Visual Studio Code 1.5 - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/updates? <comment><USER3> VSCode + TypeScript is an amazing experience for us poor JavaScript developers that never enjoyed proper autocomplete and refactoring in our editors. Writing JavaScript feels like writing random bash scripts with no help now. TypeScript is freaking awesome and you should start using it! :)

<comment><USER4> Try WebStorm. I'm surprised at how few people use it, given the quality of the autocomplete and code assistance (and the fact that it works just as well with ES6 as it does with TypeScript!)

<comment><USER5> On this day and age many don't want to pay for tools.

Sometimes I wonder if Emacs and Vi would be so appreciated if they were commercial as well, without any FOSS version available.

<comment><USER6> > On this day and age many don't want to pay for tools.

Strange logic: if everyone followed that train of thought, we'd all settle for whatever quality tools are available so long as the price is $0. I'd much rather pay for a valuable tool than use a subpar free tool.

<comment><USER7> It's a common fallacy to associate quality with price. Generally yes, but not always. Sublime Text certainly isn't 70 dollars better than Atom or VS Code.

<comment><USER8> I see you haven't abused multicursors.

<comment> ryanplant-au VSCode and Atom both have multicursors.

<comment><USER8> Much, much less powerful fotms of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really liked Visual Studio Code, but I couldn't really use it without a Vim plugin. So over the last few months I've been working on this one:

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevi...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim)

I think it's gotten a _lot_ better, and if lack of vim keybindings was something that was holding you back from trying VSC, I highly encourage you to try it again!

<comment><USER10> Thanks from a user ;) I cannot use any editor without vim keybindings, furthermore I love "relativenumber", however VSCode gives no API for relative numbers (there is some hacky gutter images extension, but it is really hacky, slow and bad looking). I've made a fork with relative numbers built-in [https://github.com/alfanick/vscode](https://github.com/alfanick/vscode). Not going to do pull request, at least not yet - unit testing and i18n required.

BTW I do not use TypeScript (or JS), but it was quite easy to write, still I was quite surprissed how messy VS Code codebase is.

<comment><USER11> I find relative number very useful to jump lines. Please consider showing current line number for current line. And go ahead with the pull request, many of us need this feature :)

<comment><USER10> that's exactly what I implemented, yup I will make a pull request soon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When VS Code was first released, I was ecstatic at the idea of a cross- platform lightweight code editor backed by the weight of the Visual Studio brand. I wanted to move into the vim/sublime style of coding, but just couldn't get used to them despite my efforts. I was also a bit anxious that VSCode might be a bit of a publicity stunt; a way to say "See, microsoft can do cross-platform" but poorly maintained and poorly funded.

I'm happy to see it is plowing ahead steadily to a best-in-class IDE! Every time I open it, there is a new point update[1]. The documentation and tutorials are thankfully kept up to date. Out of the box it is an amazing Node.js editor and debugger. It has greatly helped me develop my Javascript skills and eased a lot of the pain I had with the lack of intellisense in that language (.net dev here). If the vision for the app was "lets create Visual Studio: Millennial Edition" I'd say: target destroyed. Whoever is in charge certainly _has_ a vision, because this sort of app could easily get wrecked by going in too many directions at once. Keep up the great work and keep on that strategy of not listening to every single person's input ;)

[1] By that I mean I have it installed on mac/linux/win so when I open it on various computers, it usually has an update waiting. Not that I've ran it six times.

</comment><comment><USER13> I switched from Atom recently and have very few complaints. One of them was the (lack of) icons in the sidebar.. the new Seti icon theme is a great addition.

Ooh and they supposedly made Cmd-P searching ('Quick Open') faster. My other main complaint!

Edit: Yep it's faster. I used to wait a second or two for the desired results to pop up, now they're close to instant.

<comment><USER14> I don't hold allegiances to a text editor (c'mon, it just edits text!) so I switched from Atom for a while too: I was very impressed with it (it feels so snappy, and looks so cool!). It fell over on linting some of the ES7/8 things that we use in our code base - but as soon as they fix that I will give it another serious go.

<comment><USER15> I had the same complaints and just went with the excellent ESLint plugin with a ES2016/17 friendly config instead of the default vscode linting.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, it would be nice if the eslint module swallowed javascript linting errors for you... Also, would be cool if it defaulted to using an in-module copy of eslint with the airbnb preset as it's default if no eslint config file is found in the project/workbench.

<comment><USER13> IMO the Airbnb preset is too extreme / opinionated to use as a default ESLint config. Maybe something a bit more trimmed down would be reasonable.

<comment><USER17> The beauty of ESLint is that you can override it with your own settings. So you can use the AirBnB setting as the base and override the things that you want.

<comment><USER13> I know that, but I still think it's way too opinionated to be a base. My linter shouldn't annoy me by forcing me to do things that make my code less legible (like enforcing arrow-body-style) out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just beating a dead horse here, but I really wish Microsoft would add "hot exit" for unsaved files. It's been in Sublime Text since 2011. Nearly all my Mac apps support this feature natively. Why, in 2016, if VS Code crashes, do I lose all my unsaved files. Especially when I want to treat an instance as merely a scratch pad for ideas.

Supposedly it's Under Review _. Hopefully, the next release has it.

_[https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/293070-visual- stud...](https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/293070-visual-studio- code/suggestions/7756146-auto-save-temporary-files)

<comment><USER19> Several people on the vscode team (including myself) miss this feature so I'm sure it will come eventually. Also we deprecated user voice recently, the issue is now tracked in [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/101](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/101)

<comment><USER18> Oh man, reading your comment made me super excited. Hopefully "eventually" will be of the sooner variety ;) Joking aside, thank you for this comment, and also your contributions to a great piece of software!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's unfortunate to see that the group who named their extension "Vim" is being recognized as more or less the official recommendation for Vim emulation, despite being not so good. The last time that I did a survey of feature completeness, performance, and code quality, the author of the amVim extension had a much better showing across the board--and more active involvement in VSCode extension APIs themselves. Perception and naming do matter.

<comment><USER21> Why would you use VS Code (even with vim keybindings) over vim? Is there something you can't do in vim but can in VS Code?

<comment><USER22> I have as yet been unable to get the code completion working. Were you able to?

<comment><USER12> If you mean IntelliSense in VS Code, I just got this figured out today! The official docs will walk you through it[1]. Be careful about reading blogs about how to do it, the process has changed from when you used to use "tsd". You need to click the little green light bulb at the bottom right of the editor to create a jsconfig.json file. Then install the typings module with: npm install -g typings

then install the language files you want. This will install node completion: typings install dt~node --global

Much easier than before!

[1] [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/runtimes/nodejs#_great- co...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/runtimes/nodejs#_great-code-editing- experiences)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am worried about a lot of common functionality in VSCode/Atom, from keyboard bindings to support for more languages, being implemented by 3rd party plugins. They are updated independently, without verification, and have full code execution and network access (and things like independent telemetry).

Am I alone in this? Are there security features that I'm missing to guarantee that my code editor isn't leaking information in 20 different directions?

<comment><USER24> I noticed in the privacy instructions that MS gives a setting to disable telemetry, but only on per project. So every time you open up a new project, it will be reporting on you until you (remember to) disable it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love VS Code, but I'm getting a little disheartened after bringing this up almost every release. Is there a plan to improve the syntax highlighting? I know there are custom themes, etc, but they all seem to have the same elements available to them.

The JS syntax highlighting can't distinguish between properties and variables, or properties that are functions, or object literal keys. It's almost there, but it's lacking enough to actually be quite bothersome, with no progress so far that I can tell.

<comment><USER19> We packaged up Atom's JavaScript grammar into an extension which is probably just what you're looking for [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms- vscod...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.js- atom-grammar)

<comment><USER26> That's exactly the problem. Atom, sublime, and vs code use TextMate's syntax parsing engine [https://manual.macromates.com/en/language_grammars](https://manual.macromates.com/en/language_grammars)

But the implementation is different. You could just copy the .plist or the .tmLanguage file, but it's useless if it's not implemented or different on vs code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Do they color changed files in the sidebar now or do I still have to switch to the version control view?

edit: serious question, I like the coloring of changed/new files in Atom.

