Apple Doesn't Want to Pay the Feds' E-Book Lawyer $70,000 a Week - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20131129/apple-doesnt-want-to-pay-the-feds-e-book-lawyer-70000-a-week/

<comment><USER2> The $70k / week figure given is for the first two weeks. I'm going to jump to a conclusion and say that the first two weeks will be above average in cost due to introductory meetings, posturing on both sides, and generally bringing the process up to speed.

The $1,100 / hour is not out of line for a top law firm. It would be interesting to know what Apple is paying it's outside attorneys. The claim that the figure is "higher than Apple has ever encountered for any task" is clearly untrue. Apple has payed it's own executives much more in the past.

<comment><USER3> I think it is implied that "any task" means "any legal task". $1100/hour is definitely the highest I have ever heard of for a lawyer, much higher.

<comment><USER4> How About Apple publishing their lawyer fees to prove $1100/hour is high?

Not going to happen. Why?

<comment><USER5> Because then competitors know how much of Apple's time they have to waste (in court) to produce a certain amount of Apple legal expenses.

<comment><USER6> Any competitor with the clout the "punish" Apple, getting them to fold, already pays as much or more than Apple for their own team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article provides more context: [http://allthingsd.com/20131017/apple- gets-its-e-book-antitru...](http://allthingsd.com/20131017/apple-gets-its-e- book-antitrust-monitor)

"Together, Bromwich and Nigro will oversee Apple's internal antitrust compliance policies and employee training on them for the next two years."

$1,100 an hour is not an unusually high fee for internal investigations work, nor does $70,000 per week seem unusually high for an ongoing compliance investigation and policy restructuring of an organization as large as Apple. This sort of work usually involves getting down into the weeds and looking at how even fairly low-level employees go about their jobs. The going rate for this sort of work tends to be pretty high, because companies who hire law firm to do an internal investigation tend to be in a pretty tight spot.

<comment><USER8> This is the first time I've heard someone try to explain an extortionate hourly rate as "reasonable fees".

Would the argument be the same if a private firm was charging the government at the same rate? Or would we be here with pitchforks demanding answers?

<comment><USER9> >Would the argument be the same if a private firm was charging the government at the same rate? Or would we be here with pitchforks demanding answers?

Have you looked at attorneys' fees for this kind of work? $1,000/hr is not unreasonable whatsoever. My friend isn't even a partner in an IntProp firm (just a five year associate) and he is billed out at $650-700/hr for the most basic of tasks.

<comment><USER10> Because it's being done does not make it reasonable. There is no world in which $1000/hr is a reasonable fee for any human being to do any work.

<comment><USER11> You're not paying for the work, you're paying for the expertise regarding knowing what work needs to be done. Moreover, you're paying one of the best lawyers in the country the _market rate_ for his time and effort, which he could just as easily earn working to oppose monitoring efforts.

You've probably heard this story before:

 _One day, Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.

"It's you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist."

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.

"It's perfect!" she gushed. "You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?"

"Five thousand dollars," the artist replied.

"B-b-but, what?" the woman sputtered. "How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!"

To which Picasso responded, "Madame, it took me my entire life."_

<comment><USER12> For a valid contract Picasso should have stated his rates upfront.

Also, it's not exactly the free market hiring thia compliance firm. Where is the competition for his services ready to pay $1k an hour? And demanding to intervieq all the famous bigshots? I think the complaint is valid whether or not they win.

<comment><USER11> _For a valid contract Picasso should have stated his rates upfront._

The contract is valid if the woman accepts it; a valid contract doesn't require that the rates be stated upfront so long as the terms are disclosed and consented to by both parties.

 _Also, it 's not exactly the free market hiring thia compliance firm. Where is the competition for his services ready to pay $1k an hour?_

The other market participants for his services are other potential clients who would otherwise incur his time. Michael Bromwich works for Goodwin Proctor in the White Collar and SEC compliance groups. [http://www.goodwinprocter.com/People/B/Bromwich- Michael.aspx](http://www.goodwinprocter.com/People/B/Bromwich-Michael.aspx) (Goodwin Proctor is one of the biggest law firms in the world.) His client base consists of multinational conglomerates and multi-billion dollar companies, most of whom would gladly pay $1000/hour or more to avoid criminal sanctions and other penalties that could run into the tens or hundreds of millions.

 _And demanding to intervieq all the famous bigshots? I think the complaint is valid whether or not they win._

His job is to ensure compliance. He does this by interviewing those in charge of complying, i.e., the CEO and any executives overseeing the relevant company divisions to make sure they have taken, or are in the process of adopting, steps to ensure compliance. According to the monitor, those in charge of complying have thus far evaded most of his meeting requests, so it is necessary for him to keep issuing meeting demands until they actually agree to meet with him.

The alternative is for him to get into the nitty gritty by auditing Apple's corporate and business-line practices. This is a far more involved job, which would entail a significantly higher billing rate (mostly for additional staff, not his own personal billing rate), significantly more time spent and billed, and a significantly greater disruption to Apple's business activities.

<comment><USER13> "The contract is valid if the woman accepts it; a valid contract doesn't require that the rates be stated upfront so long as the terms are disclosed and consented to by both parties."

Actually, it depends on the type of contract, and where in the world you are.

In the US, UCC contracts don't require a price term, but other contracts do. Since UCC does not cover services contracts, Picasso's contract would have required a price term, or some other show of consideration.

In the specific case of lawyers, most states require fee agreements that state prices up front in writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If Apple were forced to pay the State $70,000 per week, I don't think this would be an issue. I do find it uncomfortable that the State is forcing Apple to transfer wealth to another private party without any (obvious) oversight.

<comment><USER15> moreover the private party's flippant attitude is really distressing. i'm no fan of Apple, but this has now become an abuse of power, whether or not the actual financial costs are reasonable.

<comment><USER16> If someone questioned why I should be paid market rate for my expertise, I'd probably have a flippant attitude as well. _Especially_ if they should know better, like Apple should.

<comment><USER15> it's not a market rate when the agent deciding the rate is the state.

<comment><USER16> Ok, semantic point. 'Comparable with the expected market rate'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it worth mentioning that on top of the $1,100 hourly rate for Bromwich, and the $1,025 hourly rate for the assisting law firm, Fried Frank, he's also demanding a 15% "service charge"? From page 23:

"And Mr. Bromwich's rates in this matter dramatically exceed what he has quoted in the past. For instance, in a proposal to monitor the New Orleans Police Department five months ago, he suggested a $495 hourly rate, without an administrative fee, which the Department of Justice termed 'relatively expensive.'"

</comment><comment><USER18> How awful, Apple breaks the law and then whines about the pocket change ($70K x 52wks x 2years = $7.3M) charge for enforcing it's own compliance.

If Apple thinks $70K/week is high for lawyers, wait until they get the overage bills from their new HQ building contractors.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Bromwich's bill for his five-person team's first two weeks of work: $138,432

To be fair, that's only $27,686 each per fortnight. Assuming 50 hour work weeks, that's only $276 per hour.

As always, check my arithmetic.

138432 / 5 people = 27686.

27686 / 100 hours = 276.

That's not far off a run of the mill family lawyer in England. (Without barristers and court fees.)

<comment><USER20> Please.. what lawyer you know works 50 hours a week? Unless there's an active trial.

<comment><USER11> Most lawyers not employed by the government work more than 60 hours a week on a normal basis. When there is an active trial or court hearing to prepare for, that number usually jumps to 80 hours a week or more. For BigLaw lawyers (i.e., the largest law firms), 80 hours a week is considered a vacation; most of them work at least 12 hours a day every day, including weekends!

The unreasonable workloads and time expectations are one of the reasons that lawyers as a profession are so depressed...and why law school enrollment plummeted so far once the legal market crashed and salaries fell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Usually in these situations, lawyers give high rates expecting the judge to knock it down. Judges always (rightly or wrongly) think lawyers are being paid too much, and often just halve the rate or whatever. This is often true regardless of what number is given.

So if you don't want to end up being ordered by a court to work at 25% of your actual market rate, you often have to give exorbitant numbers.

</comment><comment><USER21> The price Mr. Bromwich is demanding is a sideshow. The real objection Apple has is that what he demands, and the judge proposes to give him, is not within her power to grant. All that a special master is allowed to do is what the court is allowed to do, and what the parties consent to. Apple isn't consenting to anything beyond its legal obligations. It is not in the judge's power to interview witnesses alone, without their counsel present if desired. Apple's main complaint is that Bromwich is trying to act as a prosecutor, rather than as a representative of, or substitute for, the judge

</comment><comment><USER22> > "it doesn't matter if you think my fees are reasonable, because you don't > get to negotiate them: You just pay them"

Nice. Spoken like a true lawyer.

How did legal fees get so high anyway? Do lawyers perform a task more skillfull than (say) software engineers? It seems under $350/h a lawyer won't move a finger. Software engineers do not (typically) make $350/h.

Also it looks like high lawyer fees are at least partially a US phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does all of that $1100/hr go to Bromwich, or is it payed to the federal government (or the company that pays Bromwich) who then pays Bromwich some percentage of that? We've had contracts at work for $80,000/yr where the contractor only saw $50,000 of that. The rest was payed to the company he worked for.

If the entire sum isn't going to Bromwich or if the court agrees with the price he's charging, I'd chalk it up to being the price you pay for anti-trust behavior. Then again, I don't know how much a company should pay for compliance monitoring after being convicted of anti-trust behavior. Either way it _is_ a lot of money, but if it's not all going to Bromwich's pockets, it sounds like a fine being imposed for the duration of the anti-trust monitoring.

