Live Migrations, Queryable Backups and More AWS Regions in MongoDB Atlas - <AUTHOR> https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/new-live-migrations-aws-regions-queryable-backups-mongodb-atlas?jmp=community-hub <comment><USER2> Time and again MongoDB is innovating ahead of the rest. MongoDB-as-a-Service offering Atlas brings great new features:

1) hassle-free migrations from your local MongoDB replica sets into Atlas cluster by means of initial sync and oplog tailing

2) more AWS regions with VPC peering support -> including 3 EMEA regions. besides London & Dublin especially interesting is Frankfurt (Germany)

3) probably my personal favorite. next generation snapshot based point in time recovery with query functionality to get document level granularity -> partially restoring documents has never been easier.

can't wait to try all of these enhancements!

</comment><comment><USER3> It is one of the very good enhancements for MongoDB. We need more of this in coming days. Live update was a little messy few months before. I had to take down time for the production upgrade. I'm quite happy. Availability across the globe is a very good decision. Will try to explore any of these features in near future to make hand dirty. Thanks team MongoDB.

</comment><comment><USER4> MongoDB Atlas which was already a great product just continues to get better.

My favorite on this list is being able to restore a subset of data from a queryable snapshot. This will be a time saver for those times someone accidentally drops/updates a few documents and they need to be restored.

</comment><comment><USER5> These are all incredible new features! Way to go MongoDB.

I'm really excited about the new UI features and queryable backups.

</comment><comment><USER6> That sounds very handy, will check that out. Great that folks at MongoDB seem to listen what customers need.

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome work by the team at MongoDB! Going to be fun exploring how I can put this to use in my shop!

</comment><comment><USER8> MongoDB is getting better day by day! Awsome!

</comment><comment><USER9> querying backups is an amazing feature. I like the speed how MongoDB brings new features to its products.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well well well, more interesting stuff :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Great news from a great product!

</comment><comment><USER12> its a like complete suite for db ops

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool!

</comment><comment><USER14> nice release!</comment>


Why Don't They Just Do It? Lecture on Procrastination by Expert Dr. Pychyl - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA <comment><AUTHOR> Here is information about the research group at Carleton University and a short article:

1\. [http://www.procrastination.ca/](http://www.procrastination.ca/)

2\. [http://newsroom.carleton.ca/2012/09/20/what-are-you- waiting-...](http://newsroom.carleton.ca/2012/09/20/what-are-you-waiting-for- procrastination-deconstructed/)

Also, Dr. Pychyl's book on procrastination: _Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change_ if you're interested in a read:

[https://www.amazon.com/Solving-Procrastination-Puzzle- Concis...](https://www.amazon.com/Solving-Procrastination-Puzzle-Concise- Strategies/dp/0399168125)

(Just throwing up links for more info.)</comment>


Jacques Barzun, Historian and Scholar, Dies at 104 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/arts/jacques-barzun-historian-and-scholar-dies-at-104.html

<comment><USER2> Just about a few months ago someone recommended "From Dawn to Decadence" here on HN. And I wondered how old this guy is and still doing impressive stuff. I highly recommend the book, even though the title may cause you to have doubts about it as a liberal.

<comment><USER3> I think _Dawn to Decadence_ is one of the most fulfilling books I've ever read. It is a stunningly densely woven survey of western culture since the 1500s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well worth reading. "The House of Intellect" is excellent, also "Teacher in America".

</comment><comment><USER5> _"According to his biographer, Michael Murray, he began a book called "Janus" in 2001, that "was to have been a view of present-day culture by an archaeologist of the thirtieth century." In 2008, dissatisfied, he put it aside."_

I think Stanislaw Lem had a couple of stabs at that, although he can't probably be accused of being wholly serious. That may turn out to be the best way to go about it, anyway.</comment>


Free .NET Decompiler - JustDecompile - <AUTHOR> http://www.telerik.com/products/decompiler.aspx?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=sm&utm_campaign=ad <comment><USER3>
      Auto-updating and Regular Updates

      JustDecompile is evolving quickly. Thankfully,
      from day one JustDecompile ships with built-in
      support for auto-updating when new versions are
      available. JustDecompile will be updated frequently
      during the BETA, and will  receive 3 major updates per
      year. Stop settling for stale tools, and always work
      with JustDecompile, a decompiling tool that is evolving
      and has the latest and greatest features.

Isn't that what ultimately lead to the .Net Reflector ~crisis~? Can I opt out? Because otherwise I'd rather stick to ILSpy or even the jetbrains offer.

</comment><comment><USER4> In case anyone doesn't know yet (and for future reference), ILSpy (<http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ILSpy.ashx>) is an open source alternative, and .NET Reflector was the first "popular" .NET decompiler that was used until they decided to force people to pay for it.

<comment><USER5> _ahem_ Actually, I wrote the first .NET decompiler: Exemplar, with a GUI later called Anakrino; it was even quite popular. Microsoft actually used it as a test case for their compiler occasionally. ;P Reflector existed at the time, but it was not a decompiler: it was just a class browser and disassembler. He added the decompilation features due to pressure from Anakrino, to which I was adding class browser functionality (and was orders of magnitudes faster, as I hated waiting around for Reflector to analyze the binary, which used to take forever). (Incidentally, Anakrino was open source.)

<comment><USER6> I remember using Anakrino! That was a loong time ago and thanks for doing it. What happened?

<comment><USER5> To be totally honest, I think the most correct answer to "what happened?" is simply "I was 18" (maybe 19). There are a ton of other aspects to the story that involve a lot of political backstabbing (crossing even unto seemingly unrelated projects that were actually related through different means), but I now know that is "par for the course" (sadly), and were I to be me now back then you'd probably still be using Anakrino today.

<comment><USER7> did you work for another company then?

<comment><USER5> I am confused. At the time I wrote Anakrino I was a freshman (maybe a sophomore) at the College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. I did not have a job at that time: I wrote Exemplar over a weekend while visiting home to prove a point on the .NET beta mailing list (that decompilers would happen sooner, rather than later), and then wrote Anakrino to make it easier to use.

I had previously had jobs, but I had moved on as I went to college; back home, I had been working with/for a friend of mine, Patrick Dietzen, on a web design and consulting company, CyberUniverse, which he had started when he was a freshman in high school (he had to explain to his clients what the Internet was), and then (for a brief time) for one of our clients, Professional Response and Consulting, Inc., during that last summer.

At the beginning of my sophomore year, a friend of mine decided to take something I had been helping him with a few months prior (a video game he had been working on for many many years) and attempt to start a company with it, registering for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Engineering Management annual business plan competition: I was one of the people who worked with him on that project.

<comment><USER7> You are clearly very capable. What are you doing now?

<comment><USER5> I run an alternative to the App Store for jailbroken iOS devices (specializing in everything that isn't actually an "app" at all) called Cydia; I am a member of the (probably poorly named) "iPhone Dev Team", the group that writes the popular jailbreak tools, but I really specialize in everything that happens "after the hack": acting as a sort of "community manager" for the ecosystem of users and developers, and coordinating the efforts of the various groups.

In addition to some of the popular tweaks, one thing in particular that I work on and am known for is called Cydia (Mobile) Substrate, a framework and development library used by developers to reasonably sanely (and hopefully safely) make modifications to code written by other developers and running in other processes, even if multiple people are attempting to modify the same thing; this library is the foundation of most of the interesting hacks found on the iPhone.

(I also give large numbers of talks at conferences about all of this, and so the previous two paragraphs are pretty much just me typing my introduction; if you search around on YouTube you can find me saying almost the exact same thing in numerous hilarious contexts. You might also find me "busting out an Xzibit", much to the chagrin of YouTube commenters everywhere, who also like to complain about my long beard and fingernails.)

<comment><USER7> Cydia is famous. I didn't know the name behind it. Nice to meet you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If its not open source, then the same thing will eventually happen that happened with reflector.

I'll stick with ILSpy when I work on .NET/mono

</comment><comment><USER9> There's also dotPeek.

<http://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I tried this and dotPeek (<http://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/>) when Reflector stopped being free. I found them both a little lacking - <USER2> decompiled code wasn't quite right, especially for linq expressions. I finally paid for Reflector. It was worth it for me.</comment>


Amarok 2.4 Beta 1 "Closer" Released - <AUTHOR> http://amarok.kde.org/en/releases/2.4/beta/1

<comment><USER2> > _Shiny new collection scanner, rewritten from scratch_

It seems like they do this every single release, and each time it sucks in spectacularly epic ways. Does anybody know if it _actually_ works this time? They had it working fine in 1.4.x, but have messed it up every time since.</comment>


Python web development - <AUTHOR>

Hello guys,

    I would like to develop a website with python,
 now i'm learning it via shell.i want to learn it using files like in c++,or asp.net
    what are some books that i can read to learn python web development?
    what are some tools to work with html and python.
    what are the databases that work with python well? <comment><USER2> Depending on what you are planning on doing then it would be worthwhile to at least checkout the following:

            - http://flask.pocoo.org/ or http://webpy.org/ as simple lightweight alternatives to django
            - gunicorn or uwsgi as a wsgi server
            - supervisord for controlling processes
            - mongodb, redis, sqlite3 all have fairly complete and easy to use python apis

<comment><USER3> bottle.py is great, mongodb is tarpit, nginx is a great server to throw in to the mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely check out Django - the documentation includes a great tutorial that will guide you through developing a web site. Well written and easy to follow.

For something a little more minimal, try google app engine - their getting started guide is a very simple one form web app: <http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm no authority on the subject but Django seems like the big player when it comes to Python. I also believe they've got a free book walking you through it, but again I have no clues beyond that.

