A video game community filled my nephew's final days with joy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/jul/04/how-a-video-game-community-filled-my-nephews-final-days-with-happiness-elite-dangerous <comment><USER2> When a close friend's body was starting to fail from lung cancer (and it was clear that it was his final days), I think we were very lucky that we both enjoyed video games. He was bedridden, slowly losing his motor functions, and it was hard to talk since breathing started to become difficult - but in a multiplayer video game with a controller and large buttons, he could be very expressive!

There were goofy moments (where he would make his character wear something silly, and I'm pretty sure he was fishing for a reaction from me, too) or moments where I could see him emote through the in-game characters (like making a character's animation look like it's panicking by moving controls around arbitrarily, and you can see the video game character flail wildly). Through these actions I could see my friend's personality clearly, and I think being able to express yourself is important when you've been in the hospital for a while. I can only assume that he also found some joy from it as well, since it could have been difficult to express the same emotions when you're attached to machinery and often short of breath.

I think it's important to connect with people using the time we have alive, and I really think anyone in palliative care (or knows someone in palliative care) could consider video games as another option for connecting with your friends and family. With the right game/accessibility of controls, and an appropriate level of energy/attention span, it could be something that brings people closer even as we hit our physical limits.

<comment><USER3> I've been fortunate that I've not had a close friend pass in my life at the young age of 31. The day it comes around, I hope to share your world view. Thank you for sharing your story, and I'm sorry for the pain you must have experienced.

Thank you.

Small edit: my partner in life is about to finish her Physician training to become specialised in Palliative care, her wounds motivate her to be a carer and lover for those who need her specialised care. I'm quite honestly humbled and grateful people like you and her exist in the world who can bring joy and love in moments of anguish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is beautiful. It's amazing how the good side of the Internet really shines through in these pieces. Things like the 7,000-word script and professionally-narrated audio story for the kid to listen to are examples of how people sometimes go out of their way to do an amazing thing for little to no recognition, and that's what makes it even more wonderful.

I believe this is what Internet communities should aspire to be like, to cut through the toxicity and memetic warfare and just do something great together.

<comment><USER5> > Things like the 7,000-word script and professionally-narrated audio story > for the kid to listen to are examples of how people sometimes go out of > their way to do an amazing thing for little to no recognition, and that's > what makes it even more wonderful.

...and these things happen far more than we realize. My "dad" wasn't my biological dad. He married my mother when I was four and he was the one who was there for me for my entire life, so much so that I've never even known (or cared to know, beyond a passing interest in my health history) who my biological father is.

One quirk of that is that my "dad" never formally adopted me. About a week before he passed away, we had one last time alone as a family before inviting friends & relatives for a last visit. During that, he mentioned that he regretted not officially adopted me. Thanks to several local folks, including a local lawyer, local probate judge, a city clerk in another state, and probably a couple more, were were able to complete the adoption and present my dad with the paperwork and an updated birth certificate that lists him as the father within four days.

With the Internet especially, we see the worst of the worst, but I personally feel that it's overwhelmed by the good, and stories like Michael's show the power to bring people together.

<comment><USER4> That's beautiful, thanks for sharing your story.

I agree, the good parts of the Internet are more apparent if you know where to look. The darkest corners, however, are highlighted more by the news, perpetuating a cycle of negativity and pessimism.

<comment><USER5> >The darkest corners, however, are highlighted more by the news, perpetuating a cycle of negativity and pessimism.

I've basically stopped watching the evening news as a result of this. A guy stealing a wheelchair 2,000 miles away makes the local news, but 100 people helping someone out doesn't merit a mention anywhere.

<comment> em-bee this. at this point, besides friends, hackernews IS my news source. if something important happens in the world, someone will bring it up here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My sister plays this game called Bakery Story. I played for a while too and shared a lot of my sister's online friends. There were a few people who had exquisite bakeries, each a world of intricate design and my sister was in the top tier of that type of thing. My bakery was a bit more functional, I was there for sibling rivalry reasons rather than the global community.

We had not heard from one online friend for a while. But then we got a message from the daughter of the lady who had the neatest bakery in the American mid- West. As you can imagine it was doom and gloom, she had not made it out of the hospital.

Both my sister and myself were shocked by the news, however, we had been there for this lady, her life coming to a premature end in a hospital. Online her world was nothing like the sad reality of her real life. We envied her in this online world, she was in the handful of true greats, not just for the bakery but for the personality.

We did not have time for anything too fanciful, we heard our online friend was poorly and two weeks later we had the message from the daughter who was not yet teenage. Everyone in the game added a tombstone - a game prop - in memory, there was mourning going on, nobody knowing what to say for the weeks after that.

I can remember telling my workmates that I was in stunned silence due to an in-game incident, but you just don't expect online friends to die and you don't imagine that you could be stunned into silence by such an event.

We also had no further messages from the daughter so that was that, abrupt. But, if I think now of how ill she must have been and how we lavished praise on her for her creations without knowing that she was at death's door, I think we helped provide an escape. In our own special way we visited her online every day during those difficult times and talked about what mattered to her in her world.

Games can be special like that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Man... just woke up, checked HN as usual, and now I'm up in tears.

Communities like the ones from Elite Dangerous or EVE Online really tend to shine in such moments. I'm... I don't know what else to write. Dang it.

o7

<comment><USER8> Yes, this story really got to me as well.

The Eve Online and E:D communities are very supportive; players truly do care about each other underneath all the other layers. The communities have existed now for so long that they go deep. Also there's a fair bit of commitment needed to get into them, from a learning cliff perspective, so perhaps this is a factor as well? Common to both is how they are highly social communities.

(For others seeing this) look up "Broadcast 4 Reps", how Eve players encourage each other not to stay silent, but to call out when you need help. This is referring to the in game mechanic of letting logistics (a supportive fleet role) know to direct repairs your way, that you are in trouble. It's really an amazing thing to see the message spread that it is _ok_ to need help and talk about it.

o7

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was holding it together until the end when I saw the Elite tribute in the Hearst (a hand flipping the bird with the message "PILOTS NEVER DIE THEY JUST RESPAWN ON ANOTHER STATION").

This is the Internet at its best for sure, but I'm more taken aback at the resolve of this kid - staying positive and doing what he loved right up until his last moment. It's heartbreaking and inspiring all at the same time.

Godspeed, Commander.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Hermitcraft gang played Minecraft with a dying kid this season. I wonder if it was the same one, or if this is becoming a (wondeful) trend.

Hermitcraft is a bunch of adults doing their best to play with the spirit of children, and they're good at it. The energy and creativity they spent playing with this kid were impressive. They seemed to get a lot out of it. In fact they should probably make a point of inviting a kid to play regularly, terminal or not, because it seems that they gain from it about as much as the kid.

<comment> em-bee i have seen other stories like this, even here on hackernews, so this was surely another one.

</comment></comment><comment> em-bee the original longer version of this article is here:

[https://westhorpe.net/2019/07/an-open-letter-to-frontier- and...](https://westhorpe.net/2019/07/an-open-letter-to-frontier-and-friends/)

<comment> em-bee another relevant link taken from the youtube post of the audio story: [http://www.drewwagar.com/elite-dangerous-saga/michaels- story...](http://www.drewwagar.com/elite-dangerous-saga/michaels-story/)

<comment> em-bee was anyone able to download the audiobook from this page? i don't see any clickable links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great read, there are many other examples. One example I read in a Wired magazine many years back, of a World of Warcraft mass funeral and mourning in some place.

<comment><USER12> Or like the one from Norway from a few monthes ago, where the parents did not know he had friends until WOW players meet up in his funeral and a lot of players around the world mourned him in the game [https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-47064773](https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-47064773)

<comment> em-bee HN threads: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19122079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19122079) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104044)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just got into HN, looking for some cool new tech updates as usally

and this article hit me hard

Got me into such an emotional mode

This community is amazing

</comment><comment><USER14> o7 right on, commander. ("right on, commander" is the phrase from the original Elite when your combat score reached Elite status)

Not much else I can think of that adds to the conversation here. Poor little guy, I'm glad he had happiness before he left.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love when I read stories like this. Sometimes I feel so hopeless over how toxic and awful the internet can be, but then moments like this remind me that there are lots of good communities still out there. o7

</comment><comment><USER16> Right on, Commander!

</comment><comment><USER17> Meanwhile, Disnarvel won't let a kid's family put Spider-Man on his headstone. As much as Disney has been trying to pivot into social consciousness in its various media properties, it's the direct fan support that the Elite Dangerous crew showed Michael here that stands out as truly magnanimous.

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry, but putting whatever character on a tombstone does nothing for the kid, he's already dead. Like, this kind of thing makes no sense to me - gestures towards dying people are fantastic....while they are still alive. Also, if the family really cares about it this much they could just do it and then Disney has to consider the bad optics of suing a family over a kids gravestone. Most likely unless someone goes and tell them no one will notice - my local cementary has plenty of children's graves with Mickey mouse and donald duck on them and I'm 1000% certain no one asked disney for permission either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thank you for posting this Matt. What a wonderful story! It's small acts of kindness like these that make the world a better place.

</comment><comment><USER20> o7

<comment><USER21> fyi to the downvotes: o7 is a farewell salute.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3sdixv/what...](https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3sdixv/what_in_the_world_is_07/)

<comment><USER22> Just because it has a meaning does not mean it is adding constructively to the conversation.