<comment><AUTHOR> No love so far

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This package suffers from what I like to call the paper.pdf problem - <USER2> different files, rather uselessly (although not entirely illogically) given identical file names:

        ~/Downloads % md5 VSCode*
        MD5 (VSCode-darwin-stable(1).zip) = b33b479ffa87052d05ed0141e64ad8a8
        MD5 (VSCode-darwin-stable.zip) = 86f129fe0d75c195370da4b46814389c
        ~/Downloads % ls -l VSCode*.zip
        -rw-r--r--@ 1 tom  staff  49908098  8 Sep 23:04 VSCode-darwin-stable(1).zip
        -rwxrwxrwx  1 tom  staff  43345974  1 Apr 01:56 VSCode-darwin-stable.zip*

<comment><USER29> what do you mean, can you explain? isn't that correct behavior if you rename the file?

<comment><USER28> In April I downloaded VSCode version 1.something, or whatever, and got VSCode- darwin-stable.zip. And now, today, I download VSCode version 1.5, and get... VSCode-darwin-stable.zip. Two files with the same name. Of course, Firefox renames them, so it's not like the older one got overwritten, but that extra little "(1)" isn't actually telling me much.

This made me think of all the times I've downloaded this or that paper from somebody's website, and I've ended up downloading a(nother) file called "paper.pdf"... though, just to annoy me, now that I actually try to make the point, at the moment my downloads folder has exactly 0 files called paper.pdf...

<comment><USER19> We recently improved this for Linux, the latest .rpm package for example is now named code-1.5.1-1473370243.el7.x86_64.rpm. This is a good suggestion, I created an issue :) [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/11722](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/11722)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Worth mentioning that in this release TextMate Python bundle was replaced with MagicPython [1] for much improved Python code tokenization. [2]

[1] [https://github.com/MagicStack/MagicPython](https://github.com/MagicStack/MagicPython) [2] [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/commit/f4967722fa02471da...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/commit/f4967722fa02471da771f8f5386daf4b2662fe27)

<comment><USER31> Do I need to do anything to be upgraded to magic python? Thanks!

<comment><USER30> No, it's on by default in v1.5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Superbly fast. And the extensions make it even more lovable. Very happy to have moved to VSCode from Sublime.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Update All Extensions" Nice! It was a huge PITA before to close and reopen the editor once for every extension that had to be updated. One of my last big gripes about VSC, gone.

<comment><USER34> There's also an `extensions.autoUpdate` which lets you not worry about it again.

<comment><USER35> awesome, thanks for the tip

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I love how VS Code has no problem working with large and even minified files (unlike some other "modern" editors). Every update is just icing on the cake.

Keep up the good work!

<comment><USER37> > minified files

Did not know this. Are you telling me it un-minifies it to make it a bit more readable?

<comment><USER38> No, but it doesn't choke like other editors do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I too switched to VSC from Atom recently, mostly due to the TypeScript-support being vastly superior in terms of both stability and speed.

Really, really wish they would focus on providing a proper crashlog. Right now I'm getting intermittent crashes with no way of reproducing it, nor a good way of providing feedback to the team.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've been using VS Code for a couple months now to do django development. This is a welcome update as the file explorer being hard to read was my only real complaint.

</comment><comment><USER41> Opening a newly cloned Chromium repository in ~3s is very impressive to be honest.

<comment><USER42> I was about to try one of these fancy new browser based editors again, but now I'm confused. Shouldn't opening a directory be O(1)? I just opened the chromium trunk in sublime and it took 0.2 seconds, regardless of whether it was currently running or not.

Why would one ever use a text editor that has perceptible latency when doing everyday tasks?

3 seconds isn't even latency, it's a freeze tbh.

<comment><USER43> I feel we are comparing apple to oranges here: sublime (a text editor) will simply list files & directories in the top level folder when you add a folder to the projects while an IDE (thinking mostly of Eclipse here, but I assume other IDEs aren't that different) will parse every single file to build ASTs, symbol lookup tables and all these things that you either love or cannot stand.

<comment><USER44> With ST3 we scan and index symbols in each file contained in folders that have been opened. This powers our project-wide Goto Symbol functionality and the Symbol Definition popup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Anybody know how well VS Code works for C++?

I really don't like how limited Sublime's linting/static analysis options are.

<comment><USER12> I tried to get C++ working in vscode but ran into trouble getting it to debug with gdb. I was looking for a smooth "hit f5 to compile and run (with breakpoints)" experience like I am used to with VS, but unfortunately there are no tutorials I could find on making that happen. The C++ extension is available, but I can't figure out what exactly it does or how to use it. It suffers from that common problem where they give you a config file, but don't tell you the possible options. There is an opportunity for a good blog post here if someone out there knows how to do this!

<comment><USER46> This may be due to a bug I've filed a few days ago: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode- cpptools/issues/191#issu...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode- cpptools/issues/191#issuecomment-245375323) Unfortunately, it seems that the fix hasn't been landed on this release yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Anyone use VS Code for Ruby/Rails? Equal or better than Atom/Sublime? I switched from sublime to atom recently but atom is slow (I know I know) and VS Code seems well regarded so willing to give it a try.

<comment><USER48> no autocomplete. c#, javascript, even python autocomplete is really amazing

<comment><USER47> Do you know if there are extensions that could bring autocomplete for ruby?

<comment><USER49> [https://github.com/rubyide/vscode-ruby](https://github.com/rubyide/vscode- ruby)

[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rebornix...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rebornix.Ruby)

<comment><USER47> For some reason I can't reply to the child comment...

I tried using rubymine for a bit as well, but I could never get it to not be slow as hell (I'm on a 2015 mbp with 16gb of ram). Tried tuning the settings a bit, turned on the fast typing config thing, still really laggy.

The one thing I was thinking was that I was also developing in a docker setup, so maybe file access was interfering or something? I haven't run a test outside of docker, so can't really verify and have moved past rubymine for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Love vs code for Go. I dropped sublime immediately.

<comment><USER51> For some reason, for me, I have to save to get syntax highlighting and errors. Then, I have to save again to clear them. Is this just me?

<comment><USER50> I have to save to get go fmt to run, but I get colors and many most errors as I type. How odd. You could reach out to the extension's team, I hear they are responsive.

<comment><USER51> That didn't come out quite right; I meant syntax errors. I will check with the extension team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I love the updates the VSC team has been putting out, and I know this is related to Electron issues, but I _really_ wish they would add High DPI support.

Without it, this weird situation exists where Microsoft's Visual Studio Code looks really blurry on Microsoft's Surface Pro, because Microsoft Software isn't using Microsoft's API.

<comment><USER53> Ive always wondered why they don't break the text editor from Visual Studio out into a native lightweight editor. If they did that I would switch from Notepad++ for my text file editing on Windows.

However, even if there was a native VSCode for Linux it wouldn't tear me away from Emacs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I just want to say big thank you to the authors! This editor is my favorite.

</comment><comment><USER16> Grrr... seeing some issues since 1.5 wrt corporate proxy and ssl signing.

<comment><USER55> Same; can't load any extensions. Issue has been posted: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/11702](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/11702)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Interesting, just received a 1.5.1 update. I wonder what happened to result in such a quick release. (Nothing in the release notes.)

<comment><USER57> Looks like it's mentioned in the article now:

"To fix an issue when the editor.fontSize is set to 0, we're releasing a 1.5.1 recovery build."

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anti-dupe rules are too tight - redirected me to 1.4 discussion (opened a while ago) due to non-unique url

<comment><USER58> This looks like a reasonable and unique URL for this story - [https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_5](https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_5)

<comment><USER59> @dang (or mods) - Could the URL for the story be updated to this one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Can we get out of the box spell checking? The spell check plugins I've tried are all hella buggy...

