Chrome Now Officially Lets You Open All Email Links In Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/open-email-links-directly-in-gmail.html

<comment><USER2> For those interested the API it's using is navigator.registerProtocolHandler.

<http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/timers.html#custom-handlers>

[http://updates.html5rocks.com/2011/06/Registering-a- custom-p...](http://updates.html5rocks.com/2011/06/Registering-a-custom- protocol-handler)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an odd wording: "Allow ... [No] [Use Gmail]". This may confuse people who will think that in order to use Gmail, you have to click this button.

Oh, I should submit a bug report instead of posting here.

<comment><USER4> The wording is confusing and I had to do a double take and then click on the help to figure out what its' really wanting to let me know.

"Allow Gmail to open all email links" is terrible wording. It would seem to the average user that gmail wants to open up all the links in their email.

mailto: is getting less common (due to spambots) and personally I can't remember the last time I clicked on one of those (that wasn't a web page from 2002).

This will cause a lot of confusion and some tech support calls from family/friends.

Wouldn't it make more sense to say "Do you want to use Chrome as your default email client" or something?

<comment><USER5> The whole post is terribly worded. When I heard "email links" I naturally thought, "links in my email" and not "mailto: pseudo-protocol links." So I was very confused when it said that "an application on my computer that I never used would pop up and interrupt me" and that now the links "will open a fresh Gmail compose window."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> in FF you just go to preferences <http://i.imgur.com/Nf6hK.png>

<comment><USER7> My, what an intuitive interface! Just add a new "mailto" content-type and link it to gmail.

Theres so much wrong with this on so many levels. "mailto" isn't a freaking Content-Type, and this is not the right way to design interfaces.

<comment><USER8> a selector pops up the first time you click a mailto: link

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> And if you want to open mailto links in Gmail with Firefox (and Opera I guess): [http://updates.html5rocks.com/2012/02/Getting-Gmail-to- handl...](http://updates.html5rocks.com/2012/02/Getting-Gmail-to-handle-all- mailto-links-with-registerProtocolHandler)

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell On the front page of my website where I display a mailto link, I also have GMail and Yahoo specific compose links:

"Email: mymailtolink (Compose with GMail/Yahoo)"

<https://grepular.com/>

I wrote some JavaScript code a while back which would automatically detect if a visitor was logged in to GMail, and would replace all mailto links on my page with GMail compose links instead. I never put it live on my site though as the process of detecting if a user is logged in to gmail is pretty dodgy. In case you're interested in the code, or the detection process:

[https://grepular.com/Abusing_HTTP_Status_Codes_to_Expose_Pri...](https://grepular.com/Abusing_HTTP_Status_Codes_to_Expose_Private_Information)

<comment><USER6> Interesting experiment, but I don't think webdevs should interfere with what client should be run by the user to send the email. Mailto: works just fine, and it's up to the user to set up the client for mailto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google finally incorporates another obvious feature, obviating the need for a silly chrome add-on. Yay.

</comment><comment><USER4> Edit: Mea Culpa. I see this is for desktop links.

I clicked the help last night when this popped up and must have read it incorrectly.

However, this can still cause problems if you have 2 email clients, say Outlook for my corporate mail and gmail for my personal mail.

IT departments are going to love this.

<comment><USER11> If you use gmail, why wouldn't you choose to do this? I'm so sick of mailto: links opening up whatever useless mail client came preinstalled on whatever computer I'm using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A complete aside, but the pushState/client side rendering implementation on the blog surprised and confused me massively. It seems like the wrong tool for a blog.

<comment><USER13> They could at least have sent the page you're trying to load so that it's ready to render immediately (instead of having to retrieve it from the server _after_ the "container" has loaded).

<comment><USER14> Yeah, whatever they're doing about server-side rendering is just completely failing, which is really surprising. Gmail works well without js, so it's not as if they don't have competent web devs.

Smuggling XML in a giant CSS comment is also very … special.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It took them a while to build that in. So secure and fast, but something as basic as this (which the competition got since day one) has no priority apparently.

<comment><USER16> Secure, Fast, and Feature-Complete.

Pick two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What other protocols can developers use this new method with?

<comment><USER18> I believe Google Calendar also asks if you want iCal files to be opened in Google Calendar. I think other sites could register as that protocol handler as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I tried this out yesterday with a pinned gmail tab clicking the email link opened up a _new_ tab and loaded gmail :(

<comment><USER18> Seems that's intentional, even without a pinned gmail tab: "Say yes, and clicking on email links in any application on your computer will open a __fresh __Gmail compose window."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Creepy.

</comment><comment><USER21> finally

</comment><comment><USER22> This really great!</comment>


Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks investigation - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/google-says-it-fought-gag-orders-in-wikileaks-investigation/2015/01/28/e62bfd04-a5c9-11e4-a06b-9df2002b86a0_story.html <comment><USER2> The reason for the gag orders: to keep the Federal Attorneys from getting a pile of bad publicity. This flies straight in the face of any kind of transparent government. If the Attorney's office gets a ton of criticism, then they're probably doing something extremely unpopular. It's good to do unpopular things in defense of minority opinions, given the USA's free speech tradition, but if the criticism is large in volume, and it stings, which apparently the twitter investigation criticism did, then the public outcry is correct. The Feds shouldn't be doing this stuff. I conclude that the gag orders are crap, and should be lifted. The Feds are doing stuff that might be legal, but is in a larger sense immoral.

<comment><USER3> Seems like the gag orders are "don't tell these suspects that we're monitoring them". Seems quite legitimate and essential in ordinary cases. But we need a robust court system that will restrict gag orders to legit things, rather than suppressing dissent.

<comment><USER2> According to the text of the article, that's not true. The gag orders were to prevent the attorney from getting bad publicity. I suppose that they wrote "keep suspects in the dark" or the equivalent legalese in the motion, but the real reason appears to be otherwise.

<comment><USER4> Is that a fact or an opinion? The "text of the article" that supports that conclusion is a quote from Googles attorney, not an unbiased source.

<comment><USER2> After careful re-reading, I think you are correct. I didn't read closely enough. The key paragraph is attributed to Google's lawyer.

However, the whole "twitter didn't get a gag order" aspect does support the thesis that the Google gag order is to minimize criticism of the US lawyers.

Since the very same person (Jacob Appelbaum) appears to be the subject of both Twitter and Google search warrants, the "we don't want to alert TERRORISTS!" excuse for the gag order doesn't hold. Also, if it's a search warrant, and not a CALEA-type on-going surveillance warrant, why would a gag order be imposed? If Google has the data, they have to turn it over or face penalties, and I'm sure they have a policy to fork over any legally-demanded data. They may have a duty to their own consciences to contest the search warrants, but I'm sure that they hand over data.

I can think of one other motive for such a gag order, and that's to minimize the time that Appelbaum has to prepare a defense. That hardly seems fair, given that the USA is supposed to have a level playing field with ALL CITIZENS subject to the rule of law. I'd rather not think that the US Attorney, with all the legal and monetary resources of the federal government at hand, would stoop to cheap shots like that.

I think Gidari's conclusion, although an opinion, fits the facts as we know them. The Google gag order was sought to contain or minimize criticism. Assuming that seems to give the US Attorneys the benefit of the doubt, because otherwise I'd think they were trying to cheat, which they, as officers of the court have a moral duty to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      > But the case represents "an amazing Catch-22," he said.
      > Google doesn't "have the strongest right to challenge the
      > scope or the reasonableness of the warrant. The only people
      > who really have that are the targets of the warrant, and
      > they don't know about it. So essentially the government has
      > carte blanche to get whatever they want."

Shouldn't in cases like this the gag order go to the target of the warrant. I imagine it could go something like this. Google hands the information and inform only the target. The target can't publicize or inform anyone else, but now have the knowledge and right to defend himself.

Not informing the target would restrict his ability to defend himself.

In a similar note, why even involve Google at all. Why not require the target to hand the information.

Maybe the fact that the targets are in different countries a problem to this approach.

<comment><USER6> "why even involve Google at all"

"So essentially the government has carte blanche to get whatever they want"

I think your quote answered your own question.

<comment><USER7> Yup. Going to the third party provider as if it owns _your data_ is a complete bypass of the 4th amendment. To make an analogy it would be like the federal government having to serve a warrant/court order/gar order only to your local mayor to search your house without your permission.

Imagine how messed up that would be. Yet, it's exactly what happens in the digital world, and somehow we've learned to take it for granted. If it's your data, the warrant should be served to you. As for terms of service and such of online services that say once you upload your data to their cloud, then it becomes "theirs", that's complete bull, and such a thing should be made illegal.

<comment><USER8> It just occurred to me, they figured out how to serve a complaint against your property (civil forfeiture) so I'm actually half surprised they don't serve warrants against the _house_ not the house's occupants. Or even better, just serve the data itself; US Government versus 134,612 bytes of Data!

<comment><USER9> That's called _in rem_ [1] jurisdiction. I hope to see it happen with bytes of data in my lifetime.

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> IMO governments need to learn how to adapt to this new "information age". That's not to say they need to try to find new ways to suppress information. They need to allow public discourse to help them define their limitations.

<comment><USER11> I don't think they can. The information age is rendering national governments obsolete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> (Any lawyers here who could weigh in?)

Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their correspondence on their website? For example, AcmeCo gets a request from the US Government to share information about one of AcmeCo's customers (e.g. WikiLeaks). AcmeCo scans and posts this letter (as it does for _everything_ it receives including its electricity bill) on its website. Could they then circumvent the gag order this way? What would happen to AcmeCo?

<comment><USER6> "Could a company nullify gag orders if it was their policy to post ALL their correspondence on their website?"

Not a US-based company, because we have these nefarious things called National Security Letters. The penalty for knowingly breaking the gag order with the intent to interfere with an investigation is up to five years in prison.

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

Do you know any business owners willing to go to prison for five years for one of their users?

<comment><USER13> How could you knowingly break a gag order, if an automated system publicly posts all correspondence before anyone reads them?

<comment><USER14> Because the correspondence comes:

(a) in the form of a valid court order hand-delivered to and served on your CEO at his home at 6am by two very grim federal agents who don't really like getting up this early, or

(b) if you're represented by counsel, it comes in the form of notification to your attorney by the court clerk that a court order has been issued (or perhaps notification from an AUSA if the clerk's office is slacking).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're a google employee and you see a gag order and disagree with it you almost certainly have the skills to leak it undetectably such that you can't be prosecuted because there is no evidence.

I wonder, is that the right thing to do? How would you do it technically if you thought it was? Who would you leak it to?

<comment><USER16> Even granting your premise that a Google employee could leak the gag order undetectably (and I'm not confident about that, since the universe of people to investigate would be relatively small), there would still be serious repercussions to deal with.

At bottom, there's someone at Google in charge of overseeing the gag order. If the gag order leaks and they can't figure out who's responsible, I'm pretty sure they end up going to jail - if only because a court would have a hard time telling the difference between genuinely not being able to find the leaker and stonewalling / implementing a cover-up.

<comment><USER15> I'm less cynical. I don't think they can prosecute someone without evidence beyond reasonable doubt. Every single google employee who has to act on the order and be gagged by it has to see the order and verify its authenticity or else their actions would be illegal. "it must be one of these 50 google employees" might well be completely true, but not enough to prosecute any one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lots of greyed comments here. What's going on? Google fan-boys vs. NSA fan- boys?

<comment><USER18> I'd mod you up for making an interesting point, but it'd interfere with the meta-ness of your question being greyed out (a bit). I therefore leave you down-modded so you can better make your point.

On this particular story there seems to be quite a lot of (random?) down- modding. It'd be nice to hear if the admins could comment. From just looking at the greyed out comments, it at least _seems_ different from the usual hn- patterns?

<comment><USER19> It's not like the NSA or Google have the computing power to automatically have their AI fight it out in the public sphere. Right? RIGHT?!?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hard to believe, when CEO is attending bilderberg meetings !!

</comment><comment><USER21> cheap PR

</comment><comment><USER22> Google is good, not evil, they have fought for our rights, bravely and invented new genious technologies and social processes to protect our civil rights and society. Google is good, Google does what is in best interest for its users. Google stands up against an intrusive government. Being a user of Google services is supporting freedom and democracy. Google fights againt censorship and for open society.

Public announcment by Good Google.

</comment><comment><USER23> I like how any questioning of Google's integrity is being shamelessly downvoted here.

<comment><USER24> Well, one of the target of the warrant is also supporting Google here: [https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/560575339450347520](https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/560575339450347520) [https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/560579349460815872](https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/560579349460815872)

<comment><USER15> Nope, nothing there supports google. He's claiming to have played them to use their resources in support of his interests. He's not endorsing them at all. (Maybe he would or has elsewhere but not there).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really interesting to read this in the context of David Drummond's statements a few years ago: [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/19/googl...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/19/google- chief-legal-officer-david-drummond-live-q-and-a)

<comment><USER26> Why is it interesting? It's since become clear that Google was not in cahoots with the NSA, just like Drummond said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > In the fall of 2011, Google was able to tell Appelbaum that the government > had sought data such as the IP addresses of the people he e-mailed with,

Google needs to store your plaintext email so it can make money by showing you ads, but its data retention policies are both unnecessary and outrageous.

</comment><comment><USER28> Google was a premium partner in the Prysm NSA program. According to the first leaks, Google along with Facebook, Skype and Apple were the first to sign up to the NSA spying programs as partners.

All along they're trying to paint themselves as victims of the spying, which is ridiculous really...but I guess they can still fool a large population.

<comment><USER6> The NSA was also wiretapping the connections between Google's datacenters, so they were victims of the NSA too.

(Until we know more about their relationship with the NSA, I also don't condemn them for the PRISM allegations.)

<comment><USER25> I acknowledge there's a moral and ethical distinction there, but I dispute that there's any pragmatic difference: If you use Google services, your data is compromised, period.

It doesn't really matter whether the NSA or GCHQ are tapping Google's datacenters, paying off low-level employees, operating under a legal court order, or benefiting from the enthusiastic help of Google executives. The end result is the same: You cannot trust cloud services.

<comment><USER29> The question has never been "Can you trust cloud services?"

It's "Can you trust them more than the alternatives?"

Yes, you can almost certainly keep your private data more secure in a system you build and monitor yourself(1). Until an NSA or GCHQ-level entity takes interest in you, and uses a 0-day exploit on your system or just physically walks in with a warrant and steals your physical media. How is that functionally different from "If the NSA / GCHQ takes interest in you, they can have the cloud service provider hand your data over?" And that's before you add the overhead of maintaining, securing, and physically protecting your own systems.

(1) Note that even this step is a huge hurdle for most people; "You cannot trust cloud services" basically tells those people "Don't use the Internet."

<comment><USER30> There is a massive, massive difference between automatically slurping all data coming in and out of a cloud provider, and going after somebody with a targeted exploit or physically seizing machines.

<comment><USER31> I'd rather make them go through the trouble of getting my data physically then just typing

      grab * -ss 834-29-1293

or whatever they do.

<comment><USER6> Is 834-29-1293 your actual SSN? :\

<comment><USER32> 834 was never used as an area number:

[http://www.socialsecurity.gov/employer/ssns/HGJune2411_final...](http://www.socialsecurity.gov/employer/ssns/HGJune2411_final.txt)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> No Google, "fighting" a restriction on speech isn't doing exactly what you're told and asking a corrupt court for permission to do otherwise. It involves loudly publicizing the corruption and giving the thugs an uphill battle. Until you do this (or radically change your products to be oblivious to users' information in the first place), you're a de facto arm of the surveillance state.</comment>


The Beauty of the COBOL Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://devops.com/the-beauty-of-the-cobol-programming-language-v2/ <comment><USER2> Beauty is not what comes to mind with Cobol and I am old and did code in Cobol years ago.

I use to code Cobol on VMS as was required at a job. But the application was more of a systems application and had to be redundant.

So I would code using VMS system services so it did not look like Cobol. Did have to figure out how to create data structures in Cobol needed with the system services. So a 32 bit word for example, descriptor, reference.

I did the redundancy by taking out a cluster lock on the cluster with a wait ($ENQ_W). Then it was part of the startup on all the nodes in the cluster but only one got the lock and the others were stuck in a wait state. So simple.

If the Vax crashed or rebooted for maintenance another node would get the lock and run properly.

The devices the application interacted with were attached to terminal servers so all the nodes in the Vax cluster could see the terminal server.

What was ridiculous is that it should have been written in assembler or C instead of Cobol. Just because it was Cobol no one else was going to be able to maintain just because it was Cobol.

What normal Cobol programmer is dealing with system level things? I basically did everything using library and system services. So there was almost no lines of code that look like any normal Cobol.

Wonder if that code is still running?

<comment><USER3> _sigh_ they say it is in the eye of the beholder. Look at Ada,some find it terrible yet to some an under appreciated marvel

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really don't see the beauty of COBOL in those examples. The real reason COBOL is still used is legacy software that companies don't want to convert (because it's costly and because it works). My company also likes to tell newcomers that you don't need to have studied computer sciences to use it.

<comment><USER5> I think that the "beauty" (if you want to call it that) of COBOL was mostly in how it did, for the most part, exactly what you told it to do and rarely surprised you with unintended consequences (I mean, don't get me wrong, it still did, but not like C or Java or Javascript do). The problem was that you gave up a lot of expressiveness for this; when I was working in COBOL, I'd find myself cutting and pasting the same snippet of code in dozens of places with minor modifications - the language just didn't allow enough dynamism to permit decent code reuse. So in exchange for making it harder to accidentally shoot yourself in the foot, you'd end up with a codebase that needed dozens of code changes, far distributed from each other, to make functional updates - and hope that you didn't forget to update one of the cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once worked for a company that used this language for it's main software product (for insurance claims management):

[https://www.dbcsoftware.com/index.html](https://www.dbcsoftware.com/index.html)

It was very, very similar to COBOL, and was the closest I ever got to using COBOL.

My work there was involved with developing an internally used piece of software written in Visual Basic, so I wasn't involved in the main product, but at one point they wanted to run everyone who did any kind of programming thru a set of training sessions on the language.

I found that it was just -barely- possible to build a version of Breakout using the language; it wasn't great, but it did work.

Later I used some of the extended functionality that was built into the language for network access to build a simple HTTP server; nothing fancy of course, just something to see if it could be done.

I am not sure how I feel about the language - or about COBOL in general, beyond it's legacy/historical value...