<comment><USER23> You are right, but maybe once, we can just see it as what it means in this context. o7

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> beautiful tribute by the community.

o7

</comment><comment><USER25> Which happens to be a legendary glorious game BTW.

</comment><comment><USER26> So many kudos to the Elite Dangerous team!

I salute you guys!

Rest in Peace CMDR.

</comment><comment><USER27> o7

</comment><comment><USER28> o7

</comment><comment><USER29> o7

</comment><comment><USER30> I couldn't find it inspiring, only heartbreaking and anger-inducing. It makes me so geared up to think how shitty the world is to some people who have done nothing to deserve it and so generous to some who have done everything to not deserve it. Just one more reminder of how the world really feels like one wretchedly sick joke concocted in the mind of a wretchedly sick fuck.

<comment><USER31> And that's fine; cold impersonal anger can be a very powerful motivator if channeled properly. My question is what are WE going to do about it?

For me:

1/ support the Grauniad [0]: the gulf between the quality of their journalism and the rest of the market is gaping. I may not agree with all their views but the world is a better place with their investigative push

2/ let's leverage the HN community: one of the constant messages I've seen in my limited time on HN is how diverse and capable the community is. Surely we can do this and more if we set our heart to it?

It may not be the most popular view at the moment but I do believe "The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Toward Justice". But this doesn't happen automatically; each of us need to push the pendulum, and a billion pushes can outweigh quite a bit of unfairness...

<comment><USER32> Really? These days the guardian is known for its poor fact checking and misleading headlines

<comment><USER31> Well you could argue they would do better with more resources.

Anyway: the Guardian is just one paper. Support independent journalism, whether it's the NYT / WSJ / WaPo / FT / your favourite non-clickbait news platform.

<comment><USER33> I was thinking about this the other day, in the context of a local hacks-and- hackers (journalists and programmers) group...

How can one best support journalism, if its brokenness is systemic?

Consider a supermarket-checkout tabloid of the "UFO aliens tattooed my baby!" variety. It seems unlikely that any plausible level of resources will yield high-quality journalism. But perhaps the BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News pair is a counterargument.

Consider the NYT, with its view of the world as a competition between ideas, rather than between economic and political interests. More resources won't fix that.

Also apropos the NYT, for decades I wished for better coverage of the role of subculture group-think in governance failures. I excused that NYT's lack of it as resource limitations, and hoped for reallocation someday. Then Trump, and there was lots of coverage of group-think among his supporters, and still a dearth of it about its role among elite. Resource limitations weren't the bottleneck.

So yes, marginally better funding might yield marginally better journalism from the the Guardian / NYT / WSJ / WaPo / FT / etc. More reporters, fact checking, foreign bureaus, conferences, etc. But...

They still won't be tracking their failures, searching for root causes, and pursuing continuous process improvement. It won't change journalism's culture of obliviousness to decades of learning in other industries about how to organize processes for consistently high quality.

Is there any journalistic platform that has a plausibly modern process story, and just needs resources to flesh it out and grow? Regardless of focus - just, is anyone doing this well, who can be funded and assisted as an exemplar? Is there any journalism foundation attempting to encourage modern processes? Is there any dinky little local paper that's made a commitment to consistently record its failures in a google spreadsheet, and to follow up on what went wrong and how their process might be improved? That I could see funding.

Marginal non-transformative improvement is nice too. With society and history being chaotic, small deltas can have large consequences. But I find the current product quality demotivating without some prospect for transformative improvement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A History of Pi by Petr Beckmann - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/History-Pi-Petr-Beckmann-ebook/dp/B00QQHRV58/ <comment><AUTHOR> Happy Pi day! This is a wonderful book, which is really a story of the development of modern civilization and the enlightenment, all told through the lens of the best understanding of pi.</comment>


I Hate My Smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://rs.io/2011/10/19/i-hate-my-smartphone.html <comment><USER2> I'm amazed at my smartphone constantly, because it does things that my laptop/desktop cannot ever hope to do that _are_ productive and important to me.

I have, more times than I can remember, looked up restaurant recommendations, reached consensus with other people wirelessly, and then made a reservation, all without leaving my smartphone, while standing on the sidewalk somewhere.

I have also walked up to a restaurant only to find it closed, and found a delicious alternative within seconds thanks to Yelp, Urbanspoon, et al.

I have taken pictures, uploaded them to [social network] and received responses within minutes, if not seconds. I have met up with friends because the GPS told us we were near each other.

My smartphone is great for consuming the day's news (especially on a high-ppi screen, reading is a joy) while on the train to work. Laptop or even tablet? Don't be ridiculous, I need one hand hanging onto a railing.

My smartphone is also my light meter, when I'm out and about playing with vintage cameras that pre-date my birth. Not a very typical use case, but one where a laptop or even a tablet would be utterly useless.

I love my smartphone.

<comment><USER3> I have a love/hate relationship with my smartphone, but I'm still amazed at some of the things I can do with it. Adding to your list:

When my car's GPS took me miles down a road that was washed out on a trip hundreds of miles from my home, Google Navigation on my smartphone suggested a different route that got me safely to my destination.

It's a flexible and reliable alarm and kitchen timer.

I can read novels comfortably in bed on my smartphone (none of my several laptops are very ergonomic for this purpose).

I can map my bike rides and get stats on min/max/average speed, elevation, etc. (all the while using it as a music player).

It lets me easily maintain multiple shopping lists.

I can tune my guitar with it.

It functions as a real flashlight (my phone has a very bright LED).

My smartphone is no replacement for a computer, but it's better at these tasks than any computer I own.

<comment><USER4> > _I can read novels comfortably in bed on my smartphone_

Really? I tried with an iPod Touch and an iPad, and really hated both. Then I bought a Kindle and found it extraordinary. The Kindle is the best device I've ever owned.

<comment><USER5> I bought the Kindle when it first out and loved it but never carried it with me, and found it difficult to read at night - so as soon as reader version came out for my Android, I used that and never looked back.

Reading in bed with a smartphone is great because the light does not bother my partner, and after two minutes of my falling asleep, the phone switches off its screen as well. Any bed lamp I use keeps me awake rather than allowing me to fall asleep.

(I know I am the exception as I have been reading on Palm Pilot screens since the late 90s - it was the only way to make sure I could get enough reading time in medical school.)

<comment><USER4> My Kindle case has a lamp that is very effective and yet not too bright. It's perfect for reading in bed.

(And you can't use a smartphone to read on the beach or any place under direct sunlight...)

<comment><USER6> > use a smartphone to read on the beach

Not only that. To the GP: I read also on my phone (Nexus one) but I feel the backlight is not very gentle for my eyes, even when using FBreader in night mode. Also, characters are too small. To me, a (real B&W e-ink) Kindle is better, or a paper book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate touch screen keyboards. The author owned an iPhone then an android phone. If you've never coded on a Nokia e63 keyboard using vim over s2putty you've never lived.

I recently gave into the powers that be and got a new phone with a touch screen keyboard (a galaxy s2).

There are heaps of benefits to this phone over my e72 (although I my last true love was the e63) - not least of which is a vastly superior web browsing and email experience but gosh the keyboard is a frustrating piece of shit.

I would gladly trade the bottom 2 inches of my screen for a permanent hardware keyboard and no screen rotation.

Am I doomed to languish at 10wpm for the rest of my days?!

I'm so pissed off with Nokia for ditching Symbian. They were so close to being good for so many years, then they ditched it because they wanted to be like the iPhone.

Don't they realise that I actively chose NOT to purchase an iPhone? The point of difference is that they're not the same as the iPhone, a single minded unproductive useless piece of eye candy.

Even the multi-tasking on Android doesn't hold a candle to Symbian (for example I can't switch to my SSH client whilst a web page loads in the background).

Nokia, I will hate you for ever. But not as much as I hate this piece of shit touch screen you've relegated me to.

<comment><USER8> I agree with you on the keyboard. There are a few decent Android models out with slider hardware keyboards. The Samsung Epic is fairly good.

<comment><USER9> I've had two Android phones with great keyboards: the HTC G1 and the Samsung Sidekick 4G. In fact I'm typing this comment on the SK4G while lying in bed.

What makes both keyboards great is the spacing around each key. Other phones like the original Motorola Droid crammed the keyboard into the smallest space possible, and there was no space between the keys.

With these two keyboards, I can hit about 30wpm without the use of any accelerators. I typed in each character of this comment.

Unfortunately with the SK4G, it does not include the tilde and backtick with the stock keymap, but that is fixed relatively easily thanks to folks on xda- developers.com.

<comment><USER10> > What makes both keyboards great is the spacing around each key. Other phones > like the original Motorola Droid crammed the keyboard into the smallest > space possible, and there was no space between the keys.

Hm, in my experience it's just the overall size of the keyboard or perhaps size of the keys including any spacing. My previous phone was a Blackberry Pearl 8100, which had a half-QWERTY keyboard with keys large even by Blackberry standards ([http://ecx.images- amazon.com/images/I/41Obn3GQp-L._AA280_.jp...](http://ecx.images- amazon.com/images/I/41Obn3GQp-L._AA280_.jpg), phone width is 50 mm / 2 in). The keys have no spacing between them other than the ridges formed by separate buttons, but were pretty easy to feel out under my thumbs due to their shape and size. I rarely missed a key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm mostly in agreement, but maybe it's just because I don't have much use for a smart phone.

