Free Icon Set for Web Developers: Coded - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/12/23/free-icon-set-for-web-developers-coded/

<comment><USER2> They're nice, but 25 is too small a sample to be used for a consistent theme.

Here are two sets I discovered recently. They are mostly 16x16 and 32x32 in size.

<http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com> Fugue - 3000 icons, CCA license

<http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons> Fatcow hosting - 1400 icons, CCA license

<comment><USER3> Here's another one of my favorites:

<http://glyphish.com/> Glyphish - 200 icons for mobile apps, CCA

<comment><USER4> It's also worth noting here that you can pay $25 to get the set of 200 and another set of 80 in both bitmap and vector formats without the CCA license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They're pretty, but also pretty useless. Besides the bug, cookies, coffee cup, and lock all of them require text in addition to the icon in order to make sense. Even the filetype icons include textual descriptions. They're also too complicated for use in most scenarios (especially the computer icons). Additionally, the package icons won't make sense to anyone who isn't a coder, and possibly not most people who don't have non-Windows experience.

Pretty and shiny, but for real work I'll stick with something like the Tango iconset (or hire out custom designs).

</comment><comment><USER6> Hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I don't think they're very good looking at all

</comment><comment><USER7> "The set may not be resold, sub-licensed or rented." and thus incompatible with all open source licenses.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice set, though I typically find what I need on <http://www.iconfinder.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Can someone provide an example of someone actually using a coffee cup icon?

<comment><USER10> Caffeine (<http://ubuntu-tweak.com/app/caffeine/>), an app that inhibits power saving mode on Ubuntu, uses a coffee cup icon.

<comment><USER11> Not sure which one came first:

[http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/...](http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/caffeine.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are those "free" as in "public domain" respectively "CC-BY(-SA)"? Or are they just "free" as in "freeware, please don't touch"?

<comment><USER13> From the readme.txt:

"You can freely use it for both your private and commercial projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. The set may not be resold, sublicensed or rented. The set may not be offered for free downloading from websites other than SmashingMagazine.com. Please link to the article in which this freebie was released if you want to spread the word."

<comment><USER14> So, free as in beer.

<comment><USER15> Free as in beer that you can only consume at the brewery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure what you would use these for.

Also, why is Python spelled out normally, but RUBY is spelled like an acronym? And where is Perl?

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice, but I prefer my cookie icons to be chocolate chip.</comment>


Aquifer systems extending far offshore on the U.S. Atlantic margin - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44611-7 <comment><USER2> > Our data suggest a continuous submarine aquifer system spans at least 350 km > of the U.S. Atlantic coast and contains about 2800 km3 of low-salinity > groundwater.

That's a lot of water.

<comment><USER3> Not really. The Ogallala aquifer is bigger than that (3,600 km^3), and we've already drawn it down 312 km^3 since 1950.

<comment><USER4> We've only used up a tenth of the Ogallala aquifer in 70 years? That's _far_ better than I thought. (Still not good...)

<comment><USER5> It's worse, effectively, than the raw numbers, though. It's not like the aquifer is a swimming pool that you can pump out entirely from a single low point.

It's water in a porous rock formation. The more we deplete it, the deeper we have to drill wells and the less water comes out of any given well before it goes dry. And it's not like we can recover anywhere near 100% of the water for any amount of effort.

<comment><USER6> This report cites the same 3.6E3 km^3 figure (2.91 billion acre-feet) as the amount of "recoverable water" in the aquifer. Do you know if that accounts for the effects you described?

[https://ne.water.usgs.gov/projects/HPA/index.html](https://ne.water.usgs.gov/projects/HPA/index.html)

edit: from the report

 _Recoverable water in storage is the fraction of water in the aquifer that will drain by gravity and can be withdrawn by wells. The remaining water in the aquifer is held to the aquifer material and generally cannot be withdrawn by wells (Meinzer, 1923)._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It'd be interesting to find out if similar systems exist off shore from Australia, South Africa and India among others where they could exploit this to complement desal plants for household consumption in regions where there is little groundwater but are near the coast.

<comment><USER8> In Africa it could maybe be used to reverse desertification in the Sahara. There have already been ideas touted using desalination plants which are within the bounds of reality. If you can just pump the water then the project begins to look like something not just realistic but also worth while attempting.

<comment><USER9> The cost of desalination (thermal & reverse osmosis) remains quite prohibitive for most nations due to its high capital and operating cost [1]. Unless the world finds a scientific rationale for doing something of that magnitude (E.g. Pour water in the Sahara to slow down world temperature from rising) or a major resource discovery, it would seem counter-intuitive to desertify it on behalf of 2.5m people [2]. That is not even accounting the unintended consequence such as the Saharan desert feeding the Amazon [3], a place considered the lung of the earth. It would likely be more manageable to have that population become climate refugees.

[1] [https://www.advisian.com/en-us/global-perspectives/the- cost-...](https://www.advisian.com/en-us/global-perspectives/the-cost-of- desalination) [2] [https://www.britannica.com/place/Sahara-desert- Africa/People](https://www.britannica.com/place/Sahara-desert-Africa/People) [3] [https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite- reveals-...](https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how- much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants)

<comment><USER10> These "lungs of the Earth" consume almost the entirety of the oxygen they produce directly. The oxygen that they do produce, indirectly, that we are able to consume comes from 'run-off' from the forest floor producing plankton blooms, which produce oxygen and sequester carbon as they fall to the ocean floor. What this would instead do is stop redistributing resources from a water-starved but resource-rich Africa to a water-rich but relatively resource-starved South America. Whether that's a good thing or not seems more like something to leave them to figure out amongst themselves, but I imagine it will be hard for hundreds of millions of Africans to turn down if it was possible to cheaply bring water there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Once in a lifetime discovery.</comment>


Status: Investigating reports of connectivity issues - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/messages/2017-08-21 <comment><USER2> And their status page has an unbalanced parenthesis [0]. I send their support an email about that. (There is also another on the messages page that I did include in the mail).

It's quite a silly thing to complain about, but I imagine other software engineers also get slightly stressed by seeing an unbalanced paren!

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/cypsCvx.png](http://i.imgur.com/cypsCvx.png)

<comment><USER3> I can't help but wonder if your username is a coincidence. :)

<comment><USER2> Who's to tell!:-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Queue obtuse comment about how this is no big deal because git is distributed source control, ignoring the fact that Github != git and that issues/PRs/etc are pretty important.

<comment><USER5> Followed up by the comment that we need to stop this monoculture that we are creating and go back to mailing lists.

Which is then countered by people arguing that GitHub was the greatest thing to happen to open source and has introduced so many more people to the OSS community. Perhaps throwing in that a self hosted solution will most likely have worse uptime than GitHub does (which spawns it's own sub-thread of SaaS vs self-hosted solutions)

Then someone says that a higher barrier to entry could help the ecosystem (while muttering something about how many JS libraries there are out there).

I could keep going, but it seems github is working again for me, so off to do some work!

<comment><USER3> > which spawns it's own sub-thread of SaaS vs self-hosted solutions

Our Github Enterprise instance sure has better uptime than Github itself. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the second major outage of GH this summer. I'm fearing we should all become less dependent on this single service for bug reporting, merging, etc. and instead leverage the decentralized power of Git to host on a variety of platforms. That way if one is out, you just fall back to another.

Does anyone know of libraries that can sync at least the filed issues between GitHub and GitLab or Bitbucket in near real time? That's the main thing from GitHub that I'm truly missing when there's an outage.

<comment><USER7> Is this a major outage? They've been experiencing connectivity issues for ~20 mins. I've been able to connect just fine all the while, as well.

GitHub isn't 'down.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For people using GCP, this could be a viable contingency: Mirroring GitHub in GCP Cloud Source Repository [https://cloud.google.com/source- repositories/docs/connecting...](https://cloud.google.com/source- repositories/docs/connecting-hosted-repositories)

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminder to avoid the github monoculture and move to other git providers as a backup.

Gitlab is open source and has auto-pull from github

<comment><USER10> Gitlab is always mentioned here as an alternative on most every github outage post. I am wondering if there are gitlab shills ready to fire in these events? There are many other git products as well.

<comment><USER11> I'm not paid, but I am a proponent for a federated web.

I'm happy to host unlimited number of repos at my own expense[0] if it means people depending less on centralised hosting and allowing them to migrate away when they feel like it.

[0] [https://git.drk.sc](https://git.drk.sc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure this is related to the eclipse somehow.

</comment><comment><USER13> So how many new installs does GitLab[1] get every time GitHub goes down?

[1]: [https://about.gitlab.com/](https://about.gitlab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Does github report RCAs for outages to the public? I'm wondering if these outages are related to their migration to kubernetes. Either way I'd love to learn what's going on and how they resolve these incidents. There's a lot to learn and I find these things super valuable.

</comment><comment><USER15> Such an outage reminds us all how much we rely on GitHub just working. My 'flow' was suddenly interrupted because I couldn't continue my search for a specific PHP package. Luckily the workday is nearly over in the CET time zone so the impact on my productivity is minimal.

</comment><comment><USER16> It appears to be down only for some regions.

<comment><USER17> Some pages (like the github.com landing and userprofile pages) including user sessions seem to be working from here. But not browsing a repository via http. Dunno if git pull is affected.

<comment><USER18> Not sure if if it's regional but from Switzerland it's been around 1 hour that any kind of connection to github goes in timeout.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's always been working from Poland from what I could tell. Is this possible?

