How Google's Android Could Finally Crush Apple's iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/16/how-googles-android-could-finally-crush-apples-iph.aspx <comment><USER2> >"Unless you're a techie or demand a larger display, Apple's iPhone will offer the better experience"

Apple IPhone offers a better experience? Maybe for the author. I have Android phones and an IPhone. I find the IPhone's lack of a back button counter intuitive. I also cringe at the idea of using Apple Maps. I don't know why these tech writers keep claiming the superiority of Apple's UX as an objective truth.

<comment><USER3> For a lot of people. My mother is a happy OSX and iPhone user and I would not think of putting a Windows or Linux OS in front of her. Lots of people want Apple's certainty and level of customer service at Apple stores.

The price difference to have these benefits is a few hundred dollars. Easily worth it to Apple's customers who dread spending hours on a problem with no Genius Bar to fall back on.

Android scored spectactular wins with OEMs and carriers, and someone ought to put a statue of Andy Rubin on horseback on the Google campus. But, much of Android's rapid growth can be accounted for with products and markets where Apple has not gone and in many cases does not want to go. Conversely the winning strategies highlighted in the article will take many years to mature.

I could make a case that Google has bungled Android tablet marketing, and should be much farther along in having an enterprise strategy based on tablets.

None of this spells doom for iPhone.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand what these claims are supposed to show. My dad is a happy Ubuntu and Android user and I wouldn't put OS X and an iPhone in front of him. So what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 2 years too late, as the financial press usually is. Apple has already been crushed. It was obvious to anyone paying attention in 2010 (cue market/profit arguments in 3..2..1 - fanboys unite!).

Lessons learned:

Don't read the financial news if you want to have an edge. They know nothing. In fact they are so far behind you can't even see them in the rearview mirror.

Secondly, if your product is a commodity, make sure that your software owns all the price levels (see MSFT in the 80s).

Thirdly, if your monopoly is under attack, cut prices and flood the market (see Standard Oil).

And finally only the paranoid survive. Everyone is out to take your money. Be prepared and respond to the threat before it destroys you.

<comment><USER6> It hasn't helped that Apple has been awkwardly late to the game in all the major platform sizes as well. A year late with a small tablet (price corrected now so it isn't cannibalizing profits), and still no larger format phone and no phablet format...which both sell like hotcakes in the smartphone market.

It'd be like if Honda refused to make a mid-sized sedan and minivan and piled all of their efforts into the Civic.

<comment><USER7> Sell like Hotcakes? They sell reasonably well in one country - South Korea. In the rest of the world they're at 7%.

<comment><USER6> I would argue that most android phones sold have larger than iPhone screens and most phones sold globally are android phones.

<comment><USER7> I was referencing "Phablets" specifically but if you want to talk larger in general:

Just over half (55%) have larger screens, so 45% have the same or smaller screens. Given that a large number of Android phones are effectively "feature phones", the "most phones are android" is meaningless.

<comment><USER6> Again, keep moving goal posts. The upgrade path from a crappy Android phone is likely to be to a better Android phone in most of the world where Android is absolutely dominant. As those areas move up the socioeconomic ladders, Apple has to fight an uphill battle to enter those markets and then gain market share, instead of the consumers bringing the brand up with them.

<comment><USER7> Average consumers don't necessarily understand that cheap android phones are shit because they're cheap, why would you assume they will just buy another android phone?

<comment><USER6> Because if that's all that's available in their home market that's what they'll buy. When a line of products becomes entrenched, trying to enter such a market is tough. I'm not even talking about developing world markets. The iPhone sells poorly in South Korea for example and it's not because Koreans _like_ Samsung (most people in SK don't like Samsung).

iPhones should be an easy sell with an appearance oriented audience willing to spend large sums of disposable income on imported expensive goods almost to the point of insanity and bankruptcy, yet iPhones are so rare you can spend days in the heart of Seoul and count the iPhones you see on one hand.

You ask the typical South Korean why they aren't snatching up iPhones? It's the arguments I've already presented: too small, not enough features, etc. They feel like they're buying a phone from 2 or 3 generations ago, not a modern forward looking device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _could_? According to latest figures, at least globally, _is_.

[http://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/item/34832-android-t...](http://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/item/34832-android- takes-more-than/)

"'We believe the absence of a large-screen device may have contributed to Apple's inability to grow share in the third quarter,' said Ryan Reith, IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker programme director."

Also notice the average selling price. Android phones are right in the middle of the pricing pack, with iPhones sitting at more then double.

Basically, Apple makes phones that are too small and too expensive to win in the global market.

In the U.S. market Apple is the #1 manufacturer, but iOS is the #2 platform by marketshare - but holding steady (grow some quarters, lose some quarters) - not a great place to be, but not terrible either.

[http://bgr.com/2013/08/06/us-smartphone-market- share-q2-2013...](http://bgr.com/2013/08/06/us-smartphone-market- share-q2-2013-nielsen/)

Samsung is _almost_ as profitable as Apple as well.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/14/apple-samsung- take...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/14/apple-samsung-take- massive-109-of-mobile-industry-profits-while-competitors-lose-money)

iOS7 may be the beginning of a new approach for Apple. But they're going to have to launch a larger phone in addition to the already well selling smaller phone size. It's no surprised that analysts are expecting such a device the next go around.

<comment><USER7> > Basically, Apple makes phones that are too small and too expensive to win in > the global market.

So, having profits higher than any other player in the smartphone market, with just 14% of market share, is "losing" is it?

Samsung had to sell nearly 2.5x as many devices to make LESS profit than Apple.

Google's profit from Android is purely about eyeballs - what happens when people realise that Google actively watching everything they do is even more creepy than the NSA watching for what a small percentage of people are doing?

> iOS7 may be the beginning of a new approach for Apple. But they're going to > have to launch a larger phone in addition to the already well selling > smaller phone size.

So you admit that the current phone sells well, and Apple's profit share shows that it is immensely profitable, and yet somehow Apple "must" launch something different?

As for the general concept of "phablets" - have you ever fucking seen someone using one? It's like the 21st century version of someone walking around with a boom box on their shoulder.

<comment><USER6> Your ever moving fanboy goalposts are cute but irrelevant in the long term. Apple is quickly becoming irrelevant in the global market and needs to step it up to compete strategically. The smartphone market moves fantastically quickly because of all the competition. Apple brings some of the best competition there is but is increasingly starting to look old fashioned even among non fashionable demographics.

Things are starting to change. iOS7 is an important step forward from the very dated looking predecessor. But the phone format, or more specifically, the single small format smartphone they are currently leading with is not sustainable in the direction the vast majority of the market is hearing. Mark my words apple will offer a larger format phone within the next 2 years. They have no choice... Or they will fade into unfashionable irrelevance.

<comment><USER7> OK sure. Let me know when Tim Cook gives you a call for your words of wisdom. Or, you know, doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just bought a Nexus 5 and switched from Verizon to T-Mobile. (1) I now find the pricing tactics of Verizon, where I had been a happy customer for years, to be brutally anti-consumer.

(2) The Nexus 5 was $350. An iPhone 5S $650.

These are quite problematic for Apple.

<comment><USER9> Not only that, but after using my N5 and then using a 5S, the brand new 5S feels old. My friends who have iPhones are moving away. The few that are left are only holding on because their other Apple gear.

I was an original iPhone owner. For years Android phones _were_ second class in hardware and OS. Android 4.0 fixed the OS. The N4 and now N5 have fixed the hardware (and removed the carrier crap).

<comment><USER6> In a moment of lucidity, a friend of mine, when asked why he was so steadfastly sticking with his iPhone (which he was growing increasingly frustrated with) answered "I've bought too much media through iTunes to throw away."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone described the smartphone market in interesting terms to me yesterday: both Apple and Google are winners. And I think that's true: Google have a higher global marketshare, and Apple are making money hand over fist.

