HN: Minneapolis Meetup - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to see if any other HN readers and aspiring entrepreneurs in the Minneapolis area are interested in a meetup?  If so let reply here or my email address is in my profile. <comment><USER2> This Wednesday, July 14, is the Cold Start Happy Hour. We're meeting at the Bulldog NE at 7pm. Grab a beer and talk with other founders and entrepreneurs about what you're working on. For more info: <http://coldstart.tumblr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I am launching a new startup dedicated to what Silicon Valley calls "Flyover Country" and have a meetup in Minneapolis Aug. 9th: <http://flyovergeeksminnesota.eventbrite.com/>

use the code "twit5mn" for $5 off- FG is dedicated to all the entrepreneurs and startups that lie outside Silicon Valley. You can reach me: Edward.Domain[AT]gmail[DOT]com

</comment><comment><USER4> I bet I could get us into CoCo (The coworking spot in St Paul) if we wanted it.

Either way, count me in. Ill watch this thread, and drop you a line

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: The first Minneapolis meetup will be on Wednesday, July 14 at 6pm at the 5-8 Club.

Map and details can be seen at link below:

<http://litlift.com/minneapolis-hacker-news-meetup>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a quick update, about 10 people have already emailed me, so if you're interested let me know, so that if I have to find us a conference room somewhere I'll have time to do it.

<comment><USER5> A conference room sounds awkward, why not a bar?

<comment><USER6> Definitely agree. There's got to be a few bars or restaurants in the MPLS area that can hold a party of 20-30. Way back when drunkenbatman was ruling the blogs, they had a 300-man meetup in Chicago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes please! I'm in town visiting from Seattle until the end of the month. A bar is preferable to a cafe or conference room, imho.

</comment><comment><USER8> Im interested. I travel to msp every week Monday - Thursday so I could do a mid-week meet-up

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently I'm checking with people to see if sometime later next week would work for people?

Right now I'm thinking we meet at a starbucks or a caribou, unless we get a lot of people and then I'll find a conference room somewhere.

Send me an email and I'll add you to the list I'm compiling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes! Count me in.

Edit: I live in White Bear Lake; work in Shoreview.

<comment><USER10> I always thought I was the only HN reader in WBL. But now you are, since I've moved to Boulder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd be interested. Maybe start a small Google Group to organize it...?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm interested - depending on the date, I can probably make it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm in Omaha, but may be willing to pop up for this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course, I just moved away from the Twin Cities.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm interested. I'll keep my eye on the thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've already got a couple of emails, so if you want to send me yours I'll send out a message out to the list here in a few hours to start discussing when and where.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interested but alas, I'm 6 hours away. :(

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds cool. Anyone else in the Eagan area?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that at least one other person I've gotten an email from is in the Eagan area, and I work in the South Saint Paul area. Hope that helps.

<comment><USER6> That was probably me, if the message was sent at 10:18.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm in. Will be watching this thread.

</comment><comment><USER17> Awesome - keep me posted.</comment>


You might be surprised at which web browser aced this security test - <AUTHOR> http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/you-might-be-surprised-at-which-web-browser-aced-this-security-test

<comment><USER2> Who paid NSS labs for this study?

I bet I have a good chance of guessing.</comment>


2015: The Year of the OpenBSD Desktop - <AUTHOR> http://zacbrown.org/2015/01/18/openbsd-as-a-desktop.html <comment><USER2> "Now don't get me wrong, Linux does great things but it's never worked out of the box well enough as a desktop. There's always something to tinker with, some driver to compile, some knob to fiddle with."

Been using Linux (Ubuntu LTS releases) as my everyday desktop and laptop OS since around 2007/8\. I had issues at first with drivers, especially with wifi and graphics cards.

But lately (approx since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS), stuff just works, no need to manually install or compile anything, no need to tweak anything unless I want to. Of course you can find hardware that doesn't work on Linux, but that's just a matter of a bit of googling before buying a laptop/desktop.

I've found that lately, it seems like Ubuntu requires less fiddling than osx or windows, especially with printers & scanners, where I just plug it in and it works (or it auto detects if it's on a network). But colleagues on windows or osx have to download drivers, usually filled with crapware (i.e. "YOU ARE OUT IF INK, BUY IT HERE" messages, unless they're careful to download the barebone drivers instead of the full driver pack).

<comment><USER3> It seems "ready for the desktop" when applied to Linux means something different from "ready for the desktop" when applied to, say, Windows.

Windows: It can come with crapware pre-installed, such as "personal firewalls" and "antivirus" software which are mainly ad delivery platforms for the partners of whoever sold you the hardware. It can require you to go to malware-ridden sites with deliberately deceptive webpage designs in order to download some kinds of software. It occasionally requires maintenance in the form of digging through sometimes deliberately obfuscatory registry settings. It only runs Windows software; if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like you're insane. That's ready.

Linux: It must have no deficiencies. It has a package manager which performs dependency tracking (something alien to Windows, as far as I know) and contains no malware. It can never requires maintenance of any kind. It must run Windows software flawlessly. Only then will it be ready.

MacOS X: It has settings you can't change. It does things its way. If you disagree, you're wrong. It runs nobody else's software. That's ready.

<comment><USER4> > if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like > you're insane.

We make good use of cygwin at our workplace. While it's not a perfect solution, it's very easy to install and use. It's incredibly useful to run linux/unix applications "inside" a windows environment.

<comment><USER5> I haven't tried cygwin in quite a few years, but I hear that it's improved a lot. Still a large installation though, but very useful if you must use windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I installed OpenBSD 5.6 on my old Thinkpad x201 and much to my surprise, it just worked. [...] WiFi required a firmware update [...] I won't cover how to burn an ISO to a CD. [...] the various tweaks to config files in OpenBSD in my 'configs' github repo [... etc...]"

Is this a joke?

"Just worked". I don't think those words mean what you think they mean, even with the backtracking at the end of the post.

Marcellus Wallace would have something to say about how near "just worked" that is.

<comment><USER7> So I'm the author of the linked post. I hadn't ever used OpenBSD seriously in a desktop setting. I've installed it for servers to play around with.

And to answer your question "Is this a joke?", my writing is partly in jest and partly in seriousness. The fact that I had the laptop configured in about 45 mins (still faster than setting up Windows) was a surprise to me. It's faster than attempts at setting up Linux on it. Exception might be Debian but I've slept since then.

Regarding configs, those are just preferences. With the exception of the trackpoint middle click button, I don't actually need any of the other things as some nice OpenBSD devs have informed me. For example, the PF settings I included aren't necessary.

edit: expound on configs

<comment><USER8> I would say that to really use OpenBSD as a desktop OS, the login.conf tweaks are non-optional. Otherwise you will find "big" software like browsers with more than a few tabs open, Office suites, etc. being killed due to the default memory limits.

<comment><USER9> Minor correction: firefox (at least) isn't "killed" due to memory limits. firefox segfaults because it tries to allocate memory and doesn't check for null. chrome in effect works around the memory limit by using one process per tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recognize the problem of distro hopping for years and the comforts of proprietary operating systems. Then I found Arch Linux. Once installed, there is less fiddeling than for any other system I have tried, for my usecase. I tried installing OpenBSD on my laptop about a month ago, and it failed miserably, as it could not recognize the wireless network driver. There was also talk about this ancient technology called CD-ROM, which was disturbing. Within less than an hour, Arch Linux was up and running with all my favorite applications installed and a fully working desktop / window manager.

<comment><USER11> If the internal wifi doesn't work you could try a supported USB-based wifi adapter. Your internal card might eventually be supported. If having internal wifi is very important then try before you buy.

Do you remember what Linux wifi support was like between 2000 and 2010? Wifi drivers are pretty hard to write and there are virtually no docs for any of the available hardware. Linux (and FreeBSD, too) have better wifi support nowadays because vendors have finally started writing drivers for those systems. Look at the email addresses of authors in copyright statements of Linux drivers for Atheros, Broadcom, and Intel cards, for example, and you'll see that this driver code was written in-house by vendors. OpenBSD doesn't get that level of support from vendors.

<comment><USER11> By the way, add Realtek and Ralink (now Mediatek) to the above list of companies writing drivers for Linux.

And now name a wifi chipset that isn't made by one of these companies. :-)

It's awesome that Linux has achieved this kind of support. But this is a luxury. Don't take it for granted. It took a long time and a lot of energy to get there. These companies are still keeping hardware docs under NDAs so it is very hard for other open source systems to compete fairly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When the article says "wifi required a firmware update" the premise that openbsd "just worked" is false. This sort of tweaking and configuring is exactly the same as for any Linux distro. We've been doing this sort of Linux tweaking in my employer's systems group for 15 years, and no end in sight. For that matter, the same as downloading a new device driver for wifi on Windows, and of course we all have shared that experience too.

It seems to me that the only way you get a seamless experience with an OS install is if the hardware vendor has carefully tested and tuned the OS configuration for that specific piece of hardware. Apple does this, and even they aren't flawless.

<comment><USER13> OpenBSD packages firmware and handles it automatically on first boot with fw_update(1). There is no "manual tweaking", it just means that some wireless adapters won't function using the ramdisk kernel for installation.

<comment><USER14> If it was automatically handled, why would the author mention it specifically?

And if you have to go to the "very thorough OpenBSD documentation" just to configure basic desktop setup, then no, it doesn't "just work". You shouldn't need to go to documentation to set things like timezone or user/pass, so why is documentation mentioned for a "just works" install?

<comment><USER13> If you don't have wired networking configured, fw_update(1) won't be able to fetch firmware on first boot, in that case it needs to be run manually.

