Safety-critical realtime with Linux - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/734694/2e85660e26897085/ <comment><USER2> Every industry seems determined to learn from scratch on their own how to make safety critical systems. None look at an industry that figured this out 50+ years ago - the airframe industry, which has an incredibly good track record of making safe systems out of unreliable parts.

I wrote a couple articles on the general idea:

[https://digitalmars.com/articles/b39.html](https://digitalmars.com/articles/b39.html)

[https://digitalmars.com/articles/b40.html](https://digitalmars.com/articles/b40.html)

<comment><USER3> You're right, but its the Rail transportation people that figured it out before the Air guys ..

<comment><USER2> You'll see bits and pieces of it in other places, for example, the dual independent braking system in all cars. But the auto engineers failed to generalize that into the car's computer controls.

The Fukushima and Deepwater Horizon disasters show how other industries fail at applying the concept. Reading the sequence of failures in those just makes me grind my teeth. For example, venting the hydrogen overpressure, good idea. Venting it into an enclosed space with sparking electrical equipment, spectacularly dumb. (And the list goes on and one with both disasters.)

Nobody has taken it to heart and applied it pervasively like the airframe industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find that subject line completely terrifying. Please use a small trusted compute base, hopefully with rigorous auditing and attempts at formal modeling, for safety critical systems. The Linux kernel development process is not suitable for this domain.

<comment><USER5> I've read SpaceX uses Linux to fly Falcon and Dragon. If true, I wonder how they got happy with it for safety critical tasks. Or maybe those safety critical tasks get offloaded to microcontrollers with easier to audit codebases.

edit: reference to the article- [https://lwn.net/Articles/540368/](https://lwn.net/Articles/540368/)

<comment><USER6> I would have thought they'd use Dragonfly BSD. Get it!?! Dragon FLY... 'Cuz it flies...

I'll show myself out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Designed realtime with Linux is non-trivial.

I worked on HA (Highly Available) system with Linux inside Xilinx's Vertex Pro PPC. It is redundant system with multiple fault detections and switch over if any subsystem detected failure.

There was one 250 ms hard real time requirements: If I am a slave and don't detect the master 's UDP ping for 250 ms. I will assume the master has failed somehow, I will start action and take over control as master.

The sub-system did trigger from time to time while the master is alive and working perfectly OK.

Eventually I figured out that one of the system API was using > 250 ms time. (Forget which one now, that was > 10 years ago.) I have to profile very carefully and redesign the code to get around that API.

<comment><USER8> Sorta like a distributed watchdog or HA failover.

(Btw my favorite acronym is STONITH.)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, STONITH bites us on our ass every so often. Primarily, because of split- brain and no good way to ameliorate that without throwing out data.

Its better to have an odd quorum, to break tie-breakers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Segmentation faults are a bad example of a fault you don't want in a safety- critical system. A crash is okay, because you will usually have some sort of fall-back (e.g. most power steering systems work unpowered). It's non-crashes that cause silent improper behavior that are bad.

Of course, a segmentation fault is usually a symptom of pointer misuse, which means your code is likely to also suffer from corruptions.

<comment><USER11> Not all systems work with the software down. Yes, power steering works with the power down, but that's for an engine failure, not for an electronics failure or software crash. But I believe that airplanes that use software to adjust the wing control surfaces move them to neutral positions on software failure. (I can't prove that, and I have no first-hand knowledge - just recall hearing it once, if I remember correctly). That means that, while the software's down, the wings won't break off, and it won't crash due to the control surfaces doing something bizarre, _but you can 't navigate the plane._ That's still pretty bad.

<comment><USER12> Commercial aircraft have mechanical fallbacks for all controls, and emergency protocols for if some controls don't work (for example, using spoilers to turn if ailerons are inoperative). Many military jets have pure software control, as they are aerodynamically unstable and are unable to be flown safely by hand if the fly-by-wire system goes down; however, the procedure for a system failure in a military jet is usually "eject!", which is not feasible for passenger aircraft.

<comment><USER2> The Boeing 757 had 3 independent hydraulic systems, with 3 actuators per surface. Any two could overpower the 3rd. Any software in the loop was dual, written on different hardware using different algorithms, with a comparator that would physically disconnect both if they disagreed. The pilot could also physically disconnect them via circuit breakers.

There were also various mechanisms to prevent the surfaces from going too far (cannot move full travel at 500 mph, it would rip the airplane apart).

This is all very serious stuff, and was worked over by a lot of people imagining every perverse thing that could happen, and going through the list of things that had happened, to ensure it is safe.

The track record of the 757 in service shows how effective this is:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Accidents_and_inciden...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_757)

None of them resulted in recommendations for design changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how they arrive at the X microsecond worst-case number for the software-based solutions. Does it take into account a perfect storm of APIC interprocessor events, interrupts, SMP cache coherency protocol worst-case behaviour and cross-CPU TLB shootdowns, misses on all levels of instruction/data TLBs and caches and DRAM, CPU trace cache behaviour, ECC machine check events, worst case OoO core behaviour wrt branch prediction and speculative execution, worst case interference from other SMT threads, other SoC functions accessing DRAM, etc?

It would seem to me that a worst case scenario could easily cause slowdowns of many orders of magnitude. You could mitigate some of them by careful manual memory layout and hardware specific tricks like hardwired TLB entries, but still be left with a lot of uncovered stuff.

<comment><USER14> Interrupt-based designs are bad for real time, for the reasons you give. Instead you want to use techniques like polling and static scheduling, where every process gets a fixed time slice. This reduces the variability and improves fidelity to your model, since you know at every point what processes are running.

<comment><USER9> Easy to say that interrupts are bad.. But when you need to know of a pin change, rising or falling IRQ, interrupts are the only game here. And not only that, but if we were to do the timeslice strategy, then we need that slice to be at least 2x more than the fastest input for that pin.

I would think with that strategy, you'd be servicing "slice-interrupts" more than anything else.

I'll stick with writing ISR's that are only a few commands and do my work outside the ISR's, as standard in industry now.

Now, on a related topic, if they're discussing getting the system to a 10us timing, that would be useful in using Linux as a 3d printer controller directly, rather than an Atmel or STM32 chip. But those requirements of what needs turned off seems pretty onerous, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looking forward to CPUs getting on-die FPGAs so we can actually chuck some fully deterministic timing tasks onto them. Even if you're running on metal without an OS, there are heaps of things that can stop your code from running with predictable timing, and it seems like it's getting worse as CPUs are getting more complex.

<comment><USER16> We've had FPGA with CPU for 5 years or so on Xilinx Zynq. :)

<comment><USER17> Amusingly, Xilinx makes dev tools that are so unbelievably bad that it's almost impossible to do any of the best practices for development that you would hope for in safety critical systems. No source control, code review, reproducible builds, integration testing, centralized code review, etc.

Presumably you can sort of brute force it if you have defense level budgets, but it's a seriously bad situation.

<comment><USER16> Yeah last time I used Vivado a couple years ago, version control on the project was a nightmare. Reproducible builds seem to be a problem with stock FPGA synthesis tools in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought that the kernel had improved enough in recent years for sil3... perhaps not though.

I wasn't as aware of the issue of safety-critical systems as I should have been until I was inside a couple industrial companies where PLC's were everywhere (for this very reason). The thing that interests me now about this is how hard I see netconnected PLC's pushing into industrial applications, mostly because everyone in industry is on the edge of their seat for IOT to hit so they can use and abuse the data (instead of waiting for service call to pull data like they used to, why not just use an LTE-modem PLC, for example?) Do you see where I am going with this? Safety-critical industrial applications <sil4 are increasingly more vulnerable, and it's not from lack of realtime response to stimuli. In the end, using linux in realtime just seems to exacerbate this particular angle on the issue that I see. It does make me wonder about the implications of microkernel design vs monolithic in such applications though.

[http://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/all-codes-and- standa...](http://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/all-codes-and- standards/list-of-codes-and-standards/detail?code=79)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61508](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61508)

[https://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=ANSI%2fRIA+R...](https://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=ANSI%2fRIA+R15.06-2012)

[https://www.iso.org/standard/69883.html](https://www.iso.org/standard/69883.html)

[https://webstore.iec.ch/publication/22797](https://webstore.iec.ch/publication/22797)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_real- time_operat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_real- time_operating_systems)

</comment><comment><USER19> Can somebody here recommend any books on developing safety-critical systems? I've read some part of Kleidermacher's "Embedded Systems Security" book and found it very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER20> The title says [LWN subscriber-only content], the link seems to suggest the same.

It feels like LWM has bad access control, and someone abused that to post an article that shouldn't be free.

<comment><USER21> LWN has a cool feature where any subscriber can make these "subscriber links" to share an article with a friend/coworker, a relevant mailing list, or sometimes even HN. See [https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks](https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks) for details.

In this case, the link was posted by Jon Corbet, who is LWN's main editor and developer.</comment></comment>


Implementing a shell for Bytengine using 'state functions' - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/johnwilson/bshell/blob/master/core/shell.go

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought this would be a good opportunity to use 'state functions' to implement a shell for Bytengine. Rob Pike mentions the use of state functions in his talk "Lexical Scanning in Go" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE)</comment>


Three Years in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2016/05/three-years-in-san-francisco <comment><USER2> > Part of honest writing is being candid about both positives and negatives, > and every time I think about disclosing the negatives of my time at Twitter > (of which there are plenty), it somehow feels unprofessional.

