On Let's Plays – That Dragon, Cancer - <AUTHOR> http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/thatdragoncancer/2016/3/24/on-lets-plays <comment><USER3> I think we are also seeing an increase in lets plays due to the aging of the gaming population. I'm 31 grew up gaming, spending hundreds of hours each month gaming. Now I have a job 2 kids and a life. I barely have time to watch a movie once a week, let alone sit down and play a game that requires 20-40 hours of game play.

Yet I spend most of my work days sitting at a desk writing code with my headphones on. It is much easier to turn on Quill 18 playing xcom, and enjoy the game and his commentary, while working, then it is to try and fit playing xcom into my daily life. Where I play for a week, the put the game down, and having to start over in a month when I have time again, yet don't remember any part of what I was doing.

Also the demographics of games are changing. When I was young, I played C&C, games that took more thought, maybe doom. Now kids are waiting for the next call of duty to feed their ADD. While this kind of game is a more mature game aimed at a more mature player, who may not have the time to play it. Blaming the lets play culture seems like an easy thing to blame, but if your targeted demographic is an age group that has increasing less time to game, then seeing that demographic move to a format that you can't monetize, should be a warning to you before you attempt to target that demographic.

<comment><USER4> You've got it backwards. They're not blaming the Let's Play culture for existing, and they can see the value these videos add to gaming culture, what they're pointing out is the issues with revenue it currently creates. If the monetisation issue is fixed (they suggested leaving tips) then they can continue making storytelling games, and that appears to be in the interest of Let's Play video creators as well.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Half-way through reading the post I expected the authors to start passive-aggressive legal threats, or something. Instead, they announced they removed ContentID from the music ( :o ) and only kindly ask the video uploaders to encourage people to tip them a dollar or two...

This reaction makes me want to buy the game _and_ tip them just because of their approach to the issue.

EDIT: just bought. I don't have time to play it now, but I firmly believe in supporting people doing commendable things just because they do those things.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're asking viewers to donate, which is a little different :) It's manually fixing the broken revenue sharing with the streamers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do you combat this? Realistically speaking.

Here's how: Ask major let's-play channels to explain how it's meant to be experienced firsthand and they should come watch after they've played. Not for money, but for the experience.

Toby fox did this with Undertale on game grumps and it was noted that there is a significant lag time in number of viewers that picked up later which indicates that people actually followed this advice. They trust the let's players' opinion.

In reality it probably still helps sales. I routinely buy games that are high up on twitch that I hadn't heard of before.

<comment><USER7> Don't market it as a game? AFAIK people don't post "let's watch" videos of movies.

<comment><USER8> I just saw a "Let's Watch Quantum Break" video while browsing YouTube. Still game related though.

<comment><USER9> The Achievement Hunter guys call it "let's watch" when one of them plays the game and the others watch them play the game, and they all comment on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anyone read this line: "And that is this: our studio has not yet seen a single dollar from sales." and also wondered what they're talking about, this excerpt from the Wikipedia article on their game [1] might help:

"Razer Inc., who acquired the Ouya platform and property in 2015, stated that all revenue from sales of That Dragon, Cancer on Ouya would be donated to the Morgan Adams Foundation and Family House SF, two charities that had assisted the Greens' during Joel's treatment in San Francisco."

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Dragon,_Cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Dragon,_Cancer)

<comment><USER11> FYI, there might be spoilers on the wikipedia page. I haven't played the game so I don't know how much they tell you but if you're planning on playing the game I would avoid the wikipedia page for now.

(I was expecting a "Plot" section that I could avoid reading.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's extremely unlikely that this has a significant impact on sales.

But I understand why some developers get upset about it, in the same way Jonathan Blow was upset about piracy despite massive sales. It's a loss of control. You made a thing and you don't want people just taking it.

Emotionally, that makes perfect sense. But empirically, these factors have never been make-or-break for any game. Heavily pirated games are also huge sellers. Firewatch is doing very well right now despite being a similarly YouTube-able game.

<comment><USER13> I don't disagree on the sales impact - if you're spending a sufficient portion of your day watching videos of people playing a game, and that game isn't streamed, you're FAR more likely to watch a different game than actually go and buy a copy and play it.

That said, the irony is strong here when streamers are complaining about not being able to monetize their stream of someone else's work without restriction.

<comment><USER14> _> That said, the irony is strong here when streamers are complaining about not being able to monetize their stream of someone else's work without restriction._

They are monetizing their time spent/interaction with viewers which is a very different thing and something people _do_ monetize (see: speaker's fees, counseling fees, adviser fees)

That's the idea behind monetizing streams/streamers accepting donations. It's a way the viewers can support the person to stream for X hours a day and have it be something they can routinely do because they are being paid for their _time_. It just so happens that time is being spent playing a game that is the result of someone else's work.

I think it is stupid to deny free publicity - but maybe there's a reason why I'm not in marketing/advertising.

Not sure if necessary, but possible bias: I don't monetize through ads and prefer to accept donations, but I have streamed on occasion and have received donations for doing so.

<comment><USER15> Share the revenue? Don't know what the correct split is. As a game creator who spends 2+ years per game on a team of 20 (so 40 man years) and then some one spends 4 to 80 hours recording themselves playing and then editing I'd tend to think the game creators deserve the lion's share of the revenue but maybe I could be convinced otherwise.

Youtube already does this for music (not sure they actually _share_ revenue) but they do at least provide a way for the music creator (or the creator's representatives) to get revenue when someone else uses the music.

A better sharing arrangement sounds like mostly a win/win

\---

Let me add, while the Let's Player can certainly be entertaining if people are really watching for their entertainment value then they shouldn't need the game to get viewers. In other words, it seems arguable viewers view for the games more than the Let's Player. If people would tune in without the games then there's no reason for the Let's Player to have the games at all. Just be an entertaining person like a some of the more popular youtubers.

<comment><USER14> _> Share the revenue? Don't know what the correct split is. As a game creator who spends 2+ years per game on a team of 20 (so 40 man years) and then some one spends 4 to 80 hours recording themselves playing and then editing I'd tend to think the game creators deserve the lion's share of the revenue but maybe I could be convinced otherwise._

A game nobody has heard of and never will hear of vs any popular streamer who has spent 3+ years streaming and has 1,000's if not 10,000's of followers. _Some_ of those followers will buy the game. That's the dev's split.

Even a no-name streamer (like myself) who pulls in 10-20 people _tops_ during a good hour can still manage to sell some copies of the game merely by playing it (assuming they're enjoying it/it's a decent game worth buying). The dev still get's their split: free advertisement.

Dev's are, of course, free to not let streamers stream their game. I think it's stupid and wouldn't buy their game on principle: largely I assume the worst. Is the game so bad they want people purchasing it without seeing any gameplay? Well, I'll pass. Myself and 100,000's of others who have changed their purchasing decisions from " _game reviews_ " to " _someone who 's gaming taste is similar to mine enjoys it and it looks fun_".

Game development is a business. Fail to keep up with the times and find yourself using an outdated business model and you _will_ go out of business. It's just a matter of how long it takes. For better or worse, many people make their game purchasing decisions based on streamers and seeing _live gameplay_ so judge if a game looks fun or not before purchasing.

I think a dev is free to not allow people to stream their game or to profit from streaming their game. But I will point out to them that they're shooting themselves in the foot and that I think they should reconsider.

The only games that I've ever seen hurt by free advertisement are games which are awfully bad. Which I consider a win for the consumer, even if the dev loses out on. Just like any other business: it doesn't matter how hard you worked on something if the end product was bad. It's sucks for the creator/people who spent so much time on it, but that's how business works and I'll side with the consumers every time.

<comment><USER15> You do this work for free and you'll make it up in extra PR. Sounds like the typical artist/designer/photographer deal.

<comment><USER14> _> You do this work for free_

I still had to purchase the game to stream it, but your point is taken in this regard...except it goes both ways.

As a Let's Play streamer - why the hell should I play your game if I can play some other game that will allow me to be compensated for my time? Name me an advertisement agency that will advertise your product _for free_. Because that's essentially what large streamers have become.

Can always license out the rights to stream the game to _already large_ streamers rather than rolling the dice with small no-names.

<comment><USER15> You're free to play some other game and be compensated. I suspect though that most streamers would lose their audiences very quickly if they weren't streaming the top 30 games. People tune in for Fallout, Uncharted, Last of Us, GTA5, Division, etc, not for Fuzzy Bear's Adventures. In other words is more about the games, not the streamers. Again this would be easily provable. Remove the games. If the streamers manage to keep their audiences for several months then it was about the streamers. If not it was about the games.

In any case, I suggested some kind of split would be more equitable. IMO. They already kind of do this for music. Why not for games but give the streamers more than people get for music since they are adding more to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For many games, a recording of someone playing it is so different from the actual game itself that I strongly support giving rights to streamers. However, their point is well-made. This game is more similar to a movie than it is to, say, Minecraft. It's reasonable to reflect that in how recordings are treated.

Their game is not particularly interesting to me, but it seems they made something unique. I hope it eventually pays off for them.

</comment><comment><USER17> Radiolab did a story about this. [http://www.radiolab.org/story/cathedral/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/cathedral/)

<comment><USER18> This was amazing thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hasn't anyone seen how kids obsess over Let's Play?

I've talked to several kids who almost prefer watching Lets Play over playing any given game. That South Park episode was spot on.

