How Spelling Keeps Kids From Learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/how-the-english-language-is-holding-kids-back/385291/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> This really seems like excusing the underperforming education system in US and cultural glorification of language bastardization. Every language has some areas that are difficult to grasp and English is one of the easier languages, as most people who have learned more than two foreign languages (including English, of course) can tell.

<comment><USER4> Everyone seems to agree that schools are garbage. Why doesn't someone do something about it?

Also, this is off topic, but a decent place to ask: Why are there no programming classes in schools? (I've heard 'politics' before, but it has never been explained to me.)

<comment><USER5> School is 'garbage' because it's compulsory and is one of the few areas in a young person's life where they are forced to be disciplined when they're lazy, be organized when they're not, be thoughtful when they're pleased with simple, and/or work hard when they're tired.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize the specific ways in which we educate our children - but the general unease with the 'education system' has more to do with everyone having been through it (making them experts on teaching, apparently) and having negative memories of a time where they were particularly socially and mentally stressed.

<comment><USER4> While I don't like school for those reasons, I also don't like how I don't get any options to actually learn stuff. Especially stuff that I care about. (I do learn some things, but not much.)

I personally like math, but we have spent more than a week on basic sin/cos/tan/csc/sec/cot curves doing things I already know.

Also, I don't like stress. Some amount of stress is bad, but I don't care about my grades anymore because that was too much stress. (I'm good at school, so I can get good grades just by doing my homework, the increase isn't worth the stress.)

I've also noticed the few adults (mostly my mom/relatives) I've talked to in real life about school (I've talked to other people in running start (college classes in high school) or at game jams, but not about how I don't like school.) seem to be of the opinion that I "need to learn stuff and things."

If I learn less after school I will be very disappointed, because I'm pretty much terrible at everything I do and I need to get decent at something.

<comment><USER5> The real relevance of content in school is often terrible, but until we can truly figure out what we care to educate our children about (which is exceedingly difficult without being able to agree on what skills will be needed in the future economy) compulsory education will remain hindered in this way.

At least for me, I would like to see a de-emphasis of content and A stronger focus on preparing young people to educate themselves, to be curious about our world. If you bring this to the table on your own I would hardly worry about 'learning less after school'. After all, only you have done your learning this far in life. School is only one structure for learning (that is often expected to be/treated as if it's the only one).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By the way, it's not like other languages magically happened to avoid the same problems - from what I see looking at 19th century European text, they had the same issues that English still has.

Most of those languages have made a spelling reform or two that did exactly the proposed radical changes to spelling of words, including common words, to make spelling mostly match pronounciation.

<comment><USER7> Other languages don't just have spelling reforms, but they also have institutions which periodically update the spelling of words.

For example, in Spanish, "Iraq" is spelled "Irak"—but only as of 2010! The change came with justifications: that it avoids the use of "q" outside of the digraph "qu", and that the terminal "k" is nowadays more familiar in words borrowed from other languages.

Japanese is a famously difficult language, but in the past century and a half, they've had multiple reforms which standardized and eliminated characters—there are more changes in the works, but it looks like they'll get new characters, such as "gaiji".

As an English writer I feel left out.

<comment><USER8> You don't want to learn Kanji, there's about 2000 of them for words and they have several different readings depending on context. At least you can guess the reading of some English words when you read them.

<comment><USER9> Actually in Japanese the kanji makes it much easier to guess meanings, especially with place names which look bland and empty in romanji.

It's pronunciation that's hard to guess from kanji.

<comment><USER10> I like how there are two ways to say "I have a headache" in Japanese, and they are written with the exact same Chinese characters, but are pronounced _completely_ differently:

頭が痛い (atama ga itai)

頭痛がする (zutsuu ga suru)

<comment><USER11> Also in Chinese, "我有頭痛", tho "我有头疼" is often used in mainland speech.

<comment><USER10> "我有頭痛" sounds very Taiwanese. This usage of 有 is an artifact of Taiwanese / Minnan dialect. The Standard Mandarin (普通话) way to phrase that sentence is just "我头疼" or "我头很疼". Also like you said, 疼 sounds a little more mainland and 痛 sounds a little more Taiwanese. A general word for "pain" is 疼痛, they are really synonymous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't really think that native English speakers have a problem in knowing how a certain sequence of characters should be pronounced. This kind of problem is usually typical of people (of any native language) with high levels of literacy - it happens when a substantial part of their vocabulary comes from reading books rather than oral communication (be it person to person or tv/ cinema). To me, the problem of native English speakers seems to be that they are often unable to _write_ their native language well enough not to come across as uneducated people.

I am an Italian living in an English speaking country. I never had any problem in remembering the correct spelling of English words, and I believe it's because I can read them with the Italian pronunciation (in which spelling and sound are perfectly matching). It's probably much easier for the brain to remember a sequence of sounds rather than a sequence of symbols. So I wonder if anybody has ever tried, as a teaching tool, to teach children to read English with an "alphabetic" pronunciation that associates exactly one sound to each letter. Assigning to every word a "written" sound on top of the "spoken" sound could help in remembering the correct spelling.

<comment><USER11> Because of the different accents, vowel sounds are pronounced differently in different native English countries and regions of countries, so associating one letter to a sound is only possible if you chose a particular accent, e.g. U.S. Great Lakes, U.S. Kentucky, or U.K. Manchester.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> English-speaking children typically needed about three years to master the basics of reading and writing, whereas their counterparts in most European countries needed a year or less. [...] That's bad news for English-speaking societies, which represent about 6 percent of the world's population

That's also bad news for learners of English as a second language, who represent another perhaps 60% of the world.

<comment><USER13> I've been learning English since I was six, then went to a British university, completed my degree and now I live and work in the UK. My proficiency level would be easily rated at C1/C2 level - I am completely fluent in both reading and writing.

And yet, I still find words in English that I simply don't know how to pronounce. I can give them a try, but unless I've heard someone else say them, I have no idea. That's a huge problem with English and I know that a lot of people who learn English as a their second language struggle with it.

<comment><USER14> I'm a native English speaker (Australian) and I find myself looking at a dictionary on average 5 times a day. Probably because of this, and an amateur passion for linguistics, I have a broader depth of knowledge on word definitions and pronunciations than most people I communicate with.

It's certainly not uncommon for native English speakers to have no idea how to pronounce a whole bunch of English words because they don't use them, so you're not alone there.

I always tell people: read with a dictionary and understand the pronunciation key! Or use an app or web dictionary that has a 'play' button.

Having said all of that, I don't know if it's a huge problem - most people get by fine with the words they know, and domain-specific words tend to be ones you learn in the field.

<comment><USER4> How did you figure out pronunciation keys? I've tried before, I don't even think that they are consistent between dictionaries.

Also, as a sidenote: I won't be learning pronunciation that way because I would rather enjoy reading things than learn to pronounce them properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Ultimately, about one out of every five English speakers are functionally illiterate, meaning they "cannot read or write well enough for everyday literacy needs," Bell said.

This is an utterly surprising statistic. Do they mean people who aren't native speakers?

Having lived in the UK for many years, I never came across anyone who couldn't read for daily needs. How would you even use public transport?

<comment><USER16> I think this might be a US centric article.

<comment><USER17> 20% only sounds right if you are lumping in immigrants who are barely able to speak English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.

I will teach you in my verse

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse._

[…]

[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Chaos](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Chaos)

Further notes:

[http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/e/pronounc.htm](http://www- users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/cyc/e/pronounc.htm)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it is worth it to try this but it will likely go the way of Esperanto. English really is NOT especially challenging compared to other languages. And as anyone who travels in Europe will realize, there seems to be little problem with people learning it as a second language.

<comment><USER20> I'd say that's not so much because of whether it's easy or hard to learn or not, but because the vast majority of media (mostly movies and TV, but nowadays also the internet) is in English, often subtitled. Some countries dub it (like Germany), so the level of English there is often lower.

It's amount of exposure, clear and simple. Replace English TV with Spanish or Finnish or maybe Korean and you'd probably have the same effect. That said though, English is relatively close to western-European languages; similar origins and influences, so the barrier to learn English in addition to a western European language is lower than learning Russian or Korean and, arguably, Spanish or Italian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really don't understand why educators persist in trying to teach English reading and writing phonetically. It's not a phonetic language, so surely it is harmful to pretend that it is and lie to children about it.

Children learning Chinese can learn the Chinese character set through rote, and there's no reason why we can't be honest and accept that English learners have to do the same, too.

</comment><comment><USER22> When my friend married a Hungarian woman, she brought her teenage sons to the US with her. I told them that I wanted to apologize in advance for two things: English spelling, and the Imperial measuring system. They were amused. While they all knew some English, the boys, not surprisingly, have learned more quickly than their mother.

</comment><comment><USER23> _English has 205 ways to spell 44 sounds._

How's that compare to Chinese? Are Chinese kids at a disadvantage learning to read?

</comment><comment><USER24> What would the normative pronunciation be, and how long would it remain stable?

And I find this very strange: 'On the other hand, the American concept of "reading level" doesn't even exist in countries with more regular spelling systems.' Surely there is more to reading levels than knowing how the words sound.

</comment><comment><USER25> Painting with a broad brush, this article is.

