Listen to the Clouds - <AUTHOR> http://listentothe.cloud/ <comment><USER2> Wow, surprised to see this on HN!

Creator here, if you have any feedback, please just comment here or ping me on twitter @andersaberg, I'll take airport requests etc there :)

Have a good one, A

<comment><USER3> Seems to max out my CPU on MBP macOS Sierra Chrome 56.0.2924.87 (64-bit)

<comment><USER2> That's really surprising. I have no problems on my win machine which I guess is why I missed it.

Is it the same problem even if you run it in backgorund? Have some listeners that will pause the youtube video when that happens (which should minimize CPU)

<comment><USER4> For me the high CPU usage seems to happen because of the video background. As soon as I remove the

 the CPU usage drops to normal on my MacBook Pro (with integrated GPU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do people easily understand these transmissions? I always think there must be something wrong with either my English, or my ears because I barely understand a number here and there, even with headphones.

<comment><USER6> When I did my PPL one of the instructors gave us a CD full of recordings that we could listen to to train our ear for it. Matching that to transcripts helped - and it also helps once you know the lingo, since it's mostly a limited set of words and the phraseology has a specific structure.

For example: Altitudes and flight levels:

3,500 is spoken as "three thousand five hundred".

13,500 is spoken as "one three thousand five hundred".

But other numbers (like times, directions, etc) have every digit spoken, for example 10 minutes is "one zero minutes" or wind direction 220 is "wind direction two two zero". Speed reading would be something like "one niner zero knots" for 190 kt.

The sentence structure is also relatively strictly defined, for instance at an unattended airport you would always transmit in this order:

(1) where you are

(2) who you are

(3) what you intend

(4) repeat where you are

So you'd say something like: "Swartkops traffic(1), small Jabiru Kilo India Tango(2), left downwind for runway one eight, touch and go(3), at Swartkops(4)"

This kind of strict structure and limited lexicon does make it understandable after a bit of practice, since you are expecting certain words to show up.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, thanks! I bet it's international ? The french transmissions were also following this patterns.

<comment><USER6> Yes - UN member countries generally use ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) standards. There are some country-specific weird things, though.

You can read the ICAO Radiotelephony Guide[1], should you be interested.

Searching for something like "ICAO Phraseology Reference Guide" might give you good results too.

[1] [http://www.icao.int/safety/acp/Inactive%20working%20groups%2...](http://www.icao.int/safety/acp/Inactive%20working%20groups%20library/ACP- WG-C-3/wgc3_wp7.doc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this is incredibly soothing. I just followed a plane taking off on [https://www.flightradar24.com](https://www.flightradar24.com)

<comment><USER9> Wow.. that's a lot of planes!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a great background sound for working. I have the airport chatter at medium and the ambient music at low, and I listen to a busy airport that I can't understand at all (Santiago is a good one) so I don't engage my brain too much.

I'm finding this incredible for helping with focus.

<comment><USER10> The sound of a cafe can also be a nice background sound.

E.g., [https://coffitivity.com/](https://coffitivity.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea and lovely implementation. If I could make one nitpick, it would be to add some tags so that it shows up as a Twitter card for when people tweet about it:

[https://dev.twitter.com/cards/overview](https://dev.twitter.com/cards/overview)

[https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator](https://cards- dev.twitter.com/validator)

(FWIW, looks fine on the Facebook linter because of the og:meta tags [https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=http%...](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=http%3A%2F%2Flistentothe.cloud%2F))

<comment><USER2> @danso Wouldn't it be cool if it would be a player card? So it would actually broadcast (maybe a recording?) of the music+radio

<comment><USER11> That's beyond what I know of Twitter cards, mostly because I've never made anything as eminently interactive :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Suggestion - let me link to a specific airport.

[http://listentothe.cloud/#hkg](http://listentothe.cloud/#hkg) [http://listentothe.cloud/#dtw](http://listentothe.cloud/#dtw)

etc...

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, what is it about atmospheric music combined with radio chatter? On their own they don't have much of an impact on me , but combined I feel like I am Major Tom.

Awesome.

I also recommend the ISS feed (with orbital video!)

</comment><comment><USER14> Been listening to this since I discovered it on HN this morning. A lot of it reminds of the Vangelis/Blade Runner OST. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER15> I find the voice of the operator at HK airport incredibly soothing.

<comment><USER16> It almost sounds like it's pre-recorded speech actually. But I agree, very relaxing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_Broadcasting_(b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Service_Broadcasting_\(band\))

</comment><comment><USER18> You can also listen to the train ride ambient in Norway - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVWfzsgLoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVWfzsgLoQ)

<comment><USER19> On a similar note, I like listening to the videos of this guy [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVp5RGNn_CpRKUyGaQVidHg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVp5RGNn_CpRKUyGaQVidHg)

He has long drives, mostly around NY area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice UI. [http://youarelistening.to/jfk_atc](http://youarelistening.to/jfk_atc) is a similar service.

<comment><USER21> He mentions that it was inspired by YouAreListening.to

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In a way this gives a new meaning to the term "live music". Especially since this is an existing style of music: anywhere from Bowie[1] to more niche bands like Public Service Broadcasting[2] and Lemon Jelly[3].

[1] David Bowie - Space Oddity

[2] Public Service Broadcasting - Go!

[3] Lemon Jelly - Space Walk

<comment><USER23> First thing I thought of was another more niche musician ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Rimbaud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Rimbaud)) who released a number of tracks in the early 1990s under the name "Scanner". Which, as the name suggests, was ambient music over recorded snippets of conversation picked over radio scanners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Soma.fm has this for San Francisco police scanner radio traffic.

[https://somafm.com/sf1033/](https://somafm.com/sf1033/)

<comment><USER25> I love Soma.fm.

I feel the SF radio was better two or three years ago. The background music was less in the front, the mix was more seamless.

<comment><USER24> Agreed. Rusty, if you're out there, kick up the police scanner!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Kinda wish I would've come up with this idea, haha. I've been listening to LiveATC.net on and off while I work for years now.

</comment><comment> squeaky-clean Working on code for an airline while listening to this is oddly soothing. Thank you for sharing this :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Also works very well with some electronic music in the background, for example: [https://soundcloud.com/thuishaven-amsterdam/daniel-bortz- thu...](https://soundcloud.com/thuishaven-amsterdam/daniel-bortz-thuishaven- wintercircus-13-maart-2016)

</comment><comment><USER28> There's even the International Space Station feed. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER29> Very beautiful and serene. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER30> Oh my this is majestic!

</comment><comment><USER31> The difference between name (...Clouds) and address (...cloud) really triggers my ocd.

<comment><USER2> I got you covered man! [http://listentothe.cloud/s](http://listentothe.cloud/s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wow.

<comment><USER32> Why would people downvote this comment? Seriously? I was saying Wow because I was able to listen to conversations through airlines in Paris and Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, they were speaking English through traffic control. I think this is quite an amazing tool.

<comment><USER29> You have to keep in mind that even the humans on HN are robots or robotic in nature. Wanton externalizations of emotional states is undefined behavior and simply treated as noise by the hive mind.

<comment><USER33> For all we know it was 1-2 people who downvoted the comment, out of hundreds of thousands who visited the site today. It's also likely that they were downvoting because they thought the commenter was being sarcastic.

You've been a member of this community for at least 6 years. Clearly you see something of value in it. Please don't trash it with comments like this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


2011 in books - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonyhaile.com/2011/12/31/2011-in-books/

<comment><USER2> Wow, I don't read nearly as much. How much time daily does it take to read 41 books in a year?

The best book I read this year was also on your list: Where Good Ideas Come From

<comment><USER3> Depends on the book and how fast you read. Most of my books were quick one- time reads, not that many mindbending or thoughtful books in the mix like the link contains. I think I read 30 minutes to an hour or so a day (while waiting for things like flights and people for dinner or at the supermarket checkout lane, before bed, at the gym) and this year I've read thirty thousand pages across 61 books (soon to be 62 if I can sit down to finish my current read, <http://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/2444699-jane>). That's not counting magazines, blogs, RSS, HN, and technical books for work, just pure pleasure reading for me.

When your primary method of reading is via iPhone and it's always with you, there will always be opportunities to read. But in exchange, I don't do much of other hobbies. My TV watching has fallen significantly to only 3-4 shows at best and maybe one movie a week, for example.

I'm currently on a pretty carefree contract work lifestyle right now though, so YMMV. I can't imagine I'd be reading that much for fun if I had to worry about running a business or somesuch.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What web framework/language should I learn this weekend? - <AUTHOR>

So, I'm a .Net developer. I Know ASP.Net and such well and use Linux. As such, I use mono but have become a bit discontent with it recently. I don't really know any web framework other than ASP.Net, but I hope to change that.
I have a small web project I want to do in a new technology this weekend. What framework/language should I do it in? Candidates I can come up with:

  1. Ruby (and something not Rails)
  2. Go
  3. Python
  4. Node.js
  5. Something else
 What's a fun and relevant thing to develop with these days? <comment><USER2> Flask[1] for Python or maybe Play 2.0 Framework[2] with Scala. For Google Go, Revel[3] is probably the most widely used web framework for Go. If you want something in Ruby, perhaps Sinatra[4].

