Why We Shut Down Charm on the Eve of Public Launch, at $48k/Year and Growing - <AUTHOR> http://unicornfree.com/2013/why-we-shut-down-charm-on-the-eve-of-public-launch-at-48kyear-and-growing <comment><USER2> The "don't do it if it's going to make you miserable" stance is a nice switch from the usual "startups are suffering so go read some Marcus Aurelius" attitude we get around here.

<comment><USER3> As somebody who's read Marcus Aurelius, I feel like if you read it, it ought to make you realize how pointless pointless suffering is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am not sure if I buy the "it's nobody's fault" explanation. From what I gather, what they built simply did not work, even though it was clearly feasible. They had a failure of engineering and could not afford to rebuild the entire app. I know nothing about the specifics of the architecture, but I do know first-hand that if using Rails as the basis of an efficient and high- capacity SaaS backend, it is the wrong decision.

<comment><USER3> I was going to write a sarcastic reply saying "Whoops! Better tell all [major companies using Rails] that they made the wrong decision" but honestly, is it worth my breath? Haha.

<comment><USER5> Funny, but I disagree. Rails scales, if you know how... We serve millions of customers each month and have implemented a reliable and stable architecture.

<comment><USER4> Anything scales if you know how, but why choose to use a buggy, bloated mess if you don't have to?

<comment><USER6> What would you recommend?

<comment><USER4> Great question. In my career so far I have deployed Web apps in ASP Classic, PHP, ASP.NET and Ruby on Rails. It appears that RoR can only handle a small fraction of activity compared to the other technologies before maxing out system resources. There are some lighter weight Ruby frameworks out there (Rack, Sinatra) that are probably more appropriate for large-scale back ends. Still, I have not worked with any Web technology that is performant enough to confidently endorse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be a terrible shame if you tanked a viable business because of availability concerns, because these sorts of problems are well solved. Highly available systems are designed in such a way that any individual component may fail without bringing the overall system down. (ie. "Kernel issues? Detect, remotely reboot server." Yes! There's free code for that. No. Many run of the mill sysadmins probably aren't familiar with it.)

<comment><USER3> Asked with all sincerity… did you read my article?

"A kernel issue" was not "the problem." There was no "the problem". There were a slew of problems of which that was merely the icing on the nasty problem cake.

And considering how many times I lauded our sys admin as an expert and top talent, not sure why you would think he was "run of the mill." Nope, we hired somebody who had one of the best possible track records in the RoR world. We had a redundant architecture from day 1. My demand was that we have a system ready to work at scale so we wouldn't be growing and 8 or 9 months in, have to migrate servers, complete with customers. Not my cup of tea. Unfortunately, that caution didn't help (and maybe it hurt).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not sell the web app? Surely some developer would be happy to keep it running and live off it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, y'all. Amy here. If you've got a real question, I'd be glad to answer it.

EDIT: As of 4pm eastern I'm off to meet my interior designer and then attend a joinery demo at a wood shop so it may be a bit but I will absolutely read & respond to your questions later or tomorrow. My goal is to share. And maybe mock people a little, if they can't think up an original insult when they attack me.

<comment><USER9> No questions, but hopefully the naysayers and trolls won't bother you this time around. I've certainly got to the point where I DGAF about other peoples opinions - at least people on the internet. Heck, I prefer Java for developing applications, but around here a large number of people would consider me an idiot for just thinking about Java, let alone actually using it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the sentiment. They may show up, but they never bother me!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pure flame-bait for HN readers, sysadmins, developers, founders. Not worth reading.

<comment><USER3> Totally. Nobody on HN likes to read post-mortems or understand what goes wrong on a large, revenue-generating product, or in partnerships, or growth. Or hear opinions from somebody who's bootstrapped a biz to $750,000/yr gross. Nope. Definitely not of interest.</comment></comment>


MasterWiki: Stolen from MasterClass, Republished as WikiHow - <AUTHOR> https://masterwiki.how/ <comment><USER2> Jeebus! --people actually used to pay $180 to access that crap?</comment>


NixOS 16.03 Released - <AUTHOR> http://nixos.org/releases/nixos/16.03-small/nixos-16.03.488.ecf6ca4/manual/release-notes.html#sec-release-16.03 <comment><AUTHOR> I was reading more about it and found 2 Erlang Factory videos where authors talk about deploying and using NixOS in production:

Susan Potter - "From Zero To Production" : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vVZzu6HMaQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vVZzu6HMaQ)

Eric Merritt -"Managing And Releasing Erlang Systems In The Cloud With A Fully Declarative Package Manager" : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRSFJH3Lw6I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRSFJH3Lw6I)

</comment><comment><USER2> I really like the concepts brought by Nix. Guix is also a nice derivative, which uses Scheme as a DSL to describe packages and its own Scheme-implemented init system.

Explicit package definitions bring 2 great advantages. First, one can easily modify them programatically (to e.g. enable or disable options) and build the resulting custom package from source. Like Gentoo on steroids. Second, one can build packages from source and compare them bitwise with binaries offered by mirrors. This is incredibly important to avoid malicious attacks. See guix challenge command.

I dislike a bit that some Nix packages are very non-minimal, built with every possible optional dependency baked in. I consider this a security threat. Not so long ago, Firefox came with Flash by default. Getting seemingly innocent CLI packages like Mutt ended up pulling a lot of stuff like Python I don't need via GPG. I would love to have something more minimal, like what Arch gives.

<comment><USER3> We agree that package configuration isn't very discoverable — for users or our tools. Once we fix that it could be possible to add a blanket config to default to a minimal cfg instead.

I'd guess the default configurations tend to err on the side of completeness to get the most bang for buck from the cached builds.

<comment><USER2> Yep. My litmus test here would be, can I set up a whole minimal desktop (xmonad, emacs, firefox, mutt, git, rsync, openssh, gnupg...) without pulling any extraneous dependencies? This is possible on most major Linux distributions, but not in NixOS.

Otherwise a fantastic piece of work. I wish it plenty of success. It's full of simple and great ideas.

<comment><USER3> Well, with enough manual tweaking it ought to be.

You may also be interested in [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/7701](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/7701) which cuts down in unintentional dependencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using nixpkgs for almost a year on an age-old linux distro controlled by my company. It replaced gentoo-prefix, which was error prone and hated RH based distros.

Nixpkgs works really well and the separated environment makes maintenance easier to control. It occasionally breaks upgrade of some packages, but it never affects the working environment.

It seems with 16.03 they are bold enough to go gcc 5.3. It would be interesting to test out my toolchains against the gcc 5 series, but I still don't see gcc 5 being the default on the Nixpkgs. I guess I'll wait a bit longer to waste my time on gcc 5.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does NixOS have a good security update story yet? Last time I looked, security updates in widely-used libraries like glibc could get bogged down in huge rebuilds because of the way dependencies are specified/resolved. There was some kind of hack to bypass this, but I think it required manual config changes for each update. The wiki seems to have evaporated, so I'm not sure what's current.

<comment><USER6> This looks relevant: [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/10851](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/10851)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Whenever I look seriously at Nix/NixOS, I also find myself looking at Guix.

What makes them different / how can I choose between them? (or should I consider using them both? where is each better?)

<comment><USER8> Guix uses Guile instead of the nix expression language for defining packages.

Honestly, I don't understand that choice. The main issue with nix is that is a lazy functional language and the learning curve for that is a barrier to adoption. But... scheme is not a solution to that problem. It looks to me like GuixSD the successor to the Hurd as the favoured GNU OS. It's the official GNU distribution of Linux and it's choices are more political/ideological than practical.

So you're excited to use an OS that's FSF-endorsed from top to bottom, choose Guix. If you're more interested in realizing the benefits of functional package management, choose Nix. So, if you're more interested in functional package management

<comment><USER9> From what I understand they will make a DSL when the time comes and they have realised what they need. Scheme is a really nice language, and the barrier should be almost non-existant if you know how to balance parens.

<comment><USER10> A DSL already exists. It's just embedded in Scheme, not an external DSL. Here's a package definition. You can see that it mixes regular Scheme (`string-append`) with new package-specific syntax (`version`, `source`, etc).

      (define-public babl
        (package
          (name "babl")
          (version "0.1.10")
          (source (origin
                    (method url-fetch)
                    (uri (list (string-append "http://ftp.gtk.org/pub/babl/0.1/babl-"
                                              version ".tar.bz2")
                               (string-append "ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/babl/0.1/babl-"
                                              version ".tar.bz2")))
                    (sha256
                     (base32
                      "1x2mb7zfbvk9d0a7h5cpdff9hhjsadxvqml2jay2bpf7x9nc6gwl"))))
          (build-system gnu-build-system)
          (home-page "http://gegl.org/babl/")
          (synopsis "Image pixel format conversion library")
          (description
           "Babl is a dynamic, any to any, pixel format translation library.
      It allows converting between different methods of storing pixels known as
      pixel formats that have with different bitdepths and other data
      representations, color models and component permutations.

      A vocabulary to formulate new pixel formats from existing primitives is
      provided as well as the framework to add new color models and data types.")
          (license license:lgpl3+)))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to like Nix but I wasn't able to solve myself a simple issue (IMHO the docs aren't very good) and couldn't find help either ( [https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/4attyh/a_newbie_ques...](https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/4attyh/a_newbie_question_configure_nix_to_recompile_gcc/) ) so..

