Persistent Login Cookie Best Practice - <AUTHOR> http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/01/19/persistent_login_cookie_best_practice/

<comment><USER2> It's a description of how cookies work and why cookie heists are so devastating. As far as I can tell, the article doesn't contain any actual best practices. Furthermore, I think cookie stealing is a trivial problem and there is really only one solution: encryption.

The reason why encrypted connections are not the norm is a purely artificial one, because technically we could easily have the encryption aspect of HTTPS enabled by default, just as SSH does it today. We don't have that because browser makers and certificate authorities are happily running a money-making scheme that makes authentication mandatory if a site wants to use encryption. Droves of web developers and users have been brainwashed into thinking that encryption without an URL identity mechanism is somehow worse than having an unencrypted link.

However, this all has nothing to do with cookies, the connection is just incidental.

<comment><USER3> There is no such thing as meaningful encryption without authentication; it's like a car with an engine but no steering wheel. Encryption without authentication is, at best, a trivial form of obfuscation (it's trivial because everybody knows how to reverse it).

Certificates aren't an elaborate money-making scheme. They're the tie breaking vote between Bank of America and the man-in-the-middle proxy pretending to be Bank of America.

Key agreement without some form of tie-breaker (be it key continuity, web-of- trust, or anchor keys, which is what SSL certificates use) is a fundamental problem familiar to anyone who has ever built any working cryptosystem. Among competent engineers, this isn't a debate. If you think anchor keys aren't the right solution to SSL, the onus is on you to suggest a viable alternative. "Nothing" is not a viable alternative; key agreement doesn't work with "nothing".

<comment><USER2> > _They're the tie breaking vote between Bank of America and the man-in-the- > middle proxy pretending to be Bank of America._

I'm not suggesting a new encryption standard for online banking, I want better default security for otherwise unprotected web traffic.

> _There is no such thing as meaningful encryption without authentication; > it's like a car with an engine but no steering wheel. Encryption without > authentication is, at best, a trivial form of obfuscation (it's trivial > because everybody knows how to reverse it)._

In the context of my comment I was referring to the top-down cert authority structure (sorry if that wasn't clear), I didn't mean to imply that a webserver shouldn't have any certificate at all. I guess it comes down to disagreeing with you about self-signed certificates. I believe they would have been a good idea as a default mechanism for connecting to web servers and I still think they're way more secure than having nothing at all.

I believe that giving people exactly two choices, between cryptographic perfection and making transfers completely public, is wrong. And asserting that self-signed certificates are worse than no protection at all seems misguided to me. But in the end, you're the competent engineer and I'm just some guy posting inane comments on a message board over an unsecured link. And in any case, it's not like we'll change the way browser-based encryption works in the foreseeable future, so I kinda regret starting this whole discussion.

> _If you think anchor keys aren't the right solution to SSL, the onus is on > you to suggest a viable alternative. "Nothing" is not a viable alternative;_

I'm sorry to say this but I suspect you are, maybe inadvertently, attacking a straw man here...

<comment><USER3> Self-signed certificates do not solve the problem and it's fairly straightforward to see why: anybody can create them. How does a browser know to pick your real self-signed certificate from the one generated by the man- in-the-middle proxy?

 _Every single free and commercial web security testing tool already does this on the fly_. We are not talking about some complex, unlikely-to-occur threat. It's a pushbutton attack.

So... what's the point of a self-signed cert?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This system looks overly complex to me. What I use is:

Cookie = (user id, timestamp of cookie, random number, hash(rest of cookie contents, user password from database (in whatever encrypted form it's there))

With hash being something like HMAC-SHA1 with per-application key. Purpose of signing encrypted password together with all other data is to invalidate persistent login cookies when user changes password. Timestamp is there as to accommodate expiration of cookies in secure manner. This system has large advantage in that you don't have to store any additional data pertaining to persistent logins.

<comment><USER3> (1) I don't know what the value of exposing any plaintext in a security cookie is.

(2) I don't know what the value in having structured data, encoded or not, in a front-end security cookie; you are virtually always better with an opaque random number token.

(3) If you are going to play thermonuclear chicken with cryptography (point me to any code you wrote to generate and verify that token), I don't know what the point of a per-app HMAC key is; you are better off with a server-side per- cookie HMAC key.

(4) You haven't protected the timestamp, and so cannot do secure cookie expiration.

(5) The random number in that design doesn't appear to do anything.

<comment><USER4> Whole idea is that with opaque random number token requires having some database of valid tokens while this design does not. All data that this scheme exposes (user id, cookie creation time) as plaintext are probably going to be exposed anyway by normal operation of application or in metadata of said cookie. Timestamp is protected by the HMAC (which may not be entirely clear from my previous description).

And yes, the random number does not do anything significant and is probably useless. My reasoning was that it makes the structure of plain-text data slightly less evident from the cookie contents.

<comment><USER3> The reason not to expose plaintext in a cookie is not simply that it discloses things, but that it creates opportunities for bugs on the serverside.

Virtually everybody reading this thread would be far better served by `head /dev/random | openssl sha1` than by any other scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the dumb question, but I see some negative comment about this link ... so what's the good approach to implement secure persistent login in a web application ?

<comment><USER5> If you need to ask, I recommend starting with an existing implementation that has been vetted by security folks smarter than you or I.

I use Devise, based on Warden, for Ruby on Rails. Depending on your platform, that may not work for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> After many years of Rails (and other frameworks), I know now that I NEED to review the code of plugins written by folks smarter than you or I. I don't count the times I had to remove plugins from my application.

I use Warden and saw there was a rememberable strategy in Devise that I could use.

I also read I can secure the cookies to be only send over SSL. I was hoping some further explanations on that since Devise doesn't seem to do it.

<comment><USER5> That's true. And yes, devise doesn't do that by default. Basically, you'll want to have Devise (or better yet, all of Rails) set to only use secure cookies.

Unfortunately, most Rails apps run without SSL, so that's not going to be the default any year soon. At this point, you really do have to pay money for a good SSL certificate, or self-sign and then people have to click through an ominous-looking dialog to use your site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My favourite format for auth cookies is auth_tkt: <http://www.openfusion.com.au/labs/mod_auth_tkt/> it's widely supported, and even if you can't find module for your favourite language, it's pretty easy to implement yourself.

</comment><comment><USER7> _The cookie should consist of the user's username, followed by a separator character, followed by some large random number_

Why not just use a random number on its own? There's no reason I can see to bother with the username.

<comment><USER8> If you use a random number by itself, then you have to worry about possible collisions. When the cookie does not contain the username, you, the server, need to look up in your table to whom you gave the random number. This works, but in this case the attacker must create a random number and hope it collides with an existing one (even for significantly large fields).

However, if the cookie consists of a username and a random number, the previous strategy is no longer feasible. The Cartesian product of usernames and random numbers from a large field is too great a set to consider attacking. An attacker's only hope in this implementation would be sniffing or MitM attacks (which I should add are much scarier than brute force attacks).

<comment><USER9> The probability of collisions with 128 truly random bits is less than the probability of your CPU incorrectly executing a given opcode. And by that I don't mean an unanticipated logic error, I mean literally that your CPU is instructed to add 2 and 3 and gets 1029.

Once you push the odds of some event below the noise threshold of CPU error, it ceases mattering, because you've pushed past the point where you can't do anything about it anyhow anymore. CPUs are very reliable but their failure probability is not 0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why not just put the username in the cookie and make the user enter their password each time? If a user doesn't want to enter their password then they must not give that site much value.

<comment><USER11> That would only last one page load.

If you want links to work, you need a more-persistent way of being identified. That's where cookies some in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hate to be that guy, but...

 _tail -f /dev/mind > blog_

If you change that to 'tail -F', it will seamlessly pick up again if you replace (change?) your mind.</comment>


Marey's Trains - <AUTHOR> https://observablehq.com/@mbostock/mareys-trains <comment><USER2> _[comments below without realizing that the post is from about a year ago, and that the author might not be reading this...]_

That's really nice work, and I had always been curious if anyone had produced such a chart!

I note though, looks like you're using quite an old schedule as your input data, as the departure times of the weekday southbound trains in the plot don't match the current morning schedule (4:55, 5:25, 6:05, 6:15, 6:35, 6:45, 6:59, 7:05, etc) which has been in place for more than 2 years. Also on the weekends, it's missing the bullet trains (2 per day). Also for some reason if you select the weekend, the connecting lines between data points disappear.

Aside from that, really revealing chart! Interesting to see how basically trains can pass each other only at 2 stations: Bayshore and Lawrence. And the "falling off a cliff" effect for trains south of San Jose / Tamien is entertaining (though sad). One hopes that with coming electrification (will it ever arrive?), every line will be flattened by a factor, and new lines will be added (if what Caltrain claims about electrification turns out to be true). Amazing how a graphic can reveal these insights better.

Is it possible to add a function to output this as PDF or save the result as PNG? The tooltip prevents saving otherwise. Also to switch the axes and have time running along x-axis (which is a bit more traditional) producing a plot in landscape format? Then the distance north-south in also in an intuitive direction on the page.

<comment><USER3> This is my rewrite of a chart I made about 10 years ago (using Protovis, the predecessor to D3), hence the old data. Back then there were no baby bullets on weekends!

[http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/caltrain.html](http://mbostock.github.io/protovis/ex/caltrain.html)

If someone wants to collect the new data and send me a suggestion I'd be happy to update the chart.

<comment><AUTHOR> What did you use as the original data source? I've been poking at some GTFS data but there seems to be no obvious way to get distance traveled between stations (aside from as-the-crow-flies).

