XB-1's wings are officially closed out - <AUTHOR> https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/xb-1-s-wings-are-officially-closed-out-c9b53591252e <comment><USER2> The blog post is hyper focused on the wings and didn't make a lot of sense without context. This link[1] was extremely useful to better understand what Boom is doing and how far along they are.

[1] [https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build](https://boomsupersonic.com/xb-1/build)

<comment><USER3> omg that website is freakin' terrible!

<comment><USER4> I thought the website was really cool.

But the first image really sucked. The other 30 images and animated constructs were super cool, but the entire experience was wrecked by the first image that you see, which looked like a jpg of a plane drawn in ms paint.

<comment><USER5> Probably you're not looking at it from a laptop with touchpad...it's really hard to scroll, also it's really hard to use the keyboard.

I can imagine that with a tablet/mobile phone it's a nice experience.

<comment><USER4> I was scrolling on a laptop with a mouse which worked really well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is probably a dumb question, but if the wings are now closed forever, how does one do maintenance or inspection of the mechanical flight control systems composed of cables and pulleys? Is the expectation that the XB-1 is going to be used in flight for far less than the design life of those mechanical systems?

<comment><USER7> Aluminum aircraft go together more or less the same way. There will be some inspection panels but the interesting stuff is already exposed, there's very little reason to go inside the wings, particularly on a composite aircraft where corrosion isn't a problem. If you really need to see something, use a borescope.

<comment><USER8> What if a cable snaps or a pulley breaks?

<comment><USER9> You can see in the article that now no cables are in there during closing, they are in extra canals/tubes which can be accessed later on, be it for installing them in the first place or maintenance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is quite scary for a non-engineer. You're telling me that this little supersonic plane has the whole wing structure held together by a handful of 4mm thick metal struts, manually _glued_ to the wing surface, with wire pulleys running on the inside :O

<comment><USER7> Building a plane in my garage. You'd be surprised how minimal yet how strong a lot of these structures are. The vast majority of the material I use is thinner than a credit card.

<comment><USER11> I want to hear more about building a plane in one's garage. Are you using a kit? How hard is it? Cost? How will you transport it to an airport once it's finished?

It sounds like it would be a great project.

Thanks.

<comment><USER7> Kit: Yes, in my case it's an RV-8 by [https://www.vansaircraft.com/](https://www.vansaircraft.com/) they're probably the biggest name in town by volume and they make mid-cost kits. There are some more and less expensive options however.

Hard: I took a class from a licensed A&P mechanic and while not mandatory, gave me a pretty good idea of what I'd be up against. It is extremely challenging even with a kit however. Lots of learning, lots of redoing stuff because of mistakes, many many hours.

Cost: whatever you want it to be really. You can do safe builds probably from around 40-50k for something like a Sonex or Kitfox to several hundred thousand for a Velocity twin or even something turbine powered.

Transport: most people build in their garage and leave the wings off then stick it in a trailer or U-Haul to complete final assembly at a hangar. It's mostly a non-issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> i'm in no way qualified to give any praise/criticism, it just caught my attention (from the linked post on their cockpit/fuselage bonding [https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/20-hour-bonding-event- speeds...](https://blog.boomsupersonic.com/20-hour-bonding-event-speeds- xb-1-toward-first-flight-b50a682d924) )

"It's the following morning and bonding appears to be successful, but it's essential to confirm that the bond lines are shaped correctly or "filleted." A member of the engineering team, who is certified in the process, begins non- destructive tap testing to audibly listen for voids such as air bubbles within the bond. With several decades experience, he knows what to listen for. Using specialized tools, he taps all bond lines and listens for different and unusual noises. He confirms that bonding is a success."

In general it seems that their main fabrication cost is labor, and it would probably be very hard to scale for production. I wonder why wouldn't they choose titanium - the price of material doesn't seem to matter here, and while it is hard to work with than say steel, i'd think it is still more mass production friendly than carbon fiber.

<comment><USER13> Yea, not very scientific. Seems like ultrasonic tests would be good here. I think they do something similar to check welds on ships.

<comment><USER14> Ultrasound inspection is very common for multi-layer composite construction. There are large machines which transmit the ultrasound through a water jet, for use in mapping the characteristics of curved surfaces. This water jet ultrasound non-destructive testing (NDT) is used in aerospace for carbon laminates.

That said, 'tapping' is an acoustic inspection technique, and can get good results.

I am not sure why they selected the manual option, but they probably have a reason.

<comment><USER15> They're probably having the guy hit it with a mallet and listen for voids because they're a Mickey Mouse operation by aerospace standards. Plus this is a model so if something does go catastrophically wrong it at least won't kill anybody, probably.

<comment><USER16> It's a demonstrator, not a model - It has space for 2 test pilots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somewhat OT - but from their FAQ they say they're targeting a price of $200M for the Overture. I'm certainly no expert, but this feels to some extent a bargain given the capability. Capacity 55-75 passengers. A few data points for comparison (all of these approximate of course, with multiple variants available of each):

Airbus A220 - $90M

Airbus A320neo - $110M

Boeing 787 - $140M

Boeing 777 - $320M

Airbus A350 - $325M

Gulfstream G700 - $75M

All of these can of course carry more passengers (except the Gulfstream), but assuming it's somewhat efficient from a fuel perspective, and assuming an airline could sell ~60 business class seats on each leg, I'm optimistic for them - cutting your trip time in half is certainly something to brag about.

For reference, as an example, a British Airways 787-9 used for transatlantic routes seats 8 first, 42 business, 39 premium economy, and 127 economy.

<comment><USER18> The data-point for the elephant in the room:

Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde - $169M 150 passengers. Cruising speed: Mach 2

The Concorde was a thing of beauty. Massively expensive to produce and run, and fuel inefficient, it was a passenger airliner that could outrun fighter jets. Fighter jets of that era could get to mach 2 using afterburner, but that's _especially_ fuel inefficient so they could only keep up for 15 minutes or so. The money that went into the program (which is estimated in the neighborhood of $10.3 billion) was later recouped in the form of expertise that went into building Airbus.

A lot of time has passed since 1965 when the Concorde was first produced, and the improvements in technology (especially for materials) since, will hopefully allow the economics to work out better this time around. But with the rise of lie-flat seats and personal entertainment systems, flying business class is "good enough" compared to the surcharge that flights on the Concorde cost, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

Taking 3 hours instead of 6 is better, but still not low enough. Add getting to/from the airport, and checking into the hotel and all that, you're still out the better part of the day.

The really pie-in-the-sky way to travel is if a certain reusable rocket company ran (exorbitantly expensive) passenger service. Moscow to New York in 30 mins, or Moscow to London in 15.

<comment><USER19> <=3 hour flight time kind of sucks, because you're spending additional 1-2 hours at the departure airport and at least 30 minutes at the arrival airport. Then there are the trips from and to airport which are often 1-2h. Then there's scheduling slack, which translates to additional ~20% wait time. When flight time is 3h, you're expecting to spend 7-12 hours. Usually closer to 12, because you'd rather wait longer than run the risk of missing one of the transports.

One of my great travel-related discoveries has been that if I can find a train that takes even about the same amount of time, it will always be much more pleasant and less energy-draining than air travel.

<comment><USER20> All so true. The actual flight time is a non issue for me given the hassle of the airport. But I'm guessing this is for higher end travel, where skipping lines is the norm.

<comment><USER21> I once had the opportunity to fly a business-only airplane. There was no line skipping. There was a whole dedicated terminal for these airplanes. As soon as you entered the terminal someone would welcome you like at some luxury resort. The passport and ticket thing was a breeze, then they would guide you to the lounge, if you were early. If you timed your trip accurately, I guess you could find yourself from the terminal door to sitting in your comfy seat within 15 minutes. Champagne glass on the tray in front of you, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A bit of a sidenote, but I'd feel a bit anxious traveling on an airplane made by a company called "BOOM". A bit like driving a "Crash Vehicles" car?

<comment><USER23> Having been following BOOM for years this thought never occur to me. I thought BOOM was the sound coming out of the engine signalling ultra fast / super sonic speed.

What is annoying is that Now you have mentioned it I cant get that "crashing" thought out of head.

<comment><USER24> The _boom_ in a sonic boom doesn't come from the engines as such, but rather caused by the object travelling faster than the speed or sound (in air).

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

<comment><USER25> And that's also one of the big reasons that supersonic passenger aircraft have failed in the past - restrictions against supersonic flight over land due to the extreme noise. It seems strange to me that Boom would want to draw attention to this in their brand name!