Developers should be alarmed!

<comment><USER20> I don't think 'kids' obsess so much over Let's Plays as they do over the characters doing the playthrough (piewdiepie, whoever else is big, etc).

You're ten. You don't have a debit/credit card. You can't buy games on Steam. Even if you could, your parents might not even let you play them (GTA, Fallout 4, etc).

But you have a smartphone with a 4k display, and probably access to an iPad, and certainly a laptop at your disposal, and all you need is a browser to access Youtube. So you watch games instead.

You don't care much about immersing yourself in the game's world, you care about the guy screaming "oh my godddddd!! what the shiiiiiiiit!" and making comments that ten year olds find funny.

I don't think this equates to "kids will never play games when they grow up since they are so used to watching them instead." Eventually they grow out of this phase and play games like mature people do.

Of course, that only covers the "Youtube Personality" clique of Let's Plays. I myself watch narrative and immersive Let's Plays for games I certainly don't have the time or money to play anyway (Firewatch, a bunch of indie horror games I'm too scared to play, etc).

<comment><USER21> I, a 37 year old man, had heard of infamous 2nd son but don't have a playstation.

So I googled a let's play just to check out the gameplay, intending to watch 5 minutes, and ended up watching pewdiepie play the whole game.

Be as disdainful and insulting all you want, but I found him funny, charming and thoroughly enjoyable, it let me watch the story like a film, but with a touch of the camaraderie of playing a game with friends like I used to when I was younger.

<comment><USER22> It's worth noting that the Let's Play folks actually add something to the experience. I'm not much of a watcher, but I started watching vegeta311 play Dark Souls on youtube, and before I knew it, 6 hours had passed. I was amazed at the guy's seemingly-casual skill - I'd sunk many hours into Dark Souls, but it was the skill I was watching for, not the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Definitely think there should be some way of sharing the revenue with devs, especially indie devs.

Take "Life Is Strange" for instance. I watched a Let's Play on it and it killed any interest I had in actually playing the game. It was a story based game without much in terms of gameplay and I realised after I'd finished watching someone play episode 1 that the story was all that would keep me interested and I'd already seen that. Narrative games don't translate well into Let's Plays format of helping game sales.

</comment><comment><USER24> On the one hand: I do believe that if a game is basically a movie (a cinematic game), then a let's play of it can kill interest in playing (basically just seeing) it.

On the other, I have this feeling that let's plays are starting to assert themselves as a strong market force. I've already seen games specifically made to target let's players as a way to reach their fans. Let's plays may just simply be a new reality of the market.

Even if you assume policy ends up entirely in favor of cinematic games, without the ability to take advantage of the "let's play pulpit" then cinematic games are going to find themselves very disadvantaged.

I think we're starting to see the effects of this, games that try to sell themselves on their narrative, which simply end up taking the player through a series of corridors and cutscenes, are losing. Games that sell themselves on their gameplay and build narratives around the player are winning.

Not very nice to That Dragon, Cancer. I know. Sorry guys!

<comment><USER25> >I think we're starting to see the effects of this, games that try to sell themselves on their narrative, which simply end up taking the player through a series of corridors and cutscenes, are losing. Games that sell themselves on their gameplay and build narratives around the player are winning.

And that's exactly the problem - it creates a monoculture of genres even though those "losing" genres are still popular enough to be at least watched.

<comment><USER24> I disagree, I think this space you called a monoculture is incredibly diverse, and will continue to be incredibly diverse. Cinematic games are relatively recent territory, not established aspects of the gaming market. If the only limiting factor for games is that they'd have to look entertaining to people after someone has seen them play it, then I think you could look forward to some extreme diversity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Everyone, including the author, is missing the point of lets plays...

They aren't monetizing the game... the game is largely secondary... i find myself (and others i've asked today about this) tend to follow youtubers or streamers, not games. Its the personalities that earn the revenue, the game is just a talking piece...

<comment><USER27> He did specifically call out Let's Plays that just run through the game with little to no commentary. Though I suspect those might have less views than ones from the more popular streamers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I find it interesting that everyone's default mode is somehow that a developer/studio should be able to dictate what people show from their game and whether or not they can make money from it. Even though I find the idea of making money off of Let's Plays a bit silly as well, I honestly think it should be none of your business as a developer.

This is all part of a bigger picture where I think the consumer of media needs to have more rights, not less. People already mostly don't own what they buy, can't do what they want with it, etc., and further limiting that is doing no one any favors, except the people in the business that don't even play games themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the developer can't keep people from sharing the content, they're going to have to recover their costs from the relatively few people who actually buy the game, which means stratospheric prices. The only people who would by are the streamers who can commercialize their copy of the game, and rich people who just want to play. The rest of us would be stuck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well, when you make a product that's more like a movie than a game (two-hour linear story where you experience everything by watching a video), then the public will treat it more like a movie than a game. It's even priced like a movie - $15 for 2 hours of content. The problem isn't the Let's Play world, the problem is that the product is an edge case. The article sort of skims right by this issue while recognising it: _And for games with more expansive or replayable gameplay, it can directly benefit developers._ There's your problem right there - you 'made a movie, not a game', and released it through gaming channels.

Another point is that there are literally tens of thousands of games out there, and people use Let's Play not just for entertainment, but to see if a game is any good before purchasing. Essentially they use it for demo-ing the product, and if your game and your 'demo' are essentially the same thing, then that's a bad business decision, regardless of how much soul you poured into the product. Harsh, but if you're complaining from a business point of view, then you have to deal with harsh realities.

For my own experience, I saw it crop up, and thought "Why would I want to spend $15 for a short game about cancer?". I was curious about it, but not so curious as to drop $15... or even search out a Let's Play myself. I imagine most of the Let's Play audience were similar - suggesting that $1/viewer is somewhat realistic recovery for lost sales... that's nonsense, in my opinion.

Finally, a bonus problem: When your game is two hours long and you distribute through Steam, which has a no-questions-asked refund policy for 2 hours or less of gameplay, then a lot of those casual viewers you're after will just take that money back.

<comment><USER29> Not sure why you're getting downvoted when this is exactly right. If you don't want this problem then don't make something with low amount of content that people can be done with in just a few hours.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes it's not about how long a movie or game is. It can still be really powerful to experience it even if it's short. Anyways $15 seems like a reasonably small amount for a game that took years to develop.

<comment><USER22> > _Anyways $15 seems like a reasonably small amount for a game that took years > to develop._

My point was that it was more like a movie, not that the game was ridiculously expensive. But, if you want to go that way, then yes, you need to look at the competition. In the games world, $15 is a price-point where people expect more than a couple of hours of gametime. 'Interactive movies'/'Kinetic novels' are rarely hugely successful, and almost never go above $10-15. Over in the movie world, $15 gets you a movie that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and took hundreds of people years to create.

If you're talking about what something is worth from a _business_ angle, then you can't ignore the playing field and what the product is up against - <USER2> saying that it took a long time to make isn't enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Chances are that the people who are just watching the LP version of your game won't buy it.

Sorry, but it's true.

<comment><AUTHOR> But it could, at least in theory, expose the game to a few more people who will buy it. Whether that's a net gain depends on a lot of factors, but in this case, it seems clear they're losing sales.

<comment><USER30> It looks to me that they made a huge investment into a game that wouldn't necessarily pay them back.

Profits on games aren't always that great, especially for indie titles.

It's not that they're losing sales, it's that they don't have many sales. And you need to pay 8 people somehow.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a little disconcerting that a game with such wide and generally positive coverage would not be able to make any money.

<comment><USER30> It wasn't published by a massive publisher. It didn't get "hype". And it had a massive production budget.

Realize that most game programmers at AAA studios are far underpaid and overworked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> ah, game makers and musicians mad because they realized they went into the wrong industry when they could have just made potential thousands by playing video games and stuttering poor commentary over top of it

how long before they target female twitch streamers?

</comment><comment><USER32> Aw man, my son loves pancakes too.

Now I want to both buy this game and not buy this game... :'(

</comment><comment><USER33> >have an unprofitable business model

>become unprofitable

>beg for donations

If their game is a "relative linear experience" then why would anyone "go on to interact with the game in the personal way that we intended for it to be experienced".

<comment><USER34> You are assuming let's plays.

On the flip side, consider if they aggressively challenged every let's play made of their game. Then their game is again profitable. They are showing courtesy and and doing people a favor by allowing let's plays to exist, but are now kindly asking for a favor back.

<comment><USER35> Interest doesn't equate to profit if they have no other avenue to experience the "game". There are so many ways to entertain oneself that people could simply move onto something else readily available without paying for That Dragon, Cancer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> they should just file the DMCA take down requests. instead they say 'we're too nice for that' and complain in a blog post... meh.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think this pretty much says it all:

> a short, relatively linear experience like ours

If you want to make money, don't do that.

<comment><USER38> Why not? It worked for the Gone Home and Firewatch people.</comment></comment>


Mass arrests after BlackBerry cracked five years after seizure - <AUTHOR> https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/silver-bullet-mass-arrests-after-blackberry-cracked-five-years-after-seizure-20200731-p55hbq.html <comment><USER2> Wonder how many cases out there are time locked for when the cracking tech catches up. A case where some pedos encrypted their disks come to mind.

<comment><USER3> This is the general problem with committing a crime - the authorities have forever to solve the crime, whereas you only have a limited amount of time in which you can commit the crime and "get away" with it.