</comment><comment><USER20> I was playing with tails and thought github just didn't allow tor usage. Github's service record is so good that I didn't even stop to consider this might be a technical problem with Github.

<comment><USER21> I have the GitHub status page bookmarked. Take from that what you will.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Teacup, CoffeeScript Templates for Developer Happiness - <AUTHOR> http://bytes.goodeggs.com/post/40042760798/teacup-coffeescript-templates-for-developer-happiness

<comment><USER2> Direct link to github project at <http://goodeggs.github.com/teacup/></comment>


Fuzzing: On the Exponential Cost of Vulnerability Discovery [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://mboehme.github.io/paper/FSE20.EmpiricalLaw.pdf <comment><USER2> Just thought I'd drop a note that the second author (Brandon Falk) streams development of his full OS fuzzing hypervisor in Rust on Twitch, have been watching it some.

[https://twitch.tv/gamozo](https://twitch.tv/gamozo)

<comment><USER3> edit: it looks like his Twitter alias does have an unbanned Twitch account[1] that has posted recently.

As of March 5, 2019 a Twitter user with that name claims to have been banned from Twitch and moved to YouTube.

It looks from a YouTube video, he was live-streaming a RE of a game to cheat (which Twitch and YouTube both may see as ToS violations).

[1] [https://twitch.tv/gamozo](https://twitch.tv/gamozo)

<comment><USER4> Oopsies, yep, I got banned making Maplestory cheats with Ghidra when it came out.

Nevertheless, I got unbanned and I still stream at: [https://www.twitch.tv/gamozo](https://www.twitch.tv/gamozo) I upload all the vods at: [https://www.youtube.com/user/gamozolabs](https://www.youtube.com/user/gamozolabs)

Hope y'all enjoy the content <3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As some might say, there are two ways of building software: Make it simple enough that there are obviously no bugs, or make it so complex that there are no obvious bugs. The latter choice is the most common by far.

<comment><USER6> Such a tired saying. Software that is 'simple enough that there are obviously no bugs' can not have much more functionality than 'Hello world'. Once upon a time when software development was still a young field there was the illusion that software could be written in such a way that every part of the software was easily inspectable for bugs. In this age we should have learned a long time ago that this is in fact not the case for all but the most limited functionality.

<comment><USER7> I'll take a stab and say, despite having not met him, that tony hoare is probably not witless or naive.

In this he was referring to simplicity in implementation, and simplicity in the final product where achievable (AKA don't over-ask).

I've worked with a guy that, given a choice, would pick the most complex and extreme way of doing things. I've also met plenty of manager types who will elaborate a simple functional and useful 90% product into monster with repeated scope creep, and who's going to say no to them?

Another relevant Hoare quote for exactly this:

"There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way — and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay."

KISS, or do you disagree with that too?

<comment><USER6> I completely agree with the KISS principle and do indeed have to note that it is very often not followed. Much of the software out there could be simpler.

But even if it were simpler one would not arrive at the point where the software is so easily understandable that there are obviously no bugs. You may need to implement, say, the rules of chess. This would be simpler if there was no castling and no en passant rules but the programmer does not get to decide the rules of chess and, hence, merely a library for implementing the rules of chess might not be so simple that it can easily be inspected for bugs. It certainly won't be that simple if you also take into account the rules of repeating the same position three times or the fifty move rule. Much of the software that is used in practice has to still do quite a few things more things than are needed for the rules of chess so it has not chance whatsoever to be at the point where all of the bugs are easy to spot.

<comment><USER7> In implementation terms there are simple ways and unnecessarily complex ways of doing things. As per my 1st post.

In product terms there are definitely things that get pushed in that have no value, and that happens when there's too much cash around (hence "It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay"). An actual example, a 'big data' project I was involved in. Loadsa big data software thrown at a pile of hardware. End result, fuck all of worth because it barely ran. A simpler system would have been a single decently configured and provisioned server which would have run so much faster (and cost a tiny fraction of the behemoth we actually built).

I take your point about chess though. I think with a little discussion (time for which I guess neither of us have) we could come to an understanding and quite likely an agreement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HTTP Safety Doesn't Happen by Accident - <AUTHOR> https://robots.thoughtbot.com/http-safety-doesnt-happen-by-accident <comment><USER2> It's too bad we don't have <a href=... method="post">.

The distinction between safe and unsafe is not only useful for things like prefetching or caching but also for csrf. State mutation (whether intentional or accidental) on get requests can totally undermine your site's web security.</comment>


Has America Run Out of Workers to Fill Its Open Jobs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-08/has-america-run-out-of-workers-to-fill-its-open-jobs <comment><USER2> Weren't these kinds of articles published around the time that managers replaced full time employees with H1B consultants from TCS, Infosys, etc in the early 2000s, successfully making their divisions more profitable?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Wages rose 2.5 percent over the past year, which isn't rapid but does > indicate that companies are starting to compete for hard-to-get workers.

So, not really.

</comment><comment><USER4> No, no it hasn't.

</comment><comment><USER5> Has America Run Out of Jobs to Fill Its Open Workers?

</comment><comment><USER6> Have companies ran out of people who can train

<comment><USER7> No, just the odds are more in favor of opening/acquiring a branch off shore and then training those people for a quarter on the dollar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Video that autoplays with sound and no visible mute or stop button--not cool.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Bloomberg link on the previous page suggests that we have hit peak human...

</comment><comment><USER10> I thought we were all being replaced by robots..

</comment><comment><USER11> Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."</comment>


The Two-Hour Rule - <AUTHOR> http://www.kenrockwell.com/business/two-hour-rule.htm <comment><USER2> I think this article is sort of a work ethic litmus test. I'm actually considering having some contractors and business partners read it, just to see what their reactions are.

I realized the first time I ever read it that the article was a little tongue- in-cheek, but I still hated it. I could imagine the hordes of people reading it and rallying behind a "two-hour rule" banner, as if it in some way legitimized their poor work ethic.

I liked it a little better this time. If you read it and feel a little disgusted, then the chances are good that you probably aren't a bottom feeder.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm surprised to see so many negative comments. It's not about neglecting your duties or pawning your work onto someone else. It's about doing your job quickly and efficiently. My personal opinion is many jobs should not be structured as hourly full time positions but should instead be based off your actual value and efficiently. So if you can get the work done in 10 hours a week that should be it. You get paid 4x as much per hour. Many companies are starting to move towards independent contractors who are paid on a more realistic and honest scale and compete against each other on value & efficiency. I think it's a good thing. Of course it does not apply to all office jobs and probably not even the majority of jobs. It tends to be more common with engineers.

<comment><USER4> Ah yes, I've had that dream too. Unfortunately, the 8-hour, structured workday is in place because it works well for average people. It would be hard to find a workplace where you can say to your boss "I got my work done for the day by 11:30. I'm gonna take the rest of the day off."

Actually, I did know one guy who worked at a place like this in Australia. He completed his project for the week by Tuesday and when he asked his boss for more work, his boss just told him to take the rest of the week off.

Unfortunately, almost every other place requires you to still sit in your seat for the remaining time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never really had an office job, and I am having a very hard time believing this. Can I get a corroborating account or two?

<comment><USER6> I'll just chip in an "aye" and leave it at that.

<comment><USER7> With government contractors, gov employees, and union workers, they actively avoid helping anyone out if it is outside their specialty, even if they are severely under tasked. In fact, they will actively try to avoid doing their own jobs. I've seen it happen too many times. I've heard worse than I've seen from people I trust.

The disgusting part is this is accepted as normal behavior. There's rarely punishment because these people earn their employer serious money. Contractors tend to be paid 1/2 - 1/4 of the money they actually bring in. For gov't contractors, there go your tax dollars.

People complain about government workers being lazy. No, they are just as lazy as most regular Americans[1].

[1] I have no idea if this applies to other countries, but human nature tells me it probably is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love Ken Rockwell - helped me decide on which camera to buy. And I love this article - "When I had a job, a day of vacation was like finding a pot of gold. Today, a day off costs me a day's pay. Always."

One odd bit: "42? What's with 42? Simple: at this contractor, we billed time in tenths of hours. 42 minutes is 0.7 hours." What?

<comment><USER9> The union wanted to move up go-home time, and compromised on lunch time alotted. So instead of working 8-12 then 1-5 with a 1-hour lunch, the schedule changed to 8-12 then 12:42-4:42.

That doesn't explain why :42 instead of :40 or :45. Hence the mention of 10ths of hours. That makes the choices :36, :42, :48, etc., and I guess ya gotta pick one.

(That's my best guess, anyway.)

<comment><USER10> The meaning of life?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've gone through periods of life where this was true. There were reasons - truly bad boss, problems in my personal life, etc - but eventually I realized that slacking off had started to become the primary cause of my depression.

So I did what I had to do to actually start getting things done at work. (In my case, I did an end-run around the truly awful boss who was going through a nasty divorce and taking it out on me.) And it didn't take long before I stopped hating life and myself. And I left that job with my head held high. (Because once I was useful, why have a truly awful boss?)

I can't say that I go full steam every hour of the day, but I like to go home at the end of every day knowing I accomplished something real and useful. There are days where the answer is no, but they're the exception. And since I started actually working, I've gotten good, my salary has gone up, and I'm much happier. And I just recently got a great job offer in the middle of a recession!