If you're just looking to expand your knowledge and use them on your own, I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. If you're looking to expand your skills for employers, Python with Flask or Django (or alternatively node.js) probably have the most (current) adoption for companies out of your list if you're interested in using whichever language on the web.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flask_(programming)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flask_\(programming\))

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Framework](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Framework)

[3] [http://robfig.github.io/revel&#x2F](http://robfig.github.io/revel&#x2F);

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinatra_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinatra_\(software\))

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Perl's Mojolicious for all my side projects for about 1.5 years and I'm more than happy with it. It is similar with Ruby's Sinatra. I'd recommend you to choose between those 2 microframeworks based on what language you're more confortable with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Golang and Revel. Also, Perl with Mojolicious + DBIx::Class is hard to beat.

</comment><comment><USER5> Racket?

[http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Racket](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Racket)

</comment><comment><USER6> I would vote for Go along with PostgreSQL

</comment><comment><USER7> Dart?</comment>


Logical Fallacies and the Art of Debate - <AUTHOR> http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html <comment><USER2> I was a philosophy major and figured out accidentally in an academic setting that logic was one of my strong suits. After considering law, I decided I didn't want to live my day-to-life dealing with using tactics of logic and the legal system to battle against others. Of all the classes I ever took however, the most useful class for me personally was logic as it did the most to prepare me for doing business deals. Most business deals finally come down to negotiating and its good to make sure you can justify your value and easily knock down anyone who tries to undermine your value, on the spot, especially for fallacious reasons. And the more you have command of logic, the more your other qualities which are helpful for doing business deals may shine. This seems to be the case especially for those who like to design their own deals instead of take a defensive role to the another party's designs. And then comes the discussions of more in-depth terms, and logic becomes more and more useful all the way through the end of a contract. And ultimately, lawyers, who you may depend on for this part of your deal, are not usually meant to act as advisors to your business and tell you what you want to do, they are usually there just to protect you.

As others have pointed out, calling a logical fallacy card to ding an opponent may indeed often miss the point if the objective is to simply win, though I have found in doing business deals, it is logic that is most useful to protect my value and ideas, as opposed to just winning them.

So I would suggest that this is an article worth close study and that leaning about fallacies is a great way to get right at the elements involved in sound logic.

*note: this comment was not meant to be an argument, just a "subjective" comment for consideration.

<comment><USER3> Really? I've found that being good at logic (and good reasoning in general) makes me a lot worse at convincing others, because my motivations for believing things depart so much from theirs.

<comment><USER2> I guess it depends on what industry you are dealing with and on what level. When you are dealing with Hollywood, they tend to pull out ALL the tricks. Protection and savviness on business deals is a must. Its an aggressive world out there and if you are going to take your business out of doing family and friends business, you may need to be prepared for sharks. We have done contracts within many very competitive markets and it can get aggressive out there.

<comment><USER3> You deal with sharks by beating them at negotiation and people skills, not by beating them at logic. Logic is a defensive weapon only--it keeps you from getting fooled, but it won't really sway others.

<comment><USER2> Good point about "it keeps you from getting fooled". Thats a serious conclusion you make, and however you needed to get there, Im glad you were able to finally arrive at my main point. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In law, when logic does not favor your client's position, you are trained to attack in illogical ways that still might win, e.g., appeal to prejudice, attack the person, distort the issues through (subtle) misrepresentations (crude ones being too easily exposed). It can be wearying to listen to this sort of thing being endlessly paraded before any advocate's forum to the detriment of both truth and logic.

This piece gathers and reasonably explains a useful grouping of logical fallacies. Among them: (1) Begging the question ("petitio principii"): "This is the fallacy of assuming, when trying to prove something, what it is that you are trying prove" (for more, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question>); (2) Tu quoque ("So's your old man"): "This is the fallacy of defending an error in one's reasoning by pointing out that one's opponent has made the same error."

<comment><USER5> It seems that that would be a natural outgrowth of the adversarial system. If your goal is to persuade people and not to find the truth, then it is rational to use any ethical technique available to do so. A more inquisitorial system would largely be able to avoid this issue, but of course it creates issues of its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pet peeve: the confusion of understanding between "logical fallacy" when used in terms of a debate and "logical fallacy" when used in the sens of a mathematical or geometric proof.

Conversations about topics inside a system with a fixed set of consistent rules, like math, consist of not making fallacies. He who makes no fallacies can extend the system in unforeseen ways. This is the search for truth.

Human language and the totality of knowledge is not a formal system with complete rules and non-contradictions, therefore not only will an elimination of fallacies not lead anywhere, it's probably impossible to structure any kind of discussion without introducing one. So if you use a list of fallacies as a way to somehow "ding" an opponent, as if he would only use a fallacy if he were somehow making a mistake, you've missed the point. The author of the article is more correct to say that you're either debating or discussing. If you're debating, you're using all sorts of rhetorical tricks. If you're discussing, you're still using them, but the purpose isn't to score points, it's to find some agreeable progress in mutual understanding.

<comment><USER7> A lot to chew on here. First, I think your distinction between mathmatical proofs and everything else (?) is a bit simplistic. Second, you seem to suggest that the non-math side of the divide ("human language") is _necessarily_ not truth seeking and that any attempt to point out a fallacy in such a context is pointless. That strikes me as far too strong.

Imagine I am discussing a topic with someone. The topic might be anything, but let's stipulate that it's not a member of the mathematical proof family that you mention.

If I or the other person commits a logical fallacy and someone points that out, we can avoid one bad outcome: trusting an invalid conclusion. (I'm using 'valid' and 'invalid' in the sense philosophers use it of an argument where the conclusion doesn't logically follow from the premises. An invalid argument _may_ have a true conclusion, but the form of the argument makes it unreliable. Example: My name is Peter. Therefore, I will die. The conclusion is true, but the premise doesn't actually get me there.)

I completely agree that conversation shouldn't be like a scored debate, and so I think pointing out fallacies to ding other people is childish and largely pointless. But if you are actually striving _to understand_ something, then an awareness of (common) fallacies can be very, very useful.

<comment> loup-vaillant > Second, you seem to suggest that the non-math side of the divide ("human > language") is necessarily not truth seeking and that any attempt to point > out a fallacy in such a context is pointless.

That's a straw man. He said: "it's probably impossible to structure any kind of discussion without introducing [a fallacy]". Because you can't avoid fallacies doesn't mean that pointing to (some of) them is pointless.

I think you agree with Daniel more than you realize.

<comment><USER7> > _That's a straw man. He said: "it's probably impossible to structure any > kind of discussion without introducing [a fallacy]". Because you can't avoid > fallacies doesn't mean that pointing to (some of) them is pointless._

Here's his full sentence: _Human language and the totality of knowledge is not a formal system with complete rules and non-contradictions, therefore not only will an elimination of fallacies not lead anywhere, it's probably impossible to structure any kind of discussion without introducing one._

The key bit to me is "therefore not only will an elimination of fallacies not lead anywhere." You may be right about his larger meaning, but I take that part of the sentence to mean that there is no point in eliminating fallacies ("not lead anywhere").

<comment> loup-vaillant I understood "elimination of fallacies" as "elimination of _all_ fallacies". That wouldn't mean we shouldn't avoid (or point to) the worst ones.

I'm insisting because I can't believe that someone actually think that no fallacy is worth eliminating. Unless he state it without ambiguity. Daniel didn't. Plus, he stated the difference between debate and conversation. I think we can equate "mutual understanding" with "search for the truth" here.

So Daniel, would you tell us what you actually think? Are _some_ fallacies worth eliminating? Can the human language be truth seeking?

<comment><USER7> > _I'm insisting because I can't believe that someone actually think that no > fallacy is worth eliminating. Unless he state it without ambiguity._

Principle of charity? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity>

I took "mutual understanding" to be an _alternative_ to "search for the truth" - and a very carefully chosen one at that. Although I don't agree, I can see a number of potential arguments for the idea (given some of his other premises) that in math we find the search for truth, whereas in human conversations we find increased mutual understanding (under the best conditions), but no hope of a search for truth.

I'm insisting myself because the debate is on a topic I care about and one that's inherently interesting.

<comment> loup-vaillant Principle of humanity, more likely.

"Find the search for truth"? Either you search for truth or you don't. In the process, you may (or may not) find the truth, and you may (or may not) be closer to it. What did you actually mean by "hope of a search for truth"?

Now, trying to "find some agreeable progress in mutual understanding" sounds like a damn good substitute to "searching for truth". Mutual understanding is the best approximation of truth I know of, when truth actually has something to do with the conversation.

Now that I think of it, mutual understanding may not be such a good substitute, but merely a prerequisite. Meaning, until the different parties understand where they agree, and where they disagree (and maybe even _why_ they do), search for the truth is hopeless.