<comment><USER24> Assessing a fine, paid to govt or restitution is one thing. Mandating an extorntionate contract , payable to the judge's buddy, is another.

<comment><USER23> That's exactly the differentiation I tried to raise in my point. Is this a fine paid to the government who then pays the lawyer some percentage, or is all of this money going to the lawyer? One would be acceptable, the other would be less so.

<comment><USER24> From what I read, it is the legal fees from "privatized" complance monitoring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm sorry, I don't see how anyone should be defending a lawyer's fees at that price. I look at law the way I look at open source software, (the law should be accessible to everyone, for free, if they know how to interpret it). You can hire experts in law, as you hire experts in open source software (lawyers/programmers). Now imagine, for example, two startups competing with on the same technology (say Rails (whatever)) in the same market (whatever). Now imagine one of the two startups wins a dominant market position and the other has to fold. You don't imagine the developers of the winning startup demanding some arbitrary fee from the company they beat. It would seem absurd. Yet here are people defending thousands of dollars an hour, for a human being to interpret the law, which is the same for everyone and _should_ be accessible to anyone (even though we all know navigating the legal system is probably worse than navigating through WordPress source code). I don't see how a lawyer on the opposing team should be able to charge me an arbitrary amount.

</comment><comment><USER26> Although I supported the anti-trust action taken against Apple, I have to say that agree with them in regards to these ridiculous charges.

<comment><USER27> On top of that, from what I read, he regularly demands meetings with Cook, Ive, etc. Seems like the actions of someone on a power trip.

<comment><USER19> Sir Jonathon Ive is senior vice president of design, and is listed as an executive, and was considered to be Jobs's "spiritual partner at Apple".

Look at the placement of Ive here [http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/](http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/)

When a company fucks up, and is caught, and has court ordered scrutiny, it seems reasonable that the executives are going to be scrutinised.

The way to avoid this scrutiny is to avoid breaking the law.

<comment><USER28> That's ludicrous.

Ive is an industrial designer, recently tasked with some UI work. His relevance to anything ebook related is less than zero.

Cook is in charge, so he has to show up sometimes, sign off on SOX paperwork, etc. The entirety of Apple's compliance effort is managed by someone else, but every project needs a Responsible Individual.

<comment><USER29> > His relevance to anything ebook related is less than zero.

By Ive's own admission, this is false.

<comment><USER28> Mea culpa. Google fails me, please elaborate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So, Apple has to pay Bromwhich $1,265/hr ($1,100/hr + 15%) to oversee the antitrust compliance and then, additional $1025/hr to the outside counsel who would consult Bromwhich on the relevant Antitrust law.

All this because Bromwhich admits that he has NO antitrust experience. So, why was he chosen in the first place?!?!

Say I show up at your firm, get hired as a senior C++ developer. Then on the first day I show up, and tell you: "You know how you are paying me $X/hour to do this job. Yeah... You know, I don't actually know how to do this job, but John here does. He's going to be working "with" me. So, in addition to $X/hour for me, you'll need to pay John here $X/hour as well. Yeah..., so will get started now, right?"

</comment><comment><USER31> I really don't care about Apple's problems. Apple can take care of itself.

<comment><USER32> First they came for Apple...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wonder how much Apple paid their lawyers to write this brief and if they actually come out ahead even if they win.

</comment><comment><USER34> Honestly, I don't think Apple so much as broke the law as they lost out on some lobbying/regulating play where Amazon got the DoJ to investigate for agency models, as opposed to Apple getting the DoJ to investigate Amazon for predatory pricing.

In this case, I think anything is fair play.</comment>


Underhyping your startup - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/2010/04/06/underhyping-your-startup/

<comment><USER2> Sure it's stealth mode; you're trying to get by unnoticed. The difference is who you don't want to be noticed by - in classic stealth mode, it's everyone; here it's just potential competitors. Perhaps the old stealth mode could be more appropriately described as "navigating a jungle with sunglasses at night" mode.</comment>


Emerging Markets of Cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://bitflate.org/post/2019/11/10/emerging-markets-of-cryptocurrencies.html <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Some of my thoughts on the future of crypto. I have a fairly different view from traditional crypto space. I think people focus too much attention on the tech, less on monetary policy. If we want to move the space forward, we need more experimentation in monetary policy.</comment>


[show hn]Youtube prerolls that you'll never skip - <AUTHOR> http://blog.veed.me/5-best-youtubes-pre-rolls-that-you-wont-skip/

<comment><USER2> By convention, the syntax for showing the HN community something is — "Show HN : Your Title Here".

And this article doesn't qualify for "Show HN". As far as I've observed, Show HN applies for stuff OP has built or a service/tool you've discovered.

That being said, this is an entertaining set of videos, some of which made me smile.</comment>


D-Wave's black box starts to open up - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/08/d-waves-black-box-starts-to-open-up/

<comment><USER2> A year ago, I was at a talk they gave trying to get the Machine Learning/ Natural Language people at a local university interested. They were asked if they could factor RSA. Instead of saying that they couldn't do it because they didn't have a general purpose quantum computer, They claimed, emphatically and repeatedly, it wasn't a problem they were interested in and sorta implied they could do it if they set their minds to it .

I'm firmly convinced they are snake oil salesmen even if they stumbled onto something that maybe does certain quantum things.</comment>


Linus Torvalds Answers Your Questions - <AUTHOR> http://meta.slashdot.org/story/12/10/11/0030249/linus-torvalds-answers-your-questions <comment><USER2>
      Linus on git:
      ...it wasn't all that pleasant to use for outsiders early
      on, and it can still be very strange if you come from some
      traditional SCM, but it really has made my life *so* much
      better...

So, here he pretty much acknowledges you have to think like Linus to get git like Linus. I remember getting bashed here on HN for saying so, but I don't care and I'll say it again.

From the user's perspective git is not fun to use, at least not like hg or fossil are. Good programs just get the job done, but great programs are fun to use.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be mixing "unpleasant to use _early on_ " with git as it is _today_ in order to prove your point.

And to be fair your point is entirely opinion based anyways. You don't like git (fair enough), but you might be getting bashed because it is a lot of people's tool of choice.

Personally I absolutely love Git.

<comment><USER4> I didn't use git early on, but it's pretty unpleasant to use today as well. It's fine if you learn the right incantations but it breaks almost every unix rule in the book. Literally:

<http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html>

There's only a few guidelines there that git obeys. The most obvious one it obeys is "separation".

<comment><USER5> Reading through the list of unix rules you linked, I find git reasonably obeys them.

For example "Clarity is better than cleverness": Git provides a clear internal structure (Blob DAG). It does not try to provide clever merge algorithms, since "Buying a small increase in performance with a large increase in the complexity and obscurity of your technique is a bad trade".

Or another example "Design programs to be connected with other programs". In contrast to Mercurial, many git commands are separate programs and it is trivial to implement your own in any language.

Arguably git violates "In interface design, always do the least surprising thing", since it does not try to provide a comfy start for svn exiles.

<comment><USER6> For SVN exiles, there-s git-svn <http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-svn.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not a software developer by trade, but I do tinker. I've thought I understood pointers fine, but maybe I don't. Can someone who does expand on Linus' comment regarding deleting an entry from a singly linked list?

I understood the example he lamented, and probably would have done exactly that. I didn't understand his pointer to a pointer example though.

<comment><USER8> When you start the list traversal, you would have something like

        Node** link = list_head

and as you traverse, you would do

        link = &(entry->next)

Then, when you find the entry that you want to delete, link points to either (a) list_head if you are deleting the first entry or (b) the next pointer of the previous entry. Either way, doing

        *link = entry->next

does the trick.

This way, you save on the conditional branch.

<comment><USER9> That traversal doesn't traverse. It just skip list to entry->next and would keep resetting.

You could do something like this instead:

      link = &((*link)->next);

<comment><USER10> Yes and then to set it would be

      *link = (*link)->next;

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> His statements about instruction sets are interesting: basically that people get excited about low-level instructions that exploit details of processor architecture, but what would really improve performance are high-level instructions that allow software to defer to optimal implementations provided by the processor. Makes sense. Very little software can know the details of the processor architecture on which it will run, JITed code being a major exception.

<comment><USER12> To what extent does something like the JRE JIT code know about processor specific details?

You download a single x86 or x86_64 java binary from Oracle; I guess they could bake in processor specific optimizations for as many processors as they can think of at the time but I think even then the benefits of high level instructions that Linus lays out would be present. At the very least it would simplify what has to happen when a new processor comes out.

<comment><USER11> _To what extent does something like the JRE JIT code know about processor specific details?_

I honestly don't know. The most obvious thing I can think of is that it might check the L1 cache size, which I believe can be discovered even if the processor family is a new one that the JRE doesn't recognize.

<comment><USER13> cat /proc/cpuinfo. That is what the kernel says about the cpu, which is about as much info as you are going to get without some database lookup on specification data given a model number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _I want to really re-iterate how great Junio Hamano has been as a git maintainer, and I haven't had to worry about git development for the last five years or so. Junio has been an exemplary maintainer, and shown great taste_

Having listened in on the git developers mailing list for the last few years, occasionally getting involved, I can re-iterate how true this is.

Sure, git development uses some anachronistic-feeling conventions (like mailed patch-sets) but these all have reason behind them and exist because they work for the people who are working on git.