This is true for things like encryption where once the encrypted data is captured it will eventually possible to decrypt it as technology advances, as well as things like murders, where new evidence may randomly come to light, or new technology can better analyze old evidence.

<comment><USER4> I don't really understand vwhy people who need to encrypt thing to stop from going to prison, don't encrypt multiple times using different algorithms. Surely that buys centuries of time.

<comment><USER5> Few reasons off the top of my head:

\- why doesn't everybody already encrypt everything to begin with? there's often a disconnect between the benefit and the ease/overhead of doing so (it's hard enough to for people to care about using distinct and strong passwords, or 2fa; if the implementer isn't concerned with their users' security then often no one is) - people are lazy in general and security takes effort for a variety of reasons. how many users do you know who want to put in more than one password on every boot/resume from sleep/hybernation (which would be necessary, as using the same password would obviously be dumb, and using a keyfile beyond the first layers breaks the model for having those layers in the first place)?

\- hindsight is easier to gain than foresight. people rarely predict the specific fuck up that seals their fate, and most don't think about operational security at a high level of competency, never mind in ways that survive 5+ years of advancements in technology, and against someone whose job it is to keep on trying (or more realistically just waiting for developments/discoveries made in security research).

\- how many operating systems can you name that support multiple layers of full disk (or root partition) encryption with little to no effort? probably the closest would be encrypted GRUB with LUKS, with ecryptfs for encrypted home, maybe an encrypted loopback filesystem, and finally individually encrypted files; mobile is far worse too (ie. how would you approach implementing your own several layers of encryption on blackberry? that's what system was broken in this instance). aosp/android? good luck. macOS you'll find much more difficult to do any 3rd party FDE, and anything you do get working will break in miraculous ways - close-knit integration hell. iOS? HA - try convincing Apple to let you do a better job on anything system-wide, and while you're at it convince them to let other browser vendors do a better job there too, it would seriously improve iOS and be great for the web if Safari wasn't holding the whole industry back.

Overall, it's generally not the encryption itself that breaks; sure sometimes, but far less often than other channels that can be attacked. Cold boot attack for a device still powered but locked to pull encryption keys from memory is fun, but more often it's a weak/dictionary-based password or a 4 digit passcode that bottlenecks the security offered all the way down to 16 measly bits, or just attacking the joints where the encryption begins and ends. If you weld a metal frame on top of a bamboo frame, it'll be the bamboo that breaks, not the metal.

Also, the article doesn't even specify if the encryption was broken; the "new technology capabilities" could have been simply the purchase of some new hardware tooling or software to extract and dump the keys from the hardware devices securing them, or simply a court order was obtained to compel RIM to do so on their behalf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wish they would clarify what caused the 5 year delay. Were they running a password solver algorithm the whole time or were there major advances in technology that allowed them to crack the encryption?

<comment><USER7> Because it took five years for an email from Canadian police to arrive in Australia.

[https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/outrageous-rcmp-can-unlock- bla...](https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/outrageous-rcmp-can-unlock-blackberry- messages-1.2861290)

A news report from April 2016.</comment></comment>


Accurate CRT Simulation - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/CRT_Simulation_in_Super_Win_the_Game.php <comment><USER2> In the _analogtv.c_ source code, by Trevor Blackwell (part of XScreenSaver) is this comment [1]:

        A maxim of technology is that failures reveal underlying
        mechanism. A good way to learn how something works is to
        push it to failure. The way it fails will usually tell you
        a lot about how it works.

To mimic the image on a 1970s-era colour TV, XScreenSaver uses an accurate DSP simulation of all the analogue circuitry, including bandwidth limits, noise, and distortion. A gigahertz processor is _just_ capable of keeping up with this.

[1] In _XScreenSaver: a collection of free screen savers for X11 and MacOS_ by Jamie Zawinski [2].

Edit: if you want to read the source code---highly recommended!---retype the address below by hand or you'll become acquainted with jwz's countermeasures.

[2] [https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-5.34.tar.gz](https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-5.34.tar.gz)

<comment><USER3> Ironic that JWZ takes offense to the link since the code in question is by Trevor, who is a cofounder of YC.

Mirror here: [http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/dev/nokrb/third/xscreensaver/hack...](http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/dev/nokrb/third/xscreensaver/hacks/analogtv.c)

<comment><USER4> I think he's had that HN redirect for years. He is blocking hotlinking directly to files.

Try [https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/](https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/)

<comment><USER5> No, he blocks/redirects all traffic with HN as referrer. Kind of a jerk move, which sucks because his site is full of useful stuff.

<comment><USER6> jwz is a smart guy, but ultimately ... a bit inflexible and jerkish. I used to argue with him over using C++ in xscreensaver (I wrote a couple savers, glplanet, pulsar and glextrusion). I wanted to write a full scene graph implementation, a physics library, and a bytecode VM to implement screensavers without having to write a ton of low-level C++ code. Unfortunately, jwz's constraints include "Every screensaver must be a single C file" and "no C++", which while possibly wise when he first expressed it, has become a canard.

<comment><USER7> There's nothing wrong with asserting "no C++" in systems software, especially on *NIX. The stability of the C++ ABI has generally been terrible for a long time, and by avoiding C++ in a component that's heavily used, a lot of maintenance headaches are avoided.

As one of the maintainers of the C++ ABI for an operating system, I assure you, it is best avoided for system components unless there's a compelling justification.

<comment><USER6> xscreensaver is not a "system" component. Nor is it systems software. It's a game engine that only rarely takes user input.

<comment><USER7> It's a system component in the sense that it's typically distributed as part of an operating system. Not in the sense that it's a "kernel" or something like that.

As someone that helps build an operating system distribution, we consider Xscreensaver to be a system component.

Also, for licensing purposes, the GPL, as an example, considers software distributed with the system to be a system component in some scenarios. For example, "GPLv3 has adjusted the definition of System Library to include software that may not come directly with the operating system, but that all users of the software can reasonably be expected to have."

<comment><USER6> Your definition is weird. Which distribution is this?

xscreensaver is X11, not GPL.

Why does a C++ ABI really matter in a system distribution? All the distros I've used are internally consistent in their ABI and update all their deps when the C++ ABI is updated.

<comment><USER7> _Your definition is weird._

Not from a distributor's perspective ;-)

 _xscreensaver is X11, not GPL._

Correct, but since it is distributed as part of the system, or is a component that most users will have, then, as an example, if you link your GPL'd code to Xscreensaver's API, that's ok, because it's considered a "system library".

Really, I was referring to more for the purposes of definition than anything.

 _Why does a C++ ABI really matter in a system distribution?_

Because ABIs create a point of synchronization, and internally for that distributor, that create a flag day where a given set of components must be rebuilt at the same time.

Ideally, for a distributor, you don't rebuild the entire world every time one component changes. You only rebuild what you have to, since every delivery causes new binaries to be produced, which then in turn increases the amount of downtime for consumers that are upgrading.

As such, changing ABIs (thankfully GCC's doesn't change as much as it used to) create unnecessary churn, and if you can easily avoid them, you usually do (as a distributor).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the article: _" As the electron guns sweep across the screen, varying their intensity to adjust brightness, they tend to overshoot their desired value and bounce back a short time later. This creates alternating vertical bands of light and dark seen at the edges of high contrast changes in brightness."_

That's caused by a different effect. NTSC has terrible color bandwidth. The YIQ signal is really an I (intensity) signal at full bandwidth, and YQ signals with severely limited bandwidth (because, during the transition from black and white to color, they had to be stuck in subcarriers of the main black and white signal. NTSC Color TV is really greyscale TV with color tweaks superimposed.

You can only go through the YQ color space about 10 times across the width of the screen. The way to simulate this is to convert to YIQ, apply a low-pass filter horizontally to the Y and Q components, then convert back. Note that this is a horizontal issue only; in the vertical direction, every line can be a different color without problems.

<comment><USER9> >NTSC Color is really greyscale TV

My old CRT only supported PAL. So this is the reason why NTSC inputs were displayed without color.

<comment><USER10> Your old CRT is probably PAL-M, a variant of PAL. Was it made in Brazil? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL-M#Compatibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL-M#Compatibility)

<comment><USER11> I (scandinavian) have a few old TVs and monitors that are able to synchronize to the NTSC clock, but are unable to decode NTSC colors. It's not uncommon, and even my 1084S does it. As far as I understand this, PAL is just a color encoding standard, and the synchronization characteristics typically associated with it are broadcast standards, e.g. PAL-M, PAL-B etc. If you have a TV that decodes PAL at 50Hz there is a good chance that it will decode PAL at 60 Hz even outside countries that had these broadcast standards.

For NTSC, since it's only really the timing and color encoding that differs it's then not uncommon to get a grayscale picture from NTSC input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some claimed that low refresh rate on screen caused it to flash. But that wasn't true, as long as the screen had slow enough phosphor. With older CRT displays it was totally possible to read the text from the screen after three seconds of turning the display off or giving clear screen command. You could also play with magnets on the screen, not all screens got great degauss feature, so little magnet play was fun. It's also important to monitor that CRTs aren't equal. If you used regular 70s color TV it was very different from high end 21" Trinitron CRT used before flat panels became popular. Here you can see one nice CRT: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweoaOb53XQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweoaOb53XQ) One of the reasons why many computers didn't use 80 char line length was that TVs didn't produce sharp enough image and it was impossible to read 80 char lines. Of course it was also possible to modify displays to produce sharper image. With Spectravideo it was possible to use separate card to produce sharper image and 80 columns. [http://www.samdal.com/SVIDOCS/STM- I_SVI806.pdf](http://www.samdal.com/SVIDOCS/STM-I_SVI806.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Funnily, my family still uses a Trinitron daily – it's our youngest and largest TV. Around 30", amazing quality.

