Using fractals for multi-platform UI design - <AUTHOR> http://www.leavesofcode.com/2011/05/interface-design-using-fractals.html Can an single UI be created to that scales for phones, tablets and desktops... this guy seems to think so. <comment><USER2> Follow up post: [http://www.leavesofcode.com/2011/05/creating-healthy- design-...](http://www.leavesofcode.com/2011/05/creating-healthy-design-from- cells.html)</comment>


The Wrap Cord: a better MacBook extension cord - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirky.com/ideations/504917

<comment><USER2> this is seriously awesome, hope more people vote this up on quirky to make it a reality... right now i have to use one of those nite ize gear ties to make sense of the extension part of my macbook cord

</comment><comment><USER3> The 3rd prong is the ground. Removing it might not be the smartest move...</comment>


The Blasphemy We Need - <AUTHOR> http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/the-blasphemy-we-need/

<comment><USER2> The authors third point has an error. He wrote inversely proportional. From his later arguments, he clearly means proportional.</comment>


Why Do All Records Sound the Same? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-do-all-records-sound-the-same-830ba863203 <comment><USER2> So many problems with this article. I recently started recording music after a long break and I love that everything is in the computer now. I had one of the very first Pro tools systems and it cost $12,000 (25MB hard drive). Gear that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars is now available with a click. I had always wanted to use great compressors and they are almost all available now as plug-ins. I also took some old tracks and ran them through the Waves maximizers - what a difference. What this means is that anyone with some musical and recording skills can compete against record companies.

It seems to me that the writer of the article just doesn't like pop music, and doesn't understand the business of pop music. Pop music, and especially pop music on the radio, has its own rules. It's no use getting upset about them. There's a lot of skill in engineering recordings that work on the radio. And Autotune is great. It's like getting upset that a movie director uses special effects. Good music always transcends the technology. Do you care that Gravity wasn't actually filmed in space?

If you want your music to sound like it was recorded in the sixties you can do so either by getting the vintage equipment or using vintage-style plug ins. But if the Beatles were around today they would be using all of the latest techniques, just like they were at the forefront of recording technology back then.

Meanwhile, my ten-year-old daughter just bought a record player and Taylor Swift on vinyl.

<comment><USER3> Hi, Thanks for reading! I think we agree more than you think. What I wanted to do with the article was explain why music sounds like it does, explaining why the 'rules' are the way they are. I hate it when people imply producers are stupid or lazy or unskilled or uncreative because they're making pop - if it was easy to craft a radio hit that will cut through in 7 seconds in a listening session, we'd all be doing it and living in mansions. What I thought was interesting about the Maroon 5 stuff at the start wasn't that it was lazy, but that it was really hard, boring work that they didn't seem to enjoy very much. That wasn't how I perceived the process of making pop hits. Re: the Beatles today; of course they'd use the latest technology, but they might still have a hard time cutting through in a seven second listening session. Now, as then, there are other ways to be successful beyond pop radio. When I'm talking about Neil Young & Rick Rubin/Johnny Cash, I'm looking at the way studio recording has changed. It's certainly not better or worse, but it is interestingly different.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for writing the article. I'm in the middle of rediscovering the tools of recording so it made me think about many things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nitpicks: "A great deal of quality is lost as those huge files are squished to the CD format, before being further squished into MP3s on your iPod." Not true, AAC files at high bitrates are proven to be indistinguishable from the original. [http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil- young.html](http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html)

"Every part of the signal chain—from earbuds to digital/audio converters—is improving and getting cheaper." Like other technologies, digital audio had rapid improvements in the first 10 years but has mostly leveled off as we have reached the limits of physics, signals and sampling. Good audio equipment is still expensive and power hungry in every part of the chain.

Technology won't save what are fundamentally psychological issues. We respond emotionally to louder signals. We like songs that sound similar but not identical to things we've heard before. We listen to things that our friends like. All of this points to why top 40 songs sound the same, but "all records" is pretty broad. There has never been a better time to create something new in music, and yet we lean heavily on what has worked before -- in songwriting, in arrangement, in production -- so that others will like and identify with the creative output.

<comment><USER5> The format is not the limitation, but audio engineers (for major studios anyway) tend to crank the volume up on CDs more often than vinyl releases. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war)

<comment><USER6> I was once told that when mastering for vinyl you have to be careful with extremes because it can cause the needle to jump off the record.

<comment><USER7> That's frequency extremes. So the high and low ends of the frequency range are rolled off. Also wide stereo in the bass region can cause the needle to jump, so either the bass needs to be reduced in volume or made mono/as-close-to-mono as possible.

Dynamic range is less of a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Stuff like this reminds me a lot of sugary simple-carb-laden junk food. The holy grail of popular marketing is to find a way to tap into some kind of simple and probably very evolutionarily ancient "craving" or "desire" pathway in the brain. Seems like they've learned a whole collection of hacks to do this with music, and are now just cranking out manufactured pop music full of those hacks. Combined with repetition in the radio (familiarity, another cognitive bias), they can churn out predictable hits.

The question is whether people will ever get smarter and start being picky. We've seen a bit of this in food. The whole/natural/craft/whatever foods movement contains a fair amount of superstitious nonsense, but at its core it's ultimately about consumers being a lot pickier about what they eat. I think the overall effect is good -- people eating healthier food and deliberately turning down addictive nutritionally devoid junk. Maybe we'll eventually get an equivalent movement in music.

<comment><USER9> > The question is whether people will ever get smarter and start being picky.

The market for music is typically youth. So people probably do get smarter, start being picky, and stop being youth. But there's always another generation right behind.

<comment><USER10> At the same time other factors kicks in. As you get older you have less free time, you may or may not want to discover new things, you just listen to some easy songs on your way to work, and start to like them because they're part of your daily routine.

<comment><USER11> On the other hand, there's the factor of the hip music (not the top 100) getting box sets twenty years later ... because that's when the music fans have jobs and money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Rick Rubin's recordings of Johnny Cash are extraordinarily intimate and affecting. But they don't sound anything like Johnny Cash sitting in your living room playing some songs. They sound like you're perched on Johnny Cash's lap with one ear in his mouth and a stethoscope on his guitar."

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of this recent popular YouTube mashup: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vapt5C3yDeY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vapt5C3yDeY)

6 recent hit country songs combined into one. They blend into each other perfectly.

<comment><USER14> That's hilarious, but it sounds like those tunes were pitch shifted into the same key. Nashville producers have more skill than that. Oh, and FL/GA line is frigging awful.

<comment><USER15> The pitch and tempos are shifted, but more nefariously, the pieces of the songs which don't fit the VI-I-V progression are removed and replaced by pieces of other songs which do fit. It's deliberate and meticulous cherry- picking. The only thing _all_ the songs have in common is that they're in 4/4 and the verses and choruses all start on the VI chord. I should make a table showing the actual chord progressions from each song and how the creator deliberately masked out the parts of each song which are different from the baseline the creator chose.

<comment><USER14> That would require you to listen to and chart out these 6 mediocre songs. I wouldn't ask you to do that. You've got a music background, I take it?

<comment><USER15> And now I've done it: [http://baddox.github.io/six_country_songs.html](http://baddox.github.io/six_country_songs.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady >> "In a very few years, we'll have 1 terabyte iPods, easily capable of handling thousands of recordings in their original high-definition form."

I doubt it. I think we'll be lucky if Apple has increased the maximum configuration to 256GB in a few years. The other issue is that people have moved to streaming and the connections aren't good enough to stream high- quality audio. I signed up for Tidal (lossless Spotify) and even on a decent internet connection it had to buffer and the experience wasn't good enough for me to stick around.

<comment><USER16> > This article originally appeared in the March, 2008 edition of Word > Magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In my flirtation with being a musician I've learned a fair bit about how to record in a home studio. I think he has simplified a lot of this but considering the audience of this article I get it. The one point I do agree with is that technology isn't the problem.

I use Logic, Sonar, Reason and FL Studio quite extensively depending on the project and really have very little problem sounding like it was recorded in the 1960s or 70s. Technology is good enough that all but the most trained ear won't notice whether you used a real Fairchild compressor or the UAD dsp version.(or substitute your favorite vintage compressor/effect/synthesizer/amp vs software) However most people don't want the whole record to sound that way. It's great for setting a mood, but the average pop listener wants loud repetitive and catchy hooks. Experimenting is for the established "wealthy" and "bored" artists that need to find long term relevance.

In general the labels don't subsidize the breadth of records that they used to. One of the best ways to make the point that the industry is the problem is to thumb through my dads collection of vinyl. Some notable records he owns that would _never_ be produced today are "Big Sounds of the drags" [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pEdfuX1ni9E](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pEdfuX1ni9E) The Zodiac:cosmic sounds [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zodiac:_Cosmic_Sounds](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zodiac:_Cosmic_Sounds) I have a ton of old vinyl from people who are not attractive enough to make a record today. Like it or not the recording industry is about image, marketing and recipes more than music. I don't think this is a revelation to anyone and it may not even be wrong. I think what many musicians get wrong is that they think they can try to latch on to the old business model and "make it"\- becoming rich in a few years. These days that is .01% of artists. However if you think of a record _as_ marketing and look for other ways to monetize your band and its brand you can get by in the middle class. Even in the hey day it wasn't a golden ticket for most artists. Really there has _always_ been a problem with the record industry in some form or fashion, but since power is shifting towards artists and home studios labels are much more risk averse. No matter how good you are, it's a risky profession.

