IDE for building React Native apps is now free and open source - <AUTHOR> https://www.decosoftware.com/may-2016-update <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11771697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11771697)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow this is the best iterative development I've seen for iOS and easiest way I've seen to get started with React Native.

Enabling Hot Reloading (w/ Ctrl+D) lets you see changes as you type, you don't even need to hit Save. If this is a sign to come from React Native, it's going to be a game changer for both iterative development experience and code-reuse between iOS/Android.

My only concern is that I don't see how an IDE not developed in partnership with Facebook is going to succeed as I'd expect it to always be playing catchup with new features. Maybe it would've been better as a series of Atom plugin enhancements on top of Facebook's [https://nuclide.io](https://nuclide.io)

<comment><USER4> > My only concern is that I don't see how an IDE not developed in partnership > with Facebook is going to succeed as I'd expect it to always be playing > catchup with new features.

New features for React Native are extensively discussed on the github repo and in the Facebook contributors' group before making it into a release. And at this point, a substantial minority of features are proposed, implemented and sometimes even merged by non-Facebook contributors. It takes a lot of work to stay on top of all the changes of course, but being developed outside of Facebook shouldn't make that process harder than it would be anyway.

<comment><USER3> Being an independent project is presumably going to have less dev resources than Facebook, as a non-official IDE they're also going to have a smaller ecosystem and not having direct access or influence with the core React Native development team is a disadvantage for Facebook tooling developers who would.

Whilst it's not impossible to compete with official tooling, they'll always be faced with a distinct disadvantage where they'd need to deliver a lot of added value in order to attract relevant mindshare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So pretty soon we'll have cross platform UI development again, including eventually Mac and Windows once React Native is ported there. (Windows is I think already in beta somewhere.)

If we can bring in the web again via React Native for the Web (with 'widgets') then we can have UI "everywhere" with a mostly common code base.

I feel like eventually we are going to really converge. It's going to take a while before it's pretty and seamless and performant, but I feel like we'll eventually get there. The benefits are just too massive for it not to happen, especially for smaller projects that don't have a budget to have six dev teams maintain six UI code bases.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why use an IDE focused on React Native vs a generalist one with React support?

<comment><USER7> "What is Deco? Deco is an IDE for React Native. It's an all-in-one solution for writing React Native apps that you can download and use without any environment setup. Deco improves the React Native development workflow by focusing on component reuse and enabling you to edit your UI in real time."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Many are starting to use GitHub as a registry for hosting packages, in this case Deco components[1].

GitHub should look into this, otherwise we get git repos with directories that are thousands in length.

Certainly it makes sense to host published code on GitHub as well as in- development code.

I could see it replacing the likes of NPM[2], Packagist[3], RubyGems[4], PyPI[5], etc.

[1] [https://github.com/decosoftware/deco- components/tree/master/...](https://github.com/decosoftware/deco- components/tree/master/.deco)

[2] [https://www.npmjs.com/](https://www.npmjs.com/)

[3] [https://packagist.org/](https://packagist.org/)

[4] [https://rubygems.org/](https://rubygems.org/)

[5] [https://pypi.python.org/pypi](https://pypi.python.org/pypi)

<comment><USER9> This could work. There wouldn't be a need anymore for linking to the Git repo in an NPM package or similar. Maybe a special branch with a simple JSON file containing package data in the same repo as the main project.

<comment><USER8> Versioning and indexing becomes an issue -- this has to be entirely and completely separate from git repos and git branches. Playing with branches like that falls apart pretty quickly when you need to add real features that are expected by package maintainers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Who here uses this? I'd love some real-world feedback on your experience. It looks awesome.

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks awesome - even has pretty documentation!

Have run the tutorial without issue, took only a couple of minutes.

There seems to be only a small number of Components available out the box, with new ones accepted via PR.

This works fine for now, but it would be great if I could import my own Components or even build new ones within the UI.

I'd like to be able to "View Source" on a Component, it's obviously available via GitHub, but that's a few more clicks away.

Does anyone know of any similar IDE for desktop React?

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it only for OS X?

<comment><USER13> It seems to be built on electron (atom?) so it shouldn't be difficult to port to other platforms.

<comment><USER11> It uses the iOS simulator, so that's likely the hard bit to port.

Just noticed it doesn't provide the option for Android simulation, which would be more portable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this only for React Native and not web React?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how React and React Native relate. Are they similar enough that a React app can be modified to "go native" fairly easily? Like let's say you were building Slack which has web and desktop apps that appear identical. Could/would you use React/React-Native and this IDE?

<comment><USER16> Most of the logic can be the same. But the UI is different. For the web it uses html elements and for native uses native ios/android elements. Even android and ios are different. That's the biggest advantage if compared to Adobe Cordova. A lot more performant

<comment><USER17> It isn't about whether the underlying ui is different or not. Of course it is.

It is about whether the source application code can be the same. Today it isn't. But why not create a set of source compatible components that render to Android, iOS, and HTML?

I've seen projects approach this and I think it is a good idea. You get the typical lowest-common-denominator problem but if you have a decent way to mix in platform-specific elements where required, what is the downside?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Jarvis-like AI for your apps, drones, robots [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.languagengine.co/

<comment><USER2> Is there a goal to add speech processing atop this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since most (all?) devices now have speech recognition built in, this'll plug into those easily. I'm also going to let developers plug their own in if they have better stuff than Google etc

<comment><USER2> You could use your parser as a language model to improve recognition along the lines of things that would actually parse correctly, I suppose. That's probably much of a micro-optimization, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not sure how but I almost thought this engine would recognise speech and carry out actions.

The demo is nice. That said, SQL Server had a language processing plugin which could translate normal text to a SQL query, this was back in the days.

Which languages do you support?

<comment><AUTHOR> Speech processing is a secondary issue. Others are working on it, and it's basically a solved problem for the most part.

I don't know about SQL's natural language support, so I won't comment.

As for languages, the technology is independent of particular languages, so you can in principle add modules for, say, core Mandarin vocabulary, and then write your apps for Mandarin. I only speak English, however, so I can only add core vocab for that. :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any update in it's availability? It says late 2014 but nothing else.

<comment><AUTHOR> What? I don't know what you're talking about. ::whistles innocently::

Getting it to a state, even the minimal one, where it's ready for launch has taken slightly longer than expected. :(

Right now I'm reworking the API a little bit. I realized that the means of specifying new vocabulary for it was not at all friendly for coders who don't have lots of type theory background. I have a new way of doing this that I think will work, and it'll be up hopefully within a few weeks.

<comment><USER5> Do you have any examples of the new API direction yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm working to make it so that there's basically no real API for the vocabulary at all, you just use a little widget on the site to specify exactly the relevant functionality your app supports, and how the word realizes that, with nice visual linkages. LE will then pull that info into the logical formalism. No API needed, just some clicks.

Ideally, it should be so simple that I can make a 2 minute video of it and by the end, you'll think "well that was obvious", as opposed to "ugh now I have to learn type theory? ffs"

I did a dopey little sketch on of the idea, fwiw [https://twitter.com/psygnisfive/status/558287230662615040](https://twitter.com/psygnisfive/status/558287230662615040)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice. What are your ambitions with this project?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a blog post sort of explaining it all [http://www.languagengine.co/blog/you-must-be- nuts/](http://www.languagengine.co/blog/you-must-be-nuts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this a local server or is a remote service?

<comment><AUTHOR> The bulk of it will be in the cloud. Aside from letting me make improvements that then get reflected in all apps LE is embedded in without updates to them, it also lets developers add new vocabulary and conversation patterns that they missed before, so that they can actually make their app's AI better without users having to update.

There are also interesting possibilities of cross-pollinating apps, so that as more developers use LE, its out-of-the-box capabilities grow. There's no reason, for instance, that developers should be re-inventing the wheel each time someone builds an app or a robot or whatever. Imagine if every human was born with the cumulative knowledge and skills of all previous humans. Now imagine you can do that with AI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do you really call this a game changer AI app? I've hacked up much more powerful script for bash and OSX doing way complicated operations.

<comment><USER9> mind sharing it?

<comment><USER10> You might like Hubot: [https://hubot.github.com/](https://hubot.github.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Your bracelet is your datahub - <AUTHOR> http://prettio.net/index.php <comment><USER2> Nice, moreover because you've focused on the design aspects of it. But since this is ShowHN, I'm gonna ask the usual questions: 1\. Data capacity 2\. Battery capacity (in mAh) 3\. Weight 4\. Build Materials composition

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks,it doesn't contain any battery ,it contains a usb cable,so you can charge your phone with.Right now we only finish our prototype which is made from stainless steel,weighs nearly 3.5oz(100g),works with 32gb sd-card(haven't test other capacity yet).

