Hardware: Computerized Etch a Sketch - <AUTHOR> https://neil.fraser.name/hardware/etch/ <comment><USER2> Nice little project, but this part struck me:

> Legal statements required by Ohio Art:[...] > (Yes, one of their lawyers > contacted me and demanded I add the above statements.)</comment>


Ask HN: Best solution for encrypting text data, accessible publicly? - <AUTHOR> I've been buying cryptocurrencies and I'd like to leave instructions for my family to restore them should something happen to me.
They're non-technical so the simpler for them, the better. I was thinking I could just encrypt a text file which is unlockable by a password.
The question is where can I host this data and update it easily as well? Some sort of encrypted git would be ideal. It doesn't have to live online forever, just for the next while until a better solution comes up. I suppose I could just keep an encrypted file on dropbox? <comment><USER2> You can use a small VeraCrypt[0] or LUKS[1] (if on Linux) container with a password or a key file and write a short manual explaining how to mount the container.

[0] [https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/](https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/)

[1] [https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/DMCrypt](https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/DMCrypt)</comment>


The New Auteurism: True Detective, Top of the Lake, and Avant Garde Television - <AUTHOR> http://www.joylesscreatures.com/feature-articles/the-new-auteurism-true-detective-top-of-the-lake-and-avant-garde-television

<comment><USER2> Eric Andre is pretty avant garde. In fact, there is much content on Cartoon Planet that could be deemed at least 'experimental'.

</comment><comment><USER3> (2014)</comment>


Show HN: Desktop Fruit – A Curated Blog of Mac App Design - <AUTHOR> http://desktopfruit.com <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how you can call any of this "Mac App Design". To boot, none of it follows Apple's interface guidelines. At all. And beyond that, none of them can be using standard Cocoa UI elements. So they're all highly unfeasible.

Beyond that, none of them are good. It probably seems harsh to say that, but none of these really do any important thinking about how interfaces are supposed to work. Design isn't just making stuff pretty, it's making stuff work well. Most if not all of these apps are basically a fresh coat of paint on an existing product or the envisioning of a new product as it is similar to the current form.

To summarize:

\- None of them look like Mac apps

\- All of their interfaces are superficial

\- Most of their interfaces are difficult to replicate in the native Mac development environment without extensive custom work

\- None of them actually exist beyond being pictures!

How do you know that any of these ideas are actually good without trying them? A picture's worth a thousand words, but if it looks better than it works it's worth a huge loss in customers.

Sorry if this sounds grumpy, I just don't really understand the point of this at all. Everyone who's interested in pie-in-the-sky conceptual app designs that are more focused on eye candy than usability has dribbble already.

<comment><USER3> It's design, just not good design? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Regardless of viability, they are original. Throw away what doesn't work, savage what does, good to get the creative juices flowing.

<comment><USER2> good design is often original, but it is not often good because of its originality

I personally find wire framing and loose brainstorming much more effective than creating detailed mockups like these to crete good designs, but YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title is a bit off - this isn't so much a blog of Mac app design as a blog of speculative Mac app UI concepts.

Some of them are quite nice in purely visual terms, but they tend to lack any rigorous UX thought. The Slack one is a perfect example: Yes, putting the channels, direct messages, and private groups into their own tabs _looks_ neater, but now I would have to click twice instead of once each time I switched between the two channels I use most often.

<comment><USER5> > they tend to lack any rigorous UX thought. The Slack one is a perfect > example

The background transparency is nice looking as long as you're not actively using your computer for anything and don't have any windows open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently a mobile app becomes a Mac app when you add the "traffic light" window controls to the top-left corner.

What particularly irritates me is that these concepts show tiny little apps floating on an empty desktop. Which Mac user has a single app running at a time?

In the real world, a Mac app will be overlaid on top of dozens of other windows. And then all those blur backgrounds turn into grey smudges, because the content of the underlying windows is mostly text.

</comment><comment><USER7> Most of these concepts irritate me to no end by such enormous amount of wasted whitespace. May be it's an irrational thing (after all, personally I usually work with a pair of 1680x and 4k monitors and have no shortage of pixels), but I just don't get it: why use all these gigantic margins and spaces when instead UX designer could've just made the window smaller?

<comment><USER8> The thoughtful use of white space (a.k.a. negative space) can improve readability/scannability, and to guide users by helping to create a visual relationship between various UI elements.

Cosmetically, generous negative space can help create a feeling of sophistication and elegance. I suspect that this kind of use is more offensive to practical people who have little use for how something "feels".

And of course sometimes it's overdone by designers, especially in cases of concepts serving as shiny, happy portfolio fodder instead of serving real users and business goals.

<comment><USER9> Whitespace can improve readability, but only up to a point. The Slack concept currently at the top of the list would fit less than a minute's worth of conversation in a moderately busy Slack channel, so the increased readability of individual messages comes at the cost of dramatically decreased readability of the conversation as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Snooze.

Concepts are a dime a dozen and while these are nice pieces of art I can't really take them seriously as App designs.

Focus on real products and the people making them.

</comment><comment><USER11> While these designs looks good, I would absolutely not use any of them, as the _usability_ is non-existing. This also describes well why the designs doesn't follow Apple's HIG.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lovely, but funnily enough I think most of these would work just as well on Windows or the web.

</comment><comment><USER13> Contrary to the other feedback you seem to be getting, these are really nice - thanks for sharing!

I wonder if people are maybe missing that these are concepts and not fully developed designs, so they aren't perfect. It's like a concept car: there are ideas and themes that will make it to production, even though there would be extensive changes to productionise them. And that's pretty useful to see.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is great. Big fan of curated lists. Keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER15> Okay, I'll bite :) I was hoping to get some inspiration, but it's a website full of identikit flat designs. What are the designers going to do a year or two from now when "Flat Design Considered Harmful" articles start filling up the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Recognizing there are a lot of opinions on Mac app design/visuals/etc., if you have any suggestions for future posts feel free to send them to email@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER16> What the... For Mac app design concepts, these all suuuure look like Windows!! Where's the brushed metal, the shaded orbs, the soft drop shadows?

<comment><USER13> Back in 2009. Mac app design has changed significantly in the past few years.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My weekend project find words that sound similar to other words - <AUTHOR> http://whatsoundslike.com <comment><USER2> Love it! Tweeting it out...</comment>


Slack Acquires Astro - <AUTHOR> https://slackhq.com/slack-acquires-astro-to-help-email-and-channels-work-together <comment><USER2> I used to be very bitter about acquihires, and startups planning for exits from day one. But maybe - maybe just to retain sanity - it's time to look at things differently. Maybe SaaS startups should not be treated as actual products, but just as mere _temporary experiments_. If the company fails, the product dies. If the company succeeds, the products gets killed. But, however briefly, we get to see some concept implemented in software, adding to the list of things that could be done (but usually aren't).

<comment><USER3> It's really like the big company is outsourcing their R&D. The alternative would be to run dozens of experiments internally. Since most companies don't have the people power to do that, it's cheaper to just wait until a startup appears that solves their problem, or wait until they're successful enough to validate a market.

