E-Ink Monitors: Ready for Prime Time? - <AUTHOR> https://cloudconfusing.com/2018/09/18/e-ink-monitors-ready-for-prime-time/ <comment><USER2> > It turns out that staring at back-lit computer monitors for 40+ hours a week > might not be the best thing for you.

Source? Light is still hitting your retinas, whether it comes from reflection or from a backlight.

I really enjoy E-Ink displays, but not because of perceived health benefits from reflected light. I enjoy how readable they are under sunlight, how they consume zero energy to show a static image, and how this enables them to always show content even if the device has no power.

It's simply not necessary to use unsourced health claims to justify a great technology like E-Ink.

<comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17724995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17724995) Was a good thread

<comment><USER4> I don't see anything related to reflectivity vs. backlight illumination. Most of the discussion is around the wavelength of light (blue) and its effects.

<comment><USER2> does light have any other intrinsic properties besides spectrum/wavelengths and intensity (EDIT: properties that vary based on the light source alone)? It doesn't matter if it came from a backlight or reflection, the electromagnetic waves are still electromagnetic waves. If the color spectrum is unpleasant, it's possible to use Night Shift or other features to shift the spectrum. If the intensity is unpleasant, just turn down the brightness.

<comment><USER5> This is actually a reply to @Romed:

 _OLED displays have a different problem; they have so much noise at low brightness that the image falls apart. Still, I think a monochrome OLED display is what the person who wrote this article actually wants. It would have better performance in every respect to E-Ink, and it doesn 't sound like their application requires E-Ink's low power._

My understanding too is that OLEDs can have "true black" pixels that emit no light at all. For "dark mode" style screens, this is a huge benefit, because the majority of the screen may simply be turned off. Conventional LCD screens still send current to each pixel, but the "black" is simply tuned to a dark frequency, rather than being altogether off.

<comment><USER6> Yes, an unpowered LED emits no light. But an OLED that's barely on, for example at uniform 1% grey looks like crap because of the noise. People describe this as a "texture" or "banding". It's the consequence of trying to drive millions of individual semiconductor devices to the same emissive power. At higher brightness you can't notice the noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would LOVE if E-Ink monitors became a thing. Spending all day indoors sucks. I'd love to be able to work outside in the sun for an hour or two.

<comment><USER8> Lenovo has released a Yoga convertible with an E-ink display.

[https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/tablets/windows-tablets/yoga- bo...](https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/tablets/windows-tablets/yoga-book-series- windows/Yoga-Book-C930/p/ZA3S0055GB)

<comment><USER9> Interesting.

Basically two displays: primary IPS and secondary E-ink. But keyboard is… virtual, you type on e-ink.

<comment><USER8> You don't are not limited to typing on the e-Ink it can be used for to display documents, to take handwritten notes etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish Sharp Memory LCDs[1] were made in 20"\+ format. They're a hybrid between LCDs and E-paper displays with extremely fast refresh rates and the contrast is almost as good as ePaper displays.

I think monochrome displays would be fantastic for distraction-free coding or reading.

What's interesting is that you just need to toggle VCOM signal either through software or external source every 1-2 seconds for about 10ms. Therefore, you can keep the content on the display's memory for years on a coin cell battery.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAoC818Mxy4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAoC818Mxy4)

<comment><USER7> Fascinating stuff. I wish this technology was available for computer monitor usage. I'd love to try it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tangentially, the article shows video playing through eInk, and its choppy yet paper-like effect really reminds me of the animation style of the 1980s music video "Take On Me" by the band a-ha:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914)

I'm not sure if I'd be able to use one of these monitors without constantly thinking of that video.

<comment><USER11> That's an additional advantage. :)

<comment><USER12> Outstanding for sure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd pay a lot of money for a decent E Ink monitor. I don't need color or high refresh rate. I do need it to "just work", be reliable and relatively big.

The second step would be software support so that I could leave images on the screen when the computer is off.

Stuff mentioned in the article is interesting, but it sounds like the quality is quite bad for all 3.

<comment><USER14> There's been recent mention of the... Onyx Boox Max2, as Google refreshes my memory.

It can be used as a display via a simple HDMI connection.

I read a few articles, and I'd like to try one, but I haven't convinced myself to put down $800 .

Here's a googled link that my browser history says I've visited before:

[https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/onyx-boox- ma...](https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/onyx-boox- max2-pro-13-3-inch-e-reader-review)

P.S. As I asked at the time, does anyone know the/a source for the panel? Although I guess the custom firmware and buttoned down access to same, may make getting a raw panel a non-starter.

P.P.S. Duh. OP article mentions it. Anyway... still wondering where the panel comes from.

<comment><USER15> I searched for a teardown, but only found one of the Dasung Paperlike Pro [https://kevzettler.com/2018/02/11/dasung-paperlike-pro- teard...](https://kevzettler.com/2018/02/11/dasung-paperlike-pro-teardown) , but which helpfully links to a source for the panel.

The biggest display they have seems to be a 42" monochrome display for $2000 [https://shopkits.eink.com/product-category/e-ink-display- mod...](https://shopkits.eink.com/product-category/e-ink-display-modules/15/)

<comment><USER14> Thank you. At a first glance, that is an interesting/intriguing site.

Note that it's another $500 for the controller module they recommend. (I know, I was asking after the Max2's raw panel. But in considering making one of the ones on this site work.)

There's also a listing for a 31.2" panel capable of 4096 colors (per the description). $2300.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have the MaxCarta and Max2. I use the older model using network connectivity, and the Max2 using HDMI. It is really a decent experience... just the refresh rate is slow. I use it for writing and reading large documents. And as concluded, since it is an Android device, it is multifunctional.

It also shows that any decent Android tablet should be able to act as a portable screen as Onyx does. It would make Android tablets a whole lot more practical, without the trouble of using WiDi or Miracast

Note: the Max2 can also be used as a Wacom tablet with some software, which makes it double duty and outperforming the Wacom Bamboo Slate I have. (They share the same pens!!!)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's always going to be dodgy until the graphical OS you're running is aware of what eInk is, and adapts the UI toolkit and general rendering to play to eInk's strengths.

<comment><USER10> This might be one of those situations where things have to move forward imperfectly. First some people get eInk monitors, then OS developers see that there are at least some real users and some concrete reason to believe there's a payoff in supporting them.

Then decent software support will encourage more people to get eInk monitors, and that will encourage OS developers to turn decent software support into good software support.

A similar thing happened with SSDs. At first operating systems weren't TRIM- aware, but people used SSDs anyway. IIRC, first device drivers got support to send the TRIM command, then later filesystems got the ability to send the TRIM command automatically, then flash-oriented filesystems were built and went into wide(r) use.

<comment><USER7> My worry is that E-Ink Monitors will never reach the "minimum quality" point at which they are adopted by a sufficient number of people to get the ball rolling.

I don't suffer from any medical reason to use one, but, I would absolutely purchase one this second (any pay a lot for it) if it worked well. Unfortunately, what I've seen so far from the Dasung and the Onyx, isn't worth $800. I just hope these companies have enough runway to continue improving the product such that early adopters like myself, will jump in.

<comment><USER18> What will cause it to be worth $800?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel like I've been looking into this every 6 months since the mid 2000's and there's still little progress. I would be thrilled if someone made a 20" \- 27"screen with a simple HDMI connection; I don't care about the refresh rate.

</comment><comment><USER20> I posted to ask last year asking why mid size and larger E-ink devices were so expensive relative to 6inch readers.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15787026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15787026)

might be of interested to some.

<comment><USER21> The main reason is production costs. A single 13" screen is being sold to manufacturers for over 350.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would give up my code colouring for an e-ink monitor for coding. Such a delightful possible future here.

<comment><USER23> I've been using these schemes in my terminal and editor for years now:

        base16-grayscale-dark
        base16-grayscale-light

<3

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A 40 Hz model is already down to $1000. We may be on the cusp of some kind of sea change here. How insanely light could an E-Ink flatscreen monitor get? You don't need a backlight, so the power requirements would be much smaller and that would be a huge advantage to making something light. I could imagine an updated version of a "Sunflower" iMac built using one. MacOS resembling a magazine seems to be what Steve Jobs envisioned and what Apple is aiming for right now. Could they be made in such a way as to resemble good sheet material for acoustic exciters?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdkyGDqU7xA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdkyGDqU7xA)

</comment><comment><USER25> Looking forward to installing emacs on [http://fread.ink](http://fread.ink) once that's possible.

<comment><USER26> Is that project still alive? I don't see any activity in the past few months.

<comment><USER25> Yes, as far as I know Juul is still working on it. It's pretty much just one guy and life does get in the way of open source projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> And with Exeger e-ink devices will have eternal life :)

[http://www.exeger.com/](http://www.exeger.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> These would make a great wristwatch, so you can get perpetual display of time with virtually zero power, and should get long battery life.

<comment><USER29> I believe Nokia/Withings offers a fitness tracker with an eink display with a watchface.

