Load Handling vs. Data Integrity: Tradeoffs in Distributed Data Store Design - <AUTHOR> https://hazelcast.com/blog/redis-load-handling-vs-data-integrity/ <comment><USER2> > Redis was reporting 50% higher throughput even though both systems were > saturating the network using identical payloads. [...] at some point Redis > almost immediately stops replication and continues to skip replication while > workload remained high. [...] significantly raising the risk of lost data. > [...] By default, Redis is sacrificing the safety of data to perform faster > under high loads.

Wooooo. Shots fired. Excellent article, looks like they dug into the issues with quite a bit of depth.

This is what I come to have news for. The title dosnt do it justice.</comment>


From homeless drug user to millionaire - <AUTHOR> http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/FromHomelessDrugUserToMillionaire.aspx <comment><USER2> I think we all kind of missed the boat by focusing on the one comment about Christianity.

This man went from doing heroin to running a multimillion dollar software business. Perhaps there are more important distinguishing factors than the religion he happens to share with 2.1 billion people, the majority of which do not start successful software companies.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The point that I found interesting and hopefully other budding entrepreneurs would too, is how he created a niche...

"We had written all this software. The best was our warehouse and distribution package. I had been using it for years in my own stuff. We decided to try selling it. I thought it would be like the paint: I'd just go out there and introduce myself, distributors would pick it up, and I'd be home free. Well, I had a rude awakening. When those big boys are in there, they just stomp you. I realized I had to have a niche."

</comment><comment><USER3> "It wasn't like I was real flush with cash. Pretty much all my career I was undercapitalized. I borrowed on my home equity and loaded up my credit cards."

Risk rewarded. Takes guts to do that in your 40s.

</comment><comment><USER4> That reminds me of this article: [http://nukemanbill.blogspot.com/2008/06/how- to-sell-your-sof...](http://nukemanbill.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-sell-your- software-for-20000.html) where the author discusses finding niches to sell big dollar software. Good stuff.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I think that's the key point to this whole article. Too bad the discussion focused on the Christianity part.

If you found a lot of value in this article, check out their website (<http://www.horizonsoftware.com/>). Although it's not interesting, unless you are interested in successful, multi million dollar software startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I knew a lot of the chemists and taught myself about the chemistry of paint. In my spare time, I was a wildlife artist. There wasn't a good airbrush paint on the market. Everybody was using automotive lacquers. I spent about two years developing one for myself."

He's a closet engineer! He just needed some impetus.

</comment><comment><USER7> The effect such stories have on me:

1.) Men of chasing their dreams which passion don't lose.

2.) If they lose, they will hitback with a win sometime.

3.) These kind of stories remind me to keep trying even if I lose a dozen times trying to build a million dollar company(which I am still trying).

Senthil, thanks for sharing this.

</comment><comment><USER8> You had me at "Oranges instead of Snickers bars."

<comment><USER9> Junk Food isn't going to hurt you in moderation. I used to get Pepsis once a week when I stayed after school for Chess Club and it didn't kill me. My school would have been up in arms if all the self-righteous anti-junkfood moralizing busybodies around today took that away from us.

<comment><USER8> _Junk Food isn't going to hurt you in moderation._

False.

[http://www.healthbolt.net/2006/12/08/what-happens-to-your- bo...](http://www.healthbolt.net/2006/12/08/what-happens-to-your-body-if-you- drink-a-coke-right-now/)

[http://cotesensing.vox.com/library/post/healthy-lifestyle- th...](http://cotesensing.vox.com/library/post/healthy-lifestyle-the-easy- way.html)

[http://channelsurfr.com/diet-coke-can-kill-aspartame- documen...](http://channelsurfr.com/diet-coke-can-kill-aspartame-documentary/)

 _My school would have been up in arms if all the self-righteous anti-junkfood moralizing busybodies around today took that away from us._

What you call "self righteous anti-junkfood moralizing busybodies", I call "taxpayers". They get to decide what's available in the public facilities they pay for, not you.

<comment><USER9> >They get to decide what's available in the public facilities they pay for, not you.

Ah, I had a feeling that I was a de facto prisoner while I was there. I wasn't aware that it was official.

For what it's worth, I'm a taxpayer too, and I support giving kids responsibility for their own lives and teaching them to make decisions for themselves. But then again, most people consider me a crazy whacko radical who's not worth listening too. Opinions such as "kids should learn responsibility" tend to get one shunned from polite company nowadays.

My parents are also taxpayers, and I'm pretty sure they didn't care if I drank Coke or not. In fact, the abusive bastards even bought me a soda and an ice cream every now and then. Gasp!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _I had a head-on collision and very nearly was killed. While I was in the hospital I read the Bible and became a Christian._

Yay for Christianity. It can help people.

<comment><USER11> Yes the Bible can and does help people daily. In fact, the Bible has changed my life in the most profound ways. Unfortunately, most folks are too busy scoffing at it to pick it up and give it a read.

<comment><USER12> You know, the Bible helped me too! Things like "Don't kill your neighbor"... I never would have came up with this myself!

<comment><USER10> It's people like you who inspire me to post examples of Christianity _genuinely_ helping people. I am an atheist, but I don't agree with the hateful or mocking attitude many atheists have.

<comment><USER13> I expect it's mainly in response to the argument that without religion you cannot have morality which lots of religious types seem to believe.

The hijacking of morality by religious people can be pretty irritating.

<comment><USER10> While I agree the conclusion isn't true, I have yet to see any modern, public atheists write anything one quarter decent about morality. I have seen some very bad writing about morality, such as in The God Delusion, which can't be helping matters.

If you disagree, post a source.

<comment><USER13> The us is roughly twice as religeous as the uk. Is it twice as moral? I'd say crime is quite a bit higher in the us.

In my experience growing up in the uk (majority of people are not religeous), the majority DO have a good sense of what is right and wrong.

<comment><USER10> Oh certainly, I agree. However, the lack of (non-awful) explicit, atheistic writing on morality is still an important problem, and helps religious people get away with denying atheists can be moral. If you are moral, but can't explain why, it's easier for people to doubt.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


California's Prop 8 (gay marriage ban) ruled unconstitutional - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/35374462/Prop-8-Ruling-FINAL <comment><USER2> Proposition 8 "fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples..."

<comment><USER3> I'd be curious to see if the courts will apply that same argument to other laws.

For instance, will/should the courts eliminate all marriage benefits on the grounds that marital subsidies simply enshrine into law the notion that couples are superior to singles?

I'd also be curious to see if gay marriage supporters believe the courts made the correct decision, and if they would apply the same logic to other situations.

<comment><USER4> You're using very simplistic and very wrong definition of what equality and discrimination is.

For example, denying gay marriage discriminates against gays by denying a specific, identifiable group (gays) the right to marry that is given to everyone else.

You're trying to claim that the same logic applies to e.g. laws against smoking which, in your naive interpretation, "discriminate" against smokers. The crucial and not so subtle difference is that law against smoking bans a behavior. It would be discrimination if we had laws that prohibits smokers to marry.

So yes, the courts made the right decision I do want the courts to apply constitution in the future to abolish laws that violate mine and yours constitutional rights, equality being among them.

Using your reasoning serial killers are a minority and laws against killing are discrimination.

<comment><USER3> Gays have the right to marry an opposite sex partner. They may not prefer this, but they have the right to do it. Thus, laws prohibiting same sex marriage discriminate against people who prefer same sex relationships.

Similarly, renters have the right to get a mortgage subsidy by buying a home. They may not prefer it, but they have the right to do it. Thus, the mortgage subidy discriminates against people who prefer rentals.

Should we therefore eliminate mortgage subsidies (or any number of other laws which favor one preference over another) subsidies based on the same logic?

<comment><USER5> _Gays have the right to marry an opposite sex partner. They may not prefer this, but they have the right to do it. Thus, laws prohibiting same sex marriage discriminate against people who prefer same sex relationships._

The right in question is not the generic right to marry someone, but rather to marry _the person you want to marry_ (if that person will have you). And it's pretty settled at this point, since the definitive ruling was over 40 years ago; _Loving v. Virginia_ struck down "everyone is equally free to marry someone of the same race as themselves" as discriminatory, and this case is now simply following the logic to strike down "everyone is equally free to marry someone of the opposite sex".

As to your mortgage examples: marriage is and has long been held in US law to be a fundamental right. Renting a house, meanwhile, is not and has not been held to be such a fundamental right. And specifically in the case of laws which subsidize buying but not renting, such "discrimination" is allowable so long as it serves a compelling government interest. Proposition 8 was found not to serve any such interest; its sole purpose was to make law out of the religious beliefs of a particular group, and this is not something government legitimately can or should be doing.

<comment><USER3> So what is the compelling government interest in the case of, e.g., mortgage subsidies? The common justification I've heard is that home ownership is _more likely_ than renting to generate positive externalities (e.g., homeowners are more likely to improve their communities).

If increased probability of positive effects is sufficient rational basis for government acts, then it is very easy to come up with a rational basis for supporting straight marriage (but not gay marriage) based on positive externalities generated for children (e.g., straight couples are more likely to have children than gay couples).

I came up with a rational basis given only a few minutes of thought. I'm now a bit surprised that the judge couldn't come up with such an obvious rationale. It's almost a if he was making a political decision rather than a legal one.

