"A state of flow can be achieved by deep work" - <AUTHOR> https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-deep-work-flow/ <comment><USER2> Reposting my comment regarding deep work and how I achieved it:

Imagine your mind like your desk. Every morning it's empty. (Usually) You wake up you load it up with all sorts of crap to entertain yourself, social media, Reddit, hacker news etc, etc.

By the time you get to work, there is no place to put work stuff on that desk. You try to put work stuff on it, but pretty much the whole desk is filled with Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook shit. So even if you make some space for the work stuff, sooner or later you focus on Tumblr again. Work stuff gets pushed out.

Generally in my case, by 2PM I manage to clear out all the distracting stuff and get focused. The solution was this: BORE YOURSELF at every available opportunity.

When I start my morning, I refused to pick up my phone and check out social media (usually I would take a 45 minute dump just catching up on stuff posted last night). Sure my morning chores became a bit boring, but I also became more efficient (I started getting to work sooner).

Basically, by the time I get to my desk, I am so bored that the most interesting thing I can do is work. And my work (programming) is a very interesting task, it used to keep me engaged for hours and hours, it's just that Social Media defeated it.

I do check social media. I check it around 2PM after my standup. That 'impulsive' desire to constantly check it is gone. I catch up on all the social media in the evening or at night (but it doesn't create that compulsive pattern anymore.

End result: My productivity has gone up by 5-6 times. I have a performance enhancement story to work on and I managed to fix 6-7 bugs I found during my work, and it turns out that it was a whole team's sprint's work.

<comment><USER3> This is an interesting concept, but it still requires self control. I could browse all day if I wanted but I WANT to get more work done, but I cant help it. But when I get into that state of flow it seems like nothing can tear me away from my work.

I'll try this.

<comment><USER4> You can use something like StayFocusd to force yourself off it. It won't allow you to reach the distracting websites no matter what you do. Forced boredom.

Though personally I've found if I just log out of facebook and my personal email, that helps. I can't open a tab and have rewards in less than 2 seconds. The extra few seconds to type in a password slows me down enough to just close the tab again and get back to work.

<comment><USER5> Yep couldn't agree more. It's actually embarrasing how many times I end up seeing the Focus App blocking screen during a very distracted day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure many programmers would have experienced deepwork. Ironically, my best experiences with deep work were when I had broken legs and had limited physical movements.

One disadvantage of deepwork is - your brain sometimes gets stuck into a local minima/maxima when solving problems. As a programmer, I've written code in the flow and then ended up refactoring a couple of weeks later.

I've also experienced dream-learning (and dream-solving) when working or learning in this manner. However, deepwork and staying in the flow for too long can make one feel socially insane.

Deep work - works best when things are planned in detail before you fall in the flow. Any planning activities in between will just break the flow.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Really, standing up from a desk (should you be so fortunate as to be able to, that is) and taking a walk feels like piercing through the ocean's surface and taking a breath of fresh air. From certain submerged angles, the refractive index of the water makes its boundary a silvery mirror, easy to be mesmerized by.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm going to be straight, a lot of this just seems like, at best, general advice for getting things done that may or may not work for any given person. At worst, some pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo that references disproven concepts. It's a red flag to me when paragraphs start with "Research shows..." with no context/evidence in sight.

>You need to be aware of your finite amount of willpower.

Didn't willpower depletion fail to replicate last year?

> Research shows that a trained memory improves your ability to > concentrate...There are many strategies you can apply to train your memory.

I was under the impression that working memory is one of the most difficult (if not impossible) things to train or improve.

<comment><USER9> > I was under the impression that working memory is one of the most difficult > (if not impossible) things to train or improve.

I'm not a psychologist, but the way I understand "improving your working memory" is that it's not the number of units in working memory that increases, but the conceptual complexity of each unit.

So, lets say that I practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and have only 3 slots of working memory.

If I'm a beginner, each slot may contain such elements as "pull his arm across my midline", "pull his head towards me", and "post my leg on his hip". These units are only a few of the steps you need to perform a successful armbar from guard.

If I'm more experienced in the domain, each slot in working memory may contain such elements as "perform an armbar", "if that fails do a pendulum sweep", and "when I'm in mount perform an Ezekiel choke."

In each case, only three slots occupy the working memory. But the conceptual complexity of each unit is an order of magnitude greater in the experienced person's case. And the effect of the working memory is correspondingly "improved".

A consequence of this is that the power of your memory is domain specific (your memory is better in domains where you have more experience and interest).

<comment><USER10> I believe what you are describing is what they call "chunking."

<comment><USER11> Any references to what "they" say about it?

(I'm investigating various questions including of STWM, ideas, and networks or clusters of ideas.)

<comment><USER10> This isn't bad:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_\(psychology\))

It's like a grocery bag for ideas. The more familiar they are the more you can represent them with a single abstract concept in your working memory that basically acts as a pointer to the various items contained in the concrete implementation.

Here's another reference you may enjoy:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657600/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657600/)

What is STWM?

<comment><USER11> Thanks.

STWM: short-term working memory. A fascinating presentation by Sander van der Leeuw on the interactions of that and anthropology: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=80dR9Q2glgY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=80dR9Q2glgY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find that things that prevent me from getting into deep work (as I understand from the comments here, didn't read the book) is the crap involved with 'getting to work' these days. Not a day goes by were I do not have to spend a strange % of my time screwing around with settings, setup, libraries, fixing libraries, (re)installing libraries etc. This is why I would like to do embedded coding or game coding (it applies less and less there, but it applies to the games I like writing) all the time; stuff is just _there_ and I do not have to fiddle around with 'stuff'. I still do see a good place for IDE's like Delphi & Livecode or closed source systems like q/kdb+; install and just start working, no messing around with whatever badly built 3rd party stuff. Even with containers it's not perfect; too many things are just deterring from what I am hired for or, more importantly, what I want to be doing, which is writing code. If I need something (trivial or complex) and open nuget search or (more so) npm search, I know that now I will lose a _lot_ of time installing and learning all kinds of mess I don't want to deal with as I _was_ in the flow.

I am teaching a few people programming so they might have a better life (they asked me for that reason; I recommended to them to open a pizza restaurant in a small mountain village and be happy but he) and they keep asking me things like; 'why does Postgresql not contain a full search engine like elastic search, why elastic search? why do I need to install a queue, why is that not in Postgresql? why does this language library not have x, why not y? (also, why do I need to install a webserver, why is that not included? Mailserver? DNS server? etc)'. I know the answers and I know why it all is like that as I lived through the years when it was, then wasn't, then was, then wasn't but it does take me out of the flow and it makes me, sometimes, long for just switching on a computer and _just_ having basic + assembly and that's it.

<comment><USER13> That's why the author, Cal Newport, can get deep work done easily; he's an academic.

I can sort of get into deep work except my office is loud, cramped, and full of distractions :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have read the whole book, it was a waste of time.

Mainly because Newport keeps contradicting himself. I remember a few paragraphs before the end of the book, he was saying how he didnt want to make a philosophical or moral point and just after said "having a deep life is the best way of living". The full book is like this.

<comment><USER13> It's also a waste of time because it's a book. Deep Work, along with many other non-fiction "self help" books HN loves, could just be a couple of long blog posts. As a book it gets repetitive and tiring after the first half.

<comment><USER15> > Deep Work, along with many other non-fiction "self help" books HN loves, > could just be a couple of long blog posts.

Sure, they _could_ be, but I would argue there is benefit to expanding them into longer books.

I haven't read this specific book, but have read several other "self-help" books and while the majority of them have shown repetitive themes, that same repetition is what ingrained the overall message the author is trying to disseminate. Reading a book over the course of weeks has a much more lasting effect on me, than probably any blog posts I've read.

<comment><USER13> Fair enough. Maybe I just don't like self-help books as much as others do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wake up -> Go To the Gym (No Starbucks) -> Workout -> Shower -> Go to Work -> Start working right away (no email, social media or distractions)

That's it. Simple as that.

In a few hours your brain will be "fried". At that point checking email and messing around a little in social media might actually help you relax and get back into it after an hour so so.

Oh, yeah. Eat.

No coffee. Ever.

<comment><USER17> Tell me more about this coffee idea.

I drink coffee.

I heard it said like this: "Drinking coffee is borrowing time from later today. Drinking alcohol is borrowing time from tomorrow."

I did go for many months without coffee because if headaches. So I know it is doable.

<comment><USER16> Humans did not evolve needing these stimulants. I think coffee is a habit far more than a necessity.

<comment><USER18> Sure- for me it's a ritual to take a break work. And it works really well.

>Humans did not evolve needing these stimulants.

