The $80 web development workstation - <AUTHOR> http://skofo.github.io/blog/the-80-dollar-web-development-workstation/ <comment><USER2> Honest question here: Why would anyone ever think OS X has "world-class interface design"?

It's missing basic interface features that have been bog standard in Ubuntu/Windows for years, like any sort of proper window management. Hell, the maximize button actually _doesn 't work_\- it has such inconsistent use that you have almost no hope of actually getting what you want out of it. To get even decent window management, you have to buy software off of the app store.

Then, you have the fact taht you still functionally have a folder-based OS, which feels a greater need to present me with buttons to alter the view of a given folder, how icons are arranged, etc- all useful things no doubt, but things you don't change on a per-folder basis that often- while literally not having an "up one level" button. At all. You either have to know the keyboard shortcut, or you have to go to the Go menu. The back button isn't always dependable for this interaction(especially if the finder was just opened), so of course this just screws the whole pooch.

Seriously, the most I can get anyone to offer as to what makes OS X such a great operating system, is that it's Unix with no driver problems. If that's the most we can claim, can we stop acting like the interface design is halfway decent? Windows Vista had better interface design than this. That's just sad.

<comment><USER3> As a long time Mac user, I never use the zoom button. It rarely does anything useful. And Finder really needs a Go Up button, as you say. So those are two valid points you raise.

I'll try to explain what I like about the Mac and what bothers me when I use Linux. Since you mentioned window management, I'll focus on that, comparing it to Ubuntu 12.

1\. Window resizing in OS X is way nicer. It's actually possible to resize a window with a scrollbar from the lower right (on Ubuntu, the click target is literally one pixel wide). Resizing from the left edge doesn't result in weird tearing and graphics artifacts like it does in Ubuntu and Windows. The command key allows you to drag, resize, and do other interactions with windows without bringing them to the front. OS X also supports centered and fixed-aspect ratio resizing (shift and option keys); if this is possible on Ubuntu I couldn't find it.

2\. The way hiding / minimization works in Ubuntu is very confusing to me. There doesn't seem to be a way to show all the minimized windows for an app, except for the weird and jarring Exposé knockoff that you get when you click on one of the icons in the Launcher.

3\. Workspaces in OS X are much nicer. To move a window to another workspace in OS X, I just press it against the relevant side of the screen, or swipe up to enter Mission Control and drag it there. On Ubuntu, you can't drag windows to another workspace; you can instead use the context menu or press control- alt-arrow, which causes the window to disappear with no indication of where it went.

4\. It's hard to distinguish the foreground window from other windows in Ubuntu. The only thing that seems to change is the titlebar. Even the text selection color is the same for foreground and background windows.

5\. Focus stealing issues in Ubuntu are rampant. Click on a slow launching app like LibreWriter; when it finishes launching it will jump in front of the window you are currently using, and steal the keyboard focus. This happens occasionally on OS X and it bugs the hell out of me. I don't think I could stand an OS where that is the default behavior.

There's certainly some places where I find Ubuntu to be nicer, and some places that OS X falls down. My overall impression, though, is that OS X is more polished, and that Ubuntu has more clumsy knock-offs of OS X features.

<comment><USER4> One problem here is that you can't really compare OSX to Ubuntu because Ubuntu is not a desktop environment. It has a default desktop environment, but it isn't itself one, and you can swap in another effortlessly and there are typically a wealth of customization options. I'm using XFCE, and I can drag windows to other workspaces just like you, don't have the focus stealing issue, etc.

<comment><USER3> I've also tried Xubuntu (= Ubuntu + xfce) and I preferred it to Ubuntu, although Xubuntu's window resizing is even more busted.

Your post prompted me to give it another try. I found that you can drag windows between workspaces in the "mini workspace viewer" in the upper right, which is definitely an improvement over Ubuntu. However, you can't move them by simply pressing the windows against the side of the screen.

The focus stealing issues are the same as in Ubuntu. Start launching an app and switch to another window; the app will jump in front when it's done launching. Argh!

<comment><USER5> In XFCE, you _can_ move windows by pressing them against the side of the screen. Go to Settings, WindowManager, Advanced. Click "Wrap workspaces when dragging..." and choose your desired edge resistance.

However, I prefer to re-map CapsLock to <Hyper>, and define <SHIFT>-<HYPER>-Up to move window to workspace up, and so on.

Can't help with the stealing, sorry.

<comment><USER3> Hmm...I found the setting and it sure looks promising. I can switch between workspaces by moving the mouse cursor, as long as I am not dragging a window. If I am dragging a window then it refuses to switch.

Anyways thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article leaves out a key factor of why I've never committed to Linux full time, and why I wouldn't buy an $80 laptop to run linux.

I have 1 laptop, and I don't just use it for development. I've tried over and over to use Linux as my primary OS, but every time the sheer jaggedness of the GUI experience, when I'm doing non-development (I guess normal consumer) things, bugs me non-stop until I switch back. It's like switching from Ruby to C++. C++ is amazingly powerful and has great uses, but ultimately Ruby is a lot more enjoyable to use.

I think it's just a personality difference. If you're comfortable in the nitty gritty of linux, more power to you! But you're not going to convince me linux is better because you're can change the window system or [insert some other component I wouldn't care to change]. And you're not even going to convince me you're much more efficient. The arguments of efficiency and customization are always about low level details that I don't need to care about, and that play no part in good software engineering. [This is about the scope of web development, I love linux in different fields such as embedded systems. Again though, it comes up frustratingly, excruciatingly short as a general use OS]

<comment><USER7> It's popular to hate on Ubuntu, but I personally love it and its UI. I've used Ubuntu since 11.04 and run 13.04 on my personal laptop (for development and day-to-day stuff). I'm a sucker for pretty things like translucent title bars and snapping windows to full-screen, but I also love how easy it is to develop with Linux (as opposed to Windows). Everything is usually a single command away on the command line (sudo apt-get install _blank_ ) so it's easy to install new libraries or programs for development.

It may not be for everyone, but it definitely is possible to use Linux without having to install and fiddle with new window managers or file explorers or all the nuts and bolts. I've never even really had driver issues on my laptop now that Ubuntu has become this mature.

<comment><USER6> Maybe I should try it again, but last time I used it, I couldn't get programs to just work. I don't want to hate on ubuntu, I liked a lot about it, but so often you can't just install and use something, you have to do a bunch of fiddling.

Last time I used it, I couldn't get Dropbox to install correctly. Sublime text would always open in the default spot and with the default window size rather than where I closed it. There are all of these very minuscule problems that add up to a very agitating experience. That's why I said it comes up excruciatingly short, I feel like Linux is almost the best OS on every level, yet on every level (above the command line) there's some little thing that's irritating.

<comment><USER8> If you've been programming for a while, modifying software isn't as scary and intimidating as you'd think.

For exmple, I had wpa_supplicant always crap out at a few coffee shops here in LA. It tried to associate but didn't wait long enough.

I ran it with the "-v" option and saw a line that said something like:

"Waiting 5 seconds".

I downloaded the source code and searched for that message:

grep -r Waiting * | grep second

I got 5 results or so. I opened up the code and I saw a line like this, right above the debug message.

timeout = 5000;

I added a 0 (making it 50 seconds) and saved the file. I ran ./configure && make and killed /usr/bin/wpa_supplicant, then used my copy and like magic, it started working. Go me!

I think any average non-wizard programmer could have probably done the same. I didn't have to know all any big-picture detail of wpa_supplicant's design nor did I have to know the 802.11[anything] protocol. No need to do packet dissection or anything like that.

I looked at the screen, I grepped for where the problem was and I added a 0. Fixed.

It took all of 20 minutes or so. A lot less time then the productivity I had already lost by putting up with the issue in the first place. [1]

Those kinds of experiences are the kind that make me stick with linux.

I have an identical problem with the same networks on my s3. I'm guessing it's because of the same thing. But my stock install of the developer-unfriendly OS has made the barrier to doing the same process much much higher.

I had a different, but also easily solvable problem on a MBP once in 2012. I tried the same process. But the man pages were half a page long and dated 10 years ago. The developer documentation was non-existent, the source code was inaccessible, and everyone that was experiencing the problem were unsophisticated users who recommended things like "going to the mac store".

Basically, I was stuck with the problem. I would have had to have been in my top form hacking zone to even find out what and where to mod; and then I'd have to write assembly to fix it; using tricks to maintain byte alignment, function pointers, all that noise.

After a few experiences like that I realized the machine in my hands was a sophisticated consumer appliance.

That's nice. But what I really wanted was a "feasibly reprogrammable" computer.

\---

[1] Here's another example: I had an idea for a way to switch application windows where you type in string matches of the window names, all these weird UI ideas... The problem was I couldn't program in X - I had no idea how to do that.

Good thing is that I didn't need to. Because of the openness of the system, I was able to execute my idea with a perl script; calling programs to move around and manipulate windows.

The existing tools gave me enough control, power, and information, in order to execute this sophisticated idea; and all without having to learn xlib (which I intend to do one day). It's become part of my must-have list for my long-term environments. Here's the link [https://github.com/kristopolous/alttab](https://github.com/kristopolous/alttab) . I still don't know exactly how to create an x window.

