Macbook Pro Touch Bar runs watchOS - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/791872723681239040 <comment><USER2> Technology details aside, I don't understand why Touch Bar is such a big deal. Sure it's shiny and responds to touch, but I don't want to be looking at keyboard and hunt for commands that are sometimes there. I don't want another monitor with additional information, I only have one set of eyes.

<comment><USER3> Contrary to the HN demography, most people are not touch-typists, and most don't use keyboard shortcuts. Having an interactive, contextual bar of action buttons makes actions that normally require several clicks more discoverable to them.

<comment> hash-set Wouldn't it make sense to become a touch typist, then? I've watched so many developers be less effective than they could be simply because they can't type!

<comment><USER4> This is actually easier said than done. I'm 58 and been a hunt and peck typist (at this point a fairly effective and fast one) all my life. I've been a developer for 30 years. I've tried several times to learn to touch-type. I can do all of the exercises, play all of the games, but I have never been able to make the leap from looking to not looking at the keyboard.

It's the gap where you still have a full-time job to do along with those expectations that I fall down. :( Maybe it's to late for me?

That aside, I have never had any problem with productivity as a developer. As a "typist", yes, but not as an author of software. It just never comes up. Do I feel less "cool" when I am in a room with people looking at me type? Hell yes. But am I actually getting things done slower? Probably some things. Typing commands, yes. I could be faster there. Typing code? Maybe.

Just adding the perspective of a long time 6 fingered typist (occasionally 7).

<comment><USER5> You can be a touch typist without using the strict home row and finger placement. I would actually argue that the home row concept isn't ideal for developers especially. My fingers actually rest between the keys, and I know I press keys with the "wrong" fingers (easy to notice on ergonomic keyboards), but I do not have to look at my keys and I type around 70 words per minute without feeling like I'm rushing.

<comment><USER6> I touch type around 90 WPM and never took a class on it. After years of video gaming my "home row" is resting my left hand on WASD and my right hand takes care of everything right of RFV. And like you said, ergonomic keyboards are basically unusable to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very clever. Basically seems to allow the continuity, notification sharing, proximity and Apple Pay features of an Apple Watch or iPhone by slapping what is effectively an Apple Watch right into the chassis. Very little _new_ functionality would have to be written into the OS, because it doesn't have to know about the extra control surface features, it can just pass messages a'la handoff/continuity.

I would imagine this means writing TouchBar (autocorrect on my iPhone hasn't learned that one yet) support into MacOS apps means developing a watchOS extension to bundle with the app, which seems really simple and elegant.

Really makes me wonder if writing similar extensions to macOS that use a secondary control/presentation surface could be that easy. Why not let me write an extension that opens on my iPad when my macOS app is opened to show additional shortcuts/controls for that app? There are a few remote tools that can do some of this (BTT Remote and Alfred Remote come to mind as possible configurable remote control surfaces) but if I was able able to write a purpose-built control surface with bundles for TouchBar, iPhone, iPad and/or Apple Watch, all detected by proximity and using handoff to advertise readiness... that would be _amazing_.

<comment><USER8> > I would imagine this means writing TouchBar (autocorrect on my iPhone hasn't > learned that one yet) support into MacOS apps means developing a watchOS > extension to bundle with the app, which seems really simple and elegant.

Nope. Apps customize the Touch Bar using AppKit inside their app's code; there's no third-party code running on the Touch Bar's processor at any point. The Touch Bar has a little bit of intelligence (it's responsible for the Touch ID and Apple Pay UIs, and supposedly can display traditional function keys independent of the OS for use in dual-boot situations), but it appears to be mostly just receiving and displaying a framebuffer that's rendered and provided to it by the host machine, then forwarding touch events back to the host machine for interaction with the UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So I'm an unfortunate fellow that runs Ubuntu on a Macbook Pro. If I'm lucky, this means I should be able to get the touch bar working in Ubuntu, right? Since it's just framed data over USB, it shouldn't be that hard to reverse engineer, right?

<comment><USER10> My first reaction when I saw the touch bar was "Ugh this is going to cause a world of headaches when runnning Ubuntu". I was relieved to see you can still get a MBP with physical function keys[1]. (semi-off topic: any Linux users want to chime in and recommend a 14" or 15" laptop with build quality similar to a MBP?)

[1] [http://www.apple.com/ca/shop/buy-mac/macbook- pro?product=MJL...](http://www.apple.com/ca/shop/buy-mac/macbook- pro?product=MJLQ2LL/A&step=config#)

edit: thanks to everyone for the recommendations!

edit 2: there's some more recommendations here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815183)

<comment><USER11> Many people, myself included, love the Dell XPS 13.

<comment><USER12> The XPS 13 Ubuntu version seems to not be available. Does anyone know what's up? I tried to do a comparison yesterday with the new Macbooks and wasn't able to. The Windows version is still available.

[http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd)

<comment><USER13> You can find it on this page:

[http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd)

The most straightforward way is to select "Ubuntu" as the "Operating System" filter at the top of the models list.

Outside the US you should follow the links in this article:

[https://bartongeorge.io/2016/10/04/the-new- xps-13-developer-...](https://bartongeorge.io/2016/10/04/the-new- xps-13-developer-edition-lands-in-europe-and-united-states/)

<comment><USER14> UK Site - I can't see any way to configure with anything except Windows 10 Home.

<comment><USER13> In the Configurations section (where you see the first 4 models), you have to push Next until you are at the end of the list. The last 3 models mention Ubuntu (last 4 in the US).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Touch Bar is cool but it seems like a solution in search of a problem..

<comment><USER16> You think remembering all function keys for every program is not a problem? Some remarks really amaze me.

<comment><USER17> You use function keys for repetitive tasks, if you don't repeat it enough to worry about, then it is a non-issue.

<comment><USER18> Discoverability for the common consumer is the problem this is solving, plain and simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apple is unifying their operating systems.

Apple has always wanted to be a closed system. In the beginning, Jobs made the Macintosh, the first computer he was truly charged with designing, a closed system. Literally. The case needed a special precision screw bit to open. Next, the original iPhone was so closed that it didn't even have an app store.

Now Apple starts moving more and more code execution to Ring-0, on the newly rebranded macOS. macOS, iOS, watchOS... And now the inclusion of watchOS within the Macbook Pro. They're all trending toward the same goal: to create a unified platform across all their devices.

But what type of operating system will it be?

Recently Apple has enjoyed substantially greater ROI on devices that run restricted operating systems. I suppose they'll have a "developer" mode for creating applications, but macOS going to become a walled garden for the average consumer.

<comment><USER20> Since iOS's inception, it has run the exact same kernel as the Mac. They developed separate UI layers for separate devices, but the underlying system has always been the same.

They do seem to be bringing the higher level components together where they can, which seems smart from a maintainability perspective.

macOS becoming a walled garden? Maybe, but it has nothing to do with them sticking a Touch Bar running a variant of watchOS on their laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That actually makes a lot of sense. Since WatchOS spends most of its time syncing to other devices its a pretty natural choice. I suspect the main reason they did that was to avoid exposing the secure enclave directly to macOS.

For all the people calling this out as a hack I would counter that it is actually an example of elegant code reuse.

</comment><comment><USER22> Didn't some high-class Razer gaming laptop do something with little blinky / changeable icons in some keys a while ago? Just looked it up, yeah, the Blade.

That was 3 years ago.

<comment><USER23> Which isn't the same as a multitouch surface.

<comment><USER22> Right, I figure it's probably even better because the stress factor of pushing on little icons doesn't strike me as a wise longevity decision. Of course I'm talking about an Apple product here so I should acknowledge 'Intentional Obsolescence' as part of the business model. Basically I'm pointing out that not only did Apple not innovate something, they managed to make it (potentially) inferior for the sake of cuteness in the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can you play Quake on it?

<comment><USER25> *Crysis

<comment><USER26> OP question was actually plausible, as Quake and other open-sourced ID Software games have a long history of being ported / rendered to all kinds of exotic devices by the modding community: terminals [1], oscilloscopes [2], and many others.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMli33ornEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMli33ornEU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yeah it is a form of code reuse, but did they really need to add another level of software to maintain on the MacBook Pro?

It just spreads they resources thinner in my opinion with more software and compatibility to maintain. If they fail to keep their software quality high, they will lose customers and damage their brand.

</comment><comment><USER28> Keep in mind for the touch pro haters out there. You can skip the touch bar, save $200, and get a 5kwh larger battery. They didn't cripple it, you can still get more ram, larger ssd, etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> Maybe you can run Windows XP on it, if it is a separate chip :D

<comment><USER20> It's an ARM chip, but theoretically it's jailbreakable!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if they are going to release an external keyboard with a touch bar, since many mbp users connect their laptop to a monitor and use external keyboard

</comment><comment><USER31> This seems kind of crazy to me. Why not just treat the touch strip as a second display? That would seem to afford a smoother integration.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Twitter thread claims that touch input/display, touch ID, secure enclave and camera are isolated on a separate ARM SoC. Since touch ID will be used for Apple Pay, and Apple Pay will be integrated into Safari, this architecture may be harder to attack from a malicious website that is trying to obtain Apple Pay credentials. Even if macOS on x86 is compromised, there is a separate input/output system on the ARM SoC for payment credentials.

<comment><USER32> Does the touch bar shows any info when using Apple Pay ?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the Apple demo, the touch bar showed the recipient and dollar amount of payment, requiring a fingerprint to confirm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Too bad it's not detachable. And flexible.

</comment><comment><USER34> Also, lets not forget Apple is under some largely false pressure. We have been reading time and time again, basically since Cook in charge that real innovation stopped.

I personally think that this could be one of the factors why there is such an emphasis on what is basically just a cool feature. But nothing more.

Also, more normal would have been to be able to choose when ordering wether you want the touch bar or not.