<comment><USER5> _I'm now a bit surprised that the judge couldn't come up with such an obvious rationale. It's almost a if he was making a political decision rather than a legal one._

The argument presented to the judge was exactly the basis you've pointed out: that the sole purpose of marriage is to encourage procreation and to provide a stable environment in which to raise children.

If you'd actually read the ruling, you'd know that the evidence presented for this was flimsy at best; it was not demonstrated that heterosexual parents do a better job of raising children than homosexual parents, and it was freely admitted that marriage licenses are granted to heterosexual couples who are unable or unwilling to procreate. Thus the argument was rejected as legally unproven, and the ban on homosexual marriage was found to have no legally acceptable basis.

(and again the parallels with racial bans are striking: it was argued, once upon a time, that interracial couples would produce inferior children and that the government thus had an interest in preventing such couples from marrying. Such arguments were similarly unproven, and ultimately unprovable)

<comment><USER3> _If you'd actually read the ruling, you'd know that the evidence presented for this was flimsy at best;..._

The evidence doesn't need to be anything other than flimsy to constitute a rational basis. Courts are not supposed to evaluate the facts _at all_ , but should merely determine if there is any rational basis for the law given the most generous possible interpretation of the facts.

"[A] legislative choice is not subject to courtroom factfinding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data."

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-351.ZO.html>

[http://volokh.com/2010/08/05/more-on-whether-the-facts- matte...](http://volokh.com/2010/08/05/more-on-whether-the-facts-matter-in- perry-v- schwarzenegger/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+volokh/mainfeed+\(The+Volokh+Conspiracy\)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher)

If the job of the courts was factfinding, a huge number of laws would be eliminated. For example, could you prove in court that the Bush tax cuts, obamacare, minimum wage laws, gun control laws, or any other law are beneficial? I rather doubt it.

As long as one can imagine a scenario in which health insurance is related to health, Obamacare passes the rational basis test. And as long as one can imagine a scenario in which straight couples make better parents than gay couples (even if only in a probabilistic manner, i.e. 95% of straight couples are fertile compared to 0% of gay couples), then Prop 8 also has a rational basis.

<comment><USER5> Don't conflate different concepts. Rational basis review is a whole 'nother beast.

The ruling correctly states that, due to the nature of Proposition 8, strict scrutiny would normally be the appropriate level of review. It concludes, however, that strict scrutiny isn't needed because Proposition 8 doesn't even survive rational basis review, and goes through each proposed rationale:

1\. Heterosexual marriage is traditional. As Judge Walker points out, this fails as a rational basis since "the state must have an interest apart from the fact of the tradition itself."

2\. Overturning Proposition 8 would phase in a social change. But California has already, in the past, permitted same-sex marriages, so: "The evidence shows that allowing same-sex couples to marry will be simple for California to implement because it has already done so; no change need be phased in."

3\. Opposite-sex parenting is better than same-sex parenting. This fails because California already permits same-sex couples to adopt and raise children, and because "Proposition 8 does not affect who can or should become a parent under California law."

4\. Proposition 8 protects the free-speech rights of those who oppose same-sex marriage and want to teach their children to be opposed to it. But Proposition 8 is only concerned with permitting or forbidding certain marriages, not with allowing speech or education concerning marriage: "as a matter of law, Proposition 8 does not affect the rights of those opposed to homosexuality or to marriage for couples of the same sex."

5\. Homosexual and heterosexual relationships are different, and must be classified differently. This fails because "same-sex and opposite-sex unions are, for all purposes relevant to California law, exactly the same."

There's also an alleged "catch-all" interest. I'll just quote that one in full:

 _Finally, proponents assert that Proposition 8 advances "[a]ny other conceivable legitimate interests identified by the parties, amici, or the court at any stage of the proceedings." Doc #605 at 15. But proponents, amici and the court, despite ample opportunity and a full trial, have failed to identify any rational basis Proposition 8 could conceivably advance._

The important thing to remember in reading the above is that rational-basis review, while not particularly demanding, is not the same as no review. "I say there's a rational basis, therefore there is" doesn't hold up in court; you'll have to make an argument and it will have to actually make sense. The arguments advanced for a rational basis for Proposition 8 failed -- they either did not assert a valid basis for legislation or were contradicted by other established law or by Proposition 8 itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know this isn't really hacker news, but as a gay hacker, I beg you not to flag this story :-)

<comment><USER7> Why not? Not to sound mean, but there are plenty of places online where people could discuss this news; why does HN have to be one of them? Does this community have unique insights into Californian law or gay rights that other communities don't? Does this same news item really need to appear on every online social news site, everywhere, no matter the focus?

I guess it's possible that there are people who _only_ read HN, and don't have any other news source whatsoever, and that those people _would_ otherwise miss out on this bit of news—but then, I think those people have chosen to filter out other news sources for a reason :)

Edit: I'm just asking for a justification here—if it explicitly _isn't_ Hacker News, what made you want to post it?

<comment><USER6> Statistically speaking, somewhere between 4% and 8% of the HN population will be very interested in this news. I'll bet that's a bigger percentage than actually care about Erlang, and we're always hearing about that :-)

But seriously, there is no reason, other than it being a really nice piece of news that, as a member of a community, I would like to share with the rest of that community.

(And to clarify: I didn't post it, I just voted it up :-) )

<comment><USER7> I don't think we should be allowing any argument that would also justify people posting cat pictures :) I agree that it's a nice piece of news; I just sometimes wish that HN had the same sort of #foo, #foo-offtopic division that specialized IRC channels usually do.

(And I realize—I was addressing the original poster in the context of your comment. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> To answer your question, I posted this on HN because I felt it would lead to interesting comments. The ruling is certainly cause for celebration, but it's also one of the most publicized cases of a judge overturning a majority vote. I wanted to hear how other hackers settled the internal debate of forcefully eliminating bigotry vs. lessening government intervention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am likely a minority voice on HN on this topic and with so many strong feelings about this I will likely be down-voted for these arguments, but in the spirit of bringing out another side to the debate so that a full discussion can happen, I'd like to bring up a few thoughts against the court- ruling.

I rarely hear about how state-approved same-sex marriage will impact freedom of religion. Personal feelings aside, religous groups should have the freedom to practice their religion according to their conscience. They each have a right to preach their interpretation of right and wrong, and shouldn't be forced into the current policially correct view.

For example, I could see a pastor or rabbi or other religous leader feeling uncomfortable about marrying 2 people of the same sex, and then being sued for a civil rights violation with the full force of the state to back up the couple's lawsuit.

Another example that comes to mind is religous colleges that offer married student housing being forced to let a same-sex couple live in the housing; in this situation the school could be sued for discrimination and potentially lose tax-exempt status unless they comply.

These 2 examples are compelling to me because they are realistic scenarios post-today's ruling and they represent a power-grab by the government over a religion's conscience-driven decisions about what is right and wrong. We shouldn't hand over these religious decisions to bureaucrats.

It seems that by officially sanctioning same-sex marriage, we are heading towards a collision course between church and state, which is troubling from a religious-freedom perspective. In an ideal world, marriage wouldn't be a state-driven issue at all, but left to the religions themselves to define. Obviously this isn't an option; at the very least we should be careful about how much more power we want to give the government about our individual conscience-driven religous choices.

<comment><USER9> Fact 19 from the findings of the court, emphasis mine:

"Marriage in the United States has always been a _civil matter_. Civil authorities may permit religious leaders to solemnize marriages but not to determine who may enter or leave a civil marriage. _Religious leaders may determine independently whether to recognize a civil marriage or divorce_ but that recognition or lack thereof has no effect on the relationship under state law."

How this fits in with college housing, for example, I could not say. I will say, though, that the situation you're describing sounds awful discriminatory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What makes Hacker News cool is that the link is to the actual ruling, which is far more interesting than the articles about this I've seen so far. If you just glanced at the headline, I suggest you dig in...

</comment><comment><USER11> Are there any non-religious anti-gay-marriage arguments?

<comment><USER3> I'm against gay marriage and my reasons are completely non-religious.

Currently, marriage consists of a default package of contractual rights given from one partner to another (e.g. default will, medical proxy) and I have no problem extending this to gays. In fact, this part of marriage can already be pieced together with a few legal documents.

Marriage also consists of laws which force single people to subsidize married couples, for instance the non-working spouse of a worker gets SS benefits that neither spouse paid for. Gay marriage supporters are in the unique position of thinking about this issue and recognizing the unfairness of it. But rather than advocating for fairness, they simply want to be allowed to join the favored class. I'll draw an analogy to the civil rights: think of an Asian American in 1960 saying "I'm not against Jim Crow, I just want Asians to be classified as White rather than Colored."

As a single person, I'm in the same boat as gay couples. Gay marriage supporters want to throw me overboard in order to join the favored group, forcing me to subsidize a slightly larger group of people. Why should I do anything but oppose that?

Marriage fairness (i.e., no subsidies), I'll get behind. Gay marriage, no.

[edit: I thought my last line was clear enough, but from the responses it apparently was not. I favor ending marriage, or at least ending the subsidies for it. I also favor ending the penalties for it, which apply in certain circumstances.]

