22,000 years of history evaporates after freezer failure melts Arctic ice cores - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/16/arctic-ice-cores-melt-university-alberta-canada <comment><USER2> The title made it sound like we'll never get data for those 22,000 years.

A set of expensive icicles melted. They're going to go collect more samples once they collect enough money again.

<comment><USER3> Not all of that core is replaceable, because the locations the cores came from have since melted.

<comment><USER4> The irreplaceability of the ice cores is why in my opinion, an independent backup refrigeration system (without common points of failure) is a necessity, along with an independent system that can isolate the primary chillers and activate the backup system should the primary chillers misbehave.

An emergency refrigeration system that works with consumable cryogenic material (say, dry ice or liquid nitrogen [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14127835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14127835)) would be totally feasible and utterly inexpensive compared to the tragic costs of these cores melting.

I don't know the state of readiness of phase-change materials with appropriate transition temperatures (would need to be lower than -40 C) but if such a material exists, it'd work as well.

<comment><USER4> So I just learned my suggestion of using LN2/CO2 in an emergency refrigeration system isn't something I came up with -- LN2/CO2-powered backup refrigeration is in fact a standard option on ultra-low temperature freezers (the kind that get used to store biological samples and stuff):

[https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/6214](https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/6214) [http://www.helmerinc.com/Assets/helmer/knowledge- center/manu...](http://www.helmerinc.com/Assets/helmer/knowledge- center/manuals/ultra-low-freezers/ULT_Service_Manual_360173-A.pdf)

Given that it's commercially-available on freezers that get used to store critical biological material, there is no reason that a sample vault that stores irreplaceable ice cores can't have a similar, scaled-up version of this as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Curious what sort of redundancy these systems have. I mean, you think of a web production environment... you don't just get an alarm, you typically have redundant systems you can turn on if primary servers fail. Seems like they only had one system running, and when it failed they were boned.

Wonder what it would take to build more redundancy -- seems like samples that are this rare would deserve freezers inside of freezers? Multiple AC units for the room? Or is it the case that these samples can be easily restored by re- drilling in various places? Or is it the case that despite age and rarity, they don't have that much value after being catalogued?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.ualberta.ca/news-and- events/newsarticles/2017/ap...](https://www.ualberta.ca/news-and- events/newsarticles/2017/april/freezer-failure-results-in-damage-to-ice-core- collection)

There's more details about the causes of the failure at that URL:

> the refrigeration chillers shut down due to "high head pressure" conditions. > Essentially, the chillers were not able to reject their heat through the > condenser water system—heat instead of cold circulated through the freezer.

> Compounding matters, the system monitoring the freezer temperatures failed > due to a database corruption. The freezer's computer system was actually > sending out alarm signals that the temperature was rising, but those signals > never made it to the university's service provider or the on-campus control > centre.

To properly increase ability to respond to failure conditions use of an in- situ system (that doesn't depend on any additional infrastructure) that monitors the temperature before and after the evaporators and if they are __adding __heat rather than __removing it __(like what happened in this failure case), would be extremely useful -- indeed, this is one of the proposed changes: "The refrigeration system will also be modified to improve performance during failures, such as shutting down the evaporators in the event of a condenser failure."

As for redundancy, a secondary set of chillers would provide less protection than expected -- they'd likely be running on the same condenser water system and exposed to the same conditions and abuse as each other. Since the melted cores were so expensive to get, implementing an independent refrigeration mechanism (the same way nuclear reactors have alternative cooling mechanisms) that isn't vulnerable to common-cause failures is an utterly sensible approach and should have been done.

A method of providing such a backup source of refrigeration would be liquid nitrogen cooling -- universities/research labs tend to already have bulk cryogenic tanks of liquid nitrogen (that get refilled regularly from a Praxair or Air Liquide liquid nitrogen truck), so provision of LN2 is no issue. In the worst case, an additional LN2 tank would have to be installed to ensure that there's always enough LN2 on-site to last long enough until either alternative emergency refrigeration can be arranged (via emergency chiller rental) or the normal chillers can be repaired. Such a reserve tank would not incur prohibitive expenses and its normal gaseous boil-off can be used as gas nitrogen supply just like the main tank's boil-off.

All that would be needed is a connection from the LN2 tank to the ice core storage facility, a proper set of evaporators/heat exchangers/fans that work with LN2 as cooling fluid, and also a control system that, upon detection of anomalous conditions, shuts off and isolates the normal chillers and activates the LN2 backup cooling system.

There's very few common points of failure between the normal chillers and the LN2 system, and the LN2 system doesn't cool with electrical power and so wouldn't be affected by electrical outages.

<comment><USER5> Great explanation, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Feel like the title should be - 22,000 years of history MELTS after freezer failure melts Arctic ice cores

</comment><comment><USER7> Let me take a wild guess here, this new 3-4M dollar freezer with it's expensive shiney new thermostat was somehow for some stupid reason internet connected?</comment>


Ask HN: 'Nomad' startups? - J-dawg I've recently become interested in the 'Digital Nomad' lifestyle of living in places with a lower cost of living while working remotely.
I'm interested in any examples of whole teams doing this together. Have you founded a startup in a lower-cost country? Started off in your home country and moved somewhere cheaper?
'Nomad' is perhaps the wrong word as a company is more likely to stay in one place for longer than an individual, but you get the idea.
I ask because there seem to be lots of resources out there for the solo DN (e.g. NomadList) but seemingly not so many examples of companies operating like this. <comment><USER2> Check out this job ad for an idea of what some of these businesses are like. [https://www.amztracker.com/blog/jobs/](https://www.amztracker.com/blog/jobs/) I'm subscribed to GetApprenticeship.com. They sent me this last week.

>In the past year our team has grown from the 3 original co-founders to an amazing team of well over 40 people around the world. >Be prepared to move to Bangkok Thailand by December 1st for at least the first 3 months of your employment. (We cover travel expenses!) >Live anywhere after that. (although I would love for you to stay with the team wherever our next home base will be)

As far as tech goes, beyond very well known examples like Basecamp, off of the top of my head there's ConvertKit - an email marketing startup - <AUTHOR> JungleScout - another SaaS tool for Amazon sellers.

You'll notice many of these cater to the marketing crowd. Even Rob Walling's startup is an another email marketing SaaS called Drip.

A good idea might be to get a job out there and let yourself be exposed to this community. These guys talk business like most guys talk sports.

What do you have in mind? I've spent most of this year consuming this stuff non stop before deciding to learn to code. I've easily spent about 20 hours listening to silicon valley founder interviews and things like Startup School. Even more reading blogs, watching conference talks and listening to podcasts from this world.

If you want to shoot ideas around my email is ryanacalvo at gmail.

MicroConf talks are also a good source, [https://vimeo.com/user12790628](https://vimeo.com/user12790628)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think you'll find many examples of companies doing this. There's a fundamental flaw in the concept that I've observed again an again over the years, and is best summed up by "Your friends aren't going to go."

Stated plainly, no amount of planning and coordination can get a group of people to go traveling together for any length of time. Yes, there are examples, but in general if you try to plan your trip to accommodate everybody, your trip will not happen. People are flaky. They say things you want to hear, when in fact they want something else. They even try to fool themselves, but for the most part they don't want to leave their comfort zone.

I fought against this for years, trying to get friends to come along on my various trips. And ended up not going to some places that would have been really cool because friends flaked. In the end, I resigned myself to reality: If you want to go somewhere, just book the flight.

Tell your friends and encourage them to come along, go out of your way to meet up with them if they do manage to get out to the right part of the world for a while. But under no circumstances rely on anybody to actually go. Because 90% of the time they won't.

Knowing that, you can quickly calculate the probability that you'll get your entire team out to that cool house up in the mountains of Bali.

A better plan is just to make sure it has good internet and go by yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Digital Nomad" is not the keyword you are looking for. The Digital Nomad narrative targets individuals who are trying to escape the prototypical rat race, so most of the focus is on what can be done with a small set of technical skills, like setting up a Wordpress website and building landing pages, email marketing, sourcing from Alibaba, building web courses, Amazon stores, Shopify and Teespring, etc. You sound like you are interested in small tech startup teams that are location independent. Try Rob Walling's podcast Startups for the Rest of Us. And, for a more general and non-technical but still informative view, try TropicalMBA.com. If you are more interested in joining a traditional startups that lets you remote work, try remotebase.io/companies

<comment><USER2> I see digital nomadism as more as a freelancer / consultant, typically non technical though this isn't a rule, who may or may not have an addiction to traveling.

There are terms like lifestyle entrepreneur, location independent entrepreneur or micro multi-national but these are just words. Any one of them can be the founder of a tech startup or private label consumer products, manufactured in china and sell them through a combination of Amazon FBA and digital marketing. In some cases, they do both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Distributed companies like Buffer are possible and Github has a pretty good list of remote friendly tech companies (of which a portion are distributed).

[https://github.com/jessicard/remote- jobs](https://github.com/jessicard/remote-jobs)

The fundamental issue with whole teams travelling together is that everyone has different lifestyles and tastes. Finding someone who's a good fit for your company is difficult enough; throwing in lifestyle matches is adding a big dose of complication.