</comment><comment><USER7> The company I work for uses COBOL code that was written 30+ years ago to handle accounting, payroll and some other critical stuff. It works, we don't have to mess with it, and in all likelihood it will continue to work for another 30 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> The company I work for uses it for all of their customer billing, and when I was first doing my orientation I met another new hire that was joining the mainframe team, and from what he described, it is the same for most COBOL programs in most industries...legacy stuff that will continue to run for years

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember distinctly being a kid, finding a book on programming in a thrift store. It was all in COBOL. Previously I had only seen snippets of C++ and... perl I think. Anyway, I saw the COBOL syntax, all-caps, everything spaced out evenly, and it delighted me immensely. It felt structural, weighty, substantial. I think that if the javascript I write today looked as impressive to outsiders as COBOL looked to me then, I'd be showing off my work to a lot more friends & family.

</comment><comment><USER9> This was a nice intro to cobol. Not sure if the title is accurate, as I didn't see much info on the beauty of cobol. But I did appreciate the comparisons with more modern languages.

<comment><USER10> I really didn't mind COBOL back when I took a (required) course on it back in college (around '89 or so). My biggest gripe with it was how constrained you were in some areas -- for example, you couldn't have arrays more than 3 dimensions, and a few other oddities that I don't recall off the top of my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My first business language.

Sometimes I think about what it must be like to go back to COBOL today. There's probably money in it-- there can't be too many developers left! The environment is probably stable.... You'd just have to learn to navigate all the programs in your workspace (and that can be no small task.)

I think I'll pass. I like it better in the modern world.

</comment><comment><USER12> I didn't mind COBOL as a language (but it was overly verbose), it was the JCL to set it up and kick it off that drove me nuts.

<comment><USER13> Oh boy, JCL... we had a couple of JCL gurus who understood it but the rest of is just kept hacking away at existing templates.

And CICS. But even worse than those two was a 1980s IBM business language called CSP ( Cross-System Product ). If you can imagine COBOL with all its limited expressiveness removed. I used to be elated when I opened a member and found it to be COBOL or C rather than CSP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."

                                    -- Edsger W. Dijkstra</comment>


Kraken.com - US Bitcoin Exchange Opens Beta - <AUTHOR> https://beta.kraken.com

<comment><AUTHOR> In light of recent events, we just wanted you guys to know that we're on the motherfucker. Go back in there, chill out and wait for the cavalry which should be coming directly: <https://beta.kraken.com>

Target launch for real trading is mid next week. Beta accounts are auto-funded with funny money and will be wiped at launch. Actual deposits/withdrawals are disabled. Address support issues to beta-support@<domain></comment>


Ask HN: What will be the impact of Google's campus on San Jose? - <AUTHOR> Google is planning of building between 6-8 million square feet of offices and other spaces in the Diridon Station area in San Jose. This will bring up to 20,000 workers to the San Jose area.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/20/google-san-jose-negotiate-transit-village-downtown/
Around this, other real estate projects started to emerge: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/23/google-village-million-square-foot-downtown-san-jose-tech-campus/
Obviously, if all these come to fruition, the impact on San Jose and the area will be huge.
I live in San Jose, and I overall support the project. I am sure, there will be problems and bumps along the way, but if I had to chose between San Jose with Google and San Jose without Google, I would go with the former.
I am asking HN, what will be the expected impact of this on: -Real Estate -Housing -Traffic -Transportation -Crime -Schools -Life style (restaurants, activities, art) -San Jose University -Character of the area (Latino, Japan Town) -Other areas that are important and haven't listed
This story repeated two decades ago in Mountain View. What has been the impact there, and what should we expect in San Jose? <comment><USER2> Where do you see high-rise, dense urban industrial development in Mountain View?

</comment><comment><USER3> To those of us not from the Bay Area, Mountain View and San Jose might as well be the same place.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's obvious right? More traffic and higher cost of living. Nothing really new...</comment>


Myths about USB NKRO and how USB HID works - <AUTHOR> https://www.devever.net/~hl/usbnkro <comment><USER2> > Yes, this means you could theoretically make an analog keyboard which > reports the level of key depression.

There is at least one company making analog keyboards, mainly for gaming: [https://wooting.io/](https://wooting.io/)

<comment><USER3> The Realforce 108UH-ANLG [1] can also do that and can even emulate the analog sticks and buttons used on gaming controllers. Here's a demo video of one being used as a piano [2]. You can tell that harder keypresses result in louder notes. I don't think it's been released outside of Japan yet but they have some keyboards with customizable actuation points using the same Topre switches [3].

[1] [https://www.realforce.co.jp/products/108UH- ANLG_AFAX01/index...](https://www.realforce.co.jp/products/108UH- ANLG_AFAX01/index.html)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhCSIy- Qt0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhCSIy-Qt0M)

[3] [https://www.realforce.co.jp/en/products/R2A-US4G-BK/index.ht...](https://www.realforce.co.jp/en/products/R2A-US4G-BK/index.html)

<comment><USER4> The Steelseries Apex Pro has keys that can detect depth, but they too use it for actuation points. They keys are omnipoint.

I really (really) like my topre realforce rgb although the apex pro is very close in terms of solid feel, and has much more interesting electronics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> AFAIK most USB keyboards with nkro implement it by emulating multiple USB keyboards, which I guess is also within the hid spec? The manufacturers probably figured that approach was more reliable than using one hid device with a custom reporting format.

<comment><USER6> It's cheaper to reuse the same USB 1.0 controller chip than update. That's it, the dirty secret.

Some keyboards also do that to support OSes that have broken HID drivers, like Mac.

<comment><USER7> No, and it makes no sense. There are no fixed function USB HID controller chips. They are all microcontrollers with USB interface. Makes no difference from chip point of view if it reports being basic HID profile or a custom one. Besides you can even bitbang being 10 hid devices on a good old Arduino.

<comment><USER6> A cent here and there on manufacturing several hundred thousand units quickly adds up. And that's just the MCU used.

The cost of replacing the MCU with something that can run USB1.1 instead of 1.0, cost of programming, cost of dealing with broken cases that don't support HID properly (for example BIOSes that don't send "boot proto only" command, or every Mac) quickly increase the total cost. And the margins are thin.

And then there's the fact that even people who should know better often believe myths about USB being unable to report more than 6 keys - even if they are keyboard vendors who should know better and are making a high-enough margin to use better controller.

<comment><USER7> >cent here and there

someone counting cents will not use several microcontrollers + separate usb hub chip, where did you get that idea from anyway?

>cost of replacing the MCU with something that can run USB1.1 instead of 1.0

[http://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-fast-again/](http://www.os2museum.com/wp/how- fast-again/) there is no hardware difference between 1.0 and 1.1.

<comment><USER6> What I found was that in Low Speed mode, the maximum packet size made it impractical to use anything but the Boot Protocol.

As for counting cents - for majority of keyboards made, you'll get as little work done on the keyboard controller as possible. If they add a separate USB chip, it's usually logically separate from the keyboard anyway.

When you reach the more fancy keyboards, you deal with another problem.

Namely, what to do with all the broken software involved. Your priority for reducing costs is removing support calls, angry gamers calling when they can't change their overclocking parameters in BIOS, Macintosh users complaining the keyboard doesn't work at all, corporate/OEM clients returning keyboards because it is not possible to input password to _McBuggy Disk Encryption and Employee Spyware v6.66_ when the computer starts.

Those limit your options when the budget for your fancy keyboard would provide for better microcontroller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The cheap Chinese keyboard I have over here emulates NKRO by simply reporting 5 different keyboards. Although the idea makes me cringe from a engineering pov I've to admit it works really well.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if USB HID compliant keyboard can report their key map (like QWERTY vs AZERTY)? If yes is there some OS taking advantage of it and how?

In 2020 keyboard mapping is still a mess IMHO but may be I'm missing something :)

<comment><USER10> You're missing the fact that keyboards _do not have_ key maps to report. The wire protocol and the device do not remap keys. It's all done in software on the host.

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207431)

<comment><USER11> I think the GP's idea is that a keyboard could report to the host _how its keys are labeled_ so that the host could automatically select the correct keymap. This is indeed a very cool idea, but would certainly be a big effort to get implemented across all platforms.

This would be somewhat similar the more boutique input devices which are configurable in hardware.

<comment><USER10> That is not the keyboard map. It's the engraving, which has _zero effect_ on the keyboard, neither electrical nor mechanical. Keyboards can be re-labelled with little bits of paper and sticky tape or by swapping keytops, and that does nothing. _There is no keyboard map_ here.

<comment><USER12> Of course keyboards can be relabeled. But they usually aren't. If, hypothetically, keyboards came with knowledge of their original labeling, that would be meaningful information. If computers used it to set a default key layout, that would make for a better default _if_ the goal is to make key behavior match the labeling. It would fail to match the labeling if you changed the labeling, but it would still be accurate much more often than the current default.

That said, I question whether most people actually want key behavior to match the labeling. I think any touch typist would rather use their preferred layout regardless of labeling.

<comment><USER11> As a recovering Dvorak user, I would very much like the match-the-legends behavior, because for quite a long time I used a keymap which was not the default. At one job I had an Advantage2 that I carried around with me because the keys were internally remapped (when you pressed a key it reported the scancode for that letter on QWERTY) because of how time consuming it is to add a keyboard layout in most operating systems. Unfortunately that kind of internal remapping is mostly only found in some very expensive keyboards. There's at least one vendor that sells a USB dongle that does the same remapping to a pass-through USB keyboard for the same reason.