The timezone and a default user can be created during installation, however yes, it is perfectly acceptable to expect that a user is capable of reading documentation.

<comment><USER14> It is not perfectly acceptable to claim "just works" if the user has to read documentation. It violates the definition of "just works" if you have to crack open the docs.

<comment><USER15> Okay then, with that definition no operating system I've ever used has "just worked".

Hmm. I was trying to be snarky there, but now that I think about it, it might not be so far off the mark...

<comment><USER14> Yes, any task you have to read documenation for is, pretty much by definition, not a "just works" task. Of course, 'using' an operating system has so many aspects to it that your point is pretty nonsensical. In any case, we were talking about _installing_ the OS, not _using_ it.

That said, there are several OSes out there that have plenty of users who never read the docs for _using_ it. Android, iOS, OSX, and Windows all have teeming masses of people who are able to use them adequately without reading documentation (just ask someone who's worked a support desk).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I installed OpenBSD on an old Dell B130 last week, but it choked on the Broadcom BCM4318 wireless controller. I got it to connect with little difficulty after installing the driver, but speeds were slower than molasses (it took minutes to establish SSH connections between machines on the same LAN). Attempts to use the wired Broadcom BCM4401-B0 ethernet controller prevented it from booting. I finally gave up and installed Slackware Linux on it again, which also requires extra work for the wireless controller but yields great performance.

I don't blame OpenBSD and am still looking for an appropriate machine to install it on. I'm no stranger to the OS, having used it to build transparent bridging firewalls in the 3.x days. The installer has really improved a lot since then.

But I am concerned with the state of networking hardware, now that more and more machines are produced with WiFi only. The number of points for failure seem to be multiplying and the dependence on an Internet connection is a given these days (sometimes even during OS installation). I look forward to the day when all OS installations handle network connections as simply as OS X does (which I realize is by virtue of its control over hardware & software integration).

<comment><USER17> > it took minutes to establish SSH connections between machines on the same > LAN

Most likely you were using a stupid DNS server that did not respond to reverse queries. See [http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html#RevDNS](http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html#RevDNS)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the tip. I have three resolvers on my LAN, but two of them require the FQDN for reverse lookups. I'll make sure to add "search localdomain" to /etc/resolv.conf next time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like the sentiment, but reading [http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html](http://www.openbsd.org/ftp.html) about buying optical media as the best way to get openbsd, and how to boot a floppy, I immediately became skeptical. So I did a quick search for UEFI and Secure Boot and nothing comes up. I see a reference to GRUB (which can be compiled to boot UEFI computers) and rEFIt which is abandoned in favor of rEFInd. rEFInd can support both UEFI and Secure Boot. Any Mac or PC with Windows 8+ is (U)EFI based, and additionally Secure Boot enabled with Windows 8. Yes that can be disabled and then re-enabled to go back and forth between Windows and openBSD, but this is pretty well solved on Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE out of the box. Maybe the best is openSUSE which has the proper chainloader patch to boot Windows from GRUB in Secure Boot mode, obviating the need to go through the firmware's boot manager to switch between OS's. If openBSD install media lacks UEFI support, it isn't a deal killer, however it makes it rather substantially less "out of the box" if this isn't just dealt with at install time like it is on at least those three linux distributions.

</comment><comment><USER19> Perhaps the fact that simply installing an operating system and being shocked that it worked isn't really enough to start a mass migration.

OpenBSD is awesome...but anything that uses X windows isn't going to be the majority desktop anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm pretty sure his surprise is that it mostly works out of the gate, not that it is a completely tailored experience to his desires. Having it boot to a desktop and have network access is a pretty big deal, especially with the expectations for a BSD that would have been set more along the lines of "server" for me and not "desktop experience."

I'm also sure he's joking that this is the year of the BSD desktop, and it's a funny joke.

<comment><USER7> You are correct. I use a literary device known as humor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The thing to remember in these "ready for the desktop" debates is that for 95% of Windows or Mac OS users, they never experience the initial installation and configuration of the OS. The manufacturer of the computer does that, and it (hopeully) "just works" out of the box. All the necessary drivers are preinstalled and the OS is configured for that specific combination of hardware.

With Linux or BSD on the other hand, you're almost certainly installing it yourself. The basic install for most distros and even OpenBSD is just about as painless as it could be, but even "simple" questions such as using existing partitions or creating new are going to lose a lot of folks, to say nothing of tweaking config files, choosing and configuring a window manager, etc.

Hand a user a computer with a properly installed modern Linux or BSD desktop, and most would be just fine. So "ready for the desktop" is not really anything to do with the state of the OS, it's all to do with someone actually selling a PC with that OS properly installed and configured.

</comment><comment><USER21> I tried installing OpenBSD 5.6 with XFCE on a Thinkpad X300, and I didn't have any trouble with the hardware I use, or the base system, in fact everything looks well though out and documented in the manpages. (Gnome works too but it feels quite slow even on Linux)

In the end I switched back to Linux when I encountered trouble with applications from the ports, for example libreoffice dumping core everytime you click somewhere in a spreadsheet. I did write down all the tweaks/configuration that I've done on the system in an ansible script, and my plan is to try again with the next release, and report some bugs if it still fails.

<comment><USER11> Bumping datasize-cur in /etc/login.conf up to at least 1024M should prevent the libreoffice crashes. It's quite possible that this limit will be bumped up by default soon as the low default limits keep causing issues with applications like libreoffice and firefox (though for some setups low limits make sense).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> No.

I think what the BSDs do is great and they are fantastic for servers of varied types and sizes however running it on a laptop is backwards. The power management and hardware support just aren't there, even in Linux, to rival the kind of integration Apple has with it's hardware and OSX. You can get close with Linux or windows on a thinkpad, sure, but running BSD on X where X isn't a server is not the way forward for a non commercial desktop.

Yes Linux and OSX have their own problems today but they aren't the the ones discussed in this article. Sometimes you have to suffer through changes and progress for the end result.

<comment><USER23> So tired of people mocking the OS choices of others. If someone is happy with Linux or BSD in their own use, how does that equate to a claim that this same choice is acceptable for everyone and that it is the "year of the _____ desktop"? In the desktop there are many niche choices that some of us make, they work well for us and I don't think we ought to be mocked for it or told we can't do it.

<comment><USER7> As the author of the post, I'm not mocking others' OS choice. I made that title mostly as a joke. I also was just cataloging my thoughts on setting up OpenBSD 5.6 on a ThinkPad x201. I actually didn't intend for that many people to read it.

I submitted it to lobste.rs as a resource for people who might be thinking about doing it, nothing more.

I agree with you that people just choose what works for them. I was just surprised OpenBSD worked for me on that laptop.

<comment><USER23> Yeah the comment was not targeted at you. I ran OpenBSD on a laptop for years until the hardware died and I used Debian on the next one. Recently bought new hardware and put FreeBSD on it.

These are exactly what I am happy with. Lightweight unix with a lightweight X setup. Does exactly what I ask and nothing more. I recognize it's not for, say, my parents. I am not doing it with hopes that it will conquer the world. But somehow some segment of the OS X crowd is disappointed with this and feels like they have to mock it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm not an OpenBSD user (I was briefly, but now use Linux or OS X because of software availability, though I may go back at some point), however, one thing I really like about OpenBSD is the philosophy of doing it their own way. It's very opinionated and I find that to be a good thing. One of the things I find frustrating with Linux is that it tries to be everything, which is good for flexibility, but bad in some other respects. OS X on the other hand has a lot of opacity to me, and I'm not particularly fond of Xcode or objective-C.

</comment><comment><USER25> The year of the mixed desktop is upon us. Who can afford to use just one OS these days?

I use OSX because it's a Unix that runs Photoshop and Python. I use Linux because the hardware is readily available through /dev and its USB stack is sturdy enough to put up with my crappy firmware. I use Windows because that's the only place a lot of tools (e.g., embedded debuggers) and games are available.

The web browser has really made it possible for me to be mostly OS agnostic for most "normal" users' desktop needs (email, documents, video, music, &etc).

</comment><comment><USER13> A lot of people get a bad first impression by trying OpenBSD in virtualization, if you want to see how it really performs then try it out on your laptop.

OpenBSD has kernel modesetting (KMS) for Intel and AMD graphics. Here's a video from OpenBSD's GNOME 3 port maintainer, Antoine Jacoutot:

[https://www.bsdfrog.org/tmp/undeadly- gnome.webm](https://www.bsdfrog.org/tmp/undeadly-gnome.webm)

He's running 5.5 release in this video, and it looks much better in person. Of course, things have improved in 5.6 and the upcoming 5.7.

</comment><comment><USER26> 2000 should have been the year of the UNIX/Linux desktop. Windows XP was late, users were fed up with Windows 95 crashing, the Internet bolt-ons for Windows 95 were not very good, and Windows 2000 wasn't compatible with many old 16-bit applications. There was a big window of opportunity there. It was missed.

<comment> mkr-hn Do you mean Windows 98? And I don't think Windows 2000 was meant as a consumer OS.

<comment><USER26> Windows 98 was a rehash of Windows 95, as was Windows ME. Windows 2000 was a good desktop OS, based on Windows NT, but many of the crappier 16-bit apps wouldn't run, so it wasn't much used by home users. Windows XP was Windows 2000 with a lot of Windows 95 kludged back in so that old 16-bit apps would run and the user experience looked more like Windows 95.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When XP was EOL'd, I started wiping old systems (most in rough shape or running some kind of malware) and installing Lubuntu. Everything has worked with little or no adjustments, most importantly printers. We use Terminal services for the few Windows apps that people need, but otherwise they rarely use it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does Is there a desktop Carlisle of being secure enough for OpenBSD? Last time I installed it X and window managers were in ports and therefore didn't get the same kind of scrutiny as the rest of the OS. If you're wrecking security by installing an insecure GUI you may as well run Linux.