<comment><USER12> The subreddit is pretty quiet. Did you try asking on #nixos? People are pretty helpful there.

<comment><USER11> I tried once, but didn't get any reply (I really dislike IRC, it's like trying to be heard in a crowd) I'll try again..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had issues with previous versions due to pre 4 kernel drivers. I'm tempted to try it again.</comment>


"ConEmu does a good job at handling our API and console infrastructure BS." - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/111#issuecomment-238302654 <comment><AUTHOR> This was posted as a HN comment but worth pointing out for anyone who uses Windows command line (and likely ConEmu as it seems to be the main console app for developers these days).

Quote from Michael J. Niksa, who works on Windows Console Host and Subsystem at Microsoft:

> I know the underlying console infrastructure on Windows is problematic. I > know that other terminal emulators out there are better than what we've > achieved for the Windows Console Host. I know that ConEmu's Maximus in > particular has done an unbelievably good job at dealing with the BS that our > API and console infrastructure is. I am trying my hardest to come up with a > comprehensive solution that can make all of you happy, continues to advance > the inbox Windows Console Host, allows other terminals to be very viable > alternatives, and keeps my corporate overlords happy.

> My team and I have a lot more in store for the console in the coming year. > Please bear with us as we work. We look forward to pleasantly surprising you > (hopefully!) as much next year with what we still have to deliver as we did > this year with what we achieved in releasing Bash on Ubuntu on Windows.</comment>


E.L.I.Z.A. Talking - <AUTHOR> https://www.masswerk.at/eliza/ <comment><AUTHOR> More details in the Google+ post [1] by its creator

[1] [https://plus.google.com/+NorbertLandsteiner1/posts/Ln3iZzqXa...](https://plus.google.com/+NorbertLandsteiner1/posts/Ln3iZzqXaGz)</comment>


Online journalism can't survive without a wealthy benefactor or cat GIFs - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/2013/09/22/the-unfortunate-fact-is-that-online-journalism-cant-survive-without-a-wealthy-benefactor-or-cat-gifs/

<comment><USER2> People always look down at cat GIFs but they tend to forget that silly things like comic strips really helped power newspapers in the early days. In fact there were even early publications like Puck which were famous for their cartoons which were the memes of their era. Journalism is about storytelling at the end of the day, and if you tell stories that people are interested in you'll find an audience that may be willing to pay for that.</comment>


Real World Cryptography Workshop - <AUTHOR> http://crypto.stanford.edu/RealWorldCrypto/program.php

<comment><USER2> This looks really excellent. I'd want to bookmark Rogaway's authenticated encryption talk, the Royal Holloway TLS record protocol talk, and whatever Trevor Perrin is talking about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome. After doing Dr Boneh's coursera course earlier in the year, which ought to be compulsory for crypto implementing devs, this looks interesting. Now can I justify a trip to california in january... Hmmm.

</comment><comment><USER4> Last years schedule AND videos for most of the talks:

<http://www.newton.ac.uk/programmes/SAS/sasw07p.html></comment>


X86 instruction encoding and the hacks we do in the kernel [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/bpetkov-x86-hacks.pdf

<comment><USER2> The reference to the octal format (2-3-3) of the instructions is to this document:

[http://reocities.com/SiliconValley/heights/7052/opcode.txt](http://reocities.com/SiliconValley/heights/7052/opcode.txt)

If you're at all interested in the x86 architecture, it's highly recommended reading.

(This used to be one of the first search results for "x86 octal instructions". Now it's nowhere in the first 10 _pages_ of results and searching for its link directly doesn't even cause it to appear. What happened, Google...?)

<comment><USER3> Not enough adsense on the page. But more seriously the fact that it is a usenet post copied to reocities with probably zero inbound links hurts its ranking.

<comment><USER4> > Not enough adsense on the page. But more seriously the fact that it is a > usenet post copied to reocities with probably zero inbound links hurts its > ranking.

Also not helping: Reocities is a website hosting the Geocities dump Jason Scott and his merry band of guerrilla archivists made back before Yahoo killed Geocities. The point of Reocities (and Oocities, and possibly others) is to allow people to fix their old Geocities links by changing one letter in the domain name.

So it's not only obscure, it's an ancient document which has been rehosted, so none of the original links to it still work.

<comment><USER2> The thing is, Googling the link (the Reocities version, not the original Geocities one) reveals that others have linked to it a few times before - that's how I originally found it - and I've also linked to it from here on HN; yet Google seems to refuse to acknowledge the existence of that page itself, as searching for specific quoted phrases in it shows. In other words this isn't "link rot"; it's more like "Google rot".

I think it's even more unfortunate that such gems of information are being lost not because the sites hosting them are gone, but because search engines are rendering them inaccessible despite the sites still existing. In fact with things like the Internet Archive, coming across a dead link is not so bad; not being able to know (from a simple search) that a page with such information actually exists, but just wasn't present in the results, is far worse.

This isn't the first time I've seen Google "disappear" pages still around and containing useful information, but it makes for a good example.

Edit: I didn't know Jason Scott was behind Reocities - I think he deserves another donation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're interested in reading more about the various kinds of runtime code patching used in Linux, there was a nice paper on it at last year's Malware Memory Forensics Workshop:

Slides:

[https://www.acsac.org/2014/workshops/mmf/ThomasKittel- Code%2...](https://www.acsac.org/2014/workshops/mmf/ThomasKittel- Code%20Validation%20for%20Modern%20OS%20Kernels.pdf)

Paper:

[https://www.acsac.org/2014/workshops/mmf/Thomas%20Kittel-%20...](https://www.acsac.org/2014/workshops/mmf/Thomas%20Kittel-%20Code%20Validation%20for%20Modern%20OS%20Kernels- acsacmmf_kittel.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> I still wonder why AMD didn't opt for a saner encoding for 64 bit mode while still mostly keeping assembly compatibility (32-bit binary code doesn't run in 64-bit mode anyway except some edgecases)

<comment><USER7> perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it was easier to port existing compilers and perhaps even designing the first microarchitecture to support it and give decent performances without having to wait too much and loose competitive advantage.

I guess that 32bit mode could use most of the same microarchitecture and thus guarantee that during the transition period people would still buy those new chips.

Itanium was a good example of such a strategy that failed. However there might have been other reasons as well.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't call Itanium 'such a strategy', because it wasn't even similar to x86. 64 bit mode could have rearranged the instruction coding while keeping everything from ASM up roughly the same. Few single byte opcodes and bigger ranges for prefixes to improve density. Keeping all parts of register specifiers together to improve sanity. Etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> heh this reminds me of when I did some runtime patching in my own hobby OS kernel. I used it specifically for interrupt routines so that I didn't have to repeat this monstrosity header and footer for every interrupt handler.

Also, another thing begging for runtime modification is the `int` instruction (used to create an interrupt). There is literally no way to choose a random number of an interrupt to call. You're only option for that is to either do runtime modification to construct the 2 byte opcode on the fly (with the second byte being which interrupt to call), or to make a big table like `int 1; ret; int 2; ret; int 3; ret` and call into that manually. It is quite infuriating

</comment><comment><USER10> The instruction format sure is interesting, to put it politely. I tried to write a toy JIT once for compiling math expressions in a scripting language... Didn't get very far.</comment>


Katherine Dunn has died; the 'Geek Love' author once took the world by storm - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-katherine-dunn-geek-love-20160512-snap-story.html <comment><USER2> This was a great book, but the "cyber-ish" Chip Kidd cover was misleading. It's not about computer geeks, but about carnival geeks, where the term originates.

For those who have never read it, it's a fascinating story about a traveling carnival family whose parents decided to breed their own freaks. When pregnant, the mother ingests all sorts of poisons, pesticides, etc. to ensure that her children have deformities.</comment>


Study: Tesla Autopilot misleading, overestimated more than similar technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/21/study-tesla-autopilot-misleading-overestimated-more-than-similar-technology/ <comment><USER2> So I take it it's NOT okay to take your hands off the wheel with Tesla Autopilot? I am not familiar with the technology.

The Tesla page on it ([https://www.tesla.com/autopilot](https://www.tesla.com/autopilot)) takes a while to get to describing what it _does_ , but then says, among other things:

> Autopilot enables your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically > within its lane.

And:

> With the new Tesla Vision cameras, sensors and computing power, your Tesla > will navigate tighter, more complex roads.

So it's steering... but you're supposed to leave your hands on the wheel anyway? But not actually steering, just resting there just in case? I'm not sure how realistic this is in terms of human behavior. To their credit, the page, at least as of this moment, also says:

> Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make > the vehicle autonomous.

Reading just the web page, if you asked me "So, do you need to leave your hands on the wheel when autopilot is engaged on the freeway", I'd be unsure. Does "active driver supervision" mean "hands on the wheel"?

In general, it is very hard for humans to keep paying close attention to something they aren't involved in actually actively controlling, "just in case." I'm not sure if there's a way for this technology to be safe, if that's what it depends on to be safe. (not unique to Tesla).