As a digital nomad and someone who's moved continuously for the past 2 years, I can say moving non-stop actually can be draining (unless you've enough funds to pay for all the comforts that you want no matter where you move to).

Nevertheless, maybe you'll find your co-founder along the way. Hanging out in digital nomad hubs like Chiang Mai might be a good place to find someone who has a similar mindset. Good luck with your startup!

</comment><comment><USER6> I know about a dozen of startups that work as a distributed team. Some of the startups/founders are 'Nomads' while others have the team distributed around the world. You can check them on my site [[http://www.transparentstartups.com/](http://www.transparentstartups.com/), search by "remote" :)]

</comment><comment><USER7> I have met people doing this, but they have mostly built a team while traveling or after settling somewhere. I'm more familiar with remote teams that meet in the same place from time to time.

The main problem staying in one place for long is visas and work permits. Every country has its own rules for setting up a company, hiring, work permits, visas. You may have to prefer locals or hire some percentage of locals. There's no general rule, it varies by country and type of business.

</comment><comment><USER8> My co-founders and I have been building our company [https://triphappy.com](https://triphappy.com) while traveling for about a year now. We've lived in 6 different countries so far on 3 continents. We travel and live together, renting AirBnBs as we go, and normally stay in one place for 1 - 2 months at a time.

I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a 'digital nomad', but more of a startup founder that just happens not to have a home base. Other than living abroad, my lifestyle is not all that different than when I lived in the US.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think [http://payrollhero.com/](http://payrollhero.com/) used to do this, where they would travel as a team...

</comment><comment><USER10> I think what you are talking about is not actually anything new or digital or weird. You should read up on _economic geography._ Companies are routinely founded where it makes the most sense to found a company and sometimes move later.

Microsoft was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They moved to Seattle later.

Y-Combinator was founded in Cambridge. After getting proof of concept, they moved to the Bay Area.

Aflac was founded in Columbus, GA because there was no major insurance company there. They also were the first foreign insurance company in Japan and one of the three founding brothers was a lawyer who negotiated a deal that protected them from competition for a decade, IIRC. So, for ten years, they were the _only_ foreign insurance company in Japan. Last I heard, Japan constituted about 80% of their revenue.

These days, in theory, certain kinds of companies can be founded "anywhere" \-- or, to use your term, they are _location independent_ \-- because a lot of modern companies are service businesses and, these days, a lot of services can be provided over the Internet. Industry tends to be very location dependent because you need to be where the physical resources are -- although this varies some, depending upon the specific industry.

Anyway, my point is that a small group of people getting together to found a company and then moving someplace that gives them some kind of competitive advantage seems to me to be incredibly common. You are talking about low cost of living as the draw, and this is a potential advantage.

Historically, big new businesses are often born during depressions. During boom times, you can sell just about any piece of crap. During a depression, if you are going to make money, you have to bring real value for the buck. Also, you have to keep costs low and costs are often lower during a depression.

Which is to say that low cost of living is not a terrible criteria for a place to live, but it probably should not be your number one priority either. There are any number of business related metrics that need to be met in order to succeed. Placing too high of a priority on low cost of living may be a recipe for failure and may reflect a poverty mentality and lack of confidence in your ability to succeed.

So, I say that many businesses can be founded "anywhere" _in theory_ because, in reality, where you go can impact a great number of business metrics critical to the success of your business, such as available internet speed, time zone, availability of talent, weather and no doubt many other factors I can't begin to guess at, depending upon what you intend to do.

There is a reason Y Combinator moved to San Francisco after achieving proof of concept: Silicon Valley. So, in theory, they could have funded startups from anywhere. In practice, it makes more sense to be someplace with the right infrastructure, the right people, etc.</comment>


Progressive Web Apps(pwas) are coming to a safari near you - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@prathik/progressive-web-apps-pwas-are-coming-to-a-safari-near-you-216812aba5a <comment><AUTHOR> Sometime next year, native apps will start becoming irrelevant for most use cases</comment>


Did Jobs leave Tim Cook in charge because he wanted Apple to fail without him? - <AUTHOR> It's pretty clear Steve understood what happens when you leave the wrong people at the helm of a technology company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614
For a while I've been wondering why he left Tim Cook in charge and Apple's continued stagnation hasn't helped... I'm starting to think Steve wanted to be sure history remembered him as the only one who could make Apple successful.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Apple has a board of directors. I would think that they would make changes in the C-suite if they were confident that those changes would improve things. Apple has become a Big company and with that comes a sort of petrification of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER3> Next to Steve Jobs, Tim Cook was the single most important executive at Apple before Steve's death; counting among his successes the ipod. If SJ wanted to install someone who would fail TC was a bad choice.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm thinking this is a prime Betteridge headline.

<comment><USER5> This is not a newspaper article, it's a Ask HN: that is missing the "Ask HN:" bona-fide question.</comment></comment>


How much equity should I offer a writer to work on my iPhone app? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/08/05/ask-fair-how-much-should-i-offer-a-writer-to-work-on-my-iphone-app/

<comment><USER2> well what do you mean by writer? Do you mean someone to write "Click here to do blank" ? or do you mean someone to write the "FAQ"...either way its something you should be able to do yourself.

And if you need to get a copy writer, those guys are cheap, there is no reason to give up equity over a $100 contribution

<comment><AUTHOR> In the article, the guy needs more than one month of writing. That's not a FAQ. I don't know the details, but if the iPhone app is an adventure game with a captivating story, the writer is worth a lot.

<comment><USER2> Writers are cheap. There are thousands of english majors out there, looking for work. A few hundred bucks should cover anything short of writing a 300 page novel.

I doubt its a game, if you are not creative enough to come up with a compelling story, you probably aren't creative enough to come up with designs for the game sprites.

<comment><USER3> > I doubt its a game, if you are not creative enough to come up with a > compelling story, you probably aren't creative enough to come up with > designs for the game sprites.

How could you possibly know that? Most retail games right now employ several writers. Granted, this is about an iPhone game, so it's of a smaller scale, but a good adventure game could definitely use a writer.

Also, building a game isn't about "designs for the game sprites" alone. He could outsource that too. It's perfectly possible for a person to be very creative, yet be unskilled at art and/or writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Founder pie calculator: how to bring meaningful structure into discussions about dividing the equity among contributors.

[http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fd0n/35%20Founders%27%20Pie%2...](http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fd0n/35%20Founders%27%20Pie%20Calculator.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Impressive! Except there is no actual calculator. I'd also question the "business plan" category. Maybe as a side-project I could develop such an online calculator.

However, I have a gut feeling that the computer should not be the one telling you how to split the pie. Can it really be automated (even if only to give you a starting point)?

<comment><USER4> The point of the FPC is to provide framework for having a discussion and make sure nothing is left implicit. You can assign zero (or negative:-)) weight to the business plan if you chose so, but at least this implicit assumption will now be on the table for both of you to see and discuss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 30%</comment>


IT consultant subpoenaed in case alleging tampering with 2004 election - <AUTHOR> http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Republican_IT_consultant_subpoenaed_in_case_0929.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't want to see NYC to get too political but this is at least related to IT. Apologies if cause disagreements.</comment>


Apple Announces Major Consumer PC Upgrades - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2009/10/apple_announces.html <comment><USER2> New twist: In the imac 27", the Mini DisplayPort is both an input and an output. You can plug your laptop into an iMac and use it as a display.

This probably adds $0 to the assembly cost, same connector, and depending on how the bits get to the LCD, it could be near $0 in silicon costs. This feature that will provide more life for the display after the poor computer inside becomes obsolete.

<comment><USER3> I really love the screen. And consider that it is 2560x1440 at 16:9 and only 160 pixel "shorter" than the 30" Cinema HD (2560x1600 at 16:10), and the $100 CHEAPER with LED backlight --- guess what a pleasure it would be to code on it! :)

<comment><USER4> Ditto. I just wish the hard drive were user replaceable: from what I can gather, the HD is the big bottleneck on most of my day-to-day activities and would very much benefit from an SSD.

<comment><USER3> I'd like the option to use SSD too. Aside from the performance improvement, it would make the machine completely quite (fan not running and no CD spinning, though) at night :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The new iMac looks nice, the Macbook looks like less of a wussy addition to the lineup, the Mac mini still looks like a Mac mini. What I'm excited about is that mouse. Multitouch scrolling is the feature that I love most about my Macbook Pro; I feel somewhat crippled when I don't have it on the iMacs and Mac Pros at my school. This mouse looks like what I've been waiting for from Apple. Sexier and sturdier than the Mighty Mouse, and much more in line with the rest of their technology.

EDIT: _Yes!_ This was a launch that came with Jonathan Ive talking about things. Score one for Ive fanboys. <http://www.apple.com/imac/the-new- imac/#large>

EDIT EDIT: Two smaller announcements: New remote, new Time Capsule. [http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/20/apple- updates-19-remote-p...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/20/apple- updates-19-remote-predictably-coats-it-in-aluminum/) and [http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/20/apple-quietly-updates- air...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/20/apple-quietly-updates-airport- extreme-and-time-capsule/)

<comment><USER6> The Macbook has _never_ been a wussy part of the lineup. Until the unibody MB/MBP was announced, the sanest Apple purchasing advice was always, "buy the cheapest Intel Apple laptop, whatever that might be". Even now, the difference between the MBP and the MB is largely build quality, and the build quality of the plastic Macbook is still so much better than that of the Powerbook that the MBP wins mostly on pure excellence and not utility.