So, believe in the two-hour rule at your own peril. There's a sweet spot between this, and married to your job. (Workaholics really are a drain on morale too, but that's a different post.)

</comment><comment><USER12> So Ken Rockwell was essentially stealing tax dollars. I am sure that happened and still happens a lot. It has nothing to do with the supposed lazyness of the american worker or anything like that -- it has to do with the idiotic cost plus basis the government uses for military projects. This means that the higher the cost the higher the profit. The more hours billed the higher the profit. SO his managers make sure they overlook his slacking as long as there is government money coming in and he keeps sending those timeslips in.

If cost plus accounting is removed and the military actually did projects based on competitive bidding and if the government made them stick to those bids, then you would see that most of the companies Ken worked for would not allow that type of slacking.

So yeah it sure it happens a lot, but at least you'd expect most people to feel slightly guilty about it. Ken, on the other hand, feels proud.

BTW I have some friends that are engineers in the defense industry and most of them work pretty hard, so i am not sure his rule applies for most of the defense industry even.

</comment><comment><USER13> IIRC there was a study done along these lines a couple of years ago. The actual number was 90 minutes. Among the chair-moistening set, actual productivity per week boiled down to 5 * 90 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's what I've gleaned from this article:

> _If you don't own the business, there isn't much to gain by putting yourself > out as hard as if it were your own._

Be selfish.

>My dad never fell for this. He completed all his real and personal work on time, and always left around 4:30 PM as everyone else did (while charging until 4:42PM) so he was always home for us at about 5PM every night.*

Charge for work you don't do.

> _Because of this, you need to play it cool. It's always good idea to look > busy. Whenever I was working on important personal projects at work, I > always had a back story prepared about how that work was critical to my real > job in case I got busted. I never did; bosses rarely get out and walk > around._

Lie.

> _Another tactic is, presuming your work has more than one precise location > where you might be working, is to make it look as if you're at the other > place working. For instance, those of us who design and build Weapons of > Mass Destruction (WMDs), have a desk in an office, as well as laboratories, > machine shops and test ranges. If I'm not sitting at my desk, people then > look for me down in the lab. If you make each location look as if you're in > that day, but probably at the other location, you can go home for a few > hours at a time. For instance, if you leave a half-full drink and your > jacket at your desk, people will presume you're down in the lab._

Deceive.

Joke or not, this article revolted me. Regardless of the pay, the constant lying and slacking just screws the "clever" two-hour worker. After a decade or two of that, they may not be _capable_ of actual productivity. I just may not be cut out for work in America... at least not the one this guy is living in.

</comment><comment><USER15> I suddenly feel so productive...

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm usually most productive when I am about to leave the office. It's kind of strange and annoying at times.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is one of these "truths" that make you smile, but are actually not worth writing and reading. Sure, lots of people waste time unproductively in and out of offices, but these people are b.o.r.i.n.g. I much rather read about the few that actually accomplish a lot.

</comment><comment><USER18> I read this while at work on an entirely meritless conference call. I would get far greater satisfaction from additional hours of what I consider to be actual work. [not regular account]

</comment><comment><USER19> I think that thinking of this as satire is a defense mechanism. Because the turth of what the government does with our money is horrific.

</comment><comment><USER20> >If you don't own the business, there isn't much to gain by putting yourself out as hard as if it were your own.

The corollary to this is, of course, why one might want to found a startup.

</comment><comment><USER21> I work almost all of the time I'm at work, and I certainly am not most productive in those hours. I'm most productive from like 8-10 and then from 2-3.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's semi-satire, but a lot of it rings true, based on my experience working in several big corporate office/cubicle types of jobs. In that environment, people who work smart/fast generally are not rewarded proportionately to their merit. Whereas if you go freelance/contract or start your own business it does become more about effectiveness, efficiency and working "smarter, not harder". What you do, not where you do it. What you achieved, not how many hours you clocked. Social networking and relationships are still important, but it's more horizontal and collaborative rather than vertical up/down and master/slave. Also when working in the corp/office/cubicle/9-to-6 sort of job a fairly narrow slice of your talent is used, whereas it's more broad and I think satisfying and challenging intellectually if you're self-employed or freelance. Again, just a generalization based on experience in both worlds, and there are exceptions.</comment>


Waymo leads autonomous race with lowest human driver takeover rate - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2018/01/31/waymo-in-lead-in-autonomous-race/ <comment><AUTHOR> In the article is a link to a Twitter post by Amir Efrati who compiled a quick tally:

[https://twitter.com/amir/status/958826166286102528/photo/1](https://twitter.com/amir/status/958826166286102528/photo/1)

<comment><USER2> Here's the California DMV site, with pdf links to disengagement reports for every company registered to test in California:

[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2017)</comment></comment>


Chrome and Firefox 3.5 Memory Usage - <AUTHOR> http://dotnetperls.com/chrome-memory

<comment><USER2> _During the experiment, 384 memory checkpoints were taken, which amounts to 1152 seconds or 19.2 minutes._

My problem with Firefox has always been with having the browser open for a long time (days) and running multiple tabs, including having an open Gmail window constantly.

By that point, Firefox is always sluggish and painful. Closing the browser the natural is a waste of time because it takes so long for the memory to free up, and killing the process altogether is the only thing that does anything to buy me some clock cycles.

I'd like to see the results of a long-term test of that nature.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Closing firefox through file->quit takes at least 30 seconds for me, during which I can hear the laptop's fan spinning up.

Usually I just kill -9 it because I don't have the patience to wait.

Firefox 3.0.11, on a dual-core low-voltage laptop with 1 gig of ram. It's fast enough to run everything I care about but firefox.

<comment><USER4> C/C++ programs that manually memory free at exit are doing it wrong.

They ought to (1) write everything to disk they need to save (2) fsync (3) send themselves a SIGKILL. The OS will tidy up the memory.

<comment><USER3> SIGKILL? Uh, you know there is a little function called exit() that exits the program.

Other than that, yes, I agree with you, but I suspect what's actually taking all the time is paging back in the data that it wants to write to disk when it syncs, and not necessarily freeing the memory.

<comment><USER4> SIGKILL because it gives finalizers and at-exit handlers no chance to run. The building has been emptied: knock it down, don't waste time picking it apart brick by brick.

I doubt that paging all the stuff it wants to write is the reason. If that were the case, killing it during the grind would corrupt its save files, and the time duration of the grind would be proportional to what needs saving (just a few files of fairly constant size) versus proportional to how much memory it's hogging.

I think it's paging all right - it's paging back in every fiddling little object to call its finalizer.

<comment><USER3> Ah, right. I wasn't thinking of C++ destructors, since I usually program in C these days. In that case, you're probably right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Private bytes or address space? Shared readonly counted twice?

I happily suffer Chrome's stupid tab design and lack of Flash (on Ubuntu) for much better end-to-end performance, whether it takes up more memory or not.

<comment><USER6> Why don't you like Chrome's tab design? I was a little off-put when I first saw it, but it makes sense for tabs to live at the top edge of the screen from a Fitt's Law perspective: when you move your mouse upwards to interact with the browser, it's to deal with tabs (so they deserve the larger target). When you want to hit the address bar, you hit ctrl+t to get a new tab in which it's already selected.

<comment><USER5> Tabs have always seemed like a horrible misfeature to me. The OS already provides a taskbar, so now you've created N*M places to look. Not only that but you can't see all the tabs at the same time once there's multiple windows, so you have to pick a window, check all of its tabs, move to the next and repeat. The "it's like MDI/documents/text editors" argument is bogus because the window that contains gmail has nothing to do with the window that contains HN, or reader.google, or whatever. It's like all the programs written in C++ get their own taskbar, separate from the ones written in VB, separate from the ones written in JS. Except we only separate the JS ones for some reason.

For Chrome specifically:

1) it lacks the option "New pages should open in [X] a new window [ ] a new tab" compared to Firefox, which makes tabs ignorable.

2) On Windows, I'd much rather they follow the OS conventions for MDI rather than make up their own "cool"/"clever" one (see media/audio players, for some random reason). All of a sudden, for example, you can't double-click in the top left to close. Well, way to be clever, but that's crap.

<comment><USER7> The lack of top-left corner double-click drove me nuuuuts. Until I found out that you could middle-click to close tabs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is the huge memory use from Chrome just because it opens separate processes for each tab? If so, can't some of that memory actually be shared by the OS even though it shows up as duplicated (like what happens if you do vfork?)

<comment><USER9> Nope - the huge memory usage for Chrome is because this analysis is complete rubbish - it's double counting all the shared memory for each process, as you suggested.

<comment><USER10> He is using Process.PrivateMemorySize64 in .NET. It doesn't double-count, because it only counts non-shared pages.

Non-shared working set pages are probably the most relevant measure, as a process-per-tab model will have lots of address space and may use memory mapping extensively, and so have lots of non-shared pages, but not actually touch many of those pages, and end up with a relatively small working set. However, .NET's Process class doesn't have an equivalent property to Process Explorer's "WS Private" column.

EDIT: Sure enough, a quick eyeball of some Chrome subprocesses using Process Explorer gives me these results:

        Private        WS Private
           1416               460
          14916              7952
          12084              9780
          16780             13972
          16164             11336
          14812             12040
          10284              4444
          19140             15400

All numbers in KB. Non-shared working set impact on an unloaded machine, probably the most important measure for Windows, is usually quite a bit less than the private bytes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just to note - this is done on Vista, which means that the browser stats may look very different on a different OS.