We have had no time do adapt evolutionally to the different requirements of civilization. So I think this point is moot (we are built to hunt and gather I understand).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap." \- quote from William Bennett

</comment><comment><USER20> My favorite book on the subject is "Free Play : Improvisation in Life and Art" by Stephen Nachmanovitch. [https://www.amazon.com/Free-Play-Improvisation- Life-Art/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Free-Play-Improvisation-Life- Art/dp/0874776317)

His description of the necessary fight with the "inner critic" more or less lurking in everyone's mind - and especially in OCD/perfectionists - is really interesting and got to me much more than Flow (haven't read Deep Work tho).

</comment><comment><USER21> I used to have no trouble concentrating on one thing. Now, it seems nobody can work (or let anyone else work) without "multitasking". So, now I find it hard to concentrate even when I am allowed to focus on one thing[0]. The single biggest thing that helps with that is a timer and commitment to the timer.

[0] I guess I am so used to being distracted that I find I distract myself.

<comment><USER22> I'm the same boat. I am now very rarely in any kind of state of flow (maybe once every few months) and it feels more _shallow_ than it used to be.

<comment><USER23> Isn't surfing the web or Googling, flow ? you can be totally focused on it that you forget everything else , and times passes really quickly.

<comment><USER24> Good one! Checking HN/fb for hours must be some kind of flow indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My solution is a variant of the pomodoro where I work in 50-15-50-15- blocks of time. In the 50 minutes i use coldturkey which blocks all access to social media though i hardly ever use it.

I think 15 minute break is necessary because it helps you to refocus and also prevents backache.

</comment><comment><USER26> I observed that after 2 glasses of wine I'm more resistant to all kind of distractions. I don't have tendency to open dozens of tabs in browser, switch among unsolved things, check mails, smartphone etc.

Disadvantages are that I'm tired sooner and it's not sustainable drink alcohol if I need to do something.

All-in-all, no practical solution....just interesting self-observation :)

<comment><USER27> Smoking a very small dose of weed has the same effect on me. However it's difficult to get the dosage right (if it's too much I'm basically unable to do anything) and it's not really working for difficult programming. However for organizing stuff, writing down something already clear or for tasks in the flat or just plain cleaning or mundane tasks it keeps me focused.

<comment><USER28> Smoking sativas is a hidden performance hack. Easier to recover from cannabis than from drinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Distraction requires cognitive overhead to remain "skillful" at something, especially if you are expected to create content with those skills.

Some jobs don't require as much cognitive overhead as others. Some jobs require creative skills. If you look closely at labor laws, the distinction is made between exempt employees and non-exempt employees. One type has volition to determine how the job they are to do is to be done, the other has others tell them what job they are to do and how they are to do it. One gets overtime (the ones doing) and one does not (the ones observing).

It's important more people learn to achieve flow and create content by while doing direct observing. Creating content comes "effortlessly" when in the flow because the judgement of the observation doesn't get in the way. The judgement is where all the work is.

</comment><comment><USER30> > "The state of flow can be caused by various events. It can be, like Mihaly > Csikszentmihalyi says, "hearing to a song of a bird in the forest" or > "sharing a crust of bread with a friend"."

Huh? I think we're getting a little too abstract here. Getting into a state of "flow" requires three things for me:

1\. Work that doesn't suck. I gave my IDE the finger today. Double middle fingers right at my screen. What I was working on really sucked. I need to be working on something interesting.

2\. Decent amount of caffeine

3\. A song I can loop and listen to all day without it distracting me. Usually something electronic. Brain.fm's "Focus" setting also works.

Headphones in, caffeine consumed, and the hours can move by quickly. Without other interruptions of course.

</comment><comment><USER31> Deep work seems to be a derivative of Flow. Flow is a classic...it's about finding joy..pure joy...no superlatives. Just joy.

While Flow was eye opening as a book..where I really experienced 'Flow' irl was when I started reading Godel Escher and Bach by Douglas Hofstader. I think it's a book I can pick up today or ten years from now and still experience 'Flow' as I did when I read it for the first time. What a gift!

</comment><comment> jor-el I once seen this [1] lecture by Swami Sarvapriyananda on Flow. I found it very interesting and easy to understand.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGswR0tMqCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGswR0tMqCM)

</comment><comment><USER32> In landscape on mobile, 2/5 of the screen is taken up by social media icons.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have been struggling to get into the flow for the same reason that I have trouble getting into meditation: I have bulging disks and chronic pain.

I can never completely focus on anything these days because I am constantly focusing on the pain.

Does anyone else with chronic pain have advice for getting into a flow state without being interrupted by pain?</comment>


Startup Offers You Shouldn't Accept  - <AUTHOR> http://theoperationsguy.com/3-startup-offers-shouldnt-accept-how-compensation-shortcuts-hurt-company

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this post to share some of the mistakes I and some of my friends have made in 15 years of startups. Would love to see if I have missed some common other offers some of you have settled for only to regret later.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great points!</comment>


JavaScript framework for building browser-based synthesizers - <AUTHOR> http://beepjs.com/

<comment><USER2> I was just looking at Beep's inbound traffic and saw this HN post in the list. Made me smile. Cheers, Trax.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, it's fun playing around with beep.js so I needed to share it : )</comment></comment>


Linux Mint 12 "Lisa" released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1889

<comment><USER2> The Mint team deserves big kudos for striving to maintain a Gnome-panel-like desktop experience. IMO both Gnome-shell and Unity are arrogant usability nightmares; thankfully the Mint team is still keeping traditional usability alive in the Gnome environment.

<comment><USER3> The bigger point here appears to be the extensibility of GNOME shell. If I read the announcement right, the Mint desktop is GNOME3, but using extensions to create a more GNOME2-like experience.

The JavaScript environment GNOME3 was written in could lead to lots of UX experimentation like this, at least once it has better documentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run Ubuntu 10.10 as my main OS and it screams. I Installed Mint 12 on a test partition and it is a significant slow down, particularly regarding all things UI. Ubuntu puts out a pretty steady 50fps with translucent desktop cube in 1920x1200, Mint 12 can barley transition between workspaces without a choppy slow down. 5-10 second lock up whenever I use ctr+alt+T. Window color inversion (and apparently most of compiz) is broken. Installing nvidia post release caused Gnome to become totally inoperable, I had to boot with Gnome- No-Effects option. I prefer Mint's Gnome 3 to Ubuntu's Unity, but speaking practically, staying with 10.10 is my only true option. I am disappointed.

<comment><USER5> You're comparing apples to oranges, kind of. What you're saying isn't necessarily reflective of Mint 12; it could just as well be Ubuntu 11.10.

<comment><USER4> I should have mentioned that I've tried Ubuntu 11.10 on the same machine and noticed similar UI performance problems compared to Ubuntu 10.10 (as well as a broken compiz).

Yes, some of this could be attributed to Ubuntu 11.10, but the comparison is still valid since both are competing for me as a user. If the Mint team finds it necessarily to subsume Ubuntu then they must be prepared to accept the problems that are inherited as a result.

<comment><USER6> I'm on 11.04 with gnome-classic and working well. The key is to go back to the previous releases compiz via ppa.

<comment><USER7> Could you write a little more about this, please?

<comment><USER2> [http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/how-to-downgrade-to- compiz-08...](http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/how-to-downgrade-to- compiz-086-in.html)

Every version of Compiz newer than the one in this PPA gives me endless problems. If you're still on 11.04 like me (I downgraded after upgrading to 11.10), this PPA is a must.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They made DuckDuckGo a partner. I think that means they will have at least little bit of money.

I also think this could be a pretty big blow to Google because I just tried DuckDuckGo and it is working really well. I think I am going to try to switch over. Giant companies like Google make me uncomfortable.

<comment><USER9> Be careful with letting others control what you do on the Web.

 _Our goal is to give users a good search experience while funding ourselves by receiving a share of this income. Search engines who do not share the income generated by our users, are removed from Linux Mint and might get their ads blocked._

...

 _It won't only be down to donations and sponsorships anymore, your activity on the web, every search query you make and product you buy will help fund our project._

<http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The push to Unity made me try alternate window managers. I've ended up sticking with Awesome, which is a pretty sweet tiling window manager. More minimalistic than it needs to be, but still, the core functionality is great. I have multiple workspaces with different tiling schemes for different tasks - one for general purpose, one for terminal hacking (spiralling terminal windows), one for bug fixing (side by side windows w/bug tracker & Emacs), and one for prolonged development (full screen Emacs with a little terminal for building)

<comment><USER11> When Ubuntu moved to Gnome3/Unity, I did the same. I tried Kubuntu, but found KDE far too different from what I remember back in the KDE3 days to be comfortable with. Then I settled on Xubuntu, which gave me Gnome2 familiarity with XFCE.

Then, I installed Bluetile (<http://bluetile.org/>) which is a tiling window manager that functions well in desktop environments. It lets me use several different tiling layouts and different modes including tiling, full screen, and floating. Everything can be done with the keyboard or the mouse (there's a narrow pane on the side of the screen with all the functions available as buttons). I've still got window dragging, resizing with the mouse, minimize, maximize, etc. buttons, and a host of new features to play with. I find Bluetile to be the best of both worlds for me, and not much of a compromise at that.

