How Football Sounds To People That Don't Care - <AUTHOR> http://www.tickld.com/x/how-football-sounds-to-people-that-just-dont-care-T

<comment><USER2> That pretty accurately describes how I feel whenever there's some kind of 'cup' that everyone suddenly talks about.

What the article forgets to highlight is that for many people football is something they like doing themselves in their free time. That makes it different from just a random subject they're interested in.

Furthermore, I know quite a few people who don't really care about football and think it's silly, but they stay up to date on what's happening and join their friends in the pub, excitedly participating in the event.

I never understood why, until I tried doing it myself.

Turns out it can be a lot of fun to be around friends and complete strangers in an environment of excitement and talking about something meaningless with passion. It's not quite worth it for me to start watching football, but at least I see more of a point to it, and occasionally I jump in and pretend to go crazy over it.

And come to think of it, I often do just that when talking about some new framework or gadget. It won't change the world, isn't really worth arguing about, but boy is it fun to engage passionately in a discussion about it!

(I do understand this article probably isn't meant to be taken too seriously. Just wanted to share.)

</comment><comment><USER3> It says "used with permission" but I'm not sure. Why not give credit?

Source: [http://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/22osn0/as_t...](http://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/22osn0/as_the_fifa_world_cup_approaches_the_antifootball/cgpdacf)</comment>


After Gmail blocked in China, Microsoft's Outlook hacked, says GreatFire - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/19/us-microsoft-china-idUSKBN0KS12520150119?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

<comment><USER2> The title makes it sound like Outlook.com itself was actually hacked, but according to the article they just MITM the connection with a bogus SSL certificate.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. The phrase 'Microsoft Outlook Hacked' is factually incorrect.

But this way, the title is so much more apocalyptic: Google is blocked, Microsoft is hacked, western civilization is in ruins.

<comment><USER4> It's inaccurate, but personally I find the idea of successfully impersonating a service such that users think they are talking to the legitimate service is a much scarier thing to happen than for a service to get hacked, which can be a one-time (and often minor: e.g. if only part of the system got hacked) thing.

<comment><USER5> But in this case they didn't successfully do that, as they used self-signed certificates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The following screenshot shows what happens when a Chinese user accesses Outlook via an email client"

[https://zh.greatfire.org/blog/2015/jan/outlook-grim- chinese-...](https://zh.greatfire.org/blog/2015/jan/outlook-grim-chinese- authorities-attack-microsoft)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is fun. I work at a school in China where we can't use Google Apps. But we'd like something like that, so we were considering using Office 365. Microsoft isn't allowed to operate its own deployment of Office 365 in China, that gets outsourced to a Chinese service partner with its own datacenter. The features aren't even completely the same when you compare the outsourced Office 365 with Microsoft's Office 365. So of course we're thinking of just going with Microsoft's offering, which is easily accessible within China anyway (for now). Will this change? I suppose there's a reason why they had to outsource their China presence to a Chinese service partner. Gah, complicated.

</comment><comment><USER8> If the gov only blocked google service like gmail, we can use vpn to access gmail from China.

But the most horrible thing happen last few weeks: companies(include email providers) in china can't send email to gmail, this recovered after few days, but I think the gov have the power to block this forvever. companies can may fix this by many technology, but the real problem is companies can't against the orders from gov.

You can imagine one day you can't recevie emails sent from china; include verification emails/password recovery emails for lots of your accounts registered with gmail.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using outlook after gmail IMAP was blocked here in China and it is working just fine. And as far as I can see the block of gmail IMAP is now gone again. It is still a lot slower compared to outlook though.

</comment><comment><USER10> Welcome to the new world order where even your own government is a cyber- terrorist. Makes the folks over at [https://silentcircle.com/](https://silentcircle.com/) sound prophetic.</comment>


Turn email attachments into URLs - <AUTHOR> http://mailsnip.com couldn't find a service that did this so I rolled my own <comment><USER2> Interesting, but wouldn't the normal use case for turning attachments into URLs occur when attachments are > 10mb, and hence can't be sent via email?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.. but for cases like uploading photos to websites from an iPhone it is quite useful.</comment></comment>


This Startup's Artificial Voice Sounds Almost Indistinguishable from a Human's - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2017/11/03/this-startups-artificial-voice-sounds-almost-indistinguishable-from-a-humans/#316581ae388c <comment><USER2> Three totally different points:

Sometimes I find it useful to add a comment of the form "this function is called by that function" to the called function.

An editor that let you mark comments as explaining how, explaining why, identifying further work that needs doing, etc. and then filter out the irrelevant ones would be nice.

It ought to be that we could attach a comment to a specific expression, rather than just sticking it nearby.</comment>


Gemnasium acquired by GitLab, the future of version control is built-in security - <AUTHOR> https://gemnasium.com/blog/gemnasium-is-acquired-by-gitlab/ <comment><USER2> Congrats to both GitLab and Gemnasium teams, both truly fantastic products I'm very proud to use!

<comment><USER3> Thanks Mr Mondo!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Conversation moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269631)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Unfortunately, that means we have to shut down Gemnasium soon.

Which is a shame as a non-GitLab, GitHub user, although now I have a reason to migrate to their dependency graph feature introduced last year.

<comment><AUTHOR> GitLab is planning a feature with the ability to use CI/CD pipelines (and so security checks) also for GitHub hosted projects. It is intended to be released in 10.6, according to the current scheduling: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/3839](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3839)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also on TechCrunch [https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/30/gitlab-acquires- gemnasium-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/30/gitlab-acquires-gemnasium-to- strengthen-its-security-services/)</comment>


2048 Numberwang - <AUTHOR> http://louhuang.com/2048-numberwang/ <comment><USER2>
        C:\> TWENTY48
        Loading...
        Ready.

        You are in a darkened room. On the floor in front of
        you are sixteen tiles, arranged in a grid.  The tiles
        are labelled A1, A2, A3, A4, B1 and so on up to D4.

        There is a two here, on tile A1.
        There is a two here, on tile D3.

        > GET ALL
        The numbers appear too strongly glued to the tiles.

        > INVENTORY
        You have a copy of On Lisp by Paul Graham, a thing your
        Aunt gave you that you don't know what it is, and a
        small leaflet.

        > READ ON LISP
        Time passes. You have a profound enlightenment experience.
        Sadly, this does not help you win the game.

        > READ LEAFLET
        "WELCOME TO TWENTYFORTYEIGHT!

        TWENTYFORTYEIGHT is a game of numbers, addition and high
        bits. In it you will explore some of the most tedious
        territory ever seen by Hacker News readers. No computer
        will be without one!"

        > GO LEFT
        Some numbers move, and a new number appears!

        There is a two here, on tile A1.
        There is a two here, on tile C1.
        There is a two here, on tile D1. [Footnote 6]

        > FOOTNOTE 6
        There are no footnotes.

        > GO UP
        Some numbers move, some change, and some new numbers
        appear!

        There is a four here, on tile A1.
        There is a two here, on tile B1.
        There is a two here, on tile D4.

        >GO DOWN
        Some numbers move, and a new number appears!

        There is a four here, on tile C1.
        There is a two here, on tile C4.
        There is a two here, on tile D4.
        There is a two here, on tile D1.

        >PANIC
        Not surprised.

        >QUIT
        Amazed you survived this long.

        Your score is 4, out of a possible umpty squillion and six.
        Good bye!