<comment><USER26> The whole premise of the startup is to build a silent supersonic airplane. Building atop several years of existing research and experimental programs around silent sonic boom.

<comment><USER25> Sounds good. But might then a more appropriate name for the company be "Shhhhh"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The level of care and organization in this photo feels equivalent to what I would expect for a ground robot prototype out of a startup. Can any aerospace engineer comment on what they see? Does their setup inspire confidence?

<comment><USER28> It looks normal. Our shop (assembly line building full aircraft from material stock, 2 football fields long) was like that except most of the workers were filipino or hispanic, wearing street clothes. When they filmed a TV commercial there, they brought in actors wearing red jumpsuits to scurry around as technicians. Because like you, that is what the public expects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I like the idea of supersonic passenger jets existing again. I'm not sure I really see the point though.

Would you rather fly in business class comfort for 8 hours or with less comfort for 4 hours? Almost doesn't seem worth the expense and risk of going supersonic.

I would be so much more excited about an airplane that was large enough that economy class seating was as comfortable as business class seating is today. That would be much more revolutionary.

I would also get excited about an airplane that was vastly safer than the already-quite-safe airplanes we have.

An airplane with a fail-safe fuselage that can disconnect from the rest of the plane, parachute to the ground and land (or float) safely. This could potentially eliminate fire danger by jettisoning everything flammable (gas filled wings, engines, cockpit, and whatever else).

The fact that flying is uncomfortable and still-too-scary to millions of people are the biggest opportunities for innovation that I see.

Flying at 500+ MPH is already quite fast given the size of the planet.

<comment><USER30> So far this sounds more 'affordable' than 'business class comfort' which I STILL cannot afford no matter how hard I try to justify it to myself.

There's gotta be a market for an all-business-class plane, since we know that first/business subsidize coach, but nobody's doing it yet. The airlines want to throw those business class seats out as perks to people spending corporate dollars, not charge the end user what they actually cost, in which case "real humans" could afford them.

<comment><USER31> There are a handful of all business class routes. For example: [https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/travel- clas...](https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/travel- classes/business/club-world-london-city)

<comment><USER30> Wow, cool! Of course, I tried to get more info on pricing and following the booking link took me to a "Generic booking" page which, even flying into JFK and out of LCY, didn't show me the option, but I'd be really curious if I lived in NYC, for sure.

I've also had this issue with the "Premium Service" United flights between SFO and NYC/BOS. It supposedly exists, but whenever I search, I can't filter on those particular flights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There also exists a Boom rival - Spike Aerospace[1]. They successfully completed and operated flight demonstrators (SX-1) and working on delivering a production plane now.

[1] [https://www.spikeaerospace.com/](https://www.spikeaerospace.com/)

<comment><USER33> There's something a little sketchy seeming about Spike if you look at their website. The Boom demonstrator in this article is a real, hopefully supersonic aircraft with lots of photos etc, but Spike seem to have zero photos of the SX-1 which is/was apparently a subsonic radio controlled aircraft.

<comment><USER34> How can spike say on their front page "The Spike S-512 is the only supersonic jet in development that will fly at twice the speed of other jets without creating a loud sonic boom." Boom is also aiming for 2x existing jets without sonic booms. That's wrong, misleading, is there some narrow explanation for how that could be accurate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This test plane has a range of 1k nautical miles but a cruising speed of Mach 2.2, which works out to like 40 minutes of flight time at max speed? That seems like a really tight window for takeoff + test + land + any kind of safety buffer. I'd be curious to know how they handle those logistics.

<comment><USER36> They have a safety reserve of fuel. They fly it in the desert so they can glide to a landing anywhere. And plenty of your time will be below max speed (since air resistance is non-linear, your fuel consumption is much lower during these times).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does this mean if any repairs are needed they'll have to rebuild the wing from scratch?

I'd love to hear from someone at Boom what the main goals are for this aircraft. And how it will differ from the larger transport craft they're planning. Beyond size and capacity.

<comment><USER38> The company's goal is overland supersonic flight. Profitably, ideally. To make that even a legal possibility means demonstrating they can be somewhat quieter than prior supersonic aircraft. This aircraft is a proof-of-concept.

<comment><USER37> Is it specifically to demonstrate that they can make a quiet aircraft then?

I think I'm curious specifically whether this is more about internal R&D and building systems, or if it's meant to demonstrate they have the capability to to create a performant supersonic aircraft, which they can take to potential investors.

<comment><USER39> This demonstrator is a 1/3 scale model of their final design.

It allows them to prove their exact final design will be quiet, along with verifing the rest of the aerodynamics.

<comment><USER37> Any idea how often the final design and the prototype don't match in terms of volume and aerodynamics? I would have assumed that those parts are the easiest to model with high confidence.

<comment><USER36> You don't need to build it to test volume and aerodynamics (math and wind- tunnels can figure that out for you). This is probably more about finding unknown flaws in the design/running down risk. Spending however much on a prototype (10s or 100s of millions of dollars) just to marginally reduce the risk that there's a fundamental flaw in your approach makes a lot of sense when you plan to spend 6 billion total to develop the plane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> XB-1? Is it named after Ikarie XB-1 from the classic Czechoslovak sci-fi?

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

<comment><USER41> I believe it's "eXperimental Boom - 1" but I doubt they mind the coincidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Are there other industries like supersonic and space flight where a competent startup could attract top engineers in the field from government and academic jobs? (This question is partly rhetorical. If you have a good answer… Go do it!)

</comment><comment><USER43> Having built a glass/kevlar/epoxy kayak, it's a little mind blowing to read about people building a supersonic airplane, using similar (albeit far^N more precise) techniques.

<comment><USER44> Did you build a pygmy kayak kit by any chance? I did, it was the most fun I've had building something in my life. The entire "epoxy plus fibrous material" is truly a winning solution for so many applications, apparently hyper-sonic wings, too!

<comment><USER43> No, this was a high-volume play boat. About 35 years ago. And it wasn't a kit. I was boating with a club with a shop, and members who knew what they were doing.

<comment><USER44> Sorry, didn't mean to offend you by suggesting you were anything but a pro.

<comment><USER43> Me, a pro? Never. But I learned from some serious whitewater freaks. I quit because poor impulse control got me almost killed, too many times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Amazing stuff. The blog post mentions tolerances in inches. Is Aerospace engineering done in inches or meters?

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm surprised by the assembly tolerances. .05-.1" The F-35 is assembled to .003"

The usage of control cables and pulleys is odd. I would have expected hydraulic/electric actuation in a Mach 2+ aircraft.

<comment><USER6> The F-35 is also low-observable. I'm a total lay-person on this one, but I'm betting that the tolerances for achieving flight (even at Mach 2.2) are a lot looser than the tolerances for being invisible.

<comment><USER46> Yeah, the F-35 is actually milled down during/after assembly for low observables. However, the Mig-21 can hit the same speeds as the XB-1 and it has panel gaps visible from several meters.

I did some reading and the XB-1 does use hydraulics. From VEP and other companies.

It looks like they will be using titanium leading edges to handle the heat loads.

They are using a J85-GE-15. I don't think that will allow them to reach M2.2. Closer to M1.7 or so? Depends on the inlets I think. (I was wrong on the engines. They are using 3x engines, not the 2x afterburning that I was expecting. So the speed looks reasonable)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why are human test pilots still used in $current_year?

<comment><USER48> Pilots have a better chance of saving the plane if something goes wrong, software is less good at dealing with edge cases than an experienced test pilot and in order to figure out what the edge cases are in order to programmatically deal with them, you need a human to find out what they even are and figure out how to fix them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Very exciting stuff. Even ignoring the supersonic aspect, there are some very cool new ideas being applied to this aircraft.

</comment><comment><USER50> This gives me a 400 on medium. Does anyone have an alternate link?

</comment><comment><USER51> From their web page:

"Faster travel brings the world's people, cultures, and experiences within reach. Life happens in person, and at Boom we see breaking the time barrier as a moral imperative. XB-1 is the first step in bringing supersonic travel back to the world." \-- Blake Scholl, Founder and CEO

The life happens in person part currently sounds like a relic from the past. I hope Boom makes it through the travel recession.

<comment><USER52> They are targeting $5K for round trip tickets between NY and London. It is really just making it faster for the rich to travel for fun or work.

Supposedly it is inherently 3X as expensive as subsonic planes from a cost per seat mile point of view. It is basically a cheaper replacement for the Concorde.