<comment><USER12> Regarding the social security benefits...in actuality married people in the U.S. pay what's euphemistically called the _Marriage Tax_ , because the rules as codified actually require married people to pay more than if they filed separately.

Regarding the rest of your arguments, I suppose they work assuming an extremely weak social contract. Or at least, in my opinion it would require a very weak one. It's hard question to test in relation to marriage since marriage is a legally sanctioned relationship in all countries, but i am most certainly not well read on this topic.

<comment><USER3> That's true for some couples, but not all by any means. It also completely ignores the marriage subsidies.

According to the CBO, 51% of married couples received a marriage bonus, and only 42% paid a marriage tax. In total, $32.9B was paid in marriage bonuses, and $28.8B was paid in marriage penalties. Data is from 1993, sorry, a quick google search couldn't find anything better.

[http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=7&type=0](http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=7&type=0)

Note that in 2004, Bush eliminated the marriage penalty for everyone besides the rich, so I expect the numbers are more skewed now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone seeing 500 errors - S3 has all but died in the last few minutes. We are working with them to get things back up and running.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

<http://status.aws.amazon.com/>

</comment><comment><USER14> How long 'til it gets to the supreme court?

<comment><USER15> Heads next to the Ninth Circuit, which will doubtlessly uphold the ruling. Then it'll be on to the SCOTUS, which is a very different court from the '03 bench that ruled on Lawrence v. Texas.

<comment><USER16> Why would the SCOTUS want to get involved? Are they in the business of deciding whether state supreme courts are correctly interpreting their state constitutions?

<comment><USER17> Actually, had you actually read the ruling, you would have noticed that the primary foundation for the ruling was not the California state constitution, but the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses [US Constitution, Amendment XIV § 1].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Excellent news. I think gay people deserve the right to be just as miserable as us straight people.

</comment><comment><USER19> The system works!

<comment><USER20> no it didn't. The people lost.

<comment><USER21> He's getting downvoted, but he's right. The majority voted for this, but the majority didn't get what they voted for. "The System" DID NOT work for the majority in this case (although for the record, I'm very happy with the outcome).

<comment><USER22> At one time, the majority in the US supported discriminating against people based on the color of their skin. Do you _that_ should have been upheld also?!?

<comment><USER21> Jeez, read my comment. I'm happy it was overturned, so the answer to your question is obviously no. My comment was about a democractic system and how it doesn't always work to give the majority what they want. I never said the majority should get what they want or that they're correct when they have a majority.

<comment><USER22> Doh! (smacks self upside head). :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How did this leave the front page so quickly? Hm...

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't get scribd. Why wouldn't you link to the government website hosting this PDF or to a press report conveying this information? My eyes are bleeding from all the ads...

<comment><USER25> I had the same reaction, except that I found a bar that moves to be even more distracting than the adds.

Hitting full screen (in the middle of the bottom bar) and turning off autohide (move the right toggle up) made it usable for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> i wonder if the mormons try to get polygamy going amidst all that gay marriage talk

that would be interesting.

<comment><USER27> Only a subset of mormons (fundamentalist LDS). Also, I doubt they'd want to legally marry their wives: single mothers collect more benefits.</comment></comment>


EPA ends clean air policy opposed by fossil fuel interests - <AUTHOR> https://www.apnews.com/646836ad590c4230b730fc17cfbcb967/EPA-ends-clean-air-policy-opposed-by-fossil-fuel-interests <comment><USER2> Every oil/coal/whatever CEO and their family should be forced to live directly next to the refinery/plant/whatever.

It's only fair.</comment>


Show HN: Most mentioned movies on HN - <AUTHOR> http://www.hnstore.co/movies.html

<comment><USER2> Opinions on some of the movies from the list I've seen:

 _Idiocracy_ – Basically an ordinary comedy, with an above average plot, but overall nothing _that_ special or interesting. Overrated.

 _Fight Club_ – One of my favourite movies, perhaps in my top 10. Really loved it.

 _The Game_ – Another great movie from David Fincher, I love the mysterious atmosphere of his movies.

 _The Man From Earth._ – Huge disappointment, I never understood why people like this movie. It's basically one guy telling a predictable and boring story. One of the most overrated movies ever. (I mean overrated in subjective sense obviously.)

 _Traffic_ – One of the best movies about drugs and organized crime.

 _Inception_ – Above average but overrated, logically inconsistent, nothing really special about this movie. _The Cell_ is another movie where people enter someone else's dreams and even though it has only 6.2 on IMDB, I think I enjoyed it more. The depictions of the dreams were definitely more creative and looked more dreamy.

Of the top of my head I would recommend these:

* Something from David Lynch – Lost Highway, Blue Velvet or Mullholland Drive.

* Requiem for Dream

* Evil (2003)

* Sin City

* Crank – not very known, but wow, this is the best action movie ever.

* Elite squad – another great action movie, very realistic, borderline documentary.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any comments on _Mullholland Drive_? Perhaps I'm showing off my shallowness here, but that movie just seemed to be mostly random scenes, under the guise of being deep.

<comment><USER4> I need to watch Lynch movies a couple of times to understand them. The first round goes with just an excitement about the themes, the atmosphere, the music. On the second round I got more pieces together and the movie finally hits me on the third watch.

Good examples are Mulholland Drive, a movie about dreams and reality. And Lost Highway, a movie about denial and jealousy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> a. We seem to have pretty bad (or at least predictable) taste in movies.

b. The list is missing the two most important movies to HN: The Shawshank Redemption, which is about how you're never going to close funding until you give up on ever closing funding, and Ghostbusters, the greatest startup movie of all time.

<comment><USER6> HN is not a movie community so it seems rather pointless anyways (cue "HN is always negative comments"). Seems like a cheap way to grab amazon affiliate money and I find that unethical.

<comment> rkuykendall-com That's funny, because a few weeks ago somebody did the same exact thing but with books and no affiliate links. All the comments were about how he should add affiliate links, and that HN appreciates projects which make money.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you mean this discussion <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5485653>. It's about the same project actually. It didn't have affiliated links then.

Full disclosure: I'm the author.

<comment> rkuykendall-com That's brilliant. :D Perfect example of HN's contrarian nature. Looks like the commenters will never be happy, so keep the affiliate links and hopefully get a beer out of it at minimum.

<comment><USER6> HN is a broad community. If you use some kind of average or "what is the top most voted post" as your "what is HN's verdict" you will get different results every time.

It would be boring and a giant circle-jerk if every member had the same opinion. What would we discuss then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm, this doesn't seem very accurate... Tron has 360 mentions:

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tron&s...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=tron&start=0)

Some of them are split between "Tron" and "Tron: Legacy" so parsing this correctly isn't totally easy.

And don't you think "Star Wars" would have been talked about here at least once?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree. This is just an index of links to IMDB from stories and comments. I couldn't come up with anything better/more accurate.

<comment><USER8> Ah, that explains it. I couldn't believe Star Wars wasn't on the list. But nobody needs to link to Star Wars. It seems this only works for the middle tier of movie mentions. Anything that's really common currency will be missed.

<comment><USER9> I agree, though I can't think of a good way to fix it due to ambiguity in film names that aren't explicitly marked with "this is a film name".

With relatively unique names like Star Wars you could match the names as text strings. But that would lead to over-counting films like "Brazil" whose names are also names of other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No _Glengarry Glen Ross_?

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=glengarry](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=glengarry)

<comment><USER11> I ended up watching that movie on Netflix after reading some article about the Alec Baldwin speech popped up here on HN. Fantastic movie and fantastic cast. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It was funny to see the movie "Riot On!" on the list about the first start up I worked for. Here's the trailer: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQwoLYcbVmg>

</comment><comment><USER13> No hackers the movie? No zerocool? No emmanuel goldstein on his rollerblades in that terribad NYC nightclub (which sort of actually did exist).

<comment><USER14> It gets made fun of a lot, but personally I believe Hackers had the most realistic depiction of what hacking is like _to hackers_ of any movie. Definitely one of my favorites.

<comment><USER15> That's actually a good insight! It is like that sometimes, just with worse editing :p Here's an example of some guys hanging out and hacking a fun project over a couple days. The first video is the introduction, then in the second video they head to a club to talk things out (and drink :) and the third video is wrapping up the hacking session and a discussion of why their little project is crap haha. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxoig5yAKU&list=SP436FFA...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccxoig5yAKU&list=SP436FFA740BF3BC52) With better editing and soundtrack, a montage of this could be right out of that movie...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> how was this list compiled? by scanning for mentions of words like "primer", "surrogate", and "brazil"? or just by looking for links to movie pages on IMDB or amazon? because i imagine the first method would have a lot of false positives.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _the first method would have a lot of false positives_

Exactly. So this is just an index of links to movie pages on IMDB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258> needs another mention..

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't know what to make of this list. As mentioned in the title these movies are "mentions", and necessary doesn't mean that they are recommendations. Having said that if the movies aren't recommendation ( like say, what movie an entrepreneur must watch? ), does the mere mention of the movie means either author of comment is influenced by the movie, to use it as a metaphor for something he is saying or trying to say. In effect, Is a movie name being dropped in conversation by a HNer the movie might be more likable by you ?