There is also some stuff at the end of www.learnpythonthehardway.org focusing on web dev but it doesn't use Django.

Also, I imagine what ever text editor you used for other things, e.g TextMate or Emacs, could work well here too. I think maybe Eclipse will do plugin because, after all, there's usually a plugin for everything with Eclipse.

P.S keep me posted on how you get on :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you jwdunne. what are some books that can do web dev with python.

for example with asp.net,working with vs .net simplifies things,html is separated with codebehind(c#)

<comment><USER6> I really recommend just reading the Django docs: <https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/>

They are truly magnificent.

<comment><AUTHOR> OKi thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Easy simple ways that I can think of:

      - look up CherryPy - It's pretty simple to get started and
        a good way to learn something about both web servers and
        websites.

      - you could also check out learn python the hard way
        (2nd edition) toward the end it has some exercises on
        setting up a website using a framework based on web.py

        http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex50.html

      - of course, Django is the most popular framework and so
        will also have the most documentation.

</comment><comment><USER8> You can also consider using pyramid web framework. <http://pylonsproject.org/>

When it comes to databases I would advice using PostgreSQL but I guess anything will work fine, so you may stick to what you know best.

</comment><comment><USER9> you can try <http://mongrel2.org/> with python, look for a simple template system like <http://www.cheetahtemplate.org/> and for sql I likes postgresql or can probe some graphdb

some years ago I do some webs with python but i think that nodejs or lisp is better for web develop

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.google.at/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...](http://www.google.at/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=I+would+like+to+develop+a+website+with+python)

<comment><USER11> +1 for being hilarious sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> web2py is the only way to go!

<comment><USER13> "only way to go" ???

I've tried web2py on appengine, its one framework that would eat out your appengine resources very quickly - <http://youtu.be/QOhZkoK1Cr8> (that's just two of us hitting the instance, CPU usage - 16% - 20% in minutes)

Other than that, ah we got globals everywhere !! really makes it hard for any sane IDE to understand WTF is going on. Models are loaded alphabetically. I couldn't get unit-tests working sanely (but that might be as the project I work on replaces web2py crud with their own implementation on top of it).

Why not something very simple - Flask or AppEngine. I found writing your webapp in google appengine way more "a good and clean way to go" than web2py.</comment></comment>


This DIY Raspberry Pi Vintage Radio Pumps Out Google Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/06/this-diy-raspberry-pi-vintage-radio-pumps-out-google-music/

<comment><USER2> This is really cool. I've been looking for a fun Raspberry Pi project.</comment>


Hebrew U. scientist: Drug could eradicate Covid-19 from lungs in days - <AUTHOR> https://www.jpost.com/health-science/hebrew-u-scientist-drug-could-eradicate-covid-19-from-lungs-in-days-635028 <comment><USER2> This story why you should never take your medical news from newspapers. Somewhere toward the end, it's results in cell cultures. Animal studies pending, and human studies way out. Lot of things work differently in live tissue compared to cells in a petri dish.

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds big. Can anybody knowledgeable on the subject provide additional information?

</comment><comment><USER4> Whenever I see "could" in an article these days, I just roll my eyes. We might have actual clinical results of stories like these in months—a blind test in more months after that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Relevant xkcd: [https://m.xkcd.com/1217/](https://m.xkcd.com/1217/)

They haven't even done animal trials yet.</comment>


A Watch Guy's Thoughts on the Apple Watch After Seeing It in the Metal - <AUTHOR> http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/hodinkee-apple-watch-review <comment><USER2> Nice article. I'm wondering about this bit:

 _On an emotional level, you can 't compare [Apple Watch and mechanical watches], and that is why I don't believe many serious watch lovers (who, again, would normally be racing to spend their cash on an Apple release) will go for this._

I suspect that the "serious watch lover" market is one that doesn't really figure in Apple's market estimates at all. On the contrary, Apple has traditionally tried to go contrary to the expectations of the archetypal "serious lover of X" user when entering the market of X.

The Macintosh was not for "serious microcomputer lovers". The iPod was not for "serious MP3 lovers". The iPhone was not for "serious smartphone lovers". (Those did exist back in early 2007 -- they were the rare people who actually knew how to install stuff on their geeked-out Nokia N95 devices, or were in love with the BlackBerry keyboard. They hated the iPhone almost unanimously.)

Personally I'm not going to get a smartwatch because I hate interruptions. I hate OS X notifications; I hate it when the phone rings; I hate reading Twitter (but it's an addiction that's sometimes hard to overcome). I certainly don't want a blob on my wrist endlessly buzzing and tapping away, trying to figure out my heart rate and mood and generally being a bothersome noisy little electronic snoop.

But at the same time, I can imagine that the younger crowd wants exactly that. I think the Apple Watch will be a hit, but maybe about 1 year after the launch once the price of the low-end model comes down and a few millimetres get trimmed off.

<comment><USER3> This "serious watch lovers won't go for this" is debatable. I'm one.

He compares the Patek Philippe 3940G, along with a photograph. I have and used to wear the rarer top model of that series, with several more complications and digits in the price. I love and collect complication watches. I hate digital watches -- I've kept only one in 25 years.

Since getting the Pebble Steel with leather band (preordered and meant to cancel when I decided I wouldn't use it), I haven't worn the Patek or any of the other mechanicals during my _business_ day.

The moment to moment difference liberating me from "devices" during my business day is too valuable. I don't love it. But it changes my day.

Given your comment, it's an interesting contrast: I no longer wear any other watch besides the Pebble Steel because _I hate interruptions_ even more than I love mechanical watches. The Pebble's soft vibration and glance-ability is so much less intrusive than checking a device, I'm unwilling to trade it.

Couple the manufacturing detail described here with the benefit to the flow of one's day, and I'd argue the Apple Watch is the first digital likely to appeal to mechanical watch lovers in highly connected jobs.

<comment><USER4> You moved from high-end automatic watches to a smartwatch. In the long term, it's worth considering whether people will move from smartwatches to mechanical ones. If people get used to the features of an iWatch in their 20's, will they ever decide it's worth spending many thousands of dollars on a piece of jewelry that displaces all that functionality? If not, automatics may go the way of film cameras.

Whatever their merits as engineering marvels, expensive watches are Veblen goods that are worn to display wealth. Similar mechanisms can be put into pocket watches, but that's a much smaller market. Expensive watches have the appeal they do because they fall on the same continuum as everyone else's watch. Change the middle of the watch market and the current high end will look as absurd as a Vertu brick phone.

<comment><USER5> > If not, automatics may go the way of film cameras.

I think you're missing the fact that the mechanical watch industry is already post-apocalypse (i.e., the Quartz Crisis that started in the 70s).

The current mechanical watch industry does not exist for anything other than emotional reasons and won't see that much of an impact from another $400 electronic watch.

As a collector myself I think it's an interesting development for the industry and I'm sure I'll buy some version of the Apple Watch. I doubt it will replace one of my mechanicals as a daily wear.

<comment><USER6> I'd not go that far - look at the Seiko 5, which I find more attractive than most of the Kinetic models anyhow, and gray market in the US, its much much cheaper, several years ago I bought two identical ones for my 30th birthday, should last me my lifetime.

<comment><USER7> See also [http://www.seiko5finder.com](http://www.seiko5finder.com) (not affiliated)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link (41 yr old site creator).

I only recently got interested in mechanical watches. It's fun to have a mechanical marvel on my wrist for those times when I don't want to reach into my pocket to tell the time using an electronic marvel.

I'm not sure if I'd ever get a smart watch. Perhaps. I actually feel kind of attached to my automatic. If I stop wearing it for more than two days it will stop running. That just seems cruel to the little guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Am I really the only one to think that the Apple Watch is just _ugly_?

A big clunky square box with a rubber strap. Some dim electronic display on top. That's what it looks like at a distance. Honestly it looks like something Samsung or Sony might turn out.

Most of the guesswork 'prototypes' were far more compelling: [https://www.google.com/search?q=iwatch+prototype&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=iwatch+prototype&tbm=isch)

Even the Samsung offering looks better - we can finally do curved displays, and is there a better place to put them than in a wristwatch? [http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gears/](http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gears/)

<comment><USER10> I've got to say, this picture makes it look pretty good:

[http://static.squarespace.com/static/4fa14d3ce4b08a53fa26468...](http://static.squarespace.com/static/4fa14d3ce4b08a53fa26468e/t/540fc9bae4b00c94d884d87f/1410320838953/?format=750w)

I think as with most watches, it's a piece of your outfit. It doesn't look good on its own, and it's not supposed to.

<comment><USER11> I guess it's in the eye of the beholder - when I saw that picture, it was the one I liked the least. But, hey, that's why people buy/wear different things.

This article gave me more insight into why someone might actually buy this watch. But in reality I just don't see people clamoring for something like this. Although I never thought Steve Jobs was really a visionary, I did always recognize that he did have enough understanding of the market to see what people were looking for and provide it better than anyone else. I mean, digital music, smart phones, etc. all existed before Apple produced iTunes and the iPhone, but nobody marketed it correctly or provided exactly what people were looking for like Jobs and Apple. I just don't think people who can pull that off come along very often, and I don't think Apple has anyone (at least not facing the public) that can match what Steve did.

I'm not sure Jobs would be trying to produce a watch...I might consider what Jobs did and think he might have moved over into self driving cars or something like that. People would buy a self driving car from Apple, and it seems the market is starting to build momentum.

<comment><USER12> > But, hey, that's why people buy/wear different things.

