Topcoat – CSS for clean and fast web apps - <AUTHOR> http://topcoat.io/

<comment><USER2> I'm finding it hard to think up ways that this differentiates itself enough from Foundation or Bootstrap to be useful -- and your website isn't providing me any reason why as well.

Compare to <http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/> and <http://foundation.zurb.com/>, which list some benefits right on the page -- you need people to instantly understand why they should use your framework over another css framework.

Also, make sure your demo pages represent responsiveness well -- I resized my browser on your mobile demo page and the tab bar ended up becoming nothingness -- perhaps some min-widths are needed?

<comment><USER3> > and your website isn't providing me any reason why as well.

Looks like it's an Adobe project.

<comment><USER4> Check out the contribution license for a chuckle:

<http://topcoat.io/dev/topcoat-cla.html>

<comment><USER5> Why a chuckle? I like that they at least let you fill out the CLA online. The ASF still requires contributors to fax in a paper form (or they did last time I checked, which was when I did mine, which was, now that I think about it, some time ago, so maybe this long rambling comment is actually pointless after all...)

Anyway, the point is, having an online form to submit a CLA seems like a positive step to me, if you're going to require CLAs at all. And a CLA that simply grants a perpetual, worldwide, irrevockable license to the content, as opposed to asking for a _transfer_ of copyright ownership, doesn't seem to onerous to me. And for an Open Source project with commercial backing it is pretty commonplace.

That said, we are an Open Source startup, and we don't (currently) plan to ask for a CLA from outside contributors, but just something basically saying "I license my contribution under the Apache License v2".

<comment><USER6> It's using bootstrap

<comment><USER7> This should speak volumes about how ready the framework really is..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of topcoat's goals is to be highly performant CSS (especially on mobile, it's hard to deliver fast UI). To this end they're using the Chromium Telemetry project to benchmark the performance of their CSS continually. Basically CSS Performance Regression Testing.

See <http://bench.topcoat.io/> and [http://bench.topcoat.io/v2/view/results?date=30&](http://bench.topcoat.io/v2/view/results?date=30&); (metrics for time spent in recalc styles, layout, paint, composite layers)

<comment><USER9> See that's the kind of sentence that should be on the homepage!

<comment><USER10> exactly.

Knowing that there are more popular alternatives around, the question that everyone has is: why should i use this? This value prop is something that interests me greatly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I realize we're all in our early 20s with 20/15 vision, but this trend of microscopic fonts is really unfriendly to the old guys who sometimes want to read things on the web.

<comment><USER12> Hell I'm 25 and struggled with some of those font sizes. I probably do need to get my prescription altered, however.

<comment><USER13> I'm 25 and I can read it fine but I agree it needs to be bigger. 14px is a good starting size IMO for fonts.

<comment><USER14> Firefox Users:

Options / Content / Fonts & Colors / Advanced ... / Minimal font size

(some pages don't like this)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would personally like to see a CSS framework that has absolutely _zero_ opinions about design. Meaning, radio buttons are actually the standard html5 radio buttons, but perhaps with titles handled in a unified way that works across all browsers. Form elements are given proper layout CSS that solves a lot of common issues across all browsers but no additional styling is added. Etc. I don't want my site to look like yet another bootstrap site (YABS) and overriding all of bootstrap/foundations/whatever's styles is a huge PITA. I usually just end up rolling everything from scratch for sites where I want full control over the design.

edit: I'll post this as an edit since there are multiple responses referring to <http://www.getskeleton.com>. Skeleton is similar to what I'm asking for but it seems to have stopped short. I would love to see unstyled carousels, alerts, modals, sticky headers, images with inline comments, etc. Basically, all the really nice stuff you get in Bootstrap and Foundation but without any of the styling.

<comment><USER16> I think this is exactly what Skeleton tries to be.

<http://www.getskeleton.com/>

I will say though that Foundation is much easier to customize styles for than Bootstrap, which is one of the primary reasons we now use Bootstrap for internal apps or side projects which we don't intend to implement a custom design, but Foundation for all sites which we plan on designing.

<comment><USER17> One thing to keep in mind is that Skeleton has not seen a single commit in the past year, so it's not clear if the framework is going to be supported long- term. It's probably better as a blueprint for one's own homebrew minimalistic CSS framework.

<comment><USER18> So a framework needs to update every 6 months just because that would make you feel better about it?

Also, your statement is factually incorrect. There was a single commit in the past year. If you had said that next month, you might have been correct.

The author is on twitter...

<comment><USER17> 1) Nitpick about 11 months vs 12 months. Are you adding any value to the conversation? 2) The author being on Twitter doesn't affect the 31 outstanding pull requests and the 52 issues filed against the GitHub repository. Again, I'm not clear what you're getting at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks like a great start, but there are some missing parts and serious issues with the typography. In many places the text size is just too small, while the typeface they're using here is too light for display. The link text under Michael Peterson is a good example of the problem: <http://topcoat.io/topcoat/doc/mobile.html#m-well>

<comment><USER20> We're working on it! Pls file issues <http://github.com/topcoat/topcoat> and we'll get on em. =)

<comment><USER21> If you type 'pls' because it's shorter than 'please', then I'll type 'no' because it's shorter than 'yes'

<comment><USER20> LULZ UR SO CLEVAR!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Your "slide switch", "toggle buttons", "tabs", etc all suffer from the same big problem: hard to tell which one is selected (especially if there's 1 "on", 1 "off").

<comment><USER23> Those don't seem to be implemented yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like the idea of this project we do need more variety rather than bootstrap bootstrap bootstrap. However why is the font size so small its horrendously difficult to read.

</comment><comment><USER25> What is this, a webapp for ants?!

<comment><USER26> It has to be at least three times as styled!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've already picked this up for a side project of mine. So far, it's been a pleasure working with the UI toolkit. I'm seriously looking forward for 1.0 release of the Desktop flavor.

</comment><comment><USER28> It looks very nice, but it doesn't bode well when the 'mobile' section has atrociously slow scroll speed and completely breaks.

<comment><USER29> This is a known/filed issue. Current work in progress to generate a new mobile friendly guide. There's a lot of components on that page for mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is it just me, or is the proliferation of CSS frameworks and JS frameworks/libs redundant now?

<comment><USER31> Came here to say it.

Just saw in the job posting for Amicus:

"Open source projects, including our own in house, soon to be open sourced, real time Model View Presenter javascript framework with bi-directional data binding"

Are the existing libs so bad everyone has to reinvent the wheel constantly?

<comment><USER32> Amicus engineer here. It's actually built on top of Backbone, in a similar vein as Airbnb's rendr. It allows our front-end to be pre-rendered on the server, and sent to the client as static html, as well as some other cool stuff. > Are the existing libs so bad everyone has to reinvent the wheel constantly?

To actually answer your question: yes. Existing libs for building large scale apps are in a transition period from server-side only apps to something more akin to native apps, and no one has come up with a great way to do it yet.

Honestly I hope people keep "reinventing the wheel". Web Development isn't in a place where we can just accept the state of the art and call it a day.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to never have any sort of stable, widely- accepted solution built over a long period of time. Let's just keep having a new artisanal web framework of the week.

Web developers are an utter fucking embarrassment and shit like this is exactly why.