I'm convinced that although initially daunting, the "here's the blueprints" philosophy of linux actually makes sophisticated ideas simpler to execute, however counter-intuitive that sounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I ran Linux on the desktop for almost 20 years, till recently taking a Rails job where EVERYONE used Macs, and finally bought a MBP. This refrain, "OSX is Unix," seems to be very common, but I'm not feeling it. As I just tweeted today: "How much 'Unix' is in OS X when I can't use CTRL-s to freeze the terminal? Pfft." For something that's supposedly got all the power of Unix, it sure doesn't seem to expose much of it to me.

Most things are pretty locked down. That's not Unix-y. Yes, most defaults are pretty descent, but if you want more flexibility in your environment, there MIGHT be a 3rd-party tool for it, and it may even work, but if it does, it'll cost $20. It's like the world of Windows about a dozen years ago. Maybe in a few more years, this situation will improve.

I miss Linux. And, yeah, I know I can supposedly run it on a MBP, but I know that there will be nothing like the (nearly) flawless power management and screen switching capabilities of just running OS X, so I make do.

<comment><USER10> As someone who runs OS X day to day, but still loves a traditional unix desktop to get work done, I can see where you're coming from. In my experience you have a couple of options for getting the best of both:

1\. You can run XQuartz full screen, and can even run a nice wm like xmonad. This isn't perfect, but isn't entirely bad.

2\. If you have VMWare, you can just run your workhorse of choice in a convenient vm. Full screen VMs under 10.8 are actually pretty great when you're just on the laptop - you can just three finger swipe from OS X into bsd/linux/whatever and then back again.

I personally like the VMWare option, since it means that OS X gets to do all the power management and all of that, and there's no fiddling to do in the virtual machine to make things work with the hardware. And you totally own the vm environment, so you can do whatever you like to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently chose to setup my old Thinkpad X41t with something fairly similar:

\-- antiX 13 "base" with the Debian "stable" source list: [http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)

\-- I3-WM as the window manager. Needs to be installed separately. [http://i3wm.org/](http://i3wm.org/)

\-- Conkeror as the keyboard-driven browser: [http://conkeror.org/FrontPage](http://conkeror.org/FrontPage)

The reason for using antiX/Debian rather than Arch is that I have no need to live on the bleeding edge. Once I've set things up I don't want them to break. I3 is at least as good -- probably better -- than ratpoison that I used to use earlier. The ability to quickly switch between "stacked", tabbed and full screen windows works great. Whether Conkeror is superior to Firefox with Pentadactyl I'm not yet sure of -- subjectively everything seems to load faster, but you do need to do some extra customization if you are going with Conkeror. Of course, that is also one of its selling points.

</comment><comment><USER12> Really? Are we still talking about how OS X doesn't give you "full control over the system?"

Given the popularity of Macs in the developer community, it's pretty clear that you have as much control as you desire—Unix has incredible power.

And if you still somehow feel that OS X is actually constricting you (rather than just hiding advanced settings in the command line), you'd never be able to run Linux on a Mac. No, never... [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook)

As for the price component, if you're making your living off a computer I surely how you can afford a decent one.

<comment><USER13> > Really? Are we still talking about how OS X doesn't give you "full control > over the system?"

Well, it doesn't. Hence the reason for your need to put quotes around "full control over the system." Because, in fact, you don't. And problems I've solved in the past on Linux are still problems to this day on OS X.

> As for the price component, if you're making your living off a computer I > surely how you can afford a decent one.

That's fallacious at best. This ignores people starting out, or in different locations. Not everyone is being handed a MBA and 27" monitor at their plush new SV job. It's useful to be reminded sometimes that while it's nice to have a high quality laptop, you don't need the latest and greatest Apple device to get stuff done.

<comment><USER12> > Hence the reason for your need to put quotes around "full control over the > system."

Or maybe I put quotes around it because I don't agree with that assertion and it's a _quote_ from the article...

> And problems I've solved in the past on Linux are still problems to this day > on OS X.

Can you give me an example? I'm genuinely curious...

> This ignores people starting out, or in different locations.

Yet the author certainly could get a MBA, as he specifically references having one.

<comment><USER14> >Can you give me an example? I'm genuinely curious...

Try getting connectors to MSSQL working properly (in various languages) on either OS. It's annoying as hell on Linux, damn near impossible on OSX (without cheating using ODBC instead of native drivers).

<comment><USER12> ODBC doesn't seems like cheating to me.

I can understand why you'd use Windows if you're using a Microsoft stack. At that point, there's no saving you.

<comment><USER14> ODBC connectors don't offer the same suite of functions that native MSSQL might for a given language. This was annoyingly true for me at my last place of employment. MSSQL/T-SQL horsecrap for "BI" since everyone "knows" MSSQL is better.

As usual, these things are the decisions of the architects, not the analysts. As such...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Come on, we can do better than that. This is not to besmirch Apple or any silliness like that, my comment here is about this view point.

The "de facto standard?" This view is probably common among programming hipsters but its hard to take seriously. There is a world out there besides Apple and RoR that is not just enterprise slog ...

As far as the $80 machine ... I mean ok ... If you are on a serious budget but ... If you are a technologist, I don't see the point. But it is cool to note that for those of us that need it, there are good machines at economical prices.

But if we all want to be serious programmers, can we move on from this hipster phase? The funny thing is the Apple is 100% not in line with supposed precepts taken as "de facto" in the hipster community (open source, over preoccupation with github, standards, open, portable, etc)

<comment><USER16> >The "de facto standard?" This view is probably common among programming hipsters but its hard to take seriously.

I didn't realize the entire web developer community was comprised of only "hipsters", whatever that word even means now.

<comment><USER15> Certainly not, but people that hold onto these kind of views are ... It's hard to deny the existence of this "culture" that has popped up that seems to dominate the conversations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The trackpoint is like Vim. At first you find it inconvenient and you try to avoid it. Once you learn it and start being proficient in using the trackpoint you start noticing how efficient it becomes, no need to move you hands of the keyboard in order to quickly navigate the cursor, after which you quickly return to typing. Now you have gotten used to the trackpoint and using another machine without a trackpoint gives you that 'I want to navigate the red cap' feeling, which is the same as being in a non Vim text editor and stopping yourself from using the hjkl keys from navigating.

<comment><USER18> That's probably the reason why I could never get used to a non-Lenovo laptop. I'm just way to much accustomed to the trackpoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yes switching workspaces is such a pain on OSX... come on, you just swipe with your fingers. Sure you can do pretty much the same on any linux distro, but that doesn't mean it is not 'seamless' in OSX.

We can all agree that windows is just not suited for Rails development, but whatever floats your boat is fine of course. I like crunchbang linux a lot, it is very fast and makes you feel smart. But when it comes to something I have to make my living on, I'd rather go with something that is 1. stable 2. has a solid support in terms of applications (photoshop, sketch, etc) actually begin built for it. And, for now, that means I'd rather work in OSX and on a Mac.

Then again, nobody cares.

<comment><USER20> Workspaces? What workspaces? No, having a bunch of full screen apps does not count.

<comment><USER21> Am I getting whooshed here? You can definitely have multiple workspaces (with multiple windows in each - not just fullscreen apps) and switch between them by swiping...

<comment><USER20> Oh, okay, I just figured it out.

[http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_use_spaces_mac_os_...](http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_use_spaces_mac_os_x_lion)

That was completely non-discoverable though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why oh why would "The de facto standard platform for web development is the Macbook"? Web is browser interpreted, last time I checked safari was not the most used browser (even it it has port for windows) [http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)

"especially among Ruby on Rails developers"

why? is there any feature tied to the macosx that makes it worth to pay the mac tax??? or even to the hardware (that it's a wintel platform (and can be have for way less money) since apple decided to abandon IBM cpus?)

<comment><USER22> On the other hand I'm happy to discover I'm not the only one loving thinkpad hardware, even if I can't find a difference between the IBM and lenovo interpretations...

<comment><USER23> Wouldn't that be because Lenovo actually built Thinkpads for IBM? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think the greater point here is the CLI first philosophy - it's faster, and more flexible, even on "lesser" hardware.

For example, I treat my Mac nearly the same way with a few pertinent replacements - Vim for editing, Slate for window management, etc.

You could likely do the same in Cygwin on a Windows box.

<comment><USER25> To me the most important factor for developing on a laptop mentioned in the article is the use of a tiling window manager.

For me an incredibly common task in web development is to have a web browser and 1 or more terminal windows tiled horizontally, side by side, in an [ A | B ] or [ A | [ B | C ]] configuration, where A is a web browser, and B and C are terminals.

In order for this to work for me on a screen resolution <= 1920x1080, the ratio ( width of A ) / ( width of screen ) should be dynamically adjustable using a single key combo, without causing window overlapping. If this ratio is fixed, and cannot be dynamically adjusted by the window manager, I experience one or more of the following problems at any given moment:

1\. the web browser window is too narrow, causing wide documents to be clipped and a horizontal scroll bar to appear.

2\. A terminal window is wider than 80 characters, causing unnecessary screen area to be consumed which could be better allocated toward the web browser.

3\. A terminal window is less than 80 characters in width, preventing the entire line of code from being displayed.

To me Linux is the ideal laptop OS because it's the easiest OS to install a tiling window manager on, and a tiling window manager is what maximizes the platform's primary constraint: small screen area.

<comment><USER26> Tiling window managers don't maximize the use of small screen area; they ensure you'll almost always be using a fraction of the screen instead of the full screen.

