Font that creates charts - <AUTHOR> https://www.fontfont.com/how-to-use-ff-chartwell <comment><USER2> This is really quite genius. It uses ligatures (normally used to replace multiple letters by a single, nicer glyph, such as fi fl ae etc.) to replace "55+24+31" with a chart. You could theoretically use this on the web, and people who use screen readers or text-based browsers can still see the data. Cool!

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do people still insist on doing this? I prefer to remap all fonts to two (a serif and a sans) that are much easier for me to read. When people use these silly font+glyph combos I never use their software. The one rare exception is GitHub. I still wish people would just use SVG.

Edit: Why was this down-voted? Is this not a legitimate concern? It is worth mentioning that I remap my fonts to help my dyslexic brain keep track of the baseline.

Edit2: It is also worth noting that this font does degrade quite gracefully and my problem lies more with the paradigm than this particular font.

<comment><USER4> "Insist"? Because it's fun, and useful. "When people use these silly font+glyph combos I never use their software." That's fine. Don't.

<comment><USER3> You are aware it breaks accessibility, right?

<comment><USER5> I'd argue it's one of the better options from an accessibility viewpoint - from a screen reader perspective, you'll get the raw numbers. If the chart was an image, you'd get nothing.

<comment><USER3> That is a good point. This font does degrade gracefully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this set--we've been using them at Loudpixel for quite some time (even before they were bought by FontFont). I use them primarily in Illustrator for our custom research reports and publications: <http://loudpixel.com/sugarfree/>

<comment><USER7> I'm also a fan .. so much so, that I'm mid-way integrating harfbuzz into MOAI so that I can use Chartwell in games with ease and pleasure ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is the license like? It looked like per-user. Does this mean they do not wish it to be embedded on a web page? Can web browsers parse these OTF ligatures? Anybody have any experience here?

<comment><USER9> It would probably be a bad idea to embed this in a web page just for technical reasons, but for avoidance of doubt: fonts that you have to buy licenses for are virtually never embeddable directly. As a rule of thumb, if a technically capable person could in a short amount of time recover the original font from your web page and use it in their own work, you're materially violating the font's license.

This isn't just how this graphing font works; it's how virtually all professional typefaces work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a really cute hack.

That said, the pricing is absurd. There are numerous data analysis and graphing programs that produce better looking, more customizable charts and graphs with a simpler UI, most of which cost significantly less than $129 despite being much more powerful.

<comment><USER4> It's not really about producing charts, it's about putting charts where you normally couldn't. World primary energy use by %: Oil 34.77, Coal 29.36, NG 23.76, Nuke 5.47, Hydro 6.63 █▇▅▁▂

<comment><USER11> how did you do that?

<comment><USER12> That's how we used to make GUIs. Miss those days.

<comment><USER4> Close :) That was <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437> (or the Unix equivalent I guess). I used the Unicode symbols that roryokane mentioned above, because it has more options for the height of a block (not just half- blocks). You can get Unicode versions of the older drawing symbols from this page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Latin_character_sets_%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Latin_character_sets_%28computing%29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought this was really cool, until I saw that it cost $129.... Realistically, who would buy this? I'm assuming that because it is proprietary, it can not be used on the Internet, and if you don't have to cater to arbitrary OSes, why not use grh software?

<comment><USER14> $129 is actually very reasonable for a font. I've seen individual fonts several times that and you could only use them in print.

<comment><USER13> I am a type nerd; I've bought my share of typefaces in my time. This offers no discernable advantage over traditional chart generation. It only makes sense as a web font, and even then, it's a hack. I just don't see it worth the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What software aside from Adobe products would allow me to use the font like this?

<comment><USER16> TextEdit has great support for OpenType

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is there any particular reason the link is HTTPS, especially considering that the page contains no sensitive content, and a warning about non-SSL content when it's loaded?

<comment><USER9> Because it's on a site that accepts credit cards and has a prominent "Buy" link on the page itself.

<comment><USER17> I guess that makes sense, but doesn't the mixed content warning make it moot? Doesn't that mean unauthenticated javascript can be inserted?

<comment><USER9> They should fix that, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What an interesting idea. Surely this must take advantage of some in-font scripting… if I remember correctly there is some type of ECMAScript variant inside OpenType.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cool idea, but should offer a free version to spread the adoption. The premium version could offer more chart styles.

</comment><comment><USER20> FONTastic

</comment><comment><USER21> This is really nice! Any case studies, preferably HTML, where I can see this in work? :)

<comment><USER6> This isn't a web font and is mostly used in print (InDesign, Illustrator, etc...). Not sure if it's even licensed for the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Something I do not understand. Is Photoshop/Illustrator needed for this?

<comment><USER7> The chart items are implemented in the font as ligatures, which are (in a nutshell) elements that can be overlaid over other fonts in order to give them special inflection/meaning .. instead of a carat or so on, the ligature elements of the font file are filled with perfectly scaled graph figures, per datum, so that you can address the values for the graph in ligature terms .. +20+10+30+20, etc.

When you do that, and select Chartwell as the font, you get a working font - in Illustrator, or any font-display program that supports setting the Text style for .ttf fonts ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is rad!

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish it was free :(</comment>


Skype's Been Hijacked in China, and Microsoft Is O.K. With It - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/100868-skypes-been-hijacked-in-china-and-microsoft-is-o-dot-k-dot-with-it

<comment><USER2> Frankly, I'm surprised they even bothered to do the censorship client-side. I always assumed _all_ my messages and calls were sent to the skype server, where they most definitely did keep a copy of the data (I can, after all, see my message history.)</comment>


Asteroid that 'could end human life' is heading for Earth, scientists say - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/huge-asteroid-that-could-end-the-world-is-defying-gravity-as-it-moves-towards-earth-scientists-say-9670910.html <comment><USER2> Imagine the stir this article would create with an honest headline: "866 years from now, there's a 1 in 4,000 chance that an asteroid will hit earth."</comment>


Show HN: Couldn't afford GPUs as a student. Built my own cloud GPU provider - <AUTHOR> Last semester while working on deep learning side projects (most notably a TensorFlow CharRNN chatbot trained on ~500k of my own text messages) I'd always come across the same problem: I couldn't afford GPUs as a broke college student.
After being fed up spending more money on cloud resources than I did on food, I decided to build my own cloud GPU provider with prices ~3-5x less than AWS, GCP, and Azure.
This was done by aggregated underutilized servers from different hosting providers across the world and developing a layer of abstraction over their heterogenous hardware, then letting people use it for far cheaper than AWS.
It's live at https://vectordash.com - you can create a Linux VM within seconds.
Any feedback or feature requests would be much appreciated and happy training! <comment><USER2> NVidia hates this one simple trick.

</comment><comment><USER3> You have ~500k personal text messages?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple stores all of your iMessages in a nifty MySQL database hidden away deep in your applications folder. Since I got an iPhone ~4 years ago, it was about ~300 messages back and forth per day. (yes, I may have a texting problem!). I actually wanted to prank my friends by wrapping the model in a Twilio API, telling people I got a new phone number, and waiting to see how long it would take them to realize they weren't actually texting me.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Automated, scheduled, website screenshots to your inbox - <AUTHOR> http://blit.xyz/ <comment><USER2> Cool. I think there is a missed opportunity with onboarding. Seems like it would be worth testing out a landing page where instead of "Signup" is the CTA, the act of creating a schedule is the CTA. Maybe something like, "What link would you like to follow?" then prompting a "What frequency?" then "What's your email?"

So you know where I'm coming from - I wanted to see it in action, hit signup, saw I needed to do the whole user registration email/password dance as step #1 and bounced out. Too much friction for me, as I was a casual visitor with an unknown use case at the moment. Maybe once I see it in action I would discover use cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could do pretty much the same thing by running something like wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltoimage from cron.

Like blit, this will "even take screenshots behind login forms" if you login with Firefox, export cookies, and provide the --cookie-jar argument, but without charging $5/mo.

[1]: [http://wkhtmltopdf.org/](http://wkhtmltopdf.org/)

<comment><USER4> I actually can't tell if this comment is serious, or sarcastically referencing the dropbox comment from a few years ago.

<comment><USER5> Either way, it's a great way to show how developers see new services. There are a lot of things easy for developers that aren't easy for everybody else, but everybody else would pay for an easy way to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm the founder of [https://linkpeek.com](https://linkpeek.com) and "email web page screenshots" was on my "idea" Trello board for over 3 years.

I'm actually happy somebody else created it. : ) Good luck with your launch!

<comment><USER7> is linkpeek a profitable business? what's the use cases for screenshot services?