<comment><USER34> You may want to read the HN guidelines: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

In particular:

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

<comment><USER33> I didn't call anyone a name, and I wouldn't be ashamed to say it face-to-face because it is in fact what I think. I'm tired of the JS framework of the week being posted on here in some vague attempt to become the cool new thing on the block. What happened to Backbone? Not cool any more because it's remotely stable? No, of course not, because developers need to have their bespoke framework of the week.

<comment><USER35> You called web developers and utter embarrassment, that is name calling, and if you said that face to face you might get punched.

<comment><USER33> They are an embarrassment and I strongly doubt that I'd be punched.

<comment><USER36> Please try to remember that this is not Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I know all of you use Linux and OSX, but this renders horrible in Windows (IE and Chrome).

<comment><USER38> Worry not, it renders horribly on Linux too (the fonts for sure) (or maybe our taste and the author's are very different)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can we maybe get a more useful title for this submission?

</comment><comment><USER40> This looks really nice! If I hadn't already got a designer for my current project (from <http://analoghq.com/> mentioned here last week, no less!) I would definitely be using this.

EDIT: That's not to say this is a replacement for highly-skilled designers, more that it's an easy way to get a passable interface in the absence of any design skill :)

</comment><comment><USER41> why this instead of bootstrap?

<comment><USER42> Wonderful.

If there is a thread about bootstrap, some one posts "why must everything be bootstrap?" Get a thread about a bootstrap alternative and...... bingo!!!!

(Not having a go at you personally, Im sure your question was genuine. Just making general observation of the irony)

<comment><USER41> yes it was a genuine question. i guess i should have phrased it differently. I just wanted to know the difference (or benefit of this over bootstrap). I mean if a wheel is being re-invented, there's gotta be a reason behind it. (I guess "because I can" could be an answer, but I was looking for some good answer)

<comment><USER43> My problem with your question is the evergrowing lack of critical thinking on HN. I think even PG has eluded to it.

What's the difference from Bootstrap? Why don't you view its source? Read through the framework's documentation? For one the default styling is significantly different than Bootstrap.

The one thing I fondly miss about Slashdot is people would liberally tell you to RTFM when you asked something obvious that could have been answered by reading the article posted.

<comment><USER35> Then go back to slashdot and be rude there.

<comment><USER43> Suggesting someone to apply critical thinking is anything but. Your confrontational attitude is though. Another thing becoming of HN.

<comment><USER10> you are being rude in the first place. You could have framed your comment better. quit HN if this community is disturbing you so much.

I disagree with your original comment. Yes, we can read the source. Yes, we can analyze it ourselves. But time is limited to all of us. The product should state exactly how it is different with the competition and why we should pick it. This is similar to how pg asks startups to describe themselves in one simple sentence. You don't tell pg that he lacks critical thinking for not reading my website.

Stating how you are different gives the customers focus. If you state that you are different because of X then you can go into the code and look at X particularly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The buttons remind me of 90s operating systems.

<comment><USER45> One day the chiseled-3D look is going to come back as retro chic and make all our sites look like The New Yorker with smushed Skittles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I find it kind of odd and off putting that Adobe makes you sign something to contribute to the project. I think the only proper way to do switches is by using checkboxes and CSS transformations [0] - their javascript solution is not desirable.

[0] <http://www.larentis.eu/switch/>

<comment><USER5> _I find it kind of odd and off putting that Adobe makes you sign something to contribute to the project._

That's pretty common in larger projects, and/or projects that have a commercial entity backing them. And there are some very good reasons for it. It helps keep the provenance and legality of the code in more of a known state, and could be important in a SCO v. IBM type case. Also, if re-licensing ever becomes desirable down the road, it's a hell of a lot easier if at least one entity or person has permission to release the entire code base under an arbitrary license. Take the Linux kernel, where it would be effectively impossible to relicense even if Linus wanted to, since the copyright ownership is spread out among gosh knows how many people, some of who nobody knows how to contact, and some of whom might not even be alive for all we know.

The FSF, ASF and other big open source organizations also typically require a CLA or a copyright assignment of some sort as well. So at least this isn't Adobe just being evil or anything. That's not to say whether they are or aren't evil, just saying that the CLA thing, in and of itself, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I really get frustrated when I land on a page, and I can't hit space bar to page down.

</comment><comment><USER48> May be just my browser setting but the fonts rendered in Firefox (Win64) look really bad, thin and pixelized; looked like anit-alias has been turned off.

</comment><comment><USER49> One question... Why? It's missing features Bootstrap as since version 1.0.

Adobe should focus on something like not trashing Fireworks.

</comment><comment><USER50> Thanks a lot for creating this. We need some diversity and options in this realm!

</comment><comment><USER51> Nice work. A clean, attractive look.

</comment><comment><USER52> Looks very Asana-like</comment>


Someday, you may use bitcoin without knowing it - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/87556/someday-you-may-use-bitcoin-without-even-knowing-it/

<comment><USER2> " dreams of reinventing the financial system based around a currency not issued by governments and not subject to the whims of central banks."

Lets ask Greece how not having control over its currency is going...

Bitcoin is a primitive financial system wrapped up in a high tech envelope.

<comment><USER3> Someone else having control of your currency is a lot different than no one having control over it.

<comment><USER4> It might be different, but it doesn't seem to matter much in practice. But fine, instead of comparing it to Greece, you could compare it to the gold standard. That didn't work so well either.

<comment><USER5> Somehow civilizations and empires flourished before modern financial instruments.

<comment><USER6> They actually didn't. Banks have been around for centuries and where instrumental in any economic growth beyond medieval farming methods...

<comment><USER7> But "banks" aren't a currency. They may have issued their own currencies during the gold standard, but then again nothing prevents banks from issuing their own currency in an (absolutely hypothetical) bitcoin standard.

<comment><USER6> The gold standard had to be abandoned because it didn't work. For that matter, a new "Dollar Standard" is popping up, with all sorts of countries using the dollar as legal or quasi-legal tender...

<comment><USER8> "Had to be abandoned"? Threat of 10 years in prison in 1933 does not sound like "people decided gold sucks". I guess, government had to take gold by force precisely because people trusted gold more than paper.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Executive_Order_6102.jpg>

<comment><USER4> Isn't that exactly an argument why it had to be abandoned? The government couldn't increase the money supply, because dollars had to be backed by gold.

<comment><USER7> Well, some people disagree with the idea that the inability of the government to increase the money supply means the system doesn't work.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, but I think most economists agree on the problems with a gold standard [1]. This is moving off-topic, but it's interesting that this seems to be one of many topics where there's a rare consensus between economists, but the general public holds a different opinion [2].

1\. [http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll- re...](http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll- results?SurveyID=SV_cw1nNUYOXSAKwrq) 2\. [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21569378...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21569378-if-economists-agree-something-public-will-almost-certainly- think)

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this article. This is a little off topic, but I like the links. Karma point to u.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"Bitcoin is basically based on mistrust rather than trust"_

In some ways, but when we're talking about the reversability of transactions we're really just putting trust in different places. I trust the bank waaaaaaay more than I trust any online vendor. Particularly one with whom I don't have an existing relationship, but even then. For the folks that love BTC at the moment that seems to be reversed.

