HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere. - <AUTHOR> http://haxe.org/ <comment><USER2> Ah, "code once. deploy everywhere." Few examples of marketing to engineers spark quite the same level of skepticism as this oft-repeated claim.

Ignoring, for a moment, the complexity of deploying software across multiple platforms, it's important to remember the multiple form-factor problem. The same software doesn't work from a user's standpoint on multiple platforms if the UI isn't correct for that device. The best example I can give is "mobile versions" of sites and apps, clearly targeted at the form factor of a phone, being delivered to a 10" tablet. It's crappy.

Bring in the obvious elephant in the room of the number of times this claim has been made from an engineering standpoint and truly failed to deliver, and I yawn every time HaXe is mentioned.

<comment><USER3> <http://unity3d.com/>

Yes, you have to make allowances for the actual differences between platforms (physical buttons, screen sizes, input methods), but the rest of the code deploys extremely well across platforms. When moving between platforms, you only have to rewrite the pieces that you actually want to be different.

<comment><USER4> Unity is great for a restricted problem space: applications that almost fully define their own GUI, namely games.

A truly harder cross-platform problem is to abstract access to OS GUI in usable way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We use HaXe at Justin.tv.

It has some very nice points, but "code once, deploy everywhere" is ridiculous. So many of the crucial APIs are platform dependent that there is absolutely no way your HaXe application is going to be portable.

<comment><USER6> Agreed - my Haxe games run on iPhone, PC, Mac and Flash from the same code base. It's way less work than it would be rewriting them, but it's certainly not a panacea.

However, the NME project (<http://code.google.com/p/nekonme/>) is getting pretty good; it emulates the Flash APIs on other platforms. Great for games; probably not usable for the kinds of stuff you do at Justin.tv.

<comment><USER6> I should mention too that if anyone's interested in Haxe and would like to talk to me for a few minutes about my experience porting the games at <http://www.bigblockgames.com> and the feasibility of swapping to it from your current solution, hit me up at firstname.lastname@example.com.

I don't do contract or consulting work, so you don't have to worry about me trying to sell you something. :)

<comment><USER7> Would you be so kind as to post that experience here?

<comment><USER6> Sure!

* The Haxe C++ output is very solid. Sometimes there are compiler errors that you have to reverse engineer, like for when you use a try{} without a catch{}, which is valid in Haxe, but throws an error in C++. It's relatively easy though; the C++ output contains which haxe file and line number each line is from, and it has never taken more than a minute or two to figure out what's going on.

There has only been one logic error I've experienced - Haxe guarantees that arugments of a function are called left to right (i.e. something( readbyte(), readbyte() );), but of course C++ does not. Other than that, as far as the core compiler and code generation goes, if it compiles, the generated code is sound.

* Use NekoNME - bootstrapping on the iPhone without it would require a whole bunch of work. It is an API compatibility layer with Flash, and most basic stuff is replicated. So you code against the Flash APIs, and it spits out a native app on the iPhone, etc. That said, call as few of the Flash APIs as possible; roll stuff by hand, because they kind of suck.

* The garbage collector is quite slow, especially on the iPhone. So you have to be careful about the number of objects you've got in flight, even/especially strings. I don't keep Black Market's story in memory even on the PC version of the game because of this.

* The C++ generated code is very very fast. Though of course some optimisations aren't possible, like creating vectors on the stack, so for example the Haxe Box2d port is slower than the original C++ version of Box2D (I had to use pooled Vectors in Super Goblin).

* If you're making something using 2D graphics, catering to the myriad of display resolutions is going to suck. But that's not a function of Haxe.

* Similarly, you end up doing a whole bunch of work per platform anyway; stuff like putting in app purchasing into the iPhone apps required (at least when I did it) hacking it into the native sections of the NME libraries (a pain, but doable).

* Checkout NME once, and stop updating when it's working well - it breaks often, and is in constant development.

* That said, if you're a hacker, get commit access to NekoNME. If you commit solid changes back they'll love the extra help, and you're likely to want to add some missing features (not as many these days as there were when I did it a year ago).

Now that Unity3D supports Flash, my next game is actually going to be written in that (see <http://www.underthegarden.com>). However, if Haxe fits your needs (eg write your website backend, Javascript, SWF, iPhone app, PC downloadable all from the _same codebase_ ), it's solid and will likely be around for a long time; there'll be some teething pain, but it isn't a lemon technology wise.

The reason I suggested people email me is so I can help figure out if it actually does fit their use case!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I became a huge fan of haxe when I was working at chumby industries and was limited by the firmware to working on AVM1/ActionScript 2 projects. haxe allowed me to use a much more modern language with far better features (eg. compile time macros, inline functions) than AS2 allowed even while hitting the same VM.

It is a really fantastic language for many different platforms and I definitely recommend checking it out.

<comment><USER9> 1\. While haxe has macros, they're like ocaml macros not like lisp macros. You can write a function that takes an ast and returns an ast, but because the language isn't homoiconic it feels a lot more like working with dom than like macros in lisp.

2\. as2 is a superset of javascript, so it also has inline functions.

3\. Having worked in haxe quite a bit, I found that the fancy type system got in the way more than it helped. I can't think of one case where it caught a bug, but I do have memories of spending hours writing typedefs and casting things to Dynamic.

4\. You can't really target multiple platforms in practice, because nearly everything you might want to do depends on host-specific features. A multi platform codebase would be riddled with "if (flash) { } else if (c++) { } else if (javascript) { ...".

<comment><USER8> 1\. True, but whether or not this is good or bad is subjective.

2\. It (AS2 & JS) has functions as a first class type that you can define anywhere, but it does not have inline functions in the commonly accepted C/C++ sense of the definition. Actual inline function support as included in haxe can be hugely important on devices with underpowered CPUs since making a function call has significant overhead in ActionScript when you are running on a dinky ARMv5 core. With inline functions there is no function call thus no overhead (at the cost of making the 'compiled' code larger, which is often a perfectly fine tradeoff).

3\. I love the type system, so again I guess this is subjective.

4\. There is some truth to this but it is easy to encapsulate code that has to be platform aware (generally UI stuff) into libraries and then keep your primary app code platform independent.

<comment><USER10> As to #2, I think georgemcbay is talking about where the contents of a short function can be copied into the place where it's called (as with the 'inline' keyword in C or C++), thus avoiding the overhead of a function call [1], whereas it sounds like rabidsnail is talking about inner or nested functions, which you can do in JavaScript [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#Functional> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_function>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "deploy everywhere" saying may feel a bit tired, but before you hate on haXe before having given it a try, NME is a perfect example of what's possible.

I recently wrote a haXe version of "Pirate Pig", a sample game originally written for Enyo in JavaScript. It took me about a day of work to write, and it went straight to webOS, Android, Windows, Linux, Linux 64-bit, Flash, Mac and the iOS simulator.

It would have gone to an actual iOS device, too, but I was too lazy to pull out my iPod Touch.

If you are interested, please feel free to view the game online, in the webOS App Catalog, Android Market or downloadable. All the source code and assets are available, too:

[http://www.joshuagranick.com/blog/2012/02/22/nme-game- exampl...](http://www.joshuagranick.com/blog/2012/02/22/nme-game-example- pirate-pig/)

I am very thankful for haXe, which makes the NME project possible. The great part is that it really works.

</comment><comment><USER12> Another option, if you're a Java programmer and want to reuse existing Java libraries you've written: <http://code.google.com/p/playn/> which is the library initially developed to port Angry Birds to HTML5 (although it's true purpose was to allow Web and Android simultaneous development)

This is a multiplatform API for 2D games. It runs as native Dalvik code on Android with a GL backend. On the Web, it runs as JS using GWT for compilation, and either a Canvas or a WebGL backend. For flash, it uses the <http://code.google.com/p/gwt-flash> addon for the GWT compiler to produce SWFs. For iOS, it uses iKVM to run Java bytecode on Monotouch. I believe the same code can also run on the XBox and perhaps Windows phone. Box2D is builtin.

See <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtwUyu7UzcM> for <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_sbusEUz5w> for a longer presentation I did at Google I/O.

</comment><comment><USER13> The Stormpulse map was originally written in AS2 by yours truly. We recently moved it over to haXe and are now generating a .swf and an iOS app from the same codebase. I should say by "we moved it over" I mean an MIT Media Lab PhD. No way could I have figured out how to manage haXe/NME/X Code the way he did to pull it off. But it does work. The biggest work left is to make the iOS app feel like a proper iOS app rather than the Flash app on an iPad.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is there so much skepticism in this. I am also trying to develop something like this by creating a embedded in-process web (resource) server ever where (android/iphone/wp7*/linux/win/osx), then we need to use web technology using jquery mobile with backend rpc to develop the application which should make it cross platform as well native deployed. I am developing this to simplify my clients cross platform headache. Sometimes i wonder why there is no product in the market which can do this, which will make my life easier.

Music had 7 symbols and they have perfect interoperability, Software has 2 symbols and interoperability is a dream.

<comment><USER15> Software has two symbols? I'm not sure what the analogy is, but the best I can think of would be either opcodes or functions, and pretty much everybody has a lot more than two.