<comment> bjelkeman-again I used to recommend the white MacBook, but since it became clear that the top case nearly always cracked I stopped recommending them. Now I would say the 13 inch MBP is the most sensible recommendation.

<comment><USER7> I have already had the cracking thing repaired under warranty once. It has since done it again. Now that my version of the MacBook is no more, I'm going to haul it in on Nov. 28, 2010 (the last day of my AppleCare warranty) and kindly request they fix it again :-) Who knows, maybe I'll get comped an upgrade.

<comment><USER8> They'll replace it for you without complaint, but as an Apple Service Provider tech I can tell you, don't get your hopes up about the upgrade. Apple supplies its providers with parts for machines well after their warranties are all up; for a part like that, that's had problems all across the board, doubly so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was freaked out for a second when I saw the oddball screen sizes on the iMacs and the "16:9!" blurb -- usually that means that you just get a shittier lower-res panel in a larger size.

Instead, they switched back to S-IPS panels, and increased the resolutions substantially -- 21.5 is 1920:1080, the 27 is 2560:1440.

<comment><USER10> Rather disappointing Apple is going along with this trend, HD-ing resolutions of screens. I mean it's great for watching movies, but most people will be word processing, e-mailing or surfing the web on iMacs, and that's when you'll miss those 120 vertical pixels. (HD, 16:9 has 1080 vertical pixels, and 16:10 has 1200 vertical pixels.)

<comment><USER11> Neither model has lost any pixels. These displays are higher resolution in both dimensions for both models. The smaller model has gone from 1680x1050 to 1920x1080 (+30 vertical pixels) and the larger from 1920x1200 to 2560x1440 (+240 vertical pixels).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm rabidly anticipating some reviews of the Magic Mouse. The Mighty Mouse has been pretty disappointing but this new one has real potential.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't seem to be able to do a middle-click. Sad.

<comment><USER5> What do you need a middle-click for? I used to only use it for scrollballs, but multitouch killed my need for that.

<comment><USER14> I use it for closing tabs in Firefox when I don't have two hands on the keyboard (W is on the right hand's side of the keyboard for us Dvorak folks).

A middle click anywhere on the entire tab is easier that hitting the lil' x button. Plus, you can turn off the 'close tab' button it the options and make your Firefox look a little bit cleaner.

<comment><USER15> If you don't have a middle-click, how do you open a link in a new tab? (honest question, I buy mice for this.)

<comment><USER16> If you use OS X, cmd+click.

Cmd+click even works on some things that middle click doesn't, for example middle clicking on the home, back/forward, or top sites buttons in Safari will do nothing at all, but cmd+clicking will properly open your home page, previous page, or top sites page in a new tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Only thing missing in the iMac is an option for an SSD boot drive. I wonder how much of a bad idea it would be to boot off an external firewire SSD?

<comment><USER18> It would be slower and need more power - you need esataII

<comment><USER17> It doesn't have that port, though. Nor do I really feel like opening up an iMac to replace the HD.

That said, it's more the seek time which is appealing about the SSD rather than the raw data transfer speed, which is why using the Firewire interface may not be too much of an issue. Obviously I wouldn't want to use USB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting that the nicer iMacs have the ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 instead of a NVidia chip.

<comment><USER20> I would guess that Apple is getting ATI and NVIDIA to outbid each other for inclusion. Best way to get good prices.

<comment><USER19> I was wondering if it was more an issue with NVIDIA's problems of late.

<comment><USER21> You're quite correct. [http://www.hardwareinsight.com/apple-to-replace-nvidia- gpus-...](http://www.hardwareinsight.com/apple-to-replace-nvidia-gpus-with- ati-radeon-4000-series/)

<comment><USER22> Great for consumers IMHO. It will force nvidia to make their stuff better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few interesting details: the iMac displays are now 16:9 (formerly 16:10) and both models are specifically stated to use IPS displays (formerly only the 24" did, but it was not advertised), which are higher resolution than the previous models. Both now have SD card slots. Both now come with wireless keyboard and new "Magic Mouse" standard. The 27" model's Mini-DisplayPort connector functions as _both_ an input and an output.

<comment><USER16> I would love to see some of these IPS panels in the Macbook Pro's.

Currently the only things differentiating between the stock Macbook and the 13" MBP is build quality (unibody polycarbonate vs unibody aluminum), Memory Cap (4gb max vs 8gb max), default HDD size (the MBP is actually smaller), and the Pro has Firewire and a SD slot.

Granted the price difference between the MB and the 13" MBP is only $200, but I think the perfect way to distinguish between the two is IPS. Seeing this manifest itself in the iMacs is really unexpected to me given the industry trend as a whole to keep displays as cheap as possible (I was previously just hoping for a simple bump to 1680x1050 on the 15" MBP, which is what I own and will likely buy again in the future), but this gives me hope that better panel technology in the laptops is actually a potential option.

<comment><USER23> You'll be waiting a long time. IPS on laptops is basically dead at this point. The market has spoken and no one really wants an IPS laptop (5 years ago this was different story). The problem with IPS is it's expensive to make. You'll rarely find an IPS monitor (any size) for less than $500, except when Dell does a fire sale.

Because laptop makers have stopped asking for them, LCD makers stopped making them. Until something else comes along we'll be stuck with TN panels. And they have slowly taken over each market. I've checked some online sites 20" is all TN, 22" has a few old IPS displays, 24" was split 50/50 before the summer, now it's down to 9 IPS out of 100. IPS is left at the high end. And that will eventually go TN, I believe.

As an owner of a LG IPS display I'm miffed that my next display purchase will probably be worse than the one I already have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Personally I'm very glad I got my Aluminum MacBook when I did. I don't want a polycarbonate case...

My guess is that machining the aluminum cases was just too expensive, it would clearly be much cheaper to simply mold a polycarbonate case. But personally I don't think they will match up from a durability perspective...

<comment><USER25> Huh? When did Apple ever sell an aluminum MacBook? Only the MacBook Pros are aluminum AFAIK.

EDIT: I was wrong. Apple did have an aluminum 13" MacBook before the MBP version. See replies below.

<comment><USER26> There was briefly an aluminum MacBook before they introduced the 13" MacBook Pro.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 27" Screen would so much more useful if only OS X had system-wide font size settings^. Parsing 10px fonts from a distance of even a couple feet is far from accessible.

^ Resolution independence anyone?

<comment> bjelkeman-again Yeah, I still run the first Apple flat 22" display which is decidedly low-res these days, but works great for my old eyes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Look at the new 27" iMac, that 16GB of RAM make it a very interesting machine. I do wish the price on the new MacBook would have been $799.

<comment><USER28> That iMac is basically a work station with the Nehalem processor and that much ram. Still ridiculous that they charge $1400 for 16GB RAM though.

<comment><USER29> It's DDR3 memory and 16GB of it. Crucial has similiar prices for that.

<comment><USER30> Do you need 16GB of RAM? Seems like overkill unless you have a specific reason for needing it in which case the price probably isn't a huge concern anyway. I had 16GB in my Mac Pro until recently I downgraded to 8GB. I never came anywhere close to using 16GB and FB-DIMMS on the MP are power hogs. -30W of power yanking the extra memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's fairly disappointing that they decided to not include the core i7 in anything as a default processor. Considering they're the "high performance" brand. They only have it on their top model mac pro. And as an upgrade. Core i7s really up the snappiness of a system.

<comment><USER32> Since when are they the "high performance" brand? High build quality, very much yes.

<comment><USER31> I guess, but considering their high price, well built os, high build quality, you'd think they would add an extra $100 a put a proper processor to fit the image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does the new MacBook sport the Mini-DisplayPort? Can't tell from the images

<comment><USER11> Yes. It's listed on the specs page. No FireWire or SD, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how many people are thinking of ordering the Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server? I have used a normal Mac mini with server as a secondary server and it seems to do ok.

<comment><USER34> Dual HDD seems a handy addition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> wow i still think $599 for the mac mini with a core duo and 160gb hdd is way too much.

<comment><USER36> But Mac mini with Snow Leopard server is kind of intriguing. (Maybe not worth $999. But it does come with 2 500GB drives.)

<comment><USER37> Right, and 10.6 Server is basically coming for free. (Normal $500 value.) Pretty good marketing move if you want to get more people to use the Server version of Mac OS X for their small businesses, education back room machines, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They are also still selling the $899 20" to educational institutions.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is that a new remote? It looks round.

<comment><USER38> You mean the mouse?

<comment><USER19> no, I actually mean the remote - I was pricing up one of the new iMacs and got to the remote picture and it sure doesn't look like the old one.

<comment><USER38> Ah, sorry - was just looking at the article pics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> No matte screen is disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER40> Still no HMDI, that sucks...