        C:\>
        C:\>
        C:\> DEL TWENTY48.EXE
        C:\>

<comment><USER3> I give it until tomorrow before we see a text-adventure-based version of 2048

<comment><USER4> I'd do it tonight if I didn't already have plans

<comment><USER5> I'm actually looking forward to this one, and I've never been so confident of a quick software release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Found a bug you might want to look into:

After 8 steps, I "won" after reaching the following configuration (all on the edges, from top-left clockwise):

16, 584, 26, 6, 18, and 7

That's not numberwang, according to the official definition [1]

[1] D. Mitchell, B. Russell, A. Turing, and R. Webb. Numberwang determination and the Entscheidungsproblem. Principles of Mathematics and Computation, 1944. Cambridge Press 14(2).

<comment><USER7> No, "That's numberwang" does not indicate winning nor the end of the game. It just pops up at random throughout the game.

<comment><USER6> Ah yes - that's true in the BBC 4 version of the rules, introduced in 1968. I think most countries use that now. In Australia we play according to the original rule set, hence the misunderstanding.

<comment><USER8> Presumably you modify the rules to allow lateral shunts though, as per the the 1963 Davison Reformed Numberwang Rule Set (Version 3)?

<comment><USER9> Has it turned into Calvinball yet?

<comment><USER5> One.

<comment><USER10> Q

<comment><USER9> My ball, you didn't sing the 'Q' song.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those unfamiliar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjOZtWZ56lc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjOZtWZ56lc)

<comment><USER11> It makes slightly more sense when you understand the context: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfa3MHLLSWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfa3MHLLSWI)

<comment><USER12> I'm really interested to know what his process was, since he didn't seem to actually know the product he was subtracting 50 from.

<comment><USER13> Well it seems that he was always going for 4 from the top row, which reliably gives him 25, 50, 75 and 100 (I think). He then uses the ability to divide by 25 to treat these as an additional 2, 3 and 4. So once he has 318, he does (318 * 3) - 2 to get his 952, except via the 25s; ((318 * 75) - 50)/25\. It's a hack; increasing the set of available numbers by guaranteeing the presence of a common divisor.

<comment><USER14> And _that 's_ Numberwang!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is my favorite clone bar none. After about 5 seconds of playing I was giggling, as I remembered the sketches.

<comment><USER16> The first letter that popped up got me.

<comment> martin-adams For me, it was the number 36 but a mirror image

<comment><USER17> Is that the elusive shinty six?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In hindsight, we should have all jumped on this and pretended we understood the rules of Numberwang, in the style of Mornington Crescent. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_%28game%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_%28game%29)

<comment><USER18> Like the folks over at Reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/1jvgn6/i_sa...](http://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems/comments/1jvgn6/i_said_numberwang_to_the_pet_shop_cashier_when_my/cbioq86)

<comment><USER19> Nobody should do anything like Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It actually plays identically to 2048 (except you can only rely on colours, not face values), but I still love it. Ich bin gewangernumbt!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJs3Tsx-3Ak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJs3Tsx-3Ak)

<comment><USER21> No, it doesn't! I was doing well, and then it suddenly changed the _color_ of one of my tiles. It was the largest tile I had (which I always keep in the lower left, so it was very distinctive), and it dropped by a factor of 8 (3 colors) or so. At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened...

<comment><USER22> Whenever you get Numberwang it seems to change some of the tiles either up or down the scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Please guys, make it stop. I need to work. I need to sleep. I need to eat!! I have no idea wtf I was doing but this is by far the best! This dam game is worse than heroin....

<comment><USER24> Silicon Valley doesn't do the productivity porn thing anymore, does it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think I should have won by now: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/2hokoh94hujyf2j/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2hokoh94hujyf2j/Screenshot%202014-03-20%2020.08.11.png)

I thought it played normally, and it does for a while, but it always eventually seems to randomly revert your high tiles (I verified that I had at least 1024 by checking the debugger).

[edit:] Ah, I found the code. It's possible to win but you have to survive the small chance that it will perform a random merge and destroy your tile:

            // 0.005% percent chance that we will merge a cell anyway
            if (next && Math.random() > 0.995) {
              next.value = tile.value;
            }

<comment><USER26> Hm, the comment is wrong, it's 0.5% chance.

<comment><USER27> And _that 's_ CommentWang..

I'll get my coat

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How do I rotate the board?

<comment><USER29> I opened a pull request for you.

[https://github.com/louh/2048-numberwang/pull/1](https://github.com/louh/2048-numberwang/pull/1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'll admit to getting annoyed a bit by all of these 2048 clones. But this made me laugh regardless.

<comment><USER22> Ditto. They've actually been pissing me off since it seems like Threes is getting shorted by 2048.

But this was great. I managed to get 11032 before I lost. Just making a rules engine that could deduce Numberwang along is an incredible accomplishment.

<comment><USER31> you do realize the games still the same as 2048 right? just look at the colors of the tiles.

the only thing randomized is the numbers on the tiles

<comment><USER22> Yeah. But the sense of humor from Numberwang makes it more than a "look I just stole someone else's idea" clone, gives it it's own personality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love this, only thing is it doesn't have my favorite number: H

Is there going to be a Wangernumb mode too?

<comment><USER33> I did get an 'h' once. It's simply less common than numers like 3 or √7. It's even got 'i' (and everyone knows that's not a real number).

<comment><USER34> Of course 'i' is a real number. 'There are _i_ edges in this shape, where _i_ is equal to the value of half of _x_ '...You can also use it when texting informally e.g. 'i m out atm'.

<comment><USER35> i is a real number, it's one-fifth of v.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is amazing! I cannot stop laughing! The first reversed number hit me like a ton of bricks and I couldn't stop.

BEST.2048.CLONE.EVER

</comment><comment><USER37> This is one of the few clones/memes that gets better as it is propagated.

</comment><comment><USER38> Looks like the internal state of the numbers that actually decide what can be merged is changed when you press a key. Also works if you hold it down, which is a bug I think.

Just hold down one direction to observe.

<comment><USER39> This game does not any have bugs by design. If you discover a bug than it is a feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Brilliant! Even better because Numberwang is our internal term for "any random number in some code that isn't declared as a constant". Love it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Note that it is possible to lose, eventually: [http://i.imgur.com/kKsjG2u.png](http://i.imgur.com/kKsjG2u.png)

</comment><comment><USER9> is only a matter of time now before someone makes a 2048 that is turing complete

</comment><comment><USER42> I love the backwards seven! And to think I, an American, get this reference because I read The Guardian's football forums...

</comment><comment><USER43> I started giggling with the first numberwang. As it kept happening, the giggle escalated into full out laughter that just kept getting stronger. I am sure I've seen the numberwang sketch, but don't remember it, so reference was wonderfully subliminal and all the more absurd. Anyway, I love this. Laughter is glorious.

</comment><comment><USER44> "maths quiz show that's simply everyone"

Huh?

<comment><USER45> It's a quote from Numberwang Episode 2: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJDu5D_IXbc&feature=youtu.be&...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJDu5D_IXbc&feature=youtu.be&t=7s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Das ist Nümberwang!

</comment><comment><USER47> This is the best, but I'm still waiting on someone to translate the Numberwang board game :) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmiEODmYNmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmiEODmYNmI)

</comment><comment><USER48> i'm not entirely sure what I'm doing, but I think I'm winning...

