Bilingual brain boost: Two tongues, two minds - <AUTHOR> http://ronbarak.tumblr.com/post/22722767367/bilingual-brain-boost-two-tongues-two-minds-by

<comment><USER2> I was raised trilingual: born in America to a Colombian dad and Lithuanian mom, so I speak English, Spanish, and Lithuanian. My Lithuanian has gotten a bit rusty since my younger days (mostly out of lack of practice--it's not a language you hear every day), but otherwise I'm fine with all three. Though I can't quite put my finger on it, I have no doubt in my mind that being raised with three languages has had a significant positive impact in how I think. And it's only as I've gotten older that I've realized what a gift that was. When I was young everyone would tell me that, but I didn't believe them because it seemed so natural!

If anything, knowing more than one language makes you better appreciate the commonalities of all langauges. For example English and Spanish are heavily rooted in Latin (English mostly in vocabulary), so you see a lot of words inbetween. Likewise Lithuanian also has a surprising amount of vocabulary lifted directly from Latin. Knowing all three and how these seemingly completely disparate languages are in fact related in many ways fills me with wonder.

<comment><USER3> Me as well, having Romanian parents, being born in Thailand (where they taught me English) and coming to Sweden at age two. Romanian, being the last language I learned well, is the rustiest of course.

But I too feel that one can appreciate the commonalities of all the languages, and that, at least for me, I often can see how languages are built, through the pre- and suffixes, and how they work in a Latin manner. This has helped a lot when I had to learn a fourth language in school (French for 4 years, Spanish for 2 - both being very poor now that I haven't trained).

For these reasons I am shocked that people actually thought that raising a bilingual child would do damage their intelligence, seeing how a lot of smart people have been polyglots - although that was not necessarily something they were raised to be, but still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see several examples here of native speakers of two or more languages in the same language family (e.g., Indo-European). Our example at home is two older children (one who is grown up now, making his living as a hacker) who were brought up as native first-language speakers of both Mandarin Chinese and General American English. My wife is trilingual, growing up in a home that spoke Taiwanese (Taiwan dialect of Minnan Chinese), learning Mandarin as the sole language of school instruction, and learning English beginning in junior high school. Her higher education was in the United States, in the medium of English (of course). I grew up as a monolingual native speaker of General American English (although both my parents had had some foreign language instruction in school, in different languages, and each had living relatives born in the United States who were native speakers of non-English languages). I began learning Chinese, among several other languages, while at university, after learning German and Russian at school.

Oddly, the first language I ever spoke to my wife was actually Japanese, the usual Japanese greeting for a first-time meeting, "はじめまして. どうぞよろしく." Over the years, we have grown strongly to prefer speaking English with each other (from initially mostly speaking Mandarin with each other) because she finds it more congenial to speak what is really on her mind when speaking English. That's a cultural difference between American culture and Taiwanese culture--greater frankness in family conversations in America.

We were quite resolute in speaking Mandarin whenever we were together, whether living in the United States or in Taiwan, as our two older sons were growing up. I would speak to them in English if I was alone with one or both of them. They switched effortlessly from English to Chinese or back as my wife was present or not.

Literacy is HARD to maintain in languages in which the relationship between speech and writing is more remote than in English, as is surely the case in Chinese. I know many, many, many native speakers of Chinese who received their primary, secondary, and even higher educations in Chinese-speaking countries who forget how to write many Chinese characters if they spend a lot of time abroad. Computer input used to be nasty for Chinese, but it is coming along now even in American versions of Windoze. Literature is also more interesting to read if it is uncensored by the government, which gives English-language literature an enormous worldwide draw. But it is definitely life-enriching and thought-provoking to know two or more languages to reasonably high proficiency, and I have enjoyed spending the majority of my life able to communicate in Chinese.

One considerable advantage for the child who grows up bilingual is learning yet more languages as second languages when an adult more readily than do adults who grew up speaking only one language. By diligent study of linguistics, after having some foreign language study (German) that began in elementary school, I acquired enough Chinese to work professionally as an interpreter and a translator, and have enough reading German to be able to do research in that language, and smatterings of other languages. But all the native bilingual members of my family do much better than I do per unit of time in learning languages, so they have many choices before them as occasion arises to learn other languages for various purposes. That helps with second- language acquisition of an understandable pattern of pronunciation, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very true! In my part of the Netherlands Dutch is the official language, but the much older and local other language is Frisian. What you see often is students talking Frisian to other Frisians and Dutch to non-Frisians even during the same group-conversation. They don't mean to, but can't help themselves. The "other mind" takes over seamlessly. I've seen Non-Frisians kindly ask if they can just talk Dutch only to hear them speak Frisian after about 20 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER6> My wife (Polish) and I (British) are currently trying to have a child, and very much want to encourage our children to be bilingual.

I've spoken to a couple of people here who have one Polish parent, one non- Polish parent, and all seem to agree that it's easy enough to keep up the "Mum speaks Polish, Dad speaks language X" game for the first few years. Both said, though, that the real challenge was keeping interested during their teenage years.

That appears to be the challenge; thinking long-term, does anyone have any experience being raised in bilingual households? Did you keep interested past a certain age, and if so, how?

<comment><USER7> Don't worry, they'll already be fully bilingual by about seven. After that, it's a question of it they want to speak it or not, but they will already be bilingual.

If you live in Britain, make sure to back up the exposure to the Polish with films, books, trips to Poland, etc. (If you live in Poland, the opposite, obviously.) Your child needs to get the whole cultural experience, not just your wife speaking.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, that's really encouraging :)

Great point about culture; we're in Poland right now (that might change in a couple of years), and aim to continue visiting both countries for a long time yet. We'll be trying to mix and match as much as possible, so hopefully some from both cultures will rub off :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love learning languages. I chose 12 languages and made a plan to learn each of them for a month, instead of watching TV. That way, in 5 years time, I will hopefully be very happy to have made this decision now.

<comment><USER9> Don't you think it will take more than a month? Or are you that solid at learning them already? If so, I'm very impressed!

<comment><USER8> No, but I don't care. There are some languages that are similar to languages I already know (e.g. Russian to Slovene, or Danish to English and German), some are different (Chinese, Arabic), so they will inevitably take a long time... But I'm not motivated by _knowing_ languages, that is not my goal, _learning_ languages is more important.

In any case, I don't think that the amount of time spent learning matters much, immersion is what is really important. If I ever go somewhere where I'm forced to speak a language for 2 weeks or so, I will learn much more than 6 months studying alone.

<comment><USER9> Immersion is the right path. But wouldn't be better to spend each of the next 12 years in a different country (feasible if you're a top programmer) rather than swapping every month?

Again, if you're a prodigy it can work.

Or is this all a parallel to learning technical languages?

<comment><USER8> It would be better, if my goal was to _know_ these languages. But, as I've said, I don't much care about that. Learning languages is an intellectually stimulating, past-time activity. If I learn something, great. If I don't, also great.

Also, I don't like planning too far ahead. Usually, I draw the limit at about 1 month, so 12 years is a very very long period of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nothing impresses me more in people than their fluency in more than one language.

This is the one skill that is so raw and fundamental that it beats hands down everything else a person can ever learn, be it athletics, flying a jet or mastering business management. I worked with a tech support intern who was just starting in the business. He was white, in his early 20s and seemed like of an Irish descent. Then at some point he casually mentioned he spoke Chinese. What blew me away is how instantaneously my opinion of him changed. He jumped from being a smart guy, of which there's a metric ton, to someone I started to _respect_. Weird stuff, but perhaps it's just me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does the term bilingual limit itself to learning two language's fluently as a child? Or does it include learning a new language as an adult as well? And does it also demand that the person speak both languages with the repesctive native accent?

</comment><comment><USER9> I've noticed that in some circles, people compete not on "What care do you drive?" but "How many languages do your kids speak?"

</comment><comment><USER12> It would also be interesting to see how learning a non-phonetic alphabet, like Chinese or Japanese Kanji affects your brain. Learning tens of thousands of pictographs by heart is no easy feat, and I can tell you that bilingualism does _not_ prepare you for that.

<comment><USER13> Kanji contain repeated elements ("radicals"), which form something of a graphical alphabet. Learning a new character's form is not too difficult then, you can identify that it's radicals A, B and C, in this kind of arrangement. Basically, it's neatly pre-chunked for memorisation.

The pronunciation of kanji is more difficult than their visual layout, and arguably where most of the burden is in Japanese. A single kanji can have pronunciations it's picked up from several periods in history. In practice, it just means that it might have a handful of different pronunciations in different contexts. Learning all these contexts takes time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think if you are not a native English speaker, you get a second language for free! And Indians in general have three languages, their local mother tongue, national language (Hindi) and English.

</comment><comment><USER15> Most asian parents speak to their children in their native tongue, most likely the same for all immigrants, including hispanic. I know many friends whose kids spoke only their asian language until they hit preschool where they learned english. Kids pick up languages very fast when they are immersed in it.

<comment><USER16> Anyone ever think of the negative impact. I've seen small local schools flooded with children who haven't learnt English.The extra attention they require slows down learning for the other kids in the class that actually speak English.

Is that fair?