English is my native language, but I spent many years achieving fluency in French and that included extensive study of culture. I achieved a degree in English literature so I also know the background of the language (re: oops everybody who speaks Latin is dead - thanks plague!). English is by and large the most complex "cultural dumping ground" of the world. American English is incredibly diverse.

What bothers me so much is that the cultural issues surrounding language are far more complex than the English language itself. Citing Finland or South Korea is bullshit because they are very homogeneous societies and cultures. Toss in a bunch of Central Americans trying to learn Korean as a second language, or Gold Coast Africans trying to learn Finnish and show me what that study looks like. Bad, that's what. Why? Because those KSL and FSL students will be on the outside of the culture, and be dealing with literacy not just in speaking/reading/writing, but of adapting to a world that they do not know.

Boston English isn't the same as Mississippi English which isn't the same as San Diego English. Basic literacy, spelling, is the glue that allows people to move between cultures within the same language. That's why slang is so amazing in American English - it's all the influences and rule breaking that the language can stand...which, as my studies have shown, is one of the major criticisms against French as a language and culture. It's interesting to me and really broadened my worldview.

Now, after throwing the notion and explanations from this article in the trash, I do have an alternate issue that must be addressed within English learning. The day that "technology" renders writing by hand obsolete - <USER2> is a frequent argument I've heard put forth by parents and lazy students (Who writes cursive anymore? Why do I have to learn division when I have a calculator?) - students will be cheating their brain development. Why is cursive hard? Because it's forcing mental connections between the linguistic and motor skill areas of the brain. Same goes for working on basic math problems by hand.

Just like taking hits to the head in football, using performance enhancing tools should be evaluated on the basis of maturity of mind having achieved the basic skill set by which the enhancement is dependent. Also, pay sucks in Education and the dynamic of parents/administrators is one that I'm smart enough to avoid. Want smarter kids? Make them work harder.

</comment><comment><USER26> In term of spelling French is much worse than English. I wonder how they compare in term of education level. My anecdotal experience living and going to school in both England and France as a kid leads me to believe that the level of British primary school is not very high and that basic knowledge in math and reading is introduced slower there.

<comment><USER27> > In term of spelling French is much worse than English.

Is it? Certainly, multiple sequences of characters map to the same sound: the final vowels in _et, est, thé, années, soleil, clef_ all sound identical (at least to my ear: there may be some subtleties of pronounciaton that escape me).

But from what little study I've done of French, I don't remember the opposite problem being as bad: a given sequence of characters is generally pronounced in one way. So if you come across an unfamiliar French word, you can take a punt at how it's pronounced, and the odds are you'll be correct.

There are of course exceptions, especially with proper nouns ( _Moët_ , as in the champagne, is pronounced _moe-ETTE_ not _moe-AY_ , Freddie Mercury not withstanding), but these seem to be fewer than in English.

[Edited for grammar.]

<comment><USER28> In proper french nouns the final consonant is usually pronounced.

<comment><USER27> Is that really the case? There seem to be an awful lot where it's not: Bardot, Paris, Nantes, Flaubert, Monet, Camus, Dumas, Rimbaud, Truffaut, Roux, Lacroix, Godard, Foucault, Bordeaux, Versailles, Calais, Maginot....

<comment><USER28> I should say "often" rather than "usually". Regular french nouns are much stricter in contrast.

<comment><USER27> That I can believe. English proper nouns are likewise typically more badly behaved, especially British English ones: Worcester ( _WUSS-ter_ ), Featherstonehaugh ( _FAN-shaw_ ), Dalziel, ( _d '-YELL_), Menzies ( _MING-iz_ ).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Less than 6 hours of sleep a night linked to increased risk of early death - open-source-ux https://www.nhs.uk/news/lifestyle-and-exercise/less-6-hours-sleep-night-linked-increased-risk-early-death/ <comment><AUTHOR> ""There are several limitations to this study. In particular, the participants only had their sleep measured _once and in an artificial setting_, which may not have been representative of their sleep patterns over time. The researchers did not get the same results when they looked at how long participants said they usually slept.""

How is this even treated as a serious study?

<comment><USER2> (Edited, see replies)

Also "However, various health and lifestyle factors could be playing a role in the links they identified."

I imagine that if someone is poor (on average) they'd get less sleep due to living in noisier areas, working longer hours and so on. I also imagine being poor would decrease life expectancy on average.

And another one I thought of ...

1990-2017 is not a long time. Older people (say >50) tend to sleep fewer hours. Older people are much more likely to die in a 30 year period than younger people (<30), so there is that. I wonder if that was taken into account.

<comment><USER3> Read the article. It is the NHS debunking the research. Don't jump to conclusions from headlines.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I read the article but on less than enough sleep (ironically) so I missed the debunking aspect. So I will edit the post above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's important to note that this article is the NHS inspecting and mostly showing the weaknesses of the research, due to it having been popularised in Mail Online. This is something that the NHS do frequently in order to reduce misinformation spread by the media on medicines

<comment><USER4> I wish more government agencies provided write ups like this that are easy to understand. Given the lack of trust that exists in so many parts of society, it's great to see them attempt to provide a fair minded review of the research while also adding important context for the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I struggle with this problem, and am currently striving to make 6-7 hours/night non-negotiable, both for higher day-to-day functioning, and longer lifespan.

One thing I'm curious about: if one views lifespan as a function of total waking hours, rather than age at death, is there a "sweet spot" where one breaks even, or even comes out ahead? Against an 8-hour baseline, perhaps 5 hours per night shortens lifespan by more than (3 hours * 365 days * $n years), but maybe at 7 hours per night, the reduction in average lifespan is compensated by the extra hour every day? (That doesn't mean it's desirable, in terms of QoL at retirement, living to see grandkids, etc.; just curious.)

<comment><USER6> How do you factor in also spending every day feeling tired?

<comment><USER7> Getting ~5h for awhile now. Coffee ftw.

<comment><USER8> I could pull that off in my early twenties while studying and working full time and still have energy for other activities.

Now at 30, if I get less than 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep a few days in a row, I'm a zombie and I feel the negative effect in all my activities: brain fog at work, depressed, no lust for social gatherings, sports or sex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Life long Porphyria sufferer here, a hallmark symptom is Insomnia.

I've lived on 6 or less hours of sleep all my life, the only time I sleep longer is during a bad porphyria "attack", then it's like 19 hours at a time, but that's only several times a year.

Subsequently, my career choices accommodated it, I became an entrepreneur so I could set my own hours (like after Noon), and a 40 year career doing late night broadcast radio.

I've seen these "studies" so many times, all I can do is Laugh, oh, and keep on Living this way, and I've made it to 65, and still going, so hooey on those "studies".

</comment><comment><USER10> The ability to get a full nights sleep is often related to socioeconomic status. I wonder how much of this is purely sleep vs stress.

<comment><USER11> And likewise, other factors that can be associated with a short lifespan (hunger, disease, violence, etc.) also tend to disrupt sleep.

<comment><USER12> Yup. It's a pretty strong confound in this interpretations. You could easily flip the Mail Online headline to "People with health issues often sleep poorly".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What if getting six hours a sleep a night means you lose 3 years off of your life, but gain 10 years of awake time? Then it's not so bad.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. Maybe we all get a more or less set number of waking hours to live? (disease not withstanding). Maybe 95 year olds just sleep a lot and those who die early do so because they burned up their waking hours sooner!

I think I read that mammals more or less get the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime -- so Hummingbirds don't last so long but Elephants live a long time (due to slower heart rate vs very high heart rate for a Hummingbird). I suppose sleeping more might correlate to a lower average heart rate (and thus a longer life).

<comment><USER15> > I think I read that mammals more or less get the same number of heartbeats > in a lifetime

[http://robdunnlab.com/projects/beats-per- life/](http://robdunnlab.com/projects/beats-per-life/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Participants had their sleep monitored during a single night in a sleep laboratory during the 1990s

I'm not sure then what I'm supposed to take away from that study (Mail, not NHS).

Edit: I also want to include that reducing nicotine was one very large factor in me getting a better night's sleep. I found that due to constant smoking, my blood pressure was basically locked at a high rate for extended periods of time, which eventually caused my heart to palpitate during some nights. Reducing caffeine and lowering my smoking frequency made those issues vanish, and overrall, was a healthy choice to make regardless.

</comment><comment><USER17> It always surprises me when people tell me they slept 8+ and are still tired. My wife gets 9-10 hours but wakes up refreshed. I, since before age 5 always get 4.5 to 5 hours. These last few months I'm down to 3.5-4.25 hours. I wish I knew why the change and what made my body different than others.

Edit: clarifications

</comment><comment><USER18> This will come off as depressing thought but why so much focus on early death vs later death. What about how we leaved the life we leaved. It can be six hours of sleep but overall if the life is exciting and have enough money to support the family then how does it matter how late you die ?

</comment><comment><USER19> This is such a conjecture with so many data points missing. I was sleeping 8 or so hours a per night and was miserable health wise. Made (major) eating and movement changes. I am sleeping less but in so much better health! I would say, I was on my way to an early death earlier.

</comment><comment><USER20> My grandmother only slept for 3 hours a night for most of her life before she died. She was 92.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a ridiculously clickbait and incorrect title. I would expect this from CNBC or CNN or the Daily Mail. Not HN.

The participants were literally examined using a _single night 's_ sleep pattern. This is dangerous "science".

</comment><comment><USER22> Got The Pod from Eight Sleep recently and I'm loving it. Consistently feeling more refreshed in the morning.