<comment><USER49> Welcome to life, you now understand the rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> i keep getting shinty-six

</comment><comment><USER51> Try this reverse version of 2048 game.. See if you can end up with fractions :P [http://ajnas.in/one/](http://ajnas.in/one/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm due a slow commute to London next week and I can't wait to play it on a train see whether those sitting near to me can figure out the rules of the game.

</comment><comment><USER52> Thank you netflix, for insisting that I would like peep show.

</comment><comment><USER53> Despite best efforts, this is still playable because the color codes haven't changed from the original.

</comment><comment><USER54> Did you change the rules after posting it here? It seems like they are more chaotic now (and I like it).

</comment><comment><USER55> This is phenomenal. So, so good.

</comment><comment><USER56> The definitive version of 2048.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think I just peed my pants.

<comment><USER58> That's numberwang!

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This is my absolute favorite version, because I can actually beat it!

</comment><comment><USER60> Needs more fish numbers.

</comment><comment><USER61> Oddly enough, makes it easier to win.

</comment><comment><USER62> Not bad... not bad at all!

</comment><comment><USER63> You have my attention..

</comment><comment><USER64> Love this so much.

</comment><comment><USER65> thank you for brightening my day. i love it

</comment><comment><USER66> This has just turned into a meme clogging up hn

</comment><comment><USER67> can someone stop posting this?

</comment><comment><USER68> oh my god this. this so much. <3<3<3

</comment><comment><USER69> I love this! I enjoy playing!</comment>


MIDI 2.0 Specifications Available for Download - <AUTHOR> https://ask.audio/articles/midi-20-specifications-available-for-download <comment><USER2> MIDI is such an interesting standard. Anyone who has anything to do with music equipment can attest that it is literally everywhere. Every (decent) synth nowadays has at least a midi input. You can sync practically everything with MIDIs clock function (which was VERY painful to do beforehand, especially if you tried to sync multiple synths). Its interesting to see if MIDI 2.0 can follow up with that. Certainly, MIDI is here to stay and i cant wait to see what cool things people are going to create with it!

<comment><USER3> > _Every (decent) synth nowadays has at least a midi input_

Well that sentence could've been straight from a music/computer mag from early/mid 1980s - that's how old MIDI is, using DIN jackets and all.

Source: owned an Atari ST using Steinberg 24 track sequencing software to control Yamaha DX-7 (every New Wave band had one of those on stage), early digital drum machines, digital reverbs/echoes, and other devices around 1985.

<comment><USER4> Cubase represent!

My dad was a music teacher and a big proponent of getting the school to purchase Ataris for this reason.

He in later years also decided to build an electric organ with complete foot pedals and all.

MIDI never says die.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The timing must be perfect for startups that create new kinds of MIDI input devices that can support the new expressiveness controls that MIDI 2.0 supports. Roli probably a head start with their seaboard "keyboard" made in neopren. The Osmose keyboard from Expressive E, also look promising. Osmose looks like a traditional keyboard, but detects vibration on the keys.

<comment><USER6> As a (happy) owner of a Linnstrument I think supporting MPE would already be a great thing as it removes a lot of the problems I had with traditional midi (e.g. allows per finger pressure, pitchbend and mod instead of one pitchbend for all notes played).

As I know Roger Linn however he is probably already in the process of writing Midi 2.0 support for the Linnstrument firmware

<comment><USER5> The Linnstrument looks awesome. I am the happy owner of a Roli Music block, that actually looks like a small and cute version of the Linnstrument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > MIDI 2.0 delivers more nuanced expressiveness for electronic instruments. > It's now possible to convey the same kind of subtle expression normally > associated with acoustic instruments, thanks to higher-resolution dynamics > and control data, vastly extended controller options (including per-note > controllers for exceptional articulation), and simplified controller > assignments.

This could be a musical revolution in the making, some 10-20 years from now. Huge, huge implications for the entire industry and craftmanship of "instruments". At the bottom of the market, this could be the proverbial end of the 'cheap' analog stuff for the masses, a world of fantastically sounding budget intruments). At the state of the art, a whole new category of instruments with potentially crazy original software-defined features.

MIDI 2.0 would have been sci-fi not so long ago. It's fantastic that we are here.

<comment><USER8> are you referring to a control protocol or a magical signal path effect?

you could always do what you described since at least 20 years now, as MIDI need not describe your synths parameters controls

the issues with MIDI are not so much dynamics as timing resolution. 7 bits of dynamics might not sound like much but I'm not confident in any known musicians ability to express dynamics with more than 127 discrete levels lol...

timing resolution of MIDI is great for more quantized musical styles, but for accurately capturing nuanced rubato performances this is the area that needs to be improved.

the primary issue with timing in physical MIDI interfaces is timing STABILITY. this is arguably worse on a modern Mac with CoreMIDI than on an Atari 1020ST... This is directly a product of scheduler vagaries and even firmware. MIDI should be locked to the sample clock, perhaps updating as often as once a buffer or even less... (there was even a recent Macbook Pro that had it's audio clock jittering all over the place due to a power-management IC hardware rev, aka you can't download an update to fix THAT one, but I digress...)

<comment><USER7> > 7 bits of dynamics might not sound like much but I'm not confident in any > known musicians ability to express dynamics with more than 127 discrete > levels lol...

Think one step further: when I hit a key on the piano, or a fret on a guitar, virtually all other strings resonate to some degree, however minutely, and this has to do with harmonic resonances, the geometry of the piano, etc. (Fourier + chaos). Now the only way to convey that kind of subtlety currently is either to digitize "as a whole" (microphone) or discretely (e.g. individual string sensors); but each has its tradeoff that you don't get from the other (no discreteness in your microphone, and the discrete approach probably won't render any accoustic feel, let alone room shape, etc.

Basically, at a mathematical level, it seems like we should be able to get _both worlds_ — a discrete yet complete description of an "instrument", which obviously has to be designed for the purpose. It's really breaking wide open the barrier between the physics of real-world tangible objects and the mathematics of software objects, computation for music. You may thus simulate analog stuff 'perfectly' (good enough to human ear), or quantize real analog also 'perfectly' (enough).

Obviously you could do all of that now building your own stuff, instruments and software and protocols. But having it baked in MIDI is a game changer in terms of actual mainstream use, thus products to market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been following the development of MIDI 2.0 specs ¹ with interest (just personal, not for work).

In the past year, I got fairly deep into Open Sound Control ², which has so much fun potential and can practically be a superset of MIDI. In fact, I implemented encode/decode from OSC <-> MIDI in C++ and Node.js for a hobby project.

So I wonder, could MIDI and OSC converge in the future?

It seems to me that the latter being a generic protocol for any kind of message, including musical data, that it could supercede depending on industry adoption (like MIDI+OSC instruments)..

\---

¹ [https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about- midi-2-0-mid...](https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about- midi-2-0-midi-ci-profiles-and-property-exchange)

² [http://opensoundcontrol.org/](http://opensoundcontrol.org/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm glad to see the MIDI spec is available for download! It was my understanding that the only way to get the specification for MIDI 1.0 was to buy a hard copy of the spec, and that sales of the book were the only way the MIDI association made money. Looks like now both are free.

I think I had heard that from an interesting youtube lecture on how MIDI works, which I'll link to just in case anyone is interested: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPteB_LpHoM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPteB_LpHoM)

</comment><comment><USER8> yeah, great... "protocol negotiation" lol... this wants to be OSC 2.0 or maybe just everything to everyone?

See, MIDI has an elegant simplicity in that you can connect 1 stupid wire (either pin 2 or 3, IIRC) to your micro-controller and before you can even say "debounce" you can be triggering envelopes...

