A Day in the Life of a Digital Editor, 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-digital-editor-2013/273763/

<comment><USER2> I got down to the bit where the author tries to make it personal, then gave up.

It's not about being personal or publishing private emails; it's about a respected publication approaching an established writer and asking for free product to sell on. Doesn't matter whether it was the poor dear's first fortnight in the job or if she'd been there 25 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> The short version of this is, "Don't be a journalist." There are so many people who want to be journalists, or to try to be, that The Atlantic thinks they'll work for free. Evidently many of them will. Anyone reading this should know that they need to seek another profession.

Interestingly enough, in 2001 I was the co-editor-and-chief of my high school newspaper and thought about going into journalism. But it was obvious to me then that the Internet was going to destroy a lot of careers in journalism.

It has. The only thing I still find puzzling is that some people want to major in journalism in college, or attempt to be "freelance writers."

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Better advice would be, if you want to be a journalist, "have a solid back-up plan" or "pursue it on the side". Even before the internet, it was a tough profession to be successful in. Now it is even tougher, but there are still individuals who manage to eek out lucrative and rewarding careers.

This advice applies to any profession that has significant excess supply vs demand. Athletes, photographers, artists, actors, musicians etc... Even if an individual never makes it big (and most don't) these activities can be rewarding hobbies as long as expectations are managed properly.

<comment><USER4> My Dad was a musician his entire life. He's had other side jobs, but that was always his dream and big plan.

I decided to go to engineering school and do music on the side.

That has been much more successful for me money wise and in a way music wise as well. I've never had to compromise my (crappy) music to make a buck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem I have with this piece is that it doesn't really offer any solutions and is basically a justification for trying to ask people for free work.

Journalists rarely think about business models, which I think is one of the main reasons that journalism is doing so poorly. Some journalists abhor the idea of even thinking about how to support their work.

I wrote a post with some suggestions on how we can pay for great writing: [http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/2013/03/06/paying-for- great...](http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/2013/03/06/paying-for-great- writing-in-the-internet-age/)

My company got a reporting series funded on Kickstarter ($15,000), others are using Kindle Singles and there are other models to explore as well. I like what The Magazine is doing too.

Sitting around saying, "well our freelancer budget is small" doesn't help the situation.

<comment><USER4> Oddly the Atlantic is doing pretty well. If Nate Thayer wasn't resting on the laurels of his 1987 Pol Pot interview he probably would've caught onto the joys of ePub tie ins, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is partially a response to yesterday's discussion about "A day in the life of a journalist:" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5324429>.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty much all of the solutions that the author proposes for dealing with freelancers involved fixed fees per article. But if revenue is determined by unique visitors, why not just pay authors based on a royalty?

This, perhaps coupled with an appropriate sized advance would ensure that authors were being rewarded for successful work, and that The Atlantic wouldn't be pouring money into stories that only get 1,000 hits.

Given that major news can be broken over Twitter in 140 characters, paying by the word seems incredibly antiquated.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does he get paid by the word?

If you're responding to controversy, don't get too lengthy. It looks suspicious.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm siding with Thayer here ... I don't think he was "mean" to Olga (actually I thought it was refreshingly blunt), and Madrigal admits that you have to "feed the children".

Edit: Olga's budget for purchased content is $12,000 a year? I'm going to assume her salary is significantly more than that, but why would you ask an expensive editor to "obtain/curate/manicure" work that was purchased so cheaply? It sounds like it really wouldn't be worth her time.

</comment><comment><USER9> this video interview with harlan ellison seems relevant here (warning, language): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=mj5IV23g-fE#t=14s)

perhaps profit sharingbased on unique views might be a solution to the problem.

</comment><comment><USER10> I had trouble understanding what point the author was trying to make.

It feels a bit like the qualms you might feel during your first stint in management, where you basically enforce rules passed down from above. Where the good of 'increasing value' costs some of the well being of those you supervise, and you have to grow a big doublethink muscle to continue to think of yourself as a good person as opposed to a tool of exploitation, because, unfortunately the opportunities for win-win changes are actually few and far between.

<comment><USER11> The point the author was making is that quality digital journalism is in a tough place right now, with small budgets to spend on features, but also the expectation that they'll churn out good work and worthwhile articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> White knight article.

<comment><USER4> heheh. Olga is my girlfriend, she needs just about zero white-knighting.

<comment><USER12> Very few people need white knighting. Don't actually know either of you, hope you are doing well.</comment></comment></comment>


Exxon Thinks It Can Create Biofuel from Algae at Massive Scale - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40539606/exxon-thinks-it-can-create-biofuel-from-algae-at-massive-scale <comment><USER3> My main question was answered at the bottom:

> While a truck running on biofuel still emits greenhouse gases, the emissions > can be considered carbon neutral since the algae sucks up CO2 as it > grows–unlike fossil fuels, which burn carbon that has been buried for > millions of years.

<comment><USER4> Carbon neutral might not even be enough to curb major climate change consequences like irreversible permafrost melting. [1]

We need to do much much better than that - it has to be Carbon negative - <USER2> then, it might be too late already. [2]

[1]: [http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/02/permafrost-melt-soon- irrevers...](http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/02/permafrost-melt-soon-irreversible- without-major-fossil-fuel-cuts/)

[2]: [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SeaIce/page3.php](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SeaIce/page3.php)

<comment><USER5> Well I guess we could just store up the fuel and not burn it. That would be carbon negative. Or ship it to Mars and burn it there as a start to terra forming. Too bad it's hard to get stuff to Mars.

<comment><USER6> This is the answer. Not the mars thing, but creating fuel and not burning it. We got into this mess by taking stored up CO2 and releasing it for energy. You reverse this by taking energy and released CO2 and turning it into storable "fuel".

<comment> castle-bravo Would planting trees do the trick?

<comment><USER6> While it would certainly help, it would solve like 0.1% of the problem. Fun fact, plants actually consume oxygen at night. On a 24 hour cycle, they create more than they consume, so everyone just thinks all they do is create oxygen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The DAO Disaster Illustrates Differing Philosophies in Bitcoin and Ethereum - <AUTHOR> https://www.coingecko.com/buzz/dao-disaster-differing-philosophies-bitcoin-ethereum?locale=en <comment><USER3> Such a fork would be more difficult in Bitcoin due to their political/financial (not necessarily technical) decentralization. This fork, if it happens, will be proof that Ethereum is far behind bitcoin in terms of decentralization.

<comment><USER4> «This fork, if it happens, will be proof that Ethereum is far behind bitcoin in terms of decentralization.»

Wouldn't a fork imply _more_ decentralization? Multiple active forks would imply multiple actors working to their own agendas towards different objectives/goals and no central fiat to realign their interests. That would certainly sound more decentralized to me. (The block size tangle and the inability for Bitcoin to fork recently to deal with that almost certainly sounded like a power/political centralization problem to this lay observer from what I was reading, but I've managed to stay somewhat unfamiliar with much of the technical nuance.)

It seems to me like a truly decentralized system would likely be prone to forking. The issue should likely not be whether the system can fork (and how difficult it might be), but how the system handles forks when it does fork.

(This is the "DVCS criteria": a DVCS must realize that merges must be common and handle sometimes heavily divergent forks well and with grace, otherwise it is a bad DVCS that users will hate.)

<comment><USER5> Not really, if the fork is orchestrated and primarily by one group (the Ethereum Foundation).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Going from 'The DAO is based on Unstoppable Code' to 'if we screw up badly > enough, WE WILL FORK YOU' is a big change that shouldn't be taken lightly_

This is what I find so galling. If code is code is code, then the outcome should be what the code says it is. But whoops, we decided we don't like the outcome so let's toss that out.

<comment><USER7> That's how decentralized open source projects work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The value of money is subjective. Governments drain the value of fiat currency by printing and spending. This causes people to subjectively value the currency less, which makes its market value go down (inflation.)

There are several reasons why this is not the case with Eth/DAO:

1) Every fraction of Ethereum is accounted for in the public record.

2) No additional Ethereum was created to compensate the losses of investors, only the original stolen Ethereum is being returned.

3) No politician's pockets are being padded, the only receivers of value are the rightful owners of DAO Tokens. (Only ETH was stolen, not tokens - <USER2> still has their tokens.)

4) If some government took this as precedent to force a bail-out in the future Ethereum Ecosystem, based on the standards of the Ethereum community, the value of Ethereum under an actual government-instituted bailout would plummet. It goes against everything we believe in, and the subjective valuation of Ethereum on a mass scale would plummet, effectively making any funds doled out worth only a fraction of their value by the time the receiver had any chance to use them.

I could go on giving more reasons, but is it really necessary? No one should be attempting to make analogies between fiat currency controls and an Ethereum fork unless they've considered both the philosophical and economic implications of their arguments, and it's obvious that most anti-forkers haven't bothered to give due diligence to the question of what's really at stake here.

<comment><USER9> The ETH wasn't really stolen though. I thought a contract was submitted and then executed?