<comment><USER3> Ahh the old Tesla and orange trick [https://youtu.be/rOST5S06F-o](https://youtu.be/rOST5S06F-o)

<comment><USER4> IMO stuff like this should be subject to the same safe disclosure procedures as security vulnerabilities. You _know_ a bunch of idiots are going to try this after watching this video and endanger other drivers in the process

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Cruise Control" doesn't mean I can ignore the ~3200lbs of sports car I drive, just like "Tesla Autopilot" doesn't mean drivers can ignore the ~5000lbs of battery under them.

As an American who spends considerable time driving cars in various performance events (even some fun wheel to wheel endurance stuff) I think I can safely estimate at least ~25% of drivers on the road today, probably shouldn't be. Tesla is making progress, and regardless of whether they survive these various courts of public opinion, they're helping to lay the ground work for safer roads by forcing the industry to integrate more and more automated safety systems.

There will be problems. Computers will fail, mistakes will be made, and people will die, but I'm confident the break even point on those human costs is already pretty far behind us.*

*That said, we already have onerous and terrible auto regulations in this country. If we (as a society) want to force companies to be more cautious in this area, well, its entirely within our regulatory structures power to do so.

<comment><USER6> > they're helping to lay the ground work for safer roads by forcing the > industry to integrate more and more automated safety systems.

They focus more on driver-aid systems that encourage not paying attention. Their automated safety systems aren't anything special compared to what most manufactures offer.

<comment><USER7> I disagree.

Which other vehicles on the road actively steer your vehicle away from an imminent collision when it's safe to do so?

Tesla's blind spot monitoring doesn't just detect what's in your blind spot, like other vehicles, it also detects whether a vehicle is slowing down or accelerating into the "blind spot" adjacent to your vehicle.

Their autopilot or automated emergency braking doesn't just brake when a vehicle in front of your slams on it's brakes, it slows down when someone in front of that vehicle hit the brakes.

There's a lot of intelligent engineering there, and a lot of improvements that are pushing the industry to be safer and more responsible. There's a lot of negative press out there, but much of it is not based on fair statistics.

<comment><USER8> My Model 3 did exactly that this morning. I was in the act of changing lanes, expecting the car behind me in the target lane to either maintain speed or slow to avoid hitting me. Instead it sped up, my car alerted me, and as I glanced in the side view to see the car approaching, the steering wheel gently tugged me (us??) back into our lane, avoiding collision. I've never felt so grateful to an object before.

<comment><USER9> Whereas, i presume, in your previous non-Tesla cars you were regularly getting into pileups?

<comment><USER10> How reductive. Let's try looking at it as getting _closer_ to accidents before managing to fix the issue. So now with this system, one-in-a-million odds of that type of accident might become one-in-ten-million odds.

<comment><USER9> My point, ill-made, is this is anecdotal data and therefore useless in evaluating anything.

<comment><USER8> To be better understood, you could try directly stating your point instead of making a snarky remark that requires interpretation. :) as far as anecdotes, that's all I have to offer on this topic. Feel free to ignore them if they don't help you in evaluating something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Tesla also pointed out: "... If IIHS is opposed to the name 'Autopilot,' presumably they are equally opposed to the name 'Automobile.' "

Seriously? This reads like internet trolls. But it's from a public company.

<comment><USER12> From the CEO who called a hero rescue diver "Pedo guy"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >> If IIHS is opposed to the name 'Autopilot,' presumably they are equally opposed to the name 'Automobile.

My best attempt to understand this cryptic comment is as saying that Tesla intends "Autopilot" to mean a system for "piloting" an "automobile", unrelated to the common use of the word in aviation, where it's an "automated pilot(ing system)".

Even if that is the case, they should be aware of the potential for confusion with "automated pilot" and for the risk that this confusion entails.

<comment><USER14> the paragraph above it clearly states that the users are trained on how to engage and disengage the system. If consumers have a good understanding of the system and still feel that it is better than the competition how can it be an issue of mislabelling

<comment><USER15> Your comment is very misleading. You are referring to a statement by a *Tesla spokesperson:

> "Tesla provides owners with clear guidance on how to properly use Autopilot, > as well as in-car instructions before they use the system and while the > feature is in use," a Tesla spokeswoman said Friday. "If a Tesla vehicle > detects that a driver is not engaged while Autopilot is in use, the driver > is prohibited from using it for that drive."

<comment><USER14> so are they not providing the training ?? and if they are not i would accept my comments to be missleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The percentage of drivers who think it's safe to nap is small but nonetheless frightening. What are these people thinking?

<comment><USER16> They are thinking the same thing as people who drive drunk. People can be idiots.

You have to actively disable safety measures in order to get the car to drive for any kind of extended period without applying force to the wheel.

Anyone caught doing this intentionally should be cited for impaired driving same as a DUI.

Then there are the people who legitimately fall asleep at the wheel and AutoPilot saves their lives, which is a different matter.

<comment><USER17> > They are thinking the same thing as people who drive drunk.

They're worse. People who drive drunk don't necessarily make a fully conscious decision to do that. Their judgement is already impaired.

But if they think that sleeping with autopilot on is reasonable, that's 100% on them. It's something they decided ahead of time.

<comment><USER18> Lots of studies show that people who are sleep deprived are just as bad with judgement.

<comment><USER17> That's a different question though. The people were asked if they considered it safe in general. They were not in a situation when they were sleep deprived (hopefully).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I know that the name is a good one, but 'Autopilot' is a troublesome name.

I think a better way forward would be to do something fun with the 'Autopilot' name, e.g.:

"Zanzibar (formerly known as Autopilot)"

Nobody need know what "Zanzibar" actually is other than some place a long way from California. You could easily talk about your Tesla to a non-owner saying 'yeah, it's got Zanzibar...' or to a fellow owner 'did you spec the Zanzibar level 5 option?'

I picked the name 'Zanzibar' randomly here, it could be any place rather than any thing. If Autopilot was rebranded as 'celery' then someone would expect that in the glovebox. A brand name that means nothing and can be nebulous would be best.

<comment><USER20> I'm confused why there is such a dissonance on the definition of "autopilot." Most people are fully aware that commercial planes have at least one human pilot in addition to an "autopilot," and I think the passengers on the plane would be very unwilling to fly if the human pilots weren't present. "chauffeur" seems like it would be misleading for partial self-driving software, but "autopilot" seems spot on: helpful, but not good enough to replace the human.

<comment><USER19> Yes but it is a battle they have lost. Sometimes common sense does not prevail. Particularly in the media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While it's true that with current roads the self driving car software solution may not converge to an acceptable solution, it's also true that as the software gets better municipalities will start to modify their streets and roads to assist the software. At that point the combined solution will very likely converge to a "better than human" result.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Survey participants were asked questions including whether they thought it was safe to take their hands off the steering wheel"

I think this is misleading, Autopilot never told it's safe enough to let hands off the steering wheel. To this extend of course there is no difference than other solutions.

<comment><USER10> What's misleading? If they think it, they think it, and the _intentional implications_ of advertising are just as important as the words it uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of the YT videos of people caught sleeping in the drivers' seats of their Teslas on their ways to work. It's a behavior that should be possible but isn't yet assured to be safe enough to be allowed. #Affluenza

<comment><USER12> It isn't safe at all, please please no one ever do this. People have died on autopilot and sleep may have been involved. Just because your car won't kill you for the first hour of sleep does not mean that it won't at some point over the next few years. Auto accidents are actually pretty rare things to individuals and it's very easy to normalize extremely unsafe behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Off when a technology promise too much but cannot deliver without constantly monitoring. You feel like forming an autistic taxi driver.

</comment><comment><USER25> The fact that Tesla says not to take your hands off the wheel, built security for this, and have made it clear it's not at that level while people still do so is not their fault.

<comment><USER26> There are plenty of video interviews where Musk himself shows using auto pilot with his hands off the wheel.

<comment><USER26> It's even on their official sites demo video! As shared in another comment [https://www.tesla.com/autopilot](https://www.tesla.com/autopilot)

<comment><USER27> It clearly states that the functionality in the video is coming in a future update. Its a video showing what the model 3 hardware is capable of once the software and regulation catches up.

<comment><USER28> > once the software and regulation catches up.

What regulation needs to catch up?

<comment><USER12> There is none.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk: Robots will take your jobs, government will have to pay your wage - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/elon-musk-robots-will-take-your-jobs-government-will-have-to-pay-your-wage.html <comment><USER2> I am uncomfortable with the second part of this equation.

I would prefer instead of a wage, the distribution of shares that produced a dividend.

If AI and robotics really will produce all this new wealth, then that capital can be symbolized (Urbit could create such a system [https://www.urbit.org/#learn](https://www.urbit.org/#learn)) & represent this.

The basis for my reasoning is as follows.

We have already had a system that had the same effects as a 'UBI' system. We used to call people in that system aristocrats.

Suppose we enabled all or most people in our society to become aristocrats?

When we look at aristocrats of the past, we see two things.

A bunch of people who don't think mostly in terms of work/money for survival. This appears to produce two distinct genres of behavior.

Much of their time is spent partying and socializing.

Some of them greatly further the political, the artistic and scientific. Others gamble away their fortunes.

Obviously it is more complicated than this but that is the impression I'm left with when I visit the great houses. Aristocrats were continually throwing themselves into various projects. Sometimes virtuous, sometimes not.

So I was thinking about what creates an aristocracy in history, and of course the answer is mostly indentured labour or slaves.