I don't text. I don't IM except at work, and emails can wait till I get home. It is handy to have a web browser for when you absolutely must look up something on the go, but honestly that doesn't happen often enough to warrant a hefty data plan. Yeah, I don't have a data plan. I look for free WIFI if I need internet.

So what else is there? Reading books? I do read books on it (while on the go), but it's generally an unpleasant experience because the screen's so small that it renders everything at the subpixel (read: blurry) level and I spend all my time either squinting or doing zoom-in-and-pan.

Tablet? No, thanks. If I wanted to lug something big around, I'd take my laptop with me. It's far more versatile.

Games? Meh. I still haven't found any really compelling smartphone games. And really, if I wanted to play games, I'd just play them on my laptop or desktop, which have better specs and bigger screens and better input systems.

Camera? Well, I've taken some photos with it, but I don't use it often. I suppose it could come in handy for that one time when i REALLY need to take a picture.

The things I DO like are:

* note taking * voice recording * learning apps * Being able to transfer stuff onto and off the phone without too much hassle

Aside from that, there's not much I find compelling.

<comment><USER12>
         Yeah, I don't have a data plan. I look for free WIFI if I need internet.

Not to say that this doesn't work for you, but having a data plan is completely different. Being able to count on the fact that, most of the time, you're able to pull your device out of your pocket and access the internet, whether it's for email, maps, or looking something up is extremely valuable.

It may not be worth the cost for some people, but I will say that before I got my iPhone there were many times where my strategy of "open laptop and see if there's free wifi" failed to work, and occasionally involved driving to the nearest McDonald's trying to pick up their wifi from my car. Not fun.

<comment><USER13> I was a bit late to the whole smartphone thing, but got my boyfriend's old 3G when he got a new iPhone4. I thought I wouldn't need unlimited data, so I got a plan with cheap data instead. It took two weeks, and then I switched to unlimited data.

Having your phone always on and always connected is a very similar transition as when going from dialup to broadband. No more "I'll look it up on my computer when I get home", instead you can just look it up right now, anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The reactions here are pretty interesting. A lot of people are vocalizing disagreement with the authors _experience_. That's like disagreeing with my distates for tomatoes. I don't like 'em. Sorry, I just don't. That's not something to be disagreed with. It's my experience.

Likewise, the author doesn't find enjoyment in engaging in many of the activities that make a smartphone useful for many people. You could argue that his views aren't particularly apropos from a market perspective, but his experience is his own.

The article doesn't really get around to making any assertions until the very end, when it points out:

1) You're generally unable to seamlessly transition between smartphone/laptop while working on... something(?)

2) Desktops are dead; the laptop's days are numbered

3) Laptops will become carrier shells for smartphones; à la Motorla Atrix

4) Android and iOS should be working harder at providing means to "create meaningful works" on the devices

Some of these are problems to be solved (1&4) and others are conjecture (conjecture because you have to factor in that his experience with smartphones isn't reflective of the general market [1]). In general, I don't think the author is _wrong_ , but some of his insights aren't particularly relevant if you're trying to develop for the broader market.

1 - Users of Apple devices rated their satisfaction at 811 out of 1,000 points: <http://gizmodo.com/5377572/the-jd-power-smartphone-…>

</comment><comment><USER15> A few nights ago I was walking around Manhattan and decided to find a nearby restaurant, so I pulled out my MacBook Air and it was amazing. Right out of my pocket. When I finally found the restaurant, I used Google Maps in my Chrome browser for walking directions. I held my laptop in one hand, and my date in the other hand. Afterwards, we headed to a bar and I used a payphone to see if any of my friends were nearby and wanted to join us. One person answered! Except he couldn't make it. On the way home, I saw some really cool street performers playing with fire, so I opened up my MacBook Air, fired up Photo Booth, and used the built-in iSight camera to snap a few candid photos.

In the end, everything else was far more useful than a smartphone.

<comment><USER16> Are you for real? This is cracking me up.

<comment><USER6> I guess GP is being sarcastic: All what he describe is a pain with a laptop and easy with a smartphone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Writing off iOS because you used a 3G during the iOS 3 era is like writing off Android because you didn't like your G1 with 1.5. When using my old iPhone 3G or the Android tablets I tested, I would frequently drop them and grab my laptop instead. That happens much less often with my 4 simply because of how responsive it is all the time.

I find the author's perspective is shared more often than not by those who drive. I think people who take public transit or walk frequently would be hard pressed to say that they hate their smartphone. People who are always at a destination use their phones as portable computers less, because they typically have a full power machine at their destination.

The main point I take issue with though is the assertion that you can't work on a smartphone. I just don't buy that. I've handled tech support calls while accessing a server via remote desktop to solve the problem that the call was about, all from one device. On a crowded TTC bus.

A good rule of thumb is that if you've never sent a call to the background on your phone while you did something else, then you're still a little intimidated by it. You need to consciously plug it into your workflow at first, but once you truly grasp that much of what you jump on a laptop or desktop to do can be done from the device in your pocket, you'll start to like it more.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't agree with this at all. The main points seem to boil down to: "I want my smartphone to be a desktop computer." If you try to use your smartphone for the same purposes as a laptop, yeah, then you'll probably hate it, but if you approach it as a different device and explore new and different uses, the phone becomes a lot more powerful.

</comment><comment><USER19> My smartphone means I have instant access to a map that will have a shiny blue dot that means "you are _here_ " at all times. And then I can ask "How do I get _there_?" and it can tell me. And if I get somewhere and realize I forgot to write something down, I can Google it. Or look up the email that had the information. Or I can text the person I'm meeting that I will be late, or maybe they can tell me where they are and I can meet them at the new location.

Basically, my smartphone gives me easy access to information at all times. That it's not useful for work is besides the point - it's useful when I'm doing things other than work.

</comment><comment><USER20> I made the exact same switch from a 3G to an Atrix. I dislike my Atrix quite a bit, and Android in general is not what I had hoped it would be. I wonder if you are having the same experience. Some of it could really be hardware related (my friends say they can't hear me when I hold the phone with my shoulder up to my ear!)

My friends love their 4S's. I hope making the switch back to apple will make me love my smartphone again.

</comment><comment><USER21> Smart phones are on rails, they're not truly open ended. They don't use screen space well, and remote desktop is not possible to get larger-scale work done. I think they need to go back to using trackballs and styluses, because precision can't be achieved using fingers or by using the focus method in apps... The best use case i can think of for my phone these days is Angry Birds. Also, what ever happened to solar power? we're powering small cars off of solar cells, why in 2011 can't we power cell phones off of solar energy? The phones being ultra-thin, and thus having tiny batteries that only last for 30 minutes of work, does not make the phones smart, it limits them greatly. I'd rather have a thicker phone with a bigger battery.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Imagine if you could just resume your browsing session on your laptop or desktop from your phone._

You can. Firefox Sync will sync almost everything in your browsing session (including tabs, if you want). I've had no trouble moving browsing sessions from my phone to one (or more) of my laptops or to my Android tablet and back again. You do have to explicitly choose to open tabs from another Firefox, but I think that's necessary. You don't always want to pick up everything in another browsing session.

<comment><USER23> I'm also using Firefox Mobile on Android with Sync enabled -- it's awesome.

It will also sync saved passwords and even cookies.

Too bad that it uses too much memory. I hope they'll fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't hate mine. I just see very little point to it ever since I got iPad (which I use for everything except talking on the phone). I've been seriously considering getting smaller / cheaper basic flipphone if I ever need to replace it. Phone is just tween size I find useless. laptop too big / heavy, 7" tablet too small. iPad just right. The next smallest form factor I want is thing that wraps around ear (or in ear) that makes phone calls and whispers reminders and the like.

</comment><comment><USER25> _empowering users, providing the means to create meaningful works on these devices._

If you limit your view of meaningful works to things that require thousands of keystrokes then yes -- SmartPhones are very limiting. If you expand on that to include audio, video, photos, art and shorter form writing they are not so limiting anymore.

Apps like Brushes on iOS have produced professional quality artwork for The New Yorker.

Some musicians are starting to use SmartPhones (or tablets) as instruments in the studio and on the road. There are lots of very high quality audio apps these days. The Flaming Lips are using the iPad extensively on their upcoming project.

Expressing yourself short form through Twitter or FaceBook can be very meaningful to people. With high quality voice dictation it's quite possible we'll start seeing SmartPhones be more useful for longer form writing too.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm with the OP, sort of. I ditched my iPhone a couple months ago and surprisingly I barely miss it. Email, browser, and maps were the most useful applications for me, but I never cared for much else.

Now I own a Motorola F3 (FONE). It's about as simple as it gets while being incredibly durable, crazy long battery (e-ink), and amazing reception. It's also pretty slim and light, but it sucks for texting and the character display is a little painful. Worth it for me. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE>

Oh and my phone bill went from over $100 / month down to $25 / month, yet somehow I have way more talk time included in the plan (unlimited within the province).

I'm a software developer if you're wondering. Maybe I'd find smart phones a necessity in another profession...

</comment><comment><USER27> Teenagers have written novels on dumbphones and recorded albums on primitive tape decks. Complaining about imperfect tools and circumstances is the refrain of the wannabe.

If you don't like the screen, download an Audible book or buy an $80 Kindle.