<comment><USER3> Good question. The times were published on Caltrain's website, but I don't recall where we got the distance data; it's possible the initial implementation and data collection was done by collaborator, Vadim Ogievetsky. Wikipedia has track distances:

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. I was actually looking at making a similar plot of some other Bay Area transit agencies. Good to know about the Caltrain distances tho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could make a 3D version of this chart with all the trains in a country, which would be more interesting because it can show crossings (the graph in the article shows crossings but you can't see if there are collisions).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently building a realtime Marey diagram chart for Sydney buses to visualise congestion and bus bunching, feel free to reach out if you'd like me to let you know when I've shipped a demo!

</comment><comment><USER6> What would be the major cost of running the trains twice as frequently with half the number of cars, especially outside rush hour?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably quite high as Caltrain runs into hard limits with their train control software, they probably don't have that many extra locomotives, and they still contend with freight traffic.</comment></comment>


The CEO of Reddit confessed to modifying posts from Trump supporters - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/news/ceo-reddit-confessed-modifying-posts-022041192.html <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027031)

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly - He should be fired for this. If Reddit was a real company, he would have been let go already. Being CEO requires that you keep ahold of your emotions and not abuse your power.

This totally calls into question the credibility of the whole site.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Angry "The _Donald" members accused Reddit leadership of modifying or > otherwise censoring their posts — which turned out to be correct, when > Huffman posted the following comment, confessing that it was him personally > who was performing the changes.

I knew this sort of thing was going to happen and stopped using most social media.

These new platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook etc are devolving into the same sort of ban happy in group out group tribalism you get on irc channels Where some clique has all the oper accounts and anyone who has even the slightest disagreement is banned.

I would rather use a much smaller bbs or forum that does not censor rather then a huge social media platform where anything you say could get you booted if it rubs the censors the wrong way.

<comment><USER5> > I knew this sort of thing was going to happen and stopped using most social > media.

As hacker news is the same sort of "social media" as reddit, you certainly haven't stopped using it at all.

<comment><USER4> most, not all. hn is a small forum compared to those others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So as well as editing text, now that reddit are doing their own image hosting, what's to stop them replacing/editing/manipulating images as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Article 11 of Reddit's user agreement states, "You are solely responsible for the information associated with Your Account and anything that happens related to Your Account."

This sole responsibility is predicated upon user content not being tampered with, except for removal for moderation or administrative purposes.

This act is unprecedented and not accounted for in their own legal agreements with users. User trust aside, does this impact their ability to enforce their user agreements?

<comment><USER6> That's a good point.

What's to stop a u/spez with rustled jimmies finding someone he doesn't like, then editing their comment in such a way that it suddenly becomes libellous? How could the commenter possibly prove that they didn't write that comment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get why this is such a massive deal.

Kids were trolling, he trolled back. Reddit is a fun site, what do you really expect?

Personally I think it's funny.

<comment><USER8> Because it undermines the integrity of literally every post on the site.

If the admins have the ability to modify posts and comments without any notice or indication, this opens the door to... \- Creating false content via discrete edits that violate ToS, allowing for false flag to ban a user/thread/subreddit \- Any comment or post used as evidence (ahem, e.g. Hillary Clinton's IT guy, mention of drugs or crimes, literally anything like that) now is called into question. Wouldn't surprise me if he now has to testify that posts were not altered if it is accepted as evidence, etc. \- Literally anything else where a verified identity post and people assume it is what they (the person) said. AMAs are basically the thing that took Reddit mainstream, so that is kind of a big deal.

<comment><USER9> >Because it undermines the integrity of literally every post on the site.

Maybe the posts on the site shouldn't be afforded the assumption of integrity? Trump's supporters have already taken over the front page with a constant barrage of false "news" stories and a fanatical devotion to defend them.

There's no reason you shouldn't apply the classic 4-chan disclaimer to reddit as well:

>The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It was pretty obvious throughout the campaign that mods were constantly battling a tsunami of political spam from all sides.

I suspect you don't have to dig very deep to find out that quite a bit of squelching was being done on several subreddits.

One needs to look no further than the spam that has made youtube comments a no-mans land of crass stupidity to see why a fairly broad brush of modding is req'd to keep some reasonable level of maturity.

</comment><comment> iso-8859-1 this post is more popular [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027031)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original article by Business Insider syndicated through Yahoo: [http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman- modi...](http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-steve-huffman-modifies- donald-trump-the-donald-2016-11)</comment>


Yale putting high-tech tests to its controversial Vinland Map - <AUTHOR> https://news.yale.edu/2018/02/28/yale-putting-high-tech-tests-its-controversial-vinland-map <comment> m-i-l Even if the map isn't authentic, to quote the original article "Archeological discoveries at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland confirm that the Vikings had settlements in the Americas long before Columbus set sail".

</comment><comment><USER2> It's always interesting to read about the intense reaction from certain communities to anything that disparages/challenges Columbus and his 'discovery' of North America.

As a European (and particularly, as a Brit) I tend to look at most of our 'explorers' as violent colonisers, and consequently have complex (but mostly negative) feelings towards them. It also seems that's the way the public opinion here is moving (at least in my microcosm).

Is that the same in the US? I understand it may be a little different, in that Columbus is so tied into the grand mythos of the creation of the US.

<comment><USER3> Columbus Day is a national holiday in the US.

<comment><USER4> It's effectively Italian-American Day.

<comment><USER5> True. Which is unfortunate because I'd like to think there are/were plenty of Italians and Italian-Americans more worthy of recognition. Dude never got to the mainland of the United States, sailed centuries before there was a United States, and didn't even sail for Italy.

<comment><USER6> Glancing through [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_Americans) and I found this Federico Faggin, widely known for designing the first commercial microprocessor.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The wikipedia page has a nice hi-res version of the Vinland map: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland_map)

</comment><comment><USER8> Saint Brendan of Clonfert discovered America. The rest arrived after the fact.

<comment><USER9> "Although the Irish had reached and even established a religious community in Iceland before A.D. 800, there is nothing to connect Brendan with this venture. Nor is there any reliable evidence to show that either Brendan or any of his countrymen had ever reached Greenland or America."

Source: [http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/brendan_saint_1E.html](http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/brendan_saint_1E.html)</comment></comment>


Strangest language feature - Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1995113/strangest-language-feature <comment><USER2> Here is my 2cents on top of all those!

This is a valid for-loop in JavaScript

         for (;;) {}

(Saw it for the first time in Crockford's jsLint)

<comment><AUTHOR> What can it be used for?

<comment><USER3> It's equivalent to

      while (1) {...}

and I've heard it referred to as a "forever" loop. It's a natural consequence of each term of the for being optional---skip the init and/or the update, and nothing happens, skip the test and it just always evaluates to true.

<comment><USER2> It is actually a forever/infinite loop unless you break out of it with code like this:

        var i = 0;
        for (;;) {
          log(i);
          i++;
          if (i > 10) {
            break;
          }
        };

In a way is recursion, it is equivalent to this:

        var i = 0;
        (function () {
           log(i);
           i++;
           if (i > 10) {
             return;
           }
          arguments.callee();
        })();

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about in C int i=1; int * p = &i; int x = 100/* p; doesn't even compile (why?)</comment>


Curl will now output JSON - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/03/17/curl-write-out-json/ <comment><USER2> I think if all command line tools outputted JSON, it would go a long way towards fixing the "ad-hoc parser problem" in scripts, and bring unixy shells around to a more PowerShell-like object-passing style. Passing plain text around is a great idea, but It's silly to restrict yourself to a single structural unit within that text (the "line"). We have better tech now.

<comment><USER3> It's nice but I don't think json is such a great format for it. The overhead of parsing it is incredibly annoying along with being unable to pack binary data which is what unix tools can deal with to some extent

<comment><USER4> i have 2 letters for you: jq

any tool that outputs json + jq => instant scriptability win.

<comment><USER5> Particularly if you prepend queries with try. jq likes to throw errors when unexpected things happen in your search or your data, and it may return "null". Using try instead returns an empty string.

When walking JSON structures to validate data I code each validation separately instead of burying them in blocks of if-then-else logic. I think this makes it easier to maintain and more obvious when dealing with data that for example may be in a list or an array of lists.

But yeah if you write golang scripts and want to shuffle data in and out of bash, jq is your #1 power tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No need to panic! You can still pipe it to gron [0] and recover useable output.

[0] [https://github.com/TomNomNom/gron](https://github.com/TomNomNom/gron)

</comment><comment><USER7> Note that this is not titled, "Curl will now format JSON". This will "Make curl display information on stdout after a completed transfer"[1].

[1] [https://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html#-w](https://curl.haxx.se/docs/manpage.html#-w)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm testing it, maybe I'm doing it wrong but I don't understand well if it's possible to show only the json output (and not both json and response body). I'm doing it with a trick:

curl -I -XGET -w '%{json}' [https://www.google.com](https://www.google.com) | tail -1 | jq

<comment><USER9>
        -o /dev/null

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is a step in the right direction, but still far from all the goodnes of PowerShell's Invoke-WebRequest . Not sure curl can do anything about it though.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do you still need to pass it to `jq` for it to be pretty printed or no, I couldn't tell from reading the article?

<comment><USER12> yes, you still need 'jq' for pretty print.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's nice.

</comment><comment><USER14> To bad this requires nightly.

</comment><comment><USER15> beautiful. thank you for this.</comment>


Kindle vs. iPad Displays: Up close and personal - <AUTHOR> http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=2722 <comment><USER2> I'm surprised the eInk particles look like rocks at the bottom of an aquarium. All this time I was led to believe they were uniform, like tiny spheres.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having used both Kindles and iPads to read things, I don't understand how people can think it's such a clear choice (see comments, etc of article)

It honestly feels like the "kindle is awesome" side of the clearly made up their mind people have some amounts of vision trouble which has gone uncorrected. I don't understand at a slightest, the feeling they're talking about, nor do several of the iPad owners of various ages I've talked to.

It honestly feels like the "iPad is a clearly superior reading device" group don't ever walk into the sun though. Honestly, even with the contrast controls, that shiny screen gets you in troubles in sunlight heavy situations. And really many don't get that the kindle _is meant to be used the same places books are_? So many people seem to not understand you need just as much light to use it then complain about the lack of light.

