JavaScript > engine that already must exist in browsers.

But LLVM IR has complexity for a reason - you need to be able to generate efficient code from it for multiple architectures. As I mentioned elsewhere, "reusing JS components" is a very unfortunate party line because it keeps us tied to this one JS forever and ever, and we should try to see beyond that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a game developer i was pretty excited about Native Client when i first heard about it in 2010, and PNaCL is definately nice.

However, nowadays asm.js + emscripten seem to be the right direction and Google should adopt it.

<comment><USER28> PNaCL seems like a much saner stack, turning JS into assembly never made sense to me if you want to get the most out of the hardware (with resulting power savings and/or performance gains).

<comment><USER29> To be fair, asm.js isn't really JS. It's more like a low-level DSL. The fact that it happens to be a subset of JS is just a convenience for backwards compatibility.

At any rate, from the perspective of the developer, it doesn't really make a difference. Either way, developers are interacting with a C/C++ compiler, not directly with the browser engine.

<comment><USER30> It's the same interface for the developer, but instead of being run directly on the CPU, it's run in a JavaScript virtual machine that interprets it or eventually compiles it to some kind of native code. That's very hard to overcome from a performance standpoint.

<comment><USER16> I don't know what the difference between running "directly on the CPU" and "compiling to some kind of native code" is. If you mean that the Web page delivers raw machine code to the browser, that describes NaCl, not PNaCl.

Regardless, it is incorrect that asm.js is first interpreted before being compiled. asm.js is compiled ahead of time exactly as PNaCl is.

<comment><USER31> This doesn't sound right. It's a subset of javascript, you are still shipping javascript to the browser... which is then parsed and then jitted in said browser. Which is an extra step above bitcode, where you just jit it as is. Albeit it's specifically crafted to be easier to optimize but it is still javascript that you are sending to the browser.

I feel like someone is trying too hard to make javascript into something it isn't and shouldn't be. Javascript does it's thing pretty well, why is there no room for other tools in the toolbox?

<comment><USER32> I doubt parsing and validating ascii asm.js is much more work than parsing and validating binary llvm.

<comment><USER33> I call Bullshit.

<comment><USER16> <https://github.com/dherman/asm.js/tree/master/lib> is about 1,500 lines of code.

The contents of Bitcode/Reader/ in LLVM are about 3,000 lines of code alone, and that does not include the definition of LLVM data structures, the validator, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Slack notification of Mailgun breach - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/garrynewman/status/950277896576348161 <comment><USER2> The big question here is why random Mailgun employees have any access to production mail flow.</comment>


Ask HN: Gap Between Academia and Journalism - <AUTHOR> Many political and humanities scholars do research that is of a similar type that journalists would do. Due to fewer restrictions (ie time) facing academics, they can often write more in-depth material. Why isn't academic research more commonly integrated in journalism? Why is there this gap between academia and journalism when they could be complementary? If this gap were to be reduced, it would also reduce the gap between academia and the general public.
This is just my impression and feel free to correct me if I am wrong. If it is true, however does anyone have any ideas and comments that can add to my understanding?
EDIT: Journalists do sometimes use (and summarise) academic articles, but I think this is not done frequently enough (particularly in social sciences). Instead what I have seen more commonly are academics writing in a journalistic style on newspapers.
Also does anyone know of a more relevant community I could ask this question on? <comment><USER2> Not exactly the answer you are looking, but in my view:

Academic research is focused on extending / expanding the knowledge in a very specific and often narrow field. The papers are written for other scholars working in the same or related fields. The desired result is the amplification of knowledge in that field.

Journalists are focused on disseminating information on timely matters to a broad audience. When journalists report on material from academic papers, then need to translate the material so that non-specialists can comprehend the core concepts presented in the papers. In order to do perform this role well, journalists need to have at least undergraduate level knowledge in the relevant fields.

Academic scholars have 10+ years experience in their specialist fields, there is no way that you can easily bridge the knowledge gap to that of the general public. That is why journalists are trained to write simply and to use a basic vocabulary.</comment>


How Do People Spend Their Time at Work (Infographic) - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneuraddict.com/how-do-people-spend-their-time-at-work-infographic/

<comment><USER2> "Creativity is the residue of time wasted." - Albert Einstein.