<comment><USER6> Yes LinkPeek makes me profits. The use case appears to vary a _lot_ between customers. Either this is an indicator that I have not targeted or found my market or I have not marketed to my target properly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be super cool to add multiple browser engines and specify a site map/bulk list of subpages

<comment><USER8> Also a post to slack option

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about only sending a screenshot on page changes?

<comment><USER10> That sounds very much like [https://visualping.io/](https://visualping.io/)

<comment><USER11> Or [https://percy.io/](https://percy.io/)

<comment><USER12> [https://backtrac.io/](https://backtrac.io/) is another one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems nice, simple, and cheap enough. I did something similar with phantomjs (no email). I agree with other comments that change detection and a slack integration would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER14> Screenshots behind login forms = non-secure transfer of usernames/passwords?

<comment><USER15> You'd have to part with some sort of security token to make this possible so I'd say you need to trust the site or set up a limited access account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's the expected use case for this?

<comment><USER17> I've signed up. I help run a news-based site which changes on a daily basis; a complete history of screenshots to show both evolution of the site and the news that we covered will be most welcome. I know I could have set this up myself, but this service makes it very easy.

<comment><USER18> Would care to share what website is it?

Also, do you think this service would be of value to you? [https://www.bugmuncher.com/](https://www.bugmuncher.com/)

I am helping the founder with some marketing research. Thanks!

<comment><USER19> That's a pretty shameless plug, but I might have use for this service, so thanks for sharing I guess. I especially like the 'freeloader' pricing plan xD

<comment><USER18> Since I doing it for someone else, it is easier to be shameless :)

And thanks for trying!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For some reason this website is blocked on my company's network.

"The site you are trying to access may pose a security threat..."

Maybe (hopefully not) they blanket block certain TLD's. Anyone else experiencing this?

<comment><USER21> All .xyz (and most of the new gTLDs) are blocked by Forcepoint Security on our corporate network as "Elevated Exposure - Sites that camouflage their true nature or identity, or that include elements suggesting latent malign intent"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am very happy you have a free version!

I am currently adding screen size responsiveness to my website, working from my phone (don't have access to proper computer right now) so this is exactly what I need!

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm getting HTTPS errors on visit. Your connection is not private

Attackers might be trying to steal your information from blit.xyz (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

</comment><comment><USER24> Your landing page is lacking metadata, probably worth adding to attract clicks when sharing on slack/friends.

<comment><USER25> Interested 3rd party... What metadata would you say is essential?

<comment><USER26> Good ones to start with:

og:image

og:title

og:description

[https://blog.kissmetrics.com/open-graph-meta- tags/](https://blog.kissmetrics.com/open-graph-meta-tags/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What browser engine does it use? Couldn't find that from the site.

<comment><USER28> Probably PhantomJS, so Chromium? Just a guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting! Typo: Recepients => Recipients

</comment><comment><USER30> can't logout.</comment>


Ask HN: Part-time Developers - <AUTHOR> Why do you rarely see companies looking for part-time developers?  It seems like if you hired a developer for 20 hours a week, you might be able to get the 20 most efficient hours from that developer but still only pay half the going wage.  Additionally, you wouldn't incur the benefits costs of a full-time employee.  Are there any good examples of this being attempted? <comment><USER2> It would be harder to extract unpaid overtime, coordinate meeting and facilitate cross training. Not only that, but it's more difficult to manage and allocate folks when there are four 1/2 time workers instead of 2 full timers.

</comment><comment><USER3> You have a team of 4, 2 of them work Monday, Tuesdays, 2 of them work Thursdays, Fridays. How to manage?

<comment><USER4> Why would you ever need full week coverage? Just tell hires that Monday Tuesday is the schedule. It's not like factory work where the machines need to run constantly.

<comment><USER5> "Why would you ever need full week coverage?"

Because critical issues happen and typically businesses want them solved ASAP rather than waiting a week til people come in again.

<comment><USER4> This is development we're talking about, not ops. Make sure your deployment plan includes rollback capability, then let ops do what ops does. Almost never should you encounter a _dev_ issue that needs emergency code pushed in less time than it takes to make a phone call and get someone to remote in.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fast food slows learning, study shows - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/fast-food-slows-learning-study-shows/

<comment><USER2> No. There is a correlation between slow learning and fast food. It doesn't prove causation.

I think it's more likely to parents who are lazy or busy feed their kids fast food, and those parents are also too lazy or busy to be involved with kids' schooling.

There have been lots of studies showing that parenting is incredibly important for educational development (more so than teaching).</comment>


DIY Sleep Apnea Screening - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MarvSchultz/diy-sleep-apnea-screening-7e03c607c7e <comment><USER2> For those that are interested in taking a home sleep study, you can get them for far less than the $500 referenced in the article. I used RPM[1] myself; the test is $150. You can pay with an FSA or HSA card if you happen to have one. If you have a doctor's referral, they'll send the results to your doctor and they can interpret the test results and determine if you have sleep apnea and if a prescription for CPAP or anything is necessary. If you don't have a doctor's referral, they'll provide an interpretation from a sleep doctor and any necessary prescription (if warranted) to purchase the necessary equipment for treatment.

They also sell CPAP/APAP equipment themselves, and offer some of the most competitive rates I've seen. Plus run pretty frequent promotions.

[1] [https://www.rpmhst.com/](https://www.rpmhst.com/)</comment>


Why all SEOs should learn programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2011/04/seo-learn-programming-11.htm

<comment><USER2> SEOs will look at you like a wizard and clients will throw money at you if you can nail both those skill sets.

Sample SEO task, anonymized: identify the most populated 1,000 US cities for which our DB does not currently include articles. This is a one-week task for some SEOs. (Asking how someone would do it would make for a good SEO interview question.)</comment>


Employee compensation in a startup without funding - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on the software side of a startup that I feel has a lot of potential, but I'm conflicted because those in charge have asked me to sign an NDA that gives away the rights to anything I produce for the company. Normally I'd sign it without much hesitation, but the startup is in an early stage with no funding, and management will not agree to set any terms for current or future compensation (i.e. I am trusting that they will fairly compensate myself and others who are working with me). I think this company is headed in the right direction, so what are my options for making sure that if the startup succeeds I'll actually see a return on my time investment, and making sure the founders can't just use my contributions for their personal gain? <comment><USER2> You an employment contract which gives you stock, and a shareholder agreement, right? There's your guarantee that you see some benefit from the work you do for the company.

If not, what are you doing there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, no, I don't have one. The founders are holding off on cash and equity compensation until after funding has come in. They seem like honest guys, but of course only they know for sure.

<comment><USER3> Looks like you're being too nice. Why does giving equity depend on having funding? And why should you sign a formal NDA while your compensation depends on a mere verbal promise?

You should probably insist -- diplomatically -- on a contract specifying deferred salaries and equity. Say, something that does not screw the company in case it doesn't get any revenues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a tricky one. Have you thoroughly discussed your concerns with the management? Sometimes there is rational reasoning behind things that seem unfair. I believe that being able to communicate about things like this openly and establishing trust can be quite important in determining your success in resolving this concern.

<comment><USER5> In my first company, I didn't give equity agreements to my employees... IMO, it's one of the stupidest things I have ever done because we lost the trust with the employees and ended up losing productivity. If the founders are educated, they will protect the best interest of the company using vesting clauses and legal firms. My guess is that the people are either inexperienced at running a company or they have something up their sleeves for having you sign an NDA without a vesting agreement.</comment></comment>


Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/09/apple-macbook-air-macbook-pro-updates/ <comment><USER2> 99%+ of my usage of the touchbar is pressing escape, adjusting screen brightness, speaker volume, or accessing music controls.

All of these worked flawlessly when I had physical keys, but now it's hard to know what I'm pressing without looking, and sometimes the controls become unresponsive to touches or drags.

I'm a programmer/business owner, so perhaps it's useful for other sorts of creative professionals, but it feels like a total gimmick to me.

I applaud Apple's innovative spirit, but the touchbar wasn't useful at launch, it isn't useful now, and they don't seem to have put any effort into making it better. I hope they kill it with the next Macbook pro release and just go the touchscreen route like everyone else.

<comment><USER3> Why on earth do I need to tap twice to adjust the screen brightness? I couldn't find a way to just have two increase/decrease buttons. Why can't I adjust how long the touchbar stays active for? Why does it disappear at all? I can't imagine the touchbar would exist in its current form if Steve were alive.

<comment><USER4> Turns out if you do a small rightwards/leftwards swipe on the brightness or volume buttons, then you can increase or decrease them by one notch without opening the slider.

It's not an intuitive or discoverable command.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but that's still two gestures instead of one.