<comment><USER20> For it to be useful, they need 3rd party developer adoption. With it available on just one device, it's already hard enough for them. Why restrict their cool new tech to an optional status? Seems to me that Apple sees this as the future of interacting with your Mac. They are going to push it as hard as they can to drive adoption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I actually want a flexible Touch Bar on my wrist instead of a watch.

</comment><comment><USER36> the whole feature was not necessary, they could have done the same with a simple app on iPhone

</comment><comment> hash-set Gimmick. Next question.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ah, that explains the price tag change, its a bundle deal!

</comment><comment><USER38> Next version touch bar takes half of the bottom, and then eventually we will just have 2 ipads. It's the beginning of the end.</comment>


The art of creating very tiny programs for the 80x86 family of CPUs - <AUTHOR> http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Main_Page <comment><USER2> Shameless plug for an old project, a 512 byte kernel with 512 byte programs (no DOS calls): [https://bitbucket.org/danielbarry/saxoperatingsystem/src/mas...](https://bitbucket.org/danielbarry/saxoperatingsystem/src/master/)

<comment><USER3> Nice, but I have to complain about bitbucket.. it's so annoying that your html documents do not show up when browsing the bitbucket website. Github has them beat on this one- just rename the htmls to md and it will mostly work.

I wrote similar things in the past, but for 6809. My equivalent these days is whenever I have to deal with a new microcontroller, I port my personal CLI + task queue schedular to it. Once I have a UART, timer, and CLI with history running, then the actual application is usually a breeze.

<comment><USER2> >Nice, but I have to complain about bitbucket.. it's so annoying that your html documents do not show up when browsing the bitbucket website. Github has them beat on this one- just rename the htmls to md and it will mostly work.

Yeah it was mostly written before ever coming into contact with Git so wasn't designed for that! Imagine a versioning system that relied on zipping the source code and adding a version number! I'll fix it at some point, but it was more for shelving and sharing.

>I wrote similar things in the past, but for 6809. My equivalent these days is whenever I have to deal with a new microcontroller, I port my personal CLI + task queue schedular to it. Once I have a UART, timer, and CLI with history running, then the actual application is usually a breeze.

Exactly!

One thing I plan to do in the future is run a 8086/8088 VM on something like an Arduino (or whatever is popular at the time). Getting op codes to working fine is easy, getting the BIOS interrupts working is slightly harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember having great time writing this little 256-byte game:

[https://github.com/dakics/asm-tie-fighter](https://github.com/dakics/asm-tie- fighter)

Back then, it often made a huge usability difference if you optimized in asm critical inner loops or other time-consuming external methods, which would be called from Clipper, Turbo Pascal/C, Modula-2 or alike. TSR-loaded "Norton Guides" were indispensable. Good times. :)

<comment><USER5> I think my first assembly book was a Norton one :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Many folks who used to write 0x86 assembly code love size coding compos, especially demoscene folks.

Me and a couple of friends were able to implement the game of Nibbles (Snake on old Nokia phones) in 70 bytes. Someone else managed to accomplish it in 48.

[http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/compoold.htm#compo1](http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/compoold.htm#compo1)

<comment><USER6> How is this possible? I can't even produce "Hello World" program as short as that, do you not use ELF format?

<comment><USER7> LOL this reminds of old flame wars on Usenet about the smallest possible "Hello World!".

Someone would always eventually post "echo Hello World!" and the endless arguments would ensue about whether or not that was actually a program.

<comment><USER8> Why echo it?

        $ cat /tmp/hello
        hello\ world
        $ /tmp/hello
        /tmp/hello: line 1: hello world: command not found

It prints hello world :-)

<comment><USER9> Great idea! I improved the "program":

      $ cat >hello
      Hello\ World\!
      $ chmod +x hello
      $ ./hello
      ./hello: line 1: Hello World!: command not found

V0.2 changelog:

* fix: adheres to Hello World! standard now

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Smallest program I ever sold, for near-5-digit profit, was a "REBOOT.COM" which saved a sysadmin from hand-rebooting 200 machines, daily, and which earned me $9,000 on account that it was my monthly rate at the time, and its all I did that month, by circumstance, anyway ... it was a different time, and I honestly felt I deserved it, then[1].

C:\> debug.com n JMP FFF0 w reboot.com q ^Z

(or at least, it was something like that...)

[1]- Now, not so much.

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of GO.COM. It was smaller, and made its programmer money, too ([http://peetm.com/blog/?p=55](http://peetm.com/blog/?p=55))

(Sorry, source code not available)

<comment><USER12> > (Sorry, source code not available)

ISWYDT;-)

Spoiler: GO.COM is 0 bytes long, yet was incredibly useful back at the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We have the long tradition of sending encrypted or puzzle-like postcards to our local hackerspace. Three years ago we created this postcard: [https://entropia.de/Datei:2015-01-27-back.jpg](https://entropia.de/Datei:2015-01-27-back.jpg)

It's 200 bytes, a valid x85 ELF program with a deceptive 'strings' greeting message and an additional hidden message. Run at your own risk ;-) The machine readable version can be found here: [https://entropia.de/Cryptierte_Postcarten](https://entropia.de/Cryptierte_Postcarten)

</comment><comment><USER14> x86 registers were designed with purposes in mind, and many of the 1-byte opcodes reflect this-- for example, "A4 MOVS mb,mb: Move byte [SI] to ES:[DI], advance SI,DI": [https://www.swansontec.com/sregisters.html](https://www.swansontec.com/sregisters.html)

And it's fundamentally an octal machine: [http://www.dabo.de/ccc99/www.camp.ccc.de/radio/help.txt](http://www.dabo.de/ccc99/www.camp.ccc.de/radio/help.txt)

<comment><USER15> 'Octal machine' seems a little overstated (I know, that's what the ole post says), 'fundamentally' fundamentally so.

<comment><USER16> Did you read the linked material?

Looking at instruction encoding through an octal lens makes a lot of sense.

We should allow some license here. A discussion of, say the ALU, may likely yield a different statement.

"Machine", viewed theou various lenses, bit depth, ALU, clock, instructions, registers or lack of, works best in context.

Just a thought. :D

<comment><USER15> _Did you read the linked material?_

Did you read my comment that specifically mentions it?

 _Looking at instruction encoding through an octal lens makes a lot of sense._

Sure. But it doesn't make it an 'octal machine', let alone fundamentally so. Lots of binary things exhibit easier-to-see patterns when presented as octal, that's why octal is around. But it's a bit of convenient numerology not some intrinsic aspect of the (very binary) machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wrote this animated 80-byte heart shaped tunnel and sent it in a text message to a geek girl in high school: [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=12270](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=12270)

<comment><USER18> It is a _very_ nice effect! It still runs under DOSBox:

        echo "B013CD106800A00789C30FAFDB01D0F7E801C3740C31D266B8C027090066F7F3414929C8243F0420AA89F831D2BB4001F7F32D780081EAA0007FCDF7DAE9C8FF" | xxd -r -p - > heart.com ; dosbox heart.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I created a fan daemon for my Macbook in 864 bytes: [https://github.com/faissaloo/mfcd](https://github.com/faissaloo/mfcd)

I also made echo in 153 bytes: [https://github.com/faissaloo/echo](https://github.com/faissaloo/echo)

</comment><comment><USER20> Meanwhile, the remnants of the Lost Amiga Civilization snicker, and mutter something about 68k instructions, their many address modes, and custom chips between coughs.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://amycoders.org/](https://amycoders.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The smallest "Hello world!" I ever managed was 86 bytes: [https://github.com/wybiral/tiny-elf](https://github.com/wybiral/tiny-elf)

Edit: It's only possible by moving the string and some of the opcodes into the ELF header section.

</comment><comment><USER22> In my young and reckless years i loved to [ab]use INT 13 to literally mechanically destroy hard drives with 12 bytes programs.

</comment><comment><USER23> You could even make a chess program in 392 bytes: [http://nanochess.org/chess6.html](http://nanochess.org/chess6.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> How about this? A single block boot loader that understands the ext2 filesystem, so can load the kernel without having to "update-grub":

[https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/boot](https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/boot)

Bonus: it tries to read tracks at a time to make booting off of floppies faster (I wrote it in the 90s..)

</comment><comment><USER24> My only real effort in this direction was a 64-byte MS-DOS .COM file that draws colored circles on the screen:

[http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/morecircles.s](http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/morecircles.s)

        00000000: b013 cd10 c42f 89e8 f72e 0000 89c5 31c6  ...../........1.
        00000010: 31d2 89c1 31db 88f7 89df c1fb 0201 df89  1...1...........
        00000020: c3c1 fb08 01df 01f7 5b26 883d 4353 89c3  ........[&.=CS..
        00000030: c1fb 0401 da89 d3c1 fb04 29d8 e2d6 ebc6  ..........).....

There's a lot to learn from tiny demos like the ones (I didn't write) dissected in [http://canonical.org/~kragen/demo](http://canonical.org/~kragen/demo).

Oh, I also wrote a Linux HTTP server in assembly with an executable under 2000 bytes: [http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/server.s](http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/server.s) with some explanation in [http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/httpdito- readme](http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/httpdito-readme). I use it occasionally for testing stuff, since it's slightly less hassle than using python -m SimpleHTTPServer. Previous HN discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6908064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6908064)

The demoscene diskmag "hugi" did a series of sizecoding competitions in 1998–2009, with truly astounding results. [http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/hcompo.htm](http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/hcompo.htm) Highlights include a working textmode Pong game in 142 bytes, a Brainfuck interpreter in 98 bytes, a Snake game in 48 bytes, and a perfect Tic-Tac-Toe player in 213 bytes.