Also it seems that their biggest difficulty is coming up with suitable engines. The engines that they need don't exist and there doesn't seem to be an affordable way to create them.

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

It is definitely cool from a tech point of view.

<comment><USER53> I hate points like this. Pretty much all technology starts out for rich people. I mean if you don't have supersonic flight at all its technology will not improve either, neither will the economics of scale.

Air travel itself is already only for the rich, and travel in general is mostly for the rich, if you want to look at it from the poorest in the world.

Elon made this point the best with Tesla, and in 10-20 years the cheapest electric cars will likely be cheaper and better then current cheap gas cars.

I don't believe these 3x cost are actually 'inherent'.

<comment><USER54> They are though. Tesla is a horrible example, electric cars have better fuel economy, so should have a lower TCO for daily users in the long run. Which has always explicitly been Tesla's goal in the long run.

This plane, while awesome, is not a Tesla, it's never going to be as cheap as a commercial flight, and it's certainly not going to make the world a better place.

<comment><USER55> Fuel cost is far from being the dominating factor in TCO; that would be depreciation. I just ran Edmunds TCO calculator on an Audi A6: 5 year TCO of $70k, with depreciation over 5 years being $35k and fuel only contributing $9k.

Electric cars are nowhere near an affordable means of transportation right now (that would be a Hyundai Accent), so GP point stands true.

<comment><USER56> How does the A6 compare with Model 3?

<comment><USER30> That's absurd. An A6 is a much bigger/nicer car than a Model 3. I'd say the A6 is Model S territory, both in size and price. Of course this is complicated by the lower running costs of the S, but the much more spartan interior, which was basic even in 2012.

I've got a Model 3. It's a fantastic car, and as a BMW fan, I'd choose it all day every day over a BMW 3 series. But I'd take the A6 for the same price.

<comment><USER56> The parent comment said "Electric cars are nowhere near an affordable means of transportation right now". The absolute niceness of an A6 doesn't seem directly relevant to that. Model 3s are expensive to buy for a mid size sedan. I was wondering about the TCO. I found an A5, M3 and Camry TCO comparison (link below): M3 comes out similar to Camry, and way less than A5. I think the M3 is a much more fun car to drive than the Camry. I haven't driven an A5.

[https://evannex.com/blogs/news/total-cost-of-ownership- tesla...](https://evannex.com/blogs/news/total-cost-of-ownership-tesla- model-3-vs-toyota-camry)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Man I'd be sweating like a pig if I was direct-applying epoxy to a prototype so close to done. I'm used to code where trial and error is de rigueur, I forget sometimes you only get one chance.

<comment><USER7> I work in aerospace software so I live in between those two realities. Much like software, they'll do testing to make sure everything is bonded. They've also done plenty of modeling to determine what the expected strength is and they have a significant error margin baked in.

...They also don't call them test pilots for nothing...

<comment><USER57> FTA: _"Boom's two test pilots were also onsite to verify that all aspects of the wing met their approval."_

I don't know how well versed these pilots are in manufacturing this kind of stuff, but I would guess that's mostly psychological. But yes, it's their lives that are on the line. If this wing we're to break or fall apart at supersonic speed, I guess they (or one of them, if this is a single-seater) are dead.

<comment><USER7> Sorry for the late reply... Test pilots by definition are pilots with an engineering background. They're often seasoned aircraft mechanics and/or aerospace engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Broken link

<comment><USER59> Working for me here.

Although, it isn't listed on their Medium profile page yet so maybe something is up with it: [https://medium.com/@boomsupersonic](https://medium.com/@boomsupersonic)

<comment><USER58> Maybe something wrong with the medium app. It works on the web, but redirecting into the iOS app leads to a 400.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> This company is comma ai of aviation.

</comment><comment><USER61> I keep wondering if planes could benefit from the new materials developed by SpaceX. If they really have a stainless steel that's significantly lighter, it could be a game changer.

<comment><USER62> As I understand it, they are using 300-series stainless steel instead of carbon composites. Which relates to some novel techniques in manufacturing parts from stainless [1]. But they don't have a lighter stainless steel, which mostly doesn't make much sense because any steel is basically iron in terms of weight--plus or minus depending upon the additives. Some steels are lighter or heavier than others but within a relatively narrow range.

[1] [https://everydayastronaut.com/stainless-steel- starship/](https://everydayastronaut.com/stainless-steel-starship/)

<comment><USER61> They are supposedly developing a new stainless steel alloy. I've seen indications it will reduce weight on starship. If its stronger, you can use less of it which is effectively lighter. But I haven't seen real info on what they've developed yet.</comment></comment></comment>


Google refuses to fix Waze so it won't route people on 32%-grade road - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/04/waze-seems-to-suggest-route-over-32-grade-road-is-fine/ <comment><USER2> > "that's not [the] good corporate citizenship I expect."

You'll noticed that corporate citizenship is absent from Eric Schmidt's description of what makes for a successful internet venture - [https://www.slideshare.net/ericschmidt/how-google-works- fina...](https://www.slideshare.net/ericschmidt/how-google-works-final-1)

Compare it with old HP Way, which has an objective, "[t]o meet the obligations of good citizenship by making contributions to the community and to the institutions in our society which generate the environment in which we operate."

Of course, HP isn't a successful internet venture.</comment>


Serious Sam's Serious Engine source code released - <AUTHOR> http://www.croteam.com/serious-sam-source-code-released/ <comment><USER2> Also from a week ago:

\- (Same link) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11268130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11268130)

\- (Github) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11267450](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11267450)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's really cool to see an old game engine released like this for historical purposes. Not to mention, it's nice to be able to experiment and see other games become derivatives.

Still, I can't help but feel that the game industry is always a bit behind in FOSS. They don't usually open source anything until a decade or two after the tech is irrelevant. Perhaps it's to prevent competition.

Another thing that bothers me with these releases is how little documentation there is. They put up a repository without much intention of helping/building a community around it, which is a shame.

All that said, they still have the right to approach in this manner. It is their property and they are still generous when making releases like this.

<comment><USER4> Most higher level game code is actually fairly uninteresting (if not to say 'a tangled mess') and wouldn't really bring the programming world forward if open sourced. On the other hand, most of the building blocks and information to build games is in the open and can be contributed to, even if not permissively licensed. And there are a lot of lower level building blocks that are open source with a proper license (mostly MIT).

So basically, the lower you go, the more open source you will find, and the higher up you go in a specific game's code, the less useful releasing as open source would be.

<comment><USER5> > less useful releasing as open source would be.

Developers would find an immense amount of use in open sourcing their engines like this. It lets the community port them to every OS in existence including your toaster. A great/bad example is gemrb, which was an open source reimplementation of the Infinity Engine that almost certainly incentivized Atari / Bioware to let Beamdog re-release the games with modern engine updates across many platforms due to the free engine's popularity on mobile.

The open source nature of all the id engines is what keeps Wolf3d through Quake 2 games relevant this day. Their engines are bought to every new platform almost as a benchmark for porting software period, and you can play them effectively everywhere as a result. Compare that to abandonware titles like Blood that were their contemporaries, but never saw source releases and thus are effectively dead software that would only run on DOS.

I'd argue almost every console game release since the Xbox would benefit astoundingly from open sourcing their engine code. If we could see the APIs they wrote their renderers against we could reimplement them for modern cross platform tooling to enable native compilation and execution of games we still cannot emulate well because the hardware is similar enough to what we have now that we don't have the magnitudes of ghz to throw at it easily or often. And even older console titles would benefit, because they could be modernized with new resolution support, higher refresh rates, and modern rendering techniques.

This is all around immensely beneficial to developers because it is basically free money - people will keep buying copies for the assets even if they use much better engines you didn't have to put developer hours into making.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I loved this game, it and games like Painkiller feel like the last of the super face paced crazy FPS that defined the genre for me.

Would like to see more older engines released.. technically they can't be that important now and with engines like Unreal being developed in the open the tech is no longer really any secret to anyone.

<comment><USER7> For example, the Unreal Engine 1.x and 2.x would be great. The original Unreal Tournament have actually problems to run on modern hardware.

