Civilization 6 is coming in October, with big changes - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/features/2016/5/11/11653620/civilization-6-release-date-preview <comment><USER2> I've bought every Civilization game except the very first one. They're good games, but the one I really love is Alpha Centauri. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing--- I got SMAC when I was in middle school. But the faction design was phenomenal, and it was great how you actually had to play the factions differently, and knowing the other factions meant you handled them differently. I started playing University of Planet and just out-teching everyone, but learning how to play the other factions was very interesting and provided a ton of replay.

To me, Paradox's Stellaris is more of a spiritual successor to SMAC than Beyond Earth is. You have empires that have radically different traits, values, and governments. You actually have to play to your strengths and think about your policies. (Disclaimer: I am extremely sleep deprived from playing Stellaris the last two nights.)

The Civs and Beyond Earth all play the same. The faction differences are superficial. It's bleh.

//edit forgive me HN, I commented before I read. The article does address my concern:

> _" We found that there was a bit of a sameness to leaders as opponents," he > says. "They didn't really act as different personalities in terms of > diplomacy. In Civ 6, every single leader in the game has a historical > agenda. We look at something they did very well in history and we dial that > up in the game world to make them a bit fanatical about it in Civilization > 6._

But I have very little faith that they've solved it. Having a leader that is more fanatical about something isn't the same thing as having to make hard deicisions about Values & Government trade-offs!

For reference: The Alpha Centauri Social Engineering panel: [http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/201...](http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2013/03/29/nerdiness- from-noah-alpha- centauri/jcr:content/body/inlineimage_1.img.800.png/45485743.cached.png) And wiki for details: [http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri/Soci...](http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri/Social_Engineering)

<comment><USER3> SMAC also had 10/10 flavor text and setting overall. It's a game that has a lot of character.

<comment><USER4> Any of you fellow SMAC fans play Beyond Earth? Is it a spiritual successor?

<comment><USER5> Sadly, no. BE is a dressed up Civ5.

<comment><USER6> Beyond Earth _is_ kind of sad...

Civ 5 wasn't bad, but I'd rather take on Auriga in Endless Legend if I'm playing a hexagonal 4X - plus it reminds me pleasantly of Master of Magic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see a game that accurately reflects modern geopolitics. It would generate a world and run a history up to a certain point, at which you'd take control as head of state of a particular nation and conduct national affairs.

Ideally, the game would be able to make conducting the affairs of a large global hegemon like the United States as interesting as playing a small kingdom beset on all sides. Sort of like Crusader Kings but set in the modern world.

The real interesting part of the game in my view is that conquest is no longer an option, and tactics would get abstracted out of armed conflict in an "amateurs think tactics, generals think logistics" kind of way.

<comment><USER8> > The real interesting part of the game in my view is that conquest is no > longer an option

Isn't it though? Russia seemed to do OK with the conquest of Crimea. Anyway the suggestion of Europa Universalis is probably the closest you will get right now. If Paradox made a post-cold war sim I'd play the hell out of it, but I think it would be hard to do right and be interesting precisely because without real conquest and wars, there isn't much that is interesting for a game on the global level.

<comment><USER9>
        > Russia seemed to do OK with the conquest of Crimea

While I'm no Putin apologist, Russian "conquest" of Crimea is a bit like hypothetical Éire conquest of Northern Ireland. You're certainly going to upset a lot of people, but it's also hardly black and white.

<comment><USER10> > it's also hardly black and white

No, I think it's clear. The Russians invaded another country, conquered Ukranian land and kidnapped Ukrainian people.

EDIT: Fixed the ambiguous pronouns

<comment><USER9>
        > Their military invaded

"Their" being Russian here...

        > conquered their land and kidnapped their people

By 'their', you mean the people of Crimea, of which over 50% identify as Russians?

<comment><USER11> Under that logic, the 87% Hispanic population of Texas's 15th and 34th congressional districts ought to welcome the Mexican army.

<comment><USER10> Don't forget cities like New York, with China Town, Crown Heights, etc. etc. etc. It's going to be a challenge to manage all those national borders in such a small area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When Civ 1 came out I played it religiously. To the point I could wake up at noon, start playing then look outside and find it was dark.

I didn't really play Civ 2 or 3. I just found them to be classic examples of sequels: adding tedium more than anything else.

Civ 4 I also played a lot, possibly as much as Civ 1. Civ 4 was, for me, a rare sequel that didn't just add feature bloat. It added a lot of depth while streamlining some other aspects.

But I didn't play the base game as much as I played a particular mod: Fall From Heaven 2. Fall From Heaven was, I believe, a mod that came with the game that was fantasy themed. Ffh2 was that taken to another level with years of development effort.

There was much more difference between civilizations. Unit promotions were about twice as strong (eg each strength was 20% not 10%). Heroes and magic were pretty interesting. I spent countless hours playing this mod.

I tried to like Civ5. Really I did. But it just never grabbed me. Some people got excited about hexes. Not me. Once you add in all the expansions (that fix a lot of issues with the original Civ 5) it's not bad but just not inspiring.

I'm not sure I have terribly high hopes for Civ 6. I mean, it might be a perfectly fine game but the smart money is on it not hooking me like Civ 1 or Civ 4 did.

Really I just want a Ffh2 successor.

<comment><USER13> The right way to buy Firaxis games is to buy the "Complete Edition" or whatever. Civilization N with all expansions are almost always better than the base Civilization N+1 game.

<comment> some-guy I agree, I bought Civ 5 about a year ago on sale with all expansions and DLC for a small penny. Vanilla Civ 5 feels like an incomplete game with zero replay value. I'll most likely pick up Civ 6 in five years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Stonehenge can only be built near stone.

Found this a bit amusing given that the most likely quarry site for Stonehenge's material is a couple hundred miles away from Salisbury Plain, in Wales. (Not a nitpick at all, the restriction is a good idea, just thought it was quite funny given reality.)

<comment><USER15> Each tile in this game represents a large area of land.

<comment><USER16> some might say, "huge tracks of land."

<comment><USER17> tracts

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm a bit surprised at the graphics they have shown so far. I originally saw a screenshot and assumed it was a mobile game rather than a full-fledged AAA title for the PC.

<comment><USER19> Let's hope some mods will make the look more palatable.

Here is a fan made mockup of how Civilization VI could look with a different art direction:

[http://i.imgur.com/ZawuP8E.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ZawuP8E.jpg)

Here is the original look for comparison:

[http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/289070/ss_a79c8...](http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/289070/ss_a79c8fabd12e0f1711ac61486c859656d4cd894e.jpg)

<comment><USER20> I think the original looks so much better. I guess I'm tired of the trend in games where they remove most of the color and add some filters to them.

<comment><USER19> Well, the fan-made mockup has such look because that's the only thing you can do with the screenshot.

Real mod could do much more, e.g. changing textures or models geometries.

It's the whole new cartoony art direction that's weird and off-putting, unfortunately evoking the feel of cheap mobile games.

Here is a real world photo example of what look modern AAA "Civ-like" game could strive for:

[http://i.imgur.com/p4XZDeR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/p4XZDeR.jpg)

It's possible to be lush and colorful, yet realistic and more mature looking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this may be inspired by Endless Legend and how it does improvements in "districts".

Endless legend is pretty cool, but doesn't run on Linux, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm hoping they've made some changes towards making vertical expansion (focusing resources on developing a small number of large, advanced cities) a bit more of a viable alternative to horizontal expansion (focusing resources on founding as many cities as quickly as possible).

In Civ5, with the former approach, city population growth eventually becomes unsustainable (as with fewer cities, you have access to fewer resources and buildings to provide happiness to offset the growth of unhappiness from population), and city productivity will also eventually plateau (as all tiles are worked on and specialist slots filled). In practice, you tend to fall so far behind your rivals in terms of technology, economy, and military that even a cultural victory becomes out of reach on higher difficulties.

<comment><USER22> IIRC, Vertical expansion has been improved and made more competitive in every Civ release starting with at least Civ III.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I remember spamming cities seemed to be the only way to get ahead in Civ 1 (and democracy to elimite waste/corruption... ha!). Now I play most Civ 5 games with somewhere around 3-4 cities if I'm not going for a conquest victory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone remember Empire Earth? I'd love for that game to be remade. I truly enjoy playing Civ but the RTS side of empire earth created a dynamic mix of technology advancement and geopolitics combined with a starcraft like micro-management opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER25> To me, III was the sweet spot.

IV added some interesting ideas, and could have worked really well, but the interface and design was an ugly mess.

V sorted the interface and design, but seemed a very shallow shadow of the former game. It also seemed to want a ludicrous amount of resources - a simple isometric view that always seemed to need as much PC power as Far Cry. Games bogged down to plain slow from mid game on - too much turn waiting, not enough playing. I gave up on V quicker than any previous Civ and spent most of my Civ time since in Europa Universalis.

If I buy VI at all it'll be after it's been out long enough to have plenty of _real_ reviews and opinions on how well they did. Some of the ideas sound interesting, but the real test is how the balance ends up.

Don't like the cutesy graphics style though, so would hope for a mod or post- processing fix.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you liked any CIV game do yourself a favor and get the mod Fall From Heaven, civ 4.

I really enjoyed the civ games and played all of them and this mod blows them all away by far and im not much of a mod fan. Seriously go look it up now :)

<comment><USER27> I strongly agree. I rarely play mods, but Fall from Heaven 2 is awesome and totally reinvented the game in a very new and creative way. I might've played more FfH than Civ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if there are any plans to improve game engine performance on OSX. It never seems like a high priority. I understand Windows is 80%[1] of the market but still.

