Innocent man anesthetized, anal probed in Syracuse for "taunting" cops - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/blog/2018/12/19/syracuse-cops-force-doctors-to-probe-a-m <comment><USER2> Last two people this happened to got $1.6M settlements courtesy of us, the taxpayers [1][2].

[1] [https://reason.com/blog/2016/07/27/woman-kidnapped-and- sexua...](https://reason.com/blog/2016/07/27/woman-kidnapped-and-sexually- assaulted-b)

[2] [http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/14/victim-of-dog- authorized-a...](http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/14/victim-of-dog-authorized- anal-assault-re)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I believe this is called rape.</comment>


Liquid Robotics' Wave Gliders Begin Historic Swim Across Pacific - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/liquid-robotics-wave-gliders-begin-historic-swim-across-pacific

<comment><USER2> [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/business/wave-glider-a- flo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/business/wave-glider-a-floating- robot-seeks-to-network-the-oceans.html)

"I was told 'find something interesting to do'." -jag

They should have been a wee bit more specific about whose interests they were referring to!

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a 1 hour talk on the Wave Glider: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq4G2ciXjZI&t=13m11s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq4G2ciXjZI&t=13m11s)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is James Gosling's new gig...

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if these can be considered the next generation of underwater gliders. There was a very interesting program on them recently - either on PBS or Discovery, can't recall exactly. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_gliders>

One of these made an Atlantic crossing.

[http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/underwater-robots-explore- oce...](http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/underwater-robots-explore-ocean)

</comment><comment><USER6> I dont understand why James thinks this will save the world.

<comment><USER7> "Save the world" is such a broad term. It really depends on what things about the world you find to be most important.

If your primary concerns are safety from hazardous ocean-based weather, security of offshore energy generators and fisheries, and a better understanding of the ocean's effect on climate change, Liquid Robotics' technology would certainly qualify as "saving the world".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Drug cartels seen salivating, writing large checks...

<comment><USER9> Wow, I ended up reading <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine> because of that comment.

What's amazing is how sophisticated this technology is and how underreported it is. They are using fiberglass hulls to evade radar and transmitting their location using state of the art encryption.</comment></comment>


The Ignorance of Crowds (Open Source Model) - <AUTHOR> http://www.strategy-business.com/press/enewsarticle/enews053107 <comment><USER2> Summary: says that harnessing the power of crowds is great, but you can't do without a small (maybe one) group of quality control arbiters at the core. Compare Linux (Linus only lets good stuff in) with Wikipedia (anything gets in, hope it gets improved later).</comment>


Froont Wants To Keep Developers Out Of The Responsive Web Design Process - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/froont/

<comment><USER2> THIS is why Techcrunch is annoying. How many "in-browser" and "responsive" mock-up tools have already been launched? Jetstrap comes to mind immediately, and I recall seeing several others.

I appreciate them covering tech companies for less technical audiences, but it just seems like they follow a few certain VCs around, rather than looking at the technology that is worth GETTING VC funding.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is a mock-up tool. If I'm not mistaken, this is a design tool that produces production-ready HTML.

<comment><USER4> "Froont is the fastest solution for designers who want to prototype responsive websites with their true content."

>at the bottom. It's for "prototypes."

<comment><USER5> Design is iterative by its nature – therefore FROONT can be used for prototypes and for designs, that depends of the stage and complexity of design. IT can be wireframing, designing responsive patterns or design with real content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh, as in FroontPage. Totally need this.

Edit: Sorry for flippancy. I sense the challenge of the over-complete demo. Eventually, the design requires interfacing with developers who are then skewered for not getting it done as fast as the drag and drop mock-up.

It's probably not horribly worse than taking on an HTML5 template from your favorite template garden along with a laundry list of breaking customizations... I find it pretty quick to take the static images and build out without the baggage of more opinionated style work already "complete"

</comment><comment><USER7> So I'm a dev who spent 10 minutes just now with Jetstrap and Froont; Jetstrap has component items such as 'navigation' etc., which can be easily tossed in. Froont has break points for responsive design. So while Jetstrap allows you to view the result on iPhone v. desktop; Froont allows you to set up very different parameters that change responsively to screen size 'break pointss'... or am I missing that feature in Jetstrap?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is graphic designer now synonymous with ignorant? If not I think they would be fine dragging around some bootstrap text and refreshing a browser.

<comment><USER4> Seriously. Every time I see a tool pop up for "designers" the definition tends to be:

-code illiterate -drag n' drop syndrome -shortcut seeking -so visually oriented that they might as well be blind

It honestly makes designers look bad. Modern designers know how to code as well (or should). Why? So that they design with the development in mind and don't deliver shit that's too outlandish to implement, or more importantly, deliver shit that's ignorant of what's possible.

<comment><USER5> It is not about coding versus not coding : ) FROONT is about visually choosing web fonts, work with vectors right in the browser, see how designs perform on various screen widths as soon as possible! Using visual approach where it makes sense and speeds things up and coding to add something new to the project. I can't imagine why somebody, be it designers or developers, should enjoy tweaking cross-browser issues, dealing with scrollbars etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats on the launch to Sandijs and team! Glad to have played a small role in this journey. Now that you're public, I can finally add you to StartHQ: <https://starthq.com/apps/froont>

</comment><comment><USER10> I really appreciate the idea but most designers coming out of school (or self- taught) know how to manage building mockups in HTML and CSS. I might see how this could be slightly quicker but it still doesn't quite translate like the real thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> It doesn't look like this allows me to add non-standard attributes. If I'm using AngularJS, I have to export this HTML, then add my ng-* markup, and then if I want to modify my design I have to do that all over again. Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER12> How about letting me try it out without registering? :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Love Froont - did some mockups and got valid HTML out of it in minutes. Genius.

<comment><USER5> Great to hear! Thanks!</comment></comment>


Glossary of censored words from a 1919 treatise on love - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/glossary-of-censored-words-from-a-1919-book-on-love <comment><USER2> Is "cohabitate" used here as an English-English euphemism for sex? It seems so unnecessary given the franker glosses of "to ravish" / "copulation" / "sexual intercourse" / "coition"... but it's given as the gloss for "coire" and "coitus" ("going together"; same thing as "coition"), for "commiscor", which is just the passive of "commisco" ("to copulate"), _and_ for "concumbo" / "concubitus" ("lying together").

And then an adjective derived from "concubitus", concubitalis", is glossed as "copulative".

<comment><USER3> Unnecessary or not, it's my experience it means "living with someone who you are having sex with" and has my whole life.

<comment><USER2> But the glossary strongly implies that there's no meaning to "cohabitate" beyond "have sex", which I find very strange. There is not a single suggestion that "cohabitation" says anything about where you live or with whom.

And I'm asking why "have sex" needs to be euphemised in the glosses for coire / coitus / commiscor / concumbo / concubitus, when it doesn't for concarnatio / commisco / concubitalis / conjugatio / etc. etc. etc.

<comment><USER4> Why do you think the glossary implies that? The glossary has "to copulate" plenty of places, so if the author thought cohabitation only meant copulation, they'd just put "to copulate" wouldn't they? It doesn't, it says the cohabitation ones mean cohabitation. So that's living together, not just having sex together.

Note that in certain religions, unmarried girls and guys aren't even allowed in a room alone with each other without a chaperone. Even today I hear lots of religious girls refuse to move in with someone until marriage. So living together even without any mention of sex is considered scandalous to certain people of certain times - thus requiring censoring in a 1919 treatise.

Heck, even in modern times, a block away from me, there's a mediation center where the guys and girls all have to sit on opposite sides of the building even though no one is having sex at a meditation center, and what the girls are allowed to wear is tightly restricted.

<comment><USER2> > Why do you think the glossary implies that?

Because I am at least as familiar with Latin as the intended audience of the glossary. I detailed my objections in my root comment. Why don't I repeat them:

1\. "Commisco" and "commiscor" are the active and passive forms of the same verb. This glossary has the active form meaning "copulate" and the passive meaning not "get screwed" but rather "cohabit". This is not a verb with different senses in the active and passive. (I'm assuming that the glossary's "commisco" is actually commisceo; for examples of verbs that _are_ different in their active and passive senses, see video, where the active means "see" and the passive commonly means "appear [to be a certain way]", or facio, where the passive fio is so special that it is morphologically not even passive.)