<comment><USER29> X gets some scrutiny - it now runs with no user-to-hardware access on lots of hardware, and with restricted user-to-hardware access on most everything (for more information, look at machdep.allowaperture.)

Window managers aren't common sources of vulnerabilities, but there are two in base (an older fvwm, and cwm [EDIT: and twm]).

The real problem, of course, is that you probably want a _browser_. Even with OpenBSD's hardening and secure defaults (-current takes some steps towards not hooking up gstreamer-plugins[-good] to the internet), browsers are plenty scary.

<comment><USER30> > Window managers aren't common sources of vulnerabilities, but there are two > in base (an older fvwm, and cwm).

Don't forget twm.

<comment><USER31> Indeed, don't. I used twm for years and found it perfect for a simple 'some xterms' desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> ".profile - This file is loaded for each new logon session. In order to get it to reload fully, you need to logout and back in."

Just use the dot command in the shell, like if still in your home directory ". .profile" Or if in root, ". ./.profile"

There is no need to log out and in again.

</comment><comment><USER33> Rufius do you have any clarification on what trouble you ran into with FreeBSD 9.x?

</comment><comment><USER34> Funny to read an article that says that "X" is going to become main stream and who opens the argument with

"I won't cover how to burn an ISO to a CD."

</comment><comment><USER35> Highly recommend you try Arch Linux. But if you don't like to configure anything then Ubuntu may be a better choice for you.

</comment><comment><USER36> 2015 the year of elementary os on mid 2007 iMac! everything works out of box, except have to do source compile for emacs 24.4.

</comment><comment><USER37> The most important part of the post was: "YMMV." Believe me, it will.

</comment><comment><USER38> ridiculous, they missed almost every techinical progress of the last decade. Also this "year of the desktop" stuff is linked to usability. Debian or Fedroa do a nice job there nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER39> Of course no screenshot. What did I expect ...

<comment><USER7> I could provide one if you like but it looks like any other *nix system running X11...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Did they finally implemented command history in shell? Last time I used OpenBSD it was considered as possible attack vector.

<comment><USER41> ?

Command history is a property of the shell and pdksh supports it, it just isn't enabled if HISTFILE is unset (other shells use a default HISTFILE if it's unset).

Just `export HISTFILE=~/.sh_history` from your `.profile` and you're done.

<comment><USER9> Probably worth clarifying that even without histfile, each shell will keep its own history in memory. You can still run commands again by pressing the up arrow. Seems obvious, but people seem to have some funny notions about OpenBSD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't understand programmers who say that Linux has so and so unsolvable problem.

A certain program running on Linux has a problem on your particular hardware? You wanted a Unix environment, so surely you've investigated the market for compatibility with Linux, when you purchased your hardware.

Second, I've been running arch linux with standard packages on several random laptops and desktops and never had any problem whatsover. It's been my main OS for years. Actually my only OS.

Third, a certain program crashes/ has a bug on your hardware? Then switch that program with something else. If what you care about is a Unix environment for programming, and Gnome is having some problem with your hardware, than switch to Xfce, or Xmonad, or i3 ... That the rational thing to do.

If you still want that particular program that's having problems with your hardware, because, maybe you really like the UI, then by all means fix that bug. It shouldn't take you more than a few minutes, at most a couple of hours in 90% of the times. This assuming you're a C programmer, of course, and maybe some experience with device drivers.

If you're not a hacker, don't like playing with the internals of various userland programs or OS components, then don't compare Linux with Mac or other commercial crap. Set up a bounty for fixing your problem, or donate to the Linux foundation, or the software you would want improved.

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

This being said, I'm currently in the process of switching to FreeBSD (later maybe some other BSDs), because of the cleaner, lighter code-base.

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

LE: apparently, as seen by recent down-voting patterns on some of my latest comments, there aren't a lot of hackers on this site. I don't see why a reply that expresses an opinion that is not hurtful to anyone would warrant downvotes, but who cares.

<comment><USER43> It's puzzling to me how you could say that fixing driver issues "shouldn't take you more than a few minutes... assuming you're a C programmer, of course", and then bemoan the lack of "hackers" on this site, and then believe that your opinion isn't hurtful. Objectively, if it only takes minutes to hours to fix driver issues, for anyone who knows C, why are they even showing up in the drivers I get when I install a distro? Subjectively, do you believe that passive-aggressively belittling someone's competence (even if you are correct) is not hurtful?

Besides all that, HN is not a community for expressing correct opinions. HN is a community for expressing opinions (hopefully, but not necessarily, correct) in a constructive, respectful manner. Downvotes are not disagreement; they are an indication that your manner of expression does not build the community that people want.

You might enjoy (re)reading [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


The Science of Entrepreneurship - <AUTHOR> http://dustincurtis.com/the_science_of_entrepreneurship.html <comment><USER2> Designing and executing experiments is a skill that goes beyond science and beyond entrepreneurship. It will serve you well in everything you do.

The big take-away is when you learn to only make conclusions your experiment set out to find. Said another way, don't answer questions you didn't ask.</comment>


How Apple Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/howappleworks <comment><USER2> It's amazing to me how so many people outside Apple think Jony Ive could be a credible candidate for CEO, when no one inside Apple would believe that for a second. The only product-focused executive who would even have had a chance is Scott Forstall.

To the naive observer, Apple seems like a hardware company. But it is really a software company monetized through hardware sales, just as Google is a software company monetized through advertising. As Steve himself said, differentiation through software is the key to all of Apple's products. Ive doesn't have much experience, credibility or interest in this area.

On the other hand, Scott Forstall is the most powerful and credible software executive at Apple. More specifically: the Human Interface team that does all the HI design for iOS and Mac OS X reports to Forstall, not Ive. Ive isn't even one of the executives present at executive HI reviews, whereas Forstall is the one driving the decisions when SJ is not there. The HI team may get less outside visibility than Industrial Design but they make a much bigger difference to the experience of Apple products.

Furthermore, it's clear from watching company politics that Forstall has the ambition to go to the top (as does Phil Schiller), and Ive just doesn't have that kind of drive. Ive has the trust and affection of Steve for being an artist, and that's the main reason he is on the executive team. He hasn't had to fight for it like the other execs. Note for example that Eddy Cue (iTunes, iCloud) and Craig Federighi (Mac OS X) still aren't on the executive team, despite heading critical product lines and much bigger departments than ID.

<comment><USER3> Ah so that is why the hardware is so much more aesthetically pleasing than the software.

<comment><USER3> Come on who in their right mind would claim that iTunes and iCal look as nice as the iPhone 4?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Steve Jobs wore a lot of hats (ruthless tastemaker and keynote impresario among them) not because the CEO must hold these roles but because he happened to be best at them. Arguing that they must be held by the guy with the organizational power to fire anyone is daft.

No one person replaces Steve Jobs. Tim Cook and Jony Ive know it.

<comment><USER5> Someone has to be CEO and for the long term is Tim Cook really the best person for the job ? Steve Job is an irreplaceable part of Apple's lore, but that does not stop Jony Ive from making his own major mark. He already has a rich history of designing great products. To understand Aarons point better you have to watch Steve Jobs interview, see: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg> . There he says the only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste. Steve recognize some questions it's importance, he says having good taste is important for Apple. According to Steve having good taste is key to Apple's culture and success, Steve Jobs said it. A company can have great financial success without good taste, Steve Jobs said that about Microsoft. But as Aaron mentioned in the article that is not how Apple works. Tim Cook is great at operations, perhaps he should have stayed COO. The interesting move would be to appoint Jonathan Ive's as CEO. Of course to many that would seem unconventional and perhaps even risky. But that would be authentic Apple, that would be thinking different.

<comment><USER6> Implicit in your argument is that Tim Cook doesn't have good taste. I suspect he does. After all, look at his choice of employment.

<comment><USER5> He recognize good design but he does not have great design taste to make the tough calls. That only comes with experience of designing, building products. Steve has the design experience so does Ive. When presented with competing designs, he has to have great design vision to chose the one that would be the most successful. Being and editor is not easy.

<comment><USER7> Well he has been "designing" right along side Steve and John for the past 13 years right? While he might be "just" an ops guy, I'd argue that as much (or more) of Apple's design brilliance comes from the willingness to embrace and invent new industrial processes rather than the radius of a curve on a design. The candy colored iMacs required inventive injection molding at the time. The Cube, Unibody Macbooks, the Air, iPad battery life, etc. As nice as the ID is, it is the willingness to invest in and incorporate new processes that makes Apple's design special.

Given that we know almost nothing about the guy except that Steve picked him as his replacement, I'd say he'll do ok:)

<comment><USER8> According to an interview with Jony Ive in _Objectified_ , part of industrial design is designing the manufacturing process. Of course, implementing and enforcing that process involves the ops team.

On your second point, you're almost certainly right. Aside from the appointment of a certain Mr. Sculley almost 30 years ago, Steve's track record in hiring the absolute best people to work with is as good as his track record in shepherding innovative products into the marketplace.

<comment><USER7> You are right that industrial designers should specify the manufacturing processes. That said, it is rare to see designers have SO much sway over how things get built.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Tim Cook has been playing a certain role to date. He has been in charge of execution and organization. Does this mean that he doesn't have taste? Does the fact that he is not a genius public speaker mean that he doesn't have great taste?