[1] Number pulled out of my butt - I've no idea the exact figure.

<comment><USER29> It's not only OSX/Linux, the Windows version is a bit embarrassing with its performance and graphics glitches too. I really hope they're using a different game engine for this one. Civ5 late games with massive maps are very tedious to play even with a beefy gaming desktop.

<comment><USER30> I think the AI turns are quite CPU bound with the current engine, so I agree. Late game end turns take forever to complete.

<comment><USER31> Last time I profiled it, most of the execution was in vsprintf. I'm pretty sure the answer is just "nobody put time for that in the budget", as with multiplayer support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And I'm still sitting here and waiting for Age of Empires 4 :/

<comment><USER33> You and me, friend. Whatever happened to the MS division that published those games?

<comment><USER34> I wonder if those games didn't make money, or just didn't make enough money. I'm thinking AoEs and Flight Sim.

<comment><USER32> RTS genre in general is on decline. Last good RTS was Starcraft 2. It is all caused by the shift to MOBA games...

Also there is huge challenge to create playable RTS game with current popular monetization strategies - in game purchases

<comment><USER33> AoE would be awful with in-game purchases. I'd rather play an old version on a VM than go through that experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've been playing a lot of CIV 1 lately. Because I happen to have it installed on my travel-laptop in DOSBox. I'm sure I've clocked over 100 hours of CIV1 in the past year.

It would be fun to upgrade to a new CIV and see how it compares. Maybe I'll do that in October. But I might need some laptop-upgrades :)

</comment><comment><USER36> I have more fun playing Civ 4 than Civ 5. I have not played Beyond Earth much but it doesn't feel like a true spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, a much immersive game.

I think there has been a strong pressure to make Civ more appealing to casual audiences and this has somehow degraded the game to a more bland experience.

</comment><comment><USER37> I loved Civ I, trekked through the sequels, and fell in love again with Civ V (the orgy of stats in IV was starting to kill the franchise, IMHO). I think they are on the right track - the point of Civ is to find a balance between statecraft drudgery and military action, and V moved the needle back towards that ideal centre IMHO.

This new direction sounds slightly too RTS-y, but as long as they don't try to pull a Simcity 5 ("social" games, just say no, kids!), I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt.

</comment><comment><USER38> I really like the visual style changes, especially how resources show up on tiles. Very nice!

Now, just to let my friends and family know that I'll be a little harder to get hold of this autumn...

</comment><comment><USER39> Ugh. I wish they'd delay this for a year or two -- I'm afraid I'm going to lose a couple weeks of my life to this game when it comes out, unless I ration it very strictly. Civ II through V were amazing, especially with the expansions, so a version of this made by the people who make the expansions is going to be novel and addictive.

"Just one more turn..." is the ultimate design pattern for a game.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interesting. The new city system feels almost like a return to Accolade's 1996 game, "Deadlock": [https://images-4.gog.com/b621a9344cd3732776dfe5bd8039acde7eb...](https://images-4.gog.com/b621a9344cd3732776dfe5bd8039acde7eba4f5d6a80525a663d1ac69ab39d9b.jpg)

Most improvements were sensitive to the type of tiles they built upon.

</comment><comment><USER41> Nice but if it is only available with Steam's DRM then it will pass me by like Beyond Earth and Starships. Civ5 fooled me, I won't get fooled again.

</comment><comment><USER42> Hopefully they can add some AI that is not totally lame.

<comment><USER43> Agreed. I was kind of disappointed in the "AI" in Civ V. The first time I played and an country denounced me I obliterated them off the map and thought to myself, no one else will be foolish enough to denounce me now. Wrong, if you take over nation completely then everyone starts to denounce you, that is the way the "AI" is programed to think.

<comment><USER44> I dunno, makes sense to me. Annexing one nation will make all the others fear and hate you even more, of course they'll denounce you. A big part of the game is figuring out how to walk the line between expansion and alienating the other civs.

<comment><USER43> They can fear and hate me, as long as they are too scared to do anything about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It would be interesting if they logged the total hours everyone spends on it.

</comment><comment><USER46> Am I the only one who wants to play this in VR with a Vive?

</comment><comment><USER47> I remember this kind of city building in Alpha Centauri.

</comment><comment><USER48> i really like the idea of having tech advances depend on in-game actions. likewise the idea that city improvements would be more linked to geography.

</comment><comment><USER49> I love the Civilization series, but I'll be honest: it really bothers me that certain companies have one or two franchises and they keep churning out new iterations of them every year or every other year. It just feels like a money grab after a while (especially with franchises like Call of Duty or Madden, which, from my perspective, don't improve appreciably in between iterations).

I'd like to see them taking some risks and innovating new franchises, and perhaps even new genres.

<comment><USER22> > I love the Civilization series, but I'll be honest: it really bothers me > that certain companies have one or two franchises and they keep churning out > new iterations of them every year or every other year.

The main Civ series has had a new base-game release every 4-6 years, not every year or every other year.

Civ I: 1990 Civ II: 1996 (6 years) Civ III: 2001 (5 years) Civ IV: 2005 (4 years) Civ V: 2010 (5 years) Civ VI: 2016 (6 years)

<comment><USER50> Not to forget:

Civilization: Call to Power (1999)

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (continuing where Civilization II ended) (1999)

Call to Power II (2000)

Civilization: Beyond Earth (2014): Spiritual sequel to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

There are of course other PC games that are related to the Civilization series but those are IMHO further away from the "main Civilization series".

<comment><USER22> SMAC and the Call to Power series were made by different companies than the main Civ series, even though, through the process of the various sales and mergers since, all the rights related to them are, I think, in the same place _now_.

<comment><USER51> SMAC was the same people, though you're correct about CtP.

<comment><USER22> > SMAC was the same people,

SMAC was made by the same _people_ (at least, some of the key people) that made Civ I-II, at a different company (Firaxis) from the one then producing and controlling the IP for the main Civ series (MicroProse) who had, IIRC, laid them off.

Several acquisitions and spinoffs of everyone involved, and all the rights are now with Take-Two, of which Firaxis is now a studio under the 2K games umbrella.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BlackBerry posts fourth-quarter profit; seeks to end revenue slide - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/27/us-blackberry-results-idUSKBN0MN18G20150327 <comment><USER2> I just watched a recent interview with the CEO. The interviewer asked why doesn't BlackBerry get out of hardware. Chen responded that the reason is two fold: 1. Their hardware is profitable and represents a significant chunk of their revenue. If they weren't making money with it, he'd get out. 2. Their devices allow them provide the end to end security solutions that their government and enterprise customers need.

They seem like they're on the right track and will continue to post profitable, cashflow positive quarterly results. I'm interested to see how they monetize BBM. I'm interested to see how quickly they gain share in other niches ( healthcare/insurance specifically).

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this known as a "death spiral". Try to cut expenses faster than revenue is dropping, until there's nothing left. I don't see any good news here, and don't imagine that BB will exist as an independent company by next year. They do have some good technology and I'm sure it won't be hard to sell the assets.

</comment><comment><USER4> They sold 1.6M smartphones. That means that most probably they will probably cease to be a hardware company in 2016.

<comment><USER5> Who's using them? What market? I have not seen a Blackberry in years. I saw a picture of a guy with that new square-ish one and that's about it.

<comment><USER6> I switched from an iPhone to a Passport last fall, and have been very happy with it overall. I am a consumer, so this is just for personal use. My reasons for switching were:

1\. Real keyboard. I carried the iPhone for 3 years and never liked the soft keyboard. Most of my usage is text entry (messaging and email), so being able to do this quickly and accurately matters. I much prefer text entry on the Passport, both because I find it easier and more accurate, and I don't give up half the screen to the soft keyboard.

2\. Dev / unix tools. It might be a bit surprising, but the BB10 dev kit is actually pretty good: Several API options; no barriers to getting started (download and go); and you can access / expose / augment the unix userland underneath. With a command line app, it feels like a real computer. The keyboard makes this experience better.

Since switching, I have also been pleasantly surprised by the size and quality of the screen - 1440x1440 is kind of awesome (more pixels than my laptop). Blend has also been unexpectedly good.

Anyway, that's me and my reasons. I'm just a unix nerd in the consumer market. I'm not into flashing ROMs or jailbreaking or anything like that, and I find the BlackBerry keyboard lineup pretty compelling. YMMV.

<comment><USER7> I would buy a Passport if there was strong privacy/security/policy isolation between Android apps and data on the phone. Something like what Cyanogen does, by faking blank data (e.g. contacts) in response to apps which insist on having permission to access contacts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Blackberry seem to have the finances to sponsor Mercedes F1, that cannot be cheap, however it probably points to their future with QNX in the automotive world.

<comment><USER9> also noteworthy, is that this wasn't just a 'marketing deal' per se but an "enterprise partnership"

The Mercedes F1 team runs its business on BB hardware and software.

"The Mercedes F1 Team uses more than 200 BlackBerrys including Blackberry Z10s, Q10s, Z30s and Passports. It's these along with BlackBerry Enterprise Sever 10 (BES10) which seem integral to the day-to-day running of the business."

<comment><USER10> They need to get iphones.

<comment><USER11> An iPhone doesn't replace a Blackberry if you really need a Blackberry. You also can't run a car (minus the entertainment system) off of iOS like you can QNX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there any manufacturer left besides BB that builds qwerty-phones?

<comment><USER13> "smartphone qwerty keyboard 2015" gives me [http://www.phonerated.com/android_phones_with_keyboard- listb...](http://www.phonerated.com/android_phones_with_keyboard-listbycat) "2015+ Android Smartphones With A Slide-out QWERTY Keyboard", which includes the LG Optimus F3Q, so the answer to that question is _yes_.