<comment><USER4> I've seen the head of a business unit in my large organization not so subtly hint to a Director that Problem X is something that we need to solve in the next 18-24 months, but we don't have the budget properly allocated to do it ourselves.

Lo and behold the Director shortly leaves the company to found a startup aimed at solving Problem X. Eighteen months later we buy them, aquihiring back the director and some engineers who left with him to start the startup.

The head of the business unit knew he couldn't get the approval from the board to solve Problem X, so he basically outsourced the risk and in the end the director and his engineers ended up with a nice chunk of change and their old jobs back.

<comment><USER5> I don't suppose with broad stroaks what niche they filled? Just curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A two-week shutdown notice is _unbelievably_ short. And given the way the Screenhero acquisition went, I wouldn't be too optimistic if I were an Astro user.

Screenhero was acquired by Slack, and while it wasn't shut down immediately, new signups were disabled. They eventually shut it down entirely when they released support for screensharing within Slack, but the experience of that is nothing like what it was with Screenhero. Even aside from forcing people to pay for a Slack instance just to screenshare[0], the actual video sharing experience just... doesn't work anywhere near as well. So the pattern seems to be:

\- acquire product \- shut standalone product down \- replace product with inferior version of product, integrated into Slack \- charge more

[0] if you don't already share a Slack instance with the person you want to call, this is a _really_ awkward workflow just to screenshare

<comment><USER7> For me, this is a knock against basically anything Slack related. Slack 100% has the power to ensure that Astro is around long enough for all parties to make a proper transition to appropriate solutions.

I get they want to keep Astro's clients around, but it's a big FU to companies that rely on Astro to have two weeks notice about changes potentially affecting their entire users base.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I've been nervously watching slack as a current Hipchat user, working out what our next move is (pretty much Slack or Microsoft Teams seemed the saner choices), and this makes me want to have nothing to do with them.

It reeks of arrogance. Sure I understand it was a acquihire, but that means you acquired the company and take on their obligations including moral. An it is poor form to dump customers / users out when they likely could have kept the services up for at least 3 months.

If slack doesn't care about that, then I am not sure this is a business I really want to have a dependency on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's almost at a point where we could do with a cloud-to-butt-esque plugin that replaces "acquires" with "shuts down"

> The past few years have been a remarkable journey at Astro

[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> > For more details about what's next for Astro customers, read Astro's > announcement on their website.

What's next? Scrambling to find a replacement email workflow in t minus 15 days and counting ...

There is NO "what's next". The product they are using is disappearing forever. Why are these product shutterings always phrased as a "bold new adventure" for former customers?

> We'd like to thank you, our users, for whom we built this company, and for > whom we look forward to serving further as part of Slack.

I realize it is exciting news for the Astro VCs (maybe?) and, again, maybe Astro's employees, but this isn't how you thank someone for being a loyal customer. Apologize for screwing them at least.

<comment><USER11> Agree absolutely ridiculous how do we get slack to stop the shutdown

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like the standard end for any half-way decent mail app: acquihire and shut down.

Still sore about Google shuttering Sparrow a few years ago - it was by far the best email client on both iOS and Mac at the time.

<comment><USER13> > Seems like the standard end for any half-way decent mail app: acquihire and > shut down.

For context, it takes a day or two to build an app that can display an SMS message correctly, and maybe 25 person years to build an app that can display an email thread correctly. This means that no matter how much money you raise, by the time you have a semi-working product it will be pretty much time for your VCs to start returning money to their LPs before you can get traction.

If you want an email client that's not going to get shut down, try Missive... They are funding their email client from a side business selling t-shirts rather than taking VC, so it's much less likely to go anywhere.

<comment><USER2> > _maybe 25 person years to build an app that can display an email thread > correctly_

How so? E-mails are not _that_ complicated. Unless your threading involves some speculative ML algorithms.

<comment><USER13> Because the specs just for parsing out the headers, body, attachments, etc. are fiendishly complicated. Think all sorts of indefinitely nested recursive data structures that have no fixed order.

But that's the easy part. The hard part is that there is no spec at all that governs what actually goes inside the body of a message. The easiest way to explain is by way of analogy:

Imagine that you've never left your village and know nothing of the outside world, but are tasked with building a car capable of circumnavigating the globe.

So you start out by building the first version of your car that can drive on your village's streets successfully. So far, so good, you think you've solved the problem and assume it will just keep working. But as soon as you get outside your village you see that the roads are no longer paved, so the car quickly breaks down. So you go back and build a new car that can also drive on gravel roads, and set out again. And this works well enough until there stops being roads at all. So now you go back and build a third car that can handle paved roads, dirt roads, and off roading. And this works for a while until you encounter sand... And water... And -100 degree cold... And 10,000 degree heat... And zero oxygen... And people start shooting at you. Etc.

And of course if you're not very careful then the time required to build each new version of the car will increase exponentially, since you need to make sure it still works equally well on all of the previous terrain you solved for.

This is basically email parsing in a nutshell. It's also why you keep seeing these companies get bought out for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars without many users, and sometimes without having even launched anything. Because email is by for the world's largest source of human knowledge so it's a very valuable domain to be able to work with, but only a handful of people really have the expertise.

<comment><USER2> I get it. Hell, my first job involved parsing headers, body and attachments out of e-mails for further analysis. I just don't feel this is a 25 person- year job, unless you're including other people than developers working directly on the task.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> With Google Inbox getting shut down, a lot of people jumped ship to astro.

Just kind of funny.

I'm sure a fair amount of people are pulling their hair out

<comment><USER2> Wait what? Did Google Inbox get shut down?!

<comment><USER15> You missed the outrage last week's outrage :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17971516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17971516)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996144)

<comment><USER2> Yeah. It happened in the middle of my week-long break from HN, and the Internet in general.

<comment><USER15> try: [https://www.hackernewsletter.com/](https://www.hackernewsletter.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence I just went to Astro's site to see what they do and why this makes a difference for me... but all I can see is their acquisition announcement and I am not any closer to understanding what it is they do for Email :/

<comment><USER16> Seeing as they're shutting down Astro, it doesn't make much sense to be advertising their now-discontinued product that you can't use.

<comment> X-Istence Sure... but "Slack buys Astro" means absolutely nothing to me. What does Astro do? How will this affect how I use Slack? What new features am I likely to get as a Slack user?

<comment><USER16> Well, you can read the announcement. It doesn't mention any specifics about integrating astro's existing product into slack, so there probably aren't any new features to be expected in the near term.

It's just a talent acquisition. If "slack buys astro" means nothing to you, maybe this article isn't meant for you. Not all news is relevant to all people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >On Wednesday October 10, we'll shut down our Astro apps for Mac, iOS, Android, Amazon Alexa, and Slack.

Isn't this very little time if your company depends on Astro for work?

<comment><USER18> Move fast, break things.

The new reality.

<comment><USER2> And another example of why you shouldn't depend on SaaS startups for anything you can't replace very quickly with another SaaS or a homegrown solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is very disappointing.

1 - Slack has a terrible Electron app. I'd like to see money spent fixing that over buying more talent for some odd integration between my email and my work chat. 2 - Astro was great, it met all my needs/wants in an email client.

