Https hurts users far away from the server - <AUTHOR> https://antoine.finkelstein.fr/https-is-hurting-users-far-away-from-your-servers-and-what-to-do-about-it-5b143080488#.sxjb81794 <comment><USER2> The biggest impact you can have on your users experience is to trim down the number of connections and the size of your pages. _Long_ after that you can start worrying about round-trip-times to the server.

This blog post is a nice example: 30 requests (ublock origin blocked another 12, with those enabled the time to load increases to a whopping 28 seconds), 2.5M transferred, 7 seconds load time. And all that for 4K payload + some images.

<comment><USER3> Number of connections isn't that relevant with HTTP2

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately back here in the real world only about 10% or so of all websites support HTTP/2 so it is _very_ relevant.

<comment><USER4> Adding http2 is easier then reducing the number of requests.

And infact reducing the number of requests using things like spritemaps, bundling js and css is actually an antipattern with http2.

<comment><USER2> > And infact reducing the number of requests using things like spritemaps, > bundling js and css is actually an antipattern with http2.

Those are just ways to lose some of the impact of bloat without addressing the bloat itself.

If you address bloat directly it will benefit _all_ users.

<comment><USER5> If you migrate to HTTP2 or move to a host that already supports it then cutting down on "round trips" is an obsolete concern altogether.

<comment><USER2> HTTP2 does not magically bundle all connections to one. It still very much depends on how you build up your page.

<comment><USER6> It does not magically split one connections into many. One domain == one connection. Sure it won't undo your "domain sharding" hacks and merge your CDNs, yeah :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is also another problem on how much and how often is Googlebot indexing your site because your site speed is one of the factors of so called Google index budget. My users are in Germany so my VPS is also in Germany to be fast for local user (~130ms for http reply), but for US Googlebot is my site slow (~420ms for http reply). So you are penalized also for this.

<comment><USER8> Hi - I know some tools report a slow site in this case, but these reports are not accurate - don't believe them! Google is not that stupid ! :D

I am currently working as a dev in an SEO-Agency (in Austria), and we never believed this hypothesis - so we tested this once with a bunch of our sites:

When moving sites with a German speaking audience to a VPS in America, your rankings at google.de/google.at will decrease (slightly - the effect is not that big) - the other way around your rankings will improve (slightly).

However - even if your rankings would improve when moving to America I would recommend keeping your sites hosted in Europe: The increase in rankings will not offset the decrease in user satisfaction and therefore the decline in your conversion rates.

<comment><USER9> That sounds like a really interesting experiment. Kudos for taking a scientific approach to SEO.

A bit off-topic, but out of curiosity, have you run any other interesting experiments like this? I would love to read a blog post about them.

<comment><USER8> Hi, thanks!

We regularly test different things, but few are as extensive as this "server location test".

This one was quite easy to do - and to revert - even when doing it for a lot of sites: just duplicate your sites on another continent and change your dns- settings.

Sadly we do not blog about this stuff. As our customers are not particularly fond of sharing their data - and blog posts without precise data are not useful at all...

Additionally, most of our assumptions and hypotheses were wrong. So most of our blogsposts would sound like:

"We thought google would work like this, but sadly we were wrong"

SEOs might like these posts - but potential customers probably not so much :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yup, and that's why for thereg we started using Cloudflare's Railgun… with it, the connection to the servers (hosted in the UK) is "bearable"… without, it's abysmal:

From a VPS in Sydney, with a Good Enough bandwidth:

        root@sydney:~# speedtest-cli 2>&1 | grep -e Download: -e Upload:
        Download: 721.20 Mbits/s
        Upload: 117.89 Mbits/s

… doing the request through Railgun is "quite bearable":

        root@sydney:~# ./rg-diag -json https://www.theregister.co.uk/ | grep -e elapsed_time -e cloudflare_time -e origin_response_time
        "elapsed_time": "0.539365s",
        "origin_response_time": "0.045138s",
        "cloudflare_time": "0.494227s",

Despite our "origin" server being quick enough, the main chunk of time is really "bytes having to travel half the world".

Why does railgun help? Because this is what a user would get otherwise; the "whitepapers" site is hosted in the UK, and doesn't use Cloudflare or Railgun – it only uses Cloudflare for DNS:

        ./rg-diag -json http://whitepapers.theregister.co.uk/ | grep elapsed_time
        "elapsed_time": "0.706277s",

… so that's ~200ms more, and _on http_.

How much would https add, if it were done without Cloudflare's https and Railgun? That's easy to check, as our the whitepapers site has TLS (although admittedly not http/2):

        root@sydney:~# ./rg-diag -json https://whitepapers.theregister.co.uk/ | grep elapsed_time
        "elapsed_time": "1.559860s",

that's quite a huge chunk of time that Cloudfalre HTTPS + Railgun just saves/shaves for us. Recommend it highly!

<comment><USER11> Did you try CloudFlare without Railgun?

That would be interesting.

<comment><USER10> Sure, let's do just that… from the same location in Sydney; origin server hosting the content is in UK. This domain is on their "free" plan, as it gets hardly any traffic.

      root@sydney:~# ./rg-diag -json https://thereglabs.com/ | grep -e elapsed_time
        "elapsed_time": "0.863677s",

So that's from Sydney to the UK, with https served by Cloudflare. The webapp serving that isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but when tested on localhost it replies in 0.015s – the rest is time taken moving bytes across the world.

        root@sydney:~# time curl -sH 'Host: thereglabs.com' -H 'Cf-Visitor: {"scheme":"https"}' http://THE_ORIGIN_SERVER/ -o/dev/null
        real	0m0.821s

… and this is plain HTTP to the origin server: the free plan is great for offloading HTTPS at basically no cost in time added.

We've got another domain on the business plan… so let's try that one.

This is an _image_ request, which is _cached by cloudflare at the edge_:

        root@sydney:~# ./rg-diag -json https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/11/09/hypnotist_magician_smaller.jpg  | grep elapsed_time
        "elapsed_time": "0.239641s",

Lovely, the "local caching" of their CDN helps a ton!

… compared to if we were to request the same file from the ORIGIN_SERVER over HTTP:

        root@sydney:~# ./rg-diag -json http://ORIGIN_SERVER/2016/11/09/hypnotist_magician_smaller.jpg  | grep elapsed_time
        "elapsed_time": "0.704458s",

… but our "origin server" _also_ is likely to have the image in the "memory cache"…

… and that image was likely in their cache; so… let's add a parameter so they _will_ have to ask the origin server:

        $ pwgen 30 2
        Eehacoh2phoo1Ooyengu6ohReWic2I Zeeyoe8ohpeeghie3doyeegoowiCei

There you go… two new randomly generated values…

        root@sydney:~# ./rg-diag -json 'https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/11/09/hypnotist_magician_smaller.jpg?Eehacoh2phoo1Ooyengu6ohReWic2I=Zeeyoe8ohpeeghie3doyeegoowiCei'  | grep elapsed_time
        "elapsed_time": "1.198940s",

Yup, took quite a bit longer than the 200ms it took when the image URL was fully in their cache.

All in all, from the point of view of being able to _easily_ serve people on the other side of the world with a "good enough" (not great, mind you!) response time, both "standard" Cloudflare, the "pro" offering _and specifically_ the "business" offering are just effin AWESOME.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are a couple of other things you can do with existing TLS technology that can improve your latency, e.g. using OCSP stapling, use modern crypto so browsers may use TLS false start, avoid too many ciphers or unnecessary certs in the chain to make the handshake smaller.

It's a bit older, but here's some info, much of it is still valid: [https://istlsfastyet.com/](https://istlsfastyet.com/)

<comment><USER13> It is questionable if OCSP stapling reduces TLS handshake time.

Without OCSP browser makes slow request to CA, but caches results for a long time so slow request happens not often.

With OCSP stapling enabled more data is transferred between client and server on _each_ TLS handshake.

Main proponents of OCSP stapling are CA, because it saves them bandwidth/hardware.

<comment><USER14> Thinking about this a bit, it seems to be that clients talking to a server with OCSP stapling support could still make use of cached OCSP responses by simply omitting the "status_request" extension in the client hello, which would cause the server not to send the stapled OCSP response. I don't think any clients behave that way today, though.

I'm not certain how session resumption plays into this either. If OCSP is skipped for resumed session as well (which would be my guess), you'd probably not take that small bandwidth hit all that often.

As an aside, OCSP stapling improves your user's privacy quite a bit as well, by not giving your CA a list of all IP addresses connecting to a domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Presumably, cloudflare is up to its ears in NSL's, illegal wiretaps, etc. If you care at all about mass surveillance, censorship, oppressive governments (in the US, or the location of the cloudflare proxy) you probably should look elsewhere.

It's probably controversial, but I'd love to see a yellow security icon in browsers when sites are using well known https relays that can see plaintext (or are doing other obviously bad things, like running software with known zero day exploits, etc)

<comment><USER16> > Presumably, cloudflare is up to its ears in NSL's, illegal wiretaps, etc. If > you care at all about mass surveillance, censorship, oppressive governments > ... you probably should look elsewhere.

This analysis seems flawed. If you care about mass surveillance, you want their top-tier security and legal teams working for you.

<comment><USER17> Their security and legal teams don't work for you, they work for the company. The company can be drafted to work for the government. Just because you pay them, does not mean they actually work for you.

<comment><USER18> Or even that their interests and yours are even remotely aligned.

They sell you a widget/service. That's where your relationship ends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you're worried about a proprietary solution, you could host your own cache server in Australia or wherever your customers are having trouble.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, at a $200/mo cost, you could spin up a few VMs on DigitalOcean, Vultr or LightSail which have decent bandwidth and cache from there.