Overlapping windows are the thing that maximized the use of a small screen, because they let you dedicate as much or as little of the screen to any given application when its window is on top.

What you are after, rather, is an efficient way of having the entirety of the windows of multiple apps on screen simultaneously. That's a slightly different problem. I personally get by with a combination of cascaded windows[1] and maximized windows with quick keyboard window switching.

[1] When you cascade windows such that the bottom left corner of each window forms a diagonal line across the bottom left edge of the screen, you can quickly select whatever window you want with a mouse, usually more efficiently than with a task bar, since the application identity is far more obvious when you can see a rectangle of its contents. And with choice of where each window is in the cascade order, you can get usable data out of multiple windows simultaneously.

<comment><USER25> I have found cascading to be an unhappy medium in the past. In awesome-wm, I'll tap [Win+Space] to toggle between 100% overlapped (fullscreen with unoccluded task bar) and 0% overlapped (multi-column horizontal). [Win+J] and [Win+K] cycle windows. [Win+H] and [Win+L] resize the width of the primary column in a multicolumn layout.

So let's say I have a terminal window with VIM, and a web browser with a tutorial or documentation open up to the left of it. I quickly need to scroll the web page down to continue the example, BUT the VIM window is currently focused. Assuming the web browser can be scrolled using [J] and [K], I'll simply tap [Win-K, J, Win-J] to accomplish this task while avoiding modifying the layout or leaving the home row to use a pointing device. If I don't actually need to display multiple columns at the same time, I just press the change layout key to stop using a multicolumn layout.

So as a VIM user I've been very happy with this setup in awesome-wm for the past 2+ years, but if you wish to recommend an alternative I will definitely give it an install.

edit: I was able to write a new layout function for awesome-wm which implements diagonal cascading in the manner you described and retains my keybindings. I definitely agree that cascading makes it bluntly obvious which window is the currently focused one. I'll have to play around with it more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > The T42's touchpad is hardly usable for productivity. Disappointingly, so is > the iconic red nub.

I agree the touchpad leaves much to be desired, but I've found the nub to be fantastic. With one index finger on the nub, and two thumbs on the mouse buttons, my hands never leave the keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER28> The T42 was a really solid pre-Lenovo ThinkPad that had significant mindshare among tech nerds when I arrived at MIT. It was my machine in college and the keyboard was amazing. I'd probably still be using it if one of the fans hadn't died around year 4. Pretty as Macs are, and awesome as the glass touchpad is, I still miss that ThinkPad keyboard.

<comment><USER29> Lenovo made the T42 too, they were just the silent manufacturer at the time with IBM putting on the branding. I'm not sure of the distribution between IBM and Lenovo for the design and QA aspects, but IBM definitely controlled much of that too.

<comment><USER30> idk about the T42, but sometime between the T22 and the T60, things definitely went downhill. So between that and anything newer only having a shortscreen, I recently opted to upgrade to a T61 that I should be able to keep going for quite some time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sometimes it's fun to see what you can do with older hardware. I got an old HP Laptop for free (DV6409US) and decided to turn it into my 2nd Laptop for Startup Weekend / Hackathon events. I put in 4GB of Ram for $60 and installed Windows, Linux, and OSX just for the hell of it. The Windows Install is Windows 8 (ala Bizspark) and currently runs a BitNami DjangoStack with Aptana Studio 3 and Notepad++ (Web Dev), as well as the free Visual Studio 2013 Dev Suite (just messing with that for now). The Linux install is Ubuntu Desktop 12.0.4 LTS and I use it for Design with Gimp and Inkscape. The OSX install is an older osx86 release of 10.5.2 (Leopard) and that was just more for fun, not really used for Dev or any work because it's such an old version and will not run any recent versions of Xcode. The only real problems I had were with WIFI and USB Support on the Linux / OSX front (but I got those fixed). I use a ThumbDrive as my Code / Graphics Repository and just boot between OS's depending on what part of the project I'm on. With this $60 Frankenstien I can actually build some pretty good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER32> The author mentioned using "Chromium with Vimium". For someone wanting easy keyboard shortcuts (like Vim) for a browser, I'd recommend luakit.

It's a webkit based browser, scriptable (or written with?) lua, along with vim style navigation (eg, ":open www.google.com" to go to google).

afaik, it's also available in the arch core (or extra possibly) repositorys, which means no fiddling about with the aur! (good news)

<comment><USER33> Turns out it's in arch community.

Note: AUR isn't really that bad, as long as you install a package manager that handles it (like yaourt).

<comment><USER32> ah, my mistake, I didn't check.

mm, It's still (slightly) more effort, and more prone to breaking than pacman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> You shouldn't be looking for bargains for your developer hardware. You should pay for what you want, not just for what you need. You spend a lot of time using this for your daily tasks, and it's worth it.

<comment><USER35> Why does everyone always have to get what they want and not just what they need? I might want a $50,000 car, but I don't need it - this is just sad that people feel they should just always get what they want every time. I applaud the guy for realizing he didn't need to spend $1000.

<comment><USER36> Unless you make money driving, then that's a false comparison. While I don't think "want" is completely necessary, there's merit to the point that if you are making money off the machine and use it daily, it's worth spending some extra money to get something you want. That may be an $80 Thinkpad, but it may also be a $1500 MacBook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I would jump ship immediately to Linux full-time if someone developed a really good alternative to Photoshop. Something that's cross platform compatible. You have a PSD file? You can open it with GIMP (as an example). Oh you have a GIMP file? You can open that with Photoshop.

Right now, I have way too many people who deal with Adobe and for some stupid reason, Adobe continues to think Linux users are freeloaders who won't pay for the software, so they don't develop a Linux version.

I little development work I have done on Linux has been a breeze. I still hold out hope some company will start to compete with Adobe and give us an opportunity to get away from them and MS once and for all.

<comment><USER20> I don't think their reason for not developing a Linux version of Photoshop is "they're all freeloaders who won't buy the software". It's more likely "the number of people exclusively using Linux and want a version of Photoshop for their chosen OS is not high enough to justify the development costs."

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> A Thinkpad T42 is not in the same realm as a Macbook Air. That being said, a working dev setup for $80 is pretty cool. Even still, I've gone from doing full gentoo installs from scratch to Ubuntu, Windows, Mac, and lots inbetween and for my time and my effort, I'd rather just use a Mac.

I'll pay for a well designed, reliable computer, so that I can do my job and get paid very well for it. Not having to muck around with Linux settings, drivers, config, etc. means I spend more time writing code and billing time (if it's client work).

If your time is worth anything, you probably aren't saving anything by going super cheap with your tools.

That being said, to each their own.

<comment><USER38> I haven't ever had to mess with drivers with Mint and my x230. I did spend time to set up i3 and configure it to suit my workflow. I view these as "sharpening the axe" types of activites, and don't really understand why I see so many people saying they don't want to spend any time at all customizing the device they regularly use for 10+ hours a day.

The only thing to miss about osx over linux is the font rendering, but I'll trade that for a tiling window manager and a proper package manager any day.

<comment><USER39> +1 for mint. I had been using Ubuntu since ~2006. Got annoyed with the direction they are taking. Installed Linux Mint. Didn't even have to install or configure anything for my wireless mouse/keyboard. Literally zero configuration, except for setting _my_ preferences. I don't really understand the prevalence of Macbooks in web development. It's awesome hardware, but it's expensive. As far as software, there is nothing I am missing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I had a low-end travel laptop that turned into my main laptop for three years when my previous laptop died.

This $80 setup sounds cheap until you realize you're paying the real cost with your time.

You'll pay the toll every time you:

\- Have more than a few browser tabs open, god forbid you plan on running Youtube in one of them.

\- Want to quickly open Firebug.

\- `rails server` or `rake test`.

\- Run out of 512mb after opening two apps.

\- Decide which tabs/apps to close to free up some resources.

But those aren't even the best examples since the reality is that it's nickel and diming your time in a way you won't realize until you finally get a machine that liberates you from all the waiting.

<comment><USER41> I think this is very true for the consumer-web (and therefore also web development), but not if you're purely using ancient unix tools that were fast on ancient hardware. They are incredibly fast on modern "low-end" hardware. Git is of this school.

But to undermine my own point... can you really escape the consumer-web? Sites like github are JS heavy and very slow on old hardware. And, in practice, you'll want to use a PC for consumer tasks, like buying stuff, researching it, reading news, watching videos etc.

Maybe it's worthwhile buying a _special-purpose consumer-web device_ \- a tablet? It's optimised for the web; and the web is optimising for it.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, that's true.

But at the end of the day your minimal ancient-unix hackerbook loses its luster when your computer chokes trying to open a Youtube link your friend sends you over your CLI jabber client stitched together with Awk no matter how much you hate the "consumer web". Sucks when you can't even take a moment to appreciate some Bruce Springsteen together with your IRC channel.

Also, as a Rails and Clojure developer, I'm just trying to keep up with the boot time of my dev tools. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Replace the red "trackpoint" with the concave variety on eBay. It becomes incredibly ergonomic (the concave version let's you use a fraction of the pressure with greater accuracy).

</comment><comment><USER14> I love it! Same approach I take, but even cheaper!

I use a Lenovo T410, which you can readily acquire on Craigslist used/refurbished for ~$250. Comes with an i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM, and the HD can easily be upgraded. (I threw a cheap SSD in there for local DB issues.)