Apple aren't a stupid company. If they think there is a market for mobile devices with larger screens, then they'll introduce an iPhone with a larger screen. If they don't think that'll result in increased sales, then they won't.

As it stands, both platforms are in a pretty good place. Do we really need either of them to "win"?

<comment><USER6> No, and it's definitely the consumers that win in the end in such a hot competitive marketplace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Downside: it's a Motley Fool article. Tomorrow they'll likely say exactly the opposite and explain in gory detail exactly why IOS is poised to finally crush Android. I've long since abandoned them.

Upside: They have a point about techies. I have an Ipad Air that crushes every Android tablet I've ever owned w/r to usability (Nexus 7, Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, Galaxy 10.1 and yes I know they're all at least a year-old but all of them became janky* within months of buying them and stayed that way). Despite that, I'll probably buy a Nexus 5 when the contract for my Galaxy Nexus (a phone Google abandoned like Sergei Brin abandons marriage) because I find the presentation of information on Android more intuitive to me and I'll just assume I need to buy a new phone every year going forward therefore no more contracts.

*[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:janky](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:janky)

<comment><USER12> Full disclosure: I'm a developer there.

The Motley Fool doesn't have one view on a stock. Each contributor, staff writer, and analyst have their own opinions. Hence "motley." So yeah, there's a good chance you'll come back tomorrow and see other content on the site offering differing opinions. We do our best to keep transparency in this. Every article has a disclosure at the bottom listing the stocks the writer owns and the stocks the company owns. All of our contributors are encouraged to use caps.fool.com to make forward-looking picks on stocks, explaining why they think they'll go up or down over a certain time period. This is all available to the public.

Our premium memberships even keep a scorecard of every recommendation or trade that we make and a bottom-line comparison against a benchmark (S&P 500, or another index that lines up with the universe of stocks we're looking at.) Both buys and sells are included so if a premium service changes their opinion of a stock we let our members know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Or not. Wait until Samsung decides finally to abandon Android because they can't stand basing their entire business on a US competitor's work. Also so far Google is making very little on Android and on their own phones while Samsung and Apple are making all the profits. Eventually these two forces will force a change. Everyone wants to rule the world and every wants to be like Apple and control everything. Expect an ugly split into three mostly incompatible camps (plus Windows/Nokia as a minicamp). The dream of an "open" mobile OS is a temporary period not long for this world.

</comment><comment><USER14> I want to love Android. I really, genuinely do.

I have tried and tried many times but three of my four issues are unresolved.

1\. Lagging (fixed I think) 2\. No good email client that supports Exchange[1] 3\. Plasticky build quality [2] 4\. Very, very weak keyboard input

[1] Plus having to encrypt SD card makes Android slower [2] Yes, HTC One is better

<comment><USER6> 1) Lagging is still frustratingly there. Don't know if it's improved in the latest version.

2) Most of my Android devices have come with a default mail app that works perfectly with Exchange.

3) I've dropped my last 4 Android devices frequently and they've never broken (not saying they won't, they do, but it takes a bit of gusto to do it). I don't know a single iPhone user who hasn't had to replace their phone once a generation because they dropped it and the glass broke.

4) Keyboard input is definitely not the problem on Android, there are more keyboards available, and several are widely regarded as better than iOS's. Swype like keyboarding, which I think the new default Google one has supported for a while, is transformative.

<comment><USER15> 1) Lag is mostly a thing of the past now, but depends a lot on the hardware. My Nexus 4 rarely lags, whereas my Nexus 7 (2012) lags all the time. Some poorly made apps can also cause lag (Facebook used to be pretty bad).

2) It works fine with Exchange, but is lacking in features. It has, however, received a major overhaul in KitKat, so perhaps it's better now (haven't tried it yet).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> First of all, I will short any stock you pick. It is always a good bet to predict that a company will soon be in a downslide.

Secondly, your personal feelings about the iPhone UX doesn't matter.

And finally, despite the earlier "expert predictions", somehow Apple have been posting record iPhone sales per quarter. Whoever these experts are, they such at prediction. [https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/28Apple-Reports- Fou...](https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/28Apple-Reports-Fourth- Quarter-Results.html)

<comment><USER17> Apple are posting record sales every quarter because the smartphone market is growing way faster (39.9% year-on-year) than Apple's share of the market is declining (1.5% year-on-year). [http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24442013](http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24442013)

<comment><USER3> The market share numbers are true, but only Apple and Samsung (some of which is attributable to Samsung's unique vertical integration) have a significant _share of profit_ from smartphones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Non american here. Can someone help me make sense of the premise for this article?

By "month to month" is the author refering to a post-paid service (i.e. you get a bill to pay at the end of each month, which may or may not be more than your monthly minimum depending on usage), or "pre-paid/pay as you go" accounts (where you buy "credit" or "top up" every month/when it runs out?)

The author suggests "month to month" is better value than the contracts to the tune of $40/month, but I've never heard of any telecom anywhere offering worse value for money on any kind of post-paid account, compared to a pre-paid/pay- as-you-go account.

Im aware the majority of americans have long been suckling at the teat of carried locked/carrier specific phones (i.e. pick your network then see what phones are available) but is paying $600 vs paying $200 really _that_ much of an inconvenience, if the difference is $40 a MONTH!?

Please, someone explain this crazy industry you have - I grew up in Australia - when I got an iPhone 4, it was a small amount upfront, and the "device payment" added about $10 or $15 a month (on a 2 year contract) to the monthly cost - at that rate, the phone cost me about $400, for what was > $1K outright purchase.

I'm now living in Thailand, where even _with_ a contract, smartphones are not subsidised, but sometimes a slightly better contract (which can generally be broken without penalty as I understand it) is available if you purchase a phone via the telecom.

Can someone shed some light on the US sitation that this guy is talking about?

</comment><comment><USER18> Why is the freedom from carriers thought of a great advantage for consumers in the US? There is no advantage as I see it. All the carriers have the same price for a data plan. And more importantly it has only increased since the iPhone's inception. Only T-Mobile because its desperate is offering $50 plans now. And if the other carriers see it as an advantage they will offer it too. But I would guess that once T-Mobile gains enough customers they will start jacking up their rates again.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like how there are two comments on the article right now:

Comment 1: "This has to be the stupidest article just to bash Apple which this author continually does. I only read him to laugh at his misguided comments."

Comment 2: "Sam Mattera sounds like a gigantic Apple troll. Android is 1000x times better looking and more useful than the Fisher Price looking Apple iOS."

You can never win...

<comment><USER20> Motley Fool gets more clicks... Mission accomplished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Why would you ever buy an Android phone?"

He doesn't even mention the most important reason -- so that you never have to use iTunes again!

<comment><USER8> Until Apple makes a 5inch iPhone, they are simply too small for a large chunk of the population.

<comment><USER22> Bullshit.</comment></comment></comment>


Study: Android Users Are the Most Unhappy - <AUTHOR> https://lunduke.com/posts/2020-05-22/ <comment><USER2> A lot of it probably has to do with income. Linux is free, but everybody I know that uses it only uses it for work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being able to spend $ 1,000 on a phone won't make you happy, but it doesn't hurt, either.</comment>


Select2: jQuery select boxes with search, remote data sets, infinite scrolling - <AUTHOR> http://ivaynberg.github.com/select2/

<comment><USER2> This is cool - but how is it different to Chosen?</comment>


Analyzing News Headlines with MonkeyLearn and Kimono - <AUTHOR> http://blog.monkeylearn.com/are-you-getting-the-whole-story-analyzing-news-headlines-across-the-globe-with-kimono-and-monkeylearn/

<comment><USER2> Interesting way to call out CNN for basically being a tabloid... would love to see this done over a longer time period</comment>


Life Without Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Joel-Lewenstein/Life-Without-Photoshop <comment><USER2> To be fair, Quora isn't a very graphically rich site.