<comment><USER7> > _"Find the search for truth"? Either you search for truth or you don't. In > the process, you may (or may not) find the truth, and you may (or may not) > be closer to it. What did you actually mean by "hope of a search for > truth"?_

I meant that (per the argument under discussion), in some areas there is no (real) possibility of searching for the truth. So, in those areas you don't "find the search for truth." When the OP talks about math vs. human language (all other contexts?), he appears to imply that in math it is possible to search for truth, but in "human language", there is no possibility of finding truth. So, what I meant was roughly this (the following is a reconstruction of the OP's argument, as I understand it, not my views):

1\. In math, where there is "a fixed set of consistent rules" (his words), you can meaningfully search for truth.

2\. In "human language", which "is not a formal system with complete rules and non-contradictions" (his words), you cannot meaningfully search for truth.

3\. The phrase "mutual understanding" indicates a second-best option (since the search for truth is ruled out) for "human language". As you and I talk - now for instance - we cannot usefully search for truth, but we can at least try to figure out what the other person intends to say. That's "mutual understanding," and I think you can see why it's only a consolation prize compared with the search for truth.

The whole thing reminds me a bit of a certain kind of logical positivism. Only some statements are even potentially truth-evaluable. (For example 'x = x' is truth evaluable.) All the rest is simply an expression of personal belief, attitude, disposition or emotion. Under that view, if I say "action x is always wrong" and someone else says "under some circumstances action x is not wrong", the best we can do is figure out what the other person means by their statement. But there is no possibility of saying whether either of those statements is true or false, since such statements are (by definition) not truth-evaluable. That's the kind of thing I thought the OP was saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never heard of a school whose abbreviation is csun; thus, this list probably has a bunch of errors. Not worth the read.

<comment><USER9> Your argument is logically fallacious, therefore this list has no errors.

<comment><USER10> Doubly so because it made it to the front page of Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author wrote two other articles about what debaters should know about respectively Law and Economics, which will provide you some basic models to help you in your argumentation and your critical thinking about these subjects as a layman. They are on linked on his homepage <http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/dgwdebate.html>

Could somebody suggest similar articles about other topics? For example statistics.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use this a lot in debate: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum>

(Not itself a fallacy)

</comment><comment><USER13> This article actually does a good job of explaining both sides of these 'logical fallacies' including why they aren't always invalid. It's the best job I've seen so far of refuting the 'Fallacy Fallacy'. In particular it points out how the 'burden of proof' plays a big part in determining the validity of some arguments.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interestingly, the entire setup of the article---how to use an accusation of "logical fallacy" ("preferably both in Latin and English") to impress a debate judge to dismiss an opponent's argument...

...is itself an _argumentum ad verecundiam_ , an argument to authority!

Which is not to say that it's not a good debate technique. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> He who first resorts to pointing out logical fallacies has lost the debate.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if you're kidding, but if not, that's an interesting rule of thumb. I can half see your point: when arguing with normal people, if you need to resort to pointing out their fallacies, it's probably not worth it. On the other hand, if you're arguing with a Philosophy major, then pointing out a fallacy doesn't necessarily signal failure. It's closer to starting round two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have you noticed that the author is a Libertarian? (From examples of logical fallacies he quotes).</comment>


The Psychology of Founders Who Win in Downturns - <AUTHOR> https://www.nfx.com/post/psychology-winning-founders-downturns/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. I was starting to feel like I was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but now maybe I can look at it as being up on deck is giving me a better view of the icebergs.</comment>


IBM will be bringing KVM Linux virtualization to Power in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/ibm-will-be-bringing-kvm-linux-virtualization-to-power-in-2014-7000024039/#!

<comment><USER2> Power has LPARs, so why bother?

If I use Linux on Power by choice, I'm either doing OLAP/OLTP or I'm an AIX shop that needs a few Linux boxes without the hassle of a completely different platform (x86) in the mix.

But I can't imagine anyone wants to use IBM Power to host a large number of Linux KVM VMs, that just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER3> It depends how large you are. Managing physical boxes in a datacenter can be very expensive. Being able to virtualize on any platform is a good thing, as you can decide your own balance of costs between physical space, energy, network gear, network people, operations. These physical costs are often overlooked when you're talking about hardware. It takes a lot of $ to operate your own data center.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a better "Why?":

KVM is handy because you can run an unmodified guest. There are many reasons why somebody would like that, for example to run the latest greatest product somebody ships as an ISO (or VM) image.

If I understood correctly, KVM on POWER would allow to run unmodified OS guests built for the POWER architecture.

What's the use case? Where are the tons of pre existing but subtly different distributions you want to run together but have nobody supporting a couple of small fixes to let it run in a paravirtualized environment.

I'm genuinely curious about the usual ecosystem that people who run linux on IBM POWER have to cope with.

<comment><USER5> This is a case where Power differs from x86. Before KVM, PowerVM was mandatory on Power so every OS ran in a VM and these VMs were all paravirtualized. So "unmodified" Power OSes are already PV.

<comment><USER4> Hence I don't understand what's the point of KVM for the POWER platform. Could you shed some light?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why?

POWER is really nice. I mean properly awesome, but no one seems to use it these days. Even our ex-AIX financial orgs have gone x64 and a lot to windows...

<comment><USER7> I often think of the IBM Power platform as the "Dark Matter" of computing - nobody we know has ever seen, or used such a system, but it occupies huge amounts of budgets for computing.

We were joint bidding a $Billion+ project with IBM in 2004/2005, and they lent us a handful of P5 520s to do some initial development on. They were bizarre systems, and just trying to get your standard C packages to compile under AIX was a painful chore for someone used to the portability on Solaris/Linux/BSD back then. Heck, even Irix was easier.

Happy to hear that there is more weight going into KVM, I almost thought that platform had died under the Tsunami of VMware and Xen (Amazon). Nice to know there will be some real competition.

<comment><USER8> KVM is used, a lot: it is the backbone of Red Hat's virtualization in RHEL6. Also, if you create a new VM using Gnome Boxes, you will have a KVM VM unless you go out of your way.

<comment><USER7> Re: "KVM is used a lot" \- Our company actually standardized on KVM about 7 years ago, and, then, after about three years of realizing we weren't facebook scale, spent the next couple years migrating everything to VMware.

Running your stack on KVM is like running your IPSec concentrators on OpenBSD (been there, done that) - it makes an awful lot of sense technically, particularly to the people who are actually using it every day - but, from the perspective of the enterprise - No Support ecosystem, No market presence, Poor compatibility testing. One of the best things ever for Linux in the enterprise was RHEL/SUSE and their corporate support for the platform.

I'm willing to wager 90%+ of the virtualization market in the fortune 500s is VMware, and KVM has next to zero market penetration.

I'm hoping that changes with the broad market support we're starting to see from IBM and the various open stack alliances.

<comment><USER8> Anyone using RHEL6's built-in virtualization technology is using KVM, it's just all wrapped up in libvirt stuff. Those tools were in early development 7 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article says "Unfortunately, KVM only works on Intel and AMD processors"; actually it works also on S390, Power and ARM, though different archs are at different places in the "initial prototype" to "production ready" spectrum. I think what they're actually talking about here is the fact that IBM are ready to ship it as a supported product and get distros to do so too.

</comment><comment><USER10> Who actually use IBM's Power these days? And SPARC? I see ARM, AMD and Intel only.

<comment><USER3> I do :)

<comment><USER10> Why do you guys [I assume Bloomberg] use POWERS or SPARC?

<comment><USER3> Probably like any of their other customers, there is a framework which was developed that runs on big-endian hardware and the development cost to certify (read: not the porting work) that calculations are correct if switched to x86 is not necessarily worth it as long as the machines follow Moore's law just like any other hardware.

These machines represent a tiny tiny portion of overall machines, but have certain properties that make them nice for certain functions. They can handle a lot of I/O and can reduce software complexity for certain jobs which actually don't need to scale horizontally.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Uberpreneur: How an Uber Driver Makes $252,000 a Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonyoushaei/2015/02/04/the-uberpreneur-how-an-uber-driver-makes-252000-a-year/2/

<comment><USER2> Actually, if you think of Uber cars as "mobile showrooms", there's a million opportunities to push real or digital products to the passengers in the back. Like Skymall for cars.

Wait, maybe Skymall isn't the best example...</comment>


Stop Calling Software "Enterprise-grade" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aha.io/index.php/stop-calling-software-enterprise-grade/

<comment><USER2> Completely agreed. Enterprise-grade also assumes enterprises are the pinnacle of success, quality, reliability and robustness... This is an outdated term that should simply fade into memory.</comment>


No Climate Event in 2,000 Years Compares to What's Happening Now - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/why-little-ice-age-doesnt-matter/594517/ <comment><USER2> Are these statements accurate?

The increase in the rate of climate change is primarily driven by the increased emission of greenhouse gasses.

The primary driver of increased greenhouse gasses (GHG) is the burning of fossil fuels emitting CO2.

In order to stay below 2°C, we need to remain below 2900 gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere (source: one of the ipcc reports, I forget which).

Our atmosphere currently has somewhere around 1900 gigatons of CO2, as of 2011. (corrected from earlier error.)

