Chipotle's Guacamole Recipe - <AUTHOR> http://chipotle.com/guac-recipe

<comment><USER2> Oh my god, I love chipotle! Chipotle is my life!</comment>


Why Are There No Technicians in Software Engineering? - <AUTHOR> https://www.worldofbs.com/software-02/ <comment><USER2> I'd argue that a sizeable fraction of jobs titled software engineer would be more properly categorized as software technician or software designer. Designers tend to use flexible materials (clay, Python, breadboards) that are easy to prototype in, even if they don't stand up well in industrial settings. Technicians can rig up serviceable systems just by plumbing pre-engineered components together. Not everything needs to be engineered.

Also, why do we have to put up with advanced tools being pains-in-the-arse? I really like Julia's manifesto: "Even though we recognize that we are inexcusably greedy, we still want to have it all." [https://julialang.org/blog/2012/02/why-we-created- julia/](https://julialang.org/blog/2012/02/why-we-created-julia/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you make a good point here, that the majority of software jobs could be classified as software technicians. I feel that designers have a slightly different role that I can't quite put my finger on. For instance, I feel that clay is a different concept from Python or breadboards -- since clay design usually only has the abstract function designed, and doesn't actually implement it (ie. it is not prototype functionality).

I think Python and breadboards are rapid-prototyping materials (possibly similar to 3D plastic printing?), but especially with breadboards, I've found EEs tend to forgo them entirely during prototyping phase since once you've learned a proper engineering tool it is _really_ hard to go back.

Certainly many advanced tools are a pain-in-the-ass due to poor UX, but there is also the idea that a complicated problem can only get so simple. To deal with complex problems -- which advanced tools should do -- they will need to have some level of complexity that needs to be learned.

Julia is an exciting language, but even there it has its own levels of complexity. A complex problem can only get so simple, and proper engineering tools expose this leftover complexity to the engineer. Whereas beginners tools tend to hide this.</comment></comment>


At Astra, failure is an option - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/at-astra-space-failure-is-an-option/ <comment><USER2> $2.5M for putting 100kg into orbit. Versus SpaceX's price of $1M for 200kg into a Starlink inclination LEO. And since Astra didn't specify the orbit, it's probably an easier orbit, so an equivalent orbit is probably about 60kg.

And that price assumes a volume of 100 launches per year. Sure there's a market for cubesat's into bespoke orbits, but it isn't that big, AFAICT. If there was, RocketLab would have a lot more than 10 launches scheduled for 2020.

Astra says "constellations", but that makes even less sense. If you have a bunch of satellites to launch into the same orbit, a Falcon9 at $50M will get you 13000kg into LEO.

To make things worse, RocketLab is working on reusability, which gives them the potential to drop their prices significantly. They're already at just over twice the price for significantly more than twice the capability, and they don't consider 95% success rate "good enough".

I wish them luck, but it's a tough market.

<comment><USER2> Normally I'd just tell people to read the comments on a Ars Space article. Ars comments are my source of information for the my parent comment. But this article requires a bit more wading through crap comments to get to good stuff than an Ars space article usually has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Little surprised no one objected to their name. Confusing to a European [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_(satellite)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_\(satellite\))

<comment><USER4> Yeah I was about to write that as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lovely process embraced by NASA is celebrating their best failures -- the "Fail Smart" award.

[https://nasapeople.nasa.gov/awards/eligibility.htm](https://nasapeople.nasa.gov/awards/eligibility.htm)

Dava Newman explains:

[https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/nasa-leader- exp...](https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/nasa-leader-explains-why- failure-sometimes-option)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there any information on their stance regarding the environmental impact of failed launches? The propellants alone are usually toxic, plus the amount debris of each failed launch. Did they factor these externalities into their cost as well? At 1 million dollar per launch and 250k$ manuracturing cost alone, I am not sure this part of their cost model.

<comment><USER7> I'd like to see companies have to pay some kind of 'litter tax'. Any item which is lost track of or dumped in the environment pays some $X per kg fee. The fee could vary based on the hazardous/non-hazardous/biodegradable nature. Then allow anyone else to get paid the same fee for collecting the litter, as long as they can show with reasonable certainty most of the stuff they collected is litter someone else paid tax on.

<comment><USER8> Means it's free if you build a all-Aluminum rocket and fill it with alcohol?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome to se the startup mentality arrive in space engineering! Those cheap rockets would be great for deploying things like CubeSats.</comment>


Who's rehearsing for TechCrunch50? Calacanis video - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/whos-rehearsing-for-techcrunch50

<comment><USER2> The one thing I've noticed from the tech events I've attended and seen videos for is that the presentations aren't always top notch. This might be due to a focus so much on the technology at the point (timeframe in dev cycle) where these companies are presenting from or just a lack of experience in pitching.

It seems to me that if you are trying to secure funding or just showing off your product you're going to want to make sure you presentation is as polished as your product. Sure they tech behind it has to impress whomever your presenting to, but if you really want to make like easier, make your presentation stick out as exceptionally good.</comment>


The tech arms race in AAA games and why I'm abandoning it - <AUTHOR> http://andreaspapathanasis.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-tech-arms-race-in-aaa-and-why-im.html <comment><USER4> Tech to games is equivalent to the medium an artist uses. Crappy tools and materials can ruin the experience (i.e. if Michelangelo's David was made out of, say mashed potatoes it would have not survived and it would have looked silly after a while), but good materials do not make an artist (i.e. give a non-visual person marble and give Michelangelo mashed potatoes and what Michelangelo produces will probably be better than what the other bloke produces).

<comment><USER5> I agree. It uses the term "tech" in the article and fails to mention everything that isn't graphics related. Even if you decide as a game maker to forgo 3D for whatever reason, you still have REAL technical limitations when it comes to the game mechanics. Physics, AI, and Feature X can cost just as much processing power as some fancy 3D graphics, regardless of whether it is realtime or not. Major game makers already know this fact, and that is why optimization of the tech isn't optional: not doing so means there is a lot less you can actually do.

<comment><USER6> The author tells a story about being a graphic developer, so that's probably the reason for focussing on graphics.

Telling the AI people that their efforts are wasted on an arms race with little effect on the game play is a much weaker argument than 'hey, I need to revisit what _I_ am working on'.

<comment><USER7> Re AI I was just recently thinking about Half-Life 1 marines AI (low tech, required hint nodes) against which I definitely had memorable experience, compared to the slew of titles that followed, with "improved" AI that looks like a game of whack a mole alternating with scripted sequences.

Guess what? I booted HL1, and that wasn't just nostalgia tinted memory. Smartly applied low tech produces fantastic results in the proper hands.

<comment><USER8> Something that kills me today is many modern games _still_ have worse facial animations than Half-Life 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the sadder things I read today:

"What I was blindly ignoring back in my teen years was games like Elite, Ultima IV, Zork, MUD - games that fit just fine on the tiny possibility space my original PC enabled."

I had a (slap back of hand) cracked copy of Ultima IV. No User Manual. No Map. No Potions Guide. I had to create my own maps of the world, and permute ingredients to figure out all the potions. I spent three of the most glorious weeks of my life completing that game, and, _to this day_ (close to 30 years later) I recall the level, (you couldn't restore health in the midst of a dungeon) in which I ran into the mirror image of my party and had to battle myself. And riding the balloon over pirate bay. Oh my, ...

<comment><USER10> What I remember most about Ultima IV was the blind shop keep who determined if you paid her the correct amount by hearing the clink of coins. So you could buy anything for 2 coins so they clinked against each other. I thought I was so smart, but my 9 year old self didn't realize that the game was about building virtue...

<comment><USER11> What's particularly fun if you read some of the modern guides, now that the game is thoroughly understood, is how to game the system. Buy stacks of reagents from the blind women, crashing your honesty to the bottom, then boost it back up in the most expedient way possible later. Steal everything not nailed down in the early part of your run-through (if you play honestly the whole way through, resources are actually sorta hard to come by), _then_ use the stolen money to give to the poor for Sacrifice, then later on fix your honesty (or whatever stealing counts against, I forget) in some expedient manner.

I find something quite hilarious about the idea of a MinMaxing Avatar of Virtue. Minmaxing often breaks the mechanics of a game, but it's rare to see it break the _morality_ of a game the way it breaks Ultima IV.

Brilliant game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At some point it comes down to what gamers want, and that's _always_ going to be "different things to different people." Papathanasis illustrates it himself when he shares the reasons his wife prefers Sims Social over Sims 3.

Also a great game with less than cutting edge graphics will probably always win over an average game with amazing graphics- think Minecraft as the most obvious example. I see games like The Long Dark or Don't Starve or even something like Fez, all coming from smaller studios and all about 180 degrees away from an AAA game being more embraced by gamers in the long run than whatever the latest Call of Duty is. Of course if we break it down that far then we start getting into arguments between "serious gamers" and "casuals" and "console vs PC" and on and on and on...

Again, circling us back around to "different people like different things and that's OK".

<comment><USER13> > Again, circling us back around to "different people like different things > and that's OK".

Sure, there's always that. However, just commenting on game graphics for a moment, many people have a clear bias towards graphics that are strong aesthetically vs. those which are only technically impressive.

Consider, Sonic the Hedgehog was released in 1991. In my eyes, that game still looks good today, and I don't think that's purely nostalgia, I believe it has a striking, cohesive aesthetic style. Compare that with something like Doom 3, which was released about 10 years ago. Graphically, it's not awful, but it doesn't quite have the same timeless appeal.

Gameplay matters above everything else, but in terms of presentation the aesthetics are IMO more important than the strength of the graphics engine.