<comment><USER5> You don't need to tap then swipe, just swipe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna jump in front of this.

Readers of this site are mostly "hackers," however mutated or dumbed-down that term has become over the years, correct? Everyone here has their windows and spaces just so, a full complement of shortcuts and trackpad gestures, and if they're serious about the Macintosh tools like TextExpander.

As standard as GUIs are, we've all experienced a moment of disorientation when borrowing another person's computer. The more experienced and skilled that other person is, the greater that disorientation due to the amount of "hacking" they've done on their own environment.

So how come this impulse stops at the Touch Bar?

I've hacked the hell out of mine. I've mapped inscrutable keyboard commands like cmd-opt-ctrl-D to context sensitive buttons, included globals for quick terminal visors and development tools and password managers… it's slick as hell and I hate giving it up when I occasionally opt for the external keyboard at home.

The Touch Bar is amazing, you just need to hack the damn thing. Yeah, Apple should have done a better job making it more useful out of the box, but it's possible to do some really wild stuff with it.

map your Caps Lock key to Escape and go to town. [https://github.com/vas3k/btt-touchbar-presets](https://github.com/vas3k/btt- touchbar-presets)

<comment><USER7> I am a touch typist. I never look down at the keyboard, ever. The only time the Touch Bar is involved is when I accidentally switch tabs because the Touch Bar buttons trip even while you're pressing the 2 or 3 key on the keyboard, and then I'm lost in a different tab than the one I was working on in the first place.

Is there a preset that never shows _anything_ on the touch bar, _ever_ , except for the Escape key and the "global" brightness/volume buttons? Can this be done in, like, _five seconds_?

If not, then I might Frisbee this computer straight out the window. If so, I would love to know how.

<comment><USER8> System Preferences > Keyboard > Customize Touch Bar (at bottom). Drag off buttons you don't want, drag on buttons you do.

Not 5 seconds, but probably less than a minute.

<comment><USER7> This works for "global" buttons but VSCode, Firefox, etc. put their junk on their anyway. I want all of it gone. Some applications so conveniently let you turn them off (VSCode is one of them, now that I've looked)--it's absolutely ridiculous that I have to do it for every application and I want it all to GTFO, globally. How does one do that?

EDIT: So I found it - if, in the Keyboard preferences pane, you pick "Expanded Control Strip" instead of "App Controls", apps can't awfulify the touch bar. I now have haptically null touch points that do what I expect a Mac's top row to do, which is worse than having keys that do what I expect a Mac's top row to do, but it isn't as bad as it was at the start of the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I will never ever buy a MacBook Pro if they don't get rid of the TouchBar. The sheer arrogance of Apple to think they know better than their customers infuriates me. I only use a 2018 MacBook Pro because work supplied it, and because my 2015 MacBook battery was dying and the only option the IT department gave me was to upgrade to the 2018 model.

I may simply go back to Windows at home if that's the case, and will use a Windows Laptop at work if possible. Seriously, fuck Apple for this arrogance.

<comment><USER10> I'm still salty about the magsafe.

<comment><USER11> MagSafe was nice, but I'm a big fan of being able to use an industry standard $30 charger with 60W USB-C, 3x USB-A ports, and a removable charging cable.

Having to replace a whole $80 proprietary charging brick because the cable connection frayed was a pretty shitty deal.

<comment><USER9> I have collected 4 magsafe chargers from the various companies I've worked at because when I returned my laptop or got an extra, they never asked for the chargers back. It was very convenient, but now that I'm on the 2018 USB-C one, I have to throw all of them away via e-waste because I have literally no use for them.

<comment><USER11> You could try eBay or Craigslist for those.

Since Apple never licensed out MagSafe, the market has been full of poorly built counterfeits rather than anything from reputable manufacturers. That's another thing I don't miss.

Anyway, I'd bet there's still some market for used MagSafe chargers to be used with older macs whose chargers have frayed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wasted two hours the other night because of the touchbar.

I had turned my macbook pro's screen brightness down to complete black as I was using an external monitor only, and in a dark environment. Some time later I happened to restart my machine, and both the internal and external displays came up completely black.

The touchbar displayed only "Esc", without the normal brightness control. I had to figure out from memory how to log in without being able to see the screen, i.e. exactly how far I needed to move the pointer on the trackpad to click on my username, without any indication of what state the UI was in. There was no controls on the touchbar to adjust the display brightness and an external Apple USB keyboard which _did_ have the brightness control keys was not recognised. Fixing it required both an SMC and PRAM reset.

I would pay a significant premium for a macbook pro without the touchbar. I've had other cases where the machine appears to be (but isn't necessarily) bricked and there's no indicator lights anywhere to show what's going on, even if the machine has power. I hope with Ive's departure they'll dial it back a bit and start building machines which might be slightly less beautiful but include some of the more practical affordances.

/rant

<comment><USER13> Hah. I have dozens of horror stories like that. Listening to Spotify at work, headphone jack plugged in to the Macbook. Get a phone call from the wife, need to run to meet her in the restaurant in the city. Close macbook, pull out headphone jack, grab a soda from company fridge on the way down,run into a semi crowded subway car. Remember that I had Tomcat running in IntelliJ, need to kill it. Sit down, open the Macbook. Now Macbook is blasting Norwegian death metal at full volume to the entire subway car while I'm trying to make the touch ID stupidity work with my wet finger with no way to reach the volume controls. Embarrassed, close the macbook, music inexplicably takes 30 seconds to shut down. Sigh.

I don't even want to go into the horrors that is working in vi with touchbar escape key...

<comment><USER14> You need automute, buddy [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing- awkward-si...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing-awkward- situations/id1118136179?mt=12)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am a developer. The Touch Bar is useless to me. I remapped Caps lock to Esc expecting to be annoyed, but still hit Esc nonetheless because it works. And I deftly adjust volume using the Touch Bar slider using press-and-slide (not tap then pick-and-slide), relying on the += key for tactile positioning (but the position itself is largely muscle memory by now)

I am also a musician. The Touch Bar is fantastic to adjust tuneables in GarageBand, without the gorilla arm or wobbly screen effect you get on touchscreens.

If it were annoying to me I'd just remap the two or three functions I use as a developer to some keyboard shortcut. After all I'm a developer, I think I can handle that fairly swiftly by myself if no tool were available (and I'm fairly convinced there is).

<comment><USER7> _> The Touch Bar is fantastic to adjust tuneables in GarageBand, without the gorilla arm or wobbly screen effect you get on touchscreens._

I futzed around with the touch bar in Logic when I got one and wrote it off almost immediately. Logic Remote (which works with GarageBand, AFAIK) already exists and works with an iPad. Clear labels, clear text, manipulating multiple elements easily at once--it's a _better solution_ than what they tried to wedge in with the touch bar.

The bigger problem with the touch bar is that, as a developer, I end up hitting the touch bar controls all the time. VSCode "helpfully" has previous tab/next tab buttons on it--and so when I try to hit 2 or 3 on the keyboard, sometimes I brush against them and suddenly I'm disoriented and typing in a completely different tab.

This machine is a work laptop. (Typically my music stuff is done on a 2012 rMBP, which is why I already had Logic and Logic Remote set up.) When I started, I asked for a half-the-price Thinkpad on which to run FC30 and was denied because "everyone else uses a Mac." I love the job but between the garbage touchbar and the hand-wreckingly shallow keyboard travel the computer they gave me it's easily the worst part of my day.

<comment><USER16> > hand-wreckingly shallow keyboard travel

Now, I don't disagree with your sentiment, touch bar is definitely a nuisance without any superior use case over the buttons that were there before... But why do you think this keyboard wrecks hands? It is definitely the fastest keyboard I've typed on, and shallow keyboards are definitely inherently easier on the hands by any metric I can think of

<comment><USER7> I'm a keyboard pounder; it's just the way I've always typed. The best laptop keyboard I've found is the Alienware 13/15\. The next best are any of the standard-travel Lenovos.

1mm travel keys just leave me thumping my fingertips off the laptop chassis all the time. It hurts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> To me the bigger news here is killing the MacBook. It's a weird product -- crazy overpriced, and with a bunch of concessions in terms of the design, but I like that it's extremely light (33% lighter than a MacBook Air) and has no fan. I had hoped never to buy another laptop with a fan again. Yes, I know performance sucks, which is why I run most of my code on a server instead of locally on my computer. I think really the best other options without a fan are all Chromebooks.

I would guess Apple will revive the fanless model when they switch to ARM processors in 1-2 years.