We are currently releasing 35-40 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year (the US releases about 5), and the rate is currently increasing from year to year.

In order to remain below 2900 gigatons of CO2, we need to reach a GHG emission rate of 0 (zero) overall within the next 7-12 years, through some combination of reduction/elimination of burning fossil fuels, and sequestering of current CO2 from the atmosphere.

Therefore, each person should strive to not only reduce their carbon footprint, but eliminate it and aim for a negative carbon footprint.

<comment><USER3> And don't think that driving a Tesla will actually reduce carbon footprint ;) Also I am not sure if CO2 is really the most problematic greenhouse gas, I think it's methane. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

<comment><USER4> I strongly suspect water vapor from con-trails. The tendency to seed cloud formation is well documented, it's a much stronger GHG than CO2, and coincidently air travel has grown right along with total fossil fuel usage. Oh, and the weather forecasters are only recently learning to get it right in the models.

<comment><USER5> What would you estimate the ratio of total water vapor from contrails is compared with the rest of the atmosphere? And if that's small, why would it be so significant?

<comment><USER6> > The tendency to seed cloud formation is well documented

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What if this is as good as it gets? What if everyone who can be convinced, has been convinced? Will human beings go to their deaths in large numbers continuing to deny something because they can't handle it? I worry that this could be the peak level of responsibility that we as a species can manage.

<comment><USER8> This is what I worry about.

At this point, it's not a matter of if people will die, but how many people will die. And if millions of people dying is enough to motivate enough people to do something.

We're about to find out if the idea of the 'Great Filter'[0] is true or not.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This xkcd graphic really shows how massive this effect is: [https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

A lot of people just don't understand why a couple of degrees is a big deal, not understanding that the _rate_ of change we are talking about is vastly different from what our biosphere has experienced in the past.

<comment><USER10> Add in the confidence intervals and that graph tells a completely different story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yep. We're pretty much done for.

To think that just a few years ago we were hoping to keep the rise in temperature below 2°C. Now it looks like we'll have to deal with temperature increases of up to 5°C.

I seriously doubt that our global civilsation will survive this.

Edit: Hehe, I seem to have hit a nerve here. Or why else the downvotes?

<comment><USER12> I don't really understand the defeatist attitude here. By here I don't mean you, but HN in general this crops up a lot.

Humans as a species have done some pretty impressive things once they put their mind to it. It seems now, not many people care. But once the issue is shoved in everyone's face, and big money cities start sinking, I fully expect a global effort. I can't say with 100% certainty we'll be able to fix it, but I won't say we're done for, either.

<comment><USER13> "', I fully expect a global effort. I can't say with 100% certainty we'll be able to fix it, but I won't say we're done for, either. "

But by then it's too late. The feedback cycle is measured in decades. It'll keep getting hotter.

of course, it depends what we mean by "too late" Do I really think climate breakdown will cause the extinction of the human race? No, I think some pockets could live on.

I do suspect it could result in a cataclysm greater than any in recorded history, the collapse of civilization, and billions of deaths though.

It's not crazy to think we'll see nukes fly over this. A number of nuclear powers stand to see their countries desertified, and billions of desperate starving people next to now-reasonably-useful land is not a recipe for peace. You think China's just gonna starve and watch Russia in envy?

Or maybe antibiotic resistance will address the root cause at the source.

I desperately hope I'm wrong. But when people like Greta Thunberg say (I paraphrase quite liberally) "Why the fuck should I go to school to learn about grammar when civilization is going to collapse" they kind of have a point.

<comment><USER12> But these things happen over long periods of time. It's not like China catches on fire and everyone burns to death (tongue in cheek). People get uncomfortable, natural disaster increase, so they migrate. At some point either migration itself becomes an issue, or the last of the poor are tired of being left behind and mass migrate, perhaps violently. So, a collapse is possible, but I think of it as more of a slow lean than a collapse, if it were to happen. And even that would take decades if not centuries. Civilization collapse is inevitable, we know that from the fact a stars life is finite, among other things. That shouldn't prevent anyone from trying to live a happy life, and passing on teachings to the next generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel like this was news 20 years ago: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, smart people were warning us 20 years ago.

We didn't listen then, we don't listen today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's other great unnatural disturbances propelling these developments.

Greenhouse gases have nothing on the aforementioned.

<comment><USER16> Like what? Cthulu's hot breath?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> We haven't even been keeping climate data for 2,000 years, so this headline (and maybe the entire article) is not accurate.

<comment><USER18> From the article:

"Drawing on a huge database of climate-recording objects from all over the world—including tree rings, cave formations, and ancient pollen trapped in lake mud—the study concludes that 98 percent of Earth's surface experienced its hottest period of the past 2,000 years within living memory. That uniform heat spike "is unprecedented over the Common Era," it says."

In other words, we have used a variety of scientific techniques to fill in the global climate data record.</comment></comment>


How Do You Catch Covid-19? There Is a Growing Consensus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-exactly-do-you-catch-covid-19-there-is-a-growing-consensus-11592317650 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/L28k6#selection-229.9-229.72](https://archive.vn/L28k6#selection-229.9-229.72)</comment>


Startup Quote: Larry Page, co-founder, Google - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3744092032

<comment><AUTHOR> Find the leverage in the world so you can be truly lazy.

\- Larry Page

<http://startupquote.com/post/3744092032></comment>


Black silicon photodetector breaks the 100% efficiency limit - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-08-black-silicon-photodetector-efficiency-limit.html <comment><USER2> When they say that the photodetector achieves 130% efficiency, red flags pop up for anyone trained in science. Is this device creating energy ex nihilo -- like a perpetual motion machine only more so?

It turns out what they mean is that each photon impinging on the device produces, on average, 1.3 electrons. So there is not an explicit claim from an energy perspective that the device is more than 100% efficient.

But it does raise the question: Could this technology be used to significantly boost the efficiency of solar cells? The article does not address that.

<comment><USER3> It is just another photomultiplier. These devices in various forms have been in existence since 1934.

<comment><USER4> I don't think multiple exciton generation (which is what you find searching for EQE > 100%) is exactly the same as the photoelectric effect. However, your point more or less stands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Aalto University researchers have developed a black silicon photodetector > that has reached above 130% efficiency. Thus, for the first time, a > photovoltaic device has exceeded the 100% limit, which has earlier been > considered as the theoretical maximum for external quantum efficiency.

130% seems really interesting. Is it really just the color change?

</comment><comment><USER3> > _earlier been considered as the theoretical maximum_

So... Was the theory (quantum electrodynamics) wrong?

<comment><USER4> No, the theory describes it (well mostly): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_exciton_generation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_exciton_generation)

Someone please inform me if I'm missing a subtlety, but this seems like news for this specific kind of photodetector not physics in general.</comment></comment>


DroneDeploy Snags $9M as Its Drone Control Platform Soars Out of Beta - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/31/dronedeploy-series-a/

<comment><USER2> I'm one of the founders, and happy to answer any questions anyone might have about DroneDeploy.

Also - we're hiring! Check out [https://www.dronedeploy.com/jobs](https://www.dronedeploy.com/jobs)

<comment><USER3> Are you sponsoring visa?</comment></comment>


The Accidental Room - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/ <comment><USER2> The magic of 99pi is humanization.

If I found out people were living in an empty part of the mall in any other context, my response would be: "ehh weird."

But 99pi presents the story and by the end they seem like heroes sticking it to the man.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like 99pi is becoming more like This American Life. They're both great radio programs but 99pi used to produce content that shon a light on an interesting but lesser noticed aspect of our daily lives. Like this episode could have been a this American life episode. It was mostly just an anecdotal experience from a unique person. Maybe focusing a little on property developers. Maybe it's true that Roman Mars is just too talented to stay in his niche, but I'd be pretty disappointed if he just became budget Ira Glass.

</comment><comment><USER4> Strongly reminds me of Mrs Basil E Frankenweiler

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Mixed- Up_Files_of_Mrs...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Mixed- Up_Files_of_Mrs._Basil_E._Frankweiler)

</comment><comment><USER5> this is great. In a previous life I would bid construction jobs, and it was noticeable how much dead space you would end up with in say, a high school or a prison.

Nothing like this, though.

<comment><USER6> Now that everyone is worried about energy efficiency ("net zero" etc.) it seems like architectural malpractice to create large conditioned but unused volumes.

<comment><USER7> Why? Given that nobody's in it heating it up (in any other case), wouldn't it mostly serve as a ballast of cold air—a bit like having a larger freezer to contain the same amount of food? I'd think it'd _increase_ the energy efficiency of dealing with a new hot body entering the space, since there's so much more already-cold air to spread the heat into.

<comment><USER6> (In Providence they're not only concerned about AC.) More to the point, most of these volumes would extend all the way to the roof, which is the primary heat transfer boundary in a large squat building like this. It's unlikely that these areas see the draft-proofing that inhabited areas do. We now know that uncontrolled movement of air through boundaries is the largest source of HVAC inefficiency. Has a building inspector ever actually entered these areas? Without energy input, any enclosed volume will tend to converge to the outdoor temperature. Human comfort will require that energy input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe the same folks were also responsible for a secret art installation that included a bunch of hanging mannequins inside a nearby drainage tunnel. I remember hearing about it around the same time as the discovery of the mall apartment. I've only been able to find a couple[0][1] references for it though.