As jobs require more creativity, the MBA way of thinking regarding production and resources becomes less and less applicable. Anyone who is creative knows that it is near impossible to just turn it on for a straight 8 hours. In my opinion, in regard to intellectual/creative jobs we need a new frame of reference rather than the 8 hours a day, 9-5 measurement - how about instead we just judge on results and rather than judging how much time somebody "wastes"

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree. I'm much more concerned about tasks accomplished rather than how long it took you to do it. Get your stuff done for the week in 30 hours and leave for the other 10. I don't care, just get it done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The "$ wasted per month" metric doesn't make any sense for salaried employees (at which this metric seems targeted). Many salaried positions sport creativity as a bottleneck (I know this is certainly true for myself as a software engineer). That the productivity of employees in these professions cannot be measured in hours is inherently the reason that they are salaried and not hourly.

I strongly suspect that were the working hours of the measured employees were reduced to 35 hours a week that one would not see an equal reduction in productivity.

<comment><USER4> _That the productivity of employees in these professions cannot be measured in hours is inherently the reason that they are salaried and not hourly._

No, the reason is so that they can be kept in the office more than 40 hours/week without any additional pay.</comment></comment>


How you can still get a free Windows 10 upgrade - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how useful an "apparently valid" license is. Would it stand up to an audit? I sure wouldn't allow that on any of my employee laptops.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like I'd even want one.</comment>


Ask HN: Science data as viable monetization strategy for mobile apps? - <AUTHOR>

Recent data [1] shows that there are a lot of apps that aren't based on a sustainable revenue stream and have little hope of finding one. Many developers try to use advertising/IAP to make revenue on a free app, but success with this model isn't possible without very large scale. Additionally, returns are smaller and the market is increasingly crowded.
I suggest a new monetization strategy: integrate code to collect useful scientific data from the phone's sensors in the background. This data, in aggregate, is potentially valuable after being anonymized, cleaned, and re-packaged (by a third-party). App developers could make partnerships with companies who need this data - both parties can benefit through revenue sharing.
An example of how this might work: I run the PressureNet platform, which collects atmospheric pressure data from Android sensors. I wrote a library project that you can drop into your app that handles all the sensor data tasks. App developers can integrate this code and join my weather sensor network; in return for sending data, any profits in the future can be shared among the contributing apps. Does this strategy seem viable? Would you consider adding a similar library to your app?
http://pressurenet.io/
https://github.com/Cbsoftware/PressureNet-SDK
[1]: The Majority Of Today's App Businesses Are Not Sustainable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8092518 <comment><USER2> I remember, back around 2000, hearing the various pundits explain how, any day now, TiVo would start giving away their hardware and subscriptions for free. After all, the company was collecting vast quantities of data on people's viewing habits, including which commercials they were watching instead of skipping, what parts of shows were their favourites, what episodes they liked and hated, and connected viewership graphs between shows. Getting more data from having more subscribers would more than offset the costs of passing out free DVRs.

As for how well that plan worked, I just visited their website to see if they were even still in business. That was for data that's far more valuable than atmospheric data. Despite all of our advances in data mining and machine learning, there doesn't seem to be that much actual value in data.</comment>


Worldwide tablet shipments have declined 8.5% - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/05/04/worldwide-tablet-shipments-declined-8-5-past-year-q1-tenth-straight-quarter-decline/ <comment><USER2> There's lots of good reasons for this- phones doing the same job being the key one- but I wonder if people are paying attention to the replacement time on tablets as a possible cause as well?

My wife bought a Nexus tablet a few years ago. It's tough enough to survive minor drops or bumps and we don't take it outside of the house ever so I have a hard time imagining it breaking. At the same time, the things we use it for are simple and we won't really ever need to upgrade to a better tablet.

So why would I need to buy a tablet again anytime in the next decade?

Maybe part of the reason for declining tablet sales is just because everyone who wants one already has one?

<comment><USER3> I take your point but 10 years maybe a bit hyperbolic. The replacement cycle of a phone is likely 1-2 years a tablet maybe 5ish unless it is mission critical.

I wonder if tablets are declining in business & education; which are likely large consumers of tablets. Maybe that, or they haven't hit their stride yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Post PC era passed faster than teenage fads, and we are back in PC era.