<comment><USER41> [http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&c...](http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10428&cs_id=1042802&p_id=5311&seq=1&format=2)</comment></comment>


They Came. They Sawed (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/they-came-they-sawed?fullpage=1

<comment><USER2> Holy crap that was a long read. I was able to see the road just before it was bull dozed. I bought a door that was in the second house many years ago for a friend of mine.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am amused to see this on the front page. I submitted it previously and it did not get a single upvote and I found myself wanting to post more and more quotes from it because I found the piece so fascinating. So I deleted it and did a blog write up about it (with all those quotes I had begun making notes of), and then submitted that, hoping it would have more appeal for the audience here. It also got no real attention.

So, apparently, luck and timing are huge factors in what does well here.

<comment><USER3> Fridays and Saturdays are known to be slower reading days, especially for a long article like this. Otherwise IMO people don't have the attention span to read anything longer than a TechCrunch article. That may have been a factor as well.

Glancing at your submission list, I didn't see your blog post. Would you mind sharing it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the HN submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7918958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7918958)

Direct link to article: [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/06/messy- work-b...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/06/messy-work- business-analysis-of-texas.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it odd that so many nostalgia posts are going up. Are we running out of new content and having to re-use old stuff, a la Hollywood?</comment>


Ask HN: What are you using to become better at problem-solving? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Math and formalism. It helps a lot to develop an idea of the problem. Hold a PhD in physics, so this became quite natural for me.</comment>


The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant: Nick Bostrom on Death - <AUTHOR> http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html <comment><USER2> Ok, "Deathist stories" was a new one for me.</comment>


India is preparing to land on moon for the first time in the country's history - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/india-moon-landing-chandrayaan2-2017-12?r=US&IR=T <comment><USER2> Not that there are many here that believe that NASA faked the moon landings, but if you are, I've got to say: I'd have thought that Bollywood would have landed them on the moon at least a decade ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> If space transportation costs were to fall dramatically, would there be any commercial value in traveling to the Moon, or building a base on the moon? The only one I can think of is Tourism. Are there any others, such as rare minerals perhaps?

<comment> w-ll Andy Weir (author of The Martian) has a new book coming out that explores tourism to the moon. He has done a ton of research on the topic, definitely worth checking out.

He was recently on StarTalk Radio [1] give it a listen

1\. [https://www.startalkradio.net/tag/andy- weir/](https://www.startalkradio.net/tag/andy-weir/)

<comment><USER4> It just came out and is a great read. He goes into the issues of tourism, industry, and which countries will be driving efforts on the moon.

<comment><USER5> In the book, is the tourism is driven primarily by the inherent novelty and wonder of being on the moon, seeing Earth, experiencing the weaker gravity, etc., or is the draw primarily based on facilities that have been built there, like casinos, resorts, amusement parks, etc.?

My guess is that you would need to have a lot of the latter, because while the former would be undoubtedly cool, I'm afraid the novelty would wear off quickly if the living and entertainment facilities themselves were anything less than spectacular.

<comment><USER6> This is a fascinating thoughtsploration. Tourism on the moon will be a real version of the Jurassic Park narrative concept:

Enterprising, wealthy, and somewhat eccentric genius opens space theme park, pushing the boundaries of the possible whilst simultaneously exposing your crew and visitors to near infinite risks because it has never been done before and is almost the definition of unnatural.

<comment><USER7> If resurrecting dinosaurs via ancient DNA could possibly be a thing (pretty sure it can't), I wonder how big dinosaurs could get on the moon. I believe gravity was the limiting factor in how big land based dinosaurs could get, so how big could get in Lunar Jurassic Park in ~1/6th Earth gravity.

<comment><USER5> The low gravity is probably what I would have the most fun with. I can imagine all sorts of activities could get a lot more fun. I could learn to do a standing backflip, or even manage to finally break 400lb on my deadlift. :)

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't trying to deadlift more than 400 pounds be the same amount of effort on the moon? Granted, it would have to be that much more massive, so it would certainly LOOK more impressive.

<comment><USER9> No. 400 lb is 1779 newtons on Earth, but 294 newtons on the Moon. Newtons are really what defines the effort needed to lift an object.

<comment><USER8> That's what I was commenting on though; I very well may be wrong, but my understanding was that the weight of things like barbells is measured in pounds-force, not pounds-mass, so if you were going to follow that on the moon you'd need a much more massive set of weights.

Though, I suppose if you're saying "I'm taking these exact same weights to the moon to lift" then you're right. I was being unnecessarily pedantic.

<comment><USER9> I see :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5137359/Boy-18-inv...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5137359/Boy-18-invents- self-defence-SANDAL-ward-rapists.html) is more interesting from India today

<comment><USER11> That's pretty cool, but you should see a shrink. Something's wrong with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought Nasa suddenly stopped going to the moon since 1972 is because they found an alien base on the far side of the moon. That or we are in a computer simulation and there's not enough processing power to simulate another planet.

</comment><comment><USER13> To be clear this is rover landing planned around March 2018. This is not landing man on moon.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think that would be the first time in any country's history except the US....

<comment><USER15> I think that reading the article before posting usually leads to more relevant comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe provide basic supply with fresh water for the whole country first. But yeah, whatever.

<comment><USER17> Pssst, I heard the last country to land people there laughable still hasn't even made it to the level of free health care for all! They still might, of course, it's not like any of these goals are mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER18> Free healthcare? That'd sure be amazing. Oh, you mean non-free healthcare provided by taxes, paid for by anyone earning an income and only actually free for anyone not earning an income.

Anyone not earning an income in the US gets 'free' healthcare and has for decades. It's anything but free, it's very expensive.

Just ask any developed nation with socialized healthcare just how free healthcare is, as they all universally struggle to afford it (which is why Canada's wait times are so atrocious despite being held up as a good system).

One can make a great argument for socialized healthcare without pretending it's free. Claiming it's free is just an absurdity, as it's extremely expensive.

<comment><USER19> > Anyone not earning an income in the US gets 'free' healthcare and has for > decades. It's anything but free, it's very expensive.

My impression was that the only way it's "free" is if you walk into an emergency room with no money. And the fact that uninsured people can only go to emergency rooms (routine issues fester and become serious) is in part what drives up the cost.

In places like Canada the wait times are atrocious due to triaging. If your problem is serious you will get looked at immediately. If it's not, you have to wait. And if you can afford it, you're still free to go to a private clinic. But it does seem like overall health outcomes and costs are better than the US.

So...yeah it's true calling it "free" healthcare is a bit of a misnomer but no one actually thinks it costs $0 to provide. Think of free healthcare like freeways: paid for by tax money for the public good, and occasionally you'll have to pay a nominal toll (co-pay or whatever).

<comment><USER6> You make some very good points.

I think people use the term "free" in the same way that the term "free" tricks people into spending more than they would have otherwise. Calling it "free" let's you mentally sidestep the details.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Brick-laying robot stacks 1,000 bricks an hour to build a house in 2 days - <AUTHOR> http://inhabitat.com/brick-laying-robot-stacks-1000-bricks-an-hour-to-build-a-house-in-2-days/ <comment><USER2> Shouldn't there be some rebar in there somewhere?

<comment><USER3> The first robot is not able to pass the big, bad wolf's third test case just yet. The three little pigs have not yet given their stamp of approval for this reason

</comment></comment><comment> Black-Plaid "Can do everything a human bricklayer can do"

Humans come in to put in lintels.</comment>


Outlier Scenarios: 7% U.S.GDP Growth in 2011? - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/12/outlier_scenari.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InfectiousGreed+%28Paul+Kedrosky%27s+Infectious+Greed%29 <comment><USER2> I'm getting tired of constantly hearing unrealisticly good predictions from GS and other institutions with vested interests. (And yes, I know that this is the _outlier_ scenario)

This reminds me of the earlier article today from Zed Shaw. Why is GS so optimistic, constantly overestimating growth? Because they know that with their reports they can influence growth (aka, self-fulfilled profecy, so common in economics). And with more growth, they have more deals (IPOs, M&Ms, etc), and thus more money.

</comment><comment><USER3> While the economics of this are interesting - it will be depressing to see republicans claim the turn around was due to the actions they've taken since the mid term elections, and the democrats claiming it's proof what they were pushing has led to a recovery and ... I should really listen to less talk- radio.

</comment><comment><USER4> Shorter Kedrosky: "Goldman Sachs says that if lots of Americans start buying lots and lots of stuff -- which might or might not happen -- then the GDP will go way up."

No attempt to identify a reasonable set of underlying factors beyond private deleveraging or to consider countervailing factors. E.g., the widely predicted 10 - 20% continued fall in housing prices as larege numbers of delayed foreclosures kick in this coming year, with subsequent loss of consumer confidence.</comment>


The biggest legal crisis facing Uber started with a pile of vomit - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-employment-lawsuit-gig-economy-leigh-day <comment><USER2> If ever there was any doubt why Uber is working so hard on driverless vehicles, here's a prime example. Not sure how the autonomous vehicles will deal with riders puking in the car though.</comment>


Nikola admits to faking video of driving prototype - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2020/09/14/nikola-nkla-admits-faking-video-driving-prototype-weak-response/ <comment><AUTHOR> Follow up on the report[1] published by Hindenburg. Link[2] to the press release by Nikola Corporation.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24436721)

[2] [https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-sets-the- recor...](https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-sets-the-record- straight-on-false-and-misleading-short-seller-report-96)</comment>


Introducing review requests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2291-introducing-review-requests <comment><USER2> Has GitHub improved reviews since launch? I tried the review feature at launch and found it to be a severe regression from plain PR inline comments, because the review comments weren't hidden when the code they referenced changed, so I had to manually check each review comment to see whether or not it was addressed by a follow-on commit. I emailed their support asking if I was using the review feature wrong, and they said No, I was using it correctly, and it was a known weakness in the feature that they were tracking.