<comment><USER14> Jeeze, that thing must weigh as much as a vw bug.

<comment><USER15> There were CRT-based 1080i 16:9 Trinitron HDTVs available (briefly) during the early days of HDTV. My parents had a 34-inch model. Heaviest television set I've ever had the displeasure of moving. Definitely a two-man lift.

Awesome picture quality, though.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I had one of these. It was great for its day, but definitely far too heavy to be practical. Having that device carted out of my house (the mover said he could have carried it on his back, but they used two people and then nearly dropped it anyway) was one of my greatest days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> At first I though the curvature was exaggerated but then I looked at some pictures and it was actually even worse.

This reminds me the first time I used one of those flat CRT, I was so used to the convex curve that the flat one looked concave.

<comment><USER17> Well, anything Trinitron-based didn't have nearly as much curvature for technical reasons, so if you always used higher-end sets and monitors you might never have had one with this kind of curvature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're on Mac (or iOS), I highly recommend the Cathode app[1]. It's a terminal in the style of old CRTs, and I always get a kick out of using it.

[1]: [http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/](http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/)

<comment><USER19> And it's free text-editor cousin: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blinky/id550873221?mt=12](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blinky/id550873221?mt=12)

Very cool and pretty fun.

<comment><USER20> Fun, Thanks. Noticing that 'Pokey' in the 8-bit Atari emulation is actually the analog in/sound chip--ANTIC was display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love this topic and compiled a slew of related links last year: [https://chadaustin.me/2015/11/crts-pixels-and-video- games/](https://chadaustin.me/2015/11/crts-pixels-and-video-games/)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a fun and interesting article!

There are a few minor errors in this section:

> Cathode ray tube displays work by repeatedly sweeping an electron gun back > and forth across the extents of a fluorescent screen. The strength of the > electron beam may vary during this sweep, and this in turn affects the > brightness of the phosphors it illuminates. In early black-and-white models, > only a single electron gun was necessary; with the introduction of color > TVs, three electron guns were used, each tuned to a different phosphor, > which would appear as the color red, green, or blue.

> The points of light created by this interaction are too diffuse to produce a > sharp image, so a shadow mask is used to focus the electron beams before > they reach the screen. A shadow mask consists of a metal plate with holes or > apertures designed to filter out unwanted electrons. The shape of the shadow > mask and the configuration of its holes vary by model and contribute greatly > to the characteristics of the resulting image. The shadow mask also defines > the dot pitch of the display, effectively limiting its highest possible > resolution. As we will see later on, the dot pitch of the display does not > necessarily correspond to the resolution of the displayed image.

The three electron guns in a color CRT aren't _tuned_ to the different color phosphors, they are physically positioned so that the holes in the shadow mask or the gaps in the aperture grille block the beams from hitting the unwanted color phosphors and only hit the phosphor that each beam should light up.

In a shadow mask CRT, there is a triad of phosphor dots (or stripes in newer TVs) for each hole in the shadow mask. The electron beam from each gun goes through this hole at a different angle, so it only hits the correct phosphor and is blocked from the other two.

An aperture grille CRT uses a similar concept, but instead of mask with holes in it and triads of dots, it has a series of parallel vertical wires and vertical phosphor stripes serving the same function.

The mask or grille is not there because the electron beam is too diffuse to produce a sharp image. A monochrome CRT has no shadow mask or aperture grille, and with proper focusing it can be plenty sharp. The mask or grille is there simply to block the the beams from hitting the wrong color phosphors.

More information is in the Wikipedia articles on shadow masks and aperture grilles:

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

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

<comment><USER23> One thing with wire-based aperture grilles: tapping the side of the monitor will make the wires in the aperture grille vibrate, throwing of the colors. So, if you want to emulate a Trinitron display really, really well, you need an acceleration sensor and, for good measure, a microphone (to detect loud noises at the right frequency to make the wires vibrate)

I also have a question some reader might be able to answer: if you do the simple implementation, (at least) 2/3rds of your electrons will hit the aperture mask. To improve power efficiency, you would need finer control over the video signal. did any television ever do that? Or did they already have to do it to prevent the electron beams for different color from interfering with each other?

</comment></comment><comment> fake-name Maybe it's just me, but I think the old CRTs looked horrible, and I find games and other applications which strive to mimic them as closely as possible extremely visually unpleasant.

Sure, there's the nostalgia factor, but 20 seconds later I'm over it. If you have a game or something that has a CRT emulation mode, __let me turn it off __.

</comment><comment><USER24> I looked into early camera tubes recently- it's amazing that they work at all :-)

The "image orthicon" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_camera_tube#Image_orthic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_camera_tube#Image_orthicon) can only be described as a Rube-Goldberg device.

</comment><comment><USER25> NTSC - Never The Same Color

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm seeing a game development article on the front page almost every time I check HN now.

How many of you are making games?

</comment><comment><USER27> In civilized world we used SCART or JP-21 to achieve pure RGB and avoid most of the artefacts author is so nostalgic about.

[http://retrorgb.com/rgbguide.html](http://retrorgb.com/rgbguide.html)

so no, our consoles didnt look like [http://i.imgur.com/Pq2Yra4.png](http://i.imgur.com/Pq2Yra4.png), they did indeed look pixel perfect [http://retrorgb.com/images/Link%20RGB%20Compare.jpg](http://retrorgb.com/images/Link%20RGB%20Compare.jpg)

<comment><USER28> Well, the important thing is that you got a chance to be smug about your 30-year-old TV.

<comment><USER27> This whole article is a "smug about someones really BAD 30-year-old TV"

<comment><USER28> If you think that lovingly describing the details of an obsolete technology is "smug," then you are seriously on the wrong website.

(BTW, did you notice the part where the author specifically says he's talking about NTSC, and other standards work differently? Because, to be honest, getting all nationalistic over obsolete TV connection standards is kinda weird.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I made an RSS News Reader that prioritizes topics you care about - <AUTHOR> https://www.zuperlist.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN,

I've been working for a while on an intelligent RSS news reader. At its core, it works just like any other RSS news reader: you subscribe to the sites that you want to follow and you get delivered everything published there. The difference is that the news aren't sorted chronologically, they're sorted by how close they are to your interests. Zuperlist also remembers when you open the web app and separates the news by these moments. When you open it, you see what's new and noteworthy since your last visit. Another nice feature: related news are grouped together.

There are some ways to bypass the recommendations engine:

\- you can mark specific sites as highlighted and see everything published by them, before anything else

\- you can mark specific topics as highlighted and see everything that matches them. For example, mark Bitcoin as highlighted and see everything about Bitcoin in a separate block, regardless of recommendations

\- everything that doesn't match your interests is still available at the bottom of the news feed, where it's categorized by topic and by site

There are also some measures taken against creating a perfect filter bubble:

\- you get a quick glimpse at the most shared news, even if they don't match your interests

\- you get a few recommendations from sites you didn't subscribe to

\- from time to time you're shown a few items from a topic that's outside your interests

Sure, it's not perfect yet, but it works ok. I've been using it during the development and I love it, although I may be a bit biased :)

If you're intrigued by the idea, give it a try and let me know what you think. The zuperlist.com site works on both desktop and mobile, so there's no need to install an app.

<comment><USER2> Is the code open source? Would be cool to learn more.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's not open source at the moment.

<comment><USER3> that's too bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Very cool. A little while ago we created Winds, an open source RSS reader that uses machine learning to figure out what you're interested in. It's leveraging React/Redux, Stream and Algolia. An updated version is in the works: [http://github.com/getstream/winds](http://github.com/getstream/winds)

And the Hnews discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932429)

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks neat, one thing I love about my RSS reader still is it doesn't try to guess what I like. I have all my sites in there, many of them are blogs, and while most of them focus on a topic, they also post random stuff that's just interesting. I'm afraid of losing that. It's like what Facebook and Twitter do "for" me when they pick and choose what I see there.

It's like browsing the shelves of a library vs. using Amazon's recommendations. Sometimes a recommendation from some algorithm is fine, sometimes it's cool to just browse the shelves.

My feed reader is still one of my favorite things because it shows me random stuff I had no idea I'd be interested in because the sites I've picked are already doing a good job. I'm afraid if something else filters out the things it thinks I don't like then I'm going to lose out on some really interesting things. This is exactly how I found Hacker News, I had no idea what this site was before it just turned up in my feed reader a few years ago.

(I'm way old school when it comes to my feeds probably)

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand. That's why I added the feature to bypass the recommendations engine for some feeds, so that you could still see everything published by favorite blogs. That way the recommendations engine can only watch high-volume sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like that you are clear about what is free and how much it cost. Plus I welcome the idea. It is successful in China and it is needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Well, I hate it when some sites show you a large monthly price and in a corner it says "billed anually." So I wanted to be as clear as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sad that RSS has been dropped by so many news sources. It was awesome during the heydays of Google Reader.

