3D metal printing is about to go mainstream - <AUTHOR> http://newatlas.com/desktop-metal-3d-printing/50654/ <comment><USER2> There are many services printing metal parts. Shapeways has been doing it since 2009. There are several workable processes. [1][2] This new machine competes with the ExOne Innovent.[3] That uses a single-step process (no oven needed) but is slower.

Desktop Metal's big claim is that they can lay down "up to" 8200 cm³/hr of metal. The "up to" weasel words are a problem. They're vague about the layer thickness. 3D printing has a basic trade-off between speed and precision. Most of the commercial vendors go for high enough precision that you can make working parts. Desktop Metal doesn't offer many pictures of their finished parts, but I did find one.[4] That looks like it was made with layers of about 0.5mm. The furnace step provides some surface smoothing. That's not bad for casting.

It's nice, but it's not clear that it's 100x, or even 10x, better than the competition.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEfdO4p4SFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEfdO4p4SFc) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vsaSzrhvcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vsaSzrhvcw) [3] [http://www.exone.com/Systems/Research-Education- Printers/Inn...](http://www.exone.com/Systems/Research-Education- Printers/Innovent) [4] [https://embedwistia-a.akamaihd.net/deliveries/5c8aec78d82aa1...](https://embedwistia-a.akamaihd.net/deliveries/5c8aec78d82aa13cb56e05ccd8303e306ee711d2.jpg)

<comment><USER3> It would be pretty exciting to duplicate keys (especially proprietary and "do not duplicate" institutional keys) from the privacy of home. Might even hasten the end of the mechanical lock as a security device.

Sure, you can do that now with Shapeways or a crooked locksmith, but it would be fun to do independently.

<comment><USER4> It's certainly possible, but this kind of reminds me of discussions here on HN and elsewhere about way that the 3D printing of guns can create a crisis for gun control regimes. People in discussion threads reasonably pointed out that it's been possible to manufacture guns in home workshops for hundreds of years and that, for some kinds of weapons, it's not even toward the high end of challenging metalworking projects, and that indeed many people regularly do it either as a hobby or profession without 3D printing or even without CNC of any kind.

But this is kind of shocking for software-oriented people who might think that "manufacturing" "hardware" is a super-tough black art that can only be done by professionals in factories. And indeed that's pretty much my intuition as a software person who hasn't done woodworking since middle school shop class and never learned any of the other manufacturing skills that humanity has been working on for the last while. (Reading Bunnie's new book about manufacturing in China has been fascinating for me, because it's like "oh yeah, so all of these objects just come from people doing different tasks to fabricate them"!)

So people said about gun manufacturing that there was this funny intuition that 3D printing somehow allows people to casually manufacture complex objects at home which they otherwise simply couldn't do. But in fact, if people were moderately motivated, they could easily learn some of the other techniques that let them manufacture and/or duplicate objects. So we may tend to exaggerate the impact by thinking that other methods represent a huge, hard barrier while 3D printing represents true "push-button manufacturing". Neither side of this intuition is necessarily the reality.

For the problem of duplicating proprietary keys, it seems like anyone could already do this at home without especially expensive equipment and without especially extensive training. I remember reading a Mickey Mouse cartoon from many decades ago where a key was supposed to be duplicated from a negative impression taken in some clay (or something), and this was presented as a basic skill of a generalist mechanic!

On the other hand, maybe this intuition is partly right if some significant population of would-be home gunsmiths or key-copiers _is_ intimidated enough by hardware and manufacturing that they're sort of waiting around for the pushbutton solution.

Edit: looks like other people in this thread have said this a lot more concisely. :-)

<comment><USER5> > But in fact, if people were moderately motivated, they could easily learn > some of the other techniques that let them manufacture and/or duplicate > objects.

That's actually a substantial barrier. People are lazy, and pressing 'print' on some design fed into a cornucopia machine (of which a 3D printer is a rudimentary fore-runner) substantially lowers that barrier. It requires no special knowledge beyond the feeding of raw materials into hoppers.

That's a lot less than what would be required to safely turn on a lathe, let alone making something with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chroem- It's like the brogrammer world just discovered powder metallurgy.

This exact technology has existed for decades but hasn't seen widespread use because it has serious problems. I don't see any evidence that Desktop Metal solved these issues either. The resulting parts have high shrinkage, poor dimensional tolerance, and poor mechanical properties. The sintering process leaves voids inside the material that serve as stress concentrations, causing the material to fail well below its rated strength. Also sintered parts tend to fail catastrophically rather than yielding since the adhesion between particles is much weaker than the yield strength of the metal.

<comment><USER6> "brogrammer"

[https://www.desktopmetal.com/company/about/](https://www.desktopmetal.com/company/about/)

I see a bunch of PhDs with backgrounds in material science (among other things). It's just possible they might have a clue.

<comment> chroem- I'm referring to the hyperbolic headlines talking about a "metal printing revolution," not the actual company. There are already off the shelf solutions to do nearly the exact same thing that everyone here is getting all worked up about. What's more, you could have purchased those solutions before the internet was even a thing.

<comment><USER7> What does that have to do with brogrammers?

<comment><USER8> I think OP is referring to the software-oriented HN crowd who have highly upvoted this article despite little evidence that desktopmetal is doing anything revolutionary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> $120k for the prototype printer, $360k for the production printer... still about two orders of magnitude away from being practical for me to set up a microfactory in my garage. Maybe by the time my car is self-driving and earning me money instead of sitting in my garage, I can get that microfactory set up affordably.

<comment><USER10> By the time you can afford that printer, there are others that cost $100k that do better job. For most tinkerers it will be better investment to place order in local metal workshop with has good printer than have your own cheap lathes, CNC mills and 3d printers in the garage.

>Maybe by the time my car is self-driving and earning me money instead of sitting in my garage, I can get that microfactory set up affordably.

Have you ever thought why there are no cheap capital assets sold in mass markets for public that provide good ROI for no additional effort? (this is good question for armchair economists)

<comment><USER11> > Have you ever thought why there are no cheap capital assets sold in mass > markets for public that provide good ROI for no additional effort? (this is > good question for armchair economists)

Pretty much for the reason you covered in paragraph one to be honest.

If I can achieve good with 10k and someone else can achieve awesome with 100k then the person with 100k will win (assuming they can handle demand).

It's pretty obvious (if you look at..well every economic system ever really) that capital begets capital.

It's not a huge thing, the US had this issue at the turn of the 20th century.

<comment><USER12> Well, the other obvious reason is if everyone can achieve "good" for 1k, everyone will make the investment, leverage the asset, and the ROI will disappear because it was easy & accessible to everyone and becomes highly competitive.

Bitcoin mining was a good example. Everyone has a graphics card, and mining was pretty trivial. Great example of a cheap capital asset with low effort to monetize. Quickly, the ROI slimmed until only large scale operations with low costs and good economies of scale were profitable.

<comment><USER11> Yep but even there the people with the large amounts of capital won once GPU's stopped been effective since they could afford ASIC's.

I think on some level society has always known this, having access to large amounts of capital doesn't guarantee you'd win but if someone offered me the choice between starting a game of monopoly with $100 or $100,000 I know which I'd pick.

Fun trivia aside, Monopoly was created to demonstrate that activities that promote wealth creation are more beneficial than ones that allow monopolists to run amock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is another Ric Fulop company, notoriously the founder of A123 Systems [1]. That company also raised "a ton" of money but ultimately blew up, filing for bankruptcy. I'm skeptical of this new endeavor because of both economics and technology.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A123_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A123_Systems)

<comment><USER14> Another huge concern is the fact that they are trying to push to market two completely separate 3D printing process technologies, and are valued at over a billion dollars before shipping a product. A few of their claims and marketing materials are too hyped and there's a lot of skepticism about their actual technology benefits. Limitless hype has been an ongoing problem in the 3D printing field, and they seem to be capitalizing on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The company has raised a ton of money in the last few months...

> ...Desktop Metal's Studio machines are also a ton more practical to have in > an office.

> But there's a ton of metal options...

I'm guilty of this too, but I think there are more ways to describe a plethora of items than "a ton". Unless, of course, there are actually 2000lbs worth.

<comment><USER16> Strictly speaking, a "plethora" should be an _excessive_ amount of something.

It still might work in this context though, if you think the company has raised too much capital...

<comment><USER17> Well _technically_ , a plethora is a 'large _or_ excessive amount of something', so I think in this case it works, though it feels a little sesquipedalian.

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/plethora](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/plethora)

<comment><USER16> The entry you linked to agrees with my definition:

"Strictly, a plethora is not just an abundance of something, it is an excessive amount."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think they make enough of this point:

> Depending on the nature of the part, it might be necessary to do some post- > print surface finishing like sanding or bead blasting to smooth out the > layered surfaces

If this is anything like the powder-bed parts I've handled, the layers are going to be pretty rough. I wouldn't be surprised if they need some degree of post-machining. Don't sell your CNC mill just yet.

Furthermore, 15% shrinkage during sintering? What's the dimensional tolerance on the finished part then? I'm guessing it's not great.

<comment><USER19> As long as the shrinkage is predicable, you could still have very good tolerances

<comment><USER20> Somehow I doubt it. The shrinkage must be dependent on geometry/density and their method of compensating can't possibly be good enough to hold tight tolerance over an entire complex part.

<comment><USER21> Forgings and castings all shrink as well, because metal shrinks substantially when it cools. The dies and molds are made oversized.

