Ask HN: Killer app for AR? - <AUTHOR> Most of the visions for AR seem to show a world even more bombarded with information and ads.
But what if the killer app for AR will be an Ad Blocker? Imagine walking down a street that's filled with advertisement signs and you put your AR glasses on and those ads disappear.
What do you guys think of that? Would you care for something like that? <comment> T-A To reliably recognize something as an ad, as opposed to important information, would require very sophisticated processing. Scenario: "Sorry officer, I didn't see that road sign, my glasses thought it was a billboard."

And you need to do it in real time, within the constraints imposed by a device you wear on your nose.

If you are Google or Microsoft Research, maybe this is something worth thinking about.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yeah, that's a hard problem. The computer can safely add contextual information but when it starts deciding that you don't need to see things you're really taking a risk. Personally I couldn't see myself trusting AR when I know it's blocking out parts of the world.

I don't see how AR would bombard its user with anything. It's your AR rig. Just, like, turn off push notifications or whatever.

Anywho, you could probably pay for solving the hard problem by charging advertisers for 1) the data on what ads the user sees and how long their eyes stay on them and 2) bidding to replace or not replace ads and 3) the data on what context the user is utilizing AR.

That being said...nobody's going to be wearing AR rigs in public for a long time. Maybe there's a niche where early adopters will wear AR rigs in public? Maybe something like Google Maps drivers? They're just driving around looking at stuff all day anyway. Maybe guided tours?</comment>


Stitches in time: The history of the world through the eye of a needle - <AUTHOR> https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/stitches-in-time-the-history-of-the-world-through-the-eye-of-a-needle/ <comment><USER2> >I recently read a book in which the author, describing rural life in the early 19th century, casually mentioned clothing as being 'all made in the home'. I laughed. Anyone who has ever tried to sew anything (let alone make an entire family's wardrobe by hand) would not be so cavalier about the amount of labour involved.

Hmmm, true. Thinking about it, I now realize that whenever I have thought about time-frames pre-industrial revolution, I always just assumed clothing was quick to make.

I have an aunt who knits. My mother, who also knits, regards her sister as the best knitter she knows. I've seen her pieces and, while they are something I could never make, they don't have the "flawless" quality of sweaters and such you can buy at the store, and they take sometimes months for her to finish (depending on what else she's doing in her free time). I've therefore always assumed my aunt was kind of medium-tier at knitting. Kind of a silly thing to contemplate. But anyways, I never thought that it was a very long process, or should be, and that the results of hand-knitting should mimic exactly the factory-quality you see at the store.

I always just thought women who knit in the "old times" could churn out a sweater or a pair of socks in a couple days, kind of along the same lines as the thought that "everything was better _back then_ ". Similarly, when I tried to knit a scarf for my mom for Christmas one year, I gave myself a month (figuring I could work on it for an hour now and then) and I nearly did not make the deadline AND the scarf was uneven AND it wasn't long enough.

<comment><USER3> I feel like it's one of those things that wasn't necessarily done constantly. I figure there were probably those clothes making days where they'd sit and darn old clothes while maybe working on some new ones.

I imagine a lot more clothes used to be resewn or patched and passed on down to family members rather than new ones always being made.

But I have noticed the same thing as you. People I know who practice knitting, crocheting and sewing can usually makes something pretty quickly and I guess for a lot of people if it was your only option what else arr you going to do other than get fast and good at it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Teaser page now or wait for launch? - <AUTHOR>

Background: I've been working on building my first web application for a couple months or so.  One-man show. I'm also learning Ruby on Rails - at the same time. I figure it's good practice to have an actual product to work on while I'm learning the language/framework, especially because this web app is one of the driving factors behind my desire to learn how to program. On top of that, I've got some decent design chops and I've put together what I consider to be a beautiful landing page (with signup, headline, brief desc, etc) as well as a basic user interface page.
As long as school doesn't throw my schedule off, I'm shooting to have a very respectable (beta) product launched by Jan 1, 2011 with all core features. I won't release with every single feature I've ever imagined - big fan of the "release early, release often" mantra. Other features will be pumped out after release. Freemium business model.
Question: Do I release a "teaser" page right now requesting emails from potential users, or do I just wait for the initial launch? The teaser page would be designed in the likeness of the actual web app with header, info, product description, etc but would have a field requesting emails instead of a signup button (is there an actual term for this type of page?). If I do decide on a teaser page prior to launching, how early is acceptable?
I see pros and cons of both approaches, and would love to hear your thoughts on the subject. <comment><USER2> Put it up now. Text on the Internet (and links to it) starts the clock against Google not hating your bones. Keep your mailing list "warm" with a monthly email about e.g. the problem space. Cross post the email to the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good ideas - I appreciate the input. Another thought - do I request emails for beta testers specifically? Or do I request emails from the average joe, go about beta testing via another route, then inform average joe on the launch after beta testing is complete?

<comment><USER3> Request emails from everyone; send out an email announcing the beta to each individual whose address you have collected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Get it up and checkout <https://github.com/vinsol/Launching-Soon> while you are at it; I've been meaning to use this, or a similar gem, on my next project. Don't spend a lot of time on it, which is were the gem comes in, you'll be wanting to take it down ASAP.

SEO, audience building, and email gathering are key here. If you don't have a blog, start one, and just chat about things in the space. Comment on other people's blogs too, don't run around self-promoting at this point. Starting an app at day 0 with 20 followers is about a bazillion times easier than having none.

</comment><comment><USER5> Forget launching. You're just leading yourself up to this amazing day that... may not be so amazing.

Put it up. Then email your subscribers when you have an MVP. Slowly, hopefully, the word will get out.

And by the date you'll have originally launched, you'll already have an active user-base!

<comment><AUTHOR> I may have explained my goals incorrectly in the original post. The idea is to build a product with a set of core features that I have determined will make up the MVP[1]. When these features are complete, the MVP will uploaded to public space known as the internet. Period. Regardless of the date. The date exists as kind of a personal deadline - a form of self motivation. I'm pretty sure the app will be done and ready before then. I haven't worked it up to be some amazing, victorious day. Not into that kinda thing.

My question is simply - do I put a placeholder page and start taking emails today, or put up nothing at all until the MVP is complete?

[1]There are not a lot of these core features - like 4 or 5. Honestly, a decent programmer could probably build all of the functionality in a week. It's a dead simple app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Couldn't agree more about putting it up now. It's such a minimal resource commitment, and you get to leverage any traffic/press with an incredibly valuable resource: interested users!

We got 400 beta users from a tech-crunch mention on a pretty minimal "teaser" beta page. Even though we lost some momentum by not being able to launch immediately with those users, it's been great to release waves of beta invites as we iterate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, impressive - you made it on TechCrunch with just a teaser page? How did they even have enough content to write about you? That's some good hype over a teaser!

It would be awesome if I could do the same, but I am worried that the teaser page won't really do the product justice, unless I outline all of the core features - which I'm a bit hesitant to do. I probably shouldn't be hesitant, but I am anyway.

Do you have a screenshot of your teaser, or can you describe what kind of info you included?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Put up a page now. Someone actually made a project specifically for collecting emails on a teaser page but i cant remember the name, perhaps someone can help me out.

It also worth exploring a test adwords campaign to see how much interest you can get to validate your idea, it also helps build buzz.

<comment><USER8> Along the lines of testing, you can do no better than Performable (<http://performable.com>) for A/B testing of landing pages. Also, read their blog. It answers OP's question, and so many more.

As for collecting emails on a landing page, MailChimp (<http://mailchimp.com>) is the best service I can think of for capturing emails in a CAN-SPAM- compliant fashion and look good while doing it. Campaign Monitor (<http://campaignmonitor.com>) is pretty good, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> collect email addresses.</comment>


Can We Fix Daylight-Saving Time for Good? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/can-we-fix-daylight-saving-time-for-good <comment><USER2>
      At exactly 2:01 A.M. on the second Sunday in March

There _is no_ 2:01AM, to be pedantic -- it goes from 1:59:59 directly to 3:00:00.</comment>


Is it ethically OK to take an advert out on a competitors website? - <AUTHOR>

Our biggest main competitor runs a Google ad unit on their website.  It's possible for us to take out an advert on it which would probably be up for a little while before they blocked it.<p>Is this a dirty/back-door/unethical tactic? <comment><USER2> Your competitor has the capability of blocking you from buying ads on their site (it's part of the adsense interface). If they're not, I would say fair game. Honestly, if they're making money off of your ad they might not care!

It's a bit dirty, but I wouldn't call it unethical.

<comment><USER3> What's the difference between dirty and unethical out of curiosity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've seen ads of "Facebook Ads" in "Google Ads". I think there is nothing wrong in it if your competitor don't care about it. If they care, they have the option to remove it.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you had Google Ads on your own website, do you think that your competitor would hesitate to buy keywords and try to take your business away? Probably not. It's fair game.

</comment><comment><USER6> You could always ask or warn them in advance, that'd be the polite thing to do - it's what I'd do.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes it's fine. Adsense is contextual, they know competitor ads will be running in their ad unit.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're a human and apparently incapable of answering this question, what makes you think we are?

