A Canvas Made of Pixels - <AUTHOR> http://www.claybavor.com/?p=407 <comment><USER2> >> A fun (but impractical and frustrating) variant of this feature is to have the image change as soon as the viewer looks away. So you're looking at a painting, glance away to another room, and look back to find a new painting hanging on the wall.

Re this comment. There is this thing called "saccadic masking", the gist of which is that we are effectively blind while our eyes move from focusing on one position to the next. Depending on the "distance" (angle) traveled by the eye, this can last up to tens of milliseconds. Enough time to do some cool stuff!

One of the studies that conclusively showed this effect, a fairly long time ago, had participants wear some elaborate headgear that allowed the researchers to track where the eyes of their participants were looking at. They had them look at a standard sentence like

"the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog",

but with a twist! Every word in the sentence was masked, except for the word the participant would be focusing on at that moment. So if he focused on the word fox, the screen would show

"xxx xxxxx xxxxx fox xxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxx xxx".

Whenever the system detected a saccade by the eyes, they would recalculate which word the participant would be looking at (e.g. switch to dog), and changed the display of the screen accordingly, now showing

"xxx xxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxx dog"

Participants were asked if they noticed anything strange about the sentence, but they reported there was nothing strange about it! (Disregarding having a heavy set of mirrors strapped to your head).

My point: If you were able to detect saccades of the eyes, and relatively accurately calculate their position, you could have the region of the image that's unattended be colourful noise, the theory says that your visitors would be none the wiser (of course this would break down with multiple people looking at the same image)

Even cooler: procedurally re-generate parts of the image that are unattended, so that you're looking at an ever shifting image, but wouldn't quite be able to pin down what's happening. Similar to this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNF9QNEQLA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNF9QNEQLA)

<comment><USER3> This is also the principle behind foveated rendering ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveated_imaging)) where you only render the graphics in high detail where the viewer is looking, and use a low-res image for the rest with the goal of saving computing power. Big area of development right now for VR!

<comment><USER2> That's really cool! I'm not 100% sure, but what I remember from reading a few psych papers about this is that as long as the "mask" is similar to the original in a few easy to calculate sampling statistics (colour distribution, overall hue), it doesn't actually need to look anything like the original image, even calculating low-res imagery shouldn't be necessary. Our peripheral vision is just that bad (at least for static imagery, movement detection is actually pretty good). The foveated part is where the magic happens, and we've gotten pretty good at fooling ourself into believing this "foveated" part is much larger than it actually is.

<comment><USER4> Hey, something I know about! I actually worked on one of those research projects in college, programming the experiments. The idea is that there is a certain radius around the focal point where you stop being able to detect changes. I'm not sure what the final results were, but the theory was that you can calculate how blurry an image can be and still be discernable based on how far it is from the focal point of your vision. It was surprising how good people are at detecting changes in a blurry picture that's way out in their periphery.

<comment><USER2> My prof used to joke that, whenever he'd discuss fovea and periphery, that if we had a fovea the size of our full field of view, we'd need a brain the size of an elephant to process all that information. It's interesting how we're very sensitive to sudden changes (thus movement) in our periphery, but are so bad at classifying/identifying static imagery.

I remember reading about right eye and left eye dominance. Where they'd keep an image on the screen saccade invariant (ie, compensate for any saccades that were made). Slowing moving a letter/character/word/whatever to the edges of the participant's field of view and asking when the character was no longer legible. This happened surprisingly quickly, but at different positions for the left eye and right eye for pretty much all participants..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He says in the article that "Apple did a good job with their monitor", but what he fails to realize is that the panel in that monitor is made by Samsung, and is used in numerous other monitors, such as a bunch of Dell Ultrasharp monitors. These are the exact same monitor, except with a different frame and stand, and are available for a fraction of the cost.

<comment><USER6> Yea but the integrated quiet computer was also important for his project. Mounting a separate computer would have added a lot of complication.

<comment><USER7> He does not say this. In fact, at the end of the article, he writes that having the whole iMac is fairly impractical and having a smaller Android system on a chip would be the better solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Visitors to Microsoft chairman Gates' new mansion in Medina will find themselves in an electronic Disneyland where they will be able to "call up" a favorite painting or photograph on combination TV-computer screens.

"Right now, only a billionaire could afford to try $80,000 monitors and $150,000 computer-storage devices (the house could have several) that may be needed to make this all work."

from "Bill Gates: 50,000 Computer Paintings On Call" (1991)

[http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...](http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19910526&slug=1285524)

<comment><USER9> I remember reading about the various technological features Gates put in when he built his home. I would be really interested to read/see (video would be awesome) a followup piece about whether many of these things either required regular upgrading or else have simply become antiquated. I would guess that his family kept upgrading the home, but details would be interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice job! If you have a camera that tracks the viewer, you can also make the image it displays 3D as seen in this video from 2007: [https://youtu.be/Jd3-eiid-Uw?t=2m46s](https://youtu.be/Jd3-eiid-Uw?t=2m46s) (back then it used a Wiimote to track the head position).

<comment><USER11> Do you think a camera would be precise enough? This looks pretty awesome.

<comment><USER12> I had a quick go at this a few months back using Apple's CIDetector[1], and even at 'high' accuracy that didn't seem precise enough — it was distractingly jiggly.

[1] [CIDetector detectorOfType:CIDetectorTypeFace context:nil options:@{CIDetectorAccuracy: CIDetectorAccuracyHigh, CIDetectorTracking: @YES}]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm really surprised there's no photos of the build process. It's hard to tell if this is actually what is being described, or just a blog post around a photo of a framed image.

<comment><USER14> Build photos would have been really cool. Also, some detail on the software would be nice. I'm assuming it's running on OSX, but I still have lots of questions (what language, how can you change the picture, how does he manage it remotely, etc).

<comment><USER15> First of all, yes the frame really exists. :)

If I get around to pulling together build photos (which by the way aren't that exciting), I'll post them here. For now, just imagine a big hole in my wall (I had to reframe it), a photodiode sticking out of a hole on the right side of the picture frame, and an iMac.

The software is just a simple Objective-C / Cocoa app running on Mac OS X. I use a Kensington presenter clicker to advance the images to change them remotely. I drop new images into a Google Drive folder from another Mac, which the picture frame automatically picks up and puts into the image rotation. And if I want to make major changes, I just use a wireless keyboard and mouse to work on the frame like I would a normal iMac. It is very unsophisticated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My first thought when I started reading was "wow what a waste of time and money to display a stupid picture" but by the time I was near the end of the article, my attitude had turned 180 degrees. This is amazing attention to detail and craftsmanship in the traditional sense. I can only admire the process - really impressed.

</comment><comment><USER17> It brings to mind the "moving paintings" in the ride wait queues for "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey" (a dark ride with a moving car on an articulated arm). I saw those things _up close_ and they had a wonderful canvas texture laid over the screens. It really seemed _magical_ \-- though I admit I'm one to give myself over to the magic of theme parks when I can -- and it made me wonder if this effect could be reproduced by using a matte silicone mold of actual canvas or something like that.

As an aside, there is a lot of amazing technology in play in that ride; I read an unauthorized treatment of how the ride works and I was blown away at the systems/mechanical orchestration necessary to pull it off. It's no wonder it breaks down all the time.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thisi s cool, but to _really_ reproduce art, you have to avoid RGB-based displays. I've always assumed the reason wide-gamut/CIE L _a_ b*-influenced displays are uncommon is that RGB is "good enough" for most purposes outside of image-editing/printing. But they can only show a fraction of the colors humans can see. IIRC, the standard sRGB space used in most monitors can only show a third of the human-visible spectrum.

<comment><USER19> Yes, that seems like a huge limitation. Though the 5k iMac is wide gamut, so quite a bit better than sRGB. Are there even (consumer?) displays that have a significantly wider gamut?

[http://blog.conradchavez.com/2015/10/26/a-look-at- the-p3-col...](http://blog.conradchavez.com/2015/10/26/a-look-at-the-p3-color- gamut-of-the-imac-display-retina-late-2015/)

<comment><USER18> Kudos to Apple for making the new iMacs wide-gamut. But I don't know that it's too common in the consumer space yet, mostly because once you start using multiple color spaces, you run into the problem of images created in one color space being shown in another. If the image data isn't tagged correctly, things will look over/under-saturated on different monitors. (E.g., is rgb(255, 0, 0) the reddest red in sRGB or the reddest red in P3/Adobe RGB?)