<comment><USER14> What i meant was software is based on binary

<comment><USER16>
      0110100101100110001000000111100101101111011101010010000001100011011000010110111000100000011101000111001001100001011011100111001101101100011000010111010001100101001000000111010001101000011010010111001100100000011101110110100101110100011010000110111101110101011101000010000001101100011011110110111101101011011010010110111001100111001000000110100101110100001000000111010101110000001011000010000001110100011010000110010101101110001000000110100100100111011011000110110000100000011000100110010101101100011010010110010101110110011001010010000001111001011011110111010100100000011010110110111001101111011101110010000001110111011010000110000101110100001000000111100101101111011101010010011101110010011001010010000001110100011000010110110001101011011010010110111001100111001000000110000101100010011011110111010101110100

;)

<comment><USER17> mind putting a space in that comment? you're breaking the layout

<comment><USER16> would be glad to if i were able to edit it. my apologies :|

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Having been writing in Haxe for a long time, I think the "Code once deploy everwhere" line is an exaggeration. However, it is a nice framework and has some advantages. In Haxe, you can easily break out into the native language with c-like # compiler directives, so you can do #if platform=ipod. Now, this isn't a perfect solution but it does mean that you can keep a good portion of your code the same source which could save you some time. For certain elements like the UI, though, you probably have to write a custom version for each platform no matter what programming language you use.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've used HaXe in a few projects. Its a nice abstraction with strong typing and so on which helps with larger code bases. Combined with NME it is very powerful: one can compile code for html5, flash, ios, and android with little to no modification.

My only criticism would be the 32bit integer handling in the neko target. I'm not sure if its changed recently, but the last time i used it i had to wrap all operations in "Int32.<operation>(<int32 object>)" function calls which to me was a completely braindead solution.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really hope, HaXe gets a JVM compile target one day. In my opinion that would make it a perfect language for writing libraries for a large number of problems for a big audience.

<comment><USER21> <http://haxe.org/doc/intro> says "C# and Java targets are coming soon!", and links to the following tweet: <http://twitter.com/cwaneck/status/15486381623091200>, which is dated 16. December 2010.

In other words, I wouldn't get my hopes up :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Another programming language which claims to improve productivity by reducing multi-platform portability. Java starter this revolution , by quoting "Write Once , Run Anywhere". That phrase has seriously taken a huge leap today and has been used in all sorts of context.

If I start learning this language , I am not sure if I am actually getting the full benefit of what a Java/Python provides. I am not convinced until I actually see a production ready solution.

</comment><comment><USER23> After so many years and so many promises like "Write Once and Run Everywhere" and "Framework that solves all your <you name it> problems", now I will only give a language/framework more attention after it is used commercially. What I have in mind are: Go, Lift, D, HaXe, and Scala. But I admit I am not tracking these closely, so my understanding could be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER24> So what would be the perfect requirements for HaXe to make sense? (i.e. target desktop + iOS for a game)

</comment><comment><USER25> "multi-platform. code once. deploy everywhere."

wow, that claim makes me feel old. i've lost track of how many existing/legacy ways we have to write once, deploy anywhere, multi-platform apps. it's like what they say about the great thing about universal ultimate standards: there are so many to choose from!

<comment><USER26> Indeed, this was the promise of C, and it was largely realized: there are C compilers for almost every platform. (You can even use Emscripten to "compile" C to JavaScript, but don't expect miracles.)

<comment><USER27> I think there was no promise of C. There were two guys that needed somewhat portable compiler to avoid tying them to one system for their ubiquitous by now operating system.

Kernighan, Richie, UNIX and C.

Or to take more lighthearted - If there really was promise, there would've not been need for a preprocessor.

<comment><USER28> That's right, And even putting aside the preprocessor, prior to C89, C was a mess portability-wise. (Actually, even after C89, portability was still frustrated by the problem of the varying size of ints.) Ritchie designed C to get above the assembly level so that portability would be possible. But it was certainly not attained until much later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Have been writing swf with haXe ever since AS2, I use it with jedit, it is awesome and Nicolas Cannasse is a god.

</comment><comment><USER30> As long as is not javascript i am ok with it. It look kind of like c# or java which i like though.

</comment><comment><USER31> If they would have something that is worth being called documentation I might have actually taken this seriously.

<comment><USER32> Like the gigantic wiki?

<http://haxe.org/doc>

Or the API docs?

<http://haxe.org/api>

Or maybe you rather reading a book?

[http://www.amazon.com/Professional-haXe-Neko- Programmer/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Professional-haXe-Neko- Programmer/dp/0470122137)

[http://www.amazon.com/haXe-Beginners-Guide-Benjamin- Dasnois/...](http://www.amazon.com/haXe-Beginners-Guide-Benjamin- Dasnois/dp/1849512566)

<comment><USER33> But the libraries are what makes haXe so powerful, and they clearly do lack documentation...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Unlike JavaScript which can take hours to debug, haXe has a very strict > compile-time type checking feature that allows you to catch errors before > testing your program in the browser

It's great that you invented a new programming language. haXe is very cool. But why do you feel the need to disparage other programming languages?

If you personally don't like dynamic typing, that's fine. But putting that in the blurb for haXe will annoy a large potential audience for your language. For what?

<comment><USER35> While I disproportionally use Ruby and JavaScript on a daily basis, this statement is referring to a specific type of (common) error, which is largely alleviated by the use of static typing, and therefore not exactly untrue.

I didn't take it as a disparaging of dynamic typing.

<comment><USER34> It's not untrue.

But why the singling out of JavaScript? The statement is true for Python, Ruby and Lua as well.

And why even mention another language or class of language in a negative way? I propose that the sentence would better have been written as

> haXe has a very strict compile-time type checking feature that allows you to > catch errors before testing your program in the browser

It loses nothing by removing the disparaging part.

<comment><USER35> My guess is that rather than give an exhaustive list, the author wanted to give an example of a familiar language _without_ static typing. As Haxe is more similar to ECMAScript than Python, Ruby, Lua etc. - it's the most appropriate comparison.

As a person who likes (the good parts of) JavaScript, I read it as trying to appeal to me with promises of less debug time.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fungal Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.13262 <comment><USER2> I just love the name of the journal they're publishing in: "International Journal of Unconventional Computing". That's new to me!!

</comment><comment><USER3> fungal computer: [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsfs.201...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsfs.2018.0029)

<comment><USER4> "Acknowledgements

I acknowledges pearl oyster mushrooms P. ostreatus for their cooperation in the studies."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will this finally mean companies can no longer defend the blatant falsehood that open-plan layouts are cheaper than dedicating private offices per knowledge worker?

</comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating! Wouldn't you constantly be replacing units? Once the mycelium consume all of the fuel, wouldn't the compute unit die?</comment>


Safari is sending every search query to Apple - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/landonf/04c25e83687fe0867892 <comment><USER2> This is inaccurate alarmism. It shouldn't be surprising that the search bar makes autocomplete requests to Apple as you type. The address, phone number, and map link that popped up when you typed in the name of a local business, for example, didn't just appear out of thin air.

However, it seemed suspicious to me that Apple would make it impossible, as the author claims, to type in the Safari address bar without sending queries to Apple. So, I fired up Charles proxy to confirm my suspicions.

When using Safari default settings, typing in the address bar resulted in a few requests to Apple and Google autocomplete APIs. Then, I turned off "Include search engine suggestions" and "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari search preferences. (Safari -> Preferences -> Search)

As I initially believed, no requests were sent whatsoever when typing in the address bar after those settings were disabled. Can we put out our pitchforks yet, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> It's not at all inaccurate.

Might be alarmism, I don't know. But I think it just demonstrates the ways in which users' expectations about privacy are mismatched with the products they use. For example, your average non-tech-savvy user would never realize that an important privacy setting is in a search setting marked "suggestions".

It's hard to say more without seeing the text of Apple's Privacy Documentation that is referred to at the top of the article.

<comment><USER4> > For example, your average non-tech-savvy user would never realize that an > important privacy setting is in a search setting marked "suggestions".

Is this not clear enough?

[http://i.imgur.com/i1Zq3E4.png](http://i.imgur.com/i1Zq3E4.png)

<comment><USER5> Apparently not :-)

Those instructions disable "Spotlight Results" only in Spotlight-as-in- desktop-Spotlight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author of this post is confused about Safari and Spotlight privacy settings.

Spotlight search suggestions are a major new advertised feature in OS X and iOS.

To disable Spotlight Search Suggestions in Safari, open the Safari preferences and de-select "Search > Include Spotlight Suggestions".

To disable Spotlight Search Suggestions in the system Spotlight search menu, open the System Preferences and de-select "Spotlight -> Spotlight Suggestions".

<comment><USER7> Yep that looks to be spot on based on tcpdumps, although it would be nice to be made aware of this change in the release notes maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tim Cook last month:

"Our business is not based on having information about you. You're not our product ... I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they're making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried."

"We take a very different view of this than a lot of other companies have. Our view is, when we design a new service, we try not to collect data,"

"We're not in that business. I'm offended by lots of it. And so, I think people have a right to privacy."

[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/15/apples-cook-your- data...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/15/apples-cook-your-data-is-not- our-business/)

<comment><USER9> This doesn't contradict that. Spotlight provides web search results, how do people think that works?

<comment><USER10> According to TFA, "In Yosemite, all Safari web searches are sent to not only the search engine you've selected ... but _also_ to Apple..."

So as you say Spotlight web searches have to contact some sort of search engine, but I don't know of a legitimate reason why Apple should need to know about them _as well_.

<comment><USER11> Safari also shows the top spotlight search result iirc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing about Apple is the positive bias they always get on HN. In these comments:

> Is there ANY evidence that Apple is collecting data.

> I'm not sure it's a contradiction either, more of an omission, he doesn't > specifically address search data in that interview

> Doesn't seem like a data collection initiative. It seems more like a > complementary search engine

> Do they do autocompletion suggestions like Chrome? That would seem like a > good reason to collect this data.

> I actually personally don't mind sending my search data to Apple

It's just amazing. When Microsoft, Google or anyone else does it, it's EVIL and there's no other way to look at it, but when Apple does it, it's somehow perfectly OK, because, you know, they are _the good guys_.

<comment><USER13> I guess this is where the confirmation bias comes in.