<comment><USER9> Why ask any questions at all, then?

<comment><USER8> Because most questions are not about whether something is morally acceptable. You shouldn't have to ask the question "Is it morally wrong to do X?", you should know, based on your own sense of things. Unless you're a utilitarian and it's hard to calculate the side effects of doing X, but that's not the case here.

So I believe the OP is being disingenuous with this question. One way this thread could possibly affect the OP's behavior is by getting him to do something he himself deems unethical. I have no wish to help that. The other way is that he could behave in a way more restricted than his ethical boundaries would allow, and he wants to know exactly how far he can go without crossing the line. If that's his tack, I have no wish to give information helping him there, I'd rather force simulators of scruples to have to play it extra safe. Or maybe two people are in a disagreement and they decided to resolve things by posting a thread here. In which case I'd say going by majority decision is a poor way to resolve ethical problems. People should have their own sense of ethics.

<comment><USER10> By "your own sense of things" do you mean how you innately feel about it?

Speaking for myself: I have a strong innate moral sense that kicks in automatically to make me feel good or bad about certain actions. So, my brain puts in some effort and constructs a model of how to act in order to maximize the good and minimize the bad feelings.

Like most (all?) models, this model can be generalized -- applied to inputs other than those that informed its construction. The strange thing is, once my brain has made such a model, I will then feel bad about doing anything that it says I should feel bad about -- even if I wouldn't have cared before I made the model.

Sometimes I feel conflicted -- this is either because it is unclear how to apply my model to a situation or because my innate moral sense pops up and contradicts my model. The only thing to do then (if I am to avoid the path of ignoring and trying not to think about it) is to refine my model to account for the new situation or new innate "moral data".

This can require some serious thinking. Sometimes it helps to consult with other people who have already done some thinking along similar lines. It is like when physicists consult with each other because they are not sure how to apply their model in a particular situation, or because an experiment contradicts their model.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Most people prosecuted for terrorism since 2001 haven't committed a violent act - <AUTHOR> https://trial-and-terror.theintercept.com/ <comment><USER2> It'd be interesting to see breakdowns by race/religion (Muslims in mosques vs NRA gun collectors who are in local militias).

There have been cases where mosques have contacted the FBI to inform them of people they found disturbing (trying to recruit people) only to discover later those people were FBI agents sent to root out extremists.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fbi- plant-b...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fbi-plant-banned- by-mosque-ndash-because-he-was-too-extreme-2153057.html)

If one of these people, released from prison in exchange for this work, feels pressured to convert/indoctrinate a person who would normally not give a damn about any type of revolution, how is that not entrapment?

Other disturbing trends: some people are arrested for giving money to a mosque in some far of region they grew up in. If you gave money to a church or a lobby origination that ends up doing highly illegal stuff, are you now liable?

The greater speech issue: if Americans start to gather and think America should be split or states should succeed (won't happen today; there's less then 3% support even in places like Texas/Cascades--but in the future?), even if they work on peaceful means, could this be marked at terrorism? What if peaceful organizations for revolution have a few violent members? Will the leaders of peaceful originations be arrested for giving monetary support to members of a militia who do something violent?

<comment><USER3> >There have been cases where mosques have contacted the FBI to inform them of people they found disturbing (trying to recruit people) only to discover later those people were FBI agents sent to root out extremists.

Just to add to what you said - that's not at all exclusive to the FBI or the USA. Up here in Canada, the RCMP spent huge amounts of money trying to catch two "terrorists" that they basically created. These two people lacked the means and motive to carry out any kind of attack, but our federal police service wasn't deterred. A team of 240 officers worked to groom them and provide them with fake explosives. They found two naive, isolated drug addicts, then isolated them even further and tried to plant extremist ideology into their heads. Even then, at several points, they asked their undercover handler for any kind of moral justification for why they SHOULD NOT go through with the attack, and the undercover officer did the exact opposite. In the end, they _still_ wanted to back out but were afraid that the undercover officer would kill them in retaliation.

Their case was so egregious that our Supreme Court overturned the conviction on the grounds that if the RCMP had done nothing, the two wouldn't have done anything worthy of criminal charges. To make matters even worse, the RCMP billed for almost a million dollars worth of overtime alone manufacturing a fake terrorist plot.

[http://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/terror-plotters-claim-they-were- gro...](http://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/terror-plotters-claim-they-were-groomed-by- mounties-and-were-relieved-bombs-were-fake-exclusive-w5-interview-1.3279805)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxx1KdGXti0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxx1KdGXti0)

^ I was listening to this earlier and I can't help but point out the creeping government overreach in all aspects of our lives. We drop bombs at the drop of a hat, and send people to prison for thought crimes.

I really hope everyone can see that we must roll back the powers of the federal government, or it is going to roll over us.

<comment><USER5> My problem with this is that people get a perception that just rolling back the powers of the federal government is good in general and also that it would be easy. This is not necessarily the case, but it allows groups that would benefit from a weaker federal government to prosper (sometimes at the expense of the people) because one part of the federal government is getting to powerful or is not transparent enough. This allows for a divide and conquer approach in areas like the environment, discrimination, labor rights etc.

The federal government isn't simply going to give up authority, and if it does it will likely be to the economic benefit of the organizations that lobbied for it in the first place (EPA cuts for example). If you want change, simply grumbling about the federal government is not going to help. It will take concerted effort to push candidates in one of the parties to take these issues seriously and to get elected on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I didn't read the article yet but I would think "conspiring" to commit terrorism would be much more common than carrying it out.

<comment><USER7> Not only that but it seems like most of those who successfully carry out an act of terrorism end up dead anyway, either self inflicted or by LEO so obviously they wont be convicted.

<comment><USER8> Survivorship bias at its finest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. For those interested, the journalists who compiled all this data also wrote extensively about their findings: [https://theintercept.com/series/trial-and- terror/](https://theintercept.com/series/trial-and-terror/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Good prevention work then. If a person is already in a state where undercover FBI agents are able to set him up with a sting operation, then he could've just as easily been involved in the real thing if they didn't do their job.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a specific case of a general problem with how violations of law are investigated and prosecuted in this country that happens to be made worse by the fact that in this case it involves federal officers and many people who are not native to the US (and aren't as familiar with their rights).

How "terrorism" cases are prosecuted is not the problem here. How cases in general are prosecuted is the problem.</comment>


Show HN: Docker's "nonsensical names" as-a-Service - <AUTHOR> http://names.doodlebox.eu/ <comment><AUTHOR> I often find myself facing the second hard problem in computer science (naming things). So as a Python exercise, I took Docker's random names feature and made it a web service:

[http://names.doodlebox.eu](http://names.doodlebox.eu)

You get one name by calling the url and up to 30 names as a JSON list if you append /n to the end, e.g.

[http://names.doodlebox.eu/15](http://names.doodlebox.eu/15)

Code here: [https://github.com/kdoichinov/pynamesgen/tree/web- service](https://github.com/kdoichinov/pynamesgen/tree/web-service)

Hope you find it useful or at least funny.</comment>


Apple's Strategy Tax on Services - <AUTHOR> http://praxtime.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/apple-strat-tax-voice-as-god-particle/

<comment><USER2> Note that one of the original developers of the virtual assistant software Wildfire went on to work on Android, and is now at Google. Remember that Wildfire was available in the 1990s, about 20 years ago, and to the best of my knowledge is still the best experience available in the in-call constant presence virtual assistant use case (a company called Virtuosity still sells it), though both Google and Apple blow it out of the water for more general use cases.

I don't think mobile-device-based offline voice interaction is going to be sufficiently fluid for the mass market for awhile yet, but Google certainly has the server and network effects infrastructure to make advanced, mass market voice recognition work and keep improving the experience, and use that collected data to drive algorithmic and corpus improvements in the offline module. If Apple styles itself as a leading consumer tech brand, then it will be interesting to see how they counter Google.

And counter they must: at the moment, voice interaction is one-on-one, but with enough algorithms and corpus, independent agency will become possible. It will be very limited at first. Something along the lines of directing the virtual assistant to call your vet's office for an appointment that works with not just your timetable, but your anticipated errand locations traversal (that is, solving a limited-case Traveling Salesman problem on the fly).</comment>


Show HN: get a perfect elevator pitch for $25 - <AUTHOR>

This is a project I've been working on for a bit. Creating a good elevator pitch is a problem that every entrepreneur seems to face. So, let me help.<p>http://pitchremix.com <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://pitchremix.com></comment>


Tens of millions of HP LaserJet printers vulnerable to hacking - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/106945-tens-of-millions-of-hp-laserjet-printers-vulnerable-to-hacking <comment><USER2> At first this seems like ho-hum news a bit, but if their claims that you might be able to set a printer on fire using this are true, then HOLY FUCK!

How many million HP printers are there in how many million offices filled with how many vulnerable PCs?

I'm not usually one to be alarmist, but are we one clever worm away from Printergeddon?

<comment><USER3> If I was HP -- or a third-party toner provider -- I would release a worm that forces printers to use two or three times the usual amount of ink...