</comment><comment><USER61> I still confused in how bad is the F# support. I try several times [http://ionide.io/](http://ionide.io/) but all deman a NON-EXPLAINED setup that also is complicated. I wish it work asap just installing the extension.

</comment><comment><USER62> Oh, I really like the Seti File icon themes. Sure, it's a small thing but I think it will really help with quickly recognizing file types, which can help indicate things like which folder you are in (is it full of C# files?).

</comment><comment><USER63> I find it interesting that this software isn't designed with Xamarin for all platforms, but instead uses Electron. I mean I get it, the cross platform libraries are better in Electron, but it side steps their current cross platform initiative.

<comment><USER64> Xamarin doesn't support the platform the editor was originally written for: the web.

<comment><USER65> Not super relevant to the topic, but what's with Xamarin not supporting what is arguably the most important platform? This seems like a huge weakness, especially when you can now build a React app that renders natively on web and mobile thanks to React Native.

<comment><USER7> My impression is that Xamarin is designed to suck dollars out of corporate enterprise users who need to do something with mobile devices and can pay big bucks for Xamarin because it allows their C# devs to make a mobile app in short order. It saves them in the long run.

<comment><USER66> Isn't Xamarin free now?

<comment><USER7> They have a community edition but sell a corporate version with Xamarin Studio & SDK (not in community edition) for an unspecified price. It used to be $1,000 per developer.

<comment><USER66> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Congratulations on the release. I used VSC for a Typescript class.

While VSC, JetBrains IDEs, etc. are very nice, I have been going back to my late 1970s roots and been enjoying Emacs. Great language support for Haskell, lisps, etc. And very responsive.

</comment><comment><USER68> Coming from Atom, and its indentation problems, it is pure pleasure to use VSC.

</comment><comment><USER69> Have they added the ability for projects to have more than one root folder yet?

<comment><USER70> Nope :(

[https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/396](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/396)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> In fact Netbeans is very good at JavaScript and web page edit, it has the most intelligent autocomplete and refactoring I ever seen, it is also free and open source.

</comment><comment><USER72> This is great. And crazy fast. Great work VS Code team!

</comment><comment><USER73> I wish visual studio code can bring in typings automatically based on different filetypes, or at least get those popular ones ready-to-go.

<comment><USER35> ? You mean like detect .py files as Python? It does that already.

<comment><USER73> yes for syntax highlight it detects correctly, but for intellisense you have to install those dt~ files manually which is what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Anyone use VS code for Unreal Engine 4 development? Long shot but figured I'd ask.

<comment><USER75> It's great for Unity. Not sure about Unreal 4

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I'm still holding out for Visual Studio for Mac.APP, not crummy Xamarin or a glorified text editor.

<comment><USER33> What would full Visual Studio get you that VSC does not? IMO, the main awesomesauce of VS, and its advantages over other IDEs and editors, are

1\. The first-in-class debugger

2\. Intellisense

3\. Really good support for Windows-specific technologies like Win32 and COM

VSC has 1 and 2 either now, or on its roadmap. As for 3, why do you want to develop for Windows on a Mac? I guess I don't understand what you need that VSC isn't already giving you, or planning to.

<comment><USER77> Refactoring. Does that come with Intellisense? I've found that even 'rename this symbol' is extremely hard to find support for even in static languages.

<comment><USER33> It does, but it requires support from language services so it's language dependent (just because a language has syntax highlighting, it may not necessarily have 'rename symbol' support)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone else losing friends in droves? - <AUTHOR> Hopefully not directly from the pandemic.
During the Facebook debacle last week, a fair number of my friends have publicly supported interests that seem directly opposed to my safety.
Is anyone else experiencing pressure to defend their values harder than ever, to the point of conversation deadlock?
It used to be a lot easier to maintain a diverse group of friends, so I'm curious about any of your experiences through times like these.
How do you stay creative, balanced, cope with lots of change, ...
thank you. <comment><USER3> Don't buy into the notion that speech and beliefs are an attack on your "safety." That's just a tactic to elevate a certain class of political beliefs above the usual debate. It's a poisonous notion.

Of course, ideas that lead to policy matter in the aggregate. But I don't think it's productive to "lose friends" because their policy preferences, if adopted, through some long and attenuated causal chain might be contrary to your personal interests. Over the last year, I've become deeply concerned about the ideas espoused by many of my friends. I'm an immigrant to this country and for the most part love it for what it is. I think many of the notions my Facebook friends subscribe to will in the long term change the country for the worse, and lead to a worse future for my children. Indeed, it wouldn't be historically unprecedented for these ideas, if taken too far, to lead to real suffering and physical harm to many people. But I know these people and I'm convinced they hold all of their beliefs in good faith. I'm not going to hold it against them that I think that the policies they support may be wrong or even harmful in the long run.

<comment><USER4> Your response was very healing, thank you. I do believe that every man is acting in their world's best interest, too.

The sun will rise again tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Things have definitely changed. Twenty years ago, I had friends with a _wide_ variety of opinions, and it generally seemed possible to disagree without it being a problem.

These days, generally only the people to my "right" seem like this. It's rare to be able to talk long with someone to my "left" without them becoming offended. That seems particularly unusual, as I've been pretty far to the left my entire life.

It's tempting to look at the 2016 election as the cause, but I started really noticing this about a year before that.

<comment><USER6> I honestly think part of it is foreign state influence on social media, through literal fake news (not "they're biased," but "we faked a publication with fake events that never happened"), memes, and targeted manipulation designed to inflame divisions.

We're literally under attack, and these divisions are the result. For example, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- while controlled by Republicans -- concluded that driving factions of the U.S. ideologically apart is a chief aim of Russia's social media efforts. See pages 20-22 of Volume 2 of the 2019 Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns:

[https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...](https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf)

Specifically, the Republican Senate concluded that Russia's aim is to erode trust in the media, drive polarization, feed information that drives support for all political extremes (far-left, far-right, and other), and "exploit societal divisions that already exist, rather than attempt to create new ruptures." They also want to "bait[] governments to respond in a heavy-handed or improper fashion that is irreconcilable with the nation's principles and civil liberties."

It's working.

<comment><USER5> I think there's something to this, but perhaps a bit more complex. A lot of the "fake news" I see is coming straight from NYT and WaPo, so not directly due to "bots" or whatever. But certainly it's plausible that a foreign entity could be indirectly plotting to destroy the credibility of those papers, as a general morale destroyer. Watching our papers of record debase themselves is an awful sight.

The broad "bot" concept could be in play, but people are so cheap that I suspect it's funded humans instead. There does seem to be something amplifying our tendencies towards polarization.

Thirty years ago, if someone had a wacky set of ideas, people would point and laugh. These days, they're relatively more likely to clubbed into submission, forced into a struggle session, or just cancelled completely.

<comment><USER6> I actually didn't even mention bots, although social media bots are part of it (in terms of posting things). I think it's mostly real people working for Russia and China, stirring up other people who are not. Social media is a huge echo chamber.

As far as NYT and WaPo, they are not "fake news" in the sense I was talking about. Nor is Fox, Breitbart, OANN etc. I'm talking about sites that are set up for people to imitate news organizations and spread made up but super polarizing content, often about race, religion, abortion, guns, immigration -- anything that divides people. That content then pings around on social media and helps amps up the polarization to incredible levels.

<comment><USER5> > I'm talking about sites that are set up for people to imitate news > organizations and spread made up but super polarizing content, often about > race, religion, abortion, guns, immigration -- anything that divides people.

That pretty much describes journalism these days.