<comment><USER14> The F3Q is incredibly mediocre, but it's the best we'll get for quite some time.

The dearth of decent android QWERTY phones is enough to make me consider switching to BB. I don't need my phone to do that much, but typing well is the difference between a toy that plays games and runs Facebook, and a useful tool that I can type emails on, ssh from, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious to see how they do this. It doesn't appear that any of Blackberry's recent models have been a hit with consumers or enterprise.

John Chen does seem like the most level-headed exec in Blackberry's revolving door succession of CEOs, but with that said, I'm not sure what Blackberry can do to make itself an attractive alternative to iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. It seems that Blackberry has essentially given up all of their market share, and what they need to do now is to essentially build their platform from scratch.

<comment><USER16> I really think they have found a really good, niche market, but they don't recognize it. They seem, BBRY, to have it backwards. They seem to be chasing enterprise, but enterprise, doesn't understand the value proposition of the product. BBRY is not a handset only anymore, it's a software service which allows you to manage your mobile devices with a single unified view on all operating systems. Explain that to enterprise is near impossible.

What BBRY needs to do is focus on the consultants/contractors, get them to run their own/hosted BES service, with work/personal separation. Let me have as many numbers, with different work spaces and personal spaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "seeks to end revenue slide"

Aren't we all.</comment>


Aztec Political Thought (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/aztec-political-thought.html <comment><USER2> This mind-blowing article is a book review of Inga Clendinnen's "Aztecs: An Interpretation". The Aztecs really are hard to love, but even understanding the simplest things about their culture requires some comprehension of their deepest foundations, because in many ways those foundations are very different from our own.

Thinking about culture as a largely collective and continuous act of creation, one wonders how and why any culture develops the way it does; what truths it holds dear; what virtues it praises; what vices it damns; what metaphysical stage all of these play upon.

From a circumstantial perspective, without defending the morality of either the Aztecs or the Spanish, there was just this _vast_ cultural divide between them.

While what happened when they met was inevitable, there is still a ton of stuff you can learn watching a car crash in super-slow motion from all angles. As a "clash of cultures", this one was pretty intense. This article provided good insight on some of the contours of that impact, not from a military/physical perspective (that's been done and is easier), but from a psychological/cultural perspective. I'm getting the book.

<comment><USER3> On that subject (following a recommandation on HN) I started reading the Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo [0]. It is an account from a conquistator that was a member of the expedition that discovered the Aztec written in a surprisingly modern style and full of nuggets.

[0]: [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32474](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32474)

<comment><USER4> Oh wow, that bought back memories. My aunt got that book when I was quite young (about 7 or 8), and she started reading me from it. At the time I was going through a phase when I was fascinated by Aztecs and the Conquistadors and I absolutely loved that book - I remember hearing the unpronounceable names of the gods (and trying to memorise them to impress my peers at school), the gory sacrifices, the battles and the mundane bits of everyday life. It's one of the books that I blame for starting a lifelong fascination with history. Many, many years later I found the book again in a charity bookshop; I bought it, read it from cover to cover and enjoyed it just as much; this time around however I was older and had a better understanding of the events described.

Thank you for the wonderful trip down memory lane.

<comment><USER3> Reading it I actually thought that it would be a perfect bedtime story for a child old enough. Thank you for your story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did not realize the Aztecs (or Mexica) had a written Pre-Columbian history until I read an excellent summary contained in this book: A Rain of Darts by Burr Cartwright Brundage.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=HptBCwAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=HptBCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER6> be sure to check out the wiki for the codex that illustration is from:

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

there's a really excellent podcast series i listened to a few months ago about the conquest of mexico a few months ago, beginning here:

[http://historyonfirepodcast.com/episodes/2017/5/25/episode-2...](http://historyonfirepodcast.com/episodes/2017/5/25/episode-20-the- conquest-of-mexico-part-1-people-of-the-sun)

it's genuinely one of the most incredible stories in human history. if you, like me, only possess a cursory awareness of the events, i can't recommend listening through the whole thing enough.

and a supplementary podcast series about human sacrifice particularly by the aztecs (though quite meandering, in an enjoyable way):

[http://www.martyrmade.com/8-how-to-serve-man-sacrifice- canni...](http://www.martyrmade.com/8-how-to-serve-man-sacrifice-cannibalism- pt-1/)

<comment><USER7> Even more absurd to me than Cortes' conquest of Mexico was Pizarro's conquest of the Incas, an empire which was larger than both the Mayans or Aztec.

IIRC Cortes had ~1500 conquistadors on his side and Pizarro had ~500

<comment><USER8> Both conquistadors were helped by native fighters, so these numbers only show the Spanish warriors not their massive allied army.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a relatively new, philosophical take on this topic that may be of interest -- "Aztech Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion by James Maffie."

<comment><USER6> can you give a brief account of what it argues?

<comment><USER10> From the blurb on the Amazon page [https://www.amazon.com/Aztec-Philosophy- Understanding-World-...](https://www.amazon.com/Aztec-Philosophy- Understanding-World-Motion/dp/160732461X/)

> _In_ Aztec Philosophy _, James Maffie shows the Aztecs advanced a highly > sophisticated and internally coherent systematic philosophy worthy of > consideration alongside other philosophies from around the world._ [...]

>

> Aztec Philosophy _focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs' > understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of > reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics, and > aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well > as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec > metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of > weaving—theirs was a world in motion._ [...] _Maffie argues that Aztec > metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical > view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a fascinating exposition. I definitely want to read the book!

As alien as "lord, our executioner, and our enemy" is it has echos today, in particular in the Locke-infused North America.

If you are fascinated by these kinds of models I encourage you to read about the Bronze Age Greek societies which were also profoundly weird and utterly unlike their depiction in contemporary culture (more ISIS than EU).

<comment><USER12> What books do you recommend on bronze age in general and greek bronze age in particular? There doesn't seem to be much material available. I have a book on Linear B queued up for later reading.

<comment><USER11> Well you should read the Odyssey (the Lattimore translation is quite good and accessible to the modern reader; don't know if it's still in print) and if you have the patience, the Illiad. The motivations of Hector, Odyssius et al are pretty obscure when viewed through a contemporary western perspective, but make more sense when viewed through the prism of their "cousins" in medieval Indian hinduism (or that some of my relatives in the Indian countryside back in the 1980s :-( ).

Some things that will seem clear and obvious through a modern lens are in fact utterly obscure, even, or perhaps especially, in translation. For example the famous Homeric line, "the wine-dark sea"...well it doesn't mean anything like you could imagine, for their whole model of colour utterly different from ours. Ironically this code was cracked by, of all people, Gladstone: here's a good essay on this though his monograph is quite readable: [https://www.spectator.co.uk/2010/06/fathoming-the- winedark-s...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2010/06/fathoming-the-winedark- sea/) \-- notice this essay also references Vedic literature so my comment about Hinduism is not random. This kind of thing was quite puzzling to me as a high schooler trying to struggle through Homer and knowing that I would be immediately found out and screwed if I tried to use one of the translations to get a sense of the story...you get the plot in translation but can only dimly see the social order.

I also recommend Plutarch's Lives, although (or perhaps because) he attempted to bend the Greeks' actions to what we might consider a more modern frame, that of Rome. In particular though read Solon, Pericles (!!) and Alcibiades for clues into how they lived.

As for the Spartans in particular: basically any movie you've ever seen on the subject might as well be science fiction. The closest modern model I could come up with would be some Nazi fantasy crossed with Trotsky. The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse by Paul Cartledge's "The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse" is probably the best for the lay reader and will probably blow your mind.

Ancient Greek is worth learning IMHO and has opened up much more intellectual opportunity to me than the parallel years of Latin ever did. Both are Indo- European (aka "Indo-German" in German!) languages so pretty easy to learn.

HTH

<comment><USER13> > _' "the wine-dark sea"...well it doesn't mean anything like you could > imagine, for their whole model of colour utterly different from ours.'_

Doesn't seem like everyone agrees with this speculation:

> _" I'm even less impressed by Gordon's argument: it relies on oinops meaning > 'wine-dark'. The trouble is, that's not a firm foundation. Strictly > literally, the phrase straightforwardly means 'wine-faced sea', from οἶνος > 'wine' \+ ὄψ 'face'."_ [http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/01/colours- > in-homer-2...](http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/01/colours-in- > homer-2-wine-dark-sea.html)

<comment><USER11> Indeed, these things are complex and incomplete. However I mentioned it as a non-obvious example of how we can be lured into inaccurate interpretations due to our contemporary assumptions.

(by the way I say "inaccurate" but not "wrong" as the point of contemporary reading of classic texts (or any text) is to find insights into your own states, unless you're a historian or historiographer).

<comment><USER13> It seems more likely to be a translation issue to me. This is the first I've heard of it but I'd guess "wine-faced" refers to the shimmering surface rather than the color.

Going with "dark" though, Mare Tenebrosum ("Sea of Darkness") was an ancient name for the Atlantic ocean: [http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/mare- tenebrosum/](http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/mare-tenebrosum/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not difficult to see why the Catholic priests believed Atzecs were devil worshippers: Tezcatlipoca sounds literally like the Christian devil.

<comment><USER15> What must the Aztecs thought of the Spaniards whose holiest emblem is a man being publicly tortured to death.

If the history passes through the conquers, it might be shaded. The actual codices would be the most reliable.

<comment><USER16> > What must the Aztecs thought of the Spaniards whose holiest emblem is a man > being publicly tortured to death.