<comment><USER17> Speaking as a parent of two children who we have spoken exclusively Spanish to, and who picked up English from their environment, friends, and school. There has not been any impact. And this is coming from the teachers, who are usually extremely surprised to learn that we speak only Spanish at home.

You underestimate the ability of children to absorb knowledge from their environment.

As a matter of fact, if anything, it has been a net positive. Kids at a young age have a huge curiosity about languages and having bilingual kids in the classroom encourages the other kids to learn. My first graders class begged to have my daughter teach them some Spanish, and the teacher set aside some time for her to do so. The other parents heard from their kids, and thanked the teacher for it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I learnt French at school and did badly and then as an adult learnt French to a very high standard (I would call myself fluent and not bilingual). Something definitely happened to my brain as my French got really good; it was like I became two different people.

<comment><USER7> Most people think of language as a dictionary of words -- but it's really the codification of a culture. So when you speak it (fluently), you change yourself to express yourself through that culture. The same expression (perfectly translated) can mean different things in different cultures, for example.

I speak two other languages fluently, and I'm a slightly different person in each language. It's really fascinating.

<comment><USER19> On being a slightly different person, I also speak two other languages which I learned from 18 yrs old and onwards. While I wouldn't say I'm a different person in either of the three, I would say I'm not quite me in the second and third. All the nuances, humor, etc that a person shows in their first language can be lost in translation and therefore being yourself isn't as easy. People are likely to think you are quieter than you normally are (in your own language), basically that you are less of everything you actually are.

It takes a long time, I find, to reach a comfort level in another language that rivals that of how you express yourself in your mother tongue. I've been speaking Portuguese (my 3rd language) at least 50% of the time for the past 7 years or so and I'm still not able to hit my mark, as if it were my own...but I'm close. Btw, these last few years, I speak it 80% of the time.

If I were to venture a guess as to why 'hitting my mark' isn't so easy, I'd say that with most language learners, there's a certain point in your learning where you say to yourself, "I'm fluent enough". Reading and writing, I'm in the 95 percentile in Portuguese but with speaking (seemingly no matter how much I speak), I stay at around 85%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> AskHN: The consensus is that each parent speaks his languge so as not to confuse the child. When the parents are taking to each other in the presence of the child, does each one talk to his own language? Or in that case it doesn't matter?

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not so sure about the statement that being bilingual reduces the vocabulary. If this is true, this would discourage me from raising a kid to speak two languages... after all, wasn't George Orwell's thesis in 1984 that removing words from the language removed the ability to think? Who would want to do this to a child? Does learning Latin as a second language, or Ruby indeed, restrict your vocabulary? I doubt it.

<comment><USER22> George Orwell was talking about removing _important_ words from the language. For example, removing any words relating to democracy and freedom from the language would prevent people from expressing what they thought they might want the government to give them. This isn't just reducing someone's vocabulary. This is targeted destruction of a language's capacity to express specific concepts. When you learn a language, you learn the important words first.

We can make an analogy to programming languages. The reduced vocabulary (if any) from learning two languages at once can be likened to the fact that when you learn two programming languages you will probably not be familiar with as many modules from each language that you learn, whereas focusing on one programming language would allow you to deeply learn all the modules available. However, you would still fully learn the syntax and most of the core features of both programming languages. In contrast, the analogy to what George Orwell was talking about would be removing features from the core language to the point that it is no longer Turing-complete, and is only capable of expressing "approved" programs. Kind of like HQ9+[1], only instead of "hello world", quine, and 99 bottles, it's "The government is great", "I love the government", and "All power to the government". The plus can still increment the accumulator, but the accumulator represents how much you love the government.

[1] <http://esolangs.org/wiki/HQ9%2B>

<comment><USER21> You are absolutely right, he was talking about words that were important to the Party. Words that facilitated criticism, dissent etc. However, my point still stands. If you consider a child with a good vocabulary in two languages versus an excellent vocabulary in one language, which supports the superior reasoning?

<comment><USER22> Judging from the other comment threads here, I would guess the two languages with good vocabulary in each.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon is buying Eero - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/amazon-is-buying-home-mesh-router-startup-eero/ <comment><USER2> Hah, followed this twitter post, [https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1095084761796685824](https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1095084761796685824), from another commenter that leads to the Eero CEO on an episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask from 2017. This question from the interviewer is now pretty ironic:

> KS: I say one of the biggest things is that you don't want Google messing > around in your home. Honestly, half of my decisions are made like that, and > now I don't want as much Amazon in there because I buy everything now > because I'm at Whole Foods. It's fascinating. Part of it is that idea as an > independent. You don't want those two or three companies to really dominate > every single data interaction you have, which is a plus for you guys, > presumably.

> Our business model is to sell you a premium product and that's our business.

From [https://www.recode.net/2017/8/11/16135384/transcript-eero- ce...](https://www.recode.net/2017/8/11/16135384/transcript-eero-ceo-nick- weaver-answers-wi-fi-mesh-router-questions-podcast)

<comment><USER3> >This question from the interviewer is now pretty ironic

The word you need here is _prescient_. Nothing ironic about how things ended up playing out.

<comment><USER4> Positioning Eero's offerings via contrast to Amazon as a privacy threat... and then ending up Amazon-allied/assimilated does carry some irony.

<comment><USER5> The CEO only said their product is positioned as a premium product. The interviewer was the one mentioning Amazon and Google being in your home.

The CEO's reply was pretty neutral in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some acquisitions make sense, some don't, but the propensity for founders and investors to push for an exit depresses the free market consumer in me. I want lots and lots of choices for anything I consider buying, yet nearly every acquisition making headlines lately seems like it falls into 1 of 2 categories: 1) a marketshare power grab, or 2) a mechanism to gather more customer data to an already massive empire.

Somewhat related: are there any viable open source mesh network solutions for home use?

<comment><USER7> This is precisely why large concentrations of wealth are harmful to the (free- market) economy. They distort the market entirely. A wealth cap / _much_ stronger taxation on individuals and businesses funding a basic income would be a good way to fix this without breaking the market mechanism.

A concentration of wealth is nothing other than a concentration of (economic) power, and it's bad for exactly the same reasons that other concentrations of power are.

It boggles my mind that people who argue against large governments because their incentives aren't correctly aligned don't see that precisely the same argument applies to private individual/businesses with large amounts of wealth.

<comment><USER8> > This is precisely why large concentrations of wealth are harmful to the > (free-market) economy.

Large concentrations of wealth are necessary for scaling production, allowing lower costs and increasing standard of living. Moreover, large concentrations of wealth are usually not very concentrated in the first place: the wealth of the wealthy is spread across the economy and the wealth of associations is spread across the world.

> It boggles my mind that people who argue against large governments because > their incentives aren't correctly aligned don't see that precisely the same > argument applies to private individual/businesses with large amounts of > wealth.

The same arguments RE power/monopoly/unaccountability that apply to corporations in the market apply to the government much more in every case. Additionally, the government has the authority to coerce everyone into doing what they want to be done. It also has the ability to steal your money and spend it on things that you might somewhat benefit from at the best or are absolutely morally reprehensible at the worst.

And no, the existence of voting does not make any of that less of a problem.

<comment><USER9> Economies of scale taper off: truly large concentrations of wealth are not needed for this, and oligopolies can free large companies from the kind of competition that drives the search for efficiency.

I am not sure about how large concentrations of wealth are supposed to increase the standard of living across the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's clear that Amazon doesn't mess around. They're literally going into bull- dozer mode to capture all the connected home market.

It frankly makes Google look extremely slow, especially with how hard it has been for them to make sense of that Nest acquisition, in early 2014.

<comment><USER11> Google wifi is a solid product, but needs a completely separate backhaul network for client mesh handover. Once set up properly it's unbelievably good in a larger house.

<comment><USER12> I have Google Wifi at home and a unifi mesh at my office. Unless you are covering a massive area or have more than 25 clients, I'd have a real hard time recommending unifi. It requires much more configuration and maintenance. Google WiFi you really just forget about it - handles patches automatically, finds you the best channel automatically, tests your uplink daily and logs results.

Unifi's software is much better than any other enterprise solution, but it still has a lot of rough edges and bugs if you're doing anything non-standard.

<comment><USER13> Have you looked at their home wifi Amplfi line? [https://www.amplifi.com/](https://www.amplifi.com/)

It's supposed to be plug-and-play.

I'd probably buy one, but I'm pretty happy with my 2 year old Unifi AC router, after initial setup, I haven't done anything to it - I have it set to update firmware automatically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hm, was going to purchase one because some of my favorite podcasts, Mac Power Users and ATP, rave about it. I'm not sure how I feel about Eero now.

I don't have any Amazon smart thing and not sure I want one.

<comment><USER15> I got a bunch for my parents who have a pretty large house in western new york - they are just okay.

I'd recommend a Ubiquity Access Point, Ubiquity Security Gateway, and a Ubiquity Cloud Key instead. You could add one of their managed switches too if you need more network ports.

They work great, aren't that tough to set up and have better performance.

<comment><USER16> Ubiquiti makes really good stuff–I recently had a great experience setting it up for a 50-person office–but it's not necessarily a replacement for actual mesh wifi since you still need ethernet (and PoE) to hook them up.