<comment><USER18> I'm a bit disappointed and surprised by this news. Agree with everything you said about the price being ridiculous and the performance being inadequate, but it was all about the form factor - what a _gorgeous_ machine for travel- friendly computing.

I always viewed it as a v0.1 of the future of their light travel-friendly laptop model, and fully expected it to receive incremental performance upgrades and eventually replace the Air. I was hoping that in a few more years, I'd be able to buy one of these as a complement for travel or maybe even to replace (depending on the weight / performance tradeoff) my 13-inch MacBook Pro.

I assume, since they only gave it a minor upgrade once in like 3/4 years and the price was pretty ridiculous, that they just couldn't make it work. I hope, as you say, they can figure it out, perhaps using their own ARM CPUs, and eventually relaunch this model or continue making the Air thinner and lighter with the same performance.

<comment><USER19> May be a sign laying groundwork for an ARM Mac- the 12" MacBook is the obvious target for initial replacement by an ARM variant. By not having a side-by-side Intel-ARM model Apple minimizes market competition and direct performance comparisons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When the Touch Bar is discussed the discussion often turns into "is the Touch Bar useful or not?" When the crux of the whole issue is that they removed a row of keys (F- keys and escape key), because the new oversized touchpad needed to be 10mm bigger.

If they had simply left all the keys, shrunk the touchpad, and added the Touch Bar above the keyboard, people who didn't like the Touch Bar would simply choose not to use it (or even shut it off) and people who loved it could continue to do so.

That's the issue. Not the Touch Bar itself's benefit, that's a red herring.

<comment><USER21> While this is true, I am also put off by the increased attack surface of a proprietary embedded OS (watchOS) running in the touchbar, outside the control of the main OS and by extension, not under my control either.

Given how much everyone around here hates similar things like UEFI and the Intel IME (with good reason), I'm surprised this one seems to slip under the radar. Probably because everyone is much more incensed about losing necessary physical keys. Classic misdirection.

<comment><USER22> The T1 chip also serves as an authentication chip, a disk controller, and can be used for video encoding/decoding.

<comment><USER21> That's kinda the problem. It's a secure enclave (potentially a good thing) but a far too complex one with too many responsibilities and capabilities.

I am of the opinion that the secure enclave for fingerprint reading should be something that updates ideally never, and requires a hardware jumper to be set if one is absolutely necessary.

Ideally I'd like the firmware to be open source too. Those are two related but different issues though.

<comment><USER22> It's not like the chip isn't based on years of work. It based on the same technology and design that's been in iPhones since 2013.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Disclaimer: I like the touchbar. I swapped escape and caps lock, installed Pock, and never looked back.

This is my last MacBook. Xubuntu on a Thinkpad x1 carbon works great for everything I do, at a fraction of the price, with a keyboard the doesn't stop working with dust, and with more than just USB-C.

<comment><USER24> I just got an x1 extreme, and although it takes a bit more fiddling than an x1 carbon to get running with Linux, it's an amazing experience after my macbook air. Hackers, if you want to move away from the mac ecosystem, take a look at thinkpads running linux.

<comment><USER25> I was wondering if you could please provide some more details about the fiddling? Were you having issues with the graphics card, audio, sleep mode, etc.?

It looks like a great laptop, and I'm tempted to get one instead of a new MacBook. But it might also be dangerous to get the latest model if Linux devs haven't had time to support it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Removal of the function keys actually dates back to Jobs

"When I invited Jobs to take some time away from NeXT to speak to a group of students, he sat in the lotus position in front of my fireplace and wowed us for three hours, as if leading a séance. But then I asked him if he would sign my Apple Extended Keyboard. He burst out: "This keyboard represents everything about Apple that I hate. It's a battleship. Why does it have all these keys? Do you use this F1 key? No." And with his car keys he pried it right off. "How about this F2 key?" Off they all went. "I'm changing the world, one keyboard at a time," he concluded in a calmer voice." [Steve Jurvetson on Steve Jobs 2011-10-06 By Steve Jurvetson.]

</comment><comment><USER27> The Touch Bar was what finally pushed me over the edge to remap caps lock to escape. I'm shocked at how much I enjoy ESC being close to the home row (I'm not even a big vim user). For this change alone I am glad to have the Touch Bar.

<comment><USER28> I use caps lock as control. It would be hard to relearn that muscle memory.

<comment><USER29> As an old Sun keyboard user, Caps Lock as Control feels right. That's also where it is on my HHKB keyboard.

As a vim user, escape is too high up on most modern keyboards anyway. The ADM-3A terminal vi was invented on placed it to the left of the Q key, which was a lot easier to reach. HHKB puts it where the tilde key traditionally is, which is pretty close to the original intent of vi.

Remapping tilde on touchbar MacBook Pros would be a good solution, if there was an obvious other place to put tilde/backtick.

<comment><USER30> During the 80s there was such a plethora of keyboard variants, I learned never to trust where ESC would be; you can use control-[ on most keyboards to generate the same key. When the MacBookPro went useless for ESC, my muscle memory just switched over. (This is somewhat conditional on control being next to 'A', which is the only place it should ever be!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's unfortunate that so many design decisions are made with little regard for the true utility of what's being designed, of which the touch bar has essentially zero.

<comment><USER32> What utility did the previous bar have?

Volume changing? Screen brightness? Those are better with the touchbar.

Escape key for vim or whatever? Switch your caps lock with escape! You should have been doing that the whole time!

The actual function keys? I don't use them enough to need them showing up all the time. And an extra key to get them up again is no big deal.

I agree that the touch bar doesn't _add_ a whole lot of utility, but I can't see the argument of it removing any utility.

<comment><USER33> > Volume changing? That's better with the touchbar.

Not really. My wife has low vision. Changing the volume used to be a muscle memory sort of thing. Now it's an awkward fumbling mess, especially if she's in the middle of a meeting and trying to mute her laptop.

We've locked the buttons to a static position so she knows where to press but there's still no tactile feedback.

<comment><USER32> Accessibility is a good reason to not like it, that's very fair. That alone puts it from my original neutral position to it being a negative overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Imagine a random manufacturer, let's say HP, was the one bringing a touchbar to their notebooks. Some press, a lot of laughter but quickly, nobody would talk anymore about them and/or buy that notebooks.

With Apple, people keep on complaining OVER years. The touchbar, the prices, the crappy keyboards... the reason? IDK, maybe they are locked-in and can't move to another platform but there is only one single reason to be locked-in on macOS: if you develop apps for iOS, otherwise every other platform is currently way better and switching is a matter of days. Once I had the keyboard trouble on a $4K MBP I switched instantly and never returned to macOS.

<comment><USER35> I'm addicted to CMD+C/CMD+V.

I've tried making it happen in Linuxes and windows, but always with failures in one app or another, or having to configure each individual application I use independently.

The keyboard is _the_ reason I love mac for running my Linux clusters. If I didn't have that, I would have the fantastic UX features like instant scrolling. Scrolling anywhere else is a choppy and laggy nightmare for me.

<comment><USER34> Just put Ctrl on Caps and then ctrl+c and +v is on par or or even better. Don't know anyone who is using the original control. Even better: create a tap/hold key with Esc/Ctrl on Caps. Then you have a superior keyboard experience because the alt keys are better positioned and usable. On Macs you have just Cmd as the only sane/reachable modifier key compared to crtl and alt on Windows/Linux. However you could also somehow get this setup on a Mac with fiddling with Karabiner. But here again Windows' Autohotkey is superior.

Re choppy scrolling, I have a Windows precision touchpad on my notebook and it's super close to a MBP but what is even much better than a MBP touchpad: get a Logitech mouse with a free wheel eg the G502, best scrolling experience and buttersmooth.

I thought also there is nothing else than macOS but there is even more good stuff outside. eg window management on Windows or linux eg with i3 there is just 100x better. on macos it's a joke to nonexistent.

<comment><USER35> Pinkies suck. alt on windows was fine, but ctrl's keyboard mappings on windows / linux has always been a pain for me.

<comment><USER34> You are faster pressing Caps with your pinkie than Cmd with your thumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The non-touch bar pro that was previously available was a pretty old model, right? First generation butterfly keyboard?

If that's the case I'm not sure it makes sense to read too much into this. They will probably reintroduce a non-touch bar option when they refresh the pro line later this year.

<comment><USER37> I believe it's the second gen butterly keyboard. It's a good laptop for every day use, but it came out late 2016, pretty long ago now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I got a touchbar model immediately when it was released from my job. It arrived shipped next-day-air in the morning, and by lunch, I gave it to another employee who wanted an upgrade. Haven't touched another Mac since then, and this reinforces(to me) that I made the right decision. I don't know any of you work with those things... That design decision solidified for me that Apple wasn't interested in my demographic(sysop/programmer/etc) using their laptops.