The 8086 is a reasonable design for this kind of nonsense, since it's full of shortcuts and special cases that you can take advantage of. IBNIZ is an architecture really optimized for it, though: [http://pelulamu.net/ibniz/](http://pelulamu.net/ibniz/) and in practice I often find that I can get things smaller with ARM Thumb-2 code than with the 8086. For example, [https://github.com/kragen/dumpulse](https://github.com/kragen/dumpulse) is about 350 bytes of code on most architectures, but just over 200 bytes on a big-endian ARM.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there an equivalent for tiny bytecode programs?

The general list of tricks seem focused on either reusing code-data by just finding some byte/nibble you need in the code or finding op-codes that happen to accomplish multi-op-code effects.

I'd like to what you could get with self-modifying code. But naturally on 80x86, that's suicide since the code very, very heavily cached.

<comment><USER26> The CPU most definitely still supports self-modifying code. Intel takes compatibility seriously.

<comment><USER24> Oh, yeah, it's supported. But it's also slow.

<comment><USER27> "continuously modifying" code, yes.

But do something like modify a constant used in a tight loop once before it, and you will likely get _better_ performance, especially since you now don't have to use a register or an extra memory access to load that constant.

That is, after all, how JITs work.

One of the best examples is something like an image codec --- input images have diferent widths, heights, bits per channel, channels, coding modes, etc. but they are constants throughout the same image. You can essentially "compile" a decoder specialised to the exact image you're decoding, with all the loop counters replaced with constants and the branches eliminated to directly execute the code they would otherwise jump to.

<comment><USER26> I feel like this is something the compiler could do automatically. Give it a hint, let it do some alias analysis and discover that a particular variable won't change throughout a loop. And then let it treat that variable as a constant (as an immediate in instructions) and generate the code to modify it at the beginning. Perhaps let it pass on this information so that eventually the section could be mapped W+X.

<comment><USER24> Self-modifying code to optimize a hot loop is only a useful thing to do on a machine without a split I/D level-1 cache. All modern high-performance CPUs will suffer an instruction cache flush on each iteration of the hot loop, which will kill your performance. Also, though, even on CPUs with no instruction cache, it's probably a very minor improvement at best. Suppose you write the variable in one place and read it in 4 places. If no register is allocated to the variable, on a load-store machine such as a RISC, the usual approach involves one store and four loads. But if you use self-modifying code instead, you have four stores (and no loads), but those stores are modifying only part of an instruction word — so, on most hardware, they actually require a preceding load, even if the architecture tries to hide that from you.

I'm convinced there _are_ cases where this kind of optimization actually speeds up your code, but they are pretty unusual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another nice site aggregating many clever tiny x86 programs: [https://www.xorpd.net/pages/xchg_rax/snip_00.html](https://www.xorpd.net/pages/xchg_rax/snip_00.html)

<comment><USER29> maybe not the tiniest but reddit.com/r/tinycode has some

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The smaller the problem, the easier it is to brute-force the solution.</comment>


'Meet Peter, your AI-based lawyer' - <AUTHOR> https://hirepeter.com/ <comment><USER2> Scary. Peter isn't a licensed attorney or even a member of the bar. This is not surprising, because on his web page he invites users/clients to break the law, that is, notarizing documents outside the presence of the signer without asking for identification. Oops.

I'm sure that Bitproof, Inc. has a decent start-up forms library, but the organized bar is very jealous of its prerogatives. Like Zenefits selling insurance without using licensed brokers, it's deja vu all over again.

<comment><USER2> By the way, a real lawyer would alert you to the existence of 28 U.S.C. 1746 that provides for authentication in the absence of a notary. It's a handy alternative when no notary can be present and is just as effective.</comment></comment>


Body Bombs Added to America's Air Security Concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/world/07security.html <comment><USER2> Frankly, I'm a little surprised this hasn't been tried already. It was in a Batman movie 3 years ago, and the idea surely wasn't new then.

If I wanted to bring down a plane badly enough that I procured an explosive device and brought it on board, it doesn't seem like it would take a tremendous amount of additional resources to get that put inside me with some sort of remote or timed detonator. You wouldn't even need a great surgeon - just one who was able to keep me alive for a week at most to allow for time to get to the airport, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't this pretty much equate to saying that it's all for naught, the terrorists have an effectively undetectable weapon? And thus, there's no point in torturing the rest of us?</comment>


Minimalism (computing)  - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism_%28computing%29 <comment><USER2> See "colorForth": <http://www.colorforth.com/cf.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> "Some [Amiga capabilities], such as displaying multiple windows at different color depths and resolutions on the same physical screen, have yet to be duplicated at all."

Why could the Amiga do this and current computers can't? Is it any screen that can display multiple resolutions simultaneously? If so, why don't current OSes support this?

<comment><USER4> It is a very cool feature, but can you think of a sensible use for it on a machine that can run the entire screen in high resolution and full colour?

<comment><USER5> Not anymore, but if there were no 64 bit machines...

Video ram mapping reduces available memory space. Clawing back a few tens of megs of system ram could potentially have been worthwile(1).

Supporting a 32 bit colour depth screen at 32,768x32,768 resolution would require 4gb of video ram, leaving 0 bits in the address pool for the rest of the system :)

(1)For very, very low values of worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> # Text editors: Notepad, Nano, Leafpad, joe, vi, diakonos, Nedit, ne, ed

How is notepad considered minimalist compared to vi?

<comment><USER7> How is vi considered minimalist compared to Notepad?

<comment><USER8> Because it's vi, not vim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> = elegance (math)

<comment><USER10> True even without the "(math)". I've always liked the idea of elegance applied to writing -- the best writing, like the best code, uses simple language to unusually strong effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> MacOS X is cited as an example of minimalist software design? It may be many things, but I'm not buying minimalist.

<comment><USER12> perhaps they mean in terms of UI design, not software design?

I saw in one of Ian Piumarta's talks that OSX has considerably more lines of code than vista. Kinda surprises me, kinda doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That describes what every developer aspires to until sales and marketing gets involved and messes everything up.

<comment><USER14> All that selling. All that marketing. Disgusting.

<comment><USER15> Yea, good thing we never have to sell software to people who don't care how elegant the code is...</comment></comment></comment>


So What Exactly Is Vlad Zamfir's Blockchain Sharding PoC Doing? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/nearprotocol/so-what-exactly-is-vlads-sharding-poc-doing-37e538177ed9 <comment><USER2> Seems like a parent shard can cause arbitrary forks in the child shard by sending messages to blocks that are not on the main chain there?</comment>


An important software development lesson I learned from Fight Club - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeomnib.us/important-software-development-lesson-learned-fight-club/

<comment><USER2> I see the committee on the horizon. The SOA musings have been spreading like an infection for two years. The erasers being thrown over inheriting a Person that just has a name attribute vs building it right into the supposed child class. I see more time being spent in meetings and coworkers gathering in niches than actual productivity.

There's only one important part to the processes and applications we built: data. Protecting, serving, logging and preserving data. Nothing else matters.</comment>


Ask HN: How does everyone handle mobile browser testing? - <AUTHOR> Hi Everyone,
So I've been working on a mobile game engine for Saito (https://apps.saito.network/arcade) and am running into testing issues.
Right now I'm having to manually run the applications on whatever cellphones and tablets we can find. Is there a better way to do this? Asking as I figure if anyone has solved this problem with an automatic testing suite or something similar it will be someone who reads HN....
Goal is to test mobile browsers to see which ones work and eliminate avoidable failures. Most of the problems we are flagging to date are javascript-implementation issues or things like auto-transaction "features" on foreign-language browsers that strip events from the page and/or stop them from running very quickly.
Any suggestions? Anyone have a startup that tackles this sort of problem? <comment><USER2> For local automated testing of mobile browsers on both iOS and Android you probably want to have a look at [https://appium.io/](https://appium.io/), which uses the Webdriver protocol.

If you want to run the same tests against both mobile and desktop browsers, I recommend [https://webdriver.io/](https://webdriver.io/), which uses Appium for mobile testing.

If you're interested in a Docker setup as a boilerplate to test against all major browsers (both mobile and desktop) with best practices for e.g. test video recordings, you might also wanna take a look at this repo of mine: [https://github.com/blueimp/wdio](https://github.com/blueimp/wdio)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is fantastic advice. Thank you so much for sharing!

Multiple upvotes if I could.

<comment><USER2> You're welcome! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you manually testing, or programmatically/automated? If it's the latter then Browserstack ([https://www.browserstack](https://www.browserstack)) provides mobile devices for testing on mobile browsers in a cloud device farm, there are others too like SauceLabs and AWS Device farm. I've had good success with BrowserStack but you should check whether they support the browsers you need, they also provide an easy way to tunnel through to your staging/qa environment if you need to do that. For reporting, especially if it's not just you and you're in a team, consider Tesults ([https://www.tesults.com](https://www.tesults.com)), I'm the founder so hit me up with a message and I'll do what I can to get you setup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now it's been manual stuff. We get reports of users have trouble on bizarre mobile phone combos. Midnight here and just back from the gym, but I'll make sure we check out BrowserStack and Tesults tomorrow and let you know if we hae any questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Appium with Selenium (or XCUITest for iOS) will shorten your life expectancy and grow you some grey hairs, but there is no other better alternative for testing at user level. It is highly unreliable and each new phone OS version will tend to break your automation

As for finding devices there are a few cloud providers like xamarin or perfecto (never really worked with them in production) that gives you remote access to a lot of real devices and software versions

Having said that try to divert more testing towards lower levels- unit tests, testing on simulators, integration tests with a full phone and browser etc.

A good place to also ask is: [https://testersio.slack.com](https://testersio.slack.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first task to write some sort of test script to have assertions for the core features of your game.

For testing specific UI features, I would recommend looking into Selenium/Appium. Selenium for desktop browser testing, Appium for mobile testing (using Appium you can do mobile specific things like touch actions for instance).