<comment><USER14> Just look at Hotline Miami or Gunpoint for other examples. I'll note that it's partly a question of genre, IMHO. While Eldritch got some success, I think FPS are a genre where it's a lot more difficult to go for a minimalistic look.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the examples, I agree Hotline Miami and Gunpoint have strong visual styles, never knew about them before today. Gunpoint in particular looks like a great game too, would happily play that. Hotline Miami visually looks like a trippy neon Alien Breed to me, I like trippy visuals, Rez is a good example of that IMO.

I agree FPSes traditionally have been hard to make stylish, but that's not to say it can't be done. Whilst it's not a shooter, Mirror's Edge is a decent example. Eldritch isn't to my taste but I agree it's an attempt to craft something memorable. I also think the makers of Timesplitters were onto something, perhaps it could do with some cleaner lines (easily achievable now), but it could have become something iconic. There was also a FPS game (I forget the name) where bullets only moved fast when you moved, you can probably still find it somewhere, I thought that was stylish too.

<comment><USER15> The last example you cite is called Superhot, fyi

<comment><USER13> Yeah, that's the one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with the author that quality gameplay should be more of a focus for teams, and that their choices in graphics technologies should enable their gameplay choices, not the other way around.

 _But_ , gameplay isn't the only way to enjoy a game. Sometimes I enjoy something just because it's the visual and auditory equivalent of a summer blockbuster where I'm in control. And perversely, I'm willing to pay a lot of money to have the hardware necessary for that. Sometimes the gameplay is objectively worse than other, less graphically accomplished games, but that doesn't make it less aesthetically pleasing.

I think it's perfectly valid to enjoy a game for aesthetic vs. gameplay reasons, although it can sometimes be sad when gamers have no concept of the latter.

<comment><USER17> Even though people are giving "The Order: 1886" a hard time for it's linear, QTE-heavy gameplay, I really want to play through it simply because it is so technically impressive. (It might help that I make 3D engines for a living.)

[http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2015/02/why-rendering-in- order-...](http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2015/02/why-rendering-in- order-1886-rocks.html)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOHTJiRQB9o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOHTJiRQB9o)

[http://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2013-shading- course...](http://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2013-shading- course/rad/s2013_pbs_rad_slides.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Wow, are those cut scenes rendered in real time? It looks as though when he's actually playing the graphic is slightly worse and that they use a lot of blur to cover it up, still very good but not nearly as good as the cut scenes.

<comment><USER19> "Since The Order: 1886 is completely rendered in real-time with no pre- rendered frames..." [http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/04/13/order-1886-gets- po...](http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2015/04/13/order-1886-gets-powerful- photo-mode-new-update/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Some AAA studios subscribe to the idea that games can deliver the maximum emotional impact in a similar way Hollywood does: By using actors in heavily scripted sequences to tell the story of someone else that the player/viewer relates to. Instead of playing to their medium's strengths, these studios go through great pains to emulate what Hollywood gets naturally: emotive characters, good looking lighting, spectacular locations. It's a very literal attempt to imitate another established, successful medium, and because it gets some results, it's popular, despite the fact it's very expensive and brushes aside many of the benefits that games get naturally.

Games can be much more immersive than movies can. You can much more easily pretend to be the protagonist. By going down this route games lose some of the advantages of, say, arcade games, but they gain others and are generally _not_ at a disadvantage compared to movies.

<comment><USER21> It's not immersive the moment your character does or says something you don't want to do.

It's the antithesis of immersive. Seconds ago I could strut where I wanted, chop who I wanted and tea bag who I wanted.

And then suddenly I am forced to watch a cut scene with some super slow speaking voice over artist, because no-one gets to the fucking point in computer games.

Sometimes it works. More often, it does not.

That is the point he is trying to make.

I do like getting into the role of the good guy, there are greaat cut scenes, but it's ultimately a cheap gimmick with the game author stealing agency from the player. Every now and then something happens and you're all like, you what?

<comment><USER22> That's the biggest difference between WRPG and JRPG.

JRPG's don't tend to try and put you into the shoes of any characters, and instead you just learn to care about the characters the way you would reading a book or watching a movie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced "triple A") is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion.[1][2][3][4] A title considered to be AAA is therefore expected to be a high quality game and to be among the year's bestsellers."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_\(video_game_industry\))

<comment><USER24> I KINDA knew what AAA meant, but not really. Now I do! Thanks for posting this.

<comment><USER25> I still don't know what it means because the term is massively overloaded. Does it mean:

* a game with a huge development and production budget

* a good game

* a challenging game

* a game intended to be played competitively online

* a game that features adult themes like sex and violence

My guess is that it actually means the first, but game industry marketroids speak as if all these criteria were coterminous with one another.

<comment><USER26> It means only the first. I've never seen it used to mean the other ones.

<comment><USER25> The term AAA implies a sort of rating of quality, which is why it seems duplicitous to me.

It's a bit like the term "blockbuster" in film. Originally it meant a movie so good, lines to see it would go around the block. These days what it actually means is a huge-budget film filled with CG and spectacle, and studios labor under the belief that throwing that much money at a production will lead to blockbuster-scale ticket sales. Then they wonder why their "blockbusters" flop catastrophically at the actual box office.

<comment><USER22> It only implies a rating of quality because a large budget tends to imply high quality.

To give an example, no one calls Pillars of Eternity a AAA game despite it being raved over by gamers. The reason is simple. It didn't have an overly large budget, it had just a single artist.

People _expect_ high quality to come from a big budget and that's completely reasonable (not duplicitous in any way). But the term still means a large budget. No one with much familiarity with the industry would argue otherwise.

I think the misunderstanding comes about from those who don't pay too much attention to the gaming industry as a whole misunderstanding the meaning because they guess at it via context and get it wrong. There is absolutely an implication of quality, but it is not a part of the definition of the term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think sometimes people conflate mid-career personal attitude changes with some sort of profound pan-industry insight. There's obviously money to be made from high tech AAA games pushing hardware limits, and money to be made from prioritising gameplay over polish and visuals.

<comment><USER28> Indie vs AAA. I thoroughly enjoy both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope the GPU arms race continues for as long as possible. Without it there would be no GPGPU and modern deep learning wouldn't be feasible.

<comment><USER30> Last I checked, the arms race seemed to be almost over. GPUs are only 20% faster per year, and the progress seems to be getting even slower.

Gone are the days when performance doubled every year.

I think we're soon at the point upgrades make only sense every 5-10 years. Same is happening to consoles, 7 years from PS3 to PS4 or Xbox 360 to Xbox One. I guess PS5 and next Xbox are at least 10 years away. Maybe they'll even be the last consoles.

<comment> Tuna-Fish > Last I checked, the arms race seemed to be almost over. GPUs are only 20% > faster per year, and the progress seems to be getting even slower.

This is what happens when you try to make too much inferences of a trend in a short time within a step function.

The primary ingredient that fuels continued performance growth in semiconductors, including GPUs, is process shrinks. They are fundamentally what gives AMD and nVidia the additional transistors that they can use to increase performance. The foundry 20nm processes were a bust, meaning that GPUs effectively skipped a shrink. This means that the last 3 years, after 28nm became available, the only way they have had to increase performance was slight efficiency increases and growing the chips bigger.

GPUs will move to next gen foundry processes, the Samsung/GlobalFoundries 14nm and TSMC 16nm late this year or early next year. This will provide the most dramatic single change in the underlying manufacturing process of the history of making GPUs. Assuming no major architectural advances, expect twice the performance.

<comment><USER31> Process shrinks are giving diminishing returns as well, due to dark silicon [1]. We can fit more transistors in the same area which gives the possibility for more functionality but if we power them all at the same time we'll just melt the chip.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_silicon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_silicon)

<comment> Tuna-Fish Despite this general trend, the next process shrink will be the largest single step in GPU history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Heh, I've got the opposite - a very fast machine for it's day - 386DX 40Mhz but with Hercules (mono graphics chip). What I did was a resident application that has internal 320x200x256 colors buffer, and I would hack each game (looking for 0xA0000 or debugging a bit to use my buffer rather than using the graphics card directly). Then every few milliseconds I would transfer the buffer as monochrome - there was no palette transformation, just use the highest bit or something like this.

It worked fine for Star Control 2, Trolls, and few other games - yes it was very weird, slow, etc. - but I got my excitement just for doing it. And some games were not playable - I was taking 10% of the available memory back then, and others were just too damn hard to crack (taking over interrupts, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER33> Well its rather surprising and terrifying to see a game developer even having the idea "graphics makes games" for even a minute... Ask anyone about their favorite games who are passionate about them and i can bet they will list games that didn't had 3D graphics...

<comment><USER34> I think it is a great selling point. No matter how crappy the final product is, claiming new or better graphics automatically give more sold units.

It is easy to critique a game after you played it. But before you do, the only thing you can do is look. Since you can't interact with the game in any way, what is left is the visuals. And that impression sells the game. Therefore, graphics matter.

<comment><USER25> There's a thing I call Amiga Game Disease. It's a thing on many platforms, especially now, but it was prevalent on the Amiga way back when. It's when a game is pretty much a tech demo with a thin game wrapped around it. Take something like Shadow of the Beast. Beautiful to look at, and really showcased the Amiga's power. Nothing looked or sounded quite like the Amiga version of Shadow of the Beast, and the various ports to lesser systems certainly couldn't keep up.

But it was pure, frustrating, junk from a gameplay perspective. The controls were clunky and shit was always popping out of nowhere and killing you. I kept dying at the first "boss", a skeleton thing on a throne that looked like it was made of some bigger creature's jaw. What I didn't know at the time was that there was a gryphon I had to defeat by punching the crystal orb it was bouncing; defeating the gryphon would temporarily grant me the power to shoot hadoukens, and the skeleton thing was only vulnerable to the hadoukens. (If you used up your hadoukens before defeating the skeleton thing, well, sucks to be you.)