I really hate this about the tech industry.

edit:

> when you're the person in the room silently thinking "I know how this ends" > or worse yet failing to put your best energy forth, it's probably time to > move on.

This is really hitting home for me :/. I agree, it's a good barometer for when you should move on.

<comment><USER3> Another nice quote:

> Over the years, I have realized that I am 1000% guilty of this. Life is too > short to work with assholes, and if you are an asshole, my brain will > concoct all sorts of reasons you are probably not the best person for the > job. Conversely, if you are kind-hearted and emotionally intelligent, I will > go out of my way to help you succeed in almost any situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a very nice post full of wisdom.

Specially the section about management:

> Here's the difference, though, in someone who has and doesn't have emotional > intelligence: the former will pick up that these problems exist from the > team, take their emotions seriously, and dig in to help fix. The latter will > largely discount the unhappiness and, at worst, attribute it to the person > who is unhappy instead of the root cause.</comment>


Internet Architects Warn of Risks in Ultrafast Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/technology/arista-networks-founders-aim-to-alter-how-computers-connect.html

<comment><USER2> Oh God, the FUD... it's... _palpable_. And what in the _world_ do AWS and Gmail outages have to do with Internet protocols?

That said, their new tech sounds interesting, but it's buried in buzzwords and non-comprehending journalism. I don't have the slightest idea if it's just a self-healing mesh with a new sticker on it, or if it's something _actually_ different.

<comment><USER3> "FUD". "non-comprehending journalism".

SO critical! SO reticent, yes, reticent!

But, but, but you have to understand that the article is written by a highly professional practitioner of the highly professional journalistic profession and published at the highly self-esteemed pinnacle of the professional journalistic profession the NYT!

Hang on each NYT word as a pearl, ruby, emerald, sapphire, or diamond of profound wisdom from, did I mention, the highly professional journalistic profession, you are supposed to do!

It's almost as if you are suspecting that the article is some attempt at creating a case of vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional, experience, entertainment (VEFEE) via celebrity identification and the 'threat' from the core of formula fiction and just independent of anything about the actual technical problem or technical solution!

SUCH reticence!

On Friday I got the mail and saw a catalog from Toys R Us. There were lots of toys for children 4-7. The boys were shown playing with toys based on machines, tools, and construction. The girls were shown playing with toys based on babies, people, and traditional housewife roles.

You seem to be saying that the NYT piece was written for readers interested in people and not things, that is, was written for girls instead of boys.

You are saying that the NYT is effeminate? Written for girls 4-7?

But, but, but, as we know, the NYT is a highly professional pinnacle of the highly professional journalism profession and would never stoop to mere, simplistic, irrelevant emotionalism to patronize, insult, manipulate, and pander to its highly respected readers!

<comment><USER3> Guys, sorry you didn't like my jab at the NYT.

But basically Groxx was correct: The article is "FUD" and "non-comprehending journalism".

We can see what was seriously wrong with the article mostly just by looking at the article:

The title of the article was "Internet Architects Warn of Risks in Ultrafast Networks", but the article had (1) some biographical information on the "Internet architects" but (2) nothing significant about the "risks".

So, the article was what I wrote: (1) Grab attention by the formula fiction technique of claiming that there is a 'problem', i.e., the "risks", and (2) have some 'characters', i.e., Bechtolsheim and Cheriton, the readers are supposed to 'identify' with.

So, the article was not really about the risks, the Internet, or even Arista but about the two people. We're supposed to 'identify' with the people because they are wealthy and played significant roles in the early days of the commercial Internet.

So, the article is an attempt to manipulate the readers by being deceptive, by claiming to be about technology but really being just an effort to use formula fiction techniques to keep our attention.

Note: "Formula fiction"? Sure: You've seen examples thousands of times; the framework is simple, e.g., (1) introduce a character(s) the audience will 'identify' with, (2) have the character encounter a problem, (3) see the character solve the problem and get the girl.

Why does the audience 'identify' with the character? Because the audience gets a case of vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment, that is, gets to enjoy 'feeling' that they ARE the character they have identified with. Then the audience cares about the character much as they would themselves and, thus, continues to pay attention to see how the character handles the problem. Since the ancient Greeks, formula fiction

James N. Frey, 'How to Write a Damn Good Novel', ISBN 0-312-01044-3, Saint Martin's Press, New York, 1987.

(NOT a very advanced book!) has been a "sure-fire way to get and hold the attention of an audience" but, really, usually communicates next to nothing in useful information. In particular, when 'journalism' is just formula fiction it is just audience manipulation that promises information but gives only vicarious, fantasy entertainment.

So, in the case of this article, we are supposed to start reading because of the title with "Internet" and "risk", that is, technical topics, but keep reading because we 'identify' with the two people introduced, Bechtolsheim and Cheriton. That is, we are supposed to 'identify' with these two characters, that is, like to be like them. We are supposed to want to be like them because they are wealthy. Then, after we 'identify' with the characters, we want to find out more about them and how they address the "risk". So, so far the article is just a deceptive title and some simple formula fiction.

But the article does not finish the framework of formula fiction because it does not show how the characters solve the problem and at the end the characters do not get a girl.

Why avoid the solution to the problem? Because the solution is presumed to be too technical for the intended audience. In spite of the title, the article is NOT technical. A girl? There is none readily available in this story.

The shame is that the article is not about "risk" and the "Internet", is not about technology, and is about two 'celebrities' much as in a movie tabloid.

So, in particular, the article is nothing like 'professional journalism' and is, as Groxx described,, "FUD" and "non-comprehending journalism".

In being about people, in particular celebrities, instead of technology, things, or tools for solutions, the article is, drawing from the Toys R Us catalog I mentioned, more for girls 4-7 than boys 4-7. That is, the article is 'effeminate'.

Is such common for the NYT? My conclusion is that it is essentially standard for the NYT -- aim at mostly a female audience by using the techniques of formula fiction to manipulate the audience and to concentrate more on people, personalities and emotions than things, tools, or facts; yes, the NYT can understand what Toys R Us understood. So, really, except for rare cases, the NYT has nothing important to do with providing 'news', that is, informing its readers about important events in politics, the economy, etc. but is just a manipulation to get attention based on false promises.

The article's mention of 100 Gbps up to 1000 Gbps = 1 Tbps is now old news. The 1 Tbps is just for one wavelength on just one fiber where with 'dense wavelength division multiplexing' (DWDM) can put, typically, some dozens of such wavelengths on one fiber and some dozens of such fibers in one cable so that "ultrafast" is much faster than the NYT was explaining. In particular, the "ultrafast" the switch sees is heavily from the total data rate from all its inputs which might be a few connections at 100 Gbps or many more connections at the now common 10 Gbps. That is, the "ultrafast" is not just from the data rate on a single wavelength, not just from the possibility of a standard for 1 Tbps per wavelength.

For me, my startup, if successful, could use servers with 10-100-1000 Gbps NICs and a server farm LAN 'switching fabric' that could handle such data rates and also be reliable, maintainable, and scalable. I've looked at a high end Cisco LAN switch but would like to know more. So, I would have liked to have learned more about the "risk" and how Arista is addressing it. Alas, the article had no such content.

Again, the article is not journalism, is not about technology, and is not to inform the reader but is to manipulate the reader by being about 'celebrities' as in a movie tabloid, all standard for the NYT. The NYT doesn't know much about technology and doesn't care much about journalism but is a devoted, grand expert at manipulating readers with formula fiction about people.

If you didn't realize such things, then now you've learned.

Why did I post such jab at the NYT? Because I very much want them to pursue journalism to inform the public. Indeed, my conclusion is that by a wide margin the worst problem facing the US and the world is the news media that does not provide the information needed for informed citizens. So, we get, e.g., US Federal Government directed actions, especially via Fannie and Freddie, that blew the housing bubble that crashed, took the reserve capital of the banks, wiped out the banking system, put about 50% of the home mortgages 'under water', and gave us The Great Recession that no doubt has resulted in significant increases in rates of substance abuse, wife abuse, child abuse, infant mortality, stress and clinical depression, divorce, homelessness, untreated medical problems, and suicide and great losses of social and intellectual capital and production. I blame the news media, in particular, the NYT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title is disappointing.

This is about Arista Networks, a Bechtolsheim funded network device company.

The interesting thing is - as near as I can make out - Arista is another software-defined networking company (in this case the software seems to be designed to isolate bugs(?)).

I'm not in the field, but I deal with people who spend large amounts of money on hardware network devices, and it is clear to me (as a software guy) that the whole network device field is going to disrupted by software any day now.

<comment><USER5> Arista switches are switches with the actual data path in silicon but with the CNC running on an onboard processor running linux.

It's cool, it's both stupidly fast (wormhole switched, etc) and very configurable. Just costs an arm and a leg.

<comment><USER4> I think that's pretty much what would be expected at this stage.

High-performance devices will probably require custom silicon for a while yet, but they can charge a premium.

Lower end devices will probably have less custom silicon, more software and be cheaper.

<comment><USER5> Basically, yeah.

All lower end devices end up with basically same batch of ASIC, anyway just due to cost.

Most switch stuff, however basically comes down to needing more hardware. Cam costs a certain amount, packet buffers cost a certain amount (Or wormhole switching silicon costs a certain amount), etc. None of that you can ever really move into software. At least not decently.