2\. "Concumbo", "concubitus", and "concubitalis" are, respectively, a verb [literally "lie with"], a noun derived from that verb, and an adjective derived from the noun. This glossary gives the verb as "cohabitate", the noun as "cohabitation", and the adjective, somehow, as "copulative".

Here's the Lewis and Short dictionary entry for "concubitus": [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dconcubitus) . I'll repeat it here:

> I. A lying together; reclining; a firm, close shutting together (of the > teeth).

> II. Copulation, coition.

These are explicitly sexual words.

3\. "Congressus" is glossed explicitly as "coition", immediately implying that the author and audience are both aware of the meaning of the word "coition". But "coire" and "coitus" are glossed as "to cohabit" and "cohabitation", despite the fact that these are not legitimate meanings of the Latin words. They refer to sexual intercourse. (Since they literally mean "go[ing] together", they have all kinds of other senses, such as entering into contracts. Cohabitation is not mentioned. See [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dcoeo) )

> The glossary has "to copulate" plenty of places, so if the author thought > cohabitation only meant copulation, they'd just put "to copulate" wouldn't > they?

Yes, this is very strange, as I said above. This is what I'm asking about.

> It doesn't, it says the cohabitation ones mean cohabitation. So that's > living together, not just having sex together.

This conclusion cannot stand. The Latin words glossed as "cohabitation" do not generally have that meaning (concumbo does seem to offer it, though the primary sense is obviously just "have sex"), and the glossary frequently glosses _different forms of the same word_ as "copulation" in one place and "cohabitation" in another place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure how you can interpret this as censorship as opposed to different levels of understanding the meaning of latin words? The intended audience pushed back wanting an improved simplicity in understanding to improve readability for them.

The word censorship is only in the title of the article.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah, perhaps Mr. Talmey wished to evade the fate that quite soon befell upon Joyce's 'Ulysses', with it being 'effectively' banned from publication in the US, such that "throughout the 1920s, the United States Post Office Department burned copies of the novel".

<comment><USER7> Makes one wonder how long it will take the US to stop being driven by this sort of repressionist puritanical mindset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also: didn't expect the pic to actually be the entire 456-page book, embedded from Archive.org.</comment>


Facebook Has Been Intentionally Crashing Its Android App on Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/apps/news/a18837/facebook-has-been-intentionally-crashing-its-android-app-on-users/ <comment><USER2> Weird. For a few days, every time I tried to use the Facebook app, it would crash loading the second article. I ignored it for a bit, and after an update it seemed to start working again. It was frustrating, and I wonder if I was part of this "experiment".</comment>


15M jobs lost-"lay off your...least-effective workers...replace with software"  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/what-happened-to-15-million-u-s-jobs--20110120

<comment><AUTHOR> The quasi-quote in the title is a < 80 char summary of this paragraph:

 _In other words, American companies had adopted a more cold-blooded attitude toward recessions, one that fit the new model of globalization and automation. Technology made it easier to lay off your 100 least-effective workers and ship their jobs to India, or to replace them with a software program that made your remaining workforce dramatically more productive._

I apologize for editorializing (removing the clause about Indians stealing jobs as well), but I find that less interesting than technology replacing humans, and figured most of HN would as well.</comment>


Op amp on the Moon: Reverse-engineering a hybrid op amp module - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2019/02/op-amp-on-moon-reverse-engineering.html <comment><USER2> This is pretty fun, the story behind the history of this op amp has had so many analogs throughout the history of Silicon Valley. Smart people working on projects moving from company to company and sparking new innovation which is carried on etc. It was hearing stories like this that convinced me that I wanted to live in Silicon Valley when I graduated from college.

The other thing I liked about this story is that now that I am working at a place building radios I can better appreciate how going to extreme lengths with the chips on ceramic substrate can lead to lower noise and thus more sensitive amplifiers and filters. I would have loved to see the kind of wire- bonder and pick-and-place hybrid thing that assembled these parts. That had to be pretty impressive to watch.

<comment><USER3> These must have been bonded under manual control using a ball bonding machine. Automation came much later.</comment></comment>


Price Anchoring, Or Why a $499 iPad Seems Inexpensive - <AUTHOR> http://www.mint.com/blog/how-to/price-anchoring/ <comment><USER2> I agree with the premise, that the iPad seems inexpensive because of anchoring, but I completely disagree with the analysis, that the keynote presentation where the $999 is "crushed" by $499 had anything to do with it.

Fundamentally, people expect the iPad to be expensive because the iPhone was very expensive. Because Macbook Pros are very expensive, and because Macbook Airs are very expensive. Because Apple DVI connectors are expensive, because iPhone headset replacements are expensive. Because basically, everything with an Apple logo costs an arm and a leg.

So when you hear that you can get an iPad for less than twice the cost of an iPod touch then of course, that seems like a really good deal. (And only $100 more than a high-capacity iPod touch.)

The foldable iPad case $40 + keyboard dock $70 + spare charging cable $30 = $140. That's 30% of the iPad right there. So _relative_ to all other Apple products and _relative_ to its accessories an iPad for $500 looks like a steal.

<comment><USER3> If I recall, Jobs indicated the $999 price was analysts. I don't have a reference, but that's also the price I'd expected the base model iPad to be. So I think Jobs just took what he saw as everyone's expectation of the anchor, let that sink in for a bit, then "crushed" it with $499.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting that he mentions that naming a number first in salary negotiations is to your advantage, when the usual advice is that the first person to name a number loses. If there is really no rebound effect, why don't we hear stories of people asking for outrageous amounts of money, instead of letting the hiring manager name a salary first?

<comment><USER5> I read on here few months ago that naming your own price first is better. Now I believe it! Recently we hired a sales person on PT basis. At the interview, she gave her expected salary to be about 2.5 times what I had thought about paying her. Now, I _know_ about this notion of anchoring and yet I felt kind of embarrassed to make my initial offer. I fought off the urge to buy into her frame and ultimately made a decent offer but it was still significantly higher than what I had originally planned...and I credit much of it to her naming her price first!

I do think there is an upper limit which if you cross, you risk getting the other party to TOTALLY ignore it as a joke. I came pretty close to doing that with our PT person.

<comment><USER6> It feels so hilariously appropriate that you were hiring a sales person, and they did a spectacular job of, as they say, "selling themselves."

<comment><USER7> <http://xkcd.com/125/> covers it nicely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This works the other direction, too -- adding features without changing the initially-quoted price.

That's often the tag on infomercials: after they set you up for the cheez-o- matic for such-and-such price, they "also throw in a free" mini-cheez-o-matic.

Or you get a year of free support, or the 3 megabit connect for the 1.5 megabit price, or some other "added features" that make you feel like you're getting a deal even if you're really not.

<comment><USER9> This is going to be a killer with the iPad.

I managed to avoid pre-ordering one, but as the app library grows and the iPad's potential use cases multiply, that $499 will start to look like an increasingly better deal.

<comment><USER10> Though the apps are at $9.99+ on iPad. With the "anchoring" of the iPhone apps at $0.99 and $2.99 (and free), Apple and other companies are having to fight a slightly different battle of re-anchoring everyone higher.

<comment><USER11> Is the answer here then for Apple to release two versions of iWork for the iPad then? For example, have one version of iWork that only lets you read documents for $13.99, and then for $14.99 have version that lets you read + write documents?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There was an interesting article back in December in New York Mag about how restaurant menus are often designed with this intent (I believe it made it here but can't find link).

 _2.The Anchor: The main role of that $115 platter - the only three-digit thing on the menu - is to make everything else near it look like a relative bargain, Poundstone says._

<http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/62498/>

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder now if Apple had been leaking the $999 figure to set the stage for the $499 reveal or if they had just taken advantage of pure speculation.

<comment><USER14> This might shed some light on why the entry level MacBook never went lower in price like a lot of people had speculated as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go shopping. I'm out of cereal, and—what? Cap'n Crunch is $2 off? Better make it two boxes._

I seriously bought two boxes of Captain Crunch last week because they were on sale. Now I am stuck much more sugar than I can handle. Ugh.

<comment><USER16> Just throw them away, dude. You shouldn't be eating that stuff.