I corresponded with a guy who was making his own intake manifold for his mopar. (A very cool project.) He made his own molds. I did some calculation, and said he had to make the mold about 10% oversized. He told me I didn't know what I was talking about, he couldn't believe it would shrink that much. His cast manifold wound up 10% undersized :-)

Anyhow, dimensions that require tight tolerances get machined to spec after the forging/casting.

<comment><USER22> > Forgings and castings all shrink as well, because metal shrinks > substantially when it cools.

Forgings and castings also require post-op machining to bring them into tight tolerances, which isn't something that fits the mental model of a lot of people when it comes to 3d printers.

<comment><USER23> People who don't own 3d printers. There is plenty of cleanup work on a 3d print of any complexity. I find myself even drilling a fair number of holes in some of my prints because the minimum consistent hole size my printer can generate is a few mm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What is the strength of such a part, compared to a regular cast part? Say I 3-D print a spanner. How well will it hold up against a spanner that was cast and heat treated?

<comment><USER25> The process in the article is effectively sintering. If [1] is any indication, you can get to within an order of magnitude of strength of cast/forged parts, if sintering variables are controlled for properly. Which may not be the case for a diyer, metallurgy is a complex art.

1.[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14635/what- will-...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/14635/what-will-the- strength-of-a-sintered-steel-piece-be-compared-with-a-cast-piece)

<comment><USER26> Yeah and I also worry about shrinkage - they're saying ~15%, which would be a massive issue with some profiles. I don't see how a lot of parts would work very well without distortion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From the video:

 _The production system is cloud-connected_

Seriously, that's a selling point nowadays? I have to buy a hyper expensive piece of hardware and if the company goes under I might not even be able to use it anymore?

Not everything needs to be on a bloody cloud.

</comment><comment><USER28> > but the only affordable printing materials are cheap ABS plastics

Not very true at all. You can get PLA for $20/1kg or less. Even resin for SLA printers is often possible to find for affordable prices, especially considering that you can sometimes use less material without the need for infill.

I'm really not even sold on the idea that so many people "need" metal printers. Seems like most people would be way better off with the incredibly cheaper plastic options.

<comment><USER29> Isn't PLA less structurally sound than ABS? I thought the reason it was used over ABS was that it could be formed at a lower temperature.

<comment><USER30> Yes, PLA is somewhat weaker, but still more than strong enough for most desktop printing applications. It's also much less toxic to print with than ABS.

<comment><USER31> Can we get a citation for the toxicity of ABS? My Google-fu is failing me as I can only find articles that say the fumes can cause minor irritation when inhaled or in contact with the eyes.

<comment><USER30> "The higher temperature ABS-based printers had total UFP emission rates nearly an order of magnitude higher than the lower temperature PLA-based printers (1.8-2.0 10^11/min compared to 1.9-2.0 10^10/min)."

"Primary gas-phase products of ABS thermal decomposition at very high temperatures have been shown to include carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, as well as a variety of volatile organics (Rutkowski and Levin, 1986). Exposure to thermal decomposition products from ABS has also been shown to have toxic effects in both rats (Zitting and Savolainen, 1980) and mice (Schaper et al., 1994)."

from [http://ac.els- cdn.com/S1352231013005086/1-s2.0-S135223101300...](http://ac.els- cdn.com/S1352231013005086/1-s2.0-S1352231013005086-main.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Any reason not to set default skepticism to high for Loz Blain and NewAtlas?

>...it's going to compete with traditional mass manufacturing

>...the hype is real

The team, tech, results, deals already signed, all seem really impressive in their own right. No hyperbole needed to get a more views.

It's not my area, if someone tells me this really has a shot at competing with mass manufacturing in the next 5 years I retract everything.

</comment><comment><USER21> A forging is 3x the strength of a casting of the same part from the same material. That's why when upgrading the power of your muscle car, forged parts are the way to go.

What's the relative strength of 3D printing?

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm told the metal powders are still more expensive than equivalent traditional materials, and that in some cases (Ti) can be explosive. Anyone know what the real economics are in terms of materials and energy costs?

<comment><USER34> Aren't all metal powders explosive given sufficient dispersion in an oxidizer and a source of ignition?

<comment><USER35> Not all, but many. Particularly metals that would likely be used for printing applications, e.g., iron and aluminum.

However a ton of materials are explosive if made into a fine powder then dispersed, so this is more of a general fabrication issue, than something unique to 3D printing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Other than the temperature a relatively compact oven is potentially reaching, what's the breakthrough here other than the successful funding?

<comment><USER37> Production time.

Production is always judged by how much time it takes for raw material to become finished parts. Additionally that is split between 'operator time' (person required) and 'machine time' (just the machine running).

'Operator time' is a function of how skilled the operator has to be (machinists cost a lot more than technicians).

'Machine time' is a function of operating cost and depreciation.

So anything that shortens those times, or cuts those costs lowers the cost per part. Parts "have" to cost less than a threshold amount to meet the sales price of the final assembly + margin.

That is all basic manufacturing. The key is that costs have typically been reached by doing things in volume with 'tooling' (investing in dies and jigs to configure the machine to easily make the one part). That essentially makes the production line 'single use' while it is tooled that way.

These guys are proposing that they can make metal parts at the same cost as the tool and die folks in smaller quantity and with no setup costs. That changes several things;

1) You can make warranty/repair parts "on demand" so cut the cost of making a million widgets and storing them in a warehouse.

2) You can make 'small runs' of products for more specialized markets at a price that the market will accept.

3) You can support more variations of a given product without your spare parts inventory exploding.

4) Production can be parallelized from small scale shops so a large 'mega factory' isn't needed, instead you can get a dozen shops with this gear to work in parallel to meet your production target.

If they can pull it off, it really does change a lot. If they can get the costs down further it opens the possibility of domestic delivery of parts from a certified vendor rather than a warehouse somewhere.

<comment><USER38> In terms of second order effects, I think one interesting angle is that low- setup manufacturing makes ip / copyright in the STL files more valuable.

If you don't have the design then a human needs to spend a bunch of time dialling in the geometry.

I can imagine manufacturers wanting to find ways to "DRM" spare parts. One way to do that might be to make it more costly to produce designs from first principles. So having for example specific complex bits of geometry that ultimately force you to license the authorised design if you want to "economically" fab the part at low volume.

<comment><USER37> Absolutely. They are going to want to charge a 'tax' for a third party manufacturer to make the part. Something that will be hard to enforce however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As a layman, I am skeptical. This is very similar to the promises that were made regarding 3d printing of other materials, and those weren't quite fulfilled.

Like many hyped new techniques, they end up as techniques that are almost good enough to be practical.

</comment><comment><USER40> 4 furnaces per printer... reminds me of factorio

<comment><USER41> This is where I learnt the word from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> While (potentially) impressive, it's not clear to me that this will really replace production. I mean, it's faster than other _printers_ , but still far away from regular production speeds.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've watched a few DIY foundry videos on YouTube where makers melt down aluminum cans and scrap metal into chunks of metal, ready for re-use. I wonder if these 3d printers will be able to use reclaimed metal created from a similar type of process.

<comment><USER44> If you're already doing this, you probably have the skills and the tools to make your own molds (3D printed in plastic even), mold a rough version, then mill it down to proper tolerances. If your molds are good enough, and your pour goes correctly, and your tolerance needs aren't that high - the part that you get might only need a minimum of cleanup (sprue removal, some filing or sanding, sand/bead blasting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Printing with improved PMC (which is what this sounds like) doesn't seem that revolutionary to me... I know there was a Kickstarter a while back for metal- based PMC-like filament to use in regular 3-D printers (for kiln firing later), and I think somebody already makes a device to print using PMC itself. While doing so precisely, strongly, and cleanly enough for mechanical applications, and with a much broader spectrum of metals, is great, the prices seem rather far from the headline hype. (Not that the current options I mentioned don't leave much to be desired.)

<comment><USER14> MiniMetalMaker was extruding a metal clay for sintering: [https://www.minimetalmaker.com/](https://www.minimetalmaker.com/) mainly for jewelry etc. There is also the Markforged Metal X [https://markforged.com/metal-x/](https://markforged.com/metal-x/)

<comment><USER45> Filamet is the Kickstarter'd filament I was thinking of. It looks like they've got a decent product, though it also looks like the campaign became a bit rocky (typical Kickstarter delays, etc.). (I didn't back, so can't speak to it beyond appearances.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's been about 10 years since I left Caterpillar --- but I don't think you can weld (reliably) on PM / sintered parts. This was one of the concerns the crotchety old manufacturing engineers brought up when I proposed replacing some expensive machined bosses with a much cheaper PM part.

Then again, those guys really loved to say stuff like "no, that's not how it's done." \- so maybe they're wrong / tech has improved significantly.

</comment><comment><USER47> > Each production printer can produce up to an incredible 500 cubic inches of > complex parts per hour.

That is 124 iPhone 6 sized solid blocks per hour. Incredible indeed!

<comment><USER34> Your sarcasm is noted and appreciated!

Of course, this isn't supposed to print easily stamped iPhone backs, it's supposed to print fuel injectors, retention brackets, integrated linkages, etc. Parts that are complex and costly to produce through traditional machining but trivial to print.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I don't know much about how Desktop Metal works; how does this compare to things like ExOne?

</comment><comment><USER49> In case anyone else was wondering about the power requirement for the sintering furnace: 208V 3-phase, 30A. The 3-phase requirement may be an impediment to some hobbyists; they should probably offer it with a buying option of their own branded inverter.

<comment><USER50> The $300k + might be a bigger impediment.

a threephase supply is much cheaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> But could it print a CNC machine ?