<comment><USER8> This question was asked in 2014 on the Unreal Engine forums. Tim Sweeney wrote: [https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?1515-Older- En...](https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?1515-Older-Engine- sources&p=8748&viewfull=1#post8748)

 _> There is a long history on this topic, but the short summary is: We've looked at this extensively and concluded that releasing UE2 & UE3 source would be impractical due to the large number of integrated third-party libraries which have limitations on redistribution. The public source code release only became practical with Unreal Engine 4, due to an extensive effort to clean up external dependencies._

 _> UE1 might be possible at some point in the longer-term future, but that would be more for nostalgia than practical utility._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would love to read Fabien Sanglard's review of it in a couple of months...

<comment><USER10> Me too. Not sure if he's doing that anymore though

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anyone done anything interesting with the various open-sourced games and engines, or is this mainly of historical interest?

<comment><USER12> Indie game developer Brendan Chung ([http://www.blendogames.com](http://www.blendogames.com)) used a very lightly modified Quake Engine for his two short-form experimental narrative-based games, Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving. (The first is freely downloadable, the second you have to pay for). He's also working on a new game, Quadrilateral Cowboy, using the Doom 3 engine - apparently the gameplay might be more conventional for this one, though hopefully not too conventional...

The Quake 3 engine is used for fairly well-received open source arena shooters like Tremulous, Xonotic, and Nexuiz.

The Dark Mod is a Doom 3-based Engine for fan-made games in the style of the Thief Series

You also have a few ports of engines to cope with modern windows versions or non-Windows operating systems or just updated gameplay (Jagged Alliance 2 straciatella or 1.13 springs to mind).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're nostalgic, the complete collection of Serious Sam games is US$9.99 until Mar 22: [http://store.steampowered.com/sub/17410/](http://store.steampowered.com/sub/17410/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Serious Sam shooter anniversary - finding bugs in the code of the Serious Engine v.1.10: [http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0384/](http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0384/)

</comment><comment><USER15> The engine was absolutely breathtaking back in the day. And SS games are aging very well. Sadly they were one of the last pure FPS games.

<comment><USER16> What do you mean by pure? The new Wolfenstein is only 2 years old and a new Doom is coming out soon.

<comment><USER15> Wolf was classes below Return To Castle Wolfenstein. Doom is not out yet, and after Quake 4 I am sceptical.

<comment><USER8> _> Doom is not out yet, and after Quake 4 I am sceptical._

They don't have the same developers though: Quake 4 was developed by Raven Software, Doom 4 is being developed by id software.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android M Developer Preview and Tools - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2015/05/android-m-developer-preview-tools.html <comment><USER3> _Permissions_

"We are giving users control of app permissions in the M release. Apps can trigger requests for permissions at runtime, in the right context, and users can choose whether to grant the permission. Making permission requests right when they're needed means users can get up and running in your app faster. Also, users have easy access to manage all their app permissions in settings."

Great, finally Google got it. Hopefully with the old Android 2.3 style fine granular permissions and not the few permission groups of Android 4/5.

<comment><USER4> They've actually set the number of permission groups to 8. But at least you can accept/decline each individually.

EDIT: The permission groups are

Location

Camera

Microphone

Contacts

Phone

SMS

Calendar

Sensor

<comment><USER5> Conspicuously absent:

\- Read external storage

\- Internet

<comment><USER6>
      Application YourTypicalMobileApplication is asking for access to the Internet
      to display advertisements powered by Google AdMob.

                                                                 [ D̶E̶N̶Y̶ ] [ ALLOW ]

      (Do you think we would give you the option to easily cut our income?)

<comment><USER7> Then please, oh please separate it out. Internet _and_ Advertising. Shouldn't be hard.

<comment><USER8> > Shouldn't be hard.

How can the OS tell if an HTTP request is for the Internet or for Ads? It can't.

Though Google _could_ special-case AdMob effectively owning the ad scenario for apps which don't use the internet for anything else.

<comment><USER7> That's what I meant. It covers a good ~95% of all ads. Have any extras register for security exemption. Makes sense to me - in the context of not screwing the user over constantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> IMO, the most game changing feature announced today is 'Now on tap'

Google isn't releasing more details on it, but with it, Google would be able to understand what you do, when you do it, who your pals are, who you go out to movies with, who you chat with the most, are you looking to quit your job, are you about to break up, are you going through a depression and so on...

They haven't revealed anything about how exactly 'Now on tap' works...but the potential for data collection is enormous. With 'Now on tap' they promise to do 'searches' based on the context (which is derived from the contents in the app that's showing on-screen). So no matter what app you're using, Google will get its hand on the data. It sounds nightmarish and exciting at the same time.

<comment><USER10> What scared me about that announcement was that "no changes in the app are necessary" which basically means that google from now on will parse the text that is displayed, regardless of the type of app that is open.

Without any further clarification i have to expect Google now to send the displayed data of my mobile banking app to its servers everytime i hit that "Now on Tap" button, accidentally or not, while its open. I don't like that.

<comment><USER11> This only works if the developer uses app indexing where Google can search through the content and make it searchable to end users and other endpoints. It doesn't come for free so Google has no access to things like your bank app's screen.

<comment><USER12> [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/android-ms-google- now...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/android-ms-google-now-on-tap- shows-contextual-info-at-the-press-of-a-button/) makes it seem like they just walk the view hierarchy. They show examples of using this in a chat app, which makes less sense to be found via app indexing.

<comment><USER13> The presenter actually mentioned app indexing on stage at some point so I think it does rely on the developer opting into indexing.

On the other hand, it's not clear to me that the _user_ opts into the indexing, so Google might suddenly silently be getting access to a huge number of user's deep within-app data without them realising it. But that is old news, app indexing has been around for a while.

<comment><USER12> I think the way to think about it is Google is doing what it does best: search. They use whatever content they can scrape from the screen using the view hierarchy once the user signals intent that they want to search. It's a faster way to do search using context (in this case the screen) to provide the "keywords". The app indexing part is how they are able to show related apps with deep links. They use app indexing of _other_ apps to find relevant results for the query.

App indexing makes sense when you have more stable content inside of an app like a traditional public website. Think Yelp and their 'screen' per place inside of the app. It doesn't make sense to publish the contents of a chat conversation to Google's app index -- that would be a huge privacy leak! It would be the equivalent of GoogleBot indexing my Gmail inbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Google is showing off Android M dev previews while devices sold new last fall in major US retailers are still running KitKat with no updates from Google or their providers. They continue to actively create the "fractured" world of Android.

In other words, that's cool about Android M, but most people aren't even using L. (40% on K, 9% on L whose preview was the 2014 IO)

Can Google not poach one or two of Apple's negotiators to go to the right meetings at Motorola, Verizon, etc to talk about updates?

<comment><USER15> Damn lies and statistics. The Android dashboard numbers are always super pessimistic on upgrade rate.

I am the lead for an app with >250,000 installs. Over 45% of our usage is coming from Lollipop. The rest is JB & KK. We see <6% ICS for the last 30 days.

I know other major apps that have even better numbers.

Looking at my data, L usage was basically nil in January 2015. There was slow growth from there until April, when we saw an inflection point in the number of Lollipop users. This aligned with the release of several Samsung updates that pushed Lollipop to some of the most popular devices out there.

If you want publicly available numbers, I would rely on Mixpanel[1] not the Android dashboard. And even this understates it, as of writing this comment Mixpanel is not including 5.1 in the Lollipop numbers which is cutting 2-3% off that. [2]

[1] [https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/android_os_adoption](https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/android_os_adoption) [2] [https://twitter.com/mixpanel/status/604025242529308672](https://twitter.com/mixpanel/status/604025242529308672)

The narrative about Android fragmentation is really out of touch with what I experience on a daily basis.

<comment><USER16> As someone developing another Android app, a FOSS app for an IRC bouncer:

About 25% of our users are below ICS even. Yes, one quarter of our users are on Gingerbread.

And then the rest is shared equally between JB, KK and L.

<comment><USER17> The Android Market lets you depreciate old versions of Android now for your apps by leaving up the last compatible apk for them while newer devices get the latest version of your app.

With that, you can either let the old version die slowly as users upgrade devices. I haven't attempted it, but I assume you can still somehow push bugfixes for the older version without newer devices also getting it.

<comment><USER16> But then those people wouldn't get the normal upstream releases anymore, and we'd have to setup a branch for backports – not really great.

<comment><USER17> Backporting bug fixes or new features? I wouldn't be going out of my way to try adding new features to 5 year old versions of Android. If a user reports a crash for 2.3, sure, I will fix it. I know I have a fair amount of devices showing as Android 2.3 for one of my apps, but I've noticed most of them seem to be inactive. The app in question is a tool for testers and power users, so I would expect many of them to keep old devices around for fun/hobby, but not really using them actively.