My parents house is large, old, allergic to wifi and complicated to wire for ethernet...I set up a mesh network for them last year and it has been a revelation after years of terrible wifi.

<comment><USER17> I'm pretty sure all the unifi APs support a wireless uplink. They also have "mesh APs". But they do still need the PoE injector if you don't have a PoE switch.

<comment><USER16> Ah indeed it looks like they enabled multi-hop wireless uplink via a firmware update last summer about a month after I set up my parents house, so I was behind the times on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was considering buying one. Not any more.

I don't have an alexa or google home or any other "smart" home device, and don't plan to get one. The hard part will be when they integrate such software into every appliance. Anyone have any idea what those of us concerned about privacy will do then?

Also, I still don't get what the point of having a "digital assistant" in all my appliances is. Can anyone explain?

<comment><USER19> They're only useful if you've got Phillips Hue lights installed. Other than that, smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home _suck_.

This is coming from a former enthusiast who quit his job to build a cross- platform framework and SaaS for those things, and owned them in his home for years. I _really wanted_ to like them.

Trust is a big issue with these companies, but putting any conspiracy theories aside, they're just not very smart or useful. Under the hood, it's a glorified command-line that's voice activated, which is why spoken commands are often very inflexible; if you have to learn _exactly_ what to say to it, then it's not much of an assistant or better than simply pressing buttons. They are also a form of vendor lock-in, as there's really no standard for writing VUIs(voice user interfaces) like there is for writing web applications. As a developer, you're stuck working with their crippled APIs, and everything has to go through their servers.

Recent news around Google has convinced me to leave those devices unplugged for good. It was fun trying to "program" them, but after years both professionally and privately trying to come up with ways to make them useful, I always came up empty handed. If it weren't for the fact that they can control lights really well, I'd say they belong in a garbage can. Either way, they are a gateway to more of the surveillance economy.

EDIT: Being able to play Amazon Music or Spotify on them would be useful if those VUIs, years later, still weren't a complete joke. It's nifty being able to ask smart speakers to play music until you've experienced enough times of it not recognizing particular bands or not finding songs/albums that are clearly in the mobile app. _They suck._

<comment><USER18> Yeah, this is the general sense I got. Only useful if you already have a "smart home", which doesn't actually do very much. And music.

But for music, some of us don't want to pay $9.99/mo for a bs streaming service, but already have all our music ripped from cd on a nas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised that so many people here own an eero or were going to buy one. Last I checked, they required a sign-in and were completely unusable if the Internet connection went down. The router simply will not work if it can't phone home. Is that no longer the case?

If Amazon fixes that, I'd almost be more likely to buy one (if I ever get tired of my AmpliFi HD).

EDIT: Looks like eeroOS 3.9 was supposed to have fixed network persistence a few months ago, but no word on whether you still need to sign up for an account to use it. Can anyone confirm? [https://community.eero.com/t/m26cfr/offline-wlan- access](https://community.eero.com/t/m26cfr/offline-wlan-access)

<comment><USER21> I don't use eero+ (their managed firewall service) and run my eeros in bridge mode behind an ISP router/firewall…so with those caveats: my wifi has stayed up even when the uplink to the ISP is down. I have not tried managing the wifi when this has happened so it's possible that the app doesn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how some of the tech podcasters will react to this. Feels like on the ATP podcast they are constantly talking about how great Eero is. Wonder if that will change.

<comment><USER23> That's just advertising. They will accept sponsorship from many many companies.

<comment><USER24> They seem to genuinely like the product, even if they are also sponsored by eero.

But will they stop accepting eero as a sponsor? I could easily see that happening.

<comment><USER23> It's more will Eero still pay them for sponsorship. I doubt it because its not really needed anymore but maybe

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is one reason I refused to consider Eero in my "Apple is ditching AirPort line, look for secure replacement" flight.

Glad I settled on Ubiquiti. If anything, given their leadership background, they'd be acquired by Apple.

<comment><USER26> I understand that Ubiquiti sells more than just wifi routers.

BUT still, it makes me chuckle that Apple would kill off AirPort, product that was well liked by customers, only to buy (I mean IF the did) a WHOLE new company that includes a wifi router in the product lineup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Part of why I loved my Eero was that wasn't Google or Amazon controlled. Sigh...

</comment><comment><USER28> Sigh, now amazon owns my home wifi system. That's super reassuring...

</comment><comment><USER29> How long until the adblocking, privacy features (Eero Plus) go away now? I'm guessing it will just slowly start getting glitchier until they pull it due to "low consumer demand".

As an Eero customer and owner of zero commercial eavesdropping hubs, I'm not happy about this.

<comment><USER30> Just swap it out with Google Wifi. Oh wait...

<comment><USER31> Ubiquiti and Netgear are still out there with decent consumer mesh kits... for now...

<comment><USER32> Ubiquiti's consumer stuff is kind of bad (AmpliFi). I like their small business grade gear however (Unifi, and EdgeMax). Definitely wouldn't recommend it to most consumers however, it is Prosumer/Enthusiast level or above.

<comment><USER25> Why is AmpliFi bad? I'd honestly like to hear.

<comment><USER33> I had one of the early models of the AmpliFi. It was generally pretty solid. We have a really old house with a lot of brick and plaster and it did well at filling the house with wifi when other routers came up short. We got gigabit internet and it just sort of collapsed. I think newer versions are better equipped for that speed but ours couldn't seem to get past 100 mbps.

I thought their support was really good though. The main issue I have with it is that, for some reason, they were unable to identify my model number as being an older version that didn't support gigabit. They were super helpful but could have saved us both some time if they just paid closer attention to the model number.

I opted for the Netgear Orbi; good reviews and satellites capable of up to ~800 mbps in ideal situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It makes me a bit uneasy using anything amazon related as they have large contracts with the US military[0]. Granted the personal could be completely insular but why take the chance?

[0]:[https://aws.amazon.com/government- education/defense/](https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/defense/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Just checked out their offering, and they sell....glorified WiFi routers and range extenders?

And I've just read there's a mandatory account + sign-in for these things?

What am I missing?! Just go buy a couple consumer routers and a spool of cat5e and you're done. If you're lazy, get a powerline device to bring connectivity to the remote router.

This is goofy!

<comment><USER36> I wouldn't recommend the average consumer get a consumer router without automatic security updates.

<comment><USER37> I wouldn't recommend the average consumer get a consumer router, full stop.

Even if it has automatic security updates, you can bet that as soon as the thing's discontinued, the updates will be too...

<comment><USER36> What are you recommending to the average consumer then? Assuming the average consumer is unable to use a web-based config UI, or to pay anyone to do configuration for them.

<comment><USER37> I'd probably offer to buy them a Mikrotik Routerboard and set it up for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> No Eero employees chiming in?

I don't think they were in the money, and suspect there are some seriously disappointed shareholders right now.

<comment><USER39> $90M in funding according to crunchbase, [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/eero/funding_rounds/...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/eero/funding_rounds/funding_rounds_list), and it's been almost 3 years since the last one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've been using Eero for our home wifi for several years now. It works reasonably well and the family settings are great for controlling screen time for my kids.

I also use it to help control my own screen time. With eero I can set up a schedule to force myself to unplug from work and the internet on a regular basis.

I'm hoping Amazon makes Eero Plus free for prime users.

</comment><comment><USER41> Amplifi from Ubiquiti has by far the best networking gear if you just need a simple plug-and-play mesh network for your house.

</comment><comment><USER42> Slightly different subject but does anyone know the state of play in (for want of better term) "public mesh" provision - having routers talk directly to neighboring routers and forming advocates local networks (possibly with mobile included?)

It's an area I often think could truly bring about decentralisation but it seems quiet

<comment><USER43> Not an answer to your question, but: this is how Meraki started in the previous decade, as RoofNet at MIT [1], then as an independent company building wonderful idiot-proof mesh networking gear. I keep hoping another team of students somewhere will come up with RoofNet's spiritual successor, but interest in stitching together community meshes seems to be waning as everyone gets excited about 5G.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20060831053126/http://pdos.csail...](https://web.archive.org/web/20060831053126/http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/doku.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Am I wrong to assume Amazon will be slurping as much private data (browsing habits etc.) as possible?

</comment><comment><USER45> Having gone through a couple of stinker routers that cost me over $100 a piece, and having friends with similar stories, I'm thinking consumers are ready to spend properly on good name-brand wifi. Netgear can die in a fire.

<comment><USER36> Maybe your friends are better off than mine, but I've had a hell of a time recommending Eero for performance, security and stability when a single base station is $280, and my friends can get a model off Amazon that "just works" for $30.

<comment><USER46> Those $30 routers die after a year or two and seem to constantly have trouble in the interim--but I know exactly what you mean. I've gone out and purchased things for close friends and family just because I have to hear about it or support it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Does traffic that currently goes through Eero products also go through their cloud servers if they have any? I don't have these products so am wondering if this is something they do. For sure it'll be an area of concern.

<comment><USER48> From what I understand from using the product personally, unless you sign up for Eero Plus, it does not.

