Woman of 24 found to have no cerebellum in her brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329861.900-woman-of-24-found-to-have-no-cerebellum-in-her-brain.html#.VBHaCWRdURl <comment><USER2> This condition is known as cerebellar agenesis. A review of many of the case studies was done by a prominent cerebellum researcher [1]. Typically the individuals that survive past birth live relatively normal lives but with impaired motor skills which are slower to develop. Their abilities are remarkable given that acute lesions to the cerebellum result in much more significant impairments (e.g. not being able to touch your nose with the tip of your finger in one smooth, coordinated movement).

These individuals probably also exhibit diminished cognitive function as well. Only recently has it been recognized that the cerebellum is also involved in cognition [2]. It's interesting to note that you don't need a cerebellum to move or think, but the loss of it impairs both. Contrast this to damage to your motor cortex which can result in paralysis.

[1] Glickstein, M (1994). Cerebellar Agenesis. Brain, 117, 1209-1212. [2] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23996631](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23996631)

<comment><USER3> > This condition is known as cerebellar agenesis.

To tease you a little bit, I read this as

> This condition is known as being born without a cerebellum.

I don't know why we need a latin name for everything!

<comment><USER4> It certainly makes it easier to find in a book or via search. You have one word for what it's called, instead of having some under "Born without a cerebellum," some as "Missing cerebellum," others in "No cerebellum," "Undeveloped cerebellum," etc.

Plus it's more convenient to say. Not a big deal for us, but to people who deal with crazy medical conditions all day long, describing each one in natural language would be imprecise and time consuming.

<comment><USER5> Though obviously it's not the reason it was adopted, it is kind of neat that using a dead language for scientific terms disambiguates them cleanly for the purposes of searching.

Any live language would have accidental matches (even quoted) where it's just the obvious thing to say, a la "born without a cerebellum".

<comment><USER6> not a dead language.. greek language is still alive and indeed it sounds like "born without a cerebellum" (but to be fair the syntax reminds of medical term)

<comment><USER7> Latin is a dead language, there has not been a native speaker for a very long time[1].

[1]:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death)

<comment><USER8> It is still in constant use as the official language of the Vatican.

They keep having to invent new Latin words and phrases so they can discuss things like hotpants, which are _brevíssimae bracae femíneae_ apparently.

Have a look here - [http://usvsth3m.com/post/95991771713/hotpants-flirt-and- othe...](http://usvsth3m.com/post/95991771713/hotpants-flirt-and-other-new- latin-words-invented)

The cashpoint with Latin in comic-sans is awesome.

edit - translating from the latin, comic-sans is a pretty accurate font name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This also reminds me of Hemispherectomy[0] where an entire half of the brain is surgically removed in extreme cases to prevent seizures. And amazingly, especially if you do this on younger children:

"Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor,[4] and minimal changes in cognitive function overall."

If you don't _really_ need half of the brain and you don't _really_ need the cerebellum, I wonder how little (and what part) of the brain we actually do _really_ need. And then there are so many people living just fine with lesions in so many parts of the brain.

It's just amazing. Imagine going into our code bases and tearing out entire classes or modules; That wouldn't go down well.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy)

<comment><USER10> >> It's just amazing. Imagine going into our code bases and tearing out entire classes or modules; That wouldn't go down well.<< It's probably more like removing half the CPU cores and your clever code being ok with this.

<comment><USER11> Thinking of the brain as a computing platform is never a good metaphor. Neural networks do not have a rigid delineation between instruction-storage, data- storage, and CPU. Every neuron wears all three hats and intertwingles those concepts.

<comment><USER12> Von Neumann architecture isn't the only form of computation that exists.

<comment><USER13> True. If it were, what humans do with their biological CPUs would be impossible. Too bad we don't understand our own brains.

<comment><USER14> In our defense, they didn't grow to be understood but to serve its purpose. So it's akin to a code base with billions of years in the making, without any good documentation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love how these kinds of discoveries challenge, if not out right shatter, our current scientific understanding of human beings.

Again, I recommend Gattaca movie [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/)

Don't let medical science try to dictate your potential based on gender, race or anything about your DNA. They're only right until they find out they're wrong.

<comment><USER16> "Don't let mainstream misinterpretations and gross oversimplifications of medical science try to dictate your potential based on gender, race or anything about your DNA. They're only right until they find out they're wrong."

FTFY.

Most of the issues you're alluding to are not because medical science says something is impossible but because the media hears "X group has slightly elevated probability of Y" and reports it as "X group has Y".

<comment><USER17> the original comment was articulated just fine. the point is that science of all varieties has proven wrong over, and over, and over, and over, and over. science is a constant reevaluation of things we "know".

thing is, we don't know what we don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, could you imagine building a computer so resilient that it still works after a part equivalently important disappeared‽

<comment> C-- Not really a computer but some distributed systems already work that way. I've read somewhere that Netflix (might have been Amazon?) is designed in such a way that it's capable of satisfying certain requirements even when services are down.

<comment><USER19> Are we talking about a "fallback db servers take over when the main ones drop", or "static assets server morphs into temporary db server if the main one drops"? Because there is a massive difference.

<comment><USER20> There are crazy cases of plasticity like that, this is more of "massive nosql caching infrastructure is down, everything else works overdrive to still mostly function correctly".

<comment><USER19> So when your legs stop working and you start crawling around the floor with your hands pulling the rest of your body, is that plasticity too?

It's easy to continue working at increased costs when you don't have a cache. That's.. that's what a cache is for; it's not critical to the infrastructure, it's here to reduce the costs.

Not to rain on any parade of course, I'm just pointing out I'd like to see more cases of _actual_ plasticity of an email server that puts all jobs on hold while it temporarily takes over for a database server that just stopped responding.

<comment><USER21> Caching can be critical if the volume is high enough. There are physical limitations of computing appliances that make sites like Google or Facebook actually impossible to run without extensive caching and indexing layers, not just prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER19> I thought that was obvious. OP was making a point about things running without cache at the cost of increased load... I'm sure Google Search couldn't reliably achieve that right now, but we were not talking about Google Search.

<comment><USER21> Right. I figured I wasn't telling you anything new, but thought it worth making explicit for the benefit of others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The robustness of evolved systems is just crazy.

<comment><USER23> If only we had this in the much simpler than a brain computer systems, right?

<comment><USER24> Yea try booting up with half a CPU.

<comment><USER25> it can be done! You can disable cores!

<comment><USER26> well not everyone knows how to do that. And perhaps similarly.. not every brain knows how to switch of the cerebellum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is fascinating because the cerebellum is part of the "reptilian brain", one of the three sections of the mammalian triune brain that include the limbic and neocortex as well.

The reptilian brain is responsible for basic motor functions, heart rate, temperature regulation, and balance, and evolutionarily seems to be the part of the brain that is most connected to that of ancient fish and reptiles, as the name implies.

A person who is missing a portion of this rigid subsystem should still be able to think, process new information, and remember it, but might suffer from imbalance and other basic health issues as in fact this woman does. Yet, she can do lots of stuff. Apparently the surviving portions of her reptilian brain are able to compensate for the loss of the cerebellum.

It sheds a whole new light on a phrase like "my cold reptilian hindbrain tells me to ruthlessly proceed". We think of ourselves having this sort of emotionless hindbrain that is moderated by the more modern brain centers for sympathy, empathy, emotion, and higher reasoning. But what if in fact there is no such thing as a ruthless, primitive hindbrain and we are all completely in charge of our behavior, ethically and emotionally speaking?

[http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_05/d_05_cr/d_05_cr_her/d...](http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_05/d_05_cr/d_05_cr_her/d_05_cr_her.html)

<comment><USER28> Maybe it isn't that the cerebellum is "gone" but maybe the surrounding tissue that bordered the cerebellum has sort of involuntarily taken over the same function. Those nerve endings that would terminate in the cerebellum are probably still intact?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> >"[...] the woman joins an elite club of just nine people who are known to have lived without their entire cerebellum. A detailed description of how the disorder affects a living adult is almost non-existent, say doctors from the Chinese hospital, because most people with the condition die at a young age and the problem is only discovered on autopsy."

Is this woman the only one of the nine to have lived this long? Incredible given how critical the cerebellum is.

<comment><USER30> Well autopsies are rare so it's an unknown number of survivors.

