NASA Announces Design for New Deep Space Exploration System - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/sls1.html

<comment><USER3> "...kids today can now dream of one day walking on Mars."

Hell, I dreamed of walking on Mars when I worked on the Apollo Project. I never dreamed that 2011 would come and we would never have even gone back to the moon. It makes me regret even more that I never made the trek to Florida to see a Saturn V launch.

<comment><USER4> Expand on this, please.

<comment><USER5> I was fascinated, so I dug through Russell's comment history - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2746192>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Chinese explored the Middle East and Africa almost 100 years before the Europeans. Every expedition consisted of 300 ships, some as long as 400 feet with 9 mast and an armada crew totaling 28,000 men. After 30 years of doing it they realized that they were spending too much money on these grand expeditions. The succeeding emperor ended the program. The Europeans on the other hand would send out just a few ships and try to find ways for the expeditions to be profitable (Slaves, gold, land, colonies) in ways the Chinese never thought. These smaller European expeditions could not be stopped by one emperor because Europe was not a unified empire like China. The smaller European kingdoms also competed against each other. This not only made the expeditions sustainable but thrive for the next 500 years. Right now I think we are in China's situation 600 years ago. We stopped the moon landings for the same reason the Chinese stopped landing Eunuchs in Africa. Unless we find a way for these space programs to be profitable I don't see humans colonizing space anytime soon.

<comment><USER7> it can be turned the other way as well - Chinese fell into stagnation and lost the technological, power and all other races during last 2-3 centuries because they stopped the exploration and closeted themselves inside their kingdom.

>We stopped the moon landings for the same reason the Chinese stopped landing Eunuchs in Africa.

and we don't go to Mars and beyond for the same reason Chinese didn't venture deep into and across the Pacific to America - too technically challenging, unknown and dangerous

<comment><USER6> I agree. The emperor who replaced Zhu Di was more conservative and thought that China should close its doors. He famously said that "The outside world had nothing to offer China, it is too primitive and backwards, leave it alone." This inward looking mentality, fueled by the belief in your own superiority, is the disease of great powers. I am afraid that in some ways the United States has become one, maybe it's a good indicator of a power in decline.

<comment><USER6> The eventual decline and stagnation was the effect of the decision to close China's doors. But the cause of the end of the expeditions was largely financial. Culture also has an important role to play. The Chinese were not looking for new lands or have any interest in converting people to their religion. They were looking for respect and recognition. They want to prove to the world that China is the undisputed power on Earth and that they are the pinnacle of civilization. They could not have imagined that the world is about to enter into a period of tremendous change so they felt no reason to change their imperial system. How can you change perfection? ...LOL

<comment><USER7> >Culture also has an important role to play. The Chinese were not looking for new lands or have any interest in converting people to their religion.

Bingo. Gene Roddenberry's genius is replacing the classical humans' violence fueled drivers of "new lands or ... interest in converting people to their religion" with "to explore new worlds, to seek out a new life, and new civilizations" :) I hope that he will eventually be proven right.

<comment><USER6> haha......maybe the Chinese were following an earlier version of the prime directive...LOL

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The primary design objective for this system, as well as the cancelled programs NASA wasted billions on over the last four years, is to:

Spend the same money in all the congressional districts that the Shuttle program spent money in.

$18B is 50 times what NASA has paid out to SpaceX so far, and SpaceX already has already developed a working rocket. Congress could fund 50 SpaceX-like firms for that same amount.

Instead, Congress is attempting to cut the money NASA has requested for commercial crew transport.

<comment><USER9> My favorite part is that the first quote in the article is "This launch system will create good-paying American jobs". When an election isn't coming up they at least put that below the nationalistic/visionary stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah, yes, the Senate Launch System. Looks rather like the more sensible DIRECT; I haven't looked closely at it yet, but from glancing at the Wikipedia entry the Feb 11 design shows it's already a boondoggle (as reported by people I trust) by using 5 segment SRBs, one of the fatal flaws of the Ares I (going from 4 to 5 segments results in thrust oscillations severe enough to kill the crew). And from what they're _not_ saying it sounds like they're sticking with the Ares program's wider SRBs, which fantastically drove up the cost of it.

Well, since NASA has been more public works program than anything else since Apollo (and even then, helping the South was an explicit goal of Apollo), I suppose it's fitting. But can we really afford this sort of thing as opposed to building up a commercial launch sector in any one of a number of ways?

<comment><USER11> I know a few people who know more than me about astro engineering who approve of these jumbo SRBs... but I still just don't buy that they're a good idea for human-rated launch systems. U.S. astronauts who are used to flying on the Space Shuttle and then ride a Soyuz up to orbit can't believe how incredibly smooth and peaceful liftoff is - because the propulsion system is just liquid kerosene - liquid oxygen. Launch stacks with SRBs have to have so much extra weight in structural support just to deal with the immense acoustic load - <USER2> even then, it's hard to accept that they can reach the level of inherent safety of a straight liquid fuel stack.

<comment><USER10> Note my other comment on why liquid fueled rockets are preferred for manned flight _because you can turn them off_. Once you light off a SRB you're 100% committed until it burns out (at best, although at least the fuel in the Space Shuttle ones has a proper pressure and burn rate feedback: as pressure increases burn rate goes down, addressing some of the worst issues, e.g. a sudden increase in propellant surface area due to a crack).

To my now somewhat hazy memory, except for the first few Mercury suborbital missions (which were done in a real hurry) the only manned space flight system to use SRBs is the Shuttle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If SpaceX and friends can reliably launch cargo and eventually humans into LEO, why can't NASA focus on what to put into space, rather than how to get there? I'm sure I don't understand the mechanics of it, but wouldn't it be possible to put up a few smaller cargo carriers containing fuel and pieces of a trans-mars ship and assemble it in orbit?

<comment><USER13> The proposed payload for the NASA SLS is 64,000kg-120,000kg while the Falcon 9 is 10,450 kg. The proposed payload for the Falcon Heavy is 53,000 kg.

So to match 1 SLS launch you are looking at 6-12 Falcon 9s (which have flown) or 2-3 Falcon Heavy launches (which have not flown).

I don't think it's a stretch to say that using Space X would be significantly cheaper to get the same weight up there because the design work is already done. You probably would want to use the Falcon Heavy because you don't want to piece together 10 different things, but that is just 3 Falcon 9s strapped together which I can't imagine is as expensive as designing a new launch vehicle from scratch.

You are absolutely right that at this point NASA needs to get out of the launching game. Use the tax money for payloads whether that is a manned mission or robots.

<comment><USER14> _"So to match 1 SLS launch you are looking at 6-12 Falcon 9s (which have flown) or 2-3 Falcon Heavy launches (which have not flown)."_

It is my impression that SpaceX anticipates doing exactly that sort of thing.

<comment><USER15> Elon Musk has said in public, that they hope to build an ultra heavy lift vehicle which would be more powerful than the Saturn V.

<comment><USER16> That is a direct competition to this new NASA job program. And will probably cost 10-20% per lbs to orbit?

So NASA now has incentives to kill SpaceX, since they'll never be able to compete (except with political weight)? :-(

Edit: OTOH, I guess NASA will never make the SLS fly anyway...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> About six paragraphs that need to mention "cost" or "jobs created", only one at the bottom that has some actual scientific goals. How far we've fallen

<comment><USER18> It's a symptom of the times. People don't care about science today, they care about jobs, and NASA is trying to play that tune to keep themselves afloat.

<comment><USER19> When have people never cared about jobs? When have they (outside a select few) ever really cared about Science?

<comment><USER20> When joblessness is 3% and you can (not easily) find a job if you get fired from another, landing to the moon is quite interesting for you, and for anyone else.

When you are struggeling to pay the bills, finding a job, or securing your current job, landing to the moon is a quite stupid thing the USA gov. is spending the money on.

Although it won't cost the US economy only a little (few billions) comparing to its size, people won't be easy with it. They are in trouble living in earth, and are not looking for the moon or massively expensive explorations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Imagine trying to run a company that has 535 people on the board of directors, none of whom has equity in the company, but many of whom have de facto equity in your suppliers.

Maybe NASA should be spun off.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice to see that the most common reaction to this article, even among space geeks, is that this is a waste of NASA's focus and everyones tax dollars. I think that bodes well for progress.

<comment><USER22> > the most common reaction to this article, even among space geeks

As Richard Feynman once said, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm worried they'll build half of this and then cancel it.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is great news! Hopefully the final version isn't as ugly as the artist's conception: [http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/multimedia/galle...](http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/multimedia/gallery/sls_launching_2.html)

Kind of reminds me of a rocket used for the Apollo missions (although it's not) with some Space Shuttle SRBs attached to the side. The first version shown in the video actually looks kind of cool -- like something SpaceX would have built. It's a good thing progress in the space industry move at a snail's pace. Our aim is to remain the go-to country for space flight yet the first mission is slated for 2017.

