We are Switching to Dart - <AUTHOR> http://www.ramen.io/post/46936028144/we-are-switching-to-dart-why <comment><USER3> I think a few points are worth emphasizing. Dart produces JavaScript that is closer to being correct <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5424680>

Dart can produce JavaScript that is faster [http://news.dartlang.org/2013/03/why-dart2js-produces- faster...](http://news.dartlang.org/2013/03/why-dart2js-produces-faster- javascript.html)

The JavaScript output of Dart2js works across all modern browsers (IE9 and above, among others.) No browser hacks required.

Having said that, I wish they would stop working on advancing Dart and ship a 1.0 version. It's been 1.5 years since it was announced. Make the advancements in the 1.1 or 2.0 and give the tool developers a solid target to optimize for in 1.0. Let us not have to sell clients on a beta development system, even though that's what I'm doing and it's working, despite some panic when Dart developers break things with breaking changes (which is often.)

<comment><USER4> IE9+. I hope people don't miss this keyword.

<comment><USER3> That satisfies all mobile development as far as I know. The loss is on Windows XP desktop for those stuck on IE8 and below. So far, I'm doing ok telling people to run Chrome or FireFox on XP as most of them are anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming this is not April 1 con'd.

Dart is really cool. Awesome, in fact. I want this project to do well.

But there's just no way I am going to base my business on it when not even Google uses it for their own stuff. It's just way too early.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if Google does not use it for their own stuff and you don't supply references. That's not the same as saying Google will not use it for their own stuff. That would be quite surprising. In fact, I'm assuming they are developing it primarily as an internal tool, hence the disregard for a reasonable time line for shipment of 1.0

<comment><USER6> > I'm assuming they are developing it primarily as an internal tool

It's neither primarily internal nor external. My understanding is that the higher-ups feel Dart must succeed both inside and outside of Google to be successful. Which one must happen _first_ is an open question, but I think the end goal is wide use both inside and outside the company.

<comment><USER3> > end goal is wide use both inside and outside the company I agree fully. I > would just add that, just in terms of salaries they've paid to Google > employees working on Dart, they've spent millions, which they won't get back > from by selling Dart. They probably have a compelling internal reason for > doing this. They win if external developers adopt it because useful > libraries will be written.

<comment><USER6> > they've spent millions, which they won't get back from by selling Dart

Yes, I think everyone understands today that languages don't directly generate revenue.

> They probably have a compelling internal reason for doing this.

Off the top of my head:

* If it makes Googlers more productive writing apps in Dart, that directly saves Google money. We, obviously have some _very_ large JavaScript applications (gmail, maps, docs...) and we spend a ton of engineering time on them. If we can make those engineers more productive, that's a huge savings.

* If Dart succeeds externally, that's more third-party code that Google can then use for its own projects, so that directly saves us money.

* If Dart makes other web developers more productive, that makes the web bigger. A bigger web means more people spending time on it and more people doing web searches, which ultimately goes right back to Google. Google is happy when the web gets bigger.

<comment><USER3> Your first reason is the most compelling and what JavaScript developers might want to consider. My own experience is that I am much more productive writing code in Dart and then converting it to JavaScript. Why?

* Autocompletion (intellisense)

* Refactoring

* Use types and catch errors before runtime. Types are optional, although I don't know why you wouldn't use them unless you are pasting in some JavaScript code and running it as Dart. Hand converting JavaScript to Dart is fairly easy because types are optional.

* Quick turn around time in the "change code, set breakpoint, run code, stop at break point" cycle.

* Calling native JS code is painless. Libraries that are currently not available as Dart, such as three.js can still be used.

* Project organization is fairly automatic.

* Code analyzer - this one is my favorite. The analyzer will tell me if my change causes a problem in another file. It runs in the background, like C# does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This makes sense. Every time I side-peek at JS, I get terrified by the huge amount of libraries that one is supposed to be used to just get it running. It must be a liberating feeling to be able to just use one language with one standard library, for all your stuff. The "batteries included" philosophy worked well for Python.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if we could go so far as to say Dart is to JavaScript what Python is to PHP? My whole reason for using Dart on a project was out of desperation because I was handed a JavaScript/PHP mess and I didn't want the nightmares to start again. I've been sleeping really well lately. Since Guido von Rossum did a stint at Google, all they need him to do is ask him to bless Dart and we're good, or find a suitable rock star replacement to promote "The Dart Way" ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title is inaccurate, they weren't using JavaScript before, they were using CoffeeScript.

Seems that the story is they are moving towards a more opinionated language/framework. That it is Dart isn't the story here; they don't even mention the Dart VM as a benefit for the switch. It just as easily could be ClojureScript, which provides all of the same benefits.

<comment><USER9> [disclaimer: I work on Dart VM]

Even though Dart VM is not a deployment target for the client side code right now it is still an integral part of the development experience. It runs all your code while you develop (no need to compile to JavaScript just edit&refresh) and backs things like dart2js, dwc, pub which are all written in Dart itself.

<comment><USER8> Right, but the author here doesn't mention the Dart VM as a reason for the switch; they are not switching to get better performance in Chrome. They are switching because they like the language/ecosystem better.

Also, IANAL but I'm pretty sure you don't have to include a disclaimer to post on the internet. No one is going to rush out and buy Google stock based on your comments so there is no conflict of interest to what you wrote.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I agree with your point. Yet, I see quick edit&refresh as the part of the ecosystem. Hard to enable that without VM.

[regarding the disclaimer: I add it for two reasons. First, I have seen people accusing others of hiding their bias, so I prefer to state my affiliation explicitly. Second, if anybody wants to ask any Dart VM related questions and get response they know where to ask :-)]

<comment><USER10> Sweet... so how does Dart compare with asms.js?

/me _ducks_

:)

<comment><USER11> Serious answer:

The Dart2js compiler could easily take advantage of asm.js additions, and generate javascript code that uses asm.js. If asm.js does take off, all it can do is help Dart generate faster running code.

Now, if we are talking about the DartVM, asm.js could be used as an argument not to include the DartVM in other browsers. But asm.js is still very much in it's infancy, so we really need to wait and see how it's adopted and how it progresses.

<comment><USER12> No it couldn't. asm.js has no garbage collector. The only way to get dart running on asm.js would be to port the entire VM to asm.js, which afiak won't work since the dart JIT emits machine code at runtime.

<comment><USER10> I don't think @kyrra was suggesting that Dart would compile _completely_ to asm.js code, just parts where it makes sense (just like normal JavaScript uses asm.js only where it makes sense).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why does so many startups feel the need to brag about the fact that they're switching to <hot new technology>? To me it just comes off as an attempt to convince themselves it's a great idea.

How about coming back in a year and telling us how it turned out instead? Actual case-studies and analysis are interesting, fashion statements are not.

<comment><USER14> I think it does at least 3 things well:

1\. It lets developers familiar/interested in the tech to know that you use it and that they should apply there.

2\. You've done the work to research it and make the decision to switch - <USER2> doesn't hurt share that. Who knows someone may point out some flaws you didn't expect.

3\. It increases the inertia of the technology. There are strong network effects in technology and if everyone sees that something is growing they'll make the jump too. One new library created per X developers is a big win and makes it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems very risky to base your core business on a language that's only been around for two years. Sometimes web development seems to be more volatile than the fashion industry.

<comment><USER16> With the state of javascript at the moment you would certainly be using library code that's less than two years old to build core parts of your app. The line between language and library can get pretty blurry, particularly when we're talking about a language that compiles to JS.

<comment><USER17> To be fair, there's a difference between a library and a language here. Replacing or taking on the maintenance for a library is a much more feasible option for many than jumping to a new language or taking on the maintenance for an entire language (as it's not just the compiler, it's also custom tooling, debugging, plus Dart really needs its own libraries, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why go through so much pain to avoid JavaScript, coffeescript now Dart? JavaScript is not the problem, it's how terrible our community is at sharing/creating modular things. Classes and shitty syntax wont help you there

<comment><USER19> You touch on a good point, but I'm not sure it has to do with this particular piece. Rather, the author seems really confused:

      There are great projects like Underscore, Sugar,
      Prototype, jQuery, CoffeeScript and many many more that
      help to work around JavaScript's language quirks.
      Unfortunately they don't mix and match very well. Also,
      which map() or forEach() implementation should I use if I
      have multiple available?

That's like comparing barricuda, rubberbands, and bolts. Only one of the projects he mentions has anything to do with "JavaScript's language quirks," and that's CoffeeScript. Just another person who did not know JavaScript/frontend development, expected it to be like any other programming environment, and bailed rather than stepping back and reconsidering his original assumptions.

<comment><USER20> I understand what you're saying but I'm humbly disagreeing.

I do believe that all the mentioned frameworks (while positioned differently) do offer solutions to work with/around JavaScript language quirks. e.g. simple things like

        * working with collections
        * working with objects
        * extending 'things'
        * iterating over 'things'
        * working with async

That's one of the main things that I (and probably more) people find confusing about the JavaScript ecosystem even while I'm not new to it.

<comment><USER19> JavaScript provides arrays and objects, and also functions for grouping data (via closures). What else would you expect it to come with? The quality `goog.structs` package speaks to how easy it is to create very high-level data structures.

Are you perhaps thinking of the baroque and once-very-inconsistently- implemented DOM API?