I don't know how many of the processes are held over from before Junio got involved, however both those processes and how Junio handles the entire thing are a great case study on how open source can be done. Some entry points for interested people:

[https://github.com/gitster/git/blob/master/Documentation/how...](https://github.com/gitster/git/blob/master/Documentation/howto/maintain- git.txt)

[https://github.com/gitster/git/blob/master/Documentation/Sub...](https://github.com/gitster/git/blob/master/Documentation/SubmittingPatches)

[https://github.com/gitster/git/blob/master/Documentation/Cod...](https://github.com/gitster/git/blob/master/Documentation/CodingGuidelines)

</comment><comment><USER15> I found this interesting: " [...] I think that rotating storage is going the way of the dodo (or the tape). [...] The latencies of rotational storage are horrendous, and I personally refuse to use a machine that has those nasty platters of spinning rust in them. [...] "

Is this about SSD vs. HDD? Does he favor SSD over HDD for Desktops?

Personally, my 99% use time computer is a MacAir with 256 GB SDD, and I love how fast it is and that I don't have to worry about breaking a HDD. But having so little disk space is definitely a limitation to me. I would have expected, that Linus has a huge HDD in his desktop computer, maybe in combination with a SDD for speedup.

Apart from price, isn't lifetime still a huge problem for SSDs? I was expecting HDDs to die out for Laptops but to be around for a long time on desktops.

<comment><USER16> > I would have expected, that Linus has a huge HDD in his desktop computer, > maybe in combination with a SDD for speedup.

What for? The complete Linux git repository is less than one gig.

        /dev/sda1       141G   93G   42G  70% /

That's me. If you mostly just do coding, you don't need gigs and gigs of space - for most things, at least. 256 GB would be more than enough for the immediate future, so I'll definitely put an SDD in my next computer.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, that was my line of thinking, too.

Hasn't turned out to be true for me. The 256 GB are quite limiting to me.

Things that eat up a lot of space on my SSD:

\- eMail: dozen's of GB, but I wan't to be able to read them offline \- Virtual Machine, I run Windows 7 with 50 GB allocated space \- clumsy programs which eat a lot of disk space like Visual Studio \- Videos that I record from experiments \- recorded data from said experiments - when you record at 1kHz space goes up fast \- mp3 music

<comment><USER16> So, basically things that gobble space are:

* Audio and video files. That's to be expected.

* Windows.

My guess is that Linus doesn't have much to do with the latter, and probably doesn't use his work computer for the former.

<comment><USER17> He explicitly said to put media on a NAS disk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anybody else notice the date animation and mouse over text for same?

<comment><USER19> Off Topic: For Slashdot's 15 years anniversary, in the month of October, everyday there is a different community submitted logo on Slashdot!

All these Interviews are done for the 15 yrs anniversary as well with famous Slashdot active users...Today Linus, last week Wozniak: [http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/10/01/1527257/ask- steve-w...](http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/10/01/1527257/ask-steve- wozniak-anything)

</comment></comment><comment> B-Con FTA:

> People were apparently surprised by me saying that copyrights had problems > too. I don't understand why people were that surprised, but I understand > even _less_ why people then thought that "copyrights have problems" would > imply "copyright protection should be abolished". The second doesn't follow > at all.

> Quite frankly, there are a lot of f*cking morons on the internet.

I have to admit that I think pretty much the same thing whenever I read discussions about patent/copyright law on the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER20> _Btw, it's not just microkernels. Any time you have "one overriding idea", and push your idea as a superior ideology, you're going to be wrong. Microkernels had one such ideology, there have been others. It's all BS. The fact is, reality is complicated, and not amenable to the "one large idea" model of problem solving. The only way that problems get solved in real life is with a lot of hard work on getting the details right. Not by some over-arching ideology that somehow magically makes things work._

Yes, well, Torvalds is here disputing one of the main drivers of science, the motive that brought us Newtonian physics, quantum mechanics, you know, the very things he depends on via his use of microprocessor technology.

If your "one overriding idea" is wrong, then certainly that'll get you into trouble, but as history demonstrates, they aren't always wrong. They are always hard to come up with, and often when you come up with them you face an uphill battle with people who want to maintain the status quo and who can't conceive of "one big idea." But eventually those ideas are the ones that cause tectonic shifts in human progress.

His reference to Edison is apt. It wasn't Edison who brought us the AC motor that literally revolutionized power distribution and the whole industrialized world. It was a man who thought big, who had "one overriding idea": Tesla.

<comment><USER21> Physicists' job is to come up with "one overriding idea". But engineers know "one overriding idea" never works except in theory, and that the devil is in the details.

Linus is not saying that microkernels are architecturally bad. He concedes that it is an architecturally superior idea but it is not a panacea when it comes to OS design. It merely shifts inefficiency outside the kernel.

<comment><USER20> _But engineers know "one overriding idea" never works except in theory_

On the contrary, good engineers are not dogmatists. They're open to new ideas and strive for simplicity, which means striving for unified approaches based on empirical reasoning. See Newton.

<comment><USER22> Your continued comparison of physics to software engineering is horribly flawed.

Software engineering is about creating something for _humans_ while working with other _humans_. It is a science that is primarily constrained by human nature.

Physics is about describing _reality_. It is a science that is primarily constrained by reality.

In software engineering, it is always better to choose a flawed technical solution that leads to less friction among _humans_. Because less friction among _humans_ is the entire point of software engineering.

<comment><USER23> I am genuinely curious how anything technically superior ever gets a chance in this concocted world of yours. Clearly, you prize "less friction among humans" above all else. So given a choice between a clearly flawed technical solution ( say building an operating system in PHP) and alienating other humans ( specifically, an office full of PHP experts ), we should build the OS in PHP because that leads to less friction among humans...yeah ? Let me know how that goes...

Back on point, In grad school, we read the Tenenbaum-Torvalds debates in OS class to get an idea of the current state of research. Tenenbaum's point, among other things, was that microkernels were an unsolved problem. Granted they pushed the problem space into communication, and you had to contend with latencies....but that was the whole prize, to solve this brand new problem space. Whereas big bad monolithic OSes were a solved problem. We know they could be done. As far as a CS researcher was concerned, there was no meat in that space...it was mostly implementation detail and optimizing. Whereas microkernels, despite being a cleaner, more elegant approach to OS design, clearly had tons of issues to be solved, and whoever took a stab at them would push the state of the art forward. That is the point => to find a superior technical solution, not minimizing friction among humans.

<comment><USER20> I'm glad to see someone getting the point, which is that we as scientists strive for simplified, unified explanations and systems, and that's a _good_ thing.

Linux is nice and practical, but try working with it as a systems programmer sometime. It's full of hacks and arbitrary complexity and all manner of nonsense that persists year after year.

<comment><USER24> I hate all the existing OSes for this reason. Unfortunately, it's easier to crowd source a big pile of dung (sure you can help - just pick up a shovel!) than it is to build something elegant.

<comment><USER25> The problem is that even the most beautiful and simple solutions end up turning into a big pile of dung to actually be useful in the real world. You get to the 80% point and then all of a sudden you realize that to do the next thing you need one little hack here. Now you get to 85% and you realize you need one more little hack, then at 88% you need another little hack to make it speedy, ...

<comment><USER20> _The problem is that even the most beautiful and simple solutions end up turning into a big pile of dung_

Until they don't. You don't know what who is going to come up with next.

<comment><USER25> Way to hack off the end of my sentence which is the most important part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think we need more open source projects that are not open to contribution from anyone. This may upset some people but will keep the bar for quality high. Linus' original work has been tarnished by too many eager but unqualified contributors.

If he had just chosen a small team, I think Linux could have been a real contender to BSD in terms of quality. It would have taken time to do, but they have had a loyal user base (of non-contributors) and demand from early on due to the legal problems with obtaining BSD and that is I think what has pushed Linux forward.

<comment><USER27> You're asserting a lot of things without any specifics to back them up. I've been using Linux-based systems for a long time and the quality of the kernel has never posed any sort of practical issue for me.

If Linus had chosen a small team and taken his time to do anything I'm sure the Linux kernel could have ended up like OpenBSD or similar systems. A very high quality OS that takes its time to do everything to the point where users more interested in a practical OS would have looked elsewhere.

<comment><USER26> Could you define "practical OS"?

What specifically do you want this OS to be able to do? (Note that we've reached a point where no user necesarily needs to restrict themselves to a single OS. They could use different OS's on the same computer for different purposes. This was not always so easy to do. It will continue to get easier.)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Meilindex – typo tolerant full text search for emails (CLI) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tryffel/meilindex <comment><AUTHOR> I needed a tool for searching emails and was unhappy with existing solutions. I found out about Meilisearch and realized it would be the perfect engine for emails. So I wrote a tool to index mails (from local Mbox, useful with Thunderbird) and query them in CLI. This is initial release for the tool Meilindex. Search Gui is very simple. I have been using this tool for a couple of months now and I'm very happy with it. Check out Meilisearch for more info on the engine as well!</comment>


Show HN: My Weekend Project, in effort to a startup - <AUTHOR> https://market.android.com/details?id=com.falx.icollage.main Hi All HN's Readers,
I just want to announce , to show the Hacker community about my new weekend project , in effort to launch a startup, please find your precious time to review it
Thanks in advance. Abdul Mateen. FalxLabs. Android Consulting. <comment><AUTHOR> Please find your precious time to review it, your suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks</comment>


Using different delimiters in sed (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://backreference.org/2010/02/20/using-different-delimiters-in-sed/ <comment><USER2> The common alternate character, for those cases where normal slashes are not suitable, is a comma character; ','. With Sed code, readability is always an issue, and it can be improved by not using just any character and limiting yourself to as few alternative modes of syntax as possible.