As someone who would consider themselves to be a realistic 'Apple apologist' (I like Apple, as a company and their products, and tend to assume the positive for everything they do), I see a large negative bias against Apple on HN.

<comment><USER12> Probably it depends where you come from. If you always spend time on MacFans kind of forums, then yeah, I guess the HN crowd can sound pretty negative to Apple. But in comparison with other stories out there on HN, I feel Apple always gets away with better feedback no matter what they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Post seems to indicate that the wrong "Spotlight Suggestions" was unchecked. One in System Preferences (which the post mentions disabling), and one in Safari itself (that the post does not mention).

I would expect the one in System Preferences to disable suggestions in the system-wide search only, and the one in Safari to disable suggestions in Safari only.

Screenshots of the two options: [http://imgur.com/a/TWDxy](http://imgur.com/a/TWDxy)

</comment><comment><USER15> Google and Microsoft do this too when you enable real-time searching via the address bar, but both are pretty good at letting you know it happens. Doesn't Safari have some kind of first-run experience where the user gets some notice on this?

<comment><USER16> Google and Microsoft also run search engines.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps Apple internally already consider themselves a search engine. This might only be a temporary misalignment of user experience and data being sent to Apple.

<comment><USER18> Without the requisite user data or some fantastic and soon to be copied algorithm I would expect their search experience to start off about as well as Apple Maps.

You can bet they are going to build it though and it'll look nice.

<comment><USER17> That might depend on whether they learnt anything from the Apple Maps debacle. They might approach something like that much more tactfully the next time they try it.

With the right expertise on the team and some decent exposure to real users prior to the wide release, they may be able to deliver something that people enjoy using. The micro-features that delight users are something that Apple has traditionally done well, and are also the type of thing that go a long way in a product like a search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Assuming that Apple _does_ disclose this adequately -- meaning they'd be legally in the clear -- I'd still want to know the answers to: How do I delete the records of my searches saved on Apple's serves? (Google lets me delete my search history.) How do I randomize my unique ID? How many FedGov or state/local agencies have showed up demanding info on which users searched for "dirty bombs" or "how to join Al Qaeda?" Does Apple always require a warrant? Etc.

Separately, Kevin McArthur (author of the Pro PHP book) is reporting this evening on Twitter that Spotlight is harvesting user locations after updating to Yosemite, apparently before the opt-out option is presented: [https://twitter.com/KevinSMcArthur/status/523975643340353537](https://twitter.com/KevinSMcArthur/status/523975643340353537) [https://twitter.com/KevinSMcArthur/status/523977472627335168](https://twitter.com/KevinSMcArthur/status/523977472627335168)

<comment><USER20> >How do I delete the records of my searches saved on Apple's serves? (Google lets me delete my search history.)

Google deletes the search history you see but everything is still stored on the servers.

<comment><USER19> [https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/465?hl=en](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/465?hl=en) "When you delete items from your Search History, they are no longer associated with your Google Account."

Whether you think that's sufficient or not, at least I have the option. And the last octet in my IP address is automatically modified after 9 months and deleted after 18 months even if I don't do anything. If you can tell me how I can do the same thing with Apple's search log files, and what Apple's IP address retention policy for its search log files, I'd be much obliged...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The DuckDuckGo guys are not gonna be happy...

<comment><USER6> Sending your searches to DuckDuckGo is OK because they're committed to protecting your privacy.

Sending your searches to Apple is bad because... they're also committed to protected your privacy but they're Apple so it's a big conspiracy.

<comment><USER22> You may have missed the point. Sending them to DDG is OK because the user _intended to send them to DDG_. That was the entire purpose of the user's searching experience to begin with. Apple being strung into it is different - the user doesn't need Apple's involvement to complete the search.

<comment><USER6> DuckDuckGo Search Suggestions and Spotlight Search Suggestions are separate features in Safari. Either can be enabled or disabled by the user in the Safari settings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I use Little Snitch to monitor and control all my outbound traffic. I've noticed a lot more requests to Apple's servers with Yosemite than with Mavericks.

</comment><comment><USER24> Might this be for sharing one's browsing history across devices? This seems like old news: [http://www.tekrevue.com/safari-sync-browser- history/](http://www.tekrevue.com/safari-sync-browser-history/) Perhaps that type of syncing can be turned off? (I don't have Yosemite installed, so I don't know.)

</comment><comment><USER25> Simple workaround: don't use safari. Long term solution: don't by Apple products. Or at least don't run their software.

<comment><USER26> Not quite sure why you got down voted. I bought an iPod nano several years ago, because I quite liked the hardware/software that Apple made. However when I found out that they intentionally broke compatibility with 3rd party music software that isn't iTunes, I made the decision to never buy Apple products again.

I don't feel that I'm particularly missing out by making this decision (although I am aware that many other vendors probably have similar ethical problems associated with them).

<comment><USER27> Can you link to an explanation of how Apple intentionally broke 3rd-party syncing with iPod Nanos? I don't know what kerfuffle you're referencing.

<comment><USER28> It's long enough ago that a lot of the technical information has dropped off the web (or in some cases been DMCAed offline by Apple[1]), but the short answer is they started authenticating the iPod Nano music database using a cryptographic MAC with a per-device key derived using a secret algorithm. Without the key, third-party software couldn't add or remove songs. They've got more aggressive about it with each generation too; for the 5th gen iPod Nano the code to generate the key had the same kind of obfuscation as their actual DRM code[2], and there's no open source support for the 6th gen because it's just too hard to reverse-engineer.

[1] [http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/11/20/201246/apple-dmcas- ip...](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/11/20/201246/apple-dmcas-ipodhash- project)

[2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20080901013029/http://www.bluwik...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080901013029/http://www.bluwiki.com/go/Itunes_obfuscation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't seem like a data collection initiative. It seems more like a complementary search engine. Apple spotlight search is trying to find other contextual results which may not come back from typical search engines. For example: Apps, Music etc.

I am sure you can directly search on google or duckduckgo to avoid that.

<comment><USER30> Whatever they do,as long as they make it clear it is fine.I think that's an important thing users should be made aware of.It's not a big scandal but it's good practice whenever a soft does that to have the user's explicit consent.

For instance IDEs often ask if they can submit anonymous datas to a server from the software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Disabling "Include Spotlight Suggestions" in Safari Preferences seems to make it stop.

<comment><USER32> FTA: _In Yosemite, all Safari web searches are sent to not only the search engine you 've selected (e.g., Google, DuckDuckGo), but also to Apple, even if you've disabled "Spotlight Suggestions"_

<comment><USER33> It's because the author is completely wrong.

Disable the Smart Search features in Safari and it won't send anything to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Here's a tweet from Edward Marczak back in June about this behavior:

[https://twitter.com/marczak/status/481818945318428673](https://twitter.com/marczak/status/481818945318428673)

with a recommendation to block api.smoot.apple.com.

<comment><USER35> That seems to be about Spotlight searches, not web searches using Safari.

(And arguably seems like a worse behavior to me, as my Spotlight search terms are often for private info I'm trying to locate on my disk.)

<comment><USER6> If you're concerned about your privacy, you should look at System Preferences > Spotlight > About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy:

About Spotlight Suggestions & Privacy

When you use Spotlight, your search queries, the Spotlight Suggestions you select, and related usage data will be sent to Apple. Search results found on your Mac will not be sent. If you have Location Services on your Mac turned on, when you make a search query to Spotlight the location of your Mac at that time will be sent to Apple. Searches for common words and phrases will be forwarded from Apple to Microsoft's Bing search engine. These searches are not stored by Microsoft. Location, search queries, and usage information sent to Apple will be used by Apple only to make Spotlight Suggestions more relevant and to improve other Apple products and services.

If you do not want your Spotlight search queries and Spotlight Suggestions usage data sent to Apple, you can turn off Spotlight Suggestions. Simply deselect the checkboxes for both Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches in the Search Results tab in the Spotlight preference pane found within System Preferences on your Mac. If you turn off Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches, Spotlight will search the contents of only your Mac.

You can turn off Location Services for Spotlight Suggestions in the Privacy pane of System Preferences on your Mac by clicking on "Details" next to System Services and then deselecting "Spotlight Suggestions". If you turn off Location Services on your Mac, your precise location will not be sent to Apple. To deliver relevant search suggestions, Apple may use the IP address of your Internet connection to approximate your location by matching it to a geographic region.

Information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple's Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy.

<comment><USER34> _If you 're concerned about your privacy, you should look at System Preferences > Spotlight > About Spotlight Suggestions and Privacy_

The problem is that even after disabling it there, Spotlight still attempts to phone home. Here's a screenshot with "Spotlight Suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches" disabled in System Preferences with a Little Snitch window showing an attempted connection while searching: [http://imgur.com/w09aNpz](http://imgur.com/w09aNpz)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's good that Google doesn't log your Google searches with Google Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER37> I wonder if the same behavior is present for the browser in iOS 8. If they have done this on the desktop, it seems plausible they would also have done the same on their mobile platform.

<comment><USER38> I upgraded to ios8 and the two most buggy, crashy apps are iMessage, and Safari, which have rendered my daily use of the device nearly useless. I gave the hardest time copy/pasting URLs from mobile safari into iMessage, it often pastes in something from days ago instead, no matter how many times I re-copy things I'm other apps.

I want my device to 'just work' like it did when I bought it, updates shouldn't feel like downgrades

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Any speculation on what they might be using this data for?

<comment><USER6> [http://www.apple.com/osx/better-apps/](http://www.apple.com/osx/better-apps/)

See "Safari: A more intelligent way to search."

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Out of the corner of my eye, I read that as: Safari is sending every search query to an Apple //c. Everything started making sense.