<comment><USER4> _None of that you can ever really move into software. At least not decently._

For pure switches, you might be right (for a while at least). But there is plenty of higher level stuff that is at least partially implemented in silicon (and/or inaccessible software) that is about to be eaten by software.

Things like load-balancing, for example: [http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/05/20/SoftwareLoadBala...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/05/20/SoftwareLoadBalancingUsingSoftwareDefinedNetworking.aspx)

<comment><USER5> Good point. I'm not sure what most of that stuff was doing in hardware in the first place, tbh. Haproxy has been better then hardware load balancing for a long time.

What is interesting is the move off cisco's proprietary routing algorithms and into more standard quogga/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I've made the claim that the Chinese military can take it down in 30 seconds, no one can prove me wrong"

Is this the new journalistic standard at the New York Times now?

<comment><USER7> Spot on. Anytime the salesman resort to hyperbolic examples involving the bad guy du jour you know you're being sold snake oil.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "An engineering standard for a terabit per second, 1,000 gigabits, is expected in about seven years."

1Tb/s network speed! In which score would that kind of technology set us in the Carl Sagan's information based Civilization scale?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Extensions_to_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Extensions_to_the_original_scale)

<comment><USER5> What's sad is that 1tb/second isn't actually that fast anymore.

I can get over 1tb/second of switching cap in a switch that costs a few grand. Mind, I can't do this with Ethernet yet, but then again Ethernet was never meant to go above 10 megs.</comment></comment>


Google Acquires North - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/products/hardware/focus-helpful-devices-google-acquires-north/ <comment><USER2> I guess the competition for smart glasses is heating up - I imagine google thinks apple's glasses are coming soon and they take that seriously enough to want to be prepared to compete. It will be interesting to see how this space plays out. If it's anything like smart watches, the market is going to turn around with apple's entrance, and buying north now while they're suffering gives google the tech they need to enter the market again for smart glasses once apple makes them "cool."

<comment><USER3> If they are not as good as the Hololens 2, not interested. That device is off the hook good, really impressed with MS as a long time Linux user

<comment><USER4> I don't want AR glasses. I want glasses that look like regular glasses but can display stuff, similar to a smart watch.

<comment><USER3> You don't want to interact with those things using your hands or frisbee a photo to a friend, bouncing it off of a wall? (Physics applied to a UI system aware of surroundings is so much fun!)

<comment><USER4> Of course but that's a different use case and different hardware. I believe we're talking about two completely different devices and markets here.

<comment><USER3> Currently, but I everyone who's tried it is blown away by how good it is. So yes, they are different devices, but I fully expect there to be huge demand, that most smart glasses will have hand tracking, and that the end of the smart phone is without doubt.

BTW, the HL2 was design for sharing and privacy from the get go. It is after all the basis for next gen military helmets

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> North was previously known as Thalmic labs, and their first product was the Myo, a gesture-based input device. More recently, they created Focals, a smart glasses product.

More on their blog here: [https://www.bynorth.com/](https://www.bynorth.com/)

<comment><USER6> Funny story about the Myo. It was a promising device and seemed to me like it had great niche applications (such as medical). Founders weren't interested in that I guess and moved to smart glasses. Last summer they sold the patents for Myo to a company called CTRL Labs for about $20M. In the fall Facebook snatched up CTRL Labs for $500M - $1B, and their product description was basically that of the Myo.

More info:

[https://betakit.com/ctrl-labs-acquires-norths-patents-for- my...](https://betakit.com/ctrl-labs-acquires-norths-patents-for-myo-armband- technology/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21058975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21058975)

<comment><USER7> IIRC the reviews for the armband were unanimously bad, with the device barely working. If the device wasn't fit for gaming, it definitely would not be fit for any medical or industrial use at the time.

<comment><USER8> I had the chance to use one at a hackathon, and can confirm the device barely worked. It had huge difficulties differentiating between different input gestures, and the employee who demo'd it admitted as much.

<comment><USER6> In order to make it reliable you had to make a custom classifier. The one that shipped with their software was garbage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sigh, all I can think is yet another promising startup vanishes into the depths of Google, never to be seen again.

Google, please stop buying companies, please learn to support your products and build a loyal customer base. You are not a startup anymore, you need to make the transformation that companies like Microsoft did, and quit moving fast and breaking things.

People don't want an agile foundation, they want a hundred year foundation.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure "promising startup" describes North (previously Thalmic Labs) that well. Everything I've heard around the Waterloo tech scene is that it was mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government. Tales from past employees are not flattering. Being bought by Google is likely the best thing that could happen to both the founders and the employees, if Google acquires the latter.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/kitchener/comments/hg11tl/a_vision_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/kitchener/comments/hg11tl/a_vision_fades_alphabet_buying_canadian_smart/)

<comment><USER11> > mostly smoke and mirrors from the founders who were able to maintain their > own lifestyles using grants from the Canadian government

This describes a surprisingly high number of companies I've worked at in Canada. These SRED credits keep afloat so many companies that should have otherwise perished and that won't ever go anywhere.

You can even hire SRED consultants that will help you milk those credits as much as possible (for a fee of course). You can then apply for more credits to pay off these SRED consultants fees, as I understand it... While producing little to no commercial value, and coast on these for years.

<comment><USER12> I've noticed the same thing. Have you found any good writing on this topic and how the American approach differs from the Canadian approach? I've been fascinated by this dynamic after spending most of my working life in the USA then returning to Canada, and just feeling like something is "off" whenever I talk to Canadian startups, and it feels like a lot of the time it comes down to the way the flow of investment differs here (especially in the R&D space).

<comment><USER13> imho it's not just the flow of investment. It's the smallness of the community. Many of the founders in the Toronto tech scene all know each other. From private school etc. At least when I was working for one 10 years ago, it all felt very incestuous and small.

Also in the US there's a real sense of having to hunt and compete for talent, but at least then in the Toronto startup scene you were to feel blessed for not having to work for a bank or insurance company, so put up the with the bullshit and dysfunction please...

<comment><USER14> Moved back two years ago and can echo this sentiment. We raised our most recently round exclusively in the US. Will be interesting to see how COVID-19 impacts all of this given how much more remote work will be available.

<comment><USER13> Before Google acquihired my team I ended up jumping ship to a NY based company from the Toronto startup I was at. Difference in culture was night and day.

With the increase in remote work availability I'd probably hunt for work from US companies at this point rather than beg for crumbs from Canadian startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool, who here has tried Focals by North? I was thinking of getting them for everyday walking around and reading. My problem is I still don't understand what the interface is like. Can it project a screen to it or not? I'm perfectly happy to see a translucent IDE/browser window in my field of view.

<comment><USER16> Getting them now is probably not a good idea, because:

> The first-gen North Focals glasses won't work after July 31, 2020, but North > is issuing refunds to people who bought the smartglasses

[https://support.bynorth.com/hc/en- us/articles/360045128691](https://support.bynorth.com/hc/en- us/articles/360045128691)

<comment><USER17> When will people learn to not buy hardware that needs cloud support to function

At least they are giving out refunds, unlike other companies that have shutdown, but still.

Things like this is why I am a firm member of the selfhosted club

<comment><USER18> The 6th time it happens to them, as long as self hosting is easier

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not acquihire. Employees are not moving to alphabet.

North was a scam, and was about to be bought by patent trolls. This was a legal move by alphabet. They pretty much paid ransom to the North (Thalmic labs) founders to not be harassed by trolls later on.

I guess it at least shows that google haven't abandoned google-glass entirely (or their legal dept doesn't know they aren't in the glass business any more, i wouldn't doubt it)

<comment><USER20> > _Not acquihire. Employees are not moving to alphabet._

Do you have inside information? The announcement implies acquihire. You don't explicitly say _where_ people will be working for you if they're not going to be working for you.

> _They 'll join the Google team based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada—North's > hometown and an area with impressive tech talent. We're excited to welcome > our new colleagues, and committed to the growing global tech community of > Kitchener-Waterloo._

<comment><USER21> That's the public message. Their HR will probably cherry pick some, sometimes even such scammers happen to have not yet corrupt talent. Other than that the IP situation would be the only sensible explanation of this deal.

<comment><USER22> Do you think the dollar amount is real? I often see massively inflated numbers that represent the amount a company is going to invest in e.g. their own product division that will contain the acquired IP. It's in everybody's interest to inflate the numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thalmic Labs/North helped to normalize the act of exaggerating the capabilities of your tech, lying to investors, raising millions of dollars and pivoting to something completely unrelated. We have to stop celebrating tech companies that are able to raise millions of dollars and still fail to deliver.

<comment><USER24> Why should we stop celebrating them? Who are the losers here and why should I feel sorry for them?

<comment> cs-szazz I believe the losers are the employees whose equity is likely worth $0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the biggest problem with smart glasses, (AR tech) is the battery/power system. A family member worked at a defunct AR eyeglass maker and mentioned that point. Magic leap is in that space also and their solution was a huge battery pack(hip mounted) with a chord attaching to the glasses. His company had the power supply near the ear(it was smaller but didn't have enough juice to last hours). These examples(north glasses) seem pretty simple with just basic info being piped out, the two examples I mentioned above you could play movies and watch detailed realistic meta scenes imposed on reality.

If power can be figured out in small form factor the end results could really be incredible. After trying out the demo AR glasses to my family members company(5 years ago) it was one of the most incredible things I have ever seen and felt like sci-fi come true.

<comment><USER26> I think the biggest problem is the social cost. They weren't called glassholes for nothing. Maybe the stigma will be over with better use cases, like filming the police when in public.