It's possible that he does, and possible that he doesn't, but it's entirely possible that Cook has talents that simply weren't being tapped in his old job. I suspect that following up on the vision of Jobs and the design group actually takes a lot more of this magical "taste" than is immediately obvious. There are a huge number of decisions that need to be made even in the later stages of the process.

It seems like we're assuming that because he was a COO, Cook doesn't have the talents that it takes to be a CEO. How can we possibly know that? The only evidence given is that he's a COO now, and doesn't have the showmanship that Jobs does.

<comment><USER10> We don't know that the assistant janitor at Apple doesn't have the killer taste required to run the company, but without any particular evidence of it, it's probably best to assume he/she does not.

But we don't really know who was, is, and will be running the show at Apple, or how those matters of taste are truly decided. All we know is that this is the time they chose to officially announce Jobs' succession and that Cook is the person who they felt investors would have the most confidence in as CEO. The ultimate power is with the BoD, and probably with Jobs for the rest of his life.

<comment><USER11> >We don't know that the assistant janitor at Apple doesn't have the killer taste required to run the company, but without any particular evidence of it, it's probably best to assume he/she does not.

Steve Jobs did not specifically request that an assistant janitor take over as CEO. With Job's blessing, it's safe to assume that either Cook, or some system Job's put in place, is expected to continue Apple's taste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Here's how Apple products are created: a team of designers decide exactly what a product should do and how it should look and feel, their work is ruthlessly edited by Steve until he approves, and then the entire rest of the company is given the task of moving mountains to make that dream real."

Unsurprisingly, this is exactly how Pixar works. But Pixar was essentially run by Ed Catmull, who is much more like Tim Cook than Steve Jobs. Yes, Steve was CEO, but he wasn't the tastemaker at Pixar. As long as the CEO trusts someone else to drive the taste and works hard to preserve that culture, Apple will continue to be successful.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a certain degree of arrogance built into the idea that the person best suited to run the world's most successful company is the one whose skills we can best appreciate.

There's a connection, but one I can't well articulate, between that point and the success of the iPad. I know I'm not the only one who occasionally scratches his head at the popularity of a device that's too big to pocket and too small to compete with a laptop. But it's Apple's execution in the _mass market_ that matters, not what the geekerati think.

</comment><comment><USER14> I disagree with this post.

Jobs is still Chairman of the Board. I imagine decisions regarding "taste" will still run through Jobs. Ive is likely to have an increased role as well.

Tim Cook does not have to take over all of the roles that Steve Jobs had in order to be successful. He just needs to execute on Job's vision, and other top executives like Forstall and Ive will step in to take over some of Steve's day to day.

<comment><USER15> I think most people are taking on this debate with the ghoulish yet all-to- possible assumption that Jobs is not going to be with us for much longer.

<comment><USER16> [http://www.tmz.com/2011/08/26/steve-jobs-apple-photo- resigna...](http://www.tmz.com/2011/08/26/steve-jobs-apple-photo-resignation- ceo-sick/#.TllQFl1ghJE)

TMZ got a recent photo of him, take a look.

I'm not a doctor but he doesn't look good.

<comment><USER17> If you know anything about pancreatic cancer and the other glimpses of Jobs' medical history, you don't need tasteless photos to figure out what is going on. People keep saying stuff like "get better Steve", which is a nice sentiment but at some point it's not appropriate anymore to talk about a terminally ill person that way.

This guy has already survived a very long time with an illness that kills most people within months. He has now chosen to take a bow and exit the stage gracefully, a decision that I'm sure was made as late as possible. I'm certain that resignation letter has been sitting in a drawer at his lawyer's office for quite some time. The truth is this man will be dead within the next few weeks, let's give him the privacy to go out with decency. Paparazzi shots and discussions about how "not good" he looks are completely unnecessary.

As far as this thread's topic is concerned, the question boils down to the point of whether Apple can thrive on execution alone. We'll see. Ideally, Ive will reconsider scaling back his role as a creative lead. I think together with Schiller's enthusiasm and Cook's organizational talent, there is no reason why Apple shouldn't continue to put out great innovation. But even if they _do_ enter a creative slump, they have a lot of momentum and cash to carry them over any dry spell that might happen.

<comment><USER18> An overflowing warchest is probably one of the most dangerous enablers of complacency. Screw ups and missed targets get glossed over as "There's money to cover it." Eventually, it becomes business as usual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Question: Why does the 'tastemaker' have to be CEO? A traditional CEO's role is to provide vision for the company, sure, but Cook clearly knows he's not Jony Ive, and I'm sure is willing to keep people like Ive around to make those 'tastemaker' decisions. I don't think tastemaker == CEO at all, necessarily.

<comment><USER20> Operational depts have a natural tendency to answer "that's not possible" when challenged very hard, and to try and negotiate compromises. You don't need the top guy to be the tastemaster, but you need his arbitrages to be heavily biased in favor of designers, not operatives.

For this reason, it sounds worrisome to put the chief _operative_ officer at the top position, generally speaking. Now I don't know Tim Cook, maybe he's able/trained to let the visionaries call the shots.

<comment><USER8> I think if you're the COO at _Apple_ , of all companies, you're used to making the impossible happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's not just about taste though, is it? WebOS was beautifully designed, but has basically been unsuccessful. It's really a combination of taste and the ability to execute on it. Jobs wasn't as successful with Next, despite his tastes. He may not have had the right team in place to work with, to execute on his vision. And with Apple, he already had a well established brand to work with. Even all of the products released by Apple under Jobs' reign were not successful, such as the G4 Cube, the first Apple TV, the ROKR iTunes phone - and who is to say that products he nixed wouldn't have gone on to be successful - no one really knows.

Tastes are important, but there are a LOT of things that matter in addition to good design taste.

<comment><USER22> You make a good point. Execution is just as crucial to Apple's success as the good taste.

Palm and HP never had much success because they couldn't execute on the hardware front. They were continually behind the curve on hardware and continued to push an unpopular form factor. As a former Pre user, webOS was a pleasure to use but the phone itself was poorly made and had dated hardware.

HP/Palm was always too little, too late and they just couldn't execute.

Apple's excellent supply chaining and fabrication processes are a huge edge against the competition. They can execute where other's can't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's funny how all of you armchair board members are second-guessing Steve Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER24> being able to deliver a good keynote ≠ having a critical eye. and just like that, your argument vanishes in a poof of logic.

</comment><comment><USER25> Naming Tim Cook as CEO makes a lot of sense. Obviously, it made the most sense to Jobs himself. People like to think that Apple's design alone is the only reason the company's grown so large. It's easy to forget that without the operational work of Cook, Apple could not even have built the products they did. In that regard it makes more sense for Cook to be CEO because he can insure that the company remains as profitable as it is, while also enabling new devices to be realized. With great designs and weak organizational leadership, Apple cannot thrive as it has.

</comment><comment><USER26> Even if all your arguments are true, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the "top tastemaker" also needs to be CEO of the company.

</comment><comment><USER27> If Apple is to continue its revolutionary successes, then there needs to be a well functioning "4-man band" to take his place. Mr. Ive can still supply the vision part, but he'll have to work together with others to ensure software design and execution are harmoniously in step. Fortunately, I think that's what Steve has been planning all along.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ive might have been Job's first choice. But he wanted to quit, scale back work a few years ago. He had to be convinced not to move back to England.

</comment><comment><USER29> That is some mighty small font and large margins. I wish people would make their text a bit easier on the eyes.

</comment><comment><USER30> This person doesn't know wtf he's talking about.

</comment><comment><USER31> Steve Jobs worked on a lot of products in his life- not only the many that we know about but probably several times that in products that didn't end up coming to market.

But there is one product that is the most central to Steve's Life. In fact, it is his masterwork. He started when he was young and is still working on it today-- and that product is Apple itself.

Steve says Tim Cook is the right person to succeed him, and I believe that Steve would never say this if he didn't believe it. He, more than anyone else in the world, wants to see Apple continue to be what he wanted it to be.

Also, Tim Cook is gay (sorry but for me, that counts as an asset in the taste department). He's a creative guy (you have to be) and he's a uncompromising. You can't work as hard as he does and achieve what he has behind the scenes without a kind of ruthlessness that sets a very high bar.

Tim's experience as COO is exactly what makes him the best man to fill Steve's shoes, if ruthless focus on design is what Apple needs. After all, Steve isn't a designer. Steve doesn't even, by all accounts, have a lot of natural taste. He's acquired the taste over many years. What Steve has always had, and what Tim seems to have, is an uncompromisingly high bar.

Jonathan Ive is probably going to be well compensated for staying at Apple over the long term, and the skilled software designers and hardware and software engineers and those who lead them as well are critical.

But the "vision" thing is not a mystical ability, and it isn't an innate talent, or if it is, both Tim and Steve have it.

In fact, I think this is why Tim was the preferred choice by Steve, over people like Ron Johnson and Jonathan Ive. I think Steve saw this in Tim's nature, and not in Jonathans.

This makes sense, because I think a designer has to be more flexible and more open minded and more willing to take risks. A designer has to produce some crap in the process of producing brilliance because you can't know in advance that it is crap. To be able to ruthlessly weed out the crap, you have to have a different perspective.

So, Steve made the decision, and I think it makes perfect sense, but even if it didn't, who better than Steve to know who the right person is?

</comment><comment><USER32> Aaron was right about what should have been done, but it's known that Ives incurred the wrath of Jobs recently when he said he was tired of working in the US and wanted to go home and Jobs said absolutely not. This put Ives on Apple's "Disloyal" list.

