Bootstrap Designer – Generate Bootstrap Templates - <AUTHOR> http://bootstrapdesigner.com Online design tool, producing HTML5 templates based on Twitter Bootstrap that you can use for your clients' projects or sell on your own website. <comment><USER2> I think this is the second 'bootstrap designer' posted to HN today alone.

Here's my gripe with these things. It seems like we're going backwards. Years ago everyone used Frontpage and Dreamweaver to create their pages, which was fine. But it soon became apparent that handwriting your own HTML gave your far greater control and added way more value, and so use of these visual editors died down. But now they're back for revenge, except from the browser this time, and stuck with a totally overused css framework which in my opinion [when used at stock] completely devalues your design.

As a then designer who took the time to learn HTML and CSS during the WYSIWYG cull of the early 00s - which wasn't that hard - I just can't see why these editors are needed.

<comment><USER3> _> But now they're back for revenge, except from the browser this time, and stuck with a totally overused css framework which in my opinion [when used at stock] completely devalues your design._

Did you look at the examples on the site? None of them look anything like the default bootstrap design. And the section below the example section is _"Your Bootstrap site doesn't have to look like Bootstrap!"_

Also, you download the resulting code, and the customized CSS is apparently in a separate CSS file that overrides the default bootstrap stuff, not intermixed, so it's easy to further hand-modify as needed.

Only problem is there's no apparent way to test it out and see how it works without providing a credit card. Would love the ability to really see for myself to what degree you can customize bootstrap before signing up for recurring billing, even at just $4.99/mo.

A free tier that gives you the ability to create customized designs and view them in a preview window (similar wrapbootstrap.com), but no way to save them to your account or other conveniences, would be nice.

<comment><USER4> why not just use google chrome inspector as a 'template designer' ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Similar approach, but the designer gives you visual representation of the design settings (font settings, color/gradient selection, css effects, etc). Combined with real-time preview, makes it easy to experiment and to get ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really dislike this way of 'designing' with bootstrap. You need to be using the grid and setting relative values rather than fiddling with px sliders.

</comment><comment><USER6> There sure is an abundance of these lately. I can see the reason why Bootstrap opens up the possibility of building this, but I don't see exactly where it's going. Maybe I'm missing something though, so I'd be curious to have the creators defend the work.

What is going to make one of these win over the others, and who _exactly_ is the intended audience?

<comment><AUTHOR> Before releasing the Bootstrap Designer, it was my personal tool to create a mockup for clients. I can quickly experiment with colors, fonts, images, etc and pick the combination that I feel works for my project. I see this will help users to focus more on creative work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure this is a great personal tool for quick prototyping, but I'd really like to see people who are building products around the premise of design to actually care about and understand design instead of compiling bad assets from free resources to charge for it. The default Bootstrap layout is preferable to bad textures and typography laid on a custom non-grid.

<https://www.easel.io/bootstrap> is a free alternative for people looking for a WYSIWYG approach to Bootstrap, but in any case - like with the previously mentioned Frontpage and Dreamweaver dilemmas - I'd advise against using these tools for anything other than a functional mockup.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks interesting but there is no trial version? I dont see a a way to try it without paying.

<comment><USER9> Agreed - I was about to give it a try, but I'd need to be able to create one (even watermarked) to see the quality of what's generated before I pay.

<comment><USER10> How would you go about watermarking html & css?

<comment><USER11> data-* attributes on all the elements. But switched up and randomised so you wouldn't be able to strip them out with a single line of XSLT; and for greater annoyance, some of them would be required to make the design work, so stripping them out with a regex would break things.

Make 'em work for the free html they designed with your tool...

If it seems like a waste of effort on both sides, that's because it is.

Given that tools like this appear to be easy to write and easy to launch they should probably be sold to hosting companies not designers. As in, you'd make more money selling AutoMattic the whole shebang to use for designing things on top of Wordpress or it's successor than you would trying to sell $9/month subscriptions to would be web designers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is sample template, created using Bootstrap Designer: <http://bootstrapdesigner.com/easy-start.aspx>

More samples can be seen at: <http://www.facebook.com/BootstrapDesigner>

</comment><comment><USER12> "Generate HTML templates at the speed of light" - Really ? I use powerpoint/Keynote for that. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER13> Tons! Of! Exclamation! Marks! :)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is great. Now u can seriously play around with a design without knwing photoshop skills. Great effing job!

<comment><USER15> Photoshop was never needed to build an interactive demo.

<https://37signals.com/svn/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> what's the music that was used in the demo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Music from Audiojungle :)</comment></comment>


Perceptions of Randomness: Why Three Heads Are Better Than Four (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://psych.cf.ac.uk/home2/hahn/Psychological_Review_2009_Hahn.pdf <comment><USER2> I always had the suspicion (which may be wrong) that in questions like "which is a more likely outcome of 6 coin tosses, HHHHHH or HTHHTT", people tend to understand this question as: "which is a more likely outcome of 6 coin tosses, a sequence of 6 heads, or another sequence without any obvious regularity in it", in which case the latter is clearly the correct answer.

I have an additional suspicion: in my experience, people with slight autistic tendencies often have problems with sorting their impressions into broad, general categories, but instead always analyze (even remember) the exact impression (or "special case") they are confronted with. For people like this, the question "HHHHHH or HTHHTT" is a completely different question than for the majority of the population. So, the problem to me does not seem to be a problem with human intuition for probability (or with System 1, in Kahneman's words), but just one of semantics. If you go further and assume that scientists have a higher percentage of people with autistic tendencies than the general population, then the problem simply becomes one of communication between the researcher and the subject.

I read Thinking: Fast and Slow a few years ago and remember many experiments where it was clear to me that the subjects just answered a different question than the one the researcher asked them. And I do not mean that they "anchored" their answers on something else or they replaced the question with a different question because they had no answer to the original question - they just had a completely different understanding of the question itself, and their answers to this question were correct, even in System 2.

<comment><USER3> I find a lot of psychology experiments about game theory have this problem, for an example.

The common mistake is to analyze it as if people were in a prisoners' dilemma situation rather than an iterated prisoners' dilemma situation: there's no way to fully detach lab participants from the fact that the people they're interacting with exist in society, which is a sort of large scale iteration of all the social games.

Once you realize lab participants are treating each other as members of society they'll have to deal with in the future, instead of isolated lab rats only existing for one round of experimentation, almost all of the "people don't understand game theory" results disappear.

It seems instead we have multiple papers confirming psychologists don't understand society.

<comment><USER4> Papers are published within an academic pretense. So you also have to account for the brown nosing and sucking up to authority.

You pay tuition, but you don't get your degree without conforming your behavior to the expectations of faculty, and the institutional demands to publish words that seem like a readable corpus of text.

This goes up the chain, as the expectation pervades a normative culture.

Academia eats Prestigious Institutions. Institutions eat Departments. Chair of Department eats Professors. Professors eat Students. Students photosynthesize Words pleasing to the ears of their parasitic herbivores.

You are what you eat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Consider the following three plots. In one of the plots each of the blue points is sampled with equal probability from the entire square. Which one is it?

1\. [http://norvig.com/plot1.png](http://norvig.com/plot1.png)

2\. [http://norvig.com/plot2.png](http://norvig.com/plot2.png)

3\. [http://norvig.com/plot3.png](http://norvig.com/plot3.png)

You can read the rest from [http://norvig.com/experiment- design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html)

<comment><USER6> My stats professor said he used to have an assignment where he had students flip a coin 100 times and record the results on a sheet of paper. He said he could be reasonably confident who did and did not actually flip the coin because the students who did not flip the coin would not have any runs longer than 2 or 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most interesting part of this paper to me is that "HHT" is more likely than "HHH" to appear in a sub-set of tosses of length 4 or 12 (for example), and that any sequence like HHH or HHT has a "wait time" calculated by mathematicians. The wait times are how many flips on average you need to produce the sequence and they are not equal -- HHHH has a wait time of 30 vs HHHT has a wait time of 16 (not sure if I got the numbers exactly right.)

So the answer to the question "Which is more likely to be seen in a sequence of 10 coin flips, HHH or HHT", the answer is surprisingly, "HHT".

This is the key point of the paper. People are shown a sequence and they answer the question as if the sequence was pulled from a longer sequence (though that isn't strictly what the question asks).

<comment><USER8> This is fascinating to me.

Do you have a link to the paper?

I can't quickly wrap my mind around why HHT would be have a shorter wait time than HHH

<comment><USER9> Not having read the paper to which to parent referred, but I might be able to shed some light on this...

Let us describe the state of the previous two tosses as XX, with X being either H or T. If --(X)--> describes the next toss, we can describe the transition between states as follows:

HH --(H)--> HH

HH --(T)--> HT

and

HT --(H)--> TH

HT --(T)--> TT

etc.

If we are waiting for HHT, starting from state HH

HH --(H)--> HH : or, we get back to state HH

HH --(T)--> "HHT" : HHT is found and we stop searching

as opposed to waiting for HHH

HH --(H)--> "HHH" : HHH is found, and we stop

HH --(T)--> HT : and we are in a new state which requires at least two more --(H)--> in sequence before we return to state HH.

I hope this helps.