For testing JavaScript, you can take a look at libraries like [https://jasmine.github.io/](https://jasmine.github.io/).

Once you have a test script(s) ready, you can point it to cloud based testing services like BrowserStack (I work there).

We provide a large number of actual physical mobile devices to test on (no emulators), For complete list see: [https://www.browserstack.com/list-of- browsers-and-platforms/...](https://www.browserstack.com/list-of-browsers-and- platforms/automate)

Our service is completely free for open source projects !

If you want to go the manual way, you can also do that with BrowserStack, we provide the 'Live' product where you can control and test your website on actual mobile devices straight from your browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Pulkitsh, late at night now, but I'll have us look at this tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let me add visual diffing constraint to the discussion, otherwise I need the same as OP. percy.io is a cool visual diffing tool I used and liked a lot.

Last time when I used it it supported only chrome/firefox, but both mobile and desktop.

Please let me ask how is visual testing supported in other solutions like: selenium, appium, browserstack, webdriver.io, etc aka what do you use for crossbrowser visual testing?

</comment><comment><USER7> They let you test with real hardware. [https://www.perfecto.io/](https://www.perfecto.io/) Used them for a long time and everytime amazed by the amount of hardware they have. The whole setup is kind of need.

</comment><comment><USER8> HeadSpin [https://www.headspin.io/](https://www.headspin.io/) provides a large set of real Android and iOS devices distributed around the globe. Testing on real hardware is always better than testing in an emulator, and testing in a real location provides additional data points that help you eliminate performance issues with your application.

Testing just mobile web browsers is of course supported, but if you ever have the need you can test native game engines and get video and network performance statistics at the same time. Automated testing via Appium is natively supported, or you can bring your own framework.

</comment><comment><USER9> We mainly use Browserstack. It's a very powerful tool, especially with their very impressive Chrome dev-tools integration, though it can be a bit laggy at times. Quite unbeatable for the huge array of devices they have available though.

We also have a device table with some common devices that we can use whenever needed. A recent Samsung Galaxy phone (not sure which model), iPhone SE, Kindle Fire and an iPad etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> You mention foreign-language browsers. Interested to know which ones in particular you are dealing with.

<comment><AUTHOR> From our manual testing the worst seem to be 360, Sogou, and Liebao.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Most devtools on browsers have "responsive tools" \- letting you change your screen to mobile or adjusting pixels. I use it sometimes for my web apps.

<comment><USER12> Responsive design mode helps with a subset of CSS layout issues. It's much faster and easier than hooking up debugging on a live device, so it's invaluable during CSS development, but since it's still the desktop browser with just a few parameters tweaked, it's not going to be adequate for tracking down real-mobile-browser-real-device issues in a game engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm interested in this, too.

</comment><comment><USER14> Judging by the so-called quote-unquote mobile browsing "experience", they don't.</comment>


Show HN: Gmelius for Inbox by Gmail (Beta) - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gmelius-for-google-inbox/dlbjhjnahgmigifoggidegpakbcjomgg This is a very early version of Gmelius for Google Inbox, currently available as a Chrome extension. Feel free to share your suggestions and feedback in the comments. Thanks in advance. <comment><AUTHOR> This is an early (beta) version of Gmelius for Google Inbox, currently available as a Chrome extension. Feel free to share your suggestions and feedback. Thanks in advance!</comment>


China Built the World's Largest Telescope, Then Came the Tourists - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/china-fast-worlds-largest-telescope-tourists/ <comment><USER2> It is interesting that the tourism income from FAST telescope, has far exceeded its construction costs.

From [https://www.guancha.cn/society/2017_08_25_424435.shtml](https://www.guancha.cn/society/2017_08_25_424435.shtml) :

> 据悉,平塘县依靠旅游观光,上半年的营收达46亿人民币,较去年同期增加了40%。

> It is reported that relying on tourism, the revenue of Pingtang town in the > first half of the year has reached 4.6 billion yuan, an increase of 40% over > the same period last year.

From [http://www.wenxuecity.com/news/2017/10/03/socialnews-144514....](http://www.wenxuecity.com/news/2017/10/03/socialnews-144514.html) :

> 7天80万人贵州看"大锅" 五星酒店最贵一夜4888

> In 7 days, 800,000 people went to Guizhou to see the "big pot". Most > expensive room in five-star hotel has reached 4888 yuan.

<comment><USER3> Obligatory "can we trust official Chinese statistics?". Gaming local numbers after a lavishly-funded project seems to have been popular for a while [1].

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy- fraud/china...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-fraud/china- to-publish-unified-gdp-data-in-fraud-crackdown-statistics-bureau- idUSKBN1CZ0H6?il=0)

<comment><USER4> 8 is a lucky number in Chinese.

So I'm not surprised if the 5 star room costs exactly 4,888. I wouldn't be surprised if the visitor number was rounded to 800k, but I doubt the number is made from whole cloth.

<comment><USER5> 4 (the first figure in this "4888 yuans" price) is an unlucky number in China. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerology#Four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerology#Four)

<comment><USER6> Yes but you can't change the pricing of something by 25% to make it auspicious.

<comment><USER7> Going from 4888 to 5000 is not such a huge leap if numerology is a serious concern.

<comment><USER8> I think OP meant that they want three 8s in the number. If it costs 5000 dropping to 4888 is a small loss but dropping to 3888 is too much, so is raising to 5888.

<comment><USER9> Wouldn't it be easier to just go to 5088? about as small change as going to 4888.

<comment><USER10> They decided the extra 8 is worth more than eliminating the 4. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a hard science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "At other telescopes, astronomers are developing machine-learning algorithms that could identify, extract, and compensate for dirty data"

Whenever I see "machine-learning" in the context of scientific development I just mentally replace it with "magic".

Employing machine learning, at the data acquisition stage, is a really bad idea. It can easily introduce biases...

<comment> oh-kumudo I mean de-noising techniques, nowadays can be definitely claimed as Machine Learning, even though they have long existed prior to even ML as a concept even being invented...

<comment><USER12> I think the defining characteristic if machine learning system is that they get better as they experience more (see more examples). The question then the ask is two fold (a) do de-nosing techniques improve when they see more samples? (b) do the application of ML techniques applied in this context mathematically equivalent?

<comment><USER13> That is only the case for online learning systems. Offline learning is definitely machine learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Building an "Astronomy Town" in the middle of nowhere and expecting it to attract tourists permanently has echoes of Japan's bubble era written all over it. Random point of comparison: [https://soranews24.com/2018/04/24/eerie- dystopian-view-emerg...](https://soranews24.com/2018/04/24/eerie-dystopian- view-emerges-as-japan-dismantles-one-of-its-departed-bubble-era-amusement- parks/)

Japan's domestic tourism boom was done in by the triple combo of recession (30 years and counting), depopulation and Japanese finding it cheaper and more interesting to travel overseas. Sooner or later these will hit China too.

<comment><USER15> Yep. Live in a destination relic of Miyazaki. Used to get a ton of tourists, now people just go abroad.

<comment><USER16> Why is it cheaper to go abroad?

<comment><USER17> Volume of people traveling to a given place lowers the cost.. This also exists in the U.S. It's cheaper for me from SF to fly to Lima, Peru than to Knoxville, Tn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This isn't the only stupid telescope. Just outside Shanghai city limits is the Tian Ma radio telescope. It's 65m. I went there, I don't think it's used at all, and it was completed in 2012

<comment><USER19> A depressingly common pattern is that you can get funding for building things but not for running and maintaining things.

In the case of the Tian Ma they seem to still have money for work on it, I found a 2017 proceeding[1] about adding a new system optimised for pulsar searches.

I'm guessing they simply aren't getting very exciting results, which is normal for a non-american dish, you don't hear about Effelsberg every day either.

[1]: [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8105313/](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8105313/)

<comment><USER18> You can see Shanghai from it the location (on a clear day). I don't think they operate it much because of the noise issue. Apparently they also even more rarely point it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Better make sure they don't broadcast anything towards the sun...

<comment><USER11> And here I was thinking I'd try to get in first with a Three Body Problem reference, but you beat me to it.

It's interesting though, China does appear to have a much stronger commitment to radio astronomy than the US (at least that's how the article characterizes it).

I wonder why that is? The article didn't really discuss why radio astronomy is so attractive...

<comment><USER21> Why? How about the direct military applications? Resolving the signal from a distant black hole, the true light against a haze of static, is exactly how you detect the low-level radar reflection of a stealthy aircraft, or the sound of a submarine against the background of pistol shrimp. Teasing out information from a tiny radio signal, even using radio to image objects, that definitely has a military use.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but none of those problems requiring building a really really big radio telescope.

Sure there are some common data analysis techniques, but they are common to a lot of applications.

<comment><USER22> Maybe having the largest telescope will attract more top talent to the field :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For a radio telescope in the USA, the Wendover Productions channel made a good video about banning radio sources - "Why Wifi is Illegal in Green Bank, West Virginia": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjCZ6k7EzjE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjCZ6k7EzjE)

</comment><comment><USER24> remember Contact, where they made two? They should have built a fake biggest telescope and put the real one behind that other mountain over yonder

</comment><comment><USER25> There was a time when you went to the US to see the most advanced or biggest things. Now China seems to be determined to play that role.

<comment><USER26> We can call it "most advanced" when it actually works.

The US and Europe also don't have inferiority complexes where they feel like they have to build the tallest or biggest anymore. Look at skyscraper competitions — generally 2nd tier countries trying to outdo each other for bragging rights but for no real other reason. It's like the Soviet Olympic team — they had to win to make the political statement trunpeting a triumph of communism. The US did the same thing once upon a time, but then we grew up (and not necessarily for the better.. it's a lot of fun to be "first, bigger, best.") 1990s Korea, modern China, 1950s USA, the Soviet Union — those places and eras were representative of a national need to foster patriotism to create unity against real or perceived competitors on the world stage as well as remind the proles of the power and achievements of their benevolent state.