<comment><USER4> I think the "kindle is awesome" crowd are people who use a reader to read novels. The Kindle is simply almost identical to the experience reading a printed book. However good the iPad is as a reader, it is not even close to the same as a printed book mainly because of the backlight.

<comment><USER5> In a study by useit (Nielsen's group), they found reading the Kindle is slower than reading the iPad is slower than reading a book.

So, to say that using a Kindle is more like reading a book than an iPad strikes me as bogus. I don't understand how a backlight or not decides an item's bookishness. Certainly, neither has pages.

<comment><USER6> The only possible way it can strike you as bogus is if you have never taken both of them outside and tried to read them. If the focus group was conducted in an office, then the results are basically meaningless.

I use my kindle on my boat. 99.9% of the time I'm sitting in the sun reading it. I can do that with a book, and I can do that with a kindle. The iPad or anyother backlit screen is just not an option. I can barely see my cell phone or camera screen on the water, but I read the kindle becuase it is a fundamentally different technology.

<comment><USER7> I got bad reflections on my iPad just sitting on my bed. It's like holding a mirror up in front of your face, and you have to adjust it to not catch distracting things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Erm, this guy lost the opportunity to make a few hundred bucks with that post, because I want that microscope!

<comment><USER9> The image links to Amazon with what looks like a referral id in the URL if you want to kick him back a finders fee.

<comment><USER8> I'll do that, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And everybody should see why and how eInk devices (Kindle, Sony PRS, etc) are hundred times better tools to read books and papers.

<comment><USER11> Be careful with the word 'everybody'. Surely someone would prefer higher contrast, the ability to change foreground/background color, and faster page turning (without that annoying black flash) over crisper text.

Me? I still prefer print. Though I imagine that much like my preference for CDs over mp3s, my preference for print is doomed to die out over the next few years as the technology improves and I slowly get over my nostalgia.

<comment><USER12> I dunno, it's pretty definitive that emissive displays cause more eye strain than a book (and E-ink is _really_ close to a book). For any serious reader, eye strain seems likely to be at the top of their to-be-avoided list.

<comment><USER13> Eye strain is definitely antithetical to reading. That said, I'm not too worried about it with an iPad type device: I am looking at screens all day every day, and eye strain just isn't a problem.

Perhaps when I get older/my eyes get broken in more. But for now, I'd be fine with reading on something with an LCD - it really doesn't bother me.

<comment><USER14> I can surf the web for hours on end, but when I try to read dense text I find my eyes rebel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what the production cost of an iPad with TWO displays would be? The iPhone now has glass on both sides, what if the front could be LCD and the back E-Ink? Since E-ink is permanent, it could also be a great way to "personalize" your iPad with e.g. a custom design on the 'back'. Steve, are you reading this?

<comment><USER16> That reminds me of Pixel Qi, a display that's a mixture a normal LCD and E-Ink: <http://www.pixelqi.com/home>

<comment><USER17> It's not actually the same as E-Ink, it's still an LCD screen when in low power reflective mode.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The answer here seems straight forward enough: just get an iPad _and_ an eInk reader. Seriously, the eInk devices are great for replacing books (reading outside, avoiding glare, not caring about battery life), the iPad is great for internet/apps and augmenting the reading experience (eg. the way you can zoom and scroll so effortlessly makes reading those awkwardly formatted PDFs much easier. in fact you get a sort of entirely novel tactile experience)

<comment><USER19> Yes. You nailed it - I carry both of them with me 100% of the time. When I'm on the road, I _tear_ through books on my iPad in Hotel Rooms (Dark Light.) During the day, or while on the beach - the Kindle comes out and I also disappear in reading (Nobody in their right mind even attempts to read on an iPad in the sun - even with the Matte screen.)

And, best part of all - I have a MiFi (I spent many, many hours trying to decide whether to go with the 3G Ipad) - and I am astonishingly happy over the fact that I can now support the K3 (WiFi Support - Yay!), my iPad, my Laptop, and my iPhone with my 5 Gigabyte Capacity Sprint MiFi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's with the wayward "pixels" on the eink display, is that dirt or what?

I'll have to try a kindle someday. I had to wait for high resolution LCD because I am nearsighted and can literally see the pixel grid "screendoor" at HDTV resolutions on the desktop (even at 23" size) and it was driving me crazy - used a CRT until this year!

<comment><USER21> Those aren't really the pixels, they're the "phosphor" of the display. The pixels are behind the little blobs goo and are little electrical contacts that induce a magnetic field. When the field is one way, the pixels are dark, and vice versa. The field affects the nearby blobs of goo.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electronic_paper_(Side_vie...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electronic_paper_\(Side_view_of_Electrophoretic_display\).PNG)

<comment><USER22> Wait, E-Ink is literally a magnadoodle?!

I must bring a magnet to barnes&noble...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Additionally, the Kindle doesn't shoot beams of light at your eyes.

<comment><USER24> It bounces them, though. Sometimes from the _sun!_

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't wait to get my next kindle. The iPad is nice from the perspective of video and the like, but it is still very much a computer screen. The Kindle simply feels exactly like mutating paper.

It'll be really cool if Amazon ever figures out colour on the kindle.

<comment><USER26> _It'll be really cool if Amazon ever figures out colour on the kindle._

Actually, the display is made by eInk, not by Amazon.

There are color versions in development, last I heard they should be going in to mass production around the end of this year. I'd guess that Amazon will have a color version of the Kindle soon after the displays are available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> is anyone selling e-ink or even just transflective displays for laptops/computers/etc/ that I could use in my day to day work? most current e-ink stuff would be too slow for most things... but eh, for a second or third monitor I could use when reading things that don't change, it could work.

a transflective screen could also do the job... I had one of the little green OLPC jobbes for a while, and I really liked the transflective mode, though the device as a whole, imo, was fairly useless other than as a bulky e-reader. Still I'd pay money for transflective panels for my desktop, and I'd pay quite a bit of money for a transflective screen on my laptop.

<comment><USER28> Pixel Qi maybe, but 10" only atm, iirc.

<http://pixelqi.com/blog1/2010/03/07/diy-pixel-qi-kits/>

<comment><USER27> nice... that's almost enough for me to put up with a netbook keyboard, or at least enough to /look at/ netbook keyboards again. too bad it doesn't fit a thinkpad X series.

<comment><USER28> I bought a Samsung N210 for my mother which has a surprisingly good keyboard.

As a side note: IIRC there is a 10" thinkpad X netbook in Australia (for schools) and for a short time earlier this year, they displayed a 10" model on the lenovo website, so there may be hope...

A 11.6" or 12" version of the pixel qi diy kit would certainly be great.

<comment><USER27> Thanks, I'll look at the N210, but generally the acceptability of a keyboard is rather dependent on hand size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't know how much it matters what the screen looks like under magnification.

I think it's a matter of preference and which best suits your lifestyle; there are pros and cons of both.

</comment><comment><USER30> Now compare the iPad display with one of a PSP, then a TV, a CRT, an LCD, an XRAY film, a Chess board, a canvas, etc.

That's what I use the iPad for.

<comment><USER31> Well, yes, obviously the comparison is only informative for the "reading" application of the iPad. This is also the reason that comparing the prices and some other aspects of the devices is pretty worthless. But if you're interested in the differences in screen technology this is a very neat comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The simulated fibers on the Kindle's eInk screen are pretty incredible.

</comment><comment><USER33> Can someone fire one up on the iPhone 4 display?

<comment><USER34> Apple Retina Display: Under the microscope comparisons with 1G and 3G:

[http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2010/06/apple- retina...](http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2010/06/apple-retina- display/)

Discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1461213></comment></comment>


U.K. Said to Resist Full Disclosure on Trusts After Panama - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-14/u-k-said-to-be-resisting-full-disclosure-on-trusts-post-panama <comment><USER2> Brit here. I'd wager that the government are resisting full disclosure because it would implicate too many public figures. Cameron was the most public, recent example -- but there are probably many more.

The most amusing/frustrating part for me was finding out that the HMRC ( _our IRS_ ) itself is pulling a large tax dodge! They rent 25% of their office space from ' _CIHL Holdings_ ', based in Panama.</comment>


Bank error (404) makes restaurant manager the world's first ever trillionaire - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2443656/Bank-error-makes-restaurant-manager-worlds-trillionaire-offered-pay-national-debt-glitch-spotted.html

<comment><AUTHOR> As an aside, I once woke up to find my shiny new checking account (opened the day before) had a balance of $10million. At first I was all kinds of tickled, but then I realized the number was red.

Turns out Chase couldn't verify my address (I'd just moved) and their method of getting me to come in was to put my account $10million in the red. Admittedly, it was quite effective. I came in the same day and closed my account.</comment>


Scaleway Object Storage - <AUTHOR> https://www.scaleway.com/object-storage/ <comment><USER2> According to their recent meetup events, it shouldn't be a surprise if it is powered by OpenIO software ([https://www.openio.io/](https://www.openio.io/))

After their shitty Riak backed product, they chose yet another technology that, I hope, will finally let users retrieve their data after a few months. But still, not a word about how it works or why they chose that or another technology.

Maybe it's because they want to be able to let the product die in case of a technical fail, not communicate about it and blame the vendor, like they already did in the past with Riak.</comment>


Welcome to the New AWS AI Blog - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/welcome-to-the-new-aws-ai-blog/ <comment><USER2> We have recently set up a TensorFlow assessment function in AWS lambda, and got _very_ close to the maximum allowed size of a lambda function (250MB) with the trained model currently being 85MB, and the TensorFlow libraries and binaries taking up another 140 or so megabytes by default (<\- which we cracked down a bit, but that's quite a hack).

I feel like Amazon could do some work in this area to support users to use their own engines and not be bound to AWS AI Platforms and Services.

