Disproved Discoveries That Won Nobel Prizes (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/10/nobel_prizes_awarded_for_disproved_discoveries.html <comment><USER2> The Golgi case seems dubious. Golgi was wrong about the nervous system being continuous, but he did masses of other pioneering work in neurobiology and cell biology. He discovered the Golgi apparatus, which continues to baffle undergraduates to this day. He developed the staining technique which Ramón y Cajal eventually used to prove him wrong! I don't think the Nobel was given specifically for the idea that he nervous system is continuous, so it seems justified even today.

<comment><USER3> The joint nobel was awarded

> "in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system"

Not cell biology, not lab techniques, but work on specifically the structure of the _structure_ of the nervous system.

<comment><USER4> But they also awarded it to two researchers proposing opposite interpretations, so they obviously did not endorse his interpretation of a continuous nervous system.

<comment><USER5> Insofar as the committee endorses specific discoveries (Nobel's criterion was for conferring the greatest benefit on mankind), it notably did not endorse relativity in awarding the 1921 prize to Einstein, either. It has been argued that this was due to the indirect influence of Henri Bergson's philosophical- and intuition-based objections.

[http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/this-philosopher- helped...](http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/this-philosopher-helped- ensure-there-was-no-nobel-for-relativity)

The committe went so far as delaying the award until 1922, saying, in 1921, that none of the candidates that year had met their standards.

[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised they didn't include lobotomies in this list. That was a huge blunder. Otherwise, the Nobel committee has a pretty good track record.

This is of course because they wait for the dust to settle on these discoveries and for the scientific community to validate and build on those conclusions.

This is why there is such a large lag time between the discovery and the granting of the prize.

<comment><USER7> Functional stereotactic neurosurgery for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders is actively practiced.

The popular media is not a good place to get your information from...

"Functional neurosurgeons at UVa are currently treating: Neuropsychiatric conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression" [https://med.virginia.edu/neurosurgery/services/functional- ne...](https://med.virginia.edu/neurosurgery/services/functional- neurosurgery/)

"We read with great interest the publication of Liu et al. [1 ]reporting results from the largest published series of schizophrenia patients treated with MRI-guided bilateral anterior capsulotomy with 2 years of follow-up. Let us specify that a series of 87 schizophrenic patients operated, notably, by capsulotomy - but associated with a cingulotomy, amygdalectomy or thermocoagulation of the nucleus accumbens"

[https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/366005](https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/366005)

[http://med.stanford.edu/neurosurgery/divisions/functional.ht...](http://med.stanford.edu/neurosurgery/divisions/functional.html)

<comment><USER3> > Functional stereotactic neurosurgery for psychiatric and neurodegenerative > disorders is actively practiced.

Lobotomy is the removal of most or all of the prefrontal cortex. That its descendant is now called "functional neurosurgery" does tell you how disparaged and discredited lobotomy is.

It's not unlike nuclear medicine though, there was an early hype phase where it was applied too often[0], too much and without enough precision. The underpinnings remain in active use but at a very different level of activity, and with much more precise targeting.

[0] the US performed 20000 lobotomies during the 40s, mostly on women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Odd to see Moniz' 1949 lobotomy prize omitted here.

See [https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/moniz/articl...](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/moniz/article/)

<comment><USER9> Because it is disputed whether it was "wrong" (in terms of effectiveness, not in terms of morality). It did achieve what it claimed. It just happened to be a rather blunt method of doing it.

<comment><USER8> The point of any medical intervention is to make the patient better. By that standard, a lobotomy is ineffective. Lobotomies "worked" by making patients deeply disabled, in a way that made them more manageable.

<comment><USER10> They performed one on JFK's sister: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy)

It's a very sad story, although that's pretty common for lobotomy cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is kind of looking like the prize for Dark Energy was awarded for a nonexistent phenomenon. The dust hasn't settled, but it will or should be very embarrassing if it turns out so.

<comment><USER12> Not a practicing physicist anymore, so I may be hopelessly out of date.

This noted, I've been under the impression for a while that dark energy/dark matter is more likely a detailed accounting error. That is, it's likely that it is not a "new" thing, but old physics that we have an incomplete understanding of.

Science is funny that way. Early results considered groundbreaking are refined and extended over time. And sometimes, as we gain more information and comprehension, the effect we think we observed is subsumed into "boring" physics (this is how it was described to me by a friend).

<comment><USER13> I don't know if there's a huge difference between "a brand new thing" and "an old thing that is not interacting at all the way we understand it to."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nobel Prizes in the sciences do seem to withstand the test of time better than economics, literature, and (laughs) peace.

<comment><USER15> With actual war criminals winning peace prizes I do wonder what is the point of it. The value of an award is in the company it puts you in, now it looks like the peace Nobel is just worth its dollar value and its value on the TED circuit.

<comment><USER16> Do you talk about war criminals being awarded the Nobel peace prize or about Nobel peace prize laureates turning into war criminals? This is an important difference in my opinion. Since you seem to follow this more closely than I do, would you mind giving an example?

<comment><USER17> > Do you talk about war criminals being awarded the Nobel peace prize or about > Nobel peace prize laureates turning into war criminals?

For the former, Henry Kissinger.

There are examples of the latter, as well.

<comment><USER18> Holy hell, Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize?! I'm was familiar enough with him to know he's disgustingly immoral, and never imagined people back then would have been stupid enough to give him that award.

With 2 members of the committee resigning in protest, it seems not everyone with power to award it was so morally corrupt.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Trajectory – an open-source educational tool to model financial future - <AUTHOR> http://blabr.io/?2efbdcc151a2e3e57d75 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, I wrote this little Blab after struggling to visualize the impact of budgeting and investments in the long term. People kept telling me to save and invest, but I wanted to see empirically why this is true.

Features I'd like to add:

      - Better taxation rules
      - Specific asset classes and investment accounts with
        associated taxation, withdraw limits, and contribution limits
      - Investment allocation strategy with a changing risk profile
        and tax conscious account allocation
      - Social security income
      - Highlighting the "important" factors
        (i.e., the ones that impact the plot the most)
      - A probabilistic simulation to get a better result estimate
        (i.e., confidence intervals)

If you want to contribute, that'd be awesome! You can also easily fork it. If you have questions, I'm happy to answer them here!

</comment><comment><USER2> Blabr dev here. We're working on an improved plotting widget, plot2 [0], that you're welcome to try (note how it's imported in the defs section). For example, see [1] for plot2 applied to "Trajectory". It is fairly sound, but there are some issues with escaping. So, e.g., we need yLabels: ["\\\$ $\\\times 1000$"], which is a bit ugly--but it works.

[0] [http://blabr.io/?7b662930a33b1053072a](http://blabr.io/?7b662930a33b1053072a)

[1] [http://blabr.io/?7d4d0cc9f423800f23e9](http://blabr.io/?7d4d0cc9f423800f23e9)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another Blabr dev here. This is a really nice blab. We'd targeted Blabr for scientific computing (and, in particular, for STEM and conceptual modelling), but you've demonstrated that it also works well for other kinds of online, interactive computation.

Based on your work, it occurs to us that we need to improve some things for non-scientific applications, e.g., number formatting (dollars/cents, thousands separators). Please let us know if there are any other features that would help you do this kind of financial modelling work. Or any feedback in general. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Really an excellent tool! I'd originally written a shiny app, but this was much better!

Other than the plot (thanks, gballan), it would be nice to adjust the width of layout cells, especially for the code cells. It would also be cool to adjust the spacing between cells to reduce whitespace when another cell in the same row takes up a huge amount but others do not.

I was not clear how to place markdown text in between or after tables and sliders but might have just missed how to do that.

Thanks again!</comment></comment>


Screencasts for developing react web apps? - <AUTHOR> so yes I got the basic I have made simple apps to try props and states and the lifecycle now I want something practical to fit all the pieces together but I can't find something useful can you recommend any screencasts ? <comment><USER2> I host a popular video tutorial on Udemy. It walks you through the basics of React, Webpack, NPM, and Redux. It's gotten a lot of positive feedback. Check it out here: [https://www.udemy.com/react- redux/?couponCode=NHOW10](https://www.udemy.com/react- redux/?couponCode=NHOW10)

<comment><USER3> I have done Stephen's react native + redux course and it was a very enjoyable experience.

The explanations, approach to the "problems", and pace were perfect.

Thanks for your great content; I'm a happy customer and will continue to recommend to others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not screencasts, but my React/Redux links list does point to tons of tutorials and articles on React, Redux, and related topics. Tons of good info linked from there: [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) .

