Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening - <AUTHOR> This is something that struck me a few moments ago, because it's very logical but completely unexpected. I have a Macbook Pro that's doing some hard work with the fans on loud, and calling Siri turns the fans off the period that Siri is listening.<p>It's pretty amazing someone thought of that. <comment><USER2> It's been around for a while already. The dictation feature in OS X 10.10 already knows that trick. The thought of the little thinks is what still makes me stick with OS X.

<comment><USER3> > The thought of the little [things] is what still makes me stick with OS X.

This rubs me the wrong way because it's a vicious (positive, I guess) cycle. You keep buying iPhones, they stockpile billions in cash, and they can "think of the little things" (which is really just "How can we make OS X more like iOS and less suitable for power users?").

It's sad... but I can't imagine anyone taking the time to hack this together on their *nix laptop, and even if they did, it's not likely to be portable until a handful of other tinkerers donate their time. This will bring the downvotes, but the way we're stuck on Apple these days is far worse than the MS lock-in we revolted about in the 90s.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's about the money, it's more of a matter of capability and simply "caring". Regarding the latter: it seems that Apple has managed to build an organization where everyone knows that details matter and everyone identifies with their work.

Here's a wonderful example: two SMS, one from google and one from Deutsche Bank (who, at the time, probably had enough money to care about details) [https://twitter.com/salzprojekt/status/707303168703602688](https://twitter.com/salzprojekt/status/707303168703602688)

Both SMS have the same purpose: sending me a single-use login token. But only google thought enough about it to change the sentence structure so as to make the code visible without unlocking the phone.

<comment><USER5> Is the point of 2FA to show you have possession of another device, or access to another device? While I'm in the same boat and appreciate seeing the code above the fold, for really secure things I'd prefer the Deutsche Bank example.

<comment><USER6> I noticed that since I have iMessage synced to my Macbook, if I ever lost my laptop and someone tried to hack my accounts, they would get the 2FA access code on the laptop they stole.

<comment><USER7> Those codes come across as actual SMS messages to the associated phone number. It appears on your laptop only when the phone is near enough to it that the "continuity" feature is engaged. You should be safe from this threat as long as the laptop isn't lost very nearby.

<comment><USER8> That is not true. SMS messages arrive as long as the phone is online, regardless of location.

<comment><USER7> I've never seen this behavior with my own devices, and cursory searching turns up similar results. Certainly I could be wrong, so can you point me to any references that describe the "proximity not required" behavior?

<comment><USER8> Well no. I had my iPad on a trip and left my phone at home plugged into the wall. Could send and receive text messages without problems

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They have to. Any time my MBP is working really hard, say, compiling, or talking on skype, or watching a video, or loading a web page, or browsing the filesystem, the fan ramps up like a turbine. It gets so bad that the microphone can't accurately pick up my voice.

<comment><USER10> Are you using an older model that hasn't been cleaned in a while? I use an early 2013 15" MBP and the only time I ever hear the fans is when I'm doing compilation with 8 threads (100% CPU usage on all four cores).

<comment><USER11> I've got a 2015 15" mbpr, and it doesn't take much for the fans to reach noisy speeds. one core pegged will do it after a few seconds. I run into this a lot with the new docker daemon.

edit: just timed it (yes > /dev/null), it takes about 60 seconds of one core pegged to ramp up the fan to audible. And I'm used to silent so audible is noisy to me.

Two cores pegged gets loud.

<comment><USER12> I'll echo you that my 2015 15" mbpr really screams the majority of the time. I probably should do a fresh install with the latest OS but moving files around is such a pain.

Maybe we are in quiet environments and notice them more than other people?

<comment><USER13> If there's an app causing it then the "Energy" tab in Activity Monitor should show you which one. Google and Adobe apps along with their helper services are particularly poorly behaved even when "idle".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And only if you're using the internal microphone. I was trying to test this and couldn't reproduce it until I realized I was using headphones with a mic. Unplugged the headphones, activated Siri and the fan instantly turned off.

<comment><USER15> I wonder how they prevent their CPUs from burning up when they do this and there happens to be some kind of heavy load in the background...

Is someone up for a free warranty Macbook replacement? ;)

<comment><USER16> The intel CPUs have pretty good thermal management. I suspect what will happen is the CPU will just start throttling itself to cool down if you kept making the OS spin down the fans.

Even back in the P4 days there were videos of people ripping Heat sinks off intel chips while running and the system throttling down and speeding back up as the heat sink is replaced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They probably thought of it because they were getting unexpectedly bad results using the internal microphone.

I guess it ramps the priority of everything else down as well.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, can I overheat my friends laptop, by saying "Siri" and proceeding to read war and peace?

<comment><USER19> If they thought about turning it off to increase the clarity of the speech, they probably thought of turning them on in case the computer is about to explode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My MBPr 13" (Late 2012) turns off the left fan and left speaker when the microphone (which is on the left side) is in use.

This is entirely in software, and Windows 10 does not also do the same. OSX has done this since 10.8, which came with the MBPr.

<comment><USER21> I guess Windows is at a disadvantage here since it doesn't know the physical layout of the components on the hardware it's running on. It would be up to the laptop manufacturers to include a driver to do such.

<comment><USER22> > It would be up to the laptop manufacturers to include a driver to do such.

Which means it's not going to happen, and if it does, it's not going to work right.

The "IBM Compatible" or "Wintel" commodity hardware platform has proven to be a powerful force for making computers less expensive and easier to use, but there's something to be said for vertical integration.

<comment><USER23> I once wondered what would happen if Intel bought Compaq in 1991, and eventually AMD does something similar in the early 2000s (it was in 2006 that they bought ATI for example). It would not quite be vertical integration, but the point is that it would be still a step forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does it stop the CPU hungry process too?

<comment><USER24> Why the down votes? Isn't it important? If I'm running some CPU intensive processes, I would hope it could send a SIGSTOP to the process so it wouldn't burn itself.

Throttling CPU frequency would help, but I expect siri needs some CPU too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is there a timeout?

<comment><USER11> yes. I've got 3 cores pegged now, fan shuts off for a few seconds and if I don't say anything it bails and the fans come back.

just takes about 10 seconds.

edit: I was able to keep activating siri and have the fans off while 4 cores pegged for quite a while. I don't know if CPU throttling kicked in or not, not sure how to check.

<comment><USER25> We were also wondering about existing temperature conditions. For example, I might be running some super benchmark that pegs the core temperature high. What happens when Siri turns on? If it still shuts down the fan thats bad. I could potentially keep prompting Siri (to turn off the fan) and drive the temperature a bit higher.

<comment><USER11> I don't have an app for monitoring cpu temps right now, and don't know if there is a CLI way to do it.

I was able to keep the fan off for probably a minute before I stopped. I am interested to find out if intel's cpu throttling kicked in.

edit: installed Intel Power Gadget.

with 4 cores pegged (4 actual cores), the CPU was turbo-boosted (3.0GHz on my laptop). As I prevented the fans from running via Siri, the cpu throttled back to normal rated speed. Temperature varied by a few degrees C hovering around 99C. I did this for approximately a minute or so.

It didn't go below the rated speed (2.5GHz on my laptop).

edit2: I did it again with 4 cores pegged and 4 HT cores pegged. It didn't throttle below 2.5, but I did see that the "yes" processes were throttled back. when I glanced before stopping, they were all at 80% instead of 95+%

<comment><USER26> There's no default utility for this. There's some sysctl values for the CPU and the GPU but they don't actually give you a temperature.

There's an API for this in IOKit. Easiest way I've found to get at it on the CLI is:

        gem install istats
        istats cpu temp | awk '{gsub(/[^0-9\.]/,"",$3);print $3}'

<comment><USER27> Just FYI, I had to do the following:

        $ gem install istats
        ERROR:  Could not find a valid gem 'istats' (>= 0) in any repository
        ERROR:  Possible alternatives: iStats
        $ gem install iStats
        Fetching: sparkr-0.4.1.gem (100%)
        ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError)
            You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.0.0 directory.
        $ sudo gem install iStats
        Fetching: sparkr-0.4.1.gem (100%)
        Successfully installed sparkr-0.4.1
        [...]
        This could take a while...

Then, I discovered it uses sparklines for output:

        $ istats cpu
        CPU temp: 60.625°C

Which is pretty cool.

 _EDIT: the sparkline doesn 't show here, but it's a little bar-chart histogram_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's kinda stupid - instead of intelligently filtering the noise (it knows the acoustics, the RPM of the fan, etc).

<comment><USER29> Since when were simple solutions considered stupid? If filtering audio (which will probably only work the CPU, and thus the fan, more) is smarter than stopping a fan, I must be as dumb as bricks.

<comment><USER28> It's a simple non-solution as noise is not coming only from the fan. Yes, you're reducing one that's easy to eliminate, but the problem still exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hopefully not for long enough to fry your circuitry. :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Would noise cancelling(ANC) help in this case, even if the mic and fan are near each other?

<comment><USER15> Yes, a lot. This is a simple case for a noise canceller. Stationary known wideband source of noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Never used a Mac but this seems more like a workaround for the noise filtering problem.