I suspect that when monitor manufacturers tire of competing on pixel density, brightness, 3D, and size, they'll eventually get around to competing on gamut. Maybe Apple will lead the way. A lot of photo/video cameras already capture a larger gamut, so monitors are the last piece of the puzzle.

<comment> mark-r Unfortunately as the gamut gets larger, so does the visual difference between adjacent colors. You need more than 8 bits per channel from end to end if you're going to use anything wider than sRGB.

Any RGB based color space will be triangular shaped; if it's to be physically realized in a display, all 3 vertices must lie within the CIE gamut. Since the CIE gamut isn't perfectly triangular you will always be missing some colors outside of the triangle no matter what you do. You could do much better by adding a 4th primary to create a trapezoid, which would more completely fill the space. As the entire industry is RGB based this would be completely impractical, but it would be fun to see as a demo.

<comment><USER19> Is the CIE gamut "it"? In other words, are all colors perceivable by a typical human represented by it? I briefly scanned the Wikipedia article but wasn't any wiser.

<comment> mark-r Yes, the CIE 1931 color space is generally accepted as the limit of human perception. I don't know how much variability there is from person to person, since it's based on averages. There are a small number of Tetrachromats that can distinguish a greater variety of colors, but I believe those colors are all still within the gamut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nicely done, though I would have loved to have seen some build pictures. There are a number of commercial players in this market (for example [https://frm.fm/](https://frm.fm/)) which combine hardware and marketplace, and the geek in me would love to see these succeed.

I work in e-commerce selling art reproductions and have thought a lot about this. I believe as soon as you make the art ephemeral or changeable, its value (to you, rather than monetary) is diminished and it simply becomes a means of displaying pixels.

I jumped at the chance to digitise my music collection, I just can't imagine doing the same for visual art.

<comment><USER9> I would expect there are people who lovingly care for their collection of vinyl records and find the desire to digitize a music collection equally unimaginable.

<comment><USER20> Granted, though I think the difference is even more pronounced when the primary purpose of the physical object is to be appreciated visually. Not to detract from the visual appeal of record sleeves, but the primary goal is to house the album.

I would also argue that sound can be reproduced digitally in a way that closely resembles the analog equivalent, but the same is not true of displaying art on screens vs on actual paper/canvas (despite the impressive efforts in the linked post).

<comment><USER21> Some issues:

Paint on any medium is a slightly sculptural 3D. You can look at a masterpiece from four hundred years ago and _see the brushstrokes._ The reflection from the relief map changes as you move your head.

Fine art inkjet prints are more subtly textured, because museum-grade paper is never perfectly flat.

A lot of art is huge - many feet by many feet. The giant displays needed to reproduce it don't exist yet.

But the biggest problem with electronic frames is working out how to power them without trailing an obvious power lead to the floor. You can solve this problem by plastering the display into the wall, or by building a false wall, or by ignoring it. None of those are ideal.

I'd love to see a practical solution, but I'm not sure one is possible with current technology - although it may get closer with the new film displays that are appearing.

I like the light sensing here though. That's a clever solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A cool effect would be to have the painting _actually_ looking at you using face recognition.

Freaky.

<comment><USER23> An excellent idea. Perhaps combined with the look away detection mentioned in the article, such that the painting only tracks you when you aren't looking directly at it. Reminiscent of many a horror movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So... when will you start a Kickstarter campaign?

</comment><comment><USER25> It's too bad this isn't on github. I've always wanted to make something similar, but using computational art instead of paintings. My dream is to make a thing that slowly adapts to the room its in, but doesn't seem like a computer hanging on a wall.

Does anyone know where I can learn more about the lighting techniques described here?

</comment><comment><USER9> I continue impatiently waiting for a large format true color electronic paper display at a quasi-reasonable price. I have had a different project idea for such a thing for several years now, but the wait continues. I imagine such a display would be excellent for the use described in this article. No need to mess about with matching light levels (although doing that was super cool!), battery would only need charged every few weeks or months, etc. There are actually a couple products that seem to be what I want, but for reasons I do not understand the image displayed can not be changed. I have no idea why someone would buy electronic paper signage whose image has to be provided to the manufacturer and which can not be changed later. I would expect a simple printed sign would be superior for any use that would be put to.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm a big fan of flux, but brightness adjustment is another story.

On my iPad, I quickly turned it off. The auto-brightness never hit the spot I wanted, and switched too strongly and too late. Reading on the bus, the brightness basically goes berserk at every shadow and never settles. At home it would be more manageable, but unfortunately desktop monitors don't support brightness adjustments as far as I know -- really wish it was standard through HDMI.

Having to put an entire iMac computer on the wall to have access to brightness adjustments (at least that's my understanding of the solution) makes it a lot less practical. But kudos to the author for addressing that essential part of the problem.

<comment><USER27> Keep in mind that the cheapest 5K iMac is in the same price range as standalone 5K monitors. So you might as well use the iMac unless you can get a 5K monitor at a pretty steep discount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A color hi-res e-ink display would be a much better fit for the project: it requires power only to change the image and doesn't need light sensors. Too bad e-ink isn't being developed anymore.

<comment><USER29> [http://www.eink.com/](http://www.eink.com/) appear to be doing development and a year ago releasead a colour eink display. Alas the resolution and 4096 colour range is somewhat adrift from the requirements of such a use as in photo realism. Indeed the market that will boost this area will be supermarket labeling upon shelfs and the like. Even recently a few bus stops in London utilising eink for displaying a bus timetible [http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/12/tfls-trial-of-clever- eink-l...](http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/12/tfls-trial-of-clever-eink-london- bus-timetables-is-frustratingly-limited/)

But totaly agree it is aperfect fit for such display technology, alas the technology is still a long way off being suitable for this niche usage. Albeit the whole refresh aspect and power usage make it not ideal for current technology, at least the aspect of screen burn-in and ghosting are less considerations from the old CRT days (though they could do a better colour range technology wise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was having a conversation regarding these things just a few days ago. I always loved the idea of a digital frame and have had many over the years, but no devices really nailed it and backlit was always the wrong way to go. Refresh time is not an issue at all as you would refresh on inactivity if you really don't want people to see the sausage made. Feeding data to these things is trivial.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow this is incredibly cool! I love the shy feature especially, to screw with the viewer :P

One question I have, though, is that since the aspect ratio of the screen is fixed, does that mean that all the photos have to be rescaled? That is kinda inelegant, I wonder if there's a way to fix it.

<comment><USER32> I think the mat around the photo is also rendered, so you can have whatever aspect you want - although a portrait image might look a bit lost in the middle of it.

Next step - mount the frame on a motorised bearing so it can rotate 90 degrees depending on the image aspect!

<comment><USER33> I don't think the mat is rendered. In the video with changing light conditions, you can see how the picture lags slightly, while the mat reacts immediately.

<comment><USER34> The mat is also used to make the aspect ratio less extreme, so it can't be rendered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Constrast is the lagging factor in good computer displays. These are called High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays. The claim is the eye can see a contrast factor of about a million at any one time, and a billion switching between sunny daytime and darkest night. An end-to-end camera-display system would need 20 bit amplitudes represent such a dynamic range. Many current systems are just 8 or 12 bits.

SIGGRAPH often exhibits high end experimental displays. 4K resolution is close to what the eye can see. Four or six basis color systems improve color capture. But I generally just see an improvement in nature scenes. The huge win is HDR. A good HDR display is almost indistinguishable from looking through a window.

<comment> alok-g [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye#Dynamic_range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye#Dynamic_range)

>> 4K resolution is close to what the eye can see.

Depends on the distance to the display (whose resolution is independent on where the viewer is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Awesome! I really love the usage of the photodiode, as well as the camera, both are pretty thoughtful finishing touches that elevate this to more than "a cool digital frame".

How much does the display cost, if I were to make a frame like that too?

<comment><USER19> The cheapest 5k iMac is $1799, other comparable displays are roughly in the same ballpark. I imagine the other items (frame, sensors) are trivial compared to that expense.

Replacement 5k panels for the iMac (LM270WQ1) are merely $800 on AliExpress, but you'd have to figure out how to output to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hogwarts paintings!

<comment><USER38> Almost! Still need to network them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is amazing! I had the same idea a few years ago but never got around to it. I was planning to just use some regular LCD screens and give them some nice frames. Probably wouldn't have looked that great, though.

It's going to have to wait though, I'm living in an apartment now and can't really cut huge holes in our walls. Even if everything could fit inside the frame, it would be pretty ugly if you couldn't hide the power cable.