<comment><USER28> This. I am continually amazed at how few people use Audible. It is an amazing and rich source for books recorded in very high quality (read by voice talents, no stops during audio). I finish a book every 2-3 weeks just by listening on my way to and from class.

Grooveshark is another service I use my phone almost daily for. Play virtually any song on your phone.

Myfitnesspal is yet another. Record daily caloric intake and exercise easily (since you always have a phone around and since you don't know all the calories in the food you eat, but a search-enabled website does).

I also play backgammon while waiting for the bus.

I never take maps to unknown destinations any more. I still remember the times we printed maps before going to tourist destinations in nyc.

I check my email.

I check my calendar.

I talk on skype (via skype mobile). I do international calls without being charged international rates.

I check the weather (mostly the temperature) to know how heavy to wear.

I occasionally take photos when I need to record something (on a blackboard, for example) but don't want to write it down.

<comment><USER29> I got some free credit on audible, downloaded a book, discovered it's drm'd and none of my: laptop, mobile, tablet can play it. They just wasted my time - worse than useless.

I definitely take photos of whiteboards though and call via my sip provider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I agree with some of the points, but it's all about user experience. If I want to use Twitter, my smartphone is great. Even replying it's great, because it's a short message. If I click on a link to a web page that has a mobile version, it's also great. Even though the screen is small, the site is designed so the clutter is gone and it's still easy to read.

Where my smartphone isn't so great is when the user experience breaks. I click a link and I end up on a site that isn't mobile friendly, is filled with junk and I need to pinch and zoom all over the place, I hate that. Or if I want to type in more than a sentence, I really hate the onscreen keyboard, or any small keyboard. Trying to do more involved things can be frustrating as well because it's never as fast as my desktop.

So really I think it's an evolving issue. Some things work great on it, many others not so much, but it's just a matter of time for many of these things to get better. When all sites have seamless mobile versions, when speech recognition is good enough that we won't need to type anything, we'll see smartphones be much better.

<comment><USER31> >when speech recognition is good enough that we won't need to type anything

I dread the coming of that day because using public transportation will become an even more unpleasant experience because there will be more people speaking into their phones and that speech will be even more unnatural than ordinary cell-phone conversations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I kind of feel sorry for this guy. "Hate" is such a strong word though he probably didn't really mean it.

He just picked out all the negative things about a smartphone and nothing else.

Would he rather carry a laptop for driving navigation? How about a standalone digital camera to take a picture?

This reminded me of this video:

Everything's Amazing & Nobody's Happy

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk>

<comment><USER33> In my case, I have a Garmin for GPS, which is much more reliable than any phone GPS I've used.

If you compare the quality of a point and shoot digital camera vs a smart phone, the digital camera will blow it out of the water. For me, it's about the quality of the photo, not the convenience.

We're lucky to have choices. That's the beauty of it.

<comment><USER34> > If you compare the quality of a point and shoot digital camera vs a smart > phone

My rule of thumb is that the best camera is the one you have with you. Seeing as I always have my iPhone with me, it's been the camera I go to most. I don't even know where my digital point and shoot is anymore.

<comment><USER33> Well, like I said, it's good to have choices. I carry around a point and shoot all the time. There's always one in the car. There's also one in my laptop bag. I routinely have a DSLR near me 90% of the time... then again, I'm a bit of a photography nut. That might explain it :)

I guess I'm an "audiophile" when it comes to photos.

I also have a hard time dealing with 192kbps mp3s. That damn cymbal compression sound is like nails on a chalk board.

<comment><USER35> If you can tell the difference between 192kbps and 320kbps in a blind test, I would say that is impressive.

I'm a musician and I have a few "audiophile" friends that say they can tell the difference, but when we conducted a blind test, they were basically just guessing.

I am not saying it's impossible, but there aren't many people that can hear the difference, I know I can't. Even with my Grado cans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I didn't want a smartphone that couldn't do the job of a computer in a pinch, and I got a Nokia N900.

Smartphone use is definitely ok, with a smartphone (non-realistic-calfskin) contacts app and messages/phone apps that are well-integrated, and several third-party apps that I use regularly (CloudGPS, FBReader). And the browser is as good as most others.

It has also got a (small) keyboard that you can use to enter text. Not fullsize, so you wouldn't do any programming on it (unless using a Bluetooth keyboard), but entering text and URLs definitely works. Where its computer qualities shine is when you need to scp a file from one place to the other, or if you have a bit of Python or Java code you want to run (because it has OpenJDK and Python).

I've never been tempted by the possibility to run (ARM-crosscompiled) real desktop applications, though - it's only smartphone stuff plus occasional console tasks, never ever Windows/Icons/Mouse/Pointing.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder how the author feels about tablets. Because this seems related to recent discussions about consumption:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3113192> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3047786>

</comment><comment><USER38> A few weeks ago I was in a shore town that I had never been to before for a wedding.

Before driving to the rehearsal dinner I had to pick up some supplies, so I Yelped for the nearest grocery store. One more touch pulled up turn-by-turn directions.

I didn't know exactly how to get to the rehearsal dinner location, but someone had texted me the address and I could just plug that in on my phone and it could navigate me.

I didn't have anything to listen to in the car, so I just downloaded a podcast and listened to it while I drove.

My girlfriend called me along the way to see when I would be at the location. The call paused the podcast; when I ended the call it resumed it immediately. Since I could talk to her on speakerphone I wasn't really distracted from driving.

I got to the rehearsal dinner early so I checked some HN articles in Google Reader before everyone else showed up.

As other people have said here, a smartphone is incredibly useful when you get out of your house.

</comment><comment><USER39> > "the screen is too small to do any useful reading."

This is where I disagree. I love my smartphone (Galaxy S2!) because it lets me read my Google Reader and Kindle on the go. But if you don't like the experience of reading on the screen, I can see how its perceived usefulness will diminish.

Smartphone utility is probably also strongly correlated with time spent away from a laptop. I rarely use my smartphone at work or at home, but I tend to spend most of my time out and about on the weekends, so access to email, IM and Maps while out of the house is worth the price of admission. You are never out of touch, you can find the address/directions to anything, from anywhere, anytime.

Then add on camera, Facebook, Yelp for finding restaurants, Yahoo Fantasy Football app, Evernote for keeping workout logs and saving commonly run queries and I'm pretty much in love. But as always, YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is why I'm excited about Windows 8. I can potentially have a pocket- sized/e-reader-sized device that is a real computer. When on the go, use it in its slate mode. Then plug a keyboard into its USB port and a display into its mini HDMI port and it's a full blown computer. No compromise.

</comment><comment><USER41> I will add only this: if you desire to do a lot of typing (writing, emailing, etc.) with a smartphone and you do not have a device with a physical keyboard then you need to go out and buy one (droid 2/3, mytouch slide, g2, etc.) before you continue complaining. It's a solvable problem.

</comment><comment><USER42> I dunno... I compose a _ton_ of emails on mine... some of my "best". I read all the time: books (not a lot), emails, social networks, and web pages and I'm still, years later, a little shocked at how rarely I get up off the couch for a bigger device. It seems unlikely to me that we'll ever plug our phones into our laptops because... nearly nobody really would like that. So... what's left of this article for me? Smartphones should move toward letting people do something "meaningful"? There seem to be apps for doing nearly anything I can imagine [that makes sense on a ~4" screen] and tons of things (more every day) that I wouldn't.

</comment><comment><USER43> His chief criticism is that its not his general purpose computer with a full sized keyboard and he doesn't like the popular, social uses for mobile technology. I don't think anyone can help him with that.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think I understand where this guy is coming from. But I also sorta understand his definition of the word "useful".

Yes looking up reviews, finding directions, connecting with people are all cool, time-saving things... but in and of themselves they are not useful. You're not creating anything or enjoying anything. You're just doing small chores in order to get about your daily life.

So I guess a smartphone is useful in that they sort of speed up your existence and make your routine more manageable.. but they are not made for creating or even meaningfully consuming content.

<comment><USER17> The things you list as average things done with a smartphone are the average things people do with regular computers, the so-called content creation devices in this discussion.

The vast majority of people are not content creators, and just because a device is good at creating content doesn't automatically imply that it's good at consuming content.

I also am curious as to what your threshold for useful is. I'm being able to perform tech support on the go via the phone functions and various remote desktop apps, does that count as useful? I can solve problems with my home network on the bus on the way home instead of wasting that time staring out the window and then wasting more time solving the problems once I return. That's useful to me.

I feel like many of the people here complaining about the novelty of smartphones use them in a very superficial way and rarely harness any real potential. Surprising considering that it's HN, but it really does seem that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> For sharing sessions between my N900, my Debian and my Mac, Firefox Sync.

</comment><comment><USER46> Desktops aren't going anywhere until laptops catch up to desktop performance on video games and graphics in general. The only reason I have a desktop is for gaming. I imagine most people who buy new desktops now only get them for gaming. I mean honestly, who would choose a desktop over a laptop for anything unless they need to interact with graphics heavily. I suppose you can get a more powerful desktop for cheaper than an equivalent laptop but I think this is a minority case.

(Just my thoughts, no data whatsoever to back this up).

<comment><USER47> I would choose the desktop anytime. It's just a matter of use case, but a desktop plus a netbook will likely be around the same order of prices as a laptop alone.