<comment><USER52> First it would print a locking mechanism to prevent the humans from unplugging its power supply..

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This may bring the per part costs closer to what prototyping costs come in at for CNC machining or Metal Injection Molding.

I don't see this being used with a lot of exotic materials yet, but for stainless steel this is great.

</comment><comment><USER54> Doesn't oven treatment induce slight deformations?

<comment><USER55> I think I can safely say that the parts won't be flat to 1000 of an inch (.03mm) - or whatever your tolerance is. However this is something that any existing process can achieve with arbitrary shapes either.

I think this process replaces sand casting, a process that also has many slight deformations. You just make the parts a little big and then machine the important sides to the exact side you need. The downside of sand casting is it often leaves a little bit of sand embedded in the metal which will destroy your tools. If the internal metal quality is as good as sand casting, the ease of doing arbitrary shapes and lack of sand in the metal make it a winner. That you have to have a lathe/milling machine to finish the part is not a change.

If the above is right (it seems reasonable, but I don't know if it is), then beams and and flat stock will continue to be made with existing process. However odd shaped things like an engine blocks it could be a winner.

<comment><USER56> Engine blocks will almost certainly remain as a cast part, simply due to the production capacity of casting is orders of magnitude higher than additive manufacturing, as well as being relatively cheap. Metal additive manufacturing is currently used in aerospace to reduce complex assemblies of parts into a single piece, or to make small complex shapes that can't be made by a traditional machining or casting process. Additive manufacturing, for the foreseeable future will not replace load bearing parts as well, mainly due to the different processing steps load bearing parts undergo. It will also most likely stay with aerospace for the time being, since the price per part is prohibitive for automotive use currently.

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/3188899/3d-printing/boe...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/3188899/3d-printing/boeing- turns-to-3d-printed-parts-to-save-millions-on-its-787-dreamliner.html)

[http://www.additivemanufacturing.media/articles/the- aircraft...](http://www.additivemanufacturing.media/articles/the-aircraft- imperative)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The idea of an "office-friendly sintering furnace" would have been comedy a decade ago.

</comment><comment><USER58> What advantage does metal printing offer over casting a 3d printed wax/resin?

</comment><comment><USER59> How does this compare to a metal CNC machine? Cost and Speed?

<comment><USER60> CNC machines will probably continue to be the king of things they can machine. The catch, though, is that you can 3d print a lot of structures you cannot machine by any means (see: SpaceX SLS's their rocket nozzles).

You have to design for the manufacturing process. Parts designed for CNC machining will always feel like a square peg in a round hole for 3d printing. Once you start designing for 3d printing, though, things get more competitive quickly. You can design parts to have hard to machine shapes, or parts that would have too much waste to machine from a solid billet of material and 3d print them without the waste.

Your computer case is bent up from sheet metal instead of machined from a solid block of steel for a lot of obvious reasons, and it makes no sense to compare the processes for a design like that. 3d printing will enable similar shifts of design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> The game will radically change when metal printing arrives at the point where it can print coils and make stators and rotors.

Wake me up when metal printing reaches that point.

</comment><comment><USER62> So, about those good manufacturing jobs...

</comment><comment><USER63> So now anyone will be able to print a real gun with complete anonymity.

<comment><USER64> As apposed to casting and cncing one yourself? People can already build guns anonymously if they want (and many do).

People can also use current 3D printers to (mostly) print unconventional guns anonymously. Do these printers also concern you?

Reaction to technology should be with reason, not fear mongering.

<comment><USER63> 3D printing is much more convenient than casting. Also I assume metal printing would make better weapons than plastic ones.

No fear mongering, just making an observation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Is this an ad?

</comment><comment><USER66> Ok

</comment><comment><USER67> Guns for everyone!

</comment><comment><USER68> \m/</comment>


Study spells out why some insects kill their mothers - <AUTHOR> http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/32823 <comment><USER2> It makes me think that our naming of the brood mother "Queen" and the drones as "Workers" is actually a human biased understanding of the behavioral structure of eusocial insects. It is easy for us to impose on other organisms the notion of a hierarchy of subordination when we observe their organizational behaviors, but how often does this unexamined bias hinder understanding?

<comment><USER3> Well, these are a different species of insect though. Yellow jackets are wasps, fundamentally different from honey bees.

The behavior of honey bees is one driven moreso by an inherited willingness to engage in servitude, than with wasps. Wasps are predatory carnivores, and their nests are smaller, more distributed, and constructed out of found materials, modified and pasted together. Wasps don't construct nests of secreted wax, they use mud and chewed up wood. Most wasps don't make any honey.

In honey bee hives, the manner of reproduction and sex selection is different. The queen really is the window through which the genome passes, and her capacity to produce devoted offspring, hopelessly obedient to her brand of pheremones, is her mark of success as an organism. And if she produced peers and not subjects she'd never have the spare time or the environment in which to gestate her offspring.

<comment><USER4> Don't understand why wasps kill poor little honey bees. They don't even eat the bees? I saw one wasp trying to kill a honey bee in my back yard. I got some tweezers and saved the honey bee. It felt good, and I didn't get bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> it gets worse. Look up the recent PBS biopic of E.O. Wilson and his studies of matabele ants, which predate on (and _exclusively_ eat) termites.

And worse yet, there are species of predatory _fungi_ that infect insects, turning them into virtual slaves even while consuming their failing bodies.

Sleep well.

<comment><USER5> Can you please share the name of this fungi?

<comment><USER6> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Last.fm discontinues radio service in many countries - <AUTHOR> http://www.last.fm/announcements/radio2013

<comment><AUTHOR> It's weird, last.fm used to be one of my favorite websites. But ever since CBS acquired last.fm, improvements to the site seems to have stagnated. They made radio a subscription-only service in many countries, and now will be completely discontinued due to licensing issues.

It makes you wonder what the long-term vision for the site seems to be, especially considering the competition.

<comment><USER2> Looks like we can add Last.fm to the list of companys that was neglected after an acquisition. This seems to happen a lot when a fat and happy industry leader buys a young an innovative startup.</comment></comment>


Tarpn: Terrestrial Amateur Radio Packet Network - <AUTHOR> http://tarpn.net/t/packet_radio_networking.html <comment><USER2> Something that I think would go a LONG way toward encouraging a new breed to get into amateur radio is not just saying "You can do digital -- oh and here's a $25 Chinese handheld FM radio" but a $50 (or less) TNC that connects your UV-5R (or equivalent) radio to your computer or smartphone so the cost of going from zero to slinging packets on AX.25 is under $100 (not counting the cost of your computer or phone, of course).

Does anything like that exist?

<comment><USER3> The APRS-K2 cable? [https://baofengtech.com/aprs-k2-trrs- cable](https://baofengtech.com/aprs-k2-trrs-cable)

<comment><USER2> Didn't know the thing existed -- ordered it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love this as a concept.

Any radio amateurs here? What do you actually end up doing with your setups? Do you have conversations with other amateurs or something else?

If it wasn't completely obvious, I don't really know much about the "scene."

<comment><USER5> I'm part of a TARPN and the main thing we do is chat. There is a simple chat program that runs on the network so we can do realtime multi-user chat. It's pretty fun.

BBS is also a pretty common application.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm so glad someone who is actually a TARPN user posted here. I am interested in the concept but am far from being able to set this up.

<comment><USER6> The trick is to get a few Raspberry PIs and install the software. The NinoTNCs are really cheap so you can make a network on your desk without any radios. Then get the radios after you can con some couple of other hams within a few miles to play with it with you. It's a kick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Once you decide sending packets from point A to point B is a good idea, one must look at what percentage of the available bandwidth is actually usable.

Many hams think of packet radio in terms of building a single station, for a user-end-terminal, or for a relay, and generally going along with the current in-use frequency for the purpose of getting access to existing other stations.

This turns out to be a bad idea though because channel bandwidth is mostly wasted when participating on the same channel as other disinterested parties to whom you will be interfere, and take interference from. The channel bandwidth actually achieving good result (i.e. message delivery) on a shared channel is pretty minuscule compared to the available bandwidth, because of necessary redundancy, or because of retries, combine with channel time lost to collisions, weak signal, and back-off channel sharing timers.

A much more efficient approach works by having the new station actually consider themselves part of a network, and then creating a cooperative dedicated collision free channel to the next station. This, however, requires considering two stations at a time when "getting on packet". I highly recommend this method as it results in far better channel performance.

NCPACKET.ORG has 35 stations in a well thought out network, and they can run IRC-LIKE 20-way chat sessions which are lively and non-directed, with impunity, and low latency (60 seconds or less from end to end of an 8-hop-wide network).

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like someone read my other comment :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! Actually I got fed up with the discussion on h[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24304275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24304275) and had happened across TARPN the other day.

EDIT: Wrong link.</comment></comment>


Atom 1.19 – Improved Responsiveness and Memory Usage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.atom.io/2017/08/08/atom-1-19.html?hn <comment><USER2> I'm tentatively excited about this release.

It claims to fix the biggest complaint about atom: speed of editing and memory usage of edited files.

They did it by re-writing backing store for documents from JavaScript to C++.

<comment><USER3> Am I confused or is it not the case that the whole argument for Electron is "write once in Javascript, have a native app for all platforms"? If this is what a flagship Electron app has to do to be performant, is there a real future in Electron?

<comment><USER4> Not every Electro app should have to deal with a huge dom tree like Atom does. I just think the Electron is a bad fit for this particular type of application, but it does not mean it can be a bad fit for other type of stuff.

<comment><USER5> Electron is a bad fit for any kind of application.