I often wonder if the motto let's have our own tastes and buy different things is not just some recent invention intended to help us spend more money. I wonder if in the past, e.g.in the middle age, people were that much obsessed by external differentiating assets like clothes, perfumes, shoes and so on. Maybe, just maybe, this is a vast scam. And maybe without ads and tv we would be very happy to wear similar clothes, and let other things, more important things like intelligence or knowledge, differentiate us from the crowd.

<comment><USER11> In the past when new fashions were introduced, it really sucked if you didn't like them, because suddenly that's all you could buy. People didn't like it. They just didn't have much choice.

As far as a 'recent' invention, humans have been building completely unique building, architecture and paintings for our entire known history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A Timex might last over a decade if you replace the battery occasionally. A mechanical watch will offer inferior time keeping accuracy but, if maintained, can operate well for centuries. A quality mechanical watch is an heirloom item, which is one reason why watch aficionados can rationalize spending thousands on a single watch.

The Apple watch will be totally obsolete and incompatible with everything inside of five years. It's soldered-on and nearly impossible to replace battery will likely run out of charges in far less time than that. These are not heirloom items. They're _disposable_. As such, I don't expect the same kind of build quality from an Apple watch that I would from a mechanical watch. That they do offer good build quality for the money is therefore totally unexpected and rather nice.

That being said, I'm still waiting for the killer app that makes me want one of these. As a fitness tracker and GPS watch they're inferior to what's out there (chiefly because the Apple watch relies on your iPhone's GPS). I don't do workouts with a phone in my pocket. Also, so far it's unclear if the Apple watch is waterproof, and it had better be to have any use at all in this market! For almost all other applications, the effort of working with such a tiny screen and different interface outweighs the trouble of reaching into your pocket and pulling out your phone. If I want eye candy on my wrist, I'll dust off a mechanical instead of buying something that will be junk in a few years.

<comment><USER14> A rotary phone will be bolted to the wall and work for 100 years. An iPhone needs to be replaced in a few years once the battery starts to go.

This is essentially the same scenario, people wont care about them being disposable, because they wont necessarily be using it as a watch as the main feature any more. (Just like how people hardly use their phones for talking any more)

<comment><USER15> People who buy mechanical watches for 3k+ buy them because they are beautifully engineered and finished works of art. Trust me, I'm one of them. Most of us will not swap out our Tudors, our Omegas, our Patek's, or our VC's with one of these. It's just a different market.

<comment><USER16> The thing is though, once a watch can do more than tell time, the market is going to expand dramatically. If a killer app comes out, I expect the original market to get crowded out.

<comment><USER15> Well, I just don't think that most of the people who wear watches as _jewelry_ (like myself) care for a watch to do any more than it already does. I appreciate the beauty of a watch and the (old school) engineering behind it. I don't want something like this. Just a different market.

To give you some perspective, I'm a bit of a watch freak, certainly not the norm. Hell, I visit and participate in more than one watch forum on a daily basis. Mine is the general sentiment being expressed in those forums.

<comment><USER17> It's not a watch doing more than it already does; it's other devices converging onto your wrist.

You used to have to carry a camera around if you wanted to take pictures. Now that's part of the hunk of silicon in your pocket. Similarly, you used to have to carry a bunch of plastic cards in a wallet. Now that's part of the hunk of silicon on your wrist.

The hunk of silicon on your wrist isn't a "watch that does more" any more than a device that's both a camera, a PDA, a GPS, etc. is a "phone that does more." It's a convergence of several orthogonal devices that isn't a phone, or a watch, at all.

Thinking of the Apple Watch as primarily a watch obscures the value proposition. It has the _form factor_ of a watch, but it may as well not tell time at all, for all people will care about that feature of it. In fact, maybe it's better to pretend it _doesn 't_ tell time, to help you cut through to the real reasons people would want one on their wrist.

<comment><USER15> The problem is that it competes with something that I love. I have to chose one or the other and, as a watch collector/enthusiast/lover/obsessor (I seriously love watches) it will never win. Ever.

<comment><USER18> I'm willing to bet that Apple doesn't care about watch enthusiasts who will never buy anything but a mechanical watch.

<comment><USER15> I bet the same, but that's not what we're talking about here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We here on HN are mostly looking at Apple Watch as Android Wear vs. Apple Watch. This article is interesting since it shows that Apple is successful at completely ignoring these competitors and promoting Watch in a totally different market and environment, where all that matters is Brand, Design and Build. No matter if Android Wear is as good or even better, none of their manufacturers can compete in the luxury space as well as Apple may be able to.

<comment><USER20> Apple wins on hardware, loses on software.

<comment><USER21> Loses on software based on what? The software looked pretty well thought out so far

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, what a crazy review. No mention of materials, which seems odd for a 'watch guy' review. I have to go to apple.com to read: A _new aluminum alloy_? "that's 60 percent stronger than standard alloys"?? No mention of the sapphire crystals? Or the _strengthened Ion-X_ glass? As a watch guy, that's what I want to hear about. Is it lighter than titanium, or heavy like a stainless watch? Is the crystal domed? Reflective? What is the _ceramic back_? I'll be honest, this reads like a crap review.

I'm impressed by the sweeping, of course. The display looks very nice for a watch at any price range. I wish the author actually compared some $350 mechanical watches, instead of a $28,000 hourglass, a $15,000 watch too big for his cuff, a $150 mechanical Swatch, and a $700 mechanical Tissot. Instead, we get vague, non-specific swaths of comparisons:

> _Apple got more details right on their watch than the vast majority of Swiss > and Asian brands do with similarly priced watches_

> _In many cases, its offerings make what is coming out of Switzerland (or > Asia) look amateurish._

Again, no specific mention of better-than-X. Too bad. I do like that Tissot he mentioned.

I'm quite impressed by Apple's (relatively) vast array of superb finishes: other watch manufacturers could step their game up in this regard, but they would have to consolidate their designs. Also, the bracelets look _quite_ nice and I hope that competition improves things analog-side.

<comment><USER23> > _Wow, what a crazy review. No mention of materials, which seems odd for a > 'watch guy' review. I have to go to apple.com to read: A new aluminum alloy? > "that's 60 percent stronger than standard alloys"?? No mention of the > sapphire crystals? Or the strengthened Ion-X glass? As a watch guy, that's > what I want to hear about. Is it lighter than titanium, or heavy like a > stainless watch? Is the crystal domed? Reflective? What is the ceramic back? > I'll be honest, this reads like a crap review._

That wouldn't be a watch review I'd want to read, that would be the analogous of what we say in the photography forums "pixel peeping"/"measurebation" review (which, like the reviews you describe in watch circles, all too common).

<comment><USER24> Yeah, but I think "watch fans" are quite different than photographers in that respect.

Watch fans are generally pretty up-front about the fact that they like watches mainly because they're beautiful/elegant/cool artifacts. As long as a watch keeps OK time, they don't seem particularly concerned with the nominal functionality.

I think in reality, many people like cameras for similar reasons, but it's not quite as acceptable to _admit_ that. Even if someone really bought that expensive Leica because it's a beautiful jewel of precision manufacturing and high-quality materials (a perfectly fine reason if you ask me), they often put up something of a front, trying to emphasize all the ways it takes great pictures and helps their photography style...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Market Leader In A Category No One Really Asked For" -

Thats what I feel when I hear about any tech company launching a watch, be it Samsung or Apple. Maybe its just me, but since owning a smartphone, I feel I don't really need a watch. None I know wears a watch anymore. Werent watches one of the main things replaced by smartphones. Also, how many more screens can I handle? Laptops for work, tablets for browsing, smartphones for on the go tech.... and a smartwatch to do what exactly?

Maybe I am missing the whole point of smart watches. I am hoping its just not me.

<comment><USER26> This is my experience going from watch, to smartphone, to smartwatch:

The phone replaced my watch because it completed the same task while also completing many more. Why bother with a watch (for me, at least, just another thing to remember) when the phone works just as well?

A phone is not a perfect replacement, however. I constantly have to pull it out of my pocket, input a code to unlock it for various tasks, etc.

My Android watch has replaced the action of pulling my phone out of my pocket and unlocking it for basic tasks. It tells me the time, lets me dismiss phone calls, can pause and play my music, take notes, remind me of things, and display texts--and I no longer have to fish around in my pocket for a phone that takes seconds to unlock and navigate through.

As the smartphone replaced a repetitive task (remembering to wear my watch), the smartwatch replaces another repetitive task (wrestling with a phone stuck in my pocket).

<comment><USER27> yeah...people somehow manage to justify buying anything that apple makes. And nothing wrong with that, just interesting observation.

<comment><USER28> Apple makes Android watches, now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Apple is historically the kind of company that says "you can have it in any color you like, so long as it's black" for new products... and then when the product has been around for awhile, they start accessorizing it.

The iPhone is a good example: it wasn't until last year that you could have more than 2 versions (black and white)... and the 5c added many possible combinations with the off color cases. That's a product that had been on the market 6 years at that point!

So, actually offering all these different variations is quite a departure for them.

One argument for the Beats acquisition I heard was that Beats did this as well- they had many SKUs and many color combinations for each model of headphone and the argument went that managing selling a product line like that took a lot of special skill.

I wonder if this is the thing that Apple was really buying with Beats? (or more realistically, a big part of Beats value to Apple.)

<comment><USER30> Another explanation for color choices - the austere Jobs is no longer at the helm, it's Tim Cook, and Tim clearly wants to steer Apple into the fashion market - he recently hired many top execs from fashionable brands. Beats acquisition ties in as well - wearing Beats is more a fashion statement more than a technical selection.

<comment><USER31> I remember the shock and lust the original coloured iMac was greeted with. That was the first comeback Jobs hit.

Jobs was fine with colors.

<comment><USER32> Also the iPod minis.