The word robot originally comes from a slavic word for slave. Presumably a more humane aristocracy could be cultivated on the back of AI and robotics. This is what the Elon Musks and Sam Altmans point to, although they don't call it an aristocracy, what UBI advocates promote as their values (individual self empowerment, holding society to higher standards) does smack of the original meaning of the word aristocrat.

An aristocracy could never have existed were they reliant on a supply of money from the King. The popular culture idea 'the king controls all' is naive. It were never so except in certain extreme local cases. Without independent wealth (from being Landlords), the political economy would be one giant monopoly. The State would have total power in the same way the Soviet Union did over the lives of its citizens. Its too much power in one place.

This is the trouble I have with UBI. I can see scenarios for which it could work. I cannot see any of them working in which there isn't distribution of the wealth producing assets. The AI and the robots. Jaron Lanier has been saying similar things for a while now.

The left and the right, Nicolas_Colin correctly noted ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12473112](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12473112)), will tear a government funded UBI apart in trying to use it as a political weapon against each other. That problem can be ameliorated with property ownership.</comment>


500m Lines of Code Suggests Healthcare.gov Will Not Be Fixed Anytime Soon - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/21/healthcare_gov_problems_why_5_million_lines_of_code_is_the_wrong_way_to.html

<comment><USER2> Come on guys. At this point in time, I'm pretty surprised HN isn't completely outraged by now by this whole ordeal. We all in our right minds know a website like this shouldn't cost 1/100 of it's $90 million price tag nor be this bloated...

Even if this information isn't accurate, I'd argue the figures fall somewhere near what is being said, and still way more than it should for line count and price! That's simply a colossal, and pathetic failure, no matter which way or how you look at it. Why is everyone being so lax on all this? I don't want to say it....but if this was Bush's legislation and administration....yeah well I said it

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice if they named the source. Perhaps it was some non-technical person who heard one of the junior developers lamenting about what _seemed_ like a project with 500M lines of code? It would be really hard to believe that a website consisting of a registration form and a few API calls to get pricing data would ever get to that many lines of code. Also, keep in mind that the site was reported to have cost $600 million, but actually only ran $90 million. Given the political climate surround the legislation, it seems we must take any reporting on it with a whole bag of salt.

<comment><USER2> You still don't think even $90 million for a website that mostly performs CRUD operations is absurd?

<comment><USER3> I definitely agree that it seems like an awful lot. Any idea what a standard hourly bill-rate is for DC? In Arizona, the agency I work for bills at $125/hour.

However, not knowing the exact requirements for the project, we can only speculate as to what the true complexity is. Perhaps the insurance companies in each state did not provide well-documented REST APIs and you had hundreds of custom screen-scrapers pulling the data. Or, perhaps $30 million went to paying all of those insurance companies to build the required APIs? I cannot imagine how difficult and frustrating it would be to interface with those systems. Plus, all of the privacy and data safeguarding practices, and then arranging hosting, etc, etc, etc. Was there waste? Most likely. Was there waste to the tune of tens of millions? Couldn't say. However, to dismiss it as a simple CRUD app might be belying the complexity underneath.

<comment><USER2> I don't know man, while those possible sources of complexity and complications may be the case, to me they're still inexcusable. Many companies each year manage to successfully implement and release systems of ungodly complexity compared to whatever had to be dealt with to make some website like this.

All those sources of inefficiency are, to me, consequential of the fact that the people doing this work don't have proper incentives. $90M for a failed website that has to be redone? Well it's just tax dollars, let's suck in some more.

If any private company were to perform like this, they would be obliterated and their work would be done by people who are competent.

<comment><USER3> If you will recall, Twitter in its early days was essentially unusable due to high load. That was a private company that ultimately found its way.

However, that is really here nor there. I am always hesitant to make an armchair judgement about the execution of a development project without all of the facts because there are so many places where things can go pear-shaped. That is basically my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the reporter has not mixed up lines of code with database records. Perhaps the database has a record for each and every American and 5 million of those records have incorrect data and need to be fixed up so that those people can use the website?

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't buy it - I don't know where the 500M lines of code came from but it seems absurdly high. Those are 33 linux kernels and a change.

I am not sure if so many LoC is even possible to be produced at such short time.

<comment><USER6> It's complete guess work. The only mention of 500M lines of code is from the last paragraph of The Times article: "According to one specialist, the Web site contains about 500 million lines of software code."

This "one specialist" is obviously a fraud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are they rewriting the entire linux kernel from scratch? There's no way that much code has to be re-written.

Who built this website? What stack is it running on?

<comment><USER8> Healthcare.gov is all opensource: [https://www.healthcare.gov/developers/](https://www.healthcare.gov/developers/)

Some chunks are made in node.js: [https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov- Marketplace](https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov-Marketplace)

They've taken down the source on github, though it used to be all there. The server they're running it on is AkamaiGHost, and likely linux (although I've heard they're running some on it on windows)

It's an odd choice of technologies. For scalability I would have chosen something that scales across the cloud easy. I'd put my money on the different calls between organisations being at fault. There seems to be many API calls going on. It would take only one server to be slow to cause a cascading affect.</comment></comment>


Hacker News metrics (first rough approach) - <AUTHOR> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/33551.html <comment><USER3> _The Hacker News ranking algorithm tends to penalize stories that address social issues._

The Hacker News ranking algorithm does not penalize stories that address social issues. It doesn't consider social issues at all, apart from a couple of special cases that we turn off once a major wave subsides [1]. The effects the OP is observing are mostly caused by user flags and the voting ring detector.

1\. The intention there is to prevent copycat and follow-up stories from clogging up the front page. For example, NSA stories used to be weakly penalized, but no longer are, and I think there's still a similar penalty on ebola stories.

<comment><USER4> I seem to remember reading that in an attempt to avoid "controversial" subjects, posts are penalized if they generate comments too quickly. Social issue are often hotly debated and occasionally some of the most actively commented on posts on the site until they drop off the front page. So while HN might not actively be penalizing these posts, they might be penalized in indirect but still very real ways.

<comment><USER5> I believe a thread with more comments than votes is penalized as well, suggesting that commenting on a thread without upvoting it first is implicitly flagging it.

And of course there may be other arcane metrics involving thread depth, average comment rate, comment size, thread shape, etc. Who knows?

<comment><USER6> Whoa, really?

...I've been flagging a lot of articles.

<comment><USER7> Only a factor if it's got more comments than upvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2

       This clearly isn't an especially rigorous analysis

Not especially, no.

Data samples consisting of two or five articles per keyword??

And 2 out of all 5 penalized "female" entries have nothing to do with social issues etc. (one is about female mice, another about mixed-sex animals).

Comparing stories on social justice against ARM and Intel is also cherrypicking, because we don't know whether this is supposed to be a bias against social issues, or just non-tech stories in general, or something else.

And what's your methodology of choosing keywords?

"Female" \- which made it onto your list - gets penalized 5 to 1, all right.

But then in case of "girls" (omitted from your list) it's actually 0 - 3, telling us a different story.

And unlike with the "female" bunch, none of these articles is about mice. They're about how girls get better grades, how to get them into engineering and why it's easy to teach them code.

"Women" (plural) lose 13 - 4 and so the keyword is featured on your list, but "woman" (singular) wins 7 - 2, and surprise surprise, it's absent.

"equal", as a word stem (counting "inequality", "unequal" etc.) - penalized 2 times, not penalized 3 times. Holy smokes Batman, it rates better than "x86"!

Statistics, huh ;)

If this submission gets penalized, do we count it as bias against social justice, or junk science

</comment><comment><USER8> This article is humorous considering that it was submitted on the same day as Tim Cook's op-ed which has been #1 on HN all day and now has over 2000 upvotes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. I see that that four stories critical of AirBnB were penalized despite many comments (113, 70, 63, 54) and upvotes. The ones touting its value weren't.

I am not surprised. At least 5 times now, I've seen negative stories on AirBnB disappear from the home page fast, whilst silly links remained. Is someone protecting their investment?

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for doing the work of trying to apply data to investigate this. It's too often lacking in discussions like these.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not sure about penalising algorithms but I make sure to flag pointless social war mongering posts.

<comment><USER12> Right, because it's _the posts_ that incite social wars rather than the real events they discuss. This is how it happens:

1\. Something bad happens due to what we can call "SV culture", at least bad for some people.

2\. A brave soul writes about the injustice, and posts the story (or someone else does) to HN.

3\. The story is promptly flagged because the discussion of the injustice is "pointless social war mongering".

4\. Order is restored.

5\. Another brave soul writes about how HN reflects the SV social hegemony by ignoring important issues.

6\. That story is promptly flagged.

<comment><USER13> So much butthurt.

This is Hacker News, not Tumblr. Social justice idiots try to inject their nonsense into every culture, and I would prefer this community to stay on the technology.

<comment><USER12> What's technology for? Technology isn't neutral (like science can be). It is either to advance social justice or to obtain or maintain power. I think you're not particularly powerful, so I can only assume you're so laser-focused on technology, so religiously fanatical about it, because, how did you put it? Well, because you're a "social justice idiot".

<comment><USER13> You seem to have a mental disorder when everything seems to be revolving about the issues you like, and so you are unhappy when they aren't covered by site X you visit.