Nice part about cloudflare though is that they can use anycast to determine location and then send the closest server IPs. For sub-$200/mo, you're not able to do that, you'd have to find a provider that could do it for you, I'm not sure anyone offers country-based anycast DNS alone.

EDIT: Looks like easyDNS enterprise may be able to do it, [https://fusion.easydns.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/214/7/...](https://fusion.easydns.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/214/7/geodns) for about $12.75/mo too. Might be a decent way to brew your own mini caching CDN for fairly cheap.

<comment><USER21> > anycast to determine location and then send the closest server IPs

Anycast doesn't determine location or send the closet IPs, it's all the same IP address announced using BGP (border gateway protocol) to automatically route to the closest (in network travel) server.

<comment><USER20> Of course. Let me clarify - they use anycast DNS to send the closest CF caching proxy's IP.

<comment><USER21> That's not how it works. Both their DNS and reverse proxy servers use anycast IPs without any DNS-based routing.

They did recently release some features called traffic manager that lets you control the origin server based on geo. If you just need geo-balanced DNS though, AWS Route 53, Azure Traffic Manager, and NSOne offer DNS based routing.

<comment><USER20> Really? I didn't think they'd do anycast on their reverse proxy servers, that seems risky to me (ie: a TCP connection changes from one server to another due to a BGP change), but I suppose the odds are fairly low.

I seem to remember getting different IPs from different locations, but it could just be random or I could be mistaken.

EDIT: Tried now and it seems I'm getting the same IPs from Canada and Australia, so you are indeed correct.

<comment><USER21> Yes, they have a big address space and announce all ips from every location: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-architecture- elimina...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflares-architecture-eliminating- single-p/)

Pretty much all major CDNs use anycast today for load balancing, rolling downtime and security/ddos protection. Http/tcp connections are usually short- lived, relatively cheap to setup (since it's an edge network anyway) and BGP route updates don't happen that often.

LinkedIn switched to anycast too after testing: [https://engineering.linkedin.com/network-performance/tcp- ove...](https://engineering.linkedin.com/network-performance/tcp-over-ip- anycast-pipe-dream-or-reality)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand why I need to use https on a static marketing webpage. No login stuff, no JavaScript, nothing. Just straight up HTML and CSS. Right now I need to pay about $150 every year for something that's only used to satisfy Google PageRank (I can't use LetsEncrypt with my hosting provider). Why?

<comment><USER23> Keeping it extremely high level:

Among other reasons, not encrypting traffic gives an opportunity for bad actors to replace content in transit to your end users when your end users are on compromised connections, such as rogue "free" wifi networks in airports or coffee shops, or even legitimate networks which have in some way been compromised, e.g. the ISPs of the world who decide to inject other content e.g. their own ads into unencrypted traffic.

The next question is usually "what could they possibly do, change a few pictures?"

They could inject malicious payloads, and for all your users would know, it would appear to them that it came from your site.

> I can't use LetsEncrypt with my hosting provider

Consider switching. For a static site, consider Gitlab; they do a good job of permitting LetsEncrypt.

\---

I sincerely appreciate the question, though. I have marketing people ask me this question all the time in private who hesitate to do so in public because quite a few security types berate them for not doing something "obviously" more secure. It's not at all obvious to most of the world's web designers and content creators that a static site should be TLS'd until it's framed (heh) in this manner. The fact that you asked brings about a massive educational moment.

Anyway, consider switching hosts. :)

<comment><USER24> May I add an example. Let's say you are a drug company and you offer a number of different drugs. With TLS I only know that you are interested in a drug that company produces or the company itself, without it I know you or someone you care about has erectile dysfunction.

<comment><USER25> No that is not all an attacker could know. TLS does not provide confidentiality of the number of bytes transmitted. So in your example an attacker would only have to crawl the public website and find the pages matching in size to the ones you have been browsing.

<comment><USER26> There are web server modules that will append random-length comments to the end of a page's HTML in order to foil this kind of attack

[https://github.com/nulab/nginx-length-hiding-filter- module](https://github.com/nulab/nginx-length-hiding-filter-module)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems to me that it is worth considering that HTTPS is not always a panacea of goodness. We should think about two things.

First that almost every firewall out there right now supports https snooping via MITM. Example: [https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/features/decryption](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/features/decryption)

Second, I just got back from rural China where most unblocked american webpages take between 5-15 seconds to load on my mobile phone many of them take upwards of a minute to load fully. This seems to be a fun combo of network latency, smaller than expected bandwidth, and pages using javascript with a series of different load events to display content. That dompageloaded->xmlhttprequest -> onreadystatechanged chain can ad some serious time on a 500ms round trip, and that's without talking about the css, the images, and the javascript.

I forgot to pay me electric bill before I flew out and it took me nearly an hour to login, push pay my bill, accept the terms, and confirm payment. I was not a happy camper.

It seems to me that while https is a very good thing, in some cases http and low bandwidth solutions might be worth implementing. It seems to me that one might actually want to tailor this to your audience, no one in their right mind is going to waste 5 minutes loading your web page. If they are so desperate they need to wait, they are going to hate you every minute they do it.

<comment><USER28> > First that almost every firewall out there right now supports https snooping > via MITM. Example: > [https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/features/decryption](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/features/decryption)

Seems prudent to mention that this requires cooperation of the client bein MitMed. Specifically, the client needs to install a root certificate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Funny coincidence, I was running into this exact issue earlier today. Had a customer complain about high response times from even our /time endpoint (which doesn't do anything except return server time) as measured by curl, and turns out it was just the TLS handshake:

        $ curl -o /dev/null -s -w "@time-format.txt" http://rest.ably.io/time
        time_namelookup:  0.012
           time_connect:  0.031
        time_appconnect:  0.000
        time_pretransfer: 0.031
             time_total:  0.053

        $ curl -o /dev/null -s -w "@time-format.txt" https://rest.ably.io/time
        time_namelookup:  0.012
           time_connect:  0.031
        time_appconnect:  0.216
        time_pretransfer: 0.216
             time_total:  0.237

(as measured from my home computer, in the UK, so connecting to the aws eu- west region)

Luckily not that much of an issue for us as when using an actual client library (unlike with curl) you get HTTP keep-alive, so at least the TCP connection doesn't need to be renewed for every request. And most customers who care about low latency are using a realtime library anyway, which just keeps a websocket, so sidesteps the whole issue. Certainly not enough to make us reconsider using TLS by default.

Still, a bit annoying when you get someone who thinks they've discovered with curl that latency from them to us is 4x slower than to Pubnub, just because the Pubnub docs show the http versions of their endpoints, wheras ours show https, even though we're basically both using the same set of AWS regions...

</comment><comment><USER30> One round trip over the course of the time that the user is using the same OS/browser installation isn't much.

The Cloudflare Railgun is an interesting solution, and one that could be implemented in the context of an SPA over a websockets connection. Or conceivably some other consumer of an API.

</comment><comment><USER31> A related interesting topic is the possibility of secure cache servers that don't break the secure channel with "blind caches". Currently just a RFC draft and probably a long time from mass adoption, but nevertheless interesting.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomson-http- bc-00](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-thomson-http-bc-00), and Ericsson's article on it [https://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/our_publications/ericsso...](https://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/our_publications/ericsson_technology_review/archive/blind- cache)

</comment><comment><USER32> I really enjoyed the coverage of the same topic in _High Performance Browser Networking_ [0]. It effectively explains the key performance influencers across various networks without being boring.

[0]: [https://hpbn.co/](https://hpbn.co/)

</comment><comment><USER33> > In our case at Hunter, users were waiting on average 270ms for the handshake > to be finished. Considering requests are handled in about 60ms on average, > this was clearly too much.

Why? Did it hurt user engagement? Were people complaining the site was slow?

<comment><USER34> The question is "is this the best we can do?".

If it's no, then clearly we should improve.

<comment><USER33> By spending time and effort on things that may not actually matter?

To their credit this post talks about improving the performance, instead of just using it to complain about they can't use https because of a difference in a metric that may or may not actually cause end users any pain.

<comment><USER34> You do realize that every latency you see on residential connections is magnified on mobile or even satellite connections?

If you have a RTT of seconds, 10 additional roundtrips can cost an entire minute.

These things become very noticeable very quickly if the system is in non- perfect environments.

Additionally, even with modern browsers it takes far too long to open a website — it should be 100% instant, less than one or two frames (16 or 33ms). That's not possible, as RTT is usually around 18ms between users and CDN edges, but at least it should be below perceivable delays (100ms).

EDIT:

My best websites hover around 281ms to start of transfer, and 400ms to the site being finished.

That's improvable, but most sites out there take literally half a minute to load.

Now go on a 64kbps connection, and try again. Handshake takes seconds, start of transfer is almost after 30sec, and by the time your website arrives your coffee has gone cold (a few minutes for a google search).

Years ago, Google was usable on dial-up. Now even the handshake takes as long as an entire search used to take. Notice anything?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's wrong with the cloudflare free plan? You can host a static site on github pages with a custom domain and use the free cloudflare SSL cert.

<comment><USER35> The "Railgun" feature mentioned in the article is only available in some paid plans. Using the free plan wouldn't keep an open connection between your servers and Cloudflare's. It does improve the situation by terminating users' handshakes early, using better links, warm DNS cache, etc. among servers. But the latency hard limit is still present between your server and CF. Skipping https between your server and CL is not an option either for any site transferring user data.