This could be as simple as publicly documenting the time lambda's stay 'warm' for and retain data in /tmp persisting through multiple invocations or some other examples on how an AI workflow could be implemented with popular custom engines such as TensorFlow.

Does anybody else have any experience in this regard?

<comment><USER3> I've hacked around lambda quite a bit (I think the compressed size of one function is a tad under the max allowed). My hacks I remember are:

\- Run strip all .so libraries -- many aren't stripped fully

\- In Python I manually deleted sub packages of numpy/scipy I didn't need

\- If you're loading large models at initialize, numpy load routines are _much_ faster than cPickle. Have it load at module initialization, not during each invocation.

I should really write a blog post about my experience with it.

At a certain point I decided I was doing something that lambda really wasn't designed for -- I'm looking at migrating off, but the current implementation makes capacity planning super easy. Provisioning 1000 machines with 1GB of RAM for 15 minutes every day to read off a queue isn't a trivial problem.

(Also, if anyone from AWS is reading, being able to limit the max concurrency of a single function vs account level limits would be super useful).

<comment><USER4> Just to throw this out there as another possible optimization, if you find that you're putting a big fat library into every function, one possibility is to run the library as its own lambda function. You'll be slowed down a bit by the network but it might be made up for by not having to constantly initialize the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quick slightly unrelated question: Does anyone have a comparison of using Google cloud services vs AWS for machine learning? I'm planning to pick one, and I was leaning towards Google Cloud Services because of the TensorFlow support and the fact that Google is big on ML, making it likely that it's something that Google will support and be good at. With this blog post, I'm not sure.

<comment><USER6> (Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud).

Both providers offer you raw VMs with GPUs and such so you can run popular machine learning frameworks yourself by hand. After that the three providers diverge a bit, and I've not seen a good writeup myself. Roughly:

\- Google has both a hosted TensorFlow (Cloud ML) as well as specific, pre- trained models you can simply use (Cloud Vision, Cloud Speech, etc.). For an easy to use interface, we have direct TensorFlow (and more) integration in Datalab.

\- AWS also has some pre-trained services (Rekognition, Polly, Lex) but for "obvious" reasons doesn't do hosted TensorFlow. Instead Amazon Machine Learning is a bit more like Azure's offering: "Put data in, wire up stuff in the console and hit go".

If you're really interested in ML, my biased opinion is that you'll be using TensorFlow. And as you surmised, we're committed to making TensorFlow the "best" ML framework and making sure it runs well on Google Cloud. Like Kubernetes, we're not going to handicap it elsewhere, but having it managed and accelerated for you, is extremely convenient.

[Edit for formatting. I also should have mentioned there will be lots of ML- related talks at NEXT in San Francisco in two weeks!].

<comment><USER7> GM for AI at AWS here: actually - we like TensorFlow quite a bit, too.

We provide a machine image with TF, MXNet and others pre-installed, along with Keras, CPU and NVIDIA divers, and other libraries for deep learning. We just added Ubuntu support too:

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/the-aws-deep-learning-ami- no...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/the-aws-deep-learning-ami-now-with- ubuntu/)

<comment><USER8> The challenge is always to get a lot of training data.

Are there (artificial) datasets that can be used that showcase particular fit for deep learning?

I think there is way to little research in building artificial datasets (using domain knowledge of course).

It might even be possible to run these generative models and have this type of data very soon.

<comment><USER6> ImageNet, GoogleNet, etc. are all image datasets for precisely this purpose. There's also the recently announced YouTube dataset and Kaggle challenge [1] and Google Research's datasets [2].

I agree though, the kind of _artificial_ / play-against-yourself datasets that the folks at DeepMind created for say Alpha Go are an entirely different beast.

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2017/02/google- cloud-...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2017/02/google-cloud-and- youtube-8m-challenge-predict-youtube-video-tags-for-a-chance-to-win-up-to-30k)

[2] [https://research.google.com/research- outreach.html#/research...](https://research.google.com/research- outreach.html#/research-outreach/research-datasets)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it frustrating for all the power they want to give me... that some basic service design is lacking.

Polly is a stand alone component but the reverse is closely bound up into Lex which is a conversational interface API.

Amazon has internally built an engine I could ask to convert an audio file in S3 into a text content representative of the audio file... yet I can only use Lex to drive a conversation via text and audio.

If AWS really want to give me the power of their AI tools. How about unbundling them?

</comment><comment><USER10> Very impressive. I am working in a cognitive computing book, and I am going to add a chapter or appendix on Amazon AI. A little off topic, but even though I self-classify as a Google fan and very much enjoyed working there as a contractor, when a friend asked once which technology company impressed me more I said Amazon.

A big win for Amazon is that so many companies already have huge data sets in S3. Having AI APIs 'close to' existing data makes it easier getting started.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am a complete noob to the AI space but I was wondering whether the following is possible (in AWS).

I have a million scanned images of court documents. Some are briefs, some are motions, some are court orders, etc... Given that I have images and their types, could I "train" the AI with these million documents to recognize a new image that might come in?

<comment><USER12> Principally, yes. However, the approach may be more nuisanced than that. If I were you, I would first pick a character recognition engine (which might have already been well trained) to convert the image to text. Once the text is there, that might serve as a better feature to classify the content. Furthermore, I had recommend converting words in the text to word-embeddings/ vectors using a suitable Glove or Word2Vec dataset similar to your content.

While there are many benefits of end-to-end training, I don't think it might be best suited for this case. This is because we already know that the only useful feature in the document is the text, and not the contours or textures. Theefore wasting neurons in your neural network to learn the wastefulness of this features is just waste of resources. Furthermore, you benefit from even a larger corpus of learned data, which the char recognition engine has been trained on.

<comment><USER11> OCR is my current approach. I am not really happy with it. The quality of OCRing leaves much to be desired, probably due to the documents themselves being haphazardly handled by the court personnel. OCR itself is a pretty CPU intensive activity and takes a significant time to complete for many documents.

Thus, I was looking for a more advanced approach.

<comment><USER13> What do you want to recognize?

OCR is a better understood problem than a general neural net, so I think it's likely easier to improve its quality that to superseded the quality with image-based recognition.

<comment><USER11> Ideally, I would like to get all the information from the page. Phone numbers, who is suing whom, case caption, etc...

With OCR, you get bits and pieces of information, but because I don't know what the type of the document is, it is difficult to determine where, structurally speaking, this information resides on a page.

If I could use AI to determine the type of the doc, I would know the structure of the document and I could then use OCR to pinpoint specific information on the page.

Most court documents are created from templates.

<comment><USER13> If your OCR is unable to recognize the characters on a full page, I don't think it when scanning a region either? Unless using full resolution of a full image is somehow too much for the algorithm in use. But then I'd just subdivide the entire image into regions, and scan them all independently. This is also a trivially parallelizable task, so you can throw many servers at it, if the time to get results is an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Production ready AI services are few and far and but Polly is up there. I am currently using it in a workflow as part of a IVR front end. Seeing good results.

<comment><USER7> Awesome - email me if you need any help: email@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do we really need a Mark Cuban quote in there though.

<comment><USER16> Dude he put radio on the Internet, show some respect. Plus, his doors open like ___this_ __

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know ML is the big cheese right now, but doesn't it seem like a bad use case for the cloud? Consider:

1) Training ML models does not require network access, which is one of the biggest competitive advantages of the cloud.

2) Training ML models is typically a batch process, which benefits minimally from the scale-on-demand model of the cloud.

Since the cloud premium is a significant exchange for the value that it adds, I don't see this being a big win for cloud providers. I can't help but think that if I were making use of extensive machine learning with continuous training, I'd have it training models on a local bare metal cluster statically scaled to my application's demand with minimal network connectivity needs. And then ship the serialized trained models to the cloud. The potential cost difference is huge.

<comment><USER18> > does not require network access

> benefits minimally from scale-on-demand

Neither of these is true when dealing with terabytes of data (or more, if you're working with image/video corpora). Many AI/ML problems have stages that are trivially parallelizable - if you can divide your problem into iterations where a subgraph of nodes communicates internally, then sends/receives updates to other subgraphs, it's very similar to an iterative map-reduce algorithm, perfect for networked cloud systems.

And as you're tuning your hyperparameters, you don't know what the performance characteristics are, and you will absolutely want to run experiments in parallel, until you find the right settings that you'll use in production. You'd need to invest in a LOT of redundant bare metal to have that capability. As Netflix puts it in this presentation, the key to effective machine learning is iterating often, and that means having a lot of parallelism to bring to bear. [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/machine-learning- netflix...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/machine-learning-netflix-2014)

<comment><USER17> Good point. I've worked with lots of local exploratory machine learning (R or Spark on a single workstation), and lots of stable applications that use machine learning processes that are no longer fiddled with, but I've never witnessed the transition between the two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How should I interpret their picture? Can I get an AMI with Keras preconfigured on a p2 instance? Because that would be pretty useful. I currently have a p2 instance (smallest possible one) that I spin up for training and the like.

<comment><USER20> Yes, the AWS Deep Learning AMI comes with MXNet, TensorFlow, Caffe, Theano, Torch, and Keras installed and ready to use:

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/the-aws-deep-learning-ami- no...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/the-aws-deep-learning-ami-now-with- ubuntu/)

<comment><USER19> Thanks, somehow never saw this. I guess this can replace the scripts from the "Practical Deep Learning" series for me then. I'll just use the vanilla Amazon Deep Learning AMI + a p2 instance :)

Quick Heads up in case anyone wants to do the same. The only European region that supports p2 at the moment is Ireland (I tried Frankfurt at first).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Has anyone used Rekognition? We're thinking about pumping traffic cam feeds into it in cities for vehicle counting but don't want to waste time if it's junk.

<comment><USER22> If you want to email me I can connect you with the rekognition team: randhunt at Amazon dot com.

You cannot currently count objects other than faces and bounding boxes for non face objects are not currently provided.