It looks like they're trying to save some money by using advancements from the Space Shuttle and Constellation programs. Always a good thing because NASA projects are notorious for going over their budgets (with good reason).

>>It will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system

A consequence of using previous propulsion tech is that we're still using dangerous, highly explosive liquid hydrogen and oxygen rockets. I'm still hoping we're able to get higher ISP from hybrid rockets in the near future. Much safer and easier to turn off if there is a catastrophic systems failure on the way up.

<comment><USER25> Why are space ships always white? If the designers are not going to use cool colors, they could at least give the rocket racing stripes or "go Nascar" with tons of advertisements. :)

<comment><USER26> A guess: it's because it's easier to spot damage, dust, debris, etc.

<comment><USER24> Also, in a vacuum does white still absorb the least amount of heat energy from light?

<comment><USER27> The rocket part doesn't go into orbit, only the nose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Good news. So they went with the 'fast and expensive' option after all[1](the 'cheap' one was planning on first launches after 2021 instead of 2018).

[1][http://www.space.com/12916-obama-nasa-space-launch-system- bu...](http://www.space.com/12916-obama-nasa-space-launch-system-budget.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> I just want a space elevator! However, having a heavy-lifter NASA shuttle will help the creation of a space elevator.

</comment><comment><USER30> I know it's not logical but I was disappointed that the new "deep space exploration system" didn't look like something out of Star Trek. Instead they made another fucking rocket.

<comment><USER31> Barring any significant development in propulsion technologies, they did what any responsible engineering design team would.

I would obsess less over the form factor and more over efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> aka heavy rocket

</comment><comment><USER33> I have a sophisticated layman's understanding of stuff like orbital mechanics, launch energies, etc., but one thing I've never been entirely sure of: Why are rockets always round?

I'm guessing it's the least-questions-asked shape as far as aerodynamics goes, and gives good weight efficiency assuming you can build what you need into a round shape. Is there anything more fundamental than that?

<comment><USER34> A rocket is a series of pressure vessels, pressurized fuel tanks, pressurized crew compartment, etc.. Round shapes spread the pressure around the entire structure. The ideal shape for pressurized vessel is spherical, however for aerodynamic reasons cylinders with rounded ends are used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Tangentially, given the comments referencing Star Trek and SpaceX, I'd like to point out that SpaceX lost Scotty's ashes.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/space/03launchweb....](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/space/03launchweb.html)

<comment><USER36> Scotty would've understood, and respected them for trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Don't get me wrong, I am pro space exploration and love science, but I just don't see how we can justify spending money on this kind of project with the economy as it is.

<comment><USER38> If factories get shut down and re-purposed it costs a lot more to then create new factories if you need to build that product again at a later date.

Long term wise how can we justify not spending money knowing that we will spend less in the long run if we spend big in the short term?</comment></comment>


Building a human-powered airplane in only six months - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2861-how-nature-and-naivet-helped-paul-maccready-build-a-human-powered-airplane-in-only-six-months <comment><USER2> tl;dr: There was a prize offerered in the 1950s-1960s for the first person to build a human-powered plane that could run a short course (call it the X-prize of human flight). Lots of people tried to win by building planes that looked like planes.

Paul MacCready was the first to realize the key to the spec: it had to fly, but didn't have to look like a plane. He rapidly prototyped things that flew but didn't look like planes, and used substitutes for normal safety procedures (flying low and slow rather than building a strong cockpit). He learned from many failures rather than spending months building to learn once.

Lesson: make sure you understand what the spec is really asking for, and prototype quickly around that.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember reading about the follow-up, the Gossamer Albatross, when I was a kid and being enthralled. They flew it across the English Channel to claim the second Kremer prize.

Quite apart from the point about the advantage of inexperience, the Gossamer planes are wonderful creations.

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently read "More With Less", Paul Ciottis biography of Paul MacCready; if you want to dive deeper into the fascinating story of the creation of the Gossamer planes (starting with MacCready's unique background and network, the team re-shuffles [and alienations], tons and tons of iterations, all the downs for several very big ups; sounds like a start-up, doesn't it?), I certainly recommend it.

It required a man of extraordinary skills _and_ stubbornness to pull it all off. Only in retrospect, the solution seems (kinda) obvious.

[http://www.amazon.com/More-Less-MacCready-Efficient- Flight/d...](http://www.amazon.com/More-Less-MacCready-Efficient- Flight/dp/1893554902/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I enjoy my share of the new agey, platitude filled narratives that 37signals has been pushing out lately. But this one seems to have been written to push as many HN audience buttons as it possibly can. Sigh...

<comment><USER6> I don't know about that, the story did not have anyone becoming a billionaire. That is one large button left unpushed.</comment></comment>


OpenBSD 5.7 will be released tomorrow (2015-05-01) - <AUTHOR> http://www.openbsd.org/57.html

<comment><USER2> Get it here

[https://www.openbsdstore.com/cgi- bin/live/ecommerce.pl?site=...](https://www.openbsdstore.com/cgi- bin/live/ecommerce.pl?site=shop_openbsdeurope_com&state=item&dept_id=01&sub_dept_id=01&product_id=CD57)</comment>


Ask HN: How to tell I'm ready to found a startup? - <AUTHOR> It's always been my dream to start my own start-up. I think I have some pretty good ideas, but whenever I think about acting on them, I feel like it's too soon, I still have so much more to learn... but then I'm afraid if I go on like this, I'll never get started. How do I recognize the right moment? <comment><USER2> Financial security is a huge hurdle, and it's one of the few things you can't "fake till you make it". It means something different to everyone, but it should mean six to twelve months minimum of living without an income will not crush you. When I co-founded Eager, it took us six months to raise pre seed funding, and it honestly felt quick in hindsight. My wife and I had well over a year of savings to pull from, and so we didn't have to go into debt while I founded the company.

You have 1,000 other things you'll stress about starting a startup. Not worrying about paying rent and feeding yourself is a big one to check off.</comment>


Ask Admins: Why is this submission pushed down? (Screenshot) - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/bAkeiXY.png

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't mean to start conspiracy theories at all here, but it seems very strange that this post is pushed down so hard. My best guess is that it has something to do with flagging, though it seems to make more sense that flagging merely brings it to mods' attention and doesn't downvote it (else it's a replacement for the missing downvote button on submissions).

</comment><comment><USER2> Almost every time this happens it's because of the flamewar detection.

When a story gets almost as many comments as upvotes, this factors into its rank. There are probably other things that cause the flamewar detector to kick in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see, hmm. On the one hand the flamewar detector makes the community a better place; on the other it simply suppresses news that triggers opinions, even though the news itself may be of interest. Not sure that I'm in favor of this, but thanks for the explanation!

<comment><USER2> Well, if the story got more upvotes, it wouldn't be a problem. It got some time in the sun, then went away. I think the algo (assuming that's what it is, and it probably is) works pretty well and it's not a huge loss that things that are purely about discussion don't sit on the FP for a really long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The number of comments makes the rank go down.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's just the number, but more about the number of top level threads and the depth of those threads. So if there is one thread with many replies, it's probably a flame war, or just a back and forth that isn't very productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Flagging is one explanation although I can't understand why anyone would flag that article, so that explanation doesn't make sense. HN also heavily punishes articles with certain undisclosed keywords, but this is very rare (the only ones I think were discovered was "nsa" and maybe "bitcoin".)

<comment><AUTHOR> > why anyone would flag that article

Zhe Russians! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Political stories get flagged and drop off.</comment>


Design goals of Postgres (via 1995 paper) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/ERL-M85-95.pdf <comment><USER2> I think it's pretty cool that back in 1995 Stonebraker and Rowe were looking at effectively "append-only" architecture which have recently come to prominence in things like Kafka and Datomic. Interesting excerpts:

      Our proposed approach is to treat the log as normal
      data managed by the DBMS which will simplify the
      recovery code and simultaneously provide support for
      access to the historical data.

...

      3.3. Time Varying Data
      POSTQUEL allows users to save and query historical data
      and versions [KATZ85, WOOD83]. By default, data in a
      relation is never deleted or updated. Conventional
      retrievals always access the current tuples in the
      relation. Historical data can be accessed by indicating
      the desired time when defining a tuple variable.

...

      Finally, POSTGRES provides support for versions. A
      version can be created from a rela- tion or a snapshot.
      Updates to a version do not modify the underlying
      relation and updates to the underlying relation will be
      visible through the version unless the value has been
      modified in the version.

One of the purposes of the much-maligned VACUUM command was to push the historical data to archival (optical) media.

      The archival store holds historical records, and the
      vacuum demon can ensure that ALL archival records are
      valid.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The tldr; is in 1995 Postgres was focused on enabling faster rendering of shapes/graphics at about 1-2 frames per second.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this PDF! I've wanted to read this for a while and this provided me with the opportunity to do it now.