<comment><USER30> That is correct. Nokia/Withings Steel HR on my hand contains a small, surprisingly fast e-ink display (although low res).

They also have small, barely noticeable LED lights lighting the screen to be visible during night. Much more pleasant way of checking the time during the night than looking at a phone. And its battery lasts 2-3 weeks and charges in two hours.

The screen isn't always on though, and only activates on a click from the side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a max 2 since almost it was released and even if it can work as a display, it isn't ideal

ghosting and a lower resolution needed to have a better refresh rate, kills a lot of the charm.

imho, they can work but on a pretty niche way, but I wouldn't buy one just to use it as a display.

</comment><comment><USER31> > E-Ink Monitors: Ready for Prime Time?

13.3" at $899. I guess that answers the question.

</comment><comment><USER32> If the maximum size is 13.3" as shown here, then no... they are not ready for prime time. That is big for a tablet or e-reader, but small for a laptop, and tiny for something called a monitor (outside of a colo).

<comment><USER21> they are 4:3 ratio, so for a laptop is more than enough

<comment><USER32> Well I haven't ever seen a laptop with 4:3 (1024x768?) although I loved my ancient 20" 1280x1024 5:4 monitor and there are lots of smaller 3:2 surface- like laptops. The 13.3" (and the tiny 12) still accounts for only 20% of the 2017 market, with 14.1-15.6 (and even larger) accounting for the remaining 30+50=80%.

This was about the market for Monitors though... not just displays in general so this e-ink display just doesn't cover a significant portion of the market outside of tablets or very small laptops. Typical monitor sizes are 19-34", with the smaller "totable" 15.6-17" sizes accounting for <20% of the market. 13-14" aren't even listed as monitor sizes by the marketing groups like IHS or Display Search.

<comment><USER21> this ereaders doesn't have 1024 or 1280, the eink resolution is 2200x1650

<comment><USER32> Yes, I read the article. However, I have never seen a laptop use such a aspect ratio even in the olden days, and I'm not sure manufacturers would choose to now, because... These are high resolution low contrast reflective screens limited to 13" which do not hit the current market diaginal/area expectations for mainstream laptops, much less desktop monitors.

They are good for low power daylight operation and I'm sure there is a small market for people who don't like backlights and emissive displays. I like my kindle for books, but I also don't mind the backlight for indoor use. As desktop monitors they have missed everything but the smallest niche.

Good luck if you really want to use one regularly as the writer says,"Based on my research, particularly great e-ink monitor comparisons, these devices are not ready for professional, daily use. They are laggy, have staining/ghosting problems, and perhaps worst, are quite unreliable. It seems that the failure rate on both of these devices is quite high and user happiness is quite low. If e-ink is your only option (because of health reasons) then these might be a savior, but short of that it seems like your best best is to wait for future development in the space."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems like the Lenovo Yoga Book C930 would do the trick.</comment>


Show HN: Online Treasure Hunt/Q&A - <AUTHOR> https://camax.lol/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN.

This is a new side project of mine.

The goal is to create a series of questions & answers and use it for off-line treasure hunts, team buildings, online quizzes, or giveaway contests.

FYI: there is a Spider-Man PS4 giveaway contest scheduled on the 23rd of December.

Why did I build this? On the night of Halloween, I created a static website with that my friends had to visit and answer the questions/instructions. Once you answered a question correctly, you were taken to the next. It was in a sense an online treasure hunt that took them from my apartment to the nearest bar, and then to the nearest parc. It was fun. So I decided to make a website out of it. Here it is.

Let me know what you think.

Maxime.

PS: the static website is on my GitHub [https://maximedb.github.io/halloween18/](https://maximedb.github.io/halloween18/)</comment>


A No. 1 hit vanished from Poland's charts – it's not going quietly - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/arts/music/poland-chart-song-removed.html <comment><USER3> Of interest to the HN populace may be how Trójka's website started to throw HTTP 500s shortly after the song was aired.

Here's how: [https://scontent- waw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65...](https://scontent- waw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/97996661_3002459633124668_8717350358818488320_o.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_sid=8024bb&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ohc=IlP0AOfzTWsAX93txwM&_nc_ht=scontent- waw1-1.xx&_nc_tp=14&oh=6f642e1eed0f7607d5d0e3df8f689eb8&oe=5EF0166E)

<comment><USER4> A handcoded redirect to the error 500 page. A very hacky hack, certainly not an accident.

<comment><USER5> At around the same time the chart's page has stopped functioning as well - <USER2> the IIS error gave away that it was because of deleted first character '<' in XML configuration file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This was the weekly chart #1998. This thing has been running continuously for 38 years. It's iconic over here. The present fsckup is hilarious to the point of being unbelievable.

I bit the bullet and temporarily tuned my radio to something unrelated. There's a crowdfunded alternative, though, picking up steam: Nowy Świat, #1 on patronite.pl (Polish lookalike of Patreon) with 630KPLN/mo pledged already, due to start airing in June. Their staff is composed mostly of Trójka's exiles.

<comment><USER6> FWIW I'm an American living in Poland since 2 years ago, though I'm participating only as a spectator and I don't have a political horse in this race. This whole saga seems like a bit of a tempest in a teapot from where I sit.

As of a few days ago, a certain minority political faction is suddenly _very_ interested in high-sounding principles and will talk your ear off about freedom of speech and young-threatened-Democracy with a capital-D etc. Probably there is a lot of this downthread. Without making any claims about this issue itself, I will observe three interesting metacharacteristics of the situation:

0) This same suddenly-principled faction has a long record of happily supporting soft-and-hard censorship whenever it suits their politics and gleefully condemning other people's speech if they don't like it. A nonzero fraction (but of course not all) of the condemnation here comes from the literal Polish Communist Party (and their modern, slightly-rebranded allies), aka the same people who brought us 50 years of totalitarian oppression and censorship-enforced-by-secret-police-abductions. This strikes me as pretty rich.

1) Most ordinary Polish people know about this topic, but many don't find it anywhere near as scandalous as this breathless NYT article would have you believe. As far as I can tell this is not high on the list of pressing political issues for many regular people (despite a domestic Polish and foreign media blitz to the contrary).

2) State media is widely regarded as a running joke, known for its comically- hokey stories such as "Polish citizenry rejoices as Potassium exports rise 12%" (made up example but catches the tone). There are literally a small handful of state-funded radio and TV stations and arguably a semiaffiliated newspaper or two, in varying states of cheesiness. Meanwhile there are gallons and gallons of antigovernment media, most of which is _overwhelmingly_ more competent than the allegedly State-controlled media, with super-slick hollywood production values and content which is precision-engineered to be engaging. In light of this disparity I find claims about "all encompassing State propaganda mind control" to be rather dubious.

<comment><USER7> For my own curiosity, what are some of the Polish anti-government media outlets?

<comment><USER8> oko.press (has some english-language articles; investigative journalism), onet.pl (tabloid) , tvn24.pl (TV station), krytykapolityczna.pl (openly leftist so unpopular in Poland)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It always rubs me the wrong way when US media criticizes other countries as if the same things don't happen in the US. Why was Phil Donahue fired?

[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/phil-donahue-chris- matthews-m...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/phil-donahue-chris-matthews- msnbc-firing_n_2926643)

What about Peter Arnett?

[https://www.foxnews.com/story/nbc-severs-ties-with- journalis...](https://www.foxnews.com/story/nbc-severs-ties-with-journalist- peter-arnett)

But I guess the Americans have 'private' media where 'market forces' prevent criticism of US government policy.

<comment><USER10> The same thing can't really happen in US because US does not have state media. (Apart from funding Radio free Europe which can't operate in US.)

<comment><USER11> So what's NPR, PBS, and VOA?

Note that Trump is actively trying to reorient VOA to be Trump-friendly right now.

<comment><USER12> NPR is an independent nonprofit organization. Most of its funding comes from member station dues, as well as donations, grants, sponsorships, etc. 2% of the parent organization's revenue comes from government grants. Member stations also receive some government grants but most of their funding comes from listener contributions, sponsorships, etc.

The situation with PBS is similar but a bit more complicated to tease apart. The majority of PBS's funding comes from member station dues, but it also does receive some tens of millions from the federally-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) each year, and the CPB also supports those member PBS stations. PBS and the CPB also work together on program acquisition and development.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hello fellow Poles! What's the deal with that song anyway. [https://youtu.be/o9LzNtpjhV0](https://youtu.be/o9LzNtpjhV0) is this the song?

<comment><USER14> Yes, this is that song. Everything in polish media now is political discussion and/or fight about presidential elections (it's postponed due to covid19 crisis), and I consider this as part of this fight. Personally I think it is nothing to lose mind about.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand the references in that song, but doesn't seem like anything unexpected from the artist. Almost all his songs are a criticism of all political parties and governments and the social pathology. It's weird that would go to the top - my guess would be some coordinated political astro- turfing action.