Point 2 is really the gotcha here. Astro snoozes, allows using the gmail keyboard shortcuts, supports maOS and iOS, and most importantly, implements the Office365 api directly. (As opposed to the typical Exchange and/or IMAP tunnels most clients use.)

The company I work for either through mandate, or just letting IT do stuff (I don't know which), has disabled IMAP access AND Exchange access to our Office365 Instance. BUT I can use the api.

Astro and Polymail both fit the bill.

I liked Astro better. I immediately thought about going to Polymail, but they have gone subscription. (I don't have a problem paying for an email client, but once should be enough, thanks you.)

</comment><comment><USER20> I am going to stick to the ecosystem (Apple, Google or Microsoft) from now- onwards. Too many email apps tried - Sparrow, Mailbox, Newton, Inbox and now this. I have come to realize that the Mail app on Mac or Gmail just works. I can do without all those fancy features that were built into these apps.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. It seems there's no business model for third party email clients to ensure its continued development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is so frustrating, as I really loved the client, and now it's just being killed off. It's absolutely burning a good chunk of whatever goodwill I may have had for Slack.

</comment><comment><USER23> I really liked Astro. Can anyone recommend an email client for macOS and iOS that has scheduled sending and read receipts?

<comment><USER24> Superhuman. It's hands down the best os x email client I've used. Don't think they have an iOS app yet but it's coming. Or maybe they do, I don't do email on my phone.

<comment><USER23> Thanks. I signed up ages ago for Superhuman but haven't received an invite. If it is possible can you invite me using firstname.lastname@example.com?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Slack, just fix the performance of desktop first.

<comment><USER26> FTFY make a native desktop app first

<comment><USER27> To this day I haven't understood why people use the desktop client.

Browser client is fantastic and has all the features of the desktop client (including desktop notifications, if they are your thing).

<comment><USER28> I've been using the desktop client for keyboard shortcuts, how's the web app doing on that front?

<comment><USER29> So far all my common shortcuts are working in the browser (starting with cmd + k)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER30> Everyone's moaning about "aquihire and shut down" but it would make ZERO sense for Slack to do that in this case. Astro was in no way a competitor to Slack. Seems to me like they're going after Gmail for Business.

Edit: Apparently they did shut it down...

<comment><USER9> But they did acquire and shut it down. They may have future plans at some point but it has been (or will be very soon) shut down

> On Wednesday October 10, we'll shut down our Astro apps for Mac, iOS, > Android, Amazon Alexa, and Slack. As of today, we've also disabled signups > of new users.

<comment><USER31> October 10 is really short. That doesn't give people much time.</comment></comment></comment>


Examples of Cool Logos: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - <AUTHOR> https://insights.lytho.com/blog/logos-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly <comment><USER2> Logos are an art form, choosing a logo that scales well, this article does not even show historical forms for the logos it enjoys, which is a pity, because that's where the learning is.</comment>


What's Up with Ancient Greek Epitaphs - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/27/whats-up-with-ancient-greek-epitaphs/ <comment><USER2>
        He slept beneath the moon
        He basked beneath the sun;
        He lived a life of going-to-do,
        And died with nothing done.

— James Albery's epitaph for himself (that I remember because I can relate to it).

<comment><USER3> Those who like epigrams may enjoy the poetry of J.V. Cunningham. His _Collected Poems & Epigrams_ include "A Century of Epigrams", which in turn include someproposed epitaphs--for himself, and imagined others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is written in an irritating style, as if the writer were half embarrassed to be discussing something so arcane as Greek epigraphs and they feel compelled to knowingly wink at the reader about the silliness of it all.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I don't even know what the point of the article was except to define epitaph and epigram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aha, the joy of seeing _The Greek Anthology_ here on a Friday! I don't have a copy of that (because Loeb books are expensive, even used, but full text is here: [https://archive.org/stream/greekanthology01newyuoft/greekant...](https://archive.org/stream/greekanthology01newyuoft/greekanthology01newyuoft_djvu.txt)) but for our Ancient Greek II class they had us buy _A Hellenistic Anthology_ ([https://www.amazon.com/Hellenistic-Anthology-Cambridge- Greek...](https://www.amazon.com/Hellenistic-Anthology-Cambridge-Greek- Classics/dp/0521314259)), which is an abridged version with a ton (2/3 of the book) of commentary to help you along.

Although this book has 12 pages of selected epigrams, if you are like me, after some years the only one that stays in memory will be a dialogue (number 31), between a prostitute a a prospective client, using natural, everyday speech. This surely must be the earliest such written transaction.

<comment><USER7> What's the dialogue?

<comment><USER8> A little digging through the look-inside preview suggests it's the one labelled 5.46 in this list of epigrams by Philodemus: [http://www.attalus.org/poetry/philodemus.html](http://www.attalus.org/poetry/philodemus.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

At the end of this piece, that's what my brain dredged up from the opposite corner of the ring, so to speak.

</comment><comment><USER3> '8 The epigrams of "Gregory of Nazianzus" (whoever he was)'

He was a most influential and well-known theologian. It is curious to learn that his poetry was thought worth collecting.

</comment><comment><USER10> just as a sidenote regarding epitaphs, there is museum in tyrol, which collected funny epitaphs: [https://www.tyrol.tl/en/highlights/museums-and- exhibitions/c...](https://www.tyrol.tl/en/highlights/museums-and- exhibitions/cemetery-museum-kramsach/)</comment>


Yahoo SEC Filing: Name change to Altaba Inc and director resignations - <AUTHOR> https://investor.yahoo.net/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-17-5897&CIK=1011006&soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma <comment><USER2> For those confused, this filing is reporting a name change because the operating business (including its brand, domain name, etc.) is being acquired by Verizon out of what is now Yahoo! Inc. So the Yahoo business, its name, domains, and so on are not going anywhere as a result of this announcement. Altaba is just the name of of the company that will hold the investments that Verizon didn't acquire, including Alibaba shares.

<comment><USER3> Haha, Verizon owns America Online as well. Perhaps they're going to collect all relics of the 90's internet into some kind of Voltron monster.

<comment><USER4> I hope someone at Verizon cares about history and is preserving things for future museums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rather than the inevitable bashing of Marissa that will undoubtedly unfurl on this thread, I'd like to put in a little reminder that we usually celebrate taking on big projects and big risks and that we should commend her for taking on the immense challenge of steadying the Yahoo ship.

Yes, she wasn't able to keep the ship from sinking. But I do think she put in a good-faith effort.

<comment><USER6> I think there is absolutely no indication that anybody, other than Jesus Christ himself descending from the skies mounted on a Harley Davidson in flames, could have saved Yahoo.

So, bashing Marissa here would be really, really pointless and sad.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that is true. In 2012 Yahoo had $5B a year in revenue and was the second most visited property on the web.

When Thompson stepped down the board were given two proposals. The first, revive Yahoo as a premium tech firm lead by someone like Mayer, or 2. admit that Yahoo is now a media co and double down on the verticals where Yahoo is winning - especially those where you can sell premium ads (Finance, Sport)

The board had delusions of grandeur and saw Yahoo's as still being on the same level as Google rather than taking the safer bet and building out the media company.