For the time being existing solutions in the opencv/tensorflow/MXNet realm might provide more of the result you're looking for.

<comment><USER21> Hi Randall, long time no chat! Hope you're doing well. Good to know, it's not really our core product mission right now, so we're not at the point of building something (like a tensorflow implementation). I figured it rekognition has what we needed out of the box we might just clip it on and see how it performs, but wouldn't bother if it's not there yet, I'd imagine over time it will improve. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I want to know if any of the pictures from my trail camera include deer. It sounds like Rekognition might be the answer for this.

<comment><USER24> Does your trail camera capture video or image sequence? You probably only need to analyse 1 frame every few seconds or less if you just want to get deer alerts.

I would go with a DIY solution, since Rekognition will get expensive quick ($1/1000 images). If you did 1fps running continuously, you'd pay $87/day.

Nearly any ML framework with an ImageNet pre-trained model will work. Accuracy will be better if augmented with more labeled deer images (ImageNet probably only has frontal poses) but should be alright straight out of the box.

You could run the whole thing locally on a cheap android phone for free instead of AWS cloud pricing, 1fps will be fine with TensorFlow or MXNet on Android. Then just setup email alerts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Mark Cuban recently talked about it as the most important technology to ramp up on, to avoid becoming a "dinosaur""

I wonder if this impresses this blog's audience, or does exactly the opposite...

<comment><USER26> does cuban actively invest in A.I startups? wondering what makes him a quotable authority on the topic.

<comment><USER27> > wondering what makes him a quotable authority on the topic

His wealth.

The obsession with cyber-malthusianism among the owners of tech informs me more about their valuation of humanity than about the future of tech. Fortunately there's a more level headed analysis that was published by the NYT recently for those of us that aren't consciously or subconsciiously all-in about the idea of making Snow Crash non-fiction [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/no-robots- arent-k...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/no-robots-arent- killing-the-american-dream.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The one time I actually want to subscribe/follow something there's no "Hey would you like to give me your email address?" popup... hmm

<comment><USER29> The link to the RSS feed is right down at the bottom ;)

<comment><USER28> I did see that, but that RSS feed (atom?) I don't think I've ever used that in my life. I'll Google and see what/how to use it. I see it everywhere though.

edit: I did see that they have a podcast, nice, something to listen to while I walk 2 hours in the middle of the night.

<comment><USER30> Ughh, you're making me feel old. RSS is (was) an amazing system for tracking website updates over time. It lost out to Twitter and Facebook (which don't remotely replace the use case), though it is still what makes podcasts work.

I highly recommend Inoreader as a great RSS reader.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the recommendation. I tried one, I am not quite sure how it works yet at least for that AWS one. One page was a full-article, another page was several articles in one, it was odd but thank you.

Regarding Blogger back in like 2011 or so, I saw RSS feed all the time at the bottom (usually still do).

<comment><USER30> Running a partial text RSS feed through here will often replace it with a full text RSS feed: [http://fivefilters.org/content- only/](http://fivefilters.org/content-only/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Running Docker on Windows Without Hyper-V - <AUTHOR> https://www.flawlessrhetoric.com/Running-Docker-on-Windows-Without-Hyper-V <comment><USER2> Your title is completely irrelevant. You must change the title to "Running Docker on Windows with Centos using VirtualBox".</comment>


50 best practices for email marketing automation - <AUTHOR> https://pipz.com/blog/50-email-marketing-automation-best-practices/?utm_source=hackernews <comment><USER2> Very useful tools! Personally, I'm a complete newbie in the email marketing world, but I reall want to learn to benefit from it! I've been currently working on my business email design using [https://www.templatemonster.com/newsletter-email- templates.p...](https://www.templatemonster.com/newsletter-email- templates.php) . Hope, I'll cope!</comment>


Ask HN: Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm slowly getting up to speed with Emacs, switching from TextMate. There are a lot of ways to use emacs on Mac, from Aquamacs to Carbon Emacs to the Cocoa port of GNU Emacs. I've dabbled in each a little bit.
I'm most interested to hear your thoughts on keybinding (and which Emacs distribution you use). I like the thought of keeping Mac shortcuts consistent a-la Aquamacs (having CMD-Q still bound to exit, etc), but it seems like the Option key is too poorly-placed to be a useful Meta key.
(I've bound Caps-lock to Ctrl.) It seems like binding CMD->Meta and CTRL as Control would provide the best placement ergonomically, but obviously you then lose the standard Mac keybindings when in Emacs.
What does your Emacs setup look like? <comment><USER2> I'm an old hand in Emacs and new to the Macintosh, so I use Cocoa Emacs.app because it's closest to the "standard" distribution, and override the Mac keybindings. I avoid using the mouse (those things are very bad for the wrists), so my .emacs turns the toolbar, menubar, and scrollbars off -- just a plain white screen.

I use a 25" widescreen LCD, and I like to jack up the font size until I get about 200 characters across; this lets me hold two 100x47 buffers side by side, which is how I prefer to work. Most of my interaction with the computer (besides web) goes through Emacs -- eshell, gnus, bbdb, calendar/diary, planner, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> I seem to be the only one here who likes how Aquamacs uses both Mac and Emacs key bindings. I find myself using both. There is probably some reason I sometimes use the Emacs kill/yank/etc. vs. when I use Mac cut/copy/paste, but I'm not sure what it is.

I also use Emacs in Windows and Unix at work, but I imagine it is sitting in front of my Mac that triggers the cmd key bindings in my head. Maybe it's just that, with Aquamacs, whatever key binding first pops into my head will probably work, so I don't have to worry about context switching so much.

I also agree that Option is the right key to use for Meta. I don't think I would ever get used to pressing cmd and not having it activate the Mac key bindings. Probably because I have been using Macs in some capacity since 1987.

The other "Mac-like" thing about Aquamacs is how it pre-bundles so many of the useful modes. Going out and loading each mode you want one at a time and tweaking it just so seems so Linux to me. I like how Aquamacs tries to give you something that Just Works for most of what you want it to do, instead of something more bare bones that you are expected to configure out the wazoo. I discovered both SBCL and Aquamacs when I wanted to learn Common Lisp, and Aquamacs coming with SLIME pre-installed made one less thing I had to fuss with.

<comment><USER4> I would be the same as that (I am tending to use emacs more over time, relearning things from yesteryear).

My only complaint is the startup time for me seems very slow - perhaps I should just have it running after startup ? (I then use spotlight/quicksliver to quickly open up a file in it).

<comment><USER5> Yep - keep it running all the time. Also look into emacsclient and emacs --daemon (with (server-start))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here are two setup descriptions from Clojure guys: [http://paulbarry.com/articles/2008/07/02/getting-started- wit...](http://paulbarry.com/articles/2008/07/02/getting-started-with-clojure- and-aquamacs)

<http://bc.tech.coop/blog/081205.html>

They are skewed to Clojure development, but you may be able to pick out a few tips.

</comment><comment><USER7> I long used emacs in X11, but recently switched to Aquamacs out of sheer laziness - not wanting to recompile emacs+gtk for my new intel mac. I've tried all the various ports, and Aquamacs is my favorite 'native' port, but I actually miss the X11+gtk build I used before. There's something to be said for an emacs that feels like emacs :)

I agree that the option key is no good as Meta - Cmd is Meta in my setup.

I absolutely override the Mac keybindings. I like having M-Q as fill- paragraph, and I found that other useful commands were being hijacked by useless OS X Text Services (like M-> for end of buffer got stolen by OmniOutliner)

I have a large 1920x1200 display that I tend to use with one emacs frame maximized, and some arrangement of windows inside that frame - most often I have a full height window on the left, and two half-height windows on the right. Sometimes I use three columns of windows, and other times four equal- sized windows makes sense.

One of those windows is almost always running zsh inside ansi-term (M-x ansi- term). Some prefer shell-mode, but I think ansi-term and zsh are more useful. I don't think shell-mode and zsh cooperate too well.

Most of my work is done in python, and I just started using pymacs and ropemacs, which seem useful. Notes on them are here: [http://www.enigmacurry.com/2008/05/09/emacs-as-a-powerful- py...](http://www.enigmacurry.com/2008/05/09/emacs-as-a-powerful-python-ide/)

<comment> tsetse-fly If you liked running Emacs under X11 then you'll probably like Carbon/Cocoa Emacs. There are binaries available:

<http://atomized.org/wp-content/cocoa-emacs-nightly/>

<http://aquamacs.org/nightlies.shtml>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bill Clementson has a nice write up on his setup that has more to do with how not to get hurt using Emacs that I have found very helpful. Not necessarily specific to OS X, but he has a few suggestions that seem helpful for OS X (like making the right apple key your meta key):

<http://bc.tech.coop/blog/041024.html>

<http://bc.tech.coop/blog/041029.html>

<http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060116.html>

<http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060131.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> I use Terminal-based Emacs exclusively. Couldn't stand all the "distractions" (bells and whistles) of Aquamacs. But, more importantly, with this mode I can use Emacs everywhere, including my servers over ssh, with exactly the same setup.

I bind Option to Meta in Terminal.app and that works very well.

<comment><USER10> I agree with Terminal emacs being available anywhere. I do miss the anti- aliased fonts that are available in Emacs.app, but I have to be able to start separate emacs processes for different projects.

Also instead of using cmd-c and cmd-v Mac key bindings, I do M-| (shell- command-on-region) to 'pbcopy' to copy the region to the OSX clipboard. It's a godsend.

<comment><USER9> But, but, but, if you use anti-aliased fonts in Terminal, you're all set in Emacs (as well as everything else).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Carbon Emacs : [http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/carbo...](http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/carbonemacspackage.html)

\+ Emacs Starter Kit: <http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter- kit/tree/master>

\+ yasnippet: <http://code.google.com/p/yasnippet/>

\+ paredit: <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit>

\+ Clojure mode: [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clojure_Programming/Getting_Sta...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Clojure_Programming/Getting_Started#Editors.2FIDEs)

\+ Re-mapped Ctrl to Caps. Carbon Emacs defaults Meta to the Command key, which I kept.

