Space Invaders - Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/pagenum/all/

<comment><USER2> I think that the issue of text editing and typesetting should be held separate.

When editing a text, I am operating on a character string. In my editor, I can jump forward and backwards over sentences. The editor can discern these periods from others because they are followed by two space characters.

When typesetting a text, it gets a proportional font, and the space left empty between sentences is set as the typesetter wants resp. the typesetting rules dictate.

Do not confuse "two space characters" of a character stream with "a double space" of typeset text.

Of course, WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") editing of text would need to be very much aware of such issues, but mostly is not. I think that WYSIWYG editing is a bad idea, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, most people he encounters deliberately do this, most people who don't also do this _think that they should be_ , and yet he feels confident saying they're wrong. "Bold" is an understatement.

It's a arbitrary convention either way, as he admits. Invoking "writers, editors, typographers, and others" means very little in the context of _correspondence_ , personal or otherwise.

I've been teaching myself Emacs and having decent success in teaching myself various shortcuts. Re-teaching myself to _not_ put two spaces after a sentence in prose? _Ha._

</comment><comment><USER4> The hugely important point, completely overlooked by the article, is: is the text in monospace or not? If it's monospace, two spaces typically looks better. That's why old-fashioned typewriter people use two spaces.

If it's typeset, the number of spaces really should be taken care of by the justification system (as in TeX) and the point of the article is moot.

Aside, this is the article at which I vowed to no longer read Manjoo. The S/N is too low.</comment>


CodeRunner – a text editor with features like running code - <AUTHOR> https://coderunnerapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> It can run code with a Cmd-R, search documentation, debug, and it supports 25 languages.

Mac only.</comment>


Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight - <AUTHOR> http://ryanair.com

<comment><USER2> To put people who may not know Ryanair in context: is a low-cost Irish airline that operates in Europe. You can get round trip flights starting at EUR 0.01. His CEO is a very controversial person who has been on the press for suggesting aggressive measures to make air travel even cheaper, like run flights where passengers stand during the journey, removing toilets from aircrafts and the most recent one, providing paid porn movies on board. Once, I travel Madrid-Paris with them for less than 20 euros. Most of their fleet are Boeing 737-800.

Wikipedia entry: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair>

<comment><USER3> Well, .01 EUR plus 'fees' (more fees than I've ever seen in my life - [http://www.ryanair.com/en/terms-and- conditions#regulations-t...](http://www.ryanair.com/en/terms-and- conditions#regulations-tableoffees)) including a minimum 6 EUR "Admin Fee" for the privilege of buying a ticket and a 40 EUR fee if you lose or don't print a boarding pass...

<comment><USER4> I didn't downvote you but I find it a little amusing that people in Europe can get worked up over an $8 ticketing fee on a $0.02 ticket. In the US, it can cost as much as $500 one-way to fly from Pittsburgh, PA to Philadelphia, PA. $79 one-way Chicago-Atlanta is considered so spectacularly cheap that the offer consumes most of the above-the-fold real estate on Southwest Airlines' website.

<comment><USER5> You get ripped off, so you laugh at other people who don't like getting ripped off. Nice.

<comment><USER4> Tee hee!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who haven't read the Ryanair story, it's pretty remarkable. The Ryan family had a small commuter flight business in Ireland (what is Ryanair today) and a large, profitable business leasing planes to airlines in the opposite hemisphere during peak demand. When the latter business was ready to IPO, it went really, really badly and the Ryan family had taken out massive loans throwing their entire fortune into question. They appointed a family friend, Michael O'Leary, as CEO of Ryanair and made a deal with him to give him 10% (I think) of all profits. O'Leary came to the US, studied what Southwest was doing, and took it to the extreme. He went on to become one of the most successful CEOs in Europe.

Knowing the story, my reaction to this headline is: wow, through testing, they figured out that people buy the ticket rather than wanting to fill out the CAPTCHA.

Great read: [http://www.amazon.com/Ryanair-Story-Controversial-Low- Cost-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Ryanair-Story-Controversial-Low-Cost- Airline/dp/1845132939/)

<comment><USER7> Interesting. Low frills airlines don't like price comparison websites, so the CAPTCHA is likely there to stop spiders. If one of these airlines has a free seat sale then bargain hunters are on the case before regular customers have a chance. Those bargain hunters - who use these third party websites to find cheap tickets - probably aren't the target audience for the sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like Ryanair is trying very hard to get customers to use their website, instead of meta searchers that scrape their website. I think however, that they realize the complete opposite. Their website is now even more unusable and meta searchers still include Ryanair tickets.

</comment><comment><USER9> Though this is pretty minor in the scheme of things, I'm constantly surprised at how horrible they can purposefully make the experience and still have people clicking to them. Myself included. From every interview I've seen with MD you get the impression he _despises_ his customers. But they still make money. I guess until someone comes along who can compete and at least pretend they give a damn then it'll continue to work. I wont pretend I know how they could do it but the moment I have another option, Ryanair have lost me for ever.

<comment><USER10> Whenever I've had the choice between EasyJet and Ryanair, I've always chosen EasyJet. They're a bit more expensive but at least I don't feel as much treated as cattle.

<comment><USER9> Oh definitely. Unfortunately for where I live now, the only routes I'm interested in are Ryanair or BA. Much as I'd love to, I can't justify the 600% premium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They don't like scrapers, they don't even allow links _to_ their website without permission.

From their TOS:

"5. Links to this website. You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the prior written consent of Ryanair."

<comment><USER12> That's fairly standard legalese for large companies. I'm not saying it makes any sense, I'm just saying I've seen it a lot. I believe this is an attempt to lay some groundwork to support the removal of links from sites that you don't want any corporate association with.

<comment><USER13> Hopefully pg will remove the link, so HN isn't associated with Ryanair. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am the biggest Ryanair supporter, they are the best airline in Europe: they are cheap and their planes are just as comfortable as city buses but they're always on-time and cheap if you know how to book. They're actually the most punctual airline in Europe.

This said, I just gave up booking a ticket with them after the third captcha. They'll scrap that stuff as soon as they notice the drop in sales.

<comment><USER15> Doesn't also SAS and Lufthansa claim to be the most punctual airline?

(Seems like different airlines are the most punctual depending on how you measure it…)

<comment><USER16> I believe Ryanair are more likely to cancel a flight if it's delayed (e.g. by snow). This may or may not be a good way to ensure that "number of flights that arrive late" is low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They have gone completely and utterly insane. The ONLY way they get custom is through their web site - and now they are trying to put people off.

No matter what the problem was this is the wrong solution.

<comment><USER18> Actually, I don't think that'll happen.

Who flies with Ryanair ? People trying to save money. If their website is too easy to use, these people will peruse it for hours, trying to find out the cheaper combination of flights to go from "somewhere near Madrid" to "somewhere near Berlin".

If RA raises the bar a little bit, these people will probably give up one or two queries earlier, hence picking some more "natural" route that will likely make RA a bit more money. Most customers won't think (or know) about the competition, RA has a very strong brand, so the chances that they'll just give up and go elsewhere are fairly slim, especially after having invested all that time going through captchas.

Captchas are very unfriendly towards older and less computer-literate people, but those segments are more likely to go through phone or agencies anyway.

(Not that I care, I stopped using RA years ago.)

<comment><USER14> A lot of airports they fly to are in main airports for large cities, including capitals like Madrid, Dublin, possibly others.

<comment><USER16> As well as Dublin & Madrid, they also fly direct (ish) to: Nice, London (ish. Gatwick is a big London airport), Birmingham. etc.

However they do sometimes take the piss. Until recently you couldn't fly near Barcelona. Paris is still Paris (Beauvaus (sp?)). Rome, Brussles likewise.

I think they once advertised flights to Copehagen, the capital of Denmark, but the flight landed in Sweden!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazing to throw away more and more usability in their platform and still retain customers because their price scheme is cheap.

I guess their budget is not good enough to hire a good programer. I wonder if the CEO hire his nephew, the one with some frontpage/dreamweaver skills for the job.

<comment><USER18> They just don't care about "good anything", they only care about cheap. If it was practical for them to provide only a telnet server, they would do it in a heartbeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The entire Ryanair experience is painful: airports far out of the city center, baggage fees, a crew / staff that cuts you zero slack and now the website.

They know their business, people will put up with a lot if it saves them money and that's what Ryanair is good at.

<comment><USER21> I flew from Spain to Morocco with RyanAir, the hassle was so great (getting a bus an hour out of the city), and the pilot seemed to be in training considering how the wings were waggling on approach to land (no wind). Never flown again with them since, I'll pay the extra euro for Vueling, EasyJet or the big carriers every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> When I opened the link I thought it was a domain squatter. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER23> This reminded me to finish a post I drafted a while back:

[http://www.alexmuir.com/2011/12/stupid-is-the-new- business-c...](http://www.alexmuir.com/2011/12/stupid-is-the-new-business- class/)

</comment><comment><USER24> And they serve Google Ads when you search for a flight. Unbelivable.

<comment><USER25> It's not that much different from flying with them. The cabin is laden with ads: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ryanair_B737-800_Cabin.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> That's almost as good as Amtrak. You have to confirm your email address every time you buy a ticket, even after you've logged in to your account. And the form blocks paste, so you get to type it out each time.

<comment><USER27> I've never run into this issue and have booked many tickets (on the northeast line).</comment></comment>


What Science Fiction Movie or Novel Is Most Prescient Today? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/29/what-science-fiction-movie-or-novel-is-most-prescient-today?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region <comment><USER2> 'Sneakers' is worth a re-watch if you haven't seen it lately. Seems very prescient on the topics of crypto and the NSA -- especially when you consider that it came out before most people had heard of the Internet.

