Using the hunger I experienced as a kid to teach mine about generosity (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://humanparts.medium.com/i-am-a-little-too-fat-im-a-little-too-generous-i-think-i-know-why-e97cd25b7eeb <comment><USER2> I was about 11 and my mom fled a abusive relationship. Didn't really have a plan but we started in Oregon and ended up in Utah. We were getting survivors benefits from Social Security and ran out of cash. So we had to kill a few weeks in until the next check came in.

So we stayed at a battered woman's shelter in Cedar City. Lovely place, lovely people. Everyone helped out cooking. It was a small place, maybe 20 woman and children there and a few staff.

But one night my mom volunteered to make a cake. I remember this vividly. It was a Cherry Chip cake from a box and there was a thing of vanilla frosting. I ended up adding the ingredients and mixing them up. So the cake goes in the oven and bakes and something is wrong. I forgot to add eggs into the batter. So we ended up with gross sludge.

People were nice about but you could tell everyone was really disappointed. And cake was a luxury, it wasn't like we could go out and grab another one.

I'm going on 20+ years of mailing them cash with a note saying to buy cake.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for that story. The people who run these shelters are angels.

My wife escaped her ex by seeking shelter at a battered women's place. I owe her life to them.

There my wife met women of a completely different background. My wife is white, at the time already well educated, and very type A [0]. Her only "disadvantage" was that she was a recent immigrant to the US, with all the difficulties of being a recent immigrant. So the shelter is the only place in the past decade where she met people you never meet in the US; _the others_. She has very powerful memories of the people she met there.

They have one fundamental rule: you don't tell any men where it's located. Although I'm filled with curiosity (partially lack of discipline, partially to send them a cheque), I've never asked her where this place is; I don't want to put her in that position. Not to the place to which I owe her life.

[0] It's funny. She's very type-A, very much in charge, yet it took her manager, a black man, to force her to seek help. He told her either to go stay at a shelter or not come to work the next day.

<comment><USER4> This is interesting, it sounds like your wife went to an underground/unlisted type of women's shelter?

<comment><USER5> > This is interesting, it sounds like your wife went to an > underground/unlisted type of women's shelter?

If i'm not mistaken, I believe that most shelters attempt to keep a cloak over their actual identity and purpose. They're often vaguely named and are placed in non-obscure locations. Nonetheless, whether it's listed or not, I'm glad their partner was able to get the help they needed.

<comment><USER4> I think this used to be more common when in the 60s and 70s, when shelters were basically run by small groups of women volunteers and relied on word-of- mouth to get the word out. A lot of shelters are now public, get funding, and have websites so women can find them easily. I'm not not really sure how common unlisted vs. public is nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I grew up with certain privileges. Dad's an engineer and a go-getter, mom has a masters. But we were a one income family (my mom's work doesn't cross intl. borders) with a bit of job insecurity when we first moved to N. America.

Most of my childhood anxiety was due to my parents being too honest with me (my dad got laid of twice in the early 90s' recessions, I was seven).

I remember every month I would lend my mom my savings (about 200) to help her get us get to the end of the month. Since my mom depended on this being available, I asked very solemnly when I used it to buy a CD burner. To this day I ask permission to my wife to buy most anything (she has a similar background and does the same).

I remember looking at a $20 and all the power it held. A tank of gas. Several days of food. Again, similar story for my wife - she lived on a $5/day food budget.

I remember that, on long drives, we'd fit the five of us into a two door car with four seat belts. My mom's $1000 k-car had unreliable breaks. An issue on the freeway. My father never drove faster than 50 mph on the freeway (the limit was 60 at the time)

I remember my dad joking about feeding the "black hole" our non-mortgage household debt. I have deep aversion to any type of debt.

Eventually my dad moved up the ranks and all this went away. When I entered college things changed and we ended up quite well off, to the point where I have no student debt thanks to my parents.

Trough all of this, though, my parents were very clear that no matter how "difficult" (they labeled us as "poor") things were, people were much worse off than us.

<comment><USER6> If you are borrowing $200 every month and paying it back, you have a budgeting problem not an income problem.

I hope the $200 loan was a trick your mom played to help you save money.

<comment> en-us Regardless of whether or not you are right, this is just not an appropriate way to respond to someone who has just shared a trauma. This is a case of "if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all".

<comment><USER3> No worries. I don't think its fair to say I'm traumatized. Just standard immigrant stories. We weren't rich, or comfortable, but never skipped a meal. Therefore we were actually very fortunate.

My wife, on the other hand, is from an ex commie country. She could write a book of her insane stories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see a lot of people here felt moved by this writing. I wanted to share another that recently moved me: Two Arms and a Head [https://web.archive.org/web/20110107100235/http://www.2arms1...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110107100235/http://www.2arms1head.com/)

It's written by someone who became a paraplegic. You may have seen it on HN recently, but maybe not.

It's not something that you can consume in a few minutes. But it's worth reading in its entirety. It really, truly helps you appreciate just how much most of us have in life.

I apologize if this is tangential. But it was such an incredible experience to read it that I wanted to share it with someone. I haven't felt my perspective about life change that much by a single work before.

It's a longform essay on life, happiness, morals, philosophy, ethics, and someone's personal journey through the pits of hell. It's also an extended suicide note that might make you rethink certain aspects of society. But it also has a certain flavor of humor:

 _I have not been an author for long (and won't be one for long!) ..._

For some excerpts, I compiled a list that struck me while reading: [https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1208678324928700417](https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1208678324928700417)

<comment><USER8> Here's the website directly: [http://www.2arms1head.com/](http://www.2arms1head.com/)

Thread for anyone who's interested: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729056)

Very similar topic, also recommended: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Growing up in poverty is much more than just going hungry every night. Poverty consumes each person that lives inside of it and strips them of their own individual identity. As the author said, if you look at the faces of people around you long enough, you will start to see pain, fear, uncertainty, and many more unspoken emotions that is tied to poverty.

Poverty makes a person begin questioning what it is they did in their life that brought them to this low of a point. Ignoring all of the economic reasons and social standings, poverty makes the person believe they are incapable of ever achieving anything more. It is when that same person begins to actually feel as if they can escape poverty that they also begin to have stronger fears of insecurity. For many, they feel as if they do not belong in a higher bracket. Trailer parks, frozen foods, and generic brands are all they ever knew and it's all they should ever have.

Being around those with money who have never experienced this lack of worth is a terrible time for those who came from poverty. In their eyes, if they were given the opportunity to be so comfortable in life, they would do anything they could to spread joy to anyone who walked through their door. But for many families, a fridge full of groceries is common; an abundance of snack choices for your guests is nothing out of the ordinary. For those in poverty, this sense of wanting to give back to those who may need it more than you is something that is learned through hardship and life experiences.

<comment><USER9> This sounds off to me.

>Poverty consumes each person that lives inside of it and strips them of their own individual identity.

I have no idea what this means. What I know from personal experience is that poverty makes one care less about the future. And make stupid decisions like voting for the guy who gives out $1 bread, sprays money in the air and ends up stealing $10mil.

>Poverty makes a person begin questioning what it is they did in their life that brought them to this low of a point.

For someone born to a poor home, this doesn't apply

>In their eyes, if they were given the opportunity to be so comfortable in life, they would do anything they could to spread joy to anyone who walked through their door

Depends on where you grew up or what your parents said to you. Where I'm from, wealthy guys who were once poor don't spread joy, but pain & oppress others with their wealth. They make completely new friends, become extremely busy, develop amnesia and suddenly can't remember people from their days of poverty. They rub it in your face, won't give out $1 to help anyone but would buy you as many beers as you'd like.

Some people who escape poverty overspend, buy shiny wheels, drink their eyes out - buy, buy, buy to enjoy the life they never had in childhood and hasten their way to poverty.

Another set become withdrawn. The fear that the good fortune is temporary makes this class live very simple lives. To them, "Winter is just on the horizon."

<comment><USER10> I'm sad that you're getting downvoted for posting what you obviously experienced personally.

I can't agree or disagree with most of it, since it wasn't my experience, but I do want to change your mind on one point:

" And make stupid decisions like voting for the guy who gives out $1 bread, sprays money in the air and ends up stealing $10mil."

Perhaps it does make some people make stupid decisions, but I'm become very careful in what I label "stupid". When you've got un-met needs, you do what you have to in order to fulfill that need. If you can get free bread and money in return for a promise to vote a certain way, that's basic incentives.

<comment><USER11> The demographics of HN are well known. The average biases of said demographics are well known. It is telling but not exactly surprising that every single comment that claims to have first hand experience with poverty is disagreeing* with the GP and also grey and at the bottom.

*GP seems to be placing arguing that psychological factors are key to what makes poverty suck and most of the people disagreeing seem to think psychological factors are a non-issue or take a distant second place to more immediate material concerns (though they don't necessarily agree beyond that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > I don't remember Anita saying anything to my mother or even asking her > husband first if she could give us something, but I remember her packing up > her table: the pot roast, the carrots, the gravy, the potatoes. She handed > it all to my mother.

That hit me like a truck. I'm actually tearing up.