Watch this: <http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16717>

<comment><USER17> Good news! During the 90 minute video you will burn 100 calories, which is right at one serving of Captain Crunch, if you eat it without milk.

The video is also on youtube at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM> if you have a better youtube player than their little flash thinger.

<comment><USER16> Yeah well, I like linking to original sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I believe the famous paper he is speaking of in relation to asking for more and getting more is: <http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/21451/abstract>

</comment><comment><USER19> It also depends on whether the deal is optional or required, in some sense. In the example, the jury believe some award is fair, then price anchoring has an effect, as demonstrated. However, I think this might not be equally valid for "optional" deals - if I find a cool gadget that I am not sure about buying, if the seller quotes 10x the price I expect, I might just walk (as opposed to say, 1.5x). With deals that have to happen in some sense, and only the price is not set (say a job offer, or an injury award), price anchoring seems more effective. Of course I have nothing to back this up, just my feeling.

</comment><comment><USER20> Dan Ariely gives a related TED talk: "Are we in control of our own decisions?"

[http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html)

Look around 11:30 for a few examples of how comparing options affects us more than looking at each individually.

On a side note, it also seems inexpensive because it's $499 and not $500! Psychological pricing is one of my larger pet peeves...

<comment><USER21> This doesn't bother me as much as the movie-popcorn pricing system, which seems to be rapidly spreading to everything (Cold Stone and Jamba Juice are two particularly egregious offenders). You can have the miniscule size for $5, the "medium" size for $5.75, or the insanely large size for $6.95. Of course they never even expected to sell the other two sizes, they're only there to make the medium size (which is still way more than I wanted to eat) look cheap.

While I'm on the subject, here's a fun fact: a chocolate-peanut-butter flavoured milkshake from Cold Stone, in their largest size, contains over two thousand calories.

<comment><USER22> _While I'm on the subject, here's a fun fact: a chocolate-peanut-butter flavoured milkshake from Cold Stone, in their largest size, contains over two thousand calories._

Sounds like a great way for a highly active person to put on weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dave & Buster's uses this technique - as well as something called "foot-in- the-door" when persuading you to buy more gaming credits: [http://blog.kadavy- inc.com/post/465860827/psychology-hacks-o...](http://blog.kadavy- inc.com/post/465860827/psychology-hacks-of-dave-busters)

For Apple, the "foot-in-the-door" is probably the iPod or iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER24> I feel like a lot of people missed a pretty important point...

Why does the $499 seem inexpensive to the people who _DID NOT WATCH_ THE SJ presentation? There is no text on the apple website that says "pundits said it was going to cost $999, but we made it for $499"?

</comment><comment><USER25> _If you're selling something, ask for much more than you think you're going to get._

Very often that can be simply offputting and can turn away would-be buyers. There's a difference between being susceptible to an effect and being completely controllable by it.

<comment><USER26> According to the article, that's not what happens at all. In the case of personal injury lawsuits, there is no rebound, and people who ask for more simply get more.

It may be true that if you set a high price, and delay telling the customer about a deal, they will leave before you reveal the lower price. However, that's not what is typically done, and it seems like showing a deal is always more effective that just starting at a lower price.

<comment><USER25> _it seems like showing a deal is always more effective that just starting at a lower price._

If you were to believe the article's unambiguous take on this, then your interpretation would be correct. However, I believe this is a naive view or one that is only true in limited situations and often not true in the reality of the marketplace where an unreasonably high price can simply turn someone away without leaving the possibility for any further negotiation.

<comment><USER27> I think the key that the buyer must believe there is room for negotiation. If I walked in to a Best Buy and saw the only TV there was being sold for $10k, I'd walk out. But if I saw that one TV was $10k, but with slightly fewer features and slightly smaller size was less, then I have entered a negotiation where we agree on what I'll pay for a given feature set, but I may have anchored on the $10k figure already.

<comment><USER26> The point is not actually negotiation, but a perceived deal to be had. You don't have to think you can argue for a lower price, you just have to see that the TV is being sold for $10k, then see the "SALE!" sign next to it that tells you the TV is on sale for $3k. By then, you've already anchored to 10k, and the "negotiation" took 3 seconds.

Full negotiations will definitely drive some people away, but to use anchoring effectively, you can definitely advertised a "standard" price and the real price. With that, I don't see how you'd lose somebody based on that original, and you'd gain a few based on the perceived deal.

<comment><USER27> You're right. My point only applies when we're talking about making offers in a vacuum. This thread was discussing making offers or demands such as for salary, where there aren't different numbers floating around. In fact, if you were the first person to interview for a job and demanded a high price, the next guy might look like a bargain in comparison. It is when the other side believes there is room for negotiation that you can make a high/low offer and take advantage of anchoring. If they don't believe they can negotiate then you'll just drive them away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone have a good example of using this tactic in a web startup? (if it applies at all)

Our product has a setup fee + monthly fee ... is there a way to employ price anchoring on my landing or pricing pages?

</comment><comment><USER29> I am curious whether there are any examples of price anchoring for web apps. I know it is a very specific request, but if anyone knows such anchoring happening in web app space, please share the link.

<comment><USER30> How about this: <http://highrisehq.com/signup>

If most of their customers fall into the $24/month "basic plan" category, then the highlighted plan of $49/month makes the $24/month plan look like a steal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> oldest trick in the world. raise the price and discount it :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Wait, are you saying that for less than $500 I can get another device I have absolutely no use for? Oh man better than $999. I'm in!

He is right. I remember when I learned to bargan, at first I was like "They are asking for $10, how dare I ask for $1?" Now I know that by asking for $1 I am more likely to get $3 which is probably the real value of the product.

Before saying noone is immune, you must first talk to people who haggle EVERYTHING. Talk to them, hang out with them, look at how they look at the world because it is different. These techniques work quite differently on them.

It is not being told about these techniques, it is living them, just like while doing a test for a research, the researcher can't just tell you that they are actually grading you on your sense of balance, and expect you to never stumble, because that is not what your brain normally processes.

Anchoring works today because we are trained for it. Literally. In Russia I remember we never bought a peanut without reducing the price by 50%+. Here everything is labeled and final. Online everything is labeled and final, its not like you can open a chat with amazon's reps and get a book from $10 to $2 due to good haggling.

</comment><comment><USER33> That does not seem inexpensive when you take into account what you actually get.

</comment><comment><USER34> Another example of price anchoring: Points on Hacker news. I feel like this comment deserves 32 points. Can you meet my offer?

<comment><USER21> _1 point by josh33 5 hours ago_

Apparently not.

In fact, I'm sure I'll get modded down for this, but it seems to work the other way around; if you say "I'm sure I'll get modded down for this" then you'll get modded up. Of course since I've transparently pointed it out in this case I'm sure I actually will get modded down for this.

<comment><USER35> Correct.

<comment><USER21> I love it when I'm right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Agree with all the points on price anchoring... but $499 does not seem cheap to me at all for what you get with the entry level iPad. Maybe I need to watch Jobs presentation?

</comment><comment><USER37> In my opinion a $499 iPad doesn't cost enough. $499 does not reflect the true cost of the device in terms of materials, labor, and shipping. Your cheap iPad is subsidized by ripping off underpaid miners and workers in third world countries. Even if Apple makes sure their device is not assembled using slave labor they can't be sure that all the parts and materials were produced using fair labor practices, and the reality is that they probably weren't.

Price anchoring may make it seem inexpensive, but in truth it is inexpensive when you consider what it is and how much work went into creating it for you.

<comment><USER38> >>>Even if Apple makes sure their device is not assembled using slave labor they can't be sure that all the parts and materials were produced using fair labor practices, and the reality is that they probably weren't.

What company can say that, tho? What devices are we all using that contain, for example, Coltan? [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/magazine/the-dirt-in- the-n...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/magazine/the-dirt-in-the-new- machine.html?pagewanted=1&pagewanted=print)

Even here in America, think about meat packers and such. Every time you eat, you could be perpetuating a system you might want to change if you saw what it was.</comment></comment>


Troubles with Tesla's automated parking summon safety regulators - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-safety-nhtsa/u-s-auto-safety-agency-notes-tesla-accidents-with-smart-summon-feature-idUSKBN1WH280 <comment><USER2> The real problem here is that Tesla is operating under the assumption that people obey warnings they give them, and that they behave rationally around their luxury cars. They do not. In a perfectly rational world, people would read the warnings and understand the risks, and thus not "expect" the Tesla to detect things that it warns that it cannot detect.