</comment><comment><USER40> If I pull an LCD panel out of an old laptop, how do I connect it to something small like a raspberry pi or beaglebone?

My understanding was that many lcd panels required custom drivers/firmware that was often embedded in the laptop/display board.

<comment><USER41> search for the part number on ebay and you'll probably find a driver board with vga or hdmi input, or a board that you can buy and ask the seller to program it for a specific display. Usually less than $30, but you'll need power, a case, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Anti-"Shy mode" with all such frames connected over intranet would be really cool!

</comment><comment><USER43> Fantastic read, and a great idea. Very inspiring, thank you for posting it.

</comment><comment><USER44> I use a printer.

<comment><USER45> you tree killer :P</comment></comment>


NSA Pricked The "Cloud" Bubble For US Tech Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/8/6/nsa-pricked-the-cloud-bubble-for-us-tech-companies.html <comment><AUTHOR> Mr Obama and NSA spymasters, meet Mr Blowback:

 _In a survey conducted after the Snowden leaks, 10% of the foreign companies using cloud computing services said they'd already cancelled a project with a US cloud provider and 56% said they'd be less likely to use US-based providers. Conversely, among US stakeholders in the cloud sector, 36% said that the NSA leaks would make it more difficult doing business outside the US. The report estimated that if US cloud companies lose between 10% and 20% of their foreign business over three years, it will cost them between $21.5 billion to $35 billion.

But the report cautions it could get much more expensive "if foreign governments enact protectionist trade barriers that effectively cut out US providers." In Europe, momentum in that direction is growing.

German Federal Data Protection commissioners threatened with new bureaucratic hurdles. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich announced that "whoever fears their communication is being intercepted in any way should use services that don't go through American servers." And Justice Minister Jörg-Uwe Hahn called for an outright boycott of US companies._</comment>


How John and Patrick Collison Built Stripe - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2016/01/04/cashiers-of-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> I've used Dwolla for my own payments before they decided to focus on merchant accounts. Pretty good experience with them, and I wonder how they compare to Stripe today. I'm always suspicious of such over-hyped services as Stripe, and wished that there was more of a focus on describing the features and technology rather than trying to make everything into a human interest story. Yeah, the Collisons are interesting and successful guys, no doubt. Is Stripe actually a better service on merit? I really don't know, nor does this article enlighten me on that front. It really gives no basis for answering the question in its headline, other than pointing to the precocious financial success of the founders.

<comment><USER3> > over-hyped

For the past 5-6 years or so I've been working extensively with Stripe, Braintree, WePay, and PayPal, on a number of different eCommerce and marketplace platforms. Some supported only one of these gateways, other platforms I've been heavily involved with support each of those 4 gateways in parallel depending on their merchants' needs.

Stripe wins, hands-down, for the best documentation and well-thought-out API architecture. It's not even fair to call it a race, they're so far ahead. Braintree has caught up a fair bit over the years, but they're still nowhere near Stripe's level, and now that they're owned by PayPal I don't really expect them to ever get there. (As an aside, I also had a pretty frustrating experience with Braintree back in the day because they took too long to support card tokenization, and one client had no feasible way to only charge the customer once inventory was secured. Lame customer experience.)

WePay is doing some cool stuff, but, as one example, their ruby SDK gem is a 100-line thin wrapper around the core Net::HTTP library, which means I have to dig pretty heavily into both their documentation and Ruby's various Net::HTTP exceptions to safely handle errors, whereas Stripe has all of this built into their ruby gem out of the box.

My time is limited, and I'd much rather invest it towards designing great customer experiences than reading and understanding lacking documentation. Stripe is the only platform I've seen that gets that their documentation is their product. If the price is I'm on an over-hyped platform, I'm okay with that. :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, they should interview you or someone with your experience actually using the product when writing these articles!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We approached Stripe with several million/mo in processing across hundreds of merchants. The rate they offered us was almost as laughable as 2.9%+30c.

<comment><USER5> Who did you use instead?

<comment><USER4> We worked out a very good deal with CardConnect (ISO of First Data) after looking into becoming our own ISO.

Their docs aren't as good as Stripe, but there is greater functionality available. Overall, I'm satisfied.

<comment><USER6> With that kind of volume, you should go straight to a big bank - like Chase Paymentech or First Data - and getting interchange plus rates. Then you can plug your merchant account into whatever gateway you want that has the best API docs, such as Authorize.net or Braintree (I don't think Stripe supports bringing your own merchant account). Curious why you went with an ISO? Risk- related - TPPA maybe? True that ISO's are usually willing to take on more risk than the big guys.

<comment><USER7> Couple things - Chase Paymentech and First Data are processors, not banks. I'd be careful going to banks for processing, because it tends to be among the most expensive and opaque you can get. (Bank of America and Wells Fargo both have merchant processing divisions, and are among the worst solutions most businesses can choose.)

Interchange plus is definitely the pricing model that most businesses want to be on (and it's actually not limited to high volume businesses - plenty of small merchants can get it, too) but be aware that by itself, interchange plus isn't a silver bullet. It really needs to be a true pass-through model, where you pay the true costs of interchange and assessments. Otherwise, you could still get overcharged. Mercury Payments, for example, charges with "interchange plus" but has now been sued twice for overcharging on assessments. Basically they padded the costs of assessments while trying to make it look like those were the costs charged by the card brands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Still waiting for new the dashboard…almost a year now :( And how I wish Stripe allows non automatic deposit, keeps the money in the currency it was paid in and peer to peer transfers! One can hope…

<comment><USER9> Without knowing anything about how Stripe is built on the back end, I imagine there are probably some architectural issues baked into the automated deposits that would be a significant undertaking to get rid of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't consider being called "The Paypal of the Mobile Era" a compliment.

<comment><USER11> If you think of paypal as 'the easy to use payment service provider' then it makes good sense and it is a compliment.

The merchant issues that some of us dealing with PayPal are facing is of no concern. Just like being called the 'google of X' does not immediately link with supremely bad customer service. It's a short-hand, nothing more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone turn off adblocker after they put in this gateway? I just stopped reading forbes instead.

<comment><USER13> Works fine with scriptblock installed as well.</comment></comment>


On Engendering Strong Reactions, Merbist's statement about the presentation furor - <AUTHOR> http://merbist.com/2009/04/28/on-engendering-strong-reactions/

<comment><USER2> Oh man. Looks like he missed, or didn't understand, Giles' excellent comment. Witness:

 _My view is that offending someone is walking up to them and saying: "You suck, your code sucks and your partner's code sucks!". That is not what I did in my talk._

Failing so hard it's almost painful to watch.

<comment><USER3> Seriously. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, just a lame joke that went on too long. Now I see it's the _organizers_ fault for having him talk, and _my_ fault for "choosing to take offense". If this guy had any p.r. savvy he'd just issue a simple apology and move on; instead he's stoking the fire more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was at gogaruco and at the time of Matt's talk I happened to be sitting next to a woman.

It was clear to me from the title of the talk (and the cover slide, which was published in advance) that the talk was going to rely on some sort of porn analogy.

In my opinion, Matt's talk was quite unsubtle and way overdid the analogy, to the point where I was looking around the auditorium wondering if the women present would be offended. I was quite surprised that none appeared to look offended, disgusted, etc., and that none got up and left in the middle.

I kept thinking, sheesh I would guess that anyone who knows Matt probably finds this funny and harmless... but at the same time it struck me as a few steps over the line... especially since his point could have been made with far more subtlety.

I think _why's comment says it all: Be sure to make it look like when you zoom out it's just two bagels.

The whole apology thing is great, but I think the ideal response would have been "Ok, I see that putting hard core porn in the middle of a slide show is likely to offend some people"... To me that is quite obvious.

edit: I should note that I'm not the least bit offended by most porn, but think it's best experienced either alone or in the company of people who have opted in.

<comment><USER5> I understand a few slides were removed from the version on the web... but did the version as presented include 'hard core porn', graphic depiction of actual sex acts?

<comment><USER4> The pictures were mostly of scantily clad women. I think one involved oral sex.

He flipped through the images rather quickly, so it wasn't exactly clear what was going on in them, which actually made them seem a bit more risqué than they probably were.

My judgment that the talk was over the line comes from how I felt quite certain that women in the audience would be uncomfortable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an outsider to ruby/rails, this whole issue is crazy. Don't waste your time paying attention to it.

<comment><USER7> As a user of ruby/rails, this whole issue is crazy. Don't waste your time paying attention to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Huh. I almost find this piece more offensive than the presentation itself. Why can't he just say "I was wrong" and be done with it?