</comment><comment><USER41> A few years ago there was a minor scandal about microsoft's Bing "stealing" google results through the internet explorer search box. It seems strange that apple would have that kind of motivations, given that they don't have a search engine of their own... Here's the accusatory blog post google made: [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing- uses-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/microsofts-bing-uses-google- search.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> Do they do autocompletion suggestions like Chrome? That would seem like a good reason to collect this data.

</comment><comment><USER43> couldn't one just flood this with false positives? looks like a POST to 'api.smoot.apple.com' in JSON format. I'd suspect random entries would make the overall data collected alot less useful...

<comment><USER13> I'm going to assume that Apple (well, the engineers there) are at least as smart as you and had previously taken this into consideration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This appears to just be Safari syncing with your iCloud Account across all your iCloud enabled devices. That would be why the data is getting sent to Apple.

</comment><comment><USER45> Lovely. I haven't got Yosemite, yet, but I wonder what happens when you disable api.smoot.apple.com (say via /etc/hosts)?

<comment><USER46> I did earlier and there is no noticeable difference in Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> So nowadays Apple is posing itself as the champion of privacy, and yet they pull this shit...

</comment><comment><USER48> Safari private browsing is broken too. Just private browse, quit safari, reopen safari and then check in the preferences on the privacy tab and see the cookies, etc.</comment>


Dolphin Progress Report: September 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/10/02/dolphin-progress-report-september-2017/ <comment><USER2> You might also enjoy reading an article about Dolphin in the International Journal of Proof of Concept or Get the Fuck Out:

[https://archive.org/stream/pocorgtfo06/pocorgtfo06_djvu.txt](https://archive.org/stream/pocorgtfo06/pocorgtfo06_djvu.txt)

Look for "3 Gekko the Dolphin" (there is some ad text mixed in there)

Also, PDF version here: [https://archive.org/stream/pocorgtfo06/#page/n5/mode/2up](https://archive.org/stream/pocorgtfo06/#page/n5/mode/2up) (though this might be pretty slow to download as PoC||GTFO tends to hide extras in their PDF files).

</comment><comment><USER3> Always interesting to read the release notes on this product. They go into such technical detail, its a joy to read

<comment><USER4> This comment is becoming the HN equivalent of "First!" on Dolphin Progress Reports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nintendo just released the SNES classic. Next up should be the N64 Classic.

I think GameCube and Wii are probably too new to be considered retro.

Also, the games are a lot bigger... they wouldn't be able to cheaply make a device powerful enough and with enough storage to make a huge profit.

<comment><USER6> I don't think we'll see the N64 classic for a while. What makes the SNES stand out even today is that it's home to some of the most well-designed 2D games out there. Games like Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World are still relevant today because on how on top of their game their devs were.

N64 on the other hand, doesn't have that. It very clearly shows that the N64 era was a time where everyone was still struggling with 3D. Few games have a decent camera system, animations are poor, framerate is choppy, fog everywhere, etc etc. I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I can't sit down and play N64 games for that long of a time, they just haven't aged well because of those technical shortcomings.

<comment><USER7> 16 (and more?)-bit 2D ages very well - it's why many 2D games come out even today.

On the topic of "N64 Mini Classic", they will do it. I have a lot of friends who'd buy one just for Mario Kart 64 and Mario Party. The Zelda games are IMO, better on the 3DS (again because of controls), but hold a lot of nostalgia for people.

The problem with the N64 is that some of its most popular games (Goldeneye, Banjo-Kazooie, etc) are owned by Rare which is owned by Microsoft. Will they be able to get the licenses?

<comment><USER8> Judging by the fact that a port of Goldeneye for XBLA got cancelled partly because of Nintendo, I'd say probably not.

<comment><USER9> Goldeneye from what has been told is an absolute legal nightmare for all involved

(Allegedly) it goes as such

\- Nintendo owns the rights to publish Goldeneye as a "game" (which may be why there was that awful Wii "Goldeneye" game years ago)

\- Rare (unsurprisingly) owns the source code. Rare of course is now owned by Microsoft

\- MGM/United International Pictures owns the "Goldeneye" film in which the N64 game is based on. And probably needs to give the legal go ahead to both parties involved

It's hard to say if this specific case is just a "too hard basket" for Nintendo's lawyers. Or if Microsoft are playing hardball. It's unfortunate since Rare as a company is basically dead. All its talent having more or less moved on (see: Playtonic Studios "Yooka-Laylee" homage to Rare's platforming)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Indian computer science education sucks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.theschoolofskills.com/2011/10/why-indian-computer-science-education.html

<comment><USER2> completely agree with point 1,partially disagree with point 2,partially agree with point 3..:)</comment>


CCXT – OSS CryptoCurrency Exchange Trading Library (70+ Exchanges, JS, Py, PHP) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kroitor/ccxt/wiki/Exchange-Markets <comment><USER2> Hi!

My name is Igor Kroitor, I am a member of the team behind the ccxt library. Just noticed this thread and wanted to thank you for your interest in our work.

For those who don't know anything about it, ccxt is a cryptocurrency exchange trading library that provides quick access to market data for storage, analysis, visualization, indicator development, algorithmic trading, strategy backtesting, bot programming, webshop integration and related software engineering. It is intended to be used by coders, developers and financial analysts to build trading algorithms on top of it.

We started it this summer, and we are making consistent progress. We now have 70+ exchanges supported in 3 languages (JavaScript, Python and PHP), more to come! Our goal is to unify the industry standard for cryptocurrency exchange APIs.

For now the library unifies exchanges' REST interfaces. It is async in JS, sync in Python and PHP. Our biggest milestones so far:

\- Async/await support with asyncio in Python3. We're almost there, hope to deliver very soon.

\- Unified streaming APIs with WebSocket pub/sub interfaces for all exchanges. This is also a work in progress to be released in near future.

I'll hang here, ready to answer your questions, if any ) Your feedback and critique is welcome!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I noticed that this library was already submitted and flagged a month ago, probably because the authors tried to shill it, but I think it's incredibly useful for anybody who wants to build trading bots or something similar and deserves a second chance. I'm not affiliated with them in any way :)</comment>


Your Home Doesn't Matter for Tesla's Dream of a Battery-Powered Planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-21/your-home-doesn-t-matter-for-tesla-s-dream-of-a-battery-powered-planet <comment><USER2> >For the average U.S. home to rely solely on solar panels and Tesla's new batteries, the complete system would cost roughly $98,000, according to analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Even that glum assessment assumes a house in a sunny region such as Southern California.

927 kwh / month off grid solar system : [http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solarpowersystems/large- home-7...](http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solarpowersystems/large-home-7-off- grid-solar-power-system.html)

Cost : $20,172

Two of Elon's batteries: $7k

Total cost = $27,172

How the hell did they get $98k?

I think they intentionally tried to make that number look ridiculous. I wonder if this is more of ALEC's anti-solar bullshit.

<comment><USER3> Look at the link you posted. The recommended battery pack for that system is 62kWh (1284Ah * 48VDC). That is the equivalent of 6 10kWh Powerwall batteries.

Furthermore, the 10kWh Powerwall is not for solar or other daily applications; it's for backup.[1] A PV system needs to use the 7kWh batteries, thus requiring 9 for this system. That is $27,000 in batteries.

Now, on to the panels. The sizing of the system you posted indicates it assumes 5 Sun hours per day. Most of the US gets less than that; from the map on the site it looks like 4.3 is a good average for the US. Next, as the site clearly says when you run their off-grid calculator, you need to discount the Sun hours if you plan on using the system in the winter; they recommend knocking 1.5 off your yearly average. That drops most of the US to 2.8. That means the median house would need twice the number of solar panels in that set to cover all times of year.

Combined with the actual cost of Powerwall batteries, we are at $67,344. If you want to use the Pacific Northwest as your baseline (which someone opposed to solar would try to do) you approach the $98,000 for an off-grid system.

[1] [http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall](http://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall)

<comment><USER2> >Look at the link you posted. The recommended battery pack for that system is 62kWh (1284Ah * 48VDC)

Oh look. It's $8k. So the total price is $28k.

62 kwh is over two full day's worth of electricity usage for the average US home. I actually think that's probably quite a bit more than you need. Two of Elon's batteries is 20kwh, which is about 2/3 of an average day's usage - enough to last most people the night, right?

>Now, on to the panels. The sizing of the system you posted indicates it assumes 5 Sun hours per day. Most of the US gets less than that

$98k was in California right? According to this, Los Angeles gets 5.62. Manhattan gets 4.57.

[http://www.bigfrogmountain.com/SunHoursPerDay.html](http://www.bigfrogmountain.com/SunHoursPerDay.html)

>it looks like 4.3 is a good average for the US

Why not pick 3.9 and assume that everybody gets as much as Fairbanks, Alaska?

<comment><USER3> > Oh look. It's $8k. So the total price is $28k.

Yes, and the sentence you quoted specifically said the $98,000 figure was using _Tesla 's_ batteries.

> 62 kwh is over two full day's worth of electricity usage for the average US > home. I actually think that's probably quite a bit more than you need. Two > of Elon's batteries is 20kwh, which is about 2/3 of an average day's usage - > enough to last most people the night, right?

Wrong. An off-grid PV system requires a buffer to supply power during days with little to no sun. Two days is about right for most of the country; in some places I would size it larger because they are prone to multiple days of overcast conditions at certain times of year.

Furthermore, you completely ignored that I stated, supported by the link I provided to the Tesla page, that you are not supposed to use the 10kWh batteries for daily drain applications.

> $98k was in California right? According to this, Los Angeles gets 5.62. > Manhattan gets 4.57.

I didn't look into where the $98,000 was supposed to be located. I assumed they took the least-favorable location in the country.