Most of us like technology because it's interesting, not because it gives us some magical power. It's infinitely more interesting than whining about the abuse of virtual characters in games and other such idiocy.

<comment><USER3> > You seem to have a mental disorder

Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News.

<comment><USER13> Aren't you a mod here? You should ban me, or whatever the proper punishment is.

<comment><USER14> Rest assured that you will be banned eventually if you continue like that, but the proper first step is to tell someone what they are doing wrong, rather than ban them outright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> See also this thread about manual elevation, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8313505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8313505)

</comment><comment><USER12> > But for now the evidence appears consistent with my innate prejudice - <USER2> > Hacker News ranking algorithm tends to penalise stories that address social > issues.

My innate prejudice says something worse: that many stories that have to do with social justice but are oblivious to their potentially adverse effect (intentionally or not) are _not_ penalized and are rather handsomely rewarded. These are stories that seem to be about "innovation", but are really about a power struggle (e.g. stories about companies providing marketplace services in the "sharing economy"), with the sole exception of privacy (which fits with the techno-libertarian bias).

It is often said that discussion here shouldn't be about politics, but the worst kind of politics is that which you don't even notice (or choose not to notice).

And once something of substance does come up, it's so frustrating to see it quickly drop in rank because it's automatically tagged as controversial. So a story about a company offering cheap food delivery can stay at the top for a while, but a discussion about a workers' strike against Uber quickly disappears from the front page.

<comment><USER16> You may be including it in "automatically tagged as controversial", but I have the feeling that there are lots of people that are flagging those topics (which fits under "automatic" if you include reflexive flagging of social issues topics, but doesn't if you limit "automatic" to the software running the site).

I pretty much don't flag anything, but I can see how that flagging could be driven more out of a feeling that those discussions don't accomplish anything than out of a desire to penalize those stories.

<comment><USER12> Right, flagging is another issue. But as to "those discussions don't accomplish anything", what does any discussion on HN accomplish? On the more technical stories, the discussions often educate. Thing is, HN isn't /r/programming, and there are many stories about company culture, startups raising money, SV superstars etc.. What do the discussions about that kind of stories accomplish? It's just people schmoozing for entertainment. What's wrong with that?

But I have a practical suggestion: Instead of having unpleasant discussions about important stories related to technology, innovation and startups (like women in startups, which is a far more important topic than, say, Uber raising another trillion dollars), simply block comments on these stories, and at least let people read them without having them drop due to too many comments. Sure, people will still flag the stories, but AFAIK, the flagging privilege can be revoked if a user abuses it.

<comment><USER16> I don't really have an answer to the first paragraph, like I said, I don't really flag things (exceptions are things like dupes of recent, decent conversations or if I happen to look at /new, the really dumb, offtopic stuff (like celebrity news or cat pictures, the stuff that is waay out there)).

I think we also probably see the importance of visibility on hacker news differently; you're arguing that it should be a certain way, apparently because you think it will do some good (the soft phrasing there is because I'm guessing at what you are thinking, not sarcasm), I don't think it is going to have much impact (for example, many of the people that make threads awful see it as an opportunity to defend, with guile and shenanigans, their pet point of view; that's pretty clear evidence that the story isn't reaching them). I also think the media spends a lot more time pandering than it does manipulating (just throwing that in there as a similar situation where I apply a similar world view).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think there's plenty of evidence that humans by nature are uninterested in "politics", except when it might effect them. Then it becomes an object of great importance.

As for the role of the algorithm, I think its just an extension of "garbage in, garbage out".

Stories like this are a nice reminder that every community is also a bubble.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can someone explain how flags are applied? For example, today a post where person is asking for a job got killed, but I have seen same posts (people looking for a job) before that were left on the front page. Why was this one killed?

</comment><comment><USER19> wow - the money quote "I scraped Hacker Slide to get just over two months of data in the form of hourly snapshots of stories, their age, their score and their position" \-- how did he do this? I can barely get to the homepage say 14 times out of 20, without hitting the error page from their CDN/DDOS Protection pages (cloudfare?) And that's not to scrape content, just to read the headlines from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER20> An interesting read. Of course, it criticises HN for actively penalising talk on social issues, which might well mean that this story itself will be penalised. And so the great cycle continues.

<comment><USER21> In fact, it was: [https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/527890332206510080](https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/527890332206510080)

<comment><USER3> According to HN's software, this story has been heavily ring-voted. That's what has affected its rank.

Call that "penalized" if you want, but it has nothing to do with the content, so that tweet is misleading—and ironic, too, given what provoked the "penalizing".

(Also, in case anyone's wondering, moderators haven't touched the post.)

<comment><USER21> _it has precisely nothing to do with the content_

Do certain types of content set off the ring-voting detection more frequently? The type of content likely influences how it's shared and how people respond to it, which would affect how it's voted (and/or flagged). Algorithms are not unbiased, particularly when no one's bothered to study their confounding factors.

<comment><USER3> > Do certain types of content set off the ring-voting detection more > frequently?

Sure—people posting their startups, for example, set off the ring detector more frequently than the typical news article. Friends voting for friends' blog posts, too. But is that a bias of the algorithm? That strikes me as a stretch.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. How do you guard against coincidental rings?

(i.e. a subgroup of people who all love, say, Lisp, and therefore always vote up Lisp stories. They're not an organised group - but they do tend to vote in concert.)

<comment><USER3> I used to worry about that too, but it turns out not to be a big problem in practice. (I realize that's not a satisfying explanation, but this is one area where we can't give out details without enabling people to game the site. Having put a ton of effort into HN's anti-voting-ring measures, I dread the thought of having to climb all the way down the mountain and push that boulder up again.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reverse-Engineering the Intel Management Engine - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/reverse-engineering-the-intel-management-engine-romp-module/ <comment><USER3> Meanwhile I'm trying to find a way to remove the hard lock on CPU and RAM frequencies (extreme CPUs can't be overclocked, RAM is locked at 1333 MHz) :)

Looks like it can be done through Management Engine, which has access to everything apparently.

Only success so far is unlocking BCLK, but the overclock is small and unstable that way.

Another roadblock was the read only lock, which can fortunately be bypassed on POST on xx67/77 chipsets.

<comment><USER4> > extreme CPUs can't be overclocked

You mean non-extreme?

> unlocking BCLK, but the overclock is small and unstable that way

On desktop Skylake, BCLK can get you to anywhere you want (I run an i5-6400 at 4.5GHz daily, over 4.7 for benchmarks). You're talking about laptops, right?

<comment><USER3> Laptop, and extreme CPU. HP and Dell block TPL/TRL adjustment even for XM processors, and HP took it even further with their 1333 MHz limit on RAM. I have 1600 MHz sticks that can run fine at 1866 and probably more (tried with Thaiphoon Burner), so that's really annoying. I don't want an Alienware to get that.

And BCLK allows for a 5MHz overclock, which is not much, anything more and the system crashes. Which is really strange, may have something to do with PCIE as Dogma said.

I just want to get everything out of my extreme processor and RAM.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that a bad idea... laptops have significant thermal limitations, things start going wrong quickly when you push beyond those. I've not done any serious overclocking but most seem to stick to desktop and buy more capable cooling systems to make it sustainable.

<comment><USER3> Aside from heatsink limitations (which can be modded to achieve better cooling), people are pushing their gaming laptops to 80W and beyond, with overclocked GPUs as well.

Some are resorting to dual PSU's to handle the power requirements, so the system boards are capable of handling some insane load.

I myself squeezed another year out of a Core 2 Quad laptop by overclocking everything as much as possible. Temperatures were averaging 90-95 under load, but I didn't care at that point, as I was going to upgrade. It still works :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is nice, but it just allows you to replace some of the the Management Engine code. What we need to know in detail is what it's doing. There's probably a backdoor in there that hasn't been discovered yet.

<comment><USER7> On the other hand, if we get "our" code into the IME, we can really do interesting stuff. For example reading out data that one should not be read out? ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hopefully we can get a fully libre boot on purism laptops soon.

I feel like there would be legal problems though...

<comment><USER9> What kind of legal problems would you anticipate?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps by ways the DMCA, for "p0wning" DRM('d) modules?

<comment><USER11> Only the people actually subverting the DRM would have legal problems. The people manufacturing the laptop would be fine.

<comment><USER10> What sections of the law and precedents make you so sure about that?

<comment><USER11> I tend to take the view that if the law doesn't prevent it, it's ok to do. I don't need legal permission to do something, I just need to avoid things that the law specifically bans.

<comment><USER12> If someone with a lot of money has a problem with what you're doing, they'll hire lawyers to discover some way that the law prevents you from doing it. If the ensuing lawsuit, which will bankrupt you regardless of its outcome, doesn't serve as a sufficient warning for anyone else who wants to do whatever it was you did, they'll proceed to _buy_ a law that prevents you from doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did the author notify Intel about the bug they found?

<comment><USER14> Respectfully, why would they? The goal here is to find exploits in ME and use them to make Intel chips more end-user friendly.

When we were rooting Android devices we sat on a _lot_ of exploits that we believed we could use to give end-users freedom. There were a handful that were bad enough to warrant disclosure [1], but we still offered them as ways for users to control their own devices with a few layers of obfuscation on top.