<comment><USER9> Ah, I see. I did not realize that. Accordingly, I edited my comment to be less inflammatory. :)

I understand that by using the generic CF free cert, https terminates at CF and the connection CF->Origin is over unencrypted HTTP. Is this why there is latency overhead? Because CF cannot connect to origin via https so it cannot open a persistent tunnel? Or is it because the overhead of keeping an open https tunnel per origin server is prohibitively expensive to maintain for every free customer?

I assume that even though there is no persistent tunnel, CF still must still use persistent TCP connections?

<comment><USER6> Maybe the cost is not completely prohibitively expensive but they do consider it a premium feature. Have to earn money :D</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite non-technical blogs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not really a "blog" per se but Matt Levine's "Money Stuff" newsletter is frequently cross-posted on Hacker News (usually for columns about Tesla, WeWork, and Robinhood) but he's hands-down one of the best writers at the intersection of business and law/regulation. Once you learn about his themes re: "Everything Is Securities Fraud" and "Should Index Funds Be Illegal?" you will see it pop up in reality on a daily basis.

You can subscribe to his newsletter here: [http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-s...](http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff- signup)</comment>


1656 days later, Canada gets its first national charity that accepts Bitcoin - <AUTHOR>

I first heard about Bitcoin from one of my students, back when it was trading at $7. At the time, thought it was interesting and filed it away in the back of my head.
I look after digital projects for Pathways to Education, an organization dedicated to helping students who live in economically disadvantaged areas to graduate from high school. We are currently in 13 cities across Canada and provide students with tutoring, mentoring, and financial supports to help students succeed. I used to be a youth worker and I've seen firsthand the difference that it makes.
Six months ago, I wrote up a proposal detailing how Bitcoins could be accepted and how we could issue tax receipts. Management was intrigued by the idea and asked for more information, taking the time to learn more about how it worked and asking good questions to make sure we had all our bases covered.
A call to the Canada Revenue Agency (the Canadian version of the IRS) was more straightforward than I anticipated. I explained what it was that we wanted to do and they indicated that as long as a fair market value could be established, we could issue tax receipts for the Bitcoin donations.
We experimented with a few different exchanges and eventually decided on CAVirtex, in part because they are Canadian, but also because they have been extremely helpful. Still a work in progress, but it makes it extremely easy to convert BTC to CAD.
Today, the page went live and we are the first national charity in Canada to adopt Bitcoin.
If any of you would be interested in donating, this would go a long way towards helping the students who we serve and also to help validate the work that we have been doing to implement Bitcoin as a way to receive donations. Thank you in advance!
Donation page: http://www.pathwaystoeducation.ca/bitcoin
Our wallet address (if you prefer to donate anonymously): [redacted]. <comment><USER2> CaVirtex fee structure is flaky a bit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1845hf/1_million_fo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1845hf/1_million_for_001_btc_cavirtex_charges_fees_based/)

On the other note i do not think accepting bitcoin will open a floodgates of donations.

You are doing great job helping education system, why would being anonymous is of any advantage to potential donors?</comment>


GitHub satanically messing with Markdown – changes 666 to DCLXVI - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44619165/github-satanically-messing-with-markdown-changes-666-to-dclxvi?rq=1 <comment><USER2> Reddit also messes with numbers followed by periods at the start of lines. It doesn't convert them to roman numerals, but it does infer from their presence that you are trying to make a numbered list, and it apparently also assumes that you have no idea how to count, so it renumbers the list for you.

This regularly screws up posts in /r/chess. Someone might post something like this:

      1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.Bc4 g4
      5.O-O gxf3 6.Bxf7+ Kxf7 7.Qxf3 Bc5+
      8.Kh1 d6 9.c3 Nc6 10.d4 Nxd4 11.cxd4 Bxd4
      12.Bxf4 Nf6 13.Bg5 Rg8 14.Qh5+ Rg6

and Reddit changes it to this:

      1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.Bc4 g4
      2.O-O gxf3 6.Bxf7+ Kxf7 7.Qxf3 Bc5+
      3.Kh1 d6 9.c3 Nc6 10.d4 Nxd4 11.cxd4 Bxd4
      4.Bxf4 Nf6 13.Bg5 Rg8 14.Qh5+ Rg6

<comment><USER3> The whole value proposition of markdown was supposed to be that a writer/reader need not create a detailed mental model to mentally parse the text. All of these are examples show why markdown (parsing/specification) is "broken" for use cases outside the straight and narrow. No big deal for now... Platforms which don't want to punish their users will accrete special cases and escape characters -- till some time in the future where the language will start feeling heavy with un-intuitive behavior. And so the cycle goes. :smh:

<comment><USER4> The point of the numbering changes is if you want to insert a new item half way through the list you don't have to change every single line. Unfortunately it probably confuses people more often than it helps them.

<comment><USER5> I've come to the conclusion that the worst thing about how developers design their products is the existence of "features" that override the user without the user ever telling it to. It assumes you wanted to do something other than was was inputted without getting further input from the user indicating they wanted to carry out that action. Pretty much every massive technology fuck-up in my life has been the result of the computer doing something other than what I told it to do and me not realizing or not being able to fix it after it did so. Things like "open restored document" helpfully deleting the older, unrestored document for me, attaching signatures to emails when I didn't configure a signature, etc. I want to start a movement that forces us to ask every new feature "did the user tell the computer to do X and if so, where is it indicated that X will happen?" There are a million examples when you look out for it and they're all infuriating.

<comment><USER6> Ehhhh I agree with your general point, but I'd argue Markdown's list behavior shouldn't be tarred with this brush. It's a reasonable feature that makes perfect sense if you understand it, but in practice it didn't survive contact with the real world. Nothing is perfect, after all.

<comment><USER7> > It's a reasonable feature that makes perfect sense if you understand it, but > in practice it didn't survive contact with the real world.

I think the same argument can be made for almost every "the machine knows better than the user" decision, so it seems to me that this is pointing out that the Markdown list behaviour _should_ be tarred with exactly the same brush.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kind of disappointing to see that level of testing failure. A leap to assume there is something specifically strange about `666` without even trying `665`...

<comment><USER9> Which link are you more likely to click on?

\- GitHub satanically messing with Markdown - changes 666 to DCLXVI

\- GitHub changes numbers to Roman numerals in lists

I'd call it functional clickbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the CSS for github [1], there is this

      ol ol, ul ol {
        list-style-type: lower-roman;
      }

I think that will result in all items starting with numbers in lists using Roman numerals.

1\. [https://github.githubassets.com/assets/frameworks-481a47a969...](https://github.githubassets.com/assets/frameworks-481a47a96965f6706fb41bae0d14b09a.css)

</comment><comment><USER11> Can we have BBCode back? That was better.

<comment><USER12> Better for some things / worse for others.

It was _much_ easier to write parsers for though. Most of the BBCode tags could be rendered with simple regex substitutions.

<comment><USER13> >It was much easier to write parsers for though. Most of the BBCode tags could be rendered with simple regex substitutions.

Nevermind. Let's not bring BBCode back.

<comment><USER12> On the whole I'd agree. When markdown is done right it's pretty awesome. However I'd still take BBcode over buggy half implemented markdown parsers like the one we have on HN. At least [i] is a less common token than * -- which leads to no end of edits when I've absent-mindedly emphasised something that should have been bullet pointed.

...but yes, I do agree that markdown is definitely better when it's done right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So they change enumeration lists to Roman numerals. That's it, right?

</comment><comment><USER15> Can get an (2017) on the title?

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems like click bait to me - as if Github is censoring 666. But they aren't. It's just a really weird markdown bug having to do with the '.' which immediately follows the number. It's explained in the actual SO post.

It's a cool post but it has nothing to do with censorship. Am I the only one who was misled?

<comment><USER17> Neither HN nor SO are clickbaity. The user asking the question is saying there's something creepy happening, not that GitHub is censoring.

> which immediately follows the number. It's explained in the actual SO post.

Yeah, which is why it is on HN, what's your point?

<comment><USER18> Please don't respond rudely, even if another commenter is mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a nice touch that the number of upvotes (09:10 Standard European Time)is also '666'

</comment><comment><USER20> It should probably change it to χξϛ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast))</comment>


Minimum Viable Values - <AUTHOR> http://thesash.me/minimum-viable-values <comment><USER2> Do I detect a pattern? After every controversial frontpage story, someone posts a response/counterargument/moral-of-the-story blog post. But i suspect the main purpose of the post is to indirectly benefit said blogger's startup from the sure-to-follow exposure.</comment>


PicClick - Visual Shopping for eBay & Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://picclick.com/ <comment><USER2> "PicClick Visual Shopping, find everything 100x faster!"

That might be true if it didn't try to load 550k worth of images before you started scrolling, and then begin loading more as you scroll down making the user experience much more tiring than typing a few words into amazon, google, or ebay.

Who buys DVDs based on the cover art on the keep case anyway?

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a thousand words downloads faster.</comment>


Morphing neutrinos provide clue to antimatter mystery - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/morphing-neutrinos-provide-clue-to-antimatter-mystery-1.20405 <comment><USER2>
        > Why the Universe is filled with matter, rather than
        > antimatter, is one of physics' greatest mysteries.

Why do we assume there is no anti-matter just because we can't observe it? Our sensory organs were developed to survive on this planet. They're made out of matter and evolved to detect the presence of matter. And when we make a detector it's made out of matter too.