<comment><USER4> divide and conquer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like you are caught up in some horrific FB dopamine loop[1]. You really don't need to engage with people on the internet; it's totally optional, and not particularly "social." You especially don't need to engage with people on that toxic shit-hole which is designed to make you unhappy. You can either remove the app from your ipotato, or quit. I occasionally hear about shenanigans on FB from my actual friends. None of it makes any sense.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/phone-addiction- formula/](https://www.wired.com/story/phone-addiction-formula/)

<comment><USER8> This is a great answer that's totally orthogonal to the issue at hand, so I love it. No matter how you read OP, staying out of internet arguments is a good way to preserve friendships, if that's your goal. I'm going to hit "reply" now....

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Keep mouth closed, ears open. Repeat serenity prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.

Regarding the wisdom, I generally start with a null hypothesis that anything I can physically do with my body (which includes words produced by my mouth or my fingertips) is in the latter category, and everything else is in the former until I have overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

But anyways, I can relate a little. My sister has never been an activist type, never said anything about racial justice, until a week ago when she started posting BLM content on Facebook with a demand that anyone who disagrees should go ahead and unfriend her now. It was a shockingly abrupt change.

<comment><USER10> > But anyways, I can relate a little. My sister has never been an activist > type, never said anything about racial justice, until a week ago when she > started posting BLM content on Facebook with a demand that anyone who > disagrees should go ahead and unfriend her now. It was a shockingly abrupt > change.

Count me in. And I'm not even in the US.

The thing is, the currently unfolding events are about Black Lives and the systemic discrimination and criminalization of black people in the US. But are about democracy too, and by a lot. And this is important considering how much influent the USA are on other nations.

Over the last two weeks we started seeing the US military (police corps and national guards) open fire agains its own military, repressing dissent and targeting journalists specifically. We have seen racial discrimination in clear sight, police brutality and police representatives unable to admit fault even with footage. We've seen cops planting bricks to charge protestors. We've seen police telling white dudes armed but not protesting to stay inside so that it doesn't look like they're playing favourites.

We've seen the police shoot the medics: that's war crime, for christ's sake.

As an italian, this reminds me A FUCKING LOT of the history pages about the rising of fascism in Italy.

I genuinely believe that the USA are becoming a fascist country, and that the outcome of these protests and the election in november will definitively declare what kind of nation the USA are.

I'm not asking people to unfriend me because I'm not on facebook. But I feel a lot more the need to do something instead of the usual nothing about world politics.

TL;DR: the current events are crazier than have ever been, and immensely scary.

<comment><USER11> The rise of the far right, and the ambivalence of so many people in my community towards this rise, leaves me in a permanent state of anger/despair. There's many more lines in the sand for me now, and much less charity towards my fellow man. I'm glad that I have close friends and family with whom I can have more nuanced discussions, since there's a baseline of trust and empathy in those relationships — but I'm not sure what I would do if they suddenly started spouting Fox News bulletpoints. It all sucks.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's the copycat behavior that unnerves me.

I'm constantly censuring myself already, and only speak when I know what I'm talking about. Someone said talk is cheap but that's not true for everybody.

Words might be cheap, but getting them out...that's expensive if you happen to be an introvert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My interpretation of the above is that you have friends who support dismantling or at least re-building the police as an institution, and that you see this as a threat to your safety and you're getting into conflict over the matter. With that assumption, I would say:

a) Take a step back and ask yourself how much your safety is really being threatened by others' opinions on these matters. Also, as an exercise, consider the degree of un-safety that millions have been experiencing for many years which resulted in the current conflict. Even if you don't agree with your friends' conclusions, I'd bet you can at least sympathize with the root of the issue.

b) Relationships are maintained through tolerance. I maintain a good relationship with my parents despite having a polar-opposite political viewpoint, by putting what I know of them as people ahead of the words of their professed, abstract ideology. The two are not the same thing. Leaving some wiggle-room there is key to reducing conflict, which is key to maintaining lasting relationships. You have to be able to agree to disagree sometimes.

<comment><USER13> My interpretation was that the OP has friends who oppose increased accountability or demilitarizion of the police, and that they saw this as a threat to safety. How would that interpretation modify your answers?

<comment><USER12> It would depend on where the friends' views are rooted.

If the friend is saying "My uncle is a cop who's never done anything wrong and he doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the ones causing trouble", I could actively sympathize with that.

If the friend is saying "I still think it's only a few bad cops and that the protesters are causing more trouble overall than the cops", I would tend to think that person was misinformed and maybe try to share new information with them if I thought it would make a difference, but I would also leave it be if I had to for the sake of the friendship (this is my situation with my parents).

If the friend is saying "Strong-man governments are great, people should bow down and stop trying to hold the police accountable, they shouldn't have to be accountable to anybody", then that would tell me something about the person's moral center and I don't see myself wanting to remain friends with that kind of person at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Treat online discussions as online, even among friends. You're never going to win anybody over, get over yourself. In real-life, you might be able to at least make a persuasive argument based on facts and supporting evidence, or even just charm. Online dialogue is just not suited to true understanding and hearing eachother out, but rather the opposite. Just observe the wild conspiracy theories that in normal discourse would never otherwise be allowed such prominence, if not for social media platforms and covert ad campaigns.

</comment><comment><USER15> In the UK we often use the derrogative term "snowflake" to describe people who are usually left leaning & perpetually offended. Judging by Twitter, there are a new generation of snowflakes who are even more offended and angry, they melt away at the first sniff of conflicting opinion.

Whilst I dislike the term, I think life is too short to spend time with people who take themselves and their opinions too seriously. I want spend more time laughing and less time debating.

</comment><comment><USER16> 1\. If a BLM post is all it took to "lose a friend," I'd reconsider your definition.

2\. Not everything is about you. Your friends explicitly were not thinking about you when they picked a side.

3\. You won't be convinced, but someone else may benefit from a tool I've used to get past this. Would you hold the same beliefs if you were born black in an inner city? Would you want the status quo in terms of police strategies? To be scared for your life at every traffic stop? It's easy to defend a stance from a position of privilege (directly opposed to "my safety".)

You can do the same for your friends with different political beliefs - <USER2> stances are based on someone's life experiences or environment. There's likely a reason they believe something, and it has nothing to do with you. If you grew up in their situation, or friends, or life experiences, do you think you'd still hold your same beliefs? Most of the time the answer for me is no, and therefore the beliefs have nothing to do with the person's character.

<comment><USER4> Of course would a facebook post not change OP's mind. Other cultures can also have different definitions of friendship. They might even call American friends, flakes.

What is the definition of friend, if yours don't think of you when deciding to reallocate a quarter billion dollars?

I think there are no sides to this conflict. The system is in conflict with itself, and we're barely able to control it at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've got some friends with whom I disagree politically and we even regularly debate. In fact for one friend, our friendship has been maintained over the long term by regularly meeting for dinner and drinks, and often we end up having massive arguments about all kinds of topics.

Our secret is that we don't let it reduce our respect for one another, at the end of the evening we're always shaking hands and agreeing to meet again next week. It may also help that when we became friends we worked together, so we forged a bond of mutual respect through our work.

I have another friend who is a real SJW snowflake type (he got hired by Google, perhaps that explains it, he wasn't like that before). With him I don't tend to debate politics much because he gets genuinely upset. But we've also always come back and been friends again afterwards, and I've noticed he's sometimes gone off and researched whatever I was saying for himself and has questions. So obviously parts of it sunk in.

I think Facebook can be difficult because your default mental state is that all those people are "friends" even if maybe you haven't seen them for a while, or if your friendships have very different depths. The term friend is very black and white. Most people only have a tiny number of really deep friendships, often only one or two at most, I mean of the sort built on real long term knowledge of each other and which can survive genuine disagreement over divisive issues. You say "a fair number of my friends" which sounds like many of them probably aren't deep friends. They're probably more like friendships that were once deep, or who were party buddies, or who were former colleagues that you got along with etc. For them you'd probably be surprised to discover that if you started hanging out with them regularly for some reason, they'd get over it and you'd be OK.

</comment><comment><USER18> > "defend their values"

I've been trying to listen to others more in tough times like these.