[0]: [http://www.insanebunkers.com/index.php?topic=1244.0](http://www.insanebunkers.com/index.php?topic=1244.0)

[1]: [https://youtu.be/LKdbYh5uoJA](https://youtu.be/LKdbYh5uoJA)

</comment><comment><USER9> If they had occupied the room peacefully for 10 years, I wonder if they would have squatter's rights:

[http://www.landlordstation.com/blog/what-are-squatters- right...](http://www.landlordstation.com/blog/what-are-squatters-rights-in- rhode-island/)

 _If squatters are using a property consistently without the permission of the owner for a minimum of 10 years, then a claim can be filed to take over title_ of the land that is being used. _

<comment><USER10> I think squatters typically require conspicuous occupancy, not a hidden one. Otherwise someone could secretly build a shed in a secluded corner of someone's property, and claim rights to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Audacity is I think the best word to describe what they've done, but definitely in a good way!</comment>


Beautiful Pages of a Late Medieval Monk's Sketchbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2016/12/16/trial_pages_from_a_fifteenth_century_medieval_monk_s_sketchbook.html <comment><USER2> I wish I could create images like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> is that a dinosaur?

<comment><USER4> More likely an incomplete start on a bird. Is it next to a white-faced stick figure with a lampshade on its head that just threw a pie? Probably not.</comment></comment>


Lyft Office to Leave Bay Area for Nashville - <AUTHOR> https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/lyft-moves-customer-service-hq-to-nashville <comment><USER2> kind of misleading headline there... They're not leaving the bay area, they're just opening a support office in nashville.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the 3 websites you visit every single day? - <AUTHOR> Other than HN. technical or not but you feel you need to visit it once a day at least. <comment><USER2> I would've said: 1) news.ycombinator.com, 2) hn.algolia.com, and 3) hn.premii.com

But putting aside HN and the 'typical' daily stuff like weather, transit, uh, 'private' stuff, etc.:

1\. __De Correspondent __: a web-only subscription-based newspaper that has a pretty unique and very successful approach. Instead of the classical 'lots of news items as things unfold, hot off the press, and lots of barely rewritten AP feeds' model, it publishes fewer, longer, better-researched articles that provide more context. Basically, it tries to avoid the 'whims' of the day. It actively tries to center itself around the correspondents who get to write series on their area of expertise, and has done a very admirable job asking readers what they should be focusing on. And best of all, they're in the process of creating an English version of it. For now you'd have to learn Dutch for most of it.

2\. __tvcountdown.com __: despite my resolve to watch less television, I still follow a bunch of shows and always forget when they air.

3\. __duolingo.com __: currently learning Spanish. I 'm shocked by how well the 'few minutes daily' approach works!

PS: hey HN overlords. I truly love this wonderful timesink here, but can we have markdown please!?!

<comment><USER3> Instead of tvcountdown.com, You could use [http://tvshowtime.com/](http://tvshowtime.com/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! That looks much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dilbert: [http://dilbert.com](http://dilbert.com)

And for a daily dose of science:

NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day: [https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html)

Earth Science Picture of the Day: [http://epod.usra.edu](http://epod.usra.edu)

Also: Yahoo and/or Google Finance (on business days), and usually news.google.com.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. [http://www.bbc.com/news](http://www.bbc.com/news) 2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/) 3\. [http://techmeme.com](http://techmeme.com)

<comment><USER6> Had not visited techmeme before. Was surprised about the amount of detail in the headings for articles. The opposite of clickbait. I wonder how much that is editorial intent or just happy accidents of culture. Not familiar with the site at all but could see myself coming back.

<comment><USER7> Techmeme is probably the most inside source on SV. It's read by journalists and definitely influences the more mainstream tech news sites like TechCrunch, The Verge. The Information is another very inside source but geared toward founders and execs because of their business model -- expensive user subscriptions (~$400/year). Quality is top notch though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> \- Emails (zoho, hotmail)

\- HN

\- [http://localhost:3000](http://localhost:3000)

<comment><USER9> whats is deployed at [http://localhost:3000](http://localhost:3000)

<comment><USER8> it's the dev build of my web app development tool. Also occasionally a little zero-player game I'm building for fun.

<comment><USER10> Zero player game sounds interesting. Is this some kind of simulation?

<comment><USER8> it's an isometric civ game with a bunch of little game-AI agents who go about their days. It's like an aquarium or an ant farm, but with little AI people.

<comment><USER11> That looks very interesting. I suppose they keep running even when there is no visitor looking, so you come back the next day and they did all sort of things.

Are you planning to keep it for yourself or will we see a Show HN someday?

<comment><USER8> I'll probably share it if it gets anywhere - it's still early days for the project, but it'll be open source on [https://github.com/ajeffrey/civarium](https://github.com/ajeffrey/civarium)

<comment><USER12> This sounds very interesting and fun. Would be cool for a raspberry pi picture frame type of thing

<comment><USER8> it would actually :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good for long form articles on culture:

Arts and Letters Daily ([http://www.aldaily.com/](http://www.aldaily.com/))

World and UK news. I try to avoid the identity politics articles - they are of a much lower quality than the other content. The comment sections are often very insightful and of a much higher standard than most other news sites:

The Guardian ([https://www.theguardian.com/uk](https://www.theguardian.com/uk))

"Adversarial journalism":

The Intercept ([https://theintercept.com](https://theintercept.com))

</comment><comment><USER14> Excluding core utilitarian sites like Google/FB and anything personal....

Bloomberg, YouTube, Stack Exchange sites.

I used to visit Reddit daily, had to stop to try to get away from Trump mania. I cut out a lot of sites that have gone off the deep-end in regards to 24/7 Trump, such as Business Insider (it had dropped in quality long before that, granted).

Curiously while I use Netflix and Amazon Video via dedicated hardware & TV, I never use YouTube that way (and probably never will). I believe it's due to the average presentation length of content on said services and the purpose (educational/informative vs large screen entertainment).

</comment><comment><USER15> 1\. [http://skimfeed.com/](http://skimfeed.com/) 2\. Reddit 3\. Youtube

</comment><comment><USER16> NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day: [https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html)

GitHub: [https://github.com/](https://github.com/)

and...

ClickUp: (for my teams PM) [https://clickup.com/](https://clickup.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> How do I upvote one third of a comment?

<comment><USER18> Downvote twice and upvote once.

<comment><USER19> This is why I love this community!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 1\. news.ycombinator.com 2\. Reddit 3\. Local news site

</comment><comment><USER21> 1.- [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) 2.- [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) 3.- [http://www.shacknews.com/](http://www.shacknews.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> \- [http://serializer.io](http://serializer.io) my tool for following HN and reddit

\- [https://feedbin.com](https://feedbin.com) for whole range of other RSS feeds

...then I end up here reading the comments.

I try not to read my email at the weekend.

<comment><USER7> Nice feature set with the reading time indicators and toggleable sources. Added to my list of HN apps & tools.

[https://pinboard.in/u:tedmiston/t:hacker- news/](https://pinboard.in/u:tedmiston/t:hacker-news/)

<comment><USER22> Thanks - glad you like it. That's quite the list!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> \- [http://thedailywtf.com/](http://thedailywtf.com/)

\- HN

\- Feedly for news feeds

</comment><comment><USER24> 1\. HackerNews 2\. Reddit 3\. YouTube

<comment><USER25> which subredit most?

<comment><USER26> Soccer, python, roomporn, the wallpaper ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reddit, BoingBoing, and one between Guardian and BBCNews depending on how I feel (Guardian editorial agendas piss me off so much on a periodic basis, I stop reading for months at a time).

</comment><comment><USER27> NYTimes.com elderofziyon.blogspot.com Newyorker.com

</comment><comment><USER28> \- Hacker News

\- Youtube

\- Gmail

</comment><comment><USER29> Youtube (lots of great content if you look for it and set up your subscriptions)

NY times, (subscribe! Support journalism)

and Reddit (front page only)

</comment><comment><USER30> * Habitica.com - This game has actually made me start more than one real world good habit.

* news.ycombinator.com

* Youtube.com

</comment><comment><USER31> The Guardian

Twitter

That's the only two I visit every single day.

</comment><comment><USER32> Twitter, Reddit, and entirely against my better judgement, well you can probably guess.