That said, I did get a lot of "oohs" and "aahs" from other employees coming to look at it. Those went away when I'd open vim and ask them to take it for a test drive.

</comment><comment><USER39> One step forward, two steps back. They're finally getting rid of the horrible butterfly keyboard in favor of a more traditional scissor switch, but they're gonna make damn sure you have a touch bar.

<comment><USER40> I'm pretty sure the keyboard mechanism has not changed in this revision.

<comment><USER39> No, not in this revision. I was speaking more generally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Apple kills the (s/non-Touch Bar//) MacBook-Pro.

There is nothing "Pro" about a touch bar, even for fields outside of software. Apparently Ive's departure means Apple is _not_ returning to function-over- form.

<comment><USER42> Wholeheartedly disagree. I use the Touch Bar religiously for media production including scrubbing through audio/video and adjusting dials/filters/tones and I've remapped it to include my most used functions in things like VSCode and even iTerm.

I get that it's not for everyone but to generalize and say that it's not "Pro" is delusional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> As an oftentimes Emacs user and a sometimes Vim user, I need more keys not less. I especially want more modifiers in consistent locations. Laptops frequently move these around, put a fn key where ctrl normally goes, or don't even provide a ctrl key for the right hand. Apple does all of this.

Further, why does the spacebar have to be so wide? It makes the Alt and System (mapped to Hyper, Meta, leader keys whatever) harder to reach without looking. Microsoft offers an new ergo keyboard with a split keyboard, but then doesn't provide a way to map the left and right pieces to separate bindings.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've asked a lot of non-programmers about the Touch Bar. Musicians, graphic designers, teachers, writers, managers, architects. If I describe the Touch Bar, they are able to confirm that their laptop has one but are not conscious of it as a significant change in design. It's just a different way to change the volume. They are neither aware that it's supposed to be more useful than that, nor aware of why anybody would be bothered by it. To them, having the Touch Bar or not is about as meaningful as whether their gas cap is on the left side of the car or the right.

</comment><comment><USER45> The Touch Bar is just poorly executed— for the gimmick instead of the experience. It would be good if it had haptic feedback and was activated by a force touch like the trackpad does.

Allow me to touch it without pressing anything. Let me slide my finger and feel a click whenever I "hover" a different button. Add an option to show me an indication on screen of what I'm hovering, so I don't have to look down. Then when I decide to "press" the button, trick my brain into thinking there's moving parts like the trackpad does.

Give me the buttons of the future.

The big problem for me is that it's a touch-screen instead. Keyboards and trackpads are designed to have you rest your hands on them until you press, so it's awkward to have something that doesn't let you "rest" on it. They both are meant to be used while looking directly at the screen, so it's annoying to have to look down to know what you're pressing.

</comment><comment><USER46> The answer is obvious to me.

Add back the physical top row, but keep the touch bar. Just put it above the physical top row.

I like the idea of the touch bar for customization and various use cases, but I don't do that now, because I want my top row to continue to act as simply and consistently as possible.

For example, the contextual menus for programs. I think the whole concept is really interesting and adds a cool layer of interaction. However, I don't want to give up my quick access to my normal functions like volume, expose, etc. So the end result is that I just turn all the contextual options off. So I've never had a chance to fall in love with the touch bar, because all I use it for is a crappy version of what my top row use to be.

<comment><USER42> As much as the Touch Bar doesn't bother me and having the physical F keys seems a step back to me, I think this is the right answer anyways. They'd appease both sides of the argument and they wouldn't lose much at all. Even if they had to make the trackpad a little smaller, it's fucking gigantic on the newest models so losing a small bit of it wouldn't hurt anyone at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Having talked to a lot of people... the Touch Bar is _not_ meant for regular computer users or for developers.

The Touch Bar is meant for _graphics, audio and film professionals_. That's the "Pro". It's an incredibly flexible "picker/slider" for colors, volumes, mixing, and so on.

I know HN hates the touch bar... and I personally have no use for it... but _we're not the market for it_. There is a market for it, but it's _not us_.

I think it's helpful to acknowledge that in these conversations, rather than act like Apple is making dumb decision in a vacuum.

(And I'm personally happy there's now a retina MacBook Air without it, which will probably be my next machine.)

<comment><USER48> Who are these graphics, audio, and film professionals who asked for a Touch Bar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is there any way to essentially lock the touchbar in a fixed configuration? Like I'm a programmer and willing to write a mac native app if that's what I have to do, but I want the same set of things there and I don't want other programs to be able to hijack the buttons I have locked there.

If I could do that, then I can live with it, since then it is just a massive battery drain instead of being a massive battery drain as well as extremely inconvenient.

<comment><USER50> That's doable in settings. Mine displays nothing but fn keys all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I have a conceptual issue with the Touch Bar. I'm struggling to understand what the Touch bar can achieve that a toolbar that exists on the screen would not be better at. Especially on a laptop with the great trackpads that the MacBooks have.

About the only benefit is that it doesn't take up screen space, but in that case a single trackpad gesture which brings up a touchbar like toolbar right where your mouse pointer is seems like a much nicer input mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER52> I initially got a macbook seven years ago to work at a mobile shop and dabble in iOS. I liked the form factor and the *nix basis, so I've stayed with them a bit.

Between the touch bar (which bothered me enough to downgrade my work laptop to not have it), keyboard problems, and migrating away from their BSD roots, I'm completely done. I don't care if Linux desktop is clunky or bad, at least I can use it on a laptop that doesn't suck.

</comment><comment><USER53> I dunno...the story is that Apple killed two machines today: \- The non- touchbar MacBook Pro (RIP, function row)

\- The 12" "MacBook" (which I adored, largely because it was so tiny)

What's strange is that it appears that this was a streamlining effort—but if you get into the weeds and look at the "base" model 13" MacBook Pro, it's not the same machine: it has two Thunderbolt ports, rather than four, despite sharing the same moniker as the higher-end MacBook Pro. Go up a model, and you get four for more money along with the better processor, which isn't immediately clear, either.

That means it's got fewer thunderbolt lanes, as well, which is a classic nickel and dime move that's going to make it even more confusing given most people just buy the base model.

Now, my question is: are they clearing the decks at the low-end 12" for a clamshell/ARM laptop? It seems incredibly obvious that it'll start at the bottom to avoid disrupting the pros.

</comment><comment><USER54> My laptop is connected to an external monitor and keyboard more than 90% of the time. I use the function keys on the external keyboard.

Is the touchbar useful? Is it good? Who cares, it is not getting used. Given Apple's butterfly keyboard issues using the laptop keyboard as your primary keyboard isn't really an option anyway. For the limited amount of time I use the laptop keyboard the touchbar certainly isn't worth it.

If Apple sold a decent external keyboard, not the fucking aluminum chiclet keyboard, with a touchbar I would certainly be willing to consider the touchbar on whatever merits it has, but as a tiny touch enabled 3rd screen above an infrequently used keyboard it is irrelevant. I, like many people, thought that the Optimus OLED keyboard with programmable dynamic keycaps was neat. I'd be willing to give a touchbar external keyboard a fair shake.

<comment><USER55> It just occurred to me that the situation with the Touch Bar is similar to what Apple has done with 3D Touch... it seems like Apple is making a bet that more complicated input devices are better, which is a total about face from their past positions. Notably the 1-button mouse, and the original buttonless iPhone.

I think it's a bad call. To me, these input devices create a lot of confusion for very little benefit. I think it's a sign Apple has given up on the philosophy of trying to make everything accessible to the average user.

They have gone over to Microsoft's philosophy, which was that UIs should be like an iceberg, with a deep well of hidden functionality for advanced users to discover, and then a separate "normal people" UI layered on top of that.

I think there's a MASSIVE opportunity right now for someone to build a new OS, designed around a very limited set of inputs, and a highly constrained widget library. With an emphasis on speed, putting as little as possible on the screen, and like Apple of old, having simple apps that let people do things pros typically do.

For example, you could design a UI that would allow you to easily cut together clips from multiple videos. This was hard, and then iMovie made it easy, but now it is hard again. Those kinds of features make good ads, and lead to good word of mouth.

Basically, take Steve Jobs' original strategy with the iMac/iPhone and do it over again. Apple has totally departed that path.

<comment><USER56> > it seems like Apple is making a bet that more complicated input devices are > better, which is a total about face from their past positions.

Swapping hardware buttons for touchscreen controls has been a huge success for Apple for over a decade, with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, even the Apple Watch. The Touchbar is just another step down that path.