<comment><USER33> Yes agreed, it really sounds like a workaround. They improve the detection rate by reducing the noise floor. I find it interesting that they took the time to implement it, it must have cost a considerable amount of work that they could have put into filter algorithms instead. Fan noise sounds like an artifact that is easy to filter, but I'm probably wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My car does this when doing voice commands for radio or Phone.</comment>


Hacking the fundraising process with a comic book - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/thinknum-comic-book-pitch-deck-series-a-2019-8 <comment><USER2> one of the cofounders of Thinknum here, we had very few connections and Marta's idea for a comic book helped us get meetings with the many top VCs.</comment>


Innovative Courier Service - <AUTHOR>

I've come up with a solution to city couriering and wanted to get some feedback before launch.
It is a location based courier service for anyone to use. It will allow people and businesses to transport items in a cheap and quick way. Users will post their delivery request on our app and specify how much they will pay for the delivery. Depending on where the delivery is coming and going to, users who are in walking distance of the pick-up point will be able to see the request on our app. If the delivery is en-route to where ever they are going initially they can choose to accept it. This will save people and small businesses time and effort and give other people an opportunity to earn a bit. Examples of this service would be when you need your lunch delivered to your office or home because you are too busy or if you want your shoes to be purchased and delivered to your home.
What do you think of this concept?
Replies appreciated.Never too late for changes. <comment><USER2> Change 'people' to Companies and 'lunch' to goods and you are onto something. My delivery van is going to Town X and is half-empty and you are only a block away needing to deliver something to Town X.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trust is a problem. I'm going to hand over my package to someone I don't know, and give them money? What motivation do they then have to actually deliver it?

I love the idea of crowd-sourcing things like this. If we could trust everyone then the savings and efficiencies would be phenomenal. Unfortunately you can't trust everybody, and given a network that relies on trust, someone will exploit it to personal gain and other people's loss.

If you can crack that problem then you've _really_ got something.</comment>


JSONCrush – Compress JSON into URI Friendly Strings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/KilledByAPixel/JSONCrush <comment><USER2> This looks interesting, but I wish there was an explanation of how it works; I'm particularly curious about how it extracts repeated substrings. I tried reading the code, but it starts off with:

      let X, B, O, m, i, c, e, N, M, o, t, j, x, R;

and doesn't get any more readable from there. (And that's the unminified version!)

There aren't any tests, either, so if you're using this and find a bug I guess you just have to hope that nothing breaks when you change a line like

      for(M=N=e=c=0,i=Q.length;!c&&--i;)!~s.indexOf(Q[i])&&(c=Q[i]);

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, that part of the code is from JSCrush which I did not write. I don't fully understand it but here's an explanation someone wrote...

[https://nikhilism.com/post/2012/demystifying- jscrush](https://nikhilism.com/post/2012/demystifying-jscrush)

If you go to the live demo, it will do a test to crush/encodeURI and uncrush/decodeURI to the string you pass in and verify that they are the same. Maybe I should write some automated tests.

<comment><USER3> Did someone actually write that or did it come from a minified output?

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume they minified it, but I don't have access to the unminified source. I'd like to clean it up or find a cleaner version, but for now it works well enough.

<comment><USER4> The article you linked above contains a partially unminified version.

EDIT: On second thought, you'd probably be better off using a completely different compression algorithm that doesn't sacrifice performance for golfability.

<comment><USER5> No way, that compression algorithm is amazing. But I also would like to understand how it works by someone explaining it really simply.

I mean it's doing significantly better than LZ. Anyone want to provide simple intuition on these algorithms and where they come from?

<comment><USER4> The compression works by identifying repeating subsequences in the input data and picking the one that gives the best savings if replaced by a single byte not yet part of the input. This step requires time quadratic in the length of the input. After replacing the subsequence and tacking it onto the end so it can be recovered, the process continues until no repetition can be found or all possible bytes have been used.

It can beat LZ's compression ratio for two reasons:

1\. The input consists of only bytes that are valid in an URI, so it doesn't need an additional encoding step.

2\. It gets very slow very quickly for larger inputs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, LZ beats it out for longer strings, but not by much for strings in the target range (~5000 characters).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rison ([https://github.com/Nanonid/rison](https://github.com/Nanonid/rison)) is a nice alternative that seems to be more readable IMHO.

<comment><USER7> Yes I use this one, not as compact but it remains readable/editable, more notably Kibana uses it as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think a more 'popular' pattern is is to base64 encode the JSON. This is how we do it (tracking pixels/get requests), and lots of analytics/ad tech uses that pattern as well. But I'm not sure on the compression/size.

<comment><AUTHOR> Encoding to base64 increases the size by at least 33%. This is to help make links small enough to share on places like twitter, dischord etc where the max length is around 4000 bytes.

<comment><USER9> If you compress the json first, it isn't quite so bad.

Example #1 (short string):

      input: 103 bytes
      gzip(input): 87 bytes
      base64(gzip(input)): 117 bytes

Example #2 (long string):

      input: 3122 bytes
      gzip(input): 840 bytes
      base64(gzip(input)): 1121 bytes

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that is good reference. It makes sense that Zip would beat out JSON for longer strings. Just as another point of comparison, how about encodeURIComponent(gzip(input))?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hold my beer!

...

[https://donohoe.dev/project/jspng- encoder/](https://donohoe.dev/project/jspng-encoder/)

Life is too short to do something useful so why not encode all your site's Javascript code into a PNG image and then decode it on demand.

(This is a terrible idea. Don't do it. Just for fun)

<comment><USER11> this is quite cool. how do you convert the file to a png?

Why is this a terrible idea?

I'm thinking I can Whatsapp friends a huge letter as an image and they could use my toy app to decode it ;-)

<comment><USER10> A PHP script does the conversion, basically takes the code converts to a base64 png.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The code is a bit dense for my taste, these are extracts from the unminified version:

for(M=N=e=c=0,i=Q.length;!c &&\--i;)!~s.indexOf(Q[i])&&(c=Q[i]);

RegExp(`${(g[2]?g[2]:'')+g[0]}|${(g[3]?g[3]:'')+g[1]}`,'g');

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the JSCrush algorithm that I did not write and it is kind of magic. The uncompressor is crazy small. You can read more about it here...

[https://nikhilism.com/post/2012/demystifying- jscrush](https://nikhilism.com/post/2012/demystifying-jscrush)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The zzart format looks ridiculously wordy. A lot of compression could be achieved by shortening the property names. I wonder how much BSON would provide in size advantage but it'd have to be encoded to something amenable to a URI.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's another approach that compresses even better while retaining (limited) human readability: [https://bitbucket.org/tkatchev/muson/](https://bitbucket.org/tkatchev/muson/)

(Though it's mostly meant for making things smoother in statically-typed languages.)

<comment><USER15> are they usable in a URI though?

<comment><USER14> No, you'll need to percent-encode them first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe further saving could be done by converting to cbor before urlencode

</comment><comment><USER17> Idea: just put the thing in localstorage? It's cheaper, less fiddly, you can encrypt it with something like TEA if you so desire, and doesn't make urls unshareable by existing

<comment><USER18> > and doesn't make urls unshareable by existing

But when you put json in the URL, you normally do want exactly that. Making the URL shareable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, localstorage is great, but this for making URLs that are short enough to share on twitter, dischord, etc. The max twitter url length is ~4000 characters I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was looking for something like this last week so was interested to try this. It's just crashed in Firefox with the fans also kicking up to max. It worked in Chrome with a 31% reduction in size, but took a while, and the fans kicked in again.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had some issues with long strings, like 5000 or greater. What length string were you using?

<comment><USER19> 22728 characters! Maybe that's way bigger than this is meant for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I'm interested in trying to make it work with longer strings. Worst case scenario if it gets long strings it could just split it up into strings of length that it can handle. The speed seems to decreases rapidly with string length at some point eventually hitting a brick wall, the sweet spot seems around 1000-5000.

<comment><USER20> That means the algorithm's complexity is non-linear. I am suspecting the JScrush code currently but it could be somewhere else as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is the JSCrush code. I don't fully understand it, but it's a brute force approach to find the longest substrings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why?

<comment><USER22> One use case where I've put (uri-encoded) JSON in the query string is for parameterizing GET requests with more structured data, since URL encoding is fairly limited and GET requests don't have a body like POSTS.

<comment><USER21> Can't you just base64 url safe encode it and get the same result? Aren't URl strings limited in their length as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I know base64 is not guaranteed to be uri safe, though most of the time you should be fine. However more importantly converting to base64 automatically increases the size by 33%

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/WindowBase6...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/WindowBase64/Base64_encoding_and_decoding)

<comment><USER23> The parent poster was referring to the "base64url" variant of Base64 which uses `-` and `_` as the two special characters and leaves out the useless padding, making it url safe. (The 33% expansion still applies though)

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4648#page-7](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4648#page-7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like this as a compression method, but not sure how I feel about sticking it in a URL.

<comment><AUTHOR> It worked great for my use case [http://zzart.3d2k.com](http://zzart.3d2k.com)

Reduces share urls by about 75% for these very repetitious JSON strings.</comment></comment>


Agile Scrum is not working - <AUTHOR> https://iism.org/article/agile-scrum-is-not-working-51 <comment><USER3> Maybe I was spectacularly unlucky, but in the last twenty or so years working with different companies and teams claiming to do agile, most were focused on the motions and the tools (stand-ups and Jira) as opposed to the spirit and intention.

Agile was and is nearly always used as an excuse to continue to make mid- sprint changes and push more work to the dev teams "because we are agile".

An understanding of the level of support required at the leadership level and the accountability that follows is rarely understood.

Interestingly over the past few years I am seeing more organizations migrate towards an iterative model with monthly cycles, and I've seen this work well with distributed teams with a wide range of roles (dev, UX, validation, tech pub, devops, etc.)

In contrast, I also continue to see true scrum work extremely well with some teams. They are all relatively small (6-8ish) with strong support from the EVPs or C*Os, mostly operating from a single location or timezone, have a good rapport with each other and openness up the chain of command as well as horizontally with the stakeholders.