I don't think it's farfetched to assume that matter-antimatter collisions occur all the time; they're just not that spectacular. It may even be a bit presumptuous to assume that it's even possible for matter to ever detect the presence of anti-matter. Because, detecting the presence of anti-matter just constitutes looking at the radiation left behind by a "collision" with matter. That's not observing anti-matter, it's an after-the-fact conclusion, that there must had been anti-matter before the radiation in question appeared. As soon as matter _observes_ / _comes in contact with_ anti-matter, it's no longer matter. So matter, in and of itself, seemingly cannot observe anti- matter (because it's transformed into something else at the moment it does).

Reading Wikipedia, it also appears that the matter/anti-matter relationship is asymmetric:

Bondi pointed out that a negative mass will fall toward (and not away from) "normal" matter, since although the gravitational force is repulsive, the negative mass (according to Newton's law, F=ma) responds by accelerating in the opposite of the direction of the force. Normal mass, on the other hand, will fall away from the negative matter. _He noted that two identical masses, one positive and one negative, placed near each other will therefore self- accelerate in the direction of the line between them, with the negative mass chasing after the positive mass._ Notice that because the negative mass acquires negative kinetic energy, the total energy of the accelerating masses remains at zero. Forward pointed out that the self-acceleration effect is due to the negative inertial mass, and could be seen induced without the gravitational forces between the particles. \--- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- gravity#General_relativit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- gravity#General_relativity_research_in_the_1950s)

Fascinating stuff!

<comment><USER3> We know that there is no or very little anti matter in the universe because things are not blowing up, we also know that matter and anti matter have been created in equal amounts, hence were looking into what the frak happened to all the anti matter.

Also anti matter reacts to the fundamental forces just like any other matter.

It doesn't produce anti mass, anti gravity or anti anything.

It does have an opposite charge and spin off its normal matter counterparts but other than that its pretty boring.

weve made anti hydrogen, oxygen is pretty big so it would take a while before we can make anti water but it will be done also most likely.

<comment><USER2> I guess I stand corrected on some points, but Wikipedia seems a lot less certain than you regarding anti-gravity.

        > Antihydrogen atoms should be attracted to other matter
        > or antimatter gravitationally with a force of the same
        > magnitude that ordinary hydrogen atoms experience.
        > This would not be true if antimatter has negative
        > gravitational mass, which is considered highly unlikely,
        > though not yet empirically disproven (see gravitational
        > interaction of antimatter).

I'm not sure what the exact meaning of "highly unlikely" is in this context.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen#Characteristics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen#Characteristics)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_interaction_of_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_interaction_of_antimatter)

<comment><USER3> Gravity is the result of matter(or energy) interacting (bending) spacetime. All massive objects bend space time hence they generate gravity, the mass of an anti proton is exactly the same as that of a proton. We haven't observed full gravitational interactions because we only create tiny amounts of anti matter, and even less of molecular anti matter. Since all anti matter must be kept in vacuum and electro magnetic containment it's a bit hard to check how does anti mater works with gravity. There are very little frameworks where anti matter actually interacts differently with gravity and hence space time. Even MTOG theories tend to treat anti matter in the same manner, it has a positive mass (we can verify that), if it has a positive mass it also has a positive energy, if it has that it should interact with gravity in the same manner as any other massive object.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: JavaScript coding challenges on top of GitHub & circleci - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/engintekin/javascript-coding-challenges-using-github-circleci <comment><AUTHOR> I thought that I can make coding challenges using github & circleci. I find it quite exciting, please share your thoughts.</comment>


Amazon sellers can associate your personal info to bad reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/review/R5FPKAO3QSMZZ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm got a home phone call telling me seller didn't like the bad review of a bathroom scale, see vid review for audio <comment><AUTHOR> got a home phone call telling me seller didn't like the negative review i gave. reviewed months after purchase</comment>


Ask HN: Moving to Chicago - <AUTHOR>

I'm moving to Chicago (19th November) and I am pretty sure there might be many of you guys hanging out there. I always attend to a lot of meetings whenever I go somewhere new so I wanted to know a little bit more about the tech and startup scene in Chicago. I subscribed to some Meetup groups but haven't decided yet!
Do you recommend any events/places/meetings in particular?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> There's a sporadic HN meetup on Meetup.com, and the people behind it are nice, but it's going on hiatus for at least a couple months and I'm working on replacing it with something more akin to ChiSec:

[http://sockpuppet.org/chisec](http://sockpuppet.org/chisec)

I'd like to pick a bar and a "third Thursday of every month" kind of schedule and just have people show up without the RSVP dance; in particular, appreciative though I am of the generosity of sponsors, I'm not wild about meetups that happen in other people's offices.

If you're interested, you can comment here or shoot me an email.

Welcome to Chicago. This is a great city.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a shame that the HN meetings are taking a break right now! Good that people is still up for a get together :). Are you planning on organizing other meetings after the 12th of November?

Thanks for the welcoming

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't think of it that way! I'd just say, we're hopefully changing up the way we do HN meetups, from scheduled events with RSVPs on Meetup.com to regular events in public venues every can show up at without RSVP'ing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I used to frequent a few of the meetups. People in this city are very friendly. I've gone to a few R users group meetings, some mobile developer meetings, and some informal bar get togethers and I can't remember a time where I didn't learn something new or pick something up from very friendly people.

Just try lots of things. Some groups last and some don't, but it's generally worthwhile to give things a shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have some meetings in mind, so I'm looking forward to learn new things and meet other hackers :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1871 is a kind of digital startup incubator community thing:

[http://www.1871.com/about-1871/](http://www.1871.com/about-1871/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Welcome to Chicago! There's a ton of events always happening, meetups, etc. Lots of co working spaces full of entrepreneur communities.

Definitely subscribe to the Startup Digest. Feel free to shoot me any email with any questions. Tim at matchist dot com

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm at work right now but shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and I can send you a better follow up tonight with some Chicago info. Welcome to the city!

<comment><AUTHOR> Deal :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Welcome to Chicago. It's a great city. Shoot me an email if you have an questions or need any help.

zohar.[michael jackson's last name]@gmail.com</comment>


Where are the e-ink monitors? - <AUTHOR>

For programmers who look at type all day :[ <comment><USER2> You can have a great high resolution grey scale monitor, as used in hospitals to view x-rays and other imaging data, but they cost something like $6,000USD. I'm guessing you could hack them to work well with text. You'd lose color syntax highlighting.

Here's just one example, but there are loads more: (<http://www.pnwx.com/Equipment/Digital/Displays/Barco/Nio/>)

Blame stupid consumers for buying really poor quality monitors based almost only on price - forcing manufacturers to supply inferior product.

<comment><USER3> The average computer user spends most of their time playing simple 2d games on facebook while streaming low resolution videos from youtube. The type of content they consume doesn't justify the purchase of a high-end monitor.

What I would consider stupid is when a person spends an exorbitant amount of money on something that they won't use. It would be stupid for consumers to spend a ton of money on an expensive monitor when the cheaper solutions will get the job done in nearly all situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't agree with you more. I think this is one area where there would be some demand...but nothing is available at the right price point. It could be that the technology isn't there yet.

This generation is the first to grow up staring at close, backlit screens most of the day. There will be some long term consequences if we don't find some way to lessen the impact on the human eye. Our eyes evolved in a very unique way due to our environment. Drastically changing how we use them within one generation is already causing more people to have issues. Our eyes developed to perform well at varied distances in sunlight. Now, we typically look at something very close that projects an image with light. Granted, everyone needs to take a break and get outside and away from technology...but that gets harder as talented developers and engineers keep on creating great products and experiences.

</comment><comment><USER5> The main argument for better and more affordable e-ink monitors is the glowing of today's screens. I am not sure if looking into an active light source is good for our eyes. It's like staring into a fire. If you know some studies that confirm my concerns, please let me know. LCDs are a big step forward in comparison to vacuum tubes, but the problem is the glowing itself.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think E-ink would be pretty slow to react, but maybe high-resolution PixelQi or Mirasol displays.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it only had to display a new letter at a time (while you type) I bet it could made to respond quickly enough. Then again, I don't know, is it required by the technology that the screen refresh every time a change is made? That would kill it.

<comment><USER7> The tech doesn't require a screen refresh, if you don't refresh the screen it leaves behind "ghost" letters. They flash the entire screen because if you just wrote all white to a screen that had letters, you would still be able to see a difference between pixels that were previously white and pixels that were previously black.

You would have to choose between an entire screen refresh on backspace or leaving it slightly messy looking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see the tech mature over the next few years. E-ink would be great.

In the mean time, check out Gunnar glasses. They are fantastic.</comment>


The New Web War - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/column-the-scoble-show.html <comment><USER2>
     "If your competitor builds a more interactive site
     than yours, customers will flee to the flashier foe"

That must be the reason, why no one uses Google anymore.</comment>


Supreme Court upholds health-care law, individual mandate - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-to-rule-thursday-on-health-care-law/2012/06/28/gJQAarRm8V_story.html <comment><USER2> I can't even discuss this, because there really isn't anything to be said. The Supreme Court is a joke, as far as I'm concerned. Nothing gives any "government" any authority to tell me what I _must_ buy, regardless of what they, Congress, you, pg, my 7th grade Science teacher, or the sterno-bum at the corner of 9th and Main thinks.

I'm so far beyond angry right now that I'm not even capable of rational thought. "Seeing red" falls way short of describing my state right now.

I can't talk about this anymore. Have fun discussing this, folks. I need to get work done today and it's best for me to try as hard as I can to ignore this topic for a while.

<comment><USER3> The decision is actually quite interesting and it didn't come down the way a lot of folks thought it would.

1) The individual mandate is beyond Congress's commerce clause authority (5-4) and is only upheld as an income tax like social security (5-4, but only one vote in common with the commerce clause side). I don;t know if this makes the floor unconstitutional, and indeed I would suspect it might. This weakens the law in ways that a lot of people might not expect, and it also deeply constrains Congress's power to do things like this in the future.