<comment><USER10> I'll try this, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had great hopes for this release. The fglrx drivers are fething up the "shiny" gnome 3 desktop environment, not to mention I haven't seen anything great about it either -which I am coming to that shortly. MATE is... same as gnome3, I haven't seen anything special about it either. As for gnome 2, why I cannot add widgets to taskbars blows my mind...

As far as I can see, and ironically, these new releases have less usability than their older and "geekier" versions. I mean back in linux mint 9 I could find compiz settings in 2 clicks. Now I cannot even see a compiz settings button anywhere. I mean, what the hell was wrong with my rotating cube desktop? Sure, it wasn't breaking any "productivity increase" reports but it made me happy to work with my linux box, not to mention all of the mac & win people looking with envy to these effects which my pieceashit netbook can pull off while their overpowered books can't.

Two popular distros (I mean ubuntu and linux mint currently) had created an end goal it seems: "We want to be the mac of the linux world!". In the old days it was "we want to be the windows of the linux world" and this decision killed kde4. But the correct direction is to be an unique experience. Compiz did that, and as far as I can see none of the big mothers of the software world (yes I am looking at you m$ and apple) has a similar software to that!

TL;DR:Don't macify yourself.

</comment><comment><USER13> This may be the first time I'd want to try a non-KDE desktop. Excellent job Mint team!

<comment><USER14> OT: Didn't he KDE4 release make you want to try something else?

Made me try a switch to Gnome, wasn't good for me though.

KDE4 now is great IMO, still a few things I don't like but really good, but then ... sheesh!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just installed Linux Mint Debian Edition. I'm conflicted. It seems nice, but a number of things don't work, the biggest being the nvidia drivers. Turned a bunch of old stuff into a standing dual-screen multimedia center in the garage, so plenty of room for fun and education, not sure I'd switch to it full time.

<comment><USER16> The ATI drivers don't work all that great either. The post-release drivers won't install at all. The other one installs, but it's really glitchy.

<comment><USER17> I can confirm. They are _very_ glitchy for me too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm switching my Linux box and a friend's machine to Linux Mint (from Ubuntu), and was going to use v11. I want a simple desktop and something solid that isn't going to be buggy or difficult to setup. I basically use the terminal, emacs, Ruby, and a browser (Chrome).

Should I stick with v11 or go ahead and install v12 now? Would it be better to wait a while to let any bugs shake out, or should 12 be pretty solid now?

<comment><USER19> No problems here using plain ol' debian on my laptop. Stable and fast.

<comment><USER20> Huh, that wasn't the question at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it better than Ubuntu? Can I have a few workspaces? I think to leave Ubuntu as it became slow for me and Unity is really not cool at all. What do you think?

P.S. Can I transfer all my files from Ubuntu to Mint easily?

<comment><USER22> >Is it better than Ubuntu?

Is Coke better than Pepsi? It boils down more to personal preference. Which one do you like more?

>Unity is really not cool at all.

I use Ubuntu without Unity. Google "remove unity" and follow instructions for whatever version you are using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Just tried this in a VM , Mint's interpretation of Gnome3 is better than Ubuntu's at least. No way to add additional panels though (afaik) which is a major bummer.

</comment><comment><USER24> installed Mint 12(lisa) on a virtual machine but some things are missing. I've been thinking of abandoning Ubuntu for Mint. Will wait for some more time.

<comment><USER25> Err, Mint is Ubuntu(-based).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am not convinced by their "Fresh Upgrade" that looks like a fresh install! Ideally we should be able to upgrade automatically like Chrome or Windows or Wordpress. The future of Linux is here.

<comment><USER27> With a clean install, there's less chance of an incident, and if you put /home on a separate partition, you don't have to back up your data (although you should, anyway). If you installed extra packages from the repos, you can get them back with:

      dpkg --get-selections > packages.txt

After reinstalling, do

      dpkg --set-selections < packages.txt
      sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

As for automatic upgrades, that goes against the Linux / free software attitude that the user should be in control of her computer and know what it's doing. I think that's why there's no GUI option for automatic upgrades although unattended-upgrades does exist.

<comment><USER26> Some kind of service pack to update the software would be nice. But if Wordpress is automatic when you choose to update, you are not obliged to update, there is nothing against free software here!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> honest question: why are so many people hating on unity? is it the launcher bar?

<comment><USER29> For me, broken Alt+Tab that switches applications instead of windows is a non- starter. And the top application menu bar.

The rest is OK and I can learn/adapt.

<comment><USER30> For me its the menu bar on the top of the screen except for libreoffice. On a 1920 by 1080 its a bit of a trek to the top of the screen from a small Gedit window.

The rest I can deal with, I tend toward 'end user' tasks plus a couple of ssh sessions, and about 10 applications over four virtual desktops.

Hibernate works so I can keep the setup between sessions.</comment></comment></comment>


AdCamo's Background Ad Platform to Kill Popups - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/08/07/adcamo-background-advertising-platform/

<comment><AUTHOR> Will anyone miss popups? Not likely.</comment>


Corporations in the Age of Inequality: A Skeptic's Take - <AUTHOR> http://douglaslcampbell.blogspot.com/2017/03/corporations-in-age-of-inequality.html <comment><AUTHOR> See the discussion on the original piece here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13959603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13959603)</comment>


Show HN: Dhole, a developer-friendly cryptography interface built on libsodium - <AUTHOR> https://dholecrypto.com <comment><AUTHOR> A while ago, I made a libsodium wrapper for my personal projects (which I eventually plan to use in hobby game dev).

I'm going to be porting it to a few more languages in the near future, for projects that myself and my friends are building.

However, it should be generally useful to anyone wanting their cryptography APIs to be almost mind-numbingly easy.</comment>


HN: Review My Lead Magnet App - <AUTHOR> http://primethem.com/60secondsleadmagnet <comment><USER2> I read "Lead" as the element Pb...a metal in the context of "magnet" because I've never really thought about those free ebooks as "lead magnets" since I'm not tuned in to marketing jargon despite having a bit of exposure to the literature of growth hacking over the years.

Which brings me to my point that the market for your product includes segments, e.g. content creators, who don't tie the term "lead magnet" to the concept. Those people need a bit of education about your project because the value proposition isn't entirely clear until the term is tied to the concept. Helping an author put on the marketing hat is necessary before making it easy to take their marketing hat off and get back to writing has value.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey brudgers, thanks, your feedback is very insightful. I would like to make sure my work is valuable and helpful to authors. Are you an author? What are your frustrations in your field of work? Thank you! :)

<comment><USER2> I'm not an author in any sense that would cause me to use the service. It's just a role I find easy to imagine due to my daydreams. Ironically, in my profession many of my frustrations relate to people expecting free. I deal with them via hourly billing and retainers in my contracts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, just realised you are a guru coder :). Well, it's good to daydream at times. Yah, totally understand people expecting free can be a pain. Some people don't value our work. Will you stick with hourly billing? I'm trying to productize my services, think it's not impossible just that it's like starting over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think you provide enough information on the landing page to convince users to signup.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, thanks for the feedback madetech!</comment></comment>


Show HN: First project and lessons learned - <AUTHOR>

A little background.  For the last 1.5 years I lost what could be considered an embarrassing amount of money hiring other people to work on a project that I thought had potential, I got some important people involved, had some great coders, but couldn't launch.  The failure was depressing, rejection by YC didn't help.. I had to take a job, I didn't enjoy and I had a girlfriend who stood by me despite going into debt.
But bouncing back over the last 45 days I've taught myself Rails some Jquery, and Javascript and built this www.hangout.io.  It's empowering to build something myself because I'm dedicated to it.  It's wonderful to build a skill that will contribute to greater success.  Sure, this project has some flaws, some bugs.. it needs a mobile application, there are some things people don't understand.. But hell I launched and there are tangible things I can do to improve it.
I wanted to share it with hacker news cause now I feel I finally belong :) <comment><AUTHOR> I should add some of the lessons I learned:

1) When you don't know how to do something you don't know how much you should pay.. and surprisingly it takes less time to learn than you would think. I wrote off learning Rails thinking it was harder then it was.. Sure it has its nuances, but in 45 days I've gained a really good perspective on building an app. But to learn, really commit! Build an app then when you are done, build another, and then another.

2) You have to launch and as soon as possible. Nothing else is as important. Motivation will die, money will be lost, and you'll have no idea what people will want unless you do. Period.

3) People telling you something is a good idea is not the same as people willing to use it. You can't base spending money and time off people, especially your friends, thinking something is a good idea. You have to test the waters (see point 2).

4) Join the community. If you are a reader of Hacker News, but don't code join the community of coders. I can't tell you how much more fulfilling it is to show up at local Ruby events as a coder, feeling welcome as "one of them" as opposed to as an entrepreneur seen as just 'hawking an idea'. Really, it's a great community of people once you are on the same side of the equation.

