Ask HN: What should my CV/Resumé look like? - <AUTHOR>

I'm on my penultimate semester studying CS, currently applying for graduate schemes. Had 2 rejections straight away. I thought my cv was good, but those "straight off the bat" rejections have made me very conscious about it.
What is expected out of CS Graduates these days and what should I put on my CV/Resumé?
Thanks in advance for your help. <comment><USER3> Things that I've found have worked well for me:

* Respect the time of the person reading your CV. Make it trivially easy for them to find the information they want, quickly. Use a clean structure, clear sections and sub-sections, and consistent formatting. Two pages absolute maximum.

* Tailor your CV to the specific job that you're applying for. For example, if you're applying for a web development job then put your web development experience at the top.

* Pay attention to detail. Be consistent in your use of punctuation and capitalisation. Ensure that there are no spelling errors.

* Use LaTeX (there are some great CV templates available) and send your CV in PDF. Microsoft Word documents invariably look messy when you open them in Word. It's much better to send the "final" output.

* Emphasise specific skill areas (e.g. software development, system administration, domain-specific knowledge) and list my skills in each area. This makes it easy for the reader to immediately identify what I can do, they don't have to read through descriptions of my previous jobs.

* Be concise and straight to the point. Don't use personal pronouns. Keep descriptions compact.

* In the cover letter list three specific ways in which you can contribute specifically to the company to the company you are applying to. Show, exactly, how your profile matches key points in the job description. Don't talk about how great you are or what you want from them.

The goal of the cover letter/email is to get people to read your CV. The goal of the CV is to get an interview. The goal of the interview is to check you're a good fit for the job and get the job if you are. Therefore, your CV should encourage the reader to want to interview you. Don't bore them with exhaustive descriptions of what you have done. Less is more. Instead, focus on the highlights and entice them to invite you to interview to find out more.

Finally, if you do get rejected, always politely ask why. You won't always get an answer, but the answers you do get are often enlightening, often not what you expect, and will help you immensely with future applications.

<comment><USER4> If you want to use a LaTeX template, this might be helpful: [http://www.sharelatex.com/](http://www.sharelatex.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Generally at the CS graduate level most rejections are because your CV doesn't stand out from the pile.

What makes your CV good ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that I have a fairly good amount of diversified experience, for an undergraduate. I don't want to make this about me in particular, I'd like a more general answer. But I get what you mean I definitely need to make it stand out. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Okay, how I'd do it.

The biggest thing, IME, that people sending in CVs get wrong is that they have a misconception of how long someone's going to spend looking at it. A recruiter or manager is going to get hundreds of the damn things, they're only going to look at your CV for 10-15 seconds. You've got to make it easy for them to pick out the right things as fast as possible. People aren't going to fight through something that's hard to read or that uses a lot of marketing.

The way I think of it is that your resume is for concisely listing your accomplishments in a structured format. One page. Only. Chances are no-one's gonna read more than that.

Top of the page - centred, bold: Your name.

Address, mobile, email - one line, centred, not bold - may need to put it in a smaller font size, don't go beneath 10. (Make sure you've got a professional voicemail message.)

Underneath that, what you've done. Stick things in reverse chronological order. Give each role the title of the job, the date it started with, a prose paragraph of responsibilities, bullet-pointed accomplishments. Keep your bullet points on one line. Treat your education like a job. If it's the most recent thing you've done, list your university stuff first.

Company I'd do it like this: Oct 2007 - Present, Job Role, Company Name.

Uni I'd do it like this: BSC Computer Science, University of Whatever, Oct 2007 - <USER2>

Underline and bold the roles so that people can see just from casting their eye over it what you've done. Only underline and bold the roles like this - gives people something consistent. If you've got unpaid work, list it the same as any other role.

For the responsibilities paragraph, for example for uni, you'd be saying what you studied, that sort of thing.

(If you've been working for a couple of years, then your university should just be a line at the base of the CV. Remember to track your metrics as move on out into the working world by the way - if you can hang a number off of something that's often good. If you worked in a bar how many customers did you do a night? Numbers make things more concrete.)

For achievement bullet-points you want what you achieved (numbers again - preferably) and how you did it. Concisely. Don't worry if your accomplishments or achievements are small - list them anyway. You're not being compared to people who are working for five years. Don't be afraid to say something like you've worked in a bar, some work is better than no work at all. If you've been given more responsibilities, mention them! No matter how small. It shows good character.

Try to stay away from just listing responsibilities here - just don't, please don't, put them as bullet-points - that makes you look like you've just done what you had to. If you've done a job poorly, you won't have achievements to list and that's what it looks like - like you're trying to pass off responsibilities as achievements because you've not done anything.

Don't include your interests. The odds of connecting with a recruiter are low, or it's something that everyone's done and thus doesn't yield an advantage. Space is limited, just don't do it.

#

I wouldn't worry too much about just losing one or two of your first applications, by the way. The nature of this game is that you can get a lot of rejections before someone bites.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good points made. I agree with most of them, one thing I find too is that everyone has different opinions about each section and how the points should be laid out, which is absolutely fine. But it does sort of makes me insecure about which way is truly "right" (guess there's no right or wrong).

Thanks for your answer and effort, really appreciate that you'd take your time to do something like that. :)</comment></comment>


Go 1.6 Release Candidate 1 is released - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/4iqU__h7skQ <comment><USER2> I've been testing out Go for a while now and outside of deployment, the CPU performance and GC tuning that has come with new versions has been a really, really great perk over time.

No code change, no breakage, just constant free performance.

<comment><USER3> We can see the way Go solves this problem without breaking your code, a way not taken these days where not so well designed solutions break when we have to upgrade. Python 2 and python 3, angular 1 and angular 2. I guess this is the difference between a pet project gone wild and a well thought and well designed programming language designed to make the process of building applications faster and better!

<comment><USER4> You are conflating major and minor versions of software. Python 2 & 3 and Angular 1 & 2 are major versions that have forward declared breaking changes. If/When Go 2 is released, it will contain language breaking changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting thing about this release is baked in support for Http/2.

On the client side, http/2 is awesome for services like spiders that support it because the memory usage and performance is a lot better.

And you don't even have to do anything to take advantage other than upgrade to go 1.6

<comment><USER6> >> And you don't even have to do anything to take advantage other than upgrade to go 1.6

I know, right! That's what's sick. Even upgrading to the latest version of go is easy: "To remove an existing Go installation from your system delete the go directory. This is usually /usr/local/go." Then install the latest...

<comment><USER7> gvm is also worthwhile, particularly on ubuntu, and particularly if you want to test out the RC without fully committing to it. [https://github.com/moovweb/gvm](https://github.com/moovweb/gvm)

<comment><USER8> if you want 20,000 lines of shell script to manage one of the simplest to install languages out there, sure. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome! Thanks, Go Team! If you're interested in meeting Go devs in your area next month find a 1.6 release party near you: [https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Go-1.6-release- party](https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Go-1.6-release-party).

Unofficial theme song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNat6iJB5So](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNat6iJB5So)

</comment><comment><USER9> > As always, if one goroutine is writing to a map, no other goroutine should > be reading or writing the map concurrently.

What if you are writing to a value in the map? Surely that is safe to do concurrently with other processes reading at least.

<comment><USER10> >> As always, if one goroutine is writing to a map, no other goroutine should be reading or writing the map concurrently.

> What if you are writing to a value in the map? Surely that is safe to do > concurrently with other processes reading at least.

Nope. You need to protect your state by communicating with channels or using a lock.

<comment><USER9> > You need to protect your state by communicating with channels or using a > lock.

But what are you protecting? Setting a value will not cause a map rebalance, and so long as you are just setting a new value (not incrementing or like) it should be an atomic operation. Locking is really slow, and if you can find safe ways to avoid it, it can be a good thing.

<comment><USER11> Another thread could 1) write to the same key. 2) cause a table expansion (or a shrink) which rehashes the whole table (in most implementations). Either case will cause a difficult to diagnose bug. Use a lock or communicate with channels instead. There may be other subtle things which can get corrupted under concurrent use. The map type in Go has never been implemented in a thread safe fashion so if you try and use it as such you will be in for a bad time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Lero – Open group chat - jampa-uchoa http://www.lerochat.com <comment> jampa-uchoa Come to say hello on Hacker news chat: [http://lerochat.com/join/hacker- news](http://lerochat.com/join/hacker-news)

Any feedback, questions... You can post on feedback channel or here, I would love to hear it!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Chat? Just simple chat? Why is this better than IRC, Slack etc?

<comment> jampa-uchoa It's way easier to connect and talk, with a better interface and profiles, there is inline image and video support, emoji support, responsive design for mobile...

IRC is dying and people are switching to Slack, but Slack is not here to replace IRC, is annoying to enter a separate login and email for each group, and it's more complicated to do simple things, they said they have no intention to satisfy that audience[1].