The meaning and symbolism would have been blindingly obvious to them. In general, Christian and pagan theology is basically the same. Christianity is a direct development of pagan thought.

The modern thought framework for 99.9% of modern people is Gnostic, not Christian. Both Christianity and paganism is thus completely impenetrable and incomprehensible for pretty much every person alive today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My first introduction to pre Columbian life and thought was 1491 by Charles Mann. Definitely worth a read for a survey of the landscape: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus)

</comment><comment><USER18> The Aztecs were a fascinating people. If you are looking for a short, but good book on the topic, I can recommend _The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction_ ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12164067-the- aztecs](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12164067-the-aztecs))

</comment><comment><USER17> The author mentions idly wondering at the genesis of the Aztec activities--I think that would be fascinating historical fiction.

</comment><comment><USER19> This reada more like a cult than a polity, to me anyway...

<comment><USER20> A cult is a kind of polity at it's heart, and it's horrifyingly fascinating how they built an empire on top of these kinds of cultish practices.

<comment><USER21> Polities are the cults, it's the other way around</comment></comment></comment>


Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/pc-to-mac-sales-ratio/

<comment><USER2> PCs are now fucked in the moneyed mass market. The 'PC' brand is sunk - PC is to computer what Blackberry is to phone - you'll get one from your company, but you covet an iPhone/Macbook. This is thanks to:

a) The sub-par cheap plastic laptops/netbooks that have been thrown out for the last three years at $300. They were barely usable at first, and now the keys have fallen off the keyboard and the speakers don't work. And that advert to renew some antivirus keeps popping up. And the computer whizzkid who used to fix it says he doesn't know much about PCs now - he's moved to an Apple Mac.

b) Windows and IE. People are noticing that Facebook runs like crap in IE. And that their harddrive still needs formatting every year or the computer runs like a bag of shit. What's that Microsoft? Windows 8 has all this fixed. It doesn't matter - there are still millions of computers out there running Vista and Win 7, taking 60 seconds to boot up (standby mode never works - fuck knows why). Everytime I sit in front of one and right click-Exit all that shit down at the bottom right I curse you.

c) The death of desktop software.

-

This is one of the two reasons I'm bullish on Apple (the other is that I want to see them move into the living room.)

Now PCs and Linux - that's more like it but there's no profit in it.

<comment><USER3> I think on the Windows side of things there's been a huge drop in the quality of PC games which is often overlooked, contributing to an overall degradation of the market. I used to only build rigs and run windows for games and dual boot into real work mode (ubuntu), but with such low quality content on PC nowdays its hard to even justify installing windows let alone building a PC. *disclaimer: I'm neither old or jaded, its a trend I've noticed amongst my peers also.

<comment><USER4> "low quality content on PC" is completely wrong. Some of the best programs around are desktop software. Samplitude, Sublime 2, Studio One 2 are a brief few. What happens in your circle of friends does not represent anything and is one of the reasons why I think Facebook is so unhealthy for the younger generation. BTW if you do real pro audio/video work you are not going to be using Linux simply because most "Pro" audio/video does not come in a Linux version.

<comment><USER5> Nuke, Smoke, Houdini, Maya, rv.

Wrong on second point regarding video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's kind of sad that Apple has virtually no competition for its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air in terms of build quality (last time I checked, I'd be happy to be proved wrong). Nowadays, I barely care about "hard" specs (CPU, memory, etc.) when shopping for a laptop, what I really care about is: low heating, low weight, thinness, long battery life and strong build quality. Although I'd rather use Linux than OS X, it's hard to find a laptop of comparable quality to the MacBooks for the requirements I mentioned (of course, it isn't to hard to find if what you are interested in is raw speed and performance).

<comment><USER7> Thinkpads are still quite nice.

<comment><USER8> Plus no one will ever steal it.

I've had two people say to my face "Wow, that's an old computer".

Which is silly since it is the world's coolest looking laptop.

<comment><USER9> Does this mean that Thinkpads are retro now? People always seem surprised that my thinkpad has a trackpoint-nub-thing and yet is less than a year old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Easy to understand why this is happening. When Vista launched you could walk into a store and buy it on a PC that could barely run it. Mostly due to lack of RAM and bloat ware. Sure it was cheap but not a good value. A $350 borderline unusable computer is no bargain. I think people are starting I catch onto this. Things are better now in the PC market bur if you got burnt in the last few years the take away lesson is cheap isn't always better. If you only plan to replace your computer every 3-4 years $1000-$1500 isn't a huge investment to make.

<comment><USER11> > A $350 borderline unusable computer is no bargain. I think people are > starting I catch onto this.

I agree 100%.

Many friends and family have cheap and crap laptops that continually crash, and last only a year or two before being replaced (for another cheap, crap laptop)

As time has gone on, you can see they are slowly realizing this is no bargain, and are starting to look at the expensive end, and towards Apple.

<comment><USER12> The problem is people buy cheap, crap laptops, notice they are cheap and crap, and hear that the Macs are not cheap but also not crap. They then run out and buy a quality Macbook for $2300, completely ignoring the fact that it's not that Apple makes a better product, it's that Apple makes a product that exists in a market these people have never even considered.

Quality Windows laptops exist. I sold my HP Envy for almost as much as I bought it for after a year of solid use. It cost me $1000 brand new, and there was almost nothing the Macbook could offer besides OSX that could do anything but match it.

Yes, Macbooks are better than $300 laptops. But you know what is also better than a $300 laptop? A $1000 laptop, and the extra $1300 in your pocket. Your Dodge Neon is a piece of junk, true, but before you shell out cash for BMW 5-series, why not take a look at the Ford Fusion?

<comment><USER11> > Your Dodge Neon is a piece of junk, true, but before you shell out cash for > BMW 5-series, why not take a look at the Ford Fusion?

Excellent point.

I'm not saying people that are sick of cheap/crap laptops need or must go and buy an Apple product. I'm saying they start to realize buying something more expensive works out better in the long run.

When looking at something more expensive, Apple's products come into the picture (but are not the whole picture, obviously)

While we're here, lets not exaggerate too much. Apple makes exactly one laptop for $2300, and it's probably the fastest/most feature packed laptop ever made, without a competitor right now. Lots of their laptops are $1200 - $1700, which certainly is more expensive than the competition, but again, we've already decided we're willing to spend a little more for higher quality at this point.

<comment><USER13> Fastest? Most feature packed? You can get notebooks with a HD 7970M and 16GB Ram for ~2300$.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could that graph possibly be more misleading? Plotting the ratio of a number to one much smaller exaggerates small changes so you miss the big picture: PC sales dwarf Mac sales.

A better graph: two lines, one showing PC sales each year and the other showing Mac sales. It would show that Mac sales are less, and it would also show how much the market has grown since 1984. Even better: the number of machines of each type currently in use.

<comment><USER15> It depends on what you want to visualize. This graph is great for visualizing the effect of Mac sales outgrowing the pc market for 24 consecutive quarters.

<comment><USER16> This graph could just as easily be explained as people with high incomes (Mac users generally do) are more insulated from economic downturn than the people buying $300 laptops. Reading it how you want doesn't make it true.

Even according to the graph, 15x means that one in 16 machines sold is a Mac. Math tells us that's 6.25% market share. That number hasn't appreciably changed in real terms in the last decade. Yes, moving from 4% to 6% is a 50% "growth", if you want to define growth that way. Normally, that's 2% growth.

However, the inability of Mac to grab any significant market share from the overall PC market should be a concern, considering the relative popularity of their other devices.

<comment><USER15> _This graph could just as easily be explained as people with high incomes (Mac users generally do) are more insulated from economic downturn than the people buying $300 laptops._

Not if you look at the labels on the horizontal axis and you know when the downturn actually began.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Better headline: Apple's share in the PC market increases.

Wikipedia says:

> The Macintosh ( /ˈmækɨntɒʃ/ mak-in-tosh),[1] or Mac, is a series of personal > computers (PCs) designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc.

And some random quote from a comment here:

> the computer whizzkid who used to fix it says he doesn't know much about PCs > now - he's moved to an Apple Mac.

You mean he doesn't know about windows since the Apple Mac is a PC too.

</comment><comment><USER17> Would love to see that graph against the trend from desktops to laptops. It definitely seems like people when buying their first Mac are doing so in a laptop form factor usually the Air.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love this comment: "The working class folks who buy PC's are getting whacked financally, while rich people who buy Macs are making off like bandits."

<comment><USER19> It's kind of astonishing that people still have such weird believes about Macs. You can't be successful to the level Apple is by only selling to rich people. Macs are successful as a mass market product.

<comment><USER11> > You can't be successful to the level Apple is by only selling to rich people

Porsche and Ferrari come to mind...

<comment><USER20> Porsche and Ferrari combined don't have the market share for vehicles that Apple has on computers, so the comment is valid. Apple's market share is too large to just be for "rich people."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone 5 Pre-order Sells Out 20X Faster Than 4 And 4S - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/14/iphone-5-pre-order-sells-out-20x-faster-than-4-and-4s-further-highlighting-apples-dominance/

<comment><USER2> This means little unless we know how much pre-order stock there was for the various models. Were there as many of the iphone 5 available as there were of the iphone 4 when it was announced? More? Twenty times fewer?</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think of using Vi rather than Vim or Neovim? - <AUTHOR> I have been using Vim and later Neovim for a couple of years, but I have noticed they have become slower and more feels a lot more bulky, especially Vim.
I have also developed some nasty habits with plugins that has caused me to forget some of the original commands.
So I am thinking about going pure Vi.
I think I can live without syntax highlighting, but have any of you gone pure Vi and not gone back? <comment><USER2> > feels a lot more bulky, especially Vim.

