Show HN: Tubemaps – Tube routes from terminal and Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nicola/tubemaps

<comment><USER2> It looks like a fun project.

I did notice something odd in the example on your github page:

      $ tubemaps path  --from "Euston" --to "Hammersmith"
      # Piccadilly Line: Hammersmith to Barons Court
      # Piccadilly Line: Barons Court to Earl's Court
      # Piccadilly Line: Earl's Court to Gloucester Road
      # Piccadilly Line: Gloucester Road to South Kensington
      # Piccadilly Line: South Kensington to Knightsbridge
      # Piccadilly Line: Knightsbridge to Hyde Park Corner
      # Piccadilly Line: Hyde Park Corner to Green Park
      # Victoria Line: Green Park to Oxford Circus
      # Victoria Line: Oxford Circus to Warren Street
      # Victoria Line: Warren Street to Euston

It may just be me, but it seems you have "from" and "to" reversed?

(NOTE: Trusting my judgement on such directional things tends to be a bad bet since I'm ambidextrous and dyslectic --I don't know left from right, and for me, it often doesn't matter. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> You just spot a nice bug! I posted as soon as I completed 1.0.0. I will absolutely update this no!

Update: solved in 1.0.2 :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We're doing something similar in JS/Raphael. Currently working on many more cities around the world. [http://www.findproperly.co.uk/tube- map.php](http://www.findproperly.co.uk/tube-map.php)

In fact the station data looks to be from the same source but we added more stations if you're interested.

This older project is also similar [https://github.com/benbarnett/SVG-Tube- Map](https://github.com/benbarnett/SVG-Tube-Map)

</comment><comment><USER4> What's the time column mean in this dataset (I'm guessing these connections only happen during a certain time range indicated by the ID)?

[https://github.com/nicola/tubemaps/blob/master/datasets/lond...](https://github.com/nicola/tubemaps/blob/master/datasets/london.connections.csv)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the time it takes from one station to another. This is not my dataset, but I have been told this when I was give, I will let you know very soon!

<comment><USER4> Ah cool. That makes sense.</comment></comment></comment>


How to burn $20 on Twitter with $10 real CPC - <AUTHOR> I heard twitter advertising was pretty good, so I decided to give it a shot.
Why I try new advertising channels, I typically spend $20 to be fair.
I also run a personal link shorten-er, and decided to use that to track my CTR.
In about 30 minutes 20$ bought me 31 engagements (all clicks in this case) on a promoted tweet.
At ~$0.65 ecpe, this sounds like an awesome deal. Obviously the quality of the traffic won't be as good as search traffic.
However, I made sure my ad was at least geographically targeted.
Reality:
Of the 31 reported engagements, my link shorten-er showed 10 clicks.
2 were from self proclaimed bots (Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; TweetmemeBot/3.0; +http://tweetmeme.com/))
6 others were also from bots, they had these user agents:
Ruby
Kimengi/nineconnections.com
MetaURI API/2.0 +metauri.com
JS-Kit URL Resolver, http://js-kit.com/
(twice) UnwindFetchor/1.0 (+http://www.gnip.com/)
At the end of the day, only two other clicks came from realistic useragent/ips that could be construed as a real person.
Real Cost:
$10 CPC
conclusion:
Totally not worth it. Twitter needs to get their shit straight and resolve their blatant click fraud OR provide the real data behind those engagements (useragents, precise IP based geolocation, referrers.) <comment><USER3> if you want you can paypal me 50 cents and I will check out literally any link for you. cut out the middle man, keep disrupting and stuff.

<comment><USER4> I'll do it for 25 cents.

<comment><USER5> I'll do it for free. In fact, I will pay YOU for the privilege of helping you out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twitter and downstream services at times both add and strip URL redirects. (That's probably what the 'unwind' gnip process is doing: following redirects to find the real destination.)

Are you sure all clicks from all clients would have visited your shortener, as opposed to skipping it using metadata about its final destination?

(It might be worth testing with a unique, 200-returning terminal URL.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You have a good point. Let me check the actual server logs.

Shoot; the destination is a static site served with a rack app and Google Analytics does not have data yet (too old for real time, too new for normal). I'll have to check back later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tested Twitter ads for the first time recently.

I liked the demographic information they gave me - where the engagements came from geographically, as well as information on gender and interests. We can use that information with regards to Twitter, as well as independent of Twitter.

I know our campaign (probably) hit real people because we got a reply and five re-tweets. Our campaigns totalled to $225.

<comment><USER8> I feel like your return on investment is sorely lacking. A good app or post, and you can easily pull off the same results for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> when their self serve platform first came out, i did a few promoted tweets, but the fact you can't pick a specific tweet to promote left me promoting things that weren't time-relevant anymore. Also my CPC ended up being like $4, and the "followers" I gained were all bots on the experiment. Facebook definitely has their act together better on this front.

</comment><comment><USER10> One could speculate that if you increase the spend, and traffic - <USER2> percentage of bots would actually be much lower.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree completely. But it still doesn't account for all the reported clicks/engagement that never hit my servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have you tried promoted posts on Facebook? I've been curious how well that works. I'm skeptical of it's effectiveness.

<comment><USER12> I had to mention this just because we're talking about ads etc...

Facebook iOS install ads - ridiculously good conversions on installs, and then active users. Better than any other ad platform that I've tested with.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but also ridiculously expensive CPI!</comment></comment></comment>


LARS: A Fast Zero Allocation HTTP Router for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/go-playground/lars <comment><USER2> Although there are indeed many routers already I think you found a pretty cool balance!</comment>


Doubling the speed of jpegtran with SIMD - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/doubling-the-speed-of-jpegtran/ <comment><USER2> I sort of expect a top-notch compiler to perform this automatically (especially if it allows profiling). The MSVC++ compiler has pretty impressive auto-vectorization, as I've verified several times by testing the performance of my DSP code with SIMD enabled and disabled. Just make sure your code facilitates auto-vectorization, and it should be more readable and future- proof while achieving the same result, assuming the compiler is smart enough.

(Also, since this is CloudFlare, <insert rant and dream about SIMD happening in LuaJIT>... Thanks CloudFlare!)

<comment><USER3> The problem is that often the compiler can't automatically vectorize because some preconditions are not met. The knowledge about those preconditions is mostly limited to compiler people and so far, by what I know, there's no static analysis tool that tells you why the compiler couldn't vectorize a loop.

<comment><USER4> Clang can tell you why a loop wasn't vectorized with a couple of compiler flags:

-Rpass-analysis=loop-vectorize -Rpass-missed=loop-vectorized

[http://llvm.org/docs/Vectorizers.html#diagnostics](http://llvm.org/docs/Vectorizers.html#diagnostics)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if they've considered using libjpeg-turbo instead of libjpeg9a, which comes with a lot of SIMD optimization and is regarded to be 2x-5x as fast as IJG's implementation.[1]

[1] [http://www.libjpeg-turbo.org/About/Performance](http://www.libjpeg- turbo.org/About/Performance)

<comment><USER6> My thought as well.

As far as I understand, these intrinsics map to SSE instructions (they are 128-bit). One could use the later AVX (256-bit, found in server chips since 2011). Probably they decided to start with the lowest common denomintor of SSE, because they don't have AVX in _all_ of their servers? The term _SIMD_ is generic.

<comment><USER7> That is explicitly mentioned in the article:

 _Note: we could also choose to use 256-bit wide YMM registers here, but that would only work on the newest CPUs, while gaining little performance._

I'm not saying they're right and you're wrong, but you make it sound as if they never even considered AVX.

<comment><USER8> > Note: we could also choose to use 256-bit wide YMM registers here, but that > would only work on the newest CPUs, while gaining little performance.

Should that be an #ifdef ?

<comment><USER9> Maybe if the machine running the code is the machine that compiles it, or if you have a good way to send processor-specific binaries to the right places.

More useful, I think, would be a runtime check far enough up the stack (i.e., away from tight loops) that it doesn't affect performance. Probably doesn't even need to be that high, it'll branch-predict correctly every time but the first iteration, and the binary bloat probably won't hurt your icache because the number of instructions you ever actually execute stays more or less the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very nice! An independent but very useful way to speed up image batches, as log as you're working in batches and not one at a time:

      parallel jpegtran ::: *.jpg

Combine it with these SIMD improvements, and your batch will be done _before_ you hit enter.

<comment><USER11> [http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/](http://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While this is a great project from both an academic and performance perspective, the resulting images are substantially larger than ones produced using Mozjpeg. From the article:

 _We at CloudFlare make sure that our servers run at top notch performance, so our customers ' websites do as well!._

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it does seem to me that this is of greater value to CloudFlare in terms of electricity savings than to CloudFlare's customers. Less computing time for CloudFlare at the expense of larger output files for CloudFlare's customers to serve, files which will potentially be served again and again and count against the customer's transfer quota. It might not seem like much, but it adds up when you consider how many times a single image in the wild can be downloaded. Consider the following example:

      # Original size is 21796912 bytes
      # jpegtran with SIMD
      jpegtran -copy none -optimize -progressive bigjpeg.jpg > bigjpeg_jpegtran.jpg
      # bigjpeg_jpegtran.jpg resulting size is 19771224 bytes

      # mozjpeg 3.1
      mozjpeg -copy none -optimize -progressive bigjpeg.jpg > bigjpeg_mozjpeg.jpg
      # bigjpeg_mozjpeg.jpg size is 19328832 bytes

That's a difference of 442KB! I'm not emphasizing the computing time here. I do not dispute that this is orders of magnitude faster than Mozjpeg, but isn't it worth doing the extra work to get a smaller file? That file could be served billions of times. My argument is simply that the extra computing effort in the beginning leads to much grander savings in the long run.