That, to me has a large cultural component. Some teams can get there, and many won't.

<comment><USER4> Yeah companies don't change their basic modus operandi just because they bought Agile training.

Add to that problem that most legacy companies are very date driven and you really end up with Date Scrum where the team is pushed to get really anything out by a date. Then tack on people focusing on the parts they like - <USER2> means I can change things mid project! - the result of which is a scope moving chaos monster that delivers bad software by date certain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I posted this comment on another Scrum thread, and I think it applies here as well, especially on HN as lots of people on here are actually trying to make something brand new with no customer to iterate with.

>Amplified learning is critical for a startup because you are searching for value in dark space. To find value you have to package up attempts and fire them into the dark space to see if anything hits. Fire the value attempt when it is ready, not when some artificial sprint interval finishes!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23191890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23191890)

</comment><comment><USER5> For many projects that I've done that are "agile" the budget seems to go out the window....

<comment><USER6> What's better-- the right project over budget, or a broken nothing that is under budget?

<comment><USER4> That right project over budget is clearly what we want! I do claim that teams who have don't have a way to iteratively validate their increment are just going to deliver the wrong thing over budget though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So Agile Scrum is not working so what you really need is Value Scrum.

Since we are clearly in a post-agile world. There appears to be little added value in reiterating all the reasons people believe that the management of software development is not working. So what is going to replace it?</comment>


Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion <comment><AUTHOR> Video of the incident: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs)</comment>


Paul Graham's Hackers and Painters is $9.49 on O'Reilly's deal of the day. - <AUTHOR> http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449389550/

<comment><AUTHOR> ...with code: "DDHPT"[1].

[1]: <https://twitter.com/#!/oreillymedia/status/21836062456283136>

<comment><USER2> FYI this appears to be for the ebook edition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. They do something similar everday weekday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> can anyone speak of the value of getting a 6-7 year old technology-related book (aside from reminiscing about this and that)? Are readers of HN really the audience for this book (people who, at least in theory, are do-ers, go getters, etc)? I'm asking not to be the villan of this post, but simply because I haven't read the book and am wondering whether it's worth the read. So, input is appreciated!

<comment><USER4> The content of the book came from his essays (posted on his website).

Whether it is worth or not, it depends on how you define worth.

I used to buy the hype cycle out of recommended books by "the internet" (reddit, HN, blogs, etc), for example: the tipping point, wisdom of the crowd, paradox of less, this book, get things done, etc.

But then I figured out that I want to (and should) do my own thing, not to follow someone else's lead.

I sold mine last month and am now trying to get rid the other books as well.

Keep in mind that while it is 6 years old, most of the content are "concepts" of various topics from startups, competition, hackers/recruiting, etc.

<comment><USER5> I also (same book lineup as you and 4 hour week, Godin stuff, those other bad books from Gladwell, yes all of them, I still like Black Swan) came to the conclusion those hype cycle blogosphere books are not for me and only distract.

<comment><USER4> They do indeed. Funny though, I was cleaning up my bookshelves 2 days ago and I stumbled upon old books "Software Engineering in UNIX/C Environment" (1991)[Honest: I copied the book from my university library before I graduated a few years ago] and "The Greatest Secret in the World" (1997).

I browsed found interesting information. For example: SE in UNIX/C Env book mentioned Unit, System, Integration, and Acceptance Testing. Just like those Agilist/Scrum books are doing these days.

Og Mandino book is sort of self-help book that seems a combination of a few recent self-help books.

They're both thin and easy to read. I suppose I would believe reviews about old books than newer books from now on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a good book. Your library probably has it for free (SF library does, and the waiting list for it generally isn't too bad).

</comment><comment><USER7> Excellent text, eloquent argument that takes to task the modern notion of entrepreneurship and what it means for today's innovators.

I really enjoyed reading the parts that called on developers to challenge old players in new markets; inspiring stuff.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just finished this book a few weeks ago. It was very interesting, especially the chapter on wealth, where he introduces that wealth does not equal money, but rather wealth equals something that people want.

</comment><comment><USER9> Alternatively, if you want to buy it from Amazon for whatever reason, it's $9.99: <http://amzn.com/B0026OR2NQ>

<comment><USER10> That's for the kindle version, but the paperback edition is $11 [1].

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp/1449389554/ref=tmm_pap_title_0)

<comment><USER11> So you save a whole dollar and 51 cents. Big deal. I'd just as soon order it from Amazon, who in general has much better prices than direct from O'Reilly.

<comment><USER12> I would rather order it from anyone but Amazon, who has been started removing "offensive" books from the Kindle store left and right.

<comment><USER13> Citation?

<comment><USER12> Two blog posts from affected authors:

This first one was on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2007395>

Another: <http://jamthecat.blogspot.com/2010/12/boycott-amazoncom.html>

<comment><USER14> Interesting links, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found the entire book in scribd.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/47180/Paul-Graham-Hackers-And- Pain...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/47180/Paul-Graham-Hackers-And-Painters)

</comment><comment><USER16> It's worth every discount!</comment>


Romania Jails Ex-Minister Over Microsoft Licenses - <AUTHOR> http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/romania-jails-ex-minister-over-microsoft-licenses-03-24-2016 <comment><USER2> Yeah, business has been corrupt since before any of us were born. I worked at a US company that reached an agreement with a foreign government to provide all their systems for their entire government. They were dumping Microsoft, and they were going to move to open source provided by us. It was a huge deal.

So Bill Gates got on a plane and met with the country's leaders. Bill explained to them that since they were buying less product then the country would be considered a lower priority to Microsoft - and shipments of all Microsoft products to the country would be significantly delayed - even for all their non-government businesses. Of course, they couldn't let their businesses be put at such a competitive disadvantage. So the country was extorted to adopt Microsoft products.

The country couldn't say any of this publicly - fearing Microsoft reprisals - but they explained this to us in a private meeting.

People who think that the free market is really free are just naive.</comment>


Tmux and Vim – better together - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bugsnag.com/tmux-and-vim/ <comment><USER2> All this looks really great, however I think I just can't deal with the effort of maintaining these complex editor configurations anymore.

I've been a multi-decade Vim user, until I switched to VSCode last year. It made me realize how much better the user experience can be for an editor. I had all kinds of complex vim configurations and plugins with special cases for linux vs. mac, server vs. desktop, GUI vs. terminal, all of which are a huge pain in the butt to maintain.

If there was one thing I could ask of Vim (or even emacs), it'd be a consistent high-quality default user experience.

(Ofcourse, the default experience in VSCode isn't perfect either, but it took me four lines in settings.json and four plugins (vim, go, eslint, clang) for a near-perfect experience.)

<comment><USER3> I've always felt vim is an excellent editing experience but a lousy project management (ie "IDE") experience. I've also grown tired of the song and dance of setting up vim config and plugins, getting excited when I finally get a decent autocomplete working without stopping to consider VS Code has great autocomplete out of the box.

The problem is vim editing never quite mixes well with other editors. The vim plugin for VS Code is great, but do you let it take over Ctrl? Do you get Ctrl-R for redo, and sacrifice other VS Code usages of Ctrl for example? The vim plugin is also pretty buggy here and there and no matter what, I always find a vim plugin is missing some vim feature I depend on.

It's frustrating in a first world sense. It's hard to have your cake and eat it too with vim.

<comment><USER4> The real solution to this problem is for IDEs to support an editing frontend interface and then editors to be split into frontend and backend so that really you could use them in the context of the IDE.

The obvious example would be using the neo-vim frontend to interact with VSCode, Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc.

What I want most is a Neo-Vim frontend to org-mode in Emacs, because it would be hilarious and because while Spacemacs is kind of cool it's still not Vim. And org-mode is awesome and unparalleled but vim > emacs all day.

<comment><USER3> That's what this project is working on: [https://github.com/carlosdcastillo/vim- mode](https://github.com/carlosdcastillo/vim-mode) \-- using neovim as the editing backend to Atom. It still doesn't completely solve the problem of vim and editor key commands clashing.

Another interesting approach is VimR ([http://vimr.org/](http://vimr.org/)), which is Neovim combined with native IDE addons such as Markdown preview, file tree, etc. The nice thing about VimR is since the whole thing is one cohesive package, the developers can ensure it has a consistent experience. Sadly it's OSX only though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use tmux and vim together as my dev environment for five years (used Sublime before) and I like to add another thought:

One huge advantage is that I can run the dev setup on a remote server which allows to keep the entire enviroment with all build tools and watchers live and persistent for weeks. You can do this on a local environment as well if you never shutdown the system or suspend only but it still feels different. Just an example: You worked weeks ago on a side-project and want to get in again for a small fix. Just to recall and open all relevant files, run the build tool and server plus tweaking the layout requires five minutes and usually you don't do it, you just want to fix one line and not think about the project setup. With tmux you go to the respective workplace with prefix+p (for previous) in case you kept the workplace still running. That's it. With a 1GB RAM VPS I can run many tmux workplaces/windows each with ~8 vim instances or other processes.

Further, I can develop on any of my notebooks/PCs/OSes with an ssh client installed, even on my phone. Btw, tmux and vim are perfect for phone keyboards, try it and it happens really frequently that you are on the go and want to try another idea/fix. Here, prefix+z for zooming into a pane is quite helpful.

And when I get a new computer my dev environment doesn't have to be setup again. I am still using the same remote server which survived three notebooks now.

And a (small) bonus: If you want to show coworkers your work in a browser (if it's a website) you give them just your static server IP without the need to ifconfig your current local dynamic IP before.

Running your dev environment remotely is a small thing but makes a huge difference in daily use.