> I think I can live without syntax highlighting

This is the fussiest of fussy problems. I can't imagine how vim can feel bulky, and how bad it needs to be for you to be willing to trade away all other features. But it's your setup, do whatever you like. I wouldn't make a HN post anytime I think about switching my code editor or IDE.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try

        vim.tiny -u NONE

For a smaller vim with less features. 3.9mb on my system. I don't have the original vi to compare, but when we are getting this small, any further memory savings are just noise, unless your dev box is a strange device. I doubt original vi would be faster than tiny vim.

Also try mg. Only a tiny bit larger than ed, but supports modern screen display and Emacs key binds. 1.1mb on my system. Screaming fast.

Also try GNU Emacs. It takes a bit of fiddling, but you can off-load much of the start-up slowness into the build stage. Loading things into the lisp image of temacs (at the cost of flexibility, you must rebuild when stuff changes if you want to keep the speed). Then you have a fully featured IDE that boots up in 0.2 seconds. Not bad and quite a bit faster than some tricked out Vim IDE's. You can have syntax highlighting turned off too, for more speed at runtime. Large, but it's in charge and not slow.

</comment><comment><USER4> I tend to use a mix of IDEs and vi, I've never converted over to using vim as I don't always have it on every platform. I've read good things you can do with vim+tmux but I haven't really felt my gap between vi and IDEs really warranted picking it up.

The few times that I do find myself using vim, I have to override a number of things to make it sane (e.g. :syntax off) for me--color especially bad terminal palettes make my eyes try to focus text on different depth planes which is very hard to read.

</comment><comment> Avi-D-coder If I didn't rely on neovim plugins so much, I would use kakoune. Native modal multi cursors and noun verb as apposed to vi's verb noun order have to be experienced to be believed. [https://github.com/mawww/kakoune](https://github.com/mawww/kakoune)

</comment><comment><USER5> You may want to look at `busybox vi`, if worried about bulkiness.

Asceticism _is_ a virtue; as for me, alas, I'm not ready to let go of modern conveniences.</comment>


4 months on the Play Store with a niche productivity app - <AUTHOR> http://vbsteven.com/4-months-on-the-play-store-with-a-niche-productivity-app/

<comment><AUTHOR> Inspired by the recent iOS revenue number posts I decided to share my own revenue numbers. But this time for an app on the Play Store instead of Apple's App Store.</comment>


Librem 5 general development report – October - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-progress-report-21/ <comment><USER2> The decision to develop the first GNOME phone while also developing a hacker- friendly privacy-respecting physical device is going to be the death of this project.

I don't understand why they didn't just focus on the hardware, make it very hackable for the community to develop the GNOME (or any other) OS for it.

Isolate the baseband from the application processor and all the other privacy- respecting hardware decisions, land all the changes required for a mainline kernel to support everything upstream, and release it with AOSP running on it.

Then invest in the community to replace AOSP (and sell more of your hardware to said community as it grows).

<comment><USER3> I purchased both an OpenPandora ([https://pyra- handheld.com/boards/](https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/)) and a Novena ([https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page](https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page)).

The OpenPandora came out with a fairly good OS to start out with, and they have continually supported it, so it has still been useful even 7 years after it was released. If it wasn't for the fact that I can no longer find it, I have no doubt that I would still be using it. I am a supporter for the Dragonbox Pyra, and I am hoping it will have the same support.

I cannot say that I regret buying my Novena (as I learned a lot from it), but I rarely use it. I have to manually update the kernel and bootloader myself, and it is stuck on Linux 4.4, as the support and community just aren't there to help. I was able to figure out how to update it to the newest Debian, but there is no official support for it, so I imagine most folks are still on the previous version. As it stands, it marginally functions, but if I need to use a laptop again heavily, I will simply just buy a new laptop.

I relate these two stories because I think the Librem 5 will need to show that it has a polished software stack day one to gain traction and grow a community. The Open Pandora was successful in that, and that allowed the creator to make two iterations of the Open Pandora and create the Pyra.

The Novena did not have that nearly has much, and as a result, I am very doubtful that there will be a Novena + 1, and frankly after seeing the support it got, I am hesitant to purchase any other products made by Bunnie.

<comment><USER2> None of the devices you mentioned were polished physical products competitive with their contemporaries, while also costing significantly more.

What the community needs is a compelling physical piece of hardware with first-class upstream driver support for everything and relatively modern specs.

We can iterate on the userspace as a community. But there won't be a growing community if you don't sell us a compelling open piece of hardware to run it on. We can't easily iterate on the hardware as a community, this is the part puri.sm should focus on delivering.

Sell us a modern device that respects our privacy and ability to replace boot loaders and run mainline kernels. Give use first-class driver support for everything included from the GPU to the cellular modem and cameras and all the APIs necessary to speak with them.

It just seems like a total disconnect from the reality of mainline kernel support for smartphone hardware, to be off in la-la land working on a GNOME phone OS before delivery. Pavel Machek's talk from 10/22/2017 [1] comes to mind as representative of the state things are in, in mainline.

I'm far more confident in the GNOME/free software community's ability to write dialers, messengers, email and photo apps than its ability to quickly bring up low-level support for such hardware and develop the new kernel APIs where things like V4L2 fall short.

[1] [https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/10/21/181](https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/10/21/181)

<comment><USER3> "None of the devices you mentioned were polished physical products competitive with their contemporaries, while also costing significantly more."

I would actually argue the Open Pandora was a polished physical product. It worked incredibly well when it just came out.

"What the community needs is a compelling physical piece of hardware with first-class upstream driver support for everything and relatively modern specs."

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't the Librem 5 folks trying to do just that? They chose an imx8 because it has really good upstream support, and then they can add upstream support for the peripherals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really worry about the sustainability of this company? Is it a sustainable business model? How secure will your phone be if they can't afford to pay developers or go under? Who do I contact if there is a hardware issue? So many questions.

Also why do they have 'Buy now' links that take you to their kickstarter page, where you can 'pre-order' a phone that may or may not ship in Q3 2019? Seems a little shady. Also price jump of $800 for a compatible 24"monitor and a keyboard + mouse is insane...

Does anyone think this has any market appeal outside of its kickstarter audience?

<comment><USER5> The point of the Librem 5 is not to make the most popular possible phone, it's to make a _better_ phone than what is currently available.

Markets only matter to capitalists. Real hackers share with each other to make things happen that markets do not comprehend. Whether this project will be a success, only time will tell, but it has nothing to do with the market.

<comment><USER6> > _The point of the Librem 5 is not to make the most popular possible phone_

That's a strawman of GP's words. "The most popular" is absurd, but "minimally viable" is not particularly since security in a major Librem selling point and security is an active process, not a one-off. In turn sustainability matters, and for a hardware project that requires significantly more capital then a pure software project. It's not at all unreasonable to question that or attacking the company, Librem should have good answers there regardless.

> _Markets only matter to capitalists. Real hackers share with each other to > make things happen that markets do not comprehend._

What a ridiculous load of bunk. The Librem is not powered by good intentions and hacker ethos it's powered by silicon manufactured in an expensive capitalist fabricator, battery which is the same, etc. Ongoing development will need some capital, as will repairs and replacements and infrastructure. Nothing like a huge company but it's there, and it's rightfully utilizing the wider world.

"Real hackers" are _hacking_ , they're doing cool stuff utilizing things for purposes beyond what was intended, pushing the limits in ways not imagined perhaps even by the original designers. Sometimes this has no wider effect beyond a subsect, sometimes it subverts markets, sometimes it creates entire new markets. It's symbiotic with the wider world not cutoff from it! This can be true of not just tech but even law. When RMS and co worked out copyleft, they didn't just rage against the sheer existence of IP and seek to destroy it all or somehow fruitlessly deny that it existed, they hacked it to their own ends instead.

<comment><USER7> > When RMS and co worked out copyleft, they didn't just rage against the sheer > existence of IP and seek to destroy it all or somehow fruitlessly deny that > it existed, they hacked it to their own ends instead.

You mean like people who per-ordered the Librem5, because it's a practical cause they believe in, instead of just raging in the semi-frequent HN threads how awful Android is?

<comment><USER6> > _You mean like people who per-ordered the Librem5, because it 's a practical > cause they believe in, instead of just raging in the semi-frequent HN > threads how awful Android is?_

Can you explain what point you're actually arguing against here, or in sibling posts you've replied to? That's a good example of using the market to achieve a good goal, which is just what should happen. That's not an argument that "markets only matter to capitalists."

<comment><USER7> A product like the Librem5 is currently not viable to manufacture by any known OEM in the smartphone market, just as it wasn't viable for a company to develop a free-software UNIX, so RMS had to come in and start it even if it wasn't necessarily "market viable" at the time.

People sometimes do things out of passion, precisely because the markets would not support their ideas, at least initially.

So, it is not known at present whether the Librem5 would prove viable at all, but Purism are doing it despite this and there are people who pre-ordered are trying to make it viable, despite there being no guarantee that they'll get security updates or even a viable product at present.

In essence, this phone is probably non-market viable at present, but there are people who are per-ordering anyways, in order to eventually make it viable for the wider market i.e. taking practical steps for a cause they believe in. Such causes are not a good fit for "markets" in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The last news I read on this, the Librem 5 was slated to launch in April of 2019. Is this still the case? Is it usual for an ambitious project like this to be doing this sort of development (i.e. core dev, not polish) within 6 months of release?