<comment><USER12> I don't know if this is relevant or not, but Safari uses OSX's ported libraries as DLLs. If the memory size of those DLLs is being used, it would show up as less memory usage on an OSX machine due to those libraries being a shared part of the main OS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Chromium dev list discusses these results: [http://groups.google.com/group/chromium- dev/browse_thread/th...](http://groups.google.com/group/chromium- dev/browse_thread/thread/f97adb063b97a81)

TLDR: Vista's default memory readout is actually pretty good for simply adding together like this and getting reasonable numbers WRT shared libs. Chrome really does use tons more memory than FF 3.5 with simple pages in many tabs. Chrome devs chose stability, security and foreground tab prioritization over lower mem use on purpose. They don't think this test much reflects what people actually do with their browsers.

</comment><comment><USER14> 4 GB of memory can be had for $50.

When I use a computer I usually use: browser + music, OR browser + emacs.

I want my browser to be fast and responsive, and the memory isn't being used for anything else.

<comment><USER15> I also want my browser to be fast and responsive, but the current trend goes in the other direction. How on Earth can you occupy GBs of memory? How much time does it even take to download a gigabyte of data?

<comment><USER16> Of course, it's not the actual downloaded text that takes up all that memory. It's not like programs take up gobs of memory because the programmers were being lazy and disdainful.

No, it's the internal representation of the markup, and the program state of all of the javascript programs a page might incorporate, that takes up a lot of memory.

<comment><USER15> That is obvious. What is less obvious is how much memory you can waste for the internal representation. I would expect that the memory footprint of a well- designed browser should be dominated roughly by the download size (w/out taking into account the javascript code, which could keep a lot of state around).

<comment><USER16> > should be dominated roughly by the download size

Well, judging by the graphs in the linked article this is clearly something that every browser vendor experiences. I imagine that the trade off in speedy page rendering is having a lot of memory intensive data structures.

It's prolly more complicated than we give them credit for.

I've never liked the griping about memory use - if you're not swapping out to disk then you're perfectly fine. I'm much more concerned with having firefox occupying a whole core if I leave it unattended with too many js intensive tabs open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what about firefox + firebug compared to chrome?

<comment><USER18> You mean compared to Chrome + Firebug Lite? <http://getfirebug.com/lite.html>

<comment><USER17> oh cool hadn't heard of that !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ok, but how to interpret the results? If the memory is not used, it is a problem that Chrome takes up so much of it?

<comment><USER3> The problem is that the memory is used by other programs when I want to start them up.

Don't get me wrong, caches are great. However, it's one thing for the OS to cache stuff, because it can easily drop caches when memory pressure rises. Userspace software in current systems have no good way of knowing the memory pressure, and no good way of responding to it by dropping caches to free up memory. (yes, an API for "this memory is a droppable-at-any-time cache" would be nice in OSes, but it doesn't exist at the moment, and getting one that's easy to use would be hard).

More or less, that means that software that uses more memory in userspace causes swapping and lame performance. And honestly, there is no good reason for a browser to easily be the most resource intensive program on my system. Even games tend to be far lighter than browsers.

<comment><USER20> _an API for "this memory is a droppable-at-any-time cache" would be nice in OSes, but it doesn't exist at the moment_

Naive question: would this be any better than letting applications provide swapping hints to the OS? And is that any better than just letting the OS swap based on usage?

<comment><USER3> Yes, to a certain degree. The problem is that it would be cheaper to, say, drop a decoded version of a JPEG and re-decode it, instead of having it get swapped out. In fact, I suspect that for large images, it would be cheaper to re-read the compressed jpeg and decompress it than to read back a larger swapped out decompressed version, just because hitting the disk is slow, and swap tends to get fragmented because it's usually written a few pages at a time.

Swap hints probably aren't really worth the effort, although I haven't benchmarked it.

The idea behind caches is to avoid doing expensive operations repeatedly, and hitting swap is about as expensive as an operation can get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You really can't compare a beta or Release Candidate with final versions of other browsers that most definitely will put your numbers off.

<comment><USER15> Do you have any strong data stating that the final release of some software is in general more memory friendly as opposed to the beta version? I don't have data for the counterpoint either, but I'm willing to bet the developers have other priorities (i.e. bug fixes as opposed to optimization). Once you've maldesigned your software w.r.t. performance, you can't do much except to wait for hardware to catch up.

<comment><USER21> Beta versions of software include debug information. This is pretty much a standard practice, even I do it. It helps me understand where things went wrong and how it could be improved. When you do the final version you generally get rid of the debug information which more often than not will reduce memory consumption. This is different from optimization.

<comment><USER15> I doubt the beta comes with debug information (not your beta, theirs). I don't use Windows -- it should be easily checkable by someone who does.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GLMW – WebAssembly Powered Matrix and Vector Library - <AUTHOR> https://maierfelix.github.io/glmw/ <comment><USER2> Amazing! I'm one of the main contributors to the Three.JS math library and I am always looking for speed improvements.

Can you help me understand the benchmarks because there is some weirdness in them. Usually I can make sense of JS benchmarks, either it is memory allocations, deoptimization, function overhead, implicit conversions, etc.

Specifically these results:

[https://maierfelix.github.io/glmw/mat4/](https://maierfelix.github.io/glmw/mat4/)

      mat4.create:
      GLM: 0.3000000142492354ms
      GLMW: 0.2999999560415745ms

      mat4.copy:
      GLM: 4.399999976158142ms
      GLMW: 0.5000000237487257ms

      mat4.set:
      GLM: 6.999999983236194ms
      GLMW: 6.800000031944364ms

      mat4.identity:
      GLM: 2.800000016577542ms
      GLMW: 0.4000000189989805ms

Each of the above operations appears to be a series of 16 assignments in order, and some of the above have an additional allocation first.

These options sometimes it takes the same amount of time in JS and WA and sometimes WA is way faster. Any idea as to why?

The one that is weirdest above is that mat4.create is faster than mat4.identity, but mat4.create does more, specifically an allocation? I am struggling to make a mental model of why that is?

Also why is perspective so slow in WA:

      mat4.perspective:
      GLM: 4.799999995157123ms
      GLMW: 4.499999980907887ms

It is a tiny bit of math, with a tan and then 16 assignments. Is tan that slow?

I sort of think there is something wrong with the benchmarking.

<comment><USER2> I see that you used a custom benchmarking library. I think that is the problem and why I can not make sense of the results. I suggest [https://benchmarkjs.com/](https://benchmarkjs.com/) It is what we use for Three.JS benchmarking.

<comment><USER3> Im just thinking of ways to patch this in to THREE.Matrix4 :) Do you think that would speed things up significantly? Like I have large many-bones skeletons that can take time to animate.

<comment><USER2> Until I see reliable benchmarks and understand why Matrix4 is slow I do not know.

I think that the speed difference may be mostly related to avoiding allocations as in WA it is mostly just views rather than new ArrayBuffers if I am not mistaken.

I thought everything else should be fast. But I need to see the benchmarks accurately to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry if I'm piggybacking this thread my comment might be too off topic. This seems interesting, although it's probably too low level for my current needs (I don't have a background in linear algebra and numerical computing). I need to rewrite some Fortran code into JavaScript for a school project (a neural network) and I need to do operations in the BLAS subroutines. I think I'm going to end up using SciJS [1]. It seems promising at least feature wise, but if anyone has any further suggestions/recommendations I'd like to look into it.

[1]: [http://scijs.net/packages/](http://scijs.net/packages/)</comment>


Ask HN: What have you noticed people spending money on? - <AUTHOR> EXCLUDING common supermarket stuff.
I've noticed people buy board games.
Also books. <comment><USER2> Alcohol (tonic as well, i'm in the UK though)

:) I just posted a link showing search topic trends entitled "elderberry, ETFs, Zerohedge, Zoom" People also searched for aloe vera, Microsoft teams etc. [https://explodingtopics.com/topics-this- month](https://explodingtopics.com/topics-this-month)</comment>


How I bought Spindle.com - an alternative domain acquisition strategy - <AUTHOR> http://venturefizz.com/blog/how-i-bought-spindlecom-alternative-domain-acquisition-strategy#.Ume1Ry8mOYI.hackernews <comment><USER2> It's rare now a days to find a decent .com domain. A few years ago I was lucky to get [myname].com. The guy before didn't renew in time and I snatched it up.</comment>


NVIDIA drivers responsibile for 30% of Windows crashes - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/

<comment><USER2> I actually just installed Ubuntu Linux on my laptop because Vista crashed alot of the time when security mode kicked in. My machine would hang for atleast a couple of minutes, then BSOD. It was always because of nvidia drivers, but i had installed the latest, and the Vista error help program said there was no solution :)

I'd always wanted to try Ubuntu, but didn't want to invest the time in setting it up, as I don't want to do anything not related to my start-up. The crashes finally made it related, and i couldn't be happier.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about Linux crashes?

No one can do surveys like that for Linux though, since there is no central authority. Oh well, I suppose we'll have to live without useless statistics. :(

<comment><USER4> In my experience, proper crashes (although very rare except when badly configured) in Linux are frequently graphics driver problems as well, although I think here ATI/AMD win with their terrible fglrx drivers. Both ATI's and nVidia's drivers cause way more problems in 3D mode than 2D, which might explain the quantity of Vista crashes: Aero Glass uses 3D acceleration.