<comment><USER6> > (btw tmux and vim are perfect for phone keyboards, try it yourself)

What terminal emulator do you use on your phone? Android, right?

<comment><USER5> Prompt on iOS and JuiceSSH on Android are very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've found my flow with vim+i3+ranger

i3 is a window manager that can outcompete anything you can do with vim splits or a tool like tmux/screen. It's whole existence is based around putting windows in the right place at the right time.

Ranger is a vim-like ncurses file browser. I think it's genuinely one of the most underappreciated tools in programming. The ability to hjkl through your file system, with quick marks, with vim-style cut/paste, with visual mode, with about 20 other things that I use daily which just means that no other viewer comes remotely close.

My typical flow has between 4 and 12 terminals open, with the bulk being ranger->vim, which allows me to easily navigate complex project structures. The others are usually make, or htop, or some ssh.

I'll usually have a couple of web browsers open in another workspace as well. i3 tiling extends to all applications.

<comment><USER8> How is i3 for a general purpose desktop? For coding it sounds great, but the same machine is used when I'm browsing the web or playing games or whatever.

<comment><USER9> I've been using awesomewm for a few years now, and while it's not i3 I believe it's close enough that I can answer that: A tiling wm is very viable for a general purpose desktop. It's also extra useful if you have a multi-monitor setup.

Applications that works in fullscreen (mpv, vlc, video games) requires you to set them fullscreen/floating, either yourself with a keybinding (Mod+f on awesome) or through the wm's config file. Some applications do not like tiling at all, some java gui apps from what I remember, but there are so few of them that I can't actually give you any example.

I say give it a shot, but beware: controlling your desktop entirely from your keyboard is addictive.

<comment><USER8> Keyboard is great sometimes, but do they have mouse control too? If I'm watching videos when I'm in bed I'm pretty mouse reliant, but if I'm coding then the more I can do on a keyboard the better

<comment><USER9> Some things can be done with the mouse: selecting a client, moving to another workspace, changing the layout, moving/resizing a floating (ie. not tiled) window

(awesome 4.x is more mouse friendly than awesome 3.5: in addition to the above, you can also change a few client modes with the mouse: float/tiled, maximize, stick (ie. display on all workspaces), on-top, close.)

Keyboard only: adding/removing columns/masters, moving a client to the master area, resize master area, move client to another workspace/screen.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I'll put it on my ever growing list of things to try out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I usually use :!command to run a command real quick from within vim, where I also have access to the current filename and contents.

A classic gem is ":w !diff % -" to see what I've changed since the last save.

<comment><USER11> I used to run more commands from vim, but now I personally find Ctrl-Z is usually more convenient for all the one-off commands. If I do run stuff from inside of vim, it's now usually ":w !" or ":r !" (or some custom command wrapper around those).

<comment><USER12> Oh! Ctrl-Z! I've been calling !zsh all these years, for quick shell access, and never thought of suspending vim.

Thanks for the nugget.

<comment><USER13> Put this in your zshrc, and Ctrl-Z will also resume the most recently suspended process. Really handy to just Ctrl-Z in and out of Vim.

      # Make Ctrl-z also resume background process
      fancy-ctrl-z () {
          if [[ $#BUFFER -eq 0 ]]; then
              BUFFER="fg"
              zle accept-line
          else
              zleush-input
              zle clear-screen
          fi
      }
      zle -N fancy-ctrl-z
      bindkey '^Z' fancy-ctrl-z

<comment><USER14> I don't really know zsh, but that looks like it should be

      zle flush-input

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Neovim got a great builtin terminal emulator so I can just treat it like any other vim panes.

<comment><USER16> The last time I looked at the terminal emulator built into Neovim the keybindings were terrible. What keys do you personally use for navigating in and out of TERMINAL buffers?

<comment><USER17> I use the bindings suggested in the Input section at [https://neovim.io/doc/user/nvim_terminal_emulator.html](https://neovim.io/doc/user/nvim_terminal_emulator.html). Took a little getting used to but now I quite like them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice article, I used tmux for a long time until I switched back to screen as it is default on most operating systems.

\--

Dunno is it only me but I see a weird thing going on with "new" Vim community.

Everyone is starting to use it as a VSCode or Atom, trying to use hundreds plugins but most of them don't even know how to use tabs properly... I see most of this by new "neo" fans "you don't know how to make a thing in Vim? Download Neovim... or even Spacevim configuration." type of way. :)

Don't want to start a war here because every editor has it's own fans and I do not want to offend anybody either. But every one should learn to use vanilla version of their editor of choice before moving further.

<comment><USER11> I think if someone is going to use something like SpaceVim, it would be best to start early and just learn that instead of vanilla vim. The initial cognitive load will be high for learning both anyways.

I personally do not have the patience for it even after giving it a try. But in my case, my 3yo laptop might just be too slow to handle all that bloat.

<comment><USER18> Many of them will be lost when editing something in vim on a completely clean remote server or anything other... Like how to explore files without NERDTree?

You can learn basic Vim commands in 30min with vimtutor. One thing to keep in mind is this: [https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/#language](https://danielmiessler.com/study/vim/#language) and this [https://www.vi-improved.org/recommendations/](https://www.vi- improved.org/recommendations/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice article! I'm gonna introduce some of this in my configuration for sure!

I have a function in my .vimrc ( [https://github.com/Morantron/dotfiles/blob/master/vimrc#L229](https://github.com/Morantron/dotfiles/blob/master/vimrc#L229) ) that allows me to send current vim selection to the adjacent tmux pane with vimux. This comes in very handy in REPLing sessions ( MySQL and the like ).

For copy pasting stuff ( like ids, urls, SHAs, etc ) I use [https://github.com/morantron/tmux-fingers](https://github.com/morantron/tmux- fingers) which is awesome and you should totally try it! ( </shameless-plug> )

</comment><comment><USER20> Tmux is a great program, especially when trying to edit on a remote server. But I think it's worth pointing out that for most purposes, Tmux is basically just a Tiling Window Manager that only works on your terminals.

Tiling Window Managers are awesome, and I totally see why people who can't use one would choose to use Tmux, but if you have the option, I would totally recommend just going with the TWM and skipping Tmux.

<comment><USER21> Used Ion for years but finally just "upgraded" to fvwm2 and multiple tmux terminal windows. Reason? More often than not dozens of Unix hosts are being accessed through SSH rather than X. Tmux is always there, regardless of method of connection. Also, use the antique "nvi" (rather than Vim or Neovim) whenever possible. Same reason; it's always there, no tweaking.

If I find myself craving extra functionality I'm probably overthinking things and am in need of a vacation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Prior to moving to a mac and using iTerm2, I did this very thing. But iTerm2 has good enough support for all of the same things, without some of the limitations imposed by tmux, that I find I don't need to use tmux anymore. Split windows, quick switching between panes, mouse support... it's all just there.

When I work remotely, I use the tmux integration provided by iTerm2 to provide more native windows, and it works well enough that I don't have to think about it most of the time.

If I were moving back to Windows or to a Linux development machine, I probably would go back to tmux in a single window. I'm just somewhat glad I don't have to right now.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was a little bummed to see no mention of `slimux`. It's a fantastic way to execute commands in a real shell (another tmux pane) from the comfort of your ViM session. By combining this with say IPython running in the shell, it's a powerful way to do data analysis. I wrote an ebook on this kind of workflow at [http://dvbuntu.github.io/compute/](http://dvbuntu.github.io/compute/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I have been using vim since 1996. I really never started customizing things till 2005. I still keep things super minimal.

<comment><USER21> Amen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is great, I have a similar configuration with near to zero effort to setup thanks to vundle (vim) and tundle (tmux) plugin managers.

[https://github.com/chilicuil/dotfiles/blob/master/.vimrc#L25...](https://github.com/chilicuil/dotfiles/blob/master/.vimrc#L252)

[https://github.com/chilicuil/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf...](https://github.com/chilicuil/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L83)

One additional trick I often use is to look for inotify events in split tmux panes to compile/run tests on every save.

[https://superuser.com/questions/181517/how-to-execute-a- comm...](https://superuser.com/questions/181517/how-to-execute-a-command- whenever-a-file-changes)

</comment><comment><USER26> Hmm. I use both vim (and vi since '93 or '92), and tmux, but maybe not with this type of workflow - mine is similar. For a shell, I use ConqueShell (and ConqueGDB when debugging) and have a vertical split bound to a leader (and you can use the output as a normal buffer - copy, paste, scroll, search using regex in normal, etc are some of the benefits). I've got shift+arrow bindings for navigating around buffers in splits, and alt+arrow for navigating around windows. As for running tests, I have autocmds that do bindings based on filetype for generic operations, and if there's a test I run often on a project, I just create a leader binding for it. If you're thinking about this type of workflow, give ConqueShell an eval. YMMV. edit: fzf seems to work a lot like CTRL-P.

<comment><USER27> I've been using this recently as well. ConqueGDB is almost perfect. I want to have a tab for development that is just files and a tab for debug that is a split with gdb and one file viewer for stepping & etc. But if I set breakpoints in my development tab the Conque buffer has to create a new split and show itself there. So I have to close it every time after I set breakpoints.

I had some problems with CounqueShell and ended up finding it easier to switch to a "real" shell using byobu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How do you guys share session in TMUX beetween computers that there are not in the same local network?

<comment><USER29> There's tmate: a tmux fork wich allow instant pairing without the hassle of ssh'in into the other computer and running a shared tmux. You can instant-run with the online service or install and use your own tmate server (BSD- licensed).