5) Distill your idea down to its simplest form possible. Convoluted ideas are difficult to pull off, difficult to convey to potential users, and difficult to convey to investors. Focus focus focus.

<comment><USER2> re: number 4: the difference in reaction to coders vs. entrepreneurs looking for coders at local Ruby events has been amazing. I got much better reactions as a beginning but committed Ruby coder than the guys that were there looking for a technical cofounder to do that part of the work for them. Showing a willingness and real interest in the technology really helps establish a rapport, in ways that I wouldn't have even guessed at before I started learning to code six months ago.

I now think it's totally worth the experience to make the effort to learn, regardless of whether you plan to be a 'biz guy' or 'code guy' in the long run.

Also, re: point 3: no kidding. learned that the hard way in my previous life as a writer/photographer. I'm still trying to figure out how to get better at giving that kind of feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congratulations on launching something, it's great to get that initial step out the way.

I guess the key thing to ask about this is what is the unique value proposition over other services? Mainly Facebook where the vast majority of potential users probably already have their social graphs.

A couple of years back I thought about doing an events site thinking that there was space for someone to be basically social network agnostic and as well as leaveraging those services focus on email as everyone has email. Facebook has grown a lot since then though.

I think you have to use the tighter niche focus as an advantage and really zero in on what you can add to the events experience over the more broad events on things like Facebook. A good example is the photo sharing app called Batch the came out this week, really feels like a better user experience in creating albums of photos because they have focused in on just that aspect.

<comment><AUTHOR> If this is a flawed idea you can let me know (and I'm open to your thoughts) but this is what I'm operating under right now: I, nor no one I know, uses FB events for casual get togethers. Want to get together for drinks at the bar tonight after work? I wouldn't use FB events. I could send text messages to friends sure, or I could call them sure, but this is a fun easy way to accomplish that. That's what I want, and I don't have anything else that fulfills that.. if there is something else it hasn't made its way onto my desk yet. So its just a simple way t odo that, that's the value proposition at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is a hangout? Webcam? In real life?

That is kind of critical information for you projekt to tell..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, someone else mentioned this too.. so clearly its something I should address. And here I was thinking it was obvious :) I wonder if G+'s 'hangout' feature being a webcam thing made you think it could be as well?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, i think it is google's fault! hehe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The weblink <http://www.hangout.io>

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice work! Looks good and clean, will try it!

</comment><comment><USER6> Is your code on Github by any chance?

</comment><comment><USER7> I echo the other comment: there is nothing currently on the front page that tells me exactly what this site does. Is it a chat room? There's not an obvious link for previewing, if such an option exists. I just don't think the average user is going to sign up for another service without knowing what it offers

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Danso, duly noted. Will change some wording today to make it clearer and will think about longer term fixes as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is actually very motivational to me. I'm in the same boat. I've spent thousands of dollars in the last five months hiring programmers to build my site. The site is about half-complete, but now I'm running out of money and need to go find a job to sustain my expenditures.

I think your decision to teach yourself those languages is very commendable and I'm sure it feels good to have created your own website by hand.

One thing I've learned is if you plan to launch a website, create a stripped- down version of it first and attempt to monetize it before you run out of money. Then once you start generating revenue, you can begin adding the features you originally planned. Of course, if you have deep pockets, than building the entire site with all functionality first is no problem.

Good luck with your site Kevin.

</comment><comment><USER9> I know how you feel with the belonging. So many smart people around it could really be intimidating. In reality, everyone always _seems_ to be much smarter, happier, and better off than they really are.

Please, you don't have to say "sure, it needs x, y, and z". You built a cool thing and enjoyed it. That's awesome! Don't diminish your skill and effort like that.

I like reading posts like these. I don't want to see anyone fail but its a fact of life and it really comforts newbies like me who have a long road filled with failure before we reach the promised land.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Bill, an honest response. I think you nailed the emotion as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've often found myself thinking evite is way too spammy. Plus, a lot of times, it seems like overkill. This looks like a good alternative for just catching up with friends (which happens a lot more than me hosting parties).

Looking forward to checking it out.</comment>


Truth, Love and Growth (Sunstone Capital) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.maxniederhofer.com/truth-love-and-growth-the-strange-strange-values-at-the-core-of-sunstone-capital <comment><AUTHOR> One of if not the best blog by a European VC (& founder).

Worth reading. Very short & thought-provoking articles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another very good recent article: [http://blog.maxniederhofer.com/fear-and- loathing-in-venture-...](http://blog.maxniederhofer.com/fear-and-loathing-in- venture-capital)</comment></comment>


Nuitka: a Python compiler - <AUTHOR> http://nuitka.net/ <comment><USER3> I built a small app that retrieves data from a remote server, builds a summary and then pushes it to a local html file.

Number of people that tried it when I told them that to make it work they had to download python, pip, paramiko and install the pycrypto binary? _Zero_. Number of people that tried it after I just gave them a zip file with an executable? No longer zero.

I tried different libraries but Nuitka was the only one that made everything work seamlessly. I owe this guy a beer.

Edit: I no longer owe Kay a beer. I found the donation link on his website.

<comment><USER4> This issue has been addressed multiple times with considerable success by pyinstaller, py2app, cxfreeze. You can get your single-zip-file distribution package without nuitka, although it may have other advantages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _This project looks completely misguided. The talk focused on the trivialities of mapping Python to C++ rather than on the interesting problems to be encountered when trying to optimize Python while maintaining its extremely dynamic semantics. Also the benchmarking effort is laughable; pystone is not to be taken seriously (only exercises a tiny part of the language) and pybench does microbenchmarks, which are optimized away. You should try the "real- world" benchmarks from the PyPy and Unladen Swallow projects. And what is the size of the generated code? (E.g. how big would the binary for the entire standard library be?) In your blog, please use less boring subjects than "version x.y.z released"._ ~ Guido van Rossum

Find Guido's quote in the first comment.

[https://ep2013.europython.eu/conference/talks/nuitka-the- pyt...](https://ep2013.europython.eu/conference/talks/nuitka-the-python- compiler)

<comment><USER6> For me, this is not about execution speed AT ALL. I wouldnt even mind if it was slower.

It is about being able to have a easy, dead-simple way to provide Windows users with a executable. Without changing my code, without weird build systems. Like it or not, Windows users are still the majority out there.

<comment><USER7> Is that not py2exe's job?

<comment><USER8> In theory. In reality, python freezers have a lot of problems. It can be a real hassle to get a single file, and even if you do they turn out massive. I've had nothing but problems with them in the past.

<comment><USER9> I've had good experiences with PyInstaller, if you haven't tried it yet (or recently).

<comment><USER10> Seconded. I recently moved a work project from py2exe to pyInstaller and was very happy with the results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this is a really solid approach. It's the same thing I was trying to do for PHP with phc ([http://phpcompiler.org/](http://phpcompiler.org/)) - compiling down to C using the built in stdlib and C API, then using full program optimization.

Long term, it won't be as fast as a full JIT, as the Facebook HPHP team showed, but Python doesn't have a JIT of the same caliber, so this is probably useful for tons of people.

Dunno if the author is around, but they might find some of the stuff from my PhD relevant, especially how the static analysis worked and some of the challenges of compiling using the C API: [http://paulbiggar.com/research/#phd- dissertation](http://paulbiggar.com/research/#phd-dissertation)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is probably a better link, for those of us (like me) who had never heard of Nuitka: [http://nuitka.net/pages/overview.html](http://nuitka.net/pages/overview.html)

<comment><USER5> Cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0v-pht1...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0v-pht19f18J:nuitka.net/pages/overview.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Checked contributors list on Github[0] and most of the code is written by a single person, Kay. Isn't that amazing? A project of this large and value, done by single person in his own time. I wish this project gets more popularity.

Bought a beer to Kay :-)

[0] - [https://github.com/kayhayen/Nuitka/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/kayhayen/Nuitka/graphs/contributors)

</comment><comment><USER14> Great project. Compiling a simple PySide application worked fine on the first try. If you bundle all dependencies you get a binary about the same size as a binary produced by py2exe. I will do some speed comparisons next.

</comment><comment><USER15> _It is somewhat faster than CPython already, but currently it doesn 't make all the optimizations possible, but a 258% factor on pystone is a good start (number is from version 0.3.11)._

Holy cow. And here I'd set aside Python in part because of the difficulty in getting performant executables (I was getting visible lag in a turn-based SDL game ...)

<comment><USER16> Use Cython.

It's a hassle getting your head around it, and getting it set up, but you'll never look back once you do.

If you rely on PyPy, you get what you're given and then you're stuck. You can't really guess how to rewrite your code to make it faster.