Cook will be a disaster. He would have been fine as an exact opposite but balancing weight against a visionary leader like Jobs, as Ives would have been. But as the visionary leader, a man whose only contributions have been to reduce costs and quality in order to increase profits, it's going to go down a predictable path that other companies have followed.

The salary and $385 million signing bonus thing being reported are obscene for Cook who has not a single case of innovation, because it is something he is simply not capable of. This is not an insult against him, it is a simple acknowledgment of his known strengths and capabilities.

<comment><USER33> It never ceases to amaze me how much amateur advice people have for the most successful tech company in the world.

<comment><USER34> I find it's generally related to how much stock they own in the most successful tech company in the world.

<comment><USER35> I.e. large shareholders will contact Apple directly?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Law Professor Reads FCC Conditions on Comcast Merger So You Don't Have To - <AUTHOR> http://scrawford.net/blog/fcc-conditions-on-comcastnbcu/1433/

<comment><USER2> To summarize the summary:

The FCC was mainly concerned about whether the Hulus and Netflixes of the world would be locked out of NBC content. So, if another major media conglomerate cuts a deal with one of these "online video distributors", NBC is required to do that as well, on comparable terms. They're also required to license to "TV Everywhere"-style services of other cable and satellite networks, again on comparable terms to other content providers. There are arbitration rules for the inevitable disputes over what's "comparable".

They're also required to respect net neutrality wrt video content, and to preserve standalone internet access.

Lastly, there's a really weird-looking condition saying that they should try to preserve local news reporting at NBC-owned local TV stations by finding and partnering with local non-profit reporting cooperatives "within twelve months of closing".

The above is a condensed and (over?)simplified version of what was already a condensed and simplified version of a longer legal document --- but it might at least help you decide whether you've got an interest in reading the whole megillah.

</comment><comment><USER3> My qualm about all of this. It looks good on paper. But it all comes down to how the rules get enforced. The history of the telecoms suggests that they will agree to stuff up front, then find creative ways to drag their feet later. So we may not get what we've been promised.

<comment><USER4> That was certainly the case in Illinois with SBC / AT&T.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does part of the FCC conditions allow Bittorrent permanently? [0]

Startups could reduce distribution costs a lot this way.

[0] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comcast#Netwo...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comcast#Network_neutrality)</comment>


Target Removes Gender Labels from Kids Sections - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-07/target-removes-gender-labels-from-kids-sections-after-complaints <comment> V-2 _In June, Ohio mom Abi Bechtel called out Target's gender designations in its toy aisle._

Just googled the Ohio mom, she happens to run an interesting blog titled "Faith, Feminism, and Fat Acceptance" :) You couldn't make this stuff up.

 _And so you are sick to death of white, evangelical, cisgender heterosexual American men. Sick of patriarchy and condescension and those narrow gendered boxes. Sick, utterly sick of the evangelical idolatry of gender roles that is carried on the backs of hungry children and hurting children and children caught in the crossfire while the adult world of the culture war rages on around them. Because hell yes, you are angry._

Them Ohio moms!

<comment><USER2> They seem to have changed some since I knew them, though they were certainly willing to stand up for themselves. I think that when I left Ohio (almost half a century ago), I had heard of "cis" only in reference to Cisalpine Gaul, and of gender only in reference to nouns, pronouns, and adjectives.</comment></comment>


What Is a Master's Degree Worth? - <AUTHOR> http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/what-is-a-masters-degree-worth/ <comment><USER4> I found this insightful:

 _The prevalence of so many strapped borrowers is why I recommend students borrow no more for their educations, in total, than they expect to make the first year out of school.

This rule of thumb won't work for everyone — heaven knows, you may be the rare literature M.A. who writes a best-selling novel and pays off her debt with one check — but it's a good starting point for anyone considering strapping herself to more education bills._

Also, I should note that if your undergrad degree was in a non-technical field, a technical master's will be quite worth the price. My undergrad was in music, and without my master's in CS I think I would have had a difficult time entering the field. Sure, I hear it's possible to become a programmer without any formal training, but the degree opened doors that allowed me to start in a much higher position.

<comment><USER5> Could you elaborate a bit more about the the CS program and how it prepared you for industry? What distinguished you from other BA holders?

<comment><USER6> I think the original poster was saying that he didn't have a B.S. in a technical field. So getting the Masters gave him the credentials he needed to go after jobs he was intrested in. I do not believe he was saying that he had a B.S. in Computer Science and needed a M.S. in Computer Science to compete.

I think its a good example of one of the points made in the linked articles. That if you have an undergrad degree that's not really what your interested in a Masters lets you correct that.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's correct. Not only was my undergrad degree in music, I had virtually no computer/technology experience of any kind (this was back in the 80's and I was still using typewriters to type up papers.) So it would have been pretty difficult for me to enter the profession directly.

As an aside, my master's program probably wasn't the best overall preparation for a career as a software developer, actually. It was highly theoretical/mathy, and I think undergrad CS students probably got more and more relevant programming experience. It was mostly about having the credentials, I think.

<comment><USER7> Was it difficult getting admitted to a master's program in CS without a technical bachelor's degree? My impression is that technical grad schools only want applicants with top-notch technical skills.

<comment><USER4> Well, don't think the CS program was that highly ranked, but I did have to take a lot of undergrad deficiencies (including about 15hrs math). IIRC, there were leveling classes (like grad level intro to CS classes) that you could take, but they didn't have a very good reputation and I opted to take a core of undergrad classes with better instructors instead.

Mostly it just took time and persistence to get through the deficiencies. My case was probably extreme because my undergrad music program required no math/science whatsoever, so i had a lot to make up for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The liberal education establishment has long maintained the fiction that "all degrees are equal". But no-one should be under any illusion that undergrad is a choice between professional/vocational training in knowledge work or a 4-year vacation (in the sense of spending time pursing a hobby).

<comment><USER9> I don't think either of those options can be faulted and I don't think the people who choose either of them are the ones with problems.

It's the kids who go to Uni because it's what you do after high school that are wondering what has happened to them.

There's also a group of people who went in intending to become academics and have found that academia is now madly cutting costs, but that's a different and more complex story.

<comment><USER10> "I don't think either of those options can be faulted and I don't think the people who choose either of them are the ones with problems."

I do. I'm perfectly willing to fault people for going to University, spending tens of thousands of dollars, and walking out with a degree in some obscure postmodern discipline or something. No matter how you may _feel_ about such a degree, the _objective_ value is quite low.

"Shouldn't people follow their bliss?" Well, first of all, no I actually don't entirely believe that, but secondly and _much_ more importantly, have you _looked_ at a real University's course list? You seriously had to pick "French Literature in the 19th century" as your specialization when there are 30 types of engineering, 50 types of science, and a couple hundred other programs with some sort of actual use?

When I went to university, I had two basic interests I could have specialized in: Music composition, and computer programming. _That's_ a no-brainer! In the course of my education, I subsequently discovered that I could have tolerated psychology, mathematics, electrical engineering (though I do prefer programming), and there's a couple of other things on a lower tier below those. Note how those are entire disciplines, each with interesting specialties of their own.

Did I fail to follow my bliss? No, I still minored in music, in fact. But I have no regrets about spending my money to get real skills.

The only people who share the fault with the students are the numerous people who told them to ignore practicality, at a time in the student's life when they still had no actual experience with which to understand the full implications of that and resist. Some might still have chosen to pursue their bliss, and I have no problem with that, _as long as it is done with eyes open_.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. Even at 17 contemplating university, it was _obvious_ that some disciplines were massively more employable than others. But there was - is - <USER2> myth that employers don't care what degree you have, so long as you have one, and that no matter what the subject is it's just a vehicle for "learning to learn". And that is arrant nonsense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At Boeing (where i work) a Masters Degree in an Engineering Field (cs for me) counts as about 2 years experience when promotions are considered. If you get your degree (Boeing will pay for everything) while you are employed here, they also give you a 100 shares of Boeing Stock.

So for some like me, getting an advanced degree is free, and only offers upside. So after reading the articles, I could sum it up as advanced technical degrees can help, advanced liberal arts degrees not so much. Oh and some schools have bills and need more students paying tuition to pay them. There are no surprises here.

</comment><comment><USER11> As an entirely international aside I got paid to do my Master's degree (EPSRC funding in the UK) rather than incur more debt. With a theoretical computer science BA, my MPhil allowed me to specialise and become more employable within my field, as well as having an easy transition into a related PhD - <USER3> was a no-brainer, really.

<comment><USER12> May I ask for the specifics of your course/field? I wanted to apply for EPSRC funding for a Masters/PhD at Warwick complexity complex but have been somewhat sidetracked by other opportunities. Would like to hear more about other peoples experience down similar roads so I can keep the idea on the back burner and sort out my long term plans.

<comment><USER11> MPhil in Computer Speech & Language Processing at Cambridge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A grad degree is a chance to be paid to work on a project of your choice, without as strong a demand to make it mass-marketable. It's a chance to work on a project where novelty and interestingness are the lead factors in the viability, and not how easy it is to sell it to end-users.

How valuable is that? Well, that depends on you.

</comment><comment><USER14> [note: off topic but it's still somewhat relevant to this crowd as it's an example of how not to implement print view]

That's a rather annoying "print view." [http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/what- is-a-...](http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/what-is-a-masters- degree-worth/?pagemode=print)

You gotta go through the article and click on all the "Read more…" links to get the full text before printing and it still has the "Resources" links (as if I can click on them after I've printed out the article, which I'm presumably going to do if I'm looking at the article in print mode).

I expect more from the newspaper that gives such nifty charts, various APIs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> The question is: Who is the customer? You could say the customer is the student who pays the university for the education. Or you could say the customer is the employer who hires the graduate.