In my (quick) testing Jpegtran's _squishing_ performance is consistently less than that of Mozjpeg. So what, actually, is _right_ thing to do in the end?

<comment><USER13> If they get larger file sizes then that probably means they are doing something wrong. Optimized a mpg encoder with SSE once. And larger file size was usually do to some lose of floating point precision. Going thorough the functions and comparing output from serial to vector function should give the bug. Fixing this stuff also can give some more speed up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> They should've included graphs to their article, e.g. to compare speedups at each compression level using histograms. Even tabulation of their results may have looked cool.</comment>


South Korea Raised Taxes in Bid for Growth. So Far, It's Not Working - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/business/south-korea-economy.html <comment><USER2> I can't find the link, but yesterday the NY Times ran an article about the impact of the increase in minimum wage on local businesses.

One of the big challenges is that a minimum wage increase pushes wages up across the board. If minimum wage increases to $15/hr, then the people who were making $15/hr _before_ the increase will expect more. As so on, as you go up the chain.

The impact is much bigger than just a few percent of workers getting a raise.</comment>


Ask HN: Why Python developers named 'bytearray' in Python 3.x? - <AUTHOR>

Python 3.x the ascii string type is named as  type(bytearray(b'bytearrays') "bytearray".It seems quite long characters.<p>Did they consider other options like "byte" or "string" something like that? What was the particular reason for the namespaces? <comment><USER2> "string" would be confusing. "byte" would be misleading. "bytearray" is what it is - it's an array of bytes. I don't know about the developers, but it seems like an obviously better choice to me.</comment>


Here's How We'll Know an AI Is Conscious - <AUTHOR> http://m.nautil.us/blog/heres-how-well-know-an-ai-is-conscious <comment><USER2> That seemed less than useful.

What do _people_ answer when asked the question "what if my red is your blue?"

If any of them answer "That is impossible, red, green, and blue each exist as different wavelengths" then do we assume that they are not conscious? Or that the person has no visual qualia?

(Technically, the argument is "an AI lacking any visual qualia might respond with" so I'm committing logical fallacy. However, if many people with visual qualia give an answer that is consistent with what's assumed to be a lack of visual qualia then that answer is not diagnostic about the existence of visual qualia.)

Furthermore, color names are tied to culture. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Cultural_difference...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Cultural_differences)

Some languages don't have a word for green. For example, quoting from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himba_people#Color_perception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himba_people#Color_perception) "The OvaHimba use four colour names: zuzu stands for dark shades of blue, red, green and purple; vapa is white and some shades of yellow; buru is some shades of green and blue; and dambu is some other shades of green, red and brown."

How do you even ask a question like "Could there be a color greener than green?" to someone from a culture which doesn't have color terms? Quoting [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Color_ter...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Color_terms) "There is also a claim that Pirahã lacks any unique color terminology, being one of the few cultures (mostly in the Amazon basin and New Guinea) that only have specific words for light and dark."

Does that make them any less conscious?

Finally, are any animals other than humans conscious? This argument seems to be that we can't tell if anything is conscious unless it speaks a human language.</comment>


Now you can rename HN whatever you want - <AUTHOR>

If you are willing to use a GM script anyway...<p>http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039 <comment><USER2> That doesn't stop a corporate firewall from blocking the site.

</comment><comment><USER3> someone's already renamed it to Innocuous News

<comment><USER4> That would be pg

<comment><USER5> What is the story behind it? Did I miss some thread?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575815></comment></comment></comment></comment>


KDE Neon review - <AUTHOR> https://verummeum.com/blog/2018/10/07/kde-neon-review-2018/ <comment><USER2> Looking at the screenshots makes me seriously wonder if any professional graphic artist / ui designer is working on that project... screens are mostly empty gray panels, with weirdly spaced inputs from the 80s , tiny fonts and bland colors... i don't want to sound too harsh on the nice guys that worked on it, but if they want to have anything popular they should give UI a bit more love ( and i think now is the time when a popular lîux desktop is the most needed)

<comment><USER3> ElementaryOS [1] is the only Linux distribution that seems to care more about design than functionality.

[1] [https://elementary.io](https://elementary.io)

<comment><USER4> I loved the looks of classical Gnome. Say Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10).

My favorite design these days is an extremely minimal UI. A tiling window manager (StumpWM), Emacs, a terminal (xterm) and a web browser (Firefox). It's very efficient, and solves the design issue by having almost no design at all.

It can actually look really nice. See e.g. a some images from a random user with a similar setup: [https://lepisma.github.io/wiki/misc/desktop.html](https://lepisma.github.io/wiki/misc/desktop.html)

<comment><USER5> I tried i3wm for a while - are you able to compare that to StumpWM? I really like the idea of a tiling wm, but haven't gotten around to customizing it exactly the way I would want it.

<comment><USER4> Both are manual tiling window managers. I tried i3wm and I didn't like it that much, though.

StumpWM is essentially Ratpoison reimplemented in Common Lisp. It's really good and stable, plus it resembles Emacs a lot. There's even a winner-mode.

There's not much to say except that you can tweak it till infinity and extend it in CL. But for me most defaults are pretty good already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always wanted to like KDE but never really good hooked on it way back when I was surveying desktop environments over a decade ago. Have been on xmonad on my main desktops for quite some time now and just going with GNOME, Xfce or LXDE in whatever other scenario I need X11 in. I am now running KDE on my media PC and am very happy with it - it is very streamlined yet configurable. There are keyboard shortcut possibilities for pretty much anything I'd want.

I might just be replacing Lubuntu with this as my default "just need Ubuntu with a graphical environment" dist.

</comment><comment><USER7> Posted from KDE Neon.

I like the concept of "Stable OS, Updated GUI". I've been running it for a while on my laptop.

Good:

* Things just seem to work. The notifications and system settings are pretty easy and slick. The start menu is good.

* Annoying: I miss Ubuntu's Unity keyboard shortcuts. Not just that, but holding down "meta" key showed the shortcuts. I also had trouble doing... I think it was adding a hidden network? There was something in the network manager I couldn't do. AND: To this day I don't know how to make a multi-line taskbar like you can do in Windows.

I never liked KDE (Been using Linux since 2005) but this 5.1.x is making me swing my vote over.

<comment><USER8> > To this day I don't know how to make a multi-line taskbar like you can do in > Windows

It is there by default. Simply make the panel a bit taller. You can also right-click to adjust the number of rows and to always arrange in columns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> KDE feels amazing on Manjaro. I always liked KDE but it has always felt rather immature (severe bugs, clumsy design, questionable architecture) and now it feels complete finally. I would probably prefer tiling window managers if I had a huge display and used terminals a lot but as long as neither applies to me KDE seems the best of all the options available today (XFCE is not bad too but it lacks native support for Win7-like task panel).

<comment><USER10> You can combine KDE with a tiling WM very easily

<comment><USER9> And what would I get and why would I probably need it? In fact the only things I want from a DE are a Win7-like task panel + pretty and convenient window decorations. Another thing I love about KDE is Krusader - the best Linux file manager I know (I've tried using it in a GTK environment on Ubuntu but it looked ugly to the point of unusable).

<comment><USER11> KDE is convenient for a lot of things. At least, handling of the desktop / wallpaper, the amazing command runner, the menu with its search bar that also supports running commands, the network, bluetooth, clipboard management, the task manager, the configuration center, the overall integration that pretty much stays here event without KDE's window manager (which is amazing too). I'm not speaking about KDE applications because they are usable outside of plasma, but I tend to like them too.

So yes, if one day I found that an advanced tiling window manager is what I want, maybe I would keep the rest of the KDE environment.

<comment><USER9> Yes, you're right. I've forgotten the command runner isn't a standard feature of other DEs/WMs... As for BlueTooth - I have never managed to make it work - it worked on Ubuntu (although it used to take me ~10 minutes of random switching to make my BT headphones work with it but at least it would always detect them, the problem was setting them up correctly) but doesn't work on Manjaro+KDE at all, fortunately I don't really need it. As for clipboard management - it can be helpful in many cases but in my everyday work it only annoys me as I can't find how to disable clipboard erasure on Kate exit.

<comment><USER11> For what it's worth, krunner works well outside of plasma. I've found that the one of lxqt is quite nice too. I'm lost with runners from other desktop environments. No auto completion, no history or no calculator.

I've found that clipboard is wiped on application exit in X11 when no clipboard manager is running. Annoying when this happens. KDE's one is Klipper, and I tend to set it such that it keeps and history or 50 items.

Off topic: by the way, the absence of Copy paste using select+middle clic when using Wayland compositors is sadly the main thing that keeps me from using Wayland. Which is too bad, since my WQHD screen support in X is so so. I hope this gets fixed in a not to distant future, I rely on this feature.

<comment><USER9> > I've found that clipboard is wiped on application exit in X11 when no > clipboard manager is running.

I've never encountered this behavior in any DE before moving to KDE5 and even with KDE5.

> KDE's one is Klipper, and I tend to set it such that it keeps and history or > 50 items.

Although I admit clipboard history can be useful and even I used to have a task made easier with it, now I really don't want a clipboard manager to keep history.

> by the way, the absence of Copy paste using select+middle clic when using > Wayland

It doesn't work as it is meant to, reliably with all the apps even with X11 with KDE5.

<comment><USER11> I think I encounter this behavior outside of big desktop managers, when using an openbox session for instance.

For clipboard history, I understand that you don't want everything saved. I think most clipboard managers allow you to delete entries. (But you have to think about it)

>> by the way, the absence of Copy paste using select+middle clic when using Wayland

> It doesn't work as it is meant to, reliably with all the apps even with X11 > with KDE5.

I'm curious, in which situation it does not work correctly?

<comment><USER9> > I'm curious, in which situation it does not work correctly?