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe you can find this useful. I made a little series building a music player in react. [https://github.com/loriopatrick/media- box](https://github.com/loriopatrick/media-box) The videos are linked in the README as Part1, Part2, & Part 3.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks guys useful resources</comment>


Happy Pi day - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/happy-pi-day-20110314/ <comment><USER2> Happy pi day indeed! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTw45fPZa20></comment>


Australia bans Huawei and ZTE from supplying technology for its 5G network - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/22/australia-bans-huawei-and-zte-from-supplying-technology-for-its-5g-network/ <comment><USER3> The west is slowly starting to realize something that China has realized for years; economic policy is not a question of economics but of geopolitical strategy. Free markets are nice in theory (and often in practice), but once you let in bad actors with the clout of a nation state, all the usual assumption behind free markets no longer apply. It's pretty disappointing that, based on what we now know, western economists aided China in gutting western industry under the guise of "China is just subsidizing the west, we'd be stupid not to take advantage." Even worse, we had already rejected that argument when applied to companies like Walmart, but for some reason we thought it would apply to whole national economies.

<comment><USER4> > The west is slowly starting to realize something that China has realized for > years; economic policy is not a question of economics but of geopolitical > strategy.

I do not believe that this is a recent realization - this goes back to at least the Dutch East India company (VOC). The foundation of the British economy were the vast resources of the British Empire (read colonies) for many decades.

<comment><USER3> It's one of those things that the west knew and then forgot in the 90's after the cold war ended and we realized how great free markets were at improving people's lives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "This new architecture provides a way to circumvent traditional security controls by exploiting equipment in the edge of the network – exploitation which may affect overall network integrity and availability, as well as the confidentiality of customer data."

Hey Australian Government. You know what also protects confidentiality of customer data? Encryption.

<comment><USER6> Encryption isn't a magic bullet. If you have good visibility into the network there's a hell of a lot you can do with traffic analysis and metadata. Plus, if you own the end-user device you can just go around the encryption since the data, by definition, has to be displayed to the user decrypted.

It's a hard problem. Encryption is part of the solution, but it's not _the_ solution.

<comment><USER7> Excellent response, I've become quite sceptical of the Australian calls for encryption backdoors, frankly think the government knows they aren't necessary and can back down to appease the public while silently scooping up everything. Catchy lines like the laws of maths quote is a hugely successful distraction.

Mandatory metadata is already retained for 2 years at the consumers expense, no one has ever released how much or what is actually kept as all freedom of information requests by journalists have been denied. It's estimated that every adult generates around 15000 data points a day, it's known that mobile phone signal strength is kept allowing triangulation within 100m or so of every citizen every few minutes.

Last year alone there was over 300,000 warrantless requests made by 60 government agencies, many more are legally allowed to make requests, right down to small local councils in the middle of nowhere with 15 staff members and obscure agencies such as horse racing officials.

There's absolutely no oversight, I'm stuggling to imagine how many people it would actually take to investigate around 1000 requests a day, every day of the week.

It's only a matter of time before some serious abuse of the system occurs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is kinda funny and hypocritical when you devote a few brain cells to this.

Every country is gathering data on everyone. If you think they are respecting your privacy, you're naive.

The US has been doing it for years. Secretly. EU and I bet you Australia too.

And even China, yes. But hey, at least China is honest about what they're doing. Gotta respect that at least.

Point is, it's just a show.

<comment><USER9> I'm going to take issue with this, because I see this line of argument a lot on HN recently.

There is a _fundamental_ difference between "like in kind" and "like in severity".

Do the US and China both monitor telecom? Yes.

Has the US built a national firewall? No.

Do the US and China both have legal processes for acquiring court ordered telecom intercepts? Yes.

Is the US legal system wholly subordinate to political goals? No.

Do the US and Chinese governments lean on companies to comply with their wishes? Yes.

Do US companies survive at the whim of the US government and generally lack independent legal recourse to fight pressure? No.

If you want to go through point-by-point with what's similar between Chinese and US data monitoring regimes, I'm happy to do so. But they aren't close to the same.

<comment><USER10> Not a fan or defensor of China here; but the US has way more history of intervention in other countries; so I would be much much worried about US- based companies that provide searching or social networking services

<comment><USER11> But China has a worse record of human rights abuses. In regards to intervention in other countries, China consumes them. Tibet, Taiwan no longer exist according to China.

They've all got bad history. If God existed and was to strike down on the unworthy nations of the world, very few would be spared.

And I dislike this as much as any rational person (hello? rational people...?) but if it came to choosing sides in what appears to be inevitable future conflict, I'd choose the US over China and Russia. I hate that it's the case, but the US, I think, is the least worst option. This may be based purely on cultural familiarity, but, well, there it is.

<comment><USER12> > This may be based purely on cultural familiarity, but, well, there it is.

Very much this.

> In regards to intervention in other countries, China consumes them. Tibet, > Taiwan no longer exist according to China.

Oh dear. Taiwan never existed in the first place according to China because they didn't accept them becoming independent. (Protip: google how many countries actually regard Taiwan an independent nation). And Tibet? It has pretty much belonged to China for over 600 years. Tibet has been very poor even compared to China, and over the past 50 years China has greatly supported the region, establishing basic infrastructure like hospitals, schools etc. You usually never hear about this in the west though, since it doesn't fit the whole "free Tibet" narrative.

Yes there is a lot wrong with China, as with any country on this planet. I certainly don't need to get into US atrocities here for some obligatory whataboutism. But at least get your facts straight when criticising. Like when that Falun gong organ harvesting comes up. If you try to unravel this story you find no halfway credible sources and always end up with this Canadian politician who conveniently always resurfaces with that story when some election is coming up. Or recently there was a report about one million captive Uighurs in China (with a population of only 8 million), where the only source was a UN Secretary saying this "not representing the UN"...

It's sad, because we so proudly compare our free press to the state controlled propaganda in China, but for most people just knowing we have a free press equals not ever having to doubt anything the news say, at least not if it's about another country across the world you already know is evil.

<comment><USER9> If China wants more accurate reporting about Uighurs, they can bloody well allow foreign press into the region.

(Scroll down and watch the video halfway, where BBC journalists are constantly harassed)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-45173573](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45173573)

I get the Chinese government's default position is stonewalling information. But at some point, if people say a thing, and you say it isn't so: you invite them to see for themselves.

The fact that China (and the Soviet Union before it) don't...

<comment><USER12> Completely agree here. OTOH it's understandable that China is pretty paranoid about foreign press. As laid out, our reporting on China is pretty one sided and agenda-driven sometimes. which ironically enough, only fosters _our_ paranoia and conspiracy theories about these issues. And on it goes...

Tiananmen square was a rare exception in that regard since a lot of foreign press was already in Beijing during that time, but we still have a very incomplete picture, not only regarding the wildly varying figures regarding the death toll.

<comment><USER13> Talk to some Chinese. Or, even worse, people from Hong Kong. The behavior of the Chinese state is disgusting. Even at a local level constant abuses are the norm, in big cities and small. People are "disappeared". Not 1, not a few per year, but hundreds of thousands per year.

Did you see the size of the Xinjang internment camps they built then tripled in size ? But these disappearances are happening all over China, not just Tibet, Xinjang and Hong Kong. All those regions, by the way, have populations in the tens to hundreds of millions of people.

And there's the steady trickle of stories by people that somehow make it back out of those camps, talking of torture, executions, slave labour, starvation.

Let's just stop mincing words here. China is executing a holocaust on it's own people. That's the truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This destroys the logic of free trade, competition that countries and a plethora of global organizations like IMF, WB promote and enforced aggressively over the last 40 years especially when looking for markets in other countries.

But if its only applicable to a favoured set and suddenly has all sorts of qualifiers when it comes to your own markets then the whole thing collapses. And everyone can see its politics with a fig leaf of process designed for one way benefit and as a system cannot deliver mutual benefits.

<comment><USER15> > This destroys the logic of free trade

That depends on the calculation. Maybe there's a non-zero risk that China could remotely turn off their 5G network and including that in the calculation makes local sources a better value even when the dollar price is higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe PRISM is also caused by Huawei and ZTE. There is nothing about politics.

</comment><comment><USER17> Cyber actors is one I've not heard before.

Sounds like a good idea, what are the downsides if any?

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish they'd bad this equipment not because it's Chinese, but simply because it's shit. Seriously, pretty much all mobile network equipment (including EU- based Ericsson) has critical vulnerabilities. I wouldn't worry about Chinese backdoors when _anyone_ can get privileged access to the core network.

<comment><USER19> They should ban any 5G millimeter wave (30GHz-300GHz) devices until enough testing on humans has been done. It is unclear what affects these waves have on our corneas and requires more research.

<comment><USER20> Why especially the corneas?

<comment><USER19> [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10762-018-0497-z](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10762-018-0497-z)

<comment><USER21> "These findings suggested that damage to the corneal epithelium was not induced by corneal dryness alone, but by exposure of dried corneas to MMW- induced heat to above body temperature."