This problem would be infrequently encountered in the US (mostly just Dvorak and Colemak addicts) but is a lot more common in Europe due to AZERTY.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The trick to get not-exactly-standard BIOS and OS working (with NKRO for the OS) is not at all obvious ... I first read about it in [https://static.wongcornall.com/ibm-capsense-usb-web/ibm- caps...](https://static.wongcornall.com/ibm-capsense-usb-web/ibm-capsense- usb.html#x1-160003.3.2)

</comment><comment><USER14> Pretty clever trick using the padding to get the boot info there for compatibility.

</comment><comment><USER15> If I remember correctly, the good old PS/2 keyboards used to send "key down" and "key up" events - so no limit on number of simultaneous keypresses. Why was this not reflected in USB HID?

<comment><USER16> My guess is that the problem with sending events is that if you miss one you're in trouble (in this case it's especially bad if you miss/lose the "key up" message). Given the potential complexity of USB topologies making the protocol stateful might have caused more problem than it would've solved.

Besides is there any use for NKRO besides being a meme feature for overpriced keyboards? The only use case I can think of is if you play two player games on the same keyboard but doesn't seem very common these days (and you can probably buy a decent gamepad for the price of a NKRO keyboard).

<comment><USER17> Would it be that expensive to put ~4K of RAM in the keyboard's microcontroller to act as an event queue? Write keydowns/keyups into the buffer; then push (or respond to a poll with) the complete contents of the buffer as a single USB packet; and flush the buffer on ACK. (I presume USB does ACKs?) 4K would be more than enough to buffer all possible key events a pair of human hands could create in a reasonable polling interval (~16ms, i.e. 1 frame for a 60Hz game.)

Add a clock chip to the HID device as well, and you could even get finer event-reporting granularity than the OS cares to poll for (i.e. the buffer delivered at (Polling Interval x N)ms, would contain events timestamped for (Interval x (N-1)) ms, (Interval x (N-1) + 1)ms, etc.) The timestamps could just be relative to the beginning of the interval, so they wouldn't need to take up that many bits at all.

<comment><USER18> > then push (or respond to a poll with) the complete contents of the buffer as > a single USB packet; and flush the buffer on ACK

Two issues. Unless you use USB 2.0 high speed, USB "packets" (transactions) are small[1]. For low speed they can have 8 bytes of data, full speed 64 bytes. USB 2.0 HS is a lot more costly of course.

Secondly, keycodes that are sent in the same report have no defined order[2]. Thus if two keys were not present in previous report and are present in current report, the order in which those two keys are pressed are indeterminate to the OS.

So that would not be very helpful I think.

[1]: [http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/ums_3.htm](http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/ums_3.htm) (Interrupt Transfers)

[2]: [https://www.usb.org/document-library/device-class- definition...](https://www.usb.org/document-library/device-class-definition- hid-111) (Appendix C)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've noticed this on my keyboard. It has a "BIOS mode", but it works fine in "regular mode" in the BIOS anyways. Maybe because it's actually UEFI?

<comment><USER6> It means that either your firmware has more complete HID driver (doubtful) or, or likely, it properly sends "switch to boot proto" command.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Today I learned. Thanks for this!

</comment><comment><USER21> This is my kind of post. Respect.</comment>


Tcl's Google Summer of Code: Students Apply Here - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/d144a311ca66de2f

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link (instead of link to groups.google.com): <http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2011/tcltk>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> All project ideas are here: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/26127>

My project idea, an epub reader supporting Javascript widgets is here: <http://wiki.tcl.tk/28062></comment>


Ask HN: For an engineer with 3 years exp, how much is good expected salary? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Depends on geo, language, domain experience.

You'd have a pretty big range anywhere from 60K-110K would be my guess.</comment>


Sneak Peek at WebAssembly Studio - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/04/sneak-peek-at-webassembly-studio/?sample_rate=0.001&snippet_name=8301 <comment><USER2> This looks awesome. Really useful tooling + gorgeous interface + clean fonts. Mozilla's looking pretty good lately.

<comment><USER3> The editor is from Microsoft [https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco- editor](https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First the tor announcement and now this. That's a lot of exciting News from Mozilla recently.

<comment><USER5> Well, this was a couple months ago. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16811721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16811721) for the past discussion. Definitely still exciting though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fast forward few years later - web is made of executables and openness and user control is gone.

<comment><USER7> Choose HTML5. Choose Node. Choose your fucking social networking sites. Choose open APIs and a per-year subscription model. Choose microformats, micropayments, and SOA. Choose targeted mobile advertising. Choose user- contributed content. Choose your widgets in a range of matching Bootstrap colors. Choose a CDN, or two, or three. Choose the long-tail and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose surfing on that walled-garden device, a machine you paid for but do not own, watching mind-numbing, spirit- crushing videos, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up followers you spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose WebAssembly.

(Not my idea, I just updated it for the times. Please don't mod down for foul language kthx, it's a homage to the original.)

<comment><USER8> What is this? Web Assembly (from the parent comment) will not be a choice for users right?

<comment><USER9> It's along the lines of the opening to "Trainspotting" a famous novel and film [1]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trainspotting_(film)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trainspotting_\(film\))

<comment><USER8> Ahhh thanks, I remember now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Way to go Mozilla. This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER11> Binary explorer in cloud IDE is beautiful ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> I felt like seeing a lisp machine

<comment><USER7> I've never seen a Lisp machine, but when I use Chrome's developer tools, which can display complex, interactive objects right in the text console, that's what I think about.

<comment><USER13> Devtools reminds me of the Smalltalk environment.

<comment><USER12> it's not far in spirit, but it's still quite far away

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice video but (unrelated to the IDE) in order to use a printf from js it was necessary to: provide a js emulated syscall to c file that calls another c function that calls back to js again

<comment><USER15> Yeah, it's super weird when most people are expecting this to compile into JavaScript running in a browser. Nevertheless, to be fair, this isn't a C, C++, or Rust to JavaScript compiler-compiler it's a C, C++, or Rust compiler that targets WebAssembly. I realize this might read as overly pedantic but it explains why it makes sense to the implement the C interface. It's also a reasonable optimization pass for a mature compiler when it knows that you're targeting WebAssembly running in a browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Out of curiosity, does anyone know what the sample_rate query parameter in this URL is for?

</comment><comment><USER17> _The WebAssembly Studio may track its usage through telemetry. We use this information to improve user experience. This information is not made publicly available._

</comment><comment><USER18> This is very cool

</comment><comment><USER19>
         env: {
          __syscall0: function __syscall0(n) { return syscall(instance, n, []); },
          __syscall1: function __syscall1(n, a) { return syscall(instance, n, [a]); },
          __syscall2: function __syscall2(n, a, b) { return syscall(instance, n, [a, b]); },
          __syscall3: function __syscall3(n, a, b, c) { return syscall(instance, n, [a, b, c]); },
          __syscall4: function __syscall4(n, a, b, c, d) { return syscall(instance, n, [a, b, c, d]); },
          __syscall5: function __syscall5(n, a, b, c, d, e) { return syscall(instance, n, [a, b, c, d, e]); },
          __syscall6: function __syscall6(n, a, b, c, d, e, f) { return syscall(instance, n, [a, b, c, d, e, f]); },</comment>


Ask HN: Microservice Patterns: PaaS-less? - <AUTHOR> Attempting to understand the nature of microservice architecture, specifically if doing PaaS-less microservices is a common pattern. <comment><USER2> Typically they get mentioned in the same breath as PaaS and CI/CD, because these are necessary preconditions for sanity.

Architecture and design follow the contours of possibilities our tools lay out for us.

If it is hard to build many little services that interact (circa 1999: provision servers by fax, meet them at DC, configure each by hand, install software via FTP, fuck it doesn't work, fuck this I'm writing a monolith) then they don't get written.

If the cost of microservices drops -- you install a PaaS, you have decent CI/CD -- then the relative advantages (team independence, rapid iteration and deployment, somewhat easier horizontal deployments) become more compelling.

You'll see this pattern across the industry. Every "revolution" is really just a shift in the underlying economics of the different options. NoSQL was compelling because HDDs are slow, with SSDs the gap was narrowed considerably. Networks are fast enough that paying the network hop is considered acceptable for most human-facing purposes, once upon a time we did everything we could to squeeze stuff into the L2 cache. You can write massively multi-threaded software in COBOL, but it's probably going to be easier to use Go or Java for that purpose.

As the relative costs of alternatives shift, so too the industry.

Which is a long-winded way of saying: I don't think PaaS-less microservices is really "a thing". Hypothetically possible, but going to quickly run into heavy headwinds.

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean by PAAS?

In my experience, every company that ends up adopting a microservices architecture ends up building some sort of layer of developer tooling on top of their ops infrastructure (whether it's K8S, EC2, or something else). This is because in microservices, you need to make it easy and cheap to deploy new services, which means developers need some sort of access to operational tooling (or else you need a huge ops team).

<comment><AUTHOR> Platform as a Service (k8s, ec2, etc) and thank you for your response, it answers my question.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sign by Phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.signbyphone.co.uk <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, Cass and Rikki here, the co-founders of Sign by Phone ([https://www.signbyphone.co.uk](https://www.signbyphone.co.uk)).