<comment><USER33> Don't forget these guys: [http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lCcb-07Pmcc/TwXJDjDeNJI/AAAAAAAACF...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lCcb-07Pmcc/TwXJDjDeNJI/AAAAAAAACFs/Zup0sci6-_M/s1600/KeynoteScreenSnapz001.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My issue with the watch is the crown control. It just feels lazy to me to take a control mechanism made 100+ years ago for winding mechanical watches off your wrist, and repurpose it for digital control of a watch on your wrist.

Is it possible that the best possible UX solution for winding a mechanical watch and controlling a digital OS is exactly the same? Perhaps. But that seems improbable to me. It's hard to know until the thing is out in the wild, but I would expect a lot of people fiddling awkwardly with the top half of that tiny little dial as the bottom of the dial digs into their wrist. Doesn't seem terribly fun.

Or to look at it differently, both of Apple's other consumer hits (iPod, iPhone) introduced a navigation interface that was completely novel and way better than anything else on the market (iPhone => finger navigated multi- touch screen, iPod => rotary dial). A crown on a watch is definitely not novel, and I'm thoroughly skeptical it will be way better than its competition.

That being said, it's unlikely that this thing bombs. But as a test of innovation post-Steve, I'm just not seeing it. And over time, the luster of Apple will fade if there's no innovation.

<comment><USER35> The control mechanism that's lasted over 100 years obviously works well. We are not too far into the touchscreen era, and when the thing is only 1 inch on each side the touchscreen isn't going to work especially well.

Someone made a mockup a week or two ago that used the ring around normal watch face as an input mechanism. I actually thought that was kind of a neat idea. I'd kind of like to see one of the Android watchmakers give it a try. But it was more of a 'watch with some interaction' (like the old Timex Datalink) than a 'smartwatch'.

<comment><USER34> Crown mechanisms worked well for a completely different purpose. They are the easiest way to set and wind a watch that is not on your wrist. Totally different use case than controlling the watch's screen while you're wearing it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I liked this:

"But for me, it's all about the Milanese bracelet, baby. The fact that Apple even knows what this is is remarkable. I promise you not a single other tech company in the world would've spent the time to make this admittedly outdated looking option. But I absolutely love it."

Specifically "The fact that Apple even knows what this is is remarkable."

Apple knows?

Obviously Apple didn't develop the watch in a vacuum. And they have the money and resources to hire and consult with the best people in the world. So the surprise isn't that they did this what's surprising is how other equally rich companies don't tend to do things like this. In other words they seem to be lacking the motivation and creativity to even hire the right individuals.

</comment><comment><USER37> The smartwatch represents the beginning of a new era: the unbundling of the smartphone. Like Marc Andreessen pointed out with his last tweet in this storm ([https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/481554165454209027](https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/481554165454209027)), "Unbundle X from Y, but then use the liberation of X as leverage to do amazing new things with X."

This thought framework has me convinced that watch-like wearables have a place, but I think the fact that the Apple Watch doesn't "fit beneath the shirtsleeve" as OP points out is a major ding: form is as important as function for such a jewelry/tech hybrid. A 2x slimmer second generation of the Apple Watch will get /everyone/ on board.

<comment><USER38> > The fact that the Apple Watch doesn't "fit beneath the shirtsleeve" as OP > points out is a major ding: form is as important as function for such a > jewelry/tech hybrid. A 2x slimmer second generation of the Apple Watch will > get /everyone/ on board.

I agree. I think they will sell a boatload of the first generation, but two or three years down the track it will get its equivalent of the iPod-on-Windows or App-store-for-iPhone moment and take off. Everything will suddenly click and everyone will want one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Here's one thing I realized about the famous Apple "reality distortion field" with the release of this watch.

The reality distortion doesn't start with the consumer once the product is released. It starts within Apple while the product is being developed. I mean they really believed when they were building the Apple Watch "We are building a $350 device". Wheter you love the design or hate it, it's hard to deny the effort that went into designing this device, from getting the dimensions right, to the curvature of the screen and bezel camouflage to the bracelet selection. This reality distortion field only then gets transfered to the RIGHT customer who has no problem paying $350.

I still think it'll be a tough slog to get the watch through the early adopter curve and over the early majority hump simply because it has no compelling features as of yet, but that might change with a wider ecoaystem. As of right now, the main selling feature of this watch is the built in reality distortion field.

With the right offer though it might have an easier time. If you got the watch for $100 extra when upgrading your iPhone anyways that might be an easier pill to swallow than paying $350 outright. Whatever the offer may be, Apple needs to find the equivalent of the carrier subsidies which propelled smartphone adoption at the end of last decade.

TL'DR: What Apple realizes is that the way to sell their watch is to communicate to their customers that they want to wear the watch because they'll enjoy wearing it - no other reasons or features are needed. In fact many of the truly novel features (payment, identification, keyless entry...) will only scare away mainstream users. Just put in on their wrist first.. And show them the true functionality slowly and in stages.

<comment><USER40> I don't really follow what you're saying. How is designing something to match its price point distorting reality?

<comment><USER39> Because the mark-up on the actual price of producing a product is inflated due to the reality distortion field. Apple is not in the business of selling a collection of electrical conponents, silicon and labour. They are selling admission to the experience of owning an Apple product.

Apple superfans won't wear this watch because of some feature that makes their lives easier somehow. The first buyers will wear it because they enjoy wearing it from a physical and psychological standpoint.

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure your follow up clarifies your point, but it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding it.

Are you saying that the only way Apple can sell their products for such a profit (over the raw cost of materials) is because of the Reality Distortion Field? We know that they've been working on this for years with all of the associated costs of designing and developing a product in that time.

<comment><USER39> No what I am saying is that the much talked about "reality distortion field" is nothing Apple specific. It's simply the ability of a company to charge a higher mark up due to premiumness of its brand.

People don't buy Mercedes cars because of the high tech in the cars (although that's a bonus). They but them because they're Mercedes cars.

In the same way people don't buy Rolexes to tell the time (although that's a bonus). They buy them because they want to wear a Rolex.

As easy as it is for some of the snobbier techies to dismiss Samsung's or LG's R&D I am pretty sure their smart watches didn't come out of thin air. They simply end up charging less for them because they never imagined them as premium products but rather utilities. They didn't start with a "reality distortion field".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A watch which does need charging once a day with a special charger, which is not very robust, very clunky, with a UI for kids for 350+?

No way.

Apple targets the fashion market. Material might be great, but the form factor is horrible: big, clunky, ...

Basically Apple tries to sell a very tiny computer add-on in a jewelry case.

Currently I'm only using watches for training a Garmin 310xt and now most of the time a Suunto Ambit2 S. The latter is the more modern and it does the training stuff very well. I can swim with it, it has GPS and it has very good heart rate monitoring functionality (it gets the oxygen consumption and energy using heart rate variability data).

For Apple I would hope that the new Apple Watch is the equivalent of the first iPhone, which also wasn't very good on the hardware level (slow, limited connectivity, ...).

<comment><USER42> How is Ambit 2S at monitoring HR in water? Don't you need the strap for this?

<comment><USER43> From the canonical source of all questions fitness watch related: [http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/04/suunto- ambit2-review.html](http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2013/04/suunto- ambit2-review.html)

> Note that the ANT and ANT+ transmission protocols that the Ambit2 utilizes > to transmit heart rate don't transmit well underwater (about 1-2"), thus, > you won't get any heart rate data.

I believe Polar's ultrasonic sound transmission is still the only one which works reliably underwater.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great article and photos.

 _Imagine a man who grew up in the middle class, went do a decent school, got an okay job, lives in a nice apartment in some metropolitan town, maybe drives a German car and occasionally splurges on something nice for himself. Do you see him wearing the Apple Watch? I don 't._

I honestly don't think Apple are too concerned about not selling a watch to that man. The watch is targeted at the hundreds of millions of teens and 20 year olds that are already attached to their iPhone, and want another gadget to connect to it and play with.

 _Market Leader In A Category No One Really Asked For_

Which is _exactly_ what the iPad was. _Everybody_ said it was stupid and nobody would buy it, and now the sales figures speak for themselves.

<comment><USER45> >I honestly don't think Apple are too concerned about not selling a watch to that man. The watch is targeted at the hundreds of millions of teens and 20 year olds that are already attached to their iPhone, and want another gadget to connect to it and play with.

You are exactly right, which is why this is so worrying from an investment perspective.

No matter if you like it or not, the wealthy drive fashion and taste. The reason why we think of BMW, Porsche, Ferrari's as "luxury" is primarily because the rich buy them.

No stock trader is going to trade his Philippe Patek for a $350 watch that his pool-boy wears.

This is something that is not getting talked about. No one buys watches to tell time. They are almost exclusively used as status symbols.

This is the miscalculation in Apple's plan. No one needs a watch anymore. Trying to make one relevant for a purpose _other_ than status symbol is going to be tough.

They should've made a "smart band" that connects to any watch face. That would've been a clever strategy.

<comment><USER46> > No one buys watches to tell time.

I do. I don't go anywhere without my watch (I have two, in fact). I purchased a $300 watch (after numerous Timex watches dying in a year) in high school that I've worn daily for 5+ years; I don't see that changing anytime soon. I hate pulling out my phone just to check the date / time—I always get distracted by something. If I need the time or date quickly, I look at my wrist.

<comment><USER47> And if that was the only reason you had a watch, you'd have a $5 casio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Interesting that he assumes all the strap options are available at the "starting price" of $350.

<comment><USER49> To a guy who own an hourglass that cost more than my prius, I suspect that all of the options for the apple watch are so negligibly priced as to be "free".