[1][http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly- un...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/24/slack-is-quietly- unintentionally-killing-irc/)

>"it's great that people are putting Slack to good use" but unfortunately "these communities are not something we have the capacity to support given the growth in our existing business."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you wish you could leave comments on Job Posts? - <AUTHOR> Would you like to be able to ask questions about a job post? If yes, would you prefer them to be public or private? <comment><USER2> Yeah!</comment>


Show HN: Local Mindful Eating Guide - <AUTHOR> https://eatups.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> What steps on the way of making better food choices? What does "good food choices" mean to you? What does "mindful eating" mean to you? I'd love to hear what you think :)</comment>


A viable pathway for hydrogen as fuel - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/2/16/16926950/hydrogen-fuel-technology-economy-hytech-storage <comment><USER2> Something is wrong with his numbers.

 _" Johnson boasts that his electrolyzer can produce hydrogen at about three or four times the rate of electrolyzers with similar footprints, using about a third the electrical current. That represents a stepwise drop in costs._"

Three or four times? Current efficiencies are 65-70% for larger plants.[1] There's a theoretical maximum here; it takes a known amount of energy to break down water into oxygen and hydrogen. This isn't magic or perpetual motion. Electrolysis is energetically uphill. You can get most of the energy back recombining oxygen and hydrogen in a fuel cell or by combustion.

The "with similar footprints" is very suspicious. His demo unit is small. Little electrolyzers are known to be inefficient. Industrial units are bigger and more efficient.

As an emissions control measure, it might work out.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Industri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water#Industrial_output)

<comment><USER3> Considering the smaller footprints are less efficient, then perhaps that makes room for a 3-4 fold improvement. Whether that's true is another issue, but at least it appears somewhat consistent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think using it as a safe battery is a neat idea. I understand there are significant losses as compared to li-ion batteries, but the fact that the system has a longer lifespan is really interesting.

It's a way to preserve energy during surplus. As a gardener I'm constantly balancing inputs and outputs. A huge tomato harvest eaten raw off the vine is the most efficient use.

But during a huge glut, I cannot eat the tomatoes fast enough so I start freezing tomatoes and produce sauce.

I trade energy, and human time and labor to extend the shelf life of the tomato.

In this sense, from my naive perspective, A hydride fluid battery if cheap enough to build/install would be a great way to store surplus energy from solar / wind / etc.

<comment><USER5> Love the tomato analogy - exactly why you need to convert energy, even with the efficiency loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article names it, but then does not dive deeper into it: the hydrogen chain has huge energy losses. First, electrolysis unfortunately has not a high efficiency - I have read numbers around 70%, but then the compression of the produced hydrogen takes a lot of energy, as compressing gases heats them up. Then the hydrogen has to be transported and stored, requiring further energy. Finally, you have to use the hydrogen, there the efficiency varies between 60% (fuel cell) or as proposed in the article with a combustion engine as low as 30%.

At the same time, there are less and less applications which cannot be powered by electricity directly, having only a fraction of losses compared to the equivalent hydrogen chain. So as long we do not have more than 100% reneweable electricity generation, we should be very concerned about the efficiency of our energy usage.

<comment><USER7> How does that compare to using batteries? Batteries are re-usable of course, but also degrade over time and need to be replaced.

<comment><USER8> It mentions this in the article Li-ion go have a life cycle of roughly 1,000 recharges whereas these have 10,000.

<comment><USER9> Depends on the li-ion. There are chemistries out there right now that are good for 20,000 cycles like LTO. And a substantial amount of li-ion research is extending cycle life.

It doesn't matter how good hydrogen becomes. Battery tech will continue to improve faster than hydrogen tech. H2 will never catch up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a puff piece (who's his PR firm? I want to talk to them!)

Those interested in the topic should acquaint themselves with the policy context and the state-of-the-art.

[1] [https://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets- hydr...](https://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/doe-technical-targets-hydrogen- production-electrolysis)

[2] [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60528.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60528.pdf)

The DOE goal for cost of distributed / dispensed hydrogen is $4/kgH2. Cost of centralized production is estimated at half that even with electrolysis. I find it suspicious that there aren't any specific production cost estimates cited; just vague comparisons to unspecified existing technologies.

Also, methane is a far better source of hydrogen than water (less energy required to break down the molecule for the yield of twice as much hydrogen). Steam-methane reforming (95% of industrial hydrogen production) gets you hydrogen from both methane and water, but is a huge CO2 emitter (9-10 kgCO2/kgH2).

I'm personally a big proponent of thermal decomposition of methane [3]. Theoretical energy consumption is only 1.29 kWh/kgH2. if you can use a non- emitting source of energy, there's no CO2 emission. Carbon falls out as a solid and capture and sequestration is free. If you can make a valuable carbon (e.g. graphene) along the way, then you're set and there's no way electrolysis will ever be competitive.

[3] [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy02osti/31351.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy02osti/31351.pdf)

<comment><USER11> One thing about methane, though, is that it's a nonrenewable fuel. Unless you're talking about it as a storage intermediary (for example, if it's synthesized from CO2 and H2O using renewable energy).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd really (honestly) like for all this to be true, but the innovations here are that Johnson figured out some secret sauce in the electrolyzer's electrocatalyzer mix, and some more secret sauce in the fuel cell's hydrides. It's possible this happened, but I'm pretty skeptical.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most counterarguments related to Hydrogen refer to the poor efficiency of converting (electric) energy to Hydrogen and back.

True, directly using that electric energy from wind or solar is definitely the best option.

However, that is not always possible, since there is no place to consume, transport or store that electric energy.

Furthermore, scrapping all ICE vehicles for BEVs is most likely the end goal. But replacing the worldwide fleet of vehicles will take decades.

HyTech seems to be on to something for these two scenarios.

If for instance you can capture some of the excess solar and wind energy in a metal hydride for some hours, weeks, or even months, you will on a larger scale reduce the load of the electric grid.

And if some of that Hydrogen can be burnt instead of Diesel, the car or truck in your driveway is both cleaner and less dependant on fossil fuels.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I really don't understand why the debate on H2 is so focused on electrolysis. Even today, 95% of all hydrogen is produced not by electrolysis, but from natural gas through steam methane reforming (SMR).

SMRs can be easily scaled up to meet all H2 demand, and they are easily fitted with carbon capture technology (since it's a single large emission point). Then you have zero-emission H2 in quantities as large as oil and gas today.

I'm entirely convinced it will be the future, and that we'll never be able to scale pure BEVs beyond 10-15% of all cars in any large country, simply due to electricity production and distribution constraints.

<comment><USER13> The problem with nifty solutions to removing carbon from raw fuels resulting in carbon free hydrogen, is the best engineering solution to the remainder of the task list of transport, store, and burn the resulting carbon-free hydrogen, is to modify the hydrogen by synthesize up some carbon containing hydrocarbons to make some delicious hyper optimized liquid fuels, which coincidentally we have massive infrastructure to use.

Not as snarky as might sound. Given infinite fusion energy via the real thing or solar panels, truly pure synthetic fuel opens up some interesting ideas WRT catalysts and efficient burn designs to squeek out another percent or two of performance. Inherently zero (not low, but ZERO) sulfur diesel is interesting, for example. And no one says the carbon thats added has to come from underground; go harvest some trees that sucked the carbon right out of the air, then when you put it back in the air after a couple months of storage, nothing bad happened.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > the best engineering solution to the remainder of the task list of > transport, store, and burn the resulting carbon-free hydrogen, is to modify > the hydrogen by synthesize up some carbon containing hydrocarbons

If that's the case, it's equally true for H2 from renewables, no?

And I don't think it's true. LPG vehicles today are common enough, and they've solved very similar transport and distribution problems.

<comment><USER14> Not really. Hydrocarbons are much easier to store and handle. Cars may not need it so much, but as a jet fuel, kerosene is much easier than hydrogen.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Easier, sure. But Tupolev built and flew 100 flights with the Tu-155, a cryogenic H2 fueled narrow-body airliner, in the 1980s. So it's very far from impossible, it's just a matter of time IMO. Currently aviation is pushing biofuels to kick the can down the road, but they can't do that forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hydrogen does have a lot of problems which other commenters here point out.

But if HyTech is to be believed, some of these problems are solved. Probably their most significant claim, is hydride storage at ordinary temperature / pressure with safe, practical, cost effectiveness in recovering that stored energy.

<comment><USER16> HyTech doesn't solve the main problem with hydrogen - that there isn't any available as fuel, and it takes more energy to extract the hydrogen than you get back from burning it or even using it in a fuel cell.

The idea of injecting small amounts of hydrogen into a combustion engine to improve fuel economy is not new, but congrats if they can bring that concept to market. That would be a win, but is not the same as hydrogen as a primary fuel.

<comment><USER14> It takes more energy to charge a battery than can be had back discharging it.

Does it make the battery in your mobile phone useless?

<comment><USER17> No one cares about the efficiency of the tiny battery in your phone. But if charging and discharging a Tesla used twice as much energy as burning gasoline directly then people would probably care.

At some level of inefficiency, an energy solution can indeed become useless at scale.