<comment><USER31> I would think that people who die very young, like kids, would get autopsied all the time, simply because such deaths are rare and there would be suspicion of foul play or other issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is fascinating considering that the cerebellum contains _more neurons than the rest of the brain_ (!) (source: [http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s3/chapter05.html](http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s3/chapter05.html)). I wonder what other problems she experiences (the article only says she started speaking and walking at age 6-7).

<comment><USER33> The cerebellum is a much more primitive neural network, though. It's feed- forward only - it actually looks like a tree in MRIs - so it's a lot harder to encode anything. Normal neural networks ("connectomes") in the brain are massively interconnected in all directions, which allows for parallel computation; with the tree-like, feed-forward-only architecture of the cerebellum, neurons from different "branches" don't communicate.

<comment><USER34> Interesting. How was it determined that they're feed-forward-only? Can signals not travel back down the "tree"? (Note, I'm not even an amateur neurologist).

<comment><USER33> It's a different kind of neuron altogether.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I hope she knows all the lyrics to The Ramones' "Teenage Lobotomy".

"Then I guess I'll have to tell 'em / That I've got no cerebellum."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ssoBUb2cJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ssoBUb2cJk)

<comment><USER36> I was just going to post this! First thing I thought of.

</comment></comment><comment> vhost- The brain knows how to survive, that's for sure... [http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/woman.brain/index.html?...](http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/woman.brain/index.html?iref=24hours)

</comment><comment><USER10> The upper image which I assume is her MRI scan is interesting. It isn't just her cerebellum missing - her brain stem looks odd too. Where is the pons? Where are the cranial nerves attaching? Need more images! Edit. On closer reading this article isn't great. <<Doctors did a CAT scan and immediately identified the source of the problem – her entire cerebellum was missing (see scan, below left)>>. Assuming it isn't some sort of problem related to me viewing the article on a phone, that image is an MR. No CATs involved.

<comment><USER37> ? The top image is most definitely from a CAT scan. If it was MR, there would be way more artifact around the eye/nose/throat.

<comment><USER10> No it isn't. Look at the contrast and the signal from fat and water, look at the tongue. That is a T1 sag. Edit: Article, or images anyway, appear on multiple sites labeled as MRI. Pretty sure the fuzzy writing says T1 FLAIR on this site. [http://io9.com/doctors-discover-a-woman-with-no- cerebellum-1...](http://io9.com/doctors-discover-a-woman-with-no- cerebellum-1633439918) Edit 2: Here is another link and the ax T2 is seen at bottom of the images. Edit 3. The actual journal article. New scientist screwed up didn't didn't read it properly. Patient had a CT then an MRI as per the image label. New Scientist only kept the MRI image as brain MR is way nicer than CT but kept the journal text saying CT. [http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/bra...](http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/brain.awu239.full)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Her doctors describe these effects as "less than would be expected"

Understatement of the century? I wonder, then, what parts of the brain (if any) truly are essential for conscious thought?

<comment><USER39> The main role of the cerebellum is the motor function. According to the wikipedia it's still unclear if it plays a part in some cognitive functions such as attention and language, and in regulating fear and pleasure response

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Remember things like this when people talk about biological differences between men and women's brains. Studies sometimes find tiny differences, and then some people claim that's why 19 out of 20 board members are men. It's not bias, it's science!

But if people can live missing massive chunks of their brain, is it _really_ believable that tiny differences can cause such massive societal outcomes?

<comment><USER31> > But if people can live missing massive chunks of their brain, is it really > believable that tiny differences can cause such massive societal outcomes?

Congratulations, you are today's demonstration of 'proving too much': you have also just proven that things like lesions and scars cannot affect cognition, warp personalities, create agnosias and aphasias, and result in bizarre conditions like those Oliver Sacks has so memorably documented, because lesions're so tiny and such small parts of the brain - 'if people can live missing massive chunks of their brain, is it _really_ believable that tiny differences can cause such massive societal outcomes?'

<comment><USER41> The OP was not talking about the magnitude of the differences, but the nature of them.

Do you believe that neuroplasticity remains constant throughout a person's lifetime? Unless you believe that, your statement is incoherent.

Lesions and scars are acute changes in the brain that happen after birth. That's different from starting out missing massive chunk of your brain.

OP: "Look at that person who was born with no arms due to a birth defect. They're able to live a fairly normal, happy life. Maybe arms aren't essential to human happiness."

You: "So you're saying if you got your hand mutilated in a garbage disposal, that wouldn't make you unhappy? A hand is much less than a whole arm."

(I'll leave what this makes you a demonstration of as an exercise for the reader.)

<comment><USER31> > The OP was not talking about the magnitude of the differences, but the > nature of them.

And what, pray tell, are the 'nature' of disorders like Cotard's syndrome?

> OP: "Look at that person who was born with no arms due to a birth defect. > They're able to live a fairly normal, happy life. Maybe arms aren't > essential to human happiness."

Try going back and reading what was said. Your paraphrase is incorrect. Here's a correct paraphrase:

"OP: look at that person born with no legs. They're able to lead a somewhat normal life. This shows that anyone claiming that there might be differences between the fingered and the fingerless such as in fine motor control is a moron - because a leg is so much larger than a finger!"

> I'll leave what this makes you a demonstration of as an exercise for the > reader.

Well, it demonstrates you can't paraphrase or follow the logical structure of an argument. I'm not sure what I'm demonstrating; hopefully something good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have always found it fascinating that the cerebellum has more neurons than the rest of the brain. What the heck is going on in there.

</comment><comment><USER10> Better article and original source. [http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/bra...](http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/brain.awu239.full)

</comment><comment><USER42> A friend of mine lost the left side of his brain ... And he's all right now!

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm being sincere here. I am surprised and excited to see interest in this. Someone very close to me has no discernible cerebellum and no one we've seen or known has ever considered it medically interesting.

<comment><USER44> I felt the same way when I saw this article. My cousin's daughter was recently diagnosed with cerebellar hypoplasia (a missing or smaller than normal cerebellum), and it's been pretty terrifying for them. They live in a rural area where no one has ever dealt with the problem, and they're spending insane amounts of time and money on therapy (in a city an hour away) to help her learn basic skills. She celebrated her 3rd birthday this week and she can't walk, talk, or even stand unassisted.

On one hand, this article thrills me to think that at some point, her daughter might lead a relatively normal life. It's heartbreaking to see the way she suffers right now - like there's more going on in her head than she can tell us, and you can see the frustration on her face when she tries to do things or get her point across. On the other hand, I'm hesitant to send the article to my cousin because I know everything related to her daughter's problem is deeply depressing to her as she's dealing with a frustrated child who makes very little progress from day to day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Don't mind the gap . . ."

Perhaps a more tasteful lead-in was in order.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm really curious, how would this woman react to alcohol?

</comment><comment><USER47> Talk about living on "Hard" mode.

</comment><comment><USER48> That is nothing... I know of several politicians that have no brain at all, and no one has noticed yet. jk,jk

</comment><comment><USER39> Is the picture of the CT scan real or just an illustration? Because I would assume that even if the woman doesn't have a cerebellum the brain should expand to occupy that space.

<comment><USER49> The article indicates it's the actual scan and says the space "was filled with cerebrospinal fluid, which cushions the brain and provides defence against disease."

<comment><USER10> Don't read the article provided too carefully. The image isn't a CT and has been dumbed down from the source. The image is an MR not a CT, and the image below is some sort of made up composite image. Original source with proper images: [http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/bra...](http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/22/brain.awu239.full)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's strange how materialists of all sorts (just look at the comments) take it for granted that, no matter how scientifically absurd, these facts cannot be used as evidence for non-materialistic explanations of the life and the world. Everything will be explained by materialistic science, and that is settled.

<comment><USER13> Okay, but consider the alternative -- that the existence of a non- materialistic reality is assumed without empirical (i.e. material) evidence. If that were to be accepted as a given, then we might build a pseudoscience on that foundation, one that would burden everyone with assumptions about empirically untestable, non-objective properties of reality. We would have created psychology.

<comment><USER51> Empirical evidence isn't material evidence.

<comment><USER13> That's exactly what it is.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence)

Quote: "Empirical evidence (also empirical data, sense experience, empirical knowledge, or the a posteriori) is a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation.[1] The term comes from the Greek word for experience, Εμπειρία (empeiría)."

The definition goes on to contrast empirical evidence with reasoning and other ways of approaching analysis -- all the non-materialist approaches.

<comment><USER51> Read the quote again, you're begging the question.