<comment><USER2> how does it charge your phone without a battery inside the bracelet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, it's my mistake that didn't explain it clearly. Our bracelet isn't a power bank, it has a built-in usb cable to help you connect your phone to a charger, so there is no battery inside.

<comment><USER2> ah - you need to be clear about that - because batteries are heavy and would make the bracelet warm and unwieldy :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might want to add a SoC to it, e.g. Intel Edison.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks,we will try it later, but intel's size is too big for us.</comment></comment>


If you are thinking of getting Vibram Five Fingers this Christmas, read this - <AUTHOR> http://writings.withoutfriction.com/thinking-of-vibram-five-fingers-for-running-t

<comment><USER2> "Will you be worried about looking silly while wearing them?" I wear them all the time.. recently at gyms but used to wear it in the park when it was warmer.. In both places, I was stopped, asked in a very polite manner either "what are those?" or "I've seen those, what's your opinion of them?". People were curious, and while they thought it looked weird, they never once seemed to look down on me for my funky style. Plus it helps to get the most basic black color.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea, but I don't think I could handle looking that silly. I've been running in Nike Frees, which are nice, but not all that different from any other Nike. Can anyone recommend a barefoot simulating shoe that looks more normal?

<comment><USER4> The Terra Plana Vivo Barefoot are your best bet - take a look at <http://www.terraplana.com/vivobarefoot.php></comment></comment>


Don't Buy Anyone a Ring Camera - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/dont-buy-anyone-a-ring-camera-1840070640 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently debating Ring / Nest / etc.

My insurance company gives a discount for a 'monitored' system.</comment>


Ask HN: Accept a job or continue my nascent startup - <AUTHOR>

Hi everybody,
I really like the HN community and I have a hard decision to make and cannot make my mind.
I'm graduating in CS this month and have been working on my startup for the past 5 months. The project is still in development and there is at least 4 months of development left. To finance myself, I've been doing some freelancing and the company for which I work as proposed me a job as lead developer with a (well) above average salary for a fresh out of school developer and some nice incentives. The work is really nice and the team is great. The contract would have a non exclusive clause so I could continue to work on my own startup during evenings and weekends. Obviously, it would take me much more time to release something. On a sidenote, I'm completely new at the startup game, not connected at all and only have experience as a freelancer. OTOH, the guys proposing me the contract have experience creating other startups and raising funds.
Should I take the reasonable choice (I think) which is to get the job or kind of "follow my dream"?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Given your inexperience and the fact that you can continue working on the project on the side (make sure that is in any employment contract you sign, explicitly called out) I personally think you should take the job. Use it as a learning opportunity and keep moving forward on your side project.

One other note: why is your own project taking so long to develop? Is it possible that you need to reduce the scope so you can launch sooner? Just some thoughts.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a really big project involving hardware, not a web-only startup ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Continue to perform contract work with the company that offered you the position. Explain to them why you are making the choice. If they have been successful in dealing with startups, they understand that it takes a person who is following a dream to make one happen. Don't take the salary job unless you really are strapped for cash, and/or have a family to take care of.

<comment><AUTHOR> The question was raised when the made their proposal. The contract work was schedule to go until December and would continue if my decision was negative. However I do not have any other contracts lined up but I'm not really in need of cash right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Food for thought:

I work for a large company. I have an entry level job. The big thing consuming all my time, energy and money the past few years has been "getting well when doctors say it can't be done". I am a lot more functional here lately and there are hopeful signs that I will soon be able to focus a lot more on something else (for example: I have had the energy to a do a great deal more overtime this year than in previous years). The entire time I have worked at this company, I have basically been extremely torn between wanting to get a promotion or better paying job within the company and not really wanting that. I have been in basically desperate need of money the entire time and, for that reason, would have taken a promotion if offered one. Yet I also was concerned that getting one or more promotions would make it harder and harder to leave and someday go do my own thing -- in part because it would mean walking away from more money but also in part because I would be more psychologically enmeshed in the company and have more of a feeling of belonging and also would need to give more of myself to the job, thus leaving less for other things I am working on.

My health issues have been a big factor in why I didn't qualify for promotion. This year, I am very happy to have the energy to work more overtime because it gives me additional income without making me feel more a part of the company and without really taking up more of my mental space. I do have to focus on the job while I am there, but the low level of responsibility involved in my job means I can still leave it at work and no one is calling me at home or anything like that, which does happen with some of the really important people at the company. (EDIT: If you haven't seen it already, you might want to check out Paul Graham's article about "the top idea in your mind" to understand the importance to me of not having my job mentally intrude on my life after hours. <http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html>)

I have so far not been offered any promotions so did not have to specifically make a decision. But I was really happy when I recently realized that working more overtime is the perfect solution for me right now because it avoids the things I don't want that would come with a promotion while getting me the one thing I really do want from a promotion: more money.

Good luck with your decision.</comment>


Want to Protect Your Wall Street Job from Robots? Learn How to Code - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-19/coders-who-trade-wall-street-designs-its-staff-for-the-future <comment><AUTHOR> _" The kind of skills that we'll need have to be taught beginning at a much earlier age. Whether you can train the same worker at the same time you're changing their job remains to be seen."_</comment>


The Milk Situation - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/style/milk-dairy-marketing.html <comment><USER2> When I was towards the end of mouth/neck radiation I wasn't able to swallow anything, even water, for about a month.

So I was just using TwoCal® HN in my feeding tube. I was using six cans a day which is about 3K calories. I still lost 35 pounds. I ended up under 100 pounds. I am 6' tall. I was never a big guy. But I got bad.. I have a picture.

[https://i.imgur.com/UQVgJIP.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/UQVgJIP.jpg)

I don't get out in the sun much. That brown around my neck is burns from the radiation. It has been a year and that burn is still there. If anyone wants to know what it is like to have a sunburn inside your mouth feel free to ask.

But I hit a point where every joint in my legs and fingers ached and I didn't want to get out of bed because it hurt so much. I hate milk, I never put it in my mouth. But I started putting the fattiest milk as possible the feeding tube. In a week my aches went away.

<comment><USER3> > But I started putting the fattiest milk as possible the feeding tube.

I'm curious whether this was just whole milk (~3.5% fat), or if you went up to fat-added milks like half-and-half (~10%) or whipping cream (40-50%).

<comment><USER4> I had/have mouth neck cancer. The mouth part was at the very base of my tongue where it enters the throat. The hole they dug via robotic surgery on my tongue is 1x1x.5 I was told half of all people who undergo this end up with a permanent feeding tube so I should try my best to keep eating. Started radiation 2 weeks after surgery while I still couldn't swallow my spit. I ended up mostly surviving on the softest and most calorie dense concoction I could think of - yogurt with both caramel ice cream sauce and maple syrup mixed in. After 6 months I had learned both what pain really was and what morphine withdrawal meant in real terms. I've had 3 clean PET scans since but I sometimes lie awake wondering if I can force myself to go through it again if the test comes back positive. The 24/7 pain of that 6 month stretch will change the way you look at things in your life.

<comment><USER2> That is the fucked thing about cancer. It is never over. Even if you come up clean in a PET it is always still there. Lingering. Forever..

The mental game after you recover is nearly as bad as the actual treatment. When I was between scans I did fuck-all because I could be dead in a month so I will just watch reruns of "Come Dine With Me".

<comment><USER5> Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

This xkcd has a poignant illustration of the uncertainty: [https://xkcd.com/931/](https://xkcd.com/931/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> America has been "souring" on dairy milk, but it took us three tries to find some at the store last week.

I think what is also happening is that milk substitutes are being consumed more often by people who otherwise would not have drank milk, or not as much. People don't have to _switch_ to drink oat milk. They just have to buy it and pour it in a glass. The dairy industry may be targeting these people.

Another thing that is happening is that the United States is becoming less white. Europeans have the highest incidence of lactase persistence; Africans and South Asians have somewhat less (with high regional variance); and people originating from other regions have almost none. The culture surrounding products like e.g. ice cream is not the same for lactose-intolerant people, who are limited to a few flavors.

<comment><USER7> Why do people still drink dairy milk? I watched a video on factory farming and switched to almond milk ever since. What's the big deal?

<comment><USER8> I like some almond milks quite a lot. But how can you possibly think it's the same as dairy milk — they're almost incomparable. Dairy milk is rich, delicious, less "candy" tasting. It's full of wonderful fat, whereas most alternative milks are thin and sweet (or bitter and chalky).