<comment><USER48> He specifically states that the straps are unusually high quality for the $350 price point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Good article. I really agree with his comment:

"It's directly competing for the same real estate (i.e wrist), where as if we had seen a bracelet of some kind announced yesterday, those early adapters, myself included, would be begging Apple to take their pre-pre-pre-order"

I really did want the apple watch to be more of a bracelet and something that could be complimentary to an analog watch with all the messaging, notification, health aspects in tact. More than anything, the health tracking seems to be the most relevant for myself, and for that, I see a JawBone Up or something comparable that I can rest next to my analog watch as a potentially better option.

The design is brilliant, it's just not for me. However, iPhone 6 looks great so not like Apple won't be taking my money :)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm sure the author is very knowledgeable on the watch industry and by no means I'm challenging his taste and feel of fashion.

I'm just curious that when he made claim of "The Apple Watch is by far the best smartwatch", what is this claim based on? Did he try all the other high end smart watch like Moto 360 or G watch R? If not, is it really fair to make a strong public claim like this?

<comment><USER52> A watch is more jewellery than timekeeping appliance. Appearance and provenance/authenticity seem key. (You can tell this is the case, because people will spend thousands of dollars on wind-up watches that stop telling the time entirely after 2 days or whatever - even though they could instead have bought some cheap digital POS for £5, that will require adjusting about once a year.) And there's not much in the way of provenance for a computer- powered wristwatch from Apple... so the review focuses, and quite rightly I think, on what the watch looks like, and how it feels on the wrist.

The timekeeping aspect is purely secondary, since, thanks to modern technology, we know it will keep the time. My phone keeps the time, my laptop keeps the time, my TV keeps the time, my fucking _oven_ keeps the time. Keeping the time is a solved problem.

<comment><USER53> There are only a couple of options in your list that's synced to a reasonable timekeeping source - keeping _accurate_ time is something we only solved "recently"*

*Although, in the US, wasn't there a timekeeping radio broadcast?

<comment><USER54> There still is: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWVB](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWVB)

I remember having a cheap Timex in the mid 2000s that synced off this. I found it a great improvement to the watch experience; my synchronization source of choice before that was a wall clock also powered off that same signal. I also have vague memories of a phone number you could call to get the accurate time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> One thing the author is missing: the prices _begin_ at 350$. The milanaise strap he shows might be worth as much alone. For 350$ you probably get the cheap sport watch, while the beautiful ones might cost a good 1000. Which makes the wealth argument less strong. But let's see how this comes out.

<comment><USER56> Well, keep in mind the author mentions that he saved and bought an Ikepod Hourglass, which according to this link[1] costs $28,500. He also posits (rhetorically) that a 25-years-old would typically want an Omega watch, which typically starts at $2500.

His article makes some great points about the watch itself, as he clearly knows what he's talking about. But I would take his non-strictly-watch-related opinions with a bit of skepticism, as I don't think he's playing in the same league as the rest of us.

[1] [http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/2011/3/29/the-ikepod- hourglass-...](http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/2011/3/29/the-ikepod-hourglass-by- marc-newson-quite-possibly-the-coole.html)

<comment><USER55> Right. I know the Hodinkee blog well actually, and I agree with you. I was just pinning on the first part of the article, where he compares the Apple Watch with sub-350$ watches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Apple is a marketing/sales retail machine. This watch is just another thing for them to sell with a high-end, glossy look and feel that fits with their strategy of dominating the sectors they want to control. I'm not surprised it doesn't do all the things HN folks were looking for (e.g. requires pairing with iPhone, not a standalone device with its own internet connectivity/gps).

On the other hand, I think they delivered a nice product that will fit perfectly in an Apple store, engaging swarms of shoppers with lots of disposable income.

<comment><USER30> > requires pairing with iPhone, not a standalone device with its own internet > connectivity/gps

Standalone GPS is fine (even preferred - not replacing a forerunner) but another multi-band cell-radio? Simply sounds like a bad idea - the form factor is too small to make that feasible or interesting - for now.

<comment><USER58> Aliexpress is overflowing with Android devices with multi-band cell radios. Some of them even dual-SIMs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Another site with an always-present header that completely fails keyboard paging. It is really frustrating how many pages break such a basic function. Forcing the user to manually adjust the positioning every time they page is a really great way to make them lose interest and go somewhere else.

<comment><USER60> You should switch to Firefox. With Firefox, we take those headers into account when keyboard paging and everything "just works."

<comment><USER61> And I appreciate it. But it would be nice to have some built-in way to nix them. Right now I'm browsing on a MacBook Air 11" which has just 768 pixels of height. Between the menu bar, firefox UI and fixed site header, I'm left with a claustrophobic slit to view the content in.

And then I love to browse many websites by zooming in and leaning back; but once you zoom in a few steps these headers magnify to the point of absurdity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I like this, because it dispenses with the "Apple lover" angle and instead focuses on the existing watch market at the $350 price point. It should be clarified, though, that $350 is the base price and some configurations are probably going to go up to double and triple that.

<comment><USER63> Here's something that's different from the existing watch market and Apple's watch. Most people who pay $350 or more for a watch will wear it for years and years.

The Apple Watch, as beautiful as it is -- is still an electronics/computing device that has obsolescence built into its life cycle (I'm also curious if the battery can be replaced).

Unlike an analog watch, people will want to upgrade to watches with faster CPUs and other new technology. And if you use mobile phones and tablets as a model, that could translate to every couple of years.

While I believe that initial sales will be impressive, it'll be interesting to see how a premium product like this will perform in the long term.

<comment><USER62> Yeah, that is a big difference. Dropping $600-ish on a watch (figure pulled from thin air) is one thing, but usually when people do that, it's gonna be their watch for many years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I know many people who will happily spend $350 on an iWatch who wouldn't even consider a mechanical watch at any price. I think this watch is for them.

I also think mechanical watch makers are going to wake up one day and realize their market is getting old and dead.

<comment><USER65> I myself, and many of my friends, fall into that category. I realize for some that a mechanical watch may be a fashion icon or status symbol but for most, it's utterly useless. It tells time and my phone already does that.

<comment><USER66> Ironically, when you get your phone out to check it, you're doing exactly the same as people did 100 years ago with pocketwatches,

Pocketwatches were replaced by wristwatches the instant it became possible to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _" and in fact, to my left is an Ikepod Hourglass (designed by Marc Newson) that I wanted from the minute I laid eyes on it. I saved up and bought it because it's a perfect object, and even those people who don't care about time, or design, agree that it's beautiful."_

By "watch guy" he means someone who dropped $28,500 on a hourglass.

<comment><USER67> I cannot understand this "Watch lover" crowd. That hourglass looks ridiculous, I wouldn't buy that at a garage sale. And even with all the things he didn't "love" about the watch, he still is going to buy one (but might not daily wear). I'd say that's a win for Apple with version 1.0.

That said, I am not the market for a smart watch at all. I don't wear jewelry, and my phone already does a great job of telling time and showing me messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I think the point about Swiss makers being in trouble with the younger generation is valid. I'm 28, and have always had a great appreciation for fine watches. This is mainly because I grew up seeing my dad appreciate them, and many of the people I'd classify as successful were appreciating them. I wonder though, how many in my generation will teach their children - intentionally or not - that a reasonably successful individual owns the best smartwatch to control their Tesla and their smart home, and not a Rolex? It isn't a stretch to think Rolex could partner with someone to be that brand of smartwatches. Today, smartwatches aren't competing with classic timepieces. In 10 years, there's a real chance that they will.

<comment><USER69> A Rolex is a complete waste of money. For less than a very small fraction of the price of a Rolex you can get a watch that will perform just as good or possibly even better.

The only reason Rolex owners have Rolexes is to show they can afford one. And they can't wait to tell you about it.

Parents that teach their children that successful people buy overpriced trinkets are losing an opportunity to teach their kids the difference between 'good enough' and conspicuous consumption.

<comment><USER70> Tell that to every girl wearing ear rings or a diamond ring or a guy wearing a necklace. People accessorize. Get over it. For less tha the price of a mid range rolex you can also buy a rubidium atomic oscillator. I'm failing to see your point?

<comment><USER69> The point is, to the point of being pointless: that you can buy stuff because it has utility or that you can buy stuff for signalling purposes.

A Rolex is signalling stuff masquerading as utility stuff.

The utility value of a Rolex is approximately $50 (the price of a half-decent watch that will tell the time accurately for many years to come, assuming your phone doesn't already do that for you). The rest is signalling value (and in the case of a gold one some intrinsic value).

I'm perfectly ok with you not seeing my point. In the end the guy with the jeans and the t-shirt is quite possibly a lot wealthier than the guy with the Ferrari and the Rolex. (Especially when they're not bought with cash.)

<comment><USER71> I'm not sure it's always just about utility vs. signalling. I have no care for social signalling at all, but if I had money to throw away I would probably buy some things which you classify as signalling devices. For sure, though, I certainly wouldn't buy a blinged out gold Rolex (hideous) but rather something like a Speedmaster (on which I'd probably put a NATO or a velcro strap), and certainly not a sports car you can drive on public roads. Sure, both of these machines don't have that much practical utility, but they are engineering works of art. Just as some people collect art to show off their money, or store capital, some collect it because they appreciate good taste and amazing craftsmanship. It's still irrational but I wouldn't put it in the same bag as signalling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I thought Apple would say: the market ain't ready for a smartwatch. Nobody wants to pay for a watch that has to charge every 24 hours (or less).

That's immediatly the biggest mistake from the Moto360, the watch looks awesome... But the battery life is too short :(

<comment><USER14> I only ever charge my iPhone at night next to my bed, if I just have to put the watch on the charging stand (or whatever) at the same time as my phone I don't think people are going to care too much.