<comment><USER6> "Why can't someone I disagree with just admit that they aren't right!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's like scala vs ruby all over again...</comment>


Review our startup: Lanyrd, the social conference directory - <AUTHOR> http://lanyrd.com/?

<comment><USER2> The dashboard view which is a list of upcoming conferences that you and/or your friends (as determined by your Twitter account) are speaking at or tracking is hugely valuable and great for discovery -- as in, hey, there's a conference I didn't know about but a bunch of my friends are attending, I should check it out.

It would be nice to see this same association of my friends to conferences in the search result views as well.

Great start, Simon & Nat! (Who, incidentally, are touring the world on an extended honeymoon, so extra kudos for launching a new startup together from Gibraltar or Casablanca or wherever you are logging in from ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - we're in Casablanca. Only downside is our internet went down for four hours this afternoon, so I missed this entire discussion!

<comment><USER2> Lucky guess on my part :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah - and we were in Gibraltar a few weeks ago :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having got to play with the site yesterday, I was impressed that one of MY conferences was already listed with speakers, attendees and myself listed as an editor, its a really nice interface which impressed me straight off.

The only thing I would suggest would be also having facebook connect or whatever its called this week as even though we are a web conference, only 60% of our audience has a twitter account however most of them have a facebook account (with mostly the same friends)

<comment><USER4> I would recommend LinkedIn over Facebook, people will likely want to use their professional profiles for attending conferences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the most useful approach to event discovery since Upcoming. I was thrilled to see it in my Twitter list earlier, and I'm thrilled about the amount of attention it's getting.

I have just one request: feeds. Everywhere. I'd love to subscribe to a user, and have new events they're attending show up in my reader - similarly, I'd love to subscribe to a place.

The Twitter integration really works for me as opposed to Facebook; the former tends to be professional connections, while the latter is friends. However, I understand that others might feel differently. (OpenID would obviously also be brilliant, with some social graph discovery etc, but I imagine you've already thought about that.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I realize this might not be your goal, but any chance you would consider targeting some features toward academics? Academic conferences are horrible to keep track of, and this seems like it might almost be a great solution.

The missing pieces, as I see them, include more structured programs (i.e., the sessions have titles; the speakers are listed even if they're not on Lanyrd or even Twitter) and the ability to follow series of conferences (i.e., I want to know what happens at OOPSLA every year, not just once).

<comment><AUTHOR> We're absolutely interested in solving that kind of problem. We have upcoming support for sessions and schedules which should help out there (preview at <http://lanyrd.com/2009/full-frontal/schedule/> \- regular users can't add those yet though). We're also going to add support for CfPs and other deadlines related to conferences - at which point "tracking" a conference will actually be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like the fact that you did not try to create yet another social network and just exploited the existing social graph of twitter to make the connections. I totally agree with thehodge about the fact that a natural extension would be to use also the facebook social graph to offer a beter ux.

That said, the site seems a bit too dependent on twitter. I just added an "unlinked person", meaning somebody without twitter account and it seems impossible to add a picture or an url for those persons.

The UI is very nice, except maybe for the intrusive tag at the top left. It is too big IMHO

Finally, as this is a "startup review", is assume you wish to make money with this. Do you plan to do it with referees fees from Amazon for the sales of book ?

</comment><comment><USER8> I co-founded <http://confabb.com> several years back (circa 2006). It never really got off the ground but the site is still up and functional. I'm not involved with the site anymore.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like it. Since I go to conferences basically for a living, I will definitely be using it a lot. Some kind of integration with Plancast (there's already some overlap, ideally for me I'd like to see them merged) would be nice.

And some UX feedback:

\- Place selection requires full state name (Austin, TX didn't work) which was unexpected

\- Picking a lanyrd URL for the event I added seemed like an unnecessary step. Just pick the best one!

\- One-click track or attend option in dashboard and all conferences list

Overall, very well done. Looking forward to using it regularly.

</comment><comment><USER10> First impressions are that it is really clean and simple to use. I agree with others that you should have a facebook login as well as twitter. One minor thing I noticed is that if you do a search the conference results aren't in date order. For example, if you search for "Berlin" the date order goes 2010, 2007, 2010 which, IMO, is a bit counter intuitive. Apart from that, all good so far.

</comment><comment><USER11> How to build the location database used for adding a conference location? It seems quite comprehensive. Where do startups get this data?

<comment><USER12> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/98449/how-to-convert- an-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/98449/how-to-convert-an-address- to-a-latitude-longitude)

[http://search.cpan.org/~sderle/Geo-Coder- US-1.00/US/Import.p...](http://search.cpan.org/~sderle/Geo-Coder- US-1.00/US/Import.pm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wasn't able to sign in with twitter--got a 404. If you can become the largest directory of conferences, and get people to post slides and things, so they're all in one spot, I think it's a no-brainer.

Interestingly, there's also <http://confindr.com> which promises to be similar...

<comment><USER14> I had the same 404 but they fixed it very quickly. Adding a new conference was extremely easy which impressed me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like the idea. I would also be interested in your advertising program. I have a promotional product eCommerce company that sells Lanyards and conference items.

Everything seems to work great.. I would not mind seeing a short description about the event under the URL of the conference site. --- Looks Great!

</comment><comment><USER16> I am actually working on a very similar site. Glad to see that others see the same need for this. Nicely executed.

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool. Looks like <http://keynot.es> is doing the same thing as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> Awesome. I don't see any way for me to get a tweet/email/something to let me know when new stuff is added. That kind of thing would be nice, because I'm sure I won't remember to go back to the site.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really like it - the interface is very clean and exactly what I was expecting (which is good)!

It's nice being able to track a conference, but how about being able to track a topic too?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're planning the ability to track topics, locations and conference series - but we'll need to build some sort of activity stream first so that tracking actually does something useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like it. Nice layout and I like the fact that you can search/browse conferences without having to log in.

Nice job.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sign in with Twitter? Seriously?

Are standalone user/password systems so hard to add and get right? (I'm serious about this; it seems like a solved problem, yet there also seems to be a number of sites that punt on that, and want me to couple their site with my account on some other site, which I really do not want to do as a default.)

Maybe people need throwaway Twitter accounts, like there is for E-mail.

<comment><USER22> It's not hard to add, but it's so much more useful to me to not make Yet Another Account.

<comment><USER21> Then it's a matter of picking the audience you want for an app, knowing you'll be losing potential users.

<comment><USER22> What bothers you about using your Twitter or Facebook account? Just wondering, since I've considered relying only on Facebook Connect/Twitter for projects in the future.

<comment><USER21> Matters of trust and privacy. I want to be able to change/cancel services without wondering if there's some forgotten dependency.

Often I try something out first to see if it's worth the trouble. I don't want to give out some other account info for something I may not even be bothered using.

I can see offering, as an option, the use of twitter/facebook/gmail whatever, but not to the exclusion of a standalone account. Especially since, as you say, it's easy to add.

<comment><USER22> Gotcha. You do know that with Twitter, you can go in and specifically revoke an app's access to your account?

> Often I try something out first to see if it's worth the trouble.

It's really interesting that we use the same logic to justify totally different outcomes.

> but not to the exclusion of a standalone account.

To provide some context, I'd like to keep things as simple as possible, in general. Even with technical people, it's easy to get confused with multiple login options. Every time I go to Quora, something in my brain remembers that I used Facebook to sign up, so I click that button on the home page, and get a message about how I'm already signed up, I need to actually log in with my email/password via the other form. Every time.

<comment><USER23> It's crazy; just about every web application in existence requires a login and this still isn't a solved problem. I wonder why Clickpass hasn't gotten more traction.

<comment><USER22> > I wonder why Clickpass hasn't gotten more traction.

Clickpass? (of course, I can Google. Just making a point. Seems cool, though.)

I'd say OpenId was the most recent attempt at making this really work, and failed.

<comment><USER23> Sorry, <http://www.clickpass.com/>

Although, I suppose that's indicative of part of Clickpass' adoption problem - their functionality is pretty prominent right on the HN login / signup page and many people here still don't know who they are.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/look-whos-back-microsoft-rebooted-emerges-as-a-tech-leader-1481900876?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> I was going to rag on this article for touting the the same non-specific garbage we've seen the past couple days like, "more mac users switching to surface than ever!" without any hard numbers, did is go from 20 to 25? But this article is actually pretty interesting.

It focuses on how Satya Nadella has respected the leaders of Companies he's bought out and invited them to key meetings. Using their insight not only for product and company direction, but importantly creating culture as well. Very key to Microsoft and any tech company's success.