EDIT: reformatting & typo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a very accessible "numberphile" video which I think is closely related to this, about playing the odds on predicting elements of a nominally- random coin-flip sequence using the expected run length.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP- Ipsat90c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP-Ipsat90c)</comment>


Physicists Aim to Classify All Possible Phases of Matter - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-aim-to-classify-all-possible-phases-of-matter-20180103/ <comment><USER2> I've just finished a PhD in this area, topological quantum memories.

Totally amazed at the level of this quantamagazine article. Superb stuff. They even manage to explain string-nets. I keep thinking that you could make an interesting iPhone game out of this.

Actually it's nice to read a bit of a summary of the field, including the history.

Here is another good article discussing the open problem of the existence of a quantum memory [1]. The story goes like this: your hard-drive stores bits of information in little magnets. That is magnetic order, which falls into the symmetry-breaking paradigm discussed in the article. When you turn the computer off, it remembers what's on your harddrive. Those magnets keep the bits protected, by virtue of the "magnetic order". Now here's the question: can we do the same thing with quantum bits? Even theoretically, is it possible? Is there some kind of "quantum ordered system" that will protect a qubit?

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.6643](https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.6643)

<comment><USER3> > When you turn the computer off, it remembers what's on your harddrive.

Weird analogy. The computer doesn't remember – the individual storage units on a hard drive don't care whether the machine around them has power or not They are indifferent to what's going on in the system which contains them as opposed to, say, the storage units in DRAM. Are you trying to say that at the moment all qubits we've made behave like the storage units in DRAM? In other words, while the system that contains them is powered on they remain in the same state but when the power is removed they become disordered? Aren't qubits an abstraction? I mean, qubit : bit :: qubit storage unit X : harddrive bit – or – qubit : bit :: qubit storage unit Y : DRAM bit – see what I mean?

<comment><USER2> Yeah this quantum memory is a passive memory, as opposed to active error correction, which is perhaps more akin to the DRAM side of things. The active error correction is what google etc. are working on right now. It's not clear if passive quantum memories will ever be built, or as i said, if they even can be theoretically built.

<comment><USER3> Cool, that's what I was trying to find out from you. Is this [Quantum Error Correction for Quantum Memories]([https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.3428](https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.3428)) from 2013, rev. 2015 by Barbara M. Terhal representative of the state of the art?

<comment><USER2> Yes this looks like a good reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating work. Not only does it get at the very heart of connecting Nature with Mathematics. But there are some interesting novel electronics that can result.

A Rechargeable Spin Battery

[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/4/e1602531](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/4/e1602531)

More broadly is the emerging field of "Materials Informatics". Roughly ML algorithms applied to the search of stable new materials phases. As well as the processes required to create them.

Machine learning in materials informatics: recent applications and prospects

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41524-017-0056-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41524-017-0056-5)

Quantum Espresso: an integrated suite of Open-Source computer codes for electronic-structure calculations and materials modeling at the nanoscale

[http://www.quantum-espresso.org/](http://www.quantum-espresso.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Are there even a finite number of phases, or are they more of a continuous distribution, because they not truly fundamental?

<comment><USER6> At least in almost/many/same materials the liquid and the gas phase are really one. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_(thermodynamics...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_\(thermodynamics\))

I never heard about something similar with the other phases ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I'm understanding the fundamentals of the science behind this article, basically researchers are messing around with the state of the orbitals [0] of the electron clouds of individual atoms and molecules in very cold condensates that are otherwise stable, provoking interesting states that defy the usual macroscopic interactions commonly observed in the 4 classic phases of matter?

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

Is that about right?

<comment><USER8> The discrete/continuous analog would cellular automata and PDEs respectively.

Essentially, even if interaction is taking place, the hope is that such a regular and patterned formation could keep the qbits you care about, in perfect shape. There may be other interacting factors that oscillate but they are not used for storage, just for nonvolatility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Betcha the theory turns out to be intractable because it'll be possible to encode the behaviors of algorithms into the properties of such ordered matter.

<comment><USER10> Since cellular automatons are kind of Turing complete there does seem to be a chance that could happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just me or the first sentence of the article can't be parsed?

<comment><USER12> This one?

> _" In the last three decades, condensed matter physicists have discovered a > wonderland of exotic new phases of matter: emergent, collective states of > interacting particles that are nothing like the solids, liquids and gases of > common experience."_

Stripped of most everything, the sentence reduces to _" Physicists have discovered a wonderland"_.

I'm almost wishing I could embed a graphic. It's been a while since I've diagrammed the grammar of a sentence. I wonder if students are still being taught how to do that. As an exercise, more for myself than what I actually think you need, I'll just do the rest:

\- What kind of physicists? Condensed matter physicists.

\- When have the physicists discovered this wonderland? In the last three decades.

\- A wonderland of what? Of exotic new phases of matter.

\- What are these new phases like? They're emergent, collective states of interacting particles that are nothing like the solids, liquids and gases of common experience.

I hope that was the sentence you were referring to :)

<comment><USER11> Oh. Physicists in the area of condensed matter. Got it.

I would have written "condensed-matter" with a hyphen to make it more obvious that it's being used as an adjective.

<comment><USER13> Condensed matter physics is a long-standing branch of physics study, similar to high energy physics and astrophysics.

The physics dept of any university should have a condensed matter subgroup, both theory and experimental.

(FYI - I did my PhD in experimental condensed matter physics).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_matter_physics](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_matter_physics)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MHacks: Nation's largest student hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/about/news/stories/2013/february/mhacks-nation-s-largerst-student-hackathon

<comment><USER2> So impressed with this hackathon! To have 127 hacks submitted for 550 hackers is unreal! The recruiter at Facebook said he was most impressed with these hacks at a student hackathon over any other one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I particularly liked the Caffeinated Brownies that showed up Saturday! Great hackathon!

<comment><AUTHOR> those things were off the chain...they might've even worked a little too well, because that snowball fight at like 4am was wayyyy too intense!

<comment><USER3> "Equivalent to one cup of Coffee" they said... I beg to differ. Possibly "equivalent to one gallon of espresso"

<comment><AUTHOR> truth

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The University of Illinois completely owned it!

</comment><comment><USER4> epic hackathon!

</comment><comment><USER5> it was epic!

<comment><AUTHOR> that it was :) have you seen the epic video too?

<http://youtu.be/D6_bF3dFEAI></comment></comment>


Project MKULTRA - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK_ULTRA

<comment><USER2> Of possibly more contemporary relevance: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)

I suspect that the heavy duty "Clockwork Orange" stuff was abandoned as low- tech, expensive, cumbersome, politically dangerous, and difficult to deploy, and psychedelics abandoned as too unpredictable. Instead most research likely shifted into more subtile forms of psychological manipulation, both on an individual level using cult indoctrination techniques and on a mass scale using disinformation and media manipulation. When they say MKULTRA was a failure and was abandoned, they're probably telling a half-truth.

The speculations about the Peoples' Temple at the end of this article aren't particularly crazy at all. There's no proof so they're only speculations, but there's enough circumstantially there to give them a certain amount of credibility as worthy of investigation (if we had a press with a pulse). I've suspected for many years that the rash of weird cults that descended on the scene in the early 70s might have been, in at least a few cases, laboratories for the continuation of group mind control experiments. The Peoples' Temple may have been an experiment to see just how far you can take a willing group of "volunteers," and in the end it went so far... possibly threatening to escape control... that the entire group needed to be disposed of.

I also see the recent Facebook study on crowd manipulation as being evidence that these techniques are likely trickling into the private sector, as technologies usually do. The Facebook study showed only a very tiny effect, but Facebook is a medium permitting only limited interaction with the subject. You could probably gain significantly better results if you controlled or could influence much wider swaths of the media, as intelligence agencies can.

Unfortunately the conspiracy theory tag keeps anyone serious from looking into it, and the field is full of obvious nonsense about space aliens working with the CIA to mind control alien abductees on behalf of the global new world order chemtrail conspiracy or whatever the latest du jour is. Could all that stuff be disinformation designed to render the entire subject beyond serious inquiry? Naaah.</comment>


M4BASIC – A BASIC to C converter written in M4 - <AUTHOR> http://www.basic-converter.org/m4basic/ <comment><USER2> Good lord... M4?! Sounds painful.</comment>


OECD drops idea of special tax rules for Internet companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ec659cec-81ef-11e3-a600-00144feab7de.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't find it on any non-paywalled site. But here are the key paragraphs:

> Proposals for a tax crackdown on digital companies such as Google and Amazon > are to be dropped, as governments push ahead with measures affecting the > global economy.

> Designing special tax rules for internet companies would not be viable, > given the growing digital presence in large parts of the economy, an > international task force has concluded.

> Pascal Saint-Amans, the leading tax official at the Paris-based Organisation > for Economic Co-operation and Development, said: "The findings are that > there is no such thing as digital companies rather than digitalisation of > the economy. There may not be therefore a solution for the digital economy, > but we will need to draw on features of digital economy when we revise the > system. Most of the tax planning by these companies will be addressed by > this."