</comment><comment><USER18> I often recommend people read the little book "The Manual" by the KLF. [http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the- klf/](http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/)

It was written by them after they made their first number 1 hit single, back in 1988. They went ahead and had a few number ones since. That was over 25 years ago. It's a good overview of the chart music industry and much of the book is still relevant even now, and they were even able to predict that a lot of the studio work should be possible to do in the bedroom in the future.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Worse still, the technology behind systems like Waves Ultramaximizer could > easily be built into an iPod, automatically remastering all those dull old > Neil Young records into BIG LOUD IN-YOUR-FACE BANGERS.

I believe Museum of Techno has done some work on this problem.

[http://archive.museumoftechno.org/exhibition_detail.php?id=5](http://archive.museumoftechno.org/exhibition_detail.php?id=5)

<comment><USER11> :-D

Loudness wars is the sound of the genre, to be fair. But not everything is ear-bashing techno.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like music, really like music, but haven't been able to listen to _pop_ music since I discovered Beethoven late one night on a radio while going to sleep.

Now I like, say

[http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Cello+Suite+No+1+Bach/3seBIM?src...](http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Cello+Suite+No+1+Bach/3seBIM?src=5)

<comment><USER21> It has been mentioned on HN before, but you might still be interested in [http://allofbach.com/nl/bwv/bwv-1007/detail/](http://allofbach.com/nl/bwv/bwv-1007/detail/)

It's relevant to the discussion, since the masterful recording of these pieces is itself a work of art.

<comment><USER20> Gee, it can be played that way, too! Well, the _interpretation_ is consistent across the parts!

The cello sound is gorgeous beyond belief: I can't believe it's just performer, rosin, strings, bow, and room and also has to be one totally gorgeous cello. Beyond belief sound! Don't dare move the sound post or change the bridge!

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Musicians are inherently lazy," says John. "If there's an easier way of doing something than actually playing, they'll do that"

Musicians sound a lot like developers

</comment><comment><USER23> We are already starting to win the loudness war now thanks to iTunes SoundCheck. I'm not an iTunes user but as far as I understand it, it causes iTunes to adjust all tunes in a mix to the same perceptual loudness. If everyone adopted this or a similar technology (such as the open ReplayGain) there would be no incentive to master loud any more, for albums at least, because the player will only turn it down again meaning the net result is only loss of quality. Hopefully iTunes support for this tech is a turning point in the loudness war.

<comment><USER24> That can't actually account for perceived loudness, which modern mastering processes _do_ account for. The absolute amplitude of a song has always been fixed, by the technology delivering the audio. Radio, the primary medium for music discovery throughout most of our lives, has a very hard upper bound (set by both the technology and the FCC), thus a compressor/limiter is employed at the final stage before sending the audio out of the radio station to go up the tower and out over the waves. There has always been _that_ sort of leveling going on.

Modern tools provide an entirely new dimension in the form of multi-band compression, digital phase alignment, etc. It is now possible (and being done in nearly every genre) to make a recording perceptively louder than other recordings by maximizing amplitude in specific bands (those humans are most sensitive to), reduce phase cancellation between speakers, and hype the sound (boosting high and low frequencies, which tricks the ear into hearing it in the same way as louder music...but also causes listener fatigue faster), often all at once.

Amplitude compression, even when it's smart enough to recognize that there's more activity across a broader spectrum as provided by SoundCheck, does nothing to restore the damage to dynamic range, natural frequency response curves, and "real" sounding recorded music. The music is broken by these processes...the listener has no power to fix it, other than to not buy it, and choose music that hasn't been mutilated in such a way.

<comment><USER23> The main weapons in raising perceived loudness are brickwall limiters such as Waves L3 which raise RMS (root mean square) amplitude while keeping peak levels constant. I think soundcheck is based on RMS, please correct me if I'm wrong - if it were based on peak levels then as you say it would indeed be useless.

I don't know how much or whether the other technologies you mention really help to boost perceived loudness much beyond what is measured by RMS. Multiband compression raises RMS. Boosting high and low frequencies (aka "bare fat bass and mad amounts of high end" [1] - beyond what is wanted for a good sound) could be defeated by measuring RMS based on equal loudness/frequency curves. I've never really used the other things you mention but whatever they are they can be defeated by technology that measures their effect in the listener device. That's _if_ they can cheat RMS anyway - I'm not sure they can but if you do have data on that I'd be interested to see it.

As you say, sound quality is still lost, but if normalization (over the album length where necessary, of course) becomes the defacto standard in playback technology then the _incentive_ for making bad quality/loudness tradeoffs in album mastering is gone. The standard if adopted would restore the dynamic range by taking away the engineers' incentive to compromise it. The engineers would doubtless breathe a sigh of relief as most of them are more bothered about this than we are.

Analog radio would still be mastered stupidly loud. I would assume final stage compression in radio broadcast is keyed on peak not RMS level, again please correct me if I'm wrong. But it's a dying medium anyway.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nlzwDfxVSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nlzwDfxVSg)

<comment><USER24> _That 's if they can cheat RMS anyway - I'm not sure they can but if you do have data on that I'd be interested to see it._

RMS is a measure of power, not of perception. You don't have to defeat RMS to defeat perceived loudness.

But, you're right that a playback device _could_ take measures to defeat the perceived loudness baked in (though they'd get quite complex, as the tools for baking it in are extremely complex these days, and I don't actually understand half of them, despite having studied audio in college and worked in the industry). I don't know if it would actually improve listener experience to do so, though. Ending the "Oh shit that's loud!" and "Why is this song so quiet?" problem would be positive for listeners, of course. But, at what cost?

 _" Analog radio would still be mastered stupidly loud. I would assume final stage compression in radio broadcast is keyed on peak not RMS level, again please correct me if I'm wrong. But it's a dying medium anyway."_

Analog radio (and digital broadcast radio, as they still compress, despite some of the technical reasons for doing so being gone, inertia is strong in broadcast; I have noticed that Pandora and Spotify do _not_ do any sort of compression, however, which is nice...but also annoying when the playlist has new and old music as the difference can be _massive_ and unnerving) was among the earliest adopters of various technology to make music perceptively louder. Aural Exciters (a very early salvo in the loudness war) were available in a broadcast targeted version from very early on, etc.

I haven't been in the broadcast industry in a long time, and I worked in television rather than radio (though the station I worked for shared a tower with several radio stations and another TV station), but I'm reasonably confident radio stations in major markets still tend to have the most modern "make it loud!" devices available. Loudness=listeners in radio. That's _why_ the loudness wars are happening.

<comment><USER23> I agree with most of these points. I should have been clearer in what I meant, RMS is a measure of power and a proxy for perception - according to you, a worse proxy than I thought, so thanks for educating me on that point.

"I don't know if it would actually improve listener experience to do so, though" \- except inasmuch as it would remove the incentive to master albums too loud. And if it were the default in all playback devices (digital radio, codecs) it would also remove the incentive in broadcast. The only catch is it relies on the broadcaster not owning the means of playback, which with internet radio they sometimes do. But if it's someone like Spotify they are in a position to prioritize sound quality - are people really going to leave Spotify because it's too quiet when the thing has a volume control you can just turn up if you want? It's not like surfing analog radio channels used to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Even twenty years ago when I worked in radio (89-93), the song playlist was determined 2-3 weeks in advance. The station had software that ran on a TRS-80 and I had a printout to follow every shirt.

</comment><comment><USER26> Mainstream music, sure, but there will always be bands like The Flaming Lips, or My Bloody Valentine releasing records that are completely counter to this approach.

I would argue that any 'true artist' \- aka one that is consumed with the perfection of their art - is not going to be swayed to produce a 'hit' no matter what the studio wants (they simply won't sign with a big label to begin with, I know plenty of musicians that feel this way and are happy on an indie label).

<comment><USER11> The mainstream is fragmenting now that people can get access to music without it, per Steve Albini's recent update to "The Problem With Music": [http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve- albinis-k...](http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/17/steve-albinis- keynote-address-at-face-the-music-in-full)

Per the article, the "mainstream" is literally music for people who _don 't like music_.

<comment><USER2> >Per the article, the "mainstream" is literally music for people who _don 't like music_.

No doubt your parents thought the same about your music choices.

<comment><USER11> Did you read the article? Hence me saying "per the article". They specifically look for people who aren't into music to test against.

<comment><USER2> I see what you mean now. Although "don't like music" is not the same as "aren't into music". This goes back to the definition of what "real" music is. I'm fairly certain suburban moms (one of the suggested demographics in the article) will know quite a lot about radio-friendly music through their kids. In that sense they are an ideal demographic. I also don't see a problem with testing the hooks of songs against the market before making a substantial effort in promoting those songs -- that's common sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I started up here, and I ended up here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOAowiF3y_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOAowiF3y_8)

The lead up is a little long, but when the music finally starts it's bliss.

I say, lament all you want. That's fine, some of it is cheap entertainment. But here's the thing, some artists will strive to create at that level, because that level is there, and it's never been more accessible. My takeaway is that the tools have never been greater. The level of access to other people, to grow organically, if not virally, has never been better.

Has this resulted in us discovering greater artists and getting better music created? That would be an interesting article.

@sparkzilla - 'What this means is that anyone with some musical and recording skills can compete against record companies.'