They will need enough battery life though to go from morning to the next morning I would say, as you don't exactly want to have your watch stop working after a night of drinks after work...

<comment><USER42> you do not want your watch run out of juice around midnight, at the nightclub, or on the dark road

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> In one of the photos I could see a reflection in the Apple Watch of the camera man taking the photo. I can't help but think that that big honking camera will be replaced one day by the very thing he's taking the photo of.

<comment><USER74> Seems unlikely if you know anything at all about optics.

<comment><USER75> I believe one day software will be advanced enough to reduce the number of necessary lenses for quality photos.. "Software eating DSLR".

<comment><USER76> Is that belief in any way based on physics?

<comment><USER75> No. It is based on the advancement of software that can de-blur images.

For example: [http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/leojia/deblurring.htm](http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/leojia/deblurring.htm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> The hourglass referenced in the article costs $28,000, here's the start of his review about it:

 _Let 's begin this post by letting you know, right from the start, that this hourglass costs $28,500. Now, as you continue to read, you will notice how that number becomes more and more rational in your mind._

Not quite for me. It's still seeming absurd.

[http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/2011/3/29/the-ikepod- hourglass-...](http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/2011/3/29/the-ikepod-hourglass-by- marc-newson-quite-possibly-the-coole.html)

<comment><USER78> A lot of the high end watch world is focused on craftsmanship. Think of it like buying a painting, but instead of oil & canvas you get steel, gears & springs (or glass and...nanoballs in this case).

Anyone can buy a clock - you have one in the corner of your computer right now. People who spend this level of money are more interested in time keeping sculpture.

<comment><USER77> Both watches and the hourglass seem closer to a lithograph than an original piece of art, and I wouldn't pay $28k for a lithograph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I'll bet 5 bucks with someone here that it will flop (as in, won't become a regular product). My reasons for winning the bet:

-Although it looks great, it doesn't look like a great watch, it just looks like a beautiful Apple product. The thing is, on this specific product, as opposed to all their other products, Apple is competing with an established design lineage that goes back for _decades_ , and wristwatches have _always_ been about good taste and good design, so the competition on the aesthetics front is not so easy for Apple as it was on their other products (meaning computer hardware/software makers suck tremendously in regards to design, but watchmakers are champions of it).

-Extending on previous reason: it's as if Apple decided to go the eyeglass route and take on Google. Easy, because Glass is downright ugly and too geeky. So Apple makes its own beautiful glass, which is still a little geeky, and then they have to compete with Ray-Ban, Gucci, Prada, wathever.

-Short battery life sucks for a wristwatch.

-People already have the functionality on the iPhone, and the iPhone is already pretty portable.

-Short battery life sucks _a lot_ for a wristwatch, come to think of it.

 _edit:_ formatting.

<comment><USER80> You might want to define "flop" and specify a timeframe if you're offering a bet like this

Some suggestions:

* will sell less than x units in the y months after it becomes available

* is discontinued within y months

* will not make it to version n

* will bring in less than $x revenue/profit in [timeframe]

* will lose its link at the top of the apple website within y months

It's also hard to tell what Apple's internal expectations are. They may expect to only sell 100, or they may be expecting to sell 100 million. My guess is it's a "feeler" product to guage demand while they work on v2

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Personally I dont want any watch with at least 1 week of battery time with heavy use.

My current watch has 5 fucking years of battery time. Some are more or less working indefinitely.

I like that my watch looks nice, but I also like that its functional. Running, on a bike, what not, its actually much more convenient than grabbing a smartphone.

What I don't get, is why current watch makers don't make a smartwatch from their point of view:

a regular watch, with connectivity to the phones, that can do a couple of things like vibrate in a variety of ways - OK - citizen actually tried that and it sort of work but there is no attention to details.

You want the watch to reliably vibrate if u get a msg or notification that you setup. You want it to vibrate differently for navigation depending if you gotta go right or left according to your phone (so you dont need to grab the phone while on a bike for example!).

Neither work well on the citizen, and the connection eventually times out, that sort of stuff. Too bad.

<comment><USER82> Do you take your watch off at night.. leave it on a bedstand?

How much harder with it be to tap the magnetic power thingie on? Not at all.

When Apple Watch 2.0 comes out, will battery life be longer? Quite probably.

This is just the beginning. If people can get used to charging their phone 1-3x a/day, they can plug their Watch in at night. Not perfect, but I don't think this is a deal breaker.

<comment><USER83> And when you go on a trip, you have to take one more charger...

<comment><USER14> Presumably the inductive part of the charger will be accessible as an adapter to a lightning cable.

There were mentions at the event that the gold/rose gold version of the watch come in a 'charger stand' box that takes a lightning cable at the back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> With the risk of sounding like an elitist prick (not the intention, and I'm really not) that photo of a Patek Phillipe and Apple Watch side by side on his wrist to me screams: This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a digital picture of a fake butterfly. A masterpiece of craftsmanship, good taste and skill, side by side with a mass market simulation of those all those things sporting a tacky, pointless image of an animal.

I'm not an Apple fan but I do appreciate their mostly good taste and design. However, this watch is hideous. It's the first object they produced since their resurrection in 1997 that I instantly find ugly. Really, really ugly. If it was an aeroplane it wouldn't fly well. I wouldn't bet it will be unsuccessful though, there's a lot of people with bad taste out there.

</comment><comment><USER84> While I have only a few watches I certainly am not on the level of a collector nor do I own any beyond the five hundred range. I appreciate a good watch but I appreciate good design and great function as well and I just don't see it here.

I do not need a slaved device. To me that is a redundant device. If anything I would love a wrist mounted phone and would willingly give up much of the smart phone functionality I have now. Simple text messages, voice mail, gps, and similar would be needed. Full on email, taking pictures, and browsing not so.

Besides being boring, ugly, whatever, the worst offense here is that you cannot buy it. Apple should go back to announcing products you can buy today, not next year.

Slaved device, I guess we should be thankful it isn't cable attached

</comment><comment><USER85> Looks like this is not a fight just between Apple and Android. So many players, so much history, so much subjectivity that...

Apple and Android are sure to win! :)

But seriously, only these two have the tech. We never wanted those old watches these smart watches are being compared with. And we sure as hell are not going to buy them now!

None of these so called watch makers make phones. Or tablets. Touch screens. Voice recognition. They are clueless about ecosystems. Watch companies have managed to have a strap ecosystem, that's all. That's laughable and lazy for a "big" business. I continue to believe watch incumbents are obsolete. If anything, this is their last chance to jump onto the bandwagon now that tech companies have put our interests back into watches.

<comment><USER86> I think you underestimate watch makers. The watch industry already survived the 'quartz crisis' back in the late 70s and early 80s. Companies like the Swatch Group own semiconductor subsidiaries specialized in ultra-low power integrated circuits, micro controllers, lcd displays, sensors, tablets and so on. They also own battery manufacturers and have years of know how in this field.

<comment><USER85> Thanks I didn't know this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> My only question with those watches is the screen, i.e does it look like one ? I have a friend with a LG watch and the back light is annoying.

Years ago I thought digital photo frames were an excellent (and still relevant) idea but ultimately a failure because they looked like screens. And screens are distracting, eyes are drawn to them.

I hate TVs in bars, people unconsciously watched them even if they don't care about what is broadcast and forgot they are with people.

</comment><comment><USER88> A specific-purpose accessory _can 't_ be as big or as revolutionary as Apple ][e, Mac, iPhone or iPad.

More like apple TV, iPod, console, kindle. Still scope for a multi-billion dollar market though.

Just the kind of thing Sony might have made in its heyday, and Apple can dramatically improve it iteratively, limited only by the wrist-space form- factor. Replace your wallet (payments, ID, memberships), car keys, TV remote; monitor blood sugar, home-automation etc.

</comment><comment><USER89> My thought after reading this—a great product would be an actual analog watch (quartz or mechanical) with the same styling and finishes that the Apple Watch has, with a much thinner case, that customers would use with Apple's bands. Take advantage of the immense design effort that went into the watch, but set aside the smart watch idea.

I'd buy that watch today for the same price as the Apple Watch.

<comment><USER14> I wouldnt be surprised if deal extreme has a 'watch body' that will be compatible with apple watch bands before the apple watch even hits the market

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Isn't anyone else bothered by the lousy typography of both the logo (<apple>WATCH) and the typography on the screen?

The fonts are too loosely spaced, and the screen layouts looked amateurish, no better than the Android-based wearables.

I know this sounds like a nit-pick, but it's not. It's not like Apple to blow it at this level. They need to get it right at every level, especially the UI (and the brand).

<comment><USER62> Literally everyone I have seen remarking on the typography has said the exact opposite. And I concur with them, I think the type and the new typeface is one of the best parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Dear mankind:

I don't want a smartwatch to be the complement of a smartphone.

I want a smartphone to be the a complement of a smartwatch... actually, a smartphone sans the phone, like an ipod touch or a tablet.

My idea for a smartwatch is to have the modules that make a smartphone possible there: cellular antenna, gps, bluetooth, fitness tracking, etc. Baterry-unfriendly modules like Wi-Fi must be discarded.

The use case for a smartwatch as a standalone device would be the following one:

\- Connect a Bluetooth headset to listen to music (extra points, if a micro sd slot is included)

\- Receive messages and answer to them with predefined text (ex. I'm on my watch, I'll text you later)

\- Receive calls and call to existing contacts/emergency numbers, a proper dialer is not required at all

\- Basic GPS directions to predefined locations (ex. Home/Work/Gym/School)

\- Fitness tracking

\- Wireless charging

For the rest of features, and to enjoy a proper dialer, proper texting, proper navigation, etc., just connect the ipod/tablet/whatever to it via bluetooth.