<comment><USER18> That depends though on a bunch of factors including base price of electricity, renewable potential and how easily hydrogen can be shipped.

There are a few developed countries I can think of that have vast renewable capacity but the distances between the optimum location for renewables make it impractical at present.

Also modern nuclear plants are an option if you want to produce vast amounts of electricity with a smaller carbon footprint than coal/gas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The hydrogen fuel pathway has already been solved, and much more elegantly.

Hydrogen produced by direct, catalytic hydrolysis from sunlight, in water, is taken up by microbes in the water that absorb CO2 and excrete hydrocarbons -- oil -- that floats to the surface, and is directly usable in existing fuel tanks and engines, no further processing needed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hydrogen has hard risks, and high costs. Density. Corrosion. Tunneling/leaking. A new trillion-dollar distribution infrastructure to replace the fluid-version we use for petrol.

What about methanol? We can convert hydrogen to hydrocarbon. Liquid is dense, much less dangerous, less acidic, less leaky, and our current trillion-dollar infrastructure already uses it as a substantial additive.

<comment><USER17> Methanol isn't a common additive is it? Most (all?) gasoline in the US has ethanol added.

<comment><USER21> Methanol is commonly sold as "octane booster". It's definitely around.

<comment><USER17> Is it in common use as such? Meaning 92 octane is 88 buffered with methanol? If it's just in those little octane booster bottles, I would not consider that a "substantial additive" in the context of the trillion dollar petroleum industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hydrogen can't be a fuel until we find a load of it underground. Until then we spend more energy making it, so it's only as good as a battery.

<comment><USER6> And due to the inefficiency of the components, it is a very bad battery. That is the main problem, as attractive it would be to produce hydrogen via solar.

<comment><USER23> But wait, a "tall, rangy, blond, inveterate maker and builder whose eyes light up when he talks engineering" claims he's solved all efficiency and and storage problems with super-secret technology. Incidentally, he's also the CEO of the company and probably paying for the piece:

>To date, most hydride fluids have been less energy dense than compressed hydrogen, and far short of fossil fuels. They weigh too much for the energy they provide. Johnson thinks he's cracked both problems. He won't reveal the details of the hydrides involved, but he's got the power-to-weight ratio high enough to beat lithium-ion batteries (which are very heavy) and the hydride bond weak enough that it can be broken using only the redirected waste heat from the engine (no added heat or pressure required).

<comment><USER24> I'm curious about his early career in video compression. I'm thinking of a friend whose first job was working with a video compression startup whose secret algorithm was to hide ethernet cables inside the power cord.

<comment><USER25> Did your friend work for Zekko, by any chance?

[https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/1999/03/08/st...](https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/1999/03/08/story1.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there anything of substance here or did Mr Johnson pay Vox a ton of money to run a fluff piece?</comment>


How can I become the best programmer in my field? - <AUTHOR> A naive question, I know. And yet, how would I become one of the foremost expert programmers in my field? <comment><USER2> This is a relatively common question for early-career developers. It is not a question which is formed well enough to give you a specific answer.

Some ways which might refine one's thinking on goals:

What does it mean to be the "best"? Is it synonymous with foremost? Is that your _real_ terminal goal, mastery for its own sake, or are you motivated by another goal (e.g. social acclaim by peers or easy employability) which have easier ladders to climb or levers to pull than technical mastery.

What is your field? From a marketing/sales perspective, the easiest way to be the best X in your field is to constrain the set of people competing with you by applying multiple independent low-pass filters to your definition of a field.

For example, if you're in the top 50% of programmers you know, but you have no other information, you're astoundingly unlikely to be the best programmer in e.g. compilers. You have a surprisingly good shot if you attempt to be the best bilingual Japanese/English programmer working in fintech frontends, a field which is commercially relevant to many companies' interest and probably has four people in it. (I do not think my estimation is off here by an order of magnitude or more.)

Non-specific advice on getting better at things: Work with people who are good at the things you want to get better at. Aggressively optimize for skills growth. Write about what you learn; use that to expose yourself to opportunities to work with people who are better than you at them.

<comment><USER3> > attempt to be the best bilingual Japanese/English programmer working in > fintech frontends

Except you'll be competing with patio11 so watch out.. haha. Nice seeing your comment here and want to echo about the writing what you learn part. This will help refine your ideas too. It also puts you on the map and you will start to build up a portfolio of sorts. This is great advice.

<comment><USER2> The hypothetical person taking this advice has nothing whatsoever to worry about from me competing for their job, as anyone with the misfortune of having read my frontend code can readily attest to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rather than technical skill in isolation, I'd encourage you pursue work that has the potential to be high impact. Many of the "best" programmers are simply very good programmers who have worked on problems that matter.

The benefit of this approach is that it doesn't require chasing some nebulous goal. Instead you just have to pursue unsolved problems.

A prime example of this is Kenneth Reitz, who made Requests for Python. Yes, it's good engineering, but even more so, he applied solid engineering principles to an undersolved problem. It's now been downloaded hundreds of millions of people and saved countless collective hours.

</comment><comment><USER5> Disclaimer: I'm not sure how one would even measure this, as intelligence, skill, and aptitude are all highly dependent on situations and context. With that said..

The formula is going to be the same for most: Work your ass off and be tenacious like a pitbull, never let go or give up until you've dug all the way down and achieved what you set out to do. Then you'll have a shot at being the best there is, ever was, and ever will be :D

It takes huge dedication and commitment just to reach even the top 1%, .1%, or .01%.

</comment><comment><USER6> Practice Practice Practice.

Start with easier problems, go towards tougher problems then shift to multi- domain projects that are complex.

See an interesting solution to a difficult problem, solve it again on your own, then compare it to the approach used originally.

Being an expert programmer in a field, is actually being a good problem solver with a programming language.

</comment><comment><USER7> Begin by knowing which questions to ask. Especially on HN.</comment>


Google's Chrome OS will soon be able to run all Android apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/19/googles-chrome-os-will-soon-be-able-to-run-all-android-apps/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully we'll see a lot more ARM-based (and why not, AMD-based) Chromebooks as well going forward. No need for an Intel monopoly in the architecture agnostic Chrome OS world, so hopefully Google and its partners won't encourage it either (as they have so far).

Cortex A72/Snapdragon 820 have Core M-level performance. If Core M is good enough for a $400 Chromebook, then those are also good for a $300 touch- enabled Chromebook. AMD's Zen would also bring interesting competition with quad-core versions for $500 Chromebooks.</comment>


A Click-Bait Experiment, and the Navel-Gazing Problem Threatening to Ruin Medium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/a-click-bait-experiment-and-the-navel-gazing-that-threatens-to-ruin-medium-5225f409c577 <comment><USER2> I think the author here is missing the forest for the trees so to speak. The last line in particular was powerful, but probably not for the reasons he intended.

>Otherwise we're just pissing words into the wind. This accurately sums up the whole of internet blogging. Especially in this age of content aggregators, fewer and fewer users are subscribing to an individual author or even an individual hosting service (hell I can't think of the last medium article read that wasn't on either HN or reddit). At that level, it's less surprising that the distributed community that will link to 10 life hacks from Musk is bigger than the community linking to heartfelt anecdotes on Syria.

Given this, I think it's disingenuous to speak of any given hosting service being ruined by the fact that users have questionable tastes. Unless, of course, you want to imply more authors will mistag and mistitle their pieces for views and drive these users away.</comment>


Kerbal Space Program 2 release disrupted by corporate strife - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/kerbal-space-program-2-release-disrupted-by-corporate-strife <comment><USER2> It looks like Take-Two studios didn't want to pay the the premium of having another studio do the work, so they switched to recruiting the employees directly instead. And it worked.

> The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to > keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to > the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of > Star Theory's development staff to make that happen. "We are offering a > compensation package that includes a cash sign-on bonus, an excellent > salary, bonus eligibility and other benefits," Cook wrote.

I won't go so far as to condone Take-Two's actions, but I don't see this entirely as a negative for the employees involved if (and it's a big if) Take- Two chose to pay the employees extra compensation and bonuses instead of giving the money to a middleman.

As someone who went through an acqui-hire only to see our founders walk away with millions while the employees' salaries remained unchanged, I wouldn't be opposed companies directing those acqui-hire funds to hiring bonuses given directly to the employees.

<comment><USER3> > As someone who went through an acqui-hire only to see our founders walk away > with millions while the employees' salaries remained unchanged

I have always understood acqui-hire as "Big company sees a team of talented devs with good cost structure (aka: manageable salaries) so they pay a one time flat fee to get that team working on their problems"

At no point have I ever expected developers salaries to change during an aqui- hire. They might get a boost _after_ the aqui-hire if they have trouble retaining the devs for whatever reason. But usually the whole point of an aqui hire is the relative low salaries of the employees compared to their performance.

<comment><USER4> > compared to their performance

That one part is key. Acqui-hires are justified because the teams display high performance, not low cost. If the truth is that they happen for the second reason, expect a lot of fighting back against it once the word gets out.