The idea came from Cass's wife having an awkward delivery moment near the beginning of the pandemic lockdown. The delivery guy needed her to sign for a package but couldn't hand over his device due to social distancing regulations. She wondered if there was a better way to do it. The service is aimed at micro-businesses (mom and pop retailers on Etsy for example) that send lower volume but higher value items via courier. The sender can use the site to generate a unique QR code and attach to the package that can be scanned by the recipient's smartphone.

 _The service offers 3 things:_

\- Contact-free confirmation of delivery via QR code (plus SMS option for non- smartphones)

\- A channel to engage the recipient at the point of delivery by creating bespoke 'thank you' messages. This could be a discount code, a special offer or a personalised message, a substitute for the printed promotional collateral that these companies put into their packages.

\- When a user signs up for a paid plan, we also donate 25p to healthcare charities.

 _What we're looking for_

\- Just general feedback as well as any cool suggestions for extending the service in ways that would better help small businesses</comment>


Amplify the OSS community with data - <AUTHOR> https://asyncy.com/blog/oss-community <comment><AUTHOR> Would be a pleasure to hear your feedback and questions. We have a bold mission, but sometimes big dreams come true. Our in-app Intercom chat is a good place to drop us a line <3</comment>


Walnut: Spotify for digital news - <AUTHOR> https://www.walnutgo.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks promising. I wonder how much the subscription would be, but I'd rather just pay here than buy multiple subscriptions for a handful of articles I read.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe the idea isn't new, and getting publication houses on board is no easy task. That being said, if this team gets it done, they would have made some real headway in getting us rid of some serious paywall nonsense that the web is chock full of</comment>


Do you Like this Domain? - <AUTHOR> http://www.doyoulikethisdomain.com/

<comment><USER2> It's So Meta, Even This Acronym...</comment>


My iPhone Homescreen as of June 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://thegeekscompanion.com/home/my-iphone-homescreen-as-of-june-2012.html <comment><USER2> Why have both Due and Things?</comment>


How I Learned to Take the SAT Like a Rich Kid - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/opinion/how-i-learned-to-take-the-sat-like-a-rich-kid.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-5&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> And here I am in Argentina; getting into a public university, without having to pay, take exams or even have a good GPA in High School.

How expensive and competitive education is in the USA seems so alien to me; I wonder if it's really worth it. The only apparent benefit is networking and I'd dare say that only matters in Finance/Law. Am I really that screwed if I want to work at Google/Amazon/Whatever and I haven't graduated from MIT or Stanford?

<comment><USER3> _> Am I really that screwed if I want to work at Google/Amazon/Whatever and I haven't graduated from MIT or Stanford?_

The vast majority of Google/Facebook/etc. employees aren't from MIT/Stanford/Harvard/Berkeley/etc.

It's definitely much harder to get a job at these companies straight out of college if you didn't attend a big name university. 10 years later, it doesn't matter.

I got my undergrad from an unknown French university, and went to grad school at a large US state university with no brand name recognition (as is the case for many, many immigrants). Recruiters from top tier companies ignored me out of grad school, but after a few startups/talks at major conferences/open source projects/etc., I now work at such a company (and now recruiters are very eager to get some of my time).

<comment><USER4> > 10 years later, it doesn't matter.

Even a few years later, impressive work experience and open source projects should far outweigh what university you went to.

<comment><USER5> But getting you in the door for that work experience is key. Co-op programs and such can really help with that, especially if you don't have a lot of job- finding experience.

<comment><USER6> You can bite the bullet and work-for-almost-free (intern) and have a side job to pay your rent for 6 months, after which you should be able to score a full- time junior role.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I took my SAT scores from 90th percentile to 98th percentile by buying a book, doing a few sample problems every night for a couple of weeks, and reading the test taking tips in the back. Probably the most helpful tip was that all the math diagrams were drawn to scale.

The bigger benefit of all of this to me was the SATs as another example of how truly arbitrary the world seems to be, and how little extra effort is actually required to curb that arbitrariness towards your goals.

<comment><USER8> Even taking it twice is a huge boost, I don't think most folks even realize you can/should.

It's _so_ arbitrary, I bet the majority of folks would improve on their second test, but the only people who try are the ones who know about it.

<comment><USER9> I'm not even sure how many times I took the SAT (I think it was 4: at age 11, 12, and then twice in high school). I know I took the PSAT twice.

Granted my parents were both in public education and so were more in tune with what was possible, but we were by no means rich (see also: both parents were in public education).

I took it twice before age 13 in conjunction with [https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/](https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The "formula for success" appears to be: study. Is that concept so alien if you're not a "rich kid"?

Now, don't get me wrong: there's a clear disconnect in ability and means to prep. Even though there are cheap or free prep courses or materials, many won't be able to dedicate—for example—the time to cram or take Sunday classes an hour away due to jobs or family commitments.

<comment><USER11> Studying with that kind of intensity certainly is. For most kids "studying for the SAT" means doing 1 or 2 practice tests on a lazy Saturday.

<comment><USER12> I must echo the same sentiment as the GP.

It really all comes down to effective studying, and is _very_ accessible to all income levels. Just buy one or two good prep books, and get access to practice tests (I used only the ones in the books, BTW). I didn't enter into any SAT prep program, and always felt they were for people who did not know how to study well.

It doesn't even require much intensity if you do it right. For both the SAT and the GRE, I began studying 9-12 months before I expected to take the exam. I spent only a small amount of time a week on it (1-2 hours). The trick was to be regular and consistent. Towards the end, start taking practice tests. I got a pretty good score on the SAT and a fantastic score in the GRE (easily in the 99 percentile range).

No tutors. No prep programs. Just a bunch of books, and 1-2 hours a week. That's all it takes.

<comment><USER11> I would agree that it's accessible, but this doesn't make it any less alien. Most people I knew in high school (at a non-elite school) were barely even conscious of the fact that they would be taking the SATs 9 months before they did (they knew that it was something they would have to do, but it wasn't concrete enough to cause them to do anything about it). For most, studying _at all_ was something that only the more ambitious kids did. I'm not sure if there was a single student in my graduating class who spent as much time studying as you did, including some students who went to competitive colleges (there might have been but they didn't talk about it, the fact that people do this wasn't part of the collective consciousness).

Again, I'm just saying that for many students, reading this article would expose them to something that they haven't really been exposed to so far.

<comment><USER12> >For most, studying at all was something that only the more ambitious kids did.

So now we know the secret of poorly performing kids. Well, of course, if you want an ambitious score, you study. If you don't, you do not get a good score.

I think my other point was that it does not require a lot of study! I studied more for my usual classes in school than I did for the SAT/GRE. But if you try to cram it all in 3 months before the SAT, you're setting yourself up for trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The lesson here is that one element to career success (for it's own sake) is understanding how your performance will be measured, and then working specifically to 'score well' by those metrics.

Companies that understand this can craft incentives within their culture so that employee goals are aligned with company goals and both employees and the company succeed.

Companies that have serious problems, like an Uber or Theranos, are likely suffering from inappropriate reward structure, whether explicitly or implicitly defined.

The students who avail themselves of professional test prep are getting a life lesson in climbing the corporate ladder. This is one method by which wealth breeds wealth.

</comment><comment><USER14> Another thing that is only tangentially mentioned is that more affluent children can afford to take the achievement tests multiple times. When I took the ACT the second time in high school, my composite score went up 4 points without any extra study. I doubt many lower income kids have the opportunity to keep taking it until they get a good score....

<comment><USER12> Is it that expensive? It wasn't when I took it.

<comment><USER15> About $50 this year, looks like. For a couple of my friends, the money came out of their food budget.

<comment><USER12> Compared to college application costs, this is cheap.

<comment><USER15> Can't argue with that, of course. At my alma mater this year: $55 application fee, $150 enrollment confirmation fee (applies to tuition and fees for the first term, though), $185 fee for mandatory 3-day freshman orientation.

Of course, if you're rejected, you're only out $55 from that school, but last fall they had 50,000 applications and admitted 4,500 students, so you'd better do well on that $50 test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The real solution is to design a test that you can't study for effectively.

However, I suspect the study-ability for the SAT enhances it's predictive ability. Someone who does whatever it takes to learn some words for vocab testing will do whatever it takes to learn about sociology.

The truth is that standardized tests aren't less predictive for poor students. Whatever causes the score gap also causes an achievement gap once they arrive at school.

<comment><USER17> How do you design a test for which you can't study? Even if everything is laid out in the test with complete hypothetical knowledge (e.g. redefine addition for all real numbers from x + y = z to something else like x + y + (x/2) = z), you can still study for it by honing in on basic arithmetic and algebra.

This isn't meant as snark. I really don't understand.

<comment><USER16> The point of the tests are to test aptitude not knowledge. So if someone can spend 10 hours learning basic algebra and massively raise their score the test is failing at being an aptitude test, it's now a knowledge test. If the college wants to know how much alegrba knowledge a person has they can just look at their math grades. They want to know aptitude.

Some standardized tests have fairly narrow topics or have patterns in their problems that are learnable. Beyond just testing knowledge, these only specifically reward studying for the test.

The SAT used to have a set of "SAT words" that you could memorize for the verbal section. That somewhat helps your vocab, but only to the words used on teh SAT.

The ACT used to have a trick where the short answer of the grammar section was the right answer like 70% of the time.