<comment><USER6> Hear, Hear!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to beat a dead horse, but: is there anything Atom does that VSCode doesn't already do better? Is there a reason to prefer it?

<comment><USER8> Atom is a solution in search of a problem. Unless the problem was "My code editor is too easy to use, and not nerdy-looking enough. I need something that takes three hours to configure out of the box because I'm more interested in being an uber-geek than actually getting work done."

<comment><USER9> Can't say I agree. Markdown looks positively beautiful on atom. Out of the box. Plus you can tweak it, without wanting to kill yourself, to show images in markdown too. Even syntax highlighting. And real time rendering. All this means that I use it as my coding logbook, and it works better than anything else out there at that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Speaking of responsiveness and memory usage... When Atom first came out, I was one of those people harping about how goddamn slow and unresponsive it was compared to ST2 (and later ST3). When I realized just how much those milliseconds meant to me, I decided to see what was faster than even ST out there and I ended up on neovim.

It's 2017, and after two decades of fighting vi and vim at every corner, I am finally a convert. I spent (and still spend) a crazy amount of time getting neovim to behave the way I expect an IDE to behave, but the speed and responsiveness of vim in my terminal and the degree of customization finally, finally made me embrace (neo)vim and see the light, all these years later.

(rust developer life tip: forget racer, it is absolute garbage and ridiculously immature and incomplete. It is eons away from being useful to "code via intellisense" and the list of missing functionality or just simply wrong functionality is longer than the list of things it gets right. Just as I was about to give up on rust code completions, I discovered rls and its mixed racer/rustc approach to completions and haven't looked back. The ide and language-independent nature of the language server protocol and its blossoming implementations for different cilents and different languages is incredible, I wish it all the best.)

<comment><USER5> If you are on a Mac, give BBEdit a try—it's really fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does VSCode manage to take up less disk space than Atom, with similar feature set? Currently on Windows box: VSCode 1.14.0 - 156MB Atom 1.19.0 - 516MB

<comment><USER12> We always have to have somebody remind us how wonderful VSCode is compared to Atom every time there's a post about Atom.

I'm wondering—if you prefer VSCode, why even comment a post about Atom? I doubt your care that much..?

Atom is built on Electron. That means that it includes a whole version of Chromium (OMG!), and it isn't even optimized, so its size is 5 times that of VSCode.

Is that really a problem? Are you trying to tell me that as a developer you don't have 400MB to spare on your hard disk for one of—if not the most—important tool to work your job, and the size is really a reason to pick one editor over another?

Atom is about 100 times slower than Sublime Text, and like you pointed out 5 times bigger than the insuperable VSCode.

Now, I use Atom as my main editor, because I find it simpler than others for certain things, and it saves be a lot of time because GitHub integration is done very well. Also, I like the name (can't say the same thing about VSCode).

Some people like Atom because they're more productive, and don't care about its size, super-crappy speed, and whatever else you think Atom is worse than VSCode at.

Can we put this thing to rest..?

<comment><USER13> VSCode is also built with electron[1], so that doesn't excuse it. Atom's defenders always bring up that it was made with electron as the reason for it's slowness. Then, VSCode came along and invalidated that. Now, that leaves only one conclusion: Atom is slow because it was not engineered well.

And no, I don't think anyone is ready to stop pointing out that Atom is slow. Atom can implement a thousand killer features, but until they fix their performance problem nobody is going to switch back to it.

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

<comment><USER12> Meh.

I tried many editors when I decided which one to use—including VSCode—and Atom was the one where I was the most productive by a long shot.

Speed isn't everything. Atom is quick enough for the code I work on, and in other, much faster editors like Sublime Text I would be less productive and therefore slower. For instance, editing settings/packages in Sublime Text in unnecessarily nightmarish. Changing settings and installing plugins in Atom is a breeze.

Who cares if the editor is a few milliseconds faster when you're many minutes slower..? Just because of its excellent GitHub integration Atom is worth 100 times more than Sublime Text to me (even if it wasn't free).

<comment><USER14> > Who cares if the editor is a few milliseconds faster when you're many > minutes slower

Me. I care. That little hang Atom does after saving a file gets annoying after a while.

<comment><USER12> Then you might give Sublime Text a try.

I get annoyed about having to switch to GitHub, for instance.

It's fine to have opinions, I'm just annoyed by the fact that every time there's a post about Atom the conversation gets hijacked by "VSCode vs. Atom" comments.

That's why I'm bitching.

I shall go update Atom instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, looks like a full rework: [https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/13880](https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/13880)

</comment><comment><USER16> Just tested the new release, made sure it's indeed 1.19, and can definitely feel a big difference in performance. Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER17> This seems like something that if they are going to address performance comprehensively they are going to need to benchmark and watch for improvements and regressions on their builds.

[https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/](https://pavelfatin.com/typing- with-pleasure/)

Without some concrete benchmarks I'm not inclined to go to the trouble of trying it again.

<comment><USER18> Wish they'd included VS Code in that comparison.

<comment><USER19> I ran the tests myself a while back.

[http://imgur.com/0G3qbpr](http://imgur.com/0G3qbpr)

One thing that really surprised me was that my terminal emulator made even things like nano or neovim have high latency.

I suspect that most people don't really care that much about the difference between 30 and 10, but care whenever the latency spikes to 60-70 (which is more likely in VSCode and especially Atom, compared to neovim).

<comment><USER20> X-ref: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/27378](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/27378)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The improved responsiveness is absolutely noticeable for me. Great job and much appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER22> Will I not have to restart in safe mode if I open a 5MB JS payload? (It crashes the tabs and the editor, but I can still use the file menu and such)

<comment><USER23> There is nothing more horrifying in the known world than accidentally opening a 200meg log in VSCode or Atom... (both have other great advantages, though).

<comment><USER24> Meanwhile I've opened a 20GB log in Sublime Text and done some actual work with it...

<comment><USER25> Just don't turn on syntax highlighting. I've made that mistake with a giant SQL file.

<comment><USER10> A lot of vim plugins take a different approach that initially makes one think they are broken: they only render syntax based on what's in the buffer, which leads to things like HTML closing tags with opening tags not visible in the buffer (presuming you didn't scroll past the opening tag and jumped straight to the current position) won't be highlighted correctly, etc. but it means never having to parse the entire file just to get syntax highlighting working. It's a good compromise, on the whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Speed is the reason I almost stop using Atom like a few times every year, this is awesome news.

</comment><comment><USER27> They got some time to re-implement javascript parts into another shitty memory-unsafe language, and it's trending on HN. What a time to live-in

</comment><comment><USER28> And yet, still it doesn't feel as responsive as PyCharm or IntelliJ -- despite the smaller footprint.

</comment><comment><USER29> Time to update this one?

[https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/editor-p...](https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/editor-perf)

I want to like Atom becuause it's free and open source... but Sublime is so much faster.

</comment><comment><USER30> OK, so more and more C++/native stuff... Why not make a fully C++/native app? I don't see anything special in the UIs of Atom, VSCode, Bracket or whatever that is really hard to implement natively. It might be somewhat harder, but it is worth it.

<comment><USER31> Because designing UIs in a universally-understood, well-tooled markup language like HTML is a lot more developer-efficient than [insert-native-C++-library- here]. Electron allows the use of web tech on the front end with as many native or non-native calls on the backend as you want.

<comment><USER30> > HTML is a lot more developer-efficient

 _Web_ developer-efficient... But when this goes against the end-user efficiency, I'd prefer the latter one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Will it finally support gtk3 dialogs?

</comment><comment><USER33> This means you can use sshfs again

<comment><USER12> I have to try that, I've been following the issue on GitHub for a while.

It would be nice to not have to disable .git on mounted servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There was a thread on reddit about atom's insane memory usage recently</comment>


People can increase their attention by controlling certain brain waves - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/15/999309/finding-focus/ <comment><USER2> Anyone know a "poor mans" way to detect ones brainwaves for biofeedback?

<comment><USER3> Muse makes a low cost consumer EEG. I've used their software to view and collect real time data (raw and FFT analyzed, like the alpha frequency waves talked about in the article), as well as a consumer app to train (I've never actually used the app but I believe it's free).

EDIT: Link: [https://choosemuse.com/](https://choosemuse.com/)</comment></comment>


Print is eternal, and will never be replaced - <AUTHOR> http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/04/print-is-eternal.html

<comment><USER2> Paper will be around for a loooong time. There isn't yet a medium with the same longevity. I use both digital and paper formats depending on why I'm reading (research vs. leisure).

The Publishing industry will continue to change drastically. I just marvel at how long it's taking.

My fear regarding content moving to digital-only media is that we'll no longer be able to own anything.</comment>


Plato's cube and the natural geometry of fragmentation - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/16/2001037117 <comment><AUTHOR> ScienceMag has a post about this result [0]. From that text:

"Perhaps the Cubists were right. Researchers have found that when everything from icebergs to rocks breaks apart, their pieces tend to resemble cubes. The finding suggests a universal rule of fragmentation at scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary."