<comment><USER15> The song refers to the events of this years April 10th. Amid the corona crisis and restrictions, the 'Powąskowskie cemetery' was closed. It seems it was closed to the general public only, as PiS' leader, Jaroslaw K. allegedly received a personal permit to enter it and pray.

He was therefore perhaps the only person entering the graveyard on that day.

In this context, "Your pain is greater than mine" simply refers to the common citizen vs Jaroslaw. One can't go to see the grave's of his family/friends etc., whilst the other can.

<comment><USER13> Oh. I see. Thanks! Seems like a petty symbolic favoritism, very much like what I would expect. Good for Kazik for pointing it out.

<comment><USER16> There was a little bit more to it. April 10th is an anniversary of Polish presidential plane crash that occurred 10 years ago in which many polish statespeople have perished (including Jarosław's twin brother). Since that crash Jarosław and his party have used this tragedy for their political gains (mainly by creating conspiracy theories around the crash and promising to solve them).

Jarosław's visit to the cemetery (together with members of the government) was another publicity stunt. If they just wanted to pay the respects to the deceased probably no one would care and they could easily get away with minor restriction violation. Instead they made it an official visit and broadcasted it in government-controlled TV.

<comment><USER17> [https://news.sky.com/story/smolensk-crash-explosions-on- boar...](https://news.sky.com/story/smolensk-crash-explosions-on-board-before- plane-hit-ground-investigator-says-11233792)

Of all the air crashes in history this got to be the most "convenient" does not mean it was a bomb but damn you got to wonder just how many corks of champagne got popped at Putin's house when it happened.

<comment><USER18> At the time it was actually inconvenient, as he needed some of those people live at a meeting a month later.

Having observed from pretty short range how the events unfolded after that, they did jump on the insanity when polish government turned out to be weak against it. That would be when the corks got popped, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hello Streisand Effect! [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

</comment><comment><USER20> There's a small, but growing movement in Poland named "the eight star movement"(obvious reference to the five star movement) - written like so:

      ***** ***

and pronounced in bleeps.

One would be forgiven for thinking that the expression "kurwa mać" both fits the pattern and the current situation.

We'll see how this year's presidential elections, which should be held... eventually(?) will go.

Let's hope we can bring some balance to the political scene in Poland.

<comment><USER21> Actually, you are wrong (or maybe you just haven't made it clear, so I'll spell it out here). ____* __* is not intended to stand for "kurwa mać", it stands for "jebać pis". Its a reference to a political comic strip from ages ago; it only picked up steam recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's an open version: [http://archive.vn/JIE5T](http://archive.vn/JIE5T) .

</comment><comment> ur-whale The controversial song:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9LzNtpjhV0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9LzNtpjhV0)

<comment><USER23> Here's a version with English subtitles.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdLtVt8AUM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdLtVt8AUM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A similar situation is going on in the US.

Right now the most popular rapper (measured by streams)is Tekashi 6ix9ine, a controversial artist who raised concerns recently over being cheated out of the #1 Billboard Hot 100 spot.

It broke the record for most youtube views in a day (43.5 million) and also fastest to reach 100 million (71 Hours).

It also hasn't received ONE radio spin, for comparison every song above it has at least 20 million.

It also has been banned from every major Spotify playlist.

After questioning the credibility of the Hot 100 ranking methodologies multiple top artists have come to Billboards defense (Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, etc.) even causing billboard itself to release a statement.

It's resulting in a Streisand effect of people wanting to see what's this song/artist that the institutions are trying so hard to suppress from the public.

<comment><USER25> Your comparison is way off base. Poland's government is actively dismantling independent media and censoring this artist is part of that effort because they were critical of the government. The rapper you mention is a violent criminal and child rapist. We can choose where to draw the free speech line and still uphold the principals of a free and open society.

<comment><USER26> > We can choose where to draw the free speech line and still uphold the > principals of a free and open society.

You really, really can't.

<comment><USER27> Yes, we can. For instance one of the things that are also in effect in Poland and which I wholeheartedly agree with is that denying holocaust is an active crime. As someone who has lost family in the concentration camps - good, the crime was too great to be denying it.

<comment><USER28> Did it help with keeping fascists out of power in Poland?

If not, then what was the actual purpose of the law?

<comment><USER27> That's like asking "if there are still racists in the US, what's the point of the constitution - after all it clearly states all men are equal!".

Yes, there are still facists in Poland - does that mean the law was pointless? Of course not.

And of course I don't think I have to point out that you can be a fascist and not deny holocaust, so this law wouldn't do anything in that case.

<comment><USER28> I didn't ask if there are fascists in Poland, because that is not a problem in and of itself. The problem is that proto-fascists are _in power_ in Poland. And they are actively denying the involvement of many Polish nationals in Anti-Semitic pogroms that were a part of the Holocaust.

But ignoring that, you appear to be saying that it's significantly worse to deny the Holocaust, than to be a fascist, seeing how the law doesn't apply to fascists who "moved on with the times"?

<comment><USER27> No, that's not what I am saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Kurwa jebana ich mać, Niedźwiecki resigned??

</comment><comment><USER30> The ones who stayed. Does their protests ring hollow?

</comment><comment><USER31> is this a general thread about Poland now? anyone here interested in forking hnews to polish language?

</comment><comment><USER32> Paywall :(

<comment><USER33> Use ublock origin to disable js on nytimes.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> While I believe that there was no dishonest effort to manipulate the charts it is worth noting that the vote counts are both hidden from general population and adjusted by hand to remove "fraudulent votes". This can easily move songs within top 10. This lack of transparency does not help.

That being said this kind of reaction is unprecedented.

<comment><USER35> Exactly, and it was also suggested that for years the show producer would take bribes from artists for placing them at the top of the list.

The song in question here actually ended up in the fourth place, was placed on 1st deliberately - it was kind of a political statement by the show producer.

<comment><USER18> The show producer selects what songs are available for voting.

As for the "bribery"... well, they found a no-name wedding singer of dubious reputation claiming that. Unless one is firmy behind the party, pretty much haven't heard anyone believing that line.

It's why they switched to classic "he was State Security informant" or "we're removing (post-)commies" (remember, in PiS newspeak "post-communist" covers "anyone who is against PiS" and is supposed to imply that they are actually communist. Fuck logic.)

<comment><USER35> First of all, it's not just that he selects what songs enter the voting. He manipulated results afterwards, with the stupid excuse of "just removing fraudulent votes"

As for "he was State Security informant" \- that's really important factor to consider because it tells a lot about person's character. I mean what kind of scumbag would voluntarily provide information that might put people who did nothing wrong, other than oposing communist government, in jail, or worse yet, killed by "unknown perpetrators"? And for what - money, chance to advance his career? Once an asshole, always an asshole.

<comment><USER18> 1) As far as I could find, he is only _accused_ , with no actual evidence following 2) by people for whom having not just "informants", but people directly involved in oppression in their party means nothing.

So who is a bigger asshole? Accused without evidence, or someone for whom we have explicit documentation of "vigorously defending government against revolutionaries"?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Daughter's Homework Is Killing Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/my-daughters-homework-is-killing-me/309514/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Lots of discussion from when this was posted a year ago. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6416161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6416161)</comment>


Ask HN: Startups and In-House Mailing - <AUTHOR>

My team and I are getting to close to launching our startup. We were discussing our traffic strategies today and added email to the list - basically, users can sign up for our daily emails.
Basically, our startup will need to handle large scale email delivery in-house. Only problem is we have no idea where to start on this.
Any help as to where to start reading/looking? Servers, IPs...? <comment><USER2> I tend to use a slicehost slice to do my own outbound mail (I use Google Apps for all inbound).

Assuming you have a slice first you'll need to set up your DNS entry pointing to the slice and a reverse DNS entry in the slicehost manager. See these resources for more information:

[http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/9/2/mail-server-slice- set...](http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/9/2/mail-server-slice-setup) [http://articles.slicehost.com/2007/10/24/creating-a- reverse-...](http://articles.slicehost.com/2007/10/24/creating-a-reverse-dns- record).

Next set up an SPF record for your domain to legitimize your new mail server:

[http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/8/8/email-setting-a- sende...](http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/8/8/email-setting-a-sender- policy-framework-spf-record)

Finally you'll want to install the mail server software and configure it. I have a blog post that shows the standard config needed to configure the mail server and set up DKIM and DomainKeys to help your mail look legitimate:

[http://blog.nimbu.net/setting-up-a-postifx-outbound-mail- ser...](http://blog.nimbu.net/setting-up-a-postifx-outbound-mail-server-wit)

Check out the links at the bottom of the article for more information about DKIM and DomainKeys.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess the first question is, do you really need to handle it in-house (especially as you acknowledge your limitations). Outsourcing to an email service will cost cash, rather than time, in a period when you have more time than cash, but may still be worth it.

An out-of-the box solution for a few hundred dollars a month may tick this item off a crowded to-do list, and shift developer time from database creation / html editors / unsubscribe handling / deliverability reports etc to something more productive for your business.

Edit: Or have I misunderstood the question?