Empirical evidence is experiential by definition - it can be material evidence if it relates to claims about matter, but it can also be evidence about other domains.

Ex. If God exists, then religious experience is empirical evidence of this. It is not probably not material evidence however.

<comment><USER13> > Read the quote again, you're begging the question.

Yes, perhaps I am to some extent.

> Empirical evidence is experiential by definition

I would have said it relies on tangible evidence, material evidence. Its status as an experience by an observer, if present, is secondary. I say this because evidence can be gathered without anyone experiencing it directly. Consider Curiosity on Mars. If we read a mass spectrometer's results radioed back to Earth and draw conclusions on that basis, it's a stretch to assert that we've experienced the evidence. Its interpretation certainly involves an observer, but not the evidence gathering itself -- that is often automated, even here on earth.

> Ex. If God exists, then religious experience is empirical evidence of this.

No, I think a spiritual experience contradicts the direct, physical sense of empirical. I usually regard empirical evidence as that kind of physical evidence that forces different, similarly equipped observers into agreement on its meaning.

Example -- when the CMB was confirmed in the mid-1960s, it killed off the last hope for a steady-state universe. Until then the Big Bang's critics were theorizing that the universe created new matter between the galaxies, so even though the universe was clearly expanding, this didn't mean it had a beginning or an end. The CMB detection, which wasn't really anyone's direct experience, falsified this alternative to the Big Bang. And it's objective in the sense that anyone can set up and detect the same evidence using indirect means -- not by direct experience.

<comment><USER52> Where would that leave something like free will?

I think most people will agree with me that we have the sensation of control over our own actions and yet it's not something that's directly testable per se.

<comment><USER13> Because the notion of free will isn't a materially testable question, it's not in the realm of science but philosophy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kuai Kuai culture is a phenomenon in Taiwan where snacks are put on machines - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuai_Kuai_culture <comment><AUTHOR> Kuai Kuai culture is a phenomenon in Taiwan where snacks are put on machines.

</comment><comment><USER2> Are these exported? I know people that need all the superstition they can get for their equipment!</comment>


Windows Bridge for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC <comment><USER2> In the late '90s, NeXT/Apple actually had a Cocoa runtime for Windows. It was called Yellow Box (but only shipped as part of Enterprise WebObjects, IIRC). It was closed source, of course, and 3rd parties couldn't ship apps using it.

In this bizarro world we live in, Microsoft has rebuilt essentially the exact same thing _and_ has released it as MIT-licensed open source.

<comment><USER3> I have not debugged iTunes on Windows, but I have a feeling that there is at least some AppKit wrapping going on (perhaps akin to UXKit) for Windows.

<comment><USER4> iTunes on Windows is as much AppKit as it is on OS X; which might be to say, not much, maybe… but definitely a lot of ObjC and Foundation.

<comment><USER5> I thought it used to be C/C++ and only based on Carbon. Has that changed?

<comment><USER6> Proably, Xcode 6 saw the death of the Carbon tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like they took the MIT-licensed PSTCollectionView without any attribution: [https://twitter.com/steipete/status/629364240063799296](https://twitter.com/steipete/status/629364240063799296)

Compare: [https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/106d8b2738101872a1...](https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/106d8b2738101872a186479a07508b16d34f5872/Frameworks/UIKit/UICollectionViewFlowLayout.mm#L348) and [https://github.com/steipete/PSTCollectionView/blob/master/PS...](https://github.com/steipete/PSTCollectionView/blob/master/PSTCollectionView/PSTCollectionViewFlowLayout.m#L139)

Edit: They added the license [https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/commit/611e9e5a4b837360...](https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/commit/611e9e5a4b8373602f2b162313b1be41ffe9ff0e)

<comment><USER8> Is attribution required by that license? The copyright notice has to stay in the software, but I don't see an attribution clause.

License: [https://github.com/steipete/PSTCollectionView/blob/master/LI...](https://github.com/steipete/PSTCollectionView/blob/master/LICENSE)

In the source file referenced, the PSTCollectionView strings are all ifdef'd out. Lawyers would be required to tell if text not used in the software is part of the software.

<comment><USER7> Is the copyright notice still anywhere? It says Copyright Microsoft on the top of the file.

<comment><USER9> Copy and paste the first paragraph into Google. Looks like someone didn't understand the nuances of the MIT license, no biggy and easy to fix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this not vulnerable to the horrible precedent on copyrightability of APIs, established by Oracle vs Google and which the SC just refused to review?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc).

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/bad-news-supreme- court...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/bad-news-supreme-court- refuses-review-oracle-v-google-api-copyright-decision)

<comment><USER11> I've read that both Microsoft and Apple have agreed not to sue each other in court.

<comment><USER12> That's convenient, but I don't think they made the same deal with Google (Project Astoria, the Android variation).

<comment><USER13> Imagine how well it would go over for Google if they started a copyright suit from the position that they heavily argued against in Oracle.

I'm not saying they wouldn't (or even shouldn't, since they lost the case), but I'd be amused as all get out. And it'd prove what we all know deep down: Google's position will always be whatever is the best position for Google.

<comment><USER14> Personally, I find it more amusing that you speculate a situation that hasn't happened, and has no precedent from Google's history, and then use that to confirm a speculation which "we all know deep down" :)

<comment><USER13> Well, I said "it'd", which is short for "it would". As in, it would confirm, if they did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It looks like they took an approach similar to GNUStep, with its inverted layers compared to Apple's implementation. CF on top of Foundation on top of UIKit.

Looking a little deeper, it's missing some things... KVC/KVO are entirely absent. libdispatch looks to be pretty broken. NSNull is wrong in about 3 ways. There are several classes which are just stubs. Most of the NSLock subclasses are missing.

It's a good start, but I don't see it becoming _the_ ObjC standard library by any stretch of the imagination.

<comment><USER16> Ack. I recall Apportable did something similar in their first cut, then redid it with the correct architecture. (I wouldn't say Foundation is on top of UIKit in Microsoft's implementation though?)

I am surprised they didn't use any of Apple's open source code, such as libdispatch or CoreFoundation.

<comment><USER15> Apportable basically used a heavily modified fork of GNUStep originally, but yes, then they did switch to a correctly layered architecture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/08/06/windows- bri...](http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/08/06/windows-bridge-for- ios-lets-open-this-up/) has some more details. Projections look cool!

</comment><comment><USER17> Sorry for the totally n00b question, but does this enable running iOS apps on Windows or the opposite?

<comment><USER18> Most importantly, the ability to develop iOS applications on a Windows box.

<comment><USER19> This is a welcome sign for those that do not want to buy Apple hardware and have struggled working with Hackintosh VMs or cloud-based OSX desktops.

Is it still policy for Apple to require XCode and therefore force you into buying Apple hardware (one way or another) in order to deploy to the App Store?

<comment><USER20> Yes. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, you can't deploy an app to the app store without a Mac. But you can (at least in theory) do iOS _development_ on a Windows machine.

<comment><USER21> Isn't it that you just need your build to be signed by a registered copy of XCode/OSX (don't know specifically what it is)?

So you can actually just send the code developed on your windows box off to a third party build server, which will be an actual registered mac - you get the compiled binary back and then submit that to the app store, no worries.

I'm not sure if the rules around this have changed but IIRC from a couple of years ago when I last checked, this is what Adobe were doing with their phonegap build server - you send them up your phonegap project which can be written on anything (windows, linux, etc), they compile it to apps for various platforms and send you back those binaries, you then just submit these to the various platform app stores. Again, IIRC, this included iOS apps.

<comment><USER20> You are correct, and if I remember clearly, I think this is how Xamarin does it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So I'm going to assume this ultimately a way to prop up windows phones by making it much easier for developers to put something on the windows store. What surprising (to me) is that they didn't go the Android route given it's open source to begin with, and they already have patent licenses in place.

<comment><USER23> This makes me think of the ol' OS/2 downfall. OS/2 could run Windows applications; this meant no-one developed specifically for OS/2, so they never got the developer mindshare, so there were no OS/2 killer apps, so users saw no benefit to using OS/2 over Windows.

<comment><USER22> But OS/2 wasn't hardware. If Microsoft can sell phones that match features, speed, ram, look good, etc but can also run all the apps you want, then that's a more competitive situation than running a significant subset of apps out there (just look at their marketshare which is pathetic for a company with all their resources).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hope when Swift becomes open source, MS will add a bridge for Swift as well. I am really looking foreword to making Swift my go to language for web app and utility development. It's a very neat language.

