Wayland in Gnome: two progress reports - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/607091/ <comment><USER2> I'm typing this from a wayland session of the GNOME 3.14 beta (via Fedora 21 Branched). While there are still some serious bugs, I have to say I am very impressed. The synchronization problems and graphical glitches of X always made the Linux desktop feel second rate compared to Mac or Windows. With wayland, interactions with elements on the screen such as moving and resizing windows or dragging apps to the dash are perfectly in sync with the cursor. Not even Android has achieved this.

In addition, GNOME 3.14 is looking outstanding. With the latest design refinements, I find the interface significantly more attractive than OS X (before or after redesign). It's not quite there yet, but if the community can deliver a system with fully functional wayland, portable sandboxed app containers, and a stable development target, the Linux desktop truly will stand a chance against the proprietary competitors.

<comment><USER3> Each time I've attempted to use Linux as my main OS it's always X11 that scares me off. Booting into console to edit xorg.conf gets tiring after a while, spending hundreds of dollars for graphics card that has more stable drivers, the general ancient 90's feel. I've tried it multiple times, but gave up each time.

<comment><USER4> Per default, you don't have xorg.conf anymore on modern distros. I have been in the "edit xorg.conf" boat as well, but there have been tremendous improvements since the bad old days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There seems to be a lot of limitations here. It is odd, sandboxing just the graphics stack. It isn't true sandboxing so all the benefits of sandboxing are not gained, but a lot of the disadvantages still come with it.

It sounds like something as simple as a keyboard macro manager would not be doable, nor would the Windows utility AutoHotKey.

I'd also hate to try and write UI test automation for Wayland apps. It seems like they've pretty much ruled that out all together.

Heck what about services that do browser test renders? Would those be possible?

And not allowing plug ins is just foolish. "I'm sorry, we dictate that you must divide your application up _this_ way." Flash, for years, drove innovation on the web, billions of dollars of value were created by Flash, trying to say "That won't be allowed to happen again because I say so" is hubris of the worst sorts.

<comment><USER6> _It is odd, sandboxing just the graphics stack._

Since Wayland is a redesign of the graphics stack it looks like they decided to redesign it in a secure way rather than waiting for some system-wide security architecture to be designed. GNOME is working on full sandboxing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8219309](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8219309)

 _It sounds like something as simple as a keyboard macro manager would not be doable..._

That's doable in the compositor/window manager.

 _I 'd also hate to try and write UI test automation for Wayland apps._

That's possible either through accessibility interfaces ( [https://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel- guide/stable...](https://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel- guide/stable/gad-how-it-works.html.en) ) or the compositor/window manager. Note that many OS X "haxies" also use the accessibility API.

 _Heck what about services that do browser test renders?_

That should be no problem using either a modified browser or modified compositor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _There is also ongoing work to figure out how best to support taking screenshots of the whole desktop. Users expect the feature, but it has major security implications. If an application can take a screenshot unattended, it can also use that capability to record username /password combinations and other sensitive data. The straightforward solution is to force screenshot capture to require a user to verify the action; that would at least allow the user to detect if an unauthorized screenshot attempt is made._

I know how this will come across, but .. sounds like UAC?

<comment><USER8> There was never anything wrong with the idea of UAC; the problem was the implementation. When the feature was first introduced so many Windows programs did things that caused UAC pop-ups that it because nothing more than an annoying click-through that no one paid attention to. It became nothing more than a default "okay."

<comment><USER9> The problem wasn't the elevation request itself, it was the amount of requests for a single [user-perceived] action. My record was 5, but a friend managed to get 7 requests in early Win Vista... I wish I could remember what for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lack of global keybindings would keep me off wayland for a long time. At this point I am completely dependent on my keybinds in fluxbox for doing everything from resizing windows to opening programs. If I can't specify real defaults that stupid programs cannot interfere with it will be useless.

<comment><USER11> No, Wayland only makes it difficult for individual applications to define global keybindings - so, for example, a global Ctrl-Space to play/pause your music player would need some extra plumbing to be implemented. Your WM owns (well, is, in Wayland) the display server, so it can define whatever keybindings it wants.

<comment><USER12> The problem with putting _everything_ in the now-unified compositor- windowmanager-desktop thing is that it creates a huge barrier to implementing desktop customizations. Instead of being able to swap out just the window manager, or just the dock, or just the keybindings, you have to either fork the standard implementation (and be constrained by its architecture) or implement _all_ the interfaces expected of applications.

<comment><USER13> That's not accurate. A wayland compositor can implement plugin support and delegate stuff to external processes; this is how weston works. You can swap out one shell for another, and if you want you can implement a shell that itself delegates out the dock, window decoration, etc. each to different processes. But the defaults will and should be that arbitrary apps cannot in any way snoop on or interfere with the user's interaction with other apps, so obviously any app that wants to do so will have to get authorization and use some interfaces that aren't part of the normal protocol for presenting an app to the user. You're not "being constrained by [the] architecture" of the standard implementation in any way that's not completely justified.

<comment><USER12> You're suggesting that compositor- and shell-specific plugin interfaces can replace X11's desktop protocols? I understand that X11's security issues had to be fixed: I just wish that the new system had preserved some of X11's support for heterogeneous environments and not relied on the extensibility of specific compositor implementations.

<comment><USER13> Wayland tries to be a simpler and _smaller_ system than X11. For it to specify equivalents to ICCCM and EWMH would be _way_ beyond its scope. But there's nothing preventing such equivalents from being standardized; it just won't be part of Wayland, since Wayland also wants to target use cases where such things would be inapplicable. If there ends up being a proliferation of wayland implementations that support pluggable components, I think we'll definitely see some quick standardization of the necessary interfaces. But at the moment people are still working on successfully using one desktop environment at a time, so good support for the mashups will have to wait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://github.com/walac/blender-wayland](https://github.com/walac/blender- wayland)

<comment><USER15> So, this is a "Wayland back-end for Blender". Does that mean it renders real- time to a window in wayland? I'd think what most would want is a _front-end_ for Wayland? What am I missing?

<comment><USER16> It's a rendering backend for blender's frontend (The user interface is the same across Windows, Linux and OS X despite each of those using their own ways to draw things to the screen, after all).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Writers (including the author of Wayland's home page) get enthusiastic about Gnome and KDE ports to Wayland, but what Wayland really needs is a port of either Firefox or Chrome/Chromium, and I've seen very little progress on that score.