I can't remember particular cases already but sometimes middle mouse click won't paste anything or will paste old clipboard content and only Ctrl+V works the meant way. It seems this happens either because Ctrl+C/V and MMB actually use 2 independent clipboards that are not always synchronized correctly or because some UI toolkits have some quirks with this part.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I actually rely on mouse paste and Ctrl+V being independent clipboards (though usually clipboard managers offer to synchronize them, which I've never tried, so I can't say if it works flawlessly, and I can imagine glitches here).

Edit: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/139191/whats-the- di...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/139191/whats-the-difference- between-primary-selection-and-clipboard-buffer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> KDE always was and still is a buggy, but hot mess. Also, they've been busy dumbing down the UX for a more "user-friendly" Linux which traditionally means focusing on the wrong elements. Which also means that previously easy things became impossible. A good and powerful file manager was replaced by a lame joke.

I really liked KDE 4 once. It was near perfect with 4.6. But then along came Plasma 5. Downhill from there. Instead of introducing new features and design they should've focused on bugs and stability.

<comment><USER13> Interesting : )

I've found one person to admit they preferred KDE 4 series.

Everyone else seems to prefer the older 3 series or the newer 5 series, me included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to use KDE Neon installed on my work 2015 MBP. Very happy with it and missed the keyboard shortcuts so much that I switched back to KDE on my new laptop from PopOS.

I'm not sure what the point of kubuntu is any more since that's what most people will get and they'll get an old and outdated experience as a result. IMO KDE Neon should become the new Kubuntu.

<comment><USER15> Kubuntu has drivers out of the box and clean integration with Firefox for KDE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using KDE Neon since a few months after its initial release, and I'm very satisfied with it. Before that, I was for a decade on Gentoo (switching between wmii and KDE from time to time), and then on Ubuntu for a couple years (around the time I started using docker).

There are still bugs here and there (which is perfectly understandable), but it's the most polished KDE experience I ever had. I'm actually wondering if it's not the most polished linux experience I ever had - except maybe a vanilla Ubuntu using as much defaults as possible, but I just can't help moving from defaults after a short while (that's the main interest of gnu/linux, to me).

EDIT: oh btw, worth mentioning: I'm using the user edition (the LTS one). I initially used the developer edition, but I found its constant updates annoying, and things were a bit less stable than the user edition (as one could expect).

</comment><comment><USER17> KDE offers the integration that I expect from a desktop. Plasma was way ahead of others, when it came to management of

* audio, including Bluetooth

* network

* display

Unfortunately, little care is taken on security.

KDE Wallet simply offers an API to all your passwords, without any separation. Users cannot tell which application just accessed the "wallet". Certificate warnings randomly pop up, asking for "yes" or "no" without any explaination. Plasma "integration" will ask you for full access to your Google account, but it is unclear what for. The calendar integration will require separate authentication -- to the calendar only.

I think Linux desktops were ahead of others, some years ago, but right now I struggle to recommend it to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER18> It mostly covers installation, which has been for the most part the same for a long time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment!

This was my first experience with KDE Neon, so I can't compare the installation to an installation of an earlier version.

Was there any information missing that you would have liked to read? I would appreciate any feedback you can provide!

<comment><USER19> Ok, feedback of one: I don't care about the installation. I can install anything just fine. Should I though? Is this version better than the last one? Is it better than windows? Mac os? True os? How is it better? Should i care about kde neon? What if i am mainstream Ubuntu with that gnome ui that wants to be MacOs (or wherever it is lately), will Neon appeal to me, why?

Stuff like that, otherwise you provided yet another installation process screenshots and we have enough of them lately.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is my purpose to provide enough information so that anyone reading my articles can answer these questions for themselves, but I agree that there is definitely still a lot of room for improvement.

Thank you for your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As an old time KDE fan I had to give up on it because it mostly didn't work reliably after 4.x. I recently tried out Plasma on arch and was pleasantly surprised to see lot of it mostly works well - I can force font DPI and use fractional scale which means a combination of it works better on HiDPI screen than GNOME.

It still scared me few times when the lock screen didn't really lock after waking from suspend. Hopefully the Arch rolling release means I will get a fix soon.

</comment><comment><USER9> BTW what I miss using KDE and willing to extend it is a concise widget toolkit. I've taken a look at source code of some plasmoids and it seemed quite extraterrestrial to me, certainly not something you can start with quickly and easily so I've ended up using a widget (a "plasmoid") that just displays HTML and serving HTML content to it (and even that widget was not really easy to install).

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been running Kubuntu 18.04 and so far I like it. It's customizable without plugins. It's closer to GNOME 2 than Unity was and GNOME 3 is. After installing the Nvidia drivers it pretty much just works. I wish there were more themes that were compatible across Qt 4/5 and GTK 2/3\. The default theme, Breeze, isn't bad but it wastes whitespace.

</comment><comment><USER22> Kde Neon started out ok for me but slowed a low spec laptop to the point of being unusable within a few months. Other distros have run fine on the same machine before and afterwards. On top of that, Kmail somehow destroyed a couple of years of messages. I've been using Manjaro with Xfce lately and wish I had done so originally.

</comment><comment><USER23> Presumably KDE neon ships with an LTS kernel. Does this impact support for newer graphics drivers or hinder gaming usage?

<comment><USER15> They do not include any proprietary drivers. You need to enable them or do some Kubuntu Neon hybrid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been having an issue with scaling in KDE Plasma with multiple monitors. Have you been able to resolve that with Neon? I have my 4k laptop monitor at 2x scaling, but then my 1080p monitors are also 2x scaled, and unusable. I've resigned to using 1440p on my laptop with default scaling.

</comment><comment><USER25> Damn, just installed plain 18.04 a month ago, using it with i3 + KDE. Maybe I should've tried this one instead, keeping KDE a bit more current.

</comment><comment><USER26> All seems to work...i just have problems when i use 2 monitors, the srceens turn black some times when a dialog window appears on screen

</comment><comment><USER27> Was a huge fan of KDE 3.5 back in the days but with version 4.0 it became an unusable mess. Maybe I should give KDE another try.

</comment><comment><USER28> Not really a very comprehensive review I'd say.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment!

I would really like to hear what information or topics you missed in the review.

<comment><USER8> Could you say something about the distro?

The installer is used only once and not very interesting. Default preinstalled apps are nice to know, but again not important.

Interesting things would be: \- How does this differ in practice from other similar distros like ubuntu with kde, debian (stable or unstable?) or fedora? \- Is package management different? E.g. other repos, are snaps supported? flatpak? \- What additional software is added or missing in the repos compared its ubuntu lts base? Is this actually a standalone distro or "just" an added repo? \- What are the drawbacks or advantages of this distro compared to ubuntu+kde (kubuntu is just a flavor of ubuntu, not really a separate distro)? \- How many people are working on this distro? \- What about security? Do they have their own team? \- Can you contribute packages to Neon or only to ubuntu?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As long it doesn't support fraction scaling there's no good use of it.

<comment><USER30> Not sure where you are getting your information but KDE has supported fractional scaling for a while now.</comment></comment>


Google Translate Hack: Text-to-Speech - <AUTHOR>

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=hello+hacker+news
Replace hello+hacker+news with your own string.
A cute hack if you need some decent text-to-speech <comment><USER2> Here is a basic bookmarklet!

javascript:(function(){q=document.getSelection().toString();if(q){q = q.replace(/\W/g, '+');q = q.replace(/\\+\\+/g, '+');q = q.replace(/^\\+/g, '');location.href='<http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?q=+q;>};})()</comment>


Larry Lessig launches a Superpac to get money out of US politics - <AUTHOR> http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/84419344732/the-launch-of-the-mayday-citizens-superpac

<comment><USER2> This is treating a symptom not the cause. The cause of money in politics is the virtually unlimited power of the government today. The government now has the power to grant special privileges, bestow grants and tax breaks on specific industries or businesses and hamper and even crush competitors with unfair regulations. People will naturally try to influence this process through any means (including money) to protect their perceived interests. The question that needs to be asked is; What is the nature of government and what is its proper function in a free society?</comment>


Microsoft's "dirty little secret" - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/satya-nadella-cleaning-microsofts-dirty-164733240.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The title of Yahoo's article is actually misleading.

It seems that Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella is finally going to clarify the real revenues for Azure, while instead most of the article is speculation.

In any case, my view (as an ex-AWS and current VMware) is that Azure's real consumption is tiny. Nowhere near the $5.5B that Microsoft claims.

</comment><comment><USER2> Its starting to make sense. Azure support gives pay-as-you go users a hard time to increase subscription quotas but lets you make new subscriptions all day long.</comment>


Covid-19 Is Likely to Lead to an Increase in Suicides - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/covid-19-is-likely-to-lead-to-an-increase-in-suicides/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, no shit. Increase in tyranny too if we keep taking this.</comment>


Five Algorithms Every Web Developer Can Use and Understand - <AUTHOR> https://www.gitbook.com/book/lizrush/algorithms-for-webdevs-ebook/details <comment><USER2> In actuality this is "five black box API endpoints anybody with an Algorithmia account can call into", which suggests a pretty low opinion of web developers on the part of the author.</comment>


Analysis of 88M US patients healthcare costs - <AUTHOR> http://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/why-is-healthcare-so-expensive <comment><USER2> TLDR: costs are high because hospitals and doctors have little pricing transparency and monopoly power in many markets.

This administration might be friendly to forcing hospitals to publish prices, but unfortunately, I think the FTC won't be pursuing much antitrust the next few years.</comment>


Stress and Aging: a Question of Attitude - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/18526881

<comment><USER2> I was already familiar with this research in relation to distance athletes. For marathoners, the difference is extreme. They typically have telemeres the length of people many years younger.