You can also use them in bridge mode with a separate router in which they simply act as a mesh of wifi access points and don't do any routing or DHCP, but obviously they'd still have access to the frames of anything going over wireless and the ability to read their contents if they'd like, since they'd be the ones doing the encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Goddamnit, I liked my Eeros. I guess I need to decide if I want to forever monitor the changes Amazon makes to their functionality or switch router makers.

</comment><comment><USER50> Time for Apple to put WiFi on their HomePods.

<comment><USER51> Like the idea, but the only snag is that placement of the HomePod in the house would become compromised because it'd have to be a balance between where makes most sense for music/voice vs. where makes most sense for WiFi coverage.

Selling multiple at $350 each just for WiFi range extension is probably beyond even Apple's marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Nice acquisition. Should help them integrate Alexa into a single box that provides router, WiFi, and switch.

<comment><USER53> Nice from a business perspective for sure. I shudder as a privacy conscious consumer.

<comment><USER54> Indeed. Just seen in my Twitter feed via @LaurenGoode [1]

> Every Eero that's connected ends up spitting out data to help us understand > how our iPhone's performing, how our Sonos speaker's performing, how is > Alexa performing, and we use that aggregated data to keep improving our > software.

[1] [https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1095084761796685824](https://twitter.com/LaurenGoode/status/1095084761796685824)

<comment><USER55> Wow -- I wonder what data they're going to collect once they're Amazon.

Need a canary for [https://eero.com/legal/privacy](https://eero.com/legal/privacy) . Look for the string "URI" or "URL" to see when they start collecting browsing data.

<comment><USER56> Routers can't see URLs now that everything is HTTPS but they could still collect valuable site-level metadata.

<comment><USER57> Except in networks like mine -- I MITM all HTTPS traffic in my network so that I can detect and handle threats that use HTTPS to hide themselves from my defenses.

<comment><USER58> How often do you run into certificate pinning issues?

<comment><USER57> I haven't, to the best of my knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> If you buy an Alexa router you might as well run a patch cable directly to the NSA.

<comment><USER60> But the entire point of products like this is to not have to run patch cables!

At least direct NSA backhauls are only analyzed and acted upon by the slow moving government. Commercial surveillance is more agile in both regards, and then passed off to the government anyway.

The true pity of these products is the decommodification of Wifi. Meaning rather than hardware manufacturers competing to bring us ever-faster radios, the market will slouch into just competing over who supports the recent batch of throwaway firmware features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> The six page memo wrote itself on this one. Ensures there is an Alexa in every room, since you are supposed to have an Eero in every room for it to work right.

<comment><USER62> You don't need eero in every room. That is a total overkill.

Agree Alexa with WiFi mesh routing is a no brainer though.

<comment><USER63> "Alexa data mine my whole life"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Funny how Apple got out of the router game...

</comment><comment><USER65> Can someone explain what is "mesh" about this

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't get the number of people complaining about "Oh, what is going to happen to my data ?". What did you think was going to happen in the first place ? If you possess time/skill, hack on openwrt. If you don't have time/skill, but have money, buy enterprise gear. If you have neither time, nor skill, nor money, and want shiny toys, what do you think will happen ? How many times do these patterns have to repeat before people stop buying lowest common consumer garbage ?

<comment><USER36> Enterprise gear for home use if you don't have time/skill doesn't really work unless you also have money to pay an enterprise professional to configure your home network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> So if Amazon doesn't have any stores (sans whole foods) and recently received a patent to ban 'in-store' price checking[1]. Now every time you connect to and Eero, you're on amazon's network, your home is their showroom... Good luck

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/06/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/06/16/amazon- has-a-patent-to-keep-you-from-comparison-shopping-while-youre-in-its- stores/?utm_term=.9628433866e2)

<comment><USER19> How this is patentable is beyond me.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US9665881B1/en?oq=9665881](https://patents.google.com/patent/US9665881B1/en?oq=9665881)

I should revisit the unoriginal crap I've got on my GitHub and try to patent it.</comment></comment>


Invasive plant poses threat to Alaska sockeye salmon - <AUTHOR> https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/invasive-plant-poses-threat-to-alaska-sockeye-salmon <comment><USER2> I wonder how much carbon this plant sequesters, the interesting thing about "Invasive" plants is they are typically very successful or veral. 50 million years ago Azolla cleaned up the atmosphere by removing most of the Co2 then sinking to the seafloor of the Artic ocean. There are plenty of non native plants that have both good and bad properties. My personal favorite is the hymilayen black berry, it produces tons of fruit and works better than barbed wire to keep trespassers out and livestock in, sure it chokes out native berry plants but just because something was there first doesnt mean its better. Turning a problem into a solution is the key to life, don't waste time and engery trying to keep the world the same, instead adapt, evolve and count your blessings.</comment>


Android: The word Google didn't say during the Pixel 3 event - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2018/10/11/the-dirty-word-android-dead-made-by-google/ <comment><USER2> I'm using the Chromebook Pixelbook as my primary development device. I love it ergonomically: great keyboard, love the ability to flip the keyboard behind and use as a touchscreen.

ChromeOS could be really big, and it makes sense as a brand to switch again from Android for the reason.

But, the fact that I lose access to the sound services almost _every single time_ I use the machine is crazy.

The response from Google is not encouraging.

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/?noredirect=true#!top...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/?noredirect=true#!topic/chromebook- central/Va6NLP09NJM)

Basically:

 _Reboot_

Or, _just wipe all your data!_

If they really expect people to use these as their primary machines or even as just a browsing device, you MUST have sound working 100% of the time.

Mine is setup as a developer machine so it could be that I'm bleeding edge. But I'm loathe to switch back, lose all my data, just to see if that fixes things.

<comment><USER3> I'm in the market for a new development machine, and wholly afraid of the new Macbooks. What do develop on the Pixelbook? Are you using Linux or Cloud IDEs?

<comment><USER4> i recommend you get the xps 13 or 15. once you swap out the killer wifi card for an intel solution, you have a solid machine that's ready to run your favorite distro out of the box. or you can get the developer addition that actually has dell support for ubuntu. idk why you would prefer the pixelbook to this unless you really like chromeOS.

<comment><USER5> This is the annoying thing - I've got the 9350 and I had to swap the Broadcom card for an Intel card to get any kind of stability in Windows.

Well known error: [https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read- Only/bcm...](https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read- Only/bcmpciedhd63-sys-Blue-Screen-Dell-XPS-13-QHD/td-p/4677205)

At one point, the crashes even managed to corrupt my filesystem. What I will say is that it's _super_ easy to swap out the wifi and M.2 SSD - took 2 screwdrivers and about 10 minutes. I _may_ have lost Miracast but does anyone actually use that?

<comment><USER6> YMMV but a former coworker had a 2016 XPS 13" and swapped out the wifi card for some Intel one and Miracast still worked for him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm just as surprised that in this whole article the word "Fuchsia" appeared exactly a single time (and that occurrence was in parentheses).

Couldn't the primary reason be just that? They are currently maintaining three distinct OS stacks - Android, Chrome OS and now Fuchsia - and there have been numerous messages in the past that they would likely to unify them.

So my guess is they either want to de-emphasize Android to not have the OS fragmentation leak into marketing or they really plan to drop Android even as a technical foundation at some point.

<comment><USER8> They are just as dysfunctional as Microsoft with their WinDev vs DevTools political issues.

It is not only the multiple OSes, also the developer stacks.

Android, Web/PWAs, Flutter, with each one presenting themselves as the solution for delivering software on Gooogle's platforms.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree. There is massive confusion in the space...the tooling appears hard to maintain and often unloved. There is a whole push to get Android devs using Kotlin...I'd love to know the stats on actual usage. Personally, I see Kotlin as movement rather than progress.

At some point I think it would make sense to have a clean break. Personally, I'd love to see something like rust encouraged (possibly with JS frontend to ensure huge adoption). Probably never going to happen...so with that said, we'll probably end up with dart...suitable for writing macros around machine learning code.

<comment><USER10> There was a recent blog post following KotlinConf 2018, saying 27% of top 1000 google play apps use Kotlin. [https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2018/10/kotlin-mom...](https://android- developers.googleblog.com/2018/10/kotlin-momentum-for-android-and-beyond.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The word Google didn't say is "Android".

This title has been edited, but its still unclear what word wasn't said. #stopclickbait

</comment><comment><USER12> One possible interpretation is that someone simply decided the presentation should keep things simple and avoid confusing people by mentioning more than one brand.

This is a pretty common strategy in communication: pick one main idea you want to get across, and stick to that only. If you throw in everything that you can think of but the kitchen sink, the distraction does more harm than good.

Following that reasoning, Pixel is the brand of those specific phones, so that is the brand you mention on that occasion.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this because of Fuschia? Maybe, but after Google released a phone with both a notch and a chin, I have absolutely no faith in their ability to succeed in bringing that OS to market.

</comment><comment><USER14> I hear no one talking about possible privacy issues when using a ChromeBook for your work. Is that a non-issue (i.e well addressed)?

</comment><comment><USER15> I assume since Fuschia will be replacing Android soon as the all-in-one OS of Google, that they're sidelining the Android name.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is Fuchsia considered to be Unix?