So as long as I don't microwave my corneas with my phone, I should be alright. Thanks!

edit: hell, even the researchers say this themselves:

"It is an important finding that corneal epithelial damage is induced by MMW exposure, accompanying very strong pain, although it is cured within 1–2 days after injury. Since humans blink more frequently than rabbits, exposure to these levels of MMW is unlikely to induce corneal epithelial damage in humans."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tie my kangaroo down sport, that's good news. Now we just need the sleepy EU to wake up so we get their spyware removed from our Mobile Operators infrastructure here!

<comment><USER23> Take it your mobile phone is built in Germany, with German components. ;)

It's just a matter of picking your poison. You think your Cisco router has no backdoors? Your Intel CPU? Your Windows OS? Your Gmail account?

This isn't about making you safer, it's about removing competition (as crappy as it may have been). And they eliminate competition both economically and in the spying game. The more companies there are that want to spy on you, the more you pay attention to security and you make life hard for everyone.

But phew, the spies were banned so no need to worry anymore :).

<comment><USER24> Mmm. As an Australian, the main reason I'd be happy with using US telecom equipment would be the fact that Australia makes up 1/5th of the 5 eyes.

I'd expect our security people to have a very good idea of what backdoors are or are not present.

<comment><USER25> So US/AU government backdooring AU citizens is okay, but if China has access it's bad?

People actually think like this now? We just collectively rolled over and accepted mass surveillance?

<comment><USER26> Even not looking on the democratic/dictatorship spectrum - <USER2> interference will always be worse than what you get from insiders. Insiders at least depend on the country welfare - outsiders just don't give a fuck.

<comment><USER23> And the US is an insider for AU... how? Because if the NSA brought any revelation it's that the US backdoored even their allies without them knowing.

I get choosing the least evil but this is a defense only as much as burning dows a building and saying "at least this little piece survived" is a defense.

<comment><USER27> Nope, FVEY was conducted very much _with_ cooperation between the involved parties. We (Aus) have very close structural and cultural ties to the US, but China is approximately _as_ foreign as it gets. The US may not be an insider per se, but in theory we share at least some core values.

(Not to say that I personally am ok with any of it, but from a societal perspective it makes a little sense.)

<comment><USER11> But Australia's economic health relies far more on trade with China than it does with the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Many people seem to dislike the anti-china move. However, let's not forget that china has put over 1 million Muslims in literal concentration or reeducation camps. That's wrong. China needs to stop, and if not buying their cell gear helps, we should consider it too.

<comment><USER11> And what are the US kill stats up to recently?

There are no good guys.

<comment><USER29> That is not relevant to the discussion

<comment><USER30> What's really funny about this whole affair is that everything that people accuse China of doing _has actually been done by the US_. There's some powerful projection at here. We _know for a fact_ that the NSA does intercept telecom devices on their way out of the country and so the US actually does export compromised devices [1]. We _know for a fact_ that US telecom manufacturers export equipment that has been pre-broken by the NSA [2]. We _know for a fact_ that the NSA aggressively penetrates foreign networks at the deepest levels, even for so called allies. [3] All of this is a matter of record, it's been documented and verified by several agencies.

But somehow despite all this we're supposed to be very, very afraid of Huawei and ZTE? The total lack of integrity at work here is a bit breathtaking but it's come to be expected.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an- nsa...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade- factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/)

[2] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/08/cisco...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/08/cisco-confirms-nsa-linked-zeroday-targeted-its-firewalls- for-years/)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Parliamentary_Committee...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Parliamentary_Committee_investigation_of_the_NSA_spying_scandal)

<comment><USER28> I hate PRISM as much as the next guy. However, the US doesn't block pages about things with which it politically disagrees and doesn't throw people in to prison (unless they find cp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand the concern. Huawei isn't providing the 5G network, just the phones that latch on to it. It would presumably be Telstra (the primary Australian telecommunications provider) that would provide the network itself.

How is providing a 5G compatible phone any more a security risk than providing a 4G one?

Edit: I should have read this more thoroughly since it's not just about phone, but rather that "Australia has blocked Huawei and ZTE from providing equipment for its 5G network". Key word: equipment, which I'm guessing spans to the installation of infrastructure in Australia.

<comment><USER32> Huawei is not just a phone company.

In Modern Telco ( Telstra) , they are mostly setting up, dealing with land / cell site lease, backbone, customer support and Retails. Along with some Network Engineers working along side with Telecom Network Equipment manufacturers for their Services.

That Telecom Network Equipment manufacturers could be Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, Nokia, or Ericsson. Samsung is an new entry and has very little market shares. Huawei is bigger than both Nokia and Ericsson combined.</comment></comment>


Introducing FastRender for Meteor: Something like Server Side Rendering - <AUTHOR> http://meteorhacks.com/introducing-fast-render.html

<comment><USER2> New in meteor - server side rendering. Also called, what the world looked like before thicker client libraries.

I feel like this is losing sight of the goal. And you wonder why its not on their roadmap.

For me, I feel like if you are adding server-side rendering to a meteor app, you are using meteor either incorrectly, or for the wrong use cases.

<comment><USER3> If you look closer at FastRender: it only renders a part of _initial_ page on the server. Thick client is sent with some prepared data and continues all further operations as it was a regular Meteor app. I think it is a great thing to improve the initial page load time until we have more serious server-side rendering.

<comment><USER4> Its not really server side rendering at all in the traditional sense, its only used to provide an initial cache of data to serve an illusion of a faster initial load and its far from a thin client as you said. Needless to say its brilliant!

I've applied the changes to atmosphere.meteor.com and the changes are very drastic (you'll have to allow the appcache to adjust if you've loaded it before).

I think with this type of speed the drawbacks of using using meteor fall back further.

If there was a way for templates not to be download to all at once in a similar way I'd find it difficult to find a use for server side rendering.

<comment><USER3> I didn't say it is SSR, but rather "renders a _part_ of initial page on the server." I believe that it is acceptable for a chunk of data the client will use to render page to called a part of it.

<comment><USER4> Yes I agree with you, I was adding to what you said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a developer using Meteor, this is really exciting! I can't wait to play around with this and see it in action on our site.</comment>


Thank you, Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://psung.blogspot.com/2010/10/thank-you-ubuntu.html <comment><USER2> I keep try to evangelize the fact that things like apt are one of the biggest wins for the various UNIX-like OS's. In Windows world installing software takes both finding it and configuring the installer. On a Mac you have to at least find it. On Ubuntu/Debian/etc you just have to know the name (or you can search a central database). Also no more Java/Flash player/Acrobat Reader "needs to be updated" messages. You update everything at once. And it can all be scripted. And you can update your entire OS to the next major release in three commands. I can go on and on.

<comment><USER3> The package manager concept is actually what I hate most about Linux systems and Ubuntu's strategy to not let you upgrade some packages without upgrading the OS itself is insane.

Packages tend to thrust some completely idiosyncratic configuration scheme down my throat that is documented nowhere and that creates conflicts of its own. They don't just solve dependencies they encourage dependencies because they are supposed to be resolved automatically anyway. But they're not. Things break all the time. The Linux dependency hell has far surpassed the infamous Windows DLL hell of the 90s.

I was called to help people fix their Ubuntu installation after some package upgrade had uninstalled half the system. I had an upgrade replace a working but proprietary wifi driver with a non functional "free" one, etc, etc.

Most of the problems I ever had with Ubuntu were caused by that completely broken package management idea. If I want Python 2 and 3 on the same system I can't have a package manager tell me that's not supposed to be when I know full well that it's no problem.

<comment><USER4> _They don't just solve dependencies they encourage dependencies_

This is a good thing. Developers' attitude toward dependencies gets very lax when it's too much work to declare them or too much work for the user to satisfy them. Then you get into situations where you install a piece of software and 90% of the functionality is broken, because the developer was "considerate" enough not to "force" a bunch of dependencies on you, so you resort to Google to find the real dependencies, which of course aren't available for your distro. Apt gives developers a flexible way to declare different kinds of dependencies, and the Debian and Ubuntu distro repositories give them confidence that the dependencies will install smoothly for users.

I had much more difficulty with undeclared dependencies back in the day than I have with excessive dependencies now. It's just wrong for software to easily install in a mostly broken state. If you want broken, partly-working software, you should have to do extra work to achieve that, not the other way around.

<comment><USER5> How about statically-linked builds? Hard drives and memory are cheap compared to the annoyances of having to manage dependencies on the user's system.

Package management is a solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Then some central library has a security hole and half your system has to get updated, instead of just one thing.