<comment><USER27> My recollection is that the 'glasshole' thing was down to a combination of the perceived privacy intrusion of the glasses bearing a camera, the significant cost of the early editions, and a broader anger (at roughly the same time) directed at big tech companies in SF.

Interestingly, there didn't seem to be a similar backlash against the Snapchat smart glasses which came later, despite their raison d'etre being photos/video. (Cheaper? Better marketing? Or different time/social context?)

Anyway, I don't think it's a given at all that smart glasses will always come with a social stigma - they probably won't, as long as the original Google Glasses missteps/bad luck is avoided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's the rumored price? They reportedly raised $200M. Employees get nothing, I'm guessing. Well, a secure job at Google is a decent consolation prize, at least.

<comment><USER29> Employees are not guaranteed employment at Google. I'm sure a good chunk will be let go as part of this acquisition.

<comment><USER30> I'm curious how this usually plays out. Do employees of acquired companies need to go through the google interview process?

<comment><USER31> Unless they're part of leadership they usually do, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Smart Glasses?! Please!

I've been waiting since forever. This is the only "smart" tech I've been so interested in. I already wear glasses, why not make them more useful?

Meanwhile watches get in the way of using keyboards and interacting with things, and you constantly take them off. Can't use them if your hand is busy either, like holding a drink. They're not as convenient as they seem.

<comment><USER33> Do you think you'll be able to opt out of location tracking with google's smart glasses?

<comment><USER34> This was actually one of the first times/places Google really upset me from a privacy standpoint, back in 2012 or so: I had Google Glass, Explorer Edition, and it's software was written to upload any photo you took to Google Photos. As an Android device with USB support, you could download the photos direct on a PC, and delete them before it did so. However, if it had Wi-Fi and power and it had photos, Google uploaded them without consent.

They repeatedly refused to offer an option to disable photo sync, even when they added a whole settings bundle to manage the sync settings. (Essentially, they started letting you tell it to upload photos even over cellular data, but still neglected to add a "just don't upload the photos automatically" option.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was hoping that North would license their display technology to someone that would build practical smart sunglasses for endurance athletes. There are a few heads-up display products available now for cyclists but they are all flawed in various ways, and there's nothing that works for runners. Unfortunately I don't think Google understands or cares about the sports tech market.

From a customer perspective I would pay $1000 today for a pair of smart prescription sunglasses that could link to my fitness tracker as an ANT+ extended display and show a few key data field including speed, distance, heart rate, and power. That would be super helpful for racing and structured training.

<comment><USER36> And I could use a pair that could display some data from AvPlan EFB while I am flying, but everyone wants to chase general purpose instead of starting with a niche and then growing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Lastly is our appreciation for Focals 1.0 customers who share our vision of > everyday smart glasses. We are winding down Focals 1.0 and we will not be > shipping Focals 2.0

From the blog at bynorth.com ... I guess that's one way to show your appreciation!

</comment><comment><USER38> Well that's disappointing.

It seemed like they had cool products, and it's too bad to see it bought up by an advertising/spyware company with a history of killing products.

<comment><USER2> the products are already killed as a part of this acquisition. Google must think the market is worth pursuing if they're willing to dish out $180 million for the company, but considering they simultaneously announced the end of all product sales and no more focals 2.0, this is pretty clearly an acquisition for the patents and talent. They were already close to running out of money.

[https://9to5google.com/2020/06/25/alphabet-north- focals/](https://9to5google.com/2020/06/25/alphabet-north-focals/)

<comment><USER39> They are also bricking the devices at the end of July

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> In addition to everything below, a great way to expand their Canadian presence to get around problems with American immigration laws.

</comment><comment><USER34> Sad. I have their Myo band sitting around, but the company appears to never have gotten a solid hit. RIP Thalmic/North.

It'd be nice if Google was somehow prohibited from snapping up even more companies while under numerous investigations for antitrust during a global pandemic, but I think that attempted legislation has fallen flat.

<comment><USER41> Looks like North wasnt doing too well selling their tech. Would it preferable if Microsoft or Apple or Amazon or some chinese company picked them up instead ?

<comment><USER34> Microsoft or Apple or Amazon would all be preferable to Google, actually, yes. Good ideas go to Google to die.

<comment><USER42> Like Youtube, Android, Firebase, etc?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I cannot imagine North has something that Google doesn't already have. Strange buyout decision in my opinion.

<comment><USER44> North bought the Intel Vaunt IP and improved it, so they actually do have some very impressive tech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Just more proof that Google needs to acquire companies to compete:

\- Phones? Google buys Motorolla and HTC's smartphone division.

\- Watches? Google buys Fitbit and Fossil (the smartwatch side)

\- AR? Google buys North

I don't know why Google's Product team gets the prestige it does, when the last successful product it _didn't_ buy was GMail.

<comment><USER46> Google has failed to compete in all three of those things (in terms of hardware), so maybe they need to stop trying the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This acquisition along with the Fitbit deal sets up Google perfectly to dominate the health wearables market.

<comment><USER48> Isn't the Fitbit acquisition being contested currently due to privacy concerns?

<comment><USER47> I highlight the Apple Watch's FDA approval as a medical monitoring device as a counterpoint. This was in 2018. Wearables for health have been approved, legally speaking, already for some time now.

<comment><USER48> Fair point. I didn't realize the FDA had already started looking at the wearable space in such detail. Pretty forward-looking / perceptive of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> lachlan-sneff I think this is a pretty solid acquisition by google. I have doubts that the tech from North will be able to match the tech in the "upcoming" apple ar glasses, but things will probably eventually match up, like Android and iOS.

</comment><comment><USER49> > We call this ambient computing.

Wow, it sounds like "IoT" is getting a makeover. Will this become the new more palatable vogue term for total immersion in corporate-owned wireless electronics?

</comment><comment><USER50> Smart glasses were a gimmick back when they were first designed and implemented in the 60s/70s, and they will continue to be a gimmick, especially if G takes them on.

Nothing against North in particular, I just think that it's a recipe for disaster to have every minute of a human's waking life tracked by Google. Color me a cynic, but I'm not optimistic about the future of this technology, especially in the hands of big G.

<comment><USER51> I just hope it can be reprogrammed with custom firmware by some great people. My Oculus Go is ancient, but it does way more than it was supposed to thanks to some smart hackers.

<comment><USER39> Everything they did was closed source, there wasn't even ever an official SDK for others to make apps for it. I don't see there being enough of them out there for the intersection of "have a pair of Focals" and "can reverse engineer an app & device that talk over bluetooth" for this to end up anywhere close to Pebble/Rebble. And I think a custom firmware is basically out of the question.

That's not to say that I wouldn't love to see either of those happen. I'd be willing to donate my soon-to-be-a-brick Focals to someone that has a history of reverse engineering weird embedded ARM devices. Ideally you'd get it before the end of July so you can have a hope of sniffing bluetooth traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Looks like North is heading South.

</comment><comment><USER53> I look forward to everything North ever was or did being chucked down the memory hole in 3-10 years, as is tradition

<comment> cs-szazz If you look at what they've released, it seems this was the best outcome. I don't know if Focals 2.0 were ever going to see the light of day, and Focals 1 plus the Myo weren't exactly a hit.

I do feel bad for the employees whose options are now worthless though, and even worse if they'd already exercised them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Not brave enough to say it to my friends but I would really love a pair of smart glasses

<comment><USER55> It sounds great, and I've used a few, but you can't realistically walk around wearing them in the current form without people looking at you odd. It's not worth what they offer to be that much of a negative focus (see glassholes commentary for examples). I love new tech, but I won't touch smart glasses until you can't tell they are smart glasses. The Focals were closer but still very clearly weird looking and bulky when worn

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Will they keep most of the North team @ the google Kitchener-Waterloo location?

</comment><comment><USER57> Always a bit sad when Canadian companies get acquired by the US behemoths

</comment><comment><USER58> > 10 blue links on a PC

are they blue because they're all from advertisers?

</comment><comment><USER39> tl;dr what do I do about recycling my Focals, ring, and case, given the difficulties a generic e-waste facility will have in removing the highly integrated batteries from the Focals and case? Also, if you have a startup making pretty, highly integrated devices, please have a plan for recycling your devices when they inevitably turn into bricks.

I was a little surprised to hear that the acquisition is going to turn my Focals into a pair of chunky-looking, prescriptionless eyeglasses, and the carrying case into an alcantera-lined brick. I would like to recycle these, but I'm not sure how. The post-acquisition FAQ only seems to cover what's happening to their products/services, how we're going to get refunds (wasn't expecting that), and how to wipe my Focals.

My main concern in recycling these is the highly integrated batteries. The Focals, the ring, and the case all have batteries that I can't access and can't see, and I don't see too many screw holes (though I admittedly haven't looked). Given what I've seen of e-waste recycling processes, I don't see anyone taking the time to carefully opening these up to get the batteries out, and I doubt they would try cracking them open like a crab to get at the battery, given the risk of possibly breaking a battery or cutting onesself on something sharp.

Ideally, I would be able to just ship them my Focals and they would take care of recycling properly, but providing instructions on how to remove the battery or the types of facilities that would be capable of recycling these things would be a start.

Also, I'd like to make a request of all of you: if you are or are ever involved with a startup that is making pretty, highly-integrated devices, please have a plan on how to recycle your devices when they inevitably turn to bricks. Hell, make it part of your acquisition message so customers won't just throw them in the trash (or blindly throw them into the single-stream recycling expecting it to get handled there and have it end up back in the trash) and dump more lithium into landfills.