<comment><USER5> I don't think we'll ever be in the PC era ever again. We are in the mobile era right now, not PC era.

<comment><USER6> My theory:

1) The sort of people who had pcs before everyone got them, use pcs as much as ever, though they also use mobile.

2)The sort of people who got pcs because of the internet have moved to mobile and won't get another pc.

3) Tablets are being replaced by smartphones rather than by new tablets.

<comment><USER7> Someone with access to historical sales data for PCs, tablets & phones could check the data for support of this plausible hypothesis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As phone screens get larger and laptops get slimmer and lighter, tablets become more and more useless

<comment><USER9> The laptop is like the perfect tablet... compact, more powerful, comes with its own built-in keyboard AND screen stand.

What more could you want?

<comment><USER10> A full-sized keyboard. My hands are a bit too big to comfortably use a laptop keyboard.

(I realize that, if the lack of a full-sized keyboard is the problem, a tablet is _not_ the answer...)

<comment><USER11> Have you tried 13" ThinkPad recently?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was all in on tablets when they first started out. I've had the original iPad, the Motorola Xoom, the HP Touchpad, and many more including convertibles like the Asus Transformer. I really wanted tablets to be the future and replace at least my desktop, but all these years later it hasn't worked out.

I've still got two tablets, and iPad mini that I mostly use to read either PDF or pictureful rulebooks for table top games that won't work on my Kindle and a Dell Venue 8 Pro that mostly goes unused and I kept it around with the idea of working on a good tablet UI for Linux, but haven't had time or really the desire to do that.

When my wife's Galaxy Tab died, rather that get a new Android tablet or an iPad, she opted to just upgrade her laptop to a convertible(ZenBook Flip) that mostly gets used in plain old laptop mode. Even my kids who have had some kind of tablets for some time of their lives have started preferring "real" computers, especially daughter who is the oldest and gets how much more she can do on a real computer.

I think for me What it boils down to was that there was nothing that tablets really did best. If I'm going to be sitting on the couch doing some web browsing or watching a movie, a keyboard is nice to have for the web browsing and for both it's nice to be able to side the laptop down rather than holding a tablet for log periods of time. And when I do need to be more mobile, phones handle that aspect just as well and maybe better if I need to be able to put said mobile device is a smaller-than-tablet-pocket. I think in the long term, the extent of tablets will largely be some kind of pseudo-tablet convertibles like the aforementioned ZenBook and probably fewer like the Transformer of the Surface Book and most tablets that do stick around with be Surface like holdouts that can't more easily be converted into real computer mode.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think most people use tablets to watch TV in bed. Now that iPhones and Androids are shipping with larger screens and higher resolutions, there isn't much need for a second device.

<comment><USER14> I still think the need for tablets exists, because even larger phones feel inadequate for browsing the web, particularly on sites were the desktop version is superior to the mobile one. That said, tablets tend to limit the user's ability to perform other day to day tasks, most notably moving files around. My suspicion is that sales have fallen in part because tablets, particularly iPads, have too narrow a use case to justify their price.

<comment><USER15> Pretty much. The Apple devices assume that you buy into their ecosystem. It is interesting to note that back when the first ipad shipped, Apple release a camera kit that plugged into the tablet. But it only allowed files to be transferred to the tablet, not the other way.

Similarly Google started out allowing bi-directional file transfers, but then later rolled that back to only allow reading, not writing, with regards to removable storage.

This leaves Windows. But there there fusing of Windows Phone's UWP and NT's win32 is awkward at best. Resulting in the best use of the "tablet" to prop it on a surface and attach a mouse. This because UWP file management is highly restricted, leaving us to use touch-hostile win32 programs for that task.

<comment><USER16> Android can do bidirectional file transfer quite happily, you just need a "file manager" app. My Zenfone even had one preinstalled.

<comment><USER15> Thats the thing, only system apps are allowed to write to removable devices.

Yeah, some OEMs include a minimal file manager with their devices. But they are a pale comparison to what third parties can offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My tablet doesn't do much more these days than serve as an e-reader. I use it to read books, Pocket articles, and RSS feeds, primarily. I _very occasionally_ use it to watch some downloaded videos as well, either on a plane or at the gym. But otherwise, there's little on it I do that I couldn't probably do on a Kindle or a Kobo.