<comment><USER4> Even better surely is to just tell the printer to report the toner as empty after say 30% use (like manufacturers do with inkjet carts!). Then when the customer sends the toner cart in you can recycle the toner (or just top it up and reset the cart or whatever) and sell it back to the customer ... instant sales increase.

Of course after a little while the customers going to notice a problem. So then you can sell them a fix (patched firmware) or a new printer. Play it right and you get to run the same scam again then ...

<comment><USER5> Brother already does this. When the printer tells you that toner is empty on a Brother laser printer, you usually have about 15-20% left. However, the printer will refuse to print anything. The solution is (no joke) to put tape over the sensor window on the cartridge, and you can get another 1000 pages or so.

<http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/laser/39806>

Proud owner of a Brother laser printer here. My guess is that this is how they can afford to sell the printers for so cheap (usually underselling HP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not shocking at all that they allow firmware updates through the print port. That's very typical.

What's shocking is the claim that the update isn't signed. I'm at a loss as to how to describe how terrifically awful that is. It's /so/ shocking to me, I have a hard time believing it. If true, it's astoundingly negligent on their part.

</comment><comment><USER7> _It's worth noting that other (non-HP) printers, copiers, and all-in-one thingamajigs are probably vulnerable to a similar attack, too._

Well anything produced to be mass/IT-managed probably provides an easy method for firmware upgrading. And all firmware encryptions/checksums/etc are of course (at least theoretically) crackable.

I don't see how this could come off as a surprise to anyone in the industry.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow. I worked on HP printers a long time ago and didn't hear of anything this crazy.

Personally I stopped using HP a while back, thanks for sharing..!

</comment><comment><USER9> this is f*cking awesome. I feel like I'm in 80s. Thanks, HP.</comment>


What HN Users Use (45% Mac, 63% Chrome) - johnx123-up http://www.dangrossman.info/2012/08/21/what-hacker-news-users-use/ <comment><AUTHOR> To be clear it's what HN Users that are interested in a web technology use.... and surprise surprise there are a lot of Macs in that sector.

If you posted something interesting to games developers I'd wager a lot more Windows PCs and a lot few Macs.

<comment><USER2> Quite true.

I remember in the Games Developer Conference Europe 2009, all the Macs I managed to see, where actually running Windows.

<comment><USER3> Haha, I love that. Had a friend who did the same thing. But seriously: why not get a beefier computer for your buck and if you need OSX, spring for a copy and install it on a virtual machine?

<comment><USER4> "if you need OSX, spring for a copy and install it on a virtual machine" ... because that's against the license agreement?

<comment><USER2> Except that in most countries EULAs are actually void.

<comment><USER4> Really? I wouldn't have guessed that.

I also figured this person was in the States. I didn't even think to check

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More accurately it would be "analysis of user-strings of people's browsers whose referrer was hacker news when visiting my website"

<comment> T-hawk Exactly. There will be sampling bias. Opera in particular makes it very easy to turn off sending referrer information (one click on the quick preferences menu), so Opera will be underrepresented in any data corpus derived from the referrer.

<comment><USER6> I saw the story, but didn't click the link. So it's definitely not going to match what pg and team see when they examine their logs for actual HN Readers.

<comment><USER7> it would be great if pg published these stats

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As with the recent post on HN's age/gender, this does not reflect data obtained ~5 months ago through a HN poll [0]. On one hand, the poll probably has some self-selection bias, it is only representative of registered users and it asks "what's your primary OS" rather than "what OS are you using right now". On the other hand, the "date range picker for Twitter Bootstrap" post was probably heavily biased towards people who use Bootstrap and it measures what OS visitors were using when visiting which is not necessarily their primary OS. Anyways, here's the results from the HN poll:

        OS          Points
        --          </comment><comment>
        OSX         3252 (40.9%)
        Linux       2666 (33.5%)
        Windows     1729 (21.7%)
        iOS         104 (1.3%)
        Android     99 (1.2%)
        Other Unix
        variant     73 (0.9%)
        Chrome OS   20 (0.3%)
        Other       15 (0.2%)

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3786674>

</comment><comment><USER9> From my Hacker Newsletter project (<http://hackernewsletter.com>) I can say that about 70% of HN users use Gmail.

<comment><USER10> And probably a lot of people not using Gmail use Google Apps. I rarely use my @gmail.com addresses, but all my domains with mail are managed through Google Apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Internet Explorer didn't even make the list for browsers. I'm not really surprised, but as a web developer it's always nice to be reassured that it's dying/dead.

<comment><USER12> You can't conclude that from his data. His audience is web developers, so obviously IE will be very low.

<comment><USER11> I see HN as a fringe audience. Trends in the technology world usually happen first here. I do see your point though, and I'm not drawing concrete evidence from this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised Windows users outnumber Linux users. I'd like to see a breakdown as to how this changes by time of day. I'd suspect Windows users are in second place because of the workplace. At night I bet linux gets a boost.

<comment><USER14> In the other stats thread[1], users self-reported themselves as Linux 34% and Windows 22%, which I was highly doubting. There are probably a lot of closet Windows users here, or it's more l337 to claim Linux (even on an anonymous poll?). I also understand there's a selection bias related to the article's content.

I won't say polls are useless, but I keep being surprised how unreliable they are.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4421971>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was surprised to see that iOS is beating firefox. While this is just one website, I hadn't realized firefox had dropped so much in the ranks. It's still my browser of choice.

<comment><USER16> It's not a global sample. It's a sample of HN readers only. That means it's dominated by a population focused on web development, which means it skews heavily OS X and Chrome (and to a lesser extent iOS). Firefox remains popular among the general public, though it's dropping fast in the face of some really great work by Chrome. Obviously IE remeains popular too, and it doesn't even register on the linked chart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The data is presented in a neutral way, but from the comments I get a sense that people are happy that other people use what they use. Why is an Apple (or Chrome) echo chamber desirable to having discussions with people that use a variety of technologies and software?

</comment><comment><USER18> And people without javascript or blocking w3counter are also not shown

<comment><USER12> There's a noscript fallback. If w3counter does it's job right, people without javascript should be counted.

Those who explicitely block w3counter wouldn't, but that's few people, unless it's in an adblock/ghostery/... blacklist.

<comment><USER19> I'm using RequestPolicy, which I'd assume also hinders tracking even without being somehow explictely blocked. No idea how wide-spread those extensions are though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Will this still collect the data if someone is running no-script?

<comment><USER21> Your browser (unless configured otherwise) will still send the User-Agent string with the request headers, regardless of script settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am surprised that the estimate for Mac is so high. I would have never expected that. It could be the topics that he is posting. Either way interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting disparity between OS X users and Safari users.

</comment><comment><USER24> Less than 1% IE users is great news!

</comment><comment><USER25> Dan, the sidebar makes this page unusable on mobile (Android).

<comment><USER26> You're not the first to say that, but I don't know why. The site's fine on my Android phone and tablet. The markup/CSS is so simple it's hard to imagine any browser having trouble with it.

I've already spent enough time abusing the display model Android tablets at my local big box stores to test Improvely without buying a bunch of devices. I think if I go back again to try to live-fix my blog theme, they might kick me out. ;)

<comment><USER27> It also breaks when zooming in ios, so if it's the same problem and you're on OS X you might be able to fix it in the simulator?

<comment><USER26> I don't own an Apple anything, unfortunately.

<comment><USER27> The problem is display:fixed. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4889601/css- position-fixe...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4889601/css-position- fixed-into-ipad-iphone) has a good overview of why it happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> hope to see all the web like this!</comment>


'I beat type 2 diabetes with 200-calorie drinks' - open-source-ux http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42154666 <comment><AUTHOR> Having your body weight under control helps in controlling diabetes. This finding is, however, not new. Here is a 2011 study [0] using the same 600 calorie/day diet. This study only had 11 people, the current study [1] has 298.

By reducing the calorie intake you lose the fat/weight, afterwards you can resume a normal diet. The calorie restricted diet seems to restart the pancreas, kicking in the insulin production. If you can maintain your weight you are good, else you will eventually have to go back to medicine. Guardian report on the 2011 study [2].

A reddit AMA with Roy Taylor of Newcastle University [3]. Previously discussed on HN [4].

[0] : [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00125-011-2204-...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00125-011-2204-7)

[1] : [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jun/24/low- calorie-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jun/24/low-calorie-diet- hope-cure-diabetes)

[2] : [http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(17\)33102-1/fulltext?elsca1=tlpr)

[3] : [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/47psga/iama_hi_im_new...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/47psga/iama_hi_im_newcastle_university_professor_roy/)

[4] : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2699693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2699693)</comment>


We did it How a comment on HackerNews lead to 4 ½ new Unicode characters - <AUTHOR> http://unicodepowersymbol.com/we-did-it-how-a-comment-on-hackernews-lead-to-4-%c2%bd-new-unicode-characters/ <comment><USER2> "If you want to get more symbols into Unicode, please use our Open Source Guide."

[https://github.com/jloughry/Unicode](https://github.com/jloughry/Unicode)

Note: glad to see they documented their process. : )

<comment><AUTHOR> We've already had a few people contact us to say that they're using it as a template. Hopefully it removes some of the mystery from the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not seeing the new symbols on that page...