MIDI, as in normal old-assed MIDI is low-level.

Look, I get it! if ONLY we had the full 8 bits for CC's instead of only 7, etc...

The temptation to "improve and update everything" results in the crap 2020 software engineering artifacts that we leave as our legacy: firmly reminding eternity about just how far we believed that modern trendy habits are always the best for everyone always in everything...

I would have joked about making your "profiles" in XML, but then as we know it's 2020 so that would be JSON, lol...

</comment><comment><USER11> When can we expect to see it in macOS / Windows?

Any big actor did already commit to it (Abelton, Cubase)?

</comment><comment><USER12> does midi 2 suffer from MIDI timing jitter? Using modular (eurorack) now and that issue made midi unusable for me

<comment><AUTHOR> It has a mechanism to reduce it, quite probably adding some latency. But better always 8ms of latency than random jitter between 1ms to 8ms.

This will also help with WiFi + rtpmidi and bluetooth.

From the (oldish) midi.org article[1]:

> The Universal MIDI Packet format adds a Jitter Reduction Timestamp > mechanism. A Timestamp can be prepended to any MIDI 1.0 Protocol message or > MIDI 2.0 Protocol message for improved timing accuracy.

1: [https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about- midi-2-0-mid...](https://www.midi.org/articles-old/details-about- midi-2-0-midi-ci-profiles-and-property-exchange)</comment></comment>


Social Gaming Market Reaches Its Final Stage - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/17/social-gaming-hi5/

<comment><USER2> I dont think that it has reached its "Final Stage". I do feel that its currently over hyped and will have to evolve in order to compete w/ traditional casual games now that the free distribution they were receiving has disappeared. I never really thought that the current popular social games "Farmville" etc... were ever real games anyway.</comment>


Using Neutrino to jump-start modern JavaScript development - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/using-neutrino-for-modern-javascript-development/ <comment><USER2> Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find it all that difficult to get started with webpack after a few tutorials and samples. This seems like it hides away something that people should probably understand, which isn't all that difficult to get started with. Also when you start combining different packages in webpack (or encounter an error (or want to make some decisions in the config script)), the standard copy/paste boiler plate becomes less and less useful.

This looks neat, I just don't think it's likely to do away with configuration completely unless you've got a very standard setup.

That aside, it sort of sounds like the goal here is "a sort of package manager which also handles boilerplate"? Definitely sounds useful when you want to quickly try something new.

<comment><USER3> We all do basically the same thing in every app ever, it's the fragmentation that is such a huge pain with JavaScript. Most apps don't have to be unique snowflakes, we make them that way with hacky css-in-js and so on.

Webpack is great for what it is, but I strongly disagree that people should have to understand the config boilerplate aspect to get something functioning. All it does is prevent you from doing real work, not to mention if you're working on dozens of apps, this quickly becomes a hellish thing to deal with.

<comment><USER4> I have great respect for you but this seems a bit mean spirited. Why shouldn't devs want to be as many things as possible?

Is css-in-js is more ridiculous than regular CSS? I've left regular CSS behind and gained a lot of sanity.

<comment><USER3> It's just my opinion of course :) but I think css-in-js is a step backwards in the majority of cases. I do like CSS modules in terms of scoping / modularity, but I don't want to replace CSS with (what I consider to be) really gross JS implementations.

I don't want to discourage people trying new things, but I also don't want people to waste thousands of collective hours dealing with crazy configuration.

I think toying around with those things are fun for people who get paid by startups etc, but for those of us who simply want to get things done, the ecosystem is not enjoyable.

<comment><USER5> I think you are conflating multiple things. There's several JS styling libraries have literally zero configuration (and don't involve build tooling, etc). They "just work" out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a cool tool, but it's somewhere between funny and depressing that the article brags about how they were able to get a 'Hello, world!' program up in _less than 5 minutes_.

<comment><USER7> A Hello World GUI app, which is a fairly important distinction. Also one that runs on any machine with a web browser.

<comment><USER8> But creating and running a Hello World GUI app for iOS only takes a few seconds, even when running it on your live device.

<comment><USER9> Not really an apt comparison as iOS is a complete ecosystem controlled by one party, so choices are made for you. I'd say comparing it to a Hello World GUI app in C++ would be, as C++ also has a proliferation of build tools and graphics libraries that you have to choice before you can make a Hello World GUI app.

<comment><USER8> Good point. Although I guess my broader point is that the decentralized nature of web development is actually kind of a huge disadvantage in pretty much every way except "flexibility", and that the cons very much outweigh the pros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been doing something like this for a while. I have my entire build process as a project on NPM itself. I just have to import it into my projects and write a small gulp project setup. It's very declarative and if I spent a little more effort could probably mostly eliminate. It has most of my preferred tools in it, including dev server setup, statically generated Pug templates, Babel, Rollup with tree shaking, and documentation generation. I've found it's also great for keeping my project setup clean. Most of my project dependencies end up being dev dependencies for build process, and there are a lot of them. This simplifies down to one.

<comment><USER11> is it open? Would be interesting to use it.

<comment><USER10> It is, but I haven't documented it at all [https://github.com/capnmidnight/notiontheory-basic- build](https://github.com/capnmidnight/notiontheory-basic-build)

Here is an example of usage [https://github.com/NotionTheory/Primrose/blob/master/gulpfil...](https://github.com/NotionTheory/Primrose/blob/master/gulpfile.js)

The name is lame, I hadn't considered sharing it and I misremembered that the dev server and doc gen are not yet a default part of the build project (though I could add them easily).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How composable are these presets? I like to use Typescript and ideally that is only additional one preset rather than a combinatorial explosion of things like "neutrino-react-electron-typescript".

</comment><comment><USER3> Works great, I like this approach much better than the variants that I've seen, this is exactly what I was hoping to see. It's simple, concise, imposes nothing on you, ships with good presets (from what I've seen so far), still extensible. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER13> What do I have to change with the "hello world" setup to get any kind of error reporting? If I introduce syntax errors in the index.js, I don't even get a good stacktrace on the CLI, never mind a neat compiler message in the browser itself (like create-react-app does).

Is this out of the scope for the basic example or an oversight? Anyway, if this is targeted at beginners, that's a bit of an issue.

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing that seems to be missing from these SPA app utilities is an automatic way of pointing your root HTML file at an expirable root JS file. In development it's ok to point at `application.js` but in production NGINX/S3/Apache/Cloudfront should be serving something like md5-digest-of-app- bundle.js such that when the bundle content changes you invalidate the cache. If you're using a CDN you'll also need to have a prefix step to change the root url for assets.

<comment><USER15> Webpack supports the former if you use _[hash]_ (or _[chunkhash]_ ) in the output filename. [1] This is what create-react-app uses. [2]

[1] [https://webpack.js.org/configuration/output/#output- filename](https://webpack.js.org/configuration/output/#output-filename)

[2] [https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app/blob/m...](https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app/blob/master/packages/react-scripts/config/webpack.config.prod.js#L78)

<comment><USER14> Yep, the tricky part is just rewriting your __HTML __so that it includes the right file. However, it looks look my comment was incorrect and most frameworks have considered that issue. Neutrino and create-react-app use html- webpack-plugin.

[https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app/blob/m...](https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app/blob/master/packages/react- scripts/config/webpack.config.prod.js#L232-L248)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Javascript Boilerplate Fatigue

<comment><USER17> After just reading the title, I assumed the same thing, but actually this is exactly what web development needs.

create-react-app is a great example of a project that abstracts away all the complexities of a JavaScript build process and dev environment, but customization inevitably requires you to 'eject' and reintroduce that complexity to your project.