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Good points! The idea is that if something comes up in discussions often then it's part of our collective memory. Studying and drawing inspiration from it seems valuable and interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've seen it mentioned a few times on HN, and would highly recommend 'Code Rush' which is missing from this list; it's a great documentary which covers Netscape (and more broadly the general bay area culture) around the time that Microsoft came to dominate with Internet Explorer, and Mozilla was being prepared for release as an open source project.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm somewhat bemused that The Social Network isn't on there somehow, despite the movie's misgivings.

</comment><comment><USER21> No Sneakers? Hm.

</comment><comment><USER22> Cool idea. I always use HN as a starting point for tech purchase. For example, I'm looking for a NAS and the first thing I'm going to do is search HN to see what other people are using. I would totally use this if you expanded to other areas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback and kind words! There's Stuff [1] page there for all the different things HNers link to. But as I'm only indexing links there's not that much data to draw reliable conclusions from. :(

[1] <http://www.hnstore.co/stuff.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm disappointed that Hackers isn't on there.

</comment><comment><USER24> You should add open source software tools, os's, or like someone said hardware (NAS, routers, servers, chips, etc.) that are mentioned too. On top of all these movies that are mentioned here. Great work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good idea! I like it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hi everyone, if you like, you can checkout the social graph among the characters of some movies at our page <http://moviegalaxies.com> . Enjoy :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool project! Love it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It expected Primer to be in there, but it wasn't.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_%28film%29>

<comment><USER27> Isn't it the eleventh?

<comment><USER26> Hah! Indeed it is, I mis-spelled it while searching. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd be interested to see an anime category (it's pretty much all I watch nowadays :/)

</comment><comment><USER29> True story: One of the entrepreneurs from Startup.com was my summer camp counselor.

<comment><USER21> I hope it wasn't the CTO guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does the HN community not talk about Pulp Fiction? This app must be buggy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. This is just an index of links to IMDB pages. Link to Pulp Fiction page was mentioned 2 times but both times more than 1 year ago. I do not show such entries to make TOP items a little bit more varied and current.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hey OP: I'd like to know if these are also streaming on Netflix :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks for the idea! Didn't think of it as Netflix is not available in my country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hey raimonds, great work. Nice clean use of bootstrap, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for your kind words! I'm afraid it's _too_ clean as it's almost vanilla Bootstrap. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > _The Game_

I just lost it :(</comment>


Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Anything? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/05/is_a_well_lived_live_worth_anything.html <comment><USER2> Good article. It seems incredible that, while we're evolving in a lot of fields, we're clueless(not all of us, but a great percentage of the people in the world) about what leads to a great life, what makes a life worth living.</comment>


SQL Pivot: Converting Rows to Columns - <AUTHOR> https://databricks.com/blog/2018/11/01/sql-pivot-converting-rows-to-columns.html <comment><USER2> I vaguely understand (on a theoretical level) why the syntax for pivoting in databases is necessarily convoluted, but it does underscore to me how spreadsheets have a great advantage for everyday data-exploring, at least when it comes to ease of pivoting.

(by "everyday", I mean working with datasets small enough to fit within a spreadsheet's limits, and aren't yet important enough to need the reliability/regularity that comes with importing it to a database)

<comment><USER3> The ability to use Excel as a "front-end" for other data sources is underrated. For all its warts, Excel is a great data manipulation and exploration tool.

<comment><USER4> Due to system limitations, I made a stats tracker for my team in AccessDB. Due to the awfulness of access, I made an excel&vba front-end that would push data to and pull data from access.

It's been working surprisingly well so far, with no reported issues

<comment><USER5> I'm curious what you found to be the brickwall for you when using Access?

<comment><USER4> The existing "solution" was a gigantic excel where people would put it times and names.

In Access, when you enter times, you have to use a specific format, (the datetime group specified by the Windows default) rather than just "23:40" or w/e. I've seen a hack where the hour and minutes are separate boxes, but it wasn't pretty. Just this issue was enough to make Access unappealing.

Access's interface is a bit unintuitive, and given that most people I worked with weren't particularly technically capable, I preferred to present them with the familiar Excel interface (and a few extra buttons), rather than teach them an application they've never used before.

Plus, the existing workflow already used Excel, so I hijacked their workflow and their routine wouldn't be modified much at all (introducing a completely new system would cause a lot of friction and pushback, but one or two extra buttons was fine).

<comment><USER5> Huh. Next time you can set the date format to "mm/dd/yyyy hh:nn" and you can enter 24 hour times with a date.

But I understand wanting to not disrupt an existing workflow too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish there was something like this in postgres. tablefunc is a lot more complicated than this syntax.

<comment><USER7> There are a couple ways to pivot in postgres, here is one that uses json functionality [https://gist.github.com/ryanguill/101a19fb6ae6dfb26a01396c53...](https://gist.github.com/ryanguill/101a19fb6ae6dfb26a01396c53fd3c66)

</comment></comment><comment> nevi-me I had a quick look at some online material on implementations of pivot, as well as what I consider my go-to reference [0] for Apache projects' SQL support (Apache Calcite).

Looks like each DB has a proprietary way of pivoting, and I couldn't find anything on pivot in Calcite. Does anyone know if the SQL impl of pivot was created specifically for Spark, or whether it'd be upstreamed to Calcite? The benefit would be that other projects that rely on Calcite for SQL support would also have pivot capabilities. I'm thinking of Apache Beam.

\- [0] [https://calcite.apache.org/docs/reference.html](https://calcite.apache.org/docs/reference.html)

<comment><USER8> This article enlightened me on the underlying logic, as well as some different implementations. [https://modern-sql.com/use-case/pivot](https://modern- sql.com/use-case/pivot)

<comment> nevi-me I was lazy to add its link, that's where I learnt about the proprietary implementations of various databases.

I wonder if we'll ever get an ANSI-2019 SQL version that tries to merge what various DB vendors have branched off and done. Maybe it already exists? [https://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/ansi-sql- standard...](https://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/ansi-sql-standards/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very nice. I've currently had to resort to MariaDB's dynamic columns for my purposes (much nicer than a traditional entity-attribute-value solution) but this looks even nicer. Is this a Spark-only thing?

</comment><comment><USER10> mySQL needs this as well. We do a lot of pivot style reports for clients and while we have it down to a bit of a science now the resulting SQL is a debugging mess and not terribly efficient. (though it still runs fairly quick)

<comment><USER11> I'd love to see this in Presto. It would make my life 1000x easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Off topic: the GPDR banner on this site is a good example of dark pattern. Scrolling into a webpage does not mean I consent collecting personal info about me.

<comment><USER12> Downvoting won't make it more compliant...

Edit: I thought we could discuss about dark patterns on HN. I was obviously wrong. Sorry for that...

<comment><USER13> The downvotes on the original post are probably because the comment is being seen as off topic. Sometimes comments like that are accepted, sometimes not, I can't say I've noticed much of a patter there other than they are far less welcome on HN than, for example, Reddit.

I usually play safe and reserve side-topic comments to a post-script after something more immediately relevant (and if I don't have something to say on the thread topic, keep them to myself).

The downvotes on this one are going to be because of complaining about downvotes!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Gameslab, a FPGA powered handheld game console - <AUTHOR> https://craigjb.com/2019/11/26/gameslab-overview/ <comment><USER2> That's a seriously cool project.

I love that retro game emulation has spawned this massive culture of super complicated and roundabout ways to replicate $50 consoles. It's everything I love about DIY projects in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I actually didn't originally intend it to be for retro game emulation, more for experimenting with custom hardware for each game and with 3D acceleration hardware. But, the idea of putting retro emulators in the FPGA fabric is so easy.

In fact, over the holidays, I'm working on porting some of the MiSTer FPGA retro emulators to the Gameslab: [https://github.com/MiSTer- devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki](https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki)

<comment><USER3> This seems Just the sort of thing that I need to make a physical version of my fantasy console.

It's 64k ram 8-bit avr instruction set and a blitter doing a variety of data formats. It's not quite ready for prime-time yet, but you can see some of it online. The virtual hardware registers can be seen at [https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/docs/io_registers.html](https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/docs/io_registers.html) It might be quite amenable to something like this.

<comment><USER4> How does your blitter compare to the Amiga blitter? [http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_gui...](http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node0119.html)

<comment><USER3> It's quite different for a number of reasons.

The read area and the write area are separate spaces. It is strictly main RAM to frame buffer.

It is pixel based instead of bit-planes, so a lot of the features of the Amiga blitter aren't required. The minterms , multiple sources and the shifter were great for masking and sliding the bits to the right place, but once you go to chunky pixels they aren't so useful.

It does pixel format conversions to convert various compact data forms to colour graphics. 8 pixels per byte in 2 colours, 4 pixels per byte in 4 colours, 3 pixels per byte (where each 3 pixel block can have 4 colours from one of 4 micropalettes), 2 pixels per byte in 16 colours.

It supports Cell modes were it can decode cells of pixels from data, mode 0 has 3x3 blocks described in two bytes each. Cells may have any two of 16 colours. mode 1 is quite similar to the NES tiled graphics mode with 8x8 cells chosen by index to a table and individually coloured and flipped.