<comment><USER8> Do you really find that answer a satisfying resolution?

<comment><USER10> I do not think there exists a satisfying resolution. In the terms of Chess, this is pretty much a definition of checkmate. Either you think that the intent of the DAO actually was specified in the code, thus it was not a theft, or you think that the intent of the DAO actually was _not_ specified in the code, but somewhere else[1], and the whole raison d'etre of DAO disappears to the air as a puff of smoke. No moves left either way.

[1]Where?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps the next big of development the Ethereum guys need to build is a decentralized court system.

<comment><USER3> Or perhaps if you want mutable contracts based on intent, you could use one of the 253 legal systems that already provide you with that.

<comment><USER11> There's boatloads of value in a decentralized block chain approach to legal organizations.... What's amazing here is the ethereal guys are forging new territory for truly global and potentially leaderless commerce.

What's unfortunate is that it's taking the form of a dystopia. Instead of realizing that humans are a factor of the equation, and people doing business in God faith... We're entering a ruthless period where anything goes, and because it's all anonymous no one feels bad about it.

There's crazy potential in the ideas here, but it's way too Wild West.

<comment><USER3> If you want the benefits of a blockchain without the Wild West stuff, why not set up a private chain with an "approver" instead of miners? I'm sure many companies interested in Ethereum are going this route.

<comment><USER12> Private/Federated blockchains are just applied cryptography, which is not the same as the technology behind bitcoin; blockchain & proof-of-work.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I think the ship has sailed on the term "blockchain" and it no longer requires decentralization. It means a signed transaction log which can't be secretly forged. Not as sexy as bitcoin, but language is fluid and I think the definition has shifted.

<comment><USER12> > "which can't be secretly forged"

Not possible without proof-of-work

<comment><USER3> Sure it is. If all blocks are relayed to all participants, theyll have a record of whenever theres an attempt to change the block history.

All they need to do is show two coflicting blocks signed by the "approver"

<comment><USER12> How was this not possible earlier?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In a similar and slightly broader vein, I recommend this article: "Ethereum's DAO Forking Crisis: The Bitcoin Perspective" \- [https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ethereum-s-dao- forking-...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ethereum-s-dao-forking- crisis-the-bitcoin-perspective-1467404395)

</comment><comment><USER14> Smart contracts that can be modified post-hoc, through consensus or (after a precedent was made that it is possible) legislation or a judge are not smart.

<comment><USER11> A loophole in a contract is a bug in a smart contract. The difference is if you try to egregiously exploit a loophole there's a system of checks and balances... it's imperfect, but at least it tries to be fair.

Smart contracts are one-sided. The exploiter always wins if the contract writer made a stupid mistake.

WHY would you want that system?

<comment><USER15> That's kind of the point. If you don't want a smart contract, use the existing systems.

Why would you need Ethereum if the contracts you want to enforce shouldn't be "smart"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >> "it seems that funds can still be reverse under certain circumstances"

Maybe it's me, but ideas like being able to reverse funds do not belong in crypto currencies. If risk is presented, escrow the transfer, buy insurance, etc.

Why are people so unwilling to take responsibility for themselves?

<comment><USER17> There are all kinds of completely legitimate (IMO) reasons to want the ability to reverse a transaction. See theft, fraud, PayPal scams, etc.

We certainly could insist the victim live with it, but that seems like a worse world for everyone.

<comment><USER18> Wish I had the ability to downvote. What you are doing is there dictionary definition of trolling. I'm sorry for your loss, but please do not put the whole Ethereum project in danger.

<comment><USER17> Call me a troll if you like. I have nothing to do with Ethereum, I just don't believe in the sanctity of all transactions, and _" it's your fault, you should have bought transaction insurance"_ sounds like victim blaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My impression from all of this is simply that the tools (and perhaps the etherium op codes themselves) for writing smart contracts still need work.

When programming for hardware began, it was very easy to shoot yourself in the foot with languages of the time, but over time new languages which made it harder (or eliminated certain foot-guns entirely) appeared.

For Etherium, I'd look at whether the ISA (set of opcodes) is complete enough to allow one to create a contract specification language with enough flexibility to do something while allowing a degree a safety.

Have there been attempts at alternates to Etherium's Solidity which generate smart contracts?

<comment><USER20> There have been many other languages before solidity (LLL, Serpent, others) Solidity is actually pretty well engineered, it is problematic mainly because it put beginner-friendliness before security as a design goal.

I think the future the ethereum smart contract options will consist of (1) Solidity with many static analysis tests added to generate warnings about dangerous code use and (2) an ML-style language that is less novice-friendly but allows for deep type-level constraints to mitigate potential attack scenarios.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bitcoin has reversed funds multiple times via hard forks. The only thing this article proves is that ethereum is young

<comment><USER18> That is not true. Bitcoin has never reversed a transaction without a signature.

The only time you are probably talking about is when someone made a block with a 9 billion bitcoin reward. Even then, they just convinced the miners to start a different chain. Thus, the chain with the 9 billion coins block just died. So yea, no reversal without a signature, ever!

<comment><USER21> oh without a signature, a completely irrelevant qualifier that I didn't even make as a prerequisite!

I'm also referring to the march 2013 hard fork

so congratulations you just helped me prove my "multiple times" for the lay man

<comment><USER18> What happened in March 2013? Which transaction was reversed?

<comment><USER21> every transaction that happened to be on the dropped chain.

I never said the hard fork was specifically to target a particular transaction, the result is that every transaction on the dropped chain was reversed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how this would look today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11641111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11641111)

</comment><comment><USER23> Found the linked article [http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/28/ethereum- soft-fork-...](http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/28/ethereum-soft-fork- dos-vector/) very interesting as it points out the soft fork proposal essentially introduces a 2nd kind of exception semantics into the the Ethereum protocol. This in turn could be converted into a griefing attack on miners supporting the soft fork. The system level semantics and consequences don't really seem to be under control.

<comment><USER3> This soft fork has been abandoned, and the discussion had moved to a hard fork.

<comment><USER23> Yes I know the soft fork proposal is off the table. I just thought it interesting it got so far, given it would introduce additional flaws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Note that Bitcoin Core contributors have been openly hostile to Ethereum in many cases. So this article is a bit like asking Hitler how Hanukkah should be celebrated.

<comment><USER25> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can we have a meta.ycombinator.com for discussions about hackernews? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> People will carry on posting metaposts to the normal HN regardless, just as people continue to post feature requests as self posts instead of commenting on the feature requests page that is linked to from the bottom of every HN page.

<comment><USER3> But then it would be possible to delete/migrate such posts, rather than having to ignore or deal with them on the main page?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, I'd like all deleted/hidden post moved to meta so I can browse them.</comment>


San Francisco Crime Represented as Elevation - <AUTHOR> http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-crime-was-elevation/

<comment><USER2> At first I mistook this post to be an old project aptly named "Crime doesn't climb" which mapped crime to the elevation it took place.

[https://github.com/gwintrob/crime-doesnt- climb](https://github.com/gwintrob/crime-doesnt-climb)</comment>


Multitouch using water - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2010/06/26/multitouch-using-water/

<comment><USER2> More like "single touch". Only one finger ever enters the water. The original link, <http://taichi.s372.xrea.com/minamo_en.html> , is entitled "Touch Screen Interface on Water Surface", and doesn't assert multitouch at all, only mentions it at the bottom as part of what the creator is working on.

</comment><comment><USER3> multitouch is hugely over hyped term.</comment>


U.S. now can ask travelers for Facebook, Twitter handles - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/06/01/us-now-can-ask-travelers-facebook-twitter-handles/102393236/ <comment><USER4> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14465534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14465534)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm all for privacy and the government not overstepping their bounds, but could someone please let me know why this is so bad? I'm genuinely curious.

Your social media info is Public. If you have information public, that is your own fault and the govt can access that regardless if you give them your handles or not. If they were asking for passwords and access to accounts - <USER2> course_ that would be a different ball game.

But simply asking for your handles (while you can easily say you don't have accounts) doesn't seem like too much of an intrusion to me.

<comment><USER6> I don't think the ability to lie to government agents is a good argument against a law that allows them to ask for that information. At best it gets you enhanced scrutiny, at worst you go to jail.

<comment><USER5> Right, I see your point. But I'm saying - they are asking for _public_ information that ANYONE can search for. When you enter the country obviously they have to ask certain questions (or get info from your passport, ie name, DOB, country of origin, etc) - but I feel people get extra worked up for social media simply because it's digital.

If you have public information out there I have no problem with anyone asking for it - it's public after all!

<comment><USER7> Sure anyone can search for jc_811. I don't get a lot of useful data. It I can search for Joe Conner, but that isn't going to get me to jc_811s posts. Just because something is public information didn't mean YOU have to provide it

<comment><USER5> This is the most relevant answer (to me) in this thread, I see what you mean - I wasn't thinking that way and I'm glad you changed my mind.