I'd love to use an even older Thinkpad, but since I do some local testing of machine learning / CPU-bound processes, an i5-series processor is probably the floor given the complexity of the models I run.

Regardless, I still love a huge PC battlestation at home (incredibly cheap for the power) and a cheap laptop that is no-frills but gets plenty of processing power for 99.9% of applications. Never really caught on to the Mac craze, even when I got free Macbook Pro Retinas from my last employer when they were first out - a sticker price of ~$4,000! Jeez!

</comment><comment><USER43> I wrote Rails for a startup this summer, and had access to my own T60 and a MBP they gave me (I also did iOS, so it was necessary). I worked on both, but definitely preferred the Thinkpad.

I run Crunchbang, so everything ran perfectly fast (even Chrome), and there are a ton of things I preferred:

* Using a 2D grid of workspaces (as described in the OP)

* The 1400x1050 screen--my Vim fits much better in a 4:3 screen than a 16:10 one.

* Sane package management (apt-get > brew)

* The trackpoint, which for me works great.

* Sane and configurable window management.

* Various Linux niceties, such as middle-click paste.

* A fantastic keyboard.

* Etcetera etcetera etcetera.

<comment><USER38> Tiling window managers (i3) and the trackpoint are two things I don't think I can ever give up. I think I'm basically going to be on thinkpads for life, or at least until other companies start adding trackpoints to their laptops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I feel like I did my best work when I got up from the keyboard and walked around the office, maybe got some cookies, and thought of the big simplifying idea. And sure, I have no problem banging good ideas into a commodity PC running Linux. That is my preference, actually. They are simple and easily replaceable.

Addendum - adding it up, I think I spent about 15 or 20 thousand USD on various Macs from 1984 to 2000. Part of my experience might be "premium fatigue."

</comment><comment><USER45> I had a T40 and used it for web development work. As soon as I could afford it, I bought an MBP. I love Linux, but OSX gives me everything great about Unix and none of the bad stuff. At first I hated that I couldn't use Scribes, but then I discovered Sublime Text. The MBP is a much better machine all around. If you're doing web work, you should be able to afford one. If not, you should probably re-examine your business practices.

</comment><comment><USER46> I _still_ use my ThinkPad T400 running Ubuntu when I don't want to be at the desk and need more power than the iPad. I love it!

</comment><comment><USER47> The Thinkpad 701 series needs to be brought back somehow. It was ahead of it's time, including the butterfly keyboard. The T42 was my next step and probably most productive during it's time. The only thing we need to do is apply today's battery technology to those older laptops and call it a day ...

<comment><USER48> But then you might code up a cruise missle, or even worse a industry killing app. we cant have that. its best if you let all major corporations vet your content from now on. you can Trust them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I agree with the price concern around Macs. That's why I let my employer buy one for me and take it home for night/weekend hacking. A $3000 investment by my employer pays for itself in terms of my productivity increase in what, two months? Win-win. One feature I'll never go without again? SSD.

<comment><USER50> Using an employer-issued laptop makes it murkier who owns the code you might hack up on nights and weekends.

<comment><USER23> The answer to this is don't work for assholes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is very true - I just returned a new macbook air because its overall speed and display quality paled to my x31 running Arch. Not to say the same is true for the Macbook Pros, although again, you're looking at a pretty major price difference.

Battery life is where the real improvement has been over the past few years.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've been using a T60 since 2006. Still runs like a champ, but I recently bought another one NOS for $99 on eBay. Love the look on people's face when I bust it out at SF coffee shops

</comment><comment><USER53> I started with a ububtu box (ubuntu 10) in a crappy laptop. And was very usable and fun. Loved vim and gnome 2. But some times the system went a little buggy and with a bit of effort i bought a MB unibody(the first model) since then i use osx. More than once i had to jump to linux and its fine. But every time i had to use eindows i cand stand it. A couple of years ago i was diagnosef with LHON and started to lost my sight .( not completely and now im recivering it) and ctrl+scroll with inertia zoom integrated into te system had keepeeng me still in the game of development. A similar tool also is integrated in the iphone.

</comment><comment><USER54> Has to be paid by the hour. The time to wait for things just does not make up the savings...</comment>


What should Marissa Mayer do with yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://natishalom.typepad.com/nati_shaloms_blog/2012/07/what-should-marissa-mayer-do-with-yahoo.html

<comment><USER2> Good question! I've dealt with Yahoo some in the past, and while there were (and may still be) some very talented people there, they had very little cooperation or accountability with each other. Part of it may come from the outsourcing of much of their development to other countries.

My suggestion would be accountability training and proper incentives from the bottom-up.

<comment><USER3> So your suggesting to invest in the internal talent and do a re-org to create a more innovative environment for those talents right?

What are the specific areas that Yahoo should be investing in?</comment></comment>


Early Windows 8 Adoption 5X Slower than Windows 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.datamation.com/news/early-windows-8-adoption-5x-slower-than-windows-7.html

<comment><USER2> I think the Vista effect needs to be considered here. The bad feelings toward Vista would have driven many people to upgrade to 7 which was seen as a saviour at the time.

Now, 7 is still a great operating system, and with 8, people are being asked to make a fairly significant adjustment to what they are used to.

I upgraded my 7 machine to 8 last week, and absolutely love it! I suspect as positive reviews come out, and people become more comfortable with the idea of touch on their laptop screen, adoption of windows 8 will be strong. But I suspect a tepid response will last for another month or so.</comment>


Graffiti from Pompei - <AUTHOR> http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm <comment><USER2> The colloquialism of the translation makes it more familiar of course, but a couple millennia of social upheaval, scientific revolution, and cultural change notwithstanding, and we are still the same bunch of noisy, trollish jerks we have always been. Strangely comforting.

<comment><USER3> At least the street defecating problem seems to have improved.

<comment><USER4> Ahh, I see you haven't been to LA.

<comment><USER5> Or San Francisco

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I.2.20 (Bar/Brothel of Innulus and Papilio); 3932: Weep, you girls. My penis > has given you up. Now it penetrates men's behinds. Goodbye, wondrous > femininity!

This is some Reddit level humor.

> VI.14.43 (atrium of a House of the Large Brothel); 1520: Blondie has taught > me to hate dark-haired girls. I shall hat them, if I can, but I wouldn't > mind loving them. Pompeian Venus Fisica wrote this.

Amusing to see the blonde vs brunette debate even back in the day.

Overall, the sense that I get from this grafitti is that people back then aren't that much different than us. They too believed they had invented sex very much like our generation and every other generation that came before it. To be honest, it seemed like they had a much better time.

<comment><USER7> Martial, the poet, was able to put worse in writing:

[http://www.thehypertexts.com/Martial%20Epigrams.htm](http://www.thehypertexts.com/Martial%20Epigrams.htm)

<comment><USER6> shit you weren't kidding. its just so amusing to find gems like this written millenias ago. it's the same shit you read on reddit

        Epigram X.63

        Phoebus, all faggots ask you home to dine—
        Who feeds on dick is dirty, I opine.

                       Translation by Joseph S. Salemi
                       (first published in TRINACRIA)

<comment><USER6> and this pure gold:

Aegle was once in bed with double action— The eunuch Dindymus and some old geezer. She lay between while they both got her hot.

Neither guy could make a go of it; One lacked equipment, the other was senescent, So Aegle burned without real satisfaction.

What could she do? She fell down on her knees And prayed to Venus for herself and them: "Make Grandpa young, make Dindymus a man!"

<comment><USER8> There is something else she could have done on her knees to make an old man young again, surely they knew of _that_

<comment><USER9> What's that? She already said he is impotent. So "that" wouldn't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1842: Gaius Pumidius Dipilus was here on October > 3rd 78 BC

So, they were already counting down to the birth of Christ 78 years in advance?

<comment><USER11> I'm guessing dates were translated as well.

<comment><USER12> What would they have written the year as? ( what was their "zero point" as it were? )

<comment><USER13> > During the Roman Republic [509 BC–27 BC], years were named after the > consuls, who were elected annually (see List of Republican Roman Consuls). > Thus, the name of the year identified a consular term of office, not a > calendar year. For example, 205 BC was "The year of the consulship of > Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus and Publius Licinius Crassus", who took > office on 15 March of that year, and their consular year ran until 14 March > 204 BC. Lists of consuls were maintained in the fasti.

> In the later Republic, historians and scholars began to count years from the > founding of the city of Rome. Different scholars used different dates for > this event. The date most widely used today is that calculated by Varro, 753 > BC, but other systems varied by up to several decades.

I'd have to assume that one of those systems would apply here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recognize many of these quotes (the cleaner ones) from the Latin textbook(s) that I used in high school [1]. It's amusing to think that the authors (who made plenty of their own subtle jokes) had to filter through lists like these to find the phrases that _weren 't_ too dirty for a middle-and-high school audience.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/ROMANI-LEVEL-STUDENT- HARDCOVER-2005C/...](https://www.amazon.com/ROMANI-LEVEL-STUDENT- HARDCOVER-2005C/dp/0131163701)

</comment><comment><USER15> Back in the early 80s, "Pompeian Graffitti" was one of the most heavily thumbed books in my high school library (all male; everybody had to take Latin and most did Greek). I learned some verbs that didn't even exist in English.

<comment><USER16> I know exactly which verbs you are referring to. J. N. Adams's book about Latin sexual vocabulary taught me them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >The one who buggers a fire burns his penis

Now _thats_ wisdom of the ancients.