I'm struggling to articulate my _perceptions_ of events from my neighbors and friends of color in NYC. I'm struggling to understand my opinion as just _one perspective_ my family member in CA, who is in law enforcement, has put on me.

I'm not worried about losing friends, nor family member's love, because I've been struggling to hear what they're saying and pushing them past what is generally comfortable conversation, but not to the point of flipping their lid (Oh, that doesn't move you? How about this! kinda stuff), or repeating my stand on hypocrisies (once is enough).

Let me put it this way. Can you maintain 5k friends with one-on-one personal interactions? No. Impossible. By the time you get to the end of that list, someone will have been married and had two kids. How about 1k friends? 500? 50? Are we talking about fluffy posts about kittens on Twitter? or highly divisive topics? Can you have meaningful and thoughtful interactions with 5 people which leave you both aggravated, exhausted, and heart broken? I can say at this point you won't be worrying about the party you're missing with 50 friends, but thankful for the friends you do have.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not an FB user but yes, in the last couple of months. Or was it more discovering what "friend" really means. Either way, I'm actually happier now.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think this is a cultural thing. I have different view with my brother on pretty much everything but we still manage to find time to take vacation together. It makes pretty interesting evening after a slow, windless day. If people are interested he is really far left, i'm not (or i'm much, much further depending of your point of view).

I mostly don't care about my friends points of view. The only question you should ask them is : why do you think that, and the only question you should ask yourself is the same one. Unless you're really, really well informed, your point of won't be that interesting anyway. Interesting enough to post it on reddit or HN at most :)

If the conversation becomes to much for people feelings, take a tangent, talk about interesting philosophical point. Bias analysis is great too (check your own bias loudly to encourage people to do the same, it works). Do not hesitate to point that an argument is poor, especially if it comfort your views.

</comment><comment><USER21> FWIW - I periodically remind myself that everyone I know is deeply flawed and is wrong to various extents on most topics. That includes myself.

Talk is cheap, so people say (passionately) things with virtually no thought. Wait to see what people do and decide whether it's a _direct_ threat. If there's a 7 step chain of causation that's threatening, then you should relax and acknowledge you're probably wrong. The other part is you should make sure your actions directly align with your values.

Don't be this guy: [https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

<comment><USER8> Imagine technical debt, but on a societal scale. Haven't you had to fix some code; or organizational process/workflow if you're not an engineer; where the root cause was layers below the symptom?

<comment><USER9> Except society isn't even remotely comparable to a business process or software module, and the notion of "root cause" is questionable at best when you have a chaotic system with layer upon layer of feedback loops.

<comment><USER22> Society is comparable to a software module producing business process in that it's humans working together. Agreed that in both contexts there is no such thing as "root cause" at the American society level.

Regardless, my personal choice for one would be technology.

<comment><USER4> Please, let's switch from facebook to in person interaction, without technology. Does anyone really remember how facial expressions work anymore?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So your friends fractured into anti maskers and pro maskers?

Or anti protesters / protesters?

I'm Confused so many decisive issues to deal with

</comment><comment><USER24> > "my friends have publicly supported interests that seem directly opposed to > my safety"

someone who is comfortable harming a friend is not being a friend. if you've told someone that they're harming you, and they won't change at the very least for the simple reason that _you're friends_...

maybe they used to be good friends and things changed, or maybe these weren't good friends to begin with. either way, now is a good time to make new friends.

best of luck. it's tough, especially during lockdown when it's harder to connect over shared interests in the real world, but it's very worthwhile.

in conclusion: real friends can have productive conflict that doesn't ignore the core respect and concern each person has for the other's wellbeing. you deserve real friends.

</comment><comment><USER25> I preemptively removed the FB app for now. I don't know if this is a fruitful strategy in the long run but I sleep better right now.

</comment><comment><USER26> I tried to create a throwaway account using Tor to provide a sincere personal view of this topic, with valuable experience and which also needed strong anonymity as not to put specific people at risk, but the recatchpa rejects the Tor connection.

That this seemed necessary at all is itself sufficient to describe where we are.

<comment><USER27> > That this seemed necessary

It is not necessary. Please don't exaggerate.

<comment><USER28> I agree with the GP: it does not matter which side of a topic you are on, which ever side it is, it could come back an bite you professionally. It is wisest to either be anonymous or not engage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> non-entity Not really, I havent had any friends for years, but I've witnessed family go from relatively mild to full blown conspiracy-theorists within the past year, which is pretty alarming.

<comment><USER29> Conspiracy theories flourish when people are disillusioned with the leaders / govt. I know many others struggling with this, I know it must be difficult.

Go get researched up on the psychology behind it, there are some good posts here with links, and good stuff from couple years back. You won't be able to change their minds with logic or facts

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are you sure these are friends, or just aquaintances? If you do consider them friends, why do you feel you must lose them due to their personal beliefs?

<comment><USER4> Let's consider them to be friends for the argument in this discussion. And also, that I'm sensitive and unforgiving when it comes to trust.

If now someone coughs in my face, without a mask, which has happened. not sure if I should write them in my will. Because they may not have my security in their best interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > During the Facebook debacle last week, a fair number of my friends have > publicly supported interests that seem directly opposed to my safety.

Can you elaborate?

</comment><comment><USER32> Stand by your principles and beliefs. If they were really your friends they would respect you for it. Maybe it's time to find new friends.

</comment><comment><USER33> > _a fair number of my friends have publicly supported interests that seem > directly opposed to my safety_

I can't understand what you are hinting at here, or why it's related to FB. Maybe I'm out of the loop.

But in my experience, the majority of people don't religiously post on social media and have moderate views on most things. So extreme people on all sides are not representative of most people.

<comment><USER12> My interpretation of the above is that the OP has friends who support dismantling or at least re-building the police as an institution, and the OP sees this as a threat to his or her safety and is getting into conflict over the matter. FB recently received a lot of backlash from employees and others over deciding not to hide posts from the president suggesting imminent military violence against protesters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've lost two friends in the past month or so... one very leftist, one very right leaning. I tend to be more libertarian, but pragmatic.

People tend to be tribalist in nature, you tend to lean into a group and that/those groups become your identity instead of striving to take things as an individual and respecting people as individuals.

We are all allowed to have our own opinions and perspective, and even discuss and debate their value vigorously. Where we tend to falter is when we lose respect for the people who are expressing opinions that we disagree with.

It's generally a combination of pedantry, anger, ignorance and disrespect for ourselves and others that leads to action in those baser instincts and reject "the other." In the end, we are worse off for it. It often feels like general discourse has been set back over a century in the past decade alone.

I try to concentrate on admirable personality traits in terms of those I would deem to support vs not about on level with policy opinions. Arrogance, corruption and hypocrisy are the big ones for me, short of that I'm willing to put up with just about everyone.

<comment><USER35> It's tough being libertarian in that sense that there's very few people amenable to what you have to say cause it's (at least in my experience) always interpreted as something an enemy would say. As though since what you're saying doesn't obviously line up with the party dogma of whoever you're talking to, it just gets grouped into whatever's the polar opposite.

So I'd definitely agree that no matter who I'm talking to - liberal or conservative friends - they're assuming I'm left or right wing (the opposite of whatever they are).

<comment><USER34> It's definitely rough... I've literally argued against both sides depending on some nitpicky points. I generally get the sentiment either way, I just disagree on the approach mostly because they tend to encroach on individual rights.

People have every privilege to be an asshole so long as they aren't infringing on another's rights. But they all seem to want to infringe on other's rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think base assumptions and understandings are different for different people. However, we are now fully polarized on the topics.

Lockdowns: you fully support lockdowns or you want a hair cut or to murder my grandma. No room for any other interpretation or asking of questions.

Protests: you are literally a racist if you are not actively anti-racist. No room for other interpretations or asking of questions. Do not try to distract from the core message by talking about looting or rioting.

Politics: either you want to remove Trump from office or you are a racist or otherwise a terrible person. No room for other interpretation.