Next time I walk past a homeless person, I'll think twice.

<comment><USER13> Don't just walk past; give them some cash or carry gift cards for grocery store or pharmacies to hand out. Then also donate to a local shelter.

Give them cash. Give them dignity by making eye contact. Give the benefit of the doubt they need it and will use it responsibly. Give.

<comment><USER14> A nicer gesture would be asking what they need and supplying them. Cash is not always the best medium for reasons related to not having enough background information. Some of them may use it for worsening their condition (addiction) and others don't know how to get good supplies from it - mindset change due to homelessness.

<comment><USER15> One person's "worsening their condition" is another person's self-medication.

Sure, you can ask them what they need, but the nice thing about cash if they can use it to buy _whatever_ they need, that's what cash is for. And have the dignity to decide for themselves what it is, not have to tell you and get it approved like you're their teacher or boss.

I mean, are you spending some of YOUR money on alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes? Then you can afford to give someone cash without needing to worry about whether they might do the same, and whether that's good for them or not.

<comment><USER16> What is the point of giving someone money so that they can die of an overdose using the drugs you helped them buy?

<comment><USER17> The OP explained: It gives them dignity and perhaps self-determination. Both of those things have value.

A person can still die from self-determination of course, so it comes down to a decision about what you think matters the most.

<comment><USER16> They already have self-determination without you giving them money to buy drugs.

And dying of an overdose doesn't give you any dignity.

<comment><USER15> You are not able to predict who is going to die of an overdose -- let alone _because_ of your gift (ie suggeseting they wouldn't have otherwise, it is your gift that led to that).

So you can decide to treat everyone with dignity as an adult, or nobody with dignity as an adult. You are advocating for nobody (or at least nobody who is on the streets), out of an abundance of 'caution'.

You are mistaken if you think you are _helping_ people by being an asshole to them. But it is certainly your right to do so.

<comment><USER16> Not giving people money doesn't make you an asshole.

<comment><USER15> Maybe, maybe not, but claiming the reason you don't give people money is "What is the point of giving someone money so that they can die of an overdose using the drugs you helped them buy?" \-- definitely does.

You can treat someone respectfully while giving them money, or while not giving them money; and you can be an asshole either way too.

<comment><USER16> "This money _could_ help this person, but it's also quite risky, given that the majority of chronically homeless people (most people panhandling) have drug addictions or other mental health issues or both. My money would be better spent on services that can help address these issues over the long term."

I think we disagree on what constitutes an asshole. Being aware of the statistical realities of a situation and operating on them is not being an asshole. If you were to say "of course I'm not giving you money, you're probably addicted to heroin" to someone's face after they ask you for change, that would make you an asshole. But that's not what I'm advocating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While I fully agree that the most essential need of every human being -- and every animal or plant -- is drinking, breathing and eating, let's not forget there are other essential needs that everyone has: attention, love, education...

All I want to say is that the most precious thing you can give might as well be: your time and undivided attention, a smile or nice word or any other form of humanity. It can sometimes be harder to give that, than a quick donation to a foodbank.

</comment><comment><USER19> I grew up in a lower-middle class family (luxuries that we couldn't afford were school books for every year, but that was about it), but my SO grew up in actual poverty.

It does weird things to a person. One thing that stood out was decision making in general, which used to be very difficult for her - and the scope didn't even matter - it could well have been deciding on the flavour of juice to buy.

Fortunately it's much better now. We laugh that she has "expensive taste", because without looking at the prices, her first pick is usually the most expensive.

</comment><comment><USER20> That's a marvelous piece of writing.

</comment><comment><USER21> As someone who fasts intermittently, and has come to understand the cognitive effects on the brain of caloric deprivation, it's saddening to think of a child experiencing a similar effect. Unlike a voluntary faster like me, the circumstance is completely out of the child's control and probably happening while they are facing any number of other family challenges.

On top of that, they are in this condition while in school, where they are being evaluated for their cognitive performance.

It really underlines the dire importance of things like free school breakfast, lunch and snack programs.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was at a party once, which I didn't really want to be at but didn't really have a choice, and everyone was taking drugs and I was hiding in the corner. I started speaking to the only other guy who was also hiding in the corner and it turned out he was a heroin addict. He was quite open about it. He was talking about his life, and after about half an hour of him talking I thought, "this guy had no chance."

I mean, I grew up in a lower-middle class home. There was always food, 2 parents, a roof over my head, education. I had so much luck that when I made a whole bunch of mistakes (to the point that I was hiding in a corner speaking to a heroin addict), I could call up Mum and Dad and move home. This guy had none of that, and worse, people were actively trying to make money off him the entire time. His friends had got him addicted to heroin and then sold it to him, for example. The reason he was sat in the corner for so long was because he'd been late paying his heroin bill so the drug dealer was making him wait until he started to suffer withdrawal before he got some more.

The next day he died of a drug overdose. I stood there in the crowd as they took his body out of his flat. The same friends who'd sold him the drugs were saying things like, "that fucker owed me £20! If you're going to OD you'd at least cash your dole check and pay your mates back first?!"

<comment><USER23> > There was always food, 2 parents, a roof over my head, education. I had so > much luck [...] This guy had none of that, [...] His friends had got him > addicted to heroin and then sold it to him, for example.

I dunno. I mean, one could have everything you cited and still let his friends get him addicted. And there's people having no chance at all while still staying far from drugs. A personal and non-learnt-by-example inclination to self-preservation and survival may be a bigger factor than sheer luck (IMHO).

<comment><USER24> > A personal and non-learnt-by-example inclination to self-preservation and > survival may be a bigger factor than sheer luck (IMHO).

It'd sure be lucky to have such an inclination

<comment><USER23> So it must be luck, luck all the way down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I grew up in Africa, and saw some pretty heavy-duty poverty up close and personal.

It profoundly affected me.

I'm glad to have had the experience. It has done much to make me wiser, and more grateful for what I have.

</comment><comment><USER26> Grew up in a colonia and I constantly fear with my six figure salary, existing in this ridiculous world of opulence and technology that I will lose those lessons. I am more than how I grew up or where I am from. Feels good to know I do not walk alone in that journey...

</comment><comment><USER27> I must have read a million articles in my life, but that's the first one to have me in tears and really make me think at a deep level. Great writing!

</comment><comment><USER28> This world with all its evil has beautiful people who love and give freely.

<comment><USER29> The news, where "what bleeds, leads" is likely the reason for an amplified perception of "evil". The world is very likely a kind place, especially in politically stable regions

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I once forgot to bring my wallet to office. I rarely borrow money so I very reluctantly asked for 20 bucks from a colleague. It was supposed to take care of breakfast/lunch/dinner (probably should have borrowed more considering the location where I was, it wasn't a given that it'll be sufficient). I remember carefully checking the prices of items to decide what I was going to order so that I had enough for the next meal.

This was not even remotely close to being poor but it was enough to provide me with some direct perspective.

<comment><USER31> 20$ for a single day of food gives you 'direct perspective' ? come on now.

<comment><USER32> Why not read it with a modicum of charity? Or even just quote the whole sentence? The parent was clearly saying the experience was nothing remotely like poverty, but helped give some perspective on what it might be like to have to regularly think about making money stretch to the next meal. Many people who've had a cushion of savings their whole lives would never consider that experience at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have been hungry. This rings of truth and it brings me almost to tears.

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER25> I had a friend point out that excellent posting a couple of days ago.

I think it's an excellent story for our time, and I'm glad to see it here.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is the best thing I've read in a long time

</comment><comment> happy-go-lucky >> ... the car we'd used to get to the town had broken down...

A car is still a luxury where I live.

</comment><comment><USER35> Empathy, shame and the Golden Rule have to be taught.

If not, feral kids tend to grow up to be self-absorbed, mean, psychopathic, selfish pricks.

PS: I grew up middle class but am now completely destitute and semi-homeless.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why was the title changed from the author's original title?

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted using the original title. Someone changed it to the subtitle in the article. I don't know why, I think the original title was fine. A tad click-baity, perhaps, but the article actually delivers.

<comment><USER37> For what it's worth, I would never have read it if it was the original title. Glad I read it, though. Thanks for posting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Two billionaires walk down the street. They spot a charity drive.

Billionaire A hands over a $50 note, then asks for change. He is planning to donate $20. A reporter captures this moment, and the next day the news is about how much of a cheapscate A is. A proceeds to spend $10000 in PR crisis management.

Billionaire B keeps his head down and pretends he didn't see the charity. Nobody bothers him.

Total donations to charity: A:20 B:0

Also the reporter gets a payrise.

<comment><USER39> Anyone can make up a story. But what was the point of this one?

<comment><USER40> That no good deed goes unpunished.

And that people rarely miss the opportunity to criticize others.

<comment><USER39> This was quite literally a story made up on the spot to broadcast the OP's view. There are generally no useful lessons learned from fake anecdotes</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Systems and Constraints - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/systems-and-constraints <comment><USER2> Worth mentioning for those who don't know that Mercatus is a Koch-funded ideology and policy generator (I prefer this to the more obfuscatory "think tank").