When I originally posted I was working under the thought process of "My name is Mike Smith, my handle is @mike_smith (or something similar/easily searchable), so no big deal"

Considering the totally other side of "public" social media handles (ie, "my name's Mike Smith, but my handle is @xyz123, it's public as I want to get information to the public, but don't want my identity tied to it") - <USER3> definitely now see why this could potentially be a huge issue.

Thanks for the constructive explanation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And travelers can now promptly regret Facebook's Real Name Policy.

</comment><comment><USER9> Headline is a bit misleading. This was possible before, it's just a bit more official now. "Visa applicants might have faced requests for their social media handles in the past, but the practice is now explicit...."

</comment><comment><USER10> It certainly seems like bad guys will lie. Which makes it sound stupid at first. But maybe there's some logic to the law.

At least for those who lie, it adds a punishable offense that can potentially be used for prosecution at a later date, if and when the evidence emerges.

So, for example, let's say a foreign national living in the US is found later on to be apparently plotting a terror attack, but they haven't yet followed through with it, so there is nothing to prosecute them with.

The authorities could dredge up deportation-worthy crimes by going back and doing a detailed look at the person and finding that they had committed the crime of providing false or incomplete information.

<comment><USER11> That's kind of the "gotcha" question they ask you when getting a passport in an overseas office: "have you ever been affiliated with a terrorist organization or performed terrorist acts in another country?" At face value the question is ridiculous, but they put it there just to make sure they've got you on record lying to a government official if you are ever found out to have lied.

Now, the problem with the Facebook/Twitter thing is that the _really bad guys_ are not going to be stupid enough to have Facebook and Twitter accounts where they say they'll be committing terrorist acts, and they won't worry about being caught lying later on. So all in all, this sounds like posturing for posturing sake.

<comment><USER12> Yeah sounds like a way to entrap some stupid but ultimately harmless teenagers for the crime of speech supporting organizations the United States consideres terrorists.

<comment><USER13> Or for the kind of stupid shit that young people do.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> More important: what happens when someone refuses to tell or claim not to have one?

<comment><USER9> For US citizens, they may hassle you a bit but they have to let you in. For non-citizens, any refusal to cooperate will likely result in being refused entry and immediate deportation back to wherever they came from.

<comment><USER15> I actually don't have, and have never had, a facebook or twitter account. So, if I ever try to go to the US it's likely that that will be seen as "refusal to cooperate"? And I'm likely to be denied entry because of it?

Wow.

<comment><USER16> I'm the same, may be we would be advised to create a Facebook and Twitter account, but then would you be required to keep updating it and actually using it?

<comment><USER17> I've had one for a long time, but I don't post publicly. Without friending me, it's difficult to tell that the account's in use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just under the surface, this policy seems like a long play to reduce the global virality of radical online tendencies. While it might aid in US national security, it's a small part of a broader plan to transform national and global culture away from collaboration (horizontal growth) towards competition (vertical value). This is the essence of "Make America Great Again".

</comment><comment><USER19> Every headline on this story has been misleading.

When I read it I thought to myself - this is the first thing I really disagree with Trump on...but reading on:

> The supplemental questionnaire will only be given to "a fraction of 1% of > the 13 or so million people who apply for a visa to visit the United States > each year

</comment><comment><USER20> Oh no !. Now I have to create twitter,facebook and instagram accounts to travel to US ? Because I dont have any. If I declare in my visa form that I dont have any account, they are not going to believe it anyway.

US is isolating themselves & getting funnier day by day.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hmm.. this is way too much friction. I call upon the tech giants to brainstorm and make the process more seamless.

For example: why can't the govt take your picture and upload it to their servers at FB/Google/etc and get all the relevant info in a jiffy?

</comment><comment><USER22> for real? i mean isn't that something those secret agencies should have done so already by fancy machine learning and stuff?

And i remember, if you ask something, like a phone-number (of a girl in a club), you don't always get the proper information!

<comment><USER23> They missed the San Bernadino female's online posting of support for jihad on Facebook, pre-immigration to America. It's seems as if it's the case of scouring the wrong data/too much data (i.e. NSA collecting every telephone call in the USA at this time, while vetting did not look at immigrant social media background so the machine learning would never have helped if it wasn't pointed at the right data source or able to choose the data source) [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/san-bernardino- attacks...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/san-bernardino-attacks-us- visa-process-tashfeen-maliks-remarks-on-social-media-about-jihad-were- missed.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My wife was filling out ESTA forms for her parents, and they ask this stuff. Yuck.

</comment><comment><USER25> Do people who travel to other countries REALLY have the gall to post something threatening to the country they are traveling too?

<comment><USER26> Define "threatening". It's a slippery slope. Yeah, maybe "Allahu Akbar death to America" is an obvious one, but what about "Fuck Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate accord" \- is _that_ "anti-American"?

<comment><USER27> > "Fuck Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate accord" \- is that "anti- > American"?

Name one country that will grant you VISA if you start yelling similar things about their president.

<comment><USER12> The United States needs dissenting opinions to function as a democracy. I don't care one iota what other countries do in that situation.

If we start seriously saying "but it's okay for China to do it, why not us!" we've already reached terminal velocity sliding on that slope.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is cancer trending? - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0qcr0 <comment><USER2> In the last week at least, two big-name and well-regarded celebrities have died unexpectedly from cancer.

Also last week Joe Biden gave a big address at University of Pennsylvania regarding cancer and how the White House will be embarking on policies to make curing cancer a "moonshot" health project.

I can't account for the rise in interest beginning in 2015 but, at least with how it's displayed on the graph, the change from December 2014 to December 2015 was only 9 points.</comment>


12 Hour Timelapse of a Developer's Screen from Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_TEaG8ncWY

<comment><USER2> What site was used for searching the picture of the camera?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://thenounproject.com></comment></comment>


Finding Your Style as a Writer, a Principled Approach by William Zinsser - <AUTHOR> http://seekingintellect.com/2014/10/31/finding-your-style-as-a-writer-a-principled-approach.html

<comment><USER2> This article needs a good proofreading. Missing words in quotes, and incorrect words in quotes. Makes it difficult to read.</comment>


Iranian Ship, in Plain View but Shrouded in Mystery, Looks Very Familiar to U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/world/middleeast/a-ship-being-built-in-iran-looks-awfully-familiar-to-the-us.html?hp&_r=1&gwh=10DD5A902B682246FE7C82CE454323A9&gwt=pay <comment><USER2> The purpose is hardly "shrouded in mystery." Iran has been very busy perfecting their anti-carrier missiles:

[http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/09/the-sunburn- mis...](http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/09/the-sunburn-missile-the- weapon-that-could-defeat-the-us-in-the-gulf-2467754.html)

(^ that's quite possibly an overstated opinion piece -- I wouldn't know, I'm not an expert on these things -- but I'm sure there is a kernel of truth there)

[http://www.militaryaerospace.com/blogs/aerospace-defense- blo...](http://www.militaryaerospace.com/blogs/aerospace-defense- blog/2013/07/how-vulnerable-are-u-s-navy-vessels-to-advanced-anti-ship-cruise- missiles.html)

[http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/irans-carrier-killer- missile-...](http://thediplomat.com/2013/06/irans-carrier-killer-missile- improves-accuracy/)

I'd bet that the barge was built to test them in a live-fire exercise. Of course, the real question is how well the missile can get past a real carrier's defenses. A barge won't help with that, but the behavior of American carriers _after_ Iran hits the barge might give the answer away.

<comment><USER3> > that's quite possibly an overstated opinion piece

Understatement of the year (so far).

> I'd bet that the barge was built to test them in a live-fire exercise.

Might as well just use a tanker hulk. Its about as useful as this thing.

> Of course, the real question is how well the missile can get past a real > carrier's defenses.

Yes, and the defenses of the rest of the CVBG. And how well the ship's damage control will perform. And how well it will penetrate the actual armor of the ship. And how well the secondary protection systems work at suppressing secondary explosions and fires from fuel and ammunition stores. And the overall success rate of these missiles before factoring in everything else I just mentioned.

Soviet Frontal Aviation's plan for dealing with a US CVBG in the event of a hot war was to hit it with a saturation raid of 100 - 150 Tu-22 Backfire bombers each armed with a pair of Kh-22 (AS-4 Kitchen)[1] anti-ship missiles. The Soviet Navy felt that this level of saturation was required to ensure that the battlegroup's defenses would be sufficiently overwhelmed after accounting for bomber losses, electro-mechanical failures, and missile defense attrition. The Aegis system and F-14/AIM-54 pairing were developed specifically to combat a Frontal Aviation saturation raid. Sea skimmers, which the Kitchen was not, add an extra variable but do not have the range.