<comment><USER25> Swift is open source as of WWDC, and Microsoft is working on bringing Swift on as part of this project.

<comment><USER26> It's not. It's only promised to be. Kinda like FaceTime was promised to be an open standard.

<comment><USER27> Unlike Facetime nobody rised patent issues regarding Swift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting... So they are using ObjFW as their ObjC runtime, which is relatively an old implementation. So if your app has some Obj C Runtime use, you may see trouble here. It would be interesting to test their other implementations.

<comment><USER28> Hum, excuse me, but since when is the ObjFW runtime old? It supports modern ObjC quite fine and is still in active development with the last changes being from this year. However, the one used here seems to be from 2012 for some reason, instead of one from 2015.

<comment><USER3> I think they took it directly from here: [https://webkeks.org/objfw/](https://webkeks.org/objfw/) which does say 2012 as the last release. I see on GH they have commits from as recent as last month.

The problem is not the syntax support. The ObjC runtime had many changes to it done internally over obscure flags to support Swift and other compiler features. These are not readily documented on Apple open sources. (Perhaps more documentation exists in LLVM.) Once the runtime contains ABI changes, it makes it difficult to port apps that (ab)use the runtime. Not a problem for some apps, but a big problem for others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised they didn't use Apple's libobjc nor CoreFoundation; a quick look at the Foundation/CoreFoundation code suggests it's nowhere near as complete as Apportable's. The rest looks impressive though and it's great the open sourced it. Instead of complaining I suppose one should just fix things! (For example, where is CFGetTypeID()?)

<comment><USER16> Also, not using Apple's libobjc misses out on years of optimisation. e.g. compare the implementations of objc_sync_enter() (not that @synchronized is necessarily that common).

Couldn't find their implementation of objc_msgSend, interestingly...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It appears their strategy is now _" embrace everything"_.

<comment><USER30> and _extend anything_! and... (gosh)

<comment><USER31> Not an iOS developer, but, say they did extend this, what's to stop a developer taking the (presumably MIT licensed code), using it within his app to get that on iOS too? I guess this doesn't work if it's being backed by some Windows feature, but otherwise?

<comment><USER32> That doesn't make much sense because iOS already comes with implementations for all these frameworks. You're kinda asking "what's to stop a developer from including wine into his windows app so it can run on windows?"

<comment><USER31> Yes totally pointless so long as they were strictly replicating iOS, but people seem to fear Microsoft extending the APIs.

<comment><USER32> Ah, now I get your point. Yeah, unfortunately you can be pretty sure that any interesting "extended API" would be a small wrapper around a windows-specific OS-provided service and thus unportable. That was the big issue with the MS Java extensions too I believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm loving the openness of this new Microsoft. They keep launching cool stuff!

<comment><USER3> Some open, some not.

[http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/08/06/windows- bri...](http://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2015/08/06/windows-bridge-for- ios-lets-open-this-up/)

"(we're not open sourcing the compiler)"

<comment><USER31> The compiler is the Clang front end over their MSVC backend, [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2015/05/01/bringing-c...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2015/05/01/bringing- clang-to-windows.aspx) . I guess I wouldn't be too surprised if it was open sourced later as that seems to be the direction they are generally moving in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, new SDK released today includes `TARGET_OS_WIN32` in many headers. Is Apple planning a surprise?

<comment><USER34> `TARGET_OS_WIN32` has been there since a very long time ago.

<comment><USER3> Really? I haven't seen them in so many years. Either my brain blocked WIN32 or...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Wow, this must've been enormously complicated to implement

<comment><USER36> More like grunt work.

<comment><USER3> A lot of UIKit is nuances, documented or otherwise. Just discovering most of them (I'm sure they haven't) is a very difficult task.

<comment><USER36> Trust me, I have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Some of this code is just... WTF? For example, [https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/106d8b2738101872a1...](https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC/blob/106d8b2738101872a186479a07508b16d34f5872/Frameworks/Foundation/NSCalendar.mm#L233) ; even setting aside the fact that some minutes don't have 60 seconds, 30.42 days per month?!

<comment><USER38> 365 / 12 = 30.42

<comment><USER37> Well, yes, but you cannot do any useful math on months with that fact. Late in January, plus one "month", gives you early in March; early in July, plus one "month", gives you late in July. I can't imagine what useful intent could lead to this code being correct.

<comment><USER39> I expect they had to write something that looked good to meet the deadline, even if it was completely broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "No autolayout support"

Guess I'm gonna hold off this until the final version is released.

</comment><comment><USER40> Would be cool if they added SpriteKit, the games would work on iOS, Mac Os and Xbox One (Windows)

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting how they built their UIView/CALayer stuff on top of Xaml to the point where you can apparently just add any random Xaml windows component into an UIView.

Reminds me about the whole Visual J embrace-and-extend thing in the old MSJava debacle.

</comment><comment><USER41> Someone with enough Cocoa knowledge should use it as the basis for an OS X implementation of UIKit. And for other OSes like GNU/Linux using GNUstep.

Very interesting stuff, diving into the Frameworks directory in the repo.

<comment><USER40> I think Apple might be doing this themselves, dig into Photos.app on Mac Os.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> On Channel9 Microsoft introduced Islandwood (building Windows app with ObjC) in this video:

[https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/3-610](https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/3-610) (start at 35 mins)

It's an interesting (and funny) video. Some things Microsoft _might_ work on are:

\- Swift support might be on the roadmap

\- Export (changes) to Xcode project might be on the roadmap

\- There's interop between ObjC and C++ / C# using some sort of event system.

\- Visual Studio 2015 has autocomplete and syntax colouring for ObjC

</comment><comment><USER43> Maybe once Tengu ([http://www.tengu.com/](http://www.tengu.com/)) comes out of closed beta, developers will be able to use Objective-C as a cross-platform language targeting all major mobile platforms. The only question is how native the UI will feel on the non-iOS platforms.

</comment><comment><USER16> sysctlbyname() implementation in Frameworks/CoreFoundation/CFMisc.mm does not check the destination buffer size.

<comment><USER44> You know what's great about open source? You can contribute to it! :)

<comment><USER16> Heh. They already fixed it. Nice one MS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm very impressed with the technical prowess involved in shipping this, that being said, I feel like OSS this is somewhat disingenuous. To use it you'll still need VS2015 (EDIT: this tool which will only work in Windows 10 according to the spec). While Windows 10 is a free upgrade, if you're developing iOS apps you probably don't have a windows license, (because Apple requires development to happen on OSX) so you're gonna need access to two closed source (and kinda expensive) pieces of software to see any real benefit from this, I guess at the very least there'll be an easy way to provide bug reports, feature and pull requests, etc (where usually for closed source you're SOL).

RE: The project itself: looks like they're still working on getting it to work on ARM, which is strange considering that iOS is ARM...

<comment><USER46> One kinda expensive piece of software - Windows 10. VS2015 Community is free, and more than capable for the use of this.

I'd imagine if you are a mac developer then the price of Win10 is practically insignificant compared to what you are used to paying for OSX stuff.

<comment><USER47> You need to re-imagine.

I'm used to paying $0 for the OS X stuff needed to do development. This includes the Enterprise Professional Plus Home edition of both OS X and Xcode. In the lifetime of my Mac I have upgraded the OS 2 times and soon 3 for $0. So $307 is a bit significant for Windows 10 Pro (need BitLocker = Home is no go).

If you could have done the same on your Windows platform then please give me your Windows stuff contact person as he is clearly much cheaper than the ones I usually deal with.

But just for being in the Apple is ripping you off mode I did pay a bit more for the initial purchase of the hardware (around $205 more in todays prices than a comparable Dell XPS 13).

My day job is doing software management on the Windows platform so I'm fully aware of the licensing cost here. Including the price of operating a Windows developer above Visual Studio community level with their VS Pro/Enterprise editions, MSDN subscriptions, Team Foundation servers, and $2,500 HP workstation laptops (initial consumer price for lowest configuration). Seeing these prices almost causes a heart attack each time...

<comment><USER48> If you run it in a VM on your Mac, you can take advantage of any host-level full-disk encryption and avoid needing Bitlocker. (Of course, you probably want to pay the $50 or so for VMware Fusion, if you're going that approach.)

<comment><USER47> Yes, hadn't thought of that actually.

But it was mostly an example. I already have all the Windows versions I want available through work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> MS should build an amazing version of Visual Studio that lets you build Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone apps. It's free if you release Windows Phone apps along with your Android or iPhone apps.