The context is of course this recent thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7088042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7088042)</comment>


CIA Software Developer Goes Open Source, Instead - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/cia-software-developer-goes-open-source-instead/ <comment><USER2> If you follow a few links you'll end up here:

[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence- analysis/art11.html)

This is the chapter on Analysis of Competing Hypotheses in Richard Heuer's book Psychology of Intelligence Analysis.

"Analysis of competing hypotheses, sometimes abbreviated ACH, is a tool to aid judgment on important issues requiring careful weighing of alternative explanations or conclusions. It helps an analyst overcome, or at least minimize, some of the cognitive limitations that make prescient intelligence analysis so difficult to achieve.

ACH is an eight-step procedure grounded in basic insights from cognitive psychology, decision analysis, and the scientific method. It is a surprisingly effective, proven process that helps analysts avoid common analytic pitfalls. Because of its thoroughness, it is particularly appropriate for controversial issues when analysts want to leave an audit trail to show what they considered and how they arrived at their judgment."

<comment><USER3> Also check out the book "The Thinker's Toolkit" by Morgan Jones. He was a former CIA analyst. It contains 14 different analytical tools in the book that were taught to CIA analysts (including an extensive discussion on testing hypotheses).

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the suggestion. I started the book this weekend and I'm 100 pages in. What I've seen so far isn't necessarily impressive, but there are some good common-sense techniques.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've consulted for dod contractors and have witnessed such stupidity as buying a half -written ipv6 stack from a vendor rather than taking it from the Linux codebase because 'a foreigner may have touched that code.' Never mind the fact that the vendor was free to hire foreigners. Or that Linux is already used by dod. Or that the vendor is clueless and charging you out the ass.

<comment><USER5> It's no doubt a very clumsily-executed policy that has a net effect of decreasing the quality and increasing the cost of all software DoD buys, but "a foreigner touched it" is not a crazy security control. You wouldn't necessarily know just by looking at the code whether it it fatally compromised security, and the IP stack is among the more security critical components of the system.

Please don't take this comment the wrong way. Can DoD meaningfully control for this risk? No. What they're doing is no doubt stupid and unhelpful. But the original notion, that maybe "foreigners" shouldn't be touching the IPv6 stack of something DoD depends on, is valid.

<comment><USER6> It's probably more likely, though, that bugs are introduced by Good Old Americans that are simply incompetent. If only the government had a policy about not hiring incompetent people...

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The US may have the right idea regarding not adopting foreign-tainted code, but they don't have the stones to follow up on the other half of the policy, which is "we're not allowed to run any code whose origin isn't traceable and that hasn't been validated line-by-line and in simulated fault injection by NSA". They want to have it both ways; the might as well just contract the crypto engine out to China.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Myth of Gravity - <AUTHOR> http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/132

<comment><USER2> I don't like how advances in theoretical physics are now being sold directly to the public. First E8 ("surfer dude stuns physicists"), and now this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that people seem to be turning away from science and the scientific mindset, and the more that the scientific community engages with the public, the better.

Who (or what) would you suggest as an intermediary between the public and the scientists?

I believe that this is exactly what the web is for.

<comment><USER3> "Who (or what) would you suggest as an intermediary between the public and the scientists?"

It's not a matter of having an intermediary, it's a matter of listening to scientists who are trying to educate rather than promote their own theories to a public that doesn't have any hope of understanding them. It's like if you saw Steve Jobs stand in front of an audience of eight-year-olds and tell them they should grow up to learn Obj-C instead of Flash.

The public has an absurd fetish for shiny, new science while the theories of a hundred years ago would keep them scratching their heads for years. Older science is better not only because it's a necessary foundation for understanding modern science, but because it's more likely to be true. Somehow we've turned the reliability of our sources into an embarrassing flaw, and we get all our information from the dark corners that science isn't sure about yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> cousin_it doesn't like the "sold directly". So, I'm asking about how he/she would like to do it indirectly, or how you would suppress reports of new theories from reaching the public until they are proven.

Whether you like the role the media play or not (and here it is definitely the scientific media), it is not a new phenomena. News == news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "but the approach implies that gravity is nothing more than the result of a system maximising its entropy, or disorder. ...

Smolin, a long term proponent of loop quantum gravity (LQG), believes that Verlinde's work is not only compatible with LQG, it could even help to explain how familiar Newtonian gravity might emerge in this picture. According to LQG, spacetime isn't the smooth fabric that Einstein envisioned; rather, if you zoom down to scales of 10^-33 cm, the fabric turns out to be woven from quantum threads. The key point for Smolin is that the holographic principle is also valid in this framework, allowing him to apply a version of Verlinde's argument to demonstrate directly for the first time that loop quantum gravity has a limit that yields Newtonian gravity."

<comment><USER5> Occam's razor is the answer to that. Let him make predictions that the more simple model doesn't do, and test them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> All I want to know is if this brings us closer or further away to an anti- gravity device.

<comment><USER7> It would seem farther.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ooooh! My wife (trained as a chemist) gets upset when I equate information entropy and thermodynamic entropy. I can't wait to antagonize her with this.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Newton told us that apples fall towards Earth with an acceleration that depends on the Earth's mass, the apple's mass, and its distance from the centre of the Earth,_

Fail.

</comment><comment><USER10> Linkbait title.

</comment><comment><USER11> "There isn't a fundamental gravitational interaction. Is that crazy enough?"

A decade ago a physicist who would say something like this would have been dubbed a "crackpot" by his colleagues.</comment>


37signals doesn't like you sorting stuff. Are you just remaking a spreadsheet? - <AUTHOR> http://n8.tumblr.com/post/14518334287/37signals-doesnt-like-you-sorting-stuff-or-why-are

<comment><USER2> I love sorting and filtering.

When I'm looking for something, I often remember where it is by different criteria (date last visited, date saved, keywords, frequency of use, numerically, alphabetically, etc) so I get frustrated when my options are limited. But I do understand why designers want to do without.

I hate even more when things are sorted badly. For a long time Google Bookmarks were sorted alphabetically by default. Every single time I went looking for an old bookmark, I'd navigate to the Google bookmarks page and then I'd have to click on 'Date' and then on 'Bookmarks'. (Random tweets and other nonsense was included with my bookmarks by default, too. You had to choose 'Bookmarks' to view only your bookmarks.) 99.9999% of the time you're looking for a recent bookmark, not one that begins with a zero or 'a'.

To this day I'm baffled as to what confusion of ideas lead to that interface. They fixed this in the December 19th update/redesign but I'm sure it persisted for at least a couple of years.

<comment><USER3> fck, finally! I've complained about this same issue for years! Thank God is Christmas! :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the author is missing the point. Some data just looks and acts beautifully in tabular / spreadsheet form, and if you have an app where that is the case, then by all means, use a tabular layout.

Does that mean you are just remaking a spreadsheet? Cmon. No. There is all sorts of added value for using a webapp that has a tabular data view. Maybe it's nicer to use. Maybe it comes with choices pre-filled out for you for certain columns. Maybe you provide user/team visibility, or sharing, or all sorts of other stuff that a simple spreadsheet could never provide standalone.

The point is, don't shoot yourself in the foot because 37signals forgot to put a tabular view of their data in. That means nothing. You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app? Yes? Great, then provide a tabular view for your users.

<comment><USER5> > You should be thinking -- does a tabular view add value to your app?

I think the point of the article was that the author never thought this, but presupposed the answer was always 'yes'. It wasn't until looking at alternative implementations that this question popped up.

I've done the same myself. I once implemented sortable live lists (lists that may be updated with added/removed items in the background, with only part of the list shown and the rest retrieved from the server). I wondered, 'how should this work?' and cast around for other examples. At first I used the (old) Google Reader model: two lists, one is 'All items', the other is 'New items'. But then I realised that, actually, sorting doesn't add anything, and indeed might confuse people who expect predictable order in their lists. Problem solved: don't allow sorting, instead provide a canonical order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorting in a paged list (as seen on most web pages) isn't very useful unless you intend to page through the whole list. If you're only going to look at one page, you're probably better off with a search for the attribute(s) you're looking for rather than trying to find a sort that puts those results up top.

Developers love to put in sort controls because they cover lots of use cases and don't take a lot of thought to implement. And mentally, they tend to think about sorting a lot anyway. But my experience with looking at data from non- developer users has always been that they rarely use sort options when available (and search filters, either, btw. ) You see about 5% of users employing those controls.

So the developers think they've solved certain use cases by providing sorting, and users don't see those cases as covered, because they don't see that they can use sort to solve them. It's better to just not put in sort, reduce complexity and find other ways to cover those cases that users are more likely to employ.

<comment><USER7> I am quite sure you have fallen into the Google group think of no sorting + no folders. Every time someone at google has the balls to challenge that dogma, like replacing "add label" with "move to" in Gmail, correct usage soars. The search & labels only fallacy has led to some terrible interfaces, such as the Google Docs home page.

<comment><USER6> I'm quite sure you're wrong on that, since I know exactly how we reached that conclusion despite originally thinking otherwise. I worked on the issue at another major net company where we were dealing with a _lot_ of lists being viewed by very large numbers of users. While I'm unfamiliar with the results of research at Google, both analytics of production services and follow-up user labs showed very little traction for using sort to reorganize sets of information among non-technical users.