And it's just full of stuff like this. The game doesn't tell you ANYTHING about how to play it or what its goals are. Plus it was a pioneer in unskippable cutscenes: moving from one place to another -- like going in a door or something -- entailed staring at a still image while adventure-game- style flavor text scrolled by and no key or button press could dismiss it. And once you die, that's it. You have to start all the way from the beginning. The game could be cleared in half an hour -- IF you knew where everything was. I guess it got replay value by surprising you with deadly enemies and obstacles you couldn't see coming and making you start over each time a new thing bit you in the ass.

But we all remember Shadow of the Beast -- indeed Amiga users look back fondly at it -- SIMPLY BECAUSE OF ITS GRAPHICS AND SOUND.

Sword of Sodan was the same thing: clunky and repetitive, but WOW LOOK AT THOSE HUGE SPRITES.

So yes, "good graphics = good game" is a thing, and it's because of the market, not because of the execs.

<comment><USER35> Strange. I played a lot of games on Amiga and do not count SotB in the great ones. My list of great Amiga games is:

      - <USER2>
      - P.P. Hammer
      - Blues Brothers
      - Sensible Soccer
      - <USER3>
      - Alien Breed
      - Another World

Most of those had average graphics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A question for those in the know - as a programmer, I've seen a lot of democratization of the game engine side of game programming over the last few years. The price of entry to AAA-level technology has fallen so massively that now anyone can download UDK and start having a go.

I'm interested to hear of what's happened, democratization-wise, on the art and music side of game development. This is the bit that I find people don't immediately grasp. While engine technology has gotten cheaper, making assets for those engines is only getting more expensive.

So I'm interested from those who are in the art field, have asset tools become more 'democratic'? Or to put another way, are art tools moving to make art asset creation less expensive in the same way that engine tools have made the programming side less expensive?

One area I can think of off the top of my head is texturing and shaders - texture-painting tools and physically-based shaders that allow less-skilled artists (and programmer-artists) to still get aesthetically good looking results, without having to become experts in UV mapping or writing shaders.

Is there something similar for model and animation creation, etc? Is this even possible to do without making games that look 'cookie-cutter'? (My gut feeling on that last question is that it should be).

<comment><USER37> I live on the outskirts of 3d art world and there are definitely a lot of tools to make asset creation easier. You can buy texturing/shading packs, which are usually pretty customizable. There are tools like MakeHuman for humanoids and Marvelous Designer for easy clothing/cloth sim. Maya comes with built-in hair/cloth sim now which is supposed to be quite easy to use, as well as autorigging tools. You will probably want to know a little about 3D to make something decent, but then again you'll want to know a little about programming to make something decent in UDK.

I'm really curious about the music. I have a really hard time making music without having a composing background. I've tried a few music generators but the results have been pretty bad so far.

<comment><USER36> I'd heard of MakeHuman but not Marvelous Designer (it looks great). Think I'm going to submit an Ask HN, would love a list of these kinds of tools....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> For the author's comparison of The Sims to the Facebook Flash game of The Sims -- one thing he doesn't discuss at all is that by using 3D models The Sims allows you a crazy amount of customization in creating Sims and their surroundings, compared to what's possible with the hand-drawn vector graphics of The Sims Social.

Which kind of undermines his point. The Sims Social isn't a game that made different choices in graphics, it's a different kind of game with the Sims brand thrown on it. It's not just about MOAR GRAPHICS, what you're capable of doing with graphics informs what kind of gameplay experiences you can create for players.

</comment><comment><USER39> AAA games are like F1 cars, they are the extreme that hopefully technology will trickle down from so that 'consumer' indie games can benefit from. Without the huge AAA games pushing the limits of tech we wouldn't have as many game engines for indies to use. I hope it continues because I love TIS-100 and The Witcher 3.

<comment><USER36> OMFG the premise of TIS-100 sounds amazing! Thanks for making me aware of it.

[http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/](http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > What are the games that people play for years that only have pretty > environments or another form of impressive tech to offer? I can't think of > any.

Well, Final Fantasy VII frequently tops "greatest game of all time" polls, and its visuals were driven by 3D tech (and arguably less artisticly interesting than those of VI).

<comment><USER41> I think FFVII is much deeper than its graphics and storyline. It was (not quite, but almost) an early Cookie Clicker. Laughably easy, and yet you had fun anyway. It was fun to max out your materia and level your characters up even though you had long, long passed the point where the final boss was a pushover. The graphics/story/popularity/etc. allowed you to enjoy the "Cookie Clicker" without admitting it to anyone else or even to yourself.

That's just my subjective opinion of course.

<comment><USER20> The thing that defines Cookie Clicker is that it _only_ has improve-stat-get- dopamine mechanics. All games with character progression are partly Cookie Clicker. The interesting thing about CC is its distillation of a particular mechanic.

<comment><USER41> It's not just improve-stat-get-dopamine. It's a very fine-tuned, well-balanced implementation of improve-stat-get-dopamine. That same fine-tuned well-balance was seen in FFVII, in my opinion. It's subtle (1), but just think what a fine line it is between "grinding hits a plateau" (2) on one side and "grinding makes you grow out of control" (3) on the other.

(1) "Good design is obvious; great design is transparent"

(2) E.g., FFIV

(3) E.g., FFVI

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Because of the ongoing pursuit of Hollywood"

A better analogy is obviously the best hollywood movie is the one with the most and fanciest special effects.

Unfortunately 95% of the population doesn't want to watch a special effects demo reel, not even for free. And the analogy is the same problem with graphics, true the demoscene subculture is fascinated with graphics and its very technologically impressive, but 95% of the population responds with "meh".

(edited to add, the truly unfortunate part is the 5% of the population who want special effects reels is financially successful enough to completely prevent all advancement of the art other than the local maxima of special effects, so the 95% of the population who can't stand it are stuck, and are unserved by the monopoly / ogliopoly. The situation with games isn't as bad and the "casuals" are making huge piles of cash for non-3d developers, and the goal of the AAA studios and their journalist hangers on is to create and insert enough blocks in the marketplace to eliminate casual from competition and keep "gaming" a stereotypical pure 3-d WW2 FPS sequel experience, and the problem is technology has pretty much topped out eliminating "better graphics" as a marketing weapon)

<comment><USER43> I think you're dramatically overestimating the number of people who don't want to see demo reels in the cinema. In our tight technical circles, sure, I agree that most people don't. But our tech circles are such a small percentage of the audience of hollywood films. There are plenty of movies that aren't drowning in VFX released every year, yet the numbers don't lie. Avengers, Harry Potter, Avatar, Pirates of the carribean (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest- grossing_films](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films) for more)style films blow others out of the water. It's extrememly clear that people want films that are knee deep in VFX. If they didn't, then they'd stop spending 1.5 billion dollars on going to see the avengers, and see something else instead.

<comment><USER42> I see truth in what you write.

However, given that I can't see a movie for less than $15, that $1.5B represents only 100M views, and if you theorize that only 1B of the world population is wealthy enough to occasionally blow $15 to watch a movie, that implies 90% of the population is uninterested in VFX demo reels, which isn't all that dramatically different from my engineering estimate, especially given we could cherry pick examples to "prove" either your claim or mine, or play games with $ per unit time to reach either conclusion.

I completely agree that $1.5B is important business, yet it makes my point that appealing to a narrowcasted local maxima of VFX fans also simultaneously means perhaps 90% of the population will be uninterested. And the point I'm trying to make isn't that 10% of the population is irrelevant, but if someone could crack the code and disrupt the industry and instead of narrowcasting, make something of broad appeal that perhaps half the population would be interested in, that mysterious idea would be worth about $7.5B which is actually pretty good revenue for a startup. But it'll never happen if the entrenched oligopoly isn't disrupted.

I honestly have no idea how to exploit the market, but "obviously" there's a huge under served market with possibly staggering revenue, for some future startup that can figure out how to make movies that appeal to more than about 10% of the population. Piles of money are sitting out there, waiting to be harvested...

There are similar analogies and financials with pop music. Entrenched industries have pretty much figured out how to sell simple mass produced formulaic music to each generation's (each years?) teens. There seems no biological or psychological reason a better industry competitor couldn't sell 3 to 7 times as much if they could appeal to more than young kids. Eventually someone will crack that startup opportunity and make mid nine figures.

Finally ditto, kind of, with sports. "Everybody is a baseball fan" but only about 5% of the population actually watches the world series. If you take existing advertising revenue and multiply it by a fraction representing some magic startup pixie dust that gets maybe 50% of the population to watch, that's some serious ad revenue money; in fact its "football" type money, LOL, which is a whole nother topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> "The perfect balance of number of units with the amount of things a player's human brain could possibly track at any given moment was completely lost on me."

The human brain can actually abstract things away and starts thinking in groups rather than in individual units, regardless if the game mechanics allows the player to treat them as such or not. That units-limit was something I did not particularly enjoyed in those games (and appreciated instead games like Command & Conquer in this regard). I agree that there is more than technical features that make or break a game, but the units-limit in RT tactics games is a flaw and it's not a technical one.

For those who argue that units-limit encouraged unit-quality over unit- quantity thinking, I concede. It's a valid point that perhaps contributed to the *Craft success series. That feature could however have been left as an over-ridable game parameter (set on by default, if you will).

</comment><comment><USER24> I recently started playing skyrim - i know, I'm late to the party - and I'm really taken by some of the graphics and gameplay. there aren't too many games i can really stick with (just cause,bioshock,and portal are it) so it's nice to find a game I can ACTUALLY play. I tried deus ex; good game, but got too complicated, and then i tried picking it up months later and simply couldn't remember anything.