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the reasons I'd prefer to run it in-house is because users' emails are valuable data and we prefer to keep it with us rather than outsource to something like Aweber.

Another reason is the cost. Once email lists get into the tens of thousands, it becomes expensive to have someone else like Aweber handle them. I have a feeling it'd be cheaper to run it in-house. I don't really have any hard data to prove this of course, just assuming based on the fact that most startups do it this way.

Finally, based on the little bit that I've read, it's the initial setup (servers, IPs, subscribe/unsubscribe requests) that takes effort. But once it's automated, things will be humming along nicely, provided there's regular periodic monitoring of course.

I'm pretty sure startups run email delivery in-house for the reasons above and more. Take Groupon for example - I'd be willing to bet they do it in-house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tend to use mailman for my newsletters. It has a templating system where you can modify the pages.

For example:

[http://lists.exentriquesolutions.com/listinfo/xp-dev- newslet...](http://lists.exentriquesolutions.com/listinfo/xp-dev-newsletter)

Give a shout if you need some pointers on getting the templates customised.

The only thing is you don't get things like hit ratios etc. You will have to track those yourself. Additionally, you have to worry about things like SPF and domainkeys.

I did some research, and there is PHPList which some people swear by, but I found it a bit clunky.

</comment><comment><USER5> How many emails will you send? You can setup a small server on slicehost, run a smtp server (you set it up) and write something like a quick rails app to do the work. I believe the cheapest slice on slicehost would be fine at $20 a month. Or go with Heroku and launch a rails app on it for free. It might have enough power to send out daily emails using a Sendgrid service. Sendgrid solutions are basically SMTP servers that handle a lot of things like analytics for you. Easy REST API and ridiculously simple integration with Heroku would be awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks kinetic!

We're planning on sending 1 daily email to each subscriber. Let's say we want to be prepared for sending 100,000+ per day.

We're currently on rackspace's cloudservers, so we have no problem spinning a separate instance for a mail server. Just needed some guidance in terms of setting up the server and start mailing.

Can you point me to a resource where I can do some reading and educate myself a bit more?

<comment><USER6> My two cents(I've managed email campaigns to ~100k people):

Sending one email per day to everyone is a lot of mail to be sending your users. You better have a really, really good reason to do so--and those emails better provide significant value to your users, otherwise they will opt out, possibly even report as spam.

I don't know what business you are in, but only certain businesses can really get away with sending that much email--ie Groupon, Gilt, etc.--and that is because those emails provide a lot of value and meet a lot of needs. If you fall in the category of a business who can send that much email awesome!

If possible I think it is best to use a tiered, opt-in subscription model. Some example tiers: "Daily Deals Beat", "Weekly Rundown", "2-Week Summary", and "Monthly Newsletter"(these names suck I know). You can present these options as part of the sign-up process, or better yet, when they click the sign up confirmation email take them to a settings to opt-in to the various tiers. This is also good to have as the landing page for when someone clicks unsubscribe in your email. Take them to this settings page where they can adjust the level of contact, or unsubscribe completely, that is right for them. If you are sending one message a day chances are you will have a lot of people hitting that unsubscribe link, and some might not want to totally discontinue contact so give them options to adjust as well as totally unsubscribe.

Sidenote: Mediapost has an awesome publication called Email Insider, if you plan on sending that much email you might want to be reading this. [http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?art_type=32&fa=Ar...](http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?art_type=32&fa=Archives.showArchive)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Try... SendGrid, MailChimp, etc.

I definitely recommend using one of these email service providers (ESPs) until you're sending enough emails to justify the time/cost of setting up your own email service.

<comment><USER8> I was using Google Apps for my outgoing emails and switched to SendGrid a few months ago. I usually send 500-600 emails a day but with Google Apps I was hearing a lot of complaints about never getting the email.

It's been a lot better with SendGrid and SendGrid also tracks bounces so you dont send more emails to invalid addresses, which hurts your reputation on mail servers.

I'm on the 10,000 emails/month plan and go over every month but the overage charges are very reasonable

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our company is in a similar situation. We're currently looking into <http://www.port25.com/> (a software solution for $x,xxx) and <http://www.strongmail.com/> (a hardware/software solution for $xx,xxx).</comment>


An aphorism on metaprogramming - <AUTHOR> http://oyster.diiq.org/post/35892719382/aphorism-metaprogramming-involves-three-objects

<comment><USER2> Someone yell at me if I am wrong (self taught - with all the ups and downs implied), but to me these are not good names. A few points on this:

* 'code-as' is a bit of a strange statement as it implies two-steps from an original object - as you are taking something encoded ('code') and translating it to something else ('as').

* 'code-as-text' should be 'code-as-representation' at least (you needn't represent anything as text if you dont want to - it could be coloured geometric shapes...)

* I don't understand what 'code-as-procedure' means either. Is this an abstract-syntax-tree or just platform-executable-code?

* 'code-as-data' is meaningless because everything is data, both the text and procedure... Does the OP mean something platform-executable? Or something within a type system?

Good topic to launch discussion on though....

<comment><USER3> Let me try to explain it using a bit more consistent terms. Code models the behaviour of a system, let's replace all instances of 'code-as' with 'behaviour-as' to avoid confusion. So we reason about the language in which a behaviour model is expressed.

'behaviour-as-text' is the serialization of the behaviour model according to the grammar of the language.

'behaviour-as-data' is the model representation as it is viewed and modified in the model.

'behaviour-as-procedure' is the meaning of the model in the sense of execution. The semantics of the model.

So this text says that the semantics of the behaviour model need to be easily expressed as data, and the textual representation of the model must clearly show both its semantics and its data representation.

<comment><USER3> So the freaky thing about metaprogramming is that the model changes itself right? The aphorism in three simple sentences:

1 "data must express procedure"

2 "text must express procedure"

3 "text must express data"

This shows that text both _directly_ expresses procedure by rule 2, and _indirectly_ by rule 1 via rule 3. This indirection step allows recursion to take place (i.e. the data contains a model in the same language as it is defined in) that is used for the model to reason about itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In non-homoiconic languages I think this aphorism is more apt:

> Metaprogramming is the language feature that helps you write code that you > won't be able to understand once the cocaine wears off.

<comment><USER5> In case you didn't know: "Languages in which program code is represented as the language's fundamental data type are called 'homoiconic'."

From: <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HomoiconicLanguages>

I didn't.

<comment><USER6> There's an ambiguity in that definition: what does "represented" mean? It can mean "represented as source code", i.e. for consumption by the programmer, or it can mean "represented as runtime state", i.e. for consumption by the machine. The first is what the OP means by code-as-text and the second is what the OP means by code-as-data.

A program always has both kinds of representation. Without a textual representation, no one could write or read it. Without a runtime representation, it couldn't be executed. But usually it is complicated to translate between the two. In Lisp (the classic homoiconic language), these representations are so similar that it is trivial to translate from one to the other and back again. That's what makes Lisp good for metaprogramming (writing programs that manipulate other programs): it's so easy to go back and forth between the human-friendly representation (source code) and the runtime representation (data) that a whole class of new techniques arises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's "code-as-procedure" supposed to be? Denotation?

And how could "code-as-procedure" fail to be easy to express using "code-as- data"?

Isn't it more essential that "code-as-data" should be easy to express in "code-as-text"? (As that's where languages like Lisp and ML, that have quasiquotation, excel).

</comment><comment><USER6> This might be the nicest summary I've seen of the Lisp style of metaprogramming or, if you prefer, homoiconicity.

<comment><USER8> Like many koans, I'm afraid it probably only makes sense to someone who already knows; I suspect it's completely meaningless to someone who hasn't already had a chunk of direct experience.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure how representative I am, but as someone who doesn't really understand what meta-programming is about, my impression is that it's a combination of nonsensical comparisons (e.g. I don't understand the difference between text and data) and vacuous truths.

I suspect this is a reflection on me more than the koan, but I also think my reaction would probably not be uncommon among the unenlightened.

<comment><USER10> To give an actual answer: What's meant by "data" is a richer structure than mere text. For example, an expression tree that can be manipulated by recursive procedures to form a new expression tree.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A clean and tiny RESTful JSON storage service API. - <AUTHOR> https://datoji.dev <comment><USER2> The readme file doesn't mention speed or performance and doesn't compare to any other solutions. "Fastest" I think needs some proof not to be taken as marketing hyperbole.</comment>


WebJack: Two-way communication between the browser and Arduino using SoftModem - <AUTHOR> http://webjack.io <comment><USER2> > It uses the phone's audio jack and Bell 202 modem-like FSK encoding with up > to 1225 bit/s.

That seems very low, considering that there is solid wired connection between the two endpoints. Even actual modems pushed bits way faster than that, and PSTN transmission quality is much worse.

I suppose this is hampered by the fact that Arduinos do not have proper DACs, but still I wonder how fast you could use something like libquiet [https://github.com/quiet/quiet](https://github.com/quiet/quiet) on a Arduino.

</comment><comment> d--b This sounds like a pretty good way of extracting private information from your work computer without being caught.