> focused on enabling faster rendering

This is indeed provided as an example for their motivation for their first goal of supporting complex objects, and it's an interesting anecdote. There are 5 additional design goals as well.</comment></comment>


The Photo Foretelling Apple's Doom - <AUTHOR> http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/the-photo-foretelling-apples-doom/

<comment><USER2> This is the same argument people have been making about the desktop Apple products for years, and they were wrong then too. Apple is aiming at the luxury market and seems content to ignore the rest of the market. What Apple should worry about is that "good enough" is getting very, very close to Apple's "premium".

<comment><USER3> I think the real danger here to Apple is that due to devices like this, Android could decisively unseat the iPhone as "the smartphone" in the public consciousness. Right now, when you say "smartphone with apps", I suspect that most people will mentally jump to the iPhone. If these sorts of low-end, low- cost device/plan packages go big (and they will), it'll rapidly erode the iPhone's carefully-curated image as "the smartphone platform". Android has been chipping away at it for a while now, but if you capture the low-income- but-tired-of-the-RAZR market (hi, high school and college market), then you more or less have captured the entire direction of the market.

Apple will continue to sell iPhones, and will continue to be successful at it, but it won't be the market-dominating behemoth it's been in the past couple of years.

<comment><USER4> >but if you capture the low-income-but-tired-of-the-RAZR market (hi, high school and college market), then you more or less have captured the entire direction of the market.

See, apple tried that. when I was school in the 90s, apple owned the (primary school) campus computer lab market... and really, nothing else. As far as I can tell, it didn't help them much at all, other than to get a generation of people thinking of apple as slow, obsolete crap (which is as much a result of the school district keeping them around too long as anything else.)

edit: On the other hand, come to think of it, OS-x started getting real popular around the time most people my age started earning enough money to pay for a mac, so maybe I'm wrong and the policy was a resounding success? (I mean, I was born in '80, and as I've had a 'real job' since '97 or so because I skipped college to play in the .com boom, I sometimes forget that most people don't start earning money until their mid 20s.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anybody have any experience with sprint in SF / mission?</comment>


"Another World" (game) Code Review - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/index.php

<comment><USER3> If you're interested in the story behind the game's creation, Eric Chahi (the original programmer) gave a postmortem talk at the Game Developers' Conference a year or so ago:

[http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014630/Classic-Game- Postmortem...](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014630/Classic-Game-Postmortem- OUT-OF)

If you're unfamiliar with the game, there's an essay/review of it here:

<http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=431>

(press the "fist" button at the top-right of the page to cycle through a variety of ironically ugly colour schemes until you find one you like)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for posting these!

From the second link I found a link to the author's homepage where he talks about the history of the game in depth. I was really impressed to find out this game was a one-man creation. The screenshots of his character editor shows the depth of his genius.

<http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/another_world.htm>

Such a great read. Some highlights include (spoilers!):

\- he used rotoscoping of filmed footage for the car animation and a few others.

\- he set up an infinite fax loop during negotiations with interplay regarding changing the music of one of the ports.

\- when he wanted to clean up some of the animation scripting during a port to a mobile phone, he booted up his amiga and did the editing on it in the BASIC scripting editor!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do consider myself to be a decent programmer, but things like this (being able to break down other people's s/w) always puts how little I know into perspective.

If anyone is interested, here is some gameplay footage... <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgkf6wooDmw>

</comment><comment><USER6> I was pretty surprised to see it used it's own vm when I was rummaging through Gil Megidish's port to JavaScript - <http://www.megidish.net/awjs/>

There are a few huge base64 encoded data files, and the rest is just the bytecode, and converting the drawing functions to canvas.

I was surprised that "back in the day" you could take the hit of a vm - <USER2> always thought you had to get as close to the metal as possible!

<comment><USER7> It wasn't too action action packed, see the number of title from that era and even before that used the SCUMM system. Running in a VM was SOP for point and click games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seeing the background being drawn in slow-motion has quite a wow factor. At the time I assumed they were bitmap but did not know enough for the game size to raise a flag. The whole design of this game looks so clean.

<comment><USER9> The Links golf game rendered the same way: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSBojv19gU8>

Difference is that Link386 rendering was not exactly in real time. You'd have to way for the scene to render before you made your shot. Painful back in the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There used to be an open source Another World interpreter available called RAW, created by a guy called Gregory Montoir, which eventually shut down the project at the request of Eric Chahi (the creator of Another World) around the time when the game became commercially available again. The original project page is still on archive.org:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070124142934/cyxdown.free.fr/ra...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070124142934/cyxdown.free.fr/raw/)

Eventually another project cropped up called New Raw, which as far as I can gather was a fork of the then deceased RAW, but it didn't go anywhere. You can still download the source, however:

<http://newraw.svn.sourceforge.net>

I remember dusting off my floppy copy of Another World years back and running it through RAW on Linux, it ran the game pretty flawlessly, with a bunch of added features like high resolution (the game is all vectors).

edit: corrected a link

</comment><comment><USER11> _The introduction (resource 0x1C), 3 minutes long weights only 57,510 bytes once compressed_

Truly humbling - a 3 minute intro in 56kb.

</comment><comment><USER12> I love these kind of reviews. I wish someone would do a code review for some of the Ludum Dare entries. They only have 2 days to create a game so there are rarely comments. I was scratching my head at Notch's color palette code in "Minicraft" for a while for instance.

<comment><USER6> Me too with the color palette - I figured it out today though! I'll write it up on my blog after xmas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seeing the background being drawn remind me of the Last Ninja on C64. Each screen started with the world being laid out using 2D sprites, in slow motion.

Anyone know if this was done for effect or if it actually was as fast as it could be?

<comment><USER14> It's usually just a sign of low optimization or polish when the background needs a visible rendering process before gameplay resumes. Most 8-bit games written in BASIC did this, and at a glacial rate. In assembly games it was usually fast enough to just be a minor artifact on transitions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone know what the "binary to C++" thing mentioned at the start of the article is? A quick google search shows nothing. i know Gregory Montoir is a programmer on ScummVM but thats it.

<comment><USER16> I don't know for sure but maybe Hex Rays ?

<http://www.hex-rays.com/products/decompiler/index.shtml>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks so much. I actually went on an OOTW tech info binge a couple years ago. I wish I had found this at the time!

</comment><comment><USER18> Is there a "Symbia OS" or the author is talking about Symbian?</comment>


Tapkee, a dimension reduction library - <AUTHOR> http://tapkee.lisitsyn.me/

<comment><USER2> Can anyone explain to a newbie why LDA and embedding through neural networks were not included as a dimensionality reduction techniques?

<comment><USER3> [Assuming you meant LDA = Linear Discriminant Analysis.] It looks like the toolkit implements "unsupervised" methods, where the datapoints don't have a special "label" feature that is treated specially in the embedding. If you do have labels, see also neighbourhood components analysis (NCA), amongst others.

They say they've biased towards spectral methods. Getting neural net methods to work requires a different type of experience.

If you're prepared to use Matlab, there are neural net and some supervised methods in this toolbox: [http://lvdmaaten.github.io/drtoolbox/](http://lvdmaaten.github.io/drtoolbox/) A bunch of this stuff, if not all, might work in Octave too.

Some practical advice. Try linear methods like PCA and LDA first. Think about and/or try out different rescalings and representations of your features. Also look at what the code in a "blackbox" toolbox is doing. From memory, I think the Matlab toolbox reduces the dimensionality to 20 with PCA before applying most other methods. (What if your data has less than 20 dimensions? Change that code!)

I've had poor experience with most of the spectral methods. Things I've got to work include the simplest (like PCA), NCA, t-SNE and variants, and auto- encoders. On many datasets, PCA has worked the best!

If you meant LDA = Latent Dirichlet Allocation: It looks like the toolkit implements methods that are mainly used for real valued features, rather than sets of counts.

<comment><USER2> I meant Linear Discriminent Analysis - good answer! I've experienced similar results with PCA vs other methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "The library is distributed under permissive BSD 3-clause license"

Fantastic! That means it is actually an interesting announcement and worth digging deeper into.

</comment><comment><USER5> Where's the SVD? Did I miss something?

</comment><comment><USER6> Comes with a great command-line tool.</comment>


Ask HN: Your opinion to current web search engines? - <AUTHOR>

Which web search engines are you using? Primary or not primary? pros, cons? <comment><USER2> I've recently replaced Google as my browser's default engine with DuckDuckGo. It's good, and not as... hmm... scummy as Google seems to have gotten? Not sure if that's the right word.</comment>


Humble Book Bundle: The Joy of Coding - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/books/joy-of-coding-book-bundle <comment><USER2> Having read several of these, I know they're good.

LYAH and LYSE are both VERY good. Like, really, really good. They are free, but if they weren't, they'd make this bundle worth it on their own.

Likewise, The Land of Lisp and The Realm of Racket are great if you want to _think_ like a Lisper/Schemer. TLOL, however, is a better book, covering (I think) more stuff. TROR also suffers a library dependance, but I don't especially LIKE Racket, so take this with a grain of salt.