Generally, I suspect badly written drivers or drivers for two components that step on each others' toes are probably the main cause for OS crashes on any OS.

One quibble I have with Linux itself is how it handles out-of-control processes that keep allocating memory. The X session crawls to a halt while the kernel swaps like crazy and you don't get a chance to kill -9 the process. ssh or console logins fail because they time out before you get the password prompt. Linux proceeds to kill off processes one by one, but keeps the amok process alive and tries to satisfy its insatiable hunger for memory... Ok, so it happens to me maybe 1-2 times a year, but when it does, it REALLY pisses me off. Especially as the amok process is usually caused by a bug in my code. :) I think the Flash plugin also had a bug like that a couple years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's ambiguous to say "30% of Windows crashes", since the article reports that it's 30% of Windows _Vista_ crashes.

And not to be glib, but if your Vista is crashing, I'd be more inclined to blame a shoddily made OS than graphics drivers. After all, there is something to be said for the fact that the OS is built such that a bad driver can crash it.

Also of note is that the article doesn't say how MS determined that the crashes were nVidia's "fault". If I create an OS that crashes whenever any program writes my competitor's logo to the display buffer, can I blame my competitor's website for "crashing my OS"?

<comment><USER4> I'd be very interested in seeing how you'd write a graphics driver that doesn't at least have some kernel mode portion. PCIe/AGP memory accesses need to be in terms of physical memory addresses, as mainstream PCs don't have hardware IOMMUs.

<comment><USER5> I'll be the first to admit that the extent of my knowledge of graphics cards and drivers doesn't extend much past how to install them. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that on the dual-boot systems I've used (mostly machines designed for cross-platform testing) Linux and previous versions of Windows (notably XP in its SP 1 iteration), seem WAY more forgiving than Vista and don't crash or recover gracefully in situations where Vista bombs.

Admittedly, this is based on personal anecdotes and, as the saying goes, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

<comment><USER4> Well, my theory is that the problems are caused by the fact that Vista uses 3D acceleration for its Aero Glass UI. Graphics drivers almost never crash in 2D mode in my experience, on both WinXP and Linux. 3D mode tends to be much less robust. Having programmed 3D graphics hardware on the "down to the metal" level in game consoles, I'm not that surprised. GPUs hare hugely complex and tend to have a significant amount of hardware bugs or quirks that can make the developer's life really hard.

By the way, I don't use Vista on any of my systems (yet) so I'm just assuming that the reports of instability are accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is anyone else surprised it's that low?</comment>


How to Read Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://aredridel.dinhe.net/2015/03/29/how-to-read-source-code/

<comment><USER2> Great pointers and this helps to solidify many of the inutitive things I have been developing for a while. I work primarily with static code analysis so reading source code is really the primary task in my skill set. I was astonished to realize that there are developers who do not read source code. Spending the vast majority of my time reading code and only a small fraction ever coding (non-dev stuff some scripts and tutorials) has given me this intuitive idea of how programs work. While not coining any of these things and organizing them like you have it is great to use this to further develop what I have been relying on experience to explain. Thanks.</comment>


How Much Should You Allocate For Your Small Business Marketing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sourcepep.com/how-much-should-you-allocate-for-your-small-business-marketing/ The first half of this infographic deals with the current state of marketing budget allocation. This will help you understand how your peers are dealing with this issue and where you can leverage this info for your own benefit. The second half informs with how this budget should be allocated strategically. <comment><USER2> Quit posting your blogspam to HN.</comment>


Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-before-trees-overtook-the-land-earth-was-covered-by-giant-mushrooms-13709647/ <comment><USER2> When I read the title, I immediately thought of Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864). The flora are described as consisting of "...surrounded by a rocky coastline covered in petrified trees and giant mushrooms".

<comment><USER3> The obscure Japanese horror: "Mantango" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matango](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matango)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This links to a wikipedia page [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites)

So they don't look like toadstools. (sorry)

I'm confused about how these fit in the ecosystem though. Are these still just the fruiting bodies? Are they permanent?

<comment><USER5> It doesn't sound very plausible to grow such sturdy and tall structure only for a fruiting body, so you can drop your spores from a bit higher. But a tree-like structure feels plausible, it they were in symbiosis with algae (which would make them lichens, technically) and they did photosynthesis.

<comment><USER6> I was wondering something similar. Why does fungus want to be tall? Trees are tall so they can reach the sunlight, allowing them to overshadow and kill plants that would grow under the trees if it wasn't so dark there. But fungus doesn't need light.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps as a means of distributing spores? The higher up the spores are released the further they will spread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Makes me think about that Tintin cover: [https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/711FqYcc7eL...](https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/711FqYcc7eL._SY550_.jpg)

<comment><USER9> Or many places from Morrowind: [https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/d/d3...](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/elderscrolls/images/d/d3/Sadrith_Mora_ESO_Promo_Screenshot_%282%29.png/revision/latest?cb=20170201235857)

<comment><USER10> Or millions of planets from No Man's Sky.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like a mushroom bias in their prodecural algorithm.

<comment><USER12> _The universe_ is biased in favor of mushrooms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The (EXCELLENT) PBS channel Eons has video on this too. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G64DagHuOg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G64DagHuOg)

<comment><USER14> PBS has many very good YouTube channels. I particularly like Space Time (physics) and Infinite Series (math).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Off-topic / website format: it's disheartening to see that even an institution like the Smithsonian must serve so much crud to deliver us what is essentially 14 sentences + 2 quotations worth of material...

<comment><USER11> Dollars and cents my man. I really only see this getting worse with IoT devices and more and more tracking. When they finally figured out a reliable way for direct brain to computer interface the human race may be in a dark place indeed.

<comment><USER16> Dream commercials like in Futurama could be a real possibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Re-post. Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6669659)

</comment><comment><USER18> The question is how large the organisms must have been under ground: [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest- organism...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141114-the-biggest-organism-in- the-world)

</comment><comment><USER19> This TED talk was very interesting about some fungi facts.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY)

On a side note, I thought this was an interesting take on Bitcoin in relation to fungi.

[https://medium.com/@BrandonQuittem/bitcoin-is-a- decentralize...](https://medium.com/@BrandonQuittem/bitcoin-is-a- decentralized-organism-mycelium-part-1-3-6ec58cdcfaa6)

</comment><comment><USER20> A landscape populated with fungus-like spires of 6-8 meters tall. Amazing.

Makes me think of Omnivore (Of Man and Manta, #1) by Piers Anthony. A planet full of fungus, with fungoid animals.

<comment><USER21> What were the animals like?

[http://www.earthexplodes.com/comics/070/](http://www.earthexplodes.com/comics/070/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The atmospheric CO2 levels were considerably higher back then.

[https://phys.org/news/2011-04-araucarias-gauge-ancient- carbo...](https://phys.org/news/2011-04-araucarias-gauge-ancient-carbon- dioxide.html)

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171127152109.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171127152109.htm)

<comment><USER23> Odd that so many forms of life were a bit larger in the distant past. I gather physicists are sure that gravitational G is a constant (as opposed to a variable). I wish I'd studied more physics so I could evaluate how silly an explanation that would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Like the famous anime movie "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds"...?

</comment><comment><USER25> The title should include "(2013)".

Edit: Maybe change this to [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/16/strangest- th...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/16/strangest-things- fossils-reveal-how-fungus-shaped-life-on-earth)

<comment> shaki-dora Or (350,000,000 BC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a side note, this came to mind when I opened the link. A sad state really..

[https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/9pmqxb/typical_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/9pmqxb/typical_website_in_2018/)

<comment><USER27> Mobile reddit brings my phone's browser to its knees. It takes ages to load, is unresponsive, and it also takes an extra 10 seconds to click the 8px font that dismisses their mobile app advertisment.

I can only assume that mobile app was the best solution they could come up with after they realized they made a horrible mobile site.

<comment><USER28> No, their mobile site was fine UNTIL they made a mobile app. Just like old reddit used to be, it was lightweight and responsive.

Once they released a mobile app to compete with the great mobile app offerings that already existed, they crippled the mobile site with all those ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The one time I wish there was an artist's rendering...

<comment><USER30> Same here --- i manically scrolled looking for a mushroom-covered earth...but alas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Paging Terrence McKenna... :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Completely unsupported thought:

Could the ancient mushrooms and some of the theories about how mushrooms were the reason we became conscious be linked?

[https://mic.com/articles/14276/magic-mushrooms-how-they- play...](https://mic.com/articles/14276/magic-mushrooms-how-they-played-a- crucial-role-in-the-evolution-of-human-consciousness)

<comment><USER33> I'm always _very_ skeptical of people who make these kind of claims about psychedelics. One of the effects of psychedelic drugs is that they make people see things as significant or important even where there is nothing significant to be found (in the same way that drugs like MDMA increase mood, even when none of the normal mood-increasing things are present in the environment).

This is fine, and can be useful so long as you keep it in mind. But also leads to some users of psychedelics who believe in all sorts of crackpot theories that they think they have discovered through something that seems akin to divine revelation, and are so utterly convinced of their truth that it goes beyond all reason.

<comment><USER34> "users of psychedelics who believe in all sorts of crackpot theories that they think they have discovered through something that seems akin to divine revelation"

You're aware that psychedelics have been used extensively for millennia by many cultures in religious ceremonies, right?

<comment><USER35> If anything, that supports GP's point.