There has been the impression in the past that getting a degree meant getting a job, but this is not the case. Employers, who have more at stake when hiring don't have to wait 4 years to learn whether or not their "purchase" was a good one. They are learning that the value of a college degree is not much when used as a predictor of job success. More valid predictors are work experience, internships, side projects, and a work ethic. None of which are gained in college. A lot of students think college is enough, but it isn't.

This is where the problem starts over the confusion about the customer. Colleges want students to be enrolled for 4 years. If college is hard and students don't make the A's they think they deserve simply for attending class, then the student leaves the university for one where an A is easier. The student consumer is buying a product and their product is a good GPA. A low GPA won't get them a job and that's what they are after.

This is a problem with money really. It's a philosophical life issue. Is your goal to receive value _from_ the rest of the world, or to create value _for_ the rest of the world. No one wants to work anymore. We've gotten lazy and complacent. The job has become avoiding work, when all too often, doing the work is easier than avoiding it.

Life has become too easy for too many. The rest of the world is eating America's lunch. Even our president thinks it's fine to "bailout" businesses who don't want to put the effort into producing products the world wants to buy. They are losing out to better innovation, better business models, and harder work from their competitors around the world.

For too long, education has been selling hope for a better life, a better job, a higher income. So students go into debt. Debt has allowed universities to continue charging more and more and more over time with deferred payment plans that yield little consequence to the full time student who doesn't yet understand the concept of debt or even _money_.

And let's not forget the parents who spend more time at work than at home teaching their children good values, a work ethic, how to care for themselves, the value of money.

America is really in a sad state of affairs. A depression is definitely on the way. Life has been too easy for too long. It's amazing as I think about it right now, I can _feel_ it. I can feel the exhuberance evaporating. I can feel the realization setting in that our hopes and dreams for an easy future are being dashed. Only a few people really _get_ it right now. There is still an air of optimism floating around. People are thinking, "No... no really, we can keep going like this... we can. If only we try."

But we can't. We can't keep going like this and be worth anything. What we are doing isn't worth anything. Who wants to pay for it? What is the value? What's the value of your college degree? What's the value of your employment? What's the value of your iPod and your 6 room house in the suburbs and your SUV and your $20,000 in credit card debt and $125,000 in student loans.

Too many people are falling for the clever sales and marketing strategy of the universities, the car companies, the banks, the real estate agents. The irrational are the prey. The predators are eating your money and you are left empty -- today _and_ tomorrow.

The easy path is the path to destruction. You have to _work_. You have to _think_. You have to analyze and predict and learn _math_.

This stuff is hard folks. It's hard to do things faster, or cheaper, or better than everyone else. Mediocrity isn't valuable. You have to be the cream of the crop. You have to work and practice and strive for perfection _every day_.

No one said life was going to be easy. It's even harder now that the competition has become _everyone_ in the world.

<comment><USER16> Well, if we're ranting, I might as well add my gripes:

One of the things people need to realize is that in order to earn $80.000 a year, you have to create say $130.000 for the company to break even on you. It isn't easy to create this kind of value every year. If you're in the producing layer of a company (software engineer / graphic designer) you have to create enough value to also pay for all the salaries of your managers, testers, secretaries and all other non-producing employees.

People focus way too much on what their want to earn, not on how to create value. The reasoning often goes like this "I have to do X, which is much harder than Y, and people who do Y earn $Y, so I should earn more than that!". Almost everybody has this weird concept of a "fair" salary, that has no bearing on reality.

<comment><USER17> Except... if X is much harder than Y, and people who do Y earn $Y dollars, but people who do X will earn less than Y dollars, who in their right mind is going to go and do X?

If the effort/reward/value equation doesn't balance, the role will go unfilled until it does.

<comment><USER10> But that's the way it's supposed to work. If nobody is willing to pay more than $Y for X that is harder than Y, then you _shouldn't_ go into it. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

You're looking at an instantaneous snapshot of a dynamic system. If it's a problem that nobody will do X, then people will pay more for it once the feedback propagates through. If it never does, then it wasn't worth it and you shouldn't specialize in it.

<comment><USER15> jerf, you aren't looking at it from two perspectives. Both employers and employees have options. If an employee could do teaching or job x, and teaching pays $30k and job x pays $60k, which should the employee take? If teachers earned more, then the pool of talent gets larger.

You say, _If it's a problem that nobody will do X_ , when really the issue is, "Nobody will do X for $X, but lots will do X for $Y."

In something as complex as a society, society has to make investments it its future. In our society, we have become so short focused on quarterly reports, that we have forgotten the value of education. The payoff of education to a society takes years, decades, generations... this is beyond simple supply/demand microeconomics.

<comment><USER10> You've attached extra semantics to X and Y that were not in the original post. I do not apologize for failing to _guess_ what you would read those variables as.

I acknowledge the value of government in tweaking the market values of some things; I'm only a little-l libertarian. However, as an engineer, I observe that in order to do that successfully, you have to start with a correct understanding of how the market works, _dynamically_ , not just statically. Getting emotional about valuations the market gives is not a good start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes, less than nothing. I was in the University of Connecticut's graduate linguistics program for a year before deciding it wasn't for me and dropping out. I could have stuck around for one more year and left with a master's, but in linguistics it's generally viewed as a "consolation prize" for students who weren't good enough to complete the PhD. For that reason I didn't even bother.

</comment><comment><USER19> bottom line: some degrees pay off more than others.

as recent census data shows, advanced degrees in business or engineering may earn up to 15% more, in contrast to degrees in arts or anthropology which face no substantial increase

</comment><comment><USER20> The difference between a job, or no job.

<comment><USER21> I know plenty of people with no degree who are working - some in quite highly- paid and fulfilling work. They've got there through being in the right place at the right time, internships, voluntary work and being good at what they do.

I also know a number of very talented people who've graduated university with BA and MA degrees this year - most of whom are currently scrambling over one another grasping desperately at what meagre scraps of low-paid part-time work exist in the radio industry at the moment. You can't put it in such simplistic terms. (I went out with a girl who'd been to Oxford a couple of years ago. She was jobless and living in a council flat.)</comment></comment>


1253 presidential candidates for 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.fec.gov/press/resources/2016presidential_form2pty.shtml <comment><USER2> I'm assuming that there is no cost to do this.</comment>


Roboto vs Helvetica Neue: Can you distinguish the new Android typeface? - <AUTHOR> http://typewar.com/quests/quest/12/

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. Aside from the block capitals, they are pretty distinguishable. Roboto's verticals are generally thicker. The round letters are taller and less round. Roboto has a bit of a curve on the long lines, for example at the bottom of the W. Helvetica's straight lines are actually straight. Roboto has trapezoidal stems on qrpgdb, and the curved lines on those letters get a lot thinner near the vertical. The k has a horizontal bar. The ascenders on lowercase letters are taller than capital letters, but Helvetica keeps them the same height.

Edit: of course this doesn't even account for kerning, punctuation, etc.

<comment><USER3> Looks like a ripoff to me:

[http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs- helv...](http://theunderstatement.com/post/11645166791/roboto-vs-helvetica)

<comment><USER4> I see two sans serif fonts in the same broad style and line width. It's not clear if the identical metrics are the defaults or an artifact of the presentation there (though "stealing" font metrics for the purpose of layout unification has a history much longer than the tech industry's). And Helvetica Neue is hardly an Apple invention anyway; it's a rejiggering of an ancient font everyone has been using and cloning for decades.

Really, what's the point here? That Roboto is another entry in the Helvetica/Arial family of sans serif typefaces? Shocking!

Edit: If I had to find a flame in this area: I think it can be argued that if Google really wanted to make the Roboto font into part of the Android brand, to the extent that they market it via its own name, they should have worked harder at making it unique. This is, indeed, a very bland tweaking of a strong existing standard. It's not something particularly notable.

<comment><USER3> No one said it's an Apple ripoff, it's a Helvetica ripoff and not the first (famously).

It does epitomize the difference between Apple, which just goes and writes the check and Google, who seem intent on following Microsoft down a road of "embrace and extend".

<comment><USER5> If we want to go down that road, we end up back at Akzidenz-Grotesk. Almost all modern grotesque fonts (and certainly the popular ones) are derived from some previous work. I still prefer Helvetica Neue, but I don't begrudge Google for developing their own font based on Helvetica.

<comment><USER3> I don't begrudge Google for _developing their own font based on Helvetica_ either.

The point of this sub-thread is really establishing that _Google developed their own font based on Helvetica_. A number of posters have contended that they aren't that similar.

<comment><USER5> Well, good luck with the "similarity" argument when it comes to fonts. We are, after all, talking about letter forms. Within the sans-serif family, the degree of similarity has a lot to do with how much attention you pay to fonts and typography in general. Keep in mind that to some people (who probably don't care about cars) a Ford Fusion and VW Jetta look pretty similar. The same rules apply here. Similarity is in the eye of the beholder unless you're talking about some quantifiable metric.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wasn't this covered already with "Arial vs. Helvetia"? ([http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial-versus- helvetica...](http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial-versus-helvetica/))

I think what's going to distinguish these fonts isn't their individual character forms (which I do think are significantly different, perhaps even more so than Arial and Helvetica), but their optimisations. That is, how Roboto has been given ligatures, kerning, and hinting to make it work well on mobile phone screens at the sizes it'll be rendered at.

(Also, the typewar quiz is a little unfair: it's hard to scrutinise character width and it doesn't seem to include numerals---areas where there are quite noticeable differences between the two.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I commented here as well: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3130877>, but does it really make sense to compare individual letters of fonts? I'd think that a well designed font would be able to convey a different feel when looking at large bodies of text (larger than single letters, at least) via subtle nuances, even if individual letters look like those in a different font.