With a bit of exposure, commands like

s/foo/bar/

and

s,foo,bar,

can be read with equal ease.

<comment><USER3> > The common alternate character, for those cases where normal slashes are not > suitable, is a comma character; ','.

I've always used "|" since it's so visually similar, and you always want to quote regular expressions anyway.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't that confuse you because it is the alternation symbol ([https://regular-expressions.mobi/alternation.html](https://regular- expressions.mobi/alternation.html)) in many, if not all, regular expression syntaxes?

<comment><USER5> And comma appears in repetition limits (like in /a{1,2}/). I don't see much difference.

<comment><USER6> Repetition in sed would be written \\{1,2\\}, it's unwieldy enough that it's rarely used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On a related note, I found Bruce Barnett's sed tutorial is one of the best Sed guide out there: [http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html](http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html)

<comment><USER8> It was really good, thank you! I learned a ton of new tricks from it

Separately, I feel like I could have a full time job submitting PRs to fix the GNU-ism of using `sed -i"" ...` versus the BSD/macOS syntax of `sed -i "" ...`. I don't know which of those two camps broke from the other, but holy hell it _broke_ for sure.

<comment><USER9> How does the GNU-ism work at a shell level?

In your first example $0 is "sed", $1 is "-i", $2 is "...", no? What signifigance does the -i"" have in bash apart from 'concat -i to ""'?

The BSD syntax is plain, $1 is the option "-i", $2 is the value for that option: "", $3 is "...".

Edit: off by one

<comment><USER10> Indeed, appending an empty string to -i doesn't modify it in any way, AFAIK.

It's that the GNU version doesn't require an argument, but, if an argument is to be provided, it must be done as part of the flag, not as a separate element of argv. The MacOS version allows either way of providing an argument, so -i.orig tends to be portable (assuming the -i flag is supported in the first place).

Differences in how "traditional" (be they sysv or bsd) versus gnu utilities handle flags and arguments [1] is very well rooted in history, and is hardly unique to sed.

I suspect the main reason this has been forgotten is that Linux, which ships with gnu utilities, has been so dominant for so long, though, even before that, it was difficult to find a then-current unix on which gnu utilities couldn't be installed.

[1] As the sibling comment points out, the source of difference is getopt, of which there were more than just two versions.. including not even using a library

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For one offs, I like to change up my delimiter so that I a) remind myslef I can and b)think the slashes are ugly dont like escaping. I prefer pipes.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've seen so many hilariously bad workarounds for this in old shell scripts from lazy engineers who apparently can't read a man page and don't realise the delimiter character is substitutable with more or less any character you like.

This is one of this extremely useful features that a surprisingly large number of users don't seem to know about.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. `/` covers 99% of my cases, `|` covers 99% of the remaining. I think i might have had to use something "exotic" once or twice in 30+ years now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, I have some bash scripts to improve... great post, another useful fact on HN.

</comment><comment><USER15> tilda has always been my go-to; in fact i tend to use it in preference to / even if there is no literal / in my statement.

s~foo~bar~

I still use / when pointing out typos in PRs, tho :)

s/calulate/calculate/

</comment><comment><USER16> The address one is really useful I wish I knew it this very week. Thanks!</comment>


Armenia makes chess compulsory in schools - <AUTHOR> http://ca.news.yahoo.com/armenia-makes-chess-compulsory-schools-20110415-090347-232.html

<comment><USER2> It may just work out, I would really like to see the results of kids who have taken chess, and kids who don't.</comment>


Google GKE vs. Azure AKS – Automation and Reliability - <AUTHOR> https://kubedex.com/google-gke-vs-azure-aks-automation-and-reliability/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for performing these tests, they're very eye-opening!</comment>


Whistleblower: NSA Targeted Journalists, Snooped on All U.S. Communications - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/nsa-whistleblow.html

<comment><USER2> It would be nice if these articles (especially in net-savvy Wired) included computability and physical access arguments defining the current limits of practical internet surveillance, scoping a bit the unbounded oh-my-god- they're-reading-everything. Distributed growth beats centralized (observer) growth, no matter how many cooperative agents (AT&T, etc). i.e. what's the current sampling ceiling?

</comment><comment><USER3> I suspect this is the beginning of many things we will learn now that the Bush administration is out of office.

<comment><USER4> Can as many things possibly come out after bush than came out during bush?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone believe that they're really going to stop? How about that that it didn't start during the Clinton administration (if the capability existed)?

<comment><USER5> I forgot that the Kennedy administration was especially fond of govt surveillance. I'd be surprised if Nixon wasn't.

Is there any reason to believe that a govt won't do surveillance that it has the capability to do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> People in the know kept all of their phone calls to 2 minutes and 1 second, minimum.

I'm hoping that was a purely hypothetical example, or else the signal to noise ratio must have been absurd.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Boot stamping on human face etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Tice said the NSA analyzed metadata to determine which communication would be collected._

The analysis of metadata -- signals intelligence -- is NOT covered under the consitution. Likewise node analysis or lots of other forms of mathematical intelligence gathering.

If the NSA can string seven communications nodes together to hone in on an accurate communications channel for terrorists to their sponsors/members/operatives, then they are doing their job. This critical work should not be lumped in with everything else.

Now the actual recording of calls and _data_ of communications, as opposed to _metadata_ \-- that's another animal entirely.

Instead of grandstanding (and I'm a liberarian, so it's really hard not to grandstand on this one), we should try to take the concept of foreign intelligence into the world of IM, SMS, E-mail, and all the other new forms of data which live all over the world (including on U.S. servers)

I'm not making apologies for NSA. I'm simply pointing out that they are charged with doing an important job. They might be screwing it up, but that doesn't make the job go away. The last thing we want is another 1970s where Congress so crippled the intelligence agencies based on previous bad behavior that we were mostly blind in terms on HUMINT up until 9-11. Politicians and media outlets have a tendency to try to make audiences as emotional as possible -- which is exactly not what we want to do with something as important as this.

<comment><USER8> Traffic analysis is a GREATER danger to innocent bystanders than recording calls, because it is all hearsay and unproven. if they tap my phone calling for a takeaway curry then it's obvious I'm innocent. If they just log that I call that number and later somebody they are 'watching' calls that same restaurant (because their relative works there) then I am secretly linked to that person in some database - this doesn't get examine in court - but I now have 'links to terrorists'

<comment><USER7> You're making two mistakes.

One: you are confusing criminal law with intelligence. "hearsay" and "unproven" are criminal law concepts, used when the state wishes to deprive you of some of your rights, such as when you are being investigated or prosecuted.

Two: you are representing "link to terrorist" as some sort of boolean condition when in fact it's multi-dimensional. EVERYBODY has links to terrorists. I call the neighborhood pizza store who has an owner that SMSs PeeWee Herman on a regular basis who visits the web site of a known supporter of Hamas. We're all linked to terrorists -- it's like the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon concept. The point of meta-analysis is to take all of that random noise and gather meaningful meta-data in order to pursue.

Once the government becomes interested in me, personally, we start moving from intelligence to crime -- assuming I am a U.S. citizen. If I am a foreign citizen, then it's simply plain old intelligence-gathering.

The weirdness is that multi-node transports now can cover areas of both criminal law and intelligence gathering, but the laws are all written for one or the other. There has to be some allowance for work in-between the two concepts.

We have some precedence. It's legal, for instance, for authorities to search your trash without a warrant.There is no presumption of privacy when using computers owned by somebody else, such as your employer.

There's a lot of legal work to be done in these areas. I want the government completely out of my life, but that ain't happening. In any society in which a strong contingent wants to control and shape every form of energy I use (to prevent global warming), then we've gone beyond the old days and are in new territory. The game now, from a libertarian viewpoint, is damage control.

EDIT: I can see where we might have a misunderstanding. When you're concerned that tracking the types and messages from you is infringing on your rights, you're assuming that the government can identify you. I have no idea how NSA is doing its work, but the idea of signals intelligence is that people are just nodes. The association of the data with your identity is another subject entirely. (Of course, attributes about the node, such as location, occupation, religious history, etc. are fair game. Just not identification. Who you actually are is irrelevant.)

<comment><USER9> Yes I do know how it works - my company produces the software that does this for your bank, your credit card and a bunch of 3letter agencies (hence the one-shot username). What we hand over is a big list of names that are 'linked' (for whatever degree of linked they asked for) to the terrorist/criminal/transaction in question.

The tenuous definition of'match' required by some of these customers is scary, two arabic surnames beginning with Al are assumed to have a 50% match for one agency, all chinese with the surname 'Ng' are the same person according to another!

I'm sure that somewhere in military intelligence somebody understands sifting for real patterns in this. But compared to the number of people who get refused loans, get extra security at airports or listed as 'persons of interest' the next time a child is abducted - all on the basis of a 6th degree of separation.

<comment><USER7> _I'm sure that somewhere in military intelligence somebody understands sifting for real patterns in this._

Then this guy needs to revamp the system. It sounds like it is horribly broken.

Having said that, you have to look at the cost-benefit ratio of both false negatives and false positives for any kind of discrimination engine. Life isn't black and white. If Fred Smith has a nuke and is somewhere overseas (and we know he'll use his real name), I'm more than happy to carefully watch all the Fred Smiths overseas that are making any kind of travel or shipping arrangements, civil liberties have nothing to do with it. That is traditional intelligence, as it applies to foreign citizens.