The warnings say you need direct line of sight, that the system isn't perfect, and that it may not detect all obstacles. Even ones expected to be in parking lots. Those warnings all make sense, but the people recording the videos don't care. They're just pressing the button and being shocked that it doesn't work.

Ultimately, regulators will step in if they feel that people still get into crashes despite having the warnings. If the warnings don't stop people from doing stupid things, they'll require more warnings or kill the feature. Unfortunately for Tesla, the regulator focus is public safety (and the underlying statistics). If the tables turn then it doesn't matter how safe the feature is when used correctly. Instead, it matters how safe the feature is when used incorrectly.

And that will only hurt Tesla in the long run. And that's a shame, because it will make true self driving cars that much harder to get to market.

<comment><USER3> Tesla is incentivized to allow users to ignore their warnings, as it gives them a ton of real world data with which to train their algorithms, all the while using case law precedent around "intended use" to shield them from actual liability, even though the abuse is totally foreseeable and easy to prevent.

They've been doing this with Autopilot since the beginning: they have the demonstrated ability to restrict Autopilot to highways, which is the only intended use, but they choose not to flip this switch, so that they can use customers (and you, me, and your children) as guinea pigs and collect that sweet, sweet data, which they upload continuously to their servers.

<comment><USER4> Elon Musk just tweeted 500000+ parking summons since launch.

They certainly have the front seat compared to any other competitor when it comes to real world scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another point which needs to be brought up is insurance. If accidents are being caused by this technology, insurers are eventually going to either: increase rates on cars with FSD, or just stop offering insurance on cars with FSD.

IMO if Tesla were really confident in their summon technology, they would cover accidents with it themselves. Relying on errors with their technology to be covered by outside insurance is reckless.

<comment><USER6> > If accidents are being caused by this technology, insurers are eventually > going to either: increase rates on cars with FSD, or just stop offering > insurance on cars with FSD.

Or exclude use of FSD from coverage.

<comment><USER3> It's hard to verify Summon is in use when only Tesla has access to the data, and they're very uncooperative when it would make them look bad.

I wouldn't call it "FSD" except as a joke. Tesla is 15 years away from FSD.

<comment><USER6> > It's hard to verify Summon is in use when only Tesla has access to the data

Mathematical certainty, or even criminal-style proof beyond a reasonable doubt isn't required. The insurance company writes the rule in their policy, refuses to pay if they think there is sufficient evidence that the policy allows it, and if the insured disagrees they get to sue the insurance company over it, and the case will be decided on the civil preponderance of the evidence standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tried the V10 SW a few days ago. In sunny, dry weather, with no debris and 0 traffic. In a flat, well-maintained parking lot. A dog with a paper bag over its head would navigate better. I won't trust it until they are 10 iterations into it.

<comment><USER8> dogs have a keen sense of smell though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it funny that the US requires to have engraved "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear" on their mirror, and yet allow to sell cars with dubious autonomous driving claims which are misleading.

</comment><comment><USER10> "I expected the Tesla to 'see' it and stop, however I had to take my finger off the (app) button when I saw that my Tesla wasn't slowing down,"

Your car is not a fucking toy. He could have injured the occupants of the other car while he watched and filmed because he wanted to play with a cool feature without first learning how it works.

If you don't know what's going to happen, don't assume your automated car knows how to avoid a collision.

</comment><comment><USER11> If I drive drunk then I have to face legal consequences, even if I don't cause an accident. Just because of the higher probability of causing an accident.

Tesla on the other hand can freely release half baked software killing people, causing accidents with being 100% at fault and now threatening kids in shopping malls without any consequences.

<comment><USER12> You could have done that too if you had fame and money. In fact, celebrities get away with a lot of stuff that ordinary folks cannot.

I love what Tesla is doing to the auto industry but I don't like the idea if a company that's not accountable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As well they should, for a couple of reasons.

1\. Legally, just because you're a licensed driver does not mean you've been licensed to remote-operate a car, while standing on the sideline, in a pedestrian-heavy environment, where your line of sight, and your vehicle's path of travel is obstructed by hazards.

2\. Teslas seem incapable of reliable collision avoidance, so you can't just expect your car to do the right thing.

<comment><USER14> Teslas seem perfectly capable of avoiding collisions so you're wrong

<comment><USER15> From the article: " One posted a video of a Tesla striking a garage wall and another of a Tesla being struck by a vehicle backing up."

<comment><USER14> please explain how the tesla is supposed to avoid a car backing up into it

<comment><USER13> Please explain how the Tesla was not at fault in this video:

[https://twitter.com/eiddor/status/1177749574976462848](https://twitter.com/eiddor/status/1177749574976462848)

The driver had to hit an e-stop, to prevent an accident.

And also, while we're at it, please explain how a self-driving car that is incapable of seeing that it's going to get t-boned, if it crosses an intersection where it does not have the right of way is in any way ready for the public.

<comment><USER14> We have no idea if the Tesla would have stopped itself - im positive the driver releasing the button wouldn't have the reaction time the car did thus proving the car was avoiding the accident by itself. get worked idiot

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe Tesla is coaxing insurers into disallowing claims when using summon. This would the force Tesla customers to switch to Tesla insurance.

</comment><comment><USER17> How much authority do they have on private property? If I buy a farm who has the authority to stop me from driving remote control or autonomous cars on that farm? If i make that farm accessible to the public to buy my vegetables how does that change?

<comment><USER18> What happens on your private property is your business... up until the point you allow public access. If public has access then normal laws governing motor vehicles are applicable even on your private property.

<comment><USER19> >If public has access then normal laws governing motor vehicles are applicable

Laws certainly apply, but not necessarily "normal laws governing motor vehicles". For example, you probably can't be ticketed for running a stop sign in a parking lot on private property. However, you would almost certainly be liable for damage if running that stop sign caused an accident and you could be potentially charged with some type of generic reckless driving offense. Obviously the laws vary by jurisdiction.

<comment><USER20> As you say, it depends on the jurisdiction.

Here (Australia) the rules define "road related areas" as including private property that does not have a "normally locked gate" protecting access.

This means all road rules (including stop signs, alcohol/drug rules, mobile phone use, and speed limits) apply in places like publicly accessible carparks on private property, and homeowner's driveways if they do not have a "normally locked gate". People have been booked for drink driving and mobile phone use sitting in their cars in their own driveways here (almost certainly after "failing the attitude test" and pissing a cop off enough for them to punitively enforce a stupid interpretation of a poorly written law, but that's a different rant...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yet another dumb boneheaded Elon move from Tesla ... cars are not browsers.

It is one thing to test "beta" software on your PC but it is a totally another thing when it can actually kill people.

They should look at how medical devices are developed and certified.

</comment><comment><USER22> Recent and related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21105388](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21105388)

</comment><comment><USER23> So everyone who has this feature purchased the full autonomous future upgrade for $6000.

Does anyone really think that will become a reality before the cars end of life?</comment>


DDD and co., part 5: Event sourcing - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenativeweb.io/blog/2017-11-27-15-17-ddd-and-co-part-5-event-sourcing/ <comment><USER2> It's funny how event sourcing is being reinvented.

On the backend it's called event sourcing, on the frontend it's called flux / redux. Both have their own jargon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, basically Flux / Redux are just implementations of the underlying pattern (and yes, that's everything but new).</comment></comment>


What drives stock market returns - <AUTHOR> https://outlookzen.com/2018/10/27/where-do-stock-market-returns-come-from/ <comment><USER2> inflation.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some cool and useful hacker sites? - <AUTHOR>

Some sites – like HackerNews – just make life easier/better.  Here's a list of ones I've found over the last year.
Do you know of any sites that should be on this list?
Cool/useful sites:
TED – life changing talks
Fiverr – random stuff just $5
Quora - Q&A made cool and fun
StackOverflow – Q&A for coding
Flippa – buy and sell websites <comment><USER2> If you enjoy TED talks, you might also like doLectures (<http://www.dolectures.com>). They aren't "life changing" per se, but some of the talks offer new and interesting perspective.