2) The states won regarding Medicaid. They got, quite frankly, more than they asked for, even though the court did not invalidate the provision. The court (7-2) said that Congress could require use participation in new programs. This means that states can opt out of the new Medicaid expansion and, arguably other past Medicaid expansions, like SCHIP, and the Federal Government doesn't have a lot they can do about it.

I don't like the mandate. I think it's a bad idea, deeply misguided, etc. I don't see anything coming out of Congress that wouldn't make a broken system even worse, regardless of party. But if a decision was going to uphold it, this isn't such a bad one.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will You Develop for Oculus or Valve/Steam? And Why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm currently developing for the Vive + Linux: [https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula](https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh nice. So your work will allow programmers to work in vr? Or more generally to have a VR office for collaboration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hardware-wise I am more interested in PSVR than anything else on the basis of content.</comment>


Y Combinator rejection reasons - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=y+combinator+interview+%22I%27m+sorry+to+say%22++%22decided+not+to+fund%22 <comment><USER2> We applied (and interviewed!) for YC last season. We didn't get in, but they were dead on about the issues with our business.

Since then, we've addressed the issue and are continuing to move forward.

Remember, not getting into YC isn't the end - and YC does make mistakes. Just remember to hear their reasons out and really consider what they have to say. They're all brilliant people and have an uncanny ability to unravel your business in less than 10 minutes.

Build, fail, listen, learn, keep building, keep listening, keep learning, keep moving.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there is a sweet spot that you have to hit where you have the focus to start on a solution to a small part of a big problem, but still show investors that there is a clear path to eventually tackle more and more of the bigger problem. Reid Hoffman talks about "boil the ocean" startups that are just too big to tackle, but if you approach it as boiling a cup or a pot first, and convince investors that there is still an ocean to be boiled down the line, you have a good shot.

<comment><USER4> That said, YC could be missing out on opportunities if they fail to have the foresight to see the cups that could eventually become oceans -- ie the ability of sniply to (hypothetically) bring their users over to other products in the future.

Just because a particular seed from a startup isn't going to sprout into a forest overnight doesn't mean that particular startup doesn't have the potential to find other seeds that do.

I guess what I'm saying is YC would do well to consider funding people with good ideas as much as the ideas themselves.

<comment><USER3> _I guess what I 'm saying is YC would do well to consider funding people with good ideas as much as the ideas themselves._

That's a good point. YC does claim to look at people first and then ideas, and really the idea is just evidence that you can have good ideas. But I guess they are also looking for pattern recognition, as in, can you spot the pattern that YC is looking for. That seems to be (in my opinion) smart teams who can tackle a small chunk of a big problem before and during YC, and sell investors the dream of the whole chunk after YC. Think couch surfing app now, disrupting the hotel industry later. Cloud based USB stick now, revolutionize the cloud storage industry later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> YC is not going to be completely transparent in their selection process because doing so would make it easier to manipulate the interview process. Jessica Livingston already mentioned in an interivew that they've revealed too much. Now founders are going in lying about working together for years on projects and being life-long friends.

Entrepreneur: "Hey YC, what do I have to tell you in order for me to get in? You know, so I can practice it and avoid being weeded out by your process. So I can tell you all the things you want to hear during the interview. I promise I won't lie during my interview."

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this a joke that I am not getting? Is linking to google supposed to be a suggestion that there are a very large number of reasons for rejection?

<comment><USER7> I think it is just a clever way of linking to a collection of related articles.

<comment><USER8> Apparently too clever for its own good. Mobile Safari just shows clean Google search page, no search results. I guess this is what happened to the GP poster.

<comment><USER9> The submitted url is: [https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=y+combinator+interview+...](https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=y+combinator+interview+%22I%27m+sorry+to+say%22++%22decided+not+to+fund%22)

If I paste this into Safari on iOS it redirects to a blank Google page in my country: [https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=cr&ei=yqk0VcmaLaa07QbeqoH4C...](https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=cr&ei=yqk0VcmaLaa07QbeqoH4CQ)

<comment><USER6> This is exactly what is happening to me too. At least I now understand what the op was trying to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just because a business is too small for investors like YC, doesn't mean it will not be profitable if the team stays small and delivers to it's niche.

</comment><comment><USER11> Most common Y Combinator rejection reasons:

1\. Facebook is already the best "Facebook for X".

2\. The founders are old enough to know better.

3\. Co-founder looks like an extra from "Wayne's World"

4\. The co-founder is the founder's left hand inside a sock puppet.

5\. Someone mentioned "Java" and it killed the mood.

6\. The founders somehow discovered that the VCs are reptillians, as are most world leaders

</comment><comment><USER12> I remember that some years ago while reading "Hacker and Painters" I got the naive impression(I was 18) that I could just go to grad school and then become rich by just building a technically superior product, without having business experience. How wrong I was.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for the post; very helpful. You might consider sharing the link via your own product; this way people will see how it works ...

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't know why YC needed an interview to tell Sniply that "we can't see it becoming the huge type of company that investors like to fund." Surely that should have been weeded out in the initial selection. Their story highlights a lack of transparency in the YC selection process. Those who are rejected at the application stage get no reasons at all. Then they hear stories like this and wonder if there is any method to the selection process at all.

If YC has internal tools to assess all the applications (as they claim) then what is the harm in publishing those criteria, and publishing the results publicly. For example, let's say Sniply got 5/10 for market size, but had 10/10 for member ability (and that ability was weighted evenly) then we could see how it was selected, and we could see why it was selected over other applicants. Then all applicants could see where they stand. As it stands it seems to be a real crapshoot, which gives false hope to companies like Sniply, while denying others the chance to be selected.

<comment><USER15> Dude, YC is not obligated to do anything for you, or anybody. They're not a college, and even those aren't transparent with selection criteria. Christ, checklists out of 10?

Life is a crapshoot.

People need to also stop thinking that incubator == success, or that not incubator == not success.

<comment><USER16> Except that, why would people need to stop thinking that?

Because, its very obvious that, at the very least, becoming part of y combinator sets you up for major success. Just like being part of an Ivy League.

Sure, you can have success without it, but damn, why wouldn't you want it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There can be umpteen number of reasons for rejection. As long as the process is opaque, people can only speculate.

Time to move on, focus on what's critical for _you_ to succeed.</comment>


Corporate buzzwords are how workers pretend to be adults - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/most-annoying-corporate-buzzwords/606748/ <comment><USER2> I sometimes use business talk as a tool to make countering my points unattractive when having public discussions inside the company.

For example - let's say your boss decides to introduce some mandatory meeting that everyone agrees is useless. Rather then complaining about it in normal language, I would say things like "well, one of our core values is delighting clients, which I would be able to do much more efficiently if we would iterate on our process and try to optimize the time currently used by this meeting".

The example is intentionally simplified and the response is exaggerated, but you get the point - they are the ones encouraging you to use those phrases, which makes it more difficult for them to push back when you do it against them.

The only real risk is a coworker bursting into laughter in the middle of such an exchange.

<comment><USER3> Oh "values". This meaningless buzzword has creeped into every facet of modern life. From politicians and their "western values" to CEOs and their "values" to baseball teams and their "values", everyone uses "values" to justify their evil or to defend or excuse their evil. And of course there is the "alignment" of "values".

Oh, stealing signs doesn't align with your team's values. We benefited from it greatly for years, but it doesn't align with our values since we got caught.

It's like an amoral organization's PR version of "my mamma taught me better than that". Some juvenile delinquent gets caught stealing from the store and he says, "I don't know why I did that. That's not me, that's not who I am, I'm not a thief. My momma taught me better than that." If he incorporated himself, he could've said, his actions did not align with his values. Problem solved.

<comment><USER4> I disagree, I think "values" is a great word that has a clear meaning. It's a statement of what things you consider more important than others.

The problem you're outlining here is that people often use the word while lying.

<comment><USER5> This is due to the word meaning having multiple meanings.. Example:

"The values we all shares are fundamental"

We all know the meaning of the word values used in this sentence. we don't know it means what in this context, though. Am i talking about freedom? Equality? Somehing else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

...

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

[https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...](https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit)

</comment><comment><USER7> I had a "pleasure" to work briefly for Lionbridge when they acquired the company I worked for. We used to get these company wide emails about various things. You read it,sit and then think how can someone rape the language to a such degree. It was written in English but felt like alien language. The amount of bullshit one manages to squeeze in a sentence is quite astonishing. In my opinion, the main reason behind all these buzzwords is insecurity. People think that if they'd speak plain English (insert any language here), they'd be inferior.

<comment><USER8> Or that their true intentions / feelings would be exposed. I mean, "management wanted to curtail redundancies in the human resources area, and so, many workers are no longer viable members of the workforce" sounds much nicer than "yeah we fired a bunch of people".

<comment><USER9> Exactly, it's verbal defense-in-depth. When language has multiple layers of vagueness, you have to actively approach the real meaning through interpretation. Only the staunchly disagreeable are inclined to have a negative reaction through multiple iterations of reading between the lines, and if they speak up they get singled out as not-team-players or even cranks and kooks. The rest filter it through an attitude of generosity, desire for positivity, and benefit of doubt, so when they get the message its emotional weight is dampened, and they are in a suitable frame of mind to accept it with resignation.