It's strange when people forget how important _taste_ is.

<comment><USER9> Soy milk is the only replacement I found that still has a fatty feel and taste to it. And it doesn't taste disgusting like most supermarket milk. I think some people find the fatty film of milk/soy to actually be a downside, so they like the thinner replacement milks.

<comment><USER10> Hmm, I guess it depends on individual taste. I've tried several nut milks, oat milk and soy milk.

The nut and oat milks tasted good, with the oat milk in particular bring surprisingly close to dairy milk. But the soy milk I found absolutely disgusting - it didn't taste anything like dairy milk.

I do wish nut milks weren't so "thin" tho - if you look at the ingredients, there aren't actually very much nuts in them; they are mostly water. I'd gladly pay a bit more for a higher nut (and, ergo, fat and protein) content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are now clear environmental and animal rights reasons to avoid red meat and dairy. Unfortunately, animal rights motivations don't seem to cut it for most of my colleagues and friends, who are by and large highly educated. Arguments about whether cows are "alive" or "feel pain" the same way humans do inevitably conclude with an acknowledgement that they probably do in all likelihood, but too bad, they taste good/produce animal products we like, and thus it sucks to be them. Or "too bad our ancestors have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years".

Thankfully, most are swayed by environmental arguments and have eliminated their red meat consumption. Far fewer have given up milk, probably out of long-standing habits of milk consumption with cereal/coffee.

Just like the choice of whether we hurt or inflict pain and enslavement on a fellow human (a choice which has taken centuries to reverse), there's a choice of whether we enslave another sentient species for the sake of our tastebuds and convenience. I hope the decline of the milk industry continues, and that more of these farmers can successfully switch into more ethical and planet- friendly sources of revenue.

<comment><USER12> I wonder what are your views on wildlife, where animals live often in quite poor conditions, and are regularly brutally killed and eaten. Isn't properly organized farm life a better option for e.g. a sheep?

I'm not being ironic here; I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER11> It's a great and tough question, and to be totally honest I don't have a fully formed view on this. It does seem like a life lived on a farm with humans could have significantly less suffering than a live in the wild. If the animal is (i) not being used for some byproduct, e.g., being repeatedly inseminated for milk (ii) has enough volition, or freedom to roam, and reproduce in some (possibly controlled) manner, it seems like such a life could be quite good for an animal. There are probably many small family farms that keep animals for pleasure and not to raise for meat that practice this sort of ethical farming.

One argument against this sort of intervention comes from my experience living with our family dog (we've had him for five years). He is a calm and intelligent dog who I feel has had a good life, but I feel sometimes that it is a very restrictive one. He can't do whatever he wants, and is separated from other creatures like himself. My feeling is that his life was worth living, but there is an element of guilt when I think about how free he is, and once he passes away I don't think I will keep a pet in a future family I start.

It's very hard to say what these creatures who cannot speak up for themselves really want, and whether we should interfere with their lives to prevent suffering that's inherent in nature.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Please let me know if you have any books/resources to recommend. I'm planning to read Singer's Animal Liberation soon, which will probably discuss this question.

<comment><USER13> I would highly recommend Fellow Creatures by Christine Korsgaard. There was a good review in the NYRB, if you have access: [https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/03/21/christine- korsga...](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/03/21/christine-korsgaard- what-we-owe-a-rabbit/)

I don't have any background in philosophy or ethics, but I found it relatively accessible and well-argued; it helped to crystallize a lot of my thoughts on the topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This article might be a "submarine" article for it, but I'm actually glad A2 milk is getting more popular, and now even Costco carries it.

I grew up in France and drank milk without problem my whole life, but when moving to the US, I started noticing dry-patches on my arms, and digestive discomforts after breakfast.

It took me a while to pinpoint the root-cause, but after some experimentation, I figured out it was either the whole-wheat bread, or the milk. Today I'm pretty confident this is the milk.

For a while I thought this had to do with some difference in UHT/pasteurization process (all milk in France is shelf-stable until opened, whereas here it has to be refrigerated at all times). But then I realized then that this A2 milk is popular in Australia, and I had never heard of this A1/A2 distinction, but apparently France's cow is 100% A2 only, so I tried their milk, and I don't have any digestion nor dry-patch on my arms anymore. Maybe it's placebo effect, but it works for me, so now I'm back at drinking milk.

A1/A2 apparently isn't as big of a deal for processed dairy (Cheese, yogurts), but I buy the one imported from France/Switzerland, so those are probably A2 anyways.

<comment><USER15> I'm not familiar with the term 'submarine' in this context, does that refer to some sort of stealth advertising?

<comment><USER16> I believe it's from [1] by Paul Graham.

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

<comment><USER17> I can't immediately find a source with a date, but I'm pretty sure using submarine to mean undisclosed happened before Paul Graham was born.

<comment><USER18> OP used the term specifically to refer to PR-generated articles in prestige media like the NYT, which was probably a direct allusion to Graham's essay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > In an online survey by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy, seven percent of > respondents said they believed that chocolate milk comes from … brown cows.

Unless they asked 4-year olds, this _surely_ , can't possibly be true?!

<comment><USER19> Aren't most dairy cows brown? Maybe they're just being good Bayesians.

<comment><USER20> I think most dairy cows are Holstein-Friesian, so black and white (with some regressive red and white, although Guernsey are also usually red and white). Brown dairy cows (Swiss, Jersey) are the minority of the milking population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "The Canadians have a system where they can only produce what they can sell," she said. "If you produce more milk than you can sell profitably, they don't pay as much for it."

One thing this article leaves out is the massive subsidies that dairy producers receive in many nations, especially the U.S.. Even as demand has sank in the U.S., production has steadily increased, and the federal government has had to throw its weight around to force U.S. milk down the throats of other countries. Despite it's supply management system, Canada is now a consumer of U.S. dairy. This is because Trump made that a condition of lifting tariffs and negotiating NAFTA 2.0..

Because of supply management, dairy products in Canada are _significantly_ more expensive than they are in the U.S.. Yes, it's not consumer friendly, but it does let dairy farmers do fairly well and maintain good quality of their product. In the U.S., the government effectively pays for a large percentage of every glass of milk consumers drink. When that milk is, instead, exported to Canada, additional export subsidies are applied that earn farmers even more money than they do on milk sold domestically. Then the Canadian government slaps tariffs of several hundred percent on this massively subsidized dairy to bring it inline with Canadian dairy products (which are controlled but not subsidized). Amazingly, it _still_ often winds up cheaper than most Canadian dairy when it hits Canadian supermarket shelves.

The end result is that American taxpayers are paying Canadians (and their government) to drink U.S. milk, just so that U.S. dairy production can continue to grow far past domestic demand. Don't feel sorry for your local dairy farmer. Even if you're not drinking their products, you're already helping them out plenty just by paying taxes.

</comment><comment><USER22> From my perspective I'm trying to maintain my health while also working many hours at a computer each day. At 30+ I don't need milk anymore. I'm not a growing child, or calf. ;)

My whole family has developed lactose intolerance, I'm the last one left. I chose to take milk out of my diet pre-emptively and replace it with oat milk for cooking, several years ago.

Partly because it's an unnecessary source of fat. I loved milk, used to drink it like water. Now I drink water like I used to drink milk.

Sometimes I'll mix lactose free milk and oat milk for luxury cooking.

</comment><comment><USER23> "The already-low price of milk, which is set by the federal government, is projected to drop even further this year."

Interesting, and worthy of more prominence in the article IMHO.</comment>


How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters (2007) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heh4OeB9A-c <comment><USER2> I think Android could have been much better if these principles were taken to heart during the design of the main APIs. From what I recall Josh collaborated with the Android team at some point; sadly too little too late.

IMHO almost every Android API i use violates some principle in this presentation.

<comment><USER3> My response (in good humor of course): [https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/45999359.jpg](https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/45999359.jpg)

More seriously, every sufficiently complex, real-life design I have ever seen has been a set of compromises to best meet a set of competing constraints. The most that I hope that a book or a lecture can do is provide a general set of principles that an engineer should consider, and be mindful of they are going to violate them. I can't think of any very complex platform that hasn't run into this issue, and Android is no different, and probably fares better than most. Do you have any examples that you would prefer instead?

<comment><USER4> Uh, isn't the obvious comparison iOS?