Review requests are useless until GitHub makes the reviews themselves useful.

<comment><USER3> Heh, I never cease to wonder at the variety of -- often contradictory -- code review workflows. For me and many others automatically disappearing comments are a misfeature, since we _want_ to verify that a comment was correctly addressed. To each their own... :)

<comment><USER2> At the launch of GitHub reviews, it's not just that the outdated comments weren't hidden, but at that time, there were no tools in place of that to collapse threads, mark sections of diff as approved, or otherwise resolve comments with follow-on pushes. That's why I asked their support if I was using it correctly, I was super confused. I'm definitely interested in a better GitHub workflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being able to search for things my review is requested on would be good companion feature for it.

<comment><USER5> This is one of the features I love about [https://reviewable.io](https://reviewable.io).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kind of interesting. What I'd really like to be able to do is _require_ specific people to review before merging, for example require a review by at least one of our senior developers.

Right now the greenest guy on the team can approve a PR and it can be merged.

The real dream would be to be able to set the requirements on a per-directory basis, but I doubt that would ever happen.

<comment><USER7> I second this. I am an xoogler and we had a file inside of folders that dictated who you needed to get approval by. When someone edited code the review tool would crawl the tree to find the nearest owners file. We couldn't merge unless someone from that file approved the change request. Worked great!

Now that we have this tool I wonder if there is an API to add a reviewer. It would be fairly trivial to add this if there was an API.

<comment><USER8> +1. Gerrit has a similar way to express access permissions that differentiate between a "contributor" and a "developer": [https://gerrit- review.googlesource.com/Documentation/access-...](https://gerrit- review.googlesource.com/Documentation/access- control.html#examples_contributor)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any api endpoints now for querying reviews? I'd love to have a way to get a list of reviews i'm being asked to do.

<comment><USER3> AFAICT the PR review REST API is still on their "near-term roadmap" ([https://developer.github.com/early-access/platform- roadmap/](https://developer.github.com/early-access/platform-roadmap/)).</comment></comment>


Reduce GPS data error on Android with Kalman filter and accelerometer - <AUTHOR> https://blog.maddevs.io/reduce-gps-data-error-on-android-with-kalman-filter-and-accelerometer-43594faed19c <comment><USER3> This is a pretty old/widely used technique. Here's a paper about it from 1999, implementing on a DOS PC.

[http://www8.cs.umu.se/research/ifor/dl/LOCALIZATION- NAVIGATI...](http://www8.cs.umu.se/research/ifor/dl/LOCALIZATION- NAVIGATION/Multi- rate%20Sensor%20Fusion%20for%20GPS%20Navigation%20using%20Kalman%20filtering.pdf)

The really interesting stuff more recently is using RTK software to get accuracy on the order of 10s of cm with cheap GPS receivers.

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/RTKLIB](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/RTKLIB)

<comment><USER4> RTK stands for Real Time Kinematics, for those who (like me) wondered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's is. This is not unique solution. We collected all information in one article and described what we did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was 100% sure that both iOS and Android give you that by default unless you opt out and request raw GPS data.

Good job fixing that externally!

<comment><USER6> "raw" data from the GPS chipset has already been through a Kalman filter... its how they form a 'fix' based on constant measurement inaccuracies.

Of course the difference here is that the extra accelerometer data is involved. It's been a few years since I last worked on GPS chipsets, but I would be surprised if they didn't now incorporate one for this exact reason.

edit: They do: [https://www.broadcom.com/products/wireless/gnss-gps- socs/bcm...](https://www.broadcom.com/products/wireless/gnss-gps-socs/bcm4752)

"Broadcom's second-generation sensor integration technology, adding accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and altimeter outputs to the positioning engine"

<comment><USER5> I get your point. I just assumed that in a world of billions of various hardware solutions, OS level sane software defaults would be reasonable to expect. Even if GPS sensors would not provide that kind of filtering. And since OS generally has a very good access to all the sensors... you get the rest.

<comment><AUTHOR> They give good accelerometer readings. Also they give good GPS readings. All we need to do - "fuse" this.

<comment><USER7> Android has had a "fused location provider" which does this for a long time...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, but we have drivers with phones without google play services. Strange thing, but it's true :) Also sometimes we need to use phone without internet access .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if filtering just based on the GPS previous positions (thus averaging different errors to kinda cancel them) works almost equally well in this case, since cars tend to move in a quite smooth way.

<comment><USER9> 'almost' equally well is a bit qualitative; one of the main advantages of a kalman filter is that it's predictive and so doesn't suffer from the lag that a simple low-pass filter has. But as you say, a car is not a missile so the degree to which the performance of a LPF is worse than a KF may not be significant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Converting coordinates to string-based hashes is quite weird. Why not just find which grid square they are in and used the flat index of it?

<comment><USER11> Hmm, you don't have to convert the geohash to a (base-32) string - int64 may be just as fine.

Perhaps they can take advantage of the better locality of Z index compared to flat index, and/or they want to store higher precision and do lookups with varying precisions (grid sizes)?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use geohash because it's really fast and we can control precision. We don't need to store any information about grid and we don't need to convert coordinates to spherical view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if terrain roughness features could be used collectively to form extremely accurate positioning for vehicles. Collect data on bumps, slopes, curves, orientation and then use this data to predict most probable current location based on accelerometer data. This would be accurate in cases where "Dead reckoning" is inaccurate and vis versa. (related concept [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM))

</comment><comment><USER13> I would love to plug a cheap accelerometer an get these efficiencies. But it leaves me some questions:

* Will these techniques work on a stock Android device for stock programs (ie Google Maps)?

* Will the different (extra?) calculations cause my processor's calculation to go up, killing battery life? I didn't see any testing on this and your statements seemed questionable - "Herewith, the algorithm should not consume whole battery within 3 minutes as well as all available RAM."

Doesn't Android already have similar filters? I would assume they do since they've been in the business for a while.

This looks like great theoretical ideas. I hope you can use it to get a job at Google or turn it into a marketable product.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. It won't be working on stock devices, unfortenately. It's library to integrate to your android application

2\. Extra calculations don't consume as much battery as GPS and with this technique we use GPS less often. In other hand we use accelerometer and magnetometer. I tested this by eye :) and didn't find big difference between GPS only solution and presented solution. But as written in article - <USER2> doesn't accumulate coordinates.

3\. Android already has similar filters. They use Kalman filter and many interesting things. See here : [https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/native/...](https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/native/+/master/services/sensorservice/Fusion.cpp) and other files. They did really huge work here :)

<comment><USER7> For 1., on android you can have third party location providers I believe, and then any app could use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but you need to specify coefficients somehow for that and add calibration step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neat article covering a lot of topics, but I'm fairly surprised by these results.

At one point I was looking at building a navigation module for a car using a similar setup to smooth noise, but after some searching I found a paper which showed essentially no benefit from the accelerometer/gyro. The 'drift' on the accelerometer meant it could only filter very fast changes, which the Kalman filter on the GPS board already handled quite well.

I should dig out my little MTK3339 and try to replicate!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, accelerometer's "drift" became a world of pain for me, but android developers did great work for that and all we need to do is to add calibration step to application and use their "linear acceleration" sensor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is great! How would accelerometer + algorithm power usage compare to GPS?

Is there any reason this isn't already used?

<comment><USER16> This principle is already sometimes used for determining the position of UAVs (e.g. Quadcopters). So absolute position is provided by GPS and short term movements can be calculated from accelerometers and other sensors.

Of course sensor data can only provide a relative position. After longer intervals of solely relying on the relative sensor-based position small errors can accumulate which makes "synchronization" with GPS necessary to retain accuracy.

<comment><USER17> It's fun to think about how related that is to maritime navigation and in particular Dead Reckoning.

The same thing has been taught for hundreds of years in that realm. Her you take it 3D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has anyone worked with the Madgwick filter (mentioned in the post)? Any high level takeaways to share?

I work in marine robotics and am interested in experimenting with it to see how it could improve our current nav solution.</comment>


Ask HN: Apple AirPods features - <AUTHOR> whatsup. Im trying to come up with a way to make two pairs of AirPods to connect to one iOS (android) device. from what I read it seems apple made their AirPods to be shown as some kind of special device not a regular bluetooth audio device. bc of we cannot pair two headsets to one device. does anyone know how to code swift and change AirPods' settings so they are displayed as regular bluetooth devices. it seems really dumb that apple didn't make a public AirPods api... <comment><AUTHOR> MAYBE they implement this feature in AirPods 2 but I doubt it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> if anyone knows how to code swift (AirPods) pls contact me</comment>


ZFS co-creator boots 'slave' out of OpenZFS codebase - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/12/openzfs_terminology_change/ <comment><USER2> 24 hours nobody cares because 99.9% of the world doesn't know what zfs is and the 0.1% that does never meant nor took any offense.