<comment><USER2> Really? Chromium already has a fairly functional Wayland port [0] and Firefox just needs to upgrade to GTK 3, which is (admittedly optimistically) targeted for 32 [1].

[0] [https://01.org/ozone- wayland/blogs/tiagovignatti/2013/chromi...](https://01.org/ozone- wayland/blogs/tiagovignatti/2013/chromium-browser-wayland-preview-release)

[1] [http://worldofgnome.org/optimistic-target-for-firefox- gtk3-i...](http://worldofgnome.org/optimistic-target-for-firefox-gtk3-is- firefox-32/)

EDIT: Now running the GTK 3 Firefox port in a GNOME Wayland session, and it's working great!

<comment><USER18> Firefox GTK3 builds are still pre-nightly. We won't uplift such major work, current nightly is 34 with the uplift to 35 on the day after labor day. I would say that 36 would be possible but obviously depends on the work load of Glandium and Emilio Pozuelo.

If you want to test the builds the are available at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/tinderbox-builds/elm-linux64/ however there is no updater, so you would need to manually do that.

<comment><USER2> I admit I let my new-desktop-linux* evangelism get the better of me there, since I definitely knew that target was outdated. I should really put my money where my mouth is and try and help with the port.

* There should really be a term for the new emerging desktop linux platform based around systemd and wayland.

<comment><USER17> >I should really put my money where my mouth is and try and help with the port.

It's more fun to work together than to work by yourself. Maybe you and I should meet up and spend a day working together on the port. (Contact info in my profile.)

<comment><USER2> Awesome! Just emailed you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As interested as I am for Wayland, Gnome 3 is still Gnome 3.

<comment><USER20> I have grown to really like Gnome 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can't wait to see it working in (or, under?) KDE...

</comment><comment><USER22> off-topic but genuine question:

Is it not a bit ironic that this source of information about display technologies (among other things) uses tables for page layout?

<comment><USER23> So does the site you're commenting about that from.</comment></comment>


Issue 3422 - android - Animated GIF not working in browser - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3422 <comment><USER2> Comment #42

      It's a shortcoming of the graphics engine, complicated by
      the relative lack of memory and the trickiness with
      managing what little it has. The implementation in WebKit
      for GIF support allocates a 32 bpp bitmap for each
      frame, which can chew through memory very quickly. The
      bitmap allocator is backed by ashmem, but when the
      kernel detects low memory, it tends to kill the process
      rather than giving it a chance to back off.

      If you have expertise in this area, we'd gladly accept
      your help in fixing this.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious how Apple managed to do it on devices that are substantially underpowered compared to many of the ones that make up the modern Android ecosystem.

<comment><USER4> Comment #45:

According to the Android developer in comment 42 the explanation is that Android has multitasking while the iPhone doesn't.

<comment><USER3> Not really understanding what short of a truly massive design flaw could cause these two things to be related. Surely if we're running low on memory the backgrounded processes should be the first ones to get killed. Or else how can you make an app that when active pushes the limits of the device? You'd always be worried about getting killed and not about doing what your app is there to do.

<comment><USER5> What if there's a bug in the foreground process that eats memory? In that case, you don't want to start killing off background processes at random, or you'll get a dead phone.

Seriously, google "OOM killer." This problem, and problems like it, are not new, nor are they simple to solve.

<comment><USER3> I'm aware of what an OOM killer is, but it strikes me that the rules are a little different on a device where the resource constraints and mode of operation will frequently demand all the resources for a single process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The amusing thing is I've been using Android phones for well over a year and never even noticed this problem...

</comment><comment><USER7> My initial response was that's a feature, not a bug. Then I realized that there are plenty of real uses for animated gifs.

<comment><USER8> E.g. loading graphics.

<comment><USER2> Problem is, they're also massively abused by people using them to show video. Playing an animated gif 'video' would consume a ton of ram.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just the other day I installed ADT and decided to give it another try (I had played with it back the whole thing was brand new).

The story for developers is quite poor. Emulation is very slow (you can't get close to real life snapdragon speed) and then you have Eclipse (which seems to be a hate it or love it).

I've done both iPhone and Compact Framework development, and despite objective-c, iphone development is far superior to the other two.

Anyways, these types of issues, the lack of core features like USB Host and [apparently] animated GIFs, keep making me think i should actually learn Silverlight for WM7.

<comment><USER10> Android development doesn't require Eclipse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Certainly an interesting issue.

For the record, I just tested animated GIFs with Opera Mobile 5 Beta on my G1 running CompleteEclair 2.0 and it doesn't do animations either.

</comment><comment><USER12> In the context of the sea of complaints about Apple's iP* not supporting Flash this looks… interesting.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, now that is very surprising and to see the ticket go on for nearly a year with google.

Especially since how comment #134 on there makes the fix look kinda simple to include as an option for higher memory devices.

</comment><comment><USER14> Animated PNG (APNG) not working either.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm GLAD of this, frankly. 99%+ of animated gifs are simply annoying and unnecessary

<comment><USER5> ...and as with all these things, the remaining 1% are absolutely vital and a deal-breaker for those who need them.

<comment><USER16> True, but to play devil's advocate, this road leads to Microsoft Word, where each user only needs 1% of the product's features but of course every user has their own unique 1%. The result is a massive product that is resource- insatiable.

Which... leads us back here. Viewed in isolation it is no big deal, much as each feature of Word is no big deal in isolation. But the Android team have to deal with the combination of features running on resource-constrained handsets.

:-)

<comment><USER3> > this road leads to Microsoft Word

I wouldn't mind walking down the road to one of the most successful and widely loved (not to mention profitable) pieces of software in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Android team: failure has never looked this easy.

It would take too long to numerate the demonstrations of incompetence in the Android ecosystem. I guess I'll just point out a couple:

* How about that Update All button on the market application? Oh wait, there isn't one.

* Nice next and previous conversation buttons in mail. What's that you say? Neither is available on the screen itself, and the two actions are in different parts of the menu?

* Truly impressed with that universal copy and paste. Um, about that.

Seriously folks. The phone should never have launched with these deficiencies and the many others that better people than I have noted. But to allow it to stagnate and still not address them for so long? That's flat out contempt for the user.