If Hemmingway Wrote Javascript is an excellent exploration. You'll see a variety of code, some good, some bad, some smart, some dumb, and all of it mind-expanding and entertaining. It demonstrates Javascript's remarkable flexability, and argues that there is no one way to write good JS: you should use the right tool for the job. It doesn't substantiate this well, but it's fun all the same.

I've heard good things about EQJS, and Write Good Code looks interesting, but I haven't read any of them, so I cannot pass judgement.

But honestly, most of NoStarch's stuff is pretty good. Not as consistently good as O'Reilley, but their best stuff is better than O'Reilley, although not as good as MITPress.

Seriously, if you're ever in Camebridge, visit the MITPress bookstore. It's full of good books, Has excellent staff, and sells off slightly damaged books at discounts that aren't even funny. And even without the discount, it's much cheaper than buying their stuff online.

/shameless-plug

<comment><USER3> Hijacking top comment, haskellbook.com did more wonders for me than LYAH. HN fawns over that book, surprised it isn't already mentioned.

The book is also a pedagogical feat.

<comment><USER2> I'm top comment? Jeez.

Anyways, yeah, I'd never heard of HFFP before now, and don't have the spare cash to check it out. It seems neat, though.

<comment><USER4> The authors encourages anyone that can't afford the book to contact them through their support link on the Haskellbook.com site to work something fair out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Elequent Javascript is already free online ([http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/)) and a HUGE feature is using it's built in REPL to immediately play with the code samples. That is lost in PDF format.

<comment><USER6> Automate the Boring Stuff is also free online: [https://automatetheboringstuff.com/](https://automatetheboringstuff.com/)

<comment><USER7> Damn, I just bought it a few months ago too (spur-of-the-moment when it popped up on Amazon as a recommendation). Perhaps I'll get around to reading more than just the front and back covers someday. :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would gladly pay for a higher tier (at least $50) that ships you physical copies of these books.

<comment><USER9> I love that there are many people on here clamoring for physical copies. But over the years, I've noticed (for the books I have written and edited), print copies sharply declined and ebook copies sharply went up. It's to the point where I don't even know why we bother doing paper anymore.

I prefer digital because I can send out updated copies of the books to readers for free, which I can't do on paper. And programming stuff changes so frequently.

So I guess I'm saying if you want print books, you should make that known by buying physical copies of books. Cos if the trends I see continues, I can't imagine it'll be practical to do print tech books too far into the future.

<comment><USER10> > I love that there are many people on here clamoring for physical copies.

It's hilarious that people in tech clamor for physical books, even at the cost of trees, environment, poor accessibility, poor maintainability, poor upgradability and poor portability. I suspect it is because of the sucky "format-hell" of ebooks and sub-par reading experience. And the fact that ebooks are still not a _first class citizen_ of the web I agree that these trends will continue. And that's exactly what publishers would want. To be able to make more money!

<comment><USER11> > > I love that there are many people on here clamoring for physical copies.

> even at the cost of trees, environment,

We grow trees to make paper. That's how the paper industry works. Nobody complains about us devastating "virgin potato fields" because we use potatoes to make chips. But the logic is precisely the same. There are more trees _today_ than in the 1950s because of the paper industry (as well as tree planting efforts). So if we stopped using paper cold-turkey, we would remove the financial incentive for companies to plant more trees.

> I suspect it is because of the sucky "format-hell" of ebooks and sub-par > reading experience.

For me the real issue is the licensing. I think that it is intolerable that a company can claim that you don't own ebooks. It's a slap in the face to traditional freedoms of readers and is incredibly chilling. Amazon deleting copies of 1984 and other books from every kindle on the planet paints a precedent that should be taken very seriously. Not to mention that their product line is _literally_ named after fire-related terms (perhaps subconsciously implying the purpose of the products is virtual book burning)! You couldn't make this stuff up.

Companies that sell PDFs which are licensed under free licenses are much better, but the other issues you mentioned still mean I probably won't buy ebooks for a while. I prefer physical pages.

<comment><USER10> > For me the real issue is the licensing.

Sure. Wanting to own physical books to avoid issues of broken licensing model or issues of service centralization _isn 't_ the same thing as wanting physical books _because_ dead-tree ones supposedly feel better than their electronic counterparts.

The latter is simply untrue, only a means to hijack industry standards, sell propaganda, and profit from it.

IMHO, electronic books can easily have a great reading experience (much, much better) if only books/manuscripts related software was let in the open for people to innovate upon. Or made a part of the web, a first class citizen, with decentralization, accessibility etc.

I pretty much agree with you that existing options have a lot of _deliberate_ problems but do not think that the solution to all of those is in physical books. I'd rather push for books and web being coalesced into a single unified resource that is both accessible and _open_.

My friend & I even started a community/foundation that we plan to build on some of these ideas:

[https://bubbl.in/about](https://bubbl.in/about)

> Amazon deleting copies of 1984 and other books from every kindle on the > planet paints a precedent that should be taken very seriously.

I hadn't heard about this before! And what's even worse is that Amazon was allowed to acquire the .book TLD and with that own a very very large piece of "public property" for _peanuts_. I guess there was very little reportage by media on this. But then such is life lately.

> There are more trees _today_ than in the 1950s because of the paper > industry…

That's an interesting thread to go after. My tryst with physical books was almost a decade ago, and the industry I knew locally then was quite different from what you describe here. If the world gives up on ebooks like the talk of the town is lately, I'm pretty sure there will be an "impact" that would no longer hide under the design of industry.

<comment><USER11> > because dead-tree ones supposedly feel better than their electronic > counterparts.

I'll be honest, I prefer physical books. The smell, the feel of turning real pages, the fact that I can write all over them, the fact you don't need to charge them. These are things that you can't emulate with an ebook. Are they subjective? Yes. Are there things that are easier with ebooks? Hell yes.

However, I _feel_ that I learn things better when I read from a book than when I read from a screen. I'm not sure why (and I've heard there's been studies on this) but maybe it's got to do with how I grew up learning -- lots of book reading in weird positions on my couch (I like lying upside down with my head on the floor if I'm _really_ into a book).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really like this bundle! I think all previous book bundles were comics, so it's great to see tech literature represented.

Also, I think the choice languages is really good. F#, Clojure, R, Lisp, Haskell, Racket, Erlang... it's great to see all these paradigms represented. I can't speak for books themselves, but I think it's awesome that this book pack will reach the Humble bundles audience.

<comment><USER13> There was a security/malware book bundle a good while back that had some interesting books in it. Sadly, I keep forgetting that I got that bundle and haven't read any of them, but I know one book in the bundle was used for a malware analysis class at my university at some point. I'm definitely going to get this bundle and remember to download and read the malware books I got.

<comment><USER14> I wanted to buy the hacker bundle but missed it somehow, atleast i found this one now.

<comment><USER13> I went and looked back at the Hacking bundle and there's some books that overlap into this one, such as the command line and some of the Python books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For the poorer hackernews users. some of those books are free online anyways.

ex [http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php](http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php)

<comment><USER16> And: [https://automatetheboringstuff.com/](https://automatetheboringstuff.com/)

<comment><USER17> You guys just listed the only 3 books I found interesting in the bundle...

I like the charity bit however, so I am going to donate the money directly to this bundles charity organization (which happens to be EFF hence -> [https://supporters.eff.org/donate/button](https://supporters.eff.org/donate/button) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a handy one liner to grab all links from the downloads page and save a curl command to the clipboard:

      copy('curl ' + Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('a')).filter(a => String(a.search).indexOf('gamekey') > 0).map(a => '-o ' + a.pathname.substr(1) + ' ' + a.getAttribute('href')).join(' '))

Should work reasonably in most recent browsers.

<comment><USER19> As someone suggested on Reddit, download _Automate the Boring Things_ and learn to automate the rest of the downloads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, an extreme book bundle. Happy to see and instant buy from me, especially since it's drm-free and in many formats!

Myself, I've already read Clojure for the Brave and True and also the Eloquent JavaScript so I can recommend the bundle just because of those two. Currently reading Land of Lisp which is good as well but haven't finished so hard to comment on.

But, for the price of $15, it would be hard not to buy this.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ok, let's bite. Looks like a good way to support a charity anyway.

</comment><comment><USER22> The 'Write Great Code' series is worth the price of admission by itself.

I think a lot of folks who want to really know what they are doing that weren't fortunate enough to grow their skills in a time that forced you to understand the machine through to high level could could benefit from those two books immensely.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm reading LYSE right now and it's very good, worth whatever you end up paying for it!

<comment><USER24> Well, I'm curious. Which one is "LYSE"?

<comment><USER23> Sorry—Learn You Some Erlang!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm definitely going to buy this, start reading three books and finish none.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there a way to download the entire bundle as a zip file or tarball? (I probably should have asked that before downloading each file individually.)