<comment><USER50> It's called VS 2015

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Any chance of the MacOSX APIs coming along for the ride? Or how much extra effort would it be to use this and port the MacOSX apis as well?

I'd love to get Mac Apps on Windows.

<comment><USER52> Agreed — to me, the ability to compile my OS X projects for Windows is a far, far more interesting proposition than being able to port my iOS projects. To be quite honest, I don't really care that my iOS apps don't have a Windows Mobile port.

<comment><USER3> You don't care, but Microsoft does. Their Windows Phone/Mobile state is much more dire than the desktop/tablet Windows 10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can this be used to generate XAML from UIKit elements?

Let's say I want to see the Rendered XAML template of a standard UIButton?

<comment><USER20> Probably not. And if you could, then it'll only be because Microsoft re- implemented those UIKit elements in XAML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> does this mean we can compile iphone apps on windows now?

</comment><comment><USER54> when are we getting windows spider solitare on ios

<comment><USER55> Forget that, I want Space Cadet pinball

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> "Embrace and extend" \- Microsoft's long-standing strategy for overtaking & destroying the ahead-of-the-game competition. Provide high-quality tools cheap, seduce developers off the canonical platform and onto MS's highly compatible equivalents, then slowly fork the standard, leaving customers with the choice of abandoning their deeply-vested stake in MS toolsets etc or going all-in with MS.

AFAIK we ended up with C# because MS created a _very_ nice Java IDE, started to fork it, developers vested in that IDE got mad at Sun Microsystems (developers & owners of Java standard), Sun sued MS, MS was told to cut it out, MS mutated Java into C#.

Let's hope this doesn't turn into MS trying to rip iOS developers/users away from Apple as done many times before.

<comment><USER57> As a former Netscapee, I'm probably first in line to call foul on Microsoft's Embrace-Extend-Extinguish strategy (See how much damage Active Directory did to Universal LDAP support - ever try and run Outlook/Windows domain on anything but a Microsoft Directory Server?) - but that's an old war. And it's over. The beginning started in 2007 with the release of the iPhone (some such as Benedict Evans might suggest the transition to Web Apps was the beginning, but IE tried to corner that market by injecting Active-X everywhere) and Android. Microsoft failed to release a high-quality mobile solution quickly enough, and the transition to mobile effectively ended the Microsoft Hegemony. The War was officially over with the departure of Balmer, and official declaration of defeat occurred when Nadella wrote off the vast majority of the Nokia acquisition.

In order to compete, Microsoft now has to play on, and support, platforms which it does not, and never will, control.

It's taking a while for me to adjust (16 years?), but I have to say - I really like this new Microsoft, and I'm looking forward to the great things that they are going to do now that they are no longer the Monopolistic behemoth that they were for so many years.

<comment><USER58> The war is over? As a former Netscapee you might remember the relevance of Microsoft in terms of Web Browsers before IE4.

That's where Microsoft is now with their mobile OS, and it's nearly exactly the same playbook: developer mindshare and one-way compatibility to make their lousy offer become less lousy.

Given that some XAML-in-UIKit stuff is discussed somewhere else here, they may already work on extending beyond iOS, probably hoping to keep Apple busy with eternal catch-up (since they're said to have cross licensing agreements, patent wars are likely out of the question here).

<comment><USER57> The key difference is, Microsoft was able to leverage their monopoly in one industry (Desktop) to destroy the competition in another (Browsers, though yes, that phoenix did rise from the ashes)

The war is over because Microsoft no longer has a monopoly they can leverage to do this again.

Microsoft is not, and will not be a force in the mobile phone world for the foreseeable future.

Re: "probably hoping to keep Apple busy with eternal catch-up"

You've got the causation going the wrong direction - Apple doesn't have to catch up to Microsoft any more, it's Microsoft that has to play catch up with Apple.

I can't describe it any better than Benedict Evans did, so I'll just share his analysis: [http://ben- evans.com/benedictevans/2015/7/8/capitulation](http://ben- evans.com/benedictevans/2015/7/8/capitulation)

<comment><USER58> > The war is over because Microsoft no longer has a monopoly they can leverage > to do this again.

They're still a force on the desktop and the Universal App model of Windows 10 will help translating that elsewhere.

> Microsoft is not, and will not be a force in the mobile phone world for the > foreseeable future.

WinPhone sales catch up with iOS in some European countries. They have attractive offers at the low end to rival Android in less wealthy regions. I wouldn't discount them yet.

> You've got the causation going the wrong direction - Apple doesn't have to > catch up to Microsoft any more, it's Microsoft that has to play catch up > with Apple.

For now. Just like they had to with HTML on IE4 and Java for a while. At some point, they built a "better HTML than HTML" (XMLHttpRequest still survives) and a "better Java than Java" (at least they saw it that way, and it was enough of a threat that Sun took the legal route, which both Apple and Google can't easily take in this case).

They need the apps, so they provide enough support to make it work. I suppose that through a mixture of superior tools (MSVC), marketing aid ($$$) and Embrace&Extend (P/Invoke, XAML-in-UIKit) they will try to make those apps work better on Windows than on other platforms, no matter if they're written in C#, Java or ObjC/Swift.

Sound familiar to me. Microsoft is the most dangerous when they're hungry, and they certainly are.

<comment><USER57> Re: "They're still a force on the desktop "

The desktop is increasingly becoming less relevant. It won't go away, but mobile platforms are where the revenue and activity is.

Re: "WinPhone sales catch up with IOS" \- That battle is over. It's not even up for debate. There was a reason why Nadella has terminated the Windows "Services and Devices Business." and fired most of the Windows Phone engineers - and that's because Microsoft has been thoroughly and completed defeated by Android and iPhone.

There are going to be lots of places where Windows Phone will still be used, and, in fact, even be a popular choice. But there are also places in the world where Blackberry Phones are still used. But in all the key (and profit generating markets) - Android and Apple have carried the day handily.

By the way - I'm not saying the Microsoft isn't dangerous - they are wicked smart, have tons of cash, and have demonstrated that they are willing to make a significant adjustment to strategy "Devices and Services" to "Mobile first, Cloud First" and fire their CEO to do so.

What I am saying is that Microsoft is no longer in a position to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish." as Microsoft no longer has the market power to extend important standards and have others adopt those extensions as people are increasingly less likely to be using one of their products, and, more importantly, are increasingly no longer _required_ to use one of their products to get their job done.

To bring this conversation back to the beginning Microsoft has released a translation/recompilation layer that will let people who have written applications for iOS, quickly recompile them and release them for Windows, without having to write much, if any, new code. The objective is to have people write apps for Windows 10 and iOS using this mechanism, because currently, effectively 0% of people are writing first class apps for windows phone (there are, as always, small exceptions, but windows phone basically gets the dregs).

The problem with this strategy, is that now Microsoft is playing on _Apples_ platform - and this _further reduces_ the incentive for people to write native Windows phone Apps. Effectively, this is Microsoft giving up and saying, "If you won't write apps for our platform, as least we can emulate other ones and run those apps."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learning and Facing Challenges as a Webdev - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/4DHw3ILUIaw <comment><AUTHOR> I had a wonderful opportunity to talk with some established Youtubers, who create development-related content (Web Dev Simplified, Program With Erik, James Q Quick).

We discuss topics like how they got into web development, how do they face challenges, how to stop comparing yourself to others, and how to make learning fun.

An entertaining and educational listening to both beginner and more experienced devs, I believe.</comment>


Does anybody get CONNECTION_RESET errors when trying to get to HN ?  - <AUTHOR>

It's weird. I've been getting:
Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): Unknown error.
When trying to get to HN using Chrome browser. <comment><USER2> I get them every once in a while using FF. It has always resolved it self after a minute or so.

</comment><comment><USER3> I get it many times a day. Sometimes it fails to respond at all. Time to add more tubes?

</comment><comment><USER4> Got plenty over the last couple of days.</comment>


How do I stop "analyzing" and pick between two good choices? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/business-tiebreaker.html

<comment><USER2> Easy method: Flip a coin.

Because in the moment that the coin is spinning in the air, you'll suddenly realize which option you really wanted all along.

If you don't, no biggie. Just go with what the coin says.

<comment><USER3> Batman wins again. :)</comment></comment>


GitHub is testing the Profile README - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sdras <comment><USER2> According to Microsoft, GitHub is now transformed into the LinkedIn for developers.