I'm not totally sure whether an absence of Photoshop (and other Creative Suite products) is particularly worthy of explanation.

<comment><USER3> It seems like every "I didn't use Photoshop" article is always showing off a site that... looks like the designer didn't use Photoshop.

As a designer who's in Photoshop all day long, knowing when a layout necessitates using Photoshop or not is second-nature to me now. I'll just stop using it and hop over to my text editor and start writing HTML & CSS. And for sufficiently sparse layouts, I'll just not use Photoshop at all. I assumed everyone knew and did this, but perhaps I was mistaken.

<comment><USER2> I think there is an alternative to using Photoshop - especially if you use a Linux based OS.

I've often heard of people stating that GIMP is a valid alternative - I'd argue it isn't. GIMP is fine for performing a lot of everyday editing functions - but it's lacking in quite a few key areas (most notably CMYK support).

I think as an alternative, rather than having Photoshop - which could be conceptually viewed as an 'image IDE' - it's possible to choose to use a number of different command line utilities, plugins, scripts and applications to achieve the feature-set that Photoshop traditionally provides.

Creating and modifying imagery in this way, is arguably less intuitive, as workflows aren't so clearly defined - but there's the chance of matching (or possibly exceeding) what Photoshop makes possible.

<comment><USER4> Why does everybody care that the GIMP doesn't have CYMK support? The vast majority of printing presses can do their own color separation, trapping, and registering automatically.

Hell... GIMP would be an improvement: about a 20% of all print jobs are submitted in MS Publisher.

I can understand not using GIMP for high-end printing with spot colors, but that's very rare.

<comment><USER2> Because a lot of people need to produce CMYK output as part of their everyday routine.

<comment><USER5> > Because a lot of people need to produce CMYK output as part of their > everyday routine.

That still doesn't answer the question why do people care so much about CMYK.

The question was why would you care about CMYK if your work isn't to produce graphics for print.

<comment><USER2> Do you really mean that? It sounds pedantic, verging on illogical.

Why would you care about anything you don't care about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Plug: I'm building a web-based mockup tool called jMockups [1], which my long term goal is to supplant Photoshop as the high fidelity mockup tool of choice.

If you have qualms with Photoshop and can entertain the possibility of a better tool coming along, I'd really, really, really love to hear your thoughts on jMockups, what I can do to improve it, and how it can become a tool so phenomenal that it wouldn't make sense for you _not_ to switch from Photoshop. Email me at email@example.com.

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

PS: New feature you might like: Instantly convert almost any website to a mockup so you can redesign it in minutes: <http://www.jmockups.com/websiteconverter>

<comment><USER7> Sounds great, just signed up to try it. Two questions:

1\. What's with the "j"? Makes it sound like it was written in Java...

2\. Any thoughts of turning the website converter bookmarklet into a Chrome extension? Would be cleaner and seem more secure for users.

<comment><USER6> 1\. "j" is for JavaScript. Think jQuery.

2\. No need -- the bookmarklet is easier to install and works cross browser. I'd bet that most people competent enough to install a Chrome extension can also install a bookmarklet. Also, seem more secure != more secure.

Appreciate the feedback. Let me know what else I can do to make it better.

<comment><USER7> Could I make it a Chrome extension? :P Could be official or unofficial, I have my bookmark bar hidden so an extension would fit better with my workflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Along the same lines, here's why I skip Photoshop when working on designs at 37signals: <http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop>

<comment><USER9> Laugh if you will, but I've found sketching out mockups in PowerPoint to work surprisingly well and about as fast (or faster) than paper since I don't have to redraw the whole thing after too many changes are made. And to your point:

 _You can't click a Photoshop mockup. This is probably the number one reason we skip static mockups. They aren't real. Paper isn't real either, but paper doesn't have that expectation. A Photoshop mockup is on your screen. If it's on your screen it should work. You can't pull down menus in a Photoshop mockup, you can't enter text into a field in a Photoshop mockup, you can't click a link in a Photoshop mockup. HTML/CSS, on the other hand, is the real experience._

You can hyperlink in PowerPoint to other slides, so you can mockup the workflow a bit too. I agree that being able to click and move around a mockup is incredibly important.

<comment><USER10> That's a clever idea, and if it works for you, great. In fact I think it's a much better use than PowerPoint's intended purpose of crushing your soul bullet point by bullet point: <http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm>

It looks like you can sort of do this in Google Presentation too, though you have to figure out the URL to link to other slides.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I have a feeling most presentation tools (Keynote, Impress, Google Presentation, etc.) would work well for this. In fact the only pain point I've ever had was the occasional desire to change the slide size. I've found that most of the basic effects in PP have a CSS equivalent as well, a surprising number of the things mocked up in PP can be recreated entirely in CSS without images.

Most of the actual graphics I use in the mockup I've made in Photoshop anyways, and just put them in the mockup, so those are reusable art assets on the final page.

(plus you can even mockup smaller gui details like drop-down menus if you are clever enough, though it's usually more work than it's worth)

I've found that most of the MS-Office tools can be abused to do a pretty good job in roles far removed from their original intent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Context is important. A no-Photoshop approach makes sense for Quora since their product is text-heavy. For a product that requires, say, rich data visualizations like Google Analytics, some design ideas need to be mocked in a graphics package (Googlers often use Fireworks instead of Photoshop) first, then prototyped in code.

Context is also important in terms of what stage of the development process the designer is at. If a product design is already well defined (e.g. "top nav is global, 2 columns in the core content space, right column is contextual nav, left column is the content stream, here's the style guide ..."), then going directly to code makes sense. As Joel suggests, going directly to code is great for day to day new feature iterations.

But if your product is completely undefined, Photoshop or Fireworks can be excellent tools for mocking up design variations and sets of use cases or states within those variations.

Hats-off to Quora for going straight to code when it comes to design. It works for them but it's not going to work for everyone in every case.

<comment><USER12> I never understood why people are buying proprietary, expensive stuff like Photoshop just for mock-ups.

First of all, vector graphics tools like Inkscape are a lot better suited for that task.

Second, even if you don't like vector graphics, there are great Free Software projects like Gimp and Krita that deserve our attention and our support.

<comment><USER13> >I never understood why people are buying proprietary, expensive stuff like Photoshop just for mock-ups.

People have been using Photoshop for years (like myself), and personally these people feel that open source equivalents like GIMP are still way off in terms of competing with Photoshop.

>First of all, vector graphics tools like Inkscape are a lot better suited for that task.

I have used both Inkscape and Photoshop for quite a few years. It's unfair to even compare them. And, frankly Photoshop _is_ far more powerful if you want to go for high fidelity mockups.

<comment><USER14> Why not fireworks over photoshop? Its hybrid vector/imaging toolset make for a good web design experience.

<comment><USER15> In my experience, Fireworks is far less useful when it comes to the creation of graphics after the initial wireframing. On the other hand, Photoshop [and GIMP] is completely usable throughout the entire design process. For this reason, many designers would rather learn, and pay for, only one product, and that product is Photoshop. As a side note, although GIMP lags in a few areas, notably on the typography side of things, it's the best product for my needs when I weigh cost and features, and only rarely do I find myself wishing I had tossed several hundred dollars for Photoshop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm definitely going to be in the minority here, but I start with Excel.