<comment><USER27> Maybe the Python automation book covers automated downloads, or maybe the CLI book will cover it.... =P Or there's always [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/downthemall/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/downthemall/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As an "early" hobbyist Ruby/RoR programmer, would people recommend the first tier for beginners looking to expand their horizons with Python and Haskell specifically?

Also, how painful will these be to read on a Kindle Paperwhite? I've tried other coding books on there and the code block styling was impossible to make out.

<comment><USER29> There's no way to recommend LYAH enough. I learned Haskell way back when with 'A Gentle Introduction to Haskell' which was all but. I'm jealous of kids these days actually having fantastic material to work with.

Note that LYAH is also free online. I don't know about the Python book, as I don't do Python very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> FYI check the promotions tab in Gmail if you're missing the email.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sorry, I only using functional programming for nefarious reason.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is pretty cool. A bunch of resources I've either been meaning to pick up or am pretty excited to check out.

</comment><comment><USER33> Don't forget to choose which charity will benefit from your donation!

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a great collection of books. Many that I already own and love :)

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER35> Damn, I just bought the F# book...

</comment><comment><USER36> And this is why bundling destroys a la carte for zero-marginal-cost items.

<comment><USER28> Can you elaborate on this?

<comment><USER37> Pretty sure he means that bundling performs very well for items that don't cost extra to produce more of (in this case, digital content). Distributing more PDFs costs effectively nothing.

People can feel like they get a lot of value for little money, without the sellers explicitly losing.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Respond to Patent Threat? - <AUTHOR> A company I work with has recently been sent threats by Interface IP Holdings, who claim that their website (which is available in the US) infringes on a patent https://patents.google.com/patent/US7500201B2/en
The patent is broadly worded, but seems to cover  restricting the values in a drop down based on the other filled in values.  Or perhaps searching multiple fields from the same search box. I find the text ambiguous and difficult to understand, but I can't get anything out of it that doesn't seem obvious and standard.
It seems like they've brought a lot of complaints relating to this patent to the court in Delaware.
Is it really the case that you can't use standard UI components on the web without paying license fees to US companies? <comment><USER2> You do not respond, an IP lawyer responds.

That said, I don't see any litigation won on that patent. And I haven't seen them take any new cases to court in the last 2 years, so chances are it is a troll trying get a license payment.

<comment><USER3> That is the most ridiculous looking patent I've ever seen. What developer hasn't created what the patent is describing.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's basically my view too, but still, finding a published example from before 2002 isn't easy on Google. At least not with my google skills.

There's not many sites left still working from those days. :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happens if you ignore a patent troll?</comment>


Influence and influencers, the thin line between sharing and spamming (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/digital-identity/influence-and-influencers-online-the-thin-line-between-sharing-and-spamming-e759ee47bfb <comment><AUTHOR> I find this topic and discussion super relevant in 2020. I Just tried to share some of my companies articles to a subreddit and because my blog posts are connected to a company they are reluctant to accept it. On the other hand YouTube and Blog influencers which have their own agenda are not considered when they are trading their influence there and many times have sponsors.

The main point is when your rules are contradictory or not have a precise threshold. It reminds me of Wikipedia notability rules.</comment>


How to Operate the Apple II Plus - <AUTHOR> http://yesterbits.com/2015/02/10/how-to-operate-the-apple-ii-plus/

<comment><USER2> Great - thanks for sharing. It provided me by internal search with the product description of my old Macintosh Classic and the SE30, that rest in the attic at home.

I really am looking forward to listening to these on may way back from work today.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's worth listening to part of these, if only for the 1980's muzak intros... The tape quality and sounds are giving me flashbacks to elementary school tapes and projected films.</comment>


Show HN: FarmNet, an open-source LoRA agricultural sensing/actuation network - <AUTHOR> https://framagit.org/Gabe/farmnet <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, just a bit of backstory as suggested by a mod:

tl;dr is that with this python script and one of the arduino sketches you can get an out-of-the-box remote sensing network with sqlite storage that is very easy to extend and hack on and has proven stable for over a year now.

The background:

I live in the countryside and wanted to find some ways to help out our neighbouring farmers with my trade. One of the things you see a lot of is remote things failing and going unnoticed -- unclosed barriers, electrified enclosures not strong enough, escaped animals, etc. In addition to this, there are some regular maintenance tasks -- opening/closing the chicken coop door, irrigation, opening/closing a greenhouse -- that are trivial to define programatically and can save a lot of time and trouble if automated.

This is the backbone to a set of other projects currently in the pipeline, but it also includes chicken coop door opener in one of the example nodes. I have some neighbours working on remote sensing for their solar-powered electric fence generator using LoRa. Overall this technology's mix of low-power and long-range transmission makes it an awesome tool for cheap, 'low'-tech countryside hacks.

<comment><USER2> Just a tip, in the states the term 'remote sensing' refers to aerial photography of crops either by satellite, airplane or drone. These photos can find problems in the growing crop related to stress.

Things may be different in Europe but over here your use of the term will confuse people. Good luck on your project it has many applications.

[https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/fabe-5541](https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/fabe-5541)

<comment><USER3> Not sure why this is being downvoted, since it appears to be accurate (searching for "remote sensing agriculture" only yields results about aerial/satellite imagery), and the linked paper contrasts "remote" (aka aerial) with "ground-based".

That usage is quite problematic though, because, by using such a broad term for such a specific application, you lose the ability to use it to describe other valid "remote sensing " instances such as those implemented by the OP.

<comment><USER4> From Wikipedia:

> Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or > phenomenon without making physical contact with the object and thus in > contrast to on-site observation, especially the Earth.

I've encountered the term in other contexts, but always where the object is remote with respect to the sensor. The applicable term here will be "sensor networks." The OP describes it as a "remote sensing network", so we all understand the meaning, but it might be best to substitute another keyword there like "RF sensor network" to increase search relevance.

<comment><USER5> It's fair to call out the other definitions, but unfair to downvote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> LoRa is awesome technology, if you haven't yet played with it. Here in West Michigan, our city's Board of Public Works runs the local power station, which in turn powers snowmelt heated sidewalks in our downtown area. The employees are testing homegrown bricks in the sidewalk with little temperature sensors and LoRa radios that can run for months without needing a recharge, that in turn report their temperatures back to homebase. Super cool.

[https://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/20180626/new-smart- bric...](https://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/20180626/new-smart-brick-will- aid-in-snowmelt-efficiency)

LoRa can be used for all kinds of low-bandwitch medium-range transmission of data. Temperatures, lat-long, you name it.

<comment><USER7> I'm not that deep involved in LoRa but isn't there a problem with it that by spamming the network you can take down the whole one with a $3 device?

<comment><AUTHOR> This could definitely be an issue, but in my use case I think I'd find the perp pretty quickly and scare him off with my pitchfork :) . It's important to space out the messaging, I don't send more frequently than 1msg/minute, and messages are 8-12 bytes, and most sensors are 1 msg/hour.

<comment><USER8> Yes you must respect the band duty cycle ! Check your respective country regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be cool to see this sending data to farmOS running on the Raspberry Pi. farmOS has a nice graphing and mapping UI for assets on farms and I know they have it running on some Pi's.

[https://farmos.org/](https://farmos.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh cool, I'll give this a look! I also want to get integration working with OpenSprinkler in the near future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know some cheap LoRa radios I can buy? I'd like to play with it, but so far I only know about the LoPy (expensive but easy to program) and some no-name radios for which sample code is very hard to come by.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the end of the readme I point out the boards I use, namely the adafruit Lora feather which was the best bang for buck Arduino compatible board, and the Lora/GPS header for raspi which I would not necessarily recommend anymore, but that I can say works with this code.

<comment><USER10> Oh I missed that, thanks. My local Hackerspace made some boards that have that LoRa radio and an ESP8266 on them, I might grab some of those as I'm not in the US and Adafruit won't ship here cheaply, thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's probably a good bet. I'm in Europe and there are actually a decent number of European suppliers (or try Mouser, they seems to ship internationally for free, I have no idea how it works out for them but I got mine there).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any table/matrix to compare basically "for this use that"? Esp in terms of range, speed, bandwidth and power consumption (and maybe licensing?)?

</comment><comment><USER12> Thanks!! It so happens I'm signing on a house on a few acres Monday and want to set up remote soil sensors - this seems like just the thing for coordination.

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks very cool, and I actually have a farm project right now that could use it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool. I think I have some use for this.</comment>


Show HN: Superscribe, the easiest way to handle iOS subscriptions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/carpenterscode/superscribe <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, author here.

The background was that I couldn't find any out-of-box solutions or substantial documentation on how to implement this correctly for the "premium media streaming scenario. I became so frustrated that I was determined to open source the solution and save others some burden.