<comment><USER31> True but then you have to sync data between the two devices. Although this might change in the future, there is currently probably not a hassle-free way to sync all of one's persistent data without an expensive mobile data plan for the netbook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I rather think this is written to be provocative rather than creating a discussion. The writer speaks as if these things have been around since the beginning of time, but in fact we're only a few years down the line.

It's too early to tell what will happen, or what is possible on a smart "device" of any kind. I can see myself using Siri with Xcode on the iPhone in the not too distant future, if you permit me to let my mind wander. Then it would be useful, in the writer's context.

</comment><comment><USER49> I agree with this.

At my house there are constantly three things on the coffee table: an Android smartphone, an iPad 2, and a Thinkpad. The iPad 2 was novel at first, but now everyone reaches for the Thinkpad first when they are sitting on the couch.

Also, (shameless plug) I wrote about my own experience without a phone here: <http://codebrief.com/2011/06/living-untethered/>, and came up with a similar conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER50> "I hate my smartphine because I can't code on it or move what I'm doing from the computer immediately into it"? Really?

You should probably hate books (even the kindle) because they're worthless - you can't even play a video or worse, do ssh from them! And how about those pesky microwave ovens?

All microwaves should be computers. And still fit my pocket, make calls and have a big keyboard. I'm sure everyone thinks like me, so That's where the industry should be heading...

</comment><comment><USER51> with most of your points I do agree. I think for most people its about just browsing facebook/twitter, taking pictures, reading a few news sites, checking email/calendar, and call/text. I hardly think most of HN is representative of general population.

For movement between phone and desktop I use ChromeToPhone and dropbox. ChromeToPhone is probably the most seamless way.

<comment><USER52> "Imagine if you could just resume your browsing session on your laptop or desktop from your phone."

my first thought exactly --> i use chromeToPhone all the time.

<comment><USER53> _Imagine if you could just resume your browsing session on your laptop or desktop from your phone._

Firefox on Android can sync your tabs with your desktop browser (and vice- versa).

I _think_ the default Android browser on Android 3.0 and above can do this too (it certainly syncs bookmarks fine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I hate phones in general. Thats why I don't use a mobile (smart)phone. But I develop for them and follow the latest news about them. Maybe sound silly but I think mobile phones are the invention of this age that make people less social while being connected to others all day.

</comment><comment><USER55> I believe Firefox mobile does allow you to resume and visit your currently opened tabs and bookmarks.

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't hate my smartphone, but I do think I've become horribly codependant with it.

Maybe it's time for a 30 day smartphone fast: [http://www.addictionandsubtraction.com/30-day-smartphone- fas...](http://www.addictionandsubtraction.com/30-day-smartphone-fast/)

<comment><USER51> well, just switch to a dumb phone, and I think you'll probably still be alright. Limit yourself to calls and text and for most people you'll realize how little your life has changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> "Imagine if you could just resume your browsing session on your laptop or desktop from your phone."

But you can. It's called Firefox sync ;-) And it has instant sync of tabs.

</comment><comment><USER58> I miss speed dial. Other than that, my iPhone is a limb.

</comment><comment><USER59> Chrome To Phone? Seriously. Imagining being able to bring your browsing session from your desktop to your phone hasn't been necessary for over a year.

</comment><comment><USER60> Simple solution - ditch your PC and connect your phone to a monitor and a wireless keyboard. Ideally a WiFi connection to the monitor.

</comment><comment><USER61> Sounds like what he really wants is Windows 8.

</comment><comment><USER62> My old Palm IIIx was a much more useful productivity tool than this LG Android phone I'm using now. It was snappy, had a built-in suite of organization apps which worked extremely well, and I could input characters extremely quickly without even looking.

The thing that makes this smartphone superior is something which can disappear at any moment: connectivity. Using Google Navigation was pretty slick until I got to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, where there is no signal for hours. Luckily, Navigation caches map data, but if you switch to another app, it drops all theroute data on the floor.

Input is the worst aspect of smartphones. Keyboards aren't the solution. It's 2011, why do I still have to contorted my body to fit machines? Where is my skull implant, or brain wave sensing headband? This is the reason Siri will be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER63> I like my smartphone. It really makes some things in my life much easier. I can't get lost anymore! That is an amazing thing to me. It's so much nicer to use than a desktop computer. The display resolution is so high that it looks more like a shiny piece of paper than a screen. And it's a really nice physical artifact.

</comment><comment><USER64> Have you tried an iPad?

</comment><comment><USER65> How do you get a two letter .io domain?

</comment><comment><USER66> I wonder if there is a correlation between IQ points and the number of item in the 'no. of things I can do on a smartphone' lists that linkbait authors write.

"You can call people, browse the web, take photos, send text messages, and play Angry Birds."

5? Surely the author wouldn't be able to tie his own shoelaces with an IQ of 5...

</comment><comment><USER67> My smartphone means I can no longer make reliable phonecalls to anybody, ever, even if I'm standing below the cell tower. My smartphone has comparable voice quality of two tin cans and some thin wire. I tested. (to be fair, the smartphone has better range and it's network is more scaleable). My smartphone, whether verizon, sprint or at&t (I've gone through all three in five years) always manages to cost about $130 per month because they force me to pay $30/month for data and $20/month for texting. I never managed to go over on my minutes though, see my first point. My smartphone meant any hope at privacy or anonymity I might still harbor would be destroyed. My smartphone can be turned on remotely and tapped if the DHS decides to investigate my pakistani roommate from 11 years ago because he wrote "this policy is unfair" and then posted a cat stevens video on facebook. True story. My smartphone means I feel the urge to obsessively check facebook, twitter, linkedin, and my 8 email accounts every 3 seconds or else the world will end. My smartphone breaks the moment I drop it from 6 inches above a surface and costs $600 to replace. My smartphone(s) are smashed into pieces and disconnected. My smartphone has driven me to attempt to live without a mobile phone. My smartphone liberated me through frustration.

I now have a landline I rarely pick-up.

<comment><USER29> Lots of words, not sure what's the point. If you got bad reception, maybe it's a broken handset - have you tried repairing? Smartphones seem to work pretty well for other people so you're really the random bad case here.

The plan has nothing to do with he smartphone itself. I can have mine on around $6 per month prepaid in total (not in the us though). Regarding the true story... Well choose a phone which cannot be. If you don't want to be constantly connected to facebook et al. Just don't configure that account - use it via website, or not at all.

Your phone doesn't force you to do anything - you can use it however you want.</comment></comment>


David Chang's Unified Theory of Deliciousness - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/07/chef-david-chang-on-deliciousness/ <comment><USER2> David Chang himself throws me for a Strange Loop. On the one hand he is a genius and I'm so intrigued by his take on food, but then he'll talk about how he loves gas station hotdogs or orange chicken from Panda Express. I love that he can be pretentious in his unpretentiousness.

If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend the PBS series The Mind of a Chef. The first season is all about David Chang, narated by Anthony Bourdain. It's on Netflix and at least the Ramen episode is on Daily Motion.

<comment><USER3> I've always held that if you don't enjoy something across a wide range of the spectrum on which it exists, you can't really call yourself an enthusiast.

If you say you're a sushi connoisseur, but you only like top-shelf sushi prepared by world renowned chefs, then you don't really like sushi. You just like nice things. If you say you're a wine aficionado, but you will only drink wine that you've read is good, you don't really like wine.

<comment><USER4> Does a steak enthusiast need to enjoy a thin cut of pure gristle, cooked until it's blackened on both sides? Or a haut cuisine "deconstructed steak" which can be eaten in one bite?

Does a coffee aficionado need to enjoy a cup from the local 24-hour diner which was made by over-extracting cheap stale beans and then leaving the pot to sit on a hot pad for hours? Or a cup of instant coffee mixed with non-dairy creamer and two tablespoons of sugar?

Would a code connoisseur need to have an aesthetic appreciation for a corporate 500 kloc Java project that does nothing useful?

* * *

Someone who is deeply satisfied to eat anything called "sushi" is just a very hungry person, and someone who has an insatiable thirst for every type of wine is an alcoholic.

Or in other words, there's a big gray area here. There is a very wide range of quality in most things, from «entirely unpalatable and probably poisonous» to «divine once-in-a-lifetime experience», as well as a wide range in particular tastes and preferences. Different people have different standards, and that's okay.

One group of people can like student art films with no action and long philosophical monologue voiceovers by entirely unlikeable characters. Another group of people can like superhero movies with a predictable plot, flat characterization, and lots of explosions. Both groups can plausibly say they like "movies".

<comment><USER5> Your reaction to the parent says more about you than the point the parent was trying to make.

>[If] you only like top-shelf sushi prepared by world renowned chefs....

>[If] you will only drink wine that you've read is good...

Both of those are examples of a second-handed appreciation for the subject matter. In the first case, the person is substituting pricing signals and reviewer opinions for their own independent judgement. In the second case, the person is not only substituting reviewer opinions for their own judgement, but also denying themselves even the opportunity to learn how to judge the subject.

An enthusiast or connoisseur is a person with a first-handed view of a subject. In order to develop a first-handed view, a broad understanding of the material, associated topics, and direct experience with the full breadth of a subject is necessary.

In the case of sushi, the enthusiast needs to understand the varying quality of sushi available, methods and techniques of preparation, the flavor profiles of fish, the effect of garnishes and sauces, and so forth. You can't appreciate great sushi until you understand bad/mediocre/good sushi.