[1] [http://www.unrevoked.com/rootwiki/doku.php/public/unrevoked1...](http://www.unrevoked.com/rootwiki/doku.php/public/unrevoked1_disclosure)

<comment><USER15> Publishing a blog post isn't exactly sitting on a vuln. I would understand if they kept it to themselves and I would understand if they reported to Intel, but this?

<comment><USER16> I'm not entirely sure the same "responsible disclosure" arguments for software apply to hardware.

With software, a patch release is a common enough thing that it's a solid argument that letting companies like Microsoft or Apple or Google or others who've demonstrated they'll actually fix security bugs (so, maybe not Oracle, for example), or any of the hundreds or thousands of widely-used OSS projects - I'm _much_ less convinced that any company like Intel will ever manage to get even a single digit percentage of their users to reflash CPU firmware - <USER2> that's even possible - and I've never heard of a hardware company freely replacing all user's CPUs where remote exploits are known.

Where the option of "give them 90 days to get a patch out - possibly give them an extension if they ask and explain why, but otherwise sit on the bug with the vendor until it's fixed or being actively exploited in the wild" à la Google Zero & Tavis seems to work reasonably well enough of the time for software bugs - it seems to me unlikely to be as beneficial for hardware bugs which are much much harder to get fixes to end users - and early disclosure giving the opportunity to mitigate with firewalls or unplugging the device seems more likely to be the better choice.

<comment><USER17> Isn't the whole purpose of this IME to facilitate remote updates and management of systems? As for patching hardware, Intel does have the ability to apply microcode patches. At the least they are able to disable features that are buggy.

<comment><USER16> Sure - it's _possible_ to patch the microcode - but can your dentist's receptionist do it? Or your mom? Unless there's a tool that automatically applies security microcode updates as easily and as widespread as automatic Windows updates - it's really only of use to enterprise/corporate networks... I've never bumped into a small or medium sized business that runs remote management for all the machines on their office networks...

<comment><USER17> I know the Linux kernel on my Ubuntu system applies microcode patches early on bootup. I also know that Microsoft has microcode patches as updates. For example [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/3064209/june-2015-i...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/3064209/june-2015-intel-cpu-microcode-update-for-windows)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New 8-megapixel camera board on sale at $25 - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-8-megapixel-camera-board-sale-25/ <comment><USER2> Awesome stuff.

I do wish they'd release a module without the bayer filter for monochrome imaging.

Granted it is maybe quite a bit of work to rewrite parts of the ISP to suit a relatively niche market of monochrome sensor...

<comment><USER3> The color filter is much more closely integrated with the camera sensor than the IR filter was. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it can't be removed without risking damage to the sensor.

<comment><USER4> The extent of the risk depends on the sensor and board assembly. But removing the CFA is not unthinkable[1].

[1] [https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/210686-moon-with-de- bayer...](https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/210686-moon-with-de-bayered- ps3-eye-cam/)

<comment><USER3> It can be done, yes, but it's a risky hack of an operation that literally involves prying the cover off the camera with a knife and polishing away the filter. It's not production-ready by any means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I missed it, but there's no mention of whether the focus is adjustable. In the previous version, it was glued at the factory to a fixed focus and the default was wrong for close-ups on objects. Sure, you could use pliers to "break" the glue, but there was a non-zero risk of breaking the sensor. I decided to go with a different, more adjustable-on-purpose camera, instead.

<comment><USER6> According to the RS Components page [0] it appears to be fixed focus.

[0] [http://uk.rs- online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberry...](http://uk.rs- online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi)

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I did miss it. :) Newark/element14's product info page didn't have that info when I checked on my mobile. (Edit: The info about fixed focus _is_ there on the desktop version of the page. The Product Overview section didn't show up in the mobile version on my Nexus 5): [https://www.newark.com/raspberry-pi/rpi-8mp-camera- board/ras...](https://www.newark.com/raspberry-pi/rpi-8mp-camera- board/raspberry-pi-camera-board-v2/dp/77Y6521?COM=superwidget- link_RaspberryPiAccessories%20CMPNULL)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would like to see a round cable version. I know this may not fit the design ethos, but I've had projects that I really wanted to use the Pi+camera and couldn't because of camera positioning (a 1m round cable would have worked) .

<comment><USER8> You'd be better off getting a USB webcam for that, I don't imagine CSI (Camera Serial Interface Type 2, the connection the camera modules use) works well over long distances.

<comment><USER9> Works fine for me with a 2m ribbon cable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been looking into home security lately and with the more expensive camera-kits (say $2k+)...

I've been wondering if a de-centralized raspberry-pi setup might be so much better. And with 8mp I think I should start a POC, right?

<comment><USER11> There are a few projects out there [0][1] that make it fairly simple to set up a motion detection capable solution with a simple USB webcam. I'm currently waiting on a cheap infrared camera from China ($4!) for use with my Pi, but I've done testing with an older Logitech HD camera and have had excellent results.

[0] Motion: [http://lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome](http://lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome)

[1] MotionEye: [https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneye](https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneye)

<comment><USER12> If you don't mind, could you please post a link to the $4 IR camera?

<comment><USER13> Indeed. (I have a project that needs to distinguish between cats in the dark. No kidding!)

<comment><USER14> A pet door?

<comment><USER13> Cat-specific food bowls :-)

<comment><USER15> I was researching this a few months ago, but gave up upon the cat facial recognition. The best I could find for the raspberry pi was opencv haar filters for humans, and that was just detecting if a face was present in the video frame. I'm curious, how are you planning on doing cat facial detection for this?

<comment><USER16> maybe he has a white cat and a black cat... but I would probably use RFID chips in their collar.

<comment><USER13> That's what I'm trying first. RFID range is an issue, however. The electronics for this is easy, the problem is that I suck at carpentry.

The cats in question are pretty different (one black, one orange), so discrimination in visible light is easy. Not sure about IR yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting is the 4K video mode and the 120fps and 180fps modes. I wonder to what extent this will be usable/available on an Rpi.

</comment><comment><USER18> Could anyone who has the previous version comment on light response?

I went out and bought a random webcam model from a local store for 7GBP as a proof of concept so that I could start hacking on the code. 640x480, but that doesn't matter too much for testing. It is completely unusable in most lighting conditions. I wanted to point it out of the window to track wildlife. Sunlight just overloads the sensor and you get white, low light and it's fully black.

Is this something that requires higher cost equipment? I can't see how it could be useful as an ipcam if outdoor lighting destroys it.

<comment><USER19> Maybe it's possible to have a filtering lens or film to clamp the dynamic range ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is also seems to be an infra-red camera, so I ll be able to do pictures like those with it ([http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/8539757](http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/8539757)) , not that artsy of course and make a timelapse.

<comment><USER21> There's two models - one with an IR filter and one without. (Slightly confusingly to me, the "NoIR" model is the one that can see IR, though I suppose the pun was too tempting.)

<comment><USER20> I believe it means no IR filter, since that is how you get IR camera, by not having IR filter in front of sensor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Modules like this one have existed in surveillance industry for quite a while but this is the one for the DIY community I guess, the price really should be in the <$10 range though, otherwise it's fun to play with.

<comment><USER4> If you live in the US, you can walk into any GameStop and buy used PS3Eye cameras for $8.99 + tax. They are an absolute steal.

<comment><USER22> not really, ps3eye first is a USB camera, secondly, it's 640*480, which is only 300K pixel.

<comment><USER4> The sensor is the same size though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Small question if anyone might know: are the physical dimensions of this new v2.0 camera board identical to the past ones? (e.g. version 1.3?). For the most parts they _look_ identical.

</comment><comment><USER24> I _so_ hope that some day there will be a widely available wide angle version or easy-to-plug-on lens of this.

Also an official multiplexer would rock so one could connect more than one camera to the Pi.

<comment><USER25> You can use two cameras with the compute module. See [https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/real-time-depth- perception-...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/real-time-depth-perception- with-the-compute-module/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've found several USB webcam boards that work great, and give more flexibility when it comes to lens field of view and the like. The RPI is fantastic for a standing webcam setup using the USB camera, see: [http://www.trisweb.com/webcam](http://www.trisweb.com/webcam)

Does anyone have example photos from this new camera?

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there a full datasheet available for it like there was for the OV7670 if we want to perform more bitwise calculations with it? [http://www.cutedigi.com/pub/sensor/Imaging/OV7670-Datasheet....](http://www.cutedigi.com/pub/sensor/Imaging/OV7670-Datasheet.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> The IoT camera module market seems to be underserved. Here's my feature wishlist:

* A monochrome sensor option

* Better sensor documentation. Where are the quantum efficiency graphs?

* Larger sensors.

* Less emphasis on megapixels, more emphasis on efficiency.

* Exposure control in microseconds

* Binning

* C, CS, or F lens mount. Heck, I'd even accept a M12 mount, so long as the lens isn't _glued_ into place.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there an Rpi adapter to allow hdmi in via CSI port? It would be cool to use an action camera like a gopro

<comment><USER29> Not sure if this will work. But worth a try. Its $15

[https://www.tindie.com/products/freto/pi-camera-hdmi- cable-e...](https://www.tindie.com/products/freto/pi-camera-hdmi-cable-e..).