Anybody who even remotely cares about sleep fitness should try one out.

</comment><comment><USER23> It'd be a lot more honest to say "correlated" instead of "linked" in science journalism headlines.

</comment><comment><USER24> From: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/24/you-need-more- confound...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/24/you-need-more-confounders/)

> The natural explanation was that [...] People who have lots of problems in > their lives are more stressed. Stress makes it harder to sleep at night. > People who can't sleep at night get sleeping pills. Therefore, sleeping pill > users have more problems, for every kind of problem you can think of. When > problems get bad enough, they kill you. This is why sleeping pill users are > more likely to die of everything.

Obviously, you can also wind that one step back and find that "people who don't sleep well" _also_ have more problems, for every kind of problem you can think of.

<comment><USER25> While that passage is interesting in how it links to the article in OP, I find the article you shared to be significantly more interesting. I've always heard convincing links between poor sleep and poor health but I never knew there was such a controversial link between hypnotics and increased mortality, that's a bit terrifying

<comment><USER26> However, the gist of the article is that probably most of the earlier studies aren't adjusting for enough factors, and when someone did, the links went away.

Basically, if your study says that taking Ambien doubles your risk of cancer, bubonic plague, dying in a plane crash (where you are not the pilot) and being shot by snipers, the study is probably wrong. Given that it's a drug taken for sleep difficulties, and the number of possible things that can cause sleep difficulties (near the top of the list: stress, from literally innumerable sources), and the fact that sleep difficulties take a medical toll, as well as do many of the primary, secondary, and tertiary causes of sleep difficulties, it's very hard to account for that in a study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Conclusion

> ...

> However, its limitations mean that its findings are not conclusive.</comment>


NSA's Website Down - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/25/the-nsas-website-nsa-gov-is-down/

<comment><USER2> Why is this even news?</comment>


Interactive Sudoku Zero-Knowledge Proof - <AUTHOR> http://manishearth.github.io/blog/2016/08/10/interactive-sudoku-zero-knowledge-proof/ <comment><USER2> I don't know the math behind ZKP, but how does this statement work:

> _If Peggy didn't have a solution, there was a chance she'd be caught in this > round if Victor had asked for the right set of 9 squares to be revealed._

Doesn't this technique make it a "slightly more than zero knowledge proof", where the amount of knowledge revealed correlates to the probability a proof was obtained? The more knowledge, the more proof?

<comment><USER3> It should be noted that at each round Peggy performs a different permutation, so Victor cannot accumulate knowledge about Peggy's solution.

<comment><USER4> This is correct, and key to making this zero knowledge. But "accumulate" isn't quite the right word, I think. During a single round, by itself, Peggy reveals literally _nothing_ about the actual solution -- no information whatsoever -- so one might wonder, how can a bunch of repeated nothings "accumulate" to anything?

Here's how. If Peggy were to use the same permutation repeatedly, revealing different rows/columns/boxes, then Victor can cross-reference the permuted numbers in one revealed row against the same-permuted numbers in other rows. (E.g. Victor might notice that the top left corner has the same as the bottom center tile, which he didn't know before.) And each new reveal allows for more cross-referencing, and soon Victor can learn a lot. Notice that cross- referencing the numbers within a single revealed row don't tell Victor anything -- no number will appear more than once, so all Victor learns is that all the cells are different, which Victor knew already by the rules of Sudoku.

Of course, Peggy uses a different permutation each round, so each round Victor learns nothing, and the different permutations prevent Victor from cross- referencing numbers from different rounds to learn anything that way either.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Peggy reveals literally nothing about the actual solution -- no information > whatsoever -- so one might wonder, how can a bunch of repeated nothings > "accumulate" to anything?

The trick here is in the wording; Peggy _does_ reveal something. She essentially reveals that she _may_ have a correct solution, with some probability. :)

All information revealed is information that Victor knows to be true (and can guess beforehand) _assuming that Peggy had a correct solution_. The last part is the operative bit here; that still means that _something_ is revealed if we are considering the space of all moves (but nothing is revealed if we're considering the space of all moves of a non-malicious Peggy). These probabilities accumulate and eventually we're reasonably certain that that assumption is true.

This sleight of hand happens because from Peggy's side, Peggy knows that she is non-malicious and only cares about no information being leaked with this assumption in mind. On Bob's side, he has no idea about Peggy and must consider the case that Peggy is malicious. However, he doesn't care about defending from leaks, he would love leaks. He only wants the information that Peggy has a solution. From his side, he needs to obtain the information that Peggy has a solution (which Peggy is already assuming to be true).

Our brains get confused whilst juggling these assumptions and it _seems_ like something was revealed without anything being revealed -- the trick is in the difference of sample spaces and assumptions.

Overall this is one reason why I love ZKP -- it seems like magic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not explicitly stated in the article, but it's very important that we can ask for a whole row _or column_. If we can only ask for rows, then Peggy can cheat by constructing a "solution" that duplicates a number within a column.

<comment><USER6> I think it _is_ explicitly mentioned here:

>The procedure can be repeated (with a new permutation each time) to minimize this chance, with Victor asking to reveal a row, column, or 3x3 subsquare each time, until he is certain that Peggy has a solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the first round in the post is just an example. General rounds can ask for anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There seems to be a bug here. Suppose that in a puzzle there is only one 8 and one 9 that do not overlap in any way (row, column, or 3x3 square). Now, suppose that Peggy comes up with a false solution to the problem which sets both of these tiles to 8. Then, neither the 8 nor the 9 is allowed to be picked for the green squares, and so no test of Victor's can disprove Peggy's false solution.

Edit: this seems easily fixable too: rather than the whole green tiles thing, just allow Victor to query either a row/column/3x3 to prove the solution is a valid sudoku, or query the original filled in tiles, to show that the solution corresponds to the original problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good observation, and fixed! As I noted in the issue, I initially was going to go with a fourth "preset" option but I decided against it for some reason. Added it to the code and blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So in this scenario ZKP is just a cipher and a key where the cipher anonymizes the document, but lets the format be validated to a varying degree depending on how much of the encrypted document you are willing to read and a key is given to de-anonymize the document.

<comment><USER9> That's not how I understand it.

More like it's a way to prove you have a solution to a problem without revealing the solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My problem with the approach is this:

How can Victor detect that Peggy didn't just send some random numbers where the previously known fields are still consistent?

<comment><USER5> That's the bit about the Peggy sending Victor a commitment.</comment></comment>


A Hackathon for High Schoolers - <AUTHOR> http://hackbca.com/ <comment><USER2> Thank you so much for posting this. Sent this to my brother who is in high school. I wish this stuff was around when I was in high school.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, thank you :)

<comment><USER2> Hey jzone. Looks like I may have been too late to get him a ticket. Has the event really sold out? Will there be any other opportunities to get a ticket? I'd love for him to check this out. Looks like a really great hackathon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup it has. So sorry, but we cannot accommodate anyone else :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks awesome. One thing I'd like to see not only high school hackathons talk about but hackathons in general is encouraging non-coder participants. This seems to focus on "come here to code" or "come here to learn how to code", which don't get me wrong is completely awesome but there are plenty of other opportunities for non-coders to participate. Most notably people interested in design and business.

<comment><USER4> Another shameless promotion: I'm part of an organization called Pilot ([http://gopilot.org](http://gopilot.org)), and we're doing just that - planning hackathons for the students who wouldn't normally attend one. We've got a DC event coming up on March 29 ([http://dc.gopilot.org](http://dc.gopilot.org)), so if anyone's in the DC area we'd love to have you as a mentor!

<comment><USER3> That's pretty cool! I actually live in the DC area. I'll definitely check this out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh man, sounds fun. As a high school pupil myself, I'd go to one of these if there was one here (Scotland).

<comment><USER6> You may want to talk to Ross Penman. I think he's done something with hackathons for highschoolers in Scotland.

[https://twitter.com/PenmanRoss](https://twitter.com/PenmanRoss)

<comment><USER7> Ohai!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "hackBCA is open to all high school students, from the absolute beginner to > the experienced developer. Spend 24 hours turning an idea into reality."

What can an absolute beginner do in such a venue?

<comment><AUTHOR> We will have 100 mentors (at least that is our goal) to help beginners and many tech talks

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Loving the HS Hacker movement! Nicely done to whoever organizes this :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! There is a lack of good high school computer science education, and we feel that hackathons are part of the solution!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We're planning one of our next Startup Weekends to be high-school students only. We've had some student participate in the past and it has been great.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can't wait for this. Jared, you're the man.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds great fun! I'm slightly nervous about encouraging highschoolers to pull an all-nighter though, will there be any rest for them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Throughout the various collegiate hackathons that I have been to, there have not only been a few high schoolers in attendance, but many of the winners were actually high schoolers! Our goal here is to make hackathons less intimidating to high schoolers who can't code or who are beginners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm glad more efforts are being taken to get these things in front of younger audiences, but I must say, in high school I would've refused to join something meant exclusively for high schoolers. "Let me work with college students, damn it!"

</comment><comment><USER14> This looks awesome. HS Hackathons ftw!

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't wait for HackBCA! :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow this is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER17> really wish i could make it. sigh.