[0] [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/rocks-icebergs- natur...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/rocks-icebergs-natural- world-tends-break-cubes)</comment>


13,440 pacemakers recalled due to software error (February 2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls/medtronic-inc-recalls-dual-chamber-implantable-pulse-generators-ipgs-due-possible-circuit-error <comment><AUTHOR> Medtronic's letter to clinicians contains more details on the issue: [https://www.medtronic.com/us-en/healthcare- professionals/pro...](https://www.medtronic.com/us-en/healthcare- professionals/products/product-performance/dual-chamber-pacemaker-recall.html)

"For this error to occur, a unique combination of events must take place while the device is processing an atrial-sensed event. If this error occurs, the device will be unable to provide pacing until a ventricular-sensed event (VS) is detected. Once a VS is detected, normal pacing functionality is restored immediately. If a VS is not detected, the device will withhold both atrial and ventricular pacing. In addition, until a VS is detected, the device will be unable to initiate a session with a programmer, initiate a session with a CareLink™ remote monitor, or respond to a magnet. "</comment>


DevArt. Art made with code - <AUTHOR> https://devart.withgoogle.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice project, had the involvement of a personal friend of mine. The competition is over, though, as far as I know.</comment>


How Apple could slay Google at WWDC 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/05/26/how-apple-could-slay-google-at-wwdc-2010/

<comment><USER2> This section should convince anyone this article is full of crud. Why would Google continue to pay Apple if Apple cut off some of Google's revenue?

"Google currently pays Apple hundreds of millions of dollars to capture the audience of Safari Mac and iPhone users performing search queries (just as it singlehandedly also supports Firefox development the same way). Apple could continue to get this revenue (because paid search ad placement is the most valuable thing to Google) while also stripping Google of its display advertising revenue via an ad-block plugin."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can see a lot of folks just blocking Safari outright if Apple tried to pull this stunt...

<comment><USER3> That's exactly what I was thinking. As a producer of content, if a specific app is denying you an income, why would you not just block it.

Sure, you're turning away customers, but you're turning away customers that aren't paying.

<comment><USER4> Blocking would work for about five minutes, until someone releases a user agent spoofing plugin for Safari, just like the one that already exists on Firefox.

<comment><USER5> It exists under the Develop menu in Safari already. Also, there's no way Apple is going to do this, it's preposterous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of BS in this article, but one idea that I did find very interesting:

""" The big question here is: does Apple have the balls to revolutionize the web and return the world's journalism and entertainment to a paid premium model (like magazines and books and newspapers and HBO) rather than an adware garbage model? """

Apple becoming a platform for micropayments for great content. Problem with this is that Google + Android could do the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nothing to see here other than deranged fanboyism.

Apple and Google are having a good bout of competition in the market. This is generally good for everyone as they continue to try to one up each other on features and value. This is what we (consumers) want, not one company or the other engaging in anti-competitive dirty tricks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else thing Roughly Drafted is the most biased website around? I mean even John Gruber must read this and think "this guy is way too pro- Apple".

Entertaining reads on occassion, but they really read like fan fiction more than analyis.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that article was terrible. iAd is going to "slay Google"? Right. Apple is going to replace all internet ads with iAd content? This is a joke right?</comment>


Holiday Help: People vs. Robots - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704073804576023613748146944.html

<comment><USER2> Cool story, Kiva is so fascinating. The repeated quote that the robots are used in "about 10% of the top 100 retail companies" is silly, though, is it 10 out of the top 100 or not?</comment>


The target="_blank" vulnerability by example - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/ben/the-targetblank-vulnerability-by-example <comment><USER2> TFA's proposed solution seems illogical and inefficient.

TFA advocates for pushing the burden onto web programmers to use extra attributes to disable the insecure browser default behavior.

It's preferable to advocate for the inverse- i.e. browsers must change their behavior to be secure by default and force programmers to use extra HTML attributes to proactively and intentionally disable the secure behavior.</comment>


Building a Bw-Tree Takes More Than Just Buzz Words [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://db.cs.cmu.edu/papers/2018/mod342-wangA.pdf <comment><USER2> This paper is very well laid out and a joy to read.

The conclusion seems to be that Adaptive Radix Trees [1] outperform all b-tree variants, skiplists and Masstree [2] for all ops except range scans. The claim is more credible if one considers that the authors of this paper are not the authors of [1].

Since ARTs are significantly faster, it would be nice to throw in the benchmarking mix one hash map as well, such as dense_hash_map<>, if only to see what is currently the gap between ordered and unordered containers.

[1] [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=654...](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6544812)

[2] a hybrid trie/B+tree data structure

<comment><USER3> ART is just another Judy variant. And they being faster than a hash table is popular myth, but wrong. They are only faster than a very bad hash table. The linux page table implementation as hash e.g. would be much faster than the current radix tree plus cache. The Power CPU e.g uses a hash, not an ART for it's page table cache.

A Comparison of Adaptive Radix Trees and Hash Tables - Big Data Analytics PDF [https://bigdata.uni-saarland.de](https://bigdata.uni-saarland.de) › ARCD15

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the reference [1]. Maybe I missed something on the post's paper, but I don't think they make any claims wrt ARTs and hash tables. They do seem to conclude that ARTs are better than the ordered containers they compared them against.

[1] [https://bigdata.uni- saarland.de/publications/ARCD15.pdf](https://bigdata.uni- saarland.de/publications/ARCD15.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I actually ran into some of the same problems while trying to write a bw-tree implementation a couple of years ago. My naive implementation ended up having very poor performance compared to other in memory KV stores due to the inefficient busy waiting on contention. There were a few tricks that make it more efficient, but never got around to fleshing them out.

I guess I should have polished it up and wrote a paper about it.

If anyone is interested the code is available at [https://github.com/d4l3k/skeletondb](https://github.com/d4l3k/skeletondb)

<comment><USER5> Interesting work. In general, how does it perform compared to LMDB, BoltDB, Badger, etc.? What kind of performance increases would you expect from the optimizations you didn't get around to?

<comment><USER4> This was mostly just a toy project, I wouldn't recommend actually using it for anything. It's kind of depends when it comes to performance. A perfect implementation would likely get better performance than all those databases there since it resides entirely in memory. I'm not sure how it currently compares.

The main thing that caused issues was that compaction of logs into the main tree conflicted with appends. This ended up causing a lot of thrashing since the compaction cycle would run a lot more than necessary.

The key point of bw-trees is that once changes have been added to the log, only the last element will change (to point to the next item). Thus, instead of trying to compact the entire log, you can compact everything but the last item to make it conflict free.</comment></comment></comment>


Refined Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news#highlights <comment><USER3> Hi all, developer of Refined Hacker News here! Happy to see that it has been posted about again. I had initially posted it last year as a Show HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173974) and my philosphy behind the extension (as mentioned in the my comment) is:

> There are many extensions out there that add quite a few features to Hacker > News, but they also always do one thing, which I have realised, is a > slippery slope: changing the minimalistic design and style of Hacker News.

> I created this extension with one thing in mind: I am NOT going to mess > around with the overall design or style of Hacker News. It's sacrosanct.

Thanks, I'm up for discussion! :D

<comment><USER4> I really liked the idea, but the layout jumping during initial page load (used the Firefox version) was really annoying me so much, I had to deactivate it again.

<comment><USER3> Hi, thanks for using the extension. The "jumping" of the layout is probably due to the insertion of the options bar on the top. You can change this setting to position it on the bottom instead in the extension's popup window (it has a a lot more settings which you can tweak around to customise your experience).

This issue is also addressed here: [https://github.com/plibither8/refined- hacker-news/issues/25](https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker- news/issues/25)

<comment><USER4> Wow, thanks. There's the level of support I wish to have from some commercial software providers :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I had one wish for a feature of this extension to be made available on HN then it would be:

 _" Easily favorite items and comments"_

I really like the favourites feature and use it a lot but the original UI makes it really hard.

<comment><USER6> What would make it better? Making the links work the same way as vote and flag?

I'm a bit disappointed in that feature. The intention was for users to browse others' favorites to find interesting things to read, but I've not seen any indication that it worked out that way.

<comment><USER7> I agree: it should be a great addition, but it hasn't really been used to advantage. I think the main thing is that it needs some publicity: many people have never even noticed it. I've tried to use it for comments, but it's hard to be diligent if no use of it is ever made.

Another easy thing to do would be to add "Most Favorited" to the "Lists" page. Maybe it would be possible to show the number of favorites that a post or comment, with a reverse link to who has favorited it? Maybe add a notification to the creator of a comment that is favorited?

Possibly instead of just having a link on people's profile page, you could have a rolling list of the their most recent favorites? Or maybe for "person" discovery, you could automatically show who else has else favorited something after you do?

It seems like a good feature to start publicly experimenting with. Announce something, try it out for a week, then post a thread asking people what they think and how it can be improved.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think adding "Most Favorited" would create a popularity contest and people would start looking for ways to game the system. I don't think favorites should have metrics associated with them because as soon as metrics are introduced people will try to optimize them.

Now that I know comments can be favorited I plan to bookmark comments that include useful reference information on topics I find interesting. Adding counters for how many times the comment was favorited wouldn't really help me with that use case because I doubt anyone else cares about collecting useful references so my favorites would never make it to the "most favorited" list. I personally don't care if I make it to the list or not but I'm certain some people would care and they would go around and start playing a popularity contest instead of looking for ways to favorite information that would be useful to them.

<comment><USER8> The [op] tags are really helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The gifs in the readme showing the functionality you want to highlight is a nice touch. I wish more projects did that.

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks really slick and I'd love to use it. Does it require any browser- specific APIs? If not, I'd definitely try to compile it into a userscript so I can use it with qutebrowser.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've always wondered whether HN's "off-putting", "serious" interface (it is when you first see it) is an important factor in it not devolving into reddit.

<comment><USER12> People have been accusing this place of devolving into Reddit so often for so long the mods specifically call it out in the guidelines as a semi-noob delusion and tell people to knock it off, which they never do.