Here's why:

\- It's free

\- I have a perfect grid system

\- I can color in anything with borders and gradients also

\- I can format the text with spacing

\- Margin and padding properties are done using cell spacing properties

\- You can add pictures anywhere

\- I can easily copy the entire worksheet and paste it into Paint

<comment><USER17> Excel is free?

<comment><USER16> I already have it for other purposes. It is free compared to the mockup tools that I would have to pay for, I don't have to pay extra to use Excel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love starting in photoshop because I can play with an idea visually without taking my eyes off of what I'm working on.

For me photoshop is a really fast way to develop ideas and sell people on my dreams. I can mock something up that looks real and get feedback very, very quickly. Then once I know what I want to build I move to the text editor.

Photoshop is pen and pencil for me.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. Within 60 seconds I can have screenshotted another site whose template might be vaguely close in structure to that I'm thinking of, delete their text and write in my own.

No way you can get anywhere close to that kind of speed with code.

<comment><USER20> Well, technically you can, but you're right about the speed:

        javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

<comment><USER10> Very cool.

I figured there must be some Chrome extensions that make use of this, and it looks like there are. One adds some WYSIWYG-type tools to the current page: [http://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/claldafnnhbflndjb...](http://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/claldafnnhbflndjbjlmlefpcifojcag)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Fireworks still suits me best for prototyping and slicing. I'd rather give my money to Pixelmator or an indie though.

Somebody could make a fortune building an OS X app that supports legacy layered PSDs and PNGs.

<comment><USER22> The irony though would be that they would probably use either Photoshop or Fireworks to do the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've stopped designing with code for all but the most trivial elements because I realized it's too easy to get sucked into the details too early on in the process. Designing via coded prototype means that mockups are high fidelity, and there were a lot of things going on at the same time: trying to write good copy, getting each element to align correctly, finding the perfect icon, and coding good HTML/CSS/JS. Iterations then starting feeling pretty expensive.

For the same reason people use lorem ipsum, I would recommend lower resolution tools (paper, whiteboard, wireframes, etc.) to keep details out of focus until it's time. I try to avoid Photoshop when doing early design work, but it's valuable for creating proofs for clients or as a spec for engineers.

</comment><comment><USER24> Oddly enough, we don't use photoshop either. We use Keynote! <http://blog.swixhq.com/designing-swix-with-keynote/>

<comment><USER25> Very interesting! I've worked with people who did their design in PowerPoint for many of the same reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> And you see it in the Quora design. It is centered on the content, and not on fancy graphics that distract from what the user came to find on the site.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is exactly backwards. One needs to start with the needs of the user, which means mocking up the user experience without regard for implementation. The tool might vary, but the concept of starting with the user is essential.

Starting in code makes it about the coder, not the user. It conflates implementation with design.

I am a coder, and will do mockups in code -- only when I know a real design won't be available. I would much rather be directed by a good UX person. Better for the user, and faster for me as an implementor.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like fiddling around with pictures and occasionally make posters and design T-Shirts. I haven't used photoshop in about 5 years or so, I haven't needed to.

The Gimp is one of those tools that covers 80% of your design requirements. Having said that it's not particularly friendly for Photoshop users. An easier version for the transition is GimpShop (<http://www.gimpshop.com/>), although this hasn't been updated for a while.

For designers I can understand why living without Photoshop is strange, especially if it's the tool you're used to. For most people Gimpshop and The Gimp are more than capable enough, Free software and free to use.

<comment><USER10> I think the article was more about using code to do the design rather than any image tools. You could replace Photoshop with Gimp in the article and the original arguments would hold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Everyone should convert - Photoshop is still a necessary evil for image editing and sprites - but with grid layout frameworks, it's really never been easier to mockup a layout or three in pure HTML greatness. Add the flair after.</comment>


Introduction to Data Mining – Second Edition - <AUTHOR> https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kumar001/dmbook/index.php <comment><USER2> I followed the first edition of this book during my master's degree Data Mining course. This is a good book (not too math heavy like [0]). It is a good book for somebody getting into data mining but it is more theoretical. For another excellent book that concentrates on building models using R I highly recommend [1] which has a great balance of theory and practical. Fun fact regarding [1] - one of the authors is the daughter of the renowned physicist Ed Witten.

[0] [https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/ElemStatLearn/](https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/ElemStatLearn/)

[1] [http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/](http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm excited to take this class this fall at the U of M. I've heard that the fall course is more algorithmically rigorous than the spring course because the computer science department tries to open it up to non-CS majors at that time (biology majors interested in bioinformatics, for example). The professor, George Karypis, has a reputation on campus. I'm doing a dual degree in statistical science and CS so I'm looking forward to seeing how this compares to some similar class offered by the stats department.

</comment><comment><USER4> text available at [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=introduction+to+Data+mi...](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=introduction+to+Data+mining+ning&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=0&column=def)

<comment><USER5> that's the 1st edition, not the 2nd as linked in the title

<comment><USER6> True, but if you make the query a bit more general and sort by year, you get some wildly interesting results: [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?&req=%E2%88%86introduction+...](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?&req=%E2%88%86introduction+to+Data+mining&phrase=0&view=simple&column=def&sort=year&sortmode=DESC)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1st Edition of this book was excellent. Gives a solid explanation of both data mining/ml techniques and the trade-offs of choosing them.

The update to the chapter of classification was needed. Previously, the section on SVM and ANN was a subpart of a chapter, spanning no more than 10 pages, glad they added more detail there.

They also spend time in early chapters talking about preprocessing and cleaning data, something that often is glossed over.

</comment><comment><USER8> At textbook pricing this is not a casual purchase. Hopefully this is not a trend; I'd hate to see the next O'Reilly book priced north of $60.

<comment><USER9> Well I'm pretty sure it is a textbook (by Pearson a textbook publisher) put together by research PHDs in Data Mining, so textbook pricing seems appropriate to me. I'm more worried whether all that profit just goes to the publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd really like to know if their Valentine's Day publishing date had a meaning.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks great. I just looked through the 3 free chapters and saved them for later reading.

</comment><comment><USER12> Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER6> Great! I was just reading through the first edition this week. It's excellent.

Also see Mining of Massive Datasets: [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds/book.pdf](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds/book.pdf)</comment>


HBGary Windows Rootkit Analysis Report [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://publicintelligence.net/hbgary-windows-rootkit-analysis-report/

<comment><USER2> So how bad of a publicity hit has HBGary taken with the Anonymous-breach? Am I paranoid for not immediately wanting to download and open PDFs from their site?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand the purpose of this report, it's just Process Monitor dumps and log files of rootkits being executed directly. No analysis is done, save a bit of ranting on the readme files provided by these rootkits. Is this information actually useful to anyone? It's trivial to recollect it yourself with Process Monitor

<comment><USER4> Recently, I think we've learnt that HBGary.* aren't actually very good at anything, no?

<comment><USER5> I think you need to take a look at this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2237789></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Recommendations for an accountant in Toronto? - <AUTHOR>

Whom would you recommend who would be familiar with doing business in the US? <comment><USER2> I don't live there so I can't help you, but I'm interested in your question. Why wouldn't you look on one of the online recommendation websites? (e.g. Yelp, or whatever works in Toronto.) Do you figure HN-types would give a better answer?</comment>


Magic – Not so magical – experience of an early adopter - <AUTHOR> http://www.davecraige.com/magic/ <comment><USER2> Maybe you should contact the state attorney for consumer affairs and let them know that they are ignoring your requests to prove that your personal information has been destroyed.</comment>


Ask HN: Usefull developer tools - <AUTHOR>

Hope this is not totally off topic. From time to time I've seen some nice developer tools available as web apps on the HN front page. On several occasions I never bookmarked the pages.
These apps include, a project management system, an application mockup creator and a flow chart drawing app that takes text as input.
PS: You may post anything else that you consider useful.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507212></comment>


Developing for the iPhone AppStore is betting your money on horses - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandinfection.com/2009/08/08/the-iphone-appstore-disaster-why-developing-your-companys-app-for-it-is-as-safe-as-betting-on-horses/

<comment><USER2> Hopefully Cydia will gain traction. I've bought a couple apps on it already and its been a positive experience.