<comment><USER8> Definitely. Comparing fonts letter by letter is something only a font priest could do. Here is a paragraph comparison I found on the other Hacker News post on the matter:

<https://minus.com/lYhmsD1xeT9ap>

<comment><USER2> Helvetica has a lot of different "weights". I wonder if they would look more similar if you compared to a heavier weight?

Edit: here's what I mean [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Helvetic...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Helvetica_Neue_typeface_weights.svg) and [http://sixrevisions.com/infographics/helvetica-font- weights-...](http://sixrevisions.com/infographics/helvetica-font-weights-as- rock-music-genres-infographic/)

<comment><USER3> I can totally tell the difference if you bold helvetica.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Friends, I'm afraid the news is even worse than originally reported. Apparently not only does Roboto copy Helvetica, but it apparently also simultaneously copies Ascender Corp's Liberation Sans, URW++'s Nimbus Sans L, and Microsoft's Arial! And the investigation has only begun--it is too early to determine how many other Helvetica clones it might have copied.

</comment><comment><USER10> (Disclosure: I did the understatement.com piece)

I agree with many of the points people are making (there are some differences, there are many Helvetica/etc based fonts, etc). Really the most amusing thing to me is that Google made a big deal out of the type change - it was the first point in their Ice Cream Sandwich launch. Can you imagine if at Apple's iPhone 4/iOS 4 launch they said "and our first big feature is: we're dropping Helvetica! For Helvetica Neue!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Beyond the similarities there are some interesting comments from professionals and responses by the Roboto designer here:

[http://typographica.org/2011/on-typography/roboto- typeface-i...](http://typographica.org/2011/on-typography/roboto-typeface-is- a-four-headed-frankenstein/)

</comment><comment><USER11> They're clearly distinguishable on both paragraphs and individual glyphs to me.

<comment><USER9> Don't know why you got the downvote, but learning to distinguish fonts is a skill that many people haven't acquired. A friend of mine has a brain that just ignores the glyphs entirely--he'd read a research paper in comic sans and not think twice about it.

I'd think only the top 1% of font enthusiasts would be able to identify a sans font for a single "T" or "V", but Roboto has plenty of giveaways from Helvetica in the a, e, q, p, b, d, x, g, etc. Used in a sentence, I'd be able to identify it over Helvetica every time.

<comment><USER11> I am by no means a font fanboy, but it's evident to me that Roboto's guidelines clearly differ in the preferred dimensions and curving from Helvetica.

Moreover, it appears (at least on my monitor) to be a much more readable font.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That site is excruciatingly slow. I had to wait 20 seconds for every page!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, we're get high load at the moment

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a better question: Does anyone care? Seriously? The debate has degenerated to whether Google is ripping off Apple's choice of _font_? WTF?

<comment><USER2> This isn't about Apple. Helvetica is one of the most popular fonts, it's used everywhere.

edited

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, the point is just to play a fun typeface recognition game :-)

<comment><USER2> Haha, OK, I was thinking of this other post on the topic <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3130822></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook plans "awesome" launch for next week - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/30/us-facebook-idUSTRE75T55S20110630

<comment><USER2> Given the Facebook community's tendency to be irritated with change (if only for a week or so), anything that effects the status quo could be a catalyst for Google+ adoption.

<comment><USER3> Facebook needs to makes changes in steps, rather than make huge shifts. Not being able to find something immediately has the same effect as their page not loading. If it takes me 3 seconds to find the "events" button, that's the page loading 3 seconds slower... and more annoying, because it was intentional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My bet is on some video rental service. Maybe a partnership with Netflix?

<comment><USER5> Seems pretty reasonable. Although, probably not with Netflix. Not sure why Netflix would partner with anyone at this point. Hulu, possibly.

That, or something to do with Foursquare.

edit: Although giving the timing of the announcement--a day after Google released their social network--I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with mobile. Zuckerberg might be trying to return the proverbial middle finger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My guess is Music: <http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/06/20/music-dashboar/>

</comment><comment><USER7> And now we enter the age of the "Social Wars"...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> anyone want to place bets on what it is? iPad? music? mobile photos?

<comment><USER8> I Am Sparta??

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/facebook-project-spartan/></comment></comment>


"Hello World" in C++, compiled to x86 Assembly - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/1280582

<comment><USER2> This looks like it was compiled with `-O0 -g`. It'll be a lot slimmer with `-O1` or even `-Os`.

Edit: In fact, GCC 4.6.1 compiles it down to two function calls and some stack operations - about 15 instructions in all.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's significantly smaller when I do it on my machine with an optimizer.

Interestingly, g++ compiles it to the _exact_ same code if you remove all the crap that isn't the main with the cout printing a literal string.</comment>


Doom 3 Source code review - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php <comment><USER3> Worth noting here regarding the patent issue with Creative.

John Carmack said [1]:

 _"The patent [2] situation well and truly sucks. We were prepared to use a two-pass algorithm that gave equivalent results at a speed hit, but we negotiated the deal with Creative so that we were able to use the zfail method without having to actually pay any cash. It was tempting to take a stand and say that our products were never going to use any advanced Creative/3dlabs products because of their position on patenting gaming software algorithms, but that would only have hurt the users."_

[1] [http://newenthusiast.com/carmacks-reverse-still-an- issue-200...](http://newenthusiast.com/carmacks-reverse-still-an- issue-20090409489)

[2] The patent number 6,384,822, "Method For Rendering Shadows Using A Shadow Volume And A Stencil Buffer", can be read here: <http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=Om0LAAAAEBAJ>

Here is the patent work-around in the Doom 3 source code. Check out the _RB_T_Shadow_ method in _draw_common.cpp_ at line 1151 [3]:

      // patent-free work around
      if ( !external ) {
        // "preload" the stencil buffer with the number of volumes
        // that get clipped by the near or far clip plane
        qglStencilOp( GL_KEEP, tr.stencilDecr, tr.stencilDecr );
        GL_Cull( CT_FRONT_SIDED );
        RB_DrawShadowElementsWithCounters( tri, numIndexes );
        qglStencilOp( GL_KEEP, tr.stencilIncr, tr.stencilIncr );
        GL_Cull( CT_BACK_SIDED );
        RB_DrawShadowElementsWithCounters( tri, numIndexes );
      }

[3] [https://github.com/TTimo/doom3.gpl/blob/master/neo/renderer/...](https://github.com/TTimo/doom3.gpl/blob/master/neo/renderer/draw_common.cpp#L1151)

Further reading on the general topic can be found here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_volume>

</comment><comment><USER4> Attention readers: For some reason i cannot comprehend the pages use javascript to load some images. There are no noscript elements notifying you about this. So enable javascript to read through this.

<comment><USER5> The images are not loaded until you scroll them into view, so bandwidth is saved if you don't read the whole article.

<comment><USER4> In that case the noscript fallback should be loading all immediately.

<comment><USER5> That's true. It seems like javascript disabling is just not on the minds of web developers. You have to be a special kind of masochist to use noscript these days... I used it for years, but ghostery covers most of what I liked about it.

<comment><USER4> I don't use noscript (if you mean the Firefox addon). I was talking about the <noscript> tag. ;)

I use Opera with Javascript and Cookies disabled because most things work fine and are much less annoying with that setup.

<comment><USER6> Well I guess the overall improvement must be worth images not loading on this page and whining on HN. So, what's the problem again? O you think your setup should be added as an edge case, sorry non standard setups are often not worth catering to. If you want it to work just enable scrips, it's not that hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _We only just found out last year why it was problematic – on windows, OpenGL can only safely draw to a window that was created by the same thread. We created the window on the launch thread, but then did all the rendering on a separate render thread_

I actually thought this was well known and documented as I've known it for years. Guess not :)

AFAIK you _can_ use OpenGL in other threads, but you must lock the context to the current thread, which I believe means you're still only rendering from one thread at a time and possibly this is OpenGL 3+ ???

In my own multithreaded OpenGL code, my main thread always became the render thread after starting up the other subsystems. Well, render thread and input gathering thread (as that often needs to be done in the main thread too - <USER2> least in SDL).

<comment><USER8> It may be not so much "well-known" as universally observed without thinking about it. I made the same mistake id did, using SDL in fact, spawning a separate thread for SDL calls. I beat my head against it for much longer than necessary and finally ended up in the SDL irc channel, where someone firmly informed me to stop making calls from multiple threads. When I told them I was making _all_ SDL calls from my rendering thread, including SDL_Init, as advised by the documentation, their response was basically that nobody else had ever had this crazy idea before, every game does rendering and UI interaction from the main thread (never mind that I wasn't writing a game and had no user interaction,) and I shouldn't go around trying weird complex stuff until I learned the basics.

They didn't argue that the restriction was obvious or well-known, only that it didn't need to be documented because good programmers never thought of violating it. (I feel more than a little vindicated with Carmack in my corner :-) ) Strangely enough, they also implied that it might be fixed in the future, and now the SDL docs imply that what I did would work [1], though I wouldn't bet on it because they have a FAQ item that seems to say otherwise [2].

It's something for people to keep in mind when they're writing documentation: document the limitations of your software even if you can't imagine why someone would violate them. People coming from a different background, such as a non-game programmer picking up a game library for some simple animation, might approach your software with different assumptions.