In the case of wine, the enthusiast should have extensive experience with wines at many price points, understand the production methods, understand types of fermentation, know the various types of grapes, and so forth.

In my experience, enthusiasts for a specific topic are almost _never_ snobs. I've met beer enthusiasts who don't necessarily enjoy common beers, but they are nevertheless in awe of the production process and uniform quality. I've met wine connoisseurs who dislike many $30 bottles but generally enjoy $2 wine from Trader Joes (aka two-buck-chuck).

<comment><USER6> I agree with you completely.

I'll add the point that if all you've ever eaten is the best of the best, you don't really appreciate something as much as if you've experienced the middle or lower ends.

Anecdote: I dry age my own steaks, and I've realized that people don't really appreciate them as much as if they're eaten side by side with a "control" steak that's unaged.

<comment><USER7> Similarly to your dry aged steak anecdote, I has two bottles of the same brand of port, one aged 10 years and the other 20. The 10 year tasted great to me, but once I had it alongside the 20 year, I realized the 10 year had a somewhat unpleasant aftertaste which I hadn't noticed drinking it on its own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ha, he actually used the word "isomorphism" correctly, in contrast to recent JavaScript terminology :)

I don't really think he used the concept of "strange loop" correctly, because there is no self-reference involved in his examples. It's more of a "paradox" (something that's undersalted and oversalted at the same time)

<comment><USER9> I just searched for the JavaScript isomorphism conundrum and did a facepalm. JavaScript seems to be a breeding ground for getting all kinds of things wrong. Just the other day on HN [1] - a JavaScript developer had misused the term "predicate," someone provided a correction, and then a whole host of responses emerged to defend the botched definition in a variety of manipulative ways(appeals to emotion, shame, "it's just like your opinion man," etc.).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12107737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12107737)

<comment><USER10> Following your link, I do not see a single defense of the botched definition. The contention seems to be entirely over whether it is bad form to point out an incorrect definition without providing the correct one.

<comment><USER11> While I agree the ensuing argument was excessive, I'll provide a defense of the "botched" definition.

The _top_ definition for "predicate", that most people are familiar with, and that was omitted from the dictionary quote, is:

> 1\. (grammar) The part of the sentence (or clause) which states something > about the subject or the object of the sentence.

And in that context, it was a perfectly valid use of predicate, effectively synonymous with "unary function".

Sure, someone could & should have pointed out that the term was confusing because it has a more specific meaning in a computer science context, but all of the responses were simply "you're wrong" and creating in-group/out-group boundaries[1] rather than trying to _understand_ the communication mismatch.

[1] It's usually a bad sign when someone comes in and says "serious programmers should know [...]". :P

<comment><USER12> I am making serious mental contortions to try to figure out how a grammatical term about the structure of sentences can be synonymous with a unary function and I just can't do it. It seems pretty clear that the instance of the word that inspired that discussion took the computer science definition and mistakenly expanded its definition.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps I was particularly sensitive to it because it matched my internal models. Here's the way I break it down:

In classical/antiquated grammar, most sentences can be divided into a subject and a predicate. The predicate indicates what the subject does/is. While there are issues with agreement and semantics, on a broad syntactic level, the subject is arbitrary and can be replaced with another valid subject:

        The angry dog  // jumped over the fence.
        My grandmother // jumped over the fence.
        Twelve apples  // jumped over the fence.

Since the predicate encodes the action, to me it makes sense to think of this relationship as a predicate function taking a subject argument. Even if the subject is plural or conceptual it is still just a single subject object, hence unary.

Then, in the OP's js context of Object.map we have a situation like this:

        import map from 'just-map-object';
        function jumpedOverTheFence(subj) { \\ impl };
        var things = ['The angry dog', 'My grandmother', 'Twelve apples'];

        map(things, jumpedOverTheFence);

Obviously I'm doing some weird things for brevity like conflating strings and objects there, but hopefully gets the point across.

IMO the analogy actually extends fairly well too. Agreement is a good match for typing (A singular typed predicate "walks" can't take a plural typed subject "Some dogs" => "Some dogs walks" fails at the syntax level), and semantics match internal expectations of functions (The "12 apples jumped..." breaks internal, but untyped expectation that the subject would have agency or control over its actions, like a "chooseTo" method or a "consciousness" property.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > I got really into experimenting with fermentation

I really like fermented food. Love kefir (fermented milk product), kvass (a Russian fermented bread drink). Pickles, sauerkraut...

He mentions fermented chickpeas. If you get organic foods with less preservatives in them, say some fresh salsa or chickpea salads, it will ferment pretty quickly even in the fridge and you can sort of taste it. I rather like it, and have left some things around long enough for them to ferment a bit.

Btw, if you buy pickles and they have anything else in the ingredients besides spices, water, salt and cucumbers, you are probably getting just boiled cucumbers with vinegar, so the sourness doesn't come from fermentation but from the vinegar. That is a very different taste than a properly fermented pickle. So next time look at the label and see what you are getting. One brand I have been getting lately is Bubbies ([http://bubbies.com/kosher_dills](http://bubbies.com/kosher_dills)) found it in a smaller local store, but there are probably others.

<comment><USER14> Start making your own kimchi and there is no going back. Stuff goes with everything: in paninis, on oatmeal with a poached egg and sesame seeds, on a baked potato...

Thanks for the tip on the pickles. Hadn't heard this before.

<comment><USER15> Indeed. It's not hard. My family started making kimchi, by just adapting a mainstream sauerkraut recipe. You have to get the amount of salt right, hence the reason for starting with an "official" recipe. Too much salt will cause "yellow kraut" which is a disaster. We used nappa or Chinese cabbage, and then began to experiment with our own amounts of red pepper and other stuff. A half-gallon batch is not to hard to manage.

On the same subject, you can make your own "refrigerator" pickles, that are fermented in a non sealed container. It's a matter of personal preference when they're ready to eat, and they continue to work, so you can experience a variety of flavors over the space of a couple weeks.

<comment><USER16> > You have to get the amount of salt right

Correction: you have to simultaneously have TOO MUCH salt and TOO LITTLE salt. I read David Chang one time...

(just practicing how to spin this article for maximum snobbery)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> His description of saltiness reminded me of something I like to do:

I enjoy braised vegetables cooked so that there are varying levels of doneness throughout. It's as if all the best flavors in each manage to come through and you get this whole spectrum of what it means to be that vegetable.

<comment><USER18> > I enjoy braised vegetables cooked so that there are varying levels of > doneness throughout.

Yes! A common technique among more advanced cooks is to add the same spice multiple times through the cooking process. Spices (and other ingredients) change in flavor in response to heat, so you end up getting several different flavors even though they come from the same original ingredient.

My favorite example of an ingredient that works like this is onions. A fresh onion is super crunchy and so pungent it literally makes your eyes water. Simmer it for hours and you've got French onion soup—something so soft and sweet it's practically a dessert.

That's all the onion changing in response to heat. When you use an onion, you aren't selecting an ingredient. You get to select any precise point on that continuum between sharp and soft that you want, just based on when you put it in.

Even with the same recipe, I'll vary it up each time I make it based on how I'm feeling. Sometimes I want my farmer's omelette to have some crunch and tang so I cook the onions less. Other times I want it smooth and savory so I cook them more.

(And, of course, once you take into account cooking _temperature_ —slow and low versus hot and fast, and how finely you chop them—thickness effects how different the inside and outsides of each piece cook are—you realize even a single ingredient gives you a multi-dimensional space to explore).

<comment><USER17> > to add the same spice

Interesting, any tips on spices that works particularly well with?

I can totally relate to the desire to have the onions be a bit more or less crunch in an omelette depending on your mood.

<comment><USER19> I think of it more in terms of different techniques applied at different stages. One example is deglazing. Fry a piece of meat, and little sticky bits of meat and caramelized fat stick to the pan. Remove the meat, wash the pan with wine or some other liquid, scrape the meat remnants into it, and you get a sauce for the meat.

Another variant of the concept is red-eye gravy. Cook sausage, deglaze the pan with coffee. Then the gravy becomes a connector between the sausage you're eating and the coffee you're drinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is _way_ more Godel, Escher, Bach than you expected in an article by a chef.

<comment><USER20> Sure, but he totally missed the idea of the book. Something tasting salty and not salty is not an instance of self-reference and neither were any of his other examples.

<comment><USER21> I don't think he missed the idea at all. He's not saying that his food is an example of a strange loop or self-reference. He's saying that the reaction to a dish can be similar to the reaction of coming across a strange loop. He says that "When you hit a strange loop like this, it shifts your point of view: Suddenly you aren't just thinking about what's happening inside the picture; you're thinking about the system it represents and your response to it". That's the idea that he wanted to express in his food. He then provides the example of Spicy Pork Sausage & Rice cakes and other dishes that expressed that idea for him. All those dishes were no longer just about the dish, but about the reaction and response to the dish.

<comment><USER20> That's a good reading of it! I was hoping he would reach for a deeper connection though.

<comment><USER22> You're right, that would be very cool (but IMHO also a little unlikely). He did right though, by not forcing this deeper connection when it's not really there, instead referencing that "huh?" feeling, which _is_ common to both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you are in NYC, I highly recommend momofuku noodle bar and momofuku ssam bar. I've never been to Ko, but I've heard great things. I'd recommend taking a pass on ma peche.