Also, you might like <http://sta.li/> ;)

<comment><USER5> True enough, if the security hole is in a library that half of the software on my system is using. But most applications have fairly frequent update cycles for their own codebase anyway, and it's just as likely that an update to a central dynamically-linked library might introduce a new security hole that instantly compromises half of my system at once.

Thanks for the link to sta.li, I'll check it out. What I'd really like to see is a Linux distro that managed applications the way OSX does - every program is contained in its own directory.

<comment><USER7> IIRC, they still dynamically link against system libraries. It's just that OSX isn't a moving target with respect to what is expected to be in the system in it's 'base' state of a specific version. So you dynamically link against everything that should be in the system in the 'base' state, and then all other libraries need to be self-contained in the .app directory. The problem with this on Linux is that: 1) the 'base' configuration is a moving target that varies across vendors and 2) most of the libraries/etc that would make up that 'base state' are things that people would want to upgrade/modify/whatever (thereby messing up your 'base state' that you were supposed to be able to rely on) (You don't have this on OSX because Apple is the one that controls most of the things in the 'base state').

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been using Ubuntu since 6.04, longer than any other Linux distribution (one or the other has been my main desktop since 1999). I have to say, though that of course, Ubuntu wouldn't exist as it is without the grandeur of Debian - thanks, Debian.

<comment><USER9> You probably meant 6.06. That was my first Ubuntu as well, though it was also my first Linux distribution.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases>

<comment><USER8> Right, 6 something is all I remember at this point! Huh... looking at that list, it might have been even earlier, because I remember Breezy Badger and Hoary Hedgehog. I recall Dapper Drake being a particularly good release, so you jumped in at a good time!

So, I guess actually 5.04 was when I moved over from Debian. I think it was before Debian Sarge was released, which apparently was 2 months before Hoary Hedgehog, so that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "it runs on every piece of hardware you throw at it"

That's what continues to impress me about Ubuntu - I've installed it on everything from PPC-era Macs to dodgy little netbooks and it invariably 'just works'.

<comment><USER11> There was a time when you had to carefully choose your hardware to work with Linux. These days, you have to carefully choose your hardware in order to experience problems.

I am surprised by how many people do the latter.

<comment><USER12> If 95% of components work on Ubuntu, and your computer life involves 25 components (start counting, you'll hit it pretty quickly), Ubuntu is totally broken for about 75% or so of users. If Mom's camera or wireless doesn't work, she does not perceive the computer as being _mostly_ functional.

<comment><USER13> all those components come with drivers provider by the vendor of that component for windows(mostly) machine only. Linux doing a great job catching on all those components but the thing is linux is mostly behind. if Vendors helps linux community a little we should be going hand in hand.

<comment><USER11> Every vendor publishes their own buggy version of drivers for what is essentially the same hardware, all neatly packaged with some buggy "value added" crapware that introduces new and unpredictable behaviour mom has to deal with.

No. I really prefer the Linux way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ahh... Ubuntu. I've been using Linux since pretty much forever and I've gone through Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, Slackware, you name it.

Sure, Ubuntu has its fair share of idiosyncrasies, not to mention idiotic bits and a... peculiar developer community, to say the least, but on the whole it manages to combine the flexibility and openness of Linux with some of the nicer aspects of closed platforms like OS X.

Bring on 10.10 and beyond!

</comment><comment><USER15> I started using Ubuntu on my desktop when I started developing for the web and because my web-server ran ubuntu. Love the fact that I can have a server-like OS on my desktop, that also does pretty much does everything that windows and macs do

<comment><USER16> Both Windows and Mac OS X have server versions, that can easily be installed on desktops.

<comment><USER17> ...neither of which come with the normal versions (and, indeed, are quite a bit more expensive), so most people will never even touch them on their PCs.

<comment><USER18> OS X comes preinstalled with Apache. No need for OS X server.

<comment><USER19> Although there is something to be said for running the same software stack on your desktop as your server.

Though, I'll grant you, web development on OS X is really nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been having a lot of problems with Ubuntu. First of all, wireless on Ubuntu sucks. I can't be bothered reading tons of articles on how to fix wireless, i just want it to work like it does on Windows. Ubuntu doesn't detect a few of my webcams. I can't even install Ubuntu 10.04 on my new laptop (though it seems they're busy fixing it), so i'm stuck with 9.04. I'm also having some trouble with Chrome on Ubuntu, but i should probably blame Chrome for that. Rebooting on Ubuntu doesn't even work. I can only shut it down. I could probably fix it in a timely fashion, but i don't see why it broke in the first place. I've never had any trouble with Windows of this kind.

Anyway, It's still a great OS, but there's no way the average computer user is going to be satisfied with Ubuntu unless the developers somehow fix these little annoyances.

<comment><USER21> The drivers problems are a manufacturer problem, not Ubuntu's. Complain against the manufacturer, so that they know that people actually want linux drivers. Vote with your wallet, buy linux compatible hardware. Don't blame Ubuntu for others' mistakes.

<comment><USER20> Sure, i might have unnecessarily blamed Ubuntu, but it's still a problem that needs to be fixed. And as long as that problem exists, i won't recommend Ubuntu to the average computer user.

<comment><USER22> Why? The "average computer user" is precisely the kind of person who is likely to have commodity hardware that is supported by Ubuntu. Would you not recommend it because you can't _guarantee_ that Ubuntu will work with all her hardware? If that's the problem, then what _would_ you recommend? Can you guarantee that some other OS supports every piece of hardware she owns? Or are you holding Ubuntu to a higher standard?

If the answer is simply that you believe another OS will support more (though maybe not all) of her hardware, why not at least recommend that she get a Live CD, try it and see? Then she can weigh for herself the benefits of a (mostly) Free software OS against the extra cost of getting her hardware to work, instead of just accepting your guess that it's not worth it.

<comment><USER23> Hardware can be expected to work on Windows. If they don't, it's the hardware manufacturer's fault. There might be nothing you can _do_ about it, but it's their fault. They manufacturers are expected to support Windows. If hardware doesn't work on Ubuntu, it's _your_ fault for installing an unsupported system.

<comment><USER22> > Hardware can be expected to work on Windows. If they don't, it's the > hardware manufacturer's fault.

Sorry, this is an unreasonable expectation, and one that should be corrected, not reinforced. The "average user" has no right to expect that an operating system should work with any and all hardware, simply because _one_ operating system has a monopoly position with respect to users and a monopsony-ish position with respect to hardware makers. It hurts all computer users, and Free software users in particular, when we allow such companies to set our expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's weird. I used to love Ubuntu, but after 8.04 I just stopped liking it. The little things niggled away at me. The bloat, the fear of upgrades breaking things (this is why my main home file server still runs 8.04, something I'm not happy about) if you have a slightly nonstandard install. I switched to Arch for my main home laptop and breathed new life into a PIII-850 with 128mb of RAM. Ubuntu would've killed it.

In a bizarre twist of fate, work requirements meant having to use Windows Vista (the horror!) then 7, where so far the best feature seems to be "It's not vista", so no more Ubuntu at work for me, except through VMs.

Still, Ubuntu did a heck of a lot to make Linux easier for the masses, and I have to say thanks to all those at Canonical and the Ubuntu community that made it possible.

<comment><USER25> Weird. Its since 8.04 and onwards that upgrades STOPPED breaking things for me. Its been a golden era for Ubuntu.

<comment><USER26> It seems like since 8.04 they've changed the package naming conventions for LaTeX twice. That's been the biggest pain about upgrading for me, everything else has been a breeze.

<comment><USER27> I think they inherited that transition from Debian, where it's also been a bit of a pain. Part of the mess is that it wasn't just repackaging/renaming, but a switch of upstream sources too, which weren't exact drop-in replacements for each other--- teTeX hasn't been actively maintained since 2006, so Debian (and most other distros) shipped to TeX Live as their new upstream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My workplace experience is that most of these so called "average Windows users" don't even understand the Windows environment to a functional level and need hand holding to use basic features like Remote Desktop, create a mapped drive, or navigate the file system. They don't have any interest in learning more about computers, they just absorb the minimum possible computer skills to perform required office work. They don't even really understand the office tools they use everyday like Microsoft Office. As ignorant as they are about Windows they are more than willing to jump ship to an unfamiliar Apple computer as they have heard it is even more simple to use. These "office workers" know how to click(oops), then double click the big motha icon to open the data entry application, and type away all day, then leave the application open so they don't have to open it again. This stuff is going to simplify down to something like a fast food restaurant cash register with food icons on the keys.

</comment><comment><USER29> I like Ubuntu quite a bit, I just wish they would offer a Base install option. I like their hardware detection, Gnome modifications, and font smoothing, but I am not a fan of the Ubuntu One stuff or its kitchen sink approach to including software.