In short it's pure manipulation of your own tendencies for social cooperation. Perhaps a bit colorful to say on HN but--it's fucking disgusting. And multiple fields of high-paying professions consist entirely of doing this effectively, up to the scale of entire nations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Matt Levine's take on this:

> From my time in investment banking I can easily believe that most investment > banking transactions occur because investment bankers are pretending to do > what investment bankers do, acting out scenes from "Liar's Poker" until they > start to seem real. I don't know why investment banking would be different > from any other industry. So sure, yeah, work is a kind of pretense.

<comment><USER11> What did bankers do before Liars Poker? If Liars poker didn't reflect reality, why did he write it?

<comment><USER12> Liars Poker reflected a sudden and gross change in the industry due to hyper- success. They went from boring mortgage firms to the richest organizations in human history within a decade, and it distorted thinking and emotional responses, as lottery winnings are wont to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A startup I worked for was constantly seeking to have everyone _aligned_ on things. The original concept of having people pointed in the same direction was admirable, but it quickly became something like a capital-A 'Aligned' (meaning good) with the inverse capital-U 'Unaligned' being about the worst thing you could be. God help the person who found the word 'Unaligned' on their semester review...

<comment><USER14> It sounds like a cult !

<comment><USER15> That sounds unaligned. Please report to the Alignment Center at your earliest convenience. Escorts will be available for your use in 20 seconds.

<comment><USER16> This may not sound the way you intended.

<comment><USER17> I've tried to read that for a solid few minutes and _still_ can't see what else could have been intended.

<comment><USER18> "Escorts" is a term for high-end sex workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As we are at the word play, TIL "turgid", "shibboleth", "cloying", "hackneyed", "wheelhouse", "iconoclast".

To native English speakers I advice to try at least once in their career an employer with English as a business language but not headquartered in any Anglosphere country, where English is a second language to the most employees - the communication dynamics in such environments is quite different and the American corporate newspeak doesn't stick.

<comment> blaser-waffle +1 to this. We have a lot of offshore support teams, and I've lost close to 20 minutes explaining "nitty-gritty"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Blizzard developer interviews often involve phrases from the Dictionary of Management Jargon [1].

Consider this excerpt from an interview [2] with Steven Chang and David Kosak done on February 6, 2020 regarding the Galakrond's Awakening expansion for Hearthstone after the players complained about the game being unbalanced:

>In terms of the minor balance changes we've been doing recently, it's something where we want to try and see where we can strike that balance where the community feels happy about it without introducing too much change so that the game feels completely different. This is a fine line to walk, and we will always be watching and listening to the community about the amount and timings of changes.

No actual detail is given on anything, it's all empty feelgood sentences. Entire paragraphs go on like this, stating opinions and desires as outlined in the DoMJ:

>Statements of desires – A statement that something is hoped for does not imply any action is to be taken to ensure the desired outcome. Example: I want us all to be happy with our compensation.

1\. [http://dictionaryofmanagementjargon.yolasite.com/](http://dictionaryofmanagementjargon.yolasite.com/)

2\. [https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/interview-with- hearthsto...](https://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/interview-with-hearthstone- game-designers-dave-kosak-stephen-chang-galakronds-awakening-a-year-long- storyline-and-the-shaman-fiasco/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This kind of language usage isn't limited to fitting in socially in the business world.

People use overly-elaborate language to appear intelligent or innovative, too. I once spent some time learning a martial art whose founder had replaced all of the standard names for movement and techniques with novel, quasi-technical- sounding ones.

"Multiple attackers" became "plural assailants", "breathing technique" became "respiratory enhancement". "Sparring" became "fisticuffs". Etc.

It was maddening, because he would correct students who slipped up and failed to use his terminology.

[https://www.usadojo.com/ross-performance-enhancement- system/](https://www.usadojo.com/ross-performance-enhancement-system/)

</comment><comment><USER22> It may not be quite the same thing, but this reminds me of Venkatesh Rao's "Posture talk" from his Gervais Principle series:

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais- principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-ii- posturetalk-powertalk-babytalk-and-gametalk/)

<comment><USER23> I was going to comment on this article, but realized it is futile to go into detail and critizise it at this place.

Simply put I would stay far away from articles and people thinking the way Venkatesh Rao exhibits here. Highly toxic and inhumane management bullshit.

<comment> blaser-waffle I've come to the same conclusion after reading the article a few times. It pops up on HN a lot.

It's a hilarious and dark read, and certainly has grains of truth, but framing your worldview around that is silly and dangerous.

Rao is a good writer, but he's filtering a parody comic through a parody show, with additions from Dilbert (another parody), and supplements the arguments with examples from management gurus of questionable relevance. It's like Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra, where it's a simulation (parody) filtered through another simulation filtered through _another_ simulation until you have something that doesn't reflect reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This reminded me of the section about "Clutter" in the book "On writing well":

> Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their > mistakes. When the Digital Equipment Corporation eliminated 3,000 jobs its > statement didn't mention layoffs; those were "involuntary methodologies." > When an Air Force missile crashed, it "impacted with the ground > prematurely."

<comment><USER8> I like how in Kerbal Space Program, you don't crash, you "lithobrake". Like airbraking only on something with a bit more resistance.

<comment><USER25> I had a science teacher who would kill mice before feeding them to his snake. His method was "rapid deceleration" (he threw them at the ground).

<comment><USER26> Our science teacher in the 7th grade made a model coliseum out of foam-core and would release crickets into it for her lizards to eat during homeroom

<comment><USER25> That's fantastic haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is it really word play: Car Insurance is sold via a talking "cartoonesque lizard", medications that may help your dry skin (or possibly kill you-- depending on your particular physiology) are also sold at times via similar talking animated creatures--or implied peer pressure... I could go on and on. So I often ask: how mature or advanced are we really? I personally, am not Impressed.

</comment><comment><USER28> All areas of practice have their own jargon, words that superficially sound similar to regular English but actually have specific insider meaning that promotes faster in-group communication (and a degree of in-group signalling) - this is true for scientists, software engineers, yoga instructors and yes, business people.

<comment><USER29> > that promotes faster in-group communication

I think the reason that business jargon gets more flak than usual jargon is because it does not really facilitate faster communication. At least not to everyone involved. Maybe salesman to salesman, business dev to business dev, it would make sense. But then they use that jargon with everyone else (i.e., when it is not appropriate to) and it sounds just as ridiculous as when they hear a dev say "We can't do that without considerable infrastructure overhaul. The current LTS is still a year away from EOL but the vendor has decided to use incompatible dependencies anyway".

If that were me, I'd just say "There's a lot of work involved to make that happen. We're talking 60-hour work weeks if you want that deadline." Or something like that. And if you hear me use the former wording in a meeting with non-technical people involved, you can bet it's just me trying to sound relevant to the meeting (because the next question would be "Could you elaborate?" and I will use more jargon, which will cause a cycle of explanation and boy won't I look important?)

It's ridiculous for me to hear "We need to get this done because we want to capture this market and turn this vertical into a core competency. This will make our portfolio more attractive to investors." when you can just say "Our client really needs/wants these features. We risk losing them if we don't deliver by the deadline."

There's also something to be said about weird turns of phrase that make communications sound less personal. Whereas I would just say "As I already told you," business-speak will make me use "As per my last email...". I don't know about others but the first time I encountered "As per my last email", it did feel foreign to me, like it's not English anymore. Modesty aside, I've read a lot, fiction and nonfiction, but only in my work inbox will I find "As per my last email".

<comment><USER30> > As per my last email

Isn't this just the "As I've written in my last letter" for the e-mail era? Maybe it's just a cultural difference. (In my native language - and probably because of that in English too - I try use the verbs corresponding to the medium, so if I wrote to someone then I'll refer to that communication as "as you probably read" instead of "heard", and so on.)

<comment><USER29> > Isn't this just the "As I've written in my last letter" for the e-mail era?

It might as well be. It just always struck me as wrong usage, for lack of better term. "Per", to me, is always in the sense of "for each": per month, per head, etc.

That said, I decided to look it up. And quoting from [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/as%20per](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/as%20per):

> Is It Grammatically Correct to Say _as per_?

> ...The more ponderous as per is often found in business and legal prose, or > in writing that attempts to adopt a formal tone. It is not incorrect to use, > but some find it overly legalistic and counsel avoiding it for that reason. > On the other hand, it has been used to good effect in facetious mock- > business-English ("as per the President's shiny new Environmental Policy > Act"). ...

Looks like I'm not the only one who was puzzled by this turn of phrase. You learn new things everyday. :)

(edit: formatting)

<comment><USER30> I thought it comes from some tortured Latin (see "per se", and per also meaning "by means of"). And the "as" shouldn't even be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Two of the more recent ones that really grate me are "lift" (which isn't even used consistently, eg "what is the lift (effort) on this" and "how much lift (benefit) would this give us")... and "North Star" _shudder_

<comment><USER32> Haven't heard the "lift" one yet but it feels like a bunch of high school students trying to create their own internal jargon which makes them appear more "hip" per se. Just replace a word with another, adding 0 value and excluding those who don't "get it" therefore creating an exclusivity around it's usage.

Also the "North Star" one, whew, shudder is correct. Let's bury that one forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well this is a mean spirited attempt at destroying words that have meaning. Some people use them incorrectly and the nature of business moves on making them ineffective. Attacking them on multiple levels without describing when they are used in a positive sense seems unnecessary.

<comment><USER2> Can you give an example of some words you feel are being unfairly criticized? I.e. words that actually carry more meaning then their "plain" alternatives.

<comment><USER34> 'Root cause' is neither redundant nor simply a 'corporate buzzword.' It represents a clear concept of a causal chain with an underlying factor that gates all other contributing causes. The term has been around for a century and 'root cause analysis' is a formal construct in a number of professional contexts, including analysis of aviation incidents.