Being a media company isn't as interesting - but there are a lot of public, medium sized tech media co's out there who get along just fine (and some even have an innovative breakthrough every now and then - like IAC) - and Yahoo, with the later plan, would have been the best of this bunch.

<comment><USER3> I was surprised to learn at a conference in October that America Online still exists(!), and this (media) is the route that they took. Apparently they own the Huffington Post and Engadget now.

<comment><USER8> AOL was acquired by Verizon, so in a sense they still exist, but in another sense not. They did own/operate HuffPo, Engadget, and other properties for some time prior to the Verizon acquisition.

<comment><USER9> Yahoo is more or less going to be folded into aol, actually.

<comment><USER10> I also heard the recent AOL layoffs had much to do with duplicate positions at Yahoo and that Yahoo will fall under the AOL umbrella.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only mention of Mayer I can find is

> Each of David Filo, Eddy Hartenstein, Richard Hill, Marissa Mayer, Jane Shaw > and Maynard Webb has indicated that he or she intends to resign from the > Board effective upon the Closing, and that his or her intention to resign is > not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the > Company's operations, policies or practices.

Which indicates that she'll resign from the board, but doesn't say anything about her resigning as CEO. Is that just left off here because it doesn't require SEC disclosure, or is it a possibility that she'll stay?

<comment><USER12> If she stays, it should be with Verizon Yahoo, not with Altaba (shell containing Alibaba shares formerly known as Yahoo), which is a kind of company Mayer has no experience managing (and also not a managerial challenge worth the kind of salary she can get elsewhere)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, at least they _registered_ Altaba.com. No IP address as of now, though it looks like their mail is handled by Google Apps!

<comment><USER14> You're kidding. Tell me you're kidding.

<comment><USER6> And that's not everything because this is the TXT record

altaba.com. 1800 IN TXT "google-site-verification=vO3De5z6qb- AeM1GmHkcC5dlWA_cw-7WKN5xhcyFFPM"

<comment><USER5> That's required for Google's domain ownership verification, which is a pre- requisite to enabling G Suite (formerly known as Google Apps for Domains).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This says Marissa will not be involved with Altaba Inc. (RemainCo) after Yahoo's operating business is sold to Verizon. Which makes sense, since any future of her leadership is with the operating business instead of the investment company Altaba.

</comment><comment><USER16> Key takeaways from this filing: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is resigning and the company is changing its name to "Altaba Inc."

(The article link was changed from [https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/818589759320637440](https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/818589759320637440) at around 50 points)

<comment><USER17> For the record, this is incorrect. The SEC filing does not indicate she is resigning as CEO. See other comments for explanations about what's actually going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish there was a real alternative to search. I use DuckDuckGo, but I believe they run on AWS and purchase index data from Yandex et. al.

At this point, is it even feasible for anyone to enter the general search market, or has Google simply set the barrier to entry too high? Are there any niche search engines that focus on things Google has either removed or doesn't index? Are there other alternatives besides DDG, StartPage, Yandex and Bing?

<comment><USER19> _" At this point, is it even feasible for anyone to enter the desktop computer market, or has Microsoft simply set the barrier to entry too high?"_

-Us, 1999

One thing I've observed in tech over the past 25 years is that change comes from unexpected places and often very quickly.

<comment><USER20> Uhhh how has the answer to that question changed though? Windows remains the undisputed king of the desktop.

<comment><USER21> Mac has a much more significant market share than it did then, there are several viable alternatives to MS Office, and iOS and Android have kept Windows from having any significant market share in mobile.

That last point is the most significant here: sure, you might not be able to beat Google at Google-like search, but you can try to start building the thing that will become more important than Google-like search in the next 5-10 years.

<comment><USER20> Mac has increased in market share yes, but it's still not even close to a threat.

MS Office is, like Windows, still the king of office productivity application suites. Yes, there are competitors, but they are not a threat to MS as far as I know.

I'm not entirely sure that mobile will be replacing desktop in the near future. People have been shouting "fire!" for years now when it comes to tablets vs. desktop. Regardless, the original comment was talking specifically about desktop.

<comment><USER21> > Regardless, the original comment was talking specifically about desktop.

Yes but that's the point. Microsoft may still be the most dominant player on the desktop, but they're no longer the most important company in tech, because the desktop is no longer the only important platform.

Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are all now as important or more important than Microsoft, because they all run platforms that are as important or more important than Windows.

It was hard to imagine that ever happening in 1999, yet it had started happening, and it became clearly apparent that it was happening within just a few years.

Similarly, whilst Google might seem hopelessly dominant now due to their dominance in search, their dominance over tech will subside when the next important new platform emerges.

<comment><USER22> I think the OP was talking specifically about search, not tech in general. It's rather obvious that unless companies constantly reinvent themselves that the new tech will replace old methods. His question was directed toward the possibility of someone coming in and taking over search as it is today. Which i'm curious of other opinion on this question as well, because frankly I think unless a radical innovation happens in the field, that modern day search is going to be forever relegated to google.

<comment><USER21> > I think the OP was talking specifically about search, not tech in general.

Yeah fair enough, so they were.

> It's rather obvious that unless companies constantly reinvent themselves > that the new tech will replace old methods.

It's obvious in theory/hindsight, but not so much in the real world, as it's impossible to predict exactly what the next important thing will look like - which is why it's pretty much always a new upstart that invents it rather than an incumbent.

> His question was directed toward the possibility of someone coming in and > taking over search as it is today. Which i'm curious of other opinion on > this question as well, because frankly I think unless a radical innovation > happens in the field, that modern day search is going to be forever > relegated to google.

Well, for what it's worth, and if it isn't already clear from my previous comments, I'm pretty sure Google will always dominate search-as-we-know-it, but that's not that big a deal, because search-as-we-know-it won't always be as important as it is now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder what's going to happen to Flickr. I still haven't found a replacement place to host my pictures that I want to show off to others.

<comment><USER24> Check out Koken. Self-hosting but it's pretty great.

<comment><USER25> Looks nice, but for some of us, Flickr is also about externalizing management of TBs of redundant storage ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Etymology of that name - AltaVista + Ali Baba?

<comment><USER27> I figured it is pronounced "alt tabba"; it's so handy that you keep it an alt- tab away.

Perhaps Ogden Nash wrote a poem about it?

<comment><USER28> "T'alt-tab or _not_ t'alt-tab?"

Wait, that wasn't Nash's. Never mind, carry on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Altaba is just a investment company. The operating business will be sold to Verizon (if Verizon doesn't back out), and the money from the sale goes to Altaba. At that point Altaba ought to liquidate and divide the money among the shareholders, but the management may try to invest in other things to justify their jobs.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is this like Google's move to be under Alphabet as a parent company? Altaba is for the holding group that controls that substantial overseas investments while Yahoo becomes just a brand used for some of their web properties that can be sold off if necessary?

<comment><USER31> That's exactly right except for the "if necessary" part. A deal to sell off all of the web properties to verizon has already been made.

<comment><USER30> That deal may have gone pear-shaped following the latest and greatest breach, though. Maybe "if possible" would have been wording on my part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Altabax is a skin cream for bacterial infections.