The interface is merely simplistic, it's neither serious nor very off-putting. No more than, say, Craigslist anyway. For that matter, 4chan's interface is far more offputting, and its culture is far worse than Reddit.

Like, do people here _really_ believe HN would instantly descend into chaos and madness if the layout used proper typography, modern HTML or (god forbid) AJAX?

<comment><USER13> It's more inviting then, so I think it would draw more randoms. Now it's basically home to people who know the value already and choose to join because that's what matters to them.

That's at least why I come here. I hope that's a motivator until the lights go out one day. Without a doubt the most consistently intelligent conversations happen here.

<comment><USER12> "Randoms" wouldn't hang out on a site called "Hacker News" to begin with, much even know that it exists. A more "inviting" layout wouldn't change that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The auto-refresh feature is cool. I find myself hitting F5 a lot.

...

On the other hand, I really appreciate how minimalist this website is - <USER2> in how it's designed and how it's moderated. It's a nice retreat from the rest of the internet that's often overbuilt and thoughtlessly controlled.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice.

I would like to be able to collapse entire thread by clicking on its line, even when I scrolled. For that lines should be visible for entire thread duration, not only original comment (like new reddit).

I would also like to see autorefresh on topic itself.

<comment><USER16> Also, the linked area of the line is too thin - I can barely click on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Feature request: color coding of usernames by reader-defined groups. User could specify group name/color via a CSS style with a common prefix. The extension would need to maintain a local database of usernames in each group. Enables visual highlighting of user comments and stories based on previous experience.

<comment><USER16> If there's an extension, maybe we could have a collaborative tagging system so we can see what other people have labelled the author as?

<comment><USER17> Potentially, although that gets into social networks, feedback loops, status dynamics, information warfare, reputation systems, voting rings, sock puppets and other fun topics :)

Step 1 would be private lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that this looks cool. I would be perfectly fine with most of these being integrated into default HN, on the condition that it would gracefully degrade back to the current form if you have JS disabled.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love this extension for it's ability to highly new comments you haven't seen before. Only downside is it does not work for comments after the first page.

</comment><comment><USER20> Add in the facelift changes from 'Hacker News Enhancement Suite' and I'd be all about it. I wonder what happens if I use both...

Actually it works fine. Not sure what the spinning icon on the main page is all about.

edit: you can turn that off. I think I've found my new HN setup :D

It does some weird things to the popup for user profile info, but I don't think that'll be an issue.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really like the ability to reply without losing context.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the basis interface of Hacker News prevents some people from participating in discussions on this website. That is a double edged sword.

</comment><comment><USER23> Respect for linking directly to the visual demo.

</comment><comment><USER24> This looks great, like the start of a "Reddit Enhancement Suite" for hacker news. It would be great if it also worked with hckrnews.com as I find that to be my main interface for browsing the day's discussions.</comment>


Rumor: iOS 6 code-named Sundance, could bring third-party Siri support - <AUTHOR> http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/05/12/third-party-siri-support-ios-6/

<comment><USER2> How are Siri commands going to distinguish apps? For example, if I have a weather app and someone asks what the temperature is... Well Siri is just going to pull up the default Apple weather app...</comment>


Show HN: Manage your expenses through Slack - <AUTHOR>

Hello all,
We have created a mobile app in France, called Birdly. The app allows people to manage their expenses and export them into an Excel recap easily. People just have to take a picture of their receipt through their phones and we automagically recognize the data. The startup was launched a few months ago and we have some traction in France, but we are thinking of extending our service to other channels such as Slack.
I would need your help to ensure the service we thought of has some kind of interest internationally and if so, how we could improve it.
Here is the URL that presents the project : http://slack.birdly.fr
We currently have an MVP that we want to test with you from today on ! We would like ideally, to try it with 5 international Slack teams.
If you want to try it out, just invite email@example.com to your Slack team, or look for the instructions on the landing page.
Thanks in advance for your help !
Marwann <comment><USER2> This website is pending domain owner verification To learn how to verify your domain, manage your domain settings here.

Neat

<comment><AUTHOR> Strange, it does work for me. Could you check again ?

Otherwise, you could access it here : [http://bit.ly/birdlyforslack](http://bit.ly/birdlyforslack)

Thanks for your feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How does it handle receipts in Japanese or Chinese?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Paulods. Sorry for the late answer. We currently do not support other languages than latin ones. But be it English, Portuguese, German or French (among other), we could be able to help you !</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which business commentators do you read weekly? - <AUTHOR> Over the last few years, I have seen a trend of journalists and analysts moving away from the big newspaper brands to set up their own publications and newsletters.
In the tech space, Ben Thompson at Stratechery is a classic example.
But there are others, like Dan Frommer at The New Consumer.
Do you regularly read any one-person publications or the blogs (or newsletters) of individual analysts who illuminate a specific sector on a regular basis? <comment><USER2> I read Benedict Evans' newsletter every week [0]. He worked previously at a16z and gives an overview of big trends in the tech industry each week. While I get my fill of low level technical news here at HN, Benedict's newsletter gives a good overview of macro trends in the industry and his essays are good as well.

0: [https://www.ben-evans.com/](https://www.ben-evans.com/)</comment>


Chance discovery casts new light on the origins of polyphonic music - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/17/polyphonic-music-fragment-origins-rewritten

<comment><USER2> Thanks for submitting a thorough journalistic source for this bit of news, which I saw as a brief submission from a news aggregation service in the Facebook feeds of some of my friends. I'm especially impressed that this story includes a video of two university music students actually singing the newly discovered composition. The commentary in the article is quite interesting for the details it describes of the development of polyphonic music in the West.

<comment><USER3> My first hope was that the video was actually a performance of the discovered sheet music, but is that actually correct? The video is amount a minute in duration but according to the article, "The scrap of music...would have lasted no more than a few seconds."

<comment><USER4> The description of it as "lasting no more than a few seconds" is inaccurate, as shown by the notation (at [http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/images/Varelli%...](http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/images/Varelli%20detail%20crop.jpg) with a modern transcription at [http://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/inner- images/...](http://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/inner- images/modern_notation_0.jpg)). The first two texted lines "Sancte bonifati ... digneris" with the points and squiggles right above the words are typical plainchant notation as found in a lot of early manuscripts (pre-diastemmatic, not staff notation); while the two textless lines up top which look more like modern notes are the 'accompaniment' to that plainchant. FWIW those two top lines look nothing like other notation from that period.

<comment><USER5> More about plainchant notation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neume)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's important to note that this is article references the origin of polyphonic music, as it relates to the western church. Polyphonic music as a whole goes back much further than AD900, and even christianity itself. E.g: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Georgia_%28country%29#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Georgia_%28country%29#Traditional_vocal_polyphony)</comment>


WordPress before 3.6.1: PHP Object Injection - <AUTHOR> http://vagosec.org/2013/09/wordpress-php-object-injection/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty a lengthy read and if I follow it correctly, then the actual problem has not been fixed? So Wordpress is still not able to differ between injected serialized data (which is dangerous as the PHP manual states as well) and that data it serialized on it's own, right?

<comment><USER3> The article says it has been fixed in 3.6.1.</comment></comment>


US whistleblower Edward Snowden believed to have landed in Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0623/458289-edward-snowden/

<comment><USER3> Travelling to "China"[1], Russia, Cuba and Venezuela is not the way to get the average American on your side.

Revealing secrets about how the US government is spying on enemies, rather than simply about how the US government is spying on its citizens is not the way to get the average American on your side.

I can't say I admire what this man has done or how he has done it (aside from bringing domestic spying into the public eye, which I do think was a genuine public service).

[1] Or rather what will be perceived as "China" by many Americans.

<comment><USER4> The alternatives are countries that have a simple extradition process to the US.

<comment><USER3> The alternative would be to stay in the US (or leave to be interviewed by Greenwald and return to the US) and actually fight for what he believes in.

<comment><USER5> I think that his answers[1] address that point:

> ... the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, > immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at > home...

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward- snowden-n...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa- files-whistleblower)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Russian news agency Interfax claims final destination is Venezuela.

13:36 SNOWDEN'S ULTIMATE DESTINATION IS VENEZUELA WHERE HE WILL FLY TO FROM MOSCOW WITH STOPOVER IN HAVANA - <USER2>

[http://www.interfax.com/news.asp](http://www.interfax.com/news.asp)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is not good, is it?

What if he _doesn 't_ have a (super detailed and perfect) plan, and nobody out there can protect him, except the 300 million (if not 7 billion) people he did this for? What if this not a script written on our behalf, but real life?

Because that's exactly what I am thinking, you may call him a fool or a criminal, but until you can show me evidence of any selfish motives, he did this for us, and our grandchildren to boot, wether you see that now or not. Sure, it's not the same as taking a bullet for a bus full of kids, he "just" leaked classified things and ran way; but if I assume he truly believed that was the right thing to do, maybe not the smartest and safest way to lead a long life, but the right thing to do, then I have to admire his guts, and as I said, unless there is a sudden twist in all this, I am already indebted to him.

He's on the run from rather sinister people, too, who think nothing of killing thousands, or putting people in prison for life, just to make a point about dominance, while hiding behind human pyramids, deniability, limited liability and sophistry. If the public turns their back on him, he might be toast and that's that; which would be heartbreaking and flat out wrong to me.

<comment><USER8> Could be. But Wikileaks have also sent 'advisors' to sit with him. So in theory he's at least being advised on possible options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What does Fmr mean?