Nonetheless, I'm not convinced that this is really a problem, assuming you didn't pay an arm and a leg for yours. I paid somewhere between $200-$300 for my 2013 Nexus 7, it's held up for about four years now, and I still use the thing regularly.

Tablets sales are down in part, I imagine, because nearly everyone who wants a tablet already has one, and if the one you bought was above a certain threshold (i.e. Not Crap), you can comfortably use the thing for several years without needing to upgrade. Manufacturers need to realize that tablets are not phones, particularly as phones get bigger and more useful; people aren't going to upgrade their tablets every two years. Nor should they.

Case in point, I'm fine with the stock OS on it at the moment, but when I decide I no longer want to use it as is, I have at least three other OS's I could potentially load onto it, such as:

\- MaruOS ([http://maruos.com/#/](http://maruos.com/#/))

\- Kali Nethunter ([https://www.kali.org/kali-linux- nethunter/](https://www.kali.org/kali-linux-nethunter/))

\- LineageOS

<comment><USER11> Nexus 7 2013 must be the optimal tablet. Perfect size and weight + stock android.

If they ever released a 2017 version I will order 4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Make the smartphones smaller again, make high end 10 inch tablets again with a competitive price. All I want is high end smaller than 5 inch smartphones, and a 10 inch high end tablet, and a 12 or 14 inch notebook and a 30 inch 4k monitor.

I have the current gen, but the outlook looks worse and worse to get a brand new high end smartphone in the 4.5 to 4.8 inch size. You cannot put a 5.5 or bigger phone in your jean's pocket. Only women and certain hipster carry a extra handbag to store their big smartphones. Bit no wonder, when you already have a 5.5 inch or bigger smartphone there is less reason to buy a tablet as well. Another factor is that the hardware spec stalled for two years. The Android and iPad Air 2 tablets were completely unchanged for straight two years - no wonder there is little reason to upgrade a 2013 tablet if the 2016 model is almost the same hardware spec. Where are the multi window features, where are the octo-core tablets with 4+ GB memory? iPad Pro segmented the models, so you now have to pay more for high end, where as in previous gen you got more for your bucks. So new non Pro devices are as slow and little changed compared to previous gen.

</comment><comment><USER19> With constantly improving mobile flagships, it's hard for me to see what niche tablets are targeting. Could anyone enlighten me?

<comment><USER20> niche tablets or just tablets in general?

Personally I just use my iPad to watch TV shows in bed

<comment><USER21> I think they're asking which niche tablets are targeted at.

<comment><USER20> you are right, whoops

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> i think most people who have a tablet are still able to do all the things they want to do on their tablet. No reason to upgrade.

<comment><USER6> True but not the whole truth I think. My tablet's battery recently died and rather than get a new one I now use my phone for everything I used it for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There isn't a decent android tablet out there save for maybe the Tab S3 but it's pretty expensive and only 32GB. Everyone who wants an iPad already has one, and Microsoft is eating Apple's lunch with the surface line.

<comment><USER24> The Asus Nexus 7 was probably the best Android tablet for size, features, and value. I didn't buy a tablet this year because I couldn't find any Nexus 7s.

<comment><USER25> Unfortunately the Nexus devices went to high end pricing range after the first few versions. The Nexus 7 was great.

<comment><USER26> Being in the market for a tablet (to use as a document viewer when backpacking), I just looked it up on Newegg.

$400-$600, for a device from 2013. Wow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can't really think of an essential daily app (minus work / minus business related / minus intensive reading) that I use which has better UI and UX on a tablet. Everything just seems easier on my iPhone 6 Plus.

Plus as some people already mentioned, tablets from couple of years ago still run quite well right now. Especially newer iPads.

<comment><USER28> > I can't really think of an essential daily app (minus work / minus business > related / minus intensive reading) that I use which has better UI and UX on > a tablet.

For me it's TV. While I own a TV, I essentially never use it. A tablet has more viewing area than a phone, which makes it much more pleasant to consume TV shows on.

I think you hit the nail on the head re. how well relatively recent tablets work. At first I thought a tablet would be like a phone — replaced annually — but I find that I've had the same tablet for four years. It does its job, it's a nice size (and Google haven't come out with another 7" tablet since!); why replace it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem, imo, is that Google dropped the ball, and nobody really picked it up.