I think the difference is that Apple had decades of institutional GUI expertise. Android engineers were more like hardware/OS guys as far as I can tell, and perhaps less experienced with the abstractions conducive to easily creating nice GUIs.

<comment><USER5> iOS and the Cocoa framework also have their fair share of hard to work with APIs. Like the OP said, you're always going to have to make compromises between conflicting requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds just a lot my systems analysis and design classes years ago (waterfall days). Who would think of gathering requirements and specs in these days of Agile....

<comment><USER7> And Facebook showed clearly that you can change your API daily and no one cares.

<comment><USER8> Yes, when you become a de facto standard with 1.6B users, you get to set the rules.

For everyone else, we have to provide good experiences with stable products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And people say there's nothing copyrightable in an API design...

<comment><USER10> Just because something is a creative act doesn't mean it's covered by copyright. If your functional creation is useful and novel, get a patent on it.

<comment><USER9> I'd argue that the functional part of all APIs is nearly identical and that the creative part is what differentiates them.

<comment><USER10> > _I 'd argue that the functional part of all APIs is nearly identical and > that the creative part is what differentiates them._

You misunderstand.

It's not that functional things are covered by patents, "creative" things are covered by copyright. First, functional things can of course be creative; that's in the very definition of invention. Second, copyright is limited by law to the _expression_ of an idea, not the idea itself.

US law is very clear about this:

> _In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship > extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, > concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is > described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work._

Source code is indisputably copyrightable, but the question of law is if the functional aspect of an API, the way you interoperate with it, is protected by copyright. I believe Judge Alsup decided correctly that an API is a "system or method of operation", avoiding "the danger of conferring a monopoly by copyright over what Congress expressly warned should be conferred only by patent". I'm hopeful that the other circuit courts will agree.

<comment><USER9> And when you copy source code that has an API in it, you violate the copyright for that source code. This is not hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Someone should add (2007) to the title.

<comment><USER12> Someone at your service. Kind of interesting that this was posted 15 times and never really discussed:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=How%20To%20Design%20A%20Good%2...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=How%20To%20Design%20A%20Good%20API%20and%20Why%20it%20Matters&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

<comment><USER13> This regularly happens with most HN submissions. New can be equally as fruitful in its own right as front page.</comment></comment></comment>


BO, ULA and Northrop Grumman Weigh in on Multibillion-Dollar SpaceX Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2019/blue-origin-ula-subsidiary-weigh-multibillion-dollar-spacex-rocket-lawsuit/ <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for moderately edited title, the site's headline was over the character limit. BO is Blue Origin.</comment>


Lenovo's Thinnest ThinkPad Yet, The ThinkPad X1 Tested - <AUTHOR> http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Ultralight-Laptop-Review/

<comment><USER2> Sounds brilliant, but how does it feel - plastic-y and hot would ruin it. Also what the graphics?</comment>


Australia leads the world in online start-ups? - <AUTHOR> http://www.brw.com.au/p/business/australia_leads_shows_world_iconic_qT1CvUj4C3XJbyDdWzLKjK

<comment><USER2> _" A research report by online services provider Bigcommerce released on Thursday reveals a 200 per cent jump in the rate of new online stores opening between 2010 and 2012. This is four times the number in the United States and Britain."_

<comment><USER3> This likely means Australia was lagging behind, but is now catching up.

I'm living in Australia now, and there are some great companies here, Atlassian, 99Designs, CampaignMonitor, and many more that are growing significantly and are leading their industry, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a hot-bed of activity.

<comment><USER2> I realize that, that is why I posted the excerpt. The link was submitted with a question mark at the end of the title that was not found in the actual article title. I took that to mean that the submitter was suspicious of the claim.</comment></comment></comment>


Simple online time tracking software - <AUTHOR> http://www.getharvest.com/

<comment><USER2> I haven't tried out the app yet but I have to say I really like the site. The icons on the bottom part of the homepage as well as the language tone make you feel like someone's really there. I've never been a fan of time management apps but ill give it a try with an open head. Anyone else used it?</comment>


Private Team Fires 36-Year-Old NASA Probe's Engines - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/26438-isee3-spacecraft-engines-fired.html

<comment><USER2> It's had quite an adventure! [http://www.npr.org/2014/03/18/289628696/space- thief-or-hero-...](http://www.npr.org/2014/03/18/289628696/space-thief-or- hero-one-mans-quest-to-reawaken-an-old-friend)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Originally published on Space.com"

[http://www.space.com/26438-isee3-spacecraft-engines- fired.ht...](http://www.space.com/26438-isee3-spacecraft-engines-fired.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Strange they quote the Twitter feed but never say what the handle is. It's [https://twitter.com/ISEE3Reboot](https://twitter.com/ISEE3Reboot)

</comment><comment><USER5> "That might happen on Tuesday (July 7)"

The next time July 7 is on a Tuesday is next year :)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is fascinating. I just finished reading some of their blog posts and they really make me want to get a career in space-related technology. This is insanely cool.

<comment><USER7> Try Kerbal Space Program.

<comment><USER6> I have! It's a lot of fun. I'm designing a panel of switches to play KSP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (obligatory)

[http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/05/30/isee-3/](http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/05/30/isee-3/)

[http://xkcd.com/1337/](http://xkcd.com/1337/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Great, I hope they will not get prosecuted for 'kidnapping' government property.

<comment><USER10> This project has NASA's "approval" / encouragement: [http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/may/nasa-signs-agreement- with...](http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/may/nasa-signs-agreement-with-citizen- scientists-attempting-to-communicate-with-old/)

It's a "Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement (NRSAA)".

 _" The NRSAA details the technical, safety, legal and proprietary issues that will be addressed before any attempts are made to communicate with or control the 1970's-era spacecraft as it nears the Earth in August._"</comment></comment>


It's A Facebook World … Other Social Networks Just Live In It - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/13/its-a-facebook-world-other-social-networks-just-live-in-it/ <comment><USER2> inception.</comment>


The rep prefix and detecting valgrind (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://repzret.org/p/rep-prefix-and-detecting-valgrind/

<comment><USER2> Self-modifying code is a classic way to observe differences among various implementations.

As a random example of an emulator that needed this that I found, [https://github.com/kstenerud/Musashi/tree/master](https://github.com/kstenerud/Musashi/tree/master) says:

      - M68K_EMULATE_PREFETCH emulates the 4-word instruction prefetch that
      is part of the 68000/68010 (needed for Amiga emulation).

Or, [http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=12313](http://www.atari- forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=12313) mentions:

      Instruction Cache
      Self modifying code loops wont work on the 68010+ because
      it's (sic) instruction cache has no writeback stage. You must
      replace all examples of SMC or switch off the I cache.</comment>


Walmart Just Launched a Line of Backpacking Gear - <AUTHOR> https://www.outsideonline.com/2413447/walmart-launches-backpacking-gear-line <comment><USER3> Here is the link to the gear!

[https://www.walmart.com/cp/lithic/9549605](https://www.walmart.com/cp/lithic/9549605)

Excited for this. All the major outdoor gear companies have made proper backpacking pretty hard to get into without dropping a grand or two on lightweight gear. Yeah, you can grab a Coleman tent for $50 that weighs 30lbs, but to truly backpack for multiple days you are looking for a 3-6lb tent that currently is anywhere from $300 to $800 depending on your quality preference.

<comment><USER4> I don't know where you shop, but my 4-ish pound backpacking tent was less that $100.

Edit: To clarify, I'm just saying that there is a middle ground between a cheap lead-weight tent and a several-hundred-dollars gearhead tent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the ALPS 1-person tent is 4 lb and $100 on Amazon. Similar stuff is on Aliexpress.

I think the significance is that Walmart is entering this field. This really could introduce new audiences to backpacking that normally don't even think of going into REI.

<comment><USER5> There are also quite a few places with a Walmart and no nearby REI. There are whole states without REI stores. If Walmart rolls these lines out to every store, that's a massive expansion of access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank God. Let's just be honest here brands like the North face and others are horrifically overpriced for their typical gear. yeah I remember when Patagonia and North face were basically only used by expeditioners and they only sold top pulling line stuff made in the USA. The fact that it was made in America kind of explained the cost. but now they just make it all in cheap countries mark it up and hog the money.

At least now I can go out and get a mid-range backpacking set up without going completely broke.

<comment><USER7> I agree (see my comment about gear heads elsewhere in this thread), but a lot of the time you don't need a lot of specialized gear, though weight can be a factor.