<comment><USER3> Next step: hide the arduino inside a pair of headphones.

<comment><USER4> You mean use something like the Arduino mini? [https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino- mini-05](https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-mini-05)

Good thinking LOL

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's WebAudio as a data channel weekend! Also on the front page:

Using the Web Audio API to Make a Modem | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15471723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15471723)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey this is actually pretty cool!

Always was kind of bummed out over my apple devices not having a cheap and easy way to visualize data from an arduino (Well technically I guess you could use Bluetooth Serial but that would require you to write an app in ObjC which Im not really familiar with)

On my old android devices I just used USB OTG together with processing and since processing is already Java it was trivial to make it work on android (Processing supports export to android, but for serial you had to write your own wrapper, which isn't that hard)

At first I was skeptical but this could very well become my new "processing" together with various HTML5 visualization libraries such as D3 or even processing.js.

Starred this one for sure!

<comment><USER8> IF you run in to this again, Adafruit gives away an app for Arduino that can easily display data and control I/O. It's pretty neat!

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adafruit-bluefruit-le- connec...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adafruit-bluefruit-le- connect/id830125974?mt=8)</comment></comment>


Production is Red, Development is Blue - <AUTHOR> http://jeffmiller.github.com/2011/01/10/ssh-host-color <comment><USER2> To get a red prompt drop this line in your ~/.bashrc file on your production server:

PS1='\\[\e[1;31m\\][\u@\h \W]\$\\[\e[0m\\] '

We use this in our production environments and the red prompt, though not as jarring as a red background, is still scary enough to serve its purpose.

One upside in setting this up on the server, as opposed to local like the OP, is that all connections in will get the red prompt.

<comment><USER3> I do that in bash for root/non-root users (root is red, non-root is blue):

        if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ]] ; then
            PS1='\[\033[01m\][ \[\033[01;31m\]\u@\h \[\033[00m\]\[\033[01m\]] \[\033[01;32m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\n\[\033[01;31m\]\$\[\033[00m\]> '
        else
            PS1='\[\033[01m\][ \[\033[01;34m\]\u@\h \[\033[00m\]\[\033[01m\]] \[\033[01;32m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\n\[\033[01;34m\]\$\[\033[00m\]> '
        fi

Interesting to think about using it across servers, though.

<comment> s-phi-nl Konsole does this automatically, at least on openSuSE linux.

<comment><USER4> It's actually just the default bash config on openSUSE, nothing to do with Konsole. It works on text-mode VTs, via ssh, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it is time to add *.github.com to the filter list. I read through the whole post before I realized it was not from GitHub, but someone who hosts on github. We do it for blogger etc, can we get github added?

<comment><USER6> it should probably just try to strip ^www\d*?\\. from the domain and leave everything else, rather than strip off the first component of the hostname regardless of what it is.

better to print too long a url for some than too short for things like example.github.com, code.google.com, etc.

<comment><USER7> Oh please yes. + a bucket load for code.google.com which comes up a lot and would provide nice glanceable info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You should never ssh into a production system, everything should be going through automated scripts. Doing this will really save your life. For me this means:

      $ fab deploy
      ... oups errors on the website even if tested on stagging ...
      $ fab getdebuglog
      $ fab rollback
      ... fix test ...
      $ fab deploy

fab is fabric, a very very nice deployment tool in Python: <http://www.fabfile.org>

<comment><USER9> Or for those less python-happy: just use expect

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expect>

Slightly weird syntax, but learnable in a few hours. You are likely to already have it on your machines.

<comment><USER10> I've built *Nix testing frameworks using Expect. Would one use Expect/Fabric/etc. to manage deployments and development environments?

Having the ability to immediately stage an environment to reproduce an error without configuration issues would really take a lot of treachery out of trying to evolve larger systems.

<comment><USER9> I've seen it used to manage deployments, and it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than expecting a whole team of engineers to muck about on the production servers and remember to get everything just right.

In fact, an expect script [can be] nicely self-documenting, because somebody can look at it and see "oh these are the steps to deploy X" because the scripts basically read as "at the foo prompt, enter bar" over and over again, with some branching to handle varying responses (missing prereq, error messages).

The "ultimate" in building environments would probably have to be something more comprehensive and declarative like bcfg (<http://trac.mcs.anl.gov/projects/bcfg2>) which I have seen in action and it works but is very XML-heavy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We do this in a different context for our webapp work. We have three primary environments: development, staging and production. We code a contextual, 20px high, colored div at the top of our master template. It's red for development, yellow for staging, and doesn't exist in production (i know it seems backwards, but you can't really show an extra red bar in production :p ). It also somewhere we dump out some quick and dirty debug info.

I've been burned too many times when jumping back and forth between production and dev browser tabs. This simple hack saves me time, and possibly some headaches.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did this at one place I worked for terminals and sql windows (red = prod, green = dev, yellow = test). It does tend to inform you coworkers if they should really be asking you stuff when you have a whole screen of red.

</comment><comment><USER13> Doing the same thing for the webapp is also useful--it serves as visual reminder to QA folk that the production box (white background) is /not/ someplace they should be running test scenarios (vs. the QA box with an orange/whatever background).

Also, you can use different colors for different QA boxes--"I need blue qa deployed" or "That fix is in black qa".

(Yes, this was an enterprise environment, why do you ask?)

</comment><comment><USER14> I now run Byobu on my servers -- it's made my sysadmin life substantially better -- and for each server I pick a different color for the status bar along the bottom.

Production is red for me too. Like this: <http://img.ly/images/663862/full>

</comment><comment><USER15> I do this by setting the Window Background Color in saved sessions in PuTTY. Works great! (The different colors for different machines, I mean).

</comment><comment><USER16> I like this idea, and used to have a whole spectrum of color-coded terminals when I looked after dozens of boxes years ago at a large company. It proved to be very useful because although we did automate most activity on the machines (using cfengine + other tools) I still found myself logging in regularly to various machines and could often have many terminals on screen.

However... the color coding can be a bit misleading sometimes, particularly if you are chaining SSH sessions and the colors are being set on terminal launch (not on shell login). I was using PuTTY config settings for color on my company-mandated Windows machine and soon found the limitations of this when I logged in to machine A (green), then from there to machine B (red). The terminal was still green and some time later I trusted the color and ran a (destructive) command in the wrong shell. This reinforced to me that while useful, color is no substitute for thinking before typing, and double checking everything before performing destructive operations :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> Colorful shell prompts can be used for the same purpose.

<comment><USER6> except when you're doing something like editing a file, tailing a log, or doing anything other than staring at a command prompt.

<comment><USER17> FWIW, my editor has its own background color (vim in 256 color mode), so I wouldn't see the terminal background either way.

However, I like the idea in general, just not the implementation. It would be nice if modern terminal emulators (hello iTerm!) could adopt new escape sequences to do things like set a background color on the _tab_ (like ZOC and some others support by client-side configuration).

There is still lots of room for innovation in the terminal, it's a bit sad to see progress at such a glacial pace. I'd actually pay for a terminal emulator that's fast (first priority) and then also makes my life easier with innovative features like the above.

For some reason all innovation in the terminal space seems to have died when dialup BBS went out of fashion 10 years ago. Most terminal emulators have even moved backwards and don't support ZModem anymore, which could be very useful to provide adhoc drag'n'drop uploads instead of the scp/rsync limbo that is so common nowadays.

<comment><USER18> One of the developers of iTerm2 also liked the idea responded to my tweet by opening an issue request for it:

<http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/issues/detail?id=454>

<comment><USER17> Wow, pretty cool! As an iTerm user I'll be looking forward to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's the same for those of us on Macs and who like transparent Terminals.

<http://geek.swombat.com/setting-up-terminalapp-with-tr-0>

</comment><comment><USER20> I just set up the command line colors to be different on production vs. development machines - I like my terminal backgrounds black, and regular text white.

</comment><comment><USER21> Any chance it is possible to accomplish on Ubuntu?

<comment><USER6> you could use something like xtermcontrol (<http://www.thrysoee.dk/xtermcontrol/>) and run it from your ~/.ssh/config file per-host:

         Host someproductionbox
              LocalCommand xtermcontrol --bg=red

         Host sometestbox
              LocalCommand xtermcontrol --bg=blue

<comment><USER22> Great tip! Note that for this to work, you need to edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config and set PermitLocalCommand yes

There's no way to change profile from the command line using gnome-terminal, unfortunately, but there is "roxterm" which is very similar in functionality and lets you do the following to change the color scheme of the current terminal window:

        dbus-send --session /net/sf/roxterm/Options net.sf.roxterm.Options.SetColourScheme string:$ROXTERM_ID "string:NAME_OF_COLOR_SCHEME"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This doesn't work with GNU Screen.