But, I've also been thinking of making a game. I know next to nothing about games, but bunches about the web. So then it became a question of what could I build with the tools I know?

which then lead me to realize: you don't need good graphics for a great game. Some games you want the graphics because it's part of the experience; but others you don't need any. And still others just need some. A game just needs to be fun in the end, and there are a surprising number of ways to get there.

<comment><USER11> There's a lot of opportunity to use your web skills to create games. Consider things like Kingdom of Loathing or something... definitely not "great graphics" but has a lot of fans.

Monetization opportunities seem more challenging, if you're inclined in that direction. If not, then, well, don't worry about it.

<comment><USER45> "A Dark Room" on iOS is another one worth looking at for inspiration - compelling game, and not at all about the graphics..

<comment><USER46> It's actually available in the browser, not just iOS.

It's one of the best games I've ever played, and I fully consider myself a games connoisseur.

[http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/](http://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I thought this was obvious... I've played plenty of great-looking but terrible games in my life, it's not that hard to put it together.

On another note, it's nice that indie games are starting to break down barriers by NOT pushing their games to extreme technical limits and focusing on gameplay. AAA games could learn from them.

</comment><comment><USER48> Heh... I'll take this opportunity to post about my beloved MUME (Multi-Users in Middle Earth) [0], a MUD that's been running for 25 years, and still the best place in the universe for intense PvP.

[0] [http://www.mume.org](http://www.mume.org)

</comment><comment><USER36> Lots of interesting stuff in this article.

As a tech guy who went to a game programming school, my personal theory about why technical people get hung up on engine development (the old "I'm making my own game and have spent the last year writing my own engine") is quite simple - it's just an easier problem space.

Writing an engine has a defined, knowable set of steps that you can answer with if asked "What do I need to do to write a game engine?".

On the other hand, how do you answer the question "How do I make a good game?".

So people get stuck writing engines because it's interesting and because they can feel like they're making progress on something.

</comment><comment><USER49> Atari.

Atari pretty much spawned the video game industry, and the average game wasn't more than squares on a screen. Squares. Your game character is one giant pixel.

It was all about the gameplay, not the graphics, and sold millions.

<comment><USER39> True, but at the time those squares were the cutting edge, and cost about $450 today for A game. [http://game-consoles.specout.com/q/9/2566/How-much-does-a- At...](http://game-consoles.specout.com/q/9/2566/How-much-does-a-Atari-Pong- game-console-cost) [http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=98...](http://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=98&year=1975)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> If what you care about is games for their own sake, that's as valid a perspective as any other.

My perspective is very different, because I care about games not for their own sake, but for their spin-off benefits: chips whose R&D was paid for by gamers, are being used to design aircraft, discover life-saving medicines, unravel the secrets of the universe.

From that perspective, abandoning the tech arms race in games abandons that which was valuable about the enterprise in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER44> "For years the AAA argument for pushing the tech envelope has been that the bigger, better looking, better sounding, more detailed our worlds are, the more believable they are. But is this true?"

It is for me! I've enjoyed Far Cry more than the barren speed-oriented environments of Quake III or Unreal (I know, I know, this one never aimed to be "real", but it's a good example in anti-thesis). Now seriously, when I read this:

"In politics-heavy environments, there is nothing more effective in pursuing a personal agenda than using "facts" and numbers - even when those facts and numbers are hand-picked to support a certain story."

I can not help but think of the cherry-picking that the current article I'm reading does.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't think that young people today agree that this is a bad thing. I can see where someone who grew up with the older systems and older games would be nostalgic towards them (I'm turning 50 this year) and find the new to be unnecessary and gratuitous.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm not sure how reasonable it is the way the author mixes demographics to make his point. I don't see the type of person playing sims social, wanting to buy a AAA game to begin with. I think the tech arms race does matter to people. It also acts as a signal of minimum floor of quality,but the specifics I'm not sure myself. I know would definitely prefer HD in movies, tv, and videogames. I definitely prefer movie special effects to cheap television special effects.

edit: maybe it also acts a way to signal people in market full of noise (competitors?)

</comment><comment><USER53> What else in his life is he seeing in the wrong way?

<comment><USER54> I wonder why the downvotes, it's actually a quite thought provoking question.

<comment><USER55> No it's not, it's an insult.

<comment><USER56> Disagree! It's a brilliant comment. Should really be at the top, in my view :) - though as food more for thought than discussion.

<comment><USER56> I will try to explain, though I think it's obvious - at least, once you've read that comment (which is why I like it so much - maybe to others it was obvious beforehand, in which case I apologise for being dense).

Here is an article about this guy discarding beliefs that he's held for a long time. These are beliefs that I suppose you might call his doctrine, in that he held them without really questioning them. Well: great! Unquestioned beliefs, questioned and revisited, changed in the face of the evidence, or whatever. And he seems happy with the result.

How many similar beliefs might he hold in total?

If changing one set of beliefs for another is worth doing, what about some other set?

Would it be worth his adopting this as more active process, rather than simply waiting for events to demonstrate that some arbitrary set of beliefs are worth changing?

Is there a wider lesson here?

(Etc., etc.)

<comment><USER54> That's exactly how I interpreted the 'insulting' comment. We tend to compatimentalize ourselves at a rational level, but sometimes fail to see the 'bigger picture' of our mental patterns and the impact they have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This arms race is probably because what I want isn't a new game I just want the same game as the last game but looking twice as good.

</comment><comment><USER58> One example where tech enables a more engaging (fun) gameplay is Gran Turismo. It simulates real cars on real tracks and the accuracy of driving physics of actual cars is a prime source of pleasure. Driving a different car, or different settings actually makes a difference in the way it feels. I'm still waiting for GT7 to have a reason to get a PS4.

</comment><comment><USER59> The author points to Sims Social and League of Legends as points of reducing the technical prowess of games.

While it's true that these games are less technically complex than a hyper- realistic 3D game, they are extremely complicated in client-server architecture.

The requirements for technical complexity have changed focuses, not disappeared.

</comment><comment><USER60> That story about trying to encourage his wife to try the PC version reminds me very much of most experiences I have with or watching console gamers moving to the PC.

The complexity at times isn't worth it because it loses sight of what the purpose was, to have fun

</comment><comment><USER61> My thought is that it's more difficult then ever to make high tech games. There's very little games coming out now that push the limits of what's possible. It's almost like complaining there is too much water on the moon.

</comment><comment><USER62> Good games that push the envelope is entertainment and art, It may also be genre creating.

Katamari-damacy for PS, Dynasty Warriors for PS2, and Quake comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER63> This debate goes back to the late 1990's.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm still excited for more power for games. For a game that uses CPU correctly see Dwarf Fortress.

<comment><USER10> You mean that game that only runs on one core?

<comment><USER64> I mean the game that uses CPU for simulation of world, not for pushing ever more trangles to the GPU.

Didn't knew it's single core only, that's a shame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I have a stupid question that I felt the author should have addressed. What's AAA?

<comment><USER25> Marketroid term for game that has a huge dev team and production/marketing budget. Marketroids which bandy this term about are often under the delusion that this makes for a good game.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Fileshifter – Easily convert files and videos between different formats - <AUTHOR> https://fileshifter.io/converter/ <comment> Digital-Citizen Structurally, the service is hosted online as a website, this means one must upload a copy of their data to be converted. Naturally that raises questions because there's a lot we don't know about this site: who runs it, what are the terms of service (I saw none on the site), what are users granting the site owners to do with uploaded data? Answers to these are almost certainly guesses as this information is not readily available. The site source code is minified Javascript; designed to be terse and at the cost of legibility (variable names are often shortened, useful or long comments eliminated), certainly not the source code a developer would work with when writing the software.

How could this have been implemented in a way that obviates all of these show- stopper failings? Respect users' software freedom by offering users one or more programs to do the conversion jobs with reasonable default settings. Distribute complete corresponding source code alongside the rest of the site so as to let the user host an instance of the site on their own. Users so inclined can set this up for themselves and others, or use their software freedom to end up with a conversion service they don't need to guess about.

<comment><USER2> \- I appreciate these posts that promote software freedom.

\- The tools `convert` and `ffmpeg` should cover your criteria and the functionality of the site.

<comment><USER3> unoconv too, for the office formats.

<comment><USER2> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool! I think you need a way to get back to the home screen so that someone can try another conversion. After I did the default png->pdf, there is nothing to click on to go back and try another conversion, besides editing the URL. (maybe a link 'try another' or just home) - but cool thanks for sharing! Edit: on Safari mac 10.13 if that helps

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, glad you liked it! I'm working on a new update that does exactly that! So, thanks for your suggestion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Edit: Feature has now been implemented

<comment><USER4> Wonderful!! I'll give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So...it's like zamzar?

</comment><comment><USER6> Will this be open-sourced? I'd like the idea of a self-hosted version of this. Good work!

<comment><USER7> Just curious, why would you want to self-host it?

<comment><USER6> Many reasons. Primarily because of security and control of my information. Secondly because services like these tend to be short-lived and unreliable, if i host it myself i can trust it's there when i need it. And i hadn't considered the uploading time issue mentioned in a previous comment, but that is actually a very good point that self-hosting would solve as well.

I also just want to see the code because i think it's cool

<comment><USER8> >I also just want to see the code because i think it's cool

This is not "the" code but here's a script. I can't take credit for it... I don't remember but I probably cobbled it together by taking stack overflow code and making it more friendly. First, you need ffmpeg (ymmv.. this assumes macOS, for others installing ffmpeg is also possible but left as an exercise for the reader):

        $ brew install ffmpeg

Then:

[edit: fixed some typos]

        #!/bin/bash

        export OLD_IFS=$IFS
        export IFS=''

        mkdir -p converted
        for a in *.{webm,mkv,ts}
        do
            ffmpeg -i "$a" -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 20 -c:a libvo_aacenc -b:a 128k "$a.mp4"
            if [[ $? == 0 ]]; then
                mv "$a.mp4" converted
            fi
        done
        export IFS=$OLD_IFS

Save as convert-to-mp4.sh then run it in a directory containing files of undesirable types like .webm

Not saying this is perfect. Take it as a proof of concept. And there's no web UI, nor would I want one. Suggestions for tweaks welcome.