It has the potential to be huge, however no VC firm will touch it since it also has the potential to be sued out of existence. I doubt it will have the resources to build things up enough where it can scale up and get a mainstream marketshare.

Android seems to be the only real alternative to Apple's appstore madness. I'll definitely be supporting that platform in the future. Getting an iPhone 3g last year was a really boneheaded move.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't really have the potential to be huge - yes there are a lot of iPhones out there, but they are not all potential Cydia users. You need people who are technical enough to jailbreak, interested enough to jailbreak, willing to do some care and maintenance and maybe re-jailbreak every time an upgrade is released and who are unhappy with the AppStore.

Given that the marketing for the iPhone is about how easy to use it is and how comprehensive the AppStore is, the iPhone target market is pretty much entirely excluding the Cydia market. The crossover is a chance happening that geeky people like the iPhone too, and the iPhone is actually a nice gadget dressed up as a phone.

<comment><USER4> I think you're oversimplifying the divide between geeky and non-geeky people. Or, to be more specific, you'd be surprised at the lengths "non-geeky" people would go to to get what they want. "You mean I can get more free apps for my iPhone? Show me!!"

<comment><USER5> "You mean I have to go to this ad-infested site and follow this long list of instructions? All for something I'll use once and forget about?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Until someone develops a phone thats as easy-to-use, feature rich, and as pretty as the iPhone, the smart money will be to develop for the platform, evil as the approval process is.

The simple fact is that Apple is light-years ahead of the competition with the iPhone and looks to remain in that position for the forseeable future. And I say that as an Android owner with no Macs in my house.

<comment><USER7> I am not convinced the approval process is 'evil'. Capricious? yes. Opaque? You bet. But not evil. They have made some dumb decisions that are getting a good amount of press coverage in tech circles, but the general iPhone user doesn't care about most of that.

I also don't think the article's author made a good case for iPhone development being as bad as gambling. Writing software for any platform can look like a crap-shoot from the outside. But success depends on a good product and a market to be served. Many of the iPhone apps are neither so that makes it more difficult to determine what the chances of success are.

I think that iPhone development has a higher chance of success than for any other current platform. You have a audience that is willing to spend disposable income, and a place where they can easily find apps to serve their needs.

<comment><USER8> You misunderstood the comparison with gambling. It's obvious bad software usually isn't gonna be too successful, no matter the platform and its policies. But the way Apple is letting you know only AFTER you are done with development whether you'll be even allowed (!) to sell it, that is definitely NOT the conventional risk you take when you decide to develop an application or not. And there are numerous hints at Apple not approving an application citing a certain policy that is in no way related to the actual reason for not approving the app. A developer is, by definition, unable to make 100% sure that his app will be approved by Apple. _That_ is the actual reference to gambling.

<comment><USER9> You can say a similar thing when government legislates your business as illegal. Large amount of regulators can be very opaque, and you only find out after the fact a month or two after you've started business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Android is gonna have to fight the old war of OpenSource platforms that go commercial (a fight that has been won only very seldom in the past). If it succeeds at that, its future is going to be very bright. Cydia will never be as popular and/or successful as the AppStore. But then again, it never was supposed to be. Cydia is supposed to be an open platform welcomming any kind of developer without restrictions and/or fees. The idea itself is meant for an outsider-position. Saurik is doing an awesome job at maintaining the Cydia store, but his much more important work consists in bringing *nix software to the iPhone platform. Cydia is only one of these advantages ;-)

<comment><USER10> "Android is gonna have to fight the old war of OpenSource platforms that go commercial (a fight that has been won only very seldom in the past). If it succeeds at that, its future is going to be very bright."

Care to explain that? Google does not intend to make money directly out of Android sales and just about all the applications users buy are proprietary. It's more or less the same as someone buying Oracle to run on Linux - the OS is open-source, but the application is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article was very disappointing - thin, old news, and generalizes to all developers from two very specific and unique examples. Not to mention the jarring its/it's usage. I do not come to HN to get this kind of blogspam. Sorry to be so negative, but something is broken here. I suspect people are upvoting simply for the easy-to-agree-with headline. Please don't do that, without actually looking at the article first. I want those two minutes back, and I wish HN had a way to prevent this kind of thing in the future.

ObTopic: It still comes down to writing a good app, and not tempting fate by straying close to Apple's sensitive spots.

</comment><comment><USER12> I thought that all this bad publicity wouldn't hurt Apple and the App Store model, but in the last few days I've heard many people how aren't geeks and who don't even own an iPhone talking about Cydia.

</comment><comment><USER13> Developing _anything_ for _anything_ is a big gamble, akin to betting on horses. Talent, enthusiasm, and perserverance all play a role, but luck also stands behind success.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Its" not "it's." This is not rocket surgery, people.</comment>


Odessa city: the truth that is to be hidden - <AUTHOR> http://cuamckuykot.livejournal.com/420890.html

<comment><USER2> Here is a better translation: [http://mikle1.livejournal.com/4119395.html](http://mikle1.livejournal.com/4119395.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Seems like the HN community wishes to just ignore this info.

<comment><USER3> Well, it's badly translated, it's hard to follow, it has a good deal of "inside baseball" stuff, and if the tone of the English is faithful to the original, it reads like old Soviet communiques. I do not think that coups d'etat in general are a good idea, but I also don't think that Russia has clean hands here.

<comment><USER2> I see. Yes, the translation is off. Still I am curious how this can possibly distract from the main point - mass murder in an European city in 2014.

Well, I hope there will be a better translator in the future, maybe that would help.

<comment><USER3> Evaluating your evidence is not easy. Let's leave it at that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Did breaking backwards compatibility kill Drupal? - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/did-breaking-backwards-compatibility-kill-drupal <comment><USER2> I don't believe that it was purely because Drupal 8 broke compatibility. Many were excited about Drupal 8.

Drupal fell behind in some areas. Looking at Wordpress and Gutenberg (while not perfect) it has leapt forward to provide a modern content editing experience. Perhaps Acquia focused on the wrong things? Perhaps other companies making money on Drupal didn't invest enough to improve it?

Drupal.org needs to be a flagship of what Drupal can be. The documentation is not well organised. Page loads are slow. Contributing can be difficult for newcomers. Other open source projects are better at selling themselves through their project website, documentation and code examples. Drupal.org shows its age.

Drupal can take a lot of time to setup and theme. Keeping Drupal installations up to date requires expertise. Smaller clients these days realise Drupal might be too expensive and found an alternative CMS or moved to a Saas. Laravel probably also took a big chunk of custom development away from Drupal.

At some point I think the community can only do so much.

There is nostalgia. Many times I have thought to myself: If only I could give all my time to a project like Drupal. I know, I know.. I could have. I should have... For me, life got busy and my career went in a different direction.

I do also think the situation expelling Crell was weird. It felt like bridges got burned and I know people who also felt it was a strange way to handle the situation. Can't we make that right?

This is not to criticise anyone. It is just my opinion. I am not a big time Drupaler, so you could see this as an outside perspective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very first sentence in TFA:

"First of all, Drupal is not dead. But..."

<comment><AUTHOR> TFA?</comment></comment>


I'm the Wife of a Former N.F.L. Player. Football Destroyed His Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/opinion/sunday/nfl-cte-brain-damage.html <comment><USER2> NFL player and mathematics doctoral student John Urschel retired last summer because he was afraid of possible brain damage. He'd had a concussion and found that for some weeks after his ability to think about math was impaired.