<comment><USER3> re-watched this without realizing just how amazingly prescient it was, and was blown away. Definitely worth watching again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> RoboCop - Detroit is broke and crime ridden. How long before Google & an armored PETMan(1) show up to save the city?

1 - [http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_petman.html](http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_petman.html)

<comment><USER5> Environmental disaster ... Omni Consumer Products is a vast corporation that owns everything, including the goverment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A short story, Minority Report. A lot of the paranoia in Philip K. Dick's stories resonates with the mass surveillance happening today, in part, because that paranoia was driven by McCarthyism.

<comment><USER7> And Mescaline.

[http://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/aug/12/sciencefictionfa...](http://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/aug/12/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.philipkdick)

Dick was a true seer.

<comment><USER7> And a well researched rebuttal to the above article [http://ubikcan.blogspot.com/2006/08/philip-k-dick-and- drugs-...](http://ubikcan.blogspot.com/2006/08/philip-k-dick-and-drugs- again.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No love for 1984? It's so closely related to our industry.

<comment><USER9> A Brave New World resonates so much more though. 1984 only had the eternal war and surveillance... Brave New World has distractions to keep people happy when they're just slaves in a system.

<comment><USER10> Well, I guess they both had their ways of doublethink and newspeak, because that I'm seeing, too. And you forget that Nineteen-Eightyfour was written from the perspective from one of the presumably few people who objected much to anything going on. They also had their hate sessions and reports of victories and increasing chocolate rations to keep them happy.

There is an awful lot of sadism and and lust for power for the sake of power in this world, too. Did Brave New World have a lot of torture and hundreds of thousands of people screaming in agony, as we do have in our world today? Do either have drone pilots who call children "fun-sized terrorists", did either have the Vietnam War? It's not just about slavery, it's about mental illness in a very real way, if you ask me. Brave New World seems rather more relaxed compared to that, they think they have it figured out and are coasting along... Big Brother, just like us, is ever hungry, and his hate and/or ridicule for those he tortures and mutilates cannot but grow, he has no way "out" but ahead.

<comment><USER11> > "Do either have drone pilots who call children "fun-sized terrorists"".

I had some small hope that you were joking, looks like it's not my lucky day today. Is this the same source you found that out from?

[https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone- operators-s...](https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators- say-they-were-horrified-by-cruelty-of-assassination-program/)

<comment><USER10> I don't recall if I read that first or the Guardian article linked there, but yeah. Also, my reference to the Vietnam War was made while still under the impression of a documentary about the the Winter Soldier investigation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdRivBmISE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdRivBmISE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. The value of labor has been devalued by automation, government is subservient to industry, people's place in society is determined by standardized test score (those who score poorly may either join the army or do manual labor, such as repairing potholes).

</comment><comment><USER13> We're not too far away from the world of 'Hardwired' by Walter Jon Williams.

I was reading an article a while back about the drug cartels where they've created their own submarines to ship cocaine up from South America. Not nearly as cool as turbojet powered hovercraft with miniguns and SAMs, piloted via neural interface. But it is still pretty wild, when you think about it.

And of course we've got increased use of robots (drones) involved with smuggling too.

And then there are the giant mega-corporations, backed by AIs, running the world. The people in the corporations may think they are in control, but the corporations themselves have their own agenda.

At least we're also on a good path as far as reusable spacecraft now...

<comment><USER4> That's a good one, with our dystopian technocracy it's easy to pull from the world of cyberpunk for similarities.

<comment><USER11> I think part of the reason I find dystopian cyberpunk stories so cathartic is they present an glitzy, exaggerated version of now, where it's easier to see what can be done to fix things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Children of Men the movie, except the main plot with all women becoming sterile of course.

Seems like a bit of a cheat to include films that have the world building be overly reflective over current day problems/anxieties, but still.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know if I would say it's "most prescient today", but Gattaca was always one of my favorite SF films, and some of what it portrayed may well be coming our way in the not-so-distant future.

<comment><USER16> I've been thinking about Gattaca a lot lately too. It's interesting to me how in the film the mechanism for controlling genetics was to create a bunch of zygotes and then to pick the best one. But what seems to be happening now (the creepily named CRISPR and all that) is that people are editing existing DNA and controlling how DNA functions in living people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Curious to see Use of Weapons in there. While it is a fantastic story, it never struck me as particularly prescient, even compared to some of the other books in the Culture series.

<comment><USER18> Indeed, also what caught my eye since that whole series is about a post- scarcity civilization and their adventures in the galaxy. Watching the news one would think that post-scarcity mentality is as far from what we have right now as you can come.

A man can dream though. ;)

<comment><USER16> Well, the recent shift in proportion to more obese people than starving people is at least someone relevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A: Brave New World

<comment><USER20> What in "Brave New World" was prescient, really? Maybe I'm an epsilon double minus on too much soma, but I'm not seeing a world government using genetic engineering to stratify society.

<comment><USER21> I think the GE aspect of that dystopia is secondary to the use of pleasure to keep everybody conforming and complacent with their place in society.

<comment><USER11> > "the use of pleasure to keep everybody conforming and complacent with their > place in society."

That's been going on for a long time, it's telling but not exactly prescient...

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22>
      "Chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with
      information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without
      moving,"

This, from Fahrenheit 451, hit me like a truck.

</comment><comment><USER23> Snowcrash. So many things that happened in that hypercapitalist world are happening right now.

</comment><comment><USER24> From a pure technology standpoint, we're not far off from the VR in Ready Player One.

<comment><USER24> Most recently I saw this [http://www.teslasuit.com/](http://www.teslasuit.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> With all of the happenings in the middle-east, I'd have to say Dune [0].

[0] - [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/234225](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/234225)

</comment><comment><USER26> Book: George Orwell's "1984" : NSA spying, social network spying, adware too. Politically congressional bills have sweet sounding names like PATRIOT Act, and we seemingly change sides in regards to middle east wars.

Movie: Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" \- In the future of 2026, wealthy [technocrats, energy barons, and Wall Street bankers] rule the vast city of Metropolis from high-rise tower complexes, while a lower class of underground- dwelling [Chinese and Mexican workers] toil constantly to operate the machines that provide its power.

<comment><USER27> We are beyond George Orwell's "1984" since cellphones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Surprised there's no fans of :

[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> There are two novels from the 1970s by John Brunner that are astonishingly prescient: The Shockwave Rider (on computer networks and privacy, also introducing the idea of self-propagating malware) and Stand On Zanzibar (on the politics of global resource crises).

Neither gets current-day stuff perfectly (he didn't forsee the resurgence of Christian conservatism), but on the whole, they get an astonishing amount of stuff right. Let's hope The Sheep Look Up (on ecological collapse) isn't as close to the mark.

<comment><USER30> The Shockwave Rider absolutely foresaw the rise of Fundamentalism and religious absolutism.

And I wholeheartedly agree with you (as my username might have hinted).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Islands in the Net" by Bruce Sterling did a great job of capturing the current zeitgeist, way back in the 80s. Data havens, guerilla tech, UCAVs, and a post-9/11 world.

</comment><comment><USER28> Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling published around 1994

It's extremely hard sci fi about tornado chasers in the USA around now plus a little bit.

Its fun to read and see how much came true and is coming true.

Weirdly enough his culture, economics, and politics were just as dead on as his science.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cryptonomicon is spot on with data security / crypto / NSA issues

<comment><USER20> And it's a ripping good yarn to boot, even though it's oddly written entirely using present tense verbs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Distraction by Bruce Sterling sometimes seems like it's literally just right around the corner.

</comment><comment><USER33> _Distraction_ by Bruce Sterling has held up very well except for missing open source software.

</comment><comment><USER34> Currently reading Rainbows End.

</comment><comment><USER35> 'Diamond Age' (a pre-Cryptonomicon novel by Neal Stephenson)

</comment><comment><USER36> Logan's Run. At least in terms of tech career length.

</comment><comment><USER37> Stand on Zanzibar John Brunner

</comment><comment><USER38> Neuromancer by William Gibson

</comment><comment><USER39> Brazil. Definitely Brazil.

</comment><comment><USER40> idiocracy

<comment><USER41> unsure why you're getting downvotes, the movie was a satire of the aughties and yet grows more poignant with time

though exaggerated it is compelling in its depictions of politics, family planning, television, policing, language, waste management, control through sedation, food, health, standardised tests, and on and on

hell, it's essentially predicated on a beloved sf author's dismissive pith:

        There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and
        there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism
        has been a constant thread winding its way through our
        political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion
        that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as
        your knowledge.

<comment><USER41> and in the end the film remains hopeful of the future</comment></comment></comment>


Predicting Winners of the Rugby World Cup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dominodatalab.com/predicting-winners-of-the-rugby-world-cup/?r=1 <comment><USER2> Their prediction numbers seem a little off to someone with a passing knowledge of rugby but not enough statistics knowledge to understand the analysis.

eg NZ having a higher probability of beating Argentina, than NZ has of beating Namibia (or Georgia and Tonga too). Argentina is a much better team with a higher world ranking than Namibia.

The numbers were probably skewed by NZ not playing against Namibia very often (or even at all?), but they've played Argentina relatively often in the past.

<comment><USER3> Their data should have included RWC matches or tiers or both.