The LSAT has logic game problems that can be categorized and then solved with specific techniques. If you learn the techniques you'll never get more than a few questions wrong. This is purely rewarding studying for the test. If a new type of test is used the techniques fail until someone creates new techniques.

If you just learn the five most common equations for SAT algebra your score jumps up but your math ability isn't much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "I realized that they didn't just want to score exceptionally well on the > SAT. They were gunning for a score on the Preliminary SAT exams that would > put them in the top percentile of students in the United States and make > them National Merit Scholars in the fall"

Huh. I took the PSAT ~20 years ago without even knowing what it really was. I didn't even know that was how I ended up a National Merit Scholar until I read this.

</comment><comment><USER19> I grew up in Bangladesh.

I had a 12kbps internet connection and access to used bookstores a 1.5hr rickshaw ride away from where I lived.

My parents can barely speak English and my dad was a cab (now Uber) driver in New York City.

I had no tutors. I didn't know anyone else prepping for the test. I studied alone, with test prep books I bought at $2 a pop and a $40 course from the college board I subscribed to only for the answer explanations to the questions in my pirated book. My test prep strategy came from googling "how to study for the SAT" and reading the multiple hundred page thread on CollegeConfidential about the "Xiggi method"

I scored a 2120 on my first SAT and a 2360 on my second.

People from disadvantaged communities suffer many challenges and there is real inequality. But standardized testing is too often bashed at the expense of the real systemic problems - that education outcomes are a holistic problem that require us to have better schools, better home environments, better food safety, better primary education, better internet access. The government should actively play a role in providing many of those things.

But test prep is not even close to being the problem.

</comment><comment><USER20> When Americans talks about SAT or standardized test in general, I cannot stop thinking about The Rise of Meritocracy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy) it was a dystopia, but it became daily reality in the USA.

Those tests are not meritocracy, they are a farce of meritocracy.

<comment><USER21> ... cuz standardized testing isn't commonplace everywhere.

<comment><USER20> Not in continental Europe for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The SAT is a pretty silly test. When it was out of 2400 I took it for the first time and got a 1800. I studied for literally a week and increased my score to 2100, which isn't really that good, but a testament to how "studyable" the test is.

If education in this country was worth anything the SATs would be unnecessary.

<comment><USER23> Did they change the score again? I thought they just changed it to being out of 2400 but it's not anymore?

<comment><USER24> Yes, it is back to 1600.

[http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/living/sat-test-changes- school...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/living/sat-test-changes-schools/)

 _The test will shift from its current score scale of 2400 back to 1600, with a separate score for the essay. No longer will test takers be penalized for choosing incorrect answers._

<comment><USER25> Is it the writer being confused, or did they add a penalty for incorrect guesses for a few years? I took it in 2010 and am quite confident that AP tests were the only thing doing that at the time.

<comment><USER9> When I took the SAT in 1982, 1983, and twice in the late 1980s, there was a (statistically fair) penalty for wrong answers.

It was set such that if you could eliminate even one answer as "surely incorrect", it became advantageous to guess among the rest of the choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My SO is a teacher and is proctoring the SAT tomorrow. Our state mandates that all students take it free of charge in their junior year as a general aptitude test used for funding decisions and lots of other stuff. So there are a lot of students taking it together on a single day during class time. The school also provides the PSAT and requires all juniors to take it (paid by the school district only). Students are assigned to rooms based on their last name, alphabetical order and all that. When they gave the PSAT in the fall, it was ... eye opening. I never considered the possibility of a fight breaking out _during_ the test, let alone the 3 that broke out in my SO's proctoring session. How do you control for desks being thrown about during the math section? (Yes really). The reason was that the boys were bored after just writing their names and doing nothing for 4 hours (no phones or books are allowed) and then they started fighting as boys do. The loudness of the room in general is also a factor to control for, as the students that are sitting- for but not taking the test tend to chit-chat and try to hit on each other, as bored teenagers are want to do.

Richer areas don't just have studying to help them out, they also have a ... cultural... sense that one should not draw blood or try for a date during these tests.

</comment><comment><USER27> > I only wish that more lower- and middle-income peers knew how to pursue such > aggressive strategies.

But isn't exclusion one of the goals of these standardized tests? To "weed out" those who can't afford to and/or don't know how to get such high scores? If anyone could attain a high score on the SAT, SAT II, and ACT tests, ivy league schools might need to come up with another way to determine whether or not applicants come from wealthy homes.

<comment><USER28> Eh, not especially fair. The SAT is harder to study than most of the claims here suggest, and they already have your zip code and extracurricular list. Those are a much better proxy for wealth than the SAT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I grew up in a SuperZIP and I resent this article revealing our precious secrets.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ah, the PSAT. Because one high-pressure standardized test isn't enough.

<comment><USER31> Not necessarily. My circle of friends took the PSAT, but skipped the SAT.

<comment><USER30> Sure, but why? Why isn't there just one test? Why are merit scholarships handed out for PSAT results and not SAT results? I can't see any compelling reason other than making more work for the College Board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >I couldn't afford a $3,000 40-hour prep course or tutor.

If you aim for an elite college, you should be an autodidact anyway. You should be able to teach literally everything you want yourself, using only resources like the internet and books. Because trust me, nobody will help you with that integral that spans one page and you just can't resolve. Or help you find that annoying bug in your program. You're all alone. But you can resolve it all if you invest enough time. And at the end of the day, at your workplace, you will never have trouble with the challenges they throw at you.

<comment><USER33> How is it down there in Galt's Gulch?

<comment><USER32> I also enjoy my stay in sarcasm town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Note that research shows SAT prep only increases scores by about 30 points, according to an old yummyfajitas comment that I searched for which links to this paywalled article.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html)

My suspicion is that a lot of beliefs about the efficacy of SAT prep are from customers that also observe age-related improvements.

<comment><USER35> > Note that research shows SAT prep only increases scores by about 30 points

Simply retaking the test increases scores by 15 to 29 points.

[https://psychsocialissues.com/2011/07/20/sat-the-validity- an...](https://psychsocialissues.com/2011/07/20/sat-the-validity-and- reliability-and-its-effect-on-cultural-and-racial-minorities/)

<comment><USER36> Increased mine by 120 points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Most took the SAT cold.

This really bothers me. Obviously most people can't afford expensive prep classes, but it doesn't cost much to buy your children a few practice books. Back when I took the SAT, the Barron's book was great, and I got most of my value from that. This is just poor parenting.

<comment><USER35> Waiting till your senior year is poor parenting. Taking it cold before that, assessing the results, and deciding if further investment is necessary before retesting is intelligent.

<comment><USER37> Why not just take some practice tests and assess then, as opposed to waiting for the real thing? You'll get a very good idea of where you stand and save yourself the pain of having to retake it again in the future when you get a first score that's certainly suboptimal relative to your potential.

<comment><USER9> Testing under the real conditions for practice will make the next testing session be familiar; you'll know exactly what to expect, etc.

Taking a practice test at home or on the computer is different from taking a real test at the test site. IMO, it's not that much pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> with 'rich kid' levels of prep, how much can one reasonably expect scores to increase vs baseline?</comment>


Trying out the new Vulkan graphics API on PowerVR GPUs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/trying-out-the-new-vulkan-graphics-api-on-powervr-gpus

<comment><USER2> So would this help older games with updated drivers, or only for newer games that use this new version? I have a Windows tablet with a dual-core Atom and a PowerVR GPU and it performs worse in 3D graphics than my pre-iPad netbook with a single core Atom and Intel GMA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Companies would create a separate Vulkan driver that would live alongside the OpenGL ES driver; the article mentions some of the advantages in terms of performance and stability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The CPU usage drop is impressive, and great news for embedded devices.</comment>


Guy makes $100K a year off a virtual island he bought for $26K - <AUTHOR> http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/the-world-s-most-expensive-island-online/1389891

<comment><USER2> Quote: "But for all the buzz around virtual goods, you might still wonder why people are willing to pay for things that don't really exist." I would think they are paying for expectations of a level of entertainment. It's an excellent method of generating revenue compared to a subscription service. It also has a built in "affiliates" program with developers working on their own virtual goods for the site.</comment>


Control as Liability - <AUTHOR> https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/05/09/control_as_liability.html <comment><USER2> > Voluntarily giving up control, and voluntarily taking steps to deprive > oneself of the ability to do mischief, does not come naturally to many > people

Nor to the author, himself, clearly.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is quite a bizarre article coming from someone who exerts virtually complete control over the rules in Ethereum.

<comment><USER4> Well, yes. Central control over rules is not good. But this article adresses central control over data, which is another thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with Vitalik on this. It's the reason comma.ai / hotz can practically give away lane assist capability for existing cars. No control / open source. Will help in other spaces suffocated by regulations on users data such as healthcare. Make a distributed / patient controlled system for hosting patient data that you don't control, and maybe it doesn't have to worry about hippa. Build a distributed white pages for people that want more targeted advertising and maybe you don't have to worry about gpdr.

</comment><comment><USER6> Control as Liability .... unless you are the government!</comment>


Ask HN: How would you create a utility to open a custom file format? - <AUTHOR> What's the easiest language to use if I need to convert an arbitrary file format into variables in memory? (assuming there is no existing library)
Are there any languages that really lend themselves to this problem?
The data is very heterogeneous (think: underspecified file format spec with multiple independent vendors) with a header that is lots of text labels, and a body that is numeric data of variable bit depth, numeric types. <comment><USER2> I used C, and also FUSE.