For example: [http://www.dolectures.com/lectures/why-you-should-have-a- par...](http://www.dolectures.com/lectures/why-you-should-have-a-party- everyday/)

<comment><USER3> On the same theme of general interest talks by specialists, I'm quite a fan of the Long Now Foundation podcasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://Sparkfun.com> for electronics - best tuts I've ever seen

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://nettuts.com> The best dev tutorials

<comment><USER6> This place is definitely nice.

One thing I've found with even very basic tutorials on something, is that if you read through it carefully, write each character of the code by yourself -- something will click, and it'll stick with you. Skimming never works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://lifehacker.com> "Tips, tricks, and downloads for getting things done."

<comment><USER8> I really dislike the redesign :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> <https://www.owasp.org> to learn about web application security</comment>


Ask HN: Which single product would you sell online if you could sell only one? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a philosophical business question for the HN community:

Let's suppose that you had to choose one single physical product, just one, from every physical product known to man.

And let's suppose that you were going to sell it online, on your own website.

So the "rules of the game" for this thought exercise are as follows:

1) You're not selling Software, SAAS or a service.

2) You're selling a physical, packaged product that will be shipped to a customer that orders it.

3) You may not use Amazon's website in any way (i.e., via its partner programs) to advertise or take orders for your product.

4) You're using your own website, that is, you're not using traffic from someone else's website (Squarespace, etc.)

Now, which product (it can only be one single physical product) do you pick to sell and why?

A simple answer might be something like "You find the product which Amazon sells the most of, Amazon's current #1 bestseller... and you sell that".

But that's not a well thought out answer ( _I care more about the thinking process than the actual answer_ ), because then my challenge question would be this: "OK, but you do realize that Amazon probably gets a deep volume discount from the product that is their #1 bestseller... how do you propose to do that if you don't have any volume?"

What I'm looking for is thought.

Tell me the one physical product you would sell, and WHY.

Let's have an interesting discussion!

Also, I'm not doing this to make anyone look wrong or stupid... what I am interested in are ideas, lots of ideas!

<comment><USER2> I have a domain NasalStripClub.com

Why?

Subscription, reusable.

Modeled after DollarShaveClub

The Viral Video's write themselves.

Couple in bed. husband snoring...Wife says I would do anything for you to stop snoring...anything...

Could add other snore related products..

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea! Yes, I could see that working!

What other interesting ideas does the community have?</comment></comment></comment>


Lispkit – A Lisp browser using WebKit - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AeroNotix/lispkit

<comment><USER2> Ahem, this is a thin UI wrapper around a browser engine written in C++ called WebKit, the main UI elements being in reality a thin lisp wrapper around a C UI framework called GTK.

Calling this a Lisp browser is like using Xmonad and calling Linux a Haskell Operating System.

<comment><USER3> Author here.

Using that logic you can reduce a whole _heap_ of things down to just "thin wrappers".

Yes, LispKit is a wrapper around a C++/C browser library. But would you really want someone writing _yet another browser implementation_ in 2014? It's just not good engineering to rewrite things such as that. They're complicated, filled with security edge cases and would take a substantial amount of time compared to "just" writing a wrapper library.

In reality, LispKit exposes the WebKit API through Lisp using a bunch of relatively idiomatic (if I do say so myself!) functions and macros. For the most part it seems as if Lispkit was built from the ground up in Lisp. It does not feel like a "thin wrapper".

<comment><USER2> Fantastic!

Wrapping WebKit is a great idea. I mean it generally hasn't worked well for other libraries that have tried it, none of them have managed to avoid lots and lots of bugs and quirky behavior, but maybe you do, so congratulations.

My only point is that this isn't a browser written in Lisp. It's not even remotely close to that! Yet that is what the title of the HN story implies. But it's not that, it's a wrapper, which is not what the title says, so I mentioned that. You are agreeing with me except you seem to think I'm implying something bad, which I'm not, beyond all the things implied by the facts, such as:

It does inevitably just feel like a thin wrapper. There is no way for a lisp hacker to get in there and play with it, or take this work and extend it using lisp. They can change how WebKit is wrapped, but changing or extending WebKit's behavior means digging into WebKit's millions of lines of C++.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good to see people experimenting with SBCL, gtk and webkit. I'll hope we see more of that...

</comment><comment><USER5> Limp Lispkit would be a much cooler name.

<comment><USER3> Got a chuckle out of me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks pretty neat!

I've started writing a scraper around the WebKit implementation that comes with Java 8 in Clojure. Lately I've been toying with the idea of trying to put a Conkeror-like browser together that's extensible (well, to some degree) with Clojure code.

[https://github.com/cmiles74/scraper](https://github.com/cmiles74/scraper)

</comment><comment><USER7> What would it take to embed webkit in emacs proper?

<comment><USER3> Work is already underway with this, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is a Lisp browser a browser of Lisp code, or a web browser in Lisp? I won't watch a video to find out, and it wasn't immediately obvious from the source code.

<comment> vertex-four It probably took you longer to write that than to click a video and fast- forward to about half-way in to see.

<comment><USER9> Video is the worst media possible. If something is not clear from a plain text, it's quite likely something worthless.

It is really annoying that so many people are producing useless video content now instead of writing nice, clean text.

<comment><USER10> I agree 100%. All kinds of "tutorials" in video format are almost the worst. It's not searchable etc. I'm expected to grab headphones and watch the whole thing in order to learn that one thing.

<comment><USER11> I couldn't agree more, but we're in the minority. But if I see a project/company has limited its marketing/explanation to video only, I just close the browser tab. I can't stand watching a 10-minute video for an explanation, when reading a brief, well-written paragraph could give me all the info I need.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why we should all be using Windows 95 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Imaginary_Cloud/why-we-should-all-be-using-windows-95-5b63ad50e9e8 <comment><USER2> >What really stands out are the main qualities that Windows 95, as a product, had and that are not common nowadays. It had a memorable launch, it was honest regarding its objectives, focused on the user, objective and transparent.

Maybe it's because I wasn't paying attention to computer stuff in '95, but I found the author's focus on "a memorable launch" somewhat out of place compared to the rest of the essay.

<comment><USER3> I think the talk about the launch helps highlight that 95 was worthy of a launch, it was actual innovation and they threw it a party. However, I also agree that the initial focus on it is a bit unbalanced with what I consider the main argument later.

<comment><USER4> It was a big deal. The Stones got paid $3 million for the use of Start Me Up in a win95 commercial. [https://www.networkworld.com/article/2220097/data- center/wha...](https://www.networkworld.com/article/2220097/data-center/what- microsoft-paid-the-stones-to-help-launch-windows-95.html)

<comment><USER5> That was a milestone on the software industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shameless plug: modern computers are fast enough you can run it in a web browser.

[https://win95.ajf.me/](https://win95.ajf.me/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Now that's something worth the investment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Chicago build of Windows 95 was one of the most stable OSes I've ever encountered. I had a machine that ran it 24/7 with zero issues into the early 2000s until the power supply fried.

<comment><USER8> Windows 95 had a bug which could crash it after about 50 days of uptime:

[https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-may-crash- after-49-7-days/](https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-may-crash- after-49-7-days/)

<comment><USER9> For those wondering: the actual limit was 2³² milliseconds (and I remember it as _would_ crash, not _could_ crash)

<comment><USER8> I remember never having any system with Windows 9x stay up long enough to even come close to the required uptime to test the veracity of this bug report. We tried with a machine which didn't do anything at all but even that one crashed by itself in a week or two, probably due to some network traffic it didn't like. In that time I worked as editor in chief for some IT-related magazines so we had a lab full of machines to test and got invited to all the press conferences - including the one mentioned here with Gates and the Stones. I still think the later part of that Stones' song they used were a better fit than the 'You can start me up' line:

You make a grown man cry, You make a grown man cry

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "most web designs out there could surely learn a lot from how Windows 95 solved so many problems by thinking about how target users would deal with their product"

They weren't thinking about it; they were actually testing it with users.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, what does the author think Web designers do all day?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Windows 95 really made Windows better than MacOS at that time. I had to develop software for both at that time and the truth was, Windows was just better. People would defend Macs very strongly at that time, but in my experience it was because they had developed a preference.

<comment><USER5> I was a software developer back then, and I don't remember seeing a single Mac. On the other hand, Windows 95 was everywhere.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that too. PC hardware was getting really cheap so it was common. It is really amazing that they came back from the mid '90s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Windows 95 main objective was to allow you to use a computer easily.