</comment><comment><USER3> Martin Gurri is fascinating. His book Revolt of the Public is available through Stripe Press. Worth the read about our current cycle of bang/whimper crises and how our new communication styles lead to public actions that tend to have little consequence compared to past uprisings, even though they tend to dwarf the latter in number of participants.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for mentioning the book - I put it on my reading list. Below is a summary:

> Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power > between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical > institutions of the industrial age government, political parties, the media.

> The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by > digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of > ordinary people around the world.

> Originally published in 2014, this updated edition of The Revolt of the > Public includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump's improbable rise to > the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit and concludes with a > speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can > bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new > organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the > present political turbulence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a sucker for any kind of complexity theorizing but I don't see where this is going.

<comment><USER6> I've always felt the same about all those fractals and chaos books: Pretty pictures, feigenbaum constant, ... All fascinating, but I never saw any real application from it.

Now this might be because chaos theory was in its infancy, or because the books for the public were too dumbed down. In that case, these applications might also apply here. Anybody an idea?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite DevOps tools? - <AUTHOR> I am interested in careers software industry after a few years in a computational genetics PhD program. DevOps seems like a good fit because of my experience with a "Dockerized" distributed computing platform but I don't know where to start. <comment><USER2> (curious why you want to leave genetics because I'm an engineer and would like to go into computational genetics)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll just list a few tools I use on a daily basis

Kubernetes - Great platform for orchestrating containers, made my life a ton easier (Learn Docker and containers first)

Jenkins - Very powerful automation platform, great for setting up CI/CD pipelines

AWS - Good to get your feet wet in the public cloud space

Chef - Configuration management and infrastructure automation tool, you define how you want your workloads to look and it delivers

Terraform - Infrastructure as code, where Chef defines the configuration of an existing machine, terraform defines how that machine should be provisioned

In terms of core concepts, read up on CI/CD, Agile, and SDDC architecture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I am comfortable using Docker so I'll try to come up with a Kubernetes + AWS project.

<comment><USER4> AWS has an offering coming soon called EKS[0] however if you want to deploy a Kubernetes cluster to AWS sooner I would use kops[1]. however to under Kubernetes and to develop/deploy locally I would first try minikube[2] and get comfortable there before deploying into a cloud.

[0]: [https://aws.amazon.com/eks/](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/) [1]: [https://github.com/kubernetes/kops](https://github.com/kubernetes/kops) [2]: [https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube](https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dockers are probably my fav. Containers make it really easy to share projects</comment>


Slimbook collaborates with the PowerPC laptop - <AUTHOR> https://slimbook.es/en/noticias-notas-de-prensa-y-reviews/435-slimbook-collaborates-with-the-powerpc-laptop <comment><USER2> The link seems to be getting the YCombinator hug-of-death. I can't read the article at all.

Since POWER9 only exists in the server / HEDT sphere, I doubt this will be a modern POWER9 chip. Maybe something like a NXP-chip, which would still be interesting. Something on the scale of a Chromebook maybe?

If binaries were compatible with the Talos II POWER9 HEDT / Server, then there is still a good use of this laptop. To serve as a portable development platform, much like Intel Atom can serve as a portable development platform for Intel Xeons.

Depends on a lot of details however. Honestly, its probably more important to rack-up a POWER9 Talos II and just SSH into it every once in a while... modern cloud-based services makes this sort of thing much easier.

\</comment><comment>----

EDIT: Site finally worked for me. NXP T2080 chip, 4-core / 8-thread 28nm class chip. e6500 core, which is some form of PowerPC for sure... 128-bit vector units (Altivec). 32kB L1 d$ and 32kB L1 I$, 2MB L2$ for the whole chip.

This is older-tech for sure, definitely "Chromebook" level of tech, maybe a touch weaker even.

EDIT2: I think there's something to be said about an "open" design, where the schematics are available for the community to use and extend. The NXP T2080 has good GPIO pins and connectivity, so there's a chance that this laptop will be easier to interface with electronically than other devices. Guys over at hackaday probably would love something like this. [https://gitlab.com/oshw- powerpc-notebook/powerpc-laptop-mobo...](https://gitlab.com/oshw-powerpc- notebook/powerpc-laptop- mobo/blob/master/electrical_schematic_ppc_notebook_0_2_version_09_2019.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It's not Power.

If I followed the links correctly, it's a 1GHz-ish PPC derivative from a shop you for whom processors are a minor part of their product line. The motherboards linked to appear to all top out at 2GB of SoDIMM memory. So maybe "that's cool" but not "that's generally useful" and personally not "I'll spend money on that".

<comment><USER2> [https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/reference- manual/E6500RM.pdf](https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/reference-manual/E6500RM.pdf)

> The e6500 core is a low-power, 64-bit, multi-threaded implementation of the > resources for embedded processors defined by Power ISA

Page 3-1 lists the instruction-groups from PowerISA that the e6500 supports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People are getting down-voted for asking what year it is, but I'm going to "what year is this?"

I'm not discounting the effort that goes into place here — at least I'm trying not to — but like, why would anyone look at PowerPC for portables in 2019 when the whole reason Apple shifted to Intel 14 years ago was thermals? Wouldn't ARM be better?

I'm sure I'm missing something but I just don't understand this on any level except for some obsession with "openness" at the expense of actually doing anything.

<comment><USER5> > when the whole reason Apple shifted to Intel 14 years ago was thermals? > Wouldn't ARM be better?

The move to Intel wasn't because the instruction set is, for some reason, superior (it isn't), it's because IBM couldn't keep up with Intel's fabrication technology. The G5 chip from 2002 was at 130nm, while the Intel design introduced in 2006 (when 4 year old G5 was the best IBM had to offer) was at 65nm.

The chip they aim for is built on a 28nm process (which has some impact on voltages used and minimum conversion of power into heat). That's definitely not top-class, but good enough: it's about a factor 3 to the state of the art (compared to factor 2 between G5 and Intel Core in 2006), but in absolute terms it's so much closer.

There are enough ARM laptops out there, this provides another venue for more vendor independence (ARM still exerts tight control over its ISA while PowerPC is a close cousin to Power9 which was opened recently). In short, for a project like this, the goal isn't the very best performance on the market, it's "the more the merrier".

<comment><USER6> Ok. but 28nm is nowhere close to where ARM is (7nm) and will be over the next few years (3nm). Smaller, faster, with multiple cores & on-board ML/Neural subsystems. The cost on the ARM side is always going to be lower due to the volume at which they are being dropped into phones. And if one wanted a faster x64 path, then why not AMD Rizen?

<comment><USER5> ARM isn't at 7nm, TSMC is. That's different from the PPC -> Intel transition at Apple 15 years ago: the tech is available to anybody who's willing to pay (while back then, Intel was 1-2 generations ahead of everybody else, and there was no indication that this would change).

The primary goal of a project like this is to prove the concept, and if 28nm NXP PPC chips are the sweet spot (enough performance for it to matter, unlike all those RISC-V micros; efficient enough to fit in a laptop without it working double-duty as a grill, unlike Power9 CPUs; cheap enough so that people are willing to risk it, unlike the otherwise fabulous TALOS workstation family) for that, that's not too bad.

In case this takes off, there can still be some entrepreneur who cooperates with IBM or NXP or whoever has an efficient Power implementation lying around and shrink it to the smallest process node they can afford, reusing this open hardware design, and send it off to TSMC. That option didn't really exist back in 2004.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to say, I'm really happy that this seems a sort of resurgence of a proper CPU architecture diversity. I'm getting bored of the x86/ARM dichotomy.

<comment><USER8> Having few instruction set architectures, or even one, enables quicker and more efficient software development by lowering barrier to entry (easier to learn and study just one ISA instead of many) and lowering the amount of maintenance and development work that has to be done on development infrastructure such as compilers.

This is assuming royalties don't have to be paid to an ISA creator, which is a separate issue.

A single ISA doesn't have to mean there is a single CPU vendor or CPU manufacturer.

<comment><USER9> In my opinion, having a single ISA breeds lazyness, and causes shortcuts to be made in programming. Like when the whole world got rid of all those esoteric 18-bit-word and worse architectures, and started writing loads of C for 32-bit i386. Then 64-bit came along and loads of software wouldn't compile properly without fixing things like assumptions of integer size, etc.

It's why I am very glad that while Linux is very popular, there is still a BSD keeping programmers from going too crazy on the Linux-only features.

We don't know what future architecture will exist. I would rather we have a multitude of architectures now, so that people write standards-conforming code rather than it-works-on-amd64/Linux code.

<comment><USER10> The 18- ad 36-bit architectures weren't esoteric at the time! Though may of them also had bad (outdated, and not-obviously bad at the time) ideas like one's complement arithmetic. Machines like the PDP-10 were a pleasure to program in assembly, but I haven't written a line of assembly code in over a decade.

But I agree the world is full of "slap it together and if it runs once, ship it" software -- that's what gave us Y2K. Time to re-read worse is better.