Yes. It's not about being a 'fair fight' but there is a fight there.

@dankoss - 'There has never been a better time to create something new in music'

Totally agree. Let's hear it. Seriously, the response is, bring it. Great music will always draw an audience.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is why I enjoy listening to records that people like Alan Parsons have engineered ( _Dark Side of the Moon_ , Al Stewart's _Year of the Cat_ , as well as his work with The Alan Parsons Project).

Also good are those remasters reissued by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. www.mofi.com

I'd probably enjoy modern pop music (even teen hits like Meghan Trainor) if it didn't all sound the same.

</comment><comment><USER29> Live mics. Live guitars, bass & drums. One take. Play loud. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iaINsgFHVs&spfreload=10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iaINsgFHVs&spfreload=10)

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXzFCS72QIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXzFCS72QIA) intro piano glitch. 4 guys in a small room, 4 track recorder, no edit.

<comment><USER29> Nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Found this video

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPQiHyJj7Wk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPQiHyJj7Wk)

introducing the Google Radio Automation suite which seems to be what came after the SS32 thing mentioned in the article. Seems like Google got out of that business in 2009:

[http://www.wideorbit.com/wideorbit-acquires-google-radio- aut...](http://www.wideorbit.com/wideorbit-acquires-google-radio-automation/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Hard to pick the best nugget to use as I email this to friends, but I like this: "The Strokes recorded Is This It on an old Apple Mac in Gordon Raphael's basement studio. But it was mastered by Greg Calbi, who also did Born To Run and Graceland."

Great essay. Really sums up modern commercially recorded music.

</comment><comment><USER32> You think pop is homogenous, try Country:

[http://kbia.org/post/you-know-exactly-what- these-6-country-s...](http://kbia.org/post/you-know-exactly-what- these-6-country-songs-have- common&ei=Izq1VOS-F4mpogTrt4HoBQ&usg=AFQjCNG58rzCHZqBOLGaZRv70TfXIUxy4A)

<comment><USER33> This was referenced in earlier posts here but these are also chopped up and edited to fit.

And besides, this is also pop. The original article mostly discusses pop rock (compared to rock music generally created for other markets than top 40 pop) but country follows the same industry trends. There's country music that's meant to get on the radio and sell hit records and there's country music that is going for something different.

Just as you have a Maroon 5 for every White Stripes, you have an Old 97's or Eddie Spaghetti for every band on this list of 6 nearly identical songs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Records? What are records daddy ?

<comment><USER11> "They used to sell YouTube video soundtracks on big pieces of plastic. I have some in boxes in the attic."</comment></comment>


Dell Previews 27-inch '5K' UltraSharp Monitor: 5120x2880 - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/8496/dell-previews-27inch-5k-ultrasharp-monitor-5120x2880 <comment><USER2> I'd gladly buy one, or even four, if they just worked.

Unfortunately, high-res multimonitor setups are horrendously unstable, require specialized graphics cards (which usually sound like rocket jets), and have a mess of incompatible standards. I'd probably need to spend a week or two figuring out what graphics cards I need, upgrading my motherboard to have enough slots to take them, figuring out if there's a way to make it talk to my laptop, etc. Getting four 1080p displays working was enough work.

Basically, not a project I have time for.

Anytime that hardware becomes a project, it reaches 5% of the market. Most of the market are people who just want to get work done. That means word processors, IDEs, spreadsheets, PPT, etc. USB is fine even for multi-monitor 5k for normal work if you update the screen incrementally and downsample/compress video. Video games aren't necessary. 200 watt graphics cards aren't desired. Stability and ease-of-use are critical.

The trick would be making it Just Work. That means driver support (Linux, Vista, XP, MacOS, etc.). That means testing across a range of hardware and software. That means using a standard cable (USB or similar, not a pair of DisplayPort 1.3 with dual-link cables and a graphics card capable of virtual...). It also means performance testing for the stupid stuff (not issues of 60hz vs 10hz refresh, or 3d gaming, or even video -- just that there aren't funny issues where you wait 1 second for a screen refresh, or the system locks up for 30 seconds thinking).

<comment><USER3> Depends on what OS you use. If you use Linux, yeah, you're screwed. They are still arguing over how to support monitors that expose themselves to the OS as two monitors. The current answer is "that's dumb, maybe they'll go away." It is dumb, but they're not going away.

Over on Windows, Nvidia has some hacks in the driver to work around this. With a $70 current-gen card, I can drive two 4k monitors at 60Hz. One monitor connects via two HDMI cables; the other over Displayport MST. (I don't actually have two 4k monitors, but I did convince my computer that my one monitor was two to test this.)

You're right about getting 4 monitors working. Probably possible with an SLI setup, but the current generation of video hardware makes 1-3 monitors easy and 4+ monitors hard. 3 monitors is better than a few years ago, though.

<comment><USER4> Wait, how is a monitor that appears as two to the OS a problem? We've had multi monitor support for a long time, this is just the panels/pixels stitched closer together, isn't it?

<comment><USER3> The problem is you'll have two copies of your desktop (or whatever you choose to have 1-per-monitor of) on one physical screen, because the OS thinks it's two monitors when it's actually one monitor.

To make this go away, all that clever support needs to be disabled, which is actually currently impossible in Linux!

<comment><USER4> I thought Linux supported extended desktop, but come to think of it, I never actually tried it. Windows always worked perfectly fine :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming the signal is transmitted uncompressed, this would be 5120x2880x32 bits per frame, so 5120x2880x32x60 bits per seconds at 60fps.

That's 28GBit/s - more than what a single TB2 port can handle and probably also more than what a lower-to-mid range GPU is able to produce.

I hope the solution to this will neither be reducing FPS nor adding compression, so it looks like we need a new display connection standard.

Please tell me that I got my math wrong as I really, really, really want a display at this resolution for my day-to-day work.

<comment><USER6> Could you integrate the graphics card into the moniter? Surely the bandwidth between the PCI express card and the motherboard will actually be less than the bandwidth of the cable to the display.

<comment><USER7> Heh, you solved one problem by creating another.

It works fine if you only have 1 display, then you can run everything display side.

But now lets say you have 3 displays. Now each built in GPU has have the ability to talk to other items on the PCIe bus, not just the controller. This sounds like a blessing. The host PC would only have to upload the window contents once, then each display would send the information to each other. Simple right?

But now we have to deal with hardware latency, and cross vendor standardization. Which are largely problems then bandwidth.

<comment><USER8> I never had any problems running multiple displays on separate PCI graphics cards on my 2002 PowerMac G4, why would that be a bigger challenge now?

<comment><USER9> Each of the PCI graphics cards in your 2002 PowerMac was using a long- established standard signal (VGA) to communicate with the monitors, so there was no problem.

If you build the graphics card into the monitor, you'd need a new (non- existant) standard to pipe graphics bitmaps and draw instructions between the PC and the monitor. (Unless X is up to the task... hahah)

OR, you could just extend PCI express over cables to the monitors. Which would work (you can already buy PCI express breakout boxes) but then you have much greater latency between the card and the system, etc etc etc.

<comment><USER8> > OR, you could just extend PCI express over cables to the monitors

We already have this

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_\(interface\))

Thunderbolt combines PCI Express (PCIe) and DisplayPort (DP) into one serial signal alongside a DC connection for electric power, transmitted over one cable. Up to six peripherals may be supported by one connector through various topologies.

Not enough PCIe lanes to get enough performance for games but it should be fine for desktop applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not 5120x3200? 16:9 trend is really annoying.

<comment><USER11> Why a non-standard ratio like 8:5?

<comment><USER12> 16:10 is a standard ratio. 1680x1050, 1280x800, 1920x1200...

<comment><USER11> Looks like I got my math wrong. I just noticed that 8:5 is the same as 16:10 =p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So according to [https://www.sven.de/dpi/](https://www.sven.de/dpi/) it will be 217.57 PPI.. similar to the Mac Book Pro retina 15 which is 220 PPI. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_Display](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_Display) for the list.

<comment><USER14> There's a list to compare against in the article itself.

<comment><USER15> Which is sadly missing the Nexus 5 @ 445ppi

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the same size/resolution as what a 27" Retina Thunderbolt Display would be.

<comment><USER17> My thoughts exactly. I could see Apple using a similar panel for the next 27" iMac and Thunderbold Display, while using a 4k panel for the smaller iMac.

<comment><USER18> At $2500 a pop now, I doubt they would use this for another couple of years. Perhaps better to go with a UHD display now and deal with the the non-whole number multiple.

<comment><USER19> I imagine they'll at least have to support other people's 5K monitors on the Mac Pro, and maybe sell one themselves as a high-end display option. (I assume that 5K will appeal to professionals working on 4K video.)

<comment><USER18> Right. They can already support UHD, so I think a UHD iMac is imminent. However, I see us quickly moving to QUHD after a bit of time in UHD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just to put this in historical context: 14745600 pixels are enough to display 230 CGA (320x200) screenshots simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is it just me or are displays starting to have their own "moores law" in how fast the resolutions/technology is increasing. I wouldn't know were to predict what the max resolution of a commercially available display will be in 2-3 years. It's seems like it took a decade for 1080p to become "standard" and now I can buy decent 4K TV for the price a 1080p TV was just 5-6 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd pass this one. Resolution is nice. However its surface area doesn't do justice for that number of pixels. I'm having 30" 2560x1600 monitor, and any upgrade from that needs have both bigger physical size AND more pixels. Improving one without the other isn't good enough. Yes more pixels give nicer fonts and better image quality, but bigger area is needed to actually use it effectively. When considering down sides of showing it as two separate displays on Linux I'd say "These are not the monitors you are looking for."