</comment><comment><USER59> How can you buy a cardinal direction?

</comment><comment><USER60> MARCH 19, 2020: North Wearables Looks for a Buyer While Cash Is Running Out [https://outline.com/aKLaPA](https://outline.com/aKLaPA) (from Bloomberg, just without the paywall)

</comment><comment><USER61> Three more to go.

</comment><comment><USER62> > We are winding down Focals 1.0 and we will not be shipping Focals 2.0, but > we hope you will continue the journey with us as we start this next chapter.

Isn't this just a classic acquihire?

I'm sure it will be on Our Incredible Journey soon.

</comment><comment><USER63> byenorth

[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER2> I don't know if it really fits the spirit of the site if this aquisition is explicitly for the people and patents, they announce that the product is shutting down at the same time, and are giving out refunds. The spirit of ourincrediblejourney always felt to me more of when a company puts on a show at acquisition talking about how the acquisition will allow for all sorts of new growth and opportunities and then a few months later the service gets quietly shut down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> So we have a new king in the North

</comment><comment><USER65> I just can't see how these are better than smartwatches.

<comment><USER66> It's early but imagine a world where your vision is enhanced with overlays and information about your surroundings. Where your task cna be visually aided. Where sight disabilities can be corrected.

This has been military, sci-fi and video game HUD territory for so long, but that can change.</comment></comment>


Telnet Star Wars - <AUTHOR> Run telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl in the prompt and sit back to watch the show.<p>While this has been around for a while, it still pops a smile on my face every single time! <comment><USER2> Heh 'a while' yeah it's been around for decades.

</comment><comment><USER3> TIMELINE. ;)</comment>


Hijacking HTML canvas and PNG images to store arbitrary text data - <AUTHOR> https://www.igorkromin.net/index.php/2018/09/06/hijacking-html-canvas-and-png-images-to-store-arbitrary-text-data/ <comment><USER2> Similar, prior work: the video game "Spore" let you export a PNG of the creatures (and other things) you made with its many, many editors. It'd output a PNG of the critter, with all the data needed to build it from Spore's parts library encoded in the least significant bits of the pixels; you could easily share it in email/chat/whatever, then drag it into Spore to get the critter.

Lots more appealing than a square of grey noise, lots easier to understand when you run across it a year later...

edit: some more details on this, with examples [https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200806/spore_creature_creator...](https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200806/spore_creature_creator_and_steganography.html)

<comment><USER3> Someone did something similar to make a point during the 3d printed gun debate. There's a .png floating around of the PM522 (3d revolver) with the print files encoded directly in the image. IIRC it just requires zipping and changing the extension to load correctly.

<comment><USER4> That's just concatenating the files together and relying on the zip extractor to ignore the PNG part of the file, rather different than actually embedding it in the image data itself. I remember this being a popular way to upload non-image files to certain imageboard websites a few years back, to get around them only allowing image uploads. JPG+RAR was the usual choice.

<comment><USER3> The data was visible as a block of jumbled pixels as the bottom, not sure how concatenated files render visually (especially jpg format), so for all I know it may have been exactly what you're describing. Pretty sure I found it on an image board anyway.

<comment><USER5> That's how it looks when you concatenate two file types. I guess in theory if you make the image a pixel, you effectively get the same output but with way less effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately, MobileSafari is making it harder and harder to actually save the image. If you gently press and hold, it'll give you the option to Save to Camera Roll. But with the advent of force touch, pressing too hard means that you'll end up navigating to a page with the image on it, losing your original page's state in the process.

It is possible to catch the force touch event, but as far as I can tell it overrides the regular touch event so all you can do is prevent the event and print "you pressed too hard, please release and try again, gently".

<comment><USER7> When was the last time you actually tried this? Because the reality doesn't match your description at all.

First off, you have to put a pretty decent amount of pressure on it to trigger the 3D touch behavior instead of the long press behavior.

Secondly, when you do trigger 3D touch, it goes into "peek" mode, and you have to keep pressing, and in fact press _even harder_ , before it will "pop" and actually navigate to the image. In the "peek" mode simply swiping up will give you the Save Image action.

And if you're the Hulk and every single touch is a force touch, well, even gripping as hard as I can, it still forces the "peek" mode for a second or two before "popping".

<comment><USER6> Thank you; peek mode + swipe up does prompt to save the image and I did not know that. Based on user feedback, the "press-and-hold" method is the only one people commonly know about, and the major issue is that if you accidentally peek (or even imperceptibly drift into peek mode for a few ms) it won't work, and you won't get any feedback as to why.

It's handy to have a second way to trigger save, but having to include the explanation in order to teach users how to execute the maneuver is not great UX. "Press gently and hold to save. Or, if your phone supports Force Touch and has it enabled, press pretty hard (but not _too_ hard) and swipe up to save. If it doesn't work, try it again."

<comment><USER8> Force Touch in general has difficulty in exposing actions and discoverability in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I did similar several years ago but built my own index and rendered a character per channel... [https://github.com/byteface/GTP/blob/master/sentiment/canvas...](https://github.com/byteface/GTP/blob/master/sentiment/canvas/js/app/GTP.js)

meaning 3or4 chars per pixel. then tried to do boyer moore on a dynamic shader. At the time I felt I had the fastest string searching tool on the web, in the world... [https://github.com/byteface/GTP/blob/master/play/simplified/...](https://github.com/byteface/GTP/blob/master/play/simplified/js/app/shaders/TEST4.js)

it could all the 'the' in moby dick in a split second. which at the time would take textmate a few seconds.

showed a mate who then did his own storage only implementation, closer to what you are doing: [https://github.com/claus/PNGDrive](https://github.com/claus/PNGDrive)

years after saw someone did one that stored data in flckr. Think it was posted here.

To be honest, IMO the idea is senseless as pure storage as theres other better options. like zip. But if you are going to do something with it on GPU that's when it has new potential.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sigh safari is the new IE. Making everyone else suffer from nonsensical hacks.

But anyway, if the problem is that the json file is opened in a new tab instead of downloading, can't you just encode it with a non-text media type in the data-uri so the browser doesn't understand it?

E.g, data:application/octet-stream instead of data:image/png which is what you claim works right now

<comment><USER11> data uris do not support setting something equivalent to http's disposition header, which is what prompted the addition of the download html attribute. data uris also do not permit setting a sensible filename, the other feature the download attribute patches over. safari supports neither, and mobile safari is also in general incapable of sensibly dealing with an anonymous blob like that. (what could it even actually do? what app would you open it with? what would it be named?)

<comment><USER10> Uh you can definitely set the mime type in data uris. It's like right there as the first part of a data uri...

Download attribute let's you choose a filename. But giving up on that for safari sounds like a decent tradeoff to me (with the current approach you end up with a nonsense png extension in the save file anyway).

Testing with a quick demo: [https://codepen.io/anon/pen/wYpBry?editors=1010](https://codepen.io/anon/pen/wYpBry?editors=1010), it seems like mobile safari will show it as unknown.txt but have options to save to files/dropbox etc. Kind of complicated but probably still less confusing than a png file.

<comment><USER11> I didn't say anything about mime type. I said disposition (which is what you would use to force a file to download, instead of display in browser, using the http protocol), and filename. If you set mimetype to octet, mobile safari, since it does not support the download attribute, cannot name it anything sensible or choose an appropriate file extension.

I always felt like data: urls could obtain a lot more utility if disposition and filename attributes were added to it, but... uhm, browser makers don't seem to agree, and the syntax would make it difficult to add features like that whilst staying backwards compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did something vaguely similar storing text in QR codes then converting the black and white squares to audio 'noise', which could be saved as a wav then read somewhere else, by reading the audio 'noise', reconstructing the QRCode and reading that ;) - It's not a million miles away from the 'chirp' app idea.

demo at [https://qrdio.com](https://qrdio.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> What I would be interested in is if there would be a way to encode data in an image that is robust to various kinds of jpeg/back/shrinking/enlarging transforms. This is really cool and useful but there's all kinds of normal processes that images go through that would destroy data hidden in an image this way. Perhaps something akin to parity or error correction data hidden somewhere else?

<comment><USER13> Why, yes, there are ways to do this.

One of the interesting ways is adding is adding noise generated by inverse Fourier transforms.

[http://repro.grf.unizg.hr/media/Ante/Radovi/033008_1_FINAL.p...](http://repro.grf.unizg.hr/media/Ante/Radovi/033008_1_FINAL.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like image steganography. If anyone wants a python example here ya go [https://github.com/jermainezhimin/culpriteCTF/blob/master/LS...](https://github.com/jermainezhimin/culpriteCTF/blob/master/LSB/LSB.py)

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminded me of a steganography blog post I wrote back when I was doing computer security.

It should be possible to binarily concatenate compressed (RAR'd or ZIP'd) text data directly to a JPG.

Then you can save it as an image on the client, or uncompress it in the client browser and read the data.

The differences are 1) the saved image won't look like random pixels-- it'll look like whatever base image you choose and 2) you don't have to worry about writing the encoding/decoding data as bitmap stuff.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of that 4chan spam attack which was an image that told users to save it and change the extension to an executable, which would then execute and make more posts with the same image, continuing the cycle. I believe that they started scanning images for random appended data after that

</comment><comment><USER17> This is not really new. One of my friends built a DAWG into a PNG.