</comment><comment><USER18> #HELLYEAH</comment>


Growing Trees into Chairs - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-furniture-sustainability-idUSKBN1W80R0 <comment><USER2> IMHO, if its sustainable it's good. However this looks like super luxury. But then again that's where most new things start. Maybe they can scale up? I doubt it.</comment>


Why I Hire People, Not Skills - <AUTHOR> http://bostinno.com/all-series/building-teams-why-i-hire-people-not-skills/ <comment><USER2> Page is down.. here's a cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oLv6n49...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oLv6n49M-V0J:bostinno.com/all- series/building-teams-why-i-hire-people-not-skills/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</comment>


Building for People, and Now Businesses - <AUTHOR> https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000633/Building-for-People-and-Now-Businesses <comment><USER2> Finally!

The information they give is not much, however. They'll run a closed pilot. They are building a free business tool. Will there be an API? Will it be possible to develop bots? Will WhatsApp get features like cards, custom keyboards, payments, etc? Undoubtedly it'll cost money eventually, right? Will it be aimed at big companies or smaller ones too?

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure there must be an API.

Businesses want to respond with a text immediately and provide a way for people to interact with the company even outside business hours.

What would be cool is a way for the app to hand over control to a manual WhatsApp user (i.e. the employee) if necessary and continue the conversation there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting. WeChat has been doing official business accounts for a couple of years - I'm interested to see if WhatsApp takes these in a similar direction.

Official WeChat accounts have become the primary way that small businesses in China keep in touch with their customers, and a very significant source of revenue, for online and offline sales, through WeChat Pay.

Especially considering the extensive use of WhatsApp in less-developed markets like India, Indonesia, and Brazil, Facebook could be putting themselves into a very strong position as an enabler of commerce in these markets. Could we possibly even be looking at Facebook Pay if these business accounts take off?

Info about official WeChat accounts -[https://walkthechat.com/wechat-official- account-simple-guide...](https://walkthechat.com/wechat-official-account- simple-guide/)

<comment><USER5> In Brazil, companies of all sizes already use Whatsapp for Customer Support, as it is by far the most effective channel to communicate with current customers.

Companies buy cellphones that stay in the office with sole purpose of using Whatsapp with customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > a verified profile so people can identify a business

They seem really keen to verify identities of end users as well. Why does WhatsApp need access to your contact list for you to start a new conversation when you can just type the number in?

</comment><comment><USER7> And the oops-I-did-it spam begins.

<comment><USER8> It's opt-in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just use Telegram.

<comment><USER10> Or if you're security conscious[1] use Signal.

[1] - [https://www.eff.org/node/82654](https://www.eff.org/node/82654)

<comment><USER11> At the time we looked for really secure messaging and voice calls, Signal did show very poor voice quality even over wifi in our country. While the choice of secure communication should be based on mentioned features, it must also be usable at least (and have decent interface for regular chats/groups). So it depends. Telegram implemented voice calls pretty good, i.e. one can speak and be heard on daily basis. I don't know if things got better with Signal, would be nice to hear the feedback from various regular users.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but there was also no incidents of secret chat leaking from the beginning, so trusting one push-provider over the other by just EFF preferences seems like a nonsense to me.</comment></comment></comment>


What Caused a California Road to Rise and Crumble? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/what-the-hell-caused-this-california-road-to-suddenly-r-1744393718 <comment><USER2> Isn't this called a "slump"? I think I learned that this is simply a landslide without a feedback loop to accelerate the process. The centre of gravity for each moving mass of rock doesn't move outside its footprint, so nothing ever tips over and rather slowly squishes everything underneath.

I also remember that this process is what makes sand dunes sing. Wind builds them steeper and steeper while gravity causes them to slowly squish down, the billions of little slips resulting audible noise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scientists are baffled!

Oh, never mind. They pointed to the obvious landslide.

<comment><USER4> The interesting aspects of this are (a) when you say "California", people think "earthquakes", which were not a factor here; and (b) it's unusual for a landslide to push material _up_.

<comment><USER5> It was at the bottom of the hill. One can imagine a more dense or solid layer sitting on top of a looser layer of soil or sediment beneath it, plus the road acts to hold it all in place like a suture. As the land slide from above pushes downwards into the lower layer, the firmer layer above will move upwards until it breaks.

It's unusual, but hardly something that boggles the mind or deserves the headline provided.

<comment><USER2> Or creating the road removed support or, more likely imho, made changes to water movements that eventually undermined the structures uphill.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spotify bans ad blockers in updated Terms of Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215845/spotify-ad-blockers-terms-of-service <comment><USER2> Strange thing is that I never intended or expected my regular ad blocker to skip Spotify ads. I just kinda noticed one day that there seems to be more ads on mobile, and I left it at that. Then one day I noticed a bug related to looping on the desktop web client, and while trying to figure out what's going on.. that's when I finally realised that my regular ad blocker is skipping Spotify ads, and is messing up looping in the process.

So.. I guess there might be others who are kinda unintentionally blocking Spotify ads too. Terminating accounts without warning for people who are not even aware that they are in the wrong is gonna result in backslash, I think.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, this exact same thing happened to me before I upgraded to a premium account. uBlock Origin is always on for me and set to noscripting, so I was really confused at that bug. I assume that they'll implement some sort of warning system though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too bad Spotify, if I leave the music playing and go to the bathroom will you be upset too? It's my choice what to listen to and if I chose to use some automation to help me that's my business.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does something like Pihole work with Spotify?

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe I'm missing something here. If I run an ad blocker, it's because I don't have a paid account, and if I don't have a paid account, what do I care if you ban me, when I can just create a new account?

<comment><USER2> I guess some would prefer not to lose their sometimes elaborate music libraries, playlists, likes, history, recommendations, friends, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought Spotify died out years ago, sounds like hard times for them a head but atleast their still holding on.

<comment><USER8> Died out? They are the largest music streaming service in the world.

Did I miss sarcasm in your post?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does your team hire engineers? - <AUTHOR> Having been researching different hiring practices, it seems that most companies converge on a few different techniques (e.g. algorithms on a whiteboard, take-home challenge, pairing, and technical interview questions). This leads me to ask:
How does your team hire?
Do you believe in the efficacy of your process?
How do you think your hiring process can be improved? <comment><USER2> My current company does a pretty traditional "algorithms on a whiteboard" type interview segment or two, an "object/app modelling" segment, and a "chat with the CTO" segment.

It seems to be effective in the sense that I don't recall anyone getting hired and then quickly fired, and my coworkers are all very smart, capable people.

OTOH, it's ineffective in the sense that we probably need to hire at twice the rate we actually are.

I'm not sure what I'd do to improve the process, honestly. Every approach I've ever seen or thought about has significant disadvantages.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was wondering if any company in the US or outside ask for the candidate's preference about whiteboard vs. takehome project? It seems to be a highly debated sticking point for both camps: some feel they would rather have an easy (generic) way to prep by refreshing their CS101 and save time, while others want it to resemble actual work-like environment + problem.

What stops a company preparing 2 tracks and letting the person choose? Yes, it must make HR's, hiring managers' and interviewing engineers' lives a bit less planned and convenient, but it should increase the overall happiness levels for each candidate regardless of the result, which should result in referrals and a filled position (which is what the company really cares about).

What am I missing or is someone already doing this?

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring- post/](http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This has been an area of interest for me as well. I have spoken to a lot of engineers and hiring managers on this subject, and my takeaway is that no two engineers seem to agree on what's the best way to hire people.

Some think that code-while-on-the-phone interviews are bad (too much pressure for some candidates), while others think that take-home interviews bring all kinds of issues (e.g. candidates copy pasting code from Stackoverflow).

Some think that white-boarding is important (insights into the thinking process versus syntactic correctness), while others think that it's not a true evaluation of what the candidate will actually be doing at work.

Some think that asking pure algorithmic questions are bad (does anybody even implement their own hashmaps at work?) while others think that it's a reflection of how much a candidate explores the depth of a subject.

Some swear by HackerRank/Codility based automated tests to "filter" unqualified candidates, while others think that looking at Github for their code samples would be a better evaluation.

Some want generalists, while others want specialists.

Some people reject candidates on arbitrary "culture-fit" reasons.

Personally, here's my ideal interview process based on all these conversations and my own 100+ interviews in various places I have worked:

* Minimum reliance on resume - some people are just bad at writing about their achievements

* Have an initial 30-min call to learn about the projects that the candidate has worked on (especially if you are hiring a specialist). This should not be a filtering round unless you see something totally off target.

* Send the candidate a take-at-home coding assignment. This should ideally take only 2-3 hours and should be _directly related_ to the kind of work she will be doing at work.

* Have another 30-60 min follow-up call to ask the candidate about the approach taken, alternate options, and possible extensions. This will help one ensure that the candidate had not merely copy pasted the code from the Internet.

* If everything looks good, bring the candidate onsite for face-to-face interviews.

* I prefer 2 rounds of face-to-face - the first round asking questions around the candidate's areas of strengths, and projects previously worked on by her. On the second round, I prefer asking questions that are from the domain I am working on. This will allow me to find out how the person attempts to understand a new domain, and whether the person listens/asks questions etc.

At the end of the day, interviews are subjective, and I have made peace with the fact that you're always going to miss out on people who might have just had a bad day.

<comment><USER2> I, too, have gotten interested in this area.

> Send the candidate a take-at-home coding assignment. This should ideally > take only 2-3 hours and should be directly related to the kind of work she > will be doing at work.