Regarding your other points, JS is an extremely object-oriented language. I really don't think you need more "working with obejcts" things out-of-the-box. Iteration is very straightforward in all cases, unless you find hasOwnProperty confusing. The Node.js project has demonstrated well how easily Async maps to JS outside of the browser model (where Async has always reigned).

JS is a strange beast in certain ways, but it is a featureful language.

<comment><USER21> JavaScript is extremely poor at expressing OOP, it requires so much un- intuitive boilerplate to express your intent that many don't bother and will just hack together the simplest thing that works. Which causes the current situation of having so many different libraries to declare classes and they all do it their own unique way which are not compatible with each other.

It's the same for iteration, the hasOwnProperty is mostly omitted because it works most of the time without it and specifying it adds un-necessary boiler plate.

Same with async, there's a zillion async libraries that try to manage async in different ways and they aren't interchangable either. By standardizing on Futures/Streams it means all libraries can build on consistent and composable foundations and build higher-level functionality.

<comment><USER18> If you avoid inheritance js is just fine, inheritance is a pretty terrible concept to begin with IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This sure sounds like April 1 joke, but, I get that developer(s) wanted something even more innovative then brunch and coffeescript. Like arkitaip said, it is a very risky move.

<comment><USER3> Riskier than using the latest perpetual beta JavaScript library? I don't think so.

<comment><USER22> Which one ?! JQuery? What are you angry about?

<comment><USER3> I'm not angry, I just want something better. As Anders Hejlsberg said "you can write large programs in JavaScript. You just can't maintain them."

[http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2012/06/04/anders- hejlsbe...](http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2012/06/04/anders-hejlsberg-is- right-you-cannot-maintain-large-programs-in-javascript/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> BTW this is _not_ an April fools joke :)

</comment><comment><USER23> I like your post since it's a refreshing take on today's language and framework decisions. Usually people go for Coffee, Node, Go, Clojure or ClojureScript nowadays (I mixed FE and BE tech deliberately).

What I am interested in: Why did you go for Dart? What was the trigger? When I look at Google Trends Dart seems to have a very hard time compared to other current technologies regarding search popularity.

And what's your backend based on? Could I go for Dart with Node?

<comment><USER24> You could write the back-end in Dart, too. The Dart VM can do IO out-of-the- box. Just like the Node executable, it can be used to run command line scripts, web servers, or anything else you can think of.

Anyhow, since the front-end only communicates with the back-end via standardized protocols (say, HTTP or WebSockets), it doesn't matter what's used on the server-side. These two parts are completely decoupled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> While I think dart is a nice language, I do not think JavaScript is bad enough to justify switching to a completely different language.

I worked on some big js projects, and together with a good module-system and jslint with strictmode on it works out all quite well.

I think OOP is nice but you can do without much of it by focussing on composition instead of inheritance. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_over_inheritance>

Dart has a big focus on OOS and looks a lot like "JavaScript for Java Programmers". Which is not a bad thing.

<comment><USER26> 5k large? 10k large? 500k large?

the real test of a language is when it has all the millions of bug fixes built in over the years. At that point, do you feel comfortable refactoring/rearchitecting it to remove development inefficiencies? I argue that with Javascript there is no way you do once it grows beyond a small team size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting post! I'm wondering:

1\. How do you test your Dart code?

2\. How do you integrate Dart with your existing Javascript?

3\. Do you use Dart Web UI?

<comment><USER28> [disclaimer: I work on the Dart team]

1) We have unit tests and mocks built-in. Check out <https://www.dartlang.org/articles/dart-unit-tests/>

2) We have JS-interop. Check out <http://www.dartlang.org/articles/js-dart- interop/>

3) We have tutorials for Web UI. Check out <http://www.dartlang.org/docs/tutorials/>

Hope that helps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How well does Dart work with node.js? Should I even consider Dart if using node.js?

<comment><USER3> It works transparently on the client to a node server of course. I haven't seen a lot of examples Dart interop with Node on the server. There are two choices, Use the Dart VM on the server and interop with Node through the js- interop lib, or use Dart2Js to convert Dart to JavaScript and operate with the node packages that way. There's still a lot of uncharted territory with Dart, which I think provides me with a lot of interest and opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would be too afraid to base a business on a language that's only two years old. It's not even a guarantee that the language will remain supported by Google in the long term, given their periodic house-cleaning.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hope Google gets (even more) serious with Dart. Web App Development with JavaScript is a joke. Just remember the recent callbacks vs promise debate. It's like JS devs know nothing about software engineering.

<comment><USER31> debate?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm talking about <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5466872>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Many libraries, including Underscore, default to the native browser methods when they're available. It's not really much of an issue deciding which map() to use.

</comment><comment><USER33> April fools?

<comment><USER20> It's not, we're serious about Dart :)

<comment><USER34> Why Dart over <http://meteor.com/> <https://github.com/yahoo/mojito> or <http://derbyjs.com/> ?

<comment><USER7> The answer is contained in your question, I think.

<comment><USER21> Exactly :) even more-so given the list is incomplete.

<comment><USER34> there are others? what other frameworks render the page server and client side?

<http://derbyjs.com/#why_not_use_rails_and_backbone>

edit: ok I forgot <http://www.socketstream.org/> but regardless, the realtime single page app sector really is dominated by those four products. everything else is already obsolete.

<http://derbyjs.com/#introduction_to_racer></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will you ever trust CNN again? - <AUTHOR> I have watch CNN fairly regularly - before the elections - I thought of them as a quality channel.
I know my trust for CNN has never been lower.
I can't imagine believing in any of their polls in the future <comment><USER3> CNN has always been crap.

There just is not enough "news" to fill up 24 hours. CNN spends about half as much to produce 24 hours of news as NBC spends to produce 30 minutes.

So most of the time CNN is the "school shooting channel" or the "MH370 channel". Back in the day you'd see Anderson Cooper being beat up by Mubarack's thugs, but now it is so depressing to see him sit behind a desk and rap, taking the stupid things the democrats and republicans say seriously.

For the past year or so CNN has been the "Donald Trump Channel", even if they don't like him or cover him negatively. Donald Trump has kept Americans of all political persuasions glued to the news because you never know what wacky thing will come out of his mouth next. Donald Trump has been good to CNN, Fox News, and even MSNBC in terms of ratings, dollars and cents.

<comment><USER4> FLASHBACK: Jon Stewart Revels in CNN's Split-Screen Reporting >[http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/jon-stewart- revel...](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/jon-stewart-revels-cnns- split-520106)

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude - that's an awesome link. I have been a long time watcher of CNN. I used think they were highly respected. I will still watch, but will continue to notice more and more low quality and low integrity productions.

This is exactly what I mean, it isn't just "they've moved far left". It's worse than that, it's that they are making things up.

I wish I could upvote it twice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, I can't think of a single organization that got the polls right so I'm not sure why you would only blame CNN.

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't JUST the polls, which were horrible.

I honestly don't agree - or I believe that CNN was substantially worse - <USER2> that's just from personal experience and hard to quantify.

I started FACT-Checking their interviews. They were also disappointing. You can google FACT-Check CNN and read a number of articles.

They used to be solid on the fact, but it's pretty hard for them to be credible at the moment.

I was just curious if other CNN watchers (not haters) felt the same way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The polls were national polls and she won the popular vote.

<comment><USER7> the popular vote has more to do with her landslide victory in CA than anything else. The gap between her and trump there was in the millions. That is the thing about winning, you can win, but you can't win harder. If you win by a sliver or a mile it's still just winning and that's why the electoral system is important.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A game made out of tweets - <AUTHOR> http://gdevbot.sparklinlabs.com/p/starpick/edit

<comment><USER2> Awesome, but you're crazy, man.</comment>


Neil Young's PonoPlayer: The Emperor Has No Clothes - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/tech/it-was-one-of-kickstarters-most-successful-109496883039.html <comment><USER3> Bit of an invalid test since the files played through both players were not- identical. The iPhone had tracks from iTunes, the Pono tracks from the Pono Store.

Any difference in loudness will give the edge to the track which is mastered at a higher volume. That's precisely why tracks are mastered to go louder - <USER2> helps sell records but unfortunately on any half decent hifi sounds like mush: [http://www.leonroy.com/blog/2013/04/buying-hi-def-music- toda...](http://www.leonroy.com/blog/2013/04/buying-hi-def-music-today-is-a- crapshoot/)

</comment><comment><USER4> The problem is that 90% of their 2 mil song catalog is still only CD Quality (16 bit / 44.1 Khz). 256 / 320 Kbps vs. CD Quality is pretty hard to differentiate for most people. But 256 / 320 Kbps vs. 24 bit / 96 Khz should be fairly obvious.

And of course, you need a good pair of headphones.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article keeps harping on the claim that humans cannot distinguish between 16 bit/44.1kHz and higher resolution. But the data from the author's experiment suggests the opposite: a good majority of his subjects were able to distinguish between the two resolutions. It's just that most of those picked the "wrong" one as their favorite. That's not surprising. Most people these days don't know what natural sound quality is, because all they ever listen to is recorded or grossly amplified music. As a consequence, the sharp and edgy sound of low-res audio sounds better to them than the softer and smoother high-res. That's of course a legitimate choice, but it is not a reason to dismiss high-res recordings.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil- young.html](http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html)</comment>


Christine: The World's Most Modular PC Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.razerzone.com/christine

<comment><USER2> And this is what you get when you have a designer "imagine" what a PC would look like.