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

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this! I always think of him whenever discussion of the NFL comes up, and I had no idea he retired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >But who these men have become is not who they are, and I write that with conviction. The symptoms they display are beyond their control and occur through no fault of their own. These men chose football, but they didn't choose brain damage.

Completely true, and the previous generation of players rightly deserves compensation for being lied to by the NFL. They didn't know the devil's bargain they were striking. But the next generation? The ones who do now know?

Muhammand Ali was suffering from severe brain damage as early as 29, but kept boxing anyway because he was addicted to the fame and the glory. He'd come out of a match slurring his words and struggling to maintain a normal stride, yet would still deny any possibility of his brain being damaged by all the fighting. He was too tough, he was too fast, he was too macho. Until he wasn't, and then it was too late. This all coming after nearly a century of research showing the degenerative effects of boxing on the human mind.

Some jobs simply carry with them the understanding you are going to be "used up" by participating. Wrestlers, boxers, hockey players, and now footballers. Some men are willing to destroy themselves in pursuit of wealth and fame, and it's difficult to say it's our job as a society to overrule their choices about their own bodies.

 _However_ , I do think pop culture should try to stop downplaying the effects of this kind of stuff. Super heroes, for example, send the message to kids that you can engage in violence altercations for decades, and the only negative impacts will be physical (if they exist at all). I laughed out loud during TKDR when Batman's only injury from all his fighting is a bum knee and a few scars - his brain should be mush, are you kidding me?

<comment><USER5> That's all true, but I'm not sure you can even blame current generations. Yes, the knowledge that football or boxing cause heavy brain damage is pretty widespread, but nobody is telling participants that when they get into the sports. A youth football program isn't going to emphasize how dangerous it is when kids get older, and you'll see even less discussion about that among players and administration as they get older. I doubt that a newly drafted college player will be asked by the coach "hey you know you'll get concussions regularly, right?"

So is it really their own fault? Or is it an institutional issue?

<comment><USER6> Not everything has to be somebody else's fault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> NFL players are at least well compensated and are adults making decisions for themselves.

My problem is at the high school and college level. The kids are playing with great intensity for nothing more than love of the game and maybe the opportunity to move up. The long term risks seem way too high.

I'd say the same thing about kids playing soccer. I don't think heading the ball should be allowed in high school or college play. I was relieved when my daughter quit soccer.

<comment><USER8> > adults making decisions for themselves

That's the crux of the biggest issue. The NFL actively covered up/denied evidence that concussions were damaging for decades.

<comment><USER9> This is one of the key points to me - NFL actively hid the fact from their own fans and players for years. That should have been a much bigger deal I think, criminal negligence.

<comment><USER10> > _should have been a much bigger deal_

Yeah, and it's a pattern we've seen before (e.g. Big Tobacco).

I think it's a playbook. They string out the lies over a long period, then let the suspicion trickle out slowly. So, there are moments of muted outrage along the way, but by the time the full story comes out the pressure build-up has already been relieved. Beyond that, the finally-admitted truth is something we already knew for so long that our outrage has waned.

Basically, a PSYOP.

<comment><USER11> >Yeah, and it's a pattern we've seen before (e.g. Big Tobacco)

And fossil fuel

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 50 years ago when there was only had a small leather helmet, players wouldn't go head first into each other. I thought this is an overlooked point worth mentioning. Without a doubt the level of roughness has increased in 50 years and so has the methods of diagnosis for injuries.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. I played rugby and found that players are much more concerned with not injuring themselves. There were not any spear-tackles or leading with the head. Mostly cause you'll literally get knocked unconscious (or break your neck) if you try it.

Additionally, in rugby it's illegal to lift a player off both feet, and high tackles are much more heavily enforced, which forces players to use proper wrapping tackles instead of just smashing into each other trying to knock the ball-carrier down.

However, at the high level, spinal injuries are more common and actually a lot of players have been paralyzed. Especially in scrums.

Just wanted to compare football and rugby in this context. I think both sports are dangerous but, generally, I agree that the increasing protections provided by helmets and gear enables football players to take much bigger risks and hits. It's definitely a factor in the increase of CTE instances.

<comment><USER14> Tackling in rugby involves wrapping the legs and immobilizing the player rather than slamming into them as hard as possible. (Maybe inaccurate but that's how I was taught to do it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As I come from the UK and am not familiar with NFL, what moves specific to this sport cause this? This issue is not prevalent at all in Rugby, which is arguably more dangerous (no pads or helmets)

<comment><USER16> According to this article[0], concussions are just about about prevalent in rugby as in professional football.

[0] [http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/16029747/rugby-nfl- concu...](http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/16029747/rugby-nfl-concussion- issue-figured-out)

<comment><USER17> I played rugby for a few years in high school (not exactly stellar credentials but bear with me).

The first thing we were all taught to do was tackle. The technique was to wrap your arms around the opponents legs, particularly below the knee as that would guarantee their stoppage. This was a simple but very effective technique. We never tried to go for the head, or lower our heads and hit them.

I never played football so I can't say if this technique would work there but it's at least one reason no one on my team suffered a concussion in two seasons.

<comment><USER18> The single biggest difference between rugby and American football tackles is that (typically) in rugby you put your head behind the the runner while in American football you put it in front, i.e., across the body of the runner. The latter technique is only really possible without frequent facial injury when you're wearing a helmet and is used because it is more reliable (harder for the runner to run through). It also leads to more head, and especially head-to-head, contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honest question - football helmets have not changed that much in what, 25 years? Are there any efforts underway to use technology to improve the protection provided by helmets? What about a softer layer outside the hard plastic. What about crumple zones for lack of a better term - that means helmets are designed to absorb one large hit, then be replaced. I am sure there are studies underway, but seems like an area ripe for "disruption"...

<comment><USER10> The problem is that helmets--including the designs you describe-- are designed to protect the skull and not the brain.

The brain suffers damage from slamming against the inside of the skull due to inertia changes during collisions that are inherent to the sport.

There is literally no way to protect the brain as the sport is played today.

<comment><USER19> My understanding is the brain slams against the inside of the skull due to stopping fast. Wouldn't a crumple zone (again for lack of better term) allow for a slower transition and thus less rattling around in the skull?

<comment><USER10> > _the brain slams against the inside of the skull due to stopping fast_

Yes, that's the inertia change I referenced.

A crumple zone is unlikely to mitigate the problem in any meaningful way. The problem is that in a hard collision, the head still stops in an instant, but the brain continues to travel at the same rate of speed until it slams into the skull. Effectively slowing the distance over which the head comes to a stop by a few millimeters or so won't meaningfully offset that impact. The brain is still traveling too fast.

The kind of design you're referencing works in vehicles because its purpose is to dissipate the energy of the collision around the zones instead of through the vehicle. But, the goal here is to avoid damaging the vehicle so extensively that the damage intrudes upon the cabin (and its occupant).

However, the vehicle's _deceleration_ itself is not altered in any meaningful way by crumple zones. So, this system really only works if the driver is restrained (e.g. by a seat-belt). Otherwise, the driver would still bear the force of the sudden deceleration when she collided with whatever was on the other side of the empty space in front of her.

Similarly, if the brain could be restrained in its skull, then helmets might have at least some value in protecting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My concern is that changing Football will be difficult, if not impossible. It would be like asking them to change the Bill of Rights because some of it is outdated. It's a religion to many Americans.

<comment><USER21> It will be a slow process, but you hear parents now saying they would never let their children play, while when I was growing up, parents encouraged their children to play.

College is a feeder to the NFL. High school is a feeder to College, etc. Once you limit the source of nourishment, it will die in it's current state, but it will take a while.