<comment><USER34> What was his point? That he's an atheist? It seems like it inappropriate place to debate that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One of my favorite science blogs had a short write-up on this five years ago, it's a fun read:

[http://www.maryanningsrevenge.com/2013/12/awesome-dead- shit-...](http://www.maryanningsrevenge.com/2013/12/awesome-dead-shit- prototaxites.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> TL;DR: we found these things years ago, one group says they're mushrooms, the other group says they're something else. The first group just published something saying they are so, neener.

</comment><comment><USER38> Petrified ancestors of Lenin

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

</comment><comment><USER39> Came across this after the Paul Stamets episode on JRE :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Stupid ads and notifications prevent me to read this article.</comment>


What a job description should look like - <AUTHOR> http://www.adku.com/jobs

<comment><USER2> If I were a programmer, I'd just send resumes to the range of answers to "{number of unique paths}" rather than solving it.

<comment><USER2> And if I were Adku, I'd setup email accounts for the same range and reject anyone who tried that.

<comment><AUTHOR> The range is actually pretty big. You'd have to send out thousands of emails which may be a task in itself to get by the spam filters.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I love Snapchat - <AUTHOR> http://justinkan.com/why-i-love-snapchat <comment><USER2> I don't know what to say. I think OP did a good job of explaining what makes Snapchat so great, but their initial confusion and the confusion from the commenters within this thread boggles me. Recently I was in a room with a well-known VC who wouldn't believe a college student who said that they enjoy using Snapchat, as if they couldn't comprehend how anyone would like it.

Virtually all the comments are about how Snapchat confuses them and that there must be something seriously wrong with it. And yet the app is immensely popular. If you're one of those people, then Snapchat is not really made for you.

You might be able to understand why Snapchat is a beloved app by reading a report about what the millennials are up to these days but I encourage anyone dealing with this confusion to make an effort to talk to people outside of your normal social circles once in a while. This kind of empathy with others will make you much more effective when you're creating for people who are not like you.

<comment><USER3> At a base level, I'm not sure why you'd do something to have it disappear. Why would I write anything or record a short video that would self destruct?! It seems like it's for meaningless stuff. If you follow that logic far enough that means the whole thing is meaningless.

<comment><USER4> Every real interaction you have in your life immediately disappears. Snapchat is like actually talking with somebody.

<comment><USER5> But why should interaction disappear if it doesn't have to? Snapchat is no more like talking with someone than Facebook Messenger is, with the exception that you get to keep your interaction with Facebook Messenger.

While I "get" your point, I think it's a stretch in terms of what Snapchat offers that I can't get elsewhere with a better experience.

But then, I'm well over 20 and from the comments on this post, definitely not snapchat's market.

<comment><USER6> The reason snaps disappear is to enable one of the key effects of Snapchat which is low-stakes social interaction. Users feel they can be more relaxed in their interactions when they cannot be recalled later. To quote the article:

        There's no public view count, follower count, likes count, or any other social
        dick-measuring contest. You can just put whatever you're doing on Snapchat; if
        people don't like it, who gives a fuck, you'll never know. There's no
        expectation of balling out 24/7.

        Consequently, on Snapchat I'll post to my daily Story almost twice as much as
        I'll post to Twitter and Facebook combined to reach only a fraction of the
        number of people. The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat
        makes it fun to think about what aspects of what I'm doing every day might be
        cool for other people to see.

Many people do feel social pressure to be "cool", to perform to the perceived expectations of the groups they belong too. Given that, many people clamor for "lower stakes" interactions. While the same "lowering of the stakes" could happen at a social level, and I believe that is something that's happening slowly over the long term, a much faster route is to use a tool that enforces lower stakes, such as Snapchat.

If you are someone who does not find the appeal in low-stakes interactions, then it's quite understandable that Snapchat may not appeal to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem I have with Snapchat is that there are many deliberate, _counterintuitive_ UI/UX decisions which make the app hard to use.

This causes a lot of bad post-hoc rationalization from many startups that "Snapchat is a multibillion dollar startup, and they have these bad UX features, therefore if we have these X features we will be successful too!"

And thus the startup ecosystem as a whole gets dragged down.

<comment><USER8> The bad UI generates a sort of viral effect. I know a lot of young kids who use snapchat and often the conversation starts with 'How did you do that effect on that video?' or 'How do you send a text message without a picture?'. Snapchat is one of few apps that has a lot of hidden features for power users that are not explained anywhere. I am not saying that it is a good thing, but it makes people talk about it.

<comment> dorian-graph > Snapchat is one of few apps that has a lot of hidden features for power > users that are not explained anywhere.

AFAIK, every feature is explained on Snapchat's website. Also when new features are introduced, they've usually explained in the release notes on how to use them—like when lenses were first added.

<comment><USER9> That incentivizes people to explore the website/release notes to find these things, and be the first to get a new filter/lens/hologram on their story

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was about to make a snarky comment disagreeing with Justin -- as one of those folks who can't deal with Snapchat, I think it's a weird encapsulation of a lot of my complaints of newer social apps.

The UX feels deliberately confusing and disorienting; it promotes a culture of manufactured intimacy; I have to deal with a bunch of software developers thinking they're hip by saying 'bless up' and flooding their social media presences with key emojis, as if a celebrity culture disseminated via Snapchat is different than any other celebrity culture. I also don't really understand how you can write an article saying Snapchat is unmanufactured and not a "social dick-measuring contest" while using DJ Khaled as your main example (and ending with an "add me on Snapchat!").

But this article is titled _Why I love Snapchat_ , and not _Why Snapchat is the best_. And honestly -- I know a lot of people who love Snapchat. And that's totally cool! Software that creates joy is almost always a net positive thing, and even if I don't really dig Snapchat I'm glad that other people do.

It's okay to love software, even if its flawed or not the ~ _~ future of media ~_ ~ or whatever. I loved _Glitch_ , a game that hopefully Stewart Butterfield will revive at some point. I love Reddit, even though I find a substantial and growing chunk of its userbase/content to be somewhere between abysmal and appalling.

(Just please, stop with the key emojis.)

<comment><USER11> Wholeheartedly agree - I spent 2 weeks at a friend's place just a week ago, and my friend I was in became obsessed with recording videos purely for Snapchat every time. Instead of focusing on the moment with friends, she was more concerned with posting something on Snapchat for our circle to see.

I don't want everything I do blasted on social media - I want to enjoy the moments I spend with friends. Snapchat is the opposite of living in the moment, and that is my beef with it.

<comment> dorian-graph > Instead of focusing on the moment with friends, she was more concerned with > posting something on Snapchat for our circle to see.

Isn't this common with every social media app, relatively? It's the same with cameras, writing down notes, and many other things. You need to use it wisely and have a good focus on the right time and place, and amount of time too.

I use Snapchat a fair bit friends, but almost always not when we're together. It's a low-friction and cheap way of just keeping in contact. Like when you're walking down a street, see something cool and point it out to a friend. Snapchat lets you do that when you're not actually together.

When I'm with friends and want to show something to other friends, I'll make a quick photo or video, and then let it be. Again, you'll have some friends who are on their phones too much, but that's not a Snapchat app problem, or a physical camera problem, it's a user problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even though I've been pretty active with and supportive of Snapchat from the beginning, I had always thought of it as a fad that would die off pretty quickly. I also was quick to judge negatively any new features or modes of using the app - such as chat, stories, filters, etc.- assuming it was diluting the brand. At least so far, I have been incredibly wrong almost every time (other than the payment feature, that never really took off to my knowledge). It's pretty impressive how they've managed to not only stay relevant, but bring people into a content sharing platform that was initially a novelty and now a pretty major method of communication, at least with some people within my social circles.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the DJ Khaled's use of Snapchat in particular is genius. The popularity of his Story feed really struck me when I was talking to a couple high-school aged relatives earlier this week.

Me: "So do you have any New Years resolutions?"

Kid 1: "They don't want you to have resolutions."

Me: ??

Kid 2: "Resolutions are the key to success!"

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===

After that exchange, I think there are going to be a lot of musicians/actors/politicians making heavy use of Snapchat Stories in 2016.

<comment><USER14> Can you explain that a little more? I totally missed that conversation. Haha.

<comment><USER15> DJ Khaled commonly says things like "They don't want you to (insert relatively normal thing here, like watering plants)" and then after doing that thing he'll say "(thing) is the key to success!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My reason for liking Snapchat is a little bit different.

I'm a user of Facebook, but I really don't like Facebook's newsfeed. I find it to be a time sink that has a lot of advertisements and some amount of cultivation is required if you don't want to be bogged down with every little thing your friends do. So basically I only use Facebook for messaging people whose phone number I don't have, and for event tracking, as a lot of people in my social group use Facebook to make events, which I think is great.

But that leaves a small hole in my social media. I enjoy cyber stalking my friends because I like being aware of what people are doing with their lives. Snapchat (but specifically Snapchat stories) fills that need fairly perfectly. Just once or twice a day I can skim through my stories for a few minutes just to see what people have been up to that day.

I like it better than Twitter because there is too much promotion and general posting of stuff I'm not interested in (like the Facebook newsfeed) and I like it better than Instagram (for this purpose) because most users of Instagram seem to want to only put their best / most interesting / etc. photos on there, which isn't exactly what I'm looking for.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish Snapchat wasn't actively hostile to the WP market. They have outright refused to make an app and when the third party app 6snap appeared (which was quite good), they fought and had it removed. Rudy Huyun, the developer, even offered Snapchat the source code for free. Evan Spiegel even went so far as to mock the platform.