</comment><comment><USER12> I pull every now and then from git://repo.or.cz/emacs.git, and build my own with --with-ns. I was using CarbonEmacs, but multi-tty support is amazing. I have my main Emacs frames running, and if I need to pop into a quick session in a terminal, or SSHd in from another machine, it Just Works.

(Except the theme I'm using has very light colored comments, and I can't see them in 8 color terminal. Anyone have a suggestion for a 256 color terminal app?)

I don't use Mac copy-paste, etc, even though I was a Mac user long before I was an Emacs user. Using C-y and M-y reminds me of the kill ring everytime, where using C-v wouldn't. I _do_ have the clipboard synced to the top of the kill ring though...not sure if that was a default.

I use Command as Meta, and have Caps Lock for Control system-wide.

<comment><USER13> > (Except the theme I'm using has very light colored comments, and I can't see > them in 8 color terminal. Anyone have a suggestion for a 256 color terminal > app?)

We had this discussion just recently: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=443769>

BTW, why do you pull from git://repo.or.cz/emacs.git

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's mine: <http://github.com/larrywright/emacs/>

It's mostly stuff borrowed from other people, but it gives you a good starting point with Ruby/Rails support, Twitter integration, snippets, etc. I use it at home and work (Mac and Windows respectively), and it works well for me.

<comment><USER14> I just realized I only partially answered the question.

I use the standard emacs keybindings, rather than the more os-specific ones, since that way it's the same regardless of which platform I use. I use Linux, Windows, and OS X on a regular basis, so keeping things uniform works best for me.

On Windows I use Emacs Win32 of course, and on OS X I use Cocoa Emacs rather than Aquamacs. I played with Aquamacs briefly but it's focus on making Emacs an OS X app doesn't really mesh well with my needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Don't worry too much about standard Mac keybindings.

Emacs shortcuts will soon be wired into your fingertips and you will be efficient on any platform - windows, linux and mac. In fact, you will very soon forget about the platform and focus on your work at hand.

That's the reason old hands prefer to stick with traditional emacs keyboard interface. Dumping some Mac idiosyncrasies is a small price to pay for the freedom and power.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cocoa Emacs.app built from CVS - followed instructions from here: <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsForMacOS>

Scroll down to section 'Build from source' - note the comment to build from the 'nextstep' directory. I just followed the instructions in 'nextstep/INSTALL')

This is working for me, so far... a good way to get a 'vanilla' install.

<comment><USER17> Nightly Cocoa Emacs binaries (Intel-only) are available at <http://atomized.org/wp-content/cocoa-emacs-nightly/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Stay away from Aquamacs. It is for all intents and purposes, Emacs, but with all the useful stuff watered down in an attempt to make it fit in better with Mac OS.

My config is here: <http://github.com/wfarr/dotfiles/>

</comment><comment><USER19> One thing I find useful is the Its All Text! add-on for Firefox. It lets me use emacs as an external editor for any browser text area. Its ideal for blog entries, web mail or any filling in text in a small text entry area (like this one on HN!).

In addition to giving me all the power of emacs editing, getting the text inside emacs means I can more easily use templates, save stuff off in text files etc.

You need to start an emacs server in your .emacs: (server-start). I also (add- hook 'text-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode) so that I get spell correction. With my setup I just control-e in any text area and it pops open a new buffer in my emacs session.

<comment><USER9> But also note that, if you used Safari, you'd get the full Cocoa (Emacs-like) text subsystem editing facilities in any text field. It's a dream come try for Emacs fanatics. (My Emacs finger habits are now 30+ years old; scary thought.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use Cocoa Emacs.app. The only major keybinding change I've done so far (in 2 or 3 months of using Emacs on OS X) is Caps->Ctrl. Getting to alt/option is a thumb-contortion, so I'll probably try out Cmd->Meta soon. Only thing holding me back is the convenience of Cmd+C/X/V.

Cocoa Emacs /does/ have Mac shortcuts on by default. Not sure if they're all there, but save, cut, copy, and paste are certainly bound to the proper OS X shortcut.

As for Aquamacs, I tried it first, but had major issues trying to get it to accept my .emacs. It tries to save a ton of crap to custom-set-variables, including things I set via setq to keep my .emacs file logically laid out. It also tried to save my _entire color-theme_ to custom-set-faces, which is an idiotic thing to do; the color-theme takes up 1111 lines in a nice elisp file off on it's own - why try to stuff it in custom-set-faces?

Anyways, just a warning - you may have issues if you try to give Aquamacs a largish .emacs file you've built up over the years on other systems. But that's probably not a problem for you since you're coming from TextMate.

I use the same .emacs at work (WinXP) as I do at home on my Mac and Linux machines, and Cocoa Emacs played well with it with minute adjustments, so I went with it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I started off with MacPorts' Emacs 22.3 package and just used it on the command line. Eventually I moved to a portfile that tracked Emacs CVS, and finally settled on Aquamacs.

I've tried Cocoa Emacs from CVS, but it has one major problem that makes it unusable for me: no fullscreen support. The latest version of Aquamacs does this perfectly. I have an entire space dedicated to Aquamacs, and I send files to it from Terminal with emacsclient.

I too have capslock bound to control. I don't have any other keyboard modifications. I'm used to option/alt working the same in Emacs and every other OS X application (try alt+left/right/backspace/delete in an input box).

My ~/.emacs doesn't have a lot of OS X-specific settings. My favorite thing about my setup right now is having Pyflakes automatically highlight errors in my Python code as I write it. Flyspell in strings and comments is also great.

If you're interested, my ~/.emacs is here: <http://bitbucket.org/brodie/dotfiles/src/tip/.emacs>

</comment><comment><USER22> From Jim Weirich, of Rake fame:

<http://github.com/jimweirich/emacs-setup/tree/master>

Also, a starter emacs kit for rubyists:

<http://github.com/jimweirich/emacs-starter-kit/tree/master>

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm using the Cocoa Emacs.app cause it's most like the old Emacs, no new keybindings like Aquamacs has.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been using Emacs for 20 years, and fully converted my desktops to Mac last year.

I like Aquamacs OK with option->meta and caps lock -> control like you have. With that setup, it's a bit of a twist to get my pinky finger onto meta, but it's tolerable on my Microsoft Natural keyboard.

The biggest nuisance is that I can't figure out how to bind function keys. I liked having F2 = goto-line (rather M-g g) and F3 = compile.

After 20 years of Emacs, I've actually started to like Cmd-c and Cmd-v rather than C-k and C-y.

Also, the scroll wheel on the Mighty Mouse works pretty well in Aquamacs. Though you do have to clean the scroll wheel (by rolling it around on your pants) every few days.

<comment><USER25> Aquamacs has a solid fullscreen environment, and you gotta love the mac's text rendering.

First thing I did was swap to option = alt, command = meta.

Next was load up CEDET, and enable all the excessive display helpers. I'll eventually pear them down, but for now it's nice. Specifically, the header bar shows the current function/method body I'm in, and there's an overline over every signature.

Really nice to parse through large source files, especially when they're full of long definitions. Hey, no judging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I use CVS builds of GNU Emacs, they work great. Just check the source out from CVS and './configure --with-ns; make install' will produce an Emacs.app for you to drag to Applications.

The only problems I have is a bug where if you resize your window at least once, it will cause annoying flashes during redraw (but I almost never resize my emacs window, so that's not an issue) and that I would like more integration with the OS.

On the latter front, I already started calling NS services from Emacs (ns- service-Things-add-item-as-Note). This is very cool. What I'd like is more of an ability to customize what Emacs does when it is called to open a file.

I remap Caps Lock to Ctrl.

</comment><comment><USER27> I use Emacs on Windows, Mac and Linux, so I generally like the normal Emacs keybindings on everything. That way, it's equally alien/consistent on all platforms, and I just start 'thinking in Emacs'. I use Carbon Emacs on the Mac.

I keep my .emacs and a tree of elisp files (things like ecb, magit, slime, etc.) in my git repository, which I update and sync across the machines I use: this gives me a great deal of consistency across platforms.

One alteration I make on all platforms is to remap the caps lock key as a second control key: caps lock is useless, and the number of times you have to reach for control in Emacs makes it worthwhile making it easy.

</comment><comment><USER28> I use GNU Cocoa Emacs built from source. This port does the most common cmd-x,c,v,q etc, which helps me transition. I'm typing on an IBM Model M attached to my Mac, so I've mapped CAPS to Command to maintain that key. I'm fine with the placement of the ctrl and option keys.

My config is at <http://www.github.com/marten/emacs.d/> It contains a couple of useful fixes (such as Cocoa apps not getting the PATH var from the shell). It's got plenty comments. I should try turning more stuff into autoloads, I'm finding it on the slow side to start up right now.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm new to OS X (from Windows, mostly, with MinGW), but old to emacs. In my brief investigations, I have found Carbon Emacs to be the most friendly -- mainly because it makes no attempts what-so-ever to fit in with the Mac keystrokes, which suits me fine. Like most other people, I bind caps-lock to control, which I recommend whatever your platform.

Now a brief question of my own: is there any way to map command to meta in the apple terminal???

I know about mapping option to meta, but it just ain't the same, especially when I hit command-W hoping to copy text and accidentally close my whole frickin' terminal.

</comment><comment><USER30> I just have Aquamacs with all the default bindings. Then I installed ECB and all the rails goodies, of which I use very few actually! Flymake is the most useful as it highlights syntax errors without even compiling.

<comment><USER31> I also use Aquamacs and ECB. However, I just upgraded to Aquamacs 1.6, which broke my ECB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I use emacs in a terminal window for probably 75% of my editing, and textmate for the other 25- I have Aquamacs but couldn't get into the flow with it for some reason. I keep all the default keys for ctrl/etc, and it does help a bit that they newest macs have changed the enter key that used to be to the right of spacebar to alt.