A small blog post I wrote on this: [https://honnibal.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/writing-c-in- cytho...](https://honnibal.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/writing-c-in-cython/)

Here's a non-trivial example: [https://github.com/honnibal/thinc/blob/master/thinc/learner....](https://github.com/honnibal/thinc/blob/master/thinc/learner.pyx)

This code is driving a library of very fast NLP tools that I'm writing.

<comment><USER17> Unforntuately cython is even harder to package up than normal python because it generates one shared library per module.

...not really suitable for games.

<comment><USER18> You may need to fiddle around with how modules are loaded by Python, but you can do whatever you want with the C files that Cython generates.

kivy-ios should have all the details for building everything into one big Python blob, if that's what you need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems to be, by and large, the work of a single person on his spare time. Very impressive!

</comment><comment><USER20> On a tangentially related note: here is a comparison of various Python runtimes (interpreters and compilers including Nuitka and PyPy) on a fairly complex scientific code: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.6388](http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.6388)

The shootout, however, is from August 2013 so getting a bit old by now.

</comment><comment><USER21> I would love to make distributing games built on Python easier. Jessica McKeller suggested this should be a priority[0] to make the language more accessible by getting kids involved in making games and being able to share them, easily, with their friends. These days Javascript is kicking our butt in this area.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1a4Jbjc- vU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1a4Jbjc-vU)

I've been writing little helper libraries on top of Python 3.4 + pysdl2 as I've been working on games and demos for my (unfortunately cancelled) Pycon talk. One area I've only played with, unsuccessfully, is getting packaging going on Nuitka or some other compiler. If anyone wants to get together to make it awesome get in touch.

</comment><comment><USER22> I noticed that PyPy does not show any real speed improvement over CPython in these benchmarks: [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/)

If you filter by Python, you can compare some results running on both CPython and PyPy. I would be curious to know what it is about these benchmarks that makes PyPy perform poorly. I would also be interested to see how Nuitka performs.

At the moment I'm also very excited about Pyston from Dropbox: [https://github.com/dropbox/pyston](https://github.com/dropbox/pyston)

<comment><USER23> I'm supremely sceptical about those benchmarks. Go take a look at the code being tested. I would welcome a serious look at developmental time versus resource used, using code that is probable in production. I read the code used to test Django. It's not reasonable code.

<comment><USER24> It's an open sourced benchmarking comparison. If you can improve them, shoot them a pull request!

[https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks](https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why are so people so fast to trust a new compiler?

Have you audited that compiler's source and building the compiler from it with a known good compiler? Are you inspecting the resulting .pyc, and in this case, the resulting PEs? It's a super easy way to inject a compromise into a package that will probably get widely distributed.

full disclosure: link is down for me, so haven't read the article. Been a comment that has been building up for a while for me, and not specific to Nuitka. Same goes for new frameworks/languages/etc.

<comment><USER26> > _Have you audited that compiler 's source and building the compiler from it > with a known good compiler? Are you inspecting the resulting .pyc, and in > this case, the resulting PEs? It's a super easy way to inject a compromise > into a package that will probably get widely distributed._

Because nobody is that paranoid?

<comment><USER27> And if they are, they probably aren't in the business of distributing precompiled binaries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Mirror: [http://web.archive.org/web/20141218012211/http://nuitka.net/](http://web.archive.org/web/20141218012211/http://nuitka.net/)

BTW how much faster is this than PyPy or CPython? That is the question that I think is most on people's minds.

<comment><USER29> Seems to be 2x faster than CPython, but as I understood it is working on optimizations now.

<comment><USER30> As others have pointed out, these claims have to be taken very carefully and the main value (at least for now) seems to be the easy packaging and deploying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I program Django websites and work in an environment where we like to deploy often. I'm not sure we could tolerate the extra wait in compile time for deployment. At least we would need to take a serious look at the speed/resource gain before considering it.

<comment><USER31> Deployment in a controlled environment is not the ideal use case here - <USER2> benefits come from when you are shipping to non-technical users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For all that people may think this isnt a good idea, this is a very similar idea to what Unity3d is persuing with IL2CPP ([http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/20/the-future-of- scripting-...](http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/20/the-future-of-scripting-in- unity/)).

This seems immidately relevant to address pythons biggest problems; its slow, and its hard to distribute. Relevant quote:

        All code generation is done to C++ rather than architecture
        specific machine code. The cost of porting and maintenance
        of architecture specific code generation is now more amortised

</comment><comment><USER23> Git repo is unresponsive. I think we killed the poor guys box.

EDIT: [https://github.com/kayhayen/Nuitka](https://github.com/kayhayen/Nuitka)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm _very_ interested in some benchmarks on this and various other compilers/packagers/runtimes for Python.

Sidenote: A very long time ago I had some great luck with Perl's packagers: PAR, PerlApp, etc. but they all basically just bundle in the basic Perl runtime with the guts of your program so there's no real benchmark difference. I suspect the same is not true of efforts like this for Python.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is awesome! I tested it on some code that uses some not-compeltely- trivial python features like metaclasses, etc. and it worked like a charm.

I couldn't get it to work against this obfuscated hello world though: [http://benkurtovic.com/2014/06/01/obfuscating-hello- world.ht...](http://benkurtovic.com/2014/06/01/obfuscating-hello-world.html) :)

<comment><USER30> That one's relying on CPython implementation details, the author says so in his detailed description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I really like the idea, that it compiles Python but is (99,9%) compatible to CPython -- since so you can still use the many C extensions (I don't want to do my projects any more without my own Python extensions written in C).

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know much about compilers and runtimes but how come there are SO MANY of them for Python. Is there something about Python that makes it so easy to write runtimes for it?

<comment><USER32> I think it's because lots of people write lots of code in python, but then end up with performance problems at some point and try to tackle those. Have a nice regular language makes it _relative_ easy to rewrite a runtime to scratch your itch.

I suspect we would have seen this more with languages like Perl, except Perl is virtually impossible to parse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> My immediate question, which I don't see an answer to on the site or Github page: is it self-hosting yet?

</comment><comment><USER37> Python is a fun language, it has as many web frameworks as its runtime/interpreter.</comment>


Show HN: New PHP router wich is 50 times faster then Laravel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alexdodonov/mezon-router/blob/master/doc/router-laravel.md <comment><USER2> Those are some opinionated tests for performance checks. What both symfony and laravel routers achieve with their routers isn't comparable with this router library. If you want to go a bit further and implement ultimate fastest routing, create an associative array, routes as key, callable's as value. Will it be fast, yes. Will it be usable, no.

For more information about routing, plase see Nikita Popov(nikic)'s post about FastRoute.

[http://nikic.github.io/2014/02/18/Fast-request-routing- using...](http://nikic.github.io/2014/02/18/Fast-request-routing-using- regular-expressions.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this test include testing against cached routes? Does your framework cache routes? Does this integrate into the framework the same as other routing frameworks? Does it have feature parity?

The biggest thing with all these "x is faster than y" only applies until you add in the rest of the features.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope I will teach it to cache routes soon

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From a quick look, I'm wondering if this integrates with the rest of the Symfony stack, if that works with API Platform, if it supports subdomain routing and if it has long time support.

Sure, shaving a few milliseconds off the load time is nice, but it's just one parameter amongst a whole bunch.

</comment><comment><USER5> I really dislike implicit routing like this - it's just so easy to accidentally expose an endpoint that's not supposed to be exposed. I think the first time I ran into a router that worked like this was with yii2 and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Being able to register middleware is also something I really value in a router.

</comment><comment><USER6> Appreciate the effort but routing performance is the last thing i'd probably try to optimize in my application.</comment>


Diego, A Centenarian Giant Tortoise Whose Sex Drive Saved His Species - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/americas/galapagos-islands-tortoises.html <comment><USER2> Any chance his sex drive is genetic? We might end up with islands filled with horny tortoises.

<comment><USER3> If that were to become a problem, we only need to get Charles Darwin's cookbook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I heard that the total population of humans was once reduced to a few hundred. Was that just a myth, or was there a time that humans were in danger of extinction?

<comment><USER5> [http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/ho...](http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how- human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c)

It says the lowest estimate was 40.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how they came up with that number. If it's via genetic testing on current humans, they wouldn't be able to tell whether it was actually just 40, or whether there might have been some other human populations at the time, that just didn't happen to leave any descendants. (But only died out much later.)

<comment><USER7> That's pretty much the same thing because it means that that population was cut off our current gene pool so they have no effect on our survival or possible extinction.

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily.

Compare the following situations:

\- Only one group of 40 breeding pairs left. Very risky.

\- A bunch of pools of left, one of them consisting of 40 breeding pairs only. Over time the small pool recovers to a few thousand people, and at that time the other pools have some accidents and die out.

The second situation was never as risky as the first. But we wouldn't be able to tell them apart from current genetics.

<comment><USER8> >The second situation was never as risky as the first.

But if both situations have the same outcome -- everyone not descended from the 40-pair group is dead -- does it make sense after the fact to distinguish them by "riskiness"? It seems to be a distinction without a difference, as the saying goes.