</comment><comment><USER18> "III.5.1 (House of Pascius Hermes; left of the door); 7716: To the one defecating here. Beware of the curse. If you look down on this curse, may you have an angry Jupiter for an enemy."

This is similar to the modern-day "share this 30 times or you'll get bad luck" email chain that baby boomers send around.

</comment><comment><USER19> Including the original latin would have been more interesting.

<comment><USER20> Not to me, alas, although my name here is a variant of an ancient Roman joke. Nomen being latin for name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ha,ha. I reckon I learned more about ancient Rome in the 5 minutes reading this graffiti than all the years I studied history. If our boring textbooks had included this stuff I reckon we'd all have gotten 'A's.

Seriously, isn't it both remarkable and wonderful that this stuff has actually survived. Unlike us today with our modern sensibilities, it seems Pompeians didn't bother to clean graffiti off walls. If one does the sums it looks that this one below stuck around for 157 years before the eruption of AD79:

"Gaius Pumidius Dipilus was here on October 3rd 78 BC"

Just another comment in passing, this graffiti bears a remarkable similarity to that on the backs of toilet doors in the engineering school at the uni I once attended decades ago. Seems some things never change.

</comment><comment><USER22> lots of literal shitposting there

<comment><USER23> People taking a dump in unofficial locations seems to have been a problem.

<comment><USER22> some people seemed to take pride in it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That Secundus was a lad though wasn't he? Was he the Roman equivalent of FUME (if you ever been to London you will have seen his tag - everywhere).

<comment><USER16> It's funnyt how there's always that one tag in a town that's everywhere.

Secundus naturally means "second son" so probably there were quite many named that. Romans were a bit unimaginative with names.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They were certainly a romantic and ebullient group, eh?

</comment><comment><USER25> >V.5 (just outside the Vesuvius gate); 6641: Defecator, may everything turn out okay so that you can leave this place

I like how he wishes the best to Defecator.

</comment><comment><USER26> It seems the literacy rate there then would have been no more than 10%. [http://www.tektonics.org/tsr/tilliteracy.html](http://www.tektonics.org/tsr/tilliteracy.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm amazed how raunchy and explicit it all is.

I guess you can blame Christianity (maybe Catholicism in particular?) and Victorian propriety for pulling it back the other direction.

<comment><USER28> Blame Christianity for what? I don't think there has ever been a time or place in the course of human events where there wasn't vulgar graffiti.

<comment><USER27> With respect to Catholicism, I was getting at the fig leafs that were applied to classic (Roman and Greek) sculptures and paintings that depicted nudity and the general sentiment behind that movement.

Personally, I've never seen such explicit graffiti. The worst might have been "Call XXX-YYYYYY for a good time" sort of messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This seem long and complex but in Latin everything is done with prefixes and suffixes.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone have an idea where to find the original texts (Latin)?

<comment><USER16> A few here: [http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin_Vulgar/Texts/Pompeii_...](http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin_Vulgar/Texts/Pompeii_Graffiti.html)

Here's a book published by Royal Prussian Academy in 1909 Inscriptiones parietariae Pompeianae, Herculanenses, Stabianae: [https://archive.org/details/inscriptionespar42zang](https://archive.org/details/inscriptionespar42zang)

You can browse inscriptions at [http://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/](http://ancientgraffiti.org/Graffiti/) Property type has e.g. brothel, inn and tavern for the more raunchy stuff.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good tech opportunities at nonprofit orgs to volunteer for? - <AUTHOR> I am an MIS graduate and haven't been able to find a job before my visa expired. I am on a dependent visa and cannot work. I have been working on some courses from coursera/udemy and trying to start into open source with the help of openhatch.org I have worked with pyspark and recently picked up UI/frontend programming. Looking for pointers to tech volunteering opportunities. <comment><USER2> Note that OpenHatch is no longer active: [https://blog.openhatch.org/2017/celebrating-our-successes- an...](https://blog.openhatch.org/2017/celebrating-our-successes-and-winding- down-as-an-organization/)

Our opportunities at TDF: [https://www.volunteermatch.org/search/org1102611.jsp](https://www.volunteermatch.org/search/org1102611.jsp)

</comment><comment><USER3> Resources for you for finding some volunteer opportunities: [https://www.freecodecamp.org/](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) and [http://effective- altruism.com/ea/1oc/volunteer_opportunities...](http://effective- altruism.com/ea/1oc/volunteer_opportunities_in_effective_altruism/)

</comment><comment><USER4> You can join our community. We work on a server and chat on IRC ([http://dailyprog.org/](http://dailyprog.org/)).

<comment><USER5> I will also check out your site ? But do you mentor ?

<comment><USER4> Yes I can. We are a bunch who can do that.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Sol Trader released in Alpha - <AUTHOR> http://chrismdp.github.com/2012/05/sol-trader-now-in-alpha/

<comment><AUTHOR> So after all the furore on HN surrounding the choice of platform for this game, a friend urged me to point out to everyone you can now get the alpha :)

Here are the original HN posts: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3440596> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3470164></comment>


Yeah, it's a stopwatch - <AUTHOR> http://www.yeahit.com/stopwatch

<comment><USER2> Nice one! I love a simple timer that does exactly one thing. I could do with the google analytics though.

Another example of a nice, simple timer is this app:

[http://stopthismeeting.at/](http://stopthismeeting.at/)

A friend of mine wrote it some time ago. It shows a five minute timer that ticks unintrusively; filling a slice of the pie every five minutes. Upon being clicked it starts in the five minute segment of the current hour. Show this during a meeting, in order to track the time that you have spent discussing something that should have been in the invitation email for the meeting to begin with. :)

Maybe you too can add another view (I believe a modern term would be watchface) to your stopwatch?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Recently, I wanted to put a stopwatch on my iPad. A simple stopwatch. Big letters, simple buttons, no colors. For some reason I just could not find one. Neither in the app store nor online. So I made this.

<comment><USER3> Sincere question -- what don't you like about the stopwatch in the clock app?

<comment><USER4> He couldn't find it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice, I might actually use this from time to time. However, an option to show 100th of a second would be useful sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm getting a delay on the start.

<comment><USER7> There's a 1 second delay when it starts...

      function start()
      {
        if (modus=="running") return;
        interval=setInterval(step,1000);
        ...

I feel like I'm missing something here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes when I reset and start, it starts at 59:58 and counts up to 59:59, 00:00, 00:01 and so on.

<comment><USER9> A reliable way to invoke this behavior is to hit the reset button multiple times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, true! It's fixed now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google for "timer"....</comment>


Source: Israeli Firm Cellebrite Hacked San Bernardino iPhone [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/source-israeli-firm-helped-fbi-hack-san-bernardino-terrorist-s-iphone-654582339974 <comment><USER2> Is it possible for Apple to sue this company under some statue to get the exploit from them?</comment>


How to make a personal website, in 9001 easy steps (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://thomaslevine.com/!/making-your-personal-website/

<comment><USER2> Pretty much boils down to the same way you get anything done. Just start doing it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought it was meant to be ironic, the white and magenta text on black so repelled my eye. But no, some (not all) of the other pages on the site are like that.

<comment><USER4> See author photo: [https://github.com/tlevine](https://github.com/tlevine)

<comment><USER5> Side observation: He created two repositories with hundreds of fake commits so his Github activity chart would spell out "tom."

<comment><USER6> GitHub activity vandalism has been around for a while. e.g. [https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti](https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this : Nobody other than you is going to read your website once you have it, at least at first, so don't worry about designing it for other people.

I like that line.But now considering there are people reading his website.It is quite aesthetically unappealing?I found navigation a bit hard too.

And if you haven't seen it yet.This caught my attention and is actually brilliant. Belly Dancing Techy Talk :D [http://www.shira.net/techtalk.htm](http://www.shira.net/techtalk.htm)

It is actually quite an interesting read though.

</comment><comment><USER8> So many steps? There's no way that can be right!

<comment><USER9> One of the last steps is "Repeat", so they form a loop. I'm guessing that 9001 is a statistic from the creation of his website.

<comment><USER10> Or you know, it's "over 9000"</comment></comment></comment>


My experience with off-shoring teams and what went wrong - rlv-dan https://return.co.de/blog/articles/india-scaling-people/ <comment><AUTHOR> The author forgot to mention how much he paid for the offshore team. There was no mention of money in the things that went wrong. I think the cost is a very important factor if you expect a high quality project.

I have seen many people who bash India and Indian engineers for low quality work, but lets get to the crux of the problem. Its not that Indian engineers are all bad. They come in all shapes and sizes. You will get the best ones if you pay enough. You pay cheap, you get cheap.

Where can you get cheap ones ? From those big IT companies who treats employees as resources. The employees in turn will also treat their jobs along those lines.

So if you need high quality work, please don't go to these giant corporations. If you look hard enough, you will find small high quality places, but they are not cheap and not 'scalable' like your manager wants them to be.

<comment><USER2> > From those big IT companies who treats employees as resources.

I've worked in those companies, they do treat employees as resources. I was amazed how executives, RH and even Project Managers refered to developers literally as "resources", example: "We are happy to announce we have five new resources in project X".

No one seemed to care, that mentality was just sad.