</comment><comment><USER24> Debugging is sweet,

And so are you.</comment>


The Strangers Project - <AUTHOR> http://strangersproject.com/

<comment><USER2> Hey, Brandon here—I'm the founder of this project! Just saw the incoming link and thought I'd pop over. Happy to answer any questions!</comment>


On P, NP, and Computational Complexity - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/11/100641-on-p-np-and-computational-complexity/fulltext

<comment><USER2> One important application of course being that if P=NP and we can prove it is that encryption as we know it today would no longer be viable with public key systems. Also, if I recall correctly the protein problems that Folding At Home works on are some variant of NP that could be expedited.

<comment><USER3> That's almost exactly the opposite of what this article says. To summarize it briefly, Vardi reminds us that the importance of proving P!=NP is to enhance our understanding of the underlying issues. Also, he devotes a significant fraction of the article to reiterating that worst-case complexity is not the same thing as tractability.

I'm not really familiar with protein structure prediction, but I don't think that it involves solving NP-complete problems. Scouring Wikipedia articles about protein structure prediction suggests that the techniques used are broad, varied, and distinct from the classical set of problems in NP. If someone's doing work in this area and is attempting to solve a problem in NP I'd love to hear it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes the question of P versus NP is a tough, highly curious question. So far the interest is, something like the continuum hypothesis and model theory, more philosophical than practical.

I like the question of P versus NP and believe that attacks on it will yield important and useful progress right along, long before the question is settled.

But of the proponents, such as Vardi, of the importance of the P versus NP question, many of them are less than accurate or honest. E.g., Vardi wrote:

"Garey and Johnson's classical textbook showed a long sad line of programmers who have failed to solve NP-complete problems."

Nonsense. Total cooked up, clearly wrong, outright deceptive nonsense.

Vardi is talking about the cartoon early in the book. There was a long line of computer scientists with one at the front explaining to a business executive behind a desk that he, the computer scientist, could not solve the businessman's problem but neither could any of the other computer scientists in the long line.

That cartoon was always a big deception: Almost certainly the businessman's problem could be solved, and maybe some of the computer scientists in the line could solve it.

The businessman's problem was to save money in his operations. So maybe some operation was costing him $200 million a year, and an optimal solution to some integer linear programming problem (ILP), and ILP is known to be in NP complete, might save him 15%. Actually the 15% is somewhat realistic: The work for the book was at Bell Labs; one of the main business problems being considered was the design of long distance telephone networks; and there was some empirical evidence that an optimal solution could save roughly 15%. So, that would be $30 million. Nice.

Such design is an old problem: MIT Dean T. Magnanti gave a Goldman lecture on the problem at Hopkins, etc. Various large Internet and multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network operators have continued to consider the problem. Especially considering the need for growth and the uncertainty of the future products and flows, it's a tough problem. For the deterministic version of the problem, at least one company in Texas, with some expertise from SMU, got venture funding to work on the problem.

They flew me down for an interview. At one point I mentioned that my last effort into ILP was to get a feasible solution within 0.025% of optimality to a 0-1 ILP with 40,013 constraints and 600,000 variables in less than 905 seconds on a 90 MHz computer. The misunderstanding, of even several students from SMU, about NP complete led them to conclude that I had to be lying, that no such progress could be possible. The progress was possible, and easy: The problem had _special structure_. So, except for 13 constraints, the problem was _separable_ and easy to solve. So, use nonlinear duality, put the 13 constraints in the objective function with Lagrange multipliers, and do some _Lagrangian relaxation_. After 500 such iterations, I had my feasible solution and a duality bound that established the 0.025%. Did I have an algorithm that showed that P = NP? Nope. Did I get what I wanted in the real problem? Yup. The dual problem is to maximize a concave function given by an intersection of finitely many closed half spaces (in this context, always true, no matter how nasty the original problem -- the proof is easy). So, this dual problem is just ordinary linear programming, and for it I used IBM's Optimization subroutine Library (OSL). Given the dual solution, the solution of the separable problem was fast. So, I exploited "Solving ILPs for Fun and Profit 101 for Dummies" -- exploit special structure.

In a back room they had a nice, high end Dell computer with a copy of C-PLEX and were ignoring them both and trying total enumeration. Net, they didn't want to work with me, and I didn't want to work with them. Poor venture firm.

Later a company in France got with C-PLEX founder R. Bixby and got some work done. Cisco bought them to get a system configuration aid for their MPLS customers.

But back to the cartoon: The businessman's problem was to save the 15% of the $200 million, that is $30 million or so.

Here's the big lie: The businessman's problem was to save nearly all the $30 million. So, saving $29,999,999.99999 would be just fine. Presto: (1) Saving nearly all the money was likely quite doable. (2) It is not clear that algorithms for such approximate solutions are in NP complete.

Indeed, for positive integers _m_ and _n,_ for the traveling salesman problem in Euclidean _n_ -space on _m_ cities, just find a minimum spanning tree of the _m_ cities (using a polynomial algorithm), and construct a traveling salesman tour of the cities by slightly modifying a depth-first traversal of the spanning tree. Presto: With a reasonable probabilistic description of the problem, as the number of cities _m_ grows, this solution comes as close as we please to optimality with probability as close to 1 as we please. So, the problem has a polynomial algorithm that provides approximate solutions. This is an old result with details in:

Richard M. Karp, "The Probabilistic Analysis of Some Combinatorial Search Algorithms," pages 1-19, 'Algorithms and Complexity: New Directions and Recent Results', edited by J. F. Traub, Academic Press, New York, 1976.

So in the cartoon, the computer scientist was standing there arguing that the difficulty of guaranteeing to save the last tiny fraction of the last penny, exactly, always, on worst case problems, the worst that could exist even in theory, with a polynomial algorithm meant that no computer scientist in the long line could solve the businessman's problem which was and remains total deceptive, incompetent, made up, academic make-work, junk-think, busy-work, prof-scam nonsense.

Net, the computer scientist was passing out a big lie just to avoid real, useful work and go for a very long term job in philosophical curiosity and intellectual self-abuse.

And Vardi is still pushing that nonsense.

Vardi is saying that the difficulty of exceeding Mach 50 means we can't take a plane to California and then wants to be funded for life to work on exceeding Mach 50 or maybe just the speed of light.</comment>


Apple Promotes Jeff Williams to COO, Puts Phil Schiller in Charge of App Store - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/17/apple-promotes-jeff-williams-to-coo-puts-phil-schiller-in-charge-of-app-store/ <comment><USER2> > In addition, Apple says it's expanding VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil > Schiller's duties to now include running the App Store _across all Apple > platforms_.

Emphasis mine, this means there's now a visible figure responsible for the Mac App Store. I'm not in Mac development, but by many accounts it's been neglected to the point that the well known software is bailing. Most specific complaints center around the sandbox limitations, but there's also frustration with wondering what you're shelling out such a big chunk of your money for if the store hasn't improved in years.

Apple can get away with whatever they want on iOS because there are no other options. On Mac, they can't expect to charge 30% of revenue and have everyone stick around if the service isn't worth it.

Example, with many related links at the bottom: [https://www.macstories.net/linked/sketch-is-leaving-the- mac-...](https://www.macstories.net/linked/sketch-is-leaving-the-mac-app- store/)

I don't know what they have planned to fix it, but the timing of this feels like at least a tacit acknowledgement that there's a problem.

<comment><USER3> This comes up whenever the Mac App Store is mentioned, but it deserves being repeated until it's fixed:

The Mac App Store is an awful program. It's incredibly slow. You make a great point- I'm glad there's now a public face and hope that it's a sign Apple is taking the issue seriously.

<comment><USER2> That reminds me, I have a screenshot of the App Store where it downloaded all of the store page _data_ , but didn't get the stylesheet. And since it's just a shitty webview in a box and not a full browser, there's no obvious way to make it reload.

These sorts of things happen when you download your whole program's page layout off the internet. How idiotic would it look if you pulled up a playlist view in iTunes and everything turned into an unstyled HTML bulleted list?

Don't have the computer with that screenshot handy, but I can post it later.

<comment><USER2> Screenshot as promised: [http://i.imgur.com/5xNgwMH.png](http://i.imgur.com/5xNgwMH.png)

Only have the "Check for Updates" screen, but I have to assume the same can happen in any section of the store.

If this were built as a native app (or even cached the CSS for common pages), you'd at least get a usable layout, even if your connection sucks too much to get images or even download software.

It's a joke as-is. You get the "there are 5 updates" badge on your dock icon, the store app _knows_ what the updates are, but can't display the list properly without a connection to the internet.

<comment><USER4> Can you send the screenshot to them with a suggestion of shipping the CSS with it? I think you can file bugs at [http://bugreport.apple.com/](http://bugreport.apple.com/).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been wanting to start developing software for the Mac, and seeing that there is now someone in charge of the App Store - not just for iOS but for the Mac as well - is a big thing. OSX is my main platform, and I've watched the Mac App Store stagnate and float around in a holding pattern. Here's hoping it finally gets a wishlist.

<comment><USER6> I learned something the hard way so let me pass it on :)

The Mac App Store is just a distribution channel and should not hold anyone back if they seriously think they have a product of value.