</comment><comment><USER7> The website looks really cool. Do you use some service for fetching RSS feeds of parse it all by yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I use a python lib (feedparser) for parsing the RSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminded me of this[0].

[0]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-24/in- battle...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-24/in-battle-for- talent-one-startup-founder-tries-unlimited-pay)

</comment><comment><USER9> Do you plan to have a desktop version?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I didn't plan to have a desktop version until now. But anything could change, based on feedback :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> am I able to download all the RSS links so I can put them into my own reader?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you can export the list of subscribed sites to an OPML file that you can later import in another RSS reader.</comment></comment>


I Ate Soylent for a Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.lightreading.com/business-employment/jobs/i-ate-soylent-for-a-day-food-special/a/d-id/716930?page_number=1

<comment><USER2> This guy ate it for 30 days: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NCigh54jg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8NCigh54jg)</comment>


Star halfway across the universe was visible to naked eye for 30 secs on Wednesday - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080321-brightest-object.html

<comment><USER2> Those of you interested in astronomical things may enjoy <http://www.badastronomy.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst#Mass_extinction...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst#Mass_extinction_on_Earth)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is amazing. Anybody on HN happen to see it?

</comment><comment><USER5> Halfway across the visible universe, not the entire universe, which is 90+ billion light years across. Sorry to nitpick. :)

<comment><USER6> It is impossible to know what is outside of our lightcone.</comment></comment>


ThenListenTo - an open-source music recommendation visualizer - <AUTHOR> http://thenlistento.com

<comment><USER2> Pretty neat but what value does this provide over something like Pandora, where you not only get recommendations of similar artists, but you listen to their music directly?

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat indeed.</comment>


Disintegrate or Coordinate? - <AUTHOR> http://www.skidelskyr.com/site/article/coordination-vs-disintegration/

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is very long, I do apologise for that. However its a very thorough analysis of the economic issues of our times.</comment>


Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace(2015) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/untangling-the-tale-of-ada-lovelace/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was curious as to whether Ada had met Florence Nightingale, and it appears they were good friends.

Are there any visualisation packages called Florence?</comment>


Reid Hoffman has joined Microsoft's board - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/now-we-know-why-microsoft-bought-linkedin-dad742b3dd87 <comment><USER2> The future for Microsoft seems very bright. As the article mentions a reputation is hard to clean after it's been tarnished. I however, feel that Microsoft is making a big turn around with its recent open sourcing of .net core, and relationship building with the likes of Netflix and the Linux foundation[0]. Hopefully they can keep the ball rolling and change the publics opinion.

[0] [https://www.linuxfoundation.org/announcements/microsoft- fort...](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/announcements/microsoft-fortifies- commitment-to-open-source-becomes-linux-foundation-platinum)

</comment><comment><USER3> This article's premise is ludicrous. Microsoft bought LinkedIn because the company is a valuable business asset that will complement Microsoft's CRM software. More explanation of the value prop here: [https://stratechery.com/2016/microsoft-and-apple-double- down...](https://stratechery.com/2016/microsoft-and-apple-double-down/)

<comment><USER4> Indeed, it's far more probable that the acquisition had more to do with news like this >> Microsoft just took a direct swipe at Salesforce with a new enterprise-ready version of LinkedIn's product for sales professionals, Sales Navigator. << [http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/17/microsoft-new-linkedin- sales-...](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/17/microsoft-new-linkedin-sales-tool- salesforce-killer.html)</comment></comment>


Steve Wozniak: walking billboard - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@pabischoff/steve-wozniak-walking-billboard-b51fcfaaaf4f#.30tojy271 <comment><USER2> > Wozniak hasn't contributed in a meaningful way to any technological > advancement in modern-day computers.

That's a silly thing to say.

It doesn't matter if he has or hasn't. The guy did some stuff in his day and now he can do whatever he wants to. The complete article is a weird kind of hitpiece. Woz is a hacker's hacker, it's very strange seeing people go after him.

</comment><comment><USER3> If he doesn't need the money, it is far more likely that he likes people and sees no reason to say no.

The author also overstates Wozniak's pull. People like that he is a quirky hacker. I don't think people ask him publicly for advice. His private life is his own business.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't care very much what contrarian things a freelance tech writer has to say about someone who has actually accomplished something. This seems like a brazen effort to attract outraged clicks.

And citing a satirical article, even if he's since corrected it, is a sign of very poor journalistic standards. Anybody worth their salt would know to be skeptical of a claim that Wozniak has a fragrance line and a hamburger chain.</comment>


How to Build a Computer Model of God - <AUTHOR> http://www.bootstrappingindependence.com/technology/how-to-build-a-computer-model-of-god/

<comment><USER2> "Like most people, questions about the existence of God and all things spiritual plague me frequently. I want to believe in such things, especially when it comes to continuity of my consciousness. I don't like the idea of disappearing when I die."

One way to address this is to deal with these thoughts rather than entering a philosophical rat hole of trying to simulate our existence and find an analogy to the computer. Once you accept that an outside meta-influence is possible then you don't have to worry about all this "is there a God or not?" If God exists then God has powers that make Him imperceptible; if God doesn't exist then He's imperceptible. You can't tell the difference.

Oh well.

Better to live a life of good deeds and actions then worry about what's next.

<comment><USER3> > If God exists then God has powers that make Him imperceptible; if God > doesn't exist then He's imperceptible. You can't tell the difference.

This is the omnipotence paradox[1]. I often help friends and relatives understand why my religion (or lack thereof, actually) is `Tooth Fairy Agnosticism' by asking them whether or not God can create a stone that He can't lift.

> Better to live a life of good deeds and actions then worry about what's > next.

I agree. This is how I try to live my life, but it's hard to stop worrying when you have severe thanatophobia[2] like I do.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatophobia>

<comment><USER4> > This is the omnipotence paradox[1]. I often help friends and relatives > understand why my religion (or lack thereof, actually) is `Tooth Fairy > Agnosticism' by asking them whether or not God can create a stone that He > can't lift.

Lol, I've heard little kids ask that at church. Never heard an adult seriously ask that though, usually just as a gag.

<comment><USER3> > Lol, I've heard little kids ask that at church.

Did you happen to overhear any of them getting an answer? I'd love to read about how some church-going parents (guardians?) explain the omnipotence paradox to youngsters. In my experience, at least, I find that Jews treat the matter gracefully while managing to `uphold the faith', if you will.

> Never heard an adult seriously ask that though, usually just as a gag.

You don't know many Tooth Fairy Agnostics, do you?

<comment><USER5> Omnipotence means God has limitless power (or better, his power cannot be improved), not that he can do anything, whether logically impossible or not. This argument is a cavil, not a sound philosophical argument. Consider the set of natural numbers. You (given enough time and patience and brainspace) may have the ability to count up to any specified natural number. That does not imply you have the ability to count _all_ natural numbers. Once you start dealing with infinities, your intuition goes out the window.

The natural numbers can be algorithmically generated. Consider streams in Computer Science, for example. But note that the existence of streams does not imply the existence of an actual infinity in the computer's memory, only an algorithm to reach any finite member of the infinite set.

As mentioned elsewhere. If God is the first cause of the physical universe, then his existence is necessary (in the philosophical sense) and therefore changeless (in the philosophical sense) and therefore eternal (as his existence is necessary - and he exists entirely apart from time).

Once you start to enter into a discussion of infinite things like omnipotence, omniscience, necessary existence, etc, you enter the realm of infinite cardinalities, transfinite induction, the axiom of choice, Hilbert's Hotel, Russel's paradox, and so on. Philosophers have understood the issues regarding God's natural attributes for thousands of years, but only in the last 100 or so years have we had the mathematics to start saying things about infinities that are not nonsensical.

Consider that, as a human being, you are only aware of the present. You remember the past, and you have no knowledge of the future. Now imagine a being who is as _aware_ of the past as He is of the present. This is one who calls himself "I am". He says, "before Abraham was, I am". Or, he calls himself the "Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End". We aren't talking about a being with changing state and an awareness only of the present, as you or I. We have to be very careful with our intuition when examining such a subject.

Only the most rigorous and methodical mathematical argument can hope to establish anything positive or negative about such an entity.

<comment><USER3> > Omnipotence means God has limitless power (or better, his power cannot be > improved), not that he can do anything, whether logically impossible or not.

I'd like to write a well-thought-out reply, but I'm a little confused. How is `power' defined (for God, that is)?

<comment><USER5> If all that exists is God and his creation, then it is enough to state that God determines his own will (i.e. has free will) and that he has _all_ power with relation to his creation. No force, whether moral, physical, spiritual or temporal has the ability to oppose God and ultimately prevail. Thus he has no limits on his power. It is limitless.

This all stands to reason if God created time and space and matter ex nihilo. He has all the power there is. "For from Him and to Him and through him are all things"... forever. In fact, nothing that has power has so without it being given by Him. All power derives from God.

As God is changeless, his power necessarily cannot be improved.

I'll be honest and say that I do not know of any argument which proves in a direct way that a God who created the physical universe must be able to do any thing which is possible. Of course, that does not imply that there is not such an argument, nor that I do not believe it to be so.

I think that the necessary existence of God implies that there exists no being greater than God.

<comment><USER6> > I think that the necessary existence of God implies

There is no necessary existence of God nor can any logical argument establish it so.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain how the existence of a first cause can be contingent?

<comment><USER6> As I already said, the notion of a first cause is absurd, it's an idea that has no basis in reality or evidence to support that such a thing is. Just because you can think a thought doesn't mean reality must reflect it.