<comment><USER9> What if the surviving pool killed the other pools? In the absence of that one surviving pool, there would have been another. Or maybe even more?

<comment><USER8> >What if the surviving pool killed the other pools?

Well, what if they did?

I think that I have been incorrectly assuming that this subthread was about whether, in 2017, we could tell which of two things had happened -- either "there was a time when there were only 40 pairs of humans on all the earth", or "everyone today is descended from a 40-pair group that may have coexisted with others but for some reason those others died out."

If in fact we're instead talking about whether we can make any distinctions whatever between the two situations, even though we know now that whichever actually occurred, humanity didn't go extinct, then I retract my objections.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I was musing whether we can tell today---both in practice or in theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article's headline is what every man dreams his epitaph would read.

<comment><USER11> Not really. I like sex, but I really do not care about reproducing, that much. And sex is really not that important to me. My dream is to create something awesome that I can show off to the whole world. I have a feeling that most males are like me, they simply settle for something easier like sex.

<comment><USER12> Sex drive and libido is a function of hormones in your body, and nitrogen retention. My guess is that your Estradiol is fairly high and your testosterone levels are below average resulting in a diminished sex drive.

There is nothing wrong with having lots of sex and liking sex, it's a natural state our body desires and you can still get the work you want accomplished and have lots of sex.</comment></comment></comment>


Going from macOS to Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> https://kvz.io/tobuntu.html <comment><USER2> > _On the one hand, yes Electron eats a lot of RAM and native apps are more > efficient, BUT you can buy 16GB for $100 (and that will only get cheaper > /more abundant), and we do finally get to have nice things on Linux, which > is new and exciting._

I'm on the fence about Electron. While I do love how it's made portability easier (especially to Linux) I do think people outside of our tech circle get forgotten about.

For example $100 might be pocket money for us but we do need to remember that not everyone in the world has that luxury. I think sometimes peoples obsession with making pretty things with Electron leads them to forget about people on low income or countries where computers are expensive resources.

There's also an argument to be made for how native applications are generally better for people who depend on accessibility features too.

<comment><USER3> Also laptops with soldered RAM, I'm on a 13 inch MacBook Pro for example, and you cannot move beyond 16GB on that hardware...

<comment> VvR-Ox Yes you can, buy an old one from 2012 ;-P

<comment> VvR-Ox Thank you for voting me down on this - it was intended as a joke and not to upset you. I think you need some vacation.

<comment><USER3> I did read your reply pretty much as a joke. :-) (and didn't downvote you for that one)

The real problem with the older MacBooks (Pro) is weight really, for a machine that I have to carry with me every day.

As far as I know, there aren't that many 13 inch or less light options with more RAM outside of Apple either.

<comment> VvR-Ox Ok I am sorry I assumed you did - so thank you for not dragging me down :-D It must have been some anonymous jerk who doesn't have the balls to tell me what upset him and give me the chance to argue with him.

In comparison the MBP 2012 and a MBP 2016 do not differ in weight so much (1.4kg vs 2kg which is basically a package of flour) and if I am honest I don't really recognize the difference when carrying them in my backpack.

But it depends on the bag as well, because if you use a messenger bag for example the strain on the shoulder and the back is probably noticeable. Also many people like to carry their notebooks around with one arm / hand and of course this will be a huge difference then.

Some people like to use the Thinkpad X1 or the Dell XPS as a replacement but I don't have any hands-on experience with those.

I hope someone will recognize the gap in the market and jump in to produce 13 inch, retina screen uni-body metal notebooks with the ability to upgrade the parts and with all the ports you still need when not living in some bubble where magically everything was converted into USB-C overnight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run both Ubuntu and MacOS systems in my studio, each functioning as DAW's in various capacities, and I find myself feeling very relieved, more and more, whenever I sit in front of the Ubuntu Studio DAW to work .. everything just works, and with every update the system is more and more of a joy to work with.

I just suffered through an automatic update on MacOS to Catalina - this has been the most painful, idiotic thing to happen in my studio in a long time, and I now feel about Apple the way I did about Microsoft last century, when I abandoned them .. just utterly disappointed, and more the point I feel _exploited_ just so that Apple can update its OS and force us to move onto their next big thing.

More and more, I'll replace the Mac with an Ubuntu Studio-oriented DAW, and then I'll phase out using Macs entirely. Linux is catching up in a big way, especially for use as Audio/Media workstation. Its not 100%, but its certainly better than having arbitrary decisions forced on me by the OS masters in Cuppertino.

(And yes, I've disabled auto-update. Shouldn't have been on in the first place, on this production system...)

<comment><USER5> I'm confused, there was an automatic update that took you from Mojave to Catalina without your permission?

(Not sure why you got downvoted btw)

<comment><USER4> Yes - The update was downloaded automatically, when the machine was shut down for the night, it installed the update automatically on bootup. This caused days of frustration and lost productivity.

<comment><USER6> This can't happen unless you approve it. You can sit on old versions of MacOS for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Things like battery life, suspend/resume and proper handling of multiple/hidpi displays are the Achilles heels of open source projects.

They are notoriously hard to get right, require lots of work invested, and easy to break (regressions!) but are not too sexy or interesting, require insane amounts of QA and don't have low hanging fruits. As a consequence, nobody wants to do them, and so the Linux desktop will probably always be a mess.

Oh, and then there is that aspect of it that unixes in general were not built with the desktop in mind, so things like vm.swappiness defaults might be completely wrong (Ubuntu still defaults to 60 to this day!) and the kernel low memory handling is just outrageously bad, if you compare it to Windows, for instance.

I would be the first person to pay proper money for any Linux-based OS that at least _attempts_ to solve these issues. I might even go as far to purchase a laptop specifically to get the OS on that laptop, like the Macs, however I'm not willing to sacrifice on the size and quality of said laptop, actually, I expect a very high quality product for my extra money, so unfortunately at the moment there is nothing out there right now that I'd buy based on this.

<comment><USER8> AFAIK, macOS only supports 2x DPI scaling, so Linux here is not the worst offender.

<comment><USER9> No, it has extra options. It defaults to 2xDPI by default but you can choose a different resolution if you want.

I often switch from 2x to higher resolution when I need more workspace.

You can see how it works here: [https://www.imore.com/how-change-display- settings-your-mac](https://www.imore.com/how-change-display-settings-your-mac)

<comment><USER8> That looks like a resolution change, not a DPI change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reading those long installation commands makes me appreciate Arch's AUR (also available on Manjaro). No curl, no manual adding of repos. Compare ease of installation for yarn by toggling the linux distro:

[https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/install/#arch- stable](https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/install/#arch-stable)

It's even more pronounced for VSCode.

For the jetbrains tools (including Datagrip), I switched to using Toolbox. It makes updating to new versions easier:

[https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox-app/](https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox- app/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I'm hearing good things about Arch yes, maybe I should give it a shot one day. And thank you for the Toolbox recommendation, I added it to the post!

<comment><USER10> I'm personally running Manjaro, it's as easy to set up as Ubuntu and gives you access to the AUR. Much less of a commitment... An Arch installation requires plenty of effort

<comment> VvR-Ox Same here. I used various other distributions for years until arriving here.

1\. Suse Linux: don't know what version but it worked and broke my windows partition somehow (think it was a user error).

2\. Debian: very stable but not cutting edge enough for my taste. I damaged it trying to get compiz fusion and all the wonderful 3d-FX to run on my desktop.

3\. Ubuntu / Mint: more up-to-date than Debian plus some nice sane default etc. to just start working very quickly. Also a big community and some good ideas.

4\. Manjaro (finally :D): even more up-to-date than Ubuntu plus AUR's! I love the way I can install software on this OS compared to Debian-derivatives. So far it's not much more work to maintain it than it was for my Mint/Ubuntu setup.

I installed Manjaro alongside macOS (high sierra) on my MBP 2012 to get the best of both worlds.

It pretty much works and I also don't have problems with hibernation as the author of the article describes. BUT I'm afraid my WiFi is not working as good on Linux as it does on macOS and also connecting my speaker via BT isn't working as expected - the sound is choppy and I'll need to fix it when I find some time.

I can confirm the problem with the clipboards, the key-mappings and also Snaps. This is something they did quite right on the Apple side and I hope enough people of the active Linux community will implement this consistency some time, too.

The problems with the keyboard maybe stem from too many choices how to set the layout. I was given the choice between 3 or 4 layouts without being sure which one to choose.