</comment><comment><USER33> Was Marissa Mayer expected to stay with the investment company, move over to Verizon with the Yahoo property, or leave entirely?

<comment><USER31> She was expected to leave entirely. This is not a surprise.

<comment><USER34> Source? She has said repeatedly she will be with the unit that is going to Verizon, and I didn't see anything different yet.

<comment><USER31> Ah yes, you appear to be correct. As of now she's going to Verizon with the sale. Personally I can't imagine her lasting very long there but I suppose you never know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "In light of the fact that following the Closing the Company will operate as an investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940" \- this is why. It will let Verizon save billions of dollars on Alibaba stock if it can get Yahoo out of the way.

[http://fortune.com/2016/02/08/verizon-yahoo-alibaba- taxes/](http://fortune.com/2016/02/08/verizon-yahoo-alibaba-taxes/)

<comment><USER31> It won't let verizon save anything. Verizon is purchasing the operating companies and has nothing to do with the alibaba shares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> end of an era -- I wonder what Jerry Yang is thinking right now?

<comment><USER37> I'd like to imagine the multi-billionaire has taken a nostalgic moment out to reminisce, but I doubt he will be too cut up :-)

<comment><USER36> right, i bet he's laughing a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What's the verdict on Marissa, did she do a bad job, or was yahoo simply unsaveable?

<comment><USER39> All of the above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wish Yahoo would make more great series like...

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

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm guessing the brand doesn't need to change.

</comment><comment><USER42> Probably shouldn't laugh at the new name, but "altaba" really sounds like "ali(baba)'s father" in Chinese...

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Will they sell the broadcast.com domain (or will it 301 to altaba)?

I have a great idea to use that domain to host streaming of live youth sports.

<comment><USER31> broadcast.com (as well as all the rest of Yahoo's domains) is undoubtedly part of the sale of assets to Verizon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Altaba? Because a rebrand is certainly going to rescue the company. I can see the meetings now. "we need to do something" "....." "Let's do a rebrand! It will all give us the feeling we are doing something"

</comment><comment><USER44> Alta Vista + Alibaba = Altaba?

This new name is a confusing mishmash.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is Altaba etymologically related to Alibaba?

</comment><comment><USER46> Yahoo should focus on discussion.

</comment><comment><USER28> Should have called it Yooha!

<comment><USER47> I'd have gone with an semi-anagram like: Oh,Hay!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What an absolutely TERRIBLE new name. Why do they think this is a good idea?

<comment><USER49> Because it doesn't matter. It'll be a holding company for people who basically want to own Alibaba shares. From that perspective, it's a great name, because it reads a lot like "alternate alibaba".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The headline was changed but the new one reveals nothing. For those who don't want to dig through the filing: Meyer has resigned from the board and Yahoo is renaming to "Altaba".

Edit: It changed again. That's better.

<comment><USER50> The document says that Mayer is resigning from the Board of Directors, not necessarily as CEO.

> Marissa Mayer ... has indicated that he or she intends to resign from the > Board effective upon the Closing,

<comment><USER51> Will resign. She hasn't resigned yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> When all else fails, try renaming the business...

</comment><comment><USER53> the name is not the problem.

<comment><USER54> now it might be!

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> this is dumb

</comment><comment><USER56> It makes perfect sense if you look at it from the perspective of deliberate ship sinking.

<comment><USER28> Altabandon Ship?

Alt-A, Backspace?

All t'abort, aaaah!

 _(OK, I 'll show myself out.)_

 _Sneaks in edit:_ ah of course: _Altabasta!_

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm surprised she lasted this long.

<comment><USER58> Nobody cares.

<comment><USER57> Sounds like you might. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Does this mean that my email addresses will change to "@altaba.com"?

<comment><USER17> No. Yahoo as a brand will continue to exist. Verizon will own the brand.

<comment><USER28> Sounds contradictory though, doesn't it?

<comment><USER17> No. It doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I understand the recent security failures of Yahoo must have weakened the company brand name to certain extent, but it's a 2 decade old web company almost every know off, not sure what made the decision in favor of the new name.

</comment><comment><USER61> Changing the brand under these circumstances doesn't make sense to me. Brands take years to build, and Yahoo dominates as a brand in Japan. It seems sloppy PR to pick a name like "Altaba" within mere weeks/months of deciding to buy Yahoo.

<comment><USER62> This is what I'm confused about. Yahoo is a big brand with a lot of companies, is Tumblr now owned by Altaba? Altaba Weather?

<comment><USER17> No. Nothing changes for the products. Altaba is a new company that just owns stock in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. Tumblr will be owned by Yahoo Holdings, which will be owned by Verizon. Yahoo Weather will still be Yahoo Weather.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Around 4 years too late.

</comment><comment><USER64> Yeesh, that name sounds like something a fifth grader would come up with.

<comment><USER65> It has been registered for 15 years but it looks like it was purchased by Yahoo within the last three months:

Creation Date: 2001-10-09T04:22:42-0700

Updated Date: 2016-10-25T09:47:51-0700

Appears to have previously been owned by a Barcelona-based furniture supplier:

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:altaba.com](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:altaba.com)

who are now on altaba.cat.

But the new owners have quickly modified the robots.txt and hence locked-out public access on archive.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Changing a company name is one thing. Google did the same, essentially, with the formation of Alphabet. But please, dear God, don't tell me they are changing their domain. It's like the Eddie Murphy joke about falling down the stairs - for what seems like an eternity. ["My shoe!"]

It's hard to believe what's become of the mighty Y! brand.

<comment><USER67> Yahoo will still be around. Essentially the assets / pieces sold to Verizon will be "Yahoo". The rest of this company will be under "Altaba".

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I would like yahoo to go screw itself for one specific reason:

Microsoft had offered its war chest to buy them, and yahoo turned them down. It had a good chance of bringing down Microsoft in the long run, and yahoo would have done a solid for the world.

But they turned them down. The ONE TIME I want a goddamn company executive leadership to take the money and run, and they didn't.

</comment><comment><USER69> First scan read I thought they were changing their name to "Alberta Inc." and thought to myself "well, that's one way to deal with the inauguration..."

"Alt + Tab" is the only reasonable thing I can think of it being rooted in. But even that sucks like a sucky thing.

<comment><USER70> I wondered if it was related to Alibaba, which has been closely linked with Yahoo.</comment></comment>


Start learning Objective-C on a Windows machine - <AUTHOR> http://drunkenprogrammerblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/start-with-objective-c-on-windows.html

<comment><USER2> GNUstep is actually not that bad.

The most annoying thing is writing the makefiles. They have good documentation if you are building a library, command line tool, or application.

If you aren't, then the documentation is basically "this exists. Go read the source."

I've ported a few foundation tools to bsd.

I'm weird in that objective-c is my language of choice.

<comment><USER3> I like Cocotron (another open source Cocoa implementation) because it integrates into Xcode. No separate makefiles to maintain for my Windows or Linux builds, just another target in the same project as the original Mac version.

(I realize that cross-compiling to Windows from the Mac is not what the original post is about -- just thought someone might be interested in that option as well.)