If you insist the universe had to come from something, then you can't solve the problem by inventing a god that doesn't.

If you can accept that a god is eternal, then you must accept that the universe itself can be as well thus excluding any need to invent God.

If you insist that God can be eternal but the universe can't be, or that the universe _requires_ a creator but God doesn't, well... then you're just not being rational and there is not point in having a rational discussion.

<comment><USER5> Ah, I see that you do believe that the universe came from nothing.

You say that the universe _is_ and that it came from nothing. That means you believe the existence of the universe is not contingent, which implies its existence is necessary. It's also remarkable that you posit that a first cause is an absurdity, yet then postulate that the universe has the properties of a first cause.

I find a logical contradiction in that the universe is known to have had a beginning. By any definition of contingent that I know of, something with a beginning has contingent existence.

Or perhaps you think it more scientific to suppose that things can happen without a cause (e.g. universes). Good luck with that theory. You had better hope that a universe doesn't happen without a cause under your bed. Now you live in a universe where miracles can happen without any reason whatsoever. They just are.

It actually sounds like in your world anything can happen any time for no reason. This begins to look very different from the universe I appear to live in.

<comment><USER6> > Ah, I see that you do believe that the universe came from nothing.

No, I don't and I just told you that. The question is invalid; the Universe didn't come _from_ anything. Even the visible universe, which we know was born from the big bang, no one believes came from nothing; Big bang theory says it came from an infinitely dense energy and the bang converted some of that into matter. No where does the theory state it all came from nothing.

> You say that the universe is and that it came from nothing.

No, I did not. The rest of your rebuttal fails because you've setup a straw man to knock down while ignoring what I actually said; I expected as much.

> It's also remarkable that you posit that a first cause is an absurdity, yet > then postulate that the universe has the properties of a first cause.

I did no such thing.

> I find a logical contradiction in that the universe is known to have had a > beginning.

False. We know there was a big bang; we explicitly do not know that it was the beginning, or the only big bang, or that the visible universe it applies to is the only one, or that big bangs aren't cyclical. We just don't know.

> Or perhaps you think it more scientific to suppose that things can happen > without a cause (e.g. universes).

No, I believe there are answers we don't yet have. You are the one that believes things happen without a cause (e.g. gods), the universe at least is known to exist undeniably.

<comment><USER5> I'm sorry, I'm completely lost. So now you are trying to tell me the universe may not have been the beginning, but that it did not come from anything.

You are aware of the scientific issues with the cyclical universe model I take it? There are issues with entropy, fine tuning, the fact that information cannot leave our universe through the event horizon of black holes (singularities), that universes of the size of our own are almost infinitely less probable than much smaller universes, that our universe does not look to be headed for a "big crunch", etc.

You also say, "You are the one that believes things happen without a cause". So now are you trying to tell me that _you_ believe things cannot happen without a cause and that I am the only one asserting that?

If so, then do you not see that an infinite number of prior causes (e.g. your cyclical universe theory) leads to an actual infinity of prior events and that we never get to this point because there are an infinite number of events that must precede it? (This is but one of many absurdities implied by such a presupposition.)

The only escape from your argument is to suppose that there is a first cause which is uncaused, outside of the physical universe whose existence is necessary but which is sufficient to explain the existence of the universe.

If you do not accept that, then your position seems to be that our universe does not have a reason for its existence (a cause) and that it does not need one (you seem to have claimed that, regardless, quite apart from my deduction from your claims). I claim only that things which do not have a beginning need no cause. And I claim that it logically follows that such things are changeless. If not, you have to accept the existence of an actual infinity, something which leads to a multitude of mathematical contradictions (look up Hilbert's Hotel).

You can't argue with a deductive argument by saying that it is wrong but we just haven't figured out any workable alternative yet but that we are working on it. You have to either refute the premises or demonstrate a self contradiction in the argument. Without that, the argument stands.

You are welcome to your opinion that you are suspicious of the premises.

<comment><USER6> You haven't made a deductive argument yet. In fact you've made no argument at all. If you think you have, please do point it out, as I've seen nothing but a series of questions trying to pin down what I think and not a one making an actual argument as to what you think and why it must be. Other than your original statement which was an assertion, not an argument for why it must be true.

Your tactic appears to be an attempt to bait me into making an argument that you can dismantle without actually making your own case hoping that I don't notice you haven't actually made your case. I'm not biting. I don't need to explain the presence of the universe to say that claiming gods did it isn't logical nor do I need to provide a counter argument. If you believe gods did it, you must make that case; you haven't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I admire most about the author is the honest search for Truth. It is a rare individual that can approach this problem while relinquishing their biases. I can't count myself among their ranks. It seems the majority of people, believers and non-believers alike, tend to come to a decision about God after about an afternoon of thinking about it, at most.

And really, what philosophical question posed to us could be more important than the question of God? It seems that every human should spend some significant amount of time deciding where they fall on this problem before they do...well...anything else.

<comment><USER8> What does it matter if the answer cannot be known? If the question cannot be answered than "spending a significant amount of time deciding" is just waste.

<comment><USER9> What if the answer can be known? Several people in the world and throughout history claim to _know_ the answer through physical experiences. They are easy to dismiss as crazy, but what IF they've discovered HOW to search? Some things just can't be measured by physical apparatus (like love for example).

<comment><USER10> [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Biological_ba...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Biological_basis_of_love)

<comment><USER9> Lots of "migth be" and "seems to be" in that article. I don't think we understand it or can replicate it in the laboratory.

<comment><USER10> Are you claiming that lack of current understanding proves a fundamental impossibility of doing so?

<comment><USER9> Certainly not! Lack of understanding of the complete universe is why we don't know if God exists or not. We don't _now_ know how to define and measure love in the lab, so there are likewise probably other things that also cannot be measured and detected physically (at least at the present time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's called "Simulationism". I happen to quite like it.

<http://www.simulation-argument.com/>

<comment><USER12> It's really interesting to think about the theological implications of simulationism. If the world were really structured as described in the article (which is not the point he was making, I'm just having fun), then one has to wonder what the purpose of having simulated, self-contained intelligences would be. I like to think about the implications of a specific purpose and I have a favorite.

Suppose one was trying to train up a batch of true AIs that were generous, moral, loving, responsible, principled, etc. (think Santa, Jesus, or Fred Rogers). I would submit that the task would be much better suited to some combination of genetic programming and machine learning i.e. generate a bunch of AIs with varying characteristics and let them learn for a while and see how they do at the stated task. I think it would make a lot of sense for a simulation scientist to want to have a bunch of these around, they could do some really cool stuff for you and you wouldn't have to worry too much about IRB approval since they would be certified moral by the previous test.

What kind of test would make sense? It would have to be one with difficult moral choices, one with an opportunity for failure. One without unnecessary pain and stress, but one that allows the AIs to make moral mistakes and be held responsible for them. If the true AIs are interacting, and it makes sense that they probably would have to, then naturally the duds could make life a little miserable for the good ones, you'd want to minimize that as much as you could without restricting the ability of all AIs to choose freely among available opportunities given to them. On top of that you might put them in a hostile environment that requires work and effort for survival to see if they have what it takes to get stuff done.

Now if that doesn't sound like _life_ I don't know what does. I that context hell doesn't really make a lot of sense (would you really punish bad AIs forever or just put them in charge of non-morally challenging and easy jobs? (my first thought was the coffee pot, but maybe putting a misbehaving AI in charge of that is not such a good idea) and "heaven" becomes more of a "gets to do cool, interesting stuff" than "chill out playing harp". From my experience many religious people tend to punt on what actually an afterlife would be for, other than it would be nice to reward us for being good. The answer to "Why can't the simulation master give the nice heaven to everybody?" is pretty clear in this context. She can't because that would be really bad for whatever task she needed moral AI for, which, if it affected a bunch of other true AIs has huge moral implications. So sorry, no offence, but based on your test results you don't get to do the cool stuff.

<comment><USER13> A different take on the same topic:

Greg Egan, Crystal Nights: <http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg- egan/>

<comment><USER12> Thank you, that was a fascinating read

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Say I live in a set, set_1, that has some property p_1. I can think about other sets, like my own, say, set_n, with similar properties for those, say, p_n. I am confined to set_1 so I can only speculate about what goes on in the other sets, if, indeed, there be any other sets. I speculate that all these sets, s, reside in some big super-set, S, with it's own p-like property, P. But this does not have to follow. I could have an infinite series of sets s, with their own unique p properties, but a super-set to which they belong does not itself have to have its own super-p property. It might, but it might not.

This is my problem with "Simulationism". It assumes such a "super P" property for the "super-set containing all universes". This property of course is time. The entire universe could be describable by a bit-string (Tegmark, et al) but that does not mean it has to "run" on anything, any more than a super-set S of s worlds each with property p has to have its own "super-property" P. I think it is a common misconception but not easy to clear up for people who don't have a technical background.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand how your model hopes to capture any of the essential features of God as known to academic philosophers. You mention Godel incompleteness, but this only applies to sets of axioms which can be generated algorithmically. Furthermore, pure logic reveals that a transcendental first cause must be eternal, changeless (without the universe), non-physical, most likely having a mind with free will, etc. Your model fails to capture any of these essential features. In fact, I agree with the poster who says that you should reason about God, rather than try to model Him. Naturally my reason leads me to different inescapable conclusions than his.