I don't have a line drawing option but I was wondering about having some registers to accumulate with each pixel written and if the accumulators overflow the X or Y pixel position increments. It would add some rudimentary skewing for little cost.

A lot of it comes down to the fact that the blitter is doing much of the job of the display hardware in other systems. The frame buffer is the output device with no smarts at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those interested in that, Analogue will release the Analogue Pocket, a FGPA handheld console too. It will play Gameboy and Gameboy Advance games and you will be able to develop for it. There will be 1 FGPA to emulate the console and one another for development.

Analogue does great products usually so I can't wait for it.

(I'm not affiliated at all with them, I just love their products).

<comment><USER6> I'm worried the Analogue Pocket will be hard to get. At the bottom of the page[1], it says "Limited quantities will be available". If that means it will be limited like the NT and NT Mini were, that will be very disappointing.

[1] [https://www.analogue.co/pocket/](https://www.analogue.co/pocket/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Craig's project is awesome! Had a chance to interview him about it: [https://theamphour.com/469-an-interview-with-craig-j- bishop/](https://theamphour.com/469-an-interview-with-craig-j-bishop/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Chris! I didn't know you hang out on HN too :P

You're slowly becoming a software guy after all...

<comment><USER7> Someone had mentioned Contextual Electronics as a way to learn KiCad, so I got a notification about that. But yes, I also hang out here from time to time :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on getting it done.

Just mastering Ki-CAD is an accomplishment. I learned circuit design with P-CAD. And it was anything else but intuitive. Playing around with Ki-CAD reminded my of thise days.

Can you recommend a good Ki-CAD tutorial?

Can you elaborate a little bit on the mistakes you made and what led to the choices you made? E.g. first time read about Das U-Boot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! There was definitely a lot of learning involved--I wrote up some here: [https://craigjb.com/2019/12/04/gameslab- fails/](https://craigjb.com/2019/12/04/gameslab-fails/)

To be honest, I really don't know a good KiCad tutorial. I kind of just banged myself against it until I learned. But, I had previous experience with Eagle, Altium, and Cadence Allegro.

Das U-Boot is the embedded bootloader and is pretty standard for embedded ARM systems (and others! [https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/tree/master/arch](https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/tree/master/arch)).

On a dev-board prototype before, I had also used Buildroot ([https://buildroot.org](https://buildroot.org)) to create the minimal root filesystem image. This time around, I decided to use Debian since it makes installing packages I want much easier. For example, I can just apt-get install the USB wifi firmware packages instead of hunting them down and including in a manually generated image. It's still using a custom compiled kernel though, since I have custom drivers for things like the graphics hardware.

I'm trying to use Rust for as much as possible (I like Rust a lot). The STM32L0 runs rust, I bodged together a framebuffer driver in Rust, and the games in userspace are also in Rust. I'll post about the Rust framebuffer driver at some point.

<comment><USER8> Thanks a lot! I love that you are using Rust.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, Rust is great! I've used it on several production projects for work, but not for extensive embedded work before this. Embedded Rust is getting better and better!

Shout out to the Real Time For the Masses project (it's an RTOS) I used: [https://github.com/rtfm-rs/cortex-m-rtfm](https://github.com/rtfm-rs/cortex- m-rtfm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> zupa-hu > The FPGA fabric means that games and apps can bring their own unique > hardware to load into the fabric.

Curious, can you both execute code on the FPGA and simultaneously write other parts of it? Or do you have to write it in one go, than "start it"? And in the latter case, can you write it incrementally or do you have to erase it first?

<comment><USER9> Your question is hard to understand. FPGA logic fabric must be loaded at once. There is a method called partial reconfiguration, one can swap pieces of the logic design on the fly, but it's probably not the case here.

<comment><USER10> Partial reconfiguration is supported by the Zynq SoC's FPGA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> fake-name It's weird to see someone refer to a zynq as a FPGA.

Every time I've been involved with one, it's been basically a CPU with various accelerators for specific functions done in the fabric, with the design being CPU-forward. I've never seen anyone approach them from a FPGA-forward angle. Interesting!

<comment><USER11> The Zynq is definitely an FPGA. It is an FPGA with a hardened ARM core. 10 years ago, they had FPGAs with hardened PowerPC cores. Now that ARM has taken over, it makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, this was quite a treat to read! Do you have any recommendations to learn more about FPGA (and maybe not Verilog/VHDL, I'm thinking more about a SCALA based language). I always start with beginners tutorial but I always get super bored. Something about making LED drivers makes me really unmotivated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I always recommend getting hands-on for learning more about FPGAs. FPGA boards are cheaper than ever, and you have all different ones now. I'd say get a Lattice ECP5 based board (like this year's Hackaday Supercon badge). The open-source symbiflow toolchain works for these (Xilinx 7-series will be soon!).

With regard to Verilog/VHDL, you'll have to learn at least verilog at some point, but I stay away as much as I can. SpinalHDL (based on Scala) is my goto. Some people like the Python based ones like migen, but I like me some strong typing.

I have a couple of blog posts about starting to put together a Gameboy CPU on craigjb.com (not finished yet).

<comment><USER12> Thank you for the response! I'm definitely going to check out your Gameboy posts! Any other projects you recommend similar to that? I really like the idea of building something I can use.

<comment><AUTHOR> The ZipCPU tutorials section is also great! They include verilog, using verilator (for simulation), and formal verification. And, personally, I think learning formal verification early is great, since it will probably be used more and more.

It's verilog, but you're going to have to learn some anyway. All of the new- generation HDLs compile down to verilog, which then goes into the various synthesis tools.

[https://zipcpu.com/tutorial/](https://zipcpu.com/tutorial/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome. The case fabrication looks great. What materials and fabrication process did you use? I'm particularly interested to hear more details of how you made such a pro looking design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I did a video talking about the case a bit more: [https://craigjb.com/2019/12/06/gameslab- case/](https://craigjb.com/2019/12/06/gameslab-case/)

I had it fabricated for me by a company by Front Panel Express. In a DIY audiophile forum I saw people using them, and if they're good enough for audiophile gear, probably good enough for me :P

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Love the video. I love the brushed and beveled panel. I'll definitely look at something like this for some of my designs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A little late on the draw here, but this is a serious contender for submission of the decade IMO. FPGAs are one of the last frontiers of computing that I'm curious about, as the realtime requirements of audio processing make GPUs somewhat of a non-starter for this particular application of grid computing. Really impressed at seeing this level of thoroughness and polish. Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER15> I just ported my 3D engine to Raspberry, the latest (4) has a new, really good GPU! I'm looking forward to something like the compute module for the Raspberry 4 because then the mods community will port it to their handhelds, only problem is power, it uses ~5W so you need a huge battery!

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think 5W is too far off from what this thing draws under load. I have a 10,000mAh ~4.2V battery in it, and I get about 10 hours of life. The battery is clunky, 9.6mm thick, since it was originally intended for external phone battery packs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is an amazing Show HN. The best bit was "I did this because I'm lazy" I suspect not somehow. I did wonder why those chips were so expensive? I have a super limited knowledge of hardware so I was unable to figure it out exactly. Thanks again and I can't wait for more write ups.

<comment><USER17> FPGAs with large fabric are expensive because they're more useful than smaller FPGAs and because the number of viable chips that come from the fabrication process is smaller, meaning they are literally more rare and harder to make successfully. The most expensive FPGA devices can cost more than USD$30,000 per device (per chip.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is one of the coolest hardware projects I've seen! Can't wait to see the next post.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Or, a Gameboy emulator could load a Gameboy's CPU and peripherals into the FPGA fabric to "become" a Gameboy rather than emulating it in software."

Basically the holy grail of emulation... Not-emulation.

</comment><comment><USER20> > STM32L0 onboard runs embedded Rust firmware

First time I've seen a real project using this.

How far is embedded rust away from "prime time" you think?

Also, the STM32 is a system supervisor, did it really need an RTOS?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! Embedded Rust on STM32* right now is pretty good! A lot of consolidation has happened in the device crates and HAL crates recently, so I'm adjusting a bit. But, it's looking good.

I'm actually working on a post about restarting my firmware using the latest and greatest (I started working on this firmware over a year ago).

I used the RFTM real-time OS (RTOS) because it's super light-weight and handy for checking at compile time that my interrupt handlers don't cause conflicts. It's really a nice framework for any event-based firmware (a big chunk).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is amazing, I look forward to more posts! I'm trying to get into more hardware projects, stuff like this is very inspiring. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER22> Very cool. It would be incredible to see what some professional game devs could do with FPGA acceleration.

<comment><USER23> Not really a whole lot. FPGAs work best where you have precise timing requirements or _really_ wide signals.

Most game engines are about throughput and I don't think you'd see a lot of use for them, heck we had a hard enough time using the PS3 back when I was in the industry and that wasn't nearly as wide as a FPGA can be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I was going to mention the PS3 too. It was the most unique hardware of the generation and definitely took the longest for devs to adjust to and learn to leverage fully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You are a genius, and I am glad that there are many geniuses like u, to make our world more fun!

Good work!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is insanely cool, and must have been a massive undertaking! Awesome

</comment><comment><USER26> This is absolutely nuts! Congrats!</comment>


Court orders three H-1B opposition sites disabled - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142806/Court_orders_three_H_1B_sites_disabled

<comment><USER2> From my point of view the whole H-1B process is a mess.