Even if they improve the Mac App store the rationale for even having it wont change much and so some of the same issues will still prevail IMO.

You will still only be featured if you either know someone or use some of their latest features/libraries.

You will still not be able to do a lot of things because of Sandbox.

You will not be able to reach the majority of target market (Google is your friend there)

And there are plenty of other great solutions for distribution out there.

Just my five cents.

P.S. If you are serious about developing for the Mac but don't have a project. Contact me I am expanding my product line and could use a good osx dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No mention of Eddie Cue? He was previously in charge of the store, right?

<comment><USER8> Yes. IMO:

Optically, Cue has been peculiar in the last year. The night before the keynote introducing Apple Music, he was photographed at a basketball game. The keynote was a disaster: he was easily the least polished presenter; the segments didn't flow together; he stumbled a few times; he did awful dad dancing and cracked jokes which folks didn't laugh at; Drake (?) and Jimmy Iovine had clearly not told anyone what they were going to say.

The product has not been a smash hit success, either. There was so much heat over how bad it was that some of Apple's best-known cheerleaders in the press and blogs were battering it for being unusable and buggy.

This is a logical clipping of Cue's wings. Apple Music + Beats 1 are a significantly different challenge to iTunes which was buoyed by rapid expansion of a category (iPod -- which lest we forget forced Amazon to have a product page for "non-iPod MP3 players") and a low threshold to entry. Apple Music is a wartime product competing against Spotify's headstart.

Schiller has for years been better at courting developers. He's more at ease scaling from macro perspectives on Apple's philosophy down to nerding out over software.

<comment><USER9> Eddie Cue is doing a lot of things (including being responsible for iCloud and the Maps backend IIRC). And really his strength and the reason why he was instrumental to iTunes lay in his ability to negotiate and drive deals with all of the music industry players.

<comment><USER10> Deals which are visibly not getting made for the Apple TV service, by most accounts

<comment><USER11> Don't blame Cue, media companies are scared to death of making deals like Jobs made with the record labels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really hope this comes with big changes. The App Store on all platforms has been a disaster for years, IMHO. Overrun with junk ware, it really needs some serious people power put into curating categories to help you find what you're interested in.

Years ago I used to download new iOS apps all the time, I rarely do any more. Every time I go on the store all I see is junk apps loaded with in app purchase traps.

<comment><USER13> The iOS app store is actually pretty clean if you look at Google Play -- now that is truly overrun with junk ware. Same with the Chrome extension store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Small rays of hope for fixing the app store problems start to glimmer on the horizon...

</comment><comment><USER15> Where's the diversity though...

</comment><comment><USER16> Now if they can reverse the momentum on the "War on Ports" on their "pro" models of crap. And get rid of the damn trash can design for the Mac Pro.</comment>


A Mother's Tour in Kekistan - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/05/05/what-happened-after-my-13-year-old-son-joined-the-alt-right/ <comment><USER2> _If Kafka were a middle-schooler today, this is the nightmare novel he would have written._

 _At a meeting two days later with my husband, Sam, and me, the administrator piled more accusations on top of the harassment charge—even implying, with undisguised hostility, that Sam and his friend were gay. He waved in front of us a statement from the girl at the table and insisted that Sam would need to defend himself against her claims if he wanted to prove his innocence. But the administrator refused to reveal the particulars of the complaint (he had also blacked out identifying details, FBI-style) and then hid the paperwork under a book._</comment>


Dropbox is using an unsigned binary to install kernel extensions on your Mac - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JZdziarski/status/836022552770326529 <comment><USER2> Hi folks, I work at Dropbox...

\- We assert the validity of this binary through other (cryptographic) means in the Dropbox Application.

\- We're going to start sign it using the means that JZ's tweet refers to, in addition to our existing checks, to avoid confusion.

\- The kernel extension / driver is signed by Dropbox (and this binary asserts that anything we install is signed only by us).

\- The kernel extension / driver is opt-in and not enabled for the general population (it's used in our implementation of Smart Sync, née Infinite).

<comment><USER3> Can you _please_ make installing a kext an option, rather than trying to install it behind our backs? If you unload + remove the kext, it gets installed again automatically.

The only way to block the kext is using e.g. Little Flocker.

Moreover, the kext _does_ get installed on my machines and I have a Pro account without Smart Sync.

I have been pondering to uninstall Dropbox, because all this behaviour is not acceptable. Unfortunately, I haven't found a good alternative yet.

<comment><USER4> These shenanigans finally made me delete my Dropbox account, and set up an OwnCloud instance on Digital Ocean.

I've found the OC client to be very nice on the platforms I use (Linux, Windows, iOS). The Dropbox client on Linux was terrible to the point of being unusable.

<comment><USER5> > These shenanigans finally made me delete my Dropbox account, and set up an > OwnCloud instance on Digital Ocean. I've found the OC client to be very nice > on the platforms I use (Linux, Windows, iOS

So an implementation-detail for a feature on a platform you don't use caused you to shift to another product, which doesn't even support the feature you are complaining about? Am I reading you correct?

By all means. If you're happy running a FOSS solution on servers you control, more power to you. I'm just confused about your reasoning.

<comment><USER6> > So an implementation-detail for a feature on a platform you don't use caused > you to shift to another product, which doesn't even support the feature you > are complaining about? Am I reading you correct?

I don't think he's talking about only this one issue. Dropbox had an issue with something of this sort recently [0]. They secretly gave their Mac application root privileges. They may have crossed the line for him here. I should say that I'm not speaking for him but I can see how something like this could have been the last straw for someone.

I personally think that the way a company treats it customers is a good display of how good it's culture is. It's not a good sign that they did this.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722)

<comment><USER7> Is this a different issue, or just a different part of the same thing ?

<comment><USER6> I hazard the latter since they have had a series of problems except the one here.

There was also a time that when you uploaded to Dropbox a file that was already on its servers, instead of storing the new file they stored a reference to the old one (that they already had) as per [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478567)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dropbox has been willing to get their hands dirty in their pursuit of user- friendliness since day one, especially on the Mac¹. Didn't find any examples where they walk it back; usually they stick to their guns with a few minor tweaks (and top-of-HN-discussion PR replies).

 _Dropbox Hasn 't Learned Their Lesson_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722) (2016) "You seem to completely miss the point. It's not about the feature itself, it's your way of "hacking" or "injecting" Dropbox features into places the user didn't expect."

 _How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338) (2016) "It's very strange that after I remove Dropbox from the accessibility list you think it's ok to add it back in again."

 _Dropbox accesses all the files in your PC?_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9136546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9136546) (2015) "It does, however, 'QueryBasicFileInformation' and and 'QueryDirectory' when I create a file on my desktop."

 _The Tech Behind Dropbox's New User Experience on Mobile, Part 2_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8203164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8203164) [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ieinternals/2014/09/04/cave...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ieinternals/2014/09/04/caveats- for-authenticode-code-signing/) (2014) "what good is a code-signed executable when that executable can simply download a payload from the internet like this Dropbox installer does"

 _Dropship — successor to torrents?_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478567) (2011) "Apparently Dropbox notices they already have that file, and instead of you uploading it they just make it appear in your account." CEO Drew Houston actually did the PR for the cleanup: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2482712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2482712)

¹ [http://mjtsai.com/blog/2011/03/22/disabling-dropboxs- haxie/](http://mjtsai.com/blog/2011/03/22/disabling-dropboxs-haxie/) (2011) "Dropbox injects code into the Finder in order to draw the green and blue badges atop your icons"

<comment><USER5> > Dropbox has been willing to get their hands dirty in their pursuit of user- > friendliness since day one, especially on the Mac¹.

Where Apple is providing zero of the APIs you typically find on more open platforms, like Linux and Windows.

Can't say I blame them. The other option would be to have a completely user- hostile installer and we all know how well they fare with the general public.

Installation these days has to be one click, or nothing at all. Otherwise you've lost your user.

<comment><USER9> > The other option would be to have a completely user-hostile installer

I'm unconvinced that a horrible installer is the only alternative, but even if it were, you are asserting that you see subverting OS security mechanisms and _intentionally ignoring user intent_ as somehow not user-hostile?

From my perspective, DB was kinda nifty when it first came out. The gap has been filled by commodity software for folks who can deal with self-hosting, so I'm personally happy. For other people, everyone and their pets wants to offer us all seamless hosted storage; there's no need for a glorified rsync service to be this creepy, evasive and intrusive.

> Otherwise you've lost your user.

I remain unconvinced that the various actions linked in the above were all required for a nifty install experience. Indeed, some of them are only required for forcing "features" on users that many have repeatedly indicated they don't want, _after_ that all-singing, all-dancing install experience is over.

Which, turns out, is a great way to lose your user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is Condoleezza Rice still working for Dropbox?

<comment><USER11> Yeah. [http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/board.asp?p...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/board.asp?privcapId=49093148)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What value of "kernel" is involved here? It's a tweet, so there isn't much to go on. I ask because I have this possibly naive view that one shouldn't need an actual "kernel extension" to sync some files...