</comment><comment><USER33> 1\. News: Business Insider/CNN /Local news 2\. news.ycombinator.com 3\. Linkedin

</comment><comment><USER34> Ars Technica, Reddit, Verge

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com)

[http://twitter.com](http://twitter.com)

[http://youtube.com/](http://youtube.com/)

</comment><comment><USER36> 1\. facebook (chat) 2\. reddit (custom front page) 3\. gmail

</comment><comment><USER37> Feedly (RSS with HN feed as well), Reddit, and Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER38> devRant's feed [https://www.devrant.io/feed](https://www.devrant.io/feed) HN, Reddit

</comment><comment><USER39> HN, Reddit, nytimez

</comment><comment><USER40> paulgraham.com - for essays

twitter.com - for paul graham's tweets+retweets and for Calvin and Hobbes

youtube.com - well for music. but mostly for new content discovery

<comment><USER41> I was hoping you'd say YouTube for Paul Graham talks given the first 2 :p

<comment><USER40> his talks on youtube are mostly based on startups, so I don't see them because I am not planning to start up any soon. his essays still have some general essays that I like reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> 1) HN 2) Whatever is on HN 3) Akka documentation

</comment><comment><USER43> 4chan.org

reddit.com

youtube.com

Not the most interesting reply, I know

</comment><comment><USER44> news.ycombinator.com

instapundit.com - commentary on current affairs

news.google.com

inframationgroup.com/infraasia/ \- Infrastructure Asia news

</comment><comment><USER45> Hacker News, Marginal Revolution, Netflix?

</comment><comment><USER46> 1\. Reddit

2\. Internal company site

3\. Bank website

</comment><comment><USER47> 1\. 9to5Mac 2\. AWS Blog 3\. Hacker News

</comment><comment><USER48> skimfeed.com mynoise.net Google news

</comment><comment><USER49> \- Hacker News \- Anandtech \- Dropmark

</comment><comment><USER50> Hackernews, IndieHackers and Reddit

</comment><comment><USER51> skimfeed and reddit. no third one.

<comment><USER52> Same

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Hacker news Linux.com anandtech

</comment><comment><USER53> Facebook, YouTube, Nudevista.

</comment><comment><USER54> Inoreader, Facebook, Youtube

</comment><comment><USER55> Twitter, Reddit, Bloomberg.

</comment><comment><USER56> github.com and travis-ci.org of course.

reddit.com, kinokalender.com, letterboxd.com

</comment><comment><USER57> feedly.com HN dilbert.com

</comment><comment><USER58> Feedly, YouTube, Twitter

</comment><comment><USER59> Ars technica, HN, Kotaku

</comment><comment><USER60> 1\. HN 2\. Wired 3\. Imgur

</comment><comment><USER61> theoldreader.com for feeds.

Google inbox.

hashnode.com

</comment><comment><USER62> seriouseats.com, smbc.com, nytimes.com

</comment><comment><USER63> \- Twitter (hacker-News Bot)

\- Proton Mail

\- jw.org

</comment><comment><USER64> hacker news, duolingo, raywenderlich

</comment><comment><USER65> theverge.com, nytimes.com, feedly.com

</comment><comment><USER66> ycombinator, reddit, twitter.

</comment><comment><USER67> 1\. HN

2\. Github

3\. Reddit

</comment><comment> m-ou-se 1\. Hacker News 2\. Comic Rocket (tracks new web comics that I haven't read yet, like xkcd, etc.) 3\. Local news site</comment>


Cursor speed and precision link to anger and other negative emotions - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/websites-may-soon-know-if-youre-mad-a-little-mouse-will-tell-them/ <comment><USER2> Another reason to disable JS by default.</comment>


8-Bit and '8 Bitish' Graphics [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023586/8-Bit-8-Bitish-Graphics <comment><USER2> Actually leveraging the power of palletized graphics has been a lost art for well over a decade. Mark Ferrari is the only person I know of that I can call a master of that art.

When I was working on PlayStation 2 games, it was frustrating that all of the artists I worked with were creating textures that would ultimately end up palletized, but none of them had any concept of the techniques presented here even then. These days GPUs are getting powerful enough that I occasionally see kids reinventing these techniques using tricky shaders from first principles without knowing that they used to be the only way to get things done.

In the HN circles you have a chance to be familiar with Ferrari's work through [1][2]

[1] [http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_S...](http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890267)

But, in gaming circles, you might be more familiar with his work in Loom, Secret of Monkey Isle and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

<comment><USER3> Mark Ferrari also teamed up with Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick (et al) to create a new 2D adventure game called Thimbleweed Park[1] (No affiliation!) - awesome backgrounds by Ferrari!

[https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/](https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/)

<comment><USER4> In this talk he goes into detail about the Thimbleweed Park art he made and how he uses Photoshop to pull off pixel art techniques far more efficiently.

<comment><USER5> I think efficiency is the wrong term.

Palatte shifting and limited color palates were born from the necessity of effeciency. Now he has to use an emulated DOS program to edit them. He uses an experimental web app to display palate shifting projects he created years ago and looks forward to the upcomming release of a pixel editor from the same author.

Additionally, he expresses extensive configuration necessary, mostly disabling anti-aliasing within multiple tools, which makes his process possible in Photoshop. He also has removed the limitation of color palate to make the final product more pleasing, regardless of weight and efficiency, as the concern is minimal on modern hardware.

His technique in Photoshop makes heavy use of the pencil tool one pixel at a time and even falls back to antiquated software (or manual technique) when he needs to implement dithered gradients.

I did not get the inpression that he was happy to be using Photoshop, but that it is currently the best option he has.

<comment><USER4> I took away something different. He emphasized several times how Photoshop enables him to pull off pixel art style but without having to individually drop in pixels. He said that about the lighting templates, the dithering template, and the anti aliasing technique. I'd argue the mere mention of the word "template" supports this. In all cases, "not having to do one pixel at a time" seemed to be the primary advantage.

It's true he also said sometimes he still has to manually put in pixels, but that seemed to exception to me.

<comment><USER5> The selection wand is nothing revolutionary, and likely works better for his purposes in the obsolete software. PS anti-aliases selections by default, so there's a specific example of a tool he's had to tune for his style of art.

The dithering template only exists because dithering is not a concept in PS; the DOS application has a dedicated dithered gradient tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I almost overlooked this link. The presentation is very nice. It starts with an evolution of 8 bit (256 color palette/EGA) images at Lucas Games, from simple to dithered to more advanced (and impressive) animations based on palette-shifting.

It then uses the metaphor of "Renaissance" vs. "Renaissance Faire" to talk about an 8-bit style, which doesn't have to reproduce the exact details of 8-bit colors, but rather the aesthetic - "8-bitish art". Followed by details of how to do it.

<comment><USER4> I feel you omitted one of the best parts of the talk. When he is explaining the palette techniques used in the X-Men Storm game where a single image can be clouds, trees or a cityscape with just a palette swap. I actually let out a small gasp when he went over that, really impressive.

(this part is about 12 minutes in)

<comment><USER7> Amusingly, like a much more advanced version of the super mario cloud/bush pallet swap

[http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/01/tod...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/01/today-i-found-out-mario.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems with graphics and especially with games, there are two uses of "8-bit graphics"

\- One, like this, refers to 256 color (or less) graphics

\- The other, refers to graphics made using the constraints of real world common 8-bit computers (in the US, the Apple ][ or C64, in Europe, the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, etc) or 8-bit consoles, such as the NES and Sega Master System.

There are a lot of games which try to emulate these styles, and there are very few true accurate 8-bit (or 16-bit in the case of SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, Amiga, ST) games. I always appreciated the constraints of having small amounts of memory and so few colors to play with when I was messing around with my Amstrad CPC as a kid.

<comment><USER9> Amstrad CPC!

Just the other day I cooked up a legit Mode 0 "Monster Land" mockup after rediscovering the appalling Spectrum-port original.

[http://boingboing.net/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/wonderboy-a...](http://boingboing.net/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/wonderboy-amstrad.gif)

Working with true 8-bit pallettes is fun; working with 2x1 pixels is "fun"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for submission. Inspiring also outside 8bit and 8bitish art:

      Environment was small enough that you actually could think about it.

      8bit art is mentally and creatively manageable space to work in.

It is not the first time I hear this advice. If you want to be creative, work under constraints.

<comment><USER11> I think it's no accident that one of the most renown and influential works of classical music ever made — the Well-Tempered Klavier — was mostly written for 3-4 voices, for an instrument with very limited expressiveness, and under the incredibly strict rules of counterpoint. To echo what Mark is saying, this is probably one of the reasons we find classical video game music so memorable. When you only have access to a sine wave, a saw wave, and a noise channel, you get really, really good at inventively utilizing these resources to their fullest. I can't remember most of the over-orchestrated, insipid soundtracks in AAA games today, but music from my favorite NES, SNES, and DOS games has never left my mind.

As an aside, I think Disasterpeace is doing for chiptune-style music today what Mark Ferrari has done for 8-bit graphics: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB- pG7wEnzM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB-pG7wEnzM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another example of how constraints drive creativity, interesting ideas and algorithms.

It's always interesting to me where this appears - you see a ton of it from Carmack in "Masters of Doom" and it's happening again with current hardware in VR.

There's probably something to be said for purposefully setting up constraints that otherwise wouldn't need to exist in order come up with something interesting - and learn more faster.

</comment><comment><USER13> An amazing talk, especially if you were gaming at the time.