<comment><USER11> In retrospect, it's amazing how older games like Age of Empires work so well and (almost) bug free from the get go. In the software development environment for late 90s the amount of work to making sure that it works (without crashing!) is amazing.

With extreme logging now our team still throws a bunch of internal errors today, granted our team is much smaller but still, those older games are amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is incredibly exciting.

Slimbook has made some excellent hardware in the past, with terrific software support. They're much closer to being the Macbooks of the Linux world than either Purism's or System76's offerings are.

<comment><USER11> The only problem is are PowerPC/Linux up to task? Correct if I'm wrong but from what I know the entire linux ecosystem is geared toward X86/64 and if you're on other architecture the selection of software that works shrinks substantially.

While we could just compile everything, there's still the problem of untested architecture integration, bugs that doesn't happen in X86 might happen in PowerPC/ARM and it's not a trivial issue to debug a compiler/bimodal action for instruction sets.

<comment><USER13> You would think this, but it's preeeetty amazing how much of the Linux world works on an ARM-based Raspberry Pi. It's mostly a matter of finding the source and doing a proper cross-compile, but it's kinda incredible how much work the community has put into making the little board usable. The later models and their substantial bump in available RAM have made desktop computing plausible: I can run Blender to produce a 3D model, switch to Utilimaker Cura to slice it, then run Pronsole and send the .gcode out to the printer, all on the same device! It's not particularly _fast_ , but it's usable at least, and the driver support an OpenGL in particular have come a long, long way.

If a $35 (okay, $55 for the ones with 4 GB RAM) computer running an older down-clocked ARM can do this? I have little doubt that a POWER architecture could theoretically do it just as well, if not better since it should presumably be a much faster chip. I think it's mostly going to come down to support from both the vendor and the community, but I wouldn't write it off entirely.

<comment><USER14> > I have little doubt that a POWER architecture could theoretically do it just > as well, if not better since it should presumably be a much faster chip. I > think it's mostly going to come down to support from both the vendor and the > community, but I wouldn't write it off entirely.

I actually think it'll come down to the validity of that first sentence I quoted. A Pi 4 definitely has relatively decent specs for a small server or low end laptop.

If this isn't a Power9 (aka the series that the G5 and the latest Power arch chips are a part of) then all this has going for it is the openness of it. Is it more open than a Pi 4? If they release a successor to the Compute Module 3+ with better specs and someone builds a laptop chassis around it, is there any reason I shouldn't just buy that?

<comment><USER15> The G5 (PowerPC 970) was based on POWER4.

<comment><USER3> And a POWER9 is has quite a bit more horsepower than a Pi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looks like this is 64-bit but big endian. Weird choice when a) POWER has gone little-endian and b) this a system whose form factor implies running a Web browser and the Web requires little-endian ArrayBuffer behavior these days, so not running on a natively little-endian CPU seems inefficient.

</comment><comment><USER17> I will be very interested in this when they have a "give money, get laptop" situation set up. I'm glad to see more open hardware and software in the wild.

But you'll have to excuse my skepticism as long as they need to run a fundraiser to get even the basic product together, let alone getting said product to market at a reasonable price for what it is.

<comment><USER18> Even that is not the end line.

I knew a number of companies that had a Waterloo moments after very successful kickstarter campaigns with PCs and smarthones.

Seeing a company making $1m+ on kickstarter, successfully delivering, and then committing big to mass manufacturing only to see single digit orders per day is something I see often in Shenzhen

<comment><USER17> Oh, certainly. But when it comes to advocating for free software (and free hardware to run it on), the end line is nothing less than the end of proprietary software. I'm not worried about reaching the end goal today, just taking a stride. My feeling is that if they can get to a situation where for, say, $200USD (or thereabouts), I can purchase their hardware with free software loaded on it and be relatively confident that it will arrive in working order, then I'm a happy camper. And I'll stand by that even if they can't remain in business after that point; because I will have gotten the machine I paid for.

Until I can exchange currency for goods, it's just vaporware with an ideal attached.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is who they're working with: [https://www.powerpc- notebook.org/2019/09/slimbook-to-provide...](https://www.powerpc- notebook.org/2019/09/slimbook-to-provide-the-notebook-chassis/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it just me, or is the fundraising campaign only for donations, and not to get a physical product?

I would be far more interested to fund it if I knew I was getting a laptop, but as far as I can tell, that's not the case.

<comment><USER12> Yes, the fundraising campaign is for engineering work for a PPC motherboard for an existing laptop chassis.

I would also prefer sending them money in exchange for a physical product, but they're not at that point yet. They're asking for €24,000 which honestly seems a little low to cover the engineering work for an almost completely new laptop MB.

<comment><USER20> The only thing with that is usually 1 PCB is 24,000, but then 10 PCBs are 25,000 (i.e. making more is a lot cheaper than the first). If they have an existing chassis, than I would assume actually delivering a laptop isn't that difficult (famous last words, I understand).

<comment><USER12> >If they have an existing chassis, than I would assume actually delivering a laptop isn't that difficult (famous last words, I understand).

From what I can tell there are three distinct groups involved:

1) Slimbook -- an existing small laptop vendor. I'm not sure if they have an active engineering role with their amd64 motherboards or if they're more of an integrator, but I believe ~~they do the engineering for their laptop chassis (unlike some other linux laptop "manufacturers" who sell rebranded Clevo notebooks)~~. Edit: It appears that the Slimbook laptops are likely also rebranded Clevo PCs. That's pretty disappointing.

2) ACube Systems -- an existing PowerPC board designer / vendor, whose engineers will do the actual work under contract(?) from Power Progress Community.

3) Power Progress Community -- PowerPC enthusiasts, the group soliciting donations, and writing the specs. It seems they plan to function as an integrator using Slimbook chassis and Acube Systems motherboards.

All that is to say that I don't think the engineers working on the PPC board are the same ones who did the amd64 one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My recollection is that PowerPC, like ARM, can be either big or little endian. But, that most OS implementations use little endian. Is that correct?

<comment><USER22> PowerPCs have configurable endianness in the MSR register, but boot into big endian mode by default. macOS used it in big endian mode. Linux I can't speak to but believe you can pick based on kernel build config. As for IBM's OS' or the ones running on consoles, I can't speak to that.

The interesting part is that the motherboard also needs to support the specific endianness chosen, and when running in little-endian mode, it needs to perform a 64-bit byte swap on all data going in or out [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC#Endian_modes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC#Endian_modes)

<comment><USER23> Why does it have a switch for that, and wouldn't it have a big overhead?

<comment><USER24> IBM has traditionally been a big-endian shop - mainframes are BE, AIX and IBM i on Power are BE. The Motorola 68K, which Apple was using before switching to PowerPC, was also BE.

LE support was in the original PowerPC chips from the 90s, and was used to support the Windows NT port that existed until NT4. Then switchable endianness disappeared for a while, and finally came back in POWER8 when IBM decided it wanted to expand the market for Power and that LE was helpful because it makes porting easier and is more familiar to x86 programmers.

It doesn't, AFAIK, have any overhead - remember that byte swapping can be done in combinational logic.

<comment><USER23> combinatorial logic... I guess byte order is just about which order you connect the wires between two components, and then it's free modulo "wire" length. That's my circuit board model of it, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What kind of bios or system ROM will it use? OpenFirmware?

<comment><USER26> Open Firmware is the only firmware standard in existence to have its own theme song.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070204145613/http://playground...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070204145613/http://playground.sun.com/pub/1275/misc/ofwsong.au)

[https://github.com/MitchBradley/openfirmware](https://github.com/MitchBradley/openfirmware)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15867724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15867724)

OpenFirmware uses architecture independent FORTH byte code, so peripheral cards can include machine independent drivers and diagnostics!

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

Open Firmware Forth Code may be compiled into FCode, a bytecode which is independent of computer architecture details such as the instruction set and memory hierarchy. A PCI card may include a program, compiled to FCode, which runs on any Open Firmware system. In this way, it can provide platform- independent boot-time diagnostics, configuration code, and device drivers. FCode is also very compact, so that a disk driver may require only one or two kilobytes. Therefore, many of the same I/O cards can be used on Sun systems and Macintoshes that used Open Firmware. FCode implements ANS Forth and a subset of the Open Firmware library.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9844026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9844026)

That same Open Firmware Forth system [1], which was developed by Mitch Bradley [2], was not only in the PowerPC Mac bios, but it was originally used for the SparcStation boot roms, and eventually in the OLPC, and it was even an IEEE Standard 1275-1994!

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

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

In fact: the Open Firmware boot loader and plug-in card firmware interface technology, commonly used by both Sun and Apple, is the only firmware standard in existence to have its own theme song [3] !!!