<comment><USER28> Thanks for linking, but you're right I think that's only for extending a pi cam. I'm looking at gopro hdmi out going to pi csi port. should be possible - digital -digital imaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> You can get an old phone with an equivalent camera for 25 USD.</comment>


I draw figures for my mathematical lecture notes using Inkscape - <AUTHOR> https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/# <comment><USER2> I've also read previous article about how the author manage to take lecture note using Vim+Latex (also posted on HN), and that's amazing how author managed to do that. But I'm thinking for people who does not know how to use Vim (arguingly high learning curve) and Latex to take note, what options do they have to take note quickly (with Math symbols/layouts)?

You can try out Mathcha[1] which is built to help people without knowing of Latex can easily write down Note (with rich Mathematics symbols/layouts) and it also provide basic Drawing and basic Function Plotting (The Drawing Part no way compare to Inkscape, but hey! you can type Math on Drawing on Mathcha) in single Editor.

 _Please note_ that I don't want to tout and advertise Mathcha here, the point is to provide another option for people to try out (I will not say it will provide faster or more powerful than Vim+Latex)

[1] Mathcha website: [https://www.mathcha.io/](https://www.mathcha.io/)

Disclaimer: I'm creator of Mathcha.

<comment><USER3> I tended to introduce LaTeX to new folks through LyX.

Haven't used it for several years though, so no idea if the WSYIWYG is still up and running.

<comment><USER4> This might come off as pedantic, but LyX is explicitly designed to be What You See Is What You Mean (WYSIWYM) rather than What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG). It gives you the gist of how things will end up without attempting to actually represent the final LaTeX output while you edit. It's an incredible piece of software, and I strongly prefer it over raw LaTeX despite the fact that I learned LaTeX first.

<comment><USER3> Pedantic, but precise. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi I am a person with a predominantly symbolic/linguistic way of thinking, and I'm aware that I tend to be bad at anything resembling graphic design, drawing, understanding of diagrams, etc... but this puts into perspective how much I really suck at that.

Out of the example figures in this post, some of them I would outright not know how to draw. Others I would be able to draw, but I think each of them would take me at least about an hour, maybe more. And this is not out of lack of familiarity with the tool: Inkscape is my go-to tool for vector drawing and what I use most for scientific paper figures, presentation slides, posters, lecture slides, etc. so I have lots of hours of practice with it.

Who is more of an outlier, the author or I? Is it really within the reach of most people to be able to whip up figures like that in a few minutes?

<comment><USER5> I'm uncertain whether it is the conceptual step of visualising the image, or the execution that you find challenging. From the context I'm assuming it's the former. I find drawing these types of images effortless.

But I ( native English speaker) struggle ( had to google to write the first sentence ) with which is which in _former_ and _later_. I always imagine the past stretching behind and the first thing mentioned is now further away from me, so it should be the 'later' and the second thing mentioned is now closer to me and should be the 'former'. I've had this conversation enough to know that some people agree and others respond by sharply downgrading their estimation of my intelligence. As a _predominantly symbolic/linguistic_ person I suspect former/later is something you would perceive as effortless.

Though I have hard time taking the visual/auditory/kinaesthetic learning styles seriously, and with no thought as to the contribution to the variation between individuals being learned or innate - symbolic/linguistic/visual seem to be different competencies.

And Gilles Castel seems near the top of the curve on all of them.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Yes, it's mainly the conceptual part that is problematic. Although when drawing Bézier curves, for example, I also have problems with the execution, but I think they are also due to lack of visual thinking (the relation between where I click/drag the mouse and the final curve is totally non-obvious to me).

Indeed, as you assume, "former" and "later" don't pose any problem for me because I don't imagine anything visual at all when I evoke those concepts, I just think about what they mean in a non-visual way. But I can see why you would struggle if you think visually.

I guess the analogous weakness in my case is the one that manifests when I have hung my coat and forgot to take out e.g. the keys. I know what pocket my keys are in (e.g. suppose they are in the left inner pocket) but I totally struggle to find it when I'm not wearing the coat. Visual thinking seems to really outperform symbolic thinking in that problem, and sometimes memorization of the solution provides a shortcut in similar issues, but there it doesn't work because the coat can be hung in two orientations! So it's usually faster for me to take the coat, put it on, take the keys, and then hang the coat again, and in fact that's exactly what I do, at least if no one outside of friends and family is looking... :)

I'm not sure about learning styles (if a teacher provided a visual schema of a lesson I just translated it to words, or focused more on the oral explanation and ignored the diagram, and still learned it fine, it wasn't such a big deal as some people make it look like), but thinking styles are definitely a thing. I'm not sure if the difference is learned or innate either. In my case, I have always loved reading and read a lot since infancy, so it might be learned.

<comment><USER5> The coat image is very amusing :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use Ipe [0] for my work. The wiki page [1] gives you an idea of what it looks like.

It's also open source and you can compile LaTex directly in the editor to see what it looks like without switching windows.

[0] [http://ipe.otfried.org/](http://ipe.otfried.org/) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipe_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipe_\(software\))

<comment><USER7> Ipe is great not just for figures, but also presentations. It supports multi- page documents, incremental build-up of slides, presentation style-sheets, and so on. Showcase:

[https://github.com/otfried/ipe- wiki/wiki/Showcase#presentati...](https://github.com/otfried/ipe- wiki/wiki/Showcase#presentations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I initially started writing a response to this thinking the author was referring to preparing lecture notes for lectures they were giving, not taking notes at lectures they were attending. That is entirely different, and I do have to wonder whether it's actually more efficient than, say, using a tablet to draw them, except in cases where the figures involve only use of common, repeated motifs.

I do agree with the author that taking lecture notes for math-heavy classes in LaTeX is quite possible, though I haven't done it since I was an undergraduate. While the author makes use of snippets in a particular text editor setup, I instead relied on extensive use of \def. With sufficient experience and intuition as to when to \def something, I could take notes in many classes faster than everyone writing by hand, and often faster and more clearly than the professor could write: I could insert a common but complicated expression with a few keystrokes, rather than writing it out or using something like ~ to refer to it. I would also use a standard set of \def's to make standard LaTeX faster to type: \beq and \eeq for \begin{equation} and \end{equation}, and so on. This also had the advantage of working in any text editor.

The disadvantage over snippets (I'm not sure how developed they were at the time) was, of course, that my LaTeX was incomprehensible for anyone else reading it, and my style had to change significantly once I started collaborating on projects rather than just writing notes for myself.

I've long used Inkscape for paper and prepared note figures, however, and I've found that many of my colleagues now do as well, after Adobe's transition to a subscription model. In doing so, I am very wary of the pdf+latex export: it doesn't seem as though it can reliably place text exactly, leaving the risk that it looks awkward or has text move when the font; it also makes figures that are not easily reusable in other places (eg, presentations, typesetters making HTML versions of papers, etc). Additionally, the pdf export itself doesn't seem to preserve editing very well. As such, I usually store parallel svg and pdf versions, in the interest of avoiding very non-standard LaTeX packages. However, if I recall correctly, there are packages that allow direct use of Inkscape SVGs in LaTeX.

</comment><comment><USER9> As far as Inksccape goes, the MacOS experience is one of the worst I have ever had to deal with. Luckily, I only use it to extract individual photos from EPS/PDF files.

Unfortunately, all the good editing apps like Sketch and Affinity Designer cost a fortune when you factor in the actual use case. Figma is alright, but the desktop app feels like I am working with a piece of origami.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Does anyone know what are the difficulties to provide a pleasant experience for Inkscape on Mac? Gimp looks decent. With Inkscape I wouldn't need anything else, really. Both are amazing.

<comment><USER11> GIMP and Inkscape are very different. GIMP has nearly no vector graphics editing support, although you can open svg files with it. Inkscape on the other hand is a vector graphics editor.

<comment><USER12> Looks like that's why Inkscape is needed in macOS! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I was at school I used markdown and converted to latex using pandoc. However I always drew all figures on a piece of paper with a date and number on it and then matched it with my notes. I couldn't find the right tool for this and I didn't think I'd be fast enough with inscape, but i guess if you really try it's possible. That's awesome but I wish this article released 5 years ago :)

I wonder though, are there any alternatives to inscape in which you can draw graphs quickly?

<comment><USER14> > I wonder though, are there any alternatives to inscape in which you can draw > graphs quickly?

yEd [0] might be one. There's also an online version with (currently) a tad reduced feature set [1].

[0] [https://www.yworks.com/products/yed](https://www.yworks.com/products/yed) [1] [https://www.yworks.com/products/yed- live](https://www.yworks.com/products/yed-live)

There are a number of other applications, though. I still like Graphviz for quickly creating a graph structure, but tweaking its layouts can be cumbersome (Note: yEd Live supports rudimentary Graphviz import as well). There's also dia, draw.io, Gliffy, LucidChart, OpenOffice Draw, Omnigraffle. And PowerPoint works to some extent as well.

(Disclaimer: I work for yWorks.)

<comment><USER15> yEd is very helpful. I occasionally use it since many years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any way to use inkscape and have it seamlessly integrate with sharelatex? I'd be kind of concerned about using sharelatex with inkscape PDFs, and then forget about or lose the folder with the inkscape source files.

</comment><comment><USER17> Very impressive that these figures are drawn at lecture pace. I used to write my maths notes up in LaTeX, but it was always after the fact from my handwriten notes. Even typesetting math takes time.