I can't believe how little crowd reaction there is to some of the things he's showing, eg. the cityscape reveal in the Storm game screens.

<comment><USER14> Deluxe Paint II enhanced had a demo of two images in one with palette shifting that shipped with it.

It really is a phenomenal program. I had to do some pixel-art drawing c.a. 2000 and found nothing remotely as good; fortunately I still had a machine that would boot to dos and my copy of DPII.

<comment><USER15> You're not the only one who thinks fondly of DPaint!

shameless plug: here's the paint program I've been working on:

[http://evilpixie.scumways.com/](http://evilpixie.scumways.com/)

(the most up-to-date code is the 'rgba' branch in github: [https://github.com/bcampbell/evilpixie/tree/rgba](https://github.com/bcampbell/evilpixie/tree/rgba) )

<comment><USER16> Checking this out now and seeing if it compiles on OS X. In case you weren't aware, your source code download link is missing a colon.

<comment><USER15> Oop - thanks!

I've had it running on OSX, but haven't tried it recently. I'd expect there to be a few hiccups, but nothing fundamental.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> He mentions Deluxe Paint II; I was fortunate among my PC owning friends to have that rather than PC Paintbrush. It was one of those rare tools that was so well made for its purpose as to make it hard to describe what was so good about it. Plus it shipped with several tutorials and a very complete manual.

<comment><USER17> My favourite feature, and I suspect of many others given how often I saw this at demo parties etc.:

The split screen, pixel perfect zoom.

I've been looking for paint apps for Android for years, and one of my pet hates is that finding one that didn't do bilinear filtering was incredibly hard (I finally found one I like reasonably well called "Artflow").

But even without filtering, having a _quick and easy_ (one keypress) zoom that keeps the un-zoomed image visible on one side, and shows the zoomed region on the other, was vital to me, because it was one of the most frequent operations. Pretty much every paint app I see either complicates this with multiple separate views in separate windows, or by showing only a zoomed in view.

I find one of the biggest problem with modern paint applications is that they crowd the screen and don't surface the most important paint tools very well - they try to be too many things.

When I used Deluxe Paint, I wanted as little clutter as possible. I'd paint with everything off except when I wanted to change a tool, or change colour - and this to was one keypress away.

Though (relatively) low-res pixel art also tends to lend itself to using far fewer tools. I tended to mostly use the "spray can", smooth, and zoom in and draw individual pixels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just for sake of completeness, I mention here another unmatched pixel art legend, Paul Robertson.

His recent work: [http://probertson.tumblr.com/](http://probertson.tumblr.com/)

His animation, called "Kings of Power 4 Billion%": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZy5S-jUIlw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZy5S-jUIlw)

If you have a chance, watch without YouTube's compression artifacts.

<comment><USER19> You can get the source version from: [http://mirror.8chan.net/probertson/kop4b.avi](http://mirror.8chan.net/probertson/kop4b.avi)

Other original mirrors (most 404): [http://probertson.livejournal.com/23973.html](http://probertson.livejournal.com/23973.html)

(Ausgamers and culture.crypt.cx appear to be still up)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20>
      $ youtube-dl http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023586/8-Bit-8 Bitish-Graphics
      [GDCVault] 8-Bit-8-Bitish-Graphics: Downloading webpage
      [GDCVault] 8-Bit-8-Bitish-Graphics: Downloading XML
      [download] Destination: 8 Bit & '8 Bitish' Graphics-Outside the Box-1023586.mp4
      [download]  61.0% of 714.86MiB at 12.99MiB/s ETA 00:21

<comment><USER21> I would not have thought that youtube-dl worked on random websites. Thanks, the HTML5 player was buffering like crazy for me.

<comment><USER22> Here is a list of supported websites. [https://rg3.github.io/youtube- dl/supportedsites.html](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thanks for the submission. One thing I'm confused about. So, he said that in the animated scenes, the animation was done with palette shifting, and not separate components/layers. I understand that bit. However, how would the animation be done in the game? Does he mean that the palette shifting is implemented within the game, or is the palette shifting technique to easily and quickly produce art assets?

<comment><USER24> Video cards supported swapping palettes out in real time.

[http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_S...](http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5)

> Back then video cards could only render 256 colors at a time, so a palette > of selected colors was used. But the programmer could change this palette at > will, and all the onscreen colors would instantly change to match. It was > fast, and took virtually no memory. Thus began the era of color cycling.

<comment><USER25> The technique is even older than that -- most graphics modes on the 8-bit Ataris only supported a 4-color palette. To get more colors on the screen, you had to take an interrupt partway through the frame to swap out some of the colors and then put them back during the vertical blank to be ready for the next frame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It bothers me when popular culture uses the term 8-bit graphics for low- resolution no matter what the pallette. They see pixelization and automatically use the term.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting, thanks for the link!

</comment><comment><USER28> Wow. Thanks so much for this!

</comment><comment><USER29> [Video presentation]

<comment><USER30> Added to title.</comment></comment>


Rails 3.0.10 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/2373312

<comment><USER2> Blog announcement: <http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/8/16/ann-rails-3-0-10>

Rails 3.1.0 RC6 is out: <http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/8/16/ann- rails-3-1-0-rc6>

So is 2.3.14: <http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/8/16/ann-rails-2-3-14>

</comment><comment><USER3> AMA. ;-)

<comment><USER2> How on earth did you manage to ship three Rails releases on the single nicest day of the year here in Seattle?

Also, serious question: is there a target release date for Rails 3.1.0?

<comment><USER4> "Barring any show stopping bugs, Rails 3.1.0 will be released on August 30th."

<comment><USER2> Ah, from the original source. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is probably off-topic, but after the fuss that was raised about the staleness of the english Ruby site (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2839580>), why does ruby-forum.com still look _terrible_?

The bottom of this page even has a "Powered by RForum" link that 404s. I know the forums aren't meant to be "public facing", but every time I get a ruby- forum link from google, I almost immediately hit back and move on to the next link (even though a lot of the times, ruby-forum has exactly what I'm looking for -- just buried under a wall of mono-spaced text).

<comment><USER6> Ruby Forum is a web interface to the ruby-talk mailing list, and is not an official Ruby site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank goodness. Bring on the 3.1.0 love, tenderlove ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> I want a tutorial of how to update Rails in existing systems.

<comment><USER8> There are plenty of Rails 2 to 3 upgrade tutorials. [http://railscasts.com/episodes/225-upgrading-to- rails-3-part...](http://railscasts.com/episodes/225-upgrading-to- rails-3-part-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As well as Rails 3.1.0.rc6</comment>


Show HN – Command line method for digitizing photos of whiteboards - <AUTHOR> About a month ago, after searching for an existing solution, I built a little script to take photo's of whiteboards and clean them up/make them into near perfect digital representations. Here's the script:

    #!/bin/bash
    convert $1 -morphology Convolve DoG:15,100,0 -negate -normalize -blur 0x1 -channel RBG -level 60%,91%,0.1 $2
 Example Input:

    Input 1: http://i.imgur.com/CTSIPwm.jpg
    Input 2: http://i.imgur.com/37GXrwo.jpg
 Example Output:

    Output 1: http://i.imgur.com/Qf3jkBW.png
    Output 2: http://i.imgur.com/oNueb0L.png
 The basic procedure was outlined in this excellent post for cleaning up whiteboard photos using GIMP: http://matthew.mceachen.us/blog/how-to-clean-up-photos-of-whiteboards-with-gimp-403.html I just replicated the procedure using Imagemagick.
Since I do a ton of work on whiteboards nearly every day, I found this really helpful for managing photos of my whiteboard work. I figured I should share this with you guys, since the HN community seems like the kind of people who'd make use of it. <comment><USER2> First, bravo! This post is made for HN.

Second, posts without urls (i.e. Ask HNs) have an automatic rank penalty applied to them. Could you please put it up at an external url—even just a pastebin would do—and resubmit it? It'll have a much better chance of making the front page, where it belongs.

Alert readers may notice that I have to resort to this because we don't really have any tools for making stories go up in rank. It's upvotes or nothing.

Also, I've got a sweet plan to get all the good Show HNs the attention they deserve. It's a matter of finding time to implement it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I took your advice and posted a gist: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7520216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7520216)

I actually made this gist a couple months ago when I first came up with this, I can't believe I'd forgotten about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Brilliant. I really love this. So basically:

`command input_whiteboard.jpg output_cleanedup.jpg`

I think the only problem I can see with this is the time it takes to convert; on my MacBook Air 2012, running the command on the first input took >5 seconds.

<comment><AUTHOR> That invocation is precisely right. On my system, it's a shell script called `cleanWhiteboardImage`; this is an actual command I've run, taken from my bash history:

        cleanWhiteboardImage IMG_20140208_175541.jpg zoomedOut-action-flow-chart.png

Also, yes the time it takes to make this work can be problematic. That can be mitigated by shrinking the image, though that decreases the quality of the cleanup.