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks good except for the stand height, which would actually be a dealbreaker for me - a high stand is fine for the living room floor, but there's no point putting a great monitor on your desk that you can't look at without tilting your head back and giving yourself chronic neck strain. Are there any similar monitors with lower stands?

<comment><USER24> Looks like Dell's typical adjustable stand, which allows you to slide the monitor almost all the way down to the desk. If not that, then surely it has a VESA mount that you could use with your own stand.

<comment><USER23> Ah, Dell monitor stands are height adjustable these days? Good. Looks worth going for, then.

<comment><USER9> I have a 2011 30" Dell Ultrasharp and a 2014 27" Dell Ultrasharp and they both have excellent height adjustable stands. I don't know if they reserve the nice stands for their Ultrasharps or what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What do we do for a commercial stunt. We had 720p for 720x1280 We had 1080p fir 1080x1920

And now "5K" for 5120x2880? Is the screen supposed to be used in a "portrait" setting?

It's fine if you work in IT, you see what it does, but for most people those commercial designations are getting confused.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of the macOS Big Sur redesign? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I haven't used it yet (I'm waiting for the public release in the fall), but the design has grown on me.</comment>


Good and Bad reasons to become an entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/good-and-bad-reasons-to-become-an-entrepreneur-decf0766de8d

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good article, most of the people want to be an entrepreneur for this reason> Be his own boss...but in reality this is what happens:

"People have this vision of being the CEO of a company they started and being on top of the pyramid. Some people are motivated by that, but that's not at all what it's like. What it's really like: everyone else is your boss – all of your employees, customers, partners, users, media are your boss. I've never had more bosses and needed to account for more people today. The life of most CEOs is reporting to everyone else, at least that's what it feels like to me and most CEOs I know. If you want to exercise power and authority over people, join the military or go into politics. Don't be an entrepreneur."

This should be the real reason for being an entrepreneur: "If you're going to devote the best years of your life to your work, have enough love for yourself and the world around you to work on something that matters to you deeply"</comment>


Obama lawyers asked secret court to ignore public court's decision on spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/09/obama-fisa-court-surveillance-phone-records

<comment><USER2> As a The Guardian reporter summarized:

        June 2, 6:03pm: Obama says he'll sign law banning bulk collection.
        June 2 9:50pm: DOJ asks secret court for 180 more days of bulk collection

        — Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) June 8, 2015

<comment><USER3> The explanation is simple, really. The 6:03pm action was by _Candidate_ Obama, whereas the later one was at the direction of _President_ Obama. Two different guys, you know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's quit pretending that Obama's _lawyers_ were responsible for this action. _Obama_ is clearly in favor of the surveillance state. Who will do anything about that?

</comment><comment><USER5> No worries, the secret laws totally make this legal, honest!</comment>


Facebook Launches Instant Personalization On TripAdvisor - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/21/facebook-launches-instant-personalization-on-tripadvisor/

<comment><USER2> Hey -- my team here at Trip built this!

I'm happy to answer questions. Or field resumes. Celebratory happy hour is at 4pm, so try to catch me before that.

<comment><USER3> Hey, thanks for offering to take questions.

How long have you guys been working on this, and how closely was Facebook involved during development of the product on your end?

A couple comments/questions about how it works. The "can advise friends" pins seem like a great idea, but I'm not sure how it works. Am I supposed to contact them outside of Tripadviser now that I've found they are offering advice, or is there some way to request more information from them within the site?

Also, unless I missed it I think there should be a more obvious way to add your own pins to the friends map on the home page. I got there by clicking through to a city, then clicking "add to my map", but there must be a more direct way.

Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER2> We've been working on this for about three months, and Facebook's team -- both engineering and especially product -- have been closely involved.

The IP initiatives are important to Facebook, and they appear to invest a lot of effort in each one as it reflects on their strategic view of the web.

Can Advise pins are in a funny state right now. We had a feature in place called TripFriends which allowed you to message friends directly to ask questions, but we need to reintegrate it into the rest of the IP experience.

There is a much, much better way to add pins. Add the Cities I've Visited app (also from my team): <http://apps.facebook.com/tripadvisortravelmap/>

You can slam 50 pins into place in no time using the typeahead.</comment></comment></comment>


Launch HN: Audm (YC S17) – Longform Magazine Articles in Audio - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! We are Christian and Ryan (rtw2101) of Audm (https://www.audm.com/ and https://appstore.com/audm/audm). Audm is an iPhone app that lets you listen to the best longform (3000 words or longer) magazine articles from titles including The Atlantic, Wired (plus Backchannel), Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, Foreign Policy, Outside, The New York Review of Books, and a bunch of others.
We were big podcast fans, but we knew that most of the world's best storytellers write for top-tier magazines. We also love audiobooks (when they're read by really gifted narrators), so we knew that stories written for print often work well in audio. So we built Audm.
We release most stories in the app at the same moment they hit the magazines' websites. Right now we produce 5-8 articles (3-5 hours of audio) per week, and that number is growing fast as we onboard more publications. Our subscribers seem to have an insatiable appetite.
Something that we didn't fully appreciate when we started (although our users did) is just how skilled a narrator has to be if they're going to sound good reading articles that are dense with information and nuanced ideas (which often means very complex sentence structure). We've become extremely opinionated about narrators.
We'd love your feedback!
Thanks all, Ryan and Christian <comment><USER2> I see people launch stuff all the time and go with a choice that doubles as the fastest way to get people to forget your product—when someone visits your site and finds that it's locked away in an app store download. (In your case, Apple's, but it's the same for anyone doing Android-only.)

Can you publish to the Web? You might tell yourself that you need to wait for more resources so you can build the Android app that you've been wanting and then the webapp, but listen to me: you don't. You have something to publish. You don't need an app. Put it on the Web. That's what it's for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for making the case for this. We don't disagree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excited to check this out. Have been looking for a viable replacement for Umano since they were acquired by Dropbox in 2015, but have not found anything comparable to their service.

I never pay for apps, but I ended up subscribing to Umano (yearly subscription). Here's why:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

1\. Wide selection of interesting articles, esp. tech and lifestyle ones.

2\. Great narrators. Sounds like you guys are already hard at work on this, so kudos there!

3\. Value. Umano used a freemium model, and I think it worked really well since the extra features (offline downloads, customizable story intros, etc.) added value once you were hooked on the experience.

I see you guys are taking the "pay for it" approach, and my only concern there would be getting people hooked, esp. since the initial trial period is so short. Umano had time to become an indispensable part of my life (listening while driving, working out, etc., plus it became a super easy way to keep up with current events), and that motivated me to pay for it. Not sure I would have ended up doing so had I been completely locked out without paying first. Also, I liked being able to get a year's worth at a discount. Once again, would not have felt comfortable paying for an entire year up front had I not already been hooked.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Just my $0.02. All the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. Would you email us at email@example.com with 'HN' in the subject? We'd love to give you a longer free trial!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Instapaper reads me long-form articles on my commute (iOS).

I heard about audm on some podcast, I forget where. I checked it out, and decided it wasn't worth $8 a month to have a human read to me, instead of a robot, a small subset of the content I regularly consume.

Robot-for-free over human-for-pay seems like an apt analogy for our time.

At any rate, I like trials, and if your service is truly great and had the value-add of curating excellent articles from sources I wouldn't normally find, that might put me over the edge. Then again, I cancelled my Audible subscription too.

If you're successful, Amazon surely will buy you.

<comment><USER5> I am a heavy podcast listener and will toss my hat in this ring as well. I use the DreamReader app and can import websites, PDF, epub, etc. I use it to read study notes, books, and web articles.

I do appreciate a good audiobook and understand the value of a good narrator. However, I'd be more inclined to put my money toward audiobooks and let my longform journalism confinue to be read by the (suprisingly good) VoiceDream app.

I hope you do well. Have you thought about parterning with magazines and having access to your readings / the complete issue as part of a higher subscription tier to that publication? Something similar to the Economist?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this feedback and encouragement! We'd love if you would give us a try and then share any additional thoughts you may have about the difference between our narrators and VoiceDream.

A few partnerships like you describe are in the works. Stay tuned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this. There are many situations where audio is preferable to text -- driving, walking between trains on a commute, or even just lying in bed and giving your eyes a break from screens. This seems like it has the potential to vastly increase the number of quality audio options available.

Are there any plans to add high quality tech content to the mix? It would be great to occasionally take in a long article from Medium or highscalability or... lots of other sources in audio form. I suppose a challenge there would be how to read out code snippets in a digestible way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great observation about how to narrate code snippets. None of our narrators are technical (as far as we know!), but part of our job is to provide a narrator with a script describing the way they should narrate any text (or non-text figure) whose spoken equivalent isn't obvious. One recent example of this, a little different from the code example, involved 64-character hashes. You want to convey the palpable sense of randomness that one experiences looking at a hash string, but you also can't force your audience to listen as all 64 characters are read aloud.

Of course, even if we provide the best narration imaginable, it's not obvious that many articles about code would be valuable in audio form. Some things you just need to stare at for a while.