Basically, I just want Ubuntu's Base Gnome package, so that from there I can add want I want.

<comment><USER30> Try the gnome-stracciatella-session package, or choose the "Install a command- line system" option in the alternate installer and add what you like later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm so sad that so many HNers can not understand what is the real value added by Ubuntu. If more hardware is supported, it's because the kernel tends to get drivers for most hardware nowadays. If apps are getting better, it's not because of Ubuntu, but because of the apps developers. The power of Ubuntu is only on marketting.

<comment><USER32> I kind of agree with this. The article is not really about Ubuntu, it is about Linux distros in general. I have been using Mandrake/Mandriva for at least eight years. I tried Ubuntu a while ago to see if the buzz was justified. I was unconvinced. The "user-friendliness" was lower than Mandriva. But it seems Mandriva does not have the mind share that Ubuntu seems to have captured.

On the other hand, Ubuntu's success is success for Linux in general, so I have nothing against it. It just surprises me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ubuntu is excellent, except:

1\. Firefox and Chrome are very slow and freezing, when opening many tabs.

2\. Flash plugin is crashing constantly

3\. OpenOffice is very slow and freezing. Can't render properly MS Office documents.

<comment><USER11> > 1\. Firefox and Chrome are very slow and freezing, when opening many tabs.

> 2\. Flash plugin is crashing constantly

Try that without the flash plugin.

> 3\. OpenOffice is very slow and freezing. Can't render properly MS Office > documents.

I find it more likely that Office can't save its files according to whatever is the current Office file spec.

<comment><USER34> That may be the case, but I bet Office can handle those documents just fine. The non-techy user doesn't care why something doesn't work. They just care _that_ it doesn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> i am considering moving to fedora from ubuntu. one of my motivations is descriptions of better user experiences overall, plus more cutting edge stuff like systemd. morever i think i am growing more and more colored by the notion thar ubuntu doesnt really employ a significant number of core developers.

does anyone have experience of the differences in the daily experience of using fedora vs ubuntu, especially for a clean simple experience, as a developer machine setup?

<comment><USER36> I'm a Fedora contributor and closet Ubuntu user. While I can get extremely upset at how difficult things can be in Fedora, like python and ruby, I generally try and take care of these things myself anyway. And who's not using RVM so why does it matter in the first place?

Truth is, I spend way too much time hacking at my Fedora system to make things work. It gets frustrating. I fall back to the Ubuntu systems and somehow, it's just easier. I'd comment on the details here, but it is madness.

So why even bother with Fedora at all? People. I can't stand Ubuntu people. From uneducated bloggers to Ubuntu fanbois, it drives me insane. You know there's a popular blog called OMG Ubuntu!? As far as uneducated views, there's a lot of talk about how awesome NetworkManager is in Ubuntu... you know where all that awesomeness came from? Fedora!

The Fedora community? Just amazing talented people all over the place. I can't stand to give them up. Some of the most awesome, unique, thoughtful and mindful people I've ever met all have Fedora in common.

In the end, I can't see how much feature X has to do with anything over it not existing in another distro. I can sort of see how something as shiny and new as a new Ubuntu release can be appealing, but not enough to move me. It all comes down to people, and Fedora has what really matters here.

<comment><USER37> I share your absolute hatred of the Ubuntu user community — from inane theming to blogspam with <pre> elements that contain huge blocks of _sudo apt-get install…_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I love ubuntu! Although Lucid has done something that drives me nuts. The devs decided it would be nice to add a Gnome login to Netbook-Remix Sounds nice, but they decided limit a bunch of features in the old interface so it would not conflict. I love you ubuntu but you need to stop taking away my power!

</comment><comment><USER39> Yup, Ubuntu is awesome. After installing it for the first time, I never went back to other distros for my GNU/Linux desktops.

Too bad that Canonical is unsustainable, and we'll soon lose it if FOSS enthusiasts don't shift their mindset a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER40> regarding all rants in here, I simply cannot understand how could people complain so much about such a good product given to them for free.

</comment><comment><USER41> I love ubuntu as much as the next guy. I run all my servers with ubuntu.

But to say that Mac OS X is not as usable as ubuntu is blatantly wrong.

<comment><USER42> I too used to think like you do. But I've been using Ubuntu at work, and now when I go on a Mac I actually miss the usability features of Ubuntu.

Just a tiny example: hitting alt and clicking anywhere on a window to move it instead of going to that top bar. Or the multiple different ways to switch between apps. etc. etc. There's probably 100 small things that I now can't live without. So I would say the statement "Mac Os X is not as usable as Ubuntu" is actually true. Surprisingly.

<comment><USER43> I would agree with this. At my new job I was forced to use a Mac for my first couple of weeks and it was like being put in a straight-jacket. A lot of the gui can be manipulated from the keyboard in gnome, and this is what I missed the most. If Mac had alternatives I'd be happy to use them, but they weren't immediately obvious after a google or two.

Conversely if you're a 'mouse person' then this may not be an issue for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> For me, the best thing about Ubuntu is that they really care and more importantly, invest, into the UI experience.

</comment><comment><USER45> I ♥ Ubuntu, and have been since 7.04

</comment><comment><USER46> Love you, Ubuntu.</comment>


Head-Related Transfer Function - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function <comment><USER2> I love surround effects from discrete speakers, but HRTF-based systems for headphones sound like they applied some kind of bad equalization.</comment>


IE11 to support WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://microsoft-news.com/webgl-spdy3-new-dev-tools-more-confirmed-for-ie11-in-win-8-1/ <comment><USER2> Credit to Microsoft for reversing their previous stance on WebGL.

Credit to Mozilla for pushing 3d on the web and forcing the issue. Any browser that doesn't implement WebGL will soon be considered crippled; Microsoft desperately wants to avoid that title again, so in a way, Mozilla forced their hand.

Competition at work.

<comment><USER3> "Any browser that doesn't implement WebGL will soon be considered crippled"

Really? I don't think WebGL is that important. What's it really good for besides laggy browser games? What's with the hype on browser games anyway? They're always going to perform much slower than native code. I don't see WebGL becoming such a critical aspect of browsing that the average user would consider IE "crippled" for not supporting it.

<comment><USER4> Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to dream up an amazing and popular application of WebGL, now that a majority of web browsers will be supporting it. It might not be a game. Warning: imagination required.

<comment><USER5> It's hard to dream big about the browsers getting the modern iteration of something we've had in some form since 1992.

<comment><USER6> How does that not apply to every single thing on the web, whether text, image, animation, video, or interaction?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What engineering did they do to reduce the security risk? As much as I like WebGL as a dev, Microsoft's arguments against feeding arbitrary machine code to buggy graphics cards that have kernel-level memory access privileges... seemed a bit convincing.

<comment><USER8> Just want to reply to say I also would like to hear an answer to this question. Something I've wanted to do for a while is write a fuzzer [1] that puts together arbitrary garbage shader script code and runs it with weird webgl operations looking for exploitable crashes. I would expect there to be a ton of bugs found, but then again the monetary barrier to entry might be high considering differences between hardware.

It also looks like the good folks at Mozilla have already been doing this to some degree [2], presumably shrinking the untested threat surface considerably (man I love those guys).

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing)

[2] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665936](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665936)

<comment><USER9> Here's a WebGL fuzzer from Mozilla bug 614678:

[https://bug614678.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=493...](https://bug614678.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=493971)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Love the new changes in IE and the direction it is taking.

>IE11 allow you to turn off the SmartScreen filter right in the download UI.

Now only if chrome would do that I can keep myself from switching away from it. Its frustrating to know that everytime I download a file or save an image, the file hash, IP and the download URL is sent to Google. The whole NSA thing isn't making it better either. [1][2]

[1] [http://superuser.com/questions/387724/how-to-disable- downloa...](http://superuser.com/questions/387724/how-to-disable-download- scanning-protection-of-new-chrome-17) [2] [http://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about-safe- browsing.htm...](http://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about-safe- browsing.html)

<comment><USER11> You can turn off the "Safe Browsing" features in Chromium; your link [2] explicitly says how to do so.

<comment><USER10> I know but that also turns off the malware links protection. I don't mind the malware site/link protection since it only sends in a small part of the URL's hash for matching (similar to how we have in Firefox). Comparatively, the file scanner requires the whole hash of the file, the clear text of the download URL and the IP address which I find far more intrusive to privacy. I am hoping for a future update where they would let us enable/disable them individually.

<comment><USER12> > only sends in a small part of the URL's hash for matching ...

Isn't it incredibly easy to bypass that check by using a randomly generated url segment?