I recall hearing many stories about how Microsoft had like 3 managers per programmer, probably exaggeration, but the point remains, who would want to work there if you skilled/lucky enough to choose? Looks like they may be changing in some good ways.

<comment><USER3> As a developer there's been so many times that I've gotten tired of MS solutions, and get excited about new emerging platforms elsewhere. Then I smirk when MS incorporates that new platform's ideology. Then I'm pleasantly surprised when it turns out to be cool, and often surpassing the original. I've heard some devs claim they cherry pick from other people's work, and others that they work hard to remain progressive and relevant.

I don't know if .NET Core will catch up with Node, probably not, but I respect their effort and believe competition drives the best products and technology.

<comment><USER4> I have different priorities than you. In terms of IDE quality, debugger quality, flexibility (ability to use actual threads if you want them!), performance... in my opinion .NET Core is already so far ahead of Node.JS it's embarrassing for them.

The only thing I might stack in Node.JS' favor is their NPM package manager. Maybe. Possibly.

<comment><USER5> Are you seriously saying that NuGet/paket are worse than a flawed package manager that even managed to cause a JavaScript global outage when a padding package was retired? What are your problems with NuGet and paket?

<comment><USER3> Nuget dependency management is a nightmare for my team. Mostly because there's usually only one package for a given problem, and you're always at their mercy. I suppose it's a community issue, because npm packages I seem to find few complications. Also, I always find plenty of documentation/tutorials/friendly community to help with the package, and never anyone expecting money for a out-of-date pdf generator that works with tooth- picks and bubble gum holding it together (for example). The manager in VS has gotten better, but it's still far more cumbersome than a cli.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently bought a Lenovo sporting Windows 10 and decided to give it a fair try. I've been using Windows exclusively on my personal laptop for about 2 months and so far it's a good experience. This is after 16 years of running linux (or briefly a mac) on the desktop.

The window manager is tolerable (not as good as Xmonad, but equivalent to Unity). Windows subsystem for linux is letting me get my work done with no problems. Anaconda lets me do scientific python work natively from within windows. Emacs seems to work just fine. Cortana is actually pretty cool.

Overall, I haven't felt the need to race back to Linux. I'm surprised to say this, but Windows _might_ be an acceptable linux.

(A while back I wrote about my failed attempt to use OS X: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1787411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1787411) )

<comment><USER7> My experience has been the complete opposite.

I've got a Lenovo Y50 running Win10. With a HiDPI display, it is pretty much unusable. While OS elements scale rather well, most of the software doesn't, even using the "DPI fix." [1] There are also ads on lock screen. [2] The "terminal", PowerShell, is slow to launch, path completions are crawling.

The subsystem for linux is great, and certainly a move in the right direction. There's ConEmu with Bash, which is also usable. Admittedly, if it weren't for aforementioned DPI issues, which have been around for far too long, I'd probably use Windows as my primary OS.

Also have to mention that VS Code is a fantastic editor with an MIT license. So definitely there are strides in a good direction. Compared to e.g. Facebook's "open source" offerings, while great products, yet containing a `PATENT` file in every repo

[1] [http://windows10_dpi_blurry_fix.xpexplorer.com/](http://windows10_dpi_blurry_fix.xpexplorer.com/)

[2] [http://www.howtogeek.com/243263/how-to-disable-ads-on- your-w...](http://www.howtogeek.com/243263/how-to-disable-ads-on-your- windows-10-lock-screen/)

<comment><USER8> >ads on the lock screen

You understand that you approved these ads when you set up windows initially, and that they can be removed with the flick of a switch in the lock screen settings?

<comment><USER9> They aren't even the default now, right?

<comment><USER6> My windows machine does not display them, and I don't remember even being asked.

<comment><USER10> IIRC the wording wasn't "let us display ads", it was cloaked in some deceptive language.

<comment><USER9> I don't remember the exact wording, but it was something akin to, "Show Microsoft's images on my lockscreen" or somesuch similar.

It wasn't clear there might be ads there.

<comment><USER10> I actually have that option turned on, and it's exactly what it says on the tin. Pictures of landscapes/buildings/etc... that you might see in some mid tier gallery and a link to a short description. It's bland, but marginally more interesting than the basic lock screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To me, there is no doubt that Windows laptops are seeing a resurgence around Silicon Valley compared to MacbookPro's. Personally I think it is due to their overall superior compatibility with new technologies/hardware (graphics cards for VR and CUDA developers, FPGAs, Arduino, Intel RealSense3D) and better workflows for virtualization/cloud-computing vs MacOS which has become harder to virtualize because of closer binding to the AppStore and withdrawal of access to old OS versions.

As an outsider, I also think Apple seems to have spread their best technical minds thin, by adding the platforms watchOS and tvOS. While I understand the rationale behind watchOS, without the ability for developers to create the watch faces, it's not that exciting a platform, it's too controlled. Anyhow, the result of this talent dispersion, is that they have failed to maintain the MacbookPro's status as the most exciting development platform, which it had been IMO throughout the 21st century.

<comment><USER12> The idea of having their own "brand" of laptop I think was really important for recognition. It was always easy to tell the Apple users with the glowing Apple logo but the other laptops could be all shapes and sizes and that didn't say there was one competitor or 15. Having the branded laptops making an appearance really helped solidify in people's minds that it was a Microsoft product these other people were using.

<comment><USER13> That's why I like to put Debian sticker on my laptop. Otherwise people assume I'm using Windows. Kind of silly, but years of Windows domination brainwashed people.

<comment><USER14> I've been completely unable to find a Debian sticker that: a) is big enough to see from more than 3 feet away b) that works on a black laptop.

Do you know of a good supplier?

<comment><USER13> Here is one: [https://www.unixstickers.com](https://www.unixstickers.com)

Examples:

* [https://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux_os_distribution_...](https://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux_os_distribution_stickers/debian-os-saped-sticker)

* [https://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux_os_distribution_...](https://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux_os_distribution_stickers/linux-debian-logo-large-shaped-sticker)

* [https://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux_os_distribution_...](https://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux_os_distribution_stickers/debian-linux-full-logo-shaped-clear-sticker)

* [https://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux_os_distribution_...](https://www.unixstickers.com/stickers/linux_os_distribution_stickers/debian-logo-shaped-clear-sticker)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the pointers!

Your 3rd example is the one I bought, but it is clear, so doesn't show up on a black laptop. They don't seem to have a non-clear version of that one.

The non-clear ones they do have are just the spiral, without the word "debian", which seems a little vague for evangelical purposes.

One of these days, I may have to learn how to get stickers made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft continues to try to convince us that they are great with press releases and non-organic stories such as this.

I, my peers, and my co-workers just don't see it. With billions in reserve it's no surprise they are trying to buy popularity.

<comment><USER16> I find these kind of comments depressing mostly because they scream "group think". (my inner circle says this, so I repeat it) The new MS is much different than the MS I grew up with in the 90s. It's time for the community to recognize this and just let people bask in positive news that is worthy the bask in.

I love my Surface Pro 4, I love the fact .net is cross platform, I love that Azure is fast and easy to use, I love that Office on my mac is current and that Microsoft's mobile strategy is 100% cross platform unlike that of Apple and Google.. I love that MS is honest these days and its disappointing the community is largely dishonest in return.. often snarky.

<comment><USER17> > I love my Surface Pro 4,

I'd love one if I could put linux on it. or if I could buy an OEM pc without an OS (and yes I know there are _some_ vendors that "allow" (just that word makes me cringe) you to do it, but it should be a right). If, by their own definition, it's "intellectual" (and not material) property, then if I dont use it I shouldn't have to pay for it.

If they want to sell Surface because it's an awesome product, why do they need to go out of their way to lock their software on it ? If it's so awesome, surely people would _want_ to use it, right ? If the proverbial destination is so great, why do they need to lock their guests inside ?

<comment><USER18> You're not their target demographic. 99% of people don't want to put linux on it.

<comment><USER17> back in the 90's, 99% of people didn't want linux either, and MS did _just fine_ without "physically" locking you out of their competition.

<comment><USER19> I'm curious if you have a conception of exactly how much money creating, testing, and deploying a SKU of a product actually runs. Now multiply it by the number of permutations of the product. You should get a reasonably large number with six or seven zeroes at the end. Be honest: are they going to even break even off of the micropopulation that cares?