<comment><USER13> I could do math typesetting at lecture pace with my 90-100wpm.

But I can't imagine sketching my figures in inkscape.

<comment><USER18> Just curious, in the exams are you allowed to use Latex too? It is difficult to think that it wouldn't be a hinderance.

<comment><USER13> Exams were pen and paper only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> An older, similar program is xfig.

<comment><USER20> I use XFig - the learning curve is bad, but the results are great. And it integrates rather easy with LaTeX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Native LaTeX equation editing for technical diagrams was probably the biggest itch I wanted to scratch with the diagramming application I wrote ([https://vexlio.com](https://vexlio.com)). Unfortunately I haven't had much time to devote to development recently, but it's still out there and hopefully still useful to people.

</comment><comment><USER22> When I see stuff like this and the author's previous artile, it reminds me of the overwhelming potential of scriptable systems and customizable open source software. But at the same time, trying to pursue these things has always been a net negative for me in terms of productivity, for several reasons: there is often such a high learning curve, there are so many different choices of programs that people use (with the resulting community fragmentation), and there is so little investment in UX. So I get all caught up in learning the systems themselves instead of dealing with the limitations of the systems I know and getting to the actual work. So on one hand I know I'm stuck in local maxima, but on the other hand it remains such a long and risky investment to try to seek other more optimal solutions.

</comment><comment><USER23> I really like Tikz but I find drawing anything with it _extremely_ time consuming. At some point you have to ask yourself whether it's worth it. Personally, I think I'm done with Tikz. Next time I'm gonna try something else. Inkscape in particular looks like it could be a good alternative.

<comment><USER24> It's pretty great! I used it to build my business's logo and really enjoyed working with such a comprehensive suite of tools, probably using a fraction of a percent of its capability and doing so in a brutish fashion.

However, my biggest challenge with it, and I've experienced this with other similar software, is how it handles text along a path.

After struggling with this for some time I just took a somewhat brute force approach and made hidden arcs that achieved the target text curvature, despite that arc not being part of the circle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's such a pity that LatexDraw is not developed more. It would be the ideal solution if it had a few more features. I currently use Dia for the same purpose as the author uses, but I have to admit that the graphics in this article look pretty good. I'll give Inkscape a try.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes I think serious practice is needed. There is something else that is a disadvantage: you need anyway to review your lecture notes; but since they are so beautiful you do not easily see mistakes; one way to avoid overly beautiful notes is to use a kind of draft font that deliberately looks a bit off. The drawings (with the keyholes ) are of path integrals with holomorphic functions (something I did around 1982)

But the whole idea and execution are phenomenal.

My feeling is that using emacs it could be possibly easier but I will not try to convert a vimmer

</comment><comment><USER27> Is inkscape unique in using standard SVG as its native file format?

<comment><USER28> Note that while inkscape SVGs do conform to the standard, they do contain extra information in their separate namespace to preserve UI information across save/restore cycles.

One example would be layers. They are saved as standard complient groups of SVGs features. But not all grouped elements form their own layers. So the groups that should be shown as layers do have extra meta data on them. Any standard complient SVG reader while deal with that group correctly, but might not represent it as a layer in it's GUI.

<comment><USER29> > but might not represent it as a layer in it's GUI.

How would you visually represent a layer in a GUI? Layers are logical, not visual, groupings.

Edit: I wasn't considering the editor itself a GUI in this scenario, although it clearly is. I was thinking of the GUI (such as a web browser) where the SVG was being used.

<comment><USER30> In the editor, using the layers interface:

[http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Layer_Dialog](http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Layer_Dialog)

While obviously if you open the SVG in a web browser, layer information is ignored.

<comment><USER29> OK, you mean in the editor, not in the GUI that's displaying the SVG.

(I use the layers dialog in Inkscape on a weekly basis -- and used to in Illustrator as well).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Even Chris Olah uses Inkscape. (Personally, I prefer TikZ, do to the easiness to change styles in a more semantic way.)

Vide "Simple diagrams of convoluted neural networks" [https://medium.com/inbrowserai/simple-diagrams-of- convoluted...](https://medium.com/inbrowserai/simple-diagrams-of-convoluted- neural-networks-39c097d2925b) with an overview of tools for drawing diagrams for deep learning.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is awesome! Doing graphics in LaTeX has always had a pretty high barrier to entry (not to mention constant trial and error).

<comment><USER33> It's pretty much the same argument as web designers who choose to use a visual design tool versus those who choose to write HTML, CSS and JS to produce their design. Some things are easier when designed visually, others are easier when written in code. Doing LaTeX graphics is the same.

<comment><USER29> As a web developer who tried various visual design tools in the 1990s and finally eschewed them all and went back to using Vim or (later) Sublime Text for coding markup and CSS, I'm curious what things are easier when designed visually for you.

<comment><USER33> No. I started web design using Dreamweaver a long time ago. When I began, I used its visual design features quite a bit. Nowadays I just have an editor (usually Emacs) and a browser window side by side. I, do however, find visual design tools useful for prototyping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I love Inkscape for being a great "learn once run anywhere/anytime" vector drawing tool. No searching/cracking/paying for the few time a year I need a tool like that.

Always there so the skill I developed with it can be put to use efficiently. I love open source so much for this.

</comment><comment><USER35> I did most of the illustrations in my PhD thesis using PowerPoint (export via PDF and include in Latex), which I found more practical than Inkscape. Of course it's not designed for scientific diagrams but you can actually produce some pretty decent looking illustrations with it.

<comment><USER36> Was this due to already knowing PowerPoint and not knowing Inkscape? I can think of exactly 0 ways in which PowerPoint is better :)

Can you link to your thesis?

<comment><USER35> Thesis is here: [https://github.com/adewes/phd-thesis- physics](https://github.com/adewes/phd-thesis-physics)

Inkscape was very difficult to use at the time (IMHO) and had lots of bugs, maybe this improved in the meantime as almost 10 years have passed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If drawing some complicated geometry or high precision is not required, GNU Texmacs is also a good choice. You can do everything in the editor and see the immediate result, WYSIWYG style.

</comment><comment><USER38> >> but once you've got the basics down, it's hard to get back to an editor without Vim keybindings.

Right..because it's hardly possible to quit fucking vim :(

</comment><comment><USER39> This is exactly what i needed all these years i was typing in TiKz or using corel draw without latex support.

</comment><comment><USER40> cached page: [https://web.archive.org/web20190428003002/http://castel.dev/...](https://web.archive.org/web20190428003002/http://castel.dev/post/lecture- notes-2/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Trivial point: `Omit text in pdf and create LaTeX file' Should be "emit text"!

<comment><USER29> No, if you look at what it's doing, I think "Omit" is the word they wanted to use. They're saying, "Omit the (Latex code) text in pdf and create (in addition to the pdf) a Latex file (that has references to placeholders where the Latex code was originally)".

I've not used this feature in Inkscape, but that's how it seems to work.

<comment><USER41> You are correct. I should have read more carefully and verified instead of assuming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This looks really impressive, but I don't think that figure drawing should be required in lectures. It's a huge distraction, lecturers should prepare scripts instead, in this day and age. Redrawing the figure might help some understanding, if construction is proof, but often it only serves to depict labels on a graph, not to solve a geometric puzzle.

<comment><USER43> It looks more to me like this just happens to be the technique that the OP prefers to use to take notes. I imagine most students use paper or a tablet.</comment></comment>


Gaming's rarest systems and games can be found at this huge museum in Texas - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/americas-largest-gaming-museum-rare-games-crazy-prototypes-and-giant-pong/ <comment><USER2> Frisco is a northern suburb of Dallas, which is about three hours from Austin or 3.5 hours from Houston. If you're ever flying through DFW (American Airlines hub), this is about 25 minutes from the airport if you can stretch out a layover to four or five hours. There's a lot more interesting stuff to do and see in Dallas/Fort Worth, like the real-life cowboy/cattle stockyards in Fort Worth and many other world class museums.

(Sales pitch: Texas is far more diverse than it is often portrayed: Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are all in the top-ten largest cities in the United States.. Houston is the most diverse city in the nation[1] and #4 in size, projected to be #3 before the next census (behind NYC, LA, and Chicago), and all of them are artsy, cosmopolitan cities. There's enough to do in each of these cities to spend a few days checking out just the stuff that interests you, whether it be various art museums, symphony, opera, ballet, science, technology, space exploration, history, etc.)

1\. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/houston-most- divers...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/houston-most- diverse_n_1321089.html)

<comment><USER3> Also in Dallas is the 8-track tape museum. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDueID5krPY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDueID5krPY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The weirdest game seems the one using a sewing machine! [http://kotaku.com/5800606/this-might-be-the-weirdest-game- bo...](http://kotaku.com/5800606/this-might-be-the-weirdest-game-boy-game- ever-made)

<comment><USER5> A real playable game, or just a GameBoy being repurposed as a sewing machine controller? Either way, that's rather clever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fun.

I rememeber the EA game boxes, (small records, good art, the programers names on the box). The intellivision computer, that was kinda useless, except you could play "mind strike".

They seem have a good collections of the old hand held games too.

Great they have some that are playable.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's another great collection of video games & memorabilia at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for posting this. This is about a half hour drive from my house, and I forgot the museum was open now!

Definitely going to go visit soon. :-)</comment>