<comment><USER9> > First, you need ffmpeg (ymmv.. this assumes macOS, for others installing > ffmpeg is also possible but left as an exercise for the reader):

> $ brew install ffmpeg

FWIW, there's a `brew` fork for linux: [https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew](https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew)

It's not especially useful in this case as ffmpeg is available in linux package managers, but it's handy for tools that aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. I tried to convert an iPhone photo from jpg to pdf (from phone) and it threw the following error: "C952B34B-95B4-4908-9018-C224DBB753A1.jpeg - File not in jpg format"

<comment><AUTHOR> yep, looks like an error at the frontend. I'll look it to it. Thanks for reporting it

<comment><AUTHOR> Error is now fixed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's nice! Quick feedback for UX improvement: let the user upload a file first, detect the extension, then ask what file type to convert to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I'll take it onboard and try my best to implement it.</comment></comment>


What Makes Us Happy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/7439/

<comment><USER2> I read an article about that study a while ago. Maybe it was this specific article, as it dates back to June 2009. I found it extremely interesting in that what our western culture considers "success" doesn't necessarily lead to happiness. It has vindicated me in finding balance in my life and not investing too much of it just in my job.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know what makes us happy, but I'm happy to have a job that I get paid to do when I would probably do it for free and for fun. (Developer)

</comment><comment><USER4> Great article thanks for posting!

In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked,

 _"What have you learned from the Grant Study men?"_

Vaillant's response:

 _"That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."_

</comment><comment><USER5> I think this study is skewed simply by the fact that these people knew they were being observed and that what happened in their lives mattered to enough to be studied. How much does that weigh into one's happiness?

</comment><comment><USER6> Anything that confirms our self-centered views and illusions. (sorry, cannot resist =)</comment>


Can this tech empowers independent consultants? - <AUTHOR> http://www.workhint.com <comment><USER2> Unlikely for me, I live out in the backwoods where there are no clients for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> -1 for click bait title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, will not do it again :)</comment></comment>


Alto: Lightweight-vms-using-virtualization-aware-managed-runtimes(2018) - <AUTHOR> https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/publications/alto-lightweight-vms-using-virtualization-aware-managed-runtimes
Somehow, the pdf fails to load on browser. Direct link:
https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/alto.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link for the paper: [https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/alto.pd...](https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/alto.pdf)</comment>


This tweet contains exactly four As, one B, three Cs… - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/robinhouston/status/1177636866671157248 <comment><USER2> For those who read the comments here on HN before reading the article, this thread contains more than just the self-enumerating tweet, it also talks about versions in multiple languages, how to search for such things, and a computer language that compiles to SAT.

There's more in the thread than just the curiosity.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you pointed that out, since I thought it would just be a quote from Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas. The initial self-enumeration is just the kick-off for a more interesting thread that takes you on a bit of an emotional techy roller coaster.

I wrote a program in Lisp way back when that reproduces this kind of sentence, and allowed you to begin and end with any phrase bits you wish (eg: You might find it highly unlikely, but I can tell you that this sentence actually contains..., commas and a single exclamation mark to finish it off!) It was _ugly_ but it worked. And thankfully didn't take 22 days since some word combinations did indeed lead to a fail.

I think it might have actually been Hofstadter's writing, and this exercise specifically, that got me interested in Lisp in the first place.</comment></comment>


The Neuroscience Behind Bad Decisions - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160823-the-neuroscience-behind-bad-decisions/ <comment><USER2> > If offered a Snickers, a Milky Way and an Almond Joy, participants would > always choose the Snickers. But if they were offered 20 candy bars, > including a Snickers, the choice became less clear. They would sometimes > pick something other than the Snickers, even though it was still their > favorite.

Just because something is your favorite doesn't mean it's rational to always choose it every time. Hot wings are my favorite food, but I don't eat them three meals a day to the exclusion of everything else. If there's a selection of 20 candy bars, possibly including ones you haven't tried before, I don't think it's irrational to try a new one since that might _become_ a favorite. Even if it's one you already know, maybe you're just in the mood for coconut instead of peanuts at the moment. This seems like a poor way to measure irrationality.

<comment><USER3> The goal of the experiment was not to measure irrationality. The goal was to measure neuronal activity involved in decision making, while fuzzing the decision making system with too many options.

<comment><USER4> The article mentions irrationality numerous times. The experimenter appears to be attempting to frame all decision making as economic value choices. It even gets called Neuroeconomics. "What part of the brain calculates that the Snickers bar rates higher than the Milky Way?"

Maybe I'm just broken, but this is a long way from how I choose a choc bar, from 3 or 20. My choice will change depending on what I had recently.

I don't have time to skim the actual paper, but I'm more with the GP that it seems a pretty poor experiment.

<comment><USER5> See above replies from myself and whack

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am asking this out of my ignorance.

I usually never read 'Psychology/Happiness/Depression/Mindfulness/Optimism/Anxiety/Loneliness/Child Psychology/Meditation' articles that have plagued HN recently.

Is neuroscience legit science or is it unfair to lump it with psychology.

<comment><USER7> I'm not qualified to answer, but as a patient looking back; I feel duped by well meaning people.

I don't know about neuroscience, but it seems when Psychologists/Psychiarty fails they fall back too frequently on, "Well, it's an art too?".

I don't think I've met an older Psychiatrist who isn't secretly completely dissalusioned with their career. They won't admit it. I can just see it on their faces. It's ironic they know so much about denial, but they appear to really repress?

I really hope these professions attract the best students/minds in the future, and brings in enough research money so that won't be an excuse.

If you are in mental agony, you need to go through the dance--you might be the person they help. I'm not trying to be funny; you just need to go, and see if they can help.

If all you get out of it is bills, bad side effects, and no results--leave. There's a part of me that wished I never seeked out their help, but will never know if I made the right decision.

(My heart, and complete sympathy goes out to anyone hit with mental illness. I can offer this, with enough time you will feal better. Don't ruin your health by self-medicating. And I know, drugs like alcohol seem beneficial, but just don't overdo it. And again, give your brain/body time to heal. I'm an older guy who did get better. My life went down the tubes, but a lot of it was my fault--I guess? When I was in my twenties and blindsided by a malady, I held onto hope by a thin string. Every day became, just getting through it. My symptomology impoved with age. I will give good Psychologists/Psychiatrists this, they are the only professionals who seemingly truly understand what you are going through. To the rest of the world, the way you feel is a complete mystery, even family members, loved ones just don't quite get it. In the end, when you pull out of it, you might view the world a bit differently. There will be less black/white issues. I guarantee you will be a more understanding/sympathetic person. I sometimes think I became too liberal. To the point of being taken advantage of, but just don't know. I'm not the guy I used to be--for better, or worse.)

<comment><USER8> Congrats on making it through. I was extremely ill @ 29 years old and came to terms with my seemingly imminent mortality. It changed me completely from an Alpha anal-retentive to 'just another guy' enjoying the moment... more or less, there is no Utopia I have found. No one who hasn't been on their deathbed for an extended period could understand the experience, the slowness of time under the influence of ever-present discomfort and the desperation of impending finality. It is indeed maddening, then you get past it. If you're lucky enough to get a 2nd chance, your values can not not change. I've shared a campfire or two at the lake with fellow "happy people". I don't know if we're enlightened, calloussed or brain damaged, but I am much more contented in life without the high "highs" and low 'lows" of the 110% lifestyle. To each their own.

<comment><USER9> What strikes me about your comment is how frequently you employ extremely polarized descriptions of your experiences.

<comment><USER8> It is a very polarizing experience! The dichotomy between wanting relief at almost any cost and not wanting to die is a major conflict. Stretch that over a period of months and it's safe to assume values/attitudes will change. The after-effect of redfining "success" in a way that conflicts with popular culture and the consumer lifestyle invites significant divergence from established norms(in western society).

edit: reword 3rd sentence, removed excess

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd also like, "The Neuroscience behind the concept 'bad decision'"</comment>


Ask HN: WordPress Custom Page Hourly Rate? - <AUTHOR> I am a junior developer starting freelance and have a client that wants only one of his pages to have a custom layout.
I always hear about how undercutting rates on sites like Elance hurt the developers so I want to make sure I'm charging market rates.
How much should I charge for to make this custom page(landing page style, no extra widgets or sidebars or anything crazy)? I live in the greater NY area.
EDIT: Spelling <comment><USER2> Generally there are two approaches:

1) Hourly (most common) - determine what the standard rate is per hour for this kind of work in your area, then charge that, making an allowance (read: discount) for your level of skill. This may or may not be done using a "fixed price" estimate, meaning you will charge for X number of hours no matter how long it actually takes you. I'm not in your area, but my guess is that the fair market value of these services is probably in the $75-$150 range, depending on your level of expertise.

2) Value - determine the fair market value of the final output to the client and base your rate upon that estimate. This is more difficult and prone to be influenced by factors you may not be aware of (ie, if this person's relative implemented the site for free, they may attach an unreasonable expectation of value to the proposed change).

As I have progressed in my freelancing career I have found that one of the first set questions I always ask after having the client explain a request to me are:

1\. What is your budget. Making them start off the conversation about cost helps set expectations and allows me to immediately reject the request if their expectations are out of line with both the fair market value and my other active projects.