<comment><USER17> I dont follow your point. I'm not asking MS to sell me a linux version of their tablet. I"m saying they shouldn't use UEFI or other proprietary bootloader tricks to keep me from wiping windows off and installing my own software on it. That would be _cheaper_ for them to do than spending extra development time to keep me out.

<comment><USER19> But...you can do that. Right now. The Surface Pro 4 has no "bootloader tricks"; it has Secure Boot, which you can disable from the UEFI menu. No x86 Surface ever has ever had any "physical" methods of "locking you out of their competition".

So either you want something that already exists or you want something new, and I'm very confused as to your initial post.

<comment><USER20> Just goes to show how damaging FUD actually is. Someone made up this fear and people still believe it even when the proof is literally everywhere. They just don't want to look, repeating a lie is easier.

<comment><USER17> It's more nuanced than just FUD. I admit I may have been wrong and that the surface 4 might work on linux. but its disingenuous to call my position FUD.

at least according to this [1] article, MS requires secure boot in win 10. and the criticisms about UEFI and how it makes linux much more difficult to install (which I have experienced firsthand) are documented on wikipedia [2]. I'm going to enjoy my friday evening and not try to make a solid case, but of course microsoft denies that they ever intended to use UEFI to block competition (because they've never done that before :) ).

[1] [https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/201722-linuxs-worst- case...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/201722-linuxs-worst-case- scenario-microsoft-makes-secure-boot-mandatory-locks-out-other-operating- systems)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Secure_boot)

<comment><USER19> It really isn't disingenuous to call it FUD. A simple Google search would've clued you in. You don't have to mean to spread FUD to spread FUD, and you should own it and stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The young'uns here probably have not lived thru the Microsoft era in the 90s when "Embrace Extend Extinguish" was the operating motto and any Market where MS entered would send competitors quaking in fear.

They were late to the internet party and then under the disastrous leadership of Ballamer (mindshare wise, not revenue) they completely lost the plot.

Now they are indeed enjoying a resurgence, less evil, more relevant and surprisingly accepting of Open source software. How the world turns....

<comment><USER22> They are still trying to sue IBM for Linux via SCO: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/linux-kernel- laws...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/linux-kernel-lawsuit-sco- v-ibm-is-alive-13-years-and-counting/) .

So I see no change.

<comment><USER23> MS still operates a Linux patent extortion racket yet the tech press seem to be all over them since their recent charm offensive. MS is The Beast and always will be. See [http://techrights.org/2016/03/10/charm-offensives- distract/](http://techrights.org/2016/03/10/charm-offensives-distract/) for more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article loses credibility with the opening line...

FTA: After years of missteps, the software giant is among the few titans of the 1990s to figure out the new world of _mobile_ technology and cloud computing.

Saying MSFT have figured out mobile is a little too much of a stretch. They have tried many things in the space, they have figured out more of what doesn't work than what does. Unfortunately the market doesn't reward learnings alone.

<comment><USER25> They might not be a huge contender in the smart phone market, but are tablets not considered "mobile"? I agree, it might've been more appropriate to not generalize with saying they solved mobile and instead point out a particular mobile offering that is excelling or something.

<comment><USER26> Tablets, 2-in-1s and most laptops are actually mobile. This is one of the reasons why Windows 10 is in large part a mobile operating system.

The next generation of ARM-based Windows 10 tablets, 2-in-1s and laptops will also be much more SIM-friendly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Microsoft has done some very good things and some very bad things. I'll let everyone else point out the bad things because there seems to be plenty of that.

I personally like the:

      Surface products,
      Typescript,
      C#/F#,
      .NET Core,
      Visual Studio Code, and
      the Hololens.

These are all recently new developments for Microsoft that are really awesome. The fact that a lot of this has become open source is even better. You have to give Microsoft credit for one thing, they've shifted the company so much and that is impressive for a large company.

I enjoy Azure but I understand some people's frustration with it so I exclude it from the list above, I get that it's contentious so I'm leaving it off.

<comment><USER28> Have you personally tried the Hololens? They appear to have oversold the qualities of at least the first version.

<comment><USER27> Yes and I recognize that there is a lot of room for improvement, but it's a really cool idea and I think it's the best Augmented Reality product on the market right now. If there is another one then let me know, because I'd love to see it.

The biggest issue with Hololens is it's field of view.

<comment><USER28> I guess it all comes down to how expensive they'll be (at least for consumer applications). The $3000 cost for the new developer edition doesn't bode well, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just can't agree with this conclusion.

Microsoft has taken some great steps since Nadella took over. Doing more projects aimed at regular developers and taking baby steps towards open source, but that is not enough to be a leader.

In fact, I think in 2016, we are in a much worse place when it comes to tech leadership than we were in the late 90s and early 00s. The tech world has been poisoned by money and everything is focused on maximizing profit. Almost nothing is being created because it's innovative or really life changing. The new products that are coming out like Google Home or Microsoft Office 365 which claim to be innovative, really aren't. They are repackaging an existing product in a new context. That's called marketing. That's not tech leadership.

In the 90s we had the launch of Linux, the web and home internet access.

In the 2000s all we've really had is smart phones. Everything else has just been building on what was done in the 90s because the people in charge are all marketers and profit seekers.

Do something truly innovative with all your billions Microsoft, and then I will buy that you are a tech leader. No amount of press releases or fluff articles will convince me.

<comment><USER30> > "Do something truly innovative with all your billions Microsoft"

What exactly are you looking for? Are devices like HoloLens and Kinect and Surface Studio not innovative enough for you? What would you class as 'truly innovative'?

<comment><USER29> No, they aren't. Kinect was using motion tracking and stereo vision technology that already existed. They just refined it and it was clearly a dead end. Also it was just a "me too" response to the success of the Wii.

Surface studio is just a big touch screen. Nothing new.

HoloLens is the most innovative but again this kind of AR has been around for a while, it's a refinement and I think it will just be a dead end like Kinect ultimately.

Truly innovative means something that actually changes things. I think the list I gave in my comment makes that pretty obvious; the web, home broadband, Linux and smartphones. Those changed the world. The Surface Studio will not.

<comment><USER30> > "the web"

Okay, but that's sort of technological shift is rare. Nothing else in my lifetime has come close.

>"home broadband"

Just a refinement of the web.

>"Linux"

Linux is based on designs from the 70s, it was old before it was first released.

>"smartphones"

I hope you realise smartphones did not start with the iPhone. The smartphone has gone through a long period of iterative design improvements.

If you're looking for a product that emerges out of a vacuum, you won't find it, all products build upon their predecessors, even the web (which made use of existing telecommunications infrastructure and existing work in the field of computing).

What you will find are new forms that build upon the past. For example, quantum computing is a relatively new field, but has roots in the existing fields of computer science, physics and electrical engineering.

Would quantum computing count as 'truly innovative' to you? If so...

[https://stationq.microsoft.com/](https://stationq.microsoft.com/)

<comment><USER29> > >"home broadband"

> Just a refinement of the web.

What? Not remotely. It enables the web but the underlying technologies are totally different. Home broadband also enabled a lot of other things. Your statement makes me think you don't actually understand technology at all.

> Linux is based on designs from the 70s, it was old before it was first > released.

Again you're failing to understand what was revolutionary here. GNU had been around for quite a while. It's Linux that was revolutionary. It's a kernel that worked well and that people could contribute to and package up with GNU to enable operating systems of very high quality.

> I hope you realise smartphones did not start with the iPhone. The smartphone > has gone through a long period of iterative design improvements.

Aye carumba. What were called smartphones before the iPhone were awful. WinCE was a disaster, and Blackberries were a niche tool for a niche market. iOS and Android devices made computing usable on a mobile platform by everyone for the first time.

Of course everything builds on the past, all of these things are based on integrated chips and transistors and on and on.

But some technologies are actually revolutionary (like the ones just listed) and others are not (Kinect.) This is obvious by the impact or the lack of impact that they have.

You are not fun to talk to because you are missing very obvious things, and I think you're doing it deliberately, so I'm done with you.

<comment><USER30> > "What? Not remotely. It enables the web but the underlying technologies are > totally different. Home broadband also enabled a lot of other things. Your > statement makes me think you don't actually understand technology at all."

In terms of impact, which is seemingly how you want to measure how innovative something was, home broadband changed how much the web was used. Compared to the dial-up era it made the Internet something people could connect to 24/7\. However, in my own personal experience I was already a heavy Internet user before home broadband, so it mostly changed how quickly things got downloaded. I still watched videos, listened to music, chatted to strangers, played games, etc... in the dial-up era.