I used to be a fan of this, but I'm not so sure anymore. The reason is that if you give me a test that "should" take 2-3 hours to complete, I know I'm going to be competing with people who are spending large multiples of that amount of time on it.

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution to offer for this problem.

Edit: compete -> complete. Freudian slip?

<comment><USER5> Practically speaking, someone looking for a job change does not have 10 hours to spend on every company's coding challenge. So, you will have only a few people who would go out-of-the-way to do something like that.

And, that's not very different from someone spending more than the expected 40 hours at work. One can't do much about that if that person genuinely loves coding all day and does not mind working 60 hours a week.

Finally, in the follow-up call, I do ask the candidate how long the assignment took and how she spent her time across multiple tasks. Obviously if someone spent 10x the expected time, then that's another data-point to the final decision.

<comment><USER2> Suppose a candidate spends 9 hours on your 3 hour challenge. What's the incentive for them to tell you the truth? I think the only way around that is to not tell them what the expected time commitment is, but that still doesn't completely remove the incentive to spend much longer than intended and to understate the amount of time spent.

As to the time commitment, I would say finding the time to do these coding challenges is no harder than finding the time to come in and interview. And not every company even does a take-home coding challenge. The last 2 companies I've worked at did not.

My point is not that there's no signal there. My point is that the incentives encourage candidates to spend arbitrarily large amounts of time on these challenges and to not mention the fact, which distorts the signal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pace – Automatic page load progress bars in pure CSS - <AUTHOR> http://github.hubspot.com/pace/docs/welcome/

<comment><USER2> Just as a note... please dont put "in pure CSS" in the title when the basic needs include javascript:

"Include pace.js and a CSS theme of your choice, and you get a beautiful progress indicator for your page load and ajax navigation."

<comment><USER3> +1 a 100 times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool, but I'd welcome real demos on the site.

None of those things under "Themes" really show what they're like on a real site. They're progress indicators in a box.

</comment><comment><USER5> it's cool, using it for a while with [http://www.bitcoinpulse.com](http://www.bitcoinpulse.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> found this on producthunt - really love it

disclaimer: i work w/ producthunt (but would credit it anyhow)</comment>


microlink.io, get relevant information from any website - <AUTHOR> https://microlink.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

microlink.io is a service for getting relevant information from any website.

with him, you can easily convert your links into beautiful previews. Similar to Facebook URLs on timeline or cards on Twitter/Medium, but out of the box.

This is an example using microlink into my Jekyll blog:

[https://kikobeats.com/what-is-random/#truly- random](https://kikobeats.com/what-is-random/#truly-random)

We built microlink.js to make the integration easy from the frontend side:

[https://microlink.js.org](https://microlink.js.org)

WordPress integration is coming; feel free to suggest one as well!

The pricing of the service is based on API calls. We offer a generous free plan under daily rate limit. Pro plans is oriented to popular sites, with thousands or daily request.

All the information about what the API can do is under:

[https://docs.microlink.io](https://docs.microlink.io)

PS: If you feedback the project write your Twitter account and we follow you :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Have you converted to software engineering from another profession? - <AUTHOR> I'm a 26 year old living in Aberdeen, Scotland. I graduated with a mechanical engineering degree (masters) in 2012 and having been working in the oil industry as a subsea installation analyst since then.
While my work can be interesting, I've had a fascination with writing software since midway through my degree. I started out building websites for family friends. This progressed to writing optimisation software for my degree projects. The work I did at university got me a more technical role in the oil industry where I was promised I could occasionally write software to solve specific problems and automate 3rd party software used for subsea installation. I ended up writing a program that the whole department is reliant on for their work. Unfortunately, the boss that originally hired me has left, he was the only one that had an appreciation for engineers who could also code.
In addition to all this I have built a variety of web apps in my spare time. Most of these have had very little attention, but a couple (https://flutter.social, https://leanlab.io) have been featured on Product Hunt (not that featuring on PH is any measure of success).
So, I'm currently at a crossroads in my career. I either continue as an engineering analyst in the oil industry or convert to software engineering. The conversion to software engineering is the basis of my question.
Has anyone reading this converted from another engineering discipline to software engineering? If so, how has that played out for you?
I am somewhat stuck in the north of Scotland so I think remote work or freelancing is my only real option. What is the best way to go about getting into this? And is it possible to ease into contract/freelance work from salaried work.
For those of you in the UK, is it worth getting some sort of accreditation? If so, what?
I'd really appreciate any guidance on this and would most of all like to hear from anyone who has gone through a similar transition. <comment><USER2> how I did it:

degree BS Mech Eng to Manufacturing Eng

I saw an opportunity to create software around a specific manufacturing problem and started my own software biz. sold after 10 years and started working as an employee in software related positions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer.

Out of interest, were you working in a manufacturing position when you wrote the software for your business or did you spot the opportunity from the outside?

<comment><USER2> I noticed the opportunity from within, and I jumped ship and went for it. But that was a different time because I was young, no kids or typical bloated American overhead.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool. Unfortunately, I do have overheads, not kids, but enough to prevent me jumping straight out of work into a startup business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I converted from EE. I'm doing well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good for you! :)

Do you have any advice?

<comment><USER3> Programming is way easier than real engineering. Keep that in mind as you study and prepare. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting statement. Why do you think programming is easier than 'real' engineering?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hand-Washing no defense against Swine Flu - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/215435

<comment><USER2> Anyone else think the danger from the vaccines is greater than the danger from the flu ?</comment>


Show HN: Github for Designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelapse.com/hn <comment><USER3> I've been thinking about how a GitHub for designers would work. This doesn't quite seem like "it" to me. Don't take that remark the wrong way, I like what's been done here. It's well designed and I could see a use for it.

But that's just it, I have to find a use for it. It isn't immediately obvious to me. I'm not the typical designer as I don't have clients and my job isn't 100% design but I have been designing everything from packaging, to print advertisements, to websites for ten years. I don't know why I would use this. If I need alternate versions of files I just save them with version numbers. The poor man's version control. But I don't need anything more than that - <USER2> other designers?

The power of Github I believe is that it allows programmers to share their work with their colleagues, learn from others, and work together with others.

I like Dribbble because it allows designers to do what they want to do with their colleagues. Show off their work and get inspiration from other designers. To me, Dribbble is the _closest_ thing to a Github for designers.

What's missing from Dribbble is the collaborative part. Coders working with coders, designers with designers. But that's the problem. Coders have to work with other coders all the time it's the nature of the beast. Designers do not in the same way. In my experience.

So if it's not designers with designers then it's designers with coders. And a place for those who (like me) both design and code to both showcase our work and to work together with others. If you could turn this into a Dribbble + Github I think that would be interesting.

<comment><USER4> Man, this space is filling up so fast. We're working on a similar product, we're funded and a little further along (shameless plug: <http://www.revisu.com>). When we started working on this, there was no one in this space. Now there are a ton of offerings!

I think you hit the nail on the head with regard to what designers need from version control. We bill ourselves as Dribbble + Github for creative teams exactly for the reasons you describe.

<comment><USER5> Friendly advice:

I would really like to find out what revisu does and how it works without signing up. An intro video would be ideal, or at least a much more detailed feature list and screenshot walk-through.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the advice. We've been fortunate that we've had a huge user base to test with initially, so we haven't put very much work in to our public-facing stuff. More to come on this...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm trying to come up with something more interesting to say than "Wow". I've wished I had this a few times.

I think the only thing that you lose here is access to an actual "diff", but visually, you get most of it.

Grats on a fantastic achievement.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the kind words, Andrew. I'm not sure if you found it but you can compare multiple revisions side by side and also overlay revisions to see what's changed.

<comment><USER8> It took me awhile to find it, because in FF 10 on Windows, the X|Y button is showing up as an FL (it looks like it might be a sprite issue? the buttons on the bottom have the same problem) but once I found it, I liked it a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have fixed the problem for Firefox. It should look great now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh cool, just last week got the same intent to do this, after someone mentioned layervault.com in the comments.

Version controlling for design is great but if you want to differentiate from layervault or pixelnovel.com then you should try and see if designers would collaborate in an opensource fashion, ala github. (I am really curious about this, as that's the real reason people use github AFAICT) So I would go and add some social aspect for it, make it a bit more like dribbble, behance, flickr (portfolios, inspiration) as these are the sites that designers use. Also adding stockphoto/illustration selling and job board features would probably make for the best designer platform ever. (not mentioning the business options...)

And after this feature suggesting madness, I would like to point out that if you want to keep this simple and stupid, then still please get a designer and work on the ux.

Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice to see others in this space. Kelly Sutton et al run the slick <http://layervault.com> which comes to mind. "Simple version control for designers"

<comment><USER11> While I like the look of it, the mac only is an instant close and forget for me, and I know of a few friends who would do the same, some because they don't like macs others because they cant afford them. (Honest comment I don't want to start a flamewar here)

<comment><USER7> A windows version is in the pipeline. We'll have more info soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Love it but I fear it's not the right solution and I even don't think it's the right problem it's trying to solve.

When a designer is working in photoshop they are not actually part of the development process yet. They are still in design mode, they are for the lack of a better word sketching.

Not until they start to actually output assets for developers do the github concept start to make sense.

Designers often have different versions of the same design inside the document in the layers and groups and smart objects.