<comment><USER4> ... because you don't have a sufficiently Unicode 9 compatible font to see ⏻, ⏼, ⭘,⏽, ⏾?

You can seem them as images at [https://github.com/jloughry/Unicode](https://github.com/jloughry/Unicode) along with a link to a font which supports it, and a chart which shows browser support.</comment></comment>


Space Shuttle vs. Buran - <AUTHOR> http://www.buran.su/buranvssts-comparison.php <comment><USER2> The principal functional difference between the Shuttles and Buran is buried in the last paragraph:

      The main advantage of Buran over STS is that
      it was made from start to be fully automated.

The entire test flight from launch to the landing was done _completely_ autonomously. The most impressive part of it though was the landing when Buran aborted first landing run that happened to be into a strong crosswind and retried with a different runway, ultimately landing just few meters off the target point.

PS. Now reading the linked article, it appears that all its software goodness fit into less than 4 Megs. I'd totally read the memoirs of whoever was behind that firmware masterpiece.

<comment><USER3> Jesus Christ, 4MB? Did they write the whole thing in machine code?

<comment><USER4> Back in the day, not everything needed jquery and bootstrap deps to be considered "modern" ;)

Jokes aside, russian space program had some AMAZING developers working in some very low-level languages with unbelievable efficiency. I had the pleasure of working with some of them many years later on enterprise software at large banks.

NASA has written some amazing software as well. Start here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8063192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8063192)

<comment><USER5> You may joke, but Node.js is still going strong after six years, while Buran never went past test flights. Imagine how much farther Buran could have gotten if they had the ability to share small, focused, reusable modules with the community. Imagine how much more reliable their systems could have been, if they had been able to reason about them at a higher level of abstraction, without getting bogged down into the low-level complexity of left-pad!

<comment><USER6> I get your meaning, but additional abstraction layers are equally dangerous because they obsfucate underlying constraints and result in incorrect reasoning about a system.

There's a reason RTOSs don't have very tall software stacks with multiple layers and virtual machines between them and the hardware.

When your garbage collector invoking at the wrong millisecond 0.01% of the time means everyone on the craft is incinerated in the atmosphere... that's a different level of reliability requirement.

<comment><USER7> You missed the sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Buran was a neat system. Although it looks like a copy of the US shuttle, it wasn't. Buran was a payload, with no engines.

Because Buran was designed after the Shuttle, the designers had the benefit of knowing US mistakes. Buran's thermal protection is better. The Space Shuttle tile system was a huge headache; not only did it cause one crash, even successful flights required excessive maintenance of the tiles. The US tile system could not handle rain; Buran could.

The US shuttle had autoland.[1] The astronauts didn't want to use it. Post- Columbia, the shuttles did get full unmanned landing capability, so that, in some emergencies, a shuttle could be returned from the ISS with nobody on board. This was never used.

[1] [http://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/194](http://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/194)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, I was just reading up on the space shuttle design process, and how the shuttle design was hurt by politics and scope creep. Apparently the project was in jeopardy at some point and needed buy-in from the Air Force. So they made a few changes, such as making it much bigger, and the tank disposable for potential military applications.

Well, turns out the shuttle was never used by the military. But the legacy of those decisions enabled but ultimately doomed the shuttle. It did not meet it's economic goals and was less safe because of them. Is that a correct reading of what happened?

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

[http://www.airliners.net/aviation- forums/military/read.main/...](http://www.airliners.net/aviation- forums/military/read.main/144958/)

This is where the Buran comes in, they largely copied the shuttle, but did they have the foresight to improve the poor parts of the design?

<comment><USER10> > This is where the Buran comes in, they largely copied the shuttle, but did > they have the foresight to improve the poor parts of the design?

Largely, yes. With the added benefit of hindsight they were able to give it much safer heat shielding and boosters, and did a million other small improvements.

But the size remained, because Soviet intelligence couldn't quite figure out what the Shuttle was supposed to be _good for_. The Buran was essentially a just-in-case program: Once they figured out what the US wanted to do with it, they'd have the launcher necessary to copy it.

Unfortunately, the US never figured it out either. For the roles the Shuttle ended up being used in the 80s and early 90s, existing Soviet hardware was more than a match, so the Buran was cancelled.

Only much, much later was the ISS planned around the Shuttle's capabilities and found a limited use for its construction. (Some Shuttles, the earlier ones were too heavy to reach the ISS with any useful payload.)

<comment><USER11> > Soviet intelligence couldn't quite figure out what the Shuttle was supposed > to be good for.

I'm reminded of this famous joke: [http://militaryhumor.net/wp- content/uploads/2015/08/military...](http://militaryhumor.net/wp- content/uploads/2015/08/military-humor-us-war-doctrine.jpg)

> Only much, much later was the ISS planned around the Shuttle's capabilities

IIR, the STS program (of which the shuttle was the only surviving part) was always intended to ferry cargo and _some_ future spacestation parts into orbit. The ISS was the eventual compromise station and was a mere shadow of the original proposal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like this website more: [http://buran.ru/htm/molniya.htm](http://buran.ru/htm/molniya.htm) It has tons of info, not only on Buran, but also on the earlier Spiral and Bor prototypes.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why did I get the vibe I was reading pro-Buran propaganda in 2016?

<comment><USER14> Perhaps because it takes every opportunity to point out how Buran was superior, sometimes correctly (better automation, for example) and sometimes not (reused boosters, and the thermal protection bit seems dubious), while never once mentioning anything the Shuttle did better (reuse engines, or actually do something useful).

Still, great reading.

<comment><USER10> The engine reuse isn't exactly the Shuttle program's brightest moment anyway. The SSME was designed for _55_ uses… By the time of the Challenger disaster, that number was 4-5. By the end of the Shuttle program NASA counted themselves lucky when _some_ of the engines managed 15 uses; and refurbishment between each flight was only marginally cheaper than building new expendable engines for every flight. Even with the added benefit of 30 years of progress in material sciences, SpaceX is unlikely to manage 55 reuses on their engines specifically designed for it.

The Energia solution wasn't as high-tech, but it was highly pragmatic: The boosters were also used as expendable rockets on their own right (Zenit), so high production volumes – and easier to handle fuels – decreased prices significantly, to the point that several Zenit-derived engines are in use by American and South Korean companies; and the main engine was exactly the scaled-down, cheaper, expendable SSME that NASA could have used to drive down Space Shuttle launch costs.

<comment><USER14> You're right, reuse didn't work out with the Shuttle nearly the way they wanted it to. But it did work out to some degree, while Buran's version of it never went beyond paper.

<comment><USER15> But also because they pulled the plug on the Buran program because they had no use for it. They could shoot people up in rockets and that worked out cheaper for them. The Soyuz is the most cost efficient way to shoot people into space.

<comment><USER10> > The Soyuz is the most cost efficient way to shoot people into space.

The Soyuz has been the most efficient way to shoot people into space since 1968. It was developed in parallel with Apollo, and instead of throwing it away after the end of the moon program, they just kept it, and kept improving it – had NASA kept Apollo and improved it instead of throwing it away, and then throwing its successor away, then cancelling two successors in a row, to spawn a grand total of four parallel programs to maybe find one successor, who knows where the US space program would be now.

NASA's problems are less technical issues, and more a management one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Shuttle, despite its many problems, flew 133 successful flights.

<comment><USER10> At a direct cost of around 1.5 billion dollars per flight. This includes a lot of flights that were essentially milk runs, bringing satellites into orbit or doing other light work that could have been just as easily done with much cheaper capsule flights.

<comment><USER17> A large number of those missions were flow for the DoD, repairing/refuling satellites and potentially also capturing enemy satellites.

<comment><USER10> Large? Of the 135 flights, almost 50 went to Mir/ISS, doing work that should have been done by Soyuz/Progress/TKS-equivalent spacecraft in the $100-200 million range. 32 more made Spacelab flights, aka "poor man's excuse for a space station". The remainder were split between commercial satellite deployments (best left to unmanned boosters), regular scientific missions (the same already done on Gemini and Apollo capsules), missions that could have been cheaper put on a satellite (e.g. radar mapping), and _very few_ missions the Shuttle was actually useful for – DoD missions and scientific recovery of large payloads (the only mission profile the Shuttle alone was uniquely suited for). Even Hubble's repair could have been done with capsules (the JWST is planned to be maintainable by Orion capsules, should maintenance ever be needed).

<comment><USER17> There were at least 11 classified NRO missions, and likely more with NRO tasks. Requirements from the NRO directly influenced the shuttle program design. I guess "large" is an exaggeration though.

They obviously didn't use Shuttle exclusively for military purposes. But most people don't realize that nearly all government-funded scientific programs in the US also have significant defense/NRO objectives. Even The Dish at Stanford was funded to be used for SIGINT work during the Cold War.

I'd wager that these groups are now using advanced robotics to replace classified work previously done via Shuttle missions. i.e. Boeing X-37

I don't think there's any maintenance plan for JWSP, capsule or otherwise. L2 is way too far away. Do you mean maintenance after launch but before deployment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article says the detached boosters fire rockets as they are landing and deploy landing gear. Was that ever demonstrated to work? I'm curious of there is precedent for this prior to SpaceX or just wishful thinking.