<comment><USER27> Do you know the one thing all great mega-powers of the past have in common? They no longer exist. Ceasing to strive to be the best and greatest at everything is not 'growing up', it's resting on your laurels. There's much more than just bragging rights to being 'first, bigger, best'. Technology is what dictates and drives society. If Germany or Japan (or Italy or ...) had developed nuclear weapons before the US, the world would be quite a different place today. If North Korea had not developed nuclear deterrence, Kim would now likely rest alongside Gadaffi and Hussein.

And while it's now easy to say in hindsight 'Well, [insert new form of bigger, better, badder] is not particle physics.' This is true, but at time nobody knew where particle physics would take us. The idea of bomb the size of a small table that could destroy entire cities is something that would have seemed impossible before the US worked to to become 'bigger, better, badder' in what was at one time mostly theoretical particle research.

The worst part of this all is that while we don't know the future, we do have a very good idea of where it's headed. Space is likely where the nest greatest achievements and breakthroughs will come from. But predicting how or where is going to be all but impossible, which is why working to be the king of all pursuits is critical. China is headed straight in this direction. They have not matched our technical skills yet, but at the time when we were conquering the world through technology and taking the baby steps into the computer age -- China was a backwoods nation where people were literally starving to death by the tens of millions. That they're now the second most powerful nation in the world, pushing forward technology and development at an unprecedented rate, is way more than enough reason to believe that one should not underestimate their resolve and ability.

<comment><USER28> The irony behind all of this is that to the neoliberal mindset China's extraordinary willingness to invest in pure research is some sort of Communist plot. Literally, discussions just a few weeks ago about China taking the lead on R&D spending in 2019 [1] and having that lead become "indefinite" by 2025, break down (not unlike this thread) into mindless accusations against Big Government. Of course the Chinese will tell you China is just doing exactly what the West did post-War when huge government investments in science and technology provided transformative wealth that gave Westerners the best quality-of-life in the world.

The real story here is that while China's strategy is risky -- there's no guarantee all this investment will pay off -- you could argue the neoliberal strategy is even riskier. Technology tends to be a winner take all affair and it's very often the first to market that wins.

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00536-1](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00536-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Holy shit. That picture is incredible. The scale of that thing...

</comment><comment><USER30> At Arecibo radio telescope they do not allow something like a single microwave oven in a large radius. So for something that is intended to be even more sensible … yeah

</comment><comment><USER31> They spent about 150% the cost of the telescope in moving 9,000 people from the area around the telescope. Then they plan a city nearby for hundreds of thousands of people.

That can't be a decision of scientists involved in FAST. Only a bureaucrat would do something that stupid.

<comment><USER5> If I understand correctly they displaced people who where very near the telescope, and then created a city 10 miles away from it and behind mountains which interrupt at least some wave propagation(?). The article states that the town lies "just a few miles from the displaced villagers' demolished houses" and also "There are a great many mountains between the telescope and the town" (the mountains may reside in those few miles).

<comment><USER32> There's a ban on mobiles and laptops within 5km of the telescope.

I have no idea how far away the towns are but that seems impossible to enforce with tourists. I guess it just doesn't operate during certain hours because of interference.

<comment><USER5> Maybe by forbidding all and any service in this area, including implanting/enabling GSM antennas. The local government is powerful enough. Most remaining RFI would be smartphones emissions, but as they will be nearly useless in this area most people may accept to switch them in airplane mode (and will be able to use the camera).

See also [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/588679](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/588679) ("CONCLUDING REMARKS" section).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't know. I'm pretty skeptical about its technical capabilities myself. At the moment they only have a very small sliver of bandwidth they are capable of receiving. I'm unsure on how exactly they plan to receive all of these different bands at once when they are eventually added. Also, their chosen technique of removing RFI after taking in the data (noise) from space is questionable.</comment>


Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/oct13/10-24fy14q1earningspr.aspx <comment><USER2> Nice boost in their search revenue, if your wondering why Google's CPCs are going down, that is why. Microsoft has gotten serious about exploiting their search engine tech and that is having an effect [1]. Unlike 'recuter' I don't think this is their "Blackberry Moment" :-)

Google is smearing the smartphone market, at the expense of Apple's cash engine, Microsoft is smearing the Search market at the expense of Google's cash engine and Linux is smearing the operating system market at the expense of Microsoft's cash engine. Seems like there is a lot of pressure to diversify.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/pricing-engine-adwords- bing...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/pricing-engine-adwords-bing/)

<comment><USER3> > Linux is smearing the operating system market at the expense of Microsoft's > cash engine

Is this true? I don't see too many Enterprise shops going "no more windows, exchange, and active directory. its ubuntu, postfix, and ldap all the way!"

Linux certainly has killed commercial unixes, but MS Server products never got popular for web and other areas Linux is traditionally strong in. The fabled year of the linux desktop never happened.

MS still leads with many enterprise products. For all the hand-wringing over surface and bing, MS is swimming in money on the enterprise side.

<comment><USER2> Its true in two very interesting ways -

First it has nearly sealed off the 'cloud' from Microsoft. Sure there is Azure, and you can ask many VPS providers to put Windows into the box, but Linux system images dominate the 'cloud' OS space by a large margin. So a lot of what Microsoft used to sell as 'back office', aka an NT server for a small business running exchange and maybe Access is shifting over to gmail + AWS.

The other place its getting crushed is of course mobile phones. If it weren't for licensing revenues from patents the Android (and Linux kernel) would be doing more financial damage, as it is, the number of 'seats' which run the operating system of choice are running a Linux derivative. We've talked about how this is the 'post PC' era, and it is, and the Post PC, whether it is your Samsung 'smart TV' or your phone, predominantly doesn't pay Microsoft an OS tax.

So revenues that Microsoft used to get for OS installs are now time limited patent licenses.

<comment><USER4> Don't know if I agree with your first point. AWS got a head start, but Azure is gaining and fast (Azure revenue - not profit - is at least 30+% of AWS already). That says nothing about SkyDrive either, which is already the biggest cloud syncing service out there. So saying Microsoft is getting "crushed" in the cloud is _far_ from being true.

<comment><USER5> I think Azure is great, but it remains that people are using linux for their servers.

<comment><USER6> Azure is OS agnostic; Linux runs great on it.

<comment><USER5> Hence why I said it was so great. My point was that windows is dying as a server OS, though I'm sure enterprise will keep it kicking for several decades

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is impressive. They blew through their numbers. They're showing that they can offset a slowdown in the core cash-cow via other product lines. Search revenue increase was particularly impressive.

<comment><USER8> Except for the fact that their (non-GAAP) operating income fell 3% (YOY). Falling profit on rising revenue is a red flag, no?

<comment><USER9> Falling profit on rising revenue indicates shrinking margins, which should be an outcome of a capitalist marketplace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a developer at an investment bank that passed the Level 1 Chartered Financial Analyst exam part of which explicitly tests you on your ability to read accounting statements. If you are a developer without similar training, please realize that you will probably sound as uninformed offering your commentary on this topic as would an equity analyst giving their opinion on pages of C code.

<comment><USER11> This may be the most pompous comment on HN, a forum known for its pompous comments. Congratulations.

<comment><USER10> _This may be the most pompous comment on HN_

Who is more pompous? The people thinking they are intrinsically expert at financial analysis posting here or the person that points out how silly they sound?

Seriously, picture a real financial analyst with no computer background reading your Ruby code and drawing all kinds of nonsensical conclusions from it. You'd probably laugh your head off when they read a comment in the code and thought that it was a functional instruction. That's the type of things developers are doing here with their armchair financial analysis.

<comment><USER12> A financial analyst may not be able to critique my code, but he can certainly tell if my program works or not and offer his opinion on how it should work. His take on it is not invalid just because he doesn't know how to program.

The same can be said for this- I can look at it as a developer and get a general idea of how Microsoft is doing. I may not know all the intricacies behind it, but that doesn't mean my input should be thrown into the trash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those people doubting the future of MSFT, here is my take:

MSFT is both a tech company and a utility.

It has growth potential (phones, surface, search, xbox) but it is also completely essential for global business (servers, AD, SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint).

In that sense it is a utility. If you took out all the MSFT software in the world everything basically stops. Your electricity probably doesn't work, you probably can't get on a train to get to work and if you manage to get to work you can't login to anything.

People say "but my company has BYOD!" that might be true, but MSFT is still the infrastructure it is running on. You can bring your AAPL car but you're still driving on an MSFT road.

</comment><comment><USER14> Note the keyword is "first-quarter". Usually for Microsoft the first quarter of the fiscal year is a little below other quarters. But this first quarter is still below what MS typically achieves the other 3 quarters of the year:

\- 1st quarter of last year: $16.01 billion

\- 2nd quarter of last year: $21.46 billion

\- 3rd quarter of last year: $20.49 billion

\- 4th quarter of last year: $19.90 billion

\- 1st quarter of this year: $18.53 billion (the "record" one)

<comment><USER15> I assume that pattern is due to businesses not starting new purchasing orders until the start of the next financial year?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those of you who continue to predict the demise of MS, it might be worth mentioning that Microsoft has a quite broad range of products and they primarily sell to enterprise customers who are notoriously non-fickle.

<comment><USER17> Microsoft's ventures are very much dependent on their operating system though, making the entire company like a house of cards. If their operating system monopoly ever goes, the entire company would collapse with it since they're so dependent on it. The only other successful product they have that isn't dependent on windows right now is xbox, and that's a very volatile market.

Google is similar in the fact that a lot of what they do depends on internet ad revenue.