[3] [https://web.archive.org/web/20070204145613/http://playground...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070204145613/http://playground.sun.com/pub/1275/misc/ofwsong.au)

        : OpenFirmwareSong ( - )
            \ By Mitch Bradley.
            \ Sung to the tune of "The Flintstones".
            𝄞
            ." Firmware" cr
            ." Open Firmware" cr
            ." It's the appropriate technology," cr
            ." Features" cr
            ." FCode booting" cr
            ." Hierarchical DevInfo tree." cr
            ." Hack Forth" cr
            ." Using Emacs on the keys," cr
            ." Save in" cr
            ." NVRAM if you please." cr
            𝄒 cr
            ." With your" cr
            ." Open Firmware" cr
            ." You can fix the bugs in no time" cr
            ." Bring the kernel up in no time" cr
            ." We'll have an FCode time!" cr
            𝄒 cr
            \ Thank you and good night!
            reboot
        ;

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can't wait to get OS X 10.5.8 running on it!

</comment><comment><USER28> Everyone here has made a bunch of great points about this hardware, and massive props to the creators, and to IBM for open-sourcing the CPU. In light of that, this comment might sound a bit "shallow Hal", but... looking at the Slimbook's "Eclipse" case... nothing about that screams "slim".

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure about power PC, but about 15 years ago I was working on a MIPS based desktop linux system, and there was no way to get adobe flash to run on it, which at the time was a big deal.

Could they have similar issues with media stuff (netflix, hulu etc) on a device like this?

<comment><USER30> I think Google's Widevine (which is used for a lot of these DRM'd streams) is only available for Chrome. I think we'd need Google to provide a Chrome for PPC binary, which would require them to bundle a WideVine for PPC binary.

[https://www.widevine.com/](https://www.widevine.com/)

<comment><USER31> Widevine support is enabled in Firefox on 32 and 64-bit x86 platforms.

binfmt_misc can enable Flash support.

<comment><USER30> I'm pretty sure they are using the binaries provided by Google. I don't think they can compile for another platform, like PPC.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable- drm](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm)

<comment><USER31> That's my point, Widevine is only available for certain platforms. You can abuse binfmt_misc for other incompatible software, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hmm, I wonder if this will be able to run AmigaOS natively.

I've played with Aros a bit but I would love an excuse to play with "real" Amiga running natively, but the current PowerPC offerings for Amiga are obscenely overpriced.

<comment><USER33> That and MorphOS. There has been a huge gap there and these operating systems running out of new hardware. Any new hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Open? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21221602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21221602)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'd love it if someone would explain to me like I'm 5 years old. What is this? What's the point of value here / why care?

<comment><USER36> Popular CPU instruction sets like your Intel/AMD 32 and 64bit machines are proprietary. Power is not. This like GNU/Linux but for CPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Two questions come to mind:

1) Is it really a such great idea to give a product a name that is so rich in potential for satire and parody?

2) Does it come in green?

</comment><comment><USER26> If only IBM had come out with a PowerPC Thinkpad that ran MacOS in 1995 like IBM and Apple jointly promised was the whole point of CHRP: the Common Hardware Reference Platform. But nooooo, they thought all the cool kids wanted to run WARP, aka OS/2, aka "Half an Operating System".

The great thing about the Thinkpads of 24 years ago was that they were so well built and modular and user serviceable that many of them would still be working even now. They were so much more solid and dependable than anything Apple ever produced in their entire history, and especially their shitty PowerPC laptops of that time period. It would have been the perfect Powerbook, but from IBM. But no, IBM and Apple couldn't stomach running Apple software, and Apple couldn't stomach their software running on robust reliable repairable hardware.

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

>Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) is a standard system architecture for PowerPC-based computer systems published jointly by IBM and Apple in 1995. Like its predecessor PReP, it was conceptualized as a design to allow various operating systems to run on an industry standard hardware platform, and specified the use of Open Firmware and RTAS for machine abstraction purposes. Unlike PReP, CHRP incorporated elements of the Power Macintosh architecture and was intended to support the classic Mac OS and NetWare, in addition to the four operating systems that had been ported to PReP at the time (Windows NT, OS/2, Solaris, and AIX).

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

>Open Firmware, or OpenBoot in Sun Microsystems parlance, is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It originated at Sun, and has been used by Sun, Apple, IBM, ARM and most other non-x86 PCI chipset vendors. Open Firmware allows the system to load platform-independent drivers directly from the PCI card, improving compatibility.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2)

>The name stands for "Operating System/2", because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 (PS/2)" line of second-generation personal computers.

IBM should have used this for the OS/2 theme song:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ_03vnjJkA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ_03vnjJkA)

My previous comments on CHRP:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9438823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9438823)

>At the time, IBM was making CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform) PowerPC Thinkpads, which nobody could think of anything to do with because all they did was run OS/2, when everybody actually wanted them to run MacOS (but IBM refused to admit that was a good idea). That would have been the best of both worlds, back when Apple and IBM were in bed together (i.e. Kaleida, Taligent).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18393341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18393341)

>CHRP was the Common Hardware Reference Platform for the PowerPC, which IBM and Apple collaborated on. IBM made a CHRP PowerPC Thinkpad that ran OS/2, but out of pride refused to sell one that ran MacOS, which kind of missed the whole point of CHRP. IBM just couldn't imagine why anyone would want to run anything but OS/2 on them.

>I would have loved to have a MacOS powerbook running on wonderful Thinkpad hardware, because Apple's laptop hardware was pretty crappy at the time. It would have been the best of both worlds, but it was never to be.

</comment><comment><USER37> Oh how I miss big-endian...

</comment><comment><USER38> Óle!

</comment><comment><USER39> What year is this?

<comment><USER25> Is this diversity not a positive thing in your mind, even in 2019?

<comment><USER39> That was clearly sarcasm. I never said anything about diversity

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I had a powerpc laptop in 2005</comment>


Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code – But Can't - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/thousands-of-veterans-want-to-learn-to-code-but-cant-7ed60c167a61 <comment><USER2> FTA: ""I could not use my GI Bill to go to code school. That was the number one roadblock," Molina says."

As a veteran who learned to code in my spare time, landed a tech job without a degree and had the older, pre-9/11 GI Bill to help pay for an education, I'm rather skeptical. In fact, I'd say that the core problem isn't the GI Bill, but rather this passage, later in the article:

 _" But after he left the army in 2013, Molina and his family moved back to his native Oregon. As he weighed his options, he decided that a code school was his best bet to keep learning. He needed an immersive program, but on a faster timeline than college could offer — he had a wife and three daughters to support."_

If you have dependents to support, _why did you get out of the military without a contingency plan?_ Unless the discharge is unexpected (for medical or disciplinary reasons), one's enlistment period is pretty well-defined.

I got out when I was 24. Within a year I had secured a full-time, well-paying field tech support job based upon what I had learned while in the Army.

If you're _39_ and haven't taken advantage of the myriad of educational opportunities in the U.S. military to ensure that you're hire-able in the private sector, that's nobody's fault but yours.

If there are additional circumstances that prevented Mr. Molina from making that happen, the article failed to cover them.</comment>


My answer to SOPA, preserve the Internet but appease the entertainment industry - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently building a website which will crawl the web for public, illegal downloads of a particular book, film, or song and will display the download links + the takedown button for them so they can be requested to be removed.
Before anyone suggests that people will just use the site to search for pirated content / download it, I plan on charging a small fee and finding some way of authenticating that the person actually owns the copyright / affiliated with a company that owns it. Or I'm thinking of just showing a teaser of how many links I found online / maybe even potential websites I found them on, but not put direct links to them or something.
Would love to hear feedback! <comment><USER2> The ability to authenticate that someone wanting to action a takedown actually owns the copyright would be paramount to a service like this working. It would be mayhem otherwise.

Once a user is signed up and authenticated would you restrict their search to only titles that they own the copyright to?

</comment><comment><USER3> What good would a 'takedown button' do when the purpose of this bill was to create enforcement mechanisms against sites outside US jurisdiction. Your 'requests to be removed' would be ignored.</comment>


A Comparison of Angular, Backbone, CanJS and Ember - <AUTHOR> http://sporto.github.io/blog/2013/04/12/comparison-angular-backbone-can-ember/

<comment><USER2> Community wise, if you give a 5 to Backbone and 4 each to Angular and Ember - I would be somewhat ok with that.. But still a 3 to CanJS is a bit far- fetched...

CanJS github has ~500+ stars. 25 questions on SO.

In comparison Github stars: Backbone - 13k+ Angular - 8.5k+ Ember - 6.5k+

StackOverflow questions :

Backbone - 8.3k Angular - 4.4k Ember - 3.4k

Based on this atleast I would give a rating of 5 - BB , 4 - NG , 3 - Ember and 1 or 0 to Canjs under community section.

If you add Google Groups stats to this , then Angular wins out in community.

</comment><comment><USER3> I built a web-app for my previous startup in Backbone, after a year and half working with it, (1) I got frustrated with the amount of files I had to create, (2) its performance, and (3) the difficulty to write pure tests, (3) no concreate convention.

EmberJs doesn't relieve me of any of these problems other than convention, but I'm currently working on contract work that has me using EmberJS

I didn't like Angular for many reasons, but they promised to solve my big 4 problems. What I didn't like at first about Angular. Cocumentation is written from what I'd expect from a computer science major, I had to litter my dom with tons of tags and I had to overcome the idea of their syntax as ugly. But it did everything I needed. I reduce my javascript by 70%. I got ride of most of my other 3rd part libraries. Performance was awesome. I didn't need to figure out how to compile all my templates into one js file. It made testing dead easy since all I was left was logical javascript.