<comment><USER10> Former

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surprised the cab to the airport didn't "break down" (or blow up) or he didn't get mugged on his way to the airport. My guess is that Chinese agents were keeping the CIA and Western ones at bay, since that ultimately is Chinese territory. I never for a minute believe that he was in hidden location, otherwise NSA and CIA should be disbanded.

While not ideal, Cuba is probably his best choice considering that China and Russia would not take /support him openly. The Chinese agents most likely cloned his drives one way or another and the Russians might do the same if there's a layover. It's really simple:

"Wanna go to Cuba? Yes? Fine, then do what Igor says."

<comment><USER12> > Surprised the cab to the airport didn't "break down" (or blow up) or he > didn't get mugged on his way to the airport.

He's in no danger of being assassinated. There wouldn't be any point.

Killing him to "make an example of him" doesn't make sense. Killing him with plausible deniability wouldn't send a message and killing him openly would just would just make the CIA look bad.

However the US government can, publicly and openly, make his life very difficult.

<comment><USER13> I don't think looking bad matters to these people at this point.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can those of us outside the US do about Net Neutrality today? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't think there's anything that we can do besides spreading the word and taking it as a lesson for when this happens in EU.</comment>


Show HN: My open source Node/Ember homepage and portfolio - <AUTHOR> http://www.selby.io/about

<comment><USER2> Not to complain, but help. It looks bad on my android chrome

<comment><AUTHOR> The entire site or just certain pages? It's possible it's just my design skills. -.-'

I do try to design for mobile, though, so a little more info would be useful.

Thanks for the feedback. =)</comment></comment>


More MS-DOS Games Playable at the Internet Archive - <AUTHOR> https://blog.archive.org/2019/10/13/2500-more-ms-dos-games-playable-at-the-archive/ <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I'm loosely involved with the Archive, helping with the DWeb Meetup.

I love this. The Archive has been helping emulation a lot, but hosting full rom sets, and javascript-based emulators. It's a great fit with the idea of video game preservation.

MS-DOS games are an interesting problem: on one hand, Dosbox is very powerful, on the other hand, it does require a good chunk of familiarity with the original platform. After all, who's going to know to run setup.exe, what IRQ and DMA are? Thankfully I've never ran into the EMS and XMS fun, but I can imagine that some aspects of DOS would feel very arcane to younger people.

So for the Archive to make those games available, easily playable, it's a whole chunk of older computer knowledge that's being made available to all.

<comment><USER3> For us using other computer brands at that time, EMS and XMS felt arcane already then...

<comment><USER4> It felt arcane for those of us who were daily MS-DOS users, as well.

I remember when I first installed QEMM, which addressed these issues in novel ways. It wasn't perfect, but it made things much more pleasant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An awesome underrated game from the MS-DOS era was Quarantine[0] (cyberpunk cab driving with super gore, funny writing and fantastic soundtrack). It was difficult to run due to EMS and free memory requirements.

[0] [https://www.myabandonware.com/game/quarantine-2a8/play-2a8](https://www.myabandonware.com/game/quarantine-2a8/play-2a8)

<comment><USER6> I cite Quarrantine all the time, its logo was a master stroke of design, combining a steering wheel, the biohazard logo, and the letter Q.

You're spot-on about the soundtrack, too It was one of the first games that came on CDROM and used mixed-mode to put CD-DA tracks after the data track. Once the game was running, you could swap discs and listen to your own music, but the included tunes (from some Australian band, I believe) were great.

<comment><USER7> A few years ago I tried to get to the bottom of how Quarantine (made in Canada) ended up with a soundtrack of independent Aussie bands. Great bands, but bands that had a niche following, even in Australia, at the time.

I only got silence and a couple of shrugs in response to my emails though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most viewed game at the time I post this comment:

Leisure Suit Larry 6

A huge archive of playable games from a wonderful era, and everyone rushed for the 8 bit tiddies.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, that game is going places no AAA title in existence today will go. So it's debatable that anyone visiting that archive will have experienced a contemporary, mainstream game that does the same themes. It even makes the most sense for Archive.org, because the Apple App Store would never allow that game.

While I personally find nudity and sex conquest games pretty stupid, and I recognize there are a lot of interesting boundary pushing indie titles out there, it does show how utterly dead games distribution and production has gotten if people find Leisure Suit Larry in Archive.org interesting enough to try.

<comment><USER10> Isn't Steam full of games that would make Larry blush? I thought it was a mjor point of controversy. True they are not AAA titles, but it's not like the options aren't there.

<comment> blaser-waffle Yeah but skewed towards Japanese anime-eque visual novels, plus a lot of low hanging fruit, like tetris... but naked.

Source: had a roommate/former coworker that was deep into that rabbit hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> W-Stool To all the people that help make this happen: you are truly the heroes the world needs right now. A thousand thanks.

<comment><USER11> A small donation will go a long way.

<comment><USER12> Their donate page says they host 45 PB of data (45k GB). That is a mind boggling amount of data to have available online and can't be cheap. This is absolutely a cause worth donating to.

<comment><USER13> 45 PB is approx. 45 _million_ GB, or 45k TB, or 3000 of the largest HDDs available, or 2 metric tonnes of state-of-the-art hard drives.

<comment> jonah-archive It's not all on the largest available disks -- currently the primary copy occupies around 9300 hard drives.

<comment><USER13> Wow. Is there a page with more information?

I found this picture where they'd just bought a few hundred brand new 4 TB drives: [https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Incoming_additiona...](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Incoming_additional_storage_at_Internet_Archive.jpg)

<comment> jonah-archive Oh wow, hadn't seen that one -- that was in the aftermath of the 2011 Thailand floods that seriously impacted hard drive availability, there was almost nothing in the supply channel so we had to shuck external drives.

Sadly there's not really a great one-stop page for this kind of info -- [https://archive.org/web/petabox.php](https://archive.org/web/petabox.php) exists but is sadly outdated (I'll see about rewriting it sometime). We do public tours on Friday afternoons of the main office/datacenter (and our big annual event is coming up next Wednesday if you happen to be in the Bay Area: [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/world-night-market-the- internet...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/world-night-market-the-internet- archives-annual-bash-tickets-73912162267) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Impressive how well MS-DOS games stood to the test of time. I still find them much more enjoyable than modern games.

Well, since the topic is relevant, a quick question to those who know their MS-DOS games well...

The other day, I was trying to remember an MS-DOS game in which you were a Pac-man like character that was eating chips on a motherboard or something. For some reason I recall the name of the game as "Yep" but nothing turned out when I searched for it. Any ideas?

<comment><USER15> Supaplex, maybe?

<comment><USER14> Yes, that's the one!

Thank you so much!

<comment><USER16> If you're looking for a great Windows remake that keeps the original style, check out Megaplex. Apparently the original website is gone, but archive has it as well:

[https://archive.org/details/MegaPlex_1020](https://archive.org/details/MegaPlex_1020)

Supaplex is even on Steam, but probably not linked to the original creators, which have declared the game as freeware.

<comment><USER17> If you really want to play those games, I recommend you install Rocks and Diamonds, which implements Supaplex, Boulder Dash, Emerald Mine and Sokoban and even has some additional content. It's open source:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocks%27n%27Diamonds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocks%27n%27Diamonds)

There are versions for Windows, Linux, Mac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Digger from 1983 is a Dig-Dug-Clone-but-Not that came out right as IBM PCs were starting to take off, and it's a lovely little game

I used to play this a lot. But is it really a dig-dug (1982) clone? It looks closer to Mr. Do! (also 1982) to me.

<comment><USER19> That was my first game, played it on a 286 or similar in what could still have been the USSR (or right after it was gone).

IIRC, it had a PC-speaker rendition of Popcorn by Hot Butter as a soundtrack.

Still one of my favorite tunes!

<comment><USER20> One of my first games as well. You're correct about the popcorn soundtrack

<comment><USER21> Yep, my first game too, and I remember the song. When I heard the popcorn song many years later in life, I was stopped dead in my tracks because it stirred nearly the oldest memory I had stored in my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, used to play so many of these with my siblings as a kid. My dad made us an 80486 machine with CRT monitor, IBM keyboard, and speaker all in one giant wooden box. The "white computer" must have weighed 60 pounds. Good times.

</comment><comment><USER23> Surely for most CD-ROM games of that era some sort of cached streaming would help greatly.

For those that actually had large chunks of data not CDDA audio, i.e. those with FMVs on the CD, the speed of many Internet connections these days is greater than I got out of a local CD-ROM in the mid 90s especially when the latency of spin up time is considered. Streaming the data on request might feel faster than the local physical drive did back then, and avoids transferring the whole disk just to play the first part of the game. It might even make multi-CD games that started appeating in the mid 90, like Wing Commander III, practical to run this way. Of course you still need to implement some simulation of a disk swap.

For many the game was relatively small with CD music tracks making up most of the CD - these could be compressed (MP3/similar) and transmitted that way to be unpacked in the emulator at the other side. Thsi would make the payload much smaller than a full CD so make the games more practical even without trying to stream them.

</comment><comment><USER24> As a non-American, this helped me finally play that "Oregon Trail" I heard so much about on the Internet, cause apparently every American teenager had to play it at some point.

<comment><USER25> If you played the DOS version, you played the wrong one. We all played the Apple II version in schools.

<comment><USER26> The DOS and Apple II versions are identical. (There was a later "Deluxe" version for DOS that was more like the Mac version.)

<comment><USER27> Are you sure this is true? I recall the DOS hunting feature using the keyboard to navigate and shoot, whereas the Apple II version used a mouse. It's /possible/ I'm confusing the Apple II version with the Mac version?

I remember playing the Apple IIc version in school and the DOS version at home around 1994, and noting this as the difference.