<comment><USER18> What? First, they have enough cash to weather quite a lot of financial upsets.

But to say they are dependent on their OS for revenue is silly.

SQL Server income is not dependent on the OS -- anything can talk to it. Their cloud solution is not dependent on their OS. Search. Even Lync and Office can be used with other operating systems.

<comment><USER19> Does MSSQL run on Wine?

<comment><USER18> I am hesitant to put any unnecessary software layers between my databases and the hardware so I wouldn't know.

But it doesn't matter. Even if everyone stopped buying and using Windows tomorrow /Microsoft/ could still use it. MSSQL is not dependent on a thriving market for Windows. Anyone that needed to administer the machine could just RDP into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why are we comparing Microsoft to RIM?

RIM was a one trick pony. Microsoft has several billion dollar businesses.

</comment><comment><USER21> If they want to translate the great performance some parts of Microsoft are having into a Google-like stock price they should break Microsoft up into business and consumer companies.

Critics of Microsoft are wrong to call it's enterprise business a dinosaur. There is no reason to think Microsoft won't continue to grow this business for decades to come.

But I would like to be able to own this as a pure play, not mixed up with XBOX. Let's call this company "Azure" and spin it off, like HP did with Agilent (which should have been called HP), and let the "devices and services" part screw around with reinventing itself.

</comment><comment><USER22> Windows revenue is (finally) down. I say finally only because many people wouldn't believe this would happen, even a few quarters ago. That could be quite a problem for Microsoft over the next few years. Right now they are offsetting that with enterprise deals, but do they really think that's safe for them? RIM did, too.

<comment><USER23> > _Windows revenue is (finally) down. I say finally only because many people > wouldn 't believe this would happen, even a few quarters ago. Right now they > are offsetting that with enterprise deals, but do they really think that's > safe for them? RIM did, too._

If anyone is surprised by this, then that person has not been reading Microsoft's financial statements.

Windows revenues were also down year-over-year in Q4 of fiscal 2013, and in Q3 of fiscal 2013, and in Q1 of fiscal 2013. (Non-GAAP in all cases, to back out the effect of revenue deferrals.)

As for RIM, I don't see what it has to do with Microsoft. RIM didn't have platform lock-in -- all they had was email.

In contrast, analysts estimate that IBM still derives 40% of its profits from mainframes. ("Estimate" because IBM plays accounting games to minimize the contribution of mainframes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> $400M in Surface revenues. At even a generous $400 unit price, that's only 1M sold this quarter. Probably closer to 700K if you consider some of them being Surface 2 priced up to $900.

<comment><USER25> There are costs associated with each sale, not everything is revenue.

<comment><USER23> > _There are costs associated with each sale, not everything is revenue._

"Costs associated with each sale" are irrelevant when considering revenue.

If you spend $400 to make a $500 sale, it's the same as if you spend $100 to make a $500 sale. Both are $500 in revenue. What's different is income, which is revenue minus costs.

<comment><USER15> I think the OP means that $400 is the retail price of a Surface, but the revenue listed in the report will be based on its wholesale price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Stock price just hit after hours $35.63 (up 5%), good news for Microsoft employees indeed.

</comment><comment><USER27> Don't forget these are un-audited and don't really give us much information other than what they want to show us.

<comment><USER23> If they play games in Q1, then they'd simply take a hit in Q4. The annual report is audited, and the quarterly numbers have to add up to equal the annual numbers.

It wouldn't look good to play the Surface write-off trick twice in a row.

<comment><USER27> I don't see your point. These numbers are quarterly growth numbers since the audited year end statements. It has nothing to do with their upcoming year end or future quarters. They tell us the positive things but don't show us anything related to expenses or actual revenue dollar amount increases/decreases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The enterprise and business division is turning into a juggernaut at Microsoft that shows no sign of slowing down. Unlike the Windows team, they have a clear focus and vision guiding them.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, junk^Wfast-food chains also growing, so what? What is popular ins't even good in the most cases. Just a Bandwagon + Peer effects as it is in case of Java.

And, of course, defacto server-side OS is Linux. So-called Desktop will be theirs for a long long time, but not because the OS is of any good - it is meaningless a bloatware, but because of word.exe and excel.exe which it seems to be here forever.

As for their services, well, forcing sheeple to use IE and Bing by re-writing their browser's settings doesn't account for even for popularity. IE is crap compared to Chrome, and even some sheeple could see that, but most of them just doesn't know any better, so they got stuck with IE and Bing.

And to appreciate the absurdity, just look what is happening with all those Java apps, which are supposed to run everywhere, with each new release of Windows, which are supposed to be 100% backward-compatible.)

<comment><USER30> _defacto server-side OS is Linux_

Is it? Sure it's fairly defacto for public facing web servers, but servers in general? Given how hugely popular Exchange, Active Directory, SQL Server and, to a lesser extent, Sharepoint is I imagine that Windows servers are pretty darn popular (or at least common). You just don't see them if all you're looking at is public facing web servers.

<comment><USER29> Any of these inside FB, Google and most of startups? How many startups really develop _anything_ for MS platform?

Well, _really_ good tools like Go allows the same server-side code to be ran under Windows, the real question is what for?

<comment><USER31> I'm using SQL server, Server 2012 R2.

We can't use public cloud. Need our own private hardware for legal reasons.

The load isn't high, we have a high value per client, low client count business model.

The ease at which I can have a private cloud. Data replication and clustering, full Hot-Hot style DR solution, hosting on MS technologies is great.

I can get due diligence sign off from SQL Server which I could not for say Postgre, this would be due to the fact the replication component isn't vetted and considered secure/authoritative by my clients.

Then I do the maths, once bizspark ends, the total cost for all these licenses is going to be about $30k per year. We hope to have revenues of about thirty times that by then.

But better than all that. How long does it take to set up this replicating, elastic cloud, with replicated database? Not even a day.

I couldn't do that with Oracle!

Bizspark means right now that we don't have to worry about the costs compared to going VMware.

Now in the world of startups whom have 100,000 users to make $10, then yes, the cost of these technologies is going to be hard to justify!

<comment><USER32> You set up a "full Hot-Hot style DR solution" in one day ?

Did you try actually failing it over ?

<comment><USER31> better, I also got it set up with selenium doing a set of tests, my own version of a chaos monkey (a powershell script) that created failing instances, all triggered as part of a TeamCity process.... Too much faff to do it in TFS. The glue code for this is truly horrific, I'm thinking of buying ranerex.

I've not yet linked it up to the build quality (which I want to do) and I'm also thinking of making a more Windows Focused Chaos Monkey OS project. I dislike the idea of testing only that a VM stops. I want to see what happens if I hammer say its CPU with a few higher priority threads. Or simulate insane network latency, or some other networking quirk.

I worry I am only testing against very well behaved nodes disappearance.

Ultimately I'll have a nice little dashboard, which allows me to switch instance between UAT2/PROD, that shows me the available reserve for each environment. I'm toying with making some OWIN extension that allows me to control which components are loaded. For example, we have a 'chat' component, which is obviously not essential. I'd love the idea of automatically failing that. As we add more value add features, certain models and the like which are CPU demanding, these features will not have any uptime guarantee, so I'd like to automatically throttle them, in the case of a catastrophic failure (like a DC loosing connectivity).

I am looking for something 99.999%. I've got three physical separate DC sites, each DC site has 3 or more servers. We could run the entire system on one server, easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here us the Google Trends graph showing the decline in the search terms 'Microsoft' and 'Windows':

[http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=microsoft%2C+window...](http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=microsoft%2C+windows#q=microsoft%2C%20windows%2C%20android%2C%20iphone&cmpt=q)

For comparison there is the trend for 'iphone' and 'android'.

Sure Microsoft are doing loads of exciting things but people aren't typing 'Microsoft' or 'Windows' into the search engine box of Google as much as they used to. Make of that what you will.

<comment><USER34> Well, if you search for "windows safe mode", that went down too and "windows [version] safe mode" is systematically in the top 5 suggestions after "windows [version]". That may mean that people search less for windows because it became more stable. Good news!

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=windows+safe+mode#q=w...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=windows+safe+mode#q=windows%20safe%20mode&cmpt=q)

My point is that, yeah, getting conclusions from that is hard...

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> In other news, they still only pay 5% taxes due to offshore accounts.

</comment><comment><USER36> I switched my default search in chrome to bing when the new tab page changed. I've since fixed the tab page, but left the search provider alone for now to see what differences I notice over time. So far, it's OK, but fails to give me my geek-centered results for generically named things like orange and amber.

</comment><comment><USER37> The overwhelming need to poo poo these results in here is pretty disgusting though expected I suppose.

I'm interested in following those Surface numbers over the course of the next year. If they can get that revenue up to about a billion, they will have done very well. And I think they can do it.

</comment><comment><USER38> _cough_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263205) _cough_

</comment><comment><USER39> They will continue to milk the enterprise cow, but eventually even they will dry up.

<comment><USER40> I know everyone here wants to believe that but their percentage of penetration in enterprises continues to rise and the breadth of their offerings as well.

They are growing more cows and expanding their offerings to other herds (see Java support, node.js support, Linux support, ...).

<comment><USER41> > I know everyone here wants to believe that

Factually speaking, some of us here don't want to believe that, especially if we work for Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Headlines from Dec 18th, 2009: "BlackBerry shipments break record in Q3, RIM profits jump 59 percent".

Also known as the Wile E. Coyote Syndrome.

<comment><USER43> You could literally post this comment every time every company from Google to Netflix have record revenue.

Also known as the even a broken clock is right twice a day syndrome. :)

<comment><USER42> Not at all. RIM was screwed when the iPhone was announced, and despite dismissing it publicly (just like Microsoft did) they knew that internally but did nothing.

That lack of leadership sealed their fate.