While it's not really emacs, I generally do most of my development in Eclipse- but I change the keybindings to Emacs mode (window\preferences\general\keys). Makes eclipse _almost_ nice to use.

<comment><USER33> I tried setting IntelliJ IDEA to Emacs key bindings, but I had to switch back to the default bindings. With the Emacs-like key bindings my fingers automatically expected a lot of things to work that IDEA plainly did not support (like kill ring).

My preference when I am not using Emacs is to make a clean break so my finger macros don't run wild, often unintentionally pressing key bindings that do other things than I expect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are small differencies between my Emacs setup for Mac OS X & for Linux. You can find my configuration at <http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/common/emacs/_emacs.html>, and macosx-specific configurations at [http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/common/emacs/rc/emacs-rc-local- flas...](http://xtalk.msk.su/~ott/common/emacs/rc/emacs-rc-local- flash.lan.el.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> I use the native OSX emacs in the terminal with the fonts increased a fair bit. It loads really fast (~ 1 second) I tried Aquamacs but didn't like the fact that it was significantly slower when starting. I'm a new emacs user so I don't really see the need for all the bells and whistles the larger packages tend to offer. If I need anything I just install it from emacswiki.org. Also I found dotfiles.com quite useful for customising my setup.

</comment><comment><USER36> Emacs.app GNU Emacs 22.2.1 (i386-apple-darwin9.4.0, Carbon Version 1.6.0)

All my init files are check in to a repository at <https://github.com/jimm/elisp/tree>

See <http://www.io.com/~jimm/emacs_tips.html#my-dot-emacs> for how I've set up the repository for different machines.

</comment><comment><USER37> Question for everyone who binds the Caps Lock key to CTRL:

If you use the Caps Lock key as CTRL, then it feels pretty awkward for me to type some key combinations (like ctrl-x or ctrl-c) and still keep my fingers on the "home row".

Do you just get used to this? Do you type ctrl-x with your pinky and ring finger? Or, do you shift your hand away from the home row and type ctrl-x with your pinky and middle finger?

<comment><USER38> I use the Caps Lock key as a Control key, and indeed I type Ctrl-X with my left pinky and middle finger. (I realize that I touch-type "X" with my middle finger anyway. Is this unusual?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I run a vncserver (from MacPorts) on my MacBook. Then inside there I do all my coding with Emacs, generally two frames side-by side. I access it via Chicken of the VNC. I set up the same vncserver setup on all the machines I do work on, and can access each one from any other without losing context. I rarely find the need to cut/paste from the OS X desktop into/out of my vnc windows, but it can be done.

</comment><comment><USER40> Just like you say, Carbon Emacs + Caps->Control + Cmd->Meta. I dislike using Option as Meta, as you say.

This keyboard and setup is exactly the setup I have for Gnu Emacs on Solaris 8 that I have to use every day at work, and if I ever do serious work on Windows, I'll be able to remap Alt and Caps without trouble. The consistency of key placement is definitely helpful.

</comment><comment><USER41> Nightly from here: <http://atomized.org/wp-content/cocoa-emacs-nightly/>

Config: <http://github.com/bretthoerner/emacs-dotfiles/tree/master>

I maintain a very OS X-y feel, among other things.

</comment><comment><USER42> Carbon emacs package (latest) Aquamacs is unstable at least the last time I used it. Anything.el makes emacs feel like quicksilver (which is AMAZING!!!). I use redshank (hacked version for scheme) + quack.el + paredit.el for my main environment. I have been trying to use darcs and the wiki page for notes but I haven't gotten into it.

</comment><comment><USER43> I use Cocoa Emacs.app. Here's my emacs config, carefully crafted for Rails development:

<http://github.com/olegshaldybin/emacs-config/tree/master>

</comment><comment> tsetse-fly I use Carbon Emacs because Cocoa Emacs has a black square in the center of the frame for the visual bell. Also, there's no visual separator between windows when you have your scroll bar/fringes turned off. Aquamacs is too exotic.

<comment><USER28> I used to get that up until a few weeks ago too. Try recompiling from the latest head, it's fixed for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Kirubakaran has his emacs posted on github:

<http://github.com/ki/my-dot-emacs/blob/master/dot-emacs.txt>

It looked quite good to me.

</comment><comment><USER45> carbon-emacs. It's my first emacs ( I never used emacs on unix or NT). Carbon- Emacs seemed to keep more with emacs' UI guidelines compared to aquamacs. Note I think I'm running carbon emacs, I run the one with the purple logo.

I have the option key (windows key on this keyboard) mapped to Hyper. I use Hyper to navigate around emacs. H-(n|p|b|f) move up, down, left, or right one window in a frame

H-(N|P|B|F) change the size of the current window height/width

other hyper bindings open apps that I use regularly (shell, anything, sql)

<comment><USER45> I also stumbled upon this yesterday, for making the rest of OS X more like emacs (or VI). OS X already has emacs keybindings for all text areas, but it is missing some functionality (backward|forward-word). OS X has a concept called input managers, which allow you to plumb in your own custom behaviour.

[http://subtlegradient.com/articles/2005/12/27/gus-mueller- fl...](http://subtlegradient.com/articles/2005/12/27/gus-mueller-flyopts- inputmanager)

<http://www.tuaw.com/2007/02/04/vi-input-manager/>

<comment><USER9> Actually, Cocoa's built-in text facility has forward-/backward-word, etc. All covered in

[http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System....](http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm emacs newbie, and I do use Aquamacs, with separately downloaded SLIME, and custom .emacs (borrowed from many people - mainly from comp.lang.lisp)

</comment><comment><USER47> Aquamacs, fn key is meta, panic sans 10 font, <3 fullscreen-mode.

</comment><comment><USER48> \- Caps-lock == Ctrl \- plist hacked so the whole system (at least cocoa-apps) behave emacs-like (Apple is meta) \- carbon emacs, because (fullscreen, extensions work, like to have the default GNU set-up as a starting point, and there was 1 thing Cocoa Emacs did not right but I forgot what it was) \- I use color themes a lot, I plan to have each major mode auto-choosing one; most of my .emacs pets are not implemented yet, in a way the real work tends to be more fascinating \- org-mode as "productivity app" and backbone for DTP

<comment><USER48> Sorry the formating. Here is it again:

Caps-lock == Ctrl

plist hacked so the whole system (at least cocoa-apps) behave emacs-like (Apple is meta)

carbon emacs (not the one running under the CLI, the .app), because:

(fullscreen, extensions work, like to have the default GNU set-up as a starting point, and there was 1 thing Cocoa Emacs did not right but I forgot what it was)

I use color themes a lot, I plan to have each major mode auto-choosing one; most of my .emacs pets are not implemented yet, in a way the real work tends to be more fascinating

org-mode as "productivity app" and backbone for DTP</comment></comment>


Google UK town that only exists online - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6474746/Mystery-of-Argleton-the-Google-town-that-only-exists-online.html

<comment><USER2> Maybe it is a town that used to exist, but does not anymore. Some map services (i.e., Bing) report the location of "Census Designated Places" (obviously a US term, but I'm sure there is a UK equivalent), some of which have not existed for many years. Example: "Bartonsville" in this map [http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP...](http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=36.475238~-76.954937&style=h&lvl=15&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> _The data for the programme was provided by Dutch company Tele Atlas. A spokesman said it would now wipe the non-existent town from the map._

I'm not sure this is a good idea. When we cross the AI event horizon our silicon overlords will take bloody revenge for this orgy of digital destruction.

Seriously though, this has all sorts of possibilities as a sci-fi plot device. Even the name has a delicious sort of HP Lovecraft feel.

</comment><comment><USER4> More generally, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry>

<comment><USER5> And specifically, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblu_and_Beatosu>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems that there is a "Dummy 1325" and "Dummy 1456

[http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=Dummy1456,+Burton+up...](http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=Dummy1456,+Burton+upon+Trent,+Staffordshire+DE15+9,+United+Kingdom&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FS9sJQMduFfn_w&split=0&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=23.875,57.630033&hq=&hnear=Dummy1456,+Burton+upon+Trent,+Staffordshire,+United+Kingdom&z=14)

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Dummy1325,+Rufford,+Lancashire,+UK&sll=52.784175,-1.615944&sspn=0.021803,0.068922&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Dummy1325,+Rufford,+Lancashire,+United+Kingdom&z=14)

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting blog post about visiting "Argleton": [http://walkinghometo50.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/destination-...](http://walkinghometo50.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/destination- argleton-visiting-an-imaginary-place/)

</comment><comment><USER7> "When Mr Bayfield reached Argleton – which appears on Google Maps between Aughton and Aughton Park – he found just acres of green, empty fields."

Did he try midnight on a full moon?

</comment><comment><USER8> I agree with the theory that the town was added as a trap to catch people who are harvesting data off the maps. Either that or it was a practical joke by some Google developer.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a way for map data providers to prove that someone is using their data. TeleAtlas can do a search for the city and if it is found on some random map data site, they can check to make sure that they have a license to use that data.

</comment><comment><USER10> But Google street view would have shown empty fields!

<comment><USER11> No street view, but the satellite images match the allegedly non-existant streets shown in the article's screenshot. Curious.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=argleton+L39,+UK&sll=40.112676,-88.235144&sspn=0.009026,0.019205&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Argleton,+Lancashire+L39+5,+United+Kingdom&ll=53.550724,-2.906957&spn=0.007012,0.02738&t=h&z=16)

<comment><USER12> Actually, no, the area where your red marker is, is 'Aughton Park', Argleton is listed as being between Aughton and Aughton Park, as seen here:

<http://imgur.com/1a12H.png>

And thus google satellite view confirms it's just empty fields...