[Edit: Formatting + isn't]

<comment><USER13> Right, so next time we download something private from a different party, we'll ask them to change their file structure to suit our privacy needs. :)

<comment><USER12> I am not questioning that sending entire URLs is undesirable, I am asking if the hash solution works (at all).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I, for one, welcome our new WebGL overlords. Seriously though, it's good to see Microsoft reversed their stance on WebGL no doubt their hand was forced by Mozilla and Webkit (probably Mozilla more so). And SPDY support as well? Looks like IE11 might actually be a decent contender in the browser race. The future of web development doesn't look so bad after all.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is potentially great news for anyone using a browser. Let's hope that the implementation is close to spec, and makes for a relatively seamless experience across all browsers.

<comment><USER16> > Let's hope that the implementation is close to spec

I got so excited for a moment and then you had to go and post this. Microsoft seems to have a desire to make things difficult for web developers.

<comment><USER17> Considering they way it went down [1], Microsoft felt (and may still feel) that the web is an enterprise market. In so, that it was selling developer tools to web shops because the code goes through Microsoft servers to Microsoft clients. IE, a vertical integration to simplify HR decisions. [2]

That ideology carries through to the spec—enterprise products often contain janky features that mean little to developers, but the world to the bosses buying them.

Thankfully Android and iOS are a driving force showing that the web is more a consumer broadcast space than one built simply for the spec that best matches someone's tech opinions.

1\. [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/)

2\. Paraphrasing, but I've personally turned down jobs that were in this vein, specifically writing IE HTML in Visual Studio, because if their browser share is 80% IE, they might as well use the IDE from the company that makes the browser.

<comment><USER18> Is it common practice to force particular IDE to developers? Especially for web developers. I imagine my productivity would decrease quite dramatically for some time.

<comment><USER19> Only the most insane of companies explicitly require the use of a specific editor, but it's easy for the choices of technology to implicitly limit developers to a single IDE. If your project's build system assumes that everyone is using Visual Studio (or Eclipse, or whatever), then using something else is going to either require a lot of switching between them or a lot of extra work on your part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Now that's good news.

I feel this whole "but IE won't ever support it!" argument was seriously holding WebGL back. IE still has very significant market share, and since they arguably got their act together lately, I doubt it's going to get smaller in the short term.

Considering that existing C++/OpenGL code bases can be ported to the web relatively easy with Emscripten, my bet is that we'll see a bunch of games come to the browser over the next ~3 years.

<comment><USER21> IE has a lot of market share with IE7, IE8 and possibly IE9. They don't have a lot of marketshare with IE11 - and possibly never will.

So the argument that "WebGL is not supported by IE so I'll never use it" was pretty bogus anyway, since the people using those versions of IE were probably never in your target market anyway.

<comment><USER20> You're right. Last time I checked, IE8 was still the most popular IE version. However, since IE9, it's being updated automatically, so I have some hopes that most IE users will end up using the latest version, just as with Chrome and Firefox.

The main reason for IE8's popularity is probably that it's the last IE version available on Windows XP, which is still popular. I really hope Microsoft gives up on the idea that new browser versions can only come with new OS versions.

But still, even if only 10% of all IE users use IE11, that percentage can only grow. Previously, IE was a dead end for WebGL. Now there's a perspective, and that's probably good enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Love the improved dev tools and WebGL decision, but I also hate how long it's taken MS to reach this point.

Would also love for IE 11 to be available on Windows 7.

<comment><USER23> Have they said it won't be on Windows 7? I would expect them to release it on Win7 to try and keep their market share. I hope they do as I am building a WebGL application for work :)

<comment><USER22> They haven't confirmed either way, which is why I'm still hoping it'll land in Win7:

[http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/06/internet- explorer-11-ie11-m...](http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/06/internet- explorer-11-ie11-might-make-it-to-windows-7/)

 _" We aren't sharing anything around which versions of Windows IE11 will be available on at this time."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it just me, or are that others that think "Didn't it support that yet?!" at every IE release? I don't use Windows so I never use IE anymore, but I'd think IE9 or 10 would support WebGL by now...

<comment><USER25> WebGL was bleeding-edge when IE 9 was released, and there were still very valid concerns about its security for a while after that. Opera implemented it, but disabled it due to these concerns. After their nightmarish history with security, Microsoft are very focused on hardening Windows — so I wouldn't exactly call it regressive to leave WebGL out of IE 10, which was probably feature-frozen in early 2012.

<comment><USER26> Opera didn't disable it due to security concerns per se — rather more just the general bugginess of Opera's hardware acceleration. I wouldn't consider crash bugs in general security issues. Equally, there is software rendered mode, but it's pointlessly slow to enable.

Note the prior concerns are still just as true today as they were a few years ago — graphics drivers are still relatively easy to find crash bugs in, leading browser vendors to try and hack around and avoid hitting those bugs in all too many cases. :(

<comment><USER27> > I wouldn't consider crash bugs in general security issues

You should, until proven otherwise. If it crashes because it's reading an invalid memory location (for instance), it's a matter of time before someone figures out how to place executable code there.

I have no problem with MS's original position. WebGL forces your hardware drivers to run random code downloaded from the internet. I'm frankly surprised that the other browser vendors ran ahead with it so quickly and that we haven't heard about any exploits caused by it.

<comment><USER28> On that matter, it is not difficult for someone who knows how to use WinDbg or similar to see if a crash is exploitable. For example, in user mode, null pointer accesses are generally not exploitable. I personally was able to get an IE6/IE7 bug described in [http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/pseudocss.html#fltadjacent](http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/pseudocss.html#fltadjacent) fixed in the May 2013 security update by proving there is an exploitable crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Will Microsoft support the full OpenGL on Windows, too, now? Or will they just run WebGL through Google's ANGLE project?

At least Google had the "excuse" to use it because they couldn't put OpenGL on Windows themselves, so they had to translate DirectX to OpenGL to make WebGL work.

What's Microsoft's excuse? They should support OpenGL and allow Google and Mozilla to use the OpenGL API's directly, too. Then we'll all get faster, and possibly richer WebGL.

<comment><USER29> OpenGL on Windows is a driver issue. Some hardware manufacturers make opengl drivers, of varying quality. I'm not clear what you want Microsoft to do?

<comment><USER30> Microsoft should control Windows like Apple controls OSX except when I don't want them to! If something is wrong with Windows, it's Microsoft's fault for not controlling third party vendors! When Microsoft controls third party vendors, they're being anti-competitive!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you build it, they will eventually be dragged, kicking and screaming to it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Thank goodness that "Text - Empty Text Node" has been removed from the DOM explorer!

The new developer tools, especially that UI responsiveness report [1] are hot looking. Looking forward to giving that a spin.

[1] [http://microsoft-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/UI- Resp...](http://microsoft-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/UI- Responsiveness-Report.png)

</comment><comment><USER33> This is great news for game development of the web. WebGL will become the standard for 3D browser games.

</comment><comment><USER34> The other big takeway is that they added support for SPDY3!

</comment><comment><USER35> Awesome news! And the Xbox One is already available in 3D display with WebGL! [https://sketchfab.com/show/qsRPEw7hTKC4E02XMop9DUpu2wb](https://sketchfab.com/show/qsRPEw7hTKC4E02XMop9DUpu2wb)

</comment><comment><USER36> And IE11 will support Windows 7, right?

<comment><USER37> They need to support these newer browsers on older operating systems. If the OS is still being actively patched, new browsers should be made backwards compatible to work on it otherwise we'll have exact same problem with IE8 on XP and IE9 on Vista. And soon to be IE10 on Windows 7.

<comment><USER38> Their business model is to sell os , MSFT never did anything for free.

<comment><USER39> Like all vendors that depend on direct software sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love the look of the new development tools, lightyears ahead of IE10. Lets see how it matches up to Chrome

</comment><comment><USER41> Shaming link 1: [http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2011/06/micros...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2011/06/microsoft-no-way-to-support-webgl-and-meet-our-security- needs/)

Shaming link 2: [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is- fundamen...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/87696-webgl-is- fundamentally-flawed)

<comment><USER42> What are we supposed to take away from those links? The latter isn't even written from the perspective of Microsoft, it's just another generic {Open/Web}GL rant (if anything, you've granted MS legitimacy here by acknowledging other legitimate complaints about the spec).

Yes, I was annoyed when they boldly claimed they wouldn't be supporting it at all. I'm also gracious enough to say "Thanks" when handed a gift. The IE team is clearly making an effort.

<comment><USER41> My takeaway is simple, just exposing the BS from Microsoft's original stance wrt OpenGL. One thing is saying "WebGL is right now hard to secure because current OpenGL drivers are buggy, or IE's sandboxing tech is not good enough, whatever". A different thing is, "WebGL is fundamentally flawed, will never work, IE will not and should not support it ever".

Of course the same people are already changing the discourse and claiming that _now_ WebGL is safe, and IE11's WebGL will have the upper hand in security because MS controls the whole stack, etc.