<comment><USER17> Any OS w/o a POSIX interface is probably a non-starter at this point. Anything POSIX is arguably UNIX. This said, who cares about the kernel? Android is not about the kernel. There are 100x more difficult problems up the stack than the kernel. My guess nothing will happen there. It has been too hard to get Android where it is.

<comment><USER18> My pet theory is that Google intends to eventually port the existing userspace for chromeos and Android to the Fuschia kernel.

As long as your apps run inside Chrome's runtime, or interact with the Android APIs instead of the low level POSIX APIs, they'll never know the difference. (And we all know that Android's existing POSIX support is minimalistic, to say the least.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just makes sense. They will move to Fuchsia and is starting the process of moving away from the "Android" brand.

We have seen it already with Wear OS and other places.

<comment><USER20> Thanks, I hadn't yet heard of Fuchsia.

More info for any others who are interested:

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

<comment><USER21> I'd heard of it but didn't know it was open source.

Is Fuchsia in a state where you can boot it in a VM?

Wikipedia mentioned how to develop applications for it with Dart. Did anyone try developing applications for it?

In a talk [1] by Sam Altman I saw on the YC channel on YouTube, Sam said that an advantage that startups have over big corp is that the latter are not able to "turn their battleship around" as fast, developing software for new platforms. Hmmm... (pondering).

[1]: I think it was this one: [https://youtu.be/0lJKucu6HJc](https://youtu.be/0lJKucu6HJc)

<comment><USER22> One of the writers at ARS got it to work: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia- os-o...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/googles-fuchsia-os-on-the- pixelbook-it-works-it-actually-works/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"I've Been Seeing Someone Else" - <AUTHOR> http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/ive-been-seeing-someone-else

<comment><USER2> Didn't you post this just a couple of days ago?</comment>


A Garden Without Walls – SMS on XMPP (Jabber) - <AUTHOR> "XMPP is the open standard for messaging and presence." (https://xmpp.org). It is also known as Jabber.
While some companies (Google, Facebook) have (ab)used this free standard to make their own Walled Gardens, there is another group that is using it to move technology forward: JMP (https://jmp.chat)
JMP allows you to get a real phone number and use it for texting, calling, group texts, picture messages, and yes - it can even receive messages from short codes. You can use it with any XMPP-capable client on any device with an internet connection. You can also use it with a SIP client to make and receive VoIP calls.
Unlike Google Voice, JMP does not mine or sell your data.  Also, you can use/buy JMP's service completely anonymously. <comment><USER2> What is the "backend'for this? I mean do they use something like twilio or something else? I am asking cause I think most such services use SIP instead of xmpp, although for messages xmpp might fit better.

<comment><USER3> The backend is Bandwidth. Since JMP uses an actual carrier instead of a reseller like Twilio, it is easier to fix issues and get questions answered, as there is one less level of tech support indirection.

It also means JMP's costs are lower (Twilio is extremely expensive) and gets more features (Twilio doesn't do group texting or messages to short codes).

While SIP does support messaging, it is extremely limited: text-only and single recipient (no picture messaging or group texts). So XMPP is a much better fit, as all the texting features people expect can be implemented over XMPP.</comment></comment>


Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.evernote.com/2012/08/24/the-new-evernote-smart-notebook-by-moleskine/ <comment><USER2> I think this is really quite neat. I used to be a heavy user of Evernote, but I found it difficult to reconcile my handwritten notes (90% of my notes at work) with what I'd have in Evernote. As a result, I stopped using Evernote. I always hoped I'd be able to find a good way to record my notes digitally (e.g., iPad + stylus), but at the end of the day, taking notes with pen & paper always wins for me.

This could very well bring me back to Evernote. Not sure if it's worth $24+, but if it works, maybe... I do take an awful lot of handwritten notes, and I'd love to digitize them easily.

<comment><USER3> What's your opinion of Livescribe?

I'm also a paper note taker but I don't see myself moving to Livescribe (though I haven't tried it) or taking photos of pages in Evernote. I'm pretty organized, though, so I'm not dying to have everything digitized.

<comment><USER4> I found the huge pen rather clunky, and the spiral bound notebooks really frustrating. Their software is also rather pitiful compared to Evernote.

<comment><USER5> There's a livescribe->evernote bridge, though, isn't there?

<comment><USER6> Yes, there is, last I recall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So far, my experience with Evernote has been watching them make Skitch almost unusable. The app always forgets my Skitch credentials, keeps displaying the startup screen even when I check "Do not show this to me again", and tries to force me into an Evernote account. At one point they changed Skitch to display 10 different things I could do after an upload. They made it a real mess.

I assume Evernote's products are overly complicated, but I'd like to know if they just botched the Skitch acquisition. Does anybody have any insight into this?

<comment><USER8> Evernote is a fantastic app and not hard to use or overly complicated.

I agree with you on the Skitch integration, the startup screen has driven me bonkers.

My guess is that they'll sort it out, the last release seemed a little better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the world crying out for a fast e-ink small form-factor tablet that just saves everything as digital ink. (Then build-up from there.) Simply recording time (and optionally location) associated with each page would make the device awesome. Add the ability to interface with a web app for better processing, as Evernote does, and you'd take over the world.

<comment><USER10> I saw the link, and thought that's what it would be. Just that it synced with Evernote instead of Amazon or whatever.

Then I saw 'new iOS app' in the copy and my expectations disappeared. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This should be ideal for someone like me, but unfortunately I can't see myself using it. I have a shelf full of Moleskins (began buying them in 2005) and I was a premium Evernote user from 2009-2011. But I canceled my Evernote subscription because I never used the software - I really dislike their UI. The only thing that could bring me back to them is a UI redesign, to make it seem less like an email application and more like a file-sorting system, which is what it's supposed to be.

And the idea of taking pics of my notebook pages with my phone is too clunky.

However, I'll grant that this is why this doesn't work * for me * and express envy for those for whom it does work for, since "on paper" all of this seems like a great idea. Having notebook pages scanned and sortable would be wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER12> Now, for those of us interested in startups - what a perfect example of great product development:

\- Address existing need that few other products addresses

\- Helps generating new customers by removing some of the barriers - "I like to create my notes with a pen on a paper"

\- Involves non-trivial blend of hardware and software

\- Involves non-trivial business partnership

\- Serves as a test-bed for bringing the solution to more people by refining unskewing algorithms

\- etc. etc.

Well executed, Evernote!

<comment><USER13> Do either Evernote or Moleskine really qualify as startups, though? (not that that necessarily changes things, though I'm not convinced that it's as revolutionary as being made out to be... certainly evolutionary).

<comment><USER12> I don't think Evernote is a startup anymore, but it's a remarkable product development story nevertheless. Certainly thinking outside of the box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not that interested in the Moleskine, but the smart stickers are an amazing idea. A great mesh of the real world and digital.

<comment><USER15> I agree, I wish they just sold them separately so you tag random objects in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As an author, it's depressing to see empty books -- stickers and all -- selling for twice as much as full ones.

<comment><USER17> It's not very intuitive. However, a notebook stays with me for a couple of years, so I prefer it to be nice as well as durable. A novel lasts a few days usually.

<comment><USER18> This is my reasoning as well. If I'd treat a paperback novel the same way as I treat my notebooks, stuffing them in my bag, taking them everywhere, they'd fall apart after a week or two. I select a notebook for durability (among a few other things, like not having squares or lined paper but rather blank, and having a convenient form factor).

However, while I do agree that Moleskine notebooks are absolutely gorgeous, I usually buy other types at about 1/3rd of the price.

Their diary/planner, however, is merely on the high price end for such things, not by a factor of three. And in the years I've used one of those (I use a much tinier planner now), I kept on being pleasantly surprised by their attention to detail in the design of tables, grids and bubbles you'd find in a planner, all of it really well-thought-out. But then, a pre-printed planner is not the same as an empty notebook.

<comment><USER17> > However, while I do agree that Moleskine notebooks are absolutely gorgeous, > I usually buy other types at about 1/3rd of the price.

I used to do that as well, and felt Moleskines were just too expensive. Then I splurged on one a couple of years ago, and never had that feeling again. Don't know if I just feel that I get my money's worth, or that my brain just simplistically adjusted to the price.

Empty pages is also my thing. In general I have four, pocket sized one, A5 sized main notebook, A4 sized sketchbook for drawing, and a reporter style watercolor pocket one (I love the panorama-like landscape format for pictures).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The feature I would really like to see would be a printed title Box in the moleskin notebook, which would allow me to title my written work and then pass that title into Evernote when it's scanned. You could obviously also extrapolate this feature out to tags or other pieces of metadata to be stored in the digital Evernote document.

Just to clarify: this would really be made for those who have awful handwriting (like me), so only a small part of your page would need to be written carefully and eventually digitized to be searchable.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not really a fan of Moleskine's notebooks, but this is interesting.

But, Evernote's Page Camera feature that was added to the iOS app does seem to work just fine with other paper (I tested Field Notes w/ graph paper). It's just 'optimized' for the paper in these notebooks, whatever that means.