I'm really looking forward to this phone and will almost certainly move over if there is are decent mail, Whatsapp and Signal clients. Despite the cost and early adopter pains I'm likely to face :)

<comment><USER9> This phone is basically a Gnome Phone, so mail client will be Geary, which is decent enough. The anbox project is able to port Android apps into GNU/Linux. Though last time I tried, not very stable and crash very often. Whatsapp could be installed. Hope at release the project could be more stable and able to port to Librem 5.

<comment><USER10> WhatsApp isn't open source, and they don't have a client for that chip AFAIK, so getting WhatsApp working would require work from Facebook.

Apps like Signal that are open source will likely be available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They should have used Plasma Mobile and Qt. Not Gnome/GTK.

<comment><USER12> [https://dot.kde.org/2017/09/14/plasma-mobile-and-purisms- lib...](https://dot.kde.org/2017/09/14/plasma-mobile-and-purisms- librem-5-free-smartphone)

<comment><USER11> Sure, but I'm talking lack of resources concentration because of all these parallel efforts. Things will move slowly or too slowly.</comment></comment></comment>


A Secret Recording Reveals Oil Executives' Private Views on Climate Change - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/climate/methane-natural-gas-flaring.html <comment><USER2> I know they really need to ensure that they can buy their fourth house, but this sort of stuff is revealing just how much disconnect there is between those who push for oil and the coming generation:

"What's our message going forward?" Mr. Ness said. "What's going to stick with those young people and make them support oil and gas?"

Nothing, old man. Nothing. We'd need at least one covid per year to stay in line with the Paris agreements emissions-wise, and that would only curb the damage to a minimal amount. We're driving into a wall the size of a mountain, and we can't bother to decrease our ACCELERATION, let alone to actually SLOW DOWN.

Younger generations are increasingly voicing how tired they are of the apathy about this issue - or sometimes, like in this case, downright evil approach to energy needs and climate change.

If you want "those young people" to support your ass, use your lobbying powers to turn to nuclear for controllable energy and renewables for the rest. But that means no fourth house for you, huge investments upfront, and actually morals..

<comment><USER3> As a former young man, and current middle aged man, my perspectice is this: Those old men were young people once, not long ago. You might not compromise your values, but in reality, you probably will. And your peers definitely will. A few generations will grow up and suddenly, you're the bad guy because, oh I dunno, all your cell phones and tablets used up all the bismuth or something. And you'll get old one day too, desperately holding onto the thing that lets you retire. Again maybe not you, but your peers will.

That said, it's not that you shouldnt keep trying, it's just interesting how it happens. We should break the cycle of blame, and make a lateral move to create the future we want on a new path.

It makes me think, "Render unto Ceasar".

<comment><USER2> I'm a "former young man" too. There is no age to be acting well or badly with regards to this debate, and there isn't even an absolute metric for how well or badly one does when it comes to the issue.

But I know I don't need to change to a new smartphone every year, likewise for my laptop.

I know the next time I get a smartphone (in years), I'll be much more likely to accept something of lesser polish for something which allows me to replace parts easily.

I know that my beef consumption is not an essential part of my life in the sense that I'd die without it, it's an accessory of pure hedonism, and I still don't entirely avoid eating a good steak every once in a while but I put mental efforts into curbing such consumption.

I keep in mind very strongly the strategy I want to adopt regarding the place I live in and the places I could work at, such that at equal levels of satisfaction I don't pigeon-hole myself into a place where a car would be an absolute necessity. Each person's strategy can change, but things to take into account include access to public transportation, remote work even partially, only partly using a car along the way if really necessary, and so on.

I'm keenly aware of the amount of plastic packaging around me and whenever I can I will prefer avoiding such products. Likewise for anything that can be refilled: do you really need to buy the same container for your detergent over and over again? Why not refill it if you can? etc.

I keep in mind all those issues when the time comes to vote, and in my own way strive to encourage this sort of awareness in the people supposed to represent me.

-

The list is entirely dependent on each person, but you can only start to make that list and to think constructively if you acknowledge the problem and leave aside nihilism and apathy.

I don't want kids, but that doesn't prevent me from having the awareness that the things I do (or don't do) can and will hurt other people's kids. Using my age as an excuse to not give a crap is disingenuous. Using the observation that others aren't pulling their weight either is disingenuous. I can't force others to do something but I can change what I do.

<comment><USER4> This post misses the point of what it's replying to. Parent comment admitted that individuals can live responsibly, but that the bigger problem is a cycle where each generation protects its own lifestyle and blames the older people for what they'll one day do themselves.

<comment><USER2> And you're missing the fact that what the current generations in power are doing is not sustainable in the sense that regardless of what young generations do right now, they DEFINITELY won't be having the lifestyle that we're having today.

It doesn't matter what their kids end up blaming on them afterwards, we won't be there to see it. The defeatist attitudes about the now are cop-outs though, because WE are living in the now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Many free market people complain about restrictive laws, but I 100% believe if there wasn't a law prohibiting, say, putting lead in food or dumping mercury into the water table, there would be CEOs who wouldn't hesitate to do those things if it made them a little bit of money, despite knowing how awful the consequences are.

Likewise, there is nothing which will stop CEOs from ruining the environment unless the externalities of their industries cost them money. It doesn't matter how many scientific pronouncements are made or if the CEOs of gas and oil companies know in their heart of hearts what they are doing has terrible long term consequences, they will continue on the current course.

Yes, individuals can help by choosing to driving less and changing their thermostat, but many/most won't do enough. The most free market solution is to make the polluting companies pay for their externalities. Yes, dividends will go down. Yes, the costs of some goods will go up, but only up to their true costs since we won't be giving the companies a free pass to use the atmosphere as a trash can. Once things have their full costs baked in, everyone will adjust their consumption, not just the environmentally conscious. I doubt even that is enough, but it is more than we are currently doing.

<comment><USER6> It's very telling that we _had_ to create child labor laws. Someone had to be told that it was immoral and strictly forbidden from doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

― Upton Sinclair

<comment><USER8> I always thought that was due to Oscar Wilde but he gets credit for anything witty by default.

<comment><USER9> * [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's so much attention aimed at proving climate change deniers wrong, or proving that petroleum executives know that climate change is real. These are valid pursuits, but I worry that they are also a convenient object of our anger. Really turning the tide on climate change is going to require everyone in modern society to swallow some tough pills around our daily routines and consumption patterns. Aiming all of our anger and blame and attention at corporations producing products that support the way of life we aren't willing to change is denial and a waste of time.

<comment><USER11> Most people don't have a choice about how much they pollute. Can't get anywhere without burning gas, can't buy anything that doesn't come wrapped in plastic. The choices were made for us.

<comment><USER10> I agree that some choices were made for us, but abdicating any personal responsibility In favor of anger at someone else strikes me as lazy and defeatist thinking. Many people in industrialized nations make choices every day and have full control over their own behavior - how they get around, what they eat, how and how often they travel, the brands they engage with... sitting and waiting for the problem to be solved for us is what's gotten us nowhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. These aren't oil executives. They're lobbyists.

2\. There's nothing in here about their private views on climate change. They're talking about how they're worried people will _perceive_ the flaring of natural gas.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's amazing how many people have swallowed the line that stopping anthropogenic global warming is mostly about individual choices when there is clear evidence to show that the very same idea has been propagated primarily by the industries responsible for the majority of pollution.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you would like to help to solve the climate crisis, you may be interested in [https://climateaction.tech/](https://climateaction.tech/)

If you have any other useful resources, please reply :)

<comment><USER15> Maybe [https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineerin...](https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/geoengineering)

getting pure co2 from the air is profitable, because it is used in soda etc. The challenge is to get it pure, but climate is a huge business opportunity

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The real issue is how come gas is $2 a gallon still? Its unbelievably cheap. I ran AC pretty much full time the whole summer and the bill was $400. Energy is way too cheap in the US.

<comment><USER6> Still nearly $4 here on west coast

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pesky toxic waste. We should just dump it in the river.

</comment><comment><USER18> I guarantee similar conversations have been had at all large companies with negative externalities: tech, pharma, banks, etc...

</comment><comment><USER19> Tl;dr, companies would rather not spend money complying with methane regulations. They'd rather try and win the messaging war. This is largely about the gas escaping during oil drilling. Big companies are more willing to play by the rules than the small companies.

The execs made jokes about hippies "wanting to change the world" until they grew up, got jobs, and bought BMWs.

It's not the bombshell alluded to in the headline, but it's somewhat interesting. Perhaps most interesting is their realization that activists are winning on the emotional messaging, and they need a shift in strategy.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://archive.md/YGrVx](https://archive.md/YGrVx)

</comment><comment><USER21> The greatest resistance to solving climate change is the people who know it's happening, want to do something, but don't know where to start. All this other stuff is noise.

Let's go!

</comment><comment><USER22> Where can this recording being downloaded?

</comment><comment><USER23> .

<comment><USER24> This is both untrue and incredibly _unproductive_ \- born of a mishmash of puritan morals and modern problems.

Do you use a dishwasher? You should. They use less water and less energy per wash then any human washing by hand. Yet people instinctively seem to think hand washing is better because it's harder work.

No amount of energy use reduction is going to make a shred of difference if all our power comes from coal. Period. Everything else is secondary and non- fundamental: solar panels can be manufactured cleanly, and the consequences of mishandling still only pollute _locally_ \- serious, but not an uncontrollable global problem.

Environmentalism of the "we must sacrifice" nature is being pushed by idiots on the left and corporates on the right: the left feels it's honest because it's hard, the right knows that no one will do it but boy does it shift blame away from them and encourage populism and dismissal in public discourse.