It's just not how regular people think about manipulating information - in the real world, sorting a set of any interesting size is impractical if not painful. You can literally ask a loaded question - "is there any way you could sort those to make XYZ easier?" and folks will avoid that in favor of other method.

<comment><USER7> That is surprising, as I have data points that show people prefer clicking "least difficult", or "most popular" vs search or an alternative categorical method. I really think it comes down to context. You use the phrase "interesting size" and that is relevant, as I only consider sorting of stuff that is generated by a human, not humankind. I fully accept the interface should be different for human data versus humankind data. I think google products often assume _every_ list is infinitely long, and it can lead to poor interface choices.

<comment><USER6> By "interesting size" I mean "large enough that it's no longer convenient to page through it." Generally, for less than that, sorting's not necessary because you can just scan through the list visually, and for longer than that, the sort generally becomes useless anyway. It didn't seem to matter if the list was 100 long or 100,0000 long.

We saw less than 10% of users ever employing the sort controls; that's not zero, but it's low enough that you can't depend on them to cover use cases.

The problem with your examples are that you're not really showing "sorts" from a user standpoint. What a user is really doing is effectively filtering for the "show me the N least difficult", not "sort by difficulty, ascending." Also, sorting on a relatively scaled value make more sense, but a lot of the time the values in a column don't have that kind of relationship. What's the "least zip code" good for?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's hard to say why the other applications don't have sorting, but I think it's a stretch to think there is some design genius behind it. It could be for pretty mundane reasons.

I agree you don't have to reimplement spreadsheet features, but make sure you have a CSV dump if you think your users would appreciate that.

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember a place where I worked where they'd show users a big table with dozen of statistical numbers and percents everywhere. I kept saying to just show one number (The relevent %) because users didn't care about all these numbers. In fact, it'd make everything harder to understand.

But, "the leay way says to do something and iterate based on feedback" they said. So, a couple of months and iterations later, it was all redesigned with a single number: the important percent.

A trick to help focus on the important stuff is to ask: "If I ask a user that doesn't care at all about my product and is extremely busy, what should I show to make it interesting (Or convenient)?"

</comment><comment><USER10> ha, I would wager that there is a simpler reason: sortable tables in HTML are nearly impossible to implement.

once you have a lot of data, you want fixed column headers. stacked sorting (column A first, then B), a lot of things suddenly become needed additions.

and where do you sort? front end or back end? how much data are processing?

just look at google spreadsheets and you'll see how sub-optimal it is.

<comment><USER11> I'm confused as to why this is hard. I code primarily in java with JSF for views and this is possibly the simplest thing to do in any of my projects. Using something like primefaces I generally never even need to write a line of javascript unless i need to customize some action and I can use theme roller / stock css for appearance.

Example: [http://www.primefaces.org/showcase- labs/ui/datatableComplex....](http://www.primefaces.org/showcase- labs/ui/datatableComplex.jsf)

This is working client side, if i want to do server side its as simple as implementing a single class that pushes the sorting/filtering/paging off the to the database:

Example: <http://www.primefaces.org/showcase-labs/ui/datatableLazy.jsf>

It can't really be much harder to do this on other stacks can it?

<comment><USER12> JSF is a bit of exception. I haven't 'really' searched but its harder to do this in say Struts. What rule of thumb for the data size do you use when choosing between client side and server side sorting?

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't say there is a hard rule of thumb and there are three levels of operation possible, at least with primefaces:

1) All row data sent to client side, all paging done on client

2) Backing controller contains a List with all data in memory, client only gets 1 page at a time via ajax updates.

3) A truly 'Lazy' data model, ajax request for a new page of rows, controller references a lazy data model that fetches just that page worth of data from the database tier and sends it to the client.

In practice I really only use #2 and #3 normally. Unless the application has a bad internet connection as a requirement I assume its faster or negligible to fetch pages via ajax vs loading them all into the client up front. As far as choosing between #2 and #3, for my applications its usually obvious, the table either contains 5-25 items (go with 2) or thousands of items (go with 3).

In the middle ground i guess it comes down to loading: Can you afford to use more memory in the web tier or would you rather keep that memory usage down and suffer slightly long update times? Assuming your database is well designed it should only had maybe 10ms onto your response time to just grab the page from the database vs already having it in memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This may just be a case of giving credit where none was necessarily due. The absence of sort may just be a victim of 37signal's own design philosophy of only including features that users want and repeatedly request thus causing them to float to the top of the queue. In the grand scheme of things, High Rise and Base Camp users probably have other more pressing feature requests / complaints that they would rather get implemented pronto.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my opinion, Google put the search vs. sort debate to rest a long time ago. For large, multifaceted datasets, search with faceted filters is almost always the right approach (again IMO).

<comment><USER15> I always understood the sort in "Search vs Sort" to mean manually categorising documents/things into boxes or folders. Not sort as in an SQL order by clause.

<comment><USER14> Once something is "put into a box", the "box" is just another attribute of that thing. I don't think it matters whether the user is classifying stuff arbitrarily, or the system is implying those attributes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This post highlights the difficulty in making data accessible in a "traditional" web app. One of the most intuitive interfaces for accessing and manipulating tubular data is the spreadsheet, but very few web apps look or behave like a spreadsheet.

I would argue that there is an inherent friction between usability and accessibility of information. Adding options to sort, filter, search, or selectively show or hide fields might make data more accessible but result in reduced usability overall. The exact point where the tradeoff happens isn't clear to me, but 37signals tends to err on the side of usability, at the expense of accessibility. Of course, one could argue that in a data-intensive app, accessibility _is_ usability, and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Why wouldn't a user just use a spreadsheet then?

Spreadsheets are hard to share and hard to version-control, and the data is cumbersome to access programmatically.

<comment><USER18> Google Docs spreadsheets handle all of these things.

I think that it is better to question why developers still create so many simple CRUD applications. Where is the next generation MS Access?

<comment><USER19> Because people don't want a machine they can learn to use in order to solve their problems. They want their problems solved right now.

<comment><USER18> Yet spreadsheets are incredibly popular.

I am not claiming that every computer user should want to create simple CRUD applications. A few technically competent non-developers might wish to do so though. Many of us who have been around for a while have had to deal with someone creating an MS Access application that is eventually used by everyone in a department. Companies would often then pay for a "professional" reimplementation of the MS Access application that would take months or years and cost a fortune. Often the end result was something that did not work well and was hated by users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a really good idea to question the fundamentals of presentation. People, however, are really good at looking at tables and detecting patterns (at least, according to Tufte), and, since we're unlikely to anticipate all the ways people will use data, it's a good idea to make sure that, in addition to the good ideas we come up with, we give users options to muck with data to their heart's content.

<comment><USER21> Are you sure that people are good at finding patterns in tables? If I give you:

x = {1..5} and y = {3.0982, 3.3928, 3.8838, 4.5712, 5.45500}

can you tell if that's linear, quadratic, or something else? Probably not. But if I show you a graph:

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=.0982*x**2%2B3>

it becomes pretty obvious. A table is not the right way to display this data.

<comment><USER22> Sure, graphs are often better than tables.

That's not relevant to the point of whether tables should be sortable, if you already provide a table for some reason.

A more relevant task:

Given the data

        3  3.88
        5  5.45
        1  3.09
        2  3.39
        4  4.57

Can you tell if the columns are correlated? With sorting, you can, easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 37signals is pretty dogmatic about their design: what features _37signals_ believes their products should and shouldn't have. Just because they don't have the feature doesn't mean lots of users don't want it.

Furthermore, sorting large data sets is a huge performance challenge. I think that's the main reason why you don't see it in Gmail. Not because sorting is not desired.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some of the stuff they do isn't _that_ far from sorting. The screenshot where you can filter to "last 7 days", "last 30 days", etc. is a discretized alternative to sorting by age that then doesn't sort within the discrete buckets. May or may not be a better UI; depends on what people use it for and what people would've used sorting-by-age for.

<comment><USER25> Most would call that a filter, not a sort.

<comment><USER24> It's a filter, yes, but a filter based on picking different cutoff points in an ordered column: 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, etc. I often find myself using these things as a roundabout way to sort a column, where first I get the last 7 days, then the last 30 and skip the ones I'd already seen, etc. Though it really depends on the app whether users would do that. I recall doing that most recently on an apartment-search site that offered that kind of filter but no sorting: I wanted to see the most recent listings, so first I saw the _most_ recent listings, then loosened the filter to the next-most-recent category, etc. Would've just preferred a Craigslist style sort so I could continue scrolling down instead of doing the filter-loosening thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You could embed a Google Spreadsheet ([http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/11/major-update-in- goo...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/11/major-update-in-google- spreadsheets.html)) and use Google Apps Script to feed it data from your database ([http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_spreads...](http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_spreadsheet.html)).

Here's an example of how to connect a Google Spreadsheet to Neo4j running on Heroku ([http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/12/neo4j-labs-heroku-neo4j-and- go...](http://blog.neo4j.org/2011/12/neo4j-labs-heroku-neo4j-and- google.html)).