This doesn't mean I don't appreciate the change, I'm really happy that IE11 is apparently going to be an awesome improvement (over IE10 which is already pretty good, even if dated).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I really hope IE11 will integrate WebRTC.

I have to give credit to IE10 though...a cool feature that I have only seen in safari (through quicktime), is IE10 allows multi audio track support for html5 mp4...great for multi-language videos, and adapting a single video to play on multiple devices (like some that don't support 5.1 audio).

<comment><USER44> It would be extremely useful for getting Skype in Outlook.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Seriously who's using IE nowadays? [http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl- intercepted...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl-intercepted- today-decrypted-tomorrow.html)

</comment><comment><USER46> now, where do they stand on WebRTC?

<comment><USER47> They waited until WebRTC was about to be ratified and then released their own incompatible spec.

<comment><USER6> They do that for everything. Ponderous silence then last minute derailing BS. Independent of the pros and cons of any particular single technology they should be called out for what a poor corporate citizen this makes them, and how it is anti-standards and anti-consumer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> the dev tools look promising. But I do not understand what are they are trying to achieve by this. I do not see myself, or many people, switching to IE for development when there are no extensions available. I at least want some REST client like Postman. Now It appears they are only catching up on Chrome and Firebug, that will hardly convince anybody.

Do not get me wrong, they are doing good work making IE modern browser, But they can't do it alone, especially with such long release cycle. Maybe making dev branch like Canary or Aurora?

<comment><USER48> > But I do not understand what are they are trying to achieve by this. I do > not see myself, or many people, switching to IE for development

Perhaps there are others who have to support IE as a target and would like to debug/verify front ends in-browser?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > _IE11 to support WebGL_

Always 2 years at least late to the party, so that using the latest technologies across all browsers remains constantly (also considering adoption) 3-4 years in the future.

</comment><comment><USER50> Now we just need Apple to make it available in Safari, without having to explicitly turn it on.

Oh, and enable it in iOS Safari too - which I rather suspect they wnt any time soon unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER51> my long term dream is to see microsoft finally giving up on using their own rendering engine and move to either mozilla or webkit. both of them are following the standards pretty neatly so it would make dev's life far easier.

with each major release IE promises being better. which is true for an extent but they also introduce new bugs so our css / html has different hacks for each version

</comment><comment><USER52> Does this imply that those features will be henceforth natively available to windows 8.1?

</comment><comment><USER53> He's a fat boy. Walks really slow :) I expected WebDirectX!

</comment><comment><USER54> It's going to "support" WebGL.

</comment><comment><USER55> This is huge!

</comment><comment><USER56> This is great news1 I'll be able to use WebGL with the majority of my users who use IE in what, 5-6 years?

</comment><comment><USER57> better late than never i guess.

</comment><comment><USER42> Wow. IE11 looks like it has some really great stuff in it, particularly the dev tools, even over the WebGL. Props to the IE team!

</comment><comment><USER58> Typical stubborn child.</comment>


Ask HN: Legal to access data on purchased used NAS? - <AUTHOR>

Hypothetical question here.
Generally, is it legal to access/use information found on a used storage device that you have purchased?
Specifically, suppose company A is a competitor of company B. Company B goes out of business and has an auction to sell off its assets. Company A purchases used Network Attached Storage devices from auction. The NAS is not reformatted, and contains various data from Company B. What information, if any, is legally fair game for company A to access, and or use?
I would assume information regarding account info like account numbers, login credentials, etc would not be legal to use (IE it would be fraudulent). But what about information like product information (SKU / product interchange relations), pricing matrices, etc.
Perhaps none of it is legally fair game? I don't know. Please provide input regarding this hypothetical situation. <comment><USER2> I don't believe accessing any of it is legal. The rights to the data would be a separate line item to be sold. I believe the relevant law in the US would be trade secret law. Copyright law might also apply if company A was going to sell copies.</comment>


Steven Sinofsky Is The Heir Apparent of Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-next-ceo-of-microsoft-steven-sinofsky-is-the-heir-apparent-2012-2?op=1

<comment><USER2> If only.

I have a feeling Balmer will only let go of being CEO when he's rotting in the ground.</comment>


Who actually reads the code? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/who-actually-reads-the-code <comment><USER2> Can't speak for anyone else, but I'll often enable watching on random github projects I think might be interesting, or libraries as such... most of the time I mark all notices read and move on, but there are days I'll look through and review PRs... there's been once or twice I've seen some odd-looking commits.

One was the author pointing to their own npm cache server instead of npm proper (made it in from testing to a master commit), a few others just "interesting"... I feel a bit of a responsibility to help the larger OSS community, with whom I use so much, and am able to give comparatively little as much as I am able.

<comment><AUTHOR> #opensourceheroes</comment></comment>


Geospoofing with the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://mwmanning.com/2013/02/11/Geospoofing-with-the-Raspberry-Pi.html

<comment><USER2> Anyone else sick of the "%s on Raspberry Pi" Howtos. In the vast majority of them, there is nothing specific to the Raspberry Pi, they're simply "How to do %s with a linux box".

<comment><USER3> On top of that, all these ARM Cortex based boards have a closed hypervisior on them. It's pretty silly to run this as a router when you have no idea what's running in the hypervisior. I haven't been able to find any information on what it's actually running except some sources say that it might be running a port of Xen for ARM.

Using them to program your robot plant-watering robot is fine but using it for any kind of internet connected device more complicated than that is probably a bad idea.

<comment><USER2> I was unaware of a a hypervisor sitting on the ARM Cortex. Do you have any links to additional information? (I've been using the RPi to prototype a product for the service industry (Cheap linux box with exposed gpio), and while I don't intend to use them in prod, I'm curious of the potential implications for my beta users.

<comment><USER3> "In practice, since the specific implementation details of TrustZone are proprietary and have not been publicly disclosed for review, it is unclear what level of assurance is provided for a given threat model."

Let me know if you have a better "source".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great guide, thanks!

I do this with an old Acer Aspire One.

I wish the author explained some parts a little, like dev tun vs tun0.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I'll add more explanation for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a nice setup but I wish he would have touched upon a roadwarrior configuration too.

I'm having trouble finding/defining iptables rules that can forward IPSec traffic from a dd-wrt to a server acting as a VPN endpoint.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you take an AppleTV or anything with you while travelling? If you're on the road with a laptop you can just run a VPN client on there directly, you don't really need a separate networking device.

<comment><USER5> The setup I'm looking for is to be able to set up an IPSec tunnel to a home machine to be able to a) access machines and b) watch videos.

dd-wrt does not support IPSec (not without recompiling and having to fiddle with a bunch of stuff) so that's why I was thinking about terminating in a server acting as VPN endpoint.

PS. PPTP is not a consideration due to its security flaws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is great, but I'm not sure if it's actually any less complicated than installing DD-WRT or Tomato.

<comment><USER7> It may not be, but I guess it depends on what you have handy. But most of the info will still be useful no matter what hardware you use :)

I did this with an old Mac Mini that was acting mostly as a media server. My router wasn't compatible with TomatoUSB, so I went with what I had. The toolchain was a bit different since OSX uses the BSD networking toolchain rather than the Linux iptables & such.

Edit: s/GNU/Linux

<comment><USER8> IPTables isn't part of GNU. It was developed by the Netfilter team. Indeed, very few of the networking utilites that are common in Linux distributions are part of the GNU project.</comment></comment></comment>


How Bad Luck and Bad Networking Cost Douglas Prasher a Nobel Prize (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2011/apr/30-how-bad-luck-networking-cost-prasher-nobel <comment><USER2> _Many of the challenges Prasher faced were hardly unique to him. Scientific opportunities often appear only at specific times and places, potentially a serious impediment for a parent who doesn't want to relocate the family. Do your work in the wrong place, or publish it in the wrong journal, and it may vanish without a trace. And once someone drops out of science, it is hard to get back in._

Bad timing/luck was compounded by the fact that he was a bit of a loner and not driven to follow through on that area of research, even when given the opportunity to do so.

One other issue that this story brings up: There are a _lot_ of out-of-work postdocs and PhDs, owing to the major reduction in funding/grant opportunities and the consolidation taking place in certain industries, such as pharma. A very talented science blogger who covers this (as well as biochemistry research) is Derek Lowe -- I recommend bookmarking his blog at [http://www.pipeline.corante.com/](http://www.pipeline.corante.com/)

<comment><USER3> Here's a really really grim (but very well written) account of the postdoc landscape. The short version is that the present tightening is just a a prelude to what many in the field see as a much bigger storm. The killer line is this one:

"I was always told the myth as a child that we need scientists and I get here and find out that we don't need scientists."