The Gulf transit scenario is ludicrous. The US Navy would not sail a CVBG into the Gulf in a war situation where the enemy has significant shore defenses without first suppressing those defenses. This activity would not be nearly as difficult as the badly misinformed author of the first piece seems to think, as finding the installations for launching these missiles is not difficult. If said installations want to have a snowball's chance in hell of finding a target to hit they will need to light it up, even if only briefly. At that point the fire control radar station is getting a HARM up the ass. The rest of the station is going to be fairly hard (though not impossible) to hide as well.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-22](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-22)

<comment><USER4> Modern thinking is to take out a carrier with a nuke: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D_.28CSS-5_Mod-4.29_Anti- ship_ballistic_missile)

"United States Naval Institute in 2009 stated that such a warhead would be large enough to destroy an aircraft carrier in one hit and that there was "currently ... no defense against it" if it worked as theorized."

<comment><USER5> Yes, but escalation from "attack a US aircraft carrier" to "nuke a US aircraft carrier" isn't linear. It represents a decision on the part of the attacker to absorb a nuclear response from the US.

<comment><USER4> You're using Cold War logic in a world of martyrdom.

<comment><USER6> The concept of noble martyrdom has been a tool used by the powerful to motivate footsoldiers since the dawn of time -- its not something new, or something that didn't exist during the Cold War.

<comment><USER4> Let's consider another scenario, the leadership of a country like Iran or North Korea successfully nukes a US aircraft carrier. Would the US respond by nuking a city full of civilians? Maybe... but maybe not.

<comment><USER5> Nuke a city? Perhaps not (although I'd get the fuck out of Tehran or Pongyang quick, just in case). Nuke every military base in the country? Much more likely. But more importantly, we would be able to do just about anything short of a chemical or biological attack, for as long as we wanted, under the guise of "restrained response to a nuclear attack".

<comment><USER6> > Nuke a city? Perhaps not (although I'd get the fuck out of Tehran or > Pongyang quick, just in case). Nuke every military base in the country? Much > more likely.

The latter would probably involve several instances of the former.

<comment><USER5> Which is "collateral damage", not "nuking a city", in the propaganda game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could possibly be useful in practicing approaches with fast-attack craft & wargaming the response. Just speculation, but then again, so is the whole article.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not to-scale. Do you think it would have to be full-sized to be used for this purpose?

<comment><USER8> Maybe they just got bored with making fiberglass "fighter jets".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It appears to have been launched already: [https://email@example.com,55.9728151,1003m/dat...](https://email@example.com,55.9728151,1003m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps it's made of cake...

But seriously, mockup for testing optical image-recognition guided anti-ship missiles, in all weather conditions. Unlike for radar guided missiles, for image recognition systems 'looking like it' is good enough.

Expect the DOD to place an order for 100 inflatable dummy full-scale aircraft carriers.

</comment><comment><USER11> Might be useful in figuring out what the radar signature of such a boat looks like?

<comment><USER12> There've been plenty of Nimitz-class carriers in radar range of Iranian ships and installations for them to know what they look like.

<comment><USER13> The problem with that is that the aspect of a moving subject keeps changing.

For example they might wish to profile the radar signature in various wavelengths and from various angles. Carrier groups aren't co-operative to such study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Drone carrier?

</comment><comment><USER15> Another Google Black Project...</comment>


Google's Awesome New Web Measurement Tool Doesn't Measure Itself - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/google_s_compete_killer_doesn_t_measure_itself_goog_

<comment><USER2> Oh no! Alexa's old web measurement tool doesn't measure itself!

<http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/alexa.com>

Pathetic sensationalism. Google has a new reporting tool. Genuine thanks for reporting that, but the whole linkbait spin to it is just a big turnoff for intelligent readers.

If the author had actually done some work, such as comparing features and ranking agreement between the services, the post might even be considered useful.

To the author: Don't feel too bad, though. You're not alone. You're just one of an army of sales guys who "gives people what they want" to make a buck for yourself. I'm sure these types of posts are gobbled up by digg and reddit audiences.</comment>


New York Times Hacked? NYT Users Were Just Spammed About Home Delivery - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-times-hacked-spam-home-delivery-2011-12

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it at 1:15 PM; message content made me suspicious.

Searched Twitter: people with subscriptions were getting it, but also people who'd never subscribed, and people who'd used throwaway email addresses to subscribe (e.g. email@example.com).

1:49 @NYTimesComm: "A spam message was sent broadly today with the subject 'Important information regarding your subscription.' This email was not sent from The New York Times. If you received it, please delete it."

At 2:02 PM, @NYTimes: "If you received an email today about canceling your NYT subscription, ignore it. It's not from us."

Headers indicate it was sent through Epsilon, the email service provider that was hacked in a widely publicized incident last spring.

The Times' denial that the email was sent from the Times would lead me to believe there was some kind of error (or another breach) at Epsilon.</comment>


My Life with the Physics Dream Team - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/my-life-with-the-physics-dream-team <comment><USER2> When I read HN, I sometimes feel that I must be the only person in the world who really liked my PhD. Doing one was by far the best life choice I have ever made. It not not gave me much practical knowledge that has formed the bedrock of my career, but it deeply enriched my mental life and gave me perspective on so many problems.

I did a very "traditional" English-style PhD in Applied Mathematics. I had a supervisor who helped me pick a topic, and gave me just the right amount of supervision. I was under no pressure to publish, and my scholarship did not require me to teach. I spent my days thinking about problems, being frustrated, experiencing small successes, experiencing small failures, managing my time, mismanaging my time, feeling completely inadequate, and slowly becoming an independent researcher.

Yes, my Doctoral studies were undertaken in an ideal situation, supported as I was by friends, my department, my supervisor, and most of all my family, but I can't believe that I am in such a minority.

<comment><USER3> I had a very similar experience with my PhD (also in applied mathematics), though my advisor basically let me pick my own problem to work on, which turns out to be a very tough thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "'Why? Because the Ph.D. system grinds people down'?

Yes, and it's completely inappropriate for what most people need. It was designed for German academics in the 19th century and it was fine for that. But for any other kind of life, it's totally wrong. It takes far too long. It forces you to pretend to be a researcher when most people don't want to be researchers. It's become a union card and I think it's highly disruptive, particularly bad for women. For women to waste five or 10 years of their lives is more of a disaster than it is for men."

Anyone with relation to PhD programs care to reflect on this?

<comment><USER5> I have a PhD in computer science. I work as a Research Staff Member at IBM Research. I mostly agree.

One of the problems with the PhD system is that individuals have to carve out something that is _theirs_ , they _own_ it. That becomes their dissertation. It doesn't sound terrible said like that, but the most productive work I've ever done was after I graduated and got a job. A small group of people with equal ownership of a problem and solution can be so much more productive. The requirement that a student defend a body of work that is theirs disincentives them from doing, what I think, is the most productive kind of work that leads to the best research outcomes.

You _can_ work in productive groups in grad school, but you still need to find that part of the work that you can claim ownership of. Because if you don't, you won't graduate. This means that inevitably, you're going to have to think in terms of "what do I need to do to get the hell out of here" rather than "what's the best way we can solve this problem."

<comment><USER6> This depends on the program, some are happy to use a set of joint publications as a defacto dissertation. Basically, several smaller chunks are used to represent a larger body of work, which allows for closer collaboration.

<comment><USER7> When I finished my physics Ph.D. in 2005, my advisor showed me his dissertation. It was literally five papers with a cover around it. He graduated in 1985.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was at Rutgers, Dyson once came to give a talk. Most of the time when someone very famous comes and gives a talk, they try and give a talk in the general style of TED talks - light on content, big on catchy insightful seeming phrases.

The entire department showed up to the mathematical physics seminar that week. Everyone besides the math physicists was very disappointed when Dyson gave a talk about some semiconductor crystals he really liked, together with their energy band diagrams. No "meaning of life", no discussion of free will, just a clever math trick for understanding a particular kind of crystal.

It was one of the very few famous guy talks I really enjoyed (the other was Stephen Wolfram).

<comment><USER9> That reminds me of Feynman's story about giving a talk to a HS physics club under a fake name, so that it wouldn't be overwhelmed by people who simply came to see a Nobel laureate, just people interested in physics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "That's why [Feynman] had a hard time communicating"

This is surprising! I always thought old Feynman was a great communicator, but then again, the Feynman he's talking about is a young, determined Feynman, not an old, passive Feynman...

"...we didn't have anything to learn from [Einstein] and he probably felt the same way about us."

Also, a bit surprising.

"Cooper had this idea that superconductivity had something to do with pairs of electrons and Oppenheimer said that was total rubbish."

Just, wow.

"Biology is moving very fast and so the same kind of people who became physicists in those days now tend to become biologists."

"First of all, it helps to be ignorant. The time when I did my best work was when I was most ignorant. Knowing too much is a great handicap."

This article is fucking dope and you should read it. Thanks for posting this, dude.

</comment><comment><USER11> >Do you need to be willing to risk your reputation and pursue crazy ideas? Is that what leads to great breakthroughs?

>>First of all, it helps to be ignorant. The time when I did my best work was when I was most ignorant. Knowing too much is a great handicap. Especially if you've been teaching for some years, things get so fixed in your mind and it's impossible to think outside the box. I was in the lucky position of jumping into physics without ever having taken any courses in physics. I'd only been a pure mathematician up to that point.

>Is the great scientist also naturally subversive?