<comment><USER11> Those are all minor UI nitpicks. Android is open-source. If an "Update All" or better placement of Forward/Back buttons in Gmail app is so important to you, you should add it.

<comment><USER3> Enough minor UI nitpicks, and there are more than enough, begin to stack up. The "it's open source, fix it yourself" defense is tired, especially when given for a device I'd pay for (if I didn't have the good sense to own an iPhone -- or anything else -- instead).

Also, lack of copy and paste is not a "minor" nitpick. As I recall it's one of the things that iPhone haters would not stop harping about when Android first came out with the half-baked copy and paste it still has today. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofQqhJ_fa2M>) Even if that wasn't the case, it's a major, serious deficiency in the device whose absence I would miss on a fairly regular basis if I didn't have it with my iPhone.

<comment><USER17> I have to reluctantly agree. I love my Droid, and prefer it to iphone, but the Cut&Paste is a mess.

<comment><USER18> Wait, what problem are you seeing with copy&paste? I use it every day across multiple apps and I've never noticed a single problem.

<comment><USER3> Couple of things for you to try:

* Copy-paste anything from the browser to elsewhere. You see how you have to go two-deep into a menu? For iPhone users, they just tap the text they want to copy, the drag to put the bounds at the right place.

* Try copying anything out of a received gmail message and pasting it somewhere else.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The MySQL "swap insanity" problem and the effects of the NUMA architecture - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jcole.us/2010/09/28/mysql-swap-insanity-and-the-numa-architecture/ <comment> guard-of-terra One behavior I've noticed with linux that if you read files sequentially from disk (for example, doing scp), then linux would fill all the memory with those files' contents and then it would swap out everything but the (obviously useless) disk caches. So you'll have all the memory filled with data you would never need again and trying to do anything would cause a large and painful unswapping (had side effect of halting my qemu).

This is true insanity. Surely you can disable swap or tune swappiness, but what's the reason for crazy default behavior?

<comment><USER2> Use rsync. It now preserves the buffer cache status that files had before so it does not stomp on your allocations.

<http://insights.oetiker.ch/linux/fadvise/>

<comment><USER3> Also, consider using --bwlimit to throttle the copy speed, so the spindle can still respond to other IO requests. (25-50% of unthrottled speed seemed to be a reasonable tradeoff).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I still don't comprehend why one needs swap at all. All the explanations I have come across talk about not having enough memory. Given that one has at least 8 GB of memory, or maybe even >100GB, why on earth would you need swap? Sure some process might allocate even more than that, but maybe it's better to refuse such a request than to slow down the whole system due to thrashing.

I get the idea that the reason might be that a lot of programs allocate memory which they don't actually need regularly, which is then very convenient to swap out. Rather than enabling this bad habit using slow disk storage it would be much better to expect programs to be more frugal, or at least signify whether something should be kept in memory or not.

<comment><USER5> Because most data is critical and you can't afford to just drop it on the ground whenever you please. A better option would be to have the application/db to have its own swap routines optimized for its own purposes rather than letting the OS doing a catch-all swap method.

<comment><USER6> Even beyond that: it's desirable for a machine to be able to compute arbitrarily large data sets. If the data set can't efficiently fit in memory, the machine should still make progress, just more slowly, using disk.

It is not desirable for a machine to have a "wall" which, upon being hit, becomes a harsh restriction on its capabilities. This is because we often encounter the "wall" unexpectedly, at a time that might be critical.

<comment><USER7> But they still have a wall - it's just takes a bit more to hit it. In Linux systems swap is usually 2x memory. With swap set like that, all swap does is raise the wall to 3 times what it previously was.

But for a lot of systems your service will fail shortly after you start swapping anyway, because the performance cost of swapping is so high that it often starts a death spiral (can't handle enough requests, so they start piling up, eating even more memory, until your system dies or you hit connection limits etc.).

So "best case" in a typical configuration is that the wall is a bit higher. Worst case you gain nothing at all from the swap.

Personally I treat it as a failure if we ever hit swap - it means connection limits etc. has been set too high.

<comment><USER8> That's not why you need swap. Swap is because many applications will use memory when starting and then never touch it again.

You can therefor swap it out and use the extra memory for cache.

Most long term applications only need a small fraction of their startup memory.

<comment><USER2> Then surely they could free it?

<comment><USER8> If you allocate memory "after" that memory, it's not possible to return the earlier memory to the OS.

Also, suppose you need the memory only for startup and shutdown (things like logfiles, network connections, command line parsing, etc).

<comment><USER2> Yes it is. Memory allocators are heaps not queues.

Things like network connections, logfiles are used all the time, so they won't be swapped out (actually file handles are kernel side so never swapped anyway). You can free the command line parse after setting the options.

And clean shutdown is overrated: long running programs can just terminate fairly gracelessly if necessary, the OS cleans everything up.

<comment><USER8> Memory allocators might be heaps, but behind the scenes it's just an area of memory, and that area is contiguous.

If you increase the size of the memory available to you (sbrk) you can only decrease it if no memory is allocated between the new area and the end of it.

In practice the memory is never returned, and applications rely to swap to deal with that.

It's not the logfile (and network) handle that is swapped out - it's the code for deciding where it is, and opening it. Also initialization code.

Some programs can abort, but others will require a (slow) consistency check of their data if that happens to them.

And finally theory is all well and good, but in actual practice about 3/4 of the memory used by running programs can be swapped out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am very impressed with how well written this article is. A brief description of the problem, links to relevant discusions for less informed readers to come up to speed, and clear examples of how key pieces of information were gathered. I learned more from this article about the topic at hand than I have from a Blog post in recent memory.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! I am glad you learned something, and happy to get great feedback!

<comment><USER11> I'll second this.

The intro was so well written that by the time I got to the first numa_maps output ("2aaaaad3e000 default anon=13240527 dirty=13223315 swapcache=3440324 active=13202235 N0=7865429 N1=5375098") I immediately thought "well geez look at that N0/N1 imbalance, there's your problem right there".

Point being, I haven't dealt with low-level hardware details since college, and yet your article's delightfully clear intro got me sufficiently educated to feel like I was right there with you.