They will for instance have a couple of version of a header or some styling on their elements, perhaps different layout for main content.

So for this to be useful it would need to create a kind of master psd that save the state of which layers and groups are turned off and on.

This way you can sketch away and not have to worry about creating a billion different versions inside the documents that just make them bigger.

But that is a different problem.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why do I buy this instead of Layer Vault?

<comment><USER7> We think LayerVault is great and they're doing some stuff that's similar to us. There's a few things we're doing differently.

When we first came up with this idea, we really needed a good way to comment & annotate and keep all that feedback inline instead of it spilling over into email. The second is that we provide an easy way to diff revisions side by side or overlay them to see what has actually changed. Behind the scenes, we actually work quite differently from LayerVault, particularly on large files. I'd love to talk to you more to see how we can help you. Please email me firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Clever of them to show a custom welcome message for Hacker News visitors. I love how it jumps you right into a demo app with no login or registration steps.

The functionality and usefulness of this service is fantastic, but I wonder how hard it would be for github itself to compete; they've shown that they can do simpler binary versioning and comparison with PNG/JPEG images, so all they'd have to do is add support for previewing PSD files as well. Whether that's a simple thing to support is not something I'm qualified to answer though :)

<comment><USER15> I think psd versioning is outside of github's core competency. We've used distributed version control for design files, and it really doesnt support a natural workflow. Background syncing just seems much more natural as a solution to the problem since the files tend to be very large, and are compounded by rapid generation and disposal of many many versions.

<comment><USER14> Good point.

Another issue that might be how integrated the version control system could be into the graphics app. Github will never aim to integrate itself deeply into Photoshop, so designers would be forced to visit a browser to see changes.

Something like OS X Lion's file versioning system might actually be perfect for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool. Is especially like the automatic syncing. Getting designers to actually upload things to a server, or got forbid have to type in commands to git is just not going to happen.

I did find a small bug: in the X/Y view, your scrollbars are draggable, so if you scroll the image, then release the mouse button the view panel gets stuck to your mouse. (Chrome win7)

</comment><comment><USER17> Gorgeous app and well done! I really like how all the images scroll together when you are comparing multiple images.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a great idea! Often when doing work for clients I've wanted to show them something more than just the finished PSD. They've hit upon the idea that with design the through process is often as important as the final result. Pixelapse will definitely will help me extract more value from my time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really liking this. I'd be curious to hear how you've approached the storage problem?

Are the full files for each revision saved? Or have you developed a way to store only the differences?

With large PSD files, the former could get expensive quickly, which makes me wonder the same thing as ARolek asked, what will pricing be based on?

<comment><USER7> Hey Michael, We only store the differences between subsequent saves so the actual impact on bandwidth & storage is pretty small. We're still playing around with pricing but there will be a free tier with more options depending on the space used.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the reply Shravan, that's awesome to know. Definitely sounds very promising, I'm looking forward to seeing the subscription plans when yous are ready.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks cool; nice job!

Some notes:

When playing around with the |X|Y| functionality

BUG - Dragging the slider on a compare window beyond the container and releasing the mouse causes the window to follow your mouse around. Your drag and drop "sorting" functionality seems to kick in.

BUG 2 - Adding multiple versions to the compare frame works well, however it was initially hard to tell how to remove a given frame. Some ability from the frame would be nice, but that wasn't the bug. When you add multiple versions to compare you see them highlighted below. Then when you go to another view (i.e. the single revision view) and back to the |X|Y| compare view the frames you were last comparing are still there, however they are no longer highlighted.

Again, this looks great, just keep going! :)

</comment><comment><USER21> So...as an indirect competitor...let me just say...well done. This is pretty awesome!

This is something I have thought about doing for a while, but to be honest, I never had the technical chops to do it at the time.

Sure, parts of this still needs polishing - got some quirky JS issues with the comparison of the two images side by side in Chrome on Windows.

But you guys have done and awesome, awesome job!

Edit: Btw, this is the quirky issue I encountered - <http://i.imgur.com/MOY9c.png> To replicate this, in Chrome on Windows 7, click on the 'X Y' side by side icon and then just try scrolling the images up and down, or side to side, and then moving the mouse. It moves the entire DOM element.

Congrats on the launch.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice idea.

Try and chose a 2 syllable or a less tongue twisting name.

<comment><USER23> Now that I think about it, if I said "Pixelapse" out loud, I bet most people would hear it as something like "pixel apps" or "pixie laps".

<comment><USER24> My informal testing reveals people think it's "pixel apps" or "pick slaps". I'm guessing the creators don't have "dark" (velarised) L in their dialect, because it's a lot clearer when pronounced with a non-velarised L.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For some reason we have a real problem hanging on to previous design iterations and we often want to go back and try incorporating things from previous iterations. This is going to be really cool, especially for distributed teams.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think you might be onto something here. However I'd focus heavily on the designers who don't know github. Because hackers 'round here are going to tell you to just use github, because it make so much sense for them.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've always thought, in a working environment, it would be best for everyone involved if designers got up to speed with git. I know git is hard, and I know designers are not necessarily command-line junkies.

Rather, my point is simply: it's worth it.

So for me, downloading a client that syncs, while useful, is not the _answer_.

The answer is for designers to embrace git and also for developers to make git easier to use. Whether that requires a better UI, better documentation, better tutorials, etc.

Git has the power to do all this and more, there just needs to be an intuitive wrapper for the workflow maybe?

<comment><USER28> GitHub have a fantastic Mac App which makes git significantly easier to use for those less technically inclined.

<comment><USER29> It's sort of fantastic. I love that it's not just a remapping of git commands to buttons. It really is simple and easy to use.

The big problem with that is that its extremely buggy. It seems to choke on merge conflicts most of the time and it can get into some really weird states. I've had it undo changes on completely different files than what I told it to and lose hours of work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How do I fork a design? Can I make another layer and merge it into the PS file so that others can tweak my changes?

Just ideas that popped into my head looking at this. It's pretty awesome, great job!

<comment><USER31> I think this is the key part of git's workflow that improves on older simple versioning systems. the fork and merge model is really needed in other spaces too.

I wonder if it would be possible to turn design files into something textual to leverage git's builtin merge capabilities?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm still cracking up: They make you sign your name in Comic Sans on the invite page. :-)

Also, really neat concept overall. Can't wait to try it!

</comment><comment><USER33> I store all my designs in dropbox. This has worked pretty well. If I need a design I just go into dropbox and grab it and make changes to it. It works, but I'm guessing their is a better way. And when I need feedback I use a combination of droplr and instant messaging. Their is definitely room for innovation.

</comment><comment><USER34> Cool idea but I suspect by the end of this year anyone who seriously uses Photoshop will be using Adobe's Creative Cloud solution to solve the same problems.

Granted, Creative Cloud isn't fully released yet, but it will be soon and it is basically this plus Dropbox plus full native integration into all the Adobe apps.

</comment><comment><USER35> You should allow this technology to be deployed on a local server. Many companies consider their design to be confidential information, and they do not allow storage on an external server, especially in U.S. where their data can be subject to warrantless interception (Patriot Act and all).

</comment><comment><USER36> One problem is that your average designer will not know what versioning is, never mind have an opinion as to whether it'd be useful or not.

I see this as a case of applying a successful model from one field to another without consideration around whether this is actually a problem in the first place.

<comment><USER37> The usefulness of versioning and other successful models in other fields/contexts is an interesting thing to think about. It could be that some applications of these models are not solving existing problems so much as creating new opportunities. Versioning for art and design could create new opportunities for collaborative creation even if it doesn't solve the problems of existing artists and designers. I don't know how well this can work, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For me the biggest thing about Github is the ability to learn for other programmers. I am a CS grad student though so I recognize that for others collaboration is the secret sauce. Provided this solved my problem of trying to learn something about design, I'd use it frequently.

</comment><comment><USER39> I went into the demo expecting more of reapplication of git workflow (with some sort of staging area equivalent) for design, but after playing around with the demo it's clear the combination of auto-saving and milestones is both simpler and more elegant. Amazing work guys!

</comment><comment><USER40> Is this only for Photoshop? What about Fireworks or Illustrator?

When I click for an invitation, I get an Application Error (An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.)

<comment><USER7> Hey dsawler, Pixelapse works with Fireworks and Illustrator as well & we're looking to add new formats. Is there a format in particular you'd like to see?

Re: the app error. We underestimated the load on the site. :) We just scaled up so if you refresh and try again, you should be able to sign up.

<comment><USER40> Oh, that's great. Those are the only two I use :) Excited to try this out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I would be interested in fooling with this, but I'm an Illustrator addict! Photoshop used to be basically what hosted my scanner drivers, and now that I do most of my work direct in AI, and TWAIN seems to be a dead standard, I don't even use it for that.

<comment><USER7> Hey there! We didn't mention it in the demo but Pixelapse works with Illustrator files as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you like this you might also like my friends at <http://revisu.com>. Can't quite tell where the features overlap or diverge. Would love to know more.

Congrats on a sharp looking launch, Pixelapse!

</comment><comment><USER43> Great work. I can really see a use for this kind of thing for designers.

My favorite is the side by side view. Speaking of which there is a bug in latest chrome on win where the side by side panels get dragged when using the scrollbar.