<comment><USER5> > _the teams display high performance, not low cost_

Performance is relative to cost; you can't have one without the other. Trying to spin it as being only about performance is an attempt to deceive the labor.

<comment><USER4> If it helps, add "abnormally" before "low" and "high".

As of now, I don't have any certainty that there is any mass deceiving going on. Creating a team with very high performance is not easy, and it makes sense to reward it. But if there is deceiving, it is of one of the worst possible kinds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The LinkedIn message went on to say Take-Two was setting up a new studio to > keep working on the same game Star Theory had been developing, a sequel to > the cult classic Kerbal Space Program. Take-Two was looking to hire all of > Star Theory's development staff to make that happen.

I'm amazed that the contract Star Theory had with Take-Two didn't have a clause prohibiting Take-Two from poaching employees like this.

Edit: A more general question: If I hire a consultancy company to build something for me, would I normally be able to directly hire the employees who did the work? That sounds like the worst possible outcome for a consultancy, so surely contracts prohibit it!?

Edit 2: Lots of people responding that anti-competes are always bad, and I don't disagree, but this feels slightly different.

How about:

Is it ethical for a company to deliberately cause you to be made redundant so they can hire you? (Emailing all employees of a company make it fairly clear it was planned)

<comment><USER7> > I'm amazed that the contract Star Theory had with Take-Two didn't have a > clause prohibiting Take-Two from poaching employees like this.

Please don't use the word "poached" to describe getting employees to voluntarily join your company by offering better compensation. Unlike animal poaching, employee poaching is actually good for the employees being poached. In the name of preventing "poaching" many Silicon Valley companies in the past engaged in an illegal scheme to fix employee wages.

<comment><USER8> I don't think people are interpreting the term "poached" as literally as you are. Losing an employee to a competitor is bad for a company, especially bad for a small company, hence the negative connotation.

<comment><USER9> "Poaching" is terminology used by recruiters/executives precisely to control the narrative, and justify the kind of employee-hostile decisions that OP is referring to.

It makes sense to reconsider the use of that word given that employers competing on wages and benefits does benefit the employees.

<comment><USER6> Would you describe this as Poaching:

\- Finding a small zoo

\- Deliberately bankrupting them

\- Buying their animals cheap and slaughtering them

In my mind Poaching equates to using illegal or unethical means to hunt animals. Bankrupting a zoo to rid the animals of their protection feels like that to me.

<comment><USER10> It's used a lot in sports, where one team "poaches exciting talent" from another, etc. so I don't see a problem with it myself.

<comment><USER11> This is not true at all. Professional athletes are all independent contractors with explicitly defined terms of engagement and restrictions on changing employers. They even call it "free agency". This is a different legal beast than a standard employment agreement.

<comment><USER12> It is absolutely true that poaching is a common term in sports[1].

[1] [https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2023482-5-milwaukee- buck...](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2023482-5-milwaukee-bucks-who- nba-teams-should-be-poaching-this-offseason)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of my family members worked for Star Theory during this time, and turned down job offers from Take Two in favor of loyalty, but it ended up biting them in the ass unfortunately. They did end up with a great job elsewhere, but still sad to hear this all went down. A reminder to look out for your own interests, even if you like the people you work for, or at least balance them because no one else likely will.

</comment><comment><USER14> Important to note that Take Two is a huge, publicly traded, corporation with a market cap of nearly $15 billion. They owned 2K Games, Rockstar, and others.

The tactics described in this article would be extremely shady from one small business to another... but a massive corporation swooping in and basically ruining another company? Wow.

<comment><USER15> I can't read the article. Did everyone except the developers get laid off? Or did Take Two hire literally everyone from the smaller co?

edit: Ah I see they hired only about 1/3 of the staff.

<comment><USER16> > Brian Roundy, a spokesman for Private Division, said the company contacted > "every member of the development team" at Star Theory with an invitation to > join the new studio, called Intercept Games. "More than half of the team is > now at Intercept Games,"

Granted it's from the mouth of T2, but it sounds like the offer was at least more universal, and they would have preferred or at least been amenable to absorbing the whole team.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From the article:

> The contract with Take-Two was the studio's only source of revenue at the > time. Without it, the independent studio was in serious trouble.

> The [founders] had been in discussions about selling their company to Take- > Two but were dissatisfied with the terms, they explained.

> Take-Two hired more than a third of Star Theory's staff, including the > studio head and creative director.

> By March . . . Star Theory closed its doors.

So, a small game studio played chicken with Take-Two, a $15 billion juggernaut, and lost. Take-Two picked up the pieces.

<comment><USER18> Said a different way, a small studio tried to stand up for its developers, so they would be rewarded for their hard work, and they got strong armed by an industry goliath so they could keep all the profits.

<comment><USER19> It really depends on where those "royalties" were going and how they'd be managed going forward.

Somehow I wouldn't bet on them going to devs, but I'm just an old cynic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> No loyalty nor generosity in the game business. Everybody out for a buck. Eat or be eaten. I think that summarizes it?

<comment><USER21> Hmm? It sounds to me like there is a lot of generosity- Take Two poaching a lot of engineers, offering them nice bonuses. The employees are the ones winning in this story

<comment><USER20> Because it was cheaper than dealing with their current employer. All about controlling costs. The bonus was carefully calculated to balance the development costs versus contract costs.

Those employees can expect precisely nothing once the game is complete, unless coincidentally their new employer has another project they can be immediately put to work on.

<comment><USER22> That would have been the same result after the game was finished either way, given that Star was only a contractor.

At least at Take Two the employees have the possibility of working on other games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can somebody with knowledge about how those contracts are set up comment on what happens to the IP developed by Star Theory? I understand they were contracted to build KSP2, but when "the project was pulled" by Take Two who owns the development to date? Does Take Two/Infinity need to start from scratch (with the benefit of many of the original developers) or do they essentially get to go forward with whatever the latest development version was available?

<comment><USER24> Usually when you are contracted to develop something custom, you do not own the IP but rather the company that you are building it for. I doubt this is any different here.

There are possibilities that it is arranged differently, for example if the IP you are developing can be used multiple times the company that ordered the IP may want to offer you the rights to distribute and use it further, for a discount, but it is very unlikely a game would make sense for this.

<comment><USER25> > Usually when you are contracted to develop something custom, you do not own > the IP but rather the company that you are building it for.

While it can get messy, generally the IP belongs to the original creators unless otherwise stipulated by contract. Most likely, Star Theory gained ownership of the IP created by their employees via employment contracts. The contract between Take Two and Star Theory would then stipulate the conditions underwhich Star Theory gives that IP to Take Two.

How and when that IP gets assigned should be a part of any such contract negotiations and not something you should gloss over or sign blindly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If these are the people that dicked over the original team on bonuses and are now getting karma... then good riddance.

<comment><USER27> The original developer (Squad) was bought by Take-Two who then contracted Star Theory to develop KSP2. Take-Two then screwed over Star Theory.

Or in other words, same people who dicked over the original team, now dicked over another team, and probably have enough content done to still make a financial killing in the process. Given the pandemic I suspect they'll hire on the rest of the Star Theory team at a steep discount as well.

<comment><USER28> I heard Squad screwed over the developers of KSP as well, their wages were low compared to how successful the game was.

<comment><USER29> [https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/55xv60/kerbal_space...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/55xv60/kerbal_space_program_developers_only_paid_2400/) (thread with some sources)

Squad were paying the original developers next to nothing for working full time on KSP

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder how Felipe feels like about it. I helped a little with the wheels way back when (and sent the dev team a rover when they finished!)

</comment><comment><USER31> Damn. I was really looking forward to that game. I love KSP but the original is so janky with memory leaks / slowdown / physics craziness, the bigger the mission you try, the less fun it is. The same game but with its own custom- made engine learning from the previous game would have been great.

Anyway no way I can buy it now and support that.. Also even if I just pirate it, its probably gonna turn out shite anyway now with giant publisher running everything.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can someone show me a non paywall version of this? KSP is fairly important to me. (I studied with KSP author, and told him when in college, that a game like what he promised to create was impossible. KSP was among other things, him proving me wrong)

<comment><USER33> I'm curious why did you think it was impossible?

<comment><USER28> KSP takes some liberties with physics, simplifying things so that e.g. the N-body does not apply (that is, your craft are only affected by one body at once). Other challenges are the scale and number precision. It doesn't get it exactly right either, especially when you use the time accelleration, things can go a bit... weird. See [https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken](https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken)

<comment><USER34> There may not be an analytic solution, but solving the n-body problem numerically with newtonian physics isn't a difficult thing to do...it's simple enough that it has been used as a benchmark for doing computations: [https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...](https://benchmarksgame- team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/performance/nbody.html)

<comment> ben-schaaf I'm sure they know this. The problem is that n-body simulations don't scale well with simulation speed. In KSP you can speed up time by up to 100,000x, which is essential for gameplay. If you want the same accuracy for n-body at that speed, you'll also need to do 100,000x the calculations. Whereas with KSPs simplified model you can calculate the position in orbit at arbitrary points in time, making 100,000x just as computationally expensive as 10x.