In reality though, I'm fine with it taking a couple seconds. My main motivation wasn't so much to make this 'fast' as it was to automate the process.</comment></comment>


THE LOCATION SHARING APP THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A STALKER - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spotd-find-your-friends/id733009168?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, Finally launching my app Sptod to the world!! Please download it and let me know what you think, honest feedback is what Im looking for! If your a hater, then hate, it's what you do best!! ; ) Thanks in advance!</comment>


The Language Squint Test - <AUTHOR> http://lkesteloot.blogspot.com/2008/06/language-squint-test.html <comment><USER2> If you bring some of the close parens down to new lines, then the lisp example is just as "squintable" as the java.

I know that's bad lisp style, so I guess you'd have to argue that lisp devs have bad taste or don't care about program structure, neither of which are true.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author seems to be is appreciating an anti-feature. If you can squint at a block of code and know roughly what it does based on formatting alone, you've probably found an artificial pattern which should be rewritten at a higher level of abstraction (if you can without hitting the conceptual ceiling of your language).</comment></comment>


A flash platformer made in 48 hours by myself and 4 other people - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalgamejam.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2010/6841/hats_game.swf

<comment><USER2> I started to play this game at work and instantly knew I wanted to beat it and play it all the way through. It had a great look and feel to it.

Since I did get to the victory screen I thought I'd share my comments with you. In fact this if the first time I've ever commented on YC/news and had to register just to do it.

1\. I really wanted a way to go directly to the hat I wanted to use instead of cycle through them. Pressing 1 for blue, 2 for bunny etc would have made it a lot less frustrating.

2\. The green hat totally confused my jumping finger. I'd put on green, jump high, switch to bunny, try to use the same button to jump with but nothing happened.

3\. I had absolutely no problem figuring out what the goal was, how to use the blue hat, how to pass the first level, how to enter doors etc. I don't come from a long background of video game players. I was told by you that x and c are the controls and bam with a little playin around I learned what to do.

4\. I really liked the simplicity. It looked 8 bit but we know flash isn't 8 bit. Why did you choose those graphics as opposed to a more smooth sprite?

5\. I never got used to the zxc controls. I am right handed and all but for some reason my fingers kept getting it mixed up. When doing harder moves like jumping high and shooting I'd have to think it through first "ok i have to push c,z,z,z,c" and I'd still screw it up. I'd hit z 4 times instead of 3.

6\. The only levels worth playing were the last 2. I almost gave up on the last level though. Had to go eat a cookie and think about it, and come back. I died at every single obstacle at least once trying the last level.

7\. The second to last level was my absolute favorite. This is where you first have to shoot a guy have him die on spikes, jump over spikes, and repeat. The last jump to the exit took me forever and I planned a lot of different methods to finally get it. The reason why I liked it was because it seemed very hard to me yet I saw the door right there and knew the level was short. I had victory taste in my mouth every time I made that jump but something would always go wrong.

8\. I enjoyed the early levels as a tutorial on how to use the hats but the replay value is not really there if I already know how to use the hats.

9\. I really liked the lack of loading screens, lack of time it takes between death and startover, lack of frills. Just give me a game and you did!

I think if you like this game you'll probably another flash game called "Chronotron". Anyways I really enjoyed your game. I think you're doing great and thank you for sharing it!

<comment><USER2> oh and I forgot one last thing. I really thought the music and sound effects was refreshing and great. also my favorite was the yellow hat, i liked both its musical graphics and the sound it made when you shoot it. i think i only had to use it on 1 level though

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sweet game, nicely done!

Enjoyed figuring out what the hats are for, and how to use them.

In no particular order:

\- with the blue hat, keeping c pressed will turbo-toggle invisibility. It looks like it does something, but it doesn't

\- when you are in the air while doing a big jump (green hat) and then switch to speed (pink hat) you suddenly lurge forward and miss your jump. Ouch! In the same style, when walking to a cliff and switching hats (to get to the green one) you enthusiastically run into the cliff the moment you equip the pink hat.

\- having two different jump buttons with the green hat is confusing. It's also not consistent with the pink hat. The pink hat makes you run even if you don't press c, but the green hat doesn't "upgrade" your normal jump with x.

\- I haven't been able to figure out what the yellow (music?) hat is for.

\- I only discovered by accident that you can use the dead bodies of the bigger enemies as plateau.

\- touching the spikes with a toe kills you instantly. Not very forgiving.

\- it took me a few levels to figure out that you have to walk _past_ a door to trigger it, that standing in front of it and hitting some keys doesn't work.

\- having to switch quickly to the right hat can be frustrating. Especially if you see enemies approaching from both sides and you accidentally cycle past the blue hat.

\- I got stuck on the level where you have to scare one of the big guys into a cliff with the red hat. I can stand on the body, but I can't make the jump to the exit because the avatar either hits his head on the ceiling or doesn't jump far enough. I suspect there's some kind of floating ability I missed. Hrm.

Nice game though. Congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the commentary! I really appreciate it!

We are still probably going to update the game, and have already done some work on it in fact. This was just the 48 hour milestone :)

I will certainly take your comments into account!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Part of why Flash is so popular is that the tools it gives creators makes it so easy to so quickly and easily develop applications like this.

Kudos.

<comment><USER5> And this is what people forgot when they say html5 is superior. 'The future' - maybe but is anyone creating tools to speed up the generation of html5+js?

<comment><USER6> Cue Adobe. Once they get off the high horse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This game has a disturbingly large number of features for the amount of time taken...which ends up making it kind of hard to play. It took five or six tries to understand the first puzzle of the game, and it actually crashes Firefox when I die sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well done, I really enjoyed playing that game. I had to literally pull myself away from the computer because it's getting really late and I ought to go to bed, but I'll certainly play it again when I get the chance. Just one thing though: it's a bit hard for me to play the game because of the controls - I'm not using a US keyboard layout so the Z key for me is where the Y key is on a normal US keyboard. Perhaps you could make it so that the V key is used for changing the hats?

</comment><comment><USER9> Hey, my friend was in the gamejam in WPI at Worcester, Mass. and ended up with this:

<http://www.globalgamejam.org/2010/flickering-torch>

One cool thing to do with yours would be to have 1-5 be hat switch keys

</comment><comment><USER10> Played for a few minutes, couldn't get past the first guy.. as in, the guy you see within 5 seconds. I tried shooting those clouds but they don't seem to affect him, and if I try to run through him.. I die. So.. HTF do you play this game? :-)

<comment><USER11> X makes you invisible - notice how your opacity changes? Just go invisible and let them zombie walk by you, the continue on your merry way :)

<comment><USER10> X only makes mine jump. C results in a weird puff of smoke. I took a video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d2Gqy2zIsE>

This is Flash 10 on Safari 4 on OS X, by the way.

<comment><USER10> I figured it out thanks to another comment above. Seems you have to stand still, not run and press C. Brought up on too much Mario and Sonic I'm afraid.. always running :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is flash really the only good language to write web games in?

I started writing a game in Love/lua, which is really great. But you can't write web games in it, as far as I know. Any other options?

<comment><USER13> Unity3D, silverlight, WebGL

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm several levels in and I can't jump high enough, even with the green hat. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment> tomh- Which gamejam were you part of?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Carleton gamejam, the one in Ottawa, Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> wow, nappy hacker. The joys of cut and paste. I admire your zeal, but the truth is the product is too intrusive. I too would just say no!

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand what you mean.

If you're referring to my use of Flixel, this was a cautious decision made at the start of the project.

If you're referring to my coding ability, I can assure you that I was coding for at least 30 of the 48 hours.

<comment><USER16> I think you can easily ignore a negative comment which doesn't describe what the comment is about or what the issue is, talks in abstract and is from a user who created the HN account 1 hour ago, with the purpose of making that comment.

Most likely it is from someone who doesn't understand, or is just plain jealous (for whatever reason).</comment></comment></comment>


Do-Not-Track Movement is Drawing Advertisers' Fire - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/technology/do-not-track-movement-is-drawing-advertisers-fire.html

<comment><USER2> _The advent of [DNT] threatens the barter system wherein consumers allow sites and third-party ad networks to collect information about their online activities in exchange for open access to maps, e-mail, games, music, social networks and whatnot_

This narrative about a "quid-pro-quo" social contact is _completely manufactured_. All of this <sharing> was part of online culture before the cookie, and in particilar widespread privacy invasion of pixel tracking and the rest. Ie, it's ex-post rationalization by those who have a stake in the outcome.

Was the cookie the <worst> decision ever in the history of the internet? The Barter System? WAT?

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Even if there was such a contract, who fixed the price for it? In other words: who said that the right price/service in exchange for an incredibly precise audit trail of my behavior is targeted ads or some pretty lame free articles?

I paid my Navigon app, I pay for my Office 365 e-mail, I pay for the music I get, I pay for the local newspaper I read, I pay to access academia papers (i.e. ACM), I pay for a lot of tools many of which on a donor contract.

I don't even have a problem to pay a fee for a social site if I believe it gives me value in exchange.

Let's forge the contract in a different way: you want my data, you offer something in exchange, I decide if that's a good deal for me. If not, I may still decide to give you my data, but you pay.</comment></comment>