</comment><comment><USER44> A few months ago I made <http://artevolve.com> pretty much to mimic github for graphics/art... but doesn't seem like designers or artsy folks were that interested in it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Just a word of warning - the site's broken when viewed in FF 9.0.1 on Linux: <http://i.imgur.com/Y24CX.png>

</comment><comment><USER46> Anybody else see the resemblance between the logo and that of <http://www.premiumpixels.com>?

</comment><comment><USER47> Really cool idea. We could use this everyday. Have you thought about what the price is going to be? Will it be per doc, or per GB of storage used?

<comment><USER7> Hey arolek, We're still playing around with pricing but it will probably be based on storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Awesome! But.. why comic sans in the signup?

<comment><USER49> Because the font-family for the input is set to "'Tangerine', cursive", and for some reason 'cursive' defaults to Comic Sans on Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Very slick (which is important, because designers by nature have high standards). Quite a lot of potential I think.

</comment><comment><USER51> Instant utility, nice UI, good workflow that came from people scratching their own itch.

Fuck it, I'd fund this.

</comment><comment><USER50> Is it just me or is the server very slow? I guess it's getting hammered to death right now.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, we didn't anticipate this making it to the top. We just scaled up so it should be faster now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Have been in private Beta and I love it! Keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER53> How is this helpful? On projects I've worked on, I've been able to teach the designers how to use github for Mac and they picked it up really easily and felt good learning something programming-ish.

</comment><comment><USER54> What technologies do you use on client side?

</comment><comment><USER55> This is fantastic -- looks great, guys.

</comment><comment><USER56> Great work guys.

</comment><comment><USER57> Impressive!

</comment><comment><USER58> The web site repels me as a GNU/Linux user. It seems to be designed only for people who own iProducts and own a license to adobe photoshop.</comment>


Why San Francisco is really That Bad: A Manifesto In Parts - <AUTHOR> http://whysfreallyisthatbad.com/

<comment><USER2> So who is this author and where can I read more about her? I think her name is Hazel Phillips?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading this, one gets the impression that she's part of the problem that she describes. Living in the Bay Area, I loathed that SF culture enough to not spend any more time there than necessary. Which doesn't mean I thought more of San Jose, merely was able to easily ignore it.</comment>


Resilience is not a DIY endeavour - <AUTHOR> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-put-down-the-self-help-books-resilience-is-not-a-diy-endeavour/ <comment><USER2> Good article. The author's focus on the Environment more than the Individual is very right. It helps explain why when people move away from cloistered/detrimental environments to a more nurturing one for their talents, they often bloom. There is a symbiotic relationship between the Environment and the Individual with the former often holding the upper hand. An Individual can be easily shaped by the Environment while the reverse is quite hard to do (and thus the reason for the self-help industry).

The above may seem like a mere platitude but unfortunately people often focus too much on the Individual and forget the Environment. For example see research on "Behaviourism/Operant Conditioning" and also "learned helplessness". Nature only gives you possible potential, it requires tremendous Nurture to activate and make it bloom.

Finally; a caution, we should NOT make the mistake of assuming that the Individual is helpless. Willpower, Attitude, Fighting Spirit etc. are all to be cultivated. So self-help is still needed. It is just that their effect in changing ourselves and the Environment is often overemphasized. This is the crux, if the Environment is not conducive, no amount of self-help practice is going to help, you need to move out of the bad to a good Environment for you as an Individual to win.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a difficult article to read because on the one hand there is a lot of truth in it, but on the other there is a fair bit of confusion.

Trying to build resilience in the middle of a crisis is like teaching prevention to someone who is seriously ill - it is simply too late. At that point the person needs outside help to recover.

This does not mean that taking responsibility for your well-being is somehow pointless and that adapting essentially a victim mentality is all that one is reduced to. And yes, you will most likely need someone's guidance and yes, the environment you are in will make a big difference. But dismiss personal development and the taking of responsibility for it is simply nonsense.

I wish I had the time to write a longer response but I don't and anyway who's going to bother reading it anyway. ;)

<comment><USER4> USA's SOF truth #4: "Competent Special Operations Forces cannot be created after emergencies occur."

And they're built to be resilient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very revealing, especially in a forum where often overachievement is praised and it is not rare to read testimonials of burnout. It also highlights the importance of having a supporting net and an environment... I guess the same applies to Startups, after all Y Combinator offers such kind of environment, not just financing.

</comment><comment><USER6> This section resonated with my experience:

"For example, we heard stories of school guidance counsellors who insisted that parents take time off from minimum-wage jobs to attend case conferences because guidance counsellors and psychometricians do not work evenings."

This is indicative of a lot of service providers especially government departments. Pure arrogance and inflexibility. Those same departments then complain about low participation and/or lazy people "who can't be bothered" or who "don't follow up" their various "government intervention" plans.

</comment><comment><USER7> " Change your world first by finding the relationships that nurture you, the opportunities to use your talents and the places where you experience community and governmental support and social justice. Once you have these, your world will help you succeed more than you could ever help yourself." \-- but how?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, this genre of advice (as with most other self-help advice, to be frank) is pretty much "draw the rest of the fucking owl".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find self-help books and self-help gurus like Sampson to be something akin to placebos for willpower, but placebos work for a lot of people so I guess I just go through life gritting my teeth and bearing it rather than spending my time complaining how it's all a bunch of bull.

<comment><USER10> What is willpower if not a placebo? It's simply a belief at the end of the day.

<comment><USER11> Line from a song I heard recently: "Faith ain't nothing but a game face, cousin."</comment></comment></comment>


Augmented Reality in Marketing - <AUTHOR> https://www.onirix.com/news/how-to-create-a-successful-ar-marketing-campaign/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys! I just came across this website and read the article and I just realized I'm getting too old-fashioned in terms of Marketing. I've been working on this field for a long time and it's the first time I see myself at this point. Truth is that I find this awesome! I believe these kind of technologies are the future of not only marketing but many fields. What do you guys think?

<comment><USER2> Here is a perspective

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs)

"HYPER-REALITY

Keiichi Matsuda

Hyper-Reality presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media. [http://hyper-reality.co/](http://hyper-reality.co/) "</comment></comment>


FluentAutomation v2.3 Documentation - <AUTHOR> http://fluent.stirno.com/docs/

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies to the mobile users who check us out, waiting on some invalidations in the cache. ;(</comment>


JK Rowling's 'Pottermore' details revealed: DRM-free, embedded watermarks - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-06/23/pottermore-details-in-depth <comment><USER2> If it really is the case that Rowling owns the rights to digital distribution of the Potter series, how did the publishers not have the vision to realize how valuable that would be? Are they really that short sighted. That just seems baffling to me.

Kudos for Rowling to put them out DRM free as well.

<comment><USER3> Those contracts were signed a long time ago. The first version of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ was released in 1997!

Edited to add: Hindsight doesn't wear glasses. ;)

<comment><USER2> Right but new books have been published since then. I am sure the contract has changed over the years as new things have been brought into the fold, movies for example. You would have thought that by book 4 someone would have brought this up.</comment></comment></comment>


SCO zombie is dead, finally - <AUTHOR> http://fossforce.com/2016/02/sco-is-undeniably-and-reliably-dead/ <comment><AUTHOR> The SCO saga is over. The current owners of SCO have agreed to the final judgment against them. IBM can still move forward, but SCO has been denied any more actions.

Pamela Jones the editor of Groklaw needs to be commended for her work in tracking this across the years. I know that the Groklaw site has been frozen since 2013, but if you know her, pass my thanks on to her for being the voice of the Open Software Community against SCO.

Everyone should hoist a toast to the IBM legal nazguls and others (yes you too Autozone) that helped crush SCO.

<comment><AUTHOR> So a number of you have walked by and flicked off points.

\-- Sorry to see SCO go? \-- IBM Nazguls need to be treated with more respect? \-- Happy that PJ is gone? Did she make you nervous? \-- Some flaw in open source you are sideways voting against?</comment></comment>


Reverse Engineering a 433MHz Motorised Blind RF Protocol - <AUTHOR> https://nickwhyte.com/post/2017/reversing-433mhz-raex-motorised-rf-blinds/ <comment><USER2> Nice read but I would use rtl-sdr and SDR tools to reverse engineer this kind of stuff. There are lots of good tools can be used for this purpose in SDR community like this one:

[http://www.rtl-sdr.com/waveconverter-an-open-source-rf- rever...](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/waveconverter-an-open-source-rf-reverse- engineering-tool/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice write-up! - I strongly recommend looking at dspectrum for those interested in reversing these kind of devices:

[https://github.com/tresacton/dspectrumgui](https://github.com/tresacton/dspectrumgui)

"The goal of this app is to make it trivial to demodulate common RF signals, and provide a digital worksheet for your reverse engineering efforts."

<comment><USER4> The author identified a similar workflow for breaking down these packet capture bits, and linked to other potential methods. I'd say his process was an interesting read!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This guy did it the hard way, I automated my lights in a similar way with simple command line tools (./listen <pin> to get code and ./send <pin> to send.)

See here: [https://home-assistant.io/](https://home-assistant.io/)

<comment><USER6> Hey there, I'm actually the author of the linked post. Yes whilst you're right about doing this the hard way, this wasn't really what I was wanting to do.

In the post I actually outlined that I had actually captured enough data from a handful of remotes that I could have replayed these captures to control the blinds (and I even had a rig set up to do this).