<comment><USER10> The boosters as tested did not. It were plans for a later revision of the launch system, which were cancelled due to eyewatering costs (– by Soviet standards, the US wouldn't have been able to do a single Shuttle launch for the price of the entire Buran program).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Obligatory shuttle reading: [http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm](http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm)

<comment><USER9> Looks like a great article so far, am about half way through.

Ha! "You know you're in trouble when the Russians are adding safety features to your design."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I didn't realize .su domains were still relevant. Also, very interesting content!

<comment><USER21> Soviet Union. It puzzled me the whole time and only dawned on me when reading your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> On engine difference, which is critical but has not been pointed out: \- Buran had no launching engines, whole Energia rocket has been lost (apart of boosters?) \- Shuttle did, thus the most expensive part has been returned back This resulted in a fact that STS launches were expected to be much cheaper [citation needed]

<comment><USER23> Although, the plan for the Energia launch vehicle was to return and land (the boosters vertically, like SpaceX is doing, while they planned to put wings on the main rocket) - however the program was canceled before they got to that phase of the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If anyone saw that note about the computer systems and wanted to learn more about Soviet-era computers, this may be a good place to start:

[http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/argon.htm](http://www.computer- museum.ru/english/argon.htm)

I'm no expert in this subject.

</comment><comment><USER25> The Buran boosters came down on parachutes and then landed on landing gear -- did that actually happen during either test?

<comment><USER10> The shuttle itself completed several atmospheric and one orbital flight, demonstrating autopiloted runway landings from orbit.

The reusable booster technology was just planned, though. The project was cancelled long before they could be tested. I'm not even sure there were any finalized specifications.

<comment><USER26> I don't agree - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia)

There were two launches - the first of a "fully armed and.. oh" space battle station (I shit you not), the second of the Buran.

<comment><USER10> Yes, and? Both launches had the Energia in a fully disposable configuration – the launcher was never equipped with the hardware to recover the boosters, nor did the hardware exist.

Only the orbiter returned, like with the Shuttle.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Finally, voting without refresh - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html#12jun07

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't worry, I'm not going to post a link about each releaselet. I just wanted to thank PB for helping us.

<comment><USER2> I looked into how it worked and found other things out.

Every page refers to /news.css. Since few HTTP headers are returned with /news.css, no caching is performed AFAICS anywhere between my browser and news.yc. So every page access makes the browser request /news.css again, doubling the number of hits.

Any unknown URL returns a HTTP 200 OK instead of, e.g. a 404, e.g. <http://news.ycombinator.com/standards_what_standards> . This is seen by my browser when it requests a /favicon.ico. It tries twice, presumably because it isn't keen on the HTML response. That's twice per page access to news.yc. It can't learn there's no favicon because it gets a 200 back rather than a 404.

Sorting this out would just seem nice. Pretty trivial too, I'd have thought. At the moment every dynamic page access to view a thread is generating an extra three needless HTTP requests.

<comment><USER2> On a related note, <http://news.ycombinator.com/news.css> returns a MIME type of text/html instead of text/css like it should. This causes warnings to appear in this browser's console.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Prediction: this submission reaches the Top 10 after every visitor verifies the asynchronous voting.

Great stuff, Pauls (and Trevor).

<comment><USER4> It's Robert. Trevor doesn't work on news.yc, I don't think.

<comment><USER5> "Thanks to Paul Buchheit for writing the Javascript, and Trevor Blackwell for help integrating it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice move! But one thing... The server should get updated first. Only after that should the UI value change. [Right now, its the reverse here.Is there any particular reason for such an implementation?]

<comment><USER7> Is there any particular reason for such an implementation?

I think the answer boils down to this: <http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/wasting-time-on-things-that-really- dont.html>

(This is not meant to be a nasty sounding response.)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it seems to work ok for reddit (try "work offline" then click the arrows on reddit).

For things that are really important (sending an email or something) I'd check the reply, but for arrow clicking it's probably not worth the effort and delay.

<comment><USER6> Paul can say this, but,

{update the server first} - {return a value} - {update the UI}

doesn't require much "effort".Its just a good practice. I am just suggesting Paul.

<comment><USER9> You could always update the UI on the assumption that it will succeed, and then check the return value. If you get failure, notify the user somehow. Making the UI seem a slight bit more responsive might not be really worth it, of course.

<comment><USER8> UI latency is actually very important, and generally under-appreciated. Sometimes, it's better to be fast than perfect.

<comment><USER10> I think the standard solution here would be not to lie to the user. A quick _sending_ graphic, which is replaced with a _received_ graphic would accurately portray the events that are happening. These could easily be iconic, maybe just a differently colored arrow while sending, which fades out when it's sent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious why you're averse to learning and using javascript, Paul. It's really close to Lisp (no compile-time macros, but functions are first class objects, has lexical closures, so on). It's really a powerful language, much more so than C.

(Not criticizing, just curious)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not averse to using it. Just never got around to it till now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There a stupid bug - after you vote, the arrow is hidden, but it will accept clicks :-) So you can continue to upvote many times, and the score text updates. When you refresh, the actual vote is restored.

Tested with Safari 419.3.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think I count this as a bug. If you do something stupid, you see something stupid, but it doesn't affect anyone else.

<comment><USER10> It's not a harmful bug, but it's certainly not behavior users will appreciate. I could imagine a new user not understanding the one man, one vote property of the system, then being confused later when the votes seem not to have gone through.

Adding the visual effect of idempotency on the frontend is probably a two- second fix, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, this explains why PG is so big on co-founders. The amount of AJAX needed is very little, and he still had two other people do it for him.

<comment><AUTHOR> The sw on the server is somewhat more complex. It takes some amount of knitting closures together to e.g. allow the submission of a link via the bookmarklet to work even when it has to be interrupted by a login.

<comment><USER13> Oh sure, blame Arc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does it make the request, then update the number? Or does it update the number and make the request at its leisure?

<comment><USER7> Well, look at the code :) I did, it was educational. Node.href contains the values that are linked on the up/down arrows.

// ping server

var ping = new Image();

ping.src = node.href;

return false; // cancel browser nav

}

The clever part is in using the image object as an ajax-like connection, response isn't check, and I'm not sure if it's async. Question: is this a common javascript idiom? Is it browser portable?

Mynameishere: The answer to your question is it updates the number and makes an immediate request to the server.

<comment><USER11> Er.. So that means it's a GET request, and GET requests which modify state on a website are bad. Things like Google Web Accelerator silently visit all the links on the page and cache the result in case you decide to visit that link. So there might be some problems for people using those (For example, their accelerator might accidentally upvote all the comments in every comment page they visit)

<comment><USER8> It's just an adaptation of the old, non-js html, in which the arrows were just links, and it's written such that it will work in the old way if the js doesn't work for some reason (like I never bothered to test it with all the browsers).

Anything that assumes that GET links can be arbitrarily followed will break stuff all over the web. GWA needs all kinds of heuristics to avoid that kind of thing. (maybe they avoid sending cookies or session ids?)

<comment><USER11> Except it's vulnerable to an iframe exploit. See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615>

<comment><USER8> False (that GET causes the problem), see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Pirate Bay is Down, Proxies Too - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-is-down-proxies-too-130106/

<comment><USER2> Well of course the proxies are down... Sigh.

<comment><USER3> There is a difference between proxy and mirror.

<comment><USER4> Right. And if the original site is down, the site will appear down even if accessed via a proxy. Saying the proxy is "down" is a misnomer in this case; the proxy itself is probably not down. However, using a proxy still won't enable users to reach a website that is down.

Neither the parent comment nor the torrentfreak piece are referring to mirrors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their Tor hidden service is down too.

<http://jntlesnev5o7zysa.onion/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Fortunately, Linux ISOs are generally available through other means. That's why this is on HN, right? To alert people to modify their Puppet configs to pull the ISO via direct download?

<comment><USER7> Huh?

<comment><USER8> The parent poster is trying to highlight the 0.01% of PirateBay that is legitimate, so that the other 99.9% of "sharing" can be somehow legitimized by association.

Alternatively, they are trying to make a snarky suggestion that this isn't HN material.

<comment><USER9> _tumbleweed_</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Well-Typed is Hiring a Haskell Consultant - <AUTHOR> http://blog.well-typed.com/2010/05/well-typed-are-hiring/

<comment><USER2> <http://www.well-typed.com/who_we_are> = very intimidating. I'd love to be paid to write Haskell but I've been programming in it less than a year.</comment>


Co-founder - C-ray

What is the best way to find a skilled hacker co-founder for a non hacker living outside the US ? <comment><AUTHOR> This worked well for me: [http://www.cofounderslab.com/](http://www.cofounderslab.com/) See if they host a free event near you.</comment>


Testing the Windows Subsystem for Linux - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2017/04/11/testing-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/ <comment><USER2> I still have a hard time with bash-backwards name: "Windows Subsystem for Linux". Its a Linux subsystem for Windows.

<comment><USER3> It's a subsystem of Windows (hence Windows Subsystem). And, among all Windows Subsystems, it's the one for Linux, hence Windows Subsystem for Linux.