\--edit-- I'm also not sure how doing _two_ trades on an international currency transfer is supposed to be cheaper than one....

<comment><USER8> Chargebacks are useful to consumers not because of evil merchants who can steal their money (merchants in general are not evil and care about reputation). The real problem is giving away full access to your credit card. Someone can steal your CC number from any shop you used it before and then make a purchase. Since CC is so fragile, Visa offers you a chargeback capacity putting merchants under huge risk of fraud.

With bitcoin you don't show your whole wallet to anyone. You only make a single transaction to a single address. Merchant cannot possibly leak anything that will give someone ability to spend your money. Instead of spreading your identifying information to 1000s of shops you only keep it in a single place that you control directly (but you should be careful here). So you don't need chargebacks if no one can easily steal your money.

To avoid fraud from merchants, people use "reputation" and escrows. Typically, you will be okay to risk paying 3 bucks almost anyone, but you'd pay 300 dollars only to people you already trust (think Apple Store, WalMart etc.) For very rare cases when you need extra security, go to an intermediate escrow service. (E.g. ebay.)

<comment><USER9> Umm, no. I exactly want protection from unscrupulous merchants. Stolen CC detail fraud is on the decline thanks to the likes of EMV cards, and I also have legal protection from it via my bank for when that fails.

Reputation and escrows are really no equivalent to legal protection from merchant fraud and instant refunds on dispute. We have centuries of history with shysters and scammers (CAVEAT EMPTOR) to show us why this stuff is useful and it's pretty trivial to fake reputation and to fake escrow.

>> you'd pay 300 dollars only to people you already trust

Nicely cementing the big boys in the market and locking out smaller vendors forever.

I'm sorry people feel so affronted by consumer protections and chargeback, but without them I wouldn't buy stuff off the net at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Trust is central to all net purchases. No way around that.

<comment><USER10> I'd argue that online purchases are so popular precisely because the trust problem has been effectively tackled by Paypal and other processors. If a deal goes bad, you can dispute the payment and probably get your money back.

If you're using Liberty Reserve, Bitcoin, Paypal Gift, or anything else like them, your money is gone and there is nothing you can do.

Even if this isn't a problem for you, I think Bitcoin will have to solve it in some way to get any widespread adoption. Irreversible transactions are _not_ popular.

<comment><USER8> See a couple of my comments around this thread. I think irreversible transactions is precisely what is Bitcoin major selling factor. Many merchants will be able to give you a nice discount and eliminate their headaches. You as a customer will get more stuff, cheaper and with a friendlier look at you (living in Paris I see how merchants detest credit card payments for risks and losses involved).

<comment><AUTHOR> Think of the various ebay scams that exist right now around these issues. For example, I have friends who purchased a zpad (kid Ipad) and had a "no questions asked return policy" for 90 days. They sent it back week two and the Chinese company claims to not receive it until day 92. At least my friend could file a complaint so that others would not fall into the same trap. What kind of recourse would you have with bitcoin?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interestingly, I just had a local law enforcement official ask me to "explain bitcoin" to him yesterday. He said that "it came up" in a case they were working on and he had no idea what it was.

This is just evidence that its becoming a lot more mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER12> >If our experts can't agree on the value of bitcoin, why should consumers?

This is quite possibly the dumbest rhetorical question I've ever heard. On like 3 different levels. Replace 'bitcoin' with, like, _anything._ Oranges. Trees. Cars. What the eff are you talking about, lady.

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny. I posted this and didn't catch that. Good eye. Karma point to u

<comment><USER12> In fairness, I thought it was a quality piece otherwise. It was probably just something her editor threw in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Every other article describing the nature of Bitcoin, if not all, mention how it is used to sell drugs online (Silk Road), transaction anonymity [as a facilitator of crime] and this one forgot to state how Bitcoin is apparently the preferred currency of dictators, as if oficial currencies are not being used, as i type this, and have been used over the ages to facilitate every crime in the book.

I think this is important because it may be transpiring a very bad image to the less informed, because i see Bitcoin as a tool, which will be used for wrong doing as any other. Wish i had the link to a recent article that bashed Bitcoin into oblivion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I think Bitcoin has amazing potential as a tool. It's hard to create no government control without opening pandora's box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You know how there are certain words or phrases that make you feel the sands of time wastefully slipping through your fingers? They're hard to notice, because they're coupled with the habit of scanning to the next article, or moving to the next link.

The description of Bitcoin as "untraceable" makes my close-tab reflex trigger like a doctor bumping my knee. Seems like describing a human as invincible because the bodies will forever persist as some configuration of mass and energy.

<comment><USER15> No kidding. If every coin carries its immutable transaction history with it, Bitcoin is the antithesis of "untraceable."

<comment><AUTHOR> Well put. I hadn't thought of it in those terms.</comment></comment></comment>


Mangalyaan: Will India's Mars mission reach the orbit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29307123

<comment><USER2> The answer is Yes!</comment>


Show HN: Single-string instrument made with ball bearings - <AUTHOR> http://makefastworkshop.com/hacks/?p=20171213 <comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to a video of the TuneFast Harp here: [https://youtu.be/yGjTQOmBWsM](https://youtu.be/yGjTQOmBWsM)

And here are the files/info if you want to print your own: [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2709667](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2709667)</comment>


Configura – Store all your Go configuration in environment variables - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/agonzalezro/configura

<comment><USER2> I wrote a similar package taking ideas from rails configuration: [https://bitbucket.org/utils/config](https://bitbucket.org/utils/config) It provides different settings for different environments with templating support to use env vars.

<comment><USER3> Wow, adding templating there is a good idea :)

I usually did that with puppet in my previous job to create different confs per server/stage.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it kind of evolved nicely. I was trying to get rails like configuration variables similar to RAILS_ENV and it nicely fell into place :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tend to prefer solutions that integrates with the standard flags, such as [https://github.com/rakyll/globalconf](https://github.com/rakyll/globalconf)

<comment><USER3> Looks like a good idea as well, I started this project after a small discussion at work and here we want ENV vars everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how Configura the company feels about the name.

[http://www.configura.com/](http://www.configura.com/)

<comment><USER3> Not sure why it should matter to them. This is a small package for Go, they are a company.

Configura is a Spanish word that means "you, set it up" (more or less :), and the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy) didn't complain yet :D

Just kidding, but seriously, I don't think that there is any problem with the name, I also thought that I was so original and there are some other packages with the exact same name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks great! I've been using github.com/kelseyhightower/envconfig which seems to do the same task?

<comment><USER3> Quite similar, but it doesn't look to have any way of setting defaults and the vars will always require the prefix.

But, as I said, they are quite similar. I just wanted to play a little bit with the reflect package :)

<comment><USER6> Fair enough! Good job :)</comment></comment></comment>


Someone should add a column to this Wikipedia page about Y-Combinator StartUps: Status - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator#Portfolio

<comment><USER2> I'd also like to see them ordered chronologically rather than alphabetically, so that we can see the progression through status as the startups get older.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone has gone in and added a "status" column.

Everything in that column should have a date, at least an approximate one. There's too much on Wikipedia that's written in present tense. It should really be called "exit", not "status".