One of the nice things about the Mac Pro was that it was _engineered_ to look good, as opposed to being "designed" to look good. (or not depending on your design tastes).

The modern PC has three things you have to manage when engineering a 'new' one, heat management from both the CPUs and the GPUs, signals management which can carry exceptionally high frequency signals across "busses" that act as transmission lines, and modularity.

This vision has the latter covered but introduces challenges that make keeping the other two in check probably impossible.

First (and perhaps foremost) a modern PC generates a lot of heat, and managing that heat is central to any design, like having a place to eat and a place to sleep are essential to any home design. The components will generate up to 1200W of heat (equivalent to a space heater or hair blow-dryer set on 'high') Which needs to be removed from the components fast enough to prevent them from reaching their critical temperature.

Next up, modern PCs use PCIe channels that clock at 5Ghz with low voltage differential signaling. These signals absolutely do _not_ like going through connectors, so systems design need to minimize connector transitions to 1 or zero. The renders for this design seems to show components plugging into a back plane (minimum two connectors). Also at 5Ghz, the wavelength of these signals is 6 cm. That means that bits going through a wire that is longer than 6cm long start taking a "long time" (relative to the signal) to arrive. Now PCI has some mechanisms in the protocol to support this but it starts resulting in additional bus transactions and signals. That increases latency in a way that can turn your awesome GPU into something decidedly unawesome in terms of its performance. It isn't the GPUs fault, its getting the data too and from the CPU which is the problem. There is a reason the 'video' slot on PCs is the one right next to the processor :-). This problem is made even more manifest in memory systems. If you get a chance to look at the circuit board traces for memory DIMMs some time notice how some are really squiggly and some are straight. The trick is that they are all _exactly_ the same length so that data that starts coming out of the chip arrives at the same time at the CPU and vice versa. Fully Buffered DIMMs (FBDIMMs) were a shot at 'fixing' this and few people bought them. The chips ran hotter and performance was worse, lose lose to most consumers.

All that said, I love the _concept_ of modularity in a PC but at the moment I can't see how to get that without sacrificing a lot of performance. That is one of the reasons I was so impressed with Apple's effort. It gets a lot of things right.

<comment><USER3> You're right but ignoring cost I'd rather have something that looks like this than a Mac but there's no accounting for taste.

Regarding the PCIe comment: people are already using PCIe over cable as an expansion technology. We use lots of these, for example: [http://www.onestopsystems.com/pcie_over_cable_3810.php](http://www.onestopsystems.com/pcie_over_cable_3810.php)

Works in a pinch although it's of course not going to have the same performance as a connectorless solution.

<comment><USER4> The point is that GPUs need to be physically near CPUs and RAM. You can do all kinds of external PCI expansion, including Thunderbolt cables several meters long, but you'd never attach a GPU to that other end.

<comment><USER5> People are running GPU's through thunderbolt on Macbook Airs. TB Actually has provisions for doing this, but they are severely underdeveloped.

<comment><USER2> As Wise points out the challenge is the bandwidth. You can run video cards over USB (see DisplayLink) but the update rates suffer from being constrained to 480 megabits/sec. So if you are paying a lot of money for something, you probably want commensurate performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the BMW/Thermaltake collaboration from 2009. [0]

About 10 years ago I thought I wanted something like this.

Over the years I realized that my meticulously researched, highly expandable PC builds were rarely being expanded or upgraded. By the time I really wanted, much less needed something new there was little if anything worth salvaging.

This creation looks like a great way to spend even more on building/upgrading something that will be relatively big, slow, power hungry / hot in 3 years all the same.

0: [http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/level10/l10beauty_lw.jpg](http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/level10/l10beauty_lw.jpg)

<comment><USER7> Well. I don't think sata is going anywhere at the very least. A chassis that supports expandable and swappable drives wouldn't go amiss.

<comment><USER8> Easily handled. SATA backplanes with modular drive slots are available and they fit into two or three or four 5.25" slots. Many enthusiast and server chassis already have the option for SATA backplanes as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could be future of personal computing, however I am afraid that prohibitive cost would kill this. I would expect markup of $100-$150 per module, unless it is a very simple module that needs no cooling.

I am also not sure about cooling system. Little isolated compartment with nearly no holes for cooling beefy GPU or CPU with overclocking sounds a bit farfetched. They mention that each individual module would have it's own water cooling system. I think it is madness, much more practical and economical to transfer heat to the central tower and have large radiator with quiet fans there.

I built few custom rigs with water cooling, and whole point of water cooling is to transfer heat to the large radiator.

<comment><USER10> Hard to tell from the snazzy-but-vague renderings, but it looks like the intent is that every module has "in" and "out" bushings for water-cooling - the larger circles on either side of the electrical connections - with the large radiator in the bottom.

Would make "hot-plugging" more like "wet-plugging", one suspects...

<comment><USER9> They specifically mentioned self contained. While there are quick connect/disconnect water cooling connectors [1] those do leak a bit of liquid each use.

[1] [http://www.xtremerigs.net/2013/07/02/2013-quick- disconnect-r...](http://www.xtremerigs.net/2013/07/02/2013-quick-disconnect- roundup/)

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's actually self contained in the sense that the pump, fans, and radiator are also duplicated in every module. The would be a terrible waste of resources and the modules don't look like they have any room for the radiator (which would need to be exposed to the outside air to work).

<comment><USER12> I could see a pump being included in each module. In a modular design such as this the flow rate through each waterblock would need to be guaranteed with many different possible restrictions.

Additionally, if the pumps were run serially, it could add some redundancy to the cooling loop (especially benefitial since each unit's pump might not have the same MTBF)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem is that you have another hand in the middle. Intel makes the CPU and then razr wraps it up and sells it to you at a markup. Nvidia makes a gpu and then someone throws it on a board for razr and then razr wraps it up and sells it to you at a markup. Why wouldn't I just buy it on a pci-e board for less because there will be competitors. Anyone here can build a PC - it's not hard. But that is the problem that this is trying to solve - that it is hard.

"For more than 30 years, only the most hardcore enthusiasts were able to take advantage of PC customizability. Convoluted hardware made it insane for the average person: knowing what does what, what works with what, and how to connect the pieces."

So this is for the guy that wants to build his PC but not actually learn how to build it. It's like radio shack xmods - you can put a new engine in your car to make you feel like you're working on a car but you're not working on a car. You're working on a toy that looks like a car.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't be surprised if many of the Christine modules were adapters for standard interfaces. The graphics card module could just be a mounting bracket with a PCIE slot and would fit most consumer GPU's. Similarly the S/Hdd modules would have power and sata attachment points. Those cases could be sold for less than 100$, and if Razor wouldn't make them I bet a third party would.

<comment><USER5> It's water cooled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, so much extra plastic. And are those compression connectors? Last I've seen those was in SGI computers, and they were notorious for failing to contact properly after being exposed for a while (rubbing with a soft cloth and alcohol seemed to do the trick though).

[http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/dynaweb_docs/hdwr/SGI_EndUse...](http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/dynaweb_docs/hdwr/SGI_EndUser/books/Octane_OG/sgi_html/apb.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Prior discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020090)

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow that's a pretty cool idea. The only issue I see going forward is whether or not the target market can afford the machine. The biggest pro of customizing a PC is the price for performance. I'm able to save quite a bit of $$$ by building my own machine. If the people who don't know how to customize their own machine are price insensitive they might as well go for something that requires no effort from them (e.g. Apple products, high end Dell/HP). If they are in fact price sensitive, I imagine a modular machine such as this would probably be out of their price point given that every part is specifically for this one type of PC.

<comment><USER18> The greatest advantage would be partially insulating the owner from platform changes, though that depends on how Razer implements the generic backplane in the tower.

For example, lately Intel has been changing CPU sockets and interface chipsets like I change my underwear. Upgrading the processor requires upgrading the motherboard, which may trigger a cascade upgrade of other parts. With this system, it may be possible to upgrade the CPU module (with all bridge chipsets included) without having to touch any other parts.

Also, you are no longer limited by what a motherboard vendor chooses to put on their board. No worrying about number of RAM slots, number of USB headers, how many of each type of PCIe slot they decide to include.

How well it works, and whether it justifies the price, remains to be seen.

<comment><USER19> >> Oculus: "[...] whether or not the target market can afford the machine."

> vonmoltke: "[...] though that depends on how Razer implements the generic > backplane in the tower." [...] "Upgrading the processor requires upgrading > the motherboard, which may trigger a cascade upgrade of other parts."

\-----

The above are the two big items in my mind. Another potentially minor (or major) issue is how the seals for liquid cooling are made, their durability and reliability. I am assuming that the pump is located in the backplane and a quick connect/disconnect type connection is used for liquid connections.

It sure looks cool. It looks like Razer's designers and/or engineers really liked the look of Thermaltake's Level 10 and wanted to take it in a different direction. It could also be that these are OEM'ed from the same manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks ridiculous. There is no way this design could be practical. You would be paying so much money just to encapsulate the same exact hardware components you have now inside of a plastic enclosure with a custom connection (and a controller for these connections, I'm assuming) and maybe unnecessary lights, colors, displays, etc. It is a proprietary trap.