De-funding the police: you are a racist or a fascist and support police brutality or you want police removed from normal public interaction. Again, no room for a different interpretation or dialog.

I feel the problem is polarized politics and lack of room for dialog. Also, as a white male, my thoughts are not wanted nor valid. To the point that I feel I have to post with a throwaway since I've already have folks I thought were friends and have known me for years question if I am a racist because I don't support looting/rioting.

<comment><USER20> You see, this is argumentative red herring. I could do the same for the other side (maybe not the "politics" point, but honestly i don't think this is even a point...). You should do the same work against what you think, you will be less polarized.

BTW: `Do not try to distract from the core message by talking about looting or rioting.`

I'm pro-protest every time there is one, even dumb ones like Civitas or others. Riots and looting and what's destroyed are the most interesting thing to understand. Yellow vest in France destroyed expensive and electric cars, bus stops, Velib stations. Anti-capitalists Black blocs destroyed Mcdonald's and banks. BLM destroyed small stores, community infrastructure... This is saying a lot about how they see themselves and who they're against. Do you think the same?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What FB debacle? I don't use FB, so I'd not know.

</comment><comment><USER38> why is this thread flagged?</comment>


Writing an OS in Rust: Advanced Paging - <AUTHOR> https://os.phil-opp.com/advanced-paging/ <comment><USER2> I started to create the counterpart, a x86_64 bit emulator written in Rust: [https://github.com/fotcorn/x86emu](https://github.com/fotcorn/x86emu)

Disclaimer: Almost no comments, unidiomatic Rust, tons of hacks. Currently can run the uncompress code of Linux and some initial startup code. Not much more than instruction decoding & execution and basic page handling is implemented, the rest of the hardware is missing.

Sadly I do not really have time right now to work on it. I am still torn if Rust helps more than it makes everything more complicated, but recent Rust version should have made some things I wrangled with much easier.

<comment><USER3> > I am still torn if Rust helps more than it makes everything more complicated

Do you have an example in your code of what is complicated? I took a quick look, and didn't see anything crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For someone who is completley not into OS programming but has heard a lot about safety and rust etc. etc.

Assuming the rust safety lives up to the type.

Is this (or any other project) likely to ever become a "real" useful os. What about including rust modules in the linux kernel? What are the barriers?

<comment><USER5> Is someone likely to build a Rust OS that is real and useful? Yes. Projects are already in progress, and even if they all shut down, I'm sure more will exist in the future.

Is that Rust OS going to experience "success" by traditional metrics, such as taking a significant chunk of Linux's marketshare away, and becoming a viable thing you can run on some real piece of hardware for some real purpose? I won't say "no" but it will be at least a decade before that will happen. Not because Rust is bad, or the resulting OS will be bad, but all the entrenched advantages existing OSes have are just staggeringly huge. If a perfect OS jewel of perfection appeared today, but with no other support for it (no software, drivers, applications that can only run on it, etc.) it would be a long, long time for it to get any traction.

<comment><USER6> The key to getting there (aside from the driver issue), I think, would be creating an environment that is simple, easy to work with, and friendly to creating new tools. The faster you can spin up new tooling, and the more you want to, the more willing people will be to move to the new system. Then you provide VMs, emulators, and/or compatibility environments for running software from "legacy" systems.

Do not attempt to make a new posix system, because we already have giant, entrenched, mature posix OSs and you'll bring nothing new or interesting enough to the table to warrant switching while being held back by the creaking old standard.

I'd be willing to make a lot of sacrifices to move to an OS that met my personal list of wants.

<comment><USER7> Maybe, but if you dont't have a POSIX API you'll cut yourself off from a lot of applications. Even Windows is gradually admitting defeat with WSL.

You can only get adoption of a non-POSIX OS if it offers something really unique to the user, or is in a very different market space.

<comment><USER6> You can do it in a VM or compatibility layer. Your OS can support "personalities" like Windows uses to implement WSL, but with containers. So now you can have multiple POSIX containers on your non-POSIX system.

You should encourage people to make native software using the new paradigms and abstractions of the OS, built from the ground up with decades of hindsight, rather than encouraging crappy ports.

> You can only get adoption of a non-POSIX OS if it offers something really > unique to the user

At this point, just not being built on 50 year old crappy standards would be pretty unique. I have my own personal wish-list of features that would lure me in even if the only hardware supported was an RPi.

<comment><USER8> You still end up in the OS/2 situation - even if non-native apps didn't always run great, had much worse memory usage, didn't feel native, etc... they were still good enough that nearly nobody (comparatively) wrote native OS/2 apps. It's not impossible to imagine an alternate past where OS/2 had worse DOS/Windows compatibility and ended up more successful! (In actuality, I think it'd probably have done even worse — showing that the strategic options to replace the foundation of an entrenched ecosystem are "bad" vs. "worse".)

I'd like to see other paradigms explored, too, but it seems unfortunately hard to get there from here.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it is hard. So what? So is just about everything worth doing.

One thing is for certain: you will not replace the current players by cloning them.

<comment><USER9> Isn't that how Linux replaced most the UNIX players, by cloning them?

<comment><USER6> I think that had more to do with the important innovation of being free and open.

<comment><USER9> There were plenty of free and open operating systems. Linux and FreeBSD had the advantage of also being similar if not the same as what they were replacing, as well as allowing a lot of the software that was designed for UNIX's to also work with little or no change. In other words, they cloned the look, feel and compatibility (well , FreeBSd didn't really clone it, it IS it).

<comment><USER6> IIRC FreeBSD was legally nebulous at the time, and Minix couldn't be modified and redistributed. I don't recall any other significant players.

<comment><USER9> AFAIK, any possible nebulous legal situation with FreeBSD should have been resolved by late 1994[1], which is _extremely_ early in Linux's lifetime if we're talking about supplanting major operating systems. I think you're right that there weren't a lot though.

That said, I can't imagine Linux actually having gone very far if it wasn't a UNIX clone. I think it would have been a real long uphill battle and it would have gotten handily beat by whatever open source UNIX clone came along next, for the pure reason that it's much easier to deal with POSIX compliance (and all the software it brings that actually makes it worthwhile to run the OS) when trying to copy a system that already did it and worked out the kinks.

I mean, if someone came out with a free (maybe open source) version of Windows at that time which was legal, we could easily be living in a world where that's the dominant free OS.

I guess what I'm saying that that being vastly better on one metric (in this case, free) doesn't necessarily mean you'll take over a market (because a free operating system that can't run any software isn't very useful), and just being a clone won't either, but being a clone that's generally as good one most metrics and vastly better on a few others (e.g. a UNIX which is also free and open source, instead of just some other UNIX) _may_.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD#Lawsuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD#Lawsuit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> creating recursive page tables is bad idea.

<comment><USER11> Why?

<comment><USER12> It's not a general solution- you often need to access the page tables of other address spaces, and those aren't picked up by a recursive mapping.

And while a single recursive mapping is a relatively small fraction of the address space, you probably don't want to do it for all address spaces simultaneously.

So you need something more general anyway, and you may as well just use it all the time.

<comment> phil-opp It is possible to access other address spaces, it is just a bit more complicated:

\- Set the recursive entry of the active level 4 table to the (recursive) level 4 table of the other address space. \- Now the recursive addresses point to the other address space, so you can access its tables freely. \- The difficult part is to switch back to the active address space again because can no longer access the original level 4 entry. This can be solved with a temporary mapping to the active level 4 table or by using different level 4 entries for the recursive mapping of active and inactive address spaces.

However, I'm no longer sure whether recursive page tables are a good choice for the blog since they're complicated, difficult to learn and not portable. See my reply to DSMan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903235)

Edit: Discussion of previous post.

<comment><USER14> That's actually a different post.