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm developing an electronic parts inventory web app because I needed a better way catalog, order and share parts. I couldn't think of a better way than a spreadsheet to display the dozens of parts a user might have. Each part has an ID from the schematic, name, value and description which are displayed using a dojo data grid (Very happy with dojo grid btw). The rest of the attributes are hidden until the user needs them. There is a lot of data and comparisons being done and spreadsheets, it seems, were my only choice. The electronics industry hasn't solved this either. Take a look how ugly and overwhelming the product search is from Digikey, Mouser or Newark.

</comment><comment><USER28> You've made some good points.

I don't know how complex your data set is, so just remember that if you have an extremely complex set of data, give me the user a way to find something based on different criteria. If an item has a date, a number, attachments, etc give me a way to sort through them so that when I kinda know what I'm looking for I can find it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sorting is useful when order is more relevant than the exact results. Many sites just throw away this use case, because it's inconvenient.

</comment><comment><USER30> is this what's called minimalist design?

</comment><comment><USER31> Providing obvious, useful functionality has no more relationship to the concept of a cargo cult than providing a cup holder in a car.

Don't deny your users the 80% (more like 99%) case just because there's a complicated tool out there that, with a bunch of bloat and UX problems, can also provide the 20% (1%) case.

<comment><USER32> Following whatever 37signals does is what seems like cargo cult. They do so many things wrong, and yet designers like this come and say "If they are doing it that way then it must be the right way".

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd rather be allowed to choose rather than forced to accept

That's one problem I see with UX/UI designers; sometimes they don't really think about what the end user wants.

And this statement is just bull-crap:

"All this got me thinking about if I'm truly designing a solution to a problem if all I'm doing is replicating the features of a spreadsheet in a web app. Why wouldn't a user just use a spreadsheet then?"

Because you're building an application not a spreadsheet viewer.</comment>


GM accused of installing devices in diesel trucks to beat emissions tests - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/gm-defeat-device-emissions-1.4131104 <comment><USER2> Wait, you mean _everyone_ cheats? I'm shocked I tell you, shocked!

When the VW story first broke and I learned you could readily control the trade-off between performance and emissions using software in the engine controller of a diesel engine, I knew that everyone would do that. They would rationalize it in what ever way they could "Oh the stomping on the accelerator indicates an emergency so we go with maximum performance rather than emission compliance, it's to save lives don't cha know?"

<comment><USER3> The problem with "everyone cheats" is that we don't have proof of that. We're seeing proof that multiple companies have cheated so far... hopefully the punishments are equivalent.

<comment><USER4> Once you have the necessary portable emissions testing equipment, how much work is it to test a vehicle?

I've been wondering why the researchers at WVU who found the VW cheating have not gone on to test a larger set of vehicles to see who else is cheating.

<comment><USER5> Do we know the researchers haven't tested other vehicles? If VW were cheating to a greater degree than other manufacturers, that might explain why they were the first to be caught.

<comment><USER4> Yes, they weren't doing this on their own initiative, they had a contract to test 4 specific vehicles of which 3 were VW TDIs, I think. They didn't initially think they'd found cheating, and it took a year or two for CARB to get interested and things to develop.

You'd think _someone_ would fund broader testing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I work for GM. I do not work on anything related to diesel engines. I will not be commenting further on this story; what follows is just for context and is not intended to explain or justify anything about these accusations.

The EPA (and other regulators) allow engines to emit more NOx and Particulate under certain circumstances to protect the engine.

Each set of parameters where an engine will do this is called an auxiliary emissions control device [AECD], even where it is just programming, not a separate physical device.

For instance, FCA recently got in trouble for not disclosing all of their AECDs [0] - the AECDs may not have been illegal, but FCA neglected to inform the EPA of all of them.

As noted elsewhere in comments, very very few (if any) vehicle achieve the same emissions or efficiency in the real world as in a test lab.

The disparity between test and real world is not necessarily illegal.

AECDs are not necessarily defeat devices.

0\. [http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/chrysler/201...](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/chrysler/2017/01/12/fiat- chrysler-diesel-emissions/96485778/)

<comment><USER7> In April, Mercedes Benz told[1] its investors it might get in EPA trouble for an "undisclosed auxiliary emissions-control device" as well.

2017 Shipments of Mercedes Benz Sprinters were actually prevented from being delivered to dealers for a while. The last I'd heard, 6-cylinder models were released, but 4-cylinder models were still being held by the EPA.

While I'm sure at some level the EPA enjoys punishing German auto makers, hopefully the same accusations being leveled towards US car makers will encourage them to adopt a more fair and reasonable stance, assuming these are not actually "defeat devices".

[1] [http://autoweek.com/article/diesel/mercedes-parent- company-d...](http://autoweek.com/article/diesel/mercedes-parent-company- daimler-braces-its-own-potential-diesel-crisis-us)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Hagens Berman's automotive legal team has dedicated substantial resources to uncovering cheating devices used by automakers. The firm has become a trailblazer in this highly specialized realm, outpacing federal and state agencies in unmasking fraud in emissions reporting._

This is hilarious - this is the firm that made tons of money off the VW case, now they are going after the money and cutting out the middleman (EPA)

</comment><comment><USER9> If Volkswagen couldn't figure out how to meet US emission standards for diesel without cheating, I find it likely other manufacturers (who have less diesel expertise) would have an even harder time.

VW expects to pay $7.3B for 11 million cheating cars, so less than $700 per vehicle. GM will probably get about the same deal. Considering the profit margin on these vehicles in particular (big trucks), cheating was probably a good call financially.

<comment><USER10> _If Volkswagen couldn 't figure out how to meet US emission standards for diesel without cheating_

VW could meet the emissions standards, and went through the actual testing and passed. It had such an effect on either fuel economy or long term reliability however that they cheat on the road.

However it's notable that the only VW vehicles that fail are the ones that don't use diesel exhaust fluid (DEF). This is something that you refill periodically and it's sprayed into the exhaust to reduce a lot of the harmful exhaust. That system costs a couple of thousand dollars, so they eliminated it and claimed that they found a way around it.

The GM trucks, in contrast, _have_ the DEF systems, just like all of the Mercedes and higher end VW diesel cars do.

Too many commentators are taking the word of a legal firm that got some easy prey and now hopes there's blood in the water.

<comment><USER11> According to what I have learned from a talk the analysing of the VW code [1] the VW cheating consisted of dispensing less AdBlue (VW proprietary DEF) than necessary when no test was detected. That's very much at odds with what you say. I'm not claiming what you say is wrong, I'm just curious how those findings fit in with what you said.

[1] "Dieselgate — a year later" [https://youtu.be/SjlHtLux9vc](https://youtu.be/SjlHtLux9vc)

<comment><USER10> The controversy in the US and Canada revolved around vehicles that did not have DEF systems, in particular those with the EA189 engine.

[https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/company-car-tax- advice/news/whi...](https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/company-car-tax- advice/news/which-volkswagen-audi-skoda-and-seat-models-are-fitted-with-an- ea189-engine/)

VW has since announced a EA288 engine that deprecates the old one, and the new engine uses DEF.

But sure, there is suspicion that a lot of other makers cheat to degrees. Use less DEF and it's more convenient and less costly for your users. Use the EGR less and improve fuel economy and reduce possible maintenance issues. Etc. That was not the primary problem, though.

<comment><USER12> > The controversy in the US and Canada revolved around vehicles that did not > have DEF systems, in particular those with the EA189 engine.

Where are you getting this idea from? My recently-relinquished 2014 Passat was one of the affected vehicles, and it most certainly had a DEF system.

<comment><USER13> I thought most of the engines that were cheating were the non Urea engines. Most other companies thought it would be impossible to build a diesel engine that meets the pollution restrictions without including the DEF based anti pollution system.

<comment><USER12> Most, but not all as the other poster is claiming. The proportion of DEF- affected vehicles is much higher in North America as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If anyone thought VW was the only one they aren't a student of history. Lance Armstrong wasn't the only biker to live stronger. This stuff is systematic.

<comment><USER15> When I played Marco Polo as a kid, I would cheat. When I was "it", I'd yell out "Marco!" like you're supposed to, but I also opened my eyes underwater a little bit to see where the other kids were.

One day a friend brought over special goggles. They were covered in black vinyl to block your vision completely. That day we all found out that every one of us cheated the same way. When playing with the new goggles, suddenly it was: "this game sucks" and: "let's do something else".

It was eye-opening (sorry).

Cheating on emissions tests strikes me the same way. "All the other car companies seem to be meeting their targets, how can we keep up?"

Well, it turns out that to be as good as the other players, you have to cheat just like they do.

<comment><USER16> I always wondered why companies don't try to catch each other cheating. If would seem that if Ford wanted to, they could easily figure out VW was cheating, and go to the press and government with that info.

<comment> vertex-four Because all companies cheat in _some_ way, and intentionally going to war when you know you're not clean yourself isn't a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is truly despicable. Shame on any company who attempts to skirt the laws that were instilled by the people who allow the company to operate within their borders in the first place. Truly shameful and sad.

<comment><USER18> I'd be more eager to cast scorn if I could find a company that _hasn 't_ skirted the law.

<comment><USER19> Well, there's always Tesla.

All the more reason to consider EVs a moral good.