>"Again you're failing to understand what was revolutionary here. GNU had been around for quite a while. It's Linux that was revolutionary. It's a kernel that worked well and that people could contribute to and package up with GNU to enable operating systems of very high quality."

If open-source was the thing you wanted to point to as innovative, then you should've said open-source. Other than the development methodology behind it and how widespread it is, there's not much that's interesting about Linux. As for 'enable operating systems of very high quality', that's debatable. High quality compared to what? Linux is far from perfect. To give one example, CoreAudio is far better than ALSA or ALSA+PulseAudio when it comes to flexibility and latency respectively.

>"Aye carumba. What were called smartphones before the iPhone were awful. WinCE was a disaster, and Blackberries were a niche tool for a niche market. iOS and Android devices made computing usable on a mobile platform by everyone for the first time."

Again, this seems to come down to you wanting to measure innovation in terms of impact. Quite a bit of the UI of the iPhone has its roots in the PDA market, which was arguably also started by Apple with the Newton. The iPhone introduced capacitive multitouch, and had a sleek design, but if it didn't become popular it would've been just another evolution of the smartphone, just like the LG Prada.

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

>"But some technologies are actually revolutionary (like the ones just listed) and others are not (Kinect.) This is obvious by the impact or the lack of impact that they have."

So it's not the design that's revolutionary but the impact it has? Was putting wheels on luggage revolutionary?

>"You are not fun to talk to because you are missing very obvious things, and I think you're doing it deliberately, so I'm done with you."

Feel free to ignore me if you like, I'm not fussed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How do these paywall articles keep finding their way to the top? I call BS.

<comment><USER32> Use the link named "web" below the submission title to bypass the paywall.

<comment><USER33> It just searches google and when I click it, they still want me to subscribe.

<comment><USER34> Incognito mode

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Not to say that Microsoft hasn't done some good work in say Linux lately because of Azure, but I just don't see Microsoft as an innovator, it's very hard to see a company that makes 2 billion a year off android patent's as innovative... I wonder how much of Microsoft in the future will be a tech leader, versus a patents company.

<comment><USER36> I don't think this is an accurate view at all. How can you say they aren't innovating when you've got Microsoft Research still going strong with the fruits of its labor becoming visible in commercial applications such as speech, augmented reality, etc.

Not to mention the open source efforts they've put forth with .NET -- which admittedly is still in rough shape but certainly seems to have a future.

I don't think it's quite right to discount Microsoft entirely and see them as the next IBM.

<comment><USER37> Agree, even when Microsoft was unpopular and declining in relevancy MS Research was putting out the best information out of any tech company.

Please browse [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/) and try to find a comparable resource from anyone else.

<comment><USER35> These are just as respectable: [https://research.fb.com/publications/](https://research.fb.com/publications/) [https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html)

I have a fair bit of respect for Microsoft research lab's and it has also done a fair bit of interesting work in hardware, I was talking about Microsoft as a company in it's totality.

I always viewed Microsoft research labs as a spot of bright light in an otherwise relatively dark company, perhaps that is slightly schizophrenic of me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is it just me, or is the usual "copy title, paste into google search" not working this time? I can't manage to find the google search result for this article, even after trying many combinations of google filters/date filters.

They've caught on?

<comment><USER39> I think it's just you.

They don't want to disable that, because it's an easy and free way for them to rank higher in search engines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I don't buy it. As a formerly epic consumer of Microsoft products, I can't say I've actually seen ANY change other than a new fluffy marketing facade and a figurehead who appears to be able to walk on water unquestioned simply because he's not Gates or Ballmer. My rationale is as follows:

There is a massive decline in privacy with Windows 10 and retrofitted code to Windows 8.1. There is no option to disable these unless you eviscerate it with a 3rd party tool and/or get a licensing agreement that allows you to use Enterprise Edition and push out GPOs. There is no discussion from Microsoft on this other than some weasel words which say nothing of value. You have to resort to whack-a-mole techniques to secure yourself or business and use their products. The only responses are similar to "we have privacy policy. privacy good!" (read in Lars Ulrich Napster Bad voice).

The migration to a subscription model for everything is bad. Everyone ends up paying more over time and for it we're getting online software delivery that at some points doesn't even work properly or leaves you in the dust. What you end up buying is golden handcuffs.

There is so much fragmentation, it's unreal. As someone who deals with .Net a lot, there is no conclusive plan that lasts more than a few weeks. Tools are volatile, frameworks are fragmented, tooling is pushing more features instead of quality. The rate of churn is also so high, no one knows what the hell is going on. Add to that, reckless abandonment of the last few years is still a major policy. Even looking at Microsoft Office extensions, the bread and butter of many industries, no one has any idea what they hell they are playing at with VSTO and Office 365 at the moment. They plugged a half baked script API in it and consigned everyone to the side bar. No one talks about fight club, or VSTO either apparently.

There are still really bad quality issues. Not a single day goes by where anything isn't poking you in the eye to the point you want to throw your computer or handset out of the window. There is no way to report this or get it fixed conclusively. Even enterprise reps have no idea how to get products fixed at the moment. It has become worse than the days of Microsoft Connect which was a "write this down so we can close it and say fuck you". A lot of things simply just don't even work properly as well. Shit is shiny but it's still shit.

Customers are getting a pricing shafting across the board. Average Joe Consumer doesn't see this but enterprise pricing is paying for all of this. It's horrific some of the prices I've seen floating around recently.

On top of this there is also a new policy of telling the customer what they're getting and being permanently correct. Occasionally to appease the masses, one or two things a year in one of their uservoice type systems close to the business vision (which appears to be totalitarian cross platform domination) get chucked out half baked with a grand announcement. This is celebrated as a major success while a thousand new and old paper cuts, well actually proportionately speaking, eviscerations with a knife, go unnoticed.

I'm not saying they are worse than any of the other larger "tech leaders" but they are not worthy of the mindless praise that is slathered all over them by some members of the tech community and the media recently.

</comment><comment><USER41> _Look Who's Back! Microsoft...

That could be the title of a horror movie..._

Great comment from Mark stamp in the comments section.

</comment><comment><USER42> > Under Mr. Nadella, Microsoft is shaping up to be the only pre-internet tech > giant to escape the decline of its legacy product—the Windows PC operating > system—and emerge as a leader in the new era of cloud computing.

Other than Apple, Oracle and IBM?

<comment><USER26> This is the IBM that has enjoyed 18 consecutive quarterly declines in revenues, including the most recent 21% fall in hardware revenues? ;-)

It has bought more than 100 companies to try to reverse its decline (including Softlayer), so maybe it won't get much worse. However, this is a company that used to be a titan when Microsoft was a midge on its PC division's backside...

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Tens of billions of dollars of cash laying around, used well, enables a lot of pivoting.

<comment><USER44> When you are Google and Microsoft is seems you don't pivot you just try all the ideas at once

<comment><USER43> Well said! 'pivot' is too limited of a concept for what they're doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> At what point can we safely assume that Balmer was simply incompetent?

<comment><USER46> Balmer was good at what he did: making Microsoft lots of money.

Balmer ran MS from 2000 to 2014. Here's what the profits for that time period (since 2002) looked like: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/267808/net- income-of-mic...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/267808/net-income-of- microsoft-since-2002/)

So not incompetent, just focused on something else.

<comment><USER47> I'd say he was average at making money. It sounds impressive but you need to annualize and compare it to the market as a whole.

5.36B to 22B in 12 years = 11.7% annualized profit increase from 2012 to 2014.

However, MSFT stock appreciation was 22 -> 41 or 5.2% annualized. (Stock includes expectations of future growth, etc.)

Average S&P was ~7.8% for that time period.

Ballmer would have done better for investors by just investing in an index fund.

<comment><USER46> You including their 2003 stock split in your calculations?

edit: because, if not, it's more like a 9.85% return on the stock

<comment><USER47> Thanks for the catch; I didn't account for the split. Still, it looks like the SPY handily beat MSFT's return over that time period.

[https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=0&...](https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=0&chvs=Linear&chdeh=1&chfdeh=0&chdet=1392411600000&chddm=1081115&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NYSEARCA:SPY&cmptdms=0&q=NASDAQ:MSFT&ntsp=0&ei=UGpUWIn_NoL82AaWl6iQCw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Microsoft feels now, from software developer perspective, as if they finally leashed their lawyers and peddlers, that were running the show for previous decade or more, and let the engineers have a saying in what should be produced.

Express/Community versions, VS Code, typescript, open source, github, browser standards, Windows 10. So many good signs. I can't name the other company that have shown so many good signs in recent past.