All this said, we're definitely into doing more tech content. It just has to be very well-written. Unfortunately, just as in any other content vertical, most tech content just... isn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I never really used to listen to podcasts - until I got a car that has Car Play functionality. Now I listen to them all the time. Will Audm be available on Apple Car Play or Android Auto?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely -- both are in the works. We think the car's an awesome place to listen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love that this is not just audio-narrating articles from some of my favourite magazines. I adore the Kevin Spacey-esque tone! What happens if some of these magazines start releasing their own audio version? I do remember that some Atlantic articles had this. Also, did you have to get permission from the magazines to audio-narrate their articles?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We do partner actively with each publication, and we encourage them to use the audio versions we produce on their own websites and other platforms. That's where The Atlantic's audio comes from ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love the sound of this and have subscribed - an intersection of quality journalism and podcasting is a fantastic concept.

Do you have any plans to provide an Alexa skill? "Alexa, read me something interesting" is a service I would pay handsomely for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome :D

Great question about voice. Yes, we do have plans for Alexa etc. We're really excited about that.

<comment><USER2> I hope this means narrated versions of choice Wikipedia articles. E.g., listen to Wired's article "Luc Besson's Outer Limits", and afterward options appear to listen to the section from the _The Fifth Element_ Wikipedia article about the film's production, or the sections from the Luc Besson article about his early and personal life. This would give you a big, royalty-free content pool, and is your hook to keep people engaged (cf YouTube's related videos sidebar).

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty sweet concept! We have ideas for a lot of stuff like this, but it might be a ways down the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats on the launch. Have you considered doing this for Kindle Singles?

There are certain topics that I am interested in but the time I want to invest is between NewYorker articles (15-20 pages) and a full-fledged market-dynamics dictated 250-450 page book. And Kindle Singles (and such sized books) fill that niche nicely. And needless to add here, am a huge audible / audio fan - so would love to see the two get merged.

Thanks & Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't explored the Kindle Singles world as much as we'd like. How does a person hear about a Single? How does one of them catch fire and become a big seller? Is it up to the author to promote them, or are there websites/periodicals/Twitter feeds/whatever that have a lot of influence on sales?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've said it before and I'll say it again, Robertson Dean is the greatest audiobook narrator of all time. [http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/narrators/robertson- dean/](http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/narrators/robertson-dean/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You, sir, are my people.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Power Broker, am I right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interresting project, So what's the long term view, to develop an AI agent that is as good as the best human narrators?

<comment><USER13> It's a good question. Depending on whom you ask, we're either a few years away from this or 20. As of right now, we have no plans to develop our own TTS tech. With that said, it's something we keep a very close eye on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats on the Launch Christian and Ryan! :)

<comment><USER13> :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is cool—I've definitely been wanting this. I've tried many times to use iOS's accessibility features to read me an article on Pocket and... well.... you know. That didn't exactly stick ;)

I'm curious—how many narrators do you employ so far? This is such an interesting business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Other apps' read-aloud features make good temporary solutions, but sophisticated content really needs to be handled by the best narrators.

Our current core roster includes a dozen narrators.</comment></comment>


Random number generator 'improved' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36311668 <comment><AUTHOR> There are many technical problems with this piece. Is "oversimplification" the cause?

Quotes from Prof Alan Woodward sound strange. Consider the statement "Given enough time, all algorithms can be reverse-engineered" about random number generators. There are no "secret" RNGs in software (except in DIY projects) and they should never get into production software or OSs IMHO.</comment>


Purdue Pharma offers $10-12B to settle opioid claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/purdue-pharma-offers-10-12-billion-settle-opioid-claims-n1046526 <comment><USER2> That would be a steal for Purdue...</comment>


FACEBOOK IPO - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/01/16/facebook-reportedly-to-file-ipo-documents-within-the-next-month-go-public-in-may/?awesm=tnw.to_1Cp4C&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=Facebook%20reportedly%20to%20file%20IPO%20documents%20within%20the%20next%20month,%20go%20public%20in%20May

<comment><USER2> let's see if it opens as one of the most over-valued stock in history due to its hype.</comment>


Jsonbox.io – A Free HTTP Based JSON Storage - <AUTHOR> https://jsonbox.io <comment><USER2> I've always had concerns about exposing MongoDB ObjectID to users.

Is it safe?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why is it not safe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why would you wanna store your data on an unknown source?</comment>


Possibly timely items from my reliability list - <AUTHOR> http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2019/08/01/reliability/ <comment><USER2> Related: HN discussion of her earlier article on reliability: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20522868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20522868)

Also related:

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12675527](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12675527)

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Unix Time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19922062](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19922062)</comment>


Ask HN: Does anybody need 1.7M screenshots? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I just saw that one of my projects [1] which is constantly crawling websites, is still making screenshots in addition of each website. I completely forgot about the screenshots thing as I do not utilize them anymore.
It is in total around 1,790,000 full-page screenshots from sites that were posted on reddit, hacker news, tweets, financial news, since Jan 2014.
Don't ask me to open-source them and make them available for download. I dare not to get involved in any licensing issues or whatever.
They are on an S3 Bucket. Just got a bill from Amazon...
If you'd like to have them or you have any idea what I can do with them, outside of deleting, contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com
Thomas
[1] http://www.newscombinator.com <comment><USER2> This sort of data falls under the category of "I might need this someday but I can't figure out why".

For the reasons you can't think of, perhaps you might consider indexing them locally then throwing them onto Glacier. The odds of you needing every single one of them (thus making Glacier cost-prohibitive) are far less than the odds of you needing one at random.

I haven't done the math on how many months of S3 hosting it takes to equal the upload cost once to Glacier, primarily because I don't know how big 1790000 screenshots are.

Alternatively, provided downloading them all to your local desktop doesn't run your S3 bill to Mars, tape drives can still be quite cost-effective ways to store a LOT of data, cheap.

<comment><USER3> High resolution uncompressed PNG screenshots should be a couple hundred kilobytes each at most. 1.8 million of 'em would be less than 1TB of data. If you transfer 'em to a temporary EC2 instance (no bandwidth cost) and zip them, it'll probably cost $50 or so in bandwidth to save them locally from there. Then, they'll fit on a <$50 commodity hard drive.

<comment><AUTHOR> you are both to the point. It is "I might need it sometime, but not now" and it doesn't cost a fortune but it is a pain to download and move around a big bucket of files I don't really need at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I dare not to get involved in any licensing issues or whatever

You might be covered under the DMCA: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca)

And since they're screenshots some might be considered fair use: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use)

 _Some_ being blatant copies of logos, etc

<comment><AUTHOR> I will leave that up here and on some other places. Maybe someone need it for some simple cgcv tasks or whatever.

I really don't want to publish it. Some websites are already down and not reachable anymore and there is no way for the creator of the websites to take down anything of that... Some of these things hunt me and I hope they don't bite me one day.

But thanks for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds cool and it's more like 1.8M.

Sadly I don't think it'd be much use for anyone since Archive.org takes care of all archiving.

The only time that I'd see screenshots come handy is for live previews.

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be great to see such a collection from 1990s...

</comment><comment><USER7> What was the bill , eeek

<comment><AUTHOR> not much, $30. :) but now reading what I was writing makes it look like I paid thousands haha

<comment><USER5> That's astoundingly low! Was the main cost the CPU resources or b/w?</comment></comment></comment>


Go compiler now committed to gcc mainline (to be gcc 4.6) - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/browse_thread/thread/200979c143e959fc?pli=1

<comment><USER2> More information here: <http://www.airs.com/blog/archives/448>

<comment><USER3> "Release gccgo in gcc is going to introduce a difficulty for Go programmers who use it. The Go language continues to evolve, but gcc 4.6 will not. That means that people using gcc 4.6 will be using a language which will be increasingly out of date. I don't think there is any way to avoid that problem at this stage. The language will become more stable over time."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why bother with GCC when the medium to long term seems to favor the LLVM compiler infrastructure? (and yes, I know you can use GCC together with LLVM, but for example, in Apple's case, XCode 4 now favors LLVM+Clang instead of the LLVM+GCC setup of XCode 3)

<comment><USER5> In this particular case:

      - Go is created by google
      - Ian Lance Taylor, the author of gccgo, works for Google
      - Taylor has worked on gcc for more than a decade
      - Google uses gcc for all its infrastructure

I doubt they would object to an LLVM front-end, and I'm sure someone will create one in the future.

As to why Google doesn't use LLVM, the generated code is simply not as fast as GCC. Google (last I heard) employs about 30 compiler engineers to support gcc internally, so they're not about to switch over to a less mature platform, even though it shows great potential.

<comment><USER6> From Ars:

 _I was initially a bit surprised that Google chose not to use the Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) compiler framework—it has a lot of LLVM expertise internally and is using it extensively for their awesome Python optimization effort. Pike says that LLVM was considered during the early stages of the Go project, but its compile-time performance was judged to be inadequate._

[http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/11/go-new- open-...](http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/11/go-new-open-source- programming-language-from-google.ars)

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Google uses gcc for all its C++ code internally, and I would say that it has way more gcc expertise internally than LLVM. I heard some figures once that each extra percent of performance they get out of gcc is worth $1m dollars per product, for each of their 10 most important products. I think that's per year. (eg a 4% improvement in the speed of gcc-compiled code would save them $40m a year).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone else has the problem that they need to log in with a Google account before being able to see posts on Google Groups? I even have this on the group I created, which I set to the most public settings.