> Why not pick 3.9 and assume that everybody gets as much as Fairbanks, > Alaska?

Because the vast majority of the US gets in the range of 4.2 - 4.5? I could have used 4.5, but that would only move the total cost down by about $4,000. Still, that is the average. An off-grid system needs to be designed for the low on that chart, or there will be times of year you have little or no power.

<comment><USER2> >Yes, and the sentence you quoted specifically said the $98,000 figure was using Tesla's batteries.

Ok, so assuming that you really do need ~60kwh and you _must_ use Tesla's expensive batteries rather than the $8k package, that's still 21 + 3 * 8 batteries = $45k for a house in California. What is the other $53k spent on? Postage?

>I didn't look into where the $98,000 was supposed to be located. I assumed they took the least-favorable location in the country.

In California. It's right there in my first post.

Maybe they assumed that the average American lives in Alaska and use their air conditioning 24/7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something this article doesn't address is the potential impact batteries everywhere could have. This quote in particular tells me the author, and the speaker, don't see it this way:

 _"The battery-in-every-home idea—not only do I think it doesn't make economic sense, I don't think it's necessary," said Brian Warshay, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "Having a centralized grid is incredibly useful and incredibly efficient."_

The difficulty with our current power infrastructure is that there is no buffering at the consumption side. Because there is no buffering at the consumption side, the overall grid must be able to handle peak demand. That is, we must over-provision. With batteries everywhere, this isn't necessarily the case. In theory, we could all have generators, but we don't because they're noisy, smelly, and a maintenance hassle. But sticking a giant battery on the wall? I can see everyone having one, and big institutions having large arrays of them. I think that has the potential to fundamentally change our power grid.

<comment><USER5> Erm... or centralized storage mechanisms could be built.

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

Do you have any idea how many Li-Ion batteries would be needed to match the 30 GIGAWATT-hours of storage potential in the Bath County pumped storage plant?

The problem is that California didn't build enough of these 20 years ago. California has a couple of pumped-storage plants coming in... and as soon as they're built then net-metering will be even _better_ for consumers.

In general, centralized storage at the utility-level will benefit from scale. Redox batteries will probably be cheaper and more efficient than Li-Ion batteries that Tesla is putting out.

And Pumped-Hydro is _already_ much much cheaper, and has existed since the 60s.

<comment><USER6> I ran some back-of-the-envelope calculations based on Tom "Do the Math" Murphy's nation-sized battery, 336 TWh, sufficient for two weeks' reserve power.

Tesla's Superfactory could produce that. In about 12,000 years.

Even if the capacity's excessive by a few orders of magnitude, that's a hell of a lot of battery.

[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized- bat...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/)

Assuming 56 kWh Tesla batteries. Half a million battery packs is 28 GWh of total storage capacity. That's the energy equivalent of 16,000 barrels of oil. Assuming a modest 30% Carnot thermal generation efficiency, you'd need 55,000 bbl of oil to actually generate that electricity.

Yeah, batteries are a hard sell.

If each battery is 2m x 3m or 6m in area, the Nation Sized Tesla Battery would cover 36,000 km^2, or an area 190 km on a side. Maybe we'll stack them.

(The actual measurements are smaller, around 1.5 x 2.5 m or so, so that's an overstatement.)

A buddy of mine working at ORNL claims there's interesting stuff on the storage front that's competitive with pumped storage, but can't say just what yet. I'm highly curious myself.

<comment><USER5> > A buddy of mine working at ORNL claims there's interesting stuff on the > storage front that's competitive with pumped storage, but can't say just > what yet. I'm highly curious myself.

[http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access- control.cgi/2011/11273...](http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access- control.cgi/2011/112730.pdf)

"Table 4" is probably what you want to look at. As you can see, only Compressed Air is competitive with Pumped Hydro as far as energy storage (w-hrs).

It looks like Compressed Air is going to be the golden standard a few years from now. There was a relatively cheap compressed-air plant created out of abandoned mine tunnels that was hundreds-of-Megawatts in scale. I don't quite remember the name of it however.

Also, Compressed Air doesn't require you to empty a lake (and refill it) every day. So California's low-water situation may prefer compressed air storage systems.

Redox Flow batteries look to be the most promising technology at utility-scale chemical. Chemical solutions are needed for their versatility... but "long- term" energy storage (such as day-night load balancing) will likely be handled by Compressed Air and/or Pumped Hydro.

Currently, over 95% of the US's energy storage capacity is in pumped hydro.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't CAES require gas or other fuel for reheat on expansion?

<comment><USER5> Early designs did. But CAES has begun to store the excess heat that is made during compression.

For example: [http://sigmaenergystorage.com/?page_id=447&lang=en](http://sigmaenergystorage.com/?page_id=447&lang=en)

Advances are being made at _all_ energy storage solutions. Frankly, CAES is the most promising, now that they've figured out how to store excess heat during compression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the second article I've seen from Bloomberg that ignores two-thirds of what Tesla actually said and thus massively misses the point. I'm starting to think it's intentional.

No kidding this isn't (currently) attractive for North American homes. If I recall correctly, they basically said that in the press conference, though I can't find the link now. They were expecting it to be more useful in places with lots of solar and dodgy electric grids, such as Australia.

Bloomberg also goes on and on about utility scale storage. They apparently didn't read the press kit, where Tesla talked about how they're doing just that.

Press Kit - [http://www.teslamotors.com/presskit](http://www.teslamotors.com/presskit)

<comment><USER8> _I 'm starting to think it's intentional._

It IS intentional. Pretty much everything said (and NOT said) on MSM is intentional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Long time ago I visited the home of a young entrepreneur that had spent all his money installing optical fiber all around his home.

I remember what I thought: How stupid someone could be. It does not make financial sense at all when it was so expensive.

Turn out I was the stupid one. This man created a company doing exactly what he had done in his house but for others and made a ton of money.

In some way he paid a cost for living in the future, and he understood the practical shortcomings and advantages of the new technology much better than anyone else, which made him succeed when others failed.

</comment><comment><USER10> Net metering doesn't make sense. About half of the cost of residential electricity goes to running the grid.

That being said, electric companies aren't stupid. If / when solar power and batteries become ridiculously cheap, they will just switch over to solar and batteries.

Residential off-the-grid solar power will make sense in two markets: \- Highly rural areas where it's very expensive to maintain power lines. \- "Be prepared" cultures like Utah where people take pride in preparing themselves for Armageddon.

<comment><USER11> Don't forget line losses [1,2] -- closer the point of generation and the point of consumption, the lesser they are.

[1] [http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/1.2-Trillion- Met...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/1.2-Trillion-Metric-Tons- of-CO2-in-Line-Losses)

[2] [http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> First, this is the opening price. The economics are going to get better from here, and the early adopters always pay a bit more for the privilege of experiencing the technology - and _someone_ has to be first to get the ball rolling.

Next - If I have a $500K+ house (modest, by Northern California standards), and for $10K I could get this sleek, hi technology, 10 year warranty battery that lets me more efficiently leverage my solar panels, plus potentially giving me some insurance against a grid outage? Hell, I'm first in line.

Now, does the Tesla Battery make sense, for 100% of the US Population, today? Of course not - but I don't think anyone has suggested that.

But this is where we start, and we improve from here.

<comment><USER5> Except decentralized power are an expensive luxury product. If you build a 1GW pumped hydro plant with 10-hours of storage (10GW-hr plants cost roughly $3 Billion), then _everyone_ benefits, including those in poverty who are unable to buy batteries for themselves.

Net-Metering from those who can afford rooftop panels can then store the energy centrally, and then offset the costs for the non-solar users in the rest of the neighborhood.

<comment><USER12> Just a pedantic note - I don't think you would price Hydro Plants power stores based on GW-Hr capacity (that's just the size of the lakes/water reservoirs, which might store petawatt-hours of capacity depending on the geography), but on the rate/number of pumps, right?

<comment><USER5> Yes, due to Pumped Hydro's benefits... the major cost is the size of the generators.

A single 100MW turbine can store weeks-and-weeks of power if drawing from any small lake. But for it to be useful to a lot of people, you probably need to build a gigawatt scale turbine.

With that said, the Bath County generator is the largest in the world, and is close to 30 GW-hr of capacity (3GW of power. Yes, it can empty the lake in 10 hours, and refill it in another 10 hours)

<comment><USER12> I just lost 45 minutes reading about the Bath County generator - that has 50% more generation than Hoover Dam. Amazing.

In terms of Storage Capacity of a Dam, I checked: [http://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/nature/storage-capacity-of- lak...](http://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/nature/storage-capacity-of-lake- mead.htm)

The water available for power generation starts at 1050 feet, and goes to 1221.4

The Capacity goes from 11,474,857 acre feet to 31,141,756 acre feet. So Hoover Dam has an operational storage of 19,666,899 foot acres

The Turbines have a capacity of 2,080 MW. From: [http://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/brochures/faq.html#capc](http://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/pao/brochures/faq.html#capc) we discover

 _What is the maximum capacity of these works?

About 118,000 cubic feet per second: 32,000 cubic feet per second for power generation and 86,000 cubic feet per second of valve discharge. One cubic foot per second of water equals nearly 7 gallons passing a given point in one second._

So, dividing 19666899 foot acres / 118000 cubic feet/second = 6,408,487,134,720 gallons / 882,701.2987 gallons/second = 7,260,085.76644 seconds = 2,016.69049 hours (only 12 weeks)

So, the operational storage capacity of Hoover dam is 2 GW * 2000 Hours = 4 Terawatt Hours. I realize these are entirely different projects, but it's interesting to get a gut sense of how incredibly large the Bath County generators are - not only do they generate power going _down_ \- they can also pump that water up.