</comment><comment><USER4> I expected to see Batman and/or Knockout on this type of comparison.

Also, I may be biased because I haven't heard of CanJS, but this article seems suspiciously favorable toward it. Was the article written with a bit of promotion in mind?

<comment><USER5> I had the exact same impression. Judging by its github account, he seems like a contributor to the CanJS project, so maybe he's a little biaised. In particular, the "maturity" part where he puts CanJS to the same level as AngularJS, (because CanJS is using some javascriptMVC code) seems a little far fetched.

<comment><USER6> Why? CanJS' codebase is extracted from JavaScriptMVC which is ~5 years old and used on a lot of big codebases. It did go through a lot of changes but every change was made because of the real-world-need.

source: Bitovi employee / core contributor

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i use backbone for a in-development app that is larger and has a more complex UI than the examples on the backbone site. (it's in early stages, but we think we've prototyped enough to know it's going to work nicely.) Most definitely "serious"; we're talking 10 engineers for a year type of size.

> Backbone requires you to write a lot of boilerplate code, which I think is > totally unnecessary. This is in my opinion a direct threat against developer > productivity.

a lot of people parrot this but i think they're missing the point. Backbone doesn't require you write boilerplate; it requires you to handle dom manipulation yourself. if you do dom manipulation wrong there's a lot of boilerplate; or you can use one of many libraries that make this very easy. backbone isn't meant to be the only dependency, it's meant to play well with other dependencies. So some of our Backbone.Views use knockoutjs (with knockback.js) for HTML rendering, and other Backbone.Views use KendoUI widgets instead of raw HTML. Nowhere are we doing raw dom manipulation and our view hierarchies are logical, not too deep, and rendering is quite clean. Notably we are not using Marionette; the "boilerplate" Marionette tries to reduce, for us, is actual decision points that are essential complexity.

Flexibility in rendering implementation is very important as we're working with a very talented external graphic design firm to provide a clickable HTML prototype. We really don't want to be in the business of rewriting their delivery to suit our framework's rendering choices.

</comment><comment><USER8> Once again, nobody ever looks at Knockout. :)

<comment><USER9> Does anyone have any idea why it is that Knockout is often neglected in these comparisons?

<comment><USER10> Anti-Microsoft bias is my guess.

<comment><USER11> I've been using Knockout for months and I had no idea it was built by a Microsoft employee. And why should anyone care?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of all the JS frameworks the only one that felt "natural" was Angular. I instantly saw the benefits compared to doing it the jQuery way.

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree it's been a long time to move away from backbone, it is awesome, made by awesome person(s), but things have moved along in the meantime.

I think Knockout, Batman and SpineJS which is like Backbone upgraded should be seriously considered.

Lately I use Meteor :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I gave up using Backbone a year ago. Being a server side dev, the 'to much boilerplate' quickly killed the initial enthusiasm.

But while waiting for Ember to mature, I stumbled on Angular and completely bought it's original & refreshing approach that is, being ahead of what the modern browser should be : embracing html components (aka directives), observables & the beauty of dependency injection. That for me was the initial 'wow factor' beyond the nice feeling you get when binding your first view/model.

If I was to market angular I'd say it really caught the right angle of frontend webdev

</comment><comment><USER15> I think that comparing Backbone to such feature rich frameworks like Angular or Ember doesn't make much sense — you certainly would want to choose some view technology (maybe even with data bindings) on top of Backbone.View and so on.

Actually I like how Angular.js extends HTML further with high-level declarative constructs so I built something like this but for Backbone — Backbone.ViewDSL <http://andreypopp.github.io/backbone.viewdsl/> — it also allows you to add directives as new HTML elements and attributes but otherwise plays well with other libraries, that means it is not yet another "closed" ecosystem but just a simple plugin for Backbone. You can also take a look to an implementation of TodoMVC with Backbone.ViewDSL in just 113 lines of code — [https://github.com/andreypopp/todomvc/blob/gh- pages/labs/arc...](https://github.com/andreypopp/todomvc/blob/gh- pages/labs/architecture-examples/backbone.viewdsl/js/app.coffee)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been using Backbone exclusively for building Tutorialize's (<https://tutorialize.me>) chrome extension. One year ago backbone seemed like a very obvious choice, nowadays it's not the clear winner. I'm thinking about moving away from Backbone and trying out Angular or Ember. I've even thought about playing around with Dart. The most difficult thing for me has been dealing with all the things that Backbone doesn't handle out of the box. Things like zombie views, data binding, and namespacing just to name a few. The worst thing however has been the constant need to deal with strange quirks and bugs that I've found almost impossible to track down. I've posed a question to the #documentcloud irc channel three times and did not receive a single reply. I believe in the long run that the strength of a framework is about the conventions put in place. After all, isn't it about making development easier?

</comment><comment><USER17> I do not mean this to sound cynical, but are people actually _building_ full- fledged web apps with these frameworks? Where are they? Any public examples?

The thing is that these tools generally solve the _easiest_ part of problem space, yet paradoxically they make the novel and interesting parts much more difficult. They may pay off if your job is an assembly line banging out trivial CRUD apps, but I just don't see the real value for any reasonable scale project.

I looked at Angular a while back and while it got rid of a few lines of code, it made the necessary edges of a modern web app _incredibly ugly_ (and truly the biggest waste of time is fighting with your framework). That's one of the reasons I like Backbone's minimalism -- it is more a simple toolbag and less an all encompassing solution that relieves you of any reason to make decisions. Backbone also works very well in a non-pure client-side web app, which are much more common.

Seeing these comparisons I am increasingly getting the impression the discussion is dominated by people procrastinating from their projects, argue over the number of lines of "boilerplate" necessary to create an iterator, which is something that will have negligible significance later on.

<comment><USER18> I built <http://www.5by.com> on AngularJS in about 3 months, and just a few thousand lines of code. The same thing in Backbone would have likely taken a lot more time and a lot more code.

It was my first AngularJS app, and I was learning it on the job, which is why it took that long. Overall, Angular is a joy to work with and its conventions force you to write clean, readable, decoupled code.

<comment><USER19> I find it highly annoying that people who promote client-side MVC and one-page apps always _claim_ that it's trivial to make pages linkable and make browser navigation work, yet _the wast majority_ of real-life single-page apps are missing those features.

<comment><USER20> That's because it's not generally a requirement for single-page applications. The idea of a single-page app is to make it feel like a desktop application, not to make it highly linkable (which is why it was stupid for Twitter and Gawker to go the single-app route). But yes, it _is_ incredibly trivial to support it using these frameworks.

<comment><USER19> _That's because it's not generally a requirement_

Is that a new way of saying "I just don't care about it"?

 _The idea of a single-page app is to make it feel like a desktop application, not to make it highly linkable_

I've heard that before... from ASP.NET WebForms developers. Incidentally, I've seen quite a few ASP.NET WebForms applications that were literally a single page with changing panels and hidden controls. Needless to say, they were a bloody mess. Thing that normally could be achieved by linking required code changes. Integrations that could be performed via a simple HTTP post were done using complicated web services.

Links are the essence of the web platform. Calling something an "app" doesn't change that.

<comment><USER20> > Is that a new way of saying "I just don't care about it"?

It's one way of saying it, I suppose, yes. We don't worry about linking to states in desktop apps so why would we care about linking to states in desktop-like javascript apps?

> Links are the essence of the web platform. Calling something an "app" > doesn't change that.

I agree. But when you make a desktop-like app that lives on the web, then linking isn't as important. I take it your issue is with desktop-like apps on the web?

<comment><USER19> My overall problem is that a lot of modern web development trends undermine the reasons web became so popular in the first place.

Linking is an easy example. Something that didn't require any "extra" effort now requires "correct" usage of some framework and extra effort. But there are many other things as well.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, but seriously, why would you want to link to a particular state in a desktop-style application? Especially if the intent of the app is to be used by a single user working with private data.

Take google docs. During any given session there could be thousands of different states the app is in at any one time, such as certain formatting options being selected, different popover or dropdown menus shown, or the content in the document itself changing. There'd be no point in providing a different URL for each one of those states.

<comment><USER19> _Yeah, but seriously, why would you want to link to a particular state in a desktop-style application? Especially if the intent of the app is to be used by a single user working with private data._

For example, to save some kind of setup you often use as a bookmark. This is especially valuable in case there are multiple setups you often alternate between.

To make it more concrete, imagine a table with multiple columns you can sort by and a bunch of search filters at the top. Your users from accounting always sort by date. Your users from HR always filter by a particular status and last name. Your CEO wants to be able to see both views.

If the application supports proper URLs, all of this can be done via bookmarks with no extra coding. Moreover, if someone suddenly develops the need for a new weird workflow, they can service themselves simply by bookmarking the URL.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, definitely a good use case for URLs. Good thing it's so very easy to support with these newer frameworks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't really care about the comparison itself (sorry), but the adjustable results are an awesome idea. I've never seen it before.