Is it cool? Sure. But definitely not practical, efficient in any way, and it offers nothing more than aesthetics

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure how powerful it is which cannot tell from the looking. If it's the same powerful as the existing PC, I found All-in-one PC now is less than $500. So why do we need to have this nice-looking but still heavy machine? If it's super powerful, then a lot of engineering issues need to be taken care before how it looks like.

EDIT: I'm sorry, it's fully expandable. But sometimes the OS may not support the hardware expansion that much or become very low performance.

But anyway, I agree that we should make PC more customizable and more pluggable if it's doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Aren't most PCs modular? I can swap out the drives, expansion cards, memory, CPU, PSU, etc with standardized alternatives. There must be a better word for what this is.

<comment><USER23> No. A standardized PC is componebtized, but not really modular. You can't install RAM in a hard drive bay. This concept I see as more in line with traditional stereo systems....you can have many modules, and they all talk to each other via RCA cables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow.. so in the video they plugin a CPU module. Doesn't the CPU need equal length parallel lines to the memory? Or is there a serial interface to memory nowadays?

Crazy idea, I hope it works. Would definitely freshen things up.

<comment><USER25> > Doesn't the CPU need equal length parallel lines to the memory?

Yes, but you could do that within the tower. Maintaining signal integrity through the connectors and/or propagation delay due to trace length would be the limiters.

> Or is there a serial interface to memory nowadays?

Not for PC level memory speeds.

> Wow.. so in the video they plugin a CPU module.

All the pictures show "CPU / RAM" in the same module, which makes a lot more sense to me as an EE.

<comment><USER18> > Yes, but you could do that within the tower. Maintaining signal integrity > through the connectors and/or propagation delay due to trace length would be > the limiters.

They can, and probably will, also use signal path equalizers.

<comment><USER25> That would be problematic at best given the clock speed and timing requirements of DDR3.

<comment><USER18> Maxim claims to have the technology for gigabit signal path equalizers: [http://pdfserv.maximintegrated.com/en/an/AN996.pdf](http://pdfserv.maximintegrated.com/en/an/AN996.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Those are for a single serial signal - as the note indicates, mostly to replace very-short-run fiber optics. The challenges with routing DDR4 signals through connectors, etc are mostly about skew: if any signals are delayed by anything _approaching_ 1/2 a clock period (~1cm on FR4 board) relative to each other, everything is fucked.

In addition, some digging on the MAX3800 referenced there indicates that it has a power consumption of 200 mW, and a "budgetary" price of $6.90 each. Since a typical DDR interface is 100+ signals, you're looking at spending 20+ W and the price of a midrange PC just on signal integrity, and _that 's_ assuming those chips even do what you want.

There are systems that work like Christine - but they are things like IBM mainframes that don't suffer from cost constraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The inevitable consequence is that you will end up with monsters such as this [http://www.d1.dion.ne.jp/~r_high/memorial/rocketship.html](http://www.d1.dion.ne.jp/~r_high/memorial/rocketship.html) RiscPC with pods called "slices". I don't think that the board components were able to be sliced out, only peripherals.

</comment><comment><USER27> What problem is this solving?

<comment><USER28> Lack of modularization?

<comment><USER29> Computers are extremely modular already. Plus, you don't need to buy a proprietary interconnect and case that only one vendor provides.

<comment><USER30> Modular, but not necessarily modular done right. I'd much rather plug and play than take the time to screw in each component and run wires around and slice my hands on heat sinks made out of razer blades. If that means we have to go with a proprietary mb... someones gotta take the first step. I don't see why this design paradigm couldn't use existing components, like the Level 10 should have been designed.

<comment><USER5> For quick and dirty modifications they may not be 'done right', but from an engineering standpoint there are MANY limitations preventing exotic designs like this from even being viable, not to mention the cost of proprietary modules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Viewing that required moving my browser window to my 2560x1600 monitor and maximizing it. How utterly stupid. I'm coming to hate HTML5. Apparently rescaling is beyond it's capabilities or beyond those of the designer.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm guessing this is not an engineer designed product. I can see there will be a lot of technical issues to solve. Also the kind of connectors displayed can easily cost hundreds of dollars if they are custom made.

</comment><comment><USER33> Gosh that's pretty.

This is the kind of ambition that I feel like is missing from PC's. So much of the PC business revolves around just cutting cost and not making something cutting edge. Somehow Razer has managed to build interesting hardware that pushes the limits in a world where everyone is stuffing off the shelf components into mostly generic cases.

</comment><comment><USER34> Assuming that the 'tower' is the motherboard, it better cost the same as a module, or else this is a non-starter.

</comment><comment><USER35> So concepts are now a thing here?

That one sucks btw; imagine this one: a small white aluminum cube with no visible openings that does everything you will ever need to do in your life, now that's cool.</comment>


Gruber is wrong about OpenAppMkt the fight for open is about distribution - <AUTHOR> http://alexkessinger.net/story/gruber-wrong-about-openappmkt-fight-open-about-distribution

<comment><USER3> This is a semantic argument that boils down to the question of whether Apple is happy to have a vibrant marketplace of HTML5 applications or whether it sees those applications as a threat to its tightly-controlled app store. If HTML apps are a threat, they are indeed "routing around" an obstacle set up by Apple.

But there's no evidence at all that Apple sees HTML applications as a threat; Jobs himself has repeatedly promoted them as a means of delivering cross- platform apps, or apps that aren't appropriate for his app store. Apple as a company promotes its adoption of HTML5 and showcases features in HTML that provide app-like experiences.

I just don't see a lot of controversy here.

<comment><USER4> If you want any more evidence to show that Apple are heavily in favour or HTML applications, just look at Dashcode. It's essentially an iPhone webapp IDE, providing a framework to make 'native' feeling apps.

People set their level of expectations according to the distribution channel. If you go to some web page, you're not surprised if it doesn't work well or has obnoxious adverts, and everyone knows that the web is full of porn.

An App Store experience is expected to be better. People hold Apple responsible for curating the App Store, so it can't be as open as the web. People demanded that curated experience because closed/curated is simpler and easier to work with.

Ultimately, I don't see Apple caring how your app is distributed - <USER2> their closed platform or the open HTML platform - as long as people keep buying their phones.

It's easy to apply FSF-style ideology to Apple's decisions, but ultimately, they're really only interested in selling stuff. (Which means making stuff people want to buy.)

<comment><AUTHOR> My point was that if someone created a distribution channel to rival how good the App Store is, not what we have now. There is not App Store "killer" out there right now, but they only way to get an app store killer is to start making an alternative.

If it because a good competitor, then it could put developers in a position where they would need to make a decision. This one, or that one. At that point if you had a store that was more open, then the App Store, I think you could break the control of the App Store.

Again, I don't think we have that right now, but you have to start somewhere.</comment></comment></comment>


How Do You Say "Life" in Physics? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/how-do-you-say-life-in-physics <comment><USER2> > For instance, there is no English translation for the Japanese wabi-sabi—the > idea of finding beauty in imperfection—or for the German waldeinsamkeit, the > feeling of being alone in the woods.

Writers who proclaim that English has no translation for word _x_ from language _y_ , only to provide a matter-of-fact translation in the very next clause/sentence always make me chuckle.

Or they provoke pedantic ire. Depends on how much sleep I've had. :p

<comment><USER3> word != phrase

<comment><USER4> There is no such thing as "word" and "phrase" distinction across languages. There are only ideas.

In written Mandarin, for example, there are only pictographic characters. Each single character translates to an English word or phrase, but which it translates to is completely arbitrary. It is extremely anglocentric to say "English doesn't have a word" for a given Chinese character, if in fact English has a phrase for it. The Chinese language has no obligation to translate each character succinctly into a single English word.

In fact, one of the greatest strengths of pictographic languages is the high degree of information density per character. More often than not, a pictograph will translate to an English phrase, not an English word. For native Chinese readers, inference comes naturally, as each character is built out of a set of "radicals," each representing a narrowly defined idea, that act as the primitive building blocks to convey a complex combination of their ideas within one "character."

It's the ideas that matter.

<comment><USER5> I hate to be pedantic because I totally agree with the idea you're articulating here, but it is misleading to describe Chinese characters as pictographic. The correct term is "logographic" because they are graphic structures that represent morphemes. There is a large variety of character types, some of which are pictographic but most are not. My favorites are characters that visually represent abstract ideas: 上 下 凹 凸 up down concave convex

<comment><USER2> I recently realized that the logographic misconception about Chinese writing probably stems from the pretty recent past when Classical Chinese was the sole written form, and thus certain characters represented a common meaning to speakers across dialects. Of course, it's still not historically accurate to describe even Classical Chinese as purely "logographic" (for that matter, even Egyptian hieroglyphs have phonetic elements), but at least it explains the misconception somewhat

<comment><USER2> @jhedwards: My mistake - I guess I associated the term "logographic" with the idea that modern chinese characters represent "ideas," which is mostly false. My comment was aimed at the "pictographic" misconception, and was meant to agree with yours, which I evidently read too quickly.