Incredible - wonder of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "So defection from the electrical grid will remain well out of reach for most Americans, and even those who manage the feat will waste a lot of capacity thanks to solar panels and batteries that are rarely used to their full potential."

Once again a news outlet (deliberately) fails to see the long-term strategy for the sake of a click-baity nay-saying headline. Just like the Tesla vehicle itself, which is still outside the reach of 99% of Americans, the point is to aim for the luxury market first and through scale and process optimization gradually lower the price so that it is within the reach of most Americans.

The luxury market is why Tesla is now able to develop a mass market vehicle, why solar panels are reaching an inflection point where in many parts of the world it will no longer make financial sense _not_ to have them, and why home batteries will eventually be in the reach of everybody.

<comment><USER14> I love how the echo chamber keeps talking about the Powerwall as if it were the first battery system ever made.

You can buy batteries for your home, today, at a retail price half that of the Powerwall. With equal or greater energy storage, power output, and lifetime. There's no need to wait for Li-ion to become "within reach". It's a needlessly expensive technology and product attempting to displace cheaper, more capable solutions that have been available for years.

Their marketing sure is clever, though; they're already the only battery system that 98% of Americans have ever heard of! This is going to be a fascinating B-school case study in a year or two. It's one thing for Apple to convince people to pay a huge premium for its design, another entirely to convince people to pay twice as much for a noninteractive energy-storage device that sits in a basement or closet. I'm in awe. Luxury product indeed.

<comment><USER13> Sure - and plenty of MP3 players existed before the iPod, some of which, on paper, were better than the iPod (longer battery life, bigger capacity, more formats, better platform compatibility). But it took somebody who cared about user experience and design to make it a popular consumer product.

<comment><USER14> That's exactly my point: there IS no user experience. It's a piece of utility infrastructure: it sits there and does its job; you don't interact with it at all. You're paying for a Tesla nameplate on a device you will probably never even look at. Do you know who made the backflow preventer valve assembly that sits between your house/apartment and the street? Would you pay twice as much for one if it were sheathed in white plastic and had an Apple or Tesla logo?

<comment><USER15> >it sits there and does its job; you don't interact with it at all.

This is more than can be said for the "half price" lead-acid batteries, which need to be periodically checked for corrosion and cleaned. Non-sealed batteries need to be topped off with distilled water annually. All PbA batteries (flooded and AGM!) require the hydrogen vent be checked for obstructions and maintained. That vent is an extra wall penetration for mice, insects, heat loss, etc. The entire battery bank also needs to be equalized every ~6 months, which may or may not be done automatically.

Sounds like the Powerwall's "no interaction" model is already better than the competition.

[http://rimstar.org/renewnrg/off_grid_solar_battery_maintenan...](http://rimstar.org/renewnrg/off_grid_solar_battery_maintenance.htm)

<comment><USER14> AGM and gel type batteries are collectively known as valve-regulated lead-acid or VRLA types. The maintenance procedures you described are for flooded batteries (FLA) and are neither required nor even possible with VRLA batteries.

You can save even more money by using FLA if you're willing to do the maintenance. If you're not, the direct comparison is with VRLA. VRLA is much cheaper than the Powerwall on an apples-to-apples basis.

It's hard to point to a specific source describing maintenance procedures that don't exist. For example, a common manufacturer's manual may be found at [http://rollsbattery.com/public/docs/user_manual/Rolls_Batter...](http://rollsbattery.com/public/docs/user_manual/Rolls_Battery_Manual.pdf). Note the difference between FLA and AGM (VRLA) maintenance procedures. Specifically, there are none for the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Typical NYC based media people not getting it.

There are many many people who spend money right now on generators as emergency power sources.

My parents are a great example of a perfect use case for this product. They live in the country, and have 5-6 significant power outages a year, usually in winter. They need a way to automatically deliver power to critical house systems: furnace, well pump, fridge, freezer. Right now they use a large portable generator, but that requires maintenance and a manual engagement. You also cannot leave it unattended for long periods of time. That basically ties them to their house in the winter months, making vacations difficult.

Lots of other markets for this type of thing too. If you have a horse or hobby farm, one of these things keeps the heat on in the barn when the power goes out.

<comment><USER8> That is a great use of Tesla Powerwall that I didn't think of. Looks like most people are thinking Powerwall would be useful only in Sun drenched ares/season. But from your case, Powerwall would be very useful everywhere even in areas without much sun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article is much more negative than it _should be_. There is some truth in there, but the rest of it seems short-sighted. It's like saying "why in the world would anyone buy a $5,000 4k TV with an OLED screen?" Yet people buy them and that's how the technology becomes cheaper.

It's a _little_ different with batteries because they don't improve at the same rate tech products do, but they still improve and I think once Tesla gets a couple of those Gigafactories going the batteries will become more appealing to a wider range of customers.

It's also the same with electric cars - 95% of the people still _don 't want_ one, even if they had the money for it, because they don't want the range anxiety. Also aren't solar panels still more expensive than buying coal- produced electricity? Or it least it was in the past few years, yet people still installed solar panels.

The bottom line is Tesla only needs some "early adopter" customers to hold it over until the product is cheap/good enough for the mainstream market. And by the looks of it, whether it's in electric cars, solar panels or batteries, that seems to have worked pretty well.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand why people feel the need to be an "early adopter" of something like this.

How many people out there want to be an early adopter of a Lennox Air Conditioning unit? Or of a New, more efficient furnace? Or more efficient windows?

The fact remains: the Tesla Powerwall is a "home appliance". The process for buying a new home appliance is the same as any other. You run the calculations, you determine if the appliance saves you money in the long term, and if it does... you go for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I seem to remember a lot of very similar articles arguing the economics of the iPhone didn't make any sense when it first arrived as well. Not trying to say the result here will be the same, just running hard numbers doesn't always tell the whole story.

</comment><comment><USER19> The article omit use as alternative to UPS + diesel engine. In that use case it is competitive.

Moreover, any modern invention could be dismissed as toy/limited use for rich. E.g. Computers, mobile phones, cars... Next generation should be even more competitive.

<comment><USER20> Problem with Net Metering (at least for the people I know int he northeast who have solar) is that when the lights go out they are in the same boat as everyone else... where I live we have had multiple week+ outages. They, like everyone else, have to have a generator to keep things going (despite solar up on the roof). A battery would replace the generator and UPS in that case.

Of course, the week+ outage is usually due to ungodly amounts of snow... sooooo solar may not be your friend then...

<comment><USER21> > Of course, the week+ outage is usually due to ungodly amounts of snow... > sooooo solar may not be your friend then...

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm confused about why 'net metering exists' is a good argument against these batteries. As I understand it this is a mandated buy of excess home-generated solar at retail prices - is this correct? If so, does everyone really think this is sustainable if rooftop solar really takes off? Even if it technically is I expect to see widespread lobbying to end it (like in Hawaii) and expect most of the lobbying to succeed.

I don't think the Tesla batteries are a good way to lower your home energy costs, but I don't think I would factor in net metering as a reason why, at least not looking 5-10 years out.

</comment><comment><USER23> If I recall correctly about 80% of Tesla's battery pre-orders by dollar value were in the commercial and utility categories rather than residential.

This article makes a big point that in the residential/solar panel market the battery is marginal at the moment in most of the US where grid electricity is cheap. Ok, but so what?

</comment><comment><USER8> Imagine the world where only acts that make financial sense are done.

1\. No kids would be born. They do not make financial sense at all.

2\. We all would be living in some nasty environment. Caring for the environment doesn't make much sense for companies.

3\. Caring weak, vulnerable people doesn't make any financial sense at all.

</comment><comment><USER24> > No matter how cheap prices get, batteries won't be the easiest or the > cheapest way to take advantage of solar power.

that seems like it can't possibly be true.

<comment><USER25> That statement is true as long as net metering is in effect. Net metering means you sell back to the grid for the same price as you buy from the grid. So you can treat the grid as a giant, perfectly efficient battery. Put $X of electricity in during the day and pull out $X at night. With a battery, you'd only be pulling out ~0.9X due to efficiency losses, not to mention the cost of the battery itself.</comment></comment>


ProTABS – A Better Tab Manager for Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/protabs-tab-management-fo/hagccgdaknhhkbmchgnmeapckfipacfi <comment><AUTHOR> The author here, with a bit of background: As someone who doesn't compulsively clean up their tabs and likes to keep a lot of research lines open, I was really dissatisfied with the native Chrome tab management capabilities. None of the existing extension worked quite how I liked either.

So I brainstormed some ideas and built this out. It worked pretty well for myself and some of my colleagues, so I spent a lot more time polishing it up for a wider audience.

Plenty of more ideas for improvement in the pipeline, but I think it's pretty useful already. Let me know what you think!

Fun bit of trivia as well; the UI is written mainly in elm - which became a real pleasure to work with once I got the hang of it.</comment>


Department of Defense outlines Skynet and Terminator development - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/department-of-defense-outlines-skynet-and-terminator-development-20120330/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised the DoD is spending as little as $250MM on this type of Big Data/AI research. Most of the technology outlined in Lemnois' memo is interesting and exciting, rather than intimidating and indicative of "Terminator development." I'm particularly excited about "reasoning and inference engines that can learn from experience with little training and within mission timeframes" and advances in "human-machine interfaces to enable seamless collaboration for operations and for training." Maybe a little less hyperbole in the post title next time?

<comment><USER3> they're not only spending $250mil, they're spending an ADDITIONAL $250mil on this new project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's not forget the two billion dollar internet spy center from the NSA

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/al...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1)

</comment><comment><USER5> Personally I find the thought of humans killing humans much more scary than machines killing humans.

<comment><USER6> We are very _very_ far away from having any kind of artificial intelligence on the level we currently exist. We don't even understand the mechanics behind our own intelligence.