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I figured it was un-Wiki-ish of me to complain about wanting one and not actually create one. I filled in what I know, but that still leaves a lot of holes.

And I'd like status to include things like funding rounds, usage milestones, etc, because many companies are still thriving without an exit. But you're right, there should be a date on everything.

<comment><USER4> If someone sends me relevant info to the email address listed in my profile I will be happy to throw it into wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't help but wonder how many companies there were on the page, so I added a Count column - the page has 43 startups so far :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Things change too fast for status to be accurate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Monthly updates of active projects would be reasonable. I'm curious which projects are dead, which wouldn't need to be updated often :-P

<comment><USER7> Monthly updates by whom? You gonna heard fifty cats (or startup founders) into doing anything that doesn't involve free food? I doubt it.

<comment><AUTHOR> By fan or the founders. Wikipedia is essentially designed for herding cats. That's just another name for user-generated content.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


High-level overview: Operating systems, H/ware, Processors – what would you add? - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/OS_HW_Processor.html?HN_20170823 <comment><AUTHOR> I would love it if people could suggest things that I've left out, or criticize the choices I've made here. I wanted something to help give a map for explanations of what operating systems are, and how there's more than one, and there's a relationship between OS's hardware, and processors.

The diagram I have has served its original purpose, but I have no doubt the HN community will be aghast at some of the omissions.

Please, help me enhance this.

<comment><USER2> I am not optimistic about the task because there is no intrinsic relationship between an operating system and an architecture...Windows 10 runs on ARM (and before it Windows Phone 7/8 and Windows RT) and before that Windows CE and Windows Embedded on various architectures.

To put it another way, a diagram reflects a decision to leave out some details and emphasize others in order to make a particular point. To be a bit early Wittgensteinian, the world is all the facts, a diagram is a picture of the logical structure of the world, and the problem is that the relationship between operating systems and architectures has no logical structure. Knowing that OSX runs on x86 is not evidence for or against it running on MIPS. I can only use the fact in syllogism. And even then unconvincingly because OSX runs on some x86 systems and not others.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not entirely convinced I understand what you're saying here. The diagram is intended just to give an overview to someone completely unversed in the area of computing, to say that "These are operating systems, these are 'boxes', and these are the things that might be inside those boxes."

Certainly this type of diagram can't be complete, and can't be used to predict anything about what might happen, or what currently happens in dark corners. The fact that there is no logical structure simply makes a simplistic diagram like this even more useful to understand the relationships between 90% of stuff that's out there.

I was unaware of Windows 10 running on ARM based hardware - what hardware was it?

And I'm really _not_ going to go down the rabbit hole of a gazillion versions of Windows, CE, ME, NT, server, _etc._ For an overview that seems counter- indicated.

And having said all that, I can only assume from the lack of feedback (apart from yours, which is useful - thank you) that either people haven't looked, don't care, or that I got it close enough.

<comment><USER2> 0\. Windows 10 Mobile is the "phone" version of Windows and shipped in 2015. More recently, [https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171](https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171)

1\. A diagram can display the logical structure of the world. But the relationship between operating systems and CPU architectures has no logical structure. A relationship between an operating system and a CPU architecture does not imply any edges from the operating system to another CPU architecture nor edges from the CPU architecture to an operating system.

2\. If the diagram explains what it is meant to explain to the intended audience, then it has done its job. If it is meant to be 'canonical' then it cannot succeed unless the audience agrees with the premises for inclusion and exclusion.

3\. Why isn't Windows IOT [1] listed for the Rpi? Because it is not relevant to the purpose of the diagram, while RiscOS is. Caricaturizing Windows is a premise of the diagram at a high level. While deep details regarding MacOS point to Motorola and IBM CPU's from decades ago. Maybe this suggests too much detail in the diagram. Maybe it suggests a way in which the diagram could be misleading...or incomplete...or suitable to some tasks and not others.

I suppose my reaction is partially around the implication that a post to HN is some level of claim that the diagram is 'canonical' since it is not just a one off. And in part my reaction is that it portrays the world in a Mac centric way and I don't think that such portrayals make people well informed...and admittedly this is a long standing hot button of mine.

[1]: [https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/iot](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


US charges Autonomy boss Lynch with fraud over $11bn sale to HP - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-charges-ex-autonomy-boss-mike-lynch-with-fraud-over-11bn-sale-to-hp/ <comment><AUTHOR> HP paid $11BN for UK-based Autonomy, only to discover accounting irregularities and crashing sales within a year.

The British criminal investigation was closed last year.

Sigh..</comment>


Father of HTTP and REST: REST APIs must be hypertext-driven - <AUTHOR> http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven <comment><AUTHOR> I'm still trying to figure out what he means here...

<comment><USER2> There was a link to an article posted yesterday or the day before on HN that attempted to interpret the original article. Here's the link:

[http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/10/24/RESTAPIDesignIn...](http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/10/24/RESTAPIDesignInventMediaTypesNotProtocolsAndUnderstandTheImportanceOfHyperlinks.aspx)

I have to admit it's still a bit confusing to me. However, look at this snippet extracted from a comment by the author of the article you provided:

"A truly RESTful API looks like hypertext. Every addressable unit of information carries an address, either explicitly (e.g., link and id attributes) or implicitly (e.g., derived from the media type definition and representation structure). Query results are represented by a list of links with summary information, not by arrays of object representations (query is not a substitute for identification of resources)."

And this snippet from the second:

"The latest drafts of the OpenSocial specification have a great example of how a service can use existing technologies such as URI templates to make even complicated URL structures to be flexible and discoverable without having to force every client and service to hardcode a specific URL structure."

This, to me, states that a restful api should implement api discoverability and give people a method to generate URI for any api call without hard-coding URIs into your code. A snippet from the article I linked-to that defines a URI template:

<os:URI-Template><http://api.example.org/groups/>{guid}</os:URI-Template>

It's easy to imagine an api client transforming that template into a URI to retrieve group information without knowing about or caring about the specifics of the URI format -- it's a black box with the exception of '{guid}.' When provided with that information, a client can look at that template, substitute {guid} with an actual guid value, execute the URI, and get the desired results. This enables, amongst other things, the API to evolve without breaking the clients. The api clients must know how to interpret the set of template variable names used by the api ( guid, appid, selector, etc. in the example provided in the article), but that's it.

I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's the part that resonated with me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: RSS Reader that doesn't suck? - <AUTHOR>

So apparently I'm a bit late with the whole RSS thing.  I've always had a general idea of what they were, but I've never really looked into them before.  I thought RSS was only delivered through e-mail =)  I had no idea RSS readers existed up until a few minutes ago, when I was setting up RSS for my blog and discovered Google Reader through Feedburner.  Conceptually, they are awesome.  Visually, they are the ugliest things I have ever seen.  Google Reader is messy and cluttered... and apparently it's the best one there is.<p>They make a lot of sense and I could see myself using one instead of manually checking my favorite blogs.  I googled around for a few minutes and couldn't find anything decent.  I figured the iPad would probably have something nice, and I was right.  Every single one of the RSS readers for iPad look awesome - especially Reeder.  Too bad I don't have an iPad.  Are there any web-based RSS reader apps like the iPad apps?  If not, I might just have to hack something together this weekend.  This could drive me crazy. <comment><USER2> It depends on what kind of a computer user you are. If you are a pure online person then Google Reader is perfect, if you never want to be bothered by new RSS feeds, and just want to check them whenever then there is NetNewsWire, which will sync with Google Reader, so that if you have multiple computers you won't have to redo your RSS Feeds every time. If you like notifications for whenever new feeds come in, then Sociolite is a good app. If you like everything built in, just in one place. Outlook and Mail.app both have the ability to add RSS Feeds.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're using Windows, the closest thing you'll find is Feedly which is a Firefox addon.