Now I can choose what OS to use depending on the task:

\- Linux: Development (things like docker just work which is really nice), Mail (thunderbird is ugly but it can handle a lot more than Apple Mail which becomes unusable after some time), Security-related things (I trust my Linux more than macOS somehow)

\- Mac: Office (especially when working with PDF but also compare Pages to LibreOffice which tries to resemble M$ office too much for my taste), Graphics (for me Gimp is no viable alternative to Photoshop; the GUI alone brings me into rage-mode), Day-to-day "tasks" (browsing, media etc. just work better on macOS)

<comment><USER10> There must be better alternatives for email. I just installed Thunderbird and it does lots of things I don't need (Chat, Calendar). It's really hard to give up on Gmail (the recent addition of powerful autocomplete is amazing!). Plenty of people are using Mutt, but that seems too minimalist to me.

What made me switch away from Ubuntu was that at some point I was forced to upgrade my OS version in order to continue to receive updates for my packages. I now prefer rolling the rolling release model (which Manjaro / Arch use)

Having relatively recent Linux Kernels available is also cool, I'm already on version 5.3.6 and this was trivial to do (5.3.8 is the most recent stable branch).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >10 years later, copy-paste is still a horrible user experience. Different apps use different clipboards :scream: Even for copying these commands from Firefox to the terminal with keyboard shortcuts (CTRL INSERT, SHIFT INSERT, as CTRL C has a different meaning in terminals), you'll need copy-paste fixed already.

IMO this thing is way overblown. What applications these days do not simply use primary and clipboard selections in a consistent way? (FTR I like them separate very much as I would hate to have my clipboard contents change by simply selecting some text.) Middle click is not a shortcut for Ctrl+V!

Ctrl-C is indeed used to send SIGINT to the foreground processes in terminals and thus terminal emulators, and the established alternative for terminal emulators is to replace Ctrl-C/V copy/paste with Ctrl+Shift+C/V (I think that's how even cmd.exe works these days). Copying and sending a SIGINT would hardly be a useful default.

<comment> the-unknown-dev Is there a way to configure a <Super> or <Meta>-C/-V on linux to be copy/paste in a halfway compatible way? I often struggle too with my <Cmd>-C/-V muscle memory when using linux.

<comment><USER12> Take a look at Kinto [https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto/](https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems like an awful lot of configuration to get it half working like you want.

On the one hand, I'm thinking about getting an XPS because it's literally 2K cheaper than a macbook and is upgradeable. On the other hand, a macbook still has a bit better build quality and macOS is still the most polished and easy to use OS (even after Catalina).

I need a stable OS that allows me to be productive without having to waste hours looking for workarounds and setup and doesn't break my config every upgrade. I also really, really like Time Machine.

<comment><USER14> > Seems like an awful lot of configuration to get it half working like you > want.

Now look at it other way around. How much time would you have to spend to configure OSX to behave like Ubuntu?

As someone who uses both, I'd kill for middle click paste...

<comment><USER15> I'd kill for having a fully consistent copy/paste on Linux :-D

As of today, without any extra clipboard manager installed, if I copy something from the Network Manager GUI, and I close it, the content is lost.

(I'm a hardcore linux user, so this is a small joke, but still a typical Linux issue)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm always amazed by the obsession of mac users with "just closing the lid for sleep".

I simply don't want that. If I close the lid then to move the laptop more easily to the next room/next floor for a meeting, I might not want it to go to sleep. When I want to suspend I run a single command. I could put that command on a key combo, so it's not like I can't fix it. I want to control what happens when I close the lid, and more often I want nothing to happen. I have a shell open anyway, so I can run my command...

But I've had that close-lid-for-suspend fail on Windows so many times, so maybe my Linux stance is too muddled anyway :P

Also both of my ThinkPads stay with power for days when suspended (ok, not weeks, I admit that) so in this case Dell is to blame I guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I can relate to that sentiment but indeed, closing the lid worked so reliably well on my MacBook that it would basically be the same as keeping the lid open and walking to the next room. Meaning: I open the lid, it wakes up, unlocks with either my watch or fingerprint, all within a second and I'm right where I was; meanwhile, while the lid was closed, power consumption was near-zero; I could leave it like that for a month, and open it, I hear the clicking sound from unlocking via watch with a tap an my wrist, and voila. Even my running VMs would still be in the same state.

And yes, Dell is to blame for the power consumption, also according so someone commenting on the blog post, I updated the blog post accordingly

<comment><USER17> There'are some options on macOS: \- InsomniaX : do not sleep when lid is closed \- Amphetamine: do not sleep when locked (⌘⌃Q)

I have an old Macbook Air 2014 with 4 gb ram. It is sluggish af. If I open many heavy apps and then lock screen (I do every tim I go to kitchen or bathroom on job) then when i unlock it - it can take up to several minutes to function normally. So Amphetamine.app is must for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm firmly in the camp of use what makes you feel productive, and can't really grasp the tribalism around OS choice. I generally have bought Apple hardware because it's nicely engineered and offers the most choice for "legal" OS usage. I'm not all that thrilled with my latest MacBook Pro keyboard and I definitely use it less because of that. I know it's a popular meme right now to say Apple software sucks now! But I'm not really seeing it with Catalina. In fact I usually wait about 6-12 months to switch to the new version and didn't this time. Audio apps are notorious for lagging behind in supporting the latest version of the os. This time around I updated my iMac Pro and it surprisingly just worked with all my outboard gear, all my apps and it seems rock solid. I recently bought a surface for my kids who can't wrap their mind around Mac OS and it has been largely uneventful as well. I think that both windows and Mac are in a pretty good state when using the official hardware. Maybe I'm just lucky...

</comment><comment><USER19> > And say what you will about Electron being a memory hungry beast... but it > is what allows me to make this jump now, at all.

I never thought about it that way, but this is kind of true. Many apps I use everyday on Linux are available on Linux because they are built using Electron.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow, best argument I've seen in a while for _not_ switching. ;-)

I'm holding out hope for new keyboards so I can stay with macOS. For now using wonderful Realforce keyboards 99% of the time anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Yes it certainly wasn't meant to be a piece to advocate switching. Just meant to give an honest review of my experience, good and bad and cumbersome. Hopefully this helps people make more informed decisions, whichever that decision may be!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can use Clipman from the Xfce project to merge your two clipboards into one or ignore the select one. Doesn't completely solve your issue but it gives the user more control, and also a nice clipboard history.

[https://docs.xfce.org/panel- plugins/clipman/start](https://docs.xfce.org/panel-plugins/clipman/start)

</comment><comment><USER22> I've recently switched jobs and got a Mac work computer after using Ubuntu for more than a decade.

I like some things but I am also frustrated with a number of things: I miss the split clipboard, I hate the insufficient number of USB ports and the fact that I have to use a dongle, I miss the vertical maximize and the touchscreen.

</comment><comment><USER23> Again with the 'have to compile the kernel' meme...

Seriously, I've been on Ubuntu for 11 years prior and Arch for 3 after that. I have built Linux based supercomputers, and administrated clouds of thousands of raspberry pi edge nodes and I have NEVER compiled a kernel in all that time.

<comment><USER5> Compiling the kernel used to be common if you need to enable certain driver or hardware support though.

<comment><USER16> But not 10 years ago, more like 15+.

And I did have other machines than ThinkPads...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I suspect these moves will continue to accelerate with pro users as Apple continues to offer the current gen MacBook "Pro" with the annoying Touch Bar and unreliable keyboard

</comment><comment><USER25> Why `&& true` after that apt command?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. It's a noop that lets me put a \ after each lines (not all lines except the last) which lets me re-order commands easily. It's a bit like enjoying trailing comma's for all elements/lines in an array. I agree it's a bit weird.</comment></comment>


Insights into the 2013 iOS Developer Survey - <AUTHOR> http://bigswing.com/blog/2013/7/2/insights-into-the-2013-ios-developer-survey

<comment><USER2> You guys are asking some interesting questions in particular about whether people feel they charge too much or not enough. The best expose on that I've seen is in Gerald Weinberg's "Secrets of Consulting" [http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0932633013/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0932633013/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1372779848&sr=8-1&pi=SL75)

It's a question that's both externally determined, e.g. "What does the market bear?" and also based on someone's own perception of their worth. It's hard to disentangle the two but very important in order to maximize revenue. What's more the objective question of what the market will bear is often colored by my own perception, which is a recipe to leaving money on the table.

Weinberg's advice is to set your rate such that you'd feel emotionally neutral whether or not you get the gig. If you over price (by your own feeling, not by what the market says) and you get the gig, you'll be stressed to deliver at what you think that price level should be worth in labor. If you under price (by your own standard, perhaps because you think the market will not accept more) then you'll be resentful for working below what you're worth. Having been a consultant myself, I can only advise everybody to challenge the own perception of what the market will bear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic point on challenging your own perceptions of the value of an hour, the market, etc. We really hope this survey (and subsequent ones that we plan to do) gives people an additional data point to consider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> These "feel" low to me. For context I'm a freelancer doing mostly front end web work based in MN and comfortably charging 50-60 with relatively little experience (~18 months, three of which were an internship with a creative firm). My intuition would have previously been that iOS devs; being both more supply constrained and needing more technical depth in skills (webdevs can get away with just knowing how to string up wordpress instances. I'm not aware of anything similar in the objective C world) would command much more leverage.