>And it did just that.

That's true. Nowadays, if an OS _only_ gave you the ability to use a computer easily, would people like it or hate it?

I don't know. What does Windows 10 provide beyond the ability to use a computer?

<comment><USER14> That's a big part of the continuing appeal of Apple in spite of some of their mis-steps. My Mac _mostly_ just gives me a working system that keeps working and is mostly devoid of crap. The crap it does have can generally be disabled.

<comment><USER5> Second that. And the fact it can run MS Office.

You can get some versions of Linux that are pretty stable with the right hardware, but the lack of MS Office is a total bummer.

PS: First person to say that one can run MS Office using Wine, will get nailed to a tree.

<comment><USER15> Is there a particular reason LibreOffice is not sufficient?

I rarely use MS Office like software so using LibreOffice has been perfectly fine for me.

<comment><USER16> LibreOffice is absolutely awful from an UX point of view. That's enough to put me off personally.

If you're an office expert you'd probably figure out how to use it, but for me I've only used an office suite maybe a dozen times in my life so I'm very new to it, and latest Office 2016 allows me to get started easily (the much-hated Ribbon UI works for me and is intuitive), where as I find myself Googling all the time to do even the basic stuff in LibreOffice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Windows 95 didn't really offer much in the way of anything over Windows 3.11 for the everyday user. I remember everyone complaining about how it used 2x as much RAM and made their 486/25 and 386/40 systems unusable.

Sure, the interface was a little bit better, but Program Manager wasn't terrible. The 'desktop' is probably one of the worst UI concepts developed. Multi-tasking was a little better, but 16-bit apps could still wreck stuff, and the same went for memory protection. It crashed just as damn much.

<comment><USER18> I could run Lotus Notes and Excel at the same time without either crashing, which had been impossible until I'd upgraded the PC.

Yeah, it crashed, but people forget how horribly unstable 3.11 was.

<comment><USER19> Notes and Excel as apps were quite stable on Win95 in my experience.

On the other hand, I found anything made by Corel to be extremely fragile in the early days of Win95.

<comment><USER17> >> anything made by Corel to be extremely fragile

Quark and Adobe weren't any better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Windows 10 will be our best enterprise platform ever and will enable our enterprise customers to be more productive than ever before, simplifying management and deployment for IT and working seamlessly with existing enterprise apps.

Quote from the Windows 10 launch that the writer is complaining about

>Our Product Design Process ™ includes multiple stages like benchmarking, UX, UI design, design of the technical architecture and development of the project plan.

>We apply the Software Development best practices and operate with a quality mindset.

Quotes from the website of the company that wrote the article.

It seems hypocritical to complain that the Windows 10 launch was full of dubious statements when you are doing the same thing yourself.

>It had a memorable launch, it was honest regarding its objectives, focused on the user, objective and transparent.

Really? This is your argument for why we should look to Windows 95 for inspiration? Who cares about whether a launch is memorable? I doubt that the launch of Windows 95 is actually memorable for anyone outside of the tech bubble, anyways.

Honesty regarding objectives is a somewhat reasonable complaint but compared to Windows 10 I don't see why someone would say that 95 was more honest about its intentions. They seem to be making this a dig at Facebook but I don't see why Facebook should be compared to an operating system in this respect.

I honestly have no clue what they mean by saying that Windows 95 was objective. Transparent is pretty much the same as "honest regarding it's objectives". Focused on the user is a good thing but they haven't made a case that today's products _aren 't_ focused on the user.

[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Zt8F-ZqANVVbq4T5VU...](https://cdn- images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*Zt8F-ZqANVVbq4T5VUOzcA.png)

This chart seems to be saying that computers today have less utility than a computer from 1995 running Windows 95. I don't think I even need to describe why that notion is ridiculous.

For those of you that came to the comments without reading the article, don't bother. It's just a poor attempt at marketing by some UI design company.

<comment><USER21> Hypocrisy on the side of author is a logically false argument about the actual content.

I can be a murdering psychopath and express in my memoirs from prison that while I love killin', murder is immoral. Murder is still widely accepted as being immoral regardless of who asserts the opinion.

That aside I found the article's author heavily corralled observations to support his opinion.

> I'm not trying to compare operating systems with social media or mobile > applications,

Yes, yes you are.

> I'm not saying we should solve every UI and UX issue with a start menu

I find it hard to actually understand what the author is really saying, perhaps he/she is saying nothing at all. The irony about substance and honesty isn't lost on me.

<comment><USER20> I agree that hypocrisy doesn't refute their argument but it does demonstrate that the author themselves either doesn't believe what they're writing _or_ they have some other unknown reason for being hypocritical.

Seeing as no other reason was expressed in the article, I am comfortable taking the hypocrisy as a sign that the they don't believe what they're writing. In my experience, this usually means they are trying to sell me something.

<comment><USER21> Sorta feel the same way since the article really has zero substance. I hate being cynical but the days of Win95 transparency are truly over.

<comment><USER20> They're not all the way dead yet. Sublime text seems to be very transparent, in a 90's software sense. Pay some money, get some software, keep it forever. I'm sure there are other examples out there too. It does seem unlikely that any software like that will be as widespread as Windows 95 was, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not to talk specifically about Windows 95, but older is better in regarding that until Windows 8 desktop composition could be turned off, which is a major source of latency [1]. I surely do miss that.

[http://www.lofibucket.com/articles/dwm_latency.html](http://www.lofibucket.com/articles/dwm_latency.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> If anyone had told me that Windows 95 A didn't play well with SCSI (Adaptec AHA-2940AU and a Teac CD-R 55s) that would have save saved me like 20 reinstalls. Yeah, maybe having access to the internet would've also worked. Also kind of interesting that I didn't have to google for these 2 exact product names after what, 20 years? :)

</comment><comment><USER8> While it might be true that the step from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 was more of an improvement for Windows-users (but not so much for those using OS/2, its main contender at that time) the author does seem to view history through rosy glasses. Windows 95, just like its predecessors and its successors Windows 98 and (especially) Windows ME was hampered by it being built on top of MS-DOS, remnants of which would rear their ugly heads in many situations. It was all too easy to bring down the whole system by a single malfunctioning program, Windows itself and especially many third-party drivers were riddled with bugs which would cause it to 'blue-screen', Microsoft's in itself admirable drive for backward compatibility caused many problems from earlier days to linger around. Network security was a mess, it was trivial to bring down whole office farms by sending packets with a few bits in the right positions. The lack of library versioning ('DLL hell') meant that installing program A could stop program B - or even the whole system - from working. On the topic of installing and removing programs, this was still a hit and miss affair with all programs using their own installers, many of which lacked functioning uninstallers, others which left loads of crud around.

In short, Windows 95 (and 98, and ME) was a card house built on quicksand. Windows NT 3.x made good on the promise of stability at the cost of performance and resource consumption. Windows NT 4.x improved performance at the cost of stability by moving drivers - which in earlier versions ran in user space - back into kernel space. Windows 2000 was probably the most balanced version, XP coming in second (after removing the Fisher-Price interface that is...). Given that many of the long-standing problems with Windows still have to be fixed I don't see any utility in the later versions, Windows 7 included. For those looking for an operating system to do the 'usual stuff' \- internet-related activities, document processing, some multimedia - one of the more polished Linux distributions - Ubuntu, Mint, etc - is a much better choice which will save the user many a frustrating moment. If you need to run Windows-only software wine might be an option, otherwise just run it in a VM using Windows 2000 or XP if possible.

Windows on the server has been a no-starter from the beginning, this is not even worth discussing. The only reason for using it is running something like Microsoft Exchange, the question here is whether this is worth the hassle of having a Windows-based server park.

<comment><USER24> _Windows NT 4.x improved performance at the cost of stability by moving drivers - which in earlier versions ran in user space - back into kernel space._

I ran NT4 for a number of years, and it remains by far my favorite windows version. Maybe it wasn't stable enough to run a server (although I've heard otherwise, with uptimes measured in years), but I have no recollection of it crashing. It was essentially a modern OS that could happily run in 32 MB of RAM, which isn't even enough these days to launch a single windows program.