[1] [http://www.libsdl.org/cgi/docwiki.cgi/Multi- threaded_Program...](http://www.libsdl.org/cgi/docwiki.cgi/Multi- threaded_Programming) [2] <http://wiki.libsdl.org/moin.cgi/FAQDevelopment>

<comment><USER7> Both of the links you posted say that video/event functions should not be called from different threads:

 _Don't call SDL video/event functions from separate threads_

 _most graphics back ends are not thread-safe, so you should only call SDL video functions from the main thread of your application_

The second one specifically says from the main thread, while the first one only says "separate threads". I was always under the illusion that it didn't matter _which_ thread, as long as its the one you cal SDL_Init from. Your experience shows otherwise...

I agree - documentation should be clear about limitations and assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like Fabians source code reviews. Would love to see engines like Unreal being open-sourced to compare how they work internally. Would be a nice perspective. I.e. Unreal was much better in out-door scenes and I think the maps where not heavily preprocessed like in Quake et.al. What was their way of tackling the problem?

In case there are any resources that describe the technical details, would be nice If someone could post a link.

</comment><comment><USER10> > the variables highlights and the "Command-Click" to reach a definition make > the experience superior to Visual Studio.

Seriously ? There may be reasons to think Visual Studio is an inferior product, these are not among them.

<comment><USER11> He mentioned just for code browsing so don't panic. Nobody in their right mind would think XCode compares to Visual Studio. I mean it's 2012 and there is still no refactoring support.

<comment><USER5> Can you refactor c++ code in visual studio?

<comment><USER12> Yes. <http://www.wholetomato.com/>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. It's a shame that functionality isn't built into VS (especially when it costs half as much as VS pro).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very respectable of id to release it. I bet the could still get some sold cash from it if they kept it closed.

<comment><USER14> They dont open source the latest version. Tech 5 already came out.

<comment><USER13> >They dont open source the latest version.

I never said they did?!?

Doesn't matter though. Even the version before the current is still pretty new tech & interesting to study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I liked especially the 2012 Q&A with John Carmack:

<http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/interviews.php>

The blog author goes full nerd, like (paraphrasing) "You did this genius thing making a frontend/backend pipeline for rendering. Was this inspired by LCC? What are the advantages to a monolithic renderer?" and Cormack answers practically "Oh, didn't help that much, because of an unexplainable quirk of OpenGL it only worked well on my developer machine."

:-p

</comment><comment><USER16> This is great. I love reading stuff like this to gain other's insight, and just to give me incentive to look at cool open source code.

Does anybody have additional recommendation of similar reviews of interesting open source code?

</comment><comment><USER17> I get the feeling the reviewer kind of looks up to John Carmack a little bit.

I think it must be a little bit hard to be John Carmack. He probably has a hard time getting balanced feedback on his stuff.

</comment><comment><USER18> >In some part of the code (see dmap page) there are actually more comments than statements.

>Dmap source code is very well commented, just look at the amount of green: There is more comments than code !

You know, in my experience that's not a good thing. I work on similar, heavily-commented code and find it extremely painful. At some point it becomes a burden to see the code behind the comments. (And just so no one misinterprets me: I am not against comments /per se/.)

It's like when you read code written by someone who simply loved whitespace and who appended a useless "banner comment" after each real comment[1]:

// If x is less than 3, do stuff 50 times.

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

if ( x < 3 )

{

// While i goes from 0 to 50.

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

for ( int i = 0; i < 50; i++ )

{

// Do stuff.

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

doStuff ( ) ;

}

}

So what would've fitted in one screen of text, if written in a sensible fashion, now requires one and a half screen and lots of scrolling.

[1] The comments in the example are actually both crappy and pointless. Sadly, the program I work on is riddled with them. Please don't write out what the programming language constructs do in English.

<comment><USER19> At least in that case you can attribute it to well-intentioned stupidity. Here's my favourite short example you must instead attribute to malice: [1] a closed-form implementation of fibs(n). Follow along with the comments!

1\. <https://gist.github.com/eb02e9546102594e8bf7>

<comment><USER20> That's really a fun example. It took me a while to even find the definition of f after having been distracted by all the comment clutter. Point taken.

<comment><USER21> The actual algorithm is rather nice, despite the reader-hostile presentation...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sadly, no crazy genius advancements like the fast inverse sqrt. Is Carmack going out of form, or did I just miss something?

</comment><comment><USER23> Great find, thanks for sharing. Also just idle curiousity, where'd you nab your username? LoK series?</comment>


Millimeter Wave: A Bridge Too Far? - <AUTHOR> https://semiengineering.com/millimeter-wave-a-bridge-too-far/ <comment><USER2> They probably will use millimeter wave only for data paths and use the unused bandwidth of 4G for commando and surveillance paths.</comment>


Show HN: TOTP authentication web service - <AUTHOR> http://www.totp.me

<comment><AUTHOR> I recently implemented TOTP authentication[1] for a webapp of mine. Then I decided to extract it into its own web service offering, because I thought it was one of those things that was easy for people to implement insecurely if they weren't careful.

This is the V1. I'm trying to get a sense of whether implementing TOTP auth is a pain point for anyone and to develop this project further.

The way it works is that you redirect your website's users to it for authentication or master secret provisioning, and it redirects them back to you with a pass/fail response when done.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_One- time_Password_Al...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_One- time_Password_Algorithm)

<comment><USER2> Why don't you open source the code instead? Then sell it as a service that you support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a demo (or video) of how your TOTP service would work? I'm having a difficult time visualizing the flow and requirements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, under the fourth tab on the website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a description somewhere for how they're handling the security of secret keys on their end?

Also, it looks like the libraries are only offered as tarballs and are being served over HTTP?</comment>


10 Javascript Shorthand Coding Techniques - <AUTHOR> http://www.jquery4u.com/javascript/shorthand-javascript-techniques/

<comment><USER2> Aside from the fact that it's basically blogspam which does a poor job of explaining common JavaScript idioms, articles like this are dangerous because of what they _don't_ say.

In (2), for example, they suggest using the short-circuit feature of the || operator in assignments, and mention that a null, undefined or empty string value on the left will make the assignment fall through to the value on the right hand side. What this fails to mention is that any value that converts to false will trigger the fall-through: this includes 0, false, and NaN and well as the values already mentioned.

(9) is really pernicious since it neither explains the real uses of the arguments object, nor mentions how it can screw up the public interface your functions provide. For example, if a function has no named arguments it will have a length property of 0. This can screw up all kinds of handy stuff like higher-order programming.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is dire. For example:

> When doing "if checks" assignment operators can sometimes be ommited.

Should be comparison operators.

And more broadly, at this level you should explain boolean values.</comment>


Smartest socks in the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.blacksocks.com/smartersocks_us.htm

<comment><USER2> I wonder what do you do when the electronics in the socks break. Do they support carry-in service? Next business day?</comment>


Microsoft Teams is getting a Walkie Talkie feature so you can reach colleagues - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/9/21058313/microsoft-teams-walkie-talkie-push-to-talk-feature-preview <comment><USER2> It's primarily designed for "firstline workers," employees who face customers and run day-to-day operations inside companies.</comment>


Play pictionary against an AI - <AUTHOR> https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/# <comment><AUTHOR> Quite fun to play...

I draw awfully but nonetheless the AI got it, I'm impressed

Ok, ok, I know I shouldn't: deep learning just works, it's not news anymore

</comment><comment><USER2> There were lots of comments in this thread a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12965311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12965311)

</comment><comment><USER3> this is great video showing how neural networks learn [https://streamable.com/6htc](https://streamable.com/6htc)</comment>


Row-level version control with PostgreSQL (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.myitcv.org.uk/2014/02/25/row-level-version-control-with-postgresql.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's been about a day since I found this blog post. I considered using it today as I began writing a CRUD application for some data that will be modified over time and where I might want to see older revisions, but I then quickly realized that the solution in the blog post I had found will not work with a lot of common UNIQUE constraints that I imposed on my tables, so the search for row-level version control with PostgreSQL continues.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Searched Google for postgresql revision and found exactly what I was looking for; this blog post.

The blog post talks about AWS but I tested it using PostgreSQL 9.4 on Fedora 23 and it worked fine.

Briefly;

sudo dnf install postgresql-server postgresql-contrib

sudo postgresql-setup --initdb --unit postgresql

sudo -u postgres createuser -d $USER

createdb

sudo -u postgres psql -c 'create extension timetravel;'

psql

Then I pasted the function declaration [0] from the blog post into psql.

After that I pasted the SQL commands given under the heading "The functions in action: fruit trigger" in the blog post.

Next I tested with some entries

insert into fruits (name) values ('banana');

delete from fruits where name = 'banana';

insert into fruits (name) values ('apple');

update fruits set name = 'pear' where name = 'apple';

select * from fruits;

         id |  name  |          valid_from           |           valid_to
        ----+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
          1 | banana | 2016-08-24 01:14:52.395264+02 | 2016-08-24 01:15:19.6916+02
          2 | pear   | 2016-08-24 01:16:09.012415+02 | infinity
          2 | apple  | 2016-08-24 01:15:30.515809+02 | 2016-08-24 01:16:09.012415+02
        (3 rows)

The blog post mentions a couple of known limitations/problems, including the following:

>This whole process only safely works within a transaction; our version does not check that it is called within the context of a transaction

Does anyone know of a similar thing to what was described in the post, which would also be open source (preferably based on PostgreSQL, but solutions based on other open source DBs are welcome too), but which would not suffer from this problem?

[0]: [https://gist.github.com/myitcv/9212407#file- time_travel_trig...](https://gist.github.com/myitcv/9212407#file- time_travel_trigger-sql)

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't understand how this would work with foreign keys.

SQL:2011 Temporal specs how this should work, and it's in DB2 and MSSQL, but nothing yet in PG</comment>