<http://www.feedly.com/>

Incidentally I am creating a RSS Reader (actually much more than that) which is very similar to Flipboard in terms of the interface. But unfortunately, I probably won't have it ready for at least a few more months. Email me if you're interested in knowing a bit more, or helping out (I could use some help with the coding)

</comment><comment><USER4> I find it's not so much the reader itself thats the problem with RSS, but the fact that everybody broadcasts their content differently. Some blogs include a full article, some just a few lines before asking you to click though to their site. Some embed images, some even ads.

If you have dreams of sitting down to a nice application and reading people's feeds in an orderly, unified fashion you might be disappointed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't consider myself a design snob by any means, but I will not be using Google Reader because it's just unpleasant to look at and navigate. If I had the choice between visiting blogs manually and reading their feeds via Google Reader, I would visit them manually. Now if you throw iPad Reeder into the mix, I would definitely choose iPad Reeder - it seems pleasant, and that's what I want when I'm reading/browsing. I think I can handle those little imperfections you mentioned. Worse case scenario, I click through to the site.

> _If you have dreams of sitting down to a nice application and reading > people's feeds in an orderly, unified fashion you might be disappointed._

And I don't think it's as much as a dream as it is a preference. Have you seen the iPad RSS readers? I don't think I'm asking too much, this isn't rocket science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I personally don't use any of the traditional RSS readers that allow you to browse feeds one by one and look at their headlines. I personally want to see everything in a single overview, on a large canvas.

Therefore, I use the iGoogle homepage. It allows you to add a bunch of feeds and show each feed's latest 3 to 10 headlines, all together on a single page, separated in 3 by N blocks.

I'm using the A1 iGoogle theme for its simplicity, and the User CSS Safari extension to remove any further distraction.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sage for Firefox is nice <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/sage/>

<comment><USER7> If I may ask without myself attempting to accumulate the history, have you kept up to date on the whole Sage not being maintained, Sage / XSS vulnerability, Sage-Too fork, Sage-Too being abandoned due to feelings in general about freeloaders (or was that Sage?), someone's custom patch........ thing? I checked out of it all year or two ago when I rebuilt the system it was installed on.

If Sage addressed the XSS concern(s) and is being maintained, I'm tempted to reinstall it.

<comment><USER6> Maintained: Yes <http://sagerss.com/>

XSS: Fixed <https://www.mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=19185>

Firefox-4: Yes

<comment><USER7> Wow. May/June, 2008. Has it been that long since the topic was current? But, Hasegawa's name definitely looks familiar.

Thanks. I'll give the current version a go. I enjoyed Sage's nice, simple interface. Works well in combination with Scrapbook, too.

<comment><USER7> Tried it. Unfortunately, it slowed things down to the point of being usuable. In particular, it seemed to cause endless thrashing as (All In One) Sidebar tried to display favicons in the Bookmark Manager and Scrapbook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are some user-scripts/extensions for Chrome/Firefox that beautify Google-Reader. I find they help make it suck less. YMMV

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. I just found Feedly.com (with associated chrome extension) and it's the closest thing I've found to perfect. It's a bit bland, though. I think there could be something better out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reeder is also available for Mac: <http://madeatgloria.com/brewery/silvio/reeder>

It's public beta, but it works pretty well so far.

</comment><comment><USER10> Netnewswire <http://netnewswireapp.com/> for mac or Feeddemon <http://www.feeddemon.com/> for windows

<comment><USER11> I can second the nomination for NetNewsWire if you're on a Mac. It is one of my favorite apps. NNW syncs with Google Reader (which I also despise) if you're away from your own computer and need to look up something in your feeds. I haven't used FeedDemon, but am told it is similar to NetNewsWire in quality. [Protip: I use a script with NetNewsWire to automatically back up my flagged (saved) feeds into DevonThink ([http://www.devon- technologies.com/products/devonthink/index....](http://www.devon- technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html)), and it has saved me a great deal of time on research. The DevonThink AI helps me find connections I might otherwise miss. I have a ridiculous number of feeds I follow, though.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would have to add <http://www.netvibes.com> \- i've been using it for years now and it's plain awesome.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love NewsRob app on my android, it syncs with my Google Reader for offline use.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reeder for mac is still in Beta but it's pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER15> im telling you, forget all the other posts, and try www.feews.com -- you will thank me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, well it is simple, clean, and much more intuitive than Google Reader, but still not exactly what I had in mind. My search continues.

<comment><USER15> guy what are you looking for? they just launched, so there will be more features every week/month but they are focused on maintaining the simple clean intuitive design.

one thing i requested was to group stories from multiple feeds together</comment></comment></comment>


Give me a hackable linux phone already caralho ktx - <AUTHOR> I want a hackable linux phone with root access. I wont mess with the telecom protocols. You can blackbox that into an API if you want. It can even be a virtualization layer on top of android (with sudo priviledge to itself and some aspects of the media players).
There are a ton of use cases for this.
I live in the Bixigia area of Brazil.
I can provide more details, like use cases and linux architecture. How to build the thing. etc. <comment><USER2> I just want a phone where I can run linux. No chroot, I want the real thing, with all the drivers please :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's talk. See the contact info at linuxbsdos.com/contact and ping me.</comment>


A Founder's Guide to Hacking Workspace in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.theconnectorhabit.com/musings/founders-guide-to-hacking-office-space-in-san-francisco

<comment><USER2> My startup has been looking to move into the city recently, so this is actually super useful. Is there anything like this for the south bay as well?

</comment><comment><USER3> Damn I wish I had this like 6 months ago when I was trying to find a new space. However, we are very happy now at Runway!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is gold! Finally all this information distilled into a clear & direct format. Thank you!

; )</comment>


Data for Nothing, Calls for Free: How FreedomPop Will Offer Free Phone Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/06/05/data-for-nothing-calls-for-free-how-freedompop-will-offer-free-phone-service/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a good deal, but happens when sprint decides to raise the whole sale prices?</comment>


Constructing a spectrometer using a CD - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~zhuxj/astro/html/spectrometer.html <comment><USER2> A great open-source spectrometer built the same way is available from PublicLab here: [http://store.publiclab.org/products/desktop-spectrometry- kit...](http://store.publiclab.org/products/desktop-spectrometry-kit-3-0) (or you can just build it yourself using their designs on the Wiki). PublicLab also has a repository for spectra so you can calibrate and compare with others.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can also buy diffraction glasses for under $10. They're marketed as "rave" accessories, but I found them useful for quickly identifying incandescent light bulbs hidden inside fixtures, in order to replace them with CFLs.