And by dropping the ball i mean the gradual rolling back of distinctiveness between Android tablets and Android phones.

With 3.0/honeycomb, Android tablets got a distinctive interface with a single system bar, aimed at using tablets primarily in the landscape orientation.

Alongside this the first generation of Android tablets often shipped with a full size USB A port, to allow connecting things like storage and input devices (3.0 also introduced basic HID support to Android).

But come 3.1, Google did the inexplicable move of introducing a new set of storage permissions distinct from the "external" RW permission that had existed since Android 1.0. There were "media" RW permission, specifically set up to cover removable storage.

The real problem was that by default the write half of the permission set was exclusive to system apps, meaning apps bundled with the device.

End result was that Android went from being a potential production platform to being a straight media consumption platform.

Then as 4.x rolled on, more and more of the tablet UI was rolled back, replaced with a variation of the 4.0 phone UI.

This culminating in 4.3-4.4 where the single bar was fully removed on all sizes of tablets, replaced with a dual bar setup where the bottom bar would move to always be at the bottom (on phones it sticks to the portrait "bottom").

And while MS seemed poised to pick this up with Windows 8/10, they largely fumbled.

For example UWP apps are not allowed to access anything but the users home area, unless they make a specific request and the user approves. But the approval has to happen via the age old win32 file picker dialog, that is a right pain to operate using fingers.

This then leaves us with the equally old file explorer to handle file management. And not only is it still a win32 program, though now outfitted with a ribbons UI, but it is the same process as is operating the overall Windows UI!

Similarly win32 programs still have a close button everpresent on screen, making it easy to close those by grabbing the device by upper right corner.

Never mind that the Windows 10 tablet UI has sprouted a Android-like back button, but that do not interact with win32 programs except to send them to the background.

Nor is there a good indication that something is running. You have to basically tap the switcher button (same one used to handle multiple desktops in desktop mode), and see if anything pops up.

All this result in the best option for using Windows "tablets" is to prop them on some surface and attach enough devices to use them as ad-hoc desktops.

<comment><USER12> Dropping the tablet specific UI in Android (it was in 4.1 or one of the other Jellybean releases, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich had a good evolution of the Honeycomb UI) for the giant phone UI was where I started to sour on tablets in general.

<comment><USER15> 4.1 did so for screen sizes around 7". 4.3 or 4.4 did so far anything 9" and up.

There were some elements added to the base phone UI when using a tablet though. For example you either get notifications or the quick options depending on what half of the top bar you swipe from.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Stale job posting and suggestion for getting a job at FB or Google? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN ,
I have started looking for new job and very much interested in a job at high performance organizations such as FB/Google/Netflix.  Amazon is also great but I have heard few horror stories. I personally know a couple of folks who were not happy when they worked for Amazon.
Number one issue I see is stale job posting. I bookmarked few available jobs at FB/Google and 5 months later I still see them.  I understand some of these jobs could be for green card processing of existing employees,  however I am curious if job remains open for so long ?
1.  How do avoid or identify stale job postings and one that have been open for green card applications ?
2.  What are tips for getting job at FB/Google ?
I work in analytics domain and not looking for SWE jobs.
If any current or former employees can shed some light on how you landed job at these companies that will be super awesome. <comment><USER2> This is my n=1 (me) experience. You have to know someone on the inside. Job sites for someplace as large as Google or Apple are a black hole. I always have a friend refer me, which at a bare minimum gets a real human being to read my resume. I know it sounds like an advantage, but i've been rejected more times than i've received an offer. I never felt like I got special treatment.

</comment><comment><USER3> One motivation for fake/dummy postings is feign compliance with H-1B/L-1 constraints about having pursued legally-eligible workers already. This is discussed in detail in:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970166)

(scroll down to "nommm-nommm"'s subthread for specific video evidence)

</comment><comment><USER4> The big companies never really stop hiring, so there's no point to close a job posting.</comment>


UI for AWS development VM resources - <AUTHOR> does anyone know of an alternative UI for the aws console?
as we scale up developers on our team, we want to keep track of who owns what, and standardize our teams on specific console deployment options.
is there an easy to use UI that can keep track of a couple dozen VM's, keep track of which user is using a VM, help me analyze how many people own what and just keep AWS organized?
obviously - the AWS console isn't that : ) <comment><USER2> I think these guys are early but if you sign up for early access they're letting people in: [http://vantage.sh/](http://vantage.sh/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Asgard from Netflix[1] basically did what you are asking for. But it has been deprecated[2] and replaced with Spinnaker[3], which has a bit of a different focus.