This tool goes one step further and supports customization without this eject step.

This is finally where web builds need to be to provide a simple foundation for modern web development so devs can focus more on making apps and less on tooling.

I look forward to trying it out.

<comment><USER18> What complexities of build processes?!

Building Javascript files with modules and deps is a solved problem. We've built all sorts of other file types and compiled them and linked them before with tools like Make, SCons and other tools. It's ridiculous to think that JavaScript is a unique language that needs its own build tools. It does not.

We went down the wrong path years ago when we decided that whenever we use a language we also need to use tools written in that language. Grunt, gulp, webpack and the rest should go away.

<comment><USER17> I hear you. Node.js made my Ant tasks for running jshint and qunit totally redundant :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a simple example of how to add something like react-router, redux and bootstrap as to presets to neutrino. My problem with CRA is that while very helpful(!) I am often faced with having to add those kinds of components.

<comment><USER20> I'm not part of the React ecosystem so please excuse my ignorance, but why would adding a library require changing a build? Wouldn't you just npm/yarn install those things and use them?

<comment><USER21> Yes you are right. Redux or react router have nothing to do with build config. They are parts of the app

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does _anybody_ just write plain JS ?

<comment><USER23> Yes, actually. As soon as you recognize that the DOM API is rich and fast and you understand how MVC works, you actually get much cleaner code by not mixing HTML and JavaScript. My original explorations of doing this are at [https://github.com/madhadron/mvc_for_the_web](https://github.com/madhadron/mvc_for_the_web).

When you understand this, React's shadow DOM and JSX are completely unnecessary.

Combine it with the fact that grid layout is expected to be in the stable releases of Chrome and Firefox in the next month, and, if you have no legacy browser requirements as I happen not to, web application development becomes somewhat reasonable for the first time since I began doing it in the '90's.

Admittedly, when I started trying to build a library out of this ([https://github.com/madhadron/allorryll](https://github.com/madhadron/allorryll)), I put it in TypeScript, but I'm also the guy who did serial port and Firewire camera control in Haskell.

Obviously this doesn't apply to writing documents on the web, where JavaScript should only be added as part of a structure that will gracefully degrade.

<comment><USER24> Nice to hear! I also use a MVC framework (Grails) with plain old Javascript for DOM manipulations. I have no need for complex bloated frameworks like Angular and React. I do more complex UI with canvas too(where zooming and panning is required).

I agree that web development has never been more fun that it is today, except for Safari with buggy flex implementation and iOS that set position: fixed to absolute and refuse to properly scale the "document" when you want to type some text. Every time I get a bug report these days it is Safari or iOS that doesnt follow the standard. Chrome, Firefox, Edge works great most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Am I the only one who thought that the post title was referring to QNX Neutrino and did a double-take when it went on to talk about Javascript?

</comment><comment><USER26> Reminds me of a framework-agnostic vue-cli. Though that simply builds a configuration/tooling-setup which you can then tweak to your liking. Not sure what I think of using a neutrino-specific config in the package.json for overrides, feels bloated compared to just editing the webpack config directly, and doesn't make it any easier. But to each his own, I guess.

That name though, I guess particles are en vogue :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Great! More tooling

</comment><comment><USER28> Why not just use Yeoman? Moz really like reinventing the wheel.

<comment><USER3> Yeoman is boilerplate, this is code which directly avoids boilerplate, since it's an abstraction instead. Yeoman IMO encourages the wrong things, most true boilerplate (files) can just be a sample repo that you clone.</comment></comment>


How Google determined our right to be forgotten - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/18/the-right-be-forgotten-google-search <comment><USER2> _Publishers, too, have a case to answer. Was La Vanguardia entirely in the right to republish its entire archive, or was it careless?_

It's interesting that is the only piece of discussion in that whole multipage article about how the information ended up in public in the first place.

I guess it's a better story to blame faceless machines and algorithms than for a newspaper to blame another lazy, thoughtless newspaper publisher?

I think there _are_ issues around how Google deals with exposure of personal information (think deliberate trolling campaigns). But this is a weak story that provides no insight into what future issues of privacy will look like.

<comment><USER3> Are you really trying to attack a newspaper for digitizing its archives?

That isn't a "lazy, thoughtless" action.

<comment><USER4> Newspapers digitizing their archives is great; it's their rejection of the initial removal request that should have been challenged. Removing things from indexes makes much less sense than removing them at their source.

Disclaimer: I work for Google as an engineer on open source software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The first removal was made public not by Google, with a clear breakdown of what was being delisted and why, but by prominent journalists reacting to alarming emails sent to their webmasters headed "Notice of removal from Google search"."

I wonder if the author would really see it as benign if Google had published a complete breakdown of what was being delisted and why, instead of just emailing the content hosts. I think it would put Google at risk of being found in contempt of the court...

<comment><USER6> > I think it would put Google at risk of being found in contempt of the > court...

I'm not a lawyer and don't speak for Google, but my understanding is that the regulation prevents you from telling anyone except the relevant parties when a link has been delisted. I think "relevant party" includes who the link is about and the webmaster that owns the link itself.

It would kind of defeat the "right to be forgotten" if Google were to loudly publish a report saying, "Hey, everybody! Forget that Fred Smith did XYZ on this date!"

The reason we know that some things were delisted was because the relevant parties were themselves journalists who then chose to publicize the fact.

So, yes, if Google publicized all delistings, they would violate the legislation. This is something the author of the article certainly knows, so decrying Google for not doing it is disingenuous at best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, while reading the article (right from the title) I had an expectation of a strong argument against how Google handles things. No such a thing came, other than the lack of transparency. Is that a sign that whatever Google is doing is actually working, or just a writing failure?

<comment><USER8> Lack of transparency is itself a problem, because it means when things fuck up in the future there's less ability to recover.

<comment><USER6> How could Google be transparent here?

The whole point of the legislation is to stop publicizing information. Google can't exactly publicly tell the world about everyone they've been told to stop publicly telling the world about, can they?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The idea of 'right to be forgotten' is... ignorant. It is simple to create a web spider (yes, yes, it gets more complicated quickly), and you can be operating your spider quite quietly and privately. The logical outcome is that there will be grey market databank sellers of 'unforgettable' indexes of information.

<comment><USER10> I would suggest that you're ignorant of the issue.

It's not the information existing that's the problem.

It's that the most powerful search robot in the world, with little context, can tell other people severely out-dated information about you that people treat as canonical fact, long after the information was pertinent or relevant, and that can define an entire person's online identity. And it may never fade away, or drop down the rankings, because the computer is too stupid to realize that a house foreclosure notice for 10 years ago is not an appropriate thing to show.

<comment><USER11> > It's that the most powerful search robot in the world,

So, other search robots doesn't do that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I thought this was harmless, when I found out that there are numerous 3rd party websites who scrape data in social networks, newsgroups, even app reviews. This shifts the control outside your hands. Remember when there's a story about how you can't remove data from a service provider ? It doesn't matter if Google/Twitter/Facebook/others support removing my data and public posts, it means that I have to hunt down other parties to do the same, as they don't update their data and no one knows that app review I wrote is 3 years old and the account doesn't even exist anymore.