<comment><USER35> From a gameplay perspective, there isn't much sense in a full N-body simulation. Players only care about their spacecraft, which is a restricted three-body problem (small spacecraft, massive gravitational bodies) outside of special cases like gravity tractors. And the simplified two-body SOI worked pretty well in practice.

In any case, the bigger gameplay problem tends to be the vehicle physics simulation, where you have hundreds+ parts interacting and not in the most stable fashion especially above 2x time warp. That's the part that seemed amazing when KSP first came out, moreso than the orbital simulation (although the solar system exploration clinched the overall experience).

<comment><USER36> I haven't played the game, and I don't know if it _matters_ , but I would think that considering the processing necessary for attractive graphics in today's world, doing the physics right would have a cost too small to practically measure.

I don't understand how something that could easily be done on an 8 MHz computer in 1985 could strain a modern machine. Especially if you look up a decent algorithm and don't do the naive one.

Maybe there is some misunderstanding. Like, "n-body" to me doesn't imply a detailed simulation of inhomogenities in the celestial objects, like in real life they talk about mascons and such when landing on the moon. I'm assuming it's just that you calculate the forces of each body on every other body. And while you can do better than a simple N^2 calculation, if you have less than a dozen what does it matter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It was a sleazy thing to do, at least as Bloomberg describes it, but this time it won the day.

... I'm not sure that Take Two wins the war, though. Now other development companies will be more wary about working with them.

</comment><comment><USER38> Normally these contracts have a no-poaching clause to prevent this.

</comment><comment><USER39> Take Two decided to outdo EA in destroying studios.

Wasn't original Kerbal Space Program made by Squad? I'm glad they released it for Linux. I doubt Take Two will do the same.

<comment><USER40> Squad totally abused the original dev see the other comments in the thread. Take Two have some Linux games (mainly Civ, Borderland and X-Com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The game has gone worse since the original developers left. More and more bugs that ruins game-play. I guess the game still sells good though.

</comment><comment><USER42> [https://archive.md/IWOo5](https://archive.md/IWOo5)

</comment><comment><USER43> Given how badly Star Theory performed on planetary annihilation, I have minimal sympathy for the company.

Still, the hardball tactics by Take-Two is sad to see.

<comment><USER44> Oh it's _them_? Wow, hadn't heard that Uber Entertainment had changed their name.

(Planetary Annihilation was not a bad game; it just wasn't the Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander sequel that people were expecting.)

<comment><USER43> It wasn't a bad game. Definitely.

That said, they over promised and under delivered on the original, and then had a stand alone expansion (Planetary Annihilation: Titans) that finally filled most of the promises.

I recall that at first they did a bad job of supporting players who had pre- ordered, but eventually walked it back and gave kickstarter supporters the expansion for free and early purchasers large discounts.</comment></comment></comment>


The Deafening Silence - <AUTHOR> https://outlookzen.com/2013/10/17/the-deafening-silence/ <comment><USER2> I'm all for protecting dogs and other animals from cruelty, etc, but elevating their rights to that of a person? Come on.

Despite the many similarities we share with animals and regardless of your opinion of how bad and destructive humans are, we always will be qualitatively different from animals in a way that gives us rights that animals should not have. If we grant dogs the right of personhood, then they should be able to vote, marry, go to school... reductio ad absurdum.

I'm a dog lover myself, but this (American) societal tendency to blur the delineation between humans and animals is a slippery slope to absurdity.

<comment><USER3> > I'm all for protecting dogs and other animals from cruelty, etc, but > elevating their rights to that of a person? Come on.

We really are mimicking the fall of the Roman Empire. Next step: animals can vote. If they have the same rights as humans, then why not? After that comes being able to vote them into congress. I know people who think voting for a Beagle would be a better alternative than their local congressman.

<comment><USER4> We already do that. Aren't there some towns in some states that have a dog as their mayor or some shit? It's pretty amusing to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not a surprise to me.

I was one of those aspie kids who couldn't run with the other kids but I did run with a pack of dogs. Recently I realized I knew a lot about dogs and that was how I learned it.

Since then I have worked closely with cats and horses, fought with beavers, got passed on by a raccoon and also worked in A.I. I am completely convinced that 90+% of human intelligence is animal intelligence and language is the main thing we have that other animals dont.

<comment><USER6> > _language is the main thing we have that other animals dont._

There are plenty of animals with at least rudimentary forms of language. The thing which I think sets _H. sapiens sapiens_ apart is the _fictive_ use of language: we seem to be the only critters that knowingly, deliberate emit falsehoods from our pie holes (whether to deceive or entertain, or whatever else).

<comment><USER7> I think _persistence of thought_ is the thing that separates us. We are able to look back on ideas first thought by thinkers thousands of years ago and continue to riff off/transform ideas of old. That enables us to keep a catalogue not only of ideas that work, but ideas that no longer work and _why_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If we're going to worry about treatment of animals, wouldn't livestock be the appropriate starting point? After all they are the ones living in our concentration camps and being mass slaughtered. Dogs on the other hand mostly tend to be treated very well and there is plenty of outrage when they are harmed or killed.</comment>


Show HN: GOPATH Independent Go Package Manager (WIP) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jakoblorz/godpkg <comment><USER2> I don't see the benefit in this, tbh. Go's GOPATH isn't complicated, and even if it was it takes minutes to grok. The readme recommends against using this package manager, which is just weird to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate your concern. I just updated the readme to point the more essential aspects out, there was obviously too much marketing bla bla in it, I see that now. Have a great day!

tr;dl At this point this tool is just a compilation of my personal environment scripts to symlink from a global scope to project, local scoped dependencies.</comment></comment>


Facebook wants your naked photos to stop revenge porn - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-44223809 <comment><USER2> Discussion from 7 months ago (over 50 comments): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15648080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15648080)

<comment><USER3> FB wants every detail about everything your life, and wants to only share rosy PR in return. That part isn't news.

What's worth repeating is how tone-deaf and stupid this is. Decision-makers inside FB are living in a bubble crazy and arrogant enough to make them think this is something to propose to the world.

It is a technical bandaid that could theoretically work if you ignore the real people inhabiting the real world who would be using it. Reminds me, in a different way, of folks talking about how printing PGP (then) hashes on business cards was a workable fix for the web-of-trust, only throw in nudie pics, even more nerd-arrogance and FB's brazen, repeated abuses of trust.

When FB offers to act as my agent, with a contract including teeth for improper disclosure of confidential information, they will be approaching Saul Goodman levels of trustability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How can anyone with an ounce of common sense not immediately dismiss this as totally preposterous? It's completely and utterly nuts! Anyone in management at FB considering this a reasonable initiative has surely lost all perspective on the right way to solve what I'm sure is - sadly - a genuine and serious problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is old: nowadays, to create revenge porn, someone can just grab your face photos and use deepfakes.

i.e. facebook doesn't need naked photos to stop revenge porn, just use photos of your face, which they already have

i.e. photo of your face appears on fb/instagram/etc in an unlikely place? auto-crop it to just that body and ask you if you approve. even better, offer a page listing "your photos that appear on other people's feeds and profiles". The algorithm would need to be conservative (i.e. err on the side of not- matching) to avoid leaking _other_ peoples' naked pics to you. To thwart uploading previously-recorded photos/video, use the same tech as Face ID.

This would also be an excellent positive-PR partnership opportunity between Facebook, Google, Tinder, and the other top social media and dating sites.

</comment><comment><USER6> This would be a useful service if their system could detect signs of skin cancer.

In terms of squelching revenge porn, I do not see how this would remove anything from non facebook servers. Is 4chan going to integrate with this? Are they really only using hashing? Simple hash checks are negated with trivial effort.

If they are just hashes, why are users uploading anything beyond a hash? Example: virustotal [0] can get the hash of a file using javascript rather than uploading the file. Is this to see that the file is really porn?

[0] - [https://www.virustotal.com/](https://www.virustotal.com/)

<comment><USER7> I doubt it is Simple file level Hashing

MS Pioneered tech for Child Porn that looks at the actual photo and hashes parts of the file, PhotoID, that makes is more robot than a simple file hash, which ML I am sure this has improved alot in the decades it was first released

However I agree that is unlikely to curb Revenge Porn...

<comment><USER8> The technique is called fuzzy hashing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Upload your own porn to Facebook, hilarious! Zuckerberg really hasn't changed and he still believes his users are dumb fucks.

Knowing real Facebook, I would imagine at minimum they will be extracting tattoos from these photos and sharing it with FBI/LEs of all sorts. AS it turns out many criminal cases are being solved because someone flashed their tattoo.

So 10 years from now Zuck will be on the road apologizing that they shared your naked photos/tattoos with LEs but you know thats for the common good so its allright. But definitely we will do better lol :)

Here Together: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4zd7X98eOs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4zd7X98eOs)

Edit: its beyond hilarious that the upload above has comments section disabled LOL! Social network not so much LOL

</comment><comment><USER10> Will the hash take into account that some body parts may change shape compared to the sample photo Facebook asks us ?