In modern written mandarin, each character corresponds to a spoken syllable, which roughly corresponds to a morpheme, although sometimes it seems that without the writing system to differentiate the vast number of homophones in the language, the morpheme-syllable correspondence would get murky very fast. Which is indeed a manifestly logographic element of the writing system

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Addy Pross wrote a similar paper in 2011, but the neologism then was "dynamic kinetic stability"

[https://aeon.co/essays/paradoxes-of-stability-how-life- began...](https://aeon.co/essays/paradoxes-of-stability-how-life-began-and- why-it-can-t-rest)

[http://www.bgu.ac.il/~pross/PDF-10.pdf](http://www.bgu.ac.il/~pross/PDF-10.pdf)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843823/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843823/)

The upshot is that life is its own state of matter, essentially a self- stabilizing repeating pattern of matter and energy, like a waterfall or a chemical clock.

<comment><USER7> Kinda reminds me of the old teleology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems to be a really overcomplicated re-stating of Darwin.

There is no "lower level" at which to explain it: Things that are good at making copies of themselves will tend to be more prolific. Restating Darwin in terms of thermodynamics takes a simple idea and complicates it without adding explanatory power, which makes it a poor theory.

Here is how you "say 'Life' in physics": Life is a pattern which obeys four rules:

\- Reproduction: The pattern makes copies of itself. \- Inheritance: The copies share traits of the original. \- Variation: The copies can be different from the original. \- Selection: The success of the pattern making more copies depends on the traits which it inherits.

That's it. A tree is alive. A person is alive. A stone is not alive. A virus is alive.

And an idea is alive. It is a pattern in matter which replicates (I can tell you an idea; now there's one in my head AND your head), it inherits (your idea is similar to mine), it varies (you may reinterpret the idea, or combine it with your own ideas), and it selects (you will spread ideas you think are good, and discard those you think are bad). From this arises technology, or religion. We may, with a twist of the mind, think of either as an organism in its own right living in the habitat of human consciousness. (Perhaps all of our species' success can be attributed to the fact that our brains support a symbiotic form of life which can adapt far, far faster than DNA can).

And so by this definition even a solar panel is alive (and the "problem" of physically differentiating the two evaporates); it is just a stranger form of life that spends part of its existence as the plans for its production, coded in the configuration of matter in its blueprints, computer files, and human brains; and whose life cycle includes a stage where it is physically manifests and makes it self useful to its human hosts by providing them electricity. Its design is copied and mutated; some better at providing power for less effort, and thus more likely to propagate and eventually out-compete weaker designs.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Nature article is here: [http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/nnano.2015...](http://www.englandlab.com/uploads/7/8/0/3/7803054/nnano.2015.250__1_.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> All persistent dynamic structures are fundamentally circular motion. And there has to be an energy gradient to drive the motion against the resistence that is required to reproduce.

So, imagine a torus in a bath of molecules such that the torus rotates in proportion to the flux of light through it's hole. The torus rotates not like a steering wheel, but around itself (called poloidal rotation), such that the inside squeezes together and the outside expands. This might catch molecules from the surrounding bath, expanding the torus, changing it's shape. It would also tend to change it's relationship to incident light.

At some point, the torus could "shed" a second torus, roughly equal to it's original, smaller shape, which would participate with the environment in the same way, aggregating energy and matter to reproduce itself, until either all light is consumed, all free matter is consumed, or both.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is all that realistic - but I think it captures the important quality of "life" when it comes to physics, mainly that life is circular motion that has the general character of memory and reproduction.

<comment><USER11> >life is circular motion that has the general character of memory and reproduction.

This is totally random but that bit reminded me of a quote from Black Elk Speaks:

>Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop.

<comment><USER10> That's lovely, but my meaning is a little more specific and technical, and comes from the singular observation that Life cannot be constructed from unbounded linear motion. The sun shines on the planet, making things move, but gravity pulls it all down again. It's only "circular" in the same sense that a human can be approximated by a sphere of water.

P.S. Would really like to know why the downvote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My understanding of "life" has changed since I learned how biology at a low enough level is mechanical. A virus is a mechanical structure with nothing that we normally consider "alive". It arrives at a cell by accident, and its mechanical structure happens to interact with the surroundings to literally drill into the cell and then interact with its contents, again mechanically.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can somebody explain what does Wittgenstein have to do with the whole thing?

<comment><USER14> If anything, the author could have gone into Wittgenstein more, but she did cover a lot of ground... My stab at it:

Before Wittgenstein philosophers were obsessed with the factual nature of words and tried mapping everything correctly (logically) with the natural world. Except, they were failing.

Wittgenstein came in and basically said language was never designed to represent reality, but rather is what emerges from the use cases between people. Communication is a transaction ("game" in his words), and not some mathematical or logical construct. It may have such properties, and the people and the context are all real, so reality is involved, but language is not a direct output, nor does it need to directly correlate to resist contradiction or paradox -- which are abound in philosophy.

Except, for those who speak it, language is their reality. Those who cannot overcome their own immersion can never see past their own words, which sums up much of his opposition. They are all correct in their world and in their words... except Wittgenstein was talking about how words and worlds worked.

In short, words can be arbitrary, and are constrained by the goal to communicate and transact. This exact phenomenon which Wittgenstein described as what we are doing is the phenomena England is describing as what biological systems are doing.

It's all Dissipative Adaptation, with language being the unique construct for every such system that emerges and sustains it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a shame there is a huge lack of technical details here... maybe there is a profound thing that has been discovered, but I can't tell because the article is vague and describes the mundane and obvious in a grandiose style.

<comment><USER16> I wish they would put actual content in bold for those of us who aren't sure it's worth it to wade through the endless fluff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ah, Nautilus at it again. One of my favorite magazines! Any other proud subscribers out thete?

<comment><USER8> I am often disappointed with Nautilus. I find it tends to tout lofty or revolutionary ideas, and frosts them with intellectual prose, but underneath the article is surprisingly vague, content-free, and/or unscientific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> non-live systems follow the entropy maximization gradient, ie. they maximize entropy only locally. Live systems increase entropy beyond that is possible by only following the gradient, ie. live systems maximize the total entropy integrated over whole space-time path of the given system.</comment>


FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error - <AUTHOR> http://www.espn.com/chalk/story/_/id/24726426/fanduel-not-honoring-bet-paid-more-82000-due-line-error <comment><USER2> Yeah, a quick read of the relevant regs tells me Fanduel is gonna lose this one (Unless i've missed something)[1,2]

The law on this is pretty clear, and they can't unilaterally decide not to apply the gaming regulations of the state, or change them through their contracts.

(They can decide not to do business in states they don't like the regulations of course)

BTW, somewhat hilariously, the part they "..."'d is just 4 words.

[1] [http://state.nj.us/lps/ge/docs/Regulations/CHAPTER69N.pdf](http://state.nj.us/lps/ge/docs/Regulations/CHAPTER69N.pdf)

[2] (c) Upon accepting a wager pursuant to this chapter, a wagering cashier shall cause the wagering system to generate a wagering ticket.

(IE them generating the ticket is acceptance)

(d) A wagering operator shall not unilaterally rescind any wager pursuant to this chapter without the prior written approval of the Division.

(h) Winning wagering tickets shall be redeemed by a wagering cashier after verifying the validity of the wagering ticket through the wagering system.

(IE they should have redeemed it because it was valid)

(k) No wagering ticket shall be voided after the start of the wagering event on which a wager has been placed

Another reason the could not have voided it.

Essentially the best argument they have is that it's a house rule under 13:69N2-2 . This only works if their internal controls were approved by the division. Even then, a reasonable court would likely find that clearly contrary to the written regulations (and thus, not a reasonable interpretation of the regulations by the commission).

<comment><USER3> Good reply, I'm wondering they they will try to tie it to how slot machines handle errors ("All errors void play") which just payback the bet but don't payout.

<comment><USER2> In most states the regulations covering slot machines explicitly cover error. one of the most interesting parts is I can't find any part of the wagering regulations that cover error here. It's entirely possible they should but as far as I could tell they currently do not

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And yet, you can bet that they'd collect if the error were in their favor. And they probably have.

Absolutely disgusting.

<comment><USER5> Disgusting? So if you see a sign on a car for sale that says $19,95 because a digit fell off, the dealer is obligated to sell it to you at that price? People and systems make mistakes, that doesn't mean it's "disgusting" that they protect themselves financially from those mistakes.

<comment><USER6> It's more like - dealer sold you the car for $19.95, then came after you and demanded the rest $19k because of the error.

<comment><USER5> If you bought it online you bet they would come after you.

<comment><USER7> Which is completely different than a digit falling off a window, right?

<comment><USER5> No, it isn't. It's still a mistake. A programmer could have dropped a digit just as easily as a person failed to properly tape a digit to a window.

<comment><USER8> When you go to buy that car where the digit fell off the price, the sales person will tell you that the erroneous price is wrong, and tell you the correct one.

If for some reason the sales person does not do this and goes through with the sale at the erroneous price, sucks to be them. They had their chance to correct it and they failed to do so.

This is the same situation, except instead of a sales person, it's a computer.

It seems to me that this is yet another instance where companies automate processes that previously involved humans, then compensate for the newly introduced errors by blaming the customer.

If you don't want software bugs resulting in sales at absurd prices, maybe you should have a human review each order to make sure the numbers are sensible.

<comment><USER9> > this is yet another instance where companies automate processes that > previously involved humans, then compensate for the newly introduced errors > by blaming the customer

In either the digital or analog cases of your example, the end result is that the customer ends up paying the intended price. The only difference is that with the digital case, they might find out about it slightly later. How is this a "newly found error" in that case and how is it "blaming the customer"? It sounds to me like the potential for error has always been there and nothing about the assignment of blame has changed whatsoever between the two examples.