<comment><USER4> Or just get diffraction gratings. No need for the silly "glasses" markup, you know the number of lines per millimeter, and you can get 25 of them for around the same $10

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B00K6K3MCW/ref=sr_1_1...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/B00K6K3MCW/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1443337421&sr=8-1&keywords=diffraction+grating&condition=new)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool project. Makes me wonder about the spectrum of an LED light bulb.

<comment><USER3> White LEDs are just blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor, so the spectrum usually has a blue hump, and a red-green hump:

[http://www.soundandvision.com/content/led-vs-cfl-bulbs- color...](http://www.soundandvision.com/content/led-vs-cfl-bulbs-color-temp- light-spectrum-and-more)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks great! I'll try this with my kids soon - I try to do at least one experiment every week...

</comment><comment><USER7> This did for some reason wake a bit of nostalgia in me from the earlier days of the public Internet. I bet it's the spartan design and the lack of anything else other than the to-the-point content. (That said, fascinating content - might try it out!)

<comment><USER8> Just made one this morning after reading the article. Super easy and works like a charm! What fun

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you combine this with a bit of numerical post processing and some calibration with a laser pointer you can get a pretty precise result. We did this in university, it was fun :)</comment>


Why Is China Treating North Carolina Like the Developing World? - <AUTHOR> https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-is-china-treating-north-carolina-like-the-developing-world-w517973 <comment><USER2> Because based on median salaries, unemployment/underemployment statistics, general culture and level of urbanization, NC is much like a developing country.

If NC's economy is similar to Thailand, then Charlotte is Bangkok, Raleigh is Chiang Mai, and Asheville is Chiang Rai. The Outer Banks are like Krabi.

The number of corporations with large offices in NC is almost certainly comparable to Thailand.

By the same model, I'm willing to bet that life in Mississippi or Louisiana is similar to life in Albania.</comment>


'Universal Basic Income Doesn't Work' Says New Prime Example of Fake News - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-doesnt-work-says-new-prime-example-of-fake-news-60ea1983b6c4 <comment><USER2> These are all very common tricks that are often used by even the highest- profile publications. It might not have much to do with anti-UBI sentiment rather than just for-profit/click motivations, but I cannot personally know either way.

Although I do disagree with the author when they suggest that we can easily generalize results across countries, stating:

>As the behavioral economist Dan Ariely replied when asked if what is being learned in GiveDirectly's 12-year UBI experiment in Kenya could be applied to the US, "If you think about the fundamental aspect that you're testing, people are people."

We know there will be fundamental similarities, but countries are vastly different and have vastly different problems, and direct political comparisons are thus rarely fair. For UBI to actually be implemented within a country like the US, you need a lot more than just a small trial in Kenya. Even performing trials in 'more similar' countries like the UK and Canada leaves a lot to be desired.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't like articles like this one, they start claiming a tutorial on how to identify fake news, and it ends up selling us a _personal opinion_ on the opposite opinion they are judging, which at the same time can be judged by the same principles. These principles are highly subjective and the same can be used to disprove reality and authentic facts which we dislike, in addition, it is completely charged by a highly polemic topic; probably as much as communism was on its origins: there were also small communities which saw success in communism and many of these experiments and studies divided academics and experts of the time.

Teaching against fake news disproving someone's opinion while pushing for an opinion of our own between lines is like saying that the evil is in there, and then listen to me, I am the truth.

</comment><comment><USER4> > It is an observable fact that unconditional basic income reduces stress. > This fact is indisputable.

Except that's the reverse is true too.

An increase in tax expenses lead to an increase in stress. And to distribute $1,000 per month, you are gonna have to collect way more than $1,000 per month.

<comment><USER5> > And to distribute $1,000 per month, you are gonna have to collect way more > than $1,000 per month

You might want to check your math there but I'm glad you said it. This is a popular misconception of universal basic income. It's an investment not an expense. People who receive basic income immediately spend it on taxed goods and services provided by businesses who in turn pay taxes on their profits. Businesses in turn use the added profits to expand, consuming more taxable goods and services and creating additional jobs which minimize reliance on public services like universal basic income and allows comsumers to purchase more taxable goods and services. Wash, rinse, repeat. Ultimately it's a net gain for the economy as a whole.

<comment><USER4> The $1,000 per month doesn't come from nowhere. The government has no way to create additional value from thin air. It will have been spent in the economy anyway. And every time governments try to steer the economy in a certain way the overhaul it create far overweight any upsides. So it's negative feedback loop, not a positive one.

<comment><USER6> The advantage of UBI and why it's supported by well-known libertarians, is that it involves less steering than other social programs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are different paths I can choose in journey of web applications? - <AUTHOR>

I have limited experience of backend programming, mainly in java. These days I am exciting to try something which is a complete application in itself. Among plethora options available, I am deciding to go further with web applications.
Now comes the question to Dear HNs, what are the different technologies/path one can take to make web applications. I explored a bit and came to know about different technologies which can be used for this: JS Frameworks like Angular and Node.js (pardon my naivety if they are not really the frameworks), RoR, Go and others.
What are other options and what's your take on them in terms of developer friendliness, documentations, learning curve etc.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> In my view you've named all the relevant options in this space. There is no shortage of frameworks to choose from even within a single language, but the huge variety and ever-increasing number of back-end tools disguises the fact that what web servers do is mostly just querying a database and rendering the output in HTML using some kind of templating system.

Just pick one and go with it. They all do practically the same thing. If you want to become a web development expert, learn one framework at an expert level instead of knowing the "pros and cons" of several.</comment>


Static sites should be the default - <AUTHOR> https://www.mikecr.it/ramblings/static-sites/ <comment><USER2> I agree with the headline but not some of the details.

A ssg doesn't mean /about-us has to map to /about-is/index.html. It just means the content isn't generated dynamically on demand.

There are plenty of other ways to get pretty urls with a static site.

Also, using really basic things like SSI and ESI your content can be static but combined at serving time, meaning a 10k page site doesn't need to rebuild every page every time.</comment>


Ask HN: Write application using simpler parts of Java EE (JSP, Servlets, etc.)? - <AUTHOR> Will I be a laughing stock if I write an application using good 'ol JSP, Beans, and Servlets? Perhaps even throwing a bit of EJB in there? <comment><USER2> No. If you like Java, use Java. There isn't anything more wrong with java than is wrong with other programming languages.</comment>


Show HN: A simple detective game built with web sockets - <AUTHOR> https://detective-stories.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting idea, but the cases are pretty much impossible to investigate.

For example in "Strong Alibi" the story never mentions color at all and the solution requires figuring out the color reported was wrong because the witnesses were both colorblind

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks awesome but I can't get the link to copy to my clipboard ( although it keeps saying "link copied"). I even tried tapping the "link copied" banner and still wouldn't copy.

I'm on iPhone (iOS 12.2) using the Safari app.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you tell me if this is a good way to learn JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> I have been learning html & css in my web development class (soon we will do some js) and have been reading this book on the side: https://github.com/bpesquet/thejsway and also have been planning to follow it with Sacha Greif's study plan: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-study-plan-to-cure-javascript-fatigue-8ad3a54f2eb1<p>I am currently wondering if you all know of any free alternatives to Wes Bo's tutorials on react and es6. Or if you have any other suggestions for learning the language. Does it also make sense to read the book 'the JS way' linked at top of post? Or should i just dive right in with the react tutorials. ( I am interested in front end development & web apps, I might want to dive into nodejs and making apps on electron after) <comment><USER2> I've been working through the tutorials on this: [https://www.turbo360.co/tutorials](https://www.turbo360.co/tutorials). They're pretty easy to follow and almost all project-based which is why I like it.