<comment><USER24> Ko is allright, definitely check it out (my write up [0]). I've done 5/6 of the 3 Michelin stars in NYC and 5/10 2-star ones, and if you only want to pick one, Ko is allright but I would recommend Atera instead of Ko from the 2-star tier. For the really great stuff in 3-star tier, definitely Chef's Table Brooklyn Fare.

That said, ssam bar and noodle bar are both good, but don't forget Fuku, the chicken sandwiches are very juicy!

[0]: [https://rafal.io/posts/momofuku-ko-new- york.html](https://rafal.io/posts/momofuku-ko-new-york.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Suddenly you aren't just thinking about what's happening inside the picture; > you're thinking about the system it represents and your response to it.

This is what true art is about.

His use of "unfamiliarity" as a tool to evoke a shift in your point of view is actually a classic artistic device called "Defamiliarization"[1]. That is: _The artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way in order to enhance perception of the familiar._

Or as Viktor Shklovsky put it first: _The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar,' to make forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged._

On step further it can be described with the "Wundt" or "Hedonic curve"[2] that basically says, the most interesting experiences are those that are similar-yet-different to those that have been experienced previously.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization) [2]: [http://natcomp.liacs.nl/images/wundt.jpg](http://natcomp.liacs.nl/images/wundt.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER26> Interesting personal anecdote on salt.

After our marriage, my wife's mother shared her precious cookbook with her and asked her to copy/translate it. My wife did so and she used that as the basis of her cooking since.

There was one important component of the recipes that my mother in law had neglected to add since it was second nature to her.

"Add salt to taste."

I was always confounded whenever I tasted the food that my wife made from one of those recipes and when I tasted the exact same food when my mother in law made it.

It was only a while later that we found out what the cause of the inconsistency was.

<comment><USER27> This was one of the biggest level-ups in my own personal cooking, realizing that salting (and to a much lesser extent peppering) to taste makes or breaks the dish. Most home cooks I know will skip that step out of ignorance or health concerns, not realizing that it will make the dish taste awful.

Why do you enjoy simple restaurant dishes (including salads) much more than your home-cooked equivalents? Salt.

<comment><USER28> I bought some truffle salt a couple years ago and now half the time I'm using flavored salts of one variety or another.

When I dry rosemary I put all the broken bits and stems in a jar with some salt and leave it for a while, then I separate them before use. I'm curious what would happen if I just put a bunch of fresh sprigs in a jar to dry them, but I would have to start gifting it to people because damn that's a lot of salt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I noticed one of the photo captions in the article. It was suffixed with the following phrase:

"David Chang wears a Michael Kors sweater; Levi's jeans; Satellite Wave watch by Citizen."

I would expect such a caption more from a fashion magazine than from a publication like WIRED. Is that a WIRED policy to treat its article subjects as fashion celebrities or was that just something added by a Photo editor/agency?

Fantastic article in every other way though.

<comment><USER29> I agree it's a little unusual, but I don't see how it detracts from the article in any way.

<comment><USER26> It absolutely doesn't detract from the article in any objective way. It's just a pet peeve and probably misplaced considering David Chang is also a TV celebrity in addition to a masterful Chef.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Really great article. I think I had some kind of weird meta-experience reading it where I was reminded of Godel, Escher, Bach in the unfamiliar context of cooking. I'm sure the author of this article would've appreciated that (as well as the author of G.E.B.).

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a love of crunchy foods. I mainly love the crunchy sound as I eat them.

Is there an evolutionary theory of why I might have evolved to love these? The only theory I could think of is that they're a marker of freshness in some vegetables. But nature never made anything as crunchy as the crunchy foods I love.

<comment><USER32> Cooked meat can have a crunchy burned exterior, which indicates wonderful tasty easily-digestible protein, great for our energy intensive brains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well, this theory explains the appeal of a hot fudge brownie sundae. A warm brownie and cold vanilla ice cream, individually are both pretty good, but combining them becomes hypnotic.

As long as you eat it before the ice cream melts and the brownie gets cold.

</comment><comment><USER34> That is so amazing and goes with the theory put forth in the book On Intelligence (by Jeff Hawkins). The theory is that the mind noticies things that are out of place. If it is too close to an existing pattern, brain will put it into that pattern. To stabd out the new item/concept has to be far enough from any existing pattern. So if a dish is salty and not salty at the same time, it doesnt fit in any of two patterns familier to the brain.

</comment><comment><USER35> Did anyone get any actionable concepts from that article? Seems like an interesting read but not sure how to any of it to my own cooking.

<comment><USER15> More glutamic acid. Oddly enough, my family already makes two of the magic dishes mentioned in the article: The pork buns and Ma Po's tofu.

In my view, there's not much that a home cook can learn from a chef. Julia Child commented on the difference, and thought that being a good home cook is an art unto itself. A lot of what we do in home cooking is the art of the possible. We deal what's available at the supermarket, in season, whatever we can grow in our backyard gardens, etc. We may have limited equipment and limited budgets. Some of us live with vegetarians.

For instance, in our case the pork buns are made using our pizza dough recipe, and baked. We don't have those amazing giant steamers that you see in the kitchen when you go to dim sum. Our Ma Po's tofu is vegetarian, much as I love the combination of tofu and pork.

<comment><USER36> > In my view, there's not much that a home cook can learn from a chef. Julia > Child commented on the difference, and thought that being a good home cook > is an art unto itself. A lot of what we do in home cooking is the art of the > possible. We deal what's available at the supermarket, in season, whatever > we can grow in our backyard gardens, etc. We may have limited equipment and > limited budgets. Some of us live with vegetarians.

I think there's a ton we can learn from chefs. Personally, I've learned a few things from Alton Brown, particularly about reproduce-ability; being able to reproduce a recipe that you cooked once that turned out well. In an interview with him (I think it was on Radiolab but not sure) he mentioned increasing the accuracy of your measurements: use a thermometer to measure heat and measure your dry ingredients by weight, not by volume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can anyone recommend sources (preferably online) along the lines of cooking theory similar to this?

<comment><USER23> I know you said preferably online but see if any library you have access to has a copy of the five volume set Modernist Cuisine.

Incidentally the guy behind them has a fascinating, and tech relevant, biography.

<comment><USER38> You're forgetting one of the biggest patent trolls, too.

<comment><USER24> Is that relevant? It doesn't make his other positive and fascinating achievements any less great.

<comment><USER38> I believe that a super negative act can easily mar someone's reputation, and I think most on HN would agree that Intellectual Ventures is a pox on our industry. Similarly, lots of people on HN have changed their perception of Theil after his gawker stints have come to light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I like his food. I think a lot of his fame is due to his attitude but I do applaud him for trying to think more meta about what we think we like to eat.

</comment><comment><USER40> offtopic: has wired stopped blocking adblock users?

<comment><USER41> I just checked, they are still using their anti-blocker on other articles, but for this specific article it does not kick-in.

<comment><USER42> I find it entertaining that they consider Ghostery and ad-blocker. I don't mind ads, but I do mind things that track me.</comment></comment></comment>


How to put Encrypted Contents on Cloud Storages - <AUTHOR> http://haridas.in/how-to-put-encrypted-contents-on-cloud-storages.html

<comment><USER2> I've used encfs for years to keep sensitive data encrypted locally, but I found that with cloud storage, the inability to compress made that approach less than ideal, and the dropbox client refuses to sync the file when it is mounted. The approach I take is to create a standard filesystem, and then reguarly compress and encrypt a copy into the Dropbox folder. The command to do so is below: cat /overflow/dropbox.ext4 | gzip -f | openssl aes-256-cbc -pass pass:xxx > /overflow/Dropbox/dropbox.ext4.gz.aes-256-cbc

Which I set my backup routine to run when it is finished, but you could also set to run at regular intervals using cron. Occasionaly, you might want to zero out the filesystem to improve compression. This can be done using "cp /dev/zero /mnt/SecureDropbox/zero" followed by "rm /mnt/SecureDropbox/zero"

<comment><USER3> For zeroing unused blocks, I can suggest zerofree: <http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/zerofree>

<comment><USER2> There description sounds like it is intended for use in Virtual Machines

<comment><USER3> Well sure, but it's just zeroing free blocks; that's the same operation (with the same desired outcome) whether you're using the disk image in a virtual machine or as an encrypted loopback device.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Wriber – Idea Generator - <AUTHOR> https://www.wriber.com <comment><USER2> Hey, just had a go at this for five minutes, and here's what I thought. I'm probably not your 'target customer', but here's my feedback anyway!

First impression: I'm not really sure what the site does.

The first thing I see is the logo, and I don't really know what 'Write better content' means. It's too vague.

I'm then asked to 'Enter three keywords for better content creation'. I still don't know what this means, or why I'm doing this, but I do it anyway, because I want to see what happens.

I searched for 'free online education', at which point it spent a bit of time loading, before coming up with ideas for blog posts (I think!). However, some of these were a bit nonsensical, e.g. 'Whose the inclusion of links to items do not reflect their importance', 'May students also search for courses by subject, language, and institution?', 'Did a few other universities offer online textbooks?'

Conclusion: I don't mind that the algorithm is a bit iffy at the moment, becuase some of the ideas for blog posts were fairly sensible. But the messaging on the site is unclear.