<comment><USER25> > Environmentalism of the "we must sacrifice" nature is being pushed by idiots > on the left and corporates on the right: the left feels it's honest because > it's hard, the right knows that no one will do it

I totally agree with your broader point that we shouldn't rely on individual behavior change, but I think you are using a dated perspective of the left and the right.

The modern left is actually proposing massive green infrastructure spending in order to shift the country's energy production away from fossil fuels (aka the Green New Deal).

The modern right has turned the use of fossil fuels into an identity politics issue, as if you become less American somehow if you use less coal and petroleum to power your life.

The corporations are going where their business models and customer constituencies take them, which is why tech has invested heavily in renewables, and fossil fuel companies have balkanized around their products. The automobile industry is in limbo between the two, with a foot in both worlds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been in morally compromising situations before... so whereas I commiserate the situation these people are in I cannot bring myself to condemn them.

Most public outrage is in the manufacture of caricatures and the failure to engage in nuance.

Alright, light me up.

<comment><USER25> Criticism should be proportional to power.

These are very rich, politically influential people, not nobodies like you and me on this message board.

Their lobbying power by sheer dollar might as individuals and industries dwarfs that of most people. Therefore they they should be condemned when they are revealed in a lie involving the use of that power and influence, especially when that influence is changing rules to allow them to release massive quantities of methane into the atmosphere, worsening climate change.</comment></comment>


Summarizes what it's like working for most big companies (as a developer/engineer) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071026.html

<comment><USER2> Surprisingly like real life (in a big company where managers care more about their fiefdoms that doing what's right).</comment>


MinUnit: a minimal unit testing framework for C - <AUTHOR> http://www.jera.com/techinfo/jtns/jtn002.html <comment><USER3> If we're going this far - C already has a "unit testing framework", assert.h. Just ensure !NDEBUG.

<comment><USER4> A failing `assert` interrupts execution, though.

<comment><USER3> Right on one of the file/line combinations I want to look at when the debugger is attached, even. Feature!

When the debugger is not attached, it provides additional incentive to fix the tests ;).

(Hanging CI on failed tests on remote servers is, admittedly, annoying at best. MinUnit will also only report a single failed test in that case, I note.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is obviously not an option for embedded stuff, but on many common platforms, it's actually easiest to unit-test C from Python. While you do need to write extra glue code (although ctypes are often "good enough" for tests, significantly reducing that amount), it's just so much easier to set things up in Python - i.e. generate inputs (especially strings!), set up files etc.

<comment><USER6> Would you mind giving an example of how you would unit test a function?

<comment><USER5> The same way you would unit test a Python function, except you invoke the actual C function using e.g. ctypes:

[https://docs.python.org/3/library/ctypes.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/ctypes.html)

but your unit test is written in Python, including all the setup/teardown stuff and asserts. And you run it using the stock Python test runner (or some wrapper around that):

[https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.html)

(In theory, this all can be done even smoother if you use Cython, because that lets you interface with C more naturally than ctypes. I haven't tried that, though.)

Note that this all makes sense for C APIs, not C++ ones. With C++ APIs, as soon as classes etc come into the picture, and especially once you start dealing with STL and Boost data types, it becomes too difficult to invoke that stuff from Python. However, the _implementation_ can be in any language - <USER2> matters is what the tested API looks like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those asking what the point of this is, I'm not the poster but I found it very useful a few months ago in a sample solution to a programming class: [https://github.com/Warbo/aai-2016-17/tree/master/lab01](https://github.com/Warbo/aai-2016-17/tree/master/lab01)

Most of the students would waste most of their time in lab sessions adding and removing printf statements to one huge `main` function, and trawling through the resulting mess on the console.

I was quite satisfying to guide them through the process of:

\- Articulating exactly what they're looking for in the console (e.g. "these numbers should add up to the same as that")

\- Have them write that down in the code (e.g. `mu_assert("results add up", x + y == z);`)

\- Remove the corresponding printf calls

Due to sheer amount of output from printf, many students had cobbled together elaborate nested-if-based one-char-at-a-time scanf-parser menu systems to choose which parts of the program to run with which inputs; the results being far more complicated than the actual programming assignments they'd been given! Since tests only output when they fail, all of this complication could be thrown away.

Then, the magic parts:

\- _Leave the tests in place_ , so they'll be checked _every time_

\- _Keep adding more tests_ to narrow down a problem more specifically

\- Wrap the tests in `for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) { ... }` to check _far more_ cases than would be feasible manually

Besides driving home the idea of automation, testing across many inputs in a loop usually made debugging easier. Due to the effort of setting up, checking and tearing out printf debugging statements, many students had skipped checking trivial cases like 0 and 1, and instead were trying to wade through the output for an input like 50. Adding a loop caused those trivial cases to be checked, and the problems became obvious :)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're looking for something a little more featureful, there are a couple other options out there: Check[0] and Cunit[1].

I've used both, although I wouldn't say I've used any of the advanced features of Check. Check seems to be a bit more maintained and documented, but I don't remember having any particular problems with Cunit the last time I used it.

Check's documentation also includes a list of the other C unit testing frameworks its developers know about[2]. I'm curious to check out AceUnit, which is said to be usable in an embedded context.

My approach for testing embedded functionality has been to shim any hardware- specific stuff in the code I want to test and run the tests using Check on the machine hosting the build. This "works", but it misses errors that occur because of differences in e.g. the size of size_t. Mind you, I've only been doing embedded for fun recently.

[0] [https://libcheck.github.io/check/](https://libcheck.github.io/check/) [1] [http://cunit.sourceforge.net/](http://cunit.sourceforge.net/) [2] [https://libcheck.github.io/check/doc/check_html/check_2.html...](https://libcheck.github.io/check/doc/check_html/check_2.html#Unit- Testing-in-C)

ETA: Disappearing from the internet. Won't be around for discussion. Apologies for the post-and-run.

</comment><comment><USER9> Meh. Like, who the hell wants to have to restate their conditions twice? Not me, that's for sure.

What you need is something more like this. (I'll write out one case, and you can figure out the rest.) It's more lines, but I don't think you'll feel like it's bad value per LOC.

For the actual condition you write in your code, you want a macro that expands to something with __FILE__ and __LINE__, and uses the stringizing operator to get the LHS and RHS as strings. Here's one that compares to ints (hence II) for equality (hence EQ).

        #define TEST_EQ_II(A,B) (DoTestEqII((A),#A,(B),#B,__FILE__,__LINE__))

The function that implements that. Note that because C is stupid, the int parameters basically have to be int64_t... \this isn't really a problem in practice.

        void DoTestEqII(int64_t a,const char *a_str,
                        int64_t b,const char *b_str,
                        const char *file,int64_t line)
        {
            DoTestII(a,a_str,b,b_str,file,line,a==b,"==");
        }

Clearly I'm all about the layering, and here's the next layer.

        void DoTestII(int64_t a,const char *a_str,
                      int64_t b,const char *b_str,
                      const char *file,int64_t line,
                      int result,const char *oper)
        {
            if(!result) {
                Print("%s%s%" PRId64 "%s: test failed\n",file,LINE_PREFIX,line,LINE_SUFFIX);
                Print("    Expected expression: %s\n",a_str);
                Print("               Operator: %s\n",oper);
                Print("      Actual expression: %s\n",b_str);
                Print("         Expected value: %" PRId64 " (0x%" PRIx64 ")\n",a,a);
                Print("           Actual value: %" PRId64 " (0x%" PRIx64 ")\n",b,b);
                Break();
            }
        }

For VC++:

        #define Break() __debugbreak()
        #define LINE_PREFIX "("
        #define LINE_SUFFIX ")"

Then make Print print via OutputDebugString (VS2015 does C99-style snprintf, so this is easy to arrange perfectly), so the output goes to the output window. Visual Studio treats output window lines beginning like "FILE(LINE):" as referring to source locations, so when you get a failing test you can just tap F8 - I think? I'm not in Windows right now - and you'll be taken to the line and file with the error.

For POSIX-type stuff, e.g., Emacs:

        #define Break() asm volatile ("int $3\n") /* if you get a build error here, your computer is shit. */\
                                                  /* Throw it away, and buy a proper one, with an x64 CPU. */
        #define LINE_PREFIX ":"
        #define LINE_SUFFIX ""

And make Print print to stderr. I typically run my tests as part of the build process, invoked via M-x compile, and Emacs then picks up the FILE:LINE: markup when you use M-x next-error and M-x previous-error.

(If you use vim, or whatever... I'm sorry. But lesser editors often understand the standard FILE:LINE: markup, so even when you're slumming it, you're not, like, _totally_ slumming it.)

You can probably figure out how this extends from int equals int to int not equals int, int less than int, blah blah... and from there to string vs string, and double vs double, and so on. It's not really the operations that are the key thing, because of course they're easy to add; for my money the benefit comes from auto-generating the output text from the condition, and from having it integrate tidily with the calling process - Visual Studio, Emacs, other (notepad, vim, etc.) - in such a way that you can jump immediately to the source location when a test fails.

Where the article and I _do_ agree: the conclusion, all of it. Writing a unit test system isn't hard, and writing your own isn't crazy. It probably won't take you even one hour.

P.S. if you like C++, you can go one better, and have the output text auto- generated without even having to say what sort of comparison it is: [https://github.com/philsquared/Catch](https://github.com/philsquared/Catch)

Only downside is that while you'll save one hour not writing your own, you'll lose ten hours waiting for it to compile. Also, good luck trying to write test programs that have command line options. This is what I believe they call "technical debt".