<comment><USER15> As an exercise in optimistic parsing, the OP could've meant "Previous discussion of previous post". It's a handy link in either case, thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What happened to Greasemonkey? - <AUTHOR> Its seems an addon that was very much ubiquitous has completely lost its presence in the browser world. There are so many things where greasemonkey scripts can be a perfect solution, like filtering HN links with specific keywords, or redirecting quora urls to "?share=1", or any nit-pick change that doesn't necessitates a separate addon. Why aren't userscripts used anymore? <comment><USER2> Because UserScripts.org shutdown. See [http://www.ghacks.net/2014/03/29/greasy-fork-userscript- org-...](http://www.ghacks.net/2014/03/29/greasy-fork-userscript-org- alternative-creator-userstyles-org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I still use it all the time. But probably, people are more comfortable with browser plugins or something.</comment>


Bitcoin still fooling buyers into believing those 200%+ gains are coming back - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-still-fooling-buyers-into-believing-those-200-plus-gains-are-coming-back-2018-11-16 <comment><USER2> Mt.Gox manipulated the price upwards then insiders stole the coins in the last bubble. Now the fraud is more distributed, but it's pretty much the same story. There's a lot more scrutiny this time around. "Fool me twice" and all that. Let's watch it all unfold and not make too many predictions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, media is still fooling people about what is right or wrong.

</comment><comment><USER4> It kept fooling them in 2014 as well.</comment>


The Lyrids Meteor Shower Will Peak in Night Skies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/science/lyrids-meteor-shower.html <comment><USER2> Watch it next April.</comment>


Oxford Nanopore's Riposte to Illumina Trade Action - <AUTHOR> http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2016/03/oxfords-riposte-to-illumina-trade-action.html <comment><AUTHOR> BTW, Oxford Nanopore disclosed their new pore, which is derived from E. Coli:

[http://omicsomics.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/oxfords-no- thanks-i...](http://omicsomics.blogspot.co.nz/2016/03/oxfords-no-thanks-ive- already-got-one.html)

>R9 pore: it is E.coli CsgG, a component in the protein secretion system which generates curli. A nonameric protein with 36 beta sheets, it is quite different in architecture to the MspA pore over which Illumina claiming ownership.</comment>


Homeland Security List Of Monitored Words Includes Social Media, Hacker & Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.pressednews.com/2012/05/27/homeland-security-reveals-list-of-words-it-monitors-including-social-media-hacker-cloud/

<comment><USER2> Seems to have been originally reported from here: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150281/REVEALED- Hun...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150281/REVEALED-Hundreds- words-avoid-using-online-dont-want-government-spying-you.html#ixzz1vyz5yOp0)

</comment><comment><USER3> blogspam.

Here is the relevant source information [http://www.scribd.com/doc/82701103/Analyst-Desktop-Binder- RE...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/82701103/Analyst-Desktop-Binder-REDACTED)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry - didn't mean to imply the post was the list. Wrote it to illustrate how this list is both absurd and at the same time lacking. The link to the doc is first in the post (list of monitored words starts on page 21).</comment></comment>


Amazon News Network - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/KOCOZach/status/1264589763689971716 <comment> tech-historian Looks like Amazon does this all the time:

[https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/05/26/11-local-tv- stations-...](https://couriernewsroom.com/2020/05/26/11-local-tv-stations- that-pushed-amazon-scripted-segment/)</comment>


Frontiers in Computing: Simulating the World to Predict the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-machine-that-would-predict

<comment><USER2> Another article, entitled "Europe's Plan to Simulate the Entire Planet", discusses this issue in slightly more detail, without requiring a subscription. It can be found here: "<http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25126/>. The actual paper itself can be found at "<http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.4969>.</comment>


For Linux, your core skill is navigating broken stuff, which is everything - <AUTHOR> http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com/2015/05/in-linux-world-your-core-skill-is.html

<comment><USER2> I was once paid six bucks an hour to do graveyard shift phone support for Microport SystemV/AT, a port of UNIX to the 286 and 386.

My crowning achievement was writing up the complete procedure for installing a printer. I had to concern myself with whether you needed a null modem or straight through cable, or perhaps a parallel cables, permissions on various files and so on.

Back then just making a hardcopy on UNIX was a collossal pain in the ass.

</comment><comment><USER3> On a bad day, Windows feels that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason the post is not titled "Everything is broken on Windows" is because I abandoned Windows as a server operating system a long time ago, after a working lifetime of being a one-eyed Microsoft-y, because on Windows, not only is everything broken, but in many cases there's nothing you can do to fix it.

<comment><USER4> The post should be titled "Everything is broken". There's very little (if any) software that isn't irreparably broken in some way or other.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone else already wrote and article called everything is broken in which he says exactly that. I can't remember who that was.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cloudflare Says Its New VPN Service Won't Slow You Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-says-new-vpn-service-wont-slow-you-down <comment><USER2> This post has more details: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/1111-warp-better- vpn/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/1111-warp-better-vpn/)

<comment><USER3> I just downloaded the 126.96.36.199 app on Android and don't see any options to pre- register for the VPN.

<comment><USER2> We've released but the Google Play Store and the Apple AppStore have some latency...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kind of interesting. While blocking some other traffic to mitigate DDoS, Cloudflare could let through traffic from their VPN as they know those customers quite well.

Or maybe they could work with sites to remove annoying captchas from these trusted users.

</comment><comment><USER5> Direct link to the site: [https://22.214.171.124/](https://18.104.22.168/)</comment>


The Most Linked-To Wikipedia Articles on Stack Overflow - <AUTHOR> http://dfkoz.tumblr.com/post/83927509717/the-most-linked-to-wikipedia-articles-on-stack-overflow

<comment><USER2> That makes for a pretty good list of "concepts you should probably know", even though (or especially because) it's not very overlapping with the list of top ten concepts I would choose.

It would be interesting to see trending wikipedia articles as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's disappointing that CORS is listed under JSONP.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ouch, those hover animations kill my browser.</comment>


Email like it's 1995 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thestateofme.com/2010/11/22/email-like-its-1995/

<comment><USER2> I thought the spam problem was pretty much solved a few years ago with the popularization of Bayesian filtering algorithms. I use email for the vast majority of my business communications and it works perfectly well.

<comment><AUTHOR> If only that were true. I think it was around about the same time (2004) that Bill Gates said "Two years from now, spam will be solved". Of course the spammers quickly adapted their techniques to defeat Bayesian filters, leading to the sender reputation based systems we have today (like Postini).

When Google/Postini can't deliver my mail to my users I have a problem. When they can't deliver their own mail to their own users we all have a problem. But it's worse than that - any given recipient will be running a system with an unknown false positive rate, so email degenerates into a game of chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have in fact sent both e-mail, fax and snail-mail (with delivery confirmation) to a number of customers.

Even though it's possible and legal to sign a contract by completely electronic means, snail-mailing a hardcopy is still the norm.</comment>


Redefining Android: a new UI for Sharp phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.frogdesign.com/work/sharp-aquos.html

<comment><USER2> Why do phone companies feel the urge to reskin default Android?

I never feel it's better than the stock android, and it's usually inconsistent with half of the applications.

<comment><USER3> "When you visit a store, it's very difficult to distinguish between the different Android models. We knew that a special lock screen experience would be crucial to making a great first impression." (from the article)</comment></comment>


Is Jony Ive killing the Mac? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/is-jony-ive-killing-the-mac-7000010489/ <comment><USER2> >OS X Finder — damages the system, can't copy files reliably, can't do useful things it ought to do at all, hides key files, rife with bugs.

>Disk Utility — under some conditions, destroys arbitrary numbers of volumes, no real upgrade for years, took two minor releases to fix RAID support.

>iCloud — a organization-destroying bug-ridden unreliable disaster.

>File system — continued use of HFS Plus instead of robust ZFS.

How are any of these things possibly the work of Jony Ive? He's a designer, not a software engineer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Kind of insane to blame Ive, considering that only recently his jurisdiction was expanded to software.</comment>


Using WordPress to generate flat files - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/2009/09/using_wordpress_to_generate_flat_files.htm

<comment><USER2> Summary: use curl to download the dynamic site to static files.