A question well phrased is half answered...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anther good article is [https://kevinclosson.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/you-buy- a-numa...](https://kevinclosson.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/you-buy-a-numa- system-oracle-says-disable-numa-what-gives-part-ii/)

On commodity servers, unless you have specific reasons to do otherwise just switch from NUMA to SUMA. There are two things yo should do

* Change a BIOS setting. The term for this will vary by manufacturer. For Dell, it means enabling node interleaving.

* Pass numa=off to the linux kernel (e.g. edit grub.cfg)

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes, NUMA effects will really kill you, though how much depends on the particular quad-proc topology. I have some measurments for the interested in a small workshop paper I put together (I gathered the numbers in the context of tuning our garbage collector anyway):

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1620890/website/writings/mspc12-stre...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1620890/website/writings/mspc12-stream.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> Will this optimization help on virtualized machines like Xen? Or does all memory appear to be the same?

On an EC2 m1.xlarge:

$ numactl --hardware available: 1 nodes (0) libnuma: Warning: /sys not mounted or invalid. Assuming one node: No such file or directory node 0 cpus: node 0 size: <not available> node 0 free: <not available> libnuma: Warning: Cannot parse distance information in sysfs: No such file or directory

</comment><comment><USER15> For those of us mere mortals, would it be safe to assume that adding the suggested line to mysql_safe would be ok to do?

cmd="/usr/bin/numactl --interleave all $cmd"

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting read. Does anyone know if things have improved/changed significantly since the article was posted (Sep 2010)?

<comment><USER10> They have not changed in any way, however there is a patchset proposed currently to change how NUMA works a bit. Unclear if it will change this situation.

<comment><USER16> Would that be a mysql or linux kernel patch (assume the latter)? Also want to echo xxjaba's comment further down - thanks for doing the work on that post, it was really enlightening!

<comment><USER10> Yes, a Linux kernel patch. I've got a lot of ideas on NUMA optimization for MySQL directly though, so keep an eye out for that, perhaps some time this year.

<comment><USER16> >I've got a lot of ideas on NUMA optimization for MySQL directly though, so keep an eye out for that

Thanks Jeremy, I will do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The title is inaccurate. It should say, "the linux swap insanity problem" because this is entirely related to the linux kernel. It just happens to affect MySQL and similar workloads, but it is not MySQL's fault. It doesn't behave that way on other platforms either.

<comment><USER10> Pretty hard to make you happy, eh?

I agree with you on a purely technical basis, however, this article was written for the MySQL community, was tested (only) on MySQL, and has primarily affected my only on MySQL systems, which I (and the others referenced in the article) primarily run on Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are the lessons here applicable to other commonly used databases (mongo, postgres, redis, etc)?

<comment><USER19> This applies to any case where you want a single process to use more than half the server's RAM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> tl;dr - If you're running a database, or generally memory intensive system, while also using multiple CPUs you should run this command: echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode

But the article is great. You should definitely read it.

<comment><USER11> Except that's not the TL;DR at all.

From the article:

"An aside on zone_reclaim_mode

The zone_reclaim_mode tunable in /proc/sys/vm can be used to fine-tune memory reclamation policies in a NUMA system. Subject to some clarifications from the linux-mm mailing list, it doesn't seem to help in this case."

The real TL;DR is "run your mysql command under the auspices of '/usr/bin/numactl --interleave all' so that your big pool allocation is split evenly across nodes"

And an even better solution would be if _only_ the big pool allocation use interleaved allocation, and all the rest used normal node-bound allocation. This would require some sort of change to the malloc calls though, yes? All of the solutions listed in the article operate at the granularity of a process (or higher), not down to the individual allocation.

<comment><USER20> My mistake, you are correct that I forgot the second command.

The new tldr is: numactl --interleave=all /path/to/daemon; echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode

This file helps explain the different ways one can tweak memory with Linux: <http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt></comment></comment></comment>


XOR patent ended CD32, and Commodore-Amiga  - <AUTHOR> http://xcssa.org/pipermail/xcssa/2005-February/002587.html <comment><USER2> Erm... I see XOR for blinking cursors is obvious and should never be patented, but to blame only that for Amiga's demise is... a bit of an exaggeration. Management deserves most - in fact, almost all - of the credit for driving Commodore into the ground.

It's such a shame. Commodore made great computers.

The Amiga had sort of an identity problem. It was born a videogame console and NTSC timing was pervasive throughout the system and that made the design more complex as the machines evolved. They should have gotten rid of that as soon as they launched their second-generation machines.

<comment><USER3> Technically the Amiga Platform has always been rather agnostic about it's timing & video output. It spits out PAL / NTSC / RGBS in various funky resolutions, all you have to do is ask or set a jumper depending on the model. Secondly if it wasn't for this spot on NTSC carrier frequency that the Amiga could output we would never have seen products such as the Video Toaster. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster>

Or this oddity, the A2024 with a 10hz-15hz refresh rate: <http://www.amiga- hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=863>

<comment><USER4> Vaguely related, is that I once hooked up a monochrome VGA monitor to my Amiga 1200 by soldering the monitor's cable to a suitable Amiga video connector, and setting it up to be 640x480 VGA in the OS settings.

Worked a treat!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the patent in question: <http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT4197590>

</comment><comment><USER6> It's easy for HN to see that the XOR patent is obvious, and not just in hindsight. Convincing a court is not so easy. The solution is not to get rid of quote-unquote bad software patents, but to adhere to the Supreme Court precedents that make software per se non-statutory. Any patent whose novelty and non-obviousness is claimed only in software should rightly be invalid.

<comment><USER7> > Supreme Court precedents that make software per se non-statutory

Got a citation for that? I didn't think so.

<comment><USER6> I agree with the citations from the 1970s here: <http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/history.html>

I disagree with their description of the 1981 Diehr opinion as saying "the only new feature of this invention was the timing process controlled by the computer". The dissent said this, not the majority. The dissent was based on the facts of the case, not law. Diehr was not a departure from earlier precedent.

EDIT: Not only did the Court majority not say what bitlaw says in the Diehr opnion, they contradict it: "According to the respondents, the continuous measuring of the temperature inside the mold cavity, the feeding of this information to a digital computer which constantly recalculates the cure time, and the signaling by the computer to open the press, are all new in the art."

<http://brlewis.com/y/2004/diehr.htm>

<comment><USER7> To the extent those old cases are in conflict with Bilski, they are not binding precedent.