<comment><USER3> The more GitHub resembles LinkedIn, the sooner I will be withdrawing out of the platform. I've used it for years, and it's quite good, but anything that resembles the cringe-fest that is LinkedIn and the level of tracking they do is a complete no-no for me.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the rules for posting to "Launch HN": category - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's something new that we started last year, and at the moment it's just for YC startups. Some more explanation here: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20%22Launch%20HN%22&so...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20%22Launch%20HN%22&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment).

</comment><comment><USER3> There's no such category. Like "Tell HN" users made them up.

You should probably use "Show HN" [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) A good addition is to add a first comment like "author here, let me know if you have questions".

<comment><USER4> It exists, but it's not so formalized and reserved for YC

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I tried a few google searches and nothing. Perhaps this would be better on StackOverflow or similar, but I like Ask HN and used it almost instinctively.</comment>


Distributed Erlang nodes in C++ - <AUTHOR> http://www.adampetersen.se/code/tinchpp.htm <comment><USER2> This is great, a _lot_ nicer than the sparsely documented C api you get from ei and erl_interface.

I've been looking at ways to build decent native desktop gui apps that hook into an erlang backend, this might do the trick (Qt).</comment>


Top Silk Road Drug Dealer Was Flipped By Feds - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/silk-road-dealer-cooperating-567432

<comment><USER2> Is this the reason the topic of autonomous corporations reappeared recently? The topic itself is interesting, but the timing seemed odd.

Dawn of Autonomous Corporations, Powered by Bitcoin:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6589067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6589067)</comment>


Ask YC: How do I promote a web app to bloggers? - <AUTHOR>

I created a simple web app (Mytipnetwork.com) that lets a blogger create a page where their readers can tip them off to interesting stories, images or clips that they find on the web.
example page http://www.mytipnetwork.com/n.php?site=adtoferlnn
It works pretty simply you add a tipbox image to your page that tells you and your readers how many tips you've recieved today from them. And you can respond back by saying what you got tipped by(meaning heard for the first time and/or found interesting)
As a tool, what I thought it might achieve is help bloggers get inspired to their next blog post by their readers.
Problem is I don't have a blog, I don't have friends who are bloggers, and my only available currency towards promotion is time and energy. <comment><USER2> "Problem is I don't have a blog, I don't have friends who are bloggers"

I think the first thing you would need to do is start a blog. It's the whole 'eat your own dogfood' thing. If you had a blog you could do linking agreements with other bloggers to spread the word, and you would be able to better test your service.

<comment><USER3> How many fake "blogs" will this world be able to absorb? And you're advising him to start another one. Do you remember what the word (and a thing) really means?

Lets face it, todays "blogs" are nothing but little PR agencies, and your advice really reads as "start your own PR firm".

Get real, running a successful "blog" is equally hard to running a successful business, and he already trying to run one. Starting a real blog is easy: you just write what's on your mind, but those blogs have nothing to do with business and usually have an audience of 10-12 friends and family members.

<comment><USER4> I think this is really the wrong way to think about blogs in the context of your startup. Sure, you could make yet another useless blog to brag about your startup...or you could make a blog that provides useful information in your field, thus proving your expertise and spreading around good will that's bound to come back your way. You obviously shouldn't create another useless blog about your product, and no one is suggesting you should (at least, I hope no one here at news.YC is).

Wufoo gets a significant portion of their traffic from their (excellent) blog. 37signals got pretty much all of their initial uptake from people who read their blog. Not because they talk about how awesome their product is...but because they help people learn new things, solve problems, and enjoy their time on the web a little more.

If you want to call a blog a "PR firm", that's fine. Most of us are doing our own PR, as well, and if blogging fits into that line item on your budget, that's fine. The OP wants to take advantage of blogs without blogging, and people are telling him that it doesn't work that way. Nothing you've said counters that advice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How is this better than having a public email address? How will you prevent spam?

<comment><USER6> Well, we run into a similar consideration with our feedback widget we recently released on featurelist.org: <http://featurelist.org/info/features>

It won't always remain so, but at the moment, the average spambot isn't processing javascript or iframe content to populate spam forms. For now it seems the spammers are content to submit to open/typical HTML forms.

To compare some of the spam levels we get on our site bug.gd:

* We have open email addresses on our site. These are spammed insanely.

* We have a feedback widget (powered by featurelist). This has never been spammed and is getting us great user data.

* We have basic HTML search forms, comment forms, and solution forms. These are spammed 10 or more times a day.

* Our blog comments receive a good bit of spam each week.

All in all, widgets are pretty resistant at the moment. (Please no one here start a company to do this. Of course someone will.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Feel free to post in their comments (when appropriate) and send them email. There's nothing wrong with being upfront about it. Just make sure that you're not in any way obnoxious about it and no one will mind.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://shareit.com> consolidates submissions to social bookmarking. <http://mashable.com> is a popular web 2.0 news site.

Develop a "press release" and submit it to all the valley news sites you can... including here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks hendler, I'll try that

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So along the lines of Skribit and Outbrain?

<comment><AUTHOR> not quite the same, but I can see some similarities with skribit</comment></comment>


TenFarms aims to tie your mobile apps together - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/03/28/tenfarms-ties-all-your-social-local-and-mobile-activities-together-in-one-place/

<comment><USER2> Founder here, I'll be glad to answer any questions!

<comment><USER3> Just a suggestion on your pitch:

This part of the article sounded interesting: "think of TenFarms as a real- time map that displays who is nearby and lets you skim through pictures, videos, events, check-ins and conversations happening in the area."

Everything else, including your official pitch, just kind of made me glaze over. It all just sounded too high concept for me to get a grasp of until the tangible idea of the map came up. I'd focus on that.

I know you do mention "planting" objects in a location in your pitch. And that the location bit actually does imply a map, but it takes a little more thought than it should to realize that.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you look at our homepage (<https://www.tenfarms.com/>) you probably get a better idea of the service.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, homepage looks great. But if your pitch is being used in articles (like this), I think you should work on it a bit.

You should also think about how friends are going to describe it to each other and get some of that language on the site. They aren't necessarily going to bother going to the site over the course of the conversation. The phrases you have "Post, discover and curate moments around the world", "Add filters to photos and plant them anywhere in the world" aren't going to be able to convey what tenfarms is about without an accompanying visual.

But if you can get some language that conveys the idea of the map, you probably could. Something in the direction of: "A map of what's going on around you, no matter what social network it happened on."

I hope that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like your one sentence description. Do you mind if we use that?

<comment><USER3> Please do. If it ends up as copy on your site somewhere, would you mind I mentioned that in job interviews and the like? If that's cool, would you mind shooting me an email with your contact info just in case someone asks for confirmation? You should be able to find my email in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! I can't see your email on your profile (not enough karma I guess) but mine starts with joao@ and the rest you can guess from the service.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elastic Stack Release – 5.0.0-beta1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.elastic.co/blog/elastic-stack-release-5-0-0-beta1 <comment><USER2> For those wondering (like myself) what the breaking changes are for the v5.0 release, you can find the full list here: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.0/...](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.0/breaking- changes-5.0.html)</comment>


Erste.js – NextGen UI Framework for Backbone-Lovers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dashersw/erste <comment><USER2> Aside from having something that resembles Backbone's events hash, I didn't see anything that didn't look like a React component/VueJS component. Did I miss the part where Backbone was mentioned?

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't use any kind of Virtual-DOM. It doesn't have any two way binding. It makes you handle all the DOM manipulation explicitly which is same approach with Backbone.</comment></comment>


"Anarchist Cookbook" author William Powell has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/30/anarchist-cookbook-author-william-powell-dies-aged-66 <comment><USER2> Papa state said it first- those are dangerous thoughts, better not thought. Read something valuable, like Jules Verne, who would never educate you too make Nitro Glycerin. Or read a good comp-science book, instead of learning how to craft a virus. S/he who can engineer a building, can tear it down- deal with it. And by virtue of reading, anyone can do that- and this is only going to get worser. Any teenager tomorrow will be able to crisper up a plastic eating bacteria, turning any journalists notebook to black goo under there fingertips. If only those teenagers had some perspective, something to loose, some dream to be held hostage- you could actually prevent this. But doctoring at the symptoms- its so much easier. The other thing- that is almost work. To teach everyone how to craft a china masterpiece of art- that is a nightmare, to declare playing soccer illegal, that is doable. I wish there was a refund on wasted time on propaganda.