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/phys-ed-how- exercis...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/phys-ed-how-exercising- keeps-your-cells-young/)

<comment><USER3> "Exercise may be affecting telomerase activity and not telomeres directly."

Maybe exercise is affecting HGH and this is affecting telomerase. Do glands secrete telomerase? I'm not sure, but the pituitary gland secretes HGH and that could systemically affect telomerase. If so, then it stands to reason that rapidly decreasing HGH in somatopause in one's early 30's is the cause of aging because HGH is not as readily available to prop up telomeres with telomerase anymore, unless you're exercising... but:

I was under the impression that many runners look haggard, and this was due to decreased levels of COQ10 and more oxidative stress. Perhaps increased physical activity can go both ways too. I've also read about runners having scarring on the heart.

My approach to exercising and diet is simple. Eat healthy, continue learning about food and health (I started many years ago) and with any excess energy, go do some exercise but only to one's limit, maybe slightly over, if that. Keep eating moderately, and exercise again when it feels right. Listen to your body and respond to it with a palette of acquired responses (through learning and experimentation.)

<comment><USER2> It's almost certainly _not_ due to HGH. Other forms of exercise, weightlifing in particular, lead to greater increases in HGH. But weight training hasn't been correlated with longer telomeres.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "The rapidly dividing cells in a tumour soon hit the Hayflick limit and the process is brought to a screeching halt."

I thought the problem with tumours was that they can turn on telomerase so they only get bigger and never reach Hayflick.

"Telomerase has been detected in human cancer cells and is found to be 10-20 times more active than in normal body cells."

[http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/cellbio/shay- wright/intro/fac...](http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/cellbio/shay- wright/intro/facts/sw_facts.html)</comment>


Apple may have killed the BlackBerry - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-9963839-17.html <comment><USER2> this guy has no clue what he's talking about - RIM is the King (at least right now) in enterprise email system and to kill the king you have to first kill its army - corporation is not going to change their service providers just because of iphone, period. why? well ...

2\. it will cost a fortune to change the infrastructure in a corporation who are used to RIM,

3\. even if they plan to change the infrastructure, the decision making (bureaucracy)and getting everything tested and setting up new tech support structure will at least take a year or two.

4\. RIM is coming with new models (this summer) - which may surprisingly come with amazing features. Also their new product cycle is getting shorter and shorter with new design and easy usability.

5\. lack of physical keyboard is a topic of concern for power users - executives dont have time to learn new way of typing.

6\. RIM has a huge market share due to its availability with multiple service providers - apple's biggest weakness is its exclusivity with at&t and this may make them to regret in long term.

7\. RIM may surprise everyone by having some exclusive tie-up with service providers, for example free VOIP calls within north america - they will still make money out of data plans though but something like this will have huge impact on competitors business models.

Conclusion: Don Reisinger, STOP dreaming !</comment>


Mobile ad startup AppLovin in talks for $1.5B acquisition - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/26/applovin-acquisition/ <comment><USER2> We tried it. It's a scam with cpm of $0.02</comment>


The Truth About Van Halen and Those Brown M&Ms (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2012/02/14/146880432/the-truth-about-van-halen-and-those-brown-m-ms <comment><USER2> Funny thing about this is that lessor rock stars and performers used this as a license to act like jackasses without having the context as to why the brown M&M thing was important. My friends are a reasonably famous touring DJ/production act on Anjunabeats and they occasionally stick some rider-stuff in that appears a bit nonsensical. If the promoter doesn't have a yellow, 6ft, 16 gauge extension cord placed on the left side of the mixer and taped with a strip of red electrical (not gaffer) tape, there is a good likelihood that the monitoring system, mixer and everything else is likely half-assed connected. They won't trash anything, but that's a signal that they need to more carefully verify their connections. For a massive stadium show, David Lee Roth is completely correct: a failure to follow the plan precisely could lead to actual tragedy.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR; Van Halen was one of the first "arena rock" bands. Their operation was industrial scale with equipment carried on multiple semis and such.

They still had to deal with the heterogeneous set of arenas that existed around the country and to do so, they laid their requirements very carefully in a contract - important things like how much weight the stage had to be able to take. But how to tell immediately whether someone had read the contract in detail when they arrived as a given venue? Ah, put a random but visible requirement right in the middle of the contract.

<comment><USER4> I do this when I get my car serviced. Take 5 lbs out of the left front tire, maybe intentionally not fill the washer fluid, etc. So far, it's about 50% that the item was not found or fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Needs 2012 in the title

</comment><comment><USER6> The truth is apparently that it is true. No new information here.

<comment><USER7> The new information is why they _did_ this.

<comment><USER8> Except it isn't new information to a lot of people.

I heard about the "why" for this years ago (of course, the article _is_ from 2012). Pretty sure I'd heard the reason considerably earlier that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see how such tests can filter out people who blindly agree to everything (and then don't deliver). On the other hand I think this is a bit underhanded? disingenuous? to have fake requirements in the contract just to test the other party.

<comment><USER10> Trust but verify. People have died at festivals and concerts because the venues didn't follow the event organizers' instructions.

<comment><USER11> > Trust but verify

That phrase just distills down to 'verify'.

Or more generously 'verify and extrapolate' but it still lacks trust.

<comment><USER12> Wrong, when paranoia replaces trust, no agreement gets struck, and business halts.

If I don't trust you, I don't even speak to you. I don't buy a sandwich from you, I don't buy a car from you, I don't fly planes over your territory without mach 3 interceptor escorts armed to the teeth.

If I trust you, but double check you, I buy the sandwich, but I don't leave the counter without opening up the bag, unwrapping the paper and checking for onions. I buy the car, but have a third party mechanic inspect it. I fly the plane through the territory, but also observe from orbital satellites, just in case.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My First Step Towards Being a Digital Nomad - <AUTHOR> https://www.crumpledpapr.com/post/i-will-develop-10-single-page-websites-for-free-my-first-step-towards-being-a-digital-nomad <comment><USER2> This shouldn't use Show HN tag. also We Couldn't Find This Page Check out some of the other great posts in this blog.</comment>


Installing Meteor on Arch Linux - <AUTHOR> http://blog.whn.se/post/20900428947/installing-meteor-on-archlinux?fe9d1dd0

<comment><USER2> Why in the heck would he do all this instead of using the AUR? Is this guy an arch user? This is an incredibly silly way to do this and a good way to cause issues later on as you try to upgrade the package.

</comment><comment><USER3> been using arch for a while and have always wondered whether there's a good utility to grab a .deb package and install it (including all the dependencies -- from AUR, when possible)?

<comment><USER4> Nine times out of ten I'd say you could probably just install from the AUR. If not I doubt you could do so programatically, because the names might not be the same.

<comment><USER5> Not only are the names not the same, but the way the packages are split differs. For instance, Debian/Ubuntu will give the end-user "somepackage", but the developer needs to also install "somepackage-dev". In Arch, the -dev stuff is included in the end-user package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> the thing is, in india when trying to see the screencast (<http://meteor.com/screencast>), i get this :

"This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications"

pathetic.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.isup.me/meteor.com> says its down for others too.

I don't think its because of Telecom Dept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Meteor is already available on AUR: <http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=58394>

<comment><USER8> Using the AUR is of course preferable, but in his defense, the AUR package has been flagged as out of date and has the wrong dependencies (as per the comments).

Of course, this can be fixed by editing the PKGBUILD with your favorite AUR helper. For instance, yaourt (the one I've used for a while now) prompts you to edit the PKGBUILD on every package you try to install... and it displays the most recent comments on that package, so I'd notice that nodejs was a requirement.

But if you're not comfortable with PKGBUILDs and the like, I can see trying some alternate route when you notice that the AUR is out of date.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What happened to RMI? - <AUTHOR> RMI seems like such a cool idea. Even though it's older than current popular approaches, from web API to serverless, it seems much more programmer friendly. Any idea how widely used RMI is? Any idea as to why RMI is not dominating the client-server or cloud landscape? <comment><USER2> RMI = remote method invocation</comment>


Introducing Virgil: We make every developer an applied cryptologist - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@VirgilSecurity/introducing-virgil-security-216468775529#.g4a0fd9eg <comment><USER2> Nice job - an easy solution for developers with a lot of SDKs provided.</comment>


Ansible Quick Start guide - <AUTHOR> http://ryaneschinger.com/blog/ansible-quick-start/

<comment><USER2> This is a really nice overview of how to get started with ansible. If you haven't tried it out, this should do nicely as a resource.

Just remember this is a quick start guide and the power of ansible is just touched on here.

<comment><USER3> I liked it as well. I've already been using Ansible for a while but found it be a good guide for a beginner, though I would suggest installing via pip over apt/brew/whatever.

<comment><USER4> Ansible creator here.

We maintain the ansible PPA, so it's always as up to date as the pip one.

If you've got any feedback on the PPA packaging, we'd definitely like to hear it!

<comment><USER3> Ah nice. I always worry with PPA's just because there's a tendency to be behind the release. Good to know!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great for understand the value of using Ansible.

But something slightly unrelated, I noticed the -vvvv command line option. Is this the new way to indicate verbose levels? Using -v3 and such is out of fashion?

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought this was actually an ansible from Ender's Game. Instant click.</comment>


'Far Side' Cartoonist Gary Larson Shares First New Work in 25 Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/arts/far-side-gary-larson-cartoons.html <comment><USER2> Here's the link to his "New Stuff" area for those who want to go straight to the cartoons (well, straight to the disclaimer page before the cartoons...) instead of or before reading an article about them [1].

The first two made me laugh, especially the first.

I completely failed to understand the third, the one with the bears and the cub scouts. I couldn't tell if it was some pun too subtle for me, a reference to some pop culture thing I've missed, a reference to some high brow thing I'm too peasant to understand, or just a rare for Larson dud.