Just something you might want to investigate. You may not have as many actively using 2.3 as you might think. Creating a new branch for active build really isn't that much complexity and then a branch for legacy when the legacy is just maintenance mode only.

<comment><USER16> We are talking only about people who installed the latest version of the app – so they had to be online, and had updates activated, within of the past few weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Battery - We're making Android devices smarter about managing power through > a new feature called Doze. With M, Android uses significant motion detection > to learn if a device has been left unattended for a while. In this state, > Android will exponentially back off background activity, trading off a > little bit of app freshness for longer battery life.

Will this improve wakelock performance that has been plaguing Android for years?

<comment><USER19> Wakelocks have just been a scapegoat for people to pretend to sound smart when just saying that they want better battery life. They haven't actually been an issue for years.

No, this won't magically fix bugs in apps that lead to poor battery life. If an app opens the camera and forgets to close it, yeah that's gonna murder your battery.

<comment><USER20> That shouldn't even be possible IMO.

<comment><USER19> I, too, would love to live in a world where it's impossible to write bugs. Things would be so much nicer if Google could just solve the halting problem already.

Sadly it's more likely I'll just get some stupid pony instead.

<comment><USER21> The OS manages resources. It can temporarily grant (exclusive) control of a resource to an application. It can measure your other resource activity (touchscreen). If not touch screen activity for a long time, or when simply the screen is locked, then why is the camera on?

Sure, it can be a spy app, designed to listen and record! But then the OS can expose a per-app maximum wake setting. Yes, it'd look like a spreadsheet instead of a happy user UI, but that'd be a solution, instead of this "oh we can't do anything" excuse.

<comment><USER22> > If not touch screen activity for a long time, or when simply the screen is > locked, then why is the camera on?

Because the OS shouldn't be making assumptions about applications' interaction models. People tend to write apps that OS creators never dreamed about. There are legitimate reasons for resource usage (camera) to continue without user interaction.From the top of my head, I can imagine writing a baby-monitor app that uses camera to stream video to my phone in the other room using wifi.

The resource-limiting heuristics have to be _impossibly_ good, otherwise it gets in the way of useful apps.

<comment><USER23> One way of handling this is to have a separate permission - Use camera, which allows an app to use it for a limited time with the user interacting and while in foreground, and a 'Background Camera' permission which your baby-monitor app would request. Perhaps make the permissions dialog for the background permission scarier so developers have an incentive to use the less privileged permission.

This would work nicely for GPS etc - sure, I want to be able to have My Tracks keep GPS on for 3 hours, but I don't need Uber to be able to do that - <USER2> their app has a nasty habit of forgetting to turn the GPS off if you leave it at the wrong time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The update to provide run-time permission prompts pleases me as a user; as a developer, I'm not as excited about it, especially if it doesn't come with narrower categories of permission. I could see it prompting the user to provide permission to do much more than is being done, and without the ability to provide reasoning and context in the dialog.

<comment><USER25> Dave stated during the keynote that they were slimming down the number of permission categories.

<comment><USER26> Wait, wouldn't slimming down categories result in even less granular control?

<comment><USER27> I assume that the upfront permissions prompted before an install will be simpler and fewer, and the more granular permissions (like microphone or camera access) will be prompted when they are actually requested by the app. Just like iOS.

<comment><USER28> Don't think so, as their post install UI slide showed pr category switches with categories very similar to those already seen in the "improved" Play app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> the NDK support in Studio will end the use of eclipse for Android development.

<comment><USER30> I like how people see Android developments as a choice of heavyweight IDEs. I do all my Android development, Java and native, with Emacs and Buck.

<comment><USER31> Can you recommend any good resources learning about taking this approach?

<comment><USER32> I often program Android in Emacs as well. I use the Java Development Environment for Emacs and have been happy with it.

If you add an Android-specific class like TextView in your code, you can easily have Android Studio add the needed import command for it.

With Emacs/JDE, I point my jde-global-classpath to the Android jar, then when I need to add an import line I highlight the class and do a Control-C, Control-V, Control-Z. It is slightly more convoluted than Studio but works well enough, I could probably automate and simplify it more if I needed to. This was the main shortcut I missed when moving from Eclipse/ADT to Android, but doing this got it back for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Will there be an official Android M for the Nexus 4 ? It's a very powerful device even by today's standards with a quadcore and 2GB RAM.

<comment><USER34> From the article this submission is linked to:

"The M Developer Preview includes an updated SDK with tools, system images for testing on the official Android emulator, and system images for testing on Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, and Nexus Player devices."

So, no.

<comment><USER35> I don't think they released the Android L previews for the the N4 either? Maybe someone can confirm.

<comment><USER36> They didn't, but by the time Android M comes out, the Nexus 4 will be approaching three years old.

As a Nexus 4 user, I'm not holding my breath (and my N4 isn't holding its charge).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The pace of development is impressive. Now if they could get OEMs to keep up.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Android Design Support Library - Making Material design apps gets even > easier with the new Android Design support library. We have packaged a set a > key design components (e.g floating action button, snackbar, navigation > view, motion enabled Toolbars) [...]

Finally! I had to start developing for Android not too long ago, and I couldn't stand seeing "mandatory" material components for certain usages that weren't supported in the official SDK.

<comment><USER15> Nothing is mandatory. Material guidelines are a suggestion and a set of tools to make the baseline app better by default.

In general the UI components are moving out of the SDK into the support libs or the community at large. RecyclerView & Toolbar are examples of Google untangling the foundation from the look & feel, and letting the community come up with the final implementation of things.

<comment><USER39> Is that a deliberate strategy or a lack of communication between teams at Google to create the SDK level support for components their design team designs?

<comment><USER40> I don't understand this sentiment, why do you need those components? There's bunch of 3rd party libraries to implement the UI patterns. Do you go annoy Safari/Chrome/Firefox developers that they don't provide you with components for carousels in browsers as well?

<comment><USER39> Annoy? I'm not sure I understand that sentiment.

I think the comparison between operating systems and browsers is apples (no pun) and oranges. Browsers generally don't implement any specific UI design language, whereas operating systems do.

Android is a system where Google controls most of the baseline UI and does implement much of the Material design language in the SDK- but at least on the launch of 5.0 several components were missing. As you rightly say the community came to the rescue and there are several versions of each component now on github.

Was just wondering if that was on purpose, and the strategy is only to provide base components in the SDK, and only visual designs of a more comprehensive set of UI components - and then let the community implement the missing components outlined in the design guidelines? Not saying that's a bad thing, just curious if it's done on purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Product page: [https://developer.android.com/preview/index.html](https://developer.android.com/preview/index.html)

And downloads page: [https://developer.android.com/preview/download.html](https://developer.android.com/preview/download.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> > Most notable is a much requested feature from our Android NDK & game > developers: code editing and debugging for C/C++ code

Does this mean gdb integration with android studio? That would be fantastic! Working with the NDK has been a pretty painful at times, and this change will make a lot of people very happy.

<comment><USER23> Yes, They mentioned they integrate with the gdb and llvm debugger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> [https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LCRPmN9Lx_E/VWc6aVDdMkI/AAAAAAAAB...](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LCRPmN9Lx_E/VWc6aVDdMkI/AAAAAAAABpI/Kt5p6uEMK-U/s0/cropped_runtime_permissions.png)

That image... Seriously, when will Google stop doing things like these? Will they ever learn to be attentive?

<comment><USER44> What are you referring to?

<comment><USER43> The image is blurry and the colours are dithered. This really looks good to you? [https://i.imgur.com/r3HZWyG.png](https://i.imgur.com/r3HZWyG.png)

<comment><USER45> That was probably just a poor attempt by whoever edited the screenshot to de- emphasize the app in the background and highlight the actual permission dialog.

<comment><USER43> The permission dialog is also blurry and dithered. It's just barely noticeable because it's mostly white, but it's there also.

<comment><USER45> They might have saved as a 256 color GIF (resulting in the dithering) before re-encoding to PNG.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Free Zoho or Paid Google Apps? - <AUTHOR>

Should I use Zoho email for a domain with under 20 users or pay $50/user/year for Google Apps for my domain? <comment><USER2> Zoho logins are extremely flaky at times.</comment>


On the hunt for Facebook's army of fake likes - <AUTHOR> https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2016/05/12/on-the-hunt-for-facebooks-army-of-fake-likes/ <comment><USER2> Product manager at fraud detection company Simility here. I'm very surprised Facebook hasn't put more effort into curbing fake accounts, makes me think it's very low priority for them. We have social network customers who are much smaller than FB, yet have gotten their fake account rates far below FB's.