It's arguable whether a fixed set of hardware "F" buttons are more usable, or well-labeled touchscreen buttons. Again, a decade of evidence suggests that software-defined touchscreen buttons are more usable. An iPad is much easier to use than a Mac. You can hand an iPad to a 5-year-old and they get it right away.

> They have gone over to Microsoft's philosophy, which was that UIs should be > like an iceberg, with a deep well of hidden functionality for advanced users > to discover, and then a separate "normal people" UI layered on top of that.

Apple invented that paradigm by adding keyboard shortcuts to a GUI. They have continued it by adding a command line interface and multitouch gestures to Mac OS.

The Touchbar is similar. If you take it out of the box it is simple and easy to use. But if you are an advanced user, there are all sorts of options to customize it.

<comment><USER57> > Swapping hardware buttons for touchscreen controls has been a huge success > for Apple for over a decade, with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, even the > Apple Watch. The Touchbar is just another step down that path.

It isn't a step down that path though. With the iPhone/iPod/iPad the new interface completely changes how you use the device (moving to a phone without physical keys for example). The Macbook touchbar doesn't do that, it just makes things a bit awkward by adding an additional way to interface with your device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Terrible news. Well I guess I'll cling to my non-touch bar Macbook Pro for as long as possible and hopefully they'll go back on this decision in the future...

</comment><comment><USER59> Damn, can we get a macbook that works? I think the touchbar is fundamentally flawed in that if I'm looking at the screen I can't look at the touchbar, and vice versa, and there's no tactile feedback at all, basically the opposite characteristics that a keyboard should have.

</comment><comment><USER60> > The Pro still starts at $1,299 ($1,199 for students) with 8GB of RAM

Well, using Linux makes more sense after new MBP specs, every time.

<comment><USER40> 8 GB of RAM isn't top-of-the-line, but it's plenty for a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Swore I'd never buy another Mac but bought one this week (had a Dell XPS15 for a year and a half) to supervise a cross-platform app development project and many things were annoying me with NixOS (clean but not quite there yet for desktop use and may never be: too many missing packages) which had replaced Gentoo (~biannual reinstall required due to portage rot), neither of which work perfectly on laptop hardware. (Also much of my Linux work is now embedded or remote and banks here in China require Windows VMs.) Wound up just going for it, not disappointed but fairly expensive as always.

It's true, the touch bar is annoying, and I am a _vi_ user so escape is critical. But it's not really any more annoying than adjusting between apple keyboards and PC keyboards: a bit of muscle memory. I just wish you could disable the whole thing entirely, at least the lights, while keeping the escape key. Haven't figured out right click on the touchpad yet, it's currently quite irritating. The press-to-drag brightness is kinda cool, and the fingerprint lock is also cute. The Mac is about 1/2 the weight of the Dell, although the Dell was last-year's model on sale 1.5 years ago so that's to be expected. My back will thank me on business trips. USB-C is the biggest physical adjustment, and I'm all for it. Yet to select an appropriate external keyboard (might buy Apple) or HDMI adaptor (won't buy Apple), happy to take recommendations.

<comment><USER62> I wrote a tool that I'd like your opinion of. It should solve your "OS rot" problem.

[https://godarch.com/](https://godarch.com/)

<comment><USER61> "Just use a VM/container/jail/dedicated machine" is a great solution to any problem except, now you have _n+1_ problems. I am a huge fan of functional/declarative environments, hence NixOS, but these approaches have limitations. General purpose computing's attraction isn't emulating single purpose microcontrollers...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The Touch Bar is all about accidentally grazing some unknown button with part of your hand and then trying to figure out what just happened and how to get back to the thing you were trying to do.

</comment><comment><USER64> Instead of the Touch Bar, I'd be happy if a new MBP had an ethernet port, usb ports, headphone ports, mini-display ports, an SD card slot, and a lock slot.

oh yeah, that's what my 2012 MBP has.

</comment><comment><USER65> Clicking the link to the article takes me to [https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...](https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc- session_4b296de7-acb9-4c29-9c91-37bc727642e9)

This is blocked at my DNS level. Why is engadget.com forwarding to this address?

I just unblocked guce.advertising.com and it forwarded to engadget, so this must be some sort of tracking system.

<comment><USER66> I came to say the same thing... that is super annoying. Happy to just not read the article in this case. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I'm a developer and love the Touch Bar. I've never had a problem pressing the escape key and I use VIM and other applications that make use of it on a regular basis.

While I'm not a fan of replacing physical controls with touch-sensitive counterparts in safety-critical settings like cars and airplanes I think the Touch Bar is a significantly underrated improvement that I use and enjoy constantly.

I wonder how many other users feel the same way but never comment?

</comment><comment><USER68> Lack of haptic feedback aside, the Touch Bar is objectively better than the function keys it replaced:

It can display more options, many different types of controls, and you can see what each control does without needing to memorize it or having to look it up like you would with the F# keys.

Why go back to a limited set of ambiguous numbers that do a different thing in each app? I can't even remember the last time I needed to use a F# key in a Mac app.

People saying they'd pay extra for a non-Touch Bar Mac, consider some free apps to customize it to your preferences:

[0] [https://medium.com/@brendanleglaunec/making-the-macbook- touc...](https://medium.com/@brendanleglaunec/making-the-macbook-touch-bar- useful-9ec93764fc40)

[1] [https://folivora.ai](https://folivora.ai) \- BetterTouchTool for customizing the Touch Bar, Trackpad, Magic Mouse etc.

[2] [https://pock.dev](https://pock.dev) \- Display the Dock in the Touch Bar + play controls + some status

</comment><comment><USER69> Apple ET: are customers actually surprised and delighted with the touch bar? I've yet to meet one who is.

</comment><comment><USER70> Is the baseline MacBook Air sufficient for a CS major? I don't want to spend extra for the pro.

<comment><USER71> I don't think you even need a MacBook Air. I've always used Linux for development. If you're not tied to MacOS, get a Thinkpad with Ryzen + Radeon. It will run better on Linux. If you want the MacOS experience, get a Air.

Irrespective of what you get, you cannot do serious compute on a laptop. Because actually using it at full power kills your battery.

<comment><USER72> "serious compute" is for servers. For programming homework, a Macbook Air is fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> For those of you who've remapped Caps Lock as Escape, what do you do when you need to type a long string of capital letters? Do you have some other key combination mapped to caps lock, or do you just hold shift the whole time?

<comment><USER74> In those rare occasions in sublime text I select all, cmd+k, cmd+u.

If I was typing all-cap constants, I just type the variable in lowercase and use the autocomplete feature

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> I genuinely love my Touchbar. It's an extension of my macbook.

I use it to show my active TODO, time and date, when I am on break and soon current calendar event running + Karabiner profile.

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac- os/tree/master/btt](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac- os/tree/master/btt)

People who like to hate on it, didn't invest time in learning that you can program it to show what you want. And as for physical keys, with Karabiner, there is no need for those keys as they are too far away from home row anyway.

<comment><USER76> I love to hate on it, because it is impossible to "program it to show what I want". I want keys I can feel. I want to not silently trigger whatever goddamn touchbar "button" because one of my fingers grazes over it. I want to be able to hit the appropriate "button" by touch.

"And as for physical keys, with Karabiner, there is no need for those keys as they are too far away from home row anyway."

Or you know, we could just have the physical keys.

So maybe slow your roll on how all of the haters just didn't "invest the time". Sometimes stuff doesn't work for people and it's not a learning curve issue.

I can appreciate that it may work for some folks. Maybe you should appreciate that it doesn't work for others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> How are they messing up hardware?! That's supposed to be their biggest strength.

My 5 year old macbook pro has a 128GB SSD. With the size of docker images and software modules that fills up in no time.

</comment><comment><USER78> I had to remap my ESC key to the caps lock button just so I can get a physical button because of the touchbar. This will only make that arrangement the default for all my setups.

</comment><comment><USER79> I have one the 13" non-touchbar, and am dissatisfied for other reasons, but actually kind of like the idea of it existing. I personally don't think I'd do anything with it, but as a developer, it seems neat to have another platform—or aspect of a platform—to build on and extend your apps into. Much like VSCode having extensions that allow you to order pizza while you're coding, the idea of it seems like something need to write code for.

</comment><comment><USER80> I can go to BestBuy and get a 1TB SSD for $140. Is there any reason to pay $200 more for the MacBook Pros with bigger SSDs, rather that buying the drive separately?

<comment><USER81> You won't be able to put that SSD you buy in the laptop.

<comment><USER80> I have a 2012 MacBook Pro, and I upgraded the SSD by myself. Has something changed? I see articles online that suggest it's still pretty easy to unscrew the cover and plug in a new SSD.