I wrote utilities to mount and access old Disk Operating Systems from 8-bit computers of the 1980s. (Floppy filesystem, and hard disk filesystem).

You also need a good working knowledge of the file format, whether you obtain that from documentation, or by disassembling working utilities that know that file format, or just plain old digging and trial and error.

That's valid whether you're looking at just a single file's format, or whether you're talking about the workings of a complete filesystem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably whatever language you're using for the rest of the project. Of course it's most straightforward to do in C but most higher level and/or scripting languages provide some sort of API for dealing with binary data because they often need to interface with low-level C code.

For example Python has the struct library which is fairly easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER4> Really what would be nice is something like format strings for binary. Or _something_ that could let you describe binary structures in a formal way. Almost any reasonable programming language will let you push bytes around.

<comment><USER3> That's essentially what Python's struct module does.</comment></comment>


Show HN: 2M fully loaded concurrent WebSockets - <AUTHOR> https://oatpp.io/benchmark/websocket/2-million/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the good old days when an IBM 360 running CICS could support 13,000+ terminals with just 16 MB of RAM.

I thought shoehorning was a microcomputer thing until I found out about that!

<comment><USER3> Is there a URL that talks more about how CICS pulled that off?

<comment><USER4> 3270 terminals are block mode, so there's less state for the server side to deal with as compared to a typical Unix terminal.

I'm sure there's more clever stuff, but that does help a lot.

<comment><USER2> It's actually not that different from a traditional (pre-AJAX) HTML forms web app.

That is the mainframe would send out a burst of data to draw a screen on the terminal, the user would fill out the fields, then the user would hit a button that sent the field content back to the mainframe.

Thus the mainframe did not so have to handle an interrupt for each character but instead just one for the whole form.

<comment><USER3> Ah. Thanks guys.

<comment><USER2> I'll fill in some more things.

They didn't have the bloat back then that we have these days, like the crazy deep call stacks you see in both object-oriented and functional programming.

CICS programs were frequently written in assembler, sometimes COBOL and PL/I. Mainframe compilers from the early 1970s were much more advanced in many ways than the Unix/C technology described in the Dragon Book.

The mainframe did I/O through channel processors which were quite expensive in themselves, but offloaded a lot of work.

CICS did many things that operating systems do in user space. IBM never did produce a "ring to rule them all" operating system for the 360 series, but with the 370 some academics figured out how to run multiple operating systems in virtual machines. So CICS could run in a VM with the minimal OS that it needed.

Mainframe systems had the source code for CICS and the OS and usually used a custom build, so the kernel didn't have anything it didn't need.

The machine was expensive but cost effective if you used it efficiently, so people did.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for elaborating more. I think people who do performance work constantly rediscover or re-invent this (ie like the websocket post).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You may also want to check out:

\- benchmark project repo - [https://github.com/oatpp/benchmark- websocket](https://github.com/oatpp/benchmark-websocket)

\- oatpp framework repo (the benchmark built with) - [https://github.com/oatpp/oatpp](https://github.com/oatpp/oatpp)

</comment><comment><USER5> Your bottleneck might be packets/sec of 150k. Soft interrupt handling is likely getting saturated. If you tune your network (receive side scaling etc) for high packet throughput, you may be able to get the benchmark to find the application bottleneck.

<comment><USER6> How would you do that?

<comment><USER7> For UDP, this is an excellent resource: [https://events.static.linuxfound.org/sites/events/files/slid...](https://events.static.linuxfound.org/sites/events/files/slides/LinuxConJapan2016_makita_160712.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thought this was gonna be about elixir

<comment><USER9> Indeed the Phoenix benchmark with 2M concurrent connections [https://phoenixframework.org/blog/the-road-to-2-million- webs...](https://phoenixframework.org/blog/the-road-to-2-million-websocket- connections) was on a 40core/128gb machine but the load was a pretty realistic "real world" use case.

If @lganzzzo's oatpp can indeed handle 2M concurrent on 8core/52GB with _presence_ and real data being communicated/broadcast it would be worth looking into.

We use Phoenix for a number of projects and in addition to handling lots of Websocket connections it's a fully featured framework with an excellent workflow, expressive ORM and seamless DevOps.

Seems like oatpp has been built with a single purpose in mind (similar to Redis). Always good to see people diving deep into a topic to push the boundaries of the state of the art.

<comment><USER10> I'm very interested in the "seamless DevOps" part. Could you point me to some link describing how you manage to achieve that with phoenix ? (do you use docker + kubernetes, or OTP, or something else ?)

<comment><USER11> Have a look at distillery for building Elixir releases, and edeliver for deployment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The memory seems high actually, I've seen other C / C++ / Go implementation using less than a 1GB for 1m connections. Pretty cool nonetheless!

[https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets](https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets)

[https://speakerdeck.com/eranyanay/going-infinite- handling-1m...](https://speakerdeck.com/eranyanay/going-infinite- handling-1m-websockets-connections-in-go?slide=35)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, In this benchmark I decided to go without much of the framework tuning. Mostly took it as is in order to see what I can get. In any case oatpp is general purpose web framework, it is understood that dedicated libraries like uWebSockets may be more optimized. Nevertheless I beleve it's still much space for tunning and optimizing of oatpp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> @lganzzzo great work! (bookmarked for further reading...) out of curiosity, did you consider using Rust for this before using C++? or did you dive strait into C++?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey @nelsonic,

Thanks for the question!

I dived straight into C ++ because I had some groundwork written in C ++ from my previous projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Get your credit card or your infra ready, whichever applies... someone seating here with me is about to max out botnet rush to you

<comment><AUTHOR> :)) My infra is $15/Month instance running oatpp server

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anybody have real world experience (and maybe data) for websockets when used in a mobile environment (with a lot of dropped connections)?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm confused. If there are 20M clients and the server is sending 9M messages per minute, doesn't that mean that each client is sending less than 1 message per minute?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not 20M, but 2M fully loaded sockets... about 1 message per 13sec per Connection

<comment><USER16> I might of missed it, but didn't see in the article any mention of multiple IPs or NICs isn't the theoretical maximum 65k ports per IP?

<comment><USER17> No, the tuple includes source ip and port as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Network benchmarks between EC2 nodes and from EC2 to S3 - <AUTHOR> http://info.rightscale.com/2007/11/29/network-performance-in-ec2-and-s3

<comment><USER2> Summary: Max bandwidth needs multiple connections

Large instance (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each):

     EC2 -> EC2  HTTP  : 96 MB/sec (75 for 1 connection)
     EC2 -> EC2  scp   : 40 MB/sec (30-40, possible CPU bottleneck)
     S3  -> EC2  HTTPS : 50 MB/sec (12.6 for 1 connection)
     S3  -> EC2  HTTP  : 52 MB/sec (10 for 1 connection)
     EC2 ->  S3  HTTPS : 54 MB/sec upload (7-12.6  for 1 connection)

<comment><USER2> CPU info:

     Small Instance : 1x 2.6 GHz Dual-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2218 HE w/1024 KB cache
     Large Instance : 2x 2.0 GHz Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 270 w/1024 KB cache
     Extra-Large    : 4x 2.0 GHz Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 270 w/1024 KB cache

...but since each dual-core shows up once instead of twice in /proc/cpuinfo, instead of getting 2, 4, or 8 actual cores I think it's 1, 2, or 4. Not sure if this means on e.g. the Large you get 1 core on each of 2 CPUs, or both cores on 1 CPU (which could matter in the case of shared cache and also for memory access).

"2 compute units" means a 2 GHz core instead of 1 GHz, not 2 separate cores. So I suppose on the Small you get half of one 2.6 GHz core.

BTW, for Python people, you can use Python tools to access AWS (instead of the official Java tools): [http://jimmyg.org/2007/09/01/amazon-ec2-for-people-who- prefe...](http://jimmyg.org/2007/09/01/amazon-ec2-for-people-who-prefer- debian-and-python-over-fedora-and-java/)</comment></comment>


Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/SPQ2010.pdf <comment><USER2> This piece totally avoids the basic fact that both liberalism and atheism are a trend among intellectuals, so to be accepted into those circles many times one is A) inundated with a liberal and Atheist culture and B) must accept it to be considered valid among their peers. To not deal with this in the paper is a gross oversight due to the fact that the trend of the two has been strong since Marx and Nietzsche. The fact that liberalism and atheism exist in intellectual society can be as easily explained by cultural trend issues as it can be explained by the fact that intelligent people believe in it. To negate and absolutely leave out that their is a cultural trend at work invalidates the entire piece because it is a huge motivating factor in human influence and it is not cared for. The fact of the matter is there is group think at all levels of society, intellectuals may think they are not affected by it and some may not be, but the reality is their are trends among all groups and liberalism and atheism are trends among intellectual circles. This is junk and most likely self validating junk.

</comment><comment><USER3> i am generally regarded as an intelligent person, but i personally believe that intelligence is a highly overrated quality. speaking generally, being surrounded by intelligent people is "better", but if i ask myself, i'd rather have my girlfriend faithful, sweet and caring, my friends funny and reliable and my co-workers expert and easy-going because being stuck in an office with an intelligent moron 8 hours a day is not something i wish for myself.

so, while it is obviously better to have a friend fun AND intelligent or a girlfriend sweet AND intelligent, in the end pure smartness is never the first quality i look for in people.