The goals are… \- provide a working solution for App Store subscriptions \- make it extensible with listener implementations \- share best practices \- involve the community in making this as helpful as possible

Would love any feedback on this, whether product, technical, or project/marketing. Thanks!</comment>


Google Chrome Developer Tools  - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/chrome/devtools/docs/overview.html

<comment><USER2> This is news... why? I thought everybody knew about this dating back to the very first release of Chrome and the releases of Safari before that.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was news to me, because I was looking for some kind of _documentation_ for quite some time now. The best I found so far was webkit blog at <http://webkit.org/blog/> In a nutshell, it's not about the tools, it's about the missing docs and I hope google invests more resources into teaching the developer how to use these tools more efectively.

Dev tools is an excellent tool for web developers, and as far as I know, no one is using it because of Firefox and Firebug. I'm not saying they aren't good tools: they are. It's just that I personally prefer Chrome over Firefox as a browser, and I'm really glad I found this documentation resource.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The only thing that these can't do which Firebug Lite can is render the HTML for XHR responses inline in the console. In Chrome, unless I'm using the Firebug lite bookmarklet (which isn't perfect), I have to copy and save the response to a file before being able to view it. This is a big time waster for debugging web apps that send error messages in HTML, like with Django.

<comment><USER4> Whoa I am about to save you _so_ much time!

You totally can view the response, just go to the 'Resources' tab, choose 'XHR' from the top bar (or not, but it's easier). Now cause a request. You'll see it pop up in the list on the left and you can click it to see headers/params and the response.

<comment><USER5> I had to reread the reply, but it sounds like they're speaking strictly about rendered HTML- not just the response text.

For instance, when an XHR response is returned as "Content-Type:text/html; charset=UTF-8", I still see raw HTML in the content pane: <http://grab.by/7SXg>

<comment><USER3> Yes, exactly right. Sorry my post wasn't clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These tools are awesome. For my money they are better than firebug.

However the dev channel has a tendency to break JS breakpointing. It seems like I can never fully delete some breakpoints.

<comment><USER7> I switched to chrome as my fulltime browser because of the dev tools- something about them is just much more intuitive to me.

<comment><USER8> Firebug was the only thing keeping me in Firefox for a while. The initial dev tools that Webkit came with were ok, but nothing on Firebug.

Chrome dev tools have come a long way though. I use Chrome as my main browser now for both surfing and dev, and although I miss the snappiness of Firebug, Chrome's dev tools are just as good, if not better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone else want a built-in JS beautifier?

<comment><USER10> And HTML normalizer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Safari Developer Tools: [http://developer.apple.com/technologies/safari/developer- too...](http://developer.apple.com/technologies/safari/developer-tools.html)

Look familiar? :)

<comment><USER12> Yes, they're both based off the open source WebKit Web Inspector (as mentioned in the second sentence on that page.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Until yesterday I've favored Firebug over Chrome Dev Tools; the only real reason being that I haven't been familiar with the Chrome tools at all. Yesterday I fell in love with Chrome Dev Tools... The reason is that I was playing around with developing a Chrome extension (in particular one for HN which I'll have finished soon).

Not only is extension development much more fun (you can load unbundled extensions directly from the source directory, reload it to load the updates source code with one click, and there is no need to restart the browser at all). But one of the best features is that when you get some element from the DOM of the current page, and log it or any of the children elements to the developer console and hover over it, Chrome highlights that particular part on the website itself. This is just so helpful!

<comment><USER14> Firebug does this too.

One thing Firebug does that I can't find in WebKit's developer tools: in Firebug, when you select an element and switch to the "Layout" tab, mousing over the various measurements will draw on-screen rulers and guides that show how the element lines up with other items on the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Something that constantly annoys me at work is not being able to debug dynamically loaded Javascript code (i.e. JS code returned by an ajax query, then evaluated with eval()). I know this probably reflects bad design, but unfortunately it's not up to me.

I think it would be nice to have debugging support for JS code in those cases when it's evaluated from a string instead of loaded using a <script> tag.

</comment><comment><USER16> I cannot help but note that the documentation appears to be obsolete relative to the normal production deployed version of Chrome (on windows).

Chrome Developer Tools no longer has a 'Network' icon / function and the 'Storage' icon / function is not documented.

I believe Network was subsumed into Resources recently.

Personally, I have found the excellent CDT to be essentially self-documenting.

</comment><comment><USER17> Firebug (getfirebug.com)</comment>


Adobe CEO desperately tries to avoid answering a simple question (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaR2jR-RpYo

<comment><USER3> Back when this video was made (and the Australian dollar was at parity with the American one) it was cheaper to buy a plane ticket to America and purchase Creative Suite than to buy it in store locally.

[http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/02/dont-believe-the-adobe- pri...](http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/02/dont-believe-the-adobe-price-cut- hype-its-still-gauging-you-silly/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's for reasons like this and the ongoing quality and security issues Adobe has faced around flash player that I'm now actively avoiding all of their products. I've 'replaced' Photoshop with Pixelmator which is lacking in some areas, but for most of what I do is sufficient - it certainly is a lot faster than Photoshop.

<comment><USER5> I never thought pixelmator was a good replacement. BUT the two new projects from Serif, Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo DO look like good replacements.

<comment><USER4> I actually have both! I almost never use affinity photo because I find myself spending more time trying to work the Ui than I do on the work itself - <USER2> personas are clunky and the app is bloody expensive

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This Q&A is hilarious. The CEO is just giving the same PR-approved answer to a politically sensitive question. The real and politically-incorrect reason for the higher prices is that the cost of doing business is higher in Australia. For example, the minimum wage is very high and consumer protection laws require the company to provide a 2-year warranty at no additional cost. It sounds like some people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want Australia's high minimum wage and strong consumer protection laws, but they don't want to pay for it. There's no free lunch in this world.

As for the demand side of things, Australians must be sufficiently willing to pay the higher price.

The Australian dollar has gotten weaker since this video was taken, so now Adobe's prices are almost at parity with the US. I'm sure the risk of foreign exchange fluctuations is part of Adobe's pricing strategy.

<comment><USER7> What's "politically incorrect" about saying that they have to provide additional services in the Australian market? And I don't buy that a 2-year warranty costs Adobe $1800 per user. How many hours of phone support is that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Somebody save me a click. What question?

<comment><USER9> He is asked why Creative Suite costs $1,400 more in Australia compared with other countries when the software is delivered over the internet.

<comment><USER10> "Because we can"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm Australian and have no problem with Adobe's pricing strategy. Clearly they have decided that the demand curve for their software in Australia is significantly different to the US and are pricing their software accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yeah... Creative Cloud... every time I see some of my company's assets being put into a proprietary Adobe format, I wince.

I guess they'll just have to learn the hard way when one day Adobe won't let them open their own files. It's another one of these things that boggles my mind over what people will accept these days. Having to pay a subscription just to keep being able to use your own (really important) files. And doing all this relying on a company that will very unambiguously pursue goals that put its own interests over those of their customers.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think the answer of "Creative Suite is the only thing we have left, we have to make profit where we can" would fly.

</comment><comment><USER14> And my friends wonder why I'm still using CS3 and in some cases Photoshop 6.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can we add a 2013 tag to this?</comment>


Podcast Addict: Android chief apologizes for incorrect removal - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/19/podcast_addict_ban_google_android/ <comment><USER2> 3 guys I know of were working on a side project / game together.

Suddenly their app was removed. They got a vague message about some sort of rules violation (something like that) and after trying to contact someone / anyone heard nothing back.

Their running theory is one of the guys worked for a company who made an app that was fairly popular, but that company later went bad and got into the spyware game, the developer who worked there quit after he saw the writing on the wall. They wonder if maybe they related that company to their work somehow... who knows, they have no idea and have no clue what they did wrong and how not to do it in the future ...

Company that went bad, had their app suspended / removed, but as motivated spyware types they're still getting their apps on the store... but the other guys can't.

For the record I never saw their code, so I don't know first hand what they were up to, and you never know about stories like this, but I believe them / the story seems all to common.

Google is so opaque about things that how is anyone to know exactly what they did? The rules for various things might be listed for all to see, but it's hard to know how they're being interpreted.</comment>


Unix turns 40: The past, present and future of a revolutionary OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9133570 <comment><USER2> Why does no one question why we remain stuck with a 40-year-old state of the art?

[http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch....](http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch.html)

<comment><USER3> We're not "stuck" with it. There have been hundreds if not thousands of OS's written since then. Unix is still around because it's still useful. Just like the Sistine Chapel is still around because it's still beautiful. Experts come and clean it up and keep it nice :)

<comment><USER2> > There have been hundreds if not thousands of OS's written since then

With a handful of exceptions, they were all Unix clones. Among the exceptions, almost all have kept the worst limitations of the Unix family.

<comment><USER4> _Among the exceptions, almost all have kept the worst limitations of the Unix family._

Is there some analysis on this issue available? What limitations have been kept?

The only operating system that was supposed to be an improvement over Unix (that I know about) is Plan 9, but over time many ideas from Plan 9 have been ported to Unix. Unix today is not what it was 40 years ago ... the only legacy that's truly staying is the philosophy, which for better or worse, it works.