<comment><USER25> The Apple II version definitely used the keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you're up for something a little different, might I recommend: [https://archive.org/details/msdos_I_Have_No_Mouth_and_I_Must...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_I_Have_No_Mouth_and_I_Must_Scream_1995)

<comment><USER29> I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is also available on both Steam and GoG.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/245390/I_Have_No_Mouth_an...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/245390/I_Have_No_Mouth_and_I_Must_Scream/)

[https://www.gog.com/game/i_have_no_mouth_and_i_must_scream](https://www.gog.com/game/i_have_no_mouth_and_i_must_scream)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What is the legal status of these?

</comment><comment><USER31> I cannot recommend Albion[1] enough, it's a story-driven RPG set in a beautifully designed world that -- with some limitations -- still holds up today.

[1] [https://archive.org/details/msdos_Albion_1995](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Albion_1995)

</comment><comment><USER32> The CD ROM problem is interesting - a lot of my favorites were playing around with full motion video back then. We complained about load times even locally and scoffed at the idea discs would ever replace cartridges in consoles.

Might be just the problem that >Gbps internet was searching for.

<comment><USER33> Or a download + dosbox were searching for.

A 700MB download is a non-issue. An _implicit_ 700MB download _every time_ you wanna play is insane.

<comment><USER34> Perhaps the answer is just to intercept disk reads and stream on demand; 52x CD (fastest common speed) was only 6.3mb/sec and computers only had a few MB of RAM. Spread out over many hours of gameplay that's not much at all. Later games that expected to be copied on entirety to the HDDn are a different matter, although I remember few of those. Honestly most games were a few tens of MB of game data and the rest were CDDA tracks. This was before mp3 and lossy audio compression became commonplace.

<comment><USER35> Circa late 90s a common feature was full or partial installs. A full install would copy everything to disk, but partial installs commonly kept the video and music files still on the CD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Oh wow, WipEout 1 and VR slingshot. I remember sinking so much time into both of those.

<comment><USER37> Pro Pinball Timeshock is my favorite pinball game.

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Pro_Pinball_- _Timeshock_19...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Pro_Pinball_- _Timeshock_1997)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Occasionally I keep replaying Apple ][ games :) - like Karateka :) - Love the site!

</comment><comment><USER39> What a blast from the past! The first game in the linked archive (Davidson's Zoo Keeper) was my GF's (at the time) first project at Davidson. Firefox under Linux had no trouble rendering it (sound included)!

</comment><comment><USER26> My first game was the Friendlyware PC Arcade, which is up there now. It's a bunch of clones of coin-op arcade games done in ASCII/CP-437 graphics. The Frogger clone "Hopper" is most memorable for me. I still love anything done with CP-437.

For quite awhile it was hard to find on the "abandonware" sites, probably because it was a PC booter disk. I did find it eventually and have it saved. Nice to see it up on the archive now too. (I also have the original 5.25" floppy, but no drive to read it.)

</comment><comment><USER40> I have very vague memories of a game where you played... I think it was a barbarian? I remember the weapon could be upgraded but I don't remember how! The graphics looked basic even for the time.

Any ideas?

<comment><USER41> Total shot in the dark:

Dark Ages

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(1991_video_game)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_\(1991_video_game\))

<comment><USER40> Yeeeesss thank you!

I remember dying a lot, wonder if the game is actually hard now... I'll check it out :)

<comment><USER41> No problem! For some reason it was the first thing I thought of. I have good memories watching my dad play it and trying to as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Many thanks for keeping these games alive for newer generations.

A few of my favorite ones are there.

\- Ace

\- Ace of the Deep

\- Battle Chess

\- Spitfire

\- Space Quest

\- Laser Squad

\- Last Ninja

\- Loom

\- Commander Keen series

\- Game Over

\- F-15 Strike Eagle

\- Fallout

<comment><USER43> +1 for Loom.

If you haven't played Loom, play it. It's a fairly short game, so not a huge time commitment, but very different and quite fun. Also, it is easily the best looking EGA game of all time, which is a technical achievement all in its own.

<comment><USER44> Still sad that the teased sequel(s) to Loom never made it past the pitch stage. Also, if you love Loom, Brian Moriarty's three Infocom (text) adventures are worth playing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Strike Commander or bust!

I don't know if there's an actual need or not, but if any reverse engineering work is needed on retro titles, I'd happily donate my time. email is in profile.

<comment><USER43> Haha, strike commander. I legally purchased Strike Commander, but then pirated Quarterdeck QEMM386 because the game was not stable with the MS EMM386.

It was also either that game, or master of magic, that I had to use the Novell (purchased from Digital Research) nwcdex rather than the mscdex because the former used less conventional RAM, and getting the CDROM driver loaded while still having the over 600KB required conventional memory free was challenging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> They put all of the ExoDOS collection readily emulated, out there? Maaan that's a big contribution. Thank you Archive.org!

<comment><USER47> Also should shout out to eXo and his team. They have spent the past year making this work. eXo before that has spent many years alone making it work. It is a little rough around the edges due to the cut and paste job they did with their launcher/install system. But they did an amazing job of 'just works'. Looking forward to the next win3x pack.

</comment></comment><comment> jim-greer I hope they support flash game someday.

<comment><USER48> So many of the flash games I want to play require a server.

Anybody remember battledawn?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> There is something disturbing about the apparent disregard to legality of this project, if I'm being honest. there might be a better case if it didn't include games like Doom, SimCity, and Star Trek Judgment Rites (to name a few examples I checked for) that are still being actively sold (eg, on Steam and GOG)

<comment><USER50> The Internet Archive is an officially-recognized archiving institution, and can thus take a few extra liberties when it comes to preserving copyrighted materials that others would be unable to. It's quite clear to me that if we want the bulk of 'orphaned' content from that era to be preserved, that's only going to happen via some 'disregard' of legally-imposed constraints.

<comment><USER49> None of the games I mentioned are orphaned in any sense of the word, and that was the point I'm making.

<comment><USER51> None of the games in currently the archive were orphaned when people originally shared them around either, but for the vast majority of them they wouldn't exist anymore nowadays if it wasn't for that original sharing.

Even GOG had to hunt around abandonware sites for officially lost materials.

<comment><USER52> > they wouldn't exist anymore nowadays if it wasn't for that original sharing

Exactly, more often than not the people who own the rights to things can't be trusted to maintain them.

See the same thing happen with movies, the version available in stores from the rights owner is a bad transfer, likely with a crop with hardcoded subtitles. Yet the version online, compiled by a passionate individual because they care for the material has a rip from a laserdisc for best uncropped picture, sound from another cut and softcoded subtitles.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Dangerous Myth of the Hero Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/dyson26/English

<comment><USER2> Related:

Malcolm Gladwell, Annals of Business, "The Sure Thing," The New Yorker, January 18, 2010, p. 24 [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/18/100118fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/18/100118fa_fact_gladwell)

Paywall. Apologies.

</comment><comment><USER3> "In an economy such as the United States, where start-ups are revered, people who would make perfectly good project supervisors or salespeople establish their own companies, starving the ecosystem of middle managers."

That's just what America needs -- more middle management.</comment>


NYTimes takedown regarding my 7-min-workout open app, anyone feels like drawing? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mgcrea/angular-7min/blob/master/takedown/20130506-nytimes.jpg

<comment><USER2> I take it these are the illustrations in question?

[https://github.com/mgcrea/angular-7min/tree/master/app/image...](https://github.com/mgcrea/angular-7min/tree/master/app/images/workouts)

Did you copy the files directly from the NYT site, or did you draw these graphics using the NYT illustrations as a model?

If it's the latter, then the Times is in the wrong, IMHO[IANAL]... The characters and poses are generic enough, so as long as you draw them from scratch, I don't think it should count as infringement.

But if you actually copied the files from NYT, then you should definitely take them down.

</comment><comment><USER3> Woah that blows. Is this your first app?</comment>


Making propellor safer with GADTs and type families - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/making_propellor_safer_with_GADTs_and_type_families/

<comment><USER2> I'm currently working on a Java project. The more I read about how much safety one can reap from a decent type system, the more I want to be working on a project that uses one.

I do think, though, that learning about what's possible has helped me to get more benefit from Java's type system -- there are several classes of bugs that our system could suffer from, except that we explicitly designed our types with safety in mind so that code which would fail will fail at compile time rather than run-time. Mostly this involves heavier-than-usual use of generics and lambdas, so we have type information where we need it, and structuring our classes such that it's just not possible to reach unsafe bits of the framework from regular code.</comment>


Running Python in Xcode: Step by Step - <AUTHOR> http://ericasadun.com/2016/12/04/running-python-in-xcode-step-by-step/ <comment><USER2> I highly recommended pycharm.

I audit business python code for a living as a consultant while in university, and pycharm has saved me soo much time and hassle with its debugging, profilers, introspection, autocomplete, git, and various db support.

It made my life so much easier than fidling with plugins in vim or eclipse.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh god no, please don't do this to yourself. There's a free PyCharm.

<comment><USER4> If you're primarily a Swift or Objective C developer and just want to try out Python or use it for a specific component or small project, would you still advise switching to an entirely new unfamiliar IDE for it?</comment></comment>


Microsoft to Developers: Sorry About the Whole IE6 Thing, Won't Happen Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_to_developers_sorry_about_the_whole_ie6.php#.TuouSich3Xk.hackernews <comment><USER2> Will they be pushing IE8 even to pirated installs of Windows XP? My impression is that this is where a lot of IE6 use stems from.</comment>