<comment><USER22> College donors can also have an impact here. Right now, football makes colleges money. There's been recent controversy over Wesleyan, for example, focusing on football because of the money it makes: [https://slate.com/culture/2017/12/wesleyan-university- footba...](https://slate.com/culture/2017/12/wesleyan-university-football-is- good-business.html) If donors stopped giving in response to football and started demanding accountability for the long-term effects of the sport, it could have a major effect.

It may also require coordinated action, since no one wants to be the first college to give up the cash cow. This is where action by the NCAA or even legislation would be helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I still assert if you take away all (or most) of the armor that modern players have the injuries would go down. All of the spearing, head leading etc would no longer happen.

<comment><USER22> While we see these sorts of chronic problems and a rise in repetitive injuries, the number of deaths dropped dramatically with the introduction of helmets. "Between rule changes and the 1973 creation of NOCSAE, the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, head-injury fatalities in high school football declined by three-quarters.": [http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago- Magazine/The-312/May-2012/...](http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago- Magazine/The-312/May-2012/A-Brief-History-of-Football-Head-Injuries-and-a- Look-Towards-the-Future/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Excellent Intercept article came out about this yesterday-

[https://theintercept.com/2018/02/01/nfl-concussion-super- bow...](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/01/nfl-concussion-super-bowl- protocol-football/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Take the pads and helmets off and make it flag football. Therein, the game will be transformed into both athleticism and grace and would probably attract females into a womens league as well.

<comment><USER10> Interestingly, my kid's flag football league cites stats that there are more concussions in flag football than in tackle, at least in that age group.

I am not sure that I totally believe those stats, but the larger point is that any concussion in flag football would be due to an incidental collision. However, in tackle football collisions are built into the game, so every play is an opportunity for a sub-concussive blow, the accumulation of which has been found to be more damaging than the one-off full concussion.

So, yeah. Flag football FTW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://www.theplayerstribune.com/jermichael-finley- packers-...](https://www.theplayerstribune.com/jermichael-finley-packers- injury-retirement/)

"They Basically Reset My Brain"

I thought this was an interesting read after reading the headline. It is an article about a person who struggles to regain his mind after concussions after concussions.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14436417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14436417)

</comment><comment><USER27> Also a high rate of insulin resistance. You can't stay on an NFL diet after you retire. The NFL should get retirees a free pre-made meal plan and gym membership.

<comment><USER28> How so? The NFL diet seems pretty protein and vegetable-rich, and low on simple carbs. Simple carbs are correlated with insulin resistance.

[https://www.bonappetit.com/people/article/nfl-players- diet](https://www.bonappetit.com/people/article/nfl-players-diet)

<comment><USER29> Seems like some of them are doing that, but not universally. "Waffles", "pasta and chicken for lunch, double-portion on the pasta" "lasagna with some more chicken for dinner. In between, he'll put away a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or two" certainly doesn't sound like a diet low in simple carbs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There's a lot of discussion on whether players are compensated for the risk. I'll add that the career average earnings should include all the players who aspired to an NFL contract but did not succeed.

</comment><comment><USER31> What aspect of playing a contact sport causes brain damage, is it the sudden stop from a tackle or falling and hitting your head on the grass or ...? Can it be mitigated

<comment><USER32> Repeated collision of your skull, even if it doesn't result in concussion.

Linemen are the most prone.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2017/07/25/cte-s...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2017/07/25/cte- study-sends-shock-waves-through-world-of-football-part-1/#94c4cd54e64d)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> mma fighters like Eryk Anders who were once NFL players claim that NFL is much more dangerous than mma.

yet MMA seems to get much more scrutiny( bans ect) than NFL.

I saw an interesting house regulatory committee meeting where people like Randy Couture testified on this topic [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S03Z6a2ABWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S03Z6a2ABWk)

<comment><USER22> The NFL spends massive amounts of money deflecting responsibility: [https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/01/nfl-cdc- tbi162490/](https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/01/nfl-cdc-tbi162490/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think it may be a little unfair that the NFL has to pay out for damage that was done in aggregate over an entire lifetime (starting at Pee-Wee and moving on through primary school and Uni).

</comment><comment><USER35> He destroyed his mind and got paid well for it. There are many dangerous jobs out there and usually the pay reflects it. The player union and company needs to invest in solutions. If there are none apparent it might cost less to up salaries then invest in R and D. The owners dont want players to get long term damage. Mining orgs dont want miners to get black lung.

Tech solutions are a great place for this but its not a moral issue. He chose to play pro football. Its not footballs fault. And not every player gets brain damage so lets hear some numbers on that. What was this guys diet? Some people get brain damage that dont play football.

<comment><USER36> Why would you think player pay has anything to do with risk of injury? There are _very_ few occupations where this is true, and celebrity sports are close to the last place to assume that is happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised that American football doesn't come with a prop-65 like warning in CA. Seems like it should now that the link with CTE is confirmed. Maybe if it was labeled as what it is (slow suicide for the sake of random people watching), it would start to finally lose popularity

</comment><comment><USER38> First off, I mostly abhor football.

But there are all sorts of dangerous jobs. Deep sea fishermen, coal miners, oil riggers, heck even long haul truckers are high risk due to how dangerous highway travel is. People are allowed to make decisions on their own about the trade-offs and run their own lives.

If you want a job that is less risky, study hard and go to college. Then you can get an office job and all of the things that come with that (obesity, diabetes, and heart disease).

<comment><USER39> Sure, but most people aren't sending their 13 year olds to training camps for coal mining or oil rigging, whereas football is figuratively and literally drilled into the heads of a huge swath of young men in our country from the time they are born.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Let's keep this in mind next time there is a domestic abuse scandal involving an NFL player. Perhaps shaming the NFL into booting the player and cutting off his benefits isn't a appropriate solution for someone whose behavior may partially be the result of brain damage accrued while providing us with entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't mean to make to big a stretch here, but shouldn't the advertising companies also be held morally culpable for exacerbating CTE?

I mean the NFL had an incentive to increase the hits and blows to make it more entertaining, to draw more people, to sell ads.

I do see a future, where, unless the sport changes, companies will start pulling their ads from football games.

<comment><USER42> Sure, but there's degrees of moral responsibility. Shouldn't the spectators, should the player's parents etc.

<comment><USER43> "Who killed Davey Moore, Why an' what's the reason for?"

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


Internet Software Patents - <AUTHOR> http://philip.greenspun.com/business/internet-software-patents

<comment><USER2> The modern-day best-and-brightest work on Artificial Intelligence; but they are obscured by a much larger number of slightly to moderately talented nutcases who are working on Artificial Intelligence because they think it can't be that hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everyone heard of that project that was dubbed "TeslaNet", right? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower> I wonder what would the world be like if that had been successful.

<comment><USER4> Alternative tech history? We had a few opportunities. One was Wardenclyffe Tower, which proposed wireless time division multiplexed fax in 1902. We can only imagine the world today if such developments had succeeded.

Likewise, the computer industry in the 1980s had some promising developments in massively parallel computing. This included wafer scale integration and parallel processor microkernels. In 1987, Sir Clive Sinclair was granted a patent for creating massively parallel, fault tolerant computing. Rather than making a wafer of chips then packaging and testing each unit, it is possible for processors to self-test and self-assemble into a working network. This would allow an eight inch wafer to be packaged with minimal additional steps. Furthermore, this would have been an asyncronous processor design. Microkernels, such as HeliOS could have been adapted to run on such hardware and the user level programs may not have required any changes. You may also wish to research the Meiko Computing Surface which used Inmos Transputers or the Connexion Machine. Unfortunately, none of these developments were compatible with Windows.