Of course, Unix could be better. But let's be serious, what do you suppose we should do? Reinvent everything every 5 years?

<comment><USER2> > What limitations have been kept?

For example: multiple address spaces.

The disk/RAM dichotomy is an atrocity, along with everything it entails (i.e. files.) There is no reason for the machine to expose multiple address spaces. The act of program installation and loading into memory, for example, should be one and the same. Think "Palm Pilot." RAM is in practice simply a cache of disk, and for some reason we are stuck "driving stick" and moving things into and out of it by hand. Why can't we treat it the same as L0/L1 cache?

> what do you suppose we should do?

How about this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_(computer_science)>

and, while we're at it, this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_(operating_system)>

And, in general, (not) these:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6gpwh/ask_reddi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6gpwh/ask_reddit_what_atrocities_in_the_software_world/c03so2j)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is a better link to the article:

[http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=print...](http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Operating+Systems&articleId=9133570&taxonomyId=89)</comment>


Two men are trying to become the first person to cross Antarctica alone - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/sports/antarctica-race.html <comment><USER2> Colin Obrady is a close friend of mine. I was visiting him in march of last year when he told me he was considering this journey (The other trip he was considering was a solo unassisted row across the entire pacific ocean).

As someone who has been paying close to attention to this trek, along with quickly chatting with him right before he left, I had no idea that another person would be attempting the crossing at the same time until I read this article. Definitely a interesting plot twist, but hoping for a safe journey for both these courageous athletes.

</comment><comment><USER3> The closest I've ever come to getting a glimpse of what these two are going through is a 1100 mile trek through the Appalachian mountains one winter. It was fun, but I don't think I ever want to do that again. When the temperature drops below about 0* F, there are only two things you can do: Move, or get in your sleeping bag. After a couple months of 14 hours a day alone in the frigid darkness, you start to lose your sanity a little bit. You start to forget what your body looks like. And when you do get a chance to check yourself when you cross civilization, you look almost unrecognizable from the weight loss.

And this is all in the continental United States, a few hours from civilization. It's almost incomprehensible to me to do what these two are doing.

<comment><USER4> Hiking and camping in cold weather can be an extremely effective weight loss strategy. If done with good nutrition, enough sleep, proper gear, it can even be a healthy weight loss strategy. I'm surprised no one seems to ever discuss this, with so much of our culture seemingly obsessed with losing weight.

<comment><USER5> Our culture is obsessed with talking about or thinking about losing weight, preferably with no discomfort or sacrifices involved. So the exact opposite of actually doing something really hard that will result in losing weight. That doesn't sell books.

<comment><USER6> Ha, now I'm imagining this book:

 _The Frigid Formula: How to Rediscover the Ancient Secret to Rapid Weight Loss_

Inside, only one line: "Hike the Appalachian Trail in winter, eating only what you can carry or kill."

<comment><USER7> Doctors hate this!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Related, an excellent long-form New Yorker feature about another recent attempt: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white- dark...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness)

<comment><USER9> I read this and thought that whoever tries stuff like this is just a moron. There's not really much discovery to be made if any. It's extremely costly and dangerous. The only benefit is vanity.

<comment><USER10> The same thing could be said for many costly (in terms of either time or money) journeys: hiking the AT, biking across the world, to name two. In these cases, others have made these voyages thousands of times before, but that doesn't stop people from making these trips.

By the way, I think you're misreading the piece---I don't get the impression that these men are making these trips for vanity.

<comment><USER11> If you have to tell other people about your trips then it is (also) for vanity. Nobody does these extreme trips and doesn't tell about them to anybody.

<comment><USER12> Artists usually show their pieces to at least some other people, yet many paint for internal contentment - we are fundamentally a social species. A large part of experiencing something is showing it to other people to seek their opinion/approval - especially if it had a large impact on a person. More to the point, beyond simply surviving, why do anything? What is life's goal? I would put it to you that many people like this were raised in such a way that their internal contentment and pride comes from this kind of thing: they judge people and more importantly themselves on the experiences they have had and the joy they get from it. They feel a need to share to get some of this joy - usually with loved ones and friends, but sometimes wider.

This is not a bad thing: People often also have a need to hear about others' experiences - hence books, videos, and you being here on hacker news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related: "Ten things no one tells you before an Antarctic expedition" (2015) [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/11315994/Ten- things-n...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/11315994/Ten-things-no- one-tells-you-before-an-Antarctic-expedition.html)

1\. You're going to have to eat a lot of raw butter.

 _When you are skiing across Antarctica and putting in 12-14 hour days of pulling a sled in minus 40C, you have to keep your calorie count up. A normal man burns about 2,500 calories in a day. We burn between 7,000 to 9,000. That means supplementing your dehydrated food with slabs of butter. In the first few days of the expedition, it tastes revolting, but then your body just craves the fat content and you eat the butter like blocks of cheese._

</comment><comment><USER14> Let me preface this by saying I don't want to diminish what these guys are doing at all... this is an incredible feat, no matter what.

However, I'm genuinely curious, and I'm sure other people are as well: Looking at the map, the definition of "across" Antarctica seems a little bit squishy to me. Does crossing one small portion of one side of the continent count as going "across" it? Is this the New York Times trying to grab attention with the headline? Is there some known definition among these types of adventurers as to what counts as "across"? Will there be debate later?

I suppose Charles Lindbergh didn't exactly fly across the widest part of the Atlantic either... still, I'm just intrigued.

<comment><USER2> The journey they are attempting is a known route first attempted by Ernest Shackleton, and is now reffered to as shackletons crossing. It has been attempted several times but never completed. For more backstory on the history of the route, reading David Grann's excellent New Yorker article will fill in a lot of the gaps.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white- dark...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness)

<comment><USER15> I suspect should one of them be successful, the next challenge will be a proper direct crossing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just find it really inspiring to know we have the presence of such adventurous explorers. Once we find ways to travel to other stars, we'll need these men to explore once again.

<comment><USER17> Inspiring?

Having watched Everest and read Cold: Extreme Adventures at the Lowest Temperatures on Earth my view has changed to that these people are selfish glory seekers who can potentially cause a lot of grief and heartache for the people they leave behind when they screw up. As well as huge expense for rescue operations (which then put other people's life at risk).

I sort of understand your pov, but in this day and age they're literally making up dangerous challenges for themselves and have been for decades now.

<comment><USER18> "Deliverance From 27,000 Feet" [1] in the New York Times really changed my view in a similar way. While the most successful and visible adventurers are consummate professionals there is an unseen tier of adventurers that take on more than they are trained for seeking glory without the required experience.

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everes...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/18/sports/everest- deaths.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I followed some of Mike Horn's trip last year. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the differences between these attempts and Horn's trip. Wasn't Horn's trip last year the first unsupported crossing of Antarctica?

<comment><USER20> > Wasn't Horn's trip last year the first unsupported crossing of Antarctica?

It may depend on the specific definitions ("unsupported" vs "solo unsupported"), but the first unsupported crossing I'm aware of was that by Ranulph Fiennes and Mike Stroud in the Antarctic summer of 1992/1993\. It was documented in two books, "Mind Over Matter"[0] by Finnes and "Shadows on the the Wasteland"[1] by Stroud. Both were very entertaining and interesting reads.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Mind-over-Matter-Ranulph- Fiennes/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Mind-over-Matter-Ranulph- Fiennes/dp/0099435128)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Wasteland-Crossing- Antarctica...](https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Wasteland-Crossing-Antarctica- Ranulph/dp/0879516364/r)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Related: [https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_saunders_to_the_south_pole_and...](https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_saunders_to_the_south_pole_and_back_the_hardest_105_days_of_my_life)

[https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_saunders_skis_to_the_north_pol...](https://www.ted.com/talks/ben_saunders_skis_to_the_north_pole?language=en)

</comment><comment><USER22> The way I think I have no clue why people take risks like this other than for the obvious fame and fortune. Just the way I am it seems to be either narcissistic or foolish. I am sure others spur them on because what is not to like about being the friend of someone who does something where you don't suffer any large downside (other than you lose them as a friend).

Also there always seems to be a bit of 'watch car racing for the crashes' or 'watch ice hockey for the fights'. It seems to be something that people are interested because there is the chance of interesting devastation or perhaps elation after the fact that nothing happened.

<comment><USER23> I don't understand the downvotes you're getting.

It might not be as narcissistic as it seems to you: I have been embarking on a couple of adventures, certainly not even close to this Antacrtica crossing, yet my unassisted trips were seen as some as a egoist, narcissistic showoff thing to do. I got a lot of people telling me they assumed I was doing it for likes and follows, only my close friends understood that there's something deep inside you that tells you to go and explore; not for fame, which is shortlived, but for your own good. Without The Life you're struggling, trying to cope with civilization and routine while they eat you from the inside.