<comment><USER8> That's not the end result at all. There are three possibilities:

1\. The error is corrected before the sale and the customer pays the corrected price.

2\. The error is corrected before the sale and the customer changes their mind.

3\. The error is not corrected before the sale and the customer pays the erroneous price.

Companies are trying to change a 3 into a 1 by blaming computers and saying the error should have been clear to the customer, when in fact it's their own fault for not noticing the error before completing the transaction.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, they may also be trying to change a 3 into a 2 (or providing that option), but "trying" is the key word. There are enough high-value and/or physically large items that aren't cars (e.g. HDTVs, furniture) where undoing the transaction can be a huge imposition, even not considering that the merchandise is now no longer brand new and the customer must duplicate effort in the purchase process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's a nice reminder to stay away from the gambling industry. Any company that doesn't play by the same rules as you, doesn't deserve your business. Try voiding a bet you made due to your algorithm error once. I'm sure they would just laugh.

<comment><USER12> I had my account closed by a major betting site shortly after winning (and withdrawing) a few hundred euro, multiplying the original stake by around 10x in a series of bets.

These companies operate completely arbitrarily, and they really hate winners of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Owned by Paddy Power. Not surprised they are welching on the bet, they make a great play on what good sports they are in their advertising but will ban you if you show signs of not being a complete mug.

<comment><USER14> I worked for a betting company for a bit, and they actually liked people who were great at betting. They get flagged along with the sport/league they are good at, and the traders used these people to adjust their lines.

If someone bets and wins often on a specific sport/league, and they make a big bet for it that doesn't really make sense, maybe the line is wrong or that person knows something everyone else doesn't.

<comment><USER13> That's why I'm very suspicious of Paddy Power's ownership of betfair. They won't ban people there because their angle is as a broker working earning commission but they do potentially gain insider knowledge that they can then apply in their conventional business.

<comment><USER15> "Insider knowledge" isn't illegal and they couldn't care less what the outcome is. They make money by attracting customers who aren't sophisticated. If they want to know what the "right" price is, they just look at the Asian books (they don't employ people to help predict outcomes either).

<comment><USER13> maybe you're right but it being a well documented fact that they discourage successful punters to the extent of circulating photographs to betting shops makes me wonder. If someone is doing unusually well on their exchange why wouldn't they use that data, PP are extremely good at maximising every edge they have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Our system has this exactly backwards. An individual should get the benefit of the doubt, and their mistakes should be mitigated. An individual human gets tired, hungry, emotional, etc and other such experiences which cloud judgement. A corporation on the other hand is supposed to systematically avoid these things.

Because of this, mistakes in the interaction between an individual and a corporation should favor the individual. However, it seems that the system favors the corporation.

Gaming companies are especially bad about this. Their whole setup is designed to take advantage of human weaknesses in evaluating risks. However, when they make a mistake they are often the first to say that the bet is invalid.

</comment><comment><USER17> >>> industry practice, which specifically address such obvious pricing errors.

I am in two minds here. Firstly this is a "contract" \- honour it.

Secondly, I understand the industry practise, but Indont think it is in line with society needs - that is a human bookmaker would never have given 750-1 with the team leading and minutes to go.

So either you write software that won't do that and take the risk, or you stop using software to rinse every last penny out of human addiction

my preference is that mistakes in the software can bankrupt you. That way you pay attention to the software process

<comment><USER18> Well put.

Finance has seen its fair share of this. As an example, I was ashamed to see the difference in reactions between when it was Knight Capital [0] vs Goldman Sachs [1].

For Knight Capital, the entire company floundered after a trading glitch, and they closed shortly after.

When it was Goldman who suffered a glitch, many of their trades "qualified for cancellation". Co-author of the Black Scholes formula even spoke up against this hypocrisy.

Both companies lobbied to the exchanges and the SEC, but one had more capital. If this is any indicator, a company like FanDuel may be let off.

[0] [https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/knight-capital- says-...](https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/knight-capital-says-trading- mishap-cost-it-440-million/) [1] [https://www.ft.com/content/37fff9c6-0b36-11e3-bffc-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/37fff9c6-0b36-11e3-bffc-00144feabdc0)

<comment><USER19> Goldman have a strong political game. Even over those periods in which the Secretary of the Treasury is not one of theirs, they occupy lots of other appointed positions in government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel like we need the Second Software Crisis movement to address the bug riddled software were still making, it's as though we're just acclimated to bugs everywhere as being expected. Perhaps in 2100 they'll look back on this time in software as we do on the early automotive industry today.

<comment><USER21> Did the early automotive industry move fast and break things? Almost certainly.

<comment><USER22> I think an important difference is how easy it is to deploy absolutely garbage software. It's just not as easy to make a million cars, or fix a million busted cars, as it is to distribute an app across a million devices, so there's less incentive to get it right when you can "move fast and break things".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Obviously from reading these comments, most people here are not gamblers and prob do not have much interaction with bookies.

With bookies your honor and reputation is #1.

When you gamble, you take a risk and the counterparts takes a risk. Then it is up to Lady Luck to decide.

If you take a bet, you can't back out. Just don't take the bet in the first place.

In this case the guy sure had his stars aligned. To not honor that is insulting to all gamblers who respect the unknown and risk taking. They broke the social contract between the gambler and bookie.

Fanduel absolutely does not deserve to be company and should be grouped together with all the shady overseas bookies.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is why smart contracts aren't nearly as good as people make them out to be.

<comment><USER25> What do you mean? A smart contract would force them to fulfill the bet, no?

<comment><USER26> No, because as has happened before, the developers just go "oops, we made a mistake in the smart contract" and nullify the gains of anybody who profited off of it.

<comment><USER25> That was only possible because the miners have united. It's not going to be that easy in the future or on a larger chain (e.g. Bitcoin).

<comment><USER27> "non centralized block chains" and other hilarious jokes you can tell yourself

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Surprised at most of the comments here. If the line error had been for $82,000,000 would you have expected them to honor it as well?

Whenever there's doubt side with the customer but this was such an obvious error that any reasonable better would have realized it. Had the better lost the money I'm pretty confident they would have refunded the bet as well (since the bets were voided).

<comment><USER29> Or 82 billion, or trillion... yes, I would expect them to go out of business. Same if they made a mistake that killed someone, for example. As others have said, what if the client (or they kid!) had made the bet online and entered a few extra zeroes (and lost) - would they have accepted "I made a mistake" as an excuse and canceled the bet?

You should not encourage a business to have a "head we win, tails you lose" policy.

<comment><USER30> But a client entering a couple extra zeroes is not a clean and obvious mistake. A person could reasonably bet either $5 or $500 for example.

On the other hand, offering something like a 1000x payout for an event that has a 50% chance of happening is a clear and obvious error.

If an error is egregious and obvious, it seems reasonable that a company (in this case FanDuel) not honor the deal.

Similarly, say a grocery store meant to have a "Buy 1 get 2 free" steak sale but accidentally keyed it in as a "Buy 1 get 200 free" sale. Nobody would expect the grocery store to actually give away 200 free steaks to every customer who bought a single steak.

<comment><USER31> > But a client entering a couple extra zeroes is not a clean and obvious > mistake.

Neither is an oddsmaking posting odds out of line with your perception of thpe likelihood of events—if you are gambling, that's exactly what you are looking for normally.

> If an error is egregious and obvious, it seems reasonable that a company (in > this case FanDuel) not honor the deal.

This bet was made over the counter: if there was such an obvious and egregious error, it should have been refused at the counter. Would FanDuel have tested the bet induced by the odds as null and returned the funds if the bettor had lost? If not, why should it get to nullify it when the bettor wins?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is pretty standard. I've had a really angry email from a bookmaker after betting on a line that was like 10% off. From the bookmakers POV if they had to honour these bets either a) spreads would be much or higher or b) spreads would be so high there would be no market for bookmakers. I would hope the bookmakers do the honourable thing and void all bets on the misplaced line, not just the losing side. It's pretty scummy to freeroll your customers.

</comment><comment><USER33> In this case the punter must have known it was an error, so it doesn't seem moral to pick up the 82k.

Somehow everyone else seems to think otherwise, so maybe I'm just a sucker.

<comment><USER34> >In this case the punter must have known it was an error, so it doesn't seem moral to pick up the 82k.

If we lived in a world where companies did their best to be reasonable and fair to customers, particularly when mistakes occur, I would agree. However, considering most companies are quite hostile and willing to use any advantage they may have to maximize profits or minimize costs at the expense of customers I believe we need to act the same. If companies are going to hold us accountable and punish us for mistakes or errors to the fullest extent then we should do the same

<comment><USER35> That's a bunch of generalities, though; are the specific accusations about fanduel or records of them benefiting from mistakes like this?

"Well, they probably took advantage of people" isn't a very good argument.

<comment><USER36> [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sports/fanduel- draftkings...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/sports/fanduel-draftkings- fantasy-employees-bet-rivals.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Surely there's insurance for such errors?

<comment><USER38> Yeah this was my first thought too. My sincere hope is that the law's response is "Pay up, this is how your business works. If this kind of thing is going to be a problem for you, buy insurance for it."