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

The DAWG contained all french words, in a convenient small picture.

<comment><USER18> Did s/he publish somewhere? I'm interested in learning more, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A while back I built a site for converting torrents into banner-sized images, with the idea that people could share them on message boards and such, and there were browser extensions that would detect them and let you open them in your bittorrent app.

<comment><USER19> What site is it

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Depending on the amount of data, you could store it in the URL itself as a fragment identifier

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, but you would not want to use a URL that is larger than around 2k characters, in my case that wasn't enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Maybe you could store the image in the browser cache. Then users wouldn't need to manually save and upload the image. Most browsers will keep the image cached until the user manually empty the cache (eg forever).

</comment><comment><USER22> If you're using PNGs, why skip the fourth alpha channel?

<comment><USER9> because he used ascii codes which uses 3 numbers and he stored a number on each channel. method requires no table to encode/de-encode

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, and I explain it in the article, it's because of the weird behaviour you get with canvas and alpha channel. If somehow a value of 0 made it to the alpha channel, all of red, green and blue channels were reset to zero as well. It was a bit annoying to deal with and a total pain to change my code. Originally I was using all 4 channels.

<comment><USER9> ah i see now. ur using ascii code as the color value. i used to gen them with a php lib don't recall experiencing this error on alpha. browser thing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Elite did this way back to store the entire galaxy.</comment>


Droid Eris Review: Is Android for You? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nixiepixel.com/droid-eris-review-is-android-for-you/ <comment><USER2> Makes me wish I had the capacity to downvote frontpage posts.</comment>


Technological progress not slow or steady, but superexponential - <AUTHOR> http://www.santafe.edu/news/item/technology-progress-superexponential/ <comment><USER2> I wonder to what extent this is a case of a technology platform (integrated circuit density) improving at an exponential rate, but then further technologies built on top of that (e.g efficiency of computational algorithms) are are themselves improving exponentially. The exponential rates multiply to give a super-exponential rate in aggregate.

We're definitely still on the fast part of the curve, but I am one of those that thinks inevitably the rate of advancement in some and eventually all of these technologies will subside. There's nothing magical or special about IT. All technologies eventually mature, but the world will be a very different place than it was before the IT revolution by the time that happens. In fact, it already is.

<comment><USER3> FWIW multiplying two exponential functions together gives you another exponential function (not a superexponential one.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near>, Ray Kurzweil also claims that growth is not only exponential (e.g. doubling every _x_ years), but that this rate is itself increasing - which I guess is _superexponential_.

It's curious that Moore's Law (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law>) seems to be just plain ol' exponential. That is, doubling the number of transistors on a chip every 2 years. That rate itself hasn't increased; it's still 2 years, 47 years on. (BTW the 18 month figure is related, see link). Why isn't Moore's Law superexponential?

<comment><USER5> Quick guess, Moore's law applies for capacity of silicon industry to improve storage and processing of one production line.

If you include the increasing number of production lines, the total number of simultaneously connected computers, capacity of producing software that solves complex problems and the many others factors that are included in the global processing power and relevancy of calculus, you might explain this super exponential growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Article: _Gonzales says this research suggests an accelerating rate of improvement in technology... If these trends continue, he says, "in some ways things will continue to get better. In that sense it is a hopeful paper."_

Abstract: _In contrast, one cannot reject the hypothesis of superexponential growth with decreasing doubling times. This raises questions about whether past trends in the improvement of information technology are sustainable._

These seem to be two different conclusions, don't they?

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd be interested to see a chart of something trying to more directly measure "standard of living" alongside "information storage per unit volume, communications bandwidth, and computation speed". I also wonder if the relationship will change in the future. I guess standard of living depends on more than just technological change though, in particular government policy.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how the number of people working on progressing technology affects this - i.e., crudely, what (rate of technological progress) / (world population) is.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if the acceleration is increasing at a constant rate.

</comment><comment><USER10> Didn't Ray Kurzweil write a book on this a few years ago?

<comment><USER11> He's written either a book or lengthy paper about this every few years since he wrote _The Age of Intelligent Machines_ in the late 80s. At that time mainstream opinion was that he was nuts. The book was especially ridiculed for its predictions of a computer AI unseating a world chess champ by 1998 and of the human genome being mapped out by the early 2000s.

Both happened ahead of schedule, and that's the primary reason I took his later books seriously.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tips for coding with one hand? - <AUTHOR> After breaking my right (dominant) arm on my bike yesterday, I had to get a cast that restricts the use of my arm to the point where I can only use my left arm with my computer. Seeing that I'll have to wear this cast for at least four weeks, do any of you with experience with this have any suggestions? Typing with just my left hand is very slow and frustrating. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I only type with my right hand so here are my tips for typing fast and affective. 1\. Make sure you know where the letters are on the keyboard 3\. Make heavy use of keyboard shortcuts (control key almost useless) 4\. Get Alfred with powerpack. 5\. Never use command+tab. 6\. Always use Alfred to switch between programs searching for one letter and hitting enter key fast. 7\. Place your hand in the middle of the keyboard about a half an inch above your keyboard 8\. Your typing needs to flow with the words. 9\. probably more

If you're in or around San Francisco I can show you more of my technique for typing fast with one hand. You can hit me up on twitter tweets @gdi2290

</comment><comment> qu4z-2 Have you tried xkcd's mirrorboard[0]? I don't know if you're on Linux; if not I think I've seen ports for other OSes floating around somewhere. It takes a little getting used to but is fairly quick to pickup, and cheap (in money and scripting time). It works in the same way that mirror writing left-handed is remarkably easy if you do the motions with your right-hand as well (try it now, if you doubt :) ).

In any case, give it a shot. It's free, right?

[0]: [http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed- key...](http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-keyboard- layout-for-the-lazy/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Be careful of RSI, the last thing you want to do is strain your left hand with the additional work. One thing you have to accept is that you will not be as quick as before.

If you focus on anything, let it be this, to reduce strain in your left hand while continuing to work. I personally spend a lot of money on keyboards and mouses as that is your interface with anything you do at a computer.

The most comfortable setup I have found is a small apple bluetooth keyboard (low travel laptop style keys) and a logitech mobile mouse. If you have the money, it might be worth looking into getting a touch pad.

</comment><comment><USER4> Take a look at some of the links here: <http://www.onehandkeyboard.org/linux- one-handed-keyboards/>

In college I had a TA who broke his hand. He coped by using a mirror keyboard layout so when a button was held down, the values of all the keys changed.

He ended up being able to type 60wpm and ended up challenging some of his students to a typing contest and beating them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Use a half keyboard? <http://www.matias.ca/halfkeyboard/index.php>

<comment><USER6> Or some Autohotkey script to simulate something similar on a full keyboard. Either investing time into a script or money into a physical keyboard are probably your best bets if you're looking at 4 weeks of something that is going to impact your daily work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really feel for you. I broke my arm a few years ago, and never found a good way around it. I really honestly felt like I was mentally handicapped (does anyone else feel like when they're coding they think with their hands?).

The best I can say is take it easy - don't force the use of your broken arm - you could really mess things up if you push it before it's healed.

</comment><comment><USER8> You will get faster. I sometimes eat with one hand and type with the other. I'd say I get 25 to 30 wpm... which isn't too bad. Mind you, I'm not really trying to improve my one-handed typing speed. You just need to let your left hand gain some dexterity and this will take time.

</comment><comment><USER9> Use something terse, like maybe J [1]. Java or C++ definitely out of the question, too much boilerplate. Lisp would be difficult with only the left hand due to the location of '(' and ')' keys.

[1] <http://www.jsoftware.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I had a similar experience in high school. I stuck a pen in my cast and used it as a single finger on the right hand to type with. Seriously.

It's not as fast as two hands, but it's a definite improvement over nothing.

</comment><comment><USER11> The worst part I imagine would be hitting shift. Maybe onscreen keyboard or remap certain keys for special characters.

<comment><USER12> If hes on a mac, enabling sticky keys will help with the shift, command and alt keys. On older macs all you had to do was hold down one of those control keys for an extra long period of time to kick it into action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Spend some time training voice recognition software.

</comment><comment><USER14> type it all on your phone? swype.com</comment>


Show HN: Lomotions (beta) – Video camera with beautiful filters for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.twentyseconddev.lomotions <comment><AUTHOR> My first Android app and long-time side project. Showing it here in order to push myself to finish it and get some beta testers.</comment>


San Francisco Office Rents Pass Manhattan as Most Expensive in Country - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/san-francisco-office-rents-pass-manhattan-as-most-expensive-in-country/ <comment><USER5> SF has a law (1986's Prop M) that restricts the supply of new office space: [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-law-blocks-tech- bo...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-law-blocks-tech-boom- expansion-5652707.php)

One saving grace of the law is that in years when nobody wants to build, the city "banks" the excess for years when construction is over the limit. But we've just about exhausted those savings, and are now hitting the cap.

The developers and the owners of existing office space know that the carryover is about to run dry, and that the cap is going to be in full effect every year for many years to come, and are pricing their long-term leases accordingly. And companies, knowing the same thing, are signing them.