>>Yes, undoubtedly. You've got to destroy what exists in order to build something new. You need good taste, of course. If you destroy indiscriminately, it doesn't help at all. That's where intuition comes in—what parts of the old building should be taken down.

>Is physics a young person's game? It seems that most great discoveries are made by people under 40 or even under 30.

>>That is true in theoretical physics. Experimenters can keep going much longer and sometimes stay very productive into old age. That's a very different game. For theoretical physics, I suppose you need to be ignorant. After a while, you get so attached to things as they are.

I find this pretty fascinating. I was wondering why people who make something really impressive tend to not repeat that, or they basically only make variations on the original. Be they musician, painter, composer, mathematician, scientist, computer scientist, etc. It's not true for all, but it does seem to describe many successful people. Though, they already made one great feat, so it makes sense for there to just be one.

<comment><USER12> "A genius is someone who has two good ideas"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is just beautiful:

" _First of all, it helps to be ignorant. The time when I did my best work was when I was most ignorant. Knowing too much is a great handicap. Especially if you've been teaching for some years, things get so fixed in your mind and it's impossible to think outside the box._ "

Great article, thanks for posting.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it is so important to separate research and teaching, they are completely and utterly different in approach, skills, personality and philosophy.

A teacher should be primarily reading research in teaching, with research in the domain as a secondary hobby. Spending an hour filling 15 rolling blackboards with chalk squiggles has long outlived its usefulness and effectiveness.

As a rare example of an inspired researcher and pragmatic theorist of teaching for physics, I would name David Hestenes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why are Dyson's views on climate change left out of the transcript? I understand it's not complete and word for word, but it seems like a rather large point, and leaving it out does nothing to dispel Dyson's claim that the media really distorts reporting on the subject of climate change.

</comment><comment><USER15> "First of all, it helps to be ignorant. The time when I did my best work was when I was most ignorant. Knowing too much is a great handicap. Especially if you've been teaching for some years, things get so fixed in your mind and it's impossible to think outside the box."

For me, this is the most important piece in the interview (but what a man! As he himself comments to be so lucid as a 90+ year-old famous scientist is very rare).

A recurrent "if I were a rich man" fantasy of mine is to build a platform where people from very different disciplines would come together and discuss open problems in one discipline, something similar to a TED talk but spending 2-3 weeks on one problem. 99.9% of the ideas generated by the non-experts will be BS, but if the remainder is non-zero, it would be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Dyson's _Disturbing the Universe_ is one of the most interesting memoirs I've read. Startuppy types ought to like the story of General Atomics starting with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA) as a summer project, and that was just one chapter.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's the first time I hear of a physicist saying he rather QM and GR never be reconciled! :)

<comment><USER18> That comes with being a grumpy old man.

My money is on both being replaced by something quite completely different. (much like with old Newtonian physics)</comment></comment>


The Internet Archive's sites are offline - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/web/?maintenance=2015-08-03

<comment><USER2> Has this changed recently? The main site seems up to me right now, 24 minutes later...

OT: Are there official or well-known mirrors of all of archive.org, should the original maintainer ever go down?

Even more OT: clicking around the site to see what was still up/down, I discovered the (blindingly obvious in retrospect) fact that there's an API to check the archived status of a URL...neat!

[https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php](https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php)

<comment><USER3> You might want to check out IA.BAK[1]. It's not a mirror of the site, but more of a crowdsourced off-site backup effort (currently limited to a couple of data sets).

[1]: [http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK](http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK)</comment></comment>


New 'gig' economy spells end to lifetime careers - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ab492ffc-3522-11e5-b05b-b01debd57852.html#axzz3huhhryTS

<comment><USER2> It's behind a paywall. No thank you.

<comment><USER3> Ditto. Could someone please post the article?</comment></comment>


The boy behind the biggest coin-op conversion of the 80s - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-10-13-the-boy-behind-the-biggest-coin-op-conversion-of-the-80s <comment><USER3> If you liked this story, and haven't yet checked out Jordan Mechner's journals from the mid-80's when he developed Prince of Persia, I highly recommend that you do: [https://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/](https://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I go back and read this every once in a while. It's a pretty magical story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once again you see that back then, the porting game programmer had no access to the any of the original assets, art, code or assistance. I was doing the same work back in the late eighties and it was part of the job to master the game you were porting and then reverse engineer everything.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how much the authors of C64/Amiga Bubble Bobble, R-Type, Paperboy, Ghost'n'Goblins, Buggy Boy, Solomon's Key, Pang, Arkanoid, Silkworm played the game? Those were actually good ports.

Do you have a list of the games you worked on?

<comment><USER6> Not sure on the C64 version, but you can read about the ZX Spectrum conversion of R-Type here: [http://bizzley.com/](http://bizzley.com/) which I recommend if you're a fan of the spectrum, R-Type, or curious about ports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't find it now, but there was a very impressive story posted to HN about a kid who reverse engineered and patched an arcade game in the 80's and sent the code in to the company that made the game, and they wound up flying him out to meet its developers. I think the game was Robotron, but it might have been something else.

<comment><USER8> It was Robotron.

Christian Gingras reverse engineered the entire game from scratch _AND_ patched a fatal crash in the game that eluded the original developers for years.

[http://www.robotron2084guidebook.com/technical/christianging...](http://www.robotron2084guidebook.com/technical/christiangingras/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks, that made me smile like an emoticon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > When we got the first royalty check my dad gave me a grand and I part- > exchanged my Mini Cooper for a Ford Fiesta XR2. A few months later I changed > that for a Ford Orion 1.6i Ghia.

This is where i cracked up. I think these models are all European, so American readers won't be familiar with them, but this article is a lovely tour of Shit Fords of the 1980s.

<comment><USER11> The Orion was a bit shit but the Mini Cooper and the XR2 Fiesta were great at the time.

Hah, this brings back memories of buying weed in the 90's off a lad with a purple Orion.

<comment><USER12> In a true sense the Orion 1.6i was shit but not at the time, at the time it was high in the list of cars you'd want at 18 (I was born 80 so I remember lusting after them) particularly since it was the same engine as the XR3i without the utterly cripling insurance/reputation.

I still have a soft spot for that era but I'd have the even more naff (and lethal) Capri.

<comment><USER11> I loved that era of VW Scirocco but they were awful apparently. The Renault 5 GT was THE car to have around my parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd swear blind that game was cursed. Almost every 8-bit conversion (including the C64 version), and some of the 16-bit versions were terrible.

ISTR the Sega Master System version being the most playable.

<comment><USER14> How would it be possible for 8-bit machines to successfully emulate a game that used twin 68000 cpus and custom sprite scaling hardware? these conversions were just a marketing gimmick, targeting the wallets of the poor consumers.

It was amazing back then to me how bad were home computers relative to arcade machines back then. It was also amazing to me that no home computer manufacturer ever had a plan for a serious gaming home computer system that matched (or came close to) the arcades in visual quality.

Who wouldn't try to buy a machine that could play, for example, Outrun, close to the arcade? even if it cost 1000 dollars...

<comment><USER15> > It was amazing back then to me how bad were home computers relative to > arcade machines back then. It was also amazing to me that no home computer > manufacturer ever had a plan for a serious gaming home computer system that > matched (or came close to) the arcades in visual quality.

The Amiga _did_ come close-ish, but despite its custom chips, the lack of a custom sprite scaler and too low memory bandwidth would have likely made it impossible to get all that much closer (it's mainly lacking extra details next to the road). The dual 68k's on Outrun also ran on 12.5Mhz vs. ~8Mhz/7.16Mhz (depending on NTSC vs. PAL) for the Amiga's single M68k.

Outrun on Amiga: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOGxxYm4z5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOGxxYm4z5I)

Outrun on arcade: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7tZFW4WedI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7tZFW4WedI)

> Who wouldn't try to buy a machine that could play, for example, Outrun, > close to the arcade? even if it cost 1000 dollars...

In effect the Amiga was the closest the market would bear - <USER2> struggled on for years, and sold about 5m Amiga's, and the only reason they survived as long as they did was that Commodore were masters at cost-cutting (arguably that also sank them: they cut their R&D budgets to the bone, among many other mistakes). People who went from working at Apple to Commodore at the time have indicated that attempts at Apple to figure out how Commodore was able to sell the Amiga at the price-points they did for example massively over-estimated Commodores manufacturing costs and could not figure out how Commodore were able to squeeze out a margin at all.

As such we can assume the Amiga price, which including a monitor, joysticks etc. around the time of Outrun would easily ended up in the region of 1000 dollars or more, was the high point of what was commercially possible around the thousand dollar mark at the time.

<comment><USER14> Nah, the Amiga's Outrun was a silly Atari ST port. It didn't even come close to what the Amiga could do (e.g. Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge).

> In effect the Amiga was the closest the market would bear

Not at all. Commodore was a very shitty company that has no business plan, was engineer-unfriendly and by 1992 they have managed to alienate all their top engineering talent.