Just my opinion, of course -- and one that doesn't seem to be shared by others here!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback, Chris. Today has been a crazy day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So I had to retry my search after five minutes, but was really impressed with the results. I searched "Roguelike Game Development." About a third were meaningless, a third were meaningless but made me think of something useful, and a third I could probably use as interview questions when talking to a game developer.

Any chance of an API? I'm working on a head mounted display software system that could integrate something like this, not as a writing prompt, but as a conversation prompt with someone.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Our servers are blowing up right now. Fixing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Works fine for me. Pretty impressive results (I used the pre-populated query; "peanut butter alternatives").

Curious about the tech behind the site...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! There's some information retrieval, NLP, semantic analysis, and machine learning going on. All of our stuff is proprietary (4 non-provisional patents are filed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 2 cents from the CEO of a content marketing company:

One thing that humans will continue to be better at than machines for a very long time is creating interesting stories for other humans. There is no machine that has nearly written a Faulkner novel, or even written up anything more complex than a baseball game (which is itself impressive, though the template is not much more complex than a complicated madlib). When you read machine written stuff, it stinks of the machine that made it. The wriber software is little different at this stage, as evidenced by some of the mangled "ideas" it's generated for others on this thread.

Software and data absolutely have a place in any good editorial strategy, but presuming an algorithm can furnish ideas that will perform better than humans armed with data-driven insights is a mistake in my opinion.

Our content strategists are armed with boatloads of social data, they identify trending topics, top performing articles from competitors etc., and all of that informs the human decisions they make as the editors of their brand publications about what gets written.

At the end of the day, though, I'm going to leave the decision making (and a good part of the ideation) to the talented humans that make up the L&T Co. team.

I'm more compelled by software that helps my team come to data-driven insights themselves than by software that purports to "do the hard part" for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really good feedback, landtco. I want to make sure that we don't give off that impression. One of our customers is a digital agency that creates content for companies.

The ideas provided are meant to prompt thinking. Sometimes they provide the actual content, but the majority of the time, they help you research your topic (we include a URL in the paid version and allow you take snippets out of sources really easy). This is especially useful if your writers are not all subject matter experts for niche content.

We also do a lot more than provide ideas. For instance, if you're writing for a lot of companies, they may all have style guidelines that you have to follow. Instead of having to remember all the rules, you can customize Wriber to check for them.

<comment><USER5> I'd be interested to check out some of that functionality. We should connect. Drop me a line at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like it already. I typed in some words related to my startup and it proposed some really good prompts I could turn into articles. Other content-generation sites have given terrible results and suggestions, usually in a Buzzfeed style "6 things you'll never guess about art!".

This site I could take a few of these and go write a few paragraphs about off- the-cuff. Looking forward to playing more when the site comes back up.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, this was very impressive. I tried "inverse document frequency" since it was related to the report I'm working on and it came back with surprisingly good questions on the topic albeit a little broken ("How did the number of times a term appear?") in some places.

</comment><comment><USER8> What I really need at the moment is a service that tells which of my ideas is the least stupid.

I'd pay a lot for that.

<comment><USER9> Mechanical Turk?

<comment><USER10> Friend + Beer?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried with some niche content and got some weird combinations, but it still gave me a good ideia on how to write something about it in bullet points, which is really nice. Keep it up, I'll definitely keep checking.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tried 'waterless car wash', and got some incoherent and grammatically erroneous results like:

\- Which organization will make their car look?

\- Did dry Wash help someone to clean their car without using water?

\- Explore what sort of organization green Shine is?

\- Explain how Eco Auto Clean is back at it Again Hey there waterless car wash fans.

I'm guessing its using NLP and some knowledge graph and picking top terms. But still needs work.

<comment><USER13> I did Donkey Friend Time and got:

\- Discuss what sorts of organizations donkey Kong, Diddy, and Cranky are?

\- Did Diddy Kong refuse to hand over the banana hoard after what?

\- What did the more someone know about miniature donkeys before someone buys?

<comment><USER14> "dog eats software"

\- Examine why dogs will eat poop.

\- In what way did many dog owners get very upset when their dog eats poop?

\- Is this a wonderful opportunity for their dog to interact with someone?

\- Talk about what some dogs are.

\- How do some dogs have instincts to carry stuff in their mouths?

\- What is the cloud?

<comment><USER15> "cold embrace death"

\- What showing a large black bird sitting between candles?

\- Talk about why those burning eyes spoke of terrible things that have been done.

\- What is fuck all?

\- Did daylight blind their way the sun will never shine through someone?

\- Was the military encampment calling to them like a bitch in heat?

\- Describe how it was not long before they were under assault by infected.

\- Did the boy sprint towards the doors that would answer his questions?

\- What did the strain of making ends meet and paying for?

\- How does someone not know too much helpful spells yet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not working for me. Maybe we gave it the HN hug?

</comment><comment><USER17> I am really confused on what excatly it does. Does it generate ways to solve a problem?

I would personally would like to know how many other people have searched what I was looking for. Say I was allergic to peanuts and looking for alternative and I find out there are so many other guys are searching for the same thing....then I know its a common problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, it's meant to give you ideas to write about in an article or blog post. If you're every wondering what to say, this can prompt you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool tool. Worked pretty well for a specific niche that I am in. Might want to better identify why someone would want a demo? Are there additional features? Is there something that costs money that does more than the free version? Is there a way to sign up without getting the demo?

<comment><USER6> Agree on the demo points here. I saw the video and want to try the product. I don't need a demo at all. Just let me sign up. Or request a beta invite, or something.

I definitely don't want a sales call to show me everything I just saw in the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, this tool is really... smartdumb? I don't mean that as an insult, it generates ideas that are 90% complete and requires you to fill in the rest yourself. It's almost like a mind-mapping tool: start with a central topic, and branch out to related material.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not working for me. Sounds interesting though, make a beta signup for notification till it is down?

</comment><comment><USER21> Pretty cool. Returned some gibberish, and some solid sparks for topics. I wonder if you could tweak it to rank the relevance somehow. Maybe have users train it by clicking/removing crappy results, or some such. Not really my specialty - just thinking out loud.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was skeptical, but it really works. It is going to help a lot of folks with content marketing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Would be useful if there were more examples of what to search for on the landing page. I'm stumped for ideas of what to enter. I saw there was one example in the textbox but I need more for context.

</comment><comment><USER24> Love it. I would love to know how this works.

</comment><comment><USER25> I kind of upvoted this in principle, but I can't try it. Look forward to when it gets a little later.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's working now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> 'Generating your ideas'.

This copy made my future hurt.

</comment><comment><USER27> "data literacy education"

Waiting since last 5 mins :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Please try again :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> And.... its down

<comment><AUTHOR> We're back up! Sorry for the delay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> i thought this was a joke, it is not.

</comment><comment><USER30> Super duper shit mate. You should definitely have a beta signup or some other form for folks who either visit and its down or don't want to demo right away?</comment>


Jwalk: Streaming JSON Parser for Unix - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shellbound/jwalk <comment><USER2> No, it's more of a JSON to CSV converter.

I prefer gron. I primarily want the output to be greppable and easily processed by tools like sed and awk. I don't care so much that the data is column oriented and each data element is separated by tab characters.</comment>


Relax with CouchDB - First Three Chapters for Feedback - <AUTHOR> http://books.couchdb.org/relax/

<comment><USER2> I have to fight the urge to be the "someone is wrong on the internet" guy in the XKCD cartoon when I read stuff like this. I don't think it's being overly pedantic to say that words have meanings, and that meanings are especially important in relational database theory because they are precise mathematical meanings--not fuzzy natural language meanings.

From that perspective this document is borderline incoherent. The authors don't know what a relational database is.

<comment><USER3> yeah I think I must be missing the "domain" of problem that this is a solution for? If you have relatively non-relational static (more read than updated) data why do you need this to store it? Wouldn't flat files or berkeley db type solutions fit the bill?

Also I am not questioning the validity of the project - more hoping that an advocate can give an example of a foot that this show fits snugly.</comment></comment>


Free Public Resolving Name Server - <AUTHOR> http://www.resolvingnameserver.com/freerns.html

<comment><AUTHOR> After the attention that "OpenDNS is hijacking Google" received (see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=136270>), I thought Hacker News might be interested in a nameserver that did nothing but resolve domain names. I have been using Resolving Name Server for at least a year, ever since I found that my ISP was hijacking missing sites and pages, and I have been quite happy with it, but it did take me some time to find it.

I recently purchased a WRT54GL and put Tomato on it (<http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato/> \-- highly recommended, by the way) and set OpenDNS to be my static DNS, thinking that's what I was using before with my dnsmasq setup. I started finding, however, that some of my browsing was redirecting me to OpenDNS pages, something that hadn't been happening before. After going back through some old config files, I found that Resolving Name Server is what I actually had been using, so I thought I'd share it (and also remind myself :-). I have been much happier with it than with my brief experience with OpenDNS.</comment>


How I Did the Impossible: HBO Without Cable TV - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/11/04/how-i-did-the-impossible-hbo-without-cable-tv/?mod=e2fb

<comment><USER2> Title (while the actual article title) is imprecise.

The author still has "cable TV". The author has a "basic cable tier". He's getting it plus a $5/month discount against his broadband, so he is not actually paying anything to get the basic cable channels.

But he's not actually "without cable TV". Which is how he's able to watch HBO via HBO Go.

Which is why the title is imprecise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Misleading linkbait headline. He still has a cable subscription, he just gave up his set-top box.</comment>