<comment><USER22> +1 for adjustable bias

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Some comparison points are missing. Like testability.

<comment><USER24> Or i18n and form validation, which I find none of this frameworks solve in a meaning full way.

<comment><USER25> That's what has me on the fence between existing Scala/Play framework server- side and some-js-framework client-side.

Would be thrilled with my stack if it weren't for the slow-ish build times, so the thought of offloading the view to the client has some appeal.

For now coffeescript does the trick for client-side functionality -- may entertain a client-side MVC framework with a less complex/involved project to test the waters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The very first comparison of assigning scores based on number of features doesn't add value.

For example, Backbone is designed to be light-weight and this metric doesn't take that into account.

It would be like complaining that git is inferior because it doesn't have all the features of IBM's Clearcase.

<comment><USER27> Exactly! I would give anything if I could use git every day at work instead of CC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> After comparing the frameworks and talking with client-side expert, my company decided to go for Ember. Please share what you think about our decision before it's too late.

<comment><USER29> I'm making the same decision now. I've used Ember before and it has been a little painful. I'm going to give Angular a try now. It seems most people on Hacker News prefer Angular to Ember.

<comment><USER8> Angular is "hot", but it's not without it's drawbacks. For example: <https://koglerjs.com/verbiage/angular>

The author's point is that there's a fine line between "writing an MVC framework" and "writing a compiler", and the AngularJS authors blew past it without even noticing. And as a result, they now have a pretty crappy compiler. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> this is a plug for can.js right?

</comment><comment><USER31> Very nice comparison. Is it really time to move on from Backbone? I'm about to migrate a project to it because I believe in its potential to force me to write better js code in the long run. Should I not?

<comment><USER32> The question you should ask yourself is; "Is it right for you and your project?" It doesn't matter as far as your project if the community should be moving on as a whole or not. What matter's is if you, and/or your team, can effectively use the technology to reach your goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you like Rails, you will probably like ember.js, if you like bottle.py or flask, you will probably prefer backbone.js. I prefer backbone.js.

</comment><comment><USER11> How about Knockout?</comment>


Behind the Failure of Leap Transit's Gentrified Buses in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/technology/behind-the-failure-of-leap-transits-gentrified-buses-in-san-francisco.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if Uber has poisoned the well for transit startups - there is so much more awareness among both the public and the local governments of the law, that it might never work for a brand new company to follow their "do it and just let them sue you" model, because the lawsuits will arrive before they have enough cash to fight it.

<comment><AUTHOR> One reason Uber is able to get away with it is they don't own the cars. Leap owned the busses, which centralizes the target for litigation, and made it very easy to stop things in their tracks.</comment></comment>


How to create a form and simple frame with Java Swing - <AUTHOR> http://mrbool.com/how-to-create-a-form-and-simple-frame-with-java-swing/25408

<comment><USER2> I strongly recommend fixing the indentation in the code samples. I recoil from this kind of thing:

        public class SwingBasic extends JFrame
        {
            JLabel l;
        public void start()
        {
        l=new JLabel();
        l.setText(" Name :");

etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, we will do it.</comment>


MapReduce vs. SQL: It's Not One or the Other - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/04/14/mapreduce-vs-sql-its-not-one-or-the-other/ <comment><USER2> I thought MapReduce and SQL were totally separate tools to solve totally separate problems...

<comment><USER3> Yes. The actual paper ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562324> ) compares MapReduce to parallel relational database management systems, not "SQL".

Also, if this gets more points than the earlier link to the paper itself I will be sad.

EDIT: sadness.

<comment><USER4> _Also, if this gets more points than the earlier link to the paper itself I will be sad._

It's all in the headline. If the paper was titled "Researchers confirm it: MapReduce doesn't scale" (and it if wasn't a PDF) it would have a much higher score.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _I've heard Google itself uses SQL, MapReduce and/or sharding depending on the task._

Wow, that's a lot of cluelessness in a single sentence.

</comment><comment><USER6> This was my biggest take-away from Web 2.0 Expo. I thought it was a replacement database. But the guys at cloudera did an excellent job of explaining that Hadoop/MapReduce can be used for doing analysis of huge amounts of data, and prepping that data to be exported in a relational database.</comment>


Microsoft: Internet Explorer 10 Is The Most Energy-Efficient Browser - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/05/microsoft-internet-explorer-10-is-the-most-energy-efficient-browser-uses-up-to-18-less-power-than-chrome-and-firefox/

<comment><USER2> Wow, how crazy is it that every scientific study by Microsoft happens to prove the superiority of their products! What a lucky coincidence, since we all know they would _never_ fudge the results.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, the study's authors have made it clear in the study's pdf that it was commissioned on Microsoft's request and other requests that MS made and how the test beds were running. It looks fairly neutral and can be replicated.

They do not make recommendations or conclusions for MS, it is MS that interprets study's results. If looked at power draw, the difference between browsers is small, but IE has an advantage albeit small. Also, the study was done by Kurt Roth of MIT-Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy and looking at the pdf, it shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The anti-Microsoft air is thick enough in here that it stings my eyes.

(Note I am an avid Mozilla fan.)

<comment><USER5> I noticed that as I sit here reading the comments in Chrome that has 4gb of memory consumed and 2 cores almost pegged.

IE10 is a great step forward, now if they would render with WebKit...

<comment><USER6> According to top, Chrome is behaving very well here. CPU load is below 10% as I type and memory footprint, although not negligible, is well within what I would consider reasonable (under 1 GB for 4 Gmail tabs and a couple less clever sites). Pegging two cores seems excessive. What are you running?

<comment><USER5> Windows 7 w/ 4 core & 16gb, Chrome will spawn processes like rabbits breeding if I leave it running too long (>4 days).

I have started threads here before about this and I'm not alone, I use it because the dev tools are awesome.

<comment><USER6> Interesting... maybe it's something specific to Chrome on Windows or, possibly, a plugin. I'm running it both at home and at work and it stays happy even after a week on Esser machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure the title would belong to something like Lynx.

<comment><USER8> Lynx will get the title as soon as Adobe releases a flash plugin for it.

<comment><USER6> I'm quite sure disabling Flash is the single most important optimization one can use on a browser when it comes to CPU, memory and energy consumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can't believe that no one has mentioned the chart yet -- a non-zero baseline is highly misleading.

[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/browser_...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/browser_energy.png)

<comment><USER10> The misleading Y-axes on two of the charts on the IE blog post were the first thing I noticed:

[http://blogs.windows.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2013/06/05/internet...](http://blogs.windows.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2013/06/05/internet- explorer-10-is-the-most-energy-efficient-browser-on-windows-8.aspx)

Here's the top chart (left) and the same chart except with a less misleading Y-axis (right):

<http://i.imgur.com/zI1UJeS.png>

<comment><USER3> How is that misleading Y-axes? The intervals are same, only thing that will be different is the resolution, and going into that fine resolution amplifies the difference. I will not say it as misleading in a slightest bit.

<comment><USER10> The Y-axis should've started at 0 watts, not at (a rather arbitrary) 18 watts.

Look at the "Flash Video" and "HTML5 Video" bars in the original chart. The blue IE bars are roughly half the size of the green Chrome bars, which might lead you to believe that IE only consumes roughly half of the energy that Chrome consumes in those tests. But as the numbers show, the difference isn't nearly that great.

Starting the Y-axis at 18 watts only serves to make IE's advantage over the other browsers look greater than it actually is.

<comment><USER11> The y-axis should have kept the baselines that the study authors used in their graphs (14.7W for laptops, 37.8W for desktops), since those starting points are what gives you the power draw due to the browser. What the Microsoft blog did by moving the baselines up from there was unethical, but having the chart show power consumption relative to idle instead of powered down is perfectly reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is probably a crazy suggestion, but TechCrunch may want to think about filtering the stories they end up publishing.

There's a reason Mashable exists, we don't need another site publishing a advertisement as a story.

</comment><comment><USER13> Prius has the best tire wear - bested the ferrari.

I am not looking to optimize energy usage with a browser; I am looking to optimize speed and security.

Complete straw man .

<comment><USER6> When you are running on batteries, conserving power is certainly worth optimizing for.

<comment><USER13> Oh really? And what OS is IE mostly used on? Let me answer that for you - Windows. I think there are a lower hanging fruit than browser power optimization that can save on battery life on a windows powered machine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Too bad windows isn't that energy efficient...

<comment><USER15> I don't think that is really a fair call to make. From the benchmarks I have seen laptop battery life is generally ranked OSX>Windows>Linux. I think the OSX advantage can be largely attributed to their total control over hardware/OS. Some benchmarks: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/windows-7-vs-snow- le...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/windows-7-vs-snow-leopard- benchmark-performance-showdown/8586) [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE2N...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE2Njk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone got independent verification? What about across a representative sample of sites and apps? As it stands, this seems too easily cooked to be accepted at face value.

<comment><USER3> Here is the study: [http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/2/0/7204397B-DF32-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/2/0/7204397B-DF32-4C97-A86C-C06F55000992/FhCSE%20-%20The%20Impact%20of%20Internet%20Browsers%20on%20Computer%20Energy%20Consumption.pdf)

And admittedly it is in detail including sites used and test bed.