2\. What is your timetable. When a client needs a request done quickly and I have to reschedule already planned work to acommodate their request, I charge a premium for a rush job. This is analogous to the way such requests are handled in other media segments like print, video, and audio production.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like your last 2 points. I also think having them start off the money conversation so you don't undercut yourself by thinking they may not take you if you charge too much. The last point is also great as it enables them the option to possibly earn you more money.

Thanks for commenting beejhuff</comment></comment>


Hosted S/MIME by Google provides enhanced security for Gmail in the enterprise - <AUTHOR> https://security.googleblog.com/2017/02/hosted-smime-by-google-provides.html <comment><USER2> Now that Google is shooting to be their own CA, couldn't they mass-generate S/MIME certificates for all their users?

Even if the sender and receiver is Google-hosted, they could still encrypt mail, so it's encrypted at rest if it's copied from a user's gmail account to their local mail via pop/imap? And, since Google would be generating the private key, they could also decrypt it server-side in their secure environment, do whatever scanning for advertising/spam classification, and still deliver the same product?

As other users have pointed out, if you're trying to protect against an adversarial Google, you've already lost by using gmail. If you're going to trust them with message composition software, and transport, just go in whole- hog.

As far as I can tell, Google seems to have their security ducks in a row, and take this stuff seriously. Deployed correctly this could be another "raising the bar" event on email security, and help mitigate against servers still not requiring tls/ssl on port 25.

<comment> irq-1 Not only should they mass create keys for all accounts, but they should make (other/more) keys available _for any purpose_. An open system where most email addresses come with a set of keys would enable many types of encryption systems (file sharing, login, messaging, etc...) Users would still have keys managed by Google (or IT, or their webmail host) so they don't have to understand key management, and they'd have someone to call when things break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FYI, this is only supported by the G Suite Enterprise tier, Business and Basic do not have S/MIME support.

</comment><comment><USER4> > To use hosted S/MIME, companies need to upload their own certificates (with > private keys) to Gmail, which can be done by end users via Gmail settings or > by admins in bulk via the Gmail API.

So this is just to give the illusion of privacy and security then?

<comment><USER5> It gives protection against eavesdropping of messages in transit, so it's better than nothing (Even SSL+SMTP allows email relays to see the email in the clear). However it does not protect against an attacker who gets into your GMail, does not protect against warrents/NSLs/subpoenas against Google, does not protect against your domain admin accessing your message.

<comment><USER6> I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with the parent comment.

<comment><USER7> It's detailing that it does provide real privacy and security protections against some scenarios, even if not against all scenarios.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > end users have to manually install certificates to their email applications

This really is a problem that could be reduced. For instance there is no easy way to copy the S/Mime certificate from my macbook to my iPhone

<comment><USER9> It's been several years since I experimented with this, but I recall that S/MIME on an iPhone was much easier to setup than GPG anywhere else, including the desktop. I think I used a USB transfer, but googling now shows guides that allow emailing a password encrypted p12 file.

CA and Web of Trust both require verifying the key fingerprints of yo want to be serious about it, but smime was much more easy to use overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if Google is starting to get worried about services such as ProtonMail.

<comment><USER3> I doubt it, since S/MIME is only for the highest G Suite tier, Enterprise.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Laptop for Developer? - <AUTHOR> I am looking to buy a new laptop for web dev. I will be running Debian. Which laptop would you guys recommend? My main criteria is that it should be light and work without any hiccups with Debian based OS. And my budget is not much.
What are people using?
Thanks for your suggestions! <comment><USER3> I use a Thinkpad t480s (last years model). This laptop has done a great job "getting out my way". It has one of the best keyboards on any laptop I have used. It runs ubuntu great out of the box. 14in screen happens to be be a very nice size for me. I have the touchscreen model which has been nice for testing mobile sites. The screen could be a little brighter / more vibrant, but I do prefer the matte display for when I setup outside when the weather is nice. A brighter glossy version is available if you prefer that.

It has great port selection:

\- 2 usb-c ports (1 thunderbolt)

\- 2 usb-b

\- 1 hdmi port

\- 1 ethernet port

\- 1 sd card reader

Overall I'd say it's a very good well rounded laptop that I don't have any major complaints about.

<comment><USER4> Did a lot of research on my last purchase and it came down to a Thinkpad T480s or Thinkpad Carbon X1 and I ended up going with the Carbon because it's so much lighter and thinner while still having an i7, 16 GB of RAM and SSD.

And I bought it from Costco which was a great price and doubled the factory warranty for free, gives free tech support for a year and a ridiculous 90 day return policy.

And the battery lasts 10+ hours which is amazing.

<comment><USER3> I came down to the same choice, but went with the t480s for the extra RAM and the ethernet port (only used twice, but been a life safer each time).

Both are great options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using my System76 Oryx Pro for a few years, which comes with Pop!_OS or Ubuntu on it (your choice), but works well with other distros. I use Arch with it just fine.

The Oryx may be a bit bigger than you'd like, so you may want one of their lighter models. My laptop mostly sits on my desk all day, so I opted for the better CPU, GPU, and memory (which makes this machine better than the latest Macbook Pro while costing much less).

One nice thing is that System76 laptops ship with IME disabled and, soon, will be shipping with coreboot.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can't go wrong with anything from the Thinkpad T or X lines (you might be able to find them refurbished/used for pretty reasonable price). The Dell XPS 13 is another decent option but can be pricy.

For my personal use i've been using the Huawei Matebook X pro since last year. Things i dislike: no linux driver for the fingerprint scanner, there wasn't an option for me to buy the model with 16GB ram without Nvidia (its not a problem if you plan to run Ubuntu, etc). Things i like about it: The screen (3:2 screen is growing on me), the built quality seems really nice, its light but feels very sturdy. Good port selection, It has two USB-C + 1 regular USB-A port. The battery life is really good.

<comment><USER7> Keep away from t440, t440s and x240, they usually have really bad screen panels.

<comment><USER8> And a horrible trackpad without real buttons. Made using the trackpoint impossible. Replacing it with the x250 trackpad was a two hour job involving prying glued parts apart

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been given a Dell Latitude 7390 at work and I think it's awesome.

Basically, it has a full array of ports (Thunderbolt/USB-C, USB-A, microphone jack, an eff-ing ethernet port, hdmi, smartcard, sim and micro-sd), thin bezels (it looks like a 12" but it has a 13" display), a good display, 60WHr battery, a good enough keyboard and it's well supported by GNU/Linux (basically, only the fingerprint reader and nfc don't work).

Mine is configured with a quad-core 8th gen Core i7 and 16GB ram. The fun thing is, my colleague sitting at my left has a 13" macbook, and I often hear his laptop fans spin up (from the distance!). OTOH, my laptop fans have basically never spun up.

If only it had the trackpoint it could easily get me to abandon the ThinkPad altogether.

<comment><USER10> Dell's are good, I've a more modest Dell inspiron 15, i5 8250U, 16G ram

Silent, and great touchpad, I don't even use a mouse anymore actually, using it with Lubuntu 18.04

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dell XPS 13 is pretty good and ships with Ubuntu: [https://www.dell.com/en- us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/xps-13-7390...](https://www.dell.com/en- us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/xps-13-7390-laptop/cax13w10p1c606csu)

<comment><USER12> My XPS 15 (9550) has treated me very very well for the past 4 years! Ubuntu works straight out of the box and the battery life is wonderful. The super slim bezels keep it looking modern looking, too, if you care about things like that. I do somewhat wish I waited a year to get the fingerprint reader, though (not sure if it would work on Ubuntu).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use a Dell XPS 13 9570 with Ubuntu and I am absolutely smitten with it.

My last laptop was an XPS 13 9350, and I loved it too, but I did find it a bit too small for my liking so I ultimately ended up selling it and buying the 9570.

Let me know if you have any questions about this specific model, and I'll be happy to help as best I can.

</comment><comment><USER14> Matebook x pro, try to get the 2018 one due to its higher performance (weirdly) than the 2019 one.

Also linux works great on it, and build quality is a smigen under apple but very very close.

Oh and the keyboard works :)

<comment><USER15> Does the touchpad support gestures and does any driver exist for it? That's the biggest thing keeping me on macOS

<comment><USER6> It does support gestures. Gnome and KDE use libinput these days which has support for 3-finger, 4-finger gestures (Both have some gestures enabled by default when using wayland)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> System76 looks great, but I've been using Thinkpad X series for quite a while now. I get a configuration that's linux compatible, but my favorite feature is to have one double battery on the back + another battery inside, for a total of 10-14h lifetime, basically I only charge at night. If you travel a lot, and code while traveling it's pretty useful. Have been using XPS in the past, not a bad experience, but still prefer thinkpad X for the battery life.

For my teams I buy refurbished Thinkpad X250, past models (X220, X230, X240 IIRC) don't have normal mice buttons, those don't work well for me.

I miss the old keyboards though.

<comment><USER8> Onky the x240. Before and after have real buttons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I recently came across the Acer 5, that runs AMD ryzen 3 with 4GB ram at 315$ on amazon. I did a bit of research (and that's my only experience with it) and if budget is a factor, from what I saw you can't beat this one. If you can buy more RAM do it. Make sure to use both slots to activate the dual channel, as it will perfor better.

I managed to find a post from someone that has installed Linux on it, with no issues. And another that did have issues, but that's probably someone who was quite noobish to Linux.

[https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Display-Graphics- Keyboard-A515-4...](https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Display-Graphics- Keyboard-A515-43-R19L/dp/B07RF1XD36/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=laptop+acer+aspire+5&qid=1570818921&sprefix=laptop+acer+&sr=8-4)

<comment><USER18> I love the Acer Aspire E5 series. I have the E5-575g with an i5 and 16gb ram (they go up to 32gb). Here's the 576g with 8gb and a newer CPU than I have, for $599...