<comment><USER3> This is a far more profound comment than I expected to find. Teaching knowledge is important, but teaching ethics and morals is even more so.

<comment><USER4> I read the Jolly Roger's Cookbook (and many other BBS text files) as a teenager and used it to make thermite with my chemistry teacher in the 10th grade. And reading Phrack and old virus magazines like 40HEX did more to engender intellectual curiosity than any of my teachers and provided a solid foundation of low-level programming skills. I'm not sure how you'd weigh the net impact on the world of this kind of information being available, but my hunch is that it's overwhelmingly positive. I'm automatically suspicious of this deeply cynical view of human nature where everyone is so easily tempted to evil deeds if presented with forbidden knowledge and the merest opportunity.

<comment><USER5> It's a numbers game. Let's say 99.9% are good people who would only use the knowledge for wholesome purposes. That still leaves 0.1% to do bad stuff. So if all kids knew how to make viruses, 0.1% of all of those kids would be a lot of virus writers.

I'm not saying we should lock the knowledge up. More that your anecdote doesn't really change things.

<comment><USER6> But you made those numbers up.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't really matter. The important point is that there is _a_ percentage, not the exact value of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just to be clear, this was in July.

"The writer suffered a fatal heart attack while on holiday with his family in Nova Scotia on 11 July, at the age of 66."

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if this book gave people a skewed view of what anarchism is, or if it stemmed from the colloquial usage of 'anarchy', i.e mindless violence and chaotic lawlessness.

Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin and Bookchin have nicer books on anarchism in my opinion.

<comment><USER9> That's what anarchy really devolves into.

<comment><USER10> I would argue that it likely devolves into statism, if "devolve" is the correct term.

Not even most anarchists want "mindless violence and chaotic lawlessness," rather they simply want to opt out of certain laws and legal responsibilities.

<comment><USER8> I don't think that's true; social anarchists generally regard hierarchy and unjust authority as inherently something to oppose. It is the abolishment of law and legal responsibilities, not just opting out. It's rejecting the entire concept of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am surprised nobody has mentioned roguesci.org - the site from the days when the internet was relatively Wild West. That place was like Anarchist Cookbook x 100 - extensive detailed discussions, explanations, tutorials. People running the site got into some serious trouble, it was shut down in 2009, rumor has it by DOD. Some static mirrors still exist like [https://parazite.nn.fi/roguesci](https://parazite.nn.fi/roguesci) although authenticity is unclear.

</comment><comment><USER12> Kepler's Books in Menlo Park CA used to have a sign that they'd order any book you wanted, except one, "The Anarchists' Cookbook". On the other hand, I've seen copies of the book in the '60s nostalgia section of a bookstore near Ghirardelli Square.

If you want that kind of info today, right-wing "prepper" and gun nut sites will have it. Amazon sells The U.S. Army Improvised Munitions Handbook, TM 31-210. It's not like this info is hard to get any more.

<comment><USER13> I don't really understand the usage of the term "prepper" in relation to _Anarchist Cookbook_. I think of prepper as someone with an underground bunker with a large cache of vacuum-sealed stew and pickled eggs. If anything related to weapons, it's just the inventory and tools necessary to make reloads.

Similar with "gun nut" sites - these usually have content covering the latest innovation in trigger mechanisms, what the right carbon content of the steel is, etc.

Caricaturing people in the wrong way cannot serve any useful purpose.

<comment><USER14> Preppers do a lot more than just store pickled eggs. The kind of person who tends to be a prepper also tends to distrust the federal government, be paranoid of centralized power, and is often prepping for civil war, or at very least civil unrest. It wouldn't surprise me if most people in militias are also preppers of some sort.

<comment><USER13> Even if they are doing all of those things, it does not mean that their actual activities are anything other than I stated (which, by the way included activities beyond pickling eggs, you cherry-picker).

You seem to be claiming that if someone is a prepper, then they are also planning to blow up buildings, poison populations, etc. Seems a bit of a stretch.

If some militia members are also computer programmers, can I go off and make a bunch of assumptions about computer programmers based solely on this?

<comment><USER14> No, I said there's a tendency for the two to occur in the same kinds of people. There's a big difference there.

And yeah, I cherry-picked the pickled eggs line. You've gotta admit it was a good one. Neither of the main points of our posts were altered by me saying that, it was just for flavoring.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MVP App: Meeting Notes Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.useketchup.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just a little disappointed though that they chose not to support IE6 (ya, I know).

I'm forced to use IE6 at work on my desktop, and so is everyone else. I think dropping support is leaving out a pretty large potential market - <USER2> since most 'meeting minute takers' probably work for corporations, and most people forced to use IE6 are the very same people.

<comment><USER3> Hey,

I totally get your point about this, and I do work for one of those corporates, and I've seen the heavy use of IE6.

For us, building the app in our spare time, making IE6 allowances just wouldn't have been practical for getting the app built.

Isn't Chrome fairly easy to install with regular privileges on Windows?

—Paul

<comment><AUTHOR> It might be easy enough to install (I'm not sure of the security protocols there), but I guess it just adds a little more friction to the process of spreading use of the app to other people. The install process is one thing, but needing multiple browsers open simultaneously would probably be another issue.

But I understand the compromises necessary coming from working in your spare time. I personally would never have known that it doesn't work on IE6 were it not for the fact that I was at work when I first tried your app. Your target market could very well be the non-corporate type anyway, so it might be a moot point.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to future iterations. It looks great so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like the simplicity of the intro carousel. It feels like there is one screenshot missing though: how are the meeting notes inputted and displayed (arguably the most important screen).

What additional benefits do I get from using Ketchup that I wouldn't get from making a "Meeting Notes" folder in Google Docs or Etherpad?

<comment><USER3> The value prop right now is:

1) A place to put your meeting notes. So, rather than searching through Google Docs etc. there's an implicit understanding that the objects are notes. Subtle I guess, but I'm a big fan of focussed apps as an alternative to kitchen sink apps. 2) Keeping notes collected. We're week on this right now, but I'm looking forward to being able to click on a project and seeing all my meetings/notes from that project.

—P

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I LOVE the interaction with the homepage value proposition, but the calls to action aren't obvious unless you're a click feind.

Small "magical" moments like the natural language time field are very nice touches.

I'm going to play with this more, you've captured my attention at least.

<comment><USER3> Hey Alex,

Awesome! Thanks for the kind words. We'll probably iterate on the homepage in the next few days: there are a few issues with it.

Let us know what you think, and what we can do to to improve.

—P

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unaffiliated, but I think it's awesome.</comment>


Haiku Project Announces Availability of Haiku R1/Alpha 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.haiku-os.org/news/2010-05-10_haiku_project_announces_availability_haiku_r1alpha_2

<comment><USER2> One thing that I has been wondering is while there are relatively large amount on alternative operating systems (and some are quite awesome like Haiku), still most Linux distros seem to be repackagings of classic gnu/x/(gnome|kde) apps. I find it hard to believe that these days high level userspace innovation is so heavily bound to kernel. Why don't we have more diverse Linux distros instead of having diverse collection of complete operating systems?

Especially for hardware support it would be kinda nice if more projects would use a common kernel instead of writing one themselves, and I find it also hard to believe that its easier to write a new kernel (that actually works in a range of hardware) compared to modifying an existing kernel to fit the project.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.. it is a sad state of affairs when GoboLinux ( <http://www.gobolinux.org/> ), though innovative, call themselves _the_ alternative Linux distribution. They are one of the few unique Linux distributions, and all they do is redefine the filesystem hierarchy.

There are an abundance of 'niche' distributions (focusing on size, audio support, etc) but none that really attempt new things. Actually, I'm sure there are some more but I haven't heard of them.. please inform me.

But of course, why are we complaining instead of thinking up possibilities of our own?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone ever used Haiku? And what were you mostly doing with it? What are the advantages if any [for that activity]?

I've known about the project for quite a while, pretty icons and whatnot, but never fired up a vmware-like program to install it and check it out.

<comment><USER5> It's impressive. It feels like BeOS, unlike Zeta which was had poor quality.

There's some things not like they should be. This alpha is missing vi and ed (and no 've' either). It has nano. It has gcc and python2.6 and a perl5 though. Python libraries seem to work.

In some ways it's further ahead than Be. For example - far better web browser than was ever available back in the day (even relative to web browsing standards of the time). Could use some polish, but still a remarkable achievement. Better email functionality, although parts could be implement a lot better.