<comment><USER11> No, because you're uploading the exact photo you want blocked. You aren't uploading a random arbitrary photo of yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A little too ambitious.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what's their _real_ agenda with these photos. You can never take what Facebook says at face value. Just like when they say they're only building shadow profiles on you for security purposes.

<comment><USER13> For all its flaws, I don't think that it's likely that FB would move into the blackmail space.

<comment><USER14> _Are you sure you want to delete your account?_

 _These friends will miss you. ... We might have to start serving them the images you uploaded instead, or they 'll get lonely!_</comment></comment></comment>


Tennessee students encouraged to use 'xe', 'zir', 'xyr' instead of 'he', 'she' - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3214567/University-Tennessee-tells-staff-students-stop-using-switch-xe-zir-xyr-instead.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Source document: [http://diversity.utk.edu/2015/08/pronouns/](http://diversity.utk.edu/2015/08/pronouns/)

> In the first weeks of classes, instead of calling roll, ask everyone to > provide their name and pronouns. This ensures you are not singling out > transgender or non-binary students.

...

You can start meetings with requesting introductions that include names and pronouns, introduce yourself with your name and chosen pronouns, or when providing nametags, ask attendees to write in their name and pronouns.

...

A few of the most common singular gender-neutral pronouns are they, them, their (used as singular), ze, hir, hirs, and xe, xem, xyr.

...

"Oh, nice to meet you, [insert name]. What pronouns should I use?" is a perfectly fine question to ask.

The more we make sharing of pronouns a universal practice, the more inclusive we will be as a campus.</comment>


Do what you love (and pay the bills) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@stef/do-what-you-love-and-pay-the-bills-b713cccf89a1#.pk5i4mdgj <comment><USER2> Really good story, inspired very much!</comment>


Personal Productivity Checklist - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/personal-checklist.html <comment><USER2> While "20% of the activity is responsible for 80% of the problem," I doubt if "dialing the wrong number," "opening the wrong document" and "making spelling mistakes" are the kind of problems you should be spending lots of attention on.

Introspection and self-improvement can both be powerful tools, but it is best used against much larger problems, many of which will not become apparent by keeping track of writing down every little stupid mistake.

<comment><USER3> When I was reading, I wondered if I just consider different things as "mistakes" than Jason, or if he was actively censoring himself. I agree with you that "dialing the wrong number" isn't the kind of mistake I feel like is keeping me back. But I can imagine that if I were to do the 'Week of Pain', I'd have a lot of mistakes written down along the lines of:

\- Procrastinated Task X

\- Spent too much time watching CSI marathon instead of working

\- Didn't reply to Person Y soon enough.

Those are the kind of mistakes it might be worth keeping track of to see which ones are the kind of "D'oh!" mistakes everyone makes once in a while, and which ones are really bad habits that are holding me back more than I realize.

<comment><USER4> He lists all active mistakes, you list passive mistakes. I expect that passive mistakes are much more insidious, and they are the ones that really sap my productivity. They are also very ambiguous.

For example, I should probably be configuring that new web server instead of writing a comment on HN, but I like to take a little while to collect my thoughts and get back in the mood after lunch, which often involves HN. I'm not sure if it's a mistake or not.</comment></comment></comment>


Self-assembling rafts: how fire ants survive floods - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/05/self-assembling-rafts-how-fire-ants-survive-floods.ars <comment><USER2> An interesting story of ants I've experienced: when I was in California some time ago standing duty at a barracks, there was an infestation of ants everywhere (anyone in California can guess the type of ants they were). To kill some time I found a can of ant killer and proceeded to spray the ones surrounding a vending machine that they took over. 30 minutes later to my surprise, other ants had found all the places where I had sprayed and cordoned it off with gravel they carried with them as a warning to other ants. Has anyone come across other interesting behavior like this?</comment>


Try googling "random number generator" and see what you get - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=random+number+generator <comment><USER2> Try entering -9999999999999999999999999 as the min value and 10 as the max value :).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of those things that could get EU regulators in a tizzy. Since at one point you would have had to suffer through an ad bloated website to get the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try googling "askew". There's a few of these.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_Easter_eggs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_Easter_eggs)</comment></comment>


Intel to buy smart urban transit startup Moovit for $1B for its car division - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/03/intel-to-buy-smart-urban-transit-startup-moovit-for-1b-to-boost-its-autonomous-car-division/ <comment><USER2> This sort of stuff is why I quit Intel and sold all my stock. In my opinion (and I haven't been following post-Kersanich Intel closely) Intel should be focusing on their process and processors, I don't think the execs really have the will it would take to diversify.

These acquisitions almost always end up being run into the ground because Intel is so used to turning the crank on their mature (read: awesomely ubiquitous software support) CPU architecture that they don't want to spend much on R&D on things that aren't proven money makers. But they keep trying to div diversify in a very half-assed way because they have such a high market share in CPUs (not that it is without legitimate threat from AMD) that to continue to grow they want to hit new markets.

<comment><USER3> I actually disagree with your analysis, my experience with Intel was from an acquisition. They decided they were going to do 'big bets' which involved massively massively investing in a few areas. What happened, was they acquired the company and told us to grow in certain areas enormously and quickly. So it's not that they acquired and then cut R&D. The opposite happened, they hugely increased R&D (sure they cut lots of other things that caused trouble), but it was like winning the lottery, suddenly everyone could hire for everything. So the message was "Get on and hire, because it won't be like this forever, and if you fail your hiring target, you'll be stuck delivering big projects with no staff". Immediately hiring became a mess, the weight of bringing on all this new staff massively slowed everything down. In most ways we ended up delivering less with twice the staff. Needless to say: this didn't produce the results they wanted.

Fortunately for my team, Intel completely shitting the bed on 10nm meant that all these problems were barely noticed - who can blame you if the silicon isn't there.

The thing is, that when you pay a premium, overinvest and under-deliver you end up with no choice in the exec team - and you end up 'cutting you losses' and doing a McAfee.

<comment><USER4> It's amazing to me how often this story repeats itself in tech, yet the results are almost always the same:

1\. Old, hugely successful company needs to find new growth areas.

2\. Company acquires company in high growth area (sometimes innovative, sometimes not)

3\. Taking from the MBA playbook that higher investment equals more growth, acquired company is given aggressive targets but also a huge budget to meet them.

4\. Company goes on a massive, usually relatively untargeted hiring spree, things become a major shitshow, acquired leadership team is eventually canned.

Instead of finding some realistic _product_ targets and then setting a budget around what resources will be needed to attain those goals, the budget is allocated based solely on desired revenue and somehow hiring all these people without a clear plan will make that happen.

I'm genuinely curious, has this ever worked?

<comment><USER5> I think Google did it with YouTube if you want a B2C example but this has happened many times in the B2B world successfully.

<comment><USER6> Survivor bias and all that. I wonder what the ratio is between

\- bought and turned into success

\- bought and integrated into the larger business

\- bought and closed after running into the ground

\- bought and then later spun off due to inability to create a successful business or integrate.

Not just for Google, but across IT as a whole.

<comment><USER7> The number I have heard (from maybe 15 years ago) is that "2/3 of corporate mergers meet their goals." That was across a range of industries. Tech in 2020 might be different, there is a certain kind of mindlessness around acquisitions that happens around technology sectors. For instance, AOL bought Time Warner, regretted it, AT&T bought Time Warner, now the vulture funds like Elliot Capital Management are circling and they will have the CEOs head.

AT&T's mistakes were made by people who were more technical than MBA, but it's a consistent trope that "Google bought Company A" and then Company B brings their salespeople to muster the next morning to inform them what's going to happen at Company A, and the next sales retreat is fistbumps all around.

I wonder if we could put a break on mergers and acquisitions, not for the sake of communities, workers, and competition, but just for the poor stockholders!

<comment><USER8> > "The number I have heard (from maybe 15 years ago) is that '2/3 of corporate > mergers meet their goals.'"

my recollection is that it's closer to half. m&a deals tend to be executive vanity projects as often as sound strategy.

<comment><USER9> Again it depends. Look at Church & Dwight, more known as the Arm & Hammer company. Their strategy of expanding all over the grocery store cleaning isle seems to have worked as they have a whole team of brands and brands at different price premiums. They have bought smaller cpg companies successfully

<comment><USER8> yes, certainly there are successes, but it's good to realize that that's only about half of attempts. if you're an involved shareholder, it's eminently reasonable to be skeptical of executive strategies that feature m&a centrally.

<comment><USER10> And even with the half rate "successes" ( Success in terms that is actually defined by the executive themselves ), most of them were done with a miraculously talented team that normally has little to do with the executives.

Because in an ideal world you expect M&A to provide synergy, but it is often where 1+1 = 1.5 or less, and at best successes are 1+1 = 2. What people should be aiming for is 1+1 = 2.5 or more.

And recent Intel ( Post Andy Grove or Post Patrick Gelsinger ) has a track record of both poor strategic decision, acquisition _and_ execution.