<comment><USER4> Yeah it's the 'for' in there that makes it wrong. It's not 'for' Linux, it's for Windows. I know what it is and I _still_ think of it backwards every time I read it.

<comment><USER5> 'for' is heavily overloaded as an English preposition. You are expecting a connotation of "for [the benefit of] Linux" versus the connotation of "for [the purpose of] Linux". Another example in English might be the relative meanings of 'for' in "this gift is for you" versus "this gift is for good behavior".

Other languages use multiple words or different cases for some of these situations. English leaves it ambiguous.

<comment><USER4> The fact that there are so many of us discussing it implies that it is a failure of a name. After all, what are words for if not communicating? We can debate semantics all day, but in the end, it's obvious that many people find the phrasing to be confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The GNU coreutils test suite would be interesting to run as it tests most syscalls in various edge cases.

Some details at [http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/coreutils- testing.html](http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/coreutils-testing.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Using the unit tests of _other_ Linux software to be your own compatibility test is delightful. It almost feels a little subversive.

<comment><USER8> > _In these cases, the WSL team covers test gaps by writing our own unit > tests. At time of writing the team has written over 150,000 lines of unit > test code for systems calls and virtual files ( /proc, /sys)._

I wonder why they went that route instead of contributing to LTP directly?

While there's probably some edge cases specific to WSL, surely much of their increased unit test coverage would be applicable beyond WSL.

<comment><AUTHOR> We maintain a fork of LTP internally. Eventually we hope to contribute our changes back but unfortunately open sourcing isn't free and we have bigger fish to fry[1].

[1] [https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt- con...](https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt-console-bash- on-ubuntu-on-windo)

<comment><USER8> That's understandable. Thanks for the reply.

Out of curiosity, is progress on WSL bound by any blocking issues in particular, or could your team benefit from more resources being assigned to the project?

Maybe I'm naïve, but I tend to view WSL as a perfect way to win over a ton of developers who are becoming disillusioned with macOS, but are hesitant to run bare metal Linux due to the headaches involved (insofar that macOS and Windows "just work").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I gave up WSL after experiencing significant performance drop on GHC, Stackage. It was less than 1/10th of native for compiling Haskell code.

<comment><USER10> Here's the issue on GitHub if you'd like to track it: [https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1671](https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/1671)

benhills describes the cause:

 _For some context, I 've looked at what causes this slowdown. For some reason stack has mapped an mind-bogglingly huge region of memory (I'm talking dozens of terabytes). When we fork we walk the entire address range to set up the new process's state. We have a design that should vastly speed this up, but we're approaching "pencils down" date for Creators Update._

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the info!. I will try again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Recently tried to use WSL to do some pair-coding tests in an interview, with screen & tmux.

The damned terminal kept making characters disappear! I actually thought my interviewer was inadvertently deleting characters, or maybe trolling me.

I had to switch to using an actual Linux system.

MS have a ways to go before getting this right. I daresay I'll be on OSX by the time that happens though.

<comment><USER12> Did you try using WSL with the creator's update? The fixes were extensive.

<comment><USER13> You mean the update that hasn't even finished rolling out globally?

<comment><USER14> [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software- download/windows10](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software- download/windows10) Click update now. This tool will let you install it without waiting inline (assuming you don't have the option from the built in windows 10 update tool)

[https://www.cnet.com/how-to/windows-10-creators-update- downl...](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/windows-10-creators-update-download- install/) (Warning annoying video plays with sound)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there telemetry built into this too? I'd worry about ssh logins being logged for diagnostic and privacy journey purposes.

<comment><USER16> You will see ads on your command prompt from time to time and the bash completion will contain "sensible recommendations" based on your general behavior, psychological state and political orientation.

Now that everything was published they also plan to pre-install the diverse arsenal of hacking tools on every machine, as there is no reason now anymore to hide that stuff - what will make the fight for freedom much easier for everyone involved!

To support your patriotism there will now be a personal statement of all past MS CEOs showing up on startup and the national anthem playing to support your emotions.

Also from time to time a screensaver will show the sentence "Everybody adores you, because you belong to a global hacker elite using the Windows operating system in 2017! Ignore that laughter around you!"

<comment><USER17> Last part of your post is a bit wild, but you got me at the start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that the "pico process" \+ kernel driver model that they are using could be leveraged to build a new operating system on the windows kernel. That would give you a base for a new OS that can reuse the Windows Device Driver infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER19> Although I love their work, unfortunately the terminal (window cmd bash) is horrible. Copy and Paste is a pain, doing panel splits are impossible unless you use tools like tmux.

I would love to see terminator or a more advanced terminal.

<comment><USER20> I've been using ConEmu set up to auto launch Bash. Working pretty well apart from MS's ass-backwards resolv.conf population which overrides every Ubuntu mechanism for creating the file... so I have to run a script to get my VPN's DNS to work :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is anyone here using this for *Nix traditional tools?

Mostly curious about Vim/Tmux, and having serve operations spit out the server into the actual Windows browser?

I did read something about the creator update adding 24 color support.

<comment><USER22> I use vim in it when I code on my home computer, haven't had any problems. I haven't tried tmux, but I think that'd be fine too.

I'm less sure about things that require a GUI, and last time I tried postgres it didn't work. That was a while ago, though, and they might have made progress since. TFA says the postgres tests are passing.

<comment><USER23> Things that require a GUI require you to have a separate X server running. WSL, as far as I know, does not support running X11. However, if you do have a Windows native X11 server running (like xming, for example) things like emacs and gvim seem to work. I haven't tried anything more intensive than those, though.

<comment><USER24> > Things that require a GUI require you to have a separate X server running. > WSL, as far as I know, does not support running X11.

They mention X/GUI support in the "What's new in Bash/WSL" article[1].

> Note: Some of you may also have been following along with some intrepid > explorations into running X/GUI apps and desktops on WSL. While we don't > explicitly support X/GUI apps/desktops on WSL, we don't do anything to > block/prevent them from running. So if you manage to get your favorite > editor, desktop, browser, etc. running, GREAT but know that we are still > focusing all our efforts on delivering a really solid command-line > experience, running all the command-line developer tools you need.

[1]: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/04/11/wind...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/04/11/windows-10-creators- update-whats-new-in-bashwsl-windows-console/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Can we get the new, improved subsystem without having to go through the Win10 Creator's Update?

<comment><USER26> Why not go through Windows 10 Creator's Update?

<comment><USER25> Apart from the new .NET Framework 4.7 and a few minor others, a bunch of features (e.g. Paint 3D) are not necessarily targeted towards advanced users. It would make sense to fragment some key modules we use as devs and make those available piecemeal without bundling features we'll probably never use with great features like WSL and the new Windows console. Essentially MS could give options just like it gives options about what to install on VS 2017 (for advanced users of course, regular users can have the default CU install mode).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does anyone use this for work? Could I replace Ubuntu with Windows now?

<comment><USER28> That's a bit loaded, but I'll attempt to answer seriously:

Can you replace Ubuntu? Maybe, if you are OK with 14.04 LTS level support. Certain simple things straight up don't work -- you can't send a ping without an admin level windows shell (sudo wont do it either). You also won't magically get driver support for hardware that works in Linux, but not Windows (if you think this isn't a thing, try plugging in a random USB-to-something adapter without finding obscure, broken, or nonexistant drivers on Windows). If you just need access to some tools that only run on Linux, I've found WSL invaluable, so long as those tools are available on Ubuntu 14.04.

Can you replace Linux in general? Nope - I'm a 90+% Linux user for work and home, and neither Debian, Ubuntu, or its derivatives work for me, with the notable exception of some server and embedded applications. If you want a wide variety of up-to-date software, there is no replacement for something like Arch.

<comment><USER29> _Can you replace Ubuntu? Maybe, if you are OK with 14.04 LTS level support._

The latest Creators update uses 16.04 LTS.

 _you can 't send a ping without an admin level windows shell_

The latest Creators update supports ping as a non-admin.

\---

I would say that for most usages it is a good replacement for vanilla Ubuntu. Microsoft is quickly closing the gaps in support. Most stuff simply works (albeit disk filesystem I/O is still a bit slow). For instance, I used it to compile packages for Ubuntu 16.04 and upload it to a PPA without much trouble. At the time the only change I had to make was using fakeroot-tcp rather than regular fakeroot. But maybe that is fixed now.

It is especially useful if you like to work in a Unix, but also need Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, or other applications that are not available on Linux.

<comment><USER28> > The latest Creators update uses 16.04 LTS.

I did know that, but the update only came out today AFAIK, and is being slow- rolled out (I checked all my Windows machines today, none updated). People with enterprise/business versions of Windows with "Defer feature upgrades" aka "Current branch for Business" enabled also wont get it for a while. I know how to force the update, but forcing Windows updates is something I've learned better than to do.

As an aside, I would highly reccomend WSL users check out wsltty[0]. Gives a better terminal than Windows' built-in 'cmd', with options to open other shells like fish/zsh/etc in arbitrary directories.

[0][https://github.com/mintty/wsltty](https://github.com/mintty/wsltty)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like the idea of the Linux Test Project. Neat.