Though TBF I have a 30 yo Patagonia raincoat that's sailed across the Atlantic twice, been above the arctic circle, the Australian outback, northern Canada, and along the PCT. it's utterly faded but the zippers work fine, it has no tears, and it's still waterproof. I ski in it and camp with it year round. I think I got my money's worth on that one.

Relatedly: the current state of boots is horrific.

<comment><USER8> Have any recommendations on boots?

<comment><USER7> I have given up on the off the shelf boots. Best off the shelf boots I've found are some heavy leather Asolos you can get at REI (I hate those soft "hiking shoes" as they don't provide the support you need with a heavy pack or for fording a river when you can't see where you are stepping, etc). I had a cobbler disassemble them and put a plastic half-pipe-with-plate in the vertical portion behind my ankle/Achilles which gave greater stability. They were great boots — very comfortable, quite good performance — but after less than thousand miles or so the sole fell apart. Had the cobbler try to repair them but they weren't the same — they weren't designed to be resoled. Now I have my boots made by a guy in W.A. who does nothing else. They are solid and fit like a glove. Eminently repairable. You don't want to spend this kind of money unless you expect to travel more than 750 miles a year in them though.

Older boots can be repurposed as jungle boots with a few careful stabs of your knife if you like long canoe trips. Regular hiking boots adjusted like this are better even than the Cabella jungle boots IMHO if you have rigorous portages.

I have done short (3-4 day) trips in places like Desolation Wilderness wearing Chaco sandals...but you couldn't hike Mt Whitney and even in the lower sierras you need feet like leather. No ankle support so ultralight only.

For winter backpacking I have some off the shelf Columbia boots for snowshoeing. They are pretty warm. Those conditions are much less demanding on your feet and footgear than summer conditions. Don't buy the crappy Bass winter boots: those are for standing briefly by your truck, not for long distance travel. OTOH if it's really cold, and you'll be on the ice, Traveling with dogs, go for mukluks.

My dog wears ruff ware vibram sole boots in summer and winter (they sell snow boots but I've not had good luck). Vibram soles, but last only about 5-600 miles. Wear with tennis socks and in winter, gaiters I made for him for the deep snow (he's a large dog and weighs about the same as me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also: this $2,000 "Viathon" mountain bike -- a Walmart brand. Expensive for people who just want a bike to ride, but competitive with bikes that cost twice as much. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb- AJc3QL-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb-AJc3QL-Q)

It's an interesting strategy. The high-end of a lot of hobbies are inflated beyond reason, and I think it's cool that they're taking a stab at that.

<comment><USER10> The people buying high end do care about the brand and reputation. They accept to pay inflated prices for a well known brand, but would not buy at a discounted price a retail store brand. Brand and reputation communicates quality.

<comment><USER11> I don't get this. Is it ego or something? If you're on a trail the brand name won't keep you from cracking your skull any less than another.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it is ego. I was recently on a backpacking trip with a few of the most 'geared up' people I've ever met, sporting all top of the line gear and very proud of it - every single item was intentional and brand names and the long technical details of every item of clothing or gear was always mentioned. It's like almost any hobby or sport - some people will geek out and get very into the 'scene'. Walmart will provide a way for new people to dip a toe into the world of backcountry gear and some of those people will move up to the specialty brands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The first thing that came to my mind was Walmart's existing "Ozark Trail" brand of tents and outdoor equipment. I have a few of their insulated cups and water bottles and they're good value for the price.

I wonder why they decided to use new Lithic branding?

<comment><USER14> There's some negative sentiment toward Ozark Trail among the set of people who have seen abandoned tents as far as the eye can see at the end of music festivals. Not sure if that's common enough to lower the value of the brand.

<comment><USER15> That's really disappointing to me. Does money just grow on trees for these people? What are their parents teaching them about respecting hard earned money? And respecting the environment. Are people raised to waste resources these days?

<comment><USER16> Arent we all? We have learned to think of ourselves as consumers, haven't we?

<comment><USER15> I'm specifically talking about a waste of a resource, in this case, the tent that was discarded after one use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I bought their ultralight single person backpacking tent for $25 on clearance and it is surprisingly solid. It looks like a Chinese REI rip-off.

Edit* not part of their new line obviously but shows it's not all junk

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this is exciting. I suspect the gear will be bass pro shop quality, not cabella's, bit that's ok, most people only take a few short trips and don't need to spend a lot to have a really fun time.

Backpacking, like many such activities, has a significant gearhead contingent, but I like to bring as little gear as possible, and as little "pro" gear as I can get away with (some things though, like my stove, are specific). But say for winter camping I haul extra gear around in a Walmart deer sled and it's great.

<comment><USER18> > significant gearhead contingent, but I like to bring as little gear as > possible

The minimalist contingent is even more fanatical than the gearhead contingent.

<comment><USER7> My taste for minimalism isn't the extreme ultralight position (that's often another gear odyssey) but rather: can I take something I already own, or use something I've already packed?

But admittedly I don't carry a gps or spot or anything like that, just topos and compass, so i have a dose of the pretentious minimalism as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how much of those sales are from their employees who can't afford a place to live

</comment><comment><USER20> I hope this doesn't equate to 'single-use' or 'disposable' gear.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's like shops that are allowed to open are taking advantage of the lockdown to take the business of those compelled to stay shut.

<comment><USER22> Why wouldn't they take advantage of it?

How often does the government decide to unilaterally restructure the market in one group's favor?

<comment><USER23> To answer your second question, surprisingly often! Usually the "one group" is the incumbent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Surprised no one is talking about how this is Walmart's version of AmazonBasics...

Here are my thoughts: It's interesting to see big online retailers make their own cheap brands to monopolize their sales

</comment><comment><USER25> I didn't see this in the comments but Walmart bought Moosejaw a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER26> I thought it would be fun to share my backpacking checklist from 1974. (Forgive the code formatting, on mobile you can drag left/right to see it.)

      CLOTHING
        Boots - waterproofed [1]
        3 sets socks
        String shirt [2]
        Long sleeved cotton shirt
        Wool shirt
        Shorts
        Long pants
        Gaiters [3]
        Handkerchiefs
        Down vest
        Windbreaker
        Poncho
        Rain chaps
        Mittens - inner/outer
        Scarves
        Balaclava [4]
        Hat
        Stephenson Warmlite No-Sweat Shirt [5]
        Walking stick [6]
        Backpack
        For the trip home:
          Clean underpants, pants, shirt, socks

      CAMP
        Sleeping bag and stuffsack
        Mosquito netting
        Foam pad
        Ground sheet
        Tarp
        Visklamps/stakes [7]
        Nylon cord 50'
        Stove kit (stove, pot lid, lighter, bag)
          Fuel can
          Fuel pellets
          Cleaning wire
          Asbestos pad (!!)
          Fill and test stove and lighter
        Flashlight
        Knife - <USER2>
        Sharpening stone
        Clothespins
        Paper towels
        Plastic bags
        Toilet paper
        Trowel
        Canteen
        Spoon
        Washcloth
        Toothbrush/floss
        Soap
        Salt/pepper shakers

      FIRST AID
        Moleskin/foam
        Rubbing alcohol
        Tweezers
        Gauze pads
        Gauze bandage
        Triangular bandage
        ACE bandage
        Band-Aids
        Adhesive tape
        Nail clippers
        Chapstick
        Glacier cream
        Bug repellent!
        Cotton balls
        Salt tablets
        First aid book
        Snakebite kit

      EMERGENCY/REPAIR
        Matchsafe
        Flint stick
        Mirror
        Whistle
        Ripstop tape
        Spare batteries/flashlight bulbs
        Rubber bands
        Velcro
        Sewing kit/thimble
        Clevis pins
        Razor blade
        Wire
        Cord clamps
        Phone change
        Halazone [8]
        Space blanket [9]

[1] Waterproofing involved coating the boots with wax and putting them in the oven. What a mess!

[2] A mesh t-shirt, great for layering: [https://www.google.com/search?q=string+shirt&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=string+shirt&tbm=isch)

[3] Covers the gap between long pants and shoes: [https://www.google.com/search?q=gaiters&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=gaiters&tbm=isch)

[4] Not the dessert: [https://www.google.com/search?q=balaclava&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=balaclava&tbm=isch)

[5] NSFW for "naturist" style nudity: [https://www.outinunder.com/sites/default/files/Warmlite%20Ca...](https://www.outinunder.com/sites/default/files/Warmlite%20Catalog%201974.pdf)

[6] The best walking stick is the one you cut from a fallen tree with the saw in your Swiss Army knife. I still have mine!