[https://www.amazon.com/Acer- Aspire-i5-8250U-GeForce-E5-576G-...](https://www.amazon.com/Acer- Aspire-i5-8250U-GeForce-E5-576G-5762/dp/B075FLBJV7)

It's got a 1080p screen, dual video out (hdmi + vga), gigabit ethernet, usb-c, Bluetooth and the battery easily lasts over 10 hours with Manjaro Linux. Everything works under Linux and the ram, ssd and wifi are user serviceable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have Lenovo P1 (gen 2). Linux friendly, thin & light, 64GB memory, 2TB NVMe, plenty of ports, industrial build quality. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER20> The x1 carbon line is very light weight, and the generation 6 has been widely adopted. But for cheap a refurbished x230 x250 seam to be still very popular. check out reddit.com/r/thinkpads

</comment><comment><USER21> Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme / P1

\- up to 64 GB RAM

\- 15' display with 4K resolution & 500 cd/m²

\- Super fast CPU with 12 MB cache & 4,6 Ghz, 12 cores

\- Best keyboard (much better than Mac)

\- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or Quadro T2000 for the P series

\- only 1.7 kg (~3.5 pounds)

\- USB-C & Thunderbolt

<comment><USER22> I've been looking at this laptop recently. How do you feel when you use it? Is it heavy or light? How is the temperature when it is fully loaded?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd recommend Dell XPS as well. They sell refurbished units here [https://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/InventorySe...](https://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandid=2201&c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh&frid=144&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1)

</comment><comment><USER24> Dell XPS 13 9370, and it's fantastic with Ubuntu. At least 3 other developers at my office also have XPSs of varying generations

</comment><comment><USER25> Heavy Debian user + webdev + automation dev myself and have ran 8, 9, and 10 with minimal issues on an old T430. In my experience you will _almost always_ have issues with Debian laptops and hibernation.

I also run a custom fan profile for my T430 too because I tend to run it hot with multiple VMWare Workstation VMs, 5+ Docker containers in orchestration etc. It can handle IntelliJ, Chrome with tons of tabs, and the above virtualization/containerization in-parallel very successfully.

I prefer the older Thinkpads because there's more info out there for it, and they tend to be _very_ upgrade-able. I specifically run a very similar build to "The Definitive T430" seen here: [https://medium.com/@n4ru/the- definitive-t430-modding-guide-3...](https://medium.com/@n4ru/the- definitive-t430-modding-guide-3dff3f6a8e2e) ... Also there's SO many great communities out there that are willing to help! (reddit.com/r/thinkpad being the top IMO)

\---

I mention my old T430 because you have budget constraints - you can get a base system for approx $150 and I would STRONGLY recommend 16G of RAM (DDR3L for better battery performance) and the screen upgrade. All-in-all my build cost around $550 but I went all-in. It may not fit your "light" criteria but for me I still comfortably travel all the time with it, even with the extended battery. I also put "repairability" at the top of my list too.

Only thing I've found lacking on my custom T430 is video performance - <USER2> that's my problem because I make it run two HUGE displays for screen real estate.

I also run a T440p for a Win10 system (ewwwww) and that's outstanding as well - although the trackpad upgrade for that one is a must.

PS: Thanks for being a fellow Debian user as a webdev! Sorry for the stream- of-consciousness response ha

</comment><comment><USER26> Lots of recommendations for X/T lenovos in here; does anybody know of a way to navigate the lenovo outlet without screaming into the void? [https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus/laptops/c/LAPTOPS](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus/laptops/c/LAPTOPS)

It doesn't seem possible to constrain it to just X and T series, you have to pick on dimensions that are ancillary like screen dimensions and weight, but their data seems to be really dirty because there's only two laptops (out of 600+ right now) with a 'weight' field.

The best I can see is to search by "memory: 16GB" since then you don't have to wade through the ideapads etc.

</comment><comment> transistor-man Its really annoying the W series Lenovos were discontinued. The W530 could survive everything from road trip back-seat python to outdoor satellite sdr debugging, all while having a keyboard that was backlit and easy to replace.

<comment><USER27> I have a W530 that I can't stand. The keyboard is so much worse than the previous or current generations. There's also something wrong with it that makes the screen go rainbow when it moves the wrong way, so I can't carry it around. I don't know what it is but I can barely type in that thing. I have P70 now and I love the thinkpad again. My next laptop will be a P5x model. Great keyboard, screen is fine (I don't game or do anything that requires more than a modest display), built like a tank and uoi can stuff it full of memory. (Always running Linux, so I can't speak to anything else.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> With not much budget, many of the recomendations like e.g. the T480s seem too expensive.

I'd recommend a secondhand ThinkPad from the T series and suggest to ask on the reddit thinkpad forum with more details (budget, size).

</comment><comment><USER29> I've used HP EliteBook series since G1 (current is G5) all worked great with Ubuntu. G5 series is lightweight and IMHO well built.

Currently using HP Zbook G3 which came with external Nvidia card that I had to take out in order for suspend and screen brightness to work, other than that Zbook G3 works great with Ubuntu but may be too bulky for some.

It is worth checking HP outlet for notebook deals: [https://h41369.www4.hp.com/pps-offers.php](https://h41369.www4.hp.com/pps- offers.php) (under section "Notebook PCs")

</comment><comment><USER30> I've been using a refurbished Dell 7270 for the past few months which I bought for less than $300, this is a 12.5" ultrabook.

I've been pretty happy with it, since it has all the required ports (except maybe a VGA, which I can live without), has 2 ram slots which I can use for upgrading to 32gb for less than $100 in the future. Also it runs Ubuntu Mate flawlessly without any issues.

Overall I can't really find any flaws in few months that I've used it.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am very happy with a Dell Precision 5510. I bought it as replacement for my MacBook Pro, maxed out late 2016, (MB) when it needs butterfly keyboard service (twice so far). It came with a Xeon processor and 32 GB RAM. for under 1000 USD. I run it with Ubuntu and compile software all day. My MB fans were blowing a lot and once even the battery swelled (service). My replacement Precision beats the MB in any aspect.

</comment><comment><USER32> For your requirements, would 10/10 recommend an older Thinkpad. Checkout r/Thinkpad for more resources than you could ever need to find a steal.

</comment><comment><USER33> X and T thinkpads. Amazing Linux support and battery life. Very robust (I've seen Dell XPS with screen hinge broken when it more solid on thinkpads)

</comment><comment><USER34> Get a thinkpad, preferably T-series. Avoid ones with no physical trackpoint buttons. The Trackpoint is on par with a Mac trackpad for a mobile pointing device.

The T420 is an older model that's incredibly good and tough for what it is, and can be got for under $200. The T440 is also a fantastic option for a slightly higher price.

</comment><comment><USER35> I used a Lenovo X230 for years and I loved it. One can be had for under $200 US and the Linux drivers are flawless, though make sure you install battery management utilities. The battery and hard drive are replaceable, and there's a slot to add RAM.

Consider getting one refurbished, then upgrade the battery and main storage.

</comment><comment><USER36> Would you be interested in Vaio SX12 or SX14 ? [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Vaio-SX14-i5-8265U-FHD- Laptop-...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Vaio-SX14-i5-8265U-FHD-Laptop- Review.418199.0.html)

Loaded with ports and slim and light weight at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wrote about my experience with a Thinkpad here[1]. It was the P1, a great laptop on paper.

[1]: [https://lovesegfault.com/post/2019-01-24-thinkpad- nightmare/](https://lovesegfault.com/post/2019-01-24-thinkpad-nightmare/)

<comment><USER38> I've mostly had great experiences with lenovo tech support, certainly never had to talk to a robot.

When things go wrong I make a ticket and usually receive a call (and email if I don't pick up) in intelligible english within an hour, the technician usually shows up at my door within a day (unless waiting for an exotic localized keyboard or something).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'll throw in yet another recommendation for the Dell XPS 13". I'm using the 9380. It's light, thin, and has an excellent keyboard, and good battery life. The higher resolution screen option is beautiful, but it does drive the price up.

</comment><comment><USER40> I have a Dell Precision 5520 running Linux; it's incredibly similar to the Dell XPS line and is incredibly fantastic.

<comment><USER35> I have one of these as my work laptop. I agree, it's a lightweight powerful device and the Linux drivers worked perfectly in my experience (though I haven't asked much from the GPU).

I ended up getting a Lenovo Carbon X1 (6th gen) for my home laptop. It's even lighter, and again the Linux drivers are excellent.

I'd recommend either of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Thinkpads or Dell XPS laptops are great for Linux development. Light, stylish, built well and reasonably-priced.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's still a Macbook Pro, by miles!

<comment><USER43> yeah, no. unless you're an ios developer

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have a Dell XPS 9570 as well and I love it, it's been one of my favorite dev machines ever.

</comment><comment><USER45> T490, great laptop, the 3k display is fantastic. Runs Debian like a champ.

</comment><comment><USER46> System76

<comment><USER47> I second this. I have a System76 Gazelle. Would recommend to anyone looking for a Linux laptop

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm loving my Dell XPS 15 (i9 - 32G) running Ubuntu 19.04

</comment><comment><USER49> I've been using HP Omen gaming laptop. I feel you get better specs for the money out of many gaming laptops. The down side is the stupid red keyboard with dumb "gamerz" font.

</comment><comment><USER50> alienware. it glows and has an alien head on it

<comment><USER51> Yes, it clearly fulfills the light criteria by lighting up when it's powered on.

The trivial gain in weight can be ignored. What's a kilogram or two compared to your body weight after all!

It's especially well thought out considering the price point of gaming laptops. They'll surely be in the budget range if he doesn't want to spent a lot of money.