<comment><USER10> _most likely having a mind with free will_

What does that even mean outside of the physical universe?

<comment><USER5> Nothing, if you are not a philosophical dualist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Despite my desire to accept religious teachings, I am constantly prevented > by a simple fact: no one has found any physical evidence of something like a > soul, or any mechanism which might enable a persistent consciousness beyond > our current brain.

For a minute, forget about "persisting beyond death".

Consider consciousness, is there any conceptual model at all of how it arises purely out of the known physical laws?

I can imagine building a computer with strong-AI and I see no reason - what so ever - to assume that it may possess any form of consciousness. Given all that we know about how the physical world works, and how computers work, there's no reason to assume that some particular software configuration will give rise to subjective consciousness within a computer.

<comment><USER10> Define consciousness.

<comment><USER15> That's part of the problem :)

<comment><USER10> Then the question of whether software can have consciousness is meaningless.

As Dijkstra said, "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

<comment><USER15> I think you misunderstood what I meant.

The closest thing to a definition would be something that experiences Qualia, but then you'd ask me to define Qualia, and at this point I can't give an objective non-circular definition.

David Chalmers does a good job of explaining it

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kinda interesting, sorta reminds me of Knuth's book on bible verses.

</comment><comment><USER16> The author is missing a key element in his model of life, one which significantly affects the outcome of the thought experiment: his simple loops are independent, they have no shared state. Real existence is not so clean--- living beings are constantly being altered by their environment, and conversely altering it. It would be impossible to simply 'save the state' of a living being without saving the state of the entire universe in which it resides (the virtual machine). This makes reincarnation (or at least the very simple model presented in the article) impossible.

<comment><USER10> One can claim that humans are more like shared-nothing message passing processes, which can alter and be altered by their "surroundings" without sharing state per-se.

Shared state/memory seems more like a representation of the Borg ;)

<comment><USER16> However you choose to model it, the fact remains that there is no clear boundary between the state of a living thing and its surroundings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ambitious model</comment>


Kale, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts are all the same species - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/6/5974989/kale-cauliflower-cabbage-broccoli-same-plant <comment><USER2> I can't believe the author left THESE out: [https://www.google.com/search?q=geometric+brassicas&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=geometric+brassicas&tbm=isch)

You can make them at home, but it requires a lot of work and luck, since brassicas cross-breed if they are near each other at all.

<comment><USER3> Another plant he left out was Arabidopsis, which is the model organism most studied by plant biologists as it has the second shortest plant genome (they used to think it was the shortest). My company ([http://www.glowingplant.com](http://www.glowingplant.com)) is engineering these to make them glow in the dark... so maybe we can make glow-in-the-dark broccoli next ;) It's not hundreds of years to make new cultivars now, dramatic changes can be achieved in months. Fun fact: you can make an arabidopsis look like a Brussels sprout with the modification to a single gene... it wouldn't taste as good though, that takes more genes!

<comment><USER4> That's probably because it's not even in the same genus as the others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though the article mentions it, I can't believe the headline left out broccoli, which is the form of this species that I eat the most of.

<comment><USER6> Let us rectify the insult to broccoli.

</comment></comment><comment> Pirate-of-SV In Swedish and I guess in other languages as well it's not that mind blowing.

We call them: Grönkål, Blomkål, Vitkål, Broccoli, Brysselkål

<comment><USER7> Here are the Finnish names (in the order of the headline):

lehtikaali, kukkakaali, kaali, parsakaali, ruusukaalikasveille

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've unintentionally known this for about 25 years. Nobody ever believed that I was allergic to broccoli or cauliflower and just thought I hated them. Then one day I tried out kale and found that it tasted similar to broccoli to me. I asked my wife if she felt the same way (brussel sprouts also taste the same) and she said they all taste very different to her.

We then looked up and saw that they're all part of the mustard family.

So if you're ever curious if a plant is part of the mustard family just let me taste it and I'll let you know... and then throw up on you.

<comment><USER9> If you taste them raw, they all definitely have a common, slightly mustardy flavour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As is mustard. It's a pretty astounding species.

<comment><USER11> The mustard that we typically eat as a condiment or greens are _Sinapis alba_ , _Brassica juncea_ , and _Brassica nigra_ , which are in the same family as _Brassica oleracea_ , but they aren't the same species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> what is this? /r/TIL ? Of course they are...

<comment><USER13> [http://xkcd.com/1053/](http://xkcd.com/1053/)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I understand people learn new things all the time, but is HN a really appropriate place for Facebook posts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great example of the power of selective breeding.

<comment><USER15> Ah yes, selective breeding... also known as the original method for creating GMOs. Nowadays we can just do things a bit faster without all of the waiting required for multiple generations of crops. But that doesn't mean that we haven't been practicing artificial genetic selection for millennia.

<comment><USER16> Ah yes, validating all GMOs just because we've been breeding cultivars for thousands of years.

Safety not gauranteed: The solanine heavy Lenape Potato, sure solanine is in all potatoes, but when did a non-green one make you sick? The "killer zucchini" from New Zealand with dangerous amounts of curcubitan caused by a aphid outbreak in the organic fields.

Mono-cultures can happen: The Irish potato famine could have been reduced in severity if there were more variety among Ireland's food crops or their potato cultivars in 1845. While nowhere near as devasting to humanity, the destruction of the Gros Michel banana cultivar and the impending threat of the newest banana-phage on the current Cavendish cultivar aren't exactly a good faith offering on future mono-cultures, GMO or not, being avoided.

<comment><USER17> You seem to be making two contradicting points here.

On one end, you talk about food safety, and how altering the DNA of a plant means it might not be safe anymore. But in that case, the best thing we could do is to make sure we are always making plants with the exact same genetics: All clones. That's the only way you can tell what you are eating. There are more genetic changes in a naturally bred, not inbred crop than there are in a GMO event vs the untraited plant.

Then you seem to dislike monocultures: If you want the plants to be safe from some phage, nothing better than high genetic diversity in plants, which leads to us really having no idea of how safe what we are eating is.

We either want to treat them as drugs, and make monocultures the way of the world, or we look for genetic diversity, in which case having some BT toxins embedded in your corn plant won't be that bad. Just ask agribusiness to make sure there's at least 8 different germplasms per bag or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As it happens I learned this last week or so creating my latest Wikipedia trivia page, the ultimately badass [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superfoods](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_superfoods)

</comment><comment><USER19> Whatever you want to call it, they don't have exactly the same genome. Calling them the same species is like saying Dog is Wolf and Human is Ape.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure if it has changed, but things used to be called the same species if they can interbreed with each other and produce fertile offspring. Dog is wolf, yes; man is ape, no.

<comment><USER21> What you are describing is known as the Biological Species Concept. It's one of at least 28 species concepts that have been proposed in the scientific literature -- they were surveyed in a review paper whose reference irritatingly escapes me. Anyway, the BSC is not the only game in town (and is particularly useless to those, like me, who are palaeontologists.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't believe it. Very interesting read, and I don't doubt that the plants all originated from the same species . However, I'm not convinced that they are _still_ the same species; can one assert that we have, through artificial selection, induced speciation? I believe this is more likely.

I will admit that the definition of "species" is subject to debate. The general definition to which I subscribe requires that two individuals are able to mate, produce offspring, and that can then mate and produce offspring of its own. A major shortcoming with this definition, however, is that it does not address Ring Species. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)

<comment><USER23> The word 'believe' has no place in a scientific debate. Either you know or you don't know. What you believe does not enter into it, that means you need to do more research or read up on the research that has already been done.

<comment><USER24> That's nonsense. There are lots of parts of science where someone could reasonably say "I believe it's this, but I'll change my mind if future science changes my mind".

An example of where this is useful is around Neanderthals. "Did they have language?", "Did they have burial with ceremony?" are questions where it's fine to have belief on the current evidence because there's not enough data to know the answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes and they all are powerful goitrogenic plants. Don't eat them raw... unless you hate your thyroid! When I see people sipping on raw kale juice, I feel sorry for them! Raw is not always better! Would you eat raw potatoes, for example, or raw mushrooms (toxins), or spinach (rich in oxalates)?

<comment><USER26> If you have a healthy thyroid, raw kale is fine. Similarly, if you have healthy kidneys the amount of oxalates in raw kale or spinach shouldn't be a problem.

So tired of hearing this nonsense from people who read a few blog posts instead of asking their doctor.

<comment><USER25> Hmmm... I think "healthy" is very relative and Google is planning to put all its powers to determine exactly what that means. How about not relying on something so subjective and just do a little extra effort to cook the problematic foods?

<comment><USER27> Well, for me, I hate cooked broccoli, love it raw. Although come to think of it, I never eat all that much in one sitting.

So I'll be looking into the details of this.

<comment><USER25> Trans-lycopene in cooked tomatoes is times more compared to raw, for example. Steamed broccoli is definitely more pleasant to eat to most and those chewing it raw mostly do it thinking it's healthier this way. The popular wisdom is that in a soup, cell walls of vegetables are broken and nutrients are released in the broth - is there a PubMed article on this? How about centuries-old practice instead? Just now medicine finds, for example, the merits of Ayurveda. For example, the combination of turmeric and black pepper in curry is now scientifically proven to increase curcumin's bioavailability by orders of magnitude. Should you always wait decades or forever for science to prove something that's passed the test of the ages?