And this is where the conversation breaks down. Criminal law has no allowance for any kind of false positives (it is not tolerable for anybody to go to jail when they are innocent). Intelligence, on the other hand, is always dealing with probabilities -- you never expect to know fully one way or the other.

There's a fundamental incompatibility with both systems such that when they interface the language doesn't work any more. It's not going to work to try to force the concepts of one world on the other. We have to have a reasonable discussion somewhere in the middle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This needs to stop.</comment>


Ask HN: What info someone can access if they know my Gmail password? - <AUTHOR> Today, our placement cell of University forwarded a message about the recruitment process of a company
The company asked the students to create a account on their website with the same password of their personal email ID in their message.
Here's the message

  Hi,
  Please find attached the
  [Company Name] Application
  Process Guide and
  instruction below. Please
  request students to go there
  the instruction and attached
  ppt before taking the test.

  Please ask them to use
  Chrome to access the link
  for test and once they open
  Chrome they have to
  type [Registration Link]
  and start registering please
  ask them to keep trying to
  login twice or thrice if
  they face any error/problem.

  Note: Please ask them to
  give their respective roll
  number as user name and let
  the password be the one
  which they use for their
  personal mail to access.
  They have to give only their
  personal email id while
  registering and not their
  college id because all the
  test links will be set to
  their personal email id
  only.
 Majority of the students are using Gmail. So, what information they can access if they know my Gmail password? <comment><USER2> It depends how many Google services you use but it could be a lot. This could be your mail, your docs, calendar, messenger, voice, etc... Plus other services that use Google auth.

This request seems very improper for them to request that you set a password the same as their personal email. This actually violates security best practices. I would be very suspicious of why they are requesting this. Also that they specifically state that the registration process may encounter errors and to keep doing it is also suspicious. Are you sure this is a legitimate request? It appears to me a phishing attempt to me.

If this is legitimate, this company and your University need to be named so others can avoid these kind of bad practices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I'm sure this is a legitimate request. This message was sent by the officials of the college's placement cell

<comment><USER3> Are you sure it was sent by them? What if they have given out their email passwords.

You should never have to provide your password. Setup 2FA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd answer that giving out password is a security breach and they need to rework their process. Honestly, if they actually are asking for that, I wouldn't want to work with them.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's weird they ask for that.

You can setup a 2FA so that they would need access to your phone as well.

Also, make sure that the email is legit. It could be an attempt to gain access to your account.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, normally you only see this in mails from Nigeria.</comment>


Creative Thinking That Fueled WeChat's Success - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2019/10/the-kind-of-creative-thinking-that-fueled-wechats-success <comment><USER2> Sure seems an awfully uncritical fluff-piece for an app that's such a central part of China's dystopian surveillance state. Unknown scores of people have been arrested and detained indefinitely for things they've posted on WeChat.

Also, if WeChat's success is due to it's so called "Grand design" thinking and not its history of blatantly copying features from other apps, nor from Chinese protectionism in its home market, why isn't it popular outside of china with anyone other than the Chinese diaspora? Seems if its such an innovative app it should have scores of users in other countries.

</comment><comment><USER3> > there is a perception that they have succeeded through copycat strategies, > and have benefited from Facebook and Google being blocked from operating in > the country.

This fluff piece goes on and on about the "Grand Design" but does nothing to address these two criticisms. WeChat did, in fact, begin as a blatant copy of WhatsApp:

[https://news.cgtn.com/news/30596a4e78677a6333566d54/share_p....](https://news.cgtn.com/news/30596a4e78677a6333566d54/share_p.html)

And maybe WeChat "didn't get an easy ride", but it sure helps to have all major existing competitors locked out of your market.</comment>


Fairphone 3 Is Launched - <AUTHOR> https://www.fairphone.com/en/2019/08/27/launching-fairphone-3 <comment><USER2> For that price, I would have expected a better CPU than a Snapdragon 632 (~2 years old now)

<comment><USER3> Said in another way, other phone companies may be able to lower prices by negatively impacting the environment and exploiting workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fairphone 3 an eco friendly phone running Android that is service friendly.</comment>


Phone Makers Could Cut Off Drivers. So Why Don't They? - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/2016/09/25/technology/phone-makers-could-cut-off-drivers-so-why-dont-they.html <comment><USER2> Possibly for the same reason all cars aren't pre installed with breathalyzer lockouts (and maybe should be?).</comment>


Smartphone Photos in a Post-Truth Era - <AUTHOR> https://www.eetimes.com/smartphone-photos-in-a-post-truth-era/ <comment><USER2> > Making yourself look like an eight-year-old is amusing.

This was a little disturbing, since I'd just read the other HN story of a mom posing as an 11 year old girl for predator hunting.

You could pose for the purposes of grooming also.</comment>


Bitcoin terrifies me - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@piotrpawlak/bitcoin-terrifies-me-4dcfd523b41 <comment><USER2> ... because you don't understand it?

It's common knowledge people fear what they don't know.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not just the fear caused by lack of understanding.

I'd rather say - by the overwhelming financial amount Bitcoin has generated. No folks in power like to be overtaken. Strange things might happen when they realize they are not the top dogs anymore.

<comment><USER2> If you're talking about the 1% they aren't worried. The banks may have regulations, but most banks are owned by the Rothschild family. They can invest however they want since they are individuals.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm talking about this: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/264905/top-10-banks- by-m...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/264905/top-10-banks-by-market- capitalization/)

No.1. bank on highest market caps list is JP Megan Chase with $311bn. Which is being overtaken by total Bitcoin capitalisation right now. I'm pretty sure members of the Rothschild family don't sleep well these days.

<comment><USER2> If you truly believe the 1% don't know how to stay on top and pull strings so they always win then you're dreaming.

It may just be a TV show, but Mr. Robot touches on this subject. Give it a try

<comment><AUTHOR> By all means - I do believe!

I am worried the 1% will start pulling strings. That's the point.

I dropped Mr/ Robot after s01e02. There were too many depressing threads for me and my wife. Buy you're saying it is worth coming back to?

<comment><USER2> But they are already pulling strings just to slap each other and using us as pawns in the process. At least that's the picture Mr. Robot is painting right now. It does have its dark moments, but I think it's dark because the world it portrays isn't that far off from our own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There isn't much actually here, but an overblown fear of a bank run in favor of Bitcoin, which is amazingly unlikely.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't say it is unlikely. There already is a run for Bitcoin. Cold calculation makes people take their savings and go for BTC.

<comment><USER3> The banking industry is many many orders of magnitude more than Bitcoin. It's extremely unlikely.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope you're right. Just purchased more BTC :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A Riddle for an emacs User - <AUTHOR>

Is it possible to set up a key shortcut to do the following:<p>1) set focus on my browser (Firefox) 2) refresh the page 3) set focus back on my my emacs buffer <comment><USER2> Yes.

To do number 2, you'll need mozrepl.

<http://hyperstruct.net/projects/mozrepl>

Why are you doing 1 & 3?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, good question, and good answer! Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> browse-url-of-buffer (C-c C-v) followed by Alt-tab to get back to emacs.

You could look into scripting your window manager.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the hottest tech startups in Asia? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Eyedeus Labs from Pakistan [http://www.eyedeus.com/](http://www.eyedeus.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> LINE is ubiquitous in Japan. Although it's not a startup anymore I guess.</comment>


Yap: An ephemeral, Real-Time chat room with up to six participants - <AUTHOR> https://yap.chat/ <comment><USER2> >Within Elixir and Erlang programs, it's common to have hundreds of thousands of processes running at any given time.

And limit it to just 6 participants? :D

<comment><USER3> "your messages appear and disappear as quickly as you type them, which means unless you pay attention to what everyone says (for once), you'll miss it."

I think limit is based on human attention limit, not Elixir process limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea is cool but the execution is weird. Why can I not replace a speaker as a watcher when they leave the room? You just end up with dead rooms with a bunch of watchers. Or am I over thinking this?

<comment><USER5> It's probably just the MVP. It's how products are launched these days.

<comment><USER6> is it really an MVP if it isn't V?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the blog post on how it was made: [https://postlight.com/trackchanges/the-magic-elixir- behind-y...](https://postlight.com/trackchanges/the-magic-elixir-behind-yap)

<comment><USER8> While checking out the app I was thinking that Elixir&Phoenix is the perfect tool for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yeah okay, another chat app.

I was going to ask questions but I think the below linked blog article about it would be better.

I like the UI. Big, basic and intuitive! Thats a plus!

Also 'kinda' like the domain itself! I imagine that was a quick early purchase.. As for the rest, I'm struggling to see something interesting.

Unless its serverless and p2p based rooms ? That would be kinda neet, done before of course, but nicer than not!

<comment><USER10> Do know of any good mobile websites with good e2e ephemeral chats?

<comment><USER11> We built [https://safer.chat](https://safer.chat) some time ago and I have been using it on my phone for a while, there are some glitches but in general it's been usable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://yap.chat/HKXIaedEvZ?invite=CQ1A4RFj9E](https://yap.chat/HKXIaedEvZ?invite=CQ1A4RFj9E)

Let's talk about cali

<comment><USER13> Yeah, it's flawed. Six (the max) people left the room, I watch six empty seats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's talk about Artificial Intelligence

[https://yap.chat/4TB6xLs2nT?invite=QLSXwIEMCv](https://yap.chat/4TB6xLs2nT?invite=QLSXwIEMCv)

Edit: It seems more people can't join even if you kick out those who already left.