Finally, as it's a gaming laptop, it's gonna ship with Windows preinstalled. Don't fret though, you can always install some 'nix on it yourself! Battery life is gonna be at least 30 minutes as well without any driver optimizations and you'll always be warm when you use it!

Did I forget anything?

(Disclaimer: I never actually used any Alienware hardware with Linux... So I guess it _could_ be the best Linux laptops ever)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> puri.sm laptops for the best.

</comment><comment><USER53> Anything but a ChromeOS notebook.

<comment><USER54> Agree most are content consumer oriented, but my Pixelbook and the Linux container support has been awesome. Running native Linux apps together with multiple containers has been terrific for my main programming rig.</comment></comment>


Getting Pretty Lonely (an anti-GPL essay) - <AUTHOR> http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/825/getting-pretty-lonely <comment><AUTHOR> I don't agree with this essay, but I thought it was worth posting here for discussion.

For my part, I recognize that the requirements of the GPL may drive some developers away, but that's a small price to pay for making sure the code stays free.

<comment><USER2> > _that's a small price to pay for making sure the code stays free_

This isn't about the code staying free, it's more about who's in control.

The GPL is only popular with businesses because it is irrelevant when you're not distributing source-code (as in web servers), or when you're offering services not products.

I have yet to hear about a BSD project that went under because of some company that refused to contribute back. I do however know of a couple of projects that thrived because of more liberal licenses.

<comment><USER3> We have large projects under both BSD and GPL. We have different motivations for each, and the different licenses suit our needs. I'm always astonished by the self-righteous tone on both sides of the debate (though I find BSD extremists far more annoying for some reason...maybe just because RMS has inoculated me to the most obnoxious bits of GPL extremism).

And, yes, it _is_ about who's in control; I don't see what's bad about that. If I wrote the code, I can exert as much or as little control over that code as I want...including making it more difficult for businesses to fork the code and distribute it under their own brand without giving back.

 _I have yet to hear about a BSD project that went under because of some company that refused to contribute back. I do however know of a couple of projects that thrived because of more liberal licenses._

This is a specious argument. One can point to dozens of GPL projects that have thrived because of the GPL; and none that went under because of something some third party did or didn't do.

Linux is one example of thriving GPL code, while the BSD-licensed competitors are dramatically less popular. Could it be because the BSD world forked off into dozens of competing commercial and free versions in the early days? Maybe. Maybe not. I dunno. But, for every BSD success story you'd like to trot out, I can trot out an equal number of GPL success stories. And, again, I'm a developer on projects that "prove" that both licenses are effective.

I can also assure you that the BSD projects see far less giving back than the GPL project, relative to total number of corporate users. When I worked as an IT guy, I regularly came upon server "appliance" products that used our software with a custom theme and heavy modifications, and we'd never even spoken to the company in question; the BSD permits that, and we aren't offended by that usage. It certainly isn't going to kill the project. _But_ , in the case where we wanted more control, and had a very strong interest in that _never_ happening because it would seriously impact our ability to build the products we wanted to build, we opted for the GPL license.

<comment><USER2> > _And, yes, it is about who's in control; I don't see what's bad about that._

I wasn't suggesting that there's something bad about it. I just get annoyed when people start talking about the freedom in GPL.

> _Linux is one example of thriving GPL code, while the BSD-licensed > competitors are dramatically less popular_

In the case of Linux, I think we can all agree that a large part of its success is due to its creator that's a wonderful leader. 386BSD on the other hand had fewer contributions because of the strict development policies of its creators regarding external contributions.

Of course, I'm not saying that the GPL wasn't a component of its success, but I think people overestimate its role in all this. After all, BSD is a lot more popular than GNU Hurd.

<comment><USER4> From what I remember of what I read of the history of linux - it was the fact that BSD code was tied up in some kind of court case when linux was first introduced that allowed it to get a leg-up on the BSDs; because no one would risk basing anything on an OS that may not be available in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really don't understand the anti-GPL folks. I put them in the same mental category as the folk that get so upset by Wikipedia.

Yeah, wikipedia's not perfect, neither is the GPL, but they're here and they work, no-one's forcing you to use them so where does all this angst come from? Is it a generational thing? Is any of this reflected in the next generation of hackers or is the GPL just accepted as part of the environment?</comment>


Google bot delays executing JavaScript for days - <AUTHOR> http://itbrokeand.ifixit.com/2012/10/21/google-bot-delays-javascript.html <comment><USER2>
        > If you're removing code or changing an endpoint,
        > be careful you don't screw the Google bot, which
        > might be "viewing" 3-day-old pages on your
        > altered backend.

An interesting proposition. Personally, unless I was operating in some sector where keeping Googlebot happy was key to staying competitive and there was solid evidence it could hurt my page rank, I don't think I'd be prepared to go to this length. Google is doing quite an atypical thing here compared to regular browsers and I'd like to think Google engineers are smart enough to account for this type of thing in the early stages of planning.

They have a difficult cache invalidation problem here. The only way to find out if the Javascript in use on a site has changed is by checking if the page HTML has changed. And on top of that, the Javascript can change without any noticeable change to the HTML.

<comment><USER3> obligatory: "There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Googlebot also does some other crazy stuff. Like looking at url patterns and then trying out variations.. they're almost trying to sniff URLs!

For example if I have a page: www.domain.com/xyz/123

Googlebot (without any links to other pages, will actually try URLs like) www.domain.com/xyz/1234 www.domain.com/xyz/122 www.domain.com/xyz/121 and so on...

It's crazy how much 'looking around' they do these days!

<comment><USER5> I believe that one's mostly a search for duplicate content - looking for URL parameters that don't make a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not too surprised. I've got Googlebot still requesting old URLs even through there are no incoming links to them (that I know of) and they've been either 404 or 301 redirected for six months. I even tried using 410 Gone instead of 404, but it made no difference.

<comment><USER7> To just reiterate this further, I am still 301'ing urls that have been dead for nearly 5 years. I still get requests in for them. I don't want to 404 them in fear of losing that slight bit of traffic so I just 301 them. I am really surprised they don't remove these urls from their cache and I can't think for the life of me why they don't?

<comment><USER8> They might have some obscure incoming url from somewhere else on the net.

<comment><USER9> Webmasters should show that. If you 404 the page it'll appear in the errors pane after some time and show incoming sources.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like the only thing requesting the 404`ed page was google bot, which I do not believe tells you the referrer. If this is true, then it would mean either that google does not clear their cache (which I doubt), or that the link exists somewhere on the net, but in a place where no human would find it. I've done some work with web crawlers, and it you fall into that type of hole alot more often than I would expect.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure I understand, why wouldn't Webmasters show that one hard to find link if Googlebot found it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Your users may be, too. It's not unusual for me to open my sleeping laptop several days later and expect the open web pages to work without refreshing them.

<comment><USER11> What might be a good idea for Javascript-heavy web apps is to make an Ajax call to the server to see if a refresh of the page is required.

<comment><USER12> Please don't do that. I left that tab open on purpose, I'm half way through reading the page - if the page refreshes I likely lose my position

<comment><USER13> You don't have to refresh the page, you could make it so that your next page click loads the full page instead of using ajax/pjax.

quick pjax e.g.:

      <html data-lastupdated="1234567890"...

      $.getJSON('/lastupdated.json', function(lastupdated) {
      	if(lastupdated > $('html').data('lastupdated'))
      	{
      		$('a[data-pjax]').removeAttr('data-pjax');
      	}
      });

<comment><USER11> This is exactly what I meant by my initial comment - I should have been more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if it is Google's visual site previews/thumbnails that you get when you click on the arrow at the side of a search result, that are doing this.

Perhaps Google fetches the crawled page from the cache and then renders that for the previews?

<comment><USER15> This was my first thought, and seems likely. They do several forms of analysis on their cache. It could even be some engineers running tests or queries that require rendering the page or at least bootstrapping the DOM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this surprising? I'd expect the possibility of this sort of behavior from any system that was vaguely Map-Reduce-y and operated on the scale of data that Google's indexing does.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm wondering if some of the simpler cache-busting tricks would force google update their cache. For example, somescript.js?v=201210221559.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not the issue here, we include the md5 hash of the content in the url of every javascript / css asset. New pages had all the correct (brand new) urls. The issue is that Google is executing javascript on html pages they downloaded days ago. The only solution I can see is to fire off cloudfront cache expiration requests for all old assets. But that negates the simplicity of including the hash of the content in the url.

<comment><USER18> Is it possible that people are looking at the page from Google's cache? I'm thinking the 3taps kind of 'web site scraping that doesn't look like web site scraping'

<comment><USER19> Hmm, that's interesting. I don't think so, though, because the user-agent on the requests is the googlebot:

        From: googlebot(at)googlebot.com
        User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)

<comment><USER18> Well an interesting check would be to look at one of your pages in the cache that fires an AJAX call and see where that call comes from. I agree it would be 'weird' if it came from Googlebot instead of the browser looking at the cache.

At Blekko we post process extracted pages of the crawl which, if they were putting content behind js could result in js calls offset by the initial access but 3 days seems like a long time. Mostly though the js is just page animation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did anyone else get really bad font rendering running Chrome on Windows 7?

<comment><USER21> Yes, it's a known issue and has been a problem for a long time. Quite ironic that it's particularly bad with Google Web Fonts.

<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692></comment></comment>


Show HN: Meteor Day Checkin – Follow Meteor Developers Around the World - <AUTHOR> http://meteorday.meteor.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Source code at [https://github.com/thebakeryio/meteorday](https://github.com/thebakeryio/meteorday)

</comment><comment><USER2> Neat, was it easy to integrate Meteor with Phonegap?

<comment><USER3> it was very straightforward. Meteor folks have done a very good job integrating Cordova with Meteor</comment></comment>