Edit: a slightly zoomed out google maps view will show the area with the labels a little better, like this:

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=argleton+L39,+UK&sll=40.112676,-88.235144&sspn=0.009026,0.019205&ie=UTF8&t=h&hq=&hnear=Argleton,+Lancashire+L39+5,+United+Kingdom&ll=53.543317,-2.907171&spn=0.038557,0.074759&z=14)

2nd Edit:

It's _possible_ that this is all a misunderstanding, and not a 'fake entry', there is a farm directly under the area called 'Argleton', and it wouldn't be a first time for a farm to have it's own postal code, and then the name of the farm being assigned to the postcode. Thus that farm MAY be 'Argleton Farm' or such, and google picked up on it thinking it was a town name.

I've known of 3 cases of this happening in my (limited) wandering around the UK during my life, although those cases were on OS maps, not google maps.

<comment><USER11> Oh, that's a pretty small area then. When I saw the map in the article I thought that the suggestion was that all those roads were non-existant. If it's just a blank area of map with a stray label then it's a lot less interesting, but makes a whole lot more sense of course. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> my imaginary friend came from Argleton. He says it's a great little town, he also mention it was hard to spot it.</comment>


JQuery UI 1.8 Final Released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jqueryui.com/2010/03/jquery-ui-18/

<comment><USER2> And it's already on the Google CDN. <http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/documentation/#jqueryUI>

Curious, does the Google CDN version contain all widgets, effects, and themes? Or what?

<comment><AUTHOR> No themes but the widgets and effects are there.

<comment><USER3> themes are definitely up.

      http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.0/themes/base/jquery-ui.css

this will get you the base theme. just replace base with any of the other theme names.

so for vader:

      http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.0/themes/vader/jquery-ui.css

basically:

      http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.0/themes/#THEMENAME#/jquery-ui.css

<comment><USER2> Cool.

So the question (for me) of size/speed comes down to: is it faster/better to build my own jQuery UI js file with selected components or to use the full file from Google's CDN?

The former option has the benefit of being smaller, while the latter has the benefit of being hosted by Google's fast servers and there's a decent probability the client already has it cached.

<comment><USER3> when using jquery and other google hosted frameworks, i tend to use them from google CDN because a lot of the time not only is it faster, but it tends to be faster for traffic from all over the place. i have a site hosted in hong kong and most of the traffic is from japan, africa, and south america, so obviously the performance will differ for different users. but when i use jquery from google CDN, the performance tends to be similar across users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone curious about the quality assurance effort that goes into jQuery UI, take a look at the history of the new autocomplete widget.

I have been following since it was an standalone plugin, and the author cleaned up the design and code so much just to qualify for inclusion into UI. Perfect.

Another high-quality piece of code is jQuery Cycle: <http://malsup.com/jquery/cycle/>

<comment><USER5> It still (like most of the widgets) only goes 90% of the way and lacks things like gmail/facebook-style multiple items by comma separation. The worst thing is that the properties exist (multiple: true) but are not utilised as yet. Instead when an item is selected you have to dump it in a recipient field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like they got Autocompletion right.

I've written my own re-usable widget but I'll probably switch to this next time I need an autocomplete box.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've updated <http://cdncatalog.com/> to reference 1.8. This includes links to the themes as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Alas, this is still a themed UI framework that doesn't style ubiquitous basic form fields like checkboxes and radio buttons, although they do get points for adding button support this time and (if I understand the hints on the linked page properly) planning to add more in future.

Curiously, ExtJS seems to have similar limitations: you can style all kinds of things, but there doesn't seem to be any support for theming of the most basic UI controls.</comment>


Scaling the World's Most Lethal Mountain in the Dead of Winter - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/sports/polish-climbers-to-scale-deadly-k2-peak-in-winter.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER4> > "This is the way of the Polish climbers, who for reasons of history and > culture have earned reputations as the greatest climbers of the Himalayas in > winter"

take nothing away from the Poles, they've earned their reputation as the masters of winter climbing in the Himalaya; however the reasons why are mundane. Beginning in the 1960's, the Polish Teams were too poor to afford climbing permits for the pre-Monsoon season. Getting a permit for a winter climb of an 8,000 metre peak is far less expensive.

in other words, the Poles began climbing in the Himalaya in Winter because that's the only season they could afford to climb.

<comment><USER5> The reasons the Poles began climbing the Himalaya in winter were partly due to having the relevant experience from the Tatras and partly due to politics. In the age when the major Himalayan peaks were first climbed (the 50s and 60s) Polish climbers were not able to leave Poland for such trips. When the political situation started softening, there was a collective desire to put Poland on the climbing map. Since the obvious firsts on the 8000m peaks were no longer up for grabs, their attention turned to other variations: winter ascents, new routes, and alpine-style ascents.

To claim the reasons were "mundane" is to massively underplay their vision and achievements. The leading Polish climbers of the 1980s were in the vanguard of the fast & light alpinism movement - up until then virtually all Himalayan climbing was done expedition-style. One of this group - Jerzy Kukuczka - <USER2> the second person ever to summit all the 8000m peaks, most of them via new routes or in winter and mostly in alpine-style ascents. The new route he put up K2 was previously deemed unclimbable by Reinhold Messner and has never been repeated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who find this article interesting, I highly recommend the book Freedom Climbers by Bernadette McDonald ([https://www.amazon.com/Freedom- Climbers-Bernadette-McDonald/...](https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Climbers- Bernadette-McDonald/dp/1926855604/)). It tells the story of the core group of Polish climbers who did the first ascents of most of the 8000m peaks in winter, many via alpine-style ascents and new routes.

</comment><comment><USER6> K2 is so much more difficult in winter because of its northerly latitude. Most 8000m peaks are ~27N. K2 is 35N.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just a nitpick on an otherwise excellent piece: Annapurna is actually the most lethal mountain in the world, just ahead of K2. It claims 34 deaths per 100 safe returns over K2's 29.

To climb K2 in winter is extraordinarily dangerous. It's dangerous enough in season. But the Poles are the hardest of hard men in these situations - <USER3> luck to them!

<comment><USER8> To nitpick your nitpick-- there are different metrics for deadliness. By sheer volume of deaths, Mont Blanc might be on top with 6,000-8,000 (estimated).

<comment><USER7> Sheer volume is meaningless unless we know how many times it's been successfully summitted. Mont Blanc is dangerous because it's easily accessible to lay people and despite being advertised as a 'long walk' can turn deadly very quickly.

Annapurna on the other hand has been climbed less than two hundred times in history, all of those people were elite mountaineers and further third of them didn't make it back.

<comment><USER9> Wasn't a large proportion due to one avalanche though ?

That's equally misleading imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah, Polish adventurers!

One of my all-time favourite threads on ADVrider.com (motorcycle touring website) is about a group of Polish bikers traveling through Afghanistan in 2009. They have stunning photos:

[http://advrider.com/index.php?threads/afghanistan-ride- how-t...](http://advrider.com/index.php?threads/afghanistan-ride-how-to-enter- survive-and-return-in-one-piece.504942/)

<comment><USER11> Wow! What a thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those interested I recommend the movie K2: Siren of the Himalayas (2014). It is a very nice documentary, giving the history of the mountain and up close look at an attempt to summit it. Really amazing stuff.

From the description (via Rotten Tomatoes):

"This breathtaking film follows an historic attempt to summit the world's most challenging peak on the 100-year anniversary of the Duke of Abruzzi's landmark K2 expedition in 1909. World-class alpinists Fabrizio Zangrilli and Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner team up with veteran climbers Jake Meyer and Chris Szymiec in a dangerous foray of high altitude mountaineering. The documentary also examines the history and geography of the Karakoram mountains while contemplating the risks, rewards and personal nature of exploration in an age when there are few blank spots left on the map. The second highest peak on Earth at 8,611 meters, K2 is also one of the most dangerous mountains to climb: for every four people who have reached the summit of K2, one person has died trying. (C) First Run"

<comment><USER6> Another favorite Himalayan documentary is "Meru (2015)" [0]. One of the climbers ended up marrying the producer/director.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meru_(film)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meru_\(film\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems that the possibility of death plays a large part in the appeal of something like this. This makes me wonder in the future if we will have VR games that will actually kill you if you fail.

<comment><USER14> I'm assuming you meant this but wanted to put it out there - it is not the possibility of death that is the appeal, it is the possibility of cheating death. Small but essential difference.

<comment><USER15> Having done a bit of risky mountain stuff I quite like the modest risk of dying doing it. Part of my rationalization is you're going to die some day and doing it Bond movie style might be more interesting than Alzheimer's in a hospice. It's also a bit of an FU to the government forcing you to scan your shoes at airports and such like to prevent the 1E-10 chance of you leaving the party early.

<comment><USER16> Though I despise security theatre as much as the next bloke, I'd say the governments' intentions here are to keep you from making others leave the party early (or at least to give an appearance that they are doing their bit in this regard).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great story. For anyone interested in having a sample and to test yourself a bit I can recommend Kilimanjaro. It's very touristy but it'll definitely make you push yourself to beyond what you think are your physical limits.

<comment><USER18> Along the same lines I would recommend Aconcagua. It isn't really touristy, it is a trail hike for all intense and purposes as it is not at all technical.

<comment><USER19> It's about 3,500 feet higher though which is a fair bit when you get into that range. I'm not sure I would say "not at all technical." Depending on the current conditions there could be snow and ice (and may be easier if there is).

And "intents and purposes" :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _" The Katowice club overlooked Frédéric Chopin Street; its coat of arms is an eagle and an ice pick. Many dozens of climbers each night talked mountains, life, and more mountains, and sang songs and drank vodka. To gain admission at that time, a young climber had to demonstrate technical prowess, sleep outside on a mountain ledge (known as a bivouac), pass written tests and show a command of mountaineering history, art and literature."_

</comment><comment><USER21> My favorite book about K2 is "Surviving K2" by Wilco Van Rooijen, a survivor of the 2008 K2 disaster. The doco "The Summit" from 2012 was good too.</comment>