What it boils down to is that companies are given the opportunity to hire foreigners who are used to much lower salaries under conditions where said foreigners will have lower job mobility. This means that companies have every incentive to hire people more cheaply than they can hire locals. _But_ in order to do so they have to put up a pretense of having tried to hire an American and have to swear up and down that they can't find an American to hire.

In short we're putting pressure on companies to lie and everyone knows it. However it is difficult to demonstrate whether any given company has, and it is very much _not_ in their interest to let accusations of it stand. Is there any wonder that we get conflict over this?

What I would prefer instead is a simple market based solution. Any company wishing to hire a foreigner can upon posting a bond for that foreigner. (To cover expenses if that foreigner poses a problem.) The foreigner has no obligation to their employer - if the foreigner wishes to leave a week after arriving for a better job they are free to, but the original company still is liable for the bond.

Under that system companies have no obligation to claim that they looked for a local. However they have a clear incentive not to hire foreigners. Any company that hires a foreigner regardless is demonstrating by their action that either this foreigner is exceptionally valuable (and therefore is a good addition to the USA economy) or else that there really is a lack of available locals to do this job.

<comment><USER3> My friend on H1B makes $80/hr, so not all of them are "cheap".

<comment><USER4> Plenty of them are. Here's a datapoint I can contribute:

Lucent in 2001 (yes, a very bad time). I'm 40 (although I look like I'm in my early 20s), making $80K.

My best coworker is a brilliant native of a Caribbean island; he got a EE from a respectable US university and was getting his Masters at night (showed me his MOSIS chip at one point).

For the job we're doing, in his own areas he's as competent and productive as I am. Immigration law requires the company to post his salary; he's making $45K.

If he was just getting paid what I was at my second job, the first one at a market rate, he'd be getting $63K (that's adjusted for inflation, but you should subtract some for higher health care costs (they've risen faster than CPI inflation)) and he'd be worth every penny.

He knew he was being exploited and wasn't happy about it, but it was useful experience and a good path to a Green Card, at least when he signed on (Lucent of course continued its decline and canceled the project we were working on, which was important enough that it canceled their future as well).

The near indentured servitude aspect of the H1-B system is reason enough to seriously reform it ... but as noted, the necessary docility of those who have one is too attractive to too many companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is a troubling attack on free speech. If there is a lawyer here who could comment it, or if someone reading this can provide helpful links, please do!

At the same time, I feel the article does not present sufficient information so I could make a personal judgment on the texts that caused the judge to make such a drastic decision -- does anyone know if copies or excerpts are available? Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER6> Wait. This is a libel lawsuit in the U.S., which means that they're suing because someone said something about them which is _false_. They then also want the legal contract that started this whole thing taken down because _they own the copyright on it._

Either this is atrociously bad reporting, or the judge is an idiot. Even though we're talking about New Jersey here, I'll put my weight on the first.

<comment><USER7> Libel doesn't have to be false, just damaging.

<comment><USER8> IANAL, and libel laws vary from state to state, but in the United States if something is true, it's not libel. However, not being true isn't necessarily the same as being false. Or, more specifically, not being provably true is not the same as being provably not true.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law> "...the truth should be an absolute defense against libel charges." "Also, the truth of the allegedly defamatory statement will always negate the claim (whether because the plaintiff fails to meet his/her burden of proving falsity or because the defendant proves the statement to be true)." The second quote implies a burden of proof upon the plaintiff to prove the statements false, although the main wikipedia article on defamation also mentions publishing with reckless disregard for verifying the veracity. Dunno if that second category applies in the US.

<comment><USER7> I stand corrected. Obviously, also IANAL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I checked out <http://guestworkerfraud.com/> which is still accessible. I would not have any problem if it were just against H1B or "guest workers", but reading through the first few posts it seems racist. For example "So much for "high-thinking Indians" - not only are they all frauds, they are all introlerant on top of it."

<comment><USER10> Even better, because Thailand apparently deported a few thousand, this site advocates the deportation of all Indian-Americans.

It's basically a hate site. I'm not sure if there are grounds for it to be taken down, but otherwise most of the posts sound like rants by some unemployed goof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >"Apex has an outstanding reputation in the information technology field," he said.

>In the filing, Apex said it "has had three consultants refuse to report for employment" as a result postings, according to legal documents.

Its reputation is good but three different people didn't "report for employment" (whatever that means) as a result of anonymous claims on the Internet? Apparently, somebody didn't think much of their reputation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Let's just say that Apex doesn't have a stellar reputation in other areas either. I personally would never recommend that anyone sub under Apex, but considering that Apex is already doing C&D, I won't go into details.

</comment><comment><USER13> can someone explain to me how a site can be disabled over something like this? I mean go ahead, order the content deleted, that's what the people suing should want right?

But killing a site over some "bad" information just seems excessive.

<comment><USER3> It's kind of scary that a website can be shut down just like that. I'm sure they will find hosting out of US jurisdiction anyway, but still, it almost seems like violation of freedom of speech. (p.s. I don't oppose H1B program)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not knowing the details of the judgement, a shut down seems a bit heavy handed and only more likely to bring scorn/attention to Apex (this despite the fact, I disagree with what these opposition groups are advocating).

On one hand I sympathize with Apex in that it seems fundamentally wrong that there are those who can attack you with impunity and anonymously online - particularly if they're lying about it. On the other, pursuing court action especially since it is unlikely that those running these sites have deep pockets seems like a PR disaster in the making (not to mention the fact that I think most readers take anonymous postings with a big grain of salt anyway - the legal suit for some will lend legitimacy to those false claims with many suspecting that 'the lady doth protest too much' and that their point may just be about revealing who those posters are to take retribution).

<comment><USER15> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect>

I didn't even know Apex existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> <http://www.vdare.com/sanchez/091227_tunnel_rat.htm>

The APEX rampage against "Tunnel Rat" began when an anonymous Indian poster who claims to work for APEX posted a copy of an APEX employment agreement that he asserted imposed penalties of up to $35,000 for quitting. He wrote:

"If you join a company (including any level between you and APEX) then pay $35,000 or face a law suit, $9,000 for legal, training and guest services when you quit. $35,000 if you quit in between a contract…etc. The legalities of the agreement are convoluted, abstract and can/will be used against you if you displease APEX Technology Group Inc. So once you sign that document you are at the mercy of the employer and much worse than a bonded laborer in India."

</comment><comment><USER17> Wikileaks time (once they go back to operations). This would be a good time to donate something.

Disclaimer: I do not particularly have an opinion for or against H-1B, but airing of dirty laundry(aka free speech) should be supported.</comment>


Push Harder & Leave Some in the Tank - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/contradictory-advice-push-harder-leave-some-in-the-tank/

<comment><USER2> Omet'iklan: I am First Omet'iklan, and I am dead. As of this moment, we are all dead. We go into battle to reclaim our lives. This we do gladly, for we are Jem'Hadar. Remember: victory is life.</comment>


Domains: 10 .me domains to rush for - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/domains/10-me-domains-to-rush-for-307815.php <comment><USER2> I expected number 1 to be "fuck."</comment>


Million dollar question: How do you eat an elephant? - <AUTHOR> http://dhirubhaism.com/million-dollar-question-how-do-you-eat-an-elephant/

<comment><USER2> Quote from the article...

"Answer: One bite at a time.

The answer is simple, but I am sure when you saw this question…you must have thought about many different ways and concepts of eating this elephant.

Actually this is the problem with most of us. We always try to achieve our goal (s) at once and when we don't become millionaire in week or month…we give up."

Actually, I was thinking whether I would want to grill it or fry it and what the side dish would be. ;)</comment>


New Fears on Italy Jolt Europe - The end of Euro? - <AUTHOR> http://matei.org/ithink/2011/07/11/new-fears-on-italy-jolt-europe/#.ThvlRCWeiN8.hackernews <comment><USER2> California is having trouble too - end of the Dollar?</comment>


The Rise of the Tech-Savvy Parent - <AUTHOR> https://thewalrus.ca/the-rise-of-the-tech-savvy-parent/ <comment><USER2> It's not clear to me why they should be "digitally superior" \- whatever that means. Kids just need to tap icons on their touchscreens nowadays. They seldom need to tinker with or troubleshoot computers.

Just spitballing here, but I'd expect peak tech-savviness to have occurred in the 80s and early 90s. If you were old enough to want to play resource intensive games released in the run-up to Win95, you'd sometimes need to free up memory by messing around with config.sys and autoexec.bat. Good times...

<comment><USER3> I'm seeing this right now, I grew up programming (started at 7), at 9 I was way more computer fluent than my 9 year old step-son is now.

I think it's simply that modern machines are (generally) so reliable that you never have to get under the hood to figure out what broke until you (rarely) do and then you have no conceptual framework for trying to resolve what is broken.

His trouble shooting process is handing it to me and telling me "it's not working".

I refuse to fix it unless he watches and pays attention to how I'm fixing it, slowly he's starting to understand that none of this stuff is magic.

I don't care if has no interest in computers generally but I think it's important that he realises the devices/technology he interacts with isn't just a magic black box.