<comment><USER2> I like the idea of Cocotron.

However, I just could not get it to work on compiling for my bsd system.

C'est la vie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah with GNUStep you can develop Objective-C on a Windows machine. However I wouldn't recommend that. Not because I want you to buy a Mac. No, it's because I did exactly the same thing and after a few "Hello Worlds" I tried to develop an calculator in Objective-C and it worked very well unless I wanted to compile it on a Mac. My whole code, which wasn't much for sure, was not working and errors came all over the place. I cant remember why but I was little nervous to have learned the wrong syntax.

If you don't have a Mac at home try to virtualize it and if you are serious about iPhone development then go and buy a Mac. Again not because I'm using a Mac no it is because it will make your live way easier and let's you focus on development rather than messing around with the environment.

<comment><USER5> That, and you don't need a top-of-the-line $2000+ Mac Pro to develop (I think those are for video/graphics guys, anyway.)

For example, my main dev box is a Mac Mini (and it flies even with 2 monitors, Xcode, Eclipse, and a bunch of other things open at the same time.) One could even grab a refurb to make it more affordable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mate I am a bit dissapointed (nothing personal). I was really really hoping (feel free to call me crazy. you wouldnt be the first) it would be an article on replicating your iphone sdk on a non-mac platform. I managed to get the same thing done on ubuntu with nextstep but the lack of the cocoa libraries means you are way way off developing iphone apps on hac-macs.

And yes your title does not mention "iphone" in it so shame on me for hoping for it. Still id be crazy not to wish for it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, in a sense you are right, however before starting to code an Iphone game you should learn Objective-C and this can be done successfully on a Windows or Linux machine. My idea is to use the Windows machine for implementing all the non-graphical part of a simple game, maybe using some simple ASCII graphics. If you plan to use OpenGL for rendering your graphics on the Iphone you can go further and implement some of the graphical functionality.

BTW, actually you have access to some of the Cocoa libraries, check the Headers folder, in my case this is in

C:\GNUstep\GNUstep\System\Library\Headers

on your Ubuntu machine you should probably search for "Cocoa.h" header file.

Also the GNUstep manual claims you can create graphical application with the provided libraries. I think I will investigate this in a future post.

<comment><USER7> _Well, in a sense you are right, however before starting to code an Iphone game you should learn Objective-C_

The language is the easy part; you can pick up Obj-C in a day, if you have any reasonable experience in any other language. The frameworks (UIKit and Foundation are the important ones) are the harder. You can pick up an old(er) version of Foundation if you use GNUStep.

 _My idea is to use the Windows machine for implementing all the non-graphical part of a simple game, maybe using some simple ASCII graphics. If you plan to use OpenGL for rendering your graphics on the Iphone you can go further and implement some of the graphical functionality._

Anything other than backend logic and you'll want a real Mac. You'll also want a real mac if you want anything fancy like Core Data to save everything.

You'll still need to draw your text on screen somehow. You'll want an iOS UI framework, that isn't available for testing on Windows or Linux. Also, OpenGL and OpenGL ES are similar, but, I don't know how much code could be used as-is between the two platforms. My hunch is that there are parts that that can't be completely cross-platform.

 _Also the GNUstep manual claims you can create graphical application with the provided libraries._

Maybe for Mac OS X, with AppKit. There's no open version of UIKit for iOS.

<comment><USER8> I had little trouble with a first AppKit app after finding [http://www.gnustep.it/nicola/Tutorials/WritingMakefiles/node...](http://www.gnustep.it/nicola/Tutorials/WritingMakefiles/node6.html) There are links to additional articles/tutorials suggesting more complexity is available...

<comment><USER7> My point about AppKit is that AppKit doesn't exist on the iPhone or iPad. You need to use UIKit instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> You right.

The idea is that there are some people (me included) that are forced to use a Windows machine a few hours a day. I have an iMac at home on which I test/compile my code from time to time. From my experience you can safely implement on Windows about 90% of an application, because I restrain myself to use only the functions that are compatible with both OpenGL ES and OpenGL I'm able to implement parts of the graphical components of my app too. This is an incremental process and I always check,in the evening, on my iMac.

Take a game of Tic Tac Toe for example, you can implement the computer movements (game AI) on GNUstep. You can also use Blender to create your graphical objects ... In the end only about 10% of the code actually needs a real Mac.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or better find WebObjects 4.5.2 (latest 4.5) - it's OpenStep/NeXT/Cocoa precursor for Windows. It has gcc, objective-c, debugger, sampler, etc.

Or Cocotron... wait - you can't compile with it on Windows... But if you want to use through Common Lisp, then ClozureCL started using it.

<comment><USER10> I think there was an OpenStep for Windows with the complete NeXT development toolset - editors and GUI builder. I remember seeing it. It could, of course, be part of WebObjects.</comment></comment>


Show HN: 3D animated GIF viewer - <AUTHOR> https://mikolalysenko.github.io/gif-3d

<comment><USER2> Does anyone find rotation controls such as the one in the linked site usable?

<comment><USER3> Do you mean unusable?

I find the sensitivity way too low. By the time my mouse is off screen, I should have rotated the thing more than 60 degrees.

<comment><USER2> I mean usable. When I rotate something I want it to rotate in logical fashion and be able to get back to a point that I previously saw. Rotations as implemented in this site seem willy nilly and I can't think of any actual case in which I'd prefer this behavior over a local yaw to a global pitch.</comment></comment></comment>


Source Code Sale Extended Through Cyber Monday - <AUTHOR> http://lunduke.com/?p=4110

<comment><USER2> What's preventing someone from purchasing a GPL/BSD license for the source code, and then hosting it publicly (with licenses intact) somewhere, say, github?

<comment><USER3> All open source software is half off this weekend. And every weekend. Odd numbered Tuesdays its always double price. A friend once got open source software for 99% off, although I've had to pay triple. But not a penny more.

<comment><USER4> Most (all?) open source licenses place no limitation using the license and selling the source code.</comment></comment></comment>


iOS is worst-case-scenario for the web, full stop - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/slightlylate/status/1190665796717957120 <comment><USER2> With Microsoft admitting defeat to Google for their Chromium-based Edge Browser, a Chrome-only web would be the second worst-case-scenario for the web.

Thank goodness for Firefox for just existing.</comment>


Toxic fluorinated compounds found in drinking water of 33 states - <AUTHOR> http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/08/unsafe-levels-of-toxic-chemicals-found-in-drinking-water-of-33-states/ <comment><USER3> Previous discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12265762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12265762)

Top comment has instructions for finding the results for your ZIP code.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article is about heavily fluorinated organic compounds -- molecules with a carbon skeleton and all or most of the hydrogen atoms replaced by fluorine. These are not the ionic fluorine compounds that protect teeth against decay (and that cause acute toxicity in case of over-consumption).

 _Why are these compounds hazardous?_

\- Harmful biological effects in the human body, like hormone-mimic activity.

\- Low molecular polarity leads to bio-magnification in fats and oils up through the food chain, and persistence in human fat.