My favorite desktop OS overall is BeOS R5. It was just so much fun to use. Not actually very useful, with the lack of apps, but definitely fun.

<comment><USER25> > My favorite desktop OS overall is BeOS R5. It was just so much fun to use. > Not actually very useful, with the lack of apps, but definitely fun.

You should check out Haiku, then. The same old BeOS R5 desktop you remember, with modern customizeability, a package manager, and tons of ported software. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In terms of stability and performance, with work and gaming capabilities, Windows NT4 Service Pack 3 (IIRC) was the sweet spot for me. I could use my Windows NT workstation for gaming with DirectX support. It was both snappy and solid.

The sweet spot OS for me at the moment is Ubuntu MATE.

<comment><USER5> Slackware 4 ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Why we should all be using Windows 95

I use a Gtk2-derived desktop environment (Cinnamon/MATE/Xfce), which is heavily Windows 95-inspired in its UI, so I'd say I have the next best thing. Plus FLOSS.

</comment><comment><USER18> Windows 95 was extremely secure by default. No TCP stack, no web browser.

<comment><USER5> Good point. On the other hand, PEBCAK was much worst back then, as people were still trying to understand what a computer was.

<comment><USER28> > people were still trying to understand what a computer was

Did they succeed, or did we (meaning the tech industry) just change the abstractions that are presented to the use to match what they _thought_ a computer was?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Clickbait title, should be something like "What Windows 95 did right" or "Product design lessons from Windows 95".

Also, the article is crap.

</comment><comment><USER30> The curse of capitalism in software (and to a large extent, hardware) businesses. It provides great leaps every once in a while. If you want to call Win95 such a leap, okay, or maybe the better versions of OSX or MacOS were great leaps. You can find great leaps on the hardware side, HP's early printers, the iPhone, etc. But businesses can't sustain themselves with incremental improvements between those great leaps, so a pathology develops.

Companies tend to resort to a release schedule that packages a bunch of necessary and useful refinements with more flash, changed UI, and added partially-broken features. That ends up making the products worse by removing functionality some users depend on, making the products slower or less efficient in some cases, and requiring users to re-learn interfaces.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe that Windows 95 was a huge leap, but it's not the only good example we have of products that changed the game for any given industry (and computers in particular, as well).

Windows 98, for example, was a better version of the OS, in almost every aspect, but it was not as important as Win95.

<comment><USER31> Minus Windows ME Microsoft was delivering amazing updates that increased stability and added useful features in the 95 -> XP years. Then as XP started aging OS X really began to pick up steam peaking with the 2009 release of Snow Leopard. Since then we've been in a bit of a rut with both Windows and MacOS.

We are about due for something to shake things up, but I'm not really sure what that is going to be. Maybe it's Chromebooks, or tablets, but it seems like they'd have taken off already. Maybe we are just waiting for someone to drop a revolutionary release and suddenly it will be obvious in hindsight. I'm excited to see what's coming next though.

<comment><USER28> I think the revolution is happening slowly and going largely unnoticed, because it's different than we expect it to be.

Personally, I've ditched my personal laptop and moved to an LTE iPad full- time. Between native apps, web apps through Safari, and access to a remote server over MOSH I have everything I need in a mobile computing device. For "real work", I have a MBP that my employer provides... but honestly, I probably don't get enough utility from it to justify the cost. I could work at ~90% capacity from my iPad. If more people adopt my approach, in time we'll see things like full IDEs on iOS and Android that operate against a remote server.

I think Windows and macOS will continue to dominate the desktop environment for the foreseeable future and continue with evolutionary updates, but people will be using mobile phones, tablets, and eventually wearables to do more and more of what they used to do on a desktop OS. We're seeing a slow but thorough redefinition of what people see as a "computer".

I'm looking forward to the rise of AR. VR still feels like it's in its infancy to me; it's fun to play with and you can see the potential, but the real utility hasn't become apparent to the world and won't until several more iterations have happened. I believe the future will look more like Google Glass than Windows 95.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GeenPeil has obtained the necessary 300 000 signatures for a referendum - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nu.nl%2Fpolitiek%2F4134112%2Fgeenpeil-haalt-445000-handtekeningen-referendum.html&edit-text=&act=url <comment><USER2> Democracy prevails! They open sourced the application which was used to collect and print all the signatures required to make the referendum happen: [https://github.com/GeenPeil/teken](https://github.com/GeenPeil/teken)</comment>


Ask HN: Flashcard software (spaced repetition learning)? - <AUTHOR>

Help a student out.
Preferable OSX but feel free to add anything that is relevant.<p>Studying tips are also welcomed. <comment><USER2> Checkout [http://www.studyshuffle.com/](http://www.studyshuffle.com/) and [http://quizlet.com/](http://quizlet.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Anki is well used and well regarded for this:

[http://ankisrs.net/](http://ankisrs.net/)

Windows, Mac, free</comment>


Los Angeles Just Proposed the Worst Use of License Plate Reader Data - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nselby/los-angeles-just-proposed-the-worst-use-of-license-plate-reader-data-in-history-702c35733b50 <comment><USER2> Another reason I don't put a license plate on my car. If I ever get caught, it's just a fix-it ticket, which I'll correct and then promptly remove the plates again.

<comment><USER3> That can't be true, right?

<comment><USER2> The penalty for not having a license plate mounted on the car is $25 and proof of correction. You can have it signed off at your local highway patrol office. There is no additional penalty for repeat violations as far as I know.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Refback Still Matters - <AUTHOR> https://gkbrk.com/2016/08/why-refback-still-matters/ <comment><USER2> Webmention implementations usually automatically check that there's an actual link. You can go even further and require not just a link, but a proper microformats2 reply/like/repost.

<comment><USER3> > Webmention implementations usually automatically check that there's an > actual link.

So do trackback and pingback implementations of every major blogging software

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The corner popup is super annoying here - not because it popped up at all, but because it stole KB focus and my down arrow key stopped working to cycle through my available email autofill options. :(

<comment><USER5> Sadly, I can reproduce this. I will look into this issue and disable the scroll box for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds great. How do we implement this?

<comment><USER4> I'm going to be a bit obtuse and say "start with IndieWeb". The author talks about webmentions being super interesting, but low penetration.

Best thing to do is start with yourself, and indieweb solves a bunch of related problems at the same time.

[http://indieweb.org/](http://indieweb.org/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: WebGL Cube Snake Game - plays itself using Dijkstra's algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://mhluska.com/projects/snakeception/ <comment><USER2> Cool but i kinda wanna play it myself :)

<comment><USER3> You can if you press the arrow keys!</comment></comment>


It's my stack frame, I don't care about your stack frame - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.embarcadero.com/abauer/2010/01/14/38904

<comment><USER2> After a bit of googling I found this:

 _The caller ensures that the stack is 16-byte aligned at the point of the function call.

"At the point of the function call" means just before the CALL instruction is executed, the top of the stack. No further explanation is given, but an inference can be made: the Darwin kernel is using SIMD instructions to quickly move data on the stack, possibly during context switches._

[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~weinrich/papers/method_dispatch.pd...](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~weinrich/papers/method_dispatch.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> The x86_64 ABI mandates a 16 byte aligned stack. I think Apple's just doing it in their 32-bit ABI as well to keep it consistent.

Regardless of the rationale, it _really_ isn't a big deal at all. He'll need to jump through the stack alignment hoops anyway when he gets to finishing his 64-bit compiler, and so what if he has to do the same with the 32-bit compiler?

<comment><USER4> It really is a big deal when you have an unknown amount of customer's hand- coded 32-bit assembly that needs to be reviewed in order to target the platform. 64-bit is an orange in this comparison of the Apple; that's a separate architecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Eh? If the MacOS ABI says your stack alignment must be 16 bytes, then it must be 16 bytes. It's not any different than other platforms mandating a particular stack alignment, except that stack alignment on x86 is "usually" 4 bytes. Either way, some alignment is dictated by the platform's ABI, so the MacOS 16-byte stack alignment really shouldn't be _that_ surprising. Sure, it's a bit different than "most" x86 ABIs, but so what?

I agree that the ABI could use the convention that the callee sets ESP to have whatever alignment it wants, if needed for its SSE ops or whatever. But really, why care? Sure, it'd be interesting to hear the rationale... but in the end, we just have to follow the ABI, and mandating 16-byte stack alignment isn't all that crazy.