[https://tmate.io/](https://tmate.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not sure if it is only at my Mac, but with the latest Mac OS + iTerm + TMUX + VIM, my clipboard doesn't work properly, even using the following setup on my tmux

bind-key -t vi-copy y copy-pipe "reattach-to-user-namespace pbcopy"

Anyone with the same problem?

<comment><USER31> No clue if you've done these steps, and I'm not on Mac OS at the moment (also I use Terminal.app), but:

In my main .tmux.conf I put:

      if-shell 'test "$(uname -s)" = Darwin' 'source-file ~/.tmux-osx.conf'

And then in .tmux-osx.conf I add:

      # https://robots.thoughtbot.com/tmux-copy-paste-on-os-x-a-better-future
      # To copy/paste on OSX just brew install the following
      # brew install reattach-to-user-namespace

      # Setup 'v' to begin selection as in Vim
      bind-key -t vi-copy v begin-selection
      bind-key -t vi-copy y copy-pipe "reattach-to-user-namespace pbcopy"

      # Update default binding of `Enter` to also use copy-pipe
      unbind -t vi-copy Enter
      bind-key -t vi-copy Enter copy-pipe "reattach-to-user-namespace pbcopy"

I only pointed out the separation of configs because it's kinda nice for my setup.

<comment><USER30> I had the same config, but I discovered what was missing. If you use zsh, you need to add this as well:

set-option -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm really a little disappointed how much this article is about using plugins and additional tools instead of learning to integrate both tools by oneself. At least vim is not a tool that gets better by plugins.

<comment><USER33> Vim absolutely gets better with plugins. ctrlp.vim, vim-tmux-navigator, vim- clang-format, ag.vim, vim-fugitive, supertab, vim-surround are all valuable plugins that I make use of every single day.

<comment><USER32> But you don't know what it stopped you from discovering about vim core that you solve your problems that way. And as shown in another comment in this thread, each problem you can solve with vim core you can combine with other features:

E.g., if you don't use a plugin for command execution and instead learn about ":!command" then you will at some point be able to automatically read the results from your command into the current buffer (":r !command"). This enables a complete set of features that you haven't even known before. For instance you won't ever have spelling errors in your IP addresses ever again, because you just read them with a ifconfig-grep-awk combo into wherever you want to paste it. If you also learn about creating your own vimcode functions you can make it even a hotkey to insert your current ip address at the cursor position.

All of that wouldn't be possible to discover if you used a plugin to execute shell commands from vim.

<comment><USER33> I still do those things you are talking about (really handy to read the output of find into the buffer when creating a new CMake file), but you are going to be hard-pressed to achieve something like :Gblame command from vim-fugitive or the funcitonality of ctrlp.vim without plugins.

<comment><USER32> Yes, you can't achieve the same thing without the plugins. You also can't achieve the interactive debuggers that IDEs have. But have you missed those? After some time I bet you've found other ways to debug your code that are just as handy, maybe not in all cases but therefore are even better in others. When I started to miss debuggers it forced me to really learn strace, logging frameworks of my favorite languages, dmesg, and journalctl filtering. It's still more work than setting up a breakpoint and tabbing through my code, but on the other hand I have it available as well, when I need to debug a wordpress plugin a contract worker wrote for my customer 10 years ago on a webserver that has none of my usual settings, plugins etc. In the end the pros and cons equal out I'd say.

And let's assume we can agree on that: Great plugins and great skill can on average be just as good. Why do I think that in vim plugins are the wrong course? Because everything in vim is based around skill. You can't even navigate efficiently without spending some time learning search, word/block navigation, etc. If one wants to achieve success with plugins I'd say it's much smarter to build your tools on a foundation that is created for plugins like emacs or an IDE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I use tmux and vim often, but man my mind turns to mush reading about about either one of them. The biggest hassle I have is with copy-paste with tmux which I find ugly and can never remember. And then the method differs if you need to copy from tmux to another program that is not in tmux. Like for example just clicking on a URL in a tmux pane won't work (for me), nor have I figured out how to copy them so I can paste them into Firefox. And whenever I go read about it or ask it's like, 14 steps to glory and my mind is mush on step 4.

No, I don't think I have a brain injury.

</comment><comment><USER35> I love TMux and Vim and I miss it when off my machine. Has anyone used TMux in the Creator's Edition of Windows 10? It is AWESOME. I need to get CMUS and Ranger working and I will be a happy camper.

<comment><USER36> I used it for a while but then I realized that ConEmu also supports split panes, and then i can just scroll/select the buffers by mouse instead of ctrl+b, [.

ConEmu really is an amazing piece of work. Quirky to configure (but hey, so it tmux), but truly amazing still :-)

<comment><USER37> You can scroll using mouse in tmux too. :set mouse

Not sure about selecting panes with mouse though

<comment><USER38> Yes, you can select panes and windows with the mouse.

      $ cat ~/.tmux.conf
      set -g default-terminal "tmux"
      bind-key -t vi-copy 'v' begin-selection
      bind-key -t vi-copy 'y' copy-selection
      set -g mouse on
      setw -g mode-keys vi

      set display-panes-time 3000 #3s

My two wishes:

\- I wish mouse selecting text didn't select across multiple panes, or all of the blank space in a (zoomed) single pane. ("Anyone? Anyone?")

\- I wish the tmux copy buffer ( ctl-b [ select yank ctl-b ] ) would copy into the system copy buffer ( ctl-v ).

<comment><USER37> I have wished those two wishes before. Haven't seen a solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Being a tmux+vim and acme user, I'd love to see some mouse integration when using tmux+vim: \- right click on a file pattern, say some/path/to/file:line:column to open in the current vim session \- middle click on some selection to execute in a new tmux pane

That would be a nice way to integrate with the surrounding environment without so many plugins, just simple programs that would run in a separate window.

Vim remote can help, neovim-remote might help even further.

</comment><comment><USER8> What keyboards are everyone using for these setups? I find by the time you've got three layers (desktop, tmux, vim) the bindings are getting really complicated and inconsistent. Alt-tab might switch applications but then some lower programs use alt for a lot of things.

I'd love something configurable, like a dedicated WM key, a dedicated tmux key and a dedicated vim/app key.

I'm sure it's possible to setup manually, but it would take a lot of work.

</comment><comment><USER34> Another idea is a tiling terminal program. I just started using Tilix.

[https://github.com/gnunn1/tilix](https://github.com/gnunn1/tilix)

It has panes, sessions, windows. Customizing is a lot easier if you're not already familiar with tmux. The one thing you get with tmux that's killer is if your shell dies (remote disconnect, you have to logout, etc) the processes in tmux keep running.

<comment><USER40> looks very good, been looking for a terminal that supports tiling and it has nice color theme built-in, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I like using :r ! <command> for running terminal commands.

What I liked the most about your article is that 'further reading' section at the bottom!

</comment><comment><USER42> I use vim 7.4 and it segfaults atleast four-five times everyday. I suspect it's some plugin that is causing it to crash but I don't really know. Does it happen to anyone else too?

I have mapped Ctrl-C to ESC and I use it often. One specific instance I have seen vim crash is when the cursor is at np.inf and I press Ctrl-C.

<comment><USER43> Have you tried upgrading to a non-ancient vim?

<comment><USER44> Or, to neovim.

<comment><USER45> Actually, neovim is somewhat more prone to crashing than traditional vim, in my experience

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've shyed away from using tmux and Vim. For some reason, when I use tmux and Vim, if I 'copy' a snippet of text (using my mouse/cursor higlight -> right- click -> copy) it treats all of the empty space a actual "space" characters when I 'paste'. Why does it do this?

<comment><USER47> Expecting terminal programs to interact sanely with mouse gestures is somewhat futile. If I need to paste something from a vim buffer into a graphical application, I use :'<,'>!xsel -bi to copy the text. If I were doing it more often, I would probably add a keybinding to streamline the process, and solve minor annoyances like having to undo to get the copied lines back. Maybe there is a good plugin for clipboard integration?

<comment><USER48> You could use " _y (and /or "+y, depending on your X clipboard setup) to yank to your clipboard. Similarly, "_p paste from it.

<comment><USER49> I always forgot which of + and * works and end up having to try both. I think I looked up the difference once, but I didn't retain the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> i used to use tmux but when i migrated to neovim i started using its built in terminal for multiplexing instead.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, I suppose neovim much like emacs is turning more and more into an entire OS/environment for some users nowadays using it as a windowmanager like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Lots of good advice, Vimux was the killer for me I think. I have a common workflow of edit -> run -> edit and that will make that workflow seamless.

I also tried out vim-arpeggio but kept seeing "Arpeggio is not defined". Looks like the project hasn't been updated for a while.

</comment><comment><USER52> On my mac I used tmux and vim for years. However, only after building a little arch linux box did I realize I actually wanted a tiling window manager and an ide all along.

<comment><USER53> At one point I was using a tiling WM and tmux. But between the WM, tmux and vim windows.. well, I don't really need 3 layers of tiling, so I got rid of tmux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I'm sort of stuck in IDE Mode now. Been using IntelliJ for a few years with a vim emulator in it. It's alright but I miss this cool stuff too.

</comment><comment><USER55> I wish tmux could document their line protocol. Currently only iTerm is using that to integrate with tmux and no one else is doing it.

<comment><USER56> Terminator devs are working on the same kind of integration [1]. You can already attach to a running tmux session and Terminator will pick up the layout and create the splits and tabs accordingly. It has some rendering issues if you are using zsh and/ or fzf but otherwise great to see the progress.

[1]: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/1301605](https://bugs.launchpad.net/terminator/+bug/1301605)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Mouse integration has always been the blocker for me with tmux. Any good solutions out there yet?