Google and Netflix are firing on all cylinders not placating Wall Street with short term profit surges.

<comment><USER44> You're right about the lack of leadership. But as someone who has worked at both RIM and MSFT, they're vastly different. Moving out of the MSFT platform for example isn't exactly as simple as switching out a couple of servers and handing out new phones to employees. Also, there's innovation on the enterprise side of things (very cool stuff (on par with google) being done in Azure, SQL Server, Visual Studio, .NET, Dynamics CRM, Skype/Lync, Sharepoint etc.) which I think where most of the money will eventually come from (and the trends suggest that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> MSFT's todo list to boost revenues:

1\. Accelerate Ballmer booting out process. Why's he still there?

2\. Boost Cloud.

3\. Boost enterprise services and everythings.

4\. Stop wasting resources on stupid consumer widgets department.</comment>


Australian Bureau of Statistics says Census website attacked by overseas hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-10/australian-bureau-of-statistics-says-census-website-hacked/7712216 <comment><USER2> The ABS sets up a single site with identity details of every single person in the country. They are then shocked, amazed and flabbergasted when the site is attacked.</comment>


Tiny Radar Chip Revolutionizing Gesture Recognition: Google ATAP's Project Soli - <AUTHOR> http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/radar-chip-revolutionizing-gesture-recognition-google-atap-project-soli/ <comment><USER2> Small radar ICs will be useful for other things.

Radar gives you range rate directly. Getting range rate from vision is hard and takes several frame times at least. If you have position and range rate and dump it into a machine learning system, gesture recognition should be straightforward.

It's not clear how useful this will be for GUIs in general. It could be useful for interacting with large screen displays, where you may be too far back for touch and a mouse is a pain. A presentation version could be useful.

(Presentations from computers still look lame. The audience usually sees the presenter's desktop while they futz with the computer, then enter PowerPoint.)

<comment> semi-extrinsic > Presentations from computers still look lame. The audience usually sees the > presenter's desktop while they futz with the computer, then enter > PowerPoint.

1\. Unplug VGA/HDMI cable

2\. Do all of the futzing

3\. Plug VGA/HDMI cable

This is a solved technical problem. That people can't be bothered is the real problem.

<comment><USER3> Alternative if you present regularly:

1\. Enable "extended destkop", rather than "mirror desktop".

2\. Select an appropriate wallpaper, or just black.

<comment><USER4> Best i can tell, presenters use mirror so that they can see their own slides on the screen while talking.

Frankly i think a seldom talked about Android feature may be a better solution.

[https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.2.htm...](https://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.2.html#SecondaryDisplays)

<comment> semi-extrinsic I think PowerPoint already does this; Keynote's had it for ages, and I've done it on Linux with Beamer a few years back. You have presenter's notes with a small slide preview on the screen in front of you, actual slides on the big screen.

These days I run my presentations in reveal.js (HTML5), so the output is trivially cross-platform and videos, 3D content etc. always work flawlessly. This also has speaker notes, implemented as two browser windows (one for each screen) with linked controls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I though the auto industry was commoditizing this technology with minature and cheap technology.

This also happened with air bag accelerometers which sell for dimes now. They were first used to detect falling laptops and retract rotating disk arms to save disks. Then you put two or three in mobile devices figure out the 3D orientation of screens.

<comment><USER6> I always wondered how the phone knew its orientation. Then I saw this video. Wow.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVgKu6v808](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVgKu6v808)

This is from a series of videos called "Engineerguy"

<comment><USER7> His videos are wonderful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my opinion this is awful for those of us who have to help people do things from time to time. Yet another UI that is impossible to walk somebody through over the phone.

<comment><USER9> I'm working in tech support and your post just made my hair turn white.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> If this is available with a few meters of range, it has potential for automatic door control. Star Trek quality door control has been done experimentally [1] but the standard sensors are too dumb. You want range, azimuth and range rate. This is no big deal in a radar; it just costs too much.

If someone is moving fast, the door opens sooner, and faster. Moving parallel to the door should not trigger it. (In Japan, automatic sliding doors on street storefronts are common, and false triggers from passers-by are a problem.) With good sensors on both sides, you can open the door further in advance if there's someone on the other side. This allows opaque automatic doors.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhrLetrTSYA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhrLetrTSYA)

<comment><USER10> 60Ghz radio, 2-3 foot range.

       Soli's sensors can detect motion at a range of about two to three feet, Schwesig says, so any device you use within that range stands to benefit.

[http://mashable.com/2015/05/30/google-project-soli- analysis/...](http://mashable.com/2015/05/30/google-project-soli- analysis/#I.OrHXCphqqm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really exciting. It's sort of clear that there is no one killer interface, but truly robust gesture recognition, DL driven natural language interfaces, and speech recognition start to describe a nice landscape for VR and AR.

When I'm trying to create a lot of text, I'll still use a keyboard, but most of the time that's not what I want to be doing.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, most developers say they'll stick with a keyboard.

I'm still holding out for the clever person who integrates gestures into a keyboard killer. You can use gestures chords, for example. With intellisense and other intelligent completion, the future might not need a keyboard.

Here are some other gesture solutions:

[https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes#gesture- computing](https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes#gesture-computing)

<comment><USER13> I wonder if they have to be exclusive.

How cool would it be to have a keyboard where you can hold down a "gesture button" or just move your hands/fingers over a certain zone and have it pick up small gestures? You'd barely need to move your hands and could probably keep your wrists in the same position.

This could then do things like more natural scrolling, cursor control, obviously more complex actions.

They keyboard is great for what it does, but improving input doesn't necessarily have to mean getting rid of something that works quite well and completely reimagining it.

<comment><USER11> What has probably seen the end of the road, is the mouse.

<comment><USER14> Not yet. There's few things matching its combination of speed and precision.

It's more believable that computer mice will get tech like Soli integrated to become smarter.

<comment><USER11> So... a mouse and a motion control transceiver in one? That could be fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish there was more technical detail. I would love to know the performance characteristics of the radar, and what techniques it uses (eg. is it fully coherent, waveform repetition frequency, etc).

</comment><comment><USER16> They've had "small" radar modules for a while, commonly used as microwave movement detectors[0] Also, here is the manufacturer brochure[1]

[0] [http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2013/08/21/breakout- boar...](http://dangerousprototypes.com/blog/2013/08/21/breakout-board-uses- hb100-doppler-motion-sensor/)

[1] [http://www.agilsense.com/useruploads/files/01_HB%20selection...](http://www.agilsense.com/useruploads/files/01_HB%20selection%20list%20ver300.pdf)

<comment><USER17> The difference being Multi-Antenna Synthetic Aperture RADAR vs single antenna RADAR.

<comment><USER18> Precisely. You need synthetic aperture (or similarly complicated Fourier analysis) with multiple transceive pathways to get a good 3D model of the environment.

It's very impressive that this project managed to miniaturize both the radio hardware and the computational hardware required for this. You need to perform FFTs very fast to make this work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Many alarm systems have gunn-diode microwave motion sensors in them. Replace this with high-resolution radar and networking for house-wide whole-body gesture recognition.

</comment><comment><USER20> This might be great for vr? How does it compare to leap motion?

</comment><comment><USER21> Cool. So when can we get our hands on (or should I say hands off) developer kits?

</comment><comment><USER22> Another great tool for touch-less interfaces. I think the odd aspect of this Google I/O demonstration is the novelty usage of the technology for a smart watch. This tech seems like it is more difficult than it's worth in that form factor, but for devices that must remain sanitary, say in a kitchen, or a medical device in an OR, I like the potential.

</comment><comment><USER23> so they are using something like 60-66GHz which beside small antenna size advantage makes for the fastest attenuation [http://www.propagation.gatech.edu/ECE6390/project/Fall2012/T...](http://www.propagation.gatech.edu/ECE6390/project/Fall2012/Team09/Team9GeoSatTech_website_FINAL/SatCom%20website/images/GaseousAttenuation.png) . Pretty logical.

</comment><comment><USER24> I want to combine one of these chips with a magic mirror.

If this works, then it is one of Google's greatest projects, the number of applications are huge.</comment>


Cold fusion reactor independently verified, has 10k x the energy density of gas - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/156393-cold-fusion-reactor-independently-verified-has-10000-times-the-energy-density-of-gas <comment><USER2> Here's a great breakdown of why this paper is junk science: [http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/21/the-e- cat...](http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/21/the-e-cat-is-back- and-people-are-still-falling-for-it/)

Simply put, they didn't actually exclude external sources of power, nor did they properly measure before and after fusion. The test also happened _only when the device was on_. This isn't an independent review; it's equivalent to me looking at it and saying "wow, that box is pretty!"

<comment><USER3> For everyone commenting on this story -- the link daeken posted is well worth a read. Very reasonable measures were completely ignored. The most amazing to me was the fact that _external power was never disconnected_ from the device!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It will be lovely if this pans out. It will be a challenge as well.

But besides the requirement of proof, the curiosity that Rossi continues to seek out funds when, if true, he could be building power plants and under cutting everyone on their cost of power. And thus crushing the power industry and becoming independently wealthy.

So that makes me skeptical. And like radio in the past, without understanding how it works, we don't make progress very quickly. Radio turned out to be a real thing, and this could too, but so far I'm still betting on the 'don't pass' line.

</comment><comment><USER5> Andrea Rossi is a guy with a history of being a charlatan.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_(entrepreneur)>

<comment><USER6> More info on the page on this particular device:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer>

Note particularly: _Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel commented at scienceblogs saying Rossi did not allow the reactants or products to be measured on this occasion. In the previous tests there were not enough Nickel-62 and Nickel-64 (the only two isotopes which can fuse with hydrogen), at 3.6% and 0.9% respectively, in the reactants to explain the 10% copper output; these isotope levels are typical of natural copper, rather than of fusion by-product. According to Siegel, Rossi also refused to unplug the machine while it was operating despite it being an easy way to surreptitiously power the device. He also added that the supposedly independent testers had to rely on data supplied by Rossi._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suspect this will need several independent verifications, all of which meet the most stringent standards of scientific rigor.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Isolate the system in a Caloric chamber, once the device is at operating temperatures, and prove beyond all doubt that there are no hidden energy inputs.