<comment><USER20> Reducing the marginal cost of driving in terms of cash (fuel) and time (self- driving) may have second and third order effects which are deeply problematic. I like EV's, but we're foolish to think that making driving effectively free won't have downsides.

<comment><USER21> EVs also don't make driving "effectively free." We don't really have a good handle on the long-term maintenance costs associated with EVs but even the electricity itself (at residential power rates) is about 1/3 to 1/2 of gasoline costs in the US. A substantial savings but not free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The law firm that's filed suit has an article with more detail on how the cheating works. [https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/chevy-silverado- emissions/pres...](https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/chevy-silverado- emissions/pressrelease/chevy-silverado-duramax-diesel-2500-and-3500-emissions- consumers-sue-general-motors-for-allegedly-installing-multiple-emissions- cheating-defeat-devices-in-over-705000-duramax-diesel-trucks)

<comment><USER23> >"deadly NOx pollutants"

That's over the top in this context. It makes it sound like the trucks are poisoning the owners of those trucks.

<comment><USER24> Pollution is responsible for thousands of deaths every year. "Deadly" is perfectly accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The real test will be whether or not General Motors is treated with the same level of scrutiny (regulatory, legal, public etc.) and penalized as heavily as Volkswagen was. I am alluding to the fact that General Motors being regarded as an American company, and Volkswagen being a foreign one. I am pessimistic: I will be somewhat saddened, but not at all surprised if General Motors gets less harsh treatment. People will no doubt argue that these are trucks and not cars, so there are less of them, so the damage done was less, so the penalty should also be less. However, no one will likely admit the fact that the same sort of cost/benefit analysis and moral repercussions were involved in both events beyond the accusers.

I apologize if the above comes across as a rant or a whine. I can at most ask the legislator in my constituency to investigate, but that is yet another game of numbers.

</comment><comment><USER26> I predicted it would not be only VW. This kind of cheat would either take a lot of custom code in the ECU, or the ECU supplier has parameters that can be readily tweaked for strategies that would circumvent tests. There's probably an "app note" that says "You should never do this, but..."

The fact the tests are so reliably circumvented is a failure of regulation. It's evident that until recently regulators were not testing the tests to see if they are predictive of real world performance.

</comment><comment><USER27> I seriously have to wonder why "drivers don't want to fill DEF tanks too often" is given as a reason by automakers to skimp on DEF injection. DEF costs, what, $15 for 2.5 gallons, which lasts a couple of thousand miles, and can be filled either at a fuel station or at home, no dealership required. If dealership visit is required, well, since when are automakers concerned about dealerships making too much money from servicing their cars?

<comment><USER28> Probably just more mental overhead people don't want to deal with. No one wants to remember to do more stuff.

If you're comparing 2 trucks, one with a DEF system and one without, chances are as an average consumer, you're going to take the one without because it's cheaper to run and less effort for you.

Heck, the other day I was looking at some electronics on a very large Chinese shopping site and ran across a device that can emulate DEF systems in 8 different manufacturers vehicles with no actual DEF consumption occurring for ~$15. People are lazy, cheap and just don't give a shit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> GM is denying the claims that it cheated, calling them baseless.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/lawsuit-alleges- gm-...](http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/lawsuit-alleges-gm-cheated- diesel-pickup-truck-emissions-47639588)

</comment><comment><USER30> it's nearly 100% analogous to the performance enhancing drug problem in cycling and other sports.

performance vs following rules check

performance directly translates to better perception by public and therefore more money check

small monetary repercussions if discovered in comparison to amount to be gained by cheating check

arms race of detection/regulation no check yet (on the automotive side) but it will be interesting to see how this develops

</comment><comment><USER31> Now let's see them stick GM with similar fines as VW. In fact I would encourage the EU to do the same. Oh sweet sweet quid pro quo.

</comment><comment><USER32> I was on the verge of buying at VW when this happened to them. I will never buy a VW now. Pretty soon I'll have to stick to bikes if companies are allowed to get away with anything. Surprised that they haven't arrested everyone involved, considering that the people from VW fled the country.

<comment><USER33> You do realize every other auto manufacturer is doing the exact same thing? VW has one of the biggest R&D divisions in the industry. If they couldn't do it, nobody else could either.

<comment><USER34> _> You do realize every other auto manufacturer is doing the exact same thing?_

What makes you think that?

 _> VW has one of the biggest R&D divisions in the industry. If they couldn't do it, nobody else could either._

Do what? Make performant cars? Their gasoline (petrol) cars weren't implicated in this scandal. After the patch, the cars were still performing relatively well, losing about a second in the 0-60 time, and losing about 4mpg.

<comment><USER35> What I want to know is: why did they need to lose any performance or fuel economy at all?

Am I missing something? My understanding is that this was all because they couldn't meet emissions targets without using a certain amount of DEF. They calculated that to do that, the customer would have to refill the DEF tank "too soon" (meaning sooner than every regular service interval at the dealership, which is at least 10,000 miles).

So the simple fix is, in my mind: make the car use a lot more DEF so that it can generate the power and economy advertised, but the DEF tank will have to be refilled far more frequently (perhaps every 1000 miles, guessing). The driver will have to do it themselves obviously. And add some software code so that the car refuses to operate if the tank goes empty. If drivers can figure out that they need to put fuel (gas or diesel) in their car to make it go, and that it's going to die on the side of the road if they run that tank out, then they can do the same with a 2nd tank of fluid too.

<comment><USER34> This isn't apparent unless you read the article I linked, which is long. I don't expect you to.

The main violation appears to be emitting excess amounts of NO2, a pollutant, and some particulates.

<comment><USER35> My understanding (again, someone please correct me if I'm wrong or missing something) is that NOx emissions are mostly eliminated by injecting DEF (urea) into the exhaust stream, and also that NOx emissions are the big issue with dieselgate. And again, from what I read, the whole reason they didn't want to do it right was that consumers would have to refill the DEF tank too frequently, and that automakers thought people are too stupid for that and would run it dry, so they wanted it so that the dealership would refill it for them at their regular service interval, which is 10-20k miles. So as I said before, the fix should be easy, inject a lot more DEF, enough to actually eliminate the NOx per the standards, and just force consumers to refill the DEF far more frequently.

<comment><USER34> Looks like I was way less informed, thanks for the context!

It appears your analysis is right.

What would happen if the DEF was allowed to run empty?

<comment><USER35> The way they are now, I'm not sure. High NOx emissions I'm guessing, plus a warning light on the dashboard. But my proposal is to make the car stop operating if the tank is empty, just like it stops operating if your fuel tank is empty, and just make sure the dashboard light (or better yet some alphanumeric display or infotainment system display) gives ample warning to the driver that they need to refill it. I see Blue DEF sold in gas stations all the time, so it's not like it's hard to acquire.

And again, I'm not even sure I'm that well informed, I could very well be mistaken and over-simplifying things. If that's the case, I hope someone will correct me, but so far no one's said anything, but that's why I put that disclaimer in there several times.

<comment><USER36> This is how heavy truck diesels with DEF work, at least. Warning light at 10% full, flashing warning light at nearly empty, and if the tank runs completely empty, the vehicle is limited to 5mph until it's refilled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hopefully they get the proportion of fines as you know who...

</comment><comment><USER38> Another proof that Stallman was correct.

</comment><comment><USER34> "I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!"

"First they came for the trade unionists,"

"Dunning-Krueger Effect!"

"Wouldn't have happened if they used a secure coding language, like Rust"

"That's a _____ fallacy." [Link to Wikipedia list of logical fallacies]

Sorry for the OT post, I'm getting sick of the oft-repeated HN expressions that don't add to the discussion. We can do better.

And I forgot one, "I know I'll be downvoted for this, but..." ;)

<comment><USER39> It'll be amusing if this thread pops up on n-gate's weekly HN summaries: [http://n-gate.com/hackernews/](http://n-gate.com/hackernews/)

<comment><USER40> Wow. The person who writes that site sounds remarkably angry and upset at the world.

<comment><USER41> _Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

May 20, 2017 (comments)

An internet accurately describes Google's AMP program for what it is -- a barely-disguised attempt to shove more of the internet into itself, the better to track the living shit out of every human being on earth. Hackernews has attempted to avoid this program by using it heavily. Half the comments are Hackernews insisting that it is not only impossible to compete with Google in any way but also insane to try. Some Googles show up to assure everyone that this is for the greater good, and if you'd all just stop talking and get in line the whole process will be nearly painless. A few Hackernews suggest that AMP's feature set can be replicated with a "stop shoving every fucking possible line of javascript into every single pageload" approach, but they are quickly chloroformed and edited out of past Christmas photos._

How is this anything but genius? Next thing you tell me you do not approve of yosefk's excellent C++ FQA?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> _Hagens Berman's automotive legal team has dedicated substantial resources to uncovering cheating devices used by automakers._

Seems like a conflict of interest to me.</comment>


Java may be verbose, but who cares? - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/danlebrero/java-maybe-verbose-but-who-cares <comment><USER2> > IDEs generate 90% of my Java code;

It's not generating code that is costly, but reading it. Understanding 100 lines of code is usually easier than understanding 1000 lines of code, understanding 1000 lines of code is usually easier than understanding 10000 lines of code etc.