<comment><USER10> I wrote [https://github.com/keithn/seatest](https://github.com/keithn/seatest) a while back so I could test on embedded devices. It's pretty simple, but one thing I needed to avoid was memory allocation so test test suites via function chains, downside is tests have to be explicitly specified, though I have scripts for that.

<comment><USER11> Thank you so much for seatest! I've used it before on a couple of small projects and really liked it. Yes, it is a bit of a pain to specify the tests, but if you're red/greening it works out great.

I'd love to see the scripts you used to manage your suite if you wouldn't mind sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is possibly the most useless piece of code I've ever ran across, in any language or context.

<comment><USER13> Maybe it's a joke? Or some kind of hint about testing "frameworks" being too complex? Personally I think this is hilarious because I honestly cannot understand how people even need a library to do testing in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> testing from the same file, how it should be done.

future languages should have testing as the method definitions (i'd call it first class citizen testing)

</comment><comment><USER15> Tessy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Unit testing in C? Why???</comment>


The unsolved Macbook Melted Key Mystery - <AUTHOR> http://www.last100.com/2009/10/11/the-unsolved-macbook-melted-key-mystery/ <comment><USER2> Possibly a chemical, not heat.

When I was a kid I sprayed 'Off' (a mosquito repellent) on a calculator and the keys had a similar melted look to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Rubberized keys"?

I've got a couple-of-years old white plastic MacBook and the keys certainly aren't rubber. Have they changed to be like calculator keys now?

<comment><USER4> No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know what is under that key? Component wise? Anyway, that dude should go see a Genius and get his Mac replaced.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if the fact that the key is now detached would lead a cynical genius(tm) to believe that the key was melted after it was removed?

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't melted after it was removed lol

It was removed because the key no longer registered a click. So it was taken off so that the button under the key could be used instead... 000 ))))) like that.

<comment><USER6> hehe ;) Definitely take that baby back and get the store to figure out wtf happened. If it's either the optical drive or the subwoofer, my minimal knowledge of heat generation in electronics leads me to believe that those shouldn't be generating that much heat except from friction in in the drive or a short in the subwoofer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Battle of AI Processors Begins in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/battle-ai-processors-begins-2018/212131505757984 <comment><USER2> Err, I thought NVidia already won?

Though dedicated silicon like Google's TPU will always post higher _numbers_, GPUs have the ecosystem, the developers, the libraries, the language (languages? CUDA is probably the only one that matters)...

That's a lot to catch up to for all the competitors listed in the article.

Yes, yes, TensorFlow is cross-platform. History has shown that a cross- platform library or standard only serves to raise the barrier to entry for small startups. The cross-platform library/standard has never defined the cutting-edge or next-gen market makers. See: Posix, PDF, U2F, OpenCL/OpenGL, Intel HDA.

And yes, there are exceptions to the rule: USB, PCIe (and SATA, SDXC, etc.), WiFi.

<comment><USER3> The computational graph abstraction can be exploited to bypass the CUDA ecosystem btw.

<comment><USER2> That abstraction shows up in real life as a library, called TensorFlow. :)</comment></comment></comment>


CityLab has been relaunched under the Bloomberg umbrella - <AUTHOR> https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/citylab-has-been-relaunched-under-the-bloomberg-umbrella/ <comment><USER2> I've been a big citylab reader for the past few years - always loved their detailed takes on urban issues and some solid long form stuff.

After reading this, just clicked on bookmark and their homepage made me want to cry. I've never seen a brand murdered overnight before. (i guess the articles are the same? But design matters...it's a very clear message).

<comment><USER3> Same thing happened to BusinessWeek. After being consumed by Bloomberg, it's a shadow of its former self -- predictable, overly cautious, and much less interesting or informative. It feels like it's run by lawyers and investors rather than journalists who know and care about business.

<comment><USER4> Brand building for the terminal business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Sondag is a little unusual for this media age, in that she's spent her entire 20-year career with one company, Bloomberg. She's transitioning to the top job at CityLab from a six-year stint as a standards and training editor at Bloomberg._

Bloomberg has a reputation in the media world as being a very conservative company to work for. I have a relative who worked for them, and while the pay and perks were solid (thanks in large part to Bloomberg's successful terminal business) you can never criticize the company once you leave owing to a very restrictive NDA tied to severance.

There is also, as the NYT put it, "an entrenched culture of bullying, where women are often objectified and sometimes face discrimination, according to interviews with more than a dozen former employees, as well as lawsuits and internal corporate documents." ([https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/michael- bloomber...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/michael-bloomberg- nda.html))

For CityLab supporters, I would be very concerned about the way it's being absorbed into the Bloomberg mother ship. There won't be much independence to ask hard questions when buttoned-down Bloomberg lifers are brought in to keep the kids in line and global multinationals like Hyundai are footing the bill.

<comment><USER6> For the record, once Warren criticized him about the NDAs during his short presidential bid earlier this year, within two days he released all the women he had under NDA from them as well as any current employees who wished to be released (not sure about other former employees).

<comment><USER7> No, he announced that anyone wishing to be released from an NDA could contact the company "and they'll be given a release". He very explicitly did not give a blanket release, and we have no way of knowing whether anyone requested but was not actually granted one, because they would remain under an NDA.

(He also deleted the statement as soon as he dropped out of the race, so I have to link to Wayback Machine.)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200307041238/https://www.mikeb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200307041238/https://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/statement- from-mike-bloomberg-on-non-disclosure-agreements)

<comment><USER6> I don't get what you're saying. Are you claiming he lied? Based on him deleting a bunch of campaign related pages after he ended his campaign?

<comment><USER8> What the parent comment is saying is that he made a comment that in practice didn't actually amount to anything.

<comment><USER6> But he sent out emails to employees saying they just had to email HR and they would be released from their NDAs. I don't understand what more you want?

<comment><USER9> I'd like to see some proof it was actually followed up on and people were released from NDA's.

<comment><USER6> I mean the company is 20,000+ people and there hasn't been one story of anyone saying they were not allowed to get out of their NDA, nor any stories about being fired or treated poorly after being released. So either, no one took him up on the offer (highly unlikely given 20k people), or there was no issues when it happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I've enjoyed reading CityLab articles over the past few years, I've never quite known what their business model was.

<comment><USER11> Well with journalism these days, you either don't know what it is or don't like it.

May the news be entirely subscriber funded in a post-UBI world where everyone can afford to subscribe.

<comment><USER12> > May the news be entirely subscriber funded in a post-UBI world where > everyone can afford to subscribe

Probably not. UBI doesn't end the appeal of "free" and doesn't change that the people trying to sell you stuff have a motive to spend money disguising efforts to get you to buy it as other things, like "free" news services.

The advertising targets can afford to pay for the news now, because _they are paying for it_. But they still pay for it indirectly, and UBI doesn't change the systems which feed into that.

<comment><USER11> I know it's hard to reduce the purchasing power of advertisers, but w e can produce their _monopsony_ power by making subscription viable again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And the RSS feeds are now gone :( I contacted support, maybe if enough people do they'll come back. I've had success complaining about this in the past when sites did a bit move.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Beizer stressed that the Hyundai sponsorship won't affect editorial output, > but it's hard not to see a car company sponsorship as somewhat out of step > with the average CityLab reader's idea of the future of cities. As Joshua > Benton noted (foretold?) when Bloomberg acquired the site last year, > "CityLab has a comparatively small but unusually passionate group of fans > (all of whom either take public transportation or bike to work) and some of > them seem nervous about the new ownership."

With a bike riding low car audience, how does it make sense to take on a car company advertised as part of your reboot?

<comment><USER15> tbf Hyundai, in particular, seems to attempt to go into city planning[1] and Toyota is apparently building some sort of futuristic company town[2]. It seems like Japanese auto makers are attempting to branch out into urban development so I guess it makes some sense to use this as some sort of branding opportunity

[1][https://tech.hyundaimotorgroup.com/article/ces-2020-hyundai-...](https://tech.hyundaimotorgroup.com/article/ces-2020-hyundai- motors-presents-a-city-of-the-future/)

[2][https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/31171023.html](https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/31171023.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So the primary funding source for citylab is now a car company? that seems a bit problematic.

<comment><USER17> Even more problematic is the fact Michael Bloomberg owns it, you know, the guy who stopped journalists that worked for a subsidary of his from doing their job.

I have zero doubt he'll interfere with the normal operation of CityLab to suit his own agendas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Out of curiosity, why are CityLab articles so often on Hacker News homepage? I've never heard of CityLab elsewhere.

And a related question, is the popularity of paywalled articles here organic? I would expect that the vast majority of HN visitors don't have a subscription to Bloomberg etc., so paywalled articles should have a big handicap.

<comment><USER19> > why are CityLab articles so often on Hacker News homepage?

I've always assumed it was because they had quality articles about cities. Software engineers often have an extracurricular interest in other types of engineering.

<comment><USER8> It also helps that a lot of the urban planning trends in vogue, like "tactical urbanism", resemble the "move fast/break things" fast experimentation ethos.

Cities produce a crapton of data, and in general HN is receptive to anything trying to make sense of and improve things based on data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> MapLab is really cool and everyone should subscribe

[https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-coronavirus- lockdown...](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-coronavirus-lockdown- neighborhood-maps/?srnd=citylab)

</comment><comment><USER21> In adjacent news, Treehugger recently got a redesign. They're content has always been hit or miss with a few decent redas amd a number of aquihires, but I think it's still worth checking out from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER22> Citylab has been a real gem. Hopefully the team can withstand the headwinds at Bloomberg and keep up the great work.</comment>