<comment><USER82> RAM and storage are soldered to the motherboard: [https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/501498/Is+it+possible+to...](https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/501498/Is+it+possible+to+upgrade+Memory+\(RAM\)+and+Storage+\(SDD\)+later#answer501500)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Hum, aren't there rumors that say we are going to have the refresh of the MacBook line this fall?

I would be sad is they do kill the MacBook 12".

<comment><USER84> They did kill it today. Not available anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> I wonder if this is going to encourage developers to finally make full use of the Touch Bar.

To date, support has been spotty, even within Apple's own programs. Now programs without Touch Bar support will stand out. It's not something that can be seen as a gimmick anymore, even if to many it is.

(Still, I think dumping the escape key was a mistake.)

</comment><comment><USER86> They also killed the regular Macbook in favor of the Air (which is a long time coming, but I wish they'd killed the Air instead).

I never understood why the Air and the standard Macbook continued to coexist, one of them had to go.

This makes their product line make a lot more sense:

Macbook Air, Macbook Pro (I'd probably drop the 'Air')

iMac, iMac Pro

Mac Mini, Mac Pro

</comment><comment><USER87> This is Apple's way of blowing out the last of their unpopular inventory. People are avoiding it, but they have laptops to move.

It will go away in a year or two, but they need to apply a marketing rationale (newer! better!) to their course change.

We all know it sucks, but PR says they need to save face.

</comment><comment><USER88> Apple not caring what developers want seems to me extension of developers not caring what users want.

</comment><comment><USER89> I find that an under appreciated use case for the touch bar is UI discovery. I'm a fairly savvy computer user, but there have been many times when using new software that the touch bar has shown me a feature that I did not know there was a shortcut for.

</comment><comment><USER90> Touch Bar as a concept is a good idea, but it should be an accessory, not a built-in thing.

It's the reason I use a Das Keyboard instead of the laptop keyboard when doing just about everything now. It's too easy to fat finger that blasted thing.

<comment><USER91> Used a Das, loved it, but was too loud for my environment. (Even brown with dampers) I did switch to the Magic keyboard with 10-key - ergonomics aside, works great, with all the F keys and shortcut keys you give up on MBP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Dude, I'm getting a Dell. And running MacOs in a VM for occasional ios dev.

</comment><comment><USER93> I wonder if this means that tech companies will start offering better Windows notebooks (maybe even *nix pre-installed notebooks) for use as a daily driver, as an alternative to the Macbook Pro offerings.

</comment><comment><USER81> I guess at least they've added a touchbar to the lowest end model instead of just removing that model from the lineup which is what I initially thought they'd do.

</comment><comment><USER94> Idea: Add gesture support.

Two finger slide for brightness or volume. Different from/to direction with 2+ fingers, maps to different functions, to ease use without looking down.

<comment><USER42> Eh? It already has gesture support. You can flick the volume and brightness buttons to change the levels one step at a time or you can drag on them to pop-up a slider control.

Unless you're suggesting global gestures where two-fingers anywhere on the TB would control volume. In that case, I'd have to see a use-case. I can see that going horribly wrong and being triggered accidentally all the time.

<comment><USER94> I meant multi finger gestures, similar to the touchpad.

If you hit anywhere on the Touch Bar (or maybe left/right side) with two fingers and drag, you could map to volume/brightness.

When you press the wrong key and drag, the buttons disappear and you have to wait a moment for it to clear, difficult UX if you aren't looking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Absolute deal killer for me. I'll get good use of my current MBP but in the horizon I see a migration out of the walled garden.

Wait till they replace the keys with iPhone keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER96> I am still using the 2013 MBP primarily because:

\- It has ALL THE PORTS

\- No gimmicky touch bar

\- No butter-a$$ keyboard

If Apple doesn't revert these dumb changes, I will simply get a Dell or something else.

</comment><comment><USER97> The touchbar is garbage, why for the love of all that is good does Apple continue investing in it, having found 0 killer apps for it?

</comment><comment><USER98> Has anyone ever used the word completion or quick emoji picker on the touch bar? I've found both of those to be very useful!

</comment><comment><USER99> Huge mistake. The Touch Bar is a bad user experience.

Pro users need a physical ESC and F keys, that seems fairly obvious.

</comment><comment><USER100> Anyone know if the new Macbook Air is still using the butterfly keyboard or the new scissor?

<comment><USER101> According to Macrumors they have the 3rd Generation butterfly keyboard: [https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/09/all-2019-macbooks- have-...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/09/all-2019-macbooks-have-new- material-keyboard/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> I honestly don't understand how an infinitely and easy customisable high- resolution million-colour second display, supporting multi-touch gestures, could be called useless by the majority of commenters on the site called _Hacker_ News.

<comment><USER103> I was taught to touch type. I was taught that looking at the keyboard is a failure to type properly. What value does the touch bar offer me?

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Geez. Give me back a physical ESC button. I've had to remap the caps lock so that I'm not fumbling around to trigger escape. If this was one of Jony Ives' designs, don't let the door hit you on the way out, mofo.

</comment><comment><USER105> Noooooooooooooo

Seriously I'm 100% Mac, but the touchbar is consistently awful

</comment><comment><USER106> I think I want to remap ` to ESC and ctrl-' to `

</comment><comment><USER107> For fucks sake.

</comment><comment><USER108> Wait, what?!?

</comment><comment><USER109> Why do we endure this.

</comment><comment><USER110> Hackintosh it is.

</comment><comment><USER48> Who on earth even asked for this Touch Bar in the first place? The move always struck me as out of touch on the same level as "install this creepy U2 album on everyone's iPhone against their will".

</comment><comment><USER111> The touchbar looks nice. I am a religious apple fanatic so image is all important to me. My god, i had loads of chicks coming to my mac and sliding there fingers in it. I had to slap a few naughty hands lol. Sad to see it go. Those were the days.</comment>


Text of S. 1747: Computer Professionals Update Act - <AUTHOR> http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s112-1747

<comment><AUTHOR> I must h/t Matt Simons for bringing my attention to this act, which would significantly curtail the salaries of many IT professionals. His blog post asking for additional input can be found here:

[http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2011/11/usa- computer...](http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2011/11/usa-computer- professionals-update-act/)</comment>


Trump taps Kushner to lead a SWAT team to fix government with business ideas - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-taps-kushner-to-lead-a-swat-team-to-fix-government-with-business-ideas/2017/03/26/9714a8b6-1254-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html <comment><USER2> >The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump

The conflicts of interest are so widespread now, that Trump isn't even trying to hide them. Must be nice to be in a position where you can look after your family while the general public's opinion on you drops further and further.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kushner has a very sorted past, he owes the IRS a ton of money and his dad is a felon.

Good choice

</comment><comment><USER4> Idea 1: less nepotism</comment>


Another Way To Virtually Explore A New Neighborhood: MapJack.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.mapjack.com/ Check it out. It is much better than google street.
" Mapjack.com showcases a new level of mapping technology. What others have done with NASA budgets and Star Wars-like equipment, we've done on a shoestring budget, along with a few trips to Radio Shack. Specifically, we developed an array of proprietary electronics, hardware and software tools that enable us to capture an entire city's streets with relative ease and excellent image quality.

    Our coverage area doesn't stop street-side, we also include walking areas such as Parks, Universities and famous walking streets."
 <comment><AUTHOR> Check it out. It is much better than google street, and build in the spirit of HN. So far it seems they have only SF mapped.

" Mapjack.com showcases a new level of mapping technology. What others have done with NASA budgets and Star Wars-like equipment, we've done on a shoestring budget, along with a few trips to Radio Shack. Specifically, we developed an array of proprietary electronics, hardware and software tools that enable us to capture an entire city's streets with relative ease and excellent image quality.

        Our coverage area doesn't stop street-side, we also include walking areas such as Parks, Universities and famous walking streets."</comment>


Silicon Alley Talent Fair  - <AUTHOR> http://www.myworkster.com/myworkster/page/eventdetail/1587252515

<comment><AUTHOR> This won't be your average job fair. Think SXSW meets a job fair.</comment>


Show HN: detecting cache latency inside a Web browser - <AUTHOR> https://maratyszcza.github.io/laff-demos/pointer-chasing.html <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I made this demo and a related matrix-matrix multiplication demo [1] back in 2015 for Robert van de Geijn's Linear Algebra: Foundations to Frontiers MOOC class [2]. In the light of Spectre attack and recent browsers' changes to reduce precision of timers, I remembered of this project, and decided to check if it still works now, 3 years later. Surprisingly, it still works well!

The source code is available on GitHub [3].