Little things are not right - keyboard shortcuts and the like. But it's much better than I was expecting on this front. People have definitely been putting energy into quality. A lot of little things work like they should that I've tested.

I'm using it under vmware on a macbook. The 'tracker' interface still feels way better to use than anything else I've used (including current-era finder).

I was a die-hard user, and it's quite novel to think that - long after having given up on the dream of being able to run this as my primary workstation OS - I may be on the brink of being able to do just that. The key will be whether it can be installed natively with all drivers working effectively.

Update: dell lat. gets a good pass on compatilibity: [http://www.haiku- os.org/community/forum/dell_latitude_x1_dre...](http://www.haiku- os.org/community/forum/dell_latitude_x1_dream_laptop_haiku)

<comment><USER6> I believe they deliberately removed vim from the default install since they felt that it wasn't suitable for a desktop-oriented operating system. It can be installed using via optional packages ('installoptionalpackage' in console).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I loved the BeOS -- happily discarded Mac OS 8 when BeOS PR1 came out -- and I am so happy to see Heiku OS on the front page of Hacker News. To this day, the BeOS is still the OS which brought me the most fun on a day-to-day basis.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool, but... BeOS is 10 years old. And its GUI was dated even then.</comment>


How to Design A Successful Coming Soon Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/05/14/design-a-successful-coming-soon-page/

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this link as a follow up to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1323363> \- I thought more HN readers would find it useful so worth separating out as a different thread.</comment>


Ask HN: Go, chess, but can an AI win at backgammon? - <AUTHOR> I just played my first game and got in a discussion about it. My opponent said that computers can't do it yet. I was surprised since it's a game of perfect information.
I used a couple of search engines to skim some articles but I get the feeling that some people in the HN crowd can give a better perspective on it.
Why can't an AI win at backgammon? Or can they and did I skim a bit too much? <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD-Gammon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD- Gammon) (1992)

<comment><AUTHOR> 1992, but not total domination. Couldn't OpenAI solve this, or a similar research group?

I am surprised it is still out in the open. Even poker seems to be more "solved" than backgammon.

<comment><USER2> If it was possible to achieve a level close to top human players with computing resources available in 1992, hardware of equivalent cost can probably handily beat any human in 2020. So no big lab is going to spend any time on hammering home that point, because they're looking for interesting research problems, like games where no program plays at human level yet.

If you want to see how well computers play using consumer hardware, maybe try [https://www.gnu.org/software/gnubg/](https://www.gnu.org/software/gnubg/) I have no idea whether a rating of 2000 is superhuman or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Depends on your definition of win.

Do you mean perfect game?

Be the best?

Beat the average player?

I think there's a bunch of vagueness but let's take "win" to be generally better than humans, I'm not an AI expert but I suspect it's got more to do with the popularity of the game

There's no reason why backgammon can't be played by machines, and definitely no reason why they would well. There's just not as much as a marketing pop compared to chess, go or Starcraft all well regarded complex games. In a lot of ways, googles investment in AI is a marketing opportunity, and in an unpopular game there's not as much incentive</comment>


On how to grow an idea - <AUTHOR> https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/jenny-odell-how-to-grow-an-idea/ <comment><USER2> The One-Straw Revolution is actually a pretty amazing read[1]. As makers, founders, and people that "want to make the world a better place", there's no better place to start than Fukuoka's treatise on sustainable farming.

[1] [http://www.appropedia.org/images/d/d3/Onestraw.pdf](http://www.appropedia.org/images/d/d3/Onestraw.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I have acquaintance who visited Fukuoka while he was alive and who grows rice this way today. I helped him harvest one time. It's hard to estimate just by looking, but his field definitely seemed to have a comparable yield to the neighbours. He's been growing rice in that field for 10-15 years so it's pretty well established.

There were a couple of obvious differences between his field and the neighbours. First it was clear that he had a lot more wildlife in his field: frogs, insects and a _lot_ more spiders. Second, the surrounding fields had been damaged by a typhoon that had come through, while his was in great condition. He surmised that it was because they were using a more modern variety that works better with the fertiliser schedule while he was forced to use an older variety that had a more coarse straw.

He grows all the rice for himself and his wife. His wife has another plot somewhere (that I didn't see) where she grows all the vegetables. They buy fish and meat, etc at the grocery store. He tends to trade a lot with the local orchards for fruit. I'm not entirely sure how much rice he grows -- probably about 3-400 kg. I think the normal yield of rice is about 2.2 kg per m^2 (someone has written an online tonne per hectare to kg per m^2 calculator...!)... which is 200 m^2 or 2100 sq ft, which is basically bang on the size of his field.

We harvested the entire field by hand (just with a little hand scythe). It took a weekend, but was surprisingly easy (we were not rushing in any way). I expected it to be "back breaking work", but it's not at all -- at least for such a small field. We were mostly just hanging out and chatting. I asked him how much work it was the rest of the year. He told me that it took him a day to prepare and plant the seed and that after that it was just about 30 minutes a week to water, etc.

After that he has to thresh the rice and polish it, but he uses machines for that and says that it isn't that much work.

At the very high supermarket prices for rice in Japan, it's probably _just_ worth your time ($1000 worth of rice), but it might be difficult to justify the cost of labour if you were trying to do it commercially.

Of course Fukuoka's idea is that anybody can grow the bulk of their food in their spare time as a kind of light hobby. From what I can tell, that's totally doable. It certainly was an interesting experience for me. I have unfortunately lost track of my acquaintance, but I will be meeting a mutual friend soon, so I'm hoping to reconnect in the future.

<comment><USER2> This is an amazing story, thanks for sharing! One of the main reasons I love HN is coming across gems like this, and people like you.

When I was young, I would visit a great-aunt in the mountains of rural Transylvania every summer and would help harvest crops, fish, hike, and forage for mushrooms and berries with my grandmother. Now I live in LA and work in tech, often missing that bucolic lifestyle. I just couldn't stop reading about 100 pages straight of One-Straw Revolution this evening -- it reminded me of a simpler, better, time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this really just comes down to: our thoughts are strongly shaped by external details (including our interactions with them). She mentions a few cases of that, but overlooks many others: the articles and books we read, the conversations we have with others, the process of building and interacting with things (whether physical things, or stuff like software), etc. These are all major factors in developing ideas. Our mental processes can't develop ideas without such inputs, and the character of those inputs play a large role in the ideas developed.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like it, but, how do you grow an idea? I would love to have a formula for that (I know it is impossible, maybe?) but what I see is: putting attention to people and things (which requires to decide where will you put your attention), read, discuss, "produce" and get feedback... What else am I missing?

<comment><USER6> There are also mathematical models about how ideas emerge [0], with edge- reinforced random walks.

As I understand it, you tend to stay close to familiar concepts, while sometimes being open to new ones. As you revisit a concept, it gets reinforced, allowing you to comfortably spend more time there and opening you to a cluster of new concepts and ideas.

[0] [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180124123053.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180124123053.htm)

<comment><USER7> The paper discussed in that press release: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.04239](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.04239)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Do-nothing farming" sounds alot like Wu wei.

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

<comment><USER9> One could more broadly observe that many things in Japan uncannily resemble China. That's because they frequently came from China, though its unpopular to point this out. Religion, philosophy, writing, architecture, technology, food, etc. To its credit, Japan has preserved some things lost in the mainland, and does have some interesting endemic culture... it's just a lot smaller portion of modern "Japanese culture" than popularly supposed.

<comment><USER10> Reading your post, a question comes up to my mind. Just that it resembles and the origin comes from the same place, do we consider PDAs as same as the iPhone era smartphones?

The concept may look similar, but they are very different things in detail, and the latter became the defacto and created a new culture, which makes it important and I think it is enough to call it unique or original.

<comment><USER9> All I will say to that is that, as programmers, we should learn to distinguish between historically attributable derivation (evidenced _fact_ ) and vague conceptual notions such as culture and even more derivative, fuzzy and subjective notions of the potential equality of instance thereof ( _opine_ ). This is why I spoke in generalities and placed "Japanese culture" in quotes, because it is a vague and popular term without a meaningful and precise definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kind of an introduction to the idea of brainstorming without any solid advice on how to do it. Based on the title I was expecting more.

</comment><comment><USER12> Appreciated the David Abram callout. His work is worth reading if you've explored the space of how our lives emerge from our environments. "Becoming Animal" is an interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER13> Ideas aren't grown, they arrive all-at-once.</comment>