<comment><USER6> What does Bilski say that conflicts with them?

<comment><USER7> I would argue that it doesn't say anything that conflicts with them. But you were citing old cases as authority for software being per se nonstatutory subject matter, and that's pretty clearly not true in the post-Bilski world.

<comment><USER6> Theoretically, if the only opinions that conflict with those old cases are from lower courts, then they're still valid precedent. However, you're quite right that in today's world you're unlikely to get a patent overturned because of Benson or Flook. This difference between theory and practice irks me.

<comment><USER7> I meant Supreme Court's Bilski, not Fed Circuit's Bilski.

<comment><USER6> Bitlaw opines that the Supreme Court's Bilski didn't clear things up. I'd be interested in seeing a concise analysis stating otherwise.

[http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/bilski-and-software- pa...](http://www.bitlaw.com/software-patent/bilski-and-software-patents.html)

<comment><USER7> Don't get me wrong, I don't think SCt Bilski does anything but muddy the water. But it's simply not the case that there is binding precedent that software is nonstatutory. That's all I was talking about.

<comment><USER6> From a practical standpoint, you're absolutely right, and I certainly hope nobody takes what I'm saying as legal advice.

From what's actually written in the Supreme Court opinions I've read, every software patent I've seen discussed on HN should be invalid. Benson and Flook were super clear. Diehr was long and hard to read, but when you boil it down, it didn't change anything; it merely clarified that software as part of an invention doesn't automatically make the whole invention nonstatutory. I haven't read Bilski, but it sounds like SCOTUS punted on clarifying things because they think it should be Congress's job.

Until Congress steps up and clarifies, I think the previous Supreme Court decisions should be law. But they aren't. I find that extremely annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion here (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1545178>)

</comment><comment><USER9> Somehow, when I was a kid, and I got my first computer, it was an Amiga 3000. The amiga was already dying, but as a kid I was not able to at first realize that.

What personally killed the Amiga for me, was the graphics power. The Amiga 3000 "enhanced chipset", best graphic mode was 320x200 with 64 colors (extra half brigth). Meanwhile, PC VGA displays 800x600 and 1024x768 256 colors were starting to become popular on the PC side. The Amiga was clearly behind.

The Amiga was also capable of 640x400, but only with 16 colors. And the "HAM" mode, 4096 simultaneos colors on low res 320x200, suffered from "color fringing" and was mostly unusable.

What would have made me happy back then, was a 736 x 482 overscan mode with 4096 real simultaneous colors.

I wish I could restore all the game demos that I made back then with Amos Basic. lots of simple games, a basic doom clone, musical apps, etc. I would love to give a look at that code again.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmm, I wonder about the accuracy of this, specifically about CD32s not being imported.

I worked, at that time, for the largest Amiga dealer in the US, and we built a couple hundred multimedia display kiosks using CD32s and Paravision SX-1s. We had no trouble getting them (well, other then the usual Commodore supply issues of the time).

Oh, wow, found an old email about this:

<http://www.howtomakeanimations.info/cd32sx1mm300-problems>

freaky.

<comment><USER11> I remember reading about it at the time. As I recall, some units had gotten in before the majority were seized. I have a CD32 ( complete with an SX-1 ) in my garage that likely was one of your display kiosks at one time.

I have never been quite as excited over a machine as when I got my Amiga 500. I had owned a Commodore Plus/4 and a 128 since middle school and high school, and bought the 500 to start college. It was quite an amazing little machine for it's day.

Then again, I haven't ever been 17 again either, so that might explain it.

<comment><USER12> I remember when I had a C64, and my friend wanted a computer for xmas, and we were pestering his had to get the 128, which was the best computer we knew of at the time. Then on xmas day, he got an Amiga 500! We didn't even know about those. He was pretty happy. I was pretty bummed I only had a C64.

<comment><USER13> I first had a C64 and then an Amiga 500 ... those were some of my best memories as a child/teenager. My experiences with these machines undoubtedly led me to being a Computer Scientist as an adult. There will always be a place in my heart for Commodore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although I used to be a huge Amiga fan, I think that Amigas of the time lagged behind other systems for gaming. PC's having chunky display formats (as opposed to plainer (planer?) on the Amiga) meant that PC's could do far more 3D graphics than a equivalently powered Amiga, and Amigas were often underpowered anyway. The Amiga kicked ass at 2D games, but could not hack it in 3D.

At the end of the day, had the Amiga been a viable business, $10M in patent fines would not have killed them off.

<comment><USER15> The planar mode graphics had been a benefit in the more memory restricted days before; it was starting to become a problem but still, at that point Amigas tended to play the games of the day better than PCs costing 3x as much until Doom pushed 3D to the forefront. There were enough 3D games on Amigas, but Doom was a level beyond them for a while. Still, I did enjoy Acid Software's Gloom which wasn't that far behind.

As a hardware platform, it was more closely tied to the individual chips but that was rapidly fading, with OS abstraction APIs for sound and graphics coming in around then.

As a software platform, while it lacked MMU-dependent features, in other ways it had major benefits. Small, fast, pretty tidy, modular, customisable. Quite frankly I'd still like something to replace the Amiga's Datatypes concept, 20 years later.

A sad loss to computing. To this day I'm baffled how Commodore managed to lose the not-PC slot to Apple in spite of having cheaper harder with more features and a vastly more capable operating system. I've said before here; if Commodore had done their job properly, we'd be saying Steve Who?

<comment><USER16> I don't know much about the Amiga, but it sounds to me like the way in which it was a "nice computer" was that it was pushing a quirky design well past where it should actually have been, and that it was rapidly hitting the end of the road technically regardless of what the management was doing. That is to say, listening to descriptions of the Amiga reminds of listening to OS 9; yes, it's full of nice things and there's all sorts of ways to argue about how it's "better than PCs" but in the end you can't handwave around the fact that the foundation is at or beyond its capacity and there's no way to incrementally advance.

Apple managed to make the leap to OS X, as Microsoft managed to move to the NT base before it. I don't see how Commodore was going to do it without being something fundamentally different. Their machines were nice but it seems to me they were always building machines for today, never thinking much about tomorrow. But tomorrow comes... it always does.