I'm curious, does the WSL actually use any parts of Linux under the hood, or is it just an emulation of the user space, like Cygwin?

<comment><USER31> It uses a Linux-compatible kernel interface with no Linux kernel code plus Ubuntu's userland. I guess that's why they sometimes call it Bash on Windows. I'm surprised no one's proposed "Windows Subsystem for GNU".

<comment><USER32> Because the main bit is translating Linux syscalls to windows. Which isn't gnu.

<comment><USER33> Isn't the main use of WSL "first-class GNU tools for Windows"?

I can't really imagine people running anything other than development tools on WSL, and most of those come from the GNU project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'd just like to interject for moment. What you're refering to as WSL, is in fact, GNU/NT, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus NT. NT is not an operating system unto itself, but rather a non-free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, a version of GNU which is widely used today is often called WSL, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is an NT, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. NT is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. WSL is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with NT added, or GNU/NT. Windows 10, the so-called NT distribution, is really a distribution of GNU/NT!

(Sorry for the copypasta, I couldn't resist.)

<comment><USER34> The interesting bit of WSL (what the article talks about) is a Linux syscall translation/emulation layer, as well as ELF64 binary support (not specific to Linux, but not specific to GNU either). You can certainly install the Linux versions/ports of GNU tools and run them under WSL, and that's what the stock setup looks like, but an important component of WSL is about emulating a Linux (the kernel) environment.

If MS had actually ported the GNU base system to NT, then you could reasonably call it GNU/NT. They have not done that.

<comment><USER33> I think it is more significant from a user's perspective that they get the GNU tools to run on their NT machine with MS support.

What's the use of Linux syscall -> NT syscall translation if not compatibility with developer tools, most of which are GNU software?

<comment><USER35> So you were actually serious? I thought your first post was great satire. Poe's law strikes again...

<comment><USER33> I think the syscall translation part is an irrelevant hack, seems silly to act like that is what makes the project more useful because it does not guarantee performance, compatibility or stability.

<comment><USER36> The syscall translation makes it more useful than the previous UNIX subsystem, because it means it can near-perfectly emulate a popular POSIX-like system (Linux), and thus be compatible with most of its software, rather than being its own eccentric platform that existing POSIX software must first be ported to.

<comment><USER33> So is it near-perfect yet?

I don't see the value if it's not more stable than "excentric" platforms like Cygwin and MSYS, but I guess I wouldn't use it either way because there's no way I'm installing Windows 10 on my hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As a Linux user, MS Windows Subsystem for Linux is as interesting as Microsoft Bob.

Microsoft cannot say it loves Linux until they launch their flagship products such as MS Office and MS Visual Studio on Linux. Until then, it's all fugazzi.

MS SQL Server on Linux was good progress.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wake me when MS offers Linux subsystem for Windows (basically commercial WINE). From what I have read, MS is not actually that interested in improving the Windows kernel anymore unless needed or profitable. Why don't they give up and run windows user space on Linux (or BSD) :)

<comment><USER39> Why would they do that? NT is a very good kernel design.

<comment><USER40> And, moreover, the ability to run multiple operating system "personalities" on top of it like this was part of that design pretty much from the start.

<comment><USER41> Linux had that as well until it was castrated a while ago. It was called "exec_domains".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Benchmarks: Node.js vs. Go vs. PHP - <AUTHOR> http://jaxbot.me/articles/benchmarks_nodejs_vs_go_vs_php_3_14_2013

<comment><USER2> The tests are a little ignorant to say the least. In the comments the author says it was important "to see how the same code executed in each language", but the code itself is quite poor and could easily optimized in half a dozen spots (pre-compute array lengths, pre-increment rather than post-increment, actually run bubble sort more than once).

Secondly, the sort function only runs once, and then just does nothing 99,999 times. My guess is the V8 JIT and the GO compiler realize this and optimize it out. Since PHP is interpreted it's shit out of luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I ran these tests on my own and tried out what's been discussed here. The internal count() adds the most bulk. (Note: "real sorting" just means the array is redeclared for every nth sort).

Original Array ( [0]...) 28.913233995438

Original - with real sorting Array ( [0]...) 29.863515853882

HN Way - with external count() Array ( [0]... ) 4.3388159275055

HN Way - with external count() and real sorting Array ( [0]...) 5.5680060386658

</comment><comment><USER3> I would like to have seen a couple more tests done with PHP rather than just the one.

I've been looking into Node.js lately and have wanted to see direct comparisons between the two - I currently use PHP mainly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to see the results of some database query tests, as a project im considering working with wants to use node.js and mongodb over php and mysql.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would be curious what the benchmarks would be taking the count() functions out of the for loops for all languages. Those are run on each loop pass, seems pointlessly heavy.</comment>


Rebranding My Mom - <AUTHOR> https://humanparts.medium.com/rebranding-my-mom-7d661f331497 <comment><USER2> "The rest of their cushion was burned by my B.A. in English."

It's interesting how the first thought is to sell the house rather than providing their child with life experience that decisions (such as taking loans) have impacts.</comment>


How to Prepare for an Engineering Interview at The New York Times - <AUTHOR> https://open.nytimes.com/how-to-prepare-for-an-engineering-interview-at-the-new-york-times-83f4ee6a68b5 <comment><USER2> This is helpful tnx</comment>


Cloudflare passes details of abuse reporters to 8chan - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/freebsdgirl/status/554681014547513344

<comment><USER2> Strangely it is already stated on their abuse report page, \--- By submitting this report, you consent to the above information potentially being released by CloudFlare to third parties such as the website owner, the responsible hosting provider, law enforcement, and/or entities like Chilling Effects. \---

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, not exactly encouraging for genuine reports though. It also doesn't say tht they will pass the report to all those groups just that you consent that they can. I would still hope for judgement to be applied.

Even with that I would expect different treatment for people reporting harassment and CP especially if it isn't in the form of a legal threat. Surely an abuse report (unlike a DMCA takedown request) is a favour to the service provider.

Now publishing legal threats ands companies' requests is a different mater in my view.

In this case some of the reports were likely to be related to doxing, SWATing and other harassment which makes this especially egregious I would expect better from a grown up company. I also wonder what legal liabilities there may be if their disclosure leads to a SWATing of one the reporters.

<comment><USER2> Again reading the form,

While I (partially) understand the current context of harassment and SWATing, the mandatory parts that could help provide private informations are the emails and full name.

I also considered that the statement is also an blanket statement in case the reporting has to go further and contact needed to be made in case the issue would go to legal.

Not that I am defending cloudflare in any form, but the liabilities where probably waived when the person clicked on the submit button (which is way better than most website saying that you accept their TOS when you browse on it, or even hide the TOS and acceptance far away, because well nobody is interested in reading it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Surely best practice for abuse reports that you want to pass on would be to anonymize the complaints and act as conduit if appropriate. If the complainants wanted to complain to the site directly (rather than the proxy/CDN) they could have done so.</comment>


Gerald M. Weinberg has died - <AUTHOR> https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10156413364572778&id=605267777 <comment><USER2> There's a great quote on his wikipedia page:

"... while riding a bus in New York City, he observed a mother with eight small children embark. She asked the driver the amount of the fare; he told her that the cost was thirty-five cents, but that children under the age of five could ride for free. When the woman deposited only thirty-five cents into the payment slot, the driver was incredulous. "Do you mean to tell me that all your children are under five years old?" The woman explained that she had four sets of twins. The driver replied, "Do you always have twins?" "No," said the woman, "most of the time we don't have any."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg#Work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg#Work)

<comment><USER3> I don't understand that story. Could you explain?

<comment><USER4> Most of the time, after having sex, they don't have any children at all.

It makes more sense in the context of his Law of Twins:

> most of the time, no matter how much effort one expends, no event of any > great significance will result

<comment><USER5> > most of the time, no matter how much effort one expends, no event of any > great significance will result

What a great outlook on life.

<comment><USER6> In the book [0], he adds the observation that sometimes something does happen. My inference of the point of the incomplete story told above is to reassure people when their efforts don't seem to take hold. Some can begin to blame themselves. Recognizing that change is rare and hard helps to depersonalize a failure to make change happen.

[0] 'The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully', Weinberg

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> RIP Jerry, I learned a lot from you.

Jerry's blog: [http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/](http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/)

Jerry's books: [https://leanpub.com/u/jerryweinberg](https://leanpub.com/u/jerryweinberg)

<comment><USER7> _Jerry 's books ..._

Wow, I didn't realize exactly how prolific Jerry had been. There's some really interesting stuff there that I didn't know about before. Glad you shared that.

<comment><USER8> His systems thinking book is one that I stumbled onto a couple of months ago and really enjoy. And the "secrets of consulting" books are marvellous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've had a habit over the last 10 years of gifting (I've learned to never 'loan' books to people anymore) used hardback 1971 editions of The Psychology of Computer Programming (some bought as cheap as $0.13 + $3.99 S&H on Amazon). Probably given away away at least a dozen to friends & co-workers. For the handful who did more than skim it, it enriched their understanding about programming as a social activity. He left a great mark on the world, even if only a few of us truly appreciate it.