One effective strategy we've employed not mentioned here is category mapping: if an account of type A, only targets accounts of type B for likes (especially if they ignore categories C, D, etc.), this is usually a high indicator of fraud. For example, one very common strategy is to create a fake account for an attractive female to friend many male accounts (especially relatively new accounts unaware of these tactic). This can be easily detected by analyzing the gender and account age of all targets and coming up with a diversity score. Low diversity score = likely fraudster.

<comment><USER3> Hi. I worked on Facebook's anti-abuse infrastructure for awhile (I'm still at Facebook, but working on different things now). So while I didn't personally fight spam/fake accounts, I worked closely with those who did. I'll be blunt: based on this and your other comments, you don't know what you're talking about.

I'll go a step further and give you some unsolicited advice. The anti-abuse community amongst internet/game/tech companies is actually fairly close knit since it's one of the few places where everyone is on the same side and lots of "secrets" are shared (including, even, at the spam fighting conference we organized last year). I would bet a lot of people just rolled their eyes while learning of your company for the first time. You're already entangled in one argument from someone calling you on this silliness, but I assure they're not alone. I'd probably suggest reconsidering this approach.

<comment><USER2> Indeed I know it's a close-knit community. Most of our 20-person team came from anti-fraud teams at Google. I'm guessing the "silliness" you're referring to is the talk of Facebook not being incentivized to block spammers. I think kbenson articulated best what I was trying to say, that there are tradeoffs in blocking good users and decreasing apparent user volume when fighting fraud. Facebook would obviously not be wise to catch every single fraudster because there would be a high number of false positives, so a balance must be struck. As I'm sure you know, fraud teams at many companies often clash with the marketing team because they're protecting the bottom line (sometimes at the expense of the top line) respectively, and vice versa.

<comment><USER4> I worked at a company with a spam variable in the backend. 0 for eliminating most spam engagement actions like likes. 1 for letting all spam in.

We didn't set it to 0.

There's sometimes positive value in spam. Ex Instagram users get a boost when their pictures are liked, by someone real or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this a matter of, "And now they'll change those patterns", or is this something that can be generalized regardless of how the fakes change their posting styles? The last lines of the article suggests to me that the answer is something like: This isn't going to work out in the world, only in the lab.

<comment><USER6> The article mentions that services already exist that are stealthy enough to fly under the radar:

 _" The issue with these methods, however, is that stealthier (and more expensive) like farms — which likely do not rely on fake/compromised accounts — can successfully circumvent them, as a result of spreading likes over longer timespans and liking popular pages to mimic normal users. Our recent preliminary study confirms this hypothesis on accounts used by BoostLikes.com, showing that tools similar to those deployed by Facebook (which rely on graph co-clustering) fail to accurately detect fraud."_

<comment><USER5> So in essence, this is just going to slightly alter the landscape in terms of which of these services gets the money and the clients.

<comment><USER6> I think it just drives the cost per like up. I suppose there may be some threshold where the price is higher than the benefit, so perhaps that's the goal?

<comment><USER5> Good point, and it probably doesn't have to get too high for it to become prohibitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've had to go out of my way to tell several of my friends now that their account is liking spam posts. The worst part is they don't know it's happening, since they don't see posts their account is liking.

The posts getting liked are from fan pages with <5 likes, yet the post gets 10,000 likes within minutes. Is there some reason that isn't easily detectable?

</comment><comment><USER8> I get one legitimate Facebook friend request for 20 fake ones. Would be nice if Facebook was better at detecting and pruning these people.

Same goes for their other product, Instagram. I want people to find my pictures I post on there but the amount of notifications I get not from interactions but from spam accounts adding me and liking my photos is very annoying.

<comment><USER9> That's interesting, because I get maybe 1 fake Facebook friend request per year?

I think a lot of the problems people have with Facebook are based in how Facebook gets used. If you have 400 friends, you're simply not getting the same experience out of Facebook as a person with 60 friends is getting.

<comment><USER10> > That's interesting, because I get maybe 1 fake Facebook friend request per > year?

I get a few more than that, but the pattern is always the same. Profile picture is of an arguably attractive girl and we have a mutual friend. The mutual friend, in my case, is always one of a few guys who historically hasn't done well with women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've paid for fake likes on my FB pages, the reason was no-one liked them when no-one else did, so it was just to get the ball rolling. As far as I could tell they all seemed to be genuine accounts in Turkey.

</comment><comment><USER12> Facebook in many ways want to have and benefit from fake accounts and fake engagement.

They're not really selling advertising, they're selling KPIs. Facebook is the best platform because they deliver the best KPIs and so get a larger proportion of ad spend.

Think about this: Company spends $X on digital branding campaign, then to make sure they can justify it to bosses etc. they spend $Y to get the views to go with the spend. Did customers benefit from or like the campaign? That's besides the point. Companies essentially pay people to watch their videos (AutoPlay in their FB feed).

</comment><comment><USER13> Fake likes is not a problem as long the Fake v/s Genuine ratio is stable. It automatically gets factored-in in the cost per thousand impressions for marketeers. It is pretty much like emails. If you get 1% CTR to double your conversions you need to send twice the email volume.

However if that ratio is not stable then I think it will be a serious problem for marketeers because we would not have any metric to determine how much budget we should scale.

This is the reason I suspect FB is going slow on the killing the fake likes. Their strategy will manifest over much longer period than usual.

</comment><comment><USER14> And yet 50% of my Instagram interactions seem to be spam

<comment><USER15> go and read some of the affiliate marketing forums. Instagram is being abused more than you would guess. People are talking about getting a million followers on there etc and selling shutouts. I barely use Instagram anymore, and I enjoy photography.

<comment><USER16> Can't you just... only follow people you know and like? (other than the ads, of course). I use instagram sporadically, and can't really say I have any problems with the abuse mentioned.

<comment><USER14> The spam takes the form of people commenting generic words on all your posts, and their profiles are full of spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it in Facebook's best interest to find and delete fake accounts? Fake accounts clicking on ads makes Facebook money (maybe not in the long run).

<comment><USER18> I would think yes. If they didn't, why would an advertiser spend money with them, knowing full well that part of it was being thrown away on fakes?

<comment><USER19> It could just as easily be said that it's in Facebook's interest to _appear_ to want to find and delete fake accounts. As long as their customers (advertisers) believe click fraud is being addressed, Facebook wins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My stupid question.

If i changed the language of my fake accounts in response to this, would they perform better because they now no longer work in your filter?

</comment><comment><USER21> I looked at 10,000 toy bricks and they were all green so I can say with great confidence that "All toy bricks are green."

That's an example inductive reasoning. It's _quite_ flawed as a way of extrapolating from known information in to the unknown because it doesn't account for the things you don't know. In the same way, saying "Fake Facebook accounts post with _this frequency_ or _these few words_ " doesn't work, because it only considers the accounts that do. It can't detect the bots that don't.

<comment><USER9> Inductive reasoning is how the scientific method works, however.

"I've run 10,000 experiments that show toy bricks are green, therefore I can say with great confidence that all toy bricks are green."

Knowing things with absolute certainty is _super_ hard.

<comment><USER22> The point is not that you can't trust your results, it's that you can't extrapolate a theory about _all_ toy bricks unless you know you are seeing a representative sample of all bricks.

"I've run 10,000 experiments that show toy bricks _I found on the ground_ are green, therefore I can say with great confidence that all toy bricks are green." What about bricks in the toy chest? What if someone was building something green before you tested?

As this applies to Facebook's statement, all they can assert is that they've found a way to detect fake Facebook accounts that they've tested against the accounts they've been able to ascertain are fake. What about the fake accounts they could not confirm were fake, or that weren't identified in any way?

<comment><USER10> I have no idea what statement you're referring to in particular since it's not in the article and you haven't cited anything.

Facebook is looking at tackling farming. In that context, the vast majority of accounts are likely to be operated in the same way. They need to avoid detection and they need to do it as efficiently as possible in order to make the most profit. Facebook has now cracked this particular code and an arms race is likely to ensue. But at the moment Facebook discovered this, it was unlikely there were a significant number of farming operations doing things any differently.

No one is claiming this applies to _all_ fake accounts (or if they are, it's definitely not in the article). Obviously a catfishing account will be run quite differently than a farming account.