So if a machine is killing humans somewhere, it's because some human pressed the button.

So I agree with you, I find the thought of humans killing other humans much more disturbing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is good news. An Artificial Intelligence arms race between the US and China would means the Singularity is on it's way.

<comment><USER8> May you live in interesting times.

<comment><USER9> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> An AI developed by the military and without oversight would be a _very_ bad thing. A very bad thing indeed.

Ask about the motives. It wouldn't be an Asimov machine for starters</comment>


Despite Protests, UK Will Feed Richard O'Dwyer to US Officials Anyways - <AUTHOR> http://www.webpronews.com/despite-protests-uk-will-feed-richard-odwyer-to-us-officials-anyways-2012-07

<comment><AUTHOR> So this: [http://www.change.org/petitions/ukhomeoffice-stop-the- extrad...](http://www.change.org/petitions/ukhomeoffice-stop-the-extradition- of-richard-o-dwyer-to-the-usa-saverichard) is pretty much pointless now...</comment>


Ask HN: How small are your pull requests? - <AUTHOR> For example, I am currently fixing bugs with some forward/back buttons across two different parts of the system.<p>Would you group everything together? A PR for each part of the system? A PR for each button? <comment><USER2> the answer to this really depends on your deployment process.</comment>


Talent matters - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=870400&f=28&sub=Sunday

<comment><USER2> Previous submission of canonical URL, with comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3257339>

Response piece to the two authors of the New York Times opinion piece, by a leading researcher on the subject, as submitted to HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3258576>

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the things that I hate about journalists is they often don't see that their commentary has no relation to what the source is saying:

"He adds that intellectual ability - the trait that an I.Q. score reflects - turns out not to be that important. 'Once someone has reached an I.Q. of somewhere around 120,' he writes, 'having additional I.Q. points doesn't seem to translate into any measureable real-world advantage.'"

Yes, IQ isn't that important. Once you're in the top 10% in terms of IQ, it's really just about hard work!

<comment><USER4> I didn't think these were journalists writing; Hambrick and Meinz were involved in some of these studies, if you google for them.

> Once you're in the top 10% in terms of IQ, it's really just about hard work!

Did we read the same article? IQ still matters past the top 10%!

> The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the > participants who were "only" in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability > at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — > were between _three and five times_ more likely to go on to earn a > doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or > publish a literary work.

That is, a 0.8% difference in percentile ranking increased the specified output by 300-500%. Now what do you think a 10% percentile ranking difference would imply?

<comment><USER5> > That is, a 0.8% difference in percentile ranking increased the specified > output by 300-500%. Now what do you think a 10% percentile ranking > difference would imply?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation>

The difference in intellectual capacity between the top 10%, 1% and 0.1% (or 90, 99, 99.9 percentile) isn't necessarily proportional to the "percentile ranking difference".

<comment><USER4> I realize that, but it doesn't matter to the mistaken point the parent was making. If anything, considering the diminishing returns on IQ points or percentiles strengthens the point: by the usual argument that each percentile measures less real difference in intelligence (which I agree with), that means that the change in output is even more astounding! Going up 0.8% of the population yields you 3-500% increase in output, and this is in the part of the population where that IQ change ought to be _least_ important. We ought to see much larger gains going from, say, 91th to 92nd percentiles, with less gains for each step upwards - but we don't.

No matter how you cut it, shifting less than a percentile and getting the measured increase is dramatic. (So dramatic that I can't help but wonder if there are non-intelligence explanations - could it all be due to Matthew or network effects?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, practice accounted for 50% of success; working memory accounted for only 7%. Of course talent matters. Hard work matters more.

A hard worker with less talent will beat a talented slacker [tortoise & hare]. But a talented worker beats everyone. No surprises here.

However... if you work hard, other talents you do have may eventually find an application/be revealed [ugly duckling], because depending on the situation, a flaw can be a gift (and vice versa). So in hindsight, it may turn out that you were the talented one after all.

</comment><comment><USER7> i'm curious as to how their "core working memory" theory jibes with work showing that chess grandmasters could remember complex chess configurations if they were configurations that could occur in real chess games, but with random board placement they could do no better than ordinary people.

Is it that certain people who look at numbers more are able to construct patterns in digits where others wouldn't, but may not be able to do the same with a sequence of pictures or words.

My point, I don't think they've done enough to disentangle potential dependences.

<comment><USER4> Remembering board configurations is not a key competency of chess grandmasters - the board is usually right in front of you, after all. It's perfectly consistent for chess grandmasters to be both above average in working memory and also have long-term memory encodings optimized for meaningful board positions (but not random positions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a deeply flawed study. Their definition of "talent" is "performance on tests of working memory"? That just appears to be totally bunk.

I also think that the "spend 10,000 hours" thing is flawed, in the fact that you generally only spend 10,000 hours on something you are very interested and talented in. Basically, it is very hard to separate "hard work" from "talent", because most people only really work hard at things they're talented at.

</comment><comment><USER9> Single page:

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=5AD0C1E4FC0A984...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=5AD0C1E4FC0A984AE4CCD72DF111DBBC.w5?a=870400&single=1&f=28&sub=Sunday)</comment>


Node Predictions for 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://strongloop.com/strongblog/2015-node-js-predictions/

<comment><USER2> Glad to see Node making strong progress

</comment><comment><USER3> it was a very good year</comment>


LivingSocial Sells nearly 100,000 Amazon Gift Cards in 5 hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/livingsocial-sells-nearly-100000-amazon-gift-cards-in-5-hours

<comment><USER2> HA!!!! Read the fine print. Its a mostly worthless thing, its a great way for amazon to get people buying shit by giving them $5 off anything. Its just more effective.

1 per customer No gifting

And vuala its not really 50% off free cash.</comment>


Exploring the WSJ's Pulitzer-Winning Medicare Investigation with SQL - <AUTHOR> http://2015.padjo.org/tutorials/sql-walks/exploring-wsj-medicare-investigation-with-sql/ <comment><USER2> In case you want to know what the procedure is. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_counterpulsation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_counterpulsation)</comment>


Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style - <AUTHOR> http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2010-December/029251.html

<comment><USER2> Same story, same text, submitted earlier:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2004318>

No comments.</comment>


Fine-Tune Your Outbound Sales Formula To Help Save Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/03/outbound-sales-can-save-your-startup/

<comment><USER2> Usually the marketing team is tasked to generate leads. Where do they play into all of this? How can they help sales?

<comment><USER3> There is an interesting report that says marketing generates 65% of the leads of B2B companies and inside sales makes up the rest.

The book Predictable Revenue talks about this as well and makes a strong case for building an outbound lead gen process in order to achieve, hence the name, predictable growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought startups are about first finding a repeatable business model that thrives, instead of surviving, before fine-tuning it?</comment>


Python book bundle on Humble Bundle - <AUTHOR> https://www.humblebundle.com/books/python-book-bundle <comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing this. I am curious, what books on that bundle do you recommend for Python beginner?</comment>


Starting Your Own Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.ericsink.com/bos/Starting_Your_Own_Company.html <comment><USER2> not sure why ppl aren't commenting on this, i thought this was well written, and offers nice concrete advice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe that's a good thing. There's nothing arguable about the article.

That or hackernews is no longer the place to be for startup news and advice and becoming like another reddit. If so, then where's a better place for startup related articles?</comment></comment>


Kaleidoscope: Implementing a Language with LLVM - <AUTHOR> http://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/ <comment><USER2> It's also available as a PDF/mobi: [https://www.gitbook.com/book/landersbenjamin/llvm- implementi...](https://www.gitbook.com/book/landersbenjamin/llvm-implementing- a-language/details)

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots of goodies here. Shows how to write a sort of Pythonic little language with code generation for LLVM--and I love that it's from the LLVM krewe--but doesn't skimp on things like an AST. It does rely on globals, sadly, but for those of us who like compiler writing texts in plain language, it's a keeper.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does it explain how to integrate a garbage collector? Because that is the most difficult part of implementing a compiler nowadays, especially if it is a concurrent one, which doesn't stop the world on each collection cycle.

<comment><USER5> I've implemented Common Lisp using llvm (github.com/drmeister/clasp). I've integrated the Boehm and Memory Pool system garbage collectors. How? It would take a long time to explain - but it's doable.

<comment><USER2> Nice!

Have you benchmarked against Julia? Would be interesting how Clasp compares in their micro perf tests: [https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/tree/master/test/perf/mic...](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/tree/master/test/perf/micro)

[http://scilua.org/](http://scilua.org/) was added in the tests recently and does pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks good, but... what's the version I'm to read? The first one or the second one? They seem like different versions of the same document... Since the table of contents is close to being the same it looks confusing.

Looks like the first one is in C++ and the second one in OCaml . Second one it will be then :)

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure the second is C++... At least, I HOPE that is the case, as it is more reflective of the core llvm libraries, not my language preference

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anything specific to know in order to implement the language VBA ?

<comment><USER7> Man, I can't wait to see the comments THIS gets

<comment><USER9> You ask. I deliver. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apart from intellectual entertainment, why would anyone create another general purpose language ? Isnt there more than enough choice already ?

I really want to, but I struggle to come up with enough features or syntactic tricks to justify creating a new language.

What would your motivation be?

<comment><USER11> Perhaps this isn't what you mean, but "isn't there more than enough choice already" always comes across to me as "isn't there at least one language with zero flaws for your use case?" I think the answer to that question is definitely "no"\- this is why people write DSLs for niche use cases, but it also applies to general purpose languages. If we had just stopped where we were and were content with existing languages we'd be missing out on a lot of useful features today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I haven't read the tut yet but… could I write a language like python with that tutorial? If not, what would it be the best tutorial for indented syntax like python?