Note: That is M&A with respect to diversification.

<comment><USER8> yes, i refrained from using the word "synergy" because most people don't differentiate the common pejorative understanding and it's M&A usage.

it's a fascinating component of how companies are often overvalued in m&a activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wait... let's rewind. Why does Intel have an "Israeli automotive hub" from acquiring "Mobileye, the autonomous driving company" in 2017?

It makes sense when a large company acquires a smaller one, or founds a division from scratch, because it can provide that smaller company/company with uniquely valuable resources. E.g. Google/Alphabet founding Waymo because of Google's existing expertise in ML.

But how does expertise in processors translate to _any_ kind of advantage for autonomous driving? Presumably the microprocessors in a self-driving car are one of the most commoditized parts... who cares if it's Intel, AMD or ARM?

Does anyone "in the know" have a clue around Intel's strategy here?

I can only guess they want to repeat the "Intel Inside" marketing campaign of the 1990's -- i.e. if they lost mobile, they don't want to lose cars too. But then wouldn't they want to form strong subsidized partnerships, the way they did with Intel Inside? Developing their own technology seems like it would make the autonomous car industry view them as competitors, not partners, and thus _less_ likely to use their chips.

What am I missing?

<comment><USER12> NVidia has product lines specifically for this field. Tesla proudly announced to the world that they made their own chip for autonomous driving. "Autonomous driving" research/development right now means lots of Machine Learning, image processing, ... High-performance stuff that benefits from GPU-like designs, all the while the systems for that need to be reasonably energy-efficient and build in a way that they'll survive in an automotive setting. They're not a competitor to car companies because car companies typically don't want to design chips themselves, they'll happily buy them if they can (Tesla is a really odd one out in that regard, and even they'll use superior hardware made by someone else if it makes sense). If it takes off across manufacturers, Intel very much would like a slice of that pie instead of leaving it all to NVidia&Co.

<comment><USER13> Sure, NVidia has chips that fit the needs of that field. Intel though has bought the actual company.

My only explanation is that Intel may believe they would have trouble breaking into that market with their own chips, and buying the company means they can make it dogfood Intel's products. If successful, it strengthens their sales argument to others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting acquisition by Intel, but also equally surprising valuation at $1B. I thought Moovit was entirely crowdsourced and made up primarily of volunteers[1]... maybe that changed recently?

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crowdsourcing-just-ticket- exp...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crowdsourcing-just-ticket- exponentially-grow-your-business-nir-erez)

<comment><USER15> Also the article claims "800 million riders" which is astounding for an app that is currently #36 in the navigation category (iOS App Store). Unless this app is more popular than TikTok everywhere outside of the US they've gotta be playing fast and loose with those usage statistics.

<comment><USER16> Moovit is for public transportation and that is pretty much why it isn't big in the US. Here it is #3 in navigation after Google Maps and Waze.

I couldn't live without it anymore, the city has probably around 500 bus lines. Making 3 combinations isn't unusual and it works to the point where I don't worry about researching a new route. Whenever you aren't commuting it is your best option to finding a route.

Sometimes I spend a weekend in smaller cities I don't know well. They have bus lines which you can't find online anywhere. But everything is on Moovit. This has saved me so many hours, I feel like I should be paying for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone create an equivalent of the Google Graveyard but for dumb Intel acquisitions?

<comment><USER18> I nominate Spectron. It died twice I think: the corpse was sold to Dialogic, then Dialogic was bought by Intel later on, and then there was more spinoff/merger pinball.

The original idea was for Intel to wrest control of multimedia from Microsoft and create an Intel controlled multimedia subsystem. They didn't actually acquire Dragon for the speech recognition part, but Dragon's fate was even worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This appears to be a very desperate move by a company just realizing the desperate situation they find themselves in. I agree with others sentiment that they need to find a way to get back to doing well what it is they know, or used to know.

<comment><USER20> Yeah Intel really has their back against that wall, after all they are one of the most highly capitalized businesses in human history, just recorded their largest annual revenue in the history of the firm, and earn a profit of only about $80000 per minute. Pure desperation down there in Santa Clara.

<comment><USER21> Financial results are always a lagging indicator in tech. That doesn't mean they aren't important, just that you can coast on an existing product line for a really long time (decade+) and then everyone's "surprised" when unit sales decline, and there's nothing else in the pipeline.

An example of this: Sears. Dominant retailer, completely missed the boat on ecommerce, now bankrupt. Literally.

<comment><USER20> Microsoft missed the boat on mobile and now they are the biggest firm in the universe.

<comment><USER22> I do not see them, Nokia is minor, Win discontinued..?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Let me grab this occassion to draw attention to a lesser known feature of Citymapper (not everywhere alas): it can make a public transit plan augmented by a cab. This is something I have been doing without an app myself at my home city in a very clear demonstration of the "time is money" principle. This is one of the true differentiating capabilities between Citymapper, Moovit and Google Maps, otherwise they would be quite similar.

<comment><USER24> I actually hate that feature and can't figure out how to turn it off. It thinks getting me within 1-2 miles of my destination and hailing a car is better than being on a train for 20% longer but being much closer to where I actually want to go. I outright stopped using the app because it's too annoying to make sure the suggested route doesn't involving getting off a train and catching a car.

<comment><USER25> Use the Transit app, it is almost completely focused on city transit only + walking.

It suggests ubers and bike shares, but they're pushed down to the bottom of the options list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The other day I was defending buybacks and dividends on HN as policies that protect owners from managers. These kinds of acquisitions are exactly what I had in mind.

</comment><comment><USER27> can someone explain the differences between Moovit, Transit and Google Maps.. seems to me that they solve the same problem..

<comment><USER16> They do solve the same problem but Google Maps public transportation data is not crowdsourced, if there is no GTFS feed then it has nothing. Living in a 3rd world country where we have many buses but little data I can tell you that Moovit works much much better here.

<comment><USER28> Doesn't google use waze for data?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This in my opinion is just a bailout acquisition from Intel to Moovit, made to make Intel look more innovative in the face of a stagnating processor division while bailing out Moovit from bankruptcy.

<comment><USER30> If that's true why not wait a few months and buy it for say $100M? Maybe it's not as splashy for Intel if they do that.

<comment><USER10> Intel Capital ( VC arm of Intel Crop ) is one of the early investor of Moovit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Intel screwed up and missed the mobile phone revolution.

They're probably trying to make sure they don't miss out on the autonomous car revolution. Which will likely require more chips, in both vehicles and infrastructure.

But this is a huge gamble, as an infrastructure upgrade like this will cost billions or trillions. And it may likely never happen. But if and when it does, then Intel may be standing on the next wave of huge spending for its technology.

</comment><comment><USER32> What a terrible purchase. Moovit is worth exactly $0.

<comment><USER33> Clearly that depends who you are asking

<comment><USER32> If your asking the former vp from Intel that transferred to moovit I think he'd disagree strongly, your right. I'm sure he got nothing from the deal.</comment></comment></comment>


Ember PostgREST Dynamic UI: An Approach to Flexible and Easy-To-maintain UIs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-backlog-by-nimbo-x/ember-postgrest-dynamic-ui-an-approach-for-flexible-easy-to-maintain-interfaces-e94f7558dd49 <comment><AUTHOR> This is an experiment of dynamic UIs (forms atm) using Ember & PostgREST</comment>


Your robot army, controlled by Arduino and Bluetooth - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/your-robot-army-controlled-by-arduino-and-bluetooth/ <comment><USER2> Ubiquitous wireless connectivity at "disposable" prices is a looming killer app for makers. Less than 2 years ago, putting a project "on the net" cost in the neighborhood of $100. You build an entirely different kind of project when its temporary because you have to move your super expensive wireless unit around between projects.

Somewhere around $20 seems to be the "disposability" point. Everything gets interesting after that.</comment>


Apple's New San Francisco Fonts - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mach/the-secret-of-san-francisco-fonts-4b5295d9a745 <comment><USER2> "You can see the low legibility of Helvetica if you type texts in a small size and make them blur. Some texts become blended and hard to decipher. They say that Apple developed San Francisco fonts in order to make small size texts in Apple Watch more legible."

Funny thing is, this is exactly the problem that font hinting was meant to solve [1][2]. Apple developed the tech for TrueType font hinting nearly 25 years ago but then ditched most of it in their antialiasing rasterizer for OS X. If they still had hinting in their rasterizer, then instead of creating a whole new font with flatter segments they could have hinted Helvetica to flatten out at smaller sizes while still curving in the larger sizes. Then they would have had the best of both. Granted, that would have meant admitting that there's something to respecting the pixel grid [3], but this seems like a tacit admission of that anyway.