[7] I had to look this up to remember what they were: [https://www.google.com/search?q=visklamps&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=visklamps&tbm=isch)

[8] Had to look up this one too: [https://www.google.com/search?q=halazone&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=halazone&tbm=isch)

[9] Space blanket: [https://www.google.com/search?q=space+blanket&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=space+blanket&tbm=isch)</comment>


Wine 4.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.winehq.org/news/2019012201 <comment><USER2> Having used Wine for a lot of late '90s / early '00s Windows games, I think Win32-on-Wine is possibly the best, most stable game platform in history. Modern laptops run games of this era without breaking a sweat, publishers couldn't assume users had the bandwidth to patch everything after release, so there's a playable game right there on the CD. Many CD-ROM games didn't bother with copy protection (after all, who would copy a whole CD full of data?), so you can play straight from an iso.

<comment><USER3> You can get many DRM-free games on GOG. Most work fine in Wine on Linux.

<comment><USER4> Many are actually DOS games running on Dosbox, so you don't even need Wine, just re-wrap them in a native Dosbox feon your distros' repository.

<comment><USER3> I'm talking about Windows games obviously. Many have native Linux releases there as well and don't need Wine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny how Wine has implemented Windows APIs on top of Linux (and Mac), and Microsoft has implemented Linux APIs on top of Windows.

<comment><USER6> Or sad. As a user and developer, 98% of the differences between these operating systems don't really matter to me at all. They only exist because of historical accident, desire for proprietary lock-out, or other pointless reasons like ego. For anyone who didn't believe it, they've finally gone and given a proof by construction.

We've abstracted over the CPU nicely. Without even thinking about it, my software will compile and run on any modern CPU just fine. Excellent! But it's dumb that we still have to learn about the specifics of the OS, just to write a simple application. I wish they'd just pick some kernel-level API, some common formats (filesystem, executables), some UI-level APIs, etc., and then everyone could just write to that.

(That's basically what the web is, except the API is in terms of HTML/CSS/JS, rather than CPU/RAM/disk/devices. You know you suck at standardization when you're getting lapped by the _web standards_ committees. It's easier for me to cross-compile C to JS than to compile C on all the different platforms I use. What happened?)

It seems like every couple decades, a few companies get together to try to make a standard operating system (Multics, Taligent), and it always falls apart. We're just about due for another doomed effort!

<comment><USER7> > some UI-level APIs

This assumes that there is agreement on what the UI experience should be. Navigation patterns, menu bars, keyboard shortcuts, touch gestures.. But there is still active competition between OS vendors on UI. Just in the last decade, the most common form of interaction with a computer has changed from mouse and keyboard to touch and speech recognition.

> It's easier for me to cross-compile C to JS than to compile C on all the > different platforms I use. What happened?

The web is a lowest common denominator. A web app is still missing a lot of affordances that users take for granted in a native app on their given OS. That is why still in 2019, there are new native iOS and Android apps being developed. Look, there are even entirely new programming languages being invented (Swift) or integrated (Kotlin) for the purpose of writing native apps for those platforms.

Specifically regarding compile C, I don't see what your problem is compiling C. You can even compile C11 on windows with Clang. Yes you may choose to include a OS-specific header and it won't compile, but also your JS doesn't necessarily run if you call some browser specific function.

<comment><USER8> > This assumes that there is agreement on what the UI experience should be. > Navigation patterns, menu bars, keyboard shortcuts, touch gestures..

We had that for a while.

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

And most DEs even implemented it to some extent. But they didn't converge as a result of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been a fulltime Linux user for 15+ years, and up until last year I avoided using Wine (because I didn't require it -- I didn't need any Windows tools, and I wasn't a gamer).

On my last holiday break I wanted to install and play a few games, which included using Wine to play Windows games. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. Out of the ~10 games from GOG that I installed, all of them worked.

Great work.

</comment><comment><USER10> WINE is so great.

I wish there were a more user-friendly way for people to use it, without the command-line and winetricks. I use wine on macOS, but I usually hesitate before diving in, because I know it inevitably involves some gymnastics. Even with Wineskin Winery (which is no longer maintained?).

Will WINE ever be at a point where it would be stable enough to make the case for non-technical users? Another comment joked about public offices -- would it be absurd to think offices could run linux instead of windows, saving licensing costs, using WINE where legacy software is necessary?

I would have started using WINE even earlier if the documentation were more approachable. I think they've improved over the last few years, though the site still looks like an antique forum system rather than cutting-edge tech + design, like you would see from a startup's website.

<comment><USER11> Valve has been doing a lot of work here lately, they've essentially made Wine into a first party citizen of Steam (in the form of Proton). So Wine is stable & easy enough for non-tech users - at least for gaming purposes. But there isn't the equivalent for general software yet.

<comment><USER12> That said, I was attempting to run a Proton game a few weeks back and it kept failing silently. Running from the terminal revealed a missing dependency, which I apt-getted and now it works fine. So while I agree that Proton is fantastic, there's still some work to be done in making it more friendly for "non-tech" users.

<comment><USER13> Is it not the case that if you use the steam runtime then libraries should be there? Ultimately valve are targeting steamOS not linux as a whole. Some linux distros (eg arch) have a package that bundles the steam runtime which should make such issues go away.

<comment><USER14> Steam runtime doesn't have every lib ever made, can collide with libraries in the system, and game devs might not include some dependencies because of licenses without notice. I think GP had the latter case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Find how your favorite apps do - link to Wine application support db: [https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...](https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=5839)

I'd like to really Thank Wine developers! Because of your efforts pretty much only time I need to use Windows desktop is when I need Adobe Lightroom CC and Premere Pro and it looks like v4 is improving on that as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> I remember first trying Wine - I actually installed (well, compiled) XFree86 just to try it - I was proper cli-only in those days. After a long weekend of compiling, I was finally able to run a very slow instance of mIRC - for less than a minute, then it crashed. I was amazed.

2 decades later, my Wife + kids are now able to enjoy The Sims 4 and SimCity on their Linux machines, thanks to the hard work of the Wine team!

And with the additional work of Crossover, Word & Excel too.

These four non-trivial applications, built without any portability in mind, work flawlessly.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think Wine and Samba played a pivotal role in Linux adoption to those who are in someway tied to Windows land.

Of all the memories with Wine, the best one is still how Red Alert 2 worked flawlessly.

</comment><comment><USER18> Some major games seems to not be working because of the anti-cheat system: [https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41670](https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41670) (PUBG, Fortnite, etc.)

<comment><USER19> That stinks. Considering how well Fortnite is doing, I am a bit surprised that they haven't made a Linux version.

IDK how much it would cost to make a Linux version, but I would think the amount of money from microtransactions they would be getting would make up for it

<comment><USER20> It must have to do with the lack of profitability, especially after developing an anti-cheat solution.

I'm not 100% certain if EasyAntiCheat supports Wine at all, or even Linux at all, but that's what they (Epic Games) use. If not, they'd have to write an in-house solution that probably won't work.

In the past (again, I'm not sure about the present), CS:GO was victim to having a Linux client; rather, people figured out that it was much more vulnerable to exploits due to it not having a working anti-cheat solution.

<comment><USER21> > I'm not 100% certain if EasyAntiCheat supports Wine at all, or even Linux at > all, but that's what they (Epic Games) use.

It does. EAC detects Wine, and can load a Wine version if the developers enable it. There have also been a few cases where they enabled it upon player requests (without dev involvement).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wine has progressed quite a lot in the last year. Paired with dxvk especially, many quite demanding Windows games became completely playable on Linux.

The next big missing thing now is Wayland support (though it already works through XWayland).

</comment><comment><USER22> It didn't have game controller support before? I'm surprised and seem to recall game controllers working before.

<comment><USER23> It had the support, from /dev/input/js? or /dev/input/event?. Now it also supports leveraging libsdl's joystick support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wait - Wine is available on Android? I use Wine for a few things - would be great to have those apps on my Android device!

<comment><USER25> Last time I checked it worked for Android on x86, since wine is not an emulator. I do recall there being some experiments with wine running on arm via. A x86 emulator.

<comment><USER26> There's ExaGear, which is basically Wine with an x86-to-ARM translation layer running underneath. Note that the app is quite pricey at $30.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eltechs.ed](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eltechs.ed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm Debian user and I usually install the packages, and the shipped version of the software is just fine for me.

Occasionally I may want to use the newest version of a particular application and I've found that instead of installing dependencies and compiling myself the Linux version, it is way easier to download the Windows binaries and run them with WINE. In some cases, it even works better! (e.g. full screen support)

</comment><comment><USER28> Back in the day, I dreamt of being able to run Cubase on Wine, and not have to deal with Windows at all, but I remember being told (this was maybe 2002?) by someone who claimed to have the inside line that there was the possibility that Cubase would run on Linux 'soon', natively.