On the top end, I would hope these "rockstar" teams are charging 250/hr per developer?

I like to think I'm at the very bottom of the totem pole with plenty of room to climb higher and increase my revenue over a long career to come; seeing things like this make think I'm rapidly approaching a pretty hard cap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Especially comparing the average rates to proficiency and locale, I was surprised. I would expect Journeymen and Master to be charging more than $100/hr on average. Same with people in tech-heavy areas.

But, our data may be skewed this year just due to our reach. We didn't have many people from companies in the range of 20-100 people which I think is a sweet spot for high specialization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it'd be cool to see more visualizations of that data. What percentage was around the median and mean? What percentage of people charged under $50/hr?

<comment><USER5> Indeed, very little substance here. They couldn't even be bothered to indicate the time interval their "rate" applies to. One assumes hours, but it's not stated anywhere on the page. $93/hour? Day? Week? Project?

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken, but if you look at the results page (linked in the post), it's a lot more clear: [http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013](http://bigswing.com/ios- rates-2013)

<comment><USER5> Ah, thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for.

The heavier font weight didn't register and I completely missed the links in the body of the text. Maybe they need to be set off more, or maybe I just need more coffee :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that "innocent"s charge more than "exposed"s or "apprentices." I wonder if these are senior developers making a transition into iOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't considered the transitioners. That's a good point. The other way to look at it is that they don't know how bad they are yet :) When you first start to learn something, you feel like you know everything until you get that first smack down!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> \- Note this is a self-reported survey where people are likely to overstate their earnings in order to impress peers.

\- Additionally there isn't enough supporting data, e.g. no where is the rate of time defined in the article. I'd be interested to see the original survey to see if this is clearly mentioned here.

\- Can someone point to one clear unambiguous place where an iOS developer position is advertised at over $100 per hour?

<comment><AUTHOR> \- The survey was anonymous (unless you signed up to get the results). And, I don't think anyone is trying to impress us ;)

\- The data clearly shows that this is per hour (see the data here: [http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013](http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013), per the post). You can also view an archived copy of the survey here: [http://bigswing.com/ios-rate-survey-2013-archive/](http://bigswing.com/ios- rate-survey-2013-archive/) It poses the question: "If you do have an hourly rate, what is it on average?"

\- The point of doing this survey was that rates are rarely, if ever, actually posted. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it also makes hard to know if you're in line with your industry. Hence, the survey!

Your critiques and questions seem to imply that you don't think our findings are valid. Is that true or am I reading too much into it? ~$100/hour USD is right in line with our experience for an average across the whole industry. It's low for an agency or big firm and high for a young freelancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How did you get the survey out? Was it via your email list or Twitter HN etc? Survey methods can dramatically change your results.

<comment><AUTHOR> All of the above. We posted here on HN, on Twitter, our blog, and we emailed some people that we knew would want to participate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm in the wrong goddamn business. Time to look at mobile development!

<comment><USER4> For other people, maybe. The market's starting to get flooded with mobile devs I believe - and making a hit on your own is just non calculable for potential profit.

<comment><USER10> What kind of profit are we talking about? I'd be content with 2k revenue a month.

<comment><USER11> Mobile app profitability isn't linear, or even close to linear - you're either rolling in the dough or you're not even making ramen money.

Discoverability is a huge problem, if you're not in a featuring, a top-X list, or something of the sort, your profitability is extremely limited. If there's no visibility on the App Store for you, you don't get _fewer_ users, you get _almost no_ users.

$2K sustaining revenue a month isn't impossible, but it's hard.

<comment><USER12> From this discussion, it sounds like it's potentially very profitable to be a consultant MAKING apps for other companies, but, except for very rare cases, the apps themselves are not profitable.

<comment><AUTHOR> We may do a follow-up survey to attempt to confirm our assumption that the vast majority of people that make money from apps are doing so by invoicing clients, rather than selling apps in the store(s).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


It's probably time to kiss that housing market rebound good-bye - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-probably-time-to-kiss-a-housing-rebound-good-bye-2019-06-18 <comment><USER2> When prices start to go down, current homeowners who have been counting their paper profits and relying on them for retirement will put their houses on the market in large waves to lock in their gains, this will create a feedback loop of more supply and even lower prices.

There's simply not enough buyers able to afford top 10 city home prices. If homeowners try to cash in en masse, there won't be enough wealthy buyers able to support it.</comment>


Toshiba to give up on HD DVD, end format war - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSL1637974620080216

<comment><USER2> I wonder, if you offset the losses of the Playstation 3 group at Sony with the gains of winning the format war, if Sony came out ahead after all.

And of course, for anyone who missed it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywWfmRdOmJ0>

<comment><USER3> I assume Sony planned on eventually breaking even on the PS3 with game sales alone, since that's a typical strategy for console hardware. The real question is, how much money did they pay Netflix and other groups to ensure victory for Blu Ray, and will that be worth it to them? Honestly, at this point they'd probably be willing to bankrupt themselves to finally win a format war!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disks are such a pain. What I want is an 500 gb flash card for $1.99. I suspect I'll get that soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER5> And not a half decade too soon. Any longer and they would be competing with download formats.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know what's going to happen to people who try to return their HD DVD players?

<comment><USER7> I don't think they're going to do a recall on the existing players. They're already loosing a ton of money without having to give back bash to the early adopters. It's part of the cost of being an early adopter though.

I wouldn't have bought either a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player until it was clear who the winner was. But I was wiling to buy a PS3 since even if Blu-ray ended up loosing I would at least have a game console. I think a lot of folks that would have not bought either early ended up getting Bluray as a side effect of buying the PS3 (and this inevitably tipped the scales since sales and rentals of Bluray content were outperforming HD-DVD).

I'm wondering why anyone decided to go against Sony on this when the PS2 was essentially responsible for the wide adoption of DVDs.

<comment><USER8> Well, PS3 was not responsible for the wide adoption of Blu-Ray. The studios were.

If the PS3 had been an all out slam dunk like the PS2, Toshiba wouldn't have given up, they would've lost. As it stands, the PS3 isn't really even outselling the PS2 by that much.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure. There aren't that many Bluray drives out there. So of the few that exist I'm pretty sure a good percentage are PS3's. Even if Bluray had a slight edge of HD-DVD because of PS3's (it's obviously not a huge edge) this would lead to more rentals (and Blockbuster dropped support for HD-DVD from stores after running a pilot and finding out Bluray was renting 3 to 1).

Since Blockbuster isn't renting HD-DVD and Walmart stopped selling them, studios are being forced to release on Bluray which means people have access to more titles, which in turn makes Bluray players more valuable.

This snowball effect is slowly (for now) killing the HD-DVD industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope this is wrong. It would break a fundamental law of the universe: Sony Never Wins Format Wars. What next, <insert random irony here>?

</comment><comment><USER10> 80% of the commentary on HD just dried up. Thank god. Maybe people will finally figure out how to cable their systems to actually get HD.

</comment><comment><USER11> Microsoft is big on HD DVD and hates Blu-Ray... so I wonder what they are going to do now if they can't have it there way. I could see MS stepping in and getting HD-DVD players produced for computers only. The music industry does not want the storage capacity of Blue-Ray on computers and Microsoft is in bed with Riaa so they will probably team up on this.

</comment><comment><USER12> Who cares? Why so much fuss over this "format war"? Format of what? An ancient concept of storing read-only bits glued over a piece of plastic? I don't plan on using CDs or DVDs or any kind of big physical objects to store anything on in the future.

<comment><USER13> Is it snarky to ask what you mean by "big physical object?" Most things are big on a relative scale. Besides, what do you plan to do in the interim between now and whenever the proposed future arrives?

<comment><USER12> :-) In my case future has arrived already. I don't use CDs or DVDs for anything, except rare OS installations and Mac Air already shows how that can be done without a CD.

I am on the network, nearly all the time. Plus I have a 4GB flash drive and soon I'll get 32GB one of the same price.

Why would I want a read-only plastic disk for?

<comment><USER13> Not a question I can answer. ;)

But I want one because the quality of Blu-ray (or whatever hi-def format) simply beats the snot out of anything I can get via download. So perhaps that's a subjective thing. I'm not ready to kick my physical media to the curb at this time, though I do wish I could rip the hi-def formats.

Let me know when you find that deal on 32GB flash drives...I'll be right in line behind you for 2 or 3!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Smallsats Growing In Utility - <AUTHOR> http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=%2Farticle-xml%2FAW_07_30_2012_p36-478885.xml

<comment><USER2> I sincerely hope that graceful "retirement" of these small satellites, especially if they fail to deploy properly, is being taken into account in their design. We've got enough orbital debris already. When the article quotes a company spokesperson saying "Even if 20% of them failed, you'd still do your mission..." I get antsy.</comment>