I'm posting this because I'm curious about reactions; if this is flamingly wrong I'd love to hear. I don't have direct experience, except with the Commodore 64, which looking back was already experiencing the "make a computer for today" problem in many ways.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that the management of the Amiga did little to evolve it. It didn't need a revolution, ala OS X. It just needed refinement over time, of which there was none. The Amiga that Commodore purchased was the Amiga that died.

The Amiga had preemptive multitasking in 1984. Had VideoScape 3D in 1987.

It's hard to say that they were building computers for today, when they're machines were doing things the mainstream OSes (Mac and Windows) wouldn't do for a decade.

It would be like introducing the iPhone in 2000. And then doing nothing for 10 years.

I honestly can't think of another piece of computing technology that was so far ahead of the field when released. And yet virtually all of it squandered.

<comment><USER18> > I honestly can't think of another piece of computing technology that was so > far ahead of the field when released.

Maybe the PDP-1? Or the Tera MTA? Or the Transputer? Or the CDC 6600? Or VisiCalc? Or the 6502? Or Intel's first X25-M SSD? Or Gmail?

Preemptive multitasking by itself isn't very interesting. It's useful if you're running a real-time control task (in which case, on MS-DOS, you would hook an interrupt, and fuck the lack of OS) or if you have memory protection, which the Amiga didn't. That's why the mainstream OSes didn't have it for another decade: because it didn't matter. (And concurrency control is _much_ simpler without it.)

The Amiga had lots of other awesome stuff in the late 1980s, stuff that (as others pointed out) still isn't mainstream. But preemptive multitasking without an MMU is mostly a waste of time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Fountain That Earns over 28 Times the US Minimum Wage - <AUTHOR> https://www.travelstatsman.com/01072019/the-fountain-that-earns-over-28-times-the-us-minimum-wage/ <comment><USER2> the hourly rate is miscalculated I think. it is about 1/50 of the daily rate</comment>


Finally a way to get your script read and get your movie made - <AUTHOR> http://www.scriptlens.com <comment><USER2> Hey, thanks for sharing! As one of the founders, happy to answer any questions.

How'd you find this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I heard about it at Fantasia Film Festival. I am hoping to see some feedback on it. I think it sounds very interesting but kind of sounds too good to be true ...

<comment><USER2> Ha! Such a great festival. Did you see "She's Allergic To Cats?" It was so good.

What sounds too good to be true? Love to get your feedback.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the internal repercussions of vast $$$ fines to big corps? - <AUTHOR> When Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm gets these million/billion dollar fees, what are the internal repercussions?
Do they fire some executives in relevant area? Shut down whole departments, revamp completely, reorg?
How is the psychological atmosphere?
Have you been involved in such an experience? How was it? <comment><USER2> Fines like these don't tend to cause immediate personnel nor budgetary repercussions for the business unit in question, for the same reason BUs aren't punished if they miss sales targets for a quarter. Every BU's strategy is reviewed and signed off on by that BU's legal team before anything comes close to being shipped. A negative judgement isn't indicative of a mistake, it's suffering the loss of a calculated risk. If you do some VW level shenanigans you may get fed to the wolves, but most of us are smatter than that.

Ultimately the effect on the organization/employees is the same as any other financial loss. If it's too big or comes too soon in sequence with other losses, there will be strategic realignment (tm). Otherwise it's baked into the operating budget.

Source: Better part of a decade with Qualcomm</comment>


The Meaning of Desolate, Amazing Photos of Abandoned Soviet Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/g2710/amazing-photos-of-abandoned-soviet-infrastructure/ <comment><USER2> A science-fiction writing competition could be built around these images. Pick a picture, spin a story</comment>


A New Billionaire's 10 Rules for Success - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/06/24/a-new-billionaires-10-rules-for-success

<comment><USER2> Just a quick comment on the people who're hating on the Rules of Success Bob Parsons has put up and on GoDaddy

* If one of the things he recommends turns out be of great value to you.

Then does it really matter whether or not he objectifies women or does a hard sell?

 __ __ __ __*

It seems that we as geeks tend to love people who pretend to be all goody- goody like Google and open source people but if someone has the balls to be politically incorrect then it automatically means that the strategy they are using must be bullshit.

He shot an elephant != His advice is not good.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Here's a little story about 'When you're ready to quit you're closer than you think.

One of my sites got closed down by a hosting company. Some stupid reason. I was thinking about closing down the other site hosted by that hosting company too - Didn't, Stuck with it and that site has ended up making me $440K over the last two years.

At the moment when it seemed most hopeless i.e. the bigger site is just nuked and what's the point in sticking with the fledgling site -> sticking with it ended up being a great decision.

That's just one example.

Perhaps rather than applying your ethics and morals filter it might help to consider his advice on its own (i.e. separate from the person). Does it stand up - are there examples in your own life that prove that?

 __ __ __ __*

A Colombian Cocaine Warlord might figure out the same strategic magic that Jack Welch does (perhaps something like - If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete).

It's still great strategy.

<comment><USER3> I tend to ignore advice from people who I consider unethical because I generally find that their advice runs counter to my personal goals, my approach to work, and (obviously) my ethics.

Take your advice, for example:

 _One of my sites got closed down by a hosting company. Some stupid reason. I was thinking about closing down the other site hosted by that hosting company too - Didn't, Stuck with it and that site has ended up making me $440K over the last two years._

I've never had a site closed down by a hosting company. I don't even know why I _would_ have a site closed down by a hosting company. I also don't know why I'd walk away from a product I'd developed if it _was_ shut down by a hosting company.

To me, it appears that you (and Bob Parsons) have _VERY_ different ideas about personal fulfillment, and as such, your advice (and his) don't really seem to apply to me, outside of the fortune cookies style generalisms ("don't quit", "push yourself").

<comment><USER2> It was shut down by the hosting company for nothing illegal. It was just one of those - we had something very specific in our terms which you didn't read - type of things.

Nothing like gambling or illegal or porn or anything. Just a minor technicality.

I find it interesting that you would attack me or to be precise assume that I'm supporting Bob Parsons' ethical or moral fiber.

All I'm saying is -> Good strategy is good strategy.

It seems to you like a platitude. It seems to this billionaire like reality.

Perhaps you should try it before you write it off.

Besides, the stuff he writes aren't fortune cooke type generalisms. When you most want to quit is usually when you are closest to success - that's a remarkably accurate statement.