[1] [https://www.thefarside.com/new-stuff](https://www.thefarside.com/new- stuff)

</comment><comment><USER3> Now we just need Bill Watterson to come back.

<comment><USER4> He did a collaboration with Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine) a few years ago:

[https://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/ever- wished-t...](https://stephanpastis.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/ever-wished-that- calvin-and-hobbes-creator-bill-watterson-would-return-to-the-comics-page-well- he-just-did/)</comment></comment>


Plasma Antenna - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_antenna <comment><USER2> Had a dig around for some pictures of such antennas and found this: [https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-model-4068-MHz-ac- plas...](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-model-4068-MHz-ac-plasma- antenna_fig4_286640009)

Find myself wishing such tech was prevalent during the early days of mobile phones and massive external aerials, but that's just the inner Jedi in me.

<comment><USER3> Imagine a Sci-Fi title with this scene: At the last moment, some critical battlefield information is transmitted by a huge, bright and colorful beam of plasma antenna that shines the ground like Sun at night. It would make a spectacular and impressive scene of SFX and CGI, just like the SFX of the wrapped engine in the new Star Trek..

> _during the early days of mobile phones_

Probably not a good idea, in its original form, it requires a lot of power from the mains to maintain its arc discharge, which is what turns it into an antenna, kind of like a vacuum tube that needs a constant heating power. But Wikipedia says antenna-on-chip is possible, which is quite interesting.

<comment><USER4> Early mobile phones were car-mounted. So if you had a nuclear-powered car a plasma antenna would fit right in.

<comment><USER3> And a tube transmitter, of course!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my university lecturers, John Rayner, worked on developing these back in the day. Managed to track down a paper he published on it which is quite interesting: [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1291644](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1291644)

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know how stealth fighter aircraft are able to incorporate radar hardware that doesn't act like a giant retro reflector? Putting a radar array on the front of a stealth fighter just seems like painting a giant bullseye on it, even if it's not emitting.

I wonder if something like this could already be in use, since it becomes invisible to radar as soon as the plasma generator is turned off?

<comment><USER7> [https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25368/how- are-a...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25368/how-are-antennas- integrated-into-stealth-aircraft)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Going further with the idea it could be possible to make an antenna from ionized air.

As it turns out someone already patented "Antenna of ionized air": [https://patents.google.com/patent/US2760055](https://patents.google.com/patent/US2760055) The patent expired in 1973.

<comment><USER9> Meteor burst communications

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

Meteors punch ion trails through the atmosphere that serve as antennas for various purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not antenna knowledgeable nor plasma knowledgeable.

Is there a layman's explanation about what the advantages / why there are advantages here?

It talks about turning off the plasma antenna, is that any different than simply not using a regular antenna? ... or what they mean by stealth or "resistance to electronic warfare and cyber attack".

<comment><USER11> Hard-wired antennas can be detected by their shadows and reflections in the RF bands. Additionally, unless they are hardened against it, extreme RF energy, as might be generated by an EMP or by a highly-directional attacking antenna, can damage circuits connected to the receiving antenna.

When the plasma antenna is turned off, it stops existing. There's nothing there to attack or detect.

A possible future advantage would be shaping the plasma with magnetic fields, to create customizable antenna geometries, or geometries that electrically extend beyond the physical bounds of the equipment. Imagine using a laser small enough to fit in a backpack to create a 1/4 wave antenna long enough to transmit or receive at 30 kHz, with length 2.5 km .

You could create a plasma antenna 2500m long, send a message to a submarine 150 m below the surface, then it just disappears when you turn it off.

<comment> lachlan-sneff What a cool visual. Setting up a small beacon like object on the ground, standing back a couple hundred feet, and then a beam of bright blue light bursts several kilometers into the air, sending a quick burst of data while the capacitors powering it can keep it alive.

<comment><USER11> If using multiple converging lasers, the antenna need not be connected to the equipment. Two lasers could ionize the air in a line 2500m long, and a third could excite the center of it in a modulated fashion. That would be transmit only, unless you had some way to measure the energy levels at that center point from a distance.

It would be unlikely to glow brightly enough in the visual spectrum to see in the daytime, but it would be pretty cool at night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Slightly OT, but there was no image in the page, so I scrolled down to the bottom and clicked a link in the "See also" section labeled "Article with image". The article had no image of a plasma antenna. What gives, Wikipedia?

<comment><USER3> The picture was there [0], but later livescience.com updated the website and it's gone due to link rotting. Even worse, archive.org didn't have the image archived (but the "zoom picture" text can be seen). Wikipedia is one of the most affected website by link rotting.

What gives, the Web? Donate to archive.org today!

[0] [https://web.archive.org/web/20081010224347/http://www.livesc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20081010224347/http://www.livescience.com/technology/071205-plasma- antenna.html)

<comment><USER13> Another article [0] (2007) featuring the image.

[0] [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22113395/ns/technology_and_science...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22113395/ns/technology_and_science- innovation/t/new-radio-antenna-made-star-material/)

EDIT: Presentation from Igor Alexeff and Theodore Anderson (University of Tennessee):

[https://www.ysc.org.ua/2011/data/i.alexeff_presentation.pdf](https://www.ysc.org.ua/2011/data/i.alexeff_presentation.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm betting this will have horrible noise temperature. Not good for receiving.

<comment><USER15> Did you really read it ?

> At satellite frequencies, they exhibit much less thermal noise and are > capable of faster data rates.

<comment><USER14> Yes I did. This is the main presentation from the reference web site.

[http://nebula.wsimg.com/d0cadaec2cf44c9682cebb1610ce1a91?Acc...](http://nebula.wsimg.com/d0cadaec2cf44c9682cebb1610ce1a91?AccessKeyId=3DA8D5B43ACC4E9632E1&disposition=0&alloworigin=1)

If you look at the thermal analysis, it is incomplete. They are only considering the thermal noise of the reflector. The noise temperature of an antenna is a function of temperature AND aperture efficiency, with the latter set by the conductivity of the reflector. Plasma is not a great conductor (compared to metal), as is shown by the nested antennas. High performance satcom (e.g. NASA DSN) not only cool the electronics, they cool the feeds also.

There is another paper where they show a tube covering a LNB. Looks like some BS. I don't see any actual measurements of noise temperature (which are very easy to do).

[http://nebula.wsimg.com/48f10bd80f702313a1d8d094fc7d6b01?Acc...](http://nebula.wsimg.com/48f10bd80f702313a1d8d094fc7d6b01?AccessKeyId=3DA8D5B43ACC4E9632E1&disposition=0&alloworigin=1)

I didn't see any of the papers published in IEEE APS.

I design antennas for a living, and this sets my BS detector off, and it did 10 years ago too. They look fine for TX (the patterns look good), but the noise data is conspicuously absent.

Here is another noise analysis, but again it is incomplete. Just show some measurements.

[http://nebula.wsimg.com/754ac5460a5e1531953c79dd1c4863b7?Acc...](http://nebula.wsimg.com/754ac5460a5e1531953c79dd1c4863b7?AccessKeyId=3DA8D5B43ACC4E9632E1&disposition=0&alloworigin=1)

<comment><USER16> I thought plasma was a near-perfect conductor... Is that wrong?

You don't need high temperature for plasma; just low pressure. There is a big difference between glow discharge and arc discharge.

<comment><USER14> If you look at plasma attenuation of a reentry body, it's about 30 dB. Even a thin sheet of foil or perforated screen is way more (> 100 dB).

They just need to hook an antenna to a spectrum analyzer (with low noise path) and measure the noise density. If it is anywhere slightly above -174 dBm/Hz, then it is not going to function well as a satcom antenna.

That picture they show of the tube taped onto the LNB feed, they say it "intercepted" the signal. Do they mean it blocked it? Sure, it will if the plasma is conductive enough, but it should also drop the noise coming out of the receiver. Maybe it swamped the receiver with noise. Can't tell. If they can pattern the lower frequency antennas, they can certainly take the time to do some noise measurements.

Maybe the issue is exciting the plasma, and that is noisy. I'd think you couldn't do it with pulse excitation unless you limited the rise time. You could do it with CW, say a magnetron, way outside your operating band.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can someone wire one to a guitar and pair it with a rydberg vapour cell as the recieving antenna, so the audiophile community can finally have something to justify their pricing.

[https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5099036](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5099036)

<comment><USER18> On the other end we have : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_speaker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_speaker)

<comment><USER17> Good call. Since they demonstrated 2 channel already, maybe drive that with a standard electric guitar and then have a Tesla coil driven by a bass.

<comment><USER19> People just do it with Tesla coils [https://youtu.be/JH- YmzZgZ-Q](https://youtu.be/JH-YmzZgZ-Q)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fascinating!

Did not know you could make an antenna out of a plasma; this is fascinating; thank you for expanding what I thought was possible!

</comment><comment><USER21> Your microwave has a plasma antenna in it - it makes microwaves. It's called a magnetron

<comment><USER22> Or a gyrotron if you eat really big hot pockets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Technologies like this suddenly make a lot of science fiction seem outdated. :)

</comment><comment><USER24> people interested in this may also be interested in GDD Gas Discharge Detectors, they can also be used for mixing / heterodyning

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, a gas discharge mixer! I couldn't believe it exists...

<comment><USER24> I think I have seen projects using miniature neon indicator lamps tubes as GDD's / mixers

I have often toyed with the idea of making oscilloscopes, and spectrum analyzers with them, but that would take a long time to explain...

Also, I miswrote it's _Glow_ Discharge Detector

Another idea is repurpousing plasma display panels as a grid of GDD detectors, as an imaging array.