Those very clever engineers (RJ Michael, Jay Miner etc) could have easily designed chips that did sprite scaling and rotation along with blitting.

These people have developed the Amiga custom chips actually in 1982-1983. In 1989, I am sure they would be able to develop something much better.

And it could be a little pricey at first. Even at double the price or a normal Amiga, who wouldn't want to play 100% authentic coin-op conversions?

<comment><USER15> Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge _also_ has exactly the same gap in graphics capability vs arcade Outrun. I thought the same as you and was about to pull it out as a better example, and while it's a clearly better game on the Amiga more graphical detail is isn't really it - put some videos of them side by side.

> Not at all. Commodore was a very shitty company that has no business plan, > was engineer-unfriendly and by 1992 they have managed to alienate all their > top engineering talent.

And yet, those things were in large part because they _spent less_ per unit sold than pretty much _any other company_ at the time. Their R&D was chronically underfunded, they squeezed suppliers, they squeezed distributors. Commodore survived as long as they did because despite being dysfunctional the one are that dysfunction _worked_ was that they were able to produce their hardware at prices most of the competition thought was impossible.

> In 1989, I am sure they would be able to develop something much better.

Outrun came out in 1986.

> Even at double the price or a normal Amiga, who wouldn't want to play 100% > authentic coin-op conversions?

Far fewer than bought Amiga's. It might have done OK, but not well. Others have pointed out the X68000, which did not sell well at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That was an interesting read, as my relationship with my dad was pretty similar at that age. I was coding image handling systems for newspapers (in 80286 assembly) with my dad handling the business side. We had some success - installations in a few newspapers and some banks in Iceland, but not making real money. The parts about the tension and fights sounded almost exactly like my story. Then I left home at 22 and came to grad school to UC Berkeley, all the way across the country, which was one of the best decisions I ever made.

I'm still doing 2D graphics software! It flows more or less directly from the work I did as a teenager.

</comment><comment><USER17> Couldn't read their article because I couldn't even get passed their cookie consent page:

> _You can choose here if you would not like this session tracking to occur._

Does this mean I'm opting in or out? To compound things the options are "yes" and "no" rather than "opt in", "on", "enable" nor any other the other verbs typically used on other sites. Which means I have to navigate their maze of double negatives to understand what I'm electing for.

I _really_ dislike sites that employ this kind of language anti-pattern.</comment>


UI Design Newsletter (by Erik D. Kennedy) - <AUTHOR> http://thebucketlistsociety.us5.list-manage2.com/subscribe?u=5c4f486f1ba5b800b35248e74&id=eb9f8e9d66 <comment><AUTHOR> Erik is the author of the hugely popular '7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI' article [0]. He provides a free newsletter with excellent content. I really enjoy the occasional emails and recommend this newsletter to anyone interested in UI Design or Design in general.

[0] [https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating- gorgeo...](https://medium.com/@erikdkennedy/7-rules-for-creating-gorgeous-ui- part-1-559d4e805cda#.wpjtz91x5)</comment>


Apple's Earnings Fall Below Street Expectations - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/18/apple-q4-2011-earnings/

<comment><USER2> This is not a story about Apple Computer, this is a story about analysts who mis-predicted something. Apple had predicted revenue of $25 billion, and they actually had revenue of $28.27 billion, their second best quarter ever.

So why did this fall below the expectations of the analysts? The article gives one clue:

"Well, even though Apple's own guidance for the quarter was $25 billion in revenue, analysts seem to have wised up to Apple's always-low estimates and were projecting numbers far higher: they were looking for around $29.5 billion. Apple came in at $28.27 billion."

The analysts assumed that Apple would do so insanely well that the only way to accurately predict how well they would do was to wildly overestimate. Turns out, they _did_ overestimate.

Here are a few alternate headlines that could be applied equally well to this story:

"The iPhone 4S launch gives Apple second best quarter ever"

or

"Apple exceeds their expected revenue by $3.27 billion dollars"

I'd rather read about _what actually happened and why_ , then to read about how somebody misestimated what was going to happen.

<comment><USER3> Actually, from the sound of it, the iPhone 4S launch is not even in that quarter.

<comment><USER2> Wow, thanks for pointing that out. That completely invalidates one of invalidates one of the alternate headlines.

My reading-comprehension-fu must be weak right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "So why the miss? Well for one thing, Apple's iPhone sales dipped over 3 million compared to last quarter. This is undoubtedly because the world was awaiting the next version, the iPhone 4S, which launched last week."

Exactly, indeed they sold 4M just in a weekend.

<comment><USER5> And these sales were not reported in the aforementioned quarter. I think this sell-off is extremely stupid and short-sighted. Q1 will be huge for Apple, especially with holiday sales.

<comment><USER6> "I think this sell-off is extremely stupid and short-sighted."

Taken at face value I think the whole thing is stupid too and I say that as someone who dislikes Apple and refuses to buy their products personally.

However, whether or not this situation is really stupid and short-sighted depends upon who you're talking about, the guys starting it off (evil, not stupid) or the herd who follows them (stupid).

The basic idea is this:

1) Initiate Apple sell-off (via analyst number games and maybe even selling off a small percentage of your own large holdings)

2) Wait for the herd to follow you, driving the price down significantly. Buy back during the dip.

3) Profit (as price goes back up to reality)!

I've heard from many different people in the finance sector that Apple stock is the go-to stock for large player manipulation these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Impressive that iPhone sales, despite dipping vs. the previous quarter, were actually up 21% year-over-year. The year-ago quarter was the iPhone 4's launch quarter. If I'm remembering correctly, the iPhone 4 was supply-constrained around launch but could be found in stores somewhat easily by the end of August 2010.

Undoubtedly the presence of the Verizon iPhone accounts for most of this difference, but it's still very impressive that the iPhone 4 had many more sales in its last quarter (as the flagship phone) than its launch quarter.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Apple's own guidance for the quarter was $25 billion in revenue" - So they didn't miss their own goal.

<comment><USER9> Apple's guidance has historically been laughably low.

<comment><USER10> so a quarterly revenue of $25 billion is "laughably" low?

<comment><USER11> No - it's saying Apple routinely lies about it's expected earnings so that every quarter there is a headline saying "Apple earnings beat expectations"

So the street takes Apple's figures and add 20% because they know Apple always understates by 20%, so on those figures Apple didn't do as well as they should have.

The problem is that you don't know if Apple really expected $30Bn and under- performed or really expected $25Bn and over-performed.

Apple is a public company with shareholders and has a legal(and moral) duty to actually produce honest figures. Ultimately massaging them down is just as bad for investors as talking them up.

<comment><USER9> No there's a huge difference between lying and what Apple does. Apple produces extremely conservative figures that take into account all sorts of negative things that can impact the quarter like some Foxconn factory blows up or gets shut down.

<comment><USER11> If your estimates are always 20% under what you achieve every quarter then you are either deliberately underestimating or your CFO is an idiot.

If you are deliberately underestimating to be conservative - so if there is an earthquake in Japan you can still make the expectation, or you do it to produce a headline, it's equally bad for your shareholders.

Otherwise why not produce figures saying we might sell nothing next quarter -if an asteroid wipes out all life on earth.

Of course it's still a nice position to be in compared to a company lies about making a profit next quarter hoping for a miracle!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OK, someone explain this to me because I've never understood:

1) Company says it's going to make $1.00/share

2) "Analysts" says it's going to make $1.10/share

3) Company actually makes $1.05/share

4) OMG sell the stock!!1! it missed some arbitrary number!1

I'm a libertarian, but crap like this really irks me.

<comment><USER13> Why does this irk you? It's a (mostly) free market and people do as they please. The stock price follows that naturally.

Before the earning, the stock is priced in at the value from 2). After the earning, the stock drops down to the price that's valued with the actual earning numbers, which is lower than 2). This should not be a huge surprise to anyone.

The apple case here is only slightly exceptional in that Apple is known for giving very conservative guidances, which is why the analyst's estimates are almost always higher than the guidance. In the past quarters, even that number was exceeded. It's just not the case here and the stock drops accordingly.

I do think there is likely potential for future growth given the extremely high guidance given for Q1, which knowning Apple, is still conservative.

disclosure: i'm long aapl

<comment><USER14> Because it feels like irresponsible reporting.

Fine for the Wall Street Journal, I guess, since those readers know what it means.

I guess I should be happy if this is comparable to the "Apple is doomed!" stories that used to be in vogue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Time to buy Apple shares if you have any money to invest...

</comment><comment><USER15> > _"This is undoubtedly because the world was awaiting the next version, the > iPhone 4S, which launched last week."_

Apple announced their upcoming announcement on September 21.

The quarter ended September 24.

Soft sales for the quarter were almost certainly due to strong competition and a more commoditized market for smart phones.

The spike in 4S orders may be due to the T-mobile roll out and the fact that T-mobile has offered its subscribers no contract plans at a discount when the subscriber purchases their own handset.

I suspect the 4S is having the effect of converting many of those accounts to two year contracts and a meaningful fraction of 4S orders are a side effect of those conversions.