<comment><USER4> to me intelligence is something that's worth to the one who has it, meaning he'll be able to better interpret the reality that surrounds him and will have more power to adapt/readapt/understand things around him so that he doesn't live a miserable life...

for example, not being a ignorant miserable prick like Frank Miller: <http://frankmillerink.com/2011/11/anarchy>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> this shit belongs on reddit, not HN</comment>


Photographer Loves Math, Graphs Her Images - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/pl_arts_found/

<comment><USER3> The delicate graphs over low-contrast, well-shot photos are so beautifully subtle. And the typographer in me loves the equally understated equation captions.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikkigraziano>

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a strange project to me. With just a little effort, you can really make equations that almost perfectly model any curve you find in a photograph.

What's so notable about this? I guess the pictures are pretty.

<comment><USER5> I agree, I really like the idea but the 2D ones seem a bit forced to me - <USER2> that aesthetic. The 3D ones on the other hand are beautiful and have a much more natural feel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an amateur photographer, I have often noticed how the best nature images are often of curves, or other geometrical shapes with some amount of symmetry. Lines that converge to the corners or lead the eye towards the intended focal point are another good example. Seeing function curves overimposed on natural curves tells the observer explicitly of the underlying harmony in nature and in math, which we all perceive, consciously or not.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+1%2F10%28ln%28x%2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=graph+1%2F10%28ln%28x%29%2F2%29%5Esin%28x%29+from+16.5+to+27)

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool. Is there software that can create a Fourier series that matches the contour exactly, e.g. the contour of the mountain tops in the third pic?

<comment><USER9> s/mountain tops/piles of snow in a parking lot/

Yer not from around these parts, are ya? ;)

<comment><USER8> :) oops.</comment></comment></comment>


How much should I pay a startup laywer? - <AUTHOR>

I would like to incorporate a company in US. I am wondering what would startup founders typically pay to a startup lawyer to incorporate in Delaware + California and setup necessary documentation for the seed financing?. Does $5k sound like a lot? <comment><USER2> $5k sounds like a lot for that, there's a blog post around describing the whole process to incorporate in Delaware around, try to use HN search to find it, I'm on my tablet now and can't look for it, but I believe the whole procedure was under $2k, there are lawyers specialized in this.

P.S. sorry for my english, not a native speaker.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a lawyer in the US but have worked in the legal field overseas. $5000 is a lot for legal fees to set up a company. $1000 - $3000 is reasonable (inclusive of outlays i.e. registration costs, taxes etc.).

</comment><comment><USER4> We spent roughly $3K including fees, which were nearly $900 of the total cost. If you want an intro, let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Vrikhter - would love an introduction to your lawyer if possible azifali at gmail.com is my email id..

Thanks in advance!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> $5k is pretty reasonable in my experience</comment>


Suck It Dudes. Science Proves Women Are Better Coders. – Gizmodo - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/suck-it-dudes-science-proves-women-are-better-coders-1758825800 <comment><USER2> This article flat out does not belong on hackernews. It blatently violates not only the guidelines but the culture and values of this place.

I have noticed that this kind of content (inappropriate, not geneder related) is appearing with increasing frequency. I have said it before, this website turns up when you Google "Reddit alternatives." Corrective action is needed if this website is to remain a refuge for intellectuals.

</comment><comment><USER3> Actual Paper title: Gender differences and bias in open source: pull request acceptance of women versus men

Gizmodo article title: Suck It Dudes. Science Proves Women Are Better Coders.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, the title is kind of sexist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dont think this kind of articles belong to hackernews</comment>


Dangerous Knowledge (documentary): Cantor, Boltzmann, Godel and Turing, genius and insanity - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8492625684649921614&q=dangerous+knowledge&total=351&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

<comment><USER2> Ugh, not this tired old trope again! Cantor was a troubled man, but he solved the fucking problem, ok? Pitying him because infinity "drove him insane" is like pitying St George's loss to the dragon. It's not just wrong, it's insulting.

<comment><USER3> Cantor made a major contribution. But his set theory did not solve everything. There were contradictions and paradoxes lurking. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor#Paradoxes_of_set_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor#Paradoxes_of_set_theory))

<comment><USER2> My point is that his work didn't drive him mad. This heroic Promethian myth about "dangerous knowledge" is as tiresome as it is false. These Hollywood types need a new stereotype to beat to death.

<comment><USER3> Ah, OK. I agree. So I guess his madness drove him to work instead.

Actually I live quite close to were Cantor worked. According to Google-Earth I would have to drive for 1h.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Articles on co-founder equity issues and splits - <AUTHOR>

I've been spending a bit of time researching information about Co-Founder equity scenarios as well as how to find the right Co-Founder. Some  links below I found helpful.
The only wrong answer is 50/50: Calculating the co-founder equity split http://www.geekwire.com/2011/wrong-answer-5050-calculating-cofounder-equity-split/
Foundrs Calculator http://foundrs.com/
The Founders Pie Calculator method http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fd0n/35%20Founders%27%20Pie%20Calculator.htm
How much a non-technical co-founder should receive? http://blog.nahurst.com/how-much-equity-a-technical-cofounder-should
High Tech Startup Valuation Estimator (More for fundraising, but good things to think about) http://www.caycon.com/valuation.php <comment><USER2> Joel [Spolsky]'s Totally Fair Method to Divide Up The Ownership of Any Startup:

[http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a- new-s...](http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/6949/forming-a-new-software- startup-how-do-i-allocate-ownership-fairly/23326#23326)

Fred Wilson's support for it:

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder- and-...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder-and-employee- equity.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://foundrs.com/> is interesting. I appreciate these types of tools are to be taken with a grain of salt but I wonder how accurate the likes of PG would consider it to be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it would definitely be interesting to get his take. But in the meantime making decisions with the best info at hand! :)</comment></comment>


AMD Discloses Architecture Details of High-Performance "Carrizo" System-on-Chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/amd-discloses-architecture-2015feb23.aspx

<comment><USER2> The AnandTech article is probably better: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/8995/amd-at- isscc-2015-carrizo...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8995/amd-at- isscc-2015-carrizo-and-excavator-details)

Calling Carrizo "high-performance" is interesting because AMD reduced peak performance to increase power efficiency. Below ~65W Carrizo's performance should be higher than Kaveri (although still lower than Intel) but at higher power budgets performance would be worse.

</comment><comment><USER3> I will be interested to watch how the hUMA stuff works out. Having 100% overlap in memory space between the GPU and the CPU can be useful. Intel tried to go there with Larrabee. Having a collection of specialized processors in the same cache coherent space allows for some interesting data flow architectures to be tried out.

<comment><USER4> Do they have a common MMU? Have they released information on how that works in practice?

I guess this must be a solved problem since there have been many systems with similar memory architectures, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's quite a challenge.

Cache coherency can also have interesting security properties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly, while reading, I couldn't help myself thinking about the "bullshit font" from one of yesterday's (or was it the day before) submissions.

 _prestigious_ \- _wealth of_ \- _new, advanced_ \- _substantial_ \- _true_ ... bleah.

</comment><comment><USER6> Impressive what they manage to do on 28nm compared to Intel.

<comment><USER7> If you forced both companies to use the same die size then AMD compares favorably to Intel. But on the leading edge of performance, AMD lags Intel by quite a bit (Intel was selling 14nm processors at the end of 2014, and AMD isn't planning to release them until 2016). It forces AMD to compete in other ways, because they just don't have it when it comes to raw speed and efficiency. Putting CPU and GPU on the same chip is nice, but I long for the days when AMD and Intel were duking it out and high end users actually had to debate which was better.

<comment><USER8> I wonder why they don't double down on Open Source. Their architectures, since the ATi merge, have been very creative, providing a lot of heterogeneous computing power but it seemed it was unusable unless you were using their Windows drivers.

<comment><USER9> In the videogame space, optimized drivers represented a competitive advantage with some drivers detecting a title and substituting a particular kernel. This edge is somehow lost when going OSS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's been difficult to take claims of "high performance" from AMD seriously for a while :)

<comment><USER11> They may not manufacture the highest-performing cores, but they have consistently provided the best performance for the price. Who cares who's fastest? The consoles went with them because they were fast enough and better priced.

<comment><USER12> AMD's problem for a long time has been power consumption. They have had the performance per dollar crown, but their stuff runs hot. Only place I ever see them is gamer market and some servers.

<comment><USER13> This somewhat reminds me of the Netburst era, when AMD's Athlons were in the lead while Intel decided to chase after high clock frequencies with much higher power consumption as a result. Then Intel went back to the P6 to produce Core, and rapidly overtook AMD.

I still hope AMD will make another sudden leap like that, to keep the x86 market more competitive, but they seem more intent on keeping to the path started by Bulldozer...

<comment><USER11> But you're commenting on a press release about how this architecture's main benefit is gains in performance-per-watt. AMD has a reputation for using more power right now because they slowed down to focus on unifying architectures. I think ARM has proved this strategy works in the long term. Everybody knows power efficiency is king right now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Did you know you can view source of images in Chrome? - <AUTHOR>

I just found this out by accident. Check out the following in Google Chrome:
view-source:http://cdn.backyardchickens.com/3/37/378cfe56_IMG_0001.jpeg
Interesting finding as you can view metadata of many images (think EXIF data on JPEGs). <comment><USER2> There are easier ways of finding EXIF data on images. But good find :)</comment>