<comment><USER21> The grids or lines on the notebook are dotted. Their algorithm knows the geometry of those dots ahead of time, so it can exploit that fact to figure what the orientation is suppose to be.

<comment><USER22> But the geometry of all lined notebooks is effectively the same: horizontal parallel lines inside a rectangular shape. For this type of application I don't think any more geometry is needed.

Unless scale is important but I can't see how that could be.

<comment><USER23> If I had to guess, I'd say the extra geometry is useful because, 1: the dotted pattern is less likely to be confused with user writing/drawing, and 2: they have one specific notebook that they know works seamlessly with their current algorithms without a lot of extra field testing against different notebooks.

It most likely helped a good amount in bringing this feature to market as quickly as possible, and it'll be interesting what they do with the dotted pattern concept in the future (I see it either fading into an edge case of the software that becomes a technical debt for the remainder of its lifetime as the algorithms for handling the base case of any arbitrary notebook paper improve, or evolving into the base of an Evernote certification process for notebooks).

Personally, for me this feature is the tipping point between "yeah, Evernote seems kinda cool" and "I'm actually considering using Evernote (assuming the feature finds its way to Android)". The only improvement I would make that would really seal the deal would be the ability to fax all my notes to Evernote instead (seems like much less a pain in the ass for digitising volumes of notes than meticulously photographing each page), though I suppose that as long as they support manual uploading of images through their desktop site this would be fairly trivial to script myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sigh. Looks like Big Commerce (the store Evernote is using) stores passwords in plain-text or at least a reversible hash. They emailed me my password. :\

</comment><comment><USER25> Yes, but how far is this from just using standard/college/quad ruled paper in the first place? Requiring special paper automatically limits the feature's utility. Once their "limited edition" notebooks sell out this feature immediately begins the countdown to uselessness.

<comment><USER26> > Yes, but how far is this from just using standard/college/quad ruled paper > in the first place?

Not far. Most of the features, it seems, do not really require the notebook. But it also seems that it wouldn't be difficult to eventually add support for any old notebook to allow for automatic alignment.

So when you say....

> Requiring special paper automatically limits the feature's utility.

...I can't help but think it allows them to get the feature out sooner before refining it.

> Once their "limited edition" notebooks sell out

they'll be offering normal edition notebooks, as well as providing better support for other notebooks.

I really don't see the features here as something they are just going to limit to a limited time physical product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How is this different from taking notes on any physical paper and take a photo of it? My Galaxy SII camera takes real good pictures of papers. They are readable, good focused and sharp.

I just see a marketing partnering stunt here?? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER28> Automatic color and contrast correction, handwriting recognition, automatic ordering of pages, and tagging/searching capabilities once they're in the app.

<comment><USER27> But this is already evernote nothing new??

<comment><USER18> This one comes with a pretty Moleskine notebook!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "we designed a special dotted paper pattern" - this sounds very much like what Anoto[1] does. [1] <http://www.anoto.com/the-technology-1.aspx>

<comment><USER30> Wacom went the opposite way for obvious reasons - digital pen that works with any paper. Wacom Inkling, <http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Inkling>

<comment><USER31> neat idea, but this kills it for me:

> _How accurate are the sketches?

In general, sketches with Inkling will be accurate to within approximately +/- 0.1 inches (+/- 2.5 mm) in the main drawing area of an A4 page, and within (approximately +/- 0.2 inches (+/- 5.0 mm) at the edges of the page._

2.5mm is quite a large fuzz factor. Enough to make me think this could be great for very-rough sketching / outlining of a design, but not enough for replacing scanning / doing (essentially) OCR.

<comment><USER32> (Not a referral link - just a video review by someone who bought it) [http://www.amazon.com/review/R2M4YOUB8J3F84/ref=cm_cr_dp_tit...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R2M4YOUB8J3F84/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005KPUYVA&nodeID=172282&store=electronics)

If you check out that review it shows that the product definitely needs to mature. I can't see the wacom one being used for professional purposes until they up the accuracy. I was going to buy one for my finance for her birthday (she has a cintiq but wanted something for the go) but decided it wasn't worth it.

On top of that inkling requires that device to help read from the paper which limits its usefulness some (for me at least).

Hopefully they improve on it because it's definitely an interesting approach to this problem.

<comment><USER31> Illuminating video. Thanks! That's pretty condemning, inaccurate enough that I won't even consider buying it :/ It's too bad, because otherwise Wacom seems to make good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As much as I wanted to use digital notes in meetings, I still take joy in using the beautifully designed moleskine notebooks with a Cross pen. However, indexing and search is always a problem. If Evernote can fix this for me I will be a lifetime paid user of Evernote!

In my opinion this is a good glimpse of digital and analog life working in harmony instead of dictating you have to live with either one.

Great job! Ordering mine now :)

</comment><comment><USER34> I could see some use in combining the laptop and piece of paper in note taking. To make this easier I would like a system to help me reconcile the the notes made on different mediums. Probably I'm writing on laptop and would like to include stuff drawn on paper in between those notes.

Few things that could make this easier: \- Add machine readable page numbering to the notebook \- Some kind of annotation scheme, like (1) I could use to refer to the drawings on the notebook.

On laptop I could refer to the pictures with <page number>:<picture> style notation.

Would be actually nice to follow similar workflow with laptop and iPad. Write text on full keyboard, draw diagrams for the same note on iPad at the same time. Maybe this is already possible, have never tried this.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know much about unskewing, but presumably the dotted lines mean you know how each dot should be placed relative to each other dot. With plain lines you'd have to do some guesswork based on how wavey the line is etc.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't mean to be a debbie downer, but I find the idea of taking pictures of moleskine pages really, really clunky. I have done that in the past to take photos of book/magazine pages, and in my experience the picture almost always comes out low quality - a combination of blur, contrast, the curvature of the page and flash reflecting off the paper makes it very difficult to read later. I can only imagine what types of problems these factors will cause for Evernote's hand-writing recognition program. After all, software can optimize image quality only so much.

<comment><USER37> The Moleskine is supposed to lie very flat and the paper isn't shiny. Those both improve the focus, too. The lines are supposed to help remove skew, too.

It should be a lot better than a photo of a book, and much much better than a magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Great, except that Moleskine notebooks are very costly here in India.

Generally in ranges of hundreds of rupees.

[http://www.flipkart.com/search/a/all?query=Moleskine&ver...](http://www.flipkart.com/search/a/all?query=Moleskine&vertical=all&dd=0&autosuggest\[as\]=off&autosuggest\[as- submittype\]=default-search&autosuggest\[as-grouprank\]=0&autosuggest\[as- overallrank\]=0&Search=%C2%A0&_r=n_2yuAC4xgh0SZTuulvAtw--&_l=Tnndui8JdMVk7CZmDKIfXQ--&ref=5c117020-8e31-4c52-af4a-5252943b6eec&selmitem=)

</comment><comment><USER39> I didn't even look through all the functionality before I made my purchase (#182).

I use Evernote for nearly everything I do. Task lists, projects, ideas, goals. Evernote saves me one of my most precious resources: time. I've worked Evernote into my daily workflow for getting things done.

And I have a stack of Moleskines I've used for reminders, sketches, random thoughts that I scratch down in a hurry throughout my day.

This is the perfect product for my everyday use. Looking forward to when they arrive (they will ship in October). I just wonder if I bought enough of them.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interesting. And the new app seems great. No more different modes for reading and editing! Hopefully they release an update for Android as well...

</comment><comment><USER41> Stickers are a neat idea, but why not just some special drawn symbol? Would be way cool if you could define your own.

<comment><USER42> Uh, because with a drawn symbol you wouldn't need their thirty dollar notebooks?

<comment><USER43> You'd still need the pages with the "special dotted paper pattern".

<comment><USER44> Does evernote not allow you to fix the page manually? (I don't use it.) The JotNot Pro app I bought for a dollar allows one to slide the corners around and reskews the image as appropriate, with some amount of auto detection as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is there any reason they can't do this with the Android app, too? Or does it already have this functionality?

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady This is great. I love Evernote and use it daily but I also prefer writing some things in notebooks (and I use Moleskine ones). I could definitely see myself using it. It depend on how the $ price works out in GBP compared to regular Moleskine notebooks which are about £9.

</comment><comment><USER46> There are a couple of note books (CamiApp, Shotnote) that have appeared in Japan that are quite similar. I found the design pretty good, though I stopped using them.. I think mainly because I switched form Evernote to org-mode.

</comment><comment><USER47> Gutted this isn't on Android. Why are so many people still launching apps/competitions/products for iOS only? I could understand it a few years back, but doing it today just cuts your market in half.

<comment><USER48> Because even though iOS has fewer users, those users are more valuable. They tend to fall into higher income brackets and be higher spenders.

<comment><USER47> I don't doubt that :-)

But I wonder how long this will be the case. Anecdotally I'm seeing more people _choose_ Android (or at least Samsung Android phones) - with a bigger user base, how long before the subset of early adopters/higher spenders is as big or bigger than those with an iPhone?