He was interested in what I was programming the other day though so I told him we could build a website together as long as he chose the subject, wrote what he wanted to put on it and wrote the code with my supervision, inevitably it's going to be about Fortnite but I'll take whatever wins I can get.

Generally I'll ask answer his questions with questions, we had a discussion about IP addresses the other day (though he had know idea what an IP address was) because he was curious how one computer "talks" to another so I asked a bunch of questions "Assuming you had lots of computers how would you tell one from the other" "I'd number them" "Ok, so what if you wanted to replace a computer but keep talking to it as if it was the old computer?" "I'd make it so the numbers could be changed for each computer", "OK, so you have millions of computers with millions of numbers how would you know which number went with which computer?" "well...I'd name them but in a way that I could say this name belongs to this number", I was proud, he pretty much figured out DNS without knowing DNS was a thing.

So then I showed him the config panel for a web host and pointed out that his names and numbers where an actual thing.

<comment><USER4> > I think it's simply that modern machines are (generally) so reliable that > you never have to get under the hood to figure out what broke until you > (rarely) do and then you have no conceptual framework for trying to resolve > what is broken.

You have the same problem with cars. When I was 18 I was able to disassemble and reassemble my car and basically fix anything which broke. I even replaced the bodywork one time after a crash.

Today nobody even changes their summer-/winter-tires on their own anymore, let alone changing oil or renewing breaks.

You could also say that the machines became so reliable and so complicated that most people don't need too look under the hood and if they need it's too complicated anyway.

<comment><USER5> One issue with cars is that many of the simple tasks to cut your teeth on, can now require a lot of work. I had a car that you couldn't change the battery without removing a wheel and using a lift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I was a kid, my dad changed the oil in our cars, replaced brakes and spark plugs, and if it broke down he could at least diagnose it if not fix it himself.

Now I'm grown up, and cars have changed a lot. I have a tesla, and the only thing I can really service on it myself is the washer fluid. But it's also more reliable and doesn't need constant tinkering.

This was what came to mind reading this. I was of the "tinker" generation with computers, which have changed a lot since then. More reliable, more user friendly. I don't expect my children will have the same relationship with them I did, just like I didn't have the same relationship with cars my parents did. But maybe they will be the tinker generation of something else...

<comment><USER7> Sorry but I don't buy the argument...or perhaps _can 't_ is more appropriate?

There are only two things that genuinely preclude owners from servicing their own vehicles (Tesla or otherwise): a lack of will, and vehicle manufacturers refusing to sell technical manuals[1] to anyone other than authorized service shops.

Sure technology has appreciably advanced in 30 years, but the fact that technical details and know-how are scarce commodities in the age of information is _not_ a generational coincidence.

[1] [https://www.helminc.com](https://www.helminc.com)

<comment><USER8> A major difference is that our relationship to risk has changed. For example, working on some parts of a Tesla or some parts of a hybrid would mean working with high-voltage equipment. Although I know some of the principles, I am hesitant to be my own electrician. I'm very cautious just doing a jump start.

Of course, this has always been the case, people just accepted (or didn't understand) the risks. The capacitors in an old TV could pack quite a charge. Working on a roof has its risks. Early chemistry kits let kids blow stuff up. Apparently it was accepted more, before.

<comment><USER7> There's a weird relationship between electricity and self-confidence that I've never quite understood; suspect it's similar to the phenomena that enables math to be the only general academic subject in which it is socially acceptable to suck at, and/or related to a lack of "correction window" when tinkering with forces that propagate at the speed of light.

That being said, I'd posit that having a set of technical manuals at your disposal would dramatically change this perception to the detriment of certain lucrative service markets. Everything breaks; the real question is who has the capacity to administer repairs, and at what cost?

<comment><USER9> It's really easy to kill yourself if you go messing around in your house wiring. It's possible to be safe, but it's not on the same plane as messing with an unplugged washing machine or TV.

<comment><USER10> Barring fires it isn't that hard. Just turn off the circuit breakers for absolutely everything in the area and test the voltages just in case there is any capicitance before touching any wires. I am a complete neophyte with wiring but that part is simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Related, [http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use- co...](http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/)

Computers, for the majority of people, are now principally consumption devices, with some small amount of guided typing of tweets and chats (which I think I would argue is effectively consumption still, in much the way that I'd consider someone speaking on the telephone to be a consumer of that service).

I would not expect someone who watched a lot of movies to be good at making them; I would not expect someone who reads a lot of books to be a whizz when it comes to typesetting and printing; I would not expect someone who eats a lot of sandwiches to be competent at baking bread; I would not expect someone who watches Netflix and reads tweets to be good at configuring or programming the computer they're using to do it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have long thought the term 'digital native' is a sort of filter for people who are not actually technologists but avid consumers of mostly social platforms.

I (as a computer scientist) have never heard people actually working in tech refer to themselves as that.

<comment><USER13> It's a term and concept that came out of essentially sociology writing by a number of different people in the late 90s and early 2000s.

As the linked article suggests though, it's not clear it's a particularly useful term. The digital immigrants are often more tech savvy in at least many respects than the natives because they once had to be. And most of the people I work with in tech have had absolutely no problem fully incorporating the rideshare, social media, video/ music streaming, and mapping apps into their everyday lives even though many first encountered them as adults.

Are there age-based differences in media consumption etc.? Sure. But that's much more about generational preferences and habits than having grown up before the Web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The people who are "digitally superior" as those who take an active interest in learning the tech. They are young or old, and constitute only a small percentage of the population.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is something that I realized a couple of decades back, when my generation was supposedly the computer savvy one, after meeting a man in his sixties. While teaching computer programming to children I noticed that people tended to correlate screen time with technical ability, even when the child was a passive consumer. When I talk to children and youth today, I recognize similarities between the ones that I hold technical coversations with and my peers while I was growing up. I would not be surprised if the proportion of youth engaged with technology remains relatively stable from generation to generation.

</comment><comment><USER16> I guess the first generation of digital natives (and those older who caught up a bit later in life) will remain the only one who had to touch _relatively_ low level stuff (things as simple as a tree of folders and file endings).

<comment><USER17> I remember when one of the markers of being a technical person was using the word directory vs the word folder.

It seems arbitrary but I think the reason is that non technical users always feel more comfortable sitting at the exact level of abstraction of the interface without translating it into what it actually is, in computing terms. A folder is something you recognise, you put files in it, there's even an icon that looks like a folder - a file extension is the 'type' of the file and controls the progam that will open it. That's all you need to know.

I'm not sure those non technical users have got less technical with time, I just think the abstraction has moved up a level from the OS and file storage being something they have to think about regularly, to now apps mostly just handling storage and files for you and presenting the data through their interface (i.e. The concept of a file being separate from the app that uses it is going away somewhat).

The people that were dealing with folders and file extensions may seem now in retrospect to be more low level, but they weren't. That was just the interface/abstraction available to them at the time. I don't think they had a better model of what was going on underneath than someone today who just taps app icons etc.

<comment><USER16> I think language is not the best indicator, because I think one should obey the masses to keep communication efficiently, even if it hurts a bit sometimes. (drone = quadcopter, autonomous quadcopter = autonomous drone or something, app = mobile app, AI = ML/DL/if)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In my house, Mom and Dad are scientists, and quite tech savvy in our respective fields, including digital technology supporting our work. I also happen to have taken up programming and electronics as hobbies starting around 1981.

So I'm a tech savvy parent. Yet I've noticed some age differences. My kids are "quicker" at picking things up. They can notice a tiny detail on a big screen, and are more likely to recognize and remember the meaning of an icon, whereas I have to hover over it with my mouse pointer and hope for a tool tip to pop up.

So things like GUIs will seem more intuitive to them, when the real advantage is their ability to quickly distinguish a bunch of tiny abstract symbols.

</comment><comment><USER19> The same kids will run rings around most parents no matter how tech savvy when it cames to using social media. I know way more about computers and technology than my parents at the same time my dad knows more about wiring and plumbing where I sometimes draw a blank though YouTube helps. As my dad had to interact with bad plumbing and wiring in his life I haven't.

<comment><USER20> What exactly requires tech savviness about social media? The interfaces are designed to be simple and intuitively usable by the lowest common denominator. The platforms' front-ends expose almost nothing about they actually work, and there is almost no way for an average user to fix any problems should they occur, or to customize the closed-source app released in the walled garden. Does Instagram teach you about image codecs? Does the average user have any idea how the computer vision in Snapchat filters works? When YouTube suffers an outage, what can they do but shrug and wait until the people working there fix it?

That's exactly what the article above is saying. The kids aren't learning any problem solving skills. They may be better at following social media trends, knowing the latest memes, and finding the latest hot new app, but that has nothing to do with technical aptitude.

<comment><USER13> It's more akin to the fact that I'm woefully unaware of most new pop music coming out these days as well as many TV shows/films/video channels that cater to a younger audience. Given that I'm at least reasonably connected on social media I'm probably not as completely in the dark as some my age, but I'm certainly not pop culture savvy.

<comment><USER21> What is "pop culture" even? Its just a measure of targeted advertising towards the most ill equipped to respond to it productively or healthily. There was pop culture targeting your parents, yourself, your kids, and there will be something targeting your kids kids.