<comment><USER30> Just set the following configs at your .tmux.conf

# Enable mouse set -g mouse on

# Sane scrolling set -g terminal-overrides 'xterm*:smcup@:rmcup@'

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I use tmux window instead of splits.

bind-key -n C-t new-window

bind-key -n C-w kill-window

bind-key -n C-n next-window

</comment><comment><USER59> Nice post, I want improve tmux layer in SpaceVim. I think it is best editor for developers.

[https://github.com/SpaceVim/SpaceVim](https://github.com/SpaceVim/SpaceVim)

<comment><USER60> You wouldn't happen to be an author, would you? Could that maybe be why you believe it is "the best editor for developers"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Good article. I like the colors you chose for tmux and vim

</comment><comment><USER62> Anyone know what shell colour scheme they are using?

<comment><USER63> I want to know it too

<comment><USER18> [https://github.com/gregsexton/Muon](https://github.com/gregsexton/Muon) :)

<comment><USER62> Awesome. Do you also know what they are using for the shell? Seems to be something a bit different from that theme.

<comment><USER18> It looks like Atom but Im not sure, you can see more of them here: [https://github.com/lysyi3m/osx-terminal- themes](https://github.com/lysyi3m/osx-terminal-themes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I think you have to be a fool to use anything short of a full IDE unless you have no choice.

</comment><comment><USER65> Disappointed in Bugsnag for covering such trodden trails for a HN front page grab. Content marketing should have something to do with your business. There are hundreds of blog posts describing this exact setup.

<comment><USER66> Not once does the article mention Bugsnag or try to market their product. Who is to stop an enthusiastic engineer from sharing a workflow they find useful. The article has great content and powerful visuals to help convey their point. I'm happy to see companies not try to influence authors to plug their product in their blog posts.

<comment><USER65> Then it goes on their personal blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Looks like what he really needs/wants is an IDE.

<comment><USER32> In fact, if you are not on Windows your OS already _IS_ an IDE. An OS is software, so it also needs to be developed. Therefore it was natural for OS developers to create their OS in a fashion that enables development. Apple and Microsoft are the only exceptions, and Apple somewhat backtracked on that path to enable developers as well.

Some easy things are usually much faster to learn in a traditional IDE, since it has GUI. But that often leaves people less able to continue development _OF_ their development environment. If you want the full power or understand how stuff works underneath you better use an OS that works as IDE, e.g. Linux.

<comment><USER68> >os is an ide

It went nice for me with mingw/msys and selected tools for few years, but modern windows (>=vista) ugliness and death of native windows gtk distribution completely dimmed it. Msys2 may be a solution, but what a mess it is for non- packaging people. Since yesterday night I'm more than happy with mint/xfce laptop again.

I really don't need anything windows-specific, except few time-stealing games.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Legionizer – a React app that lets you recreate the Legion TV credits - <AUTHOR> http://www.legionizer.com/ <comment><USER2> Never heard about Legion before this. The subtitle sequence reminds me about Webdriver Torso, an automated testing account/channel at Youtube:

\- channel: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsLiV4WJfkTEHH0b9PmRklw/](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsLiV4WJfkTEHH0b9PmRklw/)

\- wiki: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webdriver_Torso](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webdriver_Torso)

\- BBC coverage from 2014: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQm- LbSJarQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQm-LbSJarQ)

EDIT: Not just me, apparently – [https://twitter.com/tojiro/status/829959909479313408](https://twitter.com/tojiro/status/829959909479313408), [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEhgAO7UnQI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEhgAO7UnQI)

</comment><comment><USER3> Didn't work for me. No errors in console, no nothing.

<comment><USER4> Same.

<comment><USER5> Worked for me though, I entered some random input. Looked pretty fun ^^</comment></comment></comment>


Carrier IQ Drops Empty Legal Threat, Apologizes to Security Researcher  - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/carrier-iq-drops-empty-legal-threat-apologizes-security-researcher <comment><USER3> Are there any reasons why I should _not_ donate to EFF?

<comment><USER4> The only one I can think of is if you're not in the US. The UK (for example) has the more locally focused Open Rights Group ( <http://www.openrightsgroup.org/> ).

<comment><USER5> Problem is that these are often far less aggressive than the EFF. The EFF excels in the ability of spotting situations that are so obviously "wrong" that they make great stories.

Most European organizations unfortunately appear to me far less professional organized and more a bunch of activists who are lacking the firepower of EFFs legal and PR team.

<comment><USER6> "most" ? Like which ones? Bits of Freedom seems pretty professional and organized from what I've seen.

Also what do you mean with "bunch of activists", well I can guess what you mean, but technically the EFF are activists just as well.

<comment><USER5> I contacted the EFF a while ago about their European links and they suggested me to get in touch with <http://www.edri.org/>.

Now taking a look at their member associations: <http://www.edri.org/about/members> Europe has a super fractioned structure of EFF alike associations. Sure, one could argue some "regional networks", "local strength" and "European situation" and I am sure most member associations are doing good work.

But with lawmaking increasingly trickling from the central European Union Administration to the state levels it is hard to say if this lose structures are providing enough counter balance to professional lobbying efforts.

And the EFF seems to me playing on a level playing field with strong industry/lobby organization by combining a top notch legal and public relations team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm glad for him that they apologised and dropped the action before it got too onerous for him.

I'm a bit confused about the legality of this software in the EU - does any data get sent outside the EU? Is it compliant with various EU countries' data protection laws? UK privacy campaigners might be interested, and want to take it up (if appropriate) with the ICO.

<comment> Tuna-Fish I believe it's installed by the carriers, so it's probably not used in EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's too bad that this still won't help inform people about what an egregious invasion of privacy that this and other "metrics" of their usage of online services are.

By acquiescing Carrier iQ has made sure that the public will stop hearing about this, and the noise will die down until someone else discovers a further breach of trust and privacy.

</comment><comment><USER9> The value of attention to peoples actions is demonstrated once again

<comment><USER10> "The world is a dangerous place to live not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - <USER2> Einstein

<comment><USER11> " _All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing_ " -- Edmund Burke (probably[1][2])

[1] <http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html>

[2] <http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote2.html></comment></comment></comment>


Sony's attempt to trademark 'Let's Play' is refused by the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn86801899&docId=OOA20151229112407#docIndex=0&page=1 <comment><USER2> If I'm reading it correctly it got denied because it would be too similar to an already existing trademark: _LP LET'S PLAY_.

Yuck...</comment>


Interplanetary Transport Network - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network <comment><USER2> If you find this stuff as fascinating as I do, I know of no better way to geek out about orbital mechanics than to play Kerbal Space program. Ex-NASA people quip that they learn more playing that than actually working at NASA.

It doesn't have multibody physics needed for ITN, but you'll learn tons of crazy things about the technicalities of space travel without realizing you've learned them.

That includes the realization that there are indeed ways to cross the universe using zero fuel. Also, you can burn towards a body to delay your arrival there. It's crazy, but the math checks out.

<comment><USER3> it's all about your delta V. Delta V is basically the currency of space travel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked on this for my Masters thesis [1], studying the nature of low-energy transfers [2] to the Moon, using the Weak Stability Boundary (WSB) [3]. Turns out that the WSB and invariant manifolds described by Dynamical Systems Theory (DST) [4] in the N-Body problem [5] are intricately linked. There was a bit of a "war" going on when I was doing my thesis between the group at Caltech that pioneered the (DST) methods, including people like Wang-Sang Koon, Shane Ross, and Martin Lo, and Ed Belbruno, who formalized the concept of the WSB, because there was still an evolving view of chaos in the gravitational 3-body problem.

It's a fascinating area of research that has implications for planetary formation and has been exploited for space mission design. I'm currently finalizing a paper that draws attention to the fact that low-energy orbits are likely an important component of a peculiar ring system around Uranus: the mu- ring/Mab system. Mab [6] shows strange orbital behavior that's likely intimately tied to interactions with a belt of moonlets that display horseshoe-like motion.

There's been some interesting research using the concept of orbital cyclers and the coincidental proximity of Lagrange points in the Earth-Sun and Mars- Sun systems. The only issue is that these orbits are necessarily very slow, so they're not suitable for time-critical applications.

[1] [http://repository.tudelft.nl/view/ir/uuid%3Ae8c99c80-a25d-4c...](http://repository.tudelft.nl/view/ir/uuid%3Ae8c99c80-a25d-4c7b-b8c2-f0f27c69fc32)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low- energy_transfer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-energy_transfer)

[3] [https://video.ias.edu/gds/belbruno](https://video.ias.edu/gds/belbruno)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_systems_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_systems_theory)

[5] [http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~koon/book/KoLoMaRo_DMissionBk.pd...](http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~koon/book/KoLoMaRo_DMissionBk.pdf)

[6] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mab_(moon)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mab_\(moon\))

edit: just edited the links so they display on separate links.

<comment><USER5> This work occupies an odd niche that piques my curiosity. I knew Ed Belbruno slightly, and I'm cordial with Martin Lo. I'm trying to figure out how to say this neutrally: the people like the ones I mentioned do not seem to have much influence on the actual world of mission trajectory design. They're off on their own.

Yet when I read the summaries of their methods, they don't discuss any drawbacks besides the large transit times required. I'm left thinking that either there is something political/historical going on that I don't know about, or that the large times in fact totally kill the idea, rendering the theory moot. Come to think of it, another option is that reducing delta-v to zero is not worth going to so much trouble over (from a mission design viewpoint).