<comment><USER11> But people have been expecting an iPhone 5 all summer so they may have put off buying an iPhone 4 even before the official 4s launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the market is efficient, then companies should fall below expectations exactly 50% of the time.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the most interesting thing is the number of iPads (11 mil up 20% from previous quarter).

Apple will need exactly 15 million in the holiday quarter to hit their 40 million goal for 2011.

I really didn't think they would make it after their ipad 2 supply problems in the Jan-Mar quarter where they only sold 4.69 mil but it looks like they may pull it out. Maybe someone's bonus is on the line if they don't ship 40 million :)

</comment><comment><USER17> The thing I noted was their guidance for next quarter which is $37 billion. That is a helluva lot of iPhones.

</comment><comment><USER18> "25 billion iOS devices sold last quarter."

What?

</comment><comment><USER10> For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $28.27 billion and net quarterly profit of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share, _compared to revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

Apple's yearly profit and revenue were company records with Apple reporting more than $100 billion in yearly revenue for the first time ever._

Typical BS. These are the same clueless analysts who predicted iPhone 4S sales were going to be a disaster.

This is a blockbuster quarter for Apple. They earned $8 Billion more than the year-ago quarter.

<comment><USER10> This too.

 _Apple profits jump 54% on record sales_

Only idiot Wall street analysts would be disappointed by a 54% jump in profit.

<comment><USER19> If you expected a 64% jump in profits and bought the stock at a premium on the basis of that then you actually do have a right to be disappointed.

<comment><USER20> Apple isn't selling at a premium though. It has a pe of < 12 when you take out the cash. I agree that things go down when expectations aren't met, the thing is the expectations don't make any sense at all.

Apple is the only company in the world that could grow 54%, have a pe of 12, and still go down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Apple may be one of the only companies that can get away with this without being punished in stock price.

<comment><USER22> Down 23 points at the moment in after hours trading. <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=aapl></comment></comment>


Why everything you think about User Centred Design is wrong - <AUTHOR> http://000fff.org/getting-to-the-customer-why-everything-you-think-about-user-centred-design-is-wrong/

<comment><USER3> Some of the points in this article are correct (e.g. UCD isn't applicable to every single design decision), but the main thesis depends on a couple of false assumptions.

He asks, " _Which of the following ways would you think gave you the most valuable feedback?_ " He submits that almost everyone would agree the real hammer will provide more valuable feedback than the paper or foam ones. This part is true. The next statement is false. He states that UCD practitioners would have chosen differently had the product been a web site instead of a hammer. They would have chosen the paper prototype, he says. That's just not true. UCD advocates the use of paper prototypes, not because they provide more valuable feedback, but because they are much easier to build. This means that you can test more of them in a shorter period of time. That's a _very_ important distinction.

His graph of the UCD process essentially depicts it as a waterfall process, where there are several design steps with big Implement and Deploy steps at the end. That's also usually far from the truth. UCD is very iterative and, if done correctly, involves launching early and using data from real-world usage at each iteration.

It's easy to criticize something if you fabricate its weaknesses. The title of this post is pretty ironic.

</comment><comment><USER4> I expected a thought-provoking read, but instead I get the impression that the author doesn't really understand prototyping, or the design process in general. Maybe the end has some brilliant revelation that makes it all worthwhile - I wouldn't know because I stopped reading about a third of the way through.

A couple specific gripes:

* That hammer analogy is just awful. A paper representation of a hammer loses all functionality of a hammer. A paper representation of a website loses very little. Also, which would be worse - to draw a hammer for someone and have them say "why does the claw not have a space in the middle for a nail?" or to have them say that after you've spent a month creating your prototype?

* "According to studies by J.Nielsen, users don't scroll... None-the-less, users scroll more than ever..." ...and so clearly Nielsen doesn't know anything. Except he has long since stated that his original scrolling findings are not nearly as true any more. Times changed and users started scrolling. Anyone repeating that trope is just out of date. Anyone like, say, this post.

</comment><comment><USER5> The author presents a strawman version of UCD and then tears it down but there is one important point in the article: UCD really hasn't fully come to grips with the new era of web applications.

Everything taught in schools about UCD leads up to the final prototyping stage but there's very little discussion about how UCD applies after a product is launched. A large part of this has to do with much of UCD research and literature being driven by academia.

There's a whole host of amazing UCD stuff you can do with a live web app: A/B testing, polling, behavior tracking, logging etc. However, academics typically don't have access to applications being used by real users & companies are focused more on being effective than documenting their practices so there's a disconnect.

Some of the most interesting research coming out of UCD right now comes from PhD students in HCI doing summer internships at places like facebook, Google & Yahoo. They have access to interesting sources of data yet are concerned more for scientific validity than effectiveness so they're asking different questions about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where is the strawman? The wikipedia version? Or the way I say it's applied?

The very thing that you point out as being relevant is my point exactly. That UCD should test on customers not users in a real environment.

I am not against any of the mentioned A/B testing, polling, behavior tracking, logging etc. those are the very things I would wish more would do.

The problem is that I am of course stepping on a lot of peoples toes that do exactly what I am after. And there are more than you would think. That is least what my 14 years of working with hundreds of clients have shown me.

<comment><USER6> I found the initial example to be invalid, especially having worked in "physical" industries (auto parts manufacturing, to be precise). The four choices are presented as if they are mutually exclusive - they are not - <USER2> are in fact quite often _used together_.

Options 1 through 3 are incredibly useful for early prototyping in order to whittle down a large set of potential solutions. Certainly every design process I've ever been a part of has also gone through option 4. To present these choices as if people are blindly walking down paths 1-3 and only them, is IMHO the straw man.

tl;dr version: The article brings up the classic "look what dumb people are doing!" example, but yet I don't see people doing these dumb things that are supposedly being done.

<comment><AUTHOR> So let me see if I understand.

You are taking in users and have them look at drawings of your products?

I am not saying you shouldn't do 1-3 I am saying you shouldn't test 1-3 on users. You should test 4

<comment><USER7> So basically you think hammer manufacturers should do all the design and testing in the dark, then finalise drawings, design and produce production processes and machinery and tool up a factory, forge hammers ... and then show them to the buyer for the first time.

Buyer: "we wanted ball-pein hammers not claw hammers perhaps you could show us a product drawing next time"

<comment><AUTHOR> You are confusing what kind of product the customers want with testing a product you have decided to try and make.

In so far as producing the first hammer yes they should do it in dark. That have nothing to do with whether they should research if there is even market for it. But it is not done by asking the users to look at a paper prototype of the hammer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I agree with lots of what's being said in this, the initial analogy really leaves something to be desired. Obviously, the concept for the very first hammer went through a design process as what's been charted out in the blog. Man needs to pound one thing into another to hold it in place. Man tries rock. Man asks around to see what might work better. Etc. The process just didn't linger at the initial steps as long as the final step because the physical application of the tool is such an important thing to demonstrate.

In digital, where much of the initial design surrounds process and more abstract concepts, we can hang out around the early steps longer and to greater effect.</comment>


Free 7-Day Remote Job Course - <AUTHOR> http://remotejobcourse.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN crew - I hate giving my email away unless I'm confident the thing I'm giving it to is worth it. So if you want to look at all of the course material, I made it available here: [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6BahD3pAp2ySURBSGlDZFFPRW...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6BahD3pAp2ySURBSGlDZFFPRWc).

This course is based on the approach I used to land 3 remote jobs in my career as a marketer. I structured it though so anyone who can work from their computer can implement it - from accountants to developers.</comment>


Is It Finally the Year of the Linux Desktop? - <AUTHOR> https://m.slashdot.org/story/355678 <comment><USER2> It's the year of Linux desktop the same way there is 10 billion devices on the internet running Linux, because Android and IoT.

Doesn't really matter for Linux people, non-Linux people won't care. Hell, there is an argument to be made, that it is typical MS "embrace, extend and extinguish", so net negative.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope! Linux desktop is still a PITA. Even Ubuntu won't start fully out of the box due to an Nvidia driver error on my machine. My partner's machine is still unable to even boot to tty1 because of some odd microcode error.

I love Linux to death, but I'm not afraid of the terminal and building from source. I can't imagine my parents or most of my friends really enjoying this sort of stuff. Just too frustrating if you don't live in the ecosystem day to day.

<comment><USER4> Nvidia's Linux support is bad, not the other way around.

<comment><USER5> Maybe NVIDIA's Linux driver support wouldn't be so bad if Linux actually made a modicum of effort to accommodate vendor-supplied drivers... you know, things like a stable driver API, documenting what's expected of driver writers, tooling to support and ease the development of new drivers, and isolation so that a bad driver doesn't screw the whole kernel.

You know, like Windows has.

Microsoft may be all cuddly to Linux these days, but when Dave Cutler needs a laugh he still pops open a beer and reads the Linux source.