[http://www.windowscentral.com/how-you-cant-get-snapchat- wind...](http://www.windowscentral.com/how-you-cant-get-snapchat-windows- phone-whole-sorry-saga)

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately it's their product and they can do as they wish with it. If this includes not building it for WP, well that's life. 6snap wasn't their app, and yes they had every right to have it removed from the WP store.

That's how the game is played, if one doesn't like it then don't use Snapchat.

<comment><USER19> Conversely if apps are important to you, Windows Phone may not be the best choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love Snapchat Stories. I always have a minute's worth of video in my story. I love it because, unlike Twitter, Facebook/Instagram and the rest, I can overpost to my hearts content, and people can totally ignore it if they want to. Most of my family does the same, and its fun to see. I can post videos of my children doing stupid things that no one cares about or wants to see but my parents and grandparents. Oh, thats another thing: when I tell people I love Snapchat, they assume "heh, for sexting?" Well, no, my whole family, including my 60 y.o. parents and 80 year old grandparent are on Snapchat and love seeing videos of my family's activities or stupid stuff we do. The barrier for whats acceptable to post is much lower, like toddlers running through the house naked and whatnot. And it goes away. (well, probably not technically, so I wouldn't post anything that you wouldn't be generally cool with accidentally getting broadcast somehow).

But most the time, I post interesting-but-uncurated little snippets throughout the day that I think are funny or odd, and I usually get a few random comments from friends and family, and its generally fun, frictionless and competition- less way to share without all the 'like' or friend quantifiers. Occasionally a post gets upgraded to twitter for broadcast.

I also initially enjoyed the city stories, where random regular people from, say, Doha or Abu Dhabi or Kuala Lumpur post videos of their daily lives. Cool to see how people live on the other side of the world. Eventually got bored with it, but cool concept.

<comment><USER21> Out of curiosity, Im not user so this might be ignorant, but why can't people ignore your posts on Twitter, Facebook/Instagram. Are you just referring to notifications ?

I do get the point of the psychological barrier and the problem of broadcasting likes, retweets, comments etc. I think some people will say "what if no one responds" then why would I put this out there, and stop them from putting out something that might be interesting.

<comment><USER20> Referring to core product, 'the feed.' I've had a terrible experience with Facebook. The more i curate, the more it seems to send me cruft from people i do not know. I started using Facebook back in 2004 when they opened up to all college students, and it was cool to friend everyone I've ever met, so that legacy certainly impacts my experience on FB.

With Twitter and Instagram's linear feed, I have to seasonally follow/unfollow people (whom i care about and want to follow!) based on the current sport season, they just had a baby, or whatever and they decide to binge post. Not just once, but for a literal season.

Now, I use them all, and they all have strengths and weaknesses, but Snapchat is the only one i really love to use. Its not a polar argument.

<comment><USER21> sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but i still don't understand how its different from going to a users profile directly on instagram or twitter, to see only what they posted.

<comment><USER22> That's not the default way most people use those services.

<comment><USER21> Ok thanks, that makes sense. I'm just curious when snapchat has longevity like twitter, and you have hundreds of people you're following their stories, how that User experience will be different than twitter or instagram at that point. I imagine, eventually they will need a way to curate the best user stories or active user stories out of your list of hundreds.

<comment><USER22> Snapchat works even better in this case, bc you'll still only tap the people you are interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had a similar revelation a while back with Snapchat. Users complain that you can't create groups to send to, you have to manually select each person. I like this - it means when you receive a snapchat, you know that person intentionally selected you to share a part of their life with. It adds a subtle but meaningful quality to a message that could be considered spammy and impersonal.

<comment><USER24> I completely agree with this. Every time I get a snap from someone who I'm not super close with, I can't help but feel happy that they specifically selected me. In return, I tend to send snaps to my fringe friends more often to let them know I'm thinking of them as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One thing that isn't mentioned is that the "friction" in selecting your friends is actually a positive. Instead of someone just shouting out to the world, my friend actually _picked_ my name to receive some post. Not to mention: Snapchat has this built in status for how often users snap each other back. It's a built-in mechanism to get me to respond, similar to the way Facebook wanted it's "Sling" app to work, but without forcing the issue.

I used Snapchat with a very small number of good friends fairly heavily for about a month. Things we shared:

\- what we ate \- walking to work \- on the bus/train \- waiting in line \- nothing at all \- drawing on pictures of people - example: a friend is watching ESPN talk about the owner of the 49ers, Jed York, and drew a dunce cap on his head

I think we averaged 10 messages a day each.

Basically, for us, Snapchat was for sharing photos too stupid or personal for Facebook or Instagram.

The stickiness eventually faded. We got tired of seeing the same food, the same office, the same bus every day. Contrary to how we might represent ourselves on Facebook (SUPER AWESOME!!!!), Snapchat showed each other how utterly mundane our lives were. Of the original group of ~5 people, there's maybe one left.

</comment><comment><USER26> _" The cost of content creation is extremely low, and Snapchat makes it fun to think about what aspects of what I'm doing every day might be cool for other people to see."_

But what is the _reward_ of content creation?

Honest question. How do a user feel their effort in posting was worthy? I never used Snapchat, so I don't get it much. Although I'm for sure not dismissive as some, I just never tried it.

<comment><USER27> Maybe someone replies. Maybe they don't. It's a low effort way of saying "Hey, I find this thing is worth 10 seconds of your time." My friend sent me a snap of her niece throwing a temper tantrum. It was funny. I chuckled. It disappeared. We got lunch weeks later, and I asked if her niece ever calmed down. She laughed, we moved on. She got to share a funny moment in her life with me (and presumably other people) because she thought I might be interested.

If she posted on facebook? You'd have people asking what was wrong, giving advice on how to calm a child, commenting about child abuse, and writing essays about the ethics of posting children to social media. Whatever.

<comment><USER26> So Spapchat achieved what Path tried limiting friends? Real connections with real friends.

Funny thing, went to Path.com now and find out two interesting things: i) they have two apps at the same website now - Path, the social network and Talk, a messaging app; and ii) they don't even mention the 150 friends limit anymore (contrasting that it was the core feature and the epicenter of their launch campaign)

<comment><USER27> altonzheng got it right I think when he wrote

      I had a similar revelation a while back with Snapchat. Users complain that you can't create groups to send to, you have to manually select each person. I like this - it means when you receive a snapchat, you know that person intentionally selected you to share a part of their life with. It adds a subtle but meaningful quality to a message that could be considered spammy and impersonal

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10860501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10860501)

Snapchat requires you to select who you want to see your snap. There's no facility to push into everyone's feed. I'm not sending it to my "Friends" or my "Family" without consideration.

You aren't going to click 200 people, or 150, or 50. You're going to think "These five people really love hiking." Or "My cousins were talking about adopting a husky." Or "Last time I burned bacon like this was with John and Jane."

Saying "you can only have 150 friends" wasn't the key to a more personal experience. It just meant there was a hard limit on how many people could spam you. The key for me is the tiny marginal cost of sending something to N+1 people, so instead you choose more thoughtfully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great post from somebody I respect tremendously. One thing I feel like he didn't touch on, which I feel like is most important, is that there's no public comments on Snapchat. People post without much need for validation and without fear of backlash.

<comment><USER22> Good point! I didn't think about this much specifically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is there a strong overlap between "people who don't know (or care) who DJ Khaled is" and "people who are unlikely ever to see any value in Snapchat"?

<comment> squeaky-clean I've heard his name before, but no idea who he is. I also don't have anyone added that I don't know personally. I don't care if some celebrity is watering their plants or getting coffee, but when my friends post that, it's more enjoyable than I ever thought it would be.

<comment><USER30> I don't think you quite understand the power of DJ Khaled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm surprised that there's so much "I don't get it" sentiment here. You would think that everyone on HN would be clamoring to figure out how Snapchat is able to get as many users as it has.

<comment> dorian-graph The reactions here seem reminiscent of Svbtle—people felt off socially (with Svtle, they weren't invited, and with Snapchat, they might be feel like they're missing out on what the cool kids are doing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > the content doesn't have to be that good, because it is going to disappear > anyways, and everyone else's content isn't that great either.

That makes me want to sign up right away!

</comment><comment><USER33> I love that 2016 is when many notable SV people finally got excited about Snapchat

<comment><USER22> I know -- I think I'm actually a late adopter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Snapchat is great if you have a group of friends who care about seeing random photos of your life throughout the day. What exactly am I supposed to "snap" while I'm sitting in an office all day staring at a computer? Take photos of my food? I don't understand how to participate when my life isn't filled with visual things to show people.

<comment><USER22> I just narrate the boring shit I'm doing

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> They've added some interesting features like stories from your city or events near you which are a subset of videos hand-picked from different people who submitted them for that event/location. This is really handy if you want to get a sneak peak into some event near you that you were unable to attend.

In addition, you can do real time face-to-face video chat, just like face- time. They've also been pretty smart about the implementation of it. If 2 people are snap messaging (not video, just text) and they both have the chat window open, the snapchat camera icon would start glowing blue, signifying that you can initiate a face-to-face video chat with the person.