<comment><USER35> Except when people use it as a verb as in "we need to root cause this".

<comment><USER36> It's got a clear brevity win over "we need to look into this to find the root cause" or "we need to perform a root cause analysis on this". This isn't the case for "resources" instead of "people", or deliberate obfuscation like the article's example of "we're happy to provide you with the paperwork to provide to your insurance company" instead of "we only take direct payments" or "your feedback is greatly appreciated" for "no" or "we have a new billing model to suit the next few years of sustainable development" for "we're raising prices"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Ah! [http://unsuck-it.com/](http://unsuck-it.com/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I saw this in the DoD when I was a contractor. Meetings full of buzzwords and abbreviations, some of which seemed to be tribal knowledge more than an actual thing. Things like "that solution won't work because of ABCD," and everyone nods in agreement. I had written down every abbreviation I heard to ask my supervisor later, and some he (and others) couldn't tell me what they stood for, despite being there for decades.

<comment><USER39> I worked once for a big global F500 company whose name is a abbreviation. In a meeting while we've been waiting I asked around if anybody knows what it actually means. Some tried to make up something. Everybody failed to come up with the actual meaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Corporate buzzwords are also how to say things that you can weasel out of later.

</comment><comment><USER41> There was a great piece on this yesterday by Molly Young. In my opinion, it was significantly better. It contained this excellent point:

> As the leaked Slacks make clear, Korey, as well as her employees, were > working under the new conditions of surveillance-state capitalism (or, from > the company's perspective, a culture of "inclusion and transparency"). One > reason for the uptick in garbage language is exactly this sense of nonstop > supervision. Employers can read emails and track keystrokes and monitor > locations and clock the amount of time their employees spend noodling on > Twitter. In an environment of constant auditing, it's safer to use words > that signify nothing and can be stretched to mean anything, just in case > you're caught and required to defend yourself.

[https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/spread-of-corporate- speak.htm...](https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/spread-of-corporate-speak.html)

<comment><USER11> And this has always been true in PR and board room battles, but now is seeping to everwhere. Perhaps the rank and file will start to understand how execs and politicians have always suffered from the microscope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't have anything to contribute, apart from a link to a comic which sums it up hilariously:

[http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/2013/03/business- men/](http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/2013/03/business-men/)

</comment><comment> jon-wood I'm curious when people swapped the word reply with revert. I keep seeing people use phrases like "I'll revert" when what they mean is "I'll look into that and get back to you". Particularly working in software I always have to stop myself when the initial reaction is that they've just said they'll undo what I've requested.

<comment><USER43> I believe that this usage is archaic in British business English rather than an innovation! However, it was conserved in business English in India and some other countries, and perhaps the increased interaction between Americans and Indians and in the software industry means you're just exposed to it more often?

<comment><USER44> The word revert, with this meaning, is still in widespread use in business in Britain too, in my experience.

<comment><USER45> Doubtful. I've worked in the UK for more than 20 years, and the only time I've ever heard this usage is within outsourced IT providers in India.

<comment><USER44> Perhaps it's industry specific but in finance/investment I see it used all the time (and I use it myself - I'm a Brit).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There are people that love this stuff. Mind boggling to me how people can write pages and listen to hours on end. Some jobs require you to make speeches and write pages and pages of this lawsuit unfriendly botton line oriented language. Insane.

</comment><comment><USER47> Another, better-written take on this: [https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/spread- of-corporate-speak.htm...](https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/spread-of-corporate- speak.html)

</comment><comment><USER48> This article has a clear value-prop.

We can table this discussion for now. Lets take it offline.

</comment><comment><USER49> This problem is exactly why I decided to create my Slack app Whatis! [https://whatis.rocks/](https://whatis.rocks/)

<comment><USER50> Shouldn't it be "What _are_ rocks?"

<comment><USER51> I sometimes use "whois X?", even if the correct form would be "what is?" or "who are?". Using and old IRCism is just more fun.

<comment><USER50> I guess it would depend whether you were accessing the URL in the second or third person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Are workers not adults? I thought child labour was forbidden.</comment>


Firefox OS as an Internet of Things Platform - <AUTHOR> http://ee.telenor.io/gonzo/hardware/2014/12/16/firefox-os-iot.html?shameless-repost

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the repost but it never hit the frontpage yesterday for some reason despite having quite some points.</comment>


Trump says he's going to get Apple to "build a big plant" in US - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/11/trump-says-hes-going-to-get-apple-to-build-a-big-plant-in-us/#p3 <comment><USER2> Uh huh.</comment>


Spindle Law – Crowd-Sourced Legal Research - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2010/05/spindle-law-crowd-sourced-legal-research.php

<comment><USER2> This has considerable potential. I've been looking at the study of law as a career move and and studying over the last month as preparation to acquiring some make-up credits: I've been struck by the inefficiency of cross- referencing large numbers of documents. Legal citation is highly refined, and services like Lexis/Nexis & Westlaw make research comparatively easy, but are expensive^. So I'm glad to see an effort to build something more open. I do think they need to look beyond the hierarchical model alone for exploration and presentation - a freeform relational explorer like Directed Edge could be a major asset here as the database fills out.

^ That said most of the database vendors give access to law students for free or a nominal annual cost.</comment>


Reminder: South Florida HN Meetup tonight  9pm - <AUTHOR>

Collide Factory: 541 NW 1 Ave. Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
Call if you have questions: 954.670.3289
Keg of Blue Moon + Presentation Stuff is there if you want to show something off. <comment><USER2> Nice, a HN Meetup in SFL! I won't be able to make it unfortunately, but definitely looking forward to the next one, specially if it's down in Miami.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wish I had seen this earlier! You folks should plan this stuff with the Refresh:Miami guys.</comment>


Video of Google+ iOS app running on an iPhone 4 - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/06/heres-google-for-ios-running-on-an-iphone-4/?awesm=tnw.to_19sDx&utm_campaign&utm_medium=tnw.to-other&utm_source=google.com&utm_content=twitter-publisher-other

<comment><USER2> hey thanks for submitting but do you mind changing the title to "photo" or "image"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would, but it looks like I missed the edit window. Sorry</comment></comment>


Lenovo announces laptops using new mobile Xeon processors - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/lenovo-announces-powerhouse-laptops-powered-by-new-mobile-xeon-processors/ <comment><USER2> Lenovo is now using rootkit-like techniques to install their software on CLEAN Windows installs, by having the BIOS overwrite windows system files on bootup. Someone detailed this here: [http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29497693&sid=dd...](http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29497693&sid=ddf3e32512932172454de515091db014#p29497693)

I had this happen to me a few weeks ago, on a new Lenovo laptop, doing a clean install with a new SSD, Win 8 DVD + wifi turned off. I couldn't understand how a Lenovo service was installed and running! Delete the file and it reappears on reboot. I've never seen anything like this before.

Something to think about before buying Lenovo. I searched and found almost nothing about this, so it may be something they started doing in the last few months...

<comment><USER3> This is getting increasingly disturbing with each new generation of hardware.

You no longer have the right to own the hardware you buy. Now it has become a service subject to their terms.

That Windows Platform Binary Table sounds disturbing and is ripe for being exploited.

Interesting info found [1]:

> Lenovo Service Engine (LSE) is a utility in the BIOS for certain Lenovo > desktop systems. It automatically sends non-personally identifiable system > data to a Lenovo server one time when the system is first connected to the > internet and then does not send any additional data.

> The system data that LSE collected includes machine type and model, system > UUID, region and date. No personally identifiable information is collected.

> Once this data is sent, the service is disabled automatically.

> LSE uses the Microsoft Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT) capability. > Microsoft has recently released updated security guidelines on how to best > implement this feature. Lenovo's use of LSE is not consistent with these > guidelines and so Lenovo has stopped shipping desktop models with this > utility and recommends customers with this utility enabled run a "clean up" > utility that removes the LSE files from the desktop. Instructions on how to > download and run this program are below.

> The LSE functionality has been removed from newly manufactured systems.

When some people insist on having a Libreboot/Coreboot supported laptop, they call them crazy and idealistic. Now this is what happens.

It's just a shame that with Intel ME the Libreboot/Coreboot devs have given up on Intel machines. I'm very interested in the Purism Librem laptop but I have low hopes. Maybe the future will be ARM.

[1] [https://support.lenovo.com/nz/en/product_security/lse_bios_d...](https://support.lenovo.com/nz/en/product_security/lse_bios_desktop)

<comment><USER4> > It's just a shame that with Intel ME the Libreboot/Coreboot devs have given > up on Intel machines. I'm very interested in the Purism Librem laptop but I > have low hopes. Maybe the future will be ARM.

This isn't true. Libreboot is the fork that only works with completely free platforms, which the newer Intel chipsets make impossible. Coreboot is still very much committed to supporting new Intel chipsets, although the mainboard availability of course depends on what developers have time and interest for.

Google Chromebooks all ship with Coreboot, so they're fully supported and a great choice if you're trying to make the most free usable computer you can get. They can all run Linux, and some of them even Windows with a little more effort. They also have ARM-based ones, some of which are completely blob-free.

Also, if you're putting your hopes on Pursim this may be of interested to you: [http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/08/09/the-truth-about- pu...](http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/08/09/the-truth-about-purism- behind-the-coreboot-scenes/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finally ECC memory in a laptop, I've wanted this for years!

However, I am seriously unimpressed by the maximum memory specifications. 64GB?! I had 32GB in my ThinkPad W510, which was released over _five_ years ago.