Finally, if you enjoy alternative history, you'd probably enjoy The Gernsback Continuum from William Gibson's book of short stories, Burning Chrome ( <http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/burning_chrome/> ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Our modern day best-and-brightest built Microsoft Windows Vista (TM)."

They also built AutoCAD, ecommerce, Google maps, and put personal communication devices in a billion pockets. (And hacker.news too!)

Not fair to use Microsoft for comparisons in the history of computing. It is an aberation that achieved financial success not through technical excellence, but by building a monopoly with unfair business practices and legal and political maneuvering.

<comment><USER6> I think the point of the Vista comment is to illustrate the theme of patenting fairly obvious programming technology, not to take a shot a the "modern day best and brightest."

Microsoft reputedly engages in a fair amount of this kind of inane patent activity.

<comment><USER7> Vista is a great example for an essay like this: much of its brokenness is arguably a direct result of design decisions that were driven by entertainment-industry IP lawyers.

The other factor affecting Vista, which Greenspun refers to obliquely when he talks about the "natural progression of an industry", is that the pioneers in a field get to work in an open space. Backward compatibility is not an issue. Installed base is not an issue. Your market is too small to have developed hundreds of independent, politically powerful splinter groups that are each fighting for their own agenda. And your competitors are too few and too poor to have hired lawyers to scrutinize your every move and force you to document exactly how you answer the phone.

This is the real point. In typical Greenspun fashion, he is pretending to call us all stupid, but he doesn't really mean that we're _intrinsically_ stupid. He's appalled by the fact that we live and work in a tangle of legal nonsense that makes us _effectively_ stupid.

<comment><USER5> Shame on me. As usual, a Greenspun article that is 99% quality and I pick on the sore thumb at the end. I must be still be a little irritable after filling out that 8th TPS report.

I still say Microsoft is not representative of today's best and brightest. When you have $20 billion cash, 85% market share (in some sectors), and total PHB support, you don't have to be as good. So they aren't.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does one write clean database access code without an ORM? - <AUTHOR>

Many on HN have branded ORMs harmful, suitable only for toy projects where performance doesn't matter and complexity is low. I understand that hand-crafted SELECTs can be more efficient for complex queries, and when things get hairy with an ORM I almost always use its find_by_sql (or similar) functionality.
But a lot of HNers say ORM should be avoided entirely, and I am inclined to believe there's some truth to that. I'm fairly comfortable with SQL and know where to look to learn more, so that side's not a problem for me. But I have a couple of questions:
1) Why shouldn't I use my ORM for the simple CRUD parts of an application, and only reach for raw SQL when doing complex SELECTs?
2) How does one write clean, efficient, maintainable code for dealing with results of SQL queries? Am I supposed to be iterating over row.next to fill an array and identifying columns by numerical array indices like when I first learned to write spaghetti PHP, or what? Should I be using these all through my business logic, or am I supposed to invent my own crude ORM for that?
3) Very smart programmers have asserted that relational data is not object-oriented and we shouldn't try to make it object oriented. But there are so many cases where Django ORM and ActiveRecord idioms just seem perfectly natural, and anything involving the words Cursor and ResultSet don't. I understand that raw SQL can shine in terms of specifying the query, but what is an example of a case where it's cleaner to process database results manually? <comment><USER2> I prefer what I tend to call "micro ORMs," for lack of a more formal classification. From my point of view, a micro ORM does not attempt to fully replicate the entire breadth of a data model in code--that is, it does not automatically traverse relationships; does not enforce the constraints of the data model; does not require that your object model align with your data model.

Often, a micro ORM will allow you to quickly construct a list of objects from the resultset of an arbitrary SQL query and provide some programmatic way to handle relationships.

I don't think the performance penalty of high-performance micro-ORMs is great enough to justify avoiding their use on performance grounds [1] (see ORM column at right of charts). In the linked test, several micro-ORMs fair quite well, and incidentally, Wicket is using Hibernate, which I consider a full ORM. Not my particular cup of tea, but just goes to show ORMs are not necessarily a huge performance penalty.

Edit: Using our test implementation [2] as an example of what I mean, our in- house micro ORM will fetch World objects from a World table as so:

        @Entity
        public class World
        {
          private int id;
          private int randomNumber;

          public int getId() { return id; }
          public void setId(int id) { this.id = id; }

          public int getRandomNumber() { return randomNumber; }
          public void setRandomNumber(int randomNumber) { this.randomNumber = randomNumber; }
        }

        public class HelloHandler
        // ...
        {
          @PathSegment
          public void multipleQueries()
          {
            // ...
            for (int i = 0; i < queries; i++)
            {
              worlds[i] = store.get(World.class, random.nextInt(DB_ROWS) + 1);
            }
            // ...
          }
        }

I've seen similar approaches in other micro ORMs. "Put" and other operations are generally provided, but composing joins using nothing by Java code? That's what a full ORM does.

To answer your questions:

The chief advice I would provide for writing clean database access code without an ORM is to use prepared statements as much as possible. Doing so allows you to avoid the potentially disastrous outcome of not correctly escaping user-provided data.

1\. I wouldn't agree with the premise of the question. I _would_ use an ORM for simple CRUD and then use an ORM's "build objects from a resultset" feature for complex SELECTs.

2\. I think you do want at least a micro ORM to deal with this scenario. To be clear, a micro ORM would typically automate the work of constructing objects from a resultset using reflection (or similar) but probably doesn't come with much baggage (no external configuration files and no attempt to replicate the full complexity of the data model).

3\. In my experience, cursors and read-write resultsets are not as high- performance as one might expect. If you're considering using those features in order to gain performance, I'd encourage you to do some simple tests to confirm they yield the performance benefit you are being promised.

[1] [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7...](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7&test=db)

[2] [https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast...](https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/gemini/Source/hello/home/handler/HelloHandler.java)

</comment><comment><USER3> You could try using a SQL builder which should remove a lot of the boilerplate code for handling errors, SQL injection, etc. There are several and I do not have any recommendations, but here is one for example: [https://github.com/brianc/node-sql](https://github.com/brianc/node-sql). You are still writing SQL, but the code should be a lot cleaner.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is a great post:[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/494816/using-an-orm- or-pl...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/494816/using-an-orm-or-plain-sql)</comment>


Currents: Have Meaningful Discussions at Work – G Suite - <AUTHOR> https://gsuite.google.com/products/currents/ <comment><USER2> How much time are we giving it, considering Google's letal product policies?

I give them 2 years. Not a convincing project anyway. Yammer was already outdated when Microsoft bought it 2012.

<comment><USER3> > How much time are we giving it, considering Google's letal product policies?

Google isn't really known for killing G Suite features, though it's killed other things to support G Suite features. (E.g., consumer G+.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't trust google this project is going to be active in few months/years, when you invested into it</comment>


Tilted Twister: A Lego Mindstorms robot that solves Rubik's cube - <AUTHOR> http://tiltedtwister.com/ <comment><USER2> Don't forget jpbrown's CubeSolver from the first-gen mindstorms: <http://www.jpbrown.i8.com/cubesolver.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the best ad that Lego could ask for Mindstorms NXT. I had absolutely no idea that it came with touch, light (color), sound, and ultrasonic sensors. I really want to buy a kit now and see what I can do with it.

<comment><USER4> You should note that the colour sensor that it comes with can't tell the yellow and white blocks apart very well. To do what this robot did you will need to get either different stickers for the rubicks cube or buy a third party color sensor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have experiencing programming those things using Linux?

<comment><USER6> I have a mindstorm kit to play around and I am a linux user. To be honest I still didn't have time to do anything cool with it but I'd say the best resource is still this one <http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Lego/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazing, awesome job!</comment>