Did you hear that the Sierra Club is going to have to leave the San Francisco headquarters they've occupied since the 1800s, because the rent is now too high for them to afford? ([http://www.sfexaminer.com/sierra-club-moving- headquarters-fr...](http://www.sfexaminer.com/sierra-club-moving-headquarters- from-sf-to-oakland-due-to-rising-rents/)) The irony is that those rising rents are due in no small part to their acting against their stated mission when it comes to allowing tall buildings in this city. They'd rather sprawl people out into the suburbs and beyond, where they'll bulldoze swaths of nature to build their buildings, and the people living and working there will have much larger carbon footprints.

<comment><USER6> To be livable, a city needs a balance between 3 things:

      - Business (commercial real estate)
      - <USER2>
      - Transportation (streets, busses, trains, flying cars)

The first 2 are easy, since they're very profitable to the city and developers. But taxpayers don't want to pay for transportation, and commuters are willing to tolerate horrible traffic and the resulting poor quality of life.

Does San Francisco have a good balance now? What if we doubled business and housing?

<comment><USER7> SF has plenty of money for transportation. It's just used very ineffectively.

<comment><USER6> Citation needed. :-) Is the money used on the wrong things? Or on the right things, but not efficiently? Many public works projects end up over budget and behind schedule, so I guess that should be factored in.

Where is the money going, and/or where should it be going?

What % of people who work in San Francisco also live there?

<comment><USER8> San Francisco's budget is vastly less efficient than other comparable US cities:

[http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/the-worst-run-big- city-...](http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/the-worst-run-big-city-in-the- us/Content?oid=2175354)

As for people living vs. working in SF, this comment does an excellent job explaining it, with sources:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10875936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10875936)

tl;dr: The increase in population due to daily workers commuting in from outside is vastly smaller than in NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The chart-topping office rents in San Francisco are also a testament to the > city's geographic constraints, crammed as it is into 47 square miles at the > top of a peninsula

It's more of a testament to the city's anti-development attitude. Manhattan has twice the people with half the land area, _on an island_.

<comment><USER10> I don't know what the underlying geography of SF is like, but in case you have ever wondered why Manhattan is only vertically developed in two areas of the island where there are tall skylines (with a lot of low-lying areas in between, i.e. the Village, Chelsea, Chinatown, Little Italy, etc), it is because those are the only two areas on the island where the bedrock can support that type of development. I don't know if this factors into SF development options, but just an FYI.

<comment><USER11> [http://observer.com/2012/01/uncanny-valley-the-real- reason-t...](http://observer.com/2012/01/uncanny-valley-the-real-reason-there- are-no-skyscrapers-in-the-middle-of-manhattan/)

<comment><USER10> This is rather interesting. I took a course many years ago at NYU on the history of the city, and my parent comment was taught to us in the class by none other than the Dean of the actual school. Fascinating.

<comment><USER12> It's an incredibly common urban legend even in the city itself - <USER3> with no basis in reality.

As an example the Metropolitan Life North Building right next to Madison Square Park was originally designed in the 20s to beat the Empire State for height (but sadly, the Depression happened), and that plot of land is firmly on the "soft" ground "unsuitable" for tall skyscrapers.

Not only do we not need the bedrock now, it appears we never needed it - <USER4> the engineers of the early 20th century knew this as well as we do.

<comment><USER13> Yes. And any tall building in SF's Embarcadero stands in defiance of the need for bedrock. A lot of the land there is just old, accidental landfill.

Also, I think, but, I'm not sure, that they built this extremely large, heavy structure right over the bay itself a few years back, something about helping cars get from Oakland to SF and back. I don't know how much bedrock they found underneath the supports for that thing, whatever it's called. Can't seem to remember its name ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a friend whose parents own three houses in SF.

When I asked about the rapidly increasing cost of rent and how it's driving people out, he told me, paraphrasing,

"People don't have a right to live in San Francisco."

Another way of saying that you should only live there if you can afford it.

Needless to say, I'm inclined to believe that NIMBY's cannot be reasoned with.

<comment><USER15> _" People don't have a right to live in San Francisco."_

Which is true, although the flip side is that people shouldn't have the right to prevent others from building new housing. At least not for reasons like "it might cause my property value to stop wildly increasing".

<comment><USER16> I can't speak for everyone, and this is just my personal experience. I grew up in SF, and I haven't seen this sinister quality in people who oppose density. I disagree with them, I'd like to see SF add more density, but my impression is that most of the old timers in SF oppose new development because they are resistant to change and highly suspicious of developers, not because they want to create shortages and spike the value of their property.

In short, at the extreme, the school teacher or SF state professor who was able to support a family and buy a 4 bedroom house in the sunset in 1975 wants the new professor in 2016 to be able to buy a a 4 bedroom house in SF and support a family, and is unhappy that this is no longer possible.

They also tend to believe, rightly or wrongly, that "density" would just mean lots of high end expensive apartments that nobody in the "middle class" can afford. In short (and again, I'm guessing), they are very cynical, perhaps irrationally so, about what development will do.

There are, of course, some pretty horrendous examples of redevelopment projects and so forth in SF. I know, you're already reaching for the keyboard to explain the difference, but you'd be preaching to the choir here. I'm just trying to explain why it's not really a desire to maximize the value of a real estate asset that drives so much of opposition to new housing and development. The whole thing has a very bad reputation in SF.

There is such a thing as YIMBY in San Francisco, often people who have seen their friends and children priced out.

<comment><USER17> If you are stepping on my toes and refuse to step off, I don't care whether you are being evil or irrational, you are still perpetuating an injustice

<comment><USER14> Agreed. Although My friend is a nice guy and his folks are nice people, a lack of empathy invariably forms the basis of passive cruelty. Not empathy as in "let's forgive everyone for everything", but "let me honestly consider your point of view even it may conflict with the way I'm supporting myself". This is, of course, generally impossible for most people, including myself, since it takes a great deal of mental and financial security to weather that kind of introspection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article links to this report[1] by which SF 1-bedroom housing rents are also highest in the U.S. It's an interesting report, citing a median rent of $3,490 for 1-bedroom apartment in SF, but can someone please tell me if this is price per week, per 2 weeks, per month, or per year? In the UK for example rents are often cited per week or per 2 weeks, and where I live per month.

[1] [https://www.zumper.com/blog/2016/01/zumper-national-rent- rep...](https://www.zumper.com/blog/2016/01/zumper-national-rent-report- january-2016/)

<comment><USER19> I think UK is only place where rents are advertised as per week, found it very weird when living there.

<comment><USER20> Rents are listed as per week here in Australia too.

<comment><USER21> As a French citizen, I've always assumed that Oz and US could be culturally close. Both are young countries with a lot of space, "unlimited" resources and a need to manage imigration. After living 3 years in Oz, I've noticed it has a lot of similarities with UK, for example the use of the metric system (or their schizophrenia about it), the per week/per month rents, the orthograph and vocabulary ("aluminium";) and down to the awesome simplicity of their tax forms and tax code. Actually the UK tax code is canonically simple and should be adopted by the whole world ;)

<comment><USER22> > I've noticed it has a lot of similarities with UK, for example the use of > the metric system

I'm not sure why you think this is worth pointing out, considering that Liberia, Myanmar, and the US are the only countries not using it.

<comment><USER23> He was referring to our 'schizophrenic' use of it. It's used differently among generations. Older people use purely imperial, whereas young people use a confusing mixture. For example, I measure long distances in miles, but short distances in meters and centimeters! I think of weights and volumes in a metric way, except when talking about the weight of a person, when I use stone (not pounds, mind you).

I might be an extreme example, but most people use an imperial-metric melange of some kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use to work in the Empire State building. There were stories about from tenants that in the mid 90's the building was pretty much empty and the rents per sq/foot of office space was 75% less then an apartment.

So there are stories about people renting office space to live in. They'd also have a gym membership to use the shower and they'd save a ton of money.

<comment><USER14> Is that still the case in parts of Manhattan?

I would seriously considering doing this.

<comment><USER25> Have you ever noticed how there are fortune tellers occupying prime storefronts all over the city? The places with a little chair behind the window and a thick curtain? I never saw anybody ever go in or out of those places. I asked a prosecutor friend whether these places are fronts for prostitution or drugs. Turns out the fortune teller stores are actually being used as homes for entire families. They cordone off a tiny area for palm- reading and live in rest of the space. It's a really cheap (and super illegal) way for a family to live in Manhattan.

<comment><USER14> Neato. Thanks for the anecdote.

I recall reading from somewhere, probably on HN, that a lot of banks open up storefronts primarily as a means of shifting money around into different instruments, not because they actually need or want people to do business at that banking location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For those that are not familiar with commercial rental quotes, they are stated in units of $/sq ft/year. A good rule of thumb is that you need about 200 sq ft per worker.

So, at $72/ft, your 10-person startup needs to spend $144,000 annually just for office space in SF.

<comment><USER27> That's price for a single developer, not that bad.

<comment><USER28> um, 10% overhead "not that bad" ?

<comment><USER29> For a small startup, an extra dev or 1-2mo extra runway has way more leverage. We went with downtown Oakland: cut commute east bay folks, quickly BART accessible for SF ones, and joys of a good downtown like nice restaurant s & cafes. When growing, we unanimously decided to stay rather than go to SF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> For a 1-bedroom in SF, won't it be cheaper to live in a hotel, apartment hotel or an Airbnb?