I've also had 16GB in my _seven_ year old T400. 16GB was enough for me back then, 64GB now is barely enough for me, it will certainly not be enough in a few years, although by then maybe we'd get larger memory modules, which might work just fine.

Since this is such a huge machine, they should have put more memory slots inside.

I also hope they release a 13''-14'' machine with quad-core Xeon CPUs (or some other CPUs that support ECC, some i7 chips do as well).

<comment><USER6> What do you do on a laptop that requires more than 64 GB of RAM ?

<comment><USER7> I use more than 32 GB of RAM all the time for ad hoc data processing, analysis and transformation and personally I'd like to be able to do the same work on my laptop that I do on my workstation. Especially since I often divide my time between a couple of different offices.

<comment><USER8> > I'd like to be able to do the same work on my laptop that I do on my > workstation

I'm afraid you will never get what you want as long as you keep upgrading both your laptop and your workstation.

<comment><USER7> I don't know. With this laptop I'd probably pretty much be there, assuming this new mobile Xeon CPU can post numbers in the same ballpark as a desktop Xeon from a year ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The entire premise of modern computing is built around deterministic memory. ECC in laptops very long overdue.

<comment><USER10> I'm very excited about ECC in laptops, and want to buy one as soon as possible, but...

Shame it's released by a company which cannot be trusted anymore. I know the bigger blunder (SuperFish) happened in consumer laptop, but all things considered, I can't trust Lenovo any more. That means I won't buy anything they make. I miss old Thinkpads.

Is there any serious laptop manufacturer left at all? A company that builds good hardware, allows user replaceable battery / memory / disk, and doesn't include any crapware, or things you can't disable (like secure boot, Lenovo style hard disk file replacement, etc.).

<comment><USER11> Not really, I think we can say goodbye to user-replaceable hardware with the rise of the Ultrabook form-factor. A couple of months ago I was looking for a laptop to buy and I wasn't in a hurry so I checked out literally every manufacturer I could find. In the end I defaulted to Macbook Pros. The hardware is great and OS X doesn't really get in my way. If you want customization and prefer matte screens, System76 is pretty neat but they weren't available with the keyboard layout of my choice.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, also using a 2015 Macbook Pro. 256GB SSD is already full and 16 GB non- ECC RAM is small and unreliable.

At least 2015 Macbook Pro 13" is pretty fast and light. I also love the display. Wifi is pretty snappy, download speed from internet is over 250 Mbps, which is enough for me.

I'll swap the internal SSD to 1 or 2 TB model once they become available.

<comment><USER11> Well, their SSD pricing is pretty ridiculous but other than that I've been really happy with mine. Good keyboard, really nice screen, best trackpad I've ever used. And the thing feels really sturdy compared to most laptops I've tried.

<comment><USER10> Oh yeah, the trackpad is sweet! I don't understand why other manufacturers put those crappads in their products, they're often borderline unusable.

Its ability to drive 4k monitor at 60Hz is also nice. I know it's not enough for everyone, but 4k is all the resolution I'll ever need from a computer display.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok, call me skeptical but I did not think Intel would get these out for Q4 of 2015. That 15" laptop is probably way over kill but it has some really nice specs. I think what I really want though is one of these bad boys in the NUC form factor.

<comment><USER12> I love seriously over-powered "luggables" and these machines might have impressive specs, but there's a big problem; a lot of open source folks won't buy NVIDIA gear due to the need for non-free binary-blob drivers. NVIDIA makes some impressive products, but they seldom play well with others, and they seem to have a real vendetta against supporting open source efforts by simply providing the necessary documentation. With luck, other vendors will also implement the mobile Xeon chips, but make a more friendly and compatible decision about graphics hardware.

<comment><USER13> That's not a big problem, because most people aren't "open source" people. The "open source" people won't even get wifi working. The real problem for Linux users is that the Linux drivers aren't good, or don't support Optimus (do they now?), and you get poor battery life or poor performance or you have to manually do configuration just to get a basic working system.

<comment><USER14> When did you see the Linux distribution like that? In 2000?

Specifically Thinkpad laptops are known to work out of the box with popular Linux distributions.

<comment><USER13> The rule of thumb for Thinkpads and Linux is that you'll be fine as long as you get an Intel wifi card (or some other known quantity) and integrated graphics. For example, the NVS 4200M gpu hasn't really worked out of the box for me even on Ubuntu on a T520, nor the Quadro 2000M on a W520, without having to do some fiddling, or (later) knowing what specific packages to install. Optimus or certain multi-monitor setups was a lost cause, so when you do get it to work, the battery life hurts. (I've read things have improved since a couple years ago.) Wifi drivers (such as Intel's) carry proprietary blobs, which you have to install manually on Debian, but they work reliably -- that's only a problem for true open source radicals, or normal computer users that were tricked into using Debian.

<comment><USER15> I don't know whose rule you're referring to, but Atheros has always been far more celebrated in terms of their support and openness towards Linux consumers, appliances, etc. than Intel. They had such an impact on the Linux world that Broadcom ended up opening its drivers as a result.

<comment><USER13> Thinkpads typically come with two kinds of configuration options, when it comes to wifi: Intel, and "Thinkpad" wifi cards where you don't know what you're going to get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Could someone share the binary downloaded from [http://download.lenovo.com/ideapad/windows/lsebios/win8_en-u...](http://download.lenovo.com/ideapad/windows/lsebios/win8_en- us_32_oko.json) ? I'm curious the files are properly signed and if the LSE tool is properly checking signature and so on.

</comment><comment><USER17> If only they had a non-chiclet keyboard... I guess I have to wait till retro ThinkPad :-(

<comment><USER18> That's very likely still going to have a chiclet keyboard – they didn't ask for user preferences on it –, but it will at least have a proper seven-row layout.

Personally, I don't mind the chiclets – the mechanic is the same as in the old keyboards – as long as the layout gets fixed…

<comment><USER19> Do you know if they are going to change the touchpad? I tried all the touchpads on the current Thinkpad generation in a store, and I was so disappointed that we chose to buy something else.

<comment> chao- For me the biggest issue is the lack of discrete buttons for the touchpad. I felt betrayed when Lenovo finally went the way of the "clickpad", which is the only name I have heard for the style of touchpad where the whole pad's plane depresses to click. I can't be the only one who:

1\. Doesn't like tap-to-click on touchpads.

2\. Prefers two discrete, easy-to-feel buttons over awkward clickable regions in the bottom corners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Being a bit of a bit-head, I love reading those specs.

Something caught my eye, though: "Screen options are 1920×1080 with optional touch screen or a 3840×2160 non-touch screen"

Is there a reason for this? Is anybody doing quad-HD touch screens? I never see them.

<comment><USER21> Yes. The excellent Dell XPS 13 (2015) is available with a quad-HD touch screen. (In fact, it's either QHD touch, or FHD non-touch.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Finally, ECC memory on a laptop!

</comment><comment><USER23> They should provide Linux support on these..

<comment><USER24> They do! The product spec PDF show RHEL and Ubuntu as officially supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just ordered yesterday and did a wire transfer for a thinkpad L450. Hope thinkpads are not concerned by this.

</comment><comment><USER26> AKA "lap-warmers".

<comment><USER27> Isn't that a cat?</comment></comment>


Job Hunting 101 for Coding Bootcamp Graduates - <AUTHOR> https://www.jobstart.com/guides/job-hunting-101-for-coding-bootcamp-graduates <comment><USER2> First off, really well written article. You're absolutely right in that it's a different market now than it was in 2013, when everybody with 'Full Stack' in their profile was getting hired.

Second, having hired a few bootcampers myself, I think it's definitely possible for someone to come in to a technical organization with limited experience. They just have to be willing to contribute as much as they can wherever they can.

<comment><USER3> How can you tell during an interview if they have the willingness to contribute?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah. Probably just attitude. Some people exude the desire to remain detached from work. At least in my experience :p

<comment><USER3> I'm thinking more data-centric, though... curious if there are less subjective ways like best-practice questions to ask, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 3rd rule is something we look directly for when hiring. If there is a direct passion (ex. Edtech) to draw from, it makes the candidate stand out from all the other "iOS dev" "DevOps" etc

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. And building a micro-project with an industry focus takes very little time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great job on navigating the boot-camper job hunting rollercoaster!

Disagree a lil with the focus on contracting projects for newbie bootcampers though! The kind of contracting work available to bootcampers often tends to be uninspiring. They'd be much better off working on really interesting personal projects and like you say, really focussing in on a niche.

Contracting work can be useful once they've built up a menagerie of unique projects.

That said, this is def a must read for newbie bootcampers! :)</comment>


This is not another "PHP Sucks" article - <AUTHOR> http://blog.feliperibeiro.com/2012/08/this-is-not-another-php-sucks-article.html

<comment><USER2> PHP the language does suck. PHP's library sucks. PHP's overall environment though rocks and no one has even tried to ship a similar environment using a better designed language and library.

With PHP, one server can serve hundreds of websites only requiring a one time setup by an ISP. Those websites don't need to be aware of each other, don't need to worry about stepping on each other's toes. They run without extra tools or dev environments. No compilers, etc..

Compare to say python. For a python based server you need one server per website (virtual or otherwise). Even if you managed to use virtual servers you'd overload the physical server much earlier than with PHP. Same with node.js. node for 1 site beats PHP. Node for N sites on the same server loses to PHP. You can use CGI and use perl, ruby or python but then you'll kill your server as it has to spawn a process to run a page.

I've longed for a PHP like environment but with a better language and library. One that cheap ISPs can install and forget like they do with LAMP. AFAIK it doesn't exist.</comment>