More than the "car crash" thing that you mention,I believe people are interested in witnessing success, and happiness. On top of that add the whole "fuck you i'm going" pornography, quitting everything and embarking on a solo trip seems to be a common secret dream that people working 9-5 hide deep inside of their heart.

<comment><USER22> > I don't understand the downvotes you're getting.

Because popular culture is such that we are brainwashed into thinking this type of thing is GREAT!. Similar to when someone jumps on the railroad tracks to save a complete stranger. They get called a hero. But what (to another replies point) if they get killed and aren't around for their family? Why should you risk your life in that case? How is that smart or even considerate of those around you? What is is: stupid and selfish actually.

> only my close friends understood that there's something deep inside you that > tells you to go and explore

Thanks for that. You are the type of person that I would sit down with to explore that entire thinking actually. (I don't feel the same way so I can't easily understand that..)

> quitting everything and embarking on a solo trip seems to be a common secret > dream that people working 9-5 hide deep inside of their heart.

Not me. I don't think I could deal with that!

I think it depends. I was talking to the guard at the courthouse last week and he couldn't wait to retire off to the country. But his job has to be boring as fuck <\-- sorry. And you know his son he told me was 'really good with programming and had some game author write to him directly for something he was doing'. And the father (the court sheriff guard guy) says 'he says he doesn't want to do programming full time'. What does he want to do? Well he is now a police officer in the most dangerous town in the state (really). This isn't really about the son though. My point is the father is happy standing around all day doing nothing. So of course he can't wait for his vacations and to retire (and do nothing at all most likely). Can you imagine just standing there and doing nothing? I can't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know we're talking about Antarctica, but this story reminded me of the incredible book from Hampton Sides called, "In The Kingdom of Ice" ([https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Ice-Terrible-Voyage- Jeannette...](https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Ice-Terrible-Voyage- Jeannette/dp/0307946916)).

It takes in the 1880s, when the general population believed that the North Pole was an open polar sea. The book tells the story of the USS Jeannette, which tries to sail up there.

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

</comment><comment><USER25> First? What about the crossing by Cecilie Skog and Ryan Waters in 2010? [https://www.explorersweb.com/polar/news.php?id=19064](https://www.explorersweb.com/polar/news.php?id=19064)

<comment><USER26> They weren't alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How to the skis they use differ from classic style cross country skis? In the image they look a little wider than any I've owned.

</comment><comment><USER28> If they are two men, they aren't alone. They have the presence of each other.

<comment><USER29> Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> the current HN title doesn't make any sense: "Two men are trying to become the first person to cross Antarctica alone"

two men can by definition not be alone.

<comment><USER31> As discussed in the article, two men are independently making the attempt, at the same time. The grammar works out, but it catches your eye, which is often a goal of a headline writer.

<comment><USER32> Sounds like they'd have a better shot at it if they teamed up :)

<comment><USER33> I was tempted to post that joke, but decided against it. Still, you've got my upvote.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Slicehost site redesigned - <AUTHOR> http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/3/25/slicehost-site-redesigned <comment><USER2> I rather liked the old design.

<comment><USER3> :) I think the original had the ah-good-they-are-concentrating-on-the- important-stuff vibe. Not necessarily a bad thing. Especially for a tech service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not a huge fan of it but I'm happy that they left the management console the way it was!

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't like the use the word "design" gets on the web.

I see this as mostly a re-arting.

The way I use and more importantly: read this page hasny 't really changed.

As a signed up user I click on the button that lets me log in.

The experience is a little bit more different for first time users.

I would prefer it if we called design design and art art. This distinction is important, not just pedantic. While working in groups or at my office discussions of design regularly get caught up in what should be the icing on the cake: the art.

And I think slicehost just got some nice icing

</comment><comment><USER6> Good (it looks very Web 2.0), but where are the motion-blurred pictures of people in three-piece suits and phone operators with headsets on waiting to chat with me? All I see is a concise, informative overview of the company and the services they provide.

In conclusion, no Digg.

(What is "BW"? Is that something to do with Facebook?)

<comment><USER7> BW == Bandwidth.

<comment><USER6> I guess this place is not big on sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> linode.com is a very similar service with a tad bit more value for the same pricing. we like them quite a lot.

</comment><comment><USER9> Has anyone used this for hosting? Can you give some pros/cons?

<comment><USER5> yeah, I'm trying them out for a little side-project.

plug!(<http://theskyisfree.com>)

Instance management not as programattic as EC2.

Slice manager loving rocks.

browser based shell access rocks!

tutorials section taught me a lot about system admin and are easy for a web- devs to follow

Root access for $20 a month :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Bumper-Sticker Computer Science (1985) Flashcards - <AUTHOR> https://nlaz.github.io/flashcards-for-developers/#/decks/recDpE8wdfDMjmg1z <comment><USER2> I remember most of these from reading Programming Pearls years ago so a lot of them came back from that, but a big hint to completing these is that the correct answer in this multiple-choice setup is usually the only one that is grammatically correct for the sentence. It would be more of a test for the unfamiliar readers if more of the "wrong" answers read like they could be correct.

Otherwise, fun to see these again! My favorite that was not included here (from memory): It's easier to make a 4" mirror then a 6" mirror, than it is to make a 6" mirror.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey yardshop, that's helpful to hear. We are playing around with different card types for our site. We are trying to balance difficulty and convenience.

Glad to hear you enjoyed them. Sorry about missing your favorite one. We just added :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty neat. Super simple, but potentially expandable. I could see this being really useful before a interview.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks rememberlenny!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I made this tool to help myself and other programmers improve their skills. This a flashcard deck from a favorite source of mine, Jon Benteley's Bumper Sticker Computer Science. Would love to know if you enjoy the flashcards. Thanks in advance!</comment>


Tell your friends to Shut Up or Start Up - <AUTHOR> http://prjmn.tumblr.com/post/37355646413/shut-up-or-start-up

<comment><USER2> Or just stop having these conversations. Let them change the subject. Stop telling them they could do it. Get over your apparent need to be constantly selling the startup dream and just talk about their damn sister's wedding. When they say 'oh well I couldn't because x' just say 'yea, fair enough' and move the fuck on with your life.

Oh, but 'you can't help it'? Whatever. You won't know until you try. You'll figure it out, you've just got to do it. Right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough and that's how it usually ends up, the subject changes and everyone goes about their lives. That's not really why they are asking me though... they are hoping I can give them some secret sauce to making it actually happen. The reality is that sauce is simply their not changing the subject and to keep asking questions. I'll keep talking, its more exciting then the sisters wedding at the end of the day and maybe together will figure some way forward rather than accepting the "fair enough" copout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amen. Except its a lot worse in cases I've encountered. No one wants to hear the truth. They just want validation of what they believe. When you tell them honestly, some just get royally offended by methods or things you suggest that works. It's annoying. I've concluded it's not worth helping people like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its amazing when they get offended! There is a special brand of confused anger that seems to show up on their face. The "stop making me feel like a fake" brand... I agree its best to stop trying to help when it gets to this stage.</comment></comment>


Begriffs/pg_rational: Precise fractional arithmetic for PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/begriffs/pg_rational <comment><AUTHOR> This was on my ever-lengthening list of projects. Glad to see someone do it. Thanks, Joe!</comment>


Show HN: WebMaestro v1.2.0 – HTTP Rest client and API testing tool - <AUTHOR> https://getwebmaestro.com <comment><AUTHOR> In this release I changed the licensing for WebMaestro so that when trial period expires you can still use the Rest client.

</comment><comment><USER2> why would i buy this when Fiddler/Charles is free?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, for making HTTP requests then WebMaestro is also free.

WebMaestro is targeted at making it easy to develop and mock Rest/Soap APIs. While Fiddler/Charles are Http proxies targeted at monitoring Http requests.</comment></comment>


Coinbase adds support for Litecoin - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/coinbase-adds-support-for-litecoin/ <comment><USER2> Great news. Being able to purchase BTC, ETH and now LTC easily by card is why I eventually dipped my toes in the water.</comment>


Anonymous Just Declared War on Donald Trump with a Massive Cyberattack - <AUTHOR> http://mic.com/articles/137914/anonymous-just-declared-war-on-donald-trump-with-massive-cyberattack#.57dDzLmSx <comment><USER2> If I were Trump's campaign team, I'd be _begging_ Anonymous to deliver on their threat. Trump clearly doesn't need an online presence to get out the vote or get media coverage. And nothing will increase the populist sympathy that has fueled his campaign so far than a shady, illegal attack by international cyber-activists.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Then he can grandstand about being attacked by "hooligans", thereby securing more scared old white people votes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's weird how this stuff makes the news. The group is so loosely coordinated that I could declare myself part of the group and "declare war" on Trump, or whatever and probably get traction (I am __not __part of Anon, FYI).

Maybe they'll do some graffiti or a DDoS attack and take down their site. Maybe a virus from Russia will infect their computers and Anon gets the credit/blame.

Or maybe nothing will happen at all. That's probably the safe bet.</comment>