<comment><USER49> They don't buy apps though. I know maybe a dozen people with Android phones and (barring 1 person and 1 app) they have NEVER purchased an app. They don't pay for subscription services, they don't do in-game upgrades, they don't put any money into the phone. Its crazy. And the 1 person that did buy an app? It was an app to aid in pirating things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've never gotten into Evernote, but have wanted to for a long time. I've bought these as a way of forcing myself to finally sit down and learn how to use it.

Does anyone know of a good intro guide to Evernote?

<comment><USER51> Yes, it's even advertised in the Evernote desktop application. "Evernote for Dummies".

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> It's awkward that I can't vote and therefore save stories anymore. So I have to comment even if I don't have anything useful to say. Can't be the goal of Hacker News, can it?

<comment><USER53> Or alternately, use your browser's bookmark functionality?

<comment><USER52> Correct. I don't know why voting is disabled. The account seems to be ok because I can comment. So what's wrong? There is nothing in the FAQ about this and no apparent contact address. That is all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY. Oh wait, IOS Only? Never mind.

</comment><comment><USER54> Almost enough to make me go back to Moleskine (love the notebooks, but not being able to easily digitize was a problem.)

</comment><comment><USER55> Very neat. The only concern I have is to remember take a photo of all the pages and which page I already took a photo.

<comment><USER56> Cut/Tear the corner off once a photo has been taken of both sides. I do that already to determine quickly the next available page.

<comment><USER57> That answer and its question have got to be the most value-added comments in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm addicted to moleskine notebooks - I have many, I'll certainly be getting this one as well!

</comment><comment><USER59> Great work, Evernote! That's pretty darn cool :-)

</comment><comment><USER60> I never "got" Evernote, but this is trés cool.

</comment><comment><USER61> the shills will eat this up

</comment><comment><USER62> i hate evernote

</comment><comment><USER63> Only a fool would buy $25+ notebook. I'd rather play lottery.

<comment><USER64> quality is fractal; good, smooth acid-free paper that can take a wide variety of inks without smearing, discoloring, or bleeding through -- well constructed and durable.

quality is worth paying for...

<comment><USER65> Moleskine notebooks are mediocre in paper quality, though, and not very consistent. You'll see variations based on which of their Chinese suppliers manufactured a particular notebook, but bleed through and feathering are generally sub par for the price.

They're nice and easy to find though, and the form factor's lovely.

<comment><USER12> What would you recommend as a higher-quality notebooks?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Big -1 to Moleskine. Such a brand and partnering with some tech whatever.

<comment><USER67> Because Moleskine haven't already debased their brand with gimmicky tie-ins?

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moleskine-Pac-Man-Limited-Edition- No...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moleskine-Pac-Man-Limited-Edition- Notebook/dp/8862935609)

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moleskine-Limited-Brick-Plain- notebo...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Moleskine-Limited-Brick-Plain- notebook/dp/8866130095)

etc.etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> For the hipster in your life...

<comment><USER69> Please don't post comments that don't add to the conversation.</comment></comment>


The audacious plan to bring back supersonic flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/11/2/13409324/supersonic-flight-concorde <comment><USER2> Didn't we do Boom last week?</comment>


Clarify Me, Please, God of the Galaxies - <AUTHOR> https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/05/clarify-me-please-god-of-the-galaxies <comment><USER2> Hmm... an account of a female Roman Catholic poet that should be better known. I personally don't understand this being on the front page of HN, but the diverse interests of HN readers is always surprising and makes this such an educational place. I doubt that Poetry Circle[1] has discussions on whether or not goroutines are a suitable mechanism for writing concurrent programs.

[1] [https://poetrycircle.com/forum/](https://poetrycircle.com/forum/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure why, but

      I was the one who waited in the garden
      Doubting the morning and the early light.
      I watched the mist lift off its own soft burden,
      Permitting not believing my own sight.

reminded me (I guess it's kinda iambic pentameter) of this in the 1st act of Hamlet:

      But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
      Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.

russet: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russet_(cloth)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russet_\(cloth\))

mantle: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_(clothing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_\(clothing\))

</comment><comment><USER4> I love how this is dated May 2018. Are we rounding months now?

<comment><USER5> Magazines have traditionally had this thing where the new issue is dated as next month; maybe it's related to that.

[https://ask.metafilter.com/127200/How-do-magazine- publicatio...](https://ask.metafilter.com/127200/How-do-magazine-publication- dates-work)

<comment><USER4> Fair point, yet here I was, thinking I was reading a website...</comment></comment></comment>


HN POLL: Have you taken courses in OS, PL, Arch., & Algos? - <AUTHOR>

2x, 4x, 4x, 4x <comment><USER2> I suppose OS is Operating System, Arch Computer Architecture and Algos Algorithm. Does PL means Programming Language?</comment>


Ask HN: My Hosting Went Down Right When I Sent A Link To A Promising Investor - <AUTHOR>

I don't want to name my hosting provider (they're a well known brand) just yet as they haven't fully finished resolving the problem with me.
Basically I sent my company's website to a very promising investor. I bcc'd a few of my co-founders who frantically told me upon trying out the link that the site was down. I had checked it before and everything had worked fine.
It was giving me a hosting error and there was nothing I could do. It literally said that the owner should contact their hosting.
Long story short they ended up resolving it hours after the problem. If the investor clicked the link, it's seriously bad news for us. The hosting service claimed complete responsibility for the problem.
My question is, what should I do?
1. With the hosting provider, should I ask for free hosting, domains, etc.? It won't come close to making it up but it's something.
2. Should I email the investor about the hosting problem? They don't know me directly, only through a contact. Should I just hope they didn't read it till after? Or is it too late?
Please help me with this. Thanks so much.
EDIT: This wasn't the user accesible part. It was an online presentation of the company. Sorry for the possible confusion. <comment><USER2> 2\. Email the investor. Get the hosting co's OK to quote them and then state simply what occurred and that they took responsibility. Don't point the finger of blame, just apologize for the inconvenience and ask them to take another look if they have not already. Obviously you can mention that you are reviewing your hosting options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it, I haven't been in contact with them before, is it better to just hope they didn't see the email yet? (that kind of email turnaround seems pretty abnormal to me)

I just don't want them to open up the email tomorrow and see that I had hosting problems. To me as a first impression, any problem a red flag.

Or is that just me being naive?

<comment><USER2> I would assume they've already seen it. I'm no VC but as a general matter I'd prefer an up-front explanation than the possibility of being kept in the dark. If they _have_ seen it and there's no follow-up from you then you look like an idiot. If not then you just look awkward.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice! should I just send a quick email saying that: They may have experienced some problems accessing our presentation. Our hosting had some difficulties that they took responsibility for and we're currently reevaluating our hosting options. I apologize for any inconvenience it might have caused them in learning more about the company?

(by the way you're amazing for putting up with me, I am so grateful)

<comment><USER2> Pretty much. I agree with Niggler's advice that you also need to be looking at firing your hosting company, but even companies like Amazon mess up sometimes so YMMV. You can't afford to let good leads go cold though. And if this lead doesn't bite, don't despair - you can always contact that person again in a month or two, and in the meantimekeep plugging away.

Hope things work out for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I sent them an email apologizing for any inconvenience and explaining the situation. Thanks so much for your help, if anything positive comes of this and I remember I'll update this post if you're interested!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "1. With the hosting provider, should I ask for free hosting, domains, etc.? It won't come close to making it up but it's something."

You should leave. Demand some sort of refund for the remaining time (and possibly a refund for the service up to this point)

"2. Should I email the investor about the hosting problem? They don't know me directly, only through a contact. Should I just hope they didn't read it till after? Or is it too late?"

You should sign up with another hosting provider, have it up and running, and tell the investor that you are seeing issues and that this other site reflects the current state. Treat it as if your service is currently down. If you would sit on your hands under normal circumstances, your users probably wouldn't be happy and I'd hope you'd be working on a backup plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it's up and running now, should I still tell the investor it was down? I'm thinking of tomorrow emailing the investor to tell them our hosting had some issues but they are resolved now. It sounds bad that even before the investor responds they get an email telling them that we had a problem. A big red flag it seems. Is that naive?

<comment><USER3> "telling them that we had a problem"

A very short period of hosting downtime isn't deadly. What would be a "big red flag" is if you didn't learn anything. You should be able to answer:

\- How did customers react to this (assuming, of course, you already have customers)?

\- how are you going to prevent this in the future? What is your backup plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> As I should have clarified, it wasn't the user side of the company they were looking at, but rather the online presentation of it.

But I get the feeling I should email them regardless and explain our hosting problems. I really appreciate your guidance!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So are you using Shared hosting? Well if your a startup, you shouldn't really be on shared hosting to begin with.

I would recommend you look into getting a VPS or even a dedicated server if you can.

There could of been a chance that your current server was getting DDOS'd, but there's not much you can do about that unless you get DDOS protected hosting. You can also look at setting up CloudFlare, which will cache your site if the main server decides to go down.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have clarified, the link was to an online presentation of the company. It's mostly front end which is why I used shared hosting. Is even that a mistake? I mistakingly trusted that a well known hosting company wouldn't have this problem. Also, from my conversation with the company it's not like server went down, they somehow screwed up all of the DNS settings.</comment></comment>


GDD: a lazy, naive, false design method - <AUTHOR> https://amoveablebeast.neocities.org/2016-09-03-gdd-graph-driven-development.html <comment><USER2> Thank you so very much for sharing this! I have needed FOR DECADES a means of deciding how to approach problems, not just in design/development work, but in life.