\- The high strength of the carbon-fluorine bonds greatly reduces the rate at which typical environmental degradation mechanisms (hydrolysis, photolysis, atmospheric oxidation, enzymatic breakdown in cells...) act on these compounds, compared to their hydrocarbon counterparts.

 _Why are these compounds used?_

The same properties that make them hazards once dispersed -- strong carbon- fluorine bonds that resist breakdown, low polarity -- make them desirable in applications where people want water-repellant surfaces or materials that resist high temperatures and/or chemical attack.

 _Why weren 't the risks better known before?_

It's a lot easier to test for acute hazards than for chronic ones. By _acute_ toxicity metrics, like feeding a bunch of rats these compounds until the dose is high enough to kill half, these materials are generally less toxic than substances like potassium fluoride. It turns out that for low level _chronic_ exposure, perfluorinated compounds are more hazardous than simple ionic fluorides due to persistence and accumulation.

The link between stability and persistence makes up a recurring theme in environmental toxicology: materials with lower acute hazards are often worse hazards in the long term. The very lack of reactivity that makes molecules less acutely hazardous in case of e.g. a fire or a worker accidentally splashing some on skin makes them _more_ likely to be long term problems, because the same basic properties impair how quickly environmental sinks can break them down. Pure methanol ignites more easily than diesel fuel and has worse acute toxicity risks if a worker gets drenched in a spill. But diesel contamination from a leaking storage tank is more persistent.

<comment><USER5> The article doesn't mention whether or not these compounds are removed by using a filter (like a Brita filter).

I know Brita filters don't remove fluoride normally, but these compounds sound organic, which activated carbon usually _does_ remove. Any idea whether standard filters remove this?

<comment><USER6> This EPA page seems to imply that activated carbon would help remove it:

[https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking- water/drinking...](https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking- water/drinking-water-health-advisories-pfoa-and-pfos)

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---- Can PFOA and/or PFOS be boiled out of my water?

No; PFOA and PFOS cannot be removed by heating or boiling water. However, there are steps you and your drinking water system can take to limit your exposure.In some cases, drinking water systems may be able to reduce concentrations of perfluoroalkyl substances, including PFOA and PFOS, by closing contaminated wells or changing rates of blending of water sources. Alternatively, public water systems can treat source water with activated carbon or high pressure membrane systems (e.g., reverse osmosis) to remove PFOA and PFOS from drinking water. These treatment systems are used by some public water systems today, but should be carefully designed and maintained to ensure that they are effective for treating PFOA and PFOS. In some communities, entities have provided bottled water to consumers while steps to reduce or remove PFOS or PFOA from drinking water or to establish a new water supply are completed.

Home drinking water treatment units are typically certified by independent third party organizations against ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standards to verify their contaminant removal claims. Some home filters remove impurities using activated carbon and reverse osmosis, which are the same technologies utilized by public water supply systems to remove PFOA and PFOS. However, there currently are no ANSI protocols for testing home treatment systems to verify that these devices effectively remove PFOA and PFOS or how frequently the filters should be changed in order to maintain removal efficiency. NSF International is currently developing such protocols.

</comment><comment><USER7> The article refers to compounds found in, for example, firefighting foam and not to the fluoride added for preventing tooth decay.

<comment><USER8> Nevertheless, this study will be added to the arsenal of those seeking to end municipal fluoridation.

<comment><USER9> Mouthwash seems like a better option than drinking fluoride to improve teeth.

<comment><USER10> Very true. I've been to some of the anti-fluoride talks and read a lot on both sides.

From what I gather, there simply isn't enough fluoride added to water to really make a difference. Add enough and you start getting dental floursis.

The people against municipal fluoride use a lot of the same bad maths to link fluoride to a plethora of ailments. Their evidence doesn't really add up either. Overall it looks like it's a wash.

I err on the side of it not being in water. It doesn't really help teeth unless applied topically in high concentrations, so we're better off spending money to give kids free toothpaste/brushes/education.

There's the question as to whether or not it can lead to things like osteoporosis, and honestly that question can't be answered easily. Long term toxicity buildup over 30~40+ years in humans is very difficult to test and control for. You can't put humans in a cage and have one group only drink water with fluoride and the other not. Our primate counterparts simply don't live long enough. People move around too much and drink too many different types of drinks to accurately survey exposure.

Of course this article is not about fluoride in water, so this is kinda a rabbit trail comment anyway.

<comment><USER11> It would be even better to decrease the consumption of sugar I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Luckily this will all be fixed by Scott Pruitt, by getting rid of silly safety limits (read: business killing regulations) all together! </s>

<comment><USER13> Your comment would hold a lot more weight if EPA or some other massive government agency found it possible to help people in Flint, MI, which did not have drinkable water for years now, and still don't have it.

<comment><USER14> The EPA and other regulators have been hamstrung by republicans since their inception and then when they don't do everything perfectly republicans love to show how the EPA, SEC or whoever aren't doing their job. Republicans sabotage these regulators and don't provide adequate funding. It's sabotage. "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." \- P. J. O'Rourke

<comment><USER13> FYI, the EPA is comprised of 15000 employees, and its annual budet is $8.14B. That's $543K per head. A lot of money for sitting on their hands and making excuses that they're "hamstrung".

<comment><USER15> That is a poor metric. The EPA funds many pollution prevention and mitigation programs that far exceed the cost of staffing.

<comment><USER13> Nonetheless, people in Flint didn't have drinkable water for years. If the agency is so toothless with a highly politicized case like this, you can only imagine how toothless it is when it comes to the less publicized cases. So don't tell me how awesome the EPA currently is. Maybe it could, in fact, benefit from a swift kick in the ass.

<comment><USER16> They can't do anything with the funding they have, so maybe they'll do better with less funding? That's a non-sequitur.

<comment><USER13> Maybe it's not about funding at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While drinking water is generally extremely safe in the US, especially compared to many other countries of the world. I still install three stage, under the counter filtration systems for any kitchen tap water. Minimal costs, and at the very least prevents the water from tasting like a pool.

<comment><USER18> Exactly! Everyone's always so worried about fluoride in drinking water, with little justification and without giving a thought to all the chlorine which is often present in far greater concentrations and, in certain conditions, can react with other organic and inorganic compounds to form all sorts of nasties.

Get a good filter for your drinking water and most of these concerns vanish. Plus you'll save a fortune on bottled water.

<comment><USER19> If you're worried about chlorine, you don't even need a filter. Put the water in a jug in the fridge for an hour or so.

<comment><USER18> Free chlorine will indeed break down over time, but an hour in the fridge probably won't be sufficient - the half life of free chlorine in water is much longer than an hour! (In sunlight or UV, however, it'll break down much faster).

Secondly, Chloramine is now often used instead (or in addition to) free chlorine. Chloramine is more stable and won't break down by putting it in the fridge.

And the potential health issue isn't so much with chlorine itself anyway, but with other chemical products that can be formed by reactions with chlorine, possibly before the water even reaches your tap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I work with one of the authors of the Hu et al. paper that this article is based on. I'm happy to relay any questions people have to her.

<comment><USER21> I'm not in any way advocating for toxins in the water supply, but do you worry that news like this will embolden anti-flouride people?