<comment><USER13> Probably the "Infinite" extension [1] that lets you evict files from your disk while still storing them in Dropbox. It's an opt-in feature (and perhaps only available to Business customers?).

[1] - [https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/going-deeper-with- pro...](https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/going-deeper-with-project- infinite/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Twitter account seems to have been deleted.

<comment><USER15> mirror: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CgzTBD...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CgzTBD2JNGAJ:https://twitter.com/JZdziarski/status/836022552770326529)

content:

> So @dropbox is using a completely unsigned binary to install kernel > extensions on your Mac. This behavior is indistinguishable from malware.

</comment></comment><comment> thunder-ltu Uninstalled and closed the account. Thanks Dropbox!</comment>


Sshuttle – VPN over SSH - <AUTHOR> https://www.terminalbytes.com/sshuttle-vpn-over-ssh-vpn-alternative/ <comment><USER2> Isn't this just recreating the existing functionality you can get with a Socks proxy and stock ash?

<comment><USER3> The key difference is you can right full or partial traffic (by subnet) over SSH with applications not being aware - individual applications do not require SOCKS support.

<comment><USER3> Route* not right. As an example, you can send traffic destined for 22.214.171.124/8 via the SSH connection, and leave everything else untouched. Any application connecting to that IP range will be automatically tunnelled via SSH.</comment></comment></comment>


Unsupervised learning applied to double exponential hypothesis growth problems - <AUTHOR> https://www.ayasdi.com/blog/artificial-intelligence/the-deceptive-nature-of-exponential-change/ <comment><USER2> sounds interesting would like to see how this works out.</comment>


AI Wins 5-0 in Virtual Dogfight with Human Fighter Pilot - aero-glide https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35888/ai-claims-flawless-victory-going-undefeated-in-digital-dogfight-with-human-fighter-pilot <comment> aero-glide [https://youtu.be/NzdhIA2S35w?t=16786](https://youtu.be/NzdhIA2S35w?t=16786) Watch from 4 hours 40 mins</comment>


Pablo Picasso's version of refactoring: Reducing a drawing to 12 perfect pen strokes - <AUTHOR> http://artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/animals_in_art/pablo_picasso/pablo_picasso.htm <comment><USER2> _that it captures the absolute essence of the creature in as concise an image as possible_

No, it doesn't. It looks like crap. A bull without the massive bullhead is no longer a bull, but some freaky artist's conceit attached to a declaration, "This is a bull." The fact that he changed the pene so wildly between pictures is a hint that he's playing a joke on us.

Here are some superior, simple bull pictures:

[http://www.doublevisionarts.com/images/Boxenbaum/Bull%20seri...](http://www.doublevisionarts.com/images/Boxenbaum/Bull%20series%20drawing%203.gif)

[http://www.kshdevelopment.com/DaliPictures/Dali's%20Bullfigh...](http://www.kshdevelopment.com/DaliPictures/Dali's%20Bullfight%20Num%203.jpg)

<comment><USER3> You're reading the commentator back into the artist. When I see the series I see it as a commentary on reductionism with an element of humor and absurdity.

A lot of times people get so caught up in the pretension associated with "serious" art that they ignore that it's often supposed to be funny. I remember getting scowled at once at the symphony for laughing at loud at a certain point that was (for the musically inclined) obviously a joke.

<comment><USER4> __Verdi Spoiler Alert __

In Verdi's Simon Boccanegra at Covent Garden this past spring, Fiesco says "Simone, I morti ti salutano!" -- "Simon, the [previously-thought] dead salute you!".

To the classically minded, it's a riff on the gladitorial salute to the Roman emperor "Nos te morituri te salutant" -- we who are about to die salute you.

Takeaway lesson: only date people who laugh as much at Latin jokes as you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think that the analogy between Picasso's process and software refactoring is rather weak. We generally consider refactored code to be better and less crufty than the original (one would hope!) But the refactored bull isn't necessarily "better" than the original. It's simply more abstract, and not merely more abstract in a purely functional way. The final result is still highly stylized and instantly recognizable as the work of Picasso.

What might be usefully applied to programming is that in abstracting the bull to its minimalistic essence, Picasso illuminates the bull's underlying structure. Perhaps by removing code we can also get a clearer idea of the fundamental workings of a system. ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a lithograph, not a sketch as the title would suggest. All of those were actually made by adding material back to the carving.

Here's a better article on the process:

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n3_v81/ai_136...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n3_v81/ai_13609943/print)

<comment><USER6> Great article! This quote makes me grateful for version control:

Indeed, Picasso seems to have put into practice here an idea he had expressed a few months earlier when speaking of one of his paintings: "If it were possible, I would leave it as it is, while I began over and carried it to a more advanced state on another canvas. Then I would do the same thing with that one. There would never be a |finished' canvas, but just the different |states' of a single painting, which normally disappear in the course of work."(4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting metamorphisis. But what is up with the first "Pablo Picasso Facts" at the bottom of the page... "Picasso was the greatest artist of the 20th century."

<comment><USER8> It is not an unreasonable claim. Of course it's a bit jarring to see it stated in such a matter of fact way, when we are used to hearing that everything related to art is "subjective".

But if we look at somewhat objective criteria like influence on other artists and his range of different styles and media, he is probably unsurpassed in the 20th century. And then his productive years nicely overlaps with 3/4 of the century (during which he kept reinventing himself), while many other artists are associated with a single period or movement.

Of course that doesn't mean that he has to be your favorite artist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de St. Exupery

One of my favorite quotes. All programmers should keep this in mind when working.

<comment><USER10> That should be -- "Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away."

<comment><USER9> Is the translation wrong (I got it from wikiquotes), or do you disagree with what he said?

<comment><USER10> Oh, I was just applying the principle of the quote to itself.

<comment><USER11> Then you should remove all the words from the quote, leaving nothing more to take away.

(Yes, I consider the quote superficially appealing but essentially content- free.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anybody know where you can get a print of this?

I found the final frame ([http://www.artrev.com/art/detailview.asp?pid=8877781318&...](http://www.artrev.com/art/detailview.asp?pid=8877781318&aid=119&mid=120&original=No)), but I'd like to have the whole series.

</comment><comment><USER13> The sad truth is that the majority of people would prefer the "verbose" version, no matter how genius is your cut-down version. Same in software engineering: nobody cares how beautiful and concise your code is, you are paid only for the results.

<comment><USER8> You should probably not draw the analogy to software too far. Clearly users appreciate (and are willing to pay for) beauty and simplicity in user interface. Look at the iPod. But of course customers don't care if your code is minimal or a convoluted mess, as long as the app works.

20th century art is a little different because the process is part of the exposed product - the art piece here is not the last plate (which would be a bit boring on its own), but the whole sequence.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately bloatware sells well, too - take Microsoft or Adobe.

Why this analogy: succinctness and beauty is not appreciated in our industry, whereas it should have been a standard, like in mathematics or physics, where it is appreciated and "standardized" so to say. In math and physics you have to express youself in the most concise way. And I have never seen beauty and succinctness of the code being a _requirement_ as a part of making software, unfortunately.

Edit: "bloatware" pertains to both the code and the interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "...that it captures the absolute essence of the creature in as concise an image as possible"

I'm not convinced.

(This is not an expert's comment, I know nothing about modern art)

<comment><USER8> So you think the image could be even simpler and still convey the image of a bull?

I would guess that he made a plate XII where he simplified further by removing the balls or horns, and then realized that it was no longer the image of a bull.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't capture the essence of the creature in the sense that it lacks certain elements that one can assosciate with it, e.g. power (it looks very timid to me). Probably I misinterpreted the world "image", I did't take it literally as you suggest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> These are pretty cool. It also looks neat starting from the end and working towards the beginning.</comment>


Free Ways to Get Landing Page Feedback from Real People - <AUTHOR> https://blog.loudlist.io/5-ways-to-get-landing-page-feedback/ <comment><USER2> > The first step to launching a product is setting up a good landing page

Hmm

<comment><USER3> Hmm, indeed. This is the only blog post on the site and the landing page looks like a placeholder for the time being.

Maybe this is his way of getting free feedback? Hmm!

<comment><AUTHOR> First of many. That placeholder look is thanks to my acute lack of graphic design skills. Getting better one day at a time...

> Maybe this is his way of getting free feedback?

Close. It's really content marketing for getting signups for LoudList. The world gets a list of resources I genuinely found useful, and not so easy to locate, and I (hopefully) get a mailing list.

I've gotten feedback on the landing page at [https://loudlist.io](https://loudlist.io) (rough draft though it may be) already from the resources on this list. That's where I got the idea for the blog post.

<comment><USER3> Great, there's a real person behind this! Didn't mean any harm with my comment.

It's a nice resource with sites I didn't know about, so I'm keeping them in mind for any future references.

For me personally, the signup form doesn't feel aesthetically pleasant on a desktop screen; I think having both div's centerfold is the mustard here. On mobile, it's fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>