This is such a simple, straightforward strategy for me to apply in order to meet my need for peace & order in my life. I can't emphasize how happy and relieved I feel right now. Again, thank you.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Slack Doesn't Allow Subscribing to the Hacker News RSS Url? - <AUTHOR> I tried to subscribe using the `/feed subscribe https://news.ycombinator.com/rss` command, but Slack says "That feed (https://news.ycombinator.com/rss) could not be saved. Try again?". What happened? <comment><USER2> Use [https://hnrss.org](https://hnrss.org) (customizable HN feeds) and [https://feedbin.com](https://feedbin.com) (a full featured open-source reader).

<comment><AUTHOR> That was helpful. Got it working for [https://hnrss.org/frontpage](https://hnrss.org/frontpage)</comment></comment>


Apache Pulsar 2.4.0 - New Release - <AUTHOR> https://pulsar.apache.org/release-notes/#2.4.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Apache Pulsar community has successfully released the wonderful 2.4.0 release after a few months of accumulated hard works. It is a great milestone for this fast-growing project and the whole Pulsar community.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for parsing data in python?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm a noobish programmer and I would appreciate any thoughts on how to go about parsing Aluminum prices with python. <comment><USER2> Either do it yourself using the urllib and re modules or use BeautifulSoup as is already suggested. I would use urllib/re because that way you will learn more about Python I think (and about reg.ex).

</comment><comment><USER3> pretty broad question. what format is your data in? structured or unstructured?

structured would be, for example, XML or even CSV. unstructured would be on a web page in HTML.

XML? use the python XML parser (i like the xml.dom.minidom parser myself, plenty of good examples online). CSV? even easier, the csv module has good documentation and examples.

HTML? trickier. i like BeautifulSoup still, although other people prefer other tools for getting at the data.

care to elaborate?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose it is super broad. I really have no idea to be honest, again I am still quite new to coding.

I'll check out what you've recommended. I want to be pulling prices from here: <http://www.metalprices.com/FreeSite/metals/al/al.asp>

<comment><USER3> had a look. you'll want to parse those tables using a technique broadly known as "screen scraping". varied libraries and tools exist in python.

basically walk the document and find the tables you wish to scrape, check the table name (the red bar), then keep track of the values in some python data structure (e.g. a list of dicts, list of lists, etc) and then access them that way. that's the basic strategy.</comment></comment></comment>


The Odds Are Increasing That Microsoft's Business Will Just Completely Collapse - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/microsofts-business-could-collapse-2010-6 <comment><USER2> _Big companies are starting to ditch Microsoft Office for Google Apps. If this becomes a trend, Microsoft's second huge cash cow will be under immediate threat._

The IT guys removed Office from all of our computers at work and replaced it with OpenOffice last year. I would imagine that this is happening in a lot of places. Between OpenOffice and Google Docs, you have 90% of what you need to be productive, at a cost of $0. The other 10% costs you a couple hundred per seat. I bet a lot of companies are doing the math.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Kinect Microsoft's iPod?

It wasn't so long ago that Apple was also in dire circumstances.

Cash-cows die. What company has been able to milk the same cow forever. At what point does MS start giving away their legacy products and start charging for the things that nobody else is currently doing?

I read 'Microsoft's Business Will Just Completely Collapse' as their current business, but they've arguably got a pipeline of very interesting products still to come.</comment>


The Craziest F***ing Bug I've Ever Seen - <AUTHOR> http://yehudakatz.com/2010/01/02/the-craziest-fing-bug-ive-ever-seen/

<comment><USER2> I guess any bug that occurs below your accustomed abstraction level is "crazy". If most of your work happens in an interpreted high-level language, a quite mundane bug in the runtime (like this) is "crazy". Hardware bugs are "crazy" to most software people at any level, but to hardware folks they're just bugs.

<comment><USER3> _I guess any bug that occurs below your accustomed abstraction level is "crazy"._

Good way of looking at it. So the ultimate crazy bug would be an error in the laws of physics? Actually, one better than that would be discovering an error in the laws of math.

<comment><USER4> And the singular craziest bug is Incompleteness?

<comment><USER5> not a bug, a feature

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If this is the craziest bug you've ever seen, my guess is that you've spent your whole career programming in languages that lack raw pointers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe. I guess you didn't get the reference ([http://wikiality.wikia.com/The_Craziest_Fucking_Thing_Ive_Ev...](http://wikiality.wikia.com/The_Craziest_Fucking_Thing_Ive_Ever_Heard))

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If that's the craziest bug you've ever seen you've lived a sheltered life.

As long as you don't need to break out the logic analyzer or resort to sifting through a stack of 4" of fanfold assembly printouts you're doing just fine :)

Bugs like that are always grounded in the assumption that lower layers are reliable. Hint: they're not, they contain _tons_ of bugs, the conditions to trigger them get more and more rare the longer a platform has been in production. That means that the 'hardest' bugs are going to be the last and if you find something in a platform that has been operational for a while you can bet your life it's not going to be easy to track down.

Interrupt triggered bugs are usually really hard to find as are subtle timing issues in high speed serial links. If it takes you less than a week to track it down it may be the hardest bug you've ever seen but in the greater scheme of things you're not in real trouble yet.

<comment><USER7> _Interrupt triggered bugs are usually really hard to find_

Very true. Anything that is reproducible is fairly easy to debug. Something that is hard to reproduce is even harder to figure out.

Here's a good scenario, on a good old Apple II: you'd call a subroutine. The processor would put your address on the stack, to know where to return. So when the processor returns, you can peek at the data just below the stack pointer to figure out your own address. Works 99.999999% of the time. Except if an interrupt occured exactly on the return instruction, erasing the old stack data.

With that kind of frequency (interrupts would happen at about 60 Hz on an Apple II), you'd freeze the computer after several minutes. Good luck figuring it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My craziest bug was a program that would become flaky if you stood too close to the computer. Eventually I discovered that something wasn't grounded properly, and the program was being messed up by the electric fields of our bodies. (Later, the CPU exploded.)

<comment><USER9> > Later, the CPU exploded.)

 _That's not a bug. That's a feature._

<comment><USER10> It's only a feature if the computer is a bomb. (Or if someone pressed the self-destruct button.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Neat bug but hardly what I would consider "crazy". The source code was available for tracing (and that's how the root cause was made clear).

I don't consider a bug to be "crazy" unless the word "volatile" is involved :)

<comment><USER8> I consider segfaults in MPI programs to be crazy, if only because _damn it we should not have to use C for this!_ I hope Fortress is ready for mainstream use soon, because writing parallel programs in C is inherently nuts.

(This is not to put down weird volatile bugs, of course.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Before calling the method_missing method itself, Ruby sets a thread-local > variable called call_status that reflects whether or not the original call > was a vcall or a normal call.

Yuck, MRI (Matz's Ruby Interpreter) uses a global variable for that? (Yes OK, it's actually thread-local, but that's effectively the same thing.) Awful style begets awful bugs. That's what you get for having such a messed up interface.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. I _knew_ someone was going to use this post as an excuse to wail on Ruby. No other Ruby VM uses a global (or thread-local) for this problem; it's not necessary to implement the functionality. While we were working through the problem, Evan (who works on Rubinius, another Ruby VM) remarked how much better the other implementations (like JRuby and Rubinius) handled the same problem.

<comment><USER12> I meant "MRI" and not "Ruby". It's clearly just an implementation detail and not mandated by the language itself. I'll change the original post to clarify this.

If we're going to be pedantic, it's a "Ruby Interpreter" or "Ruby implementation", but not "Ruby VM". Ruby implementations can use a VM-based design, but it's certainly not required.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Ruby 1.9 and Rubinius are both "Ruby VMs", while Ruby 1.8 is an interpreter, and IronRuby/JRuby leverage existing VMs. In this case, Evan, who works on a Ruby VM, was looking at Ruby 1.9, another Ruby VM ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It strikes me looking at the discussion here that "tell me about the craziest bug you've ever fixed" may be a very useful interview question. You quickly get an idea of someone's thought process, problem solving strategies, and level of experience.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you think that is crazy try this hardware related bug that STILL eludes me.

Netgear router -> Linksys range expander -> Netgear switch -> a set of machines.

Problem is that in that set there is a Vista machine that randomly kills the wireless network for _some_ reason. The Linksys connection light turns red and both the router and range expander wireless disappears. Everything has to be powercycled numerous times to get it back up. No other machines (Windows or Linux) do this to the network...

Trying to track down a "problem" across multiple hardware/software vendors is not fun :)

So Im gonna claim the craziest f __ __ing bug crown :)

</comment><comment><USER13> My craziest bug was making text-only changes to an html file I'd edited for months, saving the file, then seeing no changes in the browser.

Somehow I'd opened a second editing window for the file, exactly on top of the first window - and the editor was saving with a slightly different name.</comment>