That's also why I'm done with the Internet and real name policies.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this is a great article that covers quite a lot of topics. It reminded me that we're already aware in real life of the importance of being able to 'expunge' or seal certain forms of records (e.g in law or financial judgements, I believe), yet we've gotten away without such things for the data that ends up online about us. This will matter even more as devices etc become connected to the Internet and it's worth having such debates now.

It's also worth remembering that the entities that index, store, and present this data to us have their own motives for doing so. We should not be so quick to assign some kind of hallowed status upon them.

<comment><USER14> But what of the entities that publish this information online in the first place? Why are the newspapers not accountable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Long time ago there was post on HN from guy who was harassed online. Someone pretended to be him and created fake blog, twitter account, social profiles etc.. It had serious impact on his life / job / family.

Every other company removed this fake profiles within days (twitter, facebook, yahooo...). Only Google did not bothered to answer for weeks. Last time I checked he was trying to shutdown blog on some copyright technicality.

Perhaps this law would not be necessary, if google would cooperate as other companies.

<comment><USER16> Now when you say removed the profiles, do you mean removed links to it, or removed the actual profile.

I think twitter should have a requirement to remove a false account impersonating me, but i think Google (or any other search engine) shouldn't be required to remove references to that profile.

Requiring search engines to remove references to "offending" material seems like forcing libraries to hide certain books because they are illegal.

<comment><USER15> I meant to remove offending profile, not just links. Impersonation with malicious intent is probably crime in most countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wording like "taken every opportunity to passively promote its role as a "truth" engine" makes me suspicious. How do you promote something "passively"?

If the EU wants to delist results worldwide they have to reach for a worldwide law. Work together with other bodies of law, the UN or whoever. But why'd EU law rule worldwide? Oh, right, we're rich.

<comment><USER5> The article's comparison to copyright takedowns was a very good point.

<comment><USER18> It is a superficially appealing point, but I think the analogy falls apart on closer inspection.

Unlike the "right to be forgotten", a lot of effort has been put into harmonizing copyright law worldwide. While the mechanics of the takedown process may vary from country to country, if the content at the end of a link is infringing in country A, it is probably infringing in country B (with some limited exceptions like historical differences in went into the public domain). Given that, there's a serious rationale for applying copyright takedowns worldwide that isn't Google uncritically applying US law worldwide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I always find it amusing when the Streisand Effect kicks in. Before his case, I suspect that a vanishingly small number of people were aware of González's foreclosure. These days it makes its way to news articles across the world and a Wikipedia article.

<comment><USER20> This goes back to the "careless newspapers" comment someone else made: why do articles feel the need to keep naming the plaintiff? How does knowing the name of the guy and his past financial troubles improve my understanding of the situation over, say, referring to him as "a Spanish citizen..."?

It's kind of a dick move. It's not necessary to publish his name and you have reason to believe he doesn't want his name publicized like this so the only reason I can see for publishing his name constantly is a weird sort of professional-caste vendetta against him by newspapers, since his beef was also with them.

<comment><USER21> This guy single-handedly created a brand new and widely abused way for governments to censor the internet. And your reaction is to feel sorry for him? Anyone with the slightest respect for free speech and freedom of expression should have a vendetta against him.

Fuck him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This reminds me of a recent survey where more people claimed to use facebook than the internet.

It also makes me think of an alternate reality where Hitler burned the card catalog and left the books alone.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sometimes, it's easier to just change your name.

</comment><comment><USER24> "This is an excellent article." \- the comment section on this (Guardian) website is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER25> Sorry, but who can take The Guardian, and by extension the NYT seriously while they are sitting on a bunch of the Snowden material? Whining about Google when you are withholding the stuff on privacy that __really __matters due to a lack of moral courage is weak-sauce...

<comment><USER26> Perhaps it is better to judge an article by its contents only.

<comment><USER25> Privacy is a much larger topic than Google. The point I am making is that it's a bit past disingenuous to hold forth on a topic when you are not an honest broker in the overall topic itself..

Find the down votes interesting though...heh...

<comment> mkr-hn A hypocrite can still be right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


3D Ajax Preloaders  - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/forget-chuck-preloaders-3d-right-now

<comment><USER2> They're just animated GIFs. Nothing to see here, move along.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yea, anim gifs, but at least you don't have to steal a spinner from another site - here you can create one of your own.

</comment><comment><USER4> They are animated gifs (like ajaxjoad.info), but there are some nice and original spinners there.</comment>


Cloudflare Time Services - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudflare.com/time/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me that CloudFlare should just sponsor servers for inclusion in the long-standing global NTP pools.

[https://www.ntppool.org/en/](https://www.ntppool.org/en/)

<comment><USER3> pool.ntp.org is a open source project (under Apache License) with a open group of contributors (volunteers). Basically the opposite of what Cloudflare is and stands for.

Sponsoring servers in pool.ntp.org wouldn't support Cloudflare's goal(s).

<comment><USER4> I don't think they were implying it would support Cloudflares goals, but it would be nice to see big companies helping to fund public services, especially when many companies profit from open source tech.

<comment><USER3> I agree with what you say but if a person sets up a for-profit company, their goal will always be to generate profits, not to be/do good. That's why we don't see Cloudflare supporting things like pool.ntp.org

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a huge fan of Cloudflare in general, but sometimes I'm a bit uncomfortable with how much critical infrastructure is increasingly consolidated into a few single entities.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't agree more. They offer an amazing service for free; however, we shouldn't forget that they control millions of websites at a DNS level.

That's a lot of power, and a lot of responsibility. If there was an internal breach at CloudFlare, a sizeable chunk of the modern web would be in danger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So frustrated that Cloudflare didn't just add resources/support the existing NTP Pool. Hard to even pretend their motives are altruistic at this point.

<comment><USER8> Disgusting that supposed "hackers" and experts on hackernews advocate for single point of failures in the internet infrastructure.

The internet is supposed to be distributed. If the NTP pool admins go nuts, have a fight etc, I'm glad there is an alternative. You can generally specify multiple sources, this would be a new source.

And it's always the BS "they're evil" argument - when the posters contribute nothing themselves to progress.

Frustrating indeed.

<comment><USER9> Isn't the whole point of the NTP _pool_ that there isn't a single point of failure? (Assuming of course you're using multiple servers from the pool.)

<comment><USER10> In a technical sense, yes. But privateSFacct is referring to non-technical single points of failure.

Another example would be governmental capture of some chunk of the current NTP admins or something.

An organization, by its nature, is vulnerable to some potential single point of failure. Low probability, sure, but having a competing organization ready to step in can actually help keep that probability low by keeping the focus on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are the local time servers stratum 1, or do they have some central stratum 1 source that they then distribute out to the edge datacenters?

What's the value over just building your own stratum 1 source? (Shameless plug: [https://github.com/jrockway/beaglebone-gps- clock/blob/master...](https://github.com/jrockway/beaglebone-gps- clock/blob/master/README.md))

<comment><USER12> Many folks these days are deploying in the cloud, where it's difficult to deploy your own hardware. Many would see it as too costly to maintain the hardware in a separate datacenter with a fast connection to their cloud provider.

The advantage of this is that it runs on Cloudflare's network, where your cloud provider surely has a fast connection to the nearest edge.

<comment><USER13> If you're in the cloud you should get time from the cloud provider, not from Cloudflare.