Certain teams look quite good on paper; Japan have won about half their games (ever) but only won one match in the RWC (ever) before their "biggest-ever upset" victory against South Africa.

I guess this proves the importance of making a good estimate. If something is obviously off with your result, it's worth checking your model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You don't need a fancy analysis. Just pick New Zealand every time and you will do fine.

<comment><USER5> Nous allons d'enfants de la patrie!

NZ in a world cup not at home. Record not so flash... :-P

Oh did you hear Richie finally got sent off for a professional foul. So he's not a reality distortion field anymore and is going to get penalised like everyone else who commits professional fouls all day? Worrying for the all blacks. Very worrying.

In all seriousness if you're silly enough to bet rugby the thing to watch is how much pressure is being put on the ref. Because, tragically, that is what decides games between two strong sides. Some of it is blatant and public and much of it isn't but it's there none the less. England are about the fourth best rugby side in the world at best, but they're raging hot favourites because you know that's what's going on. Tough to tell the difference between rugby and professional wrestling sometimes.

<comment><USER6> So you are expecting France to face England in the semi's and the All Blacks (of course) in the finals.

Tough lineup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems to vastly overestimate the chance of underdogs winning- for example it has Uruguay at a 20% chance to beat Australia, but on betting markets it is <1%.

Ditto Namibia is 10% chance to beat New Zealand, but it's around 0.1% on betting markets.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I mean it _could_ happen. But when one considers that, say, Ireland have _never_ beaten the All Blacks in over 100 years, 10% for Namibia seems pretty ludicrous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A confounding factor with using 2015 data will be the nature of games played relatively close to the RWC. Many teams will not play their top lineup, and will not use their best/newest tactics. Indeed, they may approach the match as much as a training exercise as a contest.

<comment><USER10> Particularly as the 4-6 months leading up to the WC, the primary point of test matches and friendlies testing new players for inclusion in the training camps, and then testing for cuts or inclusion on the WC team.

Points scored is only one of many components, and often not the most important, for what ranks a 1st-15 player.</comment></comment>


Introducing Worlds First Supercomputer App Store, {functions} for Computes.io - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/computes-io/introducing-functions-app-store-for-computes-io-supercomputer-98f341b75362#.dosw19wle <comment><USER2> This is brilliant and probably how all computing will be in the future. No one will own infra but talk to cloud computation services such as this.</comment>


What are those structures on 111 gigapixel photo of Sevilla? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
There's a great picture of Sevilla (111 gigapixel http://www.sevilla111.com/default_en.htm) containing an interesting structure (http://imageshack.us/g/822/sevilla2e.jpg/). It seems like some kind of wind breakwater but for wind. I haven't seen anything like this before and I'd like to ask you about any info on this subject.
Thanks in advance,<AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to structure's photo: <http://imageshack.us/g/822/sevilla2e.jpg/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Clickable link: <http://www.sevilla111.com/default_en.htm></comment>


Building the Simple Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/07/building-the-simple-enterprise/

<comment><USER2> Aaron's point around "building simple software takes vision and discipline" really resonates with me. I've seen countless enterprise software tools that are overcomplicated and cluttered with too many features, doing most poorly.

<comment><USER3> I do wonder what "discipline" means. Cause it often depends on what the CEO wants.

For me, as a software developer, discipline means TDD, repeatable process to write code (no, it doesn't mean we should throw-away creativity).

<comment><USER4> To me, (as a "enterprise" developer), discipline means knowing when to say NO to a feature. I think traditionally Enterprise software is developed with the crazy "advanced" (5%) scenario in mind vs. the "regular" (95%) use cases.

Edit: Just re-read the article an realized he said the exact same thing (95% vs 5%).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From TFA:

"Take MySQL, who redefined the database market by offering a simpler database for every developer in the world. They now own a huge chunk of the market without having to compete with Oracle in the process."

Errr... Who owns MySQL? With little gems like that I'd really question the author's ability to research his content, which would cause me to question the validity of his position.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sorry to be a grumpy old fart about this article but it reeks of "I'm pimpin' my company on Techcrunch!" Start with a valid (in fact, valuable) assertion about simplicity in the enterprise. But follow it up with what?

>>>Look throughout your organization and find the areas where employees spend a disproportionate amount of time or run into problems on a specific set of tasks. Enabling technologies in these areas will pay huge dividends for your organization.

This is approximately like telling me that if I want to be in the Hall of Fame all I have to do is get 4 hits every 10 times out of bat. 40%! How hard can that be?

EDIT - I am grumpy because I own a business and beating simplicity into business processes is harder than getting my 6th grader to do homework.</comment>


Searching the Internet for Evidence of Time Travelers - <AUTHOR> https://thewinnower.com/papers/searching-the-internet-for-evidence-of-time-travelers

<comment><USER2> This appears to be identical to the PDF only version submitted several months ago. There was an extensive discussion then, and I look forward to seeing any new observations people might have:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6998936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6998936)</comment>


Flatbush: A very fast static spatial index for 2D points and rectangles in JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mourner/flatbush <comment><USER2> Vladimir Agafonkin, the maintainer of this repo, has a lot of cool JS libraries like this, about efficient algorithms for a specific task with very fast implementations[0]. For example, similar to flatbush he also has a repo naimed kdbush, which is points only, but (I suppose) more optimized as a result[1].

He also is involved with libraries for Mapbox and Leaflet, so if you're doing something with the web and with maps, there's a big chance you've used some of his code directly or indirectly.

[0] [https://github.com/mourner/projects](https://github.com/mourner/projects)

[1] [https://github.com/mourner/kdbush](https://github.com/mourner/kdbush)

<comment><USER3> Also the frontman of a pretty good rock band[1]

Who said one can't be a Renaissance man these days?

[1][http://rain.in.ua/en.html](http://rain.in.ua/en.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, author of the library here — feel free to ask me any questions! Very happy to see this trending on HN.

<comment><USER5> I often use your kdbush module for this, is there a case where flatbush is better for static points?

<comment><USER4> I think kdbush should always be faster for points — it uses more than 2x less memory, because when you encode points as bounding boxes, you basically duplicate them. Indexing and search is faster mostly because you operate on less data.

<comment><USER2> BTW, the readme of kdbush and flatbush don't mention each other. Might be nice if they do and clarify how they compare.

(because sometimes, people have an older, not updated library, for example)

<comment><USER4> Good point, thank you! I'll interlink those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Enables fast spatial queries on a very large number of objects

Can someone explain that? I assume the problem is something like, "user clicks on 2D map, find which objects are near the click". A naive solution might store the objects in an array sorted by X coordinate. The problem there is that the search for objects near (x,y) would have discard many objects that were far away on the Y axis. Somehow this thing solves that problem?

<comment><USER7> The readme says it uses an R-tree.[0] As the wikipedia article explains all the objects are grouped so that near by objects are put in the same group and for each group a bounding box is stored. When querying the the structure for a given position you can discard all groups that to not intersect your given position/range.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-tree)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That hilbert() function is nuts

<comment><USER9> Link: [https://github.com/mourner/flatbush/blob/eb61250246df5ebb4c9...](https://github.com/mourner/flatbush/blob/eb61250246df5ebb4c9671cb2a2c7b51d8f64f86/index.js#L325)

<comment><USER2> Hmmm... delicious bitmasking. That's when you know the author is serious about squeezing performance out of a JS VM: forcing 32 bit integer optimizations.

<comment><USER4> Note that the hilbert function wasn't written by me, just merely ported from C++ — here's a post about it by the original author: [http://threadlocalmutex.com/?p=126](http://threadlocalmutex.com/?p=126)

<comment><USER2> > _here 's a post about it by the original author:_ > [http://threadlocalmutex.com/?p=126](http://threadlocalmutex.com/?p=126)

Nice!

But still: you did port it from C++, and consciously or not, that optimization still applies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh, nice. We use RBush quite extensively in Upverter, and there are a few places where we build static trees to query. I'll have to try using this and see if it improves performance.

<comment><USER4> Awesome — let me know how it goes!

<comment><USER11> WOW- Upverter is pretty amazing! I bet you have lots of fun developing it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am wondering, would it be possible to do this even faster with WebAssembly? So that it is supported by all major browsers?

<comment><USER13> At a quick glance, I see mostly primitive operations on pre-allocated chunks of memory. WebAssembly might give you a slight performance improvement, but I doubt it would be drastic. V8 is pretty good at optimizing this kind of code. I'm sure the other browser vendors can do this pretty well too.

<comment><USER4> You're right! In my experience, today JavaScript is so fast on careful code like this that even ports to C++ or Rust aren't much faster, and any gains would likely be offset by JS <-> WebAssembly communication overhead (although this is being rapidly improved).

Here's a good thread with benchmarks that compare Earcut (also one of my libraries) to C++ and AssemblyScript WebAssembly ports: [https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl- js/issues/4835](https://github.com/mapbox/mapbox-gl-js/issues/4835) (in short, mostly slower than JS)

Another anecdotal example is that C++ and Rust ports of [https://github.com/mapbox/delaunator](https://github.com/mapbox/delaunator) (my Delaunay triangulation library) are only 10-15% faster.

<comment><USER14> Do you have to consider a lot of Jascript- or even engine-specific quirks to write fast code like this, or is it mostly about paying attention to more general principles?

My impression is that JS engines can handle straightforward imperative code on typed arrays very well. But is there more stuff that I should pay attention to when writing performance-sensitive code that acts on large datasets in JS?

<comment><USER4> The most critical thing is avoiding unnecessary work — that usually means estimating algorithmic complexity and trying to reduce it where possible (e.g. by sorting + binary search, caching, using basic data structures like a priority queue, etc.). I'm meaning to make a long blog post about my approach to algorithms, but meanwhile you can check out my recent slide deck on the matter:

[https://speakerdeck.com/mourner/fast-by-default-everyday- alg...](https://speakerdeck.com/mourner/fast-by-default-everyday-algorithmic- thinking-for-developers)

<comment><USER15> Is this supposed to have audio?

<comment><USER4> No, just slides — I don't have a video of the talk. Perhaps there will be one someday if I'm invited to some international JS conference :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi, mourner! Thanks for turning me on to rollup.js as I was reading through your very nice work!</comment>


Hack could let browsers use cloud to carry out big attacks on the cheap - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/11/hack-could-let-browsers-use-cloud-to-carry-out-big-attacks-on-the-cheap/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if there is second category of attack which is less direct. When you browse a website the client side javascript dedicates a large portion of your computational cycles to tasks such as breaking passwords? The implementation would be not dissimilar to the javascript bitcoing miner.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone guess as to how this works? Does the client send javascript directly to the remote browser? I would imagine that the remote browser goes out and fetches it instead. Or might this rely on hosting custom javascript for each of your map-reduce jobs that you want to run?

<comment><USER4> They implemented map and reduce in separate js files and used bit.ly to store the intermediate results.

Link to original paper: <http://adl.csie.ncu.edu.tw/~jhhe/doc/bmr.pdf></comment></comment>


An open society, Canada's best response to immigration - <AUTHOR> https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/robert-falconer-the-open-society-canadas-best-response-to-immigration <comment><USER2> As an immigrant in Canada (normal process, not refugee) I can say the process is fair, especially compared to other countries (see neighbor). The requirement on language makes sense and also the minimum amount of savings and no dangerous disease. Basically you are set to successfully start out.

Just talking about my experience, but after living in other 3 countries, the openness of Canadians to immigrants and the culture that they bring in is astonishing. This is probably why everyone I know that immigrated to Canada had respect for the country from the start. Cannot say the same for most other countries.

I feel like the fast (at least in immigration terms) response that the Canadian government gives speeds up the integration and lowers worry about future uncertainty.

<comment><USER3> Sadly Canadian points-based system is a non starter with Democrats and some nativist Republicans in the US.

<comment><USER2> You just have to hope that the new generation is better...

<comment><USER4> It's very possible that left wing social liberalism has jumped the shark and hard core right wing social conservatism is on the menu going forward. Evidence for this is Trump, states passing ridiculous abortion laws, nativism, etc. That we are switching from the Dionysian to the Apollonian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On paper Canada is near perfect. But in practice it is a country that is suffering so much from having to maintain continent size infrastructure on the tax base that would match a very small European country that the _only_ way they are going to solve this long term without reducing the size of their territory or falling apart is to import very large numbers of people and hope to integrate them.

So far they are quite successful in the first and not so successful in the second. But on paper they excel at both.

If you want to see this strategy fail try to move to some small town outside of the top 5 and see how well that integration works in practice.

<comment><USER6> That's a popular misconception, but flatly wrong. Canada has the 10th largest GDP in the world. It's larger than Russia's and just shy of Brazil, a country with 209M people vs. 37MM in Canada.

The vast majority of the country is within 100km of the US border, and frankly we've massively under-invested in critical infrastructure like high-speed rail. Our telecoms routinely claim that prices are the highest in the world because of the sparseness of the country, and yet our telecoms are _the_ most profitable in the world. Same for our banks.

No, Canada's real problem is its lack of self-confidence... we still coddle our banks and telecoms, regulating to protect them against foreign competition while failing to enforce competition laws that would prevent anti-competitive behaviour within the country. We seem to be afraid of competing globally on a level playing field even though this would make us better.

It's a very frustrating place to be an entrepreneur, particularly if you have anything remotely resembling a libertarian bent.

<comment><USER4> I never understood the need to protect a certain class of non-innovative noncompetitive services like banks and telecoms. It just a way to make a few a*holes rich.

<comment><USER7> Because we don't have any practical alternatives to banks; and when banks fail the people who end up losing the most are not their senior management, investors or even employees but the thousands or even millions of account holders.

With Telcos it's not that different too; if the large one as in those who actually have infrastructure fail it can lead to a catastrophic cascade failure when you can't call an ambulance not to mention can't do business because your phones or internet are down you are screwed.

Telcos are like roads it might seem really easy to set new ones up but if you remove all the existing infrastructure that was setup over a century you end up with a lot of short routes that lead up to nowhere.

<comment><USER6> This is certainly what banks and telcos will tell you, but it's simply not true.

For example, the idea that banks should maintain appropriate reserves and refrain from taking on certain kinds of risks doesn't imply that banks should be the arbiters of who is allowed to send and receive digital payments. The movement away from cash to digital has handed them extraordinary power over all economic activity in the country.

Telcos have responded to attempts to shake up the industry by acting in non- competitive ways, the primary reason why NONE of the new entrants from the last wireless spectrum auction still exist as independent entities, and why no foreign telcos have any interest in investing in the space. We don't enforce our own competition laws, leading to a small group of extraordinarily profitable companies at the expense of the rest of the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think history has shown many times that generally open societies are good for both the economy and for future strength of the country. It is nice to see a well reasoned analysis of specific applications in Canada.

<comment><USER9> What are some examples you'd give? Not trying to refute you, I just can't think of any off the top of my head.

<comment><USER10> It's a tautology. Open societies that handle their openness well are successful. There are plenty of counterexamples; China is doing well despite not being open for immigration and repressing its minorities. Singapore is hardly open. Western countries did well in the 1950s to 1980s with minimal immigration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know the author. Good guy. Level headed and data driven. I found it to be an interesting read.

He says he's been getting lots of interesting emails since this piece.

Edit: A little more context: this was in response to some other right-leaning piece (if you read the comments on the article you can see references to that).

<comment><USER11> Specifically, in response to something like this from Alberto Alesina et al

[https://scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/publications/immigrat...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/publications/immigration- and-support-redistribution)

Immigration is great on balance but it doesn't mean there's not legitimate concerns on number, diversity and education level.

<comment><USER11> Regarding Alesina, there is a "Pepes Seminar"

> Paris Empirical Political Economy Seminar, a monthly seminar series co- > organized by the Department of Economics at Sciences Po and the Paris School > of Economics.

which is funny or scary or silly depending your state of mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Canada, so very noble in accepting people of all kinds... when it's popular. [1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Czech_Republic_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Czech_Republic_relations#Visa_dispute)

</comment><comment><USER13> Certain people are always pushing fears about immigrants but the actual experience of big immigrant nations like Australia (30% foreign born) and Canada (25%) show that immigration, including large influxes of refugees, doesn't cause social or economic problems.

<comment><USER14> Not all immigrants are equal. Obviously when they're selected for employability as professionals, the results will be good.

New Zealand once took a lot of pacific island immigrants which were needed as labor for the protected auto industry and other labor intensive jobs at the time. What we're left with now is a large underclass of people over- represented in crime, unemployment, obesity, lack of education, etc. In the long term, that wave of immigration has surely hurt the country's economy and the existing people's wellbeing.

<comment> blaser-waffle Similar to Turks in Germany under the Gastarbeiter program.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would they accept an asylum seeker from the United States?

<comment><USER3> Yes, if you have enough points (young, educated, skilled, self-sufficient).

<comment><USER16> IIRC, there are three lanes: immigrant, family reunification and refugee. The OP was probably asking if an American could qualify in the refugee lane, and the answer is no. The first lane is the biggest one and the best one for most; an educated, English speaking American shouldn't have trouble qualifying in that lane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > resettling more refugees than any other country in the world

> Since 2017, approximately 150,000 asylum seekers have claimed protection

This is pretty low number. Many countries took millions of refugees.

<comment><USER18> > Canada took in 28,100 of 92,400 refugees who were resettled in 25 countries > last year

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most- refug...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-resettled-most-refugees- un-1.5182621)

Do you have a source for many countries taking in millions?

<comment><USER19> I am not the OP. When I read that sentence, I thought it meant total refugees settled, not just new 2018 refugee numbers. I would be very surprised if Canada is near the top in total resident refugees. A small country like Lebanon (population of less than 6 million, total area smaller than New York metropolitan area) has 1.5–2 million refugees residing in the country. By some estimates, more than a quarter of the population of Lebanon are refugees. No matter what indicator you choose (total, per capita, per square km, per $ GDP, ...), Lebanon would be far ahead in the number of refugees accepted.

<comment><USER18> Agreed; I'm sure there are many countries with far more total refugees. The annual trends do seem newsworthy to me though. If anything it illustrates how much the US annual number has dropped that it's now below Canada. Likewise European countries that were taking much larger numbers of refugees per year are no longer taking as many. Canada has increased its intake slightly under the Liberal government, as the article mentions, but the real change is the reduction by other countries.

<comment><USER20> "Taking" != "Resettling". European countries are still "taking" asylum seekers, but they don't "resettle" them: the asylum seekers show up in the country and request asylum. It's not a good idea to only look at resettlement and extrapolate from that to "total number of refugees admitted".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Honor for the Creator of the GIF - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/an-honor-for-the-creator-of-the-gif/?smid=tw-nytimes <comment><USER2> As everyone knows, GIF stands for "Giraffe Interchange Format". Hence the pronunciation. Demonstration: [http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7vg5p6c4u1r4ss8fo1_400.gi...](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7vg5p6c4u1r4ss8fo1_400.gif)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of this page: <http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/>

Which has, conservatively, been around forever

>I worked with the creator of GIF (Steve Wilhite) when I was still employed by CompuServe. Steve always pronounced it "jiff" and would correct those who pronounced it with a hard G. "Choosy developers choose GIF" (spinning off of a historically popular peanut butter commercial).

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure it's pronounced "ping" now since GIF is rolling slowly to the dustbin. Of course I'm sure the creator of the PNG format would say it's pronounced "pong". At least _that_ would make sense. The whole jiff joke was never, ever funny.

The reason people use a hard G is because that's what makes sense given the wording of the acronym. Unless I've been pronouncing "graphics" wrong this whole time?

<comment><USER5> _I'm pretty sure it's pronounced "ping" now since GIF is rolling slowly to the dustbin._

PNG can't be used to make animations. GIF can. That alone is enough to ensure GIF will be around for a long, long time.

<comment><USER6> It's not universally supported, but there _is_ an animated png format: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG>

<comment><USER7> As noted in that Wikipedia page, there is also the MNG format (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-image_Network_Graphics>). Unfortunately it's over 10 years old and there is still little browser support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't care what the creator of the format says. I'm using the hard g.

<comment><USER9> I'll keep mispronouncing it too, but will stop needlessly arguing with the silent-g zealots.

<comment><USER10> There are no silent-g zealots. No one pronounces it 'if' :)

<comment><USER11> Actually, I think I may have to start doing that now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use GIF pronunciation to tell how long someone has been on the Internet and precursors of the Internet. I got my first modem (300 baud Mitey Mo) in 1985 and I've seen this story come up at least 50 times since then.

If you've been on the Internet over 15 years then this will not be news to you. The other thing I find interesting about the GIF format is how everyone assumes it was designed for animation. I saw someone on reddit "knowingly" tell another redditor "oh yeah there can be non animated GIFs they just consist of a single frame of animation."

<comment><USER13> I've been on the internet for nearly 20 and didn't know. How would I find out? I wasn't aubscribed to alt.pronunciationpedantry

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The 'G' sound in the word 'G-raphics' (GIF = Graphics Interchange Format) makes more sense to carry over to the acronym. I think the boats understandably sailed Mr.White!

<comment><USER12> What about JPEG then? Should that be pronounced JPHEG since it stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.

<comment><USER15> That's how I'm rollin' from now on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The creators of SCSI wanted it to be pronounced 'sexy' (SeCSI). Tough luck.

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't talk bad about GIF! GIF is a great format. Once upon a time I wrote a GIF89a library that supported animation, etc. I found it straightforward to parse and write, eminently extensible, with a clear and easy-to-read specification.

No one has been able to get their act together and propose a successful PNG animation format, but I'm disappointed that the "PNG in GIF" proposal never took off. Size wouldn't be so bad since most images would share a global color space, and browser makers could easily implement it.

ftp://ftp.simplesystems.org/pub/png-group/documents/history/png-in-gif- proposal-20070413.txt

<comment><USER18> What resources did you use to implement gif89a?

You already mentioned the specification ( <http://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt> ). Did you use anything else?

<comment><USER17> Animation is now considered a core feature of GIF, but it was implemented as an extension by Netscape and surprisingly there is no official spec for it.

Extensibility is provided for in the specification, but the actual implementation within each application extension is, of course, application- specific.

The extensions I know about:

\- NETSCAPE (animation)

\- NETSCAPE (buffering)

\- ANIMEXTS (same as Netscape animation)

\- GIFCONnb (found this GIF Construction Set extension during testing but didn't try to reverse engineer it)

The only one of consequence is the animation one.

The page I used at the time to describe the animation extension no longer exists, but this page describes it and others:

<http://www.vurdalakov.net/misc/gif>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I personally don't care which pronunciation you use. As long you understand it's 'gib', not 'jib' when you blow somebody into pieces.

/me ducks

<comment><USER20> Same problem as GIF.

Gib, short for giblet, the innards of a bird, can be (and is) pronounced both ways — "j"iblet and "g"iblet. Where I'm from, it's always been "j"iblet, but I wouldn't mind if someone pronounced it differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> GIF will be around until there is another animated image format with decent support. APNG seems nice, but needs to be supported more. Personally, I like GIF. It's simple and can be included everywhere with a simple img tag. It's possible to animate with CSS, Javascript or video, but that's a lot more hassle and cannot be done in a comment box.

</comment><comment><USER22> Perhaps this will help: <http://howdoyoupronouncegif.com>

</comment><comment><USER20> If you want to be well liked, don't ever be the person who directly corrects other's pronunciation of words.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd let a machine decide.

[http://translate.google.com/#en/en/GIF%20or%20JIF...%0Agif%2...](http://translate.google.com/#en/en/GIF%20or%20JIF...%0Agif%20or%20jif...%0AGif%20or%20Jif...%0A%0A%22.gif%22%20or%20%22.jif%22..).

Google's Text-to-Speech seems to pronounce it with a Soft G.

<comment><USER24> actually, the 'machine' is trained with a voice model. so, when you're saying that you'll let a machine decide, in this particular case you're really letting google decide (and expecting them to have baked in an appropriate pronunciation of gif).

here's what we've got at nuance: GIF or JIF -> <http://bit.ly/1938drD>.

the google translate tts models are older than their android models (particularly network tts), and it seem as though it still treats it similarly -> <http://bit.ly/12tpCol>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's pronounced "bikeshed".

</comment><comment><USER26> "that's Frahn-ken-steen."

</comment><comment><USER27> And it's "Amerigo," according to Vespucci.

<comment><USER28> When he wrote in Latin, it was _"Americus Vespucius"_. Martin Waldseemüller decided to name the continents after him on his 1507 map, using the feminized Latin version: _"the Land of Americus, or America: since both Europa and Asia got their names from women"_ (thus, America holds the name it was given.) Amerigo was apparently never made aware that a continent had been named for him.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci> , <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Waldseem%C3%BCller> , and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_of_America#Etymology_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_of_America#Etymology_and_naming)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I used to say "Ihm-grr" (imgur.com) instead of "Ihm-jer" so I guess I can learn to say "Jiff."

<comment><USER30> It's not image-er? ;-(

<comment><USER29> Yes, your pronunciation is correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I used to pronounce it incorrectly, but my friend who built the NSFW site theworstdrug.com, which lets you click through the most popular GIFs on tumblr (hint they are all porn) enlightened me

</comment><comment><USER32> The only thing pronounced is how aged and antiquated the format is.

<comment><USER33> There's something to say for ubiquity and convenience. People would rather load a 50MB Animated GIF than watch a 10MB video of the same thing in higher res.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> GIF, JPEG, PNG,... all these are not English words, so multiply possible pronunciations by a hundred (every Dutch speaking person I know pronounces them the Dutch way).

</comment><comment><USER24> 'jif'? what!? <http://qkme.me/3uig7w>

</comment><comment><USER35> The dancing baby that started it all... I can't believe that was 17 years ago...

</comment><comment><USER36> As if they chose that stupid derivative yahoo GIF to headline this.</comment>


Warriors to play without fans in crowd following San Francisco order - <AUTHOR> https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28884486/warriors-play-home-games-fans-following-san-francisco-order <comment><USER2> Good. End crowds everywhere, right now. Do it before things get worse.

<comment><USER3> Curious, what's the end goal? And when does it end?

<comment><USER4> When the number of active cases drops to zero, when basically everyone is tested and contact tracing has resolved all current active cases, when a large fraction of the population (25%-75%) already has had it, or when a vaccine or extremely good antiviral is developed and massively deployed.

I can't see any of these happening for months. To do any of them requires massive mobilization that isn't happening in the US.

Eventually COVID-19 will probably just be endemic like the seasonal flu. Hopefully it's also mutated by that point to be much less dangerous.

<comment> munk-a Alternatively, when a vaccine becomes available and we can establish herd immunity (for everyone but the anti-vaxxers of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wondering if they could have like 950 people in the crowd still and auction off tickets. Would be surreal, but kind of a once in a lifetime experience to be watching an NBA game, at or near courtside with so few people in attendance.

<comment><USER6> If you spread people out sufficiently, I feel like it should be fine?

<comment><USER7> Have to maintain that separation through the whole game and you still have contact transmission possible through surfaces.

Also with that tiny number of people various facility costs become prohibitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Happened in an MLB game a few years ago due to violence in Baltimore. Eerie video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woP3cJxVR8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woP3cJxVR8Y)

<comment><USER9> The upcoming Bahrain Grand Prix will do the same

[https://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a31279654/2020-f1-b...](https://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a31279654/2020-f1-bahrain- grand-prix-no-spectators/)

Although the Australian Grand Prix this weekend is going on as normal

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I envy the broadcasters who have to bleep out all the cursing that normally is drowned out by crowd noise and arena music.

<comment><USER11> It's made watching Sumo a very different experience. You can hear every breath. You can hear the swish of the bow in the ending ceremony. It has been quite interesting until Takayasu's injury today - hearing his howls of agony in a silent auditorium was heart wrenching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really want to see this used as an opportunity - not like "how can we recoup our losses by doubling the number of ads shown per game," rather "what cool things can we do with drones or cameras or mics or any other element of production now that we don't have this crowd constraint?"

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if they'll receive some type of financial consideration given the loss in revenue. They aren't as good this year as in previous years but it looks like there are at least 1,000 spectators at the games most nights.

<comment><USER14> Nobody is going to be able to afford to compensate people for everything that's going to happen. Even insurance won't be able to, which is why they have the "Act of God" clauses, which I'm sure are already getting stretched and warmed up now and will be running many ultra-marathons in the months to come.

<comment> munk-a I mean, in theory, this would be a really good reason to go into deficit spending - this was unforeseeable, unnatural and preventing long term economic damage is in all of our interests - in actuality the US is too big to sanely manage such compensations and, given the current uncollectability and extreme size of the US deficit we probably don't want to try and draw any attention to it during a national crisis.

All those economic stimuluses that got dumped into stock buy backs came out of the fund that should be there to cover our asses right now.

<comment><USER15> Yup, that's why many economists have been saying that during a good economy like we've had for the past ten years, we should have used the opportunity to rebuild the economic tools we rely on in case of an emergency. Instead we cut taxes and cut interest rates, so now there's no room in the economy to recover this time.

It could end up being nothing... or it could end up being the worst economic crisis we've ever seen. And if it's the latter, we have no way to defend against it. The coffers are empty.

<comment> munk-a In fact, a lot of sane and balanced economists are saying that, while the corona virus certainly incited the latest market downturn, that downturn is going to continue since the market has been highly over-valued recently. So yea, I am concerned and not putting anything into the market right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if they'd still be doing this if they weren't dead last place in the league.

<comment><USER17> I bet this same post in r/nba would be a joke based on this very detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can they go back to Oakland if they so choose? Just curious.

<comment><USER19> Probably, but how is that relevant? Fans come from all over the Bay Area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Where does the authority come from to ban public events, forcibly quarantine individuals against their consent come from? I.e. if this went to the supreme court, would this be upheld? This is private property. From what I can tell there is little evidence that there is a large health risk to most of the population.

<comment><USER21> > From what I can tell there is little evidence that there is a large health > risk to most of the population.

These measures will absolutely prevent a significant number of people from dying. Does it matter if that population is not 'most' people?

<comment><USER22> Significant compared to what? By the metrics this is no different than flu season with lots of hysteria lumped on.

<comment><USER23> Just FYI - the best case scenario is a CFR of 10x the flu. All those stupid "Over 20,000 people die from the flu every year, so don't worry" posts are going to look _really_ bad if 200,000 people die.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Earthcomber Sues TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/08/earthcomber-sues-techcrunch-out-of-spite-pisses-me-off-personally/

<comment><USER2> FTA:

 _We will not be bullied, and people who file frivolous lawsuits need to be put down. I would rather run TechCrunch into the ground and go out of business than let this guy win._

I'm not usually much of a Michael Arrington fan but _much_ respect for this stand. This "we don't negotiate with terrorists" approach, if applied more broadly by more companies would go a long way toward fixing both the patent system and the legal system. It takes mad courage. Go Mike.

<comment><USER3> Posturing at the sight of frivolity is now considered greatness? A former lawyer fighting a lawsuit is now courageous?

<comment><USER2> We're talking about a system where fighting a suit has a certain fixed cost, along with an added element of risk. (Risk because the system is broken enough now that the outcomes are often near random).

The "best" thing to do is settle for less than the fixed cost + your willingness to gamble. This creates a system of minor extortionists knowing that by simply filing suits and collecting settlements they can sap wealth from businesses that create it almost without effort.

Whats best for the one business (to settle) is not best for all businesses because it perpetuates the broken status quo.

What it takes to stop this cycle is for individuals to stand up and say "No. That's a step to far", even if it means loosing more than taking the "rational" option of settling.

To put it slightly more succinctly, to say as nations do "We will not negotiate with terrorists". There's a reason we take such a hard stance on that. Once you give in once, you'll be giving in forever. It takes courage. Even for a former lawyer.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that's a lot of koolaid slinging.

People fight lawsuits all the time. People fight frivolous lawsuits most of all. The article makes it appear that the connection between Mike Arrington and the company is extremely tenuous. Great. Fighting that doesn't take courage, just business sense. There are far better profiles in courage, especially against better caliber patent trolls and slimy ambulance chasers.

Have you contributed to ACLU yet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love him or hate him...Arrington's the man. He's built an empire off of his personal connections, blood, sweat and tears and is raking in the cash. Mad props. The guy's writing drives me nuts and I think he seems like a jerk, but c'mon, what he's done is really impressive.

</comment><comment><USER5> Never sue a man who buys ink by the barrel.

s/ink by the barrel/has a subscription count in the sextuple digits/

<comment><USER6> Props for regex.

<comment><USER7> downmodded for incorrect implementation.

Never sue a man who buys ink by the barrel. s/buys ink by the barrel/has a subscription count in the sextuple digits/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In general, even though I disagree with much of what he says and does, I love how Arrington treats lawyers and retarded legal battles.

<comment><USER9> He knows drama like this makes for a good story. I love MA drama.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Arrington, congratulations on upgrading Earthcomber from "Who?" to "Oh yeah, those guys that sued TechCrunch... What ever came of that?"

They may not get their money's worth from this publicity stunt but it by far wasn't the worst way to spend their cash -- more money has definitely been spent on less exposure in the past.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does it really matter where you incorporate any more?

From what I understand (which may be wrong), most companies that incorporate as Delaware corporations, do so in part because DE has a solid business law system in place.

At the top of the complaint it shows that both defendants are incorporated in Delaware, yet whoever filed the complaint tried (and succeeded) in making a case for whatever goes down to take place in IL. Is that even reasonable?

While I'm sure it won't hurt TC or Loopt to take a road trip, if another startup wound up in a similar bind, I can definitely see the cost of fighting an out-of-state battle putting them over a barrel.

</comment><comment><USER12> Taking Arrington's version of events as truth is a dangerous undertaking. He's biased and has a clear conflict of interest.

I also love the fact that everyone is afraid of him bc he's a lawyer. Star Jones is also a lawyer, people. Get my drift. Beside's Arrington's an M/A lawyer, which is lawyer with a "small l" in the litigation community. You know, worker bee.

And, he's kinda fat.

</comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't Arrington have a financial interest in Loopt? I thought he is an investor?

</comment><comment><USER13> wow these guys are morons.

<comment><USER14> They're both morons in a sea of moronity, although I find it hard to believe that someone would sue techcrunch for press exposure. That is exceptionally dumb.

<comment><USER15> Arrington is probably paying them to sue TC.

<comment><USER4> I can totally believe that. That would be awesome.

How do we know Arrington didn't start Earthcomber to drum up attention for Loopt! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> earthcomber ftw!</comment>


Apple Arcade launches later this month for $4.99/mo - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/10/apple-arcade-launches-later-this-month-for-4-99-mo/ <comment><USER2> As a Consumer, I'm really excited about this. I'm fed up with skinner box RNG money extraction apps, and the ability to pay once to try a catalog of games is great. I've always been hesitant to buy pricer games because I didn't know if I would like them.

On the other hand, iOS is probably the mobile marketplace with the highest proportion of customers willing to buy non-lootbox games. If this gains enough market share, devs will feel forced to join this program, and it's currently unclear how they will be paid out.

</comment><comment><USER3> This move will probably obliterate game developers more than it first seems.

Apple Arcade _refused_ to port any existing games; they only wanted brand new, exclusive content that was painstakingly developed for all their platforms. Not only is this a giant "GTFO" to developers that have stuck with their platforms for years but it practically ensures that the initial game library, no matter how big it is, will take forever to grow. Players can blow through content _really_ quickly. And a "library" of X games doesn't really count because each person will always have their favorite genres, making most games unplayable (so we are really talking about an initial library where X/30 games are actually interesting).

At the very least, they should have invited existing App Store games into the Arcade, provided that they met some basic requirements (no in-app purchases, etc.).

It is also really rich to see Apple point out questionable game behaviors on their own App Store, when Apple has complete control and could have solved the entire problem many years ago without introducing Apple Arcade at all. _Fix your damned App Store._ I hate to imagine the millions of dollars that have _clearly_ been funneled to all the wrong parties, Apple included, by simply scamming people for more than a decade while legitimate developers beg for scraps.

Also, the existing game market will be destroyed by $4.99/month. It was already like pulling teeth to convince anyone on _mobile_ to spend money but at least on the _Mac_ you saw almost-traditional pricing for some games. Now, if lots of cross-platform games are available for peanuts, it will be _impossible_ to charge _anything_ for games, _even on the Mac_. The Mac as a gaming platform will be completely incinerated by this: if you can't put a game in the Arcade and you can't charge for it because Arcade is cheap, where does the game belong? On Windows and Switch, apparently.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a fair enough price. I don't know what the deal with the developers is, but I hope it enables them to make quality games rather than the 'free' dopamine clickers that dominate the charts now.</comment>


An Oral History of Diablo II - <AUTHOR> http://www.usgamer.net/articles/in-their-own-words-an-oral-history-of-diablo-ii-with-david-brevik-max-schaefer-and-erich-schaefer <comment><USER2> I used to work with Stieg Hedlund (the sole designer of D2) and it was really interesting to hear him talk about the issues he used to have to both solve and create (game design is often about creating problems - for players as well as solving technical problems).

Would like to have seen more of the nitty gritty about the game. This is a very project-manager-ish view of its development and as such sadly misses a lot of the work involved.

That said - it's also invaluable. Very interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also recommend reading Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire - David L. Craddock [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G8UL474](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G8UL474)

Really interesting read, covers Diablo/Warcraft development from its humble beginnings.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting that the cinematics were made by an entirely separate team that barely communicated with the game developers. Somehow it produced a better story than Diablo 3's more traditional mixing of story with gameplay.

<comment><USER5> Well, I don't think this is why. Diablo 3's problem is just that the story writing, and particularly the dialog writing, is extremely trite.

Diablo and Diablo 2 had fairly simple but compelling stories that were dropped in at key moments. Diablo 3 is largely progressively more annoying demons telling you how unlikely you are to beat them. It just gets tiresome. That'd be true if they were separated cut scenes as in Diablo 2 or integrated dialog as in 3.

<comment><USER6> I was a fan of the "Death" diplomacy in D3 /sarc. At least for the barbarian role, the solution to all problems was to murder the current antagonist, even when it seemed like the antagonizer's goal was effectively the same as the hero's; they just weren't the hero.

The hero him/herself was responsible for as much or more death than any of the enemies.

<comment><USER7> > _The hero him /herself was responsible for as much or more death than any of > the enemies._

Isn't it so true about many popular stories? If you tally the body count, it often turns out that it's the protagonist who is the monster.

<comment><USER8> The Sword of Good [http://lesswrong.com/lw/169/the_sword_of_good/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/169/the_sword_of_good/)

<comment><USER7> A great story, thanks for reminding me of it!

Another interesting but little-known story by Eliezer is [http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm always disappointed by an oral history that I can't listen to.

<comment><USER10> Feed the text of the article through Festival? >:D

<comment><USER11> It's not that the audio is missing, it's that you can't hear the emotion when the history was told. That extra data is missing from the text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would be interested in an oral history of Dungeon Siege.

<comment><USER13> In part, from Scott Bilas, from Gas Powered Games during its development: [http://scottbilas.com/games/dungeon- siege/](http://scottbilas.com/games/dungeon-siege/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> one of the best games ever made.

<comment><USER15> Seeing this brought back some memories.

I used to run farming bots for Diablo II when I was 13-16 years old and had about 20 copies of the game. Bots would run all day (while I was in school), and all night. I'd wake up early in the morning. Check the loot and transfer it to mule accounts, then restart the bots and go to school. I'd then try to trade items for general commodity items, like high runes, or certain skill items that were used as a form of trading currency due to their high demand.

The bots had some custom features that would let you bypass IP bans by logging into your router's settings, changing the mac address, and restarting your internet connection so you can get a new IP address.

One of the bots I used was written in the AutoIt Scripting Language. Since the bot was open source, I was able to see how the code was structured and modify it myself.

I attribute my introduction to programming to this farming bot, and I believe is one of the reasons I chose to study Computer Science.

The cherry on top was that I made about $600-$700 when I was 14 or 15 years old by selling a lot of farmed items on ebay.

Personally, Diablo III was a big disappointment for me. The game felt quite different from a lot of aspects. Common loot was now split into player specific loot, too many crafting recipes, unique items were garbage, etc...

I'd be happy to answer any questions regarding Diablo II or even the hacking/botting community around it.

<comment><USER16> Can you give a in-depth description of how the bots worked? You can assume the reader has good knowledge of programming, AutoIt and Diablo 2.

<comment><USER15> Typically you had 2 types of bots:

1\. AutoIt bots that simulate human interaction

2\. Other bots that manipulate game memory (usually caught by the anti-cheat dubbed 'Warden', more on that later)

The reason most bots were PindleSkin bots, is because the PindleSkin unique monster spawns on Act 5 and can be accessed through a red portal. The level generated is always the same, so the path taken to the monster is always the same.

1\. AutoIt bots simulate keyboard input and mouse clicks, and can check pixel colors at an x,y location on the screen. This alone allows you to navigate to the portal, enter it, and reach the monster. Enter a predefined number of key strokes and mouseclicks to cast spells and kill the monsters, and afterwards collect the loot.

Some examples of usage: Check the health and mana spheres pixel colors. You could estimate what percentage of HP or Mana your character had, by using some basic math, since the HP and Mana spheres were symmetrical. If the percentage was below a threshold, send keystroke 1, 2, 3, or 4 (this tells the game to drink a potion from one of those slots in your belt).

Checking inventory space and unloading items into the stash was done in a similar matter. The inventory is a 2d grid of squares, and each square has the same pixel color at the center. You'd count how much space you have by checking the pixels of each square and building a 2d array. You could also figure out how big an item was in terms of inventory space, by checking the empty spaces before and after lifting it off your inventory, and subtracting to get the difference.

Collecting the loot was initially done by using a d2loader pick-it hack, which injects into game memory, and uses a predefined list of items you want it to pick up. Now since this modified the memory, it was easily detectable, so when blizzard released the 'Warden' anti-cheat, it became useless.

Some guy by the name manus-magnus came around and released a new PindleSkin bot, written in AutoIt, which had a built in OCR. He was able to literally scan the items that were dropped, turn them into text, determine if they are rare, unique, or normal (based on pixel color), and whether to pick them up based on the pre-configured data the user specified.

He also took advantage of the ability to modify sprites on the client side, and add colored blocks to key points of interest places on the level. This allowed him to use these colored blocks as markers and navigate to reach the monsters he wanted to kill. All without manipulating game memory. I believe his bot included the 2 other unique monsters on Act 5 (Shenk and something else?)

Blizzard had such a hard time catching this bot, some believe it is the reason they added a 20 game / hr limit, and if you exceeded it, you got a temporary 15 minute IP ban.

2\. Non AutoIt bots relied on injecting into the game memory, and using a maphack to find the monsters on randomly generated levels. They were a lot more powerful, as they were able receive a lot more information from the game, but were usually banned swiftly. I don't know that much about the implementation details of the non AutoIt bots.

If you want to find more information, you can search around the AutoIt forums for a pindle skin bot, or search online for manus magnus pindleskin bot.

<comment><USER15> I could also go into detail on how the Diablo Clone hunting was done on irc.dclone.org.

The TLDR is that a bunch of people get together and pool in Stone of Jordan rings, and then decide which servers they'll spawn the clone on, and once they're all sitting on a few of those servers, the initiate the selling and "popping" (spawning the clone) on the server.

<comment><USER17> I'm interested if it's half as good as your other post! Can you explain what exactly they're trying to achieve here? Was this getting the Uber diablo triggered by selling SoJs?

<comment><USER15> Yes indeed in order to spawn the Diablo Clone, you have to sell SoJs.

No one knows what the exact number of SoJs is, so a community was created and it used irc.dclone.org as the IRC server to manage all of this and collect data over time. This gave some historical data on how many SoJ's were sold for a certain IP address before that server "popped" (the clone spawned)

Each Diablo game you create, has a unique IP address.

Let's say you're on a server with IP 123.123.123.XXX

When you sell SoJ's, all servers that end with XXX will eventually spawn a Diablo Clone and receive the "XYZ SoJs have been sold to merchants" message.

People would gather on irc.dclone.org and pool together say 100-150 SoJs on the NON-LADDER mode. Items were cheaper on NON-LADDER, so the SoJ's were sold on a NON-LADDER server, but, the people who organize the event, would in advance hog the predetermined servers that end with XXX on LADDER mode. That way, they'd get the annihilus charm the clone drops and it'd be worth more.

So in essence, you're selling the SoJs on the NON-LADDER servers, but their effect propagates to the LADDER servers. Thus, your returns are much higher.

In order to find these servers, you'd use a similar AutoIt bot to basically create a game every 3 minutes and use some basic netstat commands to extract the IP address and once a game has the .XXX address you want, the bot will idle in it, until your group spawns the diablo clone.

A private diablo clone spawning event would typically go in the following order:

1\. Get number of people to transfer SoJs to one account (buy-in is usually 10 SoJs/person assuming ~10-12 people party)

2\. At time T, the SoJs selling will begin

3\. Announce the IP address XXX at (T - 5 hours), this will give you 5 hours to search for game servers with IP address XXX.

4\. Start selling SoJs at time T

5\. Clone Spawns, everyone kills the clone in the games they have found, and collects the annihilus charm.

When I was doing this regularly, an unidentified annihilus charm was worth $20-$30 on ebay, one with perfect or near perfect stats could go up to $100.

<comment><USER17> Wow, non ladder affected ladder? How bizarre that they would do that. Such a strange mechanic for Blizzard to introduce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Diablo didn't invent cheating in internet games. I was writing bots for nettrek back in 1992, and it had been going on for a lot longer than that.

Nettrek probably invented anti-cheat practices including RSA signing the binaries and moving most of the logic to server-side. You could program info borgs to give you better display of information than other humans, and you could program combat borgs that simply reacted faster than humans could (particularly with automatic tractor/pressors, auto phasers at close distance, and auto aiming torps), but cloaked ships had their positions randomized server side so you couldn't get magic accuracy to lock on them, and torp wobble and hits were all computed server side so there was no way for client hacking to change the basic physics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great game designers are not necessarily great game historians and/or have good memory.

> It's amazing how many new standard things came out of Diablo and Diablo II. > [...] The rarity thing [for loot], for example, just kind of made sense.

While Diablo certainly helped popularize quite a few such features and even arguably gave birth to a genre (I heard people calling various other games _a Diablo_ ), it would be overconfident for them to claim inventing it: Magic the Gathering [1] had it years prior. There, rarity was implemented with printed pages: you print all your common cards on a Common sheet, uncommon cards on an Uncommon sheet and rare on Rare sheet; then put 1 card from Rare, 3 from Uncommon and 9 from Common into each booster pack. (not actual numbers! there are also Mythic Rares and each card has a tiny chance to be a Foil version, which complicates the situation, but the basic idea is something like that; from memory)

Same goes for the idea of a quest log: I don't have a specific example in mind, but I have a hard time believing no game had it before Diablo II.

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

<comment><USER20> That's not the same thing, though. They're not just talking about the fact that some items are more common than others, or even the correlation between power and rarity.

What Diablo did (that M:tG didn't) was that the same weapon could have multiple rarities, with the rarer versions being more powerful. Each card in M:tG has only a single rarity, and the foil version is just a cosmetic difference with no gameplay effect. An Uncommon (or equivalent) in Diablo is not a _sui generis_ item, it is a common with upgraded stats. A Rare is the same thing with magic effects added.

<comment><USER21> I'm not clear how that's different from e.g. the random loot tables in D&D, except that Diablo's version called some different items by the same name for added confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope all those working on it like this got a great compensation back for the extra hours/days:

"...to the point where everyone was having to work seven days a week, all waking hours, for almost a year."

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't stand articles with pagination that lack a "single page" view, defeating convenient read-it-later offline saving.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best books on Silicon Valley and the dot com boom and bust? - <AUTHOR> I'd love to read some good accounts from people who went through or studied the dot com boom and bust. Varying perspectives would be great, founders, employees, VC's, bankers, brokers etc. <comment><USER2> The New New Thing, by Michael Lewis, is about Jim Clark and the companies he founded at the time. It's a good read.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I've actually read that. Was very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Totally Wired, by Andrew Smith, tells the story of the dot com boom and bust from the NYC perspective. There was a lot more happening in NYC than I ever imagined, and I lived there at the time. It was also a much more artistic scene than I ever knew.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in Australia. What was going on in NYC at the time never even crossed my mind. Will check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> John Carreyou: Bad Blood.

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit more recent than the dot com boom but yeah good book.</comment></comment>


Captain Crozier send off by his sailors crew - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/AmberSmithUSA/status/1246052144115077120 <comment><AUTHOR> Look from the inside in the middle: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/us/politics/coronavirus-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/us/politics/coronavirus- brett-crozier-theodore-roosevelt.html)</comment>


What's New in Emacs 24.4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.masteringemacs.org/article/whats-new-in-emacs-24-4

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure the wide spacing, overuse of italics, and massive overconsumption of vertical space mean that an straight text version of the changes emacs would be more comfortable to read. At least it doesn't use ghetto antialiasing (low contrast fg/bg to reduce jaggies).

You can find the text file at: [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.24.4](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/news/NEWS.24.4)

<comment><USER3> What I'd really like, rather than the original article (for which your criticism is dead on) or the NEWS file, is a summary of the important changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using a pre-release version of 24.4 for months, and I'm loving it.

Ruby-mode got a huge improvement in its indentation. I was able to delete all of the hacks out of my .emacs files, and it works exactly the way I want it to.

The new superword minor mode is really useful. It lets to treat snake cased words as a single word, which makes recording macros a lot simpler in Ruby, Python, etc.

I've also found that I didn't have to make a single change to my .emacs files. All of my plugins were compatible. It was completely painless.

</comment><comment><USER5> Note this article was written last year and I'm guessing a lot of new stuff has been added since then.

<comment><USER6> Are you sure? The writing implies that it was written recently. (Does the emacs release team consider "any day now" == a year in "There's a new Emacs minor release due out any day now,"?)

Either way, the article does not mention its publishing date anywhere, which is rather unfortunate for a medium like the internet, where text is forever.

<comment><USER7> This post is from December 29, 2013, according to /feed (using Digg Reader). If you've been using HEAD then you've had 24.4 for longer than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This blog has had a series of posts on some of the new features that I found useful: [http://emacsredux.com/blog/categories/emacs24-dot-4/](http://emacsredux.com/blog/categories/emacs24-dot-4/)

</comment><comment><USER9> From what I see on the extended support of C++ parsing, I doesn't look very promising for handling C++11 features (let alone C++14). Truly disappointing.

I know this is a "if you really need it, why don't you work on it yourself instead of complaining?". I've tried making sense of the cc-mode source, without any success at all.

<comment><USER10> You may want to take a look at irony-mode. Do not expect any rich semantic features from the stock c-mode.

<comment><USER11> It's not rich semantic features that are missing, but basic stuff such as C++11 keywords, handling of >>, etc. Those seem to be available in a cc-mode branch, but since cc-mode is maintained separately from Emacs, it takes more effort than it should to have an updated version of cc-mode in Emacs.

<comment><USER10> Nowadays using package.el is mandatory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really love that it takes 6 min from git to build the latest Emacs on a 2010 ThinkPad.

</comment><comment><USER13> Using emacs in a terminal is for newbies? I don't want to launch another program just to do my job! I'm already IN tmux running in Terminal.app, for nearly everything else.

<comment><USER14> > Using emacs in a terminal is for newbies?

Yes, if they do it by mistake and don't know that there is an alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this mean that It is released? I can only find info suggesting that 24.3 is the current stable version.

<comment><USER16> My understanding is that it's being officially released this upcoming Monday. Builds of it, however, are available for testing and bug reporting.

<comment><USER17> Release candidate is planned this Friday with subsequent release on Monday[1] unless there's something bad.

[1] [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2014-10/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2014-10/msg00376.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> as an emacs user for 25 (!) years, this is an inspiring release.</comment>


Oh Shit, My Weekend Project Turned Into an App Store Best New App - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tannerc/oh-shit-my-weekend-project-turned-into-an-app-store-best-new-app-1fddf680778e

<comment><USER2> This is excellent work, a great example of creating a solution to solve a need or want. My only suggestion would be for the addition of an App Preview - [https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app- previews/](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app-previews/) \- to help users see how the app works live when viewed from the App Store and iTunes. This might help those that are trying to learn how to use it (Cut down the mentioned 2 minutes in one of the reviews to a few seconds).

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback, thanks. I think you're right that giving more of a preview of how the app works can help onboard new users who will find the app itself helpful.</comment></comment>


What are good ways to get large number of feedback on startup idea? - <AUTHOR>

My startup has created an alpha version of mobile app.  Before investing more time and effort, we created a demo video of our idea to get feedbacks and to make sure we are not building something that no one wants.   How do we get <i></i>large number of people to watch the demo at http://www.scribbleeverywhere.com so we can get statistically relevant feedback?   We tried adwords but trailing search has too low of a volume, we tried digg/reddit/stumbleupon/youtube/quora but it has not been discovered by the masses.  Facebook/social media got us the same unsatisfactory result.   It felt like we are standing on an empty street trying to give out free samples for people to try and give feedback but can't find enough people.   Any ideas?    I know hacker news is one of the great place, so if you have any feedback on our idea ( http://www.scribbleeverywhere.com ), it will be greatly appreciated.  Thanks. <comment><USER2> It is hard to be positive about this idea. I think that may be the reason people are reluctant to say anything. No one wants to be a downer.

I'll stick to the important facts. Take me or leave 'em, but don't ascribe any emotion to them.

This has not been done before because it would draw all ages of user, but some people would post inappropriate material.

The cost of policing the uploads could prevent it from being profitable. Also, it would be possible to become a mainstream product but then lose that status through a series of mistakes.

I could go on at length so in case perhaps you've solved this problem there are others. I'm not saying you can't solve these problems, Twitter is successful because they solved the policing problem by limiting everyone to 140 characters.

But there are definitely other problems. Pick a demographic and think how they would view your service. Solve all those problems and you've got a winner.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can submit to various sites for feedback (HN is an example). There are a few other places (reddit - /r/startups) - or you can submit it to the site I'm currently maintaining SideProjectors

[http://sideprojectors.com](http://sideprojectors.com)

We let people showcase their side projects to receive feedback.

[https://www.sideprojectors.com/showcase/submit](https://www.sideprojectors.com/showcase/submit)

</comment><comment><USER4> I really like the map idea.

One issue that I have found though is that everything your app does or wants to do is exactly what Twitter is for.

Twitter + your map idea = your app = people will actually use it. I would use it that is for damn sure. Instead of creating a new app seriously consider Twitter.

<comment><USER5> Agree. The value prop appears to be "what people are talking about or at a specific location that you are interested in". The OP will be better of harvesting and consolidating information posted on other social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Yelp and presenting in his/her app. Like you suggested, Twitter + Map is a good starting point for the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> why not release the app and try to get that discovered and get feedback. Unless your video is viral material, its hard to get it discovered. You could try virool.com, youtube.com ads, collegehumor.com, facebook promotions. If you release your app in the app store, try freemyapps.com, submit to app review sites (search google), email to some campus list servers to get college students to use it. If worried about ratings, release it with different name than planned, get feedback, tune, and release it again with planned name / branding.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would go small instead of targeting the masses. Figure out who would be your most passionate users and go after them. If you can get traction there, then target the next group of people.

</comment><comment><USER2> I just saw doubt_me and I agree. Twitter with a map would be doable. Would it gain traction? I don't know off the top of my head, but lots of problems would be solved.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home](http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home)</comment>


I am a PostSecret Addict, I built this to ease my Addition. - <AUTHOR> http://postsecretcollection.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this by scraping about 10 different websites like post secret, the RSS feed, internet Archives to find all the old postcards of post secret.

I am a true addict and I just wanted to be able to spend days looking through peoples secrets. Sad, but I think I am doing people a favor by allowing those who also can't get enough.

There are still a few bugs, but what do you all think?</comment>