<comment><USER22> I referring to the title of the _submission_ (notable because it's not the title of the _article_ , which is against HN guidelines), which is currently "Fake Facebook accounts can be detected by when they post and the vocabulary used". I assume the top-level comment was referring to that as well. My comment up-thread was really mean to address that while it's true that knowing things with absolute certainty is hard, that shouldn't excuse us from making sure our claims aren't overly broad given the experiment and results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Would the title of this get flagged?

<comment><USER24> We reverted the title to the article's because it was neither misleading nor linkbait, and so by the HN guidelines shouldn't have been changed.

(The submitted title was "Fake Facebook accounts can be detected by when they post and the vocabulary used".)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Memento: Adding time to the web - <AUTHOR> http://www.mementoweb.org/ <comment><USER2> If widely adopted, this could be very useful for holding politicians, corporations, government agencies, or other powerful/influential/public individuals/groups accountable for their statements. It is common practice for such entities to change their websites and then act like their new positions or opinions were the ones they had held all along. We already have tools (e.g. Google's cache) catching weasely acts like this, but a tool like this would make the job a whole lot easier.

Unfortunately, it looks like it only works if the website's owner implements the framework, and the weasels have very little incentive to do so.

<comment><USER3> Well there is always the internet archive as well, check it out: <http://www.archive.org/></comment></comment>


Neoen completes expansion of Hornsdale Power Reserve - <AUTHOR> https://reneweconomy.com.au/neoen-completes-expansion-of-tesla-big-battery-at-hornsdale-64433/ <comment><AUTHOR> Key points:

> French renewable energy developer Neoen says it has completed the expansion > of the so-called Tesla big battery at Hornsdale in South Australia, and it > will now begin to provide crucial inertia services to the grid from its > expanded capacity.

> The battery – officially known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve, and located > to the Hornsdale wind farm complex north of Adelaide – became the world's > biggest lithium-ion battery when it was opened in late 2017 with a capacity > of 100Mw/129MWh.

> The battery has now been expanded to 150MW/194MWh, with much of the new > capacity focused on delivering "inertia" – a critical grid service that will > be delivered for the first time at this scale by a battery, and which will > help reduce the need to keep operating gas generators as the state's grid > transitions from more than 50 per cent renewables towards the state Liberal > government target of "net 100 per cent renewables."

> ARENA chief executive Darren Miller focused on the importance of showing > that batteries are capable of providing inertia services and fast frequency > responses to the grid, saying this would pave the way for potential > regulatory changes and revenue streams to incentivise further grid scale > batteries to be built across Australia.</comment>


12 Reasons  to Learn and Use  the vi Editor - <AUTHOR> http://www.websiterepairguy.com/articles/vi/12_learn_vi.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The first eleven points are fairly regularly touted as the strong points of vi. I'm specifically interested in the twelfth point that states:

"Writing with vi is as close as you will ever come to writing in your own handwriting and still working on a computer."

Your thoughts?

<comment><USER2> It's a fairly strange list mostly because it seems the guy doesn't do a lot of programming. The whole 'only focus on one thing' is pretty well known for writing, which is why the vairous writeroom clones exist.

I've always felt that vim was pretty awkward when working with text instead of code because it doesn't reflow the text when you delete so you hit a `D` and then have to `gqgq` to get the text back into a paragraph.</comment></comment>


Attaching value to content - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tippingpointlabs.com/2009/03/willitblendcom-attaching-a-value-to-your-content/

<comment><USER2> There's no doubt that being able to produce genuinely interesting content is a solid advantage for any company looking to get users via the web.

I wonder if it's worth considering it an essential capability when starting a new company, so much so that you'd get a cofounder on board purely for his ability to write an interesting blog or create cool viral videos.

</comment><comment><USER3> Uff da. TippingPoint needs to read just a little E. Tufte. The graphs were goofy--A full color bar graph for two data points is just a little silly.

But, the willitblend is still a genius idea.</comment>


Pakistan blocks YouTube website - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7261727.stm

<comment><USER2> Hmm, I'd have thought the recordings of webcam girls and clips of porno's and people talking about sex would have been the reason. Go figure, religion doesn't censor on the basis of morals or the logic descending from their morals, but on an abstract basis of insult.</comment>


IE10: The IE team throws bricks in a glass house - <AUTHOR> http://arnorhs.com/2011/04/12/the-ie-team-throws-bricks-in-a-glass-house/

<comment><USER2> I don't see a problem pointing out issues with Firefox. To me this is helpful compliance testing. I'm sure the Firefox guys will get on it and all browsers will approach "the standard."

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Like another commenter in the IE10 preview thread pointed out: the issue will be fixed in FF4 long before IE10 is released.

<comment><USER3> Won't it break the sites that worked around the bug?

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on how you do it, what bug it is etc.

For instance.. IE6 had a difference in the way it adds margins and widths for a long time - it's a bug (at least a deviation from the standards), some people relied on it.. but the common workaround is to not assign margins to the same elements as you added widths on. (and there are other methods, like display:inline coupled with floating..etc)

The point being.. that workaround doesn't break on newer versions - it simply avoids stepping on those stones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >If I noticed a lot of differences I would assume it to be IE's problem right off the bat.

That sounds like a problem with you if you assume so without investigating first. Do you think Firefox is infallible?</comment>


HUSH from prototype to product - <AUTHOR> http://www.rockthepost.com/posts/view/1436/HUSH-from-prototype-to-product

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand what's happening here. She's got orders, she seems to already have a design business and commissions, and there's talent aplenty. Let's go - get the fucking thing made and stack it into Harvey Nicols, Harrods and Fortnums.

Now if she was working her way out of a Scottish fishing village with nothing but a felt needle and a fistful of designs then yeah, let's dig deep. But she's in London, with a decent CV and access to all the support that's available there. I don't think people should be donating to fund a high-end product with customers already teed up and waiting.

I'd write a cheque to her for £5k today as an investment. Or she can go to the bank and get a loan. I'm not at all comfortable with this model of 'donations' to fund a business.

I know Kickstarter have said they aren't selling products any longer, but I felt much better about buying a Pebble way in advance of it shipping, and taking the risk that it may never arrive (a miniscule risk with pebble, I know).

Are these crowdfunding platforms simply turning into marketing vehicles? And does that risk pushing out the very projects that need crowdfunding?

</comment><comment><USER3> The funny thing about the crowd funding is that no ne has actually purchased a chair (too high of a price tag for the typical crowd funding contributor). If not doing an actual production run of chairs what would the 5K be used for?

</comment><comment><USER4> Bit Freudian, no?

Personally, if I used one, I would either just feel sleepy or very uncomfortable and aware of what I was doing

</comment><comment><USER5> Would be awesome to have this in my office and hide from my boss whenever he is coming to give me some assignments...

</comment><comment><USER6> Neat concept; though I would like to know what the price of these chairs is going to be. I see that for a donation of $2200, you get one of the chairs, and that's the lowest price tier you can get one in. Is $2k going to be the starting cost?</comment>


Colorado Voters Accept Right-To-Die Measure - happy-go-lucky http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/09/501476275/colorado-voters-accept-right-to-die-measure <comment><AUTHOR> Colorado resident here. A few years back, I watched my wife die of cancer, in great pain, and with many other associated problems. She tried to find a doctor who could give her the option to end things, should she no longer be able to stand it, but none were able to help her.

I voted yes. Forcing people to live through that is beyond cruel.

<comment><USER2> The Right To Die is an often ignored but important law for the exact reasons you listed. It's something you don't think you need until you absolutely do need it.

These Frontline Documentaries are very explanatory for those who want to know more :

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/suicide- plan/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/suicide-plan/)

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/)

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/facing- death/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/facing-death/)

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/being- mortal/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/being-mortal/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > The measure requires that people "make two oral requests, separated by at > least fifteen days, and a valid written request to his or her attending > physician." It also requires that people be capable of taking the medication > unassisted

Why the last requirement? Seems to me like a lot of terminally ill patients wanting to die might not be self-sufficient

<comment><USER4> My dad is in the early stages of dementia and has repeatedly said he'd prefer to die than live on as a husk of a human.

Interestingly, he's got one of the weird dementias, called "primary progressive aphasia", which is slowly robbing him of the ability to speak. There are cognitive deficits as well, but the main issue is that he has trouble formulating sentences. So if we lived in Colorado, when he actually wanted to die, he would be unable to fulfill these requirements.