For an example circuit using a neon indicator lamp see figure 1 of the 2010 article:

[http://www.academia.edu/download/44461415/Heterodyne_Detecti...](http://www.academia.edu/download/44461415/Heterodyne_Detection_by_Miniature_Neon_I20160405-1310-1do4wyg.pdf)

This 2016 article measures the light emitted from the neon indicator lamp instead (with FMCW scheme to detect distance as well)

[https://www.osapublishing.org/viewmedia.cfm?uri=prj-4-6-306&...](https://www.osapublishing.org/viewmedia.cfm?uri=prj-4-6-306&seq=0)

This setup improves response time (bandwidth) of the output signal.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Site really slow, doesn't use Cloudflare? - <AUTHOR> Hi, HN resolves for me to 188.8.131.52 and doesn't use CloudFlare, it's extremely slow, and ping is over 1000 ms for me. Just letting you know. <comment><USER2> I agree, it's been very slow for a number of minutes. If you log out, the pages will update instantly though.</comment>


WHO declares the new coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency - happy-go-lucky https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement-on-the-second-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov) <comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194798)</comment>


"Is Anyone Here a Time Thief?" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/athza8/is_anyone_here_a_time_thief/ <comment><USER2> I surely was when I worked at an insurance company. It actually enabled me to build my chops and end up getting a dream job at a startup.

If you do get the opportunity to slack off at work, make sure you put it to good use, especially because they might find out one day.</comment>


The Quantified Employee: How Companies Use Invasive Tech to Track Workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-quantified-employee-how-companies-use-tech-to-track-workers <comment><USER2> Once you describe something with an easy to understand model (especially a numerical one) it becomes extremely convincing (maybe it's something like harmonic grammar or joke telling where understanding the joke makes it more funny.)

This is for the people who's entire job involves building spreadsheets full of numbers to show to each other; it's the end of academia's influence on corporate culture. It's part of a machine who's sole purpose is to make noise for its own amusement.

</comment><comment><USER3> I once took a remote job in which my first task was to write an electron app that would take camera photos every minute and upload them to an S3 bucket. It would also log the time when it was started and when it was closed. There was also talk about using basic facial recognition to establish when a human was in the photo or not. This would then be used to outline your daily start and stop time, and determine when you leave/return to the PC.

I have never noped out of a job so quickly.

<comment><USER4> > I have never noped out of a job so quickly.

Genuine thanks to you for applying ethics to your work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always get this funny email from Microsoft analytics at the end of the week. In a week where I have at least 10 hours of meetings, it reported that 86% of my time was "focus time." Gee Microsoft analytics thanks! Note that the meetings dont include firefighting, taps on shoulder, answering questions in direct message. All "focus time" apparently.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a senior technical leader, I don't write much code each week. I'd be extremely surprised if these systems could differentiate my impact versus others at the same level.</comment>


U.S. Discloses Saudi Holdings of Treasuries for First Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-16/u-s-discloses-saudi-arabia-s-treasuries-holdings-for-first-time <comment><USER2> Utterly fascinating, both that this "special arrangement" has existed and has been kept out of general public awareness throughout all this time.

Brought into context with the otherwise inexplicable tolerance for that regime's egregious human rights abuses, and the "delicateness" with which it was handled during the 9/11 investigations (extended the fact that its key people were allowed to slip out of the country in the immediate aftermath, despite a nation-wide travel ban on everyone else) -- it all starts to make sense.

Not in any tinfoil kind of way. But in a more banal, mundane, "Why do we keep kissing this bloodthirsty, homophobic, misogynist and utterly decrepit regime's ass, for decade after decade?" kind of way.

 _The U.S. started releasing data on foreign ownership of Treasuries in 1974. Since then, the Treasury's policy had been to not disclose Saudi holdings, and it grouped them instead with those of 14 other mostly OPEC nations, including Kuwait, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates, Bloomberg reported in January. The group held $281 billion as of February, down from a record of $298.4 billion in July._

 _For more than a hundred other countries, from China to the Vatican, the Treasury had provided a detailed monthly breakdown of how much U.S. debt each owns. The figures for March are scheduled for release at 4 p.m. New York time Monday._

 _The special arrangement was a product of the 1973 oil shock following the Arab embargo. It's among concessions that U.S. administrations made over the years to maintain America's strategic relationship with the Saudi royal family and access to the kingdom's oil reserves._

<comment><USER3> _(extended the fact that its key people were allowed to slip out of the country in the immediate aftermath, despite a nation-wide travel ban on everyone else)_

This is an urban legend:

[http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flights.asp](http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flights.asp)

<comment><USER4> The article just claims it's "false" that they flew out before 11:00 A.M. on September 13, 2001 (apparently the end of an "official" ban on air travel) not that it's false that they flew out of the country.

So it happened, just not before that exact date and time.

<comment><USER3> It vitiates the claim that somehow these Saudis got special treatment from the U.S. government.

Many foreign nationals flew out of the U.S. when the travel ban was lifted.

<comment><USER4> > It vitiates the claim that somehow these Saudis got special treatment

No, it doesn't, the "special treatment" is documented, it's just that the special treatment wasn't that they flew exactly "before 11:00 A.M. on September 13, 2001." Specifically, FBI lied about the whole issue:

[http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/03/14/10672374-...](http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/03/14/10672374-new- questions-about-fbi-probe-of-saudis-post-911-exodus)

"Instead of just noting that the FAA record showed the travel occurred after U.S. airspace was reopened, the FBI said Sultan and his three companions "had arrived in Lexington from Tampa by car." "The four individuals," the report went on, "had disobeyed the Prince [Ahmed] by traveling by car instead of by jet as the Prince had instructed them.""

And the very Snopes page seems to state that the pilot of one of the flights ("the bin Laden flight") was in fact an FBI agent?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is yet another fascinating step in the disenagement of the US from Saudi Arabia (pity it took so long to happen). Drip by drip stories are emerging which are preparing for it. The Saudi 9/11 pages in the report. Diplomatic spats etc.

It's fascinating to watch such a deal with the devil break down. The long term natural ally for US in the Middle East is Iran. It seems the Washington establishment knows this.

<comment><USER6> Just because we made a deal with Iran doesn't mean they are our ally, and I'd hardly call them our "natural" ally; their regime is only marginally less bad on human rights than Saudi Arabia. Iran still funds terror groups, much like Saudi Arabia. They are just part of two different tribes and despise one another. Really the U.S. mission should be to do whatever it takes to prevent Saudi Arabia and Iran from going to war. They are already in a proxy war in several locations, Iraq and Syria being the two largest.

I think that's what people in Washington know, has nothing to do with being their ally and everything to do with stopping an implosion. If Iran got a nuke, it's not likely they would give it to a terror group (from what I see) it's just incredibly likely that it will push Saudi Arabia to get one too and then we'll have quite the situation on our hands.

<comment><USER7> Before the Iranian revolution, Iran under the Shah was the USA's staunchest regional ally. And before that, the British and Russians spent centuries wrestling over influence inside Iran. There are sound geopolitical reasons to court Iranian friendship, and undoubtedly the days of Anglo-Persian cooperation will someday return. Though perhaps after regime change.

<comment><USER8> I don't see the regime in London changing anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My guess is they will reduce those holdings - they have a large budget deficit they need to cover, before it bankrupts them. Defense and fuel subsidies make a large part of that deficit.

For a country of 30 million people with a lot of sun, I find it crazy they produce most of their electricity with oil and are the 6th largest oil consumer in the world. Much of that is simply wasted through inefficient power plants and AC.

Would do them well to use their foreign reserves (while they still have them) to cover their energy needs by building solar.

<comment><USER10> Oil is $1 a barrel for them. I bet solar is 40x the price per MW.

<comment><USER11> But if it would have sold for $50 a barrel, that's $49 in lost revenue (ignoring supply/demand curves shifting).

They could have used that $49/barrel to buy some solar panels and (maybe) come out energy even in however many years.

<comment><USER10> But they can't sell anymore! Supply currently exceeding demand. If they put 1 million more barrels of oil a day on the public market, prices go down by Y, making the net gain of that 1 million barrels low (maybe negative, but if not at least close).

So if market has demand for you to sell 10 million barrels of oil a day, but you have capacity to pump 20 million... you found a way to basically have "free" energy by burning some oil.

Yes it shortens the length of your oil reserve and yes it kills the environment, but in the short term it is the best option. Most people/countries make decisions in the short term. So to me it is very logical that the middle east burns oil for electricity, nowhere near a "duh why not use solar" moment.

<comment><USER9> Not only they burn it in very large quantities, but they subsidise burning it to a degree that ends up as a hole in their budget, eroding foreign currency reserves they've built up previously. And there are huge wastages - old power plants, inefficient AC, oversized cars etc

They are starting to wake up to building solar now though:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/saudis-s...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/07/saudis- solar-energy/395315/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here is the interesting thing, why now?

Let me give you a hint....what resource do Saudi's loose in the next 5 to 10 years?

Give up? Its the next thing to reach $100 per barrel..at least in several parts of the Middle East

Okay okay okay...Water, specifically the water table Saudi has relied upon for so long will be gone.

<comment><USER13> Interesting side note. In a previous life back in the 90's, I worked in the (civilian) nuclear power industry. I came across some old company reports from the 80's for selling nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia for desalination and not electrical power generation. I asked my boss about it because he was around at the time and he said the Saudis were serious but the numbers just didn't work out. I think the main problem was fouling of the tubes used to boil off the water leaving behind all sorts of dissolved mineral and salt deposits. Chronic cleaning or replacing the tubes killed the economics.

</comment></comment><comment> c-slice This calls Saudi Arabi's bluff. Just a few weeks ago they threatened to sell all their US treasuries and some speculated that they held much larger ownership in US treasuries. They claimed to hold up to $750 billion in US treasuries. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi- ara...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-warns- ofeconomic-fallout-if-congress-passes-9-11-bill.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> US$120G does not put their reserves bellow China, Japan, Brazil, and Russia? How is it the 3rd?