<comment><USER39> My sincere hope is that you accidentally fat finger a button while banking one day and wipe out your checking account sending a transfer or something. We'll see if you feel the same way then.

<comment><USER40> There is a clear incentive for gambling operators to claim "error" anytime they might lose money.

That makes it somewhat different, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Oh a "line error". That explains it.

Wait - what? What the hell is a line error?

<comment><USER42> Almost certainly this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds#Moneyline_odds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odds#Moneyline_odds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> At Vegas sports books I have personally seen tickets invalidated due to error. It is not just FanDuel, this practice happens industry wide.

</comment><comment><USER44> They will settle this for half.

<comment><USER45> It'll cost _them_ that much to settle on top of the settlement. Lawyers aren't cheap!

This is pocket money for them. They should honour it and move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> You might want to reconsider using "welching" in this context. And don't change it to "gyping", either.

<comment><USER47> Care to clarify?

<comment><USER48> They're old racist terms against Welsh and Romani people

<comment><USER13> I've read the Welsh being described as loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls, but I cannot confirm its truth or otherwise.

<comment><USER49> Please don't post troll comments here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER13> The insults against the Welsh in that post are rather notorious being from a column in the Sunday Times by the late A.A. Gill. A complaint about them was thrown out by the Commission for Racial Equality. Not everyone, but many people in the UK view insults against the other nations of the UK as banter, a wind-up probably because we're all part of the same greater in-group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> blah-blahblah This will just add to the (necessary - don't get me wrong) tax on society that is our legal system. It's pretty obvious what should happen here because, as humans, we understand and allow for the possibilities of mistakes.

Fan Duel should send him some tickets to a game, try to create a positive interaction for him, and let's move on.

<comment><USER50> What's obvious about that? To me the obvious thing is that bookies have to honor the bets they sell and get to eat their delicious mistakes.

It's within their power to improve their automated system to not offer stupid bets.

<comment><USER51> >It's within their power to improve their automated system to not offer stupid bets

So then it's also within your power to never write bugs. Have you ever written any? How did that happen? It was within your power not to do so, right?

<comment><USER52> And if that bug cost his company say, $80,000 for some reason, there's plenty of instances where his company just has to eat that.

I've literally made tens of thousands of dollars in mistakes over my careers (try not to make the same one twice) and 9 out of 10 times the company would go "shit dude, don't ever let that happen again!"

<comment><USER51> And what if it were 1M? 500M? 1B? They just go out of business? Your logic doesn't scale well and seems overly harsh. They offered $500 and a pair of tickets. The guy lost nothing, I think that's fair.

<comment><USER53> You may be surprised to learn that software bugs put companies out of business. They also can kill people.

<comment><USER51> I'm certain I wouldn't considering I've spent my entire career in cancer diagnostics and finance.

This is a completely reversible mistake and no one was harmed in any way (feelings don't count). Let's not go off the rails and start making Therac-25 like comparisons. This isn't some abstract problem; the issue is well defined, so let's stay within the realm of reason.

<comment><USER53> Do you also think bugs in HFT code should be able to "undo" their mistakes instead of losing lots of money?

<comment><USER51> And how do you propose that would be done? You've totally jumped the shark here. Comparing this, an easily reversible incident, to HFT is simply nonsense. Thousands (probably a lot more?) of transactions would have occurred within the context of the bug, and decisions were made based on bad data once the bug was in the wild. There's no way you could undo that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An In-Depth Introduction To Ember.js - <AUTHOR> http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/11/07/an-in-depth-introduction-to-ember-js/

<comment><USER2> I only reviewed it quickly, but I think they should be using the "then" pattern of promises when saving and transitioning.

So this:

this.get('model').save();

this.transitionToRoute('users');

Should be:

var controller = this;

this.get('model').save().then(function(model) {

      controller.transitionToRoute('users');

}).fail(function(error) {

      //Feedback for the user

});

<comment><USER3> True. That's how you should implement the flow control after validation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really loving the new Promises/A+ support in Ember—lots of weird corner cases just got a lot cleaner, and it's much easier to bypass Ember-Data when the need arises. See this section of the original post for an example:

[http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/11/07/an-in-depth- in...](http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/11/07/an-in-depth-introduction- to-ember-js/#what_about_not_using_emberdata)

The first rule of Ember.js happiness is "Don't fight with Ember Data." When Ember Data does what you want, it's amazing. When you want to do something that it doesn't support, just fall back to jQuery and promises at the model layer, as shown above.

</comment><comment><USER5> Really good site. I've also found Ember Sherpa to be very useful once you're up and running: [http://embersherpa.com/](http://embersherpa.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm doing my latest project in Ember... it's cool, but even with a whole bunch of javascript experience, it's been a steep learning curve. I'm starting to get it and I like what I see, but I'd definitely welcome any resources people have in terms of getting to know it in a deeper way.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always been meaning to take a look at Ember. When I first started seeing discussions about it about 2 years ago, there weren't many guides or quick examples on how it is different than other frameworks out there. What would the use case be for Ember.js vs something like AngularJS?

<comment><USER8> Angular folk are often quick to point out that "Angular isn't a framework; it's an HTML compiler", or, as their homepage states, "AngularJS is a toolset for building the framework most suited to your application development." Angular doesn't necessarily set out to solve all of the problems and use cases that developers might run into, but rather Angular intends to give you all of the proper data-binding, dependency injection, and testability primitives as a foundation to build your app upon.

Because it doesn't intend to solve all the problems that a framework might, Angular is far fewer conventions about how to organize large-scale applications than a much heavier and opinionated framework like Ember. This doesn't mean Angular doesn't scale, or that it can't be used to build large apps, but it does explain why it's common for different teams to build large Angular apps in totally different ways, using different patterns, etc.

Ember on the other hand sets out to establish way more conventions, built right into the framework, for solving problems common to most web apps. These patterns are rigorously battle-tested since everyone is using them, and as such, it's easy (once you're past the learning curve), to drop into someone else's Ember app and know exactly where to go to diagnose a problem. That being said, when these patterns aren't helpful for an app's specific needs, most of Ember's patterns/abstractions are, like Angular, built upon composable primitives that you can use to assemble your own data structures, custom classes, etc., to tailor to your app's needs.

<comment><USER9> Very well said.

One thing I might add for others who read this is that many of Ember's design patterns are modeled after Cocoa, which has proven to be one of the world's most robust platforms for building apps. If you're familiar with Cocoa's two- stage object instantiation, MVC, or first responder patterns you should be able to recognize them fairly easily in Ember.</comment></comment></comment>


E-Estonia: How this EU country runs its government like a startup - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/17/e-estonia-how-this-eu-country-runs-its-government-like-a-startup/ <comment><USER2> Meh.. all the marketing Estonia does to get attention is not really helping the tax payer.</comment>


Talk write-up: How to build a PaaS for 1500 engineers - <AUTHOR> https://srvaroa.github.io/paas/infrastructure/platform/kubernetes/cloud/2020/01/02/talk-how-to-build-a-paas-for-1500-engineers.html <comment><USER2> I really enjoyed that write up. The focus on a good UI/UX in platform teams is definitely something that resonates with me. I also really liked the article placing an emphasis on Platform teams providing value by having a better "glue" I thought was interesting. I hadn't really thought that glue could be a component where value could be added. I really like the pattern of tools like "Devhose" and in developing a tool specifically to be the glue that integrates well with other tools.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just want to note that in house platform can also be a big cost savers vs public clouds.

For example, you should be able to be 10x cheaper on GPU compute if you use consumer GPUs in-house.

From a conversation that I had with an academic IT person, he managed to save 2M$ yearly.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if AMD will try to change that in the next couple years. AFAIK the reason for this is some clever licensing clauses by NVIDIA that effect market segmentation. If there were more competition on the high end, there would be downward pricing pressure.

<comment><USER5> It's also annoying because SR-IOV would be a wonderful thing for consumer GPUs, but it would make it too easy to use consumer GPUs for cloud providers.

Right now, you can run a VM with qemu and pass through the GPU to the guest OS, getting pretty close to native performance. With SR-IOV, every VM could have the same GPU attached, and you could manage performance with the hypervisor. This would let you toggle between VMs instantly, getting full performance on each one (assuming the others are idle).

AMD and nVidia do make SR-IOV cards, but they're extremely expensive, intended for data centers, and don't have display output. If it ever hits consumer cards, Linux will be the hypervisor of choice for pretty much everyone, because there will be minimal performance penalty for using VMs.

<comment><USER6> For reference:

[https://community.amd.com/community/radeon-instinct- accelera...](https://community.amd.com/community/radeon-instinct- accelerators/blog/2019/11/01/what-is-sr-iov-why-it-s-the-gold-standard-for- gpu-sharing)

[https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstation-virtual- graphics](https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstation-virtual-graphics)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/aemr9x/sriov_now_is_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/aemr9x/sriov_now_is_the_time_to_push_for_this_feature/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Stateless is the easy part, where are the databases?

<comment><AUTHOR> AWS takes care for most of them. All teams generally use cfn / terraform / to define that kind of infra (e.g. I need a DB with these properties) and they get applied as part of the standard deployment pipelines. We constributed support for cfn in Spinnaker to enable this.