<comment><USER8> That seems to be if you're logged in an other Google service in the same browser/session: if I open a browser I only use for development (and not for personal stuff, so it's not logged into any Google service) such as Opera, I get the message. On the other hand if I open the link in my "usual" browser it asks me to log into Google Groups (if I'm not already logged into it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So why didn't java and python made it to gcc ?

<comment><USER10> I'm trying to work out at what level your question makes sense. I'm unaware of a GCC-based Python compiler, so surely there's nothing to merge there?

As for Java: <http://gcc.gnu.org/java/> (this has been in for _years_ )

<comment><USER11> There was a SoC project for a Python front-end to GCC this past summer. I don't know how far it got.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Securely Run Your DevOps in Slack - <AUTHOR> https://cto.ai/blog/how-to-securely-run-your-devops-in-slack/ <comment><USER2> How to Securely Run Your DevOps in Slack? Don't.

Hmm, yes, let's use a typewriter to screw in a nail...</comment>


Groupware Bad (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

<comment><USER2> Beautifully written. Note however that mentioned Hula calendar is also very dead today (so there is an additional story to be told!):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hula_(software)>

And for those who don't know (international readers like me) the expression "albatross around the neck" which JWZ used here comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798):

In the poem, an albatross starts to follow a ship (...) the mariner shoots the albatross (...) which is regarded as an act that will curse the ship (...) To punish him, his companions induce him to wear the dead albatross around his neck indefinitely

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross_(metaphor)>

</comment><comment><USER3> _build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy_

One of the lessons of running Woobius is that, at least where collaboration software is concerned, in order to make money, you need users to use it, but you _also_ need managers to buy it. So you kind of have to do both really well. I like challenges.

</comment><comment><USER4> The real point to be made here is that most people are programmed to believe that you only want to hear good news. I can't think of a more damning phenomena.

If your idea sucks, having someone with experience tactfully break down the logical flaws and encourage you to try something else is the best possible outcome.

The key to getting good advice is knowing that which to ignore. However, if nobody tells you that your idea is bad, you're already screwed.

I love telling people when I think their idea is great, but I feel like I'm really helping when I look them in the eye and tell them why their idea isn't going to work. (It's the people that thank me who are most likely to succeed, in that case.)

</comment><comment><USER5> In my mind, 'Groupware' is just an old term for the following functions:

      - shared calendars (with scheduling, availability & conflict resolution)
      - global, shared address books
      - server-side email

Unfortunately the most popular options for the average company to utilise these functions is restricted to using closed source solutions where you manage a server yourself (Microsoft Exchange) or closed source solutions where another company manages the server for you (Gmail and Google Calendar).

Its a shame that more open protocols and servers haven't taken off in this space and provide competition. However as many companies have previously tried and failed to deliver a viable product its unlikely anyone else will step up to provide such a solution.

</comment><comment><USER6>
      build software that people want to use instead of
      software that managers want to buy

It seems that people have learned this lesson. Marketing folks even have a term for it: The Consumerization of IT. Spend some time around Gartner reading folk, and you'll hear it incessantly. <http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_138285_11.html>

Of course, now we have real success stories to point to. The iPhone's enterprise adoption is generally driven by normal folks, and the blackberry driven by managers.

</comment><comment><USER7> >If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.

Of course the real secret is to build something that satisfies _both_. That is why Microsoft was so successful, their products were used by individuals, families, _and_ businesses.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      > build software that people want to use instead of
      > software that managers want to buy

Yes, I remember, I learnt it the hard way between 2000 and 2002...

<comment><USER9> Have you written about this anywhere? It sounds like there's an interesting story here.

<comment><USER8> I haven't. Well it's an interesting story indeed, but I don't know how to present things while not putting blame on some people. That, and I don't have a regular personal blog to publish it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: EugeneMachine – Web change detection and alert system - <AUTHOR> https://www.eugenemachine.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I built a website change detection and alerting system. You create a list of URLs (pointing to text, documents, images, anything) and the system will continually check it to see if that thing has changed, and will email you if it has.

For example, users currently track sites and PDFs for a new request for proposal (RFP) so they don't miss new requests and they will be the first to know when its posted. The tracking tasks are not suitable for something like watching a price on ebay, this system is best for longer term monitoring campaigns.

Note: I am not a professional developer by any stretch of the imagination. I'm building some side projects, learning new ideas, talking to new people, and trying to have a bit of fun along the way.

Please have a look and let me know what you think. I would appreciate any feedback (and let me know if you are interested helping to develop the site).

You should get an email which will let you login after the "request an invite" button.

Under the hood: HTML5 bootstrap, AdminLTE, PHP, AWS, Linux</comment>


Syndicated rounds, for founders who can't find a Series A lead - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/syndicated-rounds-when-you-cant-find-a-series-a-lead/ <comment><AUTHOR> We interviewed 30+ different YC founders that had successfully raised Series As about how they did so. We found that fundraising often looks easy from the outside (especially in the press release), but in reality can be quite messy and filled with failure (especially the first time around). We wanted to write this to talk about what founders could do to get the capital they need if things aren't going their way.

<comment><USER2> It's great that you did this. But YC and other accelerators really need to do more to educate startups on the perils of the VC backed investment track.

Given that getting a Series A is only a reality for what 1% of startups it's important to know why the other 99% failed. And what percentage of those startups would've been around today had they been more aware of the low failure rate and ran their company accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Machiavellian treachery needed to raise money like this is probably why the few big successes that are run by non-sociopaths are far more likely to be bootstrapped. While pitching investors has a lot in common with pitching customers, playing them off each other like Mean Girls has nothing to do with the core business mechanics of building products, selling them, and hiring employees.

<comment><USER4> That Machiavellian treachery is essential to success in the US. In addition to investors, big successes must also play politics to avoid the crosshairs of the DOJ.

YC 2021: Syndicated Bribes, and Lobbying, for founders who can't stomach it.

<comment><USER3> Most tech companies get to tens of billions in valuation before they even _think_ about government relations.</comment></comment></comment>


Is There a Bubble in Web 2.0 Startups? - <AUTHOR> http://wallstcheatsheet.com/breaking-news/is-there-a-bubble-in-web-2-0-startups/?p=19376/

<comment><USER2> This is not a bubble, a bubble is when any idea no matter how stupid or how long the sunshine laden plan will take to break even, gets funded. I think there is an "we will make money off of ads" bubble, but that it localized to a segment of the web.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say an expertise of mine is analyzing bubbles. Web 2.0 definitely has a ton of funding in companies that are moving further down the quality chain. Also, the supply of investment is absolutely a sign to watch.

With that said, bubbles can last years.</comment></comment>


Want a job? Get a computer science degree - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/022210-computer-science.html

<comment><USER2> A degree in math may work better. It has more signalling value, since less people who are only in for the money choose it over a computer science degree.</comment>


Singapore Was Ready for Covid-19–Other Countries, Take Note - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/singapore-was-ready-for-covid-19-other-countries-take-note/ <comment><USER2> > On January 20, when China had reported only a few cases of the disease, > Taiwan spun up a Central Epidemic Command Center—created after SARS—to > coordinate the national effort.

That's how governments should react. They would lock someone out of suspicion but wouldn't do anything about a new disease until it had killed someone in their own country; as it happened today in Algeria.</comment>


SHOW HN: Left-Pad could be the next FizzBuzz so we coded it up in 13 Languages - <AUTHOR> https://www.educative.io/collection/page/10370001/520001/750001 <comment><USER2> 14 lines in JS? O'rly?

Even with such a strict check of the padding character length (with an exception) and a period by default it's a four-liner at most.

      leftPad = (str, len, pd = '.') => {
          if(pd.length !== 1) throw 'Invalid input'
          else return Array(len > str.length ? 1+len-str.length : 0).join(pd) + str
      }</comment>


Ask HN: Are you using Brave for daily browsing? - <AUTHOR> Any thoughts and impressions, concerns (privacy, security, etc.)? <comment><USER2> For me, the advantages are negated by the fact that it's still using Chrome's rendering engine. So, in my view, it's nothing more than a Chrome reskin.

<comment><USER3> Except for the zero knowledge proof system for not leaking private browsing information, a cryptocurrency wallet for micro payments for content creators and enabled by default blocking of ads, tracking, malvertising and fingerprinting scripts, yeah, it's just like Chrome. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, it's not very good.

</comment><comment><USER3> Allowing users to control how their browsing history is used for monetization is the future and Brave is way ahead here.

I use Brave everyday as a secondary browser, particularly when I need to access sites that run anti-ad blocking scripts which Brave handles better than any other solution I'm aware of. And of course I use Brave to get familiar with the Brave payments system.

Keep in mind this is a fairly early beta; version 0.20.29 just came out today; dozens of issues and bugs were fixed: [https://github.com/brave/browser- laptop/releases](https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/releases)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm writing this comment with it now. I use it as my daily driver on my home machine when running in Windows (FF when booted in to Linux). I use Chrome at work because of integrations we have with Chrome.

I'm pretty happy with it. I do notice some sites are wonky in it compared to Chrome, most notably medium. However I don't visit those sites very often and when I do if it becomes an issue I just open it in Chrome and then come back to Brave. I have it set as my default browser and there is a notable lag when clicking a link in Slack or another non-browser app for the tab to open in Brave. A minor annoyance but not really an issue for me.