I can't think of any good reason not to do this but I also can't think of a reason to care.

<comment><USER3> I'd used to think these changing master/slave PRs where stupid, no one I know has ever used the words due to there use in slavery or as a form of racism in code. The people often offended by the master/slave terms are middle-class white folk on Twitter who think it offends other people.

Then at some point, I realized it's not worth caring. If it only stops one person from being offended, the effort and time spent debating over it are far more than doing a search and replace and closing the issue to save the headache and distraction from real problems.

In saying that, the GitHub one renaming / removing the default master branch is bizarre. Never have I seen a branch named slave, which can be linked to master/slave terminology. Again it's not worth my effort caring over it, but it is strange. Are we trying to remove the word master from our vocabulary entirely because it is also used to describe people who traded slaves way before our lifetime? [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/master](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/master).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Kevlar.io – Secrets that when accessed are deleted permanently - <AUTHOR> http://kevlar.io/

<comment><USER3> I think this is neat. I can't imagine a use for it but I like the UI.

The fundamental problem with this:

There's no way to prove that the secret has been deleted and / or not copied. You have access to the plaintext and the password / url (presumably an encryption key). You (the malicious server operator or the compromised server) can do anything you want with the information.

This would be interesting if you could:

1) Offer end-to-end encryption. This would require encryption in the client which has its own issues.

2) Be able to provide proof that the information has been made inaccessible. This is not the same thing as having the link return a 404 the second time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will be open sourcing the code once I've cleaned it up a little.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't solve the problem he's describing since it won't prove that the published code is what's running.

<comment><USER5> you can host it yourself?

<comment><USER4> It was my understanding it is supposed to be used to pass secrets between people. If I host my own I may trust it but you may not.

<comment><USER5> then i guess there's no service for both of you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Er, how "secret" are secrets submitted without encryption? Could use an "s" on the end of that http for starters...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's a showstopper.

You shouldn't be launching a site in 2014 without https: that could handle 'secrets', or even any personal information, or really at all!

Also, as said above, you can't actually prove destruction (as far as I know, without a Trent i.e. trusted party to do it), which is a big theoretical flaw in the whole idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's always a possibility of someone just taking a screenshot.

<comment><USER9> Every time some service like this is submitted there's someone complaining about screenshots.

Of course they can take screenshots, that's not the use case.

People can also memorize things, or create fake pages and screenshots. Or film the screen of their phones, or take photos of their TV.

You can't just send beams magically to their head and then make all evidence and memory of it magically disappear.

The use case is for when you want to send someone a password or a small message, instead of sending it to live in their IM history or email inbox, you send it with something like this, so if they can successfully read it, you know they were the only ones to ever read it, otherwise they would not be able to read it.

Is it for super secret stuff? No.

Is it good enough for many use cases? Yes.

In case of password, you'd communicate URL, username etc regularly and just use something like this for password, so even if this thing itself is not terribly secure, it's missing context so it's still fine.

Example:

Hey John, here's the login details for the grocery manager: username: blahblah login url: [http://example.com/login](http://example.com/login) password: get it from [http://kevlar.io/QlIk6NKFfX78dRq3ZES5yw](http://kevlar.io/QlIk6NKFfX78dRq3ZES5yw)

<comment><USER10> > when you want to send someone a password or a small message

No, this is a terrible service for it for a few reasons:

\- it doesn't force https, so you should never send any password through it

\- you have no control over it, so for all we know all secrets will be saved forever on an insecure server

\- you have no idea who runs the service, so for all we know all secrets will be published in a year, available for everyone to download

Best way to collect lots of logins, passwords, cc details? Start your own "secure" storage service.

<comment><USER9> Without the other context the random password itself is not useful to the service.

People exchange full login details in email and IM all the time, this simply helps with the problem of having them sit in the history and archives indefinitely.

Security is a spectrum not an absolute measure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice... but I would prefer some self hosting alternatives, like Zerobin [http://sebsauvage.net/paste/](http://sebsauvage.net/paste/) ([https://github.com/sebsauvage/ZeroBin](https://github.com/sebsauvage/ZeroBin))

or [http://yaap.it/](http://yaap.it/) ([https://github.com/SeyZ/yaapit](https://github.com/SeyZ/yaapit))

or even [http://g0bin-demo.appspot.com/new/](http://g0bin- demo.appspot.com/new/) ([https://github.com/jyap808/g0bin](https://github.com/jyap808/g0bin))

</comment><comment><USER12> While I like the UI and such, the principle is basically flawed, as users had to implicitely trust the server administrators, their hosting providers and their CA (assuming https). Even iMessage offers a better trust model - <USER2> only need to trust apple, and, if what apple says is true, messages cannot be read by apple nor anyone else.

It could be a different thing if the service was installed locally, i.e. under the control of one of the participants in the information exchange (and then the "burn after reading" feature is pointless).

If a user would really want to pass along secrets without those things she should use XMPP/OTR instead (i.e. pidgin/adium). Which is really not that hard to use.

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems like someone accessed the site, causing it to be deleted. Now shows a Gandi.net landing page.

<comment><USER14> Apparently the URL isn't correct. Try: [http://www.kevlar.io/](http://www.kevlar.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good luck using that name. [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kevlar](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kevlar)

"Trademark. 1\. a brand of aramid fiber."

That is like calling it Nike or Adidas.

<comment><USER16> Do the people who own the Kevlar trademark also create software?

I agree that it's probably foolhardy to use somethin that is an existing trademark I can't see the Kevlar-the-fibre people winning any lawsuit. Although just the process is probably harmful to the Kevlar-the-software people.

<comment><USER17> There used to be a FTP client for linux called kevlarftp (it was a OSS clone of the bulletproof ftp client). Dupont lawyers raised copyright issues against the product name. The author promptly gave up and the software was renamed to "kftp"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Kevlar.io? Start counting the days till a Dupont lawyer knocks on your door... Anybody remember the FTP client formerly known as kevlarftp?

</comment><comment><USER18> Similar to what my friend did recently ([http://ididntsay.com/](http://ididntsay.com/)) :)

<comment><USER19> Tell your friend to store only an encrypted version of the message on their server and add the encryption key to the message url as a hash. Decrypt it in the browser for the reader.

Sending unencrypted text over http isn't what I'd choose for my top secret messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sure, and how exactly am I supposed to trust them ?

There are tons of services doing exactly the same thing, some even on Tor.

<comment><USER21> this one is going to be a similar service [https://www.burn- notice.me/](https://www.burn-notice.me/)

which other alternatives are there you are talking about? i would like to have a look at them.

in terms of trust, lot's of people put their data on facebook, so there is that... specifically for you, would it help if you can audit such an application?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems kinda similar to justleak.it. But I would have to give the link to the person manually.

See, the thing is, having seen Leak i immediately wanted to use it, and actually did use it. Seeing your thing, I just tried it for myself and don't really see a use in my life for it.

So what's your plan on the service?

<comment><USER23> On a side note, why don't justleak.it use AWS SES?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Heh. I created pretty much this exact same thing for my minor project in college. Might still be up and running on Heroku somewhere. :)

Edit: Also see: [https://oneshar.es/](https://oneshar.es/)

</comment><comment><USER25> What are the use cases for this?

<comment><USER26> You could use it for sending things like passwords. You may want to give someone access to something but not have it stored in chat or email records. If anyone else were to look up the link later, presumably it's no longer there as the recipient already clicked the link.

I think that's actually something worth clarifying about this service. Assuming that a link is created with a secret, but not accessed, how long is it stored for? Is it ever deleted otherwise?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Kevlar is a registered trademark. You might run into some problems with that.

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

<comment><USER12> Depending on the class the existing Kevlar mark is registered in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hmmm.

Don't know if it's down, but every attempt I try gets "404 - It's most likely your seeing this page because a message has already been accessed and deleted".

<comment><USER29> So do I

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There was another idea on HN sometime back:

A link unclicked for an amount of time after it has made live will expire. Opening it before the counter expires resets the counter.

</comment><comment><USER31> Did the same to try Node.js.

[https://github.com/rafaqueque/weezper](https://github.com/rafaqueque/weezper)

</comment><comment><USER32> So, same as the [https://encry.pt](https://encry.pt) which has been around for 3+ years?

</comment><comment><USER33> Just wondering, why should the secret be accessed over HTTP instead of HTTPS?

</comment><comment><USER34> >Share this secret by sending this URL with a freind.

*friend

<comment><USER35> That's what bothers you in that sentence? :-)</comment></comment>


Bill Patton and Fitness Tracking (Podcast) - <AUTHOR> https://s3.amazonaws.com/ericfeiglfitnesscandor/Fitness+Candor+014+-+Bill+Patton+.mp3 <comment><AUTHOR> Thought this was an interesting insight into the beginnings of fitness tracking and what was being done right before mobile devices took off.</comment>


Desk: A lightweight workspace manager for the shell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jamesob/desk <comment><USER2> self plug: [http://direnv.net/](http://direnv.net/) does basically the same but without having to start new sub-shells. Just `cd` into a folder, if it has an .envrc file it's loaded. If you `cd` out of the folder all the changed environment variables are restored.