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference- Manual/...](https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference- Manual/RM03/Chap3.html)

[2] [http://www.rastertragedy.com/](http://www.rastertragedy.com/)

[3] [http://blog.codinghorror.com/font-rendering-respecting- the-p...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/font-rendering-respecting-the-pixel- grid/)

<comment><USER3> As others pointed out, font hinting is solving a completely different problem from the one that Apple faces or that you describe. You describe the problem of displaying small text on a low-resolution grid. Font hinting is indeed a passable solution to that problem. However Apple's problem is displaying small text, period (Retina displays have plenty of resolution). The first sentence of the top link you give, "A quality outline font is one that provides legibility at small sizes on low resolution devices" tells us why this is not relevant. Nobody cares about low-resolution devices anymore. Apple set out to make things legible assuming infinite resolution.

<comment><USER4> Maybe we should have a hinting equivalent for physical size then (rather than pixel hinting or an entirely different font).

<comment><USER2> I believe that's already possible with TrueType now if the person doing the hinting is willing to make the effort.

TrueType hints are restricted programs stored as bytecode. One instruction, MPPEM, requests the pixels per em. Another instruction, MPS, gets the current point size. There are also instructions to find pixel lengths across various axes. I'd have to think about the details but it should be possible to estimate the DPI and physical glyph size from those and then adjust the hinting accordingly.

<comment><USER5> TrueType hints are not used in many contexts, or are not used consistently. So this isn't useful in practice. Also, I don't believe that TT hints can handle the range of letter-form and spacing changes required to properly scale from small captions up to large headings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Much of this article (and all of the images) was taken from a WWDC 2015 talk [0]. If you're interested in typography, that video is definitely worth a watch.

[0] [https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=804](https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=804)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't like the kerning on San Francisco. It's too common to have wider than normal spaces between characters to the point of being distracting. Maybe that's good to read randomly generated strings of text, but on actual words the shape of the word is the first hint to the brain when trying to read it, before the individual characters, and if that shape is compromised by wider than expected spaces, reading flow is affected.

<comment><USER8> That's funny, I loathe Helvetica's keming, and think that San Francisco's is much improved. I can always distinguish 'rn' from 'm' in the new font.

<comment><USER9> You will probably appreciate this - Liz Crain is an artist who does ceramic pieces that are made to look like old rusted cans (oil cans, etc.). Her husband is a retired typesetter, so some of her ceramic "cans" are related to typography. We bought one called Interrobang and immediately commissioned her to do a Keming can:

[https://www.facebook.com/lizcrainceramics/posts/102056813368...](https://www.facebook.com/lizcrainceramics/posts/10205681336890894)

<comment><USER10> In all seriousness, why not use a rusted oil can to begin with..?

<comment><USER11> I don't know if it was what she was going for, but the faux-rust really makes it look cartoonish/surreal. I really like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wasn't particularly excited for this update but when my phone switched over I was truly wowed by how much easier the font was on my eyes. Kudos to the Apple typographers, it's really improved my iPhone 6 experience.

<comment><USER13> That's strange. I had the opposite experience. I could no longer read. Specifically I couldn't read my notes in the Notes.app on my iPhone5S after upgrading to iOS9. The text was smaller and the lines thinner. I eventually had to go into the system settings and pick "bold" for the entire OS

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would have been fun if they'd used the _original_ Mac "San Francisco" font instead: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(1984_typeface)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_\(1984_typeface\))

<comment><USER15> I wonder why they reused the "San Francisco" name. Following the original Macintosh tradition of naming fonts after "world class cities", there are plenty of new names they have have chosen.

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=World_Class_Citie...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=World_Class_Cities.txt)

<comment><USER16> Apple has fallen into the Silicon Valley 'everything important is in California' realm.

<comment><USER17> I'm always amused when I look at the Date/Time settings and see that the West Coast runs on Cupertino time

<comment><USER18> I always make sure I have LA or portland/seattle picked, that "cupertino" thing annoys me for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Instead of making yet another slightly different Helvetica, maybe somebody should make an effort to make a font that renders Latin, Cyrillic and Greek in a unified style without glaring errors. (As far as I know, there's only one font that does this correctly, and it doesn't support anything but Latin and Cyrillic.)

How about a font that renders Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Hanzi correctly? Why do I have to install a special 'Chinese font package' in 2015?

<comment><USER20> Roboto and Noto should do what you want: [https://www.google.com/design/spec/style/typography.html#typ...](https://www.google.com/design/spec/style/typography.html#typography- typeface)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something that many digital folks don't get about old typefaces during the hot metal era:

Different sizes had different cuts. So a typeface that's at 9 points wasn't using the same outline as the same typeface at say 24 points. In fact in many cases you'd have versions of typefaces within a family designed for body text vs. headlines, so for example you have a "book weight" vs. a "display weight".

</comment><comment><USER22> Disclamer: I'm no font expert, this is all my opinion as a user.

Not a fan of the font to be honest. I was excited for a Helvetica replacement on OS X, but to this day nothing beats Lucida Grande, especially on non retina displays. I'd even say I prefer Helvetica to SF (and I was definitely not a fan of Helvetica as a UI font), after using iOS 9 for two weeks and then coming back to iOS 8. I can't describe it properly without typography knowledge, but I'd say it feels more elegant than SF (and other "modern" fonts like Roboto).

Also there's the issue of readability, so I guess in that regard SF trumps Helvetica. Then again, I'm no expert so I don't really know.

<comment><USER23> I miss the Lucida Grande + Myriad Pro days!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> At first I thought the new font looked nice and clean but lately I've really been longing for the old Helvetica Neue again.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have untrained eyes, but I could not notice a single difference between the Helvetica icon screen and the SF icon screen, other than sliiiightly different kerning. The letters looked _exactly_ the same otherwise.

<comment><USER26> The icon screen sample is pretty low res. It's much easier to see on an actual retina display, but the differences are indeed subtle.

A couple of differences: The 'a' is clearly different, and you should be able to spot the difference even with an untrained eye; the 'C' and 'G' are clearly slimmer in SF.

The curves of the rounded letters have a subtly different feel to them matching the names of the fonts: Helvetica is sterner and more geometric, San Francisco more inviting and informal. You may find this hard to see is you look too closely, but see if you can feel it or learn it by attaching adjectives to the look of the words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Slightly related: the letter i on the keyboard looks wrong. It bugs me every time (it looks too high).

<comment><USER28> They raise the baseline for the lowercase keyboard, which I find very very bothersome. It seems as though they try to center the baseline-median area, rather than just stick with the baseline from the uppercase keyboard.

I accidentally misattributed some dislike for this to dislike for the San Francisco font; after I realized a bit more what was going on I'm slightly more comfortable with the font.

<comment><USER29> It does look bothersome, but if they moved the baseline down, then the 'q', 'g', and 'p' would be the problematic ones (they already look "too low" out of context with the rest, even shifted up).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Independent of the io9 switch, that's an interesting post for the science of fonts. Very relevant for web design work.

</comment><comment><USER31> > One of the great features of San Francisco is the way it optimizes the > typeface dynamically. The system will automatically switch the Display/Text > fonts according to the text size.

I just assumed that was the case already. Back in the olden daze when there weren't many pixels, the font was hand tweaked for each resolution. I did a few myself :-)

I guess technology has come full circle.

</comment><comment><USER32> I really, really miss serif fonts. It'll be nice once we all have 600 dpi e-ink 'screens' and can have book-quality text.

</comment><comment><USER33> Apple should have limited this font to the Watch. On the iPhone it looks ugly. There is too much space between characters and that hurts readability. iPhone's screen resolution is high enough that there is no need to use a special font designed for screens -- that only makes it look cheap and unprofessional.

<comment><USER34> Disagree. Conformity is what makes professional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/19/roboto-v- helveti...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/19/roboto-v-helvetica)

<comment><USER36> In other words, San Francisco is a Apple's Arial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great WWDC video[1] "Introducing the New System Fonts" which dives deep into all the tricks they pulled, and why, with the San Francisco font (unfortunately, only viewable in Safari and WWDC app)

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=804](https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=804)

</comment><comment><USER38> As a programmer with very limited design experience, I always find such analyses of fonts fascinating. The level of detail these typographers deal with is just amazing. For example, the subtle curve in the `o`s in SF versus SF compact -- I wouldn't have figured that out myself. I hope to find some time/resources to learn some of this magic myself :)

</comment><comment><USER39> 'dfgh' on the keyboard have really strange optics in San Francisco. It almost looks as if their baselines aren't aligned, but they are. But visually, the g looks low and the f looks high. It's just something about the crossbar on the f and the bowl of the g.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is really funny. The font in the article about legibility of fonts on mobile looks really garbled on Firefox mobile (Android) when scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER41> No mention of the similarity to Roboto? IMO, the aesthetic effect of Roboto is not as good as the former.

</comment><comment><USER42> Apple should just switch to Roboto

<comment><USER43> Roboto is very similar to Helvetica. I don't really understand why Google bothered.

<comment><USER36> Unlike SF, which is nothing like Helvetica, right?</comment></comment></comment>


HTML5 Super Mario Bros - <AUTHOR> http://www.fullscreenmario.com/

<comment><USER2> Feel the need to point to the now 9 years old dhtml lemmings [1] which shouldn't have a browser preference.

[1][http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/](http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Sorry, this needs Chrome!" :(</comment>