I'm content with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wanted to use it, but there is one "feature" that I don't like: Private tabs share the same data. On safari on iOS, I can log into two different accounts on two different tabs. In Brave, both accounts are logged in at the same time on both tabs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use Waterfox on desktop and it's the brand-less FF with all the tracking crap disabled. Hardly ever have to resort to using FF Quantum but when I do, rest assure, there's the song and dance every single time of having to go in about:config and adjust/disable everything.

On mobile, Brave with PIA's killswitch enabled for daily browsing but it doesn't matter because of GCM and I can't seem to rid myself entirely of Google.

</comment><comment><USER8> Still on Safari, myself. Haven't found a private browser that is on both Mac and iOS that will sync bookmarks across the two.

<comment><USER9> Firefox will

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use Brave's mobile browser daily, and have for months. It renders like Chrome mobile as far as I can tell, it's at least as fast, and compared to Firefox mobile, I don't need to add another plugin to block ads.

I'm not really interested in the whole BAT thing that Brave is trying, and haven't heard much else about privacy or security lately.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't use it for my day to day simply because it doesn't have my history/autocomplete from Chrome/Safari. I do however use it quite often when cooking because most recipe sites are loaded with ads that either make reading a recipe an annoyance or the site crashes my iPad's browser 10 minutes in.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've found it good on mobile, but for desktop osx, it wasn't very good. Lots of broken sites.

</comment><comment><USER13> I use it almost exclusively on Android. I'll use Brave if I want to keep tabs open for a while and Firefox Focus if it's just a fleeting read.

</comment><comment><USER14> Vivaldi for me. SRWAre Iron and PaleMoon for backup OS Mint 18.2 x64

</comment><comment><USER15> I tried a couple times, but it was slow as mud.

</comment><comment><USER16> I use it as my sole browser on Android

</comment><comment><USER17> on mobile yes, would love to use on mac but plugin are mess right now

</comment><comment><USER18> Of course!

</comment><comment><USER19> it never works when pulling it from the AUR for arch linux</comment>


StableLib is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://stablelib.com/blog/shutting-down/ <comment><USER2> Maybe it was a little too early. Golang is only just starting to get wider attention. In the past months I got requests from three smaller companies who wanted to do 'something' with Go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite possible, especially considering that people adopting newer languages are probably not in the "mood" for stability yet.

Thanks for your comment!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are calculators one of the only consumer devices with solar panels? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This is actually an interesting question. I think it comes down to two things:

1) Frequency of use

2) Overall power requirement

Calculators are kind of an ideal use for solar panels because people generally only use them for a minute or two at a time and often won't touch them for days. And on top of that, modern calculators use so little power it's frankly ridiculous. We're talking a couple hundred microwatts during use. In comparison, I have trouble thinking of devices with equivalent usage and power characteristics - most devices we use intermittently have pretty high power requirements while in use, especially when you consider that indoor lighting is awful for generating solar energy.

<comment><USER3> Watches

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depends on what kind of consumer you are. People with animals to care for and contain are quite likely to have a solar powered electric fence charger. The cheap "yard lights" are ubiquitous where there are yards.

</comment><comment><USER5> Note that most "solar panels" in calculators are fake. They have a small battery inside. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLTDuGhqE2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLTDuGhqE2w) and [https://tedium.co/2017/08/09/calculators-fake-solar- charging...](https://tedium.co/2017/08/09/calculators-fake-solar-charging/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Some luxury cars have solar panels embedded on the roof that can run the fans when the car is in the sun so it is not so hot inside when you get back.

I thought about bolting my own solar panel onto the roof of my car and diverting power to the fan but you would need some kind of transfer switch and the electrical system isn't partitioned to make it easy.

</comment><comment><USER7> The short answer is that it takes large panels to generate any significant amount of power, larger than would fit on a most consumer devices.</comment>


WordPress Gutenberg will be the end of WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/wordpress-gutenberg.html <comment><USER2> I agree with all your points, but I always hesitate to predict these things. The world is moving to touch and the desktop is dying.

If you had asked OS9 users if they thought OSX was better, most of them would have said "OS9 forever"....</comment>


A look back on OCaml since 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://www.ocamlpro.com/2019/09/20/a-look-back-on-ocaml/ <comment><USER2> My own retrospective... been using OCaml in a production compiler on obscure UNICES since 3.08 (> 15 years!). Pretty seamless, simple updates, everything kept working, lights are still on. I think source changes were required ~3 times, so amazingly stable from my POV :)

<comment><USER3> What kind of compiler is it? What does it compile?

Are you the only person who has worked on it?

<comment><USER2> It compiles a "C# class"-looking DSL to GNOME GObjects, pushing all the ugly boilerplate (I'm aware there are newer ways to do it that have appeared in the last 15 years :)) into the generated code. And nowadays I'd call it a transpiler, but...

It was written by a teammate in 2004 (Frenchman, obviously!) and I've owned it since. A number of people have submitted features, etc. It's fairly straightforward and OCaml wasn't really a barrier to entry for any of the contributors.

edit: I should have said "source changes due to OCaml upgrades" above to be more clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Three things left for the full glory: better Windows support (without MinGW/Cygwin hacks, or WSL), better debugging and profiling (see DWARF PRs in GitHub repository), and, of course, multicore. Looking forward to more OCaml and faster OCaml.

<comment><USER5> > multicore

what's the state of this nowadays?

> better Windows support

couldn't agree more - they can learn on Go's lessons (the language didn't get much traction until they added Windows support).

<comment><USER6> 4.09 (which has just been released) includes a number of changes that are being introduced soley to ease the merging of multicore.

4.10 will also include a recently merged, large change for multicore support: [https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/8713](https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/8713)

The plan is to land multicore in trunk through a series of smaller chunks such as #8713

<comment><USER7> > 4.09 (which has just been released) includes a number of changes that are > being introduced to ease the introduction of multicore.

Ocaml multicore has been on the tablet since ... pretty much the dawn of time. It's save to call it vaporware or the duke nukem forever of Ocaml.

<comment><USER8> The perfect is the enemy of the good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love a good cheatsheet that actually respects the concept of being a _SINGLE, fixed-layout_ page: [http://www.ocamlpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ocaml- lan...](http://www.ocamlpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ocaml-lang.pdf)

It's something of a lost art in the paperless and HTML era of documentation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great to see OCaml picking back steam after a few slow years \o/

</comment><comment><USER11> I use OCaml for my everyday development. The main thing OCaml really needs is modular implicits.

<comment><USER3> What are modular implicits?

<comment><USER12> As a layman I would describe them as implicits like in current Scala [0] but better (easier to reason about). One thing which they allow is ad-hoc polymorphism like typeclasses.

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.01895.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.01895.pdf)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/ocaml/comments/4qan0w/modular_type_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/ocaml/comments/4qan0w/modular_type_classes_vs_modular_implicits/)

[0] [https://scala-lang.org](https://scala-lang.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They did a pretty good job shepherding it, although I'm still not too fond that the current trend is fueled by the Javascriptification of all the things.

Sadly, meanwhile "Standard" ML is languishing in academia...

<comment><USER10> I don't follow. How do you feel is OCaml javascriptified?

<comment><USER14> I think he's referring to ReasonML. Which plenty of OCaml developers dislike, but managed to build a healthy ecosystem in a short amount of time.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Brexit Was Not a Mistake - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@abarisser/why-brexit-was-not-a-mistake-5f4ae40fd15f#.chhfn3rky <comment><USER4> At _best,_ the jury is still out. We will be able to consider the question rationally in, perhaps, a decade.

NONE of the Brexiters had any planning in place to get us from in EU to out. I honestly don't believe any of them even expected to win. The _only_ politician with a plan of any form was Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP.

Britain is now experiencing overt racism like the last 40 years of progress didn't happen. Brexit has been taken as carte blanche to be proudly racist. I have witnessed this myself, last week, in an area where I'd have expected it to be non-existent.

The few politicians speaking are all seeking EU-lite, and it seems, wishing to rejoin as much of the single market (with associated costs) as possible.

By most measures it looks like it's shaping up to be a disaster for Britain.

<comment><USER5> > At best, the jury is still out. We will be able to consider the question > rationally in, perhaps, a decade.

You should have stopped there because that is the most rational conclusion to this whole thing.

But regarding the racism part: if you haven't noticed, the entire west is having a massive surge in racist ideologies. IMO it is one of two things, either a) it is not racism but classified as such by the left, or b) it is racism and the reason for its massive surge in the past few years are the current policies in place. In both of these scenarios, a change is required. Is Brexit that much needed change? I don't know. But what I do know is that leaving the EU is not as suicidal as people make it sound to be.

<comment><USER6> I happen to think the parent is quite right, but that I would go further and say that Brexit is definitely bat-shit insane. The UK has now pissed off the EU who will NOT be giving the UK favourable terms to leave the EU. Scotland will succeed and NI... well who knows what will happen there.

And don't try and minimise the outbreak of racism in the UK as if it's "happening everywhere". It's not happening here in NZ. And when people are being abused by yobos specifically referencing the Brexit vote, it makes your argument patently false and frankly, disgusting.

I've followed the arguments for and against and it's pretty clear that the biggest common denominator in the Leave argument is "It's the immagrunts, innit?".