[http://brooklynquarterly.org/pink-ribbons- red/](http://brooklynquarterly.org/pink-ribbons-red/)

<comment><USER4> This is one of the things that science educators struggle with these days -- we need people who are knowledgeable about science, but is it really right to encourage students to go into science when we know what the landscape looks like?

At a minimum, kids who "want to grow up to be a professor" should be told in no uncertain terms what the prospects look like, so they at least go in with open eyes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most surprising thing is that the whole chain of events seems to have been nobody's intent. From wikipedia:

Chalfie and Tsien invited Prasher and his wife, Virginia Eckenrode, to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony, as their guests and at their expense. All three of the 2008 Chemistry laureates thanked Prasher in their speeches.

In June 2010, Prasher was finally able to return to science, working for Streamline Automation in Huntsville until December 2011, then from 2012 on, in Roger Tsien's lab at the University of California in San Diego.

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

<comment><USER6> As someone who got my PhD in Roger Tsien's lab at that time and attended the Nobel ceremony, I strongly agree with this comment, that it was no one's intent. Many people interpret this story as though Tsien or Chalfie stole something from Doug Prasher, which isn't true. This is more a story that science is hard, people don't always follow through on projects, and there is also some luck involved. There are plenty of "fourth" people who didn't get Nobel Prizes.

<comment><USER7> > _There are plenty of "fourth" people who didn't get Nobel Prizes._

It would make for an interesting topic of its own. I know at least two myself.

<comment><USER8> I agree this "forgotten wo/men" would make a great blog. Important in science, startups, athletics, essentially every competitive endeavor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has anyone got any tips on networking? I'm not really sure how to do it. I'll meet researchers at conferences and introduce myself, but they will have surely forgotten about me once the conference is over.

There's two things I'm trying to do to help with this. The first is to get as many collaborations with different people as possible. Most of my work so far has a lot of different names on each paper, and I feel this is useful in that co-authors might remember me when they're starting a new research project. The second thing I'm trying is to create an online presence. I was initially opposed to this for a long time because it feels like "tooting my own horn" but at the same time, it's starting to feel like a necessity. So I created a LinkedIn, a ResearchGate page, and a little personal webpage.

<comment><USER10> The secret to networking is to think of it less like, "how many people can I meet and exchange contact info with?" and more like, "who's the ONE person here I'm supposed to meet?" \-- and when you find that person, spend lots of time. Think of these opportunities as a time to fine one friend.

<comment><USER11> I'm still internalizing that "Who's the ONE" recommendation, after years of watching my "Got to catch them all" strategy consistently show low returns. Thank you for reminding me to switch to the better one. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Prasher's trip would have been impossible without the sponsorship of biologist Martin Chalfie and chemist and biologist Roger Tsien, who not only invited the Prashers but paid for their airfare and hotel. Chalfie and Tsien, along with Osama Shimomura, an organic chemist and marine biologist, had won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry."

Osamu Shimomura, not Osama Shimomura!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Shimomura](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Shimomura)

</comment><comment><USER13> Fascinating - this is essentially the backstory to Breaking Bad in real life. If Prasher goes bald, time to worry.

</comment><comment><USER14> As someone who is notoriously bad at social networking, I can relate. Life would be so much easier if we could just ignore our own vanities.

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who see this story as almost identical to Walter White, which research when he was young, made his friends ultra-rich?

</comment><comment><USER16> That "special offer for 20 copies of discover magazine" hovering monstrosity has to be the most offensively oversized ad I have ever seen on a link submitted to this site.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. That was one of the worst sites I've ever seen in terms of percent of content visible. I couldn't even read the entire first sentence without closing ads and scrolling.

Around 40% of my view was header and navigation, another 25% ads, another 25% "social" junk, and maybe %10 for the headline and part of the first sentence of the story.

Needless to say, I didn't bother trying to read the article.

<comment><USER16> I agree, not a million miles from this: [http://www.lingscars.com/](http://www.lingscars.com/)

<comment><USER18> Is that for real?

<comment><USER19> Ling Valentine was the keynote speaker at The Future of Digital Marketing 2012. Basically, her site is built to be emotionally engaging, personally branded, and completely different from what you'd expect from a car site. She attracts customers who don't want to deal with a traditional car dealer because of their reputation.

Video of her talk at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xZZ1c7diUI#t=535](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xZZ1c7diUI#t=535)

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I actually did a little digging, and to make a very unoriginal comment, the site appears to be un-ironic.

That said, my first and last desire is to close tab and flee screaming. But if it works for her ...

"Reputation" is ... hardly what I'd see being established in a good way by that site though.

One observation: her site is very strongly reminiscent of many native Kanji sites (I'm slightly more familiar with Japanese and Korean than Chinese websites), which lack a number of the typical signifiers of emphasis which are found in Western / Roman characterset communications. The result is an interface that's typically exceptionally loud. Ling's site is in many ways a direct transliteration of that design motif to English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So if he had the vision AND cloned AND published on GFP, why exactly was he not included on the Nobel? Not being an active scientist shouldn't matter. It saddens me that more people wouldn't refuse such honors without Prashers' inclusion. The money differential of inclusion would hardly be life changing, but the nobility differential of the honorees would be.

<comment><USER4> It's always a very difficult call who to include, given that science is not done in isolation and at most three people can share the price. I don't think not being an active scientist had anything to do with it.

<comment><USER8> It seems like he should be one of the three. I think the actual honorees shouldn't have accepted the prize without his inclusion. That would have been the _noble_ thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Glad I know what to do the next time I'm nominated. Guess I've been getting lucky so far.</comment>


Show HN: Giraffe – Functional ASP.NET Core web framework for F# - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/giraffe-fsharp/Giraffe <comment><USER2> Hey Dustin, this is super cool. Incidentally, we _just today_ posted Round 17 [1], so you can update your links (e.g. [2]) when you get a moment.

[1] [https://www.techempower.com/blog/2018/10/30/framework- benchm...](https://www.techempower.com/blog/2018/10/30/framework-benchmarks- round-17/)

[2] [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=...](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=ph&test=plaintext&l=hra0hp-1&p=zik0zj- zik0zj-zijocf-5m9r)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thank you! The results look really good. Still got plenty of room to optimise though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Giraffe is awesome.

It is _quite_ different than the ASPX web forms or XML web services I cut my teeth on; to use this framework for a side project, I'm needing to teach myself both ASP.NET Core and MVC-style development at the same time as continuing to get comfortable with F# & Giraffe's own syntax.

I may or may not have bitten off more than I can chew, but between the existing ASP.NET Core docs and the nice documentation in Giraffe (one big file at the Github repo), I'm not defeated yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have a specific question or something which doesn't make immediate sense then open an issue and you'll normally receive fairly quickly help!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for letting me know! I think I'm currently in the throes of "nothing makes sense why do I have to do route vs routef when do I do this stuff why is everything squashed into HttpContext!!!?" dither when I just haven't ramped up the mental framework to reason about what I'm doing. Hopefully, I'm making progress towards there, but at this second, any issues I open would be skewed WAY towards the pedantic/RTM side of things rather than stuff of substance.

But I will totally open an issue if I have something not time-wasting!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This library is what I do all my new web services development in (or it's child Saturn). I'm actively working to migrate my legacy codebases to it. It feels pretty good given the host platform, and is easy to mix and match with non-giraffe components too.

<comment><USER5> It's a shame Saturn appears to have lost momentum. F# could really use a framework with a story as good as Phoenix to drive community growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> would be nice to see a realworld ( [https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld](https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld) ) using this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll send a PR ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is giraffe going to take some implementations from zebra? Zebra was amazingly fast in techempower benchmarks

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Giraffe has already taken some lessons from Zebra with some of the recent optimisations around the view engine. I think there are some more immediate gains for routing, but currently the focus is on a great Swagger integration before dwelling into anything else which requires more work. However, PRs are always welcome. To be honest some of the best perf improvements all came from PRs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've looked at using f# in production but got hung up on the fact there's no autoformatting support that I'm used to in c#, JavaScript etc.

Maybe I'm being petty and it's not really required but it would make f# are more compelling option for me if it were available.

</comment><comment><USER9> Big fan of Giraffe. Using it in production right now!</comment>


Portal for sharing news and articles - <AUTHOR> http://codersnews.com/

<comment><USER2> Neat. Needs a bit of work though. At least 3 things come at the top of my mind: 1) Search 2) Categorization/keyword 3) Don't directly dump the page in an internal frame. Use some content summarization tool. I loved the way readability.js by arc90 worked. Use that. Do a world of good to your users and your website.</comment>


The Problem with Software Registration - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001106.html

<comment><USER2> Please, please, please think about this--hard--if your startup charges people money. The removal of money from the customer's wallet must be as close to frictionless as possible.</comment>