So generally it pays of to keep codebase small and simple.

<comment><USER3> >It's not generating code that is costly, but reading it. Understanding 100 lines of code is usually easier than understanding 1000 lines of code, understanding 1000 lines of code is usually easier than understanding 10000 lines of code etc.

That's not at all true. The costly part is the complexity. You could spend half a day puzzling over ten lines of cleverly written Lisp and just breeze through 100 lines of Java that do the same thing.

<comment><USER4> You're comparing 10 lines of "clever" Lisp to 100 lines of (presumably boring) Java.

In reality, it's more likely that those 100 lines of boring Java are easily written in 10 lines of _just as boring Lisp_ , the only difference being the removal of 90 lines of boilerplate getters and setters, iteration logic, exception declarations, class definitions and instantiation, and so on.

You can explain to someone (or learn on your own) "fancy" functional constructs like map, fold, and select in about ten minutes. And then they can be part of your vocabulary for an _entire career_. It is absolutely unfathomable to me that this is not a complete no-brainer.

Imagine a novelist who replaced every instance of ten common English words with their literal dictionary definition every time they came up in a book. That's the level of incredulity I personally experience every time I see someone write the same implementation of `map` for the tenth time in a single source file.

<comment><USER3> >In reality, it's more likely that those 100 lines of boring Java are easily written in 10 lines of just as boring Lisp, the only difference being the removal of 90 lines of boilerplate getters and setters, iteration logic, exception declarations, class definitions and instantiation, and so on.

I hear this sort of thing from Lisp advocates all the time, but have never seen it in practice. _Understandable_ Lisp isn't that compact.

<comment><USER4> > [I] have never seen it in practice. Understandable Lisp isn't that compact.

Also, you are literally replying to a comment chain provoked by a post that argues, with code, exactly this point. The Clojure (a Lisp dialect) version has the same core logic as the Java version. The core logic is virtually inarguably just as readable as the Java version. And it is just shy of an order of magnitude fewer lines of code than the Java version.

So here's an example from a real, live code base of understandable Lisp, in practice, that is 10x more compact than the Java version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is a reflection of the fact that FP is better at straight data processing than OOP (which, conversely is better for simulation). Using Java8, you could likely have done something similar to the Clojure solution using Streams. Using objects to model the data is a choice, not a requirement.

</comment><comment><USER6> Where is the source code being compared? It's hard to say whether this is a fair comparison without seeing it.

</comment><comment><USER7> This jibes with my experience - After doing 10 years of Java, a year with Clojure seems like heaven. I actually have brain space now to think about the problem than the mechanical details of the solution. In fact btw terseness, simplicity and immutability I stopped caring about the language for the most part and am able to concentrate on the problem at hand.

</comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one who likes verbosity while reading code?

When I stumble upon a codebase that looks like the following:

def unzip(tuples):

        if tuples:

            return [tuple(t[i] for t in tuples) for i, _ in enumerate(tuples[0])]   <</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-WTF IS THIS LINE DOING????

        else:
            return []

It takes too much mental energy if the code is littered with the WTF-like statements above.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that's horribly ugly. But that is because list manipulation was hacked onto the Python language. The fault is more Python's than anything else.

In other languages that same idea could be fairly clearly expressed.

<comment><USER10> > that is because list manipulation was hacked onto the Python language.

No. It's because whoever wrote that doesn't understand what list comprehensions are _for_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd be interested to see a Kotlin <-> Java side-by-side in the same instance. I don't know if the savings would be as dramatic, but it's a lot easier for devs (especially typical "enterprise" devs) to learn Kotlin.

</comment><comment><USER12> Remember: you read code a lot more than you write it.</comment>


Growthhackers.com - <AUTHOR> http://growthhackers.com/

<comment><USER2> The original Growth hacker himself quietly launched a site. SSshh His tweet here: [https://twitter.com/SeanEllis/status/384814227585638400](https://twitter.com/SeanEllis/status/384814227585638400)

<comment><USER3> Glad to see it was somebody like Sean Ellis who launched the Growth Hacker community site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great. Now a just a single place to ignore all the blogs on growth hacking.

<comment><USER3> Any reason why you're anti-growth hacking? There are lots of great blogs and posts (check out Andy Johns on Quora) how extremely successful startups have blended marketing and engineering to drive revenue/signup/traffic/(target metric).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excited to see this come to life. Looking forward to it.</comment>


See how deploying streaming applications on Kubernetes is a no-brainer - <AUTHOR> https://lenses.io/blog/2020/03/why-deploying-your-streaming-applications-on-kubernetes-is-a-no-brainer/ <comment><USER2> Interesting read...

<comment><USER3> Why? Seems more like a marketing piece</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would Web development be different if HTTP was a stateful protocol? - <AUTHOR> I was refreshing on the history of the World Wide Web and glossed over the fact that the HTTP protocol was designed to be stateless. It got me thinking; what would the implications of a stateful protocol be for Web developers? Would it also fundamentally change the way users browse the Web? <comment><USER2> No, because it is stateful now that we have cookies.

<comment><USER3> You're right, but cookies aren't really a part of HTTP, they're a browser hack that got popular.

You could just as easily say that HTTP is stateless because of backend databases and sessions. It's true about the web, but not HTTP per se.

<comment><USER2> I disagree. They might have had a different name, but they would end up being essentially the same thing: a place to store a unique identifier (or other information), with an expiration date and some information about what server to send them to.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.</comment></comment></comment>


Small business banking - <AUTHOR>

All-
 Who do you use for your small business banking purposes? Any recommendations/important features to watch out for?
 Thanks. <comment><USER2> Credit Unions are pretty good if I were to give my opinion. Mine has pretty good deals like this: [https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com/Business/Banking/Chequin...](https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com/Business/Banking/Chequing_Accounts/One_Small_Fee_Business_Account/)

I'm assuming most have similar services. (As an aside, you'll notice that website is pretty damn good too, for a bank.)</comment>


Plankalkül: The First High-Level Programming Language and Its Implementation - <AUTHOR> https://web.archive.org/web/20141018204625/http://www.zib.de:80/zuse/Inhalt/Programme/Plankalkuel/Plankalkuel-Report/Plankalkuel-Report.htm <comment><USER2> Here is a PDF of the paper where you can also see the code examples embedded in the text: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250809396_Plankalku...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250809396_Plankalkul_The_First_High- Level_Programming_Language_and_its_Implementation)</comment>


Productivity Tips - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/09/27/productivity-tips/

<comment><AUTHOR> A question / poll: Is the parameter for productivity the number of effective hours / day (or) number of tasks finished ? How do you guys work?</comment>


Clojure Numerics, Part 2 - General Linear Systems and LU Factorization - <AUTHOR> http://dragan.rocks/articles/17/Clojure-Numerics-2-General-Linear-Systems-and-LU-Factorization <comment><AUTHOR> The source of the library that is used in the article: [https://github.com/uncomplicate/neanderthal](https://github.com/uncomplicate/neanderthal)</comment>


Show HN: RPG MO, HTML5 MMORPG with Websockets - <AUTHOR> https://data.mo.ee/index2.html <comment><USER2> I never knew about the "Add to Homescreen" feature, that's really interesting

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, to use it first check if navigator.standalone is defined (should only be available on iOS devices). true value means it is running from Home Screen, false means it is not. Allows for better fullscreen, can easily add buttons where usually url bar would interfere.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We also have player made mods. Enable them by typing to chat /mods</comment>


If you ever found yourself digging into wikipedia's links infinitely - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id882715956?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> This one might be for you.

It's far stretch, but I'm trying to make learning faster and more focused than switching from tab to tab, or app to app.

Throw feedbacks at me, good or bad.</comment>


This article has been perfectly formatted for maximum reading comprehension - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/452848/this-article-has-been-perfectly-formatted-for-maximum-reading-comprehension-2/

<comment><USER2> > Research going back decades has found that "chunking," a technique that > separates text into meaningful units, provides visual cues that help readers > better process information.

I tend to format comments (when they're long enough) to put one idea per line. I think most of us format code that way too.

I also tend to do that with workplace emails, which makes it look oddly paragraphed; the intent is to make it easy to identify the important points.</comment>


3D Printing Delivers Functional Prosthetic Hands at a DIY Price - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2013/09/13/3d-printing-delivers-functional-prosthetic-hands-at-a-diy-price/

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't tell if the thing point "things get weird" but at some point the DIY medicine which makes things can be really cheap will collide with the medical monopolies which everything must be really expensive. I assume you get either "sudden market sanity" or massive repression ("think of the children" who die using cheap medical devices rather being assured death through not being able afford any, etc ).</comment>


The Unlikely Pulp Fiction Illustrations of Edward Hopper - <AUTHOR> https://lithub.com/the-unlikely-pulp-fiction-illustrations-of-edward-hopper/ <comment><USER2> Wonderful article! I did not expect to read this on HN today _at all_.

I expect anyone with the undying love for Hopper's work that I have to immediately imagine the harsh realities that produced these illustrations but alas I am mistaken.

Hopper was not a social artist! He was an embodiement of the eye, a conduit of visual experience. I would also argue Hopper was _not_ a storyteller! He was more like a pornographer _of light_ than a storyteller, and this is a beautiful thing.