Look back at your own life and if you've mastered any skills you'll see the truth in it.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Seriously, try to imagine what you would think of the points if they were written by someone who fell into your 'good person' bucket and think about whether they hold true or not.

<comment><USER4> >When you most want to quit is usually when you are closest to success - that's a remarkably accurate statement.

Accurate in the sense that a broken clock is right twice a day. As you accumulate failures, your motivation flags and your desire to quit increases. Now, this might meant that you're about to make a breakthrough that will turn your business into the next Google. It also might mean that you're bashing your head into a brick wall and you need to pivot in order to become successful. Your desire to quit gives you no information as to what your strategy should be, and, therefore, is totally useless as a decision-making strategy.

tl;dr; Your desire to quit is also greatest right before you go totally bankrupt and wreck your life.

<comment><USER2> quanticle, This is the thing that I think people don't realize. Even the most successful people failed a ton before they got big success.

Big Failures = some people who let failure become bigger than them and destroy them + some people who learn from it and succeed big down the line.

When you write:

 __tl;dr; Your desire to quit is also greatest right before you go totally bankrupt and wreck your life.

 __ __ __ __*

You're exaggerating the consequences.

There's the type of failure where you take on bank loans and have to go bankrupt and there's the type of failure where you run out of your own money and have to start from scratch - perhaps with a new venture, or perhaps take up a job and then come back to entrepreneurship after a while.

The former is what you're assuming. The latter is reality - provided you don't go overboard in where you get money.

Just out of curisoity - what would the Color guys qualify as. It looks like they might fail. Would that be 'wrecking their lives'?

 __ __ __ __ __ __

Here's the interesting part:

1) If you always give up right when you feel things are bleakest -> You'll never _go bankrupt_ or to be more precise _never experience total failure_.

2) At the same time - you'll never experience the best possible success you could have. Because if everything is easy and guaranteed that probably means you never did the maximum you could and never pushed yourself.

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

Again, the first point he says - Stay outside of your comfort zone.

Is it a bit of a cliche? Yes.

However, lots of people who you would probably quantify as 'not evil like Bob Parsons' succeeded precisely for this reason. They pushed out of their comfort zone.

I think entreprenuership pretty much means getting out of your comfort zone, getting other people out of their comfort zone and changing things - for the better, or, if you are not inclined that way, for money.

<comment><USER4> >Even the most successful people failed a ton before they got big success.

That's just survivorship bias[1]. Yes, the big successes failed a lot. But so did the big failures. When all you see are Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., its easy to ignore all the little companies that failed and bankrupted all who were involved. For an example of the downside, see this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOw2yWMSfk>. Can you really, honestly say that Mark Griffin hasn't ruined his life?

You ask about the founders of Color. The cannot be failures. Why not? They've already succeeded at least once. The entire reason Color is as hyped as it is right now is because of its "supergroup" status. The only thing distinguishing it is the fact that it was designed and built by programmers and designers that were extremely successfull at other companies. Without that cachet, its simply just another photo-sharing app.

>If you always give up right when you feel things are bleakest -> You'll never go bankrupt or to be more precise never experience total failure.

>At the same time - you'll never experience the best possible success you could have. Because if everything is easy and guaranteed that probably means you never did the maximum you could and never pushed yourself.

That's true. But, before you go all-in, you should ask yourself, "Can I afford this?" Yes, its easy to say yes if you're a 25 year-old with no family, no mortgage, and no debt. But, if you're a 40 year-old with obligations? Do you really want to put your dependents through the stress and hardship of a default? Before you attempt to beat the odds, make sure you can survive the odds beating you [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>

[2] <http://www.despair.com/overconfidence.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Summary of Godaddy founder Bob Parsons' 10 Rules for Success:

1\. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.

2\. Never give up.

3\. When you're ready to quit, you're closer than you think.

4\. Always be moving forward.

5\. Be quick to decide.

6\. Measure everything of significance.

7\. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate.

8\. Never expect life to be fair.

9\. Don't take yourself too seriously.

10\. There's always a reason to smile.

<comment><USER6> 1-4 are essentially the same piece of advice: Never quit moving forward outside your comfort zone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> He forgot to mention the whole part about objectifying women, bad product, and constantly pestering customers to buy stuff they don't want.

<comment><USER8> Curious... I knew you were talking about Godaddy just by reading your description. Now... that's branding!

<comment><USER9> ha! That cracked me up as I had the same reaction. I'll add that, while I agree with the gist of athst's comment, the advice was much better than the average for this kind of article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree, this list doesn't sound all that insightful. But it did make me want to look him up on Wikipedia, and I found his history to be interesting: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Parsons>

He started out as a self-taught programmer in his late-20s and he founded his first business when he was 37. Also find it interesting that he came from a really humble background, along with a strong military background too. Reminds me of "the anatomy of determination".

</comment><comment><USER11> This is the sort of Top10ListWisdom rubbish that's almost tautological in nature and worthless when it actually comes to running a business.

<comment><USER12> I suppose everyone has to learn for themselves (it doesn't internalize from a list), but there is value in the lessons. It would probably stick better in story form.

For instance, I cannot tell you how many times success came after getting very close to giving up. I left college after one semester to find work, and taught myself basic SEO. After ranking my local pizza shop to number one to prove I could do it, I started cold calling the big businesses in my neighborhood to do work for them. My awkward self called thirty-ish businesses, on a list of thirty five, then gave up. My girlfriend encouraged me to try one more, and sure enough they bit. Without this experience my life track would have been substantially different.

<comment><USER13> This is advice that seem vapid until you end up learning them yourself. It's hard to extract the real-life story and experience from just the list.

This sort of thing only reaffirms those that have already learned the lessons, and brushed off as vapid from those that haven't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am with you all about all the negative reasons why not to like GoDaddy and Bob Parsons. Just looking at the guy and his macho-posters I really do not feel like I would even want to hold a 5-minute conversation with him. It reeks of BS. That said, I do have (or force myself to have) a lot of respect for the guy. Earning money is not easy. Building and maintaining your company is not easy. Establishing a brand is not easy. Being a billionaire is... whoa. I do think we have a lot to learn from him, despite the fact that we may not like him.

</comment><comment><USER15> Even if it is the Wallstreet Journal, you better directly visit the source: <http://www.bobparsons.me/bp_16_rules.php?ci=21428>

WSJ picked 10 of those 16 rules to make a fancy "top 10 list". Bah!