On the other hand, the scientific angle (that these trajectories can allow long-range mass circulation in the solar system) is very interesting and something I was not aware of. Thanks for your interesting reply.

<comment><USER4> It has occupied an odd niche in my curiosity ever since my first grad-level class in astrodynamics/celestial mechanics :) . It's a fascinating problem because it's inherently tied to many physical phenomena in our Solar System and in other planetary systems, yet the statement of the 3-body problem is pretty much as simple as it gets.

And you're right, they are kinda off on their own, but that's mostly because this niche is an interesting meeting of the minds for mathematicians, astrophysicists and engineers. That means you get some "interesting" discussions to say the least.

As for the "political/historical" aspects, have a chat with Ed sometime if you get the chance. He's got an interesting backstory that's catalogued in his books too. Basically, to some extent, there was a lot of resistance at JPL to his ideas, and so he had to bypass them, which is what brought about the Hiten mission.

As an objective researcher, I can say that low-energy transfers for mission design are interesting, but really for a specific subset of scenarios. Time- critical missions, e.g. manned spaceflight, falls outside the scope of low- energy transfers. Additionally, it turns out that the maths is a bit finicky and that low-energy transfers only lead to a significant Delta-V reduction if you launch in the right "geometry". In the case of Earth-Moon transfers for instance, it turns out that if you neglect the Sun, you can't actually reach the Moon "for free", as is advertised by WSB transfers, because of KAM tori around the Moon. The Sun is crucial, as it's perturbing effect ensures that phase-space opens up and you can actually reach the Moon. This comes with a BIG caveat though that the geometry of the Earth-Moon-Sun has to meet certain requirements. Hence, launch windows are limited.

As you point out, I do think the greater interest in studying low-energy orbits, WSB and invariant manifolds in high-order gravitational problems is in using the theory to explain natural processes. This fits within the larger context of dealing with resonances in the 3-body problem. Murray and Dermott have an excellent textbook on the fundamental theory behind all of this [1]. It's a must-buy if you're interested in delving into this further.

All of this has tremendous potential to elucidate exoplanet systems. There are plenty of systems discovered by Kepler, CoRoT etc. that require a deep, fundamental understanding of the processes that shape(d) them.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Solar-System-Dynamics-Carl- Murray/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Solar-System-Dynamics-Carl- Murray/dp/0521575974)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One great visualization of the principles here is this:[http://sajri.astronomy.cz/asteroidgroups/hildatroj.gif](http://sajri.astronomy.cz/asteroidgroups/hildatroj.gif)

The pink/purple ones bounce between the L3, L4 and L5 points. The green ones are in orbits of the L4 or L5 points and have an orbital period that should be the same as jupiter itself.

</comment><comment><USER7> The sci-fi technology that will truly enable mankind to efficiently explore space isn't fusion rockets, or space elevators, or any other grandiose machinery- its cryogenic sleep, or hibernation, or otherwise the ability to just conk out for long periods of time and wake up at your destination. Getting places in space is relatively easy, if you don't mind taking next-to- forever to get there. (In addition to the ITN, consider the bi-elliptic transfer: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi- elliptic_transfer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer) .)

<comment><USER8> "if you don't mind taking next-to-forever to get there."

If you want to be a (permanent-ish) space colonist that isn't wasted time.

As a counter example its continually proposed as a training / colonization system on short hops. If you want to test your 12-year rated life support system for a run to Jupiter, rather than sitting in low earth orbit the whole 12 years (boring!), why not try a leisurely ITN flight to the moon, in fact why not leave the ship/station in moon orbit when you're done, as a moon orbiting station?

If something goes horribly wrong, keep some large delta-v chemically fueled beast of a lifeboat around, worst case scenario on your "12 year mission to the moon" you'll never be more than many hours (well, OK, days worst case) from a splashdown on the earth via a very non-ITN path. Also your giant station/ship could be resupplied from the earth, at a considerably higher than ITN cost. Given your station/ship can move orbits very cheaply, your "lifeboat" could be extremely high performance.

The ITN would be a great way to help a manned (anywhere) expedition by slowly sending enormous quantities of cargo and base equipment long ahead of time.

A group that plans for the future would probably already be planning care packages and emergency packages to likely destinations. If it takes people 20 years to get to eventually really quickly fly to mars, then its no big deal if emergency O2 and first aid kits or whatever launched today take perhaps 15 years in transit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm still a fan of the Aldrin Cycler. Put an utterly massive, nearly self- sufficient space station into an orbit that touches both Mars and Earth (or presumably other pairs). Give it all the radiation shielding and spinning gravity you'd need to survive indefinitely in space. Now your per trip cost is just getting the astronauts to and from the surfaces of each planet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A complete article giving an exposition of the ideas and techniques submitted here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8579626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8579626)

</comment><comment><USER10> space travel is not worth dying for

<comment><USER11> The people who risk their lives for it clearly disagree. They can dedicate their lives to whatever cause they want.

ad astra per aspera</comment></comment>


MarioWay: a hands-free wheelchair to narrow the disability gap. Italian design - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/marioway-a-hands-free-wheelchair-to-narrow-the-disability-gap-italian-design

<comment><USER2> I don't get why it's being made out to be a luxury item instead of building something accessible to most people in wheel chairs that can't afford to pay a premium for design.

If you donate to the campaign, only some of the money is going towards solving the problem and the rest is going to craftsmanship.

I would rather see them many many rapid prototypes to work out the kinks than reach a local maxima with few superbly crafted designs that are unlikely to change much due to the cost of change in time, materials and manufacturing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a very interesting project.</comment>


Google Chromecast is down world-wide - <AUTHOR> https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/google-chromecast-is-down-world-wide/ <comment><USER2> I really wish Google was less opaque about problems like this, rare as they are. The only way to know this is happening right now is to get frustrated enough to search around reddit, the only official indication is through Twitter, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google home doesn't appear to be working right now.

slack is also down.</comment>


World War II carrier pigeon found with an uncracked secret message - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226203/Skeleton-hero-World-War-II-carrier-pigeon-chimney-secret-coded-message-attached-leg.html

<comment><USER2> _"Code-crackers are now frantically trying to decipher the message, which never reached its intended recipient"_

The picture of the message says "Copies Sent: 2" right there at the bottom. Wouldn't it make sense to send a second bird to increase the probability of delivery?

</comment><comment><USER3> 27 codes * 5 characters = 135 caracters. Is this the ancestor of Twitter!</comment>


EU has secret plan for police to 'remote stop' cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10605328/EU-has-secret-plan-for-police-to-remote-stop-cars.html <comment><USER2> In order for this to work, there must be some means of communicating with the car at distance. The nature of this (radio, etc) doesn't really matter. There will be a receiver on the car that can and will be identified and removed by criminals, rendering the stated purpose moot. Of course removing the receiver will be made illegal, as if this will accomplish anything.

That leaves two classes of people who will be affected by this. One is people who commit unplanned crimes (e.g. hit a pedestrian, panic and run). The technology will probably help here, but unplanned violent crimes committed in public places almost always end with the suspect in custody, so the marginal benefit is close to zero.

The second class is ordinary people who are not committing any crimes, but who the police may want to stop for other reasons. The police won't even need to be in the area, they can show up later (at their leisure) after your vehicle has been turned off. Ever parked illegally for a few minutes so you could run inside and deliver something? Your car might be off when you come back. Going a little faster than the speed limit? Enjoy your unplanned stop on the side of the road and wait for a policeman to show up with your ticket.

This is yet another reason ubiquitous cameras and universal location awareness on the part of law enforcement is dangerous. Even if you accept that nothing is wrong with the police watching you 24/7, the mere fact that they are enables virtually any abuse they would want to commit.

<comment><USER3> >The nature of this (radio, etc) doesn't really matter. There will be a receiver on the car that can and will be identified and removed by criminals, rendering the stated purpose moot. Of course removing the receiver will be made illegal, as if this will accomplish anything.

It has been effectively impossible to hotwire a new car for over a decade, because modern cars simply will not start without the say-so of the ECU, which is a highly secure black box. Stealing a modern car means stealing the keys, because highly sophisticated organised criminals have failed totally in developing practical attacks to circumvent immobilisers. Build the remote shutdown facility into the ECU and it will be essentially impossible to disable. Send the remote shutdown instruction over a suitably designed radio link and jamming becomes utterly impractical. I have very little doubt that the motor industry is capable of designing a very effective remote shutdown systems; Relatively crude aftermarket solutions are already being used very effectively by fleet operators.

There are perfectly legitimate civil liberties objections to such a scheme, but the usual hacker trope of "technologies that I don't like can always be circumvented" is just plain wrong. Crime can be prevented or substantially curtailed through the effective use of technology, as we have seen in Europe with IMEI-based blocking of stolen mobile phones. Cash-in-transit robberies are now quite rare, due to design improvements in CiT boxes. Security technology isn't perfect, but that doesn't make it useless.

<comment><USER4> > Send the remote shutdown instruction over a suitably designed radio link and > jamming becomes utterly impractical.

Unless the radio link must be always-on for the vehicle to move, I think you've underestimated what is required to construct an RF link that is impervious to interference.

We still have problems with shmucks using GPS jammers to prevent employers from tracking them halting traffic at major airports: [http://www.insidegnss.com/node/3676](http://www.insidegnss.com/node/3676)

"It took the FAA and FCC from March 2009 until April 2011 to locate a GPS jammer operated by another trucker on the New Jersey Turnpike, according to a presentation by John Merrill, Department of Homeland Security program manager for position, timing, and navigation, at the 2012 Telcordia-NIST-ATIS Workshop on Synchronization in Telecommunication Systems."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since cars get at least as often updated as routers, what could possibly go wrong? Seriously, with Android entertainment systems, GSM and Bluetooth for convenient wireless attacks and a government mandated connection between these and safety systems, like breaks, we just let fifteen year old script kiddies not only play with web servers but also with heavy, fast moving blocks of steel, that have people inside.