<comment><USER6> who is this dave cutler lady you speak of?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
      is_it_the_yotld () {
          echo "No. $(($(date +%Y)+1)) is the year of the Linux desktop."
      }

<comment><USER8> Huehuehue

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> No more, no less, than it's the the Year of Mercedes on the Highway.

While I am happily tootling along in my Mercedes, I don't mind in the least if you insist on driving a Ford. Likewise, if you insist on running Windows 10 it doesn't affect my running Linux On My Desktop at all.</comment>


Ask HN: You're running a shared photoalbum startup, how will you battle Facebook - <AUTHOR>

So Facebook announced shared photoalbums and already is rolling it out. Several media outlets have written pretty horrific scenarios about the future of shared photo album startups like Albumatic. If you were leading one of these startups, how would you battle Facebook? What would you're first move be? <comment><USER2> We at PastBook.com were working on a project to make easier to create books in a collaborative way - allowing people from different places and devices to put photos (but not just photos) together, to create stories and keep those memories save forever, even printing them in a book.

We saw this behavior raising up especially around gifting like "put together some crazy photo for the birthday of a common friend" or "having all the photos of a wedding from the different points of view of the guests" or "collecting the photos from a company party or an event".

Main problem in doing this was that still a lot of users are not sharing all their photos on Facebook or they simply prefer to share them somewhere else.

That's why we started working to extend this feature to allow people to simply put photos together independently from where those photos are posted/shared/saved. Then up-sell premium services like, for instance, printing.

We were not ready to launch, but I put together a landing page on unbounce ([http://hello.pastbook.com/shared-albums-for- everybody/](http://hello.pastbook.com/shared-albums-for-everybody/)) to receive feedbacks and beta users, just posted on hackernews few minutes ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283051)).

It's built from developers with developer in mind: we'll allow every other photo-app to use our API to push/get content from these shared albums and provide books (PDF/PRINTED) on demand, as potential revenue stream for a lot of startups in the photography business looking for monetization channels.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My first move would be to work towards a niche. Smaller but more loyal user base. I've only used Albumatic myself and loved to use it with a couple of nights out with my friends. I'd still consider setting up an Albumatic album instead of Facebook because the standalone app was a great experience.

Second would be to focus on other social networks rather than Facebook, probably Social Networks in Asia and other parts in the world.

<comment><USER3> Did you just reply to your own question?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, coining my own opinion. Should have done that in opening post?

<comment><USER3> I think it would have been more reasonable. I was baffled for a moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would do a mobile app that focused on privacy and photo rights. Kind of similar to apple's photo stream, but something that works on android too.

If you can include some sort of messaging functionality (like whatsapp) that would be good. The integration of photos and messages would need to be elegant though.

Mobile is facebook's Achilles heel.

It's a really hard space to break into. The odds are against you.

</comment><comment><USER5> First, I would focus on privacy. Second, on specific photo tools that Facebook isn't going to offer. Make sure that people can easily sign up during a party or an event at which a group of people is taking pictures and want to share them (afterwards). Make 'joining' an album free and let the 'album owner' pay.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you haven't reached traction already then you might as well pivot. FB has a huge advantage hete</comment>


Worst- and Best-Case Scenarios for Warming Less Likely, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worst-and-best-case-scenarios-for-warming-less-likely-groundbreaking-study-finds/ <comment><USER2> For those looking for the changes: >The metric has existed for decades now. In 1979, a groundbreaking report led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Jule Charney—dubbed the "Charney Report"—suggested the planet's climate sensitivity probably fell within a range of 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2.

>The new study narrows the range at both ends, particularly the lower end. It finds there's a 66% chance that the sensitivity range falls between 2.6 and 3.9 C of warming (4.9 to 7 F).

Also the article mentions analyzing how the Earth reacts to change being a big reason for the update, particularly clouds:

>Perhaps most importantly, the new study investigates multiple lines of evidence when it comes to climate sensitivity. It uses global climate models, which simulate large-scale processes across the whole world. It also uses detailed, process-based models, which can simulate fine-scale events related to the formation of clouds.

>The new report devotes a large chunk of its analysis exclusively to clouds. It examines the growing body of science on how different types of clouds respond to climate change, and how changes in these clouds may affect future climate change.

Not only with clouds but feedback loops in general are the most interesting aspect of these predictions for me. I'm sure it's insanely difficult to calculate all factors, but I wonder how all-encompassing these models tend to be. The article mentions this being a type of meta analysis, but for a single study looking at clouds, for example, is the lowering of Earth's albedo due to melting ice typically something they would take into account when studying cloud predictions or not?</comment>


Ask HN: Can a company NOT pay out my stock options upon termination? - <AUTHOR> I was recently terminated and my company is saying that can't pay out my stock options until July (90+ days after termination). However, I can only exercise these options for 90 days after termination. How can I handle this situation? <comment><USER2> I did exactly what you're describing when leaving a privately-held company that was about to have the final 21% ownership acquired. You have to have enough cash-on-hand (and be willing to risk losing it) to purchase the options in your 90-day window. Once converted from options to stock, you have to hold it until the company can buy them back from you. The advice to consult a lawyer is relevant as I'm sure the contract language has several paragraphs related to this transaction.

</comment><comment><USER3> get a lawyer who knows about stuff like this, and have them read the stock options agreement you signed with the company.

<comment><AUTHOR> My separation agreement clearly states the company will buy back all stock options. My Stock option agreement says I have 90 days to exercise.

Also, I can't afford a lawyer, I'm unexpectedly unemployed.

<comment><USER4> If you can't afford a lawyer then your only choice may be to wait. You can always get a free consultation and see what they say. Anything your old work tells you get in writing. If it's, they'll pay out in July, get it in writing.

Even if you had a lawyer you're liking looking at beyond July to get anything back if they want to delay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does emails count as "in writing" \- I have emails from the CEO that I will be paid out in July (after being told I'd be paid out in April) but nothing is signed, etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Reduce hand movement and mouse clicks with universal tooltip on Mac OS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tanin47/tip <comment><USER2> Very cool idea! I also like that the provider script was written in Ruby, makes it easy to start hacking on it.

I converted it to Crystal for a bit more speed and safety, you can find it here if you're interested: [https://git.io/JvnCm](https://git.io/JvnCm)

      Ruby execution time: 0.09 real         0.07 user         0.02 sys

      Crystal execution time: 0.00 real         0.00 user         0.00 sys

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

I've been using this app for a long time. It makes me way more productive.

If you use it, I would like to learn about your use cases. Please do share.

and, wow, even for a simple code, Crystal is _this_ faster than Ruby.

<comment><USER2> Most of my use cases include converting values between currencies or measuring units. I mostly use Numi for that but having a simple tooltip is so much better.

I also plan to use it for information that I can't memorize easily. Like a mapping between GPIO pins for microcontrollers, I never remember what pin does what. With this I can simply create a hashmap with something like GPIO23 as the key, and info about that pin as the value and have that always at my fingertips.

Or things like displaying Google Maps urls for words that look like places, mail app urls for email addresses, Spotify search URI for artists etc. It's a very useful and powerful tool if you can come up with ideas for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect. Yes, this tooltip is built to save a few clicks for this kind of workflow.

If you have feedback or suggestion, please don't hesitate to reach out in github or here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Super-optimizing intermediate language for functional languages - <AUTHOR> http://hackage.haskell.org/package/morte-1.7.1/docs/Morte-Tutorial.html <comment><AUTHOR> From the tutorial's conclusion:

> The primary purpose of Morte is a proof-of-concept that a non-recursive > calculus of constructions is the ideal system for the super-optimization of > functional programs. Morte uses a simple, yet powerful, optimization scheme > that consists entirely of normalizing terms using the ordinary reduction > rules of lambda calculus. Morte emphasizes pushing optimization complexity > out of the virtual machine and into the translation of abstractions to the > calculus of constructions.</comment>


Disruptive technology: Dead companies do tell tales - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com/article/2850122/innovation/disruptive-technology-dead-companies-do-tell-tales.html

<comment><USER2> "Xerox which many will remember invented but did not successfully capitalize on the mouse, the laser printer and the graphical user interface"

This suggests to me that author doesn't really care about historical accuracy.

Engelbart's team at SRI invented the mouse. No one doubts that.

Xerox invented the laser printer, and 'Gary Starkweather's laser printer made billions for Xerox' (quoting Malcolm Gladwell's article "Creation Myth" in the New Yorker), or from [http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/timelines/xeroxparchis...](http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/timelines/xeroxparchist.html) , in 1986 "Xerox's printing business, made possible by PARC's invention of laser xerography, reaches $1 billion per year."

Hardly unsuccessful! Granted, it could have done better, and it missed the transition to desktop laser printers, but that's a different point. Unfortunately, it seems that people conflate the two. I think it's because they didn't know these big photocopier machines used lasers, while personal computers started with cheaper printer technology.

"Inventing" the GUI is a toss-up, depending on if you think NLS from Engelbart's group, or Sutherland's Sketchpad was a GUI. I would like a more precise "desktop metaphor GUI", and yes, that was not successfully capitalized at Xerox.</comment>