<comment><USER22> If I understand correctly, I'd rather have cavities than cancer.

That is: Flouride is supposed to help prevent tooth decay. This stuff, on the other hand, "has been linked to" cancer (how strongly, I'm not sure). But if warning about a cancer-causer kills flouridation as collateral damage, well, I prefer that to the other way around (not doing anything about the cancer- causer to protect people's teeth).

<comment><USER23> This is extremely non-scientific, but I am an american living outside of the us - and I often wonder 'what's wrong with us' when I meet Americans. Maybe we just have it too easy, maybe we don't have to open up our minds to other cultures (we are the dominant one). But I've met enough people that just make me think c'mon man! That said, we're the dominant culture for a reason - <USER2> have some super talented people. At the end of the day, 'flouride' probably isn't the root-cause of our 'unique'-ness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _had at least one water sample that measured at or above the EPA safety limit of 70 parts per trillion (ng /L)_

Just for reference, here are the EPA safety limits for other chemicals....[1]

Cyanide - 200,000 ng/L

Lead - 15,000 ng/L

Mercury - 2,000 ng/L

Benzene - 5,000 ng/L

Glyphosate - 700,000 ng/L

PCBs - 500 ng/L

[1][https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/table- re...](https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/table-regulated- drinking-water-contaminants)

<comment><USER25> Not really related, but even as a scientist I really don't understand how ng/L == parts-per-trillion. I know that's a correct conversion, but it doesn't doesn't make much sense. I guess that's why part-per notation are called pseudo-units.

A more substantive comment:

Some of these are particularly scary, especially if you have a job where you're potentially exposed. For example, for benzene has a pretty strong odor, but 5000 ng/L is supposedly 1000 times below what you're able to smell. And it's a carcinogen...

<comment><USER26> The L part is assumed to have density of 1 (kg/L) and therefore be 1kg mass (mostly water). 1 kg = 1 trillion ng. Because the vast majority of the sample is water the number of nanograms of the substance per nanograms of water is approximately the number of parts per trillion. As you get into higher concentrations of solute you have to consider density of the solute and water as separate parts. In the ng/L or ug/L range you can hand wave the L as 1 trillion parts (by mass) and the ng as the parts out of a trillion in the full volume of sample.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 08-15 Nice, an article that links to sources in the prrimary scientific literature! Let's see, the link text says "potent immunotoxicants", that's probably a study about the effects of PFAS on the immune system. But no, it's actually some meaningless bullshit about evolution and doesn't even mention the word "fluor" once.

Given that, the term "toxic" is unjustified (it appears that if PFOA is toxic, then so are fatty acids), and so is the claim of "unsafe levels". This is sensationalist bullshit.

<comment><USER27> Your misunderstanding starts where you're considering the linked article a "primary source". Even though it's at harvard.edu, it's not a peer-reviewed "primary source".

Given that the absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence, the conclusion and causation you imply with "given that" is wrong.

You're also awfully quick to call stuff you don't understand "bullshit".

<comment> 08-15 What, are you saying they _didn 't_ link to a scientific source at all?! I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!

The point was that this is bullshit precisely because it pretends to link to a scientific source, but doesn't. Sure, it's still _possible_ that every single word in the article is correct even in the absence of actual research---but is it _likely_?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The study found that PFASs were detectable at the minimum reporting levels required by the EPA in 194 out of 4,864 water supplies in 33 states across the United States.

So, about 4% of water supplies had something at the minimum reporting levels; which must be above the detection limits, but may not be at action levels. I'd probably be more worried about heavy metals and organics in some of those locations than fire-fighting foam, but I drink groundwater, not surface-based treatment plant water.

<comment><USER29> Wells near contamination sources may also be contaminated (they just get less monitoring than municipal supplies).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My father was a Ph.D. organic chemist who worked for DuPont at the Experimental Station in Wilmington, DE. We admired and even loved DuPont while I was growing up there in the 1950's and 60's (the "Better Living Through Chemistry" era).

Now I am learning the sad truth about DuPont (and many other industrial chemical manufacturers). Despite the many great achievements of their employees, DuPont was a diabolically evil company. The history of their GM partnership and their promotion of tetraethyl lead in gasoline alone is justification for this statement.

</comment><comment><USER30> here is a better interactive map. [http://www.ewg.org/interactive- maps/2015-teflon-chemical-har...](http://www.ewg.org/interactive- maps/2015-teflon-chemical-harmful-at-smallest-doses-lower-48.php)

<comment><USER31> This is pretty interesting, thanks.

I'm not really strong in stats, but it seems like many of the non-contaminated counties have very low sample sizes that may not be statistically significant. Example: in Marin County, 0 of 11 samples were found to be contaminated. In Alameda, 2 of 73 samples were contaminated.

Maybe someone else can comment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why isn't the state of our water supply a national emergency? In the long term this will affect far more people than whatever terrorist scare Trump is currently worried about.

<comment><USER33> The short answer: Republicans. They want less regulation and have been trying for decades to gut the EPA. They will finally get their chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone have a better map? Would like to see if I'm in the highlighted range or not - I'm pretty close to one.

<comment><USER35> Your city/county might provide a water quality report on their official website which may include a more specific map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So what supplement should I buy and take to hedge against this risk?

</comment><comment><USER37> "They are making the freaking frogs gay!" \--- Alex Jones

</comment><comment><USER38> They're not toxic, they're just alternatively healthy.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone else having problems with Google Analytics? - <AUTHOR>

Since last night my analytics graphs refuse to load.  Anyone else seeing that? <comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, strange. I just tried it in Safari and it worked. Still not working in FF3.5 on OS X for me.

</comment><comment><USER2> worked for me.

JavaScript blocker active ?

flash working ?

</comment><comment> onreact-com I've seen it for a while but assumed it's my fault, a reload problem or something.</comment>


Old School Object Oriented Perl - <AUTHOR> http://www.perltricks.com/article/25/2013/5/20/Old-School-Object-Oriented-Perl

<comment><USER2> Shape is a retangle. Shape::Circle inherits from the Shape. Is it reasonable?

Shape class must have color attibute only. Shape::Retangle and Shape::Circle should inherit from the Shape.

And

...

package Shape::Retangle;

use parent 'Shape';

sub new {

        my ($class, $args) = @_;

        my $self = $class->SUPER::new( { color => $args->{color} || 'black' } );

        $self->{length} = $args->{length} || 1;

        $self->{width}  = $args->{width} || 1;

        return bless $self, $class;

}

...

package Shape::Circle;

use parent 'Shape';

sub new {

        my ($class, $args) = @_;

        my $self = $class->SUPER::new( {color => $args->{color} || 'black' } );

        $self->{diameter} = $args->{diameter} || 1;

        return bless $self, $class;

}

...</comment>


Twitter Updates Mobile Apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2012/04/more-to-discover-on-our-latest-iphone.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Still wondering when they're going to update the iPad version...</comment>


Arbitrary Code Execution in Symphony of the Night - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc56JEd1qxA

<comment><AUTHOR> The part where Cosmos, the player, manipulates the memory to execute arbitrary code starts around 8:06 mark.</comment>