<comment><USER10> "Programming as a social activity" would actually be a better title for that book, as I recall it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> He showed up on HN once in 2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1825352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1825352).

<comment><USER11> Comment is clearer in context:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1813443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1813443)

<comment><USER12> Thanks. Mentioning this might be contrary to HN's ethos, however I felt like upvoting his one and only comment - which was very thoughtful and seemed lovingly in response to his grandson's mention.

It's always sad when the good ones go. RIP Jerry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh no. Just last week there was an article on the front page of HN ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17660011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17660011)) which was plagiarized from a section of his excellent book _The Psychology of Computer Programming_. It reminded me of discovering his book in the library a couple of years and loving it, and thinking I ought to read what else he's written. Seems I never got around to doing that and thanking him. :-(

Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg)

</comment><comment><USER14> The Psychology of Computer Programming (and its Japanese translation, プログラミングの心理学) is one of my favorite books and a must-read if you're interested in computer programming AND human being. It's the only computer-related book that makes me emotional and urges me to be a better programmer AND a better person. I'm sorry to hear this.

<comment> ryan-allen I've never heard of this book, I don't know how I missed it. Just ordered it for my kindle!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was lucky enough to have met him in person several times, and to have corresponded with him in various online venues. He was generous with his time, and he both taught and practiced only giving advice when asked. His books are among my most read, most quoted, and most given to others. He was a giant. RIP.

<comment><USER15> Ditto. Every time I interacted with him, I walked away feeling smarter, and also feeling special and valued.

He truly did make the world a better place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This hit me hard. I've read several of his books and it's strange how you can feel like you know a person from that. But his writing was excellent and his personality was very evident.

If anything, I feel like now I want to read a few more of his books as a mark of respect.

And, you know, because they were excellent

</comment><comment><USER17> Becoming A Technical Leader and Secrets Of Consulting are two books that have had a profound impact on my career and leadership perspective. I revisit them often and recommend them as a great starting point for aspiring leaders.

<comment><USER18> Seconded

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A very fine person of wisdom and an effective teacher because of his great skill as a storyteller. His stories delivered his wisdom with both efficiency and grace.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Are your lights on" ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1044831.Are_Your_Lights_...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1044831.Are_Your_Lights_On_) ) is my favorite Weinberg book. It had a very profound impact on how I approach problem solving.

</comment><comment><USER21> So much of The Psychology of Computer Programming is still relevant, and still worth reading. The title might put you off ... but this is really a great book that covers some practical topics regarding the human side of programming.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sad news. I have The Psychology of Computer Programming as my bathroom reading (read into that what you will).

</comment><comment><USER23> I've learned so so much from his books on consulting, thank you for everything Mr.Weinberg. Rest in peace.

</comment><comment><USER24> I had the great privilege of interviewing Jerry late last year. He generously talked to me for nearly two hours about his life and career. Here's a link to the interview for anyone interested: [https://leanpub.com/podcasts/frontmatter/gerald-m- weinberg-3...](https://leanpub.com/podcasts/frontmatter/gerald-m- weinberg-31-01-18)

</comment><comment><USER25> I judge the quality of books on software project management from references. I look at references section, and if I don't find any Gerald M. Weinberg I flat out discard the whole book because the author obviously didn't do his homework.

Pretty much the wisest author of all. Most of the time I feel like I owe everything I know to him.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow. I have read a lot of Jerry's books in the last couple years, and have taken away a tremendous amount of value.

</comment><comment><USER27> Particularly poignant blog post of his from only two months ago.

[http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-would- an...](http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-would-anyone-want- to-live-past.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Sad news indeed. One of my favorite Weinberg quotes (phrased as a law):

> Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote > programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy > civilization.

Weinberg's books are filled with named "laws", so many that some of his books have an appendix that lists them all. Here's one of my favorites:

> Boulding's Backward Basis: Things are the way they are because they got that > way.

[Quality Software Management, Vol. 1: Systems Thinking]

</comment><comment><USER29> I didn't get much out of his later work, but _The Psychology of Computer Programming_ has changed my thinking and my career more than any other single book.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there a non-Facebook link? Facebook is blocked at my work.

<comment><USER31> There is no easy way to say this, and certainly no easy way to hear it. I am writing this on the evening of August 7th, 2018. Jerry died last night.

He's been in poor health, but this wasn't expected and Dani is coping with all of the things that need to be done. I told her that I would announce it to his friends and colleagues on Facebook, since she doesn't use social media.

I've been using the things he taught me a lot this summer, with some challenging personal and professional situations. I'm so glad I managed to tell him that while he could still hear it.

Knowing him made me a better person. His life goal was to empower Smart People to Be Happy. He succeeded.

Requiescat in pace, Jerry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> RIP Jerry, Learned a lot from your books. Those are very practical guidelines. We will miss your wisdom. It is a loos to the technological world. And I proudly posses your quite a few books, which change my life and thinking too about a specific thing. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am very sorry to hear that. I bought his book The Psychology of Computer Programming in the 70s when I was just getting started in my career. That book and some of his more recent work really had a positive influence on my life. Jerry, you will be missed.

</comment><comment><USER34> RIP, Gerald Weinberg

There's a less know book written by him: Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method

It's the only book I've found that teaches you how to steal like an writer, which the book Steal Like an Artist advocates but doesn't get into how to actually do it.

</comment><comment><USER35> A great teacher. Jerry, thank you for your wisdom and seeing right to my innermost core. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very sad news. RIP, Mr. Weinberg.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've read and re-read so many of his books. Tweeted a couple of times mentioning his work and got replies from him. Truly a great person

</comment><comment><USER36> His "Secrets of Consulting" book has been a treasure trove of insight for me. Sad to hear he has died.

</comment><comment><USER37> His books changed the way I think, work and live! Miss him! He retweeted me once, made my day fabolous!

</comment><comment><USER38> His systems thinking book will stay with me forever. RIP Gerald.

</comment><comment><USER39> Big fan, he was quite an influence on me. Really sad.

</comment><comment><USER40> He will be missed.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this who the black bar is for?

Sounds like a smart guy. I'll have to get some of his books.

<comment><USER18> Do it, they are really really good, I re-read them often

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Text for those who got Facebook blocked at work

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Sue Petersen > Gerald M Weinberg

There is no easy way to say this, and certainly no easy way to hear it. I am writing this on the evening of August 7th, 2018. Jerry died last night.

He's been in poor health, but this wasn't expected and Dani is coping with all of the things that need to be done. I told her that I would announce it to his friends and colleagues on Facebook, since she doesn't use social media.

I've been using the things he taught me a lot this summer, with some challenging personal and professional situations. I'm so glad I managed to tell him that while he could still hear it.

Knowing him made me a better person. His life goal was to empower Smart People to Be Happy. He succeeded.

Requiescat in pace, Jerry.

<comment><USER43> > Text for those who got Facebook blocked at work

As if his death was not depressing enough, there are still places that do this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Black bar worthy

<comment><USER45> Why? because he was a teacher or friend to someone who is a moderator on HN? Because he wrote some books? Lots of famous people, scientists (computer scientists and otherwise), who wrote books and died didn't get a black bar.

Every time a black bar is put for someone, his importance is immediately compared to the importance of other great people who died. Frankly I think it does a disservice not only to those who don't get a black-bar, but also to those who do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I thought we were done with the black bar. If I remember correctly Steven Hawking didn't get a black bar.

<comment><USER46> Stephen Hawking's contribution, vast and profound as it was, wasn't specifically to computer science.

The use of the black bar seems to be determined by the moderators based on who has had a profound influence on themselves and other more active members of the HN community.

When it happens, I learn something interesting or valuable about that person's contribution to the field, in a way that I possibly wouldn't if it weren't for the black bar.

It's an important and useful community custom, yet debating its use (and protesting that some other person didn't get it) happens every time and always detracts from an otherwise congenial discussion thread. As much as it seems necessary, it really isn't the case that someone always has to be that person. Please just let it go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have never heard of the guy or his book.

<comment><USER48> Then why comment?

<comment><USER49> Not OP, but 'to encourage comments like that from ohjeez' seems a good reason.</comment></comment></comment>


Toyota sees traditional gas engines phased out of its line by the 2040s - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/25/toyota-sees-traditional-gas-engines-phased-out-of-its-line-by-the-2040s/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> I'm about to buy a new vehicle and it's articles like this that make me nervous. I don't want to buy a gas car just to have it be obsolete and worthless. However electric cars are still a lot more expensive, and with my vehicular needs they aren't really there (I can't pull my RV very well with a Tesla, at least _yet_ :fingers-crossed: )

<comment><USER3> > _I can 't pull my RV very well with a Tesla, at least yet_

The fact that you own an RV and factor it into your car-buying decision means that you're not buying the most mainstream, popular car. Maybe you'll feel better about having an obsolete-in-the-next-10-years vehicle if you consider it to be one of the "irrational" (but rational to you) costs of owning an RV?

Also, there's a huge glut of used vehicles. You can get a crazy cheap gas car right now. Why not take advantage of someone _else 's_ "obsolete and worthless" car?</comment></comment>