That became less of an issue when Windows 7 came along as it worked so well, but now I know the next hardware revision of my studio PC will probably need to run Windows 10 (which I detest using), I'm looking misty-eyed at it again. But I know that Cubase is immensely demanding, and no doubt uses lots of odd Windows APIs that Wine doesn't cover (or cover fully), so that's just a pipe dream which gets awoken every time I see a new release of Wine come along and I somewhat foolishly check the app database only to find the last versions to test were years ago and were 'garbage'!

<comment><USER21> Have you tried Ardour? I'm definitely just an amateur, but it has worked fine for my needs (coming from Cubase LE).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Am I the only one testing software libraries cross-compiled to windows on wine? I do use Appveyor native, but for debugging tricky issues I rather use wine on Linux or macOS, than spinning up a Windows VM and try to debug it there. I just have to maintain seperate win32 and win64 registries and ENV vars.

<comment><USER30> I'm very curious of your setup. Do you use wine to cross-compile your windows binaries?

<comment><USER29> No, just to test the mingw compiled libraries. The old tea.org CI was doing it similar.

setups: [https://github.com/LibreDWG/libredwg/blob/master/build- aux/s...](https://github.com/LibreDWG/libredwg/blob/master/build-aux/smoke.sh) [https://github.com/rurban/safeclib/blob/master/build- tools/s...](https://github.com/rurban/safeclib/blob/master/build- tools/smoke.sh#L254)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why is this not working even though the new binaries are already available at [https://dl.winehq.org/wine- builds/ubuntu/dists/cosmic/](https://dl.winehq.org/wine- builds/ubuntu/dists/cosmic/)?

``` $ sudo apt update $ apt-cache policy winehq-stable winehq-stable: Installed: (none) Candidate: 3.0.4~cosmic Version table: 3.0.4~cosmic 500 500 [https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu](https://dl.winehq.org/wine- builds/ubuntu) cosmic/main amd64 Packages ```

</comment><comment><USER32> Anyone using Wine to run Adobe softwares (Photoshop, PPro, AEfx...)?

<comment><USER33> Photoshop works great with it. I used it for years before switching to Gimp.

<comment><USER34> So you only experienced the old Photoshop under Wine. I hear the latest Photoshop CC doesn't work well under Wine.

<comment><USER35> Oh I heard that was specifically one of the big steps forward in was it Wine 3.

Keen to know if anyone's experiences with Adobe CC products.

<comment><USER36> Did you check the db at WINEhq.com, IIRC it used to work really well but is problematic now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm looking forward to getting 3d acceleration in ChromeOS this year so I can try stuff like this (albeit without audio for now).

</comment><comment><USER38> I was pretty happy when I found out Lead Pursuit Falcon 4.0 Allied Force works perfectly on wine

</comment><comment><USER39> Is there any way to run Wine on 64-bit MacOS? Wine seems to be stuck on 32-bit.

<comment><USER3> Wine supports 64-bit for years.

[https://wiki.winehq.org/AMD64](https://wiki.winehq.org/AMD64)

[https://wiki.winehq.org/Building_Wine#Shared_WoW64](https://wiki.winehq.org/Building_Wine#Shared_WoW64)

<comment><USER39> When I ran 'port install wine,' I got the "error wine cannot be installed for the configured build_arch 'x86_64' because it only supports the arch(s) 'i386'."

<comment><USER3> I guess whatever is your source, they didn't build 64-bit one. So you can ask those who maintains that repo.

It clearly should be buildable for 64-bit.

See:

[https://wiki.winehq.org/MacOS](https://wiki.winehq.org/MacOS)

[https://dl.winehq.org/wine- builds/macosx/download.html](https://dl.winehq.org/wine- builds/macosx/download.html)

<comment><USER40> Their installer says "64 bit support (optional)". It's not selected by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Fantastic !

At this point, there is very little reason for federal, state and local government to be saddled with millions in license costs

<comment><USER42> A decade ago one major local government agency did in fact move away from Windows in the hope of avoiding those costly license fees.

They found out it can also be quite costly to run Linux as an alternative:

[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ditching-windows-for- li...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ditching-windows-for-linux-led-to- major-difficulties-says-open-source-champion-munich/)

<comment><USER43> Most likely there were just bribed by one unnamed company, or promised some investments - the time correlates with expanding their office in Munich. So I would not trust Munich's claims at all. Despite recent whitewashing of Microsoft image they were never practicing a fair business.</comment></comment></comment>


Sitting straight 'bad for backs' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6187080.stm <comment><USER2> I've always suspected that traditional ergonomic advice is basically pseudoscience. My favorite thing is those ergonomic brochures using cartoon people with completely unrealistic proportions. Why don't they use actual pictures instead for clarity?

More importantly, where are the references to peer-reviewed ergonomic research showing that so-called "correct" posture actually improves outcomes? Where did all this advice come from in the first place? Somebody's mother?

</comment><comment><USER3> While interesting, please note that this article is from November 2006. There is also criticism [2]. I tried to find the actual paper but besides a presentation [3] I couldn't find it. Some papers where W. Bashir is not the lead author [4].

Interesting thought though, what about the neck in a 135 degree posture?

[1] [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061127112844.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061127112844.htm) [2] <http://www.posturepress.com/Posture-Research-3.php> [3] <http://www.rsna.org/rsna/media/pr2006-2/aching_back-2.cfm> [4] [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Waseem+Bashir&...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Waseem+Bashir&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Data from the British Chiropractic Association..."

I'd trust data from the Tooth Fairy Association as much if not more.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, the Tooth Fairies only provided the quote about how much people sit around. The actual data seems to be from a study by "Dr Waseem Bashir of the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta Hospital", so presumably can be trusted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just _knew_ my chair-leaning-back stance was good for you. Ha. It always seemed pretty obvious that there was much less weight on the spine itself, so it should be better.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems like the benefit to the lower back might be counterbalanced by being worse for the neck and shoulders. (Disclaimer: I am not any sort of doctor or physiologist.)

<comment><USER8> I'd concur with that. Personal annecdotal evidence from working at a job that have bendy chairs often leaves me with a crick in my neck.

If you sit like the far right picture you're going to get a forward leaning neck in any case.

Further point: do these people have bad backs because they don't do any abdominal work? I've done pilates for a year and that seems to have helped a fair bit - better inner muscles and hence better posture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, what about those stokke kneeling chairs ([http://www.amazon.com/Varier- Variable-Balans-Kneeling-Natura...](http://www.amazon.com/Varier-Variable- Balans-Kneeling-Natural/dp/B002OMZPOS))?

<comment><USER10> Probably not very good for you.

Here's a thought experiment -- hold your arm straight out for 8 hours.

Does it hurt?

Yeah. So why would it be a good idea to keep your back unsupported all day?

<comment><USER11> Sitting in one of these (goofy, overpriced) chairs does not involve tensing any muscles other than those used for balance, which don't really get tired, so that's probably the worst analogy on the internet today. These chairs are meant to rest your legs, not your back. Your back doesn't need to be supported all day. It _is_ the support. There are people who stand for 8 or more hours a day, you know. And they're healthier for it.

<comment><USER9> I forgot to mention that I've used a cheap knockoff (and even goofier) model of these chairs for a couple of years. And it was quite comfortable indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Change position. Reading this I noticed I was sitting in the 'good' position, but through the day I also lean a bit forward, all the way, to the side. I'd love an automatic desk that let me stand part of the time.

If you do like to sit straight, look for an older traditional 'secretary' chair with the pad that pushes the mid-back forward to keep the natural curve. Backs are NOT straight, there is a slight but vital curve that many chairs ruin.

</comment><comment><USER13> What about our necks? Seems to me as if slouching that much for long periods would pinch the neck.

My doctor recently insisted that I take breaks once an hour, and I think that is the most important thing. He said that alone would give your back much needed rest from the strain of sitting in _any_ one position for too long.

<comment><USER10> If your monitor's on your desk, perhaps, but the solution is to not put it on your desk. You can get a finger-touch adjustable monitor stand that lets you position the monitor at any angle. And you can do the same for a keyboard.

I think desks are like diamond-frame bicycles, easy to build and very nice looking, but not a great fit for our bodies.

I'm going to try and setup something like this around my IKEA Poang chair, and see how it goes. I'm lucky in that I don't need a mouse, so it should be easy to get the monitor and keyboard into a comfortable position :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Too bad the printable version omitted the diagram.</comment>


Love at First Byte - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/mayjun/features/knuth.html

<comment><USER2> Ok, Knuths(Gods) books are like the Feynman volumes in fame. But I have never fully read any of them while I did read Feynman Vol I completely.I feel knuths volumes didn't impact my life as much as Paul Grahams writings on lisp. I am not asskissing. It's a plain fact.

Sometimes I wonder if God is not being modest and just being plain with this "He once told me that his very talent is detail and he didn't consider himself all that brilliant otherwise. He's made it clear that he considers himself less of an innovator than a cataloguer."

I am a math major and I have seen some nasty stuff in my life. Might it be true that people are in awe because no one really understood the terse pages. Another Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge?