Measure heat generated for a period of many hours. The results should be obvious.

Document everything for easy repeatability.

The Rossi-Focardi "E-Cat" is being seriously questioned. Their credibility is not great. I won't outright call it a scam yet, but I have grave doubts.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cold fusion CONFIRMED - for people who live in rooms at temperatures of 859.1 degrees centrigrade, apparently. And who don't need their research papers to be peer-reviewed :)

<comment><USER9> In other news, room temperature superconductivity was confirmed by researchers at the University of Fairbanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> " _which hasn't yet undergone peer review_ "

" _The device subject to testing was powered by 360 W for a total of 96 hours, and produced in all 2034 W thermal._ "

When it does, and the reviewers find that the authors can't even get their units correct, this will be dismissed like every other cold fusion experiment.

</comment><comment><USER11> _meh_ I'll wait until the paper is peer reviewed before I get excited. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a fusion expert, but I studied physics in undergrad, and this seems pretty much impossible.

The first obvious question is "how are you overcoming the Coulomb barrier?". Protons absorbing electrons won't just 'happen' - it's energetically unfavorable, requiring 780,000 eV of energy input. (Unbound neutrons are unstable for this reason.) Given that the energy of chemical reactions is usually around 1-3 eV, one has to wonder where the heck all this energy comes from.

The second obvious question is "where does the excess energy/momentum go?". If (say) you hit a proton with an electron at 1 MeV, and 0.78 MeV is absorbed in conversion to a neutron, 0.21 MeV of energy and all the electron's momentum still has to go somewhere. Neutrinos weigh almost nothing, so all the momentum has to go into the neutron, which is now traveling at around 500 eV (not 1 eV). You'd likely also get gamma ray emissions.

The third obvious question is "what's the reaction cross-section?". Weak force mediated reactions happen very rarely, which is why the neutron's decay time is so long.

<comment><USER13> I agree with the general sentiment wrt this article, but I can address your first objection: quantum tunneling. Just like in those old (and real, even though energetically deficient) muon-catalysed cold fusion devices

<comment><USER12> Quantum tunneling increases the rate of energetically favorable reactions, but it can't create energy from nowhere. Eg. in the muon catalysis case, the reaction (D + T -> He4 + H) produced a huge amount of energy as soon as nuclei could "tunnel through" the barrier. In this case (p + e -> n + v), no energy is produced even after the barrier is overcome; the energy used to overcome the Coulomb barrier goes into the mass of the neutron. Hence, that energy still must come from somewhere.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I realised this a while after answering. A pity muons are so expensive to generate, since at method is theoretically and effectively beautiful.

Hope is the last thing you lose, but it's pretty clear this particular case of "cold fusion" is (as the debunking article linked above) shenanigans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neutrons. If it is a cold fusion device (which the arXiv article does not claim), then copious neutron production is almost unavoidable.

If I were evaluating something that claimed anything like nuclear power densities, you can be certain that I'd have radiation detectors around, and I'd write about it in my paper. This would be as much for my own safety as for science.

A successful invention of an alternative energy source won't require secrecy. That's what a patent is for. It's not something that can be commercialized (or even produced in quantity) without someone tearing it apart and figuring out how it works.

</comment><comment><USER15> _"The cold fusion device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline. Even allowing for a massively conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline"_

Such idiotic claims. What comes next, that meat has twice the energy energy density of a fruit blender? Since when does one compare a fuel and a machine, instead of two fuels?

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm keeping the bubbly on ice for now. Not because the reactor may be a hoax, but even if it's wildly successful -- by which I mean CF replaces all current power generators -- does the estimable readership of HN think it's really going to reduce our energy bill?

Think of what goes into your bill -- it's not all a pass-through of whatever the provider had to burn, there's also labor and infrastructure.

But let's assume for argument's sake that CF is a plug-in replacement, and it's 1/10th the cost. What makes you think the utility execs will just give that away?

They have armies of lobbyists, decades of experience at bamboozling the public, and control of the infrastructure -- in some US states, they even have the power to seize property by force.

And when pressed, they'll just restructure their business so that their cost of buying energy is low or nonexistent, in order to justify their rates.

Or, more ominously, they'll manipulate the markets for CF materials to maintain or increase their rates.

Just a dose of reality. But, hey I could be wrong.

<comment> mark-r If it's cheap enough and doesn't produce toxic byproducts, you could get point-of-use reactors. No more need for utilities.

Naturally the utilities would fight that with every fiber of their being. But doesn't everybody here dream of that kind of disruption?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> ive been following this ever since the hoopla a few years ago. I want it to be real and I want to see the world changed by it, but until I see more verification I'm not getting my hope sup.

</comment><comment><USER18> This situation is the perfect, legitimate situation where patents make sense. I really wonder why Andrea Rossi doesn't simply patent his invention, and let the whole world know how - and if - it really works.

<comment><USER19> Elon Musk covered this. They don't patent things at Space X because their primary competitors are governments, and patent enforceability against governments is questionable at best.

I think the same applies here.

<comment><USER18> This is an interesting point, but the situation here is very different. For space launches there is a very little market, and if eg the Russians undercut you your potential customers will go to them and you're going to lose money.

For electricity instead there is so much demand to satisfy that the inventor could make MUCH more money than he ever dreamed of just selling it in the Countries that would respect his patent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why does this junk since about LENR keep ending up on the front page of Hacker News? It is the same report over and over again with nothing new added.

</comment><comment><USER21> Extremely skeptical of course.. but:

What if you did crack cold fusion.. imagine the (justifiable) paranoia and measures you would have to take to protect yourself, and your discovery.

I'd want to get the plans/schematics in the public domain ASAP. Someone is going to throw money at you to help build bigger and better versions once all doubt is removed anyway.

</comment><comment><USER22> On related note - there is also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon- catalyzed_fusion> \- also works in "lower" temperature, just needs some muons...

</comment><comment><USER23> If this gets verified that it produces more energy than it requires to get the thing started, our world will be revolutionized! Can't wait for the update. We can finally get rid of all the oil heads.

</comment><comment><USER24> With nickel at $6.64 per pound, and copper at $3.28, I'd be more interested in a device that went the opposite direction. (I mean, since it's not actually performing fusion anyway.)

</comment><comment><USER25> FTA: "If Rossi and Focardi's cold fusion technology turns out to be real..."

The peer review process should really be exercised before looking to publish an article, to avoid just such lines.

</comment><comment><USER26> Let's see him pop it into an electric car and take a cross-continent drive without stopping for a recharge.

</comment><comment><USER27> Believe it when I see it..

</comment><comment><USER28> Annnnd... the article is flagged of the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not just the front page - now gone below to 500s, probably into the 800s and beyond.</comment></comment>


Batch Style Guide - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/trgwii/Batch-Style-Guide <comment><USER2> I heard some people say screw these CMake, Autotools, Makefiles, Ninjas, mesons, etc. Compilation of even big projects takes seconds. Just use a batch file on Windows and shell script on Linux. It was Casey Muratori on his Handmade Hero stream. I think he is right and most projects don't need even a Makefile.

I've been learning CMake recently and it seems that quite literally every part of it is ridden with edge cases and weird bumps. Like:

      - Variables can have a type, but it's not really a type, it's for GUI only.
      - There are cache variables but regular variables take precedence except if you set a cache variable with FORCE. But if you do so, then it hides the normal variable and you get different behaviour on subsequent runs.
      - Variables can be combined in an array, except it is a string separated by ;.
      - There is a bunch of deprecated syntax that you shouldn't use but should be aware of. You should start your CMakeList.txt files with a weird conditional that sets the minimum required version using a syntactic hack.
      - It ignores $CPPFLAGS in some cases, Arch Wiki said so.
      - There are multiple values for true and false. Things like YES, 1, ON, TRUE, NO, 0, OFF, FALSE.
      - For older versions of CMake a string literal can evaluate to the value of similarly named variable.
      - It is really a programming language. There is seems to be so much to it, it doesn't look limited

I just started to learn. It's not a big deal, but it feels messy.</comment>


Women used to wear huge pockets like these under their petticoats - <AUTHOR> http://hyalineprosaic.blogspot.com/2017/08/can-we-discuss-pockets-or-beware-bad.html <comment><USER2> What I want to know is how one would _access_ these pockets in a time when a skirt high enough to show the ankle of a stocking was scandalous.</comment>


Clipper: A prediction serving system for TensorFlow, PyTorch, PySpark and others - kot-behemoth https://github.com/ucbrise/clipper <comment><AUTHOR> How are you different from other products that provides OCR as a service, object detection as a service, etc?

<comment> kot-behemoth I should say that this is not my project. Nor am I a contributor — I only found it recently in my search for deploying TensorFlow models.

In terms of how this is different to other products that provides OCR as a service, object detection as a service: this is not an "as a service" product, but a framework that allows you to deploy ML models in a variety of configurations, such as Docker/K8s. I'd even say it's even further than a framework, as it's opinionated about what goes into the serving cluster: not just model workers, but query manager/load balancer, metrics aggregator and a config DB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> It's a bit amusing how every good name has been taken, sometimes multiple times. Clipper was the name of an xBase compiler, an ill-fated RISC CPU by Fairchild that powered Integraph computers. Besides that, it's also the name of that ill-conceived crypto backdoor chip.

<comment><USER3> I was hoping this was about the Clipper Card SF Bay area transit card + big data.</comment></comment>