<comment><USER3> Does it have a trust model to prevent loading a .envrc from unknown origin?

<comment><USER2> Yes, the file path+content checksum is verified against a whitelist before execution. Typing `direnv allow [PATH]` adds it to the whitelist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe this was on the front page of HN 20 days ago. This time the URL has a hash fragment. See here for 9 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10445461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10445461)

</comment><comment><USER5> Am I understanding this right? This is basically just a command to call bash scripts that live in a certain directory? Why not just use:

. path/to/ez_lisp.sh

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

or use an alias like:

desk() {

      . path/to/$1

}

I'm a newb. So sorry if this is just over my head.

<comment><USER6> Yes and no... the details are a little different, because we're using subshells and not sourcing scripts directly in the current process (cleanup is easier that way -- you just `exit`). But in effect, yeah, this is minor window dressing around executing an initializing shell script in a sandbox. I find the interface and the doc surfacing useful.

In the nearterm I'm going to be working on supporting imports -- i.e., you `git clone` down a project that has a deskfile at its root, then you're able to import it (maybe as a fancy symlink) into your own deskfiles. That'd give you immediate, programmtic context for working on the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Or just a simple tmux session?

<comment><USER8> It's more than just a tmux session, because it's also setting up an environment for the "workspace" as well. You might even use it with tmux to quickly load the appropriate environment in a new session.

<comment><USER9> Worth checking out tmuxinator which essentially does this. The way I use tmuxinator, I just type 'mux <name>' and it'll load a tmux session with all my panes, directories, and applications loaded and running.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really want to support open source efforts. But I really can't if there's a project developed without any googling before the first line of code. We have terminal multiplexers. I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised if he had one when computer still meant big tubes and real typewriters being connected to screens. This project doesn't offer anything that screen or tmux can't do, as far as I understand the README. And it also doesn't mention its biggest two competitors.

Please, to save your own time and energy (if not the time and energy of other people) search for a solution before you build one. Only if you have found the two or three solutions that the community likes most and you are still unsatisfied, only then start coding. And set yourself a real goal about what your tool should be doing that the others don't.

In this example tmux is quite interesting. Screen was around for ages. But a few things were not possible with the screen code base, like splitting your screen in whatever way you want. And some things simply were not really user friendly, like the config. With this in mind a guy named Nicholas Marriott sat down and started coding his alternative.

That's how you do it. Stick his picture on your wall. Follow his path. Start with googling for your problem, not with coding.

PS: I think the idea of having different desktops in graphical shells in fact came from people wanting to have the terminal multiplexing feature in their graphical environment as well. So Desk is like taking your calculator apart to develop a method to calculate with pen and paper.

<comment><USER11> Love tmux, fail to see how desk and tmux are related. I think you missed the point.

Wheb i boot up, i still have to ^R to cd to the right location, and then ^R again to "compile" etc.

I'm looking forward to trying this out, direnv (mentionned above) seems like an even better idea.

<comment> vive-la-liberte I have four directories which I frequently use. For one of them, I commit as let's say firstname.lastname@example.com and in the other three as firstname.lastname@example.com.

So first of all, I have a bash function declared in my bashrc which takes one argument -- the domain -- and sets a few evironment variables such as GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL and GIT_COMMITER_EMAIL.

Next I have one two-letter alias and three three-letter aliases which all cd to their respective paths and call the function to set the env vars.

Finally, I have two-letter aliases to git add, git diff, git commit, git push and so on.

Dead simple and works great. All I need is my bashrc.</comment></comment></comment>


Self-Driving Ubers of the Future Will Deliver Stuff, Not People - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/self-driving-ubers-of-the-future-will-deliver-stuff-not-people-6952cdce0fd5 <comment><USER2> > "We're close to cracking that human performance barrier and reaching > superhuman territory," said Vogt at the Origin reveal event. "That's going > to happen soon."

De people really still fall for this shit ?

"yeah yeah guys, we'll be done with that impossible task in like 6 months, just sign here. What do you mean by 'you've been saying that for years ?', I promise we just need 500 millions this time and we're done"

<comment><USER3> > > _We're close to cracking that human performance barrier and reaching > superhuman territory_

What if we modify that with the following: "...for certain routes"?

Even if SDCs can only drive on highways, they're a society-changing service. If they can drive on most highways and 20% of city roads, they'd also be massive.

Uber has something of a head start. If it knows your start and end points, it can decide if a full SDC is appropriate or if a human driver is necessary, and then it can send you the right one. This is even better if the passenger is, as the article says, an object, and not a person who can have driver preferences.</comment></comment>


I'm hanging out at Schönefeld Airport waiting for the flight back from CCC - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jifa/status/1218572371327705089 <comment><AUTHOR> Threadreader: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1218572371327705089.html?...](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1218572371327705089.html?refreshed=yes)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd expect something more thorough than "must be surveillance that would be illegal in the country I'm in" from a Cellebrite employee. Their follow up tweets seems to attribute this to some glitch though, the rest of that thread reads like unsubstantiated tinfoil material.

<comment><AUTHOR> Transmission glitches would be exceedingly unlikely to record and play back several minutes of call audio.

Call-stretchng fraud is proposed, though ... not _entirely_ convincing? [https://www.sigos.com/success-stories/success-story- intercon...](https://www.sigos.com/success-stories/success-story-interconnect- fraud-call-stretching-detection/)

Whatever the cause, a very likely deliberate long-duration (e.g., not subsecond buffering) recording is made and kept.</comment></comment>


What to do when someone steals your startup idea - case study - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pipedrive.com/2013/07/what-to-do-when-someone-steals-your-startup-idea/ <comment><USER2> A very misleading title. The blog post doesn't describe an entity who copies an _idea_ and goes to form their own company and produce competing products.

Rather, this is the simple case of a "potential businesses party" who copied front-end code, design (obviously), and images. They also redirected traffic of an associated domain. So, beyond blatantly doing copyright infringement, they are also breaking fair trade competition/fraud laws and depending on jurisdictions, trademark (established through use in the marketplace rather than registration).

 _What you can do to protect yourself_ against such activities is simple, send a cease and desist letter, file a complaint to consumer protection agency (if you've got one), and possibly send the issue to the local police.

Their suggestion of registered trademark, watermarks, and (meh) patents might increase the reward money from a law suit and increase win chances in court, but it won't actually "protect" you against entities who already willingly commits copyright infringement.

<comment><USER3> I was about to comment the same thing.

I've yet to see I company going bust because someone copied their front-end, icons or flat design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If they blatantly stole your idea - don't worry. The type of people who can't think originally enough to come up with their own idea are probably not going to execute it well either.

The same principle applies when someone else has the same idea as you at the same time, and you catch wind of it right in the middle of your implementation of that idea. It might be slightly more difficult, since you arrived at the same good idea independently of each other. Just focus on executing better.

Ideas are a dime a dozen - they aren't worth anything in and of themselves.

If they blatantly copy your code, as is the case here, then it becomes slightly worse, an actual legal issue. But again I wouldn't worry too much since I'm willing to bet that they aren't that good at coding either.

<comment><USER5> Trying telling that to the the Winklevoss twins and see if they agree.

<comment><USER4> Having a hard time feeling sorry for the Winklevoss twins. The market paid them more than what they were worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm planning on skipping this pain, and open sourcing our base code. If someone wants to copy us, go ahead, but our machine learning and data analysis services are going to be hard to build: its taken me two years to get even close to launching ;)

Other upshot is I get to give back to the FOSS community: couldnt have built it without them.

As the saying goes, if you can be copied that easily: you've built a feature, not a business!

</comment><comment><USER7> very hard (impossible?) to copy the most important parts of a startup:

\+ business model innovation \+ go to market strategy \+ execution, focus and efficiency \+ iteration \+ user/customer care and cultivation \+ brand integrity and trust \+ vision \+ interfaces \+ partnerships \+ etc

<comment><USER8> I agree. At least 80% of your start-up depends on execution. You do need a good idea, but that's just the beginning and you can borrow heavily here (that's how progress works most of the time, improve on existing concepts). When someone 'steals' your idea and then does a terrible job at executing it, then I don't see a problem. You can just do better and prevail.

I have (supposedly) good ideas all the time, but not the time to execute most of them without totally loosing my focus. I'd actually be quite honored if someone would 'steal' some of them and execute them well as most of these ideas arise from some issue I encounter that needs fixing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Might want to update your nginx, pretty sure this one is vulnerable.

Oh, and your site is down.

<comment><AUTHOR> #2 position here was a bit of a surprise, but site looks to be accessible for most.

<comment><USER10> Server dooown, get reliable hosting :)

<comment><USER11> fixing the bottlenecks. sorry :) our blog hadn't been designed to scale well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't worry. Ideas are worthless. Implementation, marketing, etc. is what matters. Focus on that. You should be chosen because you're the best, not because you're the only one.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would suggest that, even if someone copies your front end code, don't worry about it. Run your own race. A business who just copies (instead of innovating) wont last long.