<comment><USER14> That does seem like the obvious problem with this. For example AWS apparently have GPS time sync to all their datacenters in order to provide accurate NTP time to the instances in them: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/keeping-time- with-amazon-ti...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/keeping-time-with-amazon- time-sync-service/) It seems like it'd be hard to beat the connection speed and all-around performance of that, especially since there's a cross-internet trip from the third party stratum 1 servers to Cloudflare as well as the one from their servers to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it would be super interesting if they started offering IEEE 1588 v2 aka Precision Time Protocol, but it would be much harder to offer compared to ntp. What they're almost certainly doing here is just running a cable to the roof where they have a GPS antenna and then run it into their datacenters into a time appliance (less likely) or a GPS pci card in one of their servers (more likely) that they then send out to those who want access.

<comment><USER16> You really can't do PTP over the internet, at least not meaningfully. Anyone who needs PTP is going to have their own grandmasters, reference sources, etc - and then a distribution network.

Most telecoms applications use an ePRTC source which tends to be implemented as a GPS/GLONASS/Galileo redundant frequency source, plus a local rubidium source or cesium reference. High-end telecoms applications use a hydrogen maser.

You can't stuff that over an unmanaged network and get the performance you need. Hardware needs to support it hop-to-hop.

<comment><USER15> Yeah I agree, but ptpv2 does support unicast and you can set offsets. It would be very challenging, but not impossible sans the very high res stuff where you need oscillators on the switches and routers, as you alluded to. It wouldn't get down to the sub-10 nanosecond sync you get with a proper stratum 1 timesource (such as the rubidium decay ones), but you could get faster than the guaranteed 1 second of accuracy which is what I believe ntp used to guarantee from a protocol level.

That was my point. Also if you're inside one of Cloudflare's many POPs, this could, in theory, be provided.

<comment><USER17> PTP over Internet doesn't make much sense. PTP requires hardware support in all network devices on the path between the (grand)master and slave. Without this support it will generally perform worse than NTP. Of course, it depends also on the implementation.

PTP does support unicast messaging, but it is not meant to be used as a public service. There are two major problems: It's not stateless and it has a huge traffic amplification, which could be easily exploited for DoS attacks.

<comment><USER15> Yeah this is the most sensible reason against it. NTP is also responsible for some of the biggest traffic amplification DDoS events.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but NTP as a time service (client/server mode) is safe. A request has a single response and their lengths are symmetric (that's actually a requirement for accurate synchronization). The problem with amplification is in the optional monitoring/control modes of the protocol (modes 6 and 7 as used by the ntpq and ntpdc utilities respectively), which should be disabled on public servers. Unfortunately, there are still some old misconfigured servers causing problems for a lot of people.

In PTP the problem is in the synchronization protocol itself. A master in the unicast mode is basically a programmable packet generator. It sends sync/announce messages at a rate and duration specified by its slaves, and the address can be spoofed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hmm, tried it out just now (Win10) and I´m getting a ... timeout! Go figure... (location is Brazil btw)

</comment><comment><USER19> Hello, I'm one of the engineers that worked on it. Feel free to ask me questions.

<comment><USER20> Can we telnet? Trying to telnet roughtime.cloudflare.com 2002 and getting nothing...

<comment><USER19> You have to use a roughtime client. It's a UDP protocol and we don't respond to malformed packets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I assume Cloudflare does not serve leap-smeared time? In regards to rough- time, does anyone know what the result would be when both Cloudflare and Google are used at the same time, and Google serves leap-smeared time?

<comment><USER22> Leap smear is how true time is defined in the roughtime spec.

<comment><USER21> Thanks! I guess that answers my question. So the timing of both sources should match each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "For many applications, accurate network time isn't essential: it suffices to be within 10 seconds of real time"

I can't imagine any application where the more accurate isn't preferred. And 10 secs seems like quite a bit imho

<comment><USER24> That's for their roughtime servers, which is a different service than the NTP servers they offer on the same page (though it could be clearer that they're distinct). The advantage of roughtime is that it's cryptographically signed and auditable, so you can be confident about using it to check things like TLS cert expirations (for which 10 seconds is plenty accurate).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This link on the site takes me to a 404 (not sure why, I'm presuming it's a static site?): [https://developers.cloudflare.com/time- services](https://developers.cloudflare.com/time-services)

I think it'd be nice to have some middleware hooking into the build process that curls every link at a depth of 1 to ensure that HTTP 400/500 error codes aren't returned.

</comment><comment><USER26> Cloudflare most problem with cname for RSS

</comment><comment><USER27> as usual where CF is involved, no one here gets it. this is TTL information for CF, at the expense of everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://www.cloudflare.com/resources/images/slt3lc6tev37/5SB...](https://www.cloudflare.com/resources/images/slt3lc6tev37/5SBj8VBjfRHi89ixodi5Fb/c0909c4f3f237dfac63303c402cec8d1/sad_clock_2x.png)

Has this designer never seen an actual clock?

<comment><USER29> What's your objection?

It has 12 evenly distributed lines, which are commonly used to represent the numbers on an analog clock.

It has an hour hand, a minute hand, and a second hand.

The only thing I can see that seems even a little off is that the hour hand seems slightly past the 1 mark, whereas the minute hand being on ~54 suggests it might want to be slightly before.

It seems very clock-like to me..

What gives you such a visceral reaction to it?

<comment><USER30> Only looking at this because I saw this reply. I don't have a visceral reaction to it, but I do believe that the design of the clock is rather ambiguous. From my perspective, the minute hand is actually at ~24 hence the hour hand being a little past 1.

Given that it's so easy to mix up (I had to stare at it to be sure), I'm guessing the parent commenter got frustrated with it.

<comment><USER29> Good point. I always learned to read it as the longest hand being the seconds, but your way works too. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Personally, I don't trust Cloudflare. There's just something a bit shady about a company that defends web sites which pretend to have Adobe Flash updaters or pretend to be bankofamerica.com as free speech.

That said, I don't imagine they could screw up NTP too badly, except, of course, logging and tracking users.

I hope they don't smear leap seconds like Google, or do any of a number of other dumb things simply because they're big enough to get away with it:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/02/google_public_ntp_s...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/02/google_public_ntp_servers/)

<comment><USER32> No idea why your comment got flagged. You made a legit point here. CloudFlare is a highly over rated service that shouldn't be trusted.

Not to mention their bait-and-switch billing practice should be the only thing anyone is talking about when it comes to CloudFlare.</comment></comment>


If Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google banned you, what recourse? - <AUTHOR> Should these things be regulated as utilities? <comment><USER2> Interesting! I would try to hoist a digital flag of some kind so that people can find me using the internet! (Like those used by people in disasters).</comment>


James Watson, "father of DNA" still believes in link between race, intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/14/father-dna-says-he-still-believes-link-between-race-intelligence-his-lab-just-stripped-him-his-titles/ <comment><USER2> His racist, sexist and homophobic statements are reflection of what UK and most of the west was back in the day. He is outlier now, but he was once mainstream.

Going after old bigots from bigoted era seems like counterproductive. Best strategy would be just ignore him.

<comment><USER3> The science is not uncertain. And these views are still mainstream, perhaps more so.</comment></comment>


Kagan and the triumph of WASP culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rodriguez-wasps-20100517,0,5584536.column

<comment><AUTHOR> A companion piece to the death of WASPs piece we had on here a few days ago</comment>


Chicago Sun Times Files For Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/31/chicago-sun-times-files-for-bankruptcy/

<comment><USER2> IMO News shouldn't be a for-profit industry. For-profit news encourages poor journalism as you can make more money selling lies than selling the truth.

<comment><USER3> so should the USA have something like the BBC?