The killer feature: Having to carry no smartphone at all.

You can use the multimedia system of the car to take advantage of the watch, the steering wheel could have a wireless charging module next to it.

Another accessory could be a desktop keyboard with a wireless charging module.

And at home, you could have a proper charging dock.

<comment><USER92> Man, the sense of entitlement. They can't fit all that stuff in there yet. Give it a few years, man. It's amazing what they can fit in there already.

<comment><USER91> Few years? The Chinese already have done it since many years ago, although pre-2014 models were bulky:

[http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2014-New-Design-GPS- Tr...](http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2014-New-Design-GPS-Tracker- Android_1780923094.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> What about privacy? There's something reassuring about putting an iPhone into one's pocket. Messages showing up for anyone to see doesn't really appeal to me.

I ran this page through NLTK's Sentiment Analysis and the the score is NEGATIVE 0.8, Stanford's never finished!

</comment><comment><USER94> This is not a watch, it's a communication accessory's accessory.

</comment><comment><USER95> If Motorola were able to release iteration 2 of the Moto 360 by the time the Apple Watch comes out, and make it iOS compatible, they could single-handedly kill the Apple Watch.

<comment><USER96> There's zero evidence so far that Motorola can even last 12 months in this market, and lots of evidence to say they can't, like their abject failure in the cellphone market. Ludicrous to say that their lukewarm Moto 360 effort, featuring a CPU that's 4 years old, terrible performance, cheap look-and-feel, and extremely poor battery life, could even be a serious threat to Apple's engineering efforts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> The Apple Watch looks beautiful when photographed by itself. It looks absurd to me when photographed on someone's arm.

In time perhaps history will prove me wrong.

</comment><comment><USER98> this watch is an add-on to a phone when people are extending their contracts (you know "extend your contract with a new iphone and you get an apple watch for free" kind of deal) to get some of android base back, other than that it's useless.

I would not wear one even if it was given to me for free in every configuration possible.

</comment><comment><USER99> Was the battery life announced? Cannot find a reference anywhere which makes me wonder...

<comment><USER35> No, but the keynote made a mention of how easy it is to charge every night. Rumor is that it's about a day and Apple is trying to optimize it before release.

<comment><USER99> Gotcha, did not see it due to technical issues. Apple brags about battery life in every other product they release. IMO reviewers need to hold off until real life battery life is released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> I'm still not sure what kind of information I want to be delivered via my watch...

</comment><comment><USER101> meh, Why are all this kind of watch reviews focusing on the looks rather than what you can do with it. Dunno I would be far more interested in what you can do with how you want to use it rather than how incredible wonderful it looks.

</comment><comment><USER102> The digital crown will snap off, and people will be pissed.

</comment><comment><USER103> This is the best ad ever for a Patek Philippe 3940G.

</comment><comment><USER104> now we just need a dumb seiko 5 or casio g-shock with a dim LED to do 'less intrusive' notifications..

</comment><comment><USER85> Nice photos of the watch in there

</comment><comment><USER105> I think I was too initally hard on the watch, or expected too much? After they thin it out it might just get younger people wearing watches again?

</comment><comment><USER106>

</comment><comment><USER107> Apple Watch is not a watch.

It's a computer on your wrist that will be used for special tasks where little but precise information is required.

It's all about presence, NFC, iBeacon, sensors, iTags, etc.

<comment><USER108> Yes, let's just completely ignore the aesthetics of the device and focus only on the technology. It's almost as if you didn't read the article and the finer points about the design of the face, straps, etc. that the author went into such painstaking detail about.

He didn't even mention _any_ of the things you just talked about, instead deferred it to another article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> I understand how a watch guy would have strong feelings about the emotions and ideas behind a watch. But I think he is missing the greater context.

When an object has a permanence in utility and form, we have a certain relationship with it. This is the kind of emotion and relationship we have with watches. But the world changes, and very soon it will be competing against a different type of relationship. Our relationship with wearables may be skewed more to utility than heirloom. But that's OK because wearables represent the mesh of software with hardware, and software gives the ability to evolve. We will no longer have the singular relationship with one watch, but a broad relationship with a series of evolving wearables that slowly become more and more essential to our lives.

So no, we won't have the same emotions and same relationship with wearables as we did with watches. But that's just where the universe will be going.

</comment><comment> Ar-Curunir This article is just falling over itself to praeise the Apple Watch.

The Apple Watch doesn't look particularly sleek or modern, instead it looks like someone shrunk the iPhone 3GS and put a strap on it.

The author picks up random watches that do not look nice as a comparision for the Apple Watch, but ignores watches in roughly the same price range that do look better?

For instance, look at [1] or [2], both are from Tissot, both look elegant and classy, and both are the same price as the Apple Watch.

The article obssesses over Apple's decision making regarding straps, but uses really, really biased sounding words. For instance:

> The fact that Apple even knows what this is is remarkable. I promise you not > a single other tech company in the world would've spent the time to make > this admittedly outdated looking option. But I absolutely love it.

Anybody who visits a watch store will find watches with that sort of strap a dime a dozen.

Further evidence of Apple fanboyism can be found later on in the article, when the author states that the new iPhone 6, which is not available for use yet, as "the absolute best offering in the category in both form and function".

I am not implying that liking Apple products makes one a fanboy (I own and really like my MBPr), but this article isn't of any really journalistic standard, and yet has reached the top of HN.

<comment><USER110> I for one am impressed by your categorisation of the 1957 Speedmaster and Patek 3940G as "random watches that do not look nice". You're probably not the target audience for Hodinkee.

The article acknowledges some of the shortcomings of the watch, but one thing should be obvious: this author is someone that understands the little differences in quality that differentiate a $350 watch from a $35,000 one. When it comes to the points he makes about build quality, I believe him. I'm also quite impressed by what I've seen of the bracelets, especially the ultra- thin deployant. If you've ever worn a deployant strap you'll understand what a big deal that is.

I do not think Apple has got everything right with this, but I'm increasingly realising they've done again what they always do well: completely ignore conventional wisdom about what makes a good product and focus on the "ownership experience".

As with other new Apple products, the first gen isn't very good. By the time it hits 3rd gen, all the initial complaints will have been resolved. They just need to find a market in the meantime, which is neither the Casio owner nor the Rolex owner, but I have confidence the market exists and this will do well enough to survive and evolve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> Call me cynical but how do we know that Apple didn't secretly just pay him to write this review?

<comment><USER112> Call me cynical, but how do I know that Samsung didn't secretly just pay you to cast doubt on positive articles about the watch?

<comment><USER29> Well, there is evidence of Samsung astroturfing blog authors. One fellow I followed had a rather obscure blog, and then one day he talked about samsung and suddenly had hundreds of negative comments (and not of the american pro- android kind you see here.) So, he checked his logs and found they were coming from a limited IP range in Korea.

Anecdote, of course.

But I think assuming that someone who posts a blog posting in a blog about watches with a history of writing about watches is probably not so easily bought.

<comment><USER112> > But I think assuming that someone who posts a blog posting in a blog about > watches with a history of writing about watches is probably not so easily > bought.

That was, in a roundabout way, my point; it seems silly to cry "omg, Apple shill!" with no evidence beyond "he said something nice about the iWatch" (and it is equally as silly for me to cry "omg, Samsung shill!" on nothing but the basis of "he said something unkind about Apple"). I'm afraid absurd tone doesn't come through well on the internet.

This is precisely the kind of article I'd expect from a watch aficionado. One can look at it with a suspicious eye, but unless there's something to indicate that they were bought, it's silly to call them out as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> It's interesting to me that there has been very little mention of the fact that the Apple Watches (at least the watches we've seen so far) are purely for right handed people who wear watches on their left hand. If you tried wearing these on your right hand, you'd be reaching across the face to use the digital crown.

There are two logical solutions for this:

1) Sell a left handed model as well. You can expect there to be a 90/10 skew for righties just because of genetics, but that can be accounted for in manufacturing runs.

2) Allow the watch to be flipped upside down for the right wrist. While technically this would work, I highly doubt Apple would design something to be worn upside down.

Or they can just say fuck it and only make watches that make sense for right handed people. I guess we'll find out in a few months.

<comment><USER114> We already know – they went with #2. [http://www.iclarified.com/43778/apples- iwatch-is-reversible-...](http://www.iclarified.com/43778/apples-iwatch-is- reversible-for-lefthanded-users)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to add POPCNT to the next RISC-V base or "C" set? - <AUTHOR> RISC-V is an important development, but its academic roots show in its poor bit-manipulation capabilities. The Bitmanip extension, while an impressive effort, has languished, and in any case will not be implemented in most chips even if ever adopted, as it appears huge, and any particular application needs only a subset of it.<p>A huge part of the value of the Bitmanip extension would be provided by a single, minimal POPCNT instruction. How does one go about getting that into the next release of the base or "C" compressed instruction set? Is there any possibility of getting it into  "C" compressed but not base set? Of Bitmanip claiming any part of the "C" code space? <comment><USER2> Agreed on the sentiment.

There is zero chance of getting it into the base, C or even M sets, as they have existing implementations. But maybe a lone Z (without the usual lowercase letters) could mean just this instruction.