<comment><USER6> Yep.

> A disgruntled former employee of Texas Auto Center chose a creative way to > get back at the Austin-based dealership: He hacked into the company's > computers and remotely activated the vehicle-immobilization system, which > triggered the horn and disabled the ignition system in more than 100 of the > vehicles. The dealership had installed the system in its cars as a way to > deal with customers who fell behind on their payments.

I'm not going to get into the benefits of open source for consumer appliances, just that there is quite a bit of research into internal communication within the vehicle's operational systems and it's quite poor.

Giving all cars a 3G connection to the world and having shitty security means we're going to have a bad time. I had hopes with Google showing interest in getting Android into cars, but it's just for "infotainment" which in all likelihood means offloading the development of those shitty DVD players.

Updating the firmware of the various ECUs within your car involves bringing it to a dealership/repair shop, which probably means they're _never_ going to get updated. Let that sink in for a moment -- imagine a plethora of Windows XP boxes having 3G connections and rarely getting updated _even by the end-user_.

[1] [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_R...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_Remote_access_and_other_security_issues)

<comment><USER7> Windows XP isn't a realtime operating system. You're not going to find it anything motor control related, and the infotainment system and control stuff are usually on physically seperate buses.

Of course the old adage applies, if you have access to the hardware, all security bets are off.

<comment><USER8> He meant Windows XP as an analogy, because it's the most widely deployed vulnerable OS right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> UK tabloid? Check! Anti-EU sentiment? Check! Vague accusations? Check! UK conservative MEP's heroicly fighting wind mills? Check!

A conversation about the (vague) subject area might interesting. The article most certainly isn't...

<comment><USER10> The Telegraph is not a tabloid and this alleged leak from documents prepared by the European Network of Law Enforcement Technology Services (Enlets) has been very widely reported. The report was released by Statewatch - a non- profit organization founded in 1991 that monitors the state and civil liberties in the European Union.

Questioning the inclusion of this piece in HN is fair comment though do HN readers need your guidance as in your revealing "check!"s. Would pro-EU sentiment have been acceptable "a brilliant idea to stop criminals in their track"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a bad idea even if the technology could be implemented perfectly. The advantage of violence in the context of law enforcement is that it is _violent_ , and hence something which is (in a functioning state) used only as a last-resort measure. This is important since it helps maintain the balance of power.

Remote-shutdown is nonviolent and there is hence a very good opportunity for a slippery-slope situation where this power will be abused. Who would possibly believe that a capability like this will only be used in the situations where spikes would be used to stop a lethal car chase?

Implementing systems like this is yet another step on the road towards the capability to implement the most oppressive police state in world history. Not a good route to take.

<comment><USER12> >Remote-shutdown is nonviolent and there is hence a very good opportunity for a slippery-slope situation where this power will be abused.

The article mentioned the ability to shut a car down from a remote control room. If they have the ability to shut a specific vehicle down from a remote location then they categorically will have the ability to track the location of any car at any time so long as it contains this technology.

To me at least, that's terrifying.

<comment><USER13> GPS receivers will allow the same thing...

<comment><USER14> Receiving GPS is potentially entirely self-contained and requires no upstream interaction. Navigation systems with on-board databases need no external data for geocoding, maps, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "You have one point left on your license. Have a good day." [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Since anyone planning to use their car to get away from the police would disable this device/software, only honest folks would have it enabled. So the only sure way for law enforcement to use it would be to disable the cars of innocent people to act as roadblocks in front of the pursued. And, of course, there would be an incentive for the pursued to figure out how to disable cars behind them. Doesn't seem like a game we should play. I mean, at least in my dystopian imagination.

<comment><USER17> > Since anyone planning to use their car to get away from the police would > disable this device/software, only honest folks would have it enabled

Since anyone planning to use their car to get away from the police would install run-flat tyres, spike strips would only be used against the innocent.

Your logic doesn't seem to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is what you get with self-driving cars; someone else is doing the driving, and that means someone else gets to decide when you stop.

You may also get it with regular cars; but you definitely get it with self- driving cars. So all you self-driving advocates keep that in mind...

<comment><USER19> If it means I don't have to deal with accidents on the road or the subsequent rubber-necking assholes, I'm fine with that tradeoff.

<comment><USER20> ... and would you be fine if cops were unable to stop thief disabled car and decided to stop yours that was in front of his and therefore using it as a stopping wall "for greater good of pedestrians and drivers around you". Good luck then. Make sure you have a damn good chiropractor and well-written last will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> OnStar already does this, I believe. I recall seeing an article about disabling cars using microwaves, as well.

I'm not sure how much I care considering the cops already have the power to make me stop, with force if desired.

<comment><USER22>
      > I'm not sure how much I care considering the cops
      > already have the power to make me stop, with force
      > if desired.

You should probably care quite a bit. Sure, cops can already make you stop with force, but this requires effort and coordination on their part. A remote disabling system is virtually-effortless.

History has shown that these "conveniences" are abused. Wiretaps were originally pitched as "extreme cases" techniques. Stun guns were pitched as a _non_ err _less than_ lethal weapon for use in cases where deadly force would be required. Now stun guns are routinely used on non-violent people.

This _will be_ misused by law enforcement. This will not be solely used to catch criminals. It will be used against dissidents and activists. It's illogical to think any other way.

<comment><USER23> On the other hand, high speed chases are expensive, risky, and very dangerous to everyone (not just the suspect, and not just the cops).

<comment><USER22> That's why cops typically don't engage in high speed chases (at least in the US, unsure about the UK) and instead rely on aerial surveillance (eg. police helicopters) to track the criminal.

<comment><USER24> It's similar in the UK. Rules change from time to time and sometimes policies have varied between the different regional police forces, but the last time I talked to police friends it seemed like everything was going the same way: only specialist officers would be permitted to engage in high speed pursuit, and even then they would be subject to direction from a control room where someone not tied up in the situation around them could order everyone to abandon the pursuit on safety grounds. Basically, the risk of not bringing the vehicle being chased to a halt as fast as possible would have to outweigh the risk of the pursuit, which it almost never does once you get to crazy speeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tangentially: What's the least digital, most user-serviceable car on the market right now? As a non-driver, I haven't been able to make any headway into figuring this out.

<comment><USER26> New car? nothing. forget about it. they all have 12 tons of extra gizmos built in. Maybe your basic commercial panel van wouldn't have all that stuff built in. You could drive a white panel van. Start a catering business.

Go back about 12 years and prior and you still have an ECU, but it doesn't have a bunch of information logging stuff built in, yet you have the benefits of a modern computer controlled ECU to control fuel injection and ignition timing. It's going to control those things based on some pre-defined maps and the input of several sensors. One to sense airflow at the intake, a sensor for throttle position, a sensor for cam or crank position, and an O2 sensor in the exhaust to tell the computer how complete the combustion is, and to adjust the mix accordingly. Closed loop system. There is probably also a knock sensor in there. maybe a few other failsafes to turn on an idiot light on the dashboard. coolant temperature, oil pressure, fan control, Maybe also a basic anti-lock brake system.

Most basic cars don't have any fancy traction control stuff at that point. After that? They get more complex ever year. steering angle sensors, yaw sensors, traction control, selective braking drive-by-wire throttle instead of a cable connected between your foot and the throttle plate, electric power steering, sensors that apply the brakes so you don't rear-end the guy in front of you, backup cameras, parking assist systems, more stuff offloaded to more powerful car control systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> EU police is in some ways similar to American. They have no problem to stop the traffic and use civilians in their cars as a live shield.

I wonder how this is going to be implemented. I almost died on my honeymoon because engine, power steering and !breaks! suddenly died on my rented car. We were going downhill from mountains, 1000 foot drop on one side, stone wall on other side.

I would love to see some real statistics how many criminals this will help to catch. GSM jammer is trivial.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this really a problem so dire that it needs to be addressed in such a dramatic manner? How often do the authorities know for sure which car it is they need to stop in an emergency situation? And if it's not an emergency situation, this seems like an overkill solution. Also a dangerous one (how do you disable a car safely travelling in traffic?), open to abuse by authorities, not to mention a huge and juicy target for criminal hackers.

</comment><comment><USER29> It is not secret and it is not even a plan

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand the desire to wire core functionality to any network. As long as police stations are getting their hands on drones, just forget this. It's easier (and more secure) to just follow via drone. It's not like he's going to disappear. Kill switches are security risks.

<comment><USER17> It's more that fleeing suspects are often involved in crashes, those crashes are occasionally fatal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is already being worked on by car manufacturers, as part of the EU's eCall agenda, which will be a requirement for future vehicles. Remote control of vehicles is simply an extension of the telematics system used to introduce and implement this.

</comment><comment><USER32> Made me think pretty much every government on Earth has fucked up in some ways, maybe things will be better on Mars when we colonize it. Then I remembered Mars vehicles have this feature installed already as well ...

</comment><comment><USER33> Wait till someone hacked it.

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't get why it has to be a policeman, an automated system would be better.

Otherwise, bitcoin just found a great new application: sending bribes to policemen.

</comment><comment><USER35> So does this mean that the original version of The Italian Job is actually the future of getaway vehicles?

</comment><comment><USER36> Another nasty DRM in the works. What else do they want to remote stop? Surgical implants may be?</comment>