<comment><USER28> > How about centuries-old practice instead?

Centuries-old practice had people leeching the vile humors out of their bodies when they got sick, too. The ancients got a lot of stuff wrong, and what they got right was largely by accident. I'll trust scientific rigor along with the confidence intervals and error bars over received wisdom every time.

Also, here's a link to a Pubmed article on chicken soup:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002768/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002768/)

Nothing about breaking down the cell walls of vegetables to release the nutrients, so I don't know if that's true.

And here's another Pubmed article about soup, highlighting the danger of food fads (because people don't want to wait for nutritional science to prove something and instead rely on the "test of the ages"):

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279073/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279073/)

<comment><USER25> I meant to say "practices that survived till nowadays". Your position of "PubMed it or it didn't happen" is really entertaining.

<comment><USER28> Homeopathy has survived until nowadays, despite a lack of evidence of efficacy.

You also mis-characterize my position on PubMed. It is a search engine with which I am familiar, not the summation of all scientific medicine. If I can't find something in PubMed, my thoughts on a matter remain "dunno", which is orthogonal to "believe/disbelieve" or "accept/reject". I included links to PubMed articles on soup as a humorous rejoinder to your rhetorical question. That was probably unnecessary, and I apologize.

<comment><USER25> Well, homeopathy, Dr. Schuessler's salts, and Dr. Bach's flower remedies are most probably just a placebo, which is better than many drugs especially in the States, although I know many who swear the Boiron flu "meds" really work and I don't think placebo performs well with viral and bacterial infections.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: IntelliJ plugin to auto generate boilerplate code for Java unit tests - nate-dev http://squaretest.com <comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure how comfortable I am having third party closed source tools reading my code and possibly submitting statistics - am I even allowed to do this with company code?

> Several open-source business models were considered. Unfortunately, none of > them appeared to provide enough revenue to support the development required > to create and maintain Squaretest.

How is this funded? I don't see pricing section.

<comment> nate-dev Thank you for the feedback.

The first time you invoke the generate-test-action, Squaretest will ask if you want to allow Squaretest to anonymously send usage-data. You can opt-out here if you don't want to send the data. You can also opt-out later by changing the option in the Settings menu.

The beta version of Squaretest is available for free while in beta. Afterward, users will need to purchase a license to use Squaretest.</comment></comment>


AngelHack CEO Trashes SF's Homeless 'Degenerates' - <AUTHOR> http://sfist.com/2013/12/11/angelhack_startup_ceo_trashes_sfs_d.php

<comment><USER2> This is really only a step away from Dickens-esque statements. "Then maybe they should die and decrease the surplus population."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've had 'Leo the Homeless Coder'... it wouldn't surprise me if AngelHack's mea culpa is to hold a 'Homeless Hackathon' on Market St. "Oh look, we're helping people, you know, teach a man to fish and all that..."</comment>


The coming deepfakes threat to businesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/the-coming-deepfakes-threat-to-businesses-308432e8-f1d8-465e-b628-07498a7c1e2a.html <comment><USER2> Election 2020 is going to be a shit show with deepfakes.</comment>


Bertrand Russell on Smoking - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=80oLTiVW_lc&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> Thanks. I subsequently went down the Bertrand Russel rabbit hole, and wound up watching a half hour interview of his, which I just posted to HN.</comment>


Codenode:  write Python and Sage in your web browser - <AUTHOR> http://codenode.org/

<comment><USER2> Looks cool, but for those unfamiliar with Sage, it has a similar notebook feature built-in. Codenode looks promising, but Sage's notebook is currently more mature. You can try the Sage notebook out at <http://sagenb.org> (needs registration but it's a quick process). (use shift+enter to evaluate what's in the current box)

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm one of the main developers of Codenode, and I wanted to agree that the Sage notebook is a bit more mature at this time.

In fact, I was one of the original creators of the Sage notebook (along with William Stein, Tom Boothby, and others).

We started Codenode with the hope of creating an even more generalized and robust online code notebook.

<comment><USER2> Nice. I think there's definitely room for a notebook like this outside of just Sage. The real time collaboration you mentioned sounds like a killer feature, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> this looks pretty damn cool - thanks for posting it. i've been meaning to switch to python for numerical work, this is finally going to push me over.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not seeing the benefit over emacs python mode, myself.

<comment><USER3> Codenode is like "Google Docs" for programming.

The benefits are more the ability to "code anywhere", to not have to install anything (think Windows here), to have the backend server contain lots of pre- installed packages, and to do real-time code writing collaboration with others.

The real-time collaboration is a work in progress. For more information, see here: <http://github.com/clemesha/hotdot>

<comment><USER5> Thanks, that does seem highly useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand the black bars. Do they indicate a running script?

<comment><USER3> They indicate a region where a new "Cell" can be inserted.</comment></comment>


Kurzweil Takes On Kindle With New E-Reader Platform Blio - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/01/04/kurzweil-takes-on-kindle-with-new-e-reader-platform-blio/

<comment><USER2> _Blio preserves the original format of books including typography, and illustrations, in full color_

Why do people continue to believe that this is a _feature_ rather than an annoyance?

The fact is that different devices, having different sizes, resolutions, brightness, etc., all provide different experiences for reading. Forcing us to consume the document in the same manner despite the strengths and weaknesses of the device is torture.

For example, I do my ebook reading on a PocketPC. It's got good resolution at VGA, but with a 4" screen, trying to faithfully reproduce two-column text as shown in the OP is just absurd.

Similarly, I can't fathom why we want to preserve pagination. The reader software I use allows either smooth continuous scrolling or half-page-at-a- time, which I prefer. It allows me to maintain continuity without having to remember back to the last words of the previous page after turning pages.

<comment><USER3> Over the years I've read perhaps more than a hundred books on my trusty Tungsten C. I love the fact that the screen is backlit, which means that I can read at night without disturbing my partner. The idea of preserving pagination for an electronic device makes no sense at all. Just give me plain black text on white, allow me to adjust the size, and let it scroll continuously in a single column.

<comment><USER2> Rather than black-on-white (as with paper), I've started using an ivory over very dark blue.

One of my most common uses is the same as yours, reading at night without disturbing my wife. I find that light-over-dark is much easier on the eyes when viewing in the dark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get it. I thought the whole benefit of having an ebook reader was the e-ink. Until someone develops an actual color e-ink, how does this differ from a tablet with some pdf software?

</comment><comment><USER5> _> Every time I see a Kindle, or a Sony Reader, I desperately want to buy one, but I never do. I keep telling myself that waiting just six months will mean a better version and more variety to chose from._

Bad idea. 6 months is a lot of reading he's losing.

<comment><USER6> A lot of e-reading, that is. Reading continues as it has for centuries...

I sympathize with his point of view. The smartphone market, the netbooks, the tablets, are all changing so fast that you have to settle for second best if you want to get in.

For me, cell internet access was such a big draw I couldn't stay away from the phone eventually.

<comment><USER5> _> A lot of e-reading, that is. Reading continues as it has for centuries..._

Perhaps not, unless he's reading on a cell phone. You read a lot more with a dedicated device. I find myself pulling out my kindle & losing myself in a book whenever there's any down time.

<comment><USER6> I meant, by staying out of the market, the author is losing out on e-reading only. But this doesn't mean not reading, just because the mobile phone is a crappy reading platform.

It just means carrying around a paperback.

I see why you might read much more by carrying around a Kindle rather than a phone. I'll give you that. But I'm not the target market for the Kindle, because I am willing to check out a book from the library and carry it around instead.

<comment><USER5> Yeah I got your meaning. I just think perhaps you'd do even more reading if you got a kindle. (Well it can't be less..)

Like I've been running through lots of academic papers recently. I just loaded the empirical bayes paper from the front page & I plan on reading a few pages before I sleep. Tomorrow I'll compare it with the dozen other texts I have on the kindle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This doesn't seem to have anything in it that PDF doesn't.

Also, the idea that it's not using e-ink is not a selling point; I don't want to read lots of content off a backlit screen with (if mobile) comparatively lousy battery life.

</comment><comment><USER8> Woah, it's go 3D page turning support! When can I buy it!?

</comment><comment><USER9> So, he is attacking the Kindle with Acrobat Reader. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> Its like someone released a "build and sell your own e-reader" kit to all these people.</comment>


Google Maps For Android Gets Offers, Business Photos & Indoor Walking Directions - <AUTHOR> http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/05/shop-and-travel-smarter-with-google.html

<comment><USER2> I'd be more excited if they gave me the option to disable the annoying "spin the map when you try to pinch-zoom" feature. I've never wanted my phone to give me a map where north is some arbitrary direction spun with my fingers and it's difficult to zoom without accidentally rotating the map.

// I know it's off topic, but it makes the map barely usable and I can dream that some google engineer will see my plea and consider it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Offers right in Maps is a great example of why I think those who claim Google would have been better off not doing Android cause iOS is currently making them more in mobile profits are being incredibly shortsighted.

<comment><USER4> I would pay for Maps for iOS if it had the features of the Android version. It's the only app I miss since switching but I would never consider going back just for Maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there anything like the MapDroyd app ([which keeps all the mapping info local to the phone) which also does turn-by-turn navigation?

<comment><USER6> NavDroyd is an offline turn-by-turn navigation app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I'll explode if I hear one more ukelele-backed tech promo video this week.</comment>