<comment><USER3> The best response to people calling individual contributors "resources" is to politely correct them. If the abusive terminology continues, then the "resources" have the right to "return the favor" by setting the standard in the culture of referring to managers as "overhead" (e.g. "I should ask my 'overhead' if I really need to attend that stupid meeting. I might be able to dodge it so we can get this new feature checked in.")

<comment><USER4> Problem is large orgs are political by nature. If you acted that way chances are you'd be sidelined into some dead end thing, given all the crap work, or even laid off as "not a good fit" or something. If you were the kind of person who didn't care about those possibilities then you might as well be working for a small company where you'd have a lot more fun... which is a backward way of saying that the people who work at large corps often do value security and stability and do care about keeping their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> BitKeeper guy here (predecessor to Git and Hg). If you think about the capabilities of a distributed source management system you can quickly see it's an enabler for out-sourcing.

As a commercial DSCM provider, we got to watch a lot of out-sourcing attempts.

In 18 years of doing that, I've only seen one really successful one. Which was a Portland based dev team and a Singapore based test team. Every day, the dev team would check in their stuff (or make it available in a test tree) and the Singapore team would wake up, pull it, test it, document the failures, the Portland team would wake up fix and dev some more, lather, rinse, repeat.

As I recall, the Singapore team was out-sourced, different company, but they had a stable group of people dedicated to working with the Portland guys. It was more like two teams working on the same project.

I've seen countless efforts based on "I can get 3 guys in India for what I have to pay one junior guy here" fail. The time difference makes communication hard, you have to send someone to manage the India guys and communicate what you want, there is zero loyalty, if a better gig comes along all the time you put into onboarding those guys is lost, the quality of the code is pretty crappy, etc.

Pretty quickly it becomes not worth it.

<comment> compiler-guy "There is zero loyalty."

In business, even in the US, there is almost never loyalty. Or, perhaps more precisely: In business, you have to buy loyalty.

I guarantee that there is a price at which you could buy a very stable, very competent team in India. But then it wouldn't be super cheap outsourcing any more, and the benefits aren't so great.

If you want stability in your workforce, you gotta pay for it. Whether in cash, working conditions, or some other way.

Pay for cheap labor, get cheap labor. And don't be surprised or disappointed that you got it.

<comment><USER6> > In business, even in the US, there is almost never loyalty.

There is loyalty here. You don't hire someone and they come in to work and work on OTHER PEOPLE'S PROJECTS. You don't get people lying to your face daily about their skills, it comes up pretty quickly that they can or can't do the work.

Loyalty isn't just leaving because you have got a better offer.

<comment><USER7> > There is loyalty here

Correct, but your OP is saying you need to buy that loyalty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > we needed to reject some candidates because we simply could not understand > their English pronunciation.

That could be a mistake - If you find someone who has good skills, and would otherwise make the team, there are language bootcamps you can send them to, which will help with their English. I have sent people to them, and they ended up being wonderful members of my team, once we got past the communication barriers. If you are willing to coach on other topics, refusing to coach on communications is an odd choice.

For my part, when building an offshore team, I did a few things:

1) Brought them here for a couple weeks. Seeing how we work, and getting to know each other in person made a huge difference, including being able to get used to accents and mannerisms. Like any other team, it built trust, which goes a long way towards working well together.

2) I took lessons in Hindi. Never spoke it to them, never got fluent, and many Indians don't speak it anyway... but just trying to learn it helped meet in the middle on accents, and helped communications to the point that I often ended up translating between 2 English speaking people who just couldn't understand each other. And they appreciated having an American who would just laugh with them when we couldn't understand each other vs. getting frustrated and making them fear for their job.

<comment><USER9> Nice points. Unfortunately the type that is looking to offshore has a lot in common with those who are not interested in training or coaching at all. No, must "hit the ground running."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Most of them came pretty late (around 9 or 10am), mostly due to heavy > traffic in the city.

How is that late? It's not rare for some developers to get in between 11am-12pm in the large tech companies I know about/have worked at.

<comment><USER11> The last two places I worked, the devs were expected in at 7:00am, and 8:00am. The second place gave you a five-minute grace period.

These weren't "tech" companies. They were companies in other industries. You're not going to find a lot of 11am devs in finance, healthcare, or manufacturing.

<comment><USER12> > These weren't "tech" companies. They were companies in other industries. > You're not going to find a lot of 11am devs in finance, healthcare, or > manufacturing.

You'd be surprised. 10am is very common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was a real insightful look at how "clients" feel when coming down to India. There are some great points made on how things don't gel well together.

I have been on both side of the fence - both as a "resource" for an offshore client and contracting a team for work. If I reading this correctly the issue might have started from candidate selection itself.

You have to be strict when it comes to hiring. Startup scene has ensured a good developers are paid well. But most offshoring firms tend to keep the salaries low even for in-demand stuff like mobile app development.

So, offshoring pools can be dry. In which case, companies tend to fudge resumes or provide some low quality devs.

So, look out for people being unable to answer basic stuff, that is red flag 1. And if they are unable to explain their past projects, that is red flag 2.

Apart from that, there is another thing you have to answer - What is more important? Good candidate or quickly selecting one?

We had to spend 8-9 months looking for a candidate. We found one who fit nearly 80% of our criteria, even with the best pay possible.

But when we tried building a team quickly - the overall pay rose exponentially.

IMO, a better idea is to open an offshore center and fester a culture that you want. It is difficult to ask people to follow one company's culture while they are working in another.

<comment><USER14> >IMO, a better idea is to open an offshore center and fester a culture that you want.

You want to replace the word fester with foster. Fester has a negative connotation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I owned a company that provided off-shore services to companies in the US, it worked perfectly.

If you are doing off-shoring, you really need to insist on the independence and the ability to speak up of the team, it doesn't work if you get yes-men, sadly that's the general case for India-based offshore companies

<comment><USER6> "Are you a yes-man?"

"No"

Perfect!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's an old, old story; middle management's never ending quest to commoditize and automate software development. They'll never accept software development has almost no commonality with assembly line work. But they keep trying.

Fast, good, cheap; pick any two.

<comment><USER17> Isn't this what their business education defined as success?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Although I never got an explanation, their managers were probably selling their employees to multiple projects. I 've heard that this happens from people working there._

Offshore developers from a body-shopping company who are _shopped_ to multiple customers is common. I've seen it happen multiple times in different countries.

I have over a decade of experience trying to make off-shore development work with several off-shoring companies, one of which was a wholly owned subsidiary (to avoid the various overbilling strategies). I've never been convinced it is worth it overall. The semi-irrational insistence on off-shoring was actually one of the primary reasons I quit my last job.

</comment><comment><USER19> > But that was very exhaustive and couldn't obviously go on like that forever. > Then we switched to weekly meetings, reviews were mostly done by their team > lead.

That's where you went wrong first. You let go of the responsibility and handed it over to people who did not necessary have your best interests in mind. Quality, schedule, outcomes etc need to be managed, and managed so problems can be picked up early.

Secondly "It turned out that from those 8-9 developers we hired, at the end of the project only 3 of them were actually committing code. Although I never got an explanation ...", point to another management issue.

I am sitting in a country with a reputation for being an outsourcing hub, I am from the western world and I can tell you that there are many talented developers. The problems are the same as I have had with managing western teams, personal issues, skill levels etc though some of higher or lower impact. But the basic fact remains, the further you distance yourself from responsibility the greater the risk of failure.

</comment><comment><USER20> For me, the secret was to stop looking at teams, and start looking at individuals.

We found extremelly talented people that were underpaid, dislocated and suffocated by a toxic and outdated culture.

<comment><USER21> I always thought this. However, it seems like this would require a lot of direct management. Who was the PM for you - was it you? if not, was she/he local to the devs? What was your timezone?

My struggle with offshoring to India (from PST) is that the nearly opposite timezone affords minimal overlaps, and thus either the offshore personnel or the local person managing would have crappy hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this.

More than a decade ago I started out as a developer on an offshore team for a US based product startup. We grew from 2 people to 19 people and the US based company did well in its market and got acquired in a successful exit a few years later.

There are numerous success stories like this for every engagement gone wrong.

Now days I run an India based offshore team from Europe. The cost model has changed dramatically over time, but the premise that you can ship quality code with an India team is very much viable. Every large tech company does it. I'm happy to chat offline if you want.

<comment><USER23> I've hired a lot of remote developers over the years and it has pretty much been a flop 2 / 3rds of the time. I had some reasonably good success with Columbian developers a few years back, but the two most outstanding devs I hired on a remote basis were based out of Utah and Connecticut.

I hired one a few months ago from Ukraine who absolutely blew the competition away when it came to the coding test, but then failed to actually put in the work hours when he started the job.

Any advice for interviewing / hiring remote devs that don't suck?

<comment><USER22> I think the engagement model is equally if not more important than the recruiting. Tie their growth into yours. The startup I mentioned above gave the India team stock options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> About 15 years ago my company made a long term investment in hiring software developers from India.

Early on were some of them terrible developers? Yes, but so are many United States based Developers.

Now 15 years later I can tell you that my India based coworkers are some of the best developers that I've ever worked with.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've heard and read so many "here is how my offshoring went wrong" (or even just outsourcing locally), that I am really looking for successful examples and what one can learn from them.

<comment><USER26> I work as offshore / remote consultant with entrepreneurs and small-medium sized companies in the US. Some of these clients are working with me since 5-6 years.