<comment><USER15> Yep, that's gotta be a bug surely? If somebody leaves and the room now has 5/6 people, somebody can only join as an audience member and the sixth slot is stuck on "x has left the room". Surely slots should be reusable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool app, but I really love the style.

Is there a name for this kind of style? There's a common theme here with sites like [https://glitch.com](https://glitch.com). I love it, so it would be nice to put a name to it.

Also reminds me of [https://sourcehut.org](https://sourcehut.org), but to a lesser degree. Big fan of that design too!

<comment><USER17> Probably something like "offset printing retro" would work...

<comment><USER18> This is the correct answer, that's how I know it as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> +1 for the dope, minimalist design. +2 for the no shenanigans approach. Love it

<comment><USER20> Nothing about this actually is minimal. It's a highly stylized design that I guess "feels" minimal, but it utterly fails at actually being minimal.

<comment><USER21> Saying it "utterly fails" seems harsh, especially because you don't give any explanation. I don't think you can say it fails at all, the author never said it was an attempt at minimalism, or minimalism in the way you understand it.

The app has its own aesthetic. I think it's debatable whether it's minimalist or not. I don't think it's justifiable to say it "utterly fails" either way though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22>
        ?- yet_another_prolog('yap.chat').
        false.

        ?-

This reminded me of the Prolog of the same name (it's website seems to be in limbo).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAP_(Prolog)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAP_\(Prolog\))

</comment><comment><USER23> Cool design, but the idea of messages disappearing after they're typed makes it practically pointless for general use. There would be a lot of other ways to accomplish similar functionality of keeping the most recently typed messages active, without removing them completely.

<comment><USER24> It seems really fascinating to me, all about being in the moment like conversations face to face.

<comment><USER25> It wont be though. People can record them. Might as well make it a feature.

<comment><USER26> Sure, but you can record face to face conversations too. But to do so requires more effort, and would only be done if you had a particular need for it.

The original intent and design still would apply to the vast majority of interactions on the chat room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anyone truly like Yap as I do? Really like the concept of ephemeral communication. Focus on the people at the moment, instead of doing 'public image engineering'.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it's supposed to be used by a team working / playing together. Not very useful for a bunch of strangers.

</comment><comment><USER29> Added that to [https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome- loginless](https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome-loginless). The company behind it apparently specializes in making these loginless useful apps, they also have TinySheet.com and TinyMonth.com

</comment><comment><USER30> So I tried putting a link in the box on the right and it just turned black. What is it supposed to look like?

</comment><comment><USER31> Lets's yap! (NOW IN DARK MODE) [https://yap.chat/x02xRdqrX_?invite=D_688_vp_L](https://yap.chat/x02xRdqrX_?invite=D_688_vp_L)

<comment><USER4> Weird that watchers can't join the chat when someone leaves. Just kills off the whole room.

<comment><USER31> I'm back!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So, it's like IRC &channels with +l 6 CHANMODE? Nice, but the idea is literally decades old.

<comment><USER33> But you see, it's "webscale"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I like the design. Any CSS frameworks that can produce similar look?

<comment><USER35> Why would you need a framework for this? Oh man this is so wrong...

<comment><USER34> Because I want to save the time I have. I use Bulma for 100% of my projects because I want spending priceless minutes of my own free daily time for the application _core_ instead of flexboxing viewports and debugging compatibility for numerous clients (and proving my point here).

<comment><USER35> I understand this sentiment, I really do... but this layout/design is so simple to make I think a framework would be overkill and unnecessary bloat. This is coming from someone who does css for a living daily so your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I prefer tlk.io before, so any differences?

</comment><comment><USER37> I like the sound effects.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is nice, will keep an eye

</comment><comment><USER39> This is pretty cool!

</comment><comment><USER40> hangs :(

</comment><comment><USER41> Not quite a copyright concern but wouldn't this get confused with the island[0]?

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

<comment><USER27> Java is also a place name

<comment><USER42> Amazon is also a place name.</comment></comment></comment>


Email Isn't a Natural Fit For Tech-Savvy Chinese - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120664392076969261.html?mod=OATE

<comment><USER2> Raises some interesting points about differences in business cultures. One thing that would get lost in the Chinese approach is having access to records of conversations -- I use email search every day to check the status of projects in various stages of development.

<comment><USER3> Logging IM isn't that difficult. If you use something like Pidgin then you get all of your logs neatly organized in one place regardless of protocol.

Equally most corporate IM servers support logging. I expect that with a very small amount of hacking eJabberd could be persuaded to store good data even if it can't already do so.

<comment><USER2> I was actually making a reference to the cellphone conversations mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how much of this is sort of self-feeding behavior: e.g. in America we use email a lot at work, so emails are answered quickly, which reinforces its use. But in China, they don't use email so much, so email isn't answered quickly, which discourages its use. Maybe it's more initial conditions and less culture.

<comment><USER5> I think it has a lot to do with culture. Russians are very much like Chinese in this regard: voice mail has never gained any traction there, and email is considered somewhat 2nd grade.

Email is for things that weren't important enough to deserve a phone call. Phone calls are getting replaced by SMS messages, especially among younger crowd, but email/voicemail are nowhere close to importance they have among Americans.

A typical example: my neighbours sent me an evite for a party next weekend, in Russia that would be a bit insulting: my parents would think _"nah, it's not a real invitation, otherwise they would have called"_

Americans value their "personal space" too much, and email/voicemail allows you to do just that: communicate with people without getting out of this bubble of comfort. Eastern cultures reject that: if you want to talk to me, - then TALK to me. That's the attitude. (exaggerated a bit, but delivers the message)

<comment><USER6> Well that's no fun. With IM or email you can talk to 50 people at once.

Or are you referring to business communications? I'm sure that no one in the US undervalues the effectiveness and persuasiveness of voice communication for critical negotiations.

On second reading, I think you're just referring to the resistance of old people to new technology?

<comment><USER5> This is not about technology at all, it's about ways to communicate. As I said, differences are larger than most people realize.

Here is another example not related to tech or "old people". A co-worker had a birthday party few weeks ago. The next Monday I had a "Thank you" card on my desk, even though he's sitting next door. You see, a card like this will only freak a Russian out: _a card? why? couldn't he have said something instead?_

This is why IM and SMS picked off _very_ quickly over there. I've met people with ICQ numbers on their business cards as early as mid 90s: these media fit their culture better. Email is just like a birthday card: too detached, too impersonal, not real-time, etc. The only email I ever get from my parents always contains short and usual "Call us", everything else is too important to be shared "indirectly".

It's all changing, of course. And my views and memories may be getting a little rusty (haven't been there since '02), but culture does play a major role in everything we do, including preferences for technologies.

<comment><USER7> My parents are Taiwanese. I was raised in America for most of my childhood. I got to see how my Americans friends hanged out both as a teenager and as a professional. I got to see how my parents friends interact with each other.

As tx wrote, this isn't a technology thing, it is a cultural thing.

Back in 1992, the author Neal Stephenson went over to China to do research for his book, _Diamond Age_. He wrote a whole essay on that trip in Wired Magazine. One story he shared was about the cell phones. Powerful, influential men had were early adopters of those cell phones -- big, huge, klunky, mildly phallic. These men would go to restaurants with their entourage and would stand The Cell Phone in the middle of the table to show off the depth and breadth of their social network.

Stephenson had talked to one such guy about it, who complained that it was hard to lug this around. So Stephenson told him how people in Hong Kong and the southern portions were handling it -- by getting a flunky in their entourage to carry it.

If that sounds absurd, there are lots of technologies that have a decidedly American cultural slant to them. Back in George Washington's time, the lawn of the White House was kept short with grazing sheep. In those days, if you had a huge lawn that was not for grazing animals, that was a sign of wealth. Look at this huge lawn! I'm so wealthy, I can afford not to put the animals out there to pasture!

After WWII, with rising population, massive increases in manufacturing capabilities, and financing, owning a house in the suburbs became a foundational symbol of the American Dream.

And guess what? Each of those houses have a lawn. Which a whole set of technologies were invented for the caring and feeding of the lawn: lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, high-tech fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. People didn't have sheep anymore, and it isn't as if the kids went out there to play (not with video games beckoning in the house). So why do you keep seeing people watering their lawns, fertilizing it until it becomes absurdly green, all just to trim it to the perfect height? If you kept it unkempt, your neighbors start snubbing you, because they are angry at you for lowering their property value.

You can take any technology and you can see uses that are always tied to some cultural context. As a culture with a lot of gadgets, we'd like to think that we're using technology in an objective, rational, _optimized_ way. But we're not. People are people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> E-mail isn't the only thing. If you look at the way advertising works on Chinese sites, it looks more like a street bazaar in terms of the experience.

It still amazes me that Chinese sites sell ads on a monthly/daily basis rather than CPM or hours spent on site.

</comment><comment><USER9> May I say: Text Messaging Isn't a Natural Fit For Tech-Savvy Americans?

</comment><comment><USER10> email never seemed elegant to me. mailing lists in particular are atrocious. i think a good communication medium for a business would be forums (eg vBullitin) which allow topical conversation in an organized, non-retarded way as well as one-on-one private exchanges

</comment><comment><USER11> Email is very inefficient compared to voice communication. All the time you see email threads that tallied up used half an hour plus the mental energy of people subconsciously polling for the reply, but a two minute phone conversation could have wrapped the thing up.</comment>


Show HN: Visualize your computer time - <AUTHOR> http://www.timeandtracking.com/auth/register/free/visualize

<comment><USER4> Let me give you my immediate reactions ...