But I am not willing to disregard GOD just yet. If any of you think I am mistaken, could you please leave a comment as to the highlights of Knuths career that one should be aware of. The one thing that I am aware and use frequently is the KMP algorithm.(Which has a K for Knuth in it)

<comment><USER3> What's odd is that such a bright guy could so badly estimate the curves of 1) his ability to produce new material, and 2) new research and developments in computer science that he wants to cover in the aforementioned material. They're diverging, and quickly.

<comment><USER4> Well, I think the poor estimates reflect more on the size of his goal than on anything else. Big goals aren't as easily project managed as the typical software feature.

<comment><USER3> The 'poor estimate' is estimating the one person can keep up with an entire field. It's simply not possible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Sense of an Endling - <AUTHOR> https://longreads.com/2017/03/24/the-sense-of-an-endling <comment><USER2> If I may, the article would be much more enjoyable with pictures of the animals discussed populating the margins. I am constantly googling for said animals :)

</comment><comment><USER3> > (...) and a gorilla used his hands to tell humans the story of how he became > an orphan.

This is touching. Deeply.

<comment><USER2>
        The last pair of great auks had hidden themselves on a
        huge rock in the northern Atlantic. In 1844, a trio of
        Icelandic bounty hunters found them in a crag, incubating
        an egg. Two of the hunters strangled the adults to get to
        the egg, and the third accidentally crushed its shell
        under his boot.

Without being too cynical, that exemplifies part of _Human Nature_ in a nutshell.

<comment><USER4> With only one living member of a species left and the egg, I doubt the species would have survived for much longer without humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Humans do too much harm. Yes, the world is violent. That doesn't mean we can kill anything at will.

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought this was going to be about the Booker prize winning book by Julian Barnes.

Apparently not. I would check it out though, It's a good one!

</comment><comment><USER7> I imagine the last member of a dying society (defeated in war, disease, etc) has a similar lonely experience.

<comment><USER8> We are seeing a similar process as the last native speakers of now extinct languages pass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is truly one of the saddest things I've read. :(</comment>


Ask HN: Why do developer advocates exist? - <AUTHOR> I mean this in the most non-inflammatory way possible. I want to understand what is the motivation of big companies behind having developer advocates on staff.
I don't mean people who promote (in both tech and marketing sense of the word) the final product of the business, but rather people behind e.g. React, Andular etc.
Off the top of my head, I can only see this: you want to hire good people, so you push your internal projects to opensource, hoping to increase adoption, get bug fixes etc. So you need someone to promote the project and make sure there is a core group on the edge between possibly less sociable (?) developers and wider audience. Is that even close?
I can also come up with a bunch of counter-arguments to this but I'm not really good at high-level thinking that probably lies behind these decisions so would appreciate any reasonable explanation.
This is probably related to the "why open-source at all" one since if the product is internally successful and solid, the only reasoning to open-source it besides pragmatism (hiring) would be altruism and I find it hard to believe it can actually influence decisions in large enterprises.
Again, I'm asking this completely honestly and I don't mean to diminish anyone's role or motivations. Attribute any possibly offensive tone of my question to my ignorance please. <comment><USER2> Developer advocates are sales people for an API. It does not necessarily need to be open source. For example, Twilio may have a developer advocate to help people get started with their product.

In other cases it is about an ecosystem. For Tensorflow, Google is seeking market dominance because they also offer the ecosystem around machine learning - the cloud. For that you higher people to promote your product, give people examples to get started, and sometimes interface and help users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's what I meant by "not directly related to the end product of the business". Eg why does google have developer advocates for angular? Is it purely so that adoption is wide enough that the "talent pool" admits good engineers even purely statistically, ie it's easier to hire a good coder out of 100k people that out of 1k? Not even mentioning that you don't have to teach your internal frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A developer advocate is an extrovert that likes teaching, explaining, answering questions, writing intro docs and code examples; that wants the users to succeed. They also report back to the project managers and programmers about problems: confusion, missing functionality, bugs, possible enhancements, OS and compiler incompatibilities.

No one will use your software if they cannot figure out how to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a valid argument but it does not answer my question which was about why do companies have developer advocates for products other that what they directly sell.

<comment><USER4> Because those products form an ecosystem on which the product is built which they do sell. If the users are familiar with the platform and have adopted it, it's easier to sell to them stuff based on the platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> i am pretty certain that promoting react has little impact on people who do bring the most revenue to facebook (end users who simply eat up clickbait).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Imagine having a company, you have a sales pipeline.

For every 1000 people who know what your company/product is,

100 people will go to your website,

10 people will call/email your company to ask a question.

1 person will end up considering buying your product.

So build a dev advocate team, you will increase the amount of people who know what your product is/ask questions about your product. Furthermore people calling your company after interacting with a dev advocate isnt someone who just saw your logo, or heard what your company could do from another business person, but the people calling will actually know at least something about how your product works/interacts with the customers infrastructure. So the pipeline for interactions with people will likely convert to sales at a better rate than people from marketing/sales.

Dev advocates are able to talk about code (unlike most sales people), So if you able to convince a customer's dev team that your company provides value, you at least have some additional help convincing business people to buy your stuff if their dev team wants it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm specifically not asking about these people. Take facebook - they don't sell react. Why do they have developer advocates for that? In other words, if you sell cars, why have people who talk to other people about how ICEs are built?

<comment><USER6> O i see what you mean,

I would assume Facebook having one successful dev advocate has many benefits:

-if FB is going to build products with React, it is in FB's best interest that there is a healthy React community constantly building new things FO FREE, so now Facebook can easily integrate good ideas/tools built for React into internal systems. I would assume this is huge.

-basically recruit smart/productive devs to FB by interacting with React community on a regular basis

-buys goodwill with dev community

-An additional line of communication into potential customers, when you have a potential sale going on with a customer, if your dev advocate knows important technical leadership people at customer that can help

But really i have no idea :)

<comment><USER6> Important to remember that things like React or Java, they aren't ever finished, they are constantly being worked on and improved on, so while there is a central brain trust (React has the React team at FB, Java has the Java Executive Committee comprised of devs from Oracle and other big companies like IBM, Twitter, others. these devs are eventually going to retire and will need to be replaced by community experts) these open source communities are still very much dependent on dev community assistance/feedback for the successes of these languages/frameworks to keep the gears churning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, this is close to what I was thinking too. I was wondering if this doesn't have the drawback of core team having to constantly deal with people from outside coming with their use-cases that have nothing to do with what the team's vision is. You know, "i was thinking it would be nice to have bells and whistles when you click this button" type of people. I would _really love_ to get some insight into the efficiency of this (developer-advocacy-in-general) - seems like it's really worth it for companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my experience, for React, developer advocates have been really good for getting the project out to the community

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, what I'm asking is what is the motivation to have them?</comment></comment>


Facebook Status Versus Twitter - Not The Same - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexwilhelm.com/alex_wilhelm/2009/02/facebook-status-versus-twitter-not-the-same.html People are getting the difference between an public network and private one confused. Get with it people. <comment><USER2> Of course, once you install the twitter app in facebook, they become one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really, people in FB cannot communicate back into Twitter. And the noise from a prolific tweeter is far to great for FB. IMHO.</comment></comment>


Computing the optimal road trip across the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/08/computing-the-optimal-road-trip-across-the-u-s/

<comment><USER2> 9.33 days worth of driving time -- that's a fair bit!

You'll want to do this in a car. Some of the cities and routes will not allow an RV. For example, Washington DC and NYC don't allow RVs on their streets (just too congested for a 45 foot Class A, with or without a towed car). Getting into NYC in an RV would be difficult anyway, as the Port Authority doesn't allow them through the tunnels because of the on-board propane commonly carried.</comment>