<comment><USER4> Alternatively, the USA has PBS.

<comment><USER5> And NPR, which is going gangbusters with increases in listeners.

<comment><USER6> Sorry about this attempted topic hijacking.

I live in Mass but enjoy NHPR, does anyone know of good alarm clock radios that are powerful enough to get NHPR in Mass?

<comment><USER7> <http://nhpr.org/> , click "Listen Live" at the top of the page?

What you need is a clock radio that plays MP3 streams. Maybe the Chumby can help you?

<comment><USER8> Or a Squeezebox Boom.

<comment><USER6> That looks good, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yeah, and? Raise your hands if you didn't already know newspapers were in trouble. Flagged; this isn't Hacker News, it's just plain news.

<comment><USER10> The Chicago Sun-Times is a huge paper, though. I found it pretty damn interesting that it's not just medium-to-small papers. This is the paper that houses Roger Ebert.

<comment><USER9> The Chron is about to go under; Seattle is losing a daily; the NYT may run out of operating cash in May. Is there a trend story out there about the newspapers that would be Hacker News? Sure. But this kind of isn't it.

(I'm more worried about where Jim DeRogatis is going to land than about Ebert, who can obviously just retire now).

<comment><USER10> (But it's not about his well-being. It's that I don't want him to lose his blog or to stop reviewing. He's such a tremendous writer.)

<comment><USER11> Ebert has the kind of fame that can outlive his company's downfall. He'll just take over his domain name and keep reviewing, and his content will probably continue to be syndicated nationwide.

In fact, he might end up making more since he won't have to give the Sun-Times it's share.

Just because a company goes under doesn't mean it takes all it's assets with it. The good bits will be bought by someone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Japan's Cellphones Haven't Gone Global - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/technology/20cell.html

<comment><USER2> The article speaks of excess hardware making the phones "surprisingly clunky", but really the phones don't have any hardware that you wouldn't find in a top of the line Nokia, and the software is more or less equally shitty to use. What the Japanese phones do have is software features that rely on carrier support (like iphone's visual voice mail) and widely available cheap data transfer rates, but the actual phones really aren't all that special. Japan should export the infrastructure first, then worry about the phones.

-The internet browsing thing is basically because a lot of Japanese websites have a "mobile mode", ultra simplistic layout as an option. It's not really a phone feature.

-TV receivers in mobile phones require a special signal to be sent for them (the currently available models can't deal with normal dvb-t, for example [AFAIK]), and there are different standards in use for this in different parts of the world. And well, it just isn't a terribly useful feature in the first place.

-Push email is used to replace SMS, which is pretty cool but that'd require a data plan over here.

On the other hand, Japanese phones generally lack stuff we take for granted: t-9 text input, spelling dictionaries, they use a slightly different network standard (FOMA vs 'normal' 3G),... all of which are possible to fix, of course, but then, it wouldn't be that hard for the competitors to copy their good features either.

I'd say that if Japanese phones ever become a hit in the west, it's because of the cool and different designs rather than features.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the features in the Japanese market are mostly due to the ease of expanding infrastructure. I remember getting a plan with Au that only had the good features in the Tokyo metro area. That was fine, as I never left that area. Millions of other people were in the same boat. Maybe they left the Tokyo area once or twice a year, but other than that, never.

In the US, that would never fly. The people that are willing to pay for the features need them to work in all the "large metro areas", which doesn't mean "Manhattan" but rather "suburbs of Phoenix" and so on. This makes infrastructure roll-outs very expensive, and it's why they never happen.

(Incidentally, people in the US and Japan have similar commute times, but the population density in the US goes down a lot faster as you move away from the city center. In Tokyo, it's densely packed until you get to the mountains.)

Population density has its advantages; look at everything Japan has that the US doesn't (100Mbps internet for $20/month, interesting cell-phone features, amazing rail systems), and population density explains it all. But then, they don't have 5 bedroom houses for $150,000, either.

<comment><USER4> Popluation density doesn't completely explain it. For instance here in Sweden we also have 100Mbps Internet-connection for about $20-$30/month and flat-rate 3g data-plans and we aren't exactly densily populated (#192 in the world according to Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density)). Here I think it has a lot to do with the fact that government has been pushing a lot for better IT-infrastructure.

I'm personally I strong believer in the free market, however sometimes the market is too short-sighted to make investments that will benefit society in the long run. Infrastructure and education are good examples of that. It's hard for private investors to get good ROI on things like roads, IT-networks and schools because it takes many years to get any return and it's hard to charge people as much as it actually benefits the public.

I saw and interview with Bill Gates where he basically said that this was his rationale behind the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The market simply doesn't maximize the amount of lives saved per dollar and you need non-profit organizations to do that.

<comment><USER5> And here in Canada we pay 30$/MB for over-the-air data, and a 5Mb (that's mega-bit, not byte) internet connection is almost 50$ per month. That's also pretty much the fastest you can get even in the capital (Ottawa). God I feel like I'm living in a third-world country.

<comment><USER6> Don't feel too bad, Finland has been (and still is) held back too.

Although, now there's one cable ISP that offers 110/5Mbit/s for around 70 Canadian dollars per month.

That's basically the only operator interested in advancing things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They make the point that Japanese handsets all typically have very (expensively) custom interfaces. If only there was a free-to-build-upon mobile operating system with a decent developer toolkit available.

Oh.. wait..

</comment><comment><USER8> I lived in Japan from 2002 to 2005. I have to say, one of the first things that struck me was how crazily advanced their cellphones were. Not only that, but _ _everyone_ _ had one.

</comment><comment><USER9> Broadcast television is the only cool thing about Japanese phones, that I miss on my iPhone. I just wish my iPhone could get broadcast (HD?)TV. Is there a reason it couldn't?

<comment><USER2> What would you do with HD video on a 480x320 screen?

Anyway, it'd need an extra chip to work, which would make the phone bigger, and then it'd kill your battery when you used it (receiving signal, decoding video, playing sound and keeping the screen lit), so it would be useless in all but a few scenarios, like riding the bus to work (but is there anything worthwhile on at that time...).

I used to have a TV-tuner for my Game Gear. Used it maybe three times. It's a useless gimmick 95% of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article misses a very important point. Carriers have very thorough certification processes. Imagine each of these companies having to certify each device. They would go bankrupt! Well maybe not, but they would not make any money to make it worth while.

ATT has the toughest certification process - so much so that others won't even look at new phones unless ATT has agreed to certify them. ATT certification is like a green light to T-mobile and Voda.

They need to standardize on chipsets and software platforms. The other crap like funky keyboards and lcds are no biggie. Keyword here is scale. Jap phones don't scale for worldwide distribution right now.

<comment><USER3> There is no actual technical need for certification, though. Only the GSM modem needs to be certified for technical reasons, the rest is just so AT&T can get its advertising all over the phone.

But honestly, Japanese phones are not that amazing. They have pretty cases and nice incremental features, but they are not that different from US / European cell-phones. The "internet access" is not the real Internet in many cases. Japanese phones can also avoid ugly and big QWERTY keyboards because Japanese, in general, has shorter words than English (and therefore multi-press input works better).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's new new in Japanese cellphones? I've heard about TV, credit card payment and barcode (or is that just QR code?) scanners for a couple years.

Biometric unlocking is pretty cool, but a little gimmicky. What's killer in new Japanese phones?

</comment><comment><USER12> If the problem is software related, it could be a good opportunity for android.</comment>