The difference in power draw upon firing IE, Mozilla and Chrome is small, but it is there. In both, flash and bare bones tests. I do not know how big of a difference it will make on portable computers though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In other news, the material used to cover seats in a BMW has the highest¹ thread-count of all luxury car models.

____

1\. Totally made this up. The point being that nobody chooses a car based on the thread-count of the material in the seats. And nobody chooses a browser based on the power draw.

<comment><USER18> I agree that this is a metric that will hardly matter to anybody IRL. Maybe when it comes to mobile devices (Surface?) and limited battery life, but I'm not sure how relevant _that_ even is (I wouldn't think that surfing the web draws most power on a Surface).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not that hard to optimize for power draw in software if you're willing to do the work to measure and tune. Lots of simple optimizations can produce huge gains, whether it's using the correct timer APIs to allow the OS to coalesce timer events (Raymond Chen wrote a blog post about how this allows the CPU to stay in sleep mode longer on Windows by serving all timers on say, 1000ms intervals instead of 999ms/1000ms/1001ms, etc), intentionally clamping your rendering rate to 30hz instead of 60hz, using hardware vsync instead of trying to do vsync in software (hardware vsync is often much cheaper because it can rely on the GPU clock/interrupts instead of busy-waiting or CPU timers), or simply finding ways to do less unnecessary work.

The interesting thing though is that power draw can run counter to other goals. Getting the best possible framerate can often mean higher power draw, even though a higher framerate usually means your code is running 'faster' - if you go from running on one core to four cores, you are probably increasing the CPU's power draw (and heat dissipation too, which means more power spent running the fans). But maybe if running on four cores lets you finish early enough, you can put the whole app to sleep while you wait for the next vsync, saving power. Ultimately, you have to test this stuff, then tune, then test again.

I expect IE's power savings are mostly due to its architecture. IIRC they do a lot of their isolation via threads instead of processes, which means they can use much cheaper communication mechanisms between their isolation zones, and that's going to add up. I expect their rendering architecture for plugins is also significantly more efficient than NPAPI (though I wonder if it can beat PPAPI), since they have the ability to more or less dictate how things should be done, and ActiveX plugins have been using GDI/DirectX for ages, automatically tapping into hardware surfaces and acceleration. IE9/IE10 also led the way in terms of fast, pervasive hardware acceleration for browser rendering - while Firefox and Chrome had HW accel first in certain scenarios, IE was early to the game when it comes to using hardware to render entire pages.

P.S. People who say power draw doesn't matter in a browser have obviously never used a laptop or a cell phone before. Do you think Apple and Google don't try to optimize power draw on iOS and Android devices?

<comment><USER11> From the study:

 _"In addition, at the request of Microsoft we set the JavaScript timer frequency to "conserve power" in the Windows power options. We found, however, that the default Javascript time frequency for all computers tested was set to "maximum performance." We did not investigate the impact of this setting upon browser power draw."_

So yeah, IE got some optimization applied, and unfairly so, since the other browsers were run with default settings.

<comment><USER3> No, default power settings on a laptop do that, if it is put in a power saving or Balanced mode. It is not a specific IE option, but Windows OS option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a very important benchmark, provided framerates and rendering quality are held mostly the same. It could easily grow to include cases like having 100 tabs open, which currently don't really appear in any benchmarks.

For almost all my devices, this is the one I care about most.

</comment><comment><USER21> Amdahl's law. You can get the browser itself down to nothing and it's totally futile because as soon as you open a page Flash Player will still peg the CPU.

<comment><USER11> They did test playing videos through both Flash and HTML5, and found that power draw _still_ varied significantly depending on browser, with IE drawing 30-40% less power than Chrome (after subtracting out at-desktop idle power). So there's definitely still low-hanging fruit for the browser itself.

<comment><USER21> Playing video isn't the thing that causes Flash Player to be a CPU suck. The video playing is the responsibility of the video codec, which itself is probably using the GPU. You can play HD video on a Pentium 4, and if you notice in the tests the CPU consumption for Flash Player playing video wasn't preposterously higher than it was for HTML5, which is obviously uncharacteristic of Flash Player's normal behavior.

The problem with Flash Player is that people create busy loops in ActionScript, especially in ads. You open a dozen tabs, one of them has one of these ads, your CPU is pegged. If you're worried about "browser power consumption" and your first step is not to shoot Flash Player in the head, you're doing it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How could anyone possibly care about such a thing?

<comment><USER23> If you're running Windows on a laptop, the argument here is that using IE as the browser will make your laptop last longer on a charge than other competing browsers.

The graph linked[1] does not show that much of a difference between different browsers - the difference appears exaggerated because the scale on the Y-axis does not start at zero. Thus, it is very likely that whatever power saving that you will derive are negligible and don't make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

[1] - [http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/browser_...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/browser_energy.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this really the best their marketing department can come up with? "Use IE and it's like planing millions of trees!"

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much more efficient text-based browsers are?

Unfortunately Lynx doesn't support html5 video.

<comment><USER11> I doubt that text-based browsers have been very good about incorporating the latest advancements in JavaScript engines, so they could easily lose there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So this is with one tab? Okay, how does it perform with 20? How does it perform vs. noscript?

<comment><USER3> it looks like it was with 3 tabs open. It obviously needs more testing since the difference between three browsers is small. The study can be easily replicated, as the procedure is mentioned in detail in the study's pdf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> sounds to me like "Internet Explorer is the most energy efficient umbrella".

</comment><comment> mark-r Yup, that's the first thing I look for in a browser - energy efficiency.

<comment><USER3> In portable computing, it can help battery last longer. Just because it is not user facing, does not mean it should be ignored by engineers.

<comment><USER8> As soon as microsoft tries to release an IEbook to compete with the Chomebook, this metric will have a greater impact on battery life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I bet this will change after a few patches are applied.

<comment><USER8> This would make for an interesting performance metric to track over time in lots of software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Too bad every time I start it, "Your browsing session closed unexpectedly". For once I expect it to close expectedly, when I click on the bloody 'X'.

</comment><comment><USER29> if you can't beat them with performance and features, go the green way,

</comment><comment><USER30> Can someone explain to me why Microsoft is still fighting this battle?

<comment><USER31> Momentum? An organization as large as MS, a project can go on indefinitely because there is a ton of money to back it up. Something as big as IE would probably take the CEO to cancel it.

I think it would be more likely they would use one of the OSS engines out there and rebuild IE on top of a fork.</comment></comment>


Do software engineers need mathematics? - <AUTHOR> https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_10_00.html

<comment><USER2> My dad was a computer guy in the 60's. He designed core memory modules. When I was in high school in the late 70's I expressed an interest in computers (Heathkits in particular) and he told me I wasn't good enough in math to really get into the computer field. The fact was, I didn't like math and never took the advanced classes so I took his word for it.

Then came the PC. In my late 20's I bought an 8088 and found my true calling. I don't hold a grudge against my old man for his short-sightedness; I think he'd be amazed by what we're doing with computers these days and I think he'd be proud that I was able to follow in his footsteps.</comment>


A Better You in 10 Minutes: iOS's Top 4 News Readers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/trigger-news/a-news-reader-to-call-your-own-3ebc1ef4b0d

<comment><USER2> Nice post! It's not about news especially ... but I love [https://feedbin.com/](https://feedbin.com/) in combination with [http://reederapp.com/](http://reederapp.com/) for iOS.</comment>


Google Realtime Search Manager Leaves to Build Foursquare as Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_realtime_search_manager_leaves_to_build_fou.php

<comment><USER2> I believe this to be an important indicator of the sheer size of the Google Inc. and the state of their ability to innovate. It's not a disgruntled employee quitting; it's a conscious employee searching for more fertile workplace.</comment>


The Misuse of iOS Contacts - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@garrepi/the-misuse-of-the-ios-contacts-bc9a2dd9d234 <comment><USER2> nice</comment>


Blockchain vs Hashgraph comparison and stuff - <AUTHOR> http://ajitvadakayil.blogspot.com/2017/10/blockchain-smart-contracts-part-8-capt.html <comment><AUTHOR> Warning: He writes in a very colloquial lang sprinkled with what he thinks is right. Be your own judge.</comment>


Facebook overrides fact-checks when climate science is "opinion" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/facebook-overrides-fact-checks-when-climate-science-is-opinion/ <comment><USER2> Why did Facebook ever dare to enter the world of fact checking. It's not feasible for Facebook to be the arbtiter of all truth.

It's like Facebook cannot decide if it's a news organization or a tool for posting baby photos.</comment>


How robust is logistic regression? - <AUTHOR> http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2012/08/how-robust-is-logistic-regression/

<comment><AUTHOR> I shared the Java code for this one at [https://github.com/WinVector/LStep/blob/master/src/com/winve...](https://github.com/WinVector/LStep/blob/master/src/com/winvector/lstep/ScoreStep.java) and would love to see somebody hack the code to find a non-separated example that diverges on the first step from the origin.</comment>