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised. A lot of this is good advice.

Always stay out of your comfort zone. Never give up. Never stop improving. Measure everything of significance.

It's not a quick fix or a cure all, but I think it's helpful to internalize whichever of these points resonates with you and actively apply it in your life. You have to execute and that's the hard part.

<comment><USER17> I would say it is even more important to try to apply those points that _don't_ "resonate" with you. Those are the things that are more likely to help, since you probably already apply those you agree with, at least partially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is actually a really good list of rules. Despite what you may or may not think about Bob, this truly is a solid set of ways to structure success.

</comment><comment><USER19> _sigh_

I miss the InterNIC.

</comment><comment><USER20> It is actually depressing to think that you can encapsulate success on ten easy steps/rules. Advise like this makes it seem like I'm being sold snake oil.

<comment><USER21> Getting out of your comfort zone is the #1 recipe for success.

Do it, all the time.

<comment><USER20> The thing is that everybody says it. There are no real secrets to becoming successful.

<comment><USER22> If everyone says it and the group is quite skeptical, and you know it has basis, then it seems the steps to becoming successful are actually useful. I'll call that common knowledge for lack of a better word.

Why would common knowledge be depressing?

<comment><USER20> Making it seem as if he is the first one to discover it? It is common knowledge.

<comment><USER21> Few people translate to action anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Remarkable, someone still pay money for copy-pasting from "Think And Grow Rich" and "How To Win Friends..". ^_^

</comment><comment><USER24> Formatting bullet points doesn't seem to be a rule. Must fall under violently executing his plan today instead of perfecting typography tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER25> What bothers me — far more than the banality of Bob's rules for success — is the WSJ's use of two spaces after a full stop. Do these guys think they're publishing with a typewriter?</comment>


Ask HN: Good resources for learning business concepts? - <AUTHOR> hi all
i recently realized that I have a huge desire to go to school and start pursuing an MBA soon when I can get financial aid and such worked out, but in the meantime, I was wondering if anyone had any good resources for videos to watch or blogs to read, etc, for me to get familiar with concepts and ideas within that sphere. I'm currently watching an MIT OCW playlist on writing business plans and such but I would also be quite interested in more just general business administration content, entrepreneurship, etc. basically anything you can think of that might be relevant to business, and that you think might benefit me, I would highly appreciate you sharing :)
thanks in advance <3 <comment><USER2> "business" is a pretty broad topic, but offhand I'd say start buy finding a cheap used copy of $whatever edition of a standard college "Intro to Business" text book and read through that. Since you aren't looking to use it for a for- credit class, you don't have to worry about getting the latest edition, so you should be able to find something cheap, on the order of $10.00 or less. Something like this (or equivalent)

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/0763836206/ref=sr_1_...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer- listing/0763836206/ref=sr_1_3_olp?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527823777&sr=1-3&keywords=introduction+to+business)

Do the same thing for a basic "intro to business law" book, an "intro to marketing" book, and a "strategic management" book.

Read _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ by Steve Blank.

Do that, and pick up a bit of accounting knowledge somewhere and you'll have a pretty good foundation.</comment>


Show HN: Inspiration for startups that don't exist yet  - <AUTHOR> https://reloadsurprise.appspot.com

<comment><USER2> [Off topic:

Hi! I read the pervious submissions of your site: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9208471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9208471) (17 points, 7 days ago, 16 comments)

Here it's not usual that the submitter adds 5 top level comments. One comment is fine if that add something interesting for the discussion. Two is strange, but in same cases it's justified. Five is almost always too much.

Also, try to avoid onliners. It's very difficult to write good onliners and they usually get downvoted. Try to express the same idea with more details and with some support information.

]

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

What can I say I guess I'm just strange and not usual.</comment></comment>


Show HN: brainturk.com - variants of cognitive tests - <AUTHOR>

I have been working on a pet project of mine http://brainturk.com , These games are mostly taken from various research papers and I have implemented them in HTML5 .
What do you think we should focus on next , working on existing games to add features , better graphics or add more games or work on the progress section ?.
I have been thinking of adding a section for kids (under 15) where some of the  games can be linked and maybe change some graphics and make the levels easier to start with
Please let me know if you think of any suggestions on how to improve the product and also any ideas are appreciated <comment><USER2> I get the need for registering so that a person can keep track of scores. However, there should be a way for me to play the game without registering. I am not about to give my email address to a website without even knowing beforehand if that is a useful thing for me to do.

<comment><USER3> Same here: I have some interest in what you have built, but not enough interest to go through a registration ritual. (I personally do not have any problem giving my email address; it is the hoop jumping.)

Most web apps and most web sites suck. You have to provide some evidence that yours does not suck (e.g. let me try one game for 10 minutes) before I am going to jump through hoops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a great idea--I hope you go far with it.

One thing that might encourage people to use it is to create some activity that measures fitness/capacity, then let them track it over time so they can see improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've added it to my TODO list

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this the same as lumosity.com ?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes it is similar to that

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable link <http://brainturk.com></comment>


Chinese lab studying world's most dangerous pathogens located in Wuhan - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to-study-world-s-most-dangerous-pathogens-1.21487 <comment><USER2> From what I can see this is the single highest grade viral research facility in the whole of china. There isn't another with the same status.

</comment><comment><USER3> Surprised this didn't get more upvotes! This is a crazy coincidence.

</comment><comment><USER4> So the bizarre animal market may just be a fall guy and a deadly pathogen escaped containment?

</comment><comment><USER5> The article is updated now:

> Editors' note, January 2020: Many stories have promoted an unverified theory > that the Wuhan lab discussed in this article played a role in the > coronavirus outbreak that began in December 2019. Nature knows of no > evidence that this is true; scientists believe the most likely source of the > coronavirus to be an animal market.

</comment><comment><USER6> 2017

<comment><USER7> Its being shared to imply a link between the facility and the outbreak.

<comment><USER8> Relevant quotes: "Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping,..." and "Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS..."</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Free Android Library: Unified API for Dropbox, Google, OneDrive and Box - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CloudRail/cloudrail-si-android-sdk <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, we've realeased this Android library which provides you with an unified API to integrate Dropbox, Google Drive, MS OneDrive and Box in your app. We'd love to get your thougts on it.</comment>