</comment><comment><USER15> They sure bankrolled the heck out of the Iraq War, didn't they? To the tune of around $80 billion starting in 2003.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would not want to be holding US debt, this election cycle.

<comment><USER17> Can you name a safer financial instrument than US debt? Its definitely not fiat currency nor metals (incl. gold).

<comment><USER18> > Can you name a safer financial instrument than US debt? Its definitely not > fiat currency

I dunno. I mean, US government debt is conceptually subject to both US monetary risks (the same as US dollars) and US government fiscal risks, so US government (dollar-denominated) debt must always be (even if only infinitesimally) less safe than at least one fiat currency, to wit, the US dollar.

<comment><USER10> In what case would tbonds go down but not the dollar?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


So You Want to Compete with Steam (Jan 2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-steam? <comment><AUTHOR> Submitted this interesting past article in the light of Discord taking steps to add game distribution.

Original discussion is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16173199](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16173199)</comment>


Twitter Is Running Lots More Ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/scammy-twitter-ads <comment><USER2> Although an interesting article, I had to laugh out loud when I read "it's pretty shocking to see what garbage is circulating" - and the comment wasn't about Buzzfeed!</comment>


A French wine trade war - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/business/french-wine-trade-war.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur <comment><USER2> Over the years I learned, through trial and error, that cheap French wine hardly ever compares favorably with wine from New Zealand and Australia at the same price point. More recently it's become true of Spanish wine, too.

I don't know whether it's because the French export their worst wine (or perhaps I just have no taste), but since the French themselves are drinking less of it, I can't help but think that complacency has crept in somewhere.

<comment><USER3> French living in Japan here. I think the same happens in the US: they use "French" like a trademark to sell random shit. If you are going to buy a 5-10$ bottle, all that the "French" label will bring is an increase in price but not quality.

Chilean and Australian wines are what I drink here when I go for a cheap bottle. Still, I feel like they add some kind of preservative in wines here, even good ones. There is an aftertaste I dont get with wines (even cheap ones) in France.

But yes, complacency is also a factor. Wines are getting better everywhere and foreign wine compete favorably in the cheap range.

Now I am just hoping that one day they will compete in cheese and that I can buy some at the local supermarket without having a 5x multiplier because of the "french" label.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, what do you think of the Camemberts and blue cheeses from Hokkaido?

<comment><USER3> I have never tried their blue cheese. I found some blue cheese sold at Aeon that are decent.

As for the camembert, I have no idea why they call it that way. Unless I did get particularly bad ones at my supermarket, this is really different. Very little taste, closer to a brie actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those Spanish wines that are made to look French and fool the consumer with their lavender fields etc as described in the article... Winemakers are blaming the Spanish, but there's also the French grocery stores to blame: why put the French and Spanish wines on the same shelf? Are they trying to confuse consumers because the margins on Spanish wines are much higher ?

Here in the US, nearly all wine stores I've been to sorts wine per type (red, white, etc) for local wines and have a specific foreign section "France", "Australia", etc. Even regular grocery stores tend to do this too.

If groceries chains did this in France, consumers would then rarely buy the Spanish wines unintentionally.

I don't think the winemakers would have a hard time lobbying for at least forcing grocery stores to display foreign wines in a clearly labeled section.

<comment><USER6> You're right that the stores probably play a role here. However in a typical supermarket bottle are not separated by origin: it would made little sense as most the wine comes from the country anyway.

Conning customers with fake logos (for organic food for example) and misleading packaging is a very common thing. The law forbid to use some regional names[1] but creating some fake "Château Mytho" brand with the origin of the product writing in yellow 4pt font size is still totally legal.

Some of this stuff is even legally organized. For example the "organic food" label of the European Union allows up to 5% non-organic in the product. The domestic label was then changed to match the European one, now allowing some "accidental" GMO.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%C3%B4l%C3%A9e)

<comment><USER7> > However in a typical supermarket bottle are not separated by origin: it > would made little sense as most the wine comes from the country anyway.

Do mean not separated by origin country? I thought they're mostly separated by French/area region, though? You couldn't slip one of the Spanish wines in to those sections.

Though I just googled photos of carrefour and found a photo of sections like "vin entre 3 EUR et 4 EUR". That kind of layout could easily intermingle non- French wine

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A Coca-Cola Zero soft drink in a French restaurant in Paris (France) is typically 5 to 6 euro per 50 cl (even in "normal" restaurants, not in the Champs-Élysées nor the Eiffel Tower), while in Barcelona or Madrid (Spain) is 1.50 to 2 euro, being exactly the same product. So go figure with wine, or buying a lunch (2x-3x more expensive in Paris than in Madrid or Barcelona). In my opinion, that will be good for French people: they already do massive near- dumping with milk production because of their high productivity/efficiency, and they'll have to learn how to be efficient producing wine and fruits.

</comment><comment><USER9> I only see nebulous claims of wines not being produced to French standards. Is there anything more specific? Maybe the French standards are wrong is Spanish originating wines are selling so well and even at similar price points.

<comment><USER10> Don't underestimate the emotional response from the people who've done this their entire life with the cumulated savoir-faire and effort of several generations. The grape is a huge cultural thing here.

(Disclaimer: I'm french and had said emotional reaction. I don't even particularly like wine)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "We can produce the wine at lower cost because salaries are less,"

And also in many cases, because illegal immigrants, who work in these vineyards, are treated in such poor conditions, close to slavery, that salaries can not be matched without breaking labor laws.

<comment><USER12> Can you provide some sources for this? I know this happens in the U.S. but this is my first time seeing an allegation like this for an E.U. country.

<comment><USER13> I remember reading about african immigrant being paid 4 euros an hour on Sting's vineyard.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/14/underpaid- illegal...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/14/underpaid-illegal- migrants-unwittingly-used-on-idyllic-tuscan-es/)

[http://www.ibtimes.com/plight-migrant-labor-barolo-italys- ki...](http://www.ibtimes.com/plight-migrant-labor-barolo-italys-king-wines- other-famous-brands-made-workers-under-near-slave)

<comment><USER14> Is that very low? 4€/hour at 8h/day, 22 days/month is 700€/month. I don't know how are the salary levels in Italy, but that's quite a bit more than the minimum wage in Portugal, and only slightly less than the minimum wage in Spain at the time.

<comment><USER15> It's way below a livable wage in Italy if it's _before taxes_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article highlights the real downside to progressive globalization and a major reason for the recent rise of populism (Trump, Brexit, etc). The populist message of "bringing back the good 'ol days" is an impossibility but the underlying economic frailty of large swaths of people is very real.

While typically a free market fan, I do believe the pendulum has swung too far towards globalism in the last couple of decades. In general, this has vastly improved the lives of millions of very poor families in developing nations - but at a significant cost to families like blue collar Americans, leaving millions feeling that they're being left behind by technological progress, foreign labor, and politics/media that increasingly focuses on the "glamorous" US coastal cities. This is a gross oversimplification of the myriad of intertwined issues but this is the general perception for a lot of people.

We'd better figure out how to address this perception and begin to work on tangible solutions soon or this type of violent response may only be the tip of the iceberg.

<comment><USER17> I'd say that globalization often causes losses for the poorest and gains for the richest, but that overall it increases the amount of wealth coming into the country.

Therefore ending globalization would help the poor at the expense of the rich, but you could also just take money from the rich and give it to the poor. Since globalization brings more money into the country overall there must be some level of redistributive taxation that makes globalization better than non-globalization.

<comment><USER18> Don't forget that there are gains to trade. It's not just redistributive; more people are making more stuff (aka creating wealth). The pie gets bigger. The risk is that some people's slice gets smaller, even in absolute terms.

Poor people who are still employed also gain from globalization, because their inputs become cheaper.

Above all, too high a rate of change is what causes dislocation and destroys lives, when large segments of the population are left without valuable skills.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but shrinking the pie means that finite resources such as housing (land) becomes cheaper. Even if my piece of pie gets smaller in absolute terms I might still be better off than before because the price of housing and domestic services have gone down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I worked in a wine shop for a while years ago. Occasional drinkers would always come in wanting French wine, but after trying Argentine malbecs or even American reds like those produced by Dave Phinney or say, K Syrah, would always prefer those over the few French wines they had tried.

Granted, this is all anecdotal, and I have had some great French wines (love that they are biodynamic as well for the most part), but to my eyes the wine market is really broadening. French wines just may not hold the mystique they once did.

<comment><USER21> This should be expected.

Most new world wines like the ones you mentioned taste amazing as isolated sipping wines, but sometimes compete with food rather than complement it.

Most European wines shine when consumed with food, but they often do less well as sipping wines.

Note that these are broad-stroke comments, there are always exceptions, blah blah blah. That said, any skilled sommelier can serve you the archetypes as examples.

<comment><USER20> You're exactly right. I meant to add that to my comment. Euro wines do usually tend to really stand out with food, and really do pair well with it as you said. Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _" We can produce the wine at lower cost because salaries are less," said Juan Corbalán García, who represents the Agri-Food Cooperatives in Brussels. "But that doesn't mean we're doing unfair competition."_

Perfect example of a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER23> Has there _ever_ been a race to the bottom in terms of wages ever?

<comment><USER24> what? Do you mean actual wages individually getting lowered? That's probably rarer, but an effective race to the bottom of wages happens all the time, eg when they move the textile factory from the Carolinas to China then to Bangladesh.

<comment><USER23> That's more of a reaction to the race to the ceiling in wages that's going on in the background, ain't it?

They move from China to Bangladesh because competition from more productive industries makes Chinese wages grow faster than what garment manufacturing can support, don't they?