</comment><comment><USER3> fun fun function on youtube is a great resource - unless MPJ's style drives you nuts</comment>


C64 Memory Map - <AUTHOR> https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1397 <comment><USER2> Ah, this reminds me of my first computer, the Vic 20. I was fascinated by all this. unfortunately I didn't apply myself and learn what all of this meant at that time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please let the BROWSER show the scroll-bars. Now it's fairly unusable.

<comment><USER4>
      div.disassembly_container_no_dec {
          overflow: initial;
      }

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I remember correctly, the system calls where indirect jumps where the address of the jump was in _ram_ (it had been copied from the rom on startup): it was designed to you could hijack system calls and modify their behavior. This blew my mind as a teenager.

I wish modern system where still designed like that...

<comment><USER6> Halfway correctly ;-)

There were a handful of pointers to the routines to use for BASIC execution in RAM starting at address $300, which could be pointed elsewhere for BASIC extenders or to redirect IRQs. Apart from that, most syscall addresses where in ROM.

It allowed disabling parts of the ROM though to access the full RAM. That way you could rewrite the real jump addresses, bypassing the ROM completely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I shd dig through this sometime. I remember the Basic Rom to be 8kb and the whatever it is called IO? Also 8kb. A command takes 2-3 bytes so in less then about 7000 commands it is possible to implement a full operating systen with basic. I still (and more and more so) find this unbelievably efficient.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's no horizontal scrollbar for me on Safari, which kind of makes comparing different takes on each address impossible unless you have four monitors to stretch this across. Or Firefox or Chrome, now that I check it on them. (OSX 10.14.6, Safari 13.1, FF 76.0.1, Chrome 81.0.4044.13)

<comment><USER9> Going in the CSS and removing "overflow: scroll" from "div.disassembly_container_no_dec" makes it scroll horizonally and vertically properly.

<comment><USER10> Whenever I find a site with good information but horrible readability, I turn off the CSS. That often makes it look bland, but it becomes far more readable --- more like a book. Some browsers have a "reader mode" which does a similar thing. Sometimes I may send the author an email about it.

<comment><USER4> What do you use to toggle CSS? Does the same UI work for JS too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> c64-4-eva What a blast from the past. It was always difficult to access the RAM underneath the ROM above 48K. You could but you'd have no system calls available.

<comment><USER11> > You could but you'd have no system calls available.

True, but to be fair though, games developers had little (if any) need for system calls into the kernel, and we'd often make use of that RAM.

Not that I recall exactly what we were using it for, it varied game to game — disclaimer: several published C64 games, but I've not messed with any of this since the early 90s!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's very nicely done, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER13> When I submitted this yesterday the 'Ultimate' at the beginning of the title was also automatically removed. I thought I had made a copy-and-paste error at first. Weird.

<comment><USER14> HN has a long history of de-sensationalizing link titles, both through automated substitutions and manual changes from moderators. Some aspects of this are in the "News Guidelines" at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or > exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in > submitting something that you think it's important.

> If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the > site name will be displayed after the link.

> If you submit a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] > to the title.

> If the title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd > appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To > Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is > meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."

> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or > linkbait; don't editorialize.

I sometimes wish the guidelines were a bit more transparent, e.g. confirming with the submitter that the meaning of the title hasn't been harmed by an overzealous replacement. The edits are clearly a net positive, but they're confusing when they go wrong.

A few months ago @petercooper made an app for tracking live changes to HN headlines, which gives a sense of how frequent they are: [https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/](https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/)

<comment><USER15> If the software changes a title you can always use 'edit' to change the change.

Software changes don't show up in Peter's app of course, since they're done at submission time.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker changes the way people with colour blindness see the world - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/12/18/did-a-hacker-just-cure-colour-blindness/ <comment><USER2> Edit:

tl;dr - color is a 3D space. Colorblind people can only percieve two of these. This device may change the projection of the 3D space on their 2D space, but it will not magically make the third dimension pop out.

\-- original post, a bit less synthetic.

Color is a 3D space (wherever you chose to put the axes, RGB, HSL...) because we have three subtypes of color-related light detectors, called cones, in our retina (there are more photosensitive cells, but they aren't involved in color).

Each cone is sensitive to a range of the visible spectrum, with peak sensitivity respectively in what we call red, green and blue. These ranges are overlapping, though, which allows our brain to interpret monochromatic light correctly by weighting the response of each type of cone.

See [1] for a schema and a more thorough explanation.

Note also that magenta exists as a color (ie unique subjective experience), even though no monochromatic light can evoke it. You get it by stimulating the red and the blue cones, sparring the green one.

All of this to say that with two cones, you're stuck in a 2D space of color blindness.

This tool may help colorblind people to get a different projection of the 3D space in their 2D detection field, but they will not be able to perceive the 3D space at once.

\--

For those who didn't get their dose of photoreceptors trivia:

The retina also contains another type of detectors called rods, which are much more sensitive to light than the cones, and is involved in both day and night vision whereas the cones are only stimulated in daylight This explains why you don't percieve colors in the darkness.

At last, the recently discovered melanopsin containing ganglion cells are involved in the circadian cycle and other light-related acivity in the autonomous nevous system.

\--

[1] <http://www.unm.edu/~toolson/human_cone_response.htm>

<comment><USER3> Except we don't perceive the dimensions of color as comprehensively as we perceive multi-dimensional space. We can intuitively construct straight lines, planes, spheres, cubes and various other geometric primitives. We can't construct those things in color space without a lot of specialized knowledge.

We basically perceive colors as similar or not, as well as a few basic attributes like brightness and saturation. If we're missing a dimension, we just can't differentiate between as many colors as other people. This is why people can go their entire lives without realizing they are colorblind.

So, if you can compress the normal range of colors into the range that can be seen by someone with partial colorblindness, it could potentially make all the difference.

 _Note also that magenta exists as a color (ie unique subjective experience), even though no monochromatic light can evoke it_

I don't think _any_ light can evoke it, right? You would have to artificially stimulate the optic nerve to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The opposite would be really good for designers - augmented reality of what a colour blind person would see. Would be good to check if your design is going to make life difficult for the colour blind.

<comment><USER5> You can upload screenshots to this free service:

<http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckImage.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am looking forward to testing this out.

I wish they would have a colorblind test at the start and adjust the settings for me based on what kind of colorblindness I have.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, and perhaps more importantly, the theory works the other way too. It is possible to simulate color blindness for normal people as well. I know I've seen an application that allowed you to view various things as the various colorblind conditions would see it. It allowed you to check things like button contrast on websites.

Another thing I don't understand is that if you're used to seeing things in a certain color space, and this app "fixes" it, then wouldn't it look strange to you? I mean, I get that it can be useful to discern colors that look the same to you, but it's not like the image will be more "normal" for you right?