A team in a different area to mine does offer Kafka as a service, but this pattern is an exception, and the org is actively moving away from it in most other cases. For example, a while back a team took care of offering "Cassandra's as a service", managed and operated for N product teams. They don't anymore, for reasons I explained in the article: \- AWS catches up (e.g. they recently announced Cass as a service) \- $commercial company has a Good Enough alternative (e.g. several teams are dropping Cass in favour of Dynamo) \- It's operationally _very_ expensive to maintain a team that does $storage as a service. \- The cost/benefit ratio for doing our own managed storage only adds up when the managed solution is too immature, or lacks too many features that you need. The team offering managed Cassandras actually did this and moved to offering a managed Kafka clusters ~1y earlier than AWS released the first version.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER8> So Terraform spins up a new RDS instance; what about all the management after that? Are teams left to their own devices regarding data/schema migrations, or does your team also provide a golden path there?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are on their own. The team doing managed Kafka does offer some tools for data / schema migrations, but there is nothing for other storages.

Generally they actually don't raise this as a pain point, teams tend to be quite self sufficient in this regard and rely on things like [https://flywaydb.org/](https://flywaydb.org/) to deal with it.

From our PoV, at this point this type of feature would be in the high cost / low impact quadrant. Not because it doesn't make sense, on the contrary. It's just that it falls at a later stage of maturity than we're at organisationally. As I mentioned, Adevinta is an extreme case of sprawl. To invest productively in "a fully managed relational db with data/schema migrations" we'd need a certain degree of consensus on which db should we support. We don't have that luxury. Even more: we'd also need some form of consensus on "this is how you deploy and release software" which there isn't either (do you do proper CD? is there a manual judgement? are there deployments to a PRE/Staging env? ..). This heterogeneity greatly limits our impact (sprawl reduces the potential surface of impact for any decision we make) so we focus on areas where we can avoid this problem (e.g. everyone buys cloud, containers...). But also, as I said above, data/schema migrations is actually not a pain point teams complain about frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Pirate-of-SV Spot on!

Resonates very well with me, working at a scale up in a "platform team".

Business wise we're set to out engineer competition. Biggest challenges are definitely to get engineers on board on training and transitioning into new "cool" technology. Should we help highly skilled advanced teams run fast or focus on getting everyone on board the cloud native train?

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice write-up Galo! As an ex-Deliveriarian I really enjoyed working this way, and the timing is perfect as I'm trying to set up a similar but way smaller PaaS. I'll be borrowing this text :D

</comment><comment><USER10> as a one person platform team (bare metal cluster + hpc resources); this article while super impressive gave me a kind of anxiety attack. I can barely keep the fires out and geez, look how much better it could be. There's hope for some at least.

<comment><USER11> Being a one person team is tough, I wouldn't beat yourself up over that. Usually impossible to get heads down in a project while firefighting 90% of the time.

<comment><USER12> > Usually impossible to get heads down in a project while firefighting 90% of > the time.

Put the phone away & magically there is time in the day. People have a lot more time than they're aware of but fill it by normally numbing out.

<comment><USER10> > put the software defined networking, software defined storage, kubernetes, > docker, KVM, libvirt, Windows AD, FreeIPA, thousands of Python conda > environments, annoying users, boss users, NFS shares, NFS servers which > can't do v4.1, CIFS, iSCSI LUNs, ancient iDRAC, circuit breaker replacements > for air conditioners, data migrations due to lack of quotas, quoats and ACLs > over NFS on mixed domains, DNS A records, shot motherboard in high-density > nodes, ........... & magically there is time in the day

fixed that for you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Built in tracking for the Accelerate metrics is awesome! Kudos</comment>


How Oldschool Sound/Music worked [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_3d1x2VPxk <comment><USER2> Good video, but it seems to somewhat conflate FM synths (e.g. Yamaha YM3812, YM2610, YM2151) with primitive envelope+counter-based PSGs (e.g. General Instrument AY-3-8910/Yamaha YM2149, Ricoh/Nintendo 2A03, Texas Instruments SN76489). I'd argue that the character of these two classes is substantially different. The PSGs are much more built around pure waveforms (for certain interpretations of "pure waveforms" that include pseudorandom noise), while the FM synths tend to be built around sets of parameters that produce sounds almost, but not quite, entirely unlike traditional musical instruments.

Another interesting bit of trivia is that the Yamaha "FM" synth chips were actually based on phase modulation (PM) rather than frequency modulation (FM). The abstract math can be transformed back and forth between the two, but the PM formulation accumulates less error when directly expressed in digital hardware.

The Commodore SID is arguably in a class of its own and probably can't be fully explained without some kind of textbook-length exegesis.

edited to add: samples to try to demonstrate what the heck I'm blabbing about with the difference between PSG and FM:

PSG: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMKWJ5e1kg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMKWJ5e1kg) The Legend of Zelda - Main Theme (Koji Kondo; 2A03)

FM: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWPNxSD9YNY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWPNxSD9YNY) \- The Revenge of Shinobi: The Shinobi (Yuzo Koshiro; YM2612)

<comment><USER3> There are a lot of aspects of the phenomenon of "chiptune sound" that aren't given much due. For example, early arcade hardware was more prone to using analog components - think of the rumbling explosions of games like Space Invaders, or the 6-voice subtractive synth used in Sente games[0], reused by Sequential Circuits as a standalone synth[1]. The Atari 8-bit chips(both TIA and POKEY) contained "distortion" effects (based on a variable-length LFSR) that could be used for both noise and guitar-like tonal timbres[2]. The true successor to the SID is the Ensoniq DOC used in the Apple IIGS[3] and SQ-80[4], but it gets little attention. And lastly a number of later chips, including the Game Boy, had a low-res wavetable on at least one voice, which allowed for some more timbre options(albeit 90% of the time it was a sawtooth)[5].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xCiOXQJO18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xCiOXQJO18) (MAME emulates this chip but does a terrible job)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa- Cwn4po40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa-Cwn4po40)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDeV7wrB2c0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDeV7wrB2c0)

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

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y8fNnDJUx0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y8fNnDJUx0)

[5] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caz21XapSiA&list=PL3B271CECB...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caz21XapSiA&list=PL3B271CECB53A0AD2&index=11)</comment></comment>


When every company is a tech company, valuations go insane - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/20/when-every-company-is-a-tech-company-valuations-go-insane <comment><USER2> True story!</comment>


Facebook says people OK with video ads that interrupt content, if they're short - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-says-people-are-ok-with-video-ads-that-interrupt-content-as-long-as-they-are-short-2018-1 <comment><USER2> I can say that I have _never_ watched a video past where an ad tries to load. I never even see the ad; I exit out before the ad loads.

I view it as a bait-and-switch, and I refuse to support such (IMO, morally repugnant) tactics.

I wish that we as consumers had a better, more effective way to punish such adversarial tactics.

</comment><comment><USER3> In other news, Facebook says that people are also fine with them harvesting their web history and cookies from their browser for activity completely unrelated to Facebook.

Facebook also says that you said it was OK to take your lunch out of the lunchroom fridge and that apple from your desk.

</comment><comment><USER4> "OK with" seems to really mean "don't navigate away from at a high rate".

</comment><comment><USER5> Hahaha, I wonder who's brnefit from his being the case?</comment>


Joyable App Helps User with Social Anxiety and Depression - <AUTHOR> https://joyable.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> News: [http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/18/joyable- raises-2m-launches...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/18/joyable- raises-2m-launches-app-to-help-people-get-over-their-social-anxiety/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Why $99/month? If Joyable works then it's something that could deliver some _real_ benefits to society as a whole - but only if the people who need it can afford it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some health insurance can cover mental health issues, like subsidizing meeting with a psychologist who could help prescribe cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. If Joyable were to create whatever relationship with an insurance provider is necessary, this could reduce the bill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aetna: [https://www.aetna.com/individuals-families/member-plans- bene...](https://www.aetna.com/individuals-families/member-plans- benefits/behavioral-mental-health-insurance.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is search so useless in Google Play Music? - <AUTHOR> Why can't I search exclusively in my own music library? Or by year, band or album? I am using the GPM mobile app. <comment><USER2> Same reason YouTube doesn't have a big "resume" button on the home page: Google doesn't really care about UX. They do in a hypothetical sense, but only as long as it doesn't interfere with their design vision.

</comment><comment><USER3> because this search functionality has not been implemented</comment>


Ask HN: What happens if a Soyuz launch splashes down? - <AUTHOR> I was thinking about this following the recent launch failure. Launching to the same inclination as the International Space Station, the ground track of a Soyuz covers significant areas of ocean. In the event of a second stage failure, with the second stage not burning to near fuel exhaustion (engine failure other possible problems), if a Soyuz makes 1/2 to 3/4 of an orbit and then reenters, it's going into an ocean.<p>Obviously this has never happened before. I was wondering what, if any, contingency plans might be in place. <comment><USER2> The LES parachutes people out and the kosmonaut suits are buoyant. Rescue involves helicopters.

If the craft somehow survives a bad reentry like you described, the procedure is same as in normal landing - the capsule is staged and parachutes down. Hopefully those systems work. See Soyuz 33 mission on how it's done. (That one was older design and complicated by bad decisions, but it mostly worked.)

It is buoyant and recovered by ship and/or helicopter. If the buoyancy is compromised, there are additional escape mechanisms involving pyrotechnic doors.

What Soyuz cannot do is abort to orbit - it does not have a strong engine, so it always aborts to reentry.</comment>