<comment><USER13> There is a trick for parsing "indented" syntax which is not covered by this tutorial: the lexer (not the parser) keeps track of indentation. Lexer inserts Indent and Descent tokens, which the parser considers like { and } tokens in a C syntax language.

Now your parser implements a context-free grammar although the language is not context-free.

<comment><USER14> There is even a better trick - ditch the lexer altogether.

<comment><USER13> Yes a lexer is primarily a performance optimisation. A good one though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


From 0 to GlTF with WebGPU: The First Triangle - <AUTHOR> https://www.willusher.io/graphics/2020/06/15/0-to-gltf-triangle <comment><USER2> Hi! Thanks for this tutorial. I notice you work with Ingo Wald at the fabled Utah graphics program. I just recently linked Ray Tracing Gems right here on HN and am working my way through it. Very insightful ;)

Am curious if your group investigates using WebGPU in contexts other than rendering? Web scale GPU compute clusters, wgpu on native, scientific simulations, ai research ... as just a few possible examples?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! I've started to look some WebGPU compute applications with other students in my group and I think there could be some cool use cases, like the ones you mention. It sounds a bit odd, but yeah WebGPU on native (by directly using Dawn, or wgpu-rs) is actually pretty compelling as a cross-platform low- level graphics API.

What's really cool is that compute and rendering using WebGPU can get near- native level performance. So a lot of scientific applications (which typically rely on more FLOPs/parallel processing) can be implemented in WebGPU compute without sacrificing much performance. I'm not sure how many simulations would be ported to WebGPU, since they usually end up targeting large scale HPC systems and CUDA, but for visualization applications I think the use case is pretty compelling, especially for portability and ease of distribution. On the compute side, I implemented a data-parallel Marching Cubes example: [https://github.com/Twinklebear/webgpu- experiments](https://github.com/Twinklebear/webgpu-experiments) , and found the performance is on par with my native Vulkan version. You can try it out here: [https://www.willusher.io/webgpu- experiments/marching_cubes.h...](https://www.willusher.io/webgpu- experiments/marching_cubes.html#vol=Skull) . There is a pretty high first-run overhead, but try moving the slider around some to see the extraction performance after that. WebGPU for parallel compute, combined with WebASM for serial code (or just easily porting older native libs), will make the browser a lot more capable for compute heavy applications. You could also combine these more capable browser clients with a remote compute server, where the server can do some heavier processing while the client can do medium scale stuff to reduce latency or work on representative subsets of the data.

As for AI, people have started looking at compiling ML tools to WebGPU + WebASM: [https://tvm.apache.org/2020/05/14/compiling-machine- learning...](https://tvm.apache.org/2020/05/14/compiling-machine-learning-to- webassembly-and-webgpu) with nice results, also getting to near-native GPU performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great article, thanks!

FYI: I have two GPUs but on all my browsers your article says "Error: Your browser does not support WebGPU"

AMD Radeon Pro 5300M, Intel UHD Graphics 630 integrated MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) Mac OS 10.15.5 (19F101)

[https://get.webgl.org/](https://get.webgl.org/) works fine in all my browsers.

<comment><USER4> WebGPU is a much newer API than WebGL — from the first section of the article, it sounds like you'll need to use Chrome Canary for now.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Installed canary and enabled WebGPU with chrome://flags/#enable- unsafe-webgpu</comment></comment></comment>


Will Apple Sideline Siri Before She Kills Google? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/30/will-apple-sideline-siri-before-she-kills-google/

<comment><USER2> Google is in no danger. Google Now already has a head start on Siri because it presents things to me _before I ask for them_. Apple is never going to be able to do that because they don't have the kind of data Google has on their users. Never mind that Apple has a consistent history of failing at projects involving lots of data.

Apple ought to be worried. Every user that switches to using Google Maps/Chrome/Gmail is another user they're losing data on.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _...the central point is that Siri is a search engine that doesn't just go > out onto the Internet and fetch a bunch of links and ads, but actually takes > your "query" and executes your intended task. If you don't see how that > paradigm would be disruptive to Google Search, you might be a redneck._

Talk about hyperbole. Google in danger of being killed by Siri? Either the OP has never used Google's voice tools or he has a lot of stock in Apple...how else to explain his inability to contemplate how Google's data strength would make it easy to ape Siri's task specific functionality...I mean, wasn't this well demonstrated during the Maps fiasco?

<comment><USER4> Did you actually read the whole post?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every few months I try to use Siri. And every single time I reach the same conclusion: Unusable and worthless to me. I don't have a weird accent, a lisp or a speech impediment of any kind. Just plain "clean" adult (as opposed to "like" bubblegum teenager) California English. I have never gotten anything useful out of the technology from the day it was introduced.

Just one data point of course. Yet, I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of iOS users don't use Siri but for the speech recognition version of fart jokes here and there.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is so exceedingly stupid I can't believe it's honestly posted on TechCrunch. Not that there's a ton of rumor for my opinion of TC to fall further, but they'd do themselves a favor to pull this.

It's so obvious that the author has never used Google Now and/or has no idea what he's talking about in general. Painful; I honestly checked twice to make sure this wasn't a "post from the past" where we were jestfully mocking in hindsight the silly "OMG SIRI IS THE BEST THING EVER" attitude from two years ago.

Honestly I thought that was dead even before Google Now came out and sprinted laps around it...

<comment><USER4> Actually, I've used Google Now extensively, and think it's really cool.

But I think you're missing the point: Siri has major disruptive potential that isn't being realized at all (by Apple).

Google Now is kinda a half-measure, and if Google wants to really defend itself against disruption (not just from Siri, but from the task-completion engine paradigm) it has to go all out on Google Now.

But then it risks bulldozing the AdWords model.

<comment><USER6> >Siri has major disruptive potential that isn't being realized at all (by Apple).

And Google is already doing (or it's obvious they're in progress for) all of those things.

How can anyone who has honestly used both services, in any world in our known Universe, call "Now" a "half-measure" compared to Siri? You could cut off one of its legs and it'd still lap it.

Google is going all out on Now. What are they averaging, 3 new card integrations every 2-3 weeks? EVERYTHING funnels into it. It literally knows where I'm going 90% of the time I get in my car. It alerts me when my packages are delivered. It's far more intelligent and has access to more of my data than Apple will likely ever have for any of their customers.

Here, I'll make it easy: What opportunity does Apple have with Siri that Google doesn't have or hasn't already leveraged with Now?

>But then it risks bulldozing the AdWords model.

Nah. I made a note to myself earlier today aloud "Google, note to self, pick up toilet paper". That was instantly automatically saved in Keep. Now, because Google knows I'm driving home, they can look up a retail partner that is close on my route home and automatically remind, navigate me there and then back home. There are a ton of usage stories like this. What if my partner emails me a "pick this up at the store"? They can add a filter like they're already doing for flights and shipping and they're done, they get that integration and visibility surfaced "free" through Now. There are PLENTY of opportunities for Google because of the data they have access to.

(Cynical hackers forget that advertising works because in some cases it ADDS VALUE for the consumer. That's what Ad Words have always been about. If they're not intelligently targeted, they're useless.)

I don't see any reason that Google Now has to obliviate AdWords. And in fact, funneling data to/through Now gives huge, huge advantages when we already know that Google is work on Glass and Watch.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you're angry because you don't feel I'm giving enough credit to Google Now.

But the piece itself wasn't about Google Now; it was about how Apple is screwing up the opportunity to do something really awesome with Siri, for reasons that I don't really understand.

For the record: I think Google Now is really interesting, but it's more like a "pre-emptive search" engine than a "task completion engine." If Google really builds a task-completion engine (and they certainly have the talent to do so), it would change the search paradigm.

But they make tons and tons of money on the existing search paradigm, so they have an innovators' dilemma.

<comment><USER6> >I think Google Now is really interesting, but it's more like a "pre-emptive search" engine than a "task completion engine."

It's both? Is there some "task" that Siri can do that Now can't? Because it has intuition, it's bad?

>it was about how Apple is screwing up the opportunity to do something really awesome with Siri

And my point is that they have none of the data necessary to do the real smart, amazing things that Now already does and will be able to. Even now, I guarantee (okay, not really, I can't say this as inside fact) that the Bing team isn't giving Apple query data unless it goes through Siri, so they're still never, ever going to have the full picture of their user like Google has.

I guess my point is, why would Siri try to fight Google on this, they have no unique leverage or technical or data advantage, it seems like any money spent trying to compete with Now's intelligence would be foolish unless they're really just going to go full-frontal on all Google services which would be utter insane suicide based on iCloud.

I mean, when you say "task based", what is more task based than a service that automatically notifies you about tasks like flights or shopping lists or package shipping notifications or directions to your destination, all without you never lifting a finger, based purely on your email and search habits (this already exists, today, with Now). That's as "task" driven as I can imagine. Each "card" is basically a task.

<comment><USER7> A classic example of Apple trying to fix this is a Maps app for Mavericks that has a "send to phone" feature. Something Google had and already retired in favor of Now and that works amazingly well.

If I use Google Maps on my desktop, search for directions, then choose public transportation, that's what goes to Now. If on another day I choose bike directions, that is what goes to Now.

Same goes for open tabs in Chrome, searching for flights and more. You perform the task on your computer and your Android phone, with Google Now, "just knows" what you are/were looking for.

One cool feature that I think came from ITA Software purchase is that, if the flight you looked for is delayed, Now lets you know it's delayed and change your directions to fit the new flight arrival if needed. When I first saw the delayed info on Now I didn't believe it, so I dismissed. Upon arrival on Heathrow, the arrival board was showing the exact same delay as Now. I was blown away.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>