I found this to be a helpful discussion: [https://www.embecosm.com/2019/10/22/gcc-risc-v-bit- manipulat...](https://www.embecosm.com/2019/10/22/gcc-risc-v-bit-manipulation- extension/)</comment>


My first HTML5 game - lightcycles (with source) - <AUTHOR> http://jdstraughan.com/2013/02/14/my-first-game-html5-lightcycles/

<comment><AUTHOR> You can play my HTML5 lightcycle game:

640x480 mode here: <http://jsfiddle.net/PxpVr/17/embedded/result/> 320x240 mode here: <http://jsfiddle.net/PxpVr/16/embedded/result/>

The source code is available on GitHub: <https://github.com/JDStraughan/html5-lightcycles></comment>


Modern Car Is a Privacy Nightmare - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/your-modern-car-is-a-privacy-nightmare-1840483775 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21816479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21816479)

<comment><AUTHOR> Never came up as a dupe when submitted

<comment><USER2> That's because we don't have software, only humans, to detect when two different articles are about the same story. The humans take longer and only work some of the time.

Actually, if anyone knows how to write software to do that, I'd love to hear about it. It's not an easy problem.

By the way, submitters are supposed to do this work too. The guidelines ask: " _Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter._ " This article was a clear case of one article reporting on another article. If you'd submitted the latter, then the software would have let you know it was a dupe.

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


From OS X to Linux - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nobugware.com/post/2017/back_from_osx_to_linux/ <comment><USER2> 4 Ghz i7 with 64 GB of ram sounds like a monster.

I also switched from Mac OS to Linux and it's like a breath of fresh air again. It's something about Linux that feels so right. No corporate messages anywhere.</comment>


Lend wings to Rails development with Hermes (A shell development framework) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.new-bamboo.co.uk/2012/11/05/lend-wings-to-rails-development-with-hermes

<comment><USER2> Honest question - why would you use Tmux for local sessions?

I always thought the advantage of programs like Screen and TMux were that you could persist remote sessions over bad connections, or from different terminals (e.g., going home from the office and keeping the session alive).

For purely local sessions, I don't see an advantage over iterm + vim. That also seems to be the conclusion on StackOverflow [0]:

        [0] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10015575/tmux-vs-iterm2-split-panes

[edit] - thanks for the feedback guys, I'll give it a try

<comment><USER3> Hi,

Claudio (one of the developers) here.

The motivation is that you can interact with the content of the panes both with shortcuts and programmatically, as an example I can link you this video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JXwS7z6Dqic)

The other advantage is that if for any reason iTerm crashes or is closed by mistake, you can resume your session.

<comment><USER4> ie: for all those times I press ctrl-q accidently instead of ctrl-1

<comment><USER3> I'm with you there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool!</comment>


Microsoft security guru: Jot down your passwords (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-security-guru-jot-down-your-passwords/ <comment><USER2> I still enforce this.

I would much rather that my users utilise encrypted password databases than write down their passwords. It is significantly easier for them to use (try typing a decently long password without errors), easier to change passwords, and comes with better security as they don't have a list of passwords readily available (generally under their keyboard).</comment>


Ask HN: What would you suggest for a first time web developer. - <AUTHOR>

Hi
  I am an above average software developer but mostly I have worked in projects unrelated to web technology. I wish to pick up one of the web technology stack so as to work on some of my ideas and side projects?
There are so many technologies around web stack like node, django, spring, php , RoR, etc. Which one can I pick up a bit faster and get to work? I code mainly in C. <comment><USER2> Which languages (other than C) do you like? What do you want to do as your first web project?

How familiar are you with HTML,CSS, and Javascript?</comment>


Verizon sues city to avoid paying 5G fees, says the FCC has its back - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/verizon-sues-city-to-avoid-paying-5g-fees-says-the-fcc-has-its-back/ <comment><USER2> Cities need to step away from trying to regulate federally regulated entities, its never a good thing.</comment>


How to choose colours everyone likes - <AUTHOR> http://www.creativepro.com/article/how-choose-colors-everyone-likes

<comment><USER2> This is bogus. Basically the popular combinations are "liked" because (a) they are colorful, and (b) they have value (lightness) contrast, whereas the others are both less colorful, and also have low value contrast. Completely removing the color information from these suggested schemes reveals that value contrast alone accounts for nearly all of the suggested effect.

It's easier to make combinations that satisfy conditions a and b using light yellow and dark red or blue, etc., ... but all the part about picking colors that "shift in accordance with the natural brightness" is nonsense. (I can pick colors that shift "opposite the natural brightness" which look just as good.)

Anyone wanting to really understand color should hit the books, or—if confined to the internet—should take a look at <http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wcolor.html> and in particular this page: <http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color11.html>

<comment><USER2> For those who don't believe me, here's an explicit graphical rebuttal to the article:

<http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/ycnews/nonsense.png>

<comment><USER3> I actually find the original palettes to be more pleasing than your reconstructed ones due to the hue shift. I can't help but go with what my eyes are telling me.

<comment><USER4> The original idea is that the ones on the left are uglier than the ones on the right because of their brightness. The rebuttal switches the brightness levels, which results in the _same progression_ , from ugly to less ugly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know, out of all the things a new start-up has to worry about, picking the right colours is down there with ensuring scalability to amazon levels in terms of priority.

I've been around the web for close to 15 years now, and all I can say is that the only constant is you will not get consensus on matters of creative taste.

This is a fruitless exercise to occupy your time with, IMO.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. I thought the color scheme was very important because you only get 30 seconds or so to convince a first-time user to stay for the 31st second.

<comment><USER7> This is true, except the actual number is a lot closer to 3 than 30.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm quite a fan of <http://kuler.adobe.com/> for colour schemes - hit the slider controls icon to get to the good stuff, where you can apply one of six rules to help you select related colours

</comment><comment><USER9> Another way to say this is, "How to cater to the lowest common denominator".

<comment><USER10> I've had more than the usual number of opportunities to trot out this quote lately:

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." - H.L. Mencken</comment></comment>


Image of the Project Management Profession - Study Results - <AUTHOR> http://corporategeek.info/image-project-management-profession-study-results

<comment><USER2> <http://corporategeek.info/files/img/study_image_pm/st6.png> is very telling. Especially the two "red lights" highlighting differences in perceived needs of project managers; I completely agree with them. It is not uncommon to come across over-confident-but-clueless-about-the-domain people in key project management positions. The saddest thing is they get away with it so well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. I am a project manager and I do agree with you. When there are cases where i feel that i am in over my head (technically wise), i try as much as possible to recognize my limitations to the team and ask the experts in the team to take the decisions and formulate the direction where we should all go.</comment></comment>


Bedroom Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2009/04/bedroom_startup.html

<comment><USER2> I slept and worked in the same room for four months while I got TrailBehind going.

You do what you gotta do, but I'm glad to have separate rooms for these things now, even if I still spend all day in my house.

Today, my two co-founders and I share a cabin in Truckee... which is a pretty good place to build a hiking site. We programmed in the winter, and we have a lot of users around to talk to during the spring.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hardly a new phenomenon, even in Web 2.0. del.icio.us, to take one example, operated lean like this for years. Think plastic lawn chairs:

<http://www.petefreitag.com/images/blog/delicious_office.jpg>

<comment><USER4> They can't afford real furniture to sit in 12 hours per day, but they can afford bottled water?

Is that Hacker News on his left monitor? Get back to work!

<comment><USER5> Maybe the lawn chairs are a good thing, because they encourage you to stand up and take a break every once in a while? A few people have standup-desks at Google, and ergonomically they seem much better than the regular sit-down ones. Humans weren't built to sit in _anything_ for 12 hours per day.

<comment><USER6> My favorite seat is a flat, backless piano bench. Not only does it encourage movement, also does it encourage great posture. ;) It's a bit like sitting on the floor, but a wee bit more ergonomically friendly.

I've never understood the bean bags.

<comment><USER7> I had a comfy bean bag chair set up for a while, and I think it was sort of good for exercise because I would drink a lot of assorted beverages (water, iced tea, coffee), so I would have to get my ass off the near-floor quite often, and the effort was greater than if I were sitting in a normal chair.

It also made it easy to slip into a short nap if I felt like it. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the whole story, including Richard White (kiko): [http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/04/17/the-year-of-the- scrappy...](http://blog.uservoice.com/2009/04/17/the-year-of-the-scrappy- start-up/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting.... tsumobi.com. I've always been curious about what they've been up to since they originally had something similar to Hecl, apparently.

<comment><USER10> It's good to get press, but if your product is in "private beta" like tsumobi then maybe it is time to remove the cloak. Or else how can the free press be effective?

<comment><USER9> It's been in private beta for years at this point:-/

<comment><USER11> Tsumobi was in private beta when I was in YC. So much for launch fast and iterate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Americans Are Not Abandoning the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-15/americans-are-not-abandoning-the-u-s <comment><USER2> Insightful article about regarding our annoying American tax system that tends to muck up everything for its citizens. The IRS' motto should be, "When in doubt, confuse, annoy, and confuse".</comment>


Brief YAML reference - <AUTHOR> http://camel.readthedocs.io/en/latest/yamlref.html <comment><AUTHOR> I see a trend in open source projects lately, which is to use TOML [1] as the preferred configuration and metadata format.

In some cases, I believe YAML would actually be more suitable, but there is a lack of a good, understandable reference page for regular users.

The author of a YAML serialization library for Python [2] wrote this brief YAML reference page.

\----

[1]: [https://github.com/toml-lang/toml](https://github.com/toml-lang/toml)

[2]: [https://github.com/eevee/camel](https://github.com/eevee/camel)</comment>


Ask HN: Best format for video download - <AUTHOR>

I want my website visitors to be able to purchase and download videos (without DRM) from my website.  These are not technical users and I want to minimize support with videos that won't play for whatever reason.  What format should I use for the videos? <comment><USER2> WMV can be played by all Windows PCs, about 20% of Macs, and many Linux systems. MP4 will play on all Macs but only some Windows and Linux machines. Anything else is worse.</comment>