Your link takes me straight to a signup page, which annoyed me immediately. I don't know what you do, or how you do it. You ask me to download software with no idea of your privacy policies, or why I should trust you.

I have to click on a few links to see what you produce - I still don't really know how much of my effort goes into the successful tracking of my time. It might be completely passive, it may be I need to click things while I work - <USER2> have no idea.

When go to your home page there is a huge amount of text, none of which actually tells me what pain is being taken away. You tell me lots of things your software does - realy, lots - and yet there's nothing from _my_ perspective.

I don't want to know what your whizzy software can do, I want to know what pain it takes away.

And that's my reaction.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't expect such a good feedback, thanks a lot

<comment><USER4> Great response.

Let me add that these were reactions to the web site - I never got to try the product. It's not clear that I would be in your target market anyway, and additionally I use neither Windows nor a Mac.

So the takeaway is that when I visit a web site I want to know what my ROI will be. If you want me to take some action, I firstly need to know what benefit I'll get. you need to hook me with evidence - not just words - <USER3> you understand my pain, and will take some of it away.

Hope that helps - replies/emails welcome but not necessary.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much did Amazon pay for Datarow? - <AUTHOR> I hear that this company was acquired by Amazon but there hasn't been any information on the amount it paid. Is it public information that just wasn't indexed anywhere ? <comment><USER2> You almost never see reliable information around acquisitions of private companies like this. Your best bet is to pour beer into an insider.</comment>


How I changed SSID of every router connected to my ISP to NSA Be Watchin' - <AUTHOR> http://codebreach.in/blog/2016/04/wifi-ssids-to-nsa-be-watchin/?ckattempt=1 <comment><USER2> Sounds super illegal--wouldn't post it online if I were you. The NSA really is watching.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope it won't bring me trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah. This seems really illegal. You're getting into others' routers? I wouldn't ever want to change the SSID or post about it on a site that can b used to identify you with. You could get into serious trouble. Especially if you're from Europe or North Americas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense, I just removed the post.</comment></comment>


Kubernetes Is Hard - <AUTHOR> https://itnext.io/kubernetes-is-hard-190f1d0c6d36 <comment><USER2> It's great people are finally starting to talk about the real experience running k8s however this article only lightly touched on the problems. When you see deployments when downscaling is not allowed because the code can't handle it somewhere and no one is sure where, when you see deployments with no thought on security updates.. yeah kubernetes is hard to get right.

It's also true many companies go this way not to solve a real problem but to jump the bandwagon.</comment>


The Netherlands to Reclaim a Portion of the North Sea - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fliefdevoorholland.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F07%2F23%2Finpoldering-deel-noordzee-kan%2F&edit-text=&act=url <comment><USER2> Dutchie here, this site is subtle but rather brilliant satire, hadn't seen it before.

This article for example [https://liefdevoorholland.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/plannen-b...](https://liefdevoorholland.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/plannen- benelexit-gelekt/)

Benelexit, Benelux exit will introduce a new currency, the "florijn", in the Benelux. This was found in a government report called "to b€ or not to b€"... Yeah

</comment><comment><USER3> Judging by the map mock-up, that is a massive land mass. It would also push the Netherlands well into territorial waters claimed Britain. This has got to be a non-starter. It's either a speculative article or the [pretty messed up] auto-translation is way off the mark.

Any genuine Dutchies care to chip in with an explanation?</comment>


Do Not Track: The pros and cons of being followed - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/debate/do-not-track-the-pros-and-cons-of-being-followed/6368347 <comment><USER2> >And without the targeting, advertisers will be paying a whole lot less for access to the networks and for far fewer revenue-generating click-throughs.

Not true. Advertisers just pay as much as everybody else does. Do you have an idea of the price of a single 2 page spread ad in a popular magazine? A _lot_.

Advertisers are spoiled. And if everybody else can only muddle along, well, that's what they'll do too. At the price everybody else is paying.</comment>


Mark Suster: One Book Every Entrepreneur and VC Should Own - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/25/one-book-every-entrepreneur-and-vc-should-own/

<comment><USER2> I think it's a pretty strong statement to state every entrepreneur. I've been reading Feld since he started blogging but that statement assumes every entrepreneur reading TechCrunch is planning on chasing VC money.

On the other hand if you're bootstrapping I'd recommend Start small, stay small: an entrepreneurs guide to launching a startup by Rob Walling. That is until patio11 writes the definitive guide.

<comment><USER3> You could also read 'Do More Faster' by the same authors as this VC book. I've read that one and it's solid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm against strong general statements like this. But this is a really really nice book.

I bought it after reading Fred Wilson recommending it and it's been awesome so far. It reads like a book, not a manual, and minus a few parts (term sheets), it really wasn't hard to follow at all.

I'm about half-way done with it and it's good to get all this knowledge from a VC. I'm part of an accelerator this summer and I've recommended it to everyone else participating...it's really a wealth of knowledge presented in a clear and concise manner.

</comment><comment><USER5> Am I more likely to succeed by reading this book and participating more directly in my negotiations, or by spending more time on my work and hiring a lawyer with a reputation for understanding these negotiations?

<comment><USER6> I don't think hiring a good lawyer and understanding these things are mutually exclusive. IMO, you will be much more successful and less screwed by understanding how it works and participating directly in your negotiations while working with a good lawyer.

Whether this book helps in understanding or not I don't know since I haven't read it, yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Adding another data point: Bought it, reading it, so far very impressed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can we just buy a PDF version?

<comment><USER9> But then it wouldn't be just "like having Brad whispering in your ear when you pitch VCs," as one Amz customer revr said.

<comment><USER10> It's on Kindle.

<comment><USER11> I wish it were not $30 on Kindle, but I bought it anyway.

<comment><USER12> I feel like $30 pales in comparison to $8mm.

<comment><USER11> Or to the $800/HR lawyer, even.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


VMware Buys SpringSource for $362 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.sdtimes.com/blog/post/2009/08/10/VMware-Buys-SpringSource.aspx Basically, they wanted  Hyperic. <comment><USER2> Better explanation on VMWare blog: [http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2009/08/vmware-acquires- spri...](http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2009/08/vmware-acquires- springsource.html?ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

</comment><comment><USER3> The hidden gem is about halfway down the press release: springsource owned hyperic already. Hyperic has an obvious slot in VMware's portfolio.

Some of SpringSource's other products are more confusing.</comment>


18F Is Testing Micro-Purchase Auctions - <AUTHOR> https://micropurchase.18f.gov/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10471677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10471677)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10570069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10570069)

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I understanding this correctly? Someone was awarded $350 to add 19 lines of CSS?

The auction/requirements: [https://micropurchase.18f.gov/auctions/6](https://micropurchase.18f.gov/auctions/6) The code change: [https://github.com/cwarden/micropurchase/commit/9e0f896023c6...](https://github.com/cwarden/micropurchase/commit/9e0f896023c671753eb870e7c677d56d8f3df365)

I should sign up! Looks like the other auction/requirements are more involved though.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like a fantastic deal. Seriously. There's so much government waste that it's a miracle when they pay someone less that $1000 to pick up a pencil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that this time around the bids didn't bottom out at the min. All but one are in the $300-$500 range. The first time they tried this the winning bid was one (1) dollar[1].

[1]: [https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/11/06/micro-purchase- lessons/](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/11/06/micro-purchase-lessons/)

<comment><USER6> That $1 bid was someone who wanted to do the project for free. Just thought that should be disclosed.

"I figured it would be cool to be a part of this first micro-purchase experiment and demonstrate that there are people — at least one but I think a lot more — willing and excited to help out on meaningful, civic-minded initiatives," he said in an interview with Federal Times. "I love working on little web projects in my free time. This is $1 more than I make on those and this one actually helps people."

[http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/gsa...](http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/gsa- gwac/2015/11/09/dollar-micro-purchase-pilot/75452072/)

[https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/11/06/micro-purchase- lessons/](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/11/06/micro-purchase-lessons/)

[https://github.com/18F/calc/pull/256](https://github.com/18F/calc/pull/256)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great marketplace! Now why is it so damn hard to sign up to do government contracts on this crappy website?

[https://www.sam.gov/portal/SAM/##11#1](https://www.sam.gov/portal/SAM/##11#1)

<comment><USER8> I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm stuck at getting myself a D-U-N-S number. D&B can't figure out if I really exist, though they can verify my 15-years-dead father is real and could register a business.

[http://www.tomvanantwerp.com/my-kafkaesque-attempt-to- make-a...](http://www.tomvanantwerp.com/my-kafkaesque-attempt-to-make-a-few- extra-dollars/)

<comment><USER9> It wasn't hard for me to register my LLC for a DUNS number, and I don't recall any sort of onerous verification process, but I also used the free signup for gov't contractors[1]. It still strikes me as extremely strange that government contracts require registration with a private entity—seems like it should be done through the OMB or SBA or something. Be forewarned that if you register a DUNS entity, DnB will hound you with worthless phone calls offering "value added" services (possibly including unnecessary paid "verification"); best to use a Google voice number or a line to which you can otherwise apply a blacklist.

1\. [http://fedgov.dnb.com/webform/displayHomePage.do](http://fedgov.dnb.com/webform/displayHomePage.do)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone explain why an otherwise very forward-looking, user-experienced focus got stuck with an incomprehensible name like "18F?"