But really, with couple dozen VMs, you don't have a cloud management problem. I would take a step back and figure out what the problem is, and where you want to be. Why are people creating VMs? What are the problems with them creating VMs? How do you mitigate those problems? If it is just tracking, then tags + education can help solve the issue. If it is security and standardization, an opinionated deployment system could help.

With a couple dozen VMs, I'd say you probably shouldn't be running any VMs you manage yourself, and you should be using fully manage solutions. Then focus on the tooling that makes those solutions efficient to use for your users, while meeting your security needs.

[1] [https://netflixtechblog.com/asgard-web-based-cloud- managemen...](https://netflixtechblog.com/asgard-web-based-cloud-management- and-deployment-2c9fc4e4d3a1)

[2] [https://github.com/Netflix/asgard](https://github.com/Netflix/asgard)

[3] [https://spinnaker.io/](https://spinnaker.io/)

</comment><comment><USER4> oh come on you guyes never heard of Bitnami?

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting, havent heard of it but i'm asking for something a bit lighter weight... this bitnami thing looks kind of intense...

conceptually, close but more for self-serve of development vms. bitnami looks like it does a lot more?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should I include in a tech discovery phase? - <AUTHOR>

We just got a new lead, and they want to buy a "tech discovery" phase from our software development consultancy.  They basically have an idea, a graphic designer, and an information architect.  They will put together a set of wireframes and we will be responsible for figuring out what they need on the technology side.  I want to be able to come out of this phase with the ability to make a phase 1 development proposal for the first working prototype.  They have enough budget for about 40 to 50 hours of work in this phase.<p>What do you normally include in the proposal at this stage in the game? <comment><USER2> I guess if I had five days to produce a "tech discovery" document like you describe for a non-technical audience, it would be breaking down the tasks and providing detailed estimates. Software estimation is very hard; I'm no good at it, but when I've been close to the mark, it's been because I broke down the tasks into 1- or 2-day chunks.

If I were to work on it, I would start by reading their wireframes and building a mental model -- at a high level, how the app must work. Then, if applicable, I would search for libraries which will save lots of time; the presence of an important library may pull me strongly towards certain languages, platforms, or architectures.

Once I had decided on platform and architecture (not in stone), I would start writing out the details of the tech into a document. I would put in all the technical stuff I thought I might need at first, because it's more for me to build my model right now than to give to the client. I'd spend two or three days on this, focusing on identifying the risks. If the risk is huge or easy to research, I would research it at this time and see how to mitigate it. I would also not be shy about calling them up if I think I might have a misunderstanding, as a few minutes on the phone might save hours or days.

Anyway, the last step is to distill the document for the audience. At this point I should have all the information to produce a document that includes an estimate, risk analysis and implementation plan.

[Edit: I probably sound obnoxious by using "I would" everywhere rather than "you should". (Sorry!) But I have no actual experience doing this sort of thing, so I feel dishonest giving prescriptive advice.]

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been in this kind of situation, but with less expertise on the client's side.

My (successful) angle of attack was to review the documentation provided as a kind of "requirements dump" rather than a "this is how it should work" definition. I then applied my own knowledge and experience to generate a document that said "these are the features you asked for, here's how to provide them in a user-centric manner."

As your client apparently has the IA and graphics person on their side, you may be more constrained. I'd still put forward some ideas, in a conversational manner. Two reasons for this. First, maybe I have a better idea than them. Second, it shows that I'm more than a code monkey (or a bunch of code monkeys calling itself a consultancy).

The work product should include some idea of how you're going to attack the problem, and a sense of how long it'll take (fixed bids are for the devil), and prioritization based on client requirements and prerequisites that those requirements may have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Paul. This was helpful in my thinking on this.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should add that the client here is a non technical person. He basically has a decent idea, and some money to get it going.</comment>