It's a kludge. Everytime you add a post, you need to regenerate all pages? That'll start to hurt once you have more than 10 posts.</comment>


Hacker News and drive by traffic: How to make the most of your startups launch - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/05/26/hacker-news-and-drive-by-traffic-how-to-make-the-most-of-your-startups-launch/

<comment><USER2> Well, that post ended suddenly. All I got was "Hacker News doesn't create sustained traffic" and "Capitalize on hitting the front page" (conveniently, both in huge text). Everything else was fluff.

It seems like you were headed in the right direction with the stadium pitch bit, and you told us that Mint blogged about financial topics, but you failed to provide a solid set of marketing ideas. Should startups email bloggers? Join relevant forums? Participate in Twitter and Facebook? There has to be more to it.

I appreciate what you're going for, but I've noticed that much of your content (blogs + videos) just barely scratches the surface. Dig deeper.

<comment><USER3> I started to write a reply but it became a bit long so I turned it into a blog post. [http://dbasch.posterous.com/marketing-for-hackers-a-5-min- in...](http://dbasch.posterous.com/marketing-for-hackers-a-5-min-intro-97-bs- fre)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the great insight and ideas. Your twitter link is broken, though :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Drive by traffic isn't a basis for a real business. For my business to pay for the servers and then some, I need the equivalent of frontpaging Hacker News every day. If I want to quit my day job, I need maybe 5-6 times that.

Hacker News, Reddit and all that look pretty big when you're just starting on the journey, but you really need to look beyond them for sustainable and profitable traffic.

</comment><comment><USER5> Barf. Sad, to see Hacker News being used as a marketing channel.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't view startups trying to get on Hacker News as a bad thing. Especially if the startup is providing information on how they solved a problem (Like I mentioned in the article about "Stadium Pitches").

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

I still think you should change your username, though :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: 3 yo loves robots. What robot for 4th bday? - <AUTHOR> She loves creative play,telling stories, drawing etc.
So something that she can play with without it being active would be huge.
But also something where she can make it do things to build stories around and bring other toys into.
They have loads of transformers, hotwheels, playsets and Lego. She loves vector but can't talk clearly enough but he is her little friend.
Any ideas? Please don't respond if you are going to suggest 'go outside' etc, it's not helpful. <comment><USER2> Anki Cozmo is cute and has a pretty solid set of features

<comment><USER3> Anki is no longer making robots.

<comment><USER4> There are still some around, it is a fantastic toy, even adults love him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-saleh I did buy my kid Lego Boost.

I chose this, because I like robots as well, we already have Lego, she loved playing with duplo and with help could manage to build a smaller 5+ lego set.

It is not cheap, but you can build several things out of it (I remember a Jhonny 5 style robot, a buldozer/tank(?), a guitar and animatronic cat.

The programming interface is simmilar to Scratch Jr, and she can manage it fairly well (mostly playing with the sampler set included with some of the builds, i.e. when robot-cat is supposed to sing :-)

The builds itself are fairly complicated so you'd be doing most of those.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah just got this for my 6yo, he's enjoying it but v hard for him to build. ... Then the whole needing an unlocked tablet thing.

<comment> a-saleh Yep. That is why we mostly end up in the music section :) You don't really need to rebuild i.e. the guitar for it to be a prime noise-maker :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a soon-to-be 2 yo, so I can't help you, but maybe I can learn something from you. Are there any robotic toys suitable for a 2 yo? For now we play Duplo, role play, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably a bit young.

Kids are v different. One of mine would get bored quick because they move and it messes up her games.

The other would enjoy. We had a robot that took cards and had sine games on it. Both looked that can't remember it's name though

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Check out Ozobot. It's tiny and will follow lines and take actions based on colored dots.

Super simple and doesn't have the distractions associated with iPads, etc. My son's school used it for mapping unit... each team of kids drew a pirate treasure map for the bot to follow.

My parents bought a few sphero bots for my kids when they were young... they are a little too abstract for most kids until about 2nd grade. Now (age 8), he loves the Sphero Ollie.

<comment><USER7> The Ozobot is probably too delicate for a three-year-old.

The Sphero is solid, however I agree w/ your views on it.

We've found the best bang for buck is the Photon Robot.

Another option is the Cubetto which is also age appropriate.

Credentials: Owner of (and perform testing on) a 7, 5 and 3yo + littlebird.com.au which sells all of the above.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the pointer to you site and the Photon bot... definitely will check that out! I will say that Ozobot has survived 2-3 years with 2nd graders, but would agree that it isn't the most durable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kids usually like real things better than things meant as toys. Get her a floor cleaner robot. Let her use it for her messes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol we thought about that but my eldest put his hand in vacuum once. Got friction burns from brushes ...

So something like that unsupervised is a bit worrying for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I saw this at BETT in January - very clever as you don't use a compputer/iPad etc to program it. Just the cards [https://kubo.education/](https://kubo.education/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I've been looking at that.

Looks quite good

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lego Mindstorms, it's something you can do together at first.

Check out Lego First Lego League for when they are a little older.

<comment><USER9> Lego have just launched Lego Spike - supposed to be a bit more plug'n'play than Mindstorms so maybe better for younger kids. Haven't looked at it in detail

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks like it's the step after boost. It's more general and has more interesting bits from the pictures.

Bit old for someone that young I think .... Although I'll try her on the boost stuff I bet she would love it actually

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That thing with a Nintendo Switch and cardboard? Nintendo Labo?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage passwords? - <AUTHOR>

I suspect many of us could improve our handling of passwords for various online services. What is a good approach? <comment><USER2> 1password works great for me, I periodically push encrypted backups to other machines, just in case. And now after finishing this comment, I intend to sync the backups to my dropbox account.

</comment><comment><USER3> At first I thought 1Password would be slightly helpful, but it's proven itself incredibly useful. All my passwords are complex and different and I have reliable encrypted backups of them.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://lastpass.com/> is easy, secure, and free.

(I have no affiliation with them, apart from being a happy user.)

</comment><comment><USER5> At work, we use a shared Keepass file (Keepass is a password manager). We are only a small team, so this works out quite well. And this leads us to very secure (and different!) passwords for all our client servers and accounts, because getting and setting passwords is just a click away.

Private, I use a simple system where I have a 'master' password, which I augment with letters and numbers based on the domain name of the service. For example (not my system): A domain has 5 letters and a .com TLD, so I add the number 5 to the end and 'moc.' to the beginning of the master password. You can easily expand this system for your needs. Works really well for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another vote for 1password here, since the Chrome extension its been perfect for me

</comment><comment><USER7> I memorize them, and forget them frequently. Although I'm surprised by how many I can keep in my head at once.

<comment><USER8> I found I have brainspace for ~15 passwords. All complex - non words greater than 8 characters.

Though, as I get older.. I can feel this ability waning. Thus I am interested in using a password manager - though I feel a little uncomfortable about it as I have never used one before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dropbox with a Keepass file on it. Accessible from all types of machines and phones I use, very handy (Windows computer, Linux Computer, Android Phone)

</comment><comment><USER10> Firefox Sync; don't forget to set a passphrase for the 'software security device'.

Some passwords I keep in a gpg-encrypted textfile.

</comment><comment><USER11> Password Gorilla : <https://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki>

</comment><comment><USER12> I (and lots of others) use the same 6 digit, lowercase, dictionary-based word. Something like 'monkey' or 'password'

</comment><comment><USER13> I use the built-in OSX "Keychain" app. It's integrated into the OS such that if you use the "save password" feature of your browser, it ends up in the Keychain anyway.

It also generates great passwords, so now I generate a new pw for each site rather than re-using a handful of common ones.

</comment><comment><USER14> i write em down on paper, hack that!

</comment><comment><USER15> One of my colleague suggested me <http://keepass.info/> its pretty good

<comment><USER16> I am also using KeePass and it is a great solution for password management.</comment></comment>