<comment><USER4> It's "so what" because it hurts the portability of other software to the platform. It's a bad business decision because it increases the costs of third parties supporting the platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could it be that it's a PPC emulation thing? If an Intel binary can load a PPC lib, then the calls between them would have to follow the same rules (and perhaps PPC wants things 16 byte alinged?).

<comment><USER7> Intel binaries can't load PPC libs. Rosetta can be used to run (most) PPC binaries, but that's translation (in userland, I understand.)

Consider a call to "void f(long x)": this means very different things for i386 code (long is 32-bit, little-endian) and Mac powerpc code (long is 64-bit, big-endian).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Presumably, Apple is relying on SSE for floating point, like x86-64 does. _That_ certainly is both faster and simpler than dealing with the bizarre x87.

And you don't have to insert extra code at all call sites. You can assume that _your_ stack is correctly aligned at entry too, so if you just make your stack frame a multiple of 16 bytes, you'll be fine.

<comment><USER9> Most compilers produce exclusively SSE instructions for floating point these days (unless you're explicitly generating code for machines that don't support it). But the stack doesn't need to be aligned at the call site for this, it can be done in the preamble of whatever function uses it (it costs one BAND instruction).

The stack is not aligned at function entry because the CALL instruction pushes the address on the stack, thus having alignment at the call site forces the stack to be unaligned at function entry, however, it is unaligned by a known amount so you can produce aligned addresses by subtracting a constant value (skipping the BAND instruction). The featured rant misses this point, you get aligned addresses just as easily at the bottom of your frame as at the top.

<comment><USER8> Right, "just make your stack frame a multiple of 16 bytes" was wrong; I should have said "just make your stack frame 16 * k - 4 bytes long". This is basically free because the size of the stack frame is known at compile time.

Realigning the stack at _runtime_ though, is expensive and complicated.

<comment><USER9> Aligning the stack at runtime is one instruction in the preamble so it's not a big deal, especially if the function is big enough to have non-register SSE locals. Also, when using VLAs, it's not optional. I use SSE all the time and have no problems with the alignment requirements, but it's not really a performance issue and I'm doubtful that it was worth the time for people to learn and deal with this idiosyncrasy.

<comment><USER8> You need to restore the stack to what it was before on return. Normally you can easily do that because you know the stack pointer delta at compile time. But when realigning at runtime, you don't, so you need to compute the difference and then store that somewhere, and on return you have to read that back and add it to the stack pointer.

Or is there some trick that I'm missing?

<comment><USER9> It's in the frame pointer.

Edit: You're right, optimized code might not save the frame pointer and this wouldn't provide any benefit if your frame had unknown size. But usually the preamble saves the old ESP in EBP and it is restored at the end. Maybe there is another alternative.

<comment><USER8> Hmm, I was actually about to edit my comment to say that _you_ are right because usually you'll store the old stack pointer as the new base pointer.

I guess the answer is that realigning at runtime costs a register, but most code has to pay that cost anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I find more interesting is that this is from the Embarcadero blog. Does this mean we'll have Delphi on the Mac soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that has been announced for a while.

There's no specific timeframes (and it looks a bit outdated), but here's the latest roadmap:

<http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39934></comment></comment>


Show HN: New project for on-demand chat rooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.urshoutbox.com/bLmYAL/hacker-news I created a pet project to see if it is of use and interesting to people.  The idea is on-demand real-time chat rooms for trending topics and for personal use.  You can go to the main page at www.urshoutbox.com to create your own room then share it across your social networks/email, etc.
I created a hacker news specific "shoutbox" at http://www.urshoutbox.com/bLmYAL/hacker-news . If nobody is in there, please be patient and (I hope) people will join soon to start talking.
The idea is to have trending topics on facebook/twitter/etc and have chat rooms to get people discussing in real time.  The idea came from looking at popular blogs and news sites which have comment sections where people are posting so quickly trying to have what appears to be almost real-time conversations in a limited way.  This is meant to get those conversations in a more real-time appropriate environment.
Think of it as irc but for today's clients.  I'm surprised that there wasn't really similar options out there.  Most of today's chat tools are either mobile only, require video, or limit the number of participants.  If you know of competitors in this space and I'm just an idiot for not finding them, please let me know.
I look forward to hearing people's thoughts. <comment><USER2> This post set off the voting ring detector, but I turned it off because we want to see original work on HN.

All: A voting ring is when people get their friends to upvote their posts. This is against the rules—we want stories because they're good, not because they're being promoted. Also, it's not in your interests to do, because even when we restore a post's rank, other penalties for ring-voting still apply.

Also, the OP included a long text description, but those don't show up when the story has a URL. You can post it as a comment in the thread. (tdondich, if you don't have the text handy anymore, email email@example.com and I'll send it to you).

<comment><USER3> How do you determine that it's a voting ring scenario? I'm not necessarily looking for specifics. Just wondering what the basis is for saying X upvotes came from friends. Or these two people are friends.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I logged in with a username that was a few hundred kilobytes long. Couple of seconds later the service goes down. Could just be a coincidence.

<comment><USER4> I love that the HN version of kicking the tires is a battery of exploits.

<comment><USER5> That's how you test a service: just put it on HN. If the traffic does not take it down, it's the hackers around here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm so sorry. I crashed your room. Can I send you an e-mail saying how I did it?

EDIT: I hesitate to post my e-mail to HN or to paste publicly how I did it, but it was trivial. Reply with your e-mail and I'll show you how I did it. It's probably a simple fix.

<comment><USER7> I love how the last thing he said was "well I had to do some sanitization if I'm going to submit it to a place called Hacker News. Otherwise I'd get owned pretty quickly".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. That didn't take long!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We are currently developing the similar chatroom service. [https://www.underline.io/chat/hackernews](https://www.underline.io/chat/hackernews) Since we are developing, it's not reliable.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm sorry. I pasted all emoji's from the cheat sheet and it crashed...

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, I'll need to put in a character limit. Thanks for the input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It continues to ask me for a username, even after I tried several of varying lengths with simple alphanumerics. I'm on Chrome for Android, FWIW.

</comment><comment><USER11> You mean, like IRC?

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit, but more available to people and quick to share.

<comment><USER12> There are plenty of web IRC clients.

<comment><USER13> but any good one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Woops, there it goes again. This time the page says "Bummer." No files overwritten or..?!

Edit a minute later: and back.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've moved the server to one with more resources. It should be back up now. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> And then it died :P

> The Chat Server connection was terminated.

> The Chat Server is currently unavailable.

<comment><USER6> That was my fault. I was fiddling around and played with sending some raw data over the socket, then it crashed.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm moving the server right now. Will give an update.

</comment><comment><USER14> It makes safari cry on an iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love how it amateurishly it crashes. could be a handy HN hangout place to vent or troll.

PS. Don't get me wrong people, i DO love it, but it just seems to crash too easily. These things happen to all of us. It could still be a cool place to hang out and vent on HN.

<comment><USER16> really wishing i had downvote powers right about now. since i dont, let me just pipe in with a comment about how arrogant this comment is. good software developers arent born, they're trained. you really should be constructive in your criticism.

<comment><USER15> i provided enough constructive feedback to the maker on his chat.

<comment><USER16> cool. your original comment just came off very insulting and not terribly insightful/valuable. glad you gave him some pointers elsewhere</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Russian robot escapes lab. Again. - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/55164-russian-robot-escapes-lab-again.html <comment><USER2> TL;DR possibly a promotional trick since the company had just announced new products.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Blocked a lane of traffic for 40 minutes

Curious on the 40 minutes here. Why'd it take so long to recover?

<comment><USER4> Well, they had to take as many publicity photos as they could of course..</comment></comment>


Node v10.20.1 (LTS) - <AUTHOR> https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v10.20.1 <comment><USER2> > Due to release process failures, Node.js v10.20.0 shipped with source and > header tarballs that did not properly match the final release commit that > was used to build the binaries. We recommend that Node.js v10.20.0 not be > used, particularly in any applications using native add-ons or where > compiling Node.js from source is involved.

Yeeeeesh.</comment>


Show HN: Don't let me get hangry - <AUTHOR> http://dontletmegethangry.com

<comment><USER2> After visiting your website I have no idea what it is.</comment>