I would worry about a google penalty for duplicate content across the two sites. If they are really copying your code wholesale you can screw them over by defining the canonical urls for various pages (as your own domains).

</comment><comment><USER14> "If possible, look into patenting key components of your software – this offers more protection than copyright. More on that here."

While I agree that having your site copied verbatim sucks, I don't think contributing to the giant pile that is our current patent system is the way forward.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ideas are almost worthless, implementation and execution is what counts.

</comment><comment><USER16> PipeDrive... sounds like a great name for an adult film.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's no such thing as a stolen idea.

Especially not for a startup.</comment>


Beware the IDEs - <AUTHOR> http://www.sicpers.info/2015/04/beware-the-ides/?1428369959718=1

<comment><USER2> I have long had the impression, that those who dislike IDEs only really know products such as Visual Studio or Eclipse, rather than Metrowerks CodeWarrior or ThinkC.

The simple fact that a tool is an IDE doesn't make it good or bad.

I have long preferred IDEs for development on Apple platforms but lately I am working towards moving my iOS development to makefiles with Vim and TextWrangler because Apple's Xcode IDE is so profoundly poorly designed and implemented.

I'd love to have codewarrior for iOS development but they no longer support Apple platforms.

<comment><USER3> > Xcode IDE is so profoundly poorly designed and implemented.

That's some strong criticism.

I loved Lightspeed/THINK C and Metrowerks CodeWarrior. I also have a generally positive opinion of Xcode (which might be even higher if I was remembering it from 20+ years' distance, instead of dealing with version-version inconsistencies and incremental bits).

It's unfortunate that having a good, free, first-party compiler inevitably sucks the oxygen out of any competitive market. But there were some lean years in the Mac compiler world, and I'd never want to go back to that.

That said, I use vi for _everything_ else, including lots of non-Cocoa code. I would be completely happy to do Cocoa dev in vi also, if it could be as functional as Xcode. I'm very interested to hear more about your retooling experiences!

<comment><USER4> Xcode is a decent tool for new programmers. Also, features like Cmd+Click (go to definition) can be a huge boon when dealing with an unfamiliar codebase. That said, for anyone used to using "text editors" (Sublime, Vim, Emacs, etc) it is sorely lacking. I'm not afraid to say that text editing in Xcode is barely more tolerable than a standard web textarea in that respect. It's sluggish, prone to crashing (or losing syntax highlighting), and often displays errors in the middle of typing an expression (which linger for a bit until the inline parsing catches up with the entered text, a process that may take several seconds). This, coupled with the limited text-editing ability, make it very painful to use coming from a text editor.

In my personal opinion, the worst part of the iOS development experience is the fact that one is forced to use Xcode to get any clear preview what the app will look like, or to set up connections between a view and the viewcontroller code. One can of course lay out views programmatically, but that process is hilarious verbose and the slow build times make the workflow infinitely more painful than say, HTML+CSS (where one can get sub-second feedback on code changes). This makes any sort of visual/UX work on iOS incredibly painful.

P.S. If anyone has any tips on how to mitigate either of these pain points, I'd greatly appreciate it! I fully admit that I'm not an expert and may be overlooking some critical feature that would erase these pains.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely with your criticisms of Xcode, but I don't find those problems all that bothersome. I like to think of Xcode's syntax checking and highlighting as "eventually consistent".

The text navigation aspect does foul me up at times. There's an Xcode plugin for vi-style navigation, which I've used and removed several times. It's OK but incomplete, of course.

Xcode as a package includes IB and the debugger and profiler, etc. I'm not convinced they need to be so conjoined, but switching to vi for code editing while still using Xcode for the rest doesn't seem like it would be an improvement over the current workflow.

Xcode does a much harder job than an editor plus a web browser. I do miss the round trip efficiency sometimes.

<comment><USER4> > I like to think of Xcode's syntax checking and highlighting as "eventually > consistent".

This made me laugh, but I suppose I've been spoiled by the responsiveness of text editors. Honestly I wish there were a way to turn off the error checking without losing autocomplete as well.

> switching to vi for code editing while still using Xcode for the rest > doesn't seem like it would be an improvement

Agreed - I tried both Sublime and vi alongside Xcode, it's just as (if not more) cumbersome than Xcode alone. I wouldn't even really mind the sluggishness of Xcode if it offered the same text editing capabilities (multi- cursor support, etc) as Sublime. At least then the problem can be reduced to buying a beefier machine.

<comment><USER2> QuickLetter from Working Software ran just fine on an 8 MHz Mac Plus with 4 MB of memory. I expect it would have been able to run, perhaps not acceptably but it would have run, with just 2 MB of memory.

It had a full-featured styled text engine - fonts, tabs, margins and so on. It was built on the same CoreEdit styled text engine that MacWrite was. The very first MacWrite, I'm pretty sure ran on the 1984 Superbowl Mac - that model was later given the name "Mac 128k".

The Mac 128k had a 64kB ROM and single-sided 400kB floppy disk; there was a port for an external 400kB single-sided floppy however most folks didn't have one as the drives were quite costly.

Fast forward to today, and I have a 64-bit Core Quad i7 CPU, a 500 GB SSD drive, 8 GB of DDR3 memory, and all the advances that academic computer science has made in the way of algorithms but even so...

it is quite uncommon that I don't regard a GUI program - open source or proprietary - as unacceptably unresponsive to my mouse or keyboard.

Consider Moore's Law. I don't think he actually said that hardware doubled in speed every 18 months, rather that the transistor count per chip doubled. But loosely speaking that produces the effect of hardware getting twice as fast.

It is incredibly difficult to double the transistor count on an already complex chip.

How hard could it possibly be - to make your executable code run half as fast? :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out of interest, do those who don't use IDE's use a step through debugger? This is my main reason for using one, plus I quite like being able to set things up and just press a button, rather than type a command every time I want to re-run my application.

<comment><USER4> Coming from a Node.js background, I use a text editor, and debug with Chrome using node-inspector. In other languages (Ruby, Elixir, Clojure), I just debug with print (and make heavy use of the REPL). As for buttons vs commands, I suspect that's largely a preference thing (believe me, I thought hard about refuting the buttons because I personally dislike them, but eh, different strokes). I have shell aliases for most of my common commands, and if something needs to run continuously or on save, it's pretty easy to write a script or Gulpfile that'll do that for me. For anything else, it's uncommon enough that it'd be a menu item (hopefully!) anyways, not a button, so I'm unlikely to see any effort savings from using an IDE vs the terminal.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I have a few shell aliases for commands with a load of parameters I use. I suppose setting up Eclipse versus writing a few aliases is probably about equivalent.

Debugging with print can only get you so far. I use Django which is a big framework, so I couldn't understand the code without a proper step through debugger. I would say its been essential to get to the understanding I have now of forms and class based views.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Beyond the preference aspect there's definitely a notion of using the right tool for the job - and in an unfamiliar codebase (e.g. one that relies on a heavy framework like Django filled with thousands of lines of code I've never seen), as I mentioned before an IDE can be of significant benefit. That said, once one has grokked the framework to a fair degree, I would imagine that continuing benefit (in that respect) would be quite limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tell me automated refactoring and code exploration via ReSharper or Roslyn or IntelliJ IDEA doesn't speed up development AND maintenance :).

</comment><comment><USER7> fresh perspective. for your next article you should write about emacs vs vim, that territory is also very unexplored. /s

<comment><USER2> The reason that I myself prefer vim, is that Emacs Makes A Computer Slow.

;-D</comment></comment>


Microsoft takes aim at Google, Box, Dropbox with OneDrive switch offer - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-takes-aim-at-google-box-dropbox-with-onedrive-switch-offer/ <comment><USER2> NB, this is regarding OneDrive for Business only.</comment>


Apple fined $1.2B in France for running a cartel - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-16-apple-record-breaking-1-2bn-antitrust-fine-france.html <comment><AUTHOR> Apple fined again - but it's going to appeal because they thought the law allowed such dodgy practices.

Who'd have guessed that fixing prices with other companies to abuse your market dominance wasn't a proper way to run your company?</comment>


Test-driving the NBN: Slow, anti-competitive and stifling innovation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.datalicious.com/test-driving-the-nbn-slow-anti-competitive-and-stifling-innovation/

<comment><USER2> The author of this article is uninformed to say the least.

The speeds quoted are consistent with a low-end 25/5Mbps plan. Using this single datapoint as a measure of the worth of the network is ridiculous. 100/40Mbps plans are available right now, and 250/500/1000Mbps plans will be available soon - the hardware is already capable of these speeds, we're just waiting for RSPs to finalise their product offerings.

There is nothing wrong with government-owned 'natural monopoly' infrastructure, wholesaling to competitive retail providers. This makes a lot more sense than infrastructure level competition - we've already seen this fail in Australia with cable networks (Telstra vs Optus).

As it stands, we are now cancelling a nationwide FTTP network in favour of a $41B FTTN rollout - technology that is already >10 years old and nearing the end of its useful life.

Thanks Liberals.</comment>