</comment><comment><USER36> Ok I'm watching stories now and it's awesome. thanks justin

</comment><comment><USER37> I've had a similar experience, opening the app a couple times over the years and never using it in any way. I just don't get it. Maybe it's time for another try.

<comment><USER38> Personally I find my enjoyment requires a group of friends that enjoys what I send and I enjoy what they send for the most part. So it can be a chicken and egg problem for sure. I've unfriended friends on Snapchat because I don't want to see pictures of their food. However, as I don't have a facebook, I find that Snapchat can keep me closer to my geographically remote friends in an wonderfully informal way. There's no "Heyyy! How are you?" followed by that forced how's life exchange of meaningless small talk. I get a pic of a friend on a rooftop bar and I know she's alive and having a good time.

As someone who initially thought Snapchat was stupid, and doesn't typically engage in social media, I get that someone could dislike it or not see the point. For me, Snapchat fits a niche in communication I didn't know I had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think I'm supposed to be too young to get that deeply irritated "stay off my lawn" feeling but Snapchat provides it in leaps and bounds. Lots of resentment here for Snapchat and the other useless "Hey, look ma, I'm worth a billion dollars!" unicorns lead by clueless collegiates that are always photographed wearing mom jeans and smirking into space.

I had just barely started to accept Twitter's presence in the world and now this.

</comment><comment><USER40> Snapchat is the first app that makes me feel like an old man shaking my fist at the young hooligans on the lawn. The abtruse interface leaves me tremendously baffled.

</comment><comment><USER41> I didn't realise how ubiquitous it is until I went to a music festival, every phone that was held up recording a particular act was using Snapchat.

</comment><comment><USER42> > _There's no public view count, follower count, likes count, or any other > social dick-measuring contest_

And then at the end:

> _Add me at: justinkan_

Why does he need to be seen by strangers if the whole point is to exchange "low quality content" between friends??

That said, the concept of "linear channel" is interesting, even if I'm not sure I understood everything about it.

<comment><USER22> I like getting feedback. Also I broadcasted my life to strangers and it worked out well the first time -- we turned it into a billion dollar company.

<comment><USER42> After "pivoting", no? Or did you sell footage of your life for that amount?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'd really want to try, but when I need to scroll to see the end of the list of permissions it needs, I refuse to install it...

</comment><comment><USER44> _> Instagram is the 9th circle of hell where everyone feels inadequate about their photos of bottle service, Michelin star dining and helicopter rides._

OT: That's... an interesting take.

</comment><comment><USER45> I also grew to love Snapchat over the last few months. But then I got a Nexus 5X and the Snapchat app performs so poorly on this device that I rarely open it any more.

</comment><comment><USER46> For anyone who's used both, how does this Stories feature compare to Twitter's new Periscope? They appear to aim for very similar targets.

</comment><comment><USER47> "There's no public view count, follower count, likes count, or any other social dick-measuring contest. " He adds his account so people can follow him :/

</comment><comment><USER48> "then it disappears"

</comment><comment><USER49> This post makes me think I should check it out again. A lot of our ([http://unikupid.com](http://unikupid.com)) users in India are on snapchat, thought it's just a teen fad but maybe it's fun to use</comment>


C'mon, Facebook Is Actually Pretty Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://andysparks.co/post/30484034160/cmon-facebook-is-actually-pretty-awesome

<comment><USER2> Facebook has all the tools in place for sharing things perfectly and privately just as I would want and I know I can even customize them per piece of media I put out there. The problem I have is working through 500+ people and figuring out who to share what with. I think the reason people are looking for an alternative for some aspects of sharing is that it's too much trouble to curate that giant list (and sometimes, as you mentioned, useful to just keep that giant list of friends). Instead of going through and curating all those people, it's far easier to go with a new service, proactively add just a few people you care to share with for any given event and then put your photos/content there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I understand that angle. Starting over is easy, but won't it be kind of a self-perpetuating cycle of social networks that we need to throw away and replace if we keep that up?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would really love to hear if people agree, but am even more interested in why people might disagree.</comment>


Dominant Players Over Time (NBA, Chess) - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/1392/

<comment><USER2> Where's Kobe on the graph?</comment>


Why We Should Be Careful with the "1% Control 50% of the World's Wealth" Stat - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/numbers-that-become-memes-can-be-dangerous-to-society-21975

<comment><USER2> Good point. Especially that stat, because it is so volatile. So much of the wealth is tied up in the value of companies or other complex things whose value is illiquid, and whose value can change quickly.

Still though, not like it's going to go to 50/50, 70/30, or some less-eye- popping number anytime soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> True! I just think a lot of times numbers become commodified and make rounds on the internet (accompanied by a superficial level of analysis) without touching upon the real reasons why that number is significant.</comment></comment>


Lean Startup is Crap - <AUTHOR> http://cutecoder.org/business/lean-startup-crap/

<comment><USER2> This is the biggest strawman argument I've ever encountered on HN.

Since when was 'lean startup' equated with putting up a landing page and not even telling anyone about it?

<comment><USER3> My thoughts while reading the post exactly. Read Reece's Lean Startup, and he gives specific examples on how to cheaply test the waters. Reducing all that to a landing page harvesting emails is completely the opposite of what Lean Startup proposes.

Lean Startup is about measuring everything, and only doing what takes your idea forward. Anything else is wastage. If you need to measure potential uptake in a target market that won't find your landing page, then creating a landing page is wasting your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OP seems to equate Lean Startup with "build a landing page then see what happens". This is more about "wishing and hoping" method than lean.

Lean advocates to design experiments to maximize learning from your target market and the problem you're aiming to solve. So, validating the problem, your solution, and talking to customers are definitely part of this process.

Lean startup is no miracle way of guaranteed success, but it would be nice to see more constructed criticism of lean startup than linkbait articles that in the end don't contradict lean spirit at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> Basically, this is saying that if your MVP is floundering, it's not Viable enough, and it continues to provide good advice for how to extend the Viability of that MVP. Its a good reminder that complexity complicates our field at a double-exponential rate that continually increases, and thus the complexity of our deliverables must increase at a similar rate.

Lean is still lean -- if your 3-man startup can do these things effectively from a $1000/mo apartment and are OK with ramen and occcasional McD, you can still do amazing things with less than $50,000/yr.

</comment><comment><USER6> Terrible. This article by section:

1\. Strawman defining the Learn Startup approach as creating a landing page and hoping for signups

2\. Dismissal of strawman

3\. Advocation for building a beta product and getting feedback AKA one of the fundamental concepts of the actual lean startup methodology

4\. Lengthy plug for author's Yammer tool

</comment><comment><USER7> I see lean differently from most people. For me, lean means keeping a low operations cost and nothing but that.

It's not HOW you do it, wether you build an alpha or just a landing page but just: KEEP A LOW OPERATIONS COST. That's it.

Probably different from what most people consider to be lean, but that is all lean means to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Generally good advice, iffy strawman regarding lean startup, linkbait title.

</comment><comment><USER9> Lean != landing page</comment>


Team behind webOS Enyo framework reportedly leaving HP to join Google - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/05/team-behind-webos-enyo-framework-reportedly-leaving-hp-and-joining-google/

<comment><USER2> Such a shame, they should have gone working for Mozilla on the Boot2Gecko (B2G) smartphone OS. It would have been a perfect fit and a great way to instantly get many enyo / webapps on the new platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> My speculation/dream: they port Enyo to Dart and make it the default language/framework for Android development. It also still works (where browsers support necessarily features) on the web and has PhoneGap-like functionality for iOS, et al.

I know Dart doesn't get much love here but the prospect of doing "native" mobile, web, mobile web and server side code in the same language (that isn't JS) and codebase brings a tear to my eye.

</comment><comment><USER4> No idea why people are getting worked up about this, engineers move jobs all of the time. Once webOS becomes open source later in the year, it's real fate will be decided. As a fan of the platform, I hope that someone other than HP takes it an runs with it (hardware wise), even in a small way.

The quicker it is taken out of HP's hands, the better.

</comment><comment><USER5> Mathias will be pleased!

I hope they bring the concept of the status bar and notifications to Android. What they had in WebOS was leagues ahead of everyone else.

<comment><USER6> Neither of these things are Enyo, the javascript framework for application UI, they're part of the OS itself.

What remains of the webOS team is likely still there. Notifications and other UX existed in webOS before 3.0 and Enyo, implemented with Mojo. In the comments on many sites, people keep saying things like "cant wait for cards!" and other UX elements of webOS that have nothing to do with Enyo.

The reports have Matthew McNulty and some of his Enyo app framework team moving, not the OS developers.

A big loss, sure, but the app framework is separate from the OS UX.</comment></comment>


The quest to predict – and stop – the spread of wildfires (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180924-the-quest-to-predict-and-stop-the-spread-of-wildfires <comment><USER2> Basically any landscape that broad area forest fuel loads are allowed to build up.

Indigenous tribes learned how to reduce these hazards thousands of years ago.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you create your resume? - <AUTHOR> I created my last resume in pure html and it is a pain to update. I don't like MS Word either. It would be great to hear preferred tools from the HN community.<p>Thanks <comment><USER2> It spent me a bit of time, but I usually write it in LaTeX. It looks a bit unique, and you can tailor it to express yourself too.

</comment><comment><USER3> A script that populates an HTML file from JSON and then converts that to PDF.

</comment><comment><USER4> I always hear a lot about using LaTeX... but haven't tried it yet.

</comment><comment><USER5> LaTeX document I started ages ago</comment>