[https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MLACmwsxaww/RjtOQOTDtGI/AAAAAAAAA...](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_MLACmwsxaww/RjtOQOTDtGI/AAAAAAAAAUc/s_sNdmpG4PE/s400/04hopp_CA1.650.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> Edward Hopper has always been one of my favourite artists. I'm no connossieur of art but I usually am very partial to abstract art because I am impressed by patterns and how it managed to induce an emotion in me without actually showing an obvious _posed story_ (I'm speaking of the _very_ abstract Mondarian, Kandinsky, slash-on-canvas Fontana, or Rothko, not the vaguely- screwed-up Picasso-style stuff).

Anyway, I've always been confused by the fact that I adore Edward Hopper above all of those, because the light is so striking and so 'contrasty' and stark and 'photographically' posted, and so inherently optimistic. So absolutely non-banal, so remarkable, so memorable, so... rendered?

And now up crops this stuff which strikes me as being absolutely run-of-the- mill almost-risible pulp.

It surprises me. It doesn't at all detract from my amazement of those works of his I find so absolutely affecting and moving. It makes me feel... very protective of him, because he was pushed into doing these things in order to survive and provide for himself.

Sorry for the very confused comment. Thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's something about Hopper's paintings. I can usually immediately identify one before I see any caption. I don't know what it is.

But these... Another side altogether. Thanks for the post!

<comment><USER5> I'm the same way about his paintings... I think it's genius.

I got to see a large collection of his paintings at the National Gallery in DC a number of years ago, and... wow. In person they're astounding. Go see them "live" if you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many issues of the magazine referred to in the article are available on the Internet archive: [https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Adventure+...](https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Adventure+Magazine%22&sort=date)

How cool is that.</comment>


Did Dropbox and Evernote Heed the Lessons of Flip? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dhh/making-money-along-the-way-did-dropbox-and-evernote-heed-the-lessons-of-flip-f5a133fe00d4 <comment><USER2> IIRC, back in the early 1900's, it was commonly known that tech companies should pay higher dividends than longstanding blue chip companies. Why? Because they were much more likely to have short lifespans. The newer the company, the more active the sector, the more turnover in the sector, the more likely the company will get replaced by something else. Somehow people seem to have forgotten this lesson. We now have tech companies like Sun or Groupon that go their entire lifecyle without paying out profits to investors.

That said, the strategy of not paying out profits makes sense for the investors and the founders. The founders will make more money by talking up how much long-term potential the company has, how it is going to be the next 100-year company. Then when they get the $10 billion valuation, the founder can take some money off the table. That is probably a better deal for the founder than getting a $1 billion valuation and just paying out dividends.

The question is, who will end up holding the bag. As much as I loved Dropbox when it came out, I switched off of it recently. I'm not sure what the future is for it in five, ten years. If you are techie, you want something with end- to-end encryption. If you are a normal user, you'll just go with whatever is bundled with your operating system or bundled with applications you use (iCloud, one drive, google drive).

<comment><USER3> > The question is, who will end up holding the bag.

The founders and employees (mostly the employees), it seems like. The VCs and growth capital funds have downside protection, and the public markets are no longer receptive to such blatantly unfavorable business models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TFA seems to come close to arguing that certain businesses should plan to provide value, then fold within a few years. The idea had never occurred to me. It seems to have some difficult implications. If you're the founder of a business and your mission statement involves having "failed" within five years, do you tell your employees that? Or do you pretend to want permanent growth and let them buy houses close to work?

<comment><USER5> Dropbox and Evernote are more than five-year-old and I don't think they're shutting their products down any time soon. So it doesn't apply here. Large companies also pivot (Apple, HP, Intel, Motorola...), so some will ride more than one wave.

Anyway, where there is demand, there should be supply, and conversely. The car manufacturing market boomed a couple of times. Ditto for bicycles. Home appliances as well. The PC market peaked in the 2000's, now there is no point in keeping supplying these clunky metal boxes. Today the mobile apps market is very saturated, only 7 years after the App Store launched. Once customers buy a product, they won't be on the market for some time, until the product gets amortized or dies, a big innovation occurs, or what have you. When 80% of customers already bought the product, the market is mature and concentration occurs, that's always been the case. Maybe innovation getting faster is what is happening, so companies will be more shortlived. But the pace is bound by the customer's income, so the bright side is there is a feedback loop.

I think an honest founder should at least try to find employees that understand the risks and pay them accordingly. Obviously, there will be many bad players, but prospective employees will also get wiser from the Webvans, Zyngas and Groupons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> People have been saying this about Dropbox since iCloud came out, but what has changed? Have usage statistics changed? Have Google Drive and One Drive come close in feature set? Has Office dropped support for them?

I mean the linked article suggests that this is the case without ever showing us the bases for the assumptions. As far as I know, if we are looking at major players in the field, iCloud should worry the most, since it is something that nobody uses.

<comment><USER7> I think many people see the Box performance: [http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/box/interactive- chart?timeframe...](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/box/interactive- chart?timeframe=6m&charttype=line) and they see how challenging it is for Box to hold its 1+ billion valuation in the public markets, and look at the $1.1B DropBox has raised, and think "hmm, its getting close to being unable to even meet liquidation preferences."

I know Box and DropBox are different, but for a lot of people they have the word "box" in their name, they provide cloud storage, and that is the extent of their understanding of the offerings.

So the question is, what will be the 2016 news from DropBox? And yes, there are doubters who have put them in the deadpool.

<comment><USER6> I am guessing there real problem is that they don't have any productivity suite attached to their cloud service. Google has Google Docs(which is why I went with it over Dropbox for my small business), which is the best free Office Competitor, and OneDrive has all the might of MS Office.

I think they just allowed commenting and editing Word docs through their webapps recently.

Evernote has the note market cornered. Google Keep looks like yet another silly google experiment that they might one day pull the plug on (like Reader :-( ), and Apple Notes, like icloud, only really works on Apple devices. OneNote just got free, and has got some great features and comes with Windows 10, but I don't think most non-Office365 subscribers even know it exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the problem with evernote, I was not aware it is dying. Been happily using it for years, and it does everything I need. Admittedly I just need it for usually text only storage of notes and todo stuff.

After reading this article I tested OneNote (on windows desktop). It seems to have lots of features but seemed difficult to use for plain text editing. You could move the text boxes around and paint in the note etc but that was just annoying for my use case.

And the screen capture tool just grabs a portion of the screen? No nice annotation of the image like in skitch? And easy drag and drop of the annotated image into another program like a chat window? Yes you could annotate the image in one note of course but no easy way I could find to then drag the image + annotations to another application.

Maybe I just don't know how to use it but that is just the strength of evernote and skitch, dead simple to use.

And skitch's annotation graphics are way nicer than the pixelated lines of onenote.

<comment><USER9> I too am a happy Evernote user, for text-only note-taking. Prior to Evernote, I used Xnippet, a mac-app which wasn't well supported. Evernote is a big part of my work flow, and I'd hate to see it go away. I find all the other features (web-clipping, image-editing) superfluous, and it feels like they are concentrating too much on the fluff features. Every time there is an update, it feels like they are adding more features I don't need.</comment></comment>


Yes, You Can Put a Price on a T-Rex (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2015/10/29/452763153/yes-you-can-put-a-price-on-a-t-rex <comment><USER2> There is a detective [novel by Douglas Preston]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaur_Canyon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaur_Canyon)) (2005) exploiting the high value of fossils.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a reason why the U.S. government doesn't pay ransom money to terrorists - it would set a dangerous precedent.

While this doesn't necessarily have the same dire consequences, it's a shame that the door has been opened to scientific finds being co-opted for money.

I'll always look up to Jonas Salk, who refused to patent the polio vaccine. Some things shouldn't have a price put on them.

<comment><USER4> Personal property rights should always be paramount. I don't want the government or anyone else deciding to take something away from me just because a special interest group thinks they can make better use of it. The standard should be far higher than that. Sue is nothing more than a curiosity. I happen to like paleontology and science in general, and I'm glad that Sue is on display in a museum and available to study, but there's no argument I could make for taking it away from someone without fair market compensation.

<comment><USER5> Isn't land as personal property kind of a gray area though? After all, eminent domain exists. Just because the US Government allowed settlers to claim land in South Dakota a hundred years ago, doesn't relinquish any and every right to the land and its features/resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $ 7.6 million for people who don't want to read it

<comment><USER7> That's not the point of the story. It's actually about the T-Rex named Sue that was one of the first dinosaur fossils to be auctioned at an insane price, and kickstarted the whole fossil-hunting-for-money industry.

<comment><USER8> Fossil hunting for money could be a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, there will be a lot more fossil-hunting, meaning more fossils will be found. But on the other, commercial hunters are likely to be much less careful with fossils than scientists would be.

Anyone know how the tradeoffs work out?</comment></comment></comment>


lsp is like ls command but more human-friendly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dborzov/lsp

<comment><USER2> While I hesitate to augment core functionality with something before its untested, I do think this looks pretty awesome and is exactly what I want 'ls' to perform like. Nice work, looking forward to future versions.</comment>