<comment><USER27> You're not a good example though. You can definitely build a successful relationship with a single dev in India. An easy route is to start on upwork, pay well, churn a bunch of people until you meet someone good, then hire them. The complexity comes when you need a team of people to build more than one person can do.

<comment><USER26> Building remote teams is tough, agreed. But it can be achieved. Off-shore does not / should not mean cheap labor in some obscure part of the world. There are plenty of examples of companies thriving with remote teams, such as:

Buffer: [https://buffer.com/about](https://buffer.com/about) Automattic (parent of WordPress): [https://automattic.com/about/](https://automattic.com/about/)

By the way, I am in Pakistan, not India :)

<comment><USER27> My apologies for assuming.

I would say there aren't so many examples of companies with heavily remote workforces thriving. As a founder, this was the subject of a lot of internal debate. I largely came to the same conclusion as a lot of companies: remote slows down execution, and execution is probably the single most important thing for a small company.

Also, this article discussed something different than building a remote team, and more in line with what most customers want: hire a mostly pre-made remote team all at once. The desired advantage is less cost savings and more speed. Building a remote team yourself is much more likely to work, but also probably slow enough that it's not worth it. You have to find a remote teach lead + hiring manager, work with him or her enough to trust him or her, and then empower that person to run hiring cycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't think it matters where people are as long as there isn't some hindrance to their work ethic or shady work schemes going on. You simply have to be due diligent AND be a tech lead at the same time. You cannot offshore that part. No way. Instead, you directly know each person working on the project and directly work with them, while providing guidance to the entire team. (Directly meaning on Slack since its offshore) For example, a coder puts out something sub optimal. You then correct that code, then go through this with your coder in a constructive way why this way is better and more efficient, while also noting to the group here is an example of X where you do Y. I make repos specifically for projects to refer to as example code scenarios that commonly crop up. For example, here's how you do a background image on a flexbox that auto sizes itself or here's how you destructure a promise.all easily, or here's a baseline project to start from with basic bones and structure to work from. You have to really guide and lead and there is no easy button where more time spent is the trade off of the cost savings.

</comment><comment><USER29> In India hiring decisions, on any level, are mostly based on which college one comes from, how many random buzzwords one can speak, and not based on the actual skills one has learned during college or picked up at work. People 'learn' things by reading nuggets from interview prep sites, they memorize things and repeat like a tape-recorder during interviews. No wonder their 'understanding' is non existent.

At one end of the spectrum are people who come from 'premier' colleges (term invented by HR folks, I guess), like the IITs and NITs. Although these institutes produce some brilliant minds, the majority of graduates have no skills whatsoever. Most of the skilled ones go abroad while the'unskilled' ones get hired in India. So it's not uncommon to come across people, who have fancy titles, get paid insane salaries (by Indian standards) and who have been selected through 'rigorous' technical interviews to fumble when writing a simple application program.

At the other end of the spectrum is a huge number of people graduating from private colleges. The quality of teaching and learning at these colleges is abysmal. Most of them end up at one or other 'IT giants' doing menial maintenance work and earning a pittance.

The salary varies a lot across the spectrum but the quality of work is equally bad. Their approach to programming, and problem solving in general, is trial- and-error combined with some Googling. As the author points out the code that is produced by these 'engineers' and 'programmers' is compiler-ready not production-ready.

Of course there are exceptions too. A small minority of people who stay back in India working for startups or as freelancers are amazing at what they do irrespective of which college they went to or how they learned to program.

When you're sampling from this pool, your hiring process has to be ingenious or you end up with insurmountable technical and financial debt.

</comment><comment><USER30> Another approach would be to start with one developer living in europe/US already but wants to live in India. Example: I have an Indian friend who was working in Seattle but ultimately wanted to go back to India. He found a job where he started at the headquarters on the east coast for a few months then moved to India to build a team there.

The key thing is patience on these projects and paying people well. FWIW I'm impatient and when I had a similar discussion with management as in the blogpost I openly said it was a bad idea and found myself laid off months later. The company eventually had changes in upper management and closed it's India design center.

</comment><comment><USER31> Agree with most points.

A plug and play never works when it comes to scaling engineering function through not just india but anywhere.

One must invest from a long term standpoint. Offshoring isn't a shortcut to scaling, its better from cost perspective.

Its best to first get someone on the team who knows local ecosystem(offshore) and is good fit from your culture standpoint. Its a harder process but once you get this right you are most likely to succeed.

<comment><USER32> I kinda blame the dotcom boom for this. Everyone lamented the bad habits developers learned but from my perspective it was the managers who picked up the worst tricks. As a manager you can make any lie work for about 18 months. After that the devs know if you're full of shit and by the two year mark you have to find a new group of developers to feed your lines to.

You aren't building a product. You're building a team that knows how to build that product. If you don't then version 3 won't ever happen. If you do it poorly enough version 2 will not happen.

And once you've taken that risk of making a new product, why wouldn't you want a version 2 or 3? Isn't that where all the money is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm from SF. Living in Saigon now for almost 2 years. Lots of people reach out to me to 'offshore' here because they hear that VN devs are pretty good and salaries are a fraction of the Bay Area.

What I've learned is that Vietnamese developers are generally smart and hard working. There is a lot of young hipster attitude. They don't suffer from some of the same cultural issues I've seen in other countries. They have their whole own baggage here. ;-) They really love the latest technologies and strive to keep up to date on things. At the end of the day, it is quite hit or miss, but that could really be said anywhere.

In the past, I've never really been a huge fan of offshoring, but with the right company, I've seen it work here on several occasions now. If you're willing to pay a bit more (but still way less than the bay area) for the better dev houses here, you can really get some quality work done.

</comment><comment><USER34> Off-shoring is hard. But it can be done right. It requires honest intentions and a commitment of enough financial resources. If a firm is off-shoring simply to get the cheapest devs, its not going to work.

One of the first companies I worked at had an India office even though the company was pretty small (~50 engineers in total). The Director of the India office was good at recruiting good engineers and they were paid much above market rates for the city they were based in (still less than what US based developers were making). This situation worked out best for everyone. The only problem was when scheduling long face to face meetings, which had to be done either super early or later in the night. But I felt it was a small price to pay to get to recruit a lot of good talent.

</comment><comment><USER35> Do the Indian developers get "cross-cultural training" in how to deal with Americans, Germans, or other people from 'hiring' countries, or is it assumed that only the Europeans and Americans have the aptitude to accommodate unfamiliar cultural expectations?

<comment><USER36> I am sure they do, it is very common to have cross-cultural training. Go back 30-40 years and the Japanese and Korean professionals were getting cross- cultural training to work with US teams.

Most MBA programs also include this kind of thing regardless of what country you get your MBA in.

Of course you get a lot of generalities like:

\- Americans like fast decisions

\- Americans would rather fix a wrong fast decision after the fact than wait to make the decision

\- Europeans generally prefer analysis and deliberate decisions

\- Japanese are consensus based and hierarchal

Etc.

<comment><USER35> "Americans like fast decisions" I'd love to work in an organization with some American managers/admins like that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The punchline: "It cost us nearly a million Euros to get both applications to a state that was acceptable to our customer. That did not include the actual personnel, coaching and travel costs."

"It seems that costs scale better than people."

</comment><comment><USER38> The company management doesn't know what they're doing and are looking to grow while magically cutting costs by outsourcing.

It takes years and/or a very solid network to build competent teams.

What went wrong? Your company is managed by amateurs.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've had success using Filipinos for outsourced labors.

Also fun to live in the Philippines.

Realistically, if you need to coordinate people to only talk to person A because he's in department X then you're going to have a rough time...

</comment><comment><USER40> Well... _" It turned out that from those 8-9 developers we hired, at the end of the project only 3 of them were actually committing code."_

I guess that's what went wrong :( . I wonder why they do this, because they can?

<comment><USER41> Was asked to give an estimate on a project that was offshored and I was amazed at a.) how few commits the developers did over several months b.) how little the person who hired the offshore developers was monitoring them. It's just so trivial to just check progress once a day, I like to commit to a development branch at least every day because I am paranoid about losing progress or experiments that I can reference even if I decide on something better later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Argumentative & too emotional - are Indians tough to work with?

[http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/corporate- doss...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/corporate- dossier/argumentative-too-emotional-are-indians-tough-to-work- with/articleshow/45638709.cms)

</comment><comment><USER43> > In Germany, you would not call yourself a senior but apply for a position as > senior.

Interesting. Anybody know why that is? Seems to happen in the US.

<comment><USER44> Because there are no junior developer jobs advertised.

That's almost not sarcastic. Realistically though there is a lot ambiguity over what defines a senior dev. If postings said 10-15 years experience or experience in building stable and complex architecture across the whole lifecycle...or something similar...that would clarify things.

<comment><USER45> It's very confusing honestly. If I wanted to apply for a job right now I've got 1 year professional iOS development experience and 2 years Android... So I don't really feel like a senior Android developer at all but junior positions are incredibly scarce.

Most places I've seen are asking for a lot more experience or just saying senior with "deep knowledge of Android framework"... Whatever that is supposed to mean.

Like are you asking me to know the exact implementation of the stock ArrayAdapter for ListView so that I can tell you why we'd need a custom one or are you looking for someone to debug Dalvik/kernal issues?

Like I can architecture good clean code (and have done so for personal projects as well as professional) but I still _feel_ junior because it _feels_ like junior should until be 4+ years of experience.