(I read that these days even cleaners get about 5 USD/h in the bigger cities. But that's not because cleaners are more productive, but because non-traded sectors get a case of Baumol's cost disease.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting how long it took the article to get to reporting what was supposedly "unfair" about the competition. And then it was pretty vague -- i.e. Spanish wine doesn't have to be grown by French rules.

Presumably readers are supposed to assume the French rules are somehow necessary. But Spain and many other countries seem capable of producing good wine at different price points. Maybe the French just have the wrong rules?

</comment><comment><USER26> A greater understanding of the process and supply chain that affects the products going into our body will be for the best. For any wine, if it was clear where the grapes are grown, and where the wine was made, it'd give me greater confidence in the product. This is especially true if it's a value- oriented bottle.

<comment><USER27> french wines have AOC, like italian wines have DOC, and similar things exist elsewhere.

That basically only guarantees the origin of the grapes/wine, not quality, so it seems (generally) implicit that if a geographical indication is not present the wines are from "unspecified" locations, isn't that enough?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> another interesting element of the wine trade across the eu was the ~2009 ruling on how rose could be produced

when i was working for a wine and spirits shop on the upper east side a controversial ruling was proposed in the eu(o)

it stated that rose wine, which was becoming a popular wine in the newish 'priced to drink' wine market, could subvert the costly precision of rose production, wherein for example one has to remove the skins at just the right time, with a simpler method of just mixing red and whites together

french wine producers were among the leaders in lobbying against the proposal

it seems france won that battle(i)

(o) [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/17/rose- wi...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/17/rose-wine- provence-france-eu)

(i) [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and- drink/news/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and- drink/news/eu-abandons-plan-to-allow-blended-rose-wine-1700039.html)

.. rose=rosé ..

</comment><comment><USER29> Are there certain classes of products that similar things happen to in the US?

</comment><comment><USER30> Chilean wine is the best!!!

</comment><comment><USER31> A piece of interesting trivia about the Languedoc region: its name literally means the place where people prononce "yes" as "oc" (well, "the 'oc' language"). It's as if Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas" were in a region named "the drawl zone"

Actually Occitan is now a dead language, and at the time it was current, nobody pronounced "yes" as "oui" yet either. But the name persists.

<comment><USER32> > Occitan is now a dead language

What?? This is completely false. There are hundreds of thousands of native Occitan speakers alive today.

<comment><USER33> LOL, no. Most of the few native speakers I knew are dead. The rest is people who learn a made-up language in school as a foreign language.

<comment><USER34> The many Occitan schools in my region are proving you wrong.

<comment><USER35> Existence of language schools doesn't prove existence of native speakers.

<comment><USER32> The existence of native speakers proves the existence of native speakers?

This isn't fake news, it's well documented -- every recent study on Occitan has estimated at least 100,000 native speakers, on the very low end.

Yes, it's a very endangered language, and it might be dead in a few decades, but it's not dead yet.

BTW, this only applies to France. In Val d'Aran for example (in Spain) it is an everyday language that doesn't seem at any risk of disappearing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


For Sale: Free Operating System (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/09/biztech/articles/28linux.html <comment><USER3> It's crazy for me to realize that Linux was created the same year when I got the first computer in my house running Windows 98. I didn't know Linux was this old.

Another funny thing I just remembered is how I broke our house computer trying to install Linux (I have no idea how to actually do it, I was barely 10-12 years old back then). I bought one of those magazines which shipped with CDs with demo games and other software. I tried to install Linux on our home computer using that and completely messed the computer up because apparently my hardware didn't support it or something. Anyway, I got a pretty good beating from my Mom after that.

EDIT: correction, as couple people pointed out Linux was created in 1991. I thought it was created in 1998 based on the publishing of this archived news article. I also grew up in a developing country where things came much later than the US.

<comment><USER4> Did you make a typo? Linux was created in 1991.

<comment><USER3> Oh, my bad. I thought it was created in 1998 based on the publishing of this archived news article. I also grew up in a developing country where things came much later than the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The movement, known alternately as free software and open source ...

Ha, I can think of someone who might take issue with that.

I know it's 20 years ago, but I'm interested to see it reported like that first-hand.

</comment><comment><USER6> > James Cameron's special-effects company, Digital Domain, which used the > operating system to help create the illusions in "Titanic."

I know this is a random tangent from the core theme of the article. But I found it funny that in 1998 we describe CGI as "illusions".

<comment><USER7> my memory is that the most common term to use there would have been "special effects", and "illusions" would have seemed strange even then

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "An operating system is a living thing," said Carl Shapiro, an economist at > the University of California at Berkeley and a co-author of "Information > Rules," a book to be published this week by the Harvard Business School > Press. "Ongoing investment and upgrades are essential to attract customers. > Nice cooperative thoughts are not enough."

Typical economist thinking. Linux will never work.

<comment><USER9> He wasn't wrong though. Linux has flourished because many different entities have invested a lot of money in its development, not just because of "nice cooperative thoughts".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how different things would be if Windows XP didn't end up being so popular. Or maybe there are benefits of proprietary software that aren't mentioned in this article that ended up naturally overcoming open source software.

<comment><USER11> Before Windows XP being massively popular it was Windows 98 being massively popular - up until Service Pack 2 (IIRC) the main competitor to Windows XP was Windows 98 and people would simply not move off it. There isn't really a universe where Windows XP is a failure with Windows 98's popularity - <USER2> wasn't much of a real choice from people who eventually _had_ to abandon Windows 98 outside of Windows XP and Microsoft was pushing Windows desktops hard as their primary focus at the time. Of course Windows 98 owe part of its popularity to Windows 95.

Around Windows 95 was the last time you could say that other desktop OSes had a chance to become a de-facto standard, but IIRC the only desktop competitor at the time was OS/2 and IBM shat the bed on that one (BeOS also tried but it was too little too late and Linux at the time was a regression from both DOS and Windows UX-wise... assuming anyone knew about it).

Microsoft's sketchy deals with PC vendors where they had to pay an OS license for every PC sold regardless of the PC being sold with a Microsoft OS or not didn't help competitors much.

<comment><USER12> Like children, it needs two to have a sketchy deal.

If enough OEMs had decided to go their own way, the license deals would have been changed. However they saw it as convenient as well.

As counter example, Android OEMs couldn't care less for Google's roadmap and updates.

OS/2 was not an option for most consumers when I had to pay extra 500 euros on top of an already expensive 1500 euro 386SX computer, on a country where the minimum wage was around 300 euros after taxes. Naturally I converted the escudos into euros.

As for BeOS, the only thing I got from it was the R5 demo disk and the developer book that I eventually found out by accident on a technical library.

It wasn't really on sale over here.

<comment><USER11> OEMs had no choice, it was either that deal or they wouldn't be able to sell Microsoft OS licenses at all - this was something Microsoft did since the DOS days and they took advantage of their position as the #1 OS provider for IBM PC and the clones. A PC that cannot run DOS and later Windows would be worthless.

<comment><USER12> Even small shops on Mafia controlled neighborhoods have a choice.

My first PC was bought with DR-DOS 5.0 on it, and at high school we were using a mix of MS-DOS 3.3 and PC-DOS.

Plus the market for Atari and Amiga was still kind of strong, before the respective companies started going astray with their business decisions.

And to make it actual, most Web devs have a choice, yet they decide to put Google in power with their Chrome-only focus in name of convenience.

<comment><USER11> I think you should read on MS-DOS's per-processor licensing which was the cheapest one: it wasn't _technically_ the only available scheme and didn't _technically_ forbid other OSes, it was just the cheapest by far option, especially for larger PC manufacturers who were the ones that would popularize the OS (some small corner shop using DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS wouldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things).

<comment><USER12> Lets not blame Microsoft alone for OEMs having the easiest route out, it takes two to dance.

Poor little OEMs, specially the ones that were installing pirate copies, so they weren't bound to any Microsoft requirement to start with.

Just like they do nowadays with Android updates, producing new handsets with 2 - 3 versions behind, to avoid new development costs, without any kind of updates afterwards, regardless of Treble compliance.

<comment><USER11> Vendors were the least affected by all this and they just did whatever was most profitable for them. Remember that the original message i wrote above wasn't about vendors but about by the time Windows XP came out it was already riding a huge popularity wave that began back in the DOS days. Whatever vendors took out of it, this sort of tactics made DOS hugely popular.

<comment><USER12> Vendors were doing what people asked them to put into their custom built PCs, mostly pirate software, while maximizing profits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's interesting to see those early speculations while knowing how they turned out, such as Netscape open sourcing their code and MS fearing the open source approach.

<comment><USER14> MS did fear the open source approach back then - the 'Halloween' documents were leaked out of MS in that timeframe, and they do make that quite clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's pretty unfortunate that English uses the same word for "no-cost" and "unfettered".

<comment><USER16> In this case both are relevant, since indeed, why would you sell something that's also given away by others at no cost, possibly along with your own contributions.

In Red Hat's case we did have CentOS.

<comment><USER17> Marketing is why. With good marketing investment you can reach people who don't know how to get the no cost version and are willing to pay.</comment></comment></comment>


We sell advertising, not search results - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ <comment><USER2> > Every ad on Google is clearly marked and set apart from the actual search > results.

Clearly is a stretch here.

</comment><comment> m-p-3 Yet they make it less and less obvious which result is organic and which one is an ad.</comment>


How do you politely turn down someone who wants to "grab coffee sometime"? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-politely-turn-down-someone-who-wants-to-grab-coffee-sometime/answer/Xianhang-Zhang

<comment><USER2> I always thought the suggestion of "grabbing coffee" was just a polite way of brushing _me_ off - ergo no response is really needed. Perhaps I'm just dense, tho'.</comment>