</comment><comment><USER49> So the pendulum has swung yet again!

[http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html)

<comment><USER50> MS has gone up 131% since that essay. I love the silly suggestions in it, too, about putting shielding around a hypothetical new MS to prevent Redmond ideas from getting in. And it'll be fun to see how their $25BN investment in a SV company, LinkedIn, actually pays off.

<comment><USER51> > There can only be one big man in town, and [Google is] clearly it.

This is still _mostly_ true, and Amazon is in an even more interesting position than Microsoft will _ever_ be in.

I buy cluster-compute time, movies, and sacks of organic flour from the same company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I look forward to seeing what's in store for Build 2017. It's going to be tough to outdo Reinvent.

Basically early in 2016 I gravitated towards MS mainly due to the tight integration with VS + Streamlined Azure Portal UI....but the overwhelming amount of new C# ASP.NET stuff I was now encouraged to use...was a tough sell.

tl;dr: Build 2016 convinced me to switch to Azure but now I'm back on AWS post Reinvent 2016

</comment><comment><USER53> Just curious. How do you read wsj.com articles? WSJ requires me to subscribe or sign in. >To Read the Full Story, Subscribe or Sign In

<comment><USER53> So, I just read elsewhere that if I come in through google, then it doesn't show the paywall. So, I just pasted the title into google.

<comment><USER26> If you look at the top of the page, there's a "web" menu item next to the number of comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I dont understand the new Microsoft business model. I've stopped using office, Windows is now free(?), but most stuff is in the browser anyway. We used to pay a lot of money for SQL server but now there are lots of free open source alternatives.

Sure Azure might make some money but its a commodity business, I can't see how it will replace the old cash cows.

<comment><USER55> \- Windows is not free, they just offered a free update for a limited time, which is already over.

\- Basically, every non-apple consumer computer comes with Windows preinstalled, and they charge a licence (I think around 50$). That's a solid business model right there.

\- Most of the people around me who are not programmers, prefer MS Office to do their work, and they swear by Excel. Google Apps still doesn't cut it for many people. That's also a big source of revenue.

So, the good old business model.

They're not replacing anything that I know of. They're just trying to diversify their products/markets/etc.

Edit: price ([http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-RT- Windows-8-Licens...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-RT- Windows-8-Licensing-Supply-Chain-OEM,16267.html))

<comment><USER26> _> they charge a licence (I think around 300€)_

Pretty interesting if Microsoft can charge €300 for an operating system that ships on €150 (£150/$199 or less) laptops ;-)

The Windows installation fee used to be around $42-$44 and some versions cost around $11-15 (Windows XP Ultra Low Cost PC version). IBM used to pay $27 (which we know because it complained bitterly about Microsoft tripling the price).

The tablet version of Windows 8.1 cost $10 but OEMs got a $10 kickback for making Bing the default search engine. (Microsoft did not describe this as free, it said it was "zero paid".)

Be nice to have a current figure if anyone wants to break the non-disclosure clause, but the fee for Windows is a lot closer to €30 than it is to €300.

OEMs also charge software houses to distribute software (ie crapware). This can reduce the cost of Windows _to the user_ almost to zero. In fact, when users subscribe to a pre-installed AV product, the OEM gets recurring fees which means the pre-installed Windows has actually generated a profit.

<comment><USER55> You are right. I was thinking of the price you get when you buy it off the shelf (which is also now cheaper as it used to be).

<comment><USER26> Yes, the off-the-shelf package includes a large fee for Microsoft support, and the right to move the OS from one machine to another. You don't get either of those with the OEM versions.

One obvious factor in the fall of Windows pricing is the fall of PC prices. Microsoft could charge a lot when PCs cost $/€/£2,500 each.

As PC prices fell through $/€/£1,500 each and $/€/£500 each to today's levels, the cost of Windows would have been an increasingly large proportion of the total. That was bound to be unsustainable, so I imagine (without any proof) that the price of Windows has come down much like the cost of hard drives and screens....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> There are, at least, two Microsofts, and one of them is disastrous and nobody is talking about it. Skype is one example.

</comment><comment><USER23> Whatever may have changed on the surface MS will always be MS, ie. dictating what you can and cannot do with your machine. Hell, you even need their permission to dual boot now. How is that progress? I lived through the years of the MS monopoly and watched them intentionally leave IE festering with standards incompatibilities. They set back progress a good 10 years before Mozilla and Google took matters into their own hands. I learnt my lesson - never trust anything that comes out of Redmond. MS "embraced" open source silently kicking and screaming as Google and Facebook set about building the future. Their biggest frustration these days is that it's not so easy to extend what they embrace but it won't stop them trying.

</comment><comment><USER57> Windows 10 is steadily improving too.

</comment><comment><USER58> Microsoft rebooted ! Windows home license ? $100 . Sure , rebooted...

</comment><comment><USER59> Nice Joke.

</comment><comment><USER60> Here's a Google link in case you wanted to read the article: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjlotK2jfnQAhXFLSYKHQGwBdIQFggkMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Flook- whos-back-microsoft-rebooted-emerges-as-a-tech- leader-1481900876&usg=AFQjCNF2uyF49ffhUD9lo1j4ZKchdiMYoQ)

<comment><USER61> Why is it even walled?

<comment><USER62> Because real journalism costs money to produce.

<comment><USER63> It's blocked behind a registration which is free. How does someone registering for the site get them money?

<comment><USER64> This article specifically isn't free after registration, unless you are a paid subscriber. I think WSJ makes some of their articles free after a week, but I could be mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> This title has had the exclamation mark after 'back' removed, making it hard to parse.

Are exclamation marks automatically removed? If so, can someone replace with a full stop?

</comment><comment><USER66> Microsoft is so uncool

</comment><comment><USER67> How much does it cost to buy an article in WSJ?

<comment><USER68> A good lunch is probably enough.</comment></comment>


Mind-Blowing Satellite Pictures Show How Cities Grow Over Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-pictures-cities-growing-over-time-2011-3#dubai-2000-1

<comment><USER2> As an American, I've never really appreciated this. Frequent trips to D.C., Baltimore, Philly, NYC all my life...the cities are all too new to really see such dramatic growth from the ground without really taking some time to see it. Oh a suburb here and there, a new road, a new high ramp, a new shopping center etc.

I think that D.C. in some ways is fairly easy to actually drive through the history of the city and its growth. Starting in D.C. going South or West you find yourself in various "old towns" like old town Alexandria that even today have a distinctly old timy feel. A mess of roads, narrow streets, etc. right after that you quickly see urban areas like Arlington give way to what used to be the far off suburbs of D.C. in Alexandria or Fairfax or Vienna or Falls Church. Today they are an almost unbroken semi-suburb of shopping centers and communities of small old houses built in the 60s and 70s. Get out past that area and you find the 80s. Lots of shopping malls, larger newer homes, etc. The area is noticeably nicer, better planned, less crowded, newer stuff. Out past that you find the 90s and so on and so forth.

And at some point it sort of reverses itself as you near the next old town area, you start going back again through time. The bigger the original town was, the more noticeable it is (you see this effect more as you approach Leesburg or Manassas than Haymarket.)

I actually found this effect even more interesting and pronounced in Europe, with so many cities founded by Romans, surrounded by a medieval era unplanned rats maze of narrow roads punctuated with a few Renaissance buildings (and a few later eras depending) surrounded by beautifully organized and architected 19th and early 20th century buildings and then a rats maze of ugly modern apartment blocks bleeding off into modern suburbia.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=paris,+france&aq=&sll=38.861098,-77.240753&sspn=0.577443,1.308746&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Paris,+%C3%8Ele- de-France,+France&ll=48.8576,2.351074&spn=0.060988,0.163593&t=h&z=13)

[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Barcelona,+Spain&aq=0&sll=48.8576,2.351074&sspn=0.060988,0.163593&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Barcelona,+Province+of+Barcelona,+Catalonia,+Spain&ll=41.385954,2.168255&spn=0.069548,0.163593&t=h&z=13)

You can actually see the history from space, the road organization and building layout are tell-tale. Like rings of a tree you can spot population explosions, times of hardship, uncontrolled fast growth. It's actually quite beautiful to ponder on.

This concept, travel towards or away from the founding core of a city in order to "time travel" is also echo'd by modern archeologists, dig down to go back in time. The Seattle underground and the Roman ruins under Barcelona are fantastic examples of this.

It reminds me in analogy of climate as a function of altitude (mountain and hills) or latitude (north and south). You can experience the climate of a northern latitude while at the equator by simply climbing up.</comment>