<comment><USER46> >Like are you asking me to know the exact implementation of the stock ArrayAdapter for ListView so that I can tell you why we'd need a custom one or are you looking for someone to debug Dalvik/kernal issues?

In my experience, both. They will hire for someone who knows every detail of one field, and once you're hired, put you to work on a 5-year-old bug queue for a technology you know nothing about.

<comment><USER45> Joy. Doesn't really entice me to leave the startup I work at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I find it important to have a off shore managerial team fully responsible for the project in the same manner as the home office. You can't just hire the off shore team and tell the home office engineers to make use of them. Also the project should be divided so that there is minimal need for daily communications between the teams.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, you need someone onshore to inspect every bit of work. Offshoring can be done if you expect it. You don't just give them a project to work on an check in when it is done, or once a week.

We would have standups every day, and tech leads in our country. They would explain the work needed, make sure they were on task, and check there work.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sometimes its about ... everything. Time difference * culture difference * tool availability * hierarchy * quality expectations. If they are all 90%, you still end up at under 50% of the expected result.

</comment><comment><USER49> Interesting read. I would like to read something written from the perspective of the team in India that maybe explains some of their impression of the companies they are working for.

<comment><USER50> Read "Speaking of India" by Craig Storti.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Well good developers can get $100k in India. So money is very bad reason to hire in India.

But equity you get is peanuts.

</comment><comment><USER52> You pay peanuts you get monkeys !!! If you want to outsource for cost then good luck with that, but if you want to do it for skill then you have options. There are really good shops who provide amazing service.These companies hire from the right schools and provide great training . Too much generalisation and lack of information in the article.

</comment><comment><USER53> «if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys»

</comment><comment><USER54> Indian engineers in India are like animals in a zoo. Indian engineers outside India are like animals in a forest. They thrive and shine because they are free. It's all in the environment. The only way to add "offshore" teams safely is to find people who refuse to accept a code review comment because that's not the right thing to do, no matter which part of the world they are in.

<comment><USER55> >Indian engineers in India are like animals in a zoo. Indian engineers outside India are like animals in a forest. They thrive and shine because they are free. It's all in the environment.

These kind of generalizations are useless. There are "zoo animals" and "forest animals" all over the world regardless of location.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do I want to start hacking Arduino? - <AUTHOR>

This weekend, I've been looking at what I'll need to jump into Arduino. I'm looking for list of things above and beyond the bare minimum. I would like to have a kit that will put me in a good position to explore Arduino's possibilities and will be able to keep me busy for a little bit.
I've found this that is along the lines of what I'm looking for: http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> The Arduino Starter Kit has everything you need: [http://littlebirdelectronics.com/products/starter-kit-for- ar...](http://littlebirdelectronics.com/products/starter-kit-for-arduino-flex)

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought the Sparkfun starter kit a few weeks ago.

<http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10173></comment>


Google Chrome Ditches http:// - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/04/19/google-chrome-ditches-http/

<comment><USER2> I'm all for simplicity but this solution is by no means a no-brainer. A major change in so many people's habits can only happen if there are only positives. This is doomed to failure. No wonder they closed Comments on this one in the Developers' Forum. It is always best to acknowledge your bloopers fast and Google should do so.</comment>


Show HN: Treader – AI Assisted Reading for Language Learning - <AUTHOR> https://app.treader.io/books/elementary_es <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Founder here. Let me know if you have any questions. Also just as a quick heads up this doesn't work very well on mobile yet.</comment>


Unlimited fast and free web hosting service - <AUTHOR> https://ncomputers.org/seo/ab <comment><USER2> What is this? Who is this for? Who is paying for this "unlimited" SSD/CPU/MySQL, and how technically can it even scale to unlimited?

<comment><AUTHOR> hi! who is this for? the people. who is paying? my enterprise and soon google ads. web hosting enterprises started to use the unlimited concept but it is merely a marketing strategy. we want to offer the same as they for free. it is limited to the server capabilites and what this means is that there are no limits for the account.</comment></comment>


FCC can define markets with only one ISP as "competitive," court rules - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/fcc-can-define-markets-with-only-one-isp-as-competitive-court-rules/ <comment><USER2> This title is incorrect.

They are arguing over whether the presence of a competitor within 1/2 mile counts as competition even though the competitor has not actually started service to the customer.

i.e. does the customer actually need two services? Or is the presence of another one very close by, enough to be considered as competition? (The assumption being that they would/could expand to the customer.)

Better title:

FCC can define markets with only one ISP as "competitive,", if there is another ISP within 1/2 mile, court rules

<comment><USER3> If I can't buy service from that other provider, then they don't count as competition. I can't threaten to leave my current ISP to get a better price, and you can be sure that they know that.

<comment><USER2> It's not about you as an individual, it's about the market and if it's realistic for the competitor to enter it.

If it is, the incumbent will be more restrained in their prices, to avoid inducing the competitor to enter that market.

That's basically the crux of the matter, and the judge rules both ways of looking at things are reasonable since no one knows the future.

<comment><USER4> For last-mile infrastructure, anything between "just out of range" and "50 miles out of range" is of similar difficulty to expand into.

It's realistic to imagine a competitor _could_ expand, but it's a far cry from actual competition.

These half-mile ranges shouldn't be lumped in with locations that have choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know it's mostly about wording and legalese, but it's disappointing that this is where we are now.

I don't think we should be able to redefine things that would be outside any reasonable expectation. No reasonable person would call a monopoly market a competitive one, but here we are. If they were going to change something then get rid of the competition requirement instead of changing the definition to absurdity.

<comment><USER2> > No reasonable person would call a monopoly market a competitive one, but > here we are.

1/2 a mile is pretty close - I don't see how you can call that a monopoly.

<comment><USER6> If you only have one choice, how is it NOT a monopoly?

This leads to the odd result that a city could be highly 'competitive', in which there are always many choices within 1/2 mile... but no individual home has any choice at all.

A perfectly competitive monopolistic oligopoly.

<comment><USER7> For a business, there's always choice. There's broadband via wireless. With enough investment, dedicated wires or point-to-point wireless could be run.

It's just a matter of "not yet cheap enough". Well, if you let the price mechanism work, the juicy profits will attract other providers.

Almost no place in the world had "retail broadband" just 30 years ago. By the current ever-changing escalation of what "broadband" is, almost no place had it 20 years ago, either.

But profits in bringing it places where it didn't already exist has brought it _almost_ everywhere. And with 2+ providers in _most_ places.

Let prices float, and it'll keep expanding. Replace profit-seeking with price- caps and regulatory judgements, and it'll slow down, and be at the mercy of dumb sloganeering politics.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure where you live and how it is in your area, but the majority of the country living outside a major metro has one choice for high-speed that isn't DSL or LTE. This is also true for people renting or leasing in multi- unit buildings where the owner has chosen a provider. The last three places I lived had only one wired broadband provider.

<comment><USER7> DSL, LTE, and cable are 3 choices, and that's residential.

Business districts often have other, higher-priced choices... and for businesses where high-speed is high-value, they can always pay more for a custom set-up.

The "majority of the country" (by area) is only 20% of the population. 80% of the population lives in urban areas.

At the 10Mbps downlink threshold – enough for 2-3 separate Netflix streams – over 90% of the country has at least 2 _wired_ choices, and wireless also keeps improving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is specifically related to business internet price caps, and the court said the FCC has the right to define the boundary for 'competitive' as being within 1/2 mile of a competitor.

Yes, it's not logical, and it's nonsensical, but it's not exactly as dire as the headline makes it sound, and it doesn't relate to residential broadband.

<comment><USER9> > it doesn't relate to residential broadband.

Yes it does. The precedent set by this applies to every case within the 8th Circuit, which was:

> But the FCC may rationally choose which evidence to believe among > conflicting evidence in its proceedings, especially when predicting what > will happen in the markets under its jurisdiction.

The FCC being able to pick which evidence to consider and which to ignore absolutely impacts residential broadband.

<comment><USER10> > The FCC being able to pick which evidence to consider and which to ignore > absolutely impacts residential broadband.

Not that I agree with what was chosen here, but if multiple pieces of evidence are reviewed and they conflict in their findings, they have to choose one in their ruling, right? Technically no matter the decision, they would technically be "ignoring" evidence because the outcome didn't agree with it, correct? It's not ignored, just not believed as much as other evidence from what I gather.

<comment><USER11> You can and should consider conflicting information without ignoring anything. Generally it's a sign of less accurate information or a poor model. Ignore information at will and you can support any conclusion.

<comment><USER10> If I read the article correctly (lots of spin, little facts), by that definition of "ignore", they didn't ignore the evidence, they disagreed compared to other evidence.

Given conflicting evidence, you have to choose which is right. That is not "ignoring" anything (hence why I put it in quotes), but sadly people use these incorrect/loaded words because they disagree with the decision.

<comment><USER11> Once a person's or organization's stated goal is to reach a specific conclusion their methods become suspect. Forcing them to specifically deal with all information is not going to change the outcome, but it does make their biases more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks to the Eighth Circuit for this "business-friendly" decision which is friendly to a handful of mammoth telecoms and unfriendly to all other businesses.

</comment><comment><USER13> The folly of having the FCC regulate this stuff instead of the FTC. The FCC has always been cozy with the big guys.</comment>