Also interestingly, part of his motivation is explicitly monetary: he wants his life savings to go to his family, not a nursing home.

This experience has reaffirmed my position in favor of right-to-die, but it really is a complex issue. If gran-gran doesn't want to go to the gas chamber, there should be stringent protections in place to keep her family from sending her there.

<comment><USER5> >"Also interestingly, part of his motivation is explicitly monetary: he wants his life savings to go to his family, not a nursing home."

That sentiment may seem strange to most people but I think it's more than just a logical conclusion, it's an emotional one as well.

We recently lost one of our family's matriarch's (grandmother-in-law) after her long battle with a failing cardiovascular system. After one particularly difficult evening, she realized her time was about to come and asked her husband to stay by her side while she passed in their home. Unfortunately, her end did not come easily and a relative convinced my grandfather-in-law to call an ambulance when she went into respiratory arrest as it was shockingly painful to watch. She was taken to the hospital and placed in the ICU where she was stabilized but only at the footstep of death's door. The miracles of modern medicine managed to keep her borderline comatose body alive for almost a month in the ICU before the family could come to agreement on sending her to hospice.

That month in the ICU cost almost everything they had worked their entire lives for and was intended to be passed down to their children and grandchildren. Two lifetime's worth of hard work and thoughtful planning went to cover the cost of just one last month of "life".

My point in sharing that story is that the true cost of that month isn't measured in dollars and cents, it's measured in the loss of the legacy they had worked so hard to build. Neither of them viewed their estate as something as simple as "money". Instead they saw it as things like "college tuition for the grandchildren", "a wedding gift to help the grandkids start their married life", "land my ancestors have lived on for generations", and "one last vacation for the whole family". That's what I mean when I saw they lost their legacy and why it's as much or more of an emotional decision than a cold calculation of financial realities.

<comment><USER6> When you consider situations like this, it makes total sense why hospitals would have every incentive to fight for "the right to life" and "foster a culture of life" and oppose right-to-die / assisted suicide.

<comment><USER7> While I can't speak for "hospitals". I can tell you that doctors are very much in favor of "do not resuscitate" directives, which would have prevented the scenario described above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a CO resident, and I was honestly astounded that the measure passed with such a wide margin. I don't think people read or understood the measure. CO generally has a big libertarian streak (we're one of the states Gary Johnson did best in). I'm guessing the measure won on the strength of the name alone and not the merits of the actual law.

Now the usual suspects lined up against it, and that's who NPR interviewed: the Christian right out of Colorado Springs. However, I saw more opposition to this in my middle class gentrified neighborhood than I saw support or opposition for any measure, except maybe the tax measure to support the cultural district. This neighborhood is anything but conservative and this is one of the rare cases where seeing signs on the neighbors' lawns made me look deeper and actually change my vote from the reflexive "yes" to a "no".

The good news out of this election is that Prop 107 passed, which makes it harder to get constitutional amendments on the ballot. One of the things I dislike about living here is how the state is used as a political laboratory for everybody's pet poli sci project.

<comment><USER9> I voted yes on Prop 106. Can you explain your reasoning for voting no? It didn't seem like there was anything hidden inside the measure.

I think you mean Prop 71 instead of 107. I voted no on Prop 71. I like the idea in principle but didn't like the requirement to gather signatures from all districts.

<comment><USER10> Colorado resident as well and I voted yes on 107 as well, I couldn't find anything hidden but would really like to know if I had missed something about it.

<comment><USER11> My issue with it was that it squeezed the wrong end of the amendment "funnel". It makes it harder to _propose_ amendments. I don't remember a frivolous amendment being proposed.

Instead, i would have preferred to see a bill making it harder to _pass_ amendments, moving it to 60% or something similar. That said, a lot of the progress the state has had would have failed under either requirement. Min wage increase, end of life, recreational pot, etc.

I have never said to myself "wow, we propose and pass a lot of amendments that should never have seen the ballot in the first place". And if we did, i want to see the ideas. Keep proposing easy and make them need more voter backing to pass.

<comment><USER12> Amendment 71 also made it harder to pass amendments: the threshold is now 55%. The only exception is for amendments that repeal things from the constitution, for which the threshold is still 50%

Details: [https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Imposition_of_Distribution_...](https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Imposition_of_Distribution_and_Supermajority_Requirements_for_Citizen- Initiated_Constitutional_Amendments,_Amendment_71_\(2016\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I support the notion of right to die, but the language of this measure is pretty ambiguous with regards to the patient rescinding the request.

I think it leaves the door pretty far open for someone to claim that a person who has made the request is rescinding it when they in fact are not. The language of the measure says that the patient can (paraphrasing) "rescind by any means" their request.

I appreciate that nobody wants to put someone to death if they changed their mind, but I wish the language wasn't so wide open.

<comment><USER14> [https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_End_of_Life_Options_Act,_Pr...](https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_End_of_Life_Options_Act,_Proposition_106_\(2016\))

As I read it, the patient must self-administer the medication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I worry that "right to die" can devolve into "it's the right time for you to die".

<comment><USER16> It's certainly a concern, deserving of thought and safeguards, but not a reason not to do it. Any more than "the right to have an abortion" devolving into "you need to have an abortion" is a good reason to ban abortion.

(I actually see this as a very close parallel.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Couldn't come at a sooner time.

<comment><USER18> True of every happening in this space-time continuum, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think Right-to-die laws increases the pressure on the person to commit suicide, especially in the case of those who want to die to preserve or transfer their life-savings. It does not provide protection to an individual who may want to live. Right-to-die laws were primarily conceived to alleviate pain, but it is sad if it would be used for monetary reasons.

<comment><USER20> That's an insightful unintended consequence that I too can unfortunately see playing out all to often. Still, the individual would have to choose suicide, right? They may have pressure on them for the choice from vultures, but it is still their choice.

Unless I'm mistaken, I don't see the need for any protection.

<comment><USER21> > Still, the individual would have to choose suicide, right?

Patient: I'm in pain, and need painkillers.

Insurance company/state health plan: We'll pay for poison pills, but not painkillers.

Patient: …

It similar to the way the United States uses highway funds to blackmail the several states into setting a uniform national drinking age.

<comment><USER22> I can't tell if you are serious but strong opioid painkillers are inexpensive to manufacture and many have been out of patent for decades. They're significantly cheaper than e.g. the pentobarbital* that Oregon physicians prescribe for assisted dying. Despite what people on my Facebook feed say, Big Pharma isn't making big money off of any of the old standbys like morphine, oxycodone, hydromorphone, etc. The prices a patient sees are unrepresentative of the actual cost of drugs to health care providers. A few years ago a friend got a shot of hydromorphone in the ER for kidney stone pain and the line item on the bill was like $200. About 1% of that would represent the cost of replenishing the consumed Dilaudid, maybe another 2% for a disposable syringe. As for where the other 97% came from, see: many lengthy tomes about American health care.

*Pentobarbital itself is also cheap/easy to manufacture in volume and has been out of patent for a very long time, but nowadays it is a niche drug so the overhead costs are higher.

<comment><USER21> Oh sure, the painkillers themselves are cheaper, but the painkillers plus hospital care plus other medicines &c. will not be cheaper than poison (or just a heavy one-time dose of painkillers).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does survival bias in self-taught/bootcamp developer stories matter? - <AUTHOR> The stories I find always have one thing in common: the writers "make it." They get the job, get into a Bootcamp, or launch a profitable sass app; whatever their goal may be, if they're writing about it, they've achieved it.
Similar question asking for anecdotes here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6w30de/for_those_who_travelled_down_the_selftaught_path/ <comment><USER2> Every succesful spot on the earth is subject to "survival bias". For each Neymar and Messi there are hundreds of thousands of kids literally killing themselves trying to be the next football superstar. Most of them are going to fail but the next Neymar will for sure come from this pool.

The "self thaught" career is the same, with the difference that a lot more people trying it succeed. But it is still difficult and a lot of people won't.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's less likely a traditional "survival bias" scenario because effort matters. I'm sure participants who commit the strongest get the best outcomes (and a more likely to write about it).

<comment> UK-AL There's probably a lot people who also put in a lot effort and failed. They're not going to write about it.

<comment><USER3> Well that's the survivor bias question - is there another factor that's important when you consider the whole population?

In this case, anecdotally, I doubt it. Even the linked discussion thread has a number of discussions on the reason for failing -- and lack of effort was the major one.</comment></comment></comment>