<comment><USER31> Even if that's true, so you really want to move (potentially) every month? And actually live in a hostel for an entire year? There's more to life than money

<comment><USER32> I've considered this carefully. I don't believe that you save money this way necessarily, but it certainly provides a different experience. This article covers the ups and downs better than I ever could.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/realestate/our-year-of- liv...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/realestate/our-year-of-living- airbnb.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good. Maybe we'll get "silicon valleys" everywhere else as well when situation becomes completely untenable.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why isn't office disrupted by transferring to remote work? You have these companies that make tools like 'slack', 'asana', 'dropbox' etc. which help you work remotely and all of them require their employees to be at the office in the most expensive location in the US. Programming/customer_support/sales/design/marketing jobs can all be done from anywhere. What is stopping these startups from going remote?

<comment><USER35> Because it isn't true. Remote work is fine one or two days a week but nothing beats the bandwidth of a dozen engineers in a room with a whiteboard when it comes to tackling hard problems.

If you're just making cookie-cutter intranets or shopping carts or something sure, go 100% remote, but that is not what Silicon Valley is _for_.

<comment><USER36> Gaius,

Studies are mixed on the pros/cons of office vs remote. For example a Stanford study showed productivity increased 9 to 13% for remote office workers. Some have shown that collaboration can increase as well as communication was more intentional (I don't remember the study offhand).

Anyways, point is it's not all or nothing and the data is still out on effectiveness and efficiency (I'd think it also depends on the nature of the work etc)

<comment><USER37> Totally depends on the person IMO... We have one day a week we work from home... I find myself producing more that day than the rest combined.

Others on the team function differently

<comment><USER38> And on the role.

Compare:

1\. A role which requires very little communication with the rest of team and quite a lot of long, uninterrupted concentration.

E.g. a developer working a long time on some internally intricate sub-system which has well-defined interfaces to the rest of the system.

2\. E.g. a UX designer (or perhaps a product manager) who needs to talk to many people, whose projects shift quickly, whose work affects many other people's work, etc.

<comment><USER39> UX design of customer facing systems would actually benefit most from remote work. The UX designer should create a company wide blog (or similar) showing off the current iteration of the design, along with reasons why each design element is included.

This is far better than simply talking to many people 1 to 1. It creates a written history indicating why each design element was chosen. It allows stakeholders to understand the requirements behind a particularly strange UX choice and allows them to give suggestions for better UX in a way that takes those requirements into account. Iteration can be faster as comments can be taken from all sides at the same time instead of having to seek people out and set up meetings.

I only see positives for a UX designer given the nature of their work is highly visual, functional and is cross-organizational. In fact, I think any company NOT doing UX design this way is probably being inefficient?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Having lived in both, I can tell you that Manhattan is much nicer, cleaner, and safer, with more resources, better food, and better culture. Violent Crime rate is 2.5x times higher in San Francisco. (Ask Wolfram Alpha)</comment>


Medications should be prescribed by doctors, not the president' - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01506-2 <comment><AUTHOR> "Brazil's researchers have a battle on their hands. The country has the world's third-highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, with more than 300,000 infections and 20,000 deaths. Scientists there have to fight not only the coronavirus, but also the government's anti-science stance."</comment>


An 84-year-old Japanese app developer - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Meet-the-84-year-old-Japanese-app-developer-who-inspired-Tim-Cook2 <comment><USER2> Some quotes I found interesting regarding the usage of tech by elderly people:

> I explained my app. "Since senior citizens are not good at swiping," I said, > "I made it possible for them to play by tapping."

> I think AI speakers are helpful to the elderly. Once the initial setup is > complete, we can use them even if we become bedridden.

> What we need are features that support people from the AI side. One example > would be a function that informs users that evacuation instructions have > been issued due to heavy rain. Or when you feel a pain in your chest, a > function that dials 119 (Japan's emergency number) would be helpful.

<comment><USER3> > I explained my app. "Since senior citizens are not good at swiping," I said, > "I made it possible for them to play by tapping."

I have a similar experience. A few years ago I implemented a traditional Chinese dominoes game on Android for my grandma. (To date she still plays the game every night for two hours.) When I let her tested the game, the first thing I observed was that she was poor at dragging the dominoes to the table. So, I quickly changed dragging to tapping. (Tap a dominoe once to choose it and tap the table once to play it. To cancel a wrong choice, tap the chosen dominoe again.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been programming for 45 years and started at age 15, the key to make it fun, forever, is just work on coding projects you love doing. Of course, you have to be in a situation that enables you to do that, but if you are lucky enough to be there, then I can see someone coding for another 20 years or most of your life.

<comment><USER5> How do you solve the problem where you love coding but not the problems you have to solve at work?

Where I live, every place is the same, Jira sweatshop mentality, just put out a fire or solve as many stories as quickly as possible to maintain velocity, with whatever tools someone higher than you imposed because it was convenient at the time.

When I come home I'm done with coding for the day and I have no time to code stuff I like as I'm investing it in taking care of myself physically and socially to counteract the negative effects of being on a chair at work in front of a monitor with headphones on 8 hours a day.

<comment><USER6> > Every place is the same

this is false.

look into smaller businesses who only need 1-5 coders. you will get paid well, do interesting stuff and have a lot of say in your stack and tools. usually these companies do not produce software as their deliverable but need good internal software.

e.g. i work for < 50M/yr e-commerce company that manufactures in the DIY/home remodeling industry. i report directly to the CEO, code our full stack and admin our VPS linode server. we have internal voip systems that get integrated, physical production hardware (scales, scanners, etc), inventory tracking, fulfillment, amazon integration and a whole lot more. i get to touch it all.

<comment><USER5> Where I live(Germany), the business who only need 2 developers already have them. All the job ads are only from big/medium companies and it's not worth working for the medium sized ones as you have all the downside of the big corps with none of the perks.

<comment><USER7> I agree, actually. It's so hard to find a good job that doesn't pay like crap in Germany (I used to live in Cologne and Berlin). Try contracting with UK companies if you can find a remote gig, my QoL went significantly up after I stopped working with German companies.

<comment><USER8> define "pay like crap". My experience in Berlin is different, depending on your experience 60-90K EUR is possible. Combined with the relatively low cost of living in Berlin, you can live comfortably. I don't see London paying significantly more, while being a lot more expensive.

<comment><USER7> That's exactly what I meant by that. I've been in a few companies and I don't think the compensation structure for SWEs is fair for most of the German market. I do agree that Berlin is still fairly cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really wish I'll be like that at old age. I'm now in my forties, and since the age of 12, have had great fun programming. It's now my job, but I hope it doesn't get ruined. Regularly I see people here that have become jaded, and no longer derive pleasure from coding. This lady really inspires me and makes me wish my future contains loads of interesting programming problems to solve.

<comment><USER10> The non jaded are working and not wasting time whining on HN :D

Or they don't want to waste their energy arguing with an angry internet random.

<comment><USER9> Very good point, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is awesome, and it will become more prevalent as the generations that grew up with computers start to get older. Your body may get weaker but you can at least stave off the same happening to your mind by doing brain stuff. And there's a childlike satisfaction to coding that I reckon everyone enjoys, a new challenge whenever you do it.

I certainly hope to still be able to do it in my old age.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Wakamiya also teaches "Excel art," which uses the spreadsheet software to > create designs.

I've worked at a couple of Japanese companies in Tokyo and am truly amazed at what they can do with Excel. Most recently, I had a co-worker create UI mockups in excel. It wasn't Sketch / Figma level of design -- but it was pretty effective at communicating what he needed.

On the other hand, some things are just down right atrocious like internal company pages with everyone's name and picture.

</comment><comment><USER13> We really need to address the rampant ageism problem in the software industry. I don't know what it will take but I see it as big of a problem as diversity & inclusion issues that impact women and minorities.

<comment><USER14> We can't even solve it on Hacker News! Many threads complain about old people taking up resources that younger people want. I've even been "Ok, Boomered" several times here. I'm 57.

<comment><USER15> Did the HN moderators accept that?

<comment><USER16> We don't allow that kind of thing, but we also don't see everything that gets posted here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> (Have not read the article) IMO age is not a factor on internet</comment>


Why App Developers Are Fed Up with SDKs - <AUTHOR> http://arc.applause.com/2015/08/25/developer-sdk-software-bloat/

<comment><USER2> I think the underlying reason is that it's really hard to evaluate if an SDK is useful. The promises of the documentation aren't always reflected in the reality of the implementation, and often only hard experience can reveal the truth.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Screw this $#!%"...

So, I heard this from several app and game developers at a mini-conference in Boston last week. But the language was a bit more ... colorful.</comment>


To Cohort or not to Cohort Your Mobile App Users? (That is the question...) - <AUTHOR> http://apsalar.com/blog/2011/11/to-cohort-or-not-to-cohort-your-mobile-app-users/

<comment><USER2> Why would you use colour coding or tabular data to show retention rates? Why not a line graph? Maybe 3D?

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks good. Have any devs tested these guys vs Flurry vs Google Analytics?

<comment><USER4> I am not a dev and we are investors in Apsalar so I am already biased, but our reference calls with Devs made us comfortable investing as they had tested Apsalar's product vs others and gave many compelling reasons why they were choosing the Apsalar platform. I think this Quora post does a great job of comparing mobile analytics platforms for iOS:

[http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-Mobile-Analytics- servi...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-Mobile-Analytics-service-for- iOS-apps-and-why?q=best+mobile+analytics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some of the best cohort visualizations I have seen from a mobile analytics platform provider. Thanks for the info, nice job.

</comment><comment><USER6> good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> great read.

</comment><comment><USER8> it's a good one. thanks for sharing

</comment><comment><USER9> Finally, someone made sense of this stuff. So important to know.</comment>