[1] [https://maratyszcza.github.io/laff- demos/dgemm.html](https://maratyszcza.github.io/laff-demos/dgemm.html)

[2] [https://www.edx.org/course/linear-algebra-foundations- fronti...](https://www.edx.org/course/linear-algebra-foundations-frontiers- utaustinx-ut-5-02x)

[3] [https://github.com/Maratyszcza/laff- demos](https://github.com/Maratyszcza/laff-demos)

<comment><USER2> Could you make the website viewable without JavaScript?

Edit: I think the downvotes are unjustified. For clarification, if that wasn't clear by context, I don't expect to get the JavaScript test results from my computer while viewing the website without JavaScript. Demanding that would obviously be nonsense. Rather than that I assume there is information on that website that is interesting to read even without using JavaScript personally. Or is using JavaScript now a requirement to learn about JavaScript?

<comment><USER3> There's only a graph of the results, so you are not missing any other content.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On my pretty outdated Core 2 Duo Q9300: [https://i.imgur.com/HQXm5FU.png](https://i.imgur.com/HQXm5FU.png)

The CPU is advertised as 6 MB L2 cache[0] but it has "L1 = 4 x 32 KB 8-way set associative data caches and L2 = 2 x 3 MB 12-way set associative caches (each L2 cache is shared between 2 cores)"[1].

You can clearly see the constant time access to L1 cache up to 32KB. Then grows to (linear?) access time up to 2MB (where it still fits in one of the L2 caches) and then again a different (log-like?) function from there on.

This is really neat.

[0] [https://ark.intel.com/products/33922/Intel-Core2-Quad- Proces...](https://ark.intel.com/products/33922/Intel-Core2-Quad- Processor-Q9300-6M-Cache-2_50-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB)

[1] [http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_2/Intel- Core%202%20Quad%2...](http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_2/Intel- Core%202%20Quad%20Q9300%20EU80580PJ0606M%20\(BX80580Q9300\).html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat related: using the cache latency to estimate the CPU cache size. [https://fromwhenceitca.me/cache_size/cache_size.html](https://fromwhenceitca.me/cache_size/cache_size.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> So, who thought it was a great idea again to use a mechanism intended for document transfer to run unsigned, unaudited code on just about every client in the world?

<comment><USER7> To be fair the problem is not related to web browsers. It's more about running code in general.

I start to realize that running someone else's code means trusting the developer. No matter the amount of sandboxing and the layers of abstraction, eventually his code will be able to run as root using exploits that are yet to be discovered.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but until the advent of JS you at least knew whose code you were going to run. Now you are more or less required to run untrusted code just to get through daily life.

<comment><USER8> And web platform people remain convinced that HTTPS transport encryption is sufficient to protect everyone, even though desktop app, OS, and bootloader people have been doing code-signing for something like two decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is similar to how I detected total CPU cores in 2013 to implement navigator.hardwareConcurrency: [https://eligrey.com/blog/cpu-core-estimation- with-javascript...](https://eligrey.com/blog/cpu-core-estimation-with- javascript/)

</comment><comment><USER10> i5-4690K (L1 4x32KB; L2 4x256KB; L3 6MB): [https://i.imgur.com/FUs1isW.png](https://i.imgur.com/FUs1isW.png)

LG v30 (L2 2MB): [https://i.imgur.com/q5R3bLY.png](https://i.imgur.com/q5R3bLY.png)

</comment><comment><USER11> And with the latest iOS 11.2.2, this (admittedly cool) piece of code no longer works.

Still works on the latest MacOS (10.13.2) though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm...I just tried on iPhone 7/iOS 11.2.2, and it still works, albeit takes very long to start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> On my OnePlus X Android phone: [https://imgur.com/a/C1hb7](https://imgur.com/a/C1hb7)

<comment><USER13> On my i7 8700k [https://imgur.com/a/D71v1](https://imgur.com/a/D71v1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thinkpad T42p with Pentium M 1.8GHz, 2MB L2 cache

[https://imgur.com/agxy8e7](https://imgur.com/agxy8e7)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to see some text explaining what I'm looking at.

Based on the title, it's something to do with cache latency, but that doesn't really help me. What exactly is it measuring? How does it perform this measurement? What are the limitations of this technique? What are the wider implications of this? What uses does it have, both potentially nefarious ones and potentially beneficial ones?

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there plan to collect this data voluntarily? Would be interesting to see the different percentiles

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it is a static web page, and all code runs only locally in your browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is that Ram only or also L1 etc. caches?

<comment><USER17> Okay, so how can we deactivate ASM.js and WebAssembly? (in the light of Meltdown and Spectre)

The config in Chrome is broken, WebAssembly cannot be deactivated anymore with chrome://flags/#enable-webassembly , setting it to "deactivated" and it's still active.

<comment><AUTHOR> Asm.js is not necessary, simple JavaScript interpreter is enough. This demo used to work before most browsers implemented optimizers for Asm.js</comment></comment></comment>


All 'Startup Camp Sydney 2' Startups Put Up For Auction - <AUTHOR> http://www.technation.com.au/2009/02/06/all-startup-camp-2-startups-up-for-auction/

<comment><USER2> rather tempted by ThreeFeeds - is it just me though or are these sites really poorly explained?</comment>


Ask PG: Question about the position of the questions in YCS10-app - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I took a look at the application form for YC, and while filling it, I noticed that the position of the project/business details (What's new about what you're doing, What do you understand about your business, Who are your competitors), are after some informal insight about the people applying (achieved projects, successful hack, etc).<p>If I remember correctly the form is the same as Winter 2009 one. Is this position intentional, in the sense of creating more confidence in the applicant? (Maybe a lower application rate if the questions were all at the beginning, perhaps I replied myself) <comment><USER2> We ask about the people first because we care more about the people. The earlier you invest, the more you're investing in the people rather than the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply, understood. I can think of this method as the most successful through people that are not recognized in this space (eg. first times appliers like me).</comment></comment>


Zotonic: Erlang Web Framework and Performance - <AUTHOR> http://zotonic.com/blog/1019/making-it-fast-zotonic-performance

<comment><USER2> From the website:

      Zotonic's data model can be seen as a pragmatic
      implementation of the Semantic Web: a mixture between
      a traditional database and a triple store.

I can imagine how to create a CRUD-like webapp with simple mapping DB tables to business objects, but have no experience with triple store.

It would be great to see more sample applications made with zotonic. Not only a cms (simple blog comes pre-installed), but something involving user interaction (an issue tracker, or a HN clone).

Also, at the moment zotonic looks a bit like Zope (everything should be created through backend web forms). I am most likely wrong, but a sample app could demonstrate a workflow that a developer should use.

It's a great framework, quite eager to learn how to use it properly.

<comment><USER3> Zotonic is not really like Zope: we like developers to be in control of their source code, so stuff like editing templates or code on the web / storing code in the db is not supported and never will be.

Normally, every site that runs in zotonic sits in its own git repository. You can even hook up a webhook to automatically update your site on the fly (hot code reloading, [http://modules.zotonic.com/page/367/mod- github](http://modules.zotonic.com/page/367/mod-github))

For a very simple example site you could look a this image pasting service that I whipped up: [http://stick.im/](http://stick.im/) . its code is also on github, [https://github.com/arjan/stick.im](https://github.com/arjan/stick.im)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks pretty cool, but maybe a bit tipped towards the 'CMS' side of things compared with, say, Chicago Boss, which I am currently using for a project and enjoying. Has anyone out there used both?

</comment><comment><USER5> When I reached the slide listing "what's in the box" I realized that why they call it a web framework rather than a web application framework. I never heard of the web framework concept, it seems that it's might be somewhere between a CMS framework and a web app framework.

</comment><comment><USER6> I haven't watched the video yet but I have read through the slides and found them to be rather honest. I really do enjoy presentations where the tradeoffs for using a technology are well displayed rather than disguised in other forms.

<comment><USER3> thanks :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was recently checking out Zotonic and asking questions on the #zotonic Freenode IRC channel. Very helpful people on the IRC (which seems to be bridged to some other channel thru a bot).

If you are coming from MVC frameworks in other languages, Erlang and Zotonic will take you by surprise. There's some learning to do though.

Some really good videos on Erlang for the curious - www.youtube.com/user/ErlangSolutions.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am happy to see the speaker cites our project [1], although I've only seen the slides and not yet listened to the presentation. Not sure if he talks about it in a positive or dismissive light. :)

Edit: It's partially dismissive in tone, but so be it.

[1] [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/)</comment>


Top Tech Failures of 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2518329798

<comment><USER2> 11\. yahoo as always at everything</comment>