<comment><USER11> Its name refers to its office location in northwest Washington, D.C., on 18th and F Streets.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure it doesn't hurt that 18F is the MOS designation for "special forces intelligence sergeant".</comment></comment></comment>


Coding Horror: Has The Virtualization Future Arrived? - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001258.html <comment><USER2> "The original system requirements for Windows XP are almost comically low".

Is an operating system to only be taken seriously if it requires a significant amount of resources to run?

<comment><USER3> In the Windows world? Yes. By no coincidence whatsoever: Windows customers have been _trained_ to this behavior, over decades, by Microsoft and Moore's Law.

Microsoft thrives when people buy new PC hardware, because the easiest way to acquire a customer for a new Windows license is to bundle that license with every PC sold. [1] And Moore's Law provided great leaps in processing speed every year or so. So there was never any incentive to save on resources. Quite the contrary: A Windows release which pushed the envelope of compatibility with current hardware encouraged fence-sitting users to bite the bullet and buy a new PC -- with a new Windows license -- rather than watch their apps gradually slow down or become incompatible as app developers gradually introduced features of the new Windows into their codebases.

Among other things, think of it as a subtle form of copy protection. Back in 2001, you could buy one copy of Windows XP and install it on all of your Win98 boxes. But it would run like crap. Better to just buy some new boxes -- each of which comes bundled with a copy of XP.

Of course, once PCs and Windows became "good enough" the whole strategy fell apart. We seem to be in that world now. The new rage in consumer computing is netbooks and smartphones -- machines that _deliberately throw away_ performance in exchange for other useful characteristics like "cheapness" or "lightness" or "low power consumption".

\---

[1] For years it was nigh-impossible to get a company like Dell to sell you a PC without a Windows license included. Linux users complained and fought for years over this "Microsoft tax". For all I know, this is still a problem.

</comment></comment><comment> old-gregg What I don't understand is why people keep voting up CodingHorror posts: that blog has never been interesting... mostly boring observations of obvious facts, nearly always somehow Windows-centric. Even Barnes&Noble "gets it" by now - their Windows/.NET books have been pushed into the bottom shelves to make up room for Cocoa, Python, Ruby development and Ubuntu books.

Yeah... virtualization. Yeah, good way to run legacy apps, here is a screen shot of how it works, see kidz?

</comment><comment><USER4> When I worked on a large contract for a customer with 20,000 desktops and a couple of thousand servers we used to take great delight in waxing about our server virtualisation to major hardware vendors... and then drop the bomb that we had virtualised 250 instances of Windows NT...

NT was (then) 7 years out of support and is nearer 10 now. But if you have apps that run on it, they still run on it...

However trying getting an replacement network card with NT drivers these days. Virtualisation is your man...

<comment><USER5> You know "waxing" means "growing," not "talking," right?

<comment><USER6> I imagine it was a play on "wax poetic", but then this comment should be about the content of the OP's post, not one upping their spelling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hate Jeff, but this post makes sense: instead of being constrained by the backwards compatibility requirement, one can just pack every past version of the software on each release, just like HTTP clients and servers do when they ask for the protocol version.

<comment><USER8> I see this also as a way of getting developers to stop being so damned lazy. If I were MS I'd start stripping deprecated API calls out of the OS immediately - force anyone who's still running an ancient code base that they refuse to maintain to virtual mode. This might light a fire under their asses to get "Windows 7 compatibility" (i.e. no lame dead API hooks) higher priority.

Back-compat has always been the main force that held MS back, I'm glad they're doing something about it.

<comment><USER9> If MS strips out deprecated APIs, won't they have to include virtualised XP with all new versions of Windows, and not price discriminate on it? They don't want horror stories of Aunt Tilly not being able to run her favourite apps on her new PC and blaming Windows.

<comment><USER8> The thing is, Aunt Tilly is likely to run apps like IE, Outlook, Office, and Firefox, all of which are run by teams that are professional enough to keep their code up to date. It's unlikely that these guys can't have "Windows 7 compatibility".

The horror stories will come from enterprise software, where companies are running Win3.1 binaries even to this day, and where developers are _even lazier_.

And there's no reason to strip out WinXP compatibility per se from Windows 7 - IMHO the OS needs to keep native back-compat for at least the last couple of generations - but anything older shouldn't be in the code base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can people play their XP games via the virtualized layer?

If not, then there isn't true backwards compatibility, just more bloat.

<comment><USER11> That's true, but when MS decided to make all versions of windows backward compatible, I think they were thinking more about companies than the home user. Companies are the ones who really need to be able run their programs on their machines, sometimes really old programs that no longer have support or alternatives they can choose from.

<comment><USER12> If you have to run ancient applications that no longer have support, then you deserve to run ancient applications that no longer have support ;-)

You should always have an exit strategy.

But running an emulated Windows environment is not the worst possible scenario.

<comment><USER13> These ancient, unsupported apps aren't things like spread sheets and word processors, they're industry specific applications. They're much more expensive to create and update (and buy) because of limited demand, and there's often little choice in what software a company can use.

I've been working on a project to upgrade a old DOS based industry specific app to a "modern" browser app. There are still people using the DOS based version, and our main client for the browser app is still using Windows 2000 and IE 6.

<comment><USER12> I have suffered a similar fate. Back in 1998 I had to translate the shipping cost calculation of a huge brick-and-mortar store in Brazil written in FoxPro - it was the _only_ documentation on how to calculate it they had and finally I gave up on understanding it and made a line-by-line translation for their web store.

It ran for about five years, until the company went bankrupt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm sorry, but if virtualizing an old OS in order to forego concerns about backwards compatibility is "The Virtualization Future", then it arrived on OS X in 2001...</comment>


Earth wind map - <AUTHOR> https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/850hPa/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=-101.72,27.73,418/loc=-80.657,44.536 <comment><USER2> Lovely, but posted previously here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12415488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12415488)</comment>


Tesla Pushes Back Standard Model 3 Deliveries to Late 2018, Early 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://insideevs.com/tesla-pushes-back-standard-model-3-deliveries-late-2018-early-2019/ <comment><USER2> No Surprise that their scam continues: 1) FSD is still pure vaporware - realistically years away given how flaky and risky AP2 works today and if it ever gets local legal approval... 2) Current owners promised early access to Model 3 - of course no mention that was only going to be for a $49K model 3 ...</comment>


Gattaca – Alternative Ending (1997) - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fm5KAQnFgHI

<comment><AUTHOR> Andrew Niccol's other thought-provoking films include Truman Show (reality and free will), Lord of War (arms trading), In Time (immortality and currency) and Good Kill (drones), [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Niccol](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Niccol)

</comment><comment><USER2> While I love the movie, it is flawed:

Genetic manipulation need not result in class and genetic discrimination and eugenics existed before many advances in genetics were made.

Compare with "Brave new world": genetic manipulation as a result and a tool of a classist and discriminating society, not the cause. Of course, BNW is different in other ways.

I still love the movie because of its many other themes - bravery, perseverance, whether you should be prevented of taking risks. I would still recommend it to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> All these people could still have been born - only with their mutations corrected.

In addition, all the great people who were never born because their pregnancy ended in a miscarriage due to a lethal mutation: perhaps they would have made all the difference?

<comment><USER4> Who gets to decide what a mutation is?

<comment><USER3> Strictly speaking, it's anytime there's a difference between one genome and the consensus human genome.

But since you're presumably asking whether we should consider a mutation to be good or not, that's really the same as asking whether anything is good.

Is blindness good, for example? I'd say not, but others may choose to blind themselves if it makes them happy. But I doubt most people would welcome a genetic mutation that blinded them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one of those rare movies I still find very moving and inspirational. Fantastic music too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Could someone who has seen this and the other version point out what makes it alternate? This is the only version I have seen.

<comment><AUTHOR> The DVD ends with the launch. This coda was not part of the film, but appears as a deleted scene, at least in the US version. Maybe it was added in the international version?</comment></comment>


On the Savant Syndrome and Prime Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://goertzel.org/dynapsyc/yamaguchi.htm

<comment><USER3> Summary: The guy who reported that the savants could generate primes lied - <USER2> least the guy who wrote this article thinks so, since he can not imagine a human (a savant) being able to do what was reported.

He does speculate on the savant using probabilistic prime detection methods, but decides that there is no way someone just came up with that on their own. (Without understanding math in the conventional sense.)

All in all, a worthless article. Long on speculation, utterly absent from information.

<comment><USER4> That's a rather careless reading. The most interesting point, and the one that is the basis for him questioning the report, is that the primes in the report were supposedly taken from a book listing primes up to a particular number. However, given the number of digits in said number there is no way they would fit into a (paper) book or any practical size. Also, Sachs was unable to identify the book used when directly questioned about this. He does not deduce that there is no way someone came up with that on their own, but that it's likely they do understand basic math, just not in the contexts they were tested in.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if he lied or not, but an entire paper that basically boils down to "he lied" is not actually a very interesting point when you are expecting to hear about how the brain is able to calculate primes.

> He does not deduce that there is no way someone came up with that on their > own

Sure he does - he keeps calling that idea "science fiction".

I'm sure it's a very important paper for its field, but very lacking in conclusions, and therefor of interest only to those in its field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Author doubts the veracity of the reporter. Not very ingenious. When a doctor named Silliman reported witnessing a meteorite fall, Thomas Jefferson said "I would more easily believe that (a) Yankee professor would lie than that stones would fall from heaven."</comment>