I will give you that Brexit is not literally "suicidal" but economically it will be close and it terms of the UK's image to the rest of the world - <USER2> damage there is already done. You look like a bunch of racist, impetuous, sulky, ill-informed yobos blaming the world's victims for the acts of the very people you voted into office.

<comment><USER5> > the damage there is already done. You look like a bunch of racist, > impetuous, sulky, ill-informed yobos blaming the world's victims for the > acts of the very people you voted into office.

So lets see, which is more likely?

a) It just so happened that France, Sweden, Norway, UK and a bunch of other countries turned racist over night (see the rise in numbers of voters for the extreme right parties), or

b) you are wrong because you have an incomplete picture of how the world actually looks like?

I'll let you decide which one it is.

<comment><USER6> I am claiming that economic hardship coupled with a ready scapegoat at hand leads to scapegoating. Are you claiming that this has never happened before in the world? I'm pretty sure if I try REALLLY hard, I might even be able to think of an example or two in European history.

You have to be pretty ignorant of history if you can't find parallels with Irish, Jews or Blacks and different times and places. And YES I am saying that just as in history when all those groups were demonised, this current bout in Europe is racist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author fails to take in to account the short term issues associated with the Brexit.

For the next ten years, and probably more, Britain's economy is going to be all over the place. It will be hard to keep things stable whilst new treaties are negotiated and new trade links are established.

Britain is effectively rebooting its relationship with it's biggest trading partner. There is no way that such a move cannot have significant negative repercussions.

I've already seen such repercussions with UK friends who run small businesses being impacted the drop in the value of sterling. Another UK friend who runs a tourist coach business has been told by his EU based tour operator clients that once the Brexit happens they may have to drop him as a supplier - <USER3> now means a planned expansion has been put on hold. This is the sort of stuff happening even before article 50 is invoked, once that happens then all bets are off.

The leave camp didn't have a plan, but even if they did there would still be major negative effects on the UK. And so far people have only focused on issues surrounding trade the movement of people. There are dozens of other issues that will need to be dealt with as well such as standards compliance, product safety certifications, cross border consumer issues, science/R&D partnerships, the NI peace process, OpenSkies agreements and so on and so on.

Lets assume the author is correct in his thinking and that in 10-20 years the UK economy will be thriving, you can't deny it will have been a very, very painful journey to get there.

</comment><comment><USER8> I find these "it's not so bad" posts laughable. There is zero direction and people already seem to know that it will be okay. People seem to forget that stable countries disintegrated not so long ago in Europe. One just think of what happened to Yugoslavia.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not a word here about democracy. Lord Monckton summed it up very well: Where are the counter arguments?

"My three reasons for departure, in strict order of precedence, were Democracy, Democracy, and Democracy. For the so-called "European Parliament" is no Parliament. It is a mere duma. It lacks even the power to bring forward a bill, and the 28 faceless, unelected, omnipotent Kommissars – the official German name for the shadowy Commissioners who exercise the supreme lawmaking power that was once vested in our elected Parliament – have the power, under the Treaty of Maastricht, to meet behind closed doors to override in secret any decision of that "Parliament" at will, and even to issue "Commission Regulations" that bypass it altogether.

Worse, the treaty that established the European Stability Pact gives its governing body of absolute bankers the power, at will and without consultation, to demand any sum of money, however large, from any member state, and every member of that governing body, personally as well as collectively, is held entirely immune not only from any civil suit but also from any criminal prosecution.

That is dictatorship in the formal sense. Good riddance to it."

</comment><comment><USER10> Points for ambition, but after opening the article by saying you disagree with the consensus economic analysis, you pretty much disqualify yourself from having an opinion on the economic analysis...

 _Britain could and should declare free trade unilaterally with every other nation, whether they reciprocate or not. They would become an incredibly dynamic and prosperous trading hub._

First, not sure if you understand how trading hubs work.*

Second, not sure you are listening to why people think Brexit is bad for the UK economy if you think this is the solution.

The biggest economic risk to the UK from Brexit doesn't come from the fact they now have to renegotiate access to the EU internal market, it comes from the fact that Scotland might decide to go independent.

In turn, that has unleashed a ton of uncertainty for banks like Royal Bank of Scotland that, you know, take deposits and make loans denominated in British pounds to Scottish people.

Even if you could manage the transition across independence, redenomination and recapitalization, the potential shock to credit/liquidity is sufficient that a LOT of babies are likely to get thrown out with that bathwater.

<comment>~

* It's not really tarrifs that are the big constraints to trade these days, it's stuff like regulations (please no plastic in our baby formula, thx China), IP, 'dumping' etc.

That and the fact that giving nonreciprocal market access would mean you end up spending even more on imports than you receive in income from exports (they already do this...a lot).

Meaning you have to borrow money to finance consumption...until you borrow so much that the rest of the world stops lending you money...

this is (partially) why trading hubs tend to form in places that _export_ a lot vs import a lot.

<comment>

World Bank tarrif data: [http://bit.ly/293JtWZ](http://bit.ly/293JtWZ) Melanin in baby formula: [http://bit.ly/29nVRQH](http://bit.ly/29nVRQH)

<comment><USER10> Someone wrote this up better than I could

"With or without tariff issues being resolved — which are actually irrelevant to the access issue — the claim is false. Tariffs do not prevent access to a market. They simply impose a tax on entry. The actual barrier is regulatory conformity — what is known generally as a non-tariff barrier (NTB) or, sometimes, as technical barrier to trade (TBT)."

[https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/what-s-wrong-with-the- wto...](https://medium.com/@WhiteWednesday/what-s-wrong-with-the-wto- option-1fcbf5e8cee6#.3o8nbxy0s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Regarding the "champion of free trade" idea that the article raises - this is pure fantasy. The idea of dropping your trade barriers and just hoping by some magic sense of fairplay everyone else will do the same is ludicrous. Ignoring the prima facie illogic of expecting selfless altruism from your trading partners, I know from experience that this will not work - as does everyone else in NZ. We know this because it was the brain-dead approach our governments took in the late 80's. It has lead to us having NOTHING to offer in trade deals as we'd already given away the family silver.

TL;DR, the OP is seriously confused about how economics works.

</comment><comment> pi-err Points:

\- "unrestricted free trade will be awesome"

\- peace is not at stake, au contraire

\- decentralization is awesome. And small is beautiful!

\- it doesn't matter that it's a little about xenophobia

It sounds more like a prayer to Ricardo and the Seven because there really are no arguments given. "Let's try this awesome experiment because we're awesome!"

We'll hear this a lot - especially from the Boris Johnson side of the equation.

And the UK may well get the best out of this. It could become the mythical european Dubai, half fiscal paradise and half tech/creative/trade hub. This would also mean that the biggest losers would be the exact same people would voted for Brexit: white, older, English middle class. Politically, this will be interesting.

<comment><USER11> > This would also mean that the biggest losers would be the exact same people > would voted for Brexit: white, older, English middle class.

You will always have trickle down economics to make the middle class much richer.

Oh, wait, this does not seem be to be working as expected [1]

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That graph is of course correct, but the question remains, at _what level_ do you centralize? The idea of the EU is that the central point _is_ the EU, and that it is the EU which makes deals with the rest of the blocks.

If we follow through with the idea that the ideal level is the nation state, the you have 200 odd countries doing deals with each other. Not very practical.

OR, we have several world regions doing deals with each other, plus the UK.

Which is a version of "Beggar_thy_neighbour" policy [1]: in a world in which countries in world regions are cooperating with each other by making compromises, there is _always_ the option by one of those countries to play dirty and try to game the system (for example, tax heavens).

Note: this applies to _big issues_. There are things which are better decided at the national, regional or even the city level.

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

</comment><comment><USER12> And then there's this:

[http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/683739/EU- referendum-...](http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/683739/EU-referendum- German-French-European-superstate-Brexit)

<comment><USER13> "anti-EU sentiments running high in eastern Europe, Scandinavia and France."

"Greater Germany" all over again? Makes perfect sense actually.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the EU is just as good a scapegoat as immigrants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's good in the long run too.

Maybe UK decunstructs itself, because Northern Ireland and Scottland leave it and join the EU anyway.

The EU can use the rest of UK to create an example, so no other country will leave in the future.

After that I think Londons tech hub will spread more to Ireland or Germany. Many people already use Ireland to create cheap companies and Berlin pushes hard to become the SF of Europe.

These will be bad times for the UK but I think it will wake the people up and they will fix their country.

<comment><USER15> > The EU can use the rest of UK to create an example, so no other country will > leave in the future.

If the EU shows that the only way it can maintain unity is by punishing those who try to leave, many will leave.

They will absolutely _not_ 'create an example' of the UK because that would amount to fueling the nationalist voices in France and the Netherlands. Even in Poland there are people who are now uncertain that they want to be in the EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > If you have ever travelled to Europe and tried to buy clothing, food, or a > computer, this is why they are so much more expensive than in the US

I would like to see some figures for that, but I think that more than tariffs, the author is not taking into account the VAT, the price of carburant and some other things.

<comment><USER17> VAT is definitely significantly higher than the US in most EU states, even double. It contributes greatly to the higher prices. Additionally, the different currency and shipping costs add a considerable sum too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > There has been peace in Europe because, frankly, the Europeans are weak.

What is this? Most of the regions in conflict in the world are, according to the scales he sets, "weak".</comment>