But that's not what I wanted to do. I was interested in working out what was happening with these remotes and being able to generate as many arbitrary remote codes as I wanted.

Going the step further to reverse engineer the protocol is something I did as a learning (and fun and challenging) exercise. I've definitely picked up skills through this process that I can apply in similar projects later down the track.

<comment><USER7> Hey there yourself! Great article. I posted it to [https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/comments/6nmu43/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/comments/6nmu43/reverse_engineering_a_433mhz_motorised_blind_rf/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice write up! I wanted to do this in my place and have one less reason not to

<comment><USER6> Thanks, feel free to hit me up on Twitter (@nickw444) if you happen to have any questions :)

<comment><USER8> Will do, currently have smaller 1" roller blinds so have to find the tubular motors that fit inside of them.

Rollertrol.com carries some but they are quite a bit pricier than the full radius ones elsewhere.</comment></comment></comment>


Google, IBM, Mellanox, Nvidia, Tyan form OpenPower Consortium - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41684.wss <comment><AUTHOR> I have a question. Why did a moderator lowercase OpenPOWER? It makes a difference.

<comment><USER2> To the mod:

POWER is not a typo, and it is not a emphasis, this is the trademark from IBM, the thing is really named POWER in all caps.

<comment><USER3> IMHO, that doesn't mean it's not shouting. At some point, gratuitous typography runs the risk of people refusing to respect it. For example, that company that seems to expect people to spell its name with a trailing exclamation point.

I have a bit more sympathy for IBM since they weren't exactly going for viral adoption and (seriously) their products have a long tradition of being lowercase-challenged.

<comment><USER4> "IMHO, that doesn't mean it's not shouting. "

So why did you write IBM, instead of Ibm? Or ARM, instead of Arm?

<comment><USER3> Because I find meaningless three letter acronyms much more palatable than five letter contrived ones.

The contrivedness of an acronym increases exponentially with its length.

EDIT: OK, I give in. I had too much fun hanging out with the password cracking guys at the awesome Passwords 13 conference last week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IBM is furloughing US hardware employees this month: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report- ibm...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm-to- furlough-most-of-its-u-s-hardware-staff-in-late-august/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I find this move greatly entertaining. Its like a Hollywood remake, "AIM Alliance II"[1] Many of the things that make ARM successful IBM has dismissed in the past as pandering to special interests. And, like Sun with its failed attempt to make SPARC a thing, IBM has shown it can be a bit schizophrenic when it comes to sharing enough that folks can compete. ARM, not having a fab, and not having any products for sale, has very little to discourage it from agreeing to things. IBM on the other hand has other interests that are often in tension with the goal of making a processor architecture ubiquitous.

Glad they are trying again, not sure if they will be any more successful this time, but will be pleasantly surprised if we get a credible third horse in the 'mass market instruction set architecture' race.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance)

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone else here remember the CHRP/PReP days? Good times.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platf...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platform)

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

<comment><USER8> Yes, there is a Back To The Future aspect. That said, cpus are just cheaper and easier these days. POWER, as a core, might break out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Industry consortiums are always iffy things, but here's one thing I don't think I've seen since Lisp Machine days that's potentially very interesting:

" _The consortium will offer open-source POWER firmware, the software that controls basic chip functions._ "

<comment><USER10> Open source firmware is a thing; check out U-Boot and Coreboot. I hear Google loves Coreboot.

<comment><USER9> Of course, but those aren't CPU firmware. With MIT and LMI's Lisp Machines (and probably the Symbolics LM-2 repackaging of MIT's, don't know about their own architectures), depending on how much microcode SRAM you had you could add your own microcoded instructions to the machine. There was even a compiler to make it easier, although I don't know how widely that was used.

ADDED: the elReg article in this item, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6168144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6168144), based on talking to an IBM guy, implies it is that level of BIOS/chipset firmware that's being talking about. Ah well.

<comment><USER10> It sounds like you're going to be disappointed. Firmware != microcode, and we didn't say we're opening the microcode.

<comment><USER11> We? Are you involved in the OpenPOWER project?

<comment><USER10> Not personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "OpenPOWER is open to any firm that wants to innovate on the POWER platform and participate in an open, collaborative effort."

Translation: There is no way that this hardware is going to end up being affordable for small time builders, hackers, and enthusiasts. Unless someone screws up and accidentally ships something like a Playstation 3 rev 1 using it.

I'm only cynical because I'm jealous.

</comment><comment><USER12> Too little too late? I dont get it. Intel has been iterating x86 at insane speed. In the high performance side Intel has finally caught on and eclipse Power. While Intel x86 has been winning the performance and performance / power in certain wattage scenario, they still dont have something to show for in Low Power segment. Although the next gen Intel Atom should be on par with the best in ARM, pricing would put Intel at disadvantage.

And that means in Low Power segment ARM realm supreme. Not likely to be dethrone in the next coming decade. As they have solid roadmap and pretty much the plan for next few years are all set and done.

So where does it left for Power? Coming from IBM they are very likely to be expensive. IBM has never been known to iterate as fast as Intel. Let alone ARM which now offers all sort of ARM chips for everything except High performance in their portfolio.

I just dont see how this could change anything.

<comment><USER13> For those that do not know, IBM processors are used in high-performance computing applications. Some of the world's fastest supercomputers are based on POWER [1]. These supercomputers can have hundreds of thousands or even millions of cores for massively parallel computing. We've seen recently from some of these systems that the POWER processors are much more effective than x86 processors. They consume lower power and generate less heat. If combined with Nvidia GPU's for CUDA and Mellanox's commodity InifiniBand interconnect hardware, we could have affordable clusters for heterogenous high-performance computing.

In the past, the supercomputers/clusters sold by IBM do not include hardware from these other companies. I think this partnership with Tyan (major manufacturer of current x86 chipsets) will also allow 3rd-party vendors to build systems with IBM POWER processors.

In other words, POWER is not in the same market as x86 or ARM. It does have its own niche in the market.

[1] [http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/](http://www.top500.org/lists/2013/06/)

<comment><USER14> _We 've seen recently from some of these systems that the POWER processors are much more effective than x86 processors. They consume lower power and generate less heat. _

_In other words, POWER is not in the same market as x86 or ARM. It does have its own niche in the market._

Look at that Top500 list again and compare #1 (x86) and #3 (POWER). #1 has about double the number of cores, performance and power usage. I'd say the high-end Xeons are comparable to POWER in all aspects.

<comment><USER13> The computer in the #1 spot was recently announced in China and sports Intel's Xeon Phi coprocessors, which include many cores per unit. The system in the #3 spot uses all cpu's and is completely homogenous. I worked in HPC at LLNL last year and saw the POWER processors. They are very small units and don't draw nearly as much power as Intel Xeon series.

Here's a picture of the Sequoia machine: [http://imgur.com/6UrZndM](http://imgur.com/6UrZndM)

Each of those cards is a single node in the cluster.

<comment><USER12> Great perspective. Any more to share on your view how will POWER changes, i still dont see it goes anywhere apart from HPC. And being solely used in HPC just isn't a variable long term strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> If something cool comes out of this I will be very happy.

I always considered POWER much more cool than x86, and was pretty sad when Apple abandoned it.

Also I was happy the current gen consoles used it, but I think Sony move to make it bizarrely complex to the point that noone could code for it, kinda stupid.

</comment><comment><USER15> What is the status of the old T1/T2 SPARC chips? Those were similarly open- sourced, yes?

<comment><USER16> The RTL source was released under the GPLv2, GPL and hardware is a bit iffy since synthesis isn't the same as compilation, but depending on who owns the IP (in this case Oracle) they could make the case you need to open source your RTL source as well. I personally wouldn't invest the high hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars needed to produce a chip without getting a license agreement first with the ambiguity of the license, and which point I would probably consider the POWER architectures (like many FPGAs vendors used to) or ARM. In the case of pushing it to FPGAs, the OpenSPARC would use a ton of resources to the point where I'd rather have a dedicated off chip processor, or a FPGA with a built in processor.

I know people have put the OpenSPARC code on FPGAs, but I don't know of any use in industry in FPGAs or ASICS. I'd be interested if anybody knows any.

<comment><USER15> It's a shame too... so many beautiful threads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Relevant, for anybody thinking of jumping aboard that sinking ship: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report- ibm...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2013/08/05/report-ibm-to- furlough-most-of-its-u-s-hardware-staff-in-late-august).

</comment><comment><USER18> Hmmm. Google having significant influence on the lowest level of my hardware...

<comment><USER19> You mean the bits that are already made in china?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> any chance to have a parallella sort of SOC, a cheap HPC contender out of this consortiums?

imagine a PowerPC HPC SOC for less than $99 :)

<comment><USER4> POWER != PowerPC, although they are related.

There are/were plenty of PowerPC-based microcontrollers. Freescale, among other vendors, had a few families. It's all ARM now though as far as I know.

<comment><USER21> PPC is still incredibly common in industrial embedded systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So should I not throwout my powerbook G4?

</comment><comment><USER23> Probably a good idea to deprecate your POWER infrastructure. This can only mean bad things for the customer support. Getting your APIs twisted in this so-called "open" software on proprietary, niche hardware mess with no single POC will mean you're dependent on them for a long time to come and your software will only become more and more complex and integrated as time goes on, until nobody on earth can untangle it.</comment>