</comment><comment><USER8> Great app. I wouldn't recommend using it in a theater, though (the original inspiration).

</comment><comment><USER9> Didn't want to waste my money on this, but judging from the fact that this app doesn't use magic(and screen caps), I can tell you that it doesn't work.

You can separate colors on a spectrum all you want... it doesn't make a bit of difference.

Now... if you had it display the name of the color... great. That would be a huge asset. Not an expensive chore that just confuses me more.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is quite nice, but the real killer version would be when the user has "virtual light" glasses (cf William Gibson, or - more physically - Prof. Steve Mann's "EyeTap" wearable computing ideas).

Then the colour-blind user would receive the benefit as long as they were wearing glasses (contrasted to looking through a phone when they needed to check a colour).

</comment><comment><USER11> As a colorblind person, I'd like to see something similar to Barcode Scanner with a smaller reticle to identify colors (RGB | human equivalent name) the reticle is over.

When I have some time, I plan to do this myself, if nobody else does.

<comment><USER12> Have you tried the Color Identifier app? [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color- identifier/id363346987?...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color- identifier/id363346987?mt=8) Discussed here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1704933>

<comment><USER13> I'm colorblind and have used this. I find it frustrating, because the names are often completely useless. The app's author points this out in the linked thread:

"The whimsical color names made me think that the app would be less useful for the colorblind, as most people don't understand colors like "Cosmic" and "Hippie Green." So I thought the app would be mostly used as a toy; a fun way to see what the "color" of your friend's face is ("Tacao"!)."

<comment><USER14> I've created and released a new app, Color ID Free, that offers simple color names. It's free. iTunes link: <http://bit.ly/dMgKrF>

I can't update the old app because doing so would require dropping support for iPhone OS 3 (which means the app would no longer be available to users of the original iPhone and iPod touch).

What do you think of the new app with simple color names?

<comment><USER13> I (unfortunately) now use Android. I'll get this app as soon as I switch back to iPhone. I'm really excited that you made such a thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Granted Patent for Salving Your Conscience  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1695133/amazon-granted-patent-for-green-shipping-options

<comment><USER2> We'll definitely be using it. Here is the link to the patent:

[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,813,970.PN.&OS=PN/7,813,970&RS=PN/7,813,970)</comment>


Our Universities: The Outrageous Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jul/09/our-universities-outrageous-reality/ <comment><USER2> I find it amazing that someone can write so much about the cost of college, and yet treat tuition bills as if they were handed down on stone tablets at Mt. Sinai, rather than something colleges themselves might have any responsibility for. Colleges have become giant money-sucking machines, similar to Scientology. In fact, they're so similar that I made a handy comparison chart ([http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/06/15/universities-vs- sci...](http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/06/15/universities-vs- scientology/)).

The author here insinuates that the increased cost comes from paying for teaching and research. But this is wrong for at least five reasons:

1\. Research is not a cost center for colleges. It is a profit center. Usually, research is not funded by the college itself; rather, professors get grants from outside agencies, which the college then takes a large, juicy cut of for itself. (Ask any professor.)

2\. At most colleges, the number of faculty members per student has remained stagnant for the last thirty years. The author waves their hands about "new areas of knowledge", but these new areas aren't leading to more hiring.

3\. Wages for tenured faculty have also remained stagnant, adjusted for inflation.

4\. Colleges are rapidly replacing their tenured faculty with adjuncts, who are given heavy courseloads, and paid peanuts even compared to tenured faculty (barely minimum wage, in a lot of cases).

5\. Most of the actual work of research and teaching is done by grad students, of whom there are far more than tenured faculty. Grad students are, again, a profit center rather than a cost center, since the university gets to charge them "tuition" (despite most of them taking few or no classes). This "tuition" is either paid by an outside research agency, or "generously" waived in exchange for the grad student doing teaching and grading, again at very low wages.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to echo drjesusphd and ask if you could point us to any good information you've found on increasing per-student expenditures. My university likes to justify increasing tuition by pointing to a decrease in the proportion of a student's education that is funded by the state. The implication, is that per-student state funding has gone down and that's why tuition is going up, but state funding per student has remained relatively steady in inflation-adjusted terms for decades. It leads one to wonder what exactly they're spending all the extra money on.

I have yet to look into the numbers in greater detail but if you could point me toward some good sources it would be much appreciated.

<comment><USER4> > It leads one to wonder what exactly they're spending all the extra money on.

I just looked up the operating budget for my alma mater (Oregon State University), and if I'm reading it correctly, administrative costs are about 1/3 of the total. Interestingly, the direct instruction and research portion increased 5% since last year whereas the administration portion increased 15%. And looking back 10 years, the the direct instruction and research costs increased 85%, whereas admin costs increased 110%. So the admin : education costs ratio appears to be slowly increasing over time.

<comment><USER5> This is the same as in any organization. The wealth filters to those who run it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if there'd be room for a true alternative to an elite college. I've always felt that the value of such institutions was that it is the premier place to meet and befriend other smart students, not in the facilities or instructors who make up the bulk of the cost.

Imagine: thousands of applicants from around the world vie for a spot in Nollege, a new kind of edtech startup. Admitted students are flown to the "campus", an exotic site, rotating yearly and chosen for its cheap room and board. Instruction that can be automated a la Khan Academy, is; more experienced students also tutor newcomers as needed. Students spend half their time on work-study/internship programs, which cover all costs of attendance. They're encouraged to leave whenever they feel ready, be it one semester or 10; no arbitrary rules about which courses to take. When they do, they emerge with the same bonds of friendship and learned knowledge as their college- attending peers, but are years ahead in working experience and also debt free.

Perhaps this would be most feasible for cs, where the only materials needed are a laptop and WiFi, but I could see it working for English, art, mathematics, and many other disciplines.

<comment><USER7> There are probably more efficient ways to build useful skills and learn material than paying for an elite education. Prestige is much harder to manufacture. YC is 10 years old (i think?) and has managed to do this, impressively.

<comment><USER6> It seems to me that prestige is a combination of fame and selectivity; a school is prestigious if everyone has heard of it, but few get in. A long history is certainly helpful (a ranking of UC schools by age would probably correspond to a ranking by prestige), but I think that a genuinely good product and clever marketing should be able to bridge the gap.

<comment><USER8> _prestige is a combination of fame and selectivity_ I recall a debate on the value of college( Peter Thiel vs some college admins) and Thiel asking his opponent (a university administrator) if Harvard is providing such a great value to the world why are they making it so hard to obtain for people? Good question.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't the answer be the same reason not everyone is accepted into YC, or why Thiel doesn't personally fund everyone under the sun?

<comment><USER10> Nobody is pretending that receiving money from Peter Thiel makes you better at whatever it is you do.

But a lot of people, such as Harvard admissions, do pretend that attending Harvard has such benefits.

In contrast, no one at Harvard is pretending that they couldn't afford to enroll ten times as many students.

Put another way, Thiel fundamentally doesn't fund most people because most people are bad investments. Harvard admissions isn't _claiming_ that it won't admit you because you're a bad investment and would devalue their brand. They're _claiming_ that, if you were admitted, the experience of attending Harvard would increase your personal quality, but they nevertheless won't admit you for undisclosed reasons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>