The fact you show no interest in it is more a reflection that you got through the dredge of surface level vapid entertainment all kids are subject to, come out on the other side, and realize "hey look, theres stuff thats a lot better / more interesting than that" and unsurprisingly gravitate towards that over the next iteration of entry level disposable culture targeting kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Consumer tech has been refined and dumbed down to the point where everything just sort of magically works, and since it's "magic" you never have to dive into the nuts and bolts. By making it so easy to use, we are depriving people of their opportunities to organically learn like people in my generation had to.

Exceptions exist.

* Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe - YouTube || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk)

<comment><USER23> In what way were people able to introspect into their computing devices for learning? By being able to poke around OS details or the filesystem?

Doesn't it sound more important to have an IDE + fluid building so people don't have to care about the details?

<comment><USER24> There's no such thing as "don't have to care about the details."

This is the biggest difference between then and now. In the 70s and 80s computing was all about details, all the way down to the hardware, which most developers understood at the register level.

8-bit amateurs grew up with simple toy machines. They learned enough detail to allow a natural transition to professional development on mainframes and minis - far more detail and more complexity, more of an OS to deal with, but with a recognisably similar outline.

Now most development is more like LEGO - clip moving parts to other moving parts in a slightly precarious way and hope nothing breaks.

It's a completely different way of thinking about computing - kit and cookbook based, with less space for original creation and problem solving. This is partly because the details are hidden and can't be changed, but also because the ethic of experimentation and creativity based on deep domain knowledge driven by curiosity isn't the same.

<comment><USER25> > There's no such thing as "don't have to care about the details."

The whole point of the many abstractions between the user and the hardware is so they don't have to care about the details.

<comment><USER26> Not caring about the details leaves us with people who can't fix simple issues and with applications that use way too much cpu, memory or energy than they really should. Sure, a lot of people don't care and just want to do the thing, but if you at all care that your computer that is 1000x as powerful as the one you had years ago, but doesn't really do a lot more, then you have to care. If you care about the users of your application and don't simply pass your lower development effort on to them in terms of performance cost, then you have to care. If you want to be able to fix your own issues, then you have to care.

Yes, the abstractions mean people can do more without caring, which in turn means more people can use them, but it comes at a cost too.

<comment><USER27> Performance is a business decision.

It doesn't come for free and ultimately other things might be more important.

<comment><USER28> If any performance gains from Moore's Law get canceled out by inefficient software due to Wirth's Law, then what's the point of all the work that we technologists are doing?

You can call it a business decision, but that basically means the tech people are doing the work and making our execs rich without actually creating anything that's more beneficial to humanity compared to the computer systems of 10 or 20 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's definitely a false equivalency being made in being "more connected" as meaning "superior."

Certainly younger generations will always be more accustomed to interfacing with technology (this will never change). But that doesn't mean they understand it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Get a raspberry pi and a couple of how-tos and you can watch your kid become addicted to making things sing with code.

</comment><comment><USER31> It has nothing to do with generation. About 5% of the population has the neurological wiring that makes a good programmer. The rest are just passive users of technology, just as clueless politicians and educators seem to think teaching Excel (a useful skill) somehow constitutes Computer Science.

<comment><USER32> Do you have a source for that 5% figure?

I mean, I suspect as much from my own experience, but I'm curious to know if there's actual research out there.

<comment><USER26> From my own personal experience, I believe that most people can learn most things, but they need the motivation to do it. I find that most learning material for programming (especially courses/lectures) don't do a very good job at providing motivation. I also believe that most teachers are simply not that good at teaching, sadly, which makes learning hard. For example, often you're given an example, but not enough information to get from a blank page to the example by yourself. I do believe that its mostly nurture and only a tiny bit nature (the nature is mostly in our tolerance for certain things, especially problems we face, rather than in our ability to tackle them).</comment></comment></comment>


Web Design, SEO and Internet Marketing - <AUTHOR> https://bestseo4u.co.uk <comment><AUTHOR> BestSEO4u is a full-service digital marketing agency providing high-quality, bespoke website design and online marketing services to businesses across all sectors.</comment>


Reflections of a Rehabilitated Corporate IT Worker - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kriscroaker/reflections-of-a-rehabilitated-corporate-it-worker-1abea067df2e <comment><AUTHOR> This is a blog article I recently wrote reflecting on my transition from a corporate IT office worker to working at a technology startup. I talk about the importance of focusing on your customers and explain how they are the fuel that drives our startup.</comment>


Huawei Braces for a Steep Drop in Overseas Smartphone Sales - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-16/huawei-braces-for-a-steep-drop-in-overseas-smartphone-sales <comment><USER2> Temporary problem. The Chinese market alone is the size of the whole West (US+EU combined)

It will be Apple who has the biggest decline over the next few years. (US and EU market is saturated - next Apple target market was China.)</comment>


RubyMine 6.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jetbrains.com/ruby/2013/11/let-your-ruby-shine-with-rubymine-6-0/ <comment><USER2> RubyMine is going to get some more consideration as we haven't seen a lot of movement from Sublime Text 3 in a while. Rapid developer and continuous releases like this give me real confidence in the editor (IDE).

</comment><comment><USER3> I started using emacs about 2 months ago (about 20 years too late, alas), and it has now completely replaced my usage of RubyMine.

helm-git-grep, projectile-find-file with helm completion, and a keyboard- controlled split-window layout have proven much better in practice for code navigation.

The sheer ease with which new editor functionality can be prototyped and implemented is hard to beat.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool. Jetbrains ran their big discount less than a year ago, so I'm still able to upgrade for free.

<comment><USER5> They generally only offer free upgrades for 90 days, if that.

<comment><USER6> The personal licenses (at least) have migrated to a subscription model. I bought RubyMine last Dec as part of their end of the world sale and can upgrade until April 12th.

<comment><USER5> Really? Am I not looking in the right place? I bought during the sale and they want $99 from me. Of course, I bought the full-blown IDEA, and not one of the derivatives.

<comment><USER7> IntelliJ IDEA is normally $199. The upgrade subscription fee is $99 a year. It's been this way for a long time now, and hasn't changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are all of the features of RubyMine included in IntelliJ IDEA? I've never really been fully clear on that, and I love PyCharm--but given that I use Python, Javascript, Ruby, etc., I'd rather just get the one product than need PyCharm and WebStorm AND RubyMine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me try and answer this for you.

All functionality from the mentioned products would be available through IntelliJ IDEA plugins, however some features (really few non-essential) may be temporarily unavailable due to newer or older versions of the IntelliJ Platform. It is worth noting that the plug-ins are not sim-shipped though, so there is some delay.

Let me address now your specific situation as described above.

IntelliJ IDEA 13 will be released very soon. It will include the features from the recently released "smaller IDEs." Another point is that you do not need WebStorm. All WebStorm features are available in PyCharm and RubyMine or can be installed as plugins. Again, the plugins are not sim-shipped and will be available sometime after IntelliJ IDEA release.

To recap: IntelliJ + plugins cover all functionality that all our IDEs provide. On the other hand, dedicated IDEs are convenient being more lightweight, offering a simpler UI and faster performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Been using RubyMine for a few years now and am convinced it's the best editor for Ruby development (at least for me). It just offers too many features (e.g.: built-in debugging, method click-through) that users of vim, emacs, etc. are missing out on.

<comment><USER10> I totally agree; RubyMine is my 'home base' when working on Rails apps, because its debugger beats anything I've seen for ruby/rails especially, easy to run server/tests/console under any environment, the best code completion for ruby I've seen, tons of smart navigation options, refactoring right-click 'run this test/spec' feature, etc etc.

I still use ST3, TM2, and from time to time other editors whenever I want... but RubyMine, being a complete IDE, does so much more than those tools.

Managing your product in RubyMine doesn't preclude using other editors alongside it for more intensive _code editing_ sessions, if desired.

<comment><USER10> I forgot to add why you would want to do that: because when judged just on the merits of being a well-behaved app that adheres to OS X conventions, it is awfully, terribly, horribly bad (as are most Java GUI apps).

Most of its menus are not really OS X menus at all, they are transient floating windows with wrong behavior. It doesn't have normal windows -- some can only be floating windows, but they float over some windows and not others. You can spend hours tweaking the keyboard shortcuts, but you will never get them quite sane. Text drag and drop isn't right. Tools like Typinator and multi-clipboard managers don't tend to work well with it. It doesn't interact with the system pasteboard well.

In short, as a Mac app, it's totally gross. But as an IDE, it is very powerful. Using it is a pain if you really want a nice Mac tool, but if you think about it the same way as you think about logging into a remote Linux server to do some work, or doing some task in Windows in VMWare Fusion, it's not that bad.

The area where is falls short the most is the actual editing of code, because (at least for me) that is a long, iterative task, where the OS conventions and staying true to the standard ways of doing things are most important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some more details on what's new here: [http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/whatsnew/index.html](http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/whatsnew/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Congratulations! RubyMine is improving significantly each release. I'm especially thankful for the support of leading-edge Ruby, Rails, and now Stylus too.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a good upgrade - I installed it an hour ago after getting an email from JetBrains (